A Cleansing of Souls Page 14

  “I didn’t know you smoked,” she said testily.

  “Yeah. It’s just that I didn’t have any fags.” He smiled brightly. “I just got four less cans of lager and these fags with what I would have spent on the lager. I just won’t drink so much tonight.”

  “Well I haven’t got any ashtrays.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll use one of them plastic cups I just bought.”

  He went into the kitchen, cigarette in hand, took a plastic cup from the stack that Sandy had just put in the cupboard, poured a little water into it and returned to the living room. He then sat down and, as if to demonstrate, inhaled deeply, rotated his eyes in a comic fashion, exhaled, tapped the ash into the plastic cup and smiled.

  “There. You see,” he said. “Sorted.”

  That afternoon, Sandy made some cakes and some sausage rolls and organised the rest of the food. Throughout this time, perhaps for an hour, Tom lay in the bath listening to the football on the radio. He emerged as the final whistles blew all around the country, dressed in the jeans that Sandy had bought him and wearing the black sweatshirt he had brought from home that had been washed the night before. He walked into the kitchen where Sandy was doing her third round of washing up.

  “They fit okay, don’t they?” he asked her. It was the first time he had worn the new jeans.

  Sandy turned and looked at him. He looked lovely - he smelled lovely, so fresh.

  “They look really nice”, she replied, her eyes shining.

  “Nice?”

  “Yes. Really nice,” she repeated.

  “Do you remember that English teacher we had at school who looked like Kevin Keegan, well a cross between Kevin Keegan and Russell Osman?” said Tom suddenly, with energy and some humour. “I forget his name, but he always used to say how ‘nice’ was the worst word in the English language, that it meant nothing at all. Do you remember him?”

  “Mr Crane,” said Sandy, quietly.

  “That’s him.”

  Tom smiled. Kevin Keegan. Russell Osman. Mr Crane.

  “Do you want a hand?” he asked, reaching for the tea towel.

  “No. I’ll be finished in a minute.”

  “Okay.”

  “You could put the drinks on the table for me, if you want. Put the cloth on first though. It’s in the top drawer, behind the settee.”

  “Sure.”

  Tom arranged the cans and the bottles neatly on the table, the tallest at the back and the shorter ones at the front. And when he stepped back to view his work, he realised he’d forgotten to put the tablecloth on. Ah, well. He could start again; it was a small, ineffectual task after all. There was no such thing as time anymore - the next few minutes - that was all that mattered. And then there would be another few minutes. Such was the easy flow of his life now.

  Sandy finished the cakes and covered them over with a net. Everything would be ready in time. The guests would be arriving in a couple of hours and all she had to do now was get ready.

  Sitting at her little dressing table, she sought in vain to accentuate the beauty of her eyes. She could not - for they were already as beautiful as the eyes of a child. She put deep red lipstick onto her soft lips and when she smiled she emblazoned the room. But, come on, back to her eyes. They were indeed beautiful, but there was nothing she could do about the tiny red vein in the corner of each one – the sole reminder of where the love-fear tears had broken through.

  After having made up her face, Sandy put on the white blouse. It was cool against her warm skin and it caressed her spine as it shimmered down her smooth back. She stood up and tucked it into her long, black skirt. And stepping into her shiny, black high heel shoes, she stood before the full-length mirror. She brushed her dark hair gently and let it bounce and swirl about her. But all she saw, all she saw in the mirror was the pain in her eyes. Turning, she walked into the lounge, closing the bedroom door behind her.

  “You look nice,” said Tom.

  “Thanks,” replied Sandy, picking up an empty can of lager and putting it in the bin in the kitchen.

  It had barely crossed Tom’s mind to think of Sandy as anything more than a friend, somebody that was helping him out, being kind to him; just a girl he used to know from school. That was all. He hadn’t the emotional intelligence to notice all those sideways glances, the way she looked at him, stared at him, the hurt she felt when he dismissed her or failed to respond as anything more than a young man who has fallen on his feet. He missed it all.

  And who can say why?

  Love, you conquer and you kill, you maim the innocent and you destroy the naïve. You break me apart with your lies and your deceptions. Were it not for you, Love, I may understand my life a little better.

  Sandy stood in the kitchen, her eyes closed for a moment.

  And she grew strong.

  The first guests started to arrive at around eight o’clock and Sandy led each of them in turn into the lounge. There were thirteen or fourteen in total and in the small flat that was plenty. Tom felt at first a terrible loneliness as each person came in, one stranger after another. The regard everybody had for Sandy was obvious. He just sat uncomfortably at one end of the settee, peering over a magazine, like a teenager in the doctor’s waiting room.

  The party meandered along, polite conversations punctuated now and then by lewd comments from two young men who had attached themselves tenuously to the table of drinks. One of them worked with Sandy, the other was his friend, the two of them all shiny hair, earrings and painted on stubble. By ten o’clock, they both looked ill. An hour later, one was asleep in the armchair, the other vomiting into the bath. Sandy ordered them a taxi and they left in tatters like two survivors from a bomb blast. Another great Saturday night lads.

  Tom had begun to enjoy the conversations that permeated the air around him. He was a little disappointed to see the two young men leave. They were in fact a similar age to him though he viewed them as being much younger. On their departure, he became acutely aware that he was the only male left at the party and the huddle of women who stood before him continued to talk boisterously, competing with the music from the stereo. He looked at them, leaning back, nodding at the required moments and smiling when he had to, pulling himself into their group. The alcohol was beginning to lend him confidence.

  After two or three more of the guests had pleaded early mornings, Sandy came over to join the group of women who had edged perceptibly closer to the settee where Tom sat. Up until that point, for most of the duration of the party in fact, she had actually been in her bedroom consoling a middle-aged middle manager from the bank whose love was a love unrequited. This love in question had discovered her huge desire the previous night and she didn’t know how she could face him on the Monday morning. Sandy had nursed her with kind words and a gentleness of touch until the woman fell asleep on the bed, cradling a diminishing bottle of vodka and wondering at the cruelty of life.

  Sandy ushered one of the women to one side of the room and spoke to her briefly - moments later, the two of them sat down beside Tom on the settee. The woman was tall and bright and she exuded a wonderful vitality that immediately contrasted with the soft, quiet demeanour of her friend. From what Tom could see, through the veil of smoke before his eyes, she was definitely worth getting to know.

  “This is Karen,” said Sandy, introducing her friend to Tom. “She works at the bank, don’t you Kay?”

  “I show my face,” replied Karen from beneath her painted eyelids. She took Tom’s hand and shook it limply. “And you must be Tom?” she said, still holding his hand.

  “Yes.”

  Karen withdrew her hand before continuing. “You’re a lucky man,” she said, in her seductive, cigarette-damaged voice. “This woman here can’t stop talking about you. Isn’t that right, Sand?”

  Karen grinned the grin of an idiot. Sandy smiled, embarrassed – but she remained strong.

  “Do you want another drink, Tom?” she asked.

  “No, I’m fine. Thanks. I�
�ve still got one,” he replied, motioning to the can in his hand.

  “Kay?”

  “Vodka and tonic please, Sand.”

  “Vodka?”

  “Yes. Vodka and tonic. The water of life. My life, anyway.”

  “I’ll do my best,” said Sandy, drifting back towards the bedroom, wondering how she was going to wrest baby from mother.

  As soon as Sandy was gone, Karen shuffled still closer to Tom until their hips touched. She was wearing a short, black leather skirt and a tight, low-cut top. And when she spoke to him, he could almost feel her lipstick upon his ear.

  “So are you and Sandy together then?” she asked, her voice luscious and gorgeous.

  “How do you mean?” replied Tom.

  Karen smiled. Those teeth cannot have been real, so white and perfect were they.

  “Don’t play with me, Tom,” she said, coyly, putting a manicured hand upon his thigh and leaning over. “Does she steal the covers, or do you?”

  Tom didn’t know what to say. He could have listened to her voice all night. But as he looked up from the hand upon his knee, looked at that face that was now so close to his own, he saw that she could have been fifty years old. Nothing wrong with that of course – but when you’re nineteen and as mixed-up as Tom, well, it can be pretty scary. Through the smoke and the gloom and the hazy vision of the drinker, she had been stunning. Her voice remained alluring and her tight top, well, it might as well not have been there at all.

  As the evening progressed, there were periods where the music stopped and each guest waited for another to restart it. The room grew darker and limbs grew less and less loyal to their source. Half empty cans winged themselves on to table ledges and windowsills, perching there like colourful tin birds, only to be nudged into premature, unseemly flight by some unseen, mischievous force. Crisps and peanuts were crushed into the carpet until you couldn’t walk anywhere without feeling a crunching sensation beneath your feet.

  The party was all very amiable, if a little disjointed. Occasionally, two or three women would break off into a group to talk about one of the others, who was perhaps in the bathroom or elsewhere – and they would smile wanly as their victim returned, each wondering if they would be next.

  Fuelled by alcohol and gossip, the party continued until long after midnight. For some, the time went too fast, for others, too slow. For Sandy, it was definitely the latter. Each time she looked across the dark room at Tom, there he was, next to Karen, so close to her. But she didn’t notice that each time she looked away, he sought her out with pleading, longing eyes of redemption.

  There is a moment when you recognise your love to be a love alone. And you know deep inside that moment will never leave you.

  At last, the revellers faded away. One by one, as shadows, they slipped into the night.

  Sandy had to call a taxi for Karen. She was, by the end of the party, barely able to stand even with assistance - too much water of life. Tom held her upright and guided her to the door. The following morning, she wouldn’t remember his name. Within twenty-four hours, she would have forgotten they had even met - just one more night out, one more extension of youth. Carefree. Beautiful. Lonely.

  Sandy turned the lights on in the hall and the lounge. She had not been so cruel as to do it whilst Karen was still there. She looked disconsolately at the mess before her. The light seemed so bright. She felt a little sick. Her mother would have said that it was all just a part of life’s learning.

  Tom went to the kitchen and started to put all the empty cans in the sagging black bin bag. Sandy watched him in silence for a moment and before he could notice her, she had wandered to her bedroom, fallen out of her clothes and slipped between the cool sheets. The soft pillow soothed her dazed head immediately. And she just slept. She didn’t dream. Just slept.

  Tom had not drunk excessively during the party. The first three cans had made him feel full. He was never a lager drinker anyway and Sandy hadn’t any whisky. A solitary fourth can of warm lager had steered him through the final three hours of the night. Karen had bored him senseless with her painted smile, her inane remarks and the way she kept touching him. It was like spending the evening with some irritating mechanical doll.

  But Karen had at least given him a chance to reflect. In her make up and her facile ways, he had seen in human form a part of himself. Shallow. Laughable. He saw his frailty in her eyes and his deception in her smile. And he saw how he had let himself down. With each word from those traffic light lips and each touch from those traffic light fingers, he had taken one more painful step closer to the man he truly was. He had seen himself naked. And standing now over a bin bag full of crisp packets, broken cans and empty bottles, he attempted once again to clothe himself in the raiment of dignity, gentleness and wonder. He felt shame and confusion. He felt guilt and he felt terror. In essence, he felt like Tom again.

  The night fell about Big Town, a warm, tight night. The darkness would not let the sun break through. It held out, dim and stagnant. Beneath the blanket of night, people slept and thought and paced and laughed and cried. They loved and they fought and they ran and they hid. They lived and died in the night for the night is the shoulder upon which the tears of the day are bound to fall.

  Let me fly above your town, just float above it and I will come into your homes and your houses, into your streets and your dreams and your lives. I will drift in and out. I will see you as you truly are. I will see it all in a single night – for I am nothing without you.

  The following morning, Tom made Sandy a cup of tea. He took it into her bedroom and placed it on her bedside cabinet. He looked at her for a moment and felt his heart within him. He then left her to wake with her radio and her tea whilst he tidied the lounge. And then he tidied the kitchen. In the course of a rambling, confused evening, clarity had sought him out and possessed him once more. It all seemed so obvious now. Where once there was bitterness and cynicism, now there was humility. Where once shadows, now light. Where once Michael, now Sandy.

  The eye can reflect feelings in a way that no tongue could tell. When Sandy shuffled, bewildered, into the lounge and saw Tom looking at her, she felt a warmth and a power that was overwhelming. So this is it. This is what it feels like. He moved towards her and hugged her close. He whispered into her ear, through her long dark hair, words that you and I need not know, should not know. And though she barely heard them herself, she felt their intensity.

  Their feet moved in time with one another as if dancing to a slow waltz only they could hear, holding each other up. They stepped back and around until they found themselves in the bedroom. They stood a pace from one another and looked deep into eyes, into souls. Sandy reached forward and slipped off his shirt, running her long fingers down his thin, pale chest. She allowed her teddy bear dressing gown to fall from her shoulders and stood there quite still, naked before him. She was in control now. She took his trembling hands in her own and laid him down upon the bed. She closed her eyes. He closed his too.

  And they wrapped themselves about and within one another in a wonderful physical embrace to which there was no end.

  Little Norman could have saved the world. There was something about him that nobody could fathom. He drew you in, left you feeling intoxicated. He would look at you with those wide brown eyes of his and he would move you inside, touch your heart, your soul, your very being. He would pad around the house in his bare feet, peering into corners and books and magazines. And he would gaze through his bedroom window, standing on his bed on tiptoes, filled with rapture by all that passed before him, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming. Everyone knew that Little Norman was special. That was the funny thing.

  He could have saved the world.

  George’s trips to Big Town had almost broken him. Each day, he took the train to find his son. He had no proof that he was there. It was just something he felt. He had lost weight and at times found breathing laborious, unnatural. When he spoke to his wife on the phone, for she was still with her
sister, he sounded strange to her, old and weary. And she would put the phone down after a terrible goodbye, only to fall once more into the arms of her sister, distraught and shattered.

  Tom, mate. What have you done?

  At times, George thought his courage would fail him, that he would one day travel to Big Town never to return, just travel there and curl up beside the road. He had not thought of God since that first time he prayed. There were greater things to occupy his mind now.

  The deprived and the despairing of Big Town through whom George walked in awe sat about fires in the night and stared into the flames that they themselves had created. Amidst the crackling light, they saw life and survival, movement and spontaneity, the orange and yellow and red and blue flames wavering, dancing their way through dark heat. Smoke swirled away into the blackness of the night, unheeded.

  George saw hundreds of battered shapes. He saw battered shoes and feet poking out beneath battered cardboard sheets, shoes that had been bought so long ago. Those feet had maybe skipped down the aisle in those new shoes to be married to a sweetheart in white, had danced on that wedding night until exhaustion overtook them, twirling around and around ecstatic and burning. And now those feet can but stumble from one dirt alcove to another.

  Some people had dirty sleeping bags into which they would slide without even a sound. They would just lie there, shivering beneath the hot moon. People swarmed by but saw them not. And they didn’t even see right there before them the flames of flames that illuminate the tragic and the forlorn.

  All this happens.

  All this goes on.

  This is your town.

  This is my town.

  Big Town.

  Chapter 14

  Christine sat on the edge of Laura’s bed, watching her daughter sleep. It was so quiet in the bedroom, the only sound being the faint breath of the little girl beneath the soft and colourful quilt. Christine moved down to the floor and knelt beside her daughter’s head, stroking the hair gently, rhythmically, keeping it from dangling across her face, away from her sore eyes.