at home, perhaps, but her husband, Trevor, wouldn’t have it. It wasn’t fair on the other kids, said Trevor.
‘I’m lucky that I’ve only Anna to worry about,’ said Jess, wondering as she said it how Bob and Anna would get on during the coming weeks, months, years.
‘Yes,’ said Susie, watching Anna as Anna watched the jerking progress of the moorhens. ‘Yes, I can see she’s the apple of your eye.’
Jess found Susie comforting. Her dry, matter-of-fact descriptions of what Jess very soon discovered to be the experimental programmes of R. D. Laing and his colleagues were calm, fair-minded, not what you might have expected from a woman of her background and her 1950s NHS training. The anomalous and erratic behaviour of her son Vincent had softened and broadened her attitudes to others. Susie had widened her categories of the almost-normal (although clearly husband Trevor hadn’t) to take in Vincent and Anna, some of the long-term patients at Colney Hatch, the schizophrenics at Kingsley Hall, and the adult Down’s syndrome son of one of her regular patients in Arnos Grove.
This young man, Eddie, exercised Susie’s sympathies a great deal. His mother was either recovering or more probably not recovering from a major operation for bowel cancer (Susie was on a rota to visit to help with the colostomy bag) and what would happen to Eddie if the mother died? It didn’t bear thinking about. It was a lot to ask of Eddie’s sister, she’d got children enough of her own. The mother had expected Eddie would go first, but it looked as though he wasn’t going to. You didn’t know what to hope for. Life expectation for Down’s isn’t all that long, said Susie, but they do need their mum.
Jess could listen to this kind of conversation for hours, engrossed.
In the summer, the moorhen chicks had scooted around on the surface of the water randomly like balls of mercury, with ugly little pink and yellow necks and greedy beaks. Jess had read somewhere that the chicks had a high mortality rate, because the parents built their nests of twigs and flotsam so badly that they were always collapsing and going under. Half of the eggs would drown. She wondered what percentage of that summer’s chicks had survived, and if that bird pecking stupidly at a plastic bag near Anna’s feet was from one of the broods they had seen in September.
Some species produce good mothers; others, not so good. Very few species produce what women call ‘good’ fathers. Feminists were at this time busily espousing the bits of sociobiology that suited them, and ignoring the rest. Seahorses are good fathers, and so are some spiders.
‘Yes,’ said Susie, ‘Kingsley Hall was Liberty Hall, that’s what I heard. No rules, no discipline. The patients did what they liked; they didn’t have to take their medication if they didn’t want. They could stay in bed all day if they fancied. They could paint the walls with shit if they wanted. I daresay that works out well for some. There’s no two alike, after all. I’ve a friend who works in the psychiatric ward in St Anne’s. Grim, she says. Hard cases. Screaming and yelling, and trying to slash their wrists and hang themselves all day and all night. It’s nice at Marsh Court. Don’t you think it’s nice at Marsh Court?’
Jess didn’t know. She hadn’t anywhere to compare it with.
They were comforting one another, that much she did know.
There are no two alike.
Ahead walked Anna, unique Anna, in her warm brown jacket and her long dark red wool skirt with orange amoeba-shaped blobs on it, with her scarlet crocheted beret on her head. She wore short black rubber boots. She still couldn’t do laces. Well, she could do them, if you stood over her and reminded her of the process, step by step, loop by loop, but it seemed simpler to buy her shoes without laces, jackets without too many buttons. The propagation of Velcro had been a blessing to Jess and Anna.
It was autumn, but the sun shone on
‘I’m lucky that I’ve only Anna to worry about,’ said Jess, wondering as she said it how Bob and Anna would get on during the coming weeks, months, years.
‘Yes,’ said Susie, watching Anna as Anna watched the jerking progress of the moorhens. ‘Yes, I can see she’s the apple of your eye.’
Jess found Susie comforting. Her dry, matter-of-fact descriptions of what Jess very soon discovered to be the experimental programmes of R. D. Laing and his colleagues were calm, fair-minded, not what you might have expected from a woman of her background and her 1950s NHS training. The anomalous and erratic behaviour of her son Vincent had softened and broadened her attitudes to others. Susie had widened her categories of the almost-normal (although clearly husband Trevor hadn’t) to take in Vincent and Anna, some of the long-term patients at Colney Hatch, the schizophrenics at Kingsley Hall, and the adult Down’s syndrome son of one of her regular patients in Arnos Grove.
This young man, Eddie, exercised Susie’s sympathies a great deal. His mother was either recovering or more probably not recovering from a major operation for bowel cancer (Susie was on a rota to visit to help with the colostomy bag) and what would happen to Eddie if the mother died? It didn’t bear thinking about. It was a lot to ask of Eddie’s sister, she’d got children enough of her own. The mother had expected Eddie would go first, but it looked as though he wasn’t going to. You didn’t know what to hope for. Life expectation for Down’s isn’t all that long, said Susie, but they do need their mum.
Jess could listen to this kind of conversation for hours, engrossed.
In the summer, the moorhen chicks had scooted around on the surface of the water randomly like balls of mercury, with ugly little pink and yellow necks and greedy beaks. Jess had read somewhere that the chicks had a high mortality rate, because the parents built their nests of twigs and flotsam so badly that they were always collapsing and going under. Half of the eggs would drown. She wondered what percentage of that summer’s chicks had survived, and if that bird pecking stupidly at a plastic bag near Anna’s feet was from one of the broods they had seen in September.
Some species produce good mothers; others, not so good. Very few species produce what women call ‘good’ fathers. Feminists were at this time busily espousing the bits of sociobiology that suited them, and ignoring the rest. Seahorses are good fathers, and so are some spiders.
‘Yes,’ said Susie, ‘Kingsley Hall was Liberty Hall, that’s what I heard. No rules, no discipline. The patients did what they liked; they didn’t have to take their medication if they didn’t want. They could stay in bed all day if they fancied. They could paint the walls with shit if they wanted. I daresay that works out well for some. There’s no two alike, after all. I’ve a friend who works in the psychiatric ward in St Anne’s. Grim, she says. Hard cases. Screaming and yelling, and trying to slash their wrists and hang themselves all day and all night. It’s nice at Marsh Court. Don’t you think it’s nice at Marsh Court?’
Jess didn’t know. She hadn’t anywhere to compare it with.
They were comforting one another, that much she did know.
There are no two alike.
Ahead walked Anna, unique Anna, in her warm brown jacket and her long dark red wool skirt with orange amoeba-shaped blobs on it, with her scarlet crocheted beret on her head. She wore short black rubber boots. She still couldn’t do laces. Well, she could do them, if you stood over her and reminded her of the process, step by step, loop by loop, but it seemed simpler to buy her shoes without laces, jackets without too many buttons. The propagation of Velcro had been a blessing to Jess and Anna.
It was autumn, but the sun shone on
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