Relatively Strange

by Marilyn Messik

  Individual groups, each headed by a white-coated member of staff were being led at a swift pace from the entrance hall towards the back of the building, and mine was taken up a flight of stairs to a corridor of numbered rooms, amongst which we were distributed. The room I entered with about six other children was itself sub-divided by blue curtained screens to form a couple of semi-private cubicles. On the opposite wall was a row of chairs on which it was indicated we should sit although, even as we settled ourselves, a couple of names were called and those summoned were shepherded to each of the cubicles from whence soon came a rising and falling hum of questions and answers.

  I didn’t have long to wait before my name came up, a relief, because I was next to a boy whose personal habits left something to be desired in the flatulence department. Seated inside one of the curtained cubicles was a plump, cheerfully brisk, white-coated, frizzily blond lady,

  “Call me Mo, dear,” pen poised over clipboard. She ran through a list of illnesses I might or might not have had, questioned me about vaccinations, weighed me on T bar scales and took my blood pressure. An unpleasant thought suddenly occurred as she enthusiastically pumped the little black bulb.

  “We don’t have to have a blood test do we?”

  “No dear,” said Mo, moving her fingers to my wrist and timing my pulse, “Probably not.”

  That rattled me, needles and I didn’t mix. Never did, never will – I’m not even any good at sewing. The reason for this was of course pretty straightforward with a mother who hit the ground running at the mere mention of an injection. She’d always put on a brave face when it came to my childhood jabs, but as I could hear her frantically reciting the twelve times table in her head, I remained uncomforted. It was an ordeal for both of us, not to mention for the unfortunate clinic nurse who simply couldn’t understand why every time she came near me, all feeling in her right hand disappeared. She dropped four hypos and her Florence Nightingale manner before my mother insisted on taking me outside for a little talk.

  And so, nerve-wracked as I was by the possibility of a blood test it was with attention at half-mast that I started answering Call Me Mo’s questions and it was only a change in her tone that pulled me back to the matter in hand. She was looking even more cheerful than when we’d started, like someone who’s lost sixpence and found half-a-crown,

  “Jolly good,” she said. “Well done you. How about another few sections?” We’d been doing what she called a word association test. She, giving me a category and me supplying the first word that came into my head. Mo was now looking down at her clipboard and then expectantly up at me,

  “Flower,” she repeated, pen quivering. She was looking at a small sketched rose next to the word and it dawned, belatedly that it might not be the brightest move in the world for me to get these all correct, which is what I’d obviously, absent-mindedly been doing. This actually might not come under the low profile my parents had advocated.

  “Daisy.”

  “Nursery rhyme.” She was looking at a black sheep.

  “Jack and Jill.”

  “Item of clothing.”

  “Trousers.” I said, rising above the socks.

  She had my full attention now as I was uncomfortably aware I had hers. We ran through some twenty or so more items and I made sure that not one of them did I get right. There was silence for a moment or two while she looked back over the form, before downing her pen and giving me a puzzled look. Could I, she asked, sit tight for a tick or two, she’d be right back. Within a few moments she popped her head back round the blue curtain, beckoning me to follow. We exchanged our cubicle and classroom for another, further down the corridor where with a little nod of her head she handed me and my forms over to another white-coated, altogether more intimidating individual called Iris.

  Iris, beetle-browed and unsmiling had obviously been issued with instructions to be friendly and not frighten the children but was having a struggle. More questions, this time on circles, squares and triangles – if this was an example of the fun time promised by Dr. Dreck, we’d been short-changed I reflected. I think Iris was getting paid by the question because she moved at a pretty nifty pace. I found the easiest way to answer was to opt each time for the symbol to the left of the one she was looking at on the page and once I’d established this rather cunning m.o. we bounded through the questions like things possessed, stopping breathlessly at the end of some thirty or so.

  Iris looked up at me and I belatedly realised maybe I hadn’t been quite so clever after all. In that same instant someone spoke inside my head,

  “Idiot!” they said and it suddenly felt as if my head had been swaddled in a thick, black, blanket. I suppose I’d never realised quite how much my extra senses supplied until suddenly they weren’t supplying any more. Sound instantly became flatter with no resonance of thought beyond, sight was only surface, where normally there was depth. I searched Iris’s frowning, increasingly confused face, her expression probably mirroring mine, and could sense – nothing. She was talking, but in the grip of a rising tide of panic, she might as well have been speaking in tongues. My hands and feet were freezing, my heart was thumping and something strange had happened to my breathing, I hoped I wasn’t going to have another of Nigel’s asmatacks. I broke out in chilly sweat. I didn’t think it could get any worse. I was wrong. The voice in my head was back.

  “Idiot,” it repeated irritably, “Calm down.” Calm down, calm down? I was as far from calm as it was possible to be. My surroundings were acquiring a deeply unpleasant black outline and I could feel blood draining from my head in a sickly rush. Iris jumped up from her chair, grabbed the back of my neck in a firm hand and forced my head down on to my lap. This wasn’t, I felt, an improvement. I struggled weakly and from a million miles away Iris asked someone to fetch a glass of water quickly.

  “Bit over-dramatic?” inquired the voice in my head conversationally. I jerked convulsively, Iris jumped correspondingly and the glass of water someone had handed her soaked both of us.

  “Oh get a grip.” The snapped, inside-my-head command, started to bring me back to what few senses I had left and clambering down from panic stricken heights to just plain shocked, I realised I, of all people, surely should be open to the unusual. It was just that I’d always listened when I chose, been the one in control, now here was someone invading my space. Iris, a towel in hand, reappeared and started mopping up, I could see she wasn’t having a good morning either.

  “Sorry.” I muttered.

  “Not to worry.” She said, obviously not meaning it. “What on earth made you jump like that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” I nodded, I was determined not to so much as twitch at any further internal comment, after all it was hearing voices that landed Joan of Arc in the soup. It was so strange though, not to be feeling anything extra, and I suddenly realized that this must be what everyone else felt all the time. This was Normal. How disconcerting. How extraordinarily quiet. Iris nudged me,

  “I said, how do you feel now?”

  “Sorry, yes, better thank you. It must have been the coach journey – I get travel sick, but better now, honest.”

  “Best get you checked out anyway, be on the safe side.” Checked out? Things definitely didn’t seem to be staying low-profile, I quaked at what my parents would say. We left the relative security of the blue curtain and I followed Iris’s broad beamed stride and damply discoloured Hush Puppies as she led the way downstairs again. Trotting a little to keep up with her, I felt clumsy and uncoordinated, bumping into the wall a couple of times and finding it oddly difficult to keep my balance.

  Iris took me to an open, airy, glass-roofed extension at the back of the building where she opened the door on a brightly painted waiting room already containing several anxious looking parents with children in assorted sizes who were being kept amused with coloured building bricks and picture books. At our entrance, everyone looked up expectantly and a cheerful receptionist, working throug
h a pile of forms and seemingly oblivious of the surrounding noise, nodded at Iris and smiled at me,

  “Hello there. For the Doctor? Won’t keep you a tick. Have a seat.”

  Iris continued to pat her damp skirt and shoes while we waited. I could see I’d made a firm friend there. A dough-faced baby stared at me from the safety of its mother’s lap, I smiled, but it looked away expressionlessly. A door at the end of the room opened on a thin, red-eyed woman, carrying a child, seemingly far too big and heavy for the support her arms could provide. Dr. Drek, instantly recognisable from the earlier film, came out with her, patted her encouragingly on the shoulder and stroked the child’s head briefly. In his spotless white coat, he cut a thinly elongated figure with disproportionately large hands and head. I instinctively liked him even less in person than on screen. To the couple who’d started to gather bags and child at his appearance, he smiled and gave a small apologetic bow,

  “Yes indeed, you are next but may I possibly keep you just one moment longer?” Then to Iris, “Thank you. I’ll see she gets back to the others.” And to me, “This way, young lady.”

  There was a mahogany desk in the middle of his consulting room and on the walls an uneasy combination of nursery rhyme illustration interspersed with diagrammatic illustrations of the brain. In one corner of the room a high, brown leather examination couch was next to a movable screen on wheels which partially concealed a couple of instrument trolleys and a small sink. Closing the door behind him, Dr Dreck leaned back against it and looked at me for just a moment longer than was comfortable.

  “So.” he said, “Stella?”

  “’Sright.”

  “Iris tells me, there was a dizzy spell?” clipped accent and rising intonation at the end of each sentence made question out of statement. He indicated the couch, “Please.”

  Perched high on the slippery leather surface, legs dangling. I felt totally at a loss. I was unable to read the situation in any way other than with inadequate eyes and ears but even so, I could sense there was more going on here than there should have been and my stomach clenched with unease. The door re-opened and a woman smoothed into the room. She was tall, nearly as tall as him and he must have been well over six foot. Thin also and tight-featured with high-bunned ash-blond hair and a white blouse, starched to stiffness and buttoned tight under her chin. He introduced her without looking round,

  “My assistant, Miss Merry.” She gave no response to my polite smile which didn’t really surprise me – hers wasn’t a mouth made for warmth.

  With Miss Merry gliding between couch and instrument table – I never worked out how she moved like that, she certainly had feet like everyone else, they just seemed to operate differently – Dr Dreck took my blood pressure again, my pulse, checked my eyes and ears then had a go at my knees and elbows with a small hammer. From my vantage point high on the couch, I had an unattractive view as he bent, of thinning black hair overlaying pink scalp and caught the faintest whiff of strong aftershave. He kept darting glances at me, searching my face for some kind of reaction other than the one he was getting and our gazes kept clashing in mutual bafflement. Finally, he straightened, tapping the small hammer sharply in the palm of his hand.

  “Well, no obvious problems to account for the dizziness. How do you feel now?”

  “Very well, thank you.” I said politely. “It was probably just the coach journey.” He nodded, not really listening and moved over to his desk with Miss Merry. I couldn’t quite see what they were looking at but I thought they were the forms Iris had been completing earlier. I could have kicked myself. Something in my stupidly glib responses to the tests had set alarm bells ringing, although that in no way accounted for the black-out still going on in my head. They talked for a while longer in undertones, of which I only caught the occasional word before he turned back to me.

  “Do you think,” he asked “You could tackle just a few more of our tests?” I nodded, I didn’t think I had much choice and it would be a relief to leave his unsettling presence. “Right you are,” he lifted me down, “Off you go now.” I obediently followed the smooth-moving, inscrutable Miss Merry.

  Chapter Twelve

  Miss Merry wasted no time on small talk, a relief as I needed all my breath to keep up with her. It felt, one way and another that in the course of that morning I’d done a great deal of walking from one place to another. I followed her down a flight of narrow stairs which led steeply from the older part of the building. There were no windows down here and we moved down a short artificially lit corridor, at the end of which she hauled open a heavy door which swished silently closed behind us. Through a second similar door and then we were in an enormous space, one side of which was taken up with about six small glass isolation booths, the sort Hughie Green put people in to Double Their Money. On the other side of the room one whole wall had been glassed over, floor to ceiling to create a separate area in which I could see three, seated, head-phoned people talking into microphones in front of them.

  Several of the booths were occupied by children, also with head-phones, facing the back wall of their booth. There must have been a lot of soundproofing because other than a low level sibilant hiss which I took to be some sort of air conditioning, you could have heard a pin – or in my case, a heart – drop. The worm of unease in my stomach, coiled and uncoiled. I really didn’t like this set up which seemed infinitely more scientific than the cosily curtained cubicles in which I’d started my day. These elimination tests were proving more uncomfortable by the minute.

  Miss Merry ushered me towards a vacant booth and told me what they wanted me to do. In the oddly artificial atmosphere her voice took on a metallic quality. The door to the booth was thick and heavy, like a phone box. Sliding onto the plastic coated bench, in front of me was a shelf holding head-phones and inbuilt was a console with three rounded buttons – red, green and black. Apparently I simply had to press whichever colour I chose, every time I heard a bleeped signal. Facing the grey featureless back panel, nose stinging from the disinfectant saturated cloth with which she’d wiped the headphones before handing them to me, I could see and hear nothing until low static told me the headphones were now live. Obediently then, in response to irregular beeps I began to press the coloured buttons. My choices were truly completely random and because I was still totally extra-senseless, I had no glimpse or grasp of what was going on. What I did know was it was hot and airlessly uncomfortable in the booth and the irregularity of the beeps was surprisingly unsettling.

  Nerves were cramping my stomach, I could feel my palms becoming sweaty and the headphones pressed uncomfortably tight on either side of my head so blood thumped loudly in my ears, counter-pointing the beeps. Panic was heading back in. What if I lost control? What would happen if I suddenly found myself floating off my seat in the booth? True there wasn’t room to swing a cat, but a demented Strange person like myself could just keep going up and down, up and down …

  “Enough! Calm down. Don’t talk. Concentrate on what you’re supposed to be doing and get a grip.”

  “But … ”

  “I said don’t talk, you can be seen. Top right hand corner, a camera, don’t look.” I ripped my gaze away. “When they get you out, ask for the toilet.” And the voice was gone again, leaving just beeps and disinfectant. I don’t know how long I was pressing buttons. It felt like hours. I was cramped and sweaty when Miss Merry finally opened the door and let in some blessedly fresher air and it wasn’t only because I was following instructions that I asked for the toilet. Miss Merry, receiving my request with the disdain of a being not troubled by such considerations gave directions. As I hauled open the first of the heavy doors, I glanced back. She was conferring with others in the glassed in section.

  *

  I was thankful, once in the toilet that the visiting voice had the social sensitivity to lay low until I felt able to chat.

  “Right,” it announced, while I was washing my hands, making me jump in spite of myself.

 
; “Time’s short. You need to know what’s going on. You make your own choices then. Clear?” As mud. I hoped she – I was pretty sure she was a she – was going to elaborate.

  “Close your eyes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I say so – need to concentrate, otherwise I see what you’re seeing.” I obligingly closed my eyes, wet hands still suspended over the sink. I probably looked as if I’d opted for a nap, mid-wash, still that was as good a story as any, certainly more believable than what was really going on.

  “O.K. This whole set-up is government funded. Stated aim to select and chart progress of high achieving children over a period of years. Assessing and evaluating external influences – cultural, political, financial etc.

  “I know all that.” I interjected out loud.

  “Shut up.”

  “Right.”

  “What they’re really looking for is psi factor.”

  “Psi factor?”

  “Like you and me.” I knew it! I knew there were more. I was facing the mirror and could see my face flush with excitement.