Ducie by Chris Freeman

  Chapter 9. I wandered lonely as a clown

  Dinner at the Institution was never to be sniffed at. If I have thus far painted a picture of the place being akin to a prison, then you are owed a better insight into some of the finer aspects of life there, and mealtimes is where I will start.

  Where food was concerned, especially dinner, the Institution more resembled a hotel restaurant than a prison. That said, there were no waiters, no elegant cutlery and no soothing background music. The food was wheeled out on service trolleys that clattered a weaving path in and out of the three long and parallel dining tables. The canteen staff, in their sky-blue uniforms and hair nets were couriers of culinary delights, delivering each unique meal to its intended recipient. Antipasti, seafood starters, roast dinners, risotto, profiteroles, ice cream… It all arrived on request and there was always more where it came from. Anything! You just had to ask!

  Using a fistful of his own sleeve, Adam made a rough attempt to wipe his beard clean of the mini-Sunday lunch that had accumulated there. Kate looked on with an equal medley of pity and disgust.

  - I know the rough-diamond thing is a big part of your image Adam, but are you intentionally this much of a tramp?

  - Fucking hell Katey, relax! I’ve got a bit of gravy on my sleeve. I’ll still sleep ok tonight, will you?

  - I have more things to keep me awake at night than your vile table habits. It’s just… this place is depressing enough at the best of times, without having to watch your melancholic existence unfold before my eyes.

  - Melan’ what? Jesus Katey! Everything that comes out of your mouth sounds like you’re reading one of them poems or something… “I wandered lonely as a clown”.

  - A cloud, Adam.

  - Huh?

  - “I wandered lonely as a cloud”.

  - Really? Well it should have been clown, it sounds better.

  - Are you doing this on purpose?

  - Well... clouds aren’t even lonely, are they! There are shed loads of clouds in the sky. But clowns...! Who the hell wants to be friends with a clown?

  - Funny, I was just thinking that.

  Kate couldn’t work out what degree of Adam’s stupidity was just for show. He thrived on the attention he got for his lackadaisical attitude towards everything. He not only embraced the age-old role of jester, he dragged that role by the scruff of its neck into a current context and wrote his name all over it. A modern day, fully-licensed fool. And proud of it! Confusingly though, you almost had to be clever to maintain that level of stupidity on the constant basis that he did. Despite this, Kate was determined not become the latest addition to his fan club. She would never admit it to you, but she did sometimes struggle to keep up this priggish front around Adam; she found him hilarious!

  Why Kate and Adam had spent so much time together since the day he intervened in her suicide attempt was probably something only she knew. They were never really that close in the first place. Adam certainly hadn’t forced his company on Kate and he was sensitive to her less than subtle hints when she was becoming annoyed by him, making himself scarce accordingly. Somehow though, it would never be long before the two of them found themselves deep in conversation over a meal or a cigarette somewhere in the Institution. As if the suicide incident had installed some sort of opposing magnetic currents in them, they just sort of found each other at various points throughout each day, without planning and without purpose. Kate’s best attempts to act aggrieved by Adam’s presence were made a mockery of by the sheer amount of time they spent together. She could have walked away from him whenever she chose, but she rarely did, and that spoke volumes.

  The smoking courtyard was at its busiest after mealtimes and today was no exception. The enhanced pleasure of smoking a cigarette after dinner is a largely unexplained phenomenon, but this bustling outdoor quad was testimony that it was no myth. Patients flocked to this foggy haven after finishing their meal, in order to tick the next box on their list of bodily needs; nicotine. Kate didn’t class herself as being a nicotine addict. In fact, she wasn’t entirely sure why she smoked; but then again, not many smokers are.

  As they approached the automatic doors that opened to reveal the courtyard’s bricked flowerbeds, Adam’s pace quickened, climaxing in a bout of juvenile skipping that was an outward expression of either his childlike personality or his eagerness to inhale smoke, neither of which Kate found endearing. Before they made it to the exit, a grey Wood Pigeon careered through the small open window above the doors and after falling limp, it succumbed to gravity and flopped an undignified descent to the floor.

  Adam’s fear of birds was irrational, though not uncommon and the scream he released when the bird arrived at his feet was as genuine as it was piercing. The shrieking seemed to rouse the slumped bird, as it realised its predicament and flapped an erratic and pointless path around its new, man-made environment, thudding into walls and ceiling tiles and sending a pile of leaflets about some upcoming workshop or other cascading around the foyer like wedding confetti.

  Kate threw a telegraphed punch that clipped Adam’s left arm, just enough to disturb his delicate sense of gravity and send his frail frame spinning to the ground. The punch was intended to calm Adam, which was typical of Kate’s clinical and often warped logic. Adam’s screaming and the pigeon-induced chaos had been contagious enough to draw screams from other patients, most of whom knew little of why they were screaming, but were likely responding in general panic to this rare disruption to the tranquillity of the placid Institution.

  Two guards emerged from an adjacent office, sensing commotion, but oblivious to its source, wielding batons with implied intent. The bird by now had found its freedom, like an avian pinball that had ricocheted off every available surface before, by the law of averages it had found the direction of the now open doors. The taller and more malicious looking of the two guards swung his baton at nothing in particular; more a warning shot than a specific attempt to inflict injury.

   - Evaree-wahn a stay where ya be. Ya move and I-man a start striking!

  There was something in the naturally laid back tone of his West Indian accent that made even a threat sound jovial. The baton in his hand suggested otherwise.

  Before the guard had even reached the end of his threat, back-up had arrived in the form of two further men, one holding a shield and the other a small pistol, which he was clearly inexperienced and unconfident in using.

  Then nothing…

  The riot that the guards thought they had come to diffuse had never materialised, making their heavy handed response embarrassingly apparent. They glanced at one another, then at Adam, dazed but unharmed on a floor littered with paper, a broken vase and an overturned coffee table. The guards’ paranoia was potent and there for all to see, leaving a sinister tinge on the silence that now consumed the corridor. Fifteen or twenty patients that had witnessed the whole incident were united in their surprise at the military-like hostility displayed by Joe McKenna and Harrison Morgan, the two Institution security staff, who before now had been a friendly feature of the institution. More disturbing to Adam was the fact that he didn’t recognise either of the two men that had arrived on the scene after Joe and Harrison. It was as if they had been hiding away on standby all this time, waiting for the first sign of trouble. And now they had flinched prematurely and unprovoked, exposing their presence which would now require one hell of an explanation.

  The pigeon whose brief and unsolicited arrival at the institution had opened a bigger can of worms than he’d ever realise, sat on a fencepost a mile or so from the institution, looking out onto the English countryside. A mile or so from the institution and just over nine thousand miles from the Island of Ducie.