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Nightmare in casualty

Jeremy Clarke

Tuesday, 18th March 2008

Jeremy Clarke on his Low Life

The sight of my boy weeping inconsolably, snot coming out of his nose, replays itself in my mind. I haven’t seen him cry since he was a toddler. And then I remember how I made a bad situation worse by shouting and swearing at him — something I’d not done before. ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ I’d said. ‘We’re all on the same side, aren’t we?’

‘How old is he?’ asks the taxi man. ‘Eighteen,’ I say. ‘I did it once when I was that age,’ he says. ‘What, cut your wrists?’ ‘No. Took an overdose. Paracetamol. Someone found me and I was rushed into hospital. I got over it. Since then I’ve realised that life is a series of ups and downs.’ He traced the shape of a big dipper in the air with his hand. ‘If you’re feeling down, all you’ve got to do is put your tin hat on and sit it out and things are bound to improve.’

Then my boy comes through the swing doors at the end, holding a letter the hospital doctor has written to his GP. The taxi man is considerate to a fault and acts as though he and I haven’t been talking, let alone discussing my boy. ‘What’s it say?’ I ask, pointing to the letter. ‘No idea. I can’t read it,’ he says, handing it over. There’s no envelope. Basically the letter says that my boy should be put in touch with the mental-health services and offered some form of counselling.

‘The doctor says it doesn’t mean I’m mad,’ says my boy, dissolving into tears. I draw him to me and hold him. And for the first time since he was a toddler, he lets me.