The More You Ignore Me (17 page)

She was
right and Dr Desmond longed to throw off his professional mantle and chat to
her like a friend. She seemed so sweet and earnest, but over the years his
humanity had crept further and further inside him and the hard shell of his
professional pronouncements had become as automatic as getting up every
morning.

‘Look,
let’s try a couple of things,’ he said. ‘I’ll change your mother’s oral drugs
and we’ll reduce the volume of her injection a bit and see if that improves
things at all.’

A
flicker of hope passed across Alice’s face.

‘OK.’
she said. ‘When will we do that?’

‘Well,
let’s start today,’ he said, encouraged by the softening expression on her
face.

Almost
simultaneously it occurred to them that they had ignored Gina completely during
this exchange and they both turned to her.

‘How do
you feel about that?’ Dr Desmond asked her. Gina was looking out of the window
at an elderly lady being all but dragged by two members of staff towards a door
and listening to two voices discussing how shit she was at tennis.

‘What?’
she said.

‘We’ll
change your medication a bit.’ said the spotty little creep of a doctor who had
been responsible for locking her up once and now for some reason was smiling
beatifically at her as if he was her saviour.

‘Piss
off, I’m fucking brilliant at tennis,’ Gina mumbled. ‘Well, it’s better than
fuck off,’ said Alice cheerfully ‘I’ll write to Dr Henty and tell her to halve
the dose,’ said Dr Desmond, ‘and I’ll write your mum up for some different
tablets. Let’s review it again in a month and see how we’re doing. Obviously if
there are any problems you can bring her back before that or take her to your
GP.’

He scribbled
on a piece of paper.

‘Take
that to the pharmacy’ he said, handing her the prescription, and Alice rose,
gently pulling Gina up with her.

‘What did you do today,
love?’ said Keith.

‘Oh,
just messed around at home,’ said Alice.

‘I went
to Hereford,’ said Gina from her usual position in the corner.

Oh
shit, thought Alice. She’s going to land me right in it. ‘Yes, love,’ said
Keith, not really even registering what she had said, so accustomed was he to
her pronouncements having all the authenticity of a cheap romantic novel.

Alice
now had to work out how she was going to square things with Marie Henty who,
she had realised over the years. was probably a bit in love with her dad.
Little glances, slight breathlessness, redness of cheeks and an overwillingness
to help out at any time of day or night were the symptoms she had diagnosed in
the awkward GP.

Of
course, as soon as there was a whiff of anything to do with Keith, it was
likely Marie would insist on talking to him directly, in the vain hope that
something might happen between them. Keith, in all his unashamed blissful
naivety, hadn’t got a clue, even after all this time, that Marie Henty had an
unrelenting crush on him. He just thought she was a bit weird. Alice had picked
it up when she was quite young, in an instinctive female way, and had
immediately felt protective towards her dad. It was not that she couldn’t
understand that he might want to look elsewhere for some love and comfort, she
just could not help feeling censorious towards those potential feelings because
Gina, after all, was still her mother.

Alice
decided on the tack she was going to take with Marie Henty. which, if it paid
off, would work like a dream and if it didn’t would land her well and truly in
trouble.

The
following morning found her sitting in the little surgery, flanked by two
elderly ladies who had what sounded like exactly the same cough. She flicked
through the dog-eared copies of
The Lady,
fantasising about being a
nanny to some family who lived half the year in America and travelled round
the world for the rest, although she suspected the reality might be tiredness
and irritation with a bunch of precocious little poltergeists and their equally
precocious parents.

Alice,
what a pleasant surprise. What can I do for you?’ said Marie Henty.

‘Well,
it’s what I can do for you that is probably more important,’ said Alice,
immediately grabbing back the elevated position in their duet.

‘What
do you mean?’ said Marie Henty, intrigued and wondering against hope if Alice
was going to offer somehow to get rid of Wobbly and Bighead.

‘Let’s
not beat about the bush,’ said Alice, ‘and I don’t want to embarrass you, but
you really like my dad, don’t you?’

Marie
Henty was so shocked by this statement, rocketing as it did from beneath the
big comfortable blanket of social convention, that her central nervous system
nearly forgot to make her blush. But blush she did, as she wrestled with an
appropriate and professional answer with which to counter this ever surprising
eighteen-year-old’s inquiry.

‘Um,
yes,’ she said. ‘I do like your father very much, he is a very nice man, but
I’m not sure that this is an appropriate topic of conversation for us in a
medical consulting room.’ Her voice had subtly changed pitch into the vaguely
dictatorial yet assured tones favoured by her colleagues when faced with having
to deal with an enormous emotional quagmire.

‘Well,
we can discuss it elsewhere if you want,’ said Alice, ‘but it is linked to
someone’s medical care. Not mine,’ she added swiftly.

‘Is your
dad ill?’ said Marie Henty, a tiny edge of genuine concern creeping into her
voice.

‘No,’
said Alice. ‘I want to talk to you about my mum.’

‘Right,’
said Marie Henty. ‘What does that have to do with my… apparent feelings for
your dad?’

‘Well,’
said Alice. ‘I’m not happy about what a sad life my mum is living and I want to
try and improve things for her.’

‘I’m in
agreement so far,’ said Marie Henty.

‘So,’ Alice
went on, ‘I want to see if scaling down her medication a bit will help and I
know Dr Desmond is going to write to you to cut down her depot injection, but
I’d like you to stop it for a couple of months altogether.’

Marie
Henty looked worried. Like Dr Desmond, her aim was an uneasy preservation of
the status quo with regard to the psychiatric patients under her care and any
threat to this made her stomach start to churn slightly.

‘Oh
Alice,’ she said, ‘it’s quite risky, you know, because it could bring on
another…‘ she searched for a neutral word, ‘attack.’

‘I know
there’s a risk,’ said Alice, ‘but I can’t bear to think this is her for the
rest of her life. She’s like a big, stranded whale with all the fun and
laughter sucked out of her and I can’t believe she’ll never have fun ever
again.

‘I know
it’s difficult,’ said Marie Henty.

‘No,
you haven’t a clue what it’s like,’ said Alice. ‘You don’t see her often
enough. She’s my mum and she’s a dirty, filthy, stinking, cigarette-smoking
alien in our house who sits there day after day doing fuck all. I’ve half a
mind to put a fucking pillow over her face because I can’t bear to see her be
this stranger who has no emotions any more.

Marie
Henty didn’t really know how to cope with this because she was in complete
emotional accord with Alice, but she thought about how her colleagues, friends
and the General Medical Council might view a decision that could spell
professional suicide.

‘Look,’
said Alice, ‘I promise I will do everything in my power to push things forward
between you and my dad. I’ll tell him how lovely you are, I’ll engineer
opportunities for you to see each other, go out together. I’ll make him fall in
love with you, if you just give me this one thing and let my mum off that
fucking medication for three months, give her some life. Christ, you’re a
doctor, aren’t you? Surely it’s not just about stopping her being a nuisance,
is it? Is it?’

Marie
Henty’s head was swimming.

‘Calm
down, Alice,’ she said, because she genuinely could not think of anything else
to say.

Alice
stood up. ‘I will not fucking calm down.’ By now she was half crying and half
shouting. She banged her fist on the desk. ‘It’s your decision.’ Then she
turned and walked out of the door.

Immediately
the phone began to ring.

Are you
all right. Marie?’ said the receptionist’s voice.

‘Fine,’
said Marie Henty. recovering her poise. ‘Yes, don’t worry, Joy, just some
teenage angst.’

‘Oh
good,’ said Joy, ‘because Mrs Devonshire has just shit herself, I’m afraid.’

Marie
Henty wondered if there was some sort of training course Joy could go on.

Alice
walked home very fast and went straight up to her bedroom, banged the door and
put on ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ on the highest volume setting and
played it over and over again for about an hour. She still hadn’t got bored
with the tune or lyrics and desperately wanted someone to be with who would be
happy to be run over by a bus, as long as he had her.

The
next morning she found a little handwritten note on the mat.

Dear Alice,

Come and see me after
morning surgery. About 12?

Marie Henty.

The next morning Alice
cycled up to the village again and slunk into the surgery, well aware that the
eyes of Joy, the garrulous receptionist, were upon her. She waited for well
over half an hour before Marie Henty’s door opened and Marie motioned her in.

‘I’ve
thought long and hard about it, Alice,’ she said, almost as if she was
continuing the same conversation with no break. ‘and I’m prepared to try your
mother without her injection for three months but no more.’

‘Oh,
thank you,’ said Alice, ‘thank you, Dr Henty, and I promise I will fulfil my
part of—’

Marie
Henty put her finger to her lips. ‘I don’t think we need to discuss that any
more,’ she said. But her face said something altogether different.

On the
way home, Alice met Mark.

‘Not at
work?’ he said to Alice.

‘And I
presume you’re skiving off college.’ Mark’s father had persuaded him to go to a
local agricultural college where his peers were attempting to erode any
sensitivity that was left in him, which had the effect of increasing his
determination to stay the same.

‘There’s
no one at mine,’ said Mark. ‘Do you want to come back for a coffee?’

‘Yes,
all right,’ said Alice and they walked together through the village, Alice
pushing her bike.

‘Hunt
this weekend,’ said Mark.

‘Oh
yeah,’ said Alice, not really interested.

‘I’m
going up there,’ said Mark.

‘But
you hate hunting,’ said Alice. ‘We both do.’

‘I’m
not joining the hunters,’ said Mark indignantly.

‘What
do you mean?’ said Alice.

‘I’m
going with some protesters,’ said Mark matter-of-factly, but his flushed cheeks
betrayed just what a huge step forward this was from being on the sidelines
seething with resentment yet socially handcuffed by his father’s bullying and
eminent position in the county as one of its most rabid fox hunters.

‘But
what if your dad catches you?’ said Alice.

‘I’ll
just tell him to listen to that Morrissey song “Meat Is Murder”,’ said Mark.
‘That’ll turn him.’

‘Yeah,
right,’ said Alice.

‘You
coming?’ said Mark.

‘I
don’t know,’ said Alice.

‘Put
your money where your mouth is, you recently converted vegetarian,’ said Mark,
poking her in the arm and laughing.

‘Will
there be trouble?’ said Alice.

‘Don’t
know,’ said Mark. ‘It could be good
fun.’

‘But
really,’ said Alice, ‘what if your dad does see you?’

‘He
won’t see me, I’ll be covered up. He won’t know it’s me. I’ve arranged to swap
clothes with someone. Come on, Alice, you know you want to.’