All in the Mind (35 page)

Oh my God, he thought. I’d forgotten about the funeral. I haven’t finished the eulogy. When will I finish the eulogy? But you have an outline. It’s rubbish. It’s just a sketch. It has no life in it. It has no colour and texture. I don’t have stories. People’s lives come alive with stories and colour and texture. I just have a sketch, an outline, no colour, no texture.

And how will I get Mother there? I’ll have to get up, shave and all that rubbish the normal person has to do to start the normal day, finish the eulogy, sort myself out, get to the home, get Mother, get to the funeral, meet up with Stella if she’s still coming, then do the funeral, eulogy and all, small talk, small talk, cousins blah blah, get Mother back, settle her, God, I hope I don’t have to undress her, I can’t cope with that, I know I should but I can’t and that’s that, I know I’m a medical man but she’s my mother and I want to remember her as young and life-affirming, not old and wrinkled and unable to hold everything in. I want good memories of her because I have only bad memories of him, and maybe that’s why this eulogy is so hard, because I didn’t really know his sister, certainly not after she turned, and I didn’t really know him, and what I know and remember I don’t like, and every time I think of him I feel the world is cold and dark and I’m not safe within it, and how can I be safe when I’m standing in the gutter and red buses are going by and black cabs are going by but there are no lights on? No lights. I can’t see the light. And I want to see the light, but I can’t. And maybe what I should say tomorrow is that my father drove the light out of me, and ever since then, I have been looking for it, and the closest I ever get is in seeing patients, and trying to help them from the dark, and that is the only time I feel joy, when I see them face up to their demons and confront them and deal with them and emerge blinking from the darkness and into
the
light. And oh how happy I feel when that happens but why can it never happen to me? Me? Why can’t it happen to me?

And now the private thoughts were entering a public place. He was standing in the road, on the yellow line, and shrieking the word ‘Me!’ and no cabs were coming, at least they were but none with a light on and he felt close to collapse now, and people were stopping to look at him, and he knew he was outside the hospital and he didn’t want to go back in, but he thought maybe he needed to, and maybe he needed a bit of help, but they would refer him to the best psychiatrist in town, and that was him, so no point doing that, so he would have to soldier on, keep going, just a few more hours and sleep would come, and then dreams that were warm and bright for once and his father wouldn’t be there like a great shadow falling over his face and blocking out the light.

He was about to sit down on the pavement when, finally, a cab came by, and the light was on, and he hailed it down. He was so relieved to sit and to lean back. It would take at least half an hour to get home, maybe more with rush-hour traffic, and he thought he might get a little sleep. But his mind was back on the eulogy. He rummaged through his pockets, but he’d left his fountain pen at the hospital. He asked the driver if he had a pen. The man passed through a little blue bookmaker’s pen. He took out some patient notes from his briefcase and started to scribble some thoughts on the back.

‘
Aunt J … Father … Different era … Don’t blame … They knew not what they did. Each generation must try to improve on the last
.’ You can’t say that at a funeral. He crossed it out and tried again. ‘
Aunt J. Nice old soul. Father. We must forgive. He knew not what he did. Each generation must try to improve on the last
.’ You can’t say that. It is her funeral, not my father’s. He crossed it out.

‘
Aunt J. Nice old soul. Her funeral. But also the end of her generation. Different age now. Each generation must improve on the last
.’ It was getting there. He felt he could say that. ‘
This is not just her funeral but the funeral of her generation. The end of that generation of her family
.’ No. Can’t say that. Her funeral, not his. He’s dead already. No point
reliving
. Leave it. Leave it be. It happened. It’s over. You can’t go back. Try to forgive. Try to forgive. Why can’t you forgive? You tell others to forgive. Why can’t you? Because I can’t. Can’t or won’t? Can’t. Can’t or won’t? Can’t. Can’t or won’t? Can’t, can’t, can’t.

And again a private thought was entering the public realm.

‘Can’t,’ he shouted.

The driver was taken aback.

‘Sorry, sir?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. Just thinking something and it popped out. Sorry. Nothing to worry about.’

‘Oh. OK.’ The driver turned up the volume on the radio and started to watch his fare more closely.

Sturrock looked out of the window, trying to slow down what was happening inside his head. A lorry pulled alongside. ‘Pratt’s bakery. Delivering to your home. 081 454 3298.’

Delivering to your home. A message from the lorry. I am being delivered to my home. Good. That is where I want to go. But who is the Pratt? Am I the prat? Is the lorry there to tell me I am the prat? Who is being baked? Am I being baked? What happens to me when they’ve finished baking me? Am I the baker? And why those numbers? What put them there, at this time? Nothing is there without reason. There always has to be a reason.

‘Who is the baker?’ he asked. The driver, looking into his mirror, said, ‘What?’

‘Who is the baker?’ The driver shook his head.

The cab pulled ahead of the lorry. In front now was a red BMW Series 5. Registration LS 65 BDY. LS, that must be Lesley Sissons. Bullying victim, 1998. Tried to kill herself because those bastards at her school taunted and bullied and cut her hair and ripped up her books and put dogshit in plastic bags in her locker. And twice she tried to kill herself and each time the bastards came back for more till she had to move away. Three years he saw her for and she was so much better at the end than the start. That must be LS. But why 65? She was young, not 65. Maybe she was born in ’65? No, that would put her in her forties. He only saw her a few years ago. What was
her
address? Maybe number 65 something. That’s it. It’s a street number. Lesley Sissons, 65 Something Street. BDY – short for body? Short for badly? Did he treat her badly? Or was it just that life treated her badly? BDY? Be dead yesterday. Could be. Who? Who was dead yesterday? Me? Could be. Or maybe it’s about Aunt Jessica. She died before yesterday. But it’s the funeral tomorrow. Be dead yesterday. I don’t get that one. Another lorry pulled alongside. ‘Bernard’s – Removers You Can Rely On’. That must be Bernard the depressive who thought his wife deliberately made him depressed. He has his own removal firm, isn’t that good?

They passed a road named Archer Way. Harry Archer. Done for murder. Reduced to manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility. He was a schizophrenic. OTO. Must have been nine years ago. Some OTO that was. Broadmoor. Hated going there. Nice people. Some caring staff. But sad cases. Really sad. And no escape. Prisoners. Bolts and keys and gates and barriers. And their minds a prison too. Harry Archer. Dead now. Must be dead. Did he kill himself ? Hope he didn’t kill himself. Lost soul, but not a bad man.

Grove Park. Grove? Malcolm Grove, three years ago. Drugs. Heroin. Crack cocaine. Delusional. Hated his parents. Both of them. Not just his father. Did cold turkey. Did fine. Wrote poetry. Still kept it somewhere. Grove Park. Who’s the Park? Norma Park. Was she drugs or drink? Both maybe. Nice woman. Couldn’t cope with her kids. Hurt one of them. Cry for help. But lost the kid. Social services took her away. He advised reunion after seeing her for a year but it never happened. She moved away in the end. Must be living with Malcolm Grove. Nice they named a street after them. Lovely touch. Will they ever name a street after me? Sturrock Rise – that would be nice. At the junction with Temple Way just down from Sesay Gardens. That would be nice.

The meter said £37. He wasn’t sure where he was but reckoned he was just a few miles from home now. The traffic wasn’t great. He decided he would get out at forty quid, wherever they were. Forty quid took them to the corner of Holt Road and Mansfield Bridge Road. Holt. Never had a Holt. Had a Halton. Margaret Halton. Anorexic. Got
to
the bottom of it eventually. It was her mother. Thought she was being nice, kept telling her daughter she wouldn’t want to be remembered as ‘the jolly fat one’. Lethal. Just got her at the right time. Mansfield. Alf Hixon. He came from Mansfield. OCD. Traced it back to a bullying brother. Bridge. Christian Bridge. Sad. Really sad. Three suicide attempts before he was referred. Saw him four times. Killed himself anyway. Never got to understand him. Really sad.

‘Do you want a receipt?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘OK. You take care now.’

Sturrock didn’t like the tone. Patronising. You take care. Not take care, which is just like hello or goodbye, totally insignificant. But ‘you’ take care. In other words, I, esteemed taxi driver, have decided that ‘you’, i.e. I, Martin Sturrock, need to take care. What does he know? Patronising bastard.

He thought he knew a little short cut that would get him home more quickly. He walked up St Leonard’s Hill. Leonard, as in Len Appleton, widower, broken-hearted when his son Stuart was killed right in front of him, victim of a hit-and-run driver, an accident which he survived but the boy did not. Perhaps one of the saddest cases of his career. It was terrible to see a man suffer so from the death of a child, needed major trauma support. Or Len Temple, David’s dad. No saint he. Hill, as in Rosalie Hill, post-natal depression, six or seven years ago, took to drink. Moved north in the end. Fine now. Always sent a Christmas card. No relation to the other Rosalie in his life, the first girl he had sex with.

He was walking past Mizzi’s. He stopped and stared at the pink door. He told himself he mustn’t go in. He had been there many times before. It wasn’t clean. It wasn’t nice. The woman who ran it was old and rancid. The working girls were, so far as he could recall, poor to average. Don’t, Martin. Just walk on. He was staring at the blown-up photo on the pink door, of a nice smiling face surrounded by flyaway blonde hair. She was lovely, but neither the face nor the hair would be beyond the door. Many men had been enticed in by that photo, for a ‘massage’ or a ‘sauna’. They didn’t even have a sauna.
Don
’t join them, Martin. Go home. You upset your wife today. Go home and make it up. Do not go through that door. But in another part of his mind, another voice was speaking. You’re tired. You’re stressed. Just get a massage. You don’t need to go further than that. But I will, the other voice said. I know I will. If I go through that door, I know I will have sex with a prostitute. Then another part of his mind, the practical part, joined in. You have no cash. And you can hardly use a credit card, can you, not when Mrs S will see the bill?

The practical part set the other two voices back at each other. ‘Don’t walk through the door’ was saying that if you don’t have the money, it is the man upstairs telling you it is not meant to be. ‘Go through the door and only have a massage’ was saying there is no such thing as a divine force shaping the world because if there was, there would be no need for Mizzi’s in the first place, we would all meet the partner of our dreams and live in godly union happily ever after. For heaven’s sake, ‘go through the door and only have a massage’ was saying, it is only a massage and you deserve it. Then ‘the minute you walk through the door you’ll have sex’ was saying give yourself the option. Go and get money from the cashpoint round the corner in Sutton Road and give yourself the option.

Sturrock couldn’t think of a patient called Sutton, or any connection with Sutton. The Sutton Road voice won the argument though and he went to withdraw £120. On the walk back, ‘treat yourself to a massage’ won the argument. He went through the pink door. He asked for a massage. The madam smiled knowingly, took his cash and said Angelica would be along soon.

As so often before, the moment he was in there, cash handed over, girl allocated, clothes taken off, massage underway, he wished he had been strong enough to withstand the urge. The expectation, so often, was better than what followed which in turn was followed by the surge of guilt and then, days later, the steady romanticisation of what had happened so that nice light and nice towels, dark sexuality and the stirring of desire could be recalled, but leaking taps, used condoms lying in bins and needle marks in the arms of sad girls were not. His mind had calmed a little on being forced to communicate
with
someone else, first the old woman who welcomed him and now ‘Angelica’. He was in a state of heightened anxiety which led to him being more quickly aroused than was sometimes the case and once that happened, he just wanted to get it over with. He imagined that suited Angelica as well.

‘A blow job will do,’ he said.

‘You paid the full whack, love.’

‘No, it’s fine. Please.’ He had suddenly felt repelled by the idea of seeing any more of her body than was already on display. As she started to suck him off, he was trying to paint his mind blank. He closed his eyes, tried to push aside all thoughts as soon as they came in. Work. Patients. Kids. Parents. God. Stella. Booking holidays. Remembering to get the stamps for Stella on the way home. More patients. Kids again. Stella again. Once, he could almost see the blank, but then a thought crept in, filled out the space and as soon as he chased it away, another would float in. And down below was Angelica. Never was a name so ill-fitting. Demonica would be more apt. The mind full of angels and demons. The whorehouse full of Demonicas called Angelica. He could feel her hair stroking his stomach, her hand working up and down his penis as her mouth played around the tip. How many times had she done this? What did she think about? What did she think of the men she fucked and sucked? Did she see them as clients, or patients? Was she repelled by them, or by herself ? By both, or neither? Did she have kids? Would she want her daughter to do what she does, like once he had wanted Jack to be a psychiatrist, and his father had wanted him to be an engineer? Was she any more or less worthless than he was? What he did to the mind, she did to the body, tried to take stress from it and add pleasure to it. They were both in the happiness business. Their patients/clients all came from somewhere in a land named Not Happy. He was a prostitute of the mind, she a psychiatrist of the body. Yet he needed years of training, while she needed no more than the ability to fight repulsive thoughts about repulsive men.