A Short Story by Merrilyn Hope. July 2009
This story was written with the idea of acknowledging all the beautiful, generous-spirited cuzzie-bros and friends from wee Waihi who helped me to gain sobriety.
Dedicated especially to Sandy G, the AA Angel who saved my life in 1998. God Bless You Sandy.
The Prayer – the Novena to the Virgin Mary, really was the stepping-stone to my recovery, and I am so grateful that this prayer came into my hands.
The story’s main character honours a very good friend who sings like an Angel:
The Good Lord had netted Christian just like one of Peter’s fish.
Christian was one who drank like anything and who had expected to be devoured, eventually, by all the piranhas in the hell for advanced alcoholics. He was therefore not only a little dazed, but much entranced to find himself, sober, and liberated like the carp who’d just jumped the Longmen Pass on the Yangtze river, suddenly landed in a silvery clear and glistening stream where radiantly rainbowed angel fish accompanied him, singing songs of good guidance and emotional encouragement all the day long.
This was a miracle, to be sure.
His prayers had been answered. He knew he had been saved. His Godsend was in the strange flocking of Angels which had occurred in this wee town with the big gold-mine heart.
He had come here to escape, perhaps to die. Except for his brother whom he saw only occasionally, mainly because the brother did not drink, no one knew him here. Drowning his sorrows would be easy, he thought.
The loss of his partner Florrie, first to Alzheimer’s, and then to death, had stopped him singing in the party of life.
The Pub Had No Beer.
“Twenty years. Twenty years together … but her suffering at the end was hideous. If I ever believed in God, I don’t believe in Him now”, and he would lift his bitter glass and “Drink … Drink … Drink” to that.
The ghosts of the night walked the roads of his past.
Countless ghosts on endless roads. Hopeless journeys.
His path to the Recovery Angels was lighted up one afternoon as he sat alone in his lounge. His health was deteriorating rapidly now. With shaking hands he was drinking his instant coffee whilst he ate a sandwich of peanut butter and baked beans. No beer today as he was out of pocket.
“Just as well I don’t smoke”, he said to himself, by way of counting his blessings.
His habit was to binge drink after benefit payday, while the funds lasted. He picked up the free local paper. Reading was difficult now. His focus was shot. People said it was his age, but he knew much of the cause was of his own making.
“What’s this?” … The NOVENA TO THE VIRGIN MARY, in large letters on the back page almost hit him as if Florrie had thrust the paper angrily at him to wake him up. He scrabbled his hands around in the junk on the coffee table to find his specs, to make out some of the smaller print below the title.
Christian wasn’t Catholic, but Florrie had been. She had taught him how to say The Rosary, and he knew all the verses of the Lourdes Hymn to the Blessed Virgin. Sometimes, at The White Horse Inn, he’d sung a few verses for the old boys, which had always earned him a few free drinks.
But this Novena was new to him. It caught his attention like nothing had before. It promised an answer to prayer if you said it three times, with all sincerity, on three consecutive days, ‘after which your request will be granted and the prayer must be published.’
It sounded like some magic spell from a fairy tale. Christian, open-eyed now, grasped the promise and its essence of good, and took it on unconditionally, straight to the heart.
Once he had held a plank of wood out to a drowning hedgehog in a swimming pool. He had saved the hedgehog. Now a plank was being offered unto Christian. With joy and elation he received the Spirit of Goodwill and climbed aboard.
He was on his knees now.
“Dear Mother Mary. Dear Lord. Please help me. I am so sorry for wasting my life away. For my children’s sake, for my family, please help me to get sober. I can’t do it alone.”
He was zealous. Each day he said the Novena. He added The Lord’s Prayer and said at least ten Hail Mary’s to add strength to the Novena and to show how earnest he was.
The next thing he discovered, in the same paper, an advertisement which read
‘If you want to drink, that’s your problem. If you want to stop, that’s ours.’
He wondered why he had never seen this ad before. Now he spied it in all the old issues he had lying around the house. It was as if Florrie had never left him – she was always one for leaving newspapers about if there was something she needed him to read.
And so, thanks to the Recovery Angels, Christian got sober. With Amazing Grace he accepted the things he could not change.
After sobriety came sanity, and serenity, and after those, all in good time, came sweet service. Before long he began to sing again.
As his strength returned, he felt an increasing desire to make himself useful in the community. He started working as a volunteer in the local rest homes, and at the area hospital.
His tasks, at first, were to help with jigsaws and board games, such as snakes and ladders. But when they found out about his marvellous voice, the residents would cry out “You Are My Sunshine” when he arrived, more or less in unison, and expect him to take the lead in the song.
They demanded that he sing for them, like an impresario, like “The Pav”, out on the floor in front of them. They called him “The Fourth Tenor”. They adored him.
Christian was an old tar from way back. Seven years in the navy had expanded his repertoires vastly. Now all those beautiful melodies he’d learned, from home and afar:
Haere Mai, Heart of My Heart, The Mountains O’ Mourne,
The Isle of Innisfree, and Carrickfergus,
Santa Lucia and Arrivederci Roma,
Now Is The Hour,
Songs of farewell, and songs of homecoming,
Love songs, work songs, young songs, old songs,
Dancing tunes, marching tunes,
Songs of suffering and Songs of Praise,
would all to be put to good use … evoking memories, soothing souls and nursing sad hearts, including his own.
His new-found role was, he felt, a very privileged one, that of bringing delight to many, many people Where E’re He Walked.
The good Christian was now revered, not only by the residents, but also by staff, who decided to give him a good hot dinner on each visit, with a small payment besides.
After two years of sobriety and devoted good effort in Waihi, Christian returned to Auckland. His family fold welcomed the cheer-giver back from the bottom of their hearts. They held a huge reunion party at The White Horse Inn, at Mt Roskill.
This is where I was introduced to Christian. I had been hired as pianist to play background music, and also to accompany “The Pav” on several solos he was to perform.
Needless to say, the party was a roaring success, mainly due to the fact that Christian knew every song I played, and sang well into the night.
During the break, and after the show, we got to talking. He told me all about the miracle in Waihi and how he was able to stop drinking.
We talked about music. He said that he was entirely self-taught, and that he had a fascination for opera despite never ever having learnt a note of it.
I suddenly thought of Cherry Blomfeld, the charming opera singer who was living in a rest home not too far away. She had sung in Europe for most of her life and had made many recordings. Although she now had Alzheimer’s, she still loved to entertain an audience.
I arranged for Christian to come with me the following day to meet her. He had accepted with great enthusiasm. He remembered Cherry in her prime, singing on the radio.
“With a bit of luck she might even sing for us”, I said hopefully.
I picked him up in my little old Rover shortly after lunch. He puffed a little as he squeezed his oversize frame carefully into the front seat … and then, off we set.
Cherry greeted us, with her usual grace, in the music room. She held out her hand for Christian to shake and smiled sweetly at him.
She still carried herself with great dignity, with all the polish of a distinguished Prima Donna. Christian was captivated on the spot.
She said that she would sing for him.
An expectant group of people were now gathered to witness the impromptu performance, watching as Cherry composed herself in front of the chairs.
She breathed deeply as she waited for the CD of arias to start.
Christian was already seated in the chair closest to her. A swooning type of intensity had taken hold of him. He never took his eyes away from her as she sang. I could see a tear or two, although he smiled a far-away smile as he gazed, and listened.
At the close of her performance, Cherry gave a beautiful bow to her admirers. Then she turned to Christian, to ask if he might sing for her.
We had decided beforehand that we would do How Great Thou Art if the opportunity arose to perform. Christian had given an almost flawless performance of it on the previous night, with myself on piano.
After the song, Cherry came forward and emphatically patted Christian on the back, saying excitedly,
“I KNEW you had it in you, Christian … I knew as soon as I SAW you … that you had it IN you.” Christian was made.
On the way home, down Sandringham Road, he reflected on Cherry’s warm response to him and his song. He was smiling happily.
“I’ve never met an opera singer before”, he said.
“Well, I know now what I want to be in my next life.”
“What’s that, Christian?”
“I want to be an opera singer … I want to sing like Pavarotti.”
Unfortunately for me, that was the last time I saw Christian. Two weeks later he had been found alone in his lounge, sitting quietly in his big, cosy armchair, stone dead.
He had suffered a stroke as he waited for his roast to cook.
The most remarkable thing about his passing was that Luciano Pavarotti died on the exact same day, just three hours beforehand.
I imagined Luciano in Heaven, now perfectly accessible to Christian in spirit. He was giving him lessons in the art of opera.
The Angels were at work yet again.
The Carp had indeed become a Dragon.
