Colosseum

Colosseum



The phone answered on the twenty fifth ring.

“Hey!” I said.

“Oh. Hey. How you doin? Haven’t heard from ye in ages.”

Her voice was funny. “Why are you talking with a Belfast accent?”

“Och! It’s a long story. Do ye like it?”

“Like it?”

“The accent? Tommy took me to Belfast for the weekend. I’m only just back.”

“You picked up an accent in a weekend? That’s a bit weird, isn’t it? Who’s Tommy?”

There was a pause, a laugh like glass chimes tinkling. “A fella I met inside. He’s really nice.” I felt like I’d been slapped. “You know I’m actually FROM Belfast, and no-one ever told me!”

Oh, God! “Er, no, you’re from here. Your whole family’s from here. Are you alright?”

“Not a bother. How’re ye?” The accent was grating on me. She wasn’t kidding here. It was pure Falls Road Belfast, not some cheap imitation.

“I’m grand. I’m good, even. Listen.” I struggled for the right thing to say. Sentences were born and died in my mind, but nothing came out.

“I did something,” she said. I could hear it in her voice. Something terrible.

“What?” I asked. It came out as a whisper.

“I shaved off all my hair. Oh, Dave! I look like I’m from a concentration camp.”

“You … shaved your hair? Why, for Christ’s sake? You didn’t really, did you?

“I did.” When she said it, it sounded like Ah ded.

“But why? You have lovely hair.”

“I …” I could hear the struggle. This was worse than anything she’d ever done before, and combined with the accent, it scared the shit out of me. “I hear things. Voices. They tell me to do things. They wear me out and then I give in.”

“Voices told you to shave your head?” I could hear it in my OWN voice: incredulity, accusation. “Really?” I added, softer, a desperate attempt to offset a moment of harshness with another of compassion.

“It’s starting to grow back. But … Oh, Dave, I look like a skeleton. I really do.”

“Ah, it’s only hair. It’ll grow back. It’ll be fine,” I said, stalling. “Are you taking your meds?”

Silence, seconds ticking away into a short eternity.

“Are you still there?”

“Those doctors don’t know what they’re on about,” she said, voice suddenly leached of all softness. “I’m not goin back there. They want to commit me, they don’t like that I’m seeing Tommy. It’s none of their fucking business, is it? I can see who I want, can’t I? Can’t I, Dave?”

“Er, well, yeah, I suppose you can. Guess they’re just, er, worried about you. Is Tommy a patient too?”

“Oh, aye,” she replied, laughing again. “He’s great though. He’s the only one that talks to me, that really understands. He’s a bit older …”

“Older?”

“He’s fifty six.”

I struggled to process this. “That’s … not so old.”

“Aye, that’s what I said, but they’re not having any of it. They just don’t want me to be happy, the bastards!” The Belfast accent never faltered, not for a second. One whole side of my brain was frantically wondering what to do. What to do? Call her parents? Call emergency services? She was having a full mental breakdown right there, on the other end of the phone.

“Can I come over?” I asked. “I haven’t seen you in ages.” Half of me didn’t want to. Didn’t want to have to SEE this as well as listen to it.

“No,” she replied. “Not now. Tommy’s coming round soon. Next week, maybe.”

“Next week,” I said. Was that really relief I was feeling? “OK. I’ll give you a call. Will you be OK?”

“Och, aye!”

“Sure?”

“I’ll be fine! Thanks for callin. Talk to ye next week.”

The line went dead and I sat there for a long time before it occurred to me to put the handset back in the cradle.





It was three weeks before I actually did get to see her. There were several phone calls in between, the Belfast accent fading with each until it was an embarrassment for her even to have it mentioned. In the interim, she was leading an exciting life: Tommy brought her to Cork, Tommy stayed over, Tommy crashed his car, but he’s OK, he just has a cut on his head. Then one Saturday afternoon at the beginning of December there was a text message: “do u want to come over?”

“Sure”, I texted back. I hadn’t seen her flat, even though I’d signed as guarantor for it a few months before. I steeled myself and set off. She was waiting at the street door as I parked the car.

“Hey,” she said, running her hand through half centimetre long hair and looking at me with a kind of trepidation.

“Hey,” I said back, a genuine smile engulfing me. She was herself, the same girl I’d known from “before”. I saw it the minute I looked in her eyes. “Suits you,” I said, indicating the hair. She made a face.

“It’s growing back. You should’ve seen it when I first did it.”

We spent a few seconds just looking at each other, the way people who were lovers once sometimes do. She was the first to break off. “Are you coming up?”

“Yeah, sure. Interested to see what you’ve done with the place.” She led me into the little hallway and up the stairs. I watched her all the way up to the second floor.

“It’s really small,” she said, then added, “But I really like it.” She flashed me a smile down over the banister. She was an extremely pretty girl, but when she smiled that big, wide smile of hers … I think every time she did it I fell for her all over again.

“Ta-dah!” she said with a theatrical flourish, leading me into the flat proper. She let me walk in first and waited for my impressions.

It was small – a living room like a large cupboard, with a tiny kitchenette in one corner and a foldaway table with two little chairs. Off to one side I could see, through strategically open doors, a bathroom with stand-up shower, and a bedroom whose entire floorspace appeared to be taken up with a double bed. But it was also filled with all the things I remembered from her old place, from the time before she was ill. There were bookcases and books, all carefully placed in a scheme that seemed to rely more on the colours of their spines than their contents; tiny teddy bears and cute little jewellery boxes; pictures, and posters, and dried flowers, and pot-pourri. More than that, it was infused with the scent of her, scrubbed skin and subtly-perfumed soap, shampoo and freshly laundered clothes – these and a dozen others, all compounded into a aroma as unique and individual as a fingerprint.

“It’s lovely,” I said, turning to her, moved as much by the normality as by the familiarity of it. She smiled and blushed and did that shy thing, but she beamed, too, and I saw how proud she was of getting back on her feet, back out into a place of her own. “Really. It’s really great.”

“You want tea?” she said, moving into the kitchenette.

“Coffee if you have.” I eased into one of the two armchairs in the little room. Each was draped in a woollen coverlet, what Irish people call a “throw”. As my hand touched the fabric I had a weird moment of fugue that blossomed into memory: we’d made love on this, years before.

“So,” I said, watching her fetch big green mugs from a corner cabinet. “How’ve you been?”





“It’s …” she began, but stopped, her eyes focusing downward. She was hunched in the other armchair, cradling her tea with long, pale hands. “It’s been hard.” She looked me straight in the eye, maybe anticipating a dismissive word or gesture. I nodded, slowly.

“I know it has.” I tried to smile, but it felt bleak on my face. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For not being there.”

She shrugged, and stared into the abyss of her green mug. Now I could see how the pain had eaten at her. There was a sprinkling of grey in her cropped hair and the skin around her eyes was showing the first creases and furrows of age. Oh, my poor girl, I thought. I’d visited her that first time she was hospitalized, but only once. I’d found her subdued, withdrawn; every word was an effort, every grim smile a titanic struggle. But what I’d really seen in her was shame – shame that she’d allowed this to happen to her, embarrassment that I was there to witness it.

When she was finally released we kept in touch and things were normal for a while, then she was gone again – no calls, no answer on the phone. When I rang her dad he told me about the suicide attempt. After that she was in and out two, three times a year. Sometimes we kept in touch when she was out, sometimes not so much. When she was in, I told myself I didn’t visit to save her the awkwardness and humiliation. The truth, though, is that the experience of going in there that one time, of seeing her among the zombies and the broken, was so jarring for me that I was never able to go back again.

“Why didn’t you call me?” I asked. “Maybe I could have helped.”

She gave me the saddest look I’ve ever seen. “Oh, Dave. I couldn’t. I couldn’t … burden you with that. And anyway, no-one could’ve helped.”

“I would’ve liked to try.”

“It doesn’t matter now. It’s gone, over.” I sipped coffee for a while; she just swirled her tea around.

“Did you …” I began, then faltered. “Are you OK physically? I mean, after …”

“The doctors think I might have damaged my liver.”

“I’m sorry. Really sorry.”

“Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault.” She grinned at me. It broke my heart.

“What happened? I mean, last time. You were doing so well,” I gestured around me, “this place. I thought everything was OK.”

She squirmed in her armchair. “I was. I mean, I was good, but … Dave?” She looked at me. I knew she was making a decision, whether to talk to me about it or not. Usually she decided not to. In five years I’d learned precious little about what it was actually like for her.

“Tell me,” I whispered. “Please.”

“I hear things,” she said. “Voices. They tell me to do things. They tell me, over and over, they don’t let up. And it’s getting worse. Each time, it’s getting worse. They’re getting stronger, and I’m getting weaker.”

“No,” I said – the word just came out of my mouth. “No, that’s not true. What kind of things do these voices say?” She scrunched up her face, put a fist against the side of her head. I knew it was hurting her to talk about it.

“One night, they wanted me to go out and lie on the road. It was late and it was dark. They said I should lie out in the middle of the road. It took me all night to fight them and to not do it.”

“The road outside here? The street?”

“No, at my parents’ place.”

“Jesus! That’s a … that’s a busy road, but it’s pitch black at night.” She nodded, knowingly, the first glimmers of tears in her eyes.

“The voices were trying to kill you. To get you to kill yourself.”

“I nearly did it, Dave. Very nearly.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No. Not that night. But it gets harder and harder.”

I set down my cold coffee and moved to kneel before her. I took away the tea mug and clasped her hands in mine.

“Listen. I know … I know, someday, you’ll go. I know it, and I’d do anything to stop it from happening. But I can’t. I love you.” I reached up and lifted her chin. The first tear escaped and rolled down her cheek. Her skin was soft and cool under my touch. I hadn’t touched her like this in a long, long time. “I love you, and I always will. And any time you need me, I’m right here. I promise. You hear me? I’ll never not be here for you.” She just looked at me, a lost soul look. I drew her forward and held her, and she sobbed on my shoulder for the longest time.





When I was a very young child, there was a bookcase in the corner of our living room. It wasn’t a very big bookcase – my parents were readers, but not particularly bookish. There was one book there called “Those Who Are About to Die”. Its cover contained a painting of a woman, sitting on the ground. There were ropes around her ankles, and someone was fixing a rope to her left wrist. The other wrist was already roped. Each rope ran to a harness, and the harnesses were attached to very large, very strong-looking horses. I was fascinated by this book cover, even though I was maybe only three years old. I asked my mother what was happening here, why was the man tying the woman to the horses. She told me that it was a picture of the Roman arena, the Colosseum, and that, once the ropes were tied, the man would whip the horses and the woman would be torn apart. Not a subtle woman, my mother.

I still remember the horror I felt upon hearing this story. I looked again at the woman in the painting. I must have spent hours and hours looking at her. She represented the first inkling in my child’s mind that the world might be a place where terrible things could happen.



I left the flat a couple of hours later. By that time, we’d gotten past all the sadness, and we spent the time laughing and joking and reminiscing. It was like old times, but eventually I had to go home. Somewhere along the way I’d met someone else, started building a life, bought a house, and got committed. She got committed too, but in a very different way.

This all happened, as I said, on a Saturday. She died on the Sunday. At some point, late at night, she gathered together all the pills she would need and fed them to herself, one by one, just as the voices told her to. There was no call, no text message. She didn’t leave a note. She was just gone.

And afterwards, when the funeral was done, and the gravestone was carved with her name and the dates that circumscribed her pitifully short life, when grief had washed out my eyes with its acid tears, I found myself in my own private Colosseum. I was the one sitting helpless in the sand. I was the one the Roman soldier was securing to the horses. On one side my wrist and ankle were bound, not with ropes, but with the words I said that day: I know, someday, you’ll go. I know it, and I’d do anything to stop it from happening. But I can’t. On the other, I was bound with the words I should have said: Don’t go! Stay with me. I’ll help you. I’ll be here for you. I’ll never give up on you. Don’t go. Stay. Please, stay.

I can still see the face of the woman in the painting; every detail of it is perfectly preserved in my mind. It was a look of anguish and resignation, a look of a person who knew she was doomed. I saw that same look that Saturday, when she was telling me about the voices. I just didn’t recognize it then.

And now, when I lie down in the silence of the night, I can almost feel that faceless Roman tightening the cord around my wrist. I know that soon he’ll stand up and crack his whip, and those huge horses will start to draw away apart. Some nights, they pull hard.