Swimming Upstream

16

When I woke at four the next morning, Zara was still curled up on the sofa. She was so still that I started to worry that something had happened to her in the night, but when I bent down next to her I could feel her breath gently tickling my cheek and I realised that my worry was irrational. People didn’t just die like that, in the night, for no reason. All the same, I poked my head round Catherine’s door. She too was asleep on her back, snoring gently.

I showered and dressed and headed off to work.

I was producing the Breakfast Programme that week. Sandy, my boss, looked round the studio door. He was a kind, tired, grey-haired man in his early sixties. He was of the old school that still believed in life after work and thought that people who wanted to take a lunch break or go home after an eight hour shift had a point. “You here again?” he said. “I must sort those rotas out.”

“That’s okay,” I said.

“How are you getting on?” he asked.

“Clive's down at Leadenhall Street with Tommy now,” I told him. “We’ve got a piece lined up on the damage to St Ethelburga’s and the double hit on the Baltic Exchange. And we've got the Home Secretary on cue after the headlines.”

“Well done,” said Sandy. “Great work.” I gave him a half smile and put my headphones back on. Sandy held the door open. “You okay?” he mouthed at me. I smiled again and nodded.

“Good morning, and welcome to the Breakfast Show,” said Jo Castle, the morning presenter, into my headphones.

I waved my arm at Sandy, who stuck his thumb up at me and closed the studio door.

''This last year has been the worst for terrorist attacks,” Jo was saying. “In January the IRA breached security for the second time to strike at Whitehall minutes after the Prime Minister had left. And it’s barely more than a year since the City was rocked by the biggest explosion ever on the mainland, which left three people dead and eighty injured.”

“Home Secretary on line three,” said Nikki Sanders, the show's PA, into my headphones.

“... and finally,” said Jo, “The manager of one of London's leading teaching hospitals has resigned less than a fortnight before a report was due to go to the Health Secretary naming his hospital, St Bartholomew's, as one of the four facing closure under the NHS internal market ...”

“Back to the bomb,” I said to Jo. “Home Secretary on cue.”

I flicked the intercom off and sat back. Then I leaned forward and flicked it on again. “Ask him about Barts as well!” I said. “Where will they take the injured next time? Ask him that!” A sea of faces looked up at once and stared at me through the glass from the newsroom. I realised too late that I'd pressed the wrong switch and was loudly and clearly on air.

Sandy poked his head round the door again. “You okay?” he asked again.

I nodded at Sandy, and mouthed the words “sorry”.

The phone rang. “It’s for you,” said Nikki.

Sandy closed the door. I pulled my headphones off and picked up the phone. It was Zara.

“You blame me, don’t you?” she said. “You think I was involved.”

My heart flipped in surprise at her tone. “In what?”

“The bomb.”

“Why would I think that?”

“Because I work at Barts.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I heard you just now,” she said. “On the radio. That was meant for me. Why can’t you just say it to my face?”

“Say what?” I sat back in my chair, baffled.

“Forget it,” said Zara, and put down the phone.

When the programme was over I telephoned Zara back, but there was no reply.

At the end of my shift Sandy wanted to see me

“You don’t seem yourself,” he said kindly. “Is anything bothering you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think I’m just a bit tired.”

“What you witnessed yesterday… well, it was a big thing. You may be suffering from some sort of post-trauma shock.”

I considered what he was saying. I didn’t want him to think I couldn’t handle this sort of pressure: one big story and I collapse. And I was beginning to realise that it wasn’t just yesterday’s trauma that I was re-living when I closed my eyes. Everything was coming back to me, in waves.

“I’ll be fine, Sandy. Honest.”

“Well, go home. Get some rest. But if you find yourself feeling low, you come and find me, okay? There are people you can talk to,” he said. “It’s not a sign of weakness. This sort of thing happens more often than you might think.”

“Okay.”

Sandy hesitated in the doorway and smiled at me.

“Thanks for being so kind,” I added, touched and a little overwhelmed by his compassion.

Sandy saw my discomfort, and simply said: “You’re highly valued here, Lizzie. Please come and find me if you want to talk. Any time.”

When I got home I called Zara again. Tim answered the phone.

“Lizzie.” He said. “I’m glad you called. I was just about to call you.”

“Oh, okay. What's up? And is Zara there?”

“Well that’s what I was going to call you about. She's not very well. She's in hospital.”

“In hospital?” My heart started thumping. “Has she had an accident?”

“No. Nothing like that. But Shelley took her in around lunchtime.” He paused. “She's in Strauss ward.”

“What for?” I asked. “What's wrong with her?”

“Lizzie, Strauss is the psychiatric ward,” Tim said quietly.

“Oh. I see.” Suddenly everything made sense.

“She’s a voluntary patient at the moment. But I’m not sure if she is going to stay. Shelley’s called her Dad. If she fights it they’ll section her.”

“Oh God. I knew something was wrong. She seemed depressed, and I didn’t do anything.” I started racking my brain for all the warning signs, all the clues, all the times I might have turned my back on her and been too stupid to realise. “I should have been there for her. Looked after her. Maybe it wouldn’t have got this bad.”

Tim sighed. “It's not your fault, really Lizzie. We were living with her, and we didn’t see it coming. Or at least, I think Shelley did, but she wasn’t sure. Anyway, there isn't anything anyone could have done. She needed professional help. She's not... what you have to understand, Lizzie... she's really not very well. At all. And this isn’t the first time, apparently.”

“Oh,” I said. “I see.” Although I didn't see, not really, and Tim was frightening me.

“Thank you for letting me know,” I said.

“Go and see her,” said Tim.

“I don’t know if she will want to see me,” I said. “She was pretty angry with me earlier.”

“That’s just the illness,” said Tim. “Give it till tomorrow. Let the meds kick in, then go and see her. She needs her friends right now.”

It was strange, going through the courtyard and past the fountain and up the steps into the ward with the big brick walls looming up around me, just as they had been in my dream. In fact, it felt a bit as though I were in a dream, because I'd been up since four and now this, all this with Zara, had a feel of something quite surreal.

I didn't feel as though I could walk straight in, because the ward Sister was at the reception desk talking on the telephone to someone about picking up a Miss Jenkins' scripts for her and whether or not she was going to need to “come back in and see us again.” She kept repeating “come back in and see us”, and talked slowly and clearly as if she were talking to a child, although she obviously wasn't. She was wearing a pair of very large thick glasses. I watched her neck moving up and down inside her dark blue collar. Every time she spoke, the white piping round the edge wobbled.

Finally, she put down the receiver and turned and looked at me.

“Can I help?”

“I'm here to visit Zara Lewis,” I said.

“Ah, Zara,” she said. She pointed to the day room. “You can go on in. She's just having her tea.”

Zara wasn't having any tea. She was sitting round a table with four or five other patients, who were all eating in silence. Zara was staring into space, her eyes all red and bulgy from crying, her hands hanging down by her sides. Her food lay untouched in front of her. I walked over and put my arms round her. She turned and clutched hold of me with a frail white hand.

“Who are you?” asked the woman sitting next to her. She turned her sharp beaky face towards me. “What do you want?” she rasped.

“Come on,” I whispered. Zara stood up obediently. A man sitting opposite pushed his chair back and stood up too.

“Sit down, Mr Stevens,” said one of the auxiliaries, coming into the day room.

“She hasn't finished her tea,” she added, to me.

“She doesn't want it,” I said, ignoring the look of disapproval from the auxiliary, and took Zara by the hand.

“Where's your room?” I asked her.

It had only been a couple of days since I'd last seen her, but I hadn’t realised how much weight she had actually lost. She was wearing a pair of denim dungarees that I'd never seen before. They were draping from her bony shoulders and hanging shapelessly around her as if they were dangling from a broken coat hanger. Underneath, she was wearing a white t-shirt. Her arms were almost the same colour.

She led me down the corridor past the nursing office, where the ward Sister and one of the nurses were sitting down and having a cup of tea. The Sister looked up as we passed, analysing us both through her thick lenses.

Zara stopped, as if she'd been caught doing something wrong. “Is it all right if I take my friend to my room?” she asked, nervously.

“Yes Zara, you can do that,” said the Sister, nodding. She smiled at me. I could see she thought I was a good influence. I started planning Zara's escape.

We carried on down the hallway. A good-looking young guy of about twenty wandered past us. He was nicely dressed in a checked shirt and jeans and Nike trainers.

“Hello Zara,” he said, without smiling.

“Hello Sean,” she said. “That's Sean,” she told me, after he'd passed us.

“He looks nice,” I said.

“He's schizophrenic,” said Zara.

She stopped. “This is my room,” she said. We entered a small whitewashed single room with a hospital bed set in the middle and a table and a sink by the window, which overlooked the courtyard below. I sat down on the radiator, which was one of the old big chunky ones, painted hospital green.

“So, have they told you what's wrong?” I asked her.

“Depression,” she said. “That's what they say. I’m clinically depressed.”

“Well, that’s pretty obvious. Do you get to talk to anyone? Are you seeing anyone, a psychiatrist?” I asked her.

She stared at me and shook her head. She picked up a notepad from a table by the window. “How do you spell psychiatrist?” she asked me.

“I'm sure they'll…” I began.

“I forget everything,” she said, at the same time. She looked at me. “I can't remember anything from one minute to the next. I can't even read a book, because I keep forgetting what the story's about.”

I bit my lip. I could see that planning her escape had been a little dramatic and naive, not to mention premature. She wasn't going to be going anywhere, not for a while yet. She stood there by the table, by the window with her notepad, poised and serious like a badly dressed secretary, her forehead creased up into the old familiar frown.

I spelled “Psychiatrist” for her.

“These are my things,” said Zara, putting down the pen and notepad and picking up a piece of rose quartz that Catherine had given her for Christmas and a postcard with a Monet flower print on the front. She sat down on the bed.

“Can I?” I sat down next to her.

She nodded. I took the postcard from her and turned it over. It was from her mum. It said, in big childlike print: “Dear Zara, Don't worry things will get better soon, Love MUM.”

“Why has she written “Mum” in great big capital letters?” I asked.

“I don't know,” said Zara, staring out of the window.

“Is she coming?”

Zara shook her head. “Dad can't get the time off work to drive her.” I looked up at her. “She doesn't want to,” she said, her red-rimmed eyes filling up with tears. “That's all. I phoned yesterday and asked if they could come and get me, and bring me home. Mum said, “This isn't going to be like last time, is it Zara?” And then she said it wasn't practical because Aunty Margaret and Uncle John have broken up and Aunty Margaret's staying, and there's all that to deal with and plus my sister's home from Uni, and she said it would be best all round if I just tried to carry on.”

When she finished speaking she was shaking. I put my arms round her and stroked her hair. It was wispy and wet, somehow, and it was sticking to her head. She leaned against my shoulder.

She said, “You think growing up is like - it's like, one day you're going to wake up with a bowl of cherries and life membership to the “Sorted Out Club.”” Tears were running down her cheeks. “But you know,” she continued, “it just goes on, and on, and on…”

“I know,” I said, because I did.

We sat for a long while without speaking; me holding Zara, and her leaning against my shoulder and both of us rocking gently back and forth while the sunlight beamed in through the gaps in the trees and made small fluttering leaf-shaped patterns on the wall beside us. There was nothing else to say, because there weren't any more words.

The following day, after my shift, I went straight back to the hospital. Zara was in her room.

“It's really embarrassing,” she said. “Everyone knows me.” She was sitting on her bed wearing a black crocheted top and jeans, which were bunched in around her waist with a flowery leather belt. Her hands lay palms upwards on the bed beside her and I could see faint blue veins trickling down the inside of her pale arms. “With the senior staff, I've kind of got used to it and they've been really nice to me but every time one of the Grade A nurses comes on the ward and sees me, they give me this look and I want to hang my head in shame.”

“They probably just feel for you Zara. They’re nurses. They care. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of,” I said.

Zara looked up at me, anxiously. Her eyes were still red and puffy, and weeping slightly. “That's easy for you to say. But people judge you when they find out you've had a breakdown.” She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “You wouldn't believe how differently they behave. I know from last time. It's like everyone's sitting around waiting for you to crack up all the time.”

I got up and fetched her a tissue from the box on the windowsill.

“I didn’t know about last time,” I said. “You didn’t tell me.”

“I thought you wouldn’t want to know me.”

“How could you think that?”

“I didn’t know it was going to happen again.”

I peered out of the window. “Do you want to go for a walk?” I asked her.

Zara blew her nose. “I don't know if they'll let me.”

“They'll let you,” I said. “I’ve already asked. Come on, it’ll do you good. Let’s go and have a picnic. I've brought some food.”

We walked round the courtyard a couple of times and sat on a bench by the fountain. I opened my bag. I'd bought all Zara's favourite food from a deli in Upper Street; there were apples, fresh sardines, hard-boiled eggs and a packet of Highland oatcakes.

Zara looked disinterested. “I'm not really hungry,” she said.

“You have to eat,” I coaxed her gently. She stared up at the fountain and said nothing.

When we got back inside I left Zara in the day room with Sean and went to speak to the Sister. “She’s upset,” I said. “She’s not eating. Are you sure the drugs are working?”

“She's a lot better than she was,” said the Sister. She put down a file she was holding and turned to face me. “Much better than she was when she first came in to see us.” There it was again: “Came in to see us”, as if it were an enjoyable little day trip that lots of people made, just because it was such a nice place to be. I couldn’t help but smile.

“So what is it?” I asked her. “What’s wrong with her? I mean, apart from being depressed.”

“It’s called psychosis,” explained the Sister.

“What caused it?”

“Well, that’s not something that’s so easy to establish. But believe me,” she said. “There's a lot of strange things that can go through your mind when you haven't slept properly for weeks. Her body's been under tremendous strain,” she said. “But she's going to get better.” She smiled. “Don’t you worry. She’s on the mend.”

I smiled back at her. I could see why they called them Angels.

I crossed Smithfield and headed up towards Faringdon tube. I turned into St John Street and walked up towards the Angel, then turned right into Essex Road. I realised that I hadn’t seen Uncle Silbert for several weeks and it seemed unlikely that Zara had either. Nor was she going to be visiting him for a while. I would have to take over, I decided, make sure he was okay. I would have to make time for regular visits.

The lift wasn't working, and so I had to walk up all twelve flights of stairs. The stairwell smelled of urine, like the lift had done, only for longer. I reached the top, breathless, and knocked on the door. I stayed away from the railings.

I could see Uncle Silbert shuffling down the hallway through the frosted glass. He didn’t have his walking frame and he took a long time to reach the door, which made me feel guilty. He opened the door wide and stood back, breathing heavily and nodding his head at the same time, as if he had been expecting me. “Ah, Elizabeth, come in.”

I followed him back down the hallway to the kitchen where the same one ring on the old gas stove was burning. The flat still smelled of dust and pastry. I wondered if he would allow me to have a clean up for him but decided against asking, for fear of offending him.

Uncle Silbert lowered himself into his brown armchair and I sat down on the stool by the stove.

“Shall I put the kettle on?”

Uncle Silbert nodded, coughed and pointed to the cake tin on the table.

“No. Thank you,” I said. “But let me make you some tea. Have you eaten? I could cook for you if you like?”

He shook his head. “No, no. Don’t you trouble yourself, my dear. No need.”

“Come on. I want to,” I insisted. I stood up and looked round the kitchen. “What have you got?”

I opened the small fridge, tucked under the worktop by the door, but it was switched off and smelled of damp and mould. I hastily shut the door again.

“Your fridge isn’t working?”

Uncle Silbert waved his long, bony hand. “I switch it off when it’s not being used.”

“Oh. Okay. Tea and toast, then? Do you have bread?” I made a mental note to do some checks, find out if there were benefits to which he was entitled and not getting. Some way that his bills could be paid for him so that he would have no need to turn his fridge off. So that he would put the heating on instead of living in the kitchen.

Uncle Silbert shook his head. “I don’t think so…”

I opened the larder door. Inside was a tin of Campbell’s condensed cream of mushroom soup and a packet of stale breadsticks. I opened the can and tipped it into a saucepan, and lit a second ring on the stove. While the soup was warming, I chopped up the breadsticks for croutons and made the tea. A carton of warm milk stood on the work surface by the kettle.

“I’m going to go shopping for you,” I said, pouring the soup into bowls. “As soon as we have finished this.”

“There’s no need,” said Uncle Silbert. “The lady who takes me, she’s coming tomorrow. This will be enough, for now.”

“What about breakfast?” I asked. “At least let me get you some bread, some butter and some more milk.”

“Your company is more to me. Please. Stay.”

I smiled and sat down. “Okay. So how are you?” I asked. “Did you hear the bomb?”

“It shook the entire building,” he said.

“You must have been worried, wondered what it was?”

“I knew what it was. You never forget what that sound is like. Of course, we were much closer, it was much louder.”

“Oh. Of course. I can imagine.” I stopped eating. “Well, no. That’s silly. Of course I can’t.”

“Maybe you can.”

I put down my soup spoon and looked up at him. “Zara’s not well,” I said. “She may not come round for a while.” I told him what had happened.

He nodded. “She’s an angel.” he said. “But she’s always been this way.”

“I didn’t know,” I told him. “I thought it was just life. Ups and downs. Joy and sorrow, you know? Two sides of the same coin, or so they say.”

“For some it is. For others it’s too much joy, too much sorrow.”

“But how does that happen?”

He smiled. “You’re wondering will it happen to you.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “Could it?”

“I can’t see it,” he said. “Not in you.” He reached out his hand and patted mine across the table. “You know, in the war the Japanese did some terrible things to their prisoners. Things that you would never believe one human could do to another. Men were tortured, burned and beaten, they had limbs broken. They were used for bayonet practice. Their bodies were cut, they had objects inserted.”

“Inserted?”

“Into the cuts. To cause pain. It was horrific. Many died. Many were horribly scarred. But others, others survived and went on to live normal lives. To marry, get jobs and have children.”

I shook my head. “It’s hard to know how you could survive something like that. And still live a normal life, that is.”

He nodded. “It never really goes away, of course. Not completely.” He paused. “The original trauma will often replay like an old tape throughout your life.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well. You see,” he said. “As humans we all have to make sense of the world around us and put it into some sort of order in our minds. Our expectations are based on our past experiences. If life has been good to you, you expect it to be good in the future. But if you have suffered some kind of traumatic experience, that’s what you are expecting all the time: a random and devastating event that is impossible to predict or control. So you are living in a state of constant anxiety. Until another similar event sets it off.”

I nodded. “That makes sense. When the bomb went off, when I saw what had happened, it made me feel things. As if something like that has happened before to me. But I just can’t remember anything. Apart from the fact that my father died, suddenly, when I was six,” I said. “But I just can’t seem to remember anything about that time.”

“Well. It’s a strange kind of irony. The things that affect us most are the things we can’t remember.”

“Really? How?”

He shrugged.”Well, it is believed that most of our feelings about life, the way that we make sense of it, are formed before we reach the age of five. At that time our family is the whole world to us, and our relationships within the family form the basis of how we will go on to perceive the real world, the outside world. However, this is before our memories are formed. So we have made a lot of important decisions about life, about the world, about the people in it but we are unlikely to remember the events that caused us to make those decisions. Then, after that, as we go through life we find ways to block out events that hurt us too much, that are too painful. Sometimes we don’t even know why we are feeling so hurt; we just concentrate our efforts on finding ways to deaden the pain. Drugs. Alcohol. Sex. Work. Anything that makes us feel good instead.”

“So how do we know what happened? How do we get that back?” I looked up in alarm, realising that my voice was shaking. I cleared my throat and fought back tears. “I mean…. Well, I just mean that I think that losing my father must have been important to me but I can’t remember anything about him!”

Uncle Silbert reached out his hand to me again and I took it. I stroked his long, cold, bony fingers, and then I held them tight. “Trust in it Elizabeth,” he said. “You have the answers. Know your own truths.”

I bit my lip and nodded.

After a few moments Uncle Silbert shifted forward in his chair. He rocked himself back and forth several times and then rose. “I have something for you,” he said. He shuffled out of the room. He was gone for so long that I worried something had happened to him and got up to look for him. I collided with him in the doorway as he soundlessly re-entered the room.

“Here. I want you to have this.” He handed me some sheets of yellowing paper with small print, bound together with ribbon in one corner.

“Ralph Waldo Emerson,” he said. “He was a 19th century American essayist. Also a lecturer and poet. This is his Essay on Self-Reliance. I think you will enjoy it.”

“Thank you.” I took the papers from him. “What is it about?”

“Freedom,” he said.