For more than twenty years, John Allan was a teacher of meditation, a feature of his past counseling and psycho-therapy practices. Experienced in the therapeutic use of hypnosis and Neuro Linguistic Programming, Art Therapy and a form of open dialogue, John worked with great enthusiasm and success, with dementia patients prior to retiring from clinical practice.
A published writer of fiction and self help books and blogging, John has vast experience in assisting people with cancer and drugs of addiction, but now spends his time in other pursuits.
Cav Mulholland, John's alter ego, is responsible for the fictional aspirations of a partnership that stretches back through a family history of convicts, orphans and exiles. Cav's is a story of some interest. He relates the tale of his ancestor, Joe Mulholland, who was a poorly parented and wayward youth of eighteenth century Glasgow, who couldn’t hold his grog and went on to become a thug in that town. The ruling Pommies eventually had enough and after locking him up in Pentonville, exiled him to the colony of Victoria, where much of their human detritus suffered similar fate. Joseph reformed in the colonies and ironically, joined the fledgling police force. Eventually he became successful in the goldfields of the day. He married Bridget, an orphan of the Irish famine, and together they had a large family. Cav Mulholland is directly descended from these rich pickings and his life has been so rich, some say the name must be a pseudonym, the reality is not.
In the days of Lempens, McKinnon and Del Fabbro, Mulholland also shared his lot. He was an observer of all that occurred in those collegiate days. Head Prefect for a time, Mulholland kept his finger very much, on the pulse. McKinnon even alluded to his presence when Kosmidas was crucified for drugs. There was a very elite group involved and the younger boy was expendable. Mulholland never admitted to his involvement, nor did the others, but their contact has remained a feature of their lives ever since.
The college was Catholic and graduates had an expectation of following the vocations elucidated by their elders. Teachers, clergy and the law were meritorious and worthy of mention in the college journals, but Mulholland languished and found no such entries to signify his passing, successful or not. He scraped through his final years, although upon graduation, had succeeded in somehow establishing a successful business that involved numerous people doing unspecified things. He simply smiled, when asked about his entrepreneurial flare and changed the subject. Cav Mulholland has always been able to turn on the charm when required. Popular with his peers for no other reason than his personal magnetism, Cav was privately voted by that elite cartel, as the one most likely to provide the answer when required.
So the others went to university, some, like Del Fabbro, stepped outside the square altogether, and others joined the reluctant que to fight in Vietnam. Mulholland thought it best to leave the country under his own fruition and purchased a first class ticket to London, when his peers could barely raise the price of a ticket to the movies. The Mulholland flair was apparent, even in those days and Cav travelled the ‘Fiesta Route’ spending more time than was required in Acapulco and Tahiti. It was while enjoying the spectacle at La Quebrada, that Mulholland made his first contact with the bristled mustachioed, slightly built and gentle man, Harvey.
“Beautiful. Are they not?” Harvey had said, almost to himself, as they watched the grace-filled dance of the divers, from cliff’s edge to the sparkling waters of the gulch an eternity beneath. “They suspend themselves magically, slender arms outstretched, like swallows on a summer’s breeze.”
Mulholland, mesmerized by the spectacle of the life over death defiance of the young men who plunged so eagerly into the swell of the Pacific, barely heard the utterance and nodded his reply without averting his eyes. The divers judged their moment, waiting with arms outstretched, for the swell of the ocean to fill the void between the cliffs, more than one hundred feet below and then, anticipating the moment to perfection, launched them-selves into the oblivion. When, finally, he turned, Cav was startled at the intensity of Harvey’s gaze. A faint smile etched its way beneath the thick mustache and the older man’s hand brushed against Mulholland’s shoulder. A gossamer touch. Mulholland’s smile was involuntary, but it melted Harvey’s heart.
Several years would pass before the two men would meet again and it was in the heat of Africa that such a chance encounter came their way...