To Cripps Court, so mean and bitten down you can only wonder about
Cripps. A front door, battered white paint and ply; buzzed through, to a narrow
stairway of plain red tiles, the flat numbers for each landing stencilled on the
lintel. The echo of our progress makes it sound like an army of paramedics going
up the stairs, not just me and Rae. Out onto a walkway with a black net
stretched across the gap, presumably to stop pigeons flying in, and anything
else flying out, and down, into the bins and bikes and junked-up planters in the
courtyard six floors below.
To Julius’ flat, where the door stands open and in it, a friendly
middle-aged woman talking into a phone. When she sees us she smiles and holds a
finger up. They’re here now. Thanks very
much, then. Bye, bye.
‘Thanks for coming,’ she says, slipping the phone into the pocket of
her cardigan.
‘I’m Serena, one of Julius’ care workers. He’s just inside.’
Julius is over by the window, smoking a cigarette. When I introduce
myself he lurches towards me with his hand outstretched.
‘How are you, bro?’
‘I’m good, thanks. How are you?’
He shrugs, and drops himself down on the bed.
‘I wanna die, man. If I had a knife, yeah? I’d cut myself here and
here. I’d slice my belly open and pull myself all insides out. I just wanna
die. You know what I mean?’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Or throw myself out the window into the traffic. I tried running out
in the road the other day and this taxi driver saved me. The police came and they
ended up putting me away in a cell, but then all them doctors and nurses got
their heads together, yeah? And they sent me back here.’
‘And that was yesterday?’
‘Yesterday, yeah, yesterday. So now I’ve had like a bottle of brandy
and a couple of cans and I just wanna die.’
Serena goes over to the window and opens it.
‘You smoke too much,’ she says.
She hands me a grab sheet with all his details, sits down again and
folds her arms.
Serena’s a reassuring figure, soaking up Julius’ rage with a tired
kind of warmth, as loosely knit as her cardigan.
‘Julius has got a few problems, as you can see from the sheet,’ she
says. ‘I didn’t want to call you because I know he’s so drunk they won’t assess
him for hours. And there is actually a safe house I can take him to. But he was
so adamant he didn’t want to go to the house I didn’t really have any other
choice.’
‘I ‘aint going to no house,’ says Julius, struggling up again. ‘I
wanna join my lil’ twin sister. She died ‘cos she got this hole in the heart.’
Julius stares at me, his mouth slack, his eyes heavy, the smoke from
his cigarette curling up from his fingers.
‘I don’t want to cause my mum no pain,’ he says. ‘I’m like a em-barr-isment, yeah? I should jes’ throw
myself out the window and be done.’
After some negotiation, more with Serena than Julius, we decide the
best course of action is to take him to the safe house after all. There’ll be
someone to keep an eye on him whilst he sleeps off the brandy, and in the
morning when he’s sober they can review things then.
Julius is so drunk he’s not in a position to argue. He’s happy
enough to be led out of the room and down the stairs, though – a strange, rolling
kind of lope, like a marionette forced to move with its strings in a tangle.
He’s like that when we open the main door and step out into the street. There’s
a night bus waiting at the lights nearby, its windows misted up with all the
people on board heading into town for the clubs. A young woman wipes her window
clear with the sleeve of her jacket to get a better look.
‘Thas’ where I went into the
cars,’ says Julius, dropping his head to the right and immediately lurching off
that way until I work him upright again. ‘Jes’ there. Right there.’
The bus moves off, the woman still watching.
‘My sister,’ he drools. ‘My poor lil’ sister.’
‘How old was she when she died?’ I ask him.
‘I don’t know. Like a hour or somefing?’
He stops to stare at the tarmac a second or two, then comes back to
himself – enough anyway to make it up the ambulance steps and pitch head first
onto the trolley.
5 comments:
love the images here, especially the intro. sometimes I think sadness can be an addiction that patients hold onto, and I realize there's more to it than that but I always want to tell them to squish out each negative thought like an ant to make room for a brighter future (you know, free of ants so with cookies instead. but they gotta make the cookies.)
the feel of this post breathes. thanks :)
Hopefully Julius will feel a little better about himself and life in general when the brandy has worn off.
However,carrying the death of his sister around with him might take a little more help.
How old is he? At first I thought middle age, but by the end of it was thinking young man.
Bet he's felt like something's been missing his entire life. What a shame to have lost a twin before you even know what one is.
Anon - I think you're right. I suppose you learn how to structure the world and place yourself in it, and change becomes increasingly difficult the longer you maintain that view. But it's a complex subject with plenty of variables, that's for sure.
'Mindfulness' seems to be the buzz-word treatment for anxiety & depression at the moment. I read a couple of books about it recently and I have to say it makes a lot of sense. I like the pragmatic approach, exercises you can practice, acronyms you can remember - like a toolkit for coping!
Jack - Julius has got a lot going on. I got the impression he wouldn't be easy to deal with, though, even when he's sober. I thought Serena was doing a great job in very difficult circumstances. Quite brave, actually.
Cass - Mid-twenties, but seemed stuck at teenage.
Lynda - It would be an awful thing to have happened, and you can only wonder how it affected the family. He's had a difficult upbringing - the death of his sister being just one facet, I expect.
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Thanks for the comments! :)
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