Too Many Angels
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"Granddad?"
The old man stirred in his armchair. He had been almost asleep. He opened his rheumy eyes to focus on the tot at his feet. The child had his head bent over a picture book
"Yes Sonny?"
The boy was named John after his father. To avoid confusion he was called Sonny.
"Have you ever seen an Angel?"
Now there was a question. The old man closed his eyes and drifted on a euphoric cloud. He had seen angels all right, used to see them every night. A whole bevy of them.
"Yes. Oh yes but it was a long time ago."
Their scent came back to him, a sweet cloying perfume that filled the air. They were there every evening come rain hail or snow. Their voices echoed through the air and their scent clung to him long after they had departed.
"Were they pretty Granddad?"
"They were that, pretty as pictures, their eyes had lashes that fluttered like butterflies wings and lips so red and full like ripe fruit, you could taste the juice just looking at them."
"Did they have halos"
"Not that I recall though their hair stood up something like I suppose." Bee hives they called the style.
He forgot the child as he reminisced. He heard the music, saw eyes inviting him and rose to take one of the angels in his arms. How they could dance. So light, so soft so warm they sent forbidden tingles to his loins but when the music stopped they drifted away.
"Did they have names Granddad?"
The child's voice drew him to earth.
Yes, they had names but he had known only three of them by name. Doreen a dark haired one, a blonde named Babs and the one he remembered best a red head named Jean.
"Do you see them now Granddad?"
The old man sighed, "only when I dream."
Where had they gone, his angels? With the water under the bridge, years had taken them away. There were young ones who had taken their place. Not so many of them and they didn't have the same magic. They didn't have the same scent for a start nor did they laugh as much, moreover they mostly had their own transport now and they travelled singly. In the old days they moved in groups always laughing, singing, dancing at least that is how he remembered them.
Suddenly a tear coursed down his cheek.
"Are they old now like you, Granddad?"
No they weren't old, "Angels don't grow old Sonny. I reckon God likes young pretty things around him. He took my angels back to heaven a long time ago."
"All of them?"
One by one they died. Folk law held it was the tobacco that killed them but who knows? Maybe they took the germs one from the other, working and playing close together. All he knew was he had seen them wilt like flowers in the sun. Their skins paled and their curves melted away. Jean's hair lost its fire and her hands seemed pellucid.
He went to France after Jean died, she was the last of the three but there were others. He had bumped into one when on leave but he hadn't kept in touch. Couldn't face anymore goodbyes.
"Did they wear long white robes?"
"When they were going back to heaven, they wore long white robes then."
Jean, his Jean had been dressed in the wedding dress she had never worn. In her coffin she looked like a bride but her lips and cheeks were tinged with blue. He hadn't cried as he kissed her cold cheek. He was all out of tears.
"So what did they usually wear?"
"Different things. Skirts and jumpers mainly during the day but dresses at night when they danced and shiny high heeled shoes."
The child's query conjured a vision of Jean on their first date. It was raining and she wore a mac, that shone like pearl dotted with blue stars. He looked at her in wonder. How like an angel she seemed. Underneath the mac she wore a pale blue dress. Her dress swirled around her as they danced together revealing a tantalising glimpse of her thighs.
His Jean, but she had never been really his. It hadn't occurred to him to try to possess her before they wed, that wouldn't have been right. Things were different then but since he often thought of Marvell's lines:
"The grave's a fine and private place
But none I think do there embrace"
The grave had beaten him to it. He drowned caution and morality in one night stands after Jean died and yet deep in his psyche he longed for an angel. Then he met Lizzie. She had gone to school with Jean and it was pleasant to reminisce together. He hadn't intended to bed her but he didn't resisted when she led him there. The result was he had to marry her. That was the way of things. You'd have to be a right swine to leave a wench in the 'pudding club.'
Once again the child's voice interrupted his reverie.
"Is Grandma an angel?"
His face darkened, Lizzie wasn't a Player's angel, as they nicknamed the girls from the cigarette factory, nor any other kind and eventually she left him. She blamed him for the breakup.
"There have been too many angels in your life," she said. "I can't compete"
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