Love on the NHS (43 page)

LXVI

When Luke's mother would visit sometimes she came without Bruno. Luke's dad did not like his mum using the car which was for several reasons: he wanted to keep the mileage on the clock low, he loathed dog hairs (Luke's sister Grace had a guide dog) and his mother occasionally crashed cars into objects when during parking. Reversing was the biggest problem for her and she was worst at reversing in estate cars; and Luke's father's car was one of those - so she would occasionally visit Luke by train. It was amazing the two of them were still together, especially when he took into account the pressures brought on by the decorating, his father's bouts of being controlling and his mother's lack of compassion for Bruno's health problems.

Luke and his mother went out on the Saturday after she arrived. Clouds crossed the sky like checkers on an inverted chessboard and the sun was nowhere to be seen. Their day trip which was made to Southport was quite dull; people everywhere were quiet and walking hastily. A new day dawned and the sun blazed brightly in a magnificent topaz blue sky. Today they went shopping in Woecaster. A hum of activity was everywhere, the sounds of people laughing and joking. Luke even felt strangers were somewhat friendlier than usual. The weather could make or break a day and the British would have been a very different nation had they lived in Spain.

In a maths lesson in college, an epiphany came to Luke. His english teacher was leaning over him. She was explaining how to do a one hundred and eighty degree rotation using tracing paper. Pointing out a silly error he had made, she began to laugh. She often emitted a hearty chuckle like that when she had gently admonished Luke for an error; he had always found it quite charming and had often laughed merrily himself in return. On this occasion, his mind was too occupied to join in with the jollity. He was busy pursuing one of his mental confidence tricks: he was imagining everybody in the room wore a suit and as the technique made him feel relaxed he did not laugh. As his teacher giggled and Luke remained silent something occurred to him. People laugh out of nervousness sometimes, a kind of involuntary tic that naturally develops to smooth over a situation.   He did not want to overanalyse it - laughter was a beautiful sound, he would let it be - and besides real humour undeniably existed; he was the kind of person who could lose his breath through a bout of belly laughter. Yet there it had struck him. Sometimes people laugh because they are nervous. He recalled Jolly's laughter on the phone and wondered if that now explained it. She might be someone who did not have much confidence. Then it occurred to him perhaps she had never felt a single thing for him. He had merely imagined any affection towards him on her part. Luke's maths teacher did not look happy in the lesson, she did not seem to want to be there. Irritation marked her features, she appeared to bored. Yet she laughed - then laughter was hardly a sign of having a good time necessarily; it could mean so many things. It's a pity, Luke thought, that so many people do jobs they hate. It can not be good for them.

Luke's support worker, Mary, was talking a lot in the lesson today and although she was helpful, it began to make him tired. Too much talking overburdened his brain, it was too much to process. He had read on message boards on the internet other people diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome felt the same way. He considered making a comment to the effect of, "Don't help me too much." Sometimes he wanted peace too. He did not, though, as the English are a polite people, to a fault, as a rule. Recalling his trip to France, he remembered how many people there openly had gesticulating, loud arguments. They could do that in the land of cheese and wine without people getting embarrassed or a fight breaking out. Such violence was not so easily avoided in the United Kingdom, ever proud to be tight lipped.

After college, having arrived home Luke called his mother for a talk.

"Hi. How are you?"

"Hello! I'm good thanks. How is my best son?"

"Not bad. It occurred to me, mum, that Jolly never really liked me. When she was laughing she was just nervous."

"Yeah, she can't have liked you. She wouldn't have got the police on you if she did."

"But what if it was just a misunderstanding?"

"No, it wasn't a misunderstanding. She's not interested in you, love. You'll find someone else. You will find love."

"So you're a mind reader? You can read her mind and know for sure that she does not love me?"

"Oh, okay then, I don't know anything," snapped Samantha.

"Maybe someday she'll change her mind. I might still have a chance with her."

"It's no good for you thinking like that. You've got to be realistic." She waited for his affirmation, a sign he had seen sense. None came. "Do you want to speak to your dad?"

"Okay," replied Luke. As the phone was passed over, Luke lowered himself onto his bed.

"Hi Luke."

"Hi dad."

"Are you alright?"

"So so. Mum says there's no chance of Jolly ever changing her mind - but I think she could."

"Mm. It's hard for you, isn't it?"

"Yeah. If she doesn't want to be with me, I'll live with it. I think she could change her opinion though."

"I think you've got to admit to yourself really that she was just a fantasy to you. What you thought she was, was not actually the case. We often get this picture of people in our heads because of all these feelings we have. I know from when I was younger, it happened to me a few times. I once fell in love with a woman and I really wanted to be with her; but when I asked her she didn't feel the same way. It knocked me sick. I just had to carry on, though, and to be honest I ended up going out with women I didn't feel that strong love for just because I wanted to be with someone."

"Yeah," Luke sighed. "Oh by the way, I've come up with an idea about the guitar. I'm going to rent a self-storage container in a warehouse. There are loads of them around, some of them even near the city centre. People use them for all sorts. Giving lessons, offices, meetings with people. I might rent one out to use as a space to store my guitar: and go and learn during the day so I don't disturb Pete."

"That sounds really good. Make sure you check how expensive it is though, first."

"Yeah," murmured Luke. "Don't want to be paying too much."

LXVII

No matter how many times he attended college, every day was exactly the same. People would talk to him and the conversations would be identical to the previous ones. "Are you going to go on to do an access to university course?" someone would invariably ask. Luke's answer was always no. He would explain the reason: because he did not find it easy being around people. Then they would say, "A lot of people need to be around people too much." They would tell him it was good to be able to be alone, completely missing the point. He did not like being alone, he simply felt he had to be. Going to college was a nightmare for Luke.

In the winter, his fellow students were colder. Luke had little resistance to frosty weather and had to wear big black coats. These along with vests and pullovers made him more stuffy. Somehow the other people in the class still managed to get by wearing almost nothing through wintry weather. He alone appeared out of touch and old fashioned. When the weather warmed up he bought a thinner green coat which earned him a bit more kudos amongst the others. It was a little too padded though and so there was an air of aggression about him. It was only when he happened to find a little leather jacket in a charity shop he finally was regarded as fashionably acceptable.

Of Luke's subjects that he was learning - English, maths and science - his favourite was maths. His teacher in that subject had a half decent sense of humour. Tall and graceful, she was a woman it was easy to respect. She did not inject too much personality into lessons but managed to get the balance just right so that she was lighthearted but pragmatic. Luke's other two teachers irritated him. It was not that they could not teach the subject but when they would raise their voice loudly it would shake him to his core. He wished he could have worn earplugs in their classes. They also placed a lot of emphasis on group work or discussions with the class which made learning more long-winded and less productive. His maths teacher seemed to be friendly but Luke got the impression the other two did not like him. He came to the conclusion he would never be able to cope with studying over a long period again. There were too many subjective egos to stroke in the elusive search for objective knowledge.

In maths lessons despite liking the teacher a lot Luke and the other students had a lot of tension between them. Luke did not know why but for some time it seemed people would keep staring at him. Their disgruntled feelings with him were evident as they sighed loudly. Mary, his support worker turned out to be a boon as when she came in the classes people began to stop looking as much at Luke; and he if he did not have the confidence to ask the teacher questions, he would ask his Mary to ask on his behalf would happily shout out to the teacher for him. Without her help, Luke probably would not have finished and attained a maths qualification as the drain of being disliked in the class previously had brought him very close to stopping attending.

In the last lesson of each of their subjects, Luke and his peers were handed satisfaction surveys to fill in. They were mostly tick boxes with a range of positive to negative responses. There was in addition a comments section at the end. It was hard to be honest with criticism when the teacher would in a minute pick it up and read it. Luke scored the teachers slightly above his real estimation because he did not like the thought of upsetting them while they were in the same room. The situation was a perfect illustration of how the theory of democracy - that of everyone's opinion counting - could be put into practice very badly. It would have been even worse had the survey been handed out weeks before the courses were finishing. Sometimes hospital patients might be asked questions of a similar nature and yet they do not know when they will leave. It could be terrifying for them, Luke reflected, as if they upset the people issuing the questionnaire they may well be rapidly discharged before healing or be repaid through bad care.

After their final exam, Luke and his two closest acquaintances at college Penny and Dave slowly walked in an arc from the college's entrance to the nearby roundabout. They both asked him why he had been stifling suppressed laughter during the exam. "Because the teachers overseeing it were like army colonels," he said. "Po-faced and imperiously demanding I keep looking at my paper when I had finished. I didn't mean to but I just couldn't help laughing. Those kind of serious situations in which people frown on laughter make me laugh the hardest." The hot sun was bathing them radiantly. None of them felt like leaving each other. They were not good friends, none of them felt they had found a kindred soul in any of the other two and yet they were about to lose company they had regularly kept. As people do they felt grief at losing somebody and appreciated more what each others' complimentary points were just before they were about to wave goodbye. Since their relationships had barely formed - and were only half-baked - they at least overcame their loss with little difficulty in a couple of days.

When he had nearly finished college, one day Luke received an email from a woman unknown to him. Her name was Yvonne and she had seen his apartment on HomeSwapper, the home exchange website. She was interested in a swap. To receive an offer was pleasurable enough but Luke was flabbergasted to discover her flat was in Maida Vale - in the very heart of London. If he moved there he would be living among some of the wealthiest people in the United Kingdom, even in the world. London and New York City were the two leading economic cities of the world and to think he could have come all the way from a village in Wales to that - that he could be living an unchained life soon in which ambitions really could be fulfilled - was unthinkable.

It was so exciting; then again he was safe where he was. He had never been burgled or mugged (except in Woecaster by three drug addicts when he had been drunk). And although he did not like his neighbours there were far worse out there. While he pondered upon whether he would take up the offer he caught a bus the following evening to Hardock, just across the border. He was going for chips as the takeaways in Furchurch gave him a bellyache all night and disturbed his sleep. He bought some with a sausage and barbecue sauce and licked his lips as he ate them, delighting at their worldly taste. Shortly after he ate some more of the chips in the exotic dip and consumed all the sausage the chips began to taste sour. The sauce had flooded them with a bitter sogginess The meal ruined, he threw the rest away and although he did not feel ill as he would have from a meal in Furchurch he realized: there was no getting away from it. While he lived in Duldrum, the Duldrum effect would always be there. It would reflected, be mirrored to some extent wherever he went. That constant not quite good enough feeling, the feeling of second best that haunted him. He had to get out.

In a few weeks he had arranged a move with the lady from London and soon was packed up and gone. A new breath of life was leased into him. He changed the details of his profile on his website. Before he had written he was an artist based in Woecaster. Now he was an artist based in London.

LXVIII

When he arrived in London it was hard for Luke to know what to do. He had his basic education now; he knew science, maths and English enough to have earned his GCSEs in them. He had gotten an A in English, a B in maths and a C in science. He had no desire to study further though. All Luke observed of people who went to university was not good. They would be miserable as they crammed in years of studying in crowded lecture halls. Some professors were boring and some could hardly even speak clearly. He was quite disillusioned with how universities had become. Luke was aware that animal testing was done in many universities too as had recently been in the news about a well regarded university in London. Tests on animals were often poorly regulated and cruel. From Luke's point of view it could not be right to test on animals. Surely when there were six billion people in the world, some people could volunteer to test products. If humans regarded their lives as being so precious they should make their own sacrifices rather than sacrifice creatures less able than them.