Angel 89 (Panto)

Angel was in the audience for the Christmas panto in the multi-faith arena, Jack and the Bean crop, but she knew every line as Pippa played Jack and she’d help with rehearsals, parroting back lines. Lots of fart jokes and jokes about super-strength weed. Pippa in the tightest of white shorts, blue, open-necked, silk shirt and red braces with a black teardrop stencilled under her right eye was, she freely admitted, ‘a fuckin’ sensation’ singing Heaven Seventeen’s: All I desire
Temptation
Keep climbin’ higher and higher
Temptation

Adorable creatures
Temptation
With unacceptable features
Temptation

Afterwards, Pippa returned her costume, wiped off her makeup and returned to their cell. Out of character, she lost her spark.

‘You must admit I had great fuckin’ tits,’ she pushed up her boobs inside the cotton t-shirt she wore but then took to listening to the radio most of the time and not even singing along when her favourite songs came on. Not speaking, unless Angel asked her something directly. She smoked most of Angel’s stash of tobacco, but she didn’t mind.  

Angel felt older, maternal even. She was in for a long stretch. Pippa would be out and in again. Christmas was the pantomime villain that stole away their hope and cast long shadows with reminders of home and family. Sometimes she felt her thoughts running away from her—everything she touched died—and she couldn’t breathe. Panic attacks. Adam was better away from her, but she missed him so much it was like swallowing a lightning bolt.  The door locked and nobody home.

Blizzards blew outside cotton-wooling the window. She took to standing looking out at the beauty of snow until it got too cold and she had to lie in bed with a blanket over her head.

When they heard the patter of feet and bawling voices amplified in the main corridor neither of them paid much attention. The key in the door and they looked at each other. Angel’s heart racing it would be more bad news, or the guards were going to turn over the cell again.  

‘Vicar to see you,’ said the guard.

Pippa raised an eyebrow and almost smiled.

 Angel was glad to get out of the cell and stretch her legs. The vicar had on a pair of wellies, turned up at the knees and a surprise for her. He’d ground coffee, coffee-cream sachets, milk and sugar. The guard turned a blind eye to the eatables, Rich Tea biscuits and packet of pineapple cakes he smuggled in. They had a mini-picnic in the church, a tray, two plastic seats facing each other and the lectern behind them.

‘I crapped myself,’ Angel spooned sugar into her coffee. ‘When the guard came I thought Adam had died, or it’d be an emergency of some kind - but it was only you.’  

He took his coffee black, no sugar, and the smell of freedom released into the air stronger when he stirred it. ‘Aye, only me, the bringer of bad news.’ He teased her, ‘When it’s bad news I bring Bourbon creams, dark chocolate sets the tone’.

After the constant noise of G-wing, the lights, the unpeopled space in the darkened church quietened Angel. The thought jumped into her head, ‘I’d like to light a candle,’ she said.

There was stillness about him as he considered her request. ‘We don’t actually do that kinda thing,’ he said. ‘It’s that other mob, you’re thinking about, Catholics.’ Hands on his knees he ducked down and leaned across and whispered, ‘I’m sure we could find one. After smuggling in biscuits, I’ve got the keys to the rectory and I’m sure we could steal one – the Catholic priest is a very good friend of mine’.

‘Och, it doesnae matter,’ she said.

He slapped her lightly on the knee. ‘It does matter. Everything matters to God. You stay here a wee minute, pour yourself another coffee and I’ll go and get one.’

He returned after a couple of minutes, a candle in the palm of his hand. He put it down in the floor between then and shook a box of matches, to show her he’d come prepared and passed them to her.

‘You light it.’

She foutered with the matches and nearly burnt her fingers because the wick in the candle didn’t seem to go on fire, even when she was holding the flame directly to it. She wondered if that was a bad sign. She flicked the match away and stood on it before it scorched the wooden floor.

The Reverend’s words reassured her a little. ‘I am the light that shineth in the darkness and the darkness comprehendeth not.’

The flame flickered into life and they bathed in its light for a wee while, until she spoke in faltering tones.

‘I’m not really sure whit do dae here. I’ve got this appeal case coming up, but I said to you, and I said to God, nae mair lies. I did try and kill him. I did run away and leave him – and I hoped he’d die – and I’d get away wae it. And I did dae everything I could to make sure that happened including letting his pal use me—but then Lisa and—’ She looked at him with tears in her eyes and voice choking, ‘wee Lisa and Adam—’

She lapsed into silence and said in a more conversational tone, ‘I actually hate Bruno and Tony noo, because they’ve got my son – and I haven’t – stupid!’

‘And noo I’m pregnant—and the whole thing starts again.’ Her voice grew stronger, ‘The only good thing I can say is this baby is definitely, one-hundred percent, Pizza Face’s. And I just hope it’s gonnae be a wee girl.’

He asked, with a throaty chuckle. ‘And if it’s a wee boy?’

‘Well, I hope to God it’s nothin’ like him.’

‘Aye, well, there’s the thing,’ he said, sniggering. ‘Sometimes you’ve got to gie a wee bit of room to work. Let go and let God.’

She nodded at the stage, the lectern, bringing absence into the camaraderie of candlelight. ‘That’s where my pal done the Pantomime. She was fuckin’ brilliant, but noo,’ she said, ‘I’m no’ sure she’s gonnae make it.’

‘Well,’ he said, candle-light flickering golden orbs in his dark irises. ‘We can’t be sure any of us will make it. But it takes a special kind of person to carry the other person’s darkness for a wee while.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘You’re a good friend. A good person. God bless you.’