A Note of Madness
CONTENTS
Why is this all happening to me? he asked himself desperately. What is wrong with me?
Life as a student should be good for Flynn. He’s been put forward for an opportunity-of-a-lifetime concert, and he’s got great friends. But beneath the surface, he’s falling apart. On a good day he feels full of energy and life, but on a bad day being alive is worse than being dead. Sometimes he wants to compose and practice all night, at other times he can’t get out of bed. With the pressure of the forthcoming concert and the growing concern of his family and friends, emotions come to a head. Sometimes things can only get worse before they get better.
Tabitha Suzuma
To Dilly, Nori, Tadashi, Tansy, Thalia and, of course, Tiggy
IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE
to say how it had all begun.
Shoulders pressed against the back of a hard chair, wintry sunlight streaking through steel blinds across a grey carpet, gazing at the sharp-cheeked woman at the cluttered desk, there was nothing to say. How did any madness begin? It could either creep up on you, like a slow, degenerative disease, or there could be a sudden, dramatic impact, like slamming into a brick wall and being told you were clinically insane. And how did you know when the impact actually hit? You could be walking around, getting on with life as normal one minute, and then find yourself on a window ledge four storeys up the next. Or the line between what was commonly perceived as normal and abnormal behaviour would gradually begin to blur until you found yourself, barely perceptibly, moving towards the wrong side.
Some people seemed to manage to live their whole lives just on the edge of that line, never actually crossing it. That line – always close but never enough to touch, never consciously present, yet for ever lurking somewhere in the subconscious, making itself known.
Whereas others somehow drifted over, never any deliberate stepping onto it or over it, but suddenly it just seemed to disappear, leaving nothing but a cluttered office, here in the hospital, and a bedroom like a cell to which one didn’t have the key.
The woman with the unmemorable name levelled her steady gaze, pen poised. ‘Let’s start with your childhood. What was life like when you were growing up?’
A look at her. Her gaze unfaltering. But there really wasn’t much to say. A childhood that had been normal, if that meant anything any more – no traumas, no abuse, she wasn’t going to find anything of interest there. Unlike the other patients, there was no reason for being here. Physical war-scars like burns and cuts or weird, paranoid behaviour stemming from some terrible incident were all around them. But there was nothing to talk about – nothing that was going to lead them any closer to finding out what was wrong, if indeed anything
was
wrong. Life had been normal and then it wasn’t any more and that was all there was to say about it. No startling day awaking with madness, nor madness cunningly creeping up. It was just that somehow, sometime, somewhere down the road, things had changed, and why or when that had happened was impossible to tell.
Ten years was a long time. He had just been a student, back then. No real pressures, no real responsibility, no real reason to go off the rails. His mind might drift briefly back over a dozen or more
fragmented shards but it wasn’t able to fit them together, as with pieces of a jigsaw, to form a coherent picture. A professor at a desk, running over muddy grass, the chipped beech piano in the living room, you’re breathing too quickly. Mum’s greying hair, notes flowing like torrents, hands unable to keep up, you’re playing too fast. Smoking on a picnic bench, manuscript scrawls on a grubby floor, feet thudding on a deserted path, stop running for goodness’ sake. A grey university building, Rachmaninov’s Third, Jennah’s green eyes, a gilded concert hall. It didn’t really make any sense. So he looked at the psychiatrist and smiled.
IT WAS NEARLY
spring. The air was still raw and sharp and the sky an icy blue. The first leaves on the trees, fresh and pungent, sprinkled sequins of sunlight across the street.
Flynn let the heavy door slam as he left the Royal College of Music and headed across the road towards Hyde Park, bag slung over his shoulder. As he went in through the gates, he caught sight of a familiar back ahead and broke into a jog.
‘Hey!’ He elbowed Harry in the side as he drew level.
‘Flynn. Don’t tell me you’re going running again.’
‘Thinking about it.’ Flynn jogged backwards along the wide path. ‘Want to join me?’
‘Christ, no. Did you hear what Myers said in HS? Two weeks, just two weeks to hand the bloody thing in.’
‘Yes, loads of time.’
‘Ha ha.’ Harry didn’t smile. ‘I still haven’t finished the last one. He’s given me an extension but a fat lot of good that does me now we’ve got another one.’
‘You worry too much, Harry, that’s your problem.’
‘Not everyone reels them off like you do. I’m going
to get myself a sandwich. I’ve got a lecture in twenty minutes. Coming?’
‘No, I’m going for a run.’
Harry rolled his eyes. ‘See you later.’ He returned to the path, shoulders hunched against the chill air.
Flynn set off at a fast jog. No lectures for him this afternoon; he was as free as the chill, swirling wind, and the quiet, empty park before him spread itself out, enticing and desolate.
Flynn had come to England with his family when he was four. He remembered little of Helsinki now except for building snowmen in the dark and his brother, Rami, pulling him along in a sledge made out of a tray and a length of rope. He had missed his bike and the wide-open spaces and remembered hating England for a very long time.
But one day he had discovered a piano, a dusty upright at the back of the local church hall. Two notes in the bottom octave stuck and the keys were a dirty yellow. While his mother ran Sunday bake-sales, Flynn would tentatively work out nursery rhymes with two fingers. Sometimes an older child would come along and dazzle him with ‘The Entertainer’ or ‘Für Elise’. And when they had wandered off again, Flynn would painstakingly try to find the notes himself. For his fifth birthday, his parents had given him a toy piano. It was made out of plastic, ran on batteries and could be made to play as eight different instruments which all sounded
the same. And Flynn had cried because it wasn’t real. After that they had let him have piano lessons.
At school in Sussex he had been a big fish in a small pond. He had been the star of every school concert, the one that other kids’ parents talked about. Whenever there had been an important school event, they had brought him out to play the piano. It had been a shock to arrive at the Royal College of Music here in London and find himself surrounded by students who practised as hard as he did, if not harder. Students who had spent their childhood at music school, sometimes hundreds of miles away from their families, just in order to play their instrument. Students destined to become professional musicians since they were born, starting on the Suzuki method at two, playing in concerts and winning competitions around the country when still at primary school. Sons and daughters of famous parents who toured the world and played at the Royal Festival Hall. There were even students here who had already begun to make a name for themselves, who had won prestigious competitions and had been written about in the press. Here things were very different. You had to fight to stay on top and there was always, always, someone just that bit better than you.
Still, London life suited Flynn. He liked the grey skyline, the huge parks, the bustling streets, the overfull buses and the endless traffic. He liked the way no one knew each other, no one really mattered. In a sprawling and impersonal city like this, there was such a mixture
of backgrounds, races and nationalities that everyone just blended in and nothing and no one could look out of place.
Flynn ran out of the park, cut across the main road and headed home. Harry’s flat in Bayswater, loaned to him by his parents who were living in Brussels, had been home to Flynn for almost six months now. It was on the fourth floor of a tall, white house on a long tree-lined street behind the tube station. When you came in the front door, the first thing you did was trip over the collection of trainers and a massive accumulation of junk mail in the narrow hallway. The kitchen was white and fitted, although one of the cupboard doors was held together with masking tape, and the small wooden table against the wall was covered with university papers, half-opened envelopes, dog-eared textbooks and bills. Above the table, a small, hopelessly cluttered noticeboard held a collection of papers almost an inch thick, bearing notices such as ‘Your mum phoned’ and ‘Your mum phoned again’ and ‘
PHONE YOUR MUM
!’ On the fridge door, a magnet in the form of a treble clef held a photo of Harry, Jennah and Flynn during their inter-railing holiday last summer, all white smiles, burned noses and blue sky.
The living room housed a large, sagging brown couch, a matching brown armchair and a coffee table. There was a dusty television sitting on top of a small cupboard stuffed full of DVDs, and an old side table
against the wall. Next to the window was a chipped, black upright that Harry’s mum had bought for Harry’s dad as an engagement present twenty-odd years ago. On top of the upright teetered several piles of music books, scores and manuscript pads as well as two metronomes and some kind of dying plant in a cracked pot. The music stand held several Rachmaninov scores, the top one opened at a well-thumbed page with a great many pencil scribblings between the staves. In the corner of the room was a dent in the yellow carpet where Harry’s cello usually stood, more piles of music, a top-heavy music stand and a cello bow in need of rehairing.
At the end of the hallway were the two bedrooms. Flynn’s contained a small, cluttered desk, his keyboard, a PC that only occasionally worked, his stereo, an unmade bed and a burgundy rug that Rami had brought back from Taiwan. Harry’s contained a slightly larger desk, an executive-style chair, a complicated Hi-fi system, Picasso prints on the walls and a cupboard with sliding doors. Flynn had grown fond of this flat. It was nice and comfortable, and it certainly beat university halls.
As he emerged from a steaming shower, the phone began to ring. Padding into the kitchen, stepping over a pile of washing in front of the machine, he answered, swearing mildly as his towel slipped off him.
‘Hang on,’ he said down the phone, and readjusted himself. ‘Hello?’
It was Jennah. ‘Flynn, don’t tell me you’ve just woken up again!’
‘I had lectures all morning, I’ll have you know! Doctor Swift talking about subsidiary harmony notes, suspensions and appoggiaturas. I could practically see my whole life flash in front of my eyes.’
Laughter. ‘I can imagine. Swifty’s classes always make me lose the will to live. Is Harry in?’
‘No, he doesn’t finish till four.’
‘Oh. Well I was only calling to remind the two of you about tonight.’
Flynn paused. ‘Tonight?’
‘The concert! At the Queen Elizabeth Hall?’
‘Oh yes, of course.’
That
concert.
Jennah’s muse, the elusive Professor Miguel, conducting Beethoven and Wagner. She had got them all tickets months ago. A concert was always exciting, although the prospect of this one in particular left Flynn with mixed feelings. One of his fellow students in keyboard, André Kolov, would be playing. Flynn never particularly relished listening to André play the piano – he was too good.
‘You’d forgotten!’
‘No, of course not!’
‘Yeah right! Meet you in the foyer at seven. Ask Harry to wear something smart.’
‘I can try.’
Harry and Jennah were Flynn’s oldest friends. They had met at music camp seven years ago. Harry had been a tall, dark, mature-looking twelve-year-old, sauntering around the car park on the first day, hands in his
pockets, checking out the new arrivals. Flynn had been a small, blond, hyperactive eleven-year-old and the pair had found themselves sharing a room together. After the first few days they had adopted Jennah, a tomboy with dirty fingernails and messy hair who laughed at their jokes and knew some good ones herself. Together they climbed up scaffolding, played practical jokes on unsuspecting music teachers and generally caused chaos.
The following year they had got into so much trouble that Harry and Flynn weren’t allowed to share a room. The year after that, Harry’s voice had broken, Jennah no longer had messy hair and things had changed. The practical jokes stopped. Harry and Jennah continued to tease each other but Flynn only felt relaxed with Harry and hadn’t been sure how to treat Jennah any more. Although she hadn’t changed from her usual chatty, friendly self and they still got on well, deep down something seemed to have changed within Flynn. Things were somehow difficult, and very different.
