The Lost Souls' Reunion (24 page)

*   *   *

I heard the purr of the car coming towards me and I held my breath.

It came to a stop beside me. I continued to walk.

Jonah shouted, ‘Please let me talk to you.'

He drove beside me at a snail's pace. He talked on and on about how he had not seen me, how he had not meant to harm me.

I stopped then and turned to see his white face peering out. The boy lost in it. The wind snapped harder, I thought that if I got in I would help that boy. The wind lashed my legs together, pleading with me not to do it.

The back seat still had my bloodstains.

‘I'll be getting it cleaned,' Jonah promised, as if he believed it was the car I was concerned about. He was overcome with happiness. He had found me on the road, before even reaching the home. More than a sign, it was a decision made.

If I had not got into his car to go the mile up the road I would not have taken the road marked out to this night.

Then I saw it only as a means of beginning the work I knew would have to be done between Jonah and Thomas. He talked. How well off he was, how well-regarded he was, how his life had only settled lately but he knew exactly what he wanted to do now.

I did not look at him. I stared out of the window and I watched the road-lining brambles as if they might never break and reveal the high stone pillars of St Manis's gates. My fear was still in this car, its markings on the back seat. I felt them call out: ‘Get away!'

My head was pounding. The roar of ten drums, in it. Even as the car snailed along I felt the wave of sickness and asked him please to stop and got out as all of my fear came out of me in a rush. The wind caught it and covered me and the side of his car. He came along beside me and cried, ‘What's wrong with you?'

‘I'm not used to cars.'

‘Why did you get in if you felt sick?'

‘You have other stains of mine to clean up,' I said, wiping my mouth.

I walked on and he sat in his car and watched me all the way until I had turned the corner and gone through the gates. I heard his car roar past, carrying all his anger with it. I went into the patients' washroom and sponged my coat and Margaret found me there. She gazed at me without blinking.

‘Have another accident, did you?'

‘It's nothing.'

I draped my coat on the heater, the steam rose off it and the air was filled with the strong smell of damp turning to dry.

Thomas came in, carrying his shaver and soap, it was not the scented kind of soap but it had its own distinctive smell of Thomas. He nodded to both of us and went to the mirror to lather up. I caught the lines of his back and I could not stop looking or wanting to look. Eventually Thomas barked, ‘Can't a man shave in peace without two girls watching him? Does a man have no right to privacy in this place? Have you no work to be getting on with, the pair of you?'

Outside Margaret said old bastard and I agreed.

Joe O'Reilly was arguing with himself over who would wash out the sluice and bathroom and I said I would do it. I went into the washroom as the men sat down to breakfast and I found him there, still scraping at his chin.

‘Well,' he smiled. ‘That is the slowest shave I have ever had.'

I closed the door and the air was filled with the scent of my damp coat and I began to cry because it reminded me of Jonah and the fear. I did not know how to say it to Thomas. He came to hold me and I cried tears until they stopped.

‘All this beauty and these tears wasted on an old man. Too much on your shoulders,' he whispered.

He knew who I was, but he did not know what went into making me. I had more than him to carry. Later in the day I found him with Black going through his pictures.

I saw the care that had been put into preserving these pictures and that this was the care that had restored Thomas to himself, a care he had no idea he possessed.

‘You know, Thomas,' said Black. ‘I would like you to take my photograph before I die. I would like you to do that. Take a picture that says I used to be good-looking, not a carcass.'

Thomas said he did not take pictures any more and Mr Black went quiet and the corners of his mouth were dragged down towards the death he knew was coming.

‘It's a shame,' he said. ‘When a man no longer does what he is good at.'

Later in the day I took up one of Thomas's photo albums for myself. The first picture was of a beautiful woman eating a strange fruit.

‘It's dragon fruit,' Thomas told me. ‘The Vietnamese eat it because they believe that it gives them the heart and the courage of a dragon.'

‘What does it taste like?'

‘Like a sweet and spongy nothing with seeds in it. It's the only way they can persuade themselves to eat it in my opinion. But they are a very brave people. If Black is right about me, then I need to get some dragon fruit.'

I smiled at him and turned back to the book of photos.

A thin black woman as long as life, wrapped in white cloth, her hands held up to her face, to shield herself from the light. She looked at me through her hands and I knew her as only those who have been to death and back know each other.

‘She had a fever which had lasted six, maybe seven days,' Thomas told me. ‘It was a sickness. All of them were dying. But the help didn't come. The people piled the bodies and burned them at night. The stench was terrible, and across the Mara you could see these bonfires and hear the people wailing all the night long. When I came to the village she was well, then she grew sick and during the whole of her illness I followed her, for a picture story to show what happens when the outside medical resources do not come. I thought that showing one would make more difference than showing many. We expected the last picture to be her body being placed on the bonfire. Her family were lucky, they had a shroud still, others had lost too many. They had already wrapped her up when I woke. She had become still and cool. They thought the death would be soon. The others had all had a sudden cooling before they died.

‘But she was a strong woman. Her fever had broken and she walked out of her hut like this,' Thomas pointed to the eyes squinting through hands. ‘The sunlight blinded her – she had been in the dark so many days. They said it was a miracle. They wanted me to take pictures of all their sick, to save them from death. They believed the camera had saved her. I pretended to take the pictures. They all died.

‘I won an award for this picture,' Thomas said softly. ‘I never saw this woman again.'

He cried because he had discovered that somewhere inside himself he had indeed carried them all, all those he had photographed.

I put my arm around him and his shoulders shook. Sister Mauritius found us that way. I was called into her office once more and she said, ‘First I find you with your arm around the son. Now it is the father. You are on your last warning. If you do not behave appropriately then you are not fit to work here.'

‘He was upset, Sister. I comforted him.'

‘We are in the business of looking after, not comforting.'

When I came back to the ward Jonah was sitting at Thomas's bedside.

30 ∼ Paid Twice to Look Once

J
ONAH WAS STARING
at the albums, asking his father where they had come from.

Now the son had come to his bedside the father could find no words to say to him.

‘I asked you where you got these?' Jonah repeated.

‘From a friend who had kept them for me,' Thomas finally spoke.

‘What else have you hidden away?' Jonah said, standing above him.

‘Well, that would be my own concern,' said Thomas. ‘But I will tell you that you need not worry about money. You have every penny.'

‘Where is Sive?' Jonah asked. If Thomas knew about the accident he had not mentioned it.

‘She's with the matron,' the guarded note in Thomas's voice.

‘I gave her a lift this morning. Did she tell you that?'

‘What were you doing around here at that hour?'

‘Coming to see you, Father, but she vomited all over my car so I had to go and have it cleaned. She's not used to cars, did she tell you?'

‘She did not. Leave her alone, Jonah. I am warning you. Any trouble you bring should be brought straight to me.'

‘Oh, I do not want to be any trouble to her,' he smiled.

‘You can't help it. It's in your nature.'

‘But this is not the way to talk to your son, Father. This is not the way to talk to a son you write a letter to, asking to see him, to talk.'

Thomas got out of his chair and sat on his bed, offering Jonah the chair. He did not like his son towering over him.

‘I wanted to explain some things.'

Jonah drew himself out of the chair and sat on the arm, so his gaze was level with his father's.

‘Plenty of time to discuss things again. I mean to visit a lot more than I have done.'

‘I am going to leave here soon, make a home elsewhere. I do not want you to follow me. I do not want you to think I have anything more to give you,' Thomas could not help but speak. ‘I want you only to know that I will never come after you for what you took from me. It is yours and you are welcome to it.'

Jonah looked at his father a long while. Then he said softly, ‘I would prefer it if you stayed here.'

‘You have no say in what I do.'

‘I have plenty of say. You have no money. I pay for you to stay here and without that money you are on the street with nothing for company but the creaking of your bones.'

Thomas smiled at this.

‘For all the son you claim to be you do not know me. I am plenty more than my money.'

Jonah rose, did not leave Thomas enough room to rise.

‘I have my reasons for wanting you here. If you do not stay you will be worse off for it. I will find you.'

And he was gone, saying, ‘I'll just see if the girl wants a lift. She must be heading home soon.'

‘You leave her alone, Jonah.'

Jonah could not find me. I had hidden when I saw the car.

‘Why did you not tell me he met you this morning?' Thomas knew where I would be; in the washroom.

‘Now is not the time to talk about this, Thomas,' I pleaded. ‘Sister Mauritius has me on my last warning.'

‘Keep away from him, Sive!' Thomas's voice rose. ‘He is dangerous.'

‘Do you think I do not know that? That's why I asked you to speak with him. But you only make things worse between you. He is your son and you make things worse between you.'

‘He is not my son. How many times do I have to say it?'

Thomas's eyes held an aching, an aching to hold me and to put the wrong he was continuing to do, to rights. But he saw I would not come to him and he left me to put on my coat, which had hardened with the day on the radiator.

I walked home through the fields, to avoid the road. I took the same way to work the next morning.

*   *   *

Jonah waited on the road for two hours the next morning. No sign. He drove up and down the narrow twisting road. He killed a sparrow, its tiny heart gave way as the pearl-blue monster with the shining eyes swallowed it up, mashing its heat and feathers into the cold and uncaring road.

Jonah parked his car by the gate and began to pace and smoke. He had not been able to sleep that night. He had thought of all the possibilities and had decided there was only one way with me, the right way.

He would become perfect for me. He would not make mistakes. If I was fond of his father then his father could be brought to live with us and he would make all of this work for me, make all of this right for me.

He knew he would have to work hard to win my trust. He thought of the shape of me and of the smooth skin that held that shape. He could buy clothes for my fine shape and dress me up and take me to fine places where I would be treated like a someone, instead of someone who slaved for those who were beyond thanking me for it.

He took his last cigarette and crumpled the empty packet, throwing it to the ground, and turned to shelter his lit match from the wind. I walked across the lawns, from a gap in the hedgerow. The flame burned towards his fingers and caught the tips of them and burned on and he did not feel it.

He stared at me disappearing into the building without a glance to left or right and he knew I sensed him and he saw the fear in the sensing. He got into his car, drove a short distance up the drive and parked it in full view of every window. Margaret was inside the door of the porch.

‘You are not allowed to visit now,' she said. ‘It's after ten o'clock the visiting starts.'

‘Then I will wait.' He smiled a thin smile and asked her, ‘Do you have cigarettes?'

‘In the tin shop-box, but that's not open until ten either, when the men go to the dayroom and the sister comes with the key.'

‘Will you open it now?' he asked, waving a five-pound note at her. ‘And keep the change.'

Margaret took the money, found the sister, got the key, opened the box and scampered back with the cigarettes with all the joy of a dog that has learned to retrieve.

‘Well done,' Jonah smiled and Margaret looked away, nervous of that smile. ‘Would you like one?'

‘Don't smoke,' Margaret sat on the bench beside him.

‘What do you do here, then?' Jonah asked.

And Margaret told him. He nodded for the several minutes it took her to tell him and he asked if she would like to earn more money. She said yes, because the wages were shite in here.

Then he told her how she might earn more.

‘I have to go now,' she said, ‘wait here till ten,' and she laughed so her teeth and gums were bared and she danced a little and said in a whisper, ‘Paid twice to look once. I can get rich at this.'

31 ∼ Like Old Times

I
T TOOK ME SOME TIME
, when I came through the door, to place the two strange women sitting at the table with Carmel and Eddie. Myrna was in a chair by the fire, roused by the visitors' appearance from a bed she had not left for weeks.