The Healing (5 page)

From his bedroom window he watched the two men get out of their car. They were dressed in dark suits and one wore a dog-collar. They were checking the number of the house against a piece of paper. As the minister stood looking towards the front door he smoothed the wrinkles out of his jacket, while the man who had been driving checked carefully that all the car doors were locked. They both looked hesitant and nervous but there was something official about their appearance. The minister glanced up at the bedroom window and smiled at him, but he stepped back into the room and waited for the sound of the bell. It rang twice before his mother scurried down the hall and opened the door, then with an instinctive lightness of step he moved to the landing and listened to the voices which filtered into the silence, disturbing the little cloud of stillness which had settled over the house.

He missed the first few words of the introductions, but one man was a colonel and the other some sort of army chaplain. They were both English and their accents
sounded high and strange, belonging to some world in which he had never been. His mother took them into the living-room and he heard her offering them a cup of tea. He moved onto the top stair and crouched close and hard like a knot that someone had pulled tight. The water gushed into the kettle and cups clinked against saucers as his mother clock-worked mechanically in the kitchen, preparing the tea tray. Sometimes he caught a glimpse of her as she opened cupboards near the door. In the living-room, the men spoke to each other in low voices. His mother looked a little flustered and a jerky hand flicked away a wisp of hair which fell across her forehead. Sometimes her hand did it even when there was no hair out of place. When she carried the tray through she glanced up at him and smiled, then rolled her eyes. The little secret message made him feel close to her and although he felt safe where he was, he wanted to help her through the coming moments, and so he bumped noiselessly down the stairs like a child and followed her into the living-room.

Both men stood up and shook his hand. He was too close to them to risk looking into their faces, but he knew they had been at his father's funeral. When they spoke to him he nodded his head, then sat down in a corner of the room while his mother answered their questions on his behalf as she poured the tea.

‘Samuel likes to keep his own counsel these days,' she said.

They nodded blandly in return to signal that they understood whatever she said and then they complimented her on how well the house was looking.

‘Still a long way to go,' she said jauntily. ‘Plenty
of jobs that need doing to keep Samuel and me busy.'

‘It must be quite a change for you living in the city,' the chaplain said, balancing his biscuit on the rim of the saucer.

‘Well, I was born here, you know. Of course, things have changed a lot, though I suppose it's the same everywhere.'

They both agreed with her as if anxious to concur with everything she said. Occasionally his mother looked towards him and smiled with her eyes. The two men talked in turn, steering the conversation into safe areas, and helping each other out when it lapsed into silence. The colonel had black, shiny hair and an angular face. Sometimes, his left eyelid twitched a little and each time it did he drummed his knee with his index finger. The chaplain was an older, grey-haired man with a plump red face and watery eyes. When he was listening, he angled his head a little to the side, as if to show he was carefully taking in everything that was said, and nodded constantly.

After an appropriate time they gently edged towards the purpose of their visit. It was the colonel who led off, speaking in his clipped tones but trying to sound friendly and personal.

‘You're probably wondering why we've called, Mrs Anderson. We've come because we know that these are difficult times for you and your family and we know how easy it is after – after things have moved on a little to think that you've been forgotten about. And also to offer any practical help that we can, or assist with any pressing financial worries that you might have.'

The chaplain angled his head further to the side and
smiled reassuringly at her, as the colonel continued.

‘We know that the pain of your loss will endure long after the media attention has faded. And unfortunately we know, too, from other equally painful experiences that very often the bereaved feel their plight is forgotten by the very society their husbands sought to serve.'

His mother stared impassively forward and said nothing.

‘We feel it's important in situations like these that those who have lost husbands or sons do not feel that their sacrifice has been – passed over, or – '

‘Or taken lightly,' finished the chaplain. ‘Indeed, these are difficult times but you know, as I visit homes which mourn the loss of a loved one, I am struck by the dignity and strength with which they seek to rebuild their lives.'

His watery eyes were fixed on her, but still she said nothing. It was the colonel who spoke.

‘Your husband was a very brave man, and I know from everyone I've spoken with that he was highly respected by all those who served with him. The turnout at the funeral was very impressive and I know he showed the same fine qualities in his private life.'

His mother wreathed her hand with a handkerchief.

‘My husband was the very best of men. All he lived for was his family and his church. He did no harm to a living soul and wished no one in the world any ill. And they killed him for it, killed him without a thought or a care and I can't ever forget that or forgive it.'

Both his hands gripped the bottom of his chair and he rocked himself gently, trying to spin an invisible cocoon of silence. He longed to push his palms against his ears
to block out the screams rising within him; rock, rock, cradle his soul into sweet fields of forgetfulness, but each new word pulled his senses tighter. Rock, rock . . . block out the screams which were trying to prise him open.

‘I know you meant well coming here, but please don't tell me that my husband did not die in vain because I know it's a lie. Thomas died in vain, all right, because it didn't change anything. They keep right on killing and nobody does anything to stop them. The Government doesn't care about men like my husband because if they did, they'd have done something a long time ago.'

She flicked away a wisp of hair which had fallen forward onto her forehead and her knuckles whitened as she squeezed the handkerchief into the palm of her hand.

‘Please, Mrs Anderson, don't upset yourself. I understand how you must feel and really, believe me, we didn't come here to upset you or to cause you distress,' said the chaplain, his voice dropping to a whisper.

‘I know you didn't, but there's one other thing I want to tell you,' his mother insisted. ‘I let the army give Thomas a military funeral out of respect to his wishes, but if it had been my decision alone, we would've laid him to rest in private – buried him quietly and decently without the hypocrisy. All the ceremony and all those words which no one listens to anymore. Too many empty words and condemnations from people who've been saying the same things for twenty years.'

The colonel sat back stiffly on the chair, his face colouring with embarrassment, searching for some avenue of escape.

‘I can understand why you feel this way, Mrs Anderson,' persisted the chaplain. ‘Sometimes I feel not very different from the way you do – I've walked in too many funeral processions, spoken to too many people suffering in the way your family is, not to have had very similar thoughts.'

‘Are our lives worth less than English lives? Do the people sitting in government really care about what happens here to the likes of us?' his mother asked, her voice breaking with bitterness.

‘I assure you, Mrs Anderson,' the colonel said, ‘that the authorities have the highest regard for the people of this Province, and the loyalty and devotion to their country which has led so many of them to make the ultimate sacrifice, is not something which is taken lightly. And because we're talking here in private, I may say that there are many of us who share your frustrations. There are many people in uniform who would welcome only too readily the opportunity to take these people out of existence. But you know as well as I do, that these decisions rest in the hands of politicians, not in the hands of soldiers.'

His mother stared forlornly into the cup she was holding. He wanted to go to her, but like some animal frightened of breaking cover, he hid deeper in himself. His mother stood up. She had something more to say.

‘You were right about feeling forgotten about – we feel it, all right. Two minutes on the headlines and then swept aside by some other bit of news. A couple of days later who even remembered his name? And the people who forget are the lucky ones. We would forget too, but
we can't, and we'll remember it every day for the rest of our lives.'

She started to put plates back on the tray. The two men looked at each other and the colonel started to say something but the chaplain cut across him.

‘Thank you for the tea, Mrs Anderson. It was good to have this opportunity to meet you and your son. And please remember, if there's any way at all that we can be of any help, don't hesitate to get in touch.'

He handed her a small card but she looked away. He set it gently on the fireplace and then both men said goodbye and made their own way down the hall. His mother followed, and as they left he climbed the stairs to his room to watch them go. He heard her close the front door and carry the tray into the kitchen. Outside, the chaplain stood staring up at the leaden sky while the other man was on his knees on the pavement checking the underside of the car. Then he stood up, unlocked the door and brushed both hands clean.

For the rest of the day his mother cleaned the house with a frantic determination. He helped as best he could, clearing out the fire and vacuuming the hall and stairs. He cleaned places that he knew his mother had cleaned the day before and would clean the next day. When he came back to the living-room he saw that the card had gone. Sometimes his mother sang as she worked, the music synchronising with her mechanical movements as she dusted and polished. At times in her darting, frenetic movements she looked like a little automaton that had been wound too tightly. Not long before bedtime she started to bake, as if afraid to leave any minute of the day unfilled
with activity, and when she kissed him goodnight she had a stripe of flour on her cheek.

That night before sleeping he stared down into the black pool where yellow lights criss-crossed the darkness like neon necklaces. Sometimes a light flickered like a candle flame blown by the wind. As he closed the curtains he ran his hands down their join, anxious to make sure there was no chink, no little spy hole through which eyes could peer, then pulled the quilt tightly about him. He no longer read before going to sleep. It did not help and sometimes it got mixed into the dreams and made them worse. His hand fingered the still unfamiliar texture of wallpaper and his eyes searched its pattern for the legion of faces that had lurked in the crevices of his old room, but so far none had emerged. But it gave him no feeling of safety because he knew that they waited somewhere else for him, brooding remorselessly in the shadows and planning the right moment to reach out for him.

Sleep was now the great unpredictable part of his life. Sometimes it was his friend, drowning him in a deep sea of oblivion and carrying him safely through to the morning, but sometimes it deceived him, whispering to him to trust it, to give himself to it, and when he had placed his soul in its hands, it took it greedily and carried him to that place he could not bear to go. He had tried many different things to break its power; focusing his mind on a safe, warm moment of the past, repeating a talismanic word over and over until his mind grew numb and dead, holding a small stone in his hand. Once he had even tried prayer but his words floated away aimlessly like thistledown. At other times he invented a new persona for
himself and constructed a safer, better story of his life, painting in details like a child colouring a book.

It carried him now, a little boat tugged by swirling currents, rudderless and drifting into dangerous seas. It steered him through the weak, watery eyes of the chaplain into a chain of caverns where the flapping wings of bats beat in serried flurries and sharp-edged images cut him to the bone. In his dreams he saw the colonel on his knees checking the undercarriage of his car, his mother's face whitened with flour like the face of a ghost. The images washed over him, carrying him deeper into the great echoing chambers of his heart where his mother's words – ‘every day for the rest of our lives' – reverberated eternally.

The voyage was always different but the destination never changed. It took him to his father. Tall and strong in his dark blue overalls, bits of grass in his hair after a day of silage cutting. Only the big field left to do and the clear blue skies of a summer's evening stretching still and unbroken. Hedgerows alive with colour and blossom, and everywhere, everywhere, the sweet smell of cut grass. He helped his father with many jobs but he liked this one more than any of them. He liked it because it had a start and a finish and when it was done, and the last bale safely stored it felt as if you had really done something big. Sometimes when the weather was likely to change, his father and his uncles would work through the night, their tractor lights shooting moth-filled shafts of light into darkness. But tonight, on this still summer's evening with the sun slowly sinking red, it was only the two of them. Sometimes when he had promised not to tell his mother,
he was allowed to drive the tractor, his father perched behind him in the cab, his hand resting on his shoulder and his eye keeping the steering line straight.

The grass is already cut and raked by the machine into ridged furrows, curving round the field like the graded rings of a giant shell. And everywhere lingers the sweet smell of cut grass, the fresh sap of summer lacing the night. Black smoke belches from the tractor and crows fly overhead, then land in the tractor's wake to search through the freshest swathe. As the sun ignites the tops of the hedgerows on the horizon, his father loads the machine which gathers the cut grass. Soon its long red neck spews grass into the baler, firing it in fiercely like a ceaseless torrent of rain bleeding across the sun. In the glow of the setting sun it looks like a dragon breathing fire. He stands watching it. It seems to fill very quickly and when it can take no more his father stops the tractor and climbs down, taking a minute's rest before he drives the filled baler away.