by Marian Keyes
In I burst, Chris right behind me. Then he slammed the door behind us to keep out the wind and the rain.
We were in a tiny, little room that was lovely and warm. It had a washing-machine and a spin dryer in it, both of which were hopping around doing their thing. The noise was intense, as it echoed off the stone walls and floor. I looked expectantly at Chris, waiting for him to lead me on further.
‘Ready when you are.’ I smiled, but it was tinged with anxiety because there didn’t seem to be any doors other than the one we had just come in.
‘You shouldn’t say things like that to a man in my condition.’ He laughed.
I tried to smile, but found I couldn’t. He put his cold hands on top of the vibrating washing-machine, then ran his hands through his fair hair.
‘Phew,’ he said. ‘You can see why they call it the sauna.’
‘This is the sauna?’ I asked, my voice trembling.
‘Yes.’
I looked around. But where were the Swedish pine walls, the Swedish pine benches, the big fluffy towels, the pores that were opening and detoxifying? There was just this little room with exposed breeze blocks, a concrete floor and a couple of red plastic laundry baskets.
‘It doesn’t look much like a sauna,’ I managed.
‘The sauna is only its nickname,’ said Chris, looking carefully at me. ‘Because it gets so hot in here when we’re doing our washing and drying. See?’
‘Is there an actual sauna?’ I asked, holding my breath.
And there was a pause that seemed to go on for ever before the answer came. ‘No.’
Everything inside me slumped. But it was dull despair I felt rather than outrage. I had known. At some level, I already knew. There was no sauna. Maybe there wasn’t even a gym. Or massage.
At that thought, I became gripped with panic.
‘Can we go back over to the dining-room?’ I asked, in a quavery, high-pitched voice. ‘Can I ask you some questions about our timetable?’
‘Sure.’
I grabbed him by the sweatshirt and broke into a run as I dragged him through the gale. This time there were no fantasies about tripping. I reached the timetable on the wall in the main house almost before Chris left the outhouse.
‘OK,’ I gasped, as my stomach churned. ‘See all these things here, group therapy and more group therapy and AA meetings and even more group therapy… well, is there anything else we do that isn’t on this list?’
I was aware that the rest of the inmates were looking up from their Neil enclave with interest.
‘Like what?’
I didn’t want to say straight out, ‘Is there a gym?’ just in case there wasn’t. So I said, more obliquely, ‘Does anyone ever do any exercise?’
‘Well, I do some press-ups now and again,’ he said. ‘But I couldn’t speak for the rest of them.
‘I wouldn’t have thought so, though,’ he added, sounding doubtful.
‘Where?’ I demanded breathlessly. ‘Where do you do your press-ups?’
‘In the bedroom, on the floor.’
I slumped down another notch, but I still had a little bit of hope. Maybe there wasn’t a gym, but perhaps they had other treatments. I sensed compassion emanating from Chris, a desire to be nice even though he was puzzled by me, so I took a risk.
‘Are there any…?’ I forced myself to say it. Go on, go on! ‘Sunbeds?’
First Chris looked as if he was going to laugh. Then his face changed to infinite pity and wisdom and he gently shook his head. ‘No, Rachel, no sunbeds.’
‘No massage?’ I managed to whisper.
‘No massage,’ Chris agreed.
I didn’t bother going into the long list that I had in my head. If there was no massage, which was fairly rudimentary, I was sure there was no seaweed treatment, no mudwraps, no funny stuff with algae.
‘No… no swimming pool?’ I forced myself to ask.
His mouth twitched slightly at that, but he just said ‘No swimming pool.’
‘So what do you do?’ I finally managed to ask.
‘It’s all on this list here,’ said Chris, bringing my attention back to the notice board.
I had another look and it was still just lots of group therapy, with the occasional AA meeting thrown in for variety. As I stared at it I noticed that the dining-room was billed as The Dining Hall. Dining Hall, my arse! More like the dining hut, I thought.
No, how about, the dining shack.
No, wait, the dining tenement.
No, better still, the dining condemned building, I thought with mounting hysteria.
I caught Chris’s eye.
I had one other question.
‘Er, Chris, you know all the people that are here in this building?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, is that all of you? There isn’t another wing in some other part of the grounds?’
He looked mystified by that. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Of course not.’
I see, I thought. No fucking pop stars, either. That does it. That really poxing-well does it.
‘Come on Rachel, you’ve group now,’ he said gently. I ignored him and walked away.
‘Where are you going?’ he called after me.
‘Home,’ I answered.
*
It was the worst day of my life.
I decided to leave immediately. I would go to Dublin, do a shitload of drugs, get the first flight back to New York and be reunited with Luke.
I wouldn’t stay in this shabby, run-down madhouse a moment longer. I wanted nothing further to do with the place or its inmates. I had just about been able to put up with them while they were part of a luxury package. But there was no luxury package.
I was embarrassed, humiliated, foolish, tainted by association and desperate to leave. Mad keen to put as much ground between me and those alcoholics and drug addicts as possible.
I recoiled from the Cloisters as if I’d been burnt, as though I’d been cooing and patting a cute baby, only to find, to my horror, that it was a rat.
I marched up to tell Dr Billings I was leaving. But when I got to the door that led into the office area, it was locked. Locked!
Fear came to life in my veins. I was imprisoned in this awful place. I’d be here for all eternity drinking tea.
I rattled at the doorhandle, the way they do in black-and-white B movies. Next I’d be jiggling the telephone connection up and down, shouting ‘Operator, operator!’
‘Can I help you, Rachel?’ asked a voice.
It was the Sour Kraut.
‘I want to see Dr Billings, but the door is LOCKED,’ I said, wild-eyed.
‘You are turning the handle the wrong vay,’ she pointed out coldly.
‘Oh, ah, right, thanks,’ I said, stumbling gratefully into Reception.
I ignored Bubbly the receptionist as she frantically tried to tell me I couldn’t see Dr Billings without an appointment.
‘Watch me,’ I sneered, as I marched in on top of him.
23
‘I’m afraid you can’t leave,’ said Dr Billings.
‘Says who?’ I asked with a curled lip.
‘Says you, actually,’ he said smoothly, waving a piece of paper at me. ‘You signed a legal and binding contract that you would stay here for three weeks.’
‘So sue me,’ I swaggered. I hadn’t lived in New York for nothing.
‘I’ll get an injunction issued against you,’ he riposted, ‘which will force you by law to stay here until your three weeks are up. And I’ll sue you for every penny you haven’t got.’
He picked up another piece of paper and waved that at me. ‘Your bank statement, you’ve let your financial affairs get into a bit of a mess, haven’t you?’
‘How did you get that?’ I gasped.
‘You authorized me to,’ he said. ‘On the same piece of paper in which you said you’d stay for three weeks. Now, have I made myself clear? I’m quite happy to get an injunction to stop you from leaving.’
‘You can’
t do that.’ I was full of impotent rage.
‘I can and I will, I would be failing in my duty if I didn’t.’
‘I’ll run away, I’ll escape,’ I said wildly. ‘There’s nothing to stop me from just walking out the gate now’
‘There’s plenty to stop you, I think you’ll find. Not least the high walls and locked gate.’
‘Look, you power-mad bast… pig,’ I pleaded, alternating between rage and despair, ‘there’s nothing wrong with me! I only came here for the saunas and the massage, I shouldn’t be here at all.’
‘That’s what they all say.’
What a liar he was! He had a nerve expecting me to believe that even one of the inmates wouldn’t admit to being an alcoholic. It was as plain as the red bulbous noses on their broken-veined faces. But something was telling me that if I didn’t calm down and speak rationally to him, I would get nowhere.
‘Please listen,’ I said, in a much less hysterical tone of voice. ‘There’s no need for us to fall out over this. But I only agreed to come here because I thought it was like a health farm.’
He nodded. Encouraged, I continued.
‘And it’s not like a health farm, at all. When I signed that contract saying I’d stay for three weeks, I signed under false pretences, do you see? I should have told you that I wasn’t a drug addict, I can see that now.’ I pleaded at him. ‘And it was wrong of me to come just for the gym and stuff, but we all make mistakes.’
There was silence and I stared hopefully at him.
He finally spoke. ‘Rachel,’ he said, ‘contrary to what you think, it is my opinion and the opinion of other people that you, in fact, are an addict.’
The Birmingham Six flashed into my head. The Trial by Kafka. My life was taking on the appearance of a nightmare. I was being convicted without due process of law for a crime that I didn’t commit.
‘What other people?’ I asked.
Dr Billings waved yet another piece of paper. ‘This was faxed from New York half an hour ago. It’s from a…’ he paused and looked at the page ‘… a Mr Luke Costello, I believe you know him?’
My first thought was delight. Luke had faxed me! He was in contact, that must mean that he still loved me, that he’d changed his mind.
‘Can I see it?’ I held out my hand, my eyes shining.
‘Not yet’
‘But it’s for me. Give me my letter.’
‘It’s not for you,’ said Dr Billings. ‘It’s for Josephine, your counsellor.’
‘What are you fucking talking about?’ I spluttered. ‘Why would Luke be writing to Josephine?’
‘It’s Mr Costello’s replies to a questionnaire we faxed to him on Friday’
‘What kind of questionnaire?’ My heart was pounding.
‘A questionnaire about you and your drug usage.’
‘My drug usage!’ I was hot and shaky. ‘What about his fucking drug usage? Did you ask him about that? Well did you?’
‘Please sit down, Rachel,’ said Billings, in a monotone.
‘He takes loads of drugs!’ I shrieked, even though he didn’t.
‘The thing is, Rachel – no, please sit down – the thing is, Rachel, is that Mr Costello isn’t the one in a treatment centre for drug addiction.’
He paused. ‘And you are.’
‘But I shouldn’t fucking BE HERE!’ I was in despair. ‘It was a FUCKING MISTAKE.’
‘It most certainly wasn’t a mistake,’ said Billings. ‘Haven’t you given any thought to the fact that you nearly died when you took that overdose?’
‘I didn’t nearly die,’ I scoffed.
‘You did.’
Did I?
‘It. Is. Not. Normal. Behaviour,’ he spelt out. ‘To find yourself in hospital having your stomach pumped because you took a life-threatening amount of drugs.’
‘It was an accident,’ I shot back at him, barely able to believe how dense he was.
‘What does it say about your life?’ he asked. ‘What does it say about your self-respect? When you find yourself in that position? Because you did it, Rachel, remember. You put those pills in your mouth, no one forced you.’
I sighed. It was pointless trying to argue with him.
‘And these replies from Mr Costello confirm what we already knew. That you have a chronic drug problem.’
‘Oh please.’ I tossed my head. ‘Lighten up, for God’s sake.’
‘According to this you often took cocaine before you went to work in the morning, is that right?’
I felt myself shrink, and mad anger rushed through me at Luke. The fucking bastard! How could he betray me like this? How could he hurt me so? He used to love me, why had it all gone so wrong? My nose began to quiver with the onset of tears.
‘I’m not going to answer that question,’ I managed. ‘You know nothing about my life, about how hard my job was.’
‘Rachel,’ he said gently. ‘No one has to take drugs, no one’s job is that bad.’
I should have been thumping the table and standing up for myself, but I wasn’t able. I was too devastated by Luke’s betrayal. Later the anger would return, and I would vow over and over again to get him back. I’d put his limited edition Led Zeppelin Houses of the Holy into the microwave where it would warp into Daliesque uselessness, I promised. I’d tear up the napkin that Dave Gilmour from Pink Floyd once signed for him. I’d throw his biker boots into the Hudson. While he was still wearing them.
But for the time being, I was a limp rag.
In a good cop/bad cop move, Billings sent for Celine, the nurse. And she took me into the nurses’ room and made me a cup of sweet tea, which I didn’t dash back into her face and which, to my surprise, I drank and felt comforted by.
24
‘You see, Luke isn’t a very nice person,’ I was saying. ‘He was always shallow and disloyal. Quite evil, actually.’
It was later in the day of the joint Questionnaire/No Gym disaster, and I was in the dining-room surrounded by inmates who hung on my every word. I was bitterly glad to have a platform to trash Luke on. And trash him I did.
I didn’t so much imply that Luke was a thief, as just plain say it. What did it matter? None of these people would ever meet him anyway. Of course, Luke hadn’t really stolen the money from his six-year-old niece’s money box. The money she’d been saving up to buy a puppy. In fact, Luke didn’t even have any nieces. Or nephews. But who cared?
I went too far, though, when I said he’d stolen a blind man’s fiddle. The lads looked at me suspiciously and gave each other sidelong glances. ‘He stole a blind man’s fiddle?’ Mike asked. ‘Are you sure? Didn’t that Irish saint fella do that? What was that his name was…?’
‘Matt Talbot,’ someone supplied.
‘That’s right,’ said Mike. ‘Matt Talbot. He stole a blind man’s fiddle to get money for drink when he was still on the piss.’
‘Er, that’s right,’ I backtracked hastily. ‘I meant to say Luke stole from The Blind Man’s Fiddle, a bar on West 60th Street where he worked.’
‘Aaaahhh,’ they breathed. ‘From The Blind Man’s Fiddle.’
A close run thing. They turned to each other and nodded reassuringly, ‘From the Blind Man’s Fiddle. From.’
I had spent the afternoon with Celine, in the cosy nurses’ room. Despite the cosiness of the room, the benign, motherly presence of Celine and the staggering array of chocolate biscuits, I was almost hysterical with agitation. Suffering the agonies of the damned as I wondered what else Luke had put on the questionnaire. He knew far too much about me.
‘Have you seen it?’ I asked Celine, as my heart banged in my chest.
‘No.’ She smiled.
I didn’t know whether or not to believe her.
‘If you have seen it, please, please tell me what he’s written,’ I implored. ‘It’s important, this is my life we’re talking about.’
‘I haven’t seen it,’ she said mildly.
She doesn’t understand, I thought in mute frustration. She
has no idea how important this is.
‘What do people normally put in them?’ I asked tremulously. ‘Is it usually terrible stuff?’
‘Sometimes,’ she said. ‘If the client has done terrible things.’
Despair and nausea filled me.
‘Cheer up,’ she said. ‘It can’t be that bad, have you murdered anyone?’
‘No,’ I snorted.
‘Well then.’ She smiled.
‘When will I be allowed to see it?’ I asked.
‘That’s a decision for Josephine. If she thinks it’s pertinent to your recovery she may read it out in group and…’
‘Read it out in GROUP?’ I shrieked. ‘In front of the others?’
‘It wouldn’t be much of a group if it was only you, now, would it?’ Celine said with another of her warm, yet completely impartial, smiles.
Panic bubbled up and fizzed over.
No bloody way would I be sticking around to be subjected to such treatment!
But I remembered that Dr Billings had said the gates were locked. It was true. The day I’d arrived Dad had had to introduce himself over an intercom before they opened them. And the walls were high. Far too high for a clumsy lump like me to climb.
How, in the name of Jesus, did I end up in this situation? I wondered. This must be just how Brian Keenan and John McCarthy felt when they found themselves chained to a radiator in a concrete basement in an unfashionable part of Beirut.
‘It’s not that bad,’ Celine said, as if she really believed it. She gave a comforting smile that did nothing to comfort me.
‘What do you mean?’ I almost shouted. ‘This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me!’
‘Aren’t you lucky then that you’ve had such a worry-free life?’ Celine said.
I couldn’t get it through to her how truly catastrophic this was.
My skin goosepimpled every time I thought of the questionnaire being read aloud to the other people in group. I would have given anything to know what Luke had written.
Or would I?
Did I really want to hear Luke condemning me?
I couldn’t win. It was agonizing not knowing, but it would be excruciating if I did. I knew I’d read it with my face almost turned away, wincing with each cruel word.
