THE DAY AN ANGEL CAME

Heaven or Hell... what's the difference?

In the middle of a really sharp winter an angel came to Bernard Lofthouse. And that angel came in the shape of a handsome young man sporting a crafty grin and with leathery wings and no name.

“Your time’s up, lad,” he said in a broad Yorkshire accent, proof that even Heaven has a northern zone.

“Why?” asked Bernard, because he really didn’t know. Had he done something terribly wrong? Like the time he’d courted Missie Davies and they’d made love three times in rapid succession, and might have gone on to break international records had she not died on him? It turned out she’d had a congenital heart defect since birth and hadn’t told him about it, so it was really her fault and surely he couldn’t be blamed?

Anyway, in case some policeman took it in his mind to blame him Missie Davies ended up under a layer of rockery stones on his front garden, with spiky plants marking the place where her head probably rested. Bernard was nothing if he wasn’t considerate.

He’d done nothing wrong there, surely? So why had an angel come for him? But wait a moment. Weren’t angels ambassadors from Heaven rather than Hell and only came collecting good and holy souls for a wonderful time in the hereafter, with champagne for breakfast and pretty girls in tiny skirts everywhere?

“So why’s my time up?” asked Bernard, “I’m no geriatric, am I. I’ve not reached fifty yet, and I really mean to spend the second half of my life doing good deeds.”

“Aye, lad, so you say,” almost sneered the angel, “but, lad, if I was ter ask your good lady wife, what’d she say, eh?”

“She loves me,” sighed Bernard, “she’d do anything for me, would, er, my what’s her name.”

“From where she’s holidaying with the head chef from the Royal?” asked the angel, “By golly, lad, you can’t even remember ‘er name, and that’s a corker!”

Bernard sighed. It was true that what’s her name had wanted to get away for a week or two, and had converted it into a year or two when that chef bloke won the lottery and could afford to hang his toque up for the duration. Then they’d gone off to some Caribbean island where the sun never stopped shining yet stuff grew green and wonderful. She’d sent him a card showing how glorious it was and forgotten to write wish you were here on it. How could stuff do that without a great deal of rain? But it did, and to add to his curiosity, he never saw her again.

Which he supposed was good riddance. After all, they hadn’t got on particularly well. It had been the sex side of their lives. He’d had the unfortunate demise of Missie Davies and the garden rockery on his mind whenever what’s her name sought personal attention from him in the boudoir, and he knew that beyond doubt there wasn’t enough space under the rockery for a second incumbent. So he’d gladly let her go off with the head chef from the Royal. It was a decent enough solution with no acrimony involved, and everyone was happy, especially what’s her name.

“I never was much good with names,” explained Bernard in response to the angel’s last comment. “so tell me, if you don’t mind, what have I done to have earned this special treatment?”

“Oh, by gad, it’s not special!” laughed the angel, “everyone gets a visit from one of us, and that’s a fact, when their time is up. And yours, old son, is getting past being up! I’m here to collect you and lead you up the bloody staircase between the stars to the Great gate.”

“The pearly gate?” asked Bernard, having heard some time or other about some saint in Heaven guarding a gate that led into the Afterlife or Heaven or whatever it was called. He’d never had much time for such talk, and dismissed churches and religion and stuff like that from his thoughts.

“That’s a bit of a tall story!” laughed the angel, “there’s nowt pearly about old Peter’s gate! If there was it might be worth a bob or two, and there’s folks up there who’d have flogged it off to the first comer, and no messing.”

“I thought Heaven was for the good folk?” queried Bernard, “I mean, thieves after pearly gates? Sounds like they’d be better off in the other place where there’s eternal fires according to some sources.”

“You’ve swallowed the tallest of tall tales lock stock and barrel!” laughed the angel. “Let me put it like this, when I was down here in the thick and suffocating atmosphere of Earth I was a right nasty b*****d. They hanged me for murder, they did, but that wasn’t the half of it. I had a penchant for killing kiddies, I did, on account of the way they din’t half squeal when I slit their tiny throats! So they caught me an’ ‘anged me. They did that back in my day. Dangled, I did, on a rope until it nearly cut through my bloody neck!”

Bernard stared at him, open eyed. What’s this, he thought, what kind of tale is this jerk telling me, and he reckons I’m to go off with him? It’s all so confusing I might wake up any moment and find it’s been a horrible dream. I mean, an angel that goes around murdering innocent little children! That can’t be true. Can it?

“I don’t believe you,” he squawked.

“Oh, nobody does, lad, nobody at all. Y’ see, there’s been so much told about Heaven and Hell, and you lot’ve swallowed it without so much as givin’ it a moment’s thought. Why, lad, should it be the good folks as go to ‘Eaven when it’s the bad folks as need to be told a few truths about the way they’ve been?”

It almost made sense. But if there was an angel here about to take him to where his bad ways might be straightened out, what had he done wrong? There was Missie Davies, of course, but his only sin had been burying her without telling anyone. And what’s her name had left him, but he’d never said a cross word to her, had he? Just been a bit shy about the personal stuff she wanted, and that was easy to understand, wasn’t it?”

“What about Cardinal Pomfrey?” asked the angel, seeing his problem.

“Cardinal who?” he asked, “I don’t know any cardinals. Or bishops. Or any church people. Never met one, and don’t want to.”

“You must have. You took a blade to him and slowly scraped off as much of his skin as you could until the poor fellow passed away. It was quite a rush, getting an angel to him before his flesh decomposed. You see, he’d been a nasty piece of work too. Into choir boys, he was, in a big way, and our Boss upstairs don’t approve of that.”

Bernard was appalled. He’d never done that! He couldn’t have! The sight of blood, for starters, was enough to freeze his heart and then make him vomit. It’d taken weeks for him to get over man-handling Missie Davies when he laid her to rest under the rockery. And on top of that the feel of her cold, dead flesh had stayed with him ever since.

“You’ve got the wrong man!” he exclaimed, “I would never do anything like that! I’m squeamish, you see, so squeamish I’d sooner skin myself than take a blade to some other bloke!”

“You’re Bernard, aren’t you? Of Lothouse Gardens here in Brumpton? Because that’s the lad I’ve been sent to gather in. Bernard summat or other of Lofthouse Gardens.”

“Then you have got the wrong man! I’m Bernard Lofthouse, but Lofthouse is my name and not my address! I live on Gardens Street, which is the road that runs past my front door! Of all the things, mixing a man’s name with his address! How pathetic! Bernard Lofthouse of Garden Street. That’s me.”

“Oops,” grinned the angel. “Sorry about that, lad, hope it hasn’t upset you!”

And he fluttered his wings and flew off, through a wall or the door, Bernard couldn’t tell, because the shock had been a little too much for him, and he lay back in his bed, his eyes closed, and they never re-opened.

But it wasn’t an angel that came to collect his soul. It was a charming, impish devil with horns, a tail and an oversized Adam’s apple, dribbling something that smelled of sick.

© Peter Rogerson, 10.04.22

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