Andrew Taylor - Fallen Angel

When he had finished, the basement was dry and as airless as a sealed tomb. The acoustics were strange: sounds had a deadened quality. It seemed to Eddie that the insulation absorbed and neutralized all the emotion in people’s voices.

‘It’s perfect,’ Angel told Mr Reynolds.

‘Tell me if you need any more help.’ The tips of his ears glowed. The three of them were sitting round the kitchen table with mugs of tea while Eddie wrote another cheque. ‘By the way, what did happen to all those old dolls’ houses?’

Eddie glanced up at him. ‘My father used to raffle them at work for charity.’

‘Which reminds me,’ Angel said. ‘Some of his tools are still in the cupboard downstairs. Would you have a use for any of them, Mr Reynolds?’

The flush spread to his face. ‘Well – I’m not sure.’

‘Do have a look. I know Eddie would like them to go to a good home.’

‘I remember your dad making those dolls’ houses,’ Mr Reynolds said to Eddie. ‘Your mum and dad used to ask our Jenny round to look at them. She loved it.’ He chuckled, cracks appearing in the weathered skin around his eyes and mouth. ‘Do you remember?’

‘I remember. She used to bring her dolls to see the houses, too.’

‘So she did. I’d forgotten that. And look at her now: three children and a place of her own to look after. It’s a shame about Kevin. But there – it’s the modern way, I’m afraid.’

‘Kevin?’ Angel said.

Mr Reynolds took a deep breath. Angel smiled at him.

‘Kevin – Jen’s husband. Well, sort of husband.’ He hesitated. ‘It’s not general knowledge, but he’s a bad lot, I’m afraid. Still, he’s gone now. Least said, soonest mended.’

‘I’m so sorry. Children are such a worry, aren’t they?’

‘He ran off with another woman when she was expecting her third. What can you do? My wife doesn’t like it known, by the way. You’ll understand, I’m sure.’

‘Of course.’ Angel glanced at Eddie. ‘You and Jenny were friends when you were children, weren’t you?’

Eddie nodded. He’d given Angel an edited version of his relationship with Jenny, such as it had been.

‘Your mum and dad were very kind to her,’ Mr Reynolds went on, apparently without irony. ‘And she wasn’t the only one, they say. Maybe they’d have liked a little sister for you, eh?’

‘Very likely,’ Eddie agreed.

‘And he took some lovely photographs, too,’ said the little builder, still rambling down Memory Lane. ‘He gave us one of Jenny: curled up in a big armchair, looking like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. We had it framed. We’ve still got it in the display cabinet.’

‘Photographs?’ Angel said, turning to Eddie. ‘I didn’t know your father took photographs.’

Eddie pushed the cheque across the table to Mr Reynolds. ‘Here you are.’

‘Do you have some of them still?’ Angel smiled impartially at the two men. ‘I love looking at photographs.’

Angel questioned Eddie minutely about his past, which he found flattering because no one else had ever done so. The questions came by fits and starts and over a long period of time. Eddie discovered that telling Angel about the difficulties and unfairness he had suffered made the burden of them easier to bear. He mentioned this phenomenon.

‘Nothing unusual about that, Eddie. That’s why so many people find psychotherapy appealing. That’s why confession has always been such a widespread practice among Catholics.’

Since his father’s death, Eddie had kept the surviving photographs in a locked suitcase under his bed. Angel cajoled him into showing them to her. They sat at the kitchen table and he lifted them out, one by one. The photographs smelled of the past, tired and musty.

‘How pretty,’ Angel commented when she saw the first nude. ‘Technically quite impressive.’

In the end she saw them all, even the ones with Eddie, even the one with Alison.

What a Little Tease!

‘That one’s Mr Reynolds’s daughter,’ Eddie said, pointing to another print, anxious to deflect Angel’s attention from Alison.

Angel glanced at Jenny Wren. ‘Not as photogenic as this one.’ She tapped the photograph of Alison with a long fingernail. ‘What was her name?’

Eddie told her. Angel patted his hand and said that children were so sweet at that age.

‘Some people don’t like that sort of game.’ Eddie paused. ‘Not with children.’

‘That’s silly. Children need love and security, that’s all. Children like playing games with grown-ups. That’s what growing up is all about.’

Eddie felt warm with relief. Then and later, he was amazed by Angel’s sympathy and understanding. He even told her about his humiliating experiences as a teacher at Dale Grove Comprehensive School. She coaxed him into describing exactly what Mandy and Sian had done. The violence of her reaction surprised him. Her lips curled back against her teeth and wrinkles bit into the skin.

‘We don’t need people like that. They’re no better than animals.’

‘But what can you do with them? You can’t just kill them, can you?’

Angel arched her immaculate eyebrows. ‘I think one should execute them if they break certain laws. There’s nothing wrong with capital punishment if the system is sensible and fair. As for the others, why don’t we put them in work camps? We could make the amount of food and other privileges they get depend on the amount of work they produce. Then at least they wouldn’t be such a total liability for society. You have to admit, it would be a much fairer way of doing things.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘There’s no suppose about it. You have to be realistic.’ Angel’s face was serene again. ‘One has to use other people – except one’s friends, of course; they’re different. Otherwise they abuse you. Obviously one tries to be constructive about how one uses them. But it’s no use being sentimental. They’ll just take advantage, like Mandy and Sian did. In the long run it’s kinder to be firm with them right from the start.’

Angel furnished her little palace as a bed-sitting room. She and Eddie brought down the bed which had belonged to Stanley and installed it on the wall opposite the long window. The reupholstered Victorian chair stood by the window. Beside it was a hexagonal table which Angel had found in an antique shop. She scattered small rugs, vivid geometrical patterns from Eastern Anatolia, over the floor. There were no pictures on the severe white walls.

Eddie went down to the basement only by invitation. By tacit consent, the new shower room was reserved for Angel’s use. If they needed something from the big freezer in the former scullery, it was always Angel who fetched it.

‘I know where things are,’ she explained. ‘I’ve got my little system. I don’t want you confusing it.’

She bought a small microwave and installed it on a shelf over the freezer.

‘Wouldn’t it be more convenient in the kitchen?’ Eddie asked.

‘It would take up too much space. Besides, we’ll use it mainly for defrosting. And having it down there will be handy if I want to heat up a snack.’

Despite the bed, Angel did not usually sleep in the basement, but in Thelma’s old room upstairs. There was not enough space for her clothes in the wardrobes which had belonged to Eddie’s parents, so she asked Mr Reynolds to fit new ones with mirrored doors along one wall of the front bedroom.

One morning in early May while Mr Reynolds was working upstairs, there was a ring on the doorbell. Eddie answered it. Mrs Reynolds was on the step, both hands gripping the strap of her handbag. For a second she stared at Eddie. She had bright brown eyes behind heavy glasses, a snub nose and small lips like the puckered skin round an anus.