Читать книгу Dead Writers in Rehab - Paul Bassett Davies - Страница 13

What the fuck?

Wait, sorry, I’ll start again.

Patient FJ
Recovery Diary 1

On second thoughts, should this actually be diary entry number two? Only if I go back and treat that first bit I wrote as entry number one, and according to Hatchjaw I can’t go back over anything I’ve written and change it.

Don’t they realise what that means to a writer? To be unable to rewrite? I always begin a day’s writing by going back over whatever I’m working on, from the beginning, and tinkering with it obsessively, then writing a bit of new stuff, which I then rewrite the next day along with everything else I’ve written so far. Obviously, there’s a process of diminishing returns as I write less and less new stuff each day, but somehow I’ve still managed to finish several books, so fuck Achilles and the Tortoise he rode in on.

Do people still know about Achilles and the Tortoise? By people I mean the younger readers to whom I am appealing less and less, according to my current agent (my sixth, which isn’t as bad as it sounds as one of them died while representing me, and another was jailed for assault). She says my writing is getting oldfashioned, and would claim that by tossing in things like that reference to Greek mythology I’m proving her point. Wait. Is the story of Achilles and the Tortoise from Greek mythology? I mean, I know Achilles was Greek, but maybe the story is actually a fable, from someone like Aesop, or someone later, that French one. What’s his name? It’s on the tip of my tongue. God, it’s really annoying not having access to the internet. Not even a reference dictionary! What are they trying to do to us? And writing in longhand! It’s been years since I’ve written anything longer than a cheque by hand. It starts to hurt even if I have to write my address on the back. But cheques aren’t used any more. She’s right, I am old-fashioned. Look at the way I wrote ‘to whom I am appealing less and less …’ back there, and how I’m indenting the paragraphs, even though Hatchjaw says nobody is ever going to read it except me, and it’s just a facilitation tool in the recovery process. So at least I know where I am, even if the details are a bit puzzling, because there’s only one place where they talk about things like facilitation tools in the recovery process, and that’s in good old rehabilifuckingtation.

But this place doesn’t seem like any rehab I’ve been in before. I’ve only gone halfway along the corridor so far, partly because I was feeling a bit sick and I got dizzy. There’s a lump on my forehead, which may have been caused by trying to get out of bed when I was, in fact, underneath it. Which reminds me of something I used to say to women if I found myself staying the night and they asked me which side of the bed I preferred. ‘The top,’ I used to say. God, I was a funny drunk.

The other thing that made me turn back when I got halfway along the corridor was the noise coming from the room at the far end of it. There was something familiar about that sound and the voices making it that discouraged me from going any further.

I’d stopped at an intersection in the corridor, like a crossroads, with a passage stretching away on either side of me. I remained very still so that the nausea I was experiencing would think I had gone away, and leave me alone. It did, and as I slowly turned around to go back to my room I saw someone peering at me from an alcove about 20 yards along the passage to my left. As soon as he saw I’d spotted him he darted back into his hidey-hole. I thought about going to try and find him but he didn’t seem to want my company, and I didn’t have the energy for a confrontation with a potentially hostile stranger. He probably felt the same way about me.

It was when I got back to my room that I met Hatchjaw. He was lurking in the doorway and sprang out to introduce himself. I would describe him as a dark-haired man a little below average height, with a long face, bushy eyebrows, dandruff, and bad manners. After telling me his name he just gazed at me with a faint smile. I could see the dandruff on his shoulders even though he was wearing a white coat. I thought about the snowflakes that settled on a white bed sheet my mother once hung out to dry on a January day many years ago, even though snow had been forecast. ‘Nonsense,’ she said, ‘these weathermen don’t know what they’re talking about. If it snows today I’ll eat my hat.’ Later, when she was making a chicken pie, she constructed a little hat out of pastry and ate it at dinner, very seriously, and my sister and I laughed until I nearly wet myself. My father tried to laugh too but it wasn’t very convincing. He liked to be the one who made the jokes, and he didn’t quite know what to do when anyone else did it.

I didn’t say anything to Hatchjaw, because I couldn’t be bothered, so we just stood there looking at each other. That’s why I had time to notice so many details about him. I’m not normally very observant, or so I’ve been told. Mostly by a person who made it her mission in life to puncture my self-esteem, so perhaps I’m as observant as the next man. Hatchjaw finally spoke, in a surprisingly deep voice, and asked me if I had any questions. I shook my head. He nodded a few times then stepped aside. He didn’t exactly usher me back into my room, he just made it clear that I could go back in there if I wanted to, so I did. When I tried to close the door Hatchjaw was still standing there. He seemed anxious to say something, so I raised a polite eyebrow. That was when he told me about the Recovery Diary and being forbidden to rewrite anything. He didn’t actually say it was forbidden, but when I wake up in a strange place with an institutional atmosphere, and I meet a man in a white coat who stares at me with a sinister smile, and I notice the outline of a large syringe in his top pocket, and he says that I’m ‘discouraged’ from doing something, I’m inclined not to do it. Not only that, but Hatchjaw got decidedly testy when I asked a few innocent questions about his edicts.

‘So,’ I said, ‘if I’m not allowed to do any revisions, then what I’m writing is supposed to be some kind of stream of consciousness, is that it?’

‘If you like.’

‘I don’t exactly like it, no. I find that kind of thing a bit self-indulgent and silly, to be honest with you.’

‘I expect you’re right,’ Hatchjaw said, ‘from a literary perspective. But as I’ve said, this isn’t intended to be a literary work. It’s simply a way for you to examine and express your feelings, and to write an honest account of the behaviours that have brought you to your current situation. A kind of reckoning, let’s say.’

‘I see. But I’m still a bit confused. You’re asking me to express my current feelings, but also to write about the past. So, is it meant to be a journal or a memoir?’

Hatchjaw sighed. ‘It’s up to you. It can be either, or both, or neither. I’m simply asking you to write whatever comes into your mind about your feelings, and any relevant reflections on your past that doing so may evoke.’

‘Reflections or recollections?’

‘Whichever you think is the more appropriate term.’

‘But there’s a difference, isn’t there? Recollections are an attempt to recall past events that actually happened, while reflections could be more speculative.’

Hatchjaw’s expression didn’t change but I noticed a slight tremor in his cheek, which he seemed to be trying to control. Finally he spoke. ‘If you wish to speculate about your past, and you find that process fruitful, then please do so.’

‘Perhaps you’re asking me to write fiction, essentially.’

‘Please don’t put words into my mouth.’

‘No, of course not. Sorry. It’s just that there’s a bit of a paradox in what you’re suggesting. You see, many of the behaviours, as you call them, that have contributed to my current predicament – whatever that is – are beyond the reach of my memory by their very nature, in that they invariably resulted in me getting totally shitfaced, and waking up without being able to remember a single thing I’d done.’

Hatchjaw spent a couple of moments considering this, while breathing heavily through his nose. Then he swallowed, and spoke through a thin smile that may have cost him some effort to maintain. ‘I’m sure you’ll resolve the paradox, Mr James. You’re a very intelligent man. Shall we leave it at that?’

‘Are you saying I can make it all up if I want?’

‘Just write!’ he snapped. ‘That’s what I’m saying!’

I treated him to my most boyish grin. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I will.’

‘Thank you.’ Hatchjaw turned on his heel and strode away.

I was right about being in the country. I opened the curtains in my room and discovered it was a summer evening and I was looking out across a lawn that sloped gently down to some woods, with fields and hills visible beyond the woods, rolling gently up to the horizon in the far distance, all bathed in a clear, rosy sunset glow. All very nice. I hope I’m not paying for it, but I expect I am.

As I turned away from the window I thought I caught a glimpse of a figure at the edge of the woods. But when I turned back and scanned the treeline there was no sign of anyone. The low sunlight made it difficult to see anything, and after a minute I gave up reluctantly and turned away again.

I stopped in my tracks. I felt a sudden sense of danger. I have a pretty reliable instinct for the presence of any threat to my welfare, and it’s enabled me to emerge relatively unscathed from a number of situations which I probably didn’t deserve to survive at all. But right now I couldn’t tell whether the danger I sensed was imminent, or if I was having a flashback to an ordeal I’d been through in the recent past. After a while the sensation faded, leaving me feeling merely unsettled and apprehensive.