brainbomb excerpt: LOW
i gawk at the TV, at the tory conference from blackpool. norman tebbit starts addressing the faithful. Except he's talking directly to me.
Tebbit’s humourless features remind me of a younger Peter Cushing. Except there’s no endearing twinkle in these eyes. He’s even more intimidating than his thuggish puppet on Spitting Image.
The TV is beaming the Tory party conference from Blackpool, where Norman Tebbit is addressing the audience. His haggard and humourless features remind me of a younger Peter Cushing. Except there’s no endearing twinkle in these eyes. He’s even more intimidating than his thuggish puppet on Spitting Image. He stares into the camera. I flinch. Although he’s referring to an Autocue, I know the score. When he states the only thing restraining the economy is the prevalence of shirkers and scroungers, it’s not for the benefit of his middle-aged, Middle English congregation. It’s for me. He’s talking to me. Blaming me. I feel his accusations boring into me. Everything grinds to a halt while I become his sole focus. Any moment now he’s going to mention my name.
Glancing out the window I notice two bricks on the walls of the house opposite, sooty in colour. They aren’t normal bricks. During Tebbit’s tirade, they’ve been activated. They’re stereo speakers. As the Tory Chairman rails against me, his sunken eyes following me as I squirm, these twin amplifiers are channelling his diatribe across the back greens. Over the surrounding streets.
I march into the kitchen where Mum is rinsing dishes. She asks if I’m okay. When I tell her I’m anything but okay, she asks why. I tell her the score. I’m going to hand myself in. When her eyebrows arch, I explain everything. I’m going to hand myself into the police. Torphicen Street station is closest. I’m going to do this because of what Norman Tebbit has just told me, that I’m a malingerer. I heard it through the sterio speakers. That she politely humours rather than laughs at me indicates how wary she is of the nonsense I’m liable to spout these days. In truth, she would have been adopting this lucid approach to mask her despair. But I carry on unravelling before her, insisting minutes before the Tory Chairman was speaking to me, via the PA system in Almondbank Terrace. And when I was in the bathroom earlier, I heard someone on the roof, inserting bugging devices.
Mum shuts her eyes. Sighs. Finally mustering a smile, she breaks the news they’ve made another appointment with Dr McCabe. This aggravates my paranoia. I blurt out my feelings about the imposter; I’m sure I’ve told her before. How Dr McCabe isn’t Dr McCabe. I saw the scarf draped from his surgery door. Not Burberry but like Burberry. Some equally expensive designer label, probably Italian. Terracing chique. In his case, Ibrox.
She ignores this. Lighter-heartedly, she suggests I channel my fertile imagination into writing again. I used to love writing. She reminds me of the short stories they published in our local newspaper, the Gorgie Dalry Gazette. Legless in Gatsby’s, she remembers, about someone getting thrown out of the pub in St Andrew Square. Written in the first person, she adds, grinning knowingly. Or science fiction? Didn’t I co-write a novel with a schoolfriend, Brian? Did we ever finish it? Why not get in touch with Brian, pick up where we left off?
I know what she means by fertile imagination. She might as well have tapped the side of her head.
*
I’m refusing to go. I hear Dad’s clumsy approach from their bedroom. His back pain is acute. After having spent the past few days confined to bed, eating meals from trays, peeing into a bottle, he’s heard me bleating. So he’s struggled out of his resting place to shuffle into the hall on his knees. Now he is glaring up at me like an irate Toulouse-Lautrec impersonator.
He is managing a tricky balancing act between fury and exasperation. He insists I have to see the doctor. How else am I going to get better? I argue that this implies I’m ill. Although denial is a classic symptom of mental breakdowns, I am adamant I’m not ill. He appeals to the last flickering embers of my common sense, telling me how much I’ve been upsetting Mum, although I wouldn’t be aware of this because she goes out of her way to keep her anguish hidden from me.
Bunching my right fist I fleetingly entertain the sickening impulse to spark him out. Like so many other poisonous notions flitting through my mind, the thought has scarcely materialised before it evaporates.
*
After the doorbell chimes, Mum announces Dr McCabe’s arrival. Because I refused to visit the surgery, he has agreed to make a house call. Entering the front room to discover Dr McCabe sitting by the TV, briefcase by his side, a folder spread over his lap, seems like yet another bizarre twist in my increasingly nonsensical existence.
He invites me to take a seat, adopting a placatory tone. He was in the area, so my mum’s request was easily accommodated. I demand to know what he has been jotting down in his notes. It seems takes an inordinate amount of time to force this out. It seems as if the rest of the world is at 45rpm but I’m stuck at 33rpm. But I’m not fatigued. My mind is unspooling. Rifling through the papers seems to be a way of filling the silence. Almost as an afterthought, he informs the results of my recent blood test. They were negative. Surely this news should be a relief? I scarcely recall the blood test, but when he reminds me I requested it to rule out HIV infection, I misinterpret his calming tone as sarcasm. Meaning he’s lying. He’s just saying this so Mum won’t worry about me, or worry what the neighbours might be saying about me. I put him right. I tell him how the neighbours are always talking about me. I hear them through the wall.
He looks over to Mum. This is the first time I’ve realised she is sitting in on the consultation. He enquires about making him a cup of tea, so he can have a quick chat with her. I’m reluctant to leave them alone. Exiting, I close the door, press my ear to it. McCabe murmurs something about hospital treatment essentially being no different to home treatment: time off work, regular medication, rest. The decision was entirely up to them. I know what he really means. If I’m at home, their bugs and hidden cameras will keep me under constant surveillance. Norman Tebbit will be able to listen in.
*
The upshot of the house call was this. Dr McCabe made an appointment for me to see some doctor at the Andrew Duncan Clinic. For a psychiatric assessment?
Mum and Dad have been attempting to persuade me to accompany Dad to the Clinic for a 10 am appointment for the best part of an hour. I insist there’s nothing wrong with me, struggling to articulate this sentiment, Mum only just managing to maintain a calm face while the words lodge in my mouth as if I’m succumbing to an anaesthetic.
I scuff into my bedroom and wrench open the wardrobe door. How can I even contemplate setting foot outside? I can’t remember when I last ventured over the front door. There are characters in post-apocalyptic novels populated with all manner of mutants who are filled with less trepidation about facing the distorted world I know lurks out there.
I rifle through the jeans and trousers draped in their hangers. A musty smell clings to everything. All these clothes are somehow soiled, as if I’ve been living like a tramp for the past few months. Except Mum has been faithfully washing my garments as she’s always done, and if I get the impression some of the clothing hasn’t been washed for a while, it’s simply because I haven’t been doing anything. For weeks on end.
I select a pair of beige Chinos and an Armani shirt with black and white stripes. My mates used to rib me I looked like an American ice hockey umpire. It has been a long time since I’ve been slagged by mates. Now those bastards just talk about me, scorn my failings. I wore this shirt to many nightclubs, strutted up to partying women, emboldened by alcohol, and acting as brashly as its stark colours. Now that image merely mocks me it is so far removed from the person I’ve regressed to.
Outside, Mum holds open the passenger-side door. Further up the street, joiners are working on an attic extension. The rat-a-tat of their hammering synchronises with my motion as I stumble awkwardly towards the car. They are goading me, inferring I’m an automaton. I can’t look up as I jerk robotically at the handle.
Twenty minutes later we are seated in the waiting area in the Andrew Duncan Clinic. Mum squeezes my knee, and hands me a travel mag. I glare at images of holiday resorts where the sea is flat as an ice rink but sun-dappled. Smiling people are draped on a golden beach where the only taboo conversations will be Great Whites and skin cancer. Another view of a world I am barred from.
An overweight man with a greying comb-over sits beside us. His baggy green cords are peppered with stains and he is puffing from the exertion of his two-minute walk from the car park. Sweat courses in rivulets down to the creases between his chins. I imagine the dirty bastard has just left a dominatrix who danced a flamenco all over his pimply folds before fucking him within a hair’s breadth of cardiac arrest.
He says: How are you, Mark? Recognition. Arthur Walls, one of my lecturers at Napier the previous year. But his presence compounds my dread. His coincidental appearance becomes another ingredient in the paranoid soup clogging my mindset. I turn to Mum, tell her I’m offski.
With that, I toss the magazine into Arthur’s flabbergasted lap, spring from my seat, march towards the exit. Mum heads me off just as quickly. She
asks me to see sense: this is all for my own good. Again, I feel the need to question why they think I need to see a doctor, or even ore disturbing to me, a shrink. But she steers me back to the seat, keeping my hand gripped in hers. Sulking, I sit down again. I take in more of my surroundings. I am suddenly convinced this building was damaged in a fire. The evidence is well masked. Fresh paint obscures any lingering smoke fumes. Although none of the posters bear the slightest trace of ever having risen above room temperature, the fire theory is explained to me by the part of me rationalizing the irrational. I come to a conclusion. I was one of the arsonists during some wild weekend my memory has blacked-out, like so many countless others. That is the real reason I’ve been tricked into coming here.
Five minutes later I am summoned to Dr Grant’s office. He’s a courteous, bespectacled guy, wearing a navy tie against a denim shirt, maybe in his 30s. But my delusions are hurtling out of control. Whatever it might state on the nameplate on his door, he’s no more a doctor than McCabe. The closest I’ve come to being a fire-starter was setting a toy Messerschmitt ME109 alight before launching it from my bedroom window, but he is convinced of my guilt. And his prime objective at this interrogation is to extract a confession.
My answers to his questions range between monosyllabic mumbling and blinks. Despite this, I notice how my every non-answer generates fitful biro activity as he fills in the blanks, paragraph after paragraph, stoking my paranoia. What libellous words is he concocting?
He asks if I feel depressed. When I simply glower at him, he urges me to be honest, to try and articulate the way I’m feeling. Am I anxious or worried about anything? Do I feel down? What is making me feel down? He invites me to consider underlying issues that could be impacting my moods. Am I drinking a lot? Taking recreational drugs? He reacts when I mutter about magic mushrooms, but when I tell two or three times as a teenager, most recently five years ago, he dismisses this by jotting down a quick sentence. Do I have a regular sex life? I suspect he already knows the answer to that.
Glancing out the window I notice two bricks on the walls of the house opposite, sooty in colour. They aren’t normal bricks. During Tebbit’s tirade, they’ve been activated. They’re stereo speakers. As the Tory Chairman rails against me, his sunken eyes following me as I squirm, these twin amplifiers are channelling his diatribe across the back greens. Over the surrounding streets.
I march into the kitchen where Mum is rinsing dishes. She asks if I’m okay. When I tell her I’m anything but okay, she asks why. I tell her the score. I’m going to hand myself in. When her eyebrows arch, I explain everything. I’m going to hand myself into the police. Torphicen Street station is closest. I’m going to do this because of what Norman Tebbit has just told me, that I’m a malingerer. I heard it through the sterio speakers. That she politely humours rather than laughs at me indicates how wary she is of the nonsense I’m liable to spout these days. In truth, she would have been adopting this lucid approach to mask her despair. But I carry on unravelling before her, insisting minutes before the Tory Chairman was speaking to me, via the PA system in Almondbank Terrace. And when I was in the bathroom earlier, I heard someone on the roof, inserting bugging devices.
Mum shuts her eyes. Sighs. Finally mustering a smile, she breaks the news they’ve made another appointment with Dr McCabe. This aggravates my paranoia. I blurt out my feelings about the imposter; I’m sure I’ve told her before. How Dr McCabe isn’t Dr McCabe. I saw the scarf draped from his surgery door. Not Burberry but like Burberry. Some equally expensive designer label, probably Italian. Terracing chique. In his case, Ibrox.
She ignores this. Lighter-heartedly, she suggests I channel my fertile imagination into writing again. I used to love writing. She reminds me of the short stories they published in our local newspaper, the Gorgie Dalry Gazette. Legless in Gatsby’s, she remembers, about someone getting thrown out of the pub in St Andrew Square. Written in the first person, she adds, grinning knowingly. Or science fiction? Didn’t I co-write a novel with a schoolfriend, Brian? Did we ever finish it? Why not get in touch with Brian, pick up where we left off?
I know what she means by fertile imagination. She might as well have tapped the side of her head.
*
I’m refusing to go. I hear Dad’s clumsy approach from their bedroom. His back pain is acute. After having spent the past few days confined to bed, eating meals from trays, peeing into a bottle, he’s heard me bleating. So he’s struggled out of his resting place to shuffle into the hall on his knees. Now he is glaring up at me like an irate Toulouse-Lautrec impersonator.
He is managing a tricky balancing act between fury and exasperation. He insists I have to see the doctor. How else am I going to get better? I argue that this implies I’m ill. Although denial is a classic symptom of mental breakdowns, I am adamant I’m not ill. He appeals to the last flickering embers of my common sense, telling me how much I’ve been upsetting Mum, although I wouldn’t be aware of this because she goes out of her way to keep her anguish hidden from me.
Bunching my right fist I fleetingly entertain the sickening impulse to spark him out. Like so many other poisonous notions flitting through my mind, the thought has scarcely materialised before it evaporates.
*
After the doorbell chimes, Mum announces Dr McCabe’s arrival. Because I refused to visit the surgery, he has agreed to make a house call. Entering the front room to discover Dr McCabe sitting by the TV, briefcase by his side, a folder spread over his lap, seems like yet another bizarre twist in my increasingly nonsensical existence.
He invites me to take a seat, adopting a placatory tone. He was in the area, so my mum’s request was easily accommodated. I demand to know what he has been jotting down in his notes. It seems takes an inordinate amount of time to force this out. It seems as if the rest of the world is at 45rpm but I’m stuck at 33rpm. But I’m not fatigued. My mind is unspooling. Rifling through the papers seems to be a way of filling the silence. Almost as an afterthought, he informs the results of my recent blood test. They were negative. Surely this news should be a relief? I scarcely recall the blood test, but when he reminds me I requested it to rule out HIV infection, I misinterpret his calming tone as sarcasm. Meaning he’s lying. He’s just saying this so Mum won’t worry about me, or worry what the neighbours might be saying about me. I put him right. I tell him how the neighbours are always talking about me. I hear them through the wall.
He looks over to Mum. This is the first time I’ve realised she is sitting in on the consultation. He enquires about making him a cup of tea, so he can have a quick chat with her. I’m reluctant to leave them alone. Exiting, I close the door, press my ear to it. McCabe murmurs something about hospital treatment essentially being no different to home treatment: time off work, regular medication, rest. The decision was entirely up to them. I know what he really means. If I’m at home, their bugs and hidden cameras will keep me under constant surveillance. Norman Tebbit will be able to listen in.
*
The upshot of the house call was this. Dr McCabe made an appointment for me to see some doctor at the Andrew Duncan Clinic. For a psychiatric assessment?
Mum and Dad have been attempting to persuade me to accompany Dad to the Clinic for a 10 am appointment for the best part of an hour. I insist there’s nothing wrong with me, struggling to articulate this sentiment, Mum only just managing to maintain a calm face while the words lodge in my mouth as if I’m succumbing to an anaesthetic.
I scuff into my bedroom and wrench open the wardrobe door. How can I even contemplate setting foot outside? I can’t remember when I last ventured over the front door. There are characters in post-apocalyptic novels populated with all manner of mutants who are filled with less trepidation about facing the distorted world I know lurks out there.
I rifle through the jeans and trousers draped in their hangers. A musty smell clings to everything. All these clothes are somehow soiled, as if I’ve been living like a tramp for the past few months. Except Mum has been faithfully washing my garments as she’s always done, and if I get the impression some of the clothing hasn’t been washed for a while, it’s simply because I haven’t been doing anything. For weeks on end.
I select a pair of beige Chinos and an Armani shirt with black and white stripes. My mates used to rib me I looked like an American ice hockey umpire. It has been a long time since I’ve been slagged by mates. Now those bastards just talk about me, scorn my failings. I wore this shirt to many nightclubs, strutted up to partying women, emboldened by alcohol, and acting as brashly as its stark colours. Now that image merely mocks me it is so far removed from the person I’ve regressed to.
Outside, Mum holds open the passenger-side door. Further up the street, joiners are working on an attic extension. The rat-a-tat of their hammering synchronises with my motion as I stumble awkwardly towards the car. They are goading me, inferring I’m an automaton. I can’t look up as I jerk robotically at the handle.
Twenty minutes later we are seated in the waiting area in the Andrew Duncan Clinic. Mum squeezes my knee, and hands me a travel mag. I glare at images of holiday resorts where the sea is flat as an ice rink but sun-dappled. Smiling people are draped on a golden beach where the only taboo conversations will be Great Whites and skin cancer. Another view of a world I am barred from.
An overweight man with a greying comb-over sits beside us. His baggy green cords are peppered with stains and he is puffing from the exertion of his two-minute walk from the car park. Sweat courses in rivulets down to the creases between his chins. I imagine the dirty bastard has just left a dominatrix who danced a flamenco all over his pimply folds before fucking him within a hair’s breadth of cardiac arrest.
He says: How are you, Mark? Recognition. Arthur Walls, one of my lecturers at Napier the previous year. But his presence compounds my dread. His coincidental appearance becomes another ingredient in the paranoid soup clogging my mindset. I turn to Mum, tell her I’m offski.
With that, I toss the magazine into Arthur’s flabbergasted lap, spring from my seat, march towards the exit. Mum heads me off just as quickly. She
asks me to see sense: this is all for my own good. Again, I feel the need to question why they think I need to see a doctor, or even ore disturbing to me, a shrink. But she steers me back to the seat, keeping my hand gripped in hers. Sulking, I sit down again. I take in more of my surroundings. I am suddenly convinced this building was damaged in a fire. The evidence is well masked. Fresh paint obscures any lingering smoke fumes. Although none of the posters bear the slightest trace of ever having risen above room temperature, the fire theory is explained to me by the part of me rationalizing the irrational. I come to a conclusion. I was one of the arsonists during some wild weekend my memory has blacked-out, like so many countless others. That is the real reason I’ve been tricked into coming here.
Five minutes later I am summoned to Dr Grant’s office. He’s a courteous, bespectacled guy, wearing a navy tie against a denim shirt, maybe in his 30s. But my delusions are hurtling out of control. Whatever it might state on the nameplate on his door, he’s no more a doctor than McCabe. The closest I’ve come to being a fire-starter was setting a toy Messerschmitt ME109 alight before launching it from my bedroom window, but he is convinced of my guilt. And his prime objective at this interrogation is to extract a confession.
My answers to his questions range between monosyllabic mumbling and blinks. Despite this, I notice how my every non-answer generates fitful biro activity as he fills in the blanks, paragraph after paragraph, stoking my paranoia. What libellous words is he concocting?
He asks if I feel depressed. When I simply glower at him, he urges me to be honest, to try and articulate the way I’m feeling. Am I anxious or worried about anything? Do I feel down? What is making me feel down? He invites me to consider underlying issues that could be impacting my moods. Am I drinking a lot? Taking recreational drugs? He reacts when I mutter about magic mushrooms, but when I tell two or three times as a teenager, most recently five years ago, he dismisses this by jotting down a quick sentence. Do I have a regular sex life? I suspect he already knows the answer to that.