All in the Mind (13 page)

10

Ralph was finding it hard not to blame Sandie. If only she didn’t keep disappearing off on business trips, he thought, it would be easier for him to stay sober.

As he prepared to head to the Commons for his hastily arranged consultation with Professor Sturrock, he cleared his desk in his enormous fourth-floor office at the Department of Health, took a final shot of Scotch from the hip flask in the second drawer of his desk, and walked over to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Sandie was currently in Jordan, after a tip-off from a colleague about the possibility of acquiring a sizeable collection of paintings by one of Jordan’s most renowned artists. It had been a last-minute thing. She’d heard about the possible sale at a breakfast meeting in Chelsea on Monday morning and caught the first available plane out after going home to Pimlico to pack. When she called Ralph from the taxi taking her to Heathrow airport, he felt torn, between his desire to support her, and his feeling of abandonment. He hated arriving home at night to an empty house.

Yet it had been he who had encouraged her to turn a lifelong interest in Middle Eastern art into a little business, importing and exporting paintings and artefacts. The children were grown up, she had got the MP’s wife role off pat, there was nothing to stop her, he’d said. But the business had been more successful than he’d expected and she was often away. Whereas, before, her presence would help to keep his drinking in check, now things were getting out of control.

He was just removing the cap from the tube of toothpaste when the phone rang.

‘Damn it,’ he said, walking back to the desk and picking up the phone.

‘Yes?’

‘It’s Mrs Hall, Secretary of State. It’s not a very good line.’

‘OK, put her through,’ he said, while simultaneously saying to himself, ‘must brush teeth, must brush teeth, must brush teeth.’

‘Hello, darling.’ Sandie sounded very chirpy, and very far away. She had been due home that night, but the deal was taking longer to conclude than she’d thought.

‘So when will you be back?’ he asked, trying but failing to hide his disappointment, and wondering as he tried whether it was disappointment, or just irritation.

‘I’m checking the flights now, but all being well by lunchtime tomorrow.’

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Just make sure you get the train straight up to Newcastle in time for the dinner with the Chamber of Commerce people. It’s important that the constituency still sees that I’ve got you by my side from time to time.’

‘All right, my love. See you tomorrow. Everything OK?’

‘Yes, fine. Better go now. I’ve got a meeting.’

He went over to the Commons on foot, and arrived in the central lobby to find that Professor Sturrock hadn’t yet got there. The delay was excruciating for Ralph. It meant that there was a possibility one of his colleagues, or even worse a journalist, would come up to him, and be there as Professor Sturrock arrived, and either recognise him, or ask who he was. Since he wanted nobody in his office to know about these meetings, he had to escort Professor Sturrock to his Commons office himself rather than send a secretary to collect him, but it was high risk. He found himself rehearsing answers to any curious questions: ‘Professor Sturrock has kindly agreed to advise our mental health strategy review,’ or, ‘I’m just introducing Professor Sturrock to the chairman of the health select committee.’

He was absolutely paranoid about anyone knowing he was seeing a psychiatrist, even more so since his promotion from Minister of State to Health Secretary, his first Cabinet position. He was under
little
doubt that he would have to resign if his problem became public. Times had changed. MPs could happily regale each other with tales of George Brown’s antics as Foreign Secretary under Harold Wilson, and Ralph, in his after-dinner speeches, often used a colourful version of Brown’s drunken threat to invade Israel. But one of the reasons MPs found the stories so amusing was because they involved behaviour that, in today’s more censorious, media-sensitive age, a senior politician might not be able to survive. They might wish it wasn’t so, but it was, and that was that. Ralph knew that at least three backbench MPs had been ruled out of the last junior ranks reshuffle because the chief whip reported that they spent too long in the bars.

It had taken Ralph a while to decide upon the best place to see Professor Sturrock. He’d pulled out of the first appointment, which had been scheduled to take place in his office at the department, because he was worried about some of his more observant staff members putting two and two together and, for once, making four. He now insisted on all his meetings with Professor Sturrock being either at his home first thing, provided Sandie was away, or at his Commons office, normally unattended unless he was over there for voting.

Professor Sturrock finally arrived, looking slightly harassed. He had been held up by queues at the security checks. Ralph gave him a hurried handshake and rushed him along, through the door by the message board next to a huge statue of Winston Churchill, then up dozens of stairs to his office.

It was only when they were both settled in Ralph’s office, Ralph on the green sofa, Professor Sturrock on the fake leather swivel chair, that Ralph realised that, although he had been desperate to see the psychiatrist all day, he didn’t really know what he wanted to say to him.

Professor Sturrock was looking at him with his usual gentle, patient expression.

‘So, Ralph, what’s been going on?’

Ralph felt a sudden caving in of his stomach, a desperate desire to confide.

‘Sandie’s away.’

‘Ah … And?’

‘And I’ve been drinking too much.’

‘More than usual?’

‘A lot more.’

At their first meeting five months ago, Professor Sturrock had asked detailed questions about his consumption. Ralph had been modestly relieved when Professor Sturrock said that, though he was drinking more than was good for him, he was drinking a lot less than some of his really bad cases. Still, Ralph had had to admit he couldn’t remember the last day he had gone without a drink. The closest he had got was the previous Sunday, when he’d had four glasses of wine. Most days he would have a couple of drinks on his own in the office, hopefully with nobody else knowing. If he had a lunch engagement, he would drink if others were, maybe a few glasses of wine. He would always have wine with his dinner, and if possible squeeze in a few spirits beforehand, and always a few more at home before he went to bed. But he knew his consumption had been rising in recent months, which is why he had begun to worry.

He had sensed Professor Sturrock’s concern when he confessed that not long after he woke up, he would think about when he might be able to have a drink, either publicly without people thinking it odd, or privately without being discovered. He had a secret stash of spirits in his office. He used toothpaste and breath fresheners to conceal the odour when, as happened fairly frequently, he had a drink between meetings. He drank from bottles as well as glasses. At official or social dinners, he would drink wine as would others, but also try to pull a waiter to one side and order whisky and water in a long glass, with a fair bit of ice, so that it looked like a soft drink.

‘Is that why you wanted to see me today?’ asked Professor Sturrock. ‘Because Sandie is away?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Is there anything else?’

‘There is one thing,’ Ralph said. ‘Most mornings now, especially if Sandie’s away, I’m forcing myself to vomit soon after I wake up.’

‘I see.’

‘I thought I should tell you.’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

Ralph was looking closely to see how the psychiatrist reacted to a piece of information that had been worrying him a lot. He had held back from telling him, but as he was throwing up this morning he had decided that having trusted Professor Sturrock so far, he should trust him the whole way, and with every detail. Professor Sturrock just made a note, in the same calm and unperturbed manner he made a note of most things, nodded, and then asked, ‘Every morning?’

‘Pretty much, these days.’

‘And as you’re throwing up, what are you thinking about?’

‘Hoping I’ll feel better when it’s done. Thinking about the day ahead, what meetings, what gaps in the day, what problems to deal with as soon as I get in. Even when I’m chucking up, I’m thinking about that.’

‘And how are you feeling about
yourself
when you’re chucking up?’

‘Pretty crap, I suppose. Not great, is it? Hands on the toilet bowl, knees on the floor, head down, fingers down the throat, waiting for the stuff to churn up. Not great for the self-esteem.’

‘And as you do it, which of these thoughts is closer to your mind: “I’ll never drink again” or “I wonder when I can get my first drink of the day”?’

It was the moment Ralph realised he had been right to be worried, and right to see Professor Sturrock today.

‘The second of those, I’m afraid. Every time.’

‘And which of these thoughts is closer at that time: “I would like a drink right now” or “I will wait a few hours”?’

‘Both,’ he said. ‘I don’t do the hair-of-the-dog thing, as you know. I hardly ever drink before midday, but I have various moments of struggle before I get there.’

‘Including when you’re being sick?’

‘Sometimes, yes.’ He whispered it. He knew it was a serious admission to make.

‘And why are you so afraid today?’

‘Because I probably drink more when Sandie’s not there to keep an eye on me.’

‘Do you resent her being away?’

‘A bit.’

‘Yet her art business was your idea?’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Life is full of unintended consequences, isn’t it?’

‘Do you feel jealous at all?’ asked Professor Sturrock.

‘Not jealous, no. But I thought it might be a way of filling the gap left by the children. Instead, I can see it has maybe filled some of the emotional space she saves for me. She’s always been such a support, right from the start, but it’s changed.’

Sandie had known about his political ambitions from the moment they met at university. He’d once confided in her that he felt destined to be Prime Minister and though it had sounded boastful and arrogant, it did not sound totally absurd, as are so many of the claims made by students for their own future. She supported him too when he stood for a hopeless seat in the Midlands, driving him around from village to village, town to town. On the night he became a Member of Parliament for one of the new Newcastle seats, she told him she was really proud of him, happy in the knowledge that he would be doing what he wanted to do, and happy to take a back seat, and hold home and family life together. He was soon seen as something of a rising star, though it took longer than he would have liked, and longer than some of his peers, before he was made a minister. It also irked him somewhat that though he was still seen as relatively young in political terms, the Prime Minister was even younger.

‘Shall we take a look at your drinking diary?’ asked Professor Sturrock.

‘I suppose, if we have to.’

The only homework Professor Sturrock asked Ralph to do was to keep a diary, in which he was supposed to record not just what he drank, but when and where, as well as what was happening around him, and what feelings he had about himself and others at the time. Given how busy Ralph was, it was a lot to ask for, and when he had set the task, Professor Sturrock said he understood it might not always be possible to do it in detail. Also, Ralph was so terrified of his problem being uncovered that he had been very hesitant at first, fearing that he would write it all down, then lose the document somewhere when under the
influence
, only to see it surface in a Sunday newspaper, fuelling an enormous media frenzy which would see the Prime Minister express initial support, then throw him overboard as the frenzy failed to calm.

Ralph took out the little soft-backed notebook on which he had written ‘DD’ on the cover. He had taken to writing with his left hand so that if he accidentally left it lying around the office, he could feign ignorance as to what it was. He had a code for different drinks – w for whisky, w2 for a double, w3 for one of the really large ones he sometimes had at home before going to bed, ww for white wine, wr for red. He used Roman numerals to record the time of day at which he was drinking. If he was drinking alone, he put a little letter ‘i’ inside a circle alongside the nature and quantity of the drink consumed. If he was at an official event, he would mark it with the letters ‘oe’. If he was at a social event, he recorded that with ‘se’. Recording his feelings was harder. There he relied on a number of key words, on which he would elaborate when he saw the Professor. He was quite pleased with all his little codes and his terrible handwriting. He was confident that even if Professor Sturrock were to stumble across the diary, he would not be able to decipher all its contents.

‘So which was your worst day?’ asked Professor Sturrock.

‘Wednesday, by a mile,’ said Ralph, flicking to an entry that ran to three full pages littered with increasingly erratic scribbles.

Professor Sturrock moved to join him on the sofa so that he could get a proper look at what Ralph had written. He pointed to a line where Ralph had written, ‘
Is dd mkn m d mr so v mr2pt? Rbsh. Sf/srv. Stop
.’

‘What’s that?’

Ralph translated. ‘“Is the fact of doing a daily diary making me drink more so I have more to put in it? Rubbish. Self-serving argument. Must stop thinking that.” Or maybe it’s “must stop drinking”? That’s one of the limitations of my codes. Sometimes I can’t remember what I meant.’

Professor Sturrock asked him to talk him through the day.

VII (7 a.m.) saw him starting with a morning vomit for the second day running. It was the full horrible works, four heaves, each one burning the throat more painfully, each one like a punch to the stomach until all
its
contents were gone. But it was only once he had been sick that he felt his real head was back on his shoulders. He had a note alongside his record of being sick, to the effect that the vomiting was so violent he had suggested to himself he should try not to drink anything that day.