All in the Mind (29 page)

Stella’s theory, most dramatically aired on their holiday in Devon all those years ago, but more subtly expressed on many occasions since, was that the children understood their dad wanting to put
other
people first in theory, but found it harder in practice. It was a philosophy that led to them feeling alienated from him. His theory was that his own father’s habits were deeply ingrained in him and though he tried to do better as a parent, and did do better, he was starting from so far back that he didn’t have a chance. When it came to patients, he had learned how to act with them. It was a skill that he had developed and improved over time. But with his family, he got into certain habits early on, and never really changed the skills set. So Stella was the one they looked to because she had been the one who was always there. He played at it. He contented himself with being a better, more attentive and loving father than his own father had been. But to a modern child growing up in modern Britain, that was not nearly enough. And now they were grown up and, to quote a phrase Jack was overfond of using, ‘we kind of don’t give a fuck’. Only he knew that they
did
, just as he didn’t go through a single day without at some point giving a fuck about his father.

So they talked about whether the BBC should allow advertising on its main channels, and Charlie tried to explain the copyright issues that were making life hard for many record labels, and then they talked about how Catch Up TV had changed their viewing patterns. With a bit of small talk thrown in, those topics just about got them through lunch.

It was after lunch, when the cake had been eaten, the book of photographs admired and the coffee drunk, that things started to flag badly. Sturrock wanted desperately to go up to his bedroom, draw the curtains, lie down and shut out the world. He caught Jack giving his friend amused glances and was sure they were laughing at him. He was asking himself if he was being paranoid, but concluded he had reason to be. He wished they were gone.

By teatime, when Stella began bringing out the biscuits, they had all descended into silence. Jack was just suggesting watching a DVD together when the doorbell rang.

‘That might be Michelle after all,’ said Sturrock hopefully. ‘Perhaps her match has finished.’

Stella went to answer the door, and her face as she walked back in revealed very clearly that it was not their daughter.

‘I don’t have a clue what’s going on here, Martin, but Ralph Hall is at the front door. I explained that we were in the middle of a birthday celebration but he seemed to think you would want to see him.’

Sturrock saw on Jack’s face the adult version of a look he recalled from when his son was growing up. It was a look that would appear whenever he was forced to take a work call at home, or when he had to miss attending a school sports event or a parents’ evening because one of his patients ‘needed him’.

‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘I’ll try to be quick.’

Ralph stood on the doorstep, where Stella had left him. He looked dreadful. Tired, yet agitated, almost manic.

‘I am so sorry to do this to you, Martin, I really am.’

‘That’s OK. Come in.’

He took Ralph into his study, and offered him a cup of tea.

‘I know your job is to stop me,’ Ralph said, looking shamefaced, ‘but I really could do with something stronger.’

Sturrock hesitated for a moment, but he realised that there was little point trying to put Ralph on a detox programme at this precise moment. They could come to that later.

‘How about a w1?’ he asked, trying to convey in his smile both gentleness and concern.

‘W2 would be better,’ said Ralph. He smiled too, but the smile was too weak to detract from the wretchedness written all over his face. He seemed a lot older than he had on Friday. He looked grey and a little jaundiced and his hands were shaking.

‘You don’t look too good, Ralph,’ Sturrock said as he retrieved a bottle of Macallan he kept in his filing cabinet. ‘I ought to warn you, this whisky is at least three years older than it says on the bottle. We’re not big drinkers.’

He sat down opposite Ralph and said, ‘Now, Ralph …’

‘My God, you sounded like the PM then.’

‘I didn’t mean to, I can assure you. Now what’s happening?’

Ralph was barely coherent as he tried to rattle out what had happened in the last twenty-four hours. When he came to the end, he put his head in his hands.

‘Martin, I’m finished. I’m dead. It’s all over. This is worse than anything I have ever imagined and you have to help me.’

Sturrock looked at the broken man in front of him and felt his own anxiety ratcheting upwards. Ralph Hall was investing his last hope in him, without realising that he, too, was on his way down, incapable of holding a proper conversation with his family, let alone helping someone else through the biggest crisis in their life, all in the gaze of a cruel and prurient media. He searched his mind for the appropriate response. Fortunately, something clicked and years of experience helped the words come out, almost without him thinking about them.

‘Well, Ralph, I can’t say I’m well qualified to handle all the ramifications politically, but from my point of view the questions are these: What do you want to happen? Is there any chance of you getting back with your wife? That’s really very important, because I don’t like the idea of you on your own at the moment. And finally, how are you going to handle your drinking in the short term, when you’ll be feeling under much more pressure and with a lot more focus on you?’

‘I can’t get through this without a drink, Martin, I’m telling you that for nothing.’

‘What about my first question? What do you want to happen?’

‘I want to survive,’ Ralph said in a voice choked with emotion. He then began to emit a sound that Sturrock could only describe as wailing. He sounded like a baby. ‘I want to survive. I want to survive.’

Stella popped her head round the door.

‘Are you going to be able to watch this film with us, or shall we start without you?’ she asked. Then she noticed Ralph Hall was crying, and left before her husband could answer.

Ralph sobbed for a few moments, apologised, pulled himself together a little and said, ‘Martin, you have to understand – this is
everything
I am. Politics is my life and it is draining away. By the morning I’ll be a laughing stock. I could have been Prime Minister but instead I will be a national joke. Because I got pissed. Again. Because I can’t stop drinking and I can’t stop drinking because … Because why, Martin? Why can’t I?’

‘Because it has a hold of you. It’s called the demon drink because there is a demon in there somewhere and it loves to make you feed it with drink. It has a hold of you because there is something in you that you want to forget and not have to worry about. It may be something in your past. It may be your feeling that you’re not fulfilling your ambitions. It may be a sense of inadequacy you don’t want to acknowledge. It can be many things but it has got a hold and we have to break it.’

‘How?’

‘Ralph, it is not for me to tell you what to decide, but your health has to come first. In my opinion, your marriage is part of your health, and your career is the cause of your ill health. That is my professional analysis. I hope it helps you to think about what to do.’

‘But I want to survive. I don’t want to be humiliated.’

‘I know. But the papers will give up on you after a while. You’ll still be there, having to live with yourself, whatever it is that you’re doing, in or out of politics. That is more important.’

‘I want to survive.’

‘Ralph, this is going to sound harsh. But you have lost your job and with it, so you think, your career. You have lost your wife, though I am not convinced that cannot be salvaged at a later date. You have lost everything because of your own actions, driven by drink. But you need to know if you carry on as you are, next on the losing line is your life. Do you understand that?’

Put so starkly, it pulled Ralph up short, and for a moment he put his glass down.

‘Yes I do,’ he said, before looking intently at the glass and then picking it back up.

‘You think this has happened to you suddenly, but I think it has been building for years. That’s how it works, and then once it has worked its
way
in, it can be hellish to get out. And even if you were able to stop drinking, the chances are the demon will still be in there, trying to get you to drink again, or do something else you shouldn’t in order to feed it. You have to see it in those terms.’

‘But how do you beat it? I can’t even begin to think of how I would get through a day without drink right now.’

‘I understand that. But you’re going to have to. You have to see this as the low point. You’re close to the gutter, Ralph. You’ve held it together after a fashion because you’ve had to observe the norms and do all the things expected of you. But that’s all gone. You’re out, and you’ll never get back unless you clean up your act. So you have to clean up.’

Ralph looked at him, full of fear. ‘I know, I know, I know. There’s no point keeping on telling me. But how? Just tell me what I have to do.’

‘Check yourself into a drying-out clinic tomorrow first thing. Get the shakes and the sweats and the elephants going up the wall, and then get on to a proper programme and take it a day at a time. It’s the only way I know. I’ve not been able to push you towards it because I’ve been sympathetic to the extra pressures your career and your profile have put you under. I understand why Alcoholics Anonymous was not an option before, but it might be now. I’ll give you some numbers to call. Find a hotel tonight and then ring them in the morning.’

‘I can’t see it. I can’t imagine a waking hour without drink.’

‘You will. Or if you don’t, you’re dead. Your call.’

Ralph’s head slumped forward as he cupped both hands around his glass. ‘It’s not a great day to start.’

‘It is the best possible day to start.’

‘I can’t, Martin. I know I can’t. I have to get a few days the other side of this. And then take stock. But I can’t not drink. Not tonight. Not now. I just can’t.’

Ralph helped himself to the Scotch. Then came another little blow.

‘I can’t face staying in a hotel, Martin, with all the prying eyes and the people who’ll tip off the press for a few quid.’

He looked beseechingly at Sturrock, who knew what was coming.

‘I don’t suppose I could stay here, could I? It’d be just one night …’

Not for the first time that day, Professor Sturrock felt what little energy he had seep out of him. He couldn’t deal with this, not on Jack’s birthday, with Stella on the warpath, all the preparation he needed to do for his consultations the next day, Aunt Jessica’s eulogy. But there was no way he couldn’t say yes.

Just as he was about to speak, Stella came in again. She had her coat on.

‘Would you like to come and say goodbye to your son?’ she said, deliberately not looking at Ralph.

‘Is he going?’

‘Yes. And I’m going with him.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I can see you’re busy, so I thought I’d go with Jack to his flat and have dinner there tonight.’

‘I see.’

Sturrock didn’t see, but he was conscious of needing to maintain his equilibrium in front of Ralph. He went out into the hall with Stella.

‘There you go,’ said Jack.

‘By which I think he means “par for the course”,’ said Stella.

‘I’m very sorry, Jack,’ he said, ignoring Stella’s barbed comment. ‘See you soon, I hope.’

‘Yes,’ said Jack.

‘You won’t tell anyone Mr Hall is my patient, will you?’

Jack shrugged, a shrug that said, ‘You just don’t get it, do you?’ and followed his mother and Charlie out of the house.

‘Fuck, I really am sorry,’ said Ralph.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Today was always going to be a disaster on that front. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been something else.’

Later, he showed Ralph to the spare bedroom, found a new toothbrush, toothpaste and razor, and suggested he tidy himself up and try to get a little rest.

He needed rest too. He felt so weighed down he could sleep standing up. Not only was the eulogy unwritten, he hadn’t sorted out how he was going to get his mother from her home to the funeral in Somerset. He would call Jan in the morning. As he went to the bedroom, he wondered whether to go and read his emails, and prepare himself properly for the patients he was seeing tomorrow. He knew he should. But he felt too exhausted. He felt weak. He thought if he could get to bed early, he could wake up early and do today’s work tomorrow before he headed to the hospital.

Stella phoned as he was climbing into bed. She said she was staying the night at Jack’s.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Probably for the best, Ralph Hall’s still here … Will you be back tomorrow morning?’

‘We’ll see,’ she said. ‘I need to think a little. Today was just …’

‘I know,’ he said.

Lying in bed, he was conscious of the rubber band tight around his wrist. He wanted to take it off, fling it into a corner, but he forced himself to keep it there. Then began the long wait for sleep to come. Despite everything, he missed having his wife’s body alongside his. Often Stella’s breathing would lull him to sleep, and tonight he needed that more than ever. He knew from experience that sometimes the desire to sleep, when he felt under pressure or was in the midst of a plunge, was matched by an inability to do so. He prayed to nobody and nothing in particular that tonight wouldn’t be one of his nights without sleep. That added to the sense of beleaguerment.

He tried to tell his mind to be still, but it ignored him. He tried to tell it to think of one thing at a time, but it refused. Little fragments of thoughts and fears were flying in from many different angles, some causing him to wince a little. In an effort to calm things, he started to plan out tomorrow’s cases, patient by patient, but the strategy failed when he got to Hafsatu Sesay’s appointment and his mind immediately began tracing the curves of her body. He felt all the old shame welling up in him.

At around ten past three, he heard a noise downstairs. He got up and tiptoed down the stairs. The light was on in his study. He went
in
to find Ralph lying on the floor. He had clearly waited till Sturrock was in bed and then gone downstairs to resume his drinking. The Scotch bottle was empty. He had begun to demolish a bottle of gin, neat. He was now lying on his side, and had a cut on his head, presumably from hitting it himself on the corner of the little table by the fireplace as he fell. At first, Sturrock thought he might need a stitch in it, but he cleaned it up and put a plaster on it and felt that would be enough. Ralph was incapable of speech. Sturrock was incapable of carrying him up the stairs. He hauled him on to the sofa, took off his shoes and went to get a blanket. By the time he came back downstairs with it, Ralph was vomiting. Sturrock felt himself plunge another notch as he went to fetch a bucket. It was almost 4 a.m. and he was going to have to spend the next half-hour clearing up another man’s sick from the carpet and sofa, and do it sufficiently well for his already furious wife not to notice what had happened if and when she came back to the house. By 4.30 he had mopped up the worst, settled Ralph and gone back to bed. He finally fell asleep just before five.