Huts45

Dr Fleming came immediately when Wullie the Pole phoned him. Immediately, for Dr Fleming, was two hours later. But a kind of normality, like a flurry of snow, had settled over the abnormality of Archie Cairney’s body lying in a bathtub. The familiar patter of medication that day went without any mishaps, or drama, as if somebody else’s death was just that, nothing to do with them or me.

Dr Fleming arrived flushed. He’d barely rung the bell before I’d the keys in the lock to let him in. But that wasn’t quick enough as he breezed past me, like a Bentley, to the office. He sat, centred in Wullie the Poles usual seat, with a cigar dangling from his petted lip. For once he didn’t dither. In his polite, but firm grammar school diction, he outlined how the police would need to be called, careers could be jeopardized, and lives unravelled.

He looked at me, not Wullie the Pole when he spoke, but it was as if he was addressing a crowd and not a person. But it was Dr Fleming’s long tight-lipped Sunday silences that caught me and at the same time forced me to look away. I forgot to express any kind of surprise at anything he said, or did, and turned my head to look out of the office window. Wullie the Pole nudged me gently, with his foot, under the table, to remind me, of the blasphemy of looking away when it was Dr Fleming’s career being discussed, because any hint of scandal would reflect back, and be deflected, one way, or another. One word from Dr Fleming, a simple yes or no, could mean a different kind of sentence, for most of the patients in Glendevon Hospital, and for most of the staff.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, apologetically, to Dr Fleming, ‘I think one of the patients was signalling to me’.

But Dr Fleming had already played his hand and settled back into the role of King and Joker. ‘Of course, of course,’ he said, indulgently waving me away in a plume of cigar smoke.

Outside the office I finally felt I could take a breath. I would, usually, have sat with the patients in the day room, hacking away at work time with fags and pacing and sitting and the radio and fags, but with Dr Fleming being in the ward I closed myself off in the Med cupboard, flicking through the patient’s records. Archie Cairney’s notes were in the usual place, but there was some part of them missing, although I couldn’t quite work out what. There was not a discolouration, but a mismatch. It was as if some part of them had been replaced with new sheets, with nothing on them.

A smiling Dr Fleming passed the open door, droning affably on, with Wullie the Pole closely behind him, carefully carrying a piece of paper. I followed Wullie the Pole back into the office. The ward, somehow, seemed bigger, more airy, without Dr Fleming in it. I lit up a fag in relief.

I didn’t seem to be the only one. Wullie the Pole eased himself in, behind his desk, putting the piece of paper down carefully, in front of him, as if he too had been on a long journey.

‘What do we do now?’ I asked Wullie the Pole.

An unseen smile seemed to break out in one part of his face and spread to another, so that I couldn’t help but smile back.

‘Now,’ said Wullie the Pole, waving the piece of paper, ‘now we phone the police and let them know, we have a death.

I thought Wullie the Pole had already done that. I must have frowned.

‘Death by asphyxiation, signed and dated by our very own Dr.Fleming at 5.10am,’ said Wullie the Pole, in what sounded like a triumphant tone.

I knew enough to know that the piece of paper he was waving about was the death certificate, but I wasn’t sure how they could put an exact time on it, as if they’d been standing beside Archie Cairney with a stopwatch and pen. The only thing was it wouldn’t have been Wullie the Pole that would have been doing the recording. At that time it would have been Terry and June the nightshift workers, taking a bit of time out, shagging each other. But the death certificate made it sound as if Archie Cairney choked on a big yellow gobstopper of a Bon-Bon and not hanged himself. But I said none of those things, because, everything seemed already to have been settled, and I was a simple bystander, that didn’t want to get in the way.

Wullie the Pole seemed positively garrulous. ‘Of course, in the old days, we would have moved him up to the hospital mortuary and quickly buried him ourselves. But we can no longer do that. There is a whole area. You can still see it, if you look closely for the dips and hillocks. Where the old school was. That was where patients were buried’ he said wistfully.

I’d lived in Glendevon all my life and never knew that. ‘Weren’t there any markers, gravestones or crosses or something? I asked.

‘No,’ said Wullie the Pole, shaking his head, and shaping his mouth as if I’d given him a Sour Plum, in a way that suggested the very idea was preposterous.

With nothing else to do I watched the police car crawl up the hill the front door of the hospital ward and could hear the squeak of the handbrake tightening as it parked. I wondered if Bundy was watching from the ward next door, as her brother George got out of the car, with another officer and carefully positioned his cap on, as if it was that, rather than anything else, that gave him authority. They didn’t need to ring the bell. I already had the ward door, wedged open for them, with my foot.

The younger police officer, looked to George, in a way that I recognized, a, ‘what do I do when I go into a ward full of crazies?’ But George simply whispered something to him. He looked more relaxed sat scrunched inside the Panda car.

Pea Head had set out a tray with tea and coffee and a biscuit tin overflowing -with Bourbons, Custard Creams, Carmel Wafers, Jaffa Cakes, Kit Kats, Penguins- that would have took a classroom of hungry school kids a week to eat. Yet when I went to pick up a Penguin with my tea Wullie the Pole tutted and I reluctantly let it drop back into the tin.

Some people might have said George had a sweet tooth. Others, like his sister, would have just called him a greedy bastard, as he munched his way through biscuit after biscuit. He knew why he was in the ward. And Wullie the Pole simply flicked the death certificate across the desk for him to peruse, but it was no contest. George waved it away. A Kit Kat was of much greater interest to him.

I’d never seen a person drink so much tea. I think it was the third or fourth cup, by the time George had settled into his seat and his rhythmic cropping of the contents of the biscuit tin, that he mentioned that Jammie had also killed himself.

‘Jammie, Bundy’s husband?’ I spluttered out.

George put on his police cap, to show it was official business, and his little eyes peered out at me like a crab.

‘Yes, James. Shame about that. Gassed himself, George said, like he was rhyming off some shopping list for bored suicides, between mouthfuls of Custard Creams.

George looked mournfully at the biscuit tin. But he’d his cap on and he whacked me on the back, as he stood up to leave.

‘I’ll see you at the funeral,’ George said, apologetically, ‘it’ll probably be the end of the week now, by the time they do a post mortem.’

I followed behind George, with the keys at the ready, to let him out. I wasn’t sure whether he was talking about Archie Cairney or Jammie Macintosh’s funeral. Neither of them seemed to matter to him. I reasoned that was something to do with his job. But when I tried to feel sad for Archie Cairney I just felt glad. And I couldn’t squeeze out any feelings for Jammie. The only one I felt any sorrow for was Bundy.

‘See ya,’ I said, waving him away, wondering if anyone would care if I died.