4 –Angels.
The stark reality of that day on the cliff had haunted him, awake or asleep for several months. In a way, he actually wanted it to be his worst nightmare. He could wake up from a nightmare. He knew though that for that to be the case, he would have had to be asleep for a very long time. Tortured he was. Rip Van Winkel he was not.
In the first days, weeks after the accident, there were times when he couldn’t tell dreams from reality, but they were so common now that he started to wonder if he was deliberately inventing them. Quite why he would let his own mind torture himself to the point of insanity was beyond him. Or was it? He couldn’t blame anyone else after all. Or could he?
Hans Van Klingen was the new owner of the White House. An old adversary of Rob’s, and the most singled minded fascist he had ever known, it was he who had fired that rifle shot. The trigger he pulled not only startled a horse, but also shattered the earthly connection between a man and his true soul mate. Even after his monstrous warning shot, he was not willing to help with the calamity he had started. He had stood by the window and watched them all die. Horse, woman and heart of man.
Drifting off to alcohol induced sleep, Rob went over it again and again in his mind, till her cold breath made him shiver. Breathing and dead, suggested to him that he was dreaming again. He wanted to wake, but then he was with Siobhan, and although she was motionless and cold, she was in his arms. Her hair was no longer a mass of red curls. Sharp wire cut his finger as he tried to brush it away from her face. The red droplets fell onto her pale white face, with a regular beat. He couldn’t wipe them away as that would have spoiled her, so he just let the river flow.
He even started to wonder what Christ must have thought when he hung on the cross, bleeding. He wore thorns for a crown too, and in a way they were put there by those who betrayed him, in much the same way that he felt robbed of his heart. He didn’t even believe in God but there he was musing about how his son felt at being betrayed. He wondered whether he was starting to feel better or was plunging into greater madness.
To talk to God would have been considered the righteous thing to do. Everyone could accept that. If he started to answer back then he would be certifiable. That’s what Rob hated about religion. The hypocrisy of it all. We all talk to ourselves and answer back. We all hear voices, don’t we?
Rob didn’t know if he had taken to alcohol more after the accident because he got depressed, or if it was the other way around. Alcohol is a depressant, but to someone who is already depressed, that is a scientific fact that needs to be proved over and over and over again.
He just wanted to sleep all the time, which could have been attributed to the depression or the alcohol intake, or both. Scientific advice aside, bible bashing do gooders, would have him believe that to praise the lord and sing loudly in church would send his soul to heaven. He preferred praying at the altar of any bar that would tolerate him for long enough to see visions. Double visions of choirs of angels in blue uniforms or white shirts and bow ties and biceps the size of dinner plates. He could fly without wings, without God, out of doors and into streets. Swim in puddles with the rats and mice and other non believers.
It was Siobhan that once told him that love, like the mind, is never lost. It just goes to sleep. Someone, or something has to come into your mind and wake it up. The catch is that we all expect the key to be held by the person that we held the love for. The person that we invested our life in. She told him it doesn’t work quite like that and that love is universal. You give it, you get it, and it goes around and comes around. That was a great theory when she was alive and kicking his conscience around, but he was struggling to cope with anything universal. Except perhaps the fact that a brass band playing in his head at the break of dawn was in some way connected to the jazz band he tapped his foot to at the beginning of the night before.
It helped him sleep, although with the dreams he was having, sometimes sleeping was far from a disguised blessing. Depression made him want to sleep, whilst the desire for a drink kept him awake, until he had had so much that he couldn’t stay awake anyway, and the dreams that tormented him just made him depressed. What if he stopped drinking altogether? Then he wouldn’t fall asleep by mistake, but he’d be sober and depressed and so the reality, which was far more scary than the fantasy, would force him to sleep more and hence dream more. What if he had good thoughts? Would they lead to good dreams? Dreams are wish fulfillment after all, and if he wished for Siobhan’s love to find him then maybe he would find it in sleep. Maybe it was there all the time in the nightmares.
Being awake was a nightmare, or a daymare. It didn’t make much difference, except that getting kicked out of pubs at night was a little less embarrassing. Not that he cared at the time. It was the next day, as he crawled down to the corner shop for milk and a newspaper and the less than admiring stares of the people he had woken on the way home.
Not trusting anyone, anything. Having no faith anymore. Wanting to go to another place in your mind where everything would be all right. Going to sleep with your eyes open and not having to wake up to it ever again.
If it were not for Emma, his daughter, he might have found some way of prolonging the sleep for eternity. She didn’t especially say or do anything. She didn’t have to, she just existed. Maybe she held the key. Such responsibility for one so young, with a washed out journalist for a father, who wasn’t even interested in stories anymore, unless they were fantasies to keep the dreams away.
He stroked the mane of red wire one more time, winced as it cut him and sat bolt upright, eyes bulging, staring at the new dawn. He closed them again as quickly, as he had burst them open, the morning sun sending solar shockwaves to his brain. Half open, half shut, his first thought of the day was that
all the doubts he had about divine forces and spirits and all that crap was now, in his mind, totally legitimate. He was a mess and he wanted to get worse although in truth he wanted the brass band inside his head to take a break from rehearsal. Thump, thump, thump, crash, thump. He hoped in vain that it was the wind rattling against the shutters because he could stop that in an instant. It was however far more likely to be the demons dancing on his mind like they had done every day for longer than he now cared to remember. Wait a minute though. That was all crap, all that spirits and demons talk. If they didn’t exist then they couldn’t be hurting his head. Or was it just that nothing good ever happens? The noise grew louder as he began to fully awake. He was soaked in cold, clinging sweat. Shivering like a baby, he slowly looked around the room, in which nothing ever seemed familiar. He hated that most of all. He felt detached from everything, from himself. His heart was pounding faster than he thought possible for a man alive. Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he had died at last and gone to the next life where everything was exactly the same. Wouldn’t that be Hell? Wouldn’t that be typical? Eternal torture from which there truly was no escape. Unable to free his mind and condemned forever. Pathetic. He didn’t even deserve to die, he mused. He should just run around inside his head forever and meet himself coming back occasionally, wondering what self pitying indulgence he could dream up next.
The ancients thought that dreams were messages from the gods. Rob couldn’t relate to that, as he didn’t believe in God in the first place. One alternative view was that they are messages from a deep source of wisdom and understanding within us, but wisdom was not something he felt in good supply of. Every dream could be a message from some deeper unconscious part of the self to the more conscious everyday part of self, expressed in a language that needs to be learned and understood. The royal road to the unconscious. The window to the soul. The elusive butterfly just always out of reach, like the last kiss he shared with Siobhan. He was starting to feel that if he looked any more deeply into himself, he would fall into his own abyss.
Then there was a voice. A soothing female voice that spoke his name so gently. "Rob. Are you there?" An angel perhaps? No, couldn’t be. Angels were in Heaven and that was crap. No Heaven therefore no angels. Then a knock. The door eased open, creaking painfully. "Rob," said the voice in a whisper. The thumping in his head seemed to be abating. It was now a gentle tap. "Rob." Again, so softly that it seemed almost scared but was trying to help. Now a slow spaced beat. "Rob. Can I come in love?"
Even in his semi soporific state he knew, even though he had never knowingly met an angel, that they were unlikely to call him "love." Not in that beautiful, lilting accent anyway.
"Eh, yes of course," he answered, in a slightly embarrassed tone as he realised that the lilting angel apparent at his door was in fact Mary, Siobhan’s sister. She was as close to an angel on Earth, or anywhere else, as he was ever likely to meet. She opened the door fully and stood in the doorway. She seemed to have this kind of glow all around her, which, strangely enough he refused to attribute to his hangover. It was a good glow. A glow that you could depend on, curl up into. He wanted to believe that she was a real angel. Maybe she was, but her kind expression soon turned to a scowl when she averted her gaze from him and then in turn at the whisky bottle and Chinese takeaway boxes.
"Have you been?" she gestured with her eyes at the ammunition on the bedclothes.
"Dreaming again?" he replied, in a naughty schoolboy tone.
Clearing up the mess from the duvet she growled at him. "It’s no good for you."
"I know Mare. I should try pizza or curry sometime." She didn’t laugh. He just sat helpless beneath the duvet as she continued to clean up the mess. She was unbelievable. The sort of woman who would surely get taken advantage of by a lazy, good for nothing, pig of a man. That was his own, kind description of himself at any rate. Unable to move, least he embarrassed her, his guardian angel, by exposing a part of his salty, sweaty flesh. She would have said she had seen it all before, but in all the time he had known her, he had neither seen her with nor heard her speak of a man, other than her father and W B Yeats.
"You know what I mean Robert." She picked up the bottle and turned it up then down. "I think you should get yourself some help. Maybe your dreams would stop if you stopped the drink."
"Everyone dreams, don’t they?" he retorted defiantly.
"Yes, but not everyone calls out in their sleep every night. And they don’t wake up looking like they have met a ghost. Malt whisky won’t help you to forget Siobhan you know."
"I don’t want to forget her," his defiance whimpering like the last flame in the fire. Mary sat on the edge of the bed and clasped his hands in hers.
"I know you don’t Rob. I don’t either, but she does not want this for you. She wants you to write again. That is how you will exorcise the demons that torment you every night."
"Demons huh? What makes you so sure?"
"She knows."
"Oh come on Mary. Have you been talking to her or something."?
"In a way, yes."
"I don’t go for all that crap. How come she isn’t here then? Why can’t I talk to her?"
"She will have died for a reason. It’s up to you to find out." That glow seemed to intensify, drawing him to her.
"I don’t understand. It’s all way above me." He retreated back into the duvet like a spoiled child.
"When are you happiest?" she asked.
"I have not been happy since she died."
"And if she were here, with you?"
"Writing and taking pictures I suppose, but it’s all kind of academic, isn’t it?" His morbid self-pity began to be replaced with anger, frustration. He didn’t want to vent fury on the angel. He tried to control his emotion, gritting his teeth under the duvet like a child having an injection at the doctors.
"She wants you to continue on your journey. To find the reason."
"Why can’t she just tell me then?"
"Then there would be no point."
"And what if I don’t find the reason. I am the Fool after all."
"It is the journey that is the important part. After that you will find happiness again."
"I can’t see that working for me." She stood up and breathed deeply. He could feel her staring at him. Even her breath felt angry. He had to stop this. She was trying to help, and he was using her as his punch bag. He poked his head out of the duvet.
"Maybe it is not about you Rob."
He would never forget the expression on her face that morning. A kind of anger mixed with knowledge and emotion. Mary and Siobhan were actually very alike. Not surprising for sisters really. People often joked that there was only one of them and they just pretended to be two people. They were born on the same day at exactly the same time, just a year a part. Almost twins but not quite. She stood up and was about to walk out of the room. As she reached the doorway, she turned around, suddenly. He wanted her to stay. He felt awful. At that moment he would have done anything to show how sorry he was.
"Oh, I forgot to tell you. A man called for you yesterday."
"Oh yeah. Who was he?" he replied, as if this was the most interesting news he had ever heard.
"Said his name was Harry Hall and that if you were interested in some work you should call him." She placed a note on the end of the bed. "Do you know him? Is he a friend?" She could not stay angry for long. She did not have it in her.
"Yes I know him all right. He was a friend of my fathers. I haven’t spoken to him for a long time though. I wonder what he wants me to do?"
"There is a reason for everything Rob." She smiled knowingly, and he smiled back of course and then she said, "Must dash. I have a painting to be getting on with."
"A painting?"
"Yes love. One painting that will tell many stories."
"You mean Siobhan’s painting?"
"There is only one Rob. You know I can’t really paint but it was her wish."
Rob just nodded and began to crawl out of bed, staring at this piece of paper that had the letter "H" on it and a telephone number. He must have picked the receiver up a dozen times and put it down again. He really didn’t know what was holding him back or why he was scared to get in touch with an old friend, mentor and trusted colleague of his Father. Staring alternately at the note and the empty bottle of malt, he reflected on how he had written some of his best work, and indeed gathered some of his most vital research on the back of a bottle of the amber nectar. It had that reputation though of making and breaking great men. That was especially true of those once great men who could not control it, or indeed control themselves. Harry Hall was just such a great man. An older, and greater man than Rob Collins. A survivor.
He thought of Siobhan’s prediction, recollecting a day that he had gone to the races with his Father and Harry. The two wise old men would to study the form religiously, whereas Rob would just bet on a horse whose name he liked. That used to wind them up pretty badly, especially if it won. As they drank more they would bet more. The looks on the faces of the bookmakers as they handed over wads of cash, trying to negotiate the odds, was a picture in itself. They probably won more often than they didn’t and there would be plenty of crowing too to make it look like they were expert punters. There is no such thing of course. If you are an expert you become a bookmaker and rake in everyone else’s money as well. You cannot win the game by playing, you have to own it, control it. They taught him that without even knowing. By being players.
Rob had upset Mary by lashing out at the nearest soft target, and felt guilty as Hell. Ironic really, as he doubted if any guilt was ever felt there. As if to somehow make amends for his cruelty towards her, he decided to phone Harry Hall. Anything to repair the damage done to the angel.
There was no ringing tone. Harry answered almost as soon as Rob had hit the last number. Had he not known better, he would have thought he was waiting by the phone for his call.
"Is that you Harry?" he ventured, hoping in a way that he had called the wrong number, for the voice on the other end reminded him of The Exorcist.
"Who else do you know with lungs like these? How are you doing young man?"
Rob loved the way he addressed everybody of a certain age as "young man." He expected him to do that when they were seventy and a hundred years old respectively. Unfortunately, with Harry’s consumption of cigars keeping the Cubans in business, he was not confident. And besides, if hypocrisy was fatal, Rob felt he might not live that long himself anyway.
"I’m very well Sir," he responded, in a manner which he felt countered the young man.
"That’s not what I heard."
This was starting to feel like his second telling off from an adult in one morning. "What have you heard exactly Harry?"
"Oh this and that. Mainly that the shares in a certain distillery are doing rather well on account of your night life." He coughed again, and again. "Sorry about that Robert. Where were we?"
"You were casting aspersions and I was wondering why you called yesterday."
"Yes, well I have already gone past your current life expectancy, so I have some nagging rights I think."
They had not even discussed the weather, but already they were involved in verbal fisticuffs. "Is it my move?"
"Your move?" Harry sounded confused.
"This is telephone chess, isn’t it?"
"No, mate!" Harry started to laugh but that merely induced a further coughing fit which seemed to last forever. That gave Rob time to stare at the telephone blankly and actually get the joke. He felt embarrassed for him all the same and offered to call back when it was more convenient.
"No, no. Look, meet me at the Circus tomorrow at midday. I’ll explain then."
"The circus has come to town?" The conversation had gone from sad to funny to surreal, and Rob was starting to wonder if he was still asleep.
"It’s a café Robert. A bunch of literary clowns hang out there."
"Ah, sounds like my sort of place."
"Indeed." The call ended as abruptly as it had started. Rob just sat for a while, gripping the receiver, just listening to the prrrrrr. What part was he to play in the circus? Lion tamer, ringmaster, or perhaps a high wire act. High wire? That would be rather ironic. So ironic that it actually made him smile. Perhaps there was guilt in Hell after all. As he sat thinking about asking the Devil for a dance, he felt a hand on his shoulder. Had he really been a circus act, he probably would have hit the roof. Gripping on to the phone for protection, he jumped to his feet and squeezed the fingers of the hand, twisting himself around in the process. The high pitched squeal cut threw him like a hot knife in butter. Placing the phone gently down, he clasped both of his hands around the face of his angel. Silence. He stared at her, feeling awful once more. Like an angel, she smiled and clipped him around the side of the head. He really had to wise up.
"Was that Mr. Hall? " she asked, intuitively.
"Yes it was. He wants me to meet him tomorrow, but he wouldn’t say why over the phone."
"Are you going to?"
Rob stood up and announced defiantly, " Well, I guess it’s worth an each way bet."
"Good for you Rob. Now go take a shower and get dressed." She smiled at him in that way that people do when they know something that you don’t. In his great moment of assertiveness he had completely overlooked the fact that he was completely without clothing. Exposed for a fool of a different sort, he grabbed the phone and held it in front of his shame.
"Making another call Rob?" She looked at him for what seemed like an everlasting, cheek roasting moment, turned with his bed clothes in her arms and left the room, humming to herself. He thought of the song, my angel is a centrefold, and gently laid the phone on the floor. She was. He certainly was not, but the pages were starting to turn.
The ancients also believed that nightmares were caused by evil spirits and were a form of self-punishment for unacceptable parts of ourselves that we need to come to terms with. It had dawned on Rob, through his angel, that he had to confront and understand his dream monster, which represented an unwanted part of himself. To turn around and face what it was that he feared would lead it to transform itself in his dreams. Only then would the torment cease.
Copyright © 2000 Cheynestore/Ashley Cheyne