Love on the NHS (2 page)

A terraced house in the centre of Vester was where Luke's family had initially relocated to.  Geographic destiny meant he was more involved with boys in the centre of the village but later when the family moved to a bigger semi-detached house on the outskirts, Luke 's closest friends became the two boys on his new street. The boys, Reece and Norman, were glad to have a new partner in crime.

The three would build dens in fields by their houses. They would dare each other to jump into a wild horse's paddock and run before it struck them. Once, the three were playing near a river when Luke's two friends began throwing rocks to see how they far they could manage. Norman threw a very large one, the size of a human head and as he was tall and muscular it sailed high into the sky. Luke was lying on the grass in a daydream, when suddenly it came swooping down and thudded against his head. He had never felt such agony! He bled profusely, crying for a good ten minutes.

Another boy Luke befriended, Ian, was the son of a doctor who lived in a grand mansion in the village's wealthy district. Theirs was one of the village's few homes to have marble tiles on the driveway, which were diagonally arranged and in curving patterns that revolved around landscaped flowerbeds. Ian and Luke would recline on the plush leather sofas in the lounge and watch films on the big television. Their favourite, Dumb and Dumber, replayed over and over would be followed by them engaging in all manner of hijinks.

With the passage of time Luke's social life began to change. When motorbikes became the village boys' main interest he was, to use a familiar expression, kicked to the curb. A large group of lads spent their weekends driving them on the local football pitch, up into the woods and the country lanes behind Luke's new home. Luke's family could not afford anything like that and so he became more excluded. Not all of the boys changed - Norman, Reece and Ian never got a motorcycle. They did begin to make new friends, though, and Luke did not always like their influence on them.

The rate at which he increased his social circle compared to his friends was humiliating and he was getting to dislike how unpredictable the friends of
his
friends were becoming. Luke's youth, like most youngsters of his time, was spent collecting toys and games, according to the latest fad. There were yo-yos, football stickers, Pokémon cards, Action Man figures, Hot Wheels cars and handheld video games - always a new collection to fritter one's pocket money on. He enjoyed the thrill of it all but besides buying all these amusements his parents also had to buy his trainers, which were never as popular as his friends' - they could afford all the designer names and loved showing off to each another.

IV

When he graduated to high school Luke was recognized as one of the brightest students. Starting in the second set, he was promoted to the first. Sadly, his emerging hormones and the nasty nature of teenagers meant his status as academic wunderkind would not last long. His hormones meant that he was growing to be rebellious as all teenagers do but Luke was also unusually inquisitive. The problem was he was deeply interested in what he wanted to be, not what teachers told him to be; if they could convince him of the importance of knowledge he was more likely to be interested but at heart his interests were already determined as if by fate. The one-size-fits-all school system failed him.

Yet although that may have been the greater of his problems what felt more of a weight upon his soul a the time were the relationships with his other students. For two years he withstood the pressures of being picked on by other pupils - but finally it took its toll, and he began to fall behind with classes. Luke began to sneak out of school and wander home along an old railway track. It had long ago been abandoned and offered panoramic views of the old, stone built town. As it weaved between copses and estates of houses, it then meandered on over busy roads and through fields of farmers living in isolation. He would sit and read for a few hours under a stone bridge with no company save for the dancing midges. As he read a Roald Dahl children's story or a young adult novel, intermittently a daddy-long-legs would leap up him. Later on his walk home, he would exchange pleasantries with the sheep and the cows.

As well as being taunted by other students, Luke was handled poorly by the school staff. When he lost his temper with his situation and scrawled, "To hell with school," in permanent marker on a desk, the headmaster asked to see him. As he gave Luke a stern talking to he would not let him look away, demanding he made unwavering eye contact. It made Luke begin to cry and if he averted his eyes the headmaster would yell, "Look at me when I'm talking to you."

As Luke was growing older his blonde hair was tanning to a brown while at home relationships were becoming strained. Luke's mother had began studying an access to university course at college, which she would later follow with a degree course in psychology. It meant she had to spend a lot more time out of the house and it was difficult for Luke's father Bruno to adjust to. Bruno had to learn to cook meals for the children though he could barely prepare anything except for beef stew and boiled vegetables.

He often recounted to Luke and Bridget (the other siblings had all left home by now) and their mother about his divorce from his first wife. Luke's parents had never expected to have a disabled child and so they were, without thinking about it or knowing what the term meant, carers. They struggled so often to get people to understand Luke's behaviour if he had done something slightly curious or naive; and raising him when he was so fussy with food and sensitive to strangers and changes in routine was hard. It is heartbreaking to know that hundreds of thousands of people in the United Kingdom are full time carers and receive hardly any benefits from the government for such an essential and honest job. Carers have one of the highest rates of depression of any profession and are often undiagnosed with the condition, too, as their own needs so often get overlooked.

Luke's father had four sons with the wife he had in his first marriage. She had gained custody of them all after an acrimonious divorce. It had made Bruno understandably bitter to have lost his large house, children and many possessions he had worked hard for. He became homeless and lived in a Salvation Army hostel where violent ex-cons demanded he lend them his car. He then met a woman who was also lonely like him and he found a home again. She was in a terribly dysfunctional family involved in crime and although he shared a home with his lover, the family's visits traumatized him. Their apartment was in a high rise social housing block. Bruno had once opened the door to a knock and been headbutted for no reason.

Bruno's ex-wife had divorced him when he struck her with his fist. He had done it after finding out about her affair with a younger man. It was a moment of weakness but his ex-wife had not the heart to forgive him. Bruno was still upset to this day and he would get very agitated when he recalled what had happened. When a state of agitation would come, it upset Samantha and she would threaten to leave him. Then they would have a long, shouting argument. Luke never knew if they might split up or not. It made Luke realize from a young age how horrible people could be, when Bruno would tell him about how no family member helped when he was homeless.

As Luke fell so behind with his schoolwork and his teachers kept applying pressure to catch up and achieve high marks, he could take no more and dropped out. He applied for about six jobs he saw advertised in shop windows. They were mostly basic supermarket roles like stacking shelves and serving on the counter but he never heard anything back. He had always been honest to a fault and he admitted on his application forms that he was not that much of a sociable person. Had he been fortunate to live a decade or two earlier, he may well have landed a job in those halcyon days before curriculum vitaes and interviews ruled the roost.

Though he now only ventured out for a walk or the occasional shopping trip, abuse from other youngsters did not recede. The bullying reached its lowest point when a group of young men knocked on his house and through the windows shouted, "Go home, English bastard!" He feared for his life and days later ran away from home, catching the train to Duldrum, a town in northern England. He asked to stay with his sister Lily in her house there. He lodged for half a year with his sister until his parents moved back to England, at which point he rejoined them. They wanted to be nearer to the family and now his mother had graduated, she managed to secure a job as a social worker in a mental hospital. Their new home was a soulless tract house in Luke's birth town Leece. They had returned because Grace had got a social housing apartment there when the family moved to Wales. To her Leece was home, Luke supposed, though why she stayed there was anyone's guess.

V

The tract house was stifling in the summer. It had been built pokily as most houses in England recently had. Luke's bedroom was nicknamed the box room. There was little room to do anything in it besides sit on the bed and watch DVDs - which he often did. As Leece was a fairly one-eyed town Luke caught the bus into Woecaster sometimes to go to the cinema or eat a takeaway. He was still fussy about food and so generally only bought chips, sweets or a pack of buns.

Woecaster was a shock to Luke's system. In his humble upbringing he had never seen so many boutique shops; this was a place for the well heeled. There had been little wealth flaunted in Snowdonia and although he had read a few books and attended the theatre - at the behest of his parents - he was not cultured. The signs on shops here such as "Est. 1864" and "Would patrons please kindly refrain from touching articles of clothing?" made Luke feel angry. He would wonder what such odd and wordy announcements meant. They were a sort of weapon used against the working class from Luke's perspective - ignorant people were scared people. 'Why are laws not written plainly?' thought Luke. 'If they are for everyone to understand they should be simple to read.'

It was not long before Luke began to feel very odd in his new home. He was heartened to have escaped a living hell but he was living like a refugee. The black and Asian people he encountered behaved in ways that puzzled him, having only ever seen them in films; and although he spoke with an English accent, as his parents had spoken with him in a northern English accent during childhood, he did not identify as being English. When national football matches were on or Woecaster United games, and people's faces were painted and their bodies dressed in bright red and white, he felt alienated. He did not know how to belong to these groups and probably could not have if he tried. Everything was so homogenous, football dominated - you either fitted in or you didn't, it was black and white; people who didn't support a team were viewed as snobs or weirdos. Luke missed the old traditional games local areas once had; the sort he saw in period dramas. Rolling barrels down hills, barn dances or the agricultural fairs.

While Luke felt he was living like a refugee, funnily enough, he also noticed that a troika of Bulgarian immigrants would get on his bus every morning and depart at an industrial estate. The factory they worked in was on the edge of the town near farmland. It confirmed his opinion that what he had read about the use of immigrants for cheap labour was true. Many people had migrated to Leece, not only from other countries but from outlying towns and villages too. The doctors' surgeries were all full except for one that Luke's family managed to register with. The old roads were clogged with traffic, and new houses built in the town to accommodate the increased population were laid out in claustrophobic, barren beehives.

Luke formed an identify of who he was based on his values. If he could not naturally affiliate with any area or set of people he at least could identify with virtuous deeds. He believed in building a better world and so began to buy many fair trade products. In this respect, at least, he felt he was living in solidarity with the impoverished producers he supported. There was a fair trade shop in Woecaster where he bought some of his items. The people working there, though, were quite ironic and ignorant, as most urbanites are. Luke had noticed that most urbanites, especially the British, would walk through you if they could - they did not care about boundaries and friendliness. The shop assistants put him off shopping there. so he would usually buy online. The art of chatting and making idle conversation are mastered by city dwellers but Luke could not appreciate insincerity and empty gestures. Likewise his genuine warmth rubbed people up the wrong way. That is not to give the impression he wore rose tinted glasses about country folk. He was well aware of their tendency to gossip.

Fair trade clothes on the internet were his favourite thing to buy, especially ones handmade in India. That people were paid decent wages made up for any fashion lacking in his attire. In Luke's opinion the clothes were beautiful. The confines of Western fashion, however, are quite narrow. He would venture out in pink-yellow-and-orange striped trousers and a brown, yellow and green hooded top to live the life he believed in. He was shouted at, especially by people his own age. His sense of isolation grew but since he had never lived the urban life, fashion was an unknown to Luke. He couldn't have picked out what was fashionable if he'd tried. To him, fair trade clothes were original and aspirational - but of course most people had only time for T-shirts and jeans, and whatever hideous designs were in season.

One day in Woecaster, Luke was dressed as usual and due to the pressure of being treated like a pariah - and lacking the confidence or social skills to deflect criticism - he kept on fleeing his tormentors. He walked far and wide to try to keep calm, to stay out of trouble. He passed so many unfamiliar scenes: two middle-aged ladies strolling and looking at a lingerie catalogue, teenagers having rap battles to whoops and laughter, and hawkers with clipboards selling holidays.