Hut71

It was a first. I never thought that I’d say I was glad to get back to work. But I was. The weekend had passed in freeze-frames. Maureen Hargreaves standing at the bar beside Snoddy Snodgrass with a sliver of make up that couldn’t conceal the moon-socket of a black eye. But there was more than one clown. I played pass the parcel with words, laughing my false laugh, flinging them here and there, to anyone that would listen, but they all came back to me, standing alone at the bar, nursing a pint, not listening to the rattle of music on the jukebox.

I couldn’t remember going home. I knew I’d been sick; a feeling of my mouth not being big enough, and nose filling like a bucket, so I snorted, choked and coughed, and couldn’t breath and thought I was going to die. I wiggled my toes, under the covers, like an amputee, to feel if I’d stood on the snail’s trail of sick that led to my bedroom door. But it was the shock of having no Ys on that made me sit up. I was naked and wondered if mum had wandered up the stairs, after me, and put me to bed.

It was still dark; there was no bird’s song. I realized that it was still early enough to get a mop and bucket to clean up, and leave a sweet smelling trail. If someone on the ward was sick, on the other hand, I just couldn’t look at it. The smell was enough to make me boak, and I’d have to get someone else, like Pea-Heid, to clean it. Somehow, it didn’t seem that bad, in my room, because it was mine. The carpet would be ruined, but it was already too old to take a good beating: a balding, fag- burned and beaten sump, which would need to be prised from the floorboards on its deathbed.

I sneaked my bedroom door open. But it was already too late. The arc of the bathroom light caught me. Mum was on her hands and knees scrubbing the walls, the sink, and the toilet-pan.

‘You were in some state last night,’ she said tight-lipped.

My head was too heavy, and I couldn’t lift it up, to look at her. ‘Mum,’ I said, dancing toe-to-toe, ‘I need into the toilet’.

‘Well, you’ll just have to wait,’ mum snapped.

She gathered up all her dirty rags, which were for the bin, and clean rags that might be for the bin; and rattled the bucket and mop one last note; and making sure that there was nothing that she missed, flushed the dirty water down the pan. She huffed and puffed past me, looking me carefully up and down as if I was a changeling. Half way down the stairs she shouted up, ‘what you want on for breakfast?’

‘Nothing,’ I shouted back, sure that she’d make me something.

I dived for the cold tap, but the water tasted of Vim. It was better than nothing. Dad rattled the door.

‘Hurry up, I’ve got work to go to,’ he shouted through the door, rattling it again.

I didn’t even have time to finish my pee before he was rapping on the door again. I tucked myself in, and hurried out, as dad hurried in.

‘What took you so long?’ he said, flinging the door shut in my face.

I went to lie on top of my bed, to outwait dad’s cyclonic movement through the house. I heard him shouting downstairs, ‘where are all the towels? …and what’s the playboy been up to now?’ before I fell back to sleep.

Mum startled me, standing at the side of my bed, like a wraith, with a cup of tea and a bit of toast. I didn’t need to look at her face; she was tut tutting like a typesetter, moving the plate from hand to hand, wondering where to place it on the carpet.

‘That was some state you were in last night,’ she said again. ‘I don’t know what’s happening to you. You’ve got a good job and it’s steady work. You’re doing well with your studies and, if you stick in you could be a charge nurse, running your own ward. But I don’t know what’s got into you lately. You used to be such a happy child and now; now look at you’.

I didn’t want to look. I just wanted to be left alone. Wullie the Pole’s morose presence at work was almost a relief. I was on early shift, and the good thing about earlies was after the rush of breakfast and meds, and everybody going to work, there was even less to do than normal. And that suited me.

I sat in my favourite chair in the dayroom, pulled another one across to put my feet up and watched Pea-Heid tidying up the kitchen. I had Radio 1. Fags. A cup of tea and biscuits. And the green howling wilderness of the Old Kilpatrick Hills, outside the window, couldn’t even move my newspaper.

I didn’t even have time to finish my tea, before the ward bell rung. I’d positioned my chair so that anyone looking through the reinforced glass of the side window, at the front door, would have to know where to look to see me.

The bell rang again. James Munn didn’t like to be kept waiting. Wullie the Pole deliberate steps slackened and slowed when he saw whom it was ringing the bell. He’d already turned, to go back to his office, when I scrambled past him with my set of ward keys bouncing off my leg.

James Munn was smiling, as he always did, as if Wullie the Pole had played a great joke on him.

‘How are you?’ he said, looking me up and down, inspecting me, so that I didn’t really need to answer.

‘Fine,’ I finally said, waiting him for him to say something else, but he was now in no hurry. I felt like we could have stood there for hours.

‘Mr Borusc is in his office if you want to speak to him.’ I nodded in the direction of the office.

James Munn smiled and considered this. ‘No, actually, it’s you I’ve come to see. Is there,’ he looked around, ‘somewhere we can go to talk?’

‘Yes. Yes.’ I said, my heart racing, wondering if I’d said something to him in The Horse and Barge the night before, or if I’d done something and he’d found out about it. ‘This way.’

James Munn followed me through to the dayroom. He nodded to himself, watching Pea-Heid work. And again, this time like a TV detective: my newspaper was still sitting on my favourite chair. The other chair sat pointing at it, so that I almost fell over one of the tables and kicked a bin.

‘Sorry,’ I said, taking him down the other end of the dayroom, away from the tainted evidence. There were no patients I could use as an alibi to show I was too busy to talk to him. He had me cornered and he was smiling too much.

‘This is a delicate matter,’ said James Munn, leaning over to me, his fingers drumming a message on the table. ‘I would hope this matter will remain between us…’

‘Yes, of course,’ I said, relieved that it couldn’t be about me if it was delicate. I couldn’t wait to find out what it was now, so that I could tell everybody.

‘Your mark in the examination was 67%. Other marks were lower, but almost everybody passed. But there has been rumours that some students may have seen the examination paper.’ James Munn looked at me to gauge what I knew.

I tried to look outraged, but wasn’t sure how, and couldn’t even convince myself. ‘If there was an exam paper, eh, then how did anybody fail?’

My halting diction, and ability to get red faced at the least provocation worked in my favour for once.

‘That’s a good point. I’ll need to think about that. There are other students that I need to see today, before word of my little visit travels around. I’ll let you get back to your work,’ he said, looking up towards my folded newspaper.

‘I was on my break,’ I blurted out, but as soon as I said it I knew I should have said nothing and just let him leave. ‘Who was it that failed, anyway?’ I said.

‘I believe you spoke to her, for an extended length of time, last night,’ said James Munn, smiling.

‘Who?’ I asked, thinking of Maureen Hargreaves and feeling sad and angry at the same time that I’d spoken to her.

‘Well, Gillian Ambrose,’ said James Munn, making just a bad job as I had, of looking surprised. ‘I’m sure she’ll pass the next re-sit examination. I’ll be given her special tuition, just to make sure,’ he added.

I followed him and let him out of Ailsa ward. I felt like shouting after him, if she couldn’t pass with the exam paper in front of her, what chance has she when it’s not? But I didn’t. I was too worried about what I’d said and done already. And I’d need to phone Barry Ferguson to let him know.