Tales from the Asylum

May 3rd, 2007 — jan2 | Edit

When I was a kid growing up people made jokes about a hospital in our nearest big town about ten miles from where I lived but I’d never seen it and in the early years I didn’t understand why it was the source of so much sniggering. I heard it mentioned, (it was called Benfield Hall, nicknamed Bennies) and the other, older kids laughed and called it the loony bin but I didn’t properly understand until I was about eight years old by which time I knew it was where they put the loonies. Men in white coats came and got the loonies and took them to the hospital in the big town and we smirked and chanted ,”Loonies, loonies” when an elderly woman and an oafish young man went past in the street. I had no idea why we were doing that but my village was small and my main source of information came from older kids who had been to the town and said the loonies were all locked up behind bars frothing at the mouth and rolling their eyes round their heads. They described how the loonies wore rags and shouted at people who weren’t there and how they pulled out their own hair and howled as though wolves were attacking them. They told me some of the loonies were murderers who had axed people to death or poisoned their families and should be in prison but they were different to normal axe murderers, they were loonies so they had to be in the loony bin. I worried about those people because if they were just in a hospital they could escape and do terrible things to anyone who upset them. The big kids made out they were always escaping so we should never go over Trevor’s fields (Mr Trevor was a local farmer) alone, even in the daytime because the barmy inmates always tried to hide in fields or follow cart paths and if they saw you on your own…..slash……the big kids showed us how we would have our throats cut or be strangled. I never forgot playing out and listening to those terrifying tales relayed with such gusto by the older kids who knew absolutely nothing about that hospital or its patients but had heard their parents talking and learned that loonies were freaks, figures of fun to be to be jeered at and mocked - Bennies.

As the years passed it was my turn to be one of the big kids but I didn’t spend much time playing out. I was different, I liked to stay in and read, play school with one of my brothers, make up scenes in my head. I was one of those kids who fretted but kept it to myself. The News at 6 o’clock became so terrifying I couldn’t watch it and made sure to leave the room when it came on. They were forever talking about nuclear weapons or the first man to have a heart transplant and lots of people in a block were plotting against us behind a giant cold wall which never seemed to melt. Perhaps it was always icy cold and they never had any sunshine which was why they always wore those big furry hats. The Russians had very stern faces and lots of giant bombs so we had to be careful not to upset them. I used to wonder if the loonies had a cold wall to stop them from running away but I never heard anyone talk about it so maybe the bars and locks were enough.

Mam didn’t slap me again and her rages calmed down but one day she did something that I’d never seen her do in my whole life. She started lieing down on the sofa for longer and longer periods, sometimes she went to sleep and other times she just stared into space. I tried to see what she could have been staring at but there was nothing there, she was staring at nothing. I tried to talk to her but she never answered and it was awful so after a few weeks I gave in; mam never looked at me when I was talking and it made me feel like I wasn’t there. My little brothers played out and had fun but they missed mam, she didn’t cuddle them or give them their baths or tuck them in anymore. They wanted to chatter to her about little boy things and they couldn’t because she didn’t respond and it made them feel bad. My two older brothers had to help dad cook, clean, wash the dishes, wash the clothes and generally run the house. They didn’t want to do the chores but they had to help out more even though they were upset and sad because they missed mam and didn’t know how to behave in front of her. In the evenings when we wanted to watch TV together there weren’t enough chairs for us to sit in because mam needed all the sofa so she could lie down and stare at nothing. We all wanted things to go back to how they had been when the house was tidy and there was Shepherd’s Pie in the oven and mam baked buns and scones and sometimes gingerbread men for a special treat.

We had to wait for a long time before things went back to normal and when it did we’d moved house to live in a village a couple of miles away. Mam ’s doctor brought another doctor with him one day and he said she had to stay at the hospital in the big town so they could make her better. We cried. My older brother’s tried not to but the younger ones sobbed and kept asking where the ambulance was taking mammy so I tried to console them but it wasn’t me they wanted. Dad talked to the doctor who had been visiting for weeks and he looked upset and serious but he didn’t cry because grown up men never cried.

 It was very difficult for all of us and dad arranged for us to go and stay with relatives but we had to be split up because none of them wanted or had room for five kids. We didn’t know them very well so we were a bit scared but it was no fun to go out and play because the big kids pointed at us and laughed and shouted, ‘Here come the loony’s kids, their mam’s in Bennies.’ It wasn’t funny but kids don’t understand that until they grow up - or find themselves watching their mam being taken away.

Jan