The Treatment and the Cure

by Peter Kocan

  You’re afraid alright. Not of the powdery stuff itself, but of its name. Whenever you’ve heard the name it’s been connected with somebody dying, or getting twenty years. If the screws caught you now …

  The door opens and the Charge enters with the screw behind him. Geoffrey Hawsley has made the jar vanish and is smiling up at them.

  “Ready to go?” asks the Charge.

  “I can’t tear myself away,” Geoffrey Hawsley replies. “The decor is enchanting. Who’s your decorator?”

  “Visiting time’s up.”

  “I’d considered this less a visit than a pilgrimage.”

  “You’d better go.”

  “But my dear chap, why?”

  “I think you know what’s in my mind.”

  “Anthropology isn’t my subject.”

  “I have a duty to protect Len.”

  “Lucky Len!”

  “Out!” snaps the Charge.

  “Yeah, git!” the screw adds.

  Yes, please go, you’re thinking. And go carefully so as not to stumble and drop the jar. Geoffrey Hawsley rises and takes your hand.

  “I fear I’m detaining these gentlemen. No doubt they wish to be off stoning a bear for their supper. Goodbye, my dear.”

  “Goodbye,” you say, withdrawing your hand. “And I’d rather you didn’t come again.” You are saying that because you mean it. You don’t want Geoffrey Hawsley or his jar anywhere near you. You are also saying it so the screws will know you’ve pissed him off.

  “Et tu, Brute?” he says. “A pity. I might have made something of you. On second thoughts, probably not. Such unpromising material …”

  Geoffrey Hawsley goes out and the Charge goes behind to unlock for him. You hear keys jangle and then Geoffrey Hawsley thanking the Charge for his graciousness or something like that, then he’s gone. It’s uncomfortable for a few days, but the screws don’t appear to blame you. They seem to think they’ve saved you from something. Moral ruin, you suppose.

  You’ve got your own cell. You are supposed to call it a room. It’s a nice cell, one of those along the side of the verandah, and you are between Fred Henderson and old Throgmorton. Throgmorton stays in most of the time, except when he dresses up in the blanket and tall hat with the toilet paper and goes to argue with Dunn across the yard. You hear Throgmorton at night, groaning that he’s The Owner and The Maker and threatening to sack the staff. He’s old and sick now, but in his prime he often sacked the Medical Superintendent, and once he sacked the Minister of Health who came on an inspection. You usually know when Fred Henderson’s in his cell on the other side because Bimbo squats outside the door pointing to blokes in the yard and asking if they’ll root him. “Fuckin’ oath he will!” Fred yells back every so often to encourage Bimbo.

  When you close the door the cell is fairly quiet and wonderfully private. There is a peephole and people can look in, but that’s privacy compared to what you had. The bed is against the window and the window has heavy bars. You prefer barred windows. Outside is a stretch of dry dirt and scraggly grass and then the wall of Ward 7. Between the top of your window and the top of Ward 7’s wall is a patch of sky. This dirt and grass and patch of sky belong to you. Not the things themselves but the angle of view. The blokes in other cells can see the same clump of weed or the same chimneypot on Ward 7’s roof but from a slightly different angle. Your own precise angle is yours.

  It’s nice in the evening, sitting on the verandah outside your own door, watching the sky change. The setting sun lights the tiles of the roof opposite so that they glint like copper. A cool breeze comes up most evenings. The very best times are when hundreds of wild ducks fly over at sunset and you hear the whoosh of all the wings and the cries the ducks make.

  They gave you this cell because you were next in line for one after Halliday was taken away with his bad head wound. It happened in the TV room one night. We were packed in there in the smoky haze and in the heat from the big old wood-burner they use in winter. Only a few blokes ever really watch TV. Most stay in the back of the room near the heater and the snooker table and the cards. You were in a chair near the TV, but you weren’t watching the programme. You were studying Lloyd. Lloyd loves TV and has his own chair right in front. Everyone knows the chair is Lloyd’s and they let him have it. A lot of places in the ward are like that. There’s a vague sense that certain blokes sit or walk or lie in certain spots and so other blokes tend to go along with it. It isn’t just politeness. The bottom left-hand corner of the yard, for instance, is where Hogben often traps his invisible bloke. If you were there when Hogben charges in with a flurry of punches he’d knock you black and blue without even noticing.

  Lloyd enjoys ads. If a little cartoon man hops out of a washing machine to tell the amazed housewife about Wizzo detergent you’ll see Lloyd squirm and giggle and twist his raw hands with glee. He likes jingles too, and any programme with beautiful girls. That night there was a nice ad that showed bikini girls on a beach drinking Coke. They were wet from the surf and the sun was making the drops glitter in a cascade whenever the girls tossed their hair back. They were very beautiful girls and Lloyd was staring and winding his hands and letting his big tongue loll the way he does when he’s entranced.

  “Whassat shit?” snorted an old dill from the back. The old dill normally sleeps curled in a chair halfway back in the room, except when he stirs to gob on the floor. Nobody takes any notice.

  “Whassat fuckin’ shit?” snorts the old dill again.

  “Shuddup, ya stupid old mongrel!” says someone.

  “Turn that fuckin’ shit off!” the old dill croaks. He’s out of his chair and stumbling forward.

  “Drop dead, ya mad bastard!”

  “I’ll frigginwell break it!” the old dill yells.

  “You couldn’t break wind!”

  “Can’t I just?” mumbles the old dill. He staggers back to the wood box near the heater and picks up a lump of wood, then stumbles forward again, being kicked along the way, and waves the wood at the TV screen.

  “I’ll smash it!” he yells.

  “Go on then!” It’s Harris.

  “Yeah, smash it!” urges someone else.

  “Let’s see yer do it!” cries Harris.

  The old dill makes a violent motion to hurl the wood but brings it down hard on the back of a chair. It wouldn’t have mattered except that Halliday’s head was there. The screws come and look at Halliday who is unconscious and bleeding from the ears. One screw phones Electric Ned while the other drags the old dill to the isolation cell. Halliday is taken away on a stretcher and the screw details someone to mop up the blood.

  They let the old dill out next day. The screws threaten him that when Halliday returns, if he returns, they’ll look the other way for ten minutes. The old dill doesn’t know what they’re talking about. His mind’s a blank.

  But you’ve got a nice cell.

  A movie is shown in the hall each Monday night and patients go or are taken from all over the hospital. REFRACT men who have parole can go by themselves and others who’re interested are escorted by a screw. After three months you still haven’t been. You love films and feel sick with envy seeing the group form up at the door each Monday after tea. You haven’t asked to go. You’d assumed the Charge would tell you when he thought you were ready for the privilege. The same with parole. Other men, less well behaved than you, have it. It isn’t fair. Being allowed to walk to and from OT unsupervised is a kind of parole perhaps, and you still feel amazed sometimes to be walking along by yourself without fences or wire or screws around you. But parole to walk in a straight line between two buildings isn’t much, really. You worry when you find yourself thinking like this. Give Tarbutt an inch and he wants a mile!

  It is Monday evening and the film group is gathering at the door where a screw is noting the names on a pad.

  You go to the Charge.

  “Excuse me. I was wondering if, um, er, I could …”

  The Charge looks up from his newspa
per. Already you regret this.

  “… go to the movie.”

  “Alright,” he says and looks down again.

  The screw adds your name to the list as if it’s nothing at all. The screw unlocks and steps outside, then calls each man out and ticks his name. The names will be ticked again when we come back. There are eight of us. We walk along with the screw. The moon is enormous and there is a lovely soft breeze. This is the first time in years you’ve been out under a night sky. Our feet crunch on gravel past other wards and past dark clumps of trees. You keep your eyes wide open and take deep breaths, wanting to absorb it all. We are passing a ward—Ward 10 the sign says— and a young nurse comes out and calls to our screw. We stop while he goes to talk to her. They talk in low tones for a long time, but you don’t care. You sit on a grassy bank all cool and bright under the big moon. The breeze is salty from the lake. Harris grumbles that we’ll miss the movie.

  “Listen, you Ackers,” calls our screw. “I’ve got sumpthin’ ter do. You go on by yerselves. I’ll meet yous at the hall later.”

  We walk on.

  “Dirty bugger!” says Harris. “I’ll bet he’s got sumpthin’ ter do. I wouldn’t mind doin’ her meself.”

  “Hey!” the screw calls.

  We stop.

  “Any Acker pisses orf I’ll have his guts fer garters!”

  We go over a rise and there is the lake, a cool blaze of silver stretching away to a dark shore where dots of light wink. Car lights. A point juts from one side like a great black shadow on the ruffled silver.

  The breeze is strong and salty.

  “Whad’ya reckon about pissin’ orf?” Harris asks the rest of us.

  “Dunno,” says another. “Whad’ya reckon?”

  “Yeah, whad’ya reckon?” adds a third.

  These are dills and what they do is no concern of yours, but you’d enjoy the joke of being the only one left to be ticked back into the ward.

  “Nah, I’m not pissin’ orf,” says somebody.

  “Me neither,” adds another.

  The consensus is for staying but Harris says he’s had an arseful and walks into the darkness. We go on and are nearly at the hall. It is lit up and there are patients going inside and some screws round the entrance. Harris catches up with us.

  “Aren’t ya pissin’ orf?”

  “Nah,” he says. “They reckon the movie ain’t too bad.”

  A senior screw looks us over.

  “Where yous from?”

  “REFRACT,” you tell him.

  “Where’s yer friggin’ escort then?”

  “Just back there,” you say, pointing over your shoulder as though our screw is behind us.

  The senior screw waves us inside. The hall is large and shabby, with rows of hard seats. There are more patients than you’ve seen in one place before. They are all kinds: little retards and old women, purple-faced epileptics, ones in wheelchairs parked in the aisles, ordinary dills in bunches, ones holding hands with their boyfriends and girlfriends. And there are six or seven who look almost normal. They sit slightly apart from the rest. They’re young. Probably drug addicts or something. Admission ward types. Among them is a girl about sixteen with long plaits and a string of beads around her neck. You notice her because she has a quick nervous way of fiddling with the beads. Also because she’s pretty. Hardly anyone in this hall is pretty.

  The movie is a good one and you enjoy it, except that the screen is old and patched and the patches don’t quite match. The projector keeps breaking down too and during the breaks the lights come on and the patients get even noisier than when the film is running.

  Afterwards we find our screw outside. A retard girl is on the ground outside the door and won’t get up. She is howling swearwords like a child who doesn’t know what they mean but just knows they’re nasty. She doesn’t care that her nose is snotty and her dress hiked around her waist. When a nurse lifts her she kicks and howls and then chokes on the snot and coughs and throws herself down again. The crowd from the hall is trampling her arms and legs but she stays on the ground, screaming swearwords.

  “It’s hard ter credit, ain’t it?” says our screw.

  “What is?” you ask.

  “That’s what Dennis Lane did his knackers over.”

  5

  Con Pappas has arrived from MAX. You didn’t have much to do with him there. He was one of the hangdog ones in the background who never joined in jokes or sport. Besides, he was Greek and about forty-five. You wouldn’t have tipped Con Pappas to get this transfer, but then a lot of people wouldn’t have tipped you either. It’s a lottery. Now he’s here, though, you are glad to see him. Not having much in common doesn’t matter. He was in MAX with you.

  Con Pappas walks down the yard after his pep-talk from the Charge. He feels the way you did—lost and strange and nervous of the fence.

  “Good on ya, mate!” you say. You shake hands.

  “Good you too!” he says in his Greek accent.

  “How are all the boys?” you ask. You really want to know. Also you need to show—show yourself mainly— that you are still with them in spirit.

  “Ah, they are fifty-fifty,” says Con Pappas with a hand gesture.

  “How’s Bill Greene?”

  “Okay.”

  Okay is a sort of dead end. It means nothing’s changed. You wonder what you expected.

  “How’s Ray Hoad?”

  “He has trouble.”

  “What trouble?”

  “Screws put lotta shit on him.”

  “How’s he taking it?”

  “He offer fight screw alone in cell. They will not. He offer fight two screws. They will not. He offer three. They will not.”

  No, you bet they won’t. They know what’s in Ray Hoad’s mind. Some screws spout about not hiding behind the uniform and that they’ll gladly box-on with any patient who fancies himself, but it’s always rigged. It would only be a fair fight while the screw was winning. If he looked like losing it’d immediately become an assault by a psychopath. The psychopath would get shock and the screws would demand extra danger money. Ray Hoad knows how rigged it would be but he wouldn’t care as long as he got a few good punches in. Still, it probably isn’t very smart of Ray Hoad to offer to fight screws, specially since Lubecki killed the Charge with that pitchfork.

  You half-think to ask Con Pappas about Lubecki, but there isn’t much point. Lubecki’s finished. He’ll die in MAX.

  “Much trouble when Alan Bowers necked himself?” you ask. You heard about Alan Bowers a few weeks ago. Blokes sometimes hang themselves in MAX. It averages maybe one a year. There are forty or so men there normally so you could say the necking odds are forty to one. The transfer’s a lottery and so is necking.

  “No, not much trouble,” says Con Pappas.

  You wouldn’t have expected much trouble. The necking is sort of rigged too. If you kill yourself it doesn’t reflect on the staff too badly. It’s just something you did to yourself. If you get on well, though, it’s due to the staff’s expert care. None of the credit is yours.

  That subject is a dead end.

  “How’s Dennis Lane?” you ask.

  Con Pappas looks uncomfortable. He saw Dennis Lane arrive back in MAX, so he knows transfers can be reversed.

  “Very bad,” says Con Pappas in a low voice. “Big medication. No can talk. No can walk. He is kaput!” Con Pappas stares at you. He wants to know what great danger is here.

  “Why he sent back?”

  “He was stupid.”

  “What kinda stupid?”

  “Stupid with girl.”

  “Ah,” whispers Con Pappas.

  Fred Henderson comes down the yard with Bimbo. Fred wants to hear about the boys too. He has a good old wheeze over Dennis Lane being kaput. Bimbo’s “Willee root me?” is irritating and when he starts showing Con Pappas the war dance you wander to your cell and sit thinking how all your questions about MAX led to dead ends.

  Con Pappas is sent to OT and put
in the vinyl bag section as your offsider. He cuts out the panels for you, and attaches the fittings. You concentrate on sewing. Mr Trowbridge wants as many bags as possible for the annual fete. Already you have five months’ worth stacked in a pile.

  After breakfast on the Sunday of the fete you stand at the bottom fence and watch the first cars nosing into the grounds. Banners have been strung and on the trees are signs with arrows pointing to where different attractions are to be, like speedboat races on the lake, or the hoop-las and merry-go-rounds, or the cake and drink stalls in the main hall. You can’t see any of those, just the pointing arrows. The Charge says men without parole will be taken round after lunch to see the sights.

  OT has a banner across the front: BASKETS + BAGS + WOODWORK FOR SALE. It’s a good businesslike banner. But they’ve put another sign by the door, inviting the Public to Inspect this Facility and learn about Rehabilitation and Remotivation and other things with long names. You don’t bother reading it properly. It’s just for the Public.

  By ten o’clock the crowds are beginning all along the dirt road and in and out of OT and back towards the main hall and the lake. You can hear speedboats. You watch to see if anyone is buying your bags and you begin to see more and more people emerging from OT with them. You get the impression that the vinyl bag section is pulling its weight today.

  When the crowds get thicker you leave the fence and stay on the verandah near your cell. You can see the people from here without them seeing you. You don’t mind them having the speedboats and hoop-las and cake stalls, but you don’t intend to help them have the other thing they’ve come for—the freak show.

  The people are mostly families with kids, or young couples holding hands. They are enjoying themselves. They stare into the yards from the dirt road. The wheelchair cases in Ward 7 are parked in a row across the grass, most with their heads sunk on their chests and the strings of bright spit hanging. They are supposed to be sharing the fun. The old women on the other side are wandering their yard sad and lost, like always. They have fresh dresses on. Not nice dresses, just washed ones. You wish they’d all be taken inside. They don’t care about the freak show, or even know about it, but you wish they’d be taken inside.