The below is from the opening chapter of The Angels of L19 by Jonathan Walker, published later this week.
When he was born again, the walls began to sing.
On Sundays, it’s fish fingers for tea, with watery potatoes and grey butter beans. Robert eats at five o’clock, an hour before Uncle Edward and Auntie Rose, but his aunt often sits with him at the morning-room table.
There are always fourteen to twenty beans: seven to ten mouthfuls, two beans at a time. Mix each mouthful with one-third of a fish finger to disguise the taste and texture. Half a gulp of orange squash to wash it down.
Auntie Rose is sitting at the other end of the table. Apron on; arms crossed. Her eyes follow the fork up to his mouth.
The fluorescent tube above stutters, as if there’s something trapped inside.
By five thirty, Robert’s back in the television room, at the far end of the sofa, near the window. Auntie Rose is at its other end, by the door; Uncle Edward’s in an armchair in the far corner of the room.
‘Aren’t you going to church?’ Auntie Rose asks.
‘Not today,’ Robert says.
‘But you didn’t go this morning either.’
He shrugs. He normally goes twice on Sunday, but last week he arrived at the evening service late, and before he entered the church, he placed a brown paper bag over his head with the words ‘Shame and Disgrace’ written on it in black marker. He couldn’t see where he was going, so he bumped into a few pews before he found an empty seat near the back.
The speaker was from Jireh in Bebington. Quite a good sermon, on the theme of repentance. But Bill Forester said Robert was ‘disruptive’, and he should stay away from church, just for today.
No need to mention any of that.
The Radio Times sits on the empty cushion between Auntie Rose and Robert, folded neatly to tonight’s page for BBC1. She picks it up. ‘Do you want to watch Songs of Praise then?’
He winces. ‘It’s not the same thing.’
‘Alright, I only asked.’
A choral ‘Amen’ comes through the wall from the Foresters next door. It’s a collective sound: Robert can’t distinguish the individual voices of Bill, or his daughter, Tracey, Robert’s best friend, because their whole family comes round for Sunday lunch – aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents – and they stay for the afternoon. And when they meet together, they sing.
Robert knows the Foresters’ habits because he lived next door for several weeks three years ago, shortly after he moved to Liverpool. Auntie Rose was in hospital with golden staphylococcus. Uncle Edward went to the bookies every afternoon, and passed out when he came back. Even though Robert was twelve, the Foresters made him show his teeth at night after brushing. He didn’t mind. He was happy there.
If Robert pressed himself against the adjoining wall, he could hear the singing with his body. Wherefore my bowels shall sound like an harp for Moab, and mine inward parts for Kirharesh. With his aunt and uncle in the room, he can’t follow the sound down into the dead cavity between the two houses. But he can turn an imaginary volume dial up, chasing the echo back to its source. The background hiss in his head gets louder as the sounds from next door die away.
Robert keeps his eyes fixed straight ahead, but he can feel his uncle’s gaze drifting towards him like a drunk at a steering wheel. If Robert jerks his head left, to catch him out, his uncle stares straight ahead at the television, even though it’s turned off at the wall to save electricity.
Above the carriage clock on the mantelpiece, there’s a seam of glue where the edges on the rolls of flock wallpaper go out of alignment. Solid resistance for a picking fingernail. Nits on a scalp.
His ears pop, and the pressure in the room adjusts. Here is a new thing, but at the same time, a very old thing. A presence.
It first appeared to Robert last summer, when he came home from church camp in Wales. He wasn’t surprised to find it waiting for him. He was expecting a message from God, after giving his heart to Jesus. The only surprise was that the presence didn’t immediately deliver the message. It’s returned several times since then, but Robert’s still waiting for it to speak. It’s only for him. No one else can see it.
It stands in the centre of the room, where it arranges the other occupants around itself like the figures on a clock face. Tick-tock on the mantelpiece. Or is it coming from the presence?
Its body is ivory; at other times, wax. Always hairless, smooth. No articulations or openings, apart from a bubbled vertical slit in the centre of its head, like the line of glue on the wallpaper.
An egg. Sealed, but waiting to split.
Even though the central heating’s on, Auntie Rose pulls her cardigan tighter. Uncle Edward stands up and turns on a bar of the electric fire, which pings and creaks as it turns orange. The light behind the fake coals rotates and flickers. Like the ticking of the clock, the smell of burning dust comes from the presence, not the fire. It draws all sensations into itself.
Silence in heaven for half an hour. Silence in the television room too.
Robert sometimes feels like his aunt and uncle have already died, and he’s living with their ghosts. Or their empty bodies.
***
Tracey always goes to youth group after the evening service, so she doesn’t come home until ten. Like Robert’s, her bedroom looks onto the back garden and has a rectangular bay window. At about ten twenty, Tracey knocks the base of her fist three times against her side of the common wall between their rooms. Robert knows she’s hitting an X drawn there in pencil; he thuds back at the identical X on his side, directly above the disused fireplace. Then they both go to the side panels of their respective windows, and turn to face one another.
Tracey has her Walkman on, the same model as Robert’s, but red instead of blue. She touches her hands to the earphones, then holds her index fingers up in the air, parallel to one another, as if measuring the space between them. She swipes them through the air like drumsticks and mouths the words, ‘This song is not a rebel song!’
Robert mouths in reply, ‘This song is “Sunday Bloody Sunday”.’ From the introduction to the live version on Under a Blood Red Sky. He leaves Tracey alone at the window for a minute, while he goes to find his own Walkman.
In the studio version of the song, the bass is the easiest instrument to follow, just to the right in the mix. Dur-der-der, der-dun; dur-der-der, der-dun. A five-note pattern, although it sounds like four unless Robert slows it down in his head and counts it out on his fingers. The guitar’s flat: dead chop. Marching forward, no time to waste. The cymbals spill everywhere, washing out to the edges. The violin cuts the song open.
Back at the window, Robert looks at Tracey’s hands. Her fingers are hitting the sill so fast they’re almost invisible. Eyes closed, but she knows he’s there. He waits for her to open her eyes again and flutters an imaginary white flag on a pole above his head.
Her nightie is stitched in diamond shapes – like a quilt – with lace at the collar and cuffs. Eczema flares at her wrists, and out in a halo around the tiny metal cross she wears around her neck. Sometimes she uses a steroid cream, and then she glistens. Dragon skin. Beautiful.
When the presence delivers its message, everyone will know that God has chosen Robert. Bill and Tracey will know.
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The Angels of L19 is published August 19th. Order it from us here.