He pulled open the tin locker and wardrobe with a savage snap and saw what he was looking for under the assorted dead men’s clothes his father dressed in for want of anything else.
‘If I could ask you to stop that,’ I said, standing over him as he crouched to pick up ring binders. I had to repeat myself before he looked up at me.
Jonah’s eyes had little colour in them but pale mud. The red veins in the whites of them all the more prominent for this.
‘If I could ask you not to touch those things. The man who owns them is not here,’ I repeated.
‘And what is the man’s name?’ Jonah spoke, soft and menacing laced with a thin smile.
‘Thomas Cave.’
‘And what is my name?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Well, you can gather that I must be a relative. His son. I am here to collect things which he does not need or use.’
‘You cannot remove someone’s belongings.’
‘I am doing this for him,’ he hunched down to pile up the folders and turned his back to me.
A shadow passed over my shoulder and on to Jonah’s face. I thought it was Margaret, returned.
‘Jonah.’
The man in the hunched figure of Jonah slipped away, menace gave way to fear, a child stared through his ribcage. Thomas put his hand on my shoulder and in that hand I felt all that he was holding back.
‘I’m taking what is mine,’ Jonah said in a voice that could not rise.
‘Take them gladly. I have no further use for them.’
‘You do not want them?’ Jonah asked by way of a whisper that lost itself in the emptiness all around. The truth struck him deep and he could not rise from under it. He remained hunched.
‘They are yours, as everything else I have is now yours,’ Thomas said, not gently.
Jonah Cave, like a crouched unborn, in full view of us.
I moved out of Thomas’s grip and went to Jonah and put my arms around him and gave him the comfort he was in need of. He sank his teeth into my shoulder and dry racking sobs tore him up. I held the shreds of him in my arms.
Margaret had arrived with Sister Mauritius.
‘When you have finished here, Mary Sive,’ said Sister Mauritius, ‘I will see you.’ And she departed.
Margaret watched on. Thomas barked at her.
‘Move away. There is nothing more to be seen.’
‘Get off her now, Jonah,’ Thomas said, still standing, when we were left alone.
Jonah held tighter.
Thomas gripped the fine tweed of Jonah’s jacket with his one hand and his one hand was enough to peel Jonah off me, for there was no weight or substance in him. Jonah flailed like a cat falling through the air, clutching for any part of me.
* * *
‘I do not ask, or pretend I wish to know what was going on out there.’
Sister Mauritius began a lecture that I had waited for an hour outside her office to receive. Sister Saviour had been obliged to wait with me and was not best pleased.
‘We have so much to be getting on with,’ she muttered. My shoulder ached with what Jonah had put on it.
‘But you seem to be very involved with those two,’ Mauritius continued. ‘Sister Saviour has advised me that this is a good thing, since Thomas Cave has been a very difficult patient from the word go. I am aware already that his son is—’ she paused and pushed her thin wire glasses up the length of her nose, ‘also a difficult individual, but he is a very generous one to this home. He readily appreciates the work we do and has donated over and above what it costs to keep his father.
‘Sister Saviour tells me you have brought Thomas Cave on. I am telling you, do not bring him on too far. If you want to know why, consider what has happened here this morning. This has all occurred because the patient has become too rowdy and that is because of you.’
Sister Saviour made to interrupt.
‘I do not wish to be challenged on this, Sister Saviour! I only wish to give an express order that must be adhered to so this ridiculous situation does not arise again. Mary Sive is not a nurse. She is not to be given nursing work. She is to clean and she is not to be too involved with the patients. The ward has not been the same since she came to work on it.’
We were both dismissed then. But before we left Sister Mauritius drew Sister Saviour’s attention to the fact that the men were all still outside.
‘They are littering the lawn, move them inside and quickly.’
As we made our way back to the ward Sister Saviour spoke in tight voice, ‘She is not my Mother Superior and I will be seeing my Mother Superior about this! We are a nursing order. That woman—’ The talk ran on inside her.
Thomas was outside again, not with the men but apart from them. Jonah gone.
‘Why do you not sit with the men?’ I asked.
‘Because I am not like them, I am not happy to stay here.’ He spoke like a child. ‘Why did you do that with Jonah?’
‘It was all that I could think of to do. He is upset. He is your son.’
‘He is not my son.’
‘He has your name.’
‘That,’ said Thomas before he turned his broad back to me and walked away, ‘is all he has.’
25 ∼ No Joy
THERE WAS A SOUND of laughter in another room, laughter unshared by Eddie and Carmel as they spoke to Father Malone.
It had gone badly for Eddie when he realized that they were not to see the curate. The curate was taking Father Malone’s appointment, for Father Malone felt he had to see this couple, given the circumstances.
Father Malone had pointed this out to the curate over their boiled eggs (Father Malone got two, the curate, one) at breakfast in the priory.
The curate was required to run through his list of tasks for the day at the table. Eddie Burns had asked specifically to see him.
He explained this to Father Malone when Father Malone suggested that he take this particular appointment, but this only seemed to fuel Father Malone’s determination.
The curate was not allowed to finish his tea and bread fingers before the housekeeper came to clear away the dishes. When Father Malone finished breakfast the day began for both of them.
In a few years time the priesthood, as it was presented to him in Scarna’s parish church of St Alphonsus, would break the curate. He would cause outrage by leaving the priory to move into the Greeg’s pub with its proprietor, Mrs Greeg, a woman widowed only a year, her husband buried by the curate. Life was not much different in Greeg’s pub, he did as he was told there, too. Father Malone still disapproved of him.
But this was all ahead of them, for now it was up to Father Malone to see Eddie Burns and Carmel Moriarty.
It was evening and Eddie’s arms ached from cleaning all his regular shop windows after a summer storm and three freak days of rain had left them muddied.
Father Malone’s housekeeper had brought them tea. Eddie had drunk his in two gulps, as the cups were dainty. Carmel had not touched hers. Father Malone sipped. The longer Father Malone’s cup lasted the more embarrassed was Eddie. His throat ached for another cup. He did not ask for one.
‘You will not be able to consummate this marriage.’
Father Malone was talking to Carmel and Eddie as if he was thinking of Carmel and Eddie after they had departed the priory.
‘Otherwise it will result in a child and, I’m sure you’ve realized, neither of you is in a position to bring up a family.’
The dangers of childbirth for the older woman was an issue he had never had much opportunity to raise. He was glad of the opportunity to do so with Carmel.
‘You already have a child?’ he asked her, as if she spoke a different language.
‘She does, Father,’ Eddie broke in.
‘Can she not speak for herself?’ Father Malone’s eyebrow was raised to its quizzical and kindly position. It was a position the curate knew to be nervous of.
‘She can, Father, but she doesn’t talk to many stranger
s.’
Carmel was looking at Eddie. The more she looked at him the more his jaw tightened. She put a hand out to Eddie, who brushed it away, embarrassed.
‘Well,’ Father Malone watched all this and the more he watched the more he knew. ‘Can you tell me how the daughter feels about her mother taking up with someone else?’
Father Malone had heard all about us. We had not even darkened his church or priory door since we had come back to the town and certainly he had received no invitation to darken ours.
‘Well, the girl’s her own woman, almost twenty, Father,’ Eddie said. ‘She’s not depending on Carmel any longer.’
‘And the girl’s father?’
‘Dead, Father.’
‘How?’
Eddie had trusted my word on this and did not know how the father had died or when.
‘Sive, the daughter, told me.’
‘And Carmel didn’t?’
‘No, Carmel’s sick, Father. She doesn’t say or do much. I just want to look after her, Father, and I’ll look after her better if I am married to her. She deserves that, Father. You know who her father was.’
Father Malone had been a curate himself when Joseph Moriarty had been alive. He had told Joseph’s wife to go home to him more than once. She could not control him, that was all, or the child, Carmel, who had grown and remained strange.
‘It sounds to me it is a good hospital she needs, not a husband.’
‘I am able to look after her. Will you marry us?’
‘I will,’ Father Malone began and Eddie had the ghost of smile. ‘If you can produce her husband’s death certificate and if we see you both for the next six months at Mass. For the banns to be read out. I see you there all right, Edward, but I have not seen Mrs—?’
Carmel found some words, ‘I wasn’t married before.’
‘Have you confessed your sins lately, Mrs – Miss – Moriarty?’
Carmel looked at Eddie. Eddie stood up.
‘Will you marry us or not, Father?’ he trembled in voice and body.
‘I would ask you to remain seated, Edward. This is not a bar you’re in now. I would ask you if you have considered that Miss Moriarty’s spiritual condition is not great. Even great sinners who repent find forgiveness. Christ Himself looked for it. But Miss Moriarty,’ he pointed steadily at her, ‘Miss Moriarty, by her silence, indicates she is above it and, indeed, above marriage up to this point. Now,’ he paused. ‘Why change the habits of a lifetime? Have you asked yourself who you have chosen to marry, Edward? You have not asked enough questions, Edward, that is all I am saying.’
‘If you ask me, Father, you have asked too many,’ Eddie said, as he and Carmel left. They walked briskly along the coast road.
‘You will not be talked to, or about, like that again I can promise,’ he spoke into the quiet of her round shoulder. ‘We will live in sin and to hell with them all.’
But part of Eddie was thinking of the windows that he had to clean and the talk he would overhear through them.
‘We’ve no need for papers, Carmel, we know how we feel.’ He said it softly, as if the watching people were with them. ‘We’re a pair, Carmel,’ he put a smile on her face with his warmth. She was happy when he was happy. She was anxious when he was anything else.
‘Sure, we might as well be married already.’
* * *
That night over a boiled dinner, Father Malone had an argumentative stomach, the curate asked how it had gone with Carmel and Eddie.
‘As well as could be expected,’ Father Malone eyed him coldly and went back to severing his bacon fat from the lean in a most particular fashion.
26 ∼ To the Dead and Back
I THOUGHT OF my obligations, my need for my job. I did not look at Thomas for weeks. All the while his eyes pierced into the back I kept towards him. He did not make an attempt to put a hand on me. His son was between us.
Once or twice when I left in the evening he walked down the driveway behind me and did not utter a word to stop me from going through the gates.
Down the road of Pass If You Can I felt eyes on me that I thought were his.
Thomas began to write letters to me. He was a man of few words so he did not send them. But I read them in my dreams and there were words of love and promise that drove into the heart of me and could not be taken out such was their determination to stay.
Sister Saviour and Joe O’Reilly were delighted with the now talking Thomas. He would offer to help them, finishing his food first at each mealtime and rising to collect cups and dishes, then sweeping the floor. He made his own bed and stripped the sheets off others with his one hand.
Sister Saviour asked to speak to him.
‘I see you are helping us, Mr Cave. Very good! If only we had more of that we would have our work done in no time and plenty of time for other things!’
He did not like her shouting tone, but he nodded just the same.
‘I wondered if perhaps you could be better preoccupied doing other things!’
Sister Saviour found the shortest way in conversation to be the best.
‘Doing what?’ Thomas asked.
‘You are not spending much time with the men, Mr Cave! This is your home! You will have to learn to get along with those who share it!’
‘I am not the same as them.’
‘Oh, but you are!’ Sister Saviour brushed invisibilities from her lapel busily. ‘You are every bit one of them, Mr Cave! These men are every bit as good as you, Mr Cave. Do not attempt to put yourself above them.’
‘I am not doing that,’ he said quietly. ‘I should point out, however, that I am not here because I chose to be here.’
‘That makes you exactly the same as everyone else,’ Sister Saviour returned. ‘These men are every bit as proud as you, Mr Cave, they have just been here longer and learned to be less obvious about it.’
‘What do you want me to do, Sister?’
‘You are clearly an intelligent man, Mr Cave, you clearly have done a lot of travelling. They would certainly wish to hear about it and they might even share something in common with you.’ Sister Saviour followed the remark with what she thought was a smile.
Thomas walked the grounds and came into lunch with his eyes full of thought. After lunch he retired to his cubicle, took up his pen, wrote a short letter to an address in Galway. It instructed a former colleague as to where he was and it wondered whether that former colleague could access some of his possessions.
Thomas explained where the key was hidden. He did not explain the situation with Jonah, except to say that he thought his son would have been too busy to handle this. He also wrote that he had no money with which to reimburse the former colleague.
The former colleague was John Coughlan and he had been the closest thing Thomas had had to a friend in his self-chosen life. Certainly he had admired Thomas, for all his aloofness, and certainly he would go to the cottage and see what remained of his collection and his equipment and personal possessions.
* * *
John Coughlan found he did not even need to use the key to get in, he found the cottage Thomas Cave had lived in exactly as it had been left over a year ago.
There was no reason for it to be otherwise. Though Thomas did not own the place he had paid ten years rent upfront. The sum he paid would have bought the property and left some change, but he had never owned a house and did not want one.
John Coughlan parcelled up Thomas Cave’s existence and drove to Dublin with a carload of possessions. He was surprised at how grateful Thomas Cave was to see him. He was surprised what almost two years had done to the man of before.
Thomas Cave had changed utterly. Dressed in dead men’s clothes that were too short, he had the look of the mad, his body curled around a thin stick which before would have snapped in two with the bulk of him. Lines of loose flesh stretched between bones all too visible.
But the height and the hair were still there and a shadow of the old demeanour clung enough for
John Coughlan to say, ‘It’s good to see you, Thomas.’
Thomas and John made hard conversation and John knew then that it was only the outer man who had changed. Thomas was still silent. He moved quickly, to bring the end of the visit nearer, filling Thomas’s cubicle with remnants of his past, leaving him to sit among them as he hurried away with busy promises to return one day when he was up in the Dublin area again.
Thomas Cave looked at him with the noiseless stare all the ones left in these places give occasional visitors. A stare without small talk, without talk at all, which says they know it is a promise that will not be kept.
It came to John Coughlan only after he left the dark stretch of the midlands and the lights of the western city, which was home, came into view. John Coughlan knew that all he had acquired was worth giving away if he could simply have more time to be fit and whole and with his family. He felt a strange exhaustion that made him cold despite the blazing heater in the fine and comfortable car that cushioned him against the night and road.
He resolved to take an early retirement.
‘Thomas Cave,’ he said out loud as he pulled into his own driveway and saw the light pour out of his opened front door and the welcome outline of his kind wife in the middle of it. ‘Thank you for going there before I did.’
* * *
I walked with the birth of the next morning against a sheet of driving rain and wind that carried with it the crying, dying leaves of autumn. My legs burned with the effort of pushing up the hill. It was as if the day knew what was to happen and it sought to turn me back from it.
But I had in mind to see Thomas and somehow to lay a new and touching hand on him, so that he might see I had not abandoned him. The more I pulled away from him the more I felt the pull towards him.
I curled my head into my chest and watched my feet take each slow step. I did not see the car until its headlights were almost upon me, their menacing shine spread over my shoes. I was in the air and it seemed the whole world was wailing and reeling before I felt emptiness.
I woke and I found myself on the back seat of a car. The taste of salt-blood in my mouth. I could not speak, my jaw clamped with a dull aching.
The Lost Souls' Reunion Page 16