The Dark Threads (21 page)

‘Well, if you don't think I'm sick, why prescribe drugs?'

For the first time he looked uncomfortable. ‘That's … that's difficult to explain,' he said, rubbing his forehead. ‘You've been on drugs for a long time and I personally would like to take you off them but …'

‘But what? Does Dr Shaw …'

‘Have you ever thought of leaving home?' he asked, changing the subject.

‘Yes, but I'm hardly in a position to do that now, am I? I threw that opportunity away when I chucked up me last job. It was the middle of the afternoon and I felt so tired and bored that I couldn't stand it any more. I just grabbed me coat and went home.'

‘I'd have probably done the same in your situation. I don't know how people can stick boring jobs. For instance, I often wonder how people can, say, work on a factory assembly line. I wouldn't be able to stand that for one single day.'

‘Really?' A tiny chink of light penetrated my blindfold. Maybe it wasn't me after all? Still, something scared me about the way he was talking. ‘You'll think I'm sick if I tell you what I did one night,' I said. ‘Roy, Mum's fancy man, rang and she got dressed up like a teenager and rushed out to meet him. Call me I'll come running! I think I wanted her to worry about me. Anyway, I took off and stayed out all night. Slept in a bus parked up in a depot. That's a sick thing to do, isn't it?'

‘In your circumstances, I think not.'

I eyed Dr Copeland curiously. It was a refreshing change to listen to a psychiatrist who was refusing to find ‘symptoms' in everything. He stubbed out his cigarette, looked at me and sighed.

‘What can I say to you? A shuffle of social factors and you could be sitting here behind this desk doing my job. You're easily as intelligent as I am.'

‘You've a lot of faith in IQ tests but I'm enjoying the flattery,' I said, smiling.

‘No, you're wrong there. I haven't drawn my conclusions only from an IQ test,' he said. ‘I've had conversations with you on a wide range of topics, including religion and philosophy. With no disrespect to the other patients downstairs, I couldn't discuss things on that level with any of them. And I can't find anything wrong with you.'

‘Don't you think I'm depressed?' I asked.

‘Well, you don't report any symptoms, such as early-morning wakening, which fits with a clinical depression,' he replied.

‘No, I don't wake early,' I agreed, wondering how anyone could wake early when on such knock-out drugs, ‘but I'm so dissatisfied with life. Sometimes I feel such … despair.'

‘Dissatisfied, sad, downhearted, yes, OK, but that's not mental illness.' Dr Copeland leaned forward and spoke with a tone of urgency. ‘For heaven's sake, Jean, do
something
with your abilities. Don't just throw them away. It's such a terrible waste.'

LOOKING BACK 11

I
N THE EARLY SUMMER
of 1968 I was counting the days to August when I'd be going to Butlins, Skegness, with my friend Mandy. I felt desperately in need of a break from work. My job wasn't stretching me at all, but I hid my burning desire for something more in a brilliant ongoing act of conformity. One night I dreamt I was getting on with my boring work while all the time I was crying. Sobbing out loud, simply howling, the tears rushing unchecked down my face. But the people around me were just carrying on working as if they couldn't see or hear my tears. I continued to work efficiently. I filed invoices, stamped envelopes, typed lists and letters; carried on doing the things I did on an ordinary day at work. But all the time I was crying like the Queen of Sorrows. And no one knew. I awoke, feeling disturbed.

Prompted by my ‘crying' dream, I went to the library and read the careers reference books. What was I interested in? People. Writing. So how about writing features on social issues? Journalism? Yes, but that job needed an ‘outgoing personality' and shyness would hold me back. Oh, damn, damn, damn my shyness! Need O and A levels? Need to go to college? Yes, well maybe I could do that? Hang on, better see if I can write first.

I dipped into my savings and enrolled for a correspondence course in ‘Modern Journalism'. While waiting for my first lesson to arrive, I wrote an article on what it was like to be a teenager in the sixties, about the lack of understanding and guidance, the pressures, double standards, hypocrisy that faced us, including some criticisms of Christianity as it is often practised. I sent my article to the local paper and was amazed when a staff photographer arrived at our house. I posed shyly for him. So there I was a few days later, smiling out from a page in the paper beneath the headlines ‘“
Let's bridge that age gap”, says teenager
'. Letters both praising and criticising what I'd written appeared in further editions, and also arrived on the doormat. I'd never expected such ‘fame' and was flattered, embarrassed and amused by it.

The disco was crowded and noisy as usual. Feeling bleary-eyed with gin, I almost didn't recognise my friend from Rainbow Land days. That girl at the next table, heavily made-up, sad-looking, chain-smoking: my God, it was Carrie, my childhood friend who'd dreamt of going to art school.

‘
Jean! Well, stop looking so bloody surprised. You've changed a lot, too, you know.'

On impulse I invited Carrie on a weekend in Blackpool that I was planning with Mandy. She said she'd love to come.

It was great being with Carrie again on that holiday. Mandy brought along her old friend Jane who was a fairly reserved type (I think by nature rather than by shyness). Later, Mandy told me how Jane was disgusted with the way Carrie and I laughed and carried on ‘like a pair of silly school kids'. But it had all been innocent, rollicking good fun. It's just as well Carrie and I did manage to snatch back, at least briefly, something of our childhood because I don't think either of us found much to laugh about in the years that were swiftly to follow.

Oh, Carrie, did you ever have time, amidst your teenage marriage, pregnancies and painful divorce, to remember a day long ago in Rainbow Land when the sun shone through leaves making criss-cross patterns on our arms and legs while we lay in the grass sharing secrets? What happened to your Art School dream?

I kept asking myself what had gone wrong with a society where violence was escalating? What had gone wrong with a society where the odds were rapidly increasing against adolescents living through their teen years without getting pregnant, suicidal, running away, or becoming addicted to drink, drugs or a cult? What had gone wrong with a society where too many parts of Teensville, that ‘wonderful world of the young', were becoming littered with wrecked young lives?

But I must have believed there was something wrong with
me
rather than society when I went on that Butlins holiday with Mandy a few weeks later. Or I wouldn't have thought my unhappiness should be anything to do with doctors, would I?

CASE NO. 10826

She has never, since leaving school, been in a job or situation which has totally occupied her intellectual capabilities thus leading to a situation of self-centred analysis and concern.

I do not think there is any evidence of this girl being schizophrenic – I believe this is a girl of above-average intelligence, dissatisfied with her life style and thus devoting a lot of time trying to figure out a religious or philosophical ideology to cover her life style.

Dr Copeland

PART THREE

A SELF TO RECOVER

They thought death was worth it, but I
Have a self to recover, a queen.

Sylvia Plath

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

T
IME PASSED
. T
IME ALWAYS
passed, despite everything, and it had passed quicker than I'd realised. Dr Shaw at the day hospital made me aware of that when he called me into the office upstairs, motioned for me to sit on the chair opposite his desk near the window, and asked, ‘What date is it?'

I knew the day was Thursday – I would be going to Vera's for tea as I did every Thursday – and I knew it was May or June in 1972 but I couldn't elaborate further. I gazed out of the window across the grounds where a group of elderly female patients, led by two nurses, shuffled along in single file, each wearing a shapeless cotton dress and old-fashioned straw sunbonnet with a large brim. I wondered if they were on Largactil. That would explain the bonnets, as patients on that drug are often hypersensitive to sunlight. My medication had been switched back to Melleril after my continued complaints about the effects of Largactil. Not that it helped. I felt as dreadful and drowsy on either.

‘I'm waiting for you to tell me the
full
date,' Dr Shaw said, rapping with his pen on the desk to regain my attention. ‘Now, come along, Jean. What have you got to say to me?'

I had nothing at all to say to him. It seemed pointless trying to explain how you lose track of time because it doesn't matter a toss what day or month or year it is when your mind is in a drugged torpor and each dark day that looms ahead merges into an endless tunnel.

‘How long have you been depressed?'

‘Dr Copeland doesn't think I'm clinically depressed.'

His face tightened into a frown and I realised telling him this was probably as unwise as my telling Sister Oldroyd when Dr Prior had said I didn't have to go to OT.

‘
I
think you're depressed,' he said firmly, placing much emphasis on the ‘I'. ‘How long ago was it when you were in Thornville?'

‘I don't know,' I replied sleepily. My after-dinner drugs were taking their toll and I was too tired to answer questions.

‘That's not good enough, Jean. Try to remember.'

‘It must've been at least a year ago,' I offered vaguely. ‘Or maybe longer. Could've been about two years, I think.'

‘At least a year ago? Or could have been two years? Think again, Jean. Come on. How long ago?'

‘I … I don't know,' I said, trying to stifle a yawn.

‘I'll tell you how long ago it was,' Dr Shaw said, rustling the papers on his desk. ‘It was three and half years ago.'

‘Was it?' I stared at him in shocked surprise. How could three and half years of my life disappear just like that? What had gone wrong with time? What had gone wrong with everything? What had gone wrong with
me
? I gazed out of the window again, trying to digest this information. My God, it was three and half years ago! I'd been a teenager then. I'd never be a teenager again. I'd never have those three and half years back.

Dr Shaw rapped with his pen for my attention again.

‘You've been attending this day hospital for about eighteen months. It was three and half years ago when you were an in-patient. Over three years,' he said, tapping three times with his pen, ‘in which time you've been seen by Dr Sugden, Dr Prior, Dr Dean, Dr Armstrong, Dr Copeland and myself. Haven't you?' Starting from Dr Sugden on his thumb, he had waggled each finger in turn as he named each of these psychiatrists.

‘Dr Dean?' I said, looking at the finger which had waggled for Dr Dean and wondering if this name had been thrown in to test me. ‘No, I've never seen a Dr Dean.'

He looked through the papers in front of him, then back at me.

‘Anyway, the point I am making is that during the past three and half years, you've seen several doctors, been given ECT, drugs, and participated in occupational therapy. Haven't you?'

‘Yes,' I agreed.

‘And we're still not moving much, are we? Perhaps we should try a course of ECT.'

I shuddered. I still perceived ECT as a damaging experience that had left me definitely emotionally, and probably physically, scarred. My distressing memories of the treatment were something I would have to learn to live with. Always.

‘I'm not having any more ECT,' I said.

‘We've been trying to help you for a long time, haven't we?'

‘Yes,' I said.

‘Why, then, during all that time, have your parents never once made enquiries about you and your treatment?'

I shrugged my shoulders.

‘Take your mother, for instance. What's she playing at?' he asked, thumping his desk. ‘She should have been on the phone and up here long ago, demanding to know what's going on. Doesn't she care?'

Here it was again. The all-too-familiar mother-blaming attitude – although, Lord knows, maybe I was guilty, too, of blaming her for more than she deserved. But was Dr Shaw saying what he
really
felt, or just wanting to see how I'd react if he pretended to be angry with my mother? I tried to push this thought from my mind because I knew only too well how difficult, how frustrating, how damn near impossible it was to achieve meaningful communication with staff while trying to decide whether or not they were talking in a certain way only to observe your reaction to it. Perhaps I ought to take them at face value more? Maybe Mr Jordan really did agree with wife-beating and meant it when he said he'd hit my mother if in my dad's situation? Maybe Dr Shaw really was angry with my mother now?

My eyes had wandered to the window again while I'd been trying to sort out my thoughts about all this. A sparrow flew past and hopped from branch to branch of a tree, then soared up into the sky to become a dot on the horizon before disappearing far away. I wished I was far away too. Far away from the hospital. Far away from the whole stupid mess. Oh, I wished …

‘Jean, look at me,' Dr Shaw said in his schoolteacher's voice. ‘Stop drifting away into daydreams and listen to me.'

‘I'm sorry,' I said. ‘I'm listening.'

And I did listen. Listened as he bombarded me with questions which bore no relation whatsoever to the reasons I'd sought psychiatric ‘help'. ‘Do you hear voices?' ‘Tell me, Jean, do you ever think things that are obscene?' ‘Do you ever see things that other people don't seem able to see?' ‘Do you sometimes feel other people might be able to hear or control your thoughts?'

I listened until my head spun with his irrelevant questions that in no way connected with my experiences. I wondered if he'd got my case notes mixed up with someone else's. Didn't he believe me when I said no, I wasn't having, had never had, auditory or visual hallucinations? Should I be having them? And, no, to all the other questions. God, I was tired. I stared out of the window again, wondering if sometimes patients confessed to anything if they thought it might end the interrogation.

‘I don't think we're getting anywhere, are we?'

‘No, we're not,' I agreed.

‘Why hasn't your mother asked to see us?' he said again.

‘I don't know. Maybe because she doesn't like psychiatrists.'

‘A lot of people don't like psychiatrists. And you know why that is, don't you?' he said, pausing for effect and leaning forwards as if about to impart some deep words of wisdom to me. ‘That's because psychiatrists get at the truth.'

I sighed, and stifled another yawn.

‘Would your mother see me if I sent her an appointment?'

‘Yes, I think so,' I said.

‘You may go now,' he said, looking at his watch.

As I left the office, I thought about Dr Shaw's claim that psychiatrists ‘get at the truth'. Reaction-testing? No, I didn't think so this time. I decided this was what he honestly believed.

About two weeks later, my mother, wearing her short skirt and blonde wig, sat next to me opposite Dr Shaw while Mr Jordan was seated to our right.

‘Do you mind if I smoke?' she asked.

‘No, not at all,' said Dr Shaw.

‘That's me only bad habit and, even so, I get nowt but criticism for it at home,' she said, lighting a cigarette and holding it between nicotine-stained fingers. She looked away from Dr Shaw each time he spoke to her and was obviously self-conscious. My sympathy for her embarrassment was tainted with anger at the way she tried to present herself as the family martyr, the one who was constantly criticised but never the cause of family squabbles. My anger manifested itself in fidgets, puffs and tuts until Dr Shaw asked me to leave the room.

Later that day, Mr Jordan laughed about my ‘hostile' behaviour towards my mother during the interview.

‘Oh heck, was it so obvious?'

‘It was understandable,' he said, ‘so don't worry about it.'

He leant back in his chair, looking thoughtful. ‘I'll tell you what's
really
puzzling about you. It's that you're so different from what one could expect, considering what I know about your background.'

‘What do you mean?' I asked. I didn't think he knew very much about my background.

‘Do you know what schizophrenia is?' he asked.

I wondered why he'd suddenly changed the subject. I trotted out the usual lay person's definition: ‘Isn't it summat to do with a split personality?'

‘A maladjusted personality.'

‘My friend's sister's been diagnosed as schizophrenic. It's awful. Her whole life's destroyed.'

Thinking about Donna made me feel sad. Schizophrenia seemed the most devastating illness and I was glad I hadn't got that.

‘Anyway, what did you mean about me being different from what you'd expect knowing about my background?' I asked.

‘Oh, a few things,' he said, ‘but never mind.'

‘You've got me curious now.'

‘Well, didn't you once tell me your brother needed an extra year in primary school because he was a slow learner? Quite different from you, isn't he? And it wouldn't be surprising, with your home situation, if you were acting irresponsibly, stealing, behaving promiscuously, ending up pregnant. And yet you're not at all likely to do things like that. You've got principles, which I admire.'

‘Hey, steady on. I'm no angel,' I said, smiling.

How very different, how quite the opposite, were Mr Jordan's and Dr Copeland's approach from that of the other psychiatric staff I'd encountered. Whether they were right or wrong, they certainly helped to shore up my confidence and self-worth at a time in my life when there was much to destroy it. I was sorry to hear that Mr Jordan was about to be transferred to one of the wards.

Sister Speight, a stern-faced, bossy woman, replaced Mr Jordan at the day hospital.

‘Right, Vera,' Sister Speight said. ‘Off you go upstairs to see Dr Shaw, but first take these beakers back into the kitchen.'

Vera must have heard the first instruction but not the second. She was halfway up the stairs when Sister Speight shouted at her.

‘Vera! Vera Dixon! Come down this minute! Are you deaf? Now, what did I tell you to do before going upstairs?'

With heavy heart at seeing Vera, a wife and mother in her forties, being treated like a naughty child, I joined the patients in the therapy room, where a sleepy atmosphere prevailed.

Sister Speight came in, waving some sheets of paper, and clapped her hands for attention. ‘Let's have some signs of life in here. It's like a morgue. We're going to have a sing-song.'

Soon after Vera returned to the therapy room, Sister Speight's sing-song was interrupted because Dr Shaw wanted to take our photographs. He was keen on doing this. We went outside and dutifully lined up and posed for him by the flowerbeds.

‘Aidan, put your arm around Jean,' Dr Shaw directed. I supposed it was because Dr Shaw liked these photos to portray a ‘one big happy family' image.

Aidan looked embarrassed. He was a shy, quiet young man who seemed to live in a world of his own.

‘Come on, Aidan, put your arm round her,' Dr Shaw persisted.

Aidan glanced at me and blushed. Everyone was waiting. Stiffly, Aidan's arm extended to hang awkwardly around my shoulder.

‘Good, that will do,' Dr Shaw said, focusing his camera. ‘Now, smile everybody. You as well, Marlene and Georgina. Say cheese.'

On our way back inside, Marlene said to me, ‘He's a fucking weird creep.'

‘Who?'

‘Dr Shaw, of course. Making you and Aidan pose like a courting couple for his photo. It's sick if you ask me. The other day he got me to sit on the floor with Don Parker and he told Don to put his arm round me. What does he do with all these photos anyway? I'd like to get hold of his camera and shove it up his arse.'

We returned to the therapy room where, led by an arm-waving Sister Speight, we sang ‘Onward Christian Soldiers'. Dad once said that, when he was in prison, the Salvation Army came and sang ‘Bless This House'. It amused me to think of singing to prisoners: ‘Bless these walls so firm and stout, keeping want and trouble out'. What we were doing now seemed no less ironic, but Sister Speight looked deadly serious. Vera, Georgina and I kept exchanging glances and giggling behind our song sheets like naughty schoolchildren. One aid to survival in the mental hospital world was to wring as much humour as possible out of each absurd situation.

A small group of us once frightened a museum attendant on an outing. We were bored and looking for an exit so we could slip out and go for a coffee, but we wandered off down the wrong corridor.

‘You can't get out that way,' the attendant informed us. ‘You'll have to go back along the corridor, turn right and go up the stairs then along the corridor to go down the far stairs which bring you out near the main entrance.'

‘Oh, tickle to that,' said Marlene. ‘Surely there's a quicker way out.' She mopped her forehead and waved her arms dramatically. ‘Let us out. We need to get out quick or we'll be having a funny do. We're from High Royds.'