Interview: Dennis O’Donnell, writer
Dennis O'Donnell. Photo credit: Ian MacNicol
A TRIP to the garage to buy cigarettes. Dennis O’Donnell, a bookish former hippy for whom the phrase ‘mild-mannered’ was surely invented, is accompanied by a very tall man he describes as “a human arthropod” and a male-to-female transsexual known as Lola, in a sable coat and slingbacks.
“Her chin,” he recalls, “was as craggy and blue as Bluto’s”. Bill, another companion, is also draped in fur – fingertip-length fake ocelot. Voytek is working a greatcoat, boots and flying helmet for the shopping expedition.
Every one of O’Donnell’s companions has been sectioned under the Mental Health Act. He is an orderly in their psychiatric ward. Leading this fancy dress parade out on a small errand is part of the job he describes in his memoir, The Locked Ward.
O'Donnell did not graduate from Edinburgh University with a searing ambition to traipse around West Lothian with the bipolar and paranoid. He ended up on the intensive psychiatric care unit (IPCU) almost by accident, having worked on the neighbouring geriatric ward during university summer holidays. In his 40s, disillusioned with teaching, he returned to the manual labour of washing, dressing and feeding the elderly. From there, the brother of a friend from the pub quiz team spotted his potential for serving coffee, discussing Wishbone Ash and sitting on the legs of thrashing schizophrenics who had been palming their meds. The IPCU, known as the locked ward, had lost a male nursing assistant. Would O’Donnell fancy the job?
And so, after a five-day course in ‘control and restraint’, which left what O’Donnell describes as “his pasty white body” looking “like a dalmatian”, he was ready to meet Bill of the ocelot coat fame (he addressed the quaking O’Donnell as “fresh meat”). Paranoid schizophrenic Donnie was a scripture-quoting, fire-and-brimstone religious maniac. Patchouli-scented old head Theo recognised a fellow 1960s casualty and became a great friend. Edward – handsomely endowed, highly sexed, bipolar – engineered a way to show all staff, male or female, his pride and joy.
Some encounters were genuinely terrifying. Robbie, a paranoid schizophrenic who had stopped taking his medication, was brought to the ward by three police officers. As he supervised this handcuffed party, O’Donnell imagined the next day’s headlines: “Meek hippy granddad killed at work”. “Devout coward slain by madman”. “Garotted with his own underpants”. It took 11 of them – including reinforcements from the next-door ward – to get Robbie sedated and restrained.
Yet the job, which O’Donnell did for more than seven years, was “life-enhancing, heart-warming, heart-breaking, sometimes grim, occasionally terrifying and often funny”. As is his book on the subject, although he is quick to add a proviso to his use of comedy. “Capturing their voice and humour was one of the things I really wanted to do. I knew it had to be humorous but I didn’t want people to think I was laughing at the patients like a Victorian freak show. But there’s such a rich diversity of people, as rich and diverse as people outside the ward – that’s the whole thesis of my book really – and some of them were just so bloody funny.”
Despite the richness of the material, O’Donnell describes The Locked Ward as “the one I didn’t want to write”. Having always scribbled – two collections of poetry and an impressive trousseau of unpublished novels, spoof detective tales and other memoirs – his literary career was at an impasse. “My fiction was getting praised but not published,” he recalls. “Lovely book, a page-turner, but not for our list, not at this time of year.”
It was his agent Mark Stanmore who, in the summer of 2010, suggested he try something different. “By this time I’d left the IPCU to work with older people. Stan [everyone calls Stanmore Stan] said, ‘Why don’t you write about that ward you’ve told me about?’ I thought he meant a novel with an IPCU as its setting.” (In fact that had already occurred to O’Donnell, perhaps to reset one of his rejected love stories in a psychiatric hospital.)
That was not what the prescient agent had in mind. When he clarified, O’Donnell’s first reaction to the idea of a memoir of his IPCU days was an out-of-hand rejection. “No way, ethical considerations, confidentiality.” Stanmore, rather in the manner of the psychiatric nurse, talked him round.
He then e-mailed some sample chapters to Dan Franklin, head of Jonathan Cape, a man once named as “the publishing colossus behind Britain’s superstar authors”. Franklin looks after Martin Amis and Ian McEwan. His backlist includes Joseph Heller, Gabriel García Márquez, Doris Lessing, Bruce Chatwin. Stanmore pressed the send button at 9am. By 9.30am he had an effusive reply. A meeting in London, a signature on the dotted line and a delicious advance were not far behind. “It was,” O’Donnell recalls, “my fairy godmother moment.”
It’s easy to see what Franklin saw in O’Donnell’s writing: it’s observant, modest, lightly erudite and heavily self-deprecating. He is not any kind of an expert and, having been head-hunted to the IPCU from a geriatric ward, comes to the job with no agenda, bar the desire not to be involved in a rammy every single day of his working life. What he describes in The Locked Ward are characters as vivid as those of Dickens, speaking a vernacular of Irvine Welshian filth and imagination.
Sniff had spent time in Barlinnie for stabbing his brother with a protractor. “Why did you have a protractor?” O’Donnell once asked him. “Because I’m vewy intwested in geometwy,” Sniff replied. “You never know when you might need to measure an angle accuwately.” Lawrence arrived with police outriders, in the straitjacket and face mask combo worn by Hannibal Lecter. His vocabulary contained few words of more than four letters. Despite being HIV positive as well as having hepatitis C, he spat at the staff when he was not swearing at them.
In fact, O’Donnell has been so candid about the sex, drugs, violence and profanity that were as much a part of the daily routine as roll-ups and HobNobs that he has forbidden his ten-year-old granddaughter from reading The Locked Ward until she is ready to picture Granddad discovering a female patient masturbating.
He recalls their conversation. “Can I read your book Granddad?”
“Not just now, darling. The people granddad worked with were very ill, so they swore a lot.”
“You swear Granddad.”
“I know darling. They also talked a lot about sex.”
“Oh. I’ll not bother then.”
Phlegm and obscenity-strewn as it is, The Locked Ward is also an informative read. Having been persuaded it was a good idea, O’Donnell came to like the idea of observing mental health from the other side of the drugs trolley. Prozac Nation, Running with Scissors and Girl, Interrupted, among many others, give graphic accounts of an individual’s experiences. The stories of the people in the blue smocks with the big syringes were still to be told. “That was one reason I wrote the book,” says O’Donnell.
“I wasn’t consciously trying to redress these awful misery memoirs – although I liked Running with Scissors – but once Stan convinced me, I thought that an account from a third-person point of view would be worthwhile. An interested observer’s take. I’m not kidding on I knew anything about this stuff. But I wanted to put in the more informative passages as well, not just a succession of anecdotes, sad, grim, humorous.”
The science bit, which is gently done, puts the anecdotal material in context and rounds out the picture of life in the IPCU. But it doesn’t get in the way and is never preachy or opinionated. O’Donnell accepts the drug therapies that form the basis of treatment on the ward. He says, “I don’t think they do cure people but they ameliorate their symptoms and help manage their illness well enough to be able to move back into society.
“In the locked ward, patients at least had the chance of getting out into society. When I worked with care of the elderly, there was only one place they were going. There, they were going to get better, even if only for a wee while, smidgen by smidgen, grain by grain. Whereas for the geriatrics, it was the graveyard train.”
Yet despite the richness of the material and the satisfaction of seeing patients get better, however temporarily, seven years on the IPCU wore O’Donnell down. Experienced staff would leave and not be replaced. “When I started, there would be six or seven males on both shifts. When it ended, there would be something like three. Maybe four. Imagine, someone’s on holiday or someone’s on lunch, one of these big lads is really seriously disturbed and goes off on one.” He had returned to geriatric detail by the time he wrote the book.
The odd flush of embarrassment aside, O’Donnell is taking his status as 60-year-old overnight success in his stride. He has waited a long time to become a full-time writer and is loving every minute. Growing up in West Lothian, the son of a teacher, he found himself joining what he calls “the family firm” without any noticeable vocation or burning desire to discuss Animal Farm with adolescents.
At first his 1960s idealism – and an hour of writing every night – got him through his days at the chalk face. It was the later years, when bureaucracy became overwhelming, that were a struggle. “I’ve often said that if I hadn’t given up teaching I’d have been in the IPCU as a patient. For the last seven or eight years, during every summer holiday, my wife Joan would be saying, ‘Don’t go back, find something else.’”
He finally gave up in 1997. “It wasn’t even the fact that the kids could grind you away sometimes. The profession had become box-ticking, form-shuffling, workshop-oriented crap, and actually standing in front of a class of laddies and lassies was afforded less importance. If I have a gift, and I’m not convinced I did, it was for being in front of the kids. And telling them where to put an apostrophe or asking them what they think King Lear’s doing there.”
Now he is hoping to turn his box-ticking years into a sequel to The Locked Ward. Some 40,000 words – “the fun bit, the nice hippie bit at the start, I haven’t got to being crabbit yet” – are already complete. There is also another novel, Wyndford, set in a West Lothian shale-mining village in 1946, in Stan’s capable hands.
And while he is enjoying – in a restrained and gently sardonic way – the hoohah surrounding The Locked Ward, O’Donnell has his fingers firmly crossed that his fiction may yet enjoy its own moment in the sun. Wyndford has already received the thumbs up from his two most trusted critics, his wife and daughter.
They advise him on page-turnability (his thriller-addicted wife) and sexual politics (his feminist daughter). “Joan is wonderful in terms of plot. She said it made her cry. Then I gave it to my daughter. She keeps me right. ‘Dad, you can’t say that, that’s sexist.’” He beams with pride. “She’s the lassie I made her. I gave her Germaine Greer’s book when she was 14. Anyway, she said it was incredibly moving. Even Stan had to brush a manly tear away at the end. So we’re hopeful.
“I am,” he continues, “fairly grounded about it. I’m 60, not 20. It’s lovely, I’m really enjoying doing what I always wanted to do, but I’m a realist and maybe this time next year I’ll be stacking shelves in Tesco.”
And then probably writing an extraordinary memoir about it. n
The Locked Ward, by Dennis O’Donnell, Jonathan Cape, £16.99
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Comments
There are 7 comments to this article
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rachyu2
Sunday, February 26, 2012 at 07:55 PMSomeone recommended that I read 'The Locked Ward' after coming across it in the book shop. I was desperate to get my hands on it and read it in days. I could just imagine it like Dennis was reading it to me. The West Lothian 'twang' and the swearing just reminded me of school 20 years ago! Mr O'Donnell was an amazing teacher, and was partly why I ended up in the same profession........he was down to earth, cared about us and just had fun. I'll never forget standing on the desk saying 'Captain my captain' as he came back in. Hope there's another book coming. (Rachael Underwood (Petrie))
Mark McSherry
Monday, January 16, 2012 at 06:56 PMGreetings from Brooklyn, New York, where I work as a Professor of Journalism. Dennis O'Donnell was an inspirational English teacher at St Kentigern's Academy in Blackburn, West Lothian, when I, a hooligan from Stoneyburn, attended in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Dennis was intelligent, talented, genial, human ... and always on your case to write in paragraphs. One scathing but beautifully-written page of red ink from Dennis was enough to launch my career in journalism that took me around the world for the next 30 years. His criticism started: "McSherry, it is quite clear from this self-indulgent traddle that you hope to one day aspire to the dizzy depths of being a sports journalist ... " I loved it. It was written by Dennis, so I had to do it. This is not his first taste of literary success. As I remember it, he was a co-winner of The Saltire Award for his book of poems about West Lothian, "Two Clocks Ticking." One of the poems, called something like "The Young Turks of Blackburn," was picked out by many as a winner. Another, about a barber's shop in The Shotts, was also powerful. They say 60 is the new 40, so here's hoping this publishing success is just the beginning for Dennis. He is the perfect writer to put down the stories of the shale and coal mining communities around Blackburn, Stoneyburn, Addiewell, Breich, Fauldhouse, Whitburn, Bathgate, Seafield and West Calder -- the land that time forgot. The man can write. As they say here -- Go Dennis ! mcsherry.editor@gmail.com
Mark McSherry
Monday, January 16, 2012 at 04:56 PMGreetings from Brooklyn, New York, where I work as a Professor of Journalism. Dennis O'Donnell was an inspirational English teacher at St Kentigern's Academy in Blackburn, West Lothian, when I, a hooligan from Stoneyburn, attended in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Dennis was intelligent, talented, genial, human ... and always on your case to write in paragraphs. One scathing but beautifully-written page of red ink from Dennis was enough to launch my career in journalism that took me around the world for the next 30 years. His criticism started: "McSherry, it is quite clear from this self-indulgent traddle that you hope to one day aspire to the dizzy depths of being a sports journalist ... " I loved it. It was written by Dennis, so I had to do it. This is not his first taste of literary success. As I remember it, he was a co-winner of The Saltire Award for his book of poems about West Lothian, "Two Clocks Ticking." One of the poems, called something like "The Young Turks of Blackburn," was picked out by many as a winner. Another, about a barber's shop in The Shotts, was also powerful. They say 60 is the new 40, so here's hoping this publishing success is just the beginning for Dennis. He is the perfect writer to put down the stories of the shale and coal mining communities around Blackburn, Stoneyburn, Addiewell, Breich, Fauldhouse, Whitburn, Bathgate, Seafield and West Calder -- the land that time forgot. The man can write. As they say here -- Go Dennis !
Kirsty Falconer
Friday, January 13, 2012 at 01:28 PMMr O'Donnell, my favourate teacher from school. Made english fun and interesting. He know exactly how to handle each pupil, nobody really messed about in his class because he had total respect from all the pupils, he was the cool teacher that didnt judge and was down to earth. The one thing I remember from English was a poem that I wrote an essay on, and loved every minute of it was "The Horse's" by Edwin Muir - http:www.poemhunter.compoemthe-horses. Mr O'Donnell plays a huge part in my wonderful memories from high school :) You were always a success in our minds, glad you have now gained the recognition that you deserve :)
AngelaTait
Friday, January 13, 2012 at 09:29 AMMr O'Donnell is the first teacher to come to my mind when I remember my time at secondary school, he was by far the best I had. He managed to always be positive and engaging, without being condescending, and I can't recall hearing another pupil say a bad thing about him in the six years he taught me English! I'm very much looking forward to reading The Locked Ward, and hopefully getting to the book signing at Word Power to congratulate him in person.
AndrewMurchison
Friday, January 13, 2012 at 12:51 AMI would also like to comment, on the off chance that Mr O'Donnell will read this, that he was a brilliant teacher! Certainly the best I ever had! I hope he knows that, regardless of how unhappy he had obviously become in his profession, that he was an extremely positive influence for a lot of pupils at our school. Can't wait to read The Locked Ward!! Congratulations to you Mr O'Donnell on its success!!
VinceO'Hanlon
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 01:00 PMIf Dennis O'Donnell is reading this (I hope he does) I'd just like to affirm that he had an absolute gift as a teacher. Also: thanks for introducing me to the film Hobson's Choice in about 1987 - it's still one of my favourites.
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