The Healing (3 page)

He sat for a long time wandering in a world of dream and memory. The fly buzzed more loudly. His gaze turned to an old television set. It was almost completely covered by bits of wood and cardboard boxes. On top of it rested a coiled garden hose and a rolled-up rug. He stood up and walked slowly towards it, hesitated for a second, then began to remove the objects which masked and covered it. He did so carefully, removing them one at a time and setting them down on the floor in a kind of pattern. A spider scurried out from its stolen shelter. When he had cleared them all he turned the set round and looked at the back, then, with shaking fingers, prised it open. In the cleaned-out shell was a green shoe box. He lifted the box level with his chest and carried it back to the chair, holding it tightly in both hands as if afraid that he might drop it. When he had sat down he rested the box on his knees, lifted the lid and let it drop to the ground. Inside was an object wrapped in a yellow oiled cloth and tied up with two black shoe laces. He undid the knots and drew back the corners of the cloth, uncovering the barrel of the gun. His fingers touched its ridged length lightly, then pulled back as if burnt. As he bowed his head over it with closed eyes and mouth working wildly, strange fragmented images filled his head and above them all hovered a dark angel with wings of death. He stretched out his hand into the murky half-light, fingered the blood on the lintels then let his arm fall lifelessly to his side.

His fingers fumbled with the laces, finding it difficult to retie the knots. He glanced at the curtained window
and the closed door as he returned the box to its hiding place. Piece by piece, he returned everything as close to its original position as he could remember. When he had finished he stood back and viewed the arrangement. Once or twice he moved something slightly until he was satisfied that nothing looked disturbed or altered. Then he drew back the curtains and light skirmished with the shadows, forcing its way into the narrow gaps between objects and pushing into the webbed crevices of silence. He took one final look, then went out and locked the door behind him.

As he dropped the key into his pocket his fingers felt the softness of the rose petals. He wondered how they had got there. Then the voices told him that the boy had given them to him – given them as a sign of his coming. He stopped and took them out, cupping them as if they were water in the hands of a thirsty man. His eyes stroked their velvety surface, explored their blemished beauty. The boy had given them to him. He counted them, blowing gently into his hands to make sure that none was covered by another. There were six. He counted them again. Six. It was a sign. The boy would come in six days. He lifted his cupped hands slowly to the sky then opened them until the petals scattered in the wind.

He sat with his mother in the back seat of his uncle's car, having pressed the locking button of the door, and slipped into the softness of the upholstery. His mother sat in her best coat, the white handkerchief which wreathed her hand pulled tight like a bracelet. At the rear of the car his uncle experimented with the suitcases, trying to work out the best arrangement, while his aunt supervised with impatient and exasperated gestures. The slam of the boot made him jump and dig his fingers into the seat. His mother glanced towards him and smiled a tight-lipped reassurance.

‘It's for the best, Samuel. We could never manage the farm. It's better for someone to take it over and look after it properly. It's what your father would have wanted.'

He looked up at the windows where the reflections of clouds addled in the glass. In his bedroom the hidden faces in the walls would stare now only into emptiness, the insidious, whispering voices would snake through the husks of rooms and fade into silence. He looked at the
heavy front door with its black knocker and letter box, as it squatted solid and secure like the tight lid of a box, and wondered if it would be strong enough to shut in all the evil which sought to lay hold of him and ensnare his being. If it was strong enough he might escape through this journey, escape their clutches and vanish into some safer world where their sharp talons might not reach. If only he could run far enough, run fast enough, he might find some hiding place where their cruel eyes might not seek him out.

‘I just feel it's for the best. There's nothing here for us now – only bad memories. We've got to look forward and try to make a new home. You and me together in a new home.'

She nodded her head and slowly transferred the handkerchief from one hand to the other, then turned her face away from him and looked out of the window. He stared at the back of her head. The sunlight coming through the rear window of the car lit up her hair, little wisps of grey veining the brown.

As the car set off slowly down the long lane to the road, his uncle and aunt talked incessantly as if frightened of drowning in the deep pool of silence which had formed round their departure. His mother seemed lost in her memories and kept her face angled to the window, while he peered out at the world he had known and wished his uncle would drive faster. Some swallows plummeted – dark drops of speed – then looped back on themselves. Soon, they, too would leave. Empty nests under eaves. A long line of hedgerow unravelled past his window, so close that he could have reached out
and touched it. Its deep pockets of mottled leaf and branch were riddled with blossom and its roots vanished into thick verges where the grass grew tall and wild. He searched it constantly for watching faces or camouflaged shapes screened behind the secret veil of hedge. He sank a little lower in the seat until his eyes were level with the bottom of the glass.

‘Are you looking forward to being a city boy, Samuel?' his aunt asked, turning her head slightly towards him.

The hedgerow vanished and was replaced by a stone wall, its surface weathered with whorls of yellow and white, while bearded ferns fanned around the base of the stones.

‘Yes, he's looking forward to it,' his mother replied. ‘There's a lot more life in the city than the country, lots more things to do.'

‘It'll take a while to get used to it,' said his uncle as he increased the speed of the car. ‘But young people can adapt to things a lot more easily than us older ones. Isn't that right, Samuel?'

He met his uncle's eyes in the mirror for a second, then looked away. They were reaching the end of the lane. He could hear strange noises in his head. He closed his eyes and held tightly onto the armrest. The door of the house was beginning to creak. Suddenly, a lightning-shaped crack splintered the wood and shot deep forks into the grain. It bulged forward, groaning under the black weight pounding behind it until screws popped out and it sagged forward then ripped open like the flailing skin of a drum. Windows shattered in a tinkling eruption of glass and curtains streamed into the yard like fluttering
banners. They were coming! They were coming! He had been foolish to think that they would let him go so easily. He looked into the wing mirror of the car but he knew already that they could not be seen – they could not be seen and could not be touched, but they were always there. He closed his eyes and shrank far into himself.

‘You've always been a bit of a townie at heart, Elizabeth,' his aunt said.

‘I suppose you're right, Joan. I like the country all right, but I think it takes you to be born in it to really feel you belong.'

She turned her face into the car and smiled a little.

‘Do you remember when we were just married? I cried my eyes out I was so homesick. It's a wonder Tom didn't pack my bags and send me straight home to my mother.'

Then the smile faded slowly and she turned her head away again.

‘I mind it well enough,' replied his uncle. ‘And what about that first Christmas when you insisted on dragging him all the way up to Belfast to do your shopping. We all thought he'd married a right Lady Muck.'

His mother laughed a little at the memory and as the car reached the village she rocked herself gently with a warm, lulling song of the past. People going about their shopping stopped and waved to them. They passed the church with its winding gravel driveway; the cluster of tiny shops; the public house with its green glass windows and window boxes. Leaving the main street, they found themselves stuck behind a tractor pulling a trailer, but eventually the familiar was left behind as the car sped on
its way to their new life. Country roads gave way to main roads and then, in time, to the motorway. But never fast enough, never fast enough to leave his pursuers behind. They winged their steady way, watching and following with the insistent flapping of tireless wings.

Along the side of the motorway crows pecked at empty cigarette packets and magpies scrambled across crash barriers to rest in white-barked trees. Long lorries hurtled by, making the car feel small and vulnerable and at times steep banks of grass channelled them to their destination. The further they drove from their old home, the more his mother's thoughts turned to the future. She talked as if trying to convince herself that everything would work out well but occasionally little moments of doubt appeared.

‘I'm sure Belfast's changed since I was a girl. There's been a lot of redevelopment, a lot of the old streets knocked down. And even the centre of Belfast – I hardly recognized it the last time we were there. It's all new shops and big stores. Very nice, like, but different from when we were young.'

‘There's lots of changes all right,' his aunt agreed. ‘Do you remember when we used to go every Saturday afternoon and spend the few bob we had gathered up between us over the week? Do you mind the times we used to make a cup of tea last an hour in Marshalls?'

The conversation slipped once more into the past. His mother seemed increasingly drawn into the safe world of days long gone, almost as if she hoped that by going far enough back, she might be able to return to the present by a different road. The motorway reached the outskirts
of Belfast. From his window he could see playing fields and houses, and beyond them the Lough burrowing its way into the mouth of the city. Through his mother's window tiers of houses spread up the slopes of the black ridged mountain. Then the motorway merged with more lanes and drew them closer to the city. In the distance he could see yellow cranes perched at the waterside like birds about to dip their heads. They passed through a tunnel of blue-badged bridges and tall T-shaped lights into a nowhere world littered with the backs of factories and warehouses, wedges of land planted with young trees and shrubs. A train crawled along past rows of terraced houses. Spider writing moved across grey gable walls.

‘Over there's the York Road where your grandmother lived, Samuel,' his mother said, pointing her wreathed hand. ‘She had a grocer's shop on the corner of Alexandra Park Avenue. And that train reminds me of going to Portrush for our Sunday School excursions. Those were good times – a day out on the train then was a real adventure.'

‘Aye, a few sandwiches and a bag of buns and we were as happy as sandboys,' his uncle said. ‘Do you recall the sports on the beach? Egg and spoon races, sack races – the whole works.'

‘Mind the time me and Elizabeth won the three-legged race?' asked his aunt, laughing. ‘Betty Donaldson and her cousin were raging because they'd been practising for weeks. They tripped just after the start and she ripped her best dress.'

‘That's right,' his mother remembered excitedly, ‘and we each got a bar of white chocolate.'

He listened to their gentle laughter. Seagulls hovered above a refuse dump.

‘Listen,' urged his uncle, ‘why don't we all take a drive up the Antrim Coast and go to Portrush? In a couple of weeks when you're settled in? What do you say, Samuel?'

His mother touched him lightly on his leg and smiled at him. His uncle's eyes watched him in the driver's mirror. He met them briefly, then nodded his head. A yellow bulldozer was pushing refuse into a pit.

‘That's good, that's good. I don't think these two girls are up to three-legged races anymore, but we could have a good day out. And look, quick! There's Seaview where the Crues play. Many's a match I used to watch there. Their nickname was “The Hatchet Men” – no fancy Dans in those days. Some Saturdays the ball was more often on the railway line.'

Spider writing moved across more walls but the car was travelling too quickly for it to speak to him. They left the motorway and followed a road round the outskirts of the city centre, past the docks where a ferry boat suddenly reared up its blue funnels like chimneys, and then through the Markets area. As the car headed across the city he grew nervous again. So many faces – more than he could register or scan. They surged on the pavements and peered out at him from the shadows of doorways. Like the hidden faces in his room they stared down at him and there were too many to hide from. They swarmed about the car, searching him out and whispering to each other. Neon shop signs pointed him out and although he sank lower in the seat he could still feel their penetrating
gaze and hear tongues rustling like the wind moving dead leaves. Two men stepped off the pavement so close to the car that they might have reached out and opened the door. Their eyes were sharp slits of hate. Black taxis shuttled alongside the car, their insides filled to overflowing. His mother had grown quiet and still.

Gradually they moved into the suburbs in the southeast of the city. His uncle told him it would not be long. The car turned off the main road and began to climb the winding avenues. A woman struggled to push a pram up the steepness with two small children holding on to the tail of her coat.

‘It'll be good exercise walking up here,' his uncle joked. ‘Put a few muscles on your legs.'

They turned into a tree-lined avenue where the houses were only distinguishable from each other by the colour of paintwork or the quality of garden. It seemed a quiet, sleepy sort of place and there were few people about. A few cars sat parked in driveways and tall privet hedges protected many of the fronts from prying eyes, while behind the houses narrow strips of garden stretched up the sharp slope of the hillside.