Huts28

I didn’t know what I’d do. I’d go above Wullie the Pole’s head. I’d go to James Munn. I’d ask Barry Ferguson to help. I’d even ask Bunty Macintosh. But it all came back to the same sad fact. I’d literally begged Wullie the Pole and he’d simply dismissed me with, ‘it’s in the diary,’ as if such matters where etched in blood, or stone, or both. Norean Kilean’s teeth were getting taken out and there was nothing I could do, but look away.

I was still in Ailsa ward, and it was finally getting dark outside, when the nightshift staff came on. I wanted to explain to them, to tell them how it was. In a way I blamed myself. If I hadn’t been fooling about in the kitchen I would have been on hand to help Norean and none of this would have happened. I also wanted to stay in Ailsa ward with Norean, at least until the medication wore off. I knew that would take all that night and part of the next day, but somewhere in my head, I thought, if I did that, everything would be ok.

Wullie the Pole ignored me, but I couldn’t ignore him. I stayed out of the office, out of his way, and sat with the patients in the day room. Like them my eyes were resting on the screen, letting the tinny telly noise echo around us, chain-smoking, but my mind was elsewhere. I knew that I should have been in the office, with the rest of the staff, going through the formality of changeover. It was one of the rituals that hung the day together, but I played at being an agnostic. I didn’t want anything to do with any of them, individually, or collectively.

My mind couldn’t settle and neither could my body. I was up and down to the kitchen to make tea for myself and up and down to the staff toilet with the effects of all the tea I’d been drinking. For some reason, I kept thinking about the tooth fairy, and swapping teeth and replacing teeth. I just couldn’t get it out of my head. It went round and round in circles, so that when I looked out and saw my reflection in the ward window, I was no longer sure who I was, or whether I was a patient, or staff.

Some unnamed fear, caught in my throat, and kept me from doing anything much.I could only ground myself by being with Norean Kilean, sitting on her bed, looking at her, and hearing her breathing. I was sure I’d shut her bedroom door firmly over when I’d left her earlier, but it was slightly open. Without thinking I held my breath. I pushed at the door, inch by cautious inch, looking through the gap between the door facing, and the partially opened door, into the moonlit room.

It was as if what I was seeing was too much for me to take in. Archie Cairney had swept back the blankets covering Norean leaving her body cold and exposed. He gently stroked Norean’s downy cheek, muttering something, but he was using his erect cock to do it. He had bunched her nightdress up and around her waist, as if he couldn’t be bothered taking it off, and pushed her knees apart, so that the white of Norean’s bare bum stood out like clenched fists in flashlight, which highlighted the primal darkness of her frizzy pubic hair. Her nightdress was also pushed down, around her waist, so that her pearly white tits were also on show. Archie masturbated himself, with one hand, nudging his bobbing cock against her unopened mouth. With his other hand he lifted one tit and then the other, as if he was carefully weighing them and contrasting the roughness of her aureoles with the smoothness of her pointed nipples. I don’t know if I made some noise, or Archie heard something, but he looked suddenly around and stuffed his still hard cock into his trousers.

I was no longer transfixed. My legs seemed to work. I rushed into the room and caught Archie a blow to the cheek. The suddenness of it, rather than how hard it was, seemed to catch him out. As he made a bolt for the door, I caught him around the waist and we fell onto Norean’s bed, knocking her off, so that she woke up, still partially naked, groggy and disorientated.

‘You fucking pervert,’ I heard myself shout, ‘I’ll kill you!’ As we grappled on the floor, I got a few digs in, punching him in the face, but he held on, until Wullie the Pole and the nightshift staff came and dragged us apart. I was still shouting, but I wasn’t quite sure what.

Norean Kilean was standing with a blanket around her like a castaway from a shipwreck. She was shivering, whether from the cold or shock, I wasn’t sure.

Wullie the Pole stood between Archie and me. I eyed the distance and I might just have been able to make it, but something, a look in Wullie the Pole’s eyes stopped me. Jenny and Terry, the nightshift workers, had already signalled to each other they weren’t needed, and wandered away.

‘You, go to your room,’ Wullie the Pole said to Archie, as if he was addressing a whipped cur.

But I knew that hangdog, beaten down expression that Archie had on his face was little more than a mask. I pushed past the old man and caught Archie with a haymaker. I heard the satisfying crunch of the bone on his nose giving way and saw it sprouting, as if in slow motion, a satisfactory red bloom.

There was nothing slow about the pain I felt. Wullie the Pole hit me a sharp knuckle blow to the solar plexus, bending me over. I was gagging for breath, all fight knocked out of me, and left wondering if I was going to die.

Archie Cairney pushed past us, cupping the drip from his nose as best he could. ‘Wanker,’ he said to me, but it came out waannnker, because of his nose. He was playing at being brave once again with Wullie the Pole between us, and cashed in, by glancing quickly at Norean Kilean's face and lips.

Norean Kilean sat on the bed and pulled the blankets up around her, as if she was a sleepwalker, and we were all part of her dream. I wasn’t even sure that she knew what had happened, as she hoisted the blankets around her and shut her eyes once more.

Wullie the Pole and I tip toed away, adding to the sense of unreality. When we were outside in the corridor I said, perhaps, louder than I should, ‘we need to phone the police, for that fucker’.

‘Don’t be so fucking stupid boy,’ replied Wullie the Pole.

I wasn’t surprised by what he said, but by him swearing. Wullie the Pole didn’t usually swear. I thought, maybe, the situation had even gotten to him. But I was proved wrong.

‘What would we tell them? That you were sneaking and peeking about?’ Wullie the Pole looked at me, and waited, and looked at me again, as if he knew.

I faltered. My childhood stutter returned to haunt me, but eventually I got it out. ‘He-e-e raped her!’

‘Rape,’ Wullie spat out at me, his face almost in mine, ‘I’ve seen people raped. And that wasn’t rape, you fucking- idiot- boy.’ I thought Wullie the Pole was going to hit me again.

The worst seemed to me to be suddenly over. I no longer felt winded, as if I was running down hill, and all I had to do was keep going.

‘I don’t care,’ I said emphatically, ‘I’m phoning the police’.

We were almost outside the harsh strip light of the office, but Wullie the Pole grabbed my arm and swung me around so that I was facing his scowling face, but then he seemed to relax and let go of my arm.

‘And what do you think the police will do?’ Wullie the Pole courteously asked me.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, replying in the same affable manner, as if we were talking about the book we liked best.

‘Well I do know,’ said Wullie the Pole, ‘they’ll do what they always do. They’ll do nothing. They’ll come out of course. And drink our tea and eat our biscuits. They might even take Archie Cairney into custody for a night. But Archie is smart enough to play the dribbling fool. And they’ll look at him and they’ll think he doesn’t know what he’s doing. And he’s a certified idiot. We can’t prosecute him if he doesn’t know right from wrong. The procurator fiscal won’t even look at it. And when they find out it’s just another idiot patient, well, case closed. You can’t rape a subnormal. Even if the police found you had manacled her to their front desk and were screwing her, jiggy-jiggy, in front of a whole police force, they could still not charge you with rape. Coercion is big word. Too big for subnormals. And consent. Well, that only applies to grown ups. People in these wards, in Scottish law, never grow up. Their evidence is inadmissible. They can’t give consent and they can’t withhold consent. They’re fucked.’

That was the most I’d ever heard Wullie the Pole speaking about any one thing. I wasn’t sure what he said was right or wrong, but I had to find out.

‘I’m phoning,’ I said.

Wullie the Pole grabbed my arm again.

‘Think about it. Think what you’re doing. Let me deal with it’.

I wasn’t sure. Wullie the Pole sounded convincing, but Archie couldn’t be grounded on the ward forever, but neither could he be let out.

‘No,’ I said, grabbing at the office door handle, 'my mind's made up'.

‘You need to be more flexible,’ said Wullie the Pole. He waggled his teeth at me. It was strange. I didn’t know he had falsers. Then he smiled a falser smile.

‘What about it being in the diary?’

‘Well,’ said Wullie the Pole, ‘with a bit of flexibility, it can be take out of the diary.’

I felt as if I had finally did it, saved Norean’s teeth. But there was a darker side to that.

‘What about Archie Cairney? I asked.

‘You leave him to me,’ said Wullie the Pole in a way that suggested that he would also deal with that, ‘but, know this, if I do this thing, you will owe me, you understand, you will owe me?’

I wasn’t sure whether he was talking about Norean’s teeth or Archie Cairney, but I nodded anyway.