Cassandra Voices

Tag: Emer Mullen Cassandra Voices

  • Fiction: Change

    Neil went to tea break for the gossip, to find out what was going on, although he screened out the small talk about football and politics. The canteen overlooked the carpark with the smoking shed at the other end – another good source of information. It was raining the day he heard a replacement boss was coming at the end of the month. She was something new, a bit of an innovator. The rain continued as the men discussed this new woman. Some were dismissive of anyone making a difference. Neil was silent. Sometimes change was a good thing, there was certainly no point in avoiding it. He had joined the organisation five years ago after college and he still daydreamed about the future. Nothing would stop him, he smiled slightly. He had his plans and maybe this new woman would help him.

    By three thirty the rain had stopped, but the roads were flooded, pooling around the drains in large puddles. It was dark when Neil got on his bike to cycle home and, on the way, he was soaked through by unforgiving passing cars. His mother was in the kitchen boiling potatoes the windows running with condensation.

    ‘I have a lamb chop for your tea,’ she said accusingly.

    Neil took off his backpack and hung up his wet jacket in the hallway.

    ‘How’s the captain of industry?’ his father asked amiably as he passed.

    One day Neil thought, they’ll all see. He ate his dinner without comment reading The Evening Herald unenthusiastically and then went to his room. It was his belief that things would change, his life would be transformed. He was certain of it.

    The office was a large room on the third floor. Desks were mainly clustered around the windows with managers discreetly hidden behind wooden framed screens. They were the middle managers; the senior managers had their own offices filled with books and manuals of all kinds. One of them kept a full set of golf clubs leaning against a cupboard under the window while a framed picture of Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca hung on the wall. Neil wasn’t even a middle manager; he was an executive assistant which meant he was a nobody. In the afternoons after lunch he let his thoughts wander to his amalgamation project. Imagine consolidating all the programmes and centralising the funding. Think of the savings! He’d done the research, and it was possible. Why had no one thought of it before? It came up at his last annual appraisal. They were in the process of discussing his Key Core Deliverables when he took out his folder with all his ideas and the costings to back them up.

    ‘That would be a matter for Corporate Affairs,’ his supervisor said primly.

    Neil shouldn’t have expected more from Amanda. She’d been in the job so long she could remember when they’d worked things out on their fingers.

    Down in the pub he complained to his mate Kevin.

    ‘No one can see the bigger picture,’ Neil said taking a gulp of his pint. ‘They’re all so busy squirrelling away at their own jobs no one puts their heads above the parapet.

    ‘Good way to get it shot off,’ Kevin said glumly.

    ‘What do you mean?’

    ‘Well if nobody does anything then nobody makes a mistake.’

    Neil had to admit to himself that Kevin was right. He was having doubts about spending much more time in the place anyway. He’d already done two competitions for promotion without success largely because Amanda had commented that he needed to improve. She said he needed more training to bring him up to speed on the organisation’s mission and objectives. It was a polite way of saying he didn’t know his job, but the idea of training wasn’t a bad one and he toyed with it over his ham and cheese sandwich in the canteen. He thought about the training courses he’d done so far in management skills and accountancy. He really needed to get a qualification like a Masters of Business Administration. Meanwhile the replacement manager was due to arrive on Monday. Rumours spread wildly, on the one hand describing her as a ruthless manipulator to a listening ear on the other. Neil decided to wait and see.

    Over the weekend he googled admissions criteria for an MBA. None of the colleges were taking applications until the spring, still it was something to aim for. He took out his C.V. It wasn’t impressive. For the last five years he had been working for Amanda in the same job. It didn’t look good, and HR had blocked his application for a transfer because of his poor performance at his appraisals. On Monday Kevin emailed him:

    ‘Just met the new boss. Her name is Stella Reynolds, and she has the corner office across the hallway from the D.G.’

    So she was a highflyer, well that could be a good thing.

    Usually Neil didn’t discuss work with his parents. Occasionally his mother asked him if he was happy at the office. It wasn’t a question he asked himself. The job wasn’t about happiness. We’re not here to enjoy ourselves Amanda was fond of saying. He had good days when he got something done and he felt satisfied for a little while. A lot of the time though the days were long and tedious. He was twenty-six and Neil didn’t consider himself young anymore. At this stage he should be getting on with his career, things should be happening! Instead he woke each morning with a heavy feeling of apprehension about the day ahead. He looked at Kevin’s email again and wondered if he was fooling himself thinking there was anything significant in her arrival. At tea break he skipped the canteen and went down to the smoking shed. Kevin was there smoking and drinking a can of Red Bull.

    ‘Everything OK?’ Neil asked cautiously.

    ‘I’ve had enough,’ Kevin blurted out. ‘I’m going to my brother in New Zealand. He says he can get me a job.’

    ‘When are you going?’

    ‘Next month.’

    So Kevin had found an escape route. Neil was envious, but also felt a surge of energy, now he really had to do something. When he got back to his desk there was a notification about a presentation on Financial Efficiency in the board room on Friday at three. Stella Reynolds was the lead speaker. So this was Neil’s opportunity to meet her. He accessed the slides for the talk and the topics covered coincided with the work he had done on amalgamation. This was it; this was his chance. Kevin once asked him if he believed in God. Neil was so surprised that for a few minutes he didn’t say anything. Then as if it was obvious he said:

    ‘No I believe in myself.’

    ‘But what if you’re not enough,’ Kevin said. ‘What if you try and try and it’s still not enough.’

    Was that why he was going to New Zealand? Was Kevin looking for God on the other side of the world? It wasn’t true that Neil just believed in himself, he also knew that luck had a large part to play in it. Even the best plan could come asunder if you were unlucky. He thought about Stella Reynolds and looked up her staff details on the HR link. She wore glasses and peered anxiously towards the camera. It wasn’t a good picture. She was probably nervous about having her photo taken. Then he looked at his own staff details. The photo wasn’t too bad, but he was wearing that striped shirt that always made him look like a wide boy. On Friday he would look his best and his most confident. If this plan didn’t work, it wouldn’t be because he didn’t make the effort.

    On Friday morning he left for the house early and noticed that the day was fine and dry. The trees were still bare and wintry, but there was a brightness in the sky that suggested spring. At his desk he took out his folder and went through his spreadsheets again. It wasn’t perfect, but he was sure some of his ideas would work. Then he looked up and saw Amanda was standing beside his desk.

    ‘Come with me,’ she said tersely.

    He followed her to a large cupboard hidden by a row of filing cabinets at the bottom of the room. She opened the cupboard to reveal a mess of documents lying higgeldy piggeldy on the shelves.

    ‘These have to be ordered by subject and date then filed away.’

    ‘But this will take days.’

    ‘Have you anything else on hand?’

    ‘I wanted to go to the presentation.’

    ‘This takes precedence.’

    Neil reminded himself that there was nothing to be gained by getting angry and set to work. He tried to work quickly, but the task was more complicated than he realised. By Friday evening he reckoned he was about halfway through. He took a break around four and went down to the smoking shed. Kevin looked up and asked the obvious question:

    ‘Where were you?’

    ‘Don’t ask.’

    ‘Let me guess, Amanda. Why not bring your stuff up to Stella Reynolds anyway? You’ve got nothing to lose.

    The two young men sat in silence for a few moments, smoke hung in the air and the light faded gradually as the day ended. They talked about New Zealand and staying in touch. There was a note of sadness in their conversation. Neil finished the filing job although it was difficult to tell if Amanda was happy with it. She was nowhere in sight when he left the room and climbed the stairs to the fifth floor. He walked slowly to the corner office, the door was open, he went through. Stella Reynolds smiled at him and said:

    ‘What can I do for you?’

    ‘I’ve got something to show you,’ Neil said.

     

  • Visiting

    In February Anne faced the days with her usual shaky stoicism. She opened the curtains to cold stunted mornings glimmering through the window and at the bottom of the park the pathetic trees. At lunchtime Ryan’s was full of the office crowd so she went at three when she only had a couple of old timers and the occasional dog for company. The barmen knew her and brought a large one to the table when she had settled herself, then she felt OK and had another one. Anne thought about the letter in its pink envelope. She hadn’t opened it immediately but left it on the windowsill pretending not to notice it. When she put her coat on, she picked it up and turned it over to see if there was a return address, nothing. Finally, she slid a butter knife under the gummed flap and tore it open. At first it seemed like the letter was written in a foreign language, she couldn’t understand any of it. She looked again at the name and address on the envelope.

    It was getting on for five thirty when Anne left Ryan’s and crossed the road to Dunnes. She wandered through the shelves of fruit and vegetables, the brightly coloured packets of rice and pasta, put a net of oranges in her basket and a sliced pan. Just a sandwich this evening, cheese or a bit of ham maybe biscuits or a fruit cake? Well no. At the checkout a woman was emptying a full trolley, must have a few to feed at home Anne thought. The woman unloaded several packets of mince and a red pepper. This was going to take a while. There were a few people waiting now, the woman was nearly at the bottom only a couple of bottles of Fanta and a bottle of Coke to go. Anne put her items on the conveyor belt. The boy at the checkout looked at her briefly as he put the bottle of Smirnoff through. Tomorrow she’d go to Tesco’s.

    The letter was waiting for her when she got home. She smoothed out the page and put on her reading glasses. After she read through it quickly, she sat back. There could be a mistake there must be plenty of Anne Wilsons. How could her mother be alive after all these years with no word It was forty years since that night when Anne was nine years old, the night her mother disappeared. The bottle was within reach, and she poured herself a stiff one. Forty years is a long time still Anne could remember it clearly. It was a Friday night, and her birthday was next day. Ten years old, she would be a big girl and allowed to stay up late. Every detail of that night stood out sharply in her mind, but there was no warning that her mother wouldn’t be there next day. Her father said nothing and said nothing until the day he died. From then on was sad, the brightness was gone. It was worse than if her mother had died then Anne and Dad could have gone to the grave and put flowers on it and cried.

    Anne ordered the taxi for six. It was raining and traffic was slow. The taxi driver was listening to the evening news on the radio. Anne sat very still in the back seat waiting for the lights to change as the windscreen wipers swept back and forth making a squeaking noise on the windscreen. The news had given way to ads: insurance, face cream, cold remedies. Anne listened and looked at the lights smudged against the rain spattered glass. The lights turned to green, the taxi inched forward and then sped on unimpeded. It was moving steadily now making its way through gleaming wet streets. She was rarely in this part of town, the buildings seemed darker, the streets emptier. It stopped raining as the taxi drew up to the hospital entrance. She climbed the steep steps and pushed open the gigantic door. Anne’s memories of her mother were all bound up with her disappearance. No child can accept abandonment, there had to be a reason. All through her teens she was haunted by a phantom mother, a mother that didn’t leave. At eighteen she had her first drink. It was in the Palace Bar sitting on high stools with Paul a guy from her class in college. Anne raised her glass of orange and vodka to her mouth and the pain she wasn’t even aware of vanished. A comfortable numbness gathered around her neck and shoulders. In that instant she knew she needed it and that she wanted more.

    The hospital was vast and gloomy, there was no sign of her. How would Anne even recognise her? She went to the nurse’s station, but there was no one there. Wandering aimlessly, she eventually noticed some movement from one of the beds, a tiny woman was waving frantically at her.

    ‘Come here, come here,’ she gasped.

    Was this her mother? Maybe she had expected a monster not a little bundle with snowy hair and a soft pink bed jacket.

    ‘It’s you I knew you as soon as I saw you. Do you hate me? Please don’t hate                    me I couldn’t bear it’

    Anne sat down.

    ‘What should I call you?’

    ‘Oh, call me Margaret,’ her face dimpled into a girlish smile.

    ‘Why are you here? Are you ill?’ Anne asked carefully.

    Margaret’s smile faded she plucked distractedly at her bed jacket and blew her nose.

    ‘Yes’, she said in a small voice. ‘I’ve got cancer’.

    Anne caught sight of herself in the window her hair grey and unkempt, her skin greyer still. She didn’t feel able to offer sympathy. It was forty years too late, but still she had the decency to pretend. She was well practised at passing herself off as a decent human being. She turned to her mother.

    ‘I’m so sorry is there anything you need?’

    Her mother’s blue eyes were closing, she tried to say something, but she was overcome with sleep. Anne stood up and bent over the sleeping woman pulling the blankets around her then left the way she had come.

    After she graduated Anne and Paul got married and bought a house. They tried to be like everyone else. They had a normal mortgage and a normal car. They got up in the mornings like everyone else and went to work, but that was where it ended. At home with the T.V. turned up loud so the neighbours couldn’t hear they argued heatedly and without inhibition. Alcohol no longer sedated Anne’s anger but seemed to fuel it. There was guilt, shame and above all the need to escape. Still, they went to the pub, on her third double vodka Anne convinced herself this was a good life, the only life she deserved and then the drinks would work their magic once again. One night Paul collapsed and was brought to the cardiac care unit in James’ St Hospital. A year later he didn’t get that far. The house was empty without him. The silent kitchen reminded her of the angry words that had passed between them. She hadn’t told him she loved him for a long time. In work it was harder to hide that things weren’t the way they should be so when she told her boss she was planning early retirement he didn’t discourage her.

    She was alarmed to see her mother wasn’t there when she visited again. Then behind her a voice called:

    ‘Yoo hoo it’s me I’m not dead yet.’

    Margaret grinned impishly at her from the confines of a wheelchair.

    ‘Will you get into the bed for me,’ the nurse cajoled.

    When she was settled Margaret turned to Anne and said:

    ‘Oh, good now we can have a nice chat.’

    Anne stiffened.

    ‘I think you need to tell me where you’ve been all these years.’

    ‘I met a man who was kind to me,’ Margaret said seriously. And I thought love was the most important thing in the world.’

    ‘It is,’ Anne surprised herself by saying. ‘But why didn’t you take me with you?’

    The older woman started to cry. She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.

    ‘You have no idea how many times I asked myself that and then time passed so quickly, and I thought it was too late.’

    ‘You don’t think it’s too late now?’, Anne asked bitterly.

    ‘Was it hard for you?’, Margaret ventured.

    ‘You could say that.’

    Anne leaned back in her chair. Then from somewhere deep in her chest she started to laugh. At first Margaret looked shocked and then soon she was chuckling too. Before long the two women were bent over with laughter. It resounded around the ward, down the corridor and out into the star-studded night.

    February gave way to March and at the beginning of April when the light is beginning to brighten in the sky Margaret slipped away in her sleep like a child exhausted by play. It was a small gathering at the funeral just one or two nurses from the hospital and some other people Anne didn’t know including a tall man with curly hair wearing a long grey overcoat. She found herself leaving the crematorium with him.

    ‘Did you know her well’, he asked.

    ‘No, I really only got to know her recently, but you could say we go back a long way.’

    ‘I’m her son David,’ he said smiling a familiar youthful smile.

    Next morning when Anne opened the curtains pale lemon sunshine washed the famished lawn. Eggshell blue sky, fresh and limitless roofed the world. Spring had arrived in person and to Anne this time it seemed different. There was nothing special about the daffodils clustered under the trees even the birds’ carefree song had been sung a thousand times before, but there was a detail and Anne had noticed first thing. When she opened her eyes this morning she hadn’t wanted to escape.

    Feature Image: Irina Iriser

     

     

     

  • Open

    The boy was wretched. He sat on the bed in shorts and T-shirt his hair a tangled mess. I noticed they had put him in a single room, the last on the corridor beside the fire escape. I examined his chart, apart from the nurse’s hourly checks no one had spoken to him since he had been admitted three days ago. I introduced myself.

    ‘I’m Dr Peter Philips your doctor.’

    The boy looked at me. He had piercing blue eyes and an odd way of tilting his head as if he was asking a question. There was no hostility, but it was obvious he was terrified.

    ‘Do you hear voices?’, I asked.

    He looked puzzled.

    ‘I mean do you hear voices other than your own in your head?’

    He still didn’t seem to understand what I was asking. I tried something else.

    ‘Your mother said you threw yourself from an upstairs window. Were you trying to kill yourself?’

    ‘No, I just wasn’t ready.’

    I withdrew from this cryptic comment and closed the interview.

    Later that day I looked through his case notes. He was involuntarily admitted, his mother had brought him in. The duty registrar had done the paperwork noting that the boy was unwashed, and he rambled on about a bird, a pet bird maybe? He was delusional with suicidal tendencies. Normally I would move on to treatment, but something about the boy bothered me. He obviously didn’t suffer from auditory hallucinations and there was something odd about his suicide attempt. I looked at the other entries on his file. He had never been in trouble with the Guards not even a scrap on the street. His mother had been interviewed separately. She was unwilling to say too much and appeared to be overwhelmed by what was going on. She did say her son had become obsessed by birds of prey. I didn’t draw any conclusions from this I was satisfied he was delusional.

    Nightfall, a nurse came into the room with a tray of medication. The boy took the pills and turned to the wall.

    ‘Alright Pat?’

    ‘Yeah’, he muttered.

    The night was windy, and a twig tapped on the window, a message tap, tap, tap. A message from the trees whipped by the wind. The boy listened curiously; he tapped his knee in time. Then there was a lull in the wind and the tapping stopped. In the morning there was porridge for breakfast. The dining room was full. Pat looked around at the other patients most of them were concentrating on eating. After breakfast there wasn’t very much to do, the day gaped like a long empty corridor.

    We had a team meeting the morning after I interviewed the boy. I set out the psychopharmaceutical position to murmurs of assent. There was a girl at the conference table. She introduced herself as the new occupational therapist on the ward.

    ‘His mother said he’s quite good at drawing. Could we provide him with paper and pens and see what he comes up with?’

    I was sceptical at first, the fact that he was suicidal created all sorts of problems, but then so far, my attempts to interview him had proved unproductive so I gave her the OK on the paper and pens.

    The day was slipping past, it was already afternoon, the lunch things cleared away. A smell of boiled potatoes hung limply in the air. Sunlight streaked the floor tyles and Pat let it land on his T-shirt and his legs. He felt restless as if something was boiling away inside him. He could see the sky through the high windows and a bird only a speck above the city. For a moment he felt pure joy then behind him a nurse said:

    ‘Time for you medication Pat.’

    It was almost time for the night shift to come on duty when she came through the door. She was wearing baggy black pants and she carried a bag. The doctor he had seen the first night was with her and they stood talking at the other end of the ward. Pat looked at her carefully. Her fine red hair was clipped back in a ponytail. Then she laughed a small nervous laugh, barely parting her lips. She put her hand on the man’s shoulder and said something Pat couldn’t hear. The man pointed towards Pat, and she came over to him. When she reached him, she held out her hand:

    ‘My name’s Anna, I’m the ward occupational therapist. I’m told you’re interested in birds.’

    Pat mumbled something. She smelled sweet like honeysuckle and her eyes were the colour of morning sky. He wanted to tell her everything, the peace, the freedom, to be up there looking down. Instead, she opened her bag and took out paper and pens. She was saying something like draw what you see, put down what you feel. He hardly heard her; he was so happy.

    At first it was a tremor, a flash of light a sweeping glance across the landscape. He was fifteen when it first came over him crouched at his window ready to fly. That time it only lasted minutes, but he was already caught willing it to happen again. In his sleep he dreamt of a huge black bird that soared above the fields. He became impatient and tried jumping from the windowsill, that landed him in hospital with a broken shoulder and a fractured knee. Remembering the first time, he imagined the bird and the wind beneath him, now he could see with the bird’s eyes. He sat still in his room focusing on the breath, waiting, waiting for the flash of light. Without knowing how he knew he was ready; he opened the window, and everything was there. With raised arms, the wind rushed past his face, and he could hear rustling feathers. Nothing could stop him, his feet lifted off the sill and effortlessly he cleared the treetops, the shifting breeze carried him into the clear blue sky. He wheeled around and headed back home gracefully landing again where he had left.

    The drawings were spread out on my desk. Some were remarkable pictures of birds. Others were indecipherable. I picked one up.

    ‘What’s this supposed to be?’

    ‘Well,’ Anna said tentatively. ‘At first I thought it was some kind of pattern and then I came across drone footage, and I realised it was a drawing from the air.’

    ‘So, he can imagine what things look like from the air?’

    ‘Yes, it’s amazing, isn’t it?’

    ‘But you’re not suggesting he can actually fly?’

    Anna sank back in her chair.

    ‘Look our job is to treat his symptoms. He needs to take his place in society, get a job, fit in. Maybe you’re too close to him someone else can take over.’

    Pat hung around the ward pretending he wasn’t waiting for anything. By lunchtime he wondered why she hadn’t come. Then it was three in the afternoon and when the ward door opened  it was his mother looking anxious and distracted. They sat in his room without speaking. Eventually she took out a bottle of fruit juice and put it on his bedside locker along with sixty euros in twenty euro notes. She was crying and took him in her arms:

    ‘Be a good boy,’ she said.

    Pat waited the excruciating hours until bedtime and still she didn’t come. In the morning at breakfast a nurse said quietly to him:

    ‘Dr Philips wants to see you as soon as you’re ready.’

    I saw him in my office first thing. He looked tired and hung his head as I went through his notes.

    ‘You’ve been doing some work with Anna. She’s been transferred to another ward, from now on you’ll be dealing with Carl,’.

    The boy looked shocked, and I made a note that he should be monitored carefully.

    When the nurse went into Pat’s room in the morning the small window over his bed was open. There was no sign of Pat. They never found him; he couldn’t have crawled out the opening the window afforded. Dr Philips maintained the door to the fire escape must have been left unlocked. Anna asked to see the room. She looked under the bed and lying there innocently waiting to be found was a glossy black feather. She held it up to the light and admired it, then she slipped it into her bag.

    Feature Image: AI Art Generator.