Looking-Through-The-Windows-Of-Madness-By-Leo-Vine-Knight.Pdf
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Published by Write Good Books The Old School, Cliff Lane, Mappleton, East Riding of Yorkshire HU18 1XX Tel: 01964 536663 E-mail: [email protected] ISBN: 978-1-905295-08-1 Copyright © Leo Vine-Knight 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holder. 2 Author’s Note Although this book is based on the author’s experiences as a psychiatric nurse, it is a fictional account. The characters and situations which appear in the work are synthesised from a large number of observations made during a twelve year clinical career. The author makes no attempt to factually report the actions of any particular person (living or dead), or to factually represent the structure and processes of any particular mental health unit. Similarity is therefore co-incidental. The author acknowledges that the challenging assertions made in this book are based on his personal views and subjective experience, rather than the objective truth. He recognises that the background events which inspired this novel, as well as the fictional world created, may not be typical of mental health units around the U.K. He also acknowledges the serious nature of mental disorder itself, and accepts that satire may be considered a strange form of analysis. But for those who have worked through the tragedies and comedies of a psychiatric setting, the choice may be easier to understand. They will have learnt that people often overlook significant issues until they are uncomfortably amplified. Above all, the author asserts his right to express an honest opinion on matters of public interest. 3 4 I wandered along to the bathroom in a grateful daze, and locked the door behind me. Hot water soon filled the tub, and a wan face gazed crookedly back from the chrome taps. My mind was made up and very still; but first it opened windows. Nephelokokkygia Some enlightened citizens once asked the birds to build a wonderful walled city in the air. In this place, a person could be removed from the evils of society, and made safe from the wrath of the Gods. The city was called Nephelokokkygia. Cloud Cuckoo Land Ornithes A Play by Aristophanes 414 B.C. 5 Prologue 1990 The Victorian mansion stood eerily in the mist, its perpendicular windows and scarred oak doors sitting in Gothic relief amongst the vast grit-stone walls. Nearby, the little chapel tolled its bell, and a crocodile of grey shapes meandered slowly down the gravel drive. Past the high privet hedges, the old crooked birch trees, the huge gateposts capped with carved eagles, and on towards the waiting coach. Here, one or two white faces turned around to look at the place some called home. It was the day that eight people left the regional asylum to ‘rejoin’ society. And this is the story of what happened. 2005 We adjourned to the back of the car and sumo wrestled into an uncomfortably exciting position across the leather. The thin straps of Carol’s silk dress fell away and I circled her white orbs with hot lips and poetic sighs, while she quietly inspected my credentials with a languid, vermilion tipped hand. Patiently, I wandered along the perfumed curves of her trunk, until her legs divided around me and my tongue licked rapturously along the lacy top of her right stocking. With a husky voice she gasped, “Please…..please….. “Bang!” “Wake up, you lazy pig!” she screamed from the kitchen. I would probably have woken up anyway because the neighbours had left their halogen security light trained on our bedroom window again, like a Colditz searchlight probing around for unauthorised activity across the compound. There was certainly a din going on downstairs, and this turned out to be a dropped bowl of corn flakes on the lounge carpet, followed 6 by loud recriminations and protracted sobbing. I hated great shows of emotion, and yet this seemed to be the primary method of communication in our house, as people swung freely from delirious mirth to cold silence without a second thought, or probably a first. “Will you please eat your breakfast!” my wife implored. “It’s my turn on the piano!” my youngest answered. “….grandmother strangled in her own home…” contributed the man on T.V. “Where’s Dad?” said my eldest, followed by the sound of scampering footsteps coming up the stairs, and what sounded like a mumbled insult from my spouse in the background. “Crash!” went the door as it bounced off the wall, and I received a loving hug, followed by a garrulous report of current domestic disputes downstairs. “Okay petal, I’ll be down in a minute” I said, trying to gather my wits together, as my sinuses tightened their hold on my forehead, and my rumbling bowels notified me of their overnight load. With little option, I swung my spindly legs over the side of the bed, inadvertently broke wind, and spotted the old ‘Triang’ toy crane sat on top of the wardrobe; its black bucket hanging over the side like a man on the gallows. Yawn, belch, fart. A short history of humanity. I hadn’t been sleeping well for weeks, going to bed dead beat, waking up in the early hours, and then remaining awake until four or five o’clock, when I would descend into a feverish stupor until the alarm went. I was constantly tired, sluggish and irritable, finding it harder than usual to concentrate, and carrying around a variety of aches and pains as I waded through the day like a Great War soldier waist deep in mud. At different times over the last six months, I’d had colds, aching joints, upset stomachs, sore throats, a vague dizziness and a woolly headed tendency to forget messages, or acquaintances’ names, or the toast. Some days I would have to write out a list of reminders in the morning, to ensure that I didn’t overlook something important, and even then I would occasionally mix up my shifts at work, or forget to attend a meeting. Worse than that, I’d sometimes experienced strangely delirious thoughts as I’d drifted off 7 to sleep, or when I’d woken up in the middle of the night; something which altered the shadows and forms in the room and took a whip to my imagination. Something like acid flashbacks. I couldn’t put my finger on any one reason why my health was deteriorating, largely because there was a variety of leading contenders. For a start, my mother had died earlier in the year at the age of 79, and this had opened up a Pandora’s box of conflicting emotions. We’d been reconciled for the last few years and there’d been regular visits, outings and set-piece celebrations which had brought us closer together as a family, but the past had been a long hard road. It was impossible to abolish history and no matter how generous and attentive my mother was towards the end, I simply couldn’t throw off my old attitudes of resentment, wariness and distantly recalled pain. I was caught hopelessly between the present and the past; an inward struggle with no winners. Carol and I had also provisionally agreed to divorce, although we both seemed reluctant to take practical steps towards it. We had never recovered the romance of those years before the interloper appeared, and had gradually replaced love, friendship and trust with the soft cement of parenthood, financial partnership and inertia. Most of the time we rubbed along together, but we were both sensitive to anything that reminded us of the year we separated, and the ugly issues which were then exposed forever. Relationships seem to thrive on a mutual ignorance (or disregard) of each other’s weaknesses, and this was no longer the case for us, as we fenced and boxed through the days, strangely uneasy in our nearness, like familiar strangers. We were basically very different in our outlooks now, with my wife becoming a fully paid up consumerist, while I maintained an interest in ‘down shifting’ and a simpler lifestyle. She was theatrically sociable to gain supportive friends, while I was studiously anti-social to preserve independence and fleeting quietude. She was a happy-clappy born again Christian buying a stairway to heaven, and I was an inveterate cynic critiquing the world with monotonous grumpy old man intensity. We quarrelled incessantly yet avoided one another where possible, and when we agreed to approach the solicitors one day, we probably knew we wouldn’t the next. Family visits to stately homes alternated with personal visits to estate agents, while heated exchanges vied with electrical silences to see which could have the more stressful effect. My wife spoke more to the guinea 8 pigs than me, and I thanked them for the distraction. The only thing that remained of our hippy heydays, was a split cane rubbish basket next to the toilet. Still, continuing romance had its price too and I cheered myself up by remembering the man who told his wife to excrete daily in the public lavatories rather than the domestic loo, because her bathroom activities were spoiling his idyllic view of sex. “Morning” I said, when I arrived downstairs. “Hi” said two out of the three present. “Mum’s going to take us to see ‘The Three Tenors’ tonight” said my daughter. “Oh, we’re not that poor” I quipped.