The Third Angel (15 page)

At last, exhausted, Frieda stored what she had written in her night-table drawer. She lay down in bed, but she couldn't close her eyes. She was far too excited. She felt as though the words had come through her; poetry at last. Something, a force of some sort, had made her write them down and had strung them together and she had merely been a conduit. While her roommates slept, Frieda had been somewhere else entirely. She had left and come back, and no one had noticed that she'd been gone.

I
N THE MORNING
there was a hum in the hotel, the kind that occurred when someone famous was around. Supposedly John Lennon had checked in. People said he wanted a place to escape to; therefore, if anyone saw him they were supposed to act like he wasn't there. Ajax, the hotel manager, gave the girls a stern lecture; they were employees, serious people, not screaming fans like the hordes of girls posted outside. Maids were not to speak unless spoken to, at the risk of being fired. That was what the Lion Park was all about, after all. Privacy. Double fines were in place.

Frieda wasn't working till the evening, so she went out for a walk. It was good to get away from the groupies who were making such a racket. Frieda hadn't had much sleep; she kept thinking about the drunk man on the concrete and about her poem. She supposed she had written a song. It was probably no good at all, and yet it made her feel the way “Greensleeves” did. That must mean something. She was wearing her black dress and black boots and she'd made up her eyes with Lennie's eyeliner. She felt like crying for Michael Macklin, the character in her song, yet she didn't know the first thing about him. She'd sort of made him up, after all.

Frieda sat down on a wooden bench in a small garden. She loved the way London smelled; the air trembled and seemed alive. Although the leaves were yellow, the weather was still fine. It was an enclosed garden she'd stumbled upon, the sort that made a person imagine she was truly in the countryside. Country girls were sometimes drawn to country spaces, despite their desire for a taste of city life. Frieda could barely hear the traffic through the hedges even though she was so close to Brompton Road that the bench she sat upon rattled with the vibrations from the passing traffic. She should be sitting in lectures at the university in Reading right now. The truth was, her father had always thought she would make a good doctor. She had what it took, Dr. Lewis said. Blood and illness didn't frighten her. And she asked questions whenever she went on house calls with him. That was a good sign. A questioning mind. She didn't even seem to be afraid of death. She accepted it as a natural part of our lives. That was the only way to manage a life in medicine. No hysterics, no regrets, just acceptance that all things end, if not now, then at some point in time.

One night when Frieda was fifteen her father had been called to a home in a nearby village. They'd gone over a little toll bridge where they'd had to pay the toll man two shillings. There were willow trees all along the river, their branches grazing the water. Darkness was falling, and the hedges were so tall it was difficult to see any of the houses. Frieda loved riding in the car with her father. She had absolutely no fear of the dark.

When we ride we ride with the Angel of Death or the Angel of Life, Dr. Lewis said. Sometimes one gets out of the car. Sometimes one follows you inside.

The doctor believed there were three angels. The Angel of Life, who rode along with them most nights. The Angel of Death, who appeared wearing his funeral clothes on those visits when there was no hope. And then there was the Third Angel. The one who walked among us, who sometimes lay sick in bed, begging for human compassion.

“It's not up to us to help the angels,” Frieda had said.

“Isn't it?” the doctor said.

Frieda thought this over. She wondered if he was telling her that it was her duty to help the ill and the downtrodden; perhaps she would never know if she was coming to the aid of an angel in disguise. The doctor discussed subjects other people might think she was too young to hear; she was included in all of the important aspects of his life. Frieda was the only one who knew that the doctor secretly smoked cigars. She thought he was the smartest, kindest man in the world. He rolled down the car window and sang and puffed away. He was a huge Frank Sinatra fan, and he sang “Fly Me to the Moon” that night. After they went over the bridge, they drove along the river, past willow trees. They came to a little house with horses in a meadow.

“You can stay in the car on this one, miss,” Frieda's father said. “This is one where a doctor isn't really necessary. They need an angel and not the fellow in the dark coat, if you know what I mean.”

“I'll go,” Frieda had said. “I want to go.”

She could see the sheen of two white horses, standing in the soft darkness. She didn't want to be afraid of anything, but she was afraid of them. It was a funny fear to have. Frieda didn't actually think they would hurt her, or that they were dangerous. It was more that she had the urge to run with them; to run far away, right through the grass. She loved her home and her family, but once she started running with the horses, she might never come back.

Frieda carried her father's doctor's bag. She liked to do that for him. Her father knew everything about nature. He was a bird-watcher and he was on a committee to eradicate foxhunting, which he thought barbaric. He had once brought home a rabbit, which they had kept as a pet through the cold winter months, but when spring arrived Frieda's father convinced her it would be best to set the rabbit free. They'd watched it hop away into the hedges, and Frieda had agreed that it seemed right for the rabbit to be out in the field, running so far it was soon enough a dot on the horizon. She never even thought to ask her father where he'd gotten that rabbit. He'd come home from a conference in London and there it was in the backseat of his car, curled up on his black winter coat.

It's a hotel rabbit, he told Frieda. You don't find those too often.

That animal is not living in my house, Frieda's mother had said. Rabbits are dirty. And they turn on you.

Frieda had never paid much attention to her mother, whose name was Violet, an old-fashioned name belonging to an old-fashioned woman who stayed in the background. Her word hadn't counted for much. Of course, the hotel rabbit had stayed. The doctor built a hutch in the kitchen and there the rabbit remained all through the winter, eating carrots, lettuce, and peas.

Don't marry a man who always has to have his own way, Frieda's mother had told her. Marry someone who gives a damn about what you have to say. But Frieda had believed her father's way to be the right way, so she paid no attention to her mother's complaints.

At the house with the white horses, a woman opened the door. She was a pretty, dark woman, but she looked worn out. She'd been crying. “He's already gone,” she said. “He's left me.”

Frieda noticed everything that night. The way the clock sounded, the green woolen carpet, the wooden mantel over the fireplace. They left her in the living room while they went into the bedroom. She could hear the clock and the woman crying and the low sound of her father's voice. She felt nothing bad could happen if her father was around, not then and not ever. She realized that she still had his bag so Frieda went down the hall. She saw her father with his arms around the woman he called Jenny, leaning against him, sobbing. She saw the dead man in the bed. The room smelled foul, a mix of shit and blood. The bedsheets were stained brown. The man looked like a person and yet he didn't, a wax figure without his soul or spirit or whatever it was. No life force. No wonder this woman was sobbing. Frieda's father spied her then.

“Why don't you sit with Mrs. Foley while I call for an ambulance to come round,” he said to her. “We can't have Jim staying here like this.”

Frieda looked at her father. He usually referred to the deceased as the body. He never used a person's name once they were gone, not until now. Somehow this night seemed different. Frieda was not the least afraid to be in a room with the dead. It was only a body. If anything, it was the dead man's wife she was afraid of, all those tears, all that emotion.

“Thank you, Frieda,” the woman said to her. She'd known her name. “I couldn't be alone.”

In the car, driving home, Frieda's father sang “Fly Me to the Moon” again, but now it sounded sadder. There was no moon, in fact, well maybe a little one, hidden by the trees.

“I'm proud of the way you acted,” the doctor said as they drove back across the bridge. “You have something special. You're willing to examine things and see what they really are instead of just reacting, screaming like you've seen a mouse the way most people would do when confronted with death.”

“I like mice,” Frieda had said.

“Exactly!” her father had said proudly. “You like mice. That is not typical for a teenaged girl. The things that distress and frighten other people don't scare you. I'm not sure you realize how rare that is.”

Now, sitting in the park in her black dress, Frieda thought her father would disapprove of her. She hadn't turned out the way he had expected; nothing had. Well, everything changed in this world, Frieda and her father included. There wasn't much to be proud of anymore. A maid, not a university student. A girl wearing black eyeliner. Although Frieda still liked mice. At the hotel they were supposed to set out poison, under the beds and the bureaus, but Frieda never did. Secretly, she left out a bit of cheese every now and then in the corner of her room near the heater. It was always gone by morning.

At the far bench in the park, there was a young man asleep. He had long hair and he was out cold, breathing with slow raspy breaths. Drugs or alcohol, Frieda surmised. Possibly an overdose; possibly mild pneumonia. Frieda restrained herself from butting in; she would not allow herself to go over and check to see if the fellow was conscious. The world didn't always have to be her responsibility. Maybe the man on the bench was the Third Angel and maybe he was a homeless drunk. It was not up to Frieda to speculate. She was young and she wanted to live like she was young. She didn't want to think about dead bodies and meningitis and concussions and liver damage and the Angel of Death. She wanted to think about true love that would never die, she wanted to hear music, she wanted to balance along a window ledge on the seventh floor, arms out, and not be afraid of falling or have her mind be taken up with the many ways in which bones could shatter.

Frieda walked back to the hotel the long way around, through little side streets. She loved to look in windows and imagine what it might be like to live another life. She stopped at the coffee shop and sat at a table by the window and ordered a pot of tea and a cheese sandwich. She kept a few scraps in a napkin to take home for the mice. She was thinking about her song; it was as though it was a part of her. The fellow at the next table tried to flirt with her, offering her the pitcher of milk, then the sugar bowl, for her tea, but Frieda wasn't interested. He tried conversation then.

“I hear John Lennon's staying right down the street,” he said, trying to impress her.

“You heard wrong,” Frieda said. “John Lennon would never stay around here.”

She went back to the hotel, elbowing her way through the crowd of girls outside. Jack Henry let her through the door.

“A total madhouse,” he said, happy as could be, certain he'd score with one of the girls whom he promised to get up to the room where Lennon was allegedly secreted away.

Frieda thought about Jack Henry going through a drunken man's wallet; she didn't like the way he was staring at her black dress. If he'd been Mick Jagger that would have been one thing, but he wasn't.

Frieda went up to her room and took out her verse and rewrote it again, changing words as she went along. When she was done, it looked perfect. She'd used a pen she'd borrowed from the front desk and real India ink. Lennie came in from working all day, exhausted. She'd had a fight with her sister, and now Meg was making her pay for her sharp words, giving Lennie all the worst assignments. That day she'd been put on kitchen duty and she'd had to scrub the ovens. Then she'd been sent to a suite where a bachelor party had taken place the night before. She took off her white maid's apron and threw herself down on the bed beside Frieda.

“Human beings are pigs.” Lennie lay on her back, one arm over her face. “Why can't they clean up after themselves? People leave their condoms on the floor. Used ones, mind you!And they know some poor maid will have to clean up after them. How do they live with their disgusting selves?”

“Listen to this.” Frieda propped herself up on one elbow. “Forget about condoms. Just close your eyes.”

In another world she and Lennie would have never met. Frieda would have had university friends, but none of them would have understood her the way Lennie did. The room was hot but there was a breeze coming in through the window. They could hear the girls gathered in the street chanting.

“Shut up, you idiots,” Lennie grumbled with her eyes closed. “He's not bloody registered here. I asked my sister and she said it's some guy named Lemming.”

“Block them out and listen to me.”

Frieda pulled down the shade so the room darkened and the noise was a little less annoying. She settled in to read “The Ghost of Michael Macklin” aloud. She read it slowly, as though her life depended on it. When she was done she threw herself down on her back beside Lennie.

“You wrote that?” Lennie said. Her eyes were open now.

“I did.”

“It's fucking amazing. Jesus, Frieda. What are you, a poet in disguise?”

“They're song lyrics,” Frieda said.

“Well who would have guessed? You're very surprising. You're a freak of nature if you really want to know. What can't you do? I will never understand why you're working as a maid when you're fucking brilliant.”

“You really think it's good?”

“It's better than ‘We all live in a yellow submarine,' I'll tell you that. It's wonderful. It reminds me of something, not in the words so much, but in the feeling.”