by R.J. Ellory
She nodded. ‘Please Jack.’
He was away a few minutes, and as he busied himself in the kitchen she adjusted herself to the here and now.
‘Time is it?’ she called out.
‘A little before ten,’ Jack replied, and appeared in the doorway carrying a small tray with cups and cream and sugar.
He set it on the table. ‘You want it black?’
She shook her head. ‘A little cream please.’
He pulled a chair over and sat facing her, handed her the coffee which she held for a while before she drank.
‘You okay?’ he asked, and there was that tone – the paternal tone he sometimes assumed when his concern for her welfare overrode his simple friendship.
She nodded. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Tired maybe.’
‘I can see that. You open the store today?’
‘No, not today.’
‘Where’d you go?’ he asked.
‘Downtown, Greenwich Village.’
‘Any particular reason?’
‘No, no particular reason.’
Jack smiled. ‘And that’s sometimes the best reason, is it not?’
‘Sure … the best reason.’
Jack leaned forward. ‘You want I should go? You wanna be alone?’
She shook her head. ‘No, stay. Tell me a story.’
‘A story?’
‘Sure, tell me a story, but nothing gruesome … can’t handle gruesome tonight.’
‘Okay,’ he said, ‘let me think of a story.’
Annie settled back on the couch, pulled her knees up to her chest, held the coffee cup beneath her face to savor its warmth and aroma, and then closed her eyes. She imagined she was a little girl, that it was snowing outside, the wind howling back and forth across the front porch like some angry ghost demanding entry. Her father was here, keeping her safe, keeping her close, and he was telling her a story until she slept. Another thought entered then, tiny but significant: she sensed her father’s presence, and even as she did so she pictured his face, and the face was that of Robert Forrester. She pushed the thought away, but it was tenacious and unforgiving. She forced herself to concentrate on the sound of Sullivan’s voice to the exclusion of all else, and that sound enabled her to focus her mind.
‘March of 1969,’ Sullivan said. ‘It was March of ’69, four months after returning from Vietnam, and I went to Haiti. Haiti is a republic in the West Indies, part of Dominica, used to be part of the Spanish colony of Santa Domingo, and then the French came, brought African slaves with them, and they worked sugar plantations in the north. Until the rebellion in the 1780s they were one of the world’s richest coffee and sugar producers, and then the French and British interfered, there was war between the blacks, the mulattos and the white Haitians, and it wasn’t until 1804 that the blacks secured their freedom and they became part of the Americas. They were raised on a diet of Catholicism, but always there was voodoo. Behind every part of the social and cultural fabric was the ghost of voodoo. They practised obeah – sorcery – a mix of Catholic symbolism, alongside the magic and spells of the shamans who came with the French from Africa. The religious beliefs that came from Africa were called Gine, and the Haitians believed that spirits called Iwa traveled with the shamans, and the Iwa could assume right of possession over someone’s body and communicate through them. There were people called the Medsen Fey, the leaf doctors, and they believed they could commune with the spirits of plants.
‘We came in at Port-au-Prince. I was shell-shocked, still recovering from the things I’d seen and heard in Vietnam, and there was an older man with us, a journalist from England called Len Sutton. Len had been everywhere a man could go, he was maybe fifty or fifty-five, and there was this thing he kept doing, like there was something inside his chest, something that made his body tense up and started him coughing. He’d been to every doctor, people in Harley Street in London, but according to the medical guys there was nothing wrong with him. You could see him double up sometimes; looked like a man in the middle of a coronary seizure and there was nothing anyone could do.’
Annie shifted slightly, tugged her knees up again and rested her head on her folded arms.
‘We checked in to a hotel on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince,’ Sullivan went on. ‘Len was with me, we shared a room, and twice in the four or five days we were there I saw him seize up. These seizures would last anywhere from ten minutes to half an hour or so, and he would just lie there in agony, couldn’t speak, could barely move, and then it would pass as sudden as it had come. I happened to mention this to one of the guys downstairs, a black Haitian called François L’Ouverture, and he said he would call his sister. Is your sister a doctor? I asked him, and François starts laughing, laughs like a horse, and then he tells me that his family line went all the way back to Toussaint L’Ouverture, the man who led the slave rebellion in the early 1800s and secured freedom for the blacks. We have a powerful line, he told me. We are Medsen Fey. What? I said. Medsen Fey, he said. The leaf doctors. And we can cure your Englishman if his spirit is open to obeah.
‘I told Len about this guy and what he’d said, and Len told me he was open to anything and everything if it would handle the pain. So I spoke to François again, he went to get his sister, and this little girl comes. François calls her LouLou Mambo – couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen, but there’s something about her, something in her eyes that makes me feel like I’m talking to someone who’s eighty years old and has seen everything there is to see. She tells me and Len that they have family Iwa, zanset yo’ she calls them, and these are ancestral spirits that have followed their family line since they came from Africa. She tells us that the ancestors understand human pain because they were once human themselves, and they are touched by the power of the Iwa and can heal people directly through the Medsen Fey.
‘So this little girl, she sits beside Len Sutton. She touches her hand to his forehead, and then she tells him that an angered spirit is inside him. It is one of your own ancestors, she says. One of your ancestors was killed by a bullet through the chest. Len Sutton’s mouth drops open. His eyes wide like a jack o’lantern. My grandfather, he says. My grandfather was shot in the chest in the war. 1901, the Boer war. My father was thirteen years old when he died, he says. And then the little girl proceeds to tell Len Sutton the name of his grandfather and how he died, that he was a good soldier, but that he fought for the wrong reasons, and it was his belief that he was fighting for these reasons that killed him. He felt guilty, the little girl says, and as such he brought his own death upon himself. So what can I do? Len Sutton asks her. The little girl smiles. Do? she says. What can you do? It is not what you do Englishman, it is who you are. You are here for the wrong reasons, and there is a fear inside you that you have spent your whole life doing things for the wrong reasons, and when you accept this truth and live your life for the right reasons your pain will cease.
‘Len looks like someone’s slapped him across the head. François comes closer, and he tells us that his sister is a powerful Medsen Fey, that she is speaking the truth, that her met-tete, her master of the head, is responsible for guiding her from birth to death. He tells us that each Medsen Fey is born as a child of a particular Iwa, and that the Iwa lives in the blood and is their guide and protector. He says her Iwa has guided many people back to health and away from madness, and that if the Englishman wants to suffer no more pain he should follow LouLou Mambo’s advice.
‘I’m into all of this, I believe every word that’s being said, but Len isn’t so sure. He’s a journalist, has been all his life, and this little girl’s telling him he must give up his life, do what he knows to be right, and his pain will go away. François leaves then, takes his sister with him, and Len tells me he thinks it’s all crazy bullshit, and just as the words are leaving his mouth he gets hit with this seizure, such pain that it rolls him off the bed and onto the floor. He’s howling in agony down there, and I’m standing over him like a retard ready to piss myself, not knowing
what to say or do. I think about what the little girl said, and then I lean over Len and I’m shouting at him. Give it up! I holler. Give up your job! Call the newspaper and tell them you quit! Okay! he’s shouting back at me … Okay, I quit! And as soon as the words come out of his mouth the pain stops. Just like that it stops, and Len Sutton’s eyes open wide, and he starts to cry.
‘Later I asked him why he became a journalist. He tells me he doesn’t know, never understood it because he hated the job really. I asked him what he wanted to do with his life, what he felt would make him happy, and he told me that he’d always wanted to work with animals, train dogs or horses or something … maybe buy a farm in England and grow stuff. I told him he should do that, that he should do what LouLou Mambo told him to do, and he said he would.
‘Three days later he left, went back to England, and I never heard of him again.’
Annie smiled, her eyes still closed, her knees still up against her chest.
‘But,’ Jack Sullivan whispered, ‘I’m sure he lived happily ever after.’
‘True story?’ Annie asked.
‘True as daylight,’ Sullivan said.
‘You’ve had some life haven’t you Jack,’ Annie said, a statement more than a question.
‘Some life,’ he replied, ‘but not all the life I would have liked.’
Annie opened her eyes. She leaned forward and straightened her legs. ‘What do you miss?’ she asked. ‘What would you have done differently?’
‘A family,’ Sullivan said. ‘Always wanted a family, but I didn’t think it was fair to put a family through the torment of never knowing where I was and if I was okay.’
‘But you did what you did because you felt it was right.’
‘Must’ve done,’ he said.
‘Must’ve done? What d’you mean?’
Sullivan leaned back in his chair and sighed. ‘You get to my age and you look back at things. You look at what you did and what you said to people, you ask yourself if you got your priorities right, if there was something else you could have done to make things better, and after a while you come to the conclusion that it was what it was, and even if there had been something you could have done differently there’s no way you can go back and change it. It’s a kind of philosophical resignation if you like. So you deal with it, and kind of hope that you might come back again a little wiser and get another chance.’
Annie smiled. ‘It’s a nice thought.’
‘There is one thing though,’ Sullivan said.
Annie raised her eyebrows.
‘I can honestly say that I haven’t had a “what if …” life.’
‘A what if life?’
He nodded. ‘Sure, you know what I mean. The kind of life where you look back and ask yourself endlessly what if you had done so-and-so, what if you had said yes instead of no, and having spent so much time with people who were dying I can tell you a single, simple truth. When people know they’re gonna die, when they really know they’re gonna die, you know what they talk about?’
Annie shook her head.
‘What they talk about is what they didn’t do, all the things they didn’t do. They don’t talk about what they did, where they went, who they knew … they talk about the places they didn’t see, the girl they should have married, and if you believe a twelve-or thirteen-year-old Haitian girl called LouLou Mambo then the only things that ever really hurt people are the things they knew were right, and then they compromised.’
Sullivan assumed a serious expression. ‘Like you,’ he said.
‘Like me?’ Annie asked, frowning.
‘I said something the other night, a deal … and I want to hold you to that deal.’
‘You’ll stop drinking if I get serious with someone?’
Sullivan shook his head. ‘I’m not talking about serious … serious never worked for me. I’m just talking about something with substance, something that has some kind of meaning for you.’
Annie smiled.
‘What?’ Sullivan asked. ‘The three-book guy?’
‘The three-book guy,’ she replied.
‘You saw him again?’
‘I did.’
‘And did you … you know?’
‘Did I fuck him?’ Annie asked.
Sullivan started to laugh. ‘Jesus Annie O’Neill, I can’t ever remember hearing you use that word.’
‘Well I did. There we go. Fuck. Fuck and fuck and fuck. And to answer your question, no I didn’t … but there’s time.’
Sullivan nodded approvingly. ‘Good enough,’ he said.
‘So don’t be buying any more fifths of Crown Royal, okay? I think you got enough in your apartment to keep you going.’
‘You’re keeping the deal?’
Annie smiled. ‘It was your deal Jack Sullivan … you’re the one who has to keep the deal.’
‘Right,’ he said. ‘You make it through this, make it work Annie, and I’ll never drink another drop.’
Sullivan reached out his hand. Annie took it, held it for a moment, and then she smiled.
‘You’re a good friend Jack,’ she said. ‘Best friend I ever had.’
‘Likewise,’ Sullivan said, and then he reached up and touched her face, held his hand against her cheek for a moment. ‘So when d’you see this man again … what was his name?’
‘David, David Quinn … and I don’t know when I’ll see him again.’
‘You have his number?’
She shook her head. ‘No, no number.’
Sullivan frowned. ‘This doesn’t sound too promising.’
Annie smiled. ‘He’ll show up Monday or Tuesday at the store.’
‘If you show up yourself.’
‘I’ll be there Monday … I have another reader’s club meeting, right?’
‘Right,’ Sullivan said. ‘Another meeting. Hell, you’re getting something of a whirlwind social calendar, young lady.’
‘I am,’ Annie said. ‘Following your advice, right?’
‘Take care huh?’
‘I’m not a little girl any more Jack.’
Sullivan was silent for a moment, and then he looked directly at her. ‘Sometimes you are,’ he said, and though there was nothing critical or offensive in the way he said it Annie felt a momentary irritation.
‘I can look after myself,’ she said, her tone a little sharp.
‘I know you can,’ Sullivan replied. ‘But I wanna make sure someone else does too.’
‘I’ll be fine Jack.’
Sullivan smiled. ‘I’m here if you need me … always here Annie.’
‘I know you are Jack Sullivan … my ancestral guiding spirit, my Iwa.’
‘Your Iwa,’ he said, and smiled. ‘Anyway, I’m outta here … got a good five or six bottles to drink before you get laid.’
Annie dragged a cushion out from behind her and threw it at him as he reached the door. He ducked it, opened the door, and closed it behind him, laughing.
‘Howl like a banshee so I know when to stop drinking,’ he shouted from the hallway.
‘Asshole!’ she shouted back, but Jack’s door had slammed shut.
FIFTEEN
Annie opened the store Saturday morning. Late, but nevertheless she opened it. She went not out of obligation or desire, but because she hoped David would come. Closing the door behind her she saw a plain envelope on the mat, she picked it up, turned it over, and there in a neat hand was written Annie.
She knew what it would say before she opened it.
Friday 30th.
Dear Annie,
Got a call. Have to be away. I think for just a couple of days. Should be back in the early part of next week. Take care.
Love, David.
She read through the note again, her eyes finding the last two words and concentrating on them: Love, David.
Was this merely the routine salutation found at the end of so many informal notes … or did it mean something else?
Love, David.
And did it matter
what it meant? This was a hard question, a question for the heart, the soul perhaps. Did it really mean anything to her?
The question was asked; the answer came swiftly. It did matter. It did mean something, or rather she wanted it to mean something. There were no perfect human beings, men or women, and there was enough about this man David Quinn for her to feel that something could be built here. Wasn’t it always a risk? Wasn’t there always some chance of losing? Of course there was. Surely – surely – that was life.
She returned the note to the envelope, held it in her hand for a moment, and then tucked it into the pocket of her jeans. She had worn jeans today for a reason, jeans and a tee-shirt. Today she possessed a figure, a form, some contours. Today she was not a shapeless sweater and calf-length woollen skirt. She felt more like a woman than she had in some considerable time, and she resigned herself to feeling like this alone.
She logged stock, she updated her inventory, but for some reason she paused with each battered paperback in her hand, read the flyleaf notes, in some cases the acknowledgements and tributes.
This book is dedicated to Martha, who was always there.
This book was written for many people, many of whom I cannot name, but safe to say that they all possessed their own sense of magic, and for this magic I owe them much more than I could ever repay.
For Daniel, Kelly and Frederick.
For my agent, LeAnnie Hollander.
For my editor at Huntseckers, Gerry Liebermann.
Most of all to my wife Catherine, who made me believe I could.
Annie traced her finger over the names, and imagined who they might be, what they might have said, the times they listened, advised, criticized, applauded. She gave them faces and mannerisms, quirks of character and idiosyncrasies. Gerry at Huntseckers wore Homer Simpson socks with a Brooks Brothers suit. He smoked cheroots that smelled awful, and he insisted on having his office window wide even when it was five degrees outside. These were people with lives, real lives, and so real were their lives that they possessed sufficient reality for it to overflow and affect the lives of others. They had dreams, and in some small way both David Quinn and Robert Franklin Forrester had opened a door to her own dreams.
