The Healing (15 page)

When the old man decided that they had finished their work for the day they carried his tools through a gap in the hedge and stored them in the garage. He watched the care with which the old man shut and locked the door, and assumed he was frightened that someone might steal the tools, because there was nothing else of any value to be seen. As he turned to go back to his own garden he felt a hand on his shoulder, leading him back. He had never been in the old man's house before, but he followed him with a growing sense of curiosity, staring up at the lifeless windows which reflected nothing but their own emptiness.

Billy was sitting in the kitchen, slumped forward on the table, his head surrounded by uncleared plates. The radio was on and a man was reading the news, reciting new names and places of death. As they came in, he raised his head sharply as if startled, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘Hi, kid. What about you?'

The old man ushered him into the living-room as if his son had not spoken. The voice from the radio followed them, seeking to push its way inside his head but he barred it out with practised skill, trying to concentrate only on what he could see, cataloguing everything in the room with deliberate exactitude. There was a faint musty
smell lingering over the furniture which looked old and shabby as if it had reached the end of its life. There was no sign of anything new or bright. The fire was almost dead and everywhere there was an air of neglect. He pictured his mother being let loose in it and the welcome challenge it would present to her. If allowed, she could find enough cleaning to keep her occupied for a long time and be spared the frustration of having to search for new things to do. Perhaps she might take it on in return for the old man's work in the garden, but the more he looked about, the more he sensed that he was standing close to some secret which would not welcome prying eyes or a stranger's hand. He felt it all about him, unspoken words and hidden memories, which lurked behind the faded wallpaper and threadbare furniture, and although he wasn't sure, he did not think that they were good memories. On a wall was a black and white wedding photograph of a young man with a nervous face standing stiffly in a squareshouldered suit. It was difficult to see the small face of the bride as it seemed almost shadowed by the flouncing veil.

The old man sat down at the table and gestured to him to do the same. For the first time, he noticed the green ledgers. The old man was looking at them too. The voice from the radio slipped momentarily through the barrier he had erected, but then seeped away again. He wondered what was in the books but the old man continued to stare intently and said nothing. The radio voice was replaced by music. A woman was singing about love. The old man stretched out his hand and placed it palm down on the cover of the top book.

‘They're here,' he said. ‘The names of the dead. I record
them all – since the very start, before you were even born. Many names. But not for much longer, because we're very close to the moment when it will begin. Every day brings us closer to it.'

The old man was talking to him but still staring at the books, almost as if his words were directed to them. He wondered if his father's name was there. The old man spoke more and more about healing, but the spider writing on the walls and the voices from radio and television spoke only of more deaths. Sometimes when the old man talked like this it felt as though he was talking only to himself, trying to hold onto some strange dream which had no meaning.

After a while the old man stood up from the table and without speaking left the room. His departure brought a new silence to it, and the voice on the radio grew louder. He heard the old man's footsteps in the room above and the sound of a toilet flushing. Then, suddenly, he knew that someone was watching him and he turned sharply to see Billy standing in the doorway. They smiled at each other. He came over to the table and sat down on the chair beside him, winking at him and then raising his eyes in the direction of the ceiling.

‘Don't pay too much heed, kid, to what ma da comes out with. His head's full of slamming doors. He's getting old and sometimes things get mixed up in his head. Just listen, don't pay it any heed.'

He watched Billy's face break into a smile.

‘Just listen – that's a good one. You never do anything else, do you, kid? Tell me this. What do you do with all the words that people pour into that head of yours? If you've
any sense, you'll not store them up but let them in one ear and out the other. I've been doing that all my life with ma da. And at the end of the day, words aren't worth shit. Just nod – that's all the encouragement he needs.'

Billy's eyes rested on the ledgers.

‘What's he doing with these out? He's not thinking of showing you those, is he? God in Heaven, he's not doing his bit about recording the dead. Other old lads keep scrapbooks, but they put postcards or stamps in them, not bloody obituaries!'

As he spoke, he laughed and shook his head from side to side.

‘Cutting out bits of newspaper isn't going to stop this thing – but you know that better than anyone. There's only one way'll end this and it's their way.' He could hear the old man's heavy footsteps on the stair. ‘It took us a long time to learn the lesson, but we understand it now, kid. “Our day will come” – that's their cry, but their day has come and gone and now it's time to pay them back, time to settle the score.'

Billy stretched out his hand and rested it on his shoulder.

‘Time to pay them back for your father, Samuel.'

He looked into Billy's eyes for a second then turned away from the intensity which burned there. As the old man entered the room Billy stood up and the hand which had been resting on his shoulder playfully ruffled his hair. He glanced again at Billy's face but the fire had gone, replaced by a familiar smile.

‘Believe it, kid. It's coming soon.'

The old man looked at them both, anxious to discern what had passed between them.

‘What've you been saying to the boy?' he asked.

‘Lighten up, Da. Samuel and me's mates. We've been having a wee talk, that's all.'

‘Samuel wants nothing to do with your world, William, so don't try to poison him with your hate.'

Billy shook his head and started to move out of the room, then stopped and turned back to his father.

‘The only poisonous thing in this house is all those crazy ideas you carry round in your head and you'll not be helping the boy or anyone else if you start to fill his head with them. What are those ledgers doing out? Do you think that's going to help the kid, showing him what's in those?'

They were arguing now and their rising voices speared his senses. The old man was holding onto one of the ledgers as if he expected someone might try to take it away. Their voices grew louder – vicious volleys of words – until he could stand it no more, and he slipped off the chair and ran through the kitchen to the back door, conscious only of the voice on the radio, and as he struggled with the handle he heard the voice break into laughter. Even as he ran into the garden and through the gap in the hedge, the mocking laughter ran alongside him and matched him step for step.

He could see his mother working in the kitchen and wondered why she did not look up at the sound of the laughter, but then as he focused on her, it raced finally round his head and swirled away like water down a drain. She smiled at him when he entered, but he could tell that she was agitated, and she prepared the evening meal with a staccato sharpness that told him something was wrong,
clattering the lids of pots and letting cupboard doors bang as she closed them. He sat on one of the kitchen chairs and watched her. He seemed to notice more grey hairs each time he looked, and although he could not see her face it was obvious that she was upset. There was an open letter on the other side of the table, but it was folded so that it was not possible to read it. The more he wondered if this was the reason for her present mood, the more he grew curious about the contents, and after a while his hand edged towards it.

‘Don't touch what doesn't concern you!' she snapped.

He drew back his hand guiltily and looked away as she lifted the letter and envelope, crumpled them bitterly in her hand, then crammed them into the pocket of her apron.

‘There's some very sick people in the world. You'd have to be sick to go to the trouble of finding out where we'd moved to and writing filth like this. Isn't what they did to us enough without having to do this?'

He waited for her to tell him more but she turned again to the cooker and only the rigid line of her back betrayed her anger. He did not understand but he could tell that she was not going to say any more about it.

‘Why don't you set the table instead of sitting there with your two arms the one length?'

Obediently he began to do as she had asked, lifting out the knives and forks so that nothing rattled and arranging them silently in the setting that always reminded them of the missing place. He could still see the crumpled letter and he found it difficult to take his eyes away from it. He opened the fridge, lifted out an unopened bottle of
milk, the glass cold on his hands, and as he did so the bottle slipped through his fingers and shattered on the floor, jagged peaks of glass jutting out of the milky sea like tiny icebergs. Suddenly, his mother dropped what she was holding and grabbed him by the shoulders.

‘Look what you've done – can you not be more careful?'

She was shaking him but it was the fierce frenzy of her face which shocked him more than anything, and he closed his eyes and tried to scream against it, but his voice froze in his throat and the only sounds were his mother's broken breathing, and the thumping of his heart. Then, as her hands slipped away, he darted past her and out through the door. She was calling to him, but as he ran her voice was replaced by the mocking laughter. Without slowing down, he squirmed through the gap in the fence at the bottom of the garden and clambered up the slope, the long seeded heads of grass wavering all about him, and he ran until a pain burned in his side and his breath came in great heaving gasps. He made his way, more slowly now, to the blunt-faced outcrop of rock and squeezed himself into a narrow fissure which ran deep into the stone, pushing his back tightly against the solid safety of the rock.

He felt more alone now than he had ever done before, alone and frightened of what the coming days would bring. There was no pattern now, no future road which he could travel with any expectation of arriving at some better place. The days ahead fused into a maze of misery where he and his mother wandered with increasing bitterness and despair. Soon they would begin to blame each other, their hurt rubbing against each other, keeping
the memory raw and open. He could taste the misery but he could think of nothing to block out the weight of its inevitability, and then gradually his fear turned to anger, and he pushed his back against the cold surface of the rock and dug his heels into narrow ridges as if he was trying to throw the whole hill back over on itself. His brow furrowed with the strain and his teeth bit deep into his lower lip until a little tear of blood surfaced. He held the strain for as long as he could, then released it with an explosion of breath.

Nothing had moved, nothing had changed, and then in his anger he thought of the worst words in the world – the ugly, forbidden words he had never used and had seen written only on walls, and in his silent world he explored their unfamiliar taste, singly at first, waiting for some punishment, but when none came he grew bolder, chanting them over and over to himself until the pain was numbed. Then, lifting his face to the narrow strip of sky above him, he let them out in a wordless scream.

Words streamed out and through him like water, flooding and coursing through him, sweeping away all the barriers which separated him from the will of God, cleansing and irrigating the secret drought-ridden places of doubt. They washed over him, carrying him on a wave of release as words, strange words, bubbled to his lips in an overflowing of the inner spirit, and his head rocked from side to side, while his feet shuffled in a little dance of exultation. He lifted his open hands skywards and his feet moved steadily, rubbing the open threads of the oil-smeared carpet. Guttural noises formed in his throat and swam quiveringly into freedom as he spoke in tongues of mystery, his eyes rolling in his head and stipples of spit splashing his face.

The flecked light of the garage fanned about him, flowing round his convulsive movements and forming again as gradually his motion slowed and melted into a fragile stillness. His head lowered to his chest and his hands dropped lifelessly to his sides, only his feet lingering in a final spasm. He slumped onto the paint-smeared wooden
chair and his head flopped from side to side as if his neck was broken. Things were clearer now, with uncertainties swept away and his resolution washed clean and sure.

He looked about him, his eyes searching the dark corners and hidden places with a new-found courage. He would put off the moment no longer. He approached the secret place and began to lift away the coiled wreath of objects which concealed it. They felt strange to the touch, almost as if he was holding them for the first time and his hands shook a little as he set them down in the ritual pattern he had always followed. He had to force himself to open the back of the television set and then his hands searched with increasing desperation to find what he was looking for. His hands fluttered like the wings of a bird but he knew already that it was no longer there. For a second he tried to deceive himself with explanations, but the spirit of truth was upon him and he saw with clarity what it meant.

Standing back from the empty shell, he wiped the moisture from his lips with the back of his hand, and with unblinking eyes stared into the hollowed hiding place. Before, he had tried to deny it, to push it deeper into the shadows of his mind, but it had lingered there like an open sore. It had been a sin, nothing could be hidden from the light of the Spirit, and its rotting corpse could no longer be allowed to come close to the purity of what he must do. His task was too important and now its time had finally come, he could not risk it being tainted by the smear of evil.