Three Strange Angels

by Kalpakian, Laura;

‘My question first, you sod.’

  Shocked at the boy’s coarse language, Quentin reached into his breast pocket and took out his card. ‘I’m from Castle Literary. We are your father’s literary agents. Give this to your mother.’

  ‘Stay here,’ said the boy. ‘Sit, Pooh.’

  He left, and the dog sat, never taking his suspicious gaze from Quentin who felt miserable and cold and ridiculous perched on a fence in the middle of nowhere, clutching a leather case, watched by a snarling cur named Pooh. Thank God no one at the agency could see; he could well imagine how his father would chortle. And Miss Sherrill? Miss Marr? Quentin chased their supercilious images from his mind.

  Finally the boy came back. ‘All right. Come up the house. No, Pooh! No, it’s all right. Come on, then.’

  Gingerly Quentin got down from the gate. The dog sniffed him all over, thrusting an especially intrusive canine nose into his groin. He followed the boy up to the half-timbered house, a portion of which, not visible from the road, looked to have caved in on itself. Chickens and ducks clucked amiably in a broad, cobbled yard, and he heard the occasional grunt which he assumed to be a pig.

  A pig then crossed his path, paying him no mind whatever, as did a slow-moving dappled nag, its hooves clomping on the stones. Coming on the house itself, Quentin could see the roof was a patchwork of styles and materials; there were Georgian touches and neo-Gothic crenellation. Icicles hung down from the outbuilding eaves, and from the upper, unheated reaches of the house. The place was enormous, a Jacobean monstrosity to which later generations had added or ignored as they saw fit. Old renovations embraced even older elements, like the drunken hug of someone who then went to sleep for hundreds of years.

  The boy pushed open a heavy door, and called out to his mother, ‘It’s Mr Castle!’ leaving Quentin in a mud room which truly deserved the name: thick crusts of dried mud on the floor, wellies lying everywhere like fallen sentries, coats and hats, an armoury of umbrellas, a baby’s battered pram. There were shelves with jars and crocks and garden tools, saucepans and lanterns. The boy pushed another door that led into a kitchen so vast that the daylight eking in through small windows was seemingly swallowed up. Thick beams, dark with the smoke and soot of years, striped the low ceiling. As Quentin’s eyes adjusted, he could see the place was a jumble of contradictions: a massive hearth, tall as a man, as well as a new Aga, a big soapstone sink, an old-fashioned washing copper beside a new wringer washing machine. Children’s clothes and tea towels lay stiff and dispirited, hanging over a clothesline strung from a pulley above the hearth. Against one wall a battered upright piano with yellow keys stood, and atop it a huge typewriter and stacks of papers. Scattered about on the dressers, the counters, the floor, like detritus from a departing fair, were toys, dolls, clothes, books, jars of pens and paintbrushes, assorted envelopes marked ‘overdue’, and clothes pins. The boy and two suspicious-looking younger children sat at the long wooden table, illuminated by a single light fixture overhead. The dog barked.

  The tall woman at the sink mopped her hands. Her face flushed with steam, and a damp lock of wheat-blonde hair, fallen from a loose knot atop her head, clung to her cheek. Alarm lit her face. ‘Oh! Forgive me, Mr Castle. I’m just surprised, I mean, I expected someone much older. I always thought of you, I mean, Frank always said you were, well, ancient. No offence intended.’

  ‘You’re thinking of my father. He founded the firm in 1919. I’m only lately come into it. Quentin Castle.’ He took off his glove and extended his hand. She had a strong grip, and her features, though not regular, were pleasing. The mouth was large and mobile, the nose straight, the wide-set eyes clear as Highland lakes, the blue deep enough to drown in. Tiny creases fanned out beside her eyes. Clearly she had grown out of her youthful beauty and into something else, though quite what Quentin could not say. By any standard he had been taught to admire, or even recognize, she was not especially attractive. There must be something wrong with the standard, he thought fleetingly, because he knew for a fact he had never beheld a woman quite so unexpectedly beautiful.

  ‘I guess my last letter did the trick.’ Her throaty voice still had flat American intonations. In one smooth, economical gesture, she swept some books and dolls and letters from the settle, letting them fall to the floor. One of the smaller children swooped up the doll, and clutched it. Mrs Carson beckoned Quentin to sit near the warmth. She wore a faded apron over a long blue sweater and a long black skirt. ‘How good of you to come and bring the money.’ She sat across from him, her face imbued with warmth and light.

  ‘The money?’

  ‘Well, I’ve been writing to the firm for weeks now, telling them, your father, I guess, that Frank hasn’t sent any money from America in, well, in a very long time, and I’m getting desperate here, and I need an advance on his royalties. I know that Hay Days didn’t sell that well.’ She took off the apron, and flung it over a nearby chair. The blue sweater was pocked with ember burns. ‘But he’s working on another novel – he is – and you know how successful he is really, and what a fine writer.’

  ‘I haven’t come with the money,’ he said, kicking himself for not insisting that his father cough up something for the FMB. No. The wife. The widow. Right.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Could we speak alone, Mrs Carson?’ He glanced at the boy who hovered nearby, suspicious, ready to leap to his mother’s defence if need be.

  ‘There is some problem?’

  ‘There is.’ Quentin removed his coat, feeling rather like a surgeon with a particularly nasty incision about to be made. No anaesthetic.

  She told the boy to leave, and to take the girls upstairs; she shooed the dogs as well, Pooh and Tigger, vicious-looking beasts despite their innocent names. Quentin rose from the settle, and took a seat at the large, rough-hewn table before a yellow bowl filled with mottled green apples. He wondered how she managed out here alone. He wondered why the boy at least was not in school. He wondered how she’d take the news, and then he wondered how, exactly, he would put it. He regretted being bullied into this. His father ought to have done this dismal deed. His father ought to have dealt with Louisa Partridge too. Filial resentment churned his already upset stomach.

  She returned, sat down across from him, work-roughened hands clasped in front of her. Her only jewellery was a thick gold wedding band. Her brilliant blue eyes were troubled, but her gaze was bold.

  ‘Mrs Carson, I’m afraid I have some very bad news. Your husband, Francis; I’m afraid he has died in California.’

  ‘Died?’ Her face fell, like a child who has failed an exam. ‘What do you mean, died?’

  Quentin took a deep breath. How much plainer could he be? ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Carson, to be the one who has to bring this sad news, but your husband, Francis, has died. He’s gone. They called us from California, from Los Angeles, early this morning—’

  ‘Gone? Frank? You mean he’s—’

  ‘We did not want you to hear this news on the wireless, or hear it from the press. It seemed only—’

  ‘He can’t be dead. Not like that, just gone. Dead?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Carson. Truly.’

  ‘Frank? I can’t believe it. Frank? Frank is the alivest person … alive.’ She seemed to reel, like a woman unexpectedly struck, slapped across the face, and falling, unbalanced.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Carson. We, our firm, thought it best that you should hear, that we, that I should …’ He could all but feel the news throttling through her bones, her blue eyes darting about the dim room, and he remembered the sparrow trapped in the upper reaches at Number 11, unwilling to believe itself trapped even as its strength flagged, and it thumped against the unyielding roof and its inevitable fate.

  ‘How?’

  Quentin considered. The lame truth – that he knew nothing – would clearly not be sufficient, or kind. He knew, from Robert’s death, that something – anything – was better comfort than nothing. Given Francis Carson’s reputation, it could well have b
een from drink, but such a death didn’t usually happen that quickly. Did it? He had no idea. Could he say, ‘I have no idea’? He suddenly remembered Sydney Thaxton’s unexpected death.

  ‘Heart attack.’

  ‘Oh, and was he out, drunk, with some Hollywood tart? Some whore or another?’ Her face contorted and she burst into tears.

  Confronted for the second time in a week with a weep-ing female, and just as dumbfounded, more so, Quentin took out his clean handkerchief, and handed it to her.

  The smell of Effie’s fag did not deter her in the least. She wiped her eyes, her nose, and wept some more, all the while murmuring Oh Frank Frank no, no no dearest sweet sweet … ‘All right,’ she gulped after a while, knotting the handkerchief. ‘All right.’ She took a deep breath. ‘How did it happen? Tell me.’

  ‘I’ve told you.’

  ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘They found him late at night. Alone, working, slumped over the typewriter. Into it, actually. He fell over into it.’

  ‘Who? Who found him?’

  ‘The people who clean. Charladies.’

  ‘They found him, and then what?’

  ‘Well, they called us. I mean, the charwomen called the studio people and the studio people called us.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Well, my father. I’m the junior partner. I came immediately. We couldn’t let you hear it from a stranger. Though I suppose I am a stranger.’

  She put her head down on the table and wept with abandon, shoulders shaking. One of the dogs came back and whined piteously by her feet, sitting with his nose on her shoes. She kicked him away. Quentin felt as ungainly as when he had perched on the gate. He might have reached out and touched her shoulder, but the same instinct, that innate recoil against emotion, that forbade him to comfort Mrs Rackwell, forbade him now, but neither could he look away. He had never seen anyone sob so openly. When news of Robert’s death had reached the Castles, Quentin had been at home. His father had walked outside without a word, stepped into the garden, and walked into the garden shed. His mother had stood in front of Quentin, brushing imaginary lint from his lapels, stroking his shoulders, her eyes empty, almost blinded; he had not dared to move as she stood brushing, murmuring, There there, that’s better, there, that fixes it, there there for twenty minutes, perhaps half an hour or half an eon, until she finally wobbled away, and collapsed to the floor. When at last they had got his mother settled, and Quentin was alone and could cry for the death of his brother, he had fought off tears. And won. He had thought himself manly. Now he wondered, why had he not simply heaved and shuddered like Mrs Carson? He wanted to place his hands atop her blonde head, but folded them instead, like a parson, pleased after a particularly stirring sermon.

  ‘Ma,’ came the call from somewhere unseen. The boy’s voice. ‘Ma.’

  Her head came up off the table. ‘Shut up. Go away. I’ll talk to you when I’m ready.’

  ‘Ma, is it Da?’

  ‘Close the door, I tell you!’ The door closed.

  ‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’ Quentin asked. That he could do.

  She rubbed his handkerchief all over her face, and bit her lip. ‘A drink. I need the pain dulled. I don’t care that it’s morning. Over there.’ She pointed to a bureau that held some heavy plates and cups on hooks. In the cupboard below he found a bottle of Dewar’s White Label, nearly full. He saw no glasses, so brought two teacups to the table and poured them each a splash. She lifted her chin, her cup to his, her eyes still moist. ‘To Frank.’

  ‘Francis Carson. Rest in peace.’ The sip of alcohol burned all the way down and into his empty stomach.

  Claire finished hers in one gulp. ‘There’ll be no peace, Mr Castle, no more than there was in life. I know Frank. I know him like no other. I loved him like no other.’ She wiped her nose with the handkerchief, strangled it fiercely. ‘We were always for good and always, Frank and me, even when we weren’t. We loved each other, even if, well, there were rows, of course. But I loved him, and he loved me. I was lightning to his thunder.’

  Quentin had no idea what it meant to be lightning to someone’s thunder. He took another burning sip.

  ‘Oh, Frank, it can’t be. Can it?’ She seemed to look far away, beyond the confines of this kitchen, to some horizon he could not see. ‘Can it be that I’ll never see him again, never hold him, never love him, or lie beside him, or fight with him, or prod him in the ribs, smell his armpits, or kiss his roughened cheek, or look at his fine, handsome backside when he comes out of the water?’ She moved both hands through her thick hair. ‘Oh, Frank, it means you’ll never slap me on the arse, or come up and put your lips at the back of my neck and send my knees weak like jelly. He knew how to touch, oh, he knew what it was to caress a woman, and he knew how. He always did. Shall I never watch him shave again or hear him snore, or sing “Kathleen Mavourneen” till I cry my eyes out? Or “Mistress mumbo jumbo jimmy-bob-jay-O’Shea” till I laugh myself sick? Shall I never hear him curse? Oh, he was eloquent at that! Or recite poetry, or tease the children, or declaim Shakespeare? I’ll never read his drafts? I read everything, Mr Castle. From the beginning, from Broadstairs, from the rooms we had in Brixton, or the Chelsea flat, or the cottage we took after the war, I read all his books when they were still just scrawled in his unreadable hand. I typed all but one of them.’ She frowned. ‘What was he doing over the typewriter? He couldn’t type.’

  ‘He had to learn. Anyone can hunt and peck,’ Quentin added, hoping he had not said too much, lied with too much detail. ‘No one writes by hand any more.’

  ‘What else did they tell you?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘These studio people from California.’

  ‘He’d been feeling unwell.’

  ‘Who told you? Who called?’

  ‘Someone from the studio. Someone important. I don’t remember the name.’

  ‘Did they tell you what they were doing to his picture? To Some of These Days?’

  ‘They didn’t tell me anything.’ Which, he reflected, was the most honest he had been.

  ‘Not even that he was slumped over the typewriter?’ Her blue eyes blazed with indignation.

  Perhaps Albert Castle could have lied, patted her back and somehow made the falsehood noble. Quentin could not. He had bollocksed everything. The whisky pulsed through his veins, and he felt rather sick. ‘I don’t have any idea how he died, Mrs Carson. They didn’t tell us anything except that he is dead. I’m sorry. I will not lie to you again. Forgive me.’

  ‘I suppose you were trying to be kind.’

  ‘I was, but I ought not to have lied. Shall I leave you?’

  ‘No. Please don’t.’ She reached for his hand. ‘Don’t leave me. How can I tell them?’ She nodded towards the deep stairwell. ‘The children? Until I’ve taken it in? What it means. He’s been gone to California for such a long time, last April or May. It was just supposed to be for a few months, but look at all the time that’s passed. Look at it!’

  She spoke as though that time might be in this very room, shimmering somewhere, and Quentin dutifully looked, but could see nothing but the mottled apples, the drying clothes, the battered upright piano. The yellow, broken keys reminded him of Mrs Rackwell’s teeth.

  ‘We’ve got used to living without him, you know? We’ve had to, but not … this. Not living without him forever? That he won’t be back at all?’ She sipped again, and slumped. Her lip trembled, her voice too. ‘What shall I do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Quentin thought about Robert, so vibrant, so alive, so lost forever. ‘Endure?’

  ‘Oh, Frank!’ She bolted the Dewar’s. She took a deep, painful breath and steadied her voice. ‘He wrote me every day in the beginning, when he first went to California. He wrote the way he used to talk. He knew he could fume and rant and ramble and I’d understand everything, everything his heart meant to say, no matter if he scribbled just a few lines, or page after page after page with The Garden of Allah across the top! Can you imag
ine?’

  ‘The Garden of Allah? I don’t suppose I can,’ Quentin admitted.

  ‘He was writing this wonderful script for Some of These Days! It was marvellous to be there, working. So many talented people at Regent Films! Oh, Frank was full of them, and he had notes for a new book, a novel about all these Hollywood people. It was all lovely and exciting. And then—’ She wiped her nose with the back of her hand ‘—it wasn’t. Time went on and they were gutting his beautiful novel like a fish. Blood everywhere. Metaphorically. They were philistines. Bloody philistines.’ Her flat American voice trailed off, and she put both hands over her face. When finally she laid her hands in her lap, and gazed at him, her eyes were full of truth and anguish.

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ he said, hating the convention, not knowing what else to say.

  ‘He is a free spirit. Was. The world loves them, and needs them, and applauds them, but someone always has to smooth the path before them, and clean up the shite behind them.’ She regarded him as though she expected a thought or response, and he could not oblige.

  ‘My father says you haven’t heard from him in a while.’

  ‘Since Christmas. No matter how often I wrote, time again, begging him not to leave me in darkness, he’d scarcely reply – a postcard, perhaps, as if he were a tourist, and I some mere acquaintance.’ She drew herself up with dignity that was clearly painful. ‘I guess we were at the end of our tether, Frank and me. Do you have a cigarette?’

  ‘I’m sorry I don’t smoke.’ And he meant it.

  ‘I’d kill for a fag. No money, you see?’ She started to stand, trembled, braced herself on his shoulder, and crumpled back into her seat, her palms digging into her eyes. ‘What’ll I tell the kids?’

  ‘I can’t help you with that. I’m sorry.’ He meant that too.

  ‘You have kids?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You married?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you know how devastating this is, how the whole world crumbles beneath you, as if the bricks and beams have been pulled out of my life and the whole thing come crashing down, like one of those homes hit during the Blitz and the dust and destruction is so terrible I can hardly breathe.’