The Messenger
Page 14
She sat on the floor, supporting Leonora, as her breathing gradually became steady. ‘It’s all right,’ she kept whispering. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’ But she wasn’t only saying it to Leonora. She was saying it to the house and to the memory of all the unhappy, doomed people who had suffered here since the tragedy of Ronald and Beth. Her body was leaden with fatigue, but her mind was singing.
‘I did it. I did it.’
‘What you did …’ Martin looked at her the next day very fondly. ‘What you did can never be praised enough.’
‘Oh, it was …’ Rose couldn’t quite say modestly, ‘Oh, it was nothing,’ because it wasn’t. But she said, ‘It was Ben’s doing, really. He was the one who taught me what to do.’
‘You were the one who saved Leonora’s life.’
Some time after Leonora had been taken to the hospital in the ambulance, Martin had been brought home by Mr Selby from the farm, with his chair in the back of the truck.
‘I was having a sleep in the sun,’ Martin told Rose. ‘Had a wonderful dream. I dreamed of legs. I used to do that, after the accident. I haven’t had that dream for ages. I stood. I walked. And listen, Rose – I dreamed I rode a horse. When we galloped, it was like flying. When I woke up, you’d gone, so I got myself back as far as I could. Luckily the dog barked at me, and Mr Selby came out and gave me a lift home.’
Mr Selby was cross with her for leaving Martin alone on the moor, but Martin wasn’t. He believed Rose when she told him, ‘I just knew that something was wrong with Leonora. I had to come back. But please,’ she added, ‘tell them I came back to get your hat or something.’
‘Why?’
‘Well …’ she blushed. ‘They’re all making a fuss of me. It’s embarrassing. I don’t want to make it worse by them thinking – you know – that I’m special, or anything.’
‘You are, Rose. We’ll never forget what you did.’
Chapter Thirteen
Rose knew that she would never forget any of it. If she lived for a hundred years, she would never forget that she had been the horse’s faithful messenger, and had travelled with him through the winds of time to fight against evil and sorrow.
And win.
She had done it. If she hadn’t taken all the journeys into the past with Favour, and followed up all the clues, right back to their source, she would not have been there with Lilian when Ronald made his tragic mistake, and she would not have heard Leonora calling for help, stricken as Beth had been stricken.
Leonora was saved, and the annexe house was saved. The haunting was gone for ever, Rose was sure of that. The sad, tormented ghosts of Ronald and Beth, who had destroyed so much in the lives of those who came after them, were finally laid to rest.
The front bedroom was … a bedroom. Nothing more; but a lot nicer than most hotel rooms you would find at the English seaside, or anywhere else.
The drooping chrysanthemum on the bedspread was the right way up again. How, in the laws of science, could it have been different? Rose was beginning to think she had imagined it.
The cupboard door stayed shut. When you opened it, as Rose did from time to time, to make sure, the dampness had gone completely, and, with it, the hint of the rotten sea smell, the legacy of the fisherman’s jacket.
‘Know what? That cupboard smells all right now,’ she told her mother. ‘Remember, it used to be so damp?’
‘Well, the weather’s changed. It’s been dry for days.’
They were in the front garden, planting the two rose bushes that Rose had bought for her mother.
‘But there’s another thing about this house.’ This was the best and most astonishing thing. ‘You know that awful stain under the kitchen table?’
‘The one that looked like spilled paint?’
The one that looked like spilled blood. Because it was blood, spilled a hundred years ago.
‘All of a sudden, it’s gone,’ Rose said. ‘How do you explain that?’
‘Gloria must be using a new detergent. Oh Rose, I’m so glad we’ve got the annexe. We’re making more money this year, and people love it. I think you do now, don’t you? Remember how you turned against this house and imagined it was haunted?’
Mollie finished raking the earth round the roses, and stepped back to admire them, flowering a deep pink against the ivy-covered brick. ‘This is a good house!’ she proclaimed. ‘Nothing bad could ever happen here.’
If I could only tell you.
Rose knew she never could. She could never tell anyone about the horse; not even Ben.
His big race was only a week away. She wrote to wish him luck:
I hope you win the championship. I hope you run marvellously.
Love from your Running Mate.
P.S. Thanks for teaching me resuscitation. You’re right. It works.
There was still Mr Vingo.
The hotel was full for the weekend, and Rose did not get a chance to see him alone. He had to share his corner table with two singers from the musical show that was playing at the theatre on Newcome Pier, but when Rose put down his plate of fried plaice and mashed and peas, he said without looking up, ‘So you did it.’
‘Oh – you know.’
‘Of course.’ He picked up his fork and cut through the golden breadcrumbs into the pure white flaky fish. ‘You did well, Rose of all the world.’
After dinner, when Rose was in the garden putting the lawn chairs away, she heard music from Mr Vingo’s room. The singers were upstairs, and he was playing the piano. They were singing a duet from the musical at the theatre. But below and through and above their voices, Mr Vingo began to play the tune, the piano rising up above the singing like a soaring bird.
Holding a chair, Rose stood with her mouth open, staring at the turret window.
Again? Now, when it was all over, and she had got used to the idea of being ordinary once more?
She dropped the chair and turned towards the wood, towards the moor, towards the valley.
This time, as she plunged down through the mist, there were no lurking shadowy figures. The mist parted into a shining path before her feet, and she ran straight down to the bridge and the swift flowing river.
The horse waited for her, his beautiful head turned towards the far distant huddle of white shacks at the end of the valley, where the tiny boats rode on the white-capped sea. Before, she had always shrunk back before his gaze, and glimpsed herself in his challenging eye very small and afraid. Now, as he turned his head, she stood up straight and looked full into his deep grey eye and saw herself mirrored there, erect and proud and confident.
Ready for his next command.
A Note on the Author
Great granddaughter to Charles Dickens, Monica (1915-1992) was born into an upper middle class family. Disillusioned with the world in which she was brought up, she acted out – she was expelled from St Paul’s Girls’ School in London for throwing her school uniform over Hammersmith Bridge. Dickens then decided to go into service, despite coming from the privileged class; her experiences as a cook and general servant would form the nucleus of her first book, One Pair Of Hands, published in 1939.
Dickens married an American Navy officer, Roy O. Stratton, and spent much of her adult life in Massachusetts and Washington D.C., but she continued to set the majority of her writing in Britain. No More Meadows, which she published in 1953, reflected her work with the NSPCC – she later helped to found the American Samaritans in Massachusetts. Between 1970 and 1971 she wrote a series of children’s books known as The Worlds End Series which dealt with rescuing animals and, to some extent, children. After the death of her husband in 1985, Dickens returned to England where she continued to write until her death aged 77.
Discover books by Monica Dickens published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/MonicaDickens
Closed at Dusk
Dear Doctor Lily
Enchantment
Flowers on the Grass
Joy and Josephine<
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Kate and Emma
Man Overboard
No More Meadows
One of the Family
Room Upstairs
The Angel in the Corner
The Fancy
The Happy Prisoner
The Listeners
Children’s Books
The House at World’s End
Summer at World’s End
World’s End in Winter
Spring Comes to World’s End
The Messenger
Ballad of Favour
Cry of a Seagull
The Haunting of Bellamy 4
For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain references to missing images.
This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP
First published in Great Britain 1985 by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd
Copyright © 1985 Monica Dickens
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The moral right of the author is asserted.
eISBN: 9781448214075
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