A Note of Madness

by Tabitha Suzuma

  It was faintly reassuring to know that, beyond those curtains, people were rushing about, already well into their daily activities, while he was just lying here, still foggy with sleep, choosing to delay the point when he made the transition from night to day. His senses were still pleasantly numbed by his long night and for the moment he didn’t care about very much at all. It seemed absurdly wasteful to be lying here when it was already so late and there was clearly so much to do, yet he continued to do just that, letting his eyes move slowly around the edges of the room, thinking how calm and uncluttered and peaceful it was.

  Morning sunshine filled the kitchen like a scene from a family film, lighting up the beech cupboards and sparkling against the Formica. Sophie stood at the sink, broad-hipped and no-nonsense in black trousers and a floral blouse. She turned as the door hinge creaked, and smiled broadly, her auburn hair scraped back into a pony tail, her face pink and cheerful, her large collection of silver bangles jangling against her wrists. Rami had met her at Watford General four years ago. To this day, she was the only person in the world whose opinion seemed to matter to him.

  ‘Hi, Flynn! Come in and have some breakfast.’

  He struggled to meet her gaze, trying to banish thoughts of the night before, faintly horrified at the idea of what she must think of him. ‘It’s OK, I’m not really hungry.’

  ‘Come and have some juice then. Sit down anyway.’

  He got himself over to the kitchen table and sat, at a loss for anything better to do. She looked at him and his heart started to beat faster. He wanted to go back upstairs but it was too late – now he was trapped and there was no sign of Rami.

  ‘Orange juice?’

  He nodded. Sophie’s smile was very bright but her eyes were watchful. She probably thought he was mad too, was waiting for him to lose it again. Despite the smell from the percolator filling the room, she had not offered him coffee, no doubt following Rami’s instructions.

  ‘Did you manage to get some sleep?’

  Her tone was too gentle and he nodded, cringing inwardly, sipping his juice to give himself something to do.

  ‘Rami’s on call today. He had to go out suddenly but he should be back in about an hour.’

  What was he going to do for an hour? Sophie must have sensed something because she added, ‘You can call him on his mobile if you want.’

  ‘It’s OK.’ He looked down at his glass and tried to concentrate on the specks of pulp floating just beneath the surface. There was a silence. Normally this was when Sophie would ask him about the Royal College, life in Bayswater, whether he and Harry were behaving themselves. Today she said nothing.

  ‘Can I offer you some toast? You must eat something.’

  ‘I’m really not hungry.’

  She looked away, suddenly at a loss. He felt guilty for his lack of appetite.

  ‘What you need is a good holiday,’ she said suddenly, smiling brightly again. ‘Too much work and too little play – that’s not right at your age! Have you got plans for the summer?’

  ‘Not really.’ He wished he had something more interesting to say.

  ‘Spain’s an affordable place for a summer holiday,’ Sophie ploughed on. ‘Have you found yourself a girlfriend yet?’

  ‘No.’ He gave a small smile to show that it did not matter, but a dangerous smile to warn her that she was not to pursue this particular topic of conversation. But Sophie’s eyes just widened in surprise.

  ‘Really? You must be working too hard then, Flynn. What’s a drop-dead-gorgeous guy like you doing without a girlfriend? What about that pretty friend of yours I met at the Christmas concert – the flautist?’

  He shrugged hotly. ‘Just a friend.’

  ‘Oh, shame, I told Rami I was sure something was going to happen there!’

  Flynn stared down at the table, willing her to stop chatting. ‘Can I go next door and watch TV?’ he asked in desperation.

  ‘Of course you can!’

  ‘The concert!’ Flynn jumped to his feet as soon as Rami walked through the door. ‘I’ve got a lesson at one and a rehearsal at three.’

  ‘I rang Professor Kaiser first thing this morning and told him you wouldn’t be able to make the concert.’

  Flynn stared at his brother, stunned. He knew he should care, but at this moment it seemed like too much of an effort. ‘It’s not a dentist appointment, I can’t just cancel. What did Kaiser say?’

  ‘He was fine about it, Flynn.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. What did you tell him?’

  ‘I told him the truth,’ Rami said.

  Flynn continued to stare at him, his head beginning to throb. ‘Jesus,’ he whispered.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that. It’s not the end of the world. I can’t stop you from playing in the damn concert. If it means so much to you, you can always call him back. But I honestly don’t think you’re in the right frame of mind to go through with it tonight.’

  Flynn’s emotions were numbed. He knew he should be feeling horror and outrage at Rami’s uninvited intervention but he only felt a strange sense of sadness. The fight had gone out of him.

  ‘Do you know how many weeks of practice I’ve put in?’

  ‘I do know and I think it’s one of the reasons you’re in this state now.’

  ‘What about Mum and Dad?’

  ‘I told them not to come, obviously.’

  ‘Did you tell them why?’

  ‘I didn’t give them the details, Flynn, OK? Look, it’s not such a big deal. There’ll be other concerts – this one was not the be-all and end-all.’

  Flynn felt a faint, distant spark of irritation at Rami’s flippancy. ‘I’ll never be able to see them again,’ he said. ‘I’ll never be able to face Harry and Jennah again, d’you realize that?’

  ‘Quit the melodrama. Of course you will.’

  He let himself fall back onto the sofa. ‘No, they think I’m insane. It’ll be all around uni. Everyone will know there’s something wrong with me.’ The realization descended like an invisible weight and the inevitability of it filled him with a crushing sadness.

  ‘Come on,’ Rami said suddenly. ‘I’m taking you out to lunch. And then we’re going to pop by the hospital.’

  Slowly, Flynn levelled his gaze with Rami’s. His reactions were dulled – it was taking him an inordinate amount of time to think about anything. ‘Why?’

  ‘We need to try and sort you out, old chap.’

  Getting in the car, sitting in traffic, talking to strangers, seemed way beyond his capabilities right now. He rested his chin back on his raised knee and returned his gaze to the television screen. ‘I’m OK now,’ he mumbled.

  ‘That’s debatable. Come on, get your shoes, it’s a beautiful day.’

  Flynn gave a faint shake of the head, his eyes fixed on Trisha.

  ‘Flynn.’

  ‘I’m not going.’

  ‘You’re not going to sit here like a vegetable all day, either. Come on, you want to feel better, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t care any more.’ It was true. Happy or sad, ecstatic or wretched, he just was. And that would continue till he died. He just had to find a way of coping with the time in between. The waiting.

  Rami lifted the remote and switched off the television. Flynn found himself gazing at his distorted reflection in the black screen.

  ‘Come on,’ Rami said.

  Flynn got up slowly, too tired to argue. He followed Rami out of the house and into the car. Rami turned on the stereo and rolled down the window. A warm summer breeze floated through. Everything was too loud, too bright; the roads too busy, the people too rushed. He felt as if he were in his own bubble, separated from everyone and everything by a transparent screen.

  They sat outside a small café at a table set on the pavement. The Mediterranean feel to the busy high street, basking today in summer sunshine, jarred him. Rami tucked into a large plate of pasta while Flynn toyed with the garlic bread.

  ‘Can you believe this glo
rious weather?’ Rami was saying. ‘It actually makes winter feel like a distant memory. I thought you were going to eat that.’

  ‘You can have it.’

  ‘No, I ordered the bread for you. Why don’t you have a sandwich then?’

  ‘Don’t feel like it.’

  ‘You’re a nightmare to take out to lunch, do you realize that?’

  Flynn smiled faintly.

  Rami grinned back. ‘Idiot.’

  A silence. Then Flynn asked, ‘Are you and Sophie, you know, happy together?’

  Rami thought for a moment, then nodded. ‘Yes, we are. Why?’

  ‘Just wondered.’

  ‘It’s not always easy,’ Rami went on. ‘In fact, living with another human being can be bloody difficult. But you learn a lot – learn to compromise, learn to talk things through, learn to listen to each other. The rough times you learn to weather, and the good times can be pretty amazing.’

  Flynn nodded and looked away.

  ‘Is there someone you’ve got your eye on?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Really?’

  Flynn shrugged and chewed his thumbnail.

  ‘Bet there are a lot of fit girls at the Royal College.’ Rami gave a teasing smile.

  Another shrug. ‘What’s the point?’

  Rami smiled. ‘You’ll realize what the point is the first time you fall in love.’

  ‘But what if she doesn’t – you know—?’

  ‘Feel the same way? Then you charm her, of course! Win her over!’ Rami laughed.

  There was a silence. Flynn scratched his cheek.

  ‘Is that what’s happening to you?’ Rami asked.

  ‘No . . . Dunno . . . Rami?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Am I always going to feel like this?’ He bit his tongue hard and stared at his plate.

  There was a silence. Then, ‘No, no, of course not, Flynn.’

  Flynn looked at him, his eyes hot. ‘How the hell do you know?’ It hurt to talk.

  ‘Because we’re gonna get you better.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By finding you an excellent psychiatrist.’

  ‘So do you . . . do you think I’m going mad?’

  A pause, a silence. Rami looked at him searchingly, suddenly serious. ‘I’m not sure exactly what’s wrong, mate.’

  Flynn had his answer. He gave a small nod, managed a wry smile and looked away.

  ‘Anyway, what does mad mean exactly?’ Rami added quickly. ‘Aren’t we all a little mad? Don’t we have to be somewhat mad just to go on living, to go on hoping?’

  ‘That’s not what I mean.’

  ‘I know . . . I know what you mean. But madness is just a derogatory term for mental illness and mental illness affects a staggering twenty-five per cent of the population in this country. People just don’t talk about it because it’s got this stupid stigma attached to it and that’s only because most of them don’t understand it, and they’re pathetically frightened of what they don’t understand.’

  ‘Do you think I’m mentally ill then?’ Flynn persisted.

  Rami hesitated, his eyes not quite meeting Flynn’s. ‘Well, I’m not a psychiatrist, I can’t—’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I – well I think it’s a possibility.’

  Dr Stefan had the air of a man who had seen it all before. Rami had insisted that he was a first-class doctor and renowned as an excellent diagnostician. Flynn did not like him. He exuded an irritating aura of quiet, weary, unshakeable self-confidence. He used words sparingly. It was a shock for Flynn to find himself suddenly confronted by someone who spoke even less than he did. It threw him. Dr Stefan appeared to relish silences and felt no need to fill them. He asked questions and then sat back, fully prepared to wait as long as necessary for the answers.

  Yet for some strange reason that he could not define, Flynn felt forced to take notice of him when he did talk. There was something so calm and deliberate about the man’s tone that it made you sit up and listen. It was difficult not to respect him and impossible to ignore him. He looked unshockable. And perhaps it was this that caused Flynn to finally begin to talk, to start recounting the bizarre ups and downs of his recent life. Flynn talked to Dr Stefan because Dr Stefan looked as if he had all the time in the world and did not much care whether Flynn opened his mouth or not.

  Soon, Flynn’s life as he knew it had shrunk to almost nothing. He seemed to exist only within the constraints of his daily routine – the confines of his brother’s house, the hospital café, the psychiatrist’s office. After waking each day around twelve, the sun already high in the sky, he would meet Rami for lunch at the hospital, then go to his appointment with Dr Stefan, then take the bus back to the house to watch a diet of soaps and game shows until evening. There seemed little for him to think about and even less for him to do. He didn’t even know if he liked it.

  Every day Rami would ask him how he felt – sometimes he felt OK, or he felt lousy, or he felt nothing at all. The only thing he knew with any kind of certainty was that he could not go back to university, to Professor Kaiser, to Harry’s flat and to his friends. He wondered if he could even call Harry and Jennah his friends any more: how would he ever face them again?

  Rami and Sophie seemed to be taking turns doing hospital shifts. They couldn’t always work like this or they would never see each other, so he guessed they were taking it in turns to babysit him. Flynn knew he should feel grateful, or at least touched by their concern, but instead he felt infuriated. It was difficult to understand how he could have failed so spectacularly at everything. Barely a year into university he had demonstrated catastrophically that he could not cope, not only with the pressures of playing but with the art of living. His body felt as if it had been hijacked by emotions he couldn’t control, his life had turned into a joke and he felt afraid of all the things he had once enjoyed. He had tried to sort himself out but had failed, so now his only choice was to hand over to others. His life was no longer his own. And he couldn’t understand where it had gone.

  They sat side by side on the leather sofa, Mum nervously stirring her coffee, Dad looking uncomfortable against the brightly coloured cushions. Flynn sat opposite them in the armchair, toying with the remote control.

  ‘I really think you should come home for a few days,’ Mum said for the third time. ‘Just to give yourself a rest from that university and that over-demanding professor.’

  ‘He is having a rest,’ Dad reminded her gently. ‘He’s staying here and Rami’s got him seeing a good doctor.’

  ‘Yes, but Watford’s still almost London. It’s all this fast-paced, hectic lifestyle—’

  ‘He just needs a break from university for a while, and from the piano, both of which he’s getting here,’ Dad said. ‘And Rami’s found him a really good psychiatrist at his hospital.’

  ‘But are you eating properly, are you sleeping properly? What brought all this on, Flynnie? Was it the concert?’ Mum’s face was drawn and she looked tired. She appeared a lot older suddenly, upset and bewildered. She was frightened, she didn’t understand. They had never gone through anything like this with Rami. Rami had always been sensible, calm and independent. There had been no crises with Rami, so where had they gone wrong with Flynn? ‘Did something happen?’ Mum persisted. ‘Is there something you’re not telling us?’

  Flynn whacked his knee repeatedly with the remote, refusing to look up, afraid that if he did he would start shouting at them and not be able to stop.

  Dad laid his hand comfortingly over Mum’s. ‘Maybe this is something for Flynn to talk to the psychiatrist about. That’s what the man’s there for.’

  ‘But we’re his parents, Matti! What could have happened that is so bad he can’t tell us?’ There was a catch in her voice and Flynn forced himself to look up, flinching at the sight of the tears in his mother’s eyes.

  ‘Nothing happened, Mum. I just got over-tired, that’s all.’

  ‘But you’ve been very depressed! Rami said
that you’ve been very depressed and when you came back for the weekend you couldn’t stop talking about that concert!’

  ‘I was just tired, that’s all. I’d been working too hard and hadn’t been sleeping enough.’

  ‘But why were you having to work so hard? You’re only eighteen! I blame the university – I blame that professor! That’s why I never wanted you to go to music college – those sort of places are just forcing houses!’

  ‘There’s no point blaming anyone,’ Dad said. ‘These things happen. As Flynn says, he’s just been working too hard and sleeping too little. At least he realizes it and is having a good rest now.’

  ‘I think the time has come to start you on a course of medication,’ Dr Stefan announced at the end of the following week.

  Flynn gave him a look. ‘Anti-depressants don’t work.’

  ‘Anti-depressants are very successful at treating depression,’ Dr Stefan countered. ‘But I’m not sure that you’re just suffering from clinical depression, so I want to try you on something else. I think you would benefit from a mood stabilizer.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It does what its name suggests. Helps regulate your mood swings.’

  ‘So, I’m not depressed?’

  ‘Not all of the time, no. It would appear that you’re suffering from a form of bipolar disorder, Bipolar Two, which would account for your depression and many of your other symptoms.’

  ‘Bipolar what?’

  ‘Disorder. Commonly known as manic depression: fluctuations of mood, from severely depressed to, in your case, mildly manic. I could be wrong, but it looks that way to me.’ Dr Stefan sat back in his chair, cleaned his glasses and glanced out of the window as if they were having a conversation about the weather.

  Flynn stared at him, jarred.

  ‘You seem to be rapid-cycling,’ Dr Stefan went on. ‘That means that your moods change very fast, within days, sometimes even hours. We’ll need to carry on with our therapy sessions. Medication is rarely the answer on its own, but it should kick-start you into feeling better and we’ll take it from there. I’m going to start you on some lithium. It can make you feel slightly unwell to begin with, a bit drowsy and nauseous, but that should soon wear off. I’ll start you on a low dose and we’ll build it up slowly and see how you get on.’