Eden Burning

by Deirdre Quiery

  In the space behind her closed eyes appeared a dark violet blue circle. It became luminous, expanding to extinguish the blackness around it. It came closer. Then it spontaneously broke apart, splintering into white light which settled like snow crystals on a floor. On top of the glimmering crystals stood Leo. She gasped. It was the first time that she had been able to see Leo in her imagination since he had died. He smiled at her now with his arms wide open – the way he had held them open on their wedding day, when he turned around on the altar, took two steps towards her and kissed her after the priest said, “I now pronounce you man and wife.”

  On her wedding day, Lily sang ‘Panis Angelicus’. Catherine listened again to violins playing in the background as Lily’s voice harmonised with Tom’s. Now, with her eyes closed, Leo took two steps towards her. Her thighs and lower legs tingled with excitement. Leo’s face was inches away. His eyes were smiling yet full of tears and as he closed his eyes, Catherine whispered, “Open them. Open them.” He had to keep looking at her, or he might disappear again.

  She didn’t hear the door of the theatre open or the click of heels across the concrete floor. She didn’t see the long knife in the man’s right hand or see him twist it and touch the blade with his fingers. She felt the first cold touch of its edge against her neck, sliding deeply from left to right. She heard Jonas cry and the sound of scuffling feet stopping as the theatre door slammed shut.

  Catherine held Maria tight. With her eyes closed, the blue light gone, the white crystal snow melted, Leo was still there smiling. Catherine felt the soft touch of his lips press against hers. She smelt him warm and spiced with Wrights cold tar soap. She heard him breathing close against her or was it her own breathing? She rubbed her nose against his and tasted for the last time the saltiness of his kiss.

  Outside in the corridor the woman walked towards the theatre. The flickering flames from multiple fires outside now made it easier for her to see. The emergency generator spluttered into life. The light for the theatre flashed on and off for a few seconds and then steadied on. The woman cautiously opened the theatre door. The broken glass from the corridor floor crunched and squeaked under the weight of wood. The room was in darkness. At first she couldn’t see very well, and then gradually the light from the corridor illuminated Catherine lying in bed, head to one side on the pillow with Maria and Jonas crying gently in her arms. The stranger stopped at the side of the bed. The twins fell silent.

  The woman first saw Catherine’s blue theatre gown covered in blood. Then her eyes moved from the blood-stained chest, to the gaping wound in Catherine’s throat. The woman screamed. The scream curdled into a vacuum. There was a faint movement in Catherine’s chest – a slight rising and falling. Then as the stranger moved closer, Catherine took a deep shuddering breath, quickly exhaled, her body convulsing for the last time. The twins cried, waving arms into the air, kicking vigorously underneath the white cotton blankets. The woman removed Jonas from Catherine’s embrace.

  “Don’t cry, baby. Don’t cry. You’re safe now. I’ll take care of you. Come to Mummy.” She cradled Jonas against her chest, ignoring the shrill cries from Maria as she turned and walked quickly towards the open theatre door. She pulled it firmly closed behind her, whispering “You’re safe now. Mummy will take care of you.” The Exit sign flickered as the woman opened a side door to the car park. She disappeared for a moment, lost in dozens of people huddling together for protection from the bitterly cold northerly wind. She emerged as a man covering her shoulders with a blanket guided her towards a dark shadowy figure pushing his way through the crowd towards her. Under the silvery light of an Easter moon, he embraced the woman and then the child. They kissed. He then kissed Jonas as the bombs continued to fall and the terraced houses on the Grosvenor Road, trembled and crumbled.

  Catherine had been dead only ten minutes when Mr Magee stumbled through debris on his way back to theatre. He slipped on water gushing from a broken pipe, crashing arms outstretched onto the floor, slithering forward a few yards before resting his head for a few seconds on his arms, whimpering uncontrollably and then pulling himself onto his knees. The generator rumbled into full power and low level lighting brightened the previously darkened rooms. His hands were slippery with blood. He slowly removed two large fragments of glass from his left hand, leaning against the wall, holding his breath. Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket he twisted it around his hand before walking briskly along the corridor and pushing open the door into theatre.

  His breathing quickened, a metallic taste of fear coated his tongue. He swallowed. Each breath descended into his gut like a ball of fire as he took Catherine’s pulse. Maria slept in Catherine’s arms. She occasionally made small snuffling hedgehog noises. Mr Magee gently opened Catherine’s arms and removed Maria who opened her eyes but didn’t resist as he held her with one arm, and with the other pulled the blood stained sheet over Catherine’s head. Through the broken windows the sky flickered, as though in a thunderstorm. The Henkel and Junker bombers flashed in and out of view from behind the hospital’s east wing, cumulous clouds and the slated roofs of the Grosvenor and Falls.

  • • •

  Early on Wednesday 16th April 1941, Eamon de Valera, Taoiseach in the Republic of Ireland, wakened to the shrill alarm of the telephone in his room. Minutes later thirteen fire engines were dispatched to the North. Bodies were laid out in an open air market near Smithfield as Lord Haw Haw on the radio from Hamburg said that he would give the people of Belfast time to bury their dead before the next attack. He hoped that the people of Belfast liked their “Easter Eggs”.

  Mr Magee the surgeon explained to Tom, “We don’t know what happened. We have no idea who killed Catherine, or why they killed her or who took Jonas. It may have been the same person but maybe not. He handed Maria to Tom.

  “A beauty.” Maria lay in Tom’s arms staring at him the way a Siamese cat would look at you, unblinking, in silence, with big open blue eyes. Her long fingers gripped his thumb.

  “Oh. There’s something else you should know.” Mr Magee slapped his head with his hand and then walked slowly to the back of the room where on a long wooden table, rubbing his chin; he picked up a file with notes.

  “For what it is worth, I can tell you that Jonas had an unusual birthmark to the left of his navel – three small hearts rising in a vertical line towards his heart. Catherine baptised Jonas and Maria. This was found in the drawer beside her bed.” He handed over Catherine’s small ring box. “One of the staff found it.”

  Tom opened the box. He fingered the diamond engagement ring.

  “Catherine’s wedding ring isn’t here.”

  “It was chaos last night.” Mr Magee rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. “It was absolute madness. The wedding ring could be anywhere.”

  For many years Tom tried unsuccessfully to find out who killed Catherine and who had taken Jonas. He visited every primary school in Belfast, showing photos of Maria, asking if there were any boys who resembled her. He drew the birthmark time after time on pieces of paper. They shook their heads. “No.”

  Tom and Lily lived with baby Maria on a small farm on the Horseshoe Bend until they had saved enough money to put a deposit on a small end of terrace house in Glenbryn Park, on the outskirts of Ardoyne, North Belfast. Lily found a job as an assistant in Saville’s jewellery shop on Royal Avenue. Mr Saville educated her on the world of diamonds on returning from his numerous buying trips to Antwerp. Maria grew into a beautiful woman with blonde wavy hair all the way to her waist, piercing blue eyes, delicate eyebrows, and a ballet dancer’s gait. For Tom and Lily she was a perfect child. They couldn’t have asked for better.

  One Sunday afternoon the week before Maria’s fifteenth birthday, Lily gathered her paintbrushes and placed them in empty jam jars as Tom read the Sunday papers.

  “Tom, can we give Maria Catherine’s engagement ring on her birthday next week?”

  “I was thinking of keeping it for her twenty-first.” Tom scanned the
obituary columns. “Harry Dunlop died on Friday.”

  “What age was he?” Lily squeezed acrylics onto the palette.

  “Seventeen.”

  “There you go. Nobody knows when they will die. Maria mightn’t make it to twenty one.”

  “Lily don’t say that.”

  “It’s the truth. Life is uncertain. Didn’t your mother always say ‘the truth hurts’? Let Maria enjoy the ring now. Ask Father Anthony to bless it.”

  Lily mixed blue with yellow and then dotted in platinum white.

  Tom put the paper to one side. He looked through the window where buds were opening on the cherry trees in the garden.

  “So you think it’s a good idea to give Maria Catherine’s ring?”

  “I do. Remember Marilyn – ‘Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.’”

  “You don’t think it might bring…?” He hesitated and rubbed his leg.

  “Nonsense. It won’t bring bad luck. A diamond is a wonderful symbol of mystery and magic.” Lily straightened the canvas on the easel.

  “Did you know …?” Lily was about to launch into yet another interesting diamond fact, dabbing blue, yellow and white onto the canvas to create a sea of turquoise.

  Tom interrupted with a smile, “No.”

  “That’s nasty. There’s so much you don’t know about diamonds. Don’t be horrible or I’ll paint you instead.” Lily picked a clean paintbrush dipped it into water and scattered it at Tom.

  “I’m already a walking masterpiece – you don’t need to paint me.”

  “I’m going to ignore that.” Lily scattered more water at Tom with her brush.

  “I know that it will take a better man than me to stop you.” Tom dabbed at his face with his handkerchief.

  “Do you know where the word ‘diamond’ comes from?”

  “Nope.” Tom pretended to yawn.

  “It comes from the Greek word ‘Adámas’ which means ‘indestructible’ or ‘unalterable’? I used to think that a diamond could never be destroyed but that’s not true. A diamond isn’t easily scratched but it is brittle. It shatters if you hit it with a hammer. Mr Saville told me about a man in Antwerp who had to cut a rough diamond and by mistake he bashed it to smithereens.”

  “Did he keep his job?”

  “I asked Mr Saville the very same question. He said that the person who cuts the diamond is the person who adds the most value to it. He cuts it to keep as much of the weight as possible, but also to remove any flaws or blemishes. This person made a mistake but they knew that he had real talent for the cutting and so he was worth a fortune.”

  “What happens once they’ve cut the diamond?”

  “They polish it.”

  “How?”

  “With another diamond – it can take forever, years. To find a diamond you have to journey into the earth, travelling towards the centre for perhaps seventy five to more than a hundred and twenty miles. There, in temperatures over 1,200 degrees centigrade and enormous pressure, a diamond is conceived. It’s like a baby. It has a possibility but not a certainty of being made. When it’s formed, the journey doesn’t end there, it might take anything from one billion to more than three billion years for the diamond to find its way to the surface and for someone to find it. The earth is over four and a half billion years old and so it can take nearly three quarters of the time that it has taken to make the earth to make a single diamond. So now you see why diamonds are a girl’s best friend. Do you not think ‘indestructible’ is a good way to remember Catherine and Leo’s love?”

  “OK. You’ve convinced me. Maria can have Catherine’s engagement ring on her birthday next week.” Tom tickled Lily’s chin. “Father Anthony can bless the ring.”

  “Perfect.” Lily moved to the edge of Tom’s chair and kissed him softly on the lips.

  “You’re not far off from being perfect yourself.” Tom held Lily by the waist. He smelt the sweetness of orange blossom perfume dabbed behind her ears.

  “Ahhhh but a flawless diamond isn’t really flawless. There’s always imperfection.” Lily got up from her chair and skipped backwards making faces at Tom. “That makes a diamond perfectly imperfect. It’s a bit like me. Shuush. Here comes Maria. Say nothing about the ring until next week.”

  • • •

  After blessing Catherine’s ring and returning it to Tom, Father Anthony sat alone in his cell, a familiar loneliness settling over him like heavy clouds nestling on top of Divis or Black Mountain, promising rain and showing no signs of moving. What was the meaning of his life? He reflected on the loneliness of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane. He imagined Christ at first kneeling beside a large rounded rock embedded in hard sandy ground, beneath the swirling sculpture of an olive tree on a dark moonless night. Christ looked at what seemed to be a man in an olive tree in front of him who looked at him with panda eyes – deep, dark, sunken in a wonderful, broad sun-wrinkled face. His small nose almost hidden; his mouth surrounded by a moustache and beard. Two branches of the olive tree reached out as ears. He was wearing a crown of antlers. The man in the olive tree watched Christ watching him, calmly holding him with his gaze and a smile on his lips, pulled together like a donkey munching hay.

  Christ knelt, placing his hands against the rough scaly bark, with its comforting mysterious hollows and crevices. The olive tree with the man continued to watch. The crickets sang. Their noisy call carried on a warm breeze. Father Anthony imagined Christ looking over his right shoulder seeing Peter, James and John asleep on the grass, mouths open, snoring, untroubled. No-one awake but the man in the olive tree watching, alert, conscious with him. Thick viscous tears like blood slowly squeezed from each tear duct and rolled down his face. He now knew that he was alone. There was no man in the olive tree. A terrible loneliness arose in the silence. The crickets stopped singing.

  “Can you not watch one hour with me?” He whispered. No-one heard. Alone – no-one listening. He slowly prostrated himself onto the ground. His nails dug into the earth, his head pressed against the spiky short grass. He moved his head to one side and felt the weight of his body settle and sink deeper into the ground. His body churned with an inescapable infinite nausea. He breathed deeply, opening himself to the sensations of disgust, despair, grief, shame, guilt, fear, anxiety and alienation. He drank from the chalice of the pain and poison of the world’s past, present and future – all concentrated within his body, churning within his gut. Alone, in solitude, he stretched his arms across the earth and wept.

  In the hour before Mass, sitting alone on his chair, Father Anthony bent forward, held his head in his hands and also gently wept. “It is me who is making Christ suffer. I am part of the horror he sees. I am the one who is breaking his heart – the one who can’t spend one hour watching with him.”

  In that moment Father Anthony did not know that later that day he was going to commit the biggest sin of his life. It was a strange fact that Father Anthony was capable of having his deepest insight into love and also of being capable of betraying that love within twenty four hours.

  Loneliness was the problem. Father Anthony hadn’t yet realised that loneliness had a purpose. It was like a pain in his chest warning him that he wasn’t well. Loneliness was the song of God singing in his heart, calling him home. Father Anthony couldn’t hear the song. He didn’t know where his heart was. The heart where God was singing wasn’t the organ pumping blood around his body. The heart where God was singing to him was everywhere. It was the steady pulse of the Universe within and without, calling him home. When not heard, it sent the sweet sense of loneliness like the perfume from a candle in a window, lighting the way home. Father Anthony was too busy turning his ears towards the thoughts in his head and turning his eyes to imagine Maria. He could see her now – long sandy hair falling over her shoulders, kneeling at the altar rail. Her eyes closed, chin raised to receive the Eucharist. “Amen.” She smiled at him before opening her mouth and sticking out her tongue. His body flooded with warmth and energy, a soft and deep
connection as he looked at her closed eyes. He bent closer, his finger and thumb holding the host, touching the soft wetness of her tongue. Maria’s face was shiny, like a pearl, her nose rounded like a baby’s, her lips fine and smiling.

  “The Body of Christ.”

  “Amen,” Maria answered.

  Father Anthony was thirty-five years old and had been a priest for thirteen years. His faith had been previously unshakeable. It was not a faith of rational beliefs. These were unimportant to Father Anthony. What was important was his sense of the presence of God who guided his steps, shaped his thoughts, informing him of what he had to do. He had a sense of the immanence of God within every cell of body, permeating his being, bringing certainty, peace and hope. It was impossible for him to imagine that there was an alternative to this – not to walk hand in hand with God in life – not knowing a God who desired him to exist, who created him and who loved him into being. This God was his real Father.

  Then when he was thirty five, without warning, he realised that he no longer had that sense of faith or comfort in a God who was close to him or who cared for him. He experienced his life as shrunken within the container of his head with seemingly little or no connection to anything visceral in his body. He was like a genie withdrawn from the world unable to escape this cerebral prison. He felt a fraud. He contemplated the words of St Augustine – ‘It is with the interior eye that truth is seen … Our whole business therefore in this life is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen’. He couldn’t see God. He couldn’t feel God’s presence. The memory of his previous sense of knowing God now seemed immature. It was a childish imaginary unreal God he had created. It was at best an adolescent infatuation or a projection from a feeble mind. It was nothing more than a balloon-filled idol which he now burst. He was left with dry theology, abundant ideas and beliefs about God sticking in his throat like a flaky water biscuit.