Despite the Angels (30 page)

“Oh, Mohmi, look! How beautiful! All the animals are perfect, so real. Nearly a whole farm. Look at the dogs, I can almost see their tails wagging. And the pigs look muddy. He is skilled, my father.”

“Yes, and you are appreciating the gift more than if you had been alive. You would have just chewed them to pieces and been forgiven because you were teething.”

“Oh, Lewis, thank you!” Dawn sat down and looked with pleasure at her birthday present, the joy of seeing such skills lighting up her being.
Lewis came to the table and looked at the ark with dull eyes.

“I wish you could see your ark, little Dawn. It has kept my hands busy and my mind quiet for half a year. But who is it for? No-one will play with it, now.”

“I can’t play with it, but I can look at it. I love it. I love it better than the gold amulet in Crete, or the crochet bonnet in France, because you made it for me even though I was not there. But I am here, Daddy. I am here now!”

“I will build a shelf for it. Then I can see it. Maybe I will add more animals. I need to do something interesting.”

“Why does he say that, Trynor?” Mohmi asked and Trynor arrived.

“Because no smith’s job has come available. I keep telling him to move to another place, but he is stuck. The only thing he seems to have energy to do is carve these animals and go to eat fried potatoes. When I see the way those simple chips are keeping Lewis alive and connected, I really think I must experience food again.”

“Again? I thought you said you had not had a body?”

“No, I did, once. A long time ago. They sacrificed me to their god before I was three years old.  The world seems a bit kinder now. At least child sacrifice is no longer sanctioned, so maybe I will risk it. I will ask for somewhere with really interesting food, so I do not have to go back again! I am not brave.”

“Do you remember food?” Dawn was intrigued.

“I think I remember honey. It used to be put on our bread, or porridge.” Trynor stopped and indicated Lewis with his head, “Look- he is hearing me a little!”  Lewis reached a jar of honey down from the shelf and trickled some over a slice of bread. “But he hears unimportant things like why not have honey, but not the tough stuff like why not get another job. It is such hard work, trying to get through.”

“I think he hears you, Trynor,” Dawn was kneeling with her eyes at the level of the table, admiring her wooden animals. “I just think he ignores you when it is difficult to do what you say. It is easy to decide to have honey. Getting a new job is hard.”

“Yes,” said Mohmi, “and it works the other way too. We provide the easy
stuff much quicker, don’t we? After all, ‘Please let there not be a queue ahead of me at the post office’ is so much easier to manage than ‘Please let the man who is making my life a misery drop dead of something painful!’

Lewis was sitting by the fire, holding a small lump of wood, turning it this way and that, feeling for knots, wondering about the grain. He had finished the second badger just before Christmas and had carved nothing for over a week now. It was bad planning, he thought, to have had empty hands over the New Year. I thought more of them as result. But it was good to have the badgers ready for Christmas. I wonder what this wood will make, it is a good solid piece. It needs a big animal.

He heard familiar boots clumping up the stairs and moments later Neil’s cheerful face poked round the door, followed by a smaller replica. Little William ran across the room and held up his arms.

“Hup knee, Unc Lewis?”

“Of course. Hup you come.” Lewis breathed in the sweet smell of the child’s hair and hugged him close. “And how is your little sister?”

“Sleep.” William was unimpressed by babies. “More animal?”

“Yes, another animal. What would you like?”

“We came to tell you,” Neil cut in, “They have found the Tay whale, floating north of here. They could not catch it, but they injured it enough to kill it, it seems. It is being towed ashore.”

Lewis fingered his lump of wood again and felt a shiver of excitement. “Will we go to see it? If it is ashore. I am not going out to sea.”

“Big wale,” William held his hands apart as far as he could, “big fish. Make wale, Unc Lewis!”

“Two whales, for a Noah’s Ark,” said Neil, looking proudly at his son

“No, I do not need to make two, Noah did not have to save the swimming things. But we could have one whale, swimming beside the ark. I will make a whale for Dawn’s fifth birthday.”

“Oh, Lewis. Can you not let it go? Dawn does not have a birthday. Go and find a woman and have another Dawn. Or make toys for William. He loves you.”

“And I love him. How could I not? Of course I will make him something, when he is older. I must keep my hands busy.”

“Well, will we go and see this whale?”

So on the next Sunday, Lewis joined Neil with his wife Margaret, baby Isabelle and a very excited William, to make the short train journey to where the whale was on show. It was sixpence each to see it and Lewis hesitated.

“Come on, man, not to worry. I will pay for us all. I can afford it, after being promoted!” Neil was expansive, enjoying the moment. He flung an arm around Margaret and kissed her.

“Neil! Not here!” Margaret was embarrassed. Neil fished a florin out of his pocket and handed it to the ticket seller with a flourish.

“Three, please. I am treating my wife and my staff!”  It was Lewis’s turn to be embarrassed and he turned away, to hide his expression from the others. ‘His staff!’ How dare he, Lewis thought, as they shuffled forwards towards the whale enclosure.

“Yes,” said Trynor, “he is rather overstating his case. But he is the foreman now, you cannot deny it. You will be working for him. You should leave and get another job. Show your papers to a new boss, one who has not seen Neil’s forgery and believed he was your friend. Come to think of it, you should get a new friend.”

Of course, thought Lewis, he is my friend. He did not have to pay for me; it could have
cost me twelve portions of chips just to see this lump of rotting whale. He is a good man.

“No, he is not.”

He persuaded the boss to keep me on after Dorothy died. I could have lost my job.

“He took your job. You only got his.”

A job is a job. I only need something to get up for. To take my mind off my girls.

“It has been three years, now. You could do more. What about your skills? Don’t waste them just making these animals.”

Making the animals has been good. I wonder how this whale will turn out?

“Lewis, you just aren’t listening! And when you do hear me, you get it all wrong. How can I help you if you don’t listen?”

“Listen!” Lewis held up his finger, and cocked his head to the side.

“Shhh!” said William, holding his pudgy finger in front of his mouth.

“Listen to what, Lewis? I can only hear the crowd talking,” Margaret was looking up at Lewis, a puzzled look on her usually smooth face. Lewis stopped and smiled down at her.

“I do not know, Margaret. I thought for a moment I heard something important. Just my mind playing tricks again,” Lewis pulled his scarf higher and lowered his face, partly hiding himself from the others’ curious looks.

“Oh Lewis,” Trynor’s voice was soft but full of frustration.

“Never listens, does he?” Roki was laughing. “They don’t, mostly. Makes the job easier, in a way.”

“How?”

“Well, if you know they won’t listen, you don’t have to bother exhausting yourself trying. They misunderstand, so say nothing. Just watch. My Neil is doing all right without my opinion.”

“And is it your opinion that it is right to lie and steal Lewis’s job by fraud?”

“No, of course not. But he will learn that in time.”

“At the moment he is learning that dishonesty pays. Lewis is too sad to fight back.”

“When I see him face to face, I will tell him. As will his teachers. He will know, anyway. He will just need to be reminded.”

“Would it not be better to learn now? What if the manager finds out what he has done?”

“He might. We will see.”

“Really hands-off, aren’t you? Just allow anything to happen and watch. Call yourself a guide?” Trynor turned away. Roki walked on with the little family, pulling faces at William and pretending to wrestle with William’s guide.
William laughed.

“What is funny, pet?” Margaret asked.

“Oki fighting! Oki bad!”

“Who?” Margaret was interested, but the baby gave a little wail and the business of tucking the shawls tighter and settling her daughter more firmly in the crook of her arm distracted her, so the moment passed.

The whale was satisfactorily huge, its teeth could be seen and wondered at and children could stand in its mouth. Lewis took out his notebook and made sketches, holding his pencil out and squinting at it as he recorded the proportions of the whale. He studied the tail and climbed up to see the blowhole. He felt the skin and looked closely at the teeth and eyes.

“This is so much better than working from a picture. The books in the library are good, but from now on I must try to see the animals I carve. It was easier with the first ones, the cows and horses, I was so used to them. The badgers were hard, I only once caught a glimpse of a badger.”

“Yes,” Neil said, “Your cows are very good. And the dogs and cats. Just like real. Be careful you do not carve a dead whale by copying too faithfully.”

“You are right. I must see the animals alive.” Lewis was thoughtful for a moment. “I know, I’ll save up and one day I will go to the zoological garden in London.”

“Why not just go to the circus, when it comes to Dundee?” sneered Neil.

“Mohmi?” called Dawn, “Can you come and help me again, please? I am going to see Lewis. It is that time of year, he is sad again.”

“Certainly. Let’s see what we can do this time. You are learning a bit, maybe one day you will reach him.” They flew in an instant to Lewis’s little house, on the outskirts of Cupar.
It was June, a bright evening, with the sun glancing in through the windows and lighting up the table. There was a large wooden Noah’s Ark on the table and Lewis was setting out animals in pairs, in a long line snaking to and fro, queuing them up to gain entrance to the ark. A large wooden whale, worn smooth by years of handling, swam at the bow of the ark as though guiding it. Lewis handled the little animals delicately, looking with love at each one as he unwrapped it from its tissue paper and set it up in the line. He hummed to himself as he arranged his handiwork and occasionally spoke to the empty room.

“I will have to stop this soon, Dawn. I am running out of animals. Look, the newest ones have a branch to hang from. They live in South America and they move slowly. Like me these days.” He hung two wooden sloths on the branch of a carved wooden tree and placed it at the end of the queue. He sat back beside the table and sighed.

“Happy Birthday, Dawn. Wherever you are.”

“I’m here, Daddy. Thank you. The sloths are beautiful. I can see them moving slowly.” Dawn put out her hand to the sloths and then towards Lewis. She sent her love as best she could from her hand to Lewis’s cheek.
Lewis put his hand to his cheek and his eyes widened.

“Dawn?” He looked around the room and straight into Dawn’s face. “Dawn, are you
here?”

“Yes, Daddy, I’m here. I have been here on all my birthdays and sometimes in between. You don’t usually notice.”

“Dawn. You came back. Oh Dawn…” Lewis’s voice choked and he fell silent.
Dawn wrapped her energy around him and sent a calming wave into his mind. Mohmi stood by and helped, reminding Dawn of the best ways to do this.
Lewis relaxed and looked again at his life’s work, his nearly two hundred tiny statues, and smiled.

“I did them for you, Dawn. To keep you with me. But you were not here. Are you really here now?” He looked around the room again. The sunlight slanted in, lighting the animals and showing up dust in the air, which moved occasionally as the summer breeze wafted through the room.

“Which is your favourite animal, Dawn?” Lewis stared at the table.

“Oh, Mohmi, Trynor, help!” Dawn was agitated. “I have to show him, to help him believe. How will I show him I always loved the whale?”

“You can’t,” Mohmi was brusque. “We cannot move the whale, or get the light onto it. You will have to fib. Come on, if we join forces, we can use the wind and blow something over.” They stood together and when the next soft gust came in through the open door, they pushed with all their combined skill and
one of the two little giraffes toppled and fell. Lewis gasped and picked it up. He looked around, but saw nothing. He stood it on the table and looked at it. I wonder, he thought, was it just the wind that did that? Lewis blew at the giraffe
and on the other side of the table three sets of energy blew back, as hard as they could
. The giraffe did not move.