Paul

July 1977

Paul was a gentle giant – until the day he lost his rag at work, and beat up his boss. Then he went on the run. No-one knew where he was. I was distraught.

After three days he turned up, and admitted himself to the local psychiatric hospital. I visited him every day. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t seem his normal self. But he was very subdued, and remorseful. After three weeks he was discharged, and came home. He didn’t go back to work, but he made himself useful around the house. He still wasn’t at all his old self, but he seemed to be improving day by day. I made sure he took his medication, although he seemed quite willing to do that himself, and quite capable of it.

One day about a week later, when I arrived home from work, Paul wasn’t there. He’d left a note on the kitchen table saying he’d gone to visit friends, and would be back the following day. I was rather concerned, since he’d not talked about it before, and he’d not said who he was visiting, so I couldn’t get in touch with him. I went to bed rather worried, and didn’t get to sleep for quite a while.

I woke hearing a noise, but wasn’t sure whether it was a dream, or what the noise had been. Was it the front door? I wasn’t sure. I held my breath and listened intently. Yes, there were stealthy noises downstairs. Burglar? Paul?

Then I heard soft footsteps on the stairs, and the sound of the bedroom door opening. It was dark, but a little light from the city was coming in through the curtains – and there was Paul, with the big kitchen knife in his hand. He came towards me.

Instinct took over. I rolled off the bed just as Paul plunged the knife where my chest had been. As he got up off the bed, I threw the window open and leapt out onto the sloping tiles of the kitchen roof.

Luckily I was nimble in those days, and knew the walls of my garden well. I’d often climbed onto them to sit, although they were all at least six foot high and I’m only four foot eleven tall. From the kitchen roof I jumped down onto the top of the garden wall and ran along it, not looking to see if Paul was following me. I scrambled up onto the higher wall at the end, and ran along that, away from our own garden and past the ends of all the neighbours’ gardens. At the end of the street was the police station, and the wall ended at the corner of the building. I clambered down onto the sloping roof of a cycle shed, and banged on an upstairs window at the back of the police station.

The window had bars on it, but I hoped at least to attract someone’s attention. Eventually a policeman appeared in the yard below. He was very surprised to see a young woman in her nightclothes on the roof of the cycle shed. He fetched a ladder and I climbed down.

They found Paul wandering the streets, in a very confused state, still carrying the knife.

He was never discharged from hospital again. I continued to visit him daily, although he often didn’t seem to know who I was. I think he sometimes didn’t even notice I was there.

Within six months he was dead. No-one ever really knew what had happened in his head, or what he died of. They said he’d not woken up one morning, and when they’d investigated they found he was stone dead, and had apparently died in his sleep of no discernible cause. I always suspected that what actually killed him was the drugs.

Needless to say, all the while Paul was in hospital, and for quite a while thereafter, I was in a bit of a state! My prof was very understanding, and some allowances were made in the department, but I shut my mind to my private life for several hours every day, which was probably what kept me sane. I managed to keep my research going okay.

I don’t think I was responsible in any way for Paul cracking up. I hope not! Maybe he always hated it when I used to thump him on the chest or on the arm. Was I guilty of domestic violence? I always thought it was playful. It was always intended that way, I don’t think I ever hit him hard and certainly didn’t intend to, and he never complained and never got bruises. But did it wind him up internally? I’ll never know.

I’ve never thumped anyone since, not even playfully.

Paul never thumped me. When I tell people my boyfriend tried to stab me, they sometimes assume that he used to beat me up, but he never did. They think my wonky nose must have been caused by him, but if my wonky nose was caused by a thump, it happened in utero – and I must have given as good as I got, because my twin sister’s nose is exactly the same.

Thirty-two years later I visited Burnfield again, when I was writing this book. My old street had been demolished and replaced with modern town houses, but the police station was still there, as was the pub on the opposite corner. The pub was serving meals, and I decided that would be a good place to eat.

After my meal, I sat in the pub for a while, sipping a glass of fruit juice, and people watching. As I sat there, who should come in but one of the two policemen who’d caught Paul that night. Although he looked familiar, I couldn’t place who he was; but he knew who I was immediately, and came straight over to me.

“Hello, Penny! Long time no see!”

As soon as he spoke, I knew who he was. It’s funny the way memory works. Apart from that one night, all the interaction we’d ever had was to say “Hi” on the street when we bumped into each other. In those days, I used to recognize him perfectly well by sight, whether he was in uniform or not.

We’d both retired by then, and we spent a couple of hours sitting there chatting. He wanted me to let him know when my book was published, and we exchanged addresses. A few weeks later I got a letter from him. He’d written an account of that night from his point of view, and with his permission I’ve reproduced it here as the final section of the book, before the appendices.

One thing we discussed was that since that night, both of us had started to find the sight of broken glass embedded in the tops of walls rather disturbing.

April 1978

One Saturday afternoon I was sitting on a bench in the park, brooding, when a middle-aged gent came and sat beside me. I didn’t know him at all, and I’m pretty sure he’d no idea who I was, either. He said that he thought I looked depressed, and asked me whether I minded if he asked what was wrong. I’d not really looked at him until that moment. I turned to him and looked him up and down. He seemed very straightforward, it was a public place, and there were plenty of people about. I decided he was harmless.

You have to make decisions like that. You can’t go through life distrusting everyone, there’d be no point in living if you did that.

I burst into tears. That’s not something I do often, in fact I think it was the first time I’d done it since the day Paul first went off the rails.

Later, he said his first instinct at that moment was to put a comforting arm around me, but didn’t because he thought it might frighten me. I’m not sure now whether I’d have run off immediately, or buried my face in his chest. At any rate, that’s not what he did; but he put his big hand round my small one and squeezed gently. He thought I was about sixteen. I was actually twenty-nine at the time.

“You can tell me if you want to, but you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.”

I looked up at him again, and tried to smile. He smiled back. I told him the whole story. He just sat there and listened. When I’d finished, he said, “What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to start looking for a new contract soon, my present one finishes in August.”

“I know nothing about your work. I wasn’t thinking of work, I was thinking of your private life. Take a break. You’ll get a new contract just as easily after a six month break, I’m sure. Travel. Go to India or something like that. I’ve got to go now, but I expect we’ll see each other around here again.”

That’s the best advice I’ve ever had, although I didn’t realize it at the time. Nevertheless, I took it. What he didn’t know was that I was born in India, and still had relatives there with whom I’d not been in touch since I left India when I was seven.

In the event, I got another contract at the University – which they allowed me to defer for six months. Perfect!

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