The Dark Threads

by Jean Davison

  I was seventeen when Steve became my steady boyfriend. Good-looking and sexy, he could have had his pick of girlfriends, but he asked me to dance at a disco and soon we were ‘together’.

  The psychedelic lighting in the Stardust illuminated my white cardigan and Steve’s shirt in contrast to the surrounding dimness. Feeling groggy with beer but more drunk on the surreal atmosphere of the place, I listened, dreamily, to the haunting sound of Procol Harum’s ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’.

  Then suddenly – puff!

  The music stopped; the room was flooded with harsh, bright light revealing chipped tables, tatty wall décor, a dirty floor. ‘Time, please!’ Handsome princes were transformed back to pimpled-faced, bleary-eyed frogs sitting at tables littered with half-finished glasses of beer, cigarette packets, puddles on beer-mats and ugly over-stuffed ashtrays. Screwed-up eyes soon became accustomed to the light, ears to the silence of stopped music as our senses quickly adjusted to the way the scene had changed in an instant. But somewhere in that disorientating instant, in the tiny gap between the breaking of one illusion and the adjusting to another, there flashed a moment of truth – or a moment of madness: call it what you will. A glimpse into the reality of our unrealities – or was it the unreality of our realities? Did others experience that, too, or was it just me? I shivered.

  It’s all an illusion, I thought, as I gulped down the remains of my lager while Adam, the friendly barman, stood at my table waiting for my empty glass. Life’s one big illusion that we create out of the whole fabric of illusions we’re immersed in from birth to death. And for what purpose?

  ‘Hi, Jean. Do you know any good jokes?’ Adam asked with a grin.

  CASE NO. 10826

  Recent Progress:

  (1) For a year she has attended the Day Hospital regularly and has always been a good time-keeper.

  (2) She is always neatly-dressed.

  (3) She co-operates in two schemes of group therapy and is able to write with real skill and enthusiasm, having a good command of English. There is every indication that she was able to achieve a high standard at school. Recently her own activities at the Day Hospital have been extended, so that she is working in the library on four half days per week, where she is interested and always helpful to the librarian.

  (4) She also spends two half-days with Mrs Green’s department, one session for typing and one session for the art class.

  Proposals:

  One is left with the impression that she might benefit from Modecate injections and perhaps a course of E.C.T.

  Dr Shaw

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ‘DID YOU KNOW YOUR mother’s having an affair?’

  Mandy and I were lying in bed one Sunday morning, having spent the night at her cousin Sarah’s house.

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Your mother told me so herself,’ Mandy replied, pulling herself up into a sitting position and, inadvertently, robbing me of my share of covers. ‘Remember I told you I saw her last week at the bus stop when I was going to my grandma’s? Well, she just started telling me. I was dead embarrassed. Did you know about it?’

  I shivered, retrieved some of the pink quilted bedspread and curled up into a ball. ‘Yeah. I know.’

  ‘Does it bother you?’

  ‘I don’t like to see Dad getting hurt, but I suppose if Mum wants to have an affair, it’s her business.’

  As I was saying this, Sarah, a young divorcee, was coming into the bedroom with a tray of coffee.

  ‘What? Your mam’s having an affair?’ Sarah exclaimed. ‘That’s awful!’ She stood in the doorway in a white frilly nightgown, her corn-gold hair wound up in large, spiky pink rollers.

  ‘So what? Lots of people have affairs,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Yes, I know, but you don’t expect that sort of thing of your parents, do you?’ Sarah said, sitting on the bed with the tray.

  ‘Why not? Parents are ordinary, fallible people, too,’ I commented, stirring my coffee.

  But a dangerous game was being played out. More so than I knew at the time. Years later, Dad told me how he’d gone out in search of Roy with a carving knife hidden beneath his coat (fortunately, he didn’t find him that night). ‘Did you really intend to kill him?’ I asked. His reply: ‘I just wanted to spoil his good looks.’

  Anger towards my mother bubbled up inside me. I waited until I was alone with her. She was sitting on the settee reading the Daily Mirror. I sat down beside her.

  ‘Mum, why did you tell Mandy that you’re carrying on with Roy?’

  She looked up from the paper. ‘Tell Mandy?’ she asked with a vacant look in her eyes.

  ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. Mandy said you saw her at the bus stop last week and you told her.’

  ‘Well, yeah, I did. It doesn’t matter.’ She went back to reading the paper.

  ‘It matters to me, and you embarrassed Mandy as well.’

  ‘Mandy? I don’t see why. She’s old enough to know about these things.’

  I gave up and turned on the TV. She didn’t seem to have any idea what the problem was.

  Later that evening she turned to me and said, ‘I think Roy’s coming for Christmas.’

  ‘What?’ I thought I’d got beyond being surprised by things that went on in our family. But this made me sit up and listen. ‘You’ve invited him here? To our house?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. Her eyes were shining.

  ‘What about Dad?’

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘You can’t be serious,’ I said, but the look on her face told me she saw nothing wrong or problematic about inviting her 28-year-old lover to spend Christmas with us. Nothing at all.

  Things came to a head with my parents one day when, after a squabble, Mum announced tearfully that she was leaving.

  ‘Don’t come back!’ Dad shouted after her. ‘You stupid old bag!’

  ‘Come inside, Dad. Just let her go,’ I said, putting my hand on his shoulder, but he hadn’t finished yet.

  ‘You whore!’ he shouted, before slamming the door and locking it. He turned to me. ‘She’s nowt but a friggin’ whore. Any love I once had for her has been killed.’

  ‘Sit down, Dad. I’ll put the kettle on.’

  ‘I’m not sorry she’s gone. I’m better off without her.’

  ‘Do you want tea or coffee?’

  ‘She’s a scrubber!’

  ‘Or hot chocolate?’

  ‘If she wants to come back I won’t let her in. I’ll get the locks changed tomorrow.’

  Next day when it was time to set off for the day hospital, I was reluctant to leave Dad alone in his distressed state.

  ‘You could ring Mr Jordan and tell him my mum’s left home and I’m too upset to go to the hospital today,’ I suggested.

  This backfired. Mr Jordan advised Dad to accompany me to the hospital.

  When we arrived, Mr Jordan had arranged for Dr Copeland to see me. My father waited downstairs while I went into the office with Dr Copeland and Mr Jordan. After discussing what had happened, Dr Copeland said, ‘You’re coping well with the situation. I can see there’s no need for me to arrange your admission.’

  ‘What? Of course I don’t need to be admitted!’ I said, alarmed at the thought.

  Dr Copeland and Mr Jordan exchanged glances and smiled. ‘Well, now that we’ve seen you we know you’re all right, but your father said on the phone that you were very upset.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but I’m nowhere near upset enough to need hospitalising,’ I said quickly.

  The phone rang for Dr Copeland and he left in a hurry. I went downstairs to the sitting room, and Mr Jordan took my father into the office. When Dad came out, he’d obviously been crying. Mr Jordan spoke to me while Dad waited downstairs.

  ‘Jean, I’m concerned about your father. I mean, when a man breaks down and cries like that, something’s wrong, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it?’ I asked. I’d often seen Dad cry.


  ‘Do you ever feel like hitting your mother? If I were your dad I’d have thumped her by now.’

  ‘Would you? Oh well, I’m sure wife-battering is a mature, sensible response,’ I said sarcastically. I wondered if he’d said this to test my reaction. The staff often said things I couldn’t believe they really meant, so I could only conclude it must be to see how patients reacted to what they said.

  ‘It would serve her right. I wouldn’t have allowed her to humiliate me all this time,’ Mr Jordan said.

  ‘It’s not fair of you to judge her when you’ve only heard one side of the story,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Well, has she really been talking about having her lover stay for Christmas? With your father there as well? That’s ludicrous.’

  ‘Yes, but perhaps she didn’t know how this hurt him.’

  ‘Oh, come off it, Jean. How could she not know?’

  I thought maybe my parents were childlike and naïve rather than vindictive, though I couldn’t try to explain that without it seeming as if I was the one who was childlike and naïve.

  ‘Your father needs you a lot,’ Mr Jordan said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He needs you more than you need him.’

  ‘I don’t know about that, but I do sometimes think … well, it often seems as if …’ I stopped. How much should I say? What about loyalty to my family? Was I being fair?

  ‘Yes, go on,’ Mr Jordan urged me.

  ‘Dad’s always leant on me, cried on my shoulder, confided in me about adult things even when I was a kid. It’s almost as if I were the parent and he was the child. He often tells me his troubles and asks for my advice.’

  ‘Do you think that’s good or bad for you?’

  ‘For me? Maybe a bit of both,’ I said, thinking of how it at least might have redressed the balance a bit of being treated as a psychiatric patient with no valid views. Two extremes cancelling each other out perhaps? ‘But to be honest,’ I continued, ‘I’m more worried now about my dependency on my parents than their dependency on me. I don’t know how I’d cope, either financially, practically or emotionally, without them.’

  ‘You could manage, Jean,’ Mr Jordan said reassuringly. ‘Your lack of confidence doesn’t surprise me, but you’re far more capable of coping than you think.’

  After tea that evening Dad called me to the window. I saw a dejected figure sitting on the garden wall, with coat collar up, head bent, shoulders hunched up against the wind.

  Dad opened the window and started to shout: ‘Why don’t you go to him now? Won’t he have you?’ But he turned and whispered to me, ‘What shall I do, Jean? Tell me what to do.’

  ‘Let her come in, Dad,’ I begged.

  ‘No, I won’t,’ he said, but after a pause, he called out to her: ‘If you want to come in for tonight you can do, you silly bitch.’

  At first she didn’t move.

  ‘Either you come in right now or I’ll lock you out again.’

  Slowly she walked inside, tears streaming down her face.

  This must have heralded the end of the affair. From then on there was no more talk of Roy coming for Christmas, no more did she talk to Mandy about the affair, no more jumping each time the telephone rang, no more whispering and giggling into the phone. And no more sparkle in her dull, lifeless eyes.

  Mum said she’d walked the streets, enquired at a hotel but found it much too expensive, and spent the night on some wasteland.

  ‘The woman’s mentally ill,’ Dad said to me. ‘Tell me, Jean, would anyone in their right mind go off and sleep in a field like that?’

  ‘Maybe they would if they were very unhappy,’ I said.

  I’d thought my mother and I were so different – I even used to wonder if she’d been given the wrong baby by mistake in the hospital when I was born. But were we really so different? I’d be unhappy with a life like hers. Perhaps she was, too.

  ‘Mum, why did you work in the mill at fourteen?’ I asked when just the two of us were together. ‘Didn’t you want something more?’

  ‘I’d no choice ’cos me wage was needed. I won a scholarship to go to grammar school but I couldn’t go ’cos we needed money.’

  She must have had academic ability, I thought with admiration. Not many children from our kind of background won scholarships.

  ‘Do you have regrets?’

  ‘No, there’d be no point, would there? I mean you just do what you have to do. Nobody needs to know the stuff they teach you at school anyhow. But it was sad for me brother. Now he’s the one who must have regrets. He was only sixteen when he had to get married and do whatever jobs he could to support his wife and kiddie. It’s a real shame because he was right clever at school and he could’ve gone far, being a boy.’

  I lay in bed that night thinking of wasted lives. But why should Mum’s brother have gone far ‘being a boy’? What about girls? What about the needs, aspirations and abilities of women?

  ‘We’d like you to go to the psychology department to do some tests,’ Mr Jordan informed me one morning.

  I hadn’t known there was a psychology department at High Royds. A morning spent there proved to be more interesting than OT. A petite young woman with long auburn hair shook my hand and introduced herself as Laura Barnes, a clinical psychologist. She showed me pictures and told me to make up a story around them, gave me a list of things which people might fear, such as flying, spiders, having a serious operation, and told me to tick along a continuum ranging from ‘no fear at all’ to ‘a very strong fear’, and she gave me sentence beginnings to finish off. Finally, there was the IQ test, which involved choosing which numbers and shapes fitted into a pattern sequence and so on. The intelligence test started off being very easy and became progressively harder but, not wanting to appear dim, I forced my sleepy, rusty brain to creak into action as it hadn’t done in ages. All tests finished, I thought no more about them until Dr Copeland and Mr Jordan called me into the top-floor office at the day hospital a few days later.

  ‘I’ve found out we have someone here at the day hospital who has an IQ that is well above average,’ Dr Copeland said, smiling. ‘That’s what your test result shows.’

  ‘Does it?’ I said, with only mild interest. I did not believe that tests which measured an aptitude for solving pencil and paper puzzles could ever tap the kind of intelligence linked to the qualities of character that really mattered.

  ‘Tell me why you’re a patient,’ Dr Copeland said.

  ‘Because I’m mentally ill,’ I replied, deciding to face up to that head on.

  ‘Is that what you want me to believe?’

  ‘Well, I am, aren’t I?’

  ‘In my opinion, no,’ he said.

  He leafed back through the pages of my case notes, reading them quietly for a while.

  ‘OK,’ he said, ‘so you became confused about religion and got hung up on questioning what life’s all about. Sounds to me like the normal turmoils of an intelligent adolescent, though no doubt intensified in your case by your home life.’

  Intensified, too, by my experiences in Thornville, I thought bitterly.

  ‘I’m not an adolescent now,’ I reminded him, ‘and I’m still as confused as ever about religion, and life in general.’

  ‘So what? So are lots of people,’ he said. ‘Christ, I often wonder what life’s all about.’

  He paused, lit a cigarette, and stared at me till I felt uncomfortable.

  ‘You haven’t yet convinced me that you are, or were, in any way sick, though for some reason you believe that you are,’ he said. ‘It’s clear to Dave Jordan and me that you’re as different from the other patients here as chalk from cheese. I can find in you absolutely no trace of mental illness.’

  He inhaled on his cigarette, held his head back and breathed out slowly. ‘Stop seeing yourself as mentally ill, Jean.’

  I stared at Dr Copeland in amazement. It had taken me some time to get used to the idea that I was mentally ill, and now he was talking like this. Bu
t he was a psychiatrist so he, more than most people, must have known very well where I’d been taught to perceive myself as sick.

  ‘You’re not supposed to say that, are you?’ I said mischievously. ‘Shouldn’t you be calling me a good girl for admitting that I’m mentally ill? Don’t I get brownie points or something for showing “insight”?’

  ‘I don’t think this is something you should be joking about.’

  I stopped laughing at once. ‘OK. Why was I given ECT?’

  ‘I can’t speak for other doctors. I wouldn’t prescribe ECT for you.’

  ‘Well, if you don’t think I’m sick, why prescribe drugs?’

  For the first time he looked uncomfortable. ‘That’s … that’s difficult to explain,’ he said, rubbing his forehead. ‘You’ve been on drugs for a long time and I personally would like to take you off them but …’

  ‘But what? Does Dr Shaw …’

  ‘Have you ever thought of leaving home?’ he asked, changing the subject.

  ‘Yes, but I’m hardly in a position to do that now, am I? I threw that opportunity away when I chucked up me last job. It was the middle of the afternoon and I felt so tired and bored that I couldn’t stand it any more. I just grabbed me coat and went home.’

  ‘I’d have probably done the same in your situation. I don’t know how people can stick boring jobs. For instance, I often wonder how people can, say, work on a factory assembly line. I wouldn’t be able to stand that for one single day.’

  ‘Really?’ A tiny chink of light penetrated my blindfold. Maybe it wasn’t me after all? Still, something scared me about the way he was talking. ‘You’ll think I’m sick if I tell you what I did one night,’ I said. ‘Roy, Mum’s fancy man, rang and she got dressed up like a teenager and rushed out to meet him. Call me I’ll come running! I think I wanted her to worry about me. Anyway, I took off and stayed out all night. Slept in a bus parked up in a depot. That’s a sick thing to do, isn’t it?’

  ‘In your circumstances, I think not.’

  I eyed Dr Copeland curiously. It was a refreshing change to listen to a psychiatrist who was refusing to find ‘symptoms’ in everything. He stubbed out his cigarette, looked at me and sighed.