Love of Grace and Angels

  That weekend a year ago had presented Ric with the biggest challenge he had ever faced. Meeting Grace was enormous good fortune but the timing had tested him to the limit. By comparison, pursuing Primrose had been an easy exercise. Ric simply collapsed into his grief so she could scoop him up, just as he had the little kitten. A living, breathing, Florence Nightingale, Primrose had nursed him through the worst of it. He had not confided in her about Moira’s previous identity as brother, nor had he referred to the precise nature of her death, and in the light of his obvious distress, Primrose had not sought details. A man of secrets, even the court case passed without Ric choosing to comment.

  Throwing off the white linen bedcover, Ric sat up. He enjoyed the fact that everything was immaculate and totally unlike the mess that had greeted him each day for the last six months, the heap of belongings tripping them both up ever since he moved in. He thought Primrose’s place was a very good place to be, but it wasn’t perfect. There could be no shrine.

  Given how low the anniversary of Moira’s death was making him feel, in days gone by, Ric would have clambered up to his shrine to inspect his trophies in an effort to lift his spirits. But that life was gone; a home life based on whimsical moments a thing of the past. He’d even given up smoking. Sharing meant change. It meant structure. At least his shrine was safe and useable, kept in a place no one could disturb, presenting none of the difficulties it might have, for it never could have come here. And, if he were honest, there were certain benefits to be had in its new location. True, the spontaneity of worship was lost, but the chance to grow the shrine and leave it uncovered in the much larger space now housing it was an absolute bonus. In this new existence, where everything except Moira was to be laid bare and shared, at least the one thing that must never be found remained accessible.

  In the bathroom, Ric turned on the shower. While waiting for the hot water to come through, he further reflected on Primrose’s home. His home. Although small, hers was a much nicer apartment than his had been. This was new, light and warm, with decent facilities and the added bonus of being even more central than his own central flat. He’d made money selling up, the price never ceasing to make him smile and offering a feeling of wealth he was not used to. And then of course there were his savings. No need for that refurbishment now. It all made for a neat, roundly full bank account. So much money, all sat without purpose, was indeed a comforting cushion.

  Primrose spending the day with her mother meant Ric would have ample opportunity to go to his shrine, and so while shampooing his hair, he determined to do just that. Before, however, he decided he would revisit the café, the scene of his first real taste of the woman he expected to spend the rest of his life loving and being loved by. His previous infatuation was forgotten as if she never existed. Had she appeared on the pavement before him he would have walked past her without recognition, the face and body once known in intricate detail so sullied with disappointment as to be rendered unrecognisable.

  *

  Beautiful Bath kept tourists occupied as always. Groups of foreign students listened while their teachers lectured on the historical significance of this building or that hot spa. Tour guides bustled with closed umbrellas held aloft, tailed by those grateful to be free of the coach. But from the perspective of a local, the city was relatively quiet for the time of year, and when Ric walked into the café he found it virtually empty.

  Sitting in the exact seat he had occupied three hundred and sixty four days before, he ordered a coffee. A waitress twinkled a little at the sight of him, this man who was so much a plain, blank canvas that in him she saw a face handsome as any film star’s. He smiled, perfect white teeth answering her glow. She smiled back, coyly. Ric turned his attention to the menu, his thoughts firmly with Moira and the life she would not be able to share with him, even had she wanted to.

  Her death had not blinded him to her inadequacies. He had not raised her up to immortal perfection or forgotten the faults that made up the person. Moira had been a loner, a hard sort of person, bitter, sometimes cruel, always difficult to fathom. But nothing is so tough as to be without weakness, he knew, and had she been dealt a different hand then maybe the better side of her nature might have flourished. He’d seen glimpses of kindness and known her to be vulnerable, all with such rarity that others would certainly have missed it. Bullied turned bully would be one summary, rose growing much needed thorns, another.

  Deflated by Ric’s inattention, the waitress turned barista and made him some coffee.

  There was nothing Ric felt like eating. The menu still offered food crushed and wilted, fancy twists of ingredients turning tried and tested favourites into alien offerings he couldn’t imagine bothering to try. Lightly scrambled egg with smoked salmon on olive bread, garnished with black pepper and mint. What was wrong with the original, he wondered. Why must good things always be ruined by change? Taking his coffee from the waitress and closing the menu, he found himself unable to think of anything but his sister. Poor Moira, he thought. By date, in one more day she would have missed a whole year, and that was just the first year of all the years to come. By the day, she had forty-eight hours to live with no idea she was about to die. The man that did it, that snatched her life away without a single drunken thought, lived on, he knew.

  Drunks. There were so many of them. Besides better pay and more secure hours, Ric had taken the job in the bar to watch over the crowd. Though his obsessive nature targeted Angels, this single-mindedness had not the sole focus it might seem. There were blurred edges. Unable to reflect honestly upon his own failings, Ric felt utter wrath towards people who strayed from the rules, hating the fact that often it was commonplace activities fraying the boundaries of law. In truth, only certain things bothered him, for Ric had simply drawn a line where he saw fit, making him little different from those he abhorred. Little different, in fact, from most. He loathed those who did not pay for car-parking tickets and would single them out to the warden; he did not like the fact that others left their vehicles on double-yellow lines, again directing traffic wardens in their unfortunate direction. And since Moira’s death, he despised drink driving with a passion. More lucid times found him methodically reporting these issues when able, other times he was hell bent on it; increasingly, Ric was hell bent.

  While at work and with undetected and subtle efficiency, drunks that might be intending to drive were dealt with. Some individuals Ric ensured were intercepted by the police on leaving the premises, more were unable to find their keys after staggering to the car park. A few, and only a few, were already behind the wheel when they were caught. Arrogant and unruly, these were the drinkers reluctant to leave at the end of the night, the easiest for Ric to find and report.

  Coffee drained, Ric could think of no reason to stay in the café. Picturing Grace sitting at a table with her two daughters had been surprisingly difficult. There was no presence in the cafe, no aura of what had been. Disappointed, he sighed. He thought she would be there, but maybe the difficulty in seeing her was something to do with Moira. It was, after all, the anniversary.

  Fleetingly, he thought to go to the spot where Moira died, wondering if he might feel something of what Grace had hoped to feel when visiting the bridge. But he couldn’t face it. For Ric, that spot in the road was not somewhere to summon up the ghost of a person whose spirit he could feel anyway. Perhaps, he thought, this was after all something of what Grace had felt. Like him, she had carried the connection inside her. Place did not feature.

  Having revisited the café, it was time to move back into the present and dream of the future. But just as he was about to stand, another coffee arrived, though he was sure he hadn’t ordered it. So Ric remained seated and allowed himself a further moment to drift.

  The bedcovers pulled back, sharply.

  ‘What you looking at?’

  ‘Go away, Mikey. I’m busy.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be reading. Mummy told you. I heard her.’

  ‘Go back to
bed.’

  ‘Don’t be mean.’

  ‘Not everyone is mean. Go away. I’m tired.’

  Mike stared.

  He could be very annoying, but still it baffled Ric why people wouldn’t leave his brother alone. Mike seemed to attract attention and most of it was bad. Part of Ric wondered if he actually invited it. He knew his brother had come to dislike others defending him, aware that the little boy, who was not so little, wanted to stick up for himself. It made him appear aggressive, their mum said. But Ric didn’t agree, and neither did their dad. Either way, it hadn’t lessened the focus.

  Why was it that certain kids were always bullied, Ric wondered? Was it just that they were different in some way? But this didn’t make sense, because more people than Mike were different, especially the bullies themselves.

  When finally Mike left, Ric remade his reading tent, heart still thumping a little too hard from the fright. He’d been looking at his bible, trying to find a clue from amongst the pictures for what Lucifer was feeling. He felt sorry for the fallen angel. Why had there been no one to catch him? This was something else that didn’t make sense.

  But Mike had spoiled the moment. Frustrated, Ric’s face emerged from beneath the covers, and he again breathed the cool air of the bedroom, the intense heat of last year’s summer making this one feel like a fraud. And this year, the holidays seemed likely to consist of watching programmes promoting the outdoors, rather than actually being there, as Ric preferred. Mike would be happy, though, since Mike loved television.

  There were only a few days to go before school finally broke up, and according to his mother the forecast was terrible. She’d said this many times with a tone of great annoyance, also repeatedly muttering the word, typical, as had his father and just about every other adult Ric knew.

  Ric placed the book and torch on the bedside cabinet. He lay on his side, cheek pushed into the soft pillow, covers pulled up to his neck. What was Mike thinking of, creeping around on a night he’d already been in trouble? Maybe he’d wanted to moan about it.

  For a long time, their father had been pushing them both to try for the local rugby team, so they’d been there that afternoon. As an experience, Ric found it to be better than expected, and afterwards, in the pouring rain, he’d watched the younger session, and heard people commenting that his brother was very good, considering he’d never played before. Ric felt proud of Mike, and so had their father. But Mike cried angrily during the cold walk home. He’d hated every minute. He was sent to bed straight after a bath and small supper of bread and cheese, because he couldn’t control his tantrum, which raged on long after his father had given up trying to reason with him.

  Ric wasn’t sure why Mike had reacted as he did. The weather was bad, but not bad enough to make him quite so upset. And it wasn’t as if they’d be playing again for a while, apparently, and surely being good at something took you halfway to enjoying it? That’s what their dad had said, anyway. For himself, Ric didn’t mind if he played again or not, though he felt himself leaning towards the not.

  Ric heard a movement on the landing and listened. It was his mother, whispering harshly to Mike. She must have heard him get up. It was on the instructions of his mother that Ric had taken to following Mike, when Mike insisted on going out to play alone. Ric didn’t mind, for it eased his worries as much as it eased hers. If he were always watching, his little brother would be safe.

  Ric drained the second cup of coffee, and sitting for a while longer wondered if it was, in fact, Moira he had come to see after all, for there she had been, caught up in a memory. With hindsight, that rugby try-out said a lot about Moira. The utter resistance to play a game just because others thought she should – because others considered she might be good at it – absolutely reflected the person she’d become as an adult; the secret visit to his room revealing the vulnerability she would never lose.

  A question came. What if, last year, he had not waited in the café for such a long time? What if he had left after accepting that Moira wasn’t coming? Would he then have seen her? Might he have prevented what happened? The answer was no. Grace was his fate and Moira had delivered her to him, he was sure. In Grace, Moira had ensured a better future. In Grace, Ric could always now find something of his sister.

  Ric’s hands trembled as he paid for his coffees, and whether it was caffeine or this new understanding, he wasn’t sure. Leaving the waitress with neither tip nor smile, Ric walked to his moped, eager to set off for the shrine, more convinced than ever that it was indeed in the perfect place.

  *

  The room Ric entered no longer resembled the orderly and effective living space created by his sister. It remained spotlessly clean, but all that once occupied the apartment had gone, and now it stood inexpressibly bare, a space without substance. Devoid of the human existence that made it a home, however simple, it had become a plain and featureless metaphor for the chasm Moira’s death had left in her brother, an empty hollow, save for the shrine. Save for Grace.

  Most of Moira’s things had been given to charity, including every single item of clothing, although her parents took a small side-table they had given her, recovered to prevent it falling into the grabbing hands of greedy relatives. As it was, those relatives wanted nothing and showed heartless disregard for the deeper issues of bereavement, not bothering with the pretence that a memento might be nice. No item had been taken by Ric, either, only the apartment itself.

  A careful person, Moira had paid off her mortgage. Unwilling to part with their child’s hard earned investment, the elderly parents handed the keys over to Ric. It was not a gift, they said. He should think of himself as Keeper until everything was more settled and clear. And so after it had been completely emptied and Ric was certain that his parents had given him every key, he moved his treasured shrine to its new home. It was too soon for him to make a conscious move towards giving all the space over to it – to Grace – because in his heart it remained very much Moira’s place. Nevertheless, trophy-by-trophy, photograph-by-photograph, box-by-box, the shrine grew, creeping outwards along the wall of Moira’s old bedroom, and forwards into the main room itself, the broadening spread unnoticed by the very hand responsible.

  The door swung open and tossing his keys to the floor, Ric switched on the light, heavy curtains always left closed to avoid prying eyes seeing this thing that was too personal to share. A bare bulb in the centre of the room shed a harsh light, and Ric decided his next purchase would be a shade to soften the atmosphere and after that some floor lamps. It was quite a modern place in comparison to the shrine’s old home, and rather like Primrose’s in some ways. Ric wasn’t sure if he really enjoyed modern. He thought he probably preferred old, although he hadn’t felt that way when he’d lived somewhere old.

  Standing before the shrine, Ric admired his work. The acquisition of trophies had become ridiculously easy and the days of breaking into houses and stealing soap, a thing of the past. Now, he could take whatever he wanted with the casualness of a rich man shopping. But it was a rich man whose discretion and once discerning eye was blinded by the ease of wealth: Ric’s gathering was becoming careless.

  Large pictures of Grace were stuck to the wall, fanning out from the mirrored cupboard that was again topped with an array of snuffboxes and crystals. Amongst these images – printed from a computer onto regular paper – lay smaller ones, shiny instamatic prints from an old Polaroid camera Ric had picked up from a fair. Looking like new and in good working order, it proved something of a bargain and an incredibly useful find with its wad of paper.

  Living in such close proximity to his one True Angel and having endless access to her private world, was making it increasingly hard for Ric to resist making a move on Grace. He had no doubt that she felt their connection and had always understood it, drawing him in by placing her daughter into his protective care, in this way securing him in her life. When he and Grace were together he could feel the strength of their bond. Sometimes it was a shock
ing, biting, powerful energy made all the more compelling by its maddening invisibility. Oftentimes, though, it was gentle, a comforting tide of unadulterated love. In his mind’s eye, this love was a white light that burned so brightly nothing else but it could be seen, a radiant power far more intense than the sun, yet which caused no pain as he stared, allowing it to pour in. It was silent, ethereal, all consuming and, until recently, peacefully satisfying. But times were changing, since Ric felt ready for the next step. If he did not touch her soon he thought he might go mad.

  Primrose provided a more than satisfying outlet for pent up sexual desire. They both had needs and he liked her very much. He considered theirs to be an eminently convenient relationship, for while his body was expertly fucking a very happy Primrose, his mind was making desperate love to Grace. It did not feel like cheating, simply the sum of all that mattered. Primrose loved him, Grace loved Primrose, he and Grace were not yet able to fully realise their devotion. He and Primrose made perfect substitutes for what he considered to be the real life lovers, himself and Grace.

  Ric sat on the gold cushion and slowly opened the top drawer of the mahogany travelling box. He took out the pen taken from Grace’s bag in the hotel. Perhaps it was time to send a signal, to let Grace know they must begin considering how to progress their future together, to reveal to her his growing frustration. If he wrote something with this pen and gave her the note, might it act as the trigger? If she saw him with the pen, their pen, would she then understand? He opened a patch box, the beginnings of a new tower of boxes, and took out a small pair of white panties lifted from the dirty laundry basket outside Grace’s bedroom. With eyes shut and a deep inhaling breath, he pressed the folded lace gusset to his mouth.

  Chapter 3