Speaking With the Angel

by Nick Hornby

  They led her under vaulted arches, through herbaceous avenues of rosemary and borders until they came upon a little wooden door.

  Through it they entered and found themselves in a magnificent hall, full of enchanted people dressed in garb … which is period costume … except it was from loads of different periods – a ball in mid-flow; a festival of reverberant colour. But that’s not the point, the point is that they were all completely still – like statues. All was uncannily quiet and dreamy and Emma was frightfully moved by this strange inert celebration.

  ‘Who are they?’ she enquired.

  ‘We don’t know them,’ said a weird boy.

  ‘Where is Jack?’ asked Emma.

  ‘He’ll come,’ they said.

  Then Emma laid eyes on this really good-looking bloke – one of the still people – and fell instantly in love, right there. And before she had time to think ‘Oh no, I’m in love with a still person,’ she started to feel sleepy – like something had taken hold of her. And the next thing she knew she was asleep on a giant throne- type thing in the Great Hall.

  When I woke up, the first thing I saw was some teeth grinning at me like someone taking the micky. Then I saw that they were Grandma’s teeth in their glass and I was still in her room, and then I realized that there was a great sound and fury coming from the landing and it was morning and I had slept all night in Grandma’s chair.

  The door was being banged in a where’s my glasses sort of way and Mum was going, ‘Grandma, why is this door locked?’ and, ‘What’s going on? This is going too far!’

  I came out and Mum was purple. Grandma told her to settle down, and I just made a run for it. Mum said, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ And I said, ‘Be on time for school.’ I didn’t brush my teeth or have breakfast, or anything.

  Devil creatures have skinny grey bodies, where you can see the bones – except for their tummies and their bums, which are fat, and they have no nobs and they always have a cheeky grin on their faces, with teeth like Grandma’s dentures. I did quite a good one on the back of my spelling book – probably because I kept thinking I could see them. There was one under McVittie’s chair. Lynne Lassin saw it and asked me what it was, so I told her … and it meant telling a bit of the story … and you know what? She thought it was very cool indeed. And when it came lunchtime she wanted to hear the rest. I didn’t mind, because I sort of, in a way, don’t mind Lynne Lassin.

  I carried on the story on the school field by Mr Hodkin’s room. And Deborah Willis and Zena Whitchurch came and listened as well, which I quite liked, even though I don’t like Zena Whitchurch. Roy Hattersley, the school’s worst bully (who’ll nut you if you say his whole name), loves Deborah Willis but she doesn’t love him, and he hates me ’cause I’m pants at football. And now she was listening to my story and looking at me like I’m Ricky Martin, which I didn’t mind either.

  I wasn’t sure about telling Grandma about it all, because I thought maybe I should have asked her permission or something. But when I told her, she acted like she was about seven. She clapped her hands and kept asking what they’d said, and if I’d remembered to put in the bit about the young prince, and how she wished she could have seen their faces.

  I said, ‘Why don’t I bring you to school so you can see them?’ And she said; ‘You don’t bring old ladies to school, Henry.’ She said I would take her stories out of here and that was wonderful, because that way I’d be taking her out of her room every day. She did this big smile and said, ‘I’m your muse!’

  When Emma awoke, everyone in the room had moved. They were all still still but in different positions, and some were facing her like they had been looking at her. She would have liked to see that young man again, but she was feeling not quite the thing and thought she’d better get the hell out. She had seen livelier parties, let’s face it.

  She found a door but it was locked and the children had gone.

  Above the door was this inscription which said:

  THE FRAGRANCE PURE DOTH PASS THIS WAY BUT ONCE A THOUSAND YEAR.

  THE SOUND OF HEART MAY SOON DEPART AND NE’ER BE FOUND BY FEAR.

  VAGABONDS WHO LOSE THEIR WAY, SHALL LOSE IT YET AGAIN.

  AND SOMETHING SOMETHING DIE TO DANCE, AND SO SHALL DANCE IN VAIN

  SO TOUCH THE KEY AND TAKE THE RING, BUT ALL MUST UNDERSTAND,

  THAT IF THE HEART BUT HESITATE, THE DOG SHALL BITE THY HAND.

  When she looked round for another door she saw that all the people had moved again, like musical statues.

  Then she turned again, and right in front of her was the man she had fallen in love with. He was still, but in the courtly position of asking her to dance. He had a golden key glinting upon a chain round his neck and she thought, ‘if the heart but hesitate’, and she took his hand … and as soon as she did it the whole room started to move, and a waltz struck up and they were all suddenly dancing. Whirling and whirling ever faster.

  And then she realized that she was no longer dancing with the same bloke, but a very old man with white eyes, who, you could see, was blind.

  The next day I had about fifteen people listening to the story. It was brilliant, but I started to get so many questions that it got quite difficult to carry on, and new people kept coming and irksomely wanting to hear the beginning and some of the questions got too difficult without being able to ask Grandma. In the end, when Deborah Willis asked if Emma was scared of the blind man, I said, sort of without meaning to, ‘I’ll have to ask her about that.’ ’Cause if you haven’t already guessed, Emma and Grandma are the same person.

  That really shut everybody up – for about five seconds. Then it just all broke loose, with everyone saying different things. Some of them wanted to know where she was and why they couldn’t see her, and if Jack was real, too. Finally, I told them all about Grandma, and now everyone wants to meet her, which gives me a bit of an arrangement problem, because, well, now I’ve told them that I can arrange it, and they all think I’m really cool. So I decided to bust Grandma out of her room. That way she can see people’s faces at last when she tells a story and they can see she’s real and maybe see other things are real, too – and the Department of Nothing might not be so nothing.

  Emma stood in the Night Garden, the great hall and all its denizens had vanished – and before her stood once again the weird children, but now in their midst stood also the strange blind man. This was Jack. Were he and the fine prince she’d danced with really the same bloke? She wondered secretly.

  He spoke to her at length in a golden mellifluous voice, which made her feel all funny and he told her that it had been him who had been chasing her through the forest, but it was the only way to get her to the Garden and so they could all be free from the curse of Lucien Lothair. The children were all doomed to wander lost in the Garden for an extremely long time and only Emma could break the spell. All the people in the great hall were stuck like that, too. What she had to do was climb the wall of the Castle of Ballangree, which is only visible on Thursdays, and in its highest tower stood Lucien Lothair who was frozen like a statue ’cause he had accidentally put a spell on himself. Then she had to get his ring. The trouble was that as soon as you took the ring off he would come back to life and you’d be buggered. And also he was said to be so ugly that people who had had the misfortune to glance at his face for even a second had to do weeks of therapy.

  Why her? she asked. ‘ ’Cause of the prophecy,’ they said.

  Anyway they waited till Thursday for the castle to become visible. When it came into view, it was quite the most terrible thing she’d ever seen. Very high with big black spooky windows – specially the high tower where waited for her the awful ugly Lucien Lothair.

  One by one she hugged the children and she started to climb the tower by means of creeping vines.

  Long they waited below. For long she spent up there doing goodness knows what.

  Friday came and the castle disappeared and she still hadn’t come down, and now it was obvio
us something bad had happened, like she was trapped or something.

  Grandma did escape, but I didn’t bust her out. She bust herself out, by ambulance.

  I noticed something funny was happening to her during where’s my glasses on Monday morning. And then the next morning she didn’t look that brilliant – and then after school she had her stroke. A totally new thing on the list of TTPUYL. The visit to the hospital was like a visit to the Nothing Department of the Department of Nothing … only more depressing – like a place where everyone’s been in detention for about five hundred years; a waiting-room you get put in before O’Hare comes for you. So the point of everything then is so you can end up coming here. It’s why you grow up and try and be good … so you can be like these people – so you can end up in a dustbin like this. And then you’re in O’Hare’s box, and that’s it.

  I went with just Mum. And she was really quiet and actually nice – which I knew meant something had to be really wrong with Grandma. She had a kind of secret whispering-chat with the doctor in the corridor before we went in to see her – and when it came time I got shaky and went into the loo for ages.

  Grandma was in a big lounge full of old loonies. There was an old lady gargling with tea and an old bloke who kept going ‘Just like that, just like that’.

  Grandma’s head kept moving about like she had a crick in her neck and her face was fixed like she was surprised.

  Mum said, ‘Give her your flowers, Henry.’ So I did.

  It was ages before she said anything, and then she said – and I remember it exactly – ‘How nice. They are so much nicer this way – on the inside without all that trouble … they ought to have more like that – I’m glad you gave them to me on the inside.’

  Mum squeezed my shoulder. Grandma asked if we wanted to meet her friends and that Mr Hodges had come back from India specially and she said he was an awfully nice man but his toes were too long, which troubled him terribly. My Mum said, ‘Why don’t you rest?’ And Grandma got annoyed then and started saying, ‘Rest of my life! Rest! Silly woman! Rest of my life!’ I tried to give her the paper and Mum tried to stop me doing it but Grandma didn’t take it anyway. She just smiled at me and said, ‘Lovely boy – they didn’t believe I had a cousin …’ And then she shouted out, ‘Come and meet my cousin Henry, who brings the paper!’ and I tried to tell her that I was her grandson and that she had been ill but she was better now. She went quiet for a minute and said, ‘You have to be ill if you want to get better.’

  I bumped into Roy Hattersley by the school gate with loads of his mates, and then I saw Max was one of them. And it was blatant what must have happened ’cause Roy Hattersley started to say something about fairy stories, and Max must have done a snider and told him about Grandma to suck up to Roy Hattersley, and maybe too because he wanted to seem like he was too cool to give a nob about Grandma, I don’t know. But when Luke Burns (who’s like a three foot feeb but hangs round with Hattersley so no one can ever get him) started doing loony faces I tried to hit him but I got nutted by Max. It really bloody hurt, in case you’ve never been nutted. It makes your face feel really far away from your brain. Everyone went, ‘Look, he’s nearly crying!’, which I wasn’t, I was probably just red from being nutted. Then when I was still on the ground Roy Hattersley started doing the loony face and then Max nutted him, too, and said, ‘Leave him alone!’ It’s always like that. Max can nut me but no one else can. Anyway, then Roy Hattersley nutted Max and everyone went away, except Max, who came up and grabbed me by my ears and went, ‘Fucking pack it in, all this Grandma stuff, OK?’ and you could tell he was nearly crying too. Blatantly.

  When I got in I saw Grandma’s wheelchair in the hall. I ran upstairs calling her, but I could hear all these upset voices coming out of Grandma’s room, with Mum going ‘Not now Henry!’ and Grandma like she was going to cry, going ‘Leave me alone you wicked girl!’ I shouldn’t have gone in, but I did. Grandma was standing, and Mum was trying to hold her up by the waist. Grandma didn’t have any pants on … I saw her bum, which looked like a rhino’s bum. I ran out again but I couldn’t hide in my room ’cause Max was there, so I went to the bathroom. Dad was just coming out, and he looked like maybe he was nearly crying, too. He just said, ‘Better out than in’, and walked past. I locked myself in and the whole bathroom smelled of negative Chi. A mixture of newspaper and number twos. I sprayed lemon zest and sat on the edge of the bath, but it still really stank. Mum knocked on the door and said I could go in and see Grandma but I said I was doing a poo and she went away.

  I went in to see her ages later. I was a bit scared. I didn’t know what it would be like trying to talk to her, but I really really wanted to know how the story ended. It was a bit creepy: ’cause she was in bed and only her bedside light was on and I thought she was asleep, but when I got close to her she opened her eyes quickly like a vampire, and looked at me. I said ‘Bugger’ really loudly and it’s the only time I’ve ever said that in front of Grandma and she didn’t tell me off, which was even sadder than her sitting with loonies. I said, ‘I came to sit with you for a while, Grandma.’ And she said something which was nonsense but it made me feel weirdy anyway: she said, ‘That’s another ring on your tree of shadows.’ I didn’t know if it was a secret message, or what. Anyway it seemed very serious and it made me say what normally I would have been embarrassed to, which was, ‘I love you, Grandma,’ and she said, ‘Two more rings.’ And then she smiled this huge smile, which started out really nice but then it kept getting bigger until I could see all her dentures and then I realized she wasn’t smiling, she was poking out her teeth. She reached up and put them in the glass. This always means no more talking. No more talking. The session is at an end. Anyway it didn’t look much like I was going to find out what happened with Lucien Lothair.

  She closed her eyes, but her teeth carried on smiling in the glass.

  The next day all the people who had listened to the stories, because I couldn’t tell the rest, turned into piss-takers, and started saying there was no such thing as my grandma and that the stories were pants anyway – and called me a fairy boy. All except for Lynne Lassin, who said she was my friend anyway. Lynne said maybe Lucien Lothair had put a spell on Grandma because she was giving away too many secrets. I said it’s not a spell, it’s just how old people always get. She said maybe it’s always a spell.

  What I reckon is: everyone’s a loony. However normal anyone seems, deep down inside they’re actually mental, every single person in the world and the whole of your life you have to learn not to seem mental to other people, who are all mental, too. Deep down you speak this different language – you talk in a loony language which doesn’t talk in your voice, I don’t know. Maybe it screams really loudly or something. I mean we’re all born mental aren’t we? If you think how babies act – we really don’t stop being like that. Everyone wants to scream loudly, and grab things without asking and break them, but it’s not allowed is it? So what you have to have is a kind of anti-mental translator-device, which translates all your mentalness into normal speech - and you’ve got to learn to use it, and it’s got to be working properly – or you get found out for being a loony. Like Grandma.

  A funny thing happened when I went in to see her with the paper. She lay in bed hardly talking or if she did it was just nonsense. I still sat with her – ’cause it’s better than the Department of Nothing and anyway maybe she’ll get suddenly better. I know she probably won’t, but I decided to do the crossword out loud in case it gave her a clue about words and helped to repair her brain … And she gave me a clue while she was asleep! A crossword clue I mean. It was really weird and you might not believe me but I really swear it’s true! I was trying to do 9 down which was 9 letters, first letter L and I thought it was LUMINOUS but then her voice said, ‘It’s LUDICROUS’. I didn’t see her lips move and she didn’t open her eyes or anything. And when I spoke to her, she didn’t reply. She seemed asleep. It might have been a coincidence and she might have just been
saying ‘it’s ludicrous’ in her sleep because she thought of something ludicrous. But the thing is, it was ludicrous! That was the right answer!

  When I got home the next day Mum and Dad were arguing about Grandma. Mum was saying that the old lady would exhaust us into the grave and outlive us all. I couldn’t hear what Dad said.

  Grandma’s room was getting really stinky now. It had always been a bit stinky but this was more toilety now – and it hadn’t been irksome before, but it was now. When I went in, she suddenly sat up in bed and said, ‘Where am I?’

  I said, ‘You’re here in your room, Grandma,’ and then she grabbed my arm and said, ‘I’m over there. I’m over there.’ And she pointed to her photo on the wall – of her as a young girl (Emma, in other words), and I said, ‘Yes that’s right, that’s you.’ And then she pointed to her dressing gown on the back of the door and said, ‘There, that’s me – there I am.’ And her hand got tighter on me, which hurt. Then she started saying my name over and over again, like ‘Henry, Henry, Henry’ like that: ‘Henry, Henry, Henry’. I told her she was hurting me but she was shouting really loudly now. And she started saying nutty things again, like, ‘Put my voice under a walnut tree!!! Henry, Henry, Henry.’

  That’s when Mum came rushing in already all red and worked up going, ‘Henry, what have you done?’ Then I got free and ran to the door. It’s funny ’cause then Mum’s face changed and she went over and hugged Grandma quietly and calmed her down. She rocked her like she was two years old. When I came out I saw Dad had been standing at his door listening. He shut it when he saw me.

  Later, in my room, Mum did this speech, where she had this patient wise voice that she always uses for talking bollocks, where it’s like, ‘When you’re older you’ll understand this is not bollocks.’ She said that Grandma needed me to let go of her. Like I had to say goodbye and it would be like permission for her to go. I said I could see what she was up to and that Mum and Dad and Max and everyone might want her dead but I wasn’t going to help her conspiracy.