The Messengers (17 page)

I just sat there.

Joe had eased himself back down and his mum was next to him, where Peter had been sitting. It was obvious that there would be questions and strong words later, but now they were just holding on to each other. It was weird, and comforting — even to me.

A nurse with a clipboard came. “Joseph Davies?” she said.

They both stood up.

“I want to go in on my own,” Joe said. “I’m old enough.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. I think you’ve been doing a bit too much on your own today.”

“Mum, please. I can manage.”

Rowenna could see that he was still upset.

“OK,” she said. “I’ll be right here.”

He hobbled off, his arm around the nurse, and Rowenna slumped back down into the seat. I didn’t know what else to do, so I got a plastic cup, filled it up at the water cooler, and took it to her. She looked up at me.

“Thanks,” she said. “Wait. Who
are
you?”

“Frances,” I said.

“Why are you here?” There was a note of anger in her voice now, which was fair enough.

“Because all of this is my fault.”

“That he fell over?”

“No. It’s my fault that he met Peter. I’m Peter’s friend. I arranged for him to meet Joe.”

Rowenna closed her eyes. “Peter should not have done that.”

“It was me.”

“You’re just a girl.”

“Still,” I said. “Look, I can see I made a mistake, and I guess you’re very pissed off right now. But don’t be angry with Peter, because it wasn’t his idea; it was mine.”

“Don’t tell me who I should and shouldn’t be angry with! Clearly there have been a lot of things going on that I’ve not been aware of. I’m not very happy about that, and I certainly don’t want to talk about my and my
son’s
private life with some girl I’ve never met before,” she said.

“You don’t want to know about Peter?”

She paused. “Not really.”

“You know he has always thought about you. And Joe.”

“What? That’s rubbish! If he’s been thinking about us, then where the hell has he been for the last eleven years? A check in the post is not enough. And now
this
!”

A few of the injured people in the waiting room looked over at us.

“He does care about you both. It’s just . . .” How could I tell her about being a messenger? “You have to trust me.”

“Trust you? I don’t even know who you are! I’m not going to sit here and listen to a teenager explain my bloody life to me. If Peter wants to tell me about where he’s been, then he has to be brave enough to stand here and say it himself.”

“You’re saying you’d talk to him?” I said. “If he was here?”

“No!” she said. Then she looked down into her cup and shook her head. “I don’t know. Yes. I just want to know what happened. But he walked out again, didn’t he? Just like last time.”

All of a sudden it occurred to me that I might be able to turn this situation around. What had these past few weeks been about? Taking control. Changing things.

“Wait here,” I said, standing.

“What else am I going to do?” she said.

I stepped outside and felt the coolness of the night.
A taxi
, I thought,
I’ll get a taxi to the beach hut and drag him back here
. I ran toward the taxi rank, but then I stopped in my tracks. I had spotted something unusual out of the corner of my eye. Peter.

He was sitting on top of the bus shelter, smoking, his legs swinging over the edge. There was a man standing in the shelter, and either he hadn’t seen Peter or was choosing to ignore him.

“Oi,” I said.

He gave me a glance.

“Get down off there,” I said.

“Haven’t you done enough?” he said.

“She wants to talk to you,” I said.

“She wants to shout at me, more like,” he said.

“Well, she has every reason to, hasn’t she? You’ve got to take hold of your life, Peter. Now’s the time to do it. If you love her like you say you do, then get down off the bus shelter, get back in that building, and talk to her.”

It wasn’t easy for me to say that. I knew that he still had feelings for Rowenna. And even though Rowenna was angry, you don’t get angry with people you don’t care about.

The man waiting for the bus stared at me and then cast a look up at Peter. I could see Peter searching his brain for reasons he couldn’t go back to the hospital, but it seemed he’d run out of excuses.

They sat in the hospital café and talked. Leaving them there, across a plastic table in a dim and empty little room, I saw how much Peter had changed since I first met him. His shoulders were relaxed, and he sat tall and straight.

He looked at Rowenna. For most people, looking someone in the eye is no big deal, but for Peter it was always a risk. As if he might suck the person in and then spill their life onto the page. But I was proud of Peter for taking some control over how he dealt with being a messenger.
Who knows what might happen from here?
I thought.

I intercepted Joe in the corridor. He was on crutches. “You OK?” I said.

“It’s just a sprain. I’ll be off these in a couple of days. Where’s Mum?”

“She’s just having a chat with . . . Peter.”

Joe winced and turned away. It was all too much for him. He was in denial, I suppose.

“I’m sure she’ll fill you in,” I said.

“I’d like to see her now,” he said. “And I want to go home.”

So we walked around to the café entrance, Joe struggling on the crutches. At the entrance, he paused. Rowenna’s eyes were wet. Peter was nodding. And he was talking. I knew it’d take more than five minutes and a couple of crap hot chocolates to rub out the last eleven years, but it was a start.

Rowenna looked up but not toward us. There was another door, and a man walked through it. He was a typical Helmstown man, like Uncle Robert — about forty-five but with a side-swinging fringe and a coat with those tags on the shoulders like they have in the army. “Ro!” shouted the guy, in his posh voice. She waved to him.

“I came as soon as I could,” he said. “How’s Joe?”

It was as if we weren’t there. Like we were the Ghosts of Christmas Past. “Who the hell’s that?” I said to Joseph.

“That’s Ian,” Joseph said.

On hearing Joe’s voice, Ian turned and said, “Speak of the devil.”

I reckon Pete and me both thought he was talking about us.

I got the bus back to Auntie Lizzie’s. I sat upstairs, and a drunk boy was holding his cricket hat out the window to hear the flapping sound it made. It reminded me of running through Nana’s house with my blank piece of flapping paper, running through the garden, and climbing over the little wire fence into the fields. I got that wretched feeling again. Like hell was round the corner. Looking back, I realized that I must have drawn something that day, all those years ago. My first proto-message. It would have been a harmless squiggle. Indecipherable. A dud. Nonetheless, that must have been the moment I became a messenger.

It turned out that Ian was Rowenna’s partner. In the hospital café, he had shaken hands with Peter, and his eyebrows had twitched a little. Rowenna, I figured, would explain things to Joe and Ian later. Maybe she was doing it right now. Peter hadn’t looked too glum when Ian called Rowenna “darling.” I suppose he’d been expecting as much. He always imagined the worst.

I was tired by the time I got to Auntie Lizzie’s, and I didn’t want to talk. I intended to sneak in through the back entrance, but when I passed the open kitchen window, I heard them speak.

“. . . all I’m saying is that we ought to know where she is. She’s our responsibility, really,” said Uncle Robert.

“You’re right, I know. She
is
a good girl, though, Robert,” said Auntie Lizzie.

“She’s brilliant. Clever. Funny. But I don’t know if she has many boundaries at home. Your sister —”

“Louise gets depressed. And after everything that’s happened with Johnny . . .”

“That’s what I’m saying. Frances needs some security in her life. Some attention. And at the moment, the attention she’s getting is from this guy, and we don’t know anything about him.”

“What did he look like?”

“Tall. Sort of good-looking. From his clothes, I’d say he was a painter or laborer or something. Late twenties maybe. Too old, really.”

“But what are we supposed to do? We’ve tried talking to her.”

“Well, if
she
won’t listen . . . maybe I could have a word with Brian, down at the station,” Robert said. Then he stopped. “What was that noise?”

I crept back round to the front of the house, opened the door, and ran upstairs before they could speak to me.

Up in my room, I called Mum. I flicked my mobile on to loudspeaker and chucked it on the bed, waiting for the voice mail to kick in. But, amazingly, she answered.

“Hello, Frances,” she said. She sounded numb. I grabbed the phone.

“Any news about Johnny?” I asked immediately.

“No.”

“Right.”

We were both silent for a moment. I hadn’t thought beyond questions about my brother.

“So,” she said. “Everything OK down there, is it?”

“Not really.”

“Oh, come on, Frances! Don’t try to guilt me. You’re in the lap of luxury. I know you like it better down there than you do up here. You’re the lucky one. There are other people in this world with bigger problems than you, you know.”

“I don’t want to fight, Mum.”

“Don’t wind me up, then,” she said.

I thought of a million smart-arse replies, but I let them all float away.

“Don’t go quiet on me, Frances. Come on, what have you been up to?”

“Nothing, really. Just helping out.”

“Helping out, eh?”

I could hear the accusation in her voice. Helping someone else was always seen as a failure to help her. It was disloyal. I could have reacted, but for once I didn’t.

“Frances? Are you there?”

“Why did he leave us, Mum?” I said.

“Because he thinks they’re going to lock him up and throw away the key,” she said.

“No, not Johnny. Dad. Why did Dad leave us?”

I thought Mum might tighten up. I’d asked that question so many times before and she’d just freeze. But she breathed out slowly. Maybe she was about to start telling the truth. Perhaps she was too shattered to keep lying.

“Your father didn’t leave us,” she said. “We ran away. We had to. He hit me and Johnny so hard, I didn’t know if we’d survive.”

“What?”
I said.

“The beatings were nothing compared to what he’d say to us. The cruelty of it. Johnny was only a boy. I don’t know if he ever got over it, really. As soon as I saw you, darlin’, the second you were born, I knew we had to go. You was so small, so fragile.”

She stopped.

“Mum?”

“I shouldn’t be telling you all this. I don’t know why I am. Usually, I’d —”

“It’s OK,” I said.

She didn’t speak. So I did.

“But Johnny had all these stories about Dad,” I said quietly.

“You mean the ones he told you when you got home from school?”

“How did you know about that?”

“I used to listen at the door.” She sighed. “Oh, Frances. He made them up. Every last one. But don’t be angry with him, Fran. He was only trying to do something nice.”

I wasn’t angry. It was suddenly obvious that they’d been lies. Deep down, I think I’d known all the time. But was it really so wrong? There was still goodness and brilliance in those stories. It’s just that the goodness and brilliance had come from Johnny, not my dad.

“I asked him about the stories once,” Mum said.
“‘Why you telling her all them lies?’
I said. He said he just wanted you to have the dad you deserved.”

I didn’t cry, but it was a struggle. Mum was crying now. I could hear her. “I just want Johnny back, Frances. He’s not like you. He’s not a survivor.”

People had always wondered why Johnny and me were so different. He was so wild, and I was all common sense. He went off the rails, while I did well at school. He took all that punishment in the boxing ring. Now it was clear to me why. He’d known our dad, and I hadn’t.

“He’ll be all right, Mum,” I said.

“But how do you know, Frances?” she said.

She was right. I didn’t.

When Mum and I hung up, I went over to the window and asked Johnny to come back. I asked him to remember the story he’d told me about how our dad had twisted the spring out of his finger. I told Johnny I knew that he’d made the story up, which meant that it was him — Johnny — who was the clever one. “You’ve got a good brain, Johnny,” I whispered into the night. “You can do this. You can make the right decision. Come back.”

But I knew he’d be thinking about jail. I knew he’d think there was no way out of the situation. He’d be scared stiff that the policeman would die and that they’d call him a murderer. But he wasn’t a murderer, was he?

I had been telling Peter to face up to his life, to take control of it, to take action. But what had I done about Johnny? Nothing. I had assumed he was a lost cause, in much the same way Peter had assumed that seeing his son was a lost cause. Sometimes it’s hard to take your own advice.

The conversation with Mum had shaken me out of my negative thinking about Johnny’s situation. I had changed Peter’s life, so surely I could change my own. Thinking about Johnny making up those stories on my bed, I knew I had to keep trying to help him. Maybe I didn’t need some stupid lawyer to find out if he had a case.