Touched by Angels

by Alan Watts

  His teeth were gritted and he closed his eyes against the sting of sweat.

  “And your name,” she told him. “Your real name.”

  Their eyes met over the top of the poster and it seemed an age before he said, “My real name is not printed here.”

  She took a step back.

  “It says Quinton Jack,” she protested. “A corruption of Jackson Quint, to throw would-be investigators off the scent.”

  “That’s as may be, but there’s only one man who knows my real name.”

  He turned towards Sam for the first time, as he dropped the poster. It fluttered away in the wind.

  Puzzlement spread across Sam’s face, though he noticed that Quint’s eyes had fixed on his gun.

  Then horror rolled through him, as he realised what he was seeing. Chromed steel. Ebony grip. One of only three ever made. His voice was a strangled whisper.

  “My God! You’re Ross McKenna.”

  He suddenly felt giddy, thinking he was looking at a ghost. The man with many names lift his shirt. There was a white pit several inches from his navel.

  “But how…?” Sam whispered, his eyes bugging as he looked at the scar.

  “Nuns saved me. Took me to a mission in Albuquerque. Dug the slug out. Put some stuff in the hole. Sewed it up. Prayed over me. Brought me back from the brink… just. Thank God for God, eh? Far as you were concerned, I was dead.”

  He laughed with irony. “But now, as you see, I’m here. I’m hale. I want my cut, and…” His grin faded. “I want your life.”

  Sam swallowed hard, aware for the first time that he wasn’t getting any younger.

  Lil watched as Quint’s eyes were tormenting him as a cat would a mouse.

  It was on her to shoot the swine dead.

  Nobody would ever know, but did she want her boy to see, and could she square it with all she had taught him, particularly having saved Bob from the noose, when she could so easily have let him die.

  She remembered reminding Robert of the sixth commandment, when he had accidentally killed the landlord…

  At last, she said tiredly, “Just keep on walking Quint, McKenna… whoever you are… unless you want to die a second time!”

  Quint dithered, as his hand floated over his gun once more.

  He was quick, as many had found to their cost… but there were two of them and she had proved her dexterity. He lowered his twitchy hand.

  “Best do as she says,” Sam told him, trying to hide his relief, “But lay your piece on the ground first…”

  Quint’s teeth were gritted with fury now. He drew his gun with finger and thumb, acutely aware of the fact they needed only the slightest excuse to kill him and carefully laid it in the dust. Then, shaking with rage, he started walking.

  Sam picked up his gun and tucked it into his belt.

  They both watched until he had disappeared behind the chapel, before walking towards the railroad.

  It wouldn’t take them long to flag down a passing train.

  What she didn’t expect, and nor did Sam, was the gunshot that echoed down the street seconds later.

  They turned to see Quint clasping his hand to his upper belly and dropping another revolver; clearly a spare he’d had concealed on his person the whole time.

  Quint’s face was a mad grimace of pain, surprise too, as blood flowered quickly across his shirt.

  He tottered from side to side, before crashing to his knees.

  Then, just as he grabbed his gun, and aimed wildly to his side, another shot rang out, and a pink spurt came out the other side of his head.

  As he toppled face first into the dust, dead, Billy Tweed stepped out from what was once the saloon.

  Sam knew he must have pulled the emergency cord on the train.

  He muttered, “Sweet Jesus,” and grinned, as he imagined how furious the other passengers must have been for it to happen a second time.

  “Know him?” Lil asked.

  “Yeah, I know him.”

  Billy was grinning as he neared them, and Sam could see the gun he carried was the one he had kept under the counter in the shop, in case of trouble.

  It had never been fired until now.

  “Few lessons to learn yourself,” Billy said, throwing the piece away. “Like never turning your back when you think you’re safe.”

  “I guess so,” Sam told him.

  They embraced for a long time, and Sam felt a tear wind its way down his cheek. After he had introduced Billy to Lil, he said, looking in Quint’s direction, “I guess we oughta bury him.”

  “It’s only right,” said a fresh voice.

  They turned to see Robert.

  “My son,” Lil explained, thinking once more about her husband, who

  presumably still languished in Pentonville Prison, smashing up rocks.

  They were not so very different, she supposed, him and Quint, as she cuddled the boy. It was just that one had a gun and the other hadn’t.

  She looked down into Quint’s half-open eyes and wondered if she could see a spark of goodness there. The same way she had often tried to find that spark in Bob’s eyes.

  She glanced up, hearing loud cawing. Two carrion crows were already circling above. Good or bad, they didn’t care.

  “There might be a proper yard behind the chapel,” Lil said. “The ground should be consecrated.”

  “What does that mean?” Billy asked.

  “Blessed,” she said. “No man is so wayward he should be denied it.”

  She fashioned a crude cross, while Billy, Sam and Robert dug a grave with shovels they had found.

  After they had laid him to rest, they prayed, before filling it.

  Sam whacked the cross into the ground with his shovel, the clangs probably the only human made sounds for fifty miles or more.

  Unable to find paint for an inscription and still uncertain of his real name, Lil finally said, “Let his details remain a mystery. He will be judged by God anyway, come the Day of Reckoning. As will we.”

  They remained by the grave until the crows had flown away, and as she looked down at Robert, Lil’s mind turned once more to home.

  She yearned for it as much as he did.

  They climbed aboard a train shortly after, ignoring the looks of the curious as they sat, and with a hoot of steam, the train cranked away once more.

  Epilogue

  Principle’s Study, Sycamore House Orphanage, New York, October 1918

  The Principle pulled up her chair gazing down at an inkblot on the induction form before her and cursed quietly. She hated waste. She crunched the sheet of paper up and dropped it in the waste paper bin, before taking another from a small pile.

  The woman sitting the other side of the desk had an east London accent.

  Two children stood either side of the woman, two boys and two girls; aged between eight and twelve.

  “Only way to save ’em,” the woman said, fighting back the tears, “bringin’ ’em to you, I mean. Lots of uvver places are full up, cos of all the soldiers dyin’.” She played nervously with a tatty hat on her lap.

  “But these children don’t appear to be orphaned, Mrs…?”

  “Richards. They’re not mine. I got eight o’ me own. Can’t take on four more. These are me sister’s. She’d dead. Flu.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear it.”

  “It were my ’enry’s fault.”

  The Principle looked at her questioningly, as she polished the spectacles she had taken to wearing for the past year.

  “Me ’usband,” the woman explained bitterly. ‘Connie,’ ’ee said, ‘we’ll go to America,’ ’ee said, ’er kids an’ all. ‘Get outa this shit ’ole,’ ’ee said, ‘there’s no work an’ the war’s made the country stony broke, an’ the flu’s killin’ everyone.’”

  “The flu is all over the world, Mrs Richards, just like the war. People are dying here in their thousands too.”

  Mrs Richards grinned slyly. “Yeah, but it weren’t just that. ’Ee didn’t w
anna get called up, you know, into the army. ’Ee’s a yeller as a lemon, but ’ee were scared o’ getting some white fevvers too.”

  Mrs Richards looked at her for a few seconds, before asking, “You English?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fought so. ’spect you went to fancy school to work in a fancy place like this.”

  “None that I didn’t take on board myself. All of us can move mountains, Mrs Richards.” She looked at the boys and girls pointedly, smiled and added, “All of us. In any case, I own this place.”

  “Own it?” Shocked, the woman looked around herself and the children did too. It wasn’t just the quality of the furniture that astounded them, as the cleanliness. There was no smell either.

  “Every brick,” the Principle told them. “I bought the place lock, stock and barrel, five years ago. I run it the way I deem fit, and if your children do their daily chores and pray that the Good Lord delivers them, they should make out very well.”

  She continued filling the form and when she had finished, Mrs Richards said embarrassed, as she looked at the wooden plinth with the Principle’s name on it, “I ain’t too good at this readin’ lark. Ain’t done much learnin’, wot wiv kids an’ all. What’s yer name, so’s I can come an’ visit ’em?”

  “Mrs Smith,” the Principle said, standing and smiling. “Mrs Lillian Smith.”

  Reading Group Guide

  Author Bio

  Alan Watts lives in Kent, where he works for a local pharmacy. Touched by Angels is his first published novel.

  Discussion Questions

  1. Why do think the title of the novel is ‘Touched by Angels’?

  2. Do you feel Lil’s decision to allow her husband to be incarcerated for life for a crime he didn’t ultimately commit was justified?

  3. What would have been the consequences of Lil’s choice to give up the money and the struggle for the contents of the safe?

  4. All ‘good’ characters in the novel have a mix of bad in them. What do you think is the author’s intention in relation to this?

  5. Is Lil a good mother?

  6. Does the novel reflect the desperate aspirations of the time?

  Questions and Answers with the Author

  Q1: What prompted you to write Touched by Angels?

  A1: The basic premise behind Touched by Angels was to allow a beautiful bird and her chick to escape a grubby cage. The more I wrote though, the more I saw that even if they get out, they are still inside the hostile room that holds the cage, and even if they escape that, they are still in the grubby street, and then the grubby city, where hungry cats are everywhere. I discovered the further they went, the more cats there were, with less and less barriers to protect them from harm. Paradoxically, the cage wasn't so bad after all. My want was to see justice done, but seemingly against my will, ever more cats appeared, so in a sense, the writing process was a battle between me championing the protagonists and an unseen, merciless force driving my pen, and therefore the antagonists.

  Q2: The descriptions of pre-WWI London are extremely authentic. On what did you base your research on?

  A2: An instinctive feeling for the period mostly; an abiding fascination with the Edwardian era and the Great War. Why? Because it was a time, more than any other period in history, of such rapid social and technological change; and of course, each one propelled the other. Through writing, I want to put myself, and by extension, you, there, via a virtual time machine, so we can see it, smell it, warts and all; and talk to the people, both good and bad, and see what makes them tick. People had a vastly different mind-set then and I try to tap into it. Yes, the physical facts, dates and details are vitally important, but so too is the feeling of total immersion. Without it, a novel becomes, in my view, a lengthy essay.

  Q3: Lil is an extraordinary woman in every sense of the word. Do you have a feminine figure in your life you have based your character on?

  A3: There is not one single feminine figure I have based Lil on. She was created organically, almost by herself. She largely tended to write her own dialogue, and fight her demons in her own inimitable way. She detests injustice of any sort, as I do. Even without the Suffragette Movement, she was campaigning for women’s rights without ever spearheading marches and rallies, by her innate intelligence and energies that were directed to hers and Robert's every day survival. If she had joined the Suffragettes, the vote for women would have come long before 1918.

  Q4: How do you think readers will react to Bob Smith's life sentence for a crime he didn't commit?

  A4: Bob Smith, aka ‘Fighting Bob’, is a cowardly, pig-ignorant, foul-mouthed, idle, filthy, drunken slob of a man. He is a wife- and child-beater too. It cannot even be said that he is a likeable rogue. In one scene, he even stoops so low as to kick a blind ex-soldier outside a Mission and steal a pile of farthings he had obtained by begging. One might cry, "Oh, for Heaven's sake! How could a bright, attractive woman like Lil have been so stupid as to get tied up with a man like that?!" But we all know women, and indeed men, who, barely out of their blissfully ignorant teens, have walked up the aisle with totally opposite spouses. By the time Bob stands in the dock for a murder he didn't commit, it is hopefully a testament to Lil's character that even after all she has been through, she is still determined he will not hang. She breathes a sigh of palpable relief, when instead, he gets a life sentence, and hopefully, the reader will feel the same. Or maybe not.

  Q5: What are you currently working on?

  A5: A good tag line for my current project would be, "Even amidst the horrors of war, your dreams can still come true." Set in July 1916, on the eve of the Battle of the Somme, it is provisionally entitled Parallel Lives. Just like Touched by Angels, it is a highly graphic tale, but unlike it, Parallel Lives is set in two completely diffewrent arenas that eventually converge.

  Table of Contents

  Epilogue