4.
The recreation room, or the Wreck as it was known, was as run down as the rest of the building, hollowed of games and equipment by years of neglect, budget cuts and systematic thieving. Some well-meaning soul had brought in an ancient arcade game, but it had probably never worked in Jess’ lifetime: it just sat there mournfully, rusting and peeling and gathering dust in the corner. There were a few old ping-pong tables without balls, an air hockey table without a puck and a plastic set of darts that never stuck to the board, no matter what you tried. It was always empty when she came, just a pointless and forlorn room, but that was OK; she liked the smell of old dust, and the feeling of changelessness. It could only have been thirty years old at the most, but it had it’s own antiquity, it’s own history, shades of men and woman moving and laughing on the walls. When the weak sunlight flooded in through the grimy windowpanes and made the dust motes waltz slowstep through the old wooden chairs, it could have been an ancient forgotten attic, or a broken-down summerhouse in a forest of weeds. It was her fairytale world, straight out of any novel; she came as close to feeling peaceful as she ever did, thinking here is my secret garden. All I deserve, most likely, and all I will get, certainly.
She drew in a long breathe of musty air, and sighed in relief. There was a long, low bookshelf filled with the sort of book you might find in East End charity shops, warmed by a long square of sunlight from an opposite window. Jess lowered herself slowly down to sit in it, letting it wash her body over in weak gold; she felt entirely at home.
She’d read most of the books here in her time, and they were an odd mixture, probably bought on the cheap. Bronte and Dickens stood next to penny thrillers and crime novels, 1984 rubbed shoulders with The 1984 Boys Own. Perhaps not the best books for a mental hospital, she conceded wryly, not as if anyone else would read them. She, though, had found some real gems trawling through the deep piles of parchment and ink, books that were the only thing to offer her some comfort in long hospital hours of grey and harsh white. Sophie’s World and Ender’s Game, Northern Lights and The Once and Future King; philosophy, science, fiction, hours spent squinting at blurred print thinking up unknown endings in the dark. If this was her secret garden, then these were definitely her plants, growing and flowering in her mind. Sometimes, she wondered whether fiction and stories were the only thing she was made of, now.
She’d left her bookmark in Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto; finding it shoved in between the pages of an erotic novel was the first thing in a long time that had made her laugh out loud. It was so absurd, the way everything worked, and so painful sometimes, but there were moments she couldn’t help but smile at the idiocy around her. And they said she was mad.
Settling down to read, she thought of Karl Marx in his cheap London apartment, living on handouts and taking quick runs at the maid, and she thought how sad it was that the brightest sparks should be the ones who had the least. There was no point in denying it, she was clever, and always had been, but she just couldn’t find a place to use it, to exercise it, just to think without stopping for as long as she wanted. She needed a month long Classics lesson, or a library with no closing time; as much as she hated herself for being unable to run, she admired Marx, and Neitzsche, and Socrates; all the ones who lived in squalor, and came out smelling of genius. He was long winded and pompous, was Marx, but he knew what he was talking about, and he had a turn of phrase that was truly magnificent. A spectre is haunting all of us, Karl, she thought, and some of us cannot lose our chains. Not for want of trying.
She woke with a start and a shiver, wondering how long she had been asleep; she never usually let herself get so lax, not even here. Her watch showed only half an hour had gone by, but she had to blink away the most vivid and surreal dreams from in front of her eyes.
Then she saw the boy.
He had pulled one of the ping-pong tables into the corner of the room, and was sitting cross-legged on it, reading his book. A tingle ran up from the bottom of her spine, and she was suddenly afraid; not because he was him, but because he was anyone, and he was here. She scrambled to her feet too fast, and smashed her head on the middle shelf behind her: for a moment, everything was stars and specks, then she sat down again, slowly. She wanted to hide the tears in her eyes, and she wanted to be sure where they had come from.
He hadn’t even moved, just sat there watching her without very much expression, eyes green and thoughtful over his book. She wondered, suddenly, what her own expression was like, and couldn’t quite imagine it; it has been so long since I knew what my face was doing, she thought.
“What are you reading?” she asked him, more to hear what his voice was like than because she cared. Wordlessly, he held it up: The DaVinci Code. She snorted, even though she hadn’t meant to care, and he laughed, and took the cover off the book, letting Buchan’s Courts of the Morning see the daylight. That was better, she said to herself, though slightly annoying; now he was too interesting to ignore, which was always a pain.
“Seems like a funny place to be.” He saved her the problem of continuing by proving he had a voice after all. “A teenage girl in a mental hospital, sitting in an abandoned games room reading high-end social theories.” Gently mocking, she thought, how gloriously normal. “Still, nothing more out of place than anything else here. I wonder what your Dr. Merton would think if he found you here.”
She felt something inside her freeze up; all she could see was Merton’s face, imposed on her eyes, ready to take away whatever he could lay his hands on. She looked up, stricken, wondering who she’d given her secret over to. Judas, Jesus, whoever he was, he shook his head quietly.
“I wouldn’t tell him,” he said disgustedly, “I wouldn’t give the inhuman bastard anything he hasn’t got. I’m surprised he doesn’t know you come here.” He pushed brown-blond hair back from his eyes, frowning. “I’ve never met someone with such a need to win. It frightens me.”
Somehow, his admission made it all right: there was one thing, at least, that they had in common. “I’ve not seen you before, and I’ve been here…” she hesitated. “I’ve been here a long time now, I know who people are. Nobody uses the Wreck but me; it’s mine.”
She thought she had given away a little too much feeling, but he only nodded. “I’ve been moved here, forced transfer, they thought the woman who I had helping me couldn’t deal with it. She couldn’t deal with, that makes sense, doesn’t it? Anyway, your Dr. Merton is supposed to be good with helpless cases; by the good Counsellor Jackson did, that looks like me.”
“What’s he done to you so far? You don’t look too bad for being one of his.” Not like I do, she said silently, as if I’ve wandered off and left my mind in fourth gear.
The boy’s calm face tightened slightly, and he tilted his head slightly, just enough for her to see a large bruise darkening the side of his face. She was quite impressed.
“He doesn’t usually leave marks, doesn’t want things brought back to him. You must really have pissed him off something royal.” The memory seemed to cheer him up, and he laughed again, seeming slightly pleased with himself.
“I was a little faster than he expected, that’s all, and I hadn’t let him figure I was going after him. I only hit him once, and he knocked me clean off my feet, but it took him about twenty minutes to stop his nose bleeding.” His eyes were sparkling slightly. “I don’t know what you let him get away with, but he seemed pretty put out.”
Jess felt a serious pang of envy; being a girl wasn’t usually something she thought of as a disadvantage, but right now she wanted to be six feet tall and fast enough to land a blow. “Well, we have been trying,” she said in a slightly disgruntled way, “but he expects it every time. Violence isn’t on your profile, I’d guess, or he’d have been ready for you.”
“It is now,” he said comfortably, climbing down from his table to sit against the wall. “He’s still trying to sound me out, isn’t quite sure what to make of me yet: I thought I’d put him on the defensive right from the start. Stops him from being too sure of himself.”
She admired him for that, his willingness to play the game with Merton, but she was the voice of experience here, and she knew that good tricks and enthusiasm just didn’t hold. There was something about Merton, something about the way he strangled everything, bit by bit, wearing you away. But she wasn’t about to tell him that.
For the first time in almost two years, Jess found herself having a real conversation, and enjoying it too. He wasn’t the easiest person to talk to, but then, that was what she seemed to enjoy most; there was no point in exchanging pleasantries ‘till Kingdom Come, what she wanted was something she could fight over. Politics, religion, stupidity, they all whirled into one heady mix, and she realised she’d told him much more about herself than she’d intended. There was a brief moment, then she decided she didn’t really care too much.
David Arkwright, green eyed and thoughtful, wasn’t shy about himself, either. “I was born on the borders,” he said, busy leafing through Marx and chuckling. “Just inside England, only moved up north recently; don’t think much of your weather, I’ll tell you that for nothing. Rain’s all well and good, but I can’t stand this bloody candle you call sun. Stretham’s barely north of the lakes, and I’ll see more light in a day than you get in a week; probably why the town’s full of headcases, can’t think why I shifted here.”
Jess worked backwards unconsciously, from Merton, to school, to the police, and finally back to normality, and he seemed to understand well enough. “Don’t feel like I’ve known a moment’s normality in years,” she said quietly, not sure whether to tell him or not. “You wander from pointless school to an equally pointless home, then here. Clapboard and grey brick, that’s my life. I don’t want to feel like this, but I know I deserve it all; I started it, and I can’t stop it.” She shivered, thinking she’d made a fool of herself, but he was looking at her knowingly.
“Even worse, you don’t want to, aye?” His tone was light but not joking, and she appreciated it. He seemed to be struggling for something to say, then gave up with a shrug. “I can’t think of any way out of it. It’s all nature, but they reckon they can beat it out, or burn it out, or something. Screws with your head, then shrugs when you chuck yourself off a bridge, I’ve seen it. Or I’ve seen the kind, at least.” He looked at her, troubled. “You ever see my eyes shifting too fast, you lock me up somewhere for a while. I don’t want to be another motorway pancake, not if I can help it.”
It was odd, she thought later, how natural the comment had seemed, how she hadn’t flinched or laughed nervously, or told him not to be silly. Just nodded, and gone on to something else; wondered at one point whether she should ask the same favour. Looking at his absorbed face, she wondered how two people so alike couldn’t be normal. If this isn’t everyday life, she thought, then I’ve never seen it, and I never want to. This is normal enough.
Silence wasn’t particularly deep, but conversation wandered on anyway, quiet words following the sun through layers of dust, tracing patterns back to their beginning. Jess told him about childhood, days spent stalking shadows in the green hills south of Dublin, meaningless stories filled with animals, plants, adventures, ghosts, everything nobody would ever care about. It was nice to talk to someone who didn’t think she was insane. Or didn’t care, at least.
“I wondered where your accent came from.” David was fiddling with the arcade plug, as if he could succeed where thousands had probably failed. “You don’t seem to speak through a bowl of soup like most; you wouldn’t believe how hard I’ve had it trying to get a damn cup of coffee.”
She snorted and threw a book at him, and he laughed. It was a reassuring laugh: not too loud to be fake, not too quiet to be patronising, just a short, honest chuckle. I wonder if I could tell a man by his laugh, she thought, watching him straighten the bent pages and put the book back on the shelf; I wonder if I could take everything I ever saw in a movie and make it work, just today.
He looked up and caught her eye, and it was such a perfect moment that she had to laugh again, because it was good to have someone to laugh at, laugh with, and it didn’t really matter who he was.
“Goodness,” she said finally, with a smile, “I think I’ve fallen in like with you. And it doesn’t happen often, just in case you felt slighted.”
He grinned. “Not especially.” It really was infectious, that good humour. “I don’t think I could deal with anything more.”
She looked around for another book to throw, but liked all the ones close to hand too much to risk tearing; she contented herself with another snort. She tried to think of something else clever to say, but David was looking at his watch.
“It’s nearly five,” he said thoughtfully. “They’ll be sweeping the wards to make sure none of us have run off: I guess you don’t want to be found here, do you?”
Jess blinked in surprise, and stared up and the window, where the sun was already mostly gone. Time wasn’t allowed to go this fast here, she thought, and then: maybe I just haven’t been watching the kettle enough. She got to her feet slowly; her knees ached after sitting for so long.
There was a strange current in the room, as if neither one was quite sure what they were supposed to do. It wasn’t quite awkward, but it was the closest thing Jess had come to feeling unsure; she thought about saying something, then decided she didn’t care enough.
“You’d better go out first,” David said mildly, as if completely unaware of it. “If they find me, they’ll just think I’m messing around, but you: you’d have some answers to be finding, I expect.” He held the door open for her. “Break a leg, red, don’t let Merton get you down; if I can break his nose, the least you can do is not let him break you.” He winked. “You’re much to interesting.”
Red, she thought, there’s a name, insultingly affectionate, almost; still, it seemed to fit well enough. Jess winked back and walked out to face the normal world again. I’d much rather have a crazy one, she thought. It makes so much more sense. Behind her, David chuckled as if he understood what she was thinking. Which he probably did.
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