‘What are you to do about Jonah?’
‘There is nothing I can do. He is the way he is,’ the softness gone out of him now.
‘And he was not always that way. Thomas – I want you to leave with me. But there is…’
‘Sive?’
‘Yes?’
‘The café in Soho – what was it called? I have no memories of these things – only supposition.’
‘Sergio’s.’
‘Sergio’s, I do not remember at all. But I remember your eyes.’
‘That,’ I smiled, ‘is only because you know them now.’
I heard the movement before I saw the broad feet at the edge of the curtain and knew Margaret was close at hand.
‘You will have to rest now, Thomas,’ I said loudly. ‘We’ll sort this out again.’
In the few days that followed we had no time to finish our conversation. But we had silent times together in the bathroom and it was all that we needed to know one another again.
Dear Jonah,
With all the chances I had to get to know you and not used, I don’t know how this letter will be received. I only know the need both of us have to talk.
I am not asking you to do anything that you do not want to do. But if you would visit me we could at least reach some sort of agreement. I am sending this letter via the solicitor who facilitated the signing of my assets over to you. I do not know where you live now.
Yours
Thomas
With each passing day Thomas grew stronger in the knowledge he wanted to leave St Manis and make his way into the world again. Still, he knew he would not go empty-handed to me; he would make having him worthwhile. He would find a way for that.
29 ∼ Not Ready to Go on – The Card of Passage
THE HOURS CARMEL had spent roaming were now put into Myrna. Eddie was left to fill in the times she was not with him.
It was something the years of window cleaning had trained him well for, to witness a world on the other side of the glass, a silent world which, when it spoke words, produced no sound at all to his ears.
He watched the woman he had always cared for. She treated the old and worn Myrna like a shining jewel. She spooned food into her and washed her with the love a mother shows for a child, took the shame out of the straight and unbowed Myrna’s losing strength.
And Myrna thanked Carmel for her kindness.
‘This is life,’ Myrna said softly. ‘Where one fades, another grows. You grow fine, Carmel, finer each day.’
‘Don’t leave us,’ Carmel whispered.
‘No intention of,’ Myrna smiled.
When Carmel came to bed each evening she was bone tired. Eddie held her. In her stillness he felt the memory of the young girl come back to him and he pressed his lips to the hair that had lost its shine to all others but not to him. Though not aflame it bore the shadows of the flame that had once risen within her. He kissed the white skin of her shoulders, which in youth had the appearance and texture of pearls and in middle age was clouded pearl, sweeter for all the suffering it had endured and for all the love it was still capable of.
Sometimes she would murmur names and fight to put out flames which, in her sleeping, she insisted were consuming their bed. The dream flames had taken a little more of her by morning. She grew finer each day and she grew more tired.
‘It is caring for Myrna has you worn out,’ Eddie said to Carmel as she carried the breakfast tray into the back room, which Myrna rarely left now.
‘It is not,’ Carmel said.
‘It should be Sive looking after her, you’re not able.’
‘Sive has looked after us all. Leave her have her time away from us.’
And that was how the talk went each morning. By evening there was too much tiredness to talk. The weeks turned to months.
At night I would sit with Myrna, sleep on the bed beside her. We did not speak, but the dreams passed between us and when I woke each morning I expected her breath to have left her. Then Carmel took on the caring the days required.
We three had established a rhythm of our own which Eddie could not follow. The rhythm of those who know all there is to know about the ones they travel through life with, the rhythm of lost souls preparing to lose one of their number.
While Carmel slept heavily one morning Eddie and I should have gone out the door together to work. But he chose to stay behind to let Carmel sleep and to spoon soft egg into Myrna’s mouth. I was grateful to him and I felt Myrna’s eyes on me as I left, eyes that reached through the stone wall from the back room and I did not turn back because what I wanted was ahead. I had now to see Thomas or my day had no brightness.
He had told me, in whispers, that he had known me. I nodded and smiled and watched who I was.
‘How could I not have known you immediately?’ he asked me as if I would know.
‘We were to know one another again in a different time, and one day you will meet the woman who said that,’ I promised. ‘That will be when you come through my doorway.’
There was not time for anything else. Margaret’s curious, bowl-shaped eyes were continually on us. Even our bathroom time was all looks through mirrors and not at each other.
Eddie broke pieces of white bread and made to give it to Myrna with the egg but she said softly and firmly, ‘I will feed myself if I need feeding.’
‘You need to eat. You don’t eat if we don’t feed you. You need strength,’ Eddie replied.
‘I have enough strength to go on for as long as I choose to go on for,’ Myrna smiled. ‘But I could use a cigarette. I know you have one of those.’
Eddie weighed up Carmel’s or my anger against Myrna’s pleasure and lit up two cigarettes. Together they sat and smoked and Myrna even managed to drink hot sweet tea that brought a flush to her cheeks.
‘Has there been any sign?’ Myrna asked.
‘Of what?’
‘The man, Jonah.’
‘No sign of him.’
Eddie felt ashamed to remember his inviting the man into the house at the end of an evening where had he paid for no drinks.
‘I’ll talk to the girls,’ he had promised. ‘They have to listen to a man sometime.’
He had been glad there was no visible sign of Jonah taking him up on his offer.
‘Keep him away, Eddie,’ Myrna broke through his thoughts. ‘You must promise to keep him away, always.’
‘I will. I will.’
He thought to do what he could, maybe have a word with Jonah’s father, the next time he was in St Manis on his window cleaning, ask him to keep the son away from the place.
They sat quietly together. Neither heard Carmel stirring.
‘It looks like rain today,’ Eddie said mischievously, looking out at the unrelenting blue sky in a week that had been filled with grey ones. ‘I might stay home.’
Carmel appeared in a half sleep and came to sit by Eddie, taking his hand in hers, a smile just for him.
‘Well, that’s me decided,’ Eddie said. ‘It looks like it’s going to lash all right. Will we go for a walk in the lashing rain, love?’
Carmel frowned and took a sip of his tea. The moisture on her sleep-hardened tongue was welcome.
‘What about Myrna?’ she asked.
‘Myrna’s much more herself today, aren’t you?’ Eddie winked.
‘I am.’
They laughed all together. Carmel said, ‘Were you smoking at this hour, Eddie?’ and she went to get dressed.
Myrna took hold of her blanket and pulled it around her knees.
‘Eddie, please could you get my box?’ Myrna asked.
They left her shuffling the cards and they walked into the cool, crisp air that put a freshness on everything, although its fine blaze of red and gold was already browning, preparing to be stripped bare by the harsh and bony hands of winter.
They had not gone long when Noreen Moriarty came, wearing her sunflower hat at a determined angle. She took up the chair beside Myrna.
‘Y
ou have an air about you today,’ Myrna said as she shuffled.
Noreen nodded.
‘Could you not just enjoy yourself in the other place and not trouble us for a few days? You seem to mean work for me lately.’
Noreen smiled.
‘I have lived through times,’ Myrna said in a voice that gave away all her years. She spread the cards on the table and one fell to the floor. Noreen picked it up. Myrna turned it over. The card of Passage.
‘I am not ready to go on,’ Myrna’s hands shook as she pointed at Noreen to stress her insistence. ‘I cannot go until I give that girl some sense. I know it is coming. She needs more sense and I will go then.’
Noreen continued to smile at Myrna. Her eyes said, ‘These are not your concerns now. It is time to come away.’
Myrna grew angry, ‘I would think that you would understand. She is your flesh and blood. You should protect her.’
Noreen rose and left by the door. She looked back and her eyes said, ‘The next time, there will be no asking.’
* * *
Jonah read his father’s letter and would have done little about it if the prospect of meeting me, away from the cold-blade eyes of old Myrna, had not come with it.
Jonah wondered whether his stranger-father meant to contest the financial arrangements. The solicitor assured him they were incontestable.
He could still feel the flood of soft strength that had run into him when I held him, the protection it offered against his father’s indifference. Now his father was writing lame and badly worded attempts at reconciliation and Jonah was not interested in those. He was interested only in the warmth that came with me.
There was plenty of money now; he could look after me now.
He poured himself a drink. It was almost lunchtime but he did not feel hungry. He worked it out.
If I had lived and woken it was a sign that he was meant to have me.
* * *
In my dreams that night I felt the one who watched me wanting to join me. All around black walls sprang up and I had no choice but to face his watching. I woke, wet with sweat, and went to Myrna’s room – faint shadows all around her. She was sleeping like she would never wake. The breath so faint she barely breathed at all. She would be gone from me. The alone time was coming.
* * *
I heard the purr of the car coming towards me and I held my breath.
It came to a stop beside me. I continued to walk.
Jonah shouted, ‘Please let me talk to you.’
He drove beside me at a snail’s pace. He talked on and on about how he had not seen me, how he had not meant to harm me.
I stopped then and turned to see his white face peering out. The boy lost in it. The wind snapped harder, I thought that if I got in I would help that boy. The wind lashed my legs together, pleading with me not to do it.
The back seat still had my bloodstains.
‘I’ll be getting it cleaned,’ Jonah promised, as if he believed it was the car I was concerned about. He was overcome with happiness. He had found me on the road, before even reaching the home. More than a sign, it was a decision made.
If I had not got into his car to go the mile up the road I would not have taken the road marked out to this night.
Then I saw it only as a means of beginning the work I knew would have to be done between Jonah and Thomas. He talked. How well off he was, how well-regarded he was, how his life had only settled lately but he knew exactly what he wanted to do now.
I did not look at him. I stared out of the window and I watched the road-lining brambles as if they might never break and reveal the high stone pillars of St Manis’s gates. My fear was still in this car, its markings on the back seat. I felt them call out: ‘Get away!’
My head was pounding. The roar of ten drums, in it. Even as the car snailed along I felt the wave of sickness and asked him please to stop and got out as all of my fear came out of me in a rush. The wind caught it and covered me and the side of his car. He came along beside me and cried, ‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘I’m not used to cars.’
‘Why did you get in if you felt sick?’
‘You have other stains of mine to clean up,’ I said, wiping my mouth.
I walked on and he sat in his car and watched me all the way until I had turned the corner and gone through the gates. I heard his car roar past, carrying all his anger with it. I went into the patients’ washroom and sponged my coat and Margaret found me there. She gazed at me without blinking.
‘Have another accident, did you?’
‘It’s nothing.’
I draped my coat on the heater, the steam rose off it and the air was filled with the strong smell of damp turning to dry.
Thomas came in, carrying his shaver and soap, it was not the scented kind of soap but it had its own distinctive smell of Thomas. He nodded to both of us and went to the mirror to lather up. I caught the lines of his back and I could not stop looking or wanting to look. Eventually Thomas barked, ‘Can’t a man shave in peace without two girls watching him? Does a man have no right to privacy in this place? Have you no work to be getting on with, the pair of you?’
Outside Margaret said old bastard and I agreed.
Joe O’Reilly was arguing with himself over who would wash out the sluice and bathroom and I said I would do it. I went into the washroom as the men sat down to breakfast and I found him there, still scraping at his chin.
‘Well,’ he smiled. ‘That is the slowest shave I have ever had.’
I closed the door and the air was filled with the scent of my damp coat and I began to cry because it reminded me of Jonah and the fear. I did not know how to say it to Thomas. He came to hold me and I cried tears until they stopped.
‘All this beauty and these tears wasted on an old man. Too much on your shoulders,’ he whispered.
He knew who I was, but he did not know what went into making me. I had more than him to carry. Later in the day I found him with Black going through his pictures.
I saw the care that had been put into preserving these pictures and that this was the care that had restored Thomas to himself, a care he had no idea he possessed.
‘You know, Thomas,’ said Black. ‘I would like you to take my photograph before I die. I would like you to do that. Take a picture that says I used to be good-looking, not a carcass.’
Thomas said he did not take pictures any more and Mr Black went quiet and the corners of his mouth were dragged down towards the death he knew was coming.
‘It’s a shame,’ he said. ‘When a man no longer does what he is good at.’
Later in the day I took up one of Thomas’s photo albums for myself. The first picture was of a beautiful woman eating a strange fruit.
‘It’s dragon fruit,’ Thomas told me. ‘The Vietnamese eat it because they believe that it gives them the heart and the courage of a dragon.’
‘What does it taste like?’
‘Like a sweet and spongy nothing with seeds in it. It’s the only way they can persuade themselves to eat it in my opinion. But they are a very brave people. If Black is right about me, then I need to get some dragon fruit.’
I smiled at him and turned back to the book of photos.
A thin black woman as long as life, wrapped in white cloth, her hands held up to her face, to shield herself from the light. She looked at me through her hands and I knew her as only those who have been to death and back know each other.
‘She had a fever which had lasted six, maybe seven days,’ Thomas told me. ‘It was a sickness. All of them were dying. But the help didn’t come. The people piled the bodies and burned them at night. The stench was terrible, and across the Mara you could see these bonfires and hear the people wailing all the night long. When I came to the village she was well, then she grew sick and during the whole of her illness I followed her, for a picture story to show what happens when the outside medical resources do not come. I thought that showing one would make more difference than showin
g many. We expected the last picture to be her body being placed on the bonfire. Her family were lucky, they had a shroud still, others had lost too many. They had already wrapped her up when I woke. She had become still and cool. They thought the death would be soon. The others had all had a sudden cooling before they died.
‘But she was a strong woman. Her fever had broken and she walked out of her hut like this,’ Thomas pointed to the eyes squinting through hands. ‘The sunlight blinded her – she had been in the dark so many days. They said it was a miracle. They wanted me to take pictures of all their sick, to save them from death. They believed the camera had saved her. I pretended to take the pictures. They all died.
‘I won an award for this picture,’ Thomas said softly. ‘I never saw this woman again.’
He cried because he had discovered that somewhere inside himself he had indeed carried them all, all those he had photographed.
I put my arm around him and his shoulders shook. Sister Mauritius found us that way. I was called into her office once more and she said, ‘First I find you with your arm around the son. Now it is the father. You are on your last warning. If you do not behave appropriately then you are not fit to work here.’
‘He was upset, Sister. I comforted him.’
‘We are in the business of looking after, not comforting.’
When I came back to the ward Jonah was sitting at Thomas’s bedside.
30 ∼ Paid Twice to Look Once
JONAH WAS STARING at the albums, asking his father where they had come from.
Now the son had come to his bedside the father could find no words to say to him.
‘I asked you where you got these?’ Jonah repeated.
‘From a friend who had kept them for me,’ Thomas finally spoke.
‘What else have you hidden away?’ Jonah said, standing above him.
‘Well, that would be my own concern,’ said Thomas. ‘But I will tell you that you need not worry about money. You have every penny.’
‘Where is Sive?’ Jonah asked. If Thomas knew about the accident he had not mentioned it.
‘She’s with the matron,’ the guarded note in Thomas’s voice.
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