Love on the NHS (9 page)

When childhood is over, the groove of a person's life is for the most part set in. At least, that was what Luke believed. In his high school years he had wanted to live by the sea. It was his desire to be with witty friends with a mature outlook who could reference great films, plays and literature. It would have been terrific if they could have foreseen the future and not taken the obvious route of falling apart. Where were those life affirming moments when he needed them?

How rewarding it would have been to live a youth not wasted; but alas he had been a fool. He had wanted to follow his heart - he would have liked to be able to make mistakes without being hounded. The city could be a cruel place. Surveillance cameras, community orders, overzealous police and council officers, impossibly hopeless social housing estates. Could people never just have some fun, and love, and see past all the hardship? His high school experience - wow, now that was disappointing. His friends, asinine. Their humour a cruel, hyena variant. There had been little aspiration, or time for reflection or appreciation of anything. Almost everything was geared towards keeping up with the Joneses, climbing the hierarchy of overpopulated, hyper-competitive all-singing, all-dancing corporate Britain.

This, Luke figured, was the reason he never tired of watching Lawson's Creek. Over and over again. It had in it everything he would have liked. He could quite happily have paid someone to pretend to be another character from the show - and to act out a false life with him. That would have been infinitely more useful than living a true life of emptiness.

XVII

When Luke called his mother to tell her how much he hated life, she would tell him to visit his sisters. For a few years he did so as much as he could. Every week he went to Lily and her husband James' house and to Adriana, and her partner Ken's, home. Both sisters were mothers to toddlers - it was an exciting new era/ The trouble was he did not get along with them like he had as a child. Adriana and Luke would watch programmes on the TV together, re-runs of paranormal drama The X Files or crime series Bones. An occasionally matching taste in TV shows was the extent of their common interests and so the conversation soon dried up. Adriana made a lot of hand movements and body language too, as well as frequent eye contact, all of which overwhelmed Luke. She was the most sociable of all Luke's siblings.

It was hard for Luke because body language was something he could almost feel. Scientists will probably some day discover that human beings have a sixth sense and that some people like Luke are able to use it more acutely. Ripples seemed to come through the air as people moved their arms and hands - and when people made eye contact he was sure he could feel it. He could not explain it but his best attempt would be that it was the reflection of the light from the person's eyes his body sensed. Not such a crazy idea; after all almost all biological entities are attracted to light and without very few can survive.

Meanwhile evenings at Lily and James' were spent playing video games and being silly with their baby son. Luke and Lily watched the whole of Lawson's Creek on DVD, which was wonderful. At the same time Luke was dismayed at how both his sisters got their babies to drink formula milk. It was full of unhealthy additives yet trying to persuade them to change was fruitless. Their children like most youngsters nowadays were loud and restless too and it gave Luke a headache. The travelling to get them was also a massive disincentive to see them. Buses to their homes were infrequent. It made no sense to Luke that in some towns in the south for years bus stops had had electronic notices with estimates of arrival times for due buses; but in Greater Woecaster they were nowhere to be seen. The buses to his sisters' houses went around serpentine developments of houses and both lived in dips that were colder than where Luke was, who was prone to chilblains

It played on Luke's mind that they did not seem to want to push their children to attempt to achieve a state of perfection. Being a perfectionist himself he could not understand why anyone else would not aspire to excellence. Having experienced hard times in school due to eating poorly - and not having the strength to defend himself from assault or pay attention enough in class - he would have loved to make them realize, to see how essential it was to cook fresh meals. It was not always easy, he understood that; being so busy as parents are nowadays. But he did suggest to them cooking a big batch of soup which was fairly straightforward. In truth Luke probably did not grasp how economically straitened were times for new parents: not only were food prices rising, so too were mortgage costs. At least they both breastfed their babies. All Luke had read from recent research suggested it helped develop a feeling of love and trust in a young baby. He had never been breastfed himself - but then his mother had not been able to do so. Like any uncle worth his salt, Luke sought a better life for his nephews than his own.

His sisters were good mothers but hearing about the children theirs played with reminded him there were so many bad parents out there. Lily and Adriana would tell him about naughty and mean things other children had done to theirs in play groups and shrug it off; such as most everyone did these days. What a shame that people no longer believed good behaviour was important. Fun was king - and anyone who had any sense of responsibility was seen as a sourpuss. Some parents' children were taken into care as their skills were considered so poor. But Luke did not usually agree with that harsh decision, even in circumstances where parents were violent to their kids. Putting people into care is a very risky decision. It is not only expensive for a government to finance someone living in care. It also is frequent for sexual and physical abuse to take place in care homes. It it impossible to express in words how horrible it is. For each individual, it is a different experience - even the violent anal rape of a vulnerable young boy can easily be viewed with institutional and professional indifference by social workers and members of staff.

The problem of psychopaths is rarely given coverage in the media - most likely because the people running newspapers are themselves sick in the head - and so people have still not yet learned that it is often the most charming, friendly people who hide the darkest secrets. Inspections on care homes rarely find any abuse occurring as they are too obvious and the kind of psychopaths attracted to misusing their position of power for their own gain are too emotionally and socially intelligent to let slip what they are doing to people who pose a threat to their sordid life.

After years of reports being covered up, we are now finding out members of staff in care homes as well as police officers have been implicated in widespread abuse. Yet even when long awaited reports are released parts of them have been deleted. Who then can you trust? If a youngster has no one to turn to in a place that is corrupt is it any wonder that they truant from school? For truancy is a very common problem indeed among children in care. So many care leavers, when the legal requirement to keep them there expires, become homeless or end up in prison. Surely that is evidence that there is not so much care in the care system in reality. Luke did not understand why all that money and effort was spent on putting someone in care - when far more easily, someone could pay to train and pay a person to be a live-in support worker in the family home. That way the child could stay with its family. It could maintain its natural connections and with intense one-to-one support for the parents, it could help the family become functional and to learn to handle difficult situations constructively.

Luke also thought it was a problem that authorities vacillated between two extremes: not interacting with a problem family at all and taking the drastic decision to take away their children. When children go into trouble with the police, why not make the parents attend a police station for twenty four hours? It would soon make them tired of having misbehaving kids. If they could somehow be taught the consequences of bad parenting sooner, it would not lead to so many problems down the line. Once children became accustomed to lax parents, they would push the boundaries to sometimes unacceptable levels.

The first few years after the move to Furchurch his parents, Luke and Bridget had an annual holiday. It was always taken at the lush and windswept Scottish isle of Dunbae. Located a mile-or-so out to sea from the mainland town of Nargs, it was a peaceful island with only one little town. It was during his stays there that Luke gradually realized he could not handle cold weather. He already found the Duldrum climate too adverse (which was cooler than Hardock's and Woecaster's) but in Scotland it was whole another dimension. Summer holidays they may have been but the skies were often black or grey and wild winds would blow from the Kintyre peninsula. In the evenings - and sometimes even the days - sweatshirts and coats were worn. It was quite uncomfortable because the isle had many steep hills and long walks between the caravan site and shops. Despite the biting climate, they all got hot and sweaty in so many layers.

As well as the summer holidays, Luke visited his sister Bridget in Edinburgh. She had lived in a few apartments in that city since studying at the university. Funnily enough, none of them had a good central heating system. It was a peculiar feature of Scotland! It was the closest to freezing in the United Kingdom yet had so many homes that would not heat up well. The worst part was getting up in the morning, snuggled in a few blankets - Luke would be reluctant to leave his bed. A shower was an ordeal and a half. He would dance and sing to keep his motivation, his body trembling. It made sense to Luke now, why Scotland had a lower life expectancy than other areas of the United Kingdom. It was obvious people in harsh conditions would eat more unhealthily and drink more alcohol - it kept warm. Their high consumption of drugs was their escape. Unless a person is very hardy as was Luke's sister, Bridget, those conditions would take their toll on you.

Scotland was not without its charms. In Philport, the town on the isle of Dunbae, the local fish-and-chip takeaway sold deep fried pizzas. Luke had tasted them nowhere else - they were breathtaking. In Nargs on the mainland some the locals adorned viking helmets at the weekends and went berserk with joy and drunkenness. Though Luke enjoyed some of the holidays - who would not be thrilled to share a four-seater bike with their family? - it was not the charmed youth he yearned for.

The journey to Dunbae and back was excruciating. Everyone would be under pressure to be happy, arguments would break out. On roundabouts there was confusion about which turn to make or at busy junctions in gridlocked, angry towns. Luke's mother and father would start shouting. About which way to go, each accusing the other of having a foul attitude. Samantha relied on a sat-nav device on the windscreen. It directed her but was sometimes inaccurate. It infuriated Bruno who would say, "But I've driven this road ten times. Don't you think I know the way?! Why are you listening to that? It took us a long way round last time - it sent us another twenty miles!"

An unfortunate aftermath to the holiday was to be expected too. Luke's parents would stay at his for one night on the way back, due to the length of the journey. His mother Samantha would leave one or two possessions behind. Although they would search the apartment high and low, stuff always got left. Mobile phone chargers and tea bags were the most common things left; they were so easily overlooked.

That she kept losing things like her phone and purse made Samantha worry about dementia. Was she developing it? Or maybe Alzheimer's disease. She feared her husband was too. Both were finding it harder in a conversation to recall TV programs or people's names. Bruno would moan to Luke on the phone of the perils of aging - "The greatest people die young," he would say. "My bowels keep getting binded up," was a common complaint too. And during the Scottish summer holiday the family would also make a stop at Luke's half-brothers from Bruno's first marriage. They lived far from the rest of the family - except for Bridget - in the borderlands of Scotland. That Bruno only saw them once a year, largely due to the great distance from him they lived, racked him with feelings of loss and guilt.

XVIII

The little things can be what drive us mad. Luke's A housing association is no major player on the stage of life - but Luke's caused him many headaches. Their approach to repairs was the chief annoyance. When Luke needed new taps in the kitchen they sent out three men; they shouted and bashed around for half an hour while Luke, absolutely terrified, watched TV with his back to them. The two older men, like large and excitable apes, were arguing with the younger, lean man about the London riots. The youngster expressed the opinion the police were partly to blame for the riots.

"What the hell are you talking about?" one of them thundered.

"I've experienced the police behaving aggressively myself," he said defensively.

"Yeah 'cause you're a bloody scumbag," said one of them. The other made a more offensive insult, which shall not be repeated for the sake of his mother's virtue.

The youth was in no mood to give up as he explained, "My dad was assaulted really badly by two police officers."

"What did he do? Bet he deserved it," interrupted one.

"There was a brawl going on, right, and he just got caught in the middle. He wasn't involved at all. Just outside the local pub at closing time."

"Yeah, right! Not involved, my arse. Would you rather he got seven shades of crap beaten out of him or that the police turned up? It's people like him that the police are there for to protect us from."

"No, listen, right. When they arrested him they beat him up so bad it left large, swelling bruises on his stomach and legs. When he got home the next day he took photos with a digital camera. He successfully sued for damages, he got thousands of pounds because of their thuggish behaviour."