Now or Never 9

It’s Monday at midday now.
There’s a job to see in Putney but I haven’t got enough petrol to get there. I’ve got about three roll-ups left and what was on offer in the kitchen I finished last night. There’s twenty quid in my oyster card, but I have to get to a London train-station to recuperate it. These are the dilemmas of a deplorably spineless, latent delinquent.
My sisters are acting very guardedly towards me. They came to the flat yesterday but that was only to put things in the garage. I waved to them from the window so they nervously came in to see me, and left almost immediately. There was an awful silence when they said goodbye. I felt like some weirdo just out of prison, or that’s how I perceived it.
It’s now the following Monday. During the last week, I did a bit of work in Putney, which gave me enough money to live on, and saw my care manager on Wednesday. She was great. We talked about me being discharged, and she said that it happened all the time and that I shouldn’t let it get in the way of my recovery. She arranged for me to see another treatment centre with a more relaxed program of therapy the next day, so I went out and got drunk.
I drove up and arrived in the morning, welcomed by a counsellor. We sat down together in the kitchen.
I was asked a million questions and forms were filled in, signatures scrawled.
It’s for males only, which is easier for me, and there are only eight people.
As I was leaving, the counsellor told me that I’d been accepted in principle and that he’d be calling my care manager to discuss things.
The day after, Friday, I received a call confirming that I would be expected to arrive in ten days’ time.
I would also be required to go to the treatment centre every day before then, apart from weekends, to be breathalysed, which was a bit of a downer as I’d scored some Thai weed only two days before and had enough for the whole ten days.
‘So long as you can stay off the drink and smoke while you wait for a room, you’ll be alright,’ the counsellor had said.
‘Great,’ I thought, wondering who I could offload the weed to.
It’s now Sunday night. I’ve been a very good boy. The weed’s in a bag inches from the laptop I’m writing on and I still haven’t touched it.
I keep on nearly calling a buddy who I know would like it, but I can’t remember the name of his little daughter and I’m afraid that she’ll come into conversation.
Last night, I was sure it was Milly but when I woke up, I thought it was Lotty or Natty or something completely different with a y at the end. I may just have to bite the bullet and call him before it’s too late.
After I was breathalysed today, I went up to Putney to go to the library, forgetting that it was Tuesday (the only day they’re closed), so I traipsed back to the car and, on the way, I heard a baby crying in a block of flats.
The instant I heard the cry, I stopped and looked up to where I thought the noise was coming from. The more the baby cried, the more angry I became.
As the baby continued to cry, I found myself envisaging the room he or she was in, alone and in need of attention, completely helpless and aching for love. I could see the mother in my mind’s eye watching telly or reading a magazine, unaffected by the cries of her baby, and I suddenly felt like joining in and crying. Then I felt like screaming for her to go to the baby.
In the end, I rolled a roll-up, sucked hard on it and carried on walking to the car. As I went, I wondered whether there was any significance to my reaction to this everyday occurrence.
Having not seen my own children for almost nine months, my mind’s awash with self-pity, longing and fear of never knowing them. There’s an absence of spirit that’s hard to explain, but it feels like a part of me’s been taken away and held by an aggressor (my ex), who seems hellbent on destroying me. As she’s the primary carer, the courts can do nothing until Cafcass do the report.
I got to thinking in the car, a doleful mess.
When I’m working at people’s houses and they have babies crying, my painting can easily go to pot and I invariably become distant to the client for her lack of motherly love for the child/children.
One time, I worked at a house in which I noticed that the children’s bedrooms had locks screwed in on the landing side. The mother, a seemingly nice lady who I’d got on with up till then, told me that they were locked in their rooms at bedtime. This miffed me.
When I was asked to paint these bedroom doors on both sides, it came as no surprise when I inspected the doors on the bedroom side. The boy’s door was so full of stabs, scratches and indents that I had to put an extra twenty quid on the bill for filling and an extra coat. The little girl’s door was covered in indelible red and black felt-tip pen ink. The scrawling she’d done appalled me. Sharp, jagged lines filled with anger and frustration with words like ‘help!’, ‘please!’ and ‘monsters!’ scribbled everywhere.
I went downstairs and asked the mother to come and have a look.
‘I know, they do it every night, but David won’t let me go to them. He says it’s the best way because he was brought up that way,’ she said.
Yeah, and look at him, I thought to myself. A banker with a degree in copyright law, bereft of emotional understanding, a legal child-abuser.
‘Surely you can make up your own mind about what to do,’ I said, but her mind had been made long ago as to who wore the trousers, and I was left to assume that she had no qualms about drowning the sound of her desperate children’s cries with classical music and to hell with their mental health.
In the end, she decided against doing the bedroom side of the doors. ‘A bit of a waste of money if they’re just going to do it all over again.’
‘You stupid fucking ignorant cow,’ I wanted to say, but I needed the work.
It’s now Sunday night and I’ve been at the new treatment centre since Tuesday.
I’ve got a great room and the whole set-up is about as lax as it can get.
We do therapy sessions every weekday from ten to midday. The rest of the day, we’re free to do as we like, so long as we don’t drink.
We’re breathalysed every morning to make sure.
The sessions went well apart from on Friday, when a lot of the lads got serious cravings after doing an exercise on relapse prevention.
We were asked, How would I feel if I had a drink after two minutes, two hours and twenty-four hours.
At two minutes, some of us wrote down things like ‘angry, ashamed, worried’ and others put ‘on it, brilliant, home.’ At two hours, we all put down things like ‘pissed, wrecked, where’s the drugs?’ and the like.
When it got to twenty-four hours, there was a change of atmosphere in the room. Some fidgeted, some held onto their chairs like their lives depended on it, and others looked extremely worried, as if they’d seen a ghost.
We’d all put down things like ‘fucked, lost, homeless, sick’.
One guy said he’d have gone out to get tins because he’d have needed them and another said he’d have smashed someone in to take the pain away. Another said he’d have committed suicide, but then changed his mind with a sad smile, thinking about his kids.
When we left the room, some hid in their rooms and some paced about in the kitchen, cursing themselves. I wanted to help but no one wanted it.
It’s been a shit weekend. I can’t even remember what I’ve done, although I did find out, by way of an email, that another story’s been published in the Big Issue. That’s four now. This one was about my time in the YMCA and the editor was kind enough to tell me that an in-house writer had remarked on its authentic flavour.
I went to a car boot sale and found nothing this morning, then I had breakfast and started writing a new story about a council estate set in the future where the entire police force had been jailed for fraud and whites hoodlums had forsaken their crime-rights to the Africans and Asians in exchange for free beer, hash and nappies.
In the afternoon, I drove to The Priory in Roehampton and the car overheated in a traffic jam. I made it there on time, though, and when I saw the building, a sort of low-level Disneyland castle, I couldn’t help laughing to myself.
I went in through the grand entrance, where smokers were puffing away at tailor-mades, not roll-ups, and made myself an espresso with added milk from the classy little machine, which I thought might blow up in my face for some reason.
The meeting took place in a room full of ornate fittings, stained glassed windows and architectural mouldings. I looked up at the ceiling and wondered how much the mouldings had set them back. Fifty gees, maybe more, I thought.
My mind wasn’t set to take comfort from my fellow alcoholics and I quickly cancelled out the goodness. I wanted to share but it all seemed so bloody samey, with everyone banging on about getting to meetings and feeling the love, or how they were having a hard time of it. Again, I felt like the sanest patient in the asylum, which is one step away from a drink, apparently.
The thing is, no one at the new treatment centre knows about the steps. AA’s a dirty word and no one really goes to meetings. It’s more like a glorified boarding house with a bit of therapy included. We all cook for ourselves and can do as we please, without drink or drugs. Nothing’s forced down your throat like the other place.
I left the meeting ten minutes before the end to get some water for the radiator from reception and she gave me a watering can.
When I got back to the house, I watched Scarface in bed and fantasised about becoming a wealthy Moroccan hash smuggler in a VW van.
I probably need to get a few more months of sobriety before I do that.