A Cleansing of Souls Read online

  John looked at Michael’s lips, those lips that had been so rarely kissed yet from which had come such eloquence and kindness. He tilted the head back slightly, checked for obstructions and pinched the nose. As he did so, mucus oozed out and onto his fingers. He breathed deeply to prevent himself from vomiting. He then took one huge, slow, deep breath before bowing his head until his mouth was upon Michael’s cold, moist lips. And he breathed his air into the hollow body. The morning staff performed the necessary amount of compressions but as John was about to breathe into Michael once more, his mouth so close to the hole in the face of the body, another compression followed, initiating a burst of stale air from deep within Michael’s body that passed into John through his parted lips. For a second John was filled with death. He felt he would collapse, vomit or scream. But he did none of these. Everyone is a hero.

  In time, the ambulance and the doctor arrived along with the rest of the morning staff. Michael was dead. It transpired he had been dead for over an hour before John had found him. It was just the morning sun that shone through the window had kept him warm.

  John went home that afternoon having written statements, reports, talking to other staff and managing the shift. He went home and cried. It would take a long time to free himself of the image of Michael hanging there before him, surrounded by so much light. The smell of the scene would come at all sorts of times, bringing with it sensations and emotions he thought were long gone. But the most lasting memory was the taste of death upon his lips, having that putrid air pumped into him for that single second. That would change him; haunt him, in so many different ways.

  That evening, as Michael’s room was being cleared, a newspaper was found at the bottom of the locker, just a regular daily newspaper from the previous day. It was folded neatly, and almost intact. The only thing missing was the crossword that had been carefully removed the previous evening, removed by the slender, beautiful fingers of a tragic man.

  He was a friend of mine.

  Chapter 18

  So the summer waned and died in the arms of autumn. The cool breezes became icy winds and the branches of the trees began to crack. Autumn is the cruellest season. It seems there are but a few short weeks between the hazy sunshine of the falling summer and the bitter gales of winter. The birds abscond to warmer places whilst the animals hide themselves away in the earth of their design. Leaves tumble to the ground and conkers thud into the soil to be collected by frantic children.

  The curses uttered during those hot and sticky July nights are quickly forgotten. It hardly seems credible that, just a few weeks ago, you were writhing on your quilt a burning wreck. Now two hot water bottles are still not enough. All the windows are closed firm and you hear their mournful tears throughout the night.

  Winter brings with it a sense of relief. For where autumn is deceit, winter is stone cold truth.

  Christmas becomes the focus again, the beacon of light in a vicious sea of survival. As November nears its malicious finale, colours begin to flicker in the shops, blinking innocently in the face of gloom. Bright toys replace the lapsed summer stock and the vision of some new beginning peers craftily through the bleak mists of the morning.

  It is week before Christmas day.

  Only two weeks before the start of a new decade.

  Just a fortnight before this one is over and forgotten.

  George awoke early and stumbled downstairs in his pyjamas. His bare feet almost froze upon the cold linoleum of the kitchen floor. He tiptoed over to the cupboard, took out three mugs and made a pot of tea. As he was pouring the hot tea into the mugs, the letterbox cracked shut in the hallway.

  On the doormat lay three envelopes. All bore George’s name. The first letter that he opened was a glossy affair informing him that he had won a two-week holiday in Brazil for himself and his family. The second told him he had won the pick of any of three top-of-the range cars. He did not even concern himself with reading the small print. He had learned during his term of unemployment that nobody gives anything away, not really, particularly to those who need it most. To the man bereft of both money and opportunity, the word ‘free’ is little more than a cruel misnomer.

  The mornings of tearing open letters with enthusiasm had long since passed for George - the bills, the rejections and the false hopes had seen to that. A letter was no longer a potential source of interest, more a daily reminder of circumstances and a test of tolerance. They weren’t real letters anyway. The ones he had written to Elaine whilst she was with her sister in the summer – they were real.

  He took the two largest mugs upstairs and placed one carefully on the chest of drawers beside Tom’s bed. The other, he took to his own bedroom. Elaine was sitting up in bed, her back resting against her propped up pillows. She smiled at her husband as he entered, whispering ‘thank you’ to him when he handed her the hot mug of tea. She grasped it in both hands and let its warmth numb her fingers. It had been a cold night, but she had slept deeply.

  After having gone back downstairs to drink his tea at the table, George sat on the chair and opened the third letter. It was from a local timber company asking him to come and see them the following morning. He looked at it again. He read the letter for a third time, his hands clammy. His heart was beating so fast. And then he slipped the letter back into the envelope almost as if it would disintegrate into nothing were it to be exposed to the air for too long.

  Six months earlier, he had written to all the timber firms in the local telephone directory asking them if there were any positions available to which he might be suited. He had included with each letter his employment history and relevant qualifications. In truth, it had been an effort made in desperation. He hadn’t really expected anything to come of it. But now it seemed it had paid off. G.Allman’s Timber wanted to see him.

  George thought about all of this as he got dressed, ready to go to the Department of Social Security offices to sign on. He kissed his wife goodbye and made sure that the letter was safely in his pocket before he left the house. He didn’t want anybody to find it. He would surprise them. At last he thought, all my trials Lord, all my trials.

  The pavement crackled beneath a layer of frost. There had not been any snow yet, just sharp, chilly reminders that worse was to come. As George walked, he could not quell the growing excitement within him. The interview tomorrow would be his first for more than a year. And they had written to him. He had not phoned them, pestered them. They could have just phoned him. But they hadn’t. They had taken the time to write to him. Someone had read his letter and then written back to him.

  So George’s excitement stepped into the precarious realms of anticipation.

  The DSS was at the far end of town. Standing outside it as George approached, there was a little girl. Her hair was a dirty blonde, her cheeks pale as ivory. And on her forehead were two pink blemishes that the bitter wind delighted in teasing until they resembled smouldering eyes. She wore jeans and a thick brown jumper through which she shivered.

  “Got two ones?” Her voice was harsh and sharp.

  George stopped and looked at her closely.

  “Have you got two ones, mate?” she asked again.

  He stared at her face. She couldn’t be more than eight or nine years old, he thought. He felt in his pocket and found a ten pence piece.

  “Will this be all right?” he asked, handing it to her. “It’s all I’ve got.”

  The little girl took the coin from him and placed it gently into a small red purse that she gripped between white fingers. George looked at her again but she just turned away, an expression of deep thought upon her aching face. So he continued on into the DSS, leaving the little girl outside, wondering at the two red marks upon her forehead.

  Inside the DSS, the usual queue had formed. The interior was like a doctor’s surgery. The walls were a pale yellow and the ceiling a dismal grey. There were posters on every wall depicting poorly painted characters doing various jobs. And each poster contained a slogan at wh
ich the line of people would either stare with failing bitterness or from which they would avert their eyes altogether.

  ‘Show Employers What You Can Do!’

  ‘Take A Step Forward – Join A Training Scheme!’

  ‘We Are Here To Help You – We Care!’

  ‘It’s Your Life – Shape It!’

  There were about forty people in the queue when George joined it. Each time he signed on, he always seemed to see different people. What becomes of them all?

  There are so many lives and so many sufferings of which we know nothing. They are all around us.

  Not a sound could be heard within the walls of the DSS. Nobody wanted to talk. Nobody wanted to look at anyone else. Each was in his or her own private agony, getting through as best they could. It was an internal struggle, you see. There were no complaints about the length of time spent waiting and there were no angry glances. There was just a sense of betrayal so acute as not to require an explanation. There were no words that could be said, no gesture that could accurately depict the pain of it all. It was just too vast a feeling.

  The area at the end of the room was reserved for Fresh Claimants. The recently unemployed would enter the silent sanctum with an air of nervous confidence, bravado almost, striding by the stationary queue with loud, steady steps. And what followed was always a marvel to see. The further they progress towards the back of the room, the slower becomes their pace. Unseen hands and eyes strip their clothes from them until they sit naked and grateful upon that hard chair, in full view of everyone. But no one is watching. After five or ten minutes, grasping a handful of forms to ensure respectability, they leave, adopting a funereal tread that has suddenly become so natural. They are clothed now in a flowing cloak of indignity, sliding out of that ever-open door like a shadow.

  Just as George found himself before the wire mesh of Box 2, the shutter was dragged down without explanation. The same young woman who had previously occupied Box 2 then hauled up the shutter covering Box 1. The queue shuffled silently to the left without question, as if they were all bound together with real manacles rather than these chains of ignominy that truly held them fast.

  A man behind George spoke.

  “It must be really difficult working here,” he announced to nobody in particular, “Really depressing.”

  George didn’t look around. What the man had said was just too much for the people there to comprehend. If they started to think about it, analyse it, it would surely have dragged them down further. Or else, they would have dragged him down. That was why there was always silence. Words had hurt so much in the past. Words said, words written, words thought. Nobody can handle words. Not really.

  The young woman on the other side of the wire mesh picked up George’s UB40 when he passed it to her and slid back a form in return. She had blue eyes and long blonde hair that she continuously played with, twirling it about her fingers. Around her neck, she wore a gold chain. Her blouse was as taut and abrasive as her manner. The mat in front of her was covered in graffiti. There were scribbles, drawings of dogs and men and the names of various football teams. Ah football. The young woman thrust a pen under the mesh and George signed his name before passing it back to her along with the form.

  “You need to fill in this other form,” she said. “It’s a new one.” Her voice was sharp and shrill. She may as well have said ‘pretty boy, pretty boy.”

  George took the green form that had been handed to him and walked over to a white table near the door. He looked through the form and saw that most of it didn’t apply to his situation at all. He wasn’t sure why he had been given it to complete, but he had learned not to question at moments like these. It could send the whole system into chaos. He was about to sign it anyway, when he realized there was no pen on the table. So he walked back to the wire mesh window and the people silently let him through.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to the young woman, “but could I borrow a pen to fill this form in please?”

  The rouged cheeks of the young woman lost their fake colour. Her blue eyes turned grey in an instant. In her hand she held a pen. Her eyes locked upon it as if she had just been caught with the murder weapon in the billiard room. If only she could somehow conceal it. She turned and disappeared for more than ten minutes. Meanwhile, the queue increased by another twenty people and was now out of the door and into the street.

  Out into the street?

  Can you imagine how that feels?

  You’re in the street now. You’re waiting in the street.

  In place of the young woman, a man around George’s age came to the meshed window holding between thumb and forefinger, almost at arms length, a chewed black pen. He passed it to George without a flicker of his banal countenance.

  “Please bring it back,” he muttered.

  George turned his back upon him, feeling a great urge to walk off with the pen or stab someone in the chest with it, just to fulfil the equation of the ignorant and the blind. But he couldn’t. They would never take his dignity - that was for him alone to lose.

  That evening, George searched through the wardrobe for his suit. He still hadn’t told Tom or Elaine about the interview. And he dared to whisper the words to himself, those words that brought with them such fear and unknowing. “I might have a job.” He had to sit on the edge of his bed when he had finished the sentence, so powerful was it.

  For the first time in years, he would be able to buy his wife and his son something special for Christmas. He felt a shiver rush through him as he recalled the winter evenings when he would arrive home from work, his beige duffel coat warm about him, with a small present for Tom, maybe a book or a tape or a game, or most wonderful of all a new Subbuteo team. He would be more excited than his son walking up the road to the house, unable to stop himself imagining the look of joy on that little boy’s face.

  This year, he would not be reduced to skulking around the market and the bargain stores on Christmas Eve, searching in desperation for things he could afford. No more, George. No more.

  For the man who is poor will be forever reminded of his own complete poverty. He will watch his children as they sit before the naked tree and feel like cold slaps the smiles upon their faces and the disappointment in their eyes. They will open their meagre gifts and they will say ‘Thank you mummy, thank you daddy’ in a voice that shakes. And you will want them to scream at you in full anger and to hurl at you the gifts, wrapped alone with such trepidation. But they will just sit there before the tree, quite, quite still.

  And tomorrow will not be another day - for there are no other days but these.

  As he looked through the wardrobe, George’s hands touched the material of some of Elaine’s dresses. He smelled them and ran the tips of his fingers lightly through them. She looked so elegant in this one and that other one was the one she had worn on her fortieth birthday. The first thing he would do when he got paid would be to take her out to dinner. And he would buy her a new dress. They hadn’t done that sort of thing for ages. Not since Little Norman.

  His suit, when he eventually found it, appeared at first glance to be in reasonable condition, better than he had expected anyway. There were no great marks or faded areas that he could see. He took it into the bathroom and tried it on. The thin material brushed against his legs. He had grown so used to wearing jeans. He put on the jacket over a pale green shirt and then put on his tie, the only tie he had. Stepping furtively out of the bathroom, he returned to the bedroom.

  He looked at himself in the full-length mirror. The trousers were a little tight and he wasn’t quite sure whether the brown tie went with the shirt. But, overall, George was satisfied. Dressed in his suit and with something to actually look forward to, he felt a bigger man already. And in that instant, he realized just how small he had become.

  George rose early the following morning. He was a child beginning that first day at school after the longest of summers. He had his morning tea and left the house an hour before he was due at G.All
man’s Timber. He didn’t want to be late.

  The sky was like a sheet of ice. There was not a sliver of light. The wind cut George’s face and burnt his eyes. He walked with his head bent low now, though his spirits were high. He hoped the slippery ground wouldn’t claim him. Not today. Not in his suit. Grey clouds began to break free from the white of the sky and drift slowly across town. The wind picked up loose debris from the street and wafted it carelessly into the path of any who dared confront it.

  George quickened his pace lest it snowed or rained. The sign for G.Allman’s Timber reared up before him. He stopped short of his destination and, turning to face himself in the dark window of the Electricity Showroom, he pulled a metal comb through his thin hair. Satisfied, he took a deep breath and walked on into the foyer of his prospective employer.

  After waiting for twenty minutes in the small reception area, George took the letter out of its envelope and read it again. Maybe he had made a mistake? But no, he was right. He had arrived on the correct day at the correct time.

  “Mr Spainer?” asked a woman who entered through an unseen door.

  George put the letter hastily back in the envelope and rose to meet the woman. ‘This is it’ he thought to himself.

  “Mr Dawson will be with you in five minutes, Mr Spainer,” said the woman, curtly as if he had been unconsciously harassing her throughout the morning, “so if you really wouldn’t mind taking a seat, I would be most grateful.” Her eyes were magnets. He was of metal. And she lowered him back down to the chair.

  The unseen door closed and, once again, George was alone. Just five more minutes and it would begin.

  Ten minutes later, the woman reappeared and beckoned George to her.

  “Follow me, Mr Spainer.”

  She led him to a large office and withdrew from sight.

  “Mr Spanker. Do take a seat,” said the man behind the desk. He had a very large voice and was at least fifteen years younger than George. He had a thin, brown moustache that seemed to have been pencilled on overnight by some errant child. And his eyes were unblinking.