school photos 18

‘Who’s your friend?’ Jean’s voice was dry.

The girl’s hair was a botched dye-job black, long and silky at the back, and around her face in a feather-cut. Her nightdress, a corn-syrup colour, skimmed her body and ended above the knee. As Joey had said it left little to men’s infant imagination. She didn’t seem to be wearing a bra, but the flouncy material round her chest thankfully hid what little girlish bumps she might have had. But it was her eyes that drew you in. Purple shadows made her darting pupils seem piggy-eyed and not a larger blue, as if they were hiding something. Gold hoops dangled from beneath her hair gave her a little rock star chic.

‘That’s Janine.’ John’s face was a starburst of embarrassment. He couldn’t meet his mum’s eye, or his dad’s, standing slightly behind and to the right of her.

Jean expected the girl to push off, or whatever the psychiatric lingo was for leaving them alone with her son. Instead she arranged the chairs, pushing one, pulling another into a semi-circle and had them all sitting facing each other, hands clutched like rosary beads in their laps.

‘You look nice.’ Jean spoke pleasantly enough to the girl. She’d on a ton of makeup.

‘You think so,’ Janine said. Then her thin mouth, emulsified fat with red clown lipstick, was off and running on a whine, telling them everything about her bad skin and how much foundation she put on and what kind of brush she used and how she had to get up earlier than everyone else to look that way.  In fact, how she didn’t sleep much at all.

‘Sleeping was for the dead, or older folk,’ she explained. ‘After a while you didn’t know whether you were sleeping or awake. But it didn’t matter to older folk cause when they got to that age they all looked like Thunderbirds, with their bad hair, droopy mouths and bodies.’

Joey had laughed at that. ‘You might have a point there.’ He sneaked a look at his wife.  

Jean lit a fag. The girl Kohl eyed her. ‘What exactly are you in for?’ She found herself passing her lighter and fag packet across for her to take one, hoping that at least that would shut her up.

‘I’ve got issues.’ She said it in a knowing way with a shake of the head that was meant to convey everything and nothing.

‘And that psychiatrist…’ Joey frowned and leaned and shifted forward in his chair to give help himself time to think of his name.

‘Dr Williams.’ Jean breathed his name out with a puff of smoke.

‘Aye, him,’ Joey’s voice was a low growl. ‘Whit exactly does he do for you?’

Janine slipped the cigarette lighter and packet back to Jean, her hand drifting across and settling on top of John’s. ‘He’s a bit like god, only smaller.’

Joey chortled at that, his eyes crinkling up, catching Jean’s, nodding across, sharing the joke. She half-smiled in acknowledgement. John inched his hand away from Janine’s. She watched the girl’s thin white fingers spidering across the arm of the chair, closing the distance, claiming them as her own. He looked away into the dancing dust motes of the dayroom, not meeting his mum’s eyes.

‘I think what my husband means,’ Jean kept her voice level to keep the irritation out of her voice, ‘is what kind of medical treatment do you get?’

‘Oh, apart from the usual stuff, Mr Williams doesn’t believe in that. He believes in the laws of entropy and everybody finding their own fixed state.’ She flicked her hair away from her face. ‘Or not,’ she added.

‘Sounds like something McGinley would say.’ Joey snorted through his nose at there being two people in the world, one a workmate in the yards and another, a psychiatrist, that could talk the same language of bullshit.  ‘Whit are they keeping you in for then?’ he asked Janine.

She licked her lips before leaning over, pulling the ashtray diagonally across the surface of the small table next to them, and stubbing it out, the clear lacquer marred by the gunshot circles of fag burns. ‘I’m not in for anything. I’m a voluntary patient.’ Her voice rose up and her eyes took flight. ‘I can leave at any time.’  

‘Whit about him then?’ He nodded towards John.

‘Ah’m sectioned, seven days.’ John shook his head as if he couldn’t quite believe it himself. ‘There’s nothin’ wrang with me.’ His body bristled and he sprung his hand from Janine’s. ‘The bastards.’

 ‘Seven days initially.’ The swear word was like an intake of breathe. He’d never sworn in front of his mother before and Janine nipped into the gap. ‘Then they can double it to fourteen, or twenty-eight, or fifty-six. The bastards can do what they want when they get you in here.’

‘What about you then?’ Jean voice was more forgiving, more muddled, a whisper, ‘how can we get him voluntarily status so he can leave?’

‘Can’t,’ Janine said. The two women’s eyes met with some understanding. ‘If you want out you’re not well enough to get out.’

‘Ah’ve never heard such shite,’ said Joey.

‘Try livin’ it,’ replied John, slumping backwards into his chair.

Jean picked up her fags and shelled one across to Janine’s lap, lighting hers and passing the lighter across. She began foutering in the bag she’d brought at her feet, pulling out the drawing pad, putting it on the table with the packet of loose crayons and a bottle of Lucozade. ‘I couldn’t find your pencils,’ she lied, guiding the conversation back to the tramlines of something she could understand.

‘Ah’ve probably dumped them somewhere in my room.’ He smiled at her. ‘Don’t worry Mum. These are fine.’ He picked up the bottle of Lucozade by the yellow foil machine-wrapped tightly round the neck of the bottle as if weighing it and put it back down on the table.

Jean didn’t think it was a good time to ask about his drawing of the little girl. And Joey was already huffing and fidgeting at her side in a way that suggested that it was about time they were going. Any time soon would be good.