The Blood of Angels

by Stephen Gregory

  The rain stopped, late in the afternoon. The sky cleared in time for a brilliantly orange sun to sink onto the dunes, a sun which flattened on impact and ignited a gigantic bonfire, whose embers glowed and flared and died.

  Later that night, Harry took Lizzie onto the deck.

  ‘Come and see the stars,’ he said. ‘Maybe I can give you a little guided tour.’

  They put on all the clothes they had, bundling themselves against the cold. Dressing, the two of them out of bed for the first time that day, they watched one another and smiled shyly, touching unconsciously in the confined space. Sometimes their hands met, as their eyes met.

  On the deck, they nestled under a blanket, leaning back to see the sky. She grinned and grimaced when he brought out his bat­tered old binoculars, but Harry insisted she should try them. ‘You’re right, Lizzie!’ he laughed. ‘These are the ones Mum and Dad bought me when I graduated from university. That was ten years ago, back in ’62. I was twenty-one and you were just eight. What a memory you’ve got! I had them with me in Sudan, when I was teaching out there, and that’s when I started using them on the stars. It was the clear skies in the desert that got me interested. Go on, try them! Even low-powered binoculars, even my ancient gritty binoculars, make a terrific difference.’

  The deck of the Ozymandias was a good place from which to observe the stars. The only distraction was a faint orange glow from the town of Caernarfon. There was no blurring from street­lamps, no smoke from houses or factories. Harry and Lizzie were away from all that on the deck of their boat, grounded on the wet, black sands of the wide, black estuary. They stared upwards, holding their breath, and the stars were a glittering powder, like sugar crushed into a deep, blue-black carpet.

  ‘The trick is this, Lizzie,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t look straight at the stars. Look slightly askew, just a fraction to the side of the one you want, and you’ll get a better focus. Edgar Allan Poe explained it in one of his stories, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, I think it was: “To look at a star by glances, to view it in a side-long way, is to behold the star distinctly; the lustre grows dim as we turn our vision fully upon it.” Let’s start with Orion.’

  He glanced at his sister’s upturned face. She was quivering with excitement. So he showed her the Hunter, a giant figure sprawled on his side, the magnificence of his bejewelled belt and the mistiness of his sword.

  ‘Now, from there it’s best like this,’ he said, and he drew her eyes straight down the line of the belt to the brightest star in the sky, Sirius, the Dog Star. ‘The one above Sirius is Procyon. So you already have three constellations, if you take in the smaller clusters around those distinct stars: you’ve got Orion, Canis Major and Canis Minor.’

  Onwards and upwards they moved, to the Twins, Castor and Pollux, in a sweeping curve to glorious, yellow Capella, and from there to Aldebaran, the eye of Taurus.

  ‘That’s an easy circuit,’ he whispered, ‘with Orion’s Belt run­ning one way to Sirius and the other way to Aldebaran. It points you round some of the clearest constellations.’

  She was breathless. When he leaned closer towards her, so close that he brushed her hair with his lips, she continued to gaze into the heavens.

  ‘And there’s lots more, little Lizzie,’ he said very softly, where her neck was very warm. ‘Lots and lots more . . .’

  She was training the binoculars on the gaseous nebula in Orion’s sword, on the fiery redness of Betelgeuse, discovering that Castor was white and Pollux was yellow, meeting the bloodshot eye of Aldebaran, gasping at the loveliness of the Pleiades . . . Harry watched her.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he whispered, nuzzling into her upturned collar, ‘perhaps one day I’ll have a telescope on board the Ozymandias. A telescope, maybe the next time you come and visit, and then it’ll be like flying. What do you think about that, Lizzie?’

  She lowered the binoculars and turned her eyes to his. ‘I think it’s all wonderful!’ she said, and she buried her face into his coat before continuing, as though there were things she couldn’t say without hiding herself from him. ‘I think the Ozymandias is wonderful! I think your estuary and your beach are wonderful, and all the odd creatures you’ve shown me!’

  Then her voice was muffled against his clothes, as he looked down on the thick, red mass of her hair. ‘The stars as well, Harry!’ she said. ‘You’ve brought me here and shown me everything, all these things I’d never seen before, things I hardly knew existed.’ Her shoulders started to shudder. She took a long gulping breath and said, ‘You make me feel so safe and happy here, Harry, so happy that I’ll never want to . . .’

  ‘Never want to what?’ he asked her. But she didn’t answer. She wept. He felt her body relax almost to bonelessness. He held her closely, and he gazed from her star-bright hair to the stars them­selves. At last she spilled what was left of her grief, which she’d tried to hold back at the funeral in Shrewsbury. Sobbing, she mourned her mother and father, and she mourned the passing of her childhood years, which were gone for ever. Her parents’ death had marked her transition into adulthood.

  She wept for a long time, pressing her face into her brother’s body. Even when she stopped, she didn’t finish what she’d been going to say to him.

  There was a perfect, unearthly silence that night. The wildfowl settled to roost, folding their wings with a whisper. Not a breeze, not a cloud, but a clear sky and a crackle of early frost . . . a frost that gripped the air and squeezed it dry, that tightened like a thin steel trap. Harry and Lizzie lay on the bed, their faces to the fire, feeling its warmth on them. Apart from the flutter of the flames, the only sound was the creak of the boat’s timbers. It seemed that the world and all its inhabitants were holding their breath, to conserve some inner heat. Brother and sister slept deeply, unconscious of the cooling fire, moving more closely together. They didn’t feel the nudge of the rising tide and the shiver of the Ozymandias as the boat eased from the mud. They slept dreamlessly . . .

  While Orion wheeled overhead. While the heron hunched in its cloak, while the fox limped across the fields, while the salmon surged to the river’s mouth . . . While the sky and all its stars leaned on the earth.

  In the morning, Harry awoke with a shudder of cold, alone in the bed. In his sleep, he’d turned to the wall of the cabin, so his opening eyes saw nothing but a blank of white and blistering paint. When he rolled over, he saw Lizzie kneeling by the stove, her back to him, busy with newspaper and splinters of wood, preparing to relight the fire. He watched her without speaking, her slim, boyish figure in one of his big, baggy pullovers, her bare white legs and feet, the toss of her bright-red hair in the grey light. He remembered what day it was: Lizzie had been with him on the boat for three days. She was startled when he spoke, because she hadn’t heard him turning to look at her.

  ‘Good girl,’ he said, making her jump. ‘Get it lit and then hop back into bed. The cabin will soon warm up again.’

  She grinned at him over her shoulder. The twigs crackled and spat as the newspaper exploded into flames. She built a scaffold of driftwood on the brand-new blaze, kneeling to watch the flames take hold.

  ‘Come on, come back to bed,’ he said, and she slipped in beside him. ‘Enough of a fire to warm up the cabin a bit, for when we get up. We mustn’t be late setting off. It’s an hour’s walk into Caer­narfon and then at least half an hour on the bus into Bangor. Your train goes at midday.’

  She didn’t say anything. She was burying her face in the blankets, as she’d buried her face the night before, and he sensed she was preparing to speak. But when a minute passed in silence, while he stared through her hair at the growing fire, he added, ‘Well, you’ve left me plenty of wood for this evening, when I get back here after seeing you off to London.’ He nudged her, making her look at him. ‘You’ll visit the Ozymandias again, won’t you, Lizzie? At the end of your term? Come for Christmas, if you like.’

  She fixed him with her clear, dry, intelligent eyes. ‘Oh yes, dear Harry, I’ll be
here at Christmas,’ she said quietly. ‘In fact, I’ll be here this evening. You see, I’m staying on the Ozymandias with you. I’m never going back to London.’

  Chapter Six

  Indeed, it was Harry who found himself on the London train that afternoon, while Lizzie stayed on the boat.

  They’d spent the morning in exhausting, numbing debate. He was astonished by her refusal to return to college. She was hurt by his sudden, impulsive decision to go instead of her, to talk to her tutor and the warden of her hall of residence, to leave her on her own to mull over her extraordinary decision.

  She wept as, big-brotherly, Harry reminded her of all the work she’d done to win her scholarship at the Royal College of Music, how she’d worked and worked since she was a skinny little ten-year-old, bending her tiny body to the cello without missing a single day, including Christmases, birthdays and holidays throughout her childhood and adolescence. She wept as, trying to bring her to her senses by touching the wound of her present grief, he reminded her of the unselfishness, the sacrifice of their parents, whose only thought had been the future of their exceptional daughter. She wept as he reminded her that, in winning her scholarship and her place at the college, she’d won a chance that others had worked for, whom she’d beaten into disappointment.

  But she was stubborn. He couldn’t dissuade her. The fire went out and the cabin grew cold again, but they wouldn’t seek warmth and comfort under the blankets. They sat apart, shivering. They sat in silence, distanced from one another, clenched up.

  The morning passed. At last, Harry said gruffly, ‘Well, if I don’t get moving, I’m going to miss that train,’ and he started to dress. While he gathered a few things, Lizzie grew calmer, smearing the tears on her face, breathing more deeply and steadily, and she dressed too. They didn’t touch, manoeuvring carefully in the con­fined space of the cabin. Without glancing at her, hoping he’d made her change her mind by threatening to leave without her, he said, ‘Are you coming then, Lizzie? I can travel down to London with you and make sure you’re all right, if you like.’

  But she replied, her face averted from his, ‘No, Harry, I’m not coming. I’m going out on the beach to start collecting some more wood for the stove, if you’re really going to leave me here all on my own.’

  Coincidentally, they were ready at the same time, both dressed, their red hair tousled after a night under the blankets. Harry was going to London; Lizzie was going to gather driftwood from the seashore. It was exactly the opposite of what he’d envisaged.

  ‘At least,’ he said through gritted teeth, acknowledging with a shrug and a weary sigh that she wouldn’t alter her decision, ‘at least have the goodness to walk with me into Caernarfon, won’t you? On the way back you can collect all the bloody firewood you can carry.’

  As they walked, he told her that he would talk to her tutor and make things straight for her, for the time being. He would go to her hall of residence, let himself into her room and stay overnight there; he would talk to the warden the following morning and then return to Wales with some of her clothes, and, most importantly, with her cello and her music. By now they were touching again, hand in hand on the boulders of the seashore track.

  ‘I don’t want the cello!’ she said.

  They stopped walking and faced one another. Her eyes gleamed cold, and her lips were white with anger.

  ‘You needn’t fetch it for me! Listen, Harry, I know how much it cost and how Mum and Dad saved up to buy it for me, and how they saved for all my expensive tuition. I know all that and I loved them for it. I’ll always love them, remembering everything they did for me. But I’ve finished with the cello. Even if you bring it up here to the Ozymandias, I’ll never touch it. It’s dead for me.’

  She grimaced, shuddering at the thought of it. ‘Ugh! Bits of dead wood, all twisted out of shape and embalmed in layers of polish! I hated the tension of it, as though it would snap into splin­ters at any moment . . . shatter into lots of ugly, sharp spikes. That’s what it started to feel like for me. I never told Mum and Dad, and I never told you, Harry, although I nearly did in one of the letters I used to write to you. I just kept working, holding the cello between my legs, feeling the tension in it building and building, waiting for the thing to burst into pieces and then all the spikes to fly off and stick into me. I know it sounds horrible and silly and ungrateful, but that’s what it felt like. Can you imagine it, Harry? Can you?’

  She paused for a moment and took a deep breath. She wrung her brother’s hands, and her fingers were icy on his. Her sharp little face was very white, pinched with cold, blanched by the brightness of her hair.

  ‘Please, Harry! Please don’t bring the cello back!’ she implored him. ‘We’ll think of something to do with it later, but for the time being, leave it in its case, in my room. Then, if it happens to shatter, with all that tension wound up so tight for so long, it can shatter inside its case and not hurt anybody with its flying spikes!’

  She looked up at her brother’s bewildered, frowning face and she laughed. ‘Harry, my dear Harry, the things I want are here,’ she said softly. ‘Now that Mum and Dad are dead, the cello’s dead, too. For the first time in years, since I was nine or ten, I’m free of it. It’s a great feeling! All I want is this bit of a beach, this washed-up end of the estuary, where a river goes trickling into the mud . . . and then the sea comes in, all fresh again, cleaning up and bringing odd things with it. Not exotic things, but pieces of lives, real lives. Birds or fish that have really flown or really swum. Not like the cello, holding its breath in its velvet-lined case.’

  She smiled at him, and her eyes glistened with tears. ‘I want to be here with you, Harry,’ she said, ‘on your silly old boat. Mum and Dad thought you were mad or lazy, coming to Wales, wasting your time after all that expensive schooling and university and teacher training, but I didn’t. I could see that you were alive and breathing, doing what you wanted to do. And I always thought that one day I’d escape and join you, wherever you were. So here I am, alive and breathing! That’s why I want to stay here instead of going back to London. Don’t bring the cello back, Harry! Please don’t!’

  At last she stopped, out of breath after this gushing confession. They started to walk again, along the beach towards Caernarfon. Harry didn’t speak, until, as they crossed the Seiont footbridge opposite the castle and paused for a few moments to watch a cormorant which was fishing in the river mouth, he said to her, ‘Listen, Lizzie. I’m going all the way to London and back to do these things for you, because you’re my little sister, because I love you . . . and, now that there’s just the two of us in all the world, because I’m responsible for you. Do you understand that? I’ll bring the cello back with me, and then it’s up to you. You can do what you bloody well like with it. Smash it up for firewood if you like. But I’m bringing it back here. All right?’

  So they parted in Caernarfon square, where Harry caught the bus to Bangor. ‘You’ve got money?’ he said to her. ‘You’ve got the key to the boat. You’ve got food. I’ve got your room key for the hall of residence, and the name of your tutor. For heaven’s sake, look after yourself! Keep warm and dry and I’ll be back tomorrow night.’

  He held her tightly, squeezing her so hard that he could feel her bones against his, as though she were a part of his own body. ‘Lizzie,’ he whispered. ‘Silly, stubborn, pig-headed Lizzie! Lizzie, my little love . . .’

  Chapter Seven

  The expedition was a horror for him. He hated the city. He hated the idea of leaving Lizzie alone on the estuary. By late afternoon, the train was approaching Euston Station. The landscape was appalling: acres of blackened industrial dereliction, scorched earth which even the willowherb refused to colonise; vast areas aban­doned as graveyards for all kinds of twisted and rusting wreckage; on every space on every soot-caked wall, a scrawl of obscene, humour­less graffiti; huge, sky-blotting hoardings; glimpses in the half-light of cramped and crabby lives in dark terraces, where the only illumination throug
h a haze of exhaust fumes was the jaundice of neon.

  The train got in. It burrowed into a black, booming hole. Harry crossed London in rush hour. Swept downstairs by a swarming, faceless, breathless mob, bullied onto escalators, he was crushed into the carriages of tube trains, where the oddest of intimacies took place: people who wouldn’t speak to one another or look at each other were forced into a clammy union of buttocks and bellies and breasts of every age, shape, size and ethnic origin. Finally, after a walk through a maze of ill-lit streets lined with plastic rubbish bags and cankered plane trees, he sneaked into Lizzie’s hall of residence, found her room and let himself into it.

  It was cold and empty, smelling of bleach. Only the cello, leaning in one corner, and Lizzie’s clothes in the drawers and wardrobe reminded him that she’d been there.

  He sat down on her bed, and a wave of desolation swept over him. He imagined her alone on the Ozymandias, under a wide, starlit sky, hearing the cries of the curlew, watching a blue flame in a salt-spitting fire . . . while he had come to London.

  And, next day, there were bewildering things to do done.

  Lizzie’s tutor was first of all speechless, and then very angry. While Harry stood meekly in the book-lined study, having given an account of his sister’s whereabouts and state of mind, the man paced furiously around him, flinging questions into the air with­out waiting for answers or explanations. On a boat? A boat? What on earth was she doing on a boat? In Wales? Why Wales? It occurred to Harry, as he remained silent and glum, that it was Wales that infuriated the man more than anything else; if he’d said the boat was in Devon or Sussex or even on Skye, the tutor wouldn’t have minded so much. But Wales! The man repeated the word with distaste, as though it were an unpleasant condition like piles or athlete’s foot. And where was her cello? Why hadn’t she had the courtesy to excuse herself, to write or telephone? On a boat? In Wales? Why?