The Third Angel

  “I'm sure if we look carefully we'll be able to find several crimes associated with Jamie.”

  “Does your husband hate him as well?” Frieda asked.

  “My husband hates everyone equally. He's not very discerning.”

  “Well, I won't be long,” Frieda said.

  She'd heard enough. She went up the stairs. The carpet was gold with a pattern of silver leaves. Frieda kept her eyes down until she reached the third floor. Everything inside the town house looked like a wedding cake. The cornices, the molding, the doors. Frieda knocked on the second door. It was painted cream and gold. It looked heavy enough to withstand the police, should they ever be called in. There was no answer, but it was quite possible that the door also stopped sound. Frieda thought it probably took three or four maids to keep a house like this in order.

  She opened the bedroom door. Nearly everything was blue inside: the walls, the canopy over the bed. It was like a gorgeous birdcage. The rug was Persian and very thick; the furniture was mahogany decorated with some sort of gilding. Jamie was indeed in bed. Frieda looked at him for a moment. He looked beautiful to her, and very far away.

  Frieda sat in a chair by the window. The chair was blue-and-gold silk damask. The room smelled like jasmine and citrus; she assumed it must be the scent Stella used. It was possible to see the park down below, the gold trees, the blue sky. From up here the world looked like a different place, very far away, very small.

  After a while, Frieda went over to the wardrobe and opened it. It was a walk-in wardrobe with huge built-in shelves; there were scores of dresses and pairs of shoes. There were tiny Mary Quant outfits, dresses from Biba in shades of white and cream and yellow, and a row of sheer Victorian blouses with pearl buttons. There were three leather jackets, one black, one pink, one white-and-tan stripes. There were gypsy dresses and Chanel suits. There was the python coat Frieda had seen Stella wearing at the Egyptian Club, hanging carelessly on a hook, and several furs, one of them dyed a pale apricot. There were two pairs of white Courreges boots and dozens of ballet flats in every color. At the rear of the closet were the fawn-colored suede boots with the buttons Frieda had admired. Frieda took off her short black boots and pulled on Stella's. They fitted her perfectly. She went back to the bed and sat on the side, her legs over the edge. It was a very tall bed with down coverlets. Jamie opened his eyes and smiled when he saw her.

  “Where am I?” he said.

  “I think you're in your marriage bed.”

  Jamie sat up and wiped the sleep from his eyes. He was fairly sober, but he wouldn't be for long. He had a massive headache and his leg was killing him. “Did you get a job here?” he asked Frieda.

  She laughed out loud at that. “I quit being a maid,” she said.

  “That's probably good,” Jamie said. “It's a nowhere job.” He paused. “I don't know what happened. Things just moved on. I wanted to say good-bye.”

  “Well now you can,” Frieda said.

  She noticed a used needle on the marble night-table top. There was an ashtray filled with butts and a small hashish pipe.

  “Or we could still see each other,” Jamie suggested. He brushed back his hair, which was almost to his shoulders. He had decided he would never cut it. He didn't have to sacrifice himself. To hell with that. “I mean we only have one life in this world, so we have to follow our desires.”

  Jamie kissed her for a while, then Frieda pulled away. He felt cold in a funny way, as though he'd just stepped out of the rain. She remembered him as being different. He'd been hotter; he'd made her burn.

  “I'm fucking freezing,” Jamie said.

  “How did the recording go?” Frieda asked.

  Jamie took a cigarette from a pack on the night table and gave her one as well. He grabbed the matches and lit both.

  “Great,” he said. “Unfortunately, the guys at the label said ‘The Third Angel' is the B side. I still need the hit song. It's never enough for them.”

  “Do you love her?” Frieda asked. “I mean, I hope you don't mind me asking, but I'd like to know.”

  Jamie looked at her and smiled. “Well, it's not always about that, Frieda.”

  “Isn't it?”

  “Not for people like us,” he said. “People who've ridden shotgun with the Angel of Death.” He turned on his side and studied her face. “Stella would never have to know about us. Or even if she did know, it wouldn't really affect us. It wouldn't have anything to do with the thing that we have between us. That's something rare.”

  Frieda wished she'd known him before he'd been ill, when he was a little boy who hadn't yet seen any angels or made a vow to follow his desires, no matter the cost. He'd been different then, she was sure of it; a boy who had everything in front of him, a future worth living.

  “Did you miss a great deal of school when you were growing up?” Frieda asked.

  Jamie laughed. “You came here to talk to me in my marriage bed and that's your question?” Frieda laughed, too. “I missed three years,” he told her. “I could never make it up.”

  It may have seemed a funny question, but Frieda knew precisely why she'd asked; she'd asked so she wouldn't hate him.

  She went back to the chair by the window while Jamie got up to go to the bathroom. He rooted around in the night-table drawer for his works. He took a waxy packet from a black-and-white wooden and ivory box.

  “I'll be right back,” he said.

  He reached for a bathrobe.

  “I've seen you naked,” Frieda reminded him. “You don't have to be shy.”

  “Right.” Jamie grinned and went off to the bathroom.

  Frieda watched the leaves, then went to investigate the dressing table. It was a beautiful piece of furniture, painted white, very old and inlaid with mother of pearl and abalone. There were three mirrors. Frieda was surprised to find that her reflection was different from what she might have expected. She was nearly beautiful. She took one of the lipsticks on the table and put it on. A pale shimmer. She looked at herself, then wiped off the lipstick with a tissue. Not her color. She used Stella's tortoiseshell brush. The next time Stella brushed her hair she would see dark hair among her own pale strands left between the bristles. She'd wonder, for a moment or two at least, who had been there. Who had climbed up into a world where she didn't belong.

  After about twenty minutes, Frieda went to the bathroom and opened the door. Jamie was on the bathroom floor. It was black-and-white marble, like the front hallway. Frieda went to kneel beside him. She took his wrist and measured his pulse. It was slow and even. He was alive.

  “Jamie,” she said.

  He murmured something. His head was leaning against the side of the tub. She could see his ribs, his arms; she knew all of his body, but it had changed. He was much thinner. There was a blue mark, like a plum, on his forehead.

  “Are you all right?” Frieda asked.

  “Yep.” He nodded. Or tried to. “Just give me a minute,” he said.

  Frieda went back to the bedroom and got her purse. She opened it and took out the first song she had written. She hadn't wanted to give him everything all at once; she'd been hoarding it, waiting to see if he was worthy of it, perhaps, or maybe just waiting to see what would happen next. Now she knew.

  She left it on the bed, on his pillow. “The Ghost of Michael Macklin.” She could have gotten him a blanket or a coverlet to try and make him more comfortable on the bathroom floor, but Frieda didn't really think he would have known the difference. He'd be cold either way.

  Frieda went out and closed the door behind her. She made her way downstairs and retrieved her suitcase from the front hall. Her footsteps echoed on the marble tiles. This is what Frieda knew for certain, this is the list she would have made: She would never stand by and watch him take his life into his hands so carelessly. She would never be silent while he threw the door open to the Angel of Death, while he called to him and begged him to come inside. She would never be on the outside of his life while he followed his desires.
Frieda didn't want anything in return for her songs. What she'd wanted she couldn't have. She knew that. She felt she had what some people called a broken heart, but it wasn't anything physical, and it certainly wouldn't prevent her from carrying her suitcase down to the train.

  Stella's mother came out from the parlor as Frieda went to the door.

  “Are you done with him, or shall I tell Stella about you?” she asked. “He is your boyfriend, isn't he?”

  Mrs. Ridge was a very tall woman. She looked as though she might have been a model once. She appeared softer than she had before, as if she was missing something and didn't quite know what it was.

  “Tell her whatever you'd like,” Frieda said. “She's your daughter. You're the one who cares about her.”

  Frieda already knew she would never be done with Jamie. She knew it as she carried her suitcase to Kensington High Street. The boots she had taken from Stella's closet were high heels, but they felt comfortable. It was as though she'd always owned them.

  A couple were getting out of a cab, so Frieda got in with her suitcase and asked if the driver could go along Hyde Park on the way to the train station. It seemed the end of the yellow trees. Leaves were fluttering down. She would always think about the way they looked from Stella's bedroom window.

  • •

  FRIEDA WOULD NOT be there in the winter as she had hoped. She received a letter from Lennie in December about how the park looked like diamonds after an ice storm. Ajax, the manager, had quit, and the second-floor rooms were undergoing a renovation because some of the girls had started a fire with their cigarettes.

  I hope you're not worrying about me, Lennie wrote to her. My plan is going strong. I'll be gone from here in under two years.

  But when Lennie and Meg were found out over Christmas week, they were both fired by the management and threatened with police action, and Frieda never heard from Lennie again. By then, Frieda was married. She had considered it before she'd run off to London, and now she'd followed it through. Bill was the sort of man who would stand by you, no matter what. He was honest and loyal and maybe that was what she was looking for. Frieda and Bill Rice had a quiet wedding in early December; they went to the register office, and afterward had a luncheon at The Swan, just their immediate families and a few friends. There was cold salmon and champagne and Bill's father, Harry Rice, made a long toast that left everyone in tears.

  Except for Frieda; she was not a crier. She looked elegant with her long dark hair wound up, wearing a pale beige suit and the high-heeled suede boots. Even her father, the doctor, had tears in his eyes, something that totally surprised Frieda. She had never seen him cry, except for once, when they went to visit a little girl in an apartment in Reading who'd been going through chemotherapy. Frieda was nine, grown-up enough to be his helper, but she had to wait in the hall that time; the doctor slipped on a mask and pulled coverings over his shoes. The little girl inside was susceptible to germs.

  On that visit, Frieda hadn't even realized he was crying as they were driving back until she turned to ask him if he could help her with her math homework when they got home. She must have looked shocked.

  “Everybody cries,” Frieda's father told her. “Even me.”

  “Is she dying?”

  “Well, we're all dying,” Frieda's father had said. “Some now, some later.” That was hardly comforting. “She is just a very sweet little girl. Not a complainer. Very much like you.”

  They were stopped at a light. Frieda remembered that night clearly; she had moved closer to her father. She always felt safe when she was with him. “I'm fine,” she said. “I'm not going to get sick.”

  The doctor had laughed and kissed the top of her head.

  He didn't do that often. “Thank you,” he said for no reason, maybe because she wasn't that little girl dying inside her bedroom, maybe because she knew that even he needed a word of comfort now and then. Or maybe it was simply because she was his daughter and he loved her.

  Frieda invited him to the wedding even though she knew it would be difficult for her mother. As for the doctor, he was decent enough to leave his new wife at home. Vi did quite well in her ex-husband's presence. Everyone was civil. Frieda appreciated that. She understood the reason for manners; they were a survival technique.

  “So now you're a married woman,” the doctor said to Frieda at the luncheon. It was a buffet. Frieda liked things simple. “You would have been a great doctor, my girl. You had the knack.”

  “No heart?” Frieda said. “Isn't that the prerequisite?”

  Her father looked at her. “Did you think I was heartless?”

  No matter what he'd done, Frieda had to be honest.

  “No. I thought you were brave. I'm the heartless one.” Frieda waved at Bill. Her husband was an extremely nice man. He was in his second year at Reading University, in the chemistry department. Now that they were married they would be living in a cottage on his parent's property, paying rent, of course, but at a reduced rate. He had his graduate studies to think of, after all. “Anyway, being married doesn't mean I'm dead. I'm starting nursing classes. I'm going to specialize in oncology.”

  The doctor was delighted. “You'll be using your talents. That's what I like to hear.”

  When Frieda realized that she was pregnant during her first term of training, Bill was over the moon.

  “Oh stop.” Frieda grinned. “It's only a baby.”

  “Only!” Bill said. “Only?”

  It was spring and Frieda finished out the term. She was a good student, a little less good at being pregnant. She was tired and cranky and she didn't feel much like eating. On Saturdays she always made time for her mother. They went for long walks in the country. Frieda's mum seemed to have aged; she was often confused. Still, Vi was passionate about things she'd never mentioned an interest in before and had joined the local environmental club. “If we don't save the earth, who will?” she asked Frieda. She'd become a rabid bird-watcher and she didn't keep her feelings in check as she had before. She was freer somehow. Once, when they were walking across a field, Frieda's mother turned to her and said, “You won't believe how much you'll love your child.”

  “Well, of course,” Frieda said. Didn't everyone?

  Her mother grabbed her arm. “I mean it, Frieda. I don't want you to be shocked. Nothing else will ever matter. You have no idea.”

  Frieda embraced her mother, then they resumed walking, looking for birds. Vi kept a notebook of the varieties they'd spied: dove, hawk, blackbird, sparrow, wren. Frieda was occupied with other matters as they rambled through the countryside. As always, she was thinking about Jamie. She had left him in that town house in Kensington, but she hadn't given him up. She had taken him back to Reading. Jamie might as well be sitting at the table every night at dinner while Frieda and Bill discussed their day. He might as well have been right there in bed with them. Frieda felt like a liar far too often; she played the good housewife, but at night, when she sat in the kitchen looking out the window, she was wishing for another life. Sometimes she gazed down the long gravel drive, still expecting Jamie Dunn to arrive, after he'd searched all of Reading for her in a taxi or a limousine. She had the purple jacket folded away in the closet, along with some old sweaters and the black mini-dress, things she would never again wear but couldn't bring herself to throw away.

  That spring, when Frieda was seven months pregnant, she heard Jamie on the radio. She was at the kitchen table with the radio switched on. Thankfully, she was alone. She had fixed a pot of Russian tea and a muffin with jam. She was famished all the time. Outside everything was green. Bill's parents house was known as Lilac House, and their cottage was called The Hedges because it was surrounded by boxwood that had to be trimmed back each year. She actually loved living in the countryside. She who had longed for a city life had become a bird-watcher. She even went to those Save the Environment meetings with her mother and had gotten involved with all sorts of local green issues.

  She was perfectly happy,
and then, all at once, there was his voice. Frieda truly felt that she'd been shot, as though something had gone right through her, lead or ice or sorrow or love. She sat down. It was “The Ghost of Michael Macklin.” It was as if she'd never written it, as though it had been formed whole from the power of Jamie's voice. It was different in some ways; there were electric guitars now, and more of a beat, a pounding one, but inside it was the same song.

  When I walk down this hallway, everyone thinks I've left you, but I'm here in my black coat, I won't ever be gone.

  Frieda listened to the radio all day long, longing to hear it again, and then, just before Bill came home from university, she found a pop station that was playing it. This time she was more prepared, less stunned by the sound of his voice. She listened as a critic might, and was won over again. It was his first release as a single and the radio station said there was a lot of excitement about his album, Lion Park, due out at the end of the week. The single was already number five with a bullet. A bullet must be good; a bullet meant it was getting to people, through the heart, through the soul.

  That night, Frieda couldn't sleep. She felt she'd been trapped in an alternate universe, one in which she lay beside Bill in bed and went to visit her mother on Saturdays. She belonged somewhere else, no matter what Stella had said. She belonged with him.

  She continued her routine, as if in a dream. But when she went to visit on Saturday, Frieda found her mother was too ill to walk.

  “It's just a headache,” Vi said, but it seemed like more. She had to lie down. Her head was throbbing. She asked Frieda to close the curtains because the light hurt her eyes. Frieda phoned her father from her mum's back hallway. He said he'd be over in fifteen minutes, but he was there in less than ten. He must have been speeding. Their house was a suburban brick row house with a pretty yard.

  “I was probably stupid to phone,” Frieda said. “It's probably nothing.”

  “You were right to phone.” The doctor went upstairs to what had once been his bedroom. Frieda followed behind.