Windows of Madness (Part 11)

Llewelyn
1962

Tension.
Llewelyn was just beginning to discern a vague pattern in his mother’s moods. Tranquillity would reign for two or three weeks and then one day all hell would break loose, followed by a few days of parental sulking, desperate apologies from him and a continuation of the cycle.
The statement “I’m going to send you to a children’s home!” was now regularly added to the recipe, and it took him a couple of wonderful years to work out that this particular threat was probably an idle one. Much later, he could at least attribute her behaviour to pre-menstrual tension (and this made it a lot easier to understand), but it was nevertheless impossible to forget the times he sat on the staircase trying to earn a reprieve from ‘the home’ by weeping. Understanding in itself could not erase the attitudes deeply scored through time; leaving him fallen between the two stools of compassion and blame.
He was once brave enough to ask his mother why she was so angry, and she replied:
“Because you’re a little bastard, like your father, that’s why!”
This response revealed something else about her motivation, and suggested that the pain of the divorce continued to dominate his mother’s mind. She had never really got over it, and for many years he was literally her whipping boy while she unsuccessfully transferred her emotions onto him.
“You mean everything to me” she said that evening.
Indeed, for three weeks out of every four life at home was reasonably happy, and he adopted a steady routine of ‘Sunday Night at the London Palladium’, ham salad on Fridays, Saturday afternoon wrestling (with Kent Walton), haddock and chips twice on Wednesday tea times, and fortnightly visits to the dentist for his wire brace to be tightened. His Monday morning feeling began on Sunday with an endless series of dreary 1940’s repeat films, depressing hymns and bath night in the fridge upstairs, while his weekend began on Friday when the school allowed free reading and creative art in the afternoon. He ate corn beef hash, tinned tomatoes and bacon, stew and dumplings, bangers and mash, egg and chips, pie and peas, and bubbling fritters laced with brown sauce.
There was no central heating of course, and when the six-month winter arrived they were condemned to huddling around the one coal fire in the living room, making occasional dashes to the kitchen, toilet or coal bunker as required. The large rooms, steel framed windows, and emulsion painted walls all added to the Siberian atmosphere, while double-glazing, 8” loft insulation and cavity wall filling were things from ’Tomorrow’s World’ rather than the present. Once Llewelyn was in the bath with his plastic boats and water pistols he quite enjoyed the experience, but when the immersion-heated water started to go cold all he could do was dry himself at the speed of light, and use mind-over-matter to ignore the icy rivulets trickled down his goose pimpled back. Finally, it was out with the ‘Vim’, a vigorous scrub to remove the weekly tidemark around the pock marked enamelled bath with its rusty stain from the plug chain, and a dive downstairs to toast his shivering buttocks in front of the smoking coalite.
Hypothermia knocked on every door, and he was always glad to escape to his little bedroom at the front of the house, where he would climb under the mountainous bulk of blankets to go to sleep, pausing only to check the gargantuan fruit spiders which lived in far off corners of the room. Sometimes he would raid his collection of ‘Beezer’, ‘Topper’ and ‘Victor’ annuals first, but gradually the cold would drive him under the bedclothes, and he would watch the old Singer sewing machine fade into blackness; its little drawers full of polished buttons and embroidered pips belonging to a half-forgotten man.
As Llewelyn wasn’t designed to be the life and soul of every party, he began to develop a wide range of solitary, insular pastimes (yes, including that). He read every book in the house from ‘Just William’ and ‘Biggles’ to ‘King Solomon’s Mines’ and ‘The First Men in the Moon’, and then moved through vast collections of ‘Jennings’, ‘Billy Bunter’ and ‘The Secret Seven’ from the junior library. He was trying to replace the world with something a bit more dependable, and to some extent he succeeded.
Fatally, perhaps, he began to delight in his own introversion.
By 1962, his primary school career was almost over and he was looking forward to more challenging times at the big school (not). On his final day, somebody playfully pushed his head onto the ebonised class piano, shattering the right lens of his mock tortoiseshell glasses on one of its corners. Llewelyn spent the farewell assembly picking granules of glass out of his eye, and wondering how his mother was going to see it.
“Are you alright Llewelyn?” one of the more observant teachers said, as he filed out with a red face and watery eyes.
“Yes, Miss” he lied.
“Have a nice holiday, then.”
“Thank you, Miss” he said.
Then he walked out through the gates, alone in the blurred crowd.
And angry.
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The Unit
2007

It was time for a community meeting again, and I was once more scouring the unit for unwilling participants. I prevailed on six or seven patients to leave their beds, but then noticed them forming a disorderly queue outside the door to the blocked stairs, where David stood feeling around the woodwork and muttering to himself. This was one of his regular obsessive-compulsive rituals, which tended to appear whenever he anticipated a stressful event of some sort, like shopping for fish and chips, or having a bath. I was dangerously short of patience these days, so I dispensed with the professional, politically correct pleasantries and simply bellowed:
“For God’s sake David, will you stop arsing around and get yourself downstairs.”
This always worked much more effectively than a lifetime of psychotherapy or drugs, and he instantly broke out of his reverie and moved downstairs, freeing the bottleneck. But before I had time to congratulate myself on a rare effective intervention, a nearby toilet door creaked open and out tumbled Richard, with a face like thunder.
“Oh…er…. I thought you went home hours ago Richard.”
“Yes….well…..I fell asleep on the toilet if you must know. I’m almost dead on my feet with all this extra work.”
“Yes, indeed. You certainly wouldn’t call Adolf Hitler entertainment” I said, pointing to the Large Print edition of ‘Mein Kampf’ dangling from his left hand.
“Hmmm....that’s besides the point Steven.”
“Oh…I…”
“What is the point” he continued “ is that I overheard you berating David in a grossly unprofessional manner. I believe the exact expression you used was “stop arsing around”?”
“Oh…yes….er…..sorry about that.”
It was a golden rule in psychiatric nursing that staff should keep patients entirely insulated from the rough and tumble of social life, and then wonder why the patients couldn’t cope.
“It was most reprehensible.”
“Yes….er…”
“Abominable in fact.”
“Oh….er…”
“Well, from the first of next month there will be a total ban on all rectal jokes, and the penalties will be severe.”
“Oh….but I didn’t mean……”
“Yes, I would have no option but to issue an official verbal warning which would be entered on your records and retained for a period of six months, after which the matter would be reviewed annually.”
“Oh…..but…..”
“Luckily for you there are still three days to go before the new rules are implemented, so I will make the warning unofficial” he smirked. “But from now on please avoid rectal jokes at all times, no matter how provocative the patients are.”
“Oh…er…yes….thanks, Richard.”
“And remember, we’re still waiting for the inspectors’ final report, so we can’t be too careful….. Especially you, Steven.”
“Er…yes…of course.”
“You’ve got a relative’s complaint hanging over your head for a start, and that little outburst in the inspectors’ meeting won’t have exactly endeared you to senior management.”
“I realise that…”
“They could throw the book at you.”
And the Trust book could only be a heavy one.

Richard limped off home with his trousers on back to front, and I returned wearily to the community meeting (the very least of my problems, it seemed).
A few patients had continued to refuse the time-honoured bait of tea and chocolate biscuits, regaling us instead with fairytales about sudden illness, extreme fatigue, and paralysis, while those who did attend continued to move in and out of the room like tricky targets in a rifle range, but eventually we settled down a quorum of ten. I immediately took the precaution of turning the volume of the T.V. set right down, but we had got no further than the preliminaries when I noticed that at least eight of the residents were now engrossed in watching the miming cast of ‘Coronation Street’. I broke the spell by switching over to a human biology programme on BBC 2, but one unintentional wit said:
“Bugger this biology rubbish. We want to see something about real life. Let’s have ‘Coronation Street’ back on.”
“Okay, Damian. We’ll just have the meeting first.”
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Damian
1974

Damion flinched as a shadow fell over the end of his bed, but it was only another boy on his way to the privy, padding softly down the dormitory whilst whistling ‘Hotel California’ under his breath. Damion relaxed a little, and yearned for his parents to come and rescue him from this awful place, where nice smiles disguised cruelty, and friendliness led to pain. He was apparently an orphan, although he could not allow himself to believe it, and for some years he had been ‘looked after’ in a place where orphans were sent until something better cropped up. But Damion was a ‘difficult’ boy, and when better things did crop up, he soon alienated his foster parents with flashes of temper, destructive habits and repeated bed wetting, ensuring that they quickly returned him to the home. Here, he lived in dread of companionship, because he knew that it always had a price; the price of charm and treats, outings and chocolate - pleasure and pain.

Two staff took it in turns to groom him, telling him everything was all right, everything was normal, and everything was a secret. He got used to the touches, then the fondles and the night time visits, and when he was finally raped he didn’t dare complain, because there might have been something worse, and nobody would believe him anyway. His mind tried to repress many of the memories, but it was a poor anti-dote, and even in later life he would always remember to lock the bathroom door.

At 14 he was rescued by a kindly, tolerant family who provided a proper home, and encouraged him to trust and grow. But the damage was done and he showed increasing signs of distress, oddity and escapism, particularly at school where he was eventually referred to an educational psychologist and other experts for assessment. They debated the reasons for his regression and lack of concentration, but interventions failed and soon he was giving great cause for concern, making lewd comments in class, hanging around public toilets and neglecting himself. By the age of 16 he was seeing a psychiatrist, and at 18 he was admitted to hospital in a serious psychotic state.

He had succumbed to his past, and his tormentors, seeking refuge in a delusory second childhood where everything was perfect and unchallenged, and where real life could not touch him again. He eventually passed through a nappy stage, and a period of comics and roller skates, but stalled on the edge of punk rock and sexual curiosity; once more blocked by his demons, and the things he could not face.

At 30 he was still riding his skateboard, collecting Star Wars figures, and attracting company he could do without.
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Using my best Chairman of the Board voice, I thanked those present for attending the meeting, read out the apologies, and quoted the last minutes on record (from five months earlier). The patients were so impressed they looked as though they were expecting a hanging, but within minutes the familiar double-glazed looks were beginning to form, and by the time I delivered my first tentative question there was nothing but a resounding silence. Many of them were adopting classic ‘defensive’ positions, turning right round in their chairs to face the back, rolling into foetal positions, or simply looking fixedly at their feet. To the left of me there was a rustling sound, and I knew that one of the more mischievous ladies had hidden behind a settee, while to the right Primrose had already fallen sound asleep. But I pressed on regardless, and using a series of one to one questions I managed to coax some of the more garrulous patients into life.
Once galvanised, the talkative patients were then almost unstoppable, using the meeting to broadcast their latest environmental requirements, such as a wide screen plasma T.V. set for the lounge, a continental holiday and bigger bedrooms. Double-glazing had always been a popular request, but now that we had spent £20,000 on having new sealed unit glazing units fitted, the patients were gradually shifting their interest to triple-glazing. They were a door-to-door salesman’s dream, and often became so expansive about their material aspirations that staff had to reverse gear and look for ways to curtail their monologues. The technique we used this time was to move on to the menus, asking each patient what they wanted for lunch and tea the next day. This worked, but the hedonistic patients were extremely sensitive to moderation and quickly reverted to exhibitionist behaviours to recover our interest. They had a rare captive audience and were determined to make the most of it:
“I’m not happy here. I know you want to see me in prison”
“I was cursed by a warlock”
“I’m a moonlight shadow”
Some of those who had felt left out, saw immediately that the atmosphere was deteriorating, and seized their chance with provocative and abusive remarks:
“You stink”
“You’re ugly”
“My radio’s broken.”
“I need a cigarette now!”
“For God’s sake shut up all of you!” I shouted, immediately realising that I had committed the cardinal sin of raising my voice above the melee.
“Steady on” said my assistant, with a worried side long look which told me he was mentally noting my ‘lack of professionalism’ for later reference.
The more timorous and bored hadn’t really noticed my outburst, and they were already making for their bedrooms under cover of the flak, while voices were now raised on all sides as the thin social veneer of our meeting warped and split. Donning our helmets, my assistant and I called an immediate official end to the meeting, and watched numbly as most of the remaining patients bolted through the door like whippets out of the traps. We then escorted the most abusive lady into the nearby small lounge, and left the exhibitionists to entertain each other. This drew the sting, and we retreated for a coffee. Somebody had turned the T.V. up again, and I heard:
“18 soldiers die in blast.”
“More carnage” I said.
“It didn’t go that badly” said my colleague.
“A man who slipped on a banana skin at home is claiming £100,000 compensation from the importers.” the T.V. continued.
“This is absolute madness” I remarked.
“It certainly is” replied the assistant.
“How much (or how little) compensation will the soldiers’ widows get?” I wondered aloud.
“What widows? he frowned. “What are you talking about?”
We took our drinks (and the three soft half biscuits we found at the bottom of a deluxe Christmas selection tin) back to the office, where I flicked through the latest Trust magazine. The Trust seemed to spend more on publishing than Fleet Street, producing a host of slick magazines and bulletins with constantly changing logos and endless self-congratulatory stories. Invariably, the Trust director was pictured on the front cover, sporting his latest ‘power’ haircut and surrounded by grinning lackeys basking in reflected glory. Page three summarised the findings of our fifth staff survey this year, and I was pleased to see that 80% of the staff involved were “satisfied” with Trust performance. I had seen the full report, and I suppose it would have been churlish to point out that only 35% of staff had actually returned their questionnaires to the survey team, so perhaps the headline figure was a little misleading. Taking a final look at the notice board, I read:
“It is important that all service managers and first line managers involve themselves in the workshop so that the balanced scorecard for the area is developed to meet your needs to manage your service and stimulate greater performance across the Trust.
This will be the first of many workshop sessions, which are expected to scope the needs of the services, and I am sure you will find it invaluable in terms of understanding performance indicators and their relationship with blue star ratings.”
Feeling slightly heady again, I took the bold step of ripping this jargon-riddled nonsense of the wall, and cutting it carefully into shopping lists in front of my astonished colleague.
“Steady on” he said again.
“Don’t you occasionally feel like being yourself, and saying what you think?” I said impatiently.
“Yes, but……”
“It’s the ‘but’ that’s always the bloody problem. That’s why we’ve finished up being surrounded by all this unadulterated, mind-numbing bollocks!”
“W-w-well….for God’s sake…..why don’t you leave Steve, if it’s all so crap?”
“To pay the mortgage with what?”
(silence).
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The Office
A state-of-the-art adjustable chair stood in front of the grubby 1970’s beech desk and our emblematic computer with Windows 98, and the charge nurse’s interesting personnel files – left on overnight by mistake. Drawers sat in the desk front at 30 degrees to the horizontal, like a Muller-Lier illusion, making the desk look as though it was subsiding into the corner. Perhaps, weighed down by files, and files, and more files.
Bent, vintage filing cabinets lined the walls, while shelves sagged and moaned in the old plaster; first victims of our administrative overkill. Five staff members sat around drinking coffee, tearing strips of flesh of each other’s backs, winning arguments, winning races, winning smiles.
The real office furniture.
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The kitchen radio still seemed to be set at the high volume which prevailed when the power tools were being used, and I heard an irate voice say:
“Some grade A students at top universities can’t string together basic sentences, a government education officer said today.”
“I wish somebody would turn that bloody radio down” I said to my colleague, “It’s been driving me mad all day.”
“What radio?” he said with genuine bemusement.
“The one that’s been tuned to depressing news programmes since about 9 o’clock this morning.”
“I can’t say I’ve noticed” he replied, shrugging his shoulders, and walking off. “But you do seem a bit depressed today” he added, looking back.
I sat and thought about what he said, and then suddenly jumped up to test a worrying theory. I found that the kitchen radio was actually unplugged, the T.V. had ‘Top of the Pops’ on, and the upstairs corridor was deathly quiet. I feverishly examined the radios in the patients’ rooms, and found that two were broken (not Primrose’s), one was stored on top of a wardrobe, one had been thrown out onto the grass below and the other two were silent. This proved nothing I desperately concluded, but a seed of doubt was growing inside me and I returned to the office in a disbelieving, pensive mood.
Luckily, perhaps, my ruminations had only just begun when they were shattered by the arrival of several extremely thirsty and ravenous individuals on the office doorstep, demanding instant access to the kitchen for supper.
“We need tea now!” they roared.
“Follow me then” I whispered.
“We’re going to discharge ourselves!” hooted the residents, sensing a nurse on the run.
“What an absolutely brilliant idea” I rallied “There’s a circus cannon for sale on ebay – be my guest.”
(silence)

Like clockwork, the true zealots assembled at exactly 8.00 p.m. every evening, pushing staff towards the kettle with awesome telekinetic powers. Miraculously, those who were too tired to stand up at 6.30p.m. had now risen from their beds in refreshed Transylvanian fashion and were denuding the kitchen of its paltry remaining supplies. In the old days, full English ‘breakfasts’ were often served to patients who were going straight back to bed and I remember the fire alarms sometimes being set off by the thick cloud of steam, fat and cigarette smoke plunging down the corridor. Nowadays at supper time there was barely enough food to feed a dead parrot and it was fascinating to see the patients climbing around the kitchen like steeplejacks, uncovering long lost packets of crisps, deviously hidden packets of biscuits, and black bananas in Tupperware containers on high shelves. Still, this was one of the last acts in a tedious film noire, and I was comforted by the prospects of glorious release in just over an hour.
Tock tick.
Yes, in one hour the night staff would be here, and for the sake of my sanity I refused to consider the possibility of another late sick call. Cecilia had begun to kick the walls and punch the doors, but it was all a bit half hearted and within twenty minutes she had settled for her chain-smoking norm in the tiled lounge, happily stubbing out her fag ends on the latest vinyl chair arms. I laboured through the care plan write-ups and tried to put a slightly different angle on the patients’ repetitious behaviour by using a few different synonyms, the odd novel phrase, a daring piece of interpretation; anything to break the soul-destroying dirge of recording the same non-events every working day. I had Cecilia’s short-lived agitation to report, of course, and I prepared myself for the forest of ‘very concerned’ faces which would greet the news at hand over, even though she lost her temper virtually every evening now, and it had become just another normal abnormality. Then there was the cash to count, and we would prepare one or two of the remaining patients for bed, as a traditional favour to the incoming staff.
Although some of the patients went to bed ridiculously early, some didn’t want to go at all, so we now had the rather difficult job of cajoling one lady to leave her chair and don her night-dress. She played the game like a chess grand master; initially ignoring our requests, then postponing her decision, humouring us with praise, arguing that beds were unnecessary, and finally screaming abuse. Our nostrils told us that she was badly in need of a wash and change anyway, and we knew that her arthritis would worsen if she remained sat in the cold all night, so we hovered about riding the storm. Eventually, the irritation of our continuing presence outweighed the annoyance of getting changed, and she gradually edged towards her bedroom at the sort of pace which would have pleased a Victorian photographer.
The other patient we approached got changed quickly, and then returned to her customary chair in the main T.V. lounge for her last three hours of viewing. She was glued to the television for most of the day, only leaving her chair for meals, visits to the toilet and rare baths. She preferred films, but had an encyclopaedic knowledge of virtually every popular programme on the main terrestrial channels, including cartoons, Blue Peter, cookery programmes, all the soaps, and most of the adverts. Clutching the remote control to her chest like a talisman, she would look completely devastated if staff selected a programme on behalf of another patient. Her viewing began at dawn, and only finished when night staff finally turned the melting set off around midnight.
A lot of our patients’ behaviour seemed at first glance to be masochistic, because it didn’t appear to deliver anything but discomfort and embarrassment, but on closer examination it became clear that they were often gaining an oblique satisfaction out of their activities. Although they were struggling in life according to most conventional criteria, some of the patients took an almost professional pride in their deviant acts, smiling or laughing after they had hit out, or when they’d been returned to the unit after absconding, or when they had thrown their food about. One young lady delighted in urinating around the unit, and found it particularly hilarious to defecate in her wardrobe and chest of drawers. It was what the sociologists called a ‘crystallisation of deviant identity’, where a sense of achievement and worth was attached to antisocial conduct. Patients developed a distinct hierarchy on the unit based on their aggressiveness, disruptive potential, manipulative ability and intelligence, and they also learned antisocial behaviours from each other, with new admissions frequently adopting some of the older patients’ idiosyncrasies, tricks and manoeuvres within a short space of time.
“My radio has broken” said Maddie, showing me the offending article.
“Oh, yes?”
“Can I have a new one, please”
“By all means” I said, throwing the radio into the waste paper bin, and jumping on it with both feet. ”We’ll go out tomorrow and get one.”
“Thank you.”

“Crash!”
From somewhere upstairs there came the unmistakable sound of sustained violence.
I walked quickly to the offending door, listened to the banging, shouting and clattering which reverberated around the room, and calculated carefully when it would be safe to enter. After a few minutes, the general racket gave way to one last, loud soul-jarring thud, and in the pregnant silence which followed, I knocked gently and went in. Cecilia stood looking through the shattered window, while her smashed sink rocked to and fro on its copper pipes, and three large holes stared at me from the plasterboard covered walls. The bed was on its side, with two legs missing, and the television was resting at the end of its long trajectory - on the unit vehicle’s bent bonnet. My blood ran cold.
“Are you pleased with yourself?” I enquired, with forced calmness.
“Piss off!”
“Is there any good reason for this?”
“Piss off!”
“Could it be anything to do with the fact that you wouldn’t go to the shops today because it was too cold for you, and now your mum hasn’t turned up on time with your fags and sweets?”
“Fucking piss off you fucking bastard!”
“Well, I’ve got a message for you Cecilia, so open your ears as wide as you can. If this behaviour continues, I’m going to judge you a risk to your self and others, and I’m going to Section you under the Mental Health Act to make sure you don’t leave the unit. If you leave, the police will have to bring you back, and if the doctors decide to put you on a longer term Section, you will have to get the Consultant’s agreement before you’re allowed out again. This may affect your routines quite a bit.”
“Piss off!” she yelled, barging past me onto the landing.
“I’ll give you a few minutes to think about it” I said, following her out.

I was cold and calm, watching myself from the sidelines.
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Llewelyn
1956

Pulled roots.
Llewelyn’s first memory was probably one of privileged contentment, as his three-year-old eyes surveyed the massive buffet lunch and immaculate white cloth on their large, mahogany dining room table.
“I hope it’s alright for the Colonel” he heard his mother say.
The crab sandwiches were a special treat (for his Dad), and he was looking forward to his first tentative taste of the orange-red meat which he could just see along the edges of the little triangles of thin white bread. His mother was 31, blond and attractive in her summer print dress, but the scene begins to fade as he watches her smile and they together bid farewell to their little middle-class dream.
His father was a Lieutenant in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers who had joined up in 1955 to escape a life in the Welsh pits. He was a fairly squat, determined, vain, clever and single-minded man, who was feared by both his men and his family. He had a quick temper, cruel mouth and demanding nature, but then to be fair, so did Llewelyn’s mum. They had a big army house at the barracks, a red Austin-Healey sports car and a ‘batman’ to do all the odd jobs, but apparently not enough. There was a nerve stretching tension permanently in the air, regularly raised voices, recriminations, anguish, tears and memory.
Llewwlyn’s parents were clearly not destined for a golden wedding anniversary and by 1957 his father had left the army, gone to Hong Kong and divorced his mother, leaving them both with a semidetached suburban house in a declining coastal town. This was apparently good for Llewelyn’s weak lungs, and he settled down to a sickly childhood in a funereal neighbourhood populated by retired people who monitored his every movement with gimlet eyes and photographic recall. His last memory of his father was a copy of the ‘Odham’s Wonder World of Knowledge’ which he helpfully sent Llewelyn for his fifth birthday, before disappearing into international obscurity.
The only remaining link with him took the form of strange overseas envelopes which had red and blue striped edges and appeared every month with pound notes in them. Llewelyn’s mother nearly died of stress if one was late, and she treated their arrival like the Second Coming, doling out the cash into tidy little heaps which corresponded to the household bills.
Their new house was a red-brown bricked property with a small crazy paved rose garden to the front, and a slightly larger lawn and rockery garden to the rear which could be reached using some precipitous steps next to the coal bunkers. A side path led from front to back, culminating in a galvanised metal dustbin; the scene of countless dust storms as Llewelyn or his mother battled through gale force sea winds with the pan of ashes from their coal fire. The house had been half built in the late 1930’s and completed in the early 1950’s, with an intermission for World War II and economic stagnation.
It was a nice place, but they didn’t really have the money to keep it that way, and as time passed the guttering rusted and sagged, tiles fell, the chimney moved slightly in high winds, and the little wooden gate rotted off its hinges. As other people opted for fitted carpets and gas fires, they stuck with worn rugs, varnished surrounds and a peculiar brick and wire object which they soaked in paraffin overnight to give the coal fire a kick start in the morning. They did have the house repainted every few years (“to keep up appearances”), and they were the first in the Close to break away from the regimental green which had prevailed since the place was built, choosing instead a natty cherry red and white. They were positioned next to the railway line, however, and the soot from the steam engines soon added a black scum to the tacky paint.
“This colour really won’t do” a masculine spinster later said to his mother.
“But it matches your cheeks perfectly” his mother replied.
Their neighbourhood was considered to be in a ‘good’ area, on the outskirts of town in a largely Victorian enclave, yet within walking distance of the sea, duck pond and larger shops. As time passed, however, the local facilities only extended to graffiti on every tenement wall, and a blanket of litter over the dog dirt. The wonderfully verdant gardens which used to be the pride and joy of retired people and little families, gradually became weed-infested jungles or parking bays for decaying Morris Marinas on three wheels and a pile of bricks. The distant war memorial was dwarfed by a lucrative telephone mast, and the nineteenth century iron bridge was topped with rusting steel mesh to prevent suicides.
There was only one other family with children in the Close, and they were snobs who thought Llewelyn’s mother was a concubine because she was divorced and had blond hair, while he was undoubtedly ‘spoilt’ because he was an only child. Consequently, their boy didn’t speak to Llewelyn until the 1970’s when he became a tearaway ‘biker’, and even then the conversation between them was limited to:
“Now then.”
“Now then.
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A Moment of Madness

It would have been around 1964 when something bad happened. Llewelyn was walking down one of the terraced streets in his hometown, minding his own business, when two older boys dressed in parkas came around the corner. They didn’t say anything, but when he was level with them, one suddenly bowled him over with a shoulder charge, sending him sprawling on the pavement.
“Look at this gonk!” one shouted.
“What are you doing down there four-eyes?” smiled the other.
He tried to scramble to his feet, but another shove rolled him over, and then he was a ball in the bullies’ game. At first the tears came, but after a little while, he felt himself going cold and remote, as though he wasn’t really in the middle of it any more, but looking on from the side. For a while he stopped trying to get up, and when they took a breather to laugh, he took them by surprise and bolted down the street. One of them ran after him, but it took the bully quite a while to catch up, so when he finally cornered Llewelyn, gasping for breath, he seemed to take this as an insult. His face was evil and menacing, and at first Llewelyn froze, but when he started pushing Llewelyn again, he was prepared this time, and kept his feet. Then something else seemed to take over, something deep and powerful and dark.
With all his strength, and a sort of madness, he pushed his tormentor back, hard.
The bully was standing near a low wall which guarded the descent into a basement flat, and when he fell over the wall and hit the concrete at the bottom with a chilling hollow sound, Llewelyn was as surprised as him. He didn’t bother to look down though, he just ran and ran, taking the long way home to avoid the bully’s mate, half expecting the police to pick him up. They didn’t, but his mother soon got the story out of him when he reached the house; his perspiring red face and trembling hands an obvious declaration of guilt.
After the predictable good hiding, she took him around to the police, who didn’t know anything about the situation until they rang the hospital, and discovered that a youth had indeed been admitted with head injuries.
“You’ve fractured his skull!” his mother screamed, while the policeman looked on, more at Llewelyn’s mother than the lad himself.
“He’s usually so quiet and polite” she sobbed.
“Still waters run deep sometimes” the policeman commented.
There was a long talk about it, but it never came to juvenile court, because the police soon discovered that he’d been bullied and provoked. They knew he hadn’t intended to really hurt the youth, and anyway, Llewelyn was too young for the full weight of the law.
Of course he hadn’t tried to injure him, but he was bloody glad he had.
The youth was just plain evil, like some people are.

Like some people just are.

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(to be continued)
Full story on www.windowsofmadness.co.uk
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