Aileen could usually tell what sort of day she was going to have by the way she felt as she turned into the driveway separating the Adolescent Unit from the main road. Sometimes it seemed like a horizontal level in a mine: a deep, dark, narrow tunnel leading to a place of relentless unrewarding labour. At other times the same stretch of tarmac reminded her of an old advertisement for a brand of children’s shoes, showing a straight open highway leading to worthy achievements and a brighter future. That Wednesday, the day after she had visited Gary Dunn at the Assessment Centre, the driveway seemed quite simply to offer refuge.
It had been a bad night. Douglas had had it all his way at the dinner table the evening before, although Aileen knew that she could and should have denied him. He had used one of his oldest and simplest ploys, piling up references to his own prestige and success until she was drawn into trying to retaliate. That was fatal, of course, for whatever she might think of him — and whatever he might think of himself, in his heart of hearts, where Aileen knew that he nourished the most tormenting doubts — there was no question that as far as the world was concerned, Douglas Macklin was a high-flyer. Wasn’t he off to America at the end of that very week for yet another top-level international conference? So when Aileen presumed to mention her own career it was easy for him — a smile, a glance, a raised eyebrow was enough — to make her look not only intellectually second-rate but vulgarly me-tooish into the bargain, insisting on equal time for her lacklustre accomplishments. As if that hadn’t been enough, Aileen seemed to be beginning one of the cycles of insomnia from which she had suffered since childhood, and in the intermittent patches of sleep which she had been able to snatch as she lay listening to Douglas’s ripe complacent snores, she had once again had the ‘flying’ dream.
As usual, she had no memory of the dream itself, but she knew what had happened the moment she awakened by the way she felt: blissfully relaxed and calm, as though something of the still pale glow that pervaded the dream had remained with her, casting a gentle luminance on all her thoughts. Then she had suddenly broken out in a cold sweat as she remembered the terrible significance this dream had acquired since Raymond’s death, how she had nearly died too, only surviving by a miracle which had cost the life of her unborn child. This was what always happened now, the beauty followed by the horror. The dream had lost its innocence. Deliberately, she had forced herself to get out of bed, go downstairs, make a cup of tea and listen to drivel on the radio until exhaustion calmed her.
It was thus with positive relief that she brought the red Mini to rest in the slot marked DR REITH, commemorating her predecessor who had died more than ten years earlier. She picked up Gary Dunn’s file, which she had taken home to study, and walked to her office with a feeling of anticipation. The day before her was filled with things to do, tasks to perform, duties to carry out and problems to resolve. Perhaps none of it was very glorious or noteworthy by her husband’s standards, but it was work that had to be done just the same. And doing it would be a sweet relief from the mental jumble she felt growing in volume all the time, as if all the junk she had accumulated in the attic over the years had started to breed and multiply, spilling out of its confinement, pushing down to invade the rest of the house.
When Aileen appeared in the doorway between their two offices, Jenny Wilcox was sipping a mug of Nescafe and throwing darts at a board printed with Mrs Thatcher’s features.
‘Fancy a game?’ she asked. ‘You get one for the hair, five for the chin, ten for the nose, twenty for the good eye and fifty for the wonky one. An arrow in the heart wins you the game.’
Aileen inspected the board more closely.
‘The point being …’ she began.
‘That there isn’t one. Exactly.’
Jenny beamed gleefully back at Aileen. The occupational therapist was a short, dark woman with an intensity and directness of manner usually associated with Latin blood, but which in Jenny’s case was an ideological choice: this was how she felt that women should relate to each other. A snub nose and straight black hair cut in the shape of a helmet gave her a rather engaging tomboy look, and when she smiled, as she did often, her upper lip rose to reveal a startling expanse of pink gum. But there was nothing childish about Jenny. She was bright, breezy, upbeat, combative and totally dedicated to her patients. Aileen considered her a good therapist, an excellent union rep and an invigorating and supportive colleague, but not quite a friend. There were various reasons for this, of which the most obvious was Jenny’s husband, a researcher for London Weekend Television whose one ambition in life was to get ‘front of camera’. Jon’s interest in other people depended entirely on whether he thought they might help him to achieve this. Aileen’s problem was not avoiding him — Jon wasted no time on those he couldn’t use — but coming to terms with the fact that Jenny had married him. That cast a shadow on her which Aileen could never quite forget. If Jenny was as nice as she seemed, how could she stand living with such a creep? Was her warmth to Aileen just a facade, a bit of feminist window-dressing? Or — and this was the really unpleasant thought — did she have Jon to thank for it? Did the Wilcoxes have an unspoken demarcation agreement whereby Jenny looked after being positive and jolly while Jon handled selfishness and insensitivity? Aileen was only too aware that couples didn’t stay together by chance. However ill-suited or unhappy they might appear, if the relationship lasted it was because it worked, although the exact nature of the work might well remain obscure to the couple themselves, perhaps necessarily so.
‘Do you remember a boy called Gary Dunn?’ she asked as Jenny sent her final dart winging across the room to embed itself in the Prime Minister’s ear.
The therapist pursed her lips for a moment, staring up at the warped insulation tiles on the ceiling of the hut.
‘Hang about. Wasn’t he the one with aural hallucinations of a schizophrenic kind and a taste for over-the-top mad scenes?’
‘He’s moved up to arson attempts now. Equally unconvincing, I’m glad to say. Anyway, he’s coming in for a few days and I’d like to try to make sure he settles down without too much difficulty. I seem to remember he used to like craftwork. Would it be all right to send him along as soon as he arrives this morning?’
‘Of course. The workshop’s just the place for an aspiring fire-raiser. Shall I leave some paraffin out or will he be bringing his own?’
Aileen was used to Jenny’s manner and made no reply beyond a smile. She made no attempt to explain her real reason for wanting Gary sent to the workshop immediately he arrived at the Unit. It was as if everything connected with the boy had been contaminated by the secret that Aileen concealed even from herself as far as possible: her irrational identification of Gary Dunn with the child she had conceived with Raymond. That simply wasn’t a matter she could mention, even to Jenny, and this prohibition created others, until Aileen found herself acting in a devious manner that was quite foreign to her.
After discussing the matter with the consultant the day before, Aileen had been able to phone Pamela Haynes and tell her that Gary would be admitted to the Unit for a period of ‘observation’. The social worker was due to bring him in between nine and ten o’clock that morning. Aileen was tied up with a therapy group until half past ten, but as soon as that was over she made her way to the ward where Gary had been allocated a bed which was unoccupied for a few days pending the arrival of a patient from another hospital. She hurried through the sitting room, painted in the deep pastel green from which the ward took its name, and quickly located the boy’s bed. On the counterpane lay a blue canvas bag containing Gary Dunn’s few worldly goods. Aileen sorted through them like a customs officer. She found what she was looking for almost immediately.