Authors: Matthew Formby
XLI
If Luke could have waved a magic wand, he would have made himself a temporary father, carrying a baby and all and a pet dog. Then he would be sure to impress women. Both were more or less foolproof or so the funnymen said. When he went for a day trip to Blackpool or Southport with Lily and Jason, Luke would volunteer to hold their pushchair. He would encounter a lot more smiles and sidelong glances from the fairer sex as a result. There were also the times when Luke would go out for a meal with his sister Grace and he was left to mind her guide dog Lola outside a shop. People would come up to talk, especially females, and he had once had a woman approach and stroke Lola for a few minutes while she asked Luke dozens of questions about the dog.
Struggling still to come to terms with the loss of Jolly, Luke searched for counsellors on the internet. He found a woman called Sarah who advertised herself as having knowledge of autistic spectrum disorders and so arranged to meet her over the phone. The counselling sessions were conducted at her suburban house once a week. Luke would feel crushingly poor as he walked into the garden with its trellis and tended flowerbeds; and even worse once he crossed the door's threshold, treading the real wood floors and gazing at the boutique furniture and granite kitchen. He would be guided through the hall and the kitchen into a study with cases full of books about psychology, emotional well-being and self-help. The walls were adorned with brass framed paintings of a curious nature and a wealth of ornaments decorated every nook and cranny.
Luke discussed his greatest fears and fondest hopes with Sarah. He needed to let off steam, for someone to truly recognize how sad and unappreciated he was. The difficulty with the counsellor was that she spoke in terms of emotions, as though all actual events could be reduced to feelings. If Luke told her he had been so reduced in his circumstances, she would repeat what he said in different words and say, "So that's how you feel, then? Like you've no hope?" Then she would throw a question at Luke attempted to catch him out, to make him come to believe he was really only thinking everything was so bad. Gradually, the counsellor began to offer advice. Luke had read that counselling was about listening without making judgments and so he was shocked she gave advice; surely that could only be done from a position of judgment? Then again, he needed help. Not necessarily medical help - a helping hand would have been far better - but something was better than nothing.
"I want to set you an experiment for your next meeting. Try to smile more at strangers and ask about them about themselves. That is really all anyone wants. People love to talk to good listeners."
The quality Luke most liked about his counsellor was her light, pleasant voice. Combined with her discrete posture and calm eyes it made her easy to talk to. It was usually women who had such qualities, Luke reflected, though occasionally men did. He had had some terrible male staff interact with him in the past in mental health team; but to be fair he could remember more than a few loud-mouthed, useless female ones too. He determined he would try to follow Sarah's advice.
Luke also talked to his counsellor about the feeling of neglect that pervaded him. By his reckoning he had been forsaken by people.
"It's been nine years since I dropped out of high school because of bullying. I had no friends, no self belief, nothing. I wish somebody could have convinced me to study full time at college. Occasionally people suggested it but they never managed to convince me I could do it or to put it in a way I could understand. They didn't care or didn't see how lonely I was."
"That must have very hard. You felt very isolated and overlooked."
"Yeah. I never had the motivation to learn or enjoy things alone, otherwise I could have spent those years studying with the Open University. My favourite hobby is watching DVDs and even they get boring when I see them on my own too much. Anything can be drab without someone to discuss it with."
"Yes. I agree." Sarah paused for a few moments. "What about going to college now? Could you do that?" She waited patiently for an answer. A smile slowly spread on Luke's lips and his face went red. It was embarrassing to finally recognize he wanted to go to college only through the suggestion of someone who cared. Though he needed her support, Luke never was easy with human intimacy - despite its beauty, it scared him.
"I could do. Yeah, I should. But what if the people hate me?"
"Do you think they will?" Sarah asked with a concealed smile.
"Maybe not," laughed Luke. "I shouldn't make judgments about people before I meet them, should I?"
"If that's what you think. Remember, I am not here to judge you. I'm only here to listen. This is your space to let out your feelings."
"Well, I think I should give people a chance."
Sarah looked at Luke, allowing time for him to say more if he needed to. She let his last words sink in and then said, "I think that's our time up now," and they headed for the door. "See you next week," she said and Luke echoed the same to her, emboldened by her power of suggestion. To his amazement, Luke was certain he was benefiting from his counsellor's intervention. He thought it best to seize this moment and attempt to find people to talk to in this mood of buoyancy.
Thus on the evening following that meeting, their fourth, he ventured out for the purposes of revelry. It was a crisp winter's night and only November. Luke had never felt so cold. He was caught in the middle of the worst winter the United Kingdom had been privy to in thirty years. Woecaster's streets were perilously slippy and chilly and it was on an evening in this late month of the year when Luke was approach by a short Indian man on Dockland Street. "Hello! Excuse me there, sir. Might you consider joining me for drinks for the evening?"
The man took in the full height of Luke's body lasciviously.
"Sorry but I can't."
"Please, sir!" said the man, smiling.
"Sorry!" repeated Luke and he dashed off. A sense of déjà vu had struck Luke upon the man's approach - he was certain he had been invited to drinks with him before. He could remember having once drank in a few bars with an Indian man on Ferry Street in the gay quarter. He had had to make an excruciating exit from an invitation back to the man's hotel. After what happened with Mason in America, Luke had learned the hard way to be assertive, even when it made him feel rotten. Such was the talent of a capable sexual conqueror - they could persuade a person into feeling it was their duty or only the friendly thing to do to become more comfortable with them, making the disentanglement from the proposed affair as awkward as possible.
There had been two other men who had expressed an interest in Luke while in Woecaster. At a Greek restaurant opposite the town hall, he had been propositioned for copulation by a boorish old aristocrat called Charles; and at the bus terminal near Lilly Green when he had used to wear his bright, patterned fair-trade clothes a young man had asked him to experiment with homosexuality. Luke was very touched so many men were attracted to him. He only wished they were women instead.
After he had declined the man's offer, Luke strode on to a hustle of bars near Rudemount and entered a watering hole called Boyd's Bar. The clientele were scantily dressed and out in pairs, threes, fours and fives while a few solitary men drank alone. Luke ordered a glass of red wine and sat at a stool at the bar. Two women came to order drinks, looking his way and he smiled, remembering his counsellor's advice. They frowned and would not stop staring. Oh no, I have angered them, realized Luke. He quickly shuffled away it turned ugly. In another corner of the bar he found a seat at a table next to a group. A man to his size appeared friendly and with Luke's newfound smiling technique initiating, they began to talk.
"Hi, I'm Phil." He offered his hand to shake.
"I'm Luke. Nice to meet you."
"You too. Are you out on your own?"
"Yeah. I'm just looking for a good time."
"So what do you do, Luke?"
"I play the piano."
"No way, me too! I'm on grade seven."
Luke grinned - that was an advanced level. He asked questions about Phil: enquiring of him what he did for a living, who he was out with and if he had a girlfriend. Then Luke could not think of any more and he was certain some wit would have been far better. None of that came to his blank mind either. The advice given to him was proving hard to put into practice. He approached another woman later on the dance floor and attempted to throw some moves for a while; but he was far too rigid to fit into the latest trends. At home, when he watched old music videos from the 1990s he could identify with those dances - they were slower, less cool and with it. Dances were more human then. Nowadays it was like dancing was a competitive sport. He wished he could have been born in an era of ballroom dances and dance halls, where a man approached a woman and requested a dance, receiving a simple yes or no - ah, the joys of knowing where you stood.
Luke smiled at the woman and she was surprisingly courteous and nice. The conversation did not got too far though. Even when Luke asked about her, he soon lost interest. She told him a bit about herself and she seemed a pleasant enough young lady but the way she thinned her mouth if ventured a strong opinion struck him as conceited. It was not that she was not worth knowing - but she was no Jolly. Luke had learned from the past it was not worth getting into a relationship with a woman he did not feel that crucial first spark towards. He had no energy to mingle with any more women, not wanting to get any more drunk - for he knew all too well the experience of being sick the next morning. And there was no sense in dancing sober, it was too excruciating, women would never be impressed with Luke next to the lithe, agile men all around him.
XLII
After Luke confessed his love for Jolly, the Health Service Ombudsman wrote him a letter stating his behaviour had been offensive and unacceptable. He read that he would be passed onto another assessor. Three days later he received a phone call.
"Hello. This is Kent Cooper from the Health Service Ombudsman. Can I speak to Me Jefferson please?"
"Oh, so someone finally decides to speak to me! Hello!"
"Hi Mr Jefferson. I've been referred your complaint and will be continuing with it. Just to let you know it will still take a few months before it is complete. I won't be able to reveal any details of the investigation to you either."
"I see. But I don't want to speak to you. I want Jolly to help me. She understands me."
"I don't know who you're talking about, Mr Jefferson, but I'm afraid you'll have to accept that I'm dealing with your complaint now. I'm based in the London office and so there won't be any need for you to visit the Woecaster office anymore."
"Understood." Luke cut the line. He felt so frustrated - how were ordinary people supposed to get justice anymore? All these organisations operated through phones and in anonymity from remote locations. In a newspaper, Luke had recently read that sixty percent of deaths in state custody (prisons, psychiatric detention and care homes) were in psychiatric hospitals or wards. "Sixty percent! Who cares?" said Luke to himself. That figure was astonishing. Even more shockingly, most the deaths were not listed as suicides. There was undeniable discrimination against people who suffered or who were labelled to suffer with mental health problems. The media recently had often wrote in articles and said on the television that one in four people in the United Kingdom would have a mental health problem at some stage in life. How on earth could all those deaths be acceptable?
But instead of addressing the real problems, professionals helped people by handing them pills to pop. Never mind fixing broken homes, poorly funded and expensive to use public transport and divided communities where crime and a lack of common interests were wrecking people's confidence. They had no time to ask where the well paid, decent jobs were for people or how to make work and workplaces more accepting and health-conscious. No! - It was not their ambition to alter the bigoted people who bullied and maintained the stigma the more sensitive people - why do that, when a profiteering system founded on medication could be peddled?
The way Luke had been treated by the mental health team, when other people were treated the same, would lead to deaths. Luke read in the local newspaper a woman in her forties in Duldrum committed suicide days after seeing the crisis team. She hanged herself for reasons unknown, though it was certain that she was upset about having lost her job and had become financially destitute. Luke was certain that if they had treated her as callously as they treated him, it may well have tipped her over the edge of despair. He wrote to Kent Cooper about the woman's suicide and its relation to the mental health team; but Kent informed Luke he could not consider the tragedy for investigation from the ombudsman as it was unrelated to Luke's personal case. If all the ombudsman did was investigate, Luke could believe they may well be useless. Could they not also form opinions based on what was happening all around them too? To have to go through every single event with a lengthy investigation would only mean far more deaths and perhaps never implementing much-needed reforms.
Luke also typed an email to Duldrum's coroner asking them to investigate the woman's suicide. They had already performed an autopsy but had been ignorant of incompetence within the crisis team helping the lady - and since Luke was aware of how abominable they were he could provide insights into how they might have contributed to her death. Yet despite receiving an initial response from an administrative assistant, Luke never heard back from the coroner. It was usually the case, Luke learnt, that coroners would only investigate deaths in more detail when a family requested it. How fatal that could be for an unfortunate soul. What about orphans and people whose families did not get along with them? Some families were not particularly bright either. What a rotten way of doing things.