A Cleansing of Souls Read online

  “Far be it from me to assume omnipotence

  But I have seen much in my life

  I have seen Death and I have seen Despair

  But also have I known great Pleasure.

  I have seen the weak rise up to conquer the wicked

  And I have seen the wicked stoop to vanquish the weak

  If I had built this Company with mine own hands

  It would have been with these two hands

  I hold before you now.

  But it was not to be

  For my role was not to be that of Architect

  I was to be the Custodian – the Keeper of the Castle.

  And I have pursued my task

  I have worked

  I have toiled

  I have laid to waste, waste

  I have relieved this Company of its burdens

  But I have remained a Man’s man

  Men respect me and I in turn respect that respect

  I have clung to my roots with such ferocity

  I almost wrenched them from the soil

  But now I begin to hear news

  News that troubles me

  News that something is amiss

  Something is rotten

  In a state

  And this news saddens me

  For I am a fair Man

  But also I am a harsh man!

  I employ people

  Employees

  They work for me

  I pay them money

  It is simple

  It is a chain

  A chain that must be preserved

  Each link is vital

  I am the Guardian of the Chain

  And if a link is broken I must act

  I must act…

  You, Spanner, have broken that link

  Your work, when you produce any, is Untidy

  Your relationship with your colleagues is Abysmal

  Your attitude is Deplorable

  You look Disgraceful

  You put filthy cups in your drawers

  You drop cigarettes in the lift.

  This, Spanner, is your first and final warning

  You are to be a new man from tomorrow morning!”

  And on this stupendous rhyming couplet, Mr Charles Grandon, thespian, genius and wanker, forfeited the use of his left leg and fell off the stage.

  Tom left the General Manager to his light bulb and wandered towards the lift. He had been in that office for just four minutes. As the lift doors slid open slowly to greet him, a crumpled cigarette winked up at him slyly. He gazed at it for just a moment, leaned against the wall and closed his tired, blood-stained eyes.

  That it had come to this - the dreams of youth, the beauty of a childlike hope. Ah, Innocence. That it had come to this.

  So get the camera out of here lads and leave this boy to his tears.

  Chapter 2

  Tom’s bedroom ceiling was scribed in circular patterns that rolled above him like tumbleweed. The patterns seemed to alter their shape as he stared up at them from his bed, breaking and reuniting, incessantly in search of form, pulsing with some vibrant energy. And beneath it all, the young man just lay there, broken.

  Wispy talons of curling smoke stung his eyes so he closed them, blindly stubbing out what was left of his cigarette in the full ashtray beside his bed. It was just six-thirty in the evening and the weariness that stalked him constantly had finally caught up with him. He had neither the instinct nor the will to resist. Will and Instinct, those two keystones of youth, had left him stranded. They had slipped away one winter’s evening to be replaced not even by bitterness or anger, but by a tedious ennui that had smothered him ever since. Ennui, that Baudelaire state that pounces upon you in the guise of self-pity and fits you oh so well.

  In the years since Little Norman, a routine had enforced itself upon Tom’s life but only recently had he succumbed to the force of its domination. It ate away at him like waves of despair on the once golden shoreline of his dreams. Time had fallen into itself and appeared as abstract as surely it is. Minutes, hours, months, years all meant nothing. All that was left for him were sharp, stabbing memories of his childhood; memories that taunted him with their clarity and burned him with their innocence.

  Just three years ago. Sixteen. Your sixteenth birthday. Opening presents in the dawn light. Little Norman squealing with glee amidst that sea of wrapping paper. Listening to that Otis Redding album for the first time. Standing by your birthday cake, grinning inanely whilst mum takes serious photographs, smiling from afar as you and dad watched mum scamper around the kitchen trying to catch Little Norman who is clinging to that last roll of film. Sitting down in the evening to watch a video of the hundred greatest goals ever scored, Little Norman cheering them all until Geoff Hurst cracked in his glorious third whereupon that crazy little fan just keels over on the rug and fall fast asleep, maybe knowing before everybody else that it would indeed soon all be over. And that terrifying, overpowering sensation as you had lain in bed that night, that terrible notion that, at sixteen, your childhood was now gone, that you were a child no more…

  These images were pasted on a wall in the long, dark hallway of Tom’s reminiscence, a corridor that grew longer and darker with every dream.

  A knock on the bedroom door tried to nudge Tom back to reality. The visions in his mind merged with one another until they were just one sweeping watercolour wash behind his eyes, devoid of form, replete with emotion. He made not a sound. He did not move. And you would have said for all the world that he was sleeping the sleep of a child.

  Tom’s mother knocked once more, waited, and entered quietly. She sighed as she saw her son there on the bed. He worked so hard, too hard. He was such a good boy. She had worried more than he could ever have thought that he would not find a job on leaving school; but he had. And she had been so proud of him. To see him in his suit and tie that first time was seeing him change from a boy to a man overnight. People who used to be good friends, but who now only spoke to her in embarrassing chance meetings, they would always comment on how much Tom had grown or how handsome he was. And for that brief, sparkling moment, she would be alive again. You would be able to see it in those dark eyes of hers. And she would stand just that little bit taller. Tom, Tom I love you. I need you so much. We both do your dad and me.

  She stepped softly across the room to the window and pulled the curtains together before retreating and gently closing the door behind her to put Tom’s dinner back in the oven. He could have it later, poor love.

  Tom heard the click of the door as it closed and he opened his eyes, immediately grateful for the half-light in his room. Everything was bathed in a scarlet glow as the evening sun seeped through the thin red curtains, creating an intangible aura. Beyond the bedroom door, another soap opera trundled along, peddling the tales of everyday folk, but there in Tom’s bedroom, there was silence. He could not be harmed in there, you see, not from the outside at least. But thoughts, you know what they are like, those nagging, devious creations that bring doubt and fear? Those thoughts can take you anywhere they please.

  The reds, the blues and the yellows had fallen from Tom’s life. The burning righteousness that once had held him in such wonder was gone. It had raged, flickered and then, well, just died. The naive hope of youth had given way to the cruel cynicism of adulthood, leaving the child within the man to shiver in the dank corner of his own petrified soul.

  In short, he had lost his spontaneity, his love of life. Each day differed from the last only by what was on the television or a change in the weather. Numbers meant nothing at all. People were just shapes. The world still turned, but inside him, Tom Spanner was static, lifeless, without motion. Monday was so far away from Tuesday. He was just living the same day over and over again. He was in a well of his own anguish and was barely able to look above for the light that surely beckoned him. Look at the light Tom. Look at it now, for there are inexplicable things that can one day happen to all of us.

  And, wouldn’t
you just know it? THE LIGHT burst into the room, shooting through a gap in the curtains and exploding onto an object that leaned against the foot of Tom’s bed. There it stood, glowing, as majestic as if it had been dispatched from heaven that very moment. Just look at it, Tom. Caress those curves, feel the power within it, the taut strings, the perfection of that long, slender neck, the splendour of the body. Oh that Beautiful Guitar.

  We all need a crutch at certain times in our lives, all of us. We all need something or someone to lean on, to help us to stand straight, to help us to walk unbowed in this frantic world of ours. Some of us choose people, some of us whisky. There are all kinds of crutches out there. Tom’s crutch was the Beautiful Guitar. It soothed him. It calmed him. It had stayed close to him always, never letting him down or betraying him. So precious was it to him, that it had never left his room. It was the looking glass through which he would ever lightly glide into his own private wonderland.

  So Tom stretched towards THE LIGHT at the end of his bed and picked up the Beautiful Guitar, holding it close to him. And he began to play. The notes danced slowly around the room, sweating, oozing from the fingers of this tortured young man. They floated in the red air, changing even its colour, slipping in and out of reality, and hanging on forever before wavering and finally easing into the night. Tom’s eyes were closed tight as he played and he winced as that most recognizable of pains broke from his big heart. Tears bit into his eyes and he could not hold them from streaking down his face. We had all loved Little Norman.

  Sometimes, all we can do is to keep on moving. Our mind and our heart deceive us into thinking that what we seek is out there somewhere, just waiting for us. And to a young man, who feels his life drifting away from him, the dreams of his youth tarnished and rotting, this desire to physically break free, to effect change, is as inevitable as it is destructive.

  So the following morning, just as the sun was rising, he left.

  It was as simple as that.

  He just left.

  The sun shimmered on the horizon and a slight breeze cooled Tom’s neck as he walked to the station. The pavement was cracked and uneven, the road hard and remorseless. Cars sped past on their way to work or returning home from the night shift. The houses that lined the road had stood there forever, observers of every season, every change, every wilful movement. And so many times had they seen a young man with a bag in one hand and a guitar case in the other, walking to the station, an expression of fear and hope on his face, an expression that not even the greatest actor could portray.

  It was as if a physical weight had been lifted from Tom’s bony shoulders. He felt light, inebriated. Thoughts were coming clear in his mind now, one after the other, unrestrained yet almost tangible. He began to look around him as he walked, looking above the cars and the buses, the smoke and the pressure. And he beheld the sky and the earth.

  The pigeons beneath the railway bridge bickered and shrieked, offended by the invasion of their territory by this curious young man. Tom though heard neither shrieking nor bickering, but merely a sweet song of nature. Inside the station itself, there was barely a sound. The noise of the pigeons faded away. And Tom stood there alone, quite, quite still. Then suddenly, two large birds swooped down from high above issuing loud, bellicose cries before escaping into the brightness of the morning.

  Bold shafts of light shone through gaps in the station roof, waltzing on the stone floor. Tom was serenity. A calmness of disposition enveloped him like a silken sheet. And for just a moment, as he made his way up the stone steps to the platform, he heard a choir singing.

  I pray for your safety boy. I really do.

  Tom sat down on a low plastic bench and waited for his train. Time was not an issue. He was not on his way to work or to meet anyone. There was no deadline. He was accountable to no one; for he was writing his own script now.

  Tenuously suspended from the platform roof was a large clock that clacked away the time until, finally, a low drone could be heard. Then with a clattering roar and a painful screech, a train came to a stuttering halt. Tom picked up the Beautiful Guitar in one hand and his bag in the other and boarded. The train ground reluctantly into motion once more, shaking and rattling, coughing and wheezing down the crooked line to Big Town.

  Tom had not been altogether practical with regard to his preparations for leaving. Having made the decision to go, it had all seemed suddenly so simple, so easy. Sitting on the end of his bed, he had placed the Beautiful Guitar gently into its hard, black case and fastened the catches. For the first time since it had come into Tom’s life, it would be leaving his room. They would both be on their way. He had then searched the various pairs of jeans and trousers that lay strewn across the floor, retrieving any money he could find and cramming it into the back pocket of the jeans he was wearing. At this point, he had paused to think for a moment. But a moment is no time at all when you are about to search for your future.

  After a glance through the curtains at the rising sun, Tom had taken his old school bag from the bottom of his wardrobe and thrown in a sweatshirt, a book and what was left of his packet of cigarettes. And then, ever so carefully, he took the small, framed photograph of Little Norman that he kept by his bed and eased it into the folds of the sweatshirt, wrapping the cloth tight around it as if the photograph itself had just been bathed. You would have thought he was handling his own shattered heart, so careful was he.

  Tom, if just then you had taken the time to gaze into those wide blue eyes of your baby brother, had allowed the tears to truly fall, let your anger, your guilt and your fear overwhelm you, perhaps then your story could have ended here. But fair play to you son, fair play.

  Having sat down on the train, Tom tried to stand the Beautiful Guitar between his knees, but it was too uncomfortable a squeeze, so he placed it in the empty aisle beside him, putting his left arm around it as if it were a loved one. Settling back into the torn seat, he closed his eyes and felt a wonderful peace within.

  And soon the land of hope and glory unfurled itself before Tom’s eyes, rolling by like a home movie shot through a train window. He had only ever been to Big Town before on lonely drinking sprees and had never looked towards the windows except out of maudlin curiosity when confronted by the reflection of a particularly attractive woman or a singularly strange looking man. Either way, he had never focused any attention on that which streamed by outside. Now, on this beautiful morning, he gazed in awe and let his soul take hold.

  Those fields are incredible. If any proof were required of man’s complete inferiority to nature, you need only look out of the window of a screaming train as it rips through the countryside - crops standing tall, spiky, coarse and bristling, soft purple heather spreading out in a deep, rich ocean of decadence. Fields replete with stacks of pure sustenance, bubbling under the surface with life and virility. The hedges and the stone walls, walls put together stone by stone by stone, a contribution of man almost on a par with the natural, ragged perfection that surrounds them. The brick farmhouses stand there cowering, sterile and lonely amidst all that rampant beauty. And the sheep and the cows and the horses that have surely stood in that very place forever as if they too were the products of the very soil beneath them.

  There is life.

  Man had once lived by the land, nurturing it, working with it, reaping its good and suffering its failures. It had been a vast and wondrous task.

  As Tom stared out of the train window, he tried to imagine how the land had once looked, free from all the blemishes of progress that were becoming more and more prevalent the closer the train got to Big Town. With each scene that passed, he consciously removed the steel pylons, the telegraph poles and the golf courses. He discarded the aircraft that flew so slowly overhead, the black smoke that billowed from all around and those strange, squat buildings with the barbed wire and the ‘Keep Out’ signs.

  And there before him lay a sight profound. Stretches of unbroken forest, dark and green, strolling majestically into the dis
tance; people in the field, writhing with the earth until sweat stung their eyes; and sheafs of corn in giant, endless rows, marching in time to empty stomachs and blistered skin.

  Tom was sure that man had once sought merely to live - to eat, to live, to survive. Just to live. He had sought not to conquer nature but to exist with it, respecting it, fearing it even. But little by little, this basic simplicity had been stripped away to reveal burns and scars and scorched hearts. One insistent word had precipitated the fall to enrichment. And that word was ‘more’. This unbridled yearning had ensured that with each improvement in productivity, in economic management and in streamlined efficiency, so there would be born upon this earth a new generation of the deprived.

  So as this young man’s agrarian vision began to fade so the scenes before him became infiltrated by dirty grey buildings with jagged windows and factories left to rot beside rivers and streams that had themselves turned green and black with the grimy power of failure. Foliage crawled over the rusty corrugated roofs, forcing its way into the bleak interior. Rows of houses like rabbit hutches filled the train window, each back garden separated from the other by a rickety wooden fence to which was attached what seemed to be one continuous washing line from which damp clothes hung limply. No sun ever dried these clothes, not even on the hottest of days. That task was left to the rattling wind that tormented these dwellings day and night. Each garden contained more stone than grass, more shadow than light.

  And the train roared on.

  Tom became shocked by the squalor and the coldness of all he saw as he approached Big Town. He as much as passed judgement on the people, with one fleeting thought condemning them; for he had to protect himself. But in that instant, he learned his first lesson. For as the train edged into the final tunnel on its approach to the station, it was his own face that he saw reflected in the black window, his own face. And in that face fluttered an expression of aloofness and subdued contempt. And as the train came out of the tunnel and eased into the station, Tom felt ashamed. The feeling hit him in the stomach and almost wrenched the guts out of him. Shame. It’s as good a place to start as any. Try it some time.