A Cleansing of Souls Page 13

  There was a knock on the door and John entered. He was around twenty-three years old, had dark hair and growth of stubble around his face that made him at first appear slightly older. He spoke with a soft Southern Irish accent and he had an easy, natural way about him.

  “Michael,” he said, “sorry to bother you. It’s just that we need to have a chat. I’m going to be your named nurse while you’re here and we need to work out what we can do to get you out.” In the absence of a reply, he added, “I’m John, you remember, from yesterday. When you came in.”

  Michael looked at him and sighed. He liked John. He had liked him from the moment he had met him.

  The two men walked down the long ward corridor into a room at the end. John put his heavy key in the lock and turned it, allowing Michael to enter first. The room was well lit and contained four or five chairs. Michael looked about him before sitting down on a chair beneath one of the windows. John shut the door, pulled up a chair, and sat down also.

  “How did you sleep last night, Michael?”

  “As well as I need, thank you. I took your tablet.”

  John smiled.

  “It wasn’t my tablet. It’s just what the doctor prescribed to help you sleep. If you don’t want it tonight, don’t worry. Its just there if you need it.”

  Michael enjoyed John’s voice, his accent. He was identifying beauty now, concerning himself not with anger and despair. For his time was short. And there truly was beauty everywhere.

  “Anyway,” continued John, “what we need to talk about is what needs to happen for you to leave here and go back home. So, basically, I need to know a bit more about you, how you’re feeling, what your plans are for when you get out of here, and if there’s anything we can do to make things more comfortable for you.”

  Michael looked into John’s eyes. There was redness at the edges of them, sore veins creeping into the blue pupils in which Michael saw honesty and something indefinable - life, perhaps. Or death.

  “Where would you like me to start, John?”

  “Wherever you like. We’ve got a while, so don’t worry about time.”

  Michael felt relaxed in John’s company. The room was quiet and it seemed to be far away from the unpredictable suffering of the rest of the ward. Were the walls to crumble and fall, he imagined there would be meadows all around, buzzing green fields strolling into Heaven.

  Don’t worry about time.

  Michael thought deeply.

  “We all live in a story, John. Our lives are just tales that nobody hears or reads. But you are now in mine and I am now in yours. That is how beautiful life is. That is the beauty of life.”

  John just looked at Michael. He was listening also for key words. Any mention of medication that he had been on in the past, names of family members, previous diagnosis, names of other hospitals. Anything perhaps that would make this man fit into the parameters of your average patient. But he was prepared to wait. The alcohol from the previous night had stalked him throughout the early morning and he was appreciating now the solitude of this isolated room. So he nodded, indicating to Michael that he should continue.

  “I have always known that I was different from others. I have known that for a very long time. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just the way it was meant to be.”

  “Different in what way?” asked John.

  “In the sense that, well, in the sense that, yes I live in this time, this place, but outside it too. I see what you see but also I see within it, around it and through it. I see lots of things, beautiful things.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “I see life. That is all. I see life and goodness in everything. And where there is no life, I give life. Where there is no goodness, I dream and there is goodness. My life is a cleansing of souls.”

  Michael closed his eyes. Not long now. Not long.

  “Are you okay?” asked John. “We can carry on later if you want.”

  “I had a sister. She left me a long time ago. That was when I first realised that not everybody was like me.”

  “Was she older than you, or younger?”

  “She was young then, but she is younger still now, so much younger, so young. At least I thought she was. I thought I had her back. I thought that she had come back to me, but I was misled. So now I must go and find her.”

  “Do you see her much?”

  “I see her every day, every minute. She is with us now. She will be with me always.”

  “Right.”

  This man is great, thought John, really great.

  “So you’ve got a sister. Do you see her when other people can’t?”

  “I see her with my soul. I cannot speak for others.”

  Fair enough, thought John.

  “When she left me, they put me in a hospital like this. Not as nice as this, but the same kind of place. That was a difficult time for me. Without my sister, I had nothing. So I gave myself.”

  “Gave yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “To who?”

  “To you, John.”

  Suddenly, there was shouting and thudding from out in the corridor followed by the shriek of a panic alarm and John leapt from his seat, flying out of the room.

  Michael stood up slowly and looked upwards. He looked past the ceiling, past the roof and past the sky. He saw only Heaven now.

  On leaving the psychiatric hospital just before his nineteenth birthday, Michael had begun his life again with a vigour and a pleasure in the world, a world of natural beauty of which he was the creator. Nature was, for him, the perfect embodiment of the spirit, the true bridge from vision to reality. And he was never to leave that exalted plateau. He would never return to the hatred and the factories and the smoke. His country was not one of steel and rust and fog and grime, but one of brightness, possessing a profundity that could only be found in the essence of the human soul.

  The office where Michael had begun work at the age of twenty-one had not been ideal for the pursuit of inner paradise. Though he acquired a reputation as a capable employee, he had been known more for his lapses in concentration and his distractibility. He was often intentionally induced into long orations about flowers or the sea or the sky, merely as a means of alleviating the boredom of his colleagues. They felt this strange young man humorous. And they would turn him on and switch him off at will.

  It had been at an office party that Michael first met Christine. He had been talking to a small group of people about some subject or other and it was as they gradually dispersed, one by one, both amused and bemused, that Christine stepped from the shadows full of joy and admiration. She worked at a branch on the South Coast and the party had been arranged for all those in the Southern Area Division. Such parties were frequently lurid affairs where inebriated characters, old and young alike, would weave through the night, staggering and crawling upon hands and knees, faces blotched and heads in shreds.

  Christine had been at the company for six months and she had learned in that time that a smart suit and a bright tie do not necessarily guarantee a sharp mind and a gentle heart.

  Michael was different. During that party, he had excused himself, citing the need for ‘clarity amidst the fervour’ and she had followed him outside into the dark night where they talked together until the moon rose, shone, and slipped beneath the reddening sky of the morning. They had spoken of their loves and their follies, their hopes and their predicaments. But he had not told her everything. Not about his sister, Jennifer, nor about the hospital or the marks on his hands.

  As the months and years had passed, Michael and Christine saw more of one another and they eventually married on one cold April afternoon in a registry office. He had been twenty-six, she twenty-three. Ron had been there at the wedding, as had his new girlfriend, Diane. The years following Michael’s discharge from hospital had re-introduced Ron to security. He had visited Michael almost daily during his admission. From what he could gather, they had diagnosed Michael as having some form of
thought disorder. And that was fine.

  So as each day of Michael’s life went by, events and details were clouded by dreams, wild ideas, illusions and delusions, but, wonderfully, he continued to, what the consultant would call, ‘function’.

  As he sits there now though, in that room, alarms going off, waiting for the nurse, all he sees are the dry, broken sticks of a child’s shattered vision.

  Dry, broken sticks.

  A spark will destroy a forest whose time has come, bring it all down.

  All it takes is one flickering light and it’s gone.

  The married couple had moved to a pleasant house not too far from the town and Christine had been transferred, at her request, to the same office as her husband. They had lived thereafter, for the next ten years, an uneventful, enclosed life. Neither had made any real demands upon the other. There had been no real expectations, hence no real disappointments.

  And then, almost overnight, a short while after his thirty-sixth birthday, Michael had begun to drift away. His communication with his wife and everybody else faltered. He would shut himself in his study, just staring into space only he could see, his eyes fixed, urgent, and aflame. Christine would check if he had been taking his medication – his ‘stress’ tablets. Married for ten years and then this. Meal times would be passed in a heavy silence. Foreboding had taken a seat at the table and made himself very comfortable.

  Christine had dreaded their journeys to work for her husband had grown sombre and detached. Not a word would be spoken between them. It had become impossible for her. So she had turned to their new neighbour and long-time work colleague for advice. Ron. Strong, dependable Ron. She had not wanted her marriage to fall apart. Ron would listen to her, console her. She had always admired him.

  And then Laura had come along. The pregnancy had broken the cloud smothering Michael and joy had rained upon him. It had come as a shock for Christine as Ron had just looked on.

  So Christine had handed in her notice and prepared herself for the huge change that motherhood would bring to her life, experiencing all emotions to their fullest extent.

  Michael took to coming home from work with flowers that he would hide in various parts of the house for his wife to stumble upon. He did all the housework and all the shopping, the cooking and the ironing. The physical effort had been nothing to him, for love was his. And every now and then, he would whisper to himself, “she’s coming back, she’s coming back.” And he would skip a little, whistle and be unable to keep himself from laughing.

  Michael had been there at the birth, looking on in wonder as his wife struggled in agony. Of all the sights he had ever seen, and they numbered many, none compared to the birth of this little girl. For he saw things differently from you and me. He saw it all.

  When the tiny blood-spattered child had emerged, Michael had wept. He had taken the baby in a towel and held her tight to his heart. A tear had dropped from his eye and splashed onto the fragile forehead of his little girl.

  Laura had grown as a flower in Michael’s eyes. He would spend hours just looking at her as she lay in her cot, delicate, fragile, light and beautiful. When she cried, he would hold her and whisper to her, waiting for the moment when their heartbeats were as one. And as he spoke so quietly to her, she would drift back to sleep, drift back to the wonderful land he had created for her. Michael no longer had to search for beauty in all things. It was there before him - his baby, his own baby.

  Ron had been named as Laura’s godfather, a role that he had assumed with no discomfort at all. Michael had insisted. Christine had remained silent.

  Laura would never tire of Michael’s affections. As she grew older, she was neither embarrassed nor ashamed. Some of her young friends, even at five, six years old, would be so hostile to their parents, resenting physical contact, petulant and proud. Oh so young to be so old. And Laura would look on, confused. She loved her mother dearly, but her dad was her special friend. He was the hero in all her fairy stories, the face she saw when people spoke of Jesus - that thin, pale face with the large sad eyes.

  The whole period of Laura’s early years had been a tense and nervous time for Christine. She would barely speak to Ron. He would call over on some pretext and find Michael once again there, playing with Laura, having taken another day off work.

  Ron and Christine.

  The prerogative of the friend.

  Laura. Last year at infant school just finished. The summer holidays about to begin. How do we make sense of it all? Two weeks after breaking up from school, she lies upon her bed, sore, terrified and covered in another’s sweat. Her teddy bears and her dollies gaze on, impotent. And when she wakes in the middle of the night, having finally got to sleep, she wakes in total fear. Michael is there, crouched on the floor, staring at her, tears all over the place, shaking and shuddering. She puts her arms around him, just leans across instinctively and cuddles him. And she cries too. Seven years old. He whispers through his pain and she slumps back into dark sleep.

  When I wake up, my daddy is gone. And I am so very old.

  Whilst Michael sits in that room, alarms still shattering his silence, Christine rises from her chair and pulls her dressing gown tightly about her. She walks slowly, deliberately, to the study as if being led by the hand. She pushes open the door and enters. It is so neat and so precise. She looks around the room and moves over to the large desk upon which sits a heavy, garish paperweight. Easily, calmly, she picks it up, turns and crashes it into the glass-fronted bookcase. No sound can be heard. There is no sound. She wrenches open the desk drawers and empties the contents out onto the carpet. She smashes the small lamp against the corner of the desk until the clay base is cracked and shattered. She rips down the curtains and throws them to the floor - still not a sound. She wrenches the telephone cord from out of the wall and hurls the whole thing across the room.

  And the destruction continues in complete silence until Christine, beaten, staggers out into the hall, a thin trail of blood seeping from her foot and following her out,

  And Laura, Laura is upstairs listening to the silence.

  Look closely now, for on the floor, by the study window, amidst the broken glass and the debris, amidst the artefacts of a fool, there lies a photograph, a small photograph of a beautiful girl. The edges are a little curled and the background blurred, but the girl herself is bright and smiling. The photograph was taken by a man whose love for that girl was greater than anyone could understand.

  And on the back of the photograph, if you look closer now, a name has been crossed through and replaced in ragged writing with another. Where once it had read, Laura, it now reads, Jennifer – my love.

  Surely she is an angel.

  Chapter 13

  Sandy decided to organise a party. She just needed to be amongst friends in order to re-affirm her stability. So she invited some people from work and the couple from the flat below. In some odd way, she knew that the trivial talk and the loud music would allow her time to think with more clarity about her situation. Each morning she rose, she was unable to get a grip on her feelings. The common sense that had been with her always had now left her with barely a sense of anything at all.

  Tom was enthusiastic when Sandy told him of her plans for the party. He looked forward to meeting others now, for he was a stranger to them. Pre-conceptions and previous meetings would not influence them against him. This was his new life now and these his new encounters.

  So long ago the dreamer had set out from his bedroom to tap the true source of his soul. It’s still there for you, Tom. Just stop. Close your eyes. And look all around you.

  Throughout the day of the party, Sandy tidied the flat until it looked like an artist had sketched everything into place. She vacuumed and polished, cleaned the windows, washed the kitchen floor and made sure there everything was perfect. She had sent Tom out early in the morning to the shops for food and drink and he had gone willingly. It seemed to her that he had been less tense of late. Maybe he had at last u
nderstood how kind she had been to him. As she polished the low coffee table, she wandered into dreams, allowing her eyes to fall into visions amidst the deep, smooth grain of the dark mahogany. She loved him, it’s true - but she had never been told that love could hurt this much.

  After she had cleaned the flat and while she was waiting for Tom to return, Sandy took the time to decide what to wear that evening. She looked through her wardrobe, all clanging coat hangers and swishing dresses – each dress compelling her to choose it. The feel of the material on her fingertips thrilled her. And as she stood there, her clothes returning her gaze, anticipation began to grow within her. Perhaps Tom would realise when he saw her in one of these dresses, when she had done her hair, put on some make-up, perhaps he would realise she was truly a woman now.

  She finally decided upon a long black skirt and a white blouse with frills around the neckline and lace around the sleeves. Small silver buttons fastened right the way up to the neck and the material was a beautiful silk. She slipped the skirt on over her jeans just to assure herself she could still fit into it and looked in the mirror from every conceivable angle. As she was stepping out of it to hang it back up, satisfied, there was a knock on the front door. She tossed the skirt onto the bed and hurried out into the lobby.

  “I think I got it all,” said Tom, standing in the doorway holding two bulging carrier bags. Sandy smiled and took the bags off him as he entered.

  “These are heavy. Did you walk all the way, or did you get the bus?” she asked as he followed her into the kitchen.

  “Walked. I wasn’t sure where the buses stopped,” he replied, looking at his knuckles, willing them to return to even a semblance of their natural colour.

  After packing away the shopping, Sandy came into the lounge to find Tom smoking a cigarette. The smell made her feel ill.