The Healing (12 page)

The child's laughter. He clung desperately to its sound, trying to fight off the resurgence of the present, but it faded, a tiny diminishing echo into an unreachable past. He wondered where the years had gone, but was almost glad to find no answer – from their brittle deadness he could spark no flame, force no flicker of warmth or joy.

He wondered, too, how God could use such a life to bring about His will but then he heard the boy's voice speaking to him, reminding him again of the desert rock struck by God's power and from which flowed a gushing stream. The boy often spoke to him now, bringing him messages of truth and guiding him when he was confused about which direction to take. Perhaps the boy would help him now in his dealings
with his son. Perhaps he would help him find the right words.

He went to the locked sideboard, opened it and brought out the ledgers. They squatted heavily on the table and he felt a reluctance to open them, even to touch them, but he knew it was the task which was appointed to him. He opened the top one, turning each page with a feeling of reverence and of foreboding. As always, he paused at the picture of the boy, tracing his outline with his fingers, peering close to read the writing, before moving on again. Already, two more pages had been filled with the names and pictures of those smitten by the great sickness. There was a new one to be added and he smoothed the morning paper flat before he began to cut with studied concentration. As he was finishing it, his son entered the room, barefoot, unwashed, and slumped onto the settee, then glanced over at the clock to see what time of day it was. Neither spoke for some time. He pasted the picture onto the page and sat staring it into his consciousness.

‘You'd no right to bring that girl home here last night.'

‘Her name's Cindy. It wouldn't kill you to use it sometimes.'

‘I can think of another name for her.'

‘What's that supposed to mean?'

‘I know she stayed all night. Stayed here right under this roof.'

‘So what if she did, Da? It's not the end of the world. It was late when we got in, by the time we left the boy home . . . You don't begrudge her a roof over her head, do you?'

‘That's not why she stayed. And if you've no thought for your own soul have some thought for hers.'

He slammed the picture flat with the palm of his hand.

‘I live here too, Da. I pay my way – that gives me rights too.'

‘It doesn't give you the right to fly in the face of God's law, to bring shame to this house.'

‘No one's brought shame to anyone. The only shame's inside your head. When are you going to start living in the real world, Da?'

‘Live in your world, you mean. “We are of this world but not part of it.'“

‘If you're going to start quoting the Bible, I'm not going to go on talking to you. Why, just once, can't you speak to me in your own words without coming out with all that stuff?'

‘They're not my words, William. They're God's, and if you hadn't hardened your heart you would listen to them now and know the truth of them.'

He saw his son's face darken with anger.

‘Hardened my heart? I haven't hardened my heart. I have feelings here, feelings you'll never know about. And you're a good one to be talking about hearts. What feelings did you ever have in your heart when you used to beat the hell out of me with the belt? Whose heart was hard, Da, when you used to take me and belt me till your arm was sore?'

‘I never laid a hand on you but I did it in love – did it because I cared about you.'

‘And because you beat me in love, do you think that made the pain any less, made the welts go away any sooner?'

He watched his son pull his knees up to his chest, hug
himself against the memory. He turned his gaze back to the open ledger, unsure of what to say, unable to make him understand. It had always been like this, as long as he could remember. Maybe he was right – maybe he had been too hard, his hand too heavy, but he had done it in love. Whatever the boy thought, he had done it in love. He still felt that love now, but nothing he could say or do seemed capable of reaching him or touching any part of him. Now his son scoffed, mocked the things that were dear to him, and behind the laughter was a bitterness and an anger that corroded both their souls. He felt it reaching out to him now.

‘And another thing, Da. What is it with these friggin' books that you spend half your life sticking those pictures in them? Are you running your own personal obituary column or something? If you are, you'll need a right few more books before this thing's over.'

He watched him laugh and light a cigarette, but he could see a genuine curiosity in his eyes.

‘I record the dead. God has told me to do it. I record them here, all those smitten by the disease, the names of the innocent and the forgotten, all those swept into the pit.'

‘God told you to do this?' His son's voice was raised in incredulity. ‘God told you to do this? Do you not think, Da, that sometimes that voice you hear is not God's, but your own?'

He shook his head slowly in reply and closed the ledger.

‘There was nothing innocent either about that last boy's photo you've just stuck in. He was up to his neck in it.'

‘How do you know that?'

‘It's known. They like to say it was random, sectarian, but he was one of theirs all right.'

He looked closely at his son, searching his face as he had those in the ledger.

‘But how do you know?'

‘I heard it, Da. I heard it from people who know. That's all, all right?'

‘And maybe the people who know, know, too, who killed him.'

‘Maybe they do and maybe they don't. I don't know anything about that. I mind my own business and you should, too.'

He watched him draw heavily on the cigarette, stub it out in the ash-tray balanced on the arm of the settee, then slouch into the kitchen. There was the sound of the kettle being filled and then his voice again.

‘Smitten by the disease – that's a new name for a head job. I must remember that one.'

‘It's a pity you didn't remember to bring the boy home sooner last night than you did. I'm sure his mother was worried about him. You should never've taken him anyway, letting him see a bunch of drunken people making fools of themselves.'

‘We took him to see the bonfires. What's wrong with that? The kid needs all the help he can get.'

He returned from the kitchen carrying a cup of tea and sat down on the settee again.

‘Never spoke a word all evening. Nothing. Just stared at the fire as if he saw a ghost in it.'

‘The boy will speak when the time is right. God has
a reason and a purpose for all things. He works His will in His own time and in His own way.'

‘Everything shitty that happens in the world, you say is God's will. How can you keep on saying it? It's a great way to avoid having to face up to anything. I don't even think you really believe it deep down. It's just something you say over and over, like some kind of tape recording.'

‘I do believe it, William. I believe it with all my heart and you should too. Heaven . . .'

‘Heaven! There might be a God in your heaven, Da, making plans for everyone, but all that's in my heaven is space satellites and bits of junk going round and round until they burn up and fall to earth. That's all's in heaven.'

He watched his son's eyes flood with anger.

‘I pray for you, William, and I'll keep on praying for you, hoping that some day you'll open your heart to the truth. I'm only glad your mother isn't here to hear you talk this way.'

‘My mother,' he said, his voice breaking in bitterness. ‘Don't talk to me about my mother, because I loved her. Loved her like you could never have if you accept what happened to her. I stopped believing in your God the months I stood holding her hand and watching her body being eaten away inch by inch. And when she died, I was gladder than I've ever been in my whole life, and you know something, Da, the day she died I cursed your God. What do you think of that, Da? I cursed your God.'

His son was standing up now, and the cup of tea had fallen from the settee onto the floor, and a little wisp of steam was rising as it soaked into the carpet. He was
standing, and for a second he thought he was crying, but then he waved his hand dismissively in the air as if more words were a waste of time, and went back upstairs. He sat, watching the steam rising from the floor.

The light, careful push he gave the swing, the little squeals of protest when she felt she was going too high. The child's laughter. He stopped pushing, went and stood in front of the swing. As mother and child came towards him, he opened his arms to them both, their eyes warm with smiles, laughing as the downward motion of the swing carried them away again. The sweet scent of the day. All gone now, into the past.

He picked the cup off the floor, took it to the kitchen, then returned and mopped up the spill with a damp cloth. As he knelt mopping, he whispered into the silence, ‘I loved her too', but the words had nowhere to go and they returned to him unheard, before vanishing for ever.

He sat in the front passenger's seat of the car and watched Billy carefully. He was steering the car lightly with one hand, his elbow propped at a right angle against the open window. He studied him intently and then raised his own elbow to the same position. Billy's eyes flickered constantly from the road ahead to the pavements and side streets they were passing and sometimes he pushed a hand through his hair as he glanced at himself in the mirror. He wanted to try that too, but he contented himself by cataloguing it in his memory with all of Billy's other gestures. He liked being with Billy. He was the one person he knew whose life felt strong and sure of itself, and when Billy spoke he sounded as if there was nothing in the world which could ever frighten him. Sometimes he wished he could be more like Billy, learn the secret of his strength, and when he was with him he felt protected and sheltered by his indifference to anything which existed outside his own desires. Although he did not see him very often, he had begun to think that if he could somehow join his life to
Billy's, like a feather grafted onto a wing, he might be able to share enough of his strength to escape from his present world.

The car moved steadily along roads which were unfamiliar to him, responding smoothly to the driver's light one-handed touch. Watching him drive made him think that Billy was able to control everything which was part of his experience, coolly steering an unworried course in whatever direction his impulses took and always he seemed to hold himself at a safe distance from life. Just like the night when the flames had pulled everyone else into the fire, he had held himself apart and untouched. Perhaps if he watched Billy closely enough, spent more time with him, he might be able to share the secret of this strength.

They passed a group of young people standing outside a video shop. Billy sounded the horn as he passed them and they shot their arms into the air in salute, their heads angled to watch the disappearing car. A light rain was beginning to fall, darkening the pavements and turning the world grey. Only the neon signs of fast-food shops shone brightly in the falling gloom. It didn't feel like summer, at least not the ones which existed in his memory, and the strangeness of his surroundings made the world seem separate from season or time. He knew that by now the swallows would have left the farm, having gathered in great shifting shapes ready to make their long journey. The car's wipers pushed the rain aside and Billy glanced at him almost as if he had momentarily forgotten that he had a companion.

‘Well, boss, you've my head turned the way you blether
on non-stop. You're a real motor-mouth. Can you not give my head peace for five minutes?'

Then he glanced away again as he studied a teenage girl waiting to cross the road.

‘Put your window down and ask her if she wants a lift. A smooth-talking man like you could touch for any woman he wants.'

He sounded the horn as they passed her and laughed as the girl responded with a two-fingered gesture.

‘Did you have a girlfriend back home, Sam boy? I bet a good-looking boy like you had a whole army of them – good country girls with big red cheeks and bits of straw in their hair.'

Leaning across from the driver's seat he ruffled the boy's hair. When he had finished and returned his attention to the road ahead, the boy waited a few seconds then pushed his hand back through his hair as he had watched Billy do. He had never had many friends, maybe because they lived quite far from other families, maybe because he was the type of person whom people did not want as their friend. He did not know the reason, but he wondered if Billy would become his friend.

‘Ah, you're just right. Women are nothing but trouble. Look at me with Cindy hanging round my neck like a ball and chain. Give them a sideways look and they think they own your whole life. Talking about women – let's get our story right for your ma. Think hard, where'll we tell her we've been tonight? Good idea – the zoo. Now that's what I call thinking.'

His father had been the closest he had had to a friend. Even as a small child his father had let him accompany
him in his work round the farm, taking time to explain things, showing him how things worked. In his memory he felt the rough weight of his father's guiding hand on his shoulder as he let his son steer his precious tractor, the heavy pat which wordlessly signalled his satisfaction when the short journey was safely completed. His father was mostly a quiet man but he could always tell what he was feeling by the expression on his face or the posture of his body. Sometimes when he read anger or a bad mood on his father's face he kept his distance and was careful not to get in his way, but such times never lasted more than a day or so and then they were brushed aside without reference or comment.