Three figures stood huddled together. A pure white light illuminated their presence amidst the infinite darkness of the night. There was nothing but silence out there in the empty blackness. Nothing stirred except for the wind.
Yet within that light, the white robes worn by each of the figures hung motionless to their sandaled feet, unmoving in the breeze as if the elements themselves dare not disturb them. They stood serene and tall with purpose in their hearts.
All three were beautiful to behold. Each with skin as smooth and flawless as a newborn babe with eyes as blue as sapphires and with tight golden curls atop their heads. But their most distinguishing feature was their great feathered wings of white and gold that protruded magnificently from their backs like that of a swan.
One man appeared wiser, grander and stood taller than the others. Upon his head, he wore a circlet of gold nestled within his curls. And it was he who spoke first.
‘Bernard, can you please stop shining that godforsaken torch in our faces. Blasted L.E.D is so damn bright!’ spoke the archangel Gabriel. ‘Could you not have got one with a warm hue rather than that pure white?’
‘Sorry, boss,’ answered the angel called Bernard, lowering his torch. ‘Wish we didn’t have to wear these robes,’ he added with regret.
'It is official business, so we wear the robes and display the wings. You know how Michael likes us to be professional,’ said a frowning Gabriel shaking his head. He calmed himself. Sometimes it was hard having to be nice all of the time. ‘A boy has been chosen,’ he said in his heavenly voice.
‘Another boy?’ interrupted the third angel. ‘Look what happened to the last one.’
‘Yes, thank you, Wilfred,’ said Gabriel. ‘We all know what happened to the last boy. That is why you will be watching this one. There can be no repeat of last time. Do you understand, Wilfred? The child must be watched, always. He must not find the opportunity to deceive this boy like he did the last.’
‘Yes, your holiness,’ confirmed the angel called Wilfred.
‘What about me, boss?’ asked Bernard eagerly.
Gabriel pondered for a moment. ‘Yes, Bernard, you will have your role to play.’
‘Oh, thank you, boss!’
‘And Bernard, it is not “boss”. It is “your holiness”.’
‘Okay, boss ― I mean, your holy-boss-ness.’
‘Never mind, Bernard.’ Gabriel understood that the angel called Bernard was new and lapses in etiquette were to be expected.
The three angels stood in the middle of a road directly outside a row of terraced houses built into a curving arc. Their focus was the house in the middle. At its centre was a bright red door with the number nine engraved on a slate plaque above the letterbox. All the windows were dark with curtains drawn ― it was the dead of night, after all.
‘Has contact been made?’ asked Wilfred, looking up to the window above the red door.
‘No. I will go to him tonight.’
‘Is that his bedroom, then?’ queriedBernard. He shone his torch up to the window in question flooding the entire building with brilliant white light. The house was instantly lit up like Wembley Stadium on match night.
‘Bernard!’ reprimanded Gabriel. ‘You will wake him. And the whole street!’
‘Oops. Sorry boss.’ Bernard quickly lowered his torch but only to shine it straight into Gabriel’s blue eyes instead.
Gabriel grabbed Bernard’s hand and pushed the light down toward the tarmacked road. Why was Bernard even using a torch? He was an angel, for goodness sake! Creating light should be second nature for all angels, even the stupid ones.
‘Bernard, how on earth did you get to become an angel?’ inquired an exasperated archangel Gabriel.
‘I saved a couple of kids before I died.’
Gabriel was pleasantly surprised. ‘Well, that is worthy,’ he conceded, beginning to see Bernard in a new light. ‘What happened?’
‘The mummy goat lost track of her youngsters. They’d wandered out on to a frozen lake. I was walking past and said to myself, “those kids are in trouble,” and then I ran out to save them.’
Gabriel sighed. ‘I see. Did, by any chance, the ice break under your considerable weight?’ He eyed Bernard thoughtfully, noting his rotund belly, which until now was something he hadn’t seen on an angel. It seemed Bernard was unique among God’s angelic legions.
‘Yes, boss, and I drowned in the lake. I remember seeing the mummy goat from under the water, which was nice because I knew she’d found her youngsters.’
Gabriel was beginning to lose patience. His great wings twitched. He wanted to spread them wide and yell at the stars in frustration. He couldn’t understand why the angel Bernard was causing him so much irritation. It hadn’t happened with other angels before. Gabriel supposed Bernard just had one of those faces. ‘Did it not occur to you that, perhaps, the nanny goat and her kids were quite happy without your intervention? And that the only real danger to their health was from a blundering, overweight imbecile who decided, against his better judgement, to risk his life in an ill-conceived rescue?’
Bernard looked confused. ‘Yes, boss,’ he answered finally.
Good Lord above, despaired Gabriel. What is that saying about scraping the barrel? Whatever it was, Bernard was the result. Gabriel smiled. ‘I have the perfect job for you.’ The archangel relieved Bernard of his torch, handing it to Wilfred instead. Then, with a nod of his head, there followed a flash of light and forthwith Bernard was a dog. ‘There, much better.’
‘Thank you, boss,’ said the dog called Bernard.
To observe a talking canine would have appeared very odd and not something likely witnessed during an average day or night of the week, but someone had.
There came a noise from further down the road. It sounded like someone sniggering.
Wilfred pointed the torch toward the disturbance. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘There’s someone over there!’
A hooded figure loitered in the darkness, and for all the world, it seemed as if this unsettling stranger was watching the same red-doored house as they. Whoever this person was, Bernard’s story ― and the fact that the hapless angel now resembled a mongrel ― evidently amused them.
‘I know it is there. It is one of the enemy’s spies,’ declared Gabriel. ‘This one has been here for some time ― watching.’
Bernard’s hairy little face looked shocked and he immediately scampered beneath Gabriel’s robes. With a sandaled foot, the archangel nudged the terrier back out into the road. Bernard sat with his ears flat against his fluffy head in fright.
‘You know your jobs and so it is time that you went about them. Are you ready, Wilfred? It is your turn.’
‘Yes, your holiness,’ confirmed the angel Wilfred.
Once more, Gabriel nodded his head and once more, an angel was transformed but this time taking the form of an elderly gentleman. ‘Watch the boy child like a hawk. Go where he goes. And for God’s sake,’ Gabriel indicated the hooded figure, ‘keep the likes of him at bay.’
Gabriel turned his sapphire eyes to peer up at the boy’s bedroom window. ‘So,’ he whispered, ‘it begins again.’ And with a flash of light, the archangel Gabriel disappeared.
The pine trees surrounding the housing estate began swaying in a stiffening breeze, and for those who believed in signs of portents, it might have seemed as if a long-held breath had been finally released. For those who didn’t, well, it was just another weather system sweeping in from the west guaranteed to unnerve nesting birds, ruin new hairstyles and make the use of an umbrella illegal under the offensive weapons act of 1953.
The angel Wilfred, who now appeared as an elderly gentleman, gazed down at the angel Bernard, who now resembled a mongrel terrier. ‘I think we’ll need a lead,’ he said.
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