Authors: Matthew Formby
He tired himself out. He had walked and been out for over ten hours. Nightfall came and he couldn't get a bus back home. Services to outlying towns finished early in the evening. Staying in the city centre was too dangerous so he walked in the direction that seemed safest. He walked for miles. When he came to a quarter full of students he thought this would be best as a place to lay his head. He sat down on a terraced street, his back to a wall and began to rest. Lowering his head, he avoided eye contact and tried to sleep.
Two hours later footsteps approached and suddenly there were four people, laughing. Closer inspection showed they were two young men with two young women. They approached, happily, down the street. "Are you alright there?" called one of the young men, who had long dark hair. Luke nodded shyly. "Do you need somewhere to stay for the night?" The man continued. "Come along with us man. D' yer want to party with us?"
Luke had never partied and had only even drank alcohol a few times but anything felt better than staying on the street; besides they seemed nice. He followed the foursome down the street to their shared house. They all descended to the basement where music was put on. The students got to know Luke, asking him about himself. A bottle of wine was passed around and Luke, having never drank wine, felt sick after three glugs. He carried on drinking, nevertheless. He was determined not to be ungrateful to his hospitable hosts.
"Do you do Charlie?" asked the long-haired lad, Stephen.
"What's that?" asked Luke.
"Cocaine. Oh, you probably don't. Here, have some if you want."
"I'd best not," Luke said, uncertainly. "How do you afford it?"
"Student loans. We do drugs all the time. It dulls the pain of this crappy existence."
Luke had never encountered drugs. He may have done sooner if he had not withdrawn from his old friends in Wales, and perhaps it was time to open his mind. Stephen snorted cocaine off a little mirror while the others watched. He told Luke he was going to be an architect and build "big bloody buildings". The other young man, Ben, was shaven-headed and handsome. He was training to be an accountant. It surprised Luke who assumed in a drug-fuelled house like this, there wouldn't be anyone studying anything so normal; the two girls studied psychology and history. Some cannabis was rolled and the whole group smoked, including Luke. It was a first for him and soon he began to feel better. He started laughing and became more talkative.
As a lightweight, Luke fell asleep. The next morning he woke up and found himself lying, legs and arms outspread, on the double bed in the basement. No one else was around but the room was full of stuff. There were empty bottles, a computer with speakers, books, mugs and papers and posters covering the walls. Luke felt out of sorts. Should he go upstairs? He decided it was best. He put on his shoes, placed his wallet and other belongings in his pocket and prepared to leave. He felt the hospitality offered to him would not extend into friendship, it would be best to leave on a high note. As he ascended to the hall he looked into the kitchen but there wasn't a soul.
He quietly tiptoed up the stairs and peered into the bedrooms. Everyone was fast asleep. He descended the stairs and left through the front door, carefully closing it. He was overcome with strange feelings. The evening had been great yet it was so strange. He had never been with women of an evening before, nor men really for that matter unless family counted.
As he approached the bus stop where buses headed to Woecaster, there were eight other people, mostly young, waiting. Dressed in his usual fair trade clothes, people looked on bemused and he was very embarrassed. The worse for wear from last night, he avoided eye contact. When the bus came and he boarded he started to cry. He wept mutely, large tears running down his cheeks. Once he reached Woecaster, he quickly caught the bus back home, grabbed hold of his passport and rushed out. The sky was falling, his world falling apart. He had failed in making friends. He did not belong here. Even when people were kind to him he was out of place. He was heading for France. Maybe it would be different there.
VI
Paris made Luke's heart flutter. On that day, at the age of twenty, he caught the train to Paris. The squalid, claustrophobic tract house in that long forgotten suburb was behind him. England was disintegrating; con artists were robbing the old and the naive left, right and centre. Everybody was on the make.
All people cared about was football. Company bosses would pay their employees as little as they could and spend their surplus money on flashy cars, holidays in Turkey and beauty treatments. It was a dark age for England. Luke had began to read prolifically upon his dad's encouragement when he quitted school. He learned so much about the world that was beyond the little island he lived on. After years of Thatcher, Major and Blair the United Kingdom had become America's playground. It was digesting the worst aspects of the fascist turn of the United States. For fascism was the collusion between government and private corporations to enact laws and run countries for their own profit at the expense of everyone else. Phony wars were waged for oil, the armies bankrolled by indebted taxpayers.
Luke despised the conditions people were held in at Guantanamo Bay and how there were no fair trials for the detainees - most had been locked up for years without being found guilty. Anti-protest laws, the ever expanding prison population and hysteria about terrorism were poisoning the country's atmosphere. In the English-speaking world in particular Luke noticed that the word terrorism was being banded about to deny people due process; to arrest and contain people for long periods without justification. Even secret courts were being used to deny people true justice and only give the authorities the result they wanted. The argument presented was that terrorists, in killing civilians or plotting to, did not deserve the usual legal rights. Yet in America the constitution was supposed to protect the rights of all people. Even in England human rights laws enacted after the second world war should have safeguarded liberties. When countries zealously incarcerated people without a jury trial, arrested people for thought crimes - so-called crimes that it was claimed were going to be committed - and treated them awfully, labelling them terrorists without a chance to defend themselves, those countries themselves had become tyrannical extremists.
A British man called Syed Talha Ahsan had recently been deported to America, accused of terrorist charges - apparently relating to running a website. Luke read that this man had Asperger's syndrome and had been sent to a maximum security prison in which prisoners were made to stay in cells for twenty three hours a day. Psychiatrists had labelled the decision insane, declaring the risk of people with Asperger's syndrome to commit suicide in that environment was severe.
Another man with Asperger's syndrome, Gary McKinnon, was fortunate in not being deported to America. He battled along with his devoted mother and lawyer for years. It seemed all he ever did was gain entry to American government computers to search for UFO evidence. Luke was really glad Gary's case was dropped in recognition of his condition but he could not understand why Syed Talha Ahsan was treated differently. If Asperger's syndrome was to be recognized as a severe disability, especially in a prison environments far from home, it should be so in every case!
In any case, many army personnel of the United States and the United Kingdom had killed and tortured civilians in the Middle East - if that wasn't terrorism what was? Even Nelson Mandela, one of the most globally respected figures was once dismissed as a terrorist. Any government's authority on claiming to be against terrorism was weak in Luke's opinion, for no power hungry government of recent times was whiter than white.
He wanted to get away from all the madness. Ah, the longing for a simple life! In France people could still protest without being criminalized Luke's sympathies laid in agreement with the spirit of the French. They cared more for each other and for building a tolerant and civilized society. It was a mystery how he was would make his way there but he figured something would turn up. He had the habit of all young people of taking reckless risks when he felt strongly about something.
Upon arrival in Paris he wandered along the tree lined avenues, looking agog at the cosmopolitan restaurants, brasseries, bistros, purveyors of fresh vegetables, bakeries; museums, galleries and theatres. He had always lived in poverty, both financially and culturally. Unfamiliar with so much public art, elegance, statues, boulevards, cyclists and scooter drivers he became dizzy. Removing his passport from his pocket he dropped it down a drain. If I have done that, I can't go back, he told himself. I can not go back to so much misery. I have to start anew. I can't wimp out now.
All day he wandered and ate nothing but a pack of grapes. When the long, hot day was through the night unexpectedly turned cold. Luke searched for somewhere to sleep. Eventually he found a bus stop and lay down. A few passing people began conversations but as he spoke no French they soon left. He was shivering, scared, bewildered. What could he do? Who could he talk to? Barely anyone understood the few stock phrases he spoke and nobody spoke English well. What have I done? he cried inside. God, I am scared. He took his clothes off and started walking along the road. He had to get somebody's attention. I don't know what to do, he thought. I'm desperate. I need help. This is mad but I can't communicate. What can I do?
A few cars drove by but they seemed unfazed by his nudity. Half an hour later he found himself on the verge of a highway where a police car spotted him. It pulled over. Two officers stepped out. They paused uncertainly. I must pretend to be insane, thought Luke. He started running away. It's like one of those games of cops and robbers I used to play as a child, he thought. He'd never been chased by police before. It was thrilling.
It didn't take long for them to catch him and saying a few words in French, they walked him to their car and put him in the back. He was driven to a police station. When questioned there he said nothing except the little French he knew - hello, how are you, where do you live. If they think I'm crazy, I might get help, he thought. He wasn't insane but couldn't cope with life anymore. The anxiety was overwhelming. Pretending everything was fine, tiring. His irrational behaviour felt like a release of his chains.
Lots of officers in the police station came to talk and look at him. Some female officers grinned, coyly pleased at the sight of Luke. Their faces reddened with embarrassment and they quickly retreated after sneaking a peek. He was transferred to another station, then a hospital in central Paris. There a doctor strapped him to his bed for the night. Luke looked pleadingly to the doctor but he merely returned a look of pity and crossed himself.
VII
Luke woke on the morrow to the sight of two paramedics. They unstrapped him and lifted him onto a stretcher, on which he was taken to an ambulance. Once he was strapped to the stretcher the ambulance left the hospital and began to drive away. Luke could look up out of the window and see trees and just about glance some passing shops or houses. Then he could hear cars all around and could see no more buildings. He realized he must be on a highway.
For what seemed a short eternity he wondered where he would end up, relieved at least to be out of England. When the ambulance came to its last stop and the doors opened he was outside a clinic in the provincial town of Clermont. His straps were undone and he was accompanied into a little stone building, then into a small room with a bed. Nurses popped in and out, eagerly scrutinizing his silence. How ironic that Luke interested people more when he had nothing to say. Whenever he usually spoke people took little notice. Tired and eager to say something to the nurses being nice to him, Luke broke the silence after five hours. A psychiatrist had come in who, judging from her expression appeared genuinely interested in his distress. He began by explaining he was English and she smiled as he related his life story.
After the psychiatrist left, the nurses came back to see Luke and looked wounded. They did not stay for long. He guessed they were sad he had not spoken to them. Then he was put back in the ambulance and transported to a hospital just outside the town. A massive institution, it consisted of around a hundred buildings. Some of the architecture had two-tone cream and white walls while some consisted of exposed vermilion bricks. The roofs had warm red tiles and between most the buildings high wire-mesh fences controlled access.
Like psychiatric wards and hospitals he had stayed in in England, there was a lot of neglect towards patients from staff. It was far cleaner, though, than any English hospital he had been in. The worst part about wards in England were the filthy floors in toilets. They were never tiled floors, always cheap lino or carpet irredeemably stained with urine and faeces. In Clermont the floors were all tiled and mopped three times a day. The disinfectant that was regularly used made the toilets sheen. At meal times, three courses were served and Luke would have enjoyed it if he wasn't so English. He was afraid of trying new foods.
The language barrier was a major obstacle. Though he met marvelous characters, conversations were laboured. One has to wonder why a continent as small as Europe has to have so many languages. Its citizens can not communicate with one each other, even though they share a parliament. Those who suffer the most are people with learning disabilities, low intelligence and those who have had a poor education. It is fine and dandy for the privileged, with their privately funded educations that teach foreign languages from infancy, to wax lyrical on the beauty of so much diversity. So much tradition, they marvel! How wonderful! But it is, practically speaking, ridiculous and will in time make the European Union struggle to compete with America - which is a similar size but united in its lexicon.