The Weight of Angels

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘No good, then?’ he said. I turned and shook my head, not following. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Prob’ly best, eh?’ He reached out and brushed the back of my sleeve with his knuckles and I tried not to let my mouth drop open. He was comforting me for not getting the job.

  Right then I could have called a halt to the whole stupid caper. I could have shrugged and said, ‘Thanks,’ and we could have limped on a bit longer. But who said it was simple? The very fact of him trying to make me feel better was like a punch in the neck. He was fifteen. He should be selfish and carefree, looking to Marco and me for lifts and favours, not stifling his hopes and telling me it didn’t matter. And what would it do to Marco to see ‘the wee man’ being brave? It would crush him. So I gave him a cheesy grin and waggled my eyebrows.

  ‘Major plot twist,’ I said. ‘I got the job. I start on Monday.’

  Angel did a big stagy jaw-drop, then screwed up his face and narrowed his eyes. ‘And you’re sure it won’t land you in the . . .?’

  ‘Doo-doo?’ I suggested, and felt a warm surge inside me as he smiled. ‘Nah, it’s fine.’

  ‘You sure? Because Dad made me read it over for grammar and that. What he wrote, you know? And it’s pretty inventive.’

  And there was another chance to rewind and stop this nonsense before it started. I had only spent sixty-odd pounds of the thousand. But I wanted him happy. And, more than that, I didn’t care if he was proud of me but I wanted him proud of Marco. I didn’t like him thinking his dad had got this wrong.

  ‘I smoothed all that over,’ I said. ‘I said in my interview that your dad helped me and I admitted he’d gone a bit over the top, and you know what?’

  Angelo gave me that narrow-eyed look again.

  ‘They think it shows he’s in my corner. Got my back kind of thing. They think it’s a good sign that an employee’s husband is so supportive. Well, you know, they’re psychiatrists. So they see past the surface. They see through to the real stuff underneath.’

  Angelo turned and faced the front. The day was fading and we could see the light of the television shining out from our front window.

  ‘But don’t you need accreditation and everything? Certificates, qualifications?’

  ‘Nope,’ I said. ‘I need a police background check done, but I’m not treating the patients. I’m just offering . . . What did she call it? Extra-therapeutic recreational and personal services. It’s really, really fine.’

  ‘Minty fresh,’ he said. He was still staring straight ahead, slumped down so far that his knees didn’t fit behind the dashboard. ‘What’s the pay like?’

  I knew that tone. He wanted something: jeans or a phone or a hairdo.

  ‘Pretty fantastic, actually,’ I said. I had to bite my tongue to stop myself adding, Why?

  ‘Mouthwash,’ he said. He clucked his tongue a few times but he still didn’t say what it was he had his eye on.

  ‘Talk English!’ I said, to break the mood. There. I was Mum again, nagging him about his slang. He wouldn’t ask me now. He just snorted, opened the door, uncoiled himself and went slouching over the road.

  I got out and shouted across to him. ‘Oy, Shorty!’ He stopped. ‘I’ve got two big bags of shopping here. Give us a hand, eh?’

  He looked out of the side of his eye at the bag I handed him and managed not to smile when he saw the thick pack of bacon and the big bag of frozen pizza bites, but he stepped up his pace and was bouncing as he went up the short path to the front door.

  Marco was home. Must have got the bus. But for once he wasn’t watching the telly. It was on but turned to a radio channel, classical music blaring out loudly enough for him to hear in the kitchen.

  He was wearing an apron, one of the flowered ones. I tried not to react. It was a code between us. One time when we were first married I came back to the flat and he was cooking skate wings, wearing one of my flowery aprons and nothing else. So, once Angelo was old enough to understand his parents flirting, Marco sometimes put it on to make me squirm. He was always home before me. McGovern & Son closed at half past four and my last client slot was six. For years I’d come home to tea on the table. All my girlfriends were jealous.

  I sniffed. ‘What’s for?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s only salmon,’ he said. ‘But I’ve made a herb crust.’

  ‘Mu-um!’ said Angelo, shaking the bag of bacon and frozen crap at me. ‘No way! Fish? No way!’

  ‘I’m starving,’ I said. ‘I’ll eat yours.’

  ‘You’re having chicken pockets,’ said Marco. ‘I’m not a sadist.’

  ‘You’re pretty sure of yourself,’ I said, coming up to look into the pan of rice he was frying. ‘How did you know we’d be celebrating?’

  Angelo was halfway out of the room but Marco called him back. ‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘Are you ready for this? You sure you’re ready?’ He waved his spatula. ‘I don’t want to steal your thunder or anything, Als, but I . . . have got a job.’

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since today.’ He was still grinning. But maybe 80-watt instead of 120.

  ‘Why didn’t you call me?’ I said.

  Even Angelo quirked a look at me then.

  ‘What – like, to run it past you?’ Marco said, down to 40-watt.

  ‘Of course not!’ I said. Then I stopped. How could I tell them what was wrong? I was just after saying to Angelo I’d squared away the lies on my CV. I could hardly turn round and argue to Marco that, if he’d landed a job, I was off the hook at Howell Hall. I could hardly chew him out for not phoning me as soon as he knew so I could get myself out – before Mad Julia had had a go at me, before I had seen that ghost woman sitting there with her Maya Angelou, before Dr Ferris had given me those crisp hundreds and I’d split one.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s been a stressful day. You just took the wind out my sails. But it’s brilliant news, Marco! Fantastic!’ I put my arms round his neck and planted a kiss on his mouth. Angelo fake-retched and walked away.

  ‘It’s only part-time.’ Marco turned back to the cooker and shook the pan. The two little squares of salmon didn’t move. He had burned them.

  ‘Tell me all about it,’ I said.

  ‘Over dinner,’ he said. ‘You tell me and I’ll tell you. Go and get changed.’

  The staircase to our room was awkward, nipped out of the living room that didn’t have the space to spare, and it led to a glorified attic, with a ceiling that sloped right down to the floor. We slept on the futon that used to be in the playroom, a patch of floor on either side for our bedside tables. ‘Like students,’ Marco had said, not that he or I had ever been students. We had left home, straight into a house full of wedding presents.

  I stripped off my interview clothes, put my suit back in its zip bag – all my good clothes were in them because our ‘wardrobe’ was actually the airing cupboard with a rail added and the cladding on the tank was crumbly – then clawed my tights down and walked myself out of them. I had just picked up the Juicy velour I’d been sleeping in (it was cold up here) when I heard the siren.

  The only window was the original attic skylight, single-glazed with a metal frame and a rusted prop to hold it open. We had to remember to shut it whenever the rain came on. I stood on tiptoe but couldn’t see anything lower than the tips of the trees in front of the car park and the very top of one gable-end of the abbey. But even as high as that I could see the wash of red and blue light and I could hear the car slow and turn onto the access road. I grabbed my dressing-gown from the back of the door and went downstairs.

  Marco and Angel were standing at the front window, all the lights off the better to see. I joined them, huddling up close. It was a police car, and I felt the relief like a fairground swoop in the pit of my stomach. An ambulance is always bad news for someone, a fire engine too, but a police car might just be cops getting their knickers in a twist over nothing.

  Hard on that thought, another one struck me. What a good girl I’d always been. What
a straight and narrow path I’d led for my forty-odd years that a police car was the best of the three.

  Two is different, though. As the first pulled off the track onto the tarmacked square another came from the other direction, this one silent although its lights were on. I heard the door of the next cottage along bang shut and saw the neighbour hurrying down his path, fumbling his gate open, then trotting across the road so fast his walking stick nearly tripped him.

  ‘I’m going over,’ Marco said. ‘Ali, put some clothes on in case they come to the door.’

  ‘The cops?’ I said, clutching at the neck of my dressing-gown, even though I knew it made me look like a scaredy. ‘Why would they come here?’

  ‘Because something’s obviously kicking off,’ Marco said. ‘And they’ll want witness statements. You were sitting parked out there ten minutes ago.’ He took his Barbour jacket from the back of his armchair and went out, flipping the hood up against the beginning of a drizzle. I hated that jacket. He said he’d found it cheap in the charity shop and it kept the rain off him but I hated the thought that whatever county-type had chucked it out might see him in it and recognize their cast-off.

  ‘Was that where you came from?’ I asked Angelo. ‘Just now? Were you over there?’

  He nodded. He was staring at the cars, his eyes gleaming. Except no. It was just that the lights were making his eyes gleam. Obviously. ‘And was there anything going on? Kicking off?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I’m not stupid, Angelo,’ I said. ‘Was there anyone else over there with you? Is there anything . . . Is there any reason for you to be worried?’

  ‘Me?’ he said.

  ‘If your pals dob you in? To get out of trouble.’

  ‘Mum, what are you talking about? What pals? Dob me for what?’

  ‘I know you drink,’ I said. Then I said again: ‘I’m not stupid, Angel. But is it just drink? Are there roaches over there? Baggies?’

  ‘Thanks, Mum!’ he said. Then he laughed, but with his mouth closed so it was just his breath. ‘Two candies with the lights and music for a “roach”, eh? Naw, you’re not stupid, are you?’

  ‘What’s a candy?’ I said. My mouth was suddenly dry. ‘Pills?’

  He laughed properly now. ‘A candy car, Mum. A cop car.’

  ‘Oh.’ I let my breath out and he laughed again, hearing me. ‘I’m going to put some clothes on in case Dad’s right. About a door-to-door? Because that was a good point. They wouldn’t be making this much fuss over kids’ stuff.’

  ‘They’d send a couple of chimps if we’re lucky.’

  ‘Chimps?’ I said.

  ‘Community support officers,’ said Angelo. ‘Completely hopeless in most policing situations.’

  ‘Where’d you learn that?’

  ‘From – you know – being alive and going outside,’ he said. The words were soothing: that drawl with the little scornful laugh at its back, just like always. But the way he was staring, tensed like a runner waiting for the gun, nothing moving but maybe his nostrils as the flight-or-fight breaths surged in and out of him? That was anything but normal.

  ‘Are you sure there’s nothing going on over there?’ I said.

  ‘Not a thing,’ he said, looking away at last. ‘Been a long, long time since that place saw any action.’

  I moved to the bottom of the stairs and started climbing. I had my bare feet so there wasn’t much of a racket, but I was hurrying a bit so I wasn’t silent either. I could have sworn I heard him say: ‘I’d just about given up, as it goes.’

  Chapter 4

  Marco came back when I was halfway down the stairs, dressed again. He did that little song and dance people do when they get in out of the rain, shaking himself and huffing like a hen resettling after an upset. When he’d got his coat off, he shook it out the front door before hanging it up but I could still hear drops falling, in flat-sounding blats, onto the square of plastic spread under the coat pegs.

  ‘Well?’ I said. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Nothing we need to worry about,’ he told me.

  ‘Marco,’ I said. ‘What the hell? Tell me.’

  ‘Don’t upset yourself,’ he said, like he always did.

  He went back into the living room to stand beside Angelo, the pair of them like twins in the dark. Angelo was Daddy’s boy from day one. In the hospital, he had fixed those milky blue-black eyes on Marco’s face and stared. Marco had tried to hide the swell of pride. He had looked up and wiggled his eyebrows at me, sharing the moment. And he was a great dad. He never said a word when Angelo went through that phase with the baby doll. And certainly he always shared Angelo now.

  ‘You’re really not going to tell me what’s happening?’ I said, then grabbed the Barbour and went out, banging the door behind me. I scuttled across the road, hopping clear of the black puddles at both kerbs and keeping to the crest along the middle of the track that led to the car park. The neighbour was still there, along with a huddle of other people. They must have come from the rest of the cottages in the row since there were no cars except the two pandas – the candies, Angel had called them – parked up in a V-shape with their lights still flashing. They blocked most of the view of whatever was going on and the copper planted just inside the fence did the rest. He was standing like one of the guards at Buckingham Palace, staring over the heads of the little clutch of nosy-parkers, trying to look dignified, even with rain dripping off the peak of his cap.

  ‘Does anyone know what’s happened?’ I said.

  ‘Mrs McGovern!’ the neighbour said, glancing away long enough to identify me, then training his gaze back on the distant view of swinging torch beams. They wheeled and shuddered, filled with dashing raindrops, giving the old abbey stones the leathery gleam of toad skins. ‘Your husband was just here,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t he tell you anything?’

  I bristled at the judgement and an easy lie sprang to my lips. ‘The phone rang,’ I said. ‘He didn’t get a chance.’

  ‘I never heard it,’ said the neighbour, glancing over the road. ‘I’ve been meaning to have a word about your phone, as a matter of fact. I wonder if you could turn the volume down and set the machine to catch it a bit quicker.’

  ‘His mobile,’ I said, ignoring the rest of it, refusing to think about our back-to-back fireplaces, the gurgle of his hot tank in our bedroom in the early morning, and the flush of his toilet three or four times in the quiet night. It was too easy to imagine him with a glass to the wall and a notebook open. ‘So what happened?’ I said again. I looked at the silent policeman, standing there less than four feet away. ‘Can you tell us what’s going on? Do we need to be worried?’

  ‘Nothing to worry about, Mrs McGovern,’ he said. I didn’t know if he was taking his cue from the neighbour or if he recognized me. I didn’t recognize him – at least, not with his hat pulled low and his face screwed up against the rain.

  ‘They’ve obviously found something,’ one of the others said. ‘There’s been no one put in a car so no one’s been “surprised in the act”. But they’ve found something that shouldn’t be there, haven’t they?’

  We stood in silence for a moment and watched. The torch beams had stopped wheeling and were pointed at the ground now, the little glow of light making me think of nativity scenes. The rain fell steadily, pattering onto the brollies and mackintoshes of the onlookers, and bouncing off the Barbour hood. I breathed in the waxy stink from the waterproofing. He had definitely said it was second-hand but he must have bought a can of spray-on stuff to reseal it. Either way, he’d spent more than the price of a cheap cagoule.

  ‘Could be stolen goods,’ said a woman’s voice, cutting in on my thoughts.

  But we all knew better. We knew exactly what they’d found. Even the silent policeman knew we knew and, as we all stood there thinking about it and wishing it wasn’t true, another engine sounded and a high-sided van pulled off the road, dazzling us all with its headlights at full beam.

  ‘SOCO,’ said one
of the men.

  The silent policeman unbent enough to say, ‘At bloody last,’ under his breath and went to direct it towards the gate.

  ‘I just hope it’s not a baby,’ that same woman said. ‘I heard a funny noise a few days back. I thought it was a kitten but I couldn’t find it. I checked under all the cars.’

  I left then. When I was halfway to the road I had to swerve off the track, jumping deep into the muddy verge, to let another car go by. It had a light on its roof too, but one of the sort they keep in the glovebox and just reach out the window to stick on top when they need to. A sign propped on the dashboard said ‘PATHOLOGIST ON POLICE BUSINESS’, and all doubt was gone.

  The neighbour caught up with me when we were at our gates. He put a hand on my arm and looked up into my face, his eyes enormous behind the smeared lenses of old-fashioned glasses. ‘You all right, Mrs McGovern?’

  ‘Well, upset,’ I said. ‘Naturally. Mr . . .?’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘We haven’t been on what you’d call neighbourly terms yet, have we? It’s good to see you beginning to settle in and be one of us. It’s a nice place, if you give it a chance.’ I stared at him. Anyone would think we’d been admiring the municipal flower-boxes. I pulled my arm back but his hand came with it. ‘I’m just going to get a tray of tea for the lads,’ he said. ‘Would you like to give me a hand?’

  I shook my head and, with a more determined tug, I managed to free myself.

  He watched me as I went up the short path to the front door. ‘There’s no point trying to pretend you’re not really living here,’ he said. ‘You’ll need people one of these days.’

  Any other night it would have stung me, finding out he knew my story, hearing the relish in his voice as he predicted more trouble to come. Tonight it barely registered. I got the door open and shrugged out of the jacket, letting it fall to the floor behind me.

  ‘I see you had a quality moment with Yoda,’ Angelo said. They were still where I had left them, still in darkness.

  ‘Was that a doctor’s car?’ said Marco.