by John Lynch
‘Hello?’
I can hear the television in the background and our son asks who it is on the phone.
‘Hello?’
‘Who is it, Mammy?’
‘Hello?’
‘Mammy?’
‘Gabriel…Gabriel…Is that you?’
I don’t say anything but stand there and listen to the fear in her voice, and then I imagine myself beside her watching our child getting ready for bed. I can feel the warmth of our living room, and see the news on the television. I fool myself that it is possible, that I could live that way, happy and mute, never questioning, never raising my voice. I would be content with the boredom that so many people accept. Maybe we would settle down together after John had gone to bed and watch a film, and tell ourselves that storms were things that destroyed other people’s lives, not ours. But as I lean there against the phone booth’s glass I know that it is nothing more than a myth, that I had my chance and that now I stand where I deserve to, outside of all things.
Dead Man’s Hand
I remember a train journey. It was one I had made many times before but this time it was different. I looked at the fields as they loomed into view and then fell away again and I smiled. I was leaving.
Some of the people around me moved places whenever I caught their eyes. I didn’t care. The conductor thought about saying something to me, I could see it in his eyes, so I presented the ticket to him with a fuck-you flourish. I think I tried to order a drink from the trolley that passed a half an hour or so into the journey but the young girl ignored me until I stood up and shouted after her. I can’t recall what I said but it was enough to bring the ticket collector scurrying back to tell me in no uncertain terms that if I didn’t behave I would be asked to leave at the next station. After that I just sat there and muttered to myself. Yes, I was leaving. I was throwing what was left of my life to the wind.
I believe that I see my mother sitting across from me as the train pulls into Drogheda station. I just stare at her for a moment asking my eyes to tell me the truth. I watch as she gets up from her seat and reaches to get her bag from the luggage shelf above her head and I realise that she is getting off. I speak to her; I tell her that I love her. She looks at me and I can see that she doesn’t recognise me. I repeat what I said but my tongue must be playing tricks on me because she just looks at me as if I have insulted her. I decide to leave with her and try and reason with her away from the prying eyes of the people around me.
The air when I step down from the train is cold and for a second it snaps my mind into focus, that’s when I lose sight of her. I search the platform and just when I am about to give up hope I spot her as she passes beneath the Exit sign. I hurry after her, breaking into a small trot. I collide with someone and think about apologising but if I do I will lose time so I don’t bother. I feel as if I am running across a vast desert and my feet slip and sink into the hot white sands. I call her name, but there is no reply and above the vultures circle as they have done so many times in my life. In the end I give up and stand there in the main street. I feel for the bottle in my pocket. I know I am alone and that I am in the place where all things come to die.
Like an Egg
‘Hi, Gabriel. I’m Doctor John Garland. And this…this is my colleague Doctor Sarah Burke. Please take a seat.’
The office is spartan and bare except for one filing cabinet and a desk, a phone and a few chairs. The window blinds are drawn and the desk lamp is switched on, throwing shadows on the wall behind the two doctors.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Like shit.’
‘That’s to be expected. The mind is a fragile place.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I have your file here from Doctor Rush. I trust she took care of you?’
‘No complaints.’
The woman smiles at me. She is around forty and her hair is swept back into a pony tail, her eyes are brown-black. Garland is maybe four or five years younger and balding which he has fought by shaving his head.
‘Yes indeed, the mind is as fragile as an egg. It can’t take the damage that you’ve meted out to it. And that’s leaving aside what you’ve done to your body.’
‘I want out.’
‘Listen to me, Gabriel. It’s normal that you feel this way. You have regained some kind of mental composure and now you’re wondering what all the fuss was about,’ Garland says.
‘I want out of here…You can’t fucking hold me…’
I see them look to each other.
‘I’m afraid you’re wrong there,’ she says.
‘What do you mean?’
‘We can hold you as long as we see fit.’
‘No, you can’t…Unless…’
‘Yes?’
‘Unless someone signed me in here…Who was it?’
‘You have people who love you very much,’ Dr Burke says.
‘Who was it?’
‘Your wife signed you in. With the express agreement of your family.’
‘You mean my sister.’
‘Yes, and your brother-in-law.’
‘He’s not family.’
‘We can understand that this is a shock.’
‘Fuck.’
‘So. You’re here. And our advice is go with it, give it a chance, what have you got to lose? You were in a pretty bad state when you came in…This is the best place for you…We can help you get back to some sort of normality…You have been in an alcohol-induced psychosis. You’ve damaged your liver. You were a threat not only to yourself but to those around you.’
‘My wife and I have been separated for months.’
‘Yes, we know but you are still legally married. And it was her wish that you get the help you deserve…’
‘Bollocks. She just wants me where she can control me.’
‘Have you forgotten the events of the past couple of weeks?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You believed that you were in danger. Paranoid. About to die.’
‘I was…’
‘Please…’
I am shaking. I wish I could stop it, I know that it doesn’t look good, but the more I try and control it the more the body refuses to obey.
‘I think you should rest,’ the woman says. ‘I think we should up your dosage. We have you on a combination of Librium and Quetiapine which is an anti-psychotic drug. The best thing you can do is to sleep.’
‘I don’t want to sleep. All I ever do in this fucking place is sleep.’
‘Please, Gabriel, don’t make this any harder on yourself.’
‘I want out of here.’
This time they don’t say anything but look at each other, the woman shrugs and lets out a sigh as if she was dealing with a noisy child.
‘I said I want out of here.’
‘We heard you, Gabriel,’ Garland says.
I can hear a note of frustration in his voice. He shuffles the papers in his lap as if he might find some answers there. So we sit in silence. I can hear the sound of traffic from outside and the low whine of an aircraft.
‘This is a fucking joke,’ I say.
I get up and try to look as together as I can, but my legs are shaking beneath my gown.
‘At least give me my own clothes to wear.’
This time all Garland does is shake his head. He then leans forward, his eyes holding mine.
‘We are recommending treatment for you. This will involve a stay in an institution for alcohol abuse, minimum stay four weeks. Now I know this is not what you want to hear. But you were a danger to yourself, Gabriel. You ended up on the streets of Drogheda. Do you not remember? This is no joke. This is a man’s life we’re talking about. You will be moved from here to a clinic on the other side of the grounds when we feel you are ready.’
‘Why not now?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Why not move me now?’
‘Because we have to be certain that the psychosis you suffered was alcohol-induced and no
t something more deep-rooted.’
‘But you just said it was.’
‘Yes, but we have to be certain. One hundred per cent certain. As I said the mind is a fragile place.’
‘I’m sorry, I know that this must be difficult for you,’ the woman says.
I hold her gaze and for a second I almost believe her concern is genuine, but then I grunt at her and look away.
‘You’ve been in a war,’ she says. ‘And it’s the worst kind. A war against yourself.’
The Twin
The devil lies here with me sometimes; he smiles a lot because things seem to be going his way. I’m careful not to think too much when he’s around because that’s meat and drink to him; he gorges himself full to bursting on stuff like that. He takes one thought, builds a nightmare and then hands it back to you with a big Got You grin on his face. I fight him with booze, I build a little island of amnesia in my mind and then drink my way to it and settle down there in peace. She has put me here, in this folded world. She caught me cold and knocked me through the walls that held me upright, and I landed with a smack in this place, in the shadows beneath the sunlight of normal life.
The devil tells me that women are like this, remember the snake, he says to me sometimes at night when I am trying to sleep. His whispering shakes the trees and brings flexing muscles to the dark so that everything seems as if it is on edge. It’s bad when I’m broke and can’t buy a bottle to pay the fare to the island that I built in my mind. Then I just have to tough it out. I lie by the roadside or in a doorway or wherever I happen to be and quietly sing to myself to drown out the hiss of his words. Once, my defences weren’t up in time and before I knew it he had me by the neck and his lizard’s eyes looked into mine for a whole hour before he spoke.
‘I am your twin,’ he said to me. The wind seemed to echo him beating the words out on the tin roof of a shop nearby. Rain began to fall just as he spoke to me as if in command and I remember the heavy drops falling on my forehead.
Then he became rain, before my eyes his flesh dissolved into water, and for a moment he stayed there looking at me, his eyes now two dark puddles and then he fell away to be washed along the gully that lay at my feet, his words echoing in the air like the swish of a thousand rattlesnakes. I remember I didn’t sleep after that, I kept scouring the dark, and the street corners in case he returned. Every passer-by had to be scrutinised in case he had jumped into them and was wearing their skin for a while to fool me. I know that I frightened some of them, but I had no choice, my soul was in danger. I followed one man for a few streets. I tried to be considerate and keep my distance until the chance came to get a good look at his face. At one point he stopped and stood there just ahead of me with his back to me. I waited and then slowly began to inch my way towards him. Still the man stood facing away from me and then he turned to look at me. I could tell immediately from his eyes that he had seen the devil too in his time.
‘What do you want?’ he asked me. ‘Why are you following me?’
He was frightened, his upper lip trembled, and his hands moved in and out of the pockets of his coat as he spoke to me.
‘I…’
‘Well, what the fuck do you want?’
‘Have you seen him?’ I asked him.
‘Who?’
‘Him.’
‘I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.’
He was lying. I knew that. I could tell from the shifty way he looked around him as if he was expecting someone else to come along. They always lie, the people who have seen him. I knew that. I was different, I wanted to expose the bastard, to pull him out from underneath his stone to drag him into the glare of the world. I needed allies. That’s what I wanted to say to this man, I needed an army, I needed it quick.
‘Here…’
The man threw a bunch of coins on the street by my feet.
‘Now fuck off and leave me alone.’
Before I knew it he was gone, his shiny dress shoes clacking their way along the rainy street until the shadows ate him up. I looked at the money around my feet and laughed, because Judas came to my mind: he ended up in the dirt separate and bleeding just like me. I gathered the coins, my hands scraping them from the pavement and the road. I tried to say thank you to the retreating figure but it was too much of an effort so I just thought it instead.
On the Wing
‘What happened to you last night?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You were jerking about in that bed as if it was on fire.’
‘I couldn’t sleep.’
‘Weird…I thought for a minute you were banging one out.’
‘Fuck off, Frank. Listen, I’m trying to get another half an hour…’
‘Okay…Okay…I was just worried about you, that’s all…’
‘I know, I appreciate it.’
Frank was a porn and sex freak. He was in the bed closest to mine. The orderlies would routinely raid his closet for smutty magazines and erotica of any kind. He was a skinny man, with limbs like a prepubescent and he moved quickly as if he was trying to get to the next moment of his life to see what it held.
He had lost everything, like me. He was a baker, strange for someone so thin. He owned a couple of bakeries in Belfast and had made quite a profitable little business until he started flying first class to Bangkok to get his end away. Drink was in the mix of his life too as it always was where anyone was in pain. He told me he’d met this young Thai girl who was as slender as a bamboo shoot with eyes that made you want to jump in headfirst. She could do things, he said, that he didn’t think were humanly possible. He set her up in an apartment in Bangkok. He called her his, she had a family in the mountains to feed, a brother, a niece and a mother and father, so he gave her money for them too.
His wife in Ireland began to get suspicious and asked him why he needed to make so many trips. He told her that golf had become huge in his life and the best holes were in the Far East. He borrowed money from the bank in Belfast using his business and his home as collateral.
He was being bled dry. His wife had him followed at his own expense, and the private detective caught him with his young Thai lover bent over a brand new washing machine that he had just bought her. After that, his debts caught up and the bank took away his business. He told me that he was trying to make a new start and that he would only stick to massage parlours from now on, and that he was trying to save his marriage and reclaim his good name in the community.
I felt sorry for him, but then I wasn’t in too good a shape either. I thought of the prostitute I had been to see and I know how easy it is for a man to see salvation in a young girl’s eyes, to think that heaven lay between her legs and that angels danced on the tip of her tongue.
‘You have a visitor.’
‘Who?’
‘Your wife.’
‘I have no wife.’
‘I’m only the messenger, Gabriel. Maybe that’s something you should take up with her.’
‘Give me a minute.’
‘She’s in the recreation room. And you realise that I have to note that you are still in bed. It’s now 11.30 a.m.’
‘I had trouble sleeping.’
I watch as he leaves, his name is Pat; he is one of the nurses on the floor I’m on. I didn’t like him from the moment I saw him, mainly because he didn’t seem to like the work he was doing and much less the patients entrusted to his care. He was a sweaty individual, his forehead constantly stained with perspiration and his palms when he touched you were clammy and cold.
When I reach the recreation room, I pause before I enter. It is a while since I have seen her and I know that when I look into her eyes I will be seeing a part of my past that I would rather forget.
There is a daytime chat show on the television and a few of the patients are sprawled out on chairs around it. I see her sitting at a small table in the corner. Her head is bent forwards slightly as if she is trying to pretend that she isn’t in this hospital, in thi
s ward, where the minds of those around her hang by a thread. As I reach her she looks up and a smile instinctively rises in her eyes, but then almost as quickly a frost passes over them. Her left hand is clasped around a Bic lighter and in her other she holds a packet of cigarettes.
I stand looking at her, telling myself to behave, to keep the dogs in my heart at bay, but I can’t forgive her for what she has done to me.
I see Pat hovering in the background checking up on us. I know my wife has probably had a word with him, stressing how volatile I could be, and how it might be better to keep watch in case I blew it.
I sit opposite her and stare at her. I’m owed an explanation and I’m determined not to be the one to speak first.
‘Promise me this won’t get ugly,’ she says.
‘Why on earth would it get ugly?’
‘Come on, we’re not children. You’re angry with me and I understand that.’
‘That’s a fucking understatement.’
‘Don’t, Gabriel. You’re not the only one who feels the world owes them.’
‘Why did you do it?’
‘I had to.’
‘There was no had to it. You just wanted to fucking control me…Like you always fucking did.’
‘Jesus, Gabriel. Have you no notion of the state you were in? Of the danger you posed not only to me or John but to yourself as well.’
‘I would have been okay. I just needed to get it out of my system…’
‘Get what out of your system? Normal people don’t spend nights sleeping on the street to get things out of their system. Normal people don’t terrorise those close to them to get things out of their fucking system. They talk, Gabriel. They sit down and face each other and talk. That’s what normal bloody people do. Jesus, I’m with you five minutes and I’m back to square bloody one, shaking and bloody crying. This is no good, it’s just no good…’
I lean forward and put my hand on hers; she withdraws it and tightens her grip on the lighter she’s holding. I know this woman so well, I think to myself, better than anyone else and yet there is a gulf between us that I can’t help feeling that I spent the length of our marriage putting in place.
