Lily Poole

by Jack O'Donnell

  ‘Love you, Mum,’ Ally said.

  ‘Love you too, darlin’.’ She patted Jo under the sheets to include her in their exchange. ‘But can you maybe do me a wee favour, darlin’?’

  ‘Yes, Mummy.’ Ally’s head darted up out of the sheets and she grabbed onto her cardigan.

  ‘Can I speak to Lily please?’

  ‘Don’t, Mummy! Don’t!’ Ally batted Mary’s fingers away as she grabbed at her arm. ‘You’re hurtin’ me.’ Her eyes were splotched with tears.

  ‘For God’s sake.’ Auntie Caroline shook her head, advanced toward Mary and pulled her away from her daughter by the elbow.

  Jo sat up in bed. ‘Mum,’ she shrieked, tears running down her face.

  Mary looked slowly from one to the other before her eyes settled back on Ally. She tried to explain, in a voice rickety with longing. ‘Tell Lily I just want to speak to Joey. Just for a minute. Just for a minute.’

  Day 47

  After lunch John squeezed in beside Janine, in what had become acknowledged among other patients as a doubler – the old married couples’ seats facing the corridor. His hand encircled her wrist, his thumb wedged inside the band of her baggy red sweatshirt embellished with the legend ‘Shout’, a word she thought made her seem vaguely feminist. It was not often anyone came to her for advice.

  ‘You need to help me get oot of here, for good this time. Whit am I goin’ to dae?’ John asked.

  The clinking of bottles made John glance round to check nobody was listening. SEN McMurty, the grumpy granny, positioned the edge of the trolley against the far pillar. Jocky played nurse and acted as her legs, doling out the meds. Most of the patients were stuck to the padded chairs, arranged in a rectangle, facing the telly, watching an Open University programme about differential equations. Others sat at the stacked tables used during visiting hours, their worldly possessions safe beside them in thin plastic bags. Fast Eddy’s eyes hoovered for douts on the glassy mopped floor, but with no luck. The cleaners left behind the sharp bouquet of disinfectant and the camouflage of cleanliness.

  Janine took a drag on her cigarette as she considered her answer. ‘The best thing you can do is play them at their own game, suck up to them and act normal.’ Her shoulder dropped and her head fell sideways, a comfortable fit against his shoulder.

  ‘But I am normal.’ John sat up straighter in his chair, and looked around, as though challenging anybody to deny he wasn’t.

  ‘I know that, sweetie, but there’s normal and there’s normal.’

  ‘Whit do you mean?’

  She patted him on the back of his hand. ‘Well, when I first came in here I was like you on a short-term detention order. But that was only because I wouldn’t cooperate with social workers or psychiatrists . . . or anybody much.’ Her mouth tightened into a thin, lipstick-red line. ‘The court sent me here for background reports.’

  ‘Whit did you dae?’ he asked.

  She laughed. ‘Everything.’

  ‘No? Really?’

  ‘Yeh, really. I had my ain wee house when I was fourteen, back and front door, spit of garden at the front. I was meant to have care workers living with me, but I just told them to fuck off.’

  ‘And did they?’

  ‘Well, more or less. They gave me lots of what they called “free time”. But that’s the last thing I wanted. I never felt safe in the house, was always standing beside the front door waiting to get out, roaming the streets and getting into trouble. I was one of the youngest inmates ever remanded to Cornton Vale.’ She stuck her chest out and preened. ‘They used to call me Jackanory in there because of the stories I’d tell them. But they were all true.’

  ‘That’s terrible,’ said John.

  She shook her head. ‘No, it wasn’t. I used to go into Off Sales and walk out with a crate of beer or a bottle of vodka. They used to watch for me coming, stop me from going in. “No’ tonight Jinty”, they’d say, or “You’re barred Judy”. I got a bit of a reputation. They called me “Janine, the psycho-queen” and phoned about to warn other Off Sales I was on the prowl. I loved it, but nobody would put up with me long unless I’d something to give them. So I started stealing out of ordinary shops. I’d go in and pick up a telly and stagger out of the showroom with it. The sheriff looked at my sheet and said I was a danger to society. He said I was looking at time. But I told him to fuck off. The thing was, the only place I felt really safe was behind closed doors in prison. I never felt safe in a wee house on my own. But they kept putting me away, until I was sent here for a report.’ She sniggered. ‘They adored me so much in this ward, they couldn’t bear to part with me.’

  He grinned back at her. Jocky handed him his meds, two white tablets and a pinkish one and he slipped them into his shirt pocket. Janine stuck out her hand and a prism of different pills of different sizes and shapes fell into her palm. She swept them with a dramatic flourish into her gob. She delicately sipped water, made a face, and returned the plastic cup to Jocky. The care assistant jabbed the cup in front of John’s nose, as if asking him to smell it.

  ‘No thanks.’ John waved him away.

  ‘You’ll need this for your tablets.’ Jocky’s voice was insistent.

  ‘I don’t need anything cause there’s fuck all the matter with me. Now fuck off and go and dae something useful with yourself, like getting a life.’

  The grumpy granny padded up cat-like and stood at Jocky’s shoulder. ‘Is there a problem here?’ she asked.

  ‘He won’t take his tablets.’ Jocky slouched stiffly, not sure what to do with the half-filled cup of water in his hand.

  ‘I’ve already taken them.’ John’s cheeks flashed pink and his eyes bent away from SEN McMurty’s tired gaze.

  Jocky spoke in a smug tone. ‘They’re in his top pocket.’

  ‘Ya, fuckin’ grass.’ The chair creaked as John stood up and faced Jocky, breathing heavily.

  ‘Calm down, boys.’ SEN McMurty’s voice registered a notch above apathetic.

  ‘He’s just a waste of space,’ Jocky sneered. ‘Look at him. Don’t worry, he’s all talk nae action.’

  Janine’s nails seemed to come out of nowhere, ripping across Jocky’s cheeks. He jolted backwards as John’s forehead melted the bridge of his nose. The plastic cup fell on the floor and he slipped trying to get away from them. His arms and hands stuck out blindly like antennae as he tried to hold off kicks and punches. It seemed like hours, rather than minutes, before a bell rang. Janine had a moulded orange chair poised above her head and Jocky squealed in anticipation of being hit, but John plucked it from her hands, like a wayward kite, as staff from the office and the ward next door flooded into the day room.

  John was heaved across the room by a burly nurse and his cheek squashed under a chair as a pile of bodies fell on him. He tried to look up, to locate Janine, but his fingers were bent back and someone hissed in his ear.

  ‘You want us to break them? Do you?’

  He stopped struggling and felt a needle pierce through his denims. He could just make out Janine’s platform shoes, circled by shiny black work shoes, before everything went grey.

  Day 48

  Janine took a seat beside John’s bed waiting for him to come round. Then she slipped in cheek by jowl with him. When he failed to respond to her teasing fingers, she skipped away to do her hair and face in her own room. But he was dimly aware of her, his brain a smaze in which Lily shouted a warning, ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow,’ muffled by the raspy rattling of his own breathing; Janine’s heels going away from him; the door whooshing open and thudding shut. The faintest echo of Lily’s voice resonated afterwards, as if coming up from a drain, and the smell of cigars.

  ‘Janine.’ He called her name, calling her back, but his tongue was a shoehorn. He sat up slowly. A fantail pigeon cooed on the sill, rain slanting down and high winds ruffling its feathers. He focussed on one thing at a time. His thoughts felt as though they had cardboard backs that needed to be punched and processed into the right pinholes. The pain s
neaked up on him. Legs stiff. An ebbing throb in his back. He shifted in the bed, his torso blue with bruises. He caressed the bridge of his nose with his fingertips. Somebody had dunted it, but it was fine. He examined the sheets for blood, and grew furious without knowing the reason. The back of his neck was burning and itched before he remembered with a start.

  He tried to swing his feet out of bed, but they were the wrong feet on the wrong legs, the feet of an old man. He stumbled and went down in stages onto the floor, his head buzzing. All he could think about was how parched he was. He crawled, clinging onto a chair near the window to help him stand. He lurched towards the door. Wearing only Y-fronts, his gangly body a slow-moving spectacle, John was conscious of the shadowy presence of other patients, but felt no embarrassment. He focussed on getting to the toilets.

  The stalls stank, as they usually did, of someone else’s shit. His main concern was the sinks and the cold water tap nearest the door. He stuck his gob under it and drank lukewarm water as if he was kissing the tap, breathing through his nose.

  Janine genuflected in front of the small cracked mirror. She used it to paint on her eyebrows, made them soar like eagle wings, and did something with her hair, setting it rigid with half a can of hairspray, a mould round her face. Jackie, the care assistant, knocked on her door and eased it open. She was a top-heavy girl who seemed happy in herself, and was always smiling. In hushed tones, she informed Janine that Mr Williams wanted to see her. Janine raised an eyebrow. Then she stooped to apply her coral lipstick and patted powder around her face to take the shine off. This was the consultant psychiatrist’s usual reaction when something kicked off. He didn’t specify a time – he moved in mysterious ways – but he had already sent her a message that he would send for her. The implication was she would do as she was told. Janine decided to explore other options. She followed behind Jackie, catching up with her in the corridor, where Jackie grilled her for big, fat, spicy details about her love life, which she delighted in fabricating. When Jackie broke away to give Fast Eddie a light for a limp fag, Janine strutted towards the consultant’s door and rapped on it.

  Williams clung to the door handle, his face giving no indication that he was expecting her. She swished past him, her dress a sticky-out, sixties number, with a clasp belt as wide as his forearms. Seamed nylons and heels made her four inches taller than him. Her perfume was as subtle as a dirty, honking laugh and filled his office with her presence. She kicked off her shoes and sat on Williams’s chair, spinning round and rubbing her red painted toenails against his desk. He closed the door quietly and stood watching her like a bemused adult with a kid on a roundabout in the public park. Clearing his throat, he spoke hesitantly, in his best Oxford accent, ‘I was just thinking about you.’

  ‘I was thinking about you too, Tommy.’ Her eyes remained pinned to his face, but she stood up and flounced to the grey moulded chair nearby.

  He slipped into the swivel chair, facing her. She leaned forward so their hair was almost touching. So close he could see a patch of freckles round her eyes and dods of mascara, like the residue from the legs of a dung beetle, on her eyelashes.

  ‘Cat got your tongue?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’ He licked his lips and rubbed his jaw. ‘I was just thinking that it’s maybe time that you moved on.’ She said nothing as he continued speaking in a level voice. ‘This ward is perhaps not the most conducive environment for your progress, and I think it’s maybe time for you to spend more time at home.’ He shrugged, a suggestion of languor in his slow movements. ‘Perhaps with some input from the community outreach team I’m thinking of putting together.’

  ‘Really?’ She patted the teeny pockets of her cardigan, which were not designed for carrying things but to set off the Crayola-coloured material and the V-shape of the low-cut dress beneath it. ‘Have you got a light, Tommy?’

  He pulled open his desk drawer, and placed his lighter on the desk.

  ‘Have you got a cigarette for a lady to go with that fancy lighter?’

  She laughed and he smiled. He rooted in the drawer and pushed a cellophane-wrapped packet of Regal towards her. He watched her opening them. Her long fingers glided over his hand as he held up the flame for her to get a light. They faced each other over the glow of a cigarette.

  ‘What about John?’ She kept her tone frothy and light.

  He cultivated a deadpan look and tone. ‘Oh, you know I don’t discuss other patients.’

  ‘What if I told you I was pregnant?’ Through the film of smoke, his eyes coloured to chocolate pennies. ‘What if I told you it was yours?’

  He coughed, beating his hand against his chest. ‘That’s not possible.’

  ‘Why, Tommy? Why?’ She moued her lipsticked mouth, tilting her chin at him. ‘Cause I’m too old for you now, Tommy? Cause you prefer sixteen, or was I fifteen then, when I had to have that abortion?’

  He barely breathed, then hissed, ‘Don’t try and blackmail me.’

  ‘Oh, that sounds like a threat Tommy. You’ve got me into such a state.’ She stamped her feet in a drum-roll on the floor. ‘You must long for the old days when your sort could put their little toothpicks inside people like me and then scoop out part of my brains, or fry them on some machine like a hamburger. Just remember this, Tommy boy, I’ve got friends in very low places and if I walk, I talk.’

  ‘I don’t think so Janine.’ The ghost of a smile played on his lips.

  ‘You might brazen it out.’ She patted his knee. ‘I wouldn’t put it past you. You and your two-point-four kids, but it will always be there in the background. You’ll never get another promotion, or head some charade of a community team to tell us all how well we’re all doing, with you doing most well of all. You’ll never move on. You’ll be stuck here with me. Only I won’t be here.’ She leaned forward and whispered in his ear. ‘I’ll be outside blabbing to my social worker. Crying in cop shops about the port-wine stain on your upper thigh. Talking to reporters from the Daily Record and the Sun. All those fancy snaps you took with your fancy camera when your wife was away at her mum’s, and we had the big old place all to ourselves – it makes me go all weepy and womanly.’

  Someone chapped on his door. He swivelled round and shouted in an angry voice, ‘In a minute. Just give me a minute.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said Janine, when he turned back to face her, dabbing at the corner of her eyes with a blue silk hanky. ‘We’re both so upset. And for your information – it’s probably better to know these things than not to know these things – Jocky tried to rape me in my room.’ She shrugged, ‘And if he’s been trying it on with me, there’s a fair chance he’s been sticking his little weeny in someone else.’

  She clapped her hands. ‘We’re like one big happy family in here. But you know what I think would be a really, really, really good idea? I think it would be great if you decided to let John out, say, for starters, a three-month probationary period. Think about it. All that input from social workers and psychiatric nurses out there. I’m sure he’ll be fine.’ She stood up and beamed a beatific smile at him. ‘Don’t you? A humanitarian gesture. I think it’s his dad’s funeral soon. A fine gesture from a fine man.’ She smudged his forehead with a lipstick kiss on her way to the door.

  Day 49

  Ally was playing up. She pushed her plate of cornflakes away without touching the spoon and her lip twisted like a squiggle. Mary tried tempting her with the offer of a nice bit of toast with orange marmalade. That usually got her hooked, but she sat on the armchair near the window, shoulders hunched, pouring herself into the spread of pictures of rock god David Cassidy featured in Jackie magazine, before carefully flicking over to the next page, then back again, as if she had missed something the first, second or third times, trying to work out why Jo fancied him and if she should too.

  Mary scampered to the kitchen cupboard and tore open the packet of Orange Clubs she had bought because her brother was coming with his wife from Canada for the funeral. She swooped through the livi
ng room and, a few steps from Ally, chucked the chunky biscuit at the side of her head.

  ‘There’s breakfast. You think the world revolves around you.’ She turned away, marching through to the kitchen for a quiet smoke, ignoring the shock in her daughter’s face and the fall of tears. ‘You’re just spoiled. Spoiled rotten. Sometimes I wish you’d never been born. If the homes weren’t already full of bad girls, I’d take you there right now.’

  But all Ally did was listen, curled up in a ball of snot, clutching the biscuit, listening.

  When it was time for school her face was pink and puffy and the chocolate had melted through the wrapper. She had left the biscuit on the arm of the chair, a bright orange dash on the dusty, dull brown. She was quiet. The kind of quiet she had specialised in lately. Her body went rigid as her mum zipped her into the padded anorak. The familiar smells of fag ash and sweat worked loose the ball of her clenched white fists.

  ‘Love you, Mum.’ She flung her arms around her neck, feeling the familiar warmth as her mum hugged her back and kissed her on the cheek. ‘I’ll be good, just don’t put me in the home.’

  ‘We’ll see.’ Mary straightened up, towering over her with mock solemnity. ‘Best be off to school now.’ Her daughter yawned. Mary gave her shoulder a little push, watching her totter forward, pick up her school bag and sling it over her shoulder. She turned to see if her mum was still watching and, delighted to find that she was, gave her a thousand-watt smile. One last wave before opening the door and closing it behind her.

  The radio had been left on in the kitchen, the saccharine voice of Tony Blackburn faded as Mary sloped up the hall to sit with Joey in the bedroom. The parish priest had said they were too busy to bury him. They would have to wait until Monday. She had grown used to other people making decisions for her and accepted it. Let her sister, Ruth, orchestrate the funeral and have it pushed back when she heard their brother Morris was flying all the way from Montreal. Her husband’s poor mangled face looked up at her. ‘What do you think, Joey?’ she said, snorting through her nose.