Sin City

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www.panmacmillan.com/imprints/bello

About the author:
www.panmacmillan.com/author/wendyperriam

• Wendy Perriam
  
• Dedication
  
• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• Chapter Four
  
• Chapter Five
  
• Chapter Six
  
• Chapter Seven
  
• Chapter Eight
  
• Chapter Nine
  
• Chapter Ten
  
• Chapter Eleven
  
• Chapter Twelve
  
• Chapter Thirteen
  
• Chapter Fourteen
  
• Chapter Fifteen
  
• Chapter Sixteen
  
• Chapter Seventeen
  
• Chapter Eighteen
  
• Chapter Nineteen
  
• Chapter Twenty
  
• Chapter Twenty One
  
• Chapter Twenty Two
  
• Chapter Twenty Three
  
• Chapter Twenty Four
  
• Chapter Twenty Five
  
• Chapter Twenty Six
  
• Chapter Twenty Seven
  
• Chapter Twenty Eight
  
• Chapter Twenty Nine
  
• Chapter Thirty
  

Wendy Perriam has been writing since the age of five, completing her first ‘novel' at eleven. Expelled from boarding school for heresy and told she was in Satan's power, she escaped to Oxford, where she read History and also trod the boards. After a variety of offbeat jobs, ranging from artist's model to carnation-disbudder, she now divides her time between teaching and writing. Having begun by writing poetry, she went on to publish 16 novels and 7 short-story collections, acclaimed for their power to disturb, divert and shock. She has also written extensively for newspapers and magazines, and was a regular contributor to radio programmes such as
Stop the Week
and
Fourth Column
.

Perriam feels that her many conflicting life experiences – strict convent-school discipline and swinging-sixties wildness, marriage and divorce, infertility and motherhood, 9-to-5 conformity and periodic Bedlam – have helped shape her as a writer. ‘Writing allows for shadow-selves. I'm both the staid conformist matron and the slag; the well-organised author toiling at her desk and the madwoman shrieking in a straitjacket.'

For Barbara,
last of the angels

St Joseph, are you there? Please hold me, hold me tight. I'm small. I'm very small. Just a tiny baby, like Jesus in the manger. I wasn't born in a manger, but in a hospital in Reading. My mother wasn't there. I was born to you, St Joseph, born to a father. You put me to your breast. Flat pale hairy man's breast. I'm suckling now, eyes shut, mouth pulling at your nipple.

Hold me tighter. So tight I can't see anything, just feel your chest pressed against my eyes. That's nice. Nice and safe. I like it. Your milk tastes of bananas. We never had bananas, not when I was small.

Afterwards, you bathed me. Warm water, hard green soap. You wore a plastic apron and I slipped and slid against it, free without my nappies. When you put them on again, I wet myself – felt the pee run down, hot and wet; soak into your robe. Old brown robe now stained with wet and me.

“Norah Toomey, you've wet your bed again. A great big girl like you. You'll wash those sheets yourself –
and
iron them.”

Heavy linen sheets which never dried. Nothing dried. St Joseph's was near a river. Damp stains on the walls instead of pictures. The iron was heavy, too, the ironing board too high.

I don't wet beds now. I moved from St Joseph's forty years ago. The nuns went back to Ireland, didn't take me with them. I was sent into a Home. It was bigger than the convent, not as quiet. Everybody shouted. I think it was a punishment.

Then I moved again. The new place wasn't damp. Small and cramped with shiny turquoise paint. I had to scrub the paint.

Then I went to Belstead where everyone was ill. There was a garden with real flowers, but you weren't allowed to pick them.

I forget what happened next. But I came here one December. It was bitter cold, with snow. The walls looked very high, and the snow was grey, not white.

I'm in the Day Room now. I sit here most mornings and every afternoon. The walls are green. The chairs are brown with lumpy plastic seats. The ceiling has two cracks in it. They're very long and wiggly. One day, I think they'll meet.

Half the chairs are empty. All the younger patients have gone to see a film. I didn't want to see it. Films are always guns.

Ethel Barnes is talking to a man who isn't there. Annie's gone to sleep. Lil can't move at all.

It's still two hours till dinner. It's salad on a Monday. Little cubes of beetroot with one leaf of purple lettuce underneath and some chopped up peas and carrots mixed with salad cream. I like the pudding best.

The clock ticks very loudly. They had to choose a loud one because some of them are deaf. My hearing's good, but sometimes I still leak a bit. Sister says my bladder's fallen down, and not to cough or laugh.

Someone's just come in. That new nurse with the smile. They all smile when they're new, though not much later on. There's a girl with her. A pretty girl, fair, with nice blue eyes, and messy hair curling round her shoulders. She's smoking. They nearly all smoke here, staff as well as patients. There are ninety-seven burn holes in this carpet. I counted just last week. And burn-marks on the chair-arms. Sometimes patients pester you all day. “Cigarette, cigarette,” they wail, even when you've told them you don't smoke.

They're coming right towards me, Nurse in front, the girl walking very slowly as if she's frightened that the floor is made of paper and might not hold her up.

“Hallo, Norah. Know where Sandy's got to?”

“She's gone to see the film.”

“Oh, yes, of course. Clint Eastwood. Damn! I wanted her to keep an eye on Carole. Norah, this is Carole. Carole's new.”

Carole. That's a nice name. Prettier than Norah. I try and smile. It hurts. The girl looks very sad and very young. Sandy's young as well. Most people are old here.

“They've put her in your ward. She ought to be in Robson, but the ceiling's letting water.”

Our ceiling leaked as well once. They had to put three buckets underneath, to try to catch the drips. Carole has red shoes on. I've never worn red shoes.

“Carole, this is Norah. Norah Toomey. Norah's been with us over twenty years.”

The girl stares at me and swallows. She looks scared now, not just sad.

Nurse pulls another chair up, next to mine. The seat is torn and some soft grey curly stuff is oozing out.

“Can I leave her with you, Norah? I'm wanted in the office.”

I feel frightened now myself. I won't know what to say to her. I'm not that good at words.

“Fred, get
away
.” screams Ethel.

Carole jumps.

“Fred isn't there,” I tell her. “He died two years ago.”

The clock is ticking louder. Carole's looking round. I wish the room was nicer. They took the curtains down once and no one put them back. We used to have some goldfish, but they died. Two of them were grey, but Nurse still called them goldfish.

“It's supper in two hours,” I say. “You can leave the pudding, but you have to eat the meat.”

She doesn't answer. I think she's going to cry. Her cigarette's burnt right down to the end. She lights another one. “Cigarette!” Peg moans.

“Unless you're vegetarian,” I add. No one is. Not here. We had two vegetarians at Belstead, but one died and one was moved.

Carole blows some smoke out, puffs again. There's a ladder in her stocking. Suddenly she speaks. “Toomey's Irish, isn't it?”

I nod. A lot of people hate the Irish. I expect she'll move away now, find another chair.

“You don't sound Irish, not at all. I went out with this Irish bloke and he was really broad. Quite a laugh as well. It didn't last, though. I only saw him twice. Where d'you come from? Dublin?”

“No. Belfast.” That's what they told me, but I don't know where it is. I've never been there; never been to Ireland. “I was born in Reading,” I explain.

“
I
was born in Glasgow. I'm not Scottish, though – not really anything. My mother was just passing through. She ought to be a patient here, my Mum. She's more a mess than I am.” Carole laughs. The laugh is very sad. “What are you in for?”

“I … live here.”

“Yeah, but why? You can't just live here like it's some hotel.”

I've never been in a hotel. Sister Watkins went to one, in Spain, a huge one on a beach. She sent us a postcard of the beach and wrote on the back ‘I can see this from my window.” The other Sister pinned it up, but someone scrawled three black lines across it.

I ought to answer Carole, but I don't know what to say. I try to think way back. I can see the convent, very tall and quiet. I must have grown too big for it. I can see a mop and duster. The duster's soaking wet. “I used to cry,” I say. “Every day. All day, some days.” I tried to stop, but the tears came on their own.

“Oh, depression.” The girl flicks her cigarette. The long wobbly worm of ash collapses, powdering her skirt.

I nod. That's what the doctors call it when you cry. They give me pills which make my face stiff, so it's hard to cry or laugh now. Though the things which make me cry are still there.

“I've warned you, Fred,” shouts Ethel.

Olive's snoring. Peg has tipped sideways in her seat. There's a bad smell in the room. It isn't me. There are forty-eight toilets in this hospital. I've used them all, except the staff ones, which have proper towels and locks on all the doors.

I wish Sandy would come back. Or Alison, who talks a lot. Carole's saying nothing. I don't think she likes the room. There's nothing in it really, only chairs. There's a wall outside the window, so we don't have any view. There used to be a beech tree, but two men came with a lorry and cut it down. They tied it up with chains first. Then they cut its fingers off, and next its arms and head. It took them a long time. I think I heard it scream.

Carole's looking round again. There are bare spots on the walls. People pin things up, then rip them down again and the paint comes off as well. I shut my eyes and everything looks better.