7th December 2024
CHAPTER FIVE
My ears are ringing and my skull is sore. I know I’ve got brain damage from all the beatings I’ve doled out to my own nut over the years. Who needs A N other abuser when you can sort it so expertly yourself.
The lukewarm couple on the table next to me are having a good crack at not staring. One or two glances are shooting my way from the load of bods still hogging the floor. No one’s laughing now. It’s progressed to awkward silence which needs to look coincidental. Just as you can feel the squirming, this essex girl caves in and blurts something out full volume.
‘Babes, Jen, yeh, did you see Vince, did ye’
She’s eyeballing this mixed race woman who’s drawing a blank, shaking her head slowly from side to side. She knots her eyebrows, shrugs a shoulder, then raises her chin and lowers it slowly.
‘Vince?’ She shakes her head again.
‘You know, you were ...’
‘Oh Vince, yeh ...’
It’s blatant that none of them cares whether Jen saw Vince today, least of all the bird asking. It’s obvious even Jen don’t care whether Jen saw Vince today. I’m guessing who Vince might be now. Why he’s come up right after my outburst. Maybe Vince has issues. Some sorry git like me who can’t keep a lid on it.
I flick through the reports, and as I’m pulling one out, the limp case gets up, still clinging on to his dregged up glass as if some tosser’s gonna have a go at snatching it. The calves on his missis are seriously big. And swelling now. Rippling as well. It looks like worms have got in there. Shit, it is elephantitis. I grip my whisky glass and the stuff’s asking me to knock it back so I gulp it but it goes all gloopy in my mouth. Have to spit it out at lightening speed, my heart’s going now. I slam the glass down.
They’ve put something in my drink.
Some drops have landed on my chin. They feel slimy. My stomach does one and I’m wiping my mouth with the back of my sleeve over and over. I spit again straight into my glass and I notice something crawling in the liquid.
I’m up then, lightening speed, sweeping the glass off the table and ripping my jacket off. I feel like I’m gonna retch. I fall over my chair, forced to make a wide berth round to get to the door. Soon I’m bulldozing my way through bodies and flinging the door open.
The fresh air cleans my nostrils and I pull as much into my lungs as they will hold. My heart’s still thumping and I spit a few times onto the pavement. Looks normal so this wave of relief sinks from my head to my toes. Jesus. There’s just one bloke outside stubbing out a fag. Leather jacket, greasy hair and oil stained jeans. He’s got that biker nonchalance and it calms me more. When he goes back in I cross the road and take a wander.
CHAPTER SIX
My hands are still shaking. This is how it started before the first time I wound up on a nut job ward. Food looked like worms and tasted vile. Didn’t matter what I put on the plate. I couldn’t eat. People sounded sort of underwater, like mangled old cassette tape. I had this sense that if I lifted the carpet, the floor would be missing.
I dig in my pockets for a rizla as the ghosts of yesterday loom over me. I have to fight me off. That me of that other country.
I try not to go there. To the past . It’s one of those places off the map, and though you think you know where you’re going you always get lost. But somewhere not too far from this point, there’s this ward, resounding with echoes of her. Etched into the walls, the carpets, the ceilings, all over. In the main reception area is her locker. Always crammed full. Pens, books, papers, packets of coffee, tobacco dropping to the floor. And there’s her. Stuffing it all hopelessly back in, like she had to do every day with her own overflowing feelings. More than likely to stop her strangling people and torching the place.
That place was Enid Ward, the women’s forensic unit, one of several modern pre-fabricated buildings in the grounds of Sheridan Halls, an old Georgian house, set in extensive grounds with an overdose of pheasants and a river with ducks, swans, the odd moorhen and visiting Canada geese. It was bloody clever camouflage. It could have been a school, a college, a charity. No one would have guessed it was in reality just the dump where they throw all the faulty and sub-standard parts while they decide if they can be bothered salvaging any of them. Inside the unit was bleak, cold and clinical. With hours that stopped still. It would have been one hundred percent a hell hole. Except for Dolly.
The Brecon Beacons were in that vicinity somewhere. They still are. Dolly isn’t.
I pull out a creased up paper and start rolling one as I’m walking.
What the hell am I doing here? What kind of muppet faces this kind of shit without backup?
I’m used to fronting things on my own. All day, everyday, all night, every night. That’s my normal. There’s something dawning around this though. Time is shining a light on bare reality. And it’s grim. Like the moment of truth you get when you take a dip in the sea, then look back to shore and the tide has taken you much further out than you thought.
The air is damp and I can feel spots of rain. My rizla is now soggy so I curse under my breath, chuck it and begin rolling another one. I am heading away from the main road along a tree lined side street. A couple have turned a corner and are walking towards me. They don’t look too menacing but I cross the road coz I’m not taking any chances. In front of me is a ginger cat doing yoga on a wall. It reminds me of my favourite film ‘Midnight Express’, the scene in the Turkish jail where Billy and Erich do a steamy yoga routine of sun salutes to Georgio Moroder’s haunting theme tune, while they chant in unison:
‘prison, monastery, cloister, cave
prison, monastery, cloister, cave’
Prison
Ginge is jumping from the wall. Then he is not. He is hanging, lifeless, in front of me, the cat in that film, tragically paying for the life of Max. For a moment I feel every bit of despair that Max felt.
‘Christ!’
Ginge meows to let me know he is ok. He has reappeared at my feet so I crouch down and stroke the animal. He rubs against my leg, then pushes his head into my hand a few times and begins a low purr.
‘Hey boy, how come you moggies don’t need strength in numbers?
He dips down, stretches right out and circles round for more.
‘You tigers are all loners aren’t you? Don’t need mates do you?’ I sit down on the pavement and Ginge wander in and out of my legs, purring.
‘I don’t know how they all do it Ginge, I’m lost with that one. How the hell they always seem to be hanging about together. Wherever you go, it’s the same. In cafes, boozers, anywhere. They’ve always got to be joined at the hip. Every single bloody time. There’s gotta be another bod with them, you can bet on it. Or more than one. Or a whole bloody gang crawling all over the turf. Don’t get how they do it. Sort dates, times, venues and all that crap Ginge. Sod that mate. If I try that ruse with other members of my species, normally I’m lucky if I even get a text. It’ll be along the lines of sorry, can’t make it today, another time, yeh.’
Ginge does some conformational purring. He knows.
‘They let you down, that’s the only thing you can ever rely on with homo sapiens. They’ll always fuck you over. You wind up on yer jack jones you do Ginge. I don’t get it. Where all the other spare parts are. I never see ‘em. I swear to God, they’re all hibernating. Given up looking for their own kind.’
I give Ginge a few full on strokes, head to tail. His purring goes up a scale. Eleanor flippin Rigby, that’s me. No one knows where I come from or where I wind up. And all the lonely people out there, they can’t see a point in going out solo. Either that or they’re too haunted. Too depressed. Or lying low too plagued by some other nightmare condition. Or they’re just excluded full stop.
I’ve let go of the end of Ginge’s tail and he is strolling in the wrong direction.
‘Hey mate’ I click my fingers twice and lean towards him. He does that little sprint thing, out of reach. I’ve depressed him.
‘Okay Ginge. You’re right. You do get the odd one who ventures out alone but usually it’s only coz they’ve got another half which they left at home, too decayed to move. And there’s still the hardcore ones who heroically face the frontier to grab a loaf and a tin of cat food from a shop in that old fashioned thing called the real world. Those bods exist, I’ll give you that mate’
Ginge has returned for one more. I tickle his chin, let him push into my hand, stroke him once more head to tail. As I stand up, he slides away. I check around me and everything seems sound, so I carry on round the block.
As I turn into a tree-lined side street with Victorian houses I see Ginge slipping under a gate. A dog is barking in the distance. It’s getting late, so I head back to The Coach and Horses.
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