The Blood of Angels

by Stephen Gregory

‘I wanted to see you,’ he mumbled, ducking his head from her. ‘I had to. Can you understand that?’

  The words were mealy and bland. His courage was gone. He was nervous of the girl and afraid of the rock-climber. She didn’t answer his question. So he said, ‘What about Patrick? And your uncle? They must be wondering where you’ve gone . . .’

  She shrugged. The corners of her mouth turned down, crink­ling the skin on her chin. ‘Well, my uncle might wonder,’ she said, ‘but I don’t suppose he’ll do any more than that. He’s really heavy about my morals while I’m in the caravan, in his garden, on his property, but he doesn’t care a damn once I’m off the premises.’ She put her palms together and snuggled her hands deep between her thighs.

  ‘And Patrick?’ Harry persisted. ‘Does he know where I live? He’ll find us! He’ll see my car! What will he do then?’ His voice trem­bled, because of the cold and because he was frightened.

  Sarah stared into the fire, saying nothing. Quick as a lizard, she moved suddenly forward and knelt on the rug. Her breasts were cream against the darker gold of her throat, and one of her thighs was naked in the firelight. She reached for another piece of wood and placed it in the flames, very deliberately with both hands, as though she were fitting a crown on the round, young head of a princess.

  ‘I don’t know about Patrick,’ she said at last, staring into the fire. ‘I go back to London next week. He’s going climbing in Nepal. We’ve had our fun for the summer, and I suppose that’s the end of it.’

  ‘But now!’ Harry said, trying to control the squeal in his voice. ‘I mean now, Sarah! Tonight! Isn’t he going to come looking for you?’

  ‘Not unless he walks up here, he’s not,’ she replied, looking round at Harry. ‘He’s got the van up on bricks in Beddgelert, doing something to the brakes, I think. He’ll sleep in it tonight. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he turns up tomorrow, as soon as he gets the wheels back on. It might be a good idea if you’re out of the way then, Harry, unless you want some more alterations done to your glasses. Shit, you’re a mess! Let me have a look at your face.’

  She was on her feet and in and out of the bathroom in a few seconds, sitting beside him on the sofa, lifting off his glasses and dabbing at his forehead with a wet sponge. She pressed him backwards, soaked the congealed blood from his nostrils and the hair behind his ear, squeezed the sponge on the bridge of his nose.

  ‘I don’t think it’s broken,’ she said softly.

  He closed his eyes as she swabbed at the incision on his brow where the frame of his glasses had cut him.

  ‘And that’s just a nick,’ he heard her say. ‘That’s all the nursing you need.’

  Her dressing gown rustled. The sponge rolled onto the rug. She curled up her legs and leaned on him, with her head on his shoulder. He could hear and smell her breathing very close to his neck; he could feel the flutter of her hair on his mouth. The only other sound was the movement of fire in the grate, the guttering of flames, the puthering smoke, the crackle and hiss of burning wood and the collapsing of coal in a bed of embers. Harry felt his bones go loose, as though his body were melting into the cushions of the sofa.

  Harry and Sarah sat like that for a long time, half-asleep in the firelight.

  Suddenly, there was a long creak and a bang from upstairs. The girl stiffened, without sitting up. Harry opened his eyes and held his breath to listen. Something banged a second time in the room above, wood on wood.

  ‘What’s that, Harry?’ she said, lifting her face from his shoulder. ‘Is there somebody upstairs?’

  She was frightened. Her wide, grey eyes moved from his eyes to the ceiling and to the staircase. Her right cheek was lined with a map of sleep, reddened creases from leaning on Harry’s shoulder. He raised his eyebrows, listened for another sound, reached for his glasses and fitted them to his tender nose. A third time something banged, more loudly, so that Harry prised himself free of the girl and stood up.

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s just the wind,’ he told her. ‘I must have left a window open. Stay there and I’ll have a look.’

  She swivelled on the sofa to watch him go. He went upstairs.

  In the orange light from the street, he could see that the ward­robe door had been tugged wide open, to bang three times on the skirting of the wall. Now the string from the door handle to the ceil­ing was slack, although it trembled in midair. Before Harry could reach it, there was a scuffle near the trap door and the string jerked tight, slamming the wardrobe door once more on the skirt­ing. At the same time, a patter of heavy footsteps ran to the corners of the roofspace; there was the skid and rattle of rubble, the sneezing upheaval of dust.

  Harry grabbed the chair. He stood on it and thrust open the trap door. A cloud of plaster and cobwebs fell on his head, as the rats fled to the adjacent chimney stack of the next cottage. He took the string, which trailed into the darkness, and pulled it gently towards him. Blinking at the dust in his eyes and spitting the chalkiness out of his mouth, he peered into the shadows of the roof. He tugged the string. It was snagged on something; there was a dead weight on the other end. He reached into the gloom with one hand and eased the string, finding the red neckerchief at the same time. He draped it over his shoulder and continued to pull on the string.

  At last he saw the toad. It was dragging through the dust, tum­bling over and over like a drunk in a gutter, its limbs gangling loosely and coated with white powder, its eyes closed. Harry slipped the string from its body and trod heavily from the chair onto the bedroom floor. The toad was cold and still between his hands.

  Before he could slip it inside his shirt or his pocket, Sarah was there, in the light of the landing. She spoke, before he could say anything by way of explanation or conceal the toad from her.

  ‘The natterjack? I thought so. What’s happened to it? What the hell have you done to it? Give it to me, Harry.’

  She came forward, small and neat and shining in her dressing gown, and she reached out her hand to Harry’s face. He instinc­tively flinched, accustomed to being punched, anticipating more punches in the coming hours . . . but she didn’t touch him. She lifted the neckerchief from his shoulder. She shook it hard and held it towards him, draped over her hands.

  ‘Give me the toad, Harry,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have given it to you in the first place. Give it to me!’

  And before he’d understood what she was doing, he put the motionless body of the natterjack on its neckerchief and watched her enfold it tenderly, until it was quite hidden from the light and the dust.

  She spun away from him, down the stairs. He quickly jumped on the chair and closed the trap door, jumped down again and followed her.

  She went straight into the bathroom, where, between the washbasin taps, the candle was guttering in a pool of wax. The girl’s hair gleamed, her teeth and eyes were bright in the failing light. Putting the bundle in the basin, she let the water run round the folded material. Then she handed the wet neckerchief to Harry, who stood dumbly behind her. She turned the toad in her hands, massaging it as though she were trying to get a lather from a piece of soap. Harry felt his bowels squirm, to see her smooth, brown hands on the slick, rubbery toad. The plaster dust streamed like milk, spiralling into the plughole. When the toad was clean, she bent low and examined it close to the light of the candle, peering minutely into every crease of its body.

  ‘The skin is punctured here,’ she said. ‘Looks like a bite. It’s alive, though. I can feel it pulsing in my hands.’

  She glanced up at Harry, indirectly, by means of the mirror, where he stood so closely to her that his thighs brushed against her dressing gown. Her face, reversed in reflection, was oddly, intri­guingly different. The candle was almost out, drowning the wick in molten wax. The girl bent forward again. At the touch of her body on his, Harry put his arms on her waist. She stiffened a little, then ignored him, running more water on the lifeless toad. Harry felt her warmth through the dressing gown. It was all she was wearing; it slid on he
r skin as he moved his hands. He saw his own face in the mirror, shadows and flames and bruises of blood, and he felt the desire in his belly as he leaned harder on the girl, as her hands caressed the slithery toad. He lowered his face to her hair. Ignoring her squirm, averting his eyes from her suddenly uplifted, frightened, back-to-front face in the mirror, he enfolded her waist with his arms. He slipped his hands inside her gown. Unable to control himself, he cupped her breasts, tweaked her nipples . . . She cried out, she writhed like a seal in his grip. But he couldn’t let go. He couldn’t. His head reeled at the wriggle of her buttocks against him. For a second, his eyes met hers in the mirror, and her mouth was wide open with anger and fear . . . and then the candle went out.

  The girl slapped the toad into the washbasin, freed herself by lashing backwards with her elbows, and fled from the bathroom.

  Harry sat on the edge of the bath, gulping air to try and calm himself, mopping his face with the wet neckerchief. The room was dark and cool. He had a delicious surge of toadness, like the toadness he’d enjoyed beneath the caravan, to be quiet and safe in a silent, black hole. So he waited for a minute, until his breathing was steady again, until his desire had gone down, and then he stood up, took the toad from the washbasin, wrapped it in the neckerchief and bundled it into his pocket.

  What a fool he’d been to put it in the roof! He’d been mad to cut himself off from it! But now he had it back again, the toad, the toadstone, the jewel in its head . . . and, although the beast itself was so limp and lifeless, he thought he could still feel the tingle of power go through him.

  He went into the living room. Sarah was kneeling in front of the fire. She was crying. The tears ran down her cheeks and into the corners of her mouth, into the creases of her throat. She made no effort to control them or to wipe them away. Her body shook with silent sobbing.

  Harry sat on the sofa. ‘Sarah,’ he said very softly. ‘Oh Sarah, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I couldn’t help it. I’m sorry. Please forgive me . . .’

  He reached out his fingers to her cheek, but she recoiled as though she were nettled by his touch.

  ‘Sarah, please!’ he whispered. ‘Can’t I touch you at all?’

  She shuddered and replied, wringing out each word, ‘No! Not like that! Not the same way you – ’ She stopped in midsentence, took a huge, quivering breath and smeared her face with the sleeves of her dressing gown.

  ‘What way, Sarah?’ he whispered. ‘What do you mean?’

  She said nothing. She shrugged. And the shrug, effortlessly insolent, totally dismissive, was the trigger for Harry’s anger. He took hold of her shoulders, twisted her face towards his, and shook her as hard as he could until her head rattled this way and that like a doll’s. He bellowed at her, flecking her face with spittle.

  ‘What way? What way? Why can’t I touch you? What way do you mean?’

  She went limp in his arms. He leaned very closely to her and whispered again. ‘What way, Sarah? Please tell me! Please!’

  Blubbering, gasping for breath, she managed to tell him. It was she who’d watched him in the glare of the telephone kiosk. It was she who’d dialled the number from her uncle’s house and spoken to him.

  A minute ticked by. A dead, empty minute.

  ‘Not like that, Harry!’ she whispered, as he slumped on the sofa. Her breathing was steady again. ‘Not like you did with the toad! I don’t want you to touch me like that!’

  She stood up from the rug, sat next to him and picked up both his hands in hers. His were the hands of a corpse, blue and mottled, colder and deader than stone.

  ‘It reminded me,’ she said softly. ‘Just now in the bathroom with the light and the mirror and so on, it reminded me of what you were doing in the phone box. You frightened me then, when I was watching you that night. I thought you were ill, Harry, or mad! I saw you with the toad and I was frightened . . . and that’s why I was frightened just now as well. I saw you in the mirror, and you looked sort of mad again.’

  She was no longer afraid. She’d stopped crying, although her eyes were bleary red and her face was smeared with tears. She could see that Harry Clewe was lost and broken, that he was cold and lonely. Now it was Harry’s turn to weep. He shuddered and mewed as though his chest might burst, as though his throat were burning . . . and this is what she did to comfort him. She prised his hands from his face. She opened her dressing gown, parted her smooth, brown thighs and slipped his hands between them. Then she squeezed her legs together.

  ‘Don’t be sad, Harry Clewe,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t! You’re a nice man. You’re good and kind and funny. I feel comfy and safe with you, now. Don’t always be sad, Harry Clewe. And please don’t be angry with me . . .’

  She leaned on him again, her head on his shoulder, his hands between her thighs. At last, Harry controlled his weeping. Like two unhappy children, their eyes wet with tears, they sat for a long time without speaking . . . until the fire was nearly dead. The toad was cold in Harry’s pocket, like a dead thing.

  Eventually, when the room was chilly again, the girl squirmed away and gently lifted Harry’s hands from her. His palms were moist, where they’d been pressed to her skin.

  ‘Go to bed now,’ she said to him. ‘I’ll stay down here on the sofa. Have you got a couple of blankets I could use?’

  With difficulty, Harry got up, knelt by the fire and rebuilt it with coal and logs.

  ‘That’ll keep going nearly all night now,’ he said, ‘so there’ll be plenty of hot water in the morning. I’ll get some blankets from upstairs.’

  While the girl was in the bathroom again, rinsing the smudges from her face, Harry brought the rug, eiderdown and pillow from his own bed and arranged them on the sofa for her. He put the guard in front of the fire, which was brightly flaming. Sarah came back in. Hoping she wouldn’t ask him where the toad had gone, he asked her, ‘Do you need anything else? Will you be all right?’

  They were both embarrassed, now that it was bedtime. The girl couldn’t climb under the blankets while Harry was standing there, and Harry couldn’t think of anything to say. He nodded goodnight and went upstairs.

  He stood in his bedroom, holding his breath and straining his ears for any sounds of movement. He heard the click of the lamp as the girl switched it off, the creak of the sofa, the snuggle of blankets. Nothing more. Without turning his light on, in the orange glow from the street, he took off all his clothes, unfolded the red neckerchief and pressed the toad to his belly, skin to skin.

  The creature was cold and still. It had no warmth, no pulse. It was dead. No, please, no . . . He banished the thought at once. Slip­ping under the single sheet of his bed – no pillow or rug, or eider­down – he lay there and squeezed the toad between his thighs: as the girl had squeezed his hands between her thighs, to give heat, to give life, to give comfort.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The hours went by and he couldn’t sleep. Sometimes he heard the rats in the roof, shuffling through the shadows, snuffling in the dust; they’d come inside for the warmth of the chimney, now that the nights were colder. The street was silent. There was no wind in the mountains, no wind in the dense black trees of the forest. Once, he heard the collapsing of the fire in the living room and saw the glow of flames up the stairs to his landing. He lay without moving a muscle, holding the toad between his legs. He shivered, without blankets, and he wondered if the toad, instead of being revived by his own heat, was filling him with its dead and clammy cold. No, not dead! He wouldn’t let it be dead. He wanted the power in him, the power and magic of the toadstone. So he squeezed the natterjack in the fork of his thighs.

  Three o’clock. Four. Five. Still he hadn’t slept.

  When he saw the sky lightening, he tiptoed downstairs, naked, holding the toad to his groin, and squatted by the fire to put another log there. The girl was breathing regularly, sound asleep, her face on the pillow turned towards the cooling hearth. She looked like a child: her hair was damp on her brow, her cheeks were
hot, her mouth was open and moving. She could have been twelve or thirteen – not much older than his little sister Lizzie, he thought – lost in the complicated, mysterious dreams that children have. Harry stood on the rug, where the new heat from the fire was good on his buttocks and thighs, where the pink dressing gown had been tossed on the floor.

  He knelt to her oblivious face and smooth shoulders, and he felt the caving in his belly that she was so sweet and naked and so close and she would never let him touch her. He leaned down, unable to resist, and gently kissed her cheek.

  At that, as if by some miracle, the toad started to move. It swelled and flexed and filled with heat. It throbbed and writhed, alive with a hot, hot pulse . . .

  But no. It wasn’t the toad. It was Harry Clewe. The toad was cold and apparently dead. But it seemed to swell as Harry swelled, as he rubbed it and rubbed it between his legs.

  The girl began to whisper. Her breath was hoarse. For a second she opened her eyes and stared at Harry and he sprang to his feet again, turning to try and hide himself from her. She closed her eyes. She was deeply asleep. With the taste of her skin on the tip of his tongue, with the toad on his belly, he returned to his bed. It was colder and lonelier than ever before.

  At last he slept.

  When he woke, he found that he’d curled himself into a ball. Some­thing was moving in his hands, where he snuggled them between his thighs. There was a gurgling, drumming noise. He blinked, trying to surface from sleep into the chill, grey bedroom of a Snow­donian cottage. When he realised that the toad was stretch­ing its legs and squirming and trying to crawl out of his grasp, he kicked the sheet off him and sat up.

  The natterjack was alive, as limber and sinewy and rubbery-tough as ever. It sprang about the bed, it scuttled and burrowed and bounced, quite reborn. And Harry yelped with pleasure to see it. He danced round and round the little room, giggling barbarically, a thin, white, naked man, bursting with joy that the toad had come back to life.

  At last, having watched for a delirious minute while it explored the tangled sheet, he picked up the toad and pressed its bumpy brown body to his forehead. His eyes swam with tears. It was a glorious moment . . . The power flooded through him, an infusion of pumping new blood.