by John Eider
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to overhear,’ the fifth voice continued. ‘But I’ve been sitting here looking for almost anything to distract me from this impossibly uninteresting text I’m due to be tested on in a matter of hours. When here I am presented with this remarkable case study. Sorry, I should introduce myself. Jude Marks, student of medicine.’ He put out his hand to shake, which Sylvie, being the nearest took up.
He went on, ‘So, you see I’ve taken oaths and everything. It’s all really quite confidential: between a doctor and their patient a secret isn’t something you tell even one other person. Now, none of you have punched me yet, so I’ll take it you’re intrigued for diagnosis? Okay, then allow me to summarise from the little I’ve heard. Step in if I get anything wrong.
‘Now, you are four people who are meant to be somewhere else right now?’
The table murmured in unison, as they would at each right point.
‘Somewhere calling for smart but uninspiring workwear, from what I note the men are wearing. Ladies, meanwhile, I commend you on your flair. Now, at least one of you, for your own reasons, could not set a foot inside the venue. Right?’
‘Right,’ they murmured again.
‘Now, this refusal was all it took for another of you to find, in your colleague’s absence, an excuse for yourself to leave?’
Sylvie nodded.
‘And this in turn for the third of you to leave?’
Jemima nodded.
‘And in turn the fourth?’
Jasper nodded.
‘During which time, one of you suffered something like hysterical paralysis, and another of you a breathless panic attack? Resulting in a situation where not one of you – evidently – felt able to return inside, even those among you protesting otherwise?’
Even Jasper didn’t argue this point.
‘And so what does all of that suggest to you?’
Sylvie answered for them, ‘That we all went looking for each other. I’m not sure that any one of us caused the situation.’
‘How like life! But what does that all add up to? Do you know what I think?’
The table sat expectant.
‘Some might speak of group psychosis, but I’d term it mild mass hysteria.’
Sylvie didn’t like the sound of that second term very much better than the first. Jude, noting her and the others’ alarm, explained,
‘Mental health’s one of those things we only tend to talk about when something goes wrong. It’s as if we’re ashamed of having minds, or of thinking about how they work – thinking about thinking, if you like. But mass hysteria’s no more unusual than a man who wouldn’t dream of bursting into wild screams alone in the street then doing so in a football crowd. He goes there because it’s what a part of him wants to do. And while in the street he’d probably be approached by an officer of the law and given a strong talking to, in the football ground it’s an accepted norm. It’s nothing more psychological than that.’
The student continued, ‘Mass hysteria sometimes seems to me like people only wanting to generate a new social norm for themselves, one in which they can act out their inner-need. Now, the person could just go off on an emotional tangent of their own. But is there ever anything more reassuring than the presence of others who feel the same?
‘Outside of wherever it was that the four of you couldn’t go into, you were like a little football crowd for those moments – you all wished nothing more than for the others among you to bolster your own inner-wish to act differently to what the world expected. At some deep level not one of you wanted to go in there. You sought this need out in each other, and used it for mutual encouragement in thinking the unthinkable – not going in!’
‘So not going in became our social norm?’ asked Jemima.
‘Among your group, yes.’
‘Tommyrot!’
The rest of the table groaned at Jasper, who didn’t follow up his outburst.
‘Well, it’s only a theory,’ conceded Jude, apparently untroubled at it being shot down in flames. ‘But you are here, aren’t you? And not there, wherever there is. Purely out of interest, where is it that you’re meant to be?’
‘A seminar on mortgages.’
‘Mortgages? Boring enough,’ the student agreed, ‘but surely not enough so to warrant your reacting so strongly..?’
‘Mortgage foreclosure,’ added Sylvie guiltily.
‘Ah, well there you go. You’d have to a repressed sadist to enjoy that work.’
‘Rubbish!’ At last Jasper’s dam fully broke. ‘I’m not a sadist. I didn’t want to leave, and I wished I could have gone back in.’
Jude remained unruffled,
‘No, sir, you’re not a sadist. But you’d never love your work. You’d do it for the good it brought your career and your family finances. But tell me if, in your heart, you urgently, desperately wanted, needed to attend that conference?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Then I bow to your superior judgement. And on that note, I must leave you, for I too have somewhere else that the world at large considers I ought to be. Thank you again for the mental stimulation – and remember, trust in your subconscious, it always knows best. And don’t worry, for it’s never quite the worst thing that happens.’
The student left in a flurry of goodbyes, gathered books and thrown scarves.
Chapter 12 – The Dreaded Phone Ringing
‘Well, can this day get any weirder?’ asked Sylvie.
‘I don’t know how it can hope not to,’ answered Jasper. ‘We’ve still Mitch to face at some point.’
‘I asked weirder, not worser.’
Finn sank into his jacket.
‘Take that off, for God’s sake,’ said Jasper. ‘You’re indoors now; you won’t feel the benefit later.’
‘Leave him alone,’ snapped back Sylvie, acting the carer.
‘Well, I just mean… we’re like a bunch of bloody kids here. It’s embarrassing.’
‘You drank single malt as a kid, did you?’
To which Jasper gave a contemptuous gulp and rose to buy himself another.
‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘It’s my round. I think we could all use it.’
Jemima, who’d hardly touched her Coke, hadn’t time to say she didn’t need another. Meanwhile Finn quickly drained his pint. Jasper didn’t sit down, but instead followed Sylvie to the bar to offer a hand. Once there he whispered,
‘Are that pair all right?’
‘Jemima’s fine now.’
‘And Finn?’
She shook her head, ‘I don’t know. You should have seen him in that corridor, Jay. He was like a statue.’
‘Maybe we’re not the people he needs right now?’
‘Oh no, I’m sure it’s not that bad. He just needs friendly faces. I think it’s all too much, all coming at once. And him being back home too – I didn’t even know till we were on the coach.’
‘Okay, you know him better than I do. But as soon as six o’clock comes, we get right back there and find Mitch – if we want to save our jobs.’
‘Why six?’ asked Jemima, when this decision was relayed to the table. ‘I thought the talk finished at four?’
‘It does,’ explained Jasper. ‘But then there’s closing drinks till five, before the rest of them clear off. And I’m not showing my face in there until it’s clear.’
At that point Sylvie’s phone buzzed on the table.
‘Mitch,’ she read off the screen.
‘Speak of the devil,’ uttered Jasper. ‘Why did he call you and not me?’
‘Because he knows I’m Jemima’s friend?’ she supposed. ‘Because someone told him that a girl had fainted?
‘I have to leave to take this,’ said Sylvie scooping up the phone. Before throwing it back down – ‘I can’t answer it.’
‘Oh, give it here.’
Jasper grabbed at the phone and slid the screen to answer. He gulped,
‘Hi Boss… Sylvie? She’s just away from the table�
�� Yes, we’re all here… Just somewhere quiet, a big place on the square, we’ll be back by… Yes, Jem’s fine, it was nothing, just… No, that thing with the doctor was all a confusion… Was it really, Boss? I’m sorry… When will we be back? Well, we wanted to wait till…’
From nowhere, Finn leaned in and took the phone,
‘Boss, it’s Finn… We’re sorry for the trouble we caused, but we can’t come back yet… I have to see my neighbourhood. This is my home town, you know. I can’t be back here without visiting, I’m sure you understand…’
‘When?’ Mitch must have asked.
‘Tonight.’
‘What time tonight?’
‘Not late, not late. I’ll call you when we’re back.’
At this Finn hung up, and put the phone back on the table.
‘What the hell..?’ asked Jasper.
‘Finn, what are you doing?’ asked Sylvie.
‘Just what I said.’
The others seemed to need to get their breath back before further questioning. Sylvie asked for the group,
‘So?’
‘So what?’
‘So what did he say?’
‘He said, “Okay.”’
‘Just that?’
‘He said, “Okay, I’ll see you later then.”’
‘Was it a statement or a question though?’ asked Jasper. And then another phone started buzzing, this time Jasper’s own. Though he didn’t move,
‘You’ve gone and bloody done it again, haven’t you?’ he said to Finn directly. ‘You’ve got me into something else. How can I answer this now?’ Jasper couldn’t quite say what was stopping him, but all understood. He left his phone out in front of him, leaving it to squirm along the table as it buzzed, and wishing only that it would stop ringing.
When it did stop, all were silent, before it made another, shorter noise.
‘He’s left a message,’ Jasper exclaimed as he took the phone and listened to the voicemail, before he summarised,
‘He’s in the mid-session break, about to go back in. He says we needn’t come back.’
The others gasped.
‘…before eight o’clock.’
They breathed again.
‘Eight?’ asked Sylvie.
‘So what do we do till then?’ asked Jem.
None had an exact answer, they not knowing beforehand that they would have these hours to spend. It was commonly agreed though, after they’d all had another drink, that they couldn’t stay in the bar any longer. It was as if Mitch, with Jasper’s directions of ‘a big place on the square’, could track them down there. There was a general move to drink up and get their coats on, those who’d taken them off to begin with.
‘Where do we go then?’ asked Jasper.
‘Finn’s going home,’ said Jemima.
They turned to him, ‘Then it looks like we’re coming with you.’
PART THREE – THE SOUND OF THE SUBURBS
Chapter 13 – Pitch and Yaw
Running out of the conference had felt like making a break-for-it, a mad dash to freedom. Yet the stabbing panic of that moment was nothing compared to the slow, considered undulations of the bus as it carried them out further, and still further, from the city centre. At least earlier, they had been near the Grand Hotel still, only just in hiding – they were able to return at a moment’s notice, should they have wanted to. Now physical distance was underlining the psychological.
It had been an act of will, and not of ‘group psychosis’, to find the bus stop. It was not where Finn had remembered it. It had taken all the group’s patience to wait, to board the lumbering vehicle, and now to sit, rocking to and fro as it encountered traffic lights, speed bumps, and rutted tarmac. It didn’t matter that Mitch had gifted them these hours – it was a journey that was settling no one’s nerves.
‘This is your bus route?’ asked Sylvie in the form of a statement, after they’d been travelling for twenty-five minutes.
‘It used to be.’
‘This is the longest bus I’ve ever been on. Does this town ever end?’
‘No, it goes on forever, covering the globe,’ said Finn, not even acknowledging his mordant tone.
‘It feels like it,’ was all she offered in response.
By the time they’d left the pub, the first workers were leaving early shifts. And as the pub had filled so the bus-stops had too. It was also getting darker now. Though there was no sign of rain, the dampness in the air no longer had the day’s warmth to counter it. With the bus’s heater on full, and more passengers boarding at each stop, the atmosphere within was soon like that of a swimming-baths changing-room. All windows bar the windscreen were misting up. If nothing else, this offered passengers the abstract spectacle of streetlights, shop-signs and Belisha beacons flaring in the formless night beyond. It would be another twenty minutes before they reached their stop.
The group disembarked onto an empty street corner.
‘When’s the last one back?’ asked Jasper. He watched their warm lit room head off without them, further into the darkening evening.
‘On a main route like this they run till midnight,’ answered Finn.
‘This is a main route?’ countered Jasper, incredulous. ‘And they haven’t widened the roads or fixed those potholes?’
‘And half those houses should have been knocked down,’ added Jemima. ‘I can’t believe anyone lives in them.’
The area they were stood in now was rather different though. The houses were semi-detached more often than terraced or blocked, with trees and strips of greenery around them. Their well-kept gardens disappeared into encroaching night.
‘You have this journey to town and back?’ asked Jasper, still not getting it. ‘Every time you want to go shopping or meet a mate? No wonder you’re so isolated, Finn. Growing up here you probably hardly ever had the time to go anywhere.’
‘It’s just a big city,’ said the local.
But Jasper’s thoughts weren’t finished,
‘In my home town the longest journey’s fifteen minutes. Twenty has you out on the moors. Hell, you can walk it in half-an-hour.’
Stood at the bus-stop, how did Finn feel to be back? The area had always left him with the feeling of being both surrounded by houses and standing at the end of the world. There had been a survey done in a newspaper once, Finn remembered to himself. It was to highlight the difficulties of rural life. It rated different isolated regions on the criteria of how far their populations lived from a Council Office, Job Centre, hospital, cinema, playhouse, music venue, and popular stores like Smiths, Boots, HMV, Waterstones, etcetera.
After reading the article, Finn had applied the same rules to his outer-suburb. And had calculated that even there, on the edge of a large industrious city, he was fifty minutes from a single one of those locations listed. His travel times were comparable to those of districts classed as ‘culturally disadvantaged’.
‘So, where are your folks, or whoever?’ asked Jasper.
But Finn shook his head, ‘They don’t live around here anymore. They moved away. We’d have to catch another bus.’
‘Then we’ll head over that way.’
But Finn shook his head again, ‘I don’t think we’ve time. I’ll see them at Christmas. It would just confuse things to go there now.’
Jasper bit his tongue, only asking,
‘So where’s the town centre?’
‘I don’t think we really have one.’ We – Finn had been back less than a minute, and already the collective spirit had him.
‘Well, a café? A bar?’
‘I don’t know if we want to drink any more,’ noted Jemima.
‘Don’t worry,’ answered Jasper, ‘I’ll buy you a coffee. But we can’t stand here all night.’
Sylvie, who’d been looking around her, not really taking notice, happened to ask,
‘Where are those voices? Behind the trees?’
‘That’s our old local,’ answered Finn, not even needing to look.
‘Then there we go,’ said Jasper with determination.
‘I can’t,’ blurted the local boy. ‘I might know someone there.’
Jasper’s temper broke, ‘For God’s sake, first you want to go somewhere, then you don’t. What did you bring us here for?’
‘To see the place,’ was Finn’s answer; so deceptively simple that it disarmed his questioner, who only responded,
‘Well, have a good look around. You coming, girls?’
‘I think we should stick together,’ worried Jemima.
‘It’s not the wilds,’ snapped Jasper. Though even as he said this, he wondered if he’d find his way back after turning a corner or two? Nor could he take any comfort from the sodium-lights above them, that only seemed to run along those streets in order to entice him into getting lost along them. He concluded these thoughts with,
‘Pub it is then.’
Jemima wasn’t happy,
‘Drink, drink, drink. Is that all men do?’
‘That’s my experience,’ answered Sylvie, noting her friend’s mood. Both men stayed silent. Before Jasper said finally,
‘Standing here we look like Japanese tourists.’
Sylvie took Finn’s arm, ‘It’ll be all right.’
In part reluctantly, the group began the short walk to the bar.
Chapter 14 – Suburban Ennui
‘Look, it’s happened now,’ whispered Jemima to Jasper as they made their way. ‘Think of it as a bit of an adventure.’
The place set Jasper’s teeth on edge. It was the set-back houses, the low orange lighting, and the trees that seemed to loom out of their own personal pools of mist. ‘No wonder Finn turned out the way he did,’ thought Jasper again – coming from an area like this, where every journey after dark must have been like walking through a John Carpenter horror movie set.
And Jasper could imagine too what such a suburb would be like by day – silent but for muffled motorway noise, hardly a soul about; the trees permanently present, the ground beneath them damp; the houses seeming somehow alive but staying silent, contemplative, planning their move. Had Jasper voiced these impressions though, he might have learnt that these atmospheres were what Finn had always loved about the place.
Their walk took the group around a corner where there was no pavement. A strip of trees had been allowed to remain there on their own. Their job was now to bar a row of detached houses from the traffic passing in front of them.
