by Liz Jensen
Mrs Grout-a-Matic was explaining how she’s got two daughters, right, and one day they set up this blind date with Kim’s brother’s friend at a car-boot sale, right –
But that’s always the trouble, isn’t it. Whenever you get stuck into a good programme, something happens to interrupt you: a phone call, someone coming to check the gas meter, a mealtime gong, a scuffle. Quite a noisy scuffle, in fact.
It was Ishmael being pinned to the floor by two thickset males nurses and the slim Hope. Dr Appleby was remonstrating with him.
‘Please, Dr Stern, you are abandoning all your professionalism here,’ she was saying, trying to coax him to a sitting position. ‘Try to retain some dignity, please, Dr Stern. This is very distressing.’
Ishmael was trying to grind his teeth and sob at the same time. He was breathing in great theatrical gasps. I flicked the television off and observed him closely as he tried to stuff his whole fist in his mouth. Saliva ran down his arm, followed by a small stream of blood.
It looked fishy to me. Too many symptoms, I reckoned. He was over-egging it. Dr Stern knew a lot about breakdowns. They were his job. For someone like him, I realised, they would be quite easy to fake, if the alternative was a prison sentence for negligence. A World War Two prisoner in Colditz managed to escape that way, by posing as a harmful loony. The problem was, he stayed that way after the war; the mask fused to him. Dr Appleby clearly hadn’t seen that episode of Colditz. No, she was insisting, there was no time for Dr Stern to fetch anything from his office or to change his clothes. He was going straight to London for the Inquiry Team to pronounce its sentence on his conduct as Medical Director of the Manxheath Institute of Challenged Stability. Did he really want to make a spectacle of himself in front of his staff and patients? Wisely, he didn’t answer. Still, it’s hard to see a grown man cry, even when it’s pretend. Several of us were on our feet now, staring at him as he writhed beneath the weight of the two male nurses. Hope had given up.
‘Well, well,’ said Max. ‘The fallen idol.’
And with an excellent aim, he spat a gob of greenish phlegm that landed in the middle of Ishmael’s forehead. I wanted to cheer, but instead an older instinct took over, and I found myself coming forward with a Kleenex and wiping the brow of my former lover, feeling guilty as though I’d spat at him myself. Then I wiped the blood off his hand, too, and pressed the Kleenex to the small wound he’d made with his teeth.
‘Thank you, Hazel,’ whispered Ishmael. ‘Can you forgive me?’
‘No,’ I said. And left.
Later, from my window, I saw them dragging him across the lawn to a waiting ambulance, and a sadness enveloped me. Maybe he really was having a breakdown. The dividing line between worlds is so thin: the normal world, and the world where the table is laid with its knives and forks the wrong way round, its cruet set askew, and its misshapen candelabra burning the noxious bright flame of things irredeemably amiss. And as I discovered – and remembered, thanks to my red-cushioned chair – you can straddle this dividing line, with a foot on either side.
Three weeks later, Ruby Gonzalez, head and feet propped on brightly coloured cushions on the sofa, watching television, eating chocolates. Beside her, the cot with its now frankly dreaded contents, the monster Angelica, whingeing of nature, spotty of complexion, disturbed of bowel, and average (tests clearly show) of brain. Crying again. And when, in all honesty, has she ever stopped? Only when her distraught mother, desperate for some sleep, has dosed her up with a teaspoonful of gin. The weary Ruby languishes in Hazel’s home, which is now her own, and seeks comfort from God.
‘I don’t know why you watch that crap,’ says Greg angrily, coming home to find her quite shamelessly absorbed in the Raving Rev on Channel Praise. ‘He’s the reason we had to turn to Hooper for funding, you know,’ he adds bitterly.
Ruby knows. Ruby knows also that there is pressure on Greg from Hooper to produce results. Soon. But Ruby is less of a scientist now she has become a mother. She is less sure of things in general. She is less sure, for instance, that Hooper is all good and Carmichael is all bad. In fact, from what she has seen of the two men, her allegiances are beginning to shift. Carmichael reminds her of the dark, passionate world she came from – a world of mortal sin, of self-flagellation, of back-street chemical abortions, of Liberation Theology. A world she once longed to escape from into the cool rationalism of science. A world she is now being drawn back towards by a form of magnetism. The going is getting tough for Ruby Gonzalez. And when the going gets tough, all visitors are welcome. Even God, if he delivers the goods.
Root Hooper is impatient, Greg is explaining. He has his Perfect Babywear collection (pastels) all ready to go, and his team is working on a Junior Mind Gym (primary colours) for the Perfect Toddler. He doesn’t understand why their productivity seems to have dropped.
‘You promised this thing was in the bag, Stevenson,’ he said to Greg, who now reports the conversation to Ruby. ‘Don’t forget our three-month get-out clause.’
Greg hadn’t forgotten, and knew, indeed, that Hooper would use it in a flash if he had any idea that the Perfect Baby Project was now, far from being on the brink of success, back to Square Minus One. Root Hooper was not a scientist; he was a self-made man. And he wanted that Perfect Baby drug. Now. In fact, as he’d told Greg, he wanted it yesterday.
Greg had winced inwardly at the cliché, but he’d smiled with thin lips.
‘I’m a scientist, Root, not a magician.’
‘Well, I want some magic out of you anyway,’ said Hooper. ‘Before there’s any more fuss in the tabloids from that Raving Rev git about Frankenstein’s embryos. There’s going to be a tidal wave of public opinion against this project pretty soon if he keeps this kind of pressure up. My researchers say the man in the street is getting pissed off with science. He thinks too many drugs have gone wrong, an excess number of galaxies has been discovered, there’s more mass in the universe than there should be. It’s confusing for him. He wants to get back to the days of pigs with eight teats. He’s crying out for apocalypses, visions, crystal balls, a bit of tub-thumping, all that malarkey. And maybe he’s right. The climate isn’t looking good for our Perfect Babies. We need to get them out in the marketplace quick, before the mood changes and they’re as passé as growth hormones and titty implants.’
‘Cold feet?’ enquired Greg.
Hooper snorted in response, and the colour rose behind his tan. He was used to a bit of respect. Stevenson seemed to be forgetting that he, Hooper, had the 51 per cent share in this deal. And in business, Hooper was fond of saying, he who hath 51 per cent calleth the fucking shots. He shifted his sugar-free chewing-gum to a far corner of his mouth before he spoke. There was anger in his voice, but it was soft, and mint-scented.
‘Cold feet? Root Hooper? It is well known that Root Hooper’s feet do not get cold. Root Hooper thrives on controversy. I have balls, Dr Stevenson, of steel. I want this thing ready so we can time the launch right. That little Reverend fucker is a threat to this project, if we don’t play it right. But don’t worry. I’ll deal with that part. Incriminating photos. We’ll fake them, if need be. They’re all at it, these evangelicals. Prostitutes, little boys, donkeys, you name it. So leave it to me.’
And he smiled briefly, the tongue flicking out over dry lips.
‘Meanwhile, that “human trial” you were so hopeful about, what’s become of that?’
‘There’s been a hitch,’ said Greg. ‘Something we can’t explain. The first trial, as I told you, was promising, but only a partial success, producing an average baby altogether, though one with what our psychiatrist colleague has labelled a telepathy quotient of 160. That means the child has some sort of extra-sensory perception, which means that we’re having some genetic impact, though in this case not one that’s useful for our purposes. The second human trial has, er, miscarried. A late miscarriage, I’m afraid. We’re doing the pathology now. Cutting it up, you know, sectioning off all the pieces, removing the splee
n and guts and heart and other organs for dissection, analysing and measuring parts of the foetal body …’
(Blind him with science and make him feel sick, was Greg’s strategy. Play for time.)
‘All right,’ Root Hooper said impatiently. ‘I don’t need the gory details. How long’s a baby take? Nine months? I’ll be wanting news of a new human trial by the end of next month. You can go.’
Greg had smiled tightly, turned with an acquiescent grunt, and left. How tempting it would be to snap and bite at the hand that fed him. Softly, he had closed the door on the office of Root Hooper, trillionaire and ignoramus, with a feeling not of release but of being trapped in an altogether smaller, more claustrophobic place. He would be needing balls of steel himself.
‘So that’s the score,’ he finished.
Has Ruby been listening to any of this? He notes with dismay that she has started on another box of chocolates, and is working her way through them with a grazing rhythm that indicates she does not intend to stop until she has ingested the lot. She is still staring at the television, which is now showing midday advertisements for housewives and the elderly: floor polish, antacid pills, washing powder, slim-a-soup, denture gel. Greg’s heart sinks to a new low. This is not the captivating, brilliant woman he fell in love with; this is an overweight, self-indulgent mamma with a bad case of post-natal depression. The feeling of claustrophobia tightens around Greg’s gullet and throttles his larynx. He has to clear his throat.
‘I’m off now. Got to fetch Billy and Mrs Goody from the station.’
They have been on a two-week holiday, to visit Mrs Goody’s sister in Darlington, all expenses paid. Ruby is glad to be having the nanny back, but is less delighted about Billy. He has been missing his pathetically inadequate mother, apparently, and talking about her and ‘Gwanny’ an annoying amount. Apart from that he seems a happy, normal child – a sickening mockery of Ruby’s own wizened little creature, who has this week lost weight and added late jaundice to her list of medical woes. Meanwhile her nappy rash, an angry constellation of spotty lesions, has spread to cover most of her body, and is inching towards her face. Ruby can hardly bear to look at her. She has been at home for a month, Angelica attached to her by suction for what seems like eternity.
‘Oh, just one thing,’ Greg says as he is leaving.
‘Yes, what?’ says Ruby through an Orange Velvet.
‘When’s your period likely to be due?’
‘My what?’
‘Your cycle, darling. Your menses. Your monthly flushing-out. Have you forgotten that women bleed? I was just wondering if, er, since the baby – ?’
It takes a while for the penny to drop.
With the help of chocolates, tranquillisers and Holy Hour, Ruby has managed to control some of her more explosive feelings about the baby. But now – no. No. Surely not. He can’t mean it. Not another try. Surely, not after this – disaster. But looking at him, poised at the door, jangling his keys, she realises that he does indeed mean it. It probably all seems quite reasonable to him.
It is then that something snaps.
Suddenly Ruby has shot off the sofa and hurled herself at Gregory, knocking the baby to the ground where it lands with a sickening thud and begins to bawl. But Angelica’s cries are nothing to the crazed shrieks of Ruby.
‘No! No, no, no! Get out! Get out of here! Get out!’
Greg holds her by the shoulders, grabs a handful of hair and twists. She is pinned against the wall, immobile with pain and shock. He stands looking at her for a moment.
‘Ruby,’ he whispers. ‘If we don’t get another baby on the way soon we’ll lose the whole deal with Hooper. Come on, darling. Just a few modifications. We can do it this time. Angelica was just a freak accident.’
Ruby’s eyes widen in horror.
‘She’s my baby!’
‘And you can keep her, if you want,’ Greg soothes. ‘No one’s taking her from you. And soon she can have a little brother or sister to keep her company.’
He lets go of Ruby’s hair, muffles his face in it.
‘Come on, darling. Think dates, now, love. Mrs Goody can babysit tonight and we’ll go out, relax a bit. I’ll book a table somewhere in Mutton Acre.’
Ruby’s eyes are opening still further, round windows on a flabbergasted soul.
Finally she manages to croak, ‘Get out. I never want to see you again.’
‘Calm down, darling. Look, I have to go now, but you think it through, and we’ll talk over dinner.’
And with a jingle of car keys, he has left.
For the last month, Ruby has been reduced to a womb and a pair of breasts. Since childbirth her wits have slowed, as wits do – but it doesn’t take long to think this one through. With a sureness of step and a focus of vision that have been so lacking lately, Ruby picks up Angelica and forces her, whimpering, into the kangaroo sling around her chest. Into the child’s mouth, towards which a slow lava-like stream of snot from its snub nose is making its way inexorably, she forces an enormous rubber dummy which fills its face like a door-knocker. Then she mounts the stairs, waddling two at a time, and drags out a large suitcase with wheels. From a drawer in the study she takes her Venezuelan passport, her credit cards, her address book, and her Bible. First things first. It doesn’t take her long to pack the rest. And within half an hour she and Angelica have gone.
The bells of St Manfred’s are crashing out one of their three tunes again, and Linda, cigarette in one hand, educational rattle in the other, is thinking murderous thoughts about the world. She has quickly discovered that there’s no fun or mileage in being a martyr and a saviour of the sane society when nobody is aware of it to applaud her efforts. Katie-Koo doesn’t seem to need a mother. She has got the hang of things on a physical level very quickly, and is already reaching out for her own bottle of milk, removing her own nappy when it is soiled, and applying talcum powder to her own dimpled botty. Linda and Duncan have begun to leave her for hours at a stretch, and she lies in her cot cooing gently, gurgling, or sleeping. She has not yet, in her six weeks of life, cried. Linda has been on the phone to the Ministry, saying the family crisis has ended and she’s ready to return with all guns blazing. To be frank, she can’t wait. She’d swap the fulfilment of motherhood for the fulfilment of a packet of fags any day. Katie-Koo doesn’t need looking after. Katie-Koo is perfect. She can simply be left for the day, like a cat. A pile of books next to her bed, a change of nappies, an Activity Centre. She seems to be learning the alphabet. In fact, she seems to be starting to utter noises that sound uncannily like words. The trouble is, Linda doesn’t particularly want to hear them. So Linda has taken to leaving Katie-Koo for the day, with Channel Praise on, which surely can’t do more harm than those Junior Network cartoons in which robots with laser-guns on their index fingers rescue pneumatic women from cutlass-brandishing pirates. Katie-Koo has even started to hum the Holy Hour theme tune.
Yes: Linda has decided to become a working mum. Rosemary Pithkin says it’s OK to go out to work, ‘So long as you and your conscience can live with a decision which some would describe as selfish and irresponsible. I shall not pass judgement.’ Linda gets on the phone with Dr Pithkin’s mixed blessing resounding in her head, to learn that not only will the Butter Mountain be delighted to have her back earlier than expected, but it will also be pleased to offer her a long-overdue Merit Award.
‘Yes, it is none too soon,’ responds Linda, trying nevertheless to hide the surprise in her voice. ‘If that moron in Phase Two Marg. deserves one, then so do I.’ And snorts.
The Merit Award has come about because while attending a ‘Who Are We?’ course, Mr Foley has experienced a management epiphany. He has learned that every organisation has to contain at least one person whom the others can hate: a focus of all hostility and loathing. In Linda Sugden’s absence, Butter Mountain morale has been in decline, in-fighting and apathy on the increase. Mr Foley can now say to her, and mean it, that the place just hasn’t been the same.
Linda is pleased, but does her best to hide it.
‘See you later then,’ she tells Foley, and crashes down the receiver. ‘Uh-huh,’ she grunts to herself. Then mutters, ‘They’re probably giving everyone one. If Higgins gets one, I’m resigning on the spot.’
She swigs down the last gulp of her Nescafé, dons her bottle-green mac with the flaps, tethers Katie-Koo to the cot with a little silken harness (apricot) from Hooper Babywear, and strides off to the Ministry to claim her rightful due.
The next time I went to Dr Stern’s office, his name had gone from the door, and there was no sign of the calendar, either. Dr Appleby let me in. She was in charge now. She had grey hair and a smile that seemed pinned to her face like a fashion accessory. Phoney, but welcome nonetheless. There hadn’t been much smiling in Manxheath lately, and the laughter wasn’t healthy. Whoever was doing it always looked like someone being strangled. But don’t get me wrong: I didn’t trust her. I wouldn’t make the mistake of trusting a doctor three times, would I?
So when she started talking, I just listened. She was tense. The smile seemed to get out of hand, and started to crawl about her face. Her embarrassment grew until she was the colour of raw beef. She hesitated over each word, and faltered her way along the hazardous geology of what she was trying to say, as though at any moment she and her career might topple into a mammoth crevasse. My unlawful imprisonment at Manxheath was clearly a sensitive topic. She took half an hour to spit it out, so I’ll summarise. Your assessment shows that you are a perfectly normal young woman and I have no idea why you are here. This is very serious. You claim that Dr Stern put you on a compulsory section, but we have no proof of this apart from some ashes in his bin. However, from what we understand, you were here originally to visit your mother. How you came to be an in-patient on medication, we cannot fathom. Can you help us, Mrs Stevenson? If there is further evidence of misconduct on the part of Dr Stern, we’ll need to record it, I’m afraid. Never in my twenty-five years’ experience of the mental health system …
