Hawthorn and Child (18 page)

She slept late, was late for school. Her mother stayed in bed. Beth nagged at her. Stuart kept an eye on her. Byron asked her was she OK and gave her a hug. She was fine. She was tired. She couldn’t remember most of the things she’d talked to Stuart about. She wondered what he’d said to the others. Whether she came across as needy, weepy, clingy. Those things. She ignored him.

She was still annoyed at her dad.

He closed down when he need to be open. That was what she thought. When there was something wrong he became efficient, busy. He dealt with it. Like a policeman. Like you’d want from a policeman. He would arrive and sort it out. Then he’d leave. And it was sorted. It was fixed. It was a closed case and he was closed and everything was shut off and quiet and finished and he forgot about it.

But when there was nothing wrong he was funny and kind and patient and open.

She thought it through again. She wasn’t sure what she was complaining about.

It was too hot. They took the tube down through London, holding hands and allowing themselves to be pressed against each other. She had a sheen of sweat on her forehead. Stuart was wearing a T-shirt and kept on lifting and flapping the front over his stomach.

They hadn’t been anywhere together for a while. She’d been spending time with her mother, who was still wobbly. She’d sob in front of the television. She’d sit at the kitchen table just staring into space. Cath didn’t know why. Well, she knew why, but she didn’t understand why the grief was so intense. There was something she didn’t know about, she was sure of it. Something more to the story. This Misha. How was it that she had never been spoken of before, and now she was all over Cath’s life, even though she was dead. Nothing, then dead, then everything.

Her father came round a few times. More than he had before. He and her mum would sit in the kitchen chatting quietly. She sometimes sat with them for a while. But it was too weird. They just talked to her, about her, while she was there. So she would go and watch television, or go to her bedroom, and she would hear them murmur together for a long time. Once, after she had gone to bed and fallen asleep, the front door woke her. It was her father leaving. She heard his car start up. It was 4.30 in the morning.

She didn’t know what it was.

She tried to ask her father. He would not help. All he said was that they’d been good friends once, her mother and this Misha. That was it. She wondered whether they’d been lovers or something. She couldn’t imagine it. She wondered whether the three of them had been mixed up in some sort of love triangle thing.

Her father didn’t want to talk about it.

It was cruel. It was unfair. She was the one who had to live with her mother. And for a week now she’d been weird and silent and weepy. The day of the funeral, Cath had come home to find her in bed, still wearing her black dress. She’d had to call Heather again. What was wrong with these people? It was like they forgot she existed. As soon as their own stuff hit them, they forgot about her. She had to fend for herself, knowing nothing.

She’d told her father that she couldn’t see him that day. That she was seeing Stuart.

They arrived at Waterloo and walked along the river, strolling, holding hands. He looked so good. Byron had said to her a few days before that Stuart was always good-looking, but now that he was going out with her he was beautiful. He’d said it really nicely, quietly, with a big smile. Then he’d made her promise not to tell Stuart he’d said it, or he’d kill her.

The Tate was quiet. There were still tourists and some big groups of kids, but it was nice, it was OK, it was easier to stand and look at things than it usually was. They went searching for the Rothko room. She had told Stuart about Rothko, a little. How he did not move her. And he had wanted to see. He said he knew a song about Rothko by an American singer that he liked. She rolled her eyes. The only things he knew about were things he’d heard in songs. He laughed at her.

They looked at the paintings. The room was almost empty. Large flat blocks of colour frayed at the edges, set against the dark. It was gloomy in there. Why was it so gloomy? It was cool, at least. Cath sat on a bench and tried again with Rothko. Stuart stood at first. Then he sat beside her for a while. They didn’t say anything. She wanted to let him decide for himself. He stood up again and walked around the room. Then he stopped in front of one of them and his head dropped on to his chest. Then she saw him wipe his eyes and look up again. She thought he was bored. He didn’t get it either. She stood and went to him and took his hand, meaning to lead him out of the room so they could look at some other stuff or get a coffee. He turned to her. He was crying. Not sobbing. But there were a couple of tears running down the side of his nose, and his eyes were red. She stared at him.

He wanted to stay in the room. He moved around. She watched him. He breathed deeply. He stood still. Really still. He sat on the seats a couple of times and just looked. She wondered if he was taking the piss. She went and sat beside him.

– What do you think?

– They’re beautiful. I don’t understand how they work. But they’re just beautiful.

He wanted to stay there for ages. He looked at the Rothkos, and she looked at him.

In the café afterwards she complained about her parents. She told him that there was something they weren’t telling her about this dead woman, Misha. She told him it wasn’t fair. That they just weren’t thinking about her. He nodded.

– Maybe they can’t, he said.

– They could try.

– Maybe you had to be there. Some things you can’t share, you know?

He got a second coffee. He wanted to talk about the Rothko room. He seemed a bit embarrassed now, that he’d been so moved by it. He smiled and shook his head.

– They’re so great though. I could look at those things all day.

She told him about her dad and the eggs.

– I made my dad scrambled eggs one morning yeah? When I was staying in his place for a weekend. He sleeps late you know. And I made him breakfast when he got up, you know – good little girl. And it was like, scrambled eggs on toast, and some bacon and a tomato. Stuff like that. And a pot of tea. Glass of orange juice. All posh. And he really liked it. And then he was trying to show off that he knew about art – he’s always doing this – and he splatters ketchup all over the scrambled eggs and he said,
Rothko eggs
. Pointing at the eggs yeah?
Rothko eggs
. I didn’t know what he was on about.
They look like a Rothko painting,
he said, all pleased with himself. And then I realized that he’d gotten Rothko mixed up with Pollock!

She laughed.

Stuart smiled.

– So now he still calls scrambled eggs
Rothko eggs
. I never corrected him. He hasn’t realized yet. So he’s always asking for
Rothko eggs
. I bet he does it at work and everything. Trying to show off how cultured he is. Down the police station, you know? Pretending he knows his art.
Had some great Rothko eggs this morning.
And no one has a clue what he’s on about. It’s so funny.

And she laughed, to show how funny it was.

Stuart smiled at her. He looked at her and smiled and said nothing, and he rubbed his eyes.

Later that day she asked him about the scar.

– What happened?

– What?

– There. How did you get it?

– Shark bite.

– Really though.

He said nothing for a minute. Then he lay on his back and looked at the ceiling.

– A few years ago. I was swimming in a river. Sort of a river thing, near where we were staying on holiday in France. Me and a friend went swimming. He was a local guy. And we got snagged on some stuff under the water. There was some old farm machinery or something dumped in there. And we were kind of diving down and exploring it. It wasn’t very deep but we were trying to … I don’t know … pretending it was a
shipwreck
or something. He pushed a bit of it I think. Or pulled it. Or maybe he didn’t. But it shifted. We got …

He stopped.

– What?

– Some part of it caught my leg when I was freeing myself. Some sharp edge. And cut it.

– Shit. Did it hurt?

– Yeah. Well. Yeah, after a bit. I didn’t notice at first.

– ’Cos you have arteries and stuff in there. You could bleed to death.

– Yeah.

He said nothing. She looked at him.

He was quiet. He had drifted off somewhere. She traced shapes and words and pictures on his chest with her fingers. The sun lit the curtains and the music made her drowsy. She was lulled by his heartbeat into feeling nothing more than a vague wonder that nothing in her life had really started yet.

She went home. She thought about their day. Something had gone wrong but she didn’t know what.

I am ill. I have been ill for some time. Years now. It has become years.

I believe, though I cannot prove, that my illness is due directly to the perverted Catholicism and megalomania of Mr Tony Blair, former Prime Minister, whom I met once, whose hand I physically shook (at which point he assaulted me), and who, if you should mention my name to him, will tell you that he met me, or that he did not meet me, or that he cannot recall. Because he has all the answers.

My illness is debilitating. It disbars me from work. It prevents any social interaction. It has been, my illness, both
misrecognized
and dismissed. Misdiagnosed. And dismissed. As malingering; as a problem of my own creation, of my own invention, as if it was my child or my garden or a song I was singing, or something I have idly, on a quiet afternoon say, made up, invented, as a story to tell mental health
professionals
because I have nothing better to do. It generates anger, pity, bloody-minded stinking compassion, notes between doctors, phone calls and files, avoidance, the disappearance of friends, and all that sort of Englishness. I sit in my chair.

Compassion is a weapon wielded against me. Amongst others.

I’m not blaming you, specifically. I don’t blame people, specifically.

However, Islington council, my landlords, my sister (against her entire knowledge), and the NHS are all trying to kill me. Trying to enable circumstances (to arise) in which my death becomes inevitable. They are involved in an
unconscious
, unarticulated conspiracy to kill me in other words. It’s not a plot. It’s nothing so straightforward as a plot. No one can be blamed in any individual way. It is an inevitable, bureaucratic conspiracy, so devolved and deniable as to be invisible; so peculiarly set out in rules and procedures and protocols and directives and guidelines as to allow plausible public denial of responsibility on the part of any of the
participants
at any stage of the process.

Initiated by Mr Blair. Of which I have no proof. A small wart. On my thumb. It sings to me in the mornings in warm weather. My doctor shrugs at it, and no ointment works.

No blame. You understand me. When they write the report, my report, the report into my case, they will find some systemic failures, some culture of this or that, some
procedures
for tightening, some lessons to be learned. No heads will roll. Dead children. You understand me.

*

I like where I live. I live on my own.

It’s not necessary to be paranoid or to harbour any delusions in order to feel that I have been abandoned by the mental health services. Because I have. They want me to fail, mentally. I have innumerable documents if that sort of thing interests you. Tracing a clear trajectory of discouragement, in which a subtle strategy is discernible. No single thing. Cumulative. Terribly slow, terribly patient. The gentle whisper of the letters and the reports and the assessments.
Die
, they say. You may as well.

My GP, one example, has prescribed to me, for the pain, enough Tramadol to kill me several times over. Go on. Another example, the mental health doctor who first assessed me in Archway had an office on what appeared to be the 12th floor, with a large window, and she sat me within easy reach of the window and also left me alone for several minutes in the room with the window on the 12th floor, which had a view of all of the east or south or west of London from Archway. All that sky, like the city is upside down. So that if you stepped out there you would rise. Several minutes. Perhaps seven or eight. Go on.

I do not have any trouble with my neighbours and I have never had any complications with either the police or the security services, nor have I ever stood for elected office or campaigned for any political party nor have I ever agitated or demonstrated against the authorities in any way, not even on a march – and I never even went on the anti-war march – so there can be no reason for what is happening to me that is public or which may have been expected to arise as a result of my previous actions. I can only assume that the council and my landlords and the NHS have an occult agenda to which they secretly adhere, created for them by the Tony Blair government, to encourage into complete despair any person who does not hold a stake in the national project involving bank accounts for babies, education for profit, and
pretending
to fight wars – when in fact all that is happening in Afghanistan, and all that happened in Iraq, is that British soldiers are invested in American projects so that the Tony Blair Agenda can feel that it is a stakeholder in the future, which it cannot imagine as being anything other than American, and this is our national embarrassment.

I am not a stakeholder. I hold no stake. I pay my taxes. My taxes buy weapons and arm soldiers. My taxes send the soldiers to Afghanistan and formerly Iraq to be terrified and traumatized, and to inflict terror and trauma upon others, including the killing and maiming of others, and I do not support Our Boys, it is a volunteer army and I believe that every one of those volunteers is misguided and that their innate, childish, boyish attraction to aggression and
adventure
and camaraderie is being perverted by malign and morally vacant politicians who are not even clever enough to be operating to anyone’s advantage, not even their own, who are merely drunk on narrative and who see themselves as part of something bigger, such as the delusion of History, and who are impressive only in the scope and depth and profundity of their stupidity.