Egg Dancing (30 page)

     Linda is pleased, but does her best to hide it.

     ‘See you later then,’ she tells Foley, and crashes down the receiver. ‘Uh-huh,’ she grunts to herself. Then mutters, ‘They’re probably giving everyone one. If Higgins gets one, I’m resigning on the spot.’

     She swigs down the last gulp of her Nescafé, dons her bottle-green mac with the flaps, tethers Katie-Koo to the cot with a little silken harness (apricot) from Hooper Babywear, and strides off to the Ministry to claim her rightful due.

The next time I went to Dr Stern’s office, his name had gone from the door, and there was no sign of the calendar, either. Dr Appleby let me in. She was in charge now. She had grey hair and a smile that seemed pinned to her face like a fashion accessory. Phoney, but welcome nonetheless. There hadn’t been much smiling in Manxheath lately, and the laughter wasn’t healthy. Whoever was doing it always looked like someone being strangled. But don’t get me wrong: I didn’t trust her. I wouldn’t make the mistake of trusting a doctor three times, would I?

     So when she started talking, I just listened. She was tense. The smile seemed to get out of hand, and started to crawl about her face. Her embarrassment grew until she was the colour of raw beef. She hesitated over each word, and faltered her way along the hazardous geology of what she was trying to say, as though at any moment she and her career might topple into a mammoth crevasse. My unlawful imprisonment at Manxheath was clearly a sensitive topic. She took half an hour to spit it out, so I’ll summarise. Your assessment shows that you are a perfectly normal young woman and I have no idea why you are here. This is very serious. You claim that Dr Stern put you on a compulsory section, but we have no proof of this apart from some ashes in his bin. However, from what we understand, you were here originally to visit your mother. How you came to be an in-patient on medication, we cannot fathom. Can you help us, Mrs Stevenson? If there is further evidence of misconduct on the part of Dr Stern, we’ll need to record it, I’m afraid. Never in my twenty-five years’ experience of the mental health system  . . .

     By the end of it, she looked shagged out. I felt like offering her some chicken and mushroom cup-a-soup from the machine.

     ‘Oh I couldn’t testify against him,’ I said eventually. ‘We were lovers, you see. We used to do it here on the desk, sometimes.’

     This seemed to be the last straw for the poor psychiatrist. In a strangulated voice, she asked me to excuse her. She had some urgent phone calls to make. Was I, er, considering pressing assault charges? And more words came creaking over the dangerous terrain: sensitive issue, jeopardise the reputation of, already severely embarrassed by, new management, press enquiries, de-toxification of all patients. Regret. We deeply regret. We regret deeply.

     She stood up to shake my hand, but I said, ‘You don’t understand.’ I was enjoying myself for the first time in ages. ‘Dr Stern was a wonderful lover. I had fabulous orgasms.’

     The truth can be a killer.

     She sat down in her chair with a plonk and went white. She told me, shakily that I was free to go, and that the Health Service apologised for the administrative error that had led to my being holed up here on heavy-duty medication for so long.

     But I’m not stupid. I said I wanted that in writing.

     She said, ‘Of course,’ quite coldly, looking at me sideways, and filling out a form.

     And I want my file, Dr Apple Tree, I told her. The one marked ‘Hazel Stevenson’.

     ‘Appleby. But it’s hospital property. And I haven’t studied it all yet.’

     ‘You have no right to,’ I said. ‘As you’ve admitted yourself, I should never have been here. I’m going to destroy that file personally. Or you’ll be hearing more about my orgasms, and in public. My orgasms, Dr Apple Tree, will be on
News at Ten
. It will be the end of the Manxheath Institute of Challenged Stability.’

     And I took the mustard-yellow file from the shelf right under her nose. I left. When I glanced back through the open door I saw she was slumped in the chair doing some sort of breathing exercise. So off I went.

     This was nothing compared to what I was about to do.

     I’d thought it all through, hadn’t I.

FIFTEEN

Time at the Institute had been as long as a piece of string; the two months I’d spent there might as well have been two minutes, or two centuries.

     When I walked out of reception there was a big sky with scutters of clouds, and a west wind bearing the burnt plastic smell of the Cheeseway Works. It evoked a strange nostalgia. Linda and I always used to know when they were mixing the beige. The smell of the plastic dye was different. They usually did beige on Thursdays, but today was Friday, Monica Fletcher had told me, because Friday used to be the day she had her hair done and it always gave her a pang of yearning for the days when the world was normal. I breathed in deeply, re-absorbing the pedal-bins of my past into my blood. But when I exhaled, it was with a new sense of myself – free, and cathartically changed.

     Standing in the porch, I stared at the patch of lawn where I reckoned the greenhouse had stood. It was covered with clumps of daffodils with yellowing leaves and papery flowers past their prime. The grass was lush; it would soon need mowing. Birds pecked for worms, jostled by the wind. There was no trace of the greenhouse – not even a patch of destroyed turf where it had stood. I can’t say I felt anything either way, in the emotion department.

     I walked down the drive and out. At the front gates I swung round suddenly, on impulse, and looked back. The Manxheath Institute of Challenged Stability stood solid as a colossus, surrounded by noble swaying trees. Still nothing registered, except the reflection that, if you had the misfortune to have a friend or relative afflicted by insanity, you’d feel happy they were in there, surrounded by thick walls, sensible lino, and homely settees. And you’d recognise that this place, say what you will of its management practices, would do them proud.

     I walked down the street, past the Pay and Display, and into Jaycote’s Park. One of my few memories of Dad was rooted here, on this very path. He and Linda were throwing a frisbee – Linda with haphazard violence, he with precision and grace. When the man called Dad swung his arm to hurl the plastic disc high into the air I saw a huge hole in the armpit of his purple pullover, showing an orange floral shirt underneath. It was the sixties.

     I reached the children’s play area. There was no one else in sight, so I plonked myself on a tiny merry-go-round. It squeaked as I pushed myself round in a slow arc. I did five circuits, which on a clock, I calculated, is two days and a night, then stopped. The iron was cold.

     Later, after Dad had gone to New Zealand with the woman from the petrol-station, Linda and I used to play here together, in the days when it was just a row of swings, a slide, and a see-saw, Ma over on a far bench with her shopping bags and her
Pocket Floral Encyclopedia.

     Me and Linda see-sawing: when Linda was up, I was down. When Linda was down, I was up.

     Linda shrieking, ‘Snot fair! You’re up for longer because I’m heavier than you!’

     Me shrieking back, ‘Tiz fair! The one who’s heavier can decide when to push. You could leave me stuck up here for ever if you wanted.’

     Glamour versus control.

     Ma calling, ‘OK, wee brats, you can stop bickering, ’cos it’s time to go!’

     Now, another slow squeaking circuit on the merry-go-round.

     Control was what I was after now. Look where patio furniture had got me. I would retrace my steps back to the Hopeworth. It could be my base for a week or so, while I firmed up my plans. I’d treat it as a sort of departure lounge – a decompression chamber
en route
to so-called solid ground. And it was right next to the park where I was sitting. From the merry-go-round I could see the window of the hotel room Billy and I had stayed in when we left Gregory. That’s Gridiron for you. Everything’s within spitting distance of something else.

     The more I thought about the idea, the better I liked it. The Hopeworth’s soothing muzak, laundered napkins, heavy ashtrays, and crisp sheets all stated, ‘The world is a friendly place.’ Adding, ‘And you, Mrs Stevenson, are sane.’

     Suddenly, I decided to change my name.

     ‘Morning, madam,’ chirruped two uniformed receptionists as I sailed in.

     ‘I’m Hazel Sugden,’ I blurted.

     ‘Yes, Miss Sugden,’ said the man with the big hair. ‘We remember you from before.’

     ‘I like the new look,’ said the woman wearing a lot of gold. ‘Been on holiday, then?’

     ‘Sort of,’ I replied. ‘A rest cure.’

     They smiled genially. Unlike the psychiatrists, they didn’t care if I was lying.

     ‘Any calls for me?’ I asked gaily as I could. ‘Under Sugden or Stevenson?’

     Obviously I would never see the world in the same way again.

     ‘No, Miss Sugden, I don’t think there’s anything in the message book as yet,’ said the woman, riffling through. ‘Nope. Jason will show you to your room.’

     As I followed the narrow-hipped Jason to the lifts, I thought: So far, so normal. And no news from Greg. In fact, I wasn’t too worried that he’d find me. With all the incriminating information I had on him, there wasn’t much he could do. When we reached Room 308, double with cot, I tipped Jason, unpacked my suitcase (clothes, shoes, macramé work and forty women’s magazines), showered with mauve shower gel, applied some Bloody Hell lipstick and fought my way into a strangely cut cotton dress I couldn’t remember wearing before, let alone buying.

     Before I went out again, I took a moment to look at my hospital case notes. I have to admit that I blushed with shame and anger when I read them. Among other things, Ishmael had written: ‘A woman of average intelligence, capable of paranoia and neurosis. Mother-fixated, sexually frustrated, poss. de Cleranbault’s syndrome. Depressed. Candidate for Section?’

     That bit was dated the day after he’d taken me to dinner in Mutton Acre and I’d had that dream about us making love which was so real that it had had to be true.

     Downstairs, in the Hopeworth Executive Centre, I photocopied the page. I didn’t have any plans for it, except one day, when I had the courage, to do what Linda would do: frame it and hang it on a wall.

     I still haven’t got round to doing this.

     I also photocopied a few other pages from the yellow file I’d taken from Dr Appleby, and wrote a letter to go with it.

     I’d spent quite a lot of time thinking in Manxheath. Thinking, mostly, about how to go about getting some dignity. Linda was keen on self-respect as a concept, and on revenge as a method of acquiring it, and I suppose it was her banging on about human rights that made me think perhaps I was owed some. Once I’d started to think that, it snowballed into a plan, with the help of the book Linda lent me. I’d read it in between TV game shows.

     The book,
Ready, Steady, Go For It!
, by the American educator Klaus G. Armstrong, turned out to be quite heady stuff.

     ‘Put yourself first,’ he writes. ‘Because your first duty is towards you. Prioritise your needs, e.g.,

     1. Money

     2. Power

     3. Self-fulfilment

     4. Security

etc. Now focus on that. Run through that list every night before you go to sleep, and tell yourself: I CAN HAVE ANYTHING I WANT.’

     I did what he suggested, focusing particularly on the money because I reckoned most other things would be attainable once I was rich.

     ‘Lay solid plans,’ writes Klaus G. Armstrong, ‘and your fantasies can become reality.’

     His revolutionary ideas, coming when they did, turned out to be quite a godsend.

It didn’t take long to get the letter ready. It was friendly, firm and businesslike (‘Dear Root’), and it outlined the deal in what I thought was quite eloquent language. Nothing overtly threatening: just the facts of the matter (‘Please find enclosed copies of some relevant pages of the GR218 document’), and a list of pros and cons, to save Root Hooper the trouble of working them out for himself. I don’t know much about business, but I do know, thanks to Klaus G. Armstrong, that if you’re a successful businessman you’ll recognise when some discreet damage limitation is necessary.

     A quarter of a million is nothing to people like Hooper, compared to shame, vilification and a possible jail sentence.

     I explained in my letter that what I was sending him was just a small sample of what was in the file. As he would see, his name featured prominently as a projected sponsor for the experiments my husband had incubated. Experiments which not only by-passed the law, but operated in a different orbit altogether. I was quite prepared, I explained, to tell the whole story to the police. The only thing that would stop me was a great deal of money, in cash. (Sincerely yours, etc.)

     I prepared an envelope for the personal attention of Mr Root Hooper, President, The Hooper Fertility Foundation, wrote ‘Private and Confidential’ on the back, and slipped it into my handbag with the letter.