The Messenger

by Monica Dickens

  They went to the triangular side verandah, which was usually empty after the early morning sun had left it. Rose climbed up over the rail, and tried to help him over, but he got stuck with one leg half over, and she thought he was going to have a heart attack, so she had to push him back down, and he went round into the hotel and came back to her through the glass door.

  ‘Not now, Colin.’ He was pursued through the door by a tiny boy in long shorts, who had taken to him because he carried toffees. Colin, who could barely talk, babbled something that ended in ‘Stavingo?’ Which was what he called Mr Vingo.

  ‘Run along, there’s a good chap.’ But the child had climbed securely into one of the basket chairs, so he gave him a toffee and let him stay. ‘Because he can’t understand, and if he could, he can’t talk about it.’

  Breathlessly, Rose told him something about the latest journeys she had taken through time, and the extraordinary things she had discovered.

  ‘You’re listening to me now, Mr Vingo. Last time, you went all weird and distant. You wouldn’t listen. I couldn’t reach you.’

  (Couldn’t reach you … That was what the Master had said in the bedroom, and what Beth had said to Ronald. ‘Why can’t I reach you?’)

  ‘Sorry. Clumsy ass, I was, but I knew you had to do it by yourself. You thought you had all the clues, but you didn’t, of course. You had to go back and find more. And you did, my trusty Rose of all roses.’

  ‘O of aw oses,’ from Colin.

  ‘I had to,’ Rose said. ‘Look – with Favour, you don’t choose. For a hero of peace, he can be dreadfully violent.’

  ‘Don’t forget he was a war horse once. He has to be strong. What power would he have, if he didn’t make the sternest demands on his messengers?’

  ‘That’s another thing.’ Rose frowned. ‘I met this man well, boy really – who pretended he was one of us. He wasn’t special in any way, except specially sort of a failure. He couldn’t be a messenger.’

  ‘Doesn’t follow.’ Mr Vingo leaned back in the wicker chair, and Colin came and climbed with difficulty into what would have been his lap if he had one, and started going through his pockets. ‘I mean, look at Silly Hugh. He was no great shakes. Look at Leo of Pilot Rock, who used to save ships at sea from the phantom light that lured them on to the shoals. He was a hunchback, they say, with a purple lump on the side of his head. Not exactly prepossessing. Look at me, for that matter.’

  She looked at him. ‘But when you were thirteen …’

  ‘I could have helped you then. Now you stand alone. You too, Colin. Get down, you’re a crook.’

  Colin tumbled off his lap, squeezed between two railings and fell on to the grass.

  ‘Let’s see,’ Mr Vingo went on. ‘Going backwards from the birthday party, what have we got? Something wrong with cupboard. What? House brings out worst in people. Why? Cupboard haunted by ghost of man hanging. Why? Because man did hang self. Why? Because house soured his marriage. Why? Because something dreadful happened there, connected with jacket in cupboard.’

  ‘Ronald,’ Rose said. ‘What do you think he did to poor Beth? Why didn’t he believe her? I’m so afraid of what happened. I could kill that creep Lilian for – my God, Stavingo, do you suppose he killed her? The stain. The stain that won’t come out. Blood.’ She had thought that many times.

  ‘There’s only one way to find out.’

  ‘I’ve got to get back, haven’t I?’ Rose bit on a fingernail. ‘I’ve got to find out the truth, and stop the annexe from destroying any more people with its history of unhappiness. But what could I do? What’s done is done. It’s too late.’

  ‘Never too late to restore love. Don’t you see – don’t you see – that this is the horse’s glorious mission for you?’

  A thrill went through her, as if this were the beginning of the adventure, not the end.

  ‘What will I do?’

  ‘Who can say? You’ll know when you get there. You have to go back.’

  ‘Play the piano for me then, Stavingo. Help me to find the horse.’

  ‘I can’t play,’ Mr Vingo said. ‘I cut my finger.’ He held up a fat bandage, making a child’s face for sympathy. Rose wouldn’t give him any. He had suddenly gone distant and unreachable again, and the bandage might be a fake.

  She got Joyce to let her take Moonlight out alone again, and tried to find the path to the rock. She roamed the moor on foot, but without the tune she could not find the way to the valley. She went into the scullery while the dishwasher was running, and watched the television to see if someone would speak to her. She stood on the lawn on the place where the summer house had been, clenching her teeth and her fists.

  ‘Patience.’ Mr Vingo leaned out of the turret window, like Rapunzel. ‘Wait.’

  Chapter Twelve

  It was hard to give her mind to anything, when all the time her ears were half listening for the call of the grey horse. Sometimes she longed for it. Sometimes she dreaded it. What terrible violence might she have to see? Even if she knew what to do, how could she force Lilian to do it? What happened to messengers who failed?

  Wait. Patience.

  It was better when Martin and Leonora came back to stay. Rose spent as much time with them as she could, partly because she liked being with them, partly to keep watch for anything bad the annexe house might do to them.

  Martin came in and out of the hotel through the back door, and Jim Fisher made a board ramp up the steps to the french window of the annexe lounge, so that Leonora could push his chair from the garden to the house.

  Watching him come out, Rose saw him spin the outer wheels with his powerful arms and whizz down the ramp by himself, with Leonora running anxiously behind. When he stopped safely in the grass, Leonora turned a perfect cartwheel, to show she could still do it. Sometimes she practised, holding on to a fence rail and moving her legs and body in the barre exercises. Sometimes she danced for him in a lavender-coloured leotard, in and out of the apple trees, while he sat in his chair and watched her, his eyes absorbed, smiling his easy, relaxed smile. They were very much in love.

  Rose was worried all the time about them being in the haunted room, for fear their happiness and trust in each other might be spoiled. And yet, could it be a good thing? ‘To restore love,’ Mr Vingo had said. Was it possible that by Martin and Leonora being in the house, their love might help to bring some peace to all the sadness and cruelties of a hundred years?

  Leonora thought Rose was very good-looking. She was the first person who had ever said that, except Mollie, and mothers didn’t count because they said that anyway.

  She insisted on giving Rose a white sun dress with a low square neck and full skirt. When Rose tried it on after the hem was shortened, Leonora brought her Polaroid camera out to the garden to take a picture. Rose sat on the tree stump by Martin’s chair, with the dress spread out round her.

  As the picture began to develop, you could see a very large white blur at the side of the wheelchair.

  ‘I over-exposed it,’ Leonora said, but Rose caught her breath and took the picture and turned away with it, because she could see that the developing image was the grey horse, lying proudly but calmly on the grass by the wheelchair, with his tail fanned out behind him.

  If only Martin could step on to Favour’s back and ride! Then this image was gone as the picture developed more clearly, and there was only Rose, scowling self-consciously in her unfamiliar white dress.

  But she had seen. The message was clear. So it’s now, she said silently to Favour. All right. I’m ready.

  Rose got up. ‘Going to work?’ Leonora asked. She was never one of the people who said, ‘You’re doing too much,’ or, ‘Don’t work too hard.’ Dancers knew about hard work, day after day, and taking care of Martin must be just as hard, day after day.

  ‘Actually, I’ve got the afternoon off. I thought I’d go up on the moor for a bit.’ Rose shifted from foot to foot, keyed up, anxious to be off now that the time was here.

&nbs
p; ‘We’ll come with you.’ Martin was leaning back with his face to the sun, eyes closed, smiling. He always looked more peaceful and amiable than most people who have no pain and the use of all their limbs.

  ‘I think I’ll stay here,’ Leonora said. ‘I’m a bit tired.’

  His eyes opened at once and his face was serious. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Of course. Don’t be silly. I just feel I should stay here. You go with Rose, if she’ll take you.’

  ‘I’d love that.’ Martin looked genuinely pleased, so Rose couldn’t say no, although she was aching to go to the valley. But perhaps she could go there with Martin. Ben had not been able to see it, but perhaps because the horse lay by his chair for a moment, it meant that Martin could. ‘Where shall we go, Rose?’

  ‘Wherever we want.’

  They went through the hotel garden to the wood. By pushing the outer wheels with his strong arms, Martin could move the wheelchair over level ground as fast as Rose could walk. Some of the way, she had to push him, over tree roots and round muddy patches. When they got to the slope beyond the wood, she knew she could never get him up there through the long grass and the bushes, and there was no gate in the wall beyond. They turned along the gravel lane to go round through the farmyard and up the cart track, to the moor on the other side of the walled pasture. There was no one about in the farmyard, except a chained dog who barked at the wheelchair.

  Out on the moor, Martin noticed everything, a lark high up, the shapes of clouds, the different colours of the long grass when the wind ran through it, the way two poplars by a stream turned their leaves inside out, silver to green, green to silver, the horseshoe marks of hoofs on the turf.

  He stopped. ‘Is this where you ride?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Think of me when you do. God!’ He threw back his head and for a moment his amiable face was clenched as if in pain. ‘If I could ever be on a horse again, I’d die happy.’

  If only she could take him with her on Favour. She almost began to tell him what it was like to ride into the wind on the powerful grey horse, but suddenly she heard the beckoning notes of the tune, calling her to hurry.

  ‘Are you tired?’ she asked Martin.

  ‘A bit. Let’s stop here and enjoy the sun and the view.’

  ‘I need to run. You stay here and I’ll be right back.’

  As she ran ahead, she looked back once and saw that he was not looking at the far off hills, but down at the ground where the hoof tracks were.

  When she came to the giant rock and pushed through the undergrowth of the trees to the valley, Rose was no longer afraid. She felt strong. She dropped confidently down through the mist. The demon shapes receded, and she was quickly out into the light and across the bridge and scrambling fast up to the horse, and swiftly on to his back and away.

  The wind shrieked past her, and its voice became a woman’s voice, screaming, crying hysterically.

  Lilian and Rose were in the kitchen doorway, trembling with fear. Lilian wanted to turn and run upstairs and bury her head under the bedclothes, but Rose grabbed her from within and made her stay.

  Beth had run into the kitchen, holding the fisherman’s jacket, and Ronald had followed her, still blazing with fury.

  ‘But it’s lies,’ Beth kept sobbing, ‘all lies. There’s no one but you – I swear – Oh, why can’t I make you see? I’m so stupid …’ The same words Rose had used, and had heard Felicity use when she burned the toast, in the same spot. ‘You must believe me!’

  He would not listen, and Beth could hardly speak. She was half collapsed against the sink, weeping with jagged, rending sobs. The pug went towards her, and her husband kicked it away savagely back across the room. He was like a madman. Against he told Lilian to get out. Again Rose forced her to stay, and with a giant effort of will she made Lilian step forward in the green dress puffed out with petticoats.

  ‘Have mercy, Uncle!’ she begged in her high, childish voice.

  ‘Get away from me. Get back!’ he raged at poor terrified Lilian, striking her roughly on the arm and knocking her away. She could only watch in horror as he snatched up a kitchen knife and stabbed threateningly at the jacket. Weeping hysterically, Beth tried to get to the back door, but he was there before her. She was trapped against the wall under the window, cringing, pleading with him.

  She was standing in the very place where Rose knew the stain was on the floor, the blood persisting for a hundred years. Oh God – don’t let it happen! He lunged again at the jacket. Beth tried to snatch it away, the knife went into her breast, and she fell backward by the window.

  ‘I’ve killed her!’ Ronald gave a crazed, unearthly scream and rushed outside.

  Dying, Beth cried to Lilian, ‘Help me!’ but Lilian had fallen to the floor in a faint. ‘Help me!’ Through the dizzying blackness in which she had fallen, Rose clearly heard Leonora’s voice. Beth’s agonized cries were Leonora’s. ‘Help me! Help me!’

  A rush of wind swept over Rose, and with the wind, in a thunder of hoofs, came the great horse Favour.

  ‘Help me!’ Leonora’s voice was fainter.

  ‘I’m coming!’ Rose cried. The white glow of the horse’s energy was all about her. She was caught up somehow, and then she was on his back. The strong arch of his neck rose in front of her. His mane streamed back in her face. She shouted again, and they galloped out into the sky. Beyond the sunset, beyond the flaming streaks of clouds gathering in to the western edge of the world, they flew through roaring space, hurtling forward through time until Rose woke on the grass at the back of the annexe house with Leonora’s voice still in her ears.

  She picked herself up, shaking her head to clear it, and rushed into the kitchen. Leonora had collapsed half under the table, her hand over her heart. Her colour was ghastly. She was sweating and trembling. She managed a faint smile at Rose, which became a grimace.

  ‘Suddenly a terrible pain, here,’ she gasped. ‘Help me, Rose, I …’

  Her eyes closed and she slumped against the table leg and slipped to the floor.

  The house … Beth … the knife … What had the house done to Leonora? Rose began to panic, and then across her disordered thoughts she heard Ben’s voice, very clear and crisp, giving her the instructions they had practised on the beach, with the mound of sand shaped like Mr Vingo.

  Heart attack. All right, what do you do? Try to rouse the victim.

  Leonora wouldn’t wake, so Rose pulled her on to her back on the floor and knelt beside her in the white dress that was now crumpled and dirty from the moor.

  Clear the airway. Listen and look for breathing. Rose tilted Leonora’s head back so her tongue wouldn’t block her throat, and put her cheek to her face. She felt no warm movement of air, saw no rise and fall of her chest.

  What now? Pinch the nostrils so the air doesn’t escape and give her four mouth-to-mouth breaths.

  Practising with a towel over sand was one thing. Making a seal with your mouth over the cold, slack lips of someone you loved was another. Rose blew. Was it enough? Leonora was wearing a skimpy sleeveless top. Rose easily saw her thin chest rise as the air went in.

  What next? Feel for a pulse. She put her fingers on Leonora’s neck where the carotid artery should be throbbing.

  No pulse. Rose fought to control her panic. No pulse – Leonora was going to die. ‘Don’t die,’ she begged her. ‘You’re not Beth. You don’t have to die. You can’t. Martin needs you. I won’t let you die!’ Somehow she had to start Leonora’s heart beating. With an effort, she made herself remember what to do.

  Kneeling above Leonora with one hand over the other on the bottom half of the breastbone, she began the pressure. One and – two and – three and … Fifteen times she pressed the heart between the breastbone and the backbone to make it pump. Then quickly back to Leonora’s ashen face to tilt her head back and give her two more breaths, then back to press the heart fifteen more times under her hands.

  A life in her hands. Oh God, don’t l
et it be a death! She stopped just long enough to yell through the open door. ‘Help me, somebody! Please – oh, somebody – help!’ Then back to the rhythm of filling the lungs with air and forcing the heart to pump the blood up to the brain with the vital oxygen, without which the brain cells would rapidly die.

  Every so often, Rose paused to shout for help and to feel for a pulse. Nobody heard her. There was no pulse. How long could she keep it up? Her shoulders and arms were aching. She was failing, failing. A great weight of doom was on her, as if all the unhappy spirits of this house were against her.

  So this was the battle she was fighting for the horse. This was his crucial work: goodness and the joy of love against the evil of disaster and sorrow. If Leonora died, the battle was lost. The messenger of the grey horse had failed.

  ‘It’s no use,’ Rose thought despairingly. ‘It’s too late. Why isn’t someone else here? Why doesn’t someone come? I can’t do it.’

  ‘You must,’ said Favour in her thoughts, or was it Ben? ‘Don’t give it up … ever. Keep on for an hour. Two hours. You keep on and on. You’re keeping the brain alive. you never give up.’

  Rose drove herself to the effort, with her arms and back in pain and her own heart pounding. She kept on and on. Pausing to put her fingers on Leonora’s slender neck, she felt the first flutterings of a pulse. It grew stronger – a beat, then a steady throb.

  She’d done it! Two more mouth-to-mouth breaths, and as she lifted her head, she heard Leonora give a gasp, and then another. She was breathing. She began to open her eyes as feet clattered on the back step and Jim Fisher, in dungarees with a hammer in his hand, was in the room.

  ‘What the –? I could have sworn I heard you shout, but Hilda said, “No, you’re hearing things again, Jim,” and I said, “No, listen Hilda,” and I –’

  ‘Get an ambulance quickly,’ Rose said without looking up. ‘Leonora. Leonora, look at me. It’s all right. It’s Rose. You’re all right.’