Despite the Angels (29 page)

“Oh, Dawn, how wonderful that you are here, safe. Haven’t you turned into a beautiful woman!  But I failed, again. I didn’t bring you up.” She paused. “It was interesting, being your mother for a change. How did it seem to you? Where is your father?” she looked around in increasing panic.

“He is not here, Dorothy,” said Jotin. “This time he did not die. He is in Dundee, grieving for you. We tried to stop you, Dawn cried, but you did not listen.”

“I must go to him, see if I can help him. Can I?”

“Yes, of course. Come.”

Dawn and Mohmi sat together and discussed the events and what could be done next, until Dorothy got back.

“Did you get through to him?” Dawn asked.

“Not really. When we have bodies we are all so sure there are no spirits or ghosts. So he cannot hear me, because to him, I am gone. Rose felt me a little and is encouraging him to finish the Noah’s Ark. That is a good idea, it will keep his hands busy. Maybe for a moment or two he will think we are still alive.”

“Maybe if I go?” suggested Dawn, “when he has finished the ark. I will go and admire it and be happy, then maybe he will feel me.”

“A good idea,” said Mohmi, “but now, come, we have to decide what to do next. So do you, Jotin.”

“Mrs Milne, wake up, they have found someone off the train!” Lewis was flushed and excited, barely able to stay still enough to hear Rose’s voice on the other side of the thin door. “Will you be ready to come with me?”

Rose opened the door and looked out, holding a wrap around her. “Yes, I will come, but I think we should be careful not to upset ourselves by hoping. Is it a live person they have found?”

“It is a woman. It might be Dorothy.”

“It might.” Rose closed the door gently and Lewis sat down to wait. He had not slept much, on the rug in front of the fire, and when he had his sleep had been filled with scraps of dreams, of trains, wind and crying. He put his head in his hands and wondered how long he could bear to feel like this, so at sea, so alone.

“You are not alone. I wish I could make you hear me. You have time to pass now without Dorothy, but you will see her again. Keep making the Ark, keep your hands busy and your skills sharp.” Trynor moved over to the table and blew on the half-made carving.
Some sawdust rose into the air. Lewis looked up and stretched out his hand to the little figure. It will need a bull, he thought, I cannot leave the cow half made and alone. And then maybe there will be a calf. How long was the ark at sea? Was there time on it to grow a calf? I must read more carefully and find out. Lewis smiled at his idea and was still smiling when Rose came out of the inner room, where she had spent the night in the bed.

“It is nice to see a smile, Lewis. I must confess I do not feel much like it myself. Is there a happy thought you can share?” Lewis explained about the calf and Rose did smile a little, remarking that it was wonderful how the mind went on thinking of little things even when it seemed that the big worry was so huge there would never be space for anything else.

Down at the shore they joined hundreds of people jostling and calling out. Eventually news filtered back to them. The woman found was not alive and was older, definitely not Dorothy. A search operation was being got under way, divers were coming to help.

“I must get home, Lewis,” said Rose, turning towards the dock, “send a letter if they find her and I will come to help. I pray that they are found.”

After seeing Rose onto a ferry, Lewis walked slowly back up the gentle hill towards his home. Pray, he thought, that is a good idea. I should pray that she swam ashore and was able to keep hold of the baby. Or that their bodies will be found. Or that I will die soon and not have to put up with this any longer. I will go to the kirk and say a prayer. St Mary’s church was just in front of him and he went to the door, but it was shut. He turned away and tried St Paul’s further along, but it also was closed. He felt desperate, that God was turning him away, after stealing his wife. Then he saw St. Andrew’s Cathedral and took a breath. I must say a prayer, he said, under his breath, as he watched himself walk up the steps.

“You did what?” asked Neil later, when Lewis was confessing his strange compulsion, “You went into the Roman Church? Why?”

“I do not know.” Lewis shook his head slowly.

“In his confusion he thought he needed to be in a church to say a prayer, some of his other lives’ beliefs got through. He forgot the religion here teaches that God can hear you anywhere. But any of us might think we needed a church, if we got that distressed,” Trynor was sitting on the table in Lewis’s room, swinging his legs. He addressed Lewis: “Look, we’re here, all ears, ready to pass any messages you have. And we can sometimes fix the small things ourselves. Actually, we fix a good deal you don’t even ask about.”

“What was it like?” Neil was captivated.

“Like a theatre. Very decorated, fancy, with gold, you know. And the seats sloped a bit, so if you are at the back, you can still see. Lots to look at, pictures, statues.”

“Statues? Idols?” Neil wanted to know more.

“Oh, I do not know, Neil. Go and look. I was so surprised I forgot to say any prayers.”

“Just as well, you do not want idols to be hearing you.”

“Pity. If you had sat down and been quiet for a moment you might have felt me there.” Trynor was quiet. “What do you suggest, Roki? How do you get through to Neil?”

“Once he heard me, when he was fishing. Of course he does not know it was me, but that is not important. He acted on my advice. And very good advice it was, too.”

“Only once? Never in the kirk?”

“No. They talk too much in there.”

“Isn’t that true?” Trynor laughed. “But once or twice I have worked with the guides of priests and they have encouraged the priests to say things that were useful to my people. Hard work though,” he sighed. “Maybe I will bring him on a quiet walk.”

“Get him back to work,” said Roki.

“Are you coming back to work?” asked Neil, “I’m keeping your place open for you.”

“What do you mean?” asked Lewis listlessly, his mind beginning to dwell on the possible chances of finding Dorothy by walking the shores of the Firth.

“What I said. I’m doing your work, one of the lads is doing mine. Anyone can be a stoker. Takes brains to be a smith.” Neil smirked, hitting his fists together, “tap, tap!”

“But you are not a smith. You are a farm worker turned stoker. You have no papers.”

“The foreman did not seem to mind. I said I could do it and so I can. I have been watching you for more than a year.”

“I watched my master for seven years and he watched me. It takes care and practice to be a smith. I will come back tomorrow, before you hurt yourself. I will have to trust that someone else will find my Dorothy.”

“I will tell them to expect you. Tap tap!”  Neil was gone, leaping down the stairs, singing in his off-key voice.

It was a week before another body was found, but then over the next few days, many, mostly men, were brought ashore and funeral services were held in the waiting rooms at the station where they should have arrived tired and happy after their journeys. Lewis went down to the shore every time he could and the cold seeped deeper into him each time as he began to realise that his wife would probably never be found.  He went once to eat the fried potatoes they had enjoyed together, but they were ashes in his mouth and no amount of vinegar could help. It was a waste of a halfpenny, he thought, that I cannot afford now that I am only being paid as a stoker.

“You must fight that, Lewis. You are a skilled man. You wanted to be a smith back in the Médoc and couldn’t because you were a woman, but you are a man now. Don’t let being a smith go to waste. At least you can enjoy your skills.”  Trynor had been involved in this one-sided argument ever since
Lewis had gone back to the foundry and discovered that the foreman had given his job to Neil. Lewis had just said ‘oh’ and looked around him with dead eyes.
“You have to care about yourself, Lewis. That Neil has been making lives difficult for you for a long time. It is time to fight back.”

“I wonder…” Lewis stopped, hoping the people sitting around him on the benches, enjoying their chips, had not heard him talking to himself. I wonder, he thought quietly, why Neil did it. He said it was to keep my job open and it did, for him. How can the foreman have been taken in by him, pretending to be a smith. ‘But Mr Martin, why did you not bring your papers with you?’, ‘Oh, I am sorry Sir, but I left them safe at home in Fife. You know how it is in a rented room, nothing is secure. Will I send for them?’  The cheek of him, thought Lewis, taking a risk like that. The foreman had not demanded to see the papers and Neil was settled into Lewis’s place. ‘You can have another position when one comes available, Mr Lindsay,’ the foreman had said to Lewis on his first day back after the accident, ‘you have not been reliable this last week. I think it would be easier for you as a stoker for the time being.’ Lewis said nothing, but wondered how reliable all the other people whose relatives had drowned had been this week and how it was that anyone in this town had been so untouched by the tragedy as the foreman seemed to be.

“Why have you stolen my job?” Lewis asked Neil, as they left the foundry that evening.

“I have not. I have made a job for myself. I need the money more. You have only yourself to keep, but I have my eye on a bonny lassie who works in the grocer’s in the street behind. I will need to buy pretty things for her. You will be fine as a stoker for the next little while and then he will give you another job.”

“But you are not a smith, you are not qualified. You will make a mistake.”

“No, I will not. You will stop me.” Neil was jaunty, his eyes were flashing with mischief.

“And why should I do that?” Lewis was having difficulty keeping his concentration on Neil. He was bewildered. He would have to ask Dorothy how to handle this situation. His eyes overflowed and his attempts to hide his tears were in vain. Neil chuckled.

“Because if you do not, I will tell the boss that you are trying to put out the fire by snivelling onto it!” Neil turned in at the door of a public house. “Come on, I will buy you a drink!”

“No, thank you, Neil. I just want to go home.”  Lewis trudged the rest of the way to his quiet room with a heavy heart and picked up his knife and the little cow. As he carved, he relaxed and thought of his baby and her gurgly smile. She will love this ark, he thought, as he carefully trimmed the feet of the cow so that it stood sturdily.

Mohmi sat quietly as Dawn paced to and fro, thinking out what to do; remembering when her mother Eloise had died in France; and when they were both killed by the tsunami in Crete. Mohmi glowed with a soft blue light, which she occasionally stretched out to Dawn to soothe or direct her.

“It is so hard, Mohmi. The other times I did not have to wait and watch like this. And Lewis is so sad. He does not know I am safe and that we will be together in an instant.”

“It does not feel like an instant when you are in a body. Even those people who are sure they will see each other again feel the pain of a long separation. But most of them are not at all sure. Such a pity they do not remember.”

“Have you been a human, Mohmi?”

“Yes, many times. It is hard, when you feel you are on your own in a hard world. But it is hard to be here watching too. Trying to get through to the deaf! It was a bit easier in times gone by, you all heard us a little. But now, they are all so sure they understand the world, they hear nothing.”

“Would Lewis hear me, if I went to him?”

“He might. Why don’t you try?”

Dawn came into the little room on a June morning.
The sun was glinting between the curtains and slanting across the floor and up onto the bed.
She sat on the end of the bed and watched as
Lewis began to wake
. Mohmi was with her, standing in the shadows, waiting.
Lewis stretched and opened his eyes. He looked at the sunlight and reached over to the window, to chuck open the curtain, allowing the warm light to flood into the room.

“Happy birthday, little Dawn,” he whispered and shut his eyes.

“He sees me!” said Dawn to Mohmi.

“No, I don’t think so. He just remembers. Talk to him.”

“Hello Lewis. No. Hello Daddy! I came to help you remember my birthday, but you don’t need me for that. But do you remember me? My smile?” She smiled broadly. “Does that look like my baby smile, Mohmi?”

“Not much.”

“Oh well. Remember how I used to cry when I woke up first and you could not calm me?”

Lewis stirred. “You were such a quiet baby in the mornings. Smile smile. Like the sunshine in the room.”

“Oh dear. Was I wrong?” Dawn looked at Mohmi.

“Yes. It was as Marie-Claire you were bad-tempered first thing. As Dawn you were much better. But it doesn’t matter. Stop talking so much and try to touch him with your energies.”

Dawn moved closer to Lewis and stroked his forehead. She concentrated hard and tried to get inside his mind, to plant a happy memory there.
Lewis got out of bed and went to into the other room to rake up the fire and heat water.
Dawn followed and went to the table where the ark was set out.