Mental illness, that catch all, hadn’t caught what they’d feared would put them outside the close knit cosiness of country life, the dinner parties and barbecues, the invitations to join in. Smashing up the kitchen and lying in the pond were a punishable offence, yet make everyone in the room feel lacking, tragic, frightened and you’d be rewarded; a man could be made President for that, a woman could ride rough shod. Why the collusion? Why was narcissism treated with mirth, a quick eye roll, its viciousness allowed? Ros had caused as much harm if not more, been as destructive yet had been left to roam free, whereas Tessa, trussed and dribbling for her confession, had been locked in Mercury Ward, sectioned for being the shadow they’d rather not see, the easy target, the one everyone could agree on. Perhaps, Tessa thought as she drove from Midhurst to St Richard’s, Freddy beside her, if she’d been pretty or blonde, or loud or sort of famous, if she’d been as exciting as Ros they’d have rushed to her defence, too, they’d have said you know Tessa, its DIY! And she likes swimming with her clothes on and had a good laugh about it and turned a blind eye to her act outs, the way she expressed the madness inside. Maybe if she’d been the life and soul and as good a liar, she’d have been celebrated for being awful and she’d have got over it, fixed up the kitchen, dried her clothes and no one’s marriage would have been wrecked, no one’s heart, broken, or spine. Narcissists gave people permission to act badly, while Bipolar psychotics made everyone else feel well. We are all responsible for making one thing okay and not another.
The blossom was out, the air was warming up, winter coats were not quite put away. The weather could turn cold again. Tessa and Freddy kept theirs on as they made their way across the carpark to the hospital, Mercury Ward a rooftop through the trees, Tessa focused her sights on the main entrance to St Richard’s and held her son’s hand across the road. Scott had survived the crash, but only just. He’d been catapulted through the windshield, narrowly missing the trunk of a Douglas fir, and stopped in his tracks by the lowest branches of a beech that he’d hit neck first. His days of climbing oaks, a chainsaw strapped to his chest, a hard hat on his messy Irish head, were over; there would be no more tree surgery for him, only months and months of surgery on his spinal column until he was ready to go home. Which was today.
When the police had knocked on Tessa’s door, three months earlier, the day of the crash, when they’d taken off their hats and asked if they might come in, she’d been sure the psychosis at returned. She’d seen flashes of a zebra, wheels spinning, she’d tried to keep it together. She’d sent Freddy to his room, but he was wise enough to know that police meant something bad. He’d seen them at his house before. She rang Clare, but Clare didn’t answer. She rang Diane who came over to sit with Freddy while Tessa, driven in the back of the panda car, was taken to A&E; the police told her he was breathing. Staggered at her kitchen table the following day, she heard the crunch of wheels outside and went to look. Clare’s Subaru. Clare, getting out, and slamming the driver’s door. She looked terrible. When Tessa let her in, Clare hugged her and started to cry.
She watched hopelessly, her friend trying to gather herself, find tissues, take off her coat; her sleeve caught on a button, and she swore, ripped it off, and dropped her Barbour inside out on the floor. Her terrier, nervous, jumped at her feet, and cocked a leg on the boot rack, peeing directly into Freddy’s welly, so the first five minutes were spent getting cloths and saying it doesn’t matter. By the time they faced each other in the quiet of Tessa’s kitchen, Clare was crying again.
Tessa said, “The doctor says he hasn’t punctured anything, so…” The kettle hissed. Out of the cupboard with the crack up the side she got two cups. “They don’t know what happened. He veered off the road. They think there must have been someone else involved, there are tire marks, apparently. They’ve put out signs for witnesses.” A carton of Cowdray half-fat organic milk from the fridge, Tessa imagined the yellow signs, handwritten did you see in magic marker being sprayed by passing cars on the road out of Midhurst. She put two cups of instant coffee on the table.
Clare said quietly, “Brian’s gone to the police.”
It took all morning to get the story clear, for Clare to explain and re-explain, and go over it until the fragments made sense. Clare crying, Tessa crying, Tessa angry and Clare distraught.
“It was all lies,” said Tessa. She tried to roll a cigarette. It kept going everywhere. And after Clare listened and nodded and fought and argued and dropped her face onto her folded hands, Tessa said, “have you seen her?” But Clare shook her head.
The whole of West Sussex heard a few days later that Brian had been arrested for dangerous driving with intent to cause harm. It was reported in the West Sussex Gazette along with his old discharge report from the army which outlined a case of PTSD following back-to-back tours in Iraq. The farm shop was a-buzz with it. They’d have to find someone else to supply their beef.
But the blossom was flowering and Scott was coming home, not home to Tessa but home to a rented flat in Horsham, a ground floor one bed apartment, an insurance pay out, and a pull out bed for Freddy, no stairs, a galley kitchen, a yard of dirty cigarette buts he’d have to clean when he could figure out how to walk. He would walk again, but not into Tessa’s life. Three months of coping alone had reminded her that she could cope. Scott had cared and loved her, but her illness had become a marker between them, a difference that said she was ill and he was well and he was a saint for sticking by her, she’d forgotten that she’d managed before, that she’d had years without him; she had more power to her elbow than either of them had believed. She couldn’t cook, and she was a terrible cleaner, but she knew how to organise her life, all be it in a smaller house; their home with the broken kitchen cupboard, the walls that had shut her in, no island, a pond in the garden, was for sale. She was looking at places in Brighton. Their divorce would take another year.
He smiled when he saw them and held out his arms to Freddy who hugged him and passed him his crutches; he hadn’t fought when she’d said it’s over, he’d said we gave it a shot in that typically Irish way that ignored the mountain of pain before them, that made a joke of it. He shut the door on his feelings like a good Belfast boy for whom war was a game and fear an annoyance to be ignored in case it swamped him, in case it stopped him from talking completely. Though he said nothing happened about a hundred times more, what had happened was a breach of trust. It was him who’d been the one she relied on to not throw her to the lions, discuss her in the sunshine of competitive picnics in the Polo grounds, hampers and plastic glasses, another marriage wrecked on the shores of Chardonnay. Home Counties hypocrisy had got him, he’d fallen for it, she wouldn’t be surprised to see him in red trousers and checked shirt, an amusing belt to demonstrate he hadn’t lost his touch; he wasn’t Scott anymore and he’d said fuck off when she’d shouted it, in a tone that meant he was ashamed.
She slung his bag over her shoulder, Freddy gathered Get Well cards from the windowsill, and laughed as his dad got the striding wrong and bumped into the door. He’d been taken to see him every Saturday, but home hadn’t been the same without him. Like when his mum wasn’t there, a Dad-shaped hole like the Mum-shaped one when she went away. Nobody thought he noticed. He knew she had an illness, that she threw things and couldn’t make supper and cried or worse, stood still for hours, staring at the garden, but she was his mum, the only one he had. Tessa had explained Scott would have a new home now, and he’d wondered if it was because of him.
Across the carpark and into the car, nurses thanked along the way, Freddy in the front, Scott behind with his leg stretched out. Crumbs from crisps, and pieces of Lego knocked off the seat. He would spend between now and the summer falling over and getting up, getting frustrated, angry, looking at the past, thinking how it could have been different, how he could have done it better, whether his injuries would stop him from retraining as a gardener, if Tessa would forgive him, if he would forgive himself. He would love her and try to get her back. She would refuse.
But for Brian, the future was different. It only takes a few tweaks; less money, a different job, fewer friends, an accident borne of pain that has no outlet, for a man just coping to become one who does not. In the small hours of the morning that Scott came out of hospital, Brian balanced on the cab of his tractor to tie a knot, the barn dark and dusty, an owl had flown out as he’d gone in. Straw, and mouse droppings showered his eyes, covering his face in a blanket of farming as he slid it along the rafter so that his feet wouldn’t reach; the police would later wonder why he was so covered in dirt. Poor Brian. No one had taken much notice of him at all. The news didn’t filter down for a week, it took three days for anybody to realize he was missing. He didn’t get the help he needed; the training to not speak of his feelings got him flinging a rope as if it was a question of polarity, to be here or not, a simple yes or no. When news got out, the people of Midhurst greeted it with a mixture of guilt and sorrow. Tessa understood. Clare remembered him with horror. Diane and Peter wished they’d known. Only Barbara cried. Ros didn’t care. She was too busy packing.
Tessa didn’t know Ros had left until she went round to Diane and Peter’s and heard Molly ask if it was okay to use picture hooks in her room.
“Just be precise with the hammer, darling,” replied Diane, casting a quick glance at Tessa.
“Is Molly living here?” said Tessa.
“Oh.” Diane slid a casserole out of the bottom oven, “they’re both with us.”
“Mum’s gone to LA,” said Molly, coming in with a toolbox. She put it on the table.
“For a while,” added Diane.
And that was that. Ros’ illness, if Tessa cared to think about it, was born of trauma, too; a different set of events, an identical fine mist of denial, a perfect front, a darkness behind where lurked things unspeakable, but she didn’t, care to think that is. She had her own peace to make, and she wasn’t the one taking hostages, human shields to the demons inside; Tessa had room for herself, her son, the friends who didn’t judge her, or hurt her, or make her feel shit. Ros would have to fight her battles alone which she did with a new set of friends and a new set of lies and the freewheeling confidence that a British accent brought in Santa Monica. It lasted a year.
Tessa’s recovery was slow and messy, but such is the way of it; shiny surfaces and steam-cleaned pelmets, a family dog click-clacking on a scrubbed kitchen floor were never the truth. She had good days, she had bad, she had times when she wanted to give up, and others where she knew that wasn’t an option; she didn’t want to end up like Ethel. With the help of Dr Stemping she tried to get her meds right, and with the help of a psychotherapist, she returned to the cupboard in her mind, the trauma in her body, the fine mist of abuse that can make a child mad, the assault on her senses that had haunted her. She learnt that her parents had been lying. She learnt how to manage her illness. She took a bit of exercise and mostly ate better, she practiced techniques to calm and soothe, be nicer to her frightened self, treat it with the same quiet love she gave her son. If she carried on like that, then maybe there was a chance of not falling so catastrophically that only the arms of Mercury Ward would catch her. Manic episodes were not over, but they were managed; to Clare and Diane, the friends with whom she agreed the white flag, she said raise it if you think I’m losing it and they did, and she got help, and they took care of Freddy. She would always be susceptible to exaggerated highs and death defying lows, her vulnerabilities remained the same, but with a scaffold of friends and professionals, a faith which she rebuilt brick by brick, she developed the language of help all over again, mended it from when it was broken, when she’d fallen out of a cupboard, asked for comfort and been met with tinkling laughs and false smiles, the shine of ice, gin and tonics sparkling in the sunshine, her sisters playing skip rope on the lawn.
Truly marvelous, Eleanor. My heart has been with Tessa because of her vulnerability and her survival instincts in the face of her illness while the machinations of others unraveled. The complexity of the deceits held me throughout. A brave write, a solid conclusion. Your writing, along with your friendship has been gift indeed. Love, Mary
....I loved reading it
It's almost scary how easy it is to loose myself in almost each one of the heroes, especially the main ones-Tessa, Clare, and Ros. It's either a great writing-or a strange reader. Then, it might be "both are true".
I though feel the most pain for Brian, and for the kids, and for the kids the grown ups once were, and those that are constantly back to some ward, or never leaving it.
Thank you.