The Lost Souls' Reunion (33 page)

‘Myrna has gone on ahead,' Noreen smiled and they saw the shape of her through the shadow. ‘Time for us to follow.'

40 ∼ Thomas Comes

T
HOMAS REACHED
the end of the brambled laneway as light was breaking. No sign of Jonah's car. He breathed a sigh of relief. If Thomas had known that being left homeless and penniless and old and broken could have brought this much happiness he would have become so a long time ago.

‘We will wander together,' he breathed. ‘We will know the whole world.'

He did not linger in the yard of the house, before the smouldering pile of his belongings. The dogs did not even bark, did not emerge from their hidden places to challenge him. He went in through the open door to the kitchen and stooped over the bodies of Eddie and Carmel and on into the back room where Myrna's uncovered body lay.

Then up the stairs, two at a time, and into all the rooms until he found the one that held what remained of me.

And he saw, first, the end of Jonah had come and it was a bloody one. He moved towards the body and it was only then that he saw what remained of me – obscured by Jonah.

Thomas let out a great cry, which shook all the world. He gathered my opened skin and my near lifeless bones into him.

He put his lips to the place where the hair had once been and then grasped the hands that had held him and he cried out that I had not deserved this. I had only loved. Why could it not have been him to suffer and die?

He did not glance again at the body of his son. But talked to him.

‘It is a terrible thing,' Thomas wept. ‘It is a terrible thing we have done, Jonah, you and I, to this young girl and her family. We have taken them with us, Jonah. May God forgive us.'

And he cried and in crying he gathered what he could not recognize to be me. He took shorn hair and pressed it against my head to make me whole and his, and it was impossible.

Then he felt the faint breath and he did not know whether to leave me to get help or spend the last moments with me. He fought going or staying and did not feel a hefty woman in a sunflower hat reach under his arms and pull him away from me and to his feet. Before he left he covered me with a blanket. He could not bear for me to be cold and dying.

He went to the town and his long stride took him to the door of the doctor. The doctor, sitting over his breakfast, was given no time to finish. His wife had tried to keep the tall man who might be death at the door but he had gone through the house until he found who he needed to find.

‘Get your bag,' said Thomas Cave. ‘And you,' he spoke to the wife, ‘call an ambulance and the police. Send them to the place where Sive and Carmel Moriarty and Eddie the window cleaner live.'

‘Where is that?' The wife wanted to know, though she knew it well.

‘The Hoar Rock.' The doctor grabbed his coat and stood.

*   *   *

They took me by ambulance to a white room and I lived there by a thread for a long time. And I longed for death.

Thomas sat by me. I was always cold and I did not wake or see Thomas.

Then one day I opened my eyes because I felt warmth rise through me from my feet upwards.

I found the white-haired man rubbing life into them.

‘I brought socks,' he said to me. ‘To keep out the cold.'

In that moment life won back Sive Moriarty.

*   *   *

There were long and terrible days. There were police and newspapers and all manner of inquisitions. They took what they needed to take from my grieving heart to know that Jonah was the one who had killed and torn asunder.

Many of them said, ‘Sorry for your trouble.'

They let me home from the hospital. I travelled in a car with Thomas to Solas and I screeched on seeing it. But they did not hear.

I was beyond kindness and care. I roamed long nights when I would not stay in Solas for all that had happened here. Thomas walked after me and I wept for my departed ones and for the alone future I faced with this stranger of a man who I had given up all for.

It went on for many weeks and it went for many days and nights and it would have gone on forever if the cold letter had not come to say the bodies were now free to be buried. The examinations of them were complete and satisfactory.

I did not feel complete or satisfactory. I wished for Myrna and Carmel and Eddie to live and for Thomas and me to die.

He bowed his head each time I said so, each time I would not eat what he made to eat or drink, each time he said a word I told him he did not deserve to speak. He bowed his head and he took the anger as he took the tears and the night walks and the raving and the emptying of all I had to make way for all that was to come.

Then the cold letter came to say that the bodies were now free to be buried.

And we had to bury them.

I could not bear to.

But then they said they would put them in cold, anonymous graves if we did not claim them. Thomas said he would make the arrangements. His money was returned to him on Jonah's death.

I left it to him to see to it.

At night I slept alone, as far away from Thomas as I could be. Though my body cried out for comfort. He slept in the room Myrna had once had, with the dogs, who had taken to being not far behind him.

Thomas was not a housekeeper, the place was lost to neglect. I would have been the same if Thomas had not finally dragged me to the bathroom and forced me to pour water on my skin. And then I could not be prevented from going to that bathroom and spending many hours a day in it. Scrubbing what could not be seen with the slow deliberate rhythm that made my skin cry out and bleed.

Thomas had to force food into me then. And what he forced was brought up in angry spurts and he would clean it and begin again.

Then, one night, when all that was left of me was skin and bone and eyes, the door opened and the fair-haired child of before came and he put his hand in mine. I closed my eyes.

The sleep that came to take me was the kindest I have ever known.

*   *   *

When I woke a day was already half lived.

I rose and came down the stairs to find Thomas sitting at the table. He was thin and drawn. His face had set hard and hopeless again. I was a wild-eyed skeleton, my hair knotted and covering my half nakedness like a dark cloud.

‘They will be buried here,' I said. ‘They can be buried in the part of the wood that is ours. They were happiest in the woods.'

‘Well,' Thomas sighed. ‘What of consecrated ground?'

‘There is no ground better than this.'

‘Will you have something to eat?' Thomas asked.

‘Something,' I said.

We ate in silence and each plateful that was put in front of me I cleared until I had eaten my way back into the living and breathing world. When I had finished I looked at Thomas.

‘There is a lot to be done.'

He shook his head.

‘No. I have done most of it. The bodies will be brought straight to the church. There will be a Mass and then they will be brought here. I will speak to the curate. He is a good man. It can all happen tomorrow if you wish, we are waiting for you to say when.'

He did not tell me that he had imagined this would never happen and that he had planned to bury the three without me. He did not tell me the humiliation he had suffered in walking into the town and being greeted only with silence and open stares.

The funeral home had charged him double what they would anyone else. The town had talked of nothing else but this house where all the murders had happened and the funeral home had to think of its good name and future custom.

Two men were hired to dig the plot. It cost a lot of money, Thomas had been advised by the men. He paid what was asked because he could not dig it himself.

After eating we walked down on to the beach so that I might gather what I needed.

He helped me with the driftwood. We bound them together into crosses of a fashion. He helped me to clear the house and to open all its windows so that the sadness could be taken by the air waiting to come in and begin the new life.

All this work we did in one day without a word between us. I did not ask him for anything, he was there with it before I had to ask.

That night I went to the room in which he slept, in which Myrna had slept. That night I slept in his arms. He held me and kept watch.

*   *   *

It was a fine day, the day that those three lives came to their final end. It was full of the promise of spring and the flowers that we put on the fresh earth were the first daffodils although they were not grown on our land. Thomas had bought them. They looked false to me, they looked severed and not in keeping with the wildness of the spot. But Thomas had done enough and I had not spoken to him to indicate otherwise.

The curate went back to the town in a taxi.

It was only midday when it was all done.

41 ∼ The Wanderer Reborn

I
DID NOT SPEAK
for a time. The silence was not disagreeable, it was a truthful silence, for there was nothing between Thomas and me in those days that grew into months, as the child grew in me.

Its first kick brought me back further into the land of the living, and it was only then that I realized how far, still, I was removed from it.

But this child was not one to lie in wait. This child wanted to walk into the middle of the world and let his presence be felt. He raced to this world with all the enthusiasm I had run away from it.

He grew big, so big, so quickly.

And with that child grew the love that had died. Then Jonah came in a dream and said: ‘It could be mine.'

I was afraid. I had been taken in the best of ways and the worst of ways in the one day. I woke and would not sleep again. The cards called to me to let me know what way it was to be. I had not touched them since the day I had found blood and fire and hair flowing. I knew their truth would not be hidden and I wished to hide. But the child within had no wish to hide. He wished to be known and he shifted endlessly, urging me on and, finally, I could only do as he wanted or he would not let me rest.

I picked them up and took the chair by the fire that Myrna had always used. I meant to throw them on the fire if they brought more sorrow and pain to me.

But they did not.

I asked, ‘Who's is the child? Who is the father?'

And they showed me only the card of New Beginnings and a voice said, ‘It is the child who chooses this.'

‘Who does the child choose?' I asked, and I turned the card and it was not the card of the One Who Watches, but of the Wanderer and I knew in my heart that all that was to happen from now on I should be thankful for.

‘Will the child love me?' I asked.

The cards did not speak and I remembered, then, Myrna's words.

‘Mine is the only fate they will not determine.'

And, since they were now mine, I knew it was the same for me.

I am glad for this. What I have known and felt and had these past twenty years was all experienced with the joy of not knowing it would come to me. I grew into my life. It was one of my own choosing.

In time I have come to realize that I am not one. I am a sum of many parts, all assembled in this room, this night. I have the strength of all of you in me. It has been a strength I have needed. It is a strength I am reminded of now, as this night is ending and this story is almost at an end.

It is coming, the alone time when you will depart and leave me.

More to tell. I am glad to tell it. Let me tell of clearing the way for the new life.

*   *   *

We put in a bathroom upstairs and we made a room into a nursery. I cleared the clothes of my loved ones. But I left all their possessions as they were about the place. It was still their home. I took Myrna's few dresses and objects and put them into her suitcase. In her grey coat I felt lumps and pulled at one. I pulled out a diamond necklace. By the time I had unpicked the lining there was a lot more jewellery besides. What we did not need to sell, I kept to wear and think of her, Jonah had spent most of his father's carefully earned money.

*   *   *

He came in autumn, my mother's season. He was born on the first day of the new moon and was as curious to grow as Carmel. We called him Simon and we laid him in the crib that was made for the child Eddie and Carmel did not have. Simon was a name all his own. We wanted, above all, that he would have a life apart from us.

We had been walking all day, collecting wood for the coming winter. Thomas had made a cart with wheels for the job. His health was fully restored to him, the limbs were stiff only in the morning and when that stiffness eased he was thankful for each new day in which he could work on the place and make it ready for the new-born.

He had found some of his cameras in the pearl-blue Jaguar. But he had not taken one picture since the time when he had first been found by the postman of the year. He did not wish to photograph. He wished to live and he put his back into it. He took life on and it gave him a great force with which to complete each day.

He did all that had to be done in the town. I would not go there. I stayed with my growing belly and my shoreline and woods, as my mother had done before me. What need had I for strange looks on faces that bore no sign of friendship?

Thomas grew to talk to the townspeople, the formal talk that he had used all his life and many understand that. To him, now, as with me always, it had no meaning. But he could speak and was liked well enough for his courteous manner by the women and for his lack of curiosity on matters personal by the men.

He spent some hours there each day making purchases that would give this house its chance to welcome the new life. The townspeople did not forget how he had come to live among them, but did not choose to remember each time they came across him.

He made no friends and he made no enemies.

In Solas our love grew again, as all rooted things grow. It called out to the broken part of us and mended it.