The Messengers (9 page)

Peter had wandered off. I found his silhouette against the bright-green light of a tank. “Look,” he said.

There was an ugly brown fish lying flat on a rock, with fins on either side that looked like basic arms. “Oh, yeah,” I said. “This is the kind of fish they always show in prehistoric books.”

Peter nodded. “The ones that crawl out of the sea and become humans, or whatever. I wonder how long you have to leave them in here before they change.”

We laughed.

“The beginnings of life,” Peter said.

He disappeared through a curtain and I followed him. It was the jellyfish room. The tanks were glass columns, the darkness broken by a square of light that changed from green to purple to red to blue, making the jellyfish appear to change color, too, as they rose with the slow swish of their skirts. It was magical.

Peter’s face went from red to blue, and I admit that I wanted to kiss him. It was as though I could feel the water all around us — in the tanks and in the sea outside — lifting us upward. I closed my eyes and tried to pull myself together, tried to imagine the conversation I might have with Keisha back home:

He’s quite soulful, you know. He’s had a difficult life, but he’s caring underneath it all.

He sounds nice, Fran. How old is he?

He’s in his late twenties.

Bit old. What does he do?

Oh, you know. He’s a messenger of death.

Ridiculous. I could feel the light changing through my eyelids.

“You OK, Frances?” he asked.

“Yeah, fine,” I said, opening my eyes. “Fine. I bet your boy would like this place.”

Peter turned away. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Aren’t you curious about him?”

“Of course I am. But it’s too dangerous.”

“But what if you could — ?”

“I think we’ve had this conversation.”

“Yes, but you had your fingers in your ears,” I said.

Peter ignored me, and I decided not to push too hard. We looked at the swaying tentacles of the jellyfish. “They’re making me want noodles,” I said.

Peter laughed. “Yes, chicken ramen. Let’s eat!”

We emerged, squinting, into the sun. We took a shortcut through the museum on our way to the noodle place. There was an exhibition, Cubism to Futurism. That was
all
I needed. But Peter wanted to go in, and I followed him through the door of the cubist room. Straight in front of us was a painting called
Female Nude
, all blocks and shapes.

“So this is the kind of thing that a recipient sees when we show them the message?” I said.

“Apparently. Maybe even more coded and scrambled.”

Peter read from the information board on the wall. “‘Instead of showing objects from one viewpoint, the cubist artist depicts the subject from many viewpoints to represent it in greater context.’”

“Blah, blah, blah,” I said.

The futurism room was scarier, angrier. Crooked cities, melting bodies. There was a sculpture of a man who looked as if he were in the process of exploding.

Again, Peter studied the board. “These futurist guys were mixed up in some nasty stuff,” he said. He read aloud: “‘The love of danger, violence, patriotism, and war.’”

I spun around, taking in all the distorted shapes and drooping faces. I was becoming dizzy. I kept thinking some violent scene was suddenly going to emerge from the paint. “What’s wrong?” Peter said.

“Nothing. Let’s go.”

As we walked away, I caught sight of a single quote from Pablo Picasso, stenciled onto the wall:

We bought noodles and sat on the bench, watching seagulls peel out of the clouds and perch on the big letters of
HELMSTOWN PIER
. They looked proud and full of vitality, and they gave me a bit of hope. I looked down at our hands. They had stamped us:
OCEAN LIFE
. It was an almost perfect afternoon. Or, at least it would have been, had it ended there.

Peter went back to the beach hut and put on a checked shirt. He collected his guitar and an art gallery brochure, and we walked to the bus stop on the grass above the cliffs. He smoked and we talked. I told him about my father and about Johnny being on the run, and he listened. It was the first time I’d really talked to anyone about Johnny’s situation.

He told me that when he was nine, his father had gone into hospital for major surgery. There had been complications and a second operation. He’d spent six weeks in intensive care, and it seemed that he wouldn’t make it, but somehow he fought back from the brink. The family couldn’t believe it — they’d started to accept his death. The doctors had told Peter that his daddy was a miracle man. A week after he came out of hospital, Peter’s father slipped and fell down the cellar steps. Peter found the body. He had his first blackout the day after the funeral. “It taught me that there’s no meaning in life,” he said. “And there is nothing you can do to stop death. It’s inevitable. People think they’re in control of their lives, but they’re not. Better get used to it.”

It occurred to me that we’d both had these God-awful traumatic experiences before our first blackouts — Peter had found his dead father, and I’d watched my brother being beaten to within an inch of his life in front of a crowd of lunatics. I wondered if that was a coincidence.

All I knew was this: the feeling I got, waiting to get on the bus and go to the Windmill View Retirement Home, was not one I planned to get used to. It was sickening.

Peter rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. The bus came and we went up to the top deck. There was nothing but green fields out one window, nothing but blue sea out the other. His leg was next to mine. I could feel the heat of it and wondered if he could feel the heat of mine too. I gripped the seat in front of us.

We got off outside a big old white building that looked like a hospital. “You know where we are?” he said.

I could see the windmill behind the retirement home. “Yes,” I said.

“Are you OK?”

I looked at him. “No,” I said.

“You will be.”

I looked at the windows of the retirement home and saw a shadow pass. “I don’t think so,” I said. I turned away, but Peter took me by the arm. He was strong. I felt my foot lift off the ground.

“This has to be done. For your sake and for the sake of your family.”

“Isn’t there some other way?” I said.

“No,” Peter said.

“There must be. Don’t you understand? This isn’t like giving someone a parking ticket. We’re talking about death. Doesn’t it make you feel . . . desperate?”

Peter sighed. “Yes,” he said. He hoisted the strap of his guitar case over his shoulder and carried on walking up the long gravel path.

“They’re not going to let us in here anyway,” I said. “You have to get permission to visit someone in an old folks’ home.”

“I can come and go as I please,” Peter said.

“How come?”

“I do performances and workshops here in my spare time. I teach painting and sometimes play some songs. It’s a good arrangement, because — as you can imagine — I have to come here quite a lot, as a messenger.”

I shook my head. “It’s sick.”

“I’ve got to deliver the messages. At least this way, I’m giving something back,” he said, tapping the guitar case.

“Yeah, you’re a real hero. A real guardian of the community. Don’t the staff wonder about the fact that every time you turn up, someone dies?”

“It’s a nursing home. People die all the time.” Peter cleared his throat as we approached the entrance. “Do you have the drawing?” he said.

I shuddered, thinking of the old man lying dead in the bath. “Yes,” I said.

Peter rang the doorbell.

“But it’s been such a nice day,” I said stupidly.

“That’s what we do,” said Peter. “We ruin people’s days.”

“You do a lot more than that,” I said.

A young woman opened the door. One of the staff. “Peter!” she said. She turned round and shouted back into the next room, where the old folks sat about on brown armchairs. “Everyone, Peter’s here!” She said it as if they should be over the moon.

He played a sort of lame country-and-western music, which the oldies loved. They clapped their hands as he sang. I watched him and listened to his fake American accent. The drawing I’d folded into my pocket seemed to be burning a hole through my jeans. I scanned the faces of the old people, and I saw the man from the drawing sitting at the back, grinning with his big white teeth. I thought, strangely, of the windup dentures in Max’s room. My stomach did the Big Dipper.

The old folk joined in with the chorus:

After the song, the audience broke up. Some of them went to watch TV, while some stayed behind to talk to Peter. The women seemed particularly pleased to see him, especially a woman with big earrings called Jane. I stayed back, not wanting to get involved.

“And who’s that with you?” asked Jane, pointing to me.

“That’s Frances. She’s my apprentice. Soon enough, she’ll be visiting care homes on her own.”

I nodded and tried to smile, but I was struggling to keep control of my breathing. I tried to think of Maxi’s kendo meditation. The man from my drawing was staring out the window.

“Do you do music?” Jane asked me. I shook my head.

“No,” said Peter, smiling. “Frances has a talent for drawing. She’ll be doing workshops.”

Jane laughed and nudged one of her friends. “Ooooh, is it with those nude models?” she said. “What’s it called now? Life drawing! Does she do life drawing?”

“The opposite, really,” Peter said.

I frowned at him, disgusted.

“What do you mean?” Jane said.

“Landscapes. She does mainly landscapes. Excuse me, ladies,” he said, and beckoned me to follow him to where the old man was looking out onto the lawn. I stood shakily and made my way over.

“I’m so sorry, chap, I’ve forgotten your name,” Peter said, sitting down.

“Don’t worry, pal,” the old man said, winking at me. “Everyone here is forgetful. I wonder what it is about the place. My name’s Tom. Tom Kingston.”

“You walk down by the seafront sometimes, don’t you?”

“I do,” said Tom. “Bit of sea air does you good.” He leaned forward. “I really only do it so my daughter can get some exercise. Between you and me, she’s got a big behind. But she just sits outside that coffee place and eats cake!”

Peter laughed. I fished the drawing from my pocket. I wanted to get it over with. The last thing I needed was get to know the bloke. Peter put his hand on my arm to stop me.

“I hope you don’t mind, Tom, but Frances and I brought along this catalog from one of the seafront exhibitions. It’s a free gallery, and we thought you might like to visit one day, didn’t we, Frances?”

I managed to nod.

Peter passed the catalog to me and kept talking to Tom. I was in a daze and it took me a moment to understand what I was supposed to do. I slipped the folded drawing into the catalog and thrust it toward Tom.

“Here,” I said.

“Oh,” said Tom. “Right. I don’t really need a brochure, to be honest. I can just mosey on down and —”

“Take it,” I said, a little abruptly. I softened my voice. “There’s some nice pictures in the catalog.”

“OK,” he said. “Ta.”

He flicked through and came to the piece of paper on which I’d drawn his death. “What’s this? Oh — you’re into that modern art, are you?” he said. He turned the sketch upside down. “It’s all just shapes to me. I can’t make head nor tail of it. Never have been able to. Now these sea views, that’s more my style. . . .” He slipped the piece of paper back into the catalog and continued reading. “I’ll take this upstairs, if I may,” he said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must do my ablutions before the ladies use up all the hot water.”

Peter helped him stand and get his canes, and then Tom Kingston crept down the corridor with his four-step rhythm, the brochure clasped between his elbow and his body. I felt Peter’s hand cover mine, and I had to hold back the tears.