The Lost Souls' Reunion (20 page)

24 ∼ The One Who Watches

T
HE
O
NE
W
HO
W
ATCHES
is a shadow in a doorway, an icy breeze on a summer's day, a sudden mist when all around is clear. The one who watches is one to be watched. The One Who Watches, say the cards, can be feared or loved.

I loved one who watched and I feared one who watched. They were father and son. They were different and the same.

*   *   *

When I walked through St Manis's gates on one of the last, bright mornings before winter, I saw a tall figure full of intent move towards me. He leaned on a stick but you could see that it obeyed his wishes.

The closer he came the more real he came, his left arm still tucked up neatly in its frozen state told me it was Thomas.

He kissed my forehead and said, ‘I have wanted to walk to meet you. The chair had to go.'

He had waited each night until everyone, including the night attendant, slept and he began by rising out of his bed and standing with his stick, until he could stand sure and then walk sure.

When he fell the watching moon made no attempt to pick him up, but her light was clear and steadfast and he learned to pick himself up, until one night he could walk far enough to go outside and meet her. On that night she praised him in her fullness, shining from a cloudless sky. He did not sleep that night, waiting for the time when I would walk through the gates and he would meet me.

The doing it alone was not only to surprise me, but also to prove he had still the power of himself.

‘Do not kiss me here, Thomas,' I whispered and stepped away from him, looking for Margaret's eyes. My hard words hid my rising heart and hope. To see him this way made me gladder than any gladness I had known.

‘They will see that as a grateful kiss,' he assured me. ‘Those eyes behind us. They know how much you have done for me.'

‘I don't want to them to know all I have done with you.'

His face hardened. I did not stop walking while I spoke.

‘Now we'd best get in before Margaret fills in Sister Mauritius and I have no job and no opportunity to see you.'

‘I want to leave here,' Thomas said. ‘I could leave here if I had any money left. But I will think of a way. I will find a way, if you think you would want me outside of here. I am not an easy man, and I am not asking you to be my nurse. I am not even asking for us to be together until I die. I know I would hate to take away your happiness.'

‘You have not taken it away, Thomas.'

The joy in having him walk beside me and talk of leaving his cage. He seemed to have swallowed the sunshine of the day and for the first time I saw a smile on his grave face. It rested uneasily, bringing fresh creases to the deep-wrought furrows carved from the alone times that had passed over it.

The heat in me went out to him and I could see it took all he had not to put a hand on me.

‘I am ashamed of myself,' he said. ‘Being like this with someone like you. I will be seen as a dirty old man.'

‘We must get in.'

He followed me in the door.

‘I am not used to following,' he said.

He did not see my smile. I walked ahead of him.

*   *   *

Inside, the summer air held the men by the throat, as many of the old windows had seized and swelled and could not be opened. Thomas went quietly back to his corner cubicle and I found Sister Saviour in the kitchen.

‘Should we not bring the men outside, Sister? It's such a hot day,' I asked.

‘The men are never brought outside!' she exclaimed. ‘There's never time to bring the men outside!'

‘It would not take long to wheel them. The fresh air will do them good. I can get the ward straightened while they are gone.'

Sister Saviour frowned. But the thought of unhindered scrubbing was too inviting. ‘We could get on with a lot of work all the same!'

‘I hope that does not mean I get to spend all day cleaning while she stays with them!' Joe O'Reilly had appeared behind me.

‘And what exactly do you mean by that?' Saviour enquired.

‘I'll be glad to do the cleaning, Sister. Joe can take the men out.'

As I scrubbed I heard them laugh and call to one another. I even heard the deep tones of Thomas in amongst them.

Margaret found her way to me more than once during the day and watched me.

‘You do great work,' Margaret said reluctantly, ‘for someone on slave's wages.'

‘I'm glad of it.'

‘I could give you a hand, but I'm not stupid.'

She danced away with her shrill laughter and raced outside when she heard the sound of a strange car in the driveway.

A pearl-blue Jaguar pulled up and a tall thin man stepped out of it. Margaret was the first to greet him.

‘If you have come to see anyone in particular?'

‘Thomas Cave.'

‘He's outside with all the others, having a sunbathe.'

The tall man's face was pale but for two high spots of colour which flushed deeper. Margaret stared at them openly, but the stranger did not appear to notice. He was already on the move, through the front door.

‘Not that way…'

Margaret had to push the front door as the stranger tried to close it on her.

Jonah Cave did not approve of his father being in sunshine. He had not seen him for nine months and had imagined Thomas to remain in darkness. The threat of a visit, Jonah had thought, would keep him there.

In the nine months his father's money had been spent well on improving Jonah's life. He had a fine new house and a car that purred like a satisfied cat at the slightest touch. He had many women interested in him and keen to know the source of his wealth. He had been drinking and feeling bright. 45 Peter's Road was sold to the highest bidder. By rights that should have been the end of it all with his father.

But in Jonah's dreams, Thomas Cave rose up to admonish him, side by side with his wife, Patricia. In dreams they were united, as they had not been in life. As his mother reigned blows on Jonah, Thomas stood tall as a grown tree above him and shouted with the voice Jonah had never heard. The voice carried all the weight and might of thunder and Jonah was being driven into the ground by both mother and father. Then, Thomas would walk away and not look back and his mother held him. She would laugh gaily at his screeching and wailing.

The further Jonah went into sleeping the more the dream came to him. When he could sleep no longer he had to visit Thomas.

The ring binders were Jonah's father. He had thought only to shame Thomas in presenting them to him on the day the ambulance had come. But they would also keep Jonah safe, he realized now, from the stranger-father and the known mother. The father of the ring binders, unseen, was the one Jonah had known and taken comfort from, expecting his arrival at any moment.

This was the father who had spoken to the son, through the careful selection of photographs and the world he had shown the son through them. This was the father who might one day decide to return. Not the old, broken stranger-father Jonah had found in a bed in a Galway hospital.

Jonah had not discussed the world he had searched for and grown to know in his father's work with the old silent man who had lain in his boxroom for six months and more. He had only felt anger towards that weak and crumbling creature.

‘They're out the back,' Margaret said. ‘You'll have to walk out this way, through St Michael's ward. I'll show you.'

She got no thanks from the tall and well-dressed man whose pale brown eyes had disappeared into black hollows.

‘I'll show myself.'

Jonah dismissed Margaret with a tight smile that said he did not see her as noticeable in any way. The smile made her afraid and caused her to lag behind him.

*   *   *

Now he is here, with us, part of the story's spine. The storyteller faces the story she would rather forget.

As it was with Joseph Moriarty so shall it be with Jonah Cave. There is truth waiting here for him and it will be told without him if he so chooses. Or it will be laid in front of him.

A part of him will never leave me. How did Jonah Cave see me? The part of him that is still inside me tells.

Jonah Cave almost passed me by, but then he caught sight of my movement.

It had a rhythm he had not seen, a rise and fall like a slow wave over an empty beach. He wanted that easiness to be put against his own jerking and jolting – his own movement that he seemed to lose control of and then was unable to start.

He needed a drink now, he needed the benefit of golden whiskey that calmed him and gave him the right movements. He wished to put his hands on either side of those hips he watched.

He could not stop the wanting there.

I did not need Jonah Cave's hands on me to know what I saw.

I saw a man who time had made old; a swallowed child peered at me through the slats of his ribcage. I saw a ravaged face and desolate eyes. I saw a drink-dampened evil that had begun as innocence. I saw a thin line of a man almost rubbed out and nothing but loss and failing in the places where he had been. His fine clothes did not match his face, for it had the look of hunger about it.

His impression on me more fearful than any other I have formed. His reality more fearful still.

*   *   *

Jonah said to me, ‘Thomas Cave, where does he sleep?'

‘In the corner cubicle, but he's outside if you're looking to visit.'

Jonah made his way over to the place where his father had been hidden from the world.

He pulled open the tin locker and wardrobe with a savage snap and saw what he was looking for under the assorted dead men's clothes his father dressed in for want of anything else.

‘If I could ask you to stop that,' I said, standing over him as he crouched to pick up ring binders. I had to repeat myself before he looked up at me.

Jonah's eyes had little colour in them but pale mud. The red veins in the whites of them all the more prominent for this.

‘If I could ask you not to touch those things. The man who owns them is not here,' I repeated.

‘And what is the man's name?' Jonah spoke, soft and menacing laced with a thin smile.

‘Thomas Cave.'

‘And what is my name?'

‘I have no idea.'

‘Well, you can gather that I must be a relative. His son. I am here to collect things which he does not need or use.'

‘You cannot remove someone's belongings.'

‘I am doing this for him,' he hunched down to pile up the folders and turned his back to me.

A shadow passed over my shoulder and on to Jonah's face. I thought it was Margaret, returned.

‘Jonah.'

The man in the hunched figure of Jonah slipped away, menace gave way to fear, a child stared through his ribcage. Thomas put his hand on my shoulder and in that hand I felt all that he was holding back.

‘I'm taking what is mine,' Jonah said in a voice that could not rise.

‘Take them gladly. I have no further use for them.'

‘You do not want them?' Jonah asked by way of a whisper that lost itself in the emptiness all around. The truth struck him deep and he could not rise from under it. He remained hunched.

‘They are yours, as everything else I have is now yours,' Thomas said, not gently.

Jonah Cave, like a crouched unborn, in full view of us.

I moved out of Thomas's grip and went to Jonah and put my arms around him and gave him the comfort he was in need of. He sank his teeth into my shoulder and dry racking sobs tore him up. I held the shreds of him in my arms.

Margaret had arrived with Sister Mauritius.

‘When you have finished here, Mary Sive,' said Sister Mauritius, ‘I will see you.' And she departed.

Margaret watched on. Thomas barked at her.

‘Move away. There is nothing more to be seen.'

‘Get off her now, Jonah,' Thomas said, still standing, when we were left alone.

Jonah held tighter.

Thomas gripped the fine tweed of Jonah's jacket with his one hand and his one hand was enough to peel Jonah off me, for there was no weight or substance in him. Jonah flailed like a cat falling through the air, clutching for any part of me.

*   *   *

‘I do not ask, or pretend I wish to know what was going on out there.'

Sister Mauritius began a lecture that I had waited for an hour outside her office to receive. Sister Saviour had been obliged to wait with me and was not best pleased.

‘We have so much to be getting on with,' she muttered. My shoulder ached with what Jonah had put on it.

‘But you seem to be very involved with those two,' Mauritius continued. ‘Sister Saviour has advised me that this is a good thing, since Thomas Cave has been a very difficult patient from the word go. I am aware already that his son is—' she paused and pushed her thin wire glasses up the length of her nose, ‘also a difficult individual, but he is a very generous one to this home. He readily appreciates the work we do and has donated over and above what it costs to keep his father.

‘Sister Saviour tells me you have brought Thomas Cave on. I am telling you, do not bring him on too far. If you want to know why, consider what has happened here this morning. This has all occurred because the patient has become too rowdy and that is because of you.'

Sister Saviour made to interrupt.

‘I do not wish to be challenged on this, Sister Saviour! I only wish to give an express order that must be adhered to so this ridiculous situation does not arise again. Mary Sive is not a nurse. She is not to be given nursing work. She is to clean and she is not to be too involved with the patients. The ward has not been the same since she came to work on it.'

We were both dismissed then. But before we left Sister Mauritius drew Sister Saviour's attention to the fact that the men were all still outside.

‘They are littering the lawn, move them inside and quickly.'