The Messenger

by Monica Dickens

  ‘What’s wrong with you, Rose?’

  ‘I don’t know …’

  ‘Just adolescence,’ her father said drily, and Rose yelled, ‘Oh – you don’t understand!’ and flung out of the room, stamped through the kitchen and out of the back door, running through the grass and out of the gate into the dark wood. On the damp path, where the tree trunks were smooth and calmly rooted, and the leaves carried on their business with the sky far above, she slowed and cooled down. She walked to the edge of the wood and out on to the sunlit moor, wandering about in an unfamiliar way. She never took walks by herself. She hiked across the moor to the castle ruins with the school campers, or went for bicycle rides with friends, or walked down to the village shops or the beach or the bus stop, always with a purpose. But now she pushed up through the bushes and over the wall and across the pasture to walk on towards the open moor in no particular direction, following a sheep track that skirted rocks and gorse bushes and ambled about, in the timeless way of sheep.

  Rose felt better. The anger was gone. She began to feel like herself, and that same tune came into her head to keep time with her feet, that lilting tune that was both familiar and strange, with words that were not words, but sounds that beat out a rhythm like a horse on the turf, and then the descending notes, a long, powerful snort into the wind.

  There were no riders in sight. No ponies on this part of the moor, no free horses grazing, but the air seemed full of the heady scent of a horse, and her heart quickened to the idea that she might see that marvellous grey horse again, the most beautiful horse in the world. As she walked on smiling, the path became unfamiliar. It straightened out, and there were no sheep droppings, or marks of the hard little hoofs in wet places. The hills ahead of her were the wrong shape. If she could see that pointed one with the streamer of cloud coming off the top, she ought to be nearly at the lake. Where was it? Where was she? Better turn back before she got lost, back to the hotel to be her old self and start doing some work. Lay tables, start the salad.

  The path turned, and a huge rock like a very large man was ahead of her, dark grey, glistening on its shoulders as if it were raining. Beyond it was a thicket of untidy trees, growing close together so that it was hard to find the path through the undergrowth. She wanted to turn back, but she had to push on through the trees, and out of them into a sudden swirling mist.

  She could not see anything in front of her, she could not see the path, could not even feel the path when she put a cautious foot forward. The tune came again into her head, and somewhere before her and below, as if the ground dropped away, a faint light began to glow and pulsate in the mist.

  Marsh gas. She knew about that. A marsh was no place to be when you could not even see the ground under your feet. She turned and groped back to where the path led away over the rising and falling moorland, already in the distance showing its half tones of reds and mauves and grey-blues, as the sun went down. How strange to run into such a sudden dense pocket of mist. Curiosity made her turn back to the looming giant rock and walk round it again, and through the trees. There was no mist, no marsh, no drop in the ground, only the gravel at the edge of the small lake they called Noah’s Bowl, with a few small sea birds that had come inland to sit on the quiet grey water.

  Chapter Four

  Mr Vingo spent most of the time in his room, but came down to the dining-room for meals.

  ‘You looked flushed,’ he told Rose, as she put his soup down on to the small table where he sat in the corner.

  ‘I went for a walk.’

  He had rather long and untidy black hair, which Mrs Ardis said he dyed, but Rose could see that the roots were just as dark at the parting. Being a waitress made you very familiar with the tops of people’s heads.

  ‘Where did you walk?’

  ‘Up on the moor. I went to the lake.’

  ‘You must have been running.’ With his soup spoon raised, he looked up at her and lifted a curved black eyebrow:

  ‘I was.’

  Almost, she told him about the mysterious galloping grey horse, and how she had run back along the winding sheep track, away from the awesome rock and the sudden inexplicable mist that had blotted out Noah’s Bowl, but she had all the other carrot soups to hand round from the hatch between the dining-room and pantry, where her mother was ladling out.

  When she came back to the corner to take Mr Vingo’s soup bowl and put down his shepherd’s pie, he said, ‘The lake on the moor? I must go there some time,’ as if the conversation had not been interrupted.

  ‘Everyone does. Hikers, riders, campers. Sometimes people come with spades and dig bits of it up because they want to find some more ruins of the castle that was there once – three or four hundred years ago, I think it was.’

  ‘Three hundred, three thousand, three hours ago … time makes no difference.’

  ‘Why?’ Rose didn’t care for people talking in riddles.

  Mr Vingo wheezed, as he did when he did not want to say any more, and the large whites of his eyes bulged as if he was going to choke, but he picked up his fork and started to shovel in the potato part of the shepherd’s pie.

  Rose liked him all right, because he talked to her as if she was really there, which was more than some people did when you were waiting on them at meals, or bringing up their early morning tea.

  She was not supposed to take tea up to the male guests, but Hilda thought Mr Vingo didn’t count. If Rose knocked on the door of the turret room, he would call out, ‘Greetings, Rose of all the world,’ knowing it was her from her tread on the winding stair. Sometimes as she put the tray down outside the door, she could hear him huffing and puffing to get up, and crashing about in the bed that sloped towards the middle of the floor. Sometimes he would already be up and playing the piano. She would stand outside and listen, even if she was late for school, until he finished on a running chord and called out, ‘How do you like that, Rose of all roses?’ knowing she was still there.

  If the sun was out, he might sit on the verandah with his stomach spreading above his trousers like a large egg in an egg cup, and he sometimes went out for a walk in the rain, which he liked. Later that week, Rose overtook him on her way back from the shops in the village. He was stumping along in his tight grey coat, with his blue rain hat turned up all round.

  ‘Let me help you.’ He turned down the brim of his hat to let the water out, then turned it up again and took one of her shopping bags.

  ‘Thanks. I had to pick up some extra stuff. More people are coming for the weekend.’

  ‘They must like crisps then.’ Mr Vingo looked into the bag.

  Rose giggled. ‘Well – it’s this family who come here. They have a young son Harry, and Ben who’s a bit older than me.’

  ‘I understand.’

  But he couldn’t, couldn’t possibly understand how it felt to know that the Kellys were coming.

  ‘Don’t go too fast.’ He panted beside her, with his hair straggling slickly down the sides of his face and his feet waddling outwards, and once again she almost confided in him, almost told him that she was on the hop because Ben was coming.

  When the Kellys arrived, Rose dodged into the kitchen, because she did not want to greet them in the hall if Ben was not going to notice her. Emptying the dishwasher, she heard Mr Kelly’s slow boom and Mrs Kelly’s high rattling voice, and as they went up the stairs, with Harry whining, ‘It’s too heavy!’ she heard Ben ask, ‘Where’s Rose?’

  Her mother must have told him, because the swing door of the kitchen opened and he put in his head, nut-coloured curls cropped surprisingly short this year, and said, ‘Hullo!’ brightly to Rose and Hilda, but took his head out again before Rose could say anything.

  But he did notice her this year. Incredibly, he dragged her out to walk on the sand dunes, and climbed the slopes of hollows and rolled down in the sand, as if he did not care about trying to be grown up.

  When they stood on a tufted crest to watch the edge of the quiet sea endlessly creeping,
retreating on the stony beach and he asked her, ‘How’s it going?’, she wanted to tell him about the strange upheavals in her normally dull and predictable life, but she shrugged and said, ‘Oh – same old thing.’

  ‘I heard you did something brave.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You put out a fire.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Hilda.’ Guests were not suppose to go into the kitchen, but Ben liked to go in and chat to Hilda or Jim or whoever was working back there. He could be funny and charming, and could get cake or an apple any time he wanted.

  ‘Oh, that.’ Rose scowled. ‘It was only a tiny fire.’ At the time it had seemed like a conflagration, but it couldn’t have been. ‘It was nothing.’

  Nothing compared to the dramas Ben unfolded about his school, and being in the athletics team as a long distance runner, which was why he had cut his hair, for streamlining, and how this person had been sent down for drugs and that one for alcohol, and … He pulled up Rose’s hand to look at her giant watch, which told the date as well as the time.

  ‘Half past Easter! Gotta go. I’m late.’

  With Ben, you didn’t ask, ‘What for?’, and he didn’t tell you. He ran away without waiting for her, bounding up and down over the shallow dunes like an antelope.

  On Sunday afternoon, Ben’s mother, who talked to everybody, whether they wanted it or not, persuaded Mr Vingo to play his piano for some of the guests.

  ‘Going to the concert?’

  After serving lunches and helping to clear, Rose had homework. Her father had roused her from a daydream, staring out of the sitting-room window down the long back garden and the wood.

  ‘Are you?’ she asked.

  ‘Not I.’ He prided himself of not being a joiner.

  ‘Nor me. I’ve got to do this damn stuff.’

  ‘You weren’t working.’

  ‘I was thinking.’

  ‘Don’t scowl. You’ll fix those lines on your forehead. Go on. This might help your piano lessons.’

  ‘Nothing could help them.’

  But Ben, who was the only customer who ventured into their family rooms without being invited, put his head round the door and said, ‘Come on, Rose,’ so she went.

  Half a dozen people were crowded into the turret room, its size already reduced by Mr Vingo and the little upright piano, which was made of some veined orange-coloured wood, and stood across one curve of the wall under a curving window. They sat on chairs and the bed and the carpet, which never stayed flat because of the slope. Rose sat on the floor by the door, in case she wanted to sneak out.

  Mr Vingo sat with his back to them on the round piano stool, his buttocks overflowing it on each side, the ends of his hair hanging over the neck of his grey sweater, one side of his shirt collar out, one side in. He coughed a bit, cracked the knuckles of his thick fingers, then swirled the creaking stool round to face his audience shyly.

  ‘What do you want me to play?’ He looked as if he regretted it already. His big wet eyes were sad, and his broad pale face had a nervous twitch.

  ‘Some golden oldies,’ Mrs Frolich wanted. She and Mr Frolich went in for ballroom dancing contests in sequinned tulle and a cutaway coat.

  ‘Ragtime.’ Ben beat a rhythm on his knees.

  ‘No, no, no.’ Mrs Kelly jumped up from the bed and took over the audience. ‘The whole point of this dear little gathering is that Mr Vingo is going to play us some of his own work.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘What you’re working on now you promised come along now you know you did now don’t say no there’s a good man.’ She ran her sentences together, so that you could not get a word in.

  Mr Vingo raised his massive head and looked round the room seriously. ‘I’m setting an old legend to music, you see. It’s the story of a great happening hundreds of years ago, a heroic deed that saved a lot of poor and innocent people from the tyranny of evil and a ghastly death.’

  ‘Oh it’s too moving the Middle Ages I expect you mean we did them at school centuries ago evil and violence were rife you talk about dictators they had them then and God knows the common people needed a hero to save them.’

  Mrs Kelly nodded to encourage him and sparkled her eyes. She was not really a silly woman, it was just that she had to talk.

  Mr Vingo plodded on solemnly. ‘The hero was a horse.’ Rose looked at him. ‘The music is called The Ballad of the Great Grey Horse. An immortal creature of grace and nobility, crusading against evil and sorrow by the force of his beauty and strength. His peaceable – peaceable –’

  As he leaned foward to gasp, the stool tipped on the sloping floor, but he righted it and swung away from them to the piano and crashed out some mighty chords. Mrs Kelly opened her mouth to speak, Ben said, ‘Mother …’ warningly, and Mr Vingo began to play.

  Rose was tired. She had got up early to ride. She had helped to serve thirteen lunches and lost the fight with the algebra. The music sent her off, leaning against the wall, with her head dropped and her short hair swinging forward. Then all of a sudden she was awake, because the tune from the moor was in her head, was in this room, was in Mr Vingo’s fingers, as he played it very sweetly and lovingly on his little marmalade piano.

  ‘I know that tune,’ Rose said abruptly.

  ‘Ssh!’ From Mrs Kelly, of all people.

  Mr Vingo finished the tune on its little run upwards, and then dropped it down to the low reverberating drum notes of the base.

  ‘I know that tune,’ Rose said again stubbornly.

  ‘You couldn’t,’ Mr Vingo said without turning round. ‘I only wrote it this morning.’

  He started the tune again – la da da … da-dle dee, leaping up like a flute.

  Rose scrambled to her feet and went out of the room. As she ran down the turning stair, the door of the room opened above her, and her mother called, ‘Rose – what’s the matter?’

  She ran on, along the corridor, down the back stairs, through the scullery and out of the back door, running, running into the wood where the scaly bark of the fir trees was like black crocodile hide, and the young oaks bent their branches like curving forearms beckoning – ‘Come on!’

  She jumped over roots and through puddles. At the edge of the wood she stopped, panting, and wiped the mud off her shoes on the grass. Then through the bushes and over the wall to cross the broad pasture. A small flock of sheep moved closer together and turned towards her, with a blank Miss Mumford stare. She made a face at them and went under the wire at the gap in the top wall and up the slope to the open country, running desperately.

  As she ran, the music was still in her head, the flute-like notes of Mr Vingo’s piano keeping time with her pounding feet. And all the time there was fear – why didn’t she turn and go home? – the fear that all too soon the winding sheep track her feet so obediently followed would straighten out into the lonely unknown path of trodden grass, the far off hills would change shape, and over the next rise, the great rock would suddenly be there, shining with damp. Up a steep slope, she crawled on her hands and knees, and – oh! As her head went over the top, there it was before her.

  She knew she had to go on. She knew that as she rounded the bulk of the rock and found the path through the trees, the ground would disappear beneath her, her feet would disappear as she groped her way downhill, with the mist enclosing her. Descending, she gradually walked out of the mist into brightness, and saw that she was halfway down the side of a narrow valley. A river ran at the bottom between banks of greener grass. On the other side, there was a large outcropping of flat rocks, jutting out from the valley wall like a platform. As she paused to gasp for breath, the great grey horse appeared, bounding on to the rock with a clatter of hoofs to stand there with one foot raised, head up, grey mane blowing. Because of the brightness of the sun, which shone low over the edge of the valley, his coat was luminous, like – like ice on fire, a sort of pearly grey, aglow. His tail was a silver froth, like swift-running water leaping out between t
wo boulders.

  Had he got loose from some marvellous stable she did not know existed? What was she supposed to do? Was he a wild horse that she must catch and possess and tame? Had he seen her? With his ears curved forward like scimitars, he stared down the valley past scattered farm villages and cottages towards the coast, where, far away, a huddle of white shacks she had never seen before was crouched together, and tiny boats lay on the sunlit sea.

  With a swing of his graceful neck he turned his head and lowered it to look at Rose. He snorted gently, and she went on towards him.

  At the bottom of the valley, there was a primitive sort of bridge over the river, great mossy stones supporting rough wooden planks without a handrail. Rose stepped out on to the bridge with her eyes fixed on the horse, so as not to look down. In the middle, one of the planks was loose and slippery, and there were rotten holes in it. She had to look down, and saw the water shouldering its way past the stone pillars, dragging their bright green moss out into the current like floating hair.

  Rose stood still in midstream, but it would be as bad to go back as to go forward, so she jumped over a gap in the plank, jumped down to the grass and scrambled up on the other side. Standing below him, she could see his great size, and his hide pulsing and glowing as he breathed in the sunlight. His hoofs on the rock above her were enormous, striped ivory white and slate below the delicate pasterns and strong dark grey legs. He lifted a front foot and pawed impatiently, scattering lichen from the rock.

  She did not want to be below those hoofs, so she moved to the left and went up among a jumble of small rocks to try to approach him from the side. If she could get a hand on him, grasp his long mane, she could pull off her belt and put it round his neck, somehow lead him down and back across the valley. That was what she must be supposed to do. As she came level with him, small against his size, he turned to face her, which was a good thing, because she would not have wanted to approach those powerful quarters from behind.

  The low sun was very strong, blazing on his shoulder as she reached out a hand to touch him. He snorted and stamped and tossed his elegant head, and she drew back in fear from his dapple coat which seemed both white hot and coal black, and from his large, deep grey eye, in which her dizzied senses seemed to see reflections of mountains, water, strange shapes of people moving …