The Healing (7 page)

Before, they had spoken to him in many different ways: the flight of a solitary bird, the pattern on a decaying leaf, the settling of dust on a window ledge. Above all, they had woven their threaded whispers through the silence which settled like snow on the farm house, and at night, when dreams beat wildly about his head like dark-winged bats, they screamed their fervent fury. Now they sought new ways to speak to him. An invisible finger scrawled messages of hate on gable walls, black spider lettering scuttling across pitted brick and flaking cement. As he sat beside his mother in the taxi on the way to the hospital, he read their message on each wall they passed, flicking through the street corners like the pages of a book. Black silhouettes were emblazoned on painted blue skies and the invisible finger moved slowly and deliberately, scoring the words deep into his mind. Sometimes they fingered his face until he felt as if he was walking down a long tunnel where webbed filament clung to his skin.

His mother sat tense and alert, her eyes flitting fretfully
over territory she knew was hostile, but her ears did not hear the voices. She sat as if she had a bad taste in her mouth and when the taxi stopped outside the hospital she seemed to have a momentary hesitation, almost as if she was considering telling the driver to take them home again. But she paid the fare, carefully handing over the correct amount, and then placed her purse deep in her handbag.

He didn't want to get out of the back of the taxi, but she encouraged him with a nod of her head and a tight smile which barely hid her fear. They huddled together on the pavement, exposed and vulnerable, before they followed other visitors into the hospital. Plastic doors flapped open and a reassuringly recognizable smell flowed over them. Feet echoed in the tiled corridors as porters pushed wagons of laundry. His mother looked again at the appointment card and consulted a uniformed security man for directions. His radio crackled with static as he re-directed them to a different building. They retraced their steps and walked tentatively through the sprawling grounds where parked cars filled every possible space and ambulances moved in and out. He furtively studied each passing face and walked close to his mother, their synchronized steps giving the appearance of a purpose they did not feel.

A man wearing a blue dressing gown over his pyjamas strolled by, indifferent to their stares. Pigeons stuttered across their path, their green heads washed by the sunlight. A police landrover sat with its engine running and the back door open no more than a few inches. Then a nurse directed them to their destination and in a few minutes a
receptionist pointed them to a waiting area. His mother sniffed dismissively as she inspected the green plastic chairs with their stains and cracks, the mess of magazines spilled across a wooden table, and the plastic coffee cups which sat uncollected underneath it. He stared at the posters on the wall and listened to the receptionist typing in her glassfronted office. Two doctors in white coats appeared then walked off down a corridor. The typing continued while his mother's eyes inspected more of the surroundings, holding her bag tightly in her lap as if someone was likely to steal it.

A woman approached them wearing a blue suit and white blouse, and in her hand she carried a large brown envelope. It was the doctor they had been sent to see. He looked into her face as she smiled at him. She knew his name and talked as if she knew all about him. They followed her down the long corridor until they came to an open door, where she paused and showed them in with an outstretched arm. She offered him a seat and presented him with a set of comics to read while she took his mother into an inner office. If he sat still and silent, he could hear snatches of their voices through the frosted glass. After a few minutes they came out, smiling in unison at him.

‘Well, Samuel, I think it's time for you and I to get to know each other. What do you say?'

He looked at his mother and she nodded her agreement, but he stayed in his seat and held onto the unopened comics.

‘Everything's all right, Samuel. Dr Rollins wants to help. She's helped lots of people your age. Go and talk to her,' his mother said.

Still holding onto the comics he rose and followed the doctor into the inner office. As she closed the door, he glimpsed his mother standing, clutching her bag.

There were plants in the room and coloured posters of animals. The doctor sat down on a chair which was angled towards his, close enough for him to smell her scent, and when he glanced up at her from time to time, he could see a light shadow of perspiration on her upper lip.

‘How do you like living in the city, Samuel?'

His hands rolled up the comics tightly.

‘I suppose it's a big change from living on a farm. I'm sure it'll take a while to get used to it.'

He pulled his feet back under the chair. Behind her squatted a green metal filing cabinet, watching and listening.

‘I've often thought it must be really interesting to live on a farm. Hard work I'm sure, too, of course.'

She paused and smiled at him. Little beads of perspiration had formed on her upper lip. A breeze from the partly-opened window rustled some leaves on a plant sitting on the window ledge. A mobile of metal birds hanging from the ceiling turned slowly.

‘Your mother tells me that you don't talk very much any more, Samuel. Your mother tells me too that you've been having bad dreams.'

Framed certificates on the wall stared down at him, their seals dark pupils encased in glass. His hands clutched the sides of the chair until his knuckles whitened.

‘Would you tell me about your dreams?'

The birds turned more quickly, their metal wings
glinting coldly in the light. He felt her trying to take him where he could not go. He started to run down the long tunnel of himself, pulling each door tightly closed behind him, and although thick strands of web tried to fasten to him as he ran, he brushed them aside with frantic hands.

‘It's all right, Samuel. If you don't want to tell me, it's okay.'

He glanced quickly back at her to see how close she had come in her pursuit. Her green eyes smiled at him like a set trap.

‘Sometimes using words is very hard and very painful. I understand that, so right now if you don't want to speak, it's all right.'

She stood up and went to a shelf behind her desk. Her black hair was fastened with a bronze-coloured clasp. She took down a sheet of white paper and a tub of felt-tipped pens, then cleared a space on her desk and laid the paper down.

‘I know it might sound childish, but what I'd like you to do is draw something for me. I'd like you to draw one of your dreams. You can draw it any way you want and use any of the colours. I'm going to leave you here so you can give it a go without me looking over your shoulder. Bring your chair right up to the desk while I have a chat with your mum. Don't be frightened. Trust me.'

She opened the door and went out.

The white page stretched in front of him like a sheet of ice. His fingers cautiously touched its coldness then pulled away. The pens bristled like arrows in a quiver. Above his head the sharp-beaked birds hovered menacingly. He looked at the page again. It gently called him
on, inviting him to skate across its surface, and he could hear her voice in his head urging him to trust her. He imagined her standing on the other side of the desk with her arms outstretched, enticing him forward. Step onto the ice. Just a little step and she would reach out and catch him if there was any danger. He took the top off a pen. Trust her. Step out across the ice. Just one little step – that was all it would take.

Suddenly the wail of a passing siren filled the room and his whole body was shaken by doubt. It was a trap. He would step out and the ice would crack beneath him, plunging him into the dark waters below. He would plummet into its black heart and then the ice would close over again above his head, trapping him in its frozen depths.

He took the black marker and scored it feverishly across the page, obliterating as much of the blinding whiteness as he could. He did it until his wrist was sore and the smell of the ink soaked his senses, and as he did so, the glass eyes smiled down at him and the birds rotated gently once more. Outside, he could hear the doctor talking to his mother.

‘. . . suffering from post-trauma stress disorder. A bit of a mouthful, I know, but not uncommon, I'm afraid. We can help him, but it will take time and careful therapy.'

He put the cap back on the pen. Inside the filing cabinet, something creaked. The leaves of a plant fluttered then fell still again. The tone of his mother's voice was changing. She sounded weary and suddenly full of doubt.

‘I know you mean well, Doctor, and I know you can
heal many sicknesses nowadays, but only God's peace can heal my son now.'

He rose from the chair, pushed it under the desk and went out to his mother. He stood beside her and she placed a hand on his shoulder. They both wanted to go and he closed his ears to the doctor's voice which followed them out of the office and down the long corridor with its polished floor, and doors with names on them.

A week later, on a Sunday night, his mother took him to God. It wasn't the new church they had started to attend, but a large tent on playing fields close to where the river curved its ponderous course. They walked along the embankment where young men jogged past breathlessly, and young couples strolled hand in hand, to where the tent squatted large and white.

Two men standing at the entrance gave them hymn sheets as they entered and a third guided them to seats. On a tiered level, a choir sat grouped around a pulpit. They were much younger than the choirs he was used to, and when they sang they clapped their hands and swayed gently from side to side. People in the congregation clapped along with them and there was a feeling of expectancy which he did not associate with church. He looked up at the roof of the tent where ropes and poles connected like the spokes of an umbrella. His mother bowed her head in prayer, her lips moving silently, synchronized with her soul. He wondered if small birds ever found themselves trapped inside the dome of the tent.

Then the clapping grew louder and the singing became more insistent. A couple of rows in front of where they were seated, two girls stood up and raised their arms in the
air as if they were surrendering to something. Their heads dropped back onto their shoulders and their faces searched upwards. More and more people filed their way into the tent until all the seats were taken, while some people stood in clusters at the back.

The evangelist appeared from somewhere behind the choir, gripped both sides of the lectern and bowed his head solemnly, and when he looked up, his face was smiling down at them as if he knew each one of them personally and was pleased they had come.

As he spoke, the music continued to play softly in the background and his voice was a strange mixture of a local accent and something partly American. When he lifted both his hands into the air, the tent fell silent, all the rustling and coughing fading away, until the only sound was far-off traffic.

‘Let us go to the Lord in prayer. Our heavenly Father, as we come before You tonight, as we approach the mercy seat in prayer, we look to You for Your blessing. Look down on this assembly tonight and bless us with Thy presence. Shut out all things that would distract or hinder us from hearing Thy voice and send Thy Holy Spirit to guide our worship. We know that here tonight there are those with heavy hearts weighed down by their burden of sin, and those who are afflicted in body and soul. Be graciously near to them and help them this very night to make that journey of faith that they might know the power of Thy salvation. Thou who calmed the storm, quieten now our souls and help us to hear only Thy voice. In Thy holy name we ask it.'

A chorus of affirmation burst out around the tent.
They sang one of the hymns from the sheet they had been given, and some voices in the choir sang high parts, weaving in and out of the melody. Many people raised their hands and some linked with others in a raised chain. The whole service was different to what he was accustomed to, unpredictable in both pattern and style, and when the preacher read from the Bible, his voice too had an unfamiliar cadence. The passage he read was about the woman who had an illness described as an ‘issue of blood' who was cured when she touched the hem of Christ's garment. Amidst all the heaving mass of people, Christ had known that someone had touched Him. The preacher's relentless voice filled the tent, rolling round it and billowing out the sides, and the words soared across his heart like swallows, diving and darting into the dark spaces. Sometimes, too, it felt as though the preacher's eyes rested on him, and he could see deep inside him.

He was comparing life to a journey, and beside him his mother sat with the white handkerchief wreathing her hand. She seemed to be carried along by the words.

‘Besides being a strange journey, it's also a swift one. The moment we believe, we receive life. Between God and man exists a great chasm, a deep turbulence of sin. Oh, sinner, is your soul tossed on that sea tonight? Are you weary and troubled in spirit? There have been many attempts to bridge this chasm, and indeed, all around us we hear the voices of those who preach reformation, revolution, and so on – poor, misguided people who think this or that external change can alter the condition of man's heart. Well, I say to those people tonight – read the word of God, search the scriptures, for you know, dear friends, all our
righteousness is as filthy rags. That's right, all our own efforts at change are worthless, pitiful gestures doomed to failure. Yes, and yet this journey is such a swift one that it only requires faith. It's true that it may take a man a good deal of time to approach the door, but it's also true that it only takes a moment to enter. A single moment, the twinkling of an eye – that's all it takes to enter into a living union with God. Oh poor, travel-weary sinner, it's a swift journey and now is the appointed time, and now is the moment of salvation.'