Julia chapter 4 contd

She could still see the wall even when there was a person standing in front of it. Staring at it for so long had   imprinted its image on her mind and was overriding anything she might see. 

‘I’m going to call a doctor Julia, don’t worry I’ll be right back.’  Because she had no recollection of it, for next three weeks time did not exist.  The doctors, the nurses, the psychiatrists came and went and in a pharmaceutical fog. Julia struggled to breathe and her thoughts died from lack of oxygen.  If she tried to understand anything, it left her gasping. 

‘Try to breathe deeply, concentrate on the counting’ the advice from the psychiatric nurse was well meant but he did not realize how tight it had all become.  She'd plummeted into an ocean of woes; lead boots, brass helmet and all, and it had become so dark, and so cold, and the pressure of the deep clamped hard on her chest like a fallen beam from a wreck. That was why she could not breathe.  Despite her inability to form an understanding of what was actually going on, there was this underlying feeling that she might never get out.  This place in which she was trapped, this sunken wreck of a place had caught her, cut off her ability to surface and the more she tried to work out how to get back, the more entangled she became.  In the dark she waited for someone to appear. It was Julia she was waiting for, but Julia did not come.  Julia had become a word other people used to wake her up by, to offer pills to, to use in interviews about childhood, marriage, and sex, but behind the word no one existed.  So who was this deep sea diver?  Who inhabited this diving suit with its limited vision and echoing head gear? Who twisted and turned at night trying to get free? 

‘There is an art therapy class Julia, we feel you would benefit from coming along.’  The woman speaking to Julia must have thought she was a child because she leant down and talked to her in the way a primary school teacher might to child in reception class. She had that soft cotton wool voice designed to soothe but destined to smother.  Julia nodded. That was enough to get rid of the woman, who smiled like a pious nun before she left.

The class that afternoon was in one of the craft rooms.  The walls were lined with pictures that would not have been out of place in a junior school except they all reflected some form of angst.  There were clenched fists, sewn up lips, bodies in fetal positions, not exactly the sort of thing to pull one out of depression. 

Gathered together were three other patients. 

Julia had seen them on the ward and in the dining area but she’d spoken to no one since arriving. 

Although she’d lost the power of speech, she had not lost her power to observe. 

There is a woman with lank hair and the brown eyes of a mistreated Labrador, who hunches over the long workbench that dominates the room. Her lips are pressed together but constantly moving so that she appears to be blowing kisses to a phantom lover. 

On the opposite side of the table is a girl, perhaps sixteen or seventeen, whose arms are covered in scars and cheap tattoos. In places the two intermingle so that a butterfly has been sliced in half.  She wears a nose ring and her right ear is a crescent moon of silver studs. Like overworked pastry, her skin has a yellow tint that contrasts with her bright purple hair. 

Further along the bench sits a man whose head twitches to one side with a regularity that implies someone has attached a string to his hair and is pulling it like a punkawalla.  He wears a loud check jacket, a golfing shirt, grey slacks and trainers.  Julia told herself off when she thought he’d make a good window mannequin for a charity shop.     

‘Now, let’s carry on working on our projects shall we?’

It was the woman Julia had met earlier that was speaking.  

‘Go to the cupboards and get your work out whilst I talk to Julia.’  The other patients obey without question.  Their movements are dull and deliberate, and deep in her mind Julia experiences the words ‘Lobotomy Club,’ but doesn’t know why. 

‘So Julia.’ The woman came and sat next to her. ‘What we want to do is to try to produce something which expresses the way we feel.  Our little group have all chosen a different medium, Charles is making a raffia pot, Kate is making a bust of herself, and Lilly is creating a bracelet with her name in the shape of nails.  All very different, as you can see.  So what would you like to do? Is there something you would like to make, or something you would like to mould, or perhaps you would even like to try your hand at drawing or painting? I can help you if you want to try something you haven’t done before.’   

The woman waited whilst Julia sat trying to assimilate what had been said.  Moments passed, but in her present state it didn’t register.

‘Come on Julia, give it a go.  I’m sure you will enjoy it.  Art is fun if you try it.’ The woman had gone into bubbly mode, one of several modes Julia had noticed were  employed by the nursing staff when patients were reluctant.  Without knowing why Julia went to the cupboard picked up a box of pencils and several sheets of paper.

‘Well done Julia’ said the teacher. ‘Some drawing eh? Now if you need me to guide you just say, my forte is life drawing!’ 

The familiarity of pencils and paper resonate even through the diving helmet and gauntlets of her world.  At last there is no need for those elusive little fish diving between the wrecks’ rotting structure, or shoaling beneath her, scattering when she dared to approach.  Shoals of words hide in the recesses, in the coral, under the sand, in places she cannot reach them.  For the time being she has lost contact with the spoken word but she could write a note instead, draw a picture of where she was, so that someone could come and save her.  She began to write.

‘Save me, I am tangled in the wreck, it is so dark and cold and I am running out of air.’ 

She has just finished writing when the teacher came over.

‘Let’s see then Julia, what have you been up to? Oh? Ah..well that isn’t really what we do in this room.  You can write in the creative writing group.  What we want to do here is to create something that is an expression of ourselves. Is that alright?  Would you like to try again? I see you have another piece of paper.’  Julia sat motionless.

The woman smiled yet again. ‘Come on Julia try to draw me a nice picture. I am sure you can if you try.  Everyone can learn to draw if they only practice.’  Julia took a pencil in her hand and began again. It took only minutes to complete the drawing, a perfect rendition of the three other patients and the teacher down to every detail. Underneath, three words with capital letters.

The teacher came smiling towards her.

‘How are we getting on Julia? Have you managed to do anything?’  The woman gently eased the paper from Julia’s hand and Julia witnessed her gasp as she sees the immaculate drawing. Frozen in disbelief, she fails to utter a word.  She just looks at Julia, feigns a smile and then walks over to the patient called Charles and said ‘your pot looks splendid.’ 

Julia remained staring at the bench on which her picture had fallen, and she read the words The Lobotomy Club and wondered from where they had come from.  This was two months ago.        

‘So what’s the score Julia?  Are they going to let you out?’ She was sitting with a young girl on whose wrist there hung a bracelet with the name ‘Lilly’ in the shape of bent nails.

Lilly had become a friend the moment she read the words ‘Lobotomy Club.’  She couldn’t stop laughing and as though she had dropped a lifeline into the deep, Julia sucked on the refreshing air of laughter. 

She laughed and laughed until floating up to the surface she found herself overwhelmed by tears, her whole body aching with the deep pain of reality as she cried an ocean.  Mrs Longspoon the Art teacher had to call for assistance and she was taken back to her room, but it was alright.  Lilly’s laughter had broken the spell, released the chains of whatever had anchored her to the sea bed and although there was a long way to go, she hadn’t drowned.  Lilly lived a double life; she became creatures when she was afraid.  One day a cat, the next a wolf.  As far as Julia could tell it was some weird kind of schizophrenia. She didn’t enquire into her background and Lilly didn’t offer an explanation.  It was enough that they could share a cigarette on a bench in the garden behind the psychiatric ward away from the questioning eyes of the staff, and talk about nothing of importance.  

‘So they are letting you out then’ said Lilly.

‘I think so.’

‘That’s good isn’t it?’

‘Yes, I suppose it is.’

‘You don’t sound so sure’ replied Lilly.  Julia wasn’t sure. There was something comforting about the ‘Lobotomy Club’ as they both now called the ward.

‘Oh, I am sure.  It’s just that I don’t want to think about things yet, and once I’m home that’s exactly what I shall do.  I am a great one for thinking.  Not that it does any good. You just go round and round trying to solve the unsolvable.’

‘Not sure what you mean Julia?’

‘Families. You know how I said at the group session I felt I was trapped in a wreck?’ Lilly nodded. ‘Well that wreck was my family, I was always searching for some treasure that was never there.’

‘I guess with your art and things, that’s the way you think, but I don’t.  To me everything is black and white. Like I hate my dad, I hate my brother, I hate my mother……It’s a lot easier.’

‘That’s a lot of hate for one person.’

‘Yeah well I’m on the anger management course, and Mindfulness for stress relief. Actually they ought to call it Mindlessness shouldn’t they because you’re trying not to think?’ They both laughed, but then Lilly’s face turned from laughter to one of concern.

‘You will keep in touch won’t you?’  Julia clasped Lilly’s hand in hers.

‘Yes of course I will.’  Julia wasn’t sure how she would bring herself to walk through the doors of the Psychiatric wards again once she was free, but she would try not to let Lilly down.

‘You make sure you cut down on these’ said Julia pointing to the packet of cigarettes. Lilly let out a non-committal  ‘Hmm…’

‘Who is that?’ asked Michael.  He was looking in the direction of Lilly who was standing in the window waving to Julia. Her bright purple hair was stacked up in a heap, held together by an orange bungy and she wore a jumper striped with the vibrant colours of the rainbow.

‘That’s Lilly, she’s funny; we are friends.’

Michael said nothing, but Julia could tell he did not approve. Despite his credentials as a therapist Michael was one of the most judgmental people she knew.  Had she been asked she would have said ‘technically he’s a therapist’ which would have meant he followed the guidelines, he said the appropriate things, and somehow managed to help some of his clients, but there was a superiority about him that she had learned to see so clearly since her breakdown.  Empathy was not the key tool in his therapist’s kit.  Julia knew she was now tarnished goods and they would never get back together.  She recognized that Michael would find it intolerable to have to admit that she had a breakdown.  It would be an admission of failure even though he was not responsible for her welfare, as he had so bluntly told her when he left. She stopped the flow of thought before it became too negative.  Michael had kindly agreed to take her home, see her in the house and had told her he had made sure there was food in the fridge and the hot water was on; all this despite their continued estrangement, so she had no right to be thinking these things. 

‘Valerie called yesterday.’  Julia felt a shift inside at her sister’s name.  She drew breath and started to count.

‘She wanted to update me on the situation with your mother.’ 

‘Why you?’ thought Julia but then she realized that in Valerie’s book she was technically mad so she wouldn’t want to tell her directly. 

‘How is she?’ asked Julia unenthusiastically.

‘Your mother is fine, well ‘improving’ would be a better word.  She needs daily support, but she is back at Cove House, for the time being.’

‘That’s good. I’m pleased for her.’ 

Julia meant what she said. She would not wish her harm despite their differences.

‘And Valerie?’ 

Did she really want to know?

‘I think Valerie is struggling, she seemed very jittery on the phone.’

‘Mother is getting to her…’

‘That and the business about Geoffrey.’

‘Geoffrey?  What about Geoffrey.’

‘Sorry, I thought you knew.’  Michael is concentrating on entering a line of traffic and says the words in a disconnected way.

‘Knew what?’ Julia is feeling uncomfortable in the car, nauseous.

‘That your mother wasn’t the only one taken in by Brian or should I say James.’

‘James?’

‘Brian’s real name is James Liddel, apparently he goes under several pseudonyms but

that is his birth name.’ 

Michael saying this makes Julia’s skin tighten.  Somehow she sort of knew ‘Brian’ but now he has become a stranger again and is therefore even more threatening.

‘So Mr Liddel….’

‘Please just call him Brian or I will get confused.’  Julia’s voice becomes tense.

Michael puts his fist on the horn and shouts out  ‘you bastard!’ at a motorist who has just cut him up, heightening the tension in the car.

‘Brian then.  Well it seems that when they were in Tenerife, Brian managed not only to con your mother, but he also managed to pull the wool over Geoffrey’s eyes. It is difficult to believe, but rock solid solicitor Geoffrey fell for one of Brian’s financial scams and got involved.  Not only that, but he did some legal work on Brian’s behalf and is up before the SRA.’

‘The what?’

‘The Solicitors Regulatory Authority, their watchdog.  It seems that Geoffrey might be struck off if he isn’t very lucky.’

‘Jesus.’

‘I don’t think he had anything to do with it!’ said Michael laughing at his own joke.

‘Poor Valerie.’

‘I notice you didn’t say poor Geoffrey.’ 

Julia knew immediately what Michael meant.  He knew that Geoffrey and Julia had never hit it off. Politics, power, money, they were at opposite ends of the spectrum and didn’t hold back from each other at family gatherings. In private Julia used to call Geoffrey, ‘Judge Geoffrey’ because as she used to say ‘he would willingly hang a poor person for taking a loaf of bread from Sainsbury’s.’

‘So there you have it.  Brian has managed to fuck your whole family up.’  Julia didn’t appreciate the comment despite the truth behind it.

‘You’re lucky to be out of it then aren’t you’ she replied.  Michael exhaled deeply indicating his frustration at the comment.

‘Look Julia, what happened with you and I was wider than your family.  I know I said some things that made it seem that everything was to do with them, but you know as well as I do we had been moving apart from each other for some time.  That’s what happens, people move apart, become different, and if they don’t care enough to hold it together the inevitable happens. We obviously didn’t care enough, we can’t say we didn’t see it coming.’ 

 For once Julia thought Michael was spot on.  They’d both become disinterested in the relationship and neither one had the energy or willingness to prod the other. 

‘Here we are then.’  The car drew up outside the house and Julia sat mortified as she stared at the sign.  ‘Woollard and Sons Estate Agents.’

‘You’ve put the house on the market?’

‘It’s got go Julia, you can’t afford to keep it and I can’t afford to buy you out. Just a fact of life.’ 

There it was again that annoying pragmatism that Michael always brought to the table.  She would have fought back, but the old Julia was still a few paces behind. She was dragging her around like a reluctant child, waiting for her to behave, catch up and walk normally. 

 

Michael showed her in, made sure the house was empty, opened the fridge to present the food he had purchased, and then he left.  He said he would call her the next day to make sure she was alright, and ‘by the way the list of viewings is under the fridge magnet.’ 

She flopped onto the huge settee curled up and cried.