The Lost Souls' Reunion (32 page)

‘Have you any?' Jonah looked at him and looked through him.

‘I have,' Eddie whispered. ‘It's in the kitchen.'

‘Get it,' Jonah said softly.

There was half a bottle. Eddie wondered whether to pour some of it off, down the sink, or whether to give it all to Jonah. He was still deliberating when the voice came.

‘Now. Get back here now.'

Eddie went to the back door, called, ‘Coming!' as he unbolted it.

It opened.

Eddie came back with two tumblers. Jonah waited as he filled them and watched and sipped.

The hour slipped by and Jonah did not stop until there was an empty bottle. Eddie had matched him for every second drink.

‘Waiting,' Jonah said, ‘is a boring business.'

Eddie nodded.

The drink had rubbed off the edges of Jonah's need. But the ache was still there and the ache grew into a pain in his head that pounded against his temples. His stomach was cramped and rough gas rose up to the back of his throat. He rubbed his hands at his temples and his stomach heaved and he leaned forward and retched.

‘Have you eaten all day?' said Eddie. ‘I could get you a sandwich.'

‘I couldn't eat. What man could eat when his own father and his own woman go off together? What man could eat with all that goes on against him?'

Eddie nodded.

‘I will have words with her about that. She should not have done that.'

Jonah looked at him.

‘You're not her father.'

‘God, no.'

‘Then you'll say nothing to her. She is my concern now.'

Eddie rubbed his damp hands along his thighs.

‘When did you start going with her?'

Jonah did not answer. There was silence for a time. Then Jonah said, ‘She is not worth this.'

Eddie was quick to agree. ‘You'd be better off with someone else.'

‘I chose her. You cannot help who you choose.' Then it happened. Jonah's stomach heaved and his head pounded and it seemed as if I would never come home and he roared suddenly, ‘Get your wife out here! She's been hours in there.'

‘Listen,' Eddie spoke with the care a cat walks a thin ledge. ‘You have no row with her. Leave her out of it and we'll sort this out together – man to man.'

‘Get her out I tell you.' Jonah drew out the gun from his coat and then the long blade. ‘Get her out here.'

Eddie called Carmel. Carmel let the hand of Myrna fall. Myrna did not rise to help them. Myrna did not turn to watch Carmel leave the room.

Carmel went to Eddie and Eddie took her hand.

‘That's nice,' Jonah said. ‘Tell me about your daughter.'

Carmel looked at Eddie, Jonah sprang from his chair and pulled her by the hair towards him.

‘Tell. Me. About. Your. Daughter.'

Eddie reached for Jonah's other arm.

‘Get off her, get off her now. You're making it worse for yourself.'

Jonah threw Carmel back in the chair.

‘Did you warn her that I was here? Did she come back another way? What is taking them so long?'

Jonah began walking up and down. Then he stopped and turned to Carmel again, who was weeping softly and curled up on herself in the chair.

‘What sort of woman allows her daughter to take up with an old man?'

He moved towards Carmel carrying the blade, which glinted in the firelight. Carmel reached for Eddie.

‘Easy now,' Eddie whispered, trying to keep the fear from his own voice.

‘I'll be easy when she talks. Talk woman, talk about your daughter.'

Carmel looked at Jonah.

‘My daughter is Sive.'

Jonah smiled.

‘And what else can you tell me?'

Carmel wiped her eyes and watched the fire reflected in the blade, and it was to that fire she spoke.

‘You don't need my daughter. Have me. I know what to do. I've done it before, many times. I know what to do, I do what makes you happy.'

‘I don't want you,' Jonah's lips curled around the words. ‘I don't want what any man can have. Sive had you for an example. No wonder,' he licked his dry lips.

Eddie put his head in his hands.

‘We could all do with another drink, Carmel,' he said softly.

The overhead light was uncovered, it cast harshness all about, and there were no welcoming shadows to shrink into.

‘Get the other bottle of whiskey, Carmel,' Eddie repeated. ‘In the kitchen. The one by the door.'

Both Jonah and Carmel looked at Eddie.

‘The big bottle at the door. Go and get it, Carmel.'

Carmel rose and Jonah did not stop her.

In the kitchen she saw the open doorway. She walked towards it. No one knew the ground here as well as Carmel. She went out into the night and had begun running when the first shot rang out. It stopped her in her tracks. The second brought her running back to the house.

Eddie lay in a heavy-breathing pile of blood and bared bone. He moaned and Jonah kicked him over on to his back.

‘I had to do it. You let her run off.'

Jonah did not hear the sound of the returning Carmel, her feet too light for that. She reached for something to bring it to an end and she found the poker. She brought it down on his head and Jonah brought his hands up with a great roar. He kicked at her wildly.

His foot found the soft hollow of her belly and it took the wind out of her, she rolled on to her back, gasping. Her long hair fell into the open fire. The burning began. Eddie wrenched himself around and began to crawl towards her. Carmel's long hair was all vibrant red for one glorious moment. She brought out a lump of firing with her bare hands and ran at Jonah.

He brought his hand up to shield his face. The burning woman put her coal into his open palm. He reached for the blade.

And it was the blade with the fire reflected on it that went into Carmel's belly and it brought fire with it. The air was filled with smoke. Carmel fell to her knees and reached for the dying man who had been her only love.

They held each other and they lay there, under Jonah's feet, until the moans stilled and the bodies with them.

Jonah sat, trembling, his hand joined the roar-chorus in his head and it throbbed and ached and he went into the back room where the old woman was laid out and took the sheet covering her face and left her death open to the air.

‘It was not meant to go this way,' he reasoned with the still form. ‘No one tells the truth. No one but me. I have to make sure that I tell Sive the truth when she comes. I have to make sure she knows what must happen and what must not happen. This has all gone wrong because no one will do as they are told. I will tell her that.'

He felt the ice-blade against his neck. The ghost of Noreen Moriarty had returned from taking Myrna off to where she was going. The ghost of Noreen Moriarty bared her teeth at Jonah Cave and followed him when he ran from Myrna to the next room.

Jonah sat at the table with the ice-blade against his neck. I did not come home for another hour. It was already night again. He could not forgive now. It had all gone on too long.

*   *   *

I cried out and fell on my mother and my mother's love, Eddie. I wailed and Jonah came to me and pulled me off them and said, with his hands around my waist, my neck, with his lips against my ear, ‘This is all because of you, because of you. It is up to you to put this right.'

39 ∼ All Redemption Gone

‘W
E WILL GO TO
the room, the furthest room,' Jonah said. ‘We have a lot to talk about. We can to go to the furthest room from this one where we can talk.'

I would not leave them. I clung to them screeching and he pulled me, by the hair, to the room, and he held the blade against my throat. I prayed for Myrna to return.

‘Why leave,' I whispered as I moved and bent and turned as I had learned in the dark rooms of before. ‘Why leave us now?'

He told me to lie down on the bed.

I saw nothing, felt nothing. I reached out with the eyes I had through nothing and found Noreen Moriarty waiting at the end of it. In her sunflower hat. She had a boy with her. A young boy with tanned skin and fair hair and his hand in hers. Noreen smiled at me and let go of the boy's hand and pushed him towards me. He came to me and he put his lips to my forehead and the wrenching, gasping thing above me that twisted itself into me and was cold and heaving was no more. The young boy with fair hair took me off by the hand and we walked into the greenest of places and lay down and slept.

And while the fair-haired boy had taken me off, Jonah had been left with the spirits of his own calling which tore at him and filled him with the savage knowing that he was a creature lost to life as he wished to live it.

And that is when he lost his mind entirely. All of him went over to the place he wished only to leave behind. All redemption gone. Still he would not listen. Still he thought to make me into what he wished me to be.

He would not give up trying while he had breath in him, he would not give me up while I had breath.

Out of this night, out of the darkness, comes Jonah Cave. He has lived all his life in it. Now he visits it upon me.

Jonah Cave. You use your blade again.

And you tell me that it is for my own good. For a woman who would let a man such as your father lay a hand on her.

You torture that which you love. And all the while my spirit watches you from the far corner of the room. It stays and it watches, with Noreen who has come to comfort me. She holds me and brings to me the realization that I have the power to bring death to you.

All my spirit has to do is wish you dead and the death wish would be yours.

The truth was put in front of you then, Jonah Cave, as it is now.

I open your eyes to what I am, not what you had believed you had created with your knife and your talk. I show you the torn-apart breast and heart. I leave you with the stillness. In it you have no place to hide.

You whimper and gather the shorn hair. In the hair you had loved you wanted to find life. But shorn from me it cannot live but takes on a lifeless, drab and dull form. Its shining black now faded – no longer my kind and alive night, but your dead and dull one.

I show you that your night will not end. I show you that your creation is death. I show you that the hair and the ring binders you had gathered were mementoes of people who did not love you. All, now, are beyond your persecution, except him that you had almost persecuted to death and beyond.

You had thought to wait for him, to take him with you. But you realize, no, it would be better for your father to arrive and to see that the son has taken that which he most desired.

*   *   *

The thought made Jonah sigh. He took the gun and lifted my limp hand into his. And he pulled the trigger.

It took some minutes for him to die and in those moments he hoped that his mother would come for him. But she did not. His spirit went as his life had gone, alone. On ahead of him he saw Carmel and Eddie walk together with the tall old woman, three shadows into the new light.

But his own limbs felt like lead and he could not join them.

He was left with the room and what was in it. A woman with the badness cut out of her. A man shares that badness and sacrifices his own living to have his blood run with hers. Their shared blood a sign to all that they shared life.

A suicide pact some would say. Jonah smiled at that and shivered, a long shudder went through him, and the ghost of a word came to his lips.

He was gone. His last word left unuttered.

My soul was lost. My emptiness all around and no way of leaving it. I called out and no sound came.

*   *   *

Carmel and Eddie's moments of going. I only see them now, the ones gathered tell me what I do not know of their own story. It is a comfort to me, to see Carmel and Eddie standing above what they once were and holding on to each other and who they are now.

This is how they left us. They went from what they no longer needed. They left all that had gone wrong between them and took the pure drop of their love in a look they shared over their stilled bodies. Their eyes were the same as the moment when a living breath was in them.

The years did not fall away from them, they were not returned to youth and the lines on each of them were the map of their loving. It was not a paradise that opened for them, but the unlocked door to Solas.

*   *   *

‘I cannot walk through it,' Carmel shook her head. ‘I must wait and watch for Sive. He will do harm to her.'

‘None that cannot be undone,' Noreen's voice between them, and her shadow cast itself clear on them, complete with hat. ‘Life has its work to do with her, away with you.' Then the shadow walked out the door before them and off among the trees at the bottom of the field.

‘We leave now or we stay in a place where we will intrude, Carmel,' Eddie took her hand.

They went through the open doorway and down the field into woods that had held all their loving. They walked hand in hand through the woods of goodbye to the far off place and they passed a just-roused Thomas who would soon set out from having slept in the woods. It was not for them to stop, Eddie said. But Carmel could not be prevented.

‘Hurry on, Thomas,' she gave a whisper that came to him in the form of a breeze that gave more of a chill to him on an already cold almost-morning.

Noreen walked ahead of Carmel and Eddie not only because she knew the way, but because these were moments they must have to themselves. They would not walk this wood again – and it had been all and enough for them while living. The trees wept leaf tears and the woodland creatures hung their heads to their breasts in sorrow at such a going, for Carmel was their own kind and Eddie the one she loved.

They came to a place where I cannot follow even with my story. Carmel asked where Myrna was and Noreen kissed them both on their foreheads and they felt the cool surprise of it. The dead feel as the living do, for they live too, but in another place.