Sin City (6 page)

She passes me a mug of Cup-A-Soup: Chicken Oriental, with little shreds of noodle floating on the top. “What's happened, Carole? You haven't run away, have you?”

I almost laugh. They'd have their tracker-dogs out if I tried. “No, I'm meant to be at bingo. I was at bingo, actually. I even won. Two fat ladies – eighty-eight. I just slipped out for a pee – the longest pee in history. It's okay, Jan, don't look so worried. They won't know. Bingo goes on hours. I just had to see you. There's been this awful row, you see. This afternoon. They won't let her go.”

“Who?”

“Norah.”

“Go where?”

“On the holiday, you nut. Sister just refused point-blank, said it was absolutely ridiculous for someone who'd never spent a single night away, and whose longest journey in fifty-odd years was a day-trip to Littlehampton, to go waltzing off to the States.”

“Well, I see her point, love. I said much the same myself, if you remember.”

I do remember. Jan's really quite a pain at times. “Look, Jan, if Norah doesn't take this chance, she'll never leave those four walls, except feet first in a coffin. You'd go nuts yourself if you never went out or mixed with normal people or saw a different view or … There's nothing
wrong
with Norah. Okay, she's not exactly Einstein, but she's not mental either. The only reason she's in that place at all is because she's never had a home or proper parents. She's been in institutions all her life. One leads to another. You get caught up in the system, and before you know it, you're labelled ‘nut' or ‘case' or ‘halfwit'.”

Jan says nothing, just sips her soup, face closed. She doesn't realise how much a matter of sheer chance it is, what you're labelled, or where you land in life. In her neat and tidy system, criminals go to prison and loonies live in mental homes. No mistakes, no botch-ups. No cases of bad luck or missing fathers.

She reaches for her laurel spray, shakes the cold drops off it. They sting against my face. “Be honest, Carole. Why not admit you're simply furious that you won't be able to go yourself?”

I open my mouth to deny it, scald it with hot soup instead. Jan's right. Of course I'm furious. Frustrated, disappointed. Even when I had the row with Sister, a bit of me was disgusted with myself, championing poor Norah when all I really cared about was me. Okay, so I'm a hypocrite, and worse still, Jan sees through me, but it is my only chance to see America, have a bit of fun for once. And that stupid Sister Watkins says they've booked a lovely panto for New Year and we can go to that instead. Puss in fucking Boots.

Jan starts breaking up her laurel branch. Snap, snap, snap. “You
know
it's crazy, Carole. I mean, how could Norah cope? She won't go places with you, or join in things, or be any proper company. And what are you going to talk about?”

“You're just jealous, Jan.”

“Jealous? I wouldn't want to go, thanks. A monster hotel with three thousand rooms and fifteen hundred slot machines. No fear! I'd rather have a cottage in Snowdonia.”

I flop back in my chair. I don't believe her, actually, but what's the point of quarrelling? Of course I'd rather go with her. If things had worked out better, she'd have been taking me. I entered in her name as well as Norah's,
and
her parents' name, and all three sisters'. And Norah won. Even so, I thought at first I'd swing it, borrow Toomey's name, identity; take Jan as my friend. Except I'd quite forgotten vital things like passports. I can't be Norah Toomey on a passport. So it's either her and me, or not at all.

Not at all, said Sister.

Actually, she can't say that, not legally. I phoned a friend of mine who's reading Law at London University, a brainy girl I knew at school. She looked it up for me. Unless a patient is actually confined under various complicated sections of the Mental Health Act, you can't keep her in against her will, or forbid her going places. In fact, more than nine-tenths of those patients could discharge themselves today, just walk out, piss off, and no one would have any legal right to stop them, haul them back. The trouble is, they're all too drugged or scared to try. Once you're labelled patient, you become one – passive, apathetic, with no initiative; chained to a chair and a daily timetable, salivating when the meal-bell rings. Look at me. I've started building my life round those dreary Wednesday film shows, counting the days till Sunday because there's ginger cake for tea. I've been in bloody weeks now, yet I'm not exactly chafing to escape. I rarely see the doctor on my own, and when I do, he never talks about me leaving, just assumes I'm there indefinitely. Okay, I know the place is closing, but if it wasn't, I could rot there till I die.

Jean Foster died last week, aged seventy-three. She was admitted in her twenties because she was pregnant and unmarried, just like Norah's mother. The baby was stillborn, so she was naturally upset. “Clinically depressed”, they labelled it – another label added to “depraved”. She stayed depressed. No wonder, in a place like this. But like Toomey, she had neither home nor job; nothing and nobody to bail her out, offer an alternative. Sheer bad luck, or fate, not mental illness. All right, some of them are ill – schizophrenic, senile, even bonkers – and madness is infectious, just like measles, so if you're a patient long enough, you're bound to end up weird. But it's still inhuman to lump us normal ones with the zombies and the cretins. We haven't got a chance. I mean, take Di Townsend, who's really sweet, and used to run a chain of snazzy dress shops. She was only admitted because she got weepy with her “change”. Now she says she's scared of ever leaving, feels she couldn't even run her home.

No one understands, though. Even my brainy friend, the barrister-to-be, was pretty scathing about what she called the nutters. I didn't let on that I was technically one myself. She might have refused to help. As it was, she was really very decent, said she'd get more details, look up all the books for me, type out what I needed. Once I've got her letter, got the whole thing clear, I'll march to Matron's office and confront her with the facts.

I spoon a few limp noodles from the bottom of my mug. Is it really worth the fuss? More rows and confrontations? To tell the truth, I'm feeling rather scared inside. In one way, I'm wild to go to Vegas, break out of my straitjacket, look forward to something more than ginger cake. And yet … Oh, I don't know. Winning's like so many things: it sounds wonderful until it really happens, or until you read the small print. The small print on this holiday is fine, in fact – exceptionally generous, with no hidden extras, as they say. It's the small print in my head which is causing all the problems, the secret doubts and fears. I've never won before; well, just a steam-iron once, and a game of Chinese chequers as a runner-up, but nothing big, nothing like a holiday. I didn't even known where Vegas
was
– America, of course, but I thought it was California, or maybe Mexico. Nevada sounds much duller, and it's not that hot at all. I looked it up. It's a furnace in the summer, but only fifty-five or so in winter. I'd rather have the furnace, so hot you'd just lie flat and think of nothing. I can't stop thinking since I won – or Norah won, I should say. That's the worst part. Supposing they find out she never entered, doesn't even smoke? It's like shoplifting again, stealing someone's name. And I have to keep pretending so she won't refuse to go, pretending it will be fun and hot and wonderful and that we'll get on well together when she's miles older than I am and …

“Jan …”

“Mm?” She's talking to her flower-arrangement. If I were a birch twig or a spray of dwarf chrysanthemums, I'd have her full attention.

“Look, I'd take you if I could, Jan – if it was left to me, I mean. It would be something in return for all you've done for me. You know I'm … grateful, don't you?”

“Yes, 'course. You've said it twenty times.”

She still sounds cross – no, not exactly cross, just on edge, as if she doesn't really want me there. She's wearing her best skirt and I've just noticed a fancy lemon cheesecake thawing on the side, which she hasn't offered me. Is she expecting someone? A bloke, maybe? And if so, why hasn't she mentioned him? We always confide about our boyfriends – or used to, anyway. I suppose she doesn't trust me any more. I'm batty, like poor Norah. Must be, mustn't I? Only loonies live in psychiatric hospitals.

I don't know why I came, really. I suppose I imagined she'd support me, back me up, sympathise at least. And I felt so overwrought, I needed to get out, confide in my best mate. Now I just feel flat, and in the way.

I glance around her room – three walls painted orange, the fourth one papered in blue and yellow squiggles. I suspect the landlord got both paint and paper cheap – offcuts or odd lines which no one else would buy. The chairs look reject too, faded cretonne poppies blooming over broken springs. Jan's done her best, prettied up the surface with ornaments and bits and bobs, hung a few small flower prints. The room looks bigger, somehow – perhaps because it's tidy, far tidier than it ever was with me there. My sleeping bag is rolled up in a corner, my books and knick-knacks banished to a box. It's as if she's parcelled me away, wiped me off like a grease-mark on a table.

I watch her snip a stalk, ram it into chicken wire. She's brought a few flowers home, snooty hothouse things, purplish-pink, with sort of pouting lips. Are they really only homework, or something to impress her guy, her new Mr Right who'll soon move in with her? There won't be room for three.

She repositions a flower head, moves back to admire it. “Does Norah
want
to go?”

I shrug. “Not really. I don't think she wants anything. When you've been in a place like that for years and years, you don't have any wants left. On the other hand, she's scared about the move. It's definite now. Everyone's discussing it. Patients like her who aren't batty or half-crippled or over eighty have to go into lodgings and she hates the very thought.”

“But how can a holiday change that? She'll still have to move, won't she, after the ten days?”

“Well, I suppose she thinks it's …” I swallow a last noodle, push my mug away. “Longer.”

“Carole, you didn't
let
her think that, did you?”

“No, I bloody didn't. I can't help it, can I, if she refuses to read the bumph? She's had three letters now and hasn't glanced at one of them. She assumes all sorts of things without me saying anything – not just about Las Vegas, but …”

“Look, Carole, she's obviously confused. There's just no point in going with her. She'll be a total drag. Or maybe worse. Supposing she goes funny, or has a fit or something? It's quite a responsibility, you realise, travelling all that way with a loony in your charge.”

“She's not a loony. I wish you wouldn't use that word.” I touch the squashy package in my pocket – a piece of mushroom flan wrapped in pale pink Kleenex, the pastry damp and blackened from the mushrooms. Norah saved it from her dinner, a treasure which had somehow missed the mincer, hoarded it for me. “We do have loonies, sure, quite a choice selection. In fact, it could have been far worse. Imagine ten days in Las Vegas with Flora Thompson who's got only half a face and less than half her brain cells, or Meg O'Riley who thinks she's still in Ireland.”

Jan grimaces. I suppose she loathes the hospital because her life is prettying things. Exotic scented flowers to follow bloody tearing births or smelly sordid illnesses, or to patch up deadly quarrels.

Even death itself strewn with coloured petals. Floral tributes, they call the wreaths in Mayfair.

My mother sent a wreath from both of us, a ghastly thing with silver lurex ribbons dangling from self-important lilies; wrote “To Father” on it. He wasn't her father, only mine, and anyway I never called him that. I stole out later with a pair of kitchen scissors and snipped my name neatly off the card (which was vile itself – a white and silver cross with a disembodied hand held up in blessing.) I scoured every money-box and hiding-place I'd ever used since I was a kid, tipped the pile of coins into a plastic bag (they were too heavy for a purse), blew the lot on cheerful non-snob flowers – marigolds and cornflowers, sweet williams, scented stocks; spent all day clinging on to them. They were awkward to carry and the damp stems made my skirt wet, but I couldn't bear to leave them in that sapless crematorium, or slighted by my Mother's fancy wreath. By evening, they were drooping. One marigold was just a stalk. I must have knocked its head off and not noticed. In the end, I left them on a bench, one Dad often sat on in the park, happy doing nothing – whittling sticks or patting dogs or exchanging words with strangers who walked by. (My mother never spoke to anyone unless she had a formal signed certificate – in triplicate – that they were clean, English, insured, and right of centre.) Perhaps someone picked them up, a dirty stranger or left-wing foreign tramp.

I hate the smell of stocks now – smell of death. Even the next day, I could still smell their sickly scent, as if it had seeped into my bloodstream, or was oozing from my pores.

“Carole …”

“What?”

“I wish you'd stop those pills, love. You just don't concentrate. I've asked you – twice – do you want an egg?”

“No, thanks.” I did miss supper, actually, but I hate to be a sponger. Jan doesn't earn too much and that lemon cheesecake must have cost a bomb, with those piped rosettes of cream on top and that ruff thing round the middle. I hope he likes it.

“You don't mind if
I
eat, do you?” Jan brushes bits of laurel off the table, removes them to the bin.

“Course not. Pig yourself. Aren't you cooking for him, though?”

“What?”

“Oh, nothing.” Jan's staring at me, frying pan in one hand, corn oil in the other. I think she suspects I'm going really nuts, keeps watching me for signs. It's spoiling our friendship. She doesn't quite trust me any more, seems always a bit wary and reserved. I've noticed it when she visits. We don't giggle like we used to, and sometimes there are actual silences, which we've never ever had in fourteen years.