Lonie18

Lonie felt the familiar sense of claustrophobia. Brother Connelly was close enough to catch him, he thought, if he fainted in a girly swoon. Brother Jerome opened the door. They stepped over the threshold and were locked in a dimly lit tunnel-like room with a crucifix above the entry door and another above the door that led directly into the ward areas, with the feel of a decompression chamber. A mural of the Blessed Virgin hung on the wall, her eyes looking sideways to heaven, or up at the white tiles of the false roof, and her bare foot pressed firmly down on a black snake. A reminder Lonie thought, not to play with snakes. Below her were three plastic red chairs pressed against the wall. There was also a number of metallic lockers, all of them numbered, standing open with keys in the locks.

‘This is Brother Jerome.’ Brother Connelly made the introduction. His fellow cleric nodded at Lonie. He too was built for trouble, smaller but broader than Brother Connelly. His black eyebrows met in the middle over a thick bulbous nose, studded with the porous skin and kind of black heads usually associated with a much younger man. He was quick to make eye contact, weighing Lonie up, his light green eyes dropping, deciding he wasn’t much of a threat and turning, jingling the keys to open the door, which would lead them directly into the ward.

‘Hallo, I’m Peter Lonnigan.’ Lonie stuck his hand out for Brother Jerome to shake.

The door stayed locked. The keys slipped from his hand, hanging from the chain around his belt and tethering him to the door. His hand slapped against Lonie’s, but his eyes darted across to Brother Connelly for guidance.

Brother Connelly looked up at the crucifix above the door. He covered his mouth as he yawned. ‘A vow of silence has been imposed on Brother Jerome.’

‘What for?’asked Lonie.

‘Well he’s young and rather impetuous.’

Brother Jerome untangled himself from his keys and rather hot-headily unlocked the door and ushered them into the ward proper.

‘Ah'm rather impetuous myself.’ Lonie coughed, reaching for his fags in his pocket. The bricks were all whitewashed, but had the cavern smell of ancient damp that despite the heat from the radiators stuck to the back of his throat. They paused by a statue of St Joseph set into an alcove in the wall. Well, at least Lonie thought it was St Joseph carrying Jesus on his back; either that or it was an old guy with a monkey crawling up his neck. Brother Jerome had obviously modelled himself on St Joseph. He wore the same Jesus’ sandals, as the statue, but with the thick white football socks Lonie had last seen a Celtic player, or a kid of about twelve wearing as he kicked a ball about the back- court.

‘He looked through a window to what he took to be a kitchen area to his right. There was a thin tin foil ashtray on each table, with a pokey window and closed corrugated metal shutters at the serving hatch. The smell and taste of boiled cabbage seemed to call to him from the past.

Lonie followed the clerics along the corridor. ‘This is the bottom Dorm,’ Brother Connelly, waved his hand in the general direction of the rooms on the right and left. ‘Patients here show little sign of mental illness and only low levels of demonic activity.’ He spoke with a positive tone and there was candour in his eyes that helped him to believe that what he was saying was true. ‘Most of these patients are ready to be moved on to another part of the hospital. And God willing they will find Christ and get better.’

Each cell had a window and Lonie could see the blue-black iron of the frames of the bedsteads, with white covers tucked in hospital corner tight. Behind each bed was a double cupboard, the height of the walls, for storing clothes. Narrow slit windows with a single bar in the centre let in a sliver of natural light. Lonie took a deep breath. He had the impression of vast chilly fields planted with potatoes and winter turnip, a line of pine trees on the ridge and a line of children with burlap sacks shivering and moving slowly forward. A single light bulb pressed up close to the ceiling and covered in a cage of metal bars allowed those lying in the beds below to lie in bed to read, or smoke, or sit on the chair at the thin plank of a single table bolted to the floor and wall. The doors were left open and the patients looked over at Lonie with the same interest as he looked at them.

‘Why are there more men than women patients here?’ Lonie had counted five guys and only one female. He heard a bell ringing in another part of the ward.

Brother Connelly and Jerome glanced at each other. Lonie felt Brother Connelly grabbing at his wrist. ‘You wait here,’ he said, but he was distracted. Brother Jerome fumbled the keys into the lock and Lonie watched them lock the door behind him, sprint along the corridor to the door, open and shut it behind them and disappear from view.

‘You got a smoke?’ A patient, tall, lean, with a stooping walk, and wearing pyjamas wandered out of his room from the doorway nearest him, carrying a book.

‘Sure.’ Lonie searched his pockets and pulled out his packets of fags. He put one in his mouth and gave the patient one.

‘You got a light?’ The patient put the fag in his mouth, his grey eyes studying Lonie. He took a fag out of his mouth to explain. ‘We’re not allowed matches or lighters. I see a devil riding on your shoulder, what are you in for?’

Lonie searched his coat pocket for matches and glanced at his right shoulder, but saw no devil, but the devil of good Crombie cloth. The patient had his fag stuck back in his mouth to receive a light.

‘No, other one.’ A pyjama hand reached out and patted Lonie on the left shoulder. 'The devil always sits on the left.'

Lonnie nodded, lit his fag, and looked through the slit window to the other wards to see where the Brothers were. ‘What you readin’?’ He pointed at the book.

The patient held up the book for him to see. His head dropped as he read sideways the title: The Imitation of Christ.

‘What’s it like? Lonie asked.

Another older patient had wandered out of his room wearing a housecoat. His gait had a shambling, wandering quality as if his legs weren’t that good. His blue eyes flickered away from Lonie. ‘I’ve read it.’ He addressed him in a confidential tone, as if he knew him well. ‘It’s the usual pish. But not bad.’ He tapped Lonie on the side of his arm and mimicked putting a cigarette up to his mouth. ‘You got a spare fag?’

Lonie sighed and wondered if anybody else would emerge from their rooms. He listened as the two patients debated the merits of The Imitation of Christ and the consensus seemed to be that the missals they were expected to read were at least a change from the bible. The older patient held his hand up and looking at Lonie and with his hand in declaimed ‘To you we sigh, groaning and weeping in this vale of tears… so what are you in for, what grievous crime against society or abject sin against God have you committed?’

‘I think he’s got the look of a child molester about him,’ said the younger patient with some glee.

‘Hi,’ said Lonie, pulling the fag he’d given out of his mouth and stamping it into the stone floor. ‘I’m a reporter.’

‘Close.’ The older man started laughing, his voice was bigger than his thin body, rising up, finding spaces in the rafters above the roof tiles to soar, and deepening the sense of unreality.

Lonie despite his apparent indifference closely watched the two patients quickly slope off to their cell. He was glad to see Brother Connelly and Jerome hurrying in the opposite direction from which they’d gone. This time, however, Brother Connelly had the set of keys on the chain loop and he didn’t seem to have any of the jerkiness of Brother Jerome opening and locking doors.

‘I’m sorry to keep you waiting, bit of an emergency.’ Brother Connelly bit his lip to stop from smiling. His nose lifted and his forehead grew crags as he sniffed the air, whether for fag smoke, or sulphur, Lonie wasn’t completely sure. ‘No doubt you’ve met some of the patients in the bottom Dorm.’ He looked directly across to the room where the younger man in striped pyjamas was sitting at a desk making assiduous notes about the book he was reading. ‘If you’ll follow me I’ll take you through the middle Dorm to meet Father Campbell.’

The middle Dorm, apart from the kitchen area, seemed identical to the bottom Dorm. But as Lonie looked about he felt safer with the two big Brothers standing close to him. ‘What wis it wae the bells and the big emergency?’

‘Oh, nothing much. We were just testing response times.’ Brother Connelly sounded sincere, but he’d stopped half way down the corridor and Brother Jerome walked straight into him.

‘Ou,’ said Brother Jerome.

Lonnie held up his finger and pointed at Brother Jerome, but he addressed Brother Connelly. ‘You hear that. He spoke. Better get your carpet slipper out and give him a whack, or turn your clothes outside in, or sit on a spike, or do whatever you guys do for pleasure.’

‘Very flippant.’ Brother Connelly, Prefect of Discipline drew himself up to his full height. ‘Let’s talk about chastisement.’

Lonie shook his head. ‘Let’s not. Let’s talk about bullshit. Let’s talk about you and your little friend scurrying away from me, leaving me alone with some nutters, when a bell rings. Let’s talk about Bishop Robbins giving me carte blanche to report back to him what I see. Let’s talk about this place closing and your sort disappearing into the Dark Ages with the ducking stool where it belongs.’ Lonie tried to stop his legs from shaking, but he kept his eyes firmly on the more senior of the Brothers.

‘Don’t be infantile.’ Brother Connelly walked ahead of him, with Brother Jerome behind Lonie. The Prefect of Discipline separated the keys that were bunched and reached for the right one. He laid his hand on the knob of the door that led into the Dorm at the heart of the building and secure unit. But he stopped, appeared unable or unwilling to move and a sense of remonstrance was in his eyes. ‘You mention the Dark Ages and the ducking stool in the same breath. I have studied these matters. While it is true, God help us, many innocents were killed. If you look closely at the testimonies that were taken, as I have, then you will find firm evidence that ritual black magic was performed. There was a working knowledge in the accounts of chants and sorcery. Figurines and ritualistic knives were found and even those who couldn’t read or write, knew how to mark out a spell and what materials were needed. It was unfortunate about the methods used.’ His voice broke off and he turned the key in the lock.

‘I don’t think it’s unfortunate.’ Lonie followed Brother Connelly into the upper third Dorm. ‘I think it’s criminal. And Ah’m all for bringing the duckin’ stool back and using it on those that perpetrated those crimes.’

The third Dorm had more light coming in from the windows, the furniture was modern and electric light was the kind of no nonsense strip lighting that chased away all the shadows. Lonie found he could breathe and it was like jumping from the Dark Ages to the twentieth-century. At least he did before he heard the two Brother’s dropping to their knees behind him.

Brother Jerome seemed to have found his voice. He intoned with Brother Connelly: ‘May the dreams and phantasms of night and day recede. Keep the enemy at bay, lest our bodies and minds become polluted. Amen.’ They both rose shakily to their feet.