‘Pardon?’
‘The flowers: before the accident you sent some flowers to Ellie. I’ve, er … I’ve sort of been holding them back.’
‘Holding them back?’ said Peter. ‘Your level of interventionism is really something we are going to have to talk about. How exactly?’
‘I just helped the order get a little misplaced.’
‘And the card?’ asked Gabriel.
‘Yes, the card as well. You could rewrite the card here. You will have to be relatively circumspect of course, it will have to be checked, but … what do you think, Peter?’
Peter grimaced a little and he pursed his lips. He nodded once. ‘But Christopher? This kind of thing has to stop now.’
‘Yes.’
‘I mean it.’
‘I promise.’
‘What do I say?’ Gabriel stammered. ‘ “I know that I haven’t seemed myself ...” No, it’s not about me. “Please don’t ever doubt how much I have loved you …” No, too Whitney.’ He closed his eyes and thought of Ellie. ‘ I want to say … to tell you … I want you to know that the thing that will define my life as well-lived, is you. That every day I spent before I met you was spent waiting, and every day afterward was spent wondering what on earth I had done to be so lucky. You were the first thing I thought of when I woke up in the mornings. I want you to know that I am sorry for any moment of any day that I let you feel less than the only triumph in my life …’
‘Oh bollocks’ he said out loud. ‘I’ve got a better idea.’
‘What?’
‘Could I skip the goodbye in exchange for a small miracle?’
And now Christopher was sitting staring at the lake. Everyone had gone and he was expecting to have incoming, of course. A ready-made group from the explosion in Norfolk. The angels weren’t finished with this project yet, and with James and Alice, Adam, Bernie and Gary Guitar, there would be some work to do. But for now it was quiet, and Christopher still didn’t know if he had done good or bad. He believed it would have been hard, at any point, to have done anything differently. And he thought that the thing about people is they always want more: you give them a hairdryer and they want a trouser press; you give them satellite and they want Internet access. Show them the viewing room and they want editing rights.
Christopher saw Julie after she woke up. He watched after the crying had stopped. There is a point when the celebration ends, when people stop hugging and dancing around, and they draw breath. It happens when a child is born, a life is saved, or a crisis averted. In that moment you see for the first time what your life looks like, what it feels like when you get what you have wanted.
Sometimes, more often than Christopher would have liked to believe, they find they still want more. That dreams coming true just isn’t enough. They want a trouser press, too. When Michael stopped hugging everybody—Lynne, Sarah, the nurses, a cleaner—he stopped and stared at Julie.
She stared, wide-eyed, back. ‘You been here all the time?’
‘Yes, well no, I went to get some of your things. Lynne, Lynne has been here all the time.’
‘He’s been here,’ said Lynne. ‘I like him.’
‘Good,’ said Julie. ‘Did I miss our date?’
Michael nodded.
‘Got any more?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Although I should tell you something.’
‘Have you got back with that Teletubby?’
Michael laughed. ‘Never mention that again, anyway she wasn’t a …’
‘So what?’
‘Well it occurs to me that … well. Fuck it. I love you. Didn’t think I’d get to tell you, what with the coma and all, but you’re awake and it’s true. Thought I’d better own up. I love you.’
And Julie just smiled and said, ‘Good.’
55
Ellie was sitting on the sofa, half-heartedly going through a box full of papers. Bank statements, mortgage letters, car insurance. She was vaguely hoping to find something about Gabriel having taken out a pension without telling her. She didn’t expect to find anything; he wasn’t really the type.
She put the papers down and looked behind her. The emptiness was different now: it is a different kind of silence when you know the person who is out is not coming back. Not that she could bear any noise. No music, no radio. The quiet made sense, in as much as anything did.
When she was small, Ellie would walk to school and try not to tread on the cracks. Stepping on twenty cracks meant she was an elephant. When she got a little older, not stepping on the cracks meant more: it brought small rewards. It meant the boy she liked in the class next door would like her too, or she wouldn’t get into trouble for not knowing how to do long division. She made deals with a universe she hadn’t even met, just like she had been doing for the last year or two.
‘I won’t want anything again. Just please let me have a baby.’
Gabriel used to whisper, at the beginning at least, that people didn’t really understand just how special making a life was, until they were told they couldn’t do it. He believed it too, but he realised it made him sound bitter rather than profound. And anyway he realised that he was saying it on the off chance that some God he had never believed in might mark him down as a man who has learned the intended lesson, and send him some more sperm as a reward.
For the past few years, when they made love it was tender and despairing. Afterward they would hold each other and talk softly about miracles. Sometimes they would giggle at the idea of a confused and lonely tadpole paddling its way toward an egg. ‘Swim, swim for your life, little fella,’ Gabriel would say. ‘And you,’ he teased Ellie. ‘Put your legs in the air! It’s hard enough as it is without gravity crushing down on the little chap.’
Later, as Gabriel turned inward, he would mock himself by ranting at a world that took so much for granted. ‘The problem with modern life is there is too much bric-a-brac. Every other shop, in every other town, sells rubbish. Shiny stones, crystals, porcelain cats, painted boxes, crystals with porcelain cats in them, decorated mirrors, maps to places that don’t really exist, bracelets made out of soot. It’s all rubbish. We have too much money and we don’t know how to value anything anymore. That is why so many people are unhappy.’
Although Ellie knew that was not why he was unhappy.
When he retreated, so did she. And they both became fearful. Ellie wouldn’t step on the cracks. Gabriel wouldn’t do very much of anything.
‘What would I give?’ he would ask himself. ‘You could have my dreams and my liver and even the sunrise, if that helps. I’ll stop being sarcastic; I’ll stop being angry. I’ll be small, so small nobody can see me. I’ll be pretty much whatever you want me to be; I’ll surrender, if you let me be the father of Ellie’s child.’ Like anyone was listening. And sometimes, when they lay together in the dark, still, barely touching but awake, Ellie offered up the same.
She put away the papers; there was nothing there. She went to the kitchen for more toast. Later Moira would come round with organic pasta and an expensive yet disgusting fruit drink with added goodness. They might go for a walk in the park. Ellie didn’t want to go to the shops in case she found herself looking absentmindedly at baby clothes. Too many cracks. She couldn’t drink coffee, so she made tea. She didn’t want the television and she didn’t want to read. She ate a rice cake, thought about tidying the bedroom, but preferred it in a mess. She looked out of the window: it was cloudy, a little grey. She touched her stomach, she imagined Gabriel kneeling down beside her and whispering to Lola and Luca, ‘Hold on tight, and grow.’ Because he would have, had they got this far before he died.
The doorbell rang. She carried on looking out of the window. There was some blue sky under that grime, she thought, and some light.
The bell rang again. She wasn’t expecting anyone, so she walked to the door slowly. When she opened it, there was nobody there. Resting against the door was a mixed bouquet with two small sunflowers. Not the sort of flowers you send when someone
has died. There was a scribbled note on top that read, ‘Sorry for the delay in delivery.’ Ellie closed the door. She put them down and went to get a vase, thinking, Delay?
There was a card attached—damp, crumpled, but clear. Her eyes caught fire and the words blurred.
She looked at the bouquet. The sunflowers were not ready to open yet, but they would be. And when they did they were going to be quite, quite beautiful.
Copyright © Mark A Radclifffe 2010
First published in 2010 by
Bluemoose Books Ltd
25 Sackville Street
Hebden Bridge
West Yorkshire
HX7 7DJ
www.bluemoosebooks.com
All rights reserved
Unauthorised duplication contravenes existing laws
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the-British-Library
Hardback ISBN 10: 0-9553367-7-5
ISBN 13: 978-0-9553367-7-5
Paperback ISBN 10: 0-9553367-8-3
ISBN 13: 978-0-9553367-8-2
EBOOK ISBN: 978-09575497-9-1
Printed and bound in the UK by Short Run Press, Exeter
Gabriel's Angel Page 27