by John Watt
The front door opens, then slams shut, and a slightly built boy dressed in rumpled shirt and shorts appears momentarily, heading down the passage to the back of the house. Mrs Regan smiles.
‘That’s my boy, Michael, Mr Riordan. We’re so proud of him. The youngest altar boy in the parish. Only just nine years old, and he spouts the Latin like a cardinal.’
The priest nods. ‘I believe he’s the youngest altar boy I’ve ever had. Wonderful. A real sense of reverence. It’s an inspiration to see that lad at the altar with his hands joined and his eyes closed in prayer. It would not surprise me, Mrs Regan, if you had a future priest there. You might keep it in mind. In three or four years he’ll be old enough to be sent to the seminary. It’s not wise to leave it too long. Many a fine young lad has been distracted by the things of this world and lost a clear calling.’
Mrs Regan’s skinny face glows.
‘Do you really think so, Father?’
‘I do indeed. The indications are all there. But of course these things are in God’s hands.’ He raises his eyes to the ceiling, then lowers them to the more earthly level of the table to survey what is left of the afternoon tea provisions. Thomas follows his glance. There are two scones left, but very little jam, and no cream at all.
The older man changes tack and tone.
‘Well, Mr Riordan. I think it’s high time we left Mrs Regan to the joys of her family life.’ He stands briskly and heads for the passage and the front door, with Mrs Regan scurrying in his wake and Thomas bringing up the rear.
Thanks and farewells waste little time. Thomas notices the worn expression returning to the woman’s face as she turns back into the house, and hears, or thinks he hears, a sigh. And wonders. Did she hope to have more of those scones left? Did she keep some of that cream aside? Is there any jam left in the jar? Do all those children enjoy whipped cream, or is it only for the priest? And what about Mrs Regan herself? He can’t remember seeing her with a scone on her own plate. He wonders whether the priest has noticed the tired lines on her face and the paint peeling off the door frame. He notices and avoids a cracked floorboard as he steps down from the porch.
Outside and well clear of the house, Father Kevin turns, with a sly grin.
‘There you are, m’boy. A useful lesson for you. It’ll stand you in good stead when you have a parish of your own. Work out which of the women bake a good scone. Cultivate them. You should score at least one afternoon tea invitation a week from one or other of them, in my experience. On average. What I said about nuns, it’s as true as I’m standing here. There’s not a nun alive that can serve up a half-decent scone. Sometimes I think they deliberately leave them out in the weather for a day or two to toughen them up. Mortification of the flesh. I wish they’d stick to mortifying their own flesh, and treat mine a bit more gently. I tell you, m’boy, there’s a devil of a lot more a parish priest needs to know, over and above what they teach you at the seminary.’
4
The Feast of Saint Sabas
Thomas sits stiffly upright, perching on the edge of the bulky, leather-covered chair. His legs are thrust straight out in front of him, knees tight together. His copy of Lives of the Saints rests symmetrically across them. He glances up. Macpherson is looking him over with the faintest of smiles.
‘Well, now. Your first task is to relax. To begin with, sit back in your chair. That’s better. Now let your arms and legs lose their tension. That’s a great deal better. But look at your hands.’
Thomas looks down. His hands are clenched into tight fists; he had no awareness of it. He loosens his fingers.
‘That’s better still. Now close your eyes. Sit like that for a couple of minutes. Think of nothing. Or better, imagine yourself sitting in a bare room. No furniture, no doors, no windows, no pictures, no people. Just plain white walls and ceiling and floor.’
He sneaks his eyes open to a slit. Macpherson is jotting in his notebook. What could he be writing? He closes his eyes again, to see whiteness. It seems to be a long time.
‘That’s fine—you seem much more relaxed. Open your eyes now, and pick up your book.’
Thomas hoists himself forward onto the edge of his chair.
‘No, no. Sit back again. Take another minute or so to be properly relaxed again. Now the book. I think you said that it’s organised according to the calendar. What was the first day that seems to be missing from your memories?’
‘The beginning of December. The first. I forget what day of the week.’
‘Perhaps the day of the week is not important. Open the book at the first of December and we shall see what comes to light. If anything.’
Thomas leafs through the pages. ‘Here it is, 1st December. The feast of Saint Sabas, abbot, 532 AD. That would be the year of his death.’
‘Saint Sabas. Well, now, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of him. 532 A.D.; that’s a longish time ago. No doubt I shall find this very informative. This is what I want you to do. Read the story of the life of Saint Sabas. Read it aloud. Sit back and relax while you are reading. But try to be alert for any images or thoughts that come to mind from the last time you read this story. Anything. Any memories that emerge: where you were, what you saw, or heard, or felt or smelled. Don’t worry if it seems trivial. It might be only an itch on your ankle or a mosquito buzzing in your ear. Anything at all. When you finish the story you can tell me about whatever has floated to the surface.’
Macpherson sits back in his chair. Thomas begins.
Saint Sabas, one of the most renowned patriarchs of the monks of Palestine, was born at Mutalasca, in Cappadocia, not far from Caesarea, the capital, in 439 [A.D.] . The name of his father was John, that of his mother, Sophia, both were pious, and of illustrious families. The father was an officer in the army, and being obliged to go to Alexandria, in Egypt, took his wife with him, and recommended his son Sabas, with the care of his estate, to Hermias, the brother of his wife. This uncle’s wife used the child so harshly that, three years after, he went to an uncle, Gregory, brother to his father, hoping there to live in peace.
Gregory having the care of the child, demanded also the administration of his estate, whence great lawsuits and animosities arose between the two uncles. Sabas, who was of a mild disposition, took great offence at these discords about so contemptible a thing as earthly riches, and, the grace of God working powerfully in his heart, he resolved to renounce for ever what was a source of so great evil among men. He retired to a monastery, called Flavinia, three miles from Mutalasca, and the abbot received him with open arms, and took great care to see him instructed in the science of the saints, and in the rules of a monastic profession.
His uncles, blinded by avarice and mutual animosity, were some years without opening their eyes; but at last, ashamed of their conduct towards a nephew, they agreed to take him out of his monastery, restore him to his estate, and persuade him to marry. In vain they applied all means to gain their point. Sabas had tasted the bitterness of the world, and the sweetness of the yoke of Christ, and his heart was so united to God, that nothing could draw him from his good purpose.
He applied himself with great fervour to the practice of all virtues, especially humility, mortification and prayer, as the means to attain all others. One day, whilst he was working in the garden, he saw a tree loaded with fair and beautiful apples, and gathered one with an intention to eat it. But reflecting that this was a temptation of the devil, he threw the apple on the ground, and trod upon it. Moreover, to punish himself, and more perfectly to overcome the enemy, he made a vow never to eat any apples as long as he lived.
Thomas pauses, glancing up from the page. Macpherson, apparently jotting a comment in his notebook with a puzzled expression about his eyes, notices the pause and the glance.
‘Now don’t attend to me. I’m listening, never fear. Just focus on the story. And on whatever it brings back to you.’
Thomas goes on.
By this victory over himself he made great progress in all other v
irtues, exercising himself by day in labour, accompanied by prayer, and by night in watching in devotions, always fleeing idleness as the root of all evils, sleeping only as much as was absolutely necessary to support nature, and never interrupting his labours but to lift up his hands to God.
When Sabas had been ten years in this monastery, being eighteen years old, with the leave of his abbot, he went to Jerusalem to visit the holy places, and to edify himself by the examples of the eminent solitaries of that country. He passed the winter in the monastery of Passarion, governed at that time by the holy abbot Elpidius. All the brethren were charmed with his virtue, and desired earnestly that he should fix his abode among them; but his great love of silence and retirement made him prefer the manner of life practised by Saint Euthymius. He cast himself at the feet of that holy abbot, conjuring him with many tears to receive him among his disciples.
When he was thirty years of age he obtained leave of Saint Euthymius to spend five days a-week in a remote cave, which time he passed, without eating anything, in prayer and manual labour. He left his monastery on Sunday evening, carrying with him palm-twigs, and came back on Saturday morning with fifty baskets which he had made, imposing upon himself a task of ten a-day. Thus he had lived five years, till Saint Euthymius chose him and one Domitian for his companions in his great yearly retreat in the deserts of Rouban, in which Christ is said to have performed his forty days’ fast.
They entered the solitude together on the 14th January, and returned to their monastery on Palm Sunday. In the first retreat Sabas fell down in the wilderness, almost dead from thirst. Saint Euthymius, moved by compassion, addressed a prayer to Christ, that he would take pity on his young fervent soldier, and, striking his staff into the earth, a spring gushed forth; of which Sabas, drinking a little, recovered his strength so as to be enabled to bear the fatigues of his retreat.
Macpherson intervenes.
'No doubt there is more, but we might leave the story here.’
Thomas closes the book and lays it on the bulky leather-covered armrest of the chair. The doctor leans forward, elbows on the desk.
‘That’s fine. Now close your eyes and relax. You read that story only a few weeks ago. Think yourself back into that time, that place. You put the story of Saint Sabas down, and you look around. What do you see? What do you feel, or hear, or smell?’
Thomas sinks back in his chair. He feels the smooth leather surface of the chair-back. And remembers. There is something different against his back: something massive and rough. An enormous tree trunk. Behind closed eyelids he looks around. Trees are all around him: giants of a size he has never imagined. Sitting on the ground with his back against one of them, he looks up the trunk of another directly in front of him. It has a few feet of rough bark near the ground, and above that it is smooth and pale. The smooth pale trunk goes up a long way; he can’t guess how far it is up to the first branch. Maybe seventy feet, maybe eighty, maybe even a hundred. He had no idea that such trees existed.
Macpherson prompts.
‘That’s good. Now look around a little further. What else do you see? Or hear, or smell?’
Smell, yes. The smell of smoke. Not wood smoke, more like burning oil. And something else. A smell like burned meat. Charred black. Horrible. He pauses for a few moments, eyes still shut.
Of course. How can all of this have fallen out of his memory? He looks at the main section of the plane—or what is left of it. The wing on the near side has been ripped off completely, and most of the remnants of it are wrapped around one of the immense tree-trunks. Smoke is pouring out of jagged holes in the larger part of the fuselage, and a few flames, but nothing like the smoke and flames of half an hour earlier. The rear section is a short distance further away, clear of the fire. We were at the back and we escaped alive. The others—he can almost taste the harsh smell of the burning flesh now. And hear the roaring of the flames. And the screaming—the intolerable screaming. As if people are being torn apart into small pieces. It goes on and on. He doesn’t know how long it is before the screaming finally dies away. He feels the horror of the pain, the terror of the others, trapped inside the mass of roaring flames and black smoke.
Macpherson interrupts the flow of memory. There is a more urgent tone in his voice than before.
‘“We”’. You said “We have escaped alive”. Who else is there?’
‘There is a girl. A young woman.’ Thomas stretches, finds a more comfortable angle for his legs.
‘Does she have a name? Do you know her name?’
Thomas hesitates.
‘Not at this moment. I only found out her name later.’
‘Well, then. To be true to your memories we should for the moment just think of her as a young woman. But how do you come to be sitting against a tree?
Thomas shuts out the immediate scene: the shelves packed with serious books, the big desk with the older man leaning forward over it. He has a vague memory of staggering away from the wreckage of the tail section, looking down and finding he is clutching his book, still open at the story of Saint Sabas. Of course. He was reading it in the plane when the engines abruptly cut out.
Cries for help come from the main section of the fuselage, but as he approaches it suddenly bursts into flames. For a few seconds he is unable to move, unable to decide what to do. The blaze flares up more fiercely. The calls for help change to agonised screams, but a blast of heat forces him to back well away.
As he circles around the wreck, frantically looking for an opening to make a rescue dash in, the fire swiftly engulfs the whole plane, dense black smoke churning skywards in an ominous column. He watches with horror as a face appears momentarily at one of the windows: a woman’s face, surrounded by flames, hideously distorted by pain and terror, mouth open to let out an inhuman soundless shriek, silenced by the roar of the burning wreck. Then she disappears within the inferno. This is hell, he thinks, and she is trapped without any possible way out. His sense of helplessness becomes unbearable as does his certainty that he has to run for his life before he, too, is overwhelmed by the conflagration.
He reaches safety fifty or sixty metres from the disaster. With heaving chest and thumping heart, he drops to the ground behind a huge tree trunk, crouching, eyes tightly closed, hands over his ears, trying to shut out the dreadful reality. But there is no way of escaping the hideous mixture of smells from burning fuel, plane parts and human flesh. A long time later, he has no idea how long, he becomes aware that the noise has abated and the flames have subsided into a smoking tangle of wreckage.
Macpherson sits back in his chair, his eyes fixed on a point on the wall somewhere above Thomas’s head.
‘And the young woman. Where is she, and what is she doing?’
Thomas remembers finally opening his eyes, looking around and seeing her sitting on a log a few yards away. He can picture her quite distinctly, this first moment of focusing on her. She might be much the same age as himself. She is wearing a short-sleeved shirt, showing rather slight shoulders and arms. His attention is drawn to her legs. Weeping silently, she has pulled up her blue and white skirt a little way to rub her left leg, and winces as she rubs it.
An impulse comes over him to walk to her, to speak to her, to try to do something to console her. But what would be the right thing to do? Should he sit down close beside her? He should say something—but what? Should he put his hand on her hand, or on her shoulder, or an arm around both shoulders? He notices her hair—fair, and quite short. Should he touch her head? The situation is so far outside his experience. He can’t make the first tentative move towards doing any of these things. He can’t even imagine himself doing any of them. Someone else, yes, he can visualise that. But himself—he feels a paralysis of indecision.
Macpherson prompts. ‘Please tell me about what happened next. Or what happens now: that is the way to think about it.’
Thomas sits back in his chair, closes his eyes, and takes himself back to the remembered scene. He is standing, feelin
g a tremor in his legs, taking shaky steps towards the rear section of the plane. There are two people—two bodies—among the twisted and torn debris on the ground between the sections of the fuselage. Are they complete bodies? He tries to turn away from them as he passes, but can’t control the impulse to look. Confronting him are torn faces, heads caved in, half a leg, an arm missing, scorched, blackened. Blood. The horror is like nothing he has felt before. There is a churning nauseous feeling in his stomach. He looks away, trying to see no more, trying to control what he is feeling.
He clambers through the jagged opening into the tail section of the plane, looking for something. What is he looking for?
The rear seats, one on each side of the narrow aisle, are more or less intact. Behind the seats is a bulkhead with a narrow access door which has sprung open from the impact; and behind the bulkhead is the baggage compartment. Cases, boxes and bags of various shapes and sizes, some intact, some split apart, spilling a jumble of clothing, shoes, belongings of all sorts, across the small space.
His own rigid black case has sprung open, disgorging grey and white striped pyjamas, spare collars, black socks, black trousers, white shirts, a black cardigan in case of cool south-coast weather, white underwear. They stand out against the jumble of brighter colours spilling out of other passengers’ baggage: holiday clothes, mostly. He stuffs his own belongings back into the case and closes it, and continues rummaging through the confusion.
At the back of the small baggage compartment, under a scatter of clothing spilled from a split suitcase, something different appears: two rucksacks, well filled, with heavy walking boots tied to them. The preparations for a pre-Christmas hiking holiday that is not going to happen. He drags them out of the ruins of the plane and carries them back to the log on which the young woman is still sitting, moving them one at a time; they are heavy. He is anxious to sit on the log at an appropriate distance from her, but unsure what distance would be right. He picks a spot tentatively, a metre away, worrying that this might be too close. Putting the rucksacks on the ground, he sits on the log, and rubs his hands together between his knees.