The Tale of Angelino Brown

by David Almond

  “It doesn’t matter now,” says K. “I got put into care. I soon nicked off from that. Soon nicked off from school. I disappeared, Angelino. I’ve got a new life now. I got together with the Boss. We’re a pair of Proper Villains. And I’m a Master of Disguise. And everything’s better.”

  But he doesn’t look like a Proper Villain. It doesn’t look like everything’s better. K looks like a Little Lost Boy. A little lost boy with tears glittering in his eyes who wants a cuddle from his mum.

  Angelino hums a little tune.

  “That’s nice, Angelino,” says K.

  Angelino goes on humming softly and sweetly.

  They rest together in the room and gaze into the beautiful immensity of space. Angelino hums and K joins in and together they make soft starry dreamy music.

  “That’s very nice,” murmurs K.

  “That’s nice,” says Angelino.

  K starts to snooze and dream.

  Angelino watches over him.

  The same sickle moon and the same brilliant stars shine down on Bus Conductor’s Lane. They shine into Bert and Betty’s house. They shine through the window of Paul’s bedroom and onto Betty and Bert, who are sitting together on the bed, holding hands. They’ve got down the photograph of Paul, and Angelino’s cardboard box with his name written on it. They’ve got Angelino’s little pyjamas and his clothes and their minds are filled with pain and they don’t know what to do except to hold each other’s hands and cry.

  The night deepens. The moon and stars intensify. All across the city, the people in our story sleep and dream. Except the kids. They don’t sleep or dream at all. They’re wide awake. They’re whispering to each other under their blankets on their mobile phones. They’re planning tomorrow’s search for Angelino. They’re going to tell their parents that they’re heading off together for a day in the park.

  “We could ask Ms Monteverdi to help,” says Nancy. “She understands. She knows it’s a Matter of Life and Death.”

  “We can’t,” says Alice Obi. “She’d get the sack. Imagine the headlines: Mad Art Teacher Helps Crazy Kids Look for Angels.”

  “You’re right,” sighs Nancy. “They’d have her guts for garters. She’d never teach again.”

  “Who else is there?” says Alice.

  “Bert and Betty?” suggests Jack.

  “No,” says Nancy. “They’re both just too upset.”

  They all ponder. They know there’s nobody. Nobody else would understand, or even believe.

  “We’re on our own,” says Jack.

  “On our own,” says Alice.

  They tremble in their beds.

  “It’ll be all right,” says Jack. “If the Man in White was the Bloke in Black, he didn’t really look dangerous at all. He looked just like—”

  “A big daft lad!” says Nancy.

  “That’s right,” says Alice Obi. “And we are—”

  “A team!” says Jack Fox. He pats his Barcelona badge. “The greatest team! El mejor equipo!”

  And in quiet voices, beneath their blankets, they make their plans.

  The Boss’s dreams are deep, dark and disturbing. They’re filled with ghosts and demons, monsters, witches. He tosses and turns, sweats and groans in his bed. His dreams begin to take the shape of Basher Malone, the awful massive bullying boy from junior school who scared the living daylights out of everyone. Basher’s grown into a huge and scary hulk of a man. He’s come into the room where the Boss is lying. He stands right over his bed. He gently taps the Boss’s shoulder.

  “Wake up, Boss,” he growls. “Your old mate Basher Malone has come to call.”

  The Boss snorts in terror and wakes up. No one there.

  Quaking and trembling, he goes back into the room next door. It is still night.

  K’s resting his head on his arms at the table. He stirs as the Boss comes in.

  “I wasn’t asleep, Boss,” he grunts.

  “It’s OK, K,” says the Boss. “No bother with the angel?” he asks. “No tricks? No escape attempts?”

  “No, Boss,” answers K.

  “Good. Good lad. What you been up to, then?”

  “Nothing much, Boss. Been looking at the stars and moon, Boss.”

  “That’s nice. Mind if I join in?”

  “Course not, Boss. You’re the Boss, Boss.”

  The Boss sits down at the table opposite K, as he was before. He looks at the angel and then at K. He frowns.

  “You look … a bit different,” he says.

  “Different?”

  “Aye. Like younger or something.”

  K blushes. He doesn’t know what the Boss is talking about.

  The Boss shrugs, then looks out into the night.

  “Stars,” he says. “Lots of them, eh?”

  “Aye, Boss,” says K. “Millions of ’em.”

  “Billions,” says the Boss.

  He stares at the stars and the spaces between the stars and tries to imagine the stars beyond the stars that nobody can see.

  He sighs.

  “Where did they all come from, K?”

  “Dunno, Boss.”

  “Me neither.”

  “You OK, Boss?”

  “Aye. I had some funny dreams, that’s all.”

  “I get them,” says K.

  “Do you? Dreams, eh? Where do they come from?”

  “Dunno, Boss.”

  K and the Boss look at the stars, at the moon.

  Angelino starts humming sweetly again. He flutters his wings in time with the tune. K and the Boss gaze at him.

  “To be honest,” says K, “sometimes I think I know next to nowt.”

  “Me too,” whispers the Boss. “Absolutely nowt at all. Sometimes I just feel like…”

  “A little bairn?” says K.

  “Aye.”

  “What were you like, Boss, when you were a little bairn?”

  The Boss thinks back. It wasn’t long ago.

  “I wanted to be hard,” he says, “like me dad.”

  “And were you?”

  “No. He said I was useless. He said I’d come to nowt…” He sniffs. “He cleared off when I was eight.”

  He sniffs again.

  “Then I grew up and I thought, I’ll show him what I can do. I’ll be the Boss!”

  “Does he know?”

  “Not yet. I dunno where he is.”

  They sigh together. Angelino hums. They both lean down, and rest their heads on their arms. Soon they’re breathing softly together, like pals, like brothers.

  Angelino sits up straight and fiddles with the chain around his ankle. He slips it off. He stands and spreads his wings. He flies up from the table and hovers there, looking down at the Boss and K.

  Then he hovers at the window, watching the dark shadows of the city below.

  Out there, somewhere in the darkest shadows of the darkest alley beyond the darkest lane, a dark door opens. A dark figure steps into the night. A huge figure with thick shoulders and a thick neck and a thick skull. Thick arms, thick legs, thick chest. This figure moves in black silent soft-soled boots through ancient forgotten cobbled streets, over cracks and potholes, past shuttered hovels, half-demolished warehouses, ruined chapels, past doors that were last opened and windows that were last looked through a century or more ago. Rats scatter into holes in the earth as the figure approaches and passes by. Owls stop their hooting. Bats flicker to the safety of their roofs and steeples. Mice tremble, birds shiver in their nests. Even the light of the moon and the stars seems reluctant to touch this massive horrid moving thing.

  The figure comes at last to newer places, to civilization, to where light shines down from street lights and out from closed shopfronts. There are voices here – distant laughter, someone singing high up behind closed curtains. A few cars, the night’s late taxis, a single, brilliantly lit bus carrying passengers home again after lovely Friday evenings in pubs and restaurants and cinemas and theatres. A bunch of gleeful young people come into sight. They’re chattering,
singing, half dancing as they move along the street. They quieten when they see our dark figure approach. They drag each other quickly to the other side of the road. They turn and run. Did he even see them? Who knows? He moves on, relentless. He pauses only at one shop doorway. There’s a couple of poor homeless folk in there, in thin sleeping bags on cardboard beds. He stares down at them. He snarls. He kicks them. He snorts as their eyes open, as they stare out of their troubled minds towards this beast who has come to call on them. He snarls again, he kicks again, moves on again. He turns his eyes upwards. He seeks the window behind which the Boss, K and Angelino are to be found.

  Yes, this is him, Basher Malone. Somehow he knows about the coming of the angel. The image of the angel now hovers shining at the centre of his dark, dark being. He wants it for himself. He wants Angelino.

  And who could save our little angel from such a beast as this?

  Nancy hums as she swings back and forward on a blue plastic swing in the park. It creaks softly, in time with her movement. She’s been coming to this swings park since she was a toddler, like all the kids round here. There’s toddlers here already, with their mums and dads, their grandparents. They’re laughing and yelling and squealing from the baby swings and the roundabouts, Higher, higher! Faster, faster! Yeeeeeeee!

  She swings higher, just like them. She loves to close her eyes until she starts to feel dizzy, to hear the squeak of the swing, to feel the breeze blowing on her face and in her hair.

  And then here they are, Jack Fox and Alice Obi, coming through the gate. Alice has her library book. Jack has a rucksack on his back. They all give each other a quick hug. They’re very bright-eyed and bushy-tailed considering they’ve been up plotting half the night.

  They sit in a row on a green park bench.

  Jack opens his rucksack.

  “I brought some cheese sandwiches,” he says. “And me mam’s washing line in case we need to tie anybody up.”

  “Good thinking,” says Nancy.

  She takes some sheets of paper from her pocket and unfolds them. One of them is a very good likeness of Bruno Black. The other is a picture of the same face but with white hair and a white beard.

  “We’ll show them to people and ask if they’ve seen them,” she says. “And this as well.”

  It’s a beautiful picture of little Angelino in his jeans and checked shirt with his wings raised high behind him.

  “We’ll need it,” she says. “’Cos when we say ‘Have you seen an angel anywhere about?’ they’ll think of those perfect shining daft white things like in your book, Alice, not a proper angel like our Angelino.”

  “Good thinking,” says Alice.

  She takes a little foil-wrapped package from her coat pocket. She peels some of the foil back.

  “Chocolate cake,” she says. “So Angelino can have one of his favourite things as soon as we get him back again.”

  “Brilliant!” says Nancy. “And we’ve all brought our great big hearts!”

  “And,” says Alice, “I’ve also found an experiment that might help.”

  “An experiment?” say Nancy and Jack.

  “Yes. An Angel Experiment. I found it in this library book. It’s weird, but it’s worth a try.”

  They leave the swings park, away from the noise of the little kids and the roundabouts and the swings. Alice leads them into the shade of a great chestnut tree.

  They sit together on the grass.

  “I was looking through the book last night,” says Alice, “and I came upon this chapter: ‘How to Find the Angel’.”

  “Bloomin’ heck!” says Nancy.

  “Caramba!” says Jack Fox.

  “First of all,” says Alice, “you have to answer the question ‘Do you believe in the angel?’”

  Jack laughs.

  “That’s like asking if I believe in Lionel Messi! Of course I do!”

  “Me too!” says Nancy.

  “Good,” says Alice. “Then you have to say if you are open to new and strange experiences.”

  Now Nancy laughs.

  “After what’s happened this week I think I can say we are!”

  “Excellent,” says Alice. “Now we all have to lie down.”

  The three of them lie with their heads close together, so that they make a star-like shape under the tree.

  “Breathe deeply and slowly,” says Alice. “Close your eyes. Be stiller and quieter than you’ve ever been before.”

  They try to do that. They hear the noise of traffic and people and leaves rustling in the breeze.

  A young couple look towards them as they walk through the park, but they hurry on. All they see is three nice kids enjoying the shade on a sunny day. They see the motionless bodies, but not what’s happening inside the minds, the hearts, the souls. Behind his closed eyes, Jack sees Lionel Messi skipping past defenders, curving the ball into the net. Nancy sees Angelino’s hand reaching out from Bert Brown’s pocket. Alice sees a library filled with shelves of wonderful books.

  “Now,” says Alice, “remember Angelino. Remember every little detail of his face, his body and his wings. Remember how he flies, how he dances, how – don’t laugh – he farts. Try to think of nothing else. Imagine nothing else. Imagine him so clearly that it feels like he’s part of you, like he’s there inside you.”

  The three minds concentrate. Angelino takes shape inside their heads. He dances, giggles, farts and flies. They all stay very still. Nancy gasps, because she feels something like wings fluttering inside her chest. Alice sees something glowing beautifully in the darkness deep inside her. Jack hears a farted tune of ‘We Three Kings’.”

  “Let him fly deeper, deeper, deeper,” says Alice.

  They all try to do this. Nancy trembles. She’s never realized how huge she is inside, what massive spaces there are in her body and her mind. It’s like she’s moving through herself, flying through herself.

  “In the book,” says Alice, “it says we have to take Angelino as deep as we can, as close to the centre of ourselves as we can.”

  Jack laughs, even as he’s feeling Angelino flying deeper, deeper. It’s like when he imagines he is Messi, when he’s running like Messi, when he’s not just Jack any more but also Lionel Messi. Now he’s Angelino, too, and he’s also Nancy and Alice Obi.

  “The book says you have to fly with the angel,” says Alice. “Are you doing that?”

  “Yes!” the others say.

  “It’s dead weird,” adds Jack. “It’s brilliant!”

  They lie in silence, flying with the angel inside them.

  “Then,” says Alice, “when the angel is inside you, the book says the angel outside you will call out. That’s how we’ll find out where Angelino is.”

  They continue to lie and fly.

  “Yes!” says Nancy suddenly. “He’s calling!”

  “Angelino is?” says Alice.

  “Yes! I can feel him! I know he’s somewhere near by!”

  “Is he safe?” asks Jack. “Is he happy?”

  “Yes!” cries Nancy. “No! I don’t know. He’s pulling me towards him!”

  “That’s what the book says should happen!” says Alice. “Where is he, Nancy?”

  Nancy stands up. She turns through the shadow. It’s as if there’s a magnet working her, like she’s some kind of compass.

  “Which direction?” says Jack.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t think I know…”

  And then, suddenly: “Yes. This way! Hurry!”

  Basher’s moving through the light now. The morning sunlight shines on him through the gaps between the city’s buildings. His dark clothes are dusty, faded, worn. He’s wearing shades – maybe because he’s not used to so much light.

  He lumbers forward in his big black soft-soled boots. He swings his head and sniffs the air. He hasn’t done Alice’s experiment, but it looks like he’s being pulled by the same angelic force that pulls Nancy and her friends.

  We don’t know much about Basher, but I gue
ss his name – is it his real name or a nickname? – tells us something. And the Boss’s words about what he was like when he was at school tell us more. He was a big bullying boy, and as we saw when he kicked the homeless folk, he’s a big bully still.

  Look how folk swerve to avoid him as if he’s a monster passing by.

  Is he a monster?

  Maybe he is.

  Look how mums and dads hold their children’s hands more tightly.

  Listen to them tell the children to turn their eyes away.

  Look how dogs cower from him.

  A couple of times Basher snorts in a kind of laughter, but is it true laughter?

  Yes, he looks very scary, but does he look very free? Can it really make him happy, to see people and beasts reacting like that? Could anybody really want to see such things? If we could see the eyes behind the shades and look into the mind behind the eyes, maybe we’d see something different.

  Maybe, like lots of bullies and lots of nasty blokes, he knows that something’s missing from him, something that keeps him from feeling good, or even from feeling just OK.

  Maybe that’s why he wants Angelino.

  Maybe he wants the angel to turn him into a better Basher, a better man.

  Or maybe, if he gets his hands on the angel, he will do something truly wicked, something truly awful?

  In the meantime, little Angelino’s been hovering in the window over the Boss and K. He’s been thinking about Betty and Bert, about Bert’s pocket and Betty’s custard, and about sleeping in the lovely bed that used to be Paul’s and about his lovely new clothes and his lovely new friends.

  And he finds himself crying, something that he’s not yet done in his little life; something he’s not yet done since turning up in Bert’s pocket just a few short days ago at the start of our tale.

  “I want Betty and Bert,” he whispers to himself in a tiny, trembling voice. “I want my friends!”

  A few tears fall from his eyes and run down his cheeks and splash down onto the table in the middle of the small bare room.

  He looks out into the city and towards the hills beyond. It’s so enormous, it seems as enormous as the universe itself. Where are they? Where are Betty and Bert and Bus Conductor’s Lane and St Mungo’s School? Where are Nancy and his friends?