‘Will it … will it happen again?’
‘Impossible to predict. Some people only ever have one episode. Others get ill again if they stop taking their meds. Others again take their meds but still have a series of episodes.’
‘So you can’t say which I’ll be. But Ian, why has this happened to me? I must be weak and useless.’
‘It can be hereditary.’ He slapped both hands on his thighs. ‘Vee, I must go. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful. Medication everybody!’
In the queue forming along the corridor, I joined the ranks of those I once despised.
The sun shone between the tall trees lining the main drive up to the old hospital buildings. It was my first time outside and I had found that my clothes were quite loose. Ian came with us. I was a bit high at the time and I laughed at Barbara, who was walking really slowly.
Inside the door with flaking navy paint was a dingy café. We sat in a corner with our green NHS cups and saucers. Ian said he’d be back in ten minutes.
Some strange characters inhabited this world. A shaft of light from a high window cut a sample of the smoky air, and we watched in silence as a man of about forty-five walked to and fro, in and out of this spotlight, keeping up a loud replay of the latest conversation with his psychiatrist, speaking both parts. Every so often he would go up to the counter and buy a single cigarette. His eyes saw only the bits of the real world he needed at any given moment. The rest of the time, he was totally immersed in his private dialogue made public. Another man sat nearby, in drab clothes, chain-smoking as if with a mechanical arm, rocking back and forth on his chair, his lips moving silently the whole time, saliva trickling down his chin, adding to the dark patch on the lapel of his jacket.
They were long-stay patients from Albert ward, up here in the original asylum, but they seemed to be from a different century. A bent old woman shuffled round on a tour of the ashtrays, looking for decent butts. To make a new cigarette, she would crumble the tobacco from the butts onto a paper and roll it up. I had seen people doing this on Tor ward as well. Not only did these people from Albert have very little money – fags were the patients’ currency – they never seemed to have visitors to bring them anything. Did they have anyone? Did anybody know they were there? Had they been abandoned, years ago? They made me think of old slanting gravestones, neglected and forgotten.
By the time we had finished our tea my mood had changed again. Ian and Barbara had to support me down the hill and back to Tor ward. The swings were not as frequent or as intense though by now, and at least I was more aware of those around me.
I was getting wise to things that happened on Tor ward as well. The whole of society was represented, but as if in parody. I became able to work out why the other patients were there. The ones who did not appear to be ill were ready for discharge. You had to know whom you could trust to go to the shop for you, too. I wanted a cigarette.
‘Oh, here she comes! Just ‘cos she’s having ECT, she thinks she’s special. And did you hear her the other day, when she was high, bragging about her degree!’
‘I know, she’s the big “I am”. Makes me sick. So up herself.’
I realised I must have embarrassed myself when I was in the grip of this thing, but no more so than others I’d met on the ward, who gave completely the wrong impression of what they were like in the real world. Seeing them get better proved this. They became calmer, quieter and most of all, their features seemed to shrink back to a normal size from the cartoon version they had come in with. I couldn’t help thinking of Aunt Mary’s rolling eyes.
I decided not to sit in the smoking room after all; I went into the garden. Gil was sitting on one of the benches. He was a quiet friend, a companion in depression. As I walked towards him, he raised his eyes. They were concentration-camp eyes, hollow but shining with an invincible light.
The last one: nothing to eat or drink after midnight, blood pressure check in the morning, hand in your valuables and write “bag in office” on your hand to avoid alarm when you come round. It’s hard to believe, but it’s things like that you forget. Wait til you’re sent for, then up the back stairs with your assigned nurse to the ECT suite.
There is the black bed again. The room is full of equipment and there is the doctor, a nurse and the anaesthetist. Climb on the bed – a trolley, I now realise. Any caps or crowns? No. Leads on my chest, pulse monitor on my finger, find a vein. I feel cold today and it makes it harder for them to find one. Scratch: now the valve is in my hand. A cold trickle runs up inside to my elbow. Oxygen mask and …
I’ve missed you Mum.’ We hugged each other. Then we sat in the living room at number 79, two days after I had been discharged from Tor ward. The grass was long and I only had two tea bags left. ‘How’s Jim?’
‘Oh fine. I think he’s got a new girlfriend, but I’d better let him tell you himself.’
We drank our tea. The old clock I had bought ticked on.
‘Vee, I’m really sorry I couldn’t visit you in hospital, but it’s a long way to come, and the main reason is of course that Ron’s been so ill. Flu then pneumonia. I couldn’t leave him and I couldn’t tell you at the time. I was so relieved to hear your voice on the phone the other day though, sounding more like your old self. And Ron’s made a full recovery. So my dear people are back with me.’
I tried to explain how strange I felt: I didn’t really know who my old self was any more. Assuming of course that people have constant “selves” to which they can return. From what? Where had I been then, in the meantime, if I wasn’t with my self?
I told Mum that one of the nurses out there had said this might be hereditary. This did not come as such a shock to Mum, thank goodness, although neither of us could work out why, if that were the case, she hadn’t been affected. If some crisis was needed to “switch on” the illness, surely Dad’s death would have done it? But she was more interested in learning all about ECT.
‘Well, you’re put to sleep – see the little scars on my hand? Then they put a small electric current through your brain.’
‘Oh, I don’t like the sound of that!’
‘But it is only a small amount. You have a kind of fit, but you don’t know about it of course, then you wake up.’
Mum pulled a face. I explained that not everybody has this treatment, and anyway, it doesn’t always work for those who do have it. In fact, I went on, nobody really knows how it works in the first place, but then again, they don’t always know how the tablets work either. As she could see though, it had worked for me, and that’s all that mattered for now. I said I didn’t know if I’d be there today if wasn’t for ECT. OK, it had affected my memory, but they’d told me a lot would come back.
She stood up. ‘Right, are we going shopping or not? You need a lampshade for the hall for one thing. I was shocked when I got here last night to see a bare bulb!’ She bought me a tee shirt and lunch as well, and we restocked the kitchen.
‘I’ll stay one more night, Vee.’
We set about cooking a meal, while I tried to tell her what things were like in Tor ward and how I felt, but it sounded false and unreal, as if I was recounting a nightmare which nobody else could understand because they hadn’t lived through it. Or perhaps it was somebody else’s nightmare. But every attempt to describe what I had in fact only half lived was inadequate. You don’t experience psychosis; it’s the nature of the beast. So I don’t think Mum was any the wiser in the end. And I could appreciate why people find illness like this so hard to understand. If those who experience it can’t describe it properly, what hope is there?
‘So what are you going to do about work then, Vee?’
‘Oh, don’t remind me. The money I got from the College won’t last forever, so I’ll have to start looking soon I suppose. Something tells me it might take a while.’
13
Aftershocks
Lucy Bennett had a tiny office overlooking the car park. The clinic on the hill was surrounded by trees planted when it was
built and it reminded me of my old school. Her room was full of books, leaving just enough space for a desk and two chairs.
‘Now, you’ve been referred to me after your recent admission to Tor ward.’ Her hazel eyes smiled at me. She had an oval face and shortish greying hair, from which long thin russet-coloured earrings emerged, toning with her unusual jacket. ‘Do you know why you’re here?’
‘Not really.’
‘Well, a psychologist’s job is to try to unravel any thought patterns which might have contributed to your becoming ill. Of course you’ll go on seeing Dr Wilson as well.’
‘I see.’
‘What I think would be helpful,’ she went on, ‘for both of us, is if you keep a diary of your moods, and bring it to our next session in a fortnight.’
I nodded. Using the glasses on a chain round her neck, Lucy glanced briefly at her notes, making her earrings move.
‘So, Vee, how do you feel now?’
‘There are gaps in my memory which can be awkward. Apart from that, I don’t really know how I feel. It changes from day to day. I don’t know if I’m the same person as I used to be before I was ill, or whether I’m on my way back and haven’t got there yet. I suppose only time will tell.’
‘Try and capture these states of mind in your mood diary. Do you keep a diary anyway?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. What about your moods, specifically. Do you think they’ve settled down?’
‘Well I don’t feel as weird as I did. I feel more or less level, just a bit wrung out.’
‘Do you feel able to talk about your father? When did he die?’
I hadn’t seen Patrick for a while, but then it was exam time. For a week or two all I wanted to do was sleep, but I knew I had to make an effort to get a job. I arranged to meet up with one of the men I’d flirted with when high in hospital, but realised immediately that I shouldn’t have done. In our normal lives, we wouldn’t have given each other a second glance. I could tell he felt the same; I vowed I would never make the same mistake again.
Then one evening, there was a knock at the door. To my surprise, Ian the nurse was standing there, in cycling helmet and gloves, holding the handlebars of a racing bike, which he was trying to prop against the porch wall.
‘I’ve done something I shouldn’t have,’ he said quietly. ‘I looked up your address in the notes.’
‘Come in,’ I said, eyeing his lycra shorts and muscular legs and imagining … well. ‘Cup of tea?’ I asked, as if trying to deny what was in the air.
‘Great. How are you?’ We went into the living room.
‘OK I think.’
He smiled. I stood for a moment, looking at him, and felt a silly, matching smile grow on my lips from the tension, which had to be broken. But by whom? Getting the tea was my way of opting out, although of course I would have to come back. But Ian followed me through into the kitchen. I put the mugs out and his hand was on my shoulder. I thought any feelings I might have had towards him had died when I left the ward, but I was wrong.
‘This has to stay between you and me, yes?’ he said softly into my neck. I turned and we kissed. The kettle boiled unnoticed as our desire exploded and we found ourselves undressing at top speed and landing on the bed. We went at it like animals.
Ian came round once a week for two or three months, but the lust soon faded. We couldn’t go out anywhere as a couple; it was like being with Tony. So once we had discovered each other’s bodies, there was nothing left to do. He could lose his job if he wasn’t careful. So we went our separate ways.
At my appointment with Dr Wilson, he said I should stay on lithium, with regular blood tests which I had to arrange. Then a letter came about a course I was required to attend to get me back to work. Such things were in their infancy.
Charmian Davies ran the course, held weekly in a dingy office in town. There were about eight of us, mostly men, in the cramped room. It didn’t take me long to realise that the course was designed for people with poor literacy skills, who didn’t have the first idea about how to apply for jobs or speak on the phone. Although unimpressed by the first session, I decided to give it another week or two, in case I missed something useful. But the content of Charmian’s next two stints left me cold. In fact, I was angry, because she used me. She had recognised that I didn’t need to be there. So she used me.
‘I’m not coming back!’
Charmian looked at me in alarm, her painted eyebrows resembling a clown’s. I heard the door creak as the others left. ‘But Vee … you’ve got to!’
‘Look, I know how to write a letter and speak on the phone, as you well know. I came here to get help, but so far I’ve just been helping you to help those other people. And I’m not even getting paid for it! Besides which, it’s insulting. Just because I’m unemployed doesn’t mean I can’t think!’ With that, I stormed out and walked the mile back to number 79 in the rain and the wet leaves.
The next day I bought newspapers, writing paper, envelopes and stamps. This was in the days before the Internet. Just me and the kitchen table; so, the great task began. It seemed I would have to do it on my own, as Charmian wasn’t much use.
Every day without fail for the next two years I wrote and sent off at least two applications. There was no proper system for finding work in those days. You signed on and were left to your own devices.
I took the whole thing seriously, starting by looking only at jobs for graduates, but I quickly formed the impression that employers had closed ranks on me. At the same time, I realised that I didn’t have to be quite so honest about my problems on paper. But even then, the watered-down “occasional depression” on medical questionnaires was enough for a rejection. Time was passing, the money was running out, I’d only had three interviews in eight months and I knew I’d have to start applying for jobs which did not require a degree. Getting a job had been a simple task before and I couldn’t understand why it was suddenly so difficult. Then I realised that this was stigma in action, and it hurt.
Meanwhile I wanted to find out about manic depression as well. It seemed that most people diagnosed with it had a sustained episode of one mood or the other. There were dozens of different medications; new types appeared every so often. The discovery that I was in good company – a large number of artists, writers and other famous and creative people had this diagnosis – was cold comfort in my present circumstances.
The person I really needed to know about was Aunt Mary. Mum said she’d been in hospital in Oxford, but that’s all she knew. Things like this just weren’t discussed at the time, and the Wheeler family would have been in disgrace socially if anyone had found out. Mum had obviously done some research of her own. Did I realise, she asked, that unmarried mothers were incarcerated for years too? Prejudice against women was nowhere near as bad as it used to be, she thought. In her view, I should count myself lucky that we lived in more enlightened times; I had no evidence that we did.
I made some phone calls and discovered that Mary Wheeler had been admitted to George ward in 1912, aged twenty, with “acute delirious mania”. She had three further episodes of illness. Then, in 1939, she committed suicide.
I looked into my mind: the white door had closed again, but the padlock had disappeared. Whether this was dangerous remained to be seen.
When Max came out of hospital – he didn’t remember much about the heart attack except the pain – he was under strict instructions not to overdo things and take gentle exercise. Helen had of course been reading the book; she was surprisingly calm. She came and sat on the bed. He was allowed to get up late nowadays. At Helen’s urgent request, Simon had given Jackson a good talking-to at last it seemed, about the noise at night. Helen really wanted the two of them out.
There were two get-well cards, from Grace and Anna. Helen had phoned them when he went in, and they had been ready to come home if necessary, as Helen put it.
‘But hey! Max, you really loved Vee, didn’t you?’ She smiled. ‘I know you told me a
bout her, but it was still interesting to read Vee’s version.’
He felt she deserved an explanation. ‘Helen, I want you to understand that I swear I knew nothing about the pregnancy until I read that chapter myself.’
She stroked his head. ‘I know, darling. I believe you. Your heart attack was proof enough of that. I’m just glad you’re OK. And now I’ve gone on ahead of you with the reading, so you’ve some catching up to do!’
That was the only thing he really felt like doing. He didn’t think there could be any more surprises concerning him in Vee’s book. He asked Helen what she thought had driven Vee to suicide.
‘Hold on. I need to get things clear in my mind. First, Max, I never did ask you properly what your motives are for doing this. I mean, you’re retired, we could be on holiday, cough, cough, hint, hint. Vee’s dead … Why do you, specifically, need to go into what happened at Squaremile? Because it looks as though that’s where we’re headed. Yes, I said I’d help, but – .’
‘– I want to do something to help people like Vee in the future. And I abhor stigma and discrimination. That’s my motivation. I’m still a doctor really. It’s often quoted, and I’m sure you’ve heard it, but Burke was meant to have said something like, “It is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph”. You might have got there, but I haven’t reached the point in her book when she became my patient; I saw the damage the illness did to Vee and the changes it brought about in her life. It may never be possible to know the full extent of someone’s suffering, but I believe Vee did ask for my help.’
‘And you felt guilty. I know that. I remember working that out at the funeral.’
‘I did feel guilty. So, what drove her to commit suicide?’
Helen thought for a moment. ‘Vee lost things. Important things.’ She paused to stroke his head again. ‘People and things she’d loved or put effort into. In the end, she must have thought she’d lost everything. That’s the answer to your question: loss. The rest of her book will bear this out, I’m sure.’
From a Safe Distance Page 10
