Love on the NHS (42 page)

Though he at times enjoyed travelling Luke never liked his education. He drifted unhappily through college; tired, dopey and demoralized. He was glad his classes had more females than males as he tended to get along with women better but he could not get his head around why so many women liked soap operas. Even his sisters and mother who had IQs well above 120 were obsessed with them. Luke learned to accept it as he figured it must be a part of the female nature to be interested in who was up to what, what drama was going on. If the female's role in society was to facilitate and bring people together, then she was bound to be interested in all the intricacies of relationships. The role of a man was more direct, performing specific tasks as a rule and fairing clumsily in the social realm, and so soap operas were bound to bore most men. Luke would rather watch Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives or shows about people building their own homes.

He may well have had more luck building relationships with the people in his class had he not been in Duldrum. He was unsuited to the place too much. This troubled Luke as like all people he needed some sensory stimulus from other people to make him feel a pulse to his otherwise steady days. With the heartbreak of his unfulfilled love and sense of betrayal from what had happened to him, he needed people to talk to clear his mind of its pessimism too. Having experienced so much darkness recently, he was about to be overwhelmed by it. He therefore took the unpleasant step of requesting to see the college counsellor and in the course of a few meetings could discuss with someone how let down he felt. As counsellors tended to, she disagreed with Luke - always in a friendly way but such friendliness was brittle really.

"What upsets me the most," said Luke, "is how the people treated me is outrageous. They put me through more scrutiny and intimidation than a lot of very dangerous criminals. There are drug dealers, gangsters, pimps, abusive husbands, violent football fans who have been treated better than I was."

"You do seem very upset by what happened to you," his counsellor would say. "Do you feel you might be able to come to terms with that now and embrace the good things you're doing? You are making such a change in your life, studying after years of having no confidence. You can put that all behind you now."

"But I can't," Luke would say. "Don't you understand? Why does no one care the police are so bad? Since what happened to me it woke me up to what is going on in the world. I searched on YouTube and found videos of police brutality. They've killed people in cells for no reason, tasered and shot innocent people to death. Beaten up homeless people in groups."

"That is bad but why do you watch them? What can you do about them? Do you gain anything from watching them?"

"But that's not the point! The world doesn't revolve around me. There are people who are facing injustice. I have and so are other people."

"But the best thing you can do is to succeed. Finish your college course and show Jolly that you aren't going to let what she did stop you. She obviously was not what you thought she was, to have done something so horrible. It was her who got the police on you. Who knows? I think in five years' time you'll find a woman, a really beautiful woman. And you'll get with her and then maybe Jolly will come back to you. And you'll say, 'I've moved on now. I've boarded another bus and I've gone my way and you've gone yours.'

Luke was frustrated by his counsellor's words. Maybe she was right but after seven sessions with her he could continue no longer and called an end to them. Her use of metaphors could be tiresome but then she did seem to see everything somewhat simply. Too much so in Luke's opinion. She spoke of her father's abuse to her as a child when he drank - and as a result she was adamant giving up alcohol was good for Luke, there was no in between. And Luke could not convince her Jolly should ever come back in her life; for the counsellor it was black and white, the past was the past; a wholly separate entity from the present and the future. There was at least one undeniable benefit brought about by seeing his counsellor. Having told her he was particularly feeling like quitting maths lessons due to the sense of isolation he felt from the other students she reported her concerns to his teacher - and thereafter support was arranged for him. A forty-something woman called Mary began to sit next to him in the class - making it easier to shield himself from the dissatisfied sighs and looks from classmates disappointed in his awkward demeanour.

All the anguish and the pain was driving Luke ever deeper into the abyss. With a few months of college remaining, though, he happened upon an isle of luck amidst his sea of weariness. Upon a visit to the Samaritans it dawned on him from comments made by the listener that he really was verging on alcoholism. Drinking at times every day he was having to spend more and more money and damaging his health ever more. He had barely realized but now it was clear.

A solution was needed. Alcohol was sometimes all he had to propel him to physically move. Then perhaps coffee could do the trick. He tried it for a couple of days and it did give him a bit more energy. The excess of caffeine however made him need to relieve himself a lot and made it difficult to walk sometimes. Then he tried tea and was much happier. The tannins in it reduced the caffeine content to a level bearable to Luke and had only half as much caffeine as coffee in the first place anyway. At one drink of tea a day he had more energy and began to feel calmer. He liked to have it mixed with a bit of goats' milk - which was easier to digest than cows' milk and which he believed in because of its use of less land too. It meant less plants were destroyed to make his milk, lowering carbon emissions and helping preserve the natural environment. It was more possible for him to avoid alcohol while drinking tea. He still felt depressed and at times still got drunk but the old reliance on alcohol was, fortunately for him, assigned to history.

It was not done in a day. Old habits die hard, especially drinking alcohol. When he stopped as is not unusual for alcoholics he felt sensations like electric shocks in his brain and hallucinations of bright lights could appear from nowhere.

LXV

Pieces of paper were scattered over the floor reminding Luke what he needed to do. To visitors it was always a source of bemusement or - preferably - amusement but it was essential to him. A notepad was always kept on display in the lounge near a mug of pens to quickly scrawl appointments and notices. He would leave them in the hall near the front door so he could not avoid noticing them. He had tried everything else; but that was the safest bet of remembering to do something. There were so many things to do and too little time. The most difficult part of learning to be independent for Luke was managing all the post that arrived. Letters about his complaint, bank statements, council tax notices, utility bills and NHS appointments had to be filed in plastic pockets. Then he had to tear up the letters to recycle the paper and discard the plastic packaging in the bin. Along with organising the plastic and metal recycling he felt like a secretary and handyman rolled into one, such is the volume of modern day junk.

Some days he would have to do all of the above as well as shower, shave, empty the bin, brush his teeth, wash the pots, wash his clothes and later hang the wet clothes up to try. There was his homework to do too - so barely a moment's rest. Whoever said life was easy for young people these days had not a clue! Shaving was the most time consuming of the tasks and since he sometimes cut himself he really wished he could have afforded electrolysis. Had he ever been taught the proper technique to shave or even been aware he was not following it it would have helped; but alas, Luke was clueless.

On a quiet Sunday morning Luke opened the curtains to see an overcast sky above him. In the distance yellow sunshine teased at the horizon. Dressing and skipping breakfast, he caught the bus to Woecaster and went for his morning cup of tea to Pegg's, the chain bakery. The bus that morning was very full and managing to find an empty seat, two stops later a large man came on and sat by Luke. The large man gradually spread his thighs and legs until Luke felt forced to scoot his bottom to reposition himself further away. He held the position for a few minutes but his thighs were aching and so he let them slack. They spread out, coming into contact with the other man's leg. Luke felt a movement and in the corner of his eye he saw the man was looking at him. He struggled again to keep his legs held in. It would be much easier if people weren't so uptight about contact in confined spaces, grumbled Luke inwardly. Had he been listening to music or reading he would have grown too restless to easily sit next to the stranger; he had found that to be the case on past occasions when he employed those distractions. More recently he had found a new coping mechanism. Listening to audiobooks was his latest hobby and their knack of conjuring the imagination to work meant he could more easily escape his confines than with music.

The bus terminated its journey in Woecaster and Luke headed straight for the bakery. After buying his cup of tea to take out, two other customers were dawdling near the waste disposal unit. On its top were the kettle of milk, plastic spoons and sugar sachets. A man in front of Luke was slowly adding sugar and milk to his tea and adjusting it leisurely with his spoon. After waiting patiently, to his dismay Luke saw a staff member come, and just as the man left took his place, again blocking the aisle and set about refilling the box of sugar sachets. Half a minute passed. Having finally gained access, Luke added his milk and walked out.

Just outside a couple was stood; they looked like tourists and were craning their necks back and forth. He wanted to manoeuvre around them but the way the crowd was moving on the busy street meant he could not. He was blocked from one direction by the amount of people and yet another couple was approaching from the other direction. He stood ready to head into the gap once they had passed. Just as they went by him they noticed Luke and gave him a dirty look - as though he was an idiot to stand waiting politely. He did not see what else he could do! Brazen movements and a cup full of tea were not a match made in heaven. At last free to move, Luke passed an African toy salesman who was blowing bubbles, advertising his product effortlessly to enchanted children shopping with their parents.

Luke took his tea to a bench in Lilly Green, a monstrosity of a public space that had once been quite pretty. A large concrete wall had been erected along the perimeter of one side of the garden which at one section opened up into a cuboid arch. On either side of the arch were a coffee shop and Asian restaurant; and further into the muddied gardens beyond the arch were rows of dark granite benches and a bright metallic bridge going over a walkable water fountain with slate tiles. The fountain, which ran on a timer, came on from different hoses in patterns that attracted kids to run through to see if they could avoid the water flows. Most of the grass of the gardens had been turfed over while the curvature of the paths around the central water feature was long and braced frequently with the aforementioned seats. It made a person feel they walked on a kind of poor man's catwalk.

Luke walked over to Market Street where two folding tables been set up by the Socialist Workers' Party. Those people always made Luke feel uncomfortable. They had been coming out at the weekends for years, setting up their table and trying to give out newspapers; that or get signatures for petitions. He could not understand what they were achieving. There were too many political parties and they were just another one. But worse still they were tarred with the socialist brush: something most people would never vote for.  If they had no chance of getting into government why continue making themselves such a public campaign? Why could  they not join the Green Party and actually have a chance of achieving something? Luke could almost believe some small political groups were nothing but phony groups funded by the secret services or rich people trying to protect their interests. If people demanding a fairer society looked like lunatics Luke could imagine that might help discredit the very ideas that would threaten the toxic cruelty of this world; the cruelty ministered to the masses by the indifferent, wealthy businesspeople and their investors; and the thuggish secret services.

It was hard to know who to trust. Not long ago it was exposed in the news that an undercover police officer infiltrated a group of protesters trying to disrupt coal power stations polluting the environment. The policeman was so successful that he stayed with the groups for years and slept with - and formed relationships for a time with - several of the women.

So that he could try to overcome his fears and at least trust people to some degree, A tactic he found helpful occasionally was dressing in a suit and shirt as he was given allowance to be more stiff - to be what he naturally was due to years of bullying and neglect. It was a valid excuse - people who wear suits often were more formal. While in his suit he would imagine everyone else was wearing one too - then he did not feel too self-conscious. Otherwise he would be embarrassed, feeling overdressed for an unemployed man. It all amounted to nothing in Woecaster, though. Here people had to be on a level with everyone else - or else. It was a kind of backwards egalitarianism - not equality of income or class but rather equality of expectation. Everyone had to be modest and to not think themselves more clever than anyone else; to be rich and selfish was fine, as long as one behaved like all the rest.

Luke came up with mental strategies which were better. He would repeat the word "maudlin" over and over in his head sometimes which, as bizarre as it was, sometimes made it easier to cope with eye contact and facial expressions. Then he came up with a better word: "virtue"; if said over and over again it reminded him of what he aspired to in life. When Luke had been younger he had not thought of any strategies like those and so that was one of the few advantages of growing older.