Ahoy for Joy (13 page)

Michael's heart fluttered at the sound of her name.
How did she know of Anna?
But Bernie could see the question in his eyes.

“I'm sorry, you mentioned her several times when you were delirious. Michael, do you want me to get her for you. I will find her now. I will bring her here, straightaway.” He shook his head once more.

“Can you leave me?”

The doctor looked relieved. Bernie just looked. “I'll be right over here if you need me. Remember, just pull on the handle.”

The two went off and Michael lay in silence with his thoughts. It all seemed so surreal. How much sadness was one man's destiny? How could fate strip him of everything he had in the world, then return, unsatisfied for more? What was now wanted? He had nothing left to give.

He thought of Anna. Oh, if only he could see her just one more time, just one more time. Bernie had said she would call her. She would find her for him. A dying man's wish, she would surely come. She would come for him. But was there even time? And to what end? Inflict on her the contagion of Ireland's hatred for itself? No, this was something she shouldn't see. His life was over, but hers would be perfect. Left alone, she would find a husband, and she would make him as happy as she might have made him. And children? Oh yes, she would have children. Left alone, Anna would still have a wonderful family and bring up her children with the unique love he knew she possessed.

The thought shed a glimmer of light on his fading mind, but it didn't last long.

He thought of the Trumpet Major.
Watch what you wish for
. Oh the irony! He had just assumed the soldier would end up with the beautiful girl, but now he had finished the novel. The love that had seemed on the verge of blossoming for most of the book had never materialised and the Trumpet Major lay slain on a Spanish battlefield. His love, like Michael's, unrequited.

His thoughts tailed off. She would forget him. She
should
forget him. That was right, but the loneliness of death was bleaker than he had ever imagined. There was nothing ahead, just nothing. Beneath the blankets, he clasped his hands firmly together as he had done as a child at church. He could hardly feel them and wasn't that sure his hands were even connected, but he squeezed. He didn't know what to pray for. He knew he wouldn't be saved, not for this life anyway, so he prayed for salvation. He prayed for a smooth transition as life and death connect for that short moment when all uncertainty is certain and all questions are answered.

Over the hours that followed, Michael lay in thought, his eyes closed. Bernie came by several times and took his pulse. He felt her presence, but he didn't react. He just lay there, the last of his mental powers focused on a final errand his mind sought to complete before he finally succumbed to the inevitable. At last Bernie's shift ended and she came and sat by him the way she had done so often over the past few weeks. After thirty years of nursing experience she had seen numerous successes where unlikely lost cases would suddenly revive and achieve a full recovery. She would smile openly as they thanked her and watch them stroll from the ward, once again set to enjoy the virtues of the world and endure its challenges. That's why she got into nursing. But she had also seen a few like Michael's where comparatively minor injuries had been plagued by a succession of complications that all led to a sorrowful ending. They were never easy, but for most they had been surrounded by family and friends and Bernie would be only a witness to the departure, comforting the bereaved, not the dying.

Michael was different. There were no family and friends. There was no one to comfort him. No relatives who would leave the ward, their eyes red with grief. She had grown close to the boy no one seemed to know. They had talked a little in the evenings, but mostly she had just sat with him and watched, firstly as his recovery began, then as he came to terms with the death of his parents, then in horror as his final sentence was delivered.

She knew him to be a deep individual who possessed inner qualities as yet unclear to her. She knew her purpose in nursing and in caring for this particular patient would never be surpassed. She knew no case would ever touch her as profoundly as this one. She knew she would never forget Michael Coglan, but the poignancy of what would now happen in the final hours of that young man's life would stay with her forever.

The tears were still in his eyes, when she sat down beside him. Crying for himself for no one else would. Crying for what might have been and that that never would. She held him by the hand once more, firmly, softly the same way as she had done over three weeks ago when he had awoken. Michael looked at her. She smiled once more, the same smile she had smiled that first day. It seemed like it had been a long time ago, yet only a blink of the eye. Never and forever, all rolled into one.

At last Michael spoke. “Bernie, would you write something down for me.”

“Of course,” she replied. “Look, hold on. I'll go and get some paper.” She walked off, quickly as usual. She always walked at the same speed and in the same determined way, whatever the situation. It was part of her professional composure.
Never let the patient see you're in a flap
, her first Matron had told her. In minutes, she arrived back with paper in hand and a pen. She lifted the clipboard from the end of his bed with the patient notes and their damning message still in place and clipped a fresh new sheet on top.

“OK,” she said. “I'm ready.”

“Just as I say it Bernie. Please. Please write down just what I say.”

His voice was soft and his breath short, but in the silence of the night Bernie could hear his words with remarkable clarity. She nodded.

So Michael began to dictate. His words. His final words. She had wondered what it would be. A confession? A last will and testament? She had written several lines before she realised it was a poem and she could see the little rhymes emerge. As she wrote, the words engulfed her senses and her hands shook, the one shaking the clipboard and the other shaking the pen in her hand. In the moments that followed, Bernie deserted her professional composure, not simply from the grief of the moment, but from the power of the words he spoke. Here was a young man in certain demise who still seemed able to cast the most profound message of forgiveness in this, the most challenging of theatres. Here was a young man, a life yet hardly begun whose selfless love bestowed all that is good on those who remain. Here was a young man whose voice now faded to a whisper, yet whose words still cried aloud with passion and love. And as Bernie wrote, she let the emotion take over her mind as a lover succumbs to lust and the tears dripped from her face as her quivering handwriting recorded his words.

She didn't understand everything and some words had to be repeated and others spelled for her, but she did her best, stroking through mistakes and re-writing where necessary. It was about thirty minutes before the work was finished. Bernie thought to ask if he would like her to read the poem back to him in its entirety, but she lost her composure and realised that that would be impossible.

At last Michael asked her to leave. He had never done so before and took great comfort in her presence, but he knew the end was nigh and there was something he wanted to do. Bernie held his hand tightly, hoping that if she didn't let go, things might be alright, her emotional wishes overwhelming her professional knowledge.

“I don't want you to be alone” she said at last.

“I won't be alone,” whispered Michael.

Still holding his hand, Bernie cried, for she had become close to the boy over the few weeks just gone. Indeed, they had passed far too quickly for her, because despite their sadness, she knew her own personal worth was enhanced in his presence. This was not just by the sympathetic and comforting actions she took, but by the force of the young man's presence.

Here was someone whose life seemed hardly to have touched anyone at all. He had had few visitors and of those who came, no one seemed really close to him. Yet, Bernie could now see the true depth of his complex thought processes, his talent for expression and his almost godlike capacity for forgiveness. The more she understood him, the more tormented she was by his imminent departure.

At last she left and Michael settled down to the inevitable, but he retained a sort of determination to die on his own terms. Of course he couldn't influence the outcome, but he knew where he wanted his mind to be when it happened. He sensed a sleepiness come over him and he knew the clock was ticking fast. He felt his organs shutting down. He could hardly move and barely see. His existence, he found already in some form of semi state and he imagined that he would not see the night through, but his thoughts continued.

At last he closed his mind and fixed the image of Anna he kept in his mental vision, the one he could remember so well from that first and only time they were together. She would look at him, her blue eyes seeing him in a way he had not been seen before. Then she would look away, biting her lip as she processed her thoughts, before once more looking him in the eyes. It was almost like she was about to speak, but instead the movie in his mind repeated several times.

As he lay in bed, during those last few moments, his hand twitched unexpectedly as he felt once more the same transcendent touch that he had felt before when she had touched him. The picture slowed and he felt her presence near to him as she looked into his eyes for the very last time, her soft features caressing his soul as it prepared for flight. “You have to go” she said.

Anna's elation was not to last. Michael had always replied so promptly, but the post came and went on the Tuesday, then on the Wednesday and there was no reply. Nothing came that week at all and by Saturday, she couldn't shake off the clouds of doubt that followed her around. She pondered her invitation; so warm, so open with barely the scantest protection of her feelings. It began to prey on her mind. Had she been too bold in her text, too audacious? Were her words, so carefully chosen to
convey
her affection, which was after all the message she wanted to send, simply too blunt; too obvious?

As her thoughts developed, she tried to rationalise. Michael's poems were not
love
poems. NOT messages of love. She scolded herself. They were beautiful, wonderful and exquisite. She danced in her mind at the thought of them, but they were about nature and art, about humour and life. They were not messages to
her
, she decided. She was simply his outlet, perhaps his only outlet for his bounty of creative expression. Perhaps her remoteness, the very fact that he didn't see her every day, that she was just a name on an envelope, was what made it all possible. If they were to meet again, become familiar as she had hoped and imagined they would, perhaps his talent would seal itself away. Perhaps he thought or even knew this. Perhaps she was his liberator, not his chalice. Perhaps he had already moved on to the love poems, but they were aimed elsewhere. Perhaps he had already been reciting them to another on a picnic rug beneath soaring trees in the Irish meadows. Perhaps there was already a sweet
Colleen
engaged in his soft charm, transfixed by the words that had opened her world and lit her fire.
Oh woe, oh woe
she thought.

She reflected back, trying to remember exactly what she had written; checking word after word, first against the Dutch translation, but also in her English language dictionary to catch the subtleties of meaning. In truth, she found little to reprimand herself for, but the gradual ebbing away of her confidence, the disappointment of day after day, her hope rising with every visit of the postman, then quickly falling back, left her steeped in sorrow.

“He's found someone else” said her mother.

She had embraced her. Her mother had struggled to find words, other words that might not have hurt so very much, but she could find none. Her daughter, so joyous, so certain of her future path only weeks earlier became sad and despondent as her confidence and zest for life evaporated. Yet, still, now even against her will, the endless tide of hope rose and fell with the postman's daily visits, pestering her like a chronic ache.

At last she knew that only acceptance would free her from the endless sense of loss, but before she could do that, she knew she would have to confront another possibility. Something worse. Something far, far worse than this sudden apparent abandonment. Lingering in the back of her mind, waiting to prey on her weakness, a fear arose in her. Acceptance opened a new door, a thought, not so dependent on her fragile sense of self-worth for validity, but a practical notion that chilled her emotions. Perhaps Michael did love her? Perhaps everything she felt, he too had felt. Perhaps everything she wanted, he wanted too. Perhaps the laced messages in his texts that spoke to her were as true and honest as she had always thought them to be. Perhaps he was injured! Maybe he was dead!

There is a process by which a thought emerges, first from the subconscious, then to the semi-conscious. In truth this thought had sat in her mind for some time, but engulfed in her own loss of self-esteem it had failed to fully materialise. Now her recovery of mind and acceptance of her loss had opened her eyes to another possibility; the
nature
of that loss.

She did know of the political upheaval in Northern Ireland. She knew there was danger there, terror and misery, but of course Michael had never spoken of it. The so called,
Troubles
had been reported in the Dutch news, but as the 70s had ensued, the incidents had failed to attract much on going attention among the Dutch people. Recently, the subject had fallen some way down the priority list and even off the radar of the main Dutch television news programmes.

She had also never concerned herself with it. She bore no political view and knew of none that Michael held either. There was nothing of that she wanted to know. She had closed her mind to it, left it in the background from where she thought both she and Michael were safe. Neither of them wrote about it. It wasn't an issue. It wasn't there. Now suddenly, it hit her like a boulder from above, crushing her recovery and distorting her acceptance of reality. Could he really be dead? Had he been caught up in some random act of violence, shopping or at school or… Really she had no idea and the thoughts were so unpalatable she could hardly comprehend the notion. She shivered with worried dread at the thought.

But, if he was dead or injured, then why had no one contacted her? Surely his parents would have known of their relationship. The letters had been going back and forward for 18 months,
someone
must have noticed. She knew he was different, insular, quiet and intense. She knew he was shy of his emotions, secretive perhaps, a loner. She liked him, but she knew he didn't have many friends. But surely, if he had been hurt,
someone
must have known of the ardent correspondence that had occupied so much of his time.

So she reverted back to her first thought. In the end, this was more palatable, preferred and she concluded, also more likely. He didn't want her anymore. He had found someone else and despicable as it was, he had shied from his responsibilities and failed to tell her properly. And they had never been lovers. In reality, he had no obligation to her at all. She was charmed by his words, the poignancy, the sensitivity and the wit, but wouldn't
anyone
have been? He was a pen pal, just like any other pen pal might be. Just like the Swedish girl she had exchanged letters with a year or two back. The letters had just stopped. She couldn't remember if it had been herself who had stopped writing or if it was Ingrid or Inge; she couldn't quite remember. Nothing sinister, hardly even impolite, not really, just the way things are. Just the way it goes.

She scolded herself once more at last. She shouldn't have allowed herself to become so involved, so emotional, so connected. Not with someone who she had met only once for a few hours. He was fine. She was sure he was fine. He had found someone else. A girlfriend. A
real
girlfriend. Rather surprising herself, she smiled. She could now see him hand in hand with another. An Irish girl of course, from his own land. One of his own people. That was the way it would be, she reassured herself. He was well, happy too of course.
Oh the perils of teenage angst
.

And so the gradual recovery of the young Anna began. Who has not loved and lost at the age of 16? Who does not know this pain; this arbitrary emotion? Most do live to tell the story! And so, she put her thoughts of Michael behind her. There was school, her family, her friends. Perhaps she had been neglecting them a little. Maybe she should pay those around her, those who lived in the real world, her world, more attention. Michael would always be a part of her life. She was glad she had met him and remembered him fondly, but he was part of the past, no longer the present. She put his poems in a drawer.

And so as time went on, Michael became a memory, mostly warm, sometimes confused, a little vexing, but a memory all the same. The emotions she had for him remained rather exclusive to him, not by design or intent, just by chance. As her teenage years progressed, she sought little of love and did not court its feeling. Although, she had no shortage of offers, she disallowed herself progression once more into this vulnerable state, where her emotions dominated her thoughts.

Instead she became adept at polite refusal. She could spurn advances with a shy flutter of her eyes and a soft, warm rejection that protected the humility of her suitors but did nothing to dampen the disappointment. As time went on, she gained a reputation for being a little distant, not cold exactly, but rather inaccessible. Some of the more confident young men saw her as a challenge, a test of their charm, but the flattering chat of the well-practised lothario appealed little to her. In some respects, she was a coveted prize, but as time went on, increasingly she found herself a little side-lined as the other girls found boyfriends and lovers.

Anna had always been studious, but since the disappearance of Michael, she had rather intensified her effort. It kept her mind busy and fulfilled an emotional need she could not find elsewhere. She graduated high school with very excellent results before winning a place at the University of Utrecht, about 40km from her family home.

There she studied English literature as her major subject. It had always been her passion, even from before she met Michael, though it was he who gave it the greatest boost. She quickly developed an advanced understanding, not just of the language but of Anglo-Saxon culture in general and how it manifested itself in literary styles and genres. The spoken word was also interesting to her and she studied accents and dialects. Quickly she became proficient at separating American Southerners like those characterised in Mark Twain's books from Northern professionals from Boston. She could also easily identify the colourful English accents of Liverpool or Newcastle, the Cockneys with their slang and soft consonants and the Scots with the rolling
R
s familiar in her own language. But for her own speech, she continued to cultivate the vowel sounds of the BBC at the time until her own accent was hardly discernible from that of an affluent inhabitant of Surrey or Hampshire whose speech had developed in private schools and exclusive social spheres.

She read extensively, engrossing herself in texts from Chaucer to Shakespeare but it was the Irish writers like Joyce, Shaw and Wilde who really inspired her. She developed a diversity of intellectual comprehension, supplemented by a sound understanding of German and French structure and vocabulary as well as that of her mother tongue. As university life progressed, she quickly developed her personality and interests and at the same time grew into a very fine looking young woman.

Her straw blond hair faded and darkened with the seasons and curled naturally. She might have looked a little dishevelled in the tent when Michael met her but the quickest stroke of a brush turned her hair instantly into a mop of sparkling locks that men admired and women envied. She wore little makeup and her pale skin dotted with blond freckles kept her face fresh and youthful. The pale blue eyes that had transfixed Michael contrasted with the blackness of her pupils which would dilate and contract betraying at once her feelings to those adept enough to observe. Her particular look cast an emotion in men, not only of physical attraction, but of endearment, charm, a fantasy of times gone by. Anna was not immediately someone men wanted to sleep with, she was someone they wanted to marry and to settle down with. It was easy to imagine Anna baking the apple pie and calling to the happy children playing in the garden sunshine to come in for supper. Indeed that was not just an image others saw in her but one she could easily see in herself and a role she sought to play. Her personality emitted a warm dependability, a permanence, an air of dignity and of quiet solitude that both comforted and charmed those around her.

So, despite her academic aptitude, as her university days drew to a close, Anna found little inspiration in the prospect of work. Instead it was in the much more traditional role of wife to a good man and mother to a hoard of lively children that she saw her future. Her experience with Michael was now many years behind and for some time she had been open to the prospect that one day someone would come along and light her fire once more. However, she was also troubled that no one had. She had been on the occasional date, but charming as some of her suitors were, there were no flutters of excitement on her part. Not since Michael had she had any idea of love as an all-encompassing passion that gripped the senses. In the end she came to dismiss this particular feeling as the stuff of fairy tales, of adolescent innocence. Instead she came to see love more pragmatically, more in terms of comfort and security than passion and desire.

It was in her last year at university that she met Cees Bouwmeester. He was several years older than her and although he worked at the university, was externally employed by a large research organisation while he completed his PhD. He was a good looking young man who certainly had options as far as the selection of a partner was concerned, but he was also wedded to his academic development, his science and the expectation of an interesting and exciting career. That was something he would surely have, for he was talented intellectually, but also possessed an innovative flair and pragmatic reasoning that made him a valued player in any research team.

Although he was inspired by science, he was also meticulously organised and had every aspect of his life carefully planned. A wife and family were very much part of this agenda, so he reserved some time for girlfriends and enjoyed a modest social life. He would accept the occasional invite to meet a friend of a friend or attend a dinner party as he kept an eye open for suitable contenders for the title of
Mrs Cees Bouwmeester.

It was at one such matchmaking event that he met Anna. She offered the homely charm he sought while he offered a very pleasant combination of attention and indifference, that whet her appetite in a way that previous over-enthusiastic suitors had failed to. He cared for her of course, but she enjoyed not being completely the centre of his world and he was adept at compartmentalising his life, such that he reserved time for Anna and showed genuine interest in her. It gradually became apparent that their wants and needs in life were really quite well aligned.

Anna might have been comfortable for the relationship to develop at a rather sedate pace, but Cees, saw it as an action to be ticked off in the organisation of his life. One evening in a small Italian restaurant, just after Anna had graduated, Cees proposed marriage. She had thought quickly as he looked at her over his wine glass, smiling openly with only the faintest betrayal of his apprehension displayed in the lines in his face. It was the most vulnerable she had seen him and she had not expected the proposal, but she knew her answer straight away.