Chapter 6. Massage and message

Marina sat looking at the letters on the fridge door. The letters clearly spelt out the word 'London' but she had no idea who had moved the letters around to make this word. She had not moved the letters, not since the day the Ironing Man came.

She had seen the word when she was talking to Tom, telling him about her day. Tom had not seemed very interested in the story of her day and had been very quiet as she had told him all about the Ironing Man and the butterfly. He had even looked away from her as she told the story. And then she had looked away from him and had seen the word 'London on the fridge door. So, suddenly, she had told him she was going up to London to see a friend on Thursday. She had no idea where the idea came from, but even as she said it she got very excited about it.

Why did she say she was visiting someone called 'Joanne'? She did not really know. Of course. Joanne was the name of their friend. When Tom said Joanne Searle's name Marina had agreed with him. And that was it. Marina was going to London to see 'Joanne' on Thursday.

And now it was Thursday and Marina was sitting at home, looking at the fridge door with no idea of what she was going to do ...

Marina was so excited about going up to London she had not slept well. It was only when she got up in the morning that she realised that she had no plans to go anywhere, that the idea of London had come from nowhere, and that nowhere was probably where she was going today.

She felt very empty now that the chance of getting away from the village, from the house and from the housework for a day had disappeared. She put her hands around the back of her neck. This made her feel a little better. When she had been a child her mother had always touched Marina's back and neck when she was feeling sad. It always made her feel better. She loved to be touched. Even the touch of her own hands made her feel better, but someone else touching her, someone giving her a massage, oh, that was wonderful, that was the most wonderful thing in the world. Well, one of the most wonderful things in the world.

The door bell rang and Marina ran to answer it. She was hoping that the Ironing Man had come back, but it was a woman who stood there. A young woman, about her own age with blonde hair like her own, and a big smile.

'I know you have no idea who I am,' the woman said. 'My name's Tracy. I am a beauty consultant and masseuse. Your friend phoned me and asked me to come and give you a surprise massage.'

Marina laughed out loud.

'You know who phoned me then?' the woman asked.

'I think so. Did he give a name?' Marina asked.

'The Ironing Man? I'm sure you know what that means,' and she laughed again. 'I like a man with a bit of iron in him too!'

They laughed together as they walked into the living room. Tracy quickly put up the massage table she had brought with her.

'Is this table safe?' asked Marina.

'I haven't killed anyone yet,' Tracy laughed.

Tracy took some little candles from her bag and lit them. They gave off a sweet smell of flowers.

'Would you like some music? I have some CDs with me, to help you relax.'

'Please.'

Tracy found the CD player and soon the room was full of the sounds of Brazilian rain forests.

'Better than travel,' Tracy joked. 'Well, cheaper anyway.'

The music, and the smell of the candles, and the light touch of Tracy worked their magic on Marina and she was soon travelling. Pictures of holiday places she had visited with Tom came back to her now ... walks along the empty beaches on that small Greek island at sunset... the journey in Egypt over the hills on the backs of donkeys and down to the Valley of Kings ... sitting on Croagh Patrick, the mountain in Ireland which looks over the Atlantic, where Saint Patrick had spent thirty days and nights alone ...

The smells and the sounds in the room seemed to change as she travelled from place to place in her thoughts. She smiled to herself with eyes closed and was still smiling some time later when she realised that Tracy had finished her massage. Marina remembered where she was, but she did not want to open her eyes to see it. She wanted to hold on to the smells and sounds from other places, to the pictures of her and Tom in those beautiful places, and to the touch of Tom from other times.

Finally she opened her eyes and saw Tracy smiling down at her.

'How was that?' Tracy asked.

'Wonderful,' Marina replied.

'Told you it was like travelling. Almost as good as sex,' and Tracy laughed again.

They sat for a while over a cup of tea and Tracy gave Marina some of her life story.

'Yeah, I was married for a while. You know, usual story. Boyfriend from school. The first and only boyfriend. I didn't know any better, I thought love was all about giving. Giving flowers and chocolates and having time for each other and looking into each other's eyes for hours and never looking at your watch.

'So, anyway, we got married and went on holiday to the West Indies. That was good too, that was wonderful, but after that, it was never the same again. End of giving, end of having time only for each other. End of all the little surprises. He thought that after we were married he didn't have to do that any more. He thought he didn't have to work at it any more. No more surprises. The only surprise was when he actually listened to what I was saying, or when he didn't look at his watch when I was trying to talk to him.

'It's like all those love stories you read, or see at the cinema, you know, they always seem to end when the man and woman finally get together. Those stories always stop the day they get married. I sometimes think it's men who actually write those stories, not women, you know. And men don't think about what happens after you get married. And maybe women don't either* I didn't. I had no idea what was going to happen next. And my matt, he didn't know what to do next, so he just did what his father had done. He went out, earned money, came home, watched television, went out again to the pub with his friends.

Suddenly his idea of a good time seemed to be any time he spent without me.'

Tracy looked sad and thoughtful for a moment, but then her smile and her laugh returned.

'Anyway, I gave him the push after a while. I told him to leave. Best thing I ever did. And now I do things differently. I mean, one day I might find a man who understands you have to go on working on the love after you get married. I mean there must be men like that, somewhere, don't you think? But at the moment what I do is this. I just keep them for a little while. I meet them, they love me, they think I'm wonderful, they think the sun shines out of my eyes, they give me their time and they give me wonderful presents. But, when I see they aren't romantic anymore, then I just let them go. I mean, if men can't take love seriously then why should we take them seriously? Just use them and lose them.'

She laughed again and Marina laughed with her. It was the kind of laugh that invited you to laugh with her.

'I mean, the man I've got at the moment,' Tracy continued. 'He's still in love with me. He brought me here this morning and he is picking me up later and taking me out for the day. For a day of surprises. He has taken the day off work to spend it with me. Can you believe it? No reason. He just wants to spend the day with me. Give him another few months and all the surprises will go. But he'll go as well then. Life's too short, love. Know what I mean?'

Marina nodded her head. Yes, she knew what Tracy meant, i

'Your Ironing Man is still romantic anyway, isn't he? Enjoy it while it's there, love,' Tracy said.

The door bell rang. Tracy looked out the window. A man was standing beside a car.

'It's my boyfriend,' Tracy said. 'My day of surprises begins! Oh, he is lovely, though, isn't he? Look at those shoulders, that bottom,' Tracy said. 'So strong! Just looking at him sometimes makes me shake, know what I mean? We can't live without that, can we?'

Marina was not sure if Tracy was talking about sex or not. If she was, Marina was not so sure. It was certainly possible to live without sex for some time. Even for quite a long time. It was Tom's birthday, wasn't it? That was the last time. A month ago! Twenty-nine years old and she was having regular sex. Regular sex once a month! Maybe it was time she took a lover. The thought surprised her and so did Tracy when she spoke.

'Oh my God, I almost forgot,' Tracy said. 'I have a message from the Ironing Man. Your man of iron. He says he'll meet you in the National Gallery at two o'clock this afternoon. Where's that then? In your favourite room, he said. You know what that means, do you? I don't like paintings myself. Well, maybe paintings of men. With no clothes on, of course,' and she laughed her laugh again. 'You'd better hurry up, love, it's almost twelve now!'

Tracy ran out the door and kissed her man. Then he came into the house and took Tracy's bags to the car.

Marina smiled again and then looked at her watch. Tracy was right, she would have to hurry. She ran up the stairs, jumping two stairs at a time. She could not remember ever moving this fast in this house. She did not hear Tracy's boyfriend drive off. She certainly did not hear the second car start and drive off after them.

***

The detective smiled to himself. 'Good timing,' he thought. He had arrived only ten minutes earlier. He had had trouble finding the house. Well, he did not need to tell Tom he had trouble. All these houses looked the same anyway. But he had time to check the number of the house, and the garden looked just the way Tom had described it -'like a young man's beard'. The detective had parked his car a few houses away and turned on the little cassette recorder he had bought that morning. He spoke into it.

'I am now outside the house at...'

He looked at the cassette. It was not moving. He hit it with his large hand. It still did not move. He wanted to look inside the recorder but his fingers were too thick and he could not open the back of the machine. He looked at it sadly. He never had any luck with machines. He looked at it again and then threw it onto the back seat of the car.

'I'll use a pen and paper,' he said in a loud and angry voice, as if he was speaking to the cassette recorder.

He started to make notes but at that moment he saw that a car was stopping outside the house and, as he watched, a young, good-looking man got out.

'No time to make notes now,' he said to himself, throwing the pen and the notebook onto the back seat of the car to join the cassette recorder.

The detective watched the young woman come to the door. He remembered the notes he had made when he was talking to Tom. Where were they? Of course, in the notebook. He turned round in the car to get the notebook from the back seat. This was not easy because he was a big man and it was a small car. It took a little time and by the time he had got the book the woman was walking with the man towards their car. Carrying two bags. Interesting.

They stopped and the woman put her hand around the man's head and pulled him into a long kiss. Very interesting. The detective looked at his notes again. Young, twenty-nine years old, slim, blonde. Yes, no mistake, this was Tom's wife, this was Marina. The man put the bags into the car, the young woman turned and looked at the house and seemed to wave goodbye to it. Then she turned and kissed the man again as he helped her into the car.

'Very, very interesting,' thought the detective as he started the engine of his car and followed the car with Tom's wife in it down the street.

***

Chapter 7. It's just a painting

Marina arrived at the National Gallery in London and went straight to the room where her favourite painting was. When Tracy had given her the message about the favourite room Marina knew immediately where she meant. The painting was one that Tom had brought her to see on one of their early dates. A favourite painting of his, it quickly became a favourite of theirs.

Marina stood in front of the painting now and looked up at it. The painting was of a woman standing in a room. It could be a kitchen, it could be a living room. A white room with not much furniture but with a beautiful light coming in through the window above and behind the woman. The light falls on the back of the woman's head. She is in her mid-twenties, blonde, with her hair tied up behind her head in a white scarf. She is clearly going to have a baby soon. She is holding a letter in one hand and the second hand rests on her stomach. She is reading the letter and there is a quiet smile on her face as she reads. It is a wonderfully calm painting because of the light, the stillness of the woman, and her smile.

Tom and Marina had sat in front of this painting for twenty minutes when they first came to see it.

'What do you think?' he had asked.

'It's beautiful,' she had replied.

In those days they could sit together for twenty minutes or even longer without saying anything to each other and yet still feel very close to each other.

On their first dates Tom had talked so much that there was never any quiet time between them. He had wanted her to see that he was a nice man, that he was funny and intelligent, so he talked and talked, about himself. But she had wanted him to ask her questions, to show that he was interested in her and not only in himself. It did not happen. Tom gave her his full life story, or the good parts anyway. And he even told her about his earlier girlfriends, saying what had gone wrong, what he had done wrong. But there were no questions, and there were no quiet moments.

Later, as their love developed, they could be quiet together. Looking at each other, looking at a painting, looking at the sea, looking at children playing in the park. They could be quiet and yet be with each other, feel very close to each other.

We sometimes use words to build a wall around ourselves, and sometimes saying nothing can be a way of letting people come really close to us. So in those days when Tom and Marina said nothing to each other, their silence spoke of their love for each other.

Now there was not so much silence between them. She spoke and he made noises to show he was listening. They were usually little noises and she thought that sometimes he was thinking of something else. They were not noises that invited her to say more. There was little of that old quietness.

There was quietness in the painting too, just the woman reading her letter.

'Who do you think the letter's from?' Tom asked. 'Her man,' Marina said.

Tom and Marina had once played a game with Tom's nephew, Rob, in front of this painting. Rob was ten years old and loved to be with them because they were adults who liked to play games and who did not talk to him as if he were a child. In the game they each had to say who they thought the letter was from and what it said.

'Her husband.'

'Her son's school report.'

'It's from her doctor, she has to come to the hospital for a check-up.'

The winner was the person who had the most ideas. Tom won, of course, although Marina and Rob did not like some of his ideas.

'A chance to win World Cup tickets.'

'A letter from her old lover.'

'A bill from her garage.'

'A "Dear John" letter.'

Rob did not understand this. Tom explained: 'It was during the war. It was the kind of letter that some soldiers got when they had been away from home for a long time. A letter from their girlfriends saying, "Dear John, I have found someone else." They called them "Dear John" letters.'

'But she's a woman,' Rob said.

'OK, maybe she's just written a "Dear John" letter and she's reading it again to check for spelling mistakes. They didn't have computers with spell checks then, you know.'

'No, no,' Marina said, and laughed. 'He's away, you're right, that part is true. But it’s like this. It's from her husband and he's away looking for a present to give her when the baby is born. He wants to find something that no man has ever given a woman before. He's travelled around Europe and is now in Africa. He's writing to tell her he has found something almost as beautiful as she is, almost as beautiful as the light that came into their bedroom the first morning they lay in bed together as a married couple. And he says that he will be back home soon. And that even though he is far away, when she reads this letter it will be as if he is there with her. And that soon they will lie together again in that beautiful light.'

Tom sat and looked at Marina, his mouth and eyes wide open. His eyes were the size of dinner plates and he said, 'Wow!'

Rob too, although he made a joke about shopping for presents being easier now with the Internet, was looking at Marina with wide eyes and probably thinking something like 'I want to marry you'.

'Don't even think about it!' Tom said to his nephew, reading the look on his face.

Yes, this was an important painting for Tom and Marina. They came back to it now and again, just to check on their feelings for each other. They had not been to see the painting for over a year,

'You're right,' a voice said behind her back. She knew it was the Ironing Man. 'It is from her husband, and it is a letter of love. But, come with me. I want to show you another painting.'

The Ironing Man took her by the hand and they walked through the gallery, from room to room, slowly moving from one century of paintings to another. He knew where he was going.

Finally they stopped in front of a large painting. It was not an old painting but it told an old story. There were three people in the painting. In the middle was a man dressed in expensive clothes, looking out from the painting, looking important, holding his head high, smiling with a look that says, 'I have everything now'.

In front of him there is another person. It's difficult to tell if it is a man or woman. This person is dressed in white and is not looking at the man. He is looking behind the rich man. There are big houses, expensive cars, beautiful women everywhere. Everything is expensive, everything says this man is rich, this man is important. This man has the world in his hands. But the person in white looks sad.

'What is it?' Marina asked.

'What do you think?'

Marina looked again at the painting. She now saw a third person in the painting, standing behind the smiling rich man, almost completely in the dark. He is also smiling, but it is not a friendly smile. It is a smile that says, 'What you have is nothing. I will come for you and you can do nothing to stop me. Your money will not help you. No-one will be able to help you when I come for you. I will come for you as I will come for all men.'

'This third person is death?' Marina asked.

The Ironing Man nodded.

'And the person in white ...' Marina thought a little and then turned and smiled at the Ironing Man.

'I think the person in white is like you,' she said. 'I think he has given the man in the painting three wishes, and I think the man has asked for money and ... and all these cars and houses and things.' She looked back at the painting.

'But now death has come for the man and all of these things mean nothing.'

The Ironing Man smiled at Marina.

'And you have already given me two wishes,' Marina said. 'The Ironing Man and the massage. And I have one more wish?'

The Ironing Man nodded again.

'And you want me to think carefully about it?' she added.

He nodded again and she thought some more.

'And if I asked you to bring Tom back to me,' Marina said. 'To make it like it used to be between us, to make it like it was when we used to sit here and look at the painting of the lady and the letter. Could you do that?'

'And then what would happen?' asked the Ironing Man. 'What has happened between you? If you and Tom were closer again, maybe the same thing would just happen again. What do you want, Marina? What do you really want?'

'I want Tom and me to work hard at making our love grow and continue to grow,' Marina said. 'I know we can do it. I think we have just lost our way a bit. I love him and I know he loves me, but we have forgotten how to work at it. Can you give me that?'

'You have to do that yourself,' the Ironing Man said. 'But maybe I could give you both some time together, a little holiday perhaps. And maybe I can help Tom remember just how much you mean to him, how much he really loves you.'

'Could you do that?' Marina asked.

'I think I already have ...' The Ironing Man thought for a moment and then continued. 'I think I have already started something. I think something may already be happening.'

He smiled at Marina and she smiled back.

'I am sure you can do it, Mr Ironing Man,' she said.

And then she thought of something and her smile disappeared. She looked at him with a question.

'But, that will be four wishes, won't it?' she asked. 'You will help Tom to remember and give us time to ourselves? Do I get four wishes?'

'You know, Marina,' said the Ironing Man, 'everything is going up these days. The price of everything is going up, even the number of wishes you get is going up!'

Marina laughed again and looked at him.

'Can I buy you a drink?' she asked.

He shook his head slowly.

'You people ... I mean you ... you don't drink, you can't ...' Marina said slowly.

'No, it's not that,' the Ironing Man said. 'I just thought dinner was probably a better idea. I'll pay, but you choose the restaurant. Italian, I think. That's my wish!'

***

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 760