A Cleansing of Souls (13 page)

Little Norman had loved football. Tom had used to play with him in the garden. He would be in goal whilst Little Norman took amazingly long run-ups before swinging his small foot at the ball. Tom would dive in slow motion as the ball rolled towards him and Little Norman would look on with eager eyes. I wish you could have seen those eyes. I will always remember them. And Tom would be sure that his dive looked authentic. It had to look real for Little Norman. The ball would roll just out of Tom’s reach between the jumper and T-shirt their mother told them never to use for goalposts and before the beaten goalkeeper could get up, the demon striker would be wobbling towards him on those chubby legs to retrieve the ball, all set to score another stunner.

And Little Norman would never tire. It was always Tom that became weary. He would force himself to save a few shots or feign an injury in an attempt to bring the game to a gentle end. But Little Norman would always look so concerned if he thought his big brother was hurt in some way. He would stand over him and pat him with his soft magic sponge of a hand until the pain was gone. And at the end of the game, the two brothers, fourteen years between them, would make their way back indoors, Little Norman nudging the ball before him as he went. Then their mother would inform the country’s greatest number nine to take that thing outside young man and take those dirty shoes off before you even think about coming in here. So Little Norman would throw the ball out into the garden and stand there watching it rolling over and over again as it disappeared into the bushes.

Little Norman would have played for England.

Tom felt an intense atmosphere around him
as he and Sandy continued their walk home. He recalled those precious Sundays when he was twelve or thirteen, when he played football for a local boys' team. But surely he was now just looking in on the life of another.

Each Sunday morning, he would get up early and clean his boots on the doorstep, chipping off the dried mud from the last game with his mother’s best kitchen knife. Only the best would do. He loved his boots then. He would pack his gear into a carrier bag and travel on the bus to the car park where everybody sorted out lifts to get to the game.

Those were the days of innocence - those glorious days before shame and hate.

Tom hadn’t possessed a great deal of skill on the football field, but he used to play with such heart. He would run about that pitch until he could barely stand. If he was fouled towards the end of the game, or just tumbled over in exhaustion, he would lie still on that churned up mixture of mud and grass, his eyes closed for a stolen moment in an ecstatic reverie. All he had wanted was to drift away. To go where the footballers go.

After the game, he would barely be aware of the score. It didn’t matter at all. And the dinner that his mother would prepare on those Sundays, well that was fit for the greatest player that ever lived. It was the smell that Tom most cherished, the perfect aroma of it all - the roast chicken, the gravy, the roast potatoes, even the vegetables. If he tried hard, he could visualise it, but he could never conjure up that smell. He would tell his mother and father how bad the referee was and how the other team were so much bigger and how he almost scored. And they would nod and smile. But he never told them of the pure bliss he felt, lying there on that football pitch, alive in an aching dream.

The further Tom and Sandy walked, the more the football supporters outnumbered everybody else. He felt a moment of kinship with them. He had collected all those stickers, bought the magazines, gazed at the statistics. But he had been younger then. Sandy was wary and nervous. It was different for her. More than ever, she wanted to cling to Tom. She looked away from the scarves, the faces and the shirts, not out of contempt, but out of apprehension.

The kick off to the precious new season was still two hours away but even that was too long. The gap between the final whistle of one season to the first whistle of the next is an eternity. You scratch around for three months watching videos and flicking through old programmes, convincing yourself that this will be your year. You spend three months coming off a drug only to spend the next nine months taking as much of it as you possibly can.

Sandy hated it all - the singing, the chanting and the stupidity. Just as she thought they had made it safely through the crowd, two men and a woman walked towards them. They wore scarves that looked like they had just been bought off a street vendor and they looked uncomfortable in their attire, not proud, but self-conscious.

The two men, instead of passing Tom, just continued forward until they were standing right before him. The woman stood in front of Sandy, her men by her side. Tom and Sandy had no choice but to stop. One of the men, the taller out of the two, spoke in a thin, refined voice that would certainly have been grey were it a colour, so lacking in character and emotion was it.

“What are you doing with her?” the man asked Tom. “Your own kind not good enough for you?”

The woman smiled a white tooth smile. The other man just stared vacantly.

Tom did not know how to react for his instinct had left him. This was not in his script. His throat was dry and his tongue hung heavy in his mouth.

As each second passed, the more the events, the scenes about them, were ripped away, torn out as if they had been cut from a picture and pasted elsewhere, leaving behind just this surreal tableau.

Tom took Sandy’s hand and tried to walk away, but the staring man just stepped a pace to his right and continued to stare.

“Excuse me,” continued the tall man. “I asked you a question. Didn’t your mother teach you any manners?”

Tom still could not speak. Sandy dare not.

The woman did not take her eyes off Sandy, who in turn was intent on not returning the gaze. The tall man whispered something to the white tooth woman and she laughed. Sandy smiled, hoping against hope that things weren’t as bad as they seemed.

“What are you smiling at?” asked the woman, her voice more of a bark than anything else, so in contrast with her precise make-up and bright clothes. “Are you laughing at me?”

The woman stepped forward until Sandy could smell her perfume and almost taste her cigarette ash.

“Or do you fancy me?” she asked, sneering.

She then blew a kiss at the trembling woman before her and ran a course hand slowly down Sandy’s cheek.

Tom looked across.

“Are you looking at my girl?” asked the tall man, moving forward.

“No,” replied Tom, his voice, when he finally found, higher than he would have liked.

The other man just stared.

“Why not?” asked the tall man. “Wrong colour for you?”

The situation was grotesque. There was nothing that could be done or said to stop it from progressing in the only way it could. It just had to unfold in its own agonising fashion. Tom was numb. He couldn’t get hold of his mind. If only they would give him room to limp like old Charles Grandon, maybe then they would leave him alone. There was a silence that lasted forever in his mind.

The tall man lifted his hand and stroked back his greased black hair.

“Is that why you’re with this fucking Paki?”

Before he could answer, Tom was aware of a sudden movement beside him. The woman had grabbed Sandy’s arm and was trying to take the bag of clothes off her. Sandy resisted until the white tooth woman yanked at her dark hair, the pain causing her to release her grip on the bag and it fell to the floor. The woman picked it up, grinning. Sandy was on her knees, tears on her face.

“What you got in there?” asked the woman, very pleased. “Fucking bananas?”

The two men laughed.

And so did Tom. He hadn’t been able to help it. It wasn’t a conscious thing.

Within seconds and without warning, the tall man punched Tom in the stomach. He bent over and stumbled to the ground, trying to curl up in order to protect himself from the kicks that assailed him. Sandy cried as she sat their on the dirty pavement, the white tooth woman continuously jabbed at her with high heels, playing with her, teasing her. Fucking bananas.

The other man stared on.

As Tom was on the floor receiving blow after blow, he tried to reach for Sandy, his eyes pleading with her. But then he felt his senses just shut down.

At last, Sandy heard a siren. The tall man, the staring man and the white tooth woman ran off, throwing away their scarves as they did so.

Sandy’s vision began to clear and she tried to sit up. Her body was sore all over and she couldn’t feel her face. She felt ill and dazed. And then she saw Tom’s new jeans and his new shirt on the ground amidst the debris of a Big Town Saturday afternoon - and she tried in vain to reach out for them. But each time she stretched out her arm, they just slipped by her.

A policewoman helped Sandy gently to her feet and led her to the waiting car.

“It’s all right,” she said kindly. “Just sit there for a while. There’s an ambulance coming for your boyfriend.”

Sandy wept in the front of the car. She could not think. The pain in her body drew a cloud over reality, making it vague and indistinct. Her boyfriend. Tom was her boyfriend. That was good. That was what she wanted. And then she heard that laugh again. Tom’s laugh. It had lasted no more than two seconds but it rang in her head now, over and over, that laugh - that obsequious laugh of ignorance.

She looks over now to where Tom is being carried to an ambulance. But he isn’t there at all. Not really. He is lying peaceful and serene on a huge football pitch somewhere far away, just lying there, lost in naked wonder.

George awoke to the sound of a digging machine. He tried to drag himself back to sleep, but the low rumbling noise would not let up. During the night, the first rain had fallen for what seemed like months, breaking free from the sky and spattering the dark houses. George had stayed awake for a while just listening to it agains
t the window, transfixed by its rhythm.

Drinking his morning coffee, the remnants of any routine he may once have had, he stared at the linoleum and thought of his wife and of his son. The stain on the floor had taunted him in recent days and he had taken to just looking at it, praying that one morning it would transform itself into some message of hope. But it never changed, not even for a tantalising second.

The noise outside grew before subsiding again for a brief moment, only to return again with greater ferocity. George moved to the window to see what was happening. It appeared that someone had ruptured a pipe. A stream of water was being pumped along the side of the road, gushing over the broken tarmac. A van from the Water Board pulled up and a man attached to a clipboard stepped smartly out.

“When it rains, it pours,” said the man to nobody in particular. “When it rains, it pours.”

George continued to watch the scene unfurl through the window. The workmen were an eclectic assembly of people, all sizes and all ages. Their clothes were befittingly besmirched and their hair was dishevelled beneath their protective hats. They wore strong boots more suited to climbing than walking and each of their faces hinted at untold hardships.

When the men became aware of the man with the clipboard, they made no effort to acknowledge him. They merely continued talking amongst themselves in a relaxed, easy fashion, taking time every now and t
hen to stare into space, focusing on something indiscernible far off in the distance.

One of the men was sitting on the kerb looking at a newspaper, a curious grin scrawled upon his face as if he had only just that moment understood the punch line to a joke that had been told to him some years previously. He stopped short of laughing but clearly shook with joy.

Another man was leaning upon a spade, his heavy forearms crossed on the handle. Determination oozed from his craggy rock face features. This was just one more road. I’ve seen worse than this. Back in sixty-seven when Tommy Halloran and me worked on that tunnel, now that was tough. Any moment now, a photographer will arrive on the scene and take a picture of this man for a book that nobody will read. Or maybe a party of schoolchildren, led by a thoroughly disconsolate teacher, will gather round and take notes on stained paper. And they will entitle their essay
The Statue and The Spade.

One of the older workmen was looking at the flowers in a front garden on the other side of the road. The early summer weather had been unkind to the blooms and the overnight rain had done little as yet to revive them. He peered at them with expert eyes, leaning over a low wall, assessing them, appreciating them. Suddenly, a net curtain was jerked upwards to reveal cold grey eyes and a manicured hand. The workman turned silently away to re-join his colleagues.

George saw all this through his window.

The man from the Water Board walked up and down the road, surveying the destruction, paying little heed to the men about him. He wrote something down on his clipboard, murmured to himself, and drove off again in his little white van.

George drew back from the window. For seven years now, he had been out of work. He would have toiled sixteen hours a day to mend that road, to make it smooth and right again. He would not have needed any sort of break. He would have accepted minimal wages, or maybe even none at all. And he would have done the work of a hundred men. If he had died on that road, it would have been a graceful and a meaningful death; far removed from this ignominious death that daily stalked him. Just give me a chance. That is all I ask.

All across the country, my country, there are people hating, despising every minute of their working day. Moan. Complain. Gossip. Deceive. Pettiness. Pettiness. He doesn’t like me, she doesn’t like me, look at him late again, fume, steam, stagger beneath the weight of your one-eyed view. Oh how indispensable I am.

Bollocks.

To work is a luxury greater than gold.

George would have valued every second at work. For he knew what it was like to be without it. Familiarity with desolation and despair is the greatest incentive for dedication just as the man about to be executed has at that moment the greatest thirst for life’s waters. But only the lonely and the deprived understand this, truly understand it. The man behind the huge desk with the pen in his hand understands only the huge desk and the pen in his hand. And that is the greatest sadness of all.

So the workmen faded away and George left for Big Town
to search for his son.

Well, Ron, so Michael is safe now. He has been found
. So where does that leave you?

We all have moments that we feel are pivotal yet, so often, all we can do is to stand back and await the outcome in fear and cold sweat. Control is beyond us yet it is our very future that is at stake. Fear is strange, Ron - it comes and goes, it nips at us and then just slips back into the shadows, only to return again for more. I hope you are afraid, Ron. You should be.

Michael sat in a small room, an empty chair either side of him and a desk in front of him. The faded paint of the magnolia walls was cracked and peeling. A thin layer of transparent plastic covered each window. It was neither warm nor cold. It was almost like being in a void – a quiet room in the midst of perceived madness. Michael had time to think, though he knew it would do him no good. “I am yours now, father,” he whispered to himself, smiling a salt-water smile that would have broken your heart.

A man and a woman entered the room. The man sat beside Michael on the left and the woman sat behind the desk. She arranged some papers before her, took a pen from her pocket and looked across at Michael.

“You are Michael Parrish?” she asked, her accent strongly Germanic. She had short blonde hair and a pale, pretty face.

Michael leaned forward in his chair and clasped both hands together before looking up at the woman with those eyes of his. “Yes,” he said. “I am.”

“I am Dr Muller. I work for Dr Chesney. This is a Psychiatric Hospital and this,” she added, nodding towards the man seated beside Michael, “this is John. He is one of the nurses on the ward.”

Michael turned and smiled at John and nodded.

“I am going to ask you some questions, Mr Parrish, and John will be making notes.”

Dr Muller looked at Michael for some sign that he understood. No such sign was forth
coming, so she continued anyway.

“So, Mr Parrish, can you tell me what has been happening with you lately? What has brought you here to us?”

Michael paused before answering, reflecting upon the tone of the question and the delicate features of this lovely Doctor. “It was meant to happen,” he said at last. “I was waiting for them. They came. And here I am.”

“When you say ‘they’, could you tell us who ‘they’ are?”

“The two Policemen who brought me here. I’m afraid I don’t know their names.”

Dr Muller sought out John with a quizzical look.

“Came in on a 136. ASW saw him an hour ago.”

“And he wasn't Sectioned?”

“No. He agreed to an informal admission apparently,” replied John, shrugging.

Dr Muller nodded.

“Yes, fine. So, Mr Parrish, why were you brought here to us? Do you know?”

“I am just playing my humble part,” replied Michael. He paused before continuing. “As are we all.”

“Mr Parrish, if you’ll forgive me, I have not met you before. I do not know your case. Perhaps we can start with some more basic information? How do you feel in your mood?”

“Very well thank you.”

“Do you feel low at all, what may be termed as ‘depressed’?”

“No, no I don’t.”

“How do you feel?”

“Relieved, I think. Yes, relieved.”

“Do you know where you are now?”

“I am in hospital.”

“Do you know which hospital?”

“I’m afraid I don’t. I’m not from this area.”

Dr Muller looked at John before looking back at Michael.

“John will talk to you about that when we’ve finished Mr Parrish. If you could just answer a few more questions for me? Do you sometimes see or hear things that other people can’t, visions, voices, anything like that?”

Michael sat there serene. They had come for him. He looked into Dr Muller’s eyes and allowed his own to sparkle, dance with them for a moment.

“Mr Parrish, have you ever heard voices, suffered from hallucinations?” repeated Dr Muller. She had been on duty for sixteen hours and now here comes this man, out of area, smiling at her as if it were she that was being questioned.

“I hear just one voice, that of my father. I see just one vision, that of my sister. And soon I will be back with them both.”

“Fine,” said the Doctor, writing as she listened, ready to conclude the interview now. She was getting tired. Dr Chesney could do some work for a change. “I just need to ask you, Mr Parrish, do you have any thoughts of harming yourself or anyone else?”

Michael closed his eyes. His life had been long and hard. When he finally spoke, his voice was jaded, weary and much quieter, barely audible. Dr Muller had to lean forward in order to fully hear what he said.

“I talk with souls. I listen to hearts. I have no body. Neither do you, nor does this fine young man beside me. We are all floating in this space people call life. It is not for us to hurt each other. We accept and we go on. That is the way to peace. Accept and go on.”

Dr Muller and John exchanged knowing glances. He’ll be fine. No problem.

“One last thing, Mr Parrish,” said Dr Muller, looking up. “Those marks on your face, how did they happen?”

“They will be gone soon.”

Dr Muller signed the assessment sheet. Michael was struck then by how young she looked. Ah, Jennifer, soon I will hold you again.

“Mr Parrish, I would like you to stay in hospital for a few days. It seems that you have been having a difficult time recently. You need a rest. You will be seen by Dr Chesney the day after tomorrow.”

She stood up to shake his hand. He stood up also. And that was when she noticed the wound in the centre of his palm. “What happened to your hand, Mr Parrish? Is that recent? You may need a tetanus injection for that. I shall write you up for some medication anyway.”

“That happened a long time ago,” replied Michael, calmly. “It just bleeds when it needs to. Please don’t worry about me. I am in good hands.”

Dr Muller left the room, acutely aware that there were only another four hours before she could lie in her lonely bed and think of nothing at all.

So, Ron, nothing has come out yet. But it will. Don’t worry mate.

And Laura sits in her room with her toys and her dolls and her teddy bears, just gazing at them, willing them to come to life.

George walked through the streets of Big Town, looking for Tom. He wandered aimlessly, following no map, no plan, trusting now only to miracles. Tom could have walked right in front of his very path and George would not have seen him. It just felt right to keep walking, keep moving. His eyes scoured the ground before him as if that were the best place to start.

And as he looked upon the ground, he saw depravity. For the first time in his life, he was brought within touching distance of victims. He saw young boys cowering beneath cardboard, their faces blotched and marked, their hair greasy, lank, and itching. There were not just three or four of them, but hundreds and hundreds. Boys and girls, though he could barely tell the difference, Tom’s age and younger, lying there, looking at the sky, feeling its distance.