by Claire North
He stood up, brushed dust off his knees, nodded at one of his men. “Go home, Harbinger of Death,” he said. “Go tell your master that I serve him well.”
He turned away.
A soldier picked Charlie up by the arm, and the Harbinger staggered in his grip, knees buckling, the tears pricking his eyes again. Another soldier came to help, and the two of them helped him away from the edge of the pit, back towards the car.
And as they did, Charlie looked up through a veil of tears, and at the far end of the field he beheld a pale figure leaning against a blasted tree, and it seemed to him that the land withered beneath his feet, and the sky blackened above his head, and his name was Death, and hell followed him.
Chapter 51
How deep is the sea that separates us now?
My beloved, do not cease your singing
The water carries your voice upwards
I dive
I am coming
I wear this skin of weeds
I do not fear the monsters with eyes like the broken moon
The ink that fills my veins gives me breath
Your lips guide me
We go down to the deep together.
Unpublished poem by Qasim Jahani, 2012
Everyone meets Death. The tired welcome her; the just rage against her coming. The young do not understand her; the great do not realise that she cannot be bought. But of all those for whom she comes, it is always the lovers who are the most afraid.
Extract from an email, Saga Kekkonen,
“Advice for a new Harbinger.”
Chapter 52
A car drove him to a place.
In that place, another car collected him.
Drove him to another place.
He slept one night in the back of the vehicle, in a barn of corrugated iron.
Then they drove.
And when they stopped, a man in a suit and a woman in a white dress met him, and said in English, heavily accented with French, “Good morning, Mr. Harbinger. We have been sent by Milton Keynes to take you home.”
They gave him fresh clothes, and he saw that the sign on the side of the road was in Turkish, and pointed the way to Ankara.
“Wait,” he said, and they waited, and on the edge of the road he stripped naked, and tipped a bottle of water over his head, and let the heat dry him, and changed into the clothes they’d brought, and burnt everything that was left behind.
Chapter 53
“… and everyone’s complaining, but when it comes to defending democracy, who you gonna call?”
“The Chinese record on human rights …”
“Save the Sikhs! The government of India is committing genocide against our brothers and sisters, the great temple once again is soaked in blood, and the people …”
“I’m just like, fuck, if you guys want to kill each other, that’s fine by me.”
“… secular activist was hacked to death as he left his apartment today …”
Tick. Tick. Tick.
“Poor kids would do so much better with National Service.”
“Ghostbusters!”
“On behalf of His Majesty and the people of Saudi Arabia, I demand an apology for the outrageous suggestion …”
“Free Raif Badawi, free the journalists vanished in Eritrea, free the citizens on death row in Malaysia, free the bloggers imprisoned in Belarus, free the …”
“Are my kids safe? Is my family safe? Are we going to get through the winter? That’s what I care about, and the rest, frankly, the rest you can just shove right up your …”
“Investment investment investment.”
“Aung San Suu Kyi spoke for all the peoples of Myanmar, even when she was silent, locked behind doors, but now we are dying, the Rohingya, the Kachin, the Karen, and where is she, where are those words now?”
“There is an Armageddon clock that assesses how close humanity is to self-destruction based on a number of factors compiled by a committee in …”
“Oh say can you see by the dawn’s early light!”
Tick. Tick. Tick.
“This is a global age, a global society; if you ignore issues like this then take it from me, it’ll come and bite you, and I mean hard.”
“Human human human rat human human rat rat human human human rat rat rat human …”
“A panel of retired judges will decide whether the government can see your stored web browsing history, providing safeguards against …”
“The time now is three minutes to midnight.”
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Part 5
CLOTTED CREAM
Chapter 54
On the shores of the sea …
… in a land where all things grow …
… the Harbinger of Death walked side by side with a woman.
Her name was Emmi. She was a deputy headmistress at a secondary school in Barnet. She wore blue jeans, bright cyan and grey trainers, a waterproof coat and a light white scarf, which had been given to her by students at her last school, who were so surprised to discover that they’d got a range of A–Cs in their GCSE Chemistry that they’d banded together to get her something to show their appreciation. The scarf was beautiful; the book about cocktail making was perhaps inappropriate.
“We just thought you needed to get drunk more, miss!” explained the boldest of the pupils, and in her way, she had correctly sensed a void in Emmi’s life that she had always struggled to fill.
Emmi was black, of that deepest, richest dark that came from the west coast of Africa, her heritage steeped, so her mother had always said, in the noble kings of ancient Liberia. Her ancestors had commanded armies, conducted ancient rites, sat in judgement over life and death, and Emmi had been born in Denmark Hill and grown up in a two-bedroom flat in Clapham before Clapham got pricey, and had been to Liberia twice, and secretly not enjoyed it as much as she had wanted to.
No one could call her slim, but no one could call her fat either. Her body was all curves, and while as a teenage girl she had looked in the mirror and despised herself, now that she was a little older, and her work had taught her a duty of care for the self-image of the girls in her flock, she had come to love her body, and had only been mildly troubled that there wasn’t someone else out there who seemed to love it too.
The Harbinger of Death loved Emmi’s body.
The realisation had come slowly to Emmi, fast to the Harbinger. It wasn’t merely that he was falling head-over-heels for her as a human being that surprised her; it was that he seemed to see in every contour of her face, in every flick of her wrist and stamp of her foot, another part of her, a new piece of her soul manifesting physically, and every part he saw, he loved.
He didn’t say so very often, of course. The Harbinger of Death was not renowned for being talkative. But one night, she had gone to his flat, not at all confident of what this relationship was or if she was even that interested in a man who worked for Death, let alone someone who spent a lot of time out of the country, and found an old man and his granddaughter in the living room, and Charlie had muttered something about how they were staying for a little while, hope she didn’t mind. (She did not.)
And the months had rolled by, and she still wasn’t certain, he wasn’t around enough for her to be sure, and then last week they had gone out together for a Vietnamese meal, and Charlie had been quiet, and his eyes had wandered, and his mind had floated to some other place, and Emmi had told herself well, this isn’t going anywhere, is it?
Charlie? Charlie?
And the clock on the wall went tick, tick, tick.
And she’d blurted, “Charlie, are you listening to me?”
Tick tick tick.
And he’d looked down, food barely touched, and she thought perhaps he was going to cry, and then he’d told her everything.
Told her about the graves. About the bombings, the journey through a broken land. Told her about War, smiling as the dust settled, a
bout Death, standing on the edge of the field, the edge of the ice. And Emmi had said to herself, Well, this is all very good, isn’t it, but just because he’s in a state doesn’t mean you have to get involved. But he had talked, and she had listened, and afterwards they had walked back to his flat together, and she had thought, Ah, fuck it, I’ll walk away when I want to …
And that night he had declared, simply and without needing anything from her in return, that he loved her, and that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever known, and that her beauty was in her skin, and in her eyes, and in her smile, and in her laughter, and in her frown, and in her talking, and in her silence, and in all the things good and bad that were her, because she was all beautiful, every part of her.
And Emmi had stood in the bathroom, the morning after, and looked at herself long and hard in the mirror and said, “Emmi, my girl, this is not a relationship you want or need,” and had realised, even as she said it, that she was probably wrong.
She’d dump him, of course, as soon as he cocked up, or if she decided that long-term, this relationship was a drain, not a bolster to her life.
But for now
one day at a time
in full knowledge of the good and the bad of what she might be getting into
she was willing to give it a go.
On the shores of the sea …
… in a land where all things grow …
Emmi walked side by side with the Harbinger of Death along the top of a slate cliff, as the stiff-spined flowers rattled in the wind and the sun glistened off the ocean beneath their feet. And as they walked, they talked—of difficult students and annoying teachers, of heads of department who just had to mouth off in staff meetings, of the latest cuts and government objectives, of how she’d always wanted to learn a bit more about woodwork and was hoping to sneak into the workshop after the pupils had gone home to get some tuition from Mrs. Daws; of how the parents blamed the school, the school blamed the parents, and the kids were the only ones who ever blamed themselves. And he’d talked of long stopovers at Dubai and Frankfurt, arrivals, departures, arrivals, departures; of sitting by the beds of dying men and women; of bringing flowers to a school where in a few days’ time a gunman would attack, killing fifteen. Of seeing the parents of those children and whispering, sometimes I am a courtesy, sometimes a warning …
Of knowing that of the twenty-three children who’d died one day in a shooting up in Iowa, it could have been twenty-four, but a mother who had talked with the Harbinger in the hall had decided, when her daughter said she had a cold, to believe her, even though she knew it was probably a lie.
“There is a battle,” he mused, as the sun rolled overhead, “between what people sense to be true, and what they reason. A man comes up to you in the street, and you instinctively feel that something is off, you just know it, you know that he’s … but he’s smartly dressed, and this is a civilised land, and so you shake it off and tell yourself don’t be stupid, don’t be daft, you’re being afraid of nothing. Then he follows you into your home, and you realise now that you didn’t ask him to approach you. You didn’t ask him to pick up the shopping. You didn’t ask him to walk you to the front door. The man who you fired, and who laughed and said you’d be seeing him again, and you shook it off, heat of the moment, and you were also so afraid, and again he comes, he comes and there is …”
Emmi put her hand in Charlie’s, and they walked in silence, the smell of salt, a family of fossil collectors scrambling amongst the black stones on the beaches below.
“Could you have done anything?” she asked, at last. “Could you have saved children at that school?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know the name of the attacker, I don’t know what I’m there for. Once I went to a school in Pakistan, and I thought, oh God, kids, I’m seeing kids, Death is coming and … but then they opened their gates and the girls went to school along with the boys, and they learned the Quran and also they learned the history of the Bible and the Torah, and the teacher said, ‘We are all of us simply people, doing our best,’ and Death was there for that too, and I went before to honour another way, and then in Iowa … I was going to say you never know, but I went to that school, and I think I knew. Sometimes Death comes of his own accord, bringing fire and flood, earthquake and tornado. Sometimes Death comes because people summon him. I go before, and everywhere I go, you know the thing that amazes me?”
“No.”
“Most of the time, no one is surprised to see me. At that school—no one was surprised to see me at all. And nothing changed, until it did.”
They walked together, by the sea.
Chapter 55
Settle down, all right, settle down! Yes, that includes you, Ms. Woods, phone away—phone away! We’re going to be picking up from where we left off last class with human reproduction. We’ve already discussed the formation of eggs and sperm by cellular meiosis. Today we’re going to talk about what happens during sex, fertilisation and the development of the foetus, thank you, you can laugh, of course you can, but I would argue that this is the single most important topic we are going to cover in this class all year. Nothing else you will learn will have such a profound impact on your lives, and for this purpose, we are also going to talk about contraception. Now, to address something that I’ve heard from a few people, and you know who you are, let’s clear one thing up. Having sex standing up does not, I repeat not, protect against pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease …
Chapter 56
“Charlie?”
“Um?”
“If tomorrow you got an appointment in your calendar, if you had to pick up and go … If it was me, if the appointment was me, what would you do?”
“I don’t think …”
“Come on. This is serious.”
A creaking in the bed. A rolling over white sheets. The sound of water through the window, the smell of salt. Curtains billowing in a westerly breeze, catching the sun, light reflecting off white and blue, the ocean a mirror to the sky.
At last: “If I had to visit you. As Harbinger.”
“Yes. What would you do?”
“I’d tell you.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“You’d tell me that I was going to die?”
“It’s not always …”
“Screw that, I know it’s not always, but you’d be okay with it? You’d be fine doing that?”
“Yes.”
“After Syria, after seeing that, you’d be …”
“Sometimes people don’t want to know. It’s better not to. Your lover is hit by a car in the street, the pain of that, the sudden shock, a life in pieces, you don’t want to fear, you don’t want to think, knowing would be … but if I saw your name, I’d know. And maybe there would be nothing to be done, maybe it would be … and telling you would be the cruellest thing in the world, it would be unforgivable, it would be … but sometimes I am a warning. And I would move the sky to protect you. I would risk everything. If knowing is the price of living, then I will pay that price a thousand times. We all die. We don’t have to live our lives fearing it.”
And after:
“Long-term, your job is gonna be a problem.”
“I know.”
“When you started …”
“I did it for a lot of reasons, some good, many bad. I thought it would be an adventure, meet people, see the world, learn something … important. I thought I would be important. I’m not an important person, you see.”
“And now?”
“Now I still think the job is important, even if I’m not.”
“Why? Why is it important that you go before?” He opened his mouth to answer, but she stopped him. “For the living, I know. You go for the living. I get how that matters. But I’m telling you, five years, maybe, maybe that could be a thing, but after …”
“I know. We’ll see. We’ll find something together.”
Chapter 57
A few da
ys later, far from the shores of the sea, Agnes Young cleared her throat.
“So yeah, I didn’t think like, I’d ever be doing anything like this or nothing, but I guess like, things don’t turn out the way you planned. My grandad, he was—well, you’re all here, so I guess you know what he was. He was good. There’s lots of big words you can use as well, like as how he was funny and generous and patient, always patient, even when you just wanted him to start shouting at you ’cos of how that’d be easier, like, easier to be angry with him if he’s angry and you’re just even more pissed that he ain’t—but look, those words, they’re … they’re just like the icing, you know? They’re the words that come from the word that means everything for him. He was good. He was a good man. And there’s lots of people in this world who think they’re good, and I don’t think he was one of them. He was a man who just thought that it was what you did, helping people, caring about people, seeing strangers and giving a damn, and a lot of people say they think about that and don’t really, and that doesn’t make them bad, but he never said it, and always did it, and so he was good.
“He died in the nursing home. He didn’t really want to be there, I think, never wanted to leave his home, but that wasn’t a choice he got to make. He didn’t leave much, but what he left matters more than anything that gets written in no will. He left memories; he left an idea of a way of doing things. He left us all changed. I ain’t who I thought I’d be, and ’cos of him, I think I’m better. He never liked to make a fuss, but he never turned away from the battles that needed to be fought, not ’cos he was angry or scared of losing what he had, but because the fight was good and the cause was right, and because sometimes you gotta fight for the quiet man, the best of ways. A world is ending, and there is no bringing it back, and we carry on. He taught me that, and as I live, and as you remember, he lives too, always, with us.”