The Blood of Angels

by Stephen Gregory

  He lay there, with the blood banging in the back of his head, his chest heaving. It was very dark, but he could make out the two wheels on either side and the metal struts supporting the vehicle at each corner. A tangle of electricity cables and a transparent plastic water pipe ran to the house; there was a big blue gas bottle. The bottom of the caravan was no more than a few inches from his face, with the axle jutting near his face, caked with black oil; Harry had been lucky, in his panic, not to have cracked his head on it. Struggling to control his breathing, he lay on the hard, dry ground and waited for Patrick to come out. He heard voices, masculine and feminine, muffled so that he couldn’t catch what they were saying, and then the door opened, shedding a shaft of light across the lawn. Patrick’s bare feet stepped onto the grass. The door closed with a click and the garden was dark again.

  Cramped flat underneath the caravan, Harry held his breath and watched the feet tread away from the house and stop, wide apart, at a flowerbed near the garden gate. After a few moments’ silence, a powerful jet of urine splashed into the soil, foaming noisily until the feet adjusted and the jet was redirected onto the lawn, where it fell with no more than a hiss. The flow decreased and faltered, shorter and shorter spurts stopping in a dribble. The rock-climber turned and walked back to the caravan, wiping the spattered urine from his feet on the longer tufts of grass which had grown around the gas bottle, close enough for Harry to see the calloused soles and horny toenails. As Patrick opened the door again, the column of light fell across the garden. The man stepped inside and shut the door, so that the caravan creaked above Harry’s head. Then there was darkness and silence.

  Harry relaxed. In the circumstances, he was very comfortable. It was good to lie on the dry, warm ground, where the light from the street and the house couldn’t reach him. He stretched himself luxuriously. It was the closest he’d ever come to a state of toadness: in the gloom of a cavern in the garden rockery, safe from rat or heron or magpie, where no man could smack with a spade or spit with a fork. Safe, snug in a velvet black space, like a toad in a rockery, Harry closed his eyes and sighed contentedly.

  The natterjack stirred in his pocket, recovering from the bruis­ing impact of the dive to safety. It untangled itself from the neckerchief. It felt with its tiny fingers, thrust its long hind legs. At last it stepped from the pocket, onto the ground, and hurried away from the caravan, flickering its tongue around the edges of its mouth. It disappeared into the nearest flowerbed.

  Harry heard the two soft voices above him. Perhaps the girl had gone back to her magazine. The caravan creaked as she or Patrick got up to draw the curtains, and then the garden was darker still. No more voices, only the flexing of the floorboards. Everything was quiet: the road, the house, the village . . . the whole world. A quarter of an hour went by. Patrick and Sarah lay warmly and silently together, unaware of the man who dozed only inches below them in the cobwebs and molehills of a gentle toad-dream. At last, Harry felt for the natterjack in his trouser pocket.

  Gone. This discovery provoked an instant and painful reaction.

  He sat up sharply and slammed his head on the axle of the caravan. There was an explosion of pain and a brilliant starburst inside his skull. Careless of being discovered, he scrabbled in the earth around him, groping for the natterjack. A second time, as he tried to roll over, twisting and writhing in the confined space, he cracked his head on the caravan, a hammer blow behind his left ear. Panic took hold of him. He was stuck. He couldn’t get out. Yelling with a horror of the cavern which had seemed so comfortable a moment before, he tried to crawl onto the lawn. He heard voices and footsteps overhead. Something was tangling him, preventing him from rolling clear . . . He grappled at the cables twisted round his legs. At last, with a louder yell, he wrenched himself free.

  At the same moment, the lights in the caravan went out. Before Harry could struggle to his feet, the door flew open and Patrick jumped onto the lawn.

  ‘Who the fuck . . . ? Bloody hell, it’s clueless Harry Clewe! Hey Sarah! Get some clothes on and come and see this! It’s your school­teacher friend, the daredevil rock-climber!’

  He squatted over Harry, shirtless and shoeless, wearing only his climbing slacks. Jutting his bearded chin, he grinned so hard that the tendons in his neck stood up.

  Sarah appeared in the black doorway of the caravan, wrapping a pink dressing gown around her. ‘What’s going on?’ she hissed. ‘Be quiet, Patrick! My uncle will hear you! What’s happened to the lights?’

  Then she saw Harry, as he got up from the grass.

  ‘Harry?’ she said. ‘Harry Clewe? What on earth are you doing here? Why have you pulled the cables out? What do you want?’

  He couldn’t answer. Shaking his head to try and clear the sparks inside it, he felt into the hair behind his ear. It was sticky with blood.

  ‘What’s the matter, Harry?’ she said. ‘Have you hurt yourself?’

  Her voice and the way she wound the dressing gown around her dispelled some of his confusion. He held out his fingers to­wards her, and the blood on them shone in the dark garden. Patrick stepped forward and jutted his face again.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing, Harry fucking Clewe?’ he said. ‘Why are you creeping around Sarah’s caravan? How long have you been here?’ With each question, he jabbed very hard with his forefinger in the middle of Harry’s chest. ‘Peeping through the curtains, were you? You dirty old schoolteacher!’

  He continued to jab, forcing Harry backwards across the lawn, until Sarah’s voice cut through, harder and thinner than Harry had heard before.

  ‘Leave him alone, Patrick!’ she said. The man hesitated long enough for her to add more softly, ‘Come here, Harry, and let me have a look at your head.’

  Harry moved like a sleepwalker towards the girl. But Patrick gripped him by the arm and stopped him.

  ‘No, you don’t!’ he said. ‘You’re just going to piss off home and not come back! Get the idea, Harry? Try and start that clapped-out fucking phallic symbol of a car and go home! Stick your head in a dirty magazine! I’ll knock it off the next time you come crawling round here!’

  With that, he shoved violently with the flat of his hand against Harry’s chest, so that Harry, still dazed, staggered three paces backwards and sat down with a bump.

  The girl stepped from the caravan door. ‘You bastard, Patrick!’ she said, hissing the words and glancing anxiously at the light in the house. ‘Grow up, for heaven’s sake! If you think you’re impressing me, you’re bloody wrong!’

  She came barefoot over the grass and knelt next to Harry, with her thigh close to his face.

  ‘Up you get!’ she whispered to him. ‘Don’t take any notice of Patrick. He’s got a lot of hang-ups himself, hence his clever monkey tricks on the rocks. He’s afraid of schoolteachers, for a start. Come on now, get up!’

  She took his hand and helped him to his feet. But, before he could say anything or free his hand from hers, Patrick was there again, wrenching them apart and propelling Harry across the lawn towards the garden gate. Sarah started shouting, tugging at Patrick’s arms and swearing colourfully, so that Harry was encour­aged enough to swing a half-hearted blow in the vague direction of the rock-climber’s face. By chance, as the man was distracted by the girl, the punch landed heavily on his ear. But Harry had less than a second to congratulate himself on this unexpected success, before Patrick’s fist struck him very hard on the bridge of the nose. Harry went down again, covering his face with both hands.

  Everything was wet and stinging. The blow had driven the frame of his glasses into his eyebrow. His eyes flooded with tears. A gout of blood burst from his nostrils and into his mouth. There was a tremendous commotion – Patrick’s singsong bellowing and Sarah’s high-pitched shouts – which Harry ignored as he lay on the lawn, spitting the blood from his lips. He sat up and fumbled for the neckerchief in his pocket, wiping his eyes and nose with it, putting his glasses back on in time to see the door of the house swing open. Sarah’
s uncle strode into the garden, with the same expression on his face that Harry had seen in the restaurant and on the painting outside it. He confronted Patrick in the middle of the lawn. There was more and greater commotion: the black-bearded uncle blustered and roared, the blond-bearded rock-climber jutted his face and jabbed the air with his hands. Harry had recovered enough, although his nose was still pumping blood, to see that Sarah had skipped into the caravan. He stood up, gathering from the trend of the shouting that he was only a peripheral source of aggravation: the big issue was Patrick’s half-naked presence in the caravan in the first place.

  So Harry slid out of sight. Crouching in the long grass behind the caravan, he searched for the toad. He held out the spotted red neckerchief, as though it might lure the toad to him, although the spots were stained with mucus and blood; he rummaged in the drab remains of the summer flowers and felt under evergreen shrubs; he reached for stones and clods of soil, deceived by the dull toad shapes . . . until suddenly, by a magic he could never under­stand, he plucked the pimpled, wrinkled natterjack from a flower­bed. The magic flooded him again. He was recharged by it. Pressing a single, delicate kiss to the toad’s head, he wrapped it in the neckerchief and slipped it gently into his pocket.

  The shouting continued unabated on the lawn.

  Harry ran to the garden gate and into the street. Patrick and Sarah’s uncle were too preoccupied to notice him. He trotted along the pavement to the yew, where the shadow was so black he could hardly see his car underneath it. Indeed, he groped for the smooth, cold metal of the bonnet, felt for the doorhandle and slumped at the wheel . . . before he realised that Sarah was huddled on the passenger seat. He could smell her in the darkness. Her dressing gown slithered on the leather upholstery. Her fingers came up and felt for his face.

  ‘Home in a couple of minutes,’ he whispered hoarsely, slotting the key into the ignition. With the other hand, he squeezed the toad in his pocket, praying that the magic was still good.

  It was. The car coughed and coughed and started. The lights blazed. Harry and Sarah and the natterjack toad sped out of the village.

  Chapter Twelve

  Instead of parking the car in the shed, Harry stopped under the streetlamp outside the cottage. With a wriggling of her bare legs, Sarah stood on the seat and skipped over the dented, jammed passenger door. Harry fumbled with his house key.

  ‘Hurry up, Harry,’ she said, so close behind him that he could smell her breath. ‘I feel a bit daft like this.’

  She was barefoot, wearing the pink dressing gown. But no one would see her. It was eleven o’clock; the village was silent and deserted.

  ‘Mind the step down,’ he said, as the door opened. He felt for the light switch, and again she was pressed close to him in the chill front room. Her face was pasty and confused in the sudden brightness. Her vitality was quenched in the glare of the naked bulb.

  ‘Not very homely at the moment,’ he said. ‘Soon make it cosy for you.’

  He drew her away from the door and made her sit on the sofa. ‘You’re cold,’ he said. ‘Do you want some clothes to put on? Some slippers? And what about Patrick? Will he . . . ?’

  At this, she seemed to wake up again. She reddened, as though she’d suddenly realised how little she was wearing, and she pulled the dressing gown tightly across her chest and over her knees.

  ‘Don’t worry about Patrick,’ she said, shivering. ‘Not yet, anyway. Get the fire started. Then I’ll clean your face for you. You’ve got blood in your mouth. You look terrible.’

  In the flight from Beddgelert, he’d forgotten the pain in his punched face. He took off his glasses; the right lens was crazed again, exactly as it had been broken by his fall from the rocks. He felt at the bridge of his nose, at his eyebrow, at the bleeding bump behind his ear.

  The girl shuddered very violently, hunched in the cold, bare room. ‘Get the fire lit, Harry!’ she said. ‘Let’s have some warmth before I fix you up!’ She sprang from the sofa and turned towards the bathroom. ‘Must go to the loo! I expect a roaring blaze when I come back!’

  Harry moved like a cat. He sprang past her and flicked the switch at the bathroom door. She blinked at him, surprised at the panic on his face, and he quickly said, ‘The wiring’s a bit buggered, I’m afraid. I always make sure the power’s off when I use the bathroom. Don’t worry, it’s safe now. But it means there’s no light in there. Just hang on a moment . . .’

  He crossed the living room, reached for a candle on the mantel­piece, took it past the girl and into the dark bathroom. He brushed the taps with his knuckle: no tingle. He melted some wax from the bottom of the candle and stuck it firmly on the washbasin before lighting the wick. Straight away, the room seemed warmer, lit with gold and silver flames from the mirror and the gleaming taps.

  ‘There we are,’ he said. ‘That’ll do, won’t it?’

  Sighing with exasperation, the girl closed herself inside the bathroom.

  Harry listened at the door, as he’d done the first time she’d come to the cottage: the rustling of her dressing gown and a few seconds’ silence before the water fizzed and foamed in the toilet bowl. Imagining her sitting there, with the tiny hairs on her shins and her thighs as bright as sparks in the candlelight, he leaned his fore­head on the door and closed his eyes. The toad squirmed in his pocket. His stomach turned over. The trickling noise stopped. Hearing the rattle of the toilet roll, he stepped silently into the living room and knelt at the grate; he busied himself with news­paper and kindling wood, watched as the flames flickered and licked at the thin, dry splinters; he balanced the pieces of coal from a bucket by the hearth, constructing a dome on the spars of black­ening wood. Soon, within the dome, a blossoming core of fire . . . A minute later, he heard the taps running before Sarah came back into the room, rubbing her hands together.

  ‘It’s freezing in there!’ she said. ‘And don’t you have any hot water?’

  She flung herself onto the sofa and held out her fingers and toes to the fire. She grinned the stoat-grin. ‘Come on, Harry Clewe, get organised! No light! No hot water! No fire! If you’re going to kidnap me, at least let’s have a bit of comfort!’

  He explained that there would soon be plenty of hot water, because the fire heated the back boiler. The flames grew bolder, forcing through the coal, filling the grate with blue smoke. He reached for a log and rested it there: the wood began to hiss, and a long jet of steam burst from it. Soon it was running with flames, splitting from end to end with an explosive crack which spat a spark onto the carpet. Harry stood up and ground the spark out with his Wellington boot.

  ‘I’ll go and get out of these boots,’ he said. He switched on a little table lamp and turned off the naked overhead bulb, to make the room warmer and softer. ‘That’s better, isn’t it? I won’t be a minute.’

  Upstairs, he took the natterjack from his pocket. The power of the toadstone had worked again. The girl was in his cottage, naked inside her dressing gown, in front of his fire . . . It was a mira­cle, considering the resistance he’d met. But he gulped with fear, thinking that the rock-climber might arrive in his van at any moment. Consumed with gratitude for the magic of the extra­or­dinarily ugly, indescribably beautiful creature, praying that it might continue to protect him, he unfolded the toad from the necker­chief and kissed it tenderly on the top of the head, where the jewel was concealed by poisonous pimples.

  Sitting on his bed, he reached for the length of string in the bedside drawer; he attached the string to the toad as he did nearly every night, slipping the loop over its head and pulling it tighter under its forelegs. He stood on the chair and pushed open the trap door in the ceiling, reaching up and placing the toad tenderly on its neckerchief in the dusty darkness of the roof space. No sound or movement; indeed, there’d been none since he’d first used the toad to keep the cottage free of rats. Silently, he closed the trap door. The string trailed down, running freely through a crack around the ill-fitting hinge. Normally he would tie it to his
wrist as he climbed into bed, to keep the connection even in his sleep; but now he knotted it to the door handle of his wardrobe. There was a little slack, so that the toad could move about and explore in the cobwebs. Satisfied with this arrangement, Harry took off his boots and put on a pair of slippers. It was better to have the toad out of his pocket for the moment; he would show it to the girl later, certain she’d be thrilled. It was something to hold back, like a trump card.

  He went downstairs again and sat next to Sarah on the sofa. They stared at the flames together.

  ‘You’re famous in the village, you know,’ she said. ‘Or infamous, to be more precise. That business in the hotel garden, I mean. Every­body’s talking about it. It makes your dramatic entrance into the restaurant seem pretty tame by comparison. What were you doing this evening, crawling around the caravan? Why did you pull the cable out? Another of your jokes, was it?’

  For a dazzling moment, Harry was going to tell her . . . about the beautiful bright angel he dreaded so much . . . about his chaotic classrooms and the soft, white weight of the suffocating head­mistress . . . about Sudan. About everything! That he wanted her, that he loved her, that he had come to the caravan to see her and talk to her and would do anything to stop Patrick from having her back again! He would show her the natterjack she’d found in the garden, in the spotted red neckerchief she’d given him, and they could share the power of the toadstone which had brought them together. Yes, the toadstone was common to them, to Harry Clewe and Sarah! It excluded the rock-climber!

  But the moment passed, perhaps because, for the first time in weeks, he and the toad were apart. Harry had made a mistake. Thinking to close on the girl, he’d lost his connection with the natterjack. The power was cut off. Now, he hardly dared look the girl in the eyes.