Angels in the Architecture (12 page)

‘Thomas?’ Alice cooed quietly to her son. ‘Thomas?’

Thomas looked around to his mother and smiled, and it seemed to Alice that she was most fortunate to have such a sweet child and she thought she would pay more attention than usual to his soul.

What do you peer out at through that mop of curly
hair, Thomas? Are there Angels about you? Caring for you? I do hope so, my lovely. I do hope so.

Alice sat down on the dusty ground beside her son, putting her arm around him. Thomas looked back at the space in the light just above him,
and Alice stared with him, asking that if God were nearby, to watch over this one of her children. And some other presence warmed her, and a little thread weaved a small part of her broken heart together.

Thank
you, Lord..

6

Those who have passed on through death,

have
a sphere of their own. It is not removed from ours;

but
it is sanctified from time and place.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá (1844
–
1921)

Timothy Watson
was not the child his parents imagined, nor indeed anyone. He was really very different.

He was also lucky. He did not have to feel pain in his life, and the love that was his particular birthright helped him connect to the world
of Light, and to a world of detailed imagery that other people did not see. This was not so uncommon for children that were born as Tim was, although Tim had particular assets and friends that even others like him did not. Being able to see the light and the space between things and the patterns in the spaces – these, many could see. Tim’s light spoke to him, and further, the rock in his life, which was his father, unwittingly strengthened his confidence in who Tim was and what he may be capable of.

Not only
did Tim receive light but sometimes when he became white enough with the light himself, he was able to reflect it back at his surroundings, like a pure white wall that reflected light but did not absorb it. Tim as yet had no comprehension of this ability, but in this way he could change things in his surroundings – little things that no one noticed, like making people happy. Tim could do that in the same way the light made him happy. People around him would think themselves delighted because he was a joyful soul and something beautiful and innocent to watch and even to feel blessed by. They would go away feeling they had made a special connection with a poor wee boy who had not much life to expect for himself, and they would condescend to imagine they had provided some mature, charitable, and useful support to his poor parents. They satisfied themselves they were not so cruel as others or ignorant, but knowing all the while – not so deep within themselves – that they could not have coped with a child such as this. Indeed, that they would have been embarrassed if people knew they had a child like Tim. And all the while they believed it was they who brought some light into the child’s day, not the opposite.

They also thought that inside
little Timmy’s head there was nothing much at all.

             
‘Jesus, Pete. You’re here all bloody day! It’s not that hard to fold the fucking washing, is it?! It’s not like I can come through the door and not notice this bloody great mountain, y’know. Does it not bother you? Can you not see it?’

Pete was hammered into unavoidable silence.

‘Oh, fuck it! I suppose I’ll just do it my bloody self then!’

Searching hopelessly for an opportunity to redeem not himself but the situation – since he was of the view that the presence of a mountain of unfolded washing did not warrant a barrage of this proportion – Pete sought to create some opportunity
for Alicia to retreat from her attack position and recreate some common ground between them.

At this point though they succeeded only in widening their no
-man’s-land as Alicia inwardly fumed at what she took as Pete’s refusal to rise to any admission of accountability with regard to washing – or any fundamental of housework – and Pete remained silent, bereft in fact of possible solutions or ameliorative response.

Alicia had arrived home a minute before. Jillie had come out from the living room where she was playing
with Tim, and hugged and greeted her mother before returning to her play. Proceeding into their large kitchen and family space at the rear of the house, Alicia found Pete studying the evening newspaper with both the radio and the television news going. Pete was pleased to see his wife. He’d felt a momentary joy even at the sound of the front door opening, but as he tracked Alicia’s journey up the hallway, bit by bit he felt that sense recede, first with the rapid internal judgement of the quality of Alicia’s response to Jillie, then the fact that she did not call out her arrival, which would have been usual. By the time the washing pile monologue was launched he found himself contemplating some murky descent that had been sailing into his consciousness increasingly regularly.

‘Aargh!’
cried Alicia, part-way into her mountain rescue. ‘I’m having a bath,’ and she stormed out.

Pete folded his paper, considered the most germane alternatives, and rose to set about preparing a meal. He retrieved fresh vegetables from the refrigerator and set a pot of rice to boil, taking also a cardboard wine cask from the fridge and pouring two glasses
of Chateau something-or-other.

When Alicia
returned shortly after to sit at a kitchen bar stool, Pete took this as the extent of any attempt she was going to make to reconnect, and simultaneously congratulated himself on his ability to let sleeping dogs lie.

‘How was your day?’ he asked.

Alicia looked down into her wine glass and twiddled the stem.

‘Oh, I don’t know. Al
l right, I suppose. I’m fucking bored. The fun stuff’s all happening elsewhere, without
me
.’

‘Aha,’
said Pete, continuing with dinner-making.

Alicia
sipped more than a sip from her glass and returned it to the bench with a that-hit-the-spot sigh. She looked up at Pete.

‘Sorry.’

‘It’s okay.’ Pete smiled back briefly. ‘So tell me more.’

‘Well,
the French experiments are exciting, but no one in the department could care less. Except Dryden that is. Maybe. He’s probably only trying to be nice. Humouring me like a good H-O-D should I suppose.’

‘Tell me about the experiments,’
asked Pete.

‘You wouldn’t be interested,’
said Alicia.

‘I might be.’

Alice looked up from her glass for the first time and watched as Pete poured diced vegetables from a chopping board into a waiting fry pan.

‘Rice and veges again?’ She asked.

‘You got a problem with that?’

Alicia took a deep breath. ‘What
the Paris group say they’ve found is that particle
A
can communicate with particle
B
, even if they’re a million miles apart, but they have to have previously been in the same location at some point.’

‘And this means
...?’ Pete asked.

‘The possibility of bending time,’ Alicia responded.

‘Bending time?’ Pete repeated.

Alicia explained, ‘It’s always been held that you can’t move faster than the speed of light, and if
A
can influence
B
across a million miles, then that theory is undermined.’

‘And the implications are?’

‘The implications’, replied Alicia, ‘are far too new-agey for most physicists to cope with, but for a believer – or a lunatic if you prefer – the implications are that you can influence the outcome of events on the other side of the world, or be influenced by them, with only so much as a thought. And secondly, which is even weirder, you can influence events in a different time period.’

Pete stopped stirring the vegetables to look up
at Alicia..

‘Really?’

‘In theory,’ Alicia replied.

‘Cool!’

Alicia laughed a little. ‘It’s theory, okay. Just theory.’

‘That’s fun theory though. Anyway, what do
you
think? Do you think that’s possible?’ Pete asked.

‘From the context of my particularly conservative work environment
, I couldn’t possibly say.’

‘Coward.’

‘Oh, come on. Be realistic,’ Alicia fired back at Pete.

‘About what,’ Pete responded, ‘the implications of the theory or your work environment?’

‘Well, both. It’s hard work being a natural born genius when you’re surrounded by plonkers.’

It
was Pete’s turn to laugh. ‘So what are you going to do? You could go and join them, y’know.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Look, I don’t have the right experience
,’ Alicia tried to explain.

‘Well
, get it then,’ Pete replied simply.

‘It’s not so simple as that.’

‘What would it take?’

‘
Another PhD maybe. Moving my research agenda, which is something I can’t do as long as I’m here. It’s a rock and a hard place.’

‘All I’m saying is you should think about what you really want, what the path is to get there, and let’s see what may or may not be possible. You can’t spend the rest of your career being miserable.’

Alicia was silent and poured a mopey look into the bottom of her glass.

‘Tired?’ Pete asked.

‘Exhausted,’ Alicia replied sullenly. ‘But I have no idea why though. I’m not sleeping so well.’

‘I’ve noticed. Knowing you, you’re probably thinking too much. I can practically hear the cogs turning some nights. You need to stop that.’

‘I get paid to think, dummy.’ Alicia managed a minute smile. ‘And what do you mean you can
hear
me think, idiot?’ Managed a bigger smile.

‘It’s palpable. Honestly, it keeps me awake sometimes. And you’re not being paid at night when you’re in bed with your husband. And you’re not supposed to be thinking at that time
anyway. You need to sleep, or at least give your intellect over to far more physical matters such as your husband’s unfulfilled libido,’ Pete teased.

‘You complaining?’

‘Yep.’

‘Piss off.’

‘Sigh.’ Pete smiled woefully at his wife.

‘How was your day then?’ Alicia asked.

‘Well,
I
have my own interesting story from the other side of the quantum actually,’ Pete responded.

‘What’s that?’

‘You know, when I went up to the Cathedral the other day and I met that deaconess, Rose, and we got chatting. She’d noticed something about Tim. Anyway, she invited me to this discussion group. It’s this Thursday night. They talk about ‘how do we know’, or ‘what can we know’, that kind of thing. A sort of exploration into the mysteries of the universe is the impression I got.’

‘Sounds a bit scary. Are you going?’

‘Don’t know. What do you think?’ Pete asked.

‘Sounds like you’re dabbling again.’

Pete looked up. ‘What’s that mean?’

‘Well, you know, you dabble. Fiddle with a car here. Write half an article for a newspaper there.’

‘That’s not fair,’ Pete showed some sense of minor offence.

‘Well
, it’s accurate at least. You don’t have any direction. You never have had,’ Alicia asserted.

‘Oh
, c’mon, I’m looking after our kids while you work. I don’t get a lot of spare time – when I do, well, there’s a few things I like doing – cars and newspaper articles being two of the few.’

‘Well
, you’re not always going to stay home and look after the kids, are you? I mean, what about having some real work one day.’

‘Bloody
hell, Alicia. Where are you coming from? Looking after the kids
is
real work, and having Tim’s not going to make it easy for both of us to work. Ever. I don’t think.’

‘I guess,’ Alicia replied, looking prepared to swallow her words.

Pete threw unused food items back into the refrigerator, half slamming the door and set himself stirring vegetables on the stove.

‘Well, it’s just an evening out anyway,’ he said.

‘Hmm.’ Alicia’s focus was at the bottom of her wine glass again.

Pete noticed and lifted the carton over the glass, filling it.

‘Cheers,’ she said, and took a mouthful.

Silence held sway
until Pete started to serve rice and vegetables on to plates. Alicia rallied herself to set a table.

‘Jillie,’ Pete called out. ‘Can you wash your hands and
bring Timmy into dinner, please?’