So that is how it was. Now the effects of that provision had been made apparent in the small boxroom of 45 Peter’s Road where Jonah Cave had slept and grown without a father.
Patricia Cave had shown Jonah a picture one day in the newspaper.
‘Your father,’ she said, ‘took this. He is very good at what he does.’
And a half smile came to her lips and Jonah reached up to touch it. She put the paper between them and turned away. From then on Jonah Cave looked for his father’s name in old newspapers and magazines from the Calcia and vodka shop.
He kept ring binders of his father’s work and pasted the press photos in and waited for the day when he would turn up to take him away from her.
But over the years he had learned, Thomas Cave was not coming.
* * *
Thomas would have liked to put a hand on Jonah. He would have liked to say to Jonah that he was not his father but should and could have been, and nothing could be done about it now.
Sometimes Jonah took a long time to come to the room and Thomas thought on those occasions that he might be able to die without further incident. But Jonah knew when to return, how to keep Thomas on the same thin point where life and death are one and the same.
Jonah had never felt more alive. He kept Thomas alive and gave him the Calcia cheese and told him it would always be like this.
Then the standing order stopped. Thomas had always renewed it yearly and increased the amount according to inflation. Now, without Thomas to sign there was no money for happy cheese. Jonah would have to let him go. Jonah made preparations as to where – scouring the surrounding areas for a suitable hell for the once active man, a chance to live among those similarly desecrated.
Thomas was glad to give Jonah all he had. In return a deal was struck with the money-conscious Sister Mauritius of St Manis. Jonah found it a miserable place for an errant and absent father. Thomas Cave lost everything he had and gained a set of ring binders with his work pasted in them.
Just before Thomas was loaded into the ambulance, Jonah had said to him, ‘I will come and visit.’
23 ∼ The Beginning of One
THE CARD OF THE RIVERS – the joining of two and the beginning of one.
My mother’s whole life now was Eddie, waiting for him, imagining when he was not there that he had left her. Eddie was a simple man, sometimes he felt he was swimming in a bottomless sea with no sign of land, so strong was her need.
Yet she would not marry him. She would only love him with everything she had.
They walked and walked wide and far now, as if by walking they would walk away from themselves and what had happened and just have each other. Carmel now a shadow woman.
Only on the walks did the world of before surround Carmel and Eddie. Carmel’s ways were odd ways and Eddie could not stop himself from feeling afraid when the Scarna people saw them. He took his fear and turned it into proposals. He wanted to be inside her life and not out of it, so as to keep her truly safe.
‘If we married, Carmel, we would not need to be apart,’ he said in the long summer after a long time of not mentioning it. ‘You would not need to spend hours at the end of the laneway, waiting for me to come.’
For that is what she did, even though he had told her the night before what time he would finish his work and what time he would come, and she had nodded her understanding. The next day, soon after breakfast, she walked to the end of the laneway and waited like a faithful dog for the sighting that would gladden her heart.
‘I think it is this place has her this way,’ Eddie said to Myrna while Carmel slept on the old bony couch. It had been too cold to walk that evening, an evening that had brought with it a bite that had been missing since the first days of summer. It was all the harsher for being unexpected.
‘I think she’s the way she is because of all she has suffered here, it must be full of memories for her,’ Eddie whispered, as he looked for reasons to take her away from it to his own place which he was missing. It had more comforts than this. It had a television and sports results and all the things with which he had filled up his solitary life while Carmel had been gone. It had been a lonely and comfortable life.
Myrna took herself up out of the chair by the fire and came over to put a hand on Carmel’s forehead, stroking it. In the soft light the worn lines fell away.
‘She will not leave here,’ Myrna advised Eddie. ‘It is where she belongs. In the town she will be broken in no time.’
‘Well,’ he flustered. ‘We can’t go on like this.’
He felt uncomfortable in Myrna’s presence then and went home before Carmel woke. When she did wake and he was not there Carmel walked out into the night, wordlessly and without heeding Myrna’s urging to remain, to wait for him. I found her when I came home from work.
‘He might be back yet,’ she explained to me.
‘It is too cold for him to be back,’ I answered with shortness. I wanted to be in out of the cold and I wanted Carmel with me.
‘I might call on him,’ she said. ‘I might go into the town and meet him.’
‘We’ll get you a jumper first.’
I knew well she would not go, for she had never gone into the town since she had come home.
Later, when Carmel was in bed, I was sharp with Myrna for leaving her out on a night like that. The next day the summer was back, unrepentant for its short absence, which had left us unguarded in thin clothing. Eddie and Carmel went out as soon as he called.
Carmel came back alone, in a high, flushed state and wanting me.
‘Eddie says that we have to get married.’
She stared at me, so little of her left and most of it eyes, lines and bones.
‘You may as well, then. Marry him,’ I said without looking at her. ‘You may as well make sure of him.’
‘I am afraid of it, Sive. I cannot live in the town. He will not live here.’
‘Have you asked him?’
‘I did ask him,’ she said after a long time. ‘Would you want him here?’
‘I don’t mind if you want it.’
‘I’ll go so and tell him. I’ll go to the town.’
Carmel did not go to Eddie but to the end of the laneway. She waited for seven days and nights and he did not come. On the seventh night she began the walk into town. Myrna and I watched her go.
‘Will I follow her?’ I asked.
‘This is something between her and Eddie,’ Myrna insisted.
So we went to bed and the next morning she was still not home. I went to work and all day I could not eat and moved quickly through my work. Thomas asked me what was wrong. I told him it was home trouble and he did not ask me again but in his eyes I saw the questions, the wondering of what nature of home I had and what nature of life I led away from this place.
When I returned Carmel was still not back. I imagined her lying lifeless somewhere, or wandering, or following Eddie while he ignored her.
Myrna by now had lost her usual calm, had got her cards out and turned them over and over to distract herself. Then, all of a sudden, her face cleared of expression and set again with a sadness that never lifted.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘Every beginning means an end.’
I knew I would gain nothing from questioning but my own frustration.
We waited. The dog’s warning bark outside brought us to our feet.
We sat with Carmel and Eddie at the hour of midnight. They announced their intention to be married at the earliest opportunity. A calm had come to my mother, which she had lost before I had known her. She was a stranger to me. Her eyes shone and Eddie’s look was contented enough.
‘I can move in me television,’ he offered.
‘No,’ the women spoke together.
He sighed.
‘Well, there’s always the wireless.’
The sadness was still with Myrna which, when we raised our steaming mugs of tea to toast the new intentions, could not be driven away from her
black eyes.
But that night was all of us together and all of us opening rooms in the old house that had been closed for many years so that we could fit in our new family member. Behind each door we were expecting to find ghosts. Only Myrna saw them.
We found nothing but the spiders’ webs filled with the dust of the times before even Carmel had lived here.
‘This is a place where life went on before death took hold,’ Myrna said. ‘This is a place where life can begin again.’
24 ∼ The One Who Watches
THE ONE WHO WATCHES is a shadow in a doorway, an icy breeze on a summer’s day, a sudden mist when all around is clear. The one who watches is one to be watched. The One Who Watches, say the cards, can be feared or loved.
I loved one who watched and I feared one who watched. They were father and son. They were different and the same.
* * *
When I walked through St Manis’s gates on one of the last, bright mornings before winter, I saw a tall figure full of intent move towards me. He leaned on a stick but you could see that it obeyed his wishes.
The closer he came the more real he came, his left arm still tucked up neatly in its frozen state told me it was Thomas.
He kissed my forehead and said, ‘I have wanted to walk to meet you. The chair had to go.’
He had waited each night until everyone, including the night attendant, slept and he began by rising out of his bed and standing with his stick, until he could stand sure and then walk sure.
When he fell the watching moon made no attempt to pick him up, but her light was clear and steadfast and he learned to pick himself up, until one night he could walk far enough to go outside and meet her. On that night she praised him in her fullness, shining from a cloudless sky. He did not sleep that night, waiting for the time when I would walk through the gates and he would meet me.
The doing it alone was not only to surprise me, but also to prove he had still the power of himself.
‘Do not kiss me here, Thomas,’ I whispered and stepped away from him, looking for Margaret’s eyes. My hard words hid my rising heart and hope. To see him this way made me gladder than any gladness I had known.
‘They will see that as a grateful kiss,’ he assured me. ‘Those eyes behind us. They know how much you have done for me.’
‘I don’t want to them to know all I have done with you.’
His face hardened. I did not stop walking while I spoke.
‘Now we’d best get in before Margaret fills in Sister Mauritius and I have no job and no opportunity to see you.’
‘I want to leave here,’ Thomas said. ‘I could leave here if I had any money left. But I will think of a way. I will find a way, if you think you would want me outside of here. I am not an easy man, and I am not asking you to be my nurse. I am not even asking for us to be together until I die. I know I would hate to take away your happiness.’
‘You have not taken it away, Thomas.’
The joy in having him walk beside me and talk of leaving his cage. He seemed to have swallowed the sunshine of the day and for the first time I saw a smile on his grave face. It rested uneasily, bringing fresh creases to the deep-wrought furrows carved from the alone times that had passed over it.
The heat in me went out to him and I could see it took all he had not to put a hand on me.
‘I am ashamed of myself,’ he said. ‘Being like this with someone like you. I will be seen as a dirty old man.’
‘We must get in.’
He followed me in the door.
‘I am not used to following,’ he said.
He did not see my smile. I walked ahead of him.
* * *
Inside, the summer air held the men by the throat, as many of the old windows had seized and swelled and could not be opened. Thomas went quietly back to his corner cubicle and I found Sister Saviour in the kitchen.
‘Should we not bring the men outside, Sister? It’s such a hot day,’ I asked.
‘The men are never brought outside!’ she exclaimed. ‘There’s never time to bring the men outside!’
‘It would not take long to wheel them. The fresh air will do them good. I can get the ward straightened while they are gone.’
Sister Saviour frowned. But the thought of unhindered scrubbing was too inviting. ‘We could get on with a lot of work all the same!’
‘I hope that does not mean I get to spend all day cleaning while she stays with them!’ Joe O’Reilly had appeared behind me.
‘And what exactly do you mean by that?’ Saviour enquired.
‘I’ll be glad to do the cleaning, Sister. Joe can take the men out.’
As I scrubbed I heard them laugh and call to one another. I even heard the deep tones of Thomas in amongst them.
Margaret found her way to me more than once during the day and watched me.
‘You do great work,’ Margaret said reluctantly, ‘for someone on slave’s wages.’
‘I’m glad of it.’
‘I could give you a hand, but I’m not stupid.’
She danced away with her shrill laughter and raced outside when she heard the sound of a strange car in the driveway.
A pearl-blue Jaguar pulled up and a tall thin man stepped out of it. Margaret was the first to greet him.
‘If you have come to see anyone in particular?’
‘Thomas Cave.’
‘He’s outside with all the others, having a sunbathe.’
The tall man’s face was pale but for two high spots of colour which flushed deeper. Margaret stared at them openly, but the stranger did not appear to notice. He was already on the move, through the front door.
‘Not that way…’
Margaret had to push the front door as the stranger tried to close it on her.
Jonah Cave did not approve of his father being in sunshine. He had not seen him for nine months and had imagined Thomas to remain in darkness. The threat of a visit, Jonah had thought, would keep him there.
In the nine months his father’s money had been spent well on improving Jonah’s life. He had a fine new house and a car that purred like a satisfied cat at the slightest touch. He had many women interested in him and keen to know the source of his wealth. He had been drinking and feeling bright. 45 Peter’s Road was sold to the highest bidder. By rights that should have been the end of it all with his father.
But in Jonah’s dreams, Thomas Cave rose up to admonish him, side by side with his wife, Patricia. In dreams they were united, as they had not been in life. As his mother reigned blows on Jonah, Thomas stood tall as a grown tree above him and shouted with the voice Jonah had never heard. The voice carried all the weight and might of thunder and Jonah was being driven into the ground by both mother and father. Then, Thomas would walk away and not look back and his mother held him. She would laugh gaily at his screeching and wailing.
The further Jonah went into sleeping the more the dream came to him. When he could sleep no longer he had to visit Thomas.
The ring binders were Jonah’s father. He had thought only to shame Thomas in presenting them to him on the day the ambulance had come. But they would also keep Jonah safe, he realized now, from the stranger-father and the known mother. The father of the ring binders, unseen, was the one Jonah had known and taken comfort from, expecting his arrival at any moment.
This was the father who had spoken to the son, through the careful selection of photographs and the world he had shown the son through them. This was the father who might one day decide to return. Not the old, broken stranger-father Jonah had found in a bed in a Galway hospital.
Jonah had not discussed the world he had searched for and grown to know in his father’s work with the old silent man who had lain in his boxroom for six months and more. He had only felt anger towards that weak and crumbling creature.
‘They’re out the back,’ Margaret said. ‘You’ll have to walk out this way, through St Michael’s ward. I’ll show you.’
She got no thanks from the ta
ll and well-dressed man whose pale brown eyes had disappeared into black hollows.
‘I’ll show myself.’
Jonah dismissed Margaret with a tight smile that said he did not see her as noticeable in any way. The smile made her afraid and caused her to lag behind him.
* * *
Now he is here, with us, part of the story’s spine. The storyteller faces the story she would rather forget.
As it was with Joseph Moriarty so shall it be with Jonah Cave. There is truth waiting here for him and it will be told without him if he so chooses. Or it will be laid in front of him.
A part of him will never leave me. How did Jonah Cave see me? The part of him that is still inside me tells.
Jonah Cave almost passed me by, but then he caught sight of my movement.
It had a rhythm he had not seen, a rise and fall like a slow wave over an empty beach. He wanted that easiness to be put against his own jerking and jolting – his own movement that he seemed to lose control of and then was unable to start.
He needed a drink now, he needed the benefit of golden whiskey that calmed him and gave him the right movements. He wished to put his hands on either side of those hips he watched.
He could not stop the wanting there.
I did not need Jonah Cave’s hands on me to know what I saw.
I saw a man who time had made old; a swallowed child peered at me through the slats of his ribcage. I saw a ravaged face and desolate eyes. I saw a drink-dampened evil that had begun as innocence. I saw a thin line of a man almost rubbed out and nothing but loss and failing in the places where he had been. His fine clothes did not match his face, for it had the look of hunger about it.
His impression on me more fearful than any other I have formed. His reality more fearful still.
* * *
Jonah said to me, ‘Thomas Cave, where does he sleep?’
‘In the corner cubicle, but he’s outside if you’re looking to visit.’
Jonah made his way over to the place where his father had been hidden from the world.
The Lost Souls' Reunion Page 15
