Alexis Thompson

 Ten minutes before she was due to leave the hospital, Roseanna’s mother slipped into another of her episodes. It was like any of the previous ones: the same crying out in muddled terror, as from a bad dream; aimless blue eyes desperately seeking some fixing point of recognition. The shock came from the near-perfect lucidity and strength she had shown across the previous three days: a cruel raising of hopes, as if she had been temporarily cured. The doctor was called in. Roseanna was told there was no benefit to her sticking around.
   As long as the roads remained clear, there would be just enough light to get home. She said goodnight to the girls at the desk and some of the nurses who were themselves leaving and, as she crossed the carpark, gave a small wave to those arriving for the night shift. She sat in the car for a minute or two. She pulled down the visor and inspected her eyes in the mirror, puckered and bloodshot from worry and tiredness.
    Checking to see which route to take, she was aware she ought to have known the way home better by now. She traced her fingers along the roads on the OS map, before finally allowing the GPS to decide for her.
   Turning on the ignition, a CD of The Enigma Variations continued to play from the journey down. It started suddenly in a loud, anxiety-inducing convulsion of strings, woodwind and percussion. She hovered over the skip button, considering whether to go back to 'Nimrod', but decided it was too exultant; music better suited to victory and celebration, for which there was no present call. Instead, she put on the radio. A live audience was laughing at a punchline she had missed.
  She began to think of her father. How he would have coped with all this. Roseanna’s only lasting memory of his funeral was not wiping away tears of grief, but tears of laughter. As they left the cemetery, her younger brother Freddy, languid in the back seat of the car, perhaps too much unmoved, and a little drunk, repeated old stories their father used to tell, perfectly mimicking his voice and mannerisms. Her mother then performed hostess at the wake, forbearing and gracious. Not quite the merry widow, but a remarkable transformation from her role at his bedside in the previous weeks. Roseanna thought of the mere body her father had become, the drugged landscape, site of a slow and pitiless massacre. To see all those guests eat sandwiches and smile reassuringly at each other, following such an event: it was love, but such a strange example of it. The object of this love was now gone. They were all witness to a great and terrifying mystery. Where did all that life go, that pain, that violence? It must have gone somewhere.
   The low sun was blinding her through the windscreen.
   Roseanna had been tasked with overseeing this transition, steward of her mother’s deterioration. She turned the radio down to a barely audible hum to concentrate on the directions being given. From Dorchester, the journey would follow a web of roundabouts joined to byroads and the occasional country lane–– soon after opening out onto medium-length stretches of dual-carriageway. She would need to stay vigilant, taking the correct exit so as not to find herself driving through town centres at rush hour. In the meantime, she could run through what she would say to Robert when she got home.
   She, of course, knew what to say, but it was how to say it? She couldn’t just rattle off a list of his shortcomings–– his apparent indifference, detachment, her feelings of abandonment. That only ever made things worse. The difficulty was that, superficially, he had not done anything particularly wrong. He wasn’t violent or abusive, he wasn’t unfaithful, he didn’t drink (not to excess, at least) and he was never intentionally cruel. These days, he was little more than polite, unless the conversation turned to her mother (more specifically, Roseanna’s absence on account of her mother). At which point, he could be fairly spiteful. More and more, he treated his wife as he would a family friend or a colleague, with whom, two or three nights a week, he shared a bed. But, of course she knew all of this, as did he.
     About a year before her mother showed any of the early signs of what would follow, Roseanna had made several attempts to make her feelings known to Robert. The problem was she had been unable to precisely determine the cause of this unhappiness. What began as an honest attempt to convey her dissatisfaction, quickly developed into what was construed as a series of attacks. When she was able to articulate these problems, say his lack of enthusiasm, in as sensitive a manner as possible, Robert would dismiss the point on the basis that his work sucked him dry of whatever enthusiasm he might still have. When she suggested that they sit down and actually talk to each other, he would say: ‘Why does it land on me? Why does it always have to be my fault? Why don’t you start the conversation?’ She would tell him that she was trying to do just that, she had been trying for months; countless times she made the effort to get through to him, to draw him out, have him say something, anything, for him to even acknowledge her as his wife. Instead, he would just sit there like a sad stone animal, gazing into the air.
   The longer this went on, the worse it became. Instead of talking, they would talk about talking. They argued the same points, proposed the same solutions and made the same unfulfillable promises. This further pushed Robert into retreat. If this was her idea of ‘communicating’, that is, having his abilities as a husband and lover called into question, at times explicitly criticised, then why would he want to talk to her? Wouldn’t he rather lock himself away in the spare room and get on with a bit of extra work? This is precisely what he did, returning home with a messenger full of papers, having purposefully kept some back from his day at the office.
   After six months of this, and much hesitation on both their parts, they finally decided to begin marriage counselling. Indeed, for a brief while, it seemed to work. Robert grew less defensive and they began to make more time for each other. Robert even took Roseanna to a concert in Oxford for her birthday, after which he began taking a previously unimaginable interest in classical music. She realised later that he only did so to give them something new to talk about.
   It was around this time Roseanna received a phone call from her mother.
   ‘Roseanna?’ she said, in a frail, unsteady voice which somehow made her sound younger. ‘I’m terribly worried.’
   ‘What is it?’
   ‘It’s your father. He hasn’t come home yet. I don’t know what’s happened to him.’
   While her mother had been growing progressively vague over recent years, it had never been a cause of great concern, the usual wear of old age. However, the doctors believed she might be displaying symptoms of ‘mild cognitive impairment’, which can develop into something more serious. They also agreed that in such a case it was uncommon for patients to suffer long-term memory loss, that it was more usual for them to forget what they had been eaten for breakfast that morning, rather than the death of one’s husband, a decade before.
   Roseanna had a sudden urge to smoke a cigarette. She had not smoked, nor wanted to smoke, for maybe twelve years. She considered, on seeing a sign for an upcoming service station, whether to pull in and buy a pack of Silk Cuts. She didn’t know if they still sold Silk Cuts, or how much they would cost if they did. The thought of changing lanes, parking up, crossing the forecourt, queuing up and finally buying the horrible things, not before having to direct the checkout person to which row behind the grey metal curtain the plain packaged little box sat, was too absurd. She carried on in the middle lane, passing the sign, then immediately regretted not having stopped.
   Approaching Salisbury, she vainly sought comfort from her surroundings. To either side of her, beyond the short hedgerow, was acre upon acre of flat farmland, stretched beneath a coppery haze. Occasionally, however, the cap of a hill, revealed the oblique and faintly sinister topography of Cranborne Chase in the distance, with its hilltop beech copses, tree trunks like the thin little legs of old men, above oceanic swells of green and toffee-coloured fields. She passed through Salisbury, climbing a stretch of the A345, when she was able to catch sight of the cathedral spire, rising in the rear-view mirror like a hypodermic needle. Starlings, faint particles above the city, curled shell-like in their murmuration, before bursting into black powder across the sky.
   By the time she reached Marlborough, her concentration was beginning to wane. Her blood sugar must have dipped. She hadn’t eaten anything since lunch, so took out some mints from the glove box. It was in this state of mild light-headedness that a car suddenly attempted to pull out in front of her from a junction on the left. The man behind the wheel, frontal bone glistening pink, knuckles bleaching on the steering wheel, edged out and accelerated toward the middle of the road, before being forced to reverse back again. He then proceeded to take his aggression out on Roseanna by following too closely behind her, beeping his horn if she dared to go a fraction below the speed limit or paused too long at a green light. By the time she came to the next roundabout, she was so anxious to get rid of him, she turned left instead of right, without realising her mistake.
   The GPS showed up a spinning circle on the screen and reoriented itself for an alternative route, which only added fifteen minutes to her journey. With the light westering behind the downs, the surrounding landscape took on a new primordial strangeness: trees watching from the top of hills like old dead kings against an overwhelming blue sky.
   The radio was still playing softly. She turned the volume up; something in the subliminal rhythms of the voices drew her attention. There came on one of those quasi-sermonic speeches, given by a man with dry lips sticking to his gums. The subject was visionary religious experiences. Following an introduction that assumed people listening had never heard of angels, the programme moved on to an interview between a neurologist and a woman who believed she was visited by some sort of celestial presence.
   ‘Now tell me,’ began the interviewer, ‘what was it you saw exactly?’.
   ‘Well, it wasn’t so much what I saw. It was more a kind of feeling.’
   ‘What was the feeling?’
   ‘You see, it’s very difficult to put into words. There was this voice. I guess you could say it was sort of…singing, like a choir. Only, I couldn’t  exactly hear it. I could just feel the sound, like it was running through me.
   ‘Did you see anything?’
   ‘Yes, colours, I guess. More of a glow. Again, you couldn’t really see it. It wasn’t like that. It was more like…’
   ‘I think I understand. It’s as if I had asked you to imagine the colour in your mind. You are not seeing the colour, but you are suddenly aware of it.’
   ‘That’s about right. You couldn’t see or hear or touch anything. It was like one complete feeling, all together in your mind.’
   ‘And was there any sort of message being conveyed in this feeling?’
   ‘Well, I was very ill at the time. Cancer. There wasn’t much hope for me, really. I thought I was going to die. I think everybody did, even the doctors. Of course, they never say that, do they? Only in so many words. I just wanted to give up. I was tired of fighting it. And when this, whatever you want to call it, happened, I suddenly felt all right, like there was hope. Like everything would be okay.’
   ‘And was it?’
   ‘Well I’m still here, aren’t I?’ She laughed. It was a laugh like the sound of terror shattering into a thousand tiny pieces. ‘I probably sound mad, don’t I?’
   ‘Far from it. Thank you very much for speaking with me.’
   ‘Thank you.’

   Tears filled Roseanna’s eyes. As she squinted against the low sun, they fell in streams down her cheek. ‘For God’s sake, don’t be so ridiculous,’ she said out loud, wiping the tears away with her knuckle. ‘Some ridiculous old woman, prattling on about angels.’ But it was useless trying to talk herself out of it. Whatever it was the woman had said, perhaps it could have just been the gentle way she said it, stirred something in Roseanna. Soon she was sobbing outright, like a tired child, until it became too dangerous to stay on the road.
   She was at that moment winding down a steep hill. The road further ahead seemed to level out again and she would be able to stop somewhere and gather herself together. She found a layby beside one of the bright yellow fields. Exhausted but relieved, she placed her forehead on the upper rim of the steering wheel, wrapping her arms around her ears. This old habit from childhood had served her well through many such moments. But now, she found herself alone, alone between one dreadful crisis and another, out somewhere in territory she had no business being in. Her mother, she knew, would soon die, and any attempt she now made to love her, love her fully, as she hadn’t before, was not only futile but would probably cost her her marriage, a marriage to a man she was no longer in love with, who had himself forgotten what it was to be in love with her.
   She opened the door and stepped out into the cool, yellow light. She leant her back against the car door and, as she turned her head round, flinched slightly when she saw what had been behind her the entire time. Shining from the side of the hill, the same hill she had just driven down, was the figure of a white chalk horse. With its spindly roe-fawn legs, this was not one of the more impressive examples of its kind, but there was something endearing about its bony, greyhound frame, the way it seemed to be lying down and standing up at the same time.
    She considered staying the night in the car, before dismissing the idea as ridiculous. She needed a plan, not just for the evening, but for her future as a whole. She needed to be honest with herself. What did she want? What she really wanted was not to have to answer that question. It was, in fact, quite simple. Roseanna wanted to leave Robert, but only once her mother had died. By implication, this would suggest that she wanted her mother to die–– at least more quickly if she was to die soon anyway. It was merely a matter of convenience, crude and heartless. To leave Robert meant paperwork, selling the house, starting her life again. She would not manage all this while her mother was still alive, still emotionally dependent on her. The substance of her predicament was fairly straightforward, she thought, the loss of love, a dying parent; these were deep, but narrow hardships. She understood, after her father’s death, that the subconscious, the body itself, knew how to cope in such events. It was the tangled framework, the conflicts of interest, the admin that seemed insurmountable.
   An old man passed Roseanna on his bicycle. He lifted a frayed knitted cap at her, then perched it delicately back on to his balding head.
    ‘Excuse me!’ she cried out.
   He tottered on his bike, his knees pointing outwards until he stopped. She ran across to him. The old man, his hand slightly shaking on the handlebar, dismounted.
   ‘Yes?’ He looked at her with unsteady blue eyes, just like her mother's, cataracts forming around each iris like summer clouds.
   ‘I’m so sorry to bother you. I need to make a phone call, but I can’t get any reception. Do you know where I might find some?’
   She had been holding her phone as she spoke and the man looked down at the strange device in her hand.
   ‘I don’ts use them myself,’ he said. ‘White man’s magic, I calls it. But, I suppose up the horse is best. When I was a lad, I liked the old ham radio, you know. I used to listen in on the traffic control from the airbase.’ He laughed at this, though Roseanna wasn’t quite following him. ‘Welford, sometimes, Upavon if I were lucky. Always got the best signal up on the horse. Expect it will be the same with your little gismo there.’
   ‘Thank you,’ said Roseanna. ‘Are you going all the way up the hill?’
   ‘Oh, yes.’
   ‘Can I give you a lift?’
   ‘No, no,’ he said mounting his bicycle again. ‘I’ll makes it home afore dimmet.’He lifted his cap again and slowly peddled away, slow enough that he might have been faster on foot.
   Roseanna overtook him in the car and heard him ring the bell as she passed. She returned up the hill, parked up and found a kissing gate that led on to the field. A stand of young oaks marked the downward crest of the hill. The horse, when it emerged, was no more than a chalk pit. Then, as she grew closer, its limbs seemed to sprout and a rough shape became visible. She sat down on the grass, resting her feet on the arch of the horse’s back. There was no one else around. She could see the road snaking away just ahead, moving west. The low-setting sun was in her eyes. She pulled out her phone. The wind was strong up there, but there was no getting round what she had to do. She could go no further.

* * * *

When the climb became too steep, the old man dismounted and pushed his bike until he reached the top. The young woman he had spoken to a little moment before was coming back from the horse with the setting sun behind her. He shielded his eyes as she came through the gate. She looked to have been crying. She wiped her eyes and said ‘hello, again'. She crossed the road and got into her car.
   He suddenly remembered something from when he was a boy, when he used to take his radio up to the horse, it would have been around the same hour as now. As he tried to tune into the right frequency, a strange sound came through the receiver. It wasn’t the usual static, which he recognised, but a sort of whisper, coming through in a steady rhythm like a heartbeat. It was soft, but he didn’t like it. He remembered the feeling, even now. It made his insides feel strange. Whichever direction he turned the dial, all he got were these odd-sounding whispers. He finally turned off the machine and set off for home. It was then he saw a young woman, just the same as now, a beautiful girl flickering in and out of being from the red light above the downs, the sun shining through her hair, then vanishing again. In her place was a white horse, a live one, surrounded by a billowing halo of chalk-dust, grazing on the pasture at the top of the hill. Horses were common enough on the hill, but this one hadn’t been there before. Back home, when his mother saw how frightened he was, she told him that he wasn’t to be frightened.
   ‘It weren’t a ghost you saw, my little lamb. It were an angel. You’ve been blessed to see something like that.’
    Then, later that night, as his mother tucked him into bed, she asked him.
   ‘Do you remember the story the pastor told about angels, last Sunday, the ones that helped the soldiers in France?’
    He nodded from his pillow.
   ‘And do you remember what he said about the horses?’
   ‘That Jesus appeared, with a white cav… cavla…’
   ‘Cavalry. And what did they ride on?’
   ‘White horses.’
   ‘Well, it was one of those angels you saw tonight up on the hill, just the same. And when little boys are visited by angels, they become blessed. That means if ever you meet someone in trouble, whatever sort of trouble, all you have to do is help them; and you’ll able to bless them and their troubles will be gone for good. Now, you just remember that, little lamb.’ And with that, she kissed him goodnight.

* * * *

   Roseanna watched as the old man lingered on the side of the road. It was as if he was waiting for something, perhaps waiting for her to leave. She wasn’t frightened of him, he was just a kindly, gentle old man. Perhaps he sensed something was wrong and wanted to see she left safely. She checked her eyes again in the mirror, still puckered and bloodshot. She smiled to herself and turned over the ignition. Out on the road, the old man having seen her smile, gave a final wave and cycled on.