The Messengers by Edward Hogan Read Free Book Online Page A

moment in your life leads to death, not love. Death. Every twist, every turn. Every decision, good or bad.”
    “God, that’s a lovely way of looking at it,” I said.
    “I’m just telling you the facts. Death is waiting for all of us. Your death day is out there, just like your birthday. It’s unstoppable. The disease that kills you might be there already, the bad cells might be lurking in your organs.”
    “Lurking in my organs?”
I said sarcastically.
    He pointed at a woman on the sea path, who was shouting at a toddler. “Maybe that little boy will grow up to kill me. Maybe his abusive mother is right now doing the damage that will drive him to drink.”
    “A boozing baby?”
    “I’m talking about the future. Perhaps in twenty years, he’ll get drunk, get in his car, and run me over. And everything that happens to me and him between now and then — everything we do — is just a way of getting us to that place and time.”
    The man with the whippet trundled off with his drink, and Peter stepped up to the counter. There was a confidence in his movements that the boys I knew back home didn’t have. Those boys were all so well groomed, almost girlish in their care over their appearance, and here was this man, his shoulders muscled up, who didn’t give a damn about the whitish dust all over his tracksuit top. I found that really hot. And yet he was telling me that even buying a cup of tea was just one more step along the road to the cemetery. It was depressing.
    “So you’re saying death is more important than love?” I said as Helen busied herself with the Styrofoam cups.
    “Of course it is.”
    I sighed, deeply. “Christ, don’t you know any jokes?”
    To be fair, he laughed at that. We both laughed. But then I saw the newspaper lying on an empty table. LOCAL POLITICIAN DIES AT GALA DINNER . A brief look at the photograph told me it was the man whose death scene I had held above the waves two days earlier.
    “It’s unstoppable,” Peter said quietly.
    We took the drinks back to his hut. Inside, out of the wind, Peter unzipped his top very slightly, and I noticed that he wasn’t wearing a T-shirt underneath. I could see the hollow at his throat, that one vulnerable point, and the sinews of his chest. I couldn’t look away. He caught me staring, and I panicked. “You’ll catch your death, dressed like that,” I blurted out, trying to cover myself.
    “It’s July,” he said, and I blushed.
    I studied the paintings on the wall, which — thankfully — contained no cubist art and no scenes of death. They were paintings of the sea. Sometimes there were boats; sometimes he’d painted cliffs or little coastal villages. They didn’t have the hyper-real feeling of his messages, but they were nice.
    “You sometimes paint for pleasure, then?” I said.
    “I used to. Used to sell a few, too. Not so much, these days. Don’t have the time.”
    “What’s your day job?”
    “I’m a part-time plasterer.” Which explained the dust.
    “Not quite as artistic, is it?”
    “I like it because it’s boring.”
    “Not many part-time plasterers can afford a Helmstown beach hut,” I said.
    “I inherited some money when my father died.”
    In one of the paintings, the sea and sky were nearly the same metallic gray, and I almost didn’t notice the small white-sailed boat in the corner of the scene. “It’s ace, this one,” I said. “I like the way the boat is off to the side, like it’s not the point.”
    “Thank you,” he said.
    We both knew I had questions about what was happening to me, but we needed this moment of calm first. He sat on his chair, and I sat on the floor.
    “You know, I don’t have all the answers,” he said eventually. “Nobody does.”
    “You’ve got more answers than me,” I said.
    He shrugged. “What do you want to know?”
    “Nothing. Everything,” I said.
    “I can only tell you what Tabby told me and what I’ve observed. I’m just a cog in the machine.” He