He felt a holiday sense of dread. He should be enjoying this moment, instead he felt disloyal. He had formed mental associations inside the hospital that would be considered improper in the outside world.

No one outside the hospital where he now stood would admit to such an appalling lack of intimacy. Nor would they try to overcome it in that same genial way. I have been cured by the Mayo men. But the minute he stepped through the gates he was suddenly afflicted with his need of Catherine in a terrible new way. For he had gone through this alone. She had not been with him. It was his first independent act in years, and he had an overpowering wish to tell Catherine about all that had impressed him.

Already, as he walked through Castlebar, he was preparing for his encounter with her. He felt strange on the streets. He had been happy with the hospital order of sleeping, waking, strolling, sitting, without the burden of guilt. Now, as he went down the road, another self stepped out and accompanied him. Then another. And another. The old crew, acrimonious, scolding, shouting, were back. By the time he reached the bus, they had all returned. He had a gathering of many selves, each wrapped up in their own condition and each demanding his attention by their gesticulations, their silence, their bitter talk, and their dreadful insecurity.

Each of these would be with him on the bus to Ballina, on the bus to Belmullet. They would be about the house when he got there. They would arrive ahead of him wherever he went. They would be with him – these ghosts – for the rest of his life, until, by some act of faith, he could incorporate them into himself. He tried to put them by. And to keep self-pity at bay. But that was to induce a worse sentiment – nothingness – in its place.

In a pub he sat down. He had entered it with habitual familiarity only to find that here his ghosts grew abusive and hurried. Each drinker there betrayed the same quiet mindless absorption that Jack knew of old, but now it had lost its centre. The smell of the alcohol threw him off-balance. Each face was brightly discoloured and dry. Jack nodded to them as he ordered his coffee. When someone ordered a whiskey his senses were filled with furious memories. He could feel the alcohol as it flowed down the tubes and pipes to the drinker’s stomach.

He turned his back and swallowed a Librium. God, I’ve shamed myself. He asked the time. He ordered another cup of coffee. Turned, swallowed another Librium. By the time the Ballina bus arrived, he was beginning to feel that it was possible. That he would have the strength to hide away from everyone, even her.

8. The Cockatiel

8

The Cockatiel