‘That’s crazy talk,’ I said.
A group of girls came out onto the balcony with their coffees, chatting loudly.
‘I don’t trust him,’ Geraldine said in a low voice. ‘He wanted to be rich. He is now; he inherited a fortune. He gets whatever he wants. He wants to find a way to get me. Is he using you, Joey?’
‘No one is using me,’ I said. ‘I’m just myself.’
‘A big romantic sap.’ Geraldine leaned forward and kissed me suddenly on the lips. ‘That’s to say thank you – nobody else ever wrote a poem for me before.’
‘What do you mean, before?’
Geraldine’s smile started to grow anxious. ‘Before you dropped a poem in my letterbox last night. The poem about longing to walk with me in Blackrock and share all the places I love …’ Her smile was replaced by a puzzled stare. ‘How did you manage to list so many places that are special to me, like you already knew all my secrets?’
‘I never wrote you any poem.’
‘It was signed in your name, in perfect copperplate handwriting.’ Geraldine stepped back, scared. ‘We’re letting him do this; we’re letting Shane manipulate us.’
‘Geraldine, listen to me …’
But Geraldine didn’t listen. She ran back through the café. The girls at the other table stopped their chatter to stare at me as if I had done something terrible. I ran after her, but by the time I got out onto Main Street Geraldine was gone. I stood there, feeling confused and angry, but most of all feeling the sweet aftertaste of her kiss.
THIRTY-FOUR
Joey
November 2009
Before that kiss in Starbucks Geraldine had felt untouchable, but now she was flesh and blood that I longed to kiss again. Somebody was playing mind games with us, but I couldn’t be certain whether Shane or the old man had written that poem in my name. When I had disturbed Thomas outside Geraldine’s house, could he have already posted it in her letterbox, malevolently meddling in other people’s lives?
On Thursday in school, Shane knew that something was wrong because Geraldine studiously avoided me. Looking around the class and remembering being bullied in my former school, I couldn’t stop wondering if any of my classmates were laughing at my expense, having composed the poem between them as a joke. I couldn’t stop such wild speculation because I had no one to confide in. I didn’t know whether to trust Shane any more, yet he was the only person I could go to for advice, because he felt like my only real friend in school. This was because he never allowed me the chance to get friendly with any- one else. If I started a conversation with someone, Shane always contrived to join in, so that they wound up talking to him instead. Shane and I were inseparable in people’s eyes, but only because he had started to dominate every aspect of my school life.
When Shane asked me how I had spent Wednesday afternoon I dodged the question by telling him about the old demo tapes Bongo Drums had in his attic. Shane was adamant that I should ask Bongo for them. He claimed that my mum would give anything to hear Dad’s voice again. But what if his songs failed to match the status I had granted them in my mind? I decided to seek Mum’s advice on Thursday evening.
‘Mum, a teacher in school has old tapes of Dad in his attic.
Mum looked up from her crossword. ‘How come?’
‘He was a drummer in the sessions. The thing is, I didn’t know if you’d want to hear his voice again.’
Mum put down the book. ‘I often hear his voice,’ she said. ‘I hear him sometimes in how you talk and always in how you laugh.’
‘That’s not the same thing.’
‘Who is this teacher?’
‘Mr Quinn. Bongo Drums, we call him.’
‘Bongo Drums.’ She laughed. ‘That’s a good name for Ben Quinn. I remember him on the road. He had a droopy moustache and a fondness for German women. He could talk the hind legs off a donkey.’ She reached across for my hand. ‘If Ben has tapes, you don’t need my permission to listen to them.’
‘I’d like us to listen to them together.’
Mum shook her head. ‘Your father’s songs are still too raw for me, Joey. I went through a lot of grief around the time he died; I had demons I needed to confront. I’m getting on with my life now.’ She picked up her book. ‘You listen to the tapes, but do it on your headphones in your room where I can’t overhear. I don’t ask much, Joey, but promise to keep them away from me.’
Mum looked jaded after her day’s work. She worked overtime every Saturday to bring home extra money. I was always offering to get a part-time job to help out, but she didn’t want anything to distract me from my studies. Seeing her tired face, I felt a sense of responsibility to make something good of my life to compensate for her years of struggling to bring me up alone. Shane joked glibly about me cutting loose into music and him becoming my manager and organising gigs on a tour of cities I’d barely heard of. But a family only has room for one dreamer. Dad had already used up all our dreams. I was passionate about music, but when the time came I would study accountancy or business, any steady career that guaranteed a regular wage. It was the least I owed Mum. I went back to my homework, deciding to tell Bongo Drums to keep his tapes. That would allow me to keep alive the illusion of Dad’s brilliance in my mind without having to discover just how good or bad he really was.
When I mentioned this to Shane on Friday morning he grew annoyed, saying I was making a coward’s decision. However I was increasingly suspicious about Shane’s motives. Geraldine kept ignoring my texts, but finally I gave Shane the slip for long enough to sneak a few words with her in the corridor.
‘Meet me alone,’ I said, ‘for five minutes, anywhere.’
Geraldine looked over my shoulder. ‘Your shadow is chasing you. We’re never alone, Joey. I’m being drawn into something I don’t understand. I feel I’m being watched.’
I silently cursed as Shane approached.
‘Maybe it’s not Shane,’ I whispered.
‘What do you mean?’
Before I could reply, Shane had reached us. Geraldine hugged her books to her chest and walked away. Shane barged against my shoulder good-naturedly.
‘So, what’s the story?’ he asked. ‘Have you a date or what?’
‘Why don’t you get a life of your own, Shane, and keep your nose out of mine?’
He laughed at my outburst. ‘Calm down, Joey, true love is never smooth. I’m just saying I wouldn’t kick that girl out of bed for getting crumbs on my pillow.’
He grinned and kept grinning until he had coaxed a half-hearted smile from me. I was in no mood for Shane, but it was hard to stay angry for long in his company when he had a different personality to suit every occasion. Yet behind the sardonic grin I was starting to sense a desperate loneliness within him. Still, maybe Geraldine had no reason to be so scared of Shane, because maybe the person playing games with all our lives was that old man on Castledawson Avenue. I could only find out by confronting him.
THIRTY-FIVE
Joey
November 2009
On Friday night I told Mum I was taking my usual walk. But instead, I crossed the Rock Road and slipped down Castledawson Avenue to the house where Thomas was said to live. The windows were dark; the rooms, abandoned-looking. The door knocker was loud, yet no footsteps came down the hall in reply to my knocking. I climbed onto the wall and was lit up by the security lights of the Blackrock Clinic before I jumped down into the darkness of the garden, where bushes guarded the slope leading to the kitchen. I was covered in scratches by the time I managed to find the key that Thomas had mentioned.
Opening the back door and entering the kitchen, I tried to imagine Shane and Geraldine here two years before. I could see the outline of a flight of stairs. I needed to duck under thick clouds of cobwebs to reach them. Sections of banisters were missing, as if someone had kicked them to smithereens. The faintest glow of streetlight came from a fanlight above the front door in the hallway. I entered a back room with its fireplace torn out. There was a
mattress on the floor, a few blankets and a table with a chipped mug and a loaf of bread. I sensed myself being watched and turned to see the old man behind me.
‘Did curiosity overcome you, or has he sent you to do his dirty work?’
‘Nobody sent me,’ I replied. ‘I came to tell you to stop causing trouble.’
‘Trouble?’ The old man laughed bitterly. ‘My troubles only started when he barged into my life. Did you tell him I want it back?’
‘What do you want back?’
The old man approached. Every time he took a step I took a step back.
‘Are you so dumb you can’t guess? I mean, just how clueless are you, Joey?’
I could retreat no further. I was pressed against a wall coated in mould. Beside me a thick blanket covered the window.
‘I want to know if you sent Geraldine a poem in my name. I want you to stay out of our lives.’
‘You want more than that, Joey. You wish to know what all this is about. Curiosity is a dangerous disease. Be careful or you might get your wish. Did he send you?’
‘Nobody sent me.’
‘Are you sure? He has subtle ways of making people do his bidding. He has business to conclude in this house but is too afraid to set foot inside this door. You tell him the last will and testament of Thomas McCormack is hidden here. It leaves everything to the boy who befriended a dying man. If he wants this house, to go with the other riches he keeps inheriting, tell him to come here in person and find the will. Otherwise, when the blasted, ramshackle body I’m forced to occupy finally gives out, the solicitors will follow the instructions in the original will to supervise the demolition of this house, brick by brick, and sell the site to developers. He pines for his old home here, just like he used to pine to own Castledawson House after he gambled it away. Tell him he can have his house back if he comes here. He just needs to kill me first.’
‘What do you mean, “if he wants his house back’’? It’s your house. Why would you leave it to him?’
‘I possess nothing, Joey, not even a family now. My parents died in a fire. My aunt crashed her car in England when she realised she was living with a changeling. I only ever had one true friend – a girl I still love.’
‘You’re insane,’ I said. ‘Your two brothers went mad here too.’
The old man pressed his face to mine. ‘I am an only child, four months older than you.’
I pushed him back, very gently. He seemed so frail I was afraid he would fall.
‘There’s medication you should be on.’
He lifted his stick and scattered the crockery on the table. ‘I don’t need medication! I need you to believe me. That changeling stole my life! And before that, he stole other lives. A line of old men stretching back across the centuries have been found with their throats cut after he had finally finished using the bodies he stole from them as boys.’ He looked at me. ‘Do you want to live forever, Joey?’
‘Doesn’t everyone?’
‘Not everyone gets the chance. But suppose you were given a chance to never die? What if your soul and your thoughts could live on – not inside your own body because all bodies wear out, but with other souls inside a fresh body? What would you do if offered this chance of immortality?’
I edged towards the door. The old man sat down, wearily.
‘I don’t blame you for not believing me. Even my own mother didn’t recognise me at first. When she did, he killed her in the fire.’ He stared at his gnarled fingers. ‘You and I should be classmates, Joey.’
‘You need help,’ I said, ‘you’re schizophrenic.’
‘I need that changeling to cut my throat. Then at least I would be set free from his old body so that my soul could merge with his soul back inside my own body. He tried to do it two years ago – the night I clung to the door-frame; the night he slipped and banged his skull. If he had succeeded, our souls would still be locked in combat, but inside one body – not split in two like this. As it is, I am like his shadow and he is like mine. Imagine how it feels, Joey, to see someone else walk around inside your own body? I know his every thought. He is weary of being condemned to live each lifetime alone. He wants companionship, but I’m the one creature on earth who understands him. The voices whispering in his head keep urging him to kill me and safeguard their secret. But he is too scared of being left utterly alone.’
He placed his head in his hands. I edged closer to the door.
‘Ask yourself, Joey – if he is a natural being, why is Geraldine so scared in his presence? She can sense evil.’ He looked up. ‘Stay and listen to me because you and I both love the same girl.’
‘Leave Geraldine alone, do you hear?’
‘She is in mortal danger. He is using you like bait to lead her to him. My real name is Shane O’Driscoll. You must believe this fact and make Geraldine believe it too. Tell her that inside this wasted body I am still the boy she loved. Tell her I am writing down a word here because she and I swore never to say it aloud to another living soul.’
He scribbled the word Concord on a scrap of paper and handed it to me.
‘What does Concord mean?’ I asked.
‘Ask her.’ He watched carefully to ensure I put it in my pocket. ‘Have you ever seen pictures of a tornado? It begins small, just a whipped-up breeze. Then it sucks up everything in its path until it becomes a pillar of cloud, feeding off its own momentum. Inside his head, there exists a tornado of voices. He has a jigsaw of lost souls jostling inside him. I can hear an echo of them inside my head too. A hunchback mute thought that he could save their souls by merging them with the soul of a boy destined for the priesthood. But Thomas could never grant them absolution. He tried to lock himself away and die unnoticed but the whisperers knew that he could be tempted. They chose their victim badly this time. Tell the changeling I want my life back. Tell him to put an end to my purgatory, here in his house where it all went wrong. Only one of us was meant to live after that night. Tell him I’m waiting for him to slit my throat like he once slit the throats of pigs for the nuns.’
THIRTY SIX
Thomas
December 2006
At one time the windows on this asylum in New Jersey had bars across them. Thomas feels certain of this, though he might be getting it confused with a different asylum. There have been so many asylums and homeless shelters that they have all come to look alike. The glass in this window is reinforced, but with a hammer, you could smash it and escape back into the world.
Not that Thomas wishes to escape. His health is failing and it is below zero outside. For seven decades he has been blown across America like a piece of tumbleweed. Sometimes, doctors quiz him about the cities he has lived in and the jobs he worked at. Slaughterhouses and abattoirs, he tells them, he was especially good with pigs. Pigs trusted him. Thomas doesn’t trust doctors, however. Doctors are always trying to get patients to talk. Thomas does-n’t want to talk. Death is coming and he wants to be left alone at this window to gaze out at the snow.
In the ward behind him, fellow patients doze in chairs or stare into space. Many have no idea why they are here. Thomas is here because his bones cannot survive another winter sleeping on the streets. He is too old to cope with crack addicts kicking at the cardboard he tries to wrap himself in at night. Nothing blocks the wind like cardboard, but nothing dissolves so quickly in the rain. Living on the streets was easier when people were crazy with drink or plain crazy. Thomas had coped back then, because any lunatic can be quietened if something human remains in their souls. Thomas understands souls; Thomas can see the pain in strangers’ souls. Thomas has soothed them like you soothe a scared pig. But today’s crack addicts are different, because drugs have stolen their souls. Crack addicts would feel no remorse about killing him, because they would not remember doing so afterwards.
Therefore, last month, when a cop car slowed down outside the warehouse where Thomas was trying to sleep in the doorway, he had pretended to be crazy. Cops always get nervous in case an old man dies in
custody, leaving them with mountains of paperwork. Thomas had known that they would bring him to an asylum. This asylum has no straitjackets or electric shock treatment. It is like a five-star hotel, where lunch is served with injections. His fellow patients are sensitive, damaged people who hear imaginary voices, or else conmen who have learned how to fake mental illness in winter by pretending to hear voices. Thomas keeps himself to himself, because he is as sane as the conmen but he really can hear voices.
Nothing can stop those voices. For months they have been whispering, ‘Take us home.’ Over the decades he has tried losing himself in the oblivion of drink or backbreaking labour. He has tried losing himself in religion with manic-eyed preachers, but the best he has managed is to learn to stop replying to their urgent pleas.
So when a voice calls his name now as he sits at the window, it takes Thomas a moment to realise that it does not come from his head. He becomes aware of two men behind him. They are not patients, because they stand with too much authority. They cannot be nurses, because he isn’t due medication. They cannot be visitors, because nobody ever visits him. Therefore they must be doctors, and doctors mean trouble. Last week, a doctor had examined Thomas and told him his cancer was so advanced that he only had six months left to live. The doctor had talked about a programme of pain relief when the end came, but Thomas has no intention of still being in this asylum then. When spring comes, he will find somewhere to die under the stars. He only wants two types of dealings with doctors: to convince them he is mad at the onset of winter, and to convince them he has regained his sanity each spring.
‘Thomas McCormack?’ the man asks again.
Thomas decides to play dumb. The snow outside the window looks deep. He will die of exposure if they evict him.
New Town Soul Page 14
