The Lost Souls' Reunion

by Suzanne Power

  Ahead, the shadows had come across another car, parked across a laneway. We raced on to surround and wake the all-eyes-and-bones man who sat inside staring at the house at the top of the laneway without flinching. This man looked so hard at the house he could not see us.

  We put needles and pins into him and hunger in his belly. And he shook his head and rubbed himself and felt it time to get a drink and something to eat. He had been there all night and day and already the little window cleaner had come down to him and advised him to move on or the police would be called.

  So it was that the shadows dispensed with Jonah Cave and sent him in the opposite direction to the one in which Thomas Cave travelled.

  Thomas Cave arrived at the bottom of the brambled laneway, the shadows had formed on either side of it, all but for mine and my mother’s eyes, which led the way to him, back to ourselves.

  And Eddie was the first to see the tall man with the white hair and shirt and dark suit and he, for he was one of the townspeople too, whispered, ‘It’s death. Come to get Myrna. Or a civil servant.’

  Then he saw that it was Thomas Cave from the home. He called me from the back bedroom. Without a word I opened the door and he walked through it.

  * * *

  He looked at me a long while and I at him. Then I introduced him to my family.

  ‘This is Carmel, my mother. You have met Eddie before. He cleans the windows at St Manis.’

  ‘Used to clean the windows,’ Eddie spat as he spoke.

  What was in the air stopped Thomas from making to shake the hands of Eddie and Carmel. I had fought with Eddie that morning, when he had learned of events at St Manis Home.

  ‘That’s a day’s wages a month you’ve lost me. Now we don’t even have you earning money. Where else do you think I’m going to get you a job? There’s no one will take you if you’ve been let go from St Manis! Where else, do you mind telling me?’

  ‘I suppose, Mr Cave, we might ask you to tell us why it happened that I have lost work and so has Sive?’ Eddie spoke gruff and did not look the big man in the eye.

  ‘You’ll hear soon enough,’ was all he could get from Thomas.

  ‘Fair enough so,’ Eddie said quietly. ‘I’ll just go to the bottom of the lane and see if the lunatic son of yours is still parked there and ask him please move on, seeing as how no one else is doing anything about it.’

  ‘He is not there.’

  ‘Well he’ll be back soon enough I’m sure and I am sure I won’t be told either whether him and you, Mr Cave, have anything to contribute to the running of this house with Sive not going to work any more.’

  Eddie shook his head and got his coat, slamming the door violently. Carmel went after him. We heard them walking down the laneway, Eddie shouting and Carmel pleading with him to be quiet.

  * * *

  Thomas and I sat at the table, looking at each other. We had grown used to not touching each other in company. It was a while before he put his hand out across the table to me. I took it.

  ‘It would never work if I came here,’ Thomas said.

  I nodded and said, ‘You have come through my door. I have someone I want you to meet.’

  We went into the back room, it was here the shadows had congregated having driven Jonah Cave away. Thomas saw the shrunken figure in the bed.

  ‘Myrna,’ I said to him. ‘The woman whose image did not develop.’

  Thomas looked at me in disbelief, then he looked at the shadows and knew I was not lying.

  I took his hand and walked him to the bed. I put our hands on Myrna’s breastbone and pushed the last of her breath out of her. She opened her eyes to witness us and gave it willingly.

  The shadows took the last of her breath off. Noreen had taken all else. The townspeople and Eddie were right, Thomas had brought death with him.

  I put my lips to Myrna’s forehead and kissed what she had once been. Thomas watched.

  I cried for her going and for our staying and the uncertainty before us.

  Thomas put his hand on my shoulder and asked if we might go out into the day; that we might talk freely in a way we had never been able to.

  Part of me wanted to stay with Myrna, but the living in me wanted to go after life and life was with Thomas.

  Together we walked out of the house and went down to the shoreline and silent Thomas was seized by talk as all he had held in came out and he took in fresh reaches of air and he began, ‘I was not loved by my mother and father.’

  ‘And I had no father and more than one mother,’ I answered.

  So he began at his beginning, and I began with mine. So he talked and all the life he had lived came out of him and I talked and all of my life went to him. We had waited for so long in the company of our separate secrets. Now they could be shared. As we walked and talked the coming into our own brought with it the heat we had so long denied ourselves. Our revealing to each other was more than words, it was a sense that grew between us.

  The scent of my wanting was a low, dark, musk-scent that spoke of my years of nothing and no one. All that I had stored went to him. All that I had yearned for came back to me. Our two skins came alive.

  And we had not yet touched each other.

  All night the talk went on. Until we came to know all the corners and crevices that we had not shared. He talked most for he had a lifetime to talk of. I listened and I grew in the listening into a wider world beyond that in which I had lived. A world of ice and desert, of great rains and snowfall and burning sun and blinding blue skies.

  I wandered where he had wandered and I saw all he described. He followed me into a dark basement, a high attic flat, on to grey streets and into the house where I came to know myself.

  In this way we came to know each other.

  And in the morning we were ready.

  37 ∼ The Meeting

  THERE IS THE BEST to speak of, the talk of the loving time. The card of the sun facing the moon – the card of Meeting.

  It began, as it had long promised to.

  * * *

  At the point of day when the rising sun faces the fading moon, it began on a wide open shore. The waves crashed into the silence between us and the silence between us remained. It began with the touching of our fingertips, my young firm life against his soft and loosened hold. So soft a touch I felt it to be only a whisper.

  It was at the point in seasons when the winter meets spring and retires, but not before they have touched one another and lain together. Not until they have faced each other in their ending and in their beginning. Each naked in order to behold the other at its most truthful.

  Then Thomas reached for my palms and opened them wide and watched the lines that had not yet been travelled and sought to put his life into them that I may not have to walk it alone.

  He buried his head into my curved palms and cried hot tears that ran into the lines of mine not yet lived and remained there until the years that I would live without him. And I would taste those tears in later times and I would grow strong from his weeping strength.

  We had talked such a long while! Now all was silence and sleep tried to lure us, wrapping herself around us like fine silk. But we knew to close our eyes was to leave this chance for a time that might not come again. So we were naked and we walked to the water to clothe us. Two lost souls guided by the call of the sea.

  The sea laughed and beckoned. With each returning wave came the sense that all things were to begin now and to continue on and to the end, all now contained in this moment.

  The spring scent was mine and it was high in the air, luring winter into growth, the growing warmth between us hot summer and fiery autumn and we knew to reach warmth, coldness must be left far, far behind.

  Thomas bent to kiss me and my lips were soft and shivering and cool as mountain streams on fresh days that do not know they will end. The spiced seawater took away all the need for sleep. Its fragrance was of all the loving and light of the newborn day that had begun without words and would not n
eed them.

  He held me to him. It was a long holding and I felt in him all that I had not felt and the wonder of it was that I knew it would be like this. He felt the still, closed places in himself open. He had been upright for so many years.

  The sun opened its heart to us. A heron flew across its rising.

  And he stood to mop the sodden hair and to stem my shivering, all the while growing blue with cold. I traced with one fingertip the vein map below his white skin and pressed hard in the places where they throbbed most prominently and felt the life course through him. Time would not wait for us and, as we dressed, the sun rose higher as it moved on to the whole world of moments, not just ours.

  I saw his fear then and the grey of his skin not entirely gone. Thomas wanted to picture this moment and he could not picture and preserve it for he was truly in it as he had never been before. I was all soft and heart-heated now and when the feeling came back into his old bones, through me, it pained him with the life of it.

  He had no example of love to go on, but he had experience and I had no experience but all example of love. I wished him everywhere. Inside, outside, beside, with, between, along, and all, all now.

  But this was the beginning, the deepest touch was yet to come.

  We walked up the steps cut out of the rock by unknown hands and crossed the stony fields that had been Joseph Moriarty’s penance and beyond it the railway tracks.

  We went into the woodland, my mother’s familiar.

  We walked through the tall trees and the light fell on us and the ravens called to one another to warn of our approach. A robin watched us quizzically, flying from branch to branch, his red breast strong against the bare breast of winter-not-yet-spring; against the greys and dull browns his heart spoke of all the colour in the world.

  This was my mother’s place. When Thomas stopped and held me against a tree I did not stop him. When he pulled my arms above my head and ran his hands down the pale inner arms and on down over the shoulders and on to my breasts and over my belly and into the deeper heart of me I did not stop him. His movements were rough as the tree bark I rubbed against and I welcomed the roughness and the taste of his heated lips on my salted skin.

  But when he made to pull away the clothes and I made to help him I caught the robin’s eye and the wind rustled in the trees and I knew it was not mine to know love here.

  With each step we took we were bound together, with each stumble over knotted root we fell together. We did not stop for a long while, until the woods almost ended and the sound of a stream came to us, a stream that spoke excitedly of the hard night frost’s melting and of our arrival.

  We were all lips against hair and all breath in ears and all expectation and on we went, drifting out of the holding, moving onwards now.

  The clearing we came to was alive with light, the frost had turned to sparkling dew and spiders had woven a silver web carpet to hold each dew jewel and we walked across it, leaving our marks on the now soft grass and in this place we lay together.

  All clothing taken and all the earth’s moisture became ours and the cleansing stream wove music from the bird-song. We traced the shape of our faces and our form and Thomas put aside his fears of capability and I put aside mine of sharing and we came to move together.

  When he had known each part of me with lips and hands and I him, when we had tasted much and wanted more, I welcomed him.

  Then it happened that he was brought down the road of darkness and the more he moved the more urgently he wished to move and the more he wished to cease moving for he could not bear it. I watched the flush of colour on his breastbone and in his cheeks. I watched, as the man who moved with me grew young again. The silver-white turned to dark chestnut hair that grew wild and thick and his lips and his form filled so that he was offered to me at the time of his life I would never know, when he was most beautiful.

  I cried for my love then and for the young love that had never had the chance to grow old with me and the strong love that he emptied into me. When he was done I met him with my own doing. All done, the aged man was in my arms once more.

  We stayed until the sun receded and the shadows were cast, turning them to a dullness that bore little reminder of what we had been.

  We dressed and walked to Killeaden headland and we sat to watch the rich sun set over the land and turn the sea to the reminding colour of red-gold. My lover, Thomas Cave, sheltered me from the high wind that had risen and he held me against him and when the last of the sunset had gone I felt desolate and he shared my desolation.

  Until we looked at our palms and in each palm was a white snowdrop and a purple crocus of the heart. The day’s events contained in them.

  I have them. I carry them in the box the cards rest in. The flowers have dried but they bring memories as fresh as if they were picked only a moment ago. I lived all life in that day with him.

  The light left us to walk the way home in darkness, sleep threatening to claim us before we even made it home. But we walked together and in that there was strength even sweet sleep could not conquer.

  * * *

  As the light of Solas came into view my lover left me to go his own way, but only for a while. He had to collect what possessions belonged to him from St Manis Home. He would knock on Peter’s window and gain entry that way.

  He would not leave me until we were at the bottom of the laneway.

  ‘You are the only one I can talk to, the only one I can love,’ he said. His voice was full of the future, talking and loving. Full of intent to use whatever time we had well.

  I walked the last steps with the heat of the day in my heart and between my legs and I walked as a loved woman who loves. Never to be alone again.

  38 ∼ Unspared

  THE SHADOWS had taken and kept Jonah away.

  He had gone to the Slip Inn on the harbour front at Scarna. He had been waiting for me a long while outside the house, without even a glimpse, and was glad to stretch out in the warmth and sip the neat whiskey that burned its way down his throat.

  He drank until he was thrown out. Then he fell asleep in his car. When he woke with the next morning, he was tired from sleep and the pub doors were opening again. He went in for the cure. The cramps in his shoulders gnawed and nagged him into continuous shifting as he sat on his stool at the bar. The diehards surrounding him had grown accustomed to his face appearing at regular intervals and that did not mean they liked it any better.

  So he was not asked to join in conversations that meant nothing to anyone. He was left alone to his thoughts and his thoughts were rough and ragged, snatching at him through the lack of sleep.

  What he would do when he saw me, he did not know.

  He wished me to know that I did not have to resort to the withered, listless pawing of an old man dreaming of younger days. I could have him and he would accept that I had allowed his father first to touch me. He imagined that once he had explained the situation to me about the money I would feel foolish and it would be the best way for me to feel.

  Jonah Cave had it in mind to forgive and forget. He had it in mind to entice me with a small present or two and he left the Slip Inn, at dinner hour, to go up the main street and look into the jewellers.

  The men watched him go and, one by one, they turned back to their drinks, one spat and the barman shouted for him to quit that.

  ‘He’s queer,’ one said.

  ‘A queer one indeed, with a skinful on him.’

  ‘He’ll drive the motor into a wall.’

  ‘Or over the ditch.’

  All these ends delivered slowly, with pint sips or whiskey nips in between. All these ends delivered with a certainty that they would be proved right.

  ‘Who is he – do you know?’

  ‘Not from around here.’

  They dropped all talk of him then. It was not worth speculating on one they did not know. They would wait until he met his end behind the wheel and they would talk again of him and how he had sat with his back to them
.

  * * *

  Jonah found a brooch with two pearls set into it. The lady behind the counter leaned back to escape the fumes he breathed over her and the velvet-lined tray, clouding her pieces.

  She rubbed a sleeve over them. The bundle of notes in the wallet he had produced was keeping her quiet.

  He picked it up. She wrapped it silently. After a failed attempt or two at pleasantries in which lay the traps to determine who the man was and why he wanted a brooch at four on a Wednesday afternoon, the jeweller had given up.

  She short-changed him and he walked away without counting. She laid her large bosom on the counter and sighed with satisfaction, imagining, as she did on most Wednesday afternoons, the likes of Rock Hudson unbuttoning her blouse. She undid one or two herself to remind her husband’s brother when he came, as he always did on Wednesday afternoons, of what he had to do.

  * * *

  Jonah made to drive back to Solas and then thought it better to wait until he had a clearer head.

  He would go to St Manis. If Thomas was still facing the curtain, Jonah would coax him to turn around. If Thomas was up he would tell him that everything could be sorted if only he would allow Jonah to handle things.

  Jonah would give his father the money to be gone. To be gone back to where he came from before. In return for this money, Jonah had imagined, he would get information. On what Sive liked and how he could give it to her.

  The father would tell the son, as fathers should always tell sons, about the mysteries of women and how to control the vicious cat part of them that scratched at men and would not leave them be.

  This, surely, would be the way to go about things. He was the forgiver and donator. They were the betrayers. They made a good fit, all these thoughts. Jonah’s head was clearer than it had been for days.

  It was not clear a few minutes later. He did not expect what he got from Sister Mauritius, so soon after his arrival. She was at the car before he even stepped out of it.

  ‘Mr Cave, if you would just come this way.’