Huts51

We sat in our usual seats, in our usual rows, waiting for James Munn and Barry Ferguson to come and begin the lecture. But there was in the auditorium, at the end of the week, a Friday feeling. Something of the roar and chatter of the pub and endless summer days were displayed in name calling and feet stomping as if we were on holiday and not still at work.

Maureen Hargreaves sat just in front of me, ram rod straight, silently looking straight ahead at the empty slate of the blackboard, as if filling it with her thoughts. I could have playfully leaned over and touched, or blew away, the stray blonde hairs from the nape of her long swan like neck. I wanted to, but couldn’t.

James Munn spoke quietly, but had our full attention. ‘After the last session I suggested that you pair off and visit the Mitchel Library in Glasgow and look at the relevant literature in our field.’ We waited. No one in our student class even coughed, in case it drew attention to themselves.

At least I had an excuse. Noel Behan, my student partner had left the course. He’d joined the army. ‘At least it’ll keep me off the drink,’ he’d tried to say, making up for abstinence, in advance, before falling down between two seats, the last time I’d seen him in the Horse and Barge. I wasn’t so sure that strategy would work. But when I looked at Maureen Hargreaves I thought I’d need to join up myself.

But thankfully James Munn said no more about study or study partners. I quickly turned to see if Gillan Ambrose, James Munn’s study partner, was in her usual seat. She looked slightly dishevelled, as if she’d just gotten out of bed. I didn’t want to think about such things, but not thinking about them was thinking about them. She smiled and lifted her arm and let it fall, half waved at me, before I’d quickly turned away, with the lightest tinge of red, shifting in my seat, embarrassed with my cock, for half waving in replay, and wondering if James Munn had fucked her.

I tried to concentrate on what James Munn was saying. ‘We’ve got a lot of exciting topics to cover, no doubt you have already had some experience of them and have read some of the more recent studies in challenging behaviour, but that it not my area of expertise,’ the change in tone indicating how difficult that was to believe, ‘but we have here our very own expert to take us through some of the issues involved'.

It wouldn’t have surprised me if James Munn asked for a Sunday at the Palladium style round of applause and for Barry Ferguson to spring forward into the spotlight. But Barry Ferguson stepped forward and tripped into the stripped fluorescent lighting spilling some of the pages of his ink stained underlined A4 sheets. But the joke was on us. We squirmed in our seats, tapped our pens on the back of hands and, finally, blanked over, drifting in and out of consciousness, as Barry self consciously breathed in and out with the effort of piling one word on top of another, like a stone tower reaching into the sky. I almost felt sorry for him, but only because with the last turn of the A4 sheet it was finally over for us. With his last muttered breath he gave us back our life. Barry Ferguson looked up into our grey faces, and sweating like a boxer that had given his all, stepped away from the podium.

‘That was fascinating,’ said James Munn, stepping professionally up to the podium. ‘Just to recap,’ he added, picking up a piece of chalk, to an audible collective groan, ‘Consent,’ he circled. ‘This is the marker for any civilized society. How do we measure it? Should we, for example, be allowed to treat adults as children, just because they are ill or have a handicap? ‘Autonomy,’ he also circled and drew a line connecting it to consent. ‘Autonomy means literally self rule. But how far should that concept be stretched? As Barry pointed out some patients bang their heads against walls. Should we let them, or should we intervene? What about the case, which Barry highlighted, where one subject tried to gouge his eyes out, and finally did so. Is that a success for autonomy, or a failure of treatment? And, as Barry suggested, these things don’t happen in isolation. One person’s autonomy impinges on another. Although it is a kind of oxymoron, no pun intended,’ he said, looking up from the blackboard, expecting some kind of laughter and finding none, carried straight on. ‘Is there a duty to protect the sibling of the brother who was allowed to gouge his eyes out from displaying the same learned behaviour? Should we, as in the case study,tie his hands to the chair, only releasing them for supervised feeding, or is that taking the control function of treatment too far, indeed should medicine have a control function?’ Unlike Barry, James Munn didn’t look at all tired when he finished and put the piece of chalk down.

It was our brains that were tired. But James Munn said those magical words that took all pain and tiredness away. ‘After we break for lunch…’.

Like a herd of cattle we rushed outside. I’d never been so glad to see daylight. I felt like banging my head against a wall myself, but, instead, pulled out a packet of fags and filled my lungs with life giving smoke.

‘I thought I’d find you here,’ Gillian Ambrose sneaked up beside me and tapped me on the back, with a bony finger.

She’d a habit of doing that. I wasn’t sure if I liked it or didn’t. Automatically I jerked my head left and right, scanning around us, in case somehow she was hiding James Munn and he was part of the ruse. I searched her face for clues to what she wanted, but there was only pigtails and smiles, and her skin looked tanned, had, in fact, cleared up a bit, so that she looked if not exactly pretty, well, shagable, but that didn’t add up to much. I crouched down into my fag hoping for an answer, or at least a clue.

Gillan pushed my chin up, with one finger, and touched softly stroked one cheek then the other. It was nice. But I didn’t like her doing those kinds of things in public, with everybody watching.

‘I’d heard you’d got your throat cut,’ she said in her Brummie accent that made it seem even stranger, like a foreign language.

I flicked away my fag and shook my head. I watched others leave in clusters, talking and laughing. I knew where they were going, but wasn’t sure if I was going there too and if I was would I need to go with Gillan? Her perfume caught in my throat and her direct gaze confounded me. I didn’t want to push past her.

‘I went to you house,’ Gillian said, seeing my confusion.

Then, for the first time that day, I understood. The nice girl, that mum had told me about, that had been to our house had been Gillian, not Maureen. She’d obviously heard that I’d been in a bit of a fight with Barry Ferguson. And, like everything else in the village, the story had grown like a beanstalk.

‘Och, it’s nothing,’ I said pulling away from her. ‘Just a bit of skirmich.’ My tongue searched for the place where my tooth had been.

‘Em,’ Gillian said, touching my face and cheeks again, taking more time, being more deliberate, now that everyone was almost gone.

I wasn’t sure whether I got the reddy or the hard on first.

‘Are we going to that local pub for lunch?’ Gillian said, linkng arms with me, in that accent I used to like.

I didn’t even know that I’d been waiting for her, but when Maureen Hargreaves walked past, without looking at us, I knew that I had. Maureen looked as if she’d been crying. I knew that bastard Sammy Doak would be somewhere, close behind.

‘No. Sorry,’ I said to Gillian, watching Maureen stride purposefully away, ‘my mum’s… expecting me home today… for lunch’.

I acted as if I was out of breath when I caught up with Maureen. But she saw through my ruse.

Maureen stopped dead. The watery blue eyes I’d always known looked right to the bottom of me, picked me apart, so that I couldn’t look away. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked, but I didn’t know. We didn’t know.

‘I’m going home for lunch,’ I said, breaking the spell, with half a truth and half a lie.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked, more for something to say.

‘You don’t want to know?’ Maureen replied.

‘Try me,’ I said in that smug way that I knew she hated.

‘I love you. I’ve always loved you.’

Her words ripped through me like a fault line.