by Shane Dunphy
‘I need a way to get through to him. It would be good to know what he likes, what his interests are. This is the best way to do that. He’s not able to tell me right now, so I have to use another approach. I promise you that I won’t remove anything – the room will be just as if I was never there.’
She nodded, and walked past me down the hall. ‘I’ll be downstairs.’
‘You don’t want to wait while I look around?’
That sad little laugh again. ‘One of the main reasons I’m finding it so hard to let you in there is that I can’t go in myself just at the moment.’ I heard tears enter her voice. ‘Clive is very, um, present, in that room. It hurts too much to spend time where he slept and studied and lived. I’ll wait for you in the kitchen. Come down when you’re ready.’ She took a couple of steps down, then stopped. ‘Please don’t think me rude,’ she said, and continued her descent.
I stood in the doorway and surveyed the small room before me. I had been dubious about asking Roberta to let me come here, but the truth was that I was getting nowhere with Clive, and I was growing desperate.
He was no longer trying to kill me when I visited, and his overall behaviour seemed to have levelled out quite considerably, but I had the impression he was putting on a performance, and that the role-play was brought on by sheer terror. He spoke to me, during my visits, with that same, slow, deliberate manner, but his answers to my questions were mechanical, and he rarely sustained eye contact for more than a second. I had come to suspect that Clive still believed me to be one of his tormentors, and even Roberta coming in with me on my second meeting, to reassure him that I was there at her request, had done nothing to dispel that belief. I was at a loss. This was the only course of action I could think to follow.
Clive Plummer’s room was small, the slope of the roof causing it to have very little actual usable floor space. The walls were painted in a pastel green, and the carpet was a mix of floral pink and purple. I knew immediately that Clive had not chosen these colours, or even been consulted on them. I went and sat down on the bed, which had been made with a duvet cover and pillowcase that matched the room’s colour scheme. I closed my eyes and breathed in the dusty air, trying to tap into that ‘presence’ Roberta had described. Try as I might, I was unsuccessful. The room had that slightly edgy atmosphere other people’s spaces tend to have – that feeling that you are an intruder – but otherwise it was, to me, just a room. I looked about to see where Clive had left his mark, as teenage boys will. There was a poster of The Killers on one wall, and a very small and (comparatively) moderate one of an almost fully clothed Britney Spears on another, but they were the only references to his age, and I found no CDs of either among the small collection on the shelves that had been put up beside his desk. The music Clive enjoyed seemed, like the decor in his room, to have been chosen by his parents: there was an album of well-known classical music (the Moonlight Sonata, the Four Seasons, that sort of thing), Daniel O’Donnell’s greatest hits, a Neil Diamond collection and a boxed set of Christian Rock. I put them back into their neat pile. There was nothing to be learned about Clive as a person from those.
Languishing beside the Britney poster was a wall chart. It was a large, A2-sized sheet containing colour prints of all the common, and some of the not so common, Irish wild birds. On closer inspection, I could see that a small X had been written in pencil beside many of the pictures. It seemed to me that he had been marking off the species he had seen. I knew that birdwatchers are inclined to do this: it is, to the twitcher, a little bit like having a collection – here are all the birds I’ve spotted, and here are the ones I’m still hoping to catch.
Judging from those he had ticked off, Clive was no casual observer either. Several of the more elusive birds of prey were marked, as was the avocet, that delicate wader with the strange, upwardly curved beak. I noticed that he seemed to have moved across all the habitats, with mountain, sea, lake, hedgerow, woodland and pastoral dwellers all being represented among those he had seen. This meant that Clive was either a liar or had gone to some effort to pursue his hobby. I turned my attention to his books. Alongside school volumes and a couple of encyclopedias, Clive’s books were all about wildlife and natural history. A cursory search of the room’s only wardrobe turned up a small but powerful pair of rather expensive binoculars. It appeared that I had found what I was looking for.
The grounds around St Vitus’s covered several acres and were made up largely of farmland. One hundred years ago the hospital had been self-sufficient, growing its own vegetables, butchering its own meat and even going so far as to grind flour for bread. While many of these activities had been discontinued over the years, a small farm still operated, worked largely by the patients of the hospital, and a walk around the full expanse of the hospital’s estate took a good forty-five minutes.
Clive was no longer violent, and no longer seen as a flight risk, so when I suggested to Dr Fleming that I bring the boy for a walk about the grounds, he shrugged and said: ‘Why not?’ So on a cracklingly cold afternoon I helped Clive into a heavy anorak and handed him a pair of binoculars, which, though quite serviceable, were much lighter and cheaper than his own. I had left those in his wardrobe, keeping my promise to Roberta not to remove any of the contents of the bedroom.
He looked at them confusedly. The words, as always, seemed to come after a delay, as if he had willed them to be said a good thirty seconds before they emerged from his mouth. ‘What are these for?’
‘I thought you might get some use out of them. You’re interested in wildlife, aren’t you?’
For a moment I thought he would not answer me, but suddenly it was as if a veil had been lifted from him, and he smiled sheepishly. For the first time since I had known him, I saw who Clive Plummer had been before the demons began to haunt him. Rather than a haggard, tired creature, racked with fears he could scarcely articulate, here stood a young boy, suddenly excited at the prospect of doing something he really loved, but slightly embarrassed at sharing this uncool hobby with someone else.
‘Yeah,’ he finally said, holding the binoculars loosely by the strap. ‘Kinda.’
‘Well, let’s get going, then. There’s a lot to see.’
I pushed open the door and held it for him. He didn’t move. An old cleaning lady came in the open door and walked past us, excusing herself. Clive didn’t seem to notice her. ‘We’re going outside?’ he asked.
‘You won’t see many birds inside, Clive.’
The uncertainty became almost paralysing for him. I had read articles about battery hens who, when their cages were opened by animal-rights activists, would not leave the place of their confinement. They just sat there in their own filth, staring at the space through which their escape could be accessed, yet too scared to move the few steps required to grasp it. Clive reminded me of them now, frozen to the spot, wearing a coat that was several sizes too large for him, barely healed scars criss-crossing his face. I could feel the cold air drifting in like frigid mist, and then I heard it: pee-wit, pee-wit. I knew that Clive could hear the sound too and met his eyes, cupping my ear with my free hand. The lapwings were calling him, and I knew it. Slowly, painfully, he took step after faltering step towards the door. The birds continued to cry to one another, and, with each call, Clive moved with a little more purpose, until he was standing on the steps outside the door, gazing in the direction of the frozen field where the crested birds gathered to feed.
‘They’re from Scandinavia,’ he said, to himself as much as to me. ‘The weather here is milder, even in winter, so it’s easier for them to find food.’
He moved ponderously down the steps and, on reaching the bottom, suddenly seemed to realize that he had the binoculars in his hand. Awkwardly, he raised them to his eyes and adjusted the focus. It was painstaking. He was rediscovering a part of himself that had been buried, unearthing it a tiny piece at a time.
‘Lapwings are a kind of plover, you know,’ he said. I was straining to hear him, so quietl
y was this dialogue happening. It seemed that it didn’t matter to him if I engaged or not. He was exploring being outdoors again, experiencing the birds and the feel of the air on his skin.
‘I saw a really lovely heron, and a couple of egrets the other day, close to that pond,’ I said, going up beside him and pointing at the small, partially frozen expanse of water. ‘Why don’t we go for a walk and see what else we can see?’
Clive stood there, blinking at me in the brightness. His breath came out in clouds, and some colour was seeping into his cheeks. Turning to the flock of lapwings, he meekly mimicked their call: ‘Pee-wit, pee-wit.’ It should have sounded ridiculous, but there was something so sad about it, I could find no reason to laugh or be amused.
‘There’s a kestrel that hunts above a corn field behind the hospital,’ I tried again. ‘You can see it hovering, most days, about this time.’
‘Sure,’ he said at last. ‘Yeah, okay. Let’s go and see.’
I grinned. ‘Good. Follow me.’
And so began a new phase in my relationship with Clive Plummer. Birds and wild animals became our medium for communication. I had, as a child, been greatly interested in the natural world and still indulged the diversion from time to time when the mood took me. Now that Clive and I spent several sessions a week either outdoors among the flora and fauna or poring over books on the subject, I found the names, markings and calls flooding back. I brought in a new chart for the wall of his room, where we ticked off our latest sightings. He was delighted with this and often would prepare a list of which birds he expected to see that day on our walk, suggesting parts of the grounds we might head for in the hopes of finding a curlew or a hen-harrier.
As the numbers of birds and animals we encountered grew, so did my comprehension of just how monumental the changes in this child had been as depression, paranoia and mania took root in his personality. Clive, as he continued to emerge from the shadows of his illness and allow himself to be seen by me, was a sweet, gentle, soft-spoken and self-effacing boy. He was also piercingly intelligent, and possessed a razor-sharp sense of humour that caused us to laugh a lot of the time. The plight of his fellow patients, as tragic as these stories so often were, turned out to be a constant source of funereally dark mirth for Clive.
One day, as we walked along the narrow lane that led to the stubble fields, he recounted a story he found particularly amusing, and in the telling drove home to me how even the most bizarre of circumstances can become normal in time.
We were watching a flock of fieldfare, large thrushes that migrate to Ireland during the winter months. They were a good distance from us, so we were chatting quietly, comparing these birds to our resident song and mistle thrushes.
‘They really do have a padded cell, you know,’ Clive said, out of the blue.
I had my own binoculars trained on the birds, so was able to hide my surprise at this sudden change in the subject matter.
‘Yeah, I heard that,’ I said. ‘Well, I suppose that when someone is really wound up and in danger of hurting themselves, that’s the best place to be.’ I lowered the lenses and looked at him. ‘Did they ever put you in there?’
He laughed, showing me his chipped, jagged teeth for a moment. ‘No. They always just doped me up and strapped me to the bed. I’ve seen the room, though. They leave the door of it open, sometimes. It’s all white in there. And you can see the places where people have ripped through the lining on the wall, and all the foam’s coming out.’
‘Probably best that they have that mended,’ I said. ‘Not much point having a padded cell if all the padding’s gone. Kind of defeats the purpose.’
He guffawed at that, then was quiet again for a moment. ‘Do you know Jemima?’ He was referring to a fellow patient.
‘The old lady?’
‘The fat one, yeah.’
Jemima was hard to miss. She somehow managed to combine spectacular obesity with a wizened, prune-like face. Despite her odd appearance, though, her moments of lucidity showed her to be a kind-hearted woman, and Clive had taken a shine to her. Unfortunately, those moments of calm were punctuated by violent outbursts, and it did not do to get caught in the firing line when one of these was erupting.
‘They put her in there the other day.’
‘Did they?’
‘Yeah. We were all on the Occupational Therapy ward, playing cards. And this new woman, Betty, she wasn’t playing by the rules.’
‘She was cheating?’
Clive considered this for a second. ‘No, I think she was just used to a different system. Like, they’re a lot of ways to play poker.’
‘I see.’
‘Jemima had warned her three or four times that this was the way we played, but Betty wouldn’t listen. So Jemima threw a chair at her.’
‘I’m sure that got her point across.’
‘Betty is only an old woman herself, and she’s skinny. The chair hit her in the head.’
‘Ouch.’
‘Yeah, she went down as if … well, as if someone had hit her in the head with a chair.’
‘So they put Jemima in the padded cell?’
‘They had to catch her first. See, the nurse made to grab her, and she went behind the table. The nurse kept coming after her, so Jemima said to me: “Would you mind giving up your chair for an old lady?” I moved, and she threw my chair. Everyone else had scattered at that stage, so she just kept on throwing chairs until there were none left. She tried to chuck the table, but that was a bit too heavy, even for her.’
‘Mmm. Tough woman.’
‘She sure is. By then a load of male nurses and a couple of doctors had arrived, and they all jumped her. That’s when she was sent down.’
‘Did they keep her in there for long?’
‘I’m not sure. She was out and back playing cards the next day. She told me that when she was first put in the padded room, there was a chair in there for her to sit on. When a nurse came in to check on her after a while, Jemima threw that chair at her.’
‘I would have thought they might have seen that coming.’
‘Yeah. So they took it away. She told me she didn’t care, though, because the floor was nice and padded, like a mattress, so she just lay down and had a snooze.’
Clive’s face creased up at this, and he laughed and laughed. It was infectious, and within moments I had joined him. The fieldfares, alarmed at our outburst, took off in a cloud of slate-blue and brown.
‘Sometimes,’ he said eventually, tears rolling down his cheeks, ‘sometimes, you just have to laugh.’
‘Yeah, it’s strange what can seem funny when you think about it,’ I agreed, trying to catch my breath. ‘I reckon almost anything can raise a smile, no matter how sad it actually is.’
As soon as I said it, I realized how thoughtless and wrong I was. There had been so many things I had encountered, through my work and, truth be told, in my life in general, that I knew I would never, ever find amusing. But the fatuous statement was out before I could do anything about it.
Clive’s face dropped, and he seemed to sag, almost shrinking in height. ‘There’s a lot that’s not funny,’ he said. ‘I mean, being locked up in here isn’t really a joke, is it, but I can sort of laugh about it sometimes. When I’m out here, it’s like I’m not in a madhouse, y’know? It’s easier to see the funny side of things. But the stuff that happened to me … the stuff I think happened to me … I’ll never, ever be able to laugh at that.’
‘I know that, Clive. I’m sorry about what I said. I wasn’t thinking. It was really stupid of me.’
‘Lately I haven’t been as scared. The days have been good. Getting out into the countryside, seeing the birds, I almost feel like the old me again. But when I sleep, the dreams come.’
‘Bad dreams?’
‘I’m here, in the hospital, and it’s night-time. I’m the only one on the ward. Everyone else is gone, and when I go to the door, it’s open. I walk out into the corridor and start to go down it. I know I should
n’t, and in my head I’m screaming at myself to just go back inside and close the door, but I keep going. I can see a light away in the distance, and I can hear something, like voices praying or chanting. The sound sort of pulls me forward. As I get closer, I can see that there’s someone – some thing – standing at the end of the passage.’
His voice was cracking, as if some part of him wanted him to stop, but he seemed determined to purge himself of this narrative none the less. I reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘You don’t have to tell me this if you don’t want to, Clive.’
‘I need to. I have to tell someone.’ He looked at me, and the terror was etched into every line in his face – I thought, as I watched him, that fourteen-year-old boys shouldn’t have lines on their faces, but Clive did. ‘You believe me, don’t you, Shane? I thought you were one of them at first, but I know you’re not. You understand I’m telling the truth.’
‘I know something awful happened to you, Clive. I’m certain of that much. I can see you’re in terrible pain, and that you’re scared out of your mind.’ I paused, squeezing his shoulder in an attempt to anchor him there with me, with the smell of grass and trees and frozen earth. ‘What’s at the end of the corridor, Clive? Can you tell me what you see?’
‘One of them.’
‘Who? Who are they?’
‘Not who. What.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘See, Shane, they’re not men. Standing at the end of the hallway is their leader. It’s tall, much taller than you. Its body is like a man’s, but the head is like a goat’s or a bull’s. It has horns and eyes like a cat, and smoke and fire come from the nose when it breathes. The monster wants me back. More than anything else, it desires me, and must have me. It’ll find me. In my dreams, it tells me it’s coming.’