Day Out to London

Karen Scott

1986

Sheffield 1986. I share a crummy house with friends, with ceilings that fall down. It used to be a hairdressers, so downstairs there's a huge unused room with a wall of mirror on one side which acts as a passageway to the front door of frosted glass and metalwork painted white. Today's the day. Going to see R.D.

R.D. Laing that is. I knew it would come to this, that I'd meet him eventually, having been out with one of his 'clients' for a few years and him having been involved, from a distance. This fits perfectly into my artistic lifestyle of doing nothing, on the dole, in a place with no jobs anyway. Only I don't do nothing, I'm a performance artist and I have a vague shell of a studio space in town, in the aptly named Pitt St. It's all mining and disused cutlery works here, and moans and groans.

The National Express bus takes ages to reach London but I don't care, I'm excited, this feels important to me. I need a surrogate father figure, someone I can look up to, to guide me. My life feels strangely empty without my glamorous partner and his painting, suffering and period home.

Too empty, even though I've got myself. That's disturbing me so I've got to see R.D., try to understand why I felt I couldn't cope with a seriously ill man for a partner, and my lifes a bit boring actually without him, a paradox I hadn't expected.

Here's his house, it's a basement I have to go down to, hadn't expected that, to go down. His secretary greets me and I pass her the five pounds, carefully placed in my clear plastic purse, that I feel I can contribute. He is not charging me however, and I hope the amount doesn't insult. I wait on a chair in the tiny space outside his consulting room, the windowsill behind me is crammed with copies of 'Do You love me?', the cover image is of the 'Love Hearts' I remember so well from childhood, in all their candy colours.

I go in and sit down, alone, for ages. I look at everything in the brownish interior, the books particularly, huge tomes, but their titles don't come into focus. I feel watched, but there's no one there. Its ages. I start to relax, bit by bit, as the dull disappointment of sitting in a rather fusty dark room belonging to an old Scottish man, takes shape in me.

At last, he's here. He sits opposite me and we sit in silence. He looks at me. I look at him. Blinking, some staring quizzically, then looking away. Surprised, daring to question looks, flit from me to him and back again. Then settle into boring acceptance that the other isn't speaking looks that fall to the threadbare carpet. Finally, this dance of looks gets too much for me and I burst out, 'Why aren't you saying anything?' and he says, 'Why aren't you saying anything?' and I come back with, 'You're the doctor!' Silence.