The Dark Threads

by Jean Davison

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  ‘HAVE YOU WORKED OUT your finances regarding this move?’ Mrs Winters asked as she drove me to Leeds. ‘Of course, your parents will have to give you some financial support.’

  I didn’t know what to say so I said nothing. I wasn’t expecting or wanting my parents’ financial support, and intended managing on my DHSS money until I got a job.

  ‘Do you go out at nights?’ she asked, changing the subject.

  ‘Yes, but not as much as I used to,’ I replied.

  ‘Where do you go?’

  ‘Pubs.’

  ‘Now come on, Jean. You go to more interesting places than pubs. You go dancing at the Mecca. I happen to know that.’

  Recently, a secretary at the day hospital had seen me at the Mecca. I felt like a schoolgirl who had been caught out telling lies. But I wasn’t a schoolgirl and I wasn’t lying. Perhaps I should have been more explicit and said ‘usually pubs but sometimes we go to dances afterwards’.

  ‘Do you go out on your own at nights?’

  ‘No, with friends,’ I said, then wondered if I should qualify this by saying ‘but I did go out on my own last night to a coffee bar’.

  ‘You’ve got friends? That’s lovely. Have you thought of sharing a flat with a friend?’

  ‘Yes, I’d like to do that, but my friends live with their parents and they don’t want to leave home yet,’ I explained. ‘A girl rang me a bit since to discuss sharing her flat, but she … Anyway, I don’t fancy sharing with someone I don’t know.’

  ‘But you must know her if she rang you,’ Mrs Winters said.

  I stiffened. ‘No, we’ve never met. She asked a friend of mine if she knew anyone who might want to share her flat. My friend gave her my number, so then she – this girl called Nikki – rang me.’ I paused, wondering whether to say more. ‘She seemed very much taken aback when I told her I was a patient,’ I added.

  ‘Oh, but you’re not a patient.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re not a patient.’

  At first I couldn’t think what Mrs Winters meant because of course I was a patient. Then I got it.

  ‘When I told her I was a day patient,’ I corrected myself.

  I wondered why Mrs Winters was querying everything I said throughout the journey. Ought I to be more explicit? By the time we reached the hostel my nerves were in shreds and I found myself being excessively precise in reply to her questions.

  ‘Have you packed some soap?’ she asked as we got out of the car in a street lined with large old terraced houses.

  ‘Yes. I mean no. Well, it’s not really soap,’ I stammered. ‘I’ve got some face-cleansing lotion that lathers like soap and some foaming body wash to use instead of soap.’

  I drifted through the form-filling, the preliminary chat with Mrs Stroud the warden, and my goodbyes to Mrs Winters. I was thankful to be left alone in my room on the second floor. It had a long shelf across one wall, a tall, narrow wardrobe, a large old-fashioned chest of drawers with an oval mirror on a stand on top, a small table beside the bed, and a gas fire with a slot meter.

  I unpacked a few things, then bolted the door and lay on the bed. I’d hardly slept since stopping the drugs about a week ago, but now I slid easily into an exhausted sleep. I dreamt someone was frantically rattling and banging on a door.

  ‘Open the door, Jean! Open it at once! Jean!’

  Mrs Stroud? Her tone was frightened, urgent, insistent. Perhaps there was a fire! I rushed to the door. Mrs Stroud looked first at me and then past me into the room, then back at me. ‘Are you all right? What are you doing?’

  ‘I … I was asleep,’ I mumbled apologetically.

  ‘Well, you don’t need to bolt the door. Please leave it unbolted in future.’

  I nodded, feeling puzzled at the fuss. Then I remembered how Tony had told me that her initial reluctance to accommodate me at the hostel was because a previous resident, a former High Royds patient, had locked herself in her room and attempted suicide.

  ‘I’m painting the window frames in a bedroom down the corridor. Come and watch. It’s no fun sitting in there on your own, is it?’

  I followed her down the corridor, knowing she meant well, although there was nothing in the world I would have liked more than to be left alone to sleep.

  ‘The other girls are out now. A few of them have jobs but most are students. We’re well situated for the college, polytechnic and the university, you see,’ she explained as she stirred a pot of rich brown paint. I was sitting on the mattress of the stripped bed, screwing my eyes up in the harsh glare of the sunlight streaming from the uncurtained window. ‘We’ve a girl living here now who was in care.’ She loaded the paintbrush. ‘Her name’s Marianne and she’s a lovely girl. I’ll introduce you.’

  There was silence for a while except for the swishing noise of the brush on the window frame. The overpowering smell of paint was giving me a headache, and I searched my mind for an excuse to go back to my room for some much-needed sleep.

  ‘Marianne might be in now,’ she said, putting her brush down on a wad of newspapers on the windowsill. ‘Let’s go see if we can find her, shall we?’

  Marianne, an auburn-haired, freckled-faced girl of about sixteen, was in the lounge watching horse-jumping on TV. After introducing us, Mrs Stroud left us sitting together on the old fashioned, high-backed settee.

  ‘Oh, look. Isn’t it funny?’ Marianne said, giggling and pointing to the TV. ‘Just look at that horse’s tail.’

  I laughed, too, but wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be laughing at. A clip of film was repeated in slow motion a few times showing some horses jumping over fences, and each time Marianne roared with laughter, pointing gleefully at the horses’ tails as they slowly swished up and down. I stayed in the lounge just long enough, I hoped, not to be impolite.

  ‘I’d better go to my room now,’ I said. ‘I’ve a letter to write.’ I stood up self-consciously. ‘See ya later.’

  I was lying on the bed sleeping again, dreaming about horses’ tails this time, when there was a knock at my unbolted door. I sprang up at once, feeling guilty for lying there. ‘Do you know your way round Leeds?’ Mrs Stroud asked. I shook my head. ‘Well, this street map should help you. I’ve put a cross to mark where this hostel is. We’re about fifteen minutes walk from town. To get to the town centre you take this road…’ She traced her finger on the map, but I couldn’t take it in. My head felt to be stuffed with cotton wool and my eyes just wanted to close.

  When she left, I spread the map out on the table and tried to work out how to get to the road where I’d be catching my bus to the hospital tomorrow. I knew the name of the road and eventually found it on the map, but couldn’t work out how to get there from the cross marking the hostel. Did I turn right or left from here? The more I stared at the map, the more it looked like a maze that didn’t make any sense. My mind seemed to be slowing down, switching off, blanking out. Dear God, I whispered, I’m losing my faculties. Help me.

  I was about to lie down on the bed again when there was another knock at the door. ‘Marianne will show you where the shops are,’ Mrs Stroud said cheerily. ‘The weather’s lovely so the two of you might as well go for a walk. She’s waiting for you in her room. Bring your map.’

  Mrs Stroud led me down the corridor to Marianne’s room where the three of us pored over the map. I couldn’t take in anything to do with the directions and could barely make sense of ordinary conversation. Without warning even to myself, I broke down and cried. Mrs Stroud put an arm around my shoulder and led me back to my room.

  ‘I’m OK,’ I said between sobs. ‘Just tired. I’d like to sleep for a while if that’s all right. I won’t bolt the door.’

  When Mrs Stroud left me alone, I thrashed about on the bed, now unable to sleep. I was too worried about what was happening to me. And of what I feared would happen if I didn’t manage to get a hold of myself.

  Later that afternoon, I went out alone for a walk. I
t only took me a few minutes to get lost, then I spent what seemed ages wandering the streets, exhausted, trying to get my bearings. It was then that something frightening happened, which seemed to confirm my worst fears.

  Turning round a corner into a cul-de-sac I saw some big white letters chalked on a wall, which said Psychiatrists are nuts. I smiled to myself. What a coincidence that I should come across these words now of all times. I turned back down another street and walked along for a while. Then suddenly it hit me. Surely there had been no such words on a wall? I stopped dead and leant against some railings. ‘Jesus, I’m hallucinating now!’

  I don’t know how long I stood there, leaning against the railings. This is the end of the line. I’ve gone crazy, I thought despairingly. Soon they’ll take me away to a mental hospital, and I can’t stop it happening. I can’t alter the script after all. I’ve tried. I’ve tried so hard.

  When I started walking again, my legs held me up even though they felt like paper. I felt thoroughly wretched – weak, distressed, aching, shivery and weary beyond belief. I wondered again if I’d got flu, but feared it was something far worse than that. I was curious to see if the writing was still on the wall but I couldn’t remember how to get back to it. That’s if there even was a wall … Hallucinations were a brand-new experience and the thought of them terrified me. How could I tell what was real if I couldn’t trust what I saw with my own eyes? Was this street I was in now real? Were these houses in front of me real? Was anybody else out there real? Was I real? I pinched the flesh on my arm; something could feel it, something must be real. But what is reality when we only have our perceptions?

  I continued to wander aimlessly until a telephone kiosk loomed up in front of me. I found the number of the hostel in the torn, worn directory, dialled with trembling fingers and got through to Mrs Stroud.

  ‘I can’t find my way back. I’m lost,’ I said. How true of my life, I thought wryly.

  ‘What’s the name of the street you’re on?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Doesn’t it say so in the phone booth?’

  ‘Oh yes, it’s Clayton Street.’

  ‘Well, Jean, you’re only a few minutes away. Take the first turning on your left then the next on your right and …’

  It was useless. I couldn’t understand the simple directions.

  ‘Will you ring High Royds for me, please. Tell them I … I need to be admitted because …’ I gulped back my tears and brushed aside a remaining speck of pride, ‘because I’m mentally ill.’

  I could hardly believe I’d just said that. If I was mentally ill, then the last place on earth I’d be safe in would be a mental hospital. I’d be safer roaming the streets and sleeping wrapped in newspapers.

  I’ll have to run away, I thought. But where to?

  ‘Stay right where you are, Jean,’ Mrs Stroud’s disembodied voice crackled through the telephone wires. ‘I’ll be with you in one minute.’

  A few minutes later I was in the brightly lit dining room of the hostel eating roast beef and potatoes amidst a crowd of chattering students. I was ravenously hungry although I hadn’t realised that until I’d started eating. My last meal had been a small piece of toast over twelve hours ago.

  After tea, I went to bed, taking care to leave my door unbolted. Mrs Stroud had said nothing about my request for her to ring the hospital to admit me. I had requested it in my most despairing moment of weakness, but wouldn’t agree to it now. OK, so I might have experienced a hallucination when roaming the streets stressed, hungry, exhausted, probably physically ill. And also (perhaps most significantly, though I lacked full awareness of this, then) while I was in the throes of a ‘cold turkey’ withdrawal from drugs.

  I felt I was living on borrowed time. It was as if after years of remaining static, I was on the brink of getting a lot better or a lot worse. I was still sustained by the way everything had flashed so clearly in my mind when I’d realised the destructive effects of my treatment and stopped taking the pills. Why, then, I wondered, after facing myself with undiluted truth that had at last prompted me to take necessary steps for my well-being, had I become more unsteady, more emotionally strained, more psychologically vulnerable, than ever before? Was I wrong to stop the pills after all? Had I really got some kind of mental illness that had only been held in check by drugs? Why was I getting a frighteningly good vantage point of those cliffs about which Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote? I’d once bought a second-hand poetry book and knew the words by heart from some of the poems I could relate to.

  O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall

  Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap

  May who ne’er hung there.

  As I was drifting off to sleep I heard someone crying in the next room. Her bed must be parallel with mine up against the other side of this thin wall, I thought sleepily, and she’s crying in bed. I was much too tired to be kept fully awake by this but, throughout the night, I kept hearing this sobbing. Whatever was wrong with the poor girl in the next room?

  In the morning, as I was getting dressed, I caught sight of my face in the oval mirror, and froze. A pale face stared back at me with very red, very swollen, eyes. I looked, and felt, as if I’d been crying for hours. All night perhaps? I gasped. That girl I’d heard crying was me!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I TRIED TO HIDE with make-up the signs that I’d been crying all night in my sleep, but knew I looked awful as, self-consciously, I entered the crowded, noisy dining room. There were about seven tables, each holding eight people, and a long, narrow table at the front for cutlery, crockery, a packet of sliced bread, a dish of margarine and a toaster. After waiting my turn to use the toaster I sat at the nearest vacant place: a table with seven Chinese girls engrossed in conversation in their own language.

  Many of the others had bacon and eggs with their toast, so I went through to the kitchen and found that cartons of eggs and rashers of uncooked bacon had been put out for us. A few girls were standing, laughing and chatting, around the large frying pan but, hungry though I was, the simple act of joining them to fry some bacon was too daunting. Instead, I returned to the dining room, gingerly poured some coffee from a large metal jug, and toasted another two slices of bread.

  I ate my breakfast quietly amidst the clatter of cutlery and noisy chatter. When Marianne passed my table I made an effort to smile but my lips twitched nervously. I was getting the sweats and shakes again. It’s no good, I thought, panic increasing my heart beat to an alarming rate. I can’t make it. I can’t. I breathed deeply several times: I can’t but I must. I must and I WILL.

  After breakfast I sat in my room, wondering what to do. I didn’t want to go to the day hospital. But what might happen if I didn’t show up, especially in view of my panicky phone call to Mrs Stroud last night? On no account must I agree to admission. But could they section me? Oh God, no! I washed my face again, bathed my eyes gently and then sat on the bed hoping that if I waited a while my eyes would become less puffy and I’d look less ill. It would be too dangerous to let mental health staff know how bad I was feeling. But how could I hide what showed so clearly in my face?

  I looked in the mirror again. No improvement. Oh yes, here’s a patient who’s definitely in need of drugging and shocking. Be a good girl and drink this nice Largactil syrup. Sit still, dear, while we rub conducting jelly in your hair and clamp these electrodes on your head. Don’t be a naughty girl, we’re only trying to help you.

  I brushed some pink blusher onto my chalk-white cheeks, blended it carefully with my fingers as it said in the magazines to try to achieve a natural healthy look, and forced a smile onto my lips. They’re not going to look so closely at me, I thought. Perhaps I looked at least passable from a distance. I stood back, and stared in dismay again at the mental patient in the mirror. Oh shit! Well, it was the best I could do. I’d have to set off now. And for heaven’s sake, I told myself as I fumbled to fasten my coat buttons, don’t let them see how much yo
ur hands are shaking.

  After getting lost and wandering around town, I toyed again with the idea of running away. It did seem a safer option than risking being admitted. Where could I go to lie low for a while, be anonymous, and keep away from psychiatrists, at least until I felt stronger? Had I enough money to get me to London or somewhere? Yes, just about. I headed for the railway station. But the prospect of trailing the streets of London cold, hungry, homeless, alone, held only slightly more appeal than returning to the hospital and saying, ‘OK, you win. I’m sick. Do what you like with me.’

  I sat on a bench, watching a tramp scavenging in a rubbish bin.

  Hours sneaked by.

  I moved on to the station buffet, ate a cheese sandwich, and then back to sit on the bench. The tramp I’d seen earlier returned. He sat down beside me, muttering unintelligibly. More time passed. The sky darkened and spat upon us.

  Finally, I returned to the hostel and ate my tea, shyly, amidst the chattering crowd, feeling isolated and alone. Then I went to bed.

  Next morning I woke early, pulled on my jeans and T-shirt, and breakfasted on coffee and toast before the dining room filled. I wanted to lie on my bed all day but feared Mrs Stroud might ring the hospital to say I wasn’t functioning. Perhaps I should go to the day hospital, especially after missing yesterday? But supposing the staff there decided I looked ill enough to require admission? My dilemma was the same as it had been yesterday morning: I was in no fit state to allow myself to be seen by psychiatric staff. I counted the money in my purse. Train fare to London? No, that was a crackpot idea. I went off out to find where to catch the bus to Menston.

  I arrived at the day hospital, feeling desperately sad and vulnerable. The two student nurses moved on every few months. Andy, whom I liked, was working on a ward now, replaced by Clive who had been nagging at me for the last couple of weeks to wear a ‘nice dress’ instead of my usual jeans and T-shirt. As if what I chose to wear was any of his business.