Huts73

We’d a new patient. Well, he wasn’t new. He was really old, about 50 odd, and should really have been in the geriatric ward, but we had a spare bed. I’m not sure why he’d been moved from his old ward; Boquanran House. Wullie the Pole didn’t say, and I wasn’t going to ask. There was a bit of form filling to do, which Wullie the Pole said would be good for me, as he disappeared out of the ward. I didn’t mind. It gave me something to do. Back shifts were a pain in the arse. There was nothing worse, apart from nightshift, and sometimes dayshift.

The new patient was waiting for me in the dayroom. He’d on a tweedy jacket as if he was going somewhere. He’d a faint shade of stubble. Wullie the Pole wouldn’t allow that kind of slackness, but I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t my job to tell him. He had two black plastic bags with him. ‘Is that it?’ I said, but I didn’t mean to say it so dismissively.

I picked up one to demonstrate that I wasn’t really as bad a guy as I’d first sounded. ‘Jesus,’ I said, ‘what have you got in this?’

‘Mainly books, some stuff for drawing. I like drawing birds,’ he said, his face contorting into a proud grin.

At first I thought he was joking. He dragged one foot behind him, so that one shoe was worn out on one side and other looked as if it has just come out of the shoebox, and he’d one hand shaped like a claw. It was on the tip of my tongue to say something about us all liking birds, but the weight, and the way that the corners of rectangular shapes pushed out and almost punched hole in the black bag made me ask another question.‘What kind of books do you like?

‘Tolkein mostly' he said, 'but I’ll read anything, even the sauce bottle if there’s nothing else.’

I put his plastic bag on top of his bed. We’d put him in beside Peter Bell. They were about the same age, give or take fifteen to twenty years. And he didn’t have much stuff apart from books.

‘I’ll give you time to get your stuff unpacked,’ I said, ‘and if you want to take a walk up to the office when your finished we’ll get a cup to tea and fill in a few forms.’ I didn’t want to seem ignorant, so I patted the books in the plastic bag and added ‘I like Tolkein and all those other Russian writers. I’m reading Dessss Capital myself.’

All the other patients, apart from old Agnes Pickering, were at work, so I unlocked the kitchen, filled the urn with more water and watched it boil. I made us both a cuppa. I didn’t use the patients’ mugs, for the new guy, I used staff’s, I’d wash them out later, and nobody would know the difference.

The old guy was waiting for me outside the office. He smiled at me as I walked towards him clutching the two mugs. ‘Want a hand?’ he asked. But he really only had one hand. I just smiled back and pushed open the office door. The room stinked of Wullie the Pole’s cheap cigars. But there was no window. He’d just have to get used to it, like the rest of us. I sat in Wullie the Pole’s seat and the old guy sat in mine.

‘I should have brought biscuits,’ I said.

‘It doesnae matter,’ said the old guy.

The transfer from one ward to another was straightforward. There was a bit of typed biographical information. Some standard clinical notes written in different inks. The latest was about three years ago, which was pretty much the norm. But it was one of the things that drove James Munn mad. He wanted everything up to date; sparkling and new. I had to make things up, about patient rehab, when I knew he was coming to see me at our ward. And there was the Meds chart. But the old guy wasn’t on anything. Not even an anti depressant. I flipped through his chart. The last thing he’d been prescribed was an antibiotic, about a year ago. I supped my tea and looked at him. He was going to be all right. We didn’t really need to do anything for him.

‘You want a biscuit?’ I said jumping out of Wullie’s swivel chair, and pulling the kitchen key with practiced art out of the pack, flouring it like an Ace.

I brought back the whole tin. He could feed himself, wipe his ain arse and shave himself. Low maintenance. The least he deserved was a Jammy Dodger.

He dipped his Digestive biscuit into his tea. I thought it showed a kind of disrespect, but I didn’t say anything.

‘You been working here long?’ said the old man.

I had to think about it, as it felt like most of my life, ‘about nine months,’ I said, pulling a face.

‘You’re a big baby, for nine months,’ he said, with a half smile.

I hadn’t thought about that. Nine months for a new life. That’s what it was. My old life was gone forever and I was stuck in the hospital with my new life. I felt sorry for myself. ‘What about you?’ escaped from my lips.

‘Oh, I’ve been here a bit longer,’ he said, swilling the last of his tea, looking down at the remaining liquid at the bottom of the cup, as if it held that secret, and drank it in one gulp.

‘That’s a funny name you’ve got,’ I said changing the subject ‘Are you named after that clown, with the ukulele, George Formby?

‘No,’ he said, ‘you mind if I smoke?’

He opened a packet of fags and offered me one. I held my hands up, as if to say ‘no,’ but you go ahead, but he’d already sparked his, coughing in that appreciative way and blowing out a fistful of smoke.

‘No,’ he said, smiling sadly, ‘my mum was a mad royalist. I was named after the King…George, and my name was already Formby. I’d another brother Albert. And Edward. Well, you get the picture.’

I felt I should have known that. It said nothing in his three-page file. But then again I’d only skimmed through it. ‘Any sisters?’ I asked.

‘Yes, six. Victoria, Elizabeth, Margaret.’ His face frowned and he looked at me as if I was meant to know, ‘I can’t remember the other’s names.’

‘Big family?’ I asked, stating the obvious.

‘Sixteen,’ he said proudly.

‘What brought you here then?’ I asked, as casually as I could.

‘Polio,’ he said.

I knew that wasn’t classified as a mental handicap, but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t say anything in case I was wrong. It was my turn to frown. If he was so proud of his family I couldn’t work out why he was here. We usually got babies from the maternity hospitals, and they’d lived here all of their lives. George obviously had another life, before that.

‘I got polio when I was about seven. All I can remember is coughing and coughing and not being able to breathe. And my ma wiping me down with damp pieces of rag. They didn’t want to, but they eventually had to bring in the doctor. And what a kerfuffle that was. They had to clear the near whole tenement. It was the cludgie at the back. You couldnae flush it. I don’t know if that had anything to do with it. I was just the unlucky one. Well me and wee Johnie Devlin. They took us away out to the nuns in the countryside, but I was never the same. They tried putting my legs in iron struts, from my ankle to my hip, so that I sounded like a couple of buckets getting run over by a train. But my mum and dad couldnae dae it. They only got a shilling for every kid and two shillings for themselves. And they had to pay the rent, buy food and medicine. They tried to give me back to the nuns, but they didnae want me, so they sent me here.’

I tried to imagine what that was like. I got paid more than that and I never had any kids. But George didn’t seem that bothered. ‘You want another cup of tea?’ I asked.

‘Nah, I’ll get back to my room,’ he said, ‘I’ve got a lot of unpacking to do’.

When he shut the office door behind him. I put my feet up on the desk, lit a fag, and turned the radio on. I thought that George Formby would settle in just fine.