Sin City

by Wendy Perriam

  “Come on, quick,” said Carole. “While nobody’s around.”

  She hurt me, actually, pulling me like that, but I didn’t like to say so. It may have been the pills. Those pills can make you violent, even the ones which are meant to calm you down. Big Rita takes thirty-six a day and she punched the doctor just last month, gave him a black eye. Carole is still talking very loudly.

  “What d’ you mean, won’t let us? It’s not a prison, is it? I’m leaving anyway, can’t stick the place much longer.”

  I clutch my spoon. I didn’t know I had a spoon. I must have brought it with me from my dinner. I’d better put it down or they’ll only say I stole it. I’ve never stolen anything, except a feather, once. I lay it on a hymn book, try to stop it trembling. Carole mustn’t go.

  “You mustn’t go,” I tell her.

  “I doubt we’ll have much choice, mate. I heard a rumour the place is closing down.”

  I grab my spoon again; need something to cling on to. I try to speak, but no words come out at all. They’ve all been minced like dinner, lost their shape and strength. St Joseph’s closed, and then the turquoise walls. Your home for twenty years a pile of rubble. I can see the huge blocks falling, hear the crash and roar. I don’t want to move, don’t want a holiday.

  “They couldn’t move us. Not seven hundred patients. Where would seven hundred go?”

  “God knows. I’m going to Las Vegas.”

  “Where?” I pick up the hymn book in the other hand. I feel stronger with a hymn book.

  “That’s where we’ve won the holiday. It’s famous, really famous, like Blackpool, but with gambling. And it’s hot. There’ll be sun there, even in the winter, and swimming pools and stuff. Look, if you don’t want to come, I’ll ask Jan instead. She’d jump at it. But I’ll have to use your name. I mean, Norah Toomey won. So if I can be Norah Toomey …”

  I open the hymn book. “There Is A Land Of Pure Delight”, I read. I’m very slow at reading. I shut the book again, feel the blue plastic cover sticking to my hands. Can someone else be me – own my hair and teeth, wear my clothes? Would I be Carole then? I stare down at my feet. Big black feet, not pretty. If I was Carole, I could wear red shoes. Small red shoes. I shut my eyes a moment, see different feet, brown and angry feet, clumping up the stairs. It’s Miss Johnson with the key.

  “No,” I whisper. “Please don’t lock me in.” She always did. She was frightened I’d turn violent. They sent me there because they closed the hospital – the one before, not this one. I hoped I’d move to Hillview, like Doris and the rest of them, but they sent me into lodgings in the town. You weren’t allowed to choose. They just wrote it on your form – where you went and when. My room was very small, got smaller still at night when it was locked. “And I don’t want any men,” Miss Johnson said, the first night I was there. Her face was damp and very close to mine. She always came up very close and shouted. She thought I was deaf because I didn’t say a lot. “D’you get my meaning? I don’t have men here, not at all. And it’s no good saying you’re engaged …”

  I’m not engaged and I don’t know any men. The doctor is a man, but I hardly ever see him. I couldn’t sleep that night, not even with my pills. She unlocked the door at seven in the morning, but I didn’t dare go out. I sat in that room all day, except for the evening meal. That was small, as well, and greasy, and served with the six o’clock news. Fried bread mixed with bombs. There was another patient there who believed she was expecting. She’d been expecting for five years, but she’d never had the baby. Babies. There were twelve, she said, all girls. Only dogs and cats have twelve, I told her, but she didn’t answer. We were moved again in May. I don’t like moves at all.

  Carole’s walking up and down. She’s got plumper and much quieter since she’s been here, but she’s not quiet any more. She’s shouting like Miss Johnson.

  “Listen, Norah, as far as they’re concerned, I’m Norah Toomey now – d’ you understand?”

  “What about the doctors?” I enquire. They always know who you are, even if you say you’re someone else, like Josephina. The doctors called her Pat.

  “Oh, they don’t matter.” Carole sits down on a bench, raps her fingers on the pew in front. “It’s the competition people, and photographers and stuff. At least they haven’t seen me yet – or you. And this is my address as much as yours. I mean, Beechgrove’s like a house name, isn’t it? I didn’t put ‘Hospital’ on purpose. Just Beechgrove, Milford Road.”

  “All right,” I say. I try to make her happy if I can. I’m feeling almost happy myself that she wants to be me. No one ever has before. I’m not sure they’ll believe it. She doesn’t look like me at all. I’m taller and much scraggier with bigger feet and hands. And a different generation. I’ve never had a birthday, not a definite or official one, but I know the month and year.

  I’m Carole – with a birthday, a proper one with candles and a cake. I’ve also got a friend. Her name is Jan and I save her all my biscuits. If they close us down, I’ll go back home to Jan.

  They called it home in the lodgings, but you couldn’t make a cup of tea or keep biscuits in your room. It could have been far worse. Ella Cartwright slept on a bench on Hastings promenade. I like it in the ward. The beds have pale blue covers and you can pin up pictures on the piece of yellow wall above your locker. I’ve got a mountain which I cut out of the Mail and a Royal Lifeboat Calendar which Carole says is two years out of date, but the sea doesn’t really change much.

  “Christ!” yells Carole, suddenly. I jump.

  “I’m late for my appointment with the doctor. And they fitted me in specially, so I could ask to change my pills. God! They’ll kill me. Listen Norah, don’t say anything to anyone. Not a word – right? I’ve got to think this out.” She’s running down the aisle, almost at the door now. You shouldn’t run in church. She trips on something, says a word that’s not allowed, turns back to shout again. “I’ll keep the letter, okay? If nosey parker Sanders asks you what it was, say a circular.”

  “A … A what?”

  “Oh, anything. Just don’t mention competitions, and least of all LasVegas. They’ll go mad.”

  The door crashes shut behind her. I move to another pew, where the light is dimmer. I need to fade a bit, try to sort things out. Blackpool with the sun. I’ve never been to Blackpool, but Miss Barnsley went last year and didn’t like it. And I’ve never liked the sun. It shows you up, takes away dark corners.

  There was no sun this morning. I know that from the blackboard. Nurse Clarke always writes the weather up each morning, in yellow chalk; very large in capitals so the older ones can read it. “A SUNNY DAY TODAY” or “SNOW EXPECTED LATER”. It’s kind of her to bother, since few of us go out. She also puts the day and date, and even the year, in case people have lost track of it. I remember all she wrote today. I always learn it off by heart so I know what to expect. I don’t like sudden changes. “TODAY IS 20TH NOVEMBER, 1986. TUESDAY.” (That was underlined.) “A COLD DAY WITH DRIZZLE.”

  If Beechgrove closes, we won’t have any weather. Or any Tuesdays, either. In the lodgings, the days were all the same, except supper was at seven o’clock on a Sunday, and cold. I’m cold myself, shaky-cold. I can see the hospital minced up very fine, bricks and walls oozing bloody from the mincer, huge trees mushed like peas; all the Homes and hospitals I’ve been in pulped sticky grey like porridge; stiff white nurses now soft like mashed potato …

  Carole said there’d be a second letter. Maybe from a landlady. That room I moved to had no proper curtains, so people just peered in. I could feel them watching me undress. I even turned the lights off, but I could see their eyes still shining in the dark. They didn’t have whole heads, only yellow eyes which never closed.

  I hardly slept at all until I was moved back to a ward. Beechgrove is miles away from any town, or even any street. Nobody looks in. They couldn’t if they wanted. The ward has no windows, not the bit we sleep in. The pale blue wall goes right up to the ceiling, shuts everyb
ody out.

  There are windows in this chapel, coloured ones with huge blue and scarlet people in them, which stops smaller paler people looking in (or out). I like the chapel, although it seems different on a Tuesday – more wood and fewer heads. There’s a burn-hole on the bench in front and the hymn book has a deep scratch on its cover. It’s sad how things get spoilt. I open it again. “Come, my soul, thy suit prepare …”

  I don’t understand a lot of hymns, and I never sing in case I get the tune wrong. I’m not that good at tunes. I sang at the convent, but that was years and years ago. There was a hymn to St Joseph called “Hail, Holy Joseph, Hail.” I don’t remember any of the words, except for “hail” which was repeated thirteen times.

  “Hail,” I say out loud, but Joseph doesn’t come. He seems very far away and very faint. I close my eyes, try to draw him in my mind in strong black lines like those bright saints in the windows, creep back to his workshop.

  I always choose a time when Mary’s busy shopping and Jesus has gone out, or, better still, grown up. Then there’s just the two of us. I crouch on the floor in the pile of soft wood shavings, trickling sawdust through my hands. Joseph saws. The sound goes back and forwards, back and forwards, calms me down. Joseph’s always busy. He’s got to earn our living – his and mine – but if I’m quiet and good, he’ll put his saw away, wipe his hands, swing me up and sit me on his knee. I’m so light, I’m just a shaving, just a chiselled curl of wood. My hair is pale and pretty, pressed against his chest. My eyes are blue, greenish-blue like Carole’s, with little darker flecks in them. My shoes are red, and tiny. He’s proud of me. He loves me. His large rough hand is stroking across my head. I can feel the pee beginning to trickle down, staining us, joining us, hot and wet against his legs and mine.

  “We’ve won, St Joseph,” I whisper, as his hand strokes up and down. “Carole said so. We’ve won between the two of us.”

  Chapter Five

  “Jan? Where are you? J-a-n!”

  God! She isn’t in. No, she must be. Her door’s ajar. She’d never go out and leave her room unlocked. Jan just isn’t like that. She’s probably in the loo. I race along to the cold and spidery toilet which she shares with five other tenants in the house. It’s empty.

  “Seen Jan?” I ask the tall dark man clumping up the stairs. He’s new.

  “Who?”

  “Jan Soames.”

  “Never heard of her.”

  “You must have. She lives here.” She can’t have moved, can she? Not since Tuesday, when she came to visit, brought me a poinsettia. Supposing she’s bolted back to Bristol, gone back home again to rejoin her three kid sisters? I’d be all alone in London then. And with Beechgrove closing, I’d have nowhere else to live. My palms feel clammy suddenly. I wipe them on my jeans. I wish I had a sister, someone sort of tied to me, who couldn’t leave; who could share my father’s death.

  I can’t go back to my home. It isn’t home. It’s empty. My mother’s empty bottles, my father’s empty chair. And what about his clothes and things? They’re probably still just lying where he left them. I daren’t trust myself to touch them, sort them out. Someone ought to, though, someone calm and sensible who won’t start blubbing when they see his stamp collection, his baggy cardigans.

  “Jan!” I yell again, to stop the ache.

  Moira sticks her head out of her door. “Hi, Carole. You back, dear? Jan’s in the garden, if you want her.”

  “The garden? But it’s pitch dark and pouring.” I’m soaking wet myself; waited twenty squelching minutes at the bus stop, with no umbrella and this flimsy jacket which sops up rain like blotting paper.

  I crash down the remaining flight of stairs and out into the back yard which is more a junk heap than a garden, collide with Jan who’s just returning to the house, carrying a few bare twigs and a sooty piece of laurel. Flower arrangements. Jan’s training to be a florist in Mayfair, does homework in the evenings.

  “Carole! What’s the matter, love? What are you doing here?”

  Suddenly, I’m crying. Jan sounds as if she cares – really cares – and I’d forgotten what that feels like. She walks me back inside, takes my sodden jacket, puts the kettle on, while I mop up rain and tears. I’m so relieved to see her – her short dark curly hair, her small neat nose and hands; everything about her small and neat; the way she bosses kettles, marshals mugs. Jan’s quiet, but very firm, won’t stand any nonsense, whether from droopy flowers or dozy gas rings. The kettle pants to a fast boil with her stern eye on it.

  She passes me a mug of Cup-A-Soup: Chicken Oriental, with little shreds of noodle floating on the top. “What’s happened, Carole? You haven’t run away, have you?”

  I almost laugh. They’d have their tracker-dogs out if I tried. “No, I’m meant to be at bingo. I was at bingo, actually. I even won. Two fat ladies – eighty-eight. I just slipped out for a pee – the longest pee in history. It’s okay, Jan, don’t look so worried. They won’t know. Bingo goes on hours. I just had to see you. There’s been this awful row, you see. This afternoon. They won’t let her go.”

  “Who?”

  “Norah.”

  “Go where?”

  “On the holiday, you nut. Sister just refused point-blank, said it was absolutely ridiculous for someone who’d never spent a single night away, and whose longest journey in fifty-odd years was a day-trip to Littlehampton, to go waltzing off to the States.”

  “Well, I see her point, love. I said much the same myself, if you remember.”

  I do remember. Jan’s really quite a pain at times. “Look, Jan, if Norah doesn’t take this chance, she’ll never leave those four walls, except feet first in a coffin. You’d go nuts yourself if you never went out or mixed with normal people or saw a different view or … There’s nothing wrong with Norah. Okay, she’s not exactly Einstein, but she’s not mental either. The only reason she’s in that place at all is because she’s never had a home or proper parents. She’s been in institutions all her life. One leads to another. You get caught up in the system, and before you know it, you’re labelled ‘nut’ or ‘case’ or ‘halfwit’.”

  Jan says nothing, just sips her soup, face closed. She doesn’t realise how much a matter of sheer chance it is, what you’re labelled, or where you land in life. In her neat and tidy system, criminals go to prison and loonies live in mental homes. No mistakes, no botch-ups. No cases of bad luck or missing fathers.

  She reaches for her laurel spray, shakes the cold drops off it. They sting against my face. “Be honest, Carole. Why not admit you’re simply furious that you won’t be able to go yourself?”

  I open my mouth to deny it, scald it with hot soup instead. Jan’s right. Of course I’m furious. Frustrated, disappointed. Even when I had the row with Sister, a bit of me was disgusted with myself, championing poor Norah when all I really cared about was me. Okay, so I’m a hypocrite, and worse still, Jan sees through me, but it is my only chance to see America, have a bit of fun for once. And that stupid Sister Watkins says they’ve booked a lovely panto for New Year and we can go to that instead. Puss in fucking Boots.

  Jan starts breaking up her laurel branch. Snap, snap, snap. “You know it’s crazy, Carole. I mean, how could Norah cope? She won’t go places with you, or join in things, or be any proper company. And what are you going to talk about?”

  “You’re just jealous, Jan.”

  “Jealous? I wouldn’t want to go, thanks. A monster hotel with three thousand rooms and fifteen hundred slot machines. No fear! I’d rather have a cottage in Snowdonia.”

  I flop back in my chair. I don’t believe her, actually, but what’s the point of quarrelling? Of course I’d rather go with her. If things had worked out better, she’d have been taking me. I entered in her name as well as Norah’s, and her parents’ name, and all three sisters’. And Norah won. Even so, I thought at first I’d swing it, borrow Toomey’s name, identity; take Jan as my friend. Except I’d quite forgotten vital things like passports. I can’t be Norah Toomey o
n a passport. So it’s either her and me, or not at all.

  Not at all, said Sister.

  Actually, she can’t say that, not legally. I phoned a friend of mine who’s reading Law at London University, a brainy girl I knew at school. She looked it up for me. Unless a patient is actually confined under various complicated sections of the Mental Health Act, you can’t keep her in against her will, or forbid her going places. In fact, more than nine-tenths of those patients could discharge themselves today, just walk out, piss off, and no one would have any legal right to stop them, haul them back. The trouble is, they’re all too drugged or scared to try. Once you’re labelled patient, you become one – passive, apathetic, with no initiative; chained to a chair and a daily timetable, salivating when the meal-bell rings. Look at me. I’ve started building my life round those dreary Wednesday film shows, counting the days till Sunday because there’s ginger cake for tea. I’ve been in bloody weeks now, yet I’m not exactly chafing to escape. I rarely see the doctor on my own, and when I do, he never talks about me leaving, just assumes I’m there indefinitely. Okay, I know the place is closing, but if it wasn’t, I could rot there till I die.

  Jean Foster died last week, aged seventy-three. She was admitted in her twenties because she was pregnant and unmarried, just like Norah’s mother. The baby was stillborn, so she was naturally upset. “Clinically depressed”, they labelled it – another label added to “depraved”. She stayed depressed. No wonder, in a place like this. But like Toomey, she had neither home nor job; nothing and nobody to bail her out, offer an alternative. Sheer bad luck, or fate, not mental illness. All right, some of them are ill – schizophrenic, senile, even bonkers – and madness is infectious, just like measles, so if you’re a patient long enough, you’re bound to end up weird. But it’s still inhuman to lump us normal ones with the zombies and the cretins. We haven’t got a chance. I mean, take Di Townsend, who’s really sweet, and used to run a chain of snazzy dress shops. She was only admitted because she got weepy with her “change”. Now she says she’s scared of ever leaving, feels she couldn’t even run her home.