The Healing of Broken Souls

Chapter 5

During the night I suffered one of my recurring dreams about my mother. All my dreams were events from my early childhood, and most of those events had caused me acute embarrassment at the time. Some of the incidents had occured in front of my classmates and they were the ones that hurt the most. This one, however, had taken place on a bus and, because of me, had led to my mother earning a hurtful reputation she didn't deserve.

I must have been six and had to go to the dentist. I was terrified. Mum had been poorly recently but Dad had to work so it fell to her to take me. I was throwing tantrums, refusing to leave the house, and Mum had to virtually drag me to the bus stop. She begged me to behave, saying she was too tired for all this and that the dentist wasn't going to hurt me. When the bus came I clung to the bus stop, tears running down my cheeks. Mum tried to pull me off but she had no strength. A superhuman effort got me aboard and she pushed me into a seat before slumping heavily against me. I looked up at her angrily and saw her eyes half closed as if she was falling asleep. Her weight was crushing me against the window and I thought it was to trap me in my seat.

"Get off me!" I cried loudly and two women in the seat in front turned in annoyance.

"Shurrup Mikey," my mother slurred. "Pleashe shtop making sush a fuss."

"That poor child!" one of the women exclaimed loudly. "His mother is blind drunk!"

The dream ended at that point and, as usual, I woke up in turmoil. But it was what I did afterwards that was shameful.

My Dad usually walked me to school but he was sometimes too busy. On the occasions when Mum took me, we had to set off ten minutes earlier. My Dad walked so briskly I could hardly keep up. In contrast, after the first few minutes, Mum began to walk as if she was wading through treacle. She would have to sit down and recover for a few minutes on every bench we passed. All my schoolfriends would scoot past us, staring at her and giggling. They nicknamed her 'Lazy Lewis' and teased me about her cruelly. Then, as I was being mocked in front of the entire class one day, I remembered what the woman on the bus had said and I blurted it out.

"She's not lazy! She's just blind drunk!"

#

It was five in the morning and  I couldn't get back to sleep so I got up and was surprised to see my father already sitting in the kitchen drinking tea.

"The kettle's just boiled," he said, and he must have noticed my inquiring look. "I don't sleep much these days. I feel better when I'm up and about." 

"That's fine,"  I said curtly. "Dawn and dusk are the most likely times to see a hemipode, so early rising suits me. I'll get everything into the Landy and we'll hit the road right away."

I'd recharged my miniature voice recorder the night before and inserted a new SD card that would give me 30 hours of recording time. My only problem was where to conceal it. I could put it in the pocket of my windcheater but once the sun was up I wouldn't be able to keep that on. It was conspicuous through a thin cotton shirt. In the end, I dug out half a dozen thick corduroy shirts from my winter clothes drawer. They each had baggy button-down breast pockets that hid the recorder nicely. I knew I'd sweat like a racehorse every day, but it was worth it.

It took forty minutes to drive to the spot I'd chosen in the El Saler reserve south of the city. It was one of my regular haunts. The dunes with their clumps of beach grass and myrtle were frequented by sandpipers and curlews, and Andalusian Hemipodes had been recorded in the area. I'd brought an old collapsible hunting blind that I'd picked up years ago at a car boot sale. It made a perfect hide and was big enough for two. We made ourselves comfortable with a couple of folding chairs and settled in with our binoculars for the morning.

We sat in silence until the sun was well above the horizon and the flurry of dawn feeders had subsided. 

"I'm cramping up," my father whispered. "I need to stretch my legs."

As he was speaking, my stomach issued a dramatically loud groan of hunger. 

"Ah, I think that means it's time for breakfast. I've got a camping stove in the Landy. How about bacon sandwiches?" I suggested.

"Sounds good to me," he agreed. "And a mug of tea would be nice."

#

After our breakfast, we returned to the hide. There was always a chance a gull or even a snake might flush a hemipode from its daytime roost. We waited patiently for a couple of hours without seeing so much as a sparrow. I was starting to get bored so I decided it was a good time to encourage my father to start talking. I surreptitiously felt in my top pocket and switched the recorder on. I didn't beat about the bush.

"When I came to your house, you said you wanted to tell me some things about you and my mother. I want you to tell me about what happened on my seventh birthday."

"You know as well as I do what happened that day. Your mother collapsed and died."

"That's your version, but I know what I saw."

"You know what you think you saw, Michael. But, you're a writer. You know all about context. Before we get to your seventh birthday you need to know everything that happened up until that day. I have to start right at the beginning. From the first time I met your mother."

I was annoyed that he wouldn't just tell me what I wanted to know straight off without giving me his life history. I wasn't predisposed to listen to a bullshit sob story, so I vented my anger.

"What's all this 'your mother' about? Why do you never say 'my wife'?"

"Because, Michael, your mother and I were never married."