The World Out There - 39. Thirty-Nine

He hadn’t seen the lad Ed since he left him in the middle of the ward’s corridor that afternoon. When he returned to the Common Room, he’d told Pearl, the nurse, that Ed had gone to his room.

“Thanks Liam,” she said, giving him a smile, though her smile just pushed up the corners of her mouth, it didn’t light-up her face.

He’d sat down again on one of the sofas there and carried on reading his book. It was noisy, someone had turned up the volume of the television, but he just ignored it all. He had his book to read.

Liam sat at the Formica table eating his dinner. It was sausage and chips, so at least it had some flavour, though it was dryly over-cooked. He pushed another forkful of chips into his mouth.

He saw someone approach his table, movement in the corner of his eye. He looked up from his meal and saw Ed walking towards him. Walking slowly towards him. Ed held his plate of food in one hand and his knife and fork in his other hand. Ed’s face wore a plain expression, his mouth drawn in a straight line, no obvious emotion across his features.

Ed stopped next to the chair, opposite to Liam.

“Is it all right if I sit here?” Ed asked him.

“Yes, sure,” he replied.

Ed sat down at the table, opposite to him.

“What’s the food like here?” Ed asked.

“The chips are all right, they’ve got some taste,” he replied. “Everything else is pretty tasteless - they keep it hot for so long.”

“Sounds like school dinners,” Ed replied before biting on a forkful of chips. He chewed them for a moment and then swallowed them, saying, “Yeah, school dinners.”

For several long moments, the two of them sat, eating their meals in silence. Liam liked having the excuse of eating not to talk. What should he say to Ed? The lad was so angry and resentful, so negative. What could he say against all that? He could tell Ed that it gets better here, that the nurses are all right, that the Education Centre really cares. Would that make Ed better, cheer him up, make Ed see that there were worst places? But he remembered when he arrived here, nothing anyone would have said would have made him feel better. Silence was always a good option when he was faced with something he didn’t know what to do, so he fell back into it.

As Ed’s plate neared empty, he looked up at Liam and said, “Sorry I was a shit to you before. I don’t want to be here.”

“I didn’t when I came here,” Liam replied.

“You like being here?”

“It’s better than the alternative.”

“What alternative?”

“Prison,” Liam said quietly, keeping his voice low.

“Fuck yeah,” Ed replied, his voice equally quiet.

“It’s much better than my old school, I like my lessons here, and better than my old home life.”

“Yeah, my mum and stepdad ain’t here.”

“And the nurses are okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, you’ve just got to get to know them.”

“All right,” Ed pushed his last forkful of chips into his mouth and chewed them quickly. “What we got for pudding?”

“Stewed fruit and custard.”

“That sounds shit.”

“Not shit, just tasteless and thick,” Liam told him.

“That does sound shit.”

“It is really,” Liam admitted. “I never have it.”

“I won’t then. What you doing after we’ve eaten?”

“I’ll go in the Common Room and watch some TV.”

“Will you read your book?”

“Yes, if there’s something on I don’t want to watch.”

“Do you mind if I watch TV with you?”

“No, of course not,” Liam replied.

Ed gave him a small smile that momentarily pushed life into his face.

<><><><>

The following morning, he ate his breakfast with Ed. Liam had collected his breakfast and sat down at one of the tables there. A few moments later, Ed had joined him, just sat down opposite him and started eating his own breakfast, but Liam didn’t mind. He found Ed’s company comfortable now.

The previous night, he’d sat with Ed in the Common Room watching television and he’d enjoyed it. They had sat together on the sofa and, though the television was poor the night before, having company made the evening. Liam enjoyed it. At first, they sat there in silence, then the magazine show, The One Show, came on and Ed hissed, “I hate this shit.”

“Yeah, but it’s really dumb shit.”

“It is,” Ed replied, a laugh in his voice.

For the rest of the evening, they chatted away to each other about what they were watching. When Eastenders came on after The One Show, Liam found himself explaining the different and complicated storylines to Ed, but with no attempt to be serious or respectful.

“He’s a man-whore,” he told Ed when the soap opera’s latest Romeo came on screen.

“She’s the queen-bitch but everyone hates her,” Liam said as the show’s matriarch appeared.

“He’s as dumb as concrete,” Liam said as one of the show’s new teenager characters made his entrance.

His book went unread, lying on the sofa next to him, for the whole time he was watching television with Ed. Even when the television was broadcasting a program he had little or no interest in, he still watched it as he and Ed took the piss out of it. He only read his book - and only for about half an hour - when he went to bed. He only stopped reading as he started to fall asleep, his eyelids closing by themselves and losing his concentration, reading the same line three times over.

“Ah, there you two are!” Pearl’s voice cut into his thoughts.

He looked up and saw Pearl standing next to their table. That day she was wearing a dark orange jumper over dark blue, cord trousers.

“I’ve come to take you two to the Education Centre,” Pearl told them.

“Do I have to go?” Ed asked.

“Yes. Everyone has to. Well, everyone here of school age,” Pearl replied.

“Can’t I go there on my own? It can’t be far, can it?” Ed asked her.

Pearl smiled broadly back at him.

“Nice try, but you can’t go anywhere in the hospital without a nurse taking you. That’s the rules,” Pearl told him.

Ed gave a little shrug and stood-up from the table saying, “That’s the rules then.”

Pearl took them up to the Education Centre. It wasn’t a long walk, one Liam knew with his eyes almost closed, but every time they stopped for Pearl to unlock and then lock a door, Liam saw Ed twitch with nerves, or annoyance. It had become normal for Liam, all these doors and all their locks, but looking at Ed, he saw it wasn’t normal - this place wasn’t normal life. Had he forgotten that so quickly? But he had been here for… for years now. He followed Ed through the door Pearl had just unlocked for them.

At the Education Centre they were greeted by Mrs Williams. That day she was wearing a long, electric blue dress that seemed to fall down to her calves in one straight line.

“Who’s your friend, Liam?” she asked him.

“This is Ed,” Liam replied.

“Edward Lewis,” Pearl added.

“I hate being called that. I want to be called Ed,” Ed said.

“That’s no problem,” Mrs Williams said. “We always ask what name people like to be known by.”

“Oh, right,” Ed replied.

“Liam, Mrs Devine is waiting for you in Room 2. Ed, if you’ll come with me,” Mrs Williams said.

“What for?” Ed asked, in that flat voice of his, as he took a small step closer to Liam.

“You’re new to us. I want to run some education assessments with you. It’ll help me see where you are educationally and will help me set an education plan for you,” Mrs Williams said, her voice calm and re-assuring.

“What if I get your tests wrong?” Ed asked.

“They’re not those sort of tests. I don’t set you a mark or say what you got wrong. They just show me where you are. Liam did them when he first got here, didn’t you?” Mrs Williams directed her last question at him.

“Yes, they were okay,” Liam said. It would be too big-headed to say that they were easy and he’d enjoyed them.

“Okay,” Ed quietly replied. “Will you stay with me?” His head turned and he directed his question to Pearl.

“I’ll need to ring the ward and tell them I’m staying here, but there’s enough people on today so it won’t matter,” Pearl said. “If it’s all right with you?” Pearl now addressed Mrs Williams.

“Well, I don’t see why not,” Mrs Williams said.

“I’ll see you at lunchtime,” he told Ed. “I’ve got to go to my class.”

“Thanks,” Ed said, that small and re-assuring smile appearing on his face.

Liam began to walk off towards Room 2.

<><><><>

Lunch that day was some sort of pasta dish, but all it tasted of was cheese, and not very strongly of that. Liam just pushed his fork into it and ate it.

“This seat empty?” Ed’s voice made him look up.

Ed was stood behind the other chair at Liam’s table, a plate of food in his hand.

“Yeah, sure,” Liam replied.

In a quick moment, Ed had the chair pulled out and was sat upon it, his plate of food in front of him. As Liam continued to eat his lunch, Ed took two mouthfuls of his lunch, chewing slowly on them before he said; “This tastes shit.”

“The food here never has any taste. Eat it quickly. It’s easier like that,” Liam told him.

“Bet I can’t get a MacDonalds here.”

“The nurses have to check everything we get first. They’d take so long the MacDonalds would taste worse than this.”

“Bet you’re right.”

They ate in silence for a long moment, Ed seeming to push his food in as fast as Liam was. Liam always ate his food fast, before it got cold and tasted even worse.

As they reached the end of their meals, he asked Ed; “How was it, in the Education Centre?”

“It was shit. I hated it,” Ed flatly replied.

“Why?” Something tight caught at his throat. Mrs Williams, Mrs Devine and the other teachers were really nice and so supportive. They were nothing like the teachers at his old school. What had gone wrong?

“I couldn’t do any of her tests. I kept getting them wrong and she didn’t like that.”

“Mrs Williams isn’t like that,” he jumped to her defence without barely thinking.

“She didn’t say anything - she kept saying it didn’t matter, but teachers hate it when you get their tests wrong. It’s always been like that. Teachers hate me because I’m too stupid for them.”

“It’s not like that here.”

“Why isn’t it?”

“There’s more teachers here and less of us. They’re really here to help us. They’re part of our treatment. They’re here to help us find would we’re good at. There was this lad, TJ, who was a patient here. He wasn’t good at those main subjects, but Mrs Williams helped him find what he was good at. He was really good at repairing electronical equipment.”

“Oh.” Ed stopped eating, just the remains of his meal left on his plate and stared back at Liam.

“Yeah, they are.”

“That Mrs Williams said I’m going to work with someone called Peter John.”

“I haven’t really met him, but TJ said he’s good. He got TJ fixing computers and stuff.”

“Oh… Okay,” Ed replied, giving Liam a slow nod of his head, a relaxed expression slowly spreading across his face.

<><><><>

Liam heard her footsteps approaching his table where he sat writing. The rhythmic click of her heals on vinyl flooring there. Though she always wore low-heeled shoes, Mrs Williams’s shoes always made the same low, small clicking noise as she walked. He would barely hear it in a busy room, but there was just him sat there at the table, the room mostly empty.

Her footsteps stopped and he heard a chair being pulled backwards.

He looked up and saw Mrs Williams sitting down at his table.

“Liam,” she said. “I want to talk to you about your last essay.”

“Is there something wrong with it?” he asked. He’d thought it was one of his good essays - he’d spent enough time on it and he was sure his argument was well formed. He justified the position he took.

“There’s nothing wrong with it. It was well-written and I liked your argument. I only want to talk to you about it.”

“Okay,” he replied, putting his pen down.

“I know I asked you to write and compare two fantasy novels. Why did you pick Alice in Wonderland and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?”

“I’ve read both of them and I liked Alice in Wonderland. It was so weird.”

“And you obviously didn’t like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”

“It was so simple and… Well, it was written to a formula.”

“How do you mean?”

“It was obvious who the good characters were - those kids and the lion - and who was the bad, the evil character - the witch. They were so obvious and there wasn’t anything else about them. The witch was just so evil: she had no other parts to her character. One of the good kids is tempted by her but he’s only tempted with chocolate, being greedy, but he goes back to being good before the end. It was obvious that the good characters were going to win out in the end. It was all so… simple.”

“What about Alice in Wonderland?” Mrs Williams asked him.

“The characters were all really weird in it. Okay, Alice was this sensible little girl in the middle of it all, but she doesn’t civilise them or bring order to it all. She just survives the chaos. The Queen of Hearts is bad, but she’s bad in that spoilt-Royalty-sort of way - someone with too much power. But the other characters were weird, but they weren’t good or bad. I liked that much better.”

“Why is that?”

“Because real life isn’t all good or bad,” he told her. “No one is all good or all evil. Even doing it in children’s books isn’t being honest. I don’t like that. People are complicated. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe isn’t honest with the way the characters are, and I don’t like that.”

“I see what you mean. Thanks, Liam,” Mrs Williams said, smiling her broad smile at him. “I’ll let you get back to your work.” She stood up from the table and started to walk out of the room.

He turned his attention back to his work but… That was a strange conversation. Why had she asked him about that? She’d read his essay. He actually shook his head. There were still things he didn’t understand here.

He picked up his pen again.

<><><><>

He was sat at the long table in the Common Room. Someone had put the television on in there - it was playing some loud and silly quiz program as two kids shouted the answers to its questions, mostly getting them wrong. Liam had Mrs Devine’s maths homework to do and that easily occupied his mind. Maths was so logical and structured that it was partly a pleasure to do it. He could easily get himself lost in it.

Ed’s voice called out, “Liam, Liam!”

He looked up and saw Ed rushing towards him, a smile filling his face.

In seconds, Ed was at the long table and pulling out the chair next to him.

“You’re right!” Ed exclaimed as he sat down. “That Education Centre is great!”

“What’s happened?” Liam quietly asked.

“I spent the afternoon with Peter John. He’s like one of the teachers there and he’s brilliant.”

“What did you do?”

“He teaches woodwork and metalwork and all stuff like that. He got me making things with wood, well a wooden box, and it’s great. It was so easy: it was like I already knew what to do with the wood. It’s got a grain to it, wood has, and I could so easily follow it. It was great! Pearl, the nurse, had to stay with me but she was dead impressed with what I did and in only an afternoon. My old school never had anything as cool as this.”

“That’s really good,” Liam replied. He could feel Ed’s excitement and happiness radiating off his body. The lad glowed with happiness.

“What you doing?” Ed asked as he looked over at what Liam was working on.

“This is the maths Mrs Devine gave me.”

“That Mrs Williams says I have to do Maths and English and that shit in the mornings, but I can spend the afternoons with Peter John. He says not to call him Mr John because he doesn’t like it. He says he’ll teach me how to carve wood and really make things.”

Ed’s face lit up with his smile. It didn’t just push his mouth up and out in a wide grin - it opened up his eyes and lit up his whole face. It was so infectious.

Liam couldn’t help but smile back at him.