A Cleansing of Souls Page 11

  What do you do at times like this, what do you honestly do?

  You just let yourself go, float above it all, and let the world take you in all its anger.

  “Mr Parrish?”

  “Yes.”

  The two Policemen exchanged glances.

  “You look in a bit of trouble Mr Parrish.”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ve had some reports, Mr Parrish, that lead us to suggest that it would be beneficial for you if you were to come with us.”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re going to take you to a hospital, Mr Parrish, and have you looked at. Is that okay with you? Some nasty cuts you’ve got there.”

  “Yes.”

  So, they had come for him at last, come to take him - in the Garden. They had come silently, leaving not a trace. No time to say farewell, or even to lop off an ear. They had come for him at last.

  In the back of the car, Michael’s mind turned to Heaven and the Firmament.

  “Do you know how many stars there are in the sky?” he asked.

  “Millions?” said one of the Policemen.

  “Billions?” said the other.

  Michael paused before answering.

  “No,” he said, “just one.”

  Tom woke early on Saturday morning and was looking out of the lounge window into the street when Sandy came in. He had been staying with her for three days now. She no longer asked him questions about his situation or about the night in the park. He was a new man now with a new start.

  “How long have you been up?” she asked him.

  “Not long.”

  “What do you want to do today?”

  Sandy wanted to ease up behind him as he stared out of the window, ease up behind him and hold him close. She had never felt like this before. Perhaps this is what it’s like to feel young, she thought.

  “I don’t mind,” replied Tom. He turned around and faced her. She stepped back slightly as if by instinct.

  “Well, I usually go shopping on Saturdays. There are a few things I need to get anyway. Did you want to come with me?”

  “Sure.”

  Sandy went to the kitchen to make some black coffee for them both. She was getting used to the taste now. Tom had not been out since coming to her flat. The thought of them walking down the street together excited her in a way she couldn’t fully understand. And she loved it.

  “Tom,” she called out over the noise of the boiling kettle, “I think it would be an idea to get you some clothes or something. I understand if you don’t want to collect any from home, but if you’re going to stay here for a while, you’ll need something. Don’t be offended or anything, it’s just that you could do with more than you’ve got.” She found it so much easier to talk to him when they were in different rooms.

  Tom smiled.

  “Don’t worry,” he said as she brought their coffee in, “I’ll sort something out.”

  “Are you going to go home and get some then?” asked Sandy, sitting down.

  “I’ve got a few quid on me. I’ll pick something up.”

  “Have you got enough?”

  “Who has?”

  “If it’s a problem, I can lend you some. It’s ok. I’ve just been paid. Perhaps I can treat you?”

  She liked the idea of treating him. And so did he. He drew her to him on the settee and put his arm around her, careful not to spill the coffee.

  Sandy listened to the beating of Tom’s heart. And so did he.

  Tom tried to go over recent events in his mind as he walked along with Sandy, but he just couldn’t focus his thoughts. There was something stopping him. All he could think was that things were going right for him at last. But he was no longer Tom Spanner. He was just an actor improvising in his own farce, assuming the most suitable persona for each situation. The people that passed him by were merely extras. And the girl by his side was barely a prop, though she had managed to get him to write down his parents’ address for her to add to her little note book. He kept the phone number to himself though.

  The streets were a mass of colour. It was a parade. At each side road, huge groups of people gathered, waiting to cross. And when a driver made the unfortunate mistake of stopping his car to let one or two people in front of him, the crowd would surge forward and overwhelm the car like some writhing tide of disparate limbs.

  The shoppers wandered around without direction, lost in the glorious madness of it all. But if you look closely, very closely amidst the hustle and the fervour, you will see figures that do not move, bemused, ragged figures - at the station, on the steps of the museum, in the parks, in the churches, in the doorways of your shops and of your theatres - or maybe just there on the ground by your feet. You may pass them by. You have passed them by. As have I. You may turn away, dart out a quick smile perhaps and then head bowed and shoulders hunched, hurry away wondering grief-stricken at the torrid gaze you receive to your token act of kindness. Like the Statues, the Palaces, the Cathedrals and the Parliament, these people are of this town. They will be here forever, long after you and I are gone. And you don’t even have to pay to see them. Not if you don’t want to.

  They are the products of a society that congratulates itself on the just nature of its laws and its propensity for fair play, a society that stares in rabid disbelief at poverty and human violations across the world and sees not the scars upon its own skin.

  Think about it. A man does not beg by choice. He does not willingly subject himself to the ignominious torment of procuring small change from strangers. Would you? Think about it.

  Occasionally, there will be a documentary made about the homeless and the deprived. In kitchens all across the country, kettles will boil until the adverts come on.

  Now and then, perhaps, a minor celebrity, famous for who knows what, will descend into the bowels of Big Town for a week, just to witness the pain of it all. But they will soon be back to their house and their city in the skies. Their conscience will win medals and they will have one more chapter completed in an otherwise turgid autobiography.

  A Member of Parliament may stand up before jeers and order papers to plead on behalf of the dispossessed. But his words will not be heard. He will have his answer even before he has finished asking his question. ‘Does not the honourable member know that we are spending more in that area, in real terms, after inflation, than ever before? In fact, as he should be aware, we have actually set up a working party to address the real issues. The claims of the honourable member are purely scare mongering and political point scoring and will not be taken seriously by anyone. The public will not stand for it!’

  And the public will not stand for it - for they are far too comfortable sitting down.

  The play will go on and different actors will fill the roles. The script will remain the same. As will the final act.

  This is real. It’s you and it’s me. If you were to touch with a trembling hand one of the people on the street, it would not pass through them. It would touch flesh. It would touch the same body that was once held so tightly by the mother on the day of its condemnation. The same body that sat next to you at school. And that face will be in a photograph album somewhere, smiling the smile of hope. Those feet may have played football with you in the playground with a tennis ball whilst the rain came down. And those lips may have once been kissed so softly.

  There is no worse punishment than that of being ostracised, to be alone in a bedroom, on the stairs, in the street, anywhere, feeling that not a soul would care if you were alive or dead.

  A man may make a mistake. He may be the victim of his own folly and head off down a road that can only end in failure, hounded by dream and desire. For how long must that man suffer?

  Who is it that has the right to judge another and rule that he be severed from life? Let me tell you. It is the prerogative of the friend. Believe me.

  Tom had forgotten all those lonely nights, lying awake, thinking what it would be like to have a woman love him, really love him. It
was ridiculous to him now. He did not recall the heartache, the embarrassment and the agony. It had all been swept away by this newly acquired sense of ‘maturity’.

  Thoughts and visions, that one minute he would die for, would float away on the breeze of a restless night. It was as if he were finding himself daily, consciously searching for a way to be. He was able to swing violently from altruism through apathy and cynicism to amorality and back again. And sadly somehow he had convinced himself now that he was in control of the process.

  That morning, Tom and Sandy went into nearly every shop in the high street. She bought him a pair of jeans and a shirt. He said he would pay her back. She told him not to worry. So he didn’t.

  As they walked back from the shops, they began to notice various groups of people gathered on the street corners and outside the pubs. They were different in character from the shoppers. They had a different aura. And then Tom realised. Saturday - the middle of August - the first day of the new football season; a day of incredible anticipation for some, a day of dread for the uninitiated. Over the coming season, hearts and dreams would be broken, along with a few relationships - but mainly hearts and dreams.

  Little Norman had loved football. Tom had used to play with him in the garden. He would be in goal whilst Little Norman took amazingly long run-ups before swinging his small foot at the ball. Tom would dive in slow motion as the ball rolled towards him and Little Norman would look on with eager eyes. I wish you could have seen those eyes. I will always remember them. And Tom would be sure that his dive looked authentic. It had to look real for Little Norman. The ball would roll just out of Tom’s reach between the jumper and T-shirt their mother told them never to use for goalposts and before the beaten goalkeeper could get up, the demon striker would be wobbling towards him on those chubby legs to retrieve the ball, all set to score another stunner.

  And Little Norman would never tire. It was always Tom that became weary. He would force himself to save a few shots or feign an injury in an attempt to bring the game to a gentle end. But Little Norman would always look so concerned if he thought his big brother was hurt in some way. He would stand over him and pat him with his soft magic sponge of a hand until the pain was gone. And at the end of the game, the two brothers, fourteen years between them, would make their way back indoors, Little Norman nudging the ball before him as he went. Then their mother would inform the country’s greatest number nine to take that thing outside young man and take those dirty shoes off before you even think about coming in here. So Little Norman would throw the ball out into the garden and stand there watching it rolling over and over again as it disappeared into the bushes.

  Little Norman would have played for England.

  Tom felt an intense atmosphere around him as he and Sandy continued their walk home. He recalled those precious Sundays when he was twelve or thirteen, when he played football for a local boys’ team. But surely he was now just looking in on the life of another.

  Each Sunday morning, he would get up early and clean his boots on the doorstep, chipping off the dried mud from the last game with his mother’s best kitchen knife. Only the best would do. He loved his boots then. He would pack his gear into a carrier bag and travel on the bus to the car park where everybody sorted out lifts to get to the game.

  Those were the days of innocence - those glorious days before shame and hate.

  Tom hadn’t possessed a great deal of skill on the football field, but he used to play with such heart. He would run about that pitch until he could barely stand. If he was fouled towards the end of the game, or just tumbled over in exhaustion, he would lie still on that churned up mixture of mud and grass, his eyes closed for a stolen moment in an ecstatic reverie. All he had wanted was to drift away. To go where the footballers go.

  After the game, he would barely be aware of the score. It didn’t matter at all. And the dinner that his mother would prepare on those Sundays, well that was fit for the greatest player that ever lived. It was the smell that Tom most cherished, the perfect aroma of it all - the roast chicken, the gravy, the roast potatoes, even the vegetables. If he tried hard, he could visualise it, but he could never conjure up that smell. He would tell his mother and father how bad the referee was and how the other team were so much bigger and how he almost scored. And they would nod and smile. But he never told them of the pure bliss he felt, lying there on that football pitch, alive in an aching dream.

  The further Tom and Sandy walked, the more the football supporters outnumbered everybody else. He felt a moment of kinship with them. He had collected all those stickers, bought the magazines, gazed at the statistics. But he had been younger then. Sandy was wary and nervous. It was different for her. More than ever, she wanted to cling to Tom. She looked away from the scarves, the faces and the shirts, not out of contempt, but out of apprehension.

  The kick off to the precious new season was still two hours away but even that was too long. The gap between the final whistle of one season to the first whistle of the next is an eternity. You scratch around for three months watching videos and flicking through old programmes, convincing yourself that this will be your year. You spend three months coming off a drug only to spend the next nine months taking as much of it as you possibly can.

  Sandy hated it all - the singing, the chanting and the stupidity. Just as she thought they had made it safely through the crowd, two men and a woman walked towards them. They wore scarves that looked like they had just been bought off a street vendor and they looked uncomfortable in their attire, not proud, but self-conscious.

  The two men, instead of passing Tom, just continued forward until they were standing right before him. The woman stood in front of Sandy, her men by her side. Tom and Sandy had no choice but to stop. One of the men, the taller out of the two, spoke in a thin, refined voice that would certainly have been grey were it a colour, so lacking in character and emotion was it.

  “What are you doing with her?” the man asked Tom. “Your own kind not good enough for you?”

  The woman smiled a white tooth smile. The other man just stared vacantly.

  Tom did not know how to react for his instinct had left him. This was not in his script. His throat was dry and his tongue hung heavy in his mouth.

  As each second passed, the more the events, the scenes about them, were ripped away, torn out as if they had been cut from a picture and pasted elsewhere, leaving behind just this surreal tableau.

  Tom took Sandy’s hand and tried to walk away, but the staring man just stepped a pace to his right and continued to stare.

  “Excuse me,” continued the tall man. “I asked you a question. Didn’t your mother teach you any manners?”

  Tom still could not speak. Sandy dare not.

  The woman did not take her eyes off Sandy, who in turn was intent on not returning the gaze. The tall man whispered something to the white tooth woman and she laughed. Sandy smiled, hoping against hope that things weren’t as bad as they seemed.

  “What are you smiling at?” asked the woman, her voice more of a bark than anything else, so in contrast with her precise make-up and bright clothes. “Are you laughing at me?”

  The woman stepped forward until Sandy could smell her perfume and almost taste her cigarette ash.

  “Or do you fancy me?” she asked, sneering.

  She then blew a kiss at the trembling woman before her and ran a course hand slowly down Sandy’s cheek.

  Tom looked across.

  “Are you looking at my girl?” asked the tall man, moving forward.

  “No,” replied Tom, his voice, when he finally found, higher than he would have liked.

  The other man just stared.

  “Why not?” asked the tall man. “Wrong colour for you?”

  The situation was grotesque. There was nothing that could be done or said to stop it from progressing in the only way it could. It just had to unfold in its own agonising fashion. Tom was numb. He couldn’t get hold of his mind. If only they would give h
im room to limp like old Charles Grandon, maybe then they would leave him alone. There was a silence that lasted forever in his mind.

  The tall man lifted his hand and stroked back his greased black hair.

  “Is that why you’re with this fucking Paki?”

  Before he could answer, Tom was aware of a sudden movement beside him. The woman had grabbed Sandy’s arm and was trying to take the bag of clothes off her. Sandy resisted until the white tooth woman yanked at her dark hair, the pain causing her to release her grip on the bag and it fell to the floor. The woman picked it up, grinning. Sandy was on her knees, tears on her face.

  “What you got in there?” asked the woman, very pleased. “Fucking bananas?”

  The two men laughed.

  And so did Tom. He hadn’t been able to help it. It wasn’t a conscious thing.

  Within seconds and without warning, the tall man punched Tom in the stomach. He bent over and stumbled to the ground, trying to curl up in order to protect himself from the kicks that assailed him. Sandy cried as she sat their on the dirty pavement, the white tooth woman continuously jabbed at her with high heels, playing with her, teasing her. Fucking bananas.

  The other man stared on.

  As Tom was on the floor receiving blow after blow, he tried to reach for Sandy, his eyes pleading with her. But then he felt his senses just shut down.

  At last, Sandy heard a siren. The tall man, the staring man and the white tooth woman ran off, throwing away their scarves as they did so.

  Sandy’s vision began to clear and she tried to sit up. Her body was sore all over and she couldn’t feel her face. She felt ill and dazed. And then she saw Tom’s new jeans and his new shirt on the ground amidst the debris of a Big Town Saturday afternoon - and she tried in vain to reach out for them. But each time she stretched out her arm, they just slipped by her.

  A policewoman helped Sandy gently to her feet and led her to the waiting car.

  “It’s all right,” she said kindly. “Just sit there for a while. There’s an ambulance coming for your boyfriend.”