‘Are you sure of that?’ said Love.
‘Of course I’m sure!’
‘Maybe they like little furry animals . . .’
‘The Governors have said “All must be made Perfect,”’ Mishamh cried. ‘If a thing cannot be made perfect, then it must not be. That means the Earth must be destroyed. The deadlines for destruction are set by the Governors themselves. Why won’t you let it happen?’
There was a moment of shocked silence. It seemed to spread out far beyond the room, beyond the towers of Love. It rolled down the corridors and galleries of Heaven like an icy chill, and hidden within its shivering heart was that whisper: Why?
It was felt everywhere. Souls were distracted from their lessons. Choirs faltered, sentinels looked over their shoulders. The Governors, meeting in committee, ruffled their papers uncomfortably. Behind the doors of the Head’s study, something stirred and sighed.
‘Ah,’ said Doomsday.
‘Oh,’ said the Angel of Love.
‘I’m sure my colleague didn’t mean . . .’
‘I’m sure he didn’t,’ said the angel sweetly.
‘. . . to use that word,’ Doomsday finished. ‘Of course, Love is also part of the Curriculum. It is ordained by the Governors, who are the source of all order in Heaven. We understand that. We do not question it . . .’
‘I’m so glad . . .’
‘. . . in quite the way that my colleague may have implied. Nevertheless’ – the angel raised a dangerous eyebrow – ‘nevertheless, my colleague – whom I am afraid cannot be immediately released from my department – makes a number of points that seem apt. Simply put, that the Great Curriculum moves with the Laws of Heaven. The Laws of Heaven point to the ending of the world. This conclusion is inescapable. Creation has no meaning if there is not also Destruction. Perfection cannot be perfected if it is shackled to Imperfection. Yet, because of the actions of your servants at the Appeals Board, the Destruction of Imperfection continues to be postponed.’
‘You’ve said this before, you know.’
‘I have. I note, however, that this time you have not denied that it is your servants who are responsible for the delay.’
‘Dear me! Did I say they were?’
‘According to the Great Curriculum, the world must end,’ Doomsday went on mildly. ‘Therefore the Appeal will one day be decided. At that point, the very large number of additional souls who have been born since the first deadline was postponed (most of whom are still waiting in the Gallery of Penitence, the Stair of Sincerity and the Hall of Lamentation) will have to start their classes. And since most have appealed on some ground or other connected with the subject of Love, one may imagine that Love will feature heavily on their timetable.’
He paused, as if waiting for an answer. The angel made none.
‘You will be busy, I think,’ Doomsday concluded. ‘Dear me, yes. I do not know if you are looking forward to this. But I certainly am.’
Another silence, colder by several degrees than the last. The two great angels bowed once again to each other. Then Doomsday left, with his young assistant trailing in his wake. Love watched them go.
‘Silly old fool,’ she muttered.
She said it, but she felt less serene than an angel should. Doomsday was neither silly nor foolish. He had existed for billions of years longer than she, since the days when Heaven had been a much emptier place with only the Head, a few Governors and a handful of wild-eyed astronomers to get things started. He was patient. He was calculating. He was saying that in the end the Governors would be forced by their own laws to side with him. And if he was right, then yes, there would be a terrible amount of clearing up to do.
But was he?
Love knew quite well that she and her cupids had been upsetting Heaven’s Appeals process for three thousand years. That didn’t bother her. She also knew the answer to Mishamh’s question ‘Why?’
It was because she was Love. Just that.
Love couldn’t be put in a box. Certainly not in a witness box. It couldn’t be made part of a process. It must keep bursting out, getting in the way, turning black into white and white into all the colours of the rainbow. This was what Love was. It simply wasn’t in her nature to do things any other way.
Love made things happen when everything else said they shouldn’t. Love broke rules because they were there to be broken. Yet she too was a part of Heaven. And if a thing was, in Heaven, then it was as it should be. If you asked Love to your Appeal, and your Appeal got tied up in knots because of it, then that too was as it should be.
One day, maybe soon, or maybe many thousands of years away, the Governors would have to choose between Love and Doom. Not even Love knew what they would do, or when it would be.
The one thing she did know was anyone who thought she was going to clear all of this up would be sorely mistaken. Clearing up was what happened to other people.
Among the piles on her desk there was a small bell. It sat there tinging gently each time the heart beat. She lifted a golden hammer and struck it.
‘Yes, Erry?’ said her secretary hoarsely, from the outer room.
‘Who’s handling the Appeal for us now?’
The cupid checked the back of his hand, which like bad kids everywhere he used as a notebook.
‘It’s Spikey. You said he needed a break from fieldwork.’
‘Did I? I suppose I did. Ask Spikey to step in to see me. It’s time we changed tactics.’
A plan was forming in Love’s mind. A very, very Loving plan. The sort that burned cities.
‘He will need something rather special. From our, er, weapons people. You’ll be a darling and do the paperwork for me, won’t you?’
A sulky mumble from the other room. Cupids didn’t like paperwork any more than Love herself. Love ignored it. Her thoughts had shifted on to something else. Speaking of cities . . .
This whole Appeal thing hadn’t come out of nowhere. It had been started by someone. As far as Love was concerned, that someone was unfinished business.
‘By the way – I’m expecting a complaint, about a Miss Jones of Darlington Row. Hasn’t it arrived yet?’
The secretary suppressed a groan. ‘I’ll come and find it for yer, Erry.’
Love stood thoughtfully to one side while he appeared and started searching through the piles on her desk with a pitchfork.
She never made promises. Not the sort she had to keep. In Love, lots of things got said and lots of good intentions got intended. But they weren’t contracts. You could walk away from them if you wanted to. That was the whole point. Cupids could drop pink hearts in people’s minds to say ‘essential maintenance will be carried out here’. That was all right. They could attach pink hearts to their arrows to say ‘we apologize for any inconvenience’. That was accepted.
But they never, ever, ever attached notes to say ‘If you are not completely satisfied with our service . . .’
That is, no cupid would ever, ever, ever do it again.
Love is not easily angered . . .
(Such a giveaway, that word ‘easily’ . . .)
Love keeps no record of wrongs . . .
The angel had no need to keep a record. The ‘fifty-page incident’ was not exactly something she was being allowed to forget. Nor had she forgotten who caused it. She had approved his transfer out of her department immediately. And since then she had remembered him. At least, she had remembered him often enough to keep remembering. With her peculiar and erratic focus, she had been waiting through the centuries.
For the day he became a Guardian.
(The polite way to describe the relationship between cupids and guardian angels is this: You could never get them to sing off the same sheet, you could never get them to sing in unison, and you would really have to stretch your definition of ‘harmony’. All this was said by an Angelic Choirmaster who had actually tried.)
Cupids and Guardians both did what most other angels didn’t do. They went down to Earth and worked with
what they found there, i.e. humans and all the things that were wrong with them. This did not mean they were allies. Two thirds of all that paper on the desk of Love came from unhappy guardian angels who were having to live with what the cupids had done to their human after the cupids had packed up and moved on to the next job.
And the Guardians wanted the Angel of Love to know about it. You didn’t ought to have done it, they wrote (in angel-speak). My human is out of control. Danger to themselves and everyone around them. Sleepless nights. Suicidal thoughts. Overload – overload etc.
My darling Windleberry. Do you know how much trouble you have caused me?
Maybe you do.
Can you guess, then, what I’m about to put you through?
Perhaps you’re thinking: All right. A few nights without sleep won’t kill us. A few weeks of pining we can deal with . . .
You have no idea what you are in for. You have no idea – yet.
‘Got it, Erry,’ said her sweating cupid at last. He heaved it out from under a thousand other reports that had come in the same morning.
‘Thank you. You’re a sweetie.’
A thousand reports – but this was the one for which she had waited through thirty centuries. She had already had the Objection he sent. It had arrived almost immediately after the pink heart had been delivered. But the Objection wasn’t the same as the heartfelt cry of Protest, the anguish of someone who was a slave to Order, finding that his life was now to be ruled by Chaos.
And here it was: Miss Jones of Darlington Row. Formal Complaint.
Lovely.
Lovely, my dear Windleberry. I’m going to enjoy your little essay. I hope you’ve written it with feeling. I think I might frame it.
I’m going to enjoy the next one too. And the next . . .
Slowly, smiling, she opened the cover. The Heading read:
She frowned. Miss B Jones? That wasn’t the initial she was expecting.
She turned straight to the end of the report.
The signature wasn’t the one she had expected either.
‘FUG!’
Billie was in detention. She spent it writing a love letter to Tony. She hadn’t decided if she was actually going to give it to him. What she wanted was for him to notice her without her seeming to try. But Imogen and Tara were in the same detention and Billie knew that it would make them mad.
Imogen and Tara also spent their detention writing letters. They were poison pen letters, to Billie.
Sally went home and told Mum that there was going to be a call from school about Billie. Mum took paracetamol and went to lie down.
Somewhere halfway through Sally’s R.E. essay, her phone buzzed. It was a text from Ameena, replying to one Sally had sent her earlier.
V soz 2 hear, Sally thumbed back. Bad Luk. She put the phone down and picked up the dictionary. The phone buzzed again.
‘Aargh, the curse of Miss Tackle!’ muttered Sally.
No thx I like this life, she sent back.
Tight-lipped, Sally put the phone down. She picked up her pen. She tried to think about comparisons between Sikhism and Islam. She found she couldn’t. She put her pen down and picked up her phone again.
nt her fault, she texted. Stuf goin on.
‘Not that that changes anything,’ she said, as she put her phone down again.
It didn’t.
The passages of Sally’s mind were dark. The air within them was heavy, as if a small thunderstorm was brooding somewhere. Her thoughts chased through them fretfully. They had no power.
‘Imogen only did it because of Viola,’ she said. ‘And Ameena was only playing for us because I asked her to. And now someone else is going to get dragged in, because of what Imogen did to Ameena! It’ll probably be Janey. Janey’s nice!’
Walk, walk, walk, through the corridors of crystal where everything was in its place and nothing met her need. The monuments and images looked down and could not speak. The words on the walls had no meaning. Windleberry strode beside her, head bowed. This air of grief and anger was like acid to him. There was nothing he could do about it. He could only endure it. He was patient, powerless, everlasting. He stayed with her.
‘We should just let Viola and Billie sort it out between them. Mud pies at ten paces. Or maybe teeth and nails.’
‘That wouldn’t solve anything,’ said Windleberry.
‘It would keep us out of it.’
‘And what does it do for Viola and Billie?’
‘But it’s their fault! It’s Billie’s fault, anyway. Why did she have to set herself at Tony?’
‘Is that why you’re angry with her?’
(Walk, walk, walk, in the darkness of the thoughts of her mind.)
‘No,’ said Sally. ‘All right – it’s because she got him to notice her. Why her? Except that she did it by shouting and screaming.’
‘She didn’t scream.’
‘No, maybe not. But she did shout. Twice.’
‘And if it had been you he had noticed,’ said Windleberry, ‘wouldn’t you have wanted Billie and the others to back you up?’
‘You sound just like my dad sometimes.’
‘You know why that is, don’t you?’
‘Don’t go there,’ growled Sally.
Behind them, slumped and forlorn, trailed Muddlespot. He knew he should be at Sally’s other shoulder, putting lots of ideas and cunning plans to her that would have all sorts of interesting consequences. His bosses down in Low Command had written whole books on situations like these – big black-bound books with pages of human skin. If they found out what was happening here he would be bombarded with instructions and suggestions. Probably more than he could read, let alone carry out. Maybe they’d even send a team of consultants! He shuddered.
His heart wasn’t in it. His life was misery. He felt physically sick. He could not take his eyes off Windleberry, and yet he knew that he was the one thing that Windleberry most hated, despised and thought lower than dirt. Being with him was agony. Being without him was emptiness.
‘I don’t think Tony really cares about either of them!’ said Sally.
‘I feel their pain,’ sighed Muddlespot.
‘SHUT UP!’ said both Sally and Windleberry.
‘Sorry,’ he mumbled.
‘If only Billie would fall for someone else, maybe it’ll all start to die down. But what’s the chance of that?’
‘None,’ said Muddlespot. ‘Take it from me. No chance. Whatsoever.’
They turned and looked at him then. He folded his arms and fixed Windleberry with a defiant stare.
A thoughtful expression crossed Windleberry’s face. One square finger stroked the point of his square jaw.
‘Another golden arrow, another boy for Billie?’ snarled Muddlespot. ‘Is that what you’re thinking?’
‘Maybe. Why not?’
‘Listen. I’ve been on the sharp end of one of these things. I know. There’s no way you can change what they do!’
‘In some cases – a few – you are right.’ Windleberry was still looking thoughtfully at Muddlespot. ‘Even so, there is a chance.’
‘Do tell!’
‘The golden arrow causes the victim to fall in love. But for some very rare, very special cases, the cupids have another arrow. A leaden one. It has the opposite effect.’
‘Can you get it? asked Sally.
‘I know where it is kept. I know how to use it. What I need is an idea.’
‘I’m full of ideas,’ said Sally. ‘Ideas are what I do. Big ones, small ones, made to order – exactly what kind of idea did you want?’
‘I need an idea,’ said Windleberry, ‘of flesh-coloured paint.’
He weighed up Muddlespot with his eye.
‘I should say three buckets of it. At least.’
Sally dreamed that she was under the night sky. Someone was sitting beside her. She liked him being there. She could rest her head on his shoulder and look up at the stars. They were brilliant – thousands and thousands of tiny poin
ts of white fire. One slid from its place and flashed across the sky, drawing a streak of light behind it, growing and growing even as she watched.
‘What’s that?’ she said to the boy beside her.
‘Death,’ he answered as he took her hand.
She woke and looked at the darkness. There were no stars, and no one was with her (unless she counted Shades, who had somehow found his way through her firmly-shut door so that he could curl up on her pillow and sneeze into her ear in the small hours). She felt wide awake, and yet somehow not awake enough to get up and throw Shades out again.
She thought about an asteroid hitting the Earth. That would not be cool. Lots of people might die. Maybe everyone would.
She thought about all the things she wanted to do and wouldn’t be able to if it happened. Suddenly she wasn’t sure if she had got the right ones, anyway.
She wondered who the voice in her dream had been, and whether it had been Zac Stenton. Zac wasn’t just good to look at. He noticed you. He was worth two Alecs and three Tonys, because of the way he’d grin and lift his eyebrow at you as you passed in the corridor. And that gig he had done at the end-of-term assembly had been side-splitting.
She wondered how long she was going to have to lie here before morning.
Then suddenly it was morning, and her alarm was beating out Cindy Platter’s I Love Ya Real. So she must have slept again. She forced herself up, got dressed in a daze and made her bed as she always did. She could hear the family moving around the house. Mum was knocking on Billie’s door.
Downstairs for breakfast. Greg, unshaven, was trying to talk to Mum. Mum wasn’t answering – something was wrong between them again. No good asking what. One side of Sally’s toast was black and brown, the other practically raw. The toaster had been on its last legs for months. She ate it, anyway. She tried to decide, again, what Marmite really tasted of. She tried not to think what was going to happen at school.
Mum knocked on Billie’s door for the second time. If she had to do it again she would shout. Greg slurped his coffee. That was one of the things that Mum hated, but somehow he couldn’t stop doing it. One day, soon, something was going to go snap between them. As if there wasn’t enough going on already.
Attack of the Cupids Page 10