A Cleansing of Souls (17 page)

“Time for something to eat, now,” he said softly.

The food was wonderful. There were more textures, aromas, sights and varieties of food than Tom had ever seen before. There were relishes and spices that painted masterpieces in the air above the collapsible table, lingering long after the tongue had first delighted at the taste. Tom had felt a little reluctant to serve himself too much food, but encouraged by Sandy’s father, who ate with a speed only equalled to his enjoyment, he emptied his plate, filled it, and emptied it again. Ah, gorgeous, gorgeous food.

After having eaten all his stomach could take, Tom sat back in his chair and suddenly found himself in an intense battle to contain a monstrous burp he felt building up within him. Just as he felt he had conquered the worst of it, a resonant bellow leapt from the small man beside him. This emission broke Tom’s own resistance and he too belched gloriously just seconds later.

“Ah, you enjoy your food, Tom?” said Sandy’s father, smiling.

“I’m sorry,” mumbled Tom, embarrassed, shaken by the volume and timing of his own testament as to the extent of his enjoyment.

During the rest of the evening, they all watched television. There was a nature programme followed by a quiz show and then a film. Tom watched the latter with tired eyes. He felt so content and relaxed after the meal that all he wanted to do was sleep. The warmth of the room combined with the continuing spicy aroma that wafted throughout the room tease him into somnolence.

Towards the end of the film, there were some erotic scenes that caused Sandy to glance nervously at her mother to ensure she was still knitting and not watching. And every time Sandy looked back at the screen, her mother and father smiled tenderly at one another. Tom viewed all this through half-closed eyes, on the outside now, looking in on this family.

When the time came to leave, Sandy’s mother stood up and shook Tom by the hand once more. He thanked her for the tea and she smiled, nodding her head slowly.

“It has been a pleasure to meet you, Tom,” said Sandy’s father as they stood outside in the fading light. He laboured over the words but meant every one of them.

“Yes, you too,” replied Tom, shaking the small man’s bony hand.

After a kiss goodnight for her father and a wave to her mother, Sandy led Tom back to the station and to the train that would take them both back home.

When Tom and Sandy arrived back at the flat, they were both very tired. Tom had a headache, due in part to a mixture of the heady smell of the spices and having to concentrate so hard when listening to Sandy’s father. He sat down on the settee whilst Sandy went into the kitchen to make hot chocolate for them both. Before she could return with the drinks, Tom had closed his eyes. The flat was so quiet. Everything was still. Just as he was about to slip into sleep, Sandy handed him his hot chocolate.

“That was all right, wasn’t it?” said Tom, sipping his drink, feeling it burning his lips. “Your dad’s a good bloke.”

“Yes, he is,” replied Sandy.

Tom noticed some hesitation in her voice. He was in tune with her now, closer to her. He could sense her in a way that he had been unable to before.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Did I do something wrong? Except for the burp, I mean. I’m sorry about that. It just sort of came out.”

“Dad does that all the time,” she said. “He always has done.”

“Well, what then? Was it something I said?”

Sandy put her mug on the floor, turned and looked at Tom. It was a nervous, shy and self-conscious look.

Sandy took a deep breath and continued to look into his eyes as she spoke.

“This morning,” she said, “what happened this morning was, look, I don’t know how to say this, but, what you did, what we did, it’s just that, did you mean it?” She let go her breath now in pure relief and then added, as if to jog his memory, "when we made love."

Tom watched the steam of his hot chocolate weave towards him like some spirit rising. He leaned across, closed his eyes and kissed Sandy softly on the cheek. It was the most sensitive thing he had ever done. And he hadn’t even had to think about it. Tears came to her eyes and she cried, sobbed. All day she had been wondering. It had meant so much to her. Tom held her to him and she continued to weep.

Joy. Love. Cry it all out. Hold me like this every day, every morning, every night. May your embrace be my embrace and may I never be without you.

That night, Tom and Sandy slept in each other’s arms like two wanderers in a strange land, clinging onto the only thing they knew. Their thoughts and their dreams were far apart that night though there bodies were so close. They were in the same place at the same time and that is all. But who can tell what tomorrow brings?

This is a moment. All we have are moments. Just live them.

So Sandy was in madly in love.

And Tom, well Tom just slept in that soft bed, held in the arms of another, praying that the yellow moon would hold off the morning forever.

Who can say what leads a person to suicide? No man can pass judgement on the feelings and thoughts that must consume the mind in those final moments. They are beyond our understanding - for death to be preferable to life, to be the answer, the end. You are gone from our world and our conscience and move briefly into our memories to disappear forever as you were. I would have spent an hour with you, a day, a lifetime even. Just one word from me, and you would be with us still.

Jennifer. You are gone and I am almost alone.

It had been so long ago.

It had been barely a second.

Y
oung, fresh, vibrant - so full of life and love.

At fourteen,
Jennifer had fallen in love with a boy seven years older than herself. He had just started work and, with the money he earned, would take her to all kinds of marvellous places she had never known existed. She would hang off his arm as they walked down the street, full of pride and bursting with an eagerness just to enjoy every moment with her man.

Such was her pretty, elfin face, she could have passed for eighteen, twelve or thirty-five. There had been a maturity about her features, a worldliness that had made her all that more fascinating. She was a young girl, but oh so old in so many ways.

She had loved the way he put his arm around her waist, squeezing it every now and then with his strong hand. And she had absolutely adored it when he would meet her outside school and pick her up in his car and his suit, hair slicked back and shoes as shiny as ebony.

The young man with whom she was in love was generous and kind. He would look after her brother too. He cared for them both in a way. And that made him even more special. But if
she
needed love, she knew her brother was in even greater need. They had been so close, the brother and the sister. She would look up at her brother, he being older, but she knew how he cherished her. He had once told her that she was an angel, pure and clean and untouched, soft and beautiful. And she had laughed.

During the summer, just before her fifteenth year, Jennifer and her man grew closer together. Ah, Michael, it was so hard for you, wasn’t it? To see your angel float away from you to another, to touch humanity in so base a fashion?

I love him, Michael.

I love him.

Michael leaves.

Jennifer’s man arrives.

They are in the woods now, walking with one another. Thatched branches mottle the air into an intricate, woven roof of nature. It is strangely warm here beneath this canopy of dry trees. The ground is hard, dusty and unforgiving.

I have been waiting for you. Did you have a good morning at work? That’s good. When have you got to be back? An hour with you is eternity. I do love you, Ron. Yes, we can go over there if you want. Aren’t those trees beautiful? Those tiny twigs -and how old that bark is! This is an amazing place, isn’t it? Have you been here before? I’m not surprised you came back to it. It’s like a little corner of Heaven.

Your hands feel cold. Are you cold? Do you want me to warm them for you? Of course I will. There, that’s better. Are you sure you don’t want to sit down somewhere softer? This ground is quite hard. If I’d have known we were going to rest, we could have brought that blanket from out of your car. Then now I’m sitting down, it doesn’t feel so hard after all. When you pull me into your chest like this, Ron, I feel so safe. I feel that nobody can hurt me. Especially when you wear your suit. It’s strange, but when you wear your suit, I feel so grown up.

I can hear the birds up there. Do you think they are watching us? They sing so sweetly, don’t they? You’re very quiet, Ron. Are you feeling okay? I can hear your heartbeat when we lie down like this. I could stay here all day. If we close our eyes, I wonder if we could wish ourselves somewhere, anywhere, and just be in that place together, just the two of us forever. What would it look like, that place? Would it be fields and meadows or a desert island somewhere or a small boat adrift on a bright blue sea? I wouldn’t care where it was, I don’t think, just so long as I was with you, Ron.

When you hold me to you and kiss me I feel weak and light. You control me with your arms and your strength. You seem so much bigger than me as I lie here on my back, looking up at you. I don’t think of the earth beneath me or the sky above me. I just look at you and you are all I really see. Angels could come flying down from Heaven. A thousand people could walk by and I would not see them. You don’t know what you do to me, Ron.

This is like a fairy tale for me. I suppose you would be my hero. You are my hero. If I were to tell you all I thought of you, night would fall before I was even half way through. And as I look up at you, knowing that your lips will soon meet mine, I have to close my eyes, for then I can hear your breath, your heartbeat, smell you and sense you. When I close my eyes in these moments, just before you kiss me, I experience all of you with all senses other than sight. For with my eyes closed, I see you still. You don’t notice the way I stare at you sometimes when you’re not looking. I could draw you exactly; paint a picture of you from my memory tomorrow or a hundred years from now.

And I, lying there, eyes closed, wait for you.

I love these moments. When we are married, we can make love and I cannot wait for that time. Oh to be your wife, your lover. Just to kiss you and have you embrace me satisfies me like nothing else. For now. It satisfies me more than I could imagine, for it does not destroy my dreams. You are so strong. I love these moments. Waiting for your touch. Waiting for your kiss.

I lie here still.

I wait for you still.

And I open my eyes now, unsure.

And then I see you.

You stand over me; looking down. Your face is strange, dark. Maybe it’s a shadow, a passing shadow. There is some sort of darkness about you. I can’t really see your eyes at the moment. And you have such lovely eyes. And I realise now, in my naïve way, as I take my eyes from your face, that you are naked.

I hear the birds a little now. I see some of the sky too. A picture is forming around you, a picture of beauty, natural beauty as you come down to me. Your legs are astride me now. You are sitting upon my stomach. You feel heavy and I struggle for breath for a moment. You don’t seem to notice this. You don’t look right at all.

I try to say something but your lips are on mine before I get the chance. They feel rough and hard. Not like usual. And then I realise you haven’t shaved. You always shave, Ron. And you’re moving your body around as if you are trying to escape from it - your naked body. I feel the sharpness of small stones and sticks jabbing at me through the back of my dress. You bought me this dress. It was the first thing you ever bought me, Ron. I still can’t talk. I think my lip is bleeding. My breath does not seem to be my own. You control even that.

I think I am scared now. Things are becoming blurred. This is either going really fast or really slowly. I don’t know. Time seems to mean nothing. There are movements and none of them are mine. My eyes are closed tight. Whether I open them or close them, it makes no difference.

You’ve ripped my dress down the front. I could not hear the tear though above this strange noise you are making. I can just feel that it is torn. You’re grunting like an animal. Your nails are scratching me. I don’t know if you mean it or not. Your hands are rough. I think the skin on my back is touching the dirt now. And I think it’s bleeding. This is hurting me now. And still I cannot make a sound. The birds are singing. I think I can hear them singing.

My body is on the ground. You are on top of me. You put your hand down my knickers. Your fingers are inside me. I feel like I am being stabbed. I have gone numb. And then for a moment you stop, stop only to pull down my knickers.

You are fucking me now. You are fucking me. So that’s it. You are fucking me now. Fucked by you. I am letting you do this to me.

That is my body down there. My dress is torn. There are scratches and bruises all over me. I ache already.

I think you are finished now. I still cannot open my eyes.

Yes, you are finished. I cannot hear you breathing anymore.

At last, my eyes are open. You are standing there, leaning against a tree, dressed, and smoking a cigarette. I didn’t know you smoked.

Fourteen years old.

Jennifer had lain in those woods, not moving. In truth, though, she was not there at all. Was she in a field, a meadow, on a raft, or washed up on a desert island? Who knows? Ron had looked at his watch, walked over to her, helped her up and led her back to his car. Intent on not being late for work, he had dropped her off at the bus stop outside his office and sauntered back in to sit behind his ever-expanding desk.

And what of Jennifer? What had she done?
Well, she had gone home, changed, checked her purse and bought three packets of headache tablets and a can of coke. She had sat in her room, the room that Ron had rented for her and Michael, just sat there and took one tablet after another, the drink breaking up the chalky taste in her mouth. It had taken her almost half an hour to swallow all the tablets and each minute of that time, she thought of the mother she barely remembered, of bright places and of when she was a small child, playing and dancing and singing and living. As each tablet sank to her stomach, so her courage grew. It had seemed so straightforward, so easy. Living is not everything, not to the person who wants to die. Shatter me and break me. But let me kill myself.

And Michael had come in late that evening, after meeting his friend, Ron, and going to the pictures with him. He had come in to find his angel dead on the bed. She had changed into her pyjamas and had still been ever so slightly warm when he had touched her. His little sister was dead. His angel was gone, away and free to float above in his sky and in his dreams, to sail through his veins, to dance to the beating of his heart. His angel was dead.

Time passes. Trees grow old and seasons change. We are years on now.

“I’ve left Michael Parrish’s old notes in the drawer for you, John,” said the ward clerk, motioning at the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. John was in the middle of another long day and his reactions were slowing. Before he could indicate his thanks to her, she had retreated from the madness back into her computer and her telephone.

Several hours later, long after the ward clerk had gone home, John looked at the clock on the wall and willed the seconds on. The ward had settled down a little, he had drunk as much coffee as he could and his body craved a real drink. He had done all the writing he needed to do; it was just a matter now of waiting for the night staff to come in and hoping nothing else happened on the ward in which he needed to get involved. So he decided to look at the file that had arrived from the hospital that had looked after Michael at the age of seventeen.

The file was of a light blue colour with black writing on the front indicating the name of the patient, the date of admission and the date of discharge. Michael had been there for ten months. Not bad for a seventeen year old, thought John. He looked through to try and find some information about how things had gone back then. The writing in the notes was akin to that found on some fifteenth century pamphlet, ancient, scrawled, faded and intriguing. However he looked at it, John could not decipher too much of the scrawl with any consistency. So he looked at the back of the notes for any typed letters or a summary of the admission, a discharge letter perhaps. And then he found, in rounded schoolgirl writing, the admission notes, those written by the nurse the day the patient arrived on the ward.

John read, looked at the clock and read on. During this time, Michael slept in his side room. He slept most of the time now.

My angel. You are asleep now, asleep in my arms. I will hold you until you awake. And you will awake. The night is upon us now. Look at those stars in the sky. Look at that moon. Yes. I will hold you until you awake. My angel.

The night staff came in and John put Michael’s file back in the drawer. He greeted the staff wearily and began informing them of the events of the day. Michael, being the latest patient to be admitted, was the last on the list to be handed over.