by John Lynch
‘If I’ve heard that once from you, Gabriel.’
‘I am…’
‘Well, don’t tell me, show me, show him…’
She looks away as she points at our son. I can see that she is trying not to cry. When she looks back the screen has come down again in front of her eyes, the one that tells me she is back to her disengaged self, at least where I am concerned.
They leave shortly after that. John holds on to me until his mother has to come and ease him away from my arms. I realise that I don’t know my own son, how could I when I don’t even know myself? I watch as the car drives away. I can see her adjust the rear-view mirror and lean over to whisper into our son’s ear and then gently pat him on the head. I think of Jeffrey, I imagine him bending over me. I hear him call my name. I see my face as I respond, it is ugly and it fears the chance that a fellow human being is offering me.
The Sign
They pass me as I stand there, my arms outstretched, my mouth forming the warnings I know they must hear. One or two stop for a moment and ask if I’m alright. I look into their faces and see the sorrow of their lives on their grey skin. One, a woman of about fifty, asks me if I want her to phone for an ambulance. I tell her that man cannot hold me or fix me. She goes about her business, throwing little glances of concern back at me.
I look at the heavy sky above me and watch for the sign that I know is coming, the sign that only I will comprehend. I lift my hands to heaven as I see the tear begin. I smile as the sky peels back on itself and the window to eternity appears. It is slight at first, a small peep of glory in the black sky. Then the gash widens and a cascade of light and love enters my upturned eyes. I stand transfixed. I feel it touch every tired and broken hope, every fallen dream, every molecule of anger and hate, such light, such tumult, such violent love. The voices begin, whispers carried from God’s own lips and they enter my brain and begin their work. They re-programme me, undoing all the damaged circuitry, all the cynical yearning of my heart. I am filled with gratitude and tears, they fall from my eyes. I know that the poison of this life is leaving me, bursting from me. I can taste its saltiness. I can taste its horror. I know I must undress. I must leave the old shape of me behind. I begin to pull at my coat and hurl it from my back.
My shirt is next. For a moment I hold it aloft before throwing it onto the pavement. I move with the ecstatic purpose of a saint. St Francis, I am thee.
Sing, a voice says, sing of Babylon, sing of the fall.
Soon I am naked. It doesn’t bother me, it is His decree not mine. The light above me has become a prism and I realise with joy that I am the final colour.
The unholy made holy, a voice says, the fractured made whole.
I see things for what they are, for the first time I truly see. My heart is open; staggered at the freedom it suddenly feels. I see the street before me full of people hurrying, blinkered and closed to their greater selves. I see into their spirits. I see their burning hearts. I hear the cry of the child in the cave of their souls.
You are special, the voice says, you are free, clothe yourself with me.
I drink deeply from the bottle in my hand, when it is empty I throw it from me as I know that I no longer need it. I fall to my knees and lift my arms to heaven in thanks. A man is standing above me. There is a look of fear on his face.
‘Gabriel…Gabriel?’ he says. ‘Is that you?’
I use my hands to tell him to leave me be. I am no longer who he takes me for. I have become one with the engine that runs his world and mine.
‘Gabriel…Gabriel…It’s Jeffrey…Stay where you are…I’m going to get help.’
I think of the woman who gave birth to me. I no longer call her my mother because I am moving beyond my own blood and hers.
Hallelujah, the voice says, say it, my son, say it.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, Hallelujah…Hallelujah…’
The man who was there only moments before is back, there are two other men with him, and they wear uniforms. I know the face of this man who looks at me with such concern but I can’t place it. I decide to move away but they shadow me, asking me to stay where I am. The man keeps speaking to me, telling me to trust him, that there is a way out. I know that he is lying, that he has been sent to trick me. Other men arrive and a small group has gathered. I tell them to fuck off, that I have grown wings, that I no longer need the earth beneath my feet. This puzzles them, one of them laughs and I wag my finger at him. I’ll show you, I say, I’ll fucking show you, none of you understand.
‘Gabriel…Gabriel…Look at me…’
Where do I know him from, this man who is talking to me? ‘Fuck…Fuck…’ I say it very quickly. ‘Fuck…Fuck…’ This worries them, I can tell, because they look at each other with frowns on their faces.
‘Calm down, Gabriel.’
‘Fuck…’
‘Calm down…We’ll look after you…I promise…Look at me…I promise.’
I smile at him, this man who thinks he knows me. As they grab me I laugh because I am no longer in the body that they grip so tightly, no, I am falling in the moist beauty of the air and my spirit is free.
Spirit Against Spirit
‘A man named Frank called this morning. We know him. He’s a former inmate and he was wondering if he could come and talk to you.’
‘Frank?’
‘Yes, he said that he met you at the meeting the other night. That you shared a cigarette together…’
‘Yes, I remember…How did he know to ask for me?’
‘Well we only have one Gabriel…’
‘Right.’
‘Listen, you don’t have to meet him. He’s a good guy. Been through a lot like the rest of us and he helps out here from time to time.’
Alf smiles and waits for me to reply, his eyes gentle and warm.
‘You’re still bloody debating, aren’t you?’
‘What?’
‘Oh come on.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You still can’t give in to it…To the fact that you’re one of us. If you want to survive in this fucked-up world it’s your only option.’
‘I…’
‘It can’t hurt, Gabriel. He only wants to talk to you not chop your dick off…’
‘Okay.’
‘Good man.’
It is later that afternoon and I am waiting for him. I have been excused from Trauma which makes me smile, there’s not many people in this world can say that. I have just started a cigarette when I see him walking up the long drive. He is smaller than I remember him. In the room the other night he seemed larger than life, like a big bear in a tiny wood. I also notice that he walks with a slight limp. He is whistling. For some reason I am nervous as if I was about to sit a very difficult job interview. I start down the drive towards him and meet him on its final curve.
‘My good man.’
‘Hi, Frank.’
‘Let me look at you. Man, you look well.’
‘Thanks.’
‘This is great. You are standing here with me on a beautiful winter’s afternoon. You are clean. You are sober. The old you is dead. Smashed to pieces. And the new you is standing here doing things for the first time. Like saying good afternoon to an old bollocks like me. Don’t forget this magic. Because I tell you something, we’re lucky fuckers we’ve been given a second grace. There’s not many can say that.’
He smiles at me. I laugh and take his hand, shaking my head as I do. As we walk towards the reception area he says: ‘One thing you must get about me from the very beginning, my man, is that I don’t give two sweet fucks about anything. Except staying sober. The rest is just noise and half-arsedness.’
We find a seat in a quiet corner of the lobby area. He tells me that he had been born wrong but had spent his life thinking he was right until it had been beaten out of him, had to be, he says, something had to give. I am two drinks short of normal, he says, but the trouble is that I can’t stop at one or two, my illness kicks in when I ta
ke the first drink, first fucking sip never mind drink. Every now and then he stops and asks me how I am doing. Good, I say, I’m doing good, and somewhere I almost believe it.
‘I’m rambling on like this just so that you can get to know me. It’s not because I like the sound of my own voice. Well, no, that’s a lie,’ he says, smiling at me.
He tells me that he has been in prison twice, married once and now lives alone with a small dog called Finn, less hassle that way. His first wife left him for the coal man. She liked diamonds, he says, and that was the closest she could get to them round our way. That’s how he got his limp; he went for the coal man, waited for him one night and battered the fuck out of him but kicked him so long and so hard that it left him with a limp.
There’s nothing you could tell him about rage that he didn’t already know, he came out of his mother’s womb with his fists raised. Drink eased that, took the bite out of his thinking, at first, he says, looking at me, his eyes widening slightly to emphasise what he had said. Then it became an enemy of the worst kind because it not only wanted his body but his fucking soul too. I wonder at him, at this mild calm man I see in front of me and try and put him together with the lunatic he is describing to me. But then I only have to think about my recent past to see that madness can come and go as quickly as a spring shower.
‘You know the fucking Romans had a saying about alco-holism?’
‘Did they?’
‘Yes. They said it was Spiritus contra Spiritum. Spirit against Spirit, my man.’
I look at him. I admire him; in spite of myself I am attracted to his sheer fuck-you love of living.
‘I went pretty far down, Frank,’ I say.
‘I know, son.’
‘A man called Jeffrey found me on the street. From what I can remember he doesn’t drink…I think so…For some reason it has stuck in my mind that he doesn’t.’
‘You owe him your life.’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘You see. All we have is each other. Keep going to the meetings and don’t worry about the God thing. It drove me nuts in the beginning. God is the best person you can be, someone said to me once…And I said that’ll do me…Whether you believe it or not God was in that man the day he found you. Don’t blow this, Gabriel. You may not think it…But there’s always farther to fall…’
When he says goodbye, he tells me that it’s really hello. He gives me his number and tells me to call him when I get out, that he will be at my disposal. I watch as he walks away. I like him, he is warm and his heart is open to someone like me which means he has more courage than I gave him credit for.
Not for Diamonds
He is a new arrival. His name is Michael. He is in the room next to mine. The fingers on one of his hands have no tips and the ones on his other hand are all but gone, so that all he’s left with is a fleshy stump. He had lost them trying to save his taxi. It had been hijacked many years before when the Troubles were at their height. He had been made redundant from the factory he had been working in and he had used some of the lay-off money to set himself up with a brand new Nissan and a taxi licence. He joined a local firm in the town and began to ferry drunks to and fro late at night when the bars no longer wanted them. He kept to himself; he had learned that the hard way. It comes from living in this poky little country, he said, someone’s always fucking earwigging you. The ones that tipped the best were the old ladies, he said, they liked the company and the chance to jaw with someone. The others, he said, forget it, the boozers were more tight-fisted the more they poured down their necks.
For a while all was working well, no complaints, at least there was food on the table. Then one night it went sour. It had been one of those days where you felt like there was a fucking devil sitting on your shoulder, pulling at you, not letting you get at things right. He was on his way back into the town. He had just done a drop-off in the sticks somewhere and was about a mile from the office when somebody stepped out into the middle of the road and flagged him down. It was a woman, young and quite fit, he said. It was past midnight and he remembered thinking that it was dodgy for a young lass to be out on her own, the times that were in it. If it had been a guy no way would he have stopped, not for diamonds, but a girl, that was different. So he pulls up beside her and winds down his window. Sweet she was, he told me, like sunlight cracking a grey sky. She asked to be run into an estate on the outskirts of the town. As she got in he heard the other door open at the same time, and as he turned his head to see who it was he felt the muzzle of the gun meet his cheek. He was told to get out by a man who had a voice that would have frozen your blood. What could I do? he said to me. What the fuck could I do? He watched as the man climbed into the driver’s seat and put the boot down and he and the bit of stuff and his brand new Nissan disappeared into the night.
He walked home and opened a bottle of Bacardi. He ignored his wife’s questions. First things first, blind drunk and then he would deal with the hysterics he knew were coming his way when he finally told her what happened. About three hours later he got a phone call from a mate of his who was a cop, nice fella given what he did for a living. His brother played on the same pool team as him. His car had been found abandoned on some wasteland about two miles from the town. It was intact and nothing appeared damaged, but there was a large black bin bag in the back, and they had to make sure that it wasn’t a device. What does that mean? he asked. We have to check it out, his mate told him. I’m coming down, he said. He got his neighbour out of bed and got him to run him to the place where his car was. When he got there they had it cordoned off and they were about to send in one of those fucking robot things, he said, to do a controlled explosion. They didn’t give two monkeys about me or my taxi; they just wanted the job done and home. The insurance would take a lifetime and a half to come through and he would be back to square bloody one, no, square bloody minus one.
Maybe it was the Bacardi, he said, but one second he was standing there thinking this and the next his legs were carrying him at speed towards the car. He had no idea what he was going to do when he got there but past the cordon he went, past the surprised faces of the security forces and straight to the back door of his taxi. He whipped it open, he said, and reached in and pulled out the black bin bag and ran like fuck back the way he came. This time the police and the army dived for cover as he passed them. All he wanted to do was get the fucking thing as far away from his one source of income as possible. Out into the centre of the wasteland he headed, his heart jumping around like a whore. The blast when it came sounded more like a pop gun, he said. They told him later that it had been a small device and that he was lucky that he had already let go of it when it went off, because it would not only have had his fingers but his head too. He said that they had trouble getting him into the ambulance as he insisted on crawling around in the dirt trying to gather up his missing fingers with what was left of his hands.
It’s funny, he said, you know, what life does to you. After that when they had grafted this and that bit of skin onto his knuckles and the stumps that now had to pass for fingers, he couldn’t give a fuck about his taxi, or making a living. He sold the Nissan, he took a beating on the sale, he didn’t care. He drank every bit of that motor, he said to me, raising the gnarled lump he now had for a left hand so that it sat in the air between us, and he drank his house and his wife and his child until they no longer existed. He erased them; just like these have been, he said, indicating his hands with a nod of his head. I learnt a fucking lesson that night. Don’t break the cordon, son, never ever break the fucking cordon.
Sanctuary
It’s Josey’s last day. Her mother is collecting her at 4 p.m. and she has spent the day in final counselling sessions and saying goodbye to the rest of us. I will miss her. She was the first friendly face I saw as I was coming out of my nightmare. I have grown attached to her in the three short weeks that I have known her. I tell her that I will call her when I get out.
‘Why?’ she asks me.
‘You won’t. We seldom do, us lot. We don’t keep in touch with anyone…’
‘I’m different…’
‘So am I but that doesn’t mean anything. It still won’t make us pick up the phone.’
‘I’ll see you at meetings.’
‘No, you won’t…’
Then she walks away, her suede handbag hanging down from one of her arms. After a short while she stops, looks back at me and comes back, her eyes holding mine as she does so. When she reaches me she puts her lips to my cheek, kisses me and then says: ‘You’re a good man, Mr Gabriel, no matter what they say.’
It takes me by surprise and I grin back at her unsure what to say or do. As I look into her eyes I know that her stay in this place has failed. There’s deadness in them, like someone had just switched off a light in a bare room. She would use again and if she was lucky she would end up in the only place that brought her any comfort, here. If she was unlucky she would never again look at someone with the same warmth that she is looking at me now.
A few of us stand outside and wave her off and watch as her mother barks instructions at her from how to pack her belongings in the car to how to sit in it. She has no chance, I think to myself. After she’s gone I walk for a while with Greg. I have grown to like him. He means well, if anything too well and it has caused him a lot of pain in his time. No-one can be all things to all people, I remember my father saying, then again he wasn’t anything to anyone. Greg tells me that his young wife has refused to take part in any more sessions, and that she is talking divorce; join the club, I tell him. He tells me that she thought he was stinking rich and when she found out he wasn’t, well…
‘Yes, I know,’ I say. ‘And fresh body parts cost a fortune nowadays.’
He stops and looks at me and for a moment I think he’s going to get angry with me, but then he laughs and nods his head.
‘You’re a hundred per cent right. You know I think that I could make a good case out of this. Misrepresentation. I married one woman and ended with a totally different one. I could savage her in the divorce proceedings.’