by Bateman
She said: ‘What the hell are you doing down there?’
I straightened, shone the torch on my face and called up: ‘It’s me, Mother.’
‘I can see that, you half-wit. What the hell are you doing at this hour?’
‘Gardening,’ I said. ‘Now go back to bed.’
‘Weirdo,’ Mother called down, lovingly, and closed the window.
I returned to my task. Just a few moments later, the Spoon of Hopefulness scraped across something metallic. I hesitated, and then glanced up at the distant barking of a dog. I checked the street, and the doorways, and the walls and the trees; there were so many different shades of dark – but nothing. I carefully traced the outline of what was rapidly revealed as a small box. I dug down a couple of inches around it until I reached its base, and then extracted it. The box was just about large enough to contain a defixio, but although metallic, it lacked the weight of lead. I carried it back into the house, and set it down on the kitchen table. I cleaned the soil off it using a damp green sponge purchased in a five-pack for £1.99 in Poundstretcher. The box had a faded yet intricate pattern, in which the soil was deeply ingrained. There were hinges on one side and a small latch on the other.
I studied the box from all angles, including the base, which had a maker’s mark which would help me trace its origin, if required. I took a deep breath. I carefully pushed up the latch, and then jumped back as the lid unexpectedly sprang up.
It took several moments for me to recover my composure. Then I cautiously leaned forward to examine the contents.
Inside, there was a tiny, tiny skeleton.
It was less than three inches long, and definitely not human.
It came to me that in 1978 I had buried my pet gerbil in such a box, with full pomp and ceremony, and placed it in the then robust wooden barrel in the front yard.
I had not thought about Lightning, as I had called him, in many, many years. I loved him very much. I used to let him out of his cage to run around our front room. We had great fun and games.
One day, Mother knelt on him.
She broke his neck.
She said it was an accident.
I did not believe her.
I screamed and yelled at her and she put me in a cupboard.
She opened the door five hours later and asked if I was still accusing her of gerbil murder and I said no, but at the very least she should be charged with gerbilslaughter. She said I might be precocious for an eight year old, but that gerbilslaughter wasn’t a word. I said if I said it, it became a word. She closed the cupboard again.
I always kept a small torch in that cupboard, because I was frequently in it. I used it to locate a tattered copy of Moonfleet by J. Meade Falkner which I had begun reading during previous imprisonments. It was a children’s adventure story about smuggling, set in 1757. I remember it being very exciting. A feature of the narrative was the continuing reference to the game of backgammon, which was played by the leading characters on an antique board bearing a Latin inscription. I remember it to this day because it was my first encounter with the language and I found it fascinating: Ita in vita ut in lusu alae pessima jactura arte corrigenda es, which was translated thus – As in life, so in a game of hazard, skill will make something of the worst of throws. The inscription provided a moralistic metaphor to the story of the orphan boy who in the end overcame his travails. I could relate to it, and often had, since.
I sat in my kitchen, with my baby upstairs, and my girlfriend asleep, and my mother smoking in bed, and I stared at the skeleton of Lightning, who was not quick enough to escape my mother’s knee, and I cried for him.
Although, given the state of my tear ducts, they were dry tears.
Once I started crying, I found that I could not stop. The dry heaves rocked my brain, and became so intense that whatever had been blocking my tear ducts suddenly gave way and the dammed-up tears burst forth and tore down my cheeks until they splashed onto the kitchen table and spread across the surface in a lake of sorrow around Lightning’s open casket. My whole body began to convulse and I let out howls of despair and rage and anger and loss until the kitchen door burst open and Alison stood there horrified. ‘Baby . . . baby . . . baby . . .’ she cried, ‘what is it? What is it?!’ and she threw herself upon me, and held me, and squeezed me. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ while from upstairs there came more howls from Page and further up still there was Mother screeching, ‘What in the good name of Christ is going on down there?!’ And still I howled against her and she crushed me tight until I couldn’t take it any more and I pushed her away but she came back towards me and I yelled at her to leave me alone, and she stood there shocked and frightened while I picked up Lightning’s box and hurled it against the wall where it shattered on the framed picture of Mother with Mussolini which I had once Photoshopped as a joke and given to her as a Christmas present and she had unwrapped it and stared at it in disbelief because she couldn’t ever remember meeting Kojak, and all the while mites of desiccated straw and bone from the box were filling the air while I collapsed down onto my chair again and buried my head in my hands.
Alison moved back to me and put her arm around my shoulders and said, ‘Baby, tell me, what can I do? What’s happened? Has something happened? Please, baby?’ And I collapsed against her for a moment before slithering off the seat onto the kitchen floor where I curled into a hedgehog with spikes erect and she stood over me, wringing her hands – and then Mother was in the doorway tutting and telling Alison she’d made her bed so she could lie in it and Alison came off with a mouthful no lady should be proud of and Mother went quiet and crouched beside me and stroked my brow and then Alison was going through my phone looking for the name of my doctor and there was only that of Dr Winter at the City and anyway all of my regular doctors are Mexicans who are lax about issuing prescriptions.
She phoned and explained, and Dr Winter asked if Alison was a Midnight Gardener as well and she denied it and he asked if I had soil on my hands and she examined me and yes, indeed I had, and he said the fate of the planet had become too much for me and it was important that I received the proper psychiatric care – but that provision in Northern Ireland was shockingly poor and there was a very long waiting list but that he knew someone he could call and within an hour, with me lying on the floor all that time in the essence of Lightning, there was a knock on the door and then paramedics were kneeling beside me reassuring me that I was going to be okay and quietly asking Alison if I’d been violent and she said ish and then they were strapping me to a chair and telling me they were taking me somewhere I could be looked after and made to feel better and I cried and mewed as they wheeled me out and loaded me up, and I had the briefest glimpse of a distraught Alison on the bottom step outside the house with Page in her arms and Mother just behind her and Mother’s bony arm snaking out and curling around her in what was meant to be a reassuring squeeze but which was just like the Devil claiming her for her own . . . and then the ambulance doors were shut and I lay there burbling while we zipped through the dawn-damp streets with lights flashing and alarm sounding towards Purdysburn.
22
‘You’re much calmer now,’ Dr Richardson said.
‘I feel much calmer. Thank you. The horse tranquilliser worked.’
‘It was mild sedation. Do you know why you’re here?’
‘To be assessed as to my mental condition, health, or well-being.’
‘Can you tell me your name?’
I drew myself up and said grandly: ‘Count Leopold of Prussia.’
He began to write it down.
I said, ‘I’m only joking,’ and gave him my name.
‘Yes, we knew that,’ he said. ‘Just checking. We have had some difficulty accessing your full medical records. Bits and pieces, mostly.’
‘That’s because they are spread far and wide, under different names and political systems.’
He made a note.
He was a tall, wan man in wire spectacles who was, I beli
eve, striving to appear older than he was. He wore a plain white shirt and green tie. To be any sort of a psychiatrist, you need to look wise, and that only comes with age. He couldn’t have been more than thirty-two. There was a certificate on the wall behind him. It was probably from the Royal College of Psychiatry, but with my eyesight it could just as easily have been confirmation that he had passed his cycling proficiency test. His office was plain, and lacked personal effects, which suggested that either it was used by several members of staff, or that he didn’t want to give his patients ammunition to use against him, literally or figuratively. There was a buffed linoleum floor and a large double-glazed window overlooking the grounds, an internal window gave a view of the corridor outside, although there were Venetian blinds if privacy was required. The office door was closed. There was probably a panic button, purposefully concealed.
Everything was going according to plan – apart, obviously, from the bits which weren’t. I was secure in the secure wing at Purdysburn, but instead of spending my time exploring and investigating, interviewing and observing, I had spent the best part of twenty-four hours in a drug-fuelled sleep in a locked room. They had taken the laces from my shoes and both My Nail for the Scratching of Cars with Personalised Numberplates and the Dessert Spoon of Hopefulness. I had been woken by a male nurse at 6 a.m. and given breakfast on a tray. My head felt woozy. The coffee was lukewarm and the porridge milky and cool. My clothes had been removed and there were hospital-issue pyjamas, dressing-gown and slippers. I was, for the first time in many years, without my pills and potions. My hands were already shaking. The rest of me would shortly follow. It was as inevitable as loathing follows lust.
Dr Richardson said, ‘Why don’t you tell me how you’ve been feeling?’
‘You go first.’
‘I understand you own a bookshop? Must be difficult times for a bookseller, what with downloads and Amazon and whatnot.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But come the revolution . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘Trading conditions are difficult. Yes. But we will endure.’
‘We?’
‘The shop, and I. And my staff.’
‘But depressing, all the same.’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you depressed?’
‘I’d be a fool not to be.’
‘You’ve been a patient here before.’
‘A very long time ago.’
He looked down at a file on his desk. ‘And then there’s a very considerable gap, which we are seeking to fill in, until . . . just a few days ago, when you were admitted to Belfast City Hospital following a suicide attempt.’
‘It wasn’t a suicide attempt.’
‘According to this report you were behaving bizarrely and you ate flowers containing a potentially fatal amount of cyanide.’
‘Shrubs,’ I corrected, and he made a note.
‘The doctor who referred you to us and signed you in has noted that you have an obsession with gardening.’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Midnight Gardening.’ He raised an eyebrow. And then lowered it. ‘Your partner, to whom I have also spoken, reports that you destroyed a flower pot and were throwing soil and other sediments around your house.’
‘I just lost my temper. I’m fine.’
‘Did you have a garden when you were growing up?’ I nodded. ‘Did you ever have any unpleasant experiences in that garden?’
‘Yes. No. No more than anyone else.’
‘Do you hear voices?’
‘Often.’
‘I mean, inside your head.’
‘That’s where you would usually hear them.’
‘Do you believe sometimes that you are the Devil, and imagine sacrificing your son?’
I sighed. ‘You shouldn’t listen to my partner, she’s the looper.’
He nodded, sagely, and made another note. Then he reached into his pocket and removed a set of keys. He found the small one he was looking for and inserted it in his desk drawer. He lifted out a see-through plastic bag.
‘Your partner, she brought us this. Do you recognise it?’
‘The contents? Yes.’
‘Yes, this is indeed the medication that you currently take, or at least as much of it as your partner could find. She says she is always turning up packets and bottles and syringes hidden around your house.’
‘Not very well hidden, clearly.’
Dr Richardson rattled the bag. ‘I am, quite frankly, bewildered as to how you managed to obtain all of this, and then also, how you manage to still be alive. This lot would kill a herd of elephants.’
‘I’m allergic to elephants,’ I said.
He set the bag back in the drawer and locked it.
‘I imagine you’ve seen a lot of psychiatrists in your time.’
‘You have a good imagination.’
‘And I also imagine that you are very used to dealing with them. Psychiatrists almost always are convinced by their own powers of observation; their decisions as to your future are usually based on one short meeting, because they haven’t time to take the weeks or months or perhaps years that they would really need in order to make an accurate diagnosis. It is repeatedly drilled into us as students that patients are adept at showing the side of their personality or personalities that they want us to see, that they are often very accomplished actors. Even though we know this, we are so very reluctant to take on board second- or third-hand reports because they do not come from a trained medical professional. And yet who is best placed to monitor a patient’s behaviour – a partner who spends the greater part of each day at their sides, or a psychiatrist who has to decide in a matter of minutes what the best course of treatment actually is?’
‘If it’s all the same to you,’ I said, ‘I’ll go with the snap judgement.’
‘Your partner, Alison, loves you very much.’
‘So she says.’
‘But she is increasingly disturbed by your behaviour.’
‘She’s one to talk.’
‘And she very much wants us to get to the bottom of this.’
I folded my arms. ‘Go for it,’ I said.
‘She never quite knows whether you’re acting it out or you’re genuinely suffering, if you’re playing a game or you’re seriously disturbed. She was very upset when she saw the state of you at your home, and when you were admitted.’
‘She followed me to hospital?’
‘Of course. You didn’t think she would?’ I shrugged. ‘And your mother came too. She was very upset. Everyone cares for you a lot.’
If there was a stick to be had, he had clearly gotten hold of the wrong end of it.
‘I have to warn you, that if any part of this is an act, then you are in for a very serious wake-up call. If you don’t treat the doctors here with respect, then they, we – I – have the power to keep you here for a very long time. And if you don’t treat your fellow patients with respect then . . . well. You are in here because of your behaviour, some of it violent – it’s at the lower end of the spectrum, to be sure, but still we have to err on the side of caution. That’s why you are in this secure unit. It is fair to say that this unit also contains many at the other end of that spectrum – so it’s only right that I warn you to be on your guard at all times. Although we have adequate staff, when it happens, violence can be very, very quick and very, very savage.’
‘I read you had a murder here a few days ago.’
Dr Richardson made a note. ‘Yes. Indeed. It was a very unpleasant business. But it should not worry you unduly, since the man responsible is being kept well offside. It’s the others that you should be watchful for, the ones who are still free to roam, the ones who are placid for ninety-nine point nine per cent of the time and then they just explode. In fact, in just the way that you exploded with your partner.’
‘She said that? I was only violent to some shrubbery and a dead gerbil.’
‘Well,’ said Dr Richardson, ‘there’s nothing that can’t be
sorted out. I want you to have faith in me, and what we can achieve here. Although, before we can even start to address what is clearly distressing you, we need to get you off all of this . . . junk,’ and he indicated the drawer where he had returned my medications.
‘It is not junk,’ I said. ‘Some of the finest chemists in Nigeria developed those pills.’
‘And it isn’t going to be easy or pleasant.’
‘I’m sure there’s a pill for that too.’
‘If you are not experiencing them already, then very soon you are going to start having withdrawal symptoms. There will be sweats, vomiting, convulsions. It will be deeply unpleasant. But it is only when this vicious concoction is out of your system that we are going to be able to assess you properly, really get to the bottom of what is wrong and why you are behaving in this manner. It may take several days, perhaps a week to get you fully detoxed . . .’
‘I can’t do a week. Twenty-four hours, max. Just sluice me out, let me have a bit of a doze and a relax, and then I’ll be right as rain. The shop can wait for a day, but tomorrow, absolutely, I have to be open. It’s our busy time of year.’
Dr Richardson shook his head. ‘You’re not quite getting this, are you? The shop is being looked after by your staff. Don’t you worry about it. You, on the other hand, are being looked after by me, and my staff. And Rome wasn’t built in a day.’
‘It’s just not possible for me to—’
He cut me off, and sternly. ‘I’m trying to make this as clear and straightforward for you as I can,’ he said. ‘You have been sectioned. Do you understand what that means? You have been judged by your closest relatives, a referring doctor and the admitting staff here to be no longer capable of looking after yourself or of making a reasoned judgement. In other words, you are considered to be a danger to yourself and to others. You are here, sir, until we decide if you are safe to be let out on the streets again.’
23
Dr Richardson walked me back to the security gate. An orderly hovered just behind us. When I felt dizzy and staggered, he grabbed me and guided me forward. The doctor told me to go back to my room and lie down and a nurse would look in on me and give me something if the withdrawal got too bad. And then I was through the gate like a child, flying alone, escorted off a plane by a caring hostess, only to be hurled into the heaving maelstrom of an international airport. Odd, distorted faces leered at me, crooked hands pushed and prodded and fondled me. The corridor along which I was attempting to make my way became tubular and I began to cycle up the walls of some mad kind of velodrome which I knew was being conjured by my fever but about which I was quite unable to do anything other than to compete with the other racers. We were twelve retards on Choppers shepherded by tracksuited Nazis screaming at us to go faster, faster, faster . . .