by Clare Allan
'I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome Poppy on behalf of the Patients' Council. However long your stay with us, I hope you will find it a useful and beneficial one. I don't know how much you already know about the Abaddon Unit. The date of the building is uncertain, but it seems highly probable that even before this splendid structure which houses the unit today, there were earlier buildings standing on the site. Victorian patients speak of a ballroom where weekly dances were held, though, sadly perhaps, no trace of this remains. The land now covered by the Darkwoods Estate used to be cultivated by Abaddon patients growing vegetables for the hospital. It may be hard to imagine beneath all the concrete today! [pause] There was also a farm producing eggs and milk the excess of which was sold to provide an important source of income. The Gatehouse pub next door occupies what used to be the hospital laundry where patients were put to work washing and mending for their fellow inmates and also the public at large. Indeed the Abaddon was much admired as a model of Moral Management, a self-sufficient community, restoring the mad through a combination of discipline and productive employment. Treatment of the insane was seen as a measure of the new, enlightened society and Londoners would come out from the city specially to visit the Abaddon and observe the patients at work and leisure. Charles Dickens attended an Abaddon Ball, who knows perhaps on this very spot where we find ourselves now assembled![pause]
'In previous eras the focus was more upon physical restraint and containment. Before the relatively recent advent of anti-psychotic medication, many were shackled and held in chains to prevent them committing acts of violence towards themselves and others. Strait-jackets were frequently used, the arms crossed over in front and secured behind.' (Middle-Class Michael shown us how.) 'Patients were muzzled and locked into chairs; whips and chains were frequently used to beat them into submission. Treatment was often punitive: bleeding, purging, half-drowning patients whose conditions failed to improve. Diagnoses were often arbitrary, reflecting the patient's social background and gender more than anything else, but of course things have moved on! [pause]
'I shan't go further into our history now, but if you are interested I would warmly recommend the work of my good friend, the medical historian Professor Max McSpiegel, currently occupying the 'M' bed on the second floor. Max is in the process of researching his definitive history of the Abaddon, in which, he tells me, the name of every patient past and present will be listed with diagnosis, physical description/photograph where possible, and brief biographical details, in his exhaustive "Appendix C", which is expected to run to seventeen volumes alone, [long pause]
'The Dorothy Fish is a somewhat newer institution. For indeed it is only relatively recently that patients have been encouraged out of the asylums and with the help of medication, community-based resources and day hospitals such as this one, enabled to live as part of a wider society Established in 1983, seven years before the MAD act of 1990, the Dorothy Fish very much sets the standard for a client-centred, user-led approach to psychiatric treatment. [pause] We have twenty-five patients, from Astrid to Zubin (the "X" chair is currently vacant) drawn from every sector of society and representing a broad cross-section of the multi-cultural community from which our client group is drawn.
'Day patients at the Dorothy Fish have often moved down from the wards. And the day hospital forms part of a programme of rehabilitation and reintegration back into the community. This can take time, especially for those who may have spent much of their lives in institutions. For others, the day hospital represents a move in the opposite direction. People who find themselves shipwrecks in the storm of life, washed up on a desert island perhaps or drifting aimlessly across an unresponsive sea. For such as these the Dorothy Fish provides much-needed rest and water, an opportunity to rebuild one's ship, to catch up the log books and take on fresh supplies for the voyage ahead.' ('That'll be peas then,' said Astrid and everyone laughed. Middle-Class Michael been doing pretty well but he gone a bit red in the ears at that, and he pulled at his nose and coughed and looked down, and Schizo Safid leapt to his feet, begun, 'Three cheers for Middle-Class Michael.''Please,' said Michael. 'Please!' and he held up his hand but they just give him three cheers more. 'Please,' he said, coughing. 'I'm really . . . I'm just doing my job.')
'However you use your time here, there's one thing of which I am certain. And that is that we will all do our best to make you feel a valued part of our therapeutic family.[pause] And the Patients' Council, of which I am an elected representative, sits very much at the heart of that family.[pause] Our sole and exclusive purpose is to represent the interests of every Abaddon patient, [pause] And as a patient you are automatically entitled to have your views and opinions respectfully expressed at a twice-yearly forum of Patients' Council members, members of staff and representatives from the medical profession. We also provide an award-winning patients' advice service, Abaddon Patients' Rights, which is staffed entirely by users and can offer help and advice on all practical matters from housing to benefits as well as referring patients where necessary for legal representation. Your guide will I'm sure be more than happy to show you to our office.' (The flops was all clapping and cheering again; I couldn't help smiling a bit.)
'On the subject of the Patients' Council, I have an announcement to make. You have all heard, I know, of the tragic death of Pollyanna Pleasance. Not only was Pollyanna a close friend of mine and a much-loved member of our community, her premature discharge offers a warning to us all. [long pause]
'We are witnessing a critical time, a decisive time, a dangerous time for all psychiatric patients, a time in which the role of the Patients' Council has never been more crucial, [pause] You will be aware from reports in the press and perhaps on television, of government proposals to privatise our mental health services. Veronica Salmon, the Minister for Madness, has commissioned a number of feasibility studies, and at least two of our largest pharmaceuticals companies have already expressed an interest. The treatment and care of the mentally ill, a yardstick by which, as has sometimes been noted, a civilisation may measure itself, is now to be viewed as nothing more than a commercial enterprise. Already evidence suggests that hospitals are feeling the pressure and being forced to improve their discharge figures or withdraw from the marketplace. The message is simple: Madness Must Pay and anything which stands in the way of Profit must be dispensed with!
'As patients we have an obligation to fight these proposals with every resource we can muster, [pause] We have the right to demand the services we need, services based on our requirements and not on the greed of avaricious shareholders!!!! [pause] Madness is our heritage, our cultural identity, our bond, our common struggle. [pause] It is not to be traded on the stock exchange by men in suits commuting from the home counties! It belongs to us, the service users; [pause] it belongs to us, the underclass; [pause] it belongs to us, the madmen, [very long pause]
'I hope that Poppy will not object to my using this speech to express such concerns, affecting us all as they do. As a new member of our community no less than our older patients, some of whom have been at the Abaddon sixty years or more, [pause] Poppy needs to know that her concerns will be properly represented, and therefore . . .da capo senzafine . . .'
Well every time Michael done his speech he got himself more and more worked up, especially with all the politics and that 'bout Veronica Salmon, and he kept on getting his hanky out and wiping his forehead and the back of his neck and I reckoned you could of wrung out that hanky and filled a bath with it easy. So like I say the flops gone wild and Schizo Safid was having the time of his life, and the day dribblers too got well into it, and the way Michael spoke, do you know what I'm saying, none of the flops could of spoke like that in a million years, so I reckon they felt pretty proud. Even Dawn, I ain't saying she knew what was going on exactly but she sat there clapping with everyone else and cheering him on and it never crossed her mind to make a table.
Rosetta didn't seem to be enjoying it so much. I looked when he s
aid about Pollyanna. She was slumped like a sack just staring across at the empty brown chair opposite, and her skin was as dull as a dusty old shelf and I seen this tear trickle down her cheek and left a line in the dust.
As for Poppy, there's only one word can describe what she looked like: 'gobsmacked'. But 'gobsmacked' don't begin to describe how totally gobsmacked she looked. I tell you if fucking St Paul's Cathedral had picked itself up from behind Paolo's shoulder, walked all through the Darkwoods, up Abaddon Hill, got a pass off of Sharon, walked in through the doors, sat down next to Jacko, lit up a fag, and begun singing 'Hallelujah!', the look on her face still wouldn't of come nothing close. She weren't even smoking, that's how stunned she was; she'd forgot she was even a smoker. Just stood there gawping at Middle-Class Michael, reading his cards and punching the air and wiping the sweat off his forehead. And if Curry Bob had exploded behind her, she wouldn't of flinched, I reckon, she was that fucking gobsmacked.
So Middle-Class Michael gone on and on and like I say it seemed like he weren't never going to finish. And every time he reached the end I knew he kept turning the cards and doing it again but I never could get the point where he done it exact. And like I say, the flops was enjoying it, kept jumping up and clapping and stamping and three cheers for Middle-Class Michael, but after a time, I mean quite a long time, I noticed even they begun to get restless. Seemed to me them cheers sounded more and more empty, and the clapping sounded like kind of distracted; they didn't come in so quick or go on so long.
Well flops ain't hard to read, do you know what I'm saying, and all it is is you just got to know how to read them. So as soon as I heard the flops dying down, I had a look up at the clock with no hands, seen it was only a half-hour till dinner, and didn't need to look no further. But Middle-Class Michael, he weren't going to give in easy. And it was like he could feel them wandering off and he just got more worked up so's to try and keep them, and he kept on adding in these bits he hadn't done last time round, like stuff about medication and that and MAD money forms, being the two things what gets dribblers going. And the poor fucking flops, it was like they was ripping in two. And instead of the cheering all you could hear was cries like being tortured and the clapping sounded like bones being pulled apart, 'cause half of them needed to get in the queue what was already gone out the doors and the other half needed to hear the end of the speech so as not to miss it. And half of each flop I mean, not half of them total.
So in the end, it was really weird. Nobody said nothing, nobody looked, there weren't no signal, like firing a gun or blowing a whistle or nothing, but they all got up exactly together and all of them, they rushed at Middle-Class Michael. And all you seen was this huge crowd of flops, like surging forwards any way they could. And it was like they was ants or something; every crack, the tiniest gap between two chairs, the space behind the dead plant, they found it. And as soon as one gone through the others followed, like streams and streams of them pouring in, round the ends and between the chairs, in and out and around the tables, not even thinking, do you know what I'm saying, like ants just streaming forward. And Fat Cath said it was Jacko the Penguin and Jacko the Penguin said it was Curry Bob, but somebody upset the empty 'P' chair, and it lain on its back with its legs sticking forwards and after that they poured in even faster. And when they got to Middle-Class Michael, still stood on the table, still shouting, still stood on the table, they picked him up, I mean not with their hands but just with the force of them moving, and they carried him off, still punching the air and shouting Veronica Salmon, and they moved off, all the mass of them, back across the common room and out through the double swing-doors and the last thing I seen was this fist waving high above their heads and the last thing I heard was 'Minister for Mad . . .' as they gone round the corner and into the corridor.
17. How everyone turned to Poppy and what Poppy said
Well once the flops had took Michael out and gone off to join the dinner queue, they left a bit of an empty space behind them. And the day dribblers sat there twiddling their thumbs and wondering what to do next. Candid put her headphones on and turned the volume up so loud you could see her head vibrating in time to the beat.
'I was enjoying that,' said Astrid. 'What they have to carry him out for?'
'Turn it down, Candid,' said Sue the Sticks, but Candid didn't hear her. Up the other end of the row, Wesley drummed on the arm of his chair.
'He weren't even talking to them,' said Astrid.
'Do you think it's true about privatisation?' said Verna. Sue the Sticks shrugged.
'Yeah man,' said White Wesley, though it weren't too clear if he was answering Verna or not.
'He weren't even talking to them,' said Astrid.
Tina nodded and gone a bit pink. 'He was welcoming Poppy,' she said, so quiet she hardly said it at all. But just the name, do you know what I'm saying, it was like someone pressing a switch. Every one of them - 'cept for Rosetta, who was still on a bit of a downer - every one of them lit up like that, and turned their heads to where we was standing, me and Poppy, next to the mountain of fag butts. 'Speech!' they shouted. 'Speech! Speech! Speech!'
We'd been stood there ever since Michael gone out. I knew how we should of been chatting and stuff but I couldn't think how to get started. And it didn't help each time I looked at her, like just to say 'Alright', or something, she never even met my eye but stood arms folded, leant on one hip, staring across through the safety-glass windows, like blanking the whole of London.
'Speech!' they shouted. 'Poppy! Speech!' She glanced down and seen two rows of dribblers clapping and stamping the carpet.
'Don't worry,' I said. 'You don't have to say much.' She looked at me. 'You alright?' I said.
'Speech!' they gone. 'Poppy! Speech!'
'I've been better,' she said. 'I saw the doctors . . .'
'Yeah?' I said.
White Wesley whistled.
'They say I've got to stay a month!'
'That's alright!' I said, which I know it ain't science but every cell in my body sighed with relief. 'They say that to everyone,' I said. 'It's like a probation. Don't worry about it. They're bound to extend it; they always do! Fuckin'ell, Poppy!' I said.
She frowned.
'I thought they'd turned you awayl' I said. 'Reckoned you wasn't mad enough.' I knew that was tactless as soon as I said it but I was just so relieved do you know what I'm saying, like for her I mean, fact she hadn't been kicked out. 'You'll be fine!' I said. She was staring at me. 'Play your cards right, you could be here for years.'
'I'm not being rude,' she said, 'but are you fucking stupid?!'
She knew she was out of order alright. She looked away and taken a big deep breath. But then she just kind of waved her hand, like 'Fuck it! I can't be arsed.' And she walked off and stood between the two rows of dribblers, kept shouting 'Speech! Poppy. Speech!' And I had to sort of squeeze around behind her to get down the row to my chair, but I never said 'Excuse me' or nothing and I shown her the back of my head.
I don't know why Poppy decided on Tina, maybe because she was done up so nice with her skirt clean and ironed and her hair all turned under, but she seemed to reckon she was her likeliest option. So most of what she got to say, she said it like talking to Tina, and Tina was so embarrassed being picked she knotted her fingers together, and she kept on glancing across at Astrid, and wriggling her fingers about and trying to get free.
'I need to get out of here,' said Poppy.
'Get out?' said Astrid. 'You've just arrived!'
' 'Cause there's nothing wrong with me,' said Poppy.
'So why you here?' said Sue the Sticks.
'Look at me!' said Poppy. 'Do you know what I'm saying?!' Tina blushed, stared down at her lap. 'Do I look like I'm mentally ill?' said Poppy. Tina nodded then shaken her head. She glanced over at Astrid like desperate. 'What's the procedure for getting out? I've told them there's nothing the matter with me! They're saying I've got to stay a month. I mean, Jesus Christ, I can't stay here a
month!'
'So what did you come for?' Astrid said and everyone said yeah. You could see not one of them weren't convinced; she might look as normal as a Sniff Street sniff but any second she'd whip out her ace and trump them.
'So what did you come for?' said Astrid, again.
Poppy shrugged. 'I didn't have a choice.'
'You always got a choice,' said Sue. 'It might not feel like you have, but you do. I'm not saying it's easy but there's always a choice. I mean, personally, I used to self-harm . . .'
'But I don't have a choice,' said Poppy. 'That's the point.' She give up on Tina. 'It's compulsory!'
'Compulsory?' said Sue the Sticks. 'I never heard of that before.'
'I'm compulsory,' Candid said. But nobody paid no attention.
'Day patients aren't compulsory,' said Astrid. 'There's no such thing.'
'Compulsive maybe,' Zubin said, 'but not compulsory.'
'But I am compulsory,' Poppy said. 'They say if I don't come every day they'll have to admit me as an inpatient.'
Well no one knew what to say to that; it didn't make no sense at all, but you had to admit she seemed genuine stressed; it was hard to just dismiss it as dribbler bragging.
All morning Rosetta been slumped in her chair, staring across at the empty brown vinyl, but now she looked up at Poppy. 'If that's what they told you,' she said, 'they must have a reason . . .'
'I said there was nothing the matter,' said Poppy. 'They wouldn't listen!'
'They're doctors,' said Zubin.
'It's just generally speaking,' Rosetta said, 'day patients aren't compulsory, we're here on a voluntary basis.'
'You mean you choose to come!' said Poppy - thought I was slow on the uptake.
'We come 'cause we need to,' Rosetta said.
'They say I've got to stay a month,' said Poppy. 'So they can work out what's wrong. I told them there wasn't anything wrong! I can't stay a month, do you know what I'm saying!'