A Cleansing of Souls Read online

  It took Tom a moment to adjust. He had expected Michael to be gone when he awoke.

  “What’s the time?” he asked, drowsily.

  “Around six I think, Tom, although I couldn’t really be sure.”

  Tom nodded and leaned back, yawning.

  “Still on the tired side?” inquired Michael smiling kindly.

  “I’ll be all right.”

  And thus each man leaned forward simultaneously. There was a profound silence as their bodies, slightly hunched but perfectly still, shook within.

  The sky is a perfect blue. The flowers, the grass and the trees have leapt straight from Vincent Van Gogh’s soul.

  Man is so small, so slight.

  Man is surely the thorn upon the rose that is this earth.

  The afternoon had played tricks with Tom’s mind. During his sleep, a frightening vagueness of purpose had crept up on him, blurring his ideals, muddying the clear waters of his optimism. And he couldn’t shake it off. The sun and the burger had combined to add a feeling of nausea to his already unsettled state. As he sat there on the bench he felt fear and loneliness. He also felt a little foolish, but most of all, he felt alone, terribly alone.

  Tom’s loneliness was compounded by an empty sensation within him, a dense void, and a heavy, indefinable pain that stung him with images of earlier times. He was in bed, wrapped in cold blankets on a winter’s evening, twelve years old, his homework still to be done and school again tomorrow. His mother had kissed him goodnight and walked to the door to turn off the light, leaving him in darkness and silence. And as she had opened the door to leave, he had closed his eyes, praying so hard that she would turn back and just hold him for a while. ‘Mum, mum just hold me please. I’m scared and confused. And I know everything will be all right if you just hold me.’ That was a long time ago now, but those feelings cruelly returned to him now. He just wanted to be held.

  Michael was perceptive. He could see into your soul. For it was the very plane upon which he himself lived.

  “Well, I’d best be off now,” he said, gathering his energy. “I’m going to the library. Bit of a read, you know, before they close. The papers, that sort of thing.”

  Michael rose from the bench. He looked down upon the head of the young boy and put his hand upon his shoulder, squeezing it gently, massaging it almost.

  “You can come too, Tom,” he said softly. “If you want to.”

  Tom offered no audible reply. He just stood up as if he were being lifted, guided. And he could see himself from above, guitar in hand. For this crucial moment, every movement was scripted, written in parenthesis. There was nothing for him to do but to watch and let it all happen - to watch and to wonder at the heavy beating of his own heart.

  The evening sun began to quail beneath the smoke and the fumes of Big Town. The visible cloud of pollution filtered the falling rays of sunlight until they were weak and dim, barely able to light the way of the man and the boy who wandered out of the park onto the ragged streets upon which they both were strangers.

  The library was divided into two floors, the lower for borrowing and browsing, the upper for study and research. Books lined the walls opposite the entrance and continued down both sides of the ground floor. Michael led Tom to a spiral stairway in the centre and they both ascended to the haven of learning.

  The door to the upper floor study area was heavy and stiff and Tom needed all his strength to hold it open whilst Michael slipped through, and just avoided the snapping jaws himself as the door slammed shut behind him.

  Indignant eyes were raised.

  There were twenty-four tables across the floor, aligned in uniform rows. Huge wooden bookcases rested against every wall and a small reception area, just in front of the door through which Tom and Michael had just entered, abounded with leaflets, posters and advertisements for various local community groups and activities.

  Students, both mature and immature, occupied all but one of the desks, some there to study, others for more spurious reasons. The tables had been designed to comfortably accommodate four people – two either side of a low partition. But the ugly instinct of the learned had been at work. Open books and bags lay strewn across the desks, taking up space, ensuring that the lone occupant of each desk remained undisturbed by intruders, undefiled. The territory had been marked.

  There is so much to learn.

  There is so little that can be taught.

  Silence returned to the library, though the slamming door could still be heard reverberating dully against every wall. And those eyes that stared at Tom and Michael on the moment of their arrival and continued to stare at them as they stood before the reception area, those eyes were SO COLD.

  The librarian appeared from below the counter like some slow motion jack-in-a-box, wavering slightly as he gained his full height. He was a tall, thin man wearing a beige suit that had perhaps been designed for somebody slightly shorter and slightly larger. He had large, sad eyes and a voice that sounded like wood cracking.

  “How may I help you?” he asked.

  “I would like to see the newspapers, please,” replied Michael.

  After a suitably studious look at the two men before him, the librarian turned and walked slowly to the rear of the cramped booth. He came back after some moments with a stack of newspapers, his sandals slapping on the tile floor and his head bobbing up and down in sympathy with the agonizing oratorio of his life.

  “Well, Tom,” said Michael as they sat down opposite each other at the vacant table, “what do you fancy?”

  He lined the newspapers up for Tom, presenting them to him as if they were great sketches.

  Tom shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t care. He was just glad to be around people. He was glad of the light and of the normality of the place. He took a newspaper anyway and began to flick through it with little interest.

  Michael gathered the rest of the newspapers together and arranged them neatly on top of each other on his side of the table, taking care not to take up too much room. He then reached into a canvas bag, his only accoutrement, and took out a small notepad and pencil. After a moments thought, he rose, scanned the bookcase behind him and returned to his seat with a small hardback book. A final flash of sunlight reflected off the book’s laminated cover and dazzled Tom’s eyes. He was thus provoked into watching what Michael was doing.

  Arriving at the page in the first newspaper with the crossword on it, Michael used the pencil and the spine of the hardback book to transcribe the crossword grid onto a clear page in the notepad. Once the grid was complete, he flipped over to another clear page, took the next newspaper, found the crossword and repeated the process. It was only after Michael had drawn the third grid that Tom noticed no attempt had been made by Michael to either number the squares or copy out the clues. It was just the columns and rows of black and white that seemed to matter, particularly those black squares that Michael shaded in with such force.

  Only once had Tom been to a library before of his own volition. He had skulked amongst the shelves during school hours but his first willing foray had been when he was sixteen years old.

  Between the ages of thirteen and seventeen, he had fallen in love so many times. He had loved each girl more than the last, and each in turn had repaid him by being more and more oblivious to his undying affection. In his mind, he had gone through all the stages of love, from initial infatuation to eventual disenchantment. In his mind, he had experienced warmth, loss, longing and desire. In reality, he had barely spoken to any of these girls. He had just made them too big, too special even to approach. They had become angels in his eyes - and why not?

  Ah, what a woman can do to a man.

  Rebecca had been Tom’s last and fondest love, preceded in this most tortuous of adolescence, by Paula, Natalie, Gaynor, Juliet, Ruth, Susan and Charlotte. But they had been as nothing compared to Rebecca. They had been the prelude, she the finale.

  He had loved Rebecca for her pure and natural ways, her innocence and h
er charm. She had possessed none of the petty affectation of her classmates. She had been gentle and kind.

  Tom had followed her home once, from a distance, in the cold rain. He had followed her through the park and out onto the street where she lived, waiting there until she had gone into her house. He had resisted the temptation to do it again, but to have tasted just a part of her life, to have walked for just a moment where she had walked, seen what she saw every day, had been beautiful to him.

  Rebecca had worked in a shop on Saturdays that sold records, tapes and videos and Tom had become a frequent, if furtive, visitor. He would roam the aisles, searching, and having located her, would gaze at her from behind the records. The snapping of that price gun in her hand mesmerized him. Bang. Bang. Bang…

  But one day, he had been unmasked for the lovelorn fool he was. That fateful day, he had been unable to find Rebecca in her usual place on the ground floor, so he had made his way cautiously up the stairs to the first floor where the videos were displayed and sold. He had never been up there before and had been struck by how much quieter and more open it was. He had been in the process of concealing himself behind a display of videos when he saw her, not five yards away, talking to a customer.

  To his eternal credit, he had not panicked, and to his huge relief, he had been sure she had not seen him. But what was that? Footsteps coming closer and closer!

  Clack…Clack…Clack… beautiful perfume wafting nearer and nearer. He had known instantly that it was her. No one clacked like she did. Thinking frantically, he had decided on the casual approach. Be cool. Be the tall, dark stranger in town.

  So, there he had stood, legs wide, feet firmly on the ground, hands clasped manfully behind his back - at ease, sir. And as Rebecca had come around the corner to say hello to that sweet boy in her class that she was so secretly in love with, there he had been – COOL – SHARP - and gazing in abject horror at row upon row of naked women sprawled across the covers of the pornographic videos before him, all huge breasts and red lips…

  It had been that afternoon that Tom had felt the need to visit the public library. He had needed a quiet place to think. For a re-appraisal of strategy had seemed in order.

  And now, here he was just a few years later, leaving a library in Big Town, stepping into the fading light with a man he didn’t know, on his way to who knows where.

  The little girl is no longer weeping beneath the sweating body of her father.

  Michael is in Big Town now.

  Chapter 4

  Two days later, in a large house in the country, a bronze letterbox snapped shut. Christine was drinking a cup of tea in the study when she heard the noise. Although she had been waiting on that sound and reacting to it every day for the last week, it still startled her each time. She was a tall woman with long, dark wavy hair that had not yet given way to the grey strands of age. Her face was slightly angular, though softened by her brown eyes. Those very eyes, usually so bright, were now tired and sore, her face sallow and weary. The natural strength and purpose that had always pervaded her was daily faltering.

  The study was a room in which she had always been reluctant to spend time. Her husband had always insisted upon calling it a study – as far as he insisted upon anything – but what he actually studied in there, she had never been sure. There were no books, no writing equipment, no journals, computers or any other signs of learned endeavour, just a large wooden desk with a telephone on it set facing the patio doors and the garden.

  For the last seven days, Christine had woken early, sat in the leather chair behind the desk and gazed into the garden as the sun had lit up the dew like tiny torches and the birds had heralded the morning.

  When she heard the crack of the letterbox, Christine put her cup and saucer on the desk and went out into the hall, trying to suppress the curious mixture of fear and resignation that was gradually becoming so much a part of her. She bent down. Another bill, another circular. Please let there be something from him.

  On the doormat was a small, white envelope, so small in fact that the postmark had almost entirely obliterated the address. Recognizing the handwriting on the front, Christine tore it open hurriedly. Then just for a moment, time stood still as a thin piece of paper slipped out, swaying from side to side, floating to the floor beneath some invisible parachute. She crouched down and picked it up and holding the small piece of paper between thumb and forefinger, she gazed at the words that had been written so precisely between the black squares.

  She felt her knees crack as she rose and she winced a little. She took the piece of paper into the study and, brushing the cup and saucer inadvertently as she sat behind the desk, picked up the telephone.

  “Ron, it’s Chris. Can you come over?”

  “Is he back?”

  “No, no he’s not back. I’ve just received a note from him through the post. Can you come round? I know it’s early.”

  “I’ll be as quick as I can.”

  Ron was a stocky, muscular man with sturdy legs and a thick, strong neck. He was fifty-five years old and had been married to his wife, Diane, for seventeen years. He was a man of order and a man of reason. And thus he lived his life. Even now, following the early morning call from his close friend, he dressed slowly, meticulously. He was in no hurry. Time was his to command.

  At last, combing some oil through his already lank hair, and applying after-shave as if he were washing his face with it, he stepped into the day.

  “What do you think?” asked Christine as she and Ron sat beside one another on the sofa in the beautifully ornate lounge.

  “At least we know he’s all right,” replied Ron. “It could have been worse.”

  As he had walked the short distance to Christine’s house, he had imagined perhaps a more tragic message.

  “Who’s to say it’s not going to get worse? That bastard has kept me waiting here day after day, just waiting. I don’t know where he is, what he’s doing. He hasn’t even phoned. And when he does deign to get in touch, he can’t even bloody do that normally.” Christine paused, angry, tearful. “He doesn’t even say when he’s coming back,” she added, almost to herself. She lit another cigarette and smoked in agitation. “I thought I knew him,” she said softly, staring straight ahead now, the pain of the last few days clambering over her crumbling defences. She shook a little and turned towards Ron, her face that of a child, a child that has been betrayed for the very first time. “I thought I bloody knew him.”

  Ron continued to look at her face before averting his eyes at the moment her final words wafted into the morning.

  Christine was thinking now of the moment she realised he had gone. That evening seven days ago when he didn’t come home from work, she had waited up until gone midnight in sullen anger, before falling asleep on the sofa where she now sat with Ron. And she had awoken with spiteful anticipation, ready to curse him for his lack of responsibility and his complete lack of awareness of how a married man with a child should conduct himself. But he had not been there at all.

  So all that rage, that violent energy, was left to churn within her where now it just ached and throbbed. Two days had passed then two nights, then another and another. It was a gradual realisation, a feeling of deep fear. A part of her world was gone. And this fear, this foreboding gripped her from the depths of her stomach straight through to her heart. It was debilitating and crushing. And she had become angry and irritable; not consistently but at times when he should have been there – when she was doing a puzzle in one of her magazines and she couldn’t ask him the answer or when Laura wanted to play one of those games he had created for her. Or when she got out too many plates for dinner. Or when she awoke in the night so cold even at the peak of summer. At these times, she had been acutely, unbearably aware of his absence. His presence had almost seemed insignificant, but his absence left a huge gap. She was angry both with him and with herself. But it was anger that could not find expression. For he had always been that subservient well of tranquillity
into which she would discharge her rage.

  “It’s just his way, Chris,” said Ron, putting a hand on her shoulder.

  “Don’t touch me!” she replied sharply.

  Ron withdrew, stung, and sat stiffly once more.

  A dark and heavy silence fell upon them both.

  Footsteps clumped along the pavement outside, quietly at first, then more loudly, before fading into the air. Christine’s tattered heart beat faster as the steps grew louder and just throbbed as they drifted away. The waiting was destroying her in as much as she was soon going to have to look at herself, apportion blame perhaps. She did not know how much she had needed him until he was gone. She had not known how much he had meant to her until he wasn’t there at all. These thoughts settled in her mind now like vagabonds, tormenting her with their sense and clarity.

  “Ron,” she said finally, “you’ve known him longer than I have. What is he doing? Why is he doing this to me?”

  Ron paused before replying, deliberating over his response.

  “I would say we just have to be patient, Chris. You know how he is, his ways. And you know how much he loves you. He needs you, Chris. He’ll be back soon. We just have to be patient.”

  Christine looked deep into Ron’s face. He was always so sure, so dependable, and so different from her husband. She looked down at her slippers, staring as if awaiting advice from them. And then a thought crashed into her mind, blazing, urgent. She had fear all over her and turned her eyes upon Ron. But he met her gaze with calmness and assurance. He had been there. He had experienced that intense fear; for a thought just as explosive, though very different in content, had occurred to him the day he found out Michael had gone. Guilt shows no compassion.

  “Chris, Chris. He loves you. And he loves Laura.”

  There, there.

  As he was walking back home, Ron felt he had done enough to reassure Christine, though he was having difficulty convincing himself that all would turn out well. Through all the years he had known Michael, he had never quite been able to work him out, had never really been able to say ‘yes, this, this and this are what Michael is made up of and this is what he is all about’. There were problems posed by Michael’s character to which answers appeared wilfully elusive. Ron found him at times impossible to comprehend. He didn’t really know Michael. He just knew more about him that was all. He had helped to steer him through the cruelty of children. He had guided him, looked out for him. And now he was gone.