Waving Not Drowning 20: Potato Printing Helps Take the Pain Away

You don’t try and save someone who tried to kill you.
I can’t figure it out.
My foot nudging up against the box full of pellets I stupidly forgot about.
Was he trying to tell me I was forgiven?

Stephen’s sister has officially registered him as missing. He hasn’t been seen for over a week. Danny is AWOL. Luckily (or unluckily I can’t decide which) the CCTV footage wasn’t clear enough to see exactly what happened. Cameras get vandalised by people like Danny (listen to Mrs Sanctimonious!). So the hopping along the bridge with one shoe on, that bit was captured on film, as was the mysterious ‘Wino Gabriel’.
After that everything had been too far away.

So I changed my story, to the psychiatrist, to the police, to my family. I said I’d jumped of my own accord. I told them Stephen (who was a friend and nothing more) had tried to save me but had fallen in himself. I didn’t tell them about Danny. Danny just made the whole story more complicated.

I have exactly six hours until my parents come and collect me and take me back to Shady Sands. In these hours I will drink as much as possible. I will pray. I will drink, pray and eventually pass out and when I wake up Stephen will be sitting on the sofa playing Grand Theft Auto. The vodka, Thunderbird and other exotic tipples are out on the counter much like they were when we left except the lemonade is flat and the bottle of vodka has fag ash in the bottom. I rummage around under the sink, contemplate drinking the ‘Flash’ floor cleaner, scan the back for ingredients… if there is alcohol in there I must have it. This is the moment I will recount in AA meetings, the moment I contemplated drinking cleaning fluid. Pathetic does not go far enough.

After finishing off the vodka, I start in on the beers; three left, I drink them quickly, they cannot touch the insides of my cheeks, that’s the game I play as they go down but they fight to cut loose and escape out my nose so I lean over the sink and let some of the liquid stream out again. Ahhhhhh sweet memories. I play Fleetwood Mac (the record still on the turntable from the night long ago when I’d impressed them with my magnificent musical taste). I channel the souls of all the winos that ever lived before. ‘Thunder only happens when it’s raining’. They lift my legs, ‘when the rain washes you clean you’ll know’, propel my arms into the air, one of them slips their hand in mine and twirls me around until I feel sick and collapse on the sofa ‘what you had, what you lost, what you had’ where I feel the box of pellets with my foot, pick them up shake them in one hand and consider swallowing them. I could walk to the canal, jump in, swim to the bottom, retrieve the rifle, fill it with pellets and blast myself between the eyes (except I’d miss). How about I swallow them, then jump. Or I could jump out the window and avoid water altogether. Just jump. Did anyone ‘just’ do it?

But I quickly realise I haven’t got the guts, can’t stand heights, can’t even top myself with dignity unless… there’s painkillers in my bedside table. Lying nestled in a stolen handbag, the one I liked, the one that probably belonged to the neighbour downstairs who is listening with dread to my leaden feet stomping out the lyrics of Fleetwood Mac. They’re strong, I take them in the mornings when my head feels like it’s going to explode and I’m not drunk enough to sleep through the pain. Sixteen in total, each white worm protected in its own foil nest. I empty them out into my palm. Unbelievable to think that something so small could have such a dramatic effect but then I think about the pellets and the trouble they’ve caused and it all makes sense. I take them two at a time, washing them down with the beer which has now gone flat. Once I’ve finished I sit and wait.

I will try not to drool or shout.

When I open my eyes I see a shape on the floor, it lurches towards me. It is dark, almost black, engorged with blood, pumping, wet. As it gets near the kitchen doorway, I see it’s a heart, veins thick and mauve, it shudders, moving in and out, leaving a trail of blood behind as it goes. It moves slowly, deliberately. It is the finger, the charred goldfish, the pellets, the graffiti all rolled into one terrifying slimy bloody mess. I pull my feet up under my knees, hug them to my chest. A powdery metallic taste forms in the back of my throat. The sound of wet muscle slapping up against the cold, plastic floor.

I will go out with as much dignity as I can muster under the circumstances.

* * * * *

Trust me to be sick. Trust me to be sick all over the table, the floor, in a mug, then in the toilet, into a handbag, on my Mother’s lap in the car, in the pocket where they keep the enormous RAC map, on my feet as my Father wheeled me into the hospital. People stood back as we whizzed past in the wheelchair.

I kept thinking, this is it, I will never stop throwing up, it will go on forever, until the earth is covered in the stuff.

By the time I got into the room where they pump your stomach out, there was nothing left inside but a dried up old Hoover bag.
‘This’ll make you nauseous,’ the male nurse said holding up what looked like a bright orange soup, ‘We have to be certain there’s nothing left.’
It gets worse before it gets better. What more evidence do you need?
He had a friendly face. Another curly haired kind person.
‘I can’t be sick anymore,’ I said pushing the jug away.
He pushed the jug towards me. I was wrong, he was evil.
‘Drink,’ my Mum said as she held a glass to my lips. When I’d finished she poured me another. It tasted like raw eggs and orange juice. I could feel it curdle everything in its path. Five minutes, then it played its part in the drama and I hung over the side of the bed as Mum pulled my hair back and Dad turned away and covered his mouth with the back of his hand. Then I slept for what felt like days but when I awoke it was still light so must have been afternoon. Mum was in the same place, the line between her eyes thick as if drawn on her face with black kohl pencil. She squeezed my hand.
‘Just rest,’ she said.
But the sweats had started already and all I could do was ride them out until I got to Shady Sands and they’d hopefully give me something to get through it.

Stephen visited for the first time that night. He sat at the bottom of the bed, his back turned away. As I lent forward he disappeared and I was left clutching the cold, steel bed frame as the room swayed then came back into focus.

By the following morning I was stuck to the sheets and it took two nurses and my Dad to wrestle me back into the wheelchair. They wrapped me in a blanket so tight that I couldn’t make a run for it and I was in the back of the car with the seat-belt wrapped around my arms and torso with just my head peeping out. Like a newborn, my parents checked on me every few seconds to see that I wasn’t vomiting or crying.
‘Why did she do it?’ my Dad said like I wasn’t there.
‘Let’s talk about it later,’ Mum said blowing her nose.
Mum was hoping to put everything on hold indefinitely. She leant forward and ‘Steve Wright’s Sunday Love Songs’ filled the car.
I looked out the window and tried to figure out what I was doing there.

Shady Sands Shirley welcomed me with open arms. It wasn’t her role to judge. Still wrapped up tight in my hospital blanket, I was moved seamlessly from car, to wheelchair to wood-chipped box room. Once inside, the door was locked, I tried to wriggle free of the blanket but I was so sweaty that it had glued itself to my hospital gown which was stuck to my back. I let my head fall back, stared at the ceiling. For the second time in twenty-four hours I wished I was dead. But they’d already thought about that and there was nothing to harm yourself in here, nothing but a truly awful painting of a unicorn rearing up on its back legs with a Merlin type figure in the background. I would become well acquainted with this wizard in the days and nights to come. I could hear Mum’s voice echoing down the corridor, then steps and the door swung open. Lavender filled the air and for a second I was momentarily transported to the fields of Provence.
‘Are you going to lie there all day?’ Shirley said.
With great difficulty I struggled into a seated position, my body still wrapped up like a bandaged Mummy.

‘I think it’s time we stop treating you like a baby,’ she said, ‘Get that blanket off and go and take a shower. I’ll bring you in some food and something to take the edge off.’
There was little point in resisting. Good behaviour meant privileges and privileges meant freedom. Freedom to go and kill yourself properly. No half measures. I’d find a car that was going really fast and launch myself under the wheels. As I wriggled the blanket off a burst of cold air rushed in under the doorframe to greet my clammy, old body and I shuffled towards the bathroom with as much enthusiasm as a man on his way to the gallows.

Stephen visited again that night. This time my hand actually touched the back of his sweatshirt before he disappeared. He was alive. I chanted this to myself as the sedatives got to work and I went back under.

On the seventh day, once the sweating had abated and the headaches were not as severe, Ruth arrived. I was confused to discover that she was only four and a half months pregnant. It felt like I’d been in Shady Sands for at least two months; time had lost all meaning, I spent most of my day in a drug-induced slumber. Then she reminded me the last time we’d seen one another and how she’d broken the news about Jim and all I’d done was slam the door in her face and let her drive home alone. This would be the first of many bad things that came back to haunt me. Not the biggest but nevertheless they all added up.
‘I was drunk,’ I explained (again this would become a regular retort, I considered getting a badge printed up just to save time).
‘You’re not wrong.’
She took both my hands in hers. That action alone brought the feeling to my throat, as she pulled me towards her I started crying. It was the first time I’d cried sober in ages. It reminded me why I’d enjoyed drinking so much.

We talked about that night. I thought about making something up, telling her the same story I’d told everyone else but Ruth was my best friend and I had to share it with someone so I tried to explain what had happened but when I got to the bit on the bridge I could see I was losing her already. Part of the problem was, the story didn’t make sense without the shooting bit and I couldn’t bear to tell her about that. Selfishly I needed her friendship and I knew that if I told her she’d probably never speak to me again. On top of this she just couldn’t get her head round my relationship with Stephen. Why would I hang out with a boy that was half my age? I tried but couldn’t tell her the truth - the fact was I’d had more in common with Stephen than I’d ever have with Ruth.

I thought back to the day in Southwold when we’d both decided to return to London. I’m not going to romanticise it (yes I am) but I remember looking at Stephen and imagining a long future stretched out ahead of us. We just needed to get to the right place. We’d get jobs and then we’d live together in a nice house (with a proper front door and a hallway that didn’t stink of pee and disinfectant). I quickly realised that getting to this place also required significant time travel. Play station, Reality TV and hoodies wouldn’t exist. I’d bake cakes and maybe Stephen would chop firewood. We’d make big, thick, comforting soups with rabbit and other wild creatures (Stephen would be in charge of that, I didn’t like the idea of shooting anything anymore). It would be the kind of soup that bubbles away on the fire for days on end, whilst it was bubbling lovely smells would envelop the cosy, gas-lit front room whilst we played backgammon, rummy or we’d listen to the wireless. Perhaps we’d have some hens and a dog. They’d be snuggled up round the fire too, all cosy, the chickens all fluffed up and swaying on their feet and the dog lying on its side and wagging its tail hard so you could hear it slapping against the stone tiles (or maybe we’d have that under floor heating, not everything in the past was good). Once a week we’d sit in the local pub (me sipping on ginger beer, no more booze, who needed it?) and we’d laugh about the nightmare we’d survived together.

Another week passed and still no news. Mum came in to tell me that the police had searched the area where I’d ‘beached’ myself and found nothing.
They’d looked further upstream.
The likelihood of them ever finding Stephen was slim.

Every moment I thought of him.

Merlin’s face loomed large at night. The streetlights bounced off his eyes, his expression was kindly, what was he trying to tell me? Could he see into the future?
Then his expression shifted and he slowly rolled his eyes in disgust, tapped his magic wand three times and flew back inside the painting. The corners of the unicorn’s mouth twitched ever so slightly.

I started a prolific period of potato printing.
Shirley said this was a good sign.

With ‘Classic FM’ playing in the background I sat in the main ‘therapy’ room carving faces into potatoes with a blunt knife (I couldn’t be trusted yet) and then shoving them into red, black then orange paint. Sometimes I pressed so hard the potatoes were crushed between my fingers, sometimes they forced their way out the other side of the paper. The paintings grew more and more life-like (or so I thought). In group sessions I traced the outlines of my next masterpiece, dragging my fingertips across the palm of my left hand. Here was Danny. Here was Stephen. Here was Danny shouting and then falling into the water. Here was me reaching out for Stephen and pulling him to safety. Here was Danny being sucked into a swirling pool of black paint, disappearing into the hole, doomed. I’d like to say that these works of art went on to win critical acclaim in the art houses of London and beyond but they were the works of a crazed baboon.
‘That’s great,’ Shirley said with enthusiasm as I took yet another potato steeped in paint and covered every available space of paper in black mess.

At night Merlin returned to haunt me. He whipped the blankets into a mini- typhoon with just one wave of his magic wand.
‘You’re bad,’ he said then threw the wand onto the shag pile carpet, crushing it under his long pointy calfskin boots.
‘You killed the rainbow,’ the unicorn said.

Stephen didn’t appear again after that.