‘I’m sorry about your mother. You must be feeling sad.’
Freddie wished that he was. There had been murmurings at the funeral as condolences had been offered by the congregation: ‘Such a brave lady.’ ‘Such a wonderful person.’ He had tried to make the sentiments ring true, but much as he had loved Lilli – and he had loved her – he was consumed with guilt by the fact that the only thing he felt was relief. Not only was he absolved of financial liability for Lilli, a considerable drain on his empty pocket, but he was no longer required to live up to her expectations of him.
‘I believe you’ve lost your job…’
‘You know very well I have.’
‘Dr Wells tells me that you were an extremely successful banker.’
Freddie was not going to blow his own trumpet, about being a damned good head of corporate finance, to Dr Chapman.
‘When did things start to go wrong?’
Freddie put on his overcoat. In an effort to be civil – the poor girl was only doing her job – he had started to tell her about the inexorable change in his fortunes over the past few months, the £11,000 he had lost on Universal Concrete, the £10,000 he had thrown away at the casino, the fiasco of the Bowker & Page contract, his feelings of failure and worthlessness, when a woman in a navy-blue suit barged in with his bill.
‘Not now, Jean.’
‘Sorry, Dr Chapman.’
‘That’s typical of this place,’ Freddie took the worry beads out of his pocket.
‘It is very irritating. Mr Hartley, he’s the hospital administrator…well, let’s say there are some administrative problems.’
‘You can say that again.’ The worry beads were working overtime.
‘Would you do something for me, Freddie?’
The grey eyes. She reminded him of Sidonie.
‘I’d like you to give the Chesterfield a few days.’ Dr Chapman referred to her notes. ‘Dismissal. Not much luck with a new job. You seem to have been getting off at the wrong stations lately? Sometimes it’s because you’re on the wrong train. I think you need a break, and some medication to make you less agitated…’
Freddie slid the worry beads back into his pocket. ‘I’m not the slightest bit agitated.’
‘Until the end of the week, say. No visitors,’ the grey eyes went to the bed, ‘no newspapers, no phone calls. Then we can have a look at what appear to be your negative thought processes…’
Freddie had no idea what she was on about, but he had been feeling like a zombie, his head like a balloon, since he had taken the whisky and the pills. He was still extremely tired. Had it been Martin Wells he would have told him to stuff it. He could not get over Dr Chapman’s resemblance to Sidonie. She was still talking.
‘…Suppose we say Friday?’
‘Then you’ll let me go?’
‘It isn’t a prison.’
The RMO, who came from Sri Lanka, had written him up for medication. When it finally arrived, Freddie slept on and off for three days. On the fourth day, tired of waiting for his breakfast tray, which when it did arrive was as likely as not to belong to someone else, he went down to the dining-room where the bacon was cold and the toast hard. He sat next to an emaciated girl wearing black leggings. She was toying with half a grapefruit.
‘Just arrived?’
Freddie had come down for his breakfast, not to talk.
‘No.’
‘Becky. That’s my name. Anorexia.’ She eyed Freddie’s plate with disgust. ‘What’s your problem?’
‘The bacon is cold. Is the food always cold?’
‘I don’t eat it. That’s m y problem. I only weigh 41 kilos. I was in an adolescent unit when I was 13. They locked me up. My thyroid and pituitary glands are down. I like it in this place. They don’t fill you up with a lot of philosophical shit. Have you got a name?’
‘Freddie.’
‘Where’d you live?’
‘In Regent’s Park.’
‘Can’t you afford a house? I live in Clapham. I’m a hairdresser. I’d like to go to college and get a diploma. You could do with your ends trimming. I’ve got two kids. My mum’s looking after them. It turns my boyfriend off when I’m thin. What do you do?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing!’
‘I was a banker. I’ve been made redundant.’
‘Gave you plenty of dosh, did they?’
‘A hundred and thirty thousand…’
‘A hundred and thirty grand!’
‘I owe my bank manager more than that.’
‘It’s not exactly a Greek tragedy.’
‘I didn’t say it was.’
‘You put me in mind of my father…’
Freddie looked again at the girl. She was young enough to be his daughter.
‘…He was a big fella, like you. The perfect daddy.’
‘I’m flattered.’
Becky put the spoon down on her uneaten grapefruit and got up from the table.
‘No need to be, mate. He abused me until I was 15.’
Freddie had intended to go home, but he was too tired to make the effort. He lay on his bed listening to Der Freischütz on the radio but heard no more than the ubiquitous overture before falling into a deep sleep. In the evening he was visited again by Dr Chapman.
‘Can we talk?’
‘If you like.’
‘How are you feeling now?’
‘Fine. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I hate these places. I’m perfectly all right.’
‘You did try to take your own life.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘Come on now, Freddie. You checked into a hotel, you didn’t tell anyone where you were going, you took more than thirty 10 milligram Temazepam capsules, you drank an entire bottle of whisky. What did you imagine would be the outcome?’
‘I didn’t think about it.’
It was true. Standing by Lilli’s graveside, surrounded by his family and friends, he had tried hard to endow the tableau with some meaning, to relate it to himself. The vicar is the vicar. A man of God, whoever ‘God’ was. Freddie knew that the man was an impostor, a minor actor from central casting, reading his lines, made up for the part. The extras, in their sombre clothes, facsimiles of James and Dos, Piers and Alex, Charles and Bingo, Peter and Georgina, with some of whom he had shared the most intimate moments of his life, had been carefully selected for their roles. The ‘chrysalis son’. The ‘adolescent daughter’. The ‘faithless wife’. The ‘grieving carer’ (nice of Mrs Williams to come) had been suitably positioned, a little apart, at the back of the gathering. The trees and the sky had been painted on, the grave-diggers came straight out of Hamlet. The design department had had a ball with the gravestones. Lurching this way and that, some of them were quite old, the inscriptions illegible. The more recent ones, like double beds, left spaces for their partners. The vicar in his surplice, Lilli in her box. So the undertakers said. It was probably weighted with stones although they all thought that it was Lilli. You could see by their faces, suitably downcast. But they were trained thespians, schooled for the part.
Freddie knew better. Lilli, her face alight, her hair bobbing, her shoulders swaying, was seated at the Broadwood playing Chopin’s Polonaise, her hands pursuing each other deftly up and down the keyboard after the last of the pupils had gone, and the teacher, in a moment of release, was free to play what she wished, for the boy standing at the door waiting for help with his homework and – caught up in the moment – for herself. You did not put people in boxes. Did not commit them to the earth.
The mourners dispersed. He remembered grasping hands which had held his in the grip of emotion, theirs not his, as the knot around the graveside disintegrated. There remained a man, Charles, and a message, something about Singapore, then he too was gone. Freddie had said goodbye. To the box. He knew it was expected of him. The rest was silence. No semblance of reality. Least real of all was himself. At Sitwell Hunt he had been the vice-chairman. He had had a place to go
to, colleagues to connect with, work to confirm his competence and a salary to put a value on it. There was no longer any point in pretending that he was Freddie Lomax. Sidonie had been right. The comedy was over. It was time to end the charade.
‘You told Dr Wells a great deal about your mother, Freddie.’ Dr Wells had made copious notes. ‘House in Maida Vale… Brought you up single-handed. Gave piano lessons. That must have been a big responsibility…?’
‘It was. She worked extremely hard.’
Dr Chapman looked at him. ‘For you, not her.’
She flipped over the lined pages covered with neat handwriting.
‘I don’t see anything about your father?’
‘He died. Thirty-four years ago.’
‘Would you like to tell me about him?’
‘I was 6 years old. He was playing cricket with me in the garden.’ Freddie took out his worry beads. ‘There’s nothing to tell.’
‘He died suddenly then?’
Freddie nodded.
‘How did that make you feel?’
‘Upset, of course.’
‘That’s how you feel now,’ Dr Chapman said. ‘How did the 6-year-old Freddie feel?’
Freddie was 40 years old. It was a stupid question. The extended silence which succeeded it, and which he had no intention of breaking, was punctuated by the clicking of the beads. How was he supposed to know?
To his surprise, Dr Chapman closed her folder. Standing up, she said: ‘I understand you talked to Becky at breakfast.’
‘Becky?’
‘Becky Bostock. Black leggings? She’s been here for quite a while. You’re the first person she’s opened up to. She needs someone to listen to her.’
Becky Bostock. Making up his mind to leave the Chesterfield next morning, he had sat next to her at dinner. Just looking at the meat and vegetables on Freddie’s plate had paralysed her with fear.
‘My Dad used to force-feed me.’ She put her fork down on the minute quantity of mashed potato she had taken. ‘I’ve got chronic constipation…’
Freddie was looking with horror at her arm. She had pushed up the sleeve of her sweatshirt and a network of scars, like pink tramlines, traversed the skin.
‘I self-injure,’ Becky said. ‘Glass. I used to do it at school with the compasses. Sometimes I pour boiling water over myself. I’m in a transitional relearning phase. I suppose you think I need a good kick up the bum. You got any kids?’
‘A son, and a daughter of 15.’
‘What d’you call her?’
‘Rosina.’
‘Rosina! Bet she’s not like me. Bet she goes to a posh school and got a cupboard full of clothes. Bet she’s a daddy’s girl. I flipped when I was fifteen. Drinking. Clubbing. One-night stands. People like you make me sick, you know, Freddie. Bloody bankers. With their bloody chauffeurs, and their bloody briefcases. I see them in the salon. Sloane Street. If ever I met my father you know what I’d do to him?’
‘What would you do?’
‘I’d chop up his willie and stuff it in his mouth.’
She pushed her plate away and got up from the table.
The next morning at breakfast, she moved away when Freddie sat down next to her, refused to say a word.
‘Don’t take it personally.’ The educated voice came from a man of about 30. He sat opposite Freddie and looked familiar. ‘Becky’s not exactly all sweetness and light. Bill…’ He held out his hand. ‘Alcohol dependency.’
Freddie remembered the face. His name was not Bill and he had seen him on TV reading the news.
‘How long have you been in here?’ Freddie said.
‘Three weeks. Saved my life. I’m dry as a bone.’
‘Full of heminevrin!’ Becky was going past the table on the way to the door.
‘Better than being full of vodka, my love. I got through two bottles a day and two wives.’ He crossed his fingers. ‘I’m doing it for Emma. She’s my new partner. We’re getting married when she gets her divorce. That’s Sebastian.’ He pointed to another table. ‘Executive burnout. Electronics business. Crashed his jet. The big guy in the T-shirt is Eddy. Some nerd threw himself in front of his HGV on the M1 two years ago. He hasn’t been able to work since. The pretty one’s Paul, good family, degree in Russian, diploma in business management, made redundant, unemployed, doing drugs – still smuggles them in – a direct result of the recession…’
‘I know all about that.’
It was a revelation to Freddie to find that the Chesterfield, which he had imagined would be full of nutcases (not that it was full, he had noticed that half the beds were empty), was full of ordinary people like himself.
He had had a massage, and found himself telling the masseur, a trained counsellor, about Jane and Piers, the sight of whom at the corner table in the City Pipe he had been unable to get out of his mind. He had attended a cognitive thinking seminar with Bill, and although he had always associated it with weirdos in sandals and with brown rice, had been so relaxed by the voice of the yoga instructor – telling him what to do, so that there was for once no need to think – that he had fallen asleep on the floor. In the Jacuzzi he had beefed to Sefton, an American businessman who spoke the same language, about the gross mismanagement of the Chesterfield, and he had been to a problem solving group where, while others had freely explored their feelings and discussed issues, he had not opened his mouth. He had changed his mind about going home. There was nothing to go home for.
Forty
‘You’re angry,’ Kay Chapman said. ‘Why are you angry?’
Freddie paced up and down his room twirling his worry beads. ‘This place makes me angry. I’m angry about Bill.’
In the past two weeks he had struck up a friendship with Bill, who had been doing very well on his detox programme until a colleague had informed him that Emma – who had chickened out of telling him herself – had been persuaded to go back to her husband and had moved out of his flat. Bill had disappeared from the Chesterfield and had been found by Paddy, the staff nurse, in the pub opposite, roaring drunk.
‘He should never have been allowed to leave,’ Freddie said.
‘He slipped out while Mike was on his tea-break.’
‘That’s not good enough. In a place like this, that desk should be manned at all times, the street door locked, and a log kept of everyone who comes in or goes out.’
‘You care about Bill?’
‘I care about running a department properly, Kay.’
‘We don’t seem to have made all that much progress in the Freddie Lomax department.’ Dr Chapman consulted her notes. ‘I understand you’re down for the psychodrama group today?’
‘I promised Kylie.’
Kylie was his New Zealand nurse.
‘You still don’t have much faith in our programme.’
‘I don’t need a programme, Kay. I don’t need aerobics…’
‘The exercises get you up in the morning, get you motivated.’
‘…I need a job.’
‘So do three million other people in this country. They don’t all feel they’re shits because nobody wants them, because they miss out on a few deals; they don’t all fall apart because they’re no longer the life and soul of the party. They don’t all try to kill themselves.’
‘Maybe it’s different when you’re a bricklayer, a shop-floor worker…’
‘Maybe it’s different when you’re Freddie Lomax, when everything has to be black or white, when you have to be successful or you’re nothing, when everything has to be perfect. Maybe you’re making negative assumptions, that you can only be an adequate human being if other people approve of you? If they show their approval by giving you a job? Maybe we need to challenge your assumptions, to turn them into hypotheses instead of facts. Maybe you should start by putting a disk into your personal computer, Freddie. Maybe it’s time to scroll through “erstwhile vice-chairman”, and “Universal Concrete”, and “Bowker & Page”, and open up the file marked “loss”.’
A dozen chairs, most of them already occupied by patients – amongst them the news reader, the lorry driver, the hairdresser and the banker – homogeneous in their leisure wear, had been arranged in a circle in the otherwise bare room. Julian, the therapist, a bearded Scotsman wearing a polo-necked sweater, was removing his shoes, an exercise which revealed a hole in his sock. The rest of the group followed suit. Freddie kept his shoes on.
‘This is the warm up,’ Julian explained to Freddie, who sat next to him, before turning to the group. ‘What I’d like you all to do is to wriggle your toes. When you feel yourselves nice and free, why don’t you give each other a bit of relaxing massage.’
Freddie folded his arms across his chest while Becky rubbed at Eddy’s T-shirt, her thin hands, at the end of fragile wrists, seeming to make little impression on the muscular back. He recognised Lavinia, who had come down from Oxford where she had been abusing heroin, and Pamela, a Cheam housewife whose mouth drooped permanently downwards and who was seriously depressed, and thought how damned stupid they all looked wriggling their outstretched toes and rubbing away at each other’s backs. When they had finished wriggling and rubbing – they seemed to enjoy it – Julian placed a spare chair in the middle of the circle.
‘I’m going to go round and ask each of you in turn’, he said, ‘who would you most like to talk to in your imagination. Who is it you would like to see sitting in that chair. Freddie?’
‘Pass,’ Freddie said. ‘I don’t talk to empty chairs.’
‘No problem. Becky?’
Golden Boy Page 31
