Clovenhoof 02 Pigeonwings Page 5

  The cleanup is underway, and has necessitated new carpets. I made sure that I kept a small sample of the terrible substance. I understand that humans must pass waste as part of the blessed cycle of life, but I had not imagined that it would smell so very dreadful. It matches nothing that I have eaten, with the possible exception of the kebab.

  Michael glanced up at the jar that was on the edge of his desk.

  I showed the sample to the Adversary and asked him if he thought it was abnormal. He gave me a long, penetrating look and said, "Holy crap, mate. You’re showing me a jar of shit. Of course it’s bloody abnormal."

  I may need to perform some further analysis.

  ~ooOOOoo~

  Nerys picked out Jayne’s distinctive silhouette as she walked out from the red brick train station. The word that was most often used to describe Jayne in the Thomas household was ‘generous’. Depending on the context, and the person saying it, that could be a compliment or an insult. Mostly it was an insult. Interestingly (and Nerys decided it was nature’s way of equipping a person to deal with life’s difficulties) as much as Jayne was slightly plumper than the other women in the household, she was also decidedly less neurotic about her body image.

  Jayne caught sight of Nerys waving and rushed forwards, her coat flapping open, her wheeled bag bouncing like an over-eager puppy.

  "Nerys!" she shrieked and wrapped her arms around her sister. Nerys leaned back under the weight of the embrace. "I can’t believe I’m here at last," said Jayne. "It took hours. The train took us all round the houses, down to Machynlleth, then Welshpool, Shrewsbury. Oh, and we had to change at Birmingham International." Jayne sighed deeply and looked round at Sutton Coldfield’s unlovely town centre. "It’s so cosmopolitan!"

  Nerys picked up the bag and placed it in the boot. It was not a small bag.

  "Staying for long?"

  Jayne twirled theatrically.

  "In a city like this? I might never leave. It feels so good!"

  "I bet it does," said Nerys, knowing exactly what she meant.

  "Are Mom and Dad well?" asked Nerys as she started the engine.

  "Yes, yes. They’re fine," said Jayne distractedly. "Is the Bull Ring shopping centre close by?"

  "No," said Nerys. "That’s a few miles away, in the city centre. We’re sort of on the fringes here. We can go there if you like though."

  "Oh, I want to see everything! Aston Villa, Cadbury World, the Space Centre."

  "Um, I think the Space Centre’s in Leicester," said Nerys. "Let’s start with Boldmere shall we?"

  Nerys drove them through the streets, taking extra care after Jayne leaned across in front of her to point out a billboard for a shop that was claiming to open twenty-four hours a day.

  "That can’t be right, surely!" she exclaimed.

  "Oh, yes."

  "No."

  "Yes."

  "It’s like another world, isn’t it?"

  "Something like that," said Nerys, swung off the Boldmere high street, past the church and pulled up outside four hundred and something Chester Road.

  Jayne got out of the car and looked round.

  "Is this where you live?"

  "Home sweet home."

  "And it’s all yours."

  "No, only the top floor."

  "My!" Jayne put her hand to her face. "What’s that smell?"

  "Nerys wrinkled her nose and looked at the open bin bags stacked by the gate.

  "Rolls of carpet. They weren’t there when I went out. Maybe someone’s waiting for the council to take them away."

  "What is that stuff on them?"

  "I don’t want to know. Come on."

  Nerys hurriedly shepherded Jayne up to her flat.

  "Penthouse living," said Jayne. "It must be wonderful to have your own space."

  "I’ll make us a brew," said Nerys and went into the kitchen.

  "I’m surprised you haven’t given the place a bit of a makeover," Jayne called. "It’s a bit old-ladyish still, isn’t it?"

  Nerys held her temper and counted to ten as she filled the kettle.

  "It’s something I’ll get round to," she said, "but I’ve been so busy at work, it’s hard to find the time. I practically run that branch you know."

  "Oh, the employment agency. Well they must let you have some time off. You’re not a machine."

  Nerys leant in the doorway with the weariness of the selfless martyr.

  "I have a sense of responsibility for the others. It’s up to me to keep it all going, and times are hard. I can’t let them down."

  "That’s lovely, Nerys. Do you ever find time for yourself though?"

  "I try."

  "Do you have a man in your life at the moment?"

  Nerys smiled boldly.

  "My problem is that I have quite a few admirers. They all like to think they’re the one for me, but I’m keeping my options open. I’m a bit young to commit, don’t you think?"

  "Oh. Well. How nice," said Jayne, turning away to inspect the ornaments on the window sill. Nerys wondered briefly if she’d gone too far by bringing up the question of age with the eldest Thomas sister. The comments about being left on the shelf kicked in at around the age of twenty three in a Thomas family gathering. Jayne suffered the double-whammy of still living at home to suffer the reminders daily and being a couple of years older than Nerys.

  "Is this Aunt Molly’s will?" Jayne asked, noticing the grubby document on the dining table.

  As she had checked that the flat was tidy before going to fetch Jayne, Nerys had smoothed out the will on the table and shook her head at the stains. She had scraped it, sponged it and ironed it, but Clovenhoof’s filthy mess remained. She had created a couple of her own stains in the margins to camouflage the lewd cartoons that he’d drawn, but parts of the text in the document remained obscured. She sighed and headed out.

  "Yes. It’s not all that legible. I had to rescue it."

  "From where?" Jayne asked. "Inside a dog? Oh, where is…?"

  Jayne looked around and spotted Twinkle curled up on the sofa, doing his best impression of a small hairy cushion.

  "Oh, Twinkle, you beautiful pup!" said Jayne and snatched up the unsuspecting terrier. "It’s been a long time since I saw you, Twinkle-winkle! Have you grown? Yes, I think you have!"

  Twinkle bared his teeth as Jayne crushed him to her bosom.

  "Oh, he’s smiling at me! I think he remembers me!" Jayne cried.

  Nerys made tea, listening to Twinkle growling and Jayne talking back to him in that awful childish voice.

  "I think Twinkle’s loved out," said Nerys returning to the room with two cups of tea. "Take a look at the will. You can make out most of the important stuff. I’m the executor, see that’s on here. She wants some money to go to the Dog’s Trust, and once the probate stuff’s all done, there’s enough in her savings account to cover that."

  "This bit about the flat’s got some kind of ink stain on it," said Jayne, poring carefully over the wording.

  "Yes," said Nerys, once more conjuring up the colourful images of painful torture she’d like to inflict on Clovenhoof. As always, she was confounded by the certainty that he would enjoy the attention.

  "It talks about my favourite niece," said Jayne, "but then the part with the name is completely impossible to make out. Have you tried a magnifying glass?"

  "I've tried everything."

  "Yes, I can even see that you tried smearing grease on to dissolve the ink," said Jayne.

  "Actually, that's just another stain, but it certainly hasn't touched the ink," said Nerys.

  "Well that's interesting," said Jayne. "In theory it could be any one of us."

  Nerys put her hands on her hips and glared at Jayne.

  "Really?"

  "I’m just saying."

  "You want to say that?"

  "In theory is could be one of four of us."

  "In theory it could, yes," said Nerys frostily. "In practice though, who looked after her these last years?"

/>   "Well –"

  "Who cooked and cleaned for her?"

  "I’m not denying you’ve been –"

  "In fact when did you, Catherine or Lydia even see her last?"

  "Oh Nerys," said Jayne. "You mustn't think that those of us who couldn't be with her cared any less."

  "Is that so?"

  "I used to send her knitting patterns in the post."

  Nerys felt the rage explode from within her like a chest-bursting alien.

  "You sent her one knitting pattern! One! She showed it to me. It was for a stupid hot water bottle cover with a rabbit on the front."

  "I thought she might like it."

  "No you didn't. You wanted her to knit one for you. That's the only reason you sent it. I can't believe you come up here and try to tell me that you might have been her favourite niece because you tried to get her to be your knitting slave."

  Jayne made a slow down gesture with the palm of her hand, which made Nerys twitch with the urge to slap her.

  "Now, Nerys. You need to calm down. This kind of outburst won't solve anything."

  The twitching grew stronger.

  "Right," said Nerys. "And you've got some brilliant idea, I suppose?"

  "I think maybe you need a professional to take a look at this. Someone like a solicitor. Someone who knows how to execute this will properly."

  "Right," said Nerys, "well we're already on shaky ground there."

  "Why's that?" asked Jayne.

  "This part here," said Nerys, pointing, "where it says that she wants her ashes scattered in the Dogpool Potters Field -wherever that is."

  "What's wrong with that?" asked Jayne. "We should do whatever it says to fulfil her wishes."

  "What's wrong with that? What's wrong with that?" Nerys walked towards Jayne, jabbing an accusing finger at her face. "I'll tell you what's wrong with that. If you'd been bothered to come to the funeral you'd know what's wrong with that. We didn't cremate Aunt Molly. We buried her."

  ~ooOOOoo~

  Michael sat through Sunday's service, noting with approval that Reverend Zack had implemented some of his suggestions. The dust had been removed from the legs of the pews, and the windows were a little cleaner. The flowers still sat in hopeless lacklustre bunches. Michael wondered if he'd have to oversee that task himself, as clearly nobody here had any kind of an eye for floral aesthetics. Not today though. Today he had volunteered to help with Sunday School.

  After the service, in the function room at the back of the church, Darren (in a stunning piece of knitwear depicting the Last Supper that surely would not have been possible on a man with anything less than a sixty inch chest) led the twenty-odd children in adding further details to some complicated collage work that he pulled out from under the stage. The giant collage, composed primarily of sugar paper, pasta shells and glitter, appeared to be the backdrop for a Christmas performance. After thirty minutes of inefficient industry, the collage featured several new scenes, and Darren was smeared with more glue and scraps than any of the children.

  "Story time now," called Darren, picking a sequin from his ear. "Take your places on the rug."

  Michael walked to the front, sat on a chair and looked at the rows of expectant faces. The children gazed back. There were a couple of runny noses and persistent blinkers among them but they seemed a fairly docile bunch. Michael had met children en masse in his previous visits to earth. He could do this.

  "Hello children," he said with a hesitant smile. "My name is Mr Michaels and I will be reading your Bible story today. Make sure you pay close attention and you will learn all about Adam and Eve."

  He looked at the children's version of the stories, which had been handed to him in a loose-leaf binder. He suspected that the Reverend Zack had crafted much of the prose, as the language was rather bland, but peppered with unlikely elements, no doubt designed to be child-friendly. He snorted with derision at the suggestion that Adam was unsatisfied with the table manners of monkeys, causing God to take pity on him and make a woman. He closed the folder after glancing through the opening paragraphs and recounted the story in the only way he thought appropriate.

  There were no interruptions until Michael came to the actual temptation of Adam and Eve by the serpent.

  "’You will certainly not die,’" said Michael in his most hissingly evil voice. "’For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’"

  Michael noticed from the corner of his eye that Darren, sat cross-legged on the rug with the children, had his hand in the air.

  "Yes, Darren?"

  "How could it talk?"

  "Sorry?"

  "The snake. How could it talk without lips?"

  "Because it's really Satan in disguise."

  "Oh."

  "And Satan is capable of subtlety and cunning." Michael thought for a moment. "Well cunning, certainly."

  He continued with the story.

  "When the woman, Eve, saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband and he ate it."

  Another hand went up. A small girl in the front row regarded him with a solemn expression.

  "Why did God put the tree there if they weren't supposed to eat the fruit?" she asked.

  Michael smiled.

  "Let me ask you – Stephanie, isn’t it? – why do you think God put the tree there and told them not to eat it."

  "Because he wanted to keep it for himself," said a runny-nose in the back row. "Like my dad’s lager."

  "Did God want all the apples for himself?" asked another boy.

  "Now, the Bible doesn’t say it was apples," said Michael. "Common mistake. Well, let me tell you that God wanted to test them. They should have done what God asked them to do instead of allowing themselves to be tempted."

  "That's not a test, that's entrapment," replied solemn Stephanie. "Everyone knows that."

  "Let's move on," said Michael. "We're getting to my favourite bit."

  "Which bit's that?" said the runny-nose with the lager-drinking dad.

  "It’s where God cast Adam and Eve out from the Garden of Eden. Do you know how he stopped them going back in?"

  "Razor wire!"

  "Piranhas!"

  "Landmines!"

  "No, Darren," said Michael. "He put cherubim in place to guard the gate."

  A boy with glasses at the back put up a tentative hand.

  "Are they the babies with wings that shoot people to make them fall in love?"

  "No," said Michael with a gleam of passion in his eye. "They are warrior angels and God gave them flaming swords. They are dangerous, terrifying creatures, and God put them in place so that Adam and Eve would be afraid to enter through the gate."

  A few of the boys leapt up and started brandishing imaginary flaming swords, light-sabre style.

  Michael's smile faltered as he saw Darren's hand go up again.

  "Did they have belly buttons?" he asked.

  "What? The angels?"

  Michael’s hand went involuntarily to his own stomach.

  "Adam and Eve," said Darren. "Did they have belly buttons?"

  "Is that important? I think there are some more pressing questions -"

  "They couldn't have had belly buttons," said the self-assured girl in the front row. "You have your belly button from when you're born and they weren't born. They were made by God."

  "That picture up there has them with belly buttons," said the boy at the back. All heads turned to look at the badly-framed print on the back wall. The painting showed Adam and Eve covering their nakedness with leaves.

  "Well that's most interesting," said Michael. "But I doubt the painter was there at the time. Remember Adam and Eve were the first humans. You are all descended from them."

  Michael knew without looking that Darren's hand was in the air again.

  "Yes?"

  "How many children did
Adam and Eve have?" asked Darren.

  "Three," said Michael. "Cain, Abel and Seth."

  "How did they make more people then?" asked Darren. "Who did they have sex with? If their mom was the only woman -"

  "Enough!" snapped Michael. "I don't think it's appropriate to speculate, but I imagine God would have provided some suitable mates for them. That detail wasn't recorded. Significant events like Cain murdering Abel were on their minds perhaps."

  "Mr Michaels, thank you so much!"

  Michael span round to see Reverend Zack approaching. He wondered how long he'd been listening.

  "Children, I can see that you've had a lovely time listening to the story of Adam and Eve. It's home time now, so you need to collect your coats and line up by the door. Darren?"

  Darren got to his feet and Reverend Zack took a seat next to Michael.

  "You did a good job there. I can see that you're a natural with them."

  "Thanks,"

  "I, er, wonder if we could impose upon your time for next week as well? Angela has run into a bit of trouble on her holiday."

  "Trouble?"

  "Local trouble. And we're not sure when she'll be back."

  "Of course," said Michael. "I'd be happy to help."

  "Angela is also the Akela of the cub pack that meets in here," said Zack. "I'm sure that they would be very grateful for any extra help they could get until she returns. Darren will tell you all about the cubs if you're interested. He's Baloo."

  "He’s clearly something."

  "All the cub helpers are given names from the Jungle Book."

  "Oh, I see. Let me think about that. I guess cubs is similar to Sunday School?"

  Reverend Zack hesitated for the briefest of moments.

  "I can't be sure it's quite the same group of children," he said carefully. "But I'm sure you'll cope magnificently."

  By the time he got home, Michael realised he was quite exhausted by Sunday School.

  Why were there so many questions, so much doubt? If these children were being brought up as Christians, surely they would accept the truths that were placed before them. Could it be that modern human life had so many distractions that God's message just wasn't getting through to people? Based on his experience so far, it seemed as though it was quite hard work to find evidence that God was around.