by David Almond
“A project?” says Bert.
“Yes. It’s all about Buses and Angels.”
“It’s new,” says Alice Obi. “It’s experimental.”
Ms Monteverdi laughs. “Will you allow this happy crew to create our project on your bus?”
“I will indeed,” says Bert.
He knows how thrilled Betty will be to think he’s part of an Experimental School Project.
“Champion,” says Ms Monteverdi. “Me name’s Millicent, by the way.”
“Bert,” says Bert.
She gives him the fares.
“To tell the truth,” says Nancy, “I think Mrs Mole just wanted us out of the way. A Government Advisor’s coming to school today.”
“That sounds important,” says Bert.
Nancy laughs.
“His name is Cornelius Nutt. Poor Mrs Mole is in a proper tizz about it.”
She waves to Angelino. He waves back.
“Could we borrow Angelino for a little while?” she asks Bert.
“Borrow?” says Bert.
“We’d like to look at him,” she says, “to draw him, to talk to him, to get to know him better.”
“We’re exploring the nature of angels,” explains Alice Obi. “We’ll ponder how angels are just like us, and how they are very different from us too.”
She shows Bert her library book.
“There are pictures of angels in here but none of them are quite like our Angelino.”
She shows Bert a couple – glorious white-and- golden things with glorious high wings.
Bert laughs.
“Ha! The folk that drew them have never seen a proper angel like our Angelino! Mebbe somebody should make a book with him inside.”
“Yes!” says Alice. “We’re the ones to do it, and we’ll start it on this bus today!”
“Come on, Driver!” shouts somebody from the back of the bus. “There’s places to go and people to see.”
“Sorry, folks!” shouts Bert.
He releases Angelino from the seat belt and hands him into Nancy’s care. He can’t stop smiling. Who’d have thought that the dreams he’d dreamed in Mrs Stubbs’ Reception Class would lead to something as marvellous as this?
They all sit down, and Bert drives on.
Jack switches on a little sound recorder.
They open their notebooks and sketchbooks.
Angelino sits on Nancy’s knee.
“Speak into the microphone,” she says to him, “so that we can record your voice. I love your new clothes, by the way!”
“Thank you,” says Angelino.
“Who made them?” asks Nancy.
“Betty Brown!” says Angelino.
“And who drives the bus?” asks Jack Fox.
“Bert Brown,” says Angelino.
They smile.
“Your speech is coming along so well,” says Alice Obi. “And you’re growing up so fast!”
Angelino gives a grin.
“How do you talk so well already and grow so quickly?” marvels Nancy.
“And how do you know how to write?” adds Alice.
“I don’t know nowt,” says Angelino.
They watch him and smile. He smiles back. He’s silent and he flutters his wings.
“We all know how to do those things,” says Alice Obi. “Perhaps he’s the same as us.”
Jack laughs.
“Si!” he says. “Just like us, but with wings.”
Angelino hums a tune, something weird and lovely, something they’ve never heard before. He tilts his head back and shuts his eyes.
“What’s that tune called?” says Nancy.
The angel stares at her. He doesn’t know. The bus rolls onward, through the town, through the country. They hardly feel it moving, they hardly hear it roaring. They don’t see Bert looking back at them through the driver’s mirror. They’re lost in their project, they’re engrossed in little Angelino.
“Have you ever seen Lionel Messi?” says Jack.
“Have you ever met God?” says Alice Obi.
Angelino stares.
“My book says that angels are messengers from God,” says Alice. “Have you brought a message? Have you come from Heaven?”
Angelino grins and stares. He farts.
“Where did you come from, Angelino?” says Nancy.
Angelino ponders very deeply.
“I don’t know nowt,” he says.
Gently, they all inspect his wings. The feathers are just like the feathers of birds, soft and downy ones overlaid with stronger longer ones. They’re a speckled mingling of white, grey and brown. They grow out from his shoulder blades. He leans forward to let them see more closely. Sometimes he giggles softly, as if the human fingers are tickling him.
“They’re so beautiful,” says Nancy.
They all try hard to draw them, to give a proper impression of them, even though the bus rattles and sways and swerves. Ms Monteverdi says it doesn’t matter about the wobbly lines caused by the bus.
“There’s no such thing as perfect art!” she declares. “You’re drawing and seeing and dreaming and imagining. Draw on! You’re looking close, you’re showing truth.”
They inspect and draw Angelino’s toes and fingers, which are just like tiny human ones.
“Have you got a heart?” says Nancy. “Just like we do?”
“I don’t know nowt,” says Angelino.
She lifts him up and listens to his chest, and despite the bus she hears it there, and she gasps and grins.
“Bump bumpity bump,” she says. “You do, Angelino!”
She takes his hand and presses it against his chest.
“Feel it!” she says. “Bump bumpity bump. Can you feel it, Angelino?”
Angelino’s eyes widen and brighten.
“Bump!” he says. “Bump bumpity bump!”
The angel has a heart, they write. The angel has fingers and toes, like us. The angel, in many ways, is just like us.
“My mum used to say I was a little angel,” says Nancy.
“Mine said I was a devil,” laughs Jack.
“Some tales say that the Devil himself was once an angel,” says Alice.
“How come?” asks Jack Fox.
“He lived in Heaven with God,” Alice explains, “but he wouldn’t do what God wanted so God threw him out. The Devil was a rebel against God.”
Nancy writes down that little tale.
“Were you a rebel, Angelino?” she asks. “Did God throw you out of Heaven down to Earth?”
Angelino farts.
“I can’t believe that anyone would ever throw you out, Angelino,” says Millicent Monteverdi.
She touches his hair. So soft, just like a baby’s.
They draw and write and talk and speculate as the bus meanders through the town, as it stops and starts, as passengers get on and get off again, as some of them nudge each other and say, “An angel! Look, a little angel!” Sometimes Bert grins at them through his bus driver’s mirror. Once or twice he toots his horn. The bus rolls on, stopping and starting, sighing and groaning, rattling and humming.
Jack moves the sound recorder through the air, to catch the babble of voices, to catch the music of the engine and the brakes and doors and of everyone inside the bus.
Outside, the sun is shining from above the rooftops.
“Aren’t we lucky,” says Ms Monteverdi, “to be out in such a lovely world on such a lovely day!”
Angelino flaps his wings. He flies and hovers over the children and they draw him flying there, so light, so strange, so beautiful. He twists and turns. The bus drives on. Its engine roars, its gears grind. It slows, it stops. Its doors sigh open.
And a hand suddenly reaches up into the air and grabs the little angel.
It’s the bloke in white with the white beard! He’s been on the bus all along! He’s got Angelino in his fist! He dashes through the door and out into the crowded streets and is lost from sight.
Imagine this. A small white room
with a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. A single window with black curtains pulled across it. A square table in the middle of the room. Two chairs face each other. A white-bearded bloke dressed in white sits in one of them. Yes, it’s him, the bloke from the bus. It’s Bruno Black, the Chief Inspector of Schools. It’s Kevin Hawkins, Master of Disguise. He’s sitting opposite another bloke. This one’s dressed in black with a black cowboy mask covering his eyes. It must be the Boss. Lying across the table is a steel chain. One end is nailed down, the other is fastened to the ankle of an angel wearing jeans and a checky shirt with holes in the shoulders for his wings. Angelino.
The angel sits with his face in his hands and his elbows on his knees.
The Boss grins.
“Well done, K,” he says.
“Thanks, Boss.”
“You’re a Proper Villain now.”
“Thanks, Boss.”
The Boss leans forward and stares down at Angelino.
“You’ve had it easy up to now, lad,” he snarls. “Bus drivers’ pockets and nice school dinners and lovely sweet bairns and everybody saying, ‘Oh, isn’t he lovely,’ and “Look how he flies,’ and ‘Listen to how he speaks,’ and ‘Isn’t he just the loveliest little angel we’ve ever seen in our lovely, lovely world?’ Well, welcome to the real world, sonny. Welcome to the world of the Boss and his sidekick, K. We are Wicked, we are Evil. We are Monsters. We are your worst Nightmare!”
The Boss lowers his face closer to the little angel.
“We,” he whispers, “are the Devil.”
The two blokes laugh a wicked laugh.
“I want Bert,” says Angelino. “I want Betty.”
The Boss sneers. He laughs again.
“That’s all over now, lad. You belong to us! K, the phone!”
K lifts the phone receiver, passes it to the Boss. The Boss dials a number.
“We got it,” he snarls down the phone. “Aye, just like I telt you. Little thing with wings like birds… Aye, we’ll be considering offers over the weekend. Starting price, a hundred grand… Credit? No, we don’t take bloomin’ credit. Cash or nowt. Get your bid in or you’ll have no chance.”
He clicks it off, clicks it on again, dials another number.
“Good afternoon, Your Lordship… Yes, we have indeed… No, sir, no one knows… Yes, sir. Of course, sir… Oh, he would look splendid against your gilded columns and your painted ceilings… I should say that there is interest from other quarters… Thank you very much, sir.”
He puts the phone down, lifts it again, dials again.
“Badger,” he snarls. “It’s here… Now… Yes, the wings are proper real. No fakery, no tricks… Course he can fly… Course he’ll look great in that massive bloomin’ cage – they’ll come from miles away… Food? Cake and custard, I believe. Not much more.”
He puts the phone down, rubs his hands.
The phone rings. He lifts it up.
“Yes, Your Lordship. Of course we are in a position to sell. He is in our possession. No one else has any claim on him. He now belongs to us…No, sir, there will be no trouble from the authorities. The police will not become involved. After all, how can one steal an angel…? Thank you, sir… Yes, sir… No, sir… Certainly, sir… We will look forward to your bid, sir. Will it be possible to let us know by Monday?”
He puts the phone down, pokes Angelino in the ribs.
“This is the world you’ve come down to,” he tells him. “A mad, bad, crazy rotten world filled with crooks and villains and with wicked blokes like K and me. And lucky us, we’ve just grabbed you!”
He giggles, snarls, claps his hands.
“You, my lad,” he says, “are a bloomin’ godsend!” Then he calms himself, and softly snarls, “So, are there any more where you come from?”
Angelino stares back at him.
“Any little feathered friends?” asks the Boss. “Any more of you turning up in bus drivers’ pockets or dinner ladies’ custard jugs?”
K laughs.
“Imagine that!” he says. “A little angel crawling out of Betty’s custard!”
The Boss glares him.
“This ain’t a laughing matter, K. If there’s any other angels, we need to be the first to know.”
“Aye, Boss. That’s right, Boss. Sorry, Boss.”
“You’ve done good so far, K. Beady eyes and good disguise. I’m proud of you. But you got to keep concentrating, you got to keep alert.”
“Thanks, Boss. I do me best, Boss.”
The Boss prods the angel again.
“Come on. Speak up. Tell us where your pals are. Tell us where they’re hiding and flying. Is there any other pockets they’ve landed in?”
Angelino just stares.
“We have ways of making you talk,” says the Boss.
“Have we, Boss?” says K.
“Course we have,” says the Boss. “We’ve done them before, haven’t we, K? Horrible things. Remember? Very, very scary things.”
He glares at his partner in crime.
“Oh aye, Boss,” K says. “Aye, I remember now. Terrible things.”
“Good lad. Now keep an eye on him. I’m going to the bog.”
The Boss steps out of the room.
“We haven’t really done those things,” K whispers to the angel.
“I want Betty,” says Angelino.
K tries to sneer. The angel slumps. K reaches out and touches his wings. They remind him of the wings he wore in the school play, when he was in Miss O’Malley’s class. They were made of strips of cardboard painted to look like feathers. He remembers farting “We Three Kings of Orient Are”.
“I was an angel once,” he says.
Angelino just stares back at him.
“Miss O’Malley used to say I was a little monster,” says K.
“I want Bert,” says Angelino.
“Don’t think she meant it, though. She used to pat my head and say I just needed to concentrate a bit more. Like the Boss says now. Can you concentrate, Angelino?”
“I want Nancy,” says Angelino.
K sighs. He shrugs.
“I know,” he says. “But never mind.” He thinks about school again. “I was hopeless at sums but excellent at farting. Even Miss O’Malley used to smile when I did that. Would you like to hear—”
The phone rings. K jumps. He stares at it. It keeps on ringing.
“Get that phone!” yells the Boss from the bog.
K picks it up. There’s silence on the other end.
“Hello?” says K.
There’s heavy breathing.
“Where’s the Boss?” snarls a deep voice.
“On the toilet,” answers K.
He hears the toilet flush.
“He’s finished,” says K.
“Tell him Basher rang.”
“Is there a message?”
The phone clicks and there’s silence again.
The Boss hurries in.
“Who is it?”
“He’s gone,” says K.
“Who was it?”
“Basher.”
The Boss stops dead still.
“Basher?”
“Yes, Boss.”
“Basher Malone?”
“Dunno, Boss. Is there more than one?”
The Boss sits down. He licks his lips.
“Do you know him, Boss?”
The Boss stares into the void.
“I was at school with him,” he says.
“Was he your pal?” says K.
The Boss’s hand reaches across the table and touches the angel’s wing.
“Was he nice?” says K.
The Boss just stares at him.
The man in white simply disappears from sight with the angel in his fist. The children and Ms Monteverdi jump out of the bus and run through the packed streets. Other passengers from the bus join in. They run through shops and supermarkets and cafes and pubs.
The children yell out, “Angelino! Angelino! Angelino!”
They stop passers-by.
“Did you see a man in white carrying an angel?” Nancy asks a sweet old lady pushing a tartan shopper-on-wheels.
“An angel? No, pet. Are you sure?”
“We’ve lost an angel!” Jack Fox says to a bloke in a suit and tie hurrying into a bank.
“An angel?” he answers.
“He’s been stolen, señor!” Jack says.
“Are you having me on?” says the bloke. “Are you mad? And why’re you talking foreign? And why aren’t you at school?”
Everywhere it’s the same.
An angel? Mebbe you got it wrong, pet. Mebbe it was a delusion, son – or an illusion. Mebbe it was a publicity stunt, a circus act, a magic trick. Mebbe you just dreamed it. Mebbe you should all calm down. Mebbe you should all just get back to school!
Bert drives back and forth through the town, down narrow shopping streets and round roundabouts and through estates and past great apartment blocks and supermarkets and pubs and restaurants and banks and churches, and nowhere is there an angel to be seen.
They all come together again in the market square.
Father Coogan from Connemara happens to be passing by.
He looks at them with gentle priestly eyes and asks what’s going on.
“We’ve lost our angel, Father!” cries Ms Monteverdi.
He smiles kindly.
“Oh now, haven’t we all?”
“We mean it, Father. We had an angel, Angelino, and now he’s gone.”
“It’s true,” says Alice Obi.
The priest recognizes her from his congregation.
He links his hands across his rotund belly.
“Now, Alice,” he says, “haven’t I said often enough that the images of angels in our church are simply that? Stone images. They are things for us to contemplate. Some say they are signs of our inner goodness, of our yearning for—”
Bert stamps his foot.
“He’s a bloomin’ angel! And he was in your bloomin’ church just yesterday!”
“In my church?”
“Aye, with Betty.”
“With Betty? I certainly saw your wife, Mr Brown, but I have to say there was no sign of any angel.”
“Of course there wasn’t! He was in her shopping bag!”
The priest blinks. He taps his cheek.
“I see,” he says. “So the angel was in Betty’s shopping bag—”
