Bull Running For Girlsl (25 page)

Over the next few months he began to forgive me. I even saw a smile on his face as he glided like a flying squirrel from tall tree to tall tree. He would never fly as a bird does because his bones were too heavy and his muscles too weak. I doubted if we would ever leave our remote hiding place.

Everyone adored Ricky and in his late teens he fell in love with a girl called Annais whose leprosy was in remission, then Susie a nurse who did not object when he was attracted to Oli. Ricky rutted on a regular basis and took great pleasure in his conquests. However, I did not oppose the unions. Who was I to stand in the way of such youthful optimism when I had messed about with all that DNA? All the women were content, not a jealous one amongst the first six. Ricky had a natural talent for keeping them all happy. When the babies came along (usually within the first three months of conception), they were born with ready-made brothers and sisters—in litters of six, eight, and more, and all had the lumps that would develop into wings.

Even as I grew older, it never failed to amaze me how resistant to disease my grandchildren were. A snake had gotten into one litter and had bitten three of the babies before a cherubic sibling choked the snake in its chubby little fist. All three babies had a mild fever for a day or two but shrugged off the poison.

The Amazon canopy was Heaven-like, filled with these tiny winged angels that looked like Sistine Chapel cherubs, with their ruddy complexions and winning ways. I adored them all. They were perfect. Each generation developed their wings earlier, and the wing structure became stronger as they glided from branch to branch. It was not me that gave them the name Homo angelus—but it stuck.

In a few years we will be discovered and face extreme prejudice from the rest of the world. I have no doubts that gene dominance can ensure their place at the head of the evolutionary chain, and anyway, the romantic imagery of angels is embedded too firmly into the human psyche to resist. In generations to come—Homo sapiens will have been bred out and the prophetic imagery of the Italian artists will become a reality.

“I was angry with my friend:

I told my wrath, my wrath did end,

I was angry with my foe:

I told it not, my wrath did grow.”

From
A Poison Tree
in
The Poetical Works

of William Blake,
edited by John Sampson.

1913 Oxford edition.

It was only for a weekend. A short, one hour trip into London, a taxi to the studio, an afternoon of listening to other people getting a little comfort and connection with their loved ones—dead although they were—and then back to a hotel overnight. What was wrong with that?

“But, I don’t believe in all that talk about the dead returning. I don’t believe in an afterlife. I don’t believe it one bit.” Jean fidgeted with her blonde hair, stared in the hall mirror and wondered why she looked so pale and thin. She was pleased to see that she had lost a lot of weight.
Perhaps too much,
she mused.

“Do it for me, Jean. I never ask you to do anything for me. I just don’t want to go alone. I really want to try and get in touch with Stephen.”

“Can’t you just go? If you want to so much just get on with it and go.”

Jean hadn’t liked Brenda’s husband, Stephen. She hadn’t liked him so much that she stole him away from Brenda and married him. Jean thought him an insipid man and uninspiring. But, it wasn’t so long ago that he had died, and amazingly enough, Brenda and Jean remained friends for all those years.

“I helped you when you needed help with your mother, couldn’t you just do this one thing?” Brenda implored.

It was true, Brenda had helped her that awful time when her mother died in the nursing home. Jean’s mother been left unattended in the day room and wanted to go to the toilet. As she made her way through the fire door she had leant against it. The safety lock released. The door sprang shut and trapped her fingers, almost severing one of them.

Even though Jean’s mother had been old and frail she had been given a general anaesthetic in an attempt to save her finger, it had not been amputated. The doctor felt he should try to preserve the old lady as she had lived to her ninety-second year. After the operation, Brenda helped Jean bring her mother back to the nursing home in a taxi. It was a cold day; Jean’s mother had only a thin jacket on. Brenda had taken off her own jumper, draped it over the frail old lady’s head and wrapped the arms around her neck. It looked like some handless, flat entity was pulling her away to some far off distant place. Of course, it had all been too much for Jean’s poor mother and she died a few weeks later after a series of debilitating strokes. Brenda had supported Jean and helped her through those difficult months.

Now Brenda wanted something in return.

Jean’s conscience was awakened, just a little. After all, they
had
been friends for over twenty years
.
Brenda was a very forgiving but needy person and when Jean lashed out Brenda was always the first to make up,
even
though Jean had taken her husband away from her. Brenda was always the first to telephone and always the first to put disputes behind her—which meant she usually had to apologise for something that didn’t need an apology.

“All right, I’ll go but you can pay for the trip,” Jean relented.

Jean knew her friend didn’t have much money but it pleased her that Brenda should pay as she wanted to go to London so much.
It is only fair,
Jean thought; someone, other than she, always had to pay.

The studio where Calvin Caldwell played to packed audiences was full of widows and widowers. Like the offspring of a spider, there were dozens of them, mourners of the dead, wearing fixed, pained smiles and hints of jewellery here and there to distinguish them from one another.

Jean was uncharacteristically nervous there. She wore a grey skirt, which seemed a size bigger than when she had dressed that morning, and a low-cut red blouse. For a second, she wished that she hadn’t worn the red, for that colour’s symbolism wasn’t lost on her. Jean had always found it easy to
move on
and when her mother died she had moved on quickly enough. This audience hadn’t. Even before the recording some of them had their little initialled handkerchiefs out and were staring her down because she didn’t look right. She didn’t care too much about that.

“I’d like to come over to the people on this side…somewhere in the middle, about half way up.” Calvin waved his right hand in Jean’s direction and for a second his glance fell upon her. She quickly looked down at her hands clasped in her lap. She looked up again, and he fixed his puzzled gaze on hers. She was caught before she knew it and she found it easier to let him hold her than to break away.

“Now, I don’t mean to scare you but there is a woman by your side with a scowl on her face and I have to say that she isn’t happy with you. Can you place her?”

Jean shook her head.

“Well, she says that she is here for you—well not
here
for you but wanting to tell you about her confusion.”

Another shake of the head.

“Does the name Jean mean anything to you?”

“My name is Jean.”

“I’m sorry. You’re Jean? She says that you know her. She’s definitely here for you, my love, and she’s showing me a picture of a train…not a train…but a train station..but she can’t remember why. Another Jean and a train or a train station—do those details mean anything to you?”

Jean shook her head again.

“Would you like to join me on the couch, my love? Perhaps we can help this person remember what happened. She is very distressed.”

Calvin addressed the spirit to his left where the audience could see nothing. “All right, my dear, we’ll sort it out,” and he pointed directly at Jean.

“Yes—you my dear. I have a person here who clearly wants me to talk to you on her behalf, but is holding back.”

Jean shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

Calvin turned to talk to the invisible person at his side. “Don’t be shy love—I’m here to help you. I’m here in this world to help you communicate from the next. That’s it love, come on through—”

Calvin had a small, reverent smile on his face as he stepped back. His expression then changed, it contorted with his effort to speak. The alteration was dramatic: he looked like someone who was in great pain and his features were definitely not his own.

The audience gasped and one or two got up to make their way out of the studio.

“Stop!” he said in a commanding voice.

Everyone trying to leave the studio halted immediately. Some in the audience were quite clearly terrified, others looked on with scepticism, and still others just stared open mouthed.

Calvin began to speak. “She was there at my death. I wish to speak to Jean. My name is Jean.”

With that, the Jean in the audience fainted.

The recording of the show stopped briefly, whilst she was attended to in the green room.

Brenda fussed over her, squeezed her hand and apologised yet again.

“I’m sorry, dear. I shouldn’t have asked you to come. I had no idea that your mum’s passing, and Stephen’s…would have this effect. I’m so sorry.”

With a wave of a mysteriously thinner hand she pushed Brenda out of her face. “Brenda, stop it. It isn’t that. I’ll be okay. I just want to get out of this hot studio.”

“You’re not fine, Jean. There is something obviously wrong.”

“Brenda, get a taxi. Once we get to the station I’ll be fine.”

“But I thought that we would stay over, get a meal and take in a show—you know that you don’t get out much. I’ll ring for a taxi. Are you sure you can—”

The glare in Jean’s eyes was all that Brenda needed to send her scurrying away to find a phone.

Calvin Caldwell had never, in his entire life as a psychic, taken a spirit home with him from the studio—until now. She followed him, the doppelganger spirit of the woman who had fainted on prime time.

“Listen love, you have been sitting on that couch for the last hour. You won’t speak to me, you just sit there, and you won’t go no matter what I say or do.”

He paced the room, working himself up into a sweat. He hoped that the doppelganger would be scared off by his insistence. This proved not to be the case. Her dull, grey eyes followed him up and down the room and around the sheepskin rugs that clung to the floor.

Calvin shook his head. “How can I do anything when you won’t tell me what you
want
?”

As he voiced an emphasis on the last word the spirit became more solid, stood up and grasped his arm to pull him towards the front door of his apartment. Once out on the street she pointed to a taxi that was speeding by and finally Calvin hailed one down and they got in. The spirit faded a little as she followed him inside the taxi and sat opposite him.

The taxi driver waited patiently for directions and turned round when nothing was forthcoming.

“Well, Jean?” began Calvin, staring straight at the spirit that faced him. She sat with her back to the driver.

“Well what?” the cabbie asked.

“Sorry, just a minute. I’m trying to find out where to go.”

“What? Ain’t you that psychic fellah off the telly? Don’t you
know
where you’re going?”

“Not yet—no. Just hold on a minute please.”

“Ere, you ain’t doing one of those séance thingies in my cab are you?”

“No, I’m just talking to someone who won’t leave me alone.”

“Well, don’t leave it alone here. I don’t want any company on me travels. I like working alone and I don’t need no ghost to tell me how to find my way. I did the Bible, I did, and perhaps you would like to take your ghost friend and walk to where you want to go—when you find out.”

The spirit sent Calvin the image of the train again.

“Where’s the nearest station?”

“St. Pancras.”

“I guess that’s where we’ll start then.”

The internationally famous façade of St. Pancras Station came into view. During the Blitz of the Second World War part of the station had been bombed.

The taxi drew up to the curb.

“That’ll be ten pounds. No extra charge for the other passenger.” The cabbie laughed at his own joke.

In Death’s dominion there are no rules of engagement; up until this point Calvin Caldwell had thought that there were, but all indications to the chance that he might regain control of the situation disappeared when an air raid warden, complete with gas mask box over his shoulder, opened the door of the taxi.

The cabbie caught sight of the door opening, but couldn’t see who had done it.

“Ere—how did you do that? Come on, don’t play any tricks. The fare, please.”

Calvin moved closer to the edge of his seat and stared through his phantom companion, who had faded away even more.

“I can assure you, sir, that I didn’t open the door and have every intention of paying the fare.”

Calvin fumbled in his pockets for a few seconds and mumbled a few choice words under his breath before realising he had left his wallet back at his apartment. He had no loose change either. Jean was still staring at him with her cold, grey eyes and the air raid warden still had his hand on the door handle. The air raid warden beamed at him.

“I—I haven’t got any money,” said Calvin.

“What? All this palaver and you haven’t got the fare?”

“Yes—look. You obviously know who I am. Could you have it on good faith that I will give you the money when we get back from—wherever we’ll be getting back from?”

“Faith?
Faith
? I never had any faith in anything but myself. Look—”

Before the cabbie could finish Calvin had bolted through the open door and run off into St. Pancras Station.

“I’m not having that,” the cabbie muttered under his breath, “don’t care who he is.”