Oleander Soul

by James Arklie

  ​She tried a smile and lied. ‘In hand, Mum. No worries.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I have to go and see the woman in charge.’ She rummaged through the top drawer of Alesha’s beside cabinet. ‘You got any drugs for a headache, Mum. I’ve got a killer building.’

  ​Alesha rang her bell. ‘I’ll get some, love.’

  ​Ollie dragged herself along the magnolia painted corridors. They smelt of stale food and disinfectant. Blue suited helpers in ill-fitting smocks and trousers dished out drugs and cups of tea from trolleys. She wondered which helped the most. God, she hated places like this. Institutions, imposed order, where one human controlled another. Bossed them. Could determine their destiny. Where there was no way to fight back, shout out and be heard. Only formality and rules and obedience. Restraint without the straps.

  ​Ollie rapped twice on the door marked, ‘Rose Orbison’ and didn’t bother waiting for a reply. Don’t make this confrontational, she told herself. It won’t do any good. Be here for your mother.

  ​Rose Orbison looked annoyed. ‘Most people wait.’

  ​‘And last time I was here that ‘wait’ was one hour and as I don’t have one hour spare to throw in the trash bin I thought I would come right on in.’ Too savage, Ollie. Less aggression. Control your beast.

  ​Rose Orbison removed glasses, glanced at the cleavage on display and read the tense anger in the body language.

  ​‘Take a seat, Oleander and tell me, how is Alesha today?’

  ‘The same as yesterday and the same as the day before. I’ve said it too many times. There’s no bloody point in all of you bouncing into her room like bloody Tigger with an ‘and how are we today?’ because she’s always the same. No. Actually, she’s always bloody worse because what you lot don’t seem to understand is that Motor Neurone Disease is a progressively degenerating disease. So, what that means is that tomorrow she will be worse than today.’

  ‘I know what MND is.’

  ‘Except because she also has the start of dementia she’s not sure if it is today or tomorrow or even yesterday.’ Ollie was rubbing hard at the ache on the left side of her head.

  Rose Orbison was reading the signs. ‘I can call security.’

  ‘That will be great if they can pop in every day to check she is all right. Otherwise call someone who can do something constructive.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. I meant I will call them to throw….’

  ‘Christ, I know what you bloody meant. I was being funny. Jokes.’

  Rose sighed and Ollie simmered into the silence between them. She knew the woman opposite was waiting for an apology that Ollie was not going to offer.

  Rose stopped waiting and said bluntly, ‘We need your Mother out of here in five days. The consultant has given her the all clear. I assume you have somewhere she can continue her recovery and you can look after her?’

  Ollie closed her eyes against the pain and the world and breathed. Keep your rag. Get some oxygen molecules into your brain. She knows what you are and have been and that you don’t have anywhere to take your mother. But let her make her power point.

  Ollie made hers. ‘You mean to recover from the life-threatening operation she had to wait two years for because she was parked in the ‘let’s not waste our time and resources on an old woman who has dementia and MND and will die shortly anyway’ list?’

  ‘Nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Given you are part of the NHS, it has everything to do with all of you. Just leave it long enough, was the perverted thinking and she will die. Save the money. How many people do you leave to die like that each year? Bet the actuaries have worked out the saving.’ Ollie fiddled with the ring in her eyebrow. The anger in her fingers screamed at her to rip it out. Create a different pathway of pain to divert the one invading her head.

  She breathed. ‘Okay. Tell me. Does she qualify for housing assistance? Yes or no?’

  ‘Well, she….’

  Ollie slapped the desk, hard. Papers jumped. Something slithered off a pile and onto the floor. A spoon rattled in a mug.

  Rose Orbison had faced it all before. ‘You want anything from me, Oleander, you have to start talking to me in a less aggressive and more civil manner. A little respect will get you a long way.’

  ‘Aretha Franklin.’

  Rose looked bemused. ‘What?’

  ‘R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Show a little respect. It works both ways.’

  Rose threw her pen on the desk as if she was talking to an idiot.

  Ollie glared and let the lid off. ‘I’ll take that as a ‘no’ then. And I’ll tell you something for free. I don’t pander to bitches like you who pigeon-hole women like me as if I’m a used condom to be flushed down the toilet and then go and wash the taint off your hands.’

  ‘I’m calling security.’

  Ollie rolled her eyes and stood. ‘It will be really useful to me and my mother if you could make a call to Welfare instead. Explain her predicament and ask them to call me.’

  Rose Orbison lifted the receiver and Ollie left before finding out who she’d called.

  Chapter Four

  Small’s mood had changed. Or rather, been changed, thought Andy. She’d pulled her hair back into an angry ponytail. ‘What the hell is he doing here?’

  She was looking down the corridor towards the interview rooms.

  Andy answered, ‘Acting for the activist guy who poured petrol over three cars in Oxford Street yesterday and tossed a match.’

  Mark Anderson, defence lawyer, saw Small and threw up a provocative wave. Small just shook her head and turned back to the office. ‘What happened?’

  ‘The guy says he was protesting against global warming. Too many cars, planes, people and all that. Took a couple of squeezy bottles full of petrol to Oxford Circus, waited for the lights to turned red, sprayed it around and set light to it.’ He paused. ‘It’s all over YouTube, Boss.’

  Of course, it is, she thought. ‘People get out okay?’

  ‘Easily. Would have been worse if he’d sprayed the crowd instead.’

  ‘No, Andy. Worse was one of the cars exploding.’

  Andy trod carefully. ‘That too, Boss.’ He knew the issue here was that Anderson had got Soul out and free as a bird twice on Small’s watch. Both on technicalities. He went and made tea and took it to her, but she still hadn’t let it go.

  ‘Why do smart intelligent people enjoy defending guilty, dangerous, manipulative, nutters? All over YouTube, so what’s to defend?’

  ‘Still has his rights, Boss.’ He felt she was describing Soul more than a random activist. He also knew she never liked to lose.

  ‘Can we get a list of cases he’s defended? I want to know who’s side he’s on. If he’s going to keep popping up I want some dirt on him.’

  Small stirred her tea slowly. ‘And Andy, focus on his links to Soul, because both times she was in he turned up within the hour, unrequested. And that is very strange.’

  ​ * * *

  Ollie took her bubble of anger down the corridor to her mother’s room. As she got close, she heard the familiar, deep, confident voice of Saran, an old friend from school days.

  They rarely saw one another now. Saran had moved away, aged fifteen, left school under a cloud and pregnant. Since then she’d gone upwards to become a doctor and now worked at Guy’s Hospital while Ollie had descended into a deep, dark pit with smooth, slimy walls from which not even a rat could escape.

  ‘Here she is.’ Saran jumped up to greet her too enthusiastically.

  They hugged and pecked cheeks. Ollie looked over Saran’s shoulder and into her mother’s eyes. Her face was smiling, but the eyes were cold on Saran’s back, the way they always had been.

  Saran powered on with her enthusiasm for life. ‘I was here seeing a patient so just had to pop in and see Alesha. I’ve just promised Lily that I’ll take you both for coffee and cakes in the park over the road.’

  Ollie wasn’t sure she wanted to be confronted with the success of her friend,
but Lily was bouncing on the bed with excitement. Anyway, at the moment food was food. But still, she felt hijacked.

  ‘I have to go and see Lily’s school later, so….’ Then she let it go. Don’t turn into a whinger, Ollie.

  Ten minutes later they were in the park and sitting at a table in the sunshine. Lily had two cupcakes. One smothered in bright pink icing and the other topped with a ballerina cut out of white icing doing a pirouette. She took the pink one across to the swings where she picked happily at the icing.

  Ollie sipped a large cappuccino, wondering if the caffeine would ease her headache or make it more severe. Saran could also be intense and Ollie wanted to keep this chat simple, keep it away from herself.

  Ollie asked, ‘How’s Jacob?’

  Saran nodded. ‘He’s good. At boarding school in Dorset.’

  One day, thought Ollie. Not that she wanted to send Lily away somewhere, but just to have the money and the opportunity to do so would be good.

  Saran probed. ‘Alesha looks good.’

  ‘Other than dementia, MND and recovering from her heart operation she’s not bad.’ It came out bad tempered and bitter.

  ‘Ollie. There’s nothing that you can do about any of that. Old age and genes wait for no man.’

  Ollie ignored the clever phrase. ‘And I need to find us all somewhere to live in the next five days because they are throwing her out. Lily and I need somewhere for tonight because I have also been thrown out.’

  Not that it was much to be thrown out of, but right now the security of that room was like owning a country mansion. Ollie sipped her cappuccino.

  ‘You need to listen to some of your favourite Motown, Sweets and cheer yourself up.’

  ‘Oh right, Saran. I’ll just download that from the Spotify account I don’t have, onto the iPhone I don’t have, or I could get an old clip of the Supremes on YouTube on the iPad I don’t have.’

  Ollie heard the bitterness in her voice, she spooned the chocolate from the froth and ate it. When had she last bought a bar of chocolate for herself or for Lily?

  ‘Ollie. Can I be direct. Like as your oldest friend, direct.’

  ‘Friend? What’s a friend?’

  Saran shook her head, exasperated. ‘Well, as I’m the only girlfriend who still talks to you from when we were kids. The only one you’ve screwed over for money, men, clothes and drugs and is still here buying you coffee and Lily cakes, I guess I’m what you call a friend.’

  She held up her left hand. As well as a wedding ring, on her little finger was a faded pink ring. ‘And because you’re still wearing the cheap plastic ‘friends for ever’ ring after all these years…’

  Ollie searched her friend’s eyes, looking for any hint of her wanting to throw her success in Ollie’s face. There was none.

  She looked down at her own ring. ‘Sorry.’ Then she laughed. ‘Anyway, I nicked them.’

  Saran smiled back. ‘Right, in any case I’m going to give you some psychiatry shit for free. You’ve got to get yourself back up. You created this stinking cesspool that you love sinking into. You did this to yourself and you keep doing it to yourself. Lily’s ten, how many of those years have you spent with her?’

  ‘Saran, I don’t need the lecture. Not now.’

  ‘Don’t run from me, friend. You put yourself in this space, so time to face up and get yourself out. You fight institutions that are there to help you, never giving them a chance. Not everyone in this world is out to get you, Sweets.’

  Ollie looked at her, her face incredulous. ‘I’ve just told you the shit I’m in. I’m like a bollard on springs. I get hit by a car, I get up. Then a dumper truck hits me, I get up. Then an articulated truck smashes into me and I still bounce up.

  ‘I’m getting tired of crawling back to my feet, Saran. My body hurts and my head is a mess of pain.’ She paused, then,

  ‘Better description. You know those wind up monkeys with cymbals in their hands? Hopping around with a mad smile on their face as they smash the cymbals together. Crash, crash, crash. That’s my head. That’s my brain. You try living a life through that.’

  ‘There are drugs.’

  ‘The drugs I like won’t help in the medical sense.’

  ‘That’s the next point, Sweets, you’re getting too happy down there. Like serial offenders who prefer life in prison. You blame everyone else. But what or who has really caused this, Ollie? Not a rant, just one word. Think and be truthful and honest with yourself.’

  Ollie narrowed her eyes and shifted in her seat. She looked at Lily and then back to Saran and said angrily, ‘The world.’

  ‘Oh, please, Ollie. Now you’re blaming the whole world.’ Saran had her forefinger pointing on the tabletop to make the point. She stared into Ollie’s eyes and they glared back, challenging her.

  ‘Ollie. I was there when your father disappeared. I watched you and your mother fall apart and your lives unwind. I watched as you self-harmed and turned into an alcoholic, a junkie, a prostitute and a mother at the age of twenty. I watched your mother contract a debilitating disease that I still think is psychological not physiological.

  ‘That wheelchair, that bed, they are where she hides from the world. And you’re heading that way, Ollie. Twenty years and that will be you in the chair and Lily fighting for your survival. You really want that?’

  Ollie’s head was pounding. She didn’t need this. She jumped to her feet.

  ‘My mother is ill. She’s not hiding from anything. We’re leaving.’

  ‘No. You’re running. Again.’ Saran leant forward. ‘You should be a sprinter by now.’

  Ollie paused, looked down and met the challenge in her friend’s eyes, then sat down.

  Saran leant forward, softening her tone and her voice. ’Sort your life, Ollie. For your sake and for Lily’s future. Kill the demon that has created and started all of this. Go back to the beginning and find your father or, at the very least, what happened to him.’

  Chapter Five

  ​Ollie had two more meetings with authority. She wanted to ignore both, but that’s what she’d always done. Run to the pub or for a fix and hide away from it all. Today she had no choice but to give it a go.

  The first meeting was with the Deputy Head of Lily’s school. Ollie perched on the edge of her chair, arms folded defensively, ready for the next confrontation, listening to the beat of pain in her head.

  She couldn’t remember the woman’s name, Arlene or something similar, but she didn’t care. She knew what was coming and all she felt was the bubbling, simmering anger she’d had when, as a teenage schoolgirl, she’d spent more and more time with authority telling her how shit and uncontrollable she was, instead of someone asking what the problem was and how could they help.

  Ollie stared at Arlene whoever and Arlene whoever stared back, absently shuffling papers into a neat stack the way teachers who spend their life marking and grading do. Ollie saw that the teacher’s marks were now in green rather than red. Not that the colour makes a lot of difference, she thought, it’s what’s said that matters.

  ‘The attendance of your daughter at school is not good enough. She’s missed five days out of twenty-five this half-term alone. That’s twenty-five percent.’

  Christ. Here we go again, being judged and talked to like a piece of shit. Teachers even admonish parents with that same teacher’s voice.

  ‘Twenty percent actually.’ Ollie corrected her and glanced across at Lily, sitting in a corner, parked out of the way while they talked about her.

  ‘But she’s not been well. Have you, poppet? I’m having her checked for gluten intolerance, lactose intolerance and her iron levels, but it takes time to get the appointments. Can the school cope with her if she has one of those?’

  ‘No. That’s for you to provide her with the correct food. If she has a severe allergy, such as nuts, then we can take precautions. Probably a facemask depending on the severity and you will have to leave an epi-pen with us.’

  ‘Nuts.’

/>   Oleander let the word hang with its meaning.

  The deputy head resumed. ‘If she’s ill then you need to supply doctor’s notes. You haven’t.’

  ‘I’ll make sure I do next time. If that’s all…’

  ‘There’s also the question of your address. Lily doesn’t seem to know where you live.’

  ‘We always use my Mum’s address. My relationship broke up and there are complications.’

  ‘Do I need to know what those complications are?’

  ‘None of your business. But he disappeared suddenly and without trace. The police have this theory that I murdered him.’

  Arlene’s eyes blinked and she gave Lily another glance.

  ‘I thought your mother was in a residential home.’

  Ollie lied. ‘She discharged herself.’ And then added a second lie for spice.

  ‘It’s no place to end her life.’

  The deputy head glanced at Lily, clearly not approving of talking about the impending death of a grandmother in front of a ten-year old grandchild.

  Ollie went on, free-wheeling because she didn’t give a shit and she was back in front of her old headmistress again, challenging regimes, the norm and authority. Enjoying herself.

  ‘And Mum has free access to gin at home. She can get pissed whenever she wants. And I can get her all the painkillers she needs….if you know what I mean?’ Oleander smiled sweetly.

  ‘Oh, and she does like a smoke. It seems to assist. If you know the brand I mean?’

  Ollie was wondering why she had to sit and hold it together with people like this ticking their boxes, not seeing what was in front of them and not hearing what was being said. Intent only on a fucking square box on a rectangular piece of paper on their cluttered desk.

  Arlene just shook her head in a disappointed way. The way authority does when you piss on their orderly rules and destroy their comfort zones. Great things never come from comfort zones, only the same old song.

  Arlene’s green pen was flicking angrily across a sheet of paper.