Year Zero (2000), page 3
To cut a long story short, Elvis fell apart—but Molly just kept on telling herself over and over again that it wasn't her fault. She had her own life to lead, her own destiny to seek, and there simply wasn't room in her life just now for an immortal superstar and all the immortal corruption he was carrying around inside himself.
In the end, he became too annoying to be borne a single moment longer.
"If I were you, Elvis, I'd try to pull myself together," Molly advised him. '€1 know you've been hurt—wounded, even—but you have to be strong. It's not the end of the world, you know. Mortal or immortal, worm-eaten or worm-ridden, idol or idler, life is what you make it. That's my philosophy, at any rate."
It was, too. At least, it was now. This was year zero, and it was February. Saint Valentine's Day was already in the past and Easter was on the horizon. It was time to think of more serious matters, to try to get the big picture into focus. She was sorry for Elvis, but he was responsible for himself, and if he couldn't take are of himself, who could? The simple fact was that she didn't love him and she couldn't include him in her plans—but she couldn't help feeling a distinct thrill of triumph when he finally admitted that she was right and agreed to disappear.
6
The first time Molly saw the angel, he was standing in the middle of the pedestrianized precinct at the end of Stockwell Road. There was no mistaking what he was. He had wings like a great white eagle, whose pinion feathers were touching the ground although the tops of their great furled arches extended a foot and a half above the circle of light that rimmed his head. It wasn't a comedy halo like a battery-powered quoit, but a solid disc half as bright as the winter sun. He was dressed in a dazzling-white robe that hung loose from his broad shoulders to his sandaled feet. He looked slightly puzzled, but only in an intellectual sort of way—more curious than alarmed and not in the least discomposed.
No one was paying any attention to the angel, even though the passers-by had nothing more pressing to do than was normal for a Tuesday morning in February. The shoppers and the truanting kids saw him all right, but they wouldn't look directly at him and they made detours to avoid passing within arm's reach of him. He couldn't have alienated so much attention if he'd been carrying a clipboard, a blue pencil and a sheaf of questions about sanitary protection.
Molly almost paused—but during the little margin of hesitation which might have realised the almost, she lost heart and quickened her step, just like everybody else.
Later, she told herself that she'd had to do it. She couldn't afford to get involved in anything dodgy. She'd kept the affair with Elvis secret, of course; if she'd told anyone it would have got back to the Social Services. Not that she'd have been sectioned again—you practically had to kill someone to get sectioned these days—but it would have come up when the next group meeting considered the possibility of restoring custody of the kids. The only thing likely to have a worse effect on the average group meeting than the news that the client thought she'd had a fling with Elvis—even one that had never got as far as actual penetration—was the news that the client thought she'd been visited by an angel. The entire audience for "Touched by an Angel" was probably made up of social workers, who presumably figured the show as the ultimate wet dream but couldn't believe a word of it. It was very popular in the States, they said, but so was Elvis; neither played quite as well in Brixton, even on what the local Estate Agents called the "Dulwich fringe."
Even so, she regretted falling into step with everybody else and pretending that the angel wasn't there. It was cowardly. It was no consolation to think that angels' missions were probably supposed to work that way. In all probability, nobody ever stopped to speak to an angel except the person the angel had come to see. There would be a certain propriety in that—and if angels couldn't maintain propriety in this godforsaken world, who could?
When she saw the angel again, he was standing outside the old Salvation Army Temple. There was a split second when she didn't quite recognise him, but the face was unmistakable even though everything else about him had changed. His wings were only half the size they had been, and were now patterned like a pigeon's. The nimbus was gone, although his hair was still luxuriant and golden blond. The white robe was gone too, unless its trailing hem had been tucked up above the knee so that it could remain hidden within the tan-coloured raincoat he was wearing—which seemed unlikely, given that the bottoms of a pair of grey flannel trousers were clearly visible, their turn-ups resting on brown suede loafers. He still seemed a trifle bewildered, and discomposure was beginning to creep up on him now.
The benches where the down-and-outs hung out were crowded, but none of the alkies was looking at the angel. They couldn't have treated him with more disdain if he'd been a Tory councillor down from Westminster on a factfinding tour.
Molly had thought for some months after it closed that the alkies kept returning to the Temple out of habit and sentiment, but Francine had eventually let her in on the secret that it was just round the corner from the lock-up where the local white van man stored the bottles and cans he shipped in from Eastenders three times a week. It was the cheapest source of strong cider for miles around. The white van man was called Lucas but the alkies called him Saint Luke because he allowed them to buy at wholesale prices without a trade card. The local crackheads looked upon the alkies with naked envy, knowing full well that their prices went up as their dependency increased—but their supplier insisted on being known as Saint John anyway, just for form's sake.
Again, Molly almost stopped when she saw the angel, in spite of the fact that he was hanging about in a place where she usually quickened her paces in order to minimize the deluge of cackling abuse. Again, she couldn't quite bring herself to interrupt her stride.
The down-and-outs weren't in the least bothered by the fact that the angel could overhear them; they made all the usual remarks. They knew where Molly lived, and in their estimation—which was not unrepresentative of the world's —that automatically made her a career whore whose current hundred-per-cent dependency on the social only signified that she was too ugly to get the kerb-crawlers to stop. That was what they called out, anyhow, although an alky would have to have very few memory cells left to be oblivious to the fact that kerb-crawlers would stop for anything in a skirt and heels, provided that she a hole at the right height.
Molly never rose to the bait, as Francine some of the other residents of the B&B were wont to do, but on this particular occasion she couldn't suppress a blush. It was not on her own behalf that she suffered embarrassment but on behalf of the angel. It wasn't much of an advertisement for humankind that the Sally Ann had had to close its Temple, or that all the street scum in the neighbourhood gathered there to take what advantage they could of their friendly neighbourhood smuggler, or that the very same street scum were prepared to pretend that the only thing stopping her from pulling down her knickers for them was that they had better things to do with their money.
Given that the real Millennium was only ten months away, Molly would have thought that even the down-and-outs would have wanted to put on a bit of a front while the eyes of Heaven were upon them, but no. The alkies had long since given up on propriety—and, she supposed, everything else.
The third time Molly saw the angel he was sitting at a twoseater table crammed into an alcove in the public library. He was reading the Independent. Of his wings there was now not the slightest trace, and his raincoat, although it couldn't have been cheap—if, in fact, he'd purchased it instead of miracuIously spinning it out of some mysterious utility fog—was stained, as if he'd been sleeping rough. His hair was mousy brown, just beginning to thin at the back. In spite of all this, there was no hesitation in her recognition. She'd seen him twice already, and she hadn't forgotten the finely-sculpted lines of his face. Three days' worth of stubble couldn't hide the fact that he was the most beautiful man presently in the world. Elvis would have wept in envy, even before the immortal worms got to work on his insides.
Molly looked away as soon as she saw him, but she'd already taken note of the fact that the only empty seat left on the entire ground floor was the one opposite the angel, and she knew before she went up the stairs to REFERENCE that there wouldn't be any room up there because of all the kids from the college filling in their free periods. When she got to REFERENCE, she went over to the encyclopaedias. She hesitated over the Britannica and the Catholic Encyclopaedia, but in the end she took the Encyclopaedia of Fantasy off the shelf. It seemed, on the whole, to be the most sensible place to look up ANGELS.
She read through the article, committed a handful of names to memory and then went back down to the card-catalogue to check whether the books were in the lending stock. She always used the card-catalogue instead of the computer because it felt nicer. She'd hoped the library might at least have The Revolt of the Angels or The Wonderful Visit, but they didn't. Out of print, out of mind. What they did have back in REFERENCE, however, was a two-volume edition of Old Testament Apocrypha and Pseudoepigraphia, so she went upstairs again and hauled out the unwieldy volume containing the Book of Enoch. Then she took it downstairs, planted it on the table at which the angel was sitting and plonked herself with almost-equal emphasis in the vacant chair.
7
It didn't occur to Molly to wonder whether the angel might be reading the Independent as a matter of choice. She'd spent enough time taking advantage of the free central heating to know that no one came into the library because they were keen to find out what was happening in the world. The ones who were so desperate to get in that they would be queuing up at opening time always grabbed the Sun, the Mirror and the Mail first, then the Express and the Guardian. Then the ones who were pretending hardest that they were really earning their Jobseeker's Allowance would grab the Times, the Telegraph and the local rag. The Independent was always the last to go, left for the attention of the poor sucker who had no choices left.
She had opened her own book and read the first four pages of Enoch, including the footnotes, before the angel finally condescended to lower the Independent sufficiently to let his eyes peep over. She waited a full three seconds before raising her own head so that she could meet his curious but mildly suspicious gaze. The angel's eyes were the bluest she had ever seen. They were bluer than the bluest sky on the brightest summer day there had ever been. They were the only thing left which would have immediately informed the most casual observer, seeing him for the first time, that their owner was, in fact, an angel.
To show off her erudition, Molly had already prepared an apposite quote. She wasn't entirely sure which James Bond book it came from, but thought it was probably Goldfinger.
"Once is happenstance," she said. "Twice is coincidence. Three times is ... are you looking for me, by any chance?"
"No," said the angel, too bluntly to allow her to savour the music of his voice.
"Oh," said Molly, wondering whether she ought to be relieved or hurt. "Well, if you'd care to tell me who you are looking for, maybe I can help. You don't seem to be having much success on your own."
"I'm not looking for anyone," the angel said. He didn't seem particularly well-spoken.
"No message to deliver?" Molly queried. "No mission to carry out?"
"No," said the angel.
"You're just not playing the game, are you?" Molly said. "What's the matter—don't you have TV in Heaven?"
The angel lowered the Independent and displayed the entirety of his incredibly beautiful but unshaven face. He seemed to be trying to formulate a question. Molly guessed that she was the first human being he'd talked to, and figured that she ought to help him out.
"Well," she said, "if you haven't come to deliver a message, and you aren't here to befriend and redirect some poor unfortunate who's on the brink of making a morally disastrous decision, what are you doing way down on terrafirma?"
The angel didn't even blink. "I fell," he said.
It wasn't what he said that bowled Molly over but the way he said it. She'd spoken lightly, as if the whole thing were a joke, not because she thought it was but because that was the only way she knew of dealing with a situation she'd never encountered before. He could have said exactly the same words in that sort of way and it would have been funny. It could have been pure stand-up, the kind of thing that got Eddie Izzard a big laugh—but it wasn't. It was deadly serious.
Even though Molly was sitting there with the Book of Enoch open on the desk, its pages well-nigh tabloid-size, it didn't even occur to her to connect "I fell" with the war in Heaven or Paradise Lost or the angels which had begat the Nephilim on the lucky daughters of men. She had heard "I fell" spoken in exactly that manner, in exactly that tone, by neighbours in the bedsit, by companions in group and by fellow shelf-stackers on the very few occasions when the temp agency managed to get her work in spite of her record, her history, her lack of a proper address, and her general Oxfam-dressed appearance.
Oddly enough, she couldn't quite remember whether she'd ever said it herself. She'd certainly sported the bruises more than once in the hectic days when she'd copped for the kids, so she knew it wasn't a lie. It never was a lie, although everyone always thought it was. Even when you got a push in the back, or a fist in your face, it wasn't a lie. The fact that an angel could say it certainly proved that, even if it proved nothing else.
A few more minutes passed before Molly recovered herself sufficiently to say: "When you say fell, you do mean from Heaven, I suppose—not from the Land of Dreams, or any copout along those lines."
"From Heaven," the angel confirmed. Nobody with eyes like those could be capable of copping out, any more than he could be capable of copping for a couple of kids.
Molly took the angel round the corner to The Greasy Spoon, whose proprietor hadn't quite got to grips with the concept of irony when he'd changed its name from The Bistro. She offered to buy the angel something to eat, but he told her that he didn't need food as such. She ordered the allday breakfast and a pot of tea for two.
"I shouldn't really have to do this," she explained to him, figuring that he had to be pretty innocent in the ways of the world if he'd had to make do with the Independent since his arrival. "Being in a B&B, I ought to get breakfast included. That's what the second B stands for, after all—but standards have slipped down here. On the other hand, it's better than a lot of places. The girls on the game are very good about only doing it in alleyways and cars, for the sake of the kids, and we've all got our own sinks and electric kettles, and the loos aren't that bad, considering, and the TV in the sitting room is always replaced the day after it gets nicked, and we've got cable. I'm in the smallest room, of course, but you could say that I'm in the lap of luxury compared to most, because my kids are still out to foster. Unfortunately, just about the last way you can score any points when you get that close to the bottom is to get your kids back, so I'm actually reckoned to be not yet off the mark, even though I've kicked everything but the Prozac and the over-the-counter tranks disguised as antihistamines. Some would say that my brain chemistry is fried anyhow, but I don't think so—and at least I've got guts, to say that to an angel. I have the breakfast at lunchtime because it's cheaper than anything actually called lunch and if you only have one real meal a day it's better to have it in the middle. Can't cook in the rooms, you see, except for cup-a-soup and other just-add-boiling-water crap, and who can stomach that? What's Heaven like, exactly?"
"It's not like anything," the angel said, unhelpfully.
"Nice gardens? Pleasant weather? Bright light?" Molly prompted, figuring that any hint at all would be better than nothing, and that she really ought to try to bring the angel out of himself a little. If he hadn't been sent to deliver a message, the fact that he had accepted the lunch invitation, even though he didn't need food as such, suggested that maybe he had been sent as some kind of test.
"None of that," he said.
"None of it! What about singing? Surely you were in the choir. Doesn't it get boring, just bathing in the presence of God, century after century?"
"No," he said. "There's no time in Heaven."
"No time?" Molly hadn't been expecting that. "What keeps everything from happening at once then?"
"Nothing," he informed her, calmly. "Everything does happen at once. " He sipped his tea but it was still too hot, and probably too sharp for his celestially-softened palate.
"You'd better put some sugar in it," Molly said, passing him the thing that looked like a giant salt-cellar with a chimney. "That's a bit rotten, don't you think? The preachers promise eternity. Don't you think the dead might be a little disappointed when they get there and find that their stay is considerably shorter than a split nanosecond? If Saatchi and Saatchi tried that, the Advertising Standards Authority would be down on them like a ton of bricks."
"It's not shorter than anything," the angel said. "You have to set aside that whole way of thinking. Paradise isn't a place at all. The human imagination is too narrowly attuned to mere existence to encompass its essence."
Molly couldn't help but wonder whether she'd first caught sight of him just too late to see the clipboard and blue pencil disappear.
"So what did you do?" she said.
"We don't do anything," he began—but she immediately saw that he'd got hold of the wrong end of the stick.
"I said what did you do," she reminded him. "I've given up fishing for descriptions. I mean, what did you do to qualify for the drop? With Lucifer it was pride, with the fathers of the Nephilim it was presumably lust. That still leaves five deadly sins untapped by angelkind. Please don't tell me it was sloth."
The angel made a face. He'd obviously put too much sugar in the tea. "I fell," he repeated, in the same stubbornly heart-melting fashion. It wasn't a lie. Whatever he was covering up, whoever he was protecting, it wasn't a lie.
