A Cleansing of Souls (5 page)

And now, here he was just a few years later, leaving a library in Big Town, stepping into the fading light with a man he didn’t know, on his way to who knows where.

The little girl is no longer weeping beneath the sweating body of her father.

Michael is in Big Town now.

Two days later, in a large house in the country, a bronze letterbox snapped shut. Christine was drinking a cup of tea in the study when she heard the noise. Although she had been waiting on that sound and reacting to it every day for the last week, it still startled her each time. She was a tall woman with long, dark wavy hair that had not yet given way to the grey strands of age. Her face was slightly angular, though softened by her brown eyes. Those very eyes, usually so bright, were now tired and sore, her face sallow and weary. The natural strength and purpose that had always pervaded her was daily faltering.

The study was a room in which she had always been reluctant to spend time. Her husband
had always insisted upon calling it a study – as far as he insisted upon anything – but what he actually studied in there, she had never been sure. There were no books, no writing equipment, no journals, computers or any other signs of learned endeavour, just a large wooden desk with a telephone on it set facing the patio doors and the garden.

For the last seven days, Christine had woken early, sat in the leather chair behind the desk and gazed into the garden as the sun had lit up the dew like tiny torches and the birds had heralded the morning.

When she heard the crack of the letterbox, Christine put her cup and saucer on the desk and went out into the hall, trying to suppress the curious mixture of fear and resignation that was gradually becoming so much a part of her. She bent down. Another bill, another circular. Please let there be something from him.

On the doormat was a small, white envelope, so small in fact that the postmark had almost entirely obliterated the address. Recognizing the handwriting on the front, Christine tore it open hurriedly. Then just for a moment, time stood still as a thin piece of paper slipped out, swaying from side to side, floating to the floor beneath some invisible parachute. She crouched down and picked it up and holding the small piece of paper between thumb and forefinger, she gazed at the words that had been written so precisely between the black squares.

She felt her knees crack as she rose and she winced a little. She took the piece of paper into the study and, brushing the cup and saucer inadvertently as she sat behind the desk, picked up the telephone.

“Ron, it’s Chris. Can you come over?”

“Is he back?”

“No, no he’s not back. I’ve just received a note from him through the post. Can you come round? I know it’s early.”

“I’ll be as quick as I can.”

Ron was a stocky, muscular man with sturdy legs and a thick, strong neck. He was fifty-five years old and had been married to his wife, Diane, for seventeen years. He was a man of order and a man of reason. And thus he lived his life. Even now, following the early morning call from his close friend, he dressed slowly, meticulously. He was in no hurry. Time was his to command.

At last, combing some oil through his already lank hair, and applying after-shave as if he were washing his face with it, he stepped into the day.

“What do you think?” asked Christine as she and Ron sat beside one another on the sofa in the beautifully ornate lounge.

“At least we know he’s all right,” replied Ron. “It could have been worse.”

As he had walked the short distance to Christine’s house, he had imagined perhaps a more tragic message.

“Who’s to say it
’s not going to get worse? That bastard has kept me waiting here day after day, just waiting. I don’t know where he is, what he’s doing. He hasn’t even phoned. And when he does deign to get in touch, he can’t even bloody do that normally.” Christine paused, angry, tearful. “He doesn’t even say when he’s coming back,” she added, almost to herself. She lit another cigarette and smoked in agitation. “I thought I knew him,” she said softly, staring straight ahead now, the pain of the last few days clambering over her crumbling defences. She shook a little and turned towards Ron, her face that of a child, a child that has been betrayed for the very first time. “I thought I bloody knew him.”

Ron continued to look at her face before averting his eyes at the moment her final words wafted into the morning.

Christine was thinking now of the moment she realised he had gone. That evening seven days ago when he didn’t come home from work, she had waited up until gone midnight in sullen anger, before falling asleep on the sofa where she now sat with Ron. And she had awoken with spiteful anticipation, ready to curse him for his lack of responsibility and his complete lack of awareness of how a married man with a child should conduct himself. But he had not been there at all.

So all that rage, that violent energy, was left to churn within her where now it just ached and throbbed. Two days had passed then two nights, then another and another. It was a gradual realisation, a feeling of deep fear. A part of her world was gone. And this fear, this foreboding gripped her from the depths of her stomach straight through to her heart. It was debilitating and crushing. And she had become angry and irritable; not consistently but at times when he should have been there – when she was doing a puzzle in one of her magazines and she couldn’t ask him the answer or when Laura wanted to play one of those games he had created for her. Or when she got out too many plates for dinner. Or when she awoke in the night so cold even at the peak of summer. At these times, she had been acutely, unbearably aware of his absence. His presence had almost seemed insignificant, but his absence left a huge gap. She was angry both with him and with herself. But it was anger that could not find expression. For he had always been that subservient well of tranquillity into which she would discharge her rage.

“It’s just his way, Chris,” said Ron, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t touch me!” she replied sharply.

Ron withdrew, stung, and sat stiffly once more.

A dark and heavy silence fell upon them both.

Footsteps clumped along the pavement outside, quietly at first, then more loudly, before fading into the air. Christine’s tattered heart beat faster as the steps grew louder and just throbbed as they drifted away. The waiting was destroying her in as much as she was soon going to have to look at herself, apportion blame perhaps. She did not know how much she had needed him until he was gone. She had not known how much he had meant to her until he wasn’t there at all. These thoughts settled in her mind now like vagabonds, tormenting her with their sense and clarity.

“Ron,” she said finally, “you’ve known him longer than I have. What is he doing? Why is he doing this to me?”

Ron paused before replying, deliberating over his response.

“I would say we just have to be patient, Chris. You know how he is, his ways. And you know how much he loves you. He needs you, Chris. He’ll be back soon. We just have to be patient.”

Christine looked deep into Ron’s face. He was always so sure, so dependable, and so different from her husband. She looked down at her slippers, staring as if awaiting advice from them. And then a thought crashed into her mind, blazing, urgent. She had fear all over her and turned her eyes upon Ron. But he met her gaze with calmness and assurance. He had been there. He had experienced that intense fear; for a thought just as explosive, though very different in content, had occurred to him the day he found out Michael had gone. Guilt shows no compassion.

“Chris, Chris. He loves you. And he loves Laura.”

There, there.

As he was walking back home, Ron felt he had done enough to reassure Christine, though he was having difficulty convincing himself that all would turn out well. Through all the years he had known Michael, he had never quite been able to work him out, had never really been able to say ‘yes, this, this and this are what Michael is made up of and this is what he is all about’. There were problems posed by Michael’s character to which answers appeared wilfully elusive. Ron found him at times impossible to comprehend. He didn’t really know Michael. He just knew more about him that was all. He had helped to steer him through the cruelty of children. He had guided him, looked out for him. And now he was gone.

Michael’s disappearance was just one issue on Ron’s mind though, as he opened the door to his house. There were different scenarios evolving in his head, each with
its own consequence. So he had to do what he did best. And that was to look after himself.

Diane was in the kitchen when her husband came in, listening to the radio and frying some eggs. The music that permeated the smell of the sizzling breakfast could have been Bach or Mozart or frankly anybody as far as Ron was concerned. It all sounded the same to him. He was strictly a Sinatra man. Diane loved all sorts of classical and other types of music and secretly appreciated the interest her husband tried to show in it. He would always have a guess as to the composer in a manner that suggested he already knew and was in fact testing her. That was so like him.

“Hello, love,” she said.

“Hello, dear,” replied Ron, sitting down at the table, thoughtful and subdued. After a moment, he spoke.

“Haydn?”

“No, love. Humperdink.”

“Ah, Humperdink.”

Ron closed his eyes for a second.

“Christine rang,” he said, his eyes still shut. “That’s where I’ve been. She needed me to talk to her.”

“Has she heard from Michael?” asked Diane, looking up from her gently fizzing eggs just as Ron opened his eyes.

“He sent her a note.”

“What did it say?”

“Nothing really.”

“Well, at least he’s had the heart to finally get in touch. If I were Christine, I’d be going out of my mind by now. How is she?”

“She’ll be fine. Everything will be fine.”

“Has she phoned the police yet? She told me yesterday she would if he wasn’t back soon.”

“No, we discussed that. He’ll be back soon.”

Aware now that the conversation was to come to an end, Diane nudged the eggs from the frying pan onto her husband’s plate to join the sausages, tomatoes, beans and toast, and began tidying the kitchen.

Ron drank his tea and ate his breakfast, deep in thought. An unpleasant feeling was building up within him, a nasty, acidic taste that crept into his throat. Maybe it was the whole situation that he could foresee developing. Maybe it was just the eggs. He could see everything moving too fast. He had become so accustomed to the easy, predictable swing of his life that he was having difficulty accommodating the sharps and the flats that were being injected into the music of his middle years.

He was a man who bled confidence. He was seen as loyal and trusted. Friends confided in him knowing they were safe to do so. He was a man for whom people believed temptation was anathema. Surely it would not dare even to approach his door. He had never been considered the kind of man who would fall victim to its seductive tones. But Ron knew more than anyone believed that temptation succumbed to in a life of hard conformity is liable to take advantage of its oh so privileged position.

“Have you finished, love?” asked Diane as her husband examined his empty teacup.

Ron looked up at her and smiled as well as he was able. She came around to his side of the table and picked up the cup and saucer.

“Don’t worry, love,” she said to him. “He’ll come back and Christine will be happy, Laura will be happy and it will be like it all never happened.”

But Ron knew that things could not be the same again. Things had got out of hand. It was time to take control again.

“Tom,” said Michael, “do you ever think about the stars?”

Tom had just woken from a lengthy, faltering sleep and weariness still clung to him like irritating cobwebs. He had been away for three days now and it seemed that all he had done was walk, sleep and listen to Michael talk. His energy was leaving him, his dreams becoming cloudy, the brightness of his vision and purpose losing its clarity beneath hunger and damp nights.

“What do you mean?” he managed to respond.