Gabriel's Angel Read online

‘Oh don’t worry. You haven’t blown your chances yet,’ said Clemitius, lifting his fingers in the air and miming inverted commas. ‘That’s why you are all here. To use a modern colloquialism, the jury is still out on you.’ He paused for dramatic effect.

  Gabriel was staring out of the only window in the room, at the brilliant blue sky outside, which seemed to irritate Clemitius slightly. Looking directly at Gabriel, he said, ‘This is a therapeutic group. You are here to work on yourselves, to look at those characteristics, neuroses, anxieties, or simple personal blockages that prevented you from leading the life God might have expected from you.’

  ‘It’s a bit late now,’ said Julie.

  ‘Oh no it isn’t,’ Christopher said, anxious to bring something like good news to the newly dead and comatose people around him.

  ‘Quite,’ said Clemitius, who was enjoying himself. ’If you do well, work through your problems and come out on the other side, you may get a second chance. Ours is a merciful Lord, and if he thinks you can learn from what has gone before and, more importantly, what goes on here, you may be allowed to go back to your life.’

  ‘You are not serious?’ said Julie who, even as she said it, thought, None of this can be serious!

  ‘Is this one of those weird psychology experiments?’ asked Yvonne.

  ‘How do I get out of here?’ said Gabriel.

  ‘Well it’s not like a hoop you have to jump through. It’s about confronting yourselves in this group, but I warn you it’s rare for people to go back. Mostly they pass through this therapeutic group into the kingdom of Heaven. Or Hell. Now I think maybe we need a few introductions. Gabriel, would you like to start?’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘Gabriel, please,’ said Christopher.

  ‘No, hang on,’ said Yvonne. ‘I have a question.’ She sat back in her chair and crossed her legs, looking directly at Christopher.

  ‘Of course,’ he said.

  ‘That man over there murdered me. He is a murderer. That is a sin, it is the biggest sin. It makes him a bad person. Why isn’t he in hell?’

  ‘Fair question,’ Christopher answered, but before he could say anything else, not that he was sure what he was going to say, Clemitius inhaled deeply and loudly, raised himself up in his armless, wine-coloured chair and took over.

  ‘Indeed. The thing is, whilst the old sins are still important, they are not what we would call the whole story.’

  ‘Not the whole story?’ whispered Yvonne.

  ‘Think of it like this. A modern God, a God in touch with the nuances and struggles of modern life, would know that the things people do are not necessarily indicative of who they are. That sometimes, quite often in fact, we need to look beyond the actions of a person and see inside them to truly understand what motivates them and who, in fact, they are. Moreover, a modern God would recognise that it is by addressing the inner turmoil that can haunt you all, that one might truly address sin.’

  Everyone stared at Clemitius. Gabriel shook his head and muttered something under his breath. Kevin nodded vigorously.

  Finally Yvonne spoke. ‘Oh my,’ she said softly. ‘Someone has killed God and replaced him with a social worker.’

  ‘What exactly do you expect from us?’ asked Julie.

  ‘We expect you to work,’ Clemitius said.

  ‘What does that mean?’ she snapped at him.

  ‘You’ll come here twice a day and we’ll talk. We’ll share and hopefully support each other in that sharing. Together we will try to understand why you lived as you did. Why you missed the opportunities to be … what you could have been.’

  ‘Do you do this for everyone who dies?’ Julie asked.

  ‘You’re not dead yet,’ Christopher told her. ‘You and Gabriel are still alive. Do well here, and maybe you can go back.’

  ‘No,’ Clemitius said as if Christopher had not spoken. ‘We don’t do this for everyone who dies. This is a pilot project. We hope it takes off in a big way, but that partly depends on people like you. You should be proud. There is a lot riding on you.’

  ‘Are we the first?’ asked Kevin.

  ‘Oh no,’ Clemitius said. ‘You’re not that special.’

  ‘Is this Hell?’ Gabriel had stopped staring out of the window and was instead staring at Clemitius. ‘Because it feels a lot like I would imagine hell to feel. Not that I believed in hell up to today, you understand.’

  And Clemitius looked back at him almost pityingly. He licked his dry lips and said slowly, ‘Oh no, this isn’t Hell. Hell is far, far worse than this. Let’s see if we can help make sure you don’t ever find that out, shall we?’

  5

  After the first group session Christopher took each of them back to their rooms. The same quiet walk down the white corridor. Julie could see another group of miserable dead people through the windows at the corridor’s other end. She thought they looked broken and realized that she probably looked the same.

  None of them spoke much. Kevin was happy; Yvonne was angry; Julie, bemused and in shock. Gabriel was the nearest to despair. In his room he was restless: he lay on the bed, stood up and paced around, lay down again, turned on the TV, flicked through the channels, and turned it off again.

  Finally he just sat on the bed, brought his hands to his eyes and his knees to his chest, and was still. He wanted to scream but hadn’t the breath in his body. He rocked to and fro, whispering to himself, ‘This can’t be real, dear god this can’t be real.’ And then, even quieter: ‘Ellie.’ The whispering turned into gasping as he cried.

  Ellie and Gabriel met more than seven years ago at her best friend’s birthday party. Izzy was turning thirty and decided to hire a bar in Soho and invite loads of people. Unfortunately, however, she didn’t actually know loads of people, so she made her boyfriend Sam invite people he knew. This made Izzy appear more popular than she actually was and also meant there would be some unknown men at a party full of women—always a plus for both sides after a few drinks.

  Ellie had known Izzy for years; they had trained together as psychiatric nurses. During that time they had shared a flat, some clothes, a couple of men and five holidays. Inevitably, they had also shared approximately 668 bottles of wine, a small amount of cocaine, and 345 conversations about what simple beasts men are.

  ‘Men want oral sex and the football results,’ Ellie would say drunkenly.

  ‘But not at the same time,’ Izzy giggled. ‘That really pisses them off.’

  Tall and slim, Ellie had gone for the stunningly-sexy-best-friend-of-the-host approach to Izzy’s party. She wore black trousers with a sleeveless long white top that covered her bum. Not that she needed to. She had shoulder-length black hair and a slightly turned-up nose. As faces go it was probably average, but she had this teasing smile that seemed to say to women, ‘I am genuinely interested in what you have to say and am completely satisfied with your company, for we are sisters,’ and to men, ‘ I am so good at sex, it’s scary.’

  Ellie’s casual elegance inevitably annoyed Izzy a little. Not that she was going to show it, at least not until she had drunk half a bottle of tequila and been sick on Sam’s new Paul Smith shirt. Izzy had gone for a floral print smock over black jeans. It might have worked if the pink carnations had been smaller, or if her hips were a little narrower, but as it was she felt from the moment she arrived that she had chosen the wrong combination and thus felt out of place for the whole evening.

  Izzy had managed to hold on to the complexion of a sixteen-year-old and no amount of Clearasil was changing that. Spots, for people who are spotty, are like that; when you really need them to keep a low profile, they decide to throb and show off a little, pretending to be garden peas sellotaped to a face. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, Izzy was slipping between people, kissing them theatrically on the cheek and asking them, in a voice only half a cocktail away from sobbing, ‘Are you having a good time? It’s so lovely to see you. You look great, where did you get that top/lipstick/boobtube/cravat/poncho? It�
�s so pretty/vibrant/ironic/retro/aromatic.’ Given the right amount of tequila and enough nervous energy to power a light aircraft, Izzy always knew the right thing to say. Except about ponchos, obviously.

  All women are genetically programmed to know what to do at their best friend’s thirtieth birthday party. They know it is their job to be there until the end, to bestow the right amount of hugging, reassuring and agreeing, and to spend some time late in the evening needlessly reminiscing about great times, which weren’t terribly great but are worthy of mention merely because they happened. It often takes a drunken thirty-year-old woman with garden vegetables stuck to her face to realise with absolute clarity that all times are precious.

  Gabriel was there as a near-friend of Sam’s. They worked in the same building: Sam worked for an advertising company that occupied most of it, while the website for which Gabriel wrote about sports was based in the basement. They met following an e-mail that went round the building asking if anyone fancied starting a football team. The team never materialised, but over the summer a bunch of men from around the building had got together for a kick-about in the park, some coughing and a couple of beers.

  Sam and Gabe went along, and still turned out every Tuesday. They didn’t know each other well but that didn’t really matter; they had drunk together and laughed at a bloke called Barry who played football in a Phil Collins on Tour t-shirt. More importantly, both supported Chelsea, which meant they could talk uninterrupted for four or five hours at a time without becoming bored.

  Parties in bars are like parties anywhere: everyone circles each other for the first hour or so, moistening themselves with vodka and bottled beer, talking to the people they know the best about nothing. It’s a bit like the first five laps of a 10,000-metre race—a little light jostling for position, establishing a rhythm, then settling in for the duration before the inescapable late sprint for the finishing line.

  Inevitably there is someone who goes off too fast. In this case it was Izzy’s little sister, Moira, who set off at a blistering pace. The more experienced chasing pack let her go and ran their own race. Consequently, Moira stepped off the track on lap 12 or, more precisely, was sick on the pavement and her Nicole Farhi velvet smock and was put into a taxi by her big sister at 10:15 p.m.

  Gabriel was a tall man with thick lips and dark hair. Seven years ago he had a bit of a quiff thing going on; even then you could tell his hair was only reluctantly stuck to his head, and some of it was beginning to leave. On the whole though, he was a good-looking man who took a suntan well and knew how to carry his I-go-to-the-gym-just-for-evenings-like-this body. In his early twenties, he had decided to base his walk on that of James Coburn in The Magnificent Seven and spent some time cultivating it. Gabriel believed every man should choose how to walk, as opposed to just ambling about; it is our capacity to determine the way we carry ourselves, he thought, that separates us from the apes—that and trousers anyway. He was, or at least was back then, the kind of man who thought of lines like that in bed at night and saved them up for parties like Izzy’s, secure in the knowledge that he would never, ever use them.

  Ellie and Gabriel spoke for the first time about 10 p.m. They were drawn to the increasingly watchable Moira, whose tousled brown hair had begun to unfurl into a jug of piña colada. She had already been sick and was caught between the two irresistible desires that can overcome someone in that position: to sleep or to sing ‘Dancing Queen.’ Poor adorable Moira lay her head on a small round metal table, closed her eyes, and heard a voice that existed only in her head say, ‘Tonight Matthew, I am going to be Agnetha.’ She burst into a high-pitched, disco-diva mumble, disguising bravely the fact that she didn’t know any of the words other than ‘queen’ and ‘dancing.’

  Ellie and Izzy floated over to Moira, being sweet, caring, and a tiny bit patronising and Sam, who was talking to Gabriel about Ruud Guillit, glanced over and said, ‘Oh Moira.’ He walked the short distance to the table and Gabriel, having long ago noticed Ellie and seen she was involved with the drunk kid with a bit of pineapple on her head, inevitably followed.

  He could have said ‘Do you need a hand?’ in that fake, helpful way that always comes out as condescending. He could have said ‘What’s the matter?’ and thus given the impression that he was not only a moron but had also never been to a pub before. However, after watching with his hands in his pockets, as Sam joined Izzy and Ellie, who were talking to Moira as though she were deaf rather than drunk, Gabe chose to start singing along.

  This immediately got Moira’s attention. She started banging her hand on the table, bellowed ‘Dancing queen!’ and fell backwards off her chair. Mind you, credit where it’s due, even while sprawling on the floor with her frock round her hips, Moira managed to let out another ‘Dancing Queen!’ before she smiled at Gabriel and threw up.

  As Izzy and Sam went to help her, Ellie said to him, ‘Nice touch.’

  ‘It’s the effect I have on women. If that had been a date I would have considered it a raging success.’

  ‘Even the throwing up?’ asked Ellie

  ‘Oh yes,’ smiled Gabriel. ‘At least we hadn’t just kissed.’

  Izzy and Sam were busily arranging a taxi and an escort for Moira.

  ‘Do you want a drink?’ Gabe asked.

  Ellie looked at Gabe and quite liked what she saw. ‘Flushed with success, the man who sings at drunk girls moves on to his next conquest,’ she answered, and did her smile.

  They were sitting together and drinking pink cocktails by the time Izzy and Sam came back into the bar. For Izzy, the possibility of her best friend getting off with a mate of Sam’s should perhaps have constituted a wonderful girlfriend moment. Especially since it was a mate about whom she had heard no unsavoury ‘he split up with his girlfriend when she found him in bed with her dad’ stories. However, Izzy’s heart sank, and it stayed that way for seven years and counting.

  Sam, meanwhile, glanced at the potential couple and—summing up beautifully that moment when new love may just burst into the world—patted Izzy’s bum, nodded in their direction, and said, ‘Aye aye.’

  Ellie and Gabriel exchanged numbers, but Ellie decided that it would not be appropriate to go home with a bloke she had just met at her best friend’s birthday party, it being traditionally a ridiculously emotional time. Izzy certainly appeared to be giving her that message anyway. Ellie got in just after 2 a.m., tired but not ready to sleep, drunk but perfectly able to put the kettle on. The phone rang at 2:11.

  ‘Hello,’ said Gabriel.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Did you get home OK?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘Good.’

  There was a long pause before Gabriel said: ‘Well, I’m pleased you gave me your real number. The last time a beautiful woman gave me her phone number it turned out to be Pizza-a-Go-Go.’

  ‘That’s a line.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Come over.’

  ‘OK.’

  He was there inside 24 minutes and stayed the weekend. On Sunday morning they walked around Regents Park exchanging bits of life story. On Sunday afternoon they watched a black-and-white British film, eating Kettle Chips and doing impressions of Margaret Lockwood and James Mason.

  By Sunday evening they had pretty much sailed through all the requisite tests that qualify the contestants to move on to part two of the preliminary rounds of the relationship game. These tests included the giggling-while-having-sex test, and the falling-asleep-together-unexpectedly during ‘Antiques Roadshow.’

  Izzy had phoned Ellie the morning after the party but Ellie had ignored the phone. She called her back soon after Gabriel had left. Izzy’s discomfort was demonstrated by the first words she said on finding out that Gabriel had been at Ellie’s since the party: ‘Well, I hope you had safe sex.’ Dead giveaway that—any excited friend would want to know what happened or what was going to happen, or at least do some mandatory squealing. They would not pretend to be a health-promotion leaflet
.

  Ellie knew this and, with the sole purpose of irritating Izzy the spoilsport, said: ‘I’m not stupid, Izzy, when we ran out of condoms I took it up the arse to be on the safe side.’

  Within three months of meeting, Gabriel and Ellie took their first foreign holiday together. Within two days of being abroad they had their first argument. It was about putting away underwear. Ellie felt that putting away pants once you had finished with them was a simple and reasonable act. Gabriel felt that putting away pants was not something one should prioritise when on holiday. As all good first arguments should, the Great Pants Debate of 2003 became something of a motif. They would trot it out at dinner parties or when teasing each other in front of family or friends. In fact, the Great Pants Debate was to Gabriel and Ellie what ‘Yesterday’ was to the Beatles—not their greatest or most relevant work, but certainly something familiar and easy to remember them by.

  By year two, Izzy had reluctantly decided that Ellie and Gabriel were not just a passing fad. They had, after all, moved in together after first spending three months travelling round India. They had even had tattoos done at the same time: not matching tattoos, obviously—that would be ridiculous—but something indelible nonetheless. Consequently, Izzy, Sam, Gabriel, and Ellie occasionally socialised together. One New Year for example, they hired a cottage together in Wales and spent a long weekend drinking pretty cocktails, walking on windswept beaches, and playing Trivial Pursuit and charades. Izzy’s discomfort with the Gabriel-Ellie axis receded over the years, and became a bit like an unsightly mole: most of the time she forgot she had it, in fact she had to look for it just to make sure it hadn’t completely disappeared, but when she found it she resented it; somehow it made her feel imperfect.

  At least for the first couple of years, Gabriel and Ellie could easily have passed for the kind of couple who appeared in bottled-beer adverts with other nice-looking, linen-wearing, laid-back people. However, as they edged into their mid-thirties and beyond, they wore less linen, Gabriel found himself with less hair, and Ellie’s bum was … less ‘gathered’ is perhaps the best way of putting it. After vaguely trying to get pregnant for a year, and then really trying to get pregnant for another year and a half – temperatures, legs-in-the-air, vitamin-supplements, come-home-at-lunchtime-and-have-really-mechanical-sex trying – they appeared less laid-back. Izzy felt they had been reminded of the struggle, the struggle that less-blissful people have with life most of the time. This feeling really kicked in when Izzy and Sam managed to get pregnant before, as Izzy said, ‘I even got my pants off.’