Demons (21 page)

to a question I hadn’t got round to asking
yet.

Classics Competition

Mum and Dad didn’t know quite what to think.
They stared at me, at each other. To smile or to frown? To ask why,
or to stay silent? To trust, or to disbelieve? Too many options. I
put them out of their misery. I told them why I was who I was.

‘
That’s clever,’ said Mum.
‘You could come to our next meeting dressed like that.’

‘
Will anyone else realise?’
Dad said.

‘
The team knows what I’m
going to be, they just don’t know how I’ll look. Or
why.’

‘
Is Chris picking you up
for this?’ Mum asked.

‘
What do you think?’ I
asked them. They were already aware that we’d broken up.

‘
I’ll tell you about it one
day,’ I’d said to them. ‘About that and other things as well. First
I’ll get school out of the way.’

‘
Sure you can
wait?’

‘
Yes,’ I’d said. ‘It’s not
much longer now.’

‘I’m driving myself,’ I said to Dad. ‘Come
with me if you want.’

‘
Well,’ said Dad. ‘I
wouldn’t mind . . .’

‘
No. I think this is one
thing Andrea needs to do on her own,’ said Mum firmly.

I arrived at the university. Not early. Not
late. Just in time to walk across the paved courtyard into the
lecture buildings, have a loo stop (got a few funny looks), go
across the scuffed wooden floor, up the stairs to the entrance of
the tiered lecture theatre where the Classics Competition was being
held.

Chris and Becs and Ro were
in a nervous huddle

outside with Ms Shapiro and the others of
our class, wondering where on earth I was, thinking I’d changed my
mind and wasn’t coming.

I didn’t expect we’d win, but it would be a
victory of sorts.

Of the classics class only Becs knew that
Chris and I had split up and she was keeping quiet about it. No
need, she’d said, for everyone to have such a juicy piece of gossip
right at the end of the year.

However, they all knew I
was going to dress up as one of the women revellers in
The Bacchae
, one of the
worshippers of the god Dionysus, one of his woodland
priests.

I smoothed down my black trousers and
jacket, adjusted my white dog collar so it didn’t feel too tight
around my neck and then I stepped over to join them.

STRANGE MEETING

‘I saw in the paper
that
The Bacchae
’s on tonight.’

“
No kidding. I didn’t know
that.’

‘
No reason to, not so soon
after you’ve come back. It’s being performed in a night club, with
a dance party after. Interested?’

‘
Only if it’s in the
original Greek.’

‘
You geek,’ I
say.

We stand up to go. ‘A way of starting
again,’ says Chris. A question, or a statement?

‘
It won’t be another start
for us,’ I say. ‘It’ll be a way of finishing.’

Chris’s face falls. Tough luck. Tough
love.

‘
But I thought . .
.’

‘
Next Thursday, after
graduation, I’m booked on a flight to London and Ireland,’ I say.
‘Chasing a few ghosts.’

‘
I see. And after . .
.’

‘
Who knows,’ I say. ‘I’ll
open the bag of winds and decide where I want them to blow
me.’

Graffiti

Chris got it wrong.

A gentle breeze often
turns into a strong wind
.

Definitions

Religious studies at uni
came in useful in more ways then one. It taught me eschatology. It
told me that Christopher comes from the Greek word
Khristophoro
. It’s a
word of two halves, Khristos, by definition, meaning ‘Christ, the
anointed one” and
pherein
, by definition meaning ‘to
carry’.

So, Christ-carrier.

But, in reality, a person who actually never
existed. St Christopher, who carried Christ across a raging river,
was struck off the official list of saints. Turns out he was a
story. A myth. An allegory.

But his story is still around today and will
last as long as all stories last.

So what does all this prove, Chris? That you
never were? Of course not.

You did exist, and I existed, but it was in
a different time and a different place, that’s all.

For a short time we were like a miracle. And
maybe, in your own way, you did carry me across a river.

Keep the faith Chris, whatever yours is.

I’ll carry mine.

Sorry Gran. Like I said to you at the
cemetery I’m not a big-C Catholic at the moment but I am still
‘catholic’. Part of the universe. Maybe even part of your universe
of saints. And, somehow, we’ll go on

forever and, somewhere, we’ll meet
again.

Epilogue

Without me noticing, Mum and Dad have
returned. They sit down on either side of me.

‘
Andrea,’ Dad says.
‘They’ve made the boarding announcement.’

It’s as if I’m rising up out of deep
water.

‘
What?’

‘
Time to go,’ Dad
says.

I shake my head, trying to clear it, not
succeeding very well. ‘I didn’t hear them say.’

‘
You were away with the
fairies,’ says Mum.

‘
And the
leprechauns.’

‘
Don’t forget the angels,’
I say. ‘And the demons.’

‘
Come on,’ Dad says. ‘Up
you get.’

We all stand up together. We hug. We
cry.

‘
I can’t believe it,’ I
say.

‘
Neither can we,’ says Mum.
‘Our little girl. Off on her big OE.’

‘
Mum,’ I say.

‘
Get going,’ says Dad,
‘before we change our minds.’

‘
You what?’ I begin. But of
course, it’s a tease.

We put on brave faces. We move apart.

That’s what life is sometimes. Moving apart.
Moving away. Moving on. But everything goes in circles, I like to
think, and the ends of the loop will join up again one day.

Still, I can’t help it. In the final seconds
I look round wildly in case Chris is there. He is and he isn’t. I
see him and I don’t. All the ghosts of my life are suddenly
crowding around me, trying to press close, to touch, to pull, to
become part of me again. I push them away. You’ve had your time, I
tell them. You

built me but I’m doing the rebuilding. See
how you like the new construction.

Then the ghosts drift away and I move on.
Closing the gaps.

15, 17, 22.

Now
.

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Creative New Zealand for a
grant that enabled him to work on this book.

The translations from the
Ancient Greek are by the author, with the exception of the last
quoted line from Euripides’
The
Bacchae
. That irresistible phrase, ‘joyful
mysteries,’ comes from T. A Buckley’s 1850 translation of the play.
See:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Eur.+Ba.+235&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0092
)

The Bacchae
was performed in a local night club several years
ago. I didn’t see the production but would like to thank actor,
translator and Associate Professor of Classics, Robin Bond, for the
inspiration.

Last, but not least, my thanks to HTK.