Authors: Grace McCleen
‘It was so good to see you, Margaret,’ I said. ‘Will you come back?’
She said that she would and she told me to take care of myself and not to give them any problems, and I promised I would not.
Abraham went out without knowing where he was going. Many souls within these walls go out too, every day, without knowing their destination. May God, if He exists, guide them.
At four o’clock today I will have my first ECT treatment. I must admit that I started the day with a degree of trepidation but as it wore on the anxiety modulated into a gentle sense of grief. All in all it has been a strange afternoon; I feel I am packing and setting out again for a new country, like my father and my mother and I did all those years ago. A couple of hours ago I thought again of the day my mother and I first found the farm, how happy we were, and since then, all afternoon, things have been bursting into my head, little snippets I may never remember again – the night we chased the horses through the courtyard, preaching in the lanes on the long balmy mornings, the afternoons when Elijah and I lay in the grass. What happens to these moments if no one remembers them? Do they cease to exist?
The end of my journey is a room at the end of a corridor. At fourteen minutes to four I set out, escorted by a male nurse. We pass through double doors and beyond these find ourselves in a high room with an enormous white light in the ceiling. I have never seen anything as big or as bright as this light. I lie on a table beneath the white light and straps are attached to my arms and my legs. A woman with soft hands dabs my temples with what feels like water and gives me something to bite on. The water trickles into my hair like oil. I am an offering to the great white light. I trust the god will find me acceptable.
My heart is beating extremely quickly. I hope it will soon quieten. As they move around me, talking softly, I find I am standing on the banks of the river again. The fields of forgetfulness lie behind me and the evening sun is setting. It is at this moment that I wish Margaret were here.
But I am not alone: I look and see the girl standing beside me. I see her slim shins, the gold of her hair, the freckles on her nose.
‘Don’t leave me again,’ I say to her, and she promises she won’t. The girl takes my hand and looks back at the water. She is asking me something; I understand now, and nod.
We wait beneath the light, two human-shaped holes, with nothing beyond us but clear, shining space, and it strikes me now for the first time that there is something beautiful about these lacunae, about absence in general, an erasure so extreme. We are no more than openings – yet look what shines through us! We are ‘not’ – and yet we are infinite.
The girl closes her eyes. I follow her example. There will be words and there will be light. The words will blur and we will wander. We will go down a road, we will turn up a lane, we will round a corner. We will go further than we have ever gone before. We will see a line of trees, a track that looks familiar, a road sloping upwards. The trees will turn out to be those that we know. We will walk towards them. And sooner or later, one way or another, we will be home.
Thank you to Carole Welch, my fantastic editor, and to Celia Levett – the best copyeditor I have ever had. Thank you to Claire Gatzen for helpful suggestions and last-minute edits, and thank you to my agents Bill Hamilton and Rob Dinsdale – Bill for advancing advances and Rob for detailed and careful editing.