Mysterious ways

From dead sleep to instant alert in the blackest part of the night. The presence filled the room. Palpable presence that was almost a noise and if it had been a noise would have been a ringing in my ears. It had no substance, no smell nor form, but it suffused me with dread. From the moment of waking I lay still as death, only my eyelids moved and I made no sound other than the deafening beat of my blood. How long it went on I cannot say but when I woke at the usual time the next day everything was normal. The windows and door were closed, my sisters were in their beds and it was clear that no living thing had crept into that room to scare me. In any case our house was so full of squeaks and creaks it was impossible to creep around unheard.

I have never mentioned this to anyone until now, in fact haven't thought about it for many years. Well, it would have sounded so lame - God came into my bedroom, he didn't speak or touch me and I couldn't see him. I just knew he was there.

Thing is, it was like that.

I am hesitating now to tell you the next part of my story, because I don't want you to think I am suggestible. I'm not, quite the opposite, I am a very rational person, persuaded by facts, I look for the logical explanation, think scientifically. Hocus pocus is not my thing.

But having said that, another inexplicable thing happened when I was a teenager. It was after I had the terrible conversation with my sister Teri. It must have been a little while later, so she was over the shock and denial and we were talking about how much we hated him. (By the way she adopted the name Teri and it was clever that she spelt it that way so that when she signed her name she was able to draw a lovely fat circle instead of the dot over the i. I was envious of that for a few years, but when I discovered from Teach yourself graphology that the big ball over the i was a sign of egoism and childishness, I felt vindicated for having stuck with the Greek e that gave my own signature the distinction of being alternative and arty.)

So this day we were talking about how much better our life would be if he was gone. We started by going through all the ways that we could legally get rid of him. There weren't many. We could report him to the police but we were sure that wife beating was not a crime. Maybe if we could get to talk to a psychiatrist it would become obvious that he was dangerously mad and he could be locked up that way.  How did one find a psychiatrist? Social workers didn't get a mention, I doubt we had ever heard of them. My sister wanted to beg our aunties and uncles for help but they already knew what was going on and they hadn't done anything yet, not so much as a sympathetic look in our direction.

We had to take matters into our own hands so we made a voodoo doll. It was brown plasticine and laid in a shoe box. When the day came we pulled it out from under the bunk bed and took it with the one dressmaker's pin into my brother's tiny room. We debated who should execute the stabbing and agreed we would hold the pin together. We would will him to have a heart attack and drop down dead, although privately I would have been satisfied with a cardiac arrest sufficient to leave him chastened and reformed, somewhat of an invalid whom I could love. Whatever.

When it came to it we both lost our nerve and jabbed the pin into the plasticine leg. The doll went back under the bed. It had been cathartic but we knew it couldn't really work, we hadn't even said the proper words. A few days later after school mum said be quiet and behave the doctor is upstairs. A first - what was going on? "Your father's been brought home from work. He had an accident and injured his leg. The doctor is examining him now. They've put him on Michael's bed so keep away from your brother's room."

Around this time we became obsessed with contacting the dead. On the nights mum worked at the Red Lion my father would be sure to spend the evening also in the bar keeping his jealous vigil. We were left to our own devices and various friends would turn up to drink coffee and smoke, listen to music, talk. For a few months it would be that as soon as there were more than three or four of us out would come the 26 squares of paper for letters, nine for numbers and the two extra for Yes and No. Fingers on the base of the stem, after a few false starts of nervous giggles and rampant cheating, the glass would start to move across the table, slowly at first then swiping fast from one side to the other, spelling out strange collections of letters that sometimes made words. 

One evening we called up the spirits, starting with our usual "Is there anybody there?" The glass picked up speed quickly that night. The spirit was called Frederik Willis and he had been a pilot during the war. He was angry and didn't want us to leave. Someone asked what will happen if we do and Frederik propelled the glass angrily to spell D-E-A-   a girl screamed and we released our fingers. The light came on, we were scared. Was Frederik a German, a Nazi? Why was he so angry? We didn't hear the car pull up outside and when my parents came through the door it was too late to gather up the papers. Joss sticks were still burning.

They had warned us about the seances before and we were expecting serious punishment. Instead my father said if we were so clever with our ouijie stuff we could contact his grandmother and tell him what she had to say. Well for starters we had never even heard of his grandmother and she must have been long gone. It's hazy now but we did contact someone called Florence and she gave us a message for my dad. When we told him the colour drained from him and he begged us to stop. 

As I say I don't believe in all that stuff. I prefer facts, I am a practical person. But regarding my father something happened about a decade later that was spooky, so I am just including it here for interest and nothing more.

He had finally left my mother when I was about 21 and at 23 I was living with my boyfriend, rarely bumping into my father although he lived in the same town. The phone rang, "Hello?" .."Eve?"  He had never once rung me before. In that infinitessimal moment I knew he was going to have cancer and he would die. My insides were heavy and sinking.

"I haven't been well. I'm going into hospital. It's a lump. Having tests. Thought you should know."

Inside a week he was dead and when he came back to visit me it was always to wake me up in the dark with that urgent whisper in my ear, "Eve!"

My belief in God waned over the years and I stopped feeling religious, even in church, at funerals, singing carols. In many ways I mourn the loss of religious feeling and the gap it left remains. Our children are atheists. They also respect science, which is good.

The last part of my story happened a few years ago in Rome where two of us - he a Catholic by birth - attended the weekly audience with the pontiff. I will admit to being a little curious as to whether the presence of his holiness would stir up the old religiousity, but even the fervent chanting of Il Papa, Il Papa, though moving, did nothing to give me the sense of God that I once had. 

Pope John Paul II came on to the stage. The cardinals told us which psalm he had been studying that week and that he had prayed for family unity. He prayed for all of us. Through the hundreds of faithful, legions of sightseers, mawkers and hawkers, past the armed Swiss guards in their archaic costume and the magenta robes of the cardinals, there was only one resting place for the eyes. Goodness was radiating from the pope, cleansing us sinners while he saw all of us and forgave, he was beatific. 

One image from the disposable camera survived, out of all the shots we took in the Vatican. It revealed everything in shadow, though we snapped it in strong light, with just the distant figure of John Paul, tiny, with a large orb of golden light shining round his head. 

I'm no photographer, but there is sure to be a scientific explanation for that photo. Still, it makes you think though doesn't it?