A is for Angelica
Authors: Iain Broome
Iain Broome
is 31 and lives in Sheffield. A graduate of Sheffield Hallam’s MA Writing programme, he has edited literary magazines, co-run a successful monthly
spoken word event and currently maintains a popular website and podcast about writing.
A is for Angelica
is Iain’s first novel.
You can visit Iain at:
www.iainbroome.com
@iainbroome
facebook.com/iainbroomeauthor
Legend Press Ltd, 2 London Wall Buildings,
London EC2M 5UU
[email protected]
www.legendpress.co.uk
Contents © Iain Broome 2012
The right of the above author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available.
Print ISBN 978-1-9087759-8-6
Ebook ISBN 978-1-9087756-2-7
Set in Times
Printed by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Cover design by Jonathan Wilkinson www.welivehere.co.uk
Author photo © Andrew Leonard Turner
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to
criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Some thank yous
My family, for all their love and support. The Whites, for all their love and support too. My friends, for their love, support and gentle ribbing. Simon Crump, for setting me
off on the right path and for demonstrating the art of editing with the use of an actual axe (murder your darlings). Alex Moody, for providing the space for me to realise that writing a novel was
going to be really, really hard work. And for the cricket. Obviously. Sophie Lambert, for her advice, guidance and unique ability to say exactly the right thing at exactly the right time.
And Suzy, for her love, patience, and unwavering faith in me and
Angelica
.
For Suzy
Contents
Angelica
If I look hard enough, it will go away.
So I sit and I stare.
This morning I prayed for forgiveness.
It’s evening now. The sky through the window tapers up from the rooftops, red to blue, blue to black. I’m on a chair with a cushion tied to the seat. I moved it from the kitchen
nearly a year ago. It doesn’t belong there anymore. It’s just the chair by the bed that no-one else sits on. It gives me backache. A strip of light shines through from the landing. I
think about it waking her up, hurting her eyes should they open. I imagine I’m someone else looking in through the window from across the street, watching this room faintly lit by the glow of
another. I hope someone sees me, follows the light through the gap in the door and writes down what I’m about to do.
Angelica walks in. She offers me a piece of chocolate cake.
‘Have you finished?’ she says. ‘It’s almost time.’ I don’t answer properly. I never answer properly. I sit and I stare.
‘Did you know the Russians have a special word for light blue?’
She looks away. Sips her tea. Shakes her head.
‘Just get on with it,’ she replies. ‘Before your drink gets cold.’
Benny
Benny paints pictures with his eyes closed. I keep a thick file on Benny. He paints every day between one and two in the morning and his light is always the last in the street
to go out. It would be mine, but I never switch it on when I’m in the spare room, adding to a file. It’s easy to write in the dark. My eyes have nothing to adjust to, or from.
Last summer, Benny became the youngest ever nominee for the Harris Manning Arts Award. It was in the local papers. A picture of him shaking hands with the mayor. He sold three of his paintings
for £2000, which is far too much money to give a sixteen-year-old boy. He was in the papers for that as well, this time with his arm around an art collector from London. Benny’s mother,
Jenny, was standing next to him. She was holding an oversized cheque. I cut the picture out and put it with the others.
I can see into Benny’s room. He has a row of five candles lined up along the windowsill. He lights them when he’s painting. His window doesn’t have curtains
because he set fire to them. When he paints, the back of his canvas always faces the street. I’ve watched him painting for hours, but I’ve never seen one of his pictures. They never put
Benny’s pictures in the papers – just pictures of Benny.
When he lights his candles, I can see the air around the flames shimmering, like when roads get hot in summer. The candles illuminate half the room. Benny disappears, flicks the switch by the
door, comes back through the half-light like a ghost. He stands at his easel and picks up the paintbrush, holds it stretched in front of him, leans forward until it touches the canvas, arches his
neck, lifts his head and closes his eyes. He opens them again when he’s done, when there’s air between his picture and the paintbrush.
I started Benny’s file a year ago, the day of the fire. I sat on the end of the bed in the spare room, looking out through the window at an empty street. A row of closed curtains, darkness
behind darkness. His curtains were thick enough to hide the light from the candles; close enough to catch the heat from the flames. They ate the material from the bottom up. I began to see Benny,
the tops of his legs, then his stomach. He was perfectly still, revealed like the opening of a play.
And then there was movement. A paintbrush fell to the floor, the curtains opened and closed as Benny pulled and yanked them from the rail. I watched him jumping up and down, trying to put the
fire out, the flames dancing across his bedroom floor, the only light in the street. Then it rose again. It hovered in the air, just for a second, and then tumbled out into the night. Benny sat on
his bed in a tangle of shades, black and blacker still. A room framed like a picture, only outlines of objects to go by.
I picked up my pen and started writing.
Note: Benny Martin has an easel in his room. He set fire to his curtains and threw them out of the window. Time for fire to die = 32 minutes. Note end.
I see Benny twice a day. Once when he leaves for school in the morning and again at night when he’s painting. I never see him come back because he enters the house
through the back door. John Bonsall told me so. He can see him from his kitchen, climbing over the wall and into the back garden. Benny wears the same jacket every day. It’s a navy suit
jacket with three badges attached to the right lapel. The badges change colour each morning. He collects them. His hair is long around his ears. Sometimes he ties it into a ponytail with a light
blue band. I remember him being born in the back of his mother’s Mini Metro. She wasn’t driving. His father was. Before the divorce. They were on their way to hospital, but she
couldn’t hold on. It ruined the upholstery.
When Benny was a child he played football on his own in the street. He’d wear trousers with holes in, dribble around the parked cars and kick the ball against my fence. Sometimes I’d
go out and watch him, shout encouragement from the garden. He’d ask me to join in, but I’d always tell him he was far too good for me. He’d carry on regardless, dribbling and
kicking, happy as Larry. One day, while he was playing, a dog pulled free from its owner and sank its teeth into Benny’s leg. It refused to let go. He never played again.
I haven’t spoken to Benny since he was twelve-years-old. Apart from once. It was two years ago. I was walking home from church. I’d been in early with some leaflets from the
neighbourhood watch. As I turned into the street, I saw Benny leaving his house to go to school. He walked towards me with his bag over his shoulder. His jacket had one green, one orange and one
red badge attached, like upside down traffic lights. His limp seemed worse than usual.
‘Good morning,’ I said, as he got near.
‘What are you looking at?’ he replied, and carried on walking.
Birthdays
It’s the day after New Year’s Day, and it’s my birthday. Kipling, my dog, has diarrhoea. This means I haven’t taken him for his eight o’clock
march to the dog mess bin. To use it you have to put your hand inside a plastic sandwich bag, pick up the mess and turn the bag inside out. You carry the bag to the bin. It’s a trusted
technique, but not for me. Not anymore. Not since I bought the wrong sandwich bags, the ones with two holes in the bottom to ventilate the food. I’ve developed a technique of my own. I time
it so that Kipling gets to the bin at exactly the right moment. Then I pick him up, cut out the middleman.
Note: 7.15am feed Kipling. 8.00am take Kipling for walk. Judge speed of walk on food left in Kipling’s bowl. 8.15am to 8.30am (varies) arrive at dog mess bin.
Estimated saving on sandwich bags = 28 pence. Risk factor = 6. Note end.