Apocalypso

  ‘Not for some time yet I fancy. Would you care for a cigarette?’

  ‘No thanks, I don’t feel like dying.’

  The old fellow laughed. ‘Then you do believe in fate. You believe that if you smoke cigarettes your fate would be an early death.’

  ‘Fate has got nothing to do with it. Cigarettes are toxic. I wouldn’t drink poison, so why should I smoke it?’

  ‘Fate brought you into this carriage,’ said the old fellow. ‘Fate decreed that an old woman would delay you and an old man would open a door for you and then you would find yourself here talking about fate.’

  ‘I think you brought up the subject .’

  ‘Only because you were thinking about it. You were gazing out of the window wondering what fate would bring you. Something different? Something new? A new beginning?’

  ‘How did you know I was thinking that?’

  ‘Call it an educated guess. Would you like me to tell you a little story concerning fate? It would pass the time and I think it might amuse you.’

  ‘Oh yes please,’ said Porrig, in a tone that lacked all conviction.

  The old fellow leaned towards Porrig. ‘Do you often find yourself being smashed in the face for your sarcasm?’ he asked.

  ‘All the time,’ said Porrig. ‘You’d think I’d learn, but I don’t seem to.’

  ‘Well, just be advised on this occasion. I’ve a very short temper and despite my frail appearance I could easily knock your nose clean through the back of your head.’

  ‘About this story,’ said Porrig.

  ‘Indeed,’ said the other, settling back onto his seat with a creaking of bones and a crackling of ancient flesh. ‘It begins long ago in the days of my youth. I was born of humble working stock and grew up in the kind of poverty which, although not so bad at the time, has, with the constant retelling of this tale, grown into something so awful that many who hear of it scarcely believe it to be true.’

  ‘Eh?’ said Porrig.

  ‘Folk cannot bring themselves to believe that anyone could have endured the kind of hardships I tell them I endured. And why should they, eh?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘But endure these fictitious hardships I did. And although a sickly child, all gone with the mange and the ringworm, the rickets and the bloat, I laboured fifteen hours each day in the fields, drawing turnips and bringing in the sheaves. My mother died giving birth to my brother and my father lived out his final years a broken man, made barmy and blind through drinking fermented cows’ urine, which in those days you could get on prescription from Boots the Chemist.’

  ‘I think my stop’s coming up,’ said Porrig.

  ‘I thought you said you were going to Victoria.’

  ‘I’m sure I didn’t.’

  ‘But you are.’

  ‘Go on with your story.’

  ‘Hard times,’ said the old one, ‘hard times. Though not without joy. We had no television sets in those days, we had no electricity, but we made our own amusements. We would hollow out a dead rat to make a glove puppet, or hold maggot races, or simply engage in acts of anarchy and arson.’

  ‘Happy days,’ said Porrig.

  ‘Are you taking the Mickey?’

  ‘No, of course not. Well, just a bit. Perhaps. I mean, what is the point of all this? It’s just nonsense you’ve made up.’

  ‘So far it is, yes. But I’m leading you on to the good bit. Have you ever seen an angel, Porrig?’

  ‘How did you know my name? I never told you my name.’

  ‘Didn’t you? Well, I must have just guessed that too, mustn’t I? So have you ever seen an angel, Porrig?’

  ‘Of course I haven’t. There’s no such thing.’

  ‘No such thing as fate. No such thing as angels. What a lot you think you know. Well, I have seen an angel, Porrig. I’ve seen one and I’ve touched one. So what do you think of that?’

  Porrig eyed the old fellow warily. ‘I’d rather not say,’ he said.

  ‘Very wise of you. In our yard.’

  ‘In your yard?’

  ‘In our yard, up against the cottage wall, was an old lean-to shed. We used to keep the chickens in it. Rotten, it was and it smelled real bad. Well, one night there was a big storm, thunder and lightning and winds and roaring rain. We brought all our livestock into the cottage and the wind tore tiles from the roof and ripped up trees and blew down the landlord’s barn. People were killed in our village: a young family who lived in a cellar. The rain flooded down the high street and through their room and lifted the baby out of its crib and the parents tried to save it and they were all washed away and drowned. People could hear their screams above the storm but could do nothing to save them.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Porrig. ‘This is true, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Porrig, this is true. But in the morning after that terrible night, the storm had blown over and there was peace. There was wreckage everywhere, trees down, hedges ripped away, dead cows in the fields, and three dead people too, but they found them later when the water went down. All curled up together, they were, with their arms about each other.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Porrig, once more.

  ‘Yes, oh. And I remember that light, that first light, when I went outside. Everything seemed to be different. Clearer somehow, more defined. As if the rain had washed clean the air, made it like glass. I waded out through the mud to see if there was anything that could be salvaged. Anything valuable that might have blown our way. And I found something valuable all right, in fact something quite beyond value.

  ‘You see, somehow the old lean-to had survived the storm. The door was gone but it was still standing and as I looked inside I could see something odd. Something sort of glowing. Like a dim lamp, or the light that shines through your fingers when you cup your hands about a candle. And I leaned in through the doorway and there, crouched in the corner, was a man. But he was not a man. He was like a man, but he was too small, the size of a three-year-old child. Perfectly proportioned though. A miniature man. And he was quite naked as he crouched there in the corner, shivering, and the light came from him, it shone all about him, as if he were lit from inside.

  ‘And where we have hairs on our bodies, under our arms and on our chests and so on, he had these tiny feathers, like the soft down on chicks, and on his back and curled right under him he had wings.

  ‘Wings, Porrig, curved like eagles’ wings, but more complicated somehow, and these wings were golden, or silvery-golden, and they shone too. They glittered. They were the wings of an angel.

  ‘But this light about him, it sort of came and went. Faded and then came back. Because he was ill, you see, he was wounded. His wings were wounded. The feathers were all broken at the bottom. And the smell of him. How I remember that smell.’

  ‘That smell?’

  ‘The smell of lilacs. The odour of sanctity, it’s called. The perfume that issues from the incorruptible bodies of the saints. Sanctity, you see, perfection, it has its own smell. Not like anything in this world, this world where everything corrupts and dies. Not like ordinary lilacs, oh no.

  ‘And I stared down at this tiny naked man with the wings, this angel, and he looked back at me with his eyes so pale and pleading, but he didn’t speak. I don’t know if he could speak. Perhaps they don’t. Perhaps there are no words in the perfection of heaven. Perhaps words themselves are corrupt. Perhaps to put a name to anything given by God, to label it with a word, perhaps that is blasphemy.

  ‘But though he didn’t speak, I knew that he was begging me, begging me to protect him and not let him be seen. You see, somehow, in that great storm, he had fallen to Earth. I don’t know how it happened, he never told me, because he never spoke, but somehow he let me know that he had come for the souls of that poor family who died. Come to take their souls to paradise.’

  Porrig’s mouth was open, but no words came from it.

  ‘I nursed him,’ said the old fellow. ‘I hid him and I nursed him. I kept him secret in the old lean-to. I broug
ht him out a blanket and I fed him milk. He didn’t drink it like we do, he held it in the palms of his hands and it evaporated, or sank into the skin, or something.

  ‘So I looked after him and I protected him. I straightened out the feathers on his wings as best I could. There was this dust on the broken ones, this light dust that came off on my fingers when I touched them. And the smell was on that dust and on my fingers and all through the day, when I sat at school in the classroom, I could smell that smell. I would sit there and sniff my fingers and smell that marvellous perfume.’

  Porrig looked at the old man. His face was shining and there were tears in his eyes.

  ‘Go on,’ said Porrig. ‘Go on with your story.’

  ‘He went,’ said the old fellow, ‘upped and went. One day I got home from school and he’d gone. Without a word of goodbye, or of thank you.’

  ‘But he never spoke.’

  ‘I would have known, he would have let me know. But he was gone, just gone. I searched all over the place, and I cried, I can tell you. I sat there in that old lean-to and I wept. But I never saw him again. I don’t know what happened to him.’

  ‘He was well again,’ said Porrig. ‘So he had gone to . . . you know.’

  ‘To perfection. He had gone back to perfection. But he left me with something.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘Oh yes. But then, no, he did not. I took it, you see. I know now that I shouldn’t have and I know now that I must return it to him. Find him and return it. I must do that, I know.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about.’

  ‘While he slept,’ said the old one. ‘He slept a lot at first, while he was so very ill. And while he slept I took it. Just a little piece to carry with me, so I could smell that marvellous perfume. I didn’t think it would matter.’

  ‘A little piece of what? What did you take?’

  ‘A piece of a feather from his broken wing. I’ve kept it with me ever since. Until the day comes when I can return it to him.’

  The old fellow slipped a wizened hand beneath his jacket and delved into the pocket of his tweedy waistcoat. From here he drew out an old snuff box. It was a shallow ebony cylinder, perhaps an inch and a half in diameter, shining with a rich patina.

  ‘I bought this box brand new,’ said the old fellow. ‘Saved up my pennies and bought it. To keep my treasure in. And I’ve carried it with me ever since. Would you like to see what’s in it, Porrig?’

  Porrig stared at the box and then into the eyes of the old man. What was all this, he asked himself. Some elaborate hoax? Some almighty wind-up? The old man’s foolish talk and then this incredible tale that he told with such conviction. Could such a tale be really true? And if it was, what would it mean? A feather from an angel’s wing?

  The sunlight flickered through the window and the carriage wheels click-clacked on the track beneath. But somehow here, here in this compartment, there was silence. And stillness.

  And sanctity.

  ‘You may see it,’ said the old man. ‘Although you may not touch it, you may see it.’ He held the box forward and his ancient fingers lightly brushed the polished lid. And Porrig saw that on that lid there was a date engraved in silver. Engraved when the box was new, in the year that the old man had bought it.

  And the year engraved upon that lid was 1837.

  ‘That is my fate,’ said the old man. ‘I will not die. I cannot die, until I have returned what I have stolen, do you understand?’

  And gently, gently, he unscrewed the lid.

  ‘You gotta get out now, love. The train don’t go no further.’

  Porrig jerked up on his seat, eyes blinking.

  A large Jamaican lady in the costume of a cleaner smiled down upon him. ‘Sorry to have to wake you up, love. But it’s the end of the line, Victoria, and I gotta clean the compartment.’

  Porrig gaped all about. But for the smiling cleaner he was all alone.

  ‘Did you see an old man?’ Porrig asked. ‘Getting off the train? He was sitting just there and—’

  ‘I see lots of people. Thousands of people. One old man’s much the same as another.’

  ‘Not this one.’ Porrig shook his head and clicked at his jaw. ‘Never mind,’ he said, as he dragged himself to his feet. ‘It was just a mad dream or something.’ And he pulled down his suitcase from the rack and turned to take his leave.

  ‘You look after yourself,’ said the cleaner. ‘You mind how you go.’

  ‘I will,’ said Porrig, climbing down from the tram.

  ‘And, love,’ called the cleaner.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘That’s a real pretty aftershave you’re wearing. It fills up all the compartment. It smells just like lilacs, it does.’

  4

  It was a somewhat ashen Porrig who boarded the Brighton-bound train. A chastened Porrig. A quiet one. He took himself off to the buffet car and ordered a cup of coffee.

  ‘Not till the train leaves the station,’ the attendant told him. ‘And that goes for the bog as well.’

  Porrig sat down in the nearest compartment and waited for the train to leave. He was confused, Porrig was. Confused and upset. He didn’t know what to believe. He knew he had met the old man. The old man had held the door open for him: he’d have missed the train otherwise. But how much of the rest had been real?

  Probably only the first part.The stupid story about hollowed-out rats and maggot races. He must have dreamed the rest. Fallen asleep and dreamed it. And the smell of lilacs? Well, he hadn’t actually smelled that himself. But perhaps it had wafted into the carriage from the outside and he’d smelled it in his sleep and sort of incorporated it into the dream.

  That all made sense.After a fashion.

  That’s how Scully would have figured it out.

  Though possibly not Mulder.

  Satisfied that it did all make sense, after a fashion, Porrig returned to the buffet car, for the train was now leaving the station. Here he was met by an unruly scrum fighting for attention at the counter. Porrig went back to his seat.

  The train rushed forward, passing by houses and streets, houses and streets, further houses and further streets. Porrig looked out at them and wondered, as many have before him, just who were all these people who lived in these houses and drove along these streets. There were so many of them, all going about their daily lives, their ordinary lives. These people didn’t meet angels, they just went to the shops and watched television and brought up children who did just the same. That was the real way of it; that was how it really was.

  At length the scrum cleared and Porrig was able to get himself coffee and something that vaguely resembled a roll. And the train rushed on to Brighton and Porrig rushed on with it.

  Brighton Station is still a thing of wonder and beauty: a triumph of Victorian ironwork, curving for a quarter of a mile. The great arched roof, with its countless skylights and its many pigeons, echoes with life. It’s a Grade Two listed building, but it could use a lick of paint. Porrig humped his suitcase across the concourse and out to the rank where the taxis, distinctively tasteless in their pale blue and white livery, stood, surrounded by another unruly scrum.

  Porrig decided he would walk.

  ‘Grand Parade?’ he asked a pimpled youth.

  ‘Big Issue?’ this fellow replied.

  ‘Bless you,’ said Porrig.

  ‘Bless you?’ said the youth. ‘You the flipping Pope, or something?’

  ‘No,’ said Porrig. ‘It’s a joke. You said “Big Issue” and I said “Bless you,” as if you’d sneezed, you see. Big Issue sounds like Atishoo. It’s really not funny if you have to explain it.’

  ‘So you think homelessness is funny, do you?’

  Porrig put down his suitcase. ‘Well, obviously not all homelessness,’ he explained. ‘Homelessness brought on by deprivation, need and abuse wouldn’t be too funny. But homelessness chosen as an alternative lifestyle, that’s another matter.’

  ‘I see,’ said the youth
.

  ‘Not that I’ve got anything against alternative lifestyles,’ Porrig went on. ‘I’m all for them. If anyone wants to buck the system that’s all right with me.’

  ‘Most enlightened of you,’ said the youth.

  ‘It’s everyone’s right to rebel,’ said Porrig.

  ‘Here here,’ said the youth.

  ‘But not at my expense.’

  ‘You flipping bounder!’

  ‘Eh?’ said Porrig.

  ‘Life on the street is hard, mate. It’s no laughing matter. I don’t do this by choice.’

  ‘Then get yourself a job,’ said Porrig.

  ‘I’m homeless, you flipper!’

  ‘Well, get a job with a home thrown in. Caretaker, or lighthouse keeper, or North Sea oil driller, or performing in a circus or something.’

  ‘Get real. There ain’t any jobs like that. I’m a free spirit, me. The only jobs I could get would be unskilled slave labour. Washing dishes, or cleaning out toilets. And I’m not doing those.’

  ‘You could get other jobs, you’re not a loony are you?’

  ‘I’m not a slave either, mate. I’m not selling my soul to the work ethic. I’m a free spirit, I told you.’

  ‘So hawking magazines on the streets in all weathers is your idea of being a free spirit?’

  ‘You flipping flipper!’

  ‘And what’s all this “flipping” stuff? Don’t you know how to swear?’

  ‘I’m not allowed to swear. I’ll lose my licence if I swear at people.’

  ‘Oh, very free spirit.’

  The youth head butted Porrig and Porrig fell down on the pavement.

  ‘Welcome to Brighton,’ said the youth.

  By the time Porrig regained consciousness the youth had departed. And so too had Porrig’s suitcase. On the bright side, the unruly scrum surrounding the taxis had also departed and so Porrig was able to get himself a cab.

  ‘Grand Parade please,’ he said, in a dazed and dismal tone. ‘The offices of Ashbury, Gilstock and Phart-Ebum.’

  Grand Parade, as it happened, was only a few hundred yards from the station, although it did take the taxi driver nearly fifteen minutes to get there, by a route which took in the seafront and many places of local interest.