The Blood of Angels

by Stephen Gregory

  The toad was precious. Sarah had found it and held it and given it to him. It might yet lure her back to his garden.

  Before he went to bed, he put the natterjack in the roofspace over his bedroom. He did this by pushing open a trap door in the centre of the ceiling. When he flashed a torch into the cobwebs, all was silence and dust. Around the toad’s body he’d gently attached a length of string which could slip neither forwards over its fore­arms nor backwards over its hind legs. Once the creature was set­tled on the red neckerchief, itself a precious thing that the girl had worn and had given him, he closed the trap door. The string trailed down to his bed. Tied around his wrist, it connected him with the toad; throughout the night, he could feel its movements, its pulse, its power, whether he woke or slept.

  No rats. In the morning, when Harry retrieved it from the ceiling, the toad was peacefully dozing, replete after a feast of spiders. It was a mutually satisfactory arrangement. The rats no longer came to the roofspace. To Harry Clewe, it seemed that the toadstone protected him from them . . . as it protected him from the dangerous wiring and might yet deliver the girl to him.

  Chapter Eight

  Harry’s obsession with the toad and his brooding over Sarah were responsible for a sharp decline in his enthusiasm for gardening.

  It was autumn. The middle of September saw an end to the enveloping warmth of summer. The mornings were misty and grey, wrapping the oak trees at the top of the hotel garden with silver cobwebs. It was much cooler. Harry was reluctant to get out of bed and into his damp, dirty trousers, into the Wellington boots with crumbs of leaf mould inside them, into a shirt which smelled of smoke. Reassured by the tension in the string around his wrist, after another night undisturbed by rats, he would turn over and go back to sleep. Until then, he’d been perfectly punctual, arriving at the hotel at eight o’clock every morning and working until one o’clock in the afternoon. But now he’d lost interest in the hotel garden. It had been a novelty, after a year in Sudan and his convalescence in Shrewsbury. In reality, he’d made little impres­sion on it. The wall was rebuilt and might be safe for a year or two, but it compared unfavourably with its predecessor, which had stood for a century until he’d brought it down with a crash. Otherwise, he’d spent weeks cutting the rhododendron hedges and making the garden tidy. He’d cleaned out the pond, which had been choked with a thick carpet of grass he’d cut away and peeled off like a massive bearskin rug. Underneath, there was a shallow pool of brown water, heaving with insect life reactivated by the sudden sunlight: skaters and boatmen zigzagged on the smooth, dark surface. He’d enjoyed that, and his hours in the smoke of the fire had passed pleasantly enough: the clucking of jackdaws, the aromatic smoke of the burning branches and the chance to browse in an old newspaper; the flycatchers and swifts and the stinkhorn . . . The summer had gone by in a dream, quite unlike the bruising disorder of his classroom.

  But he’d achieved nothing in the garden that a healthy Boy Scout couldn’t have done just as well.

  Now he was late for work again. The garden had changed. It was grey and chill. The grass was drenched with dew. Underfoot there was a mat of wet leaves. The jackdaws drooped on the glis­tening branches like black, decaying fruit. The bronze and copper of autumn were deadly metallic without the sun to break through the mist and light them up. Harry shuddered and trudged up the path. He didn’t feel like raking in the sodden undergrowth, but he took some tools to the top where he could hide from the manager. He stopped at the pond. The water was as smooth as wax, apart from the scribbling of insects on it.

  He knelt down and took the natterjack from inside his shirt. It was used to being there, relaxed in the neckerchief on the skin of his stomach. Sometimes, if it sensed that Harry was tense, the toad became tense as well; then he’d feel it swelling, rowing its legs, or excreting a blob of faeces. But now it was quiet as a stone, with its eyes closed tight. Without the startling brightness of those yellow bulbs, the toad was as dull as an old turnip. He held it to his mouth and breathed some warmth on its head. The toad woke up. It squirmed in his hand, flicked its eyes open, flickered its tongue. Harry felt his stomach go loose with a delicious caving. He clenched his eyelids shut and dreamed of Sarah.

  For the rest of the morning, Harry sat and watched the toad about its business in the pond. It lowered itself into the water, sub­merged apart from its periscopic eyes. It launched a series of raids on the insects in the mosses and weeds, gorging on the mayfly nymphs, the saucer bugs, the water scorpions. Then it would stride to the land again with rhythmic and powerful thrusts of its hind legs, so that Harry could help it out of the pond and put it in the long grass. When it was ready, the toad returned to the water. It reminded Harry of the sleek, fat Arabs, the Wabenzi, he’d seen around a swimming pool in Khartoum.

  Inevitably, the time had come when the hotel manager was no longer satisfied with Harry’s performance as a gardener. That day, the man climbed into the garden to see how the work was pro­gressing. He was a small, dapper, middle-aged fellow whom Harry liked, a Lancashire businessman who’d moved into Beddgelert some years before. Harry appreciated that he’d been given the gar­den­ing job in a generous spirit, when it would have been easier for the manager to turn him away and hire someone more obviously competent. He would have felt guilty about his recent laziness, except that his obsession with the girl and the natterjack precluded any other feeling. Now, he whirled from the pond at the approaching footsteps and cringed with embarrassment at disappointing his employer.

  ‘Late again this morning, Harry?’ the man began. ‘You haven’t done much the last few days, have you? What are you doing now? Just playing with the pond? I’ve a feeling I won’t be wanting a gar­dener any more, now that you’ve tidied up the wall at the bottom. Come inside, lad. I’ll pay you up to date and you can go home.’

  He patted Harry affectionately on the shoulder. ‘Don’t look so glum!’ he said. ‘You haven’t done too badly, you know. But I don’t think the gardening’s really in your line, is it? What the hell have you done to your face? And your specs?’

  Harry muttered a brief account of his fall from the rocks. He was sorry that the manager was disappointed in him. He explained the injury to his cheek, which was healing in such a colourful way.

  ‘You’ve been in the wars, my lad,’ the manager said. ‘You should have stuck to schoolteaching. I expect you were good at that. Come on, leave all this dirty gardening to someone else.’

  Harry waited for him to start down the steps, before kneeling again to try and retrieve the toad. It had hauled itself onto an island in the middle of the pond. Harry judged the distance, about six feet from him, stood up and attempted a jump onto another stone which protruded above the surface of the water. Perhaps because of his broken glasses, he misjudged the leap. He hit the stone, swayed for a second, and, crying out, trod heavily into the pond. It was much deeper than he’d thought it would be, almost to his waist, and very cold. The bottom was slimy and uneven; he had to put his arm sharply into the water to try and steady himself or else he would have fallen over completely. With the splashing commotion, the toad was galvanised into action. It catapulted into the water and dived, leaving only a string of bubbles to show where it had gone. At the same time, the manager came back to see what was happening.

  ‘Bloody hell, Harry! What are you doing? Get out of there!’

  Harry said nothing. He blinked, standing stupidly in the pond as the waves lapped at his thighs. His arm was draped with icy green weeds. The cold was in his bones, sapping him. The heat drained from him. The power of the toadstone was gone, lost in the deep, green pool.

  ‘I slipped,’ he eventually succeeded in saying. Then, having de­cided there was nothing he could do that would humiliate him further, he waded after the disappearing toad, moaning inco­he­rently, putting both his hands into the water and dragging them through the weed.

  ‘Just get out, for heaven’s sake!’ the manager snapped. ‘What the hell are you looking for?’


  Harry ignored him. Miraculously, he felt between his fingers the familiar, wrinkled shape of his natterjack, which he raised triumphantly from the surface in a welter of greens and browns and splattering silver. The power, which he thought he might have lost for ever, flooded through him again. Oblivious of the other man’s presence, concerned only that he’d found the precious toad, Harry brought it to his lips again and kissed it. His throat was thick with emotion. His eyes blurred with tears.

  The manager starting shouting. He was frightened and angry; he’d never seen anyone kissing a toad before. Half a minute later, after the two men had grappled clumsily on the edge of the pond, the ex-gardener toppled the hotel manager into the water. Waiting only long enough to see that the man wasn’t hurt and to settle the toad on his heaving stomach, Harry bolted down the garden steps. He dashed through the hotel and into the street. Water and weeds streamed from his trousers as he ran squelching along the pavement and jumped into his car. Trembling uncontrollably, hardly able to believe that he’d tumbled a grown man into a brown pond, Harry drove wildly from the car park and out of the village.

  The bullet-hole crack in the top right-hand corner of the wind­screen and the bullet-hole crack in his glasses fused in a kaleidoscopic sunburst. Besides, he could hardly see for tears. But, with the toad in the neckerchief hot on his belly, and the Wabenzi power under his right boot, he didn’t need to see – he was flying! He hurtled through the valley mist and broke into a glittering heaven of clear, bright sunshine.

  Calming himself before he reached his own village, he pulled into some rough parking at the side of the road. His panic had been transmitted to the natterjack. Even as he was exhilarated by his flight from Beddgelert, he’d been aware of the toad’s discomfort. Stopping the car and switching off the engine, he unbuttoned his shirt. The toad was swollen tight, shiny and smooth; the warts and carbuncles had vanished. It was nearly twice its usual size. He put it down on the passenger seat. There it sat, with its fingers clasped across its chest, the hind legs bunched as though ready for a leap. Harry felt his stomach tingling; opening his shirt, he saw that his skin was blotchy and red, nettled by the toad’s poison. Moreover, it had oozed a pearl of excreta onto the waistband of his trousers.

  For all of this, instead of being repulsed by the creature, Harry loved the natterjack more. They’d shared a moment of danger. With the toad pressed against him, he’d felt the sting of its acrid sweat. It was a kind of consummation.

  At home, he marshalled his thoughts. Once the toad had assured him that the water was safe, he removed it from the bath and set it on the neckerchief. It sat and blinked at him, framed by the silver columns of the taps, like a fat little god in an oriental shrine. Harry lay in the warm bath. The irritation on his stomach was gone. The water was soon brown with earth from the garden pond, swirling with strands of emerald weed. From inside his boots or a crease in his trousers, a number of aquatic insects had arrived in the bath; they stalked and sculled about, so light on their spindly legs and covered with the finest of hairs that they didn’t break the surface, but trod as though they were on dry land. They were water measurers. Harry reached for the toad and held it close to the busy insects. It lashed out its tongue and they were gone. He replaced the toad on the spotted neckerchief.

  While the water cooled, he assessed his position. He had no job. The rent on the cottage was due. The car was expensive to run. He was owed some money at the hotel, but he wasn’t sure he could go and collect it, after his skirmish with the manager. Far more important, he hadn’t seen Sarah for nearly a fortnight. The realisation was a jolt to him, almost as strong as the jolts he’d had from the bathroom taps. Again he was filled with courage and determination by the proximity of the toad, as it beamed at him and licked its chops on the edge of the bath . . .

  The power of the toadstone! The jewel in the head of the pustular toad!

  If only he’d had it in school, when he was teaching! If only he’d had it in Sudan! To outface those gleaming, untouchable girls! To outface the big-bellied children with flies in their eyes! To outface the cripples he’d seen in Kosti and Kadugli and Khartoum, gnawing on discarded bicycle tyres!

  He surged with confidence. Gripping the sides of the bath, he stood up in a spectacular whooshing of water. He was strong! He was armed! That day, he’d pushed a rich man into a pond! How many people in Beddgelert had done that? How many in Wales?

  Bath water and threads of weed coursed down his body. For once in his life, he was sure what he was going to do. With the toad in his pocket, he would go down to the hotel and demand the money due to him. If the manager paid, Harry would buy him a drink; if not, Harry would carry the little man into the garden and throw him into the pond again.

  Then, in search of Sarah . . .

  Chapter Nine

  By eight o’clock that evening, it was dark outside. A fine drizzle was blowing in folds of mist from the surrounding mountains: the kind of drizzle that drenches everything and penetrates every corner of man and countryside and machinery.

  Harry had paid minute attention to his appearance. For the first time since coming to Wales, he’d put on a collar and tie and a sports jacket. He’d shaved carefully and dabbed on a drop of cologne from a bottle he hadn’t opened for more than a year, since his week­ends under the headmistress. Washed and combed, his hair blazed like a beacon. The bruises on his cheek were almost gone, faded to a faint discolouring of the skin. In clean clothes from top to bottom, with the tie uncomfortably knotted at his throat, in a whiff of talcum powder and aftershave, Harry stepped from the cot­tage and met a blanket of rain. The weight of the toad in his jacket pocket was wonderfully reassuring. He ran to the car, which was parked under cover in the nearby farmyard.

  It refused to start. Time and time again he turned over the engine, but there was no spark. Not wanting to flatten the battery, he waited in the darkness of the shed with his hands between his thighs, before trying again. The engine churned and churned but wouldn’t fire. Swearing very loudly, gripping the bundled toad in his pocket to try and feel the power of its pulse, he leaped out of the car, wrenched open the bonnet and randomly jetted a spray of damp-start into the sooted, black contraptions of the big engine. To his astonishment and delight, it exploded into life the next time he tried it. The noise made the corrugated-iron shed rattle and thrum. Wonderfully exhilarated, buzzing with the combined power of toad­stone and Wabenzi, Harry drove down to Beddgelert. The rain swept over and around the hoodless car, so he was still quite dry when he parked in the shelter of the great black yew.

  Checking his pockets for the two things most crucial to the suc­cess of the evening, his wallet and the natterjack toad, he ducked through the glistening, empty streets of the village and stepped unhesitatingly into the hotel. Only then, in the warm, softly lit reception, he felt the qualms in his belly that he’d come back to confront the manager.

  But the toad was strong magic. Without noticing that Harry Clewe was standing damply on the doormat, the man came strut­ting out of the kitchen, on his way to the bar with an ice-bucket under his arm. He was immaculate in a lightweight grey suit, a white shirt with his initials embroidered on the breast pocket, and a lemon-yellow tie. His suede shoes were silent on the deep carpet. For contrast, Harry caught sight of himself in a full-length mirror: his limp, shapeless schoolteacher’s jacket with frayed cuffs and worn elbows, his baggy schoolteacher’s trousers. Instinctively, he thrust his hand into his pocket and gripped the toad. It was as hot as a pie. The heat flooded his arm.

  ‘Excuse me!’ he called out. The manager looked up to see who was there.

  ‘Harry!’ the man exclaimed. ‘Harry Clewe!’ He came forward, smiling warmly, running his eyes from Harry’s feet to his gleaming red hair. ‘That’s more like it!’ he said. ‘The gardening didn’t suit you, did it? Are you going back to schoolteaching? Come on, Harry, my lad! Let me get you a drink! I owe you some money, too.’

  As influential people do, he turned aw
ay without waiting for a reply, knowing that Harry would follow him.

  Harry went into the bar. From the glances and whispers of the other drinkers, he could tell that the morning’s incident was common knowledge; inevitably, in a village community, especially when the publican was involved. The manager appeared on the other side of the bar and rubbed his hands briskly together.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he announced to the whole room, ‘this is Harry Clewe! Harry threw me into the pond this morning. I always buy drinks for people who throw me into a pond. I like eccentrics, that’s one reason . . . and being so small, I have to keep on the right side of dangerous folks! What’ll you have, young man?’

  He pulled a foaming pint and pushed it towards Harry, before turning to the till for a handful of pound notes. He counted them onto the bar.

  ‘All square then, Harry?’ he said. ‘I’d use the money to get your glasses fixed, if I were you. You did me a world of good this morning, you know. Life can be bloody dull in Wales. The whole village needs a good shake-up. It takes a madman like you to do it!’

  The toad flexed and shifted. Enfolded in the spotted neckerchief, it dreamed of water boatmen and saucer bugs in a sunlit pool. Harry slipped the money into his wallet and gulped his beer. When the time came, he bought a drink for the manager and another for himself. Famous, heroic, he basked in his notoriety. He glowed with the heat of the toadstone in his pocket and the power it gave him. At ten o’clock on a rainswept September night, he shook the manager’s hand and left the hotel, bent on the achievement of his second and far more important goal.