Whit

'Life can seem cruel sometimes, Uncle Mo,' I said. 'I know this now, though you have known it longer.  You are older and wiser than I am and you have suffered more, but you must know in your heart, in your soul, that God loves you and that They - or He, your prophet's God, if you will - that God can be your comfort, just as your family and friends can comfort you, too.  You do know that, don't you, Uncle Mo?'

He put down his drink and turned to me in the seat, putting out his arm; I leaned forward so that he could put his arm between me and the seat.  We hugged each other.  He still smelled of cologne.  I hadn't realised how slight he was; shorter than me, and somehow packaged, bulked out with his fine clothes to look more substantial than he actually was.  I was aware of his wallet pressing into my breast and, with my left hand, could feel what was probably the hardness of a portable telephone in another jacket pocket.

'You are such a good child, Isis!' he assured me again. 'Such a good, good child!'

I patted him on the back, quite as though it was he who was the child, not I.

'And you are a good uncle,' I said. 'And I am sure you are a good son as well.  I'm sure Zhobelia must love you and must love to see you.'

'Ah,' he said, shaking his head against my shoulder. 'She has little time for me.  I cannot get to see her as often as I would like anyway, Isis; they keep her up there, away from me; ha!  I have to pay; my savings, you'll notice; mine.  My money from my savings and the few parts I get and the restaurant money.  It is a fine, good restaurant, Isis; I don't actually own it, you probably guessed that, if I ever gave that impression I didn't mean… didn't mean deceiving, but it is the best in the city, a most estimable place where one might lavish oneself and I am the maître de you see, Isis; I am the first public face of the establishment and so most highly important and influential with the minds and hearts of the diners, you see.  We have a most extensive wine list and I was a fine wine waiter, a fine wine waiter I tell you as well and still can fill in… in the most exemplary manner.'

'Your mother should be proud of you.'

'She is not.  She calls me a liqueur Moslem; innocent and sweet on the outside - even chocolate coloured - but open me up and I am full of alcohol.  It is her family.  Her other family.'

'Her other family?' I said, shifting my hand to stroke Uncle Mo's head.

'The Asis family.  She says she wants to be in that home but she was happy in Spayedthwaite; they persuaded her, turned her against me, made her say she wanted to be nearer to them.  And yet I still pay.  I get some help from them and a little from your people but I pay most; I.  Me.  Mr Muggins McMuggins here.  They talked about responsibility and blood ties and they wanted her near them and they made her say that she wanted the same thing too and so she away went, most unfairly.  It isn't fair, Isis.' He squeezed my hand. 'You are a good child.  You would have been good to your poor mother and father.  I don't know I should be doing this for your brother, really.  He holds the wallet strings, you know that, but I don't know that I should be taking you away like this.  It is so hard to do the right things.  I try, but I don't know.  You must forgive me, Isis.  I am not so strong a man.  Not so strong as I should like to be.  Then, who is?  You are a woman, Isis, you would not understand.  Such strength.  Please understand…'

He put his head down upon my breast and sobbed then, and after a moment or two I could feel my shirt getting wet.

I looked out of the window.  Trees whizzed past.  The train rocked us.  The trees parted dramatically, like a great green curtain upon a stage, revealing a small steep valley with a river curving through beneath.  A flock of birds burst from somewhere underneath us and turned as one, a grey-black cloud of fluttering movement sweeping through the air between the banked walls of the trees.  The trees rushed back up in a green blur.  I looked upwards to the creamy layers of cloud.

'Where did they take Zhobelia, Uncle Mo?' I asked quietly.

Mo sobbed, then sniffed hard, so that I felt his whole body shake and vibrate.  'I'm not supposed… Oh, what does… ?  You're not supposed…'

'I'd love to know, Uncle Mo.  I might be able to help, you know.'

'Slanashire,' he said.

'Where's that?'

'It's Lanca… Lanarkshire; a horrid little town in… Lanarkshire,' he said.

That was a relief.  I'd thought he was going to name somewhere in the Hebrides, or even back in the sub-continent.

'I'd so much like to write to her,' I said softly. 'What's her address?'

'Oh… The… what is that word again?  Gloaming.  Indeed.  There.  The Gloamings.  The Gloamings Nursing Home, Wishaw Road, Mauchtie, Lancashire.  Lanarkshire,' he said.

I got him to repeat the town's name, too.

'Near Glasgow,' he went on. 'Just outside.  Well; near.  Bloody horrid little place it is.  Oh, excuse me.  Don't go….  Miserable….  Write.  She would love to hear you… hear from you.  She would love to see you, perhaps.  Well, maybe.  She seems not to want to see us very much… Her own son… but… Well.  Who knows?  Who ever knows, Isis?  Nobody ever knows.  Nobody ever… knows nothing… at all.  All dreams.  Just… dreams.  Terrible……dreams.' He gave a single great, ragged sigh, and settled closer into me.

I held him for a while.  He seemed very small.

After a while, I shifted one of my hands to Uncle Mo's head and gently placed my palm over his hair, cupping his head like some delicate goblet.  I closed my eyes.  I settled into the steady rhythm of the rushing, rocking train, letting its hurtling movement become stillness and its shimmering, steely racket become silence, so that I found - in that stillness and that silence - a place to prepare myself and gather my powers and await the awakening sensations that were the presentiment of my Gift.

It came eventually, tingling in my head and in my hand, and I became a conduit, a filter, a heart, an entire system.  I felt my uncle's pain and sadness and broken dreams, felt their spare, bleak, numbing terror, felt the choking fullness of his emptiness, and felt it all flowing into me, circulating through me and being cleaned and neutralised and made good through me and then flowing back out through my hand and into him again as something made wholesome from poison, something made positive that had been negative, giving him peace, giving him hope, giving him faith.

I opened my eyes again and flexed my hand.

The trees outside the window gave way to farmland, then houses.

I watched the houses for a while.  Uncle Mo breathed on, easily now, and nestled against me like a child.

The guard announced we would soon be arriving at Newcastle upon Tyne.  Uncle Mo didn't stir.  I thought for a moment, then looked at my hand, the hand that I had touched Uncle Mo's thoughts with.

'Oh, Uncle Mo,' I breathed, too quiet for him to hear, 'I'm sorry.'

I did some quick mental arithmetic and a bit of estimating, then I looked around to make sure nobody could see and shifted Uncle Mo a little in my arms.  Then - asking God for Their forgiveness as I did it, and feeling quite wretched and triumphantly predatory in equal measure, yet excited as well - I took Uncle Mo's wallet from his inside jacket pocket.

He had eighty pounds.  I took half, then gave him change for twenty-nine from the funds I already held, most of which, admittedly, Uncle Mo himself had unwittingly provided.  I pocketed the notes, replaced his wallet and shifted him again, pushing him gently away from me so that he rested with his head partly against the side of the seat and partly against the window.  I thought a little more, then reached into his other inside pocket and took his portable telephone.  He muttered something, but seemed otherwise oblivious.  I scribbled a quick note on a napkin and put it under his tumbler on the table in front of him.