The Third Angel

by Alice Hoffman

  “I'll show you something,” Mrs. Ridge said. “You'll understand.”

  They went to the back of the house into the conservatory. The curtains were drawn and the room was darkened, but there were so many windows and a skylit dome that bands of sunlight managed to stream through. There were tall ferns and orchids in majolica pots. Mrs. Ridge opened the glass doors that led outside. There was an enormous garden behind the house, astonishingly large for the city. They stepped out. It was so overgrown it was like entering a jungle. Everything was golden, a jumble of vines and shrubs that should have been cut back. Bramble, ash tree, tufted weeds. And then there were surprising varieties for a London garden: belladonna, thorn-apple, hemlock, black nightshade. These things had never been planted; they had arrived on their own in the past thirty days, ever since the girls had gone. Everything poisonous had flourished.

  “My mourning garden,” Mrs. Ridge said.

  She had lost her daughters and she felt as though she was never going to let this garden be cared for again. It was grief that fed this garden, nothing less. In summer it was green, and now it was gold. In a few weeks it would be black as satin, and then at last it would be white. For months it would stay that way, pure white.

  Frieda stood there in the cool shadows. There was a beautiful herringbone path made of brick and cobblestones. There was a plum tree whose fruit had fallen, left to rot on the ground. There were white roses, overgrown as the weeds, falling into pieces, dropping from twisted black canes. In the branches of an apple tree there was a dove in her nest, roosting out of season. They could hear the chirping of her fledglings, even though it was bad timing, the absolute wrong season. It would be cold before they knew it. They stood there and worried for the birds in the nest, for the coming winter, for all that could and would happen in due time. At that moment Frieda understood all there was to know about love. It was all very clear, as though the truth had written itself in the air. Everything was yellow; everything was moving so fast. Frieda took Mrs. Ridge's hand and stayed outside with her until it grew dark.

  I I I .

  The Rules of Love

  1952

  LUCY GREEN COULDN'T STOP READING. She was a secret reader and the trip across the Atlantic had given her all the time in the world to be secretive. Her stepmother, Charlotte, thought she was unsociable, perhaps even pathological, but Lucy stayed in her tiny stateroom and read Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl three times. Sometimes she felt as though she lived in that attic, that she had Anne Frank's dreams. She was motherless and she had the look that motherless girls sometimes have, uncared for in some deep way, hair unbrushed, socks mismatched.

  She only came out of her stateroom for meals and to walk around the deck with her father in the evenings, during which time they did not speak, except to occasionally mention the shape of the clouds or the color of the sea. The ocean was endless and terrifying and beautiful. There was no need for words when you were on the deck of an ocean liner, when the world seemed so vast, and you were only a speck of flesh and blood.

  Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl had just been published in the States in June and Lucy's stepmother thought her too young for such material; she nixed it and suggested Lucy stick to Nancy Drew. Frankly, Charlotte wasn't much of a reader, and she thought books could be dangerous if placed in the wrong hands. But Lucy was twelve, old enough to read what she pleased; she didn't care what her stepmother thought, or her father, either, for that matter. She didn't care that she was on a ship crossing the Atlantic, and that all of her friends at home in Westchester were jealous that she was going off to a wedding in England while they led their boring lives back home.

  What did she care about adventure and festive occasions? Lucy was the sort of girl who thought a lot about why people were put on earth, and spent her time wondering how she might right the wrongs of the world. She did not believe that sitting at the captain's table and ordering shrimp cocktail would help her along this path. She didn't want to sprawl out on a deck chair or talk to the other children on board, as her stepmother continued to suggest. Lucy was not sociable and she wasn't a great fan of traveling. For one, she had a turtle named Mrs. Henderson that she'd had to leave with the next-door neighbor who didn't even like turtles, and she worried about Mrs. Henderson's well-being. Secondly, on her only other trip away from home she had gone to Miami with her father and Charlotte—whom she was supposed to call Mom, but whom she called nothing at all—and she hadn't enjoyed the trip one bit. She'd been shocked to discover that the golf course her father was so excited about down in Miami did not allow Negroes to play, except for Mondays, caddy day. There were so many wrongs out there in the world; so many people mistreated. Plus, Lucy didn't even believe in marriage as a valid institution, not since her father had married Charlotte at any rate, so going to the wedding of her stepmother's sister seemed pointless, even if it was in London.

  The boat docked in Liverpool, and after they collected their luggage there was a taxi to the train station. Lucy sat on a bench while they waited in the station and continued reading the diary. She was wearing a skirt because her stepmother insisted that slacks were for tomboys, and were totally unacceptable wear for travel. Lucy's father, Ben, had winked at her, but he went along with what Charlotte said, so there Lucy was, uncomfortably dressed in a frumpy skirt. Lucy thought she might be a pervert, actually. She certainly had weird thoughts: That her mother had died because of something she had done wrong. That her stepmother was slipping arsenic into her iced tea, which Lucy poured into potted plants all through the voyage over rather than drink. That her father would be better off without her, his life simpler and easier. That it wasn't possible to fight off all that was wrong in the world and that it took too much to get through each day and probably wasn't worth the effort. Lucy was disappearing and no one even noticed. Every day she was slipping farther away.

  “You doing all right?” Lucy's father asked in the train station.

  It was sooty and hot. The beginning of August. Ben Green was a lawyer and a Democrat and he said he was glad to leave the States for a month because Eisenhower and Nixon had just gotten the Republican nomination. He'd prefer to be standing in a sweltering train station in Liverpool, hauling around his wife and daughter's luggage, than forced to read the New York Times back in Westchester and be hit with the news that charted Ike's progress.

  “I'd rather be home,” Lucy said. “Anne Frank didn't go outside for over two years. She didn't have to travel to know about people. She understood things from the inside out. She wanted to be a writer.”

  “The whole world wants to be a writer,” Ben Green said. He'd written a novel at college and thrown it in the trash. “You'll be the prettiest girl at the wedding.”

  “Unlikely.” Lucy kept reading, but she felt herself blush. She knew she wasn't pretty. She noticed that one of her socks was brown and the other was gray. She crossed one foot over the other to hide her mistake.

  Her father kissed the top of her head, and then it was time to get on the train. They had their own compartment, which was sweltering and dim. Lucy curled up with her book. She pretended she was at home.

  “She'll get eyestrain reading in the dark,” Charlotte said to Lucy's father when they were on their way.

  Despite her reading, Lucy was eavesdropping. She was very good at it.

  “Leave her be,” Ben said. “She's in mourning.”

  That was when Lucy realized that she was. Even though her mother had been gone for two years, she was still in mourning. There was no point trying to escape that. Whenever she stopped reading, she started to think about her mother. Sometimes she imagined the last day they had spent together, the most perfect day in the world. They had gone for a walk in Central Park and they'd seen something no one ever saw in New York City. A blue heron in a pond in the Ramble, the wildest part of the park, filled with brambles and bird nests. Since that time, nothing had seemed interesting or worth paying attention to. Except for books.

  Lucy
closed her eyes and slept all the way to London. It was pitch-black and very humid when they got there. They gathered their luggage and got off the train with the rest of the crowd. And then something unexpected happened. As Lucy stared up at the chaos of Euston Station, she felt the way some people did when they fell in love. London had won her over despite herself. She actually felt a quickening of her blood. Outside it was even better—darker and more bustling. The streetlights were yellow and Lucy felt she was in a dream. She could vanish into the hustle of London and yet still be herself. There were probably thousands—no, millions—of books she hadn't yet read in this city. There were bookshops and libraries and bookstalls and publishers and guided tours of places where writers had made up whole other worlds out of nothing but words. Every person who passed by was most likely a writer, or at the very least, a story waiting to be told. Lucy wanted to visit each bookstore; she wanted to walk through the streets, to look into people's faces and guess what had happened to them. The way that Lucy felt surprised her. It shocked her, actually. It had been a very long time since she'd wanted anything.

  They took a taxi and went to their hotel. Charlotte's entire family would be staying at the Lion Park, and Charlotte was aggravated because they were the last of the Evans wedding party to arrive. She blamed bad luck and Lucy's dawdling. Plus this was not the hotel she would have chosen; it was plain and homey and that was not Charlotte's style. Lucy fully expected to hate it as well, but first she had fallen for Euston Station and now she was mad for their hotel. Everything was so unpredictable and charming. The lobby looked out onto a garden in which there was a stone lion rumored to have been stolen by a knight during the Crusades. The statue was faintly mossy and green and surrounded by bluestones. The lobby itself was even better. There was rose-covered wallpaper and fresh white woodwork. Best of all, there was actually a huge rabbit sitting behind the front desk. Lucy loved London.

  “Is that real?” she asked Dorey Jenkins, the girl who was the night clerk. The rabbit was as big as an extra-large Persian cat. It had long white hair.

  “Oh, yeah,” Dorey said. She turned to the rabbit. “Show us your bunny hop, Millie.” The rabbit came hopping over and Dorey gave her a bit of lettuce kept in a drawer along with the paper clips and rubber bands. “She's our mascot. She wandered in off the street one day. We think she found her way over from the park, but now she lives under the desk.”

  “If you followed her she'd probably lead you to another dimension in space and time, and you'd be just like Alice,” Lucy said. “You'd see worlds of wonder. You'd have to struggle to get back.”

  “Nah, she'd lead me straight to the bin in the kitchen. She likes to look for potato peelings. She's crazy about them. And she likes to eat wallpaper as well, which gets her into trouble.”

  “I don't mind trouble.” Lucy felt excited and alive just being in London.

  “There you are,” Dorey said warmly. “You and Millie are two of a kind.”

  LUCY DIDN'T WANT to be traveling with her father and Charlotte, but at least she had her own room on the seventh floor. It was stuffy, with a vanity right there in a bureau beside the bed, and there was a bathtub instead of a shower, but at long last she had some privacy and could go more than ten minutes without someone getting in her business, informing her that everything she did was wrong. As if she didn't know that.

  Lucy unpacked her clothes, washed up, and read the diary until she fell asleep. She liked the way London sounded, traffic and birdsongs both. The noise put her to sleep and when she dreamed she dreamed she was following a rabbit down a hallway. Because her internal clock was off, Lucy woke up early, before she could get to the end of the hall in her dream. When she woke Lucy felt shortchanged, the way she would if she'd lost a book before she'd gotten to the end of the story. Maybe she'd dream that same dream some other time and find out what happened. She got dressed and went downstairs to the restaurant. It wasn't officially open, but the cook said he'd make her tea and toast, so Lucy sat down and read from the diary. A good-looking man came in and glanced around.

  “This place is dead,” he said.

  He had a New York accent and great Irish looks, dark hair and light eyes. From then on, Lucy always preferred men with that coloring. He had an incredible smile, as well; even someone who was twelve could tell that.

  “Seems like you're the only living person in London,” the man said. “Mind if I sit down?”

  Lucy nodded. She kept reading. She didn't mind being rude when she needed to be.

  “Anne Frank,” the man mused. “I saw her house in Amsterdam.”

  Lucy put down her book. “No you didn't. You're just saying that.”

  “Swear to God.” The man held up his hand as though he was a Boy Scout. “I've been traveling around and I was there last week. Stood outside and said a prayer.”

  “Really?” Lucy said, not quite believing him.

  Her tea and toast came. She put marmalade on it, but when she took a bite, she wasn't sure whether or not she liked it. It was bitter, but maybe she'd get used to bitter things. She was somewhat embarrassed to be chewing in front of the man who'd sat down across from her. Thankfully the handsome man was hungry, too; he ordered eggs and bacon.

  “Give me three sunny-side up,” he said. “Make that four.”

  “Tea and toast,” the cook offered. “We're not open yet, you may have noticed if you've bothered to look around.”

  “Great. Fine. Make it toast. Give me anything. Jesus, you'd think I was asking for a gourmet meal.” The man lit a cigarette. Lucky Strike. “So what are you doing in London?”

  “I'm here for a wedding, not that I believe in marriage.”

  “Ah. Marriage.”

  “It's a load of crap actually,” Lucy said.

  She raised her chin, expecting him to react the way most adults did and tell her that girls with foul mouths were unattractive, but he didn't.

  “Utter crap most of the time,” he agreed. “But not always.” The man stuck out his hand. “Michael,” he introduced himself.

  “Lucy.”

  “I see we have something in common, Lucy. We're not big believers in things.”

  “Why should we be?” Lucy said.

  “Love exists,” Michael informed her. “Believe it or not.”

  “Not.” Lucy had finished her tea and toast just as Michael's order arrived. She sat there anyway and watched him refuse the marmalade. Despite their differing opinions on love, they were quite alike in many ways.

  “Love brought me all the way from New York. Through Paris, through Amsterdam, past Anne Frank's house, right to here.”

  “My stepmother brought me here,” Lucy said. “I could be home reading. Instead I have to go to some stupid wedding.”

  “What makes it stupid?” He sounded genuinely interested. Grown-ups were usually bored with a child's opinion, but Michael was different.

  “I don't even know the people involved,” Lucy explained. “It's my stepmother's sister, Bryn. I hope for her sake that they're nothing alike.”

  Michael grinned. He nodded to the book on the table. “That's the diary Anne Frank wrote?” When Lucy said yes, he asked if he could borrow it. Lucy didn't usually like to lend books; people never returned them and besides, she'd gotten used to reading the diary all through the day.

  “Unless you don't trust me,” Michael said.

  Lucy looked up at him. It wasn't easy to say no to him.

  “You'll give it back?” she asked.

  Michael crossed his heart with his hand, making an X.

  “Hope to die,” he promised.

  LUCY WAS A little lost without her book. She stood at the front desk and asked the day clerk if she could see the rabbit. But the day clerk was a middle-aged man who was studying accounting and disliked children. He was nothing like Dorey Jenkins.

  “This is a place of business,” he told Lucy.

  She spied the rabbit in a wire hutch in the rear office. For some reason that made her feel like cr
ying. She wandered into the courtyard and sat on the base of the lion. The stone smelled damp and mossy.

  “That is a statue, not a bench,” the day clerk called.

  Lucy went through the lobby, out onto the street, where she asked a woman who looked like a grandmother how to get to the nearest park. She was directed to Hyde Park, only a few blocks away, and when she arrived she was shocked by how enormous it was. There were probably hundreds of rabbits living in the hedges. Her mother had always told her when in doubt about a city, visit a park.

  On the trip over, Lucy had met a woman who practiced fortune-telling. She was the maid who cleaned the staterooms, and she told Lucy that she'd been fortunate enough to be born in the year of the rabbit in the Chinese calendar; so maybe she was lucky, if she could ever make herself believe in anything as stupid as luck. Now it was the year of the dragon, which probably meant anything could happen. As she walked through Hyde Park, Lucy had the same weightless feeling she'd had in Euston Station. She was still in love with London. She walked on until she stumbled upon the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens. Then she sat down in the grass. It was a lovely place to be. For the first time in two years she was without a book, and that was very strange indeed. But her mother had been right; parks revealed the inside of a city, the greenest, sweetest piece.

  There were two young women staring at Lucy and clearly talking about her. The grass was perfect and it didn't even smell like a city. Every once in a while it was possible to hear the drone of a bus in the outside world, but that was it. The young women were still talking about her.

  “Don't be rude,” Lucy called. They were tall blondes who looked very much alike; they reminded Lucy of swans, with their long necks and their pale hair. She thought perhaps there was a rule about not sitting on the grass, or she had crossed onto private property. Or maybe they just didn't like Americans. “Come and talk to me if you have something to say.”