Then Alice
Then
Alice
Jake is asleep, curled on his side, facing the window. He has a hole in one of his socks and the three middle toes have broken free. Something about those toes, that sock, breaks my heart. I sit down on the bed more heavily than I intended. I roll my bulk towards him, my arms wrapped right around his waist, our unborn child filling the gap between us, and this is how he wakes.
He turns to face me; instantly he’s crying, tears that will not stop.
‘Oh Jake,’ I say, ‘I love you so much. I wish I could help.’
He doesn’t speak, not for a long time; the sadness in him is just too big. By the time the doctor arrives mid-morning, he has said only one word to me – sorry – and I saw the effort it cost him to speak. So much pain and he has no way of expressing it. He is caged within his body, his mind in torment.
The doctor is with him for almost an hour, and I spend the time pacing back and forwards from the kitchen to the sitting room, making a cup of tea that turns cold as I stare out of the window.
‘Shall we sit down?’ the doctor says, finally coming into the sitting room and gesturing at our brown sofa. ‘I’m sure you must be very anxious with your baby almost due, and so I’m sorry for what I have to tell you. Jacob is very severely depressed. The important thing is that we’ve caught it. We need to get him into hospital right away and on to medication. I’ll be able to organise a bed for him within a couple of hours, probably at the Maudsley.’
‘Not the hospital. Please, Jake hates hospitals.’
‘I’m afraid so. And as a matter of urgency. You do understand, I hope, the severity of this depression?’
‘Will I be able to visit him?’
‘Of course. Perhaps not a good idea for the first few days, until we can stabilise him.’
‘What if he doesn’t want to go? Have you talked to Jake about this?’
‘He knows he needs to go into the hospital for a while. He’s fairly resistant to it. But, Alice, it’s the only way. If he refuses to come voluntarily, then we would have to section him to keep him safe.’
He pats my arm before he leaves.
‘Once the medication starts to take effect, you’ll see a huge change, believe me.’
Jake is staring up at the ceiling when I return to the bedroom, but even from the doorway I can see the constant slide of tears running down his cheeks. He watches me come into the room, he taps the space beside him. I put out a hand behind me and lower myself in stages, a lumbering manoeuvre that would have made him laugh not long ago. He turns to face me and we lie there holding hands, not speaking. Sometimes the baby kicks or shifts position and I’ll capture his hand and hold it to my belly so he can feel it too. He doesn’t smile, but he leaves his hand there long after the baby has stopped moving.
The clock beside the bed is measuring out our time; three hours turns to two and then one and a half. And still we haven’t had the conversation about the hospital. I don’t have the strength for it.
Eventually I get off the bed and start pulling clothes out of his cupboard. Underwear, socks, T-shirts. Are these the right things? I come across his long, skinny scarf, the one emblazoned with a feather design; he was wearing it the day he came to find me at the Slade. I hold it out to him.
‘Remember this? You were wearing this the day I fell in love with you.’
He nods but doesn’t smile, and I put the scarf on top of the chest of drawers, knowing I’ll need to look at it later.
‘What are you doing?’
I hear how hard he has to dig for each word.
‘They want you to go into hospital today.’
I feel treacherous saying it, this word ‘hospital’ which he loathes and dreads and fears.
‘No.’
I return to the bed and sit on the edge. I reach out for his hand, but he shifts away from me, a sullen child.
‘NO.’
‘Jake. Please. You have to do what the doctor says. You’re so unwell. They only want to make you better.’
‘What about …’ He breaks off, the effort of speech exhausting him. ‘What about our baby. Can’t miss it.’
‘It will probably be late. First babies often are. You’ll be back by then, I know you will.’
He turns his face away from me.
‘So you’re on their side?’
‘Of course I’m not. How can you say that? All I want is for you to get better so you can come home again.’
‘What if I say no?’ He speaks the words to the window. And he knows the answer just as I did.
‘They are going to make you.’
We’re both crying now, and I lie down beside him. This time he does let me hold his hand.
‘It will be all right,’ I say. ‘It won’t be like last time because now you’ve got me.’
Jake manages to nod before he turns away.
I finish packing his bag. A pair of jeans. Toothbrush and toothpaste from the bathroom, a brand-new bar of soap. I reach for his razor and snatch my hand away, thinking better of it but hating myself a little more.
It’s almost 2.30 by the time I’ve finished. Robin and the doctor are arriving in half an hour: Robin to drive him, the doctor to enforce his admittance if required. My heart is bleak.
‘I’ll go with you,’ I say, but Jake shakes his head.
‘No. Come here.’
I lie back down next to him, and this time he wraps his arms around me just as he used to.
‘I don’t want you to see it. I told you what those places are like. It will frighten you.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘But I do.’
‘You’ll let me visit you, though?’
He squeezes my hand. ‘I’m counting on it.’
‘You know how much I love you?’
‘Same, same.’
‘Could you eat something? There’s enough time.’
He nods. ‘Something small.’
‘Soup?’
He smiles for the first time in twenty-four hours.
‘Soup would be perfect,’ he says.
Did anyone ever prepare a tin of soup with such care? As if I can deliver all my love and hope and reassurance into this small bowl of vivid orange, the toast crisp and hot and buttered from corner to corner. While I wait for the soup to heat, I make myself a cup of tea and remember that I haven’t eaten anything since a slice of toast at eight o’clock this morning. I chide myself for not taking better care of the baby. I think that with Jake away I will go to the greengrocer and pack in all the healthy ingredients I can get my hands on, a last-minute nutrient boost for our almost-born babe.
It’s a quarter to three by the time I make it back to the bedroom, enough time for him to eat the soup, which I have taken care not to over-boil. I push at the door with my foot, but it doesn’t budge; there’s something jamming it from the other side. I put the tray down on the floor, a difficult move at nine months pregnant.
‘Jake?’ I call, pushing harder at the door so that it inches forward, but there is still something pushed against it, something heavy and hard to shift. Everything in my body – bones, blood, skin, heart, lungs, stomach – turns to ice. I shove against the door with my full weight and then I see on the other side of it his feet, still in the holey socks, three toes exposed, and I know, oh I know, what I am going to find. He is leaning away from the door, face tilted up grotesquely, neck looped to the doorknob by a slip knot in his cream feathered scarf.
I’m sobbing as I try to release the noose with hands that shake.
‘You’re alive,’ I say, talking to myself, talking to him, talking to anyone who might be able to make this true.
And his skin is still warm, that’s the thing, but his body slumps forwards across my lap the minute he is released from the scarf, and his eyes are staring into nothing. I sit down on the floor, cradling him in my lap, my lover, my love, my darling.