A Start

Christmas before last,  I asked George to write me a Christmas story. He obliged with the beautiful  story below. It forms part one of the complete story, as you’ll see, because as I started to comment on it, a strangely wonderful thing happened: my comment  turned into a sequel!

                                                                                                                                   

                                                                                                                                    Flying planes

                                                                                                                                     Flying birds

                                                                                                                                   Flying angels

   

                                                                                                                             Flying imagination

                                                                              

                                                                                                                  We have to start somewhere ….

                  

                                                                                                                                     Flying kites

                                                                        Painter Pieter van der Westhuizen on the kites in many of his paintings.

                                                                                                                                             ***

”I think there are more people around who have seen ghosts, than people who have seen angels.” Beth examines the remaining content on the bottom of her tea cup intently while saying this.

   

“Where on earth does that come from?” asks the astonished Sundra.

“I don’t know. The thought just came to me this week on seeing all the Christmas decorations with the angels in the shops. As a child I could listen for hours as the older people told stories about experiences with ghosts and the supernatural. They never said anything about angels.”

     

“Maybe they just didn’t know what an angel looks like” says Sundra.

   

“At the yoga centre where I go to, against the bathroom wall, someone has put up a picture of an angel standing guard over a sleeping girl. There’s a verse about the angels who will be sent to guard over us at the bottom of the picture. But girl friends, if that’s what an angel looks like, then I want to be guarded over. Something to behold, I tell you. Naked torso, broad shoulders and long curly hair falling over his one eye as he looks at the girl. I can only hope that one day there will be a throng of angels waiting for me!”

    

There is boisterous laughter around the table in the tea room.

    

“You should be ashamed, Chantel!” says Elaine vehemently. “It is because you’re involved in all these strange practices that you talk such a lot of nonsense.”

     

“I’d rather be open minded than a goody two shoes like you, Elaine. I bet your angel will be wearing a suit and a tie and the message he has to deliver will be typed on a sheet of paper that he keeps in a folder.”

      

“Cut it out you two!” intervenes Sundra. “Lunch time won’t last forever. Where is Rose?”

       

Connie nods with her head in the direction of the balcony outside the tea room where the smokers are gathered. “I’m a little scared of Rose” she says. “She always looks upset about something and she can give the clients such a hard time over the phone there at Sales! Why do they keep her if she’s like that? And why is she like that anyway?”

     

“No, they won’t remove her from Sales, because let’s face it, she is good” remarks Beth. “She brings in the big money for the company and has years of experience. One can criticize her style but you mustn’t let her attitude upset you, Child. Deep underneath she actually has a small and tender heart. I often think that she has grown a protective shell around her. The lives of others are a closed book.”

     

At the end of her sentence she looks up as a man appears in the doorway. He stands there in his blue overall trousers and gholf shirt, with a thin tuft of hair hanging straight over his forehead. The toolbox he’s carrying seems almost too big for him.

     

“Can we help you?” she asks as the   others also turn in their chairs to face him.

     

 “I’m here to have a look at the urn, but I can come back later. The lights in the store room also need attention.”

      

“No, come in” says Beth as she pushes her chair back and gets up. “That urn has given us such a lot of trouble over the last few months that we’ll be just too glad to make room for anybody who can fix it. As it is we wait for ages for the water in the kettle to boil and there never is enough for everybody.”

    

 “Let’s go and have a quick look at the stuff that girl in Peter’s department is making and selling. Maybe we can find some useful gifts there.” Chantel’s and the other’s voices become fainter as they leave the room and walk down the long passage.

    

For a while it is silent in the empty room while the man is busy with the urn. He gives a satisfied smile as he plugs it in and the red light goes on. With a jug that he finds in one of the cupboards he starts filling it. The homelike sound of  water boiling is just starting to emerge when the balcony door opens and Rose enters.

   

“Oh” she says, “where are all the others?”

 “They went to have a look at Kim’s candles at Accounts” comes the answer from the cupboard.

    

Almost suspiciously Rose looks at him. “Do you work here?” she asks.

    

“No, one can probably say I’m freelancing. Repair broken stuff, that type of thing. Do you want some tea? I’m going to make me some. It’s been a hectic morning.”

    

“Yes, thank you. I’ll get my own sugar and milk.” Rose pulls out a chair, places the packet of cigarettes and the lighter next to her on the table and sits down. She makes no effort to make small talk, looks absent-mindedly at her fingernails as the cup is placed before her and he sits down at the other side of the table. In silence, that for some reason or the other isn’t  uncomfortable for either of them, they drink their tea.

    

Suddenly he sits up straight. “I wish you could see it” he says. “The sun is shining in a particular way through the window and gives you hair a lovely glow. You have beautiful hair.” He mentions it as if it is the most natural fact in the world.

     

There is the faint sign of a smile on Rose’s lips. “One of the great Russian authors, can’t remember who exactly, said that people always say a woman has beautiful hair when she... How did he put it? “When a woman isn’t beautiful, people always say, ‘You have beautiful eyes, you have lovely hair.”

     

He raises one eyebrow in mock surprise. “You read!”

“I read” she says.

 “Chekhov, mind you!”

“That’s the one! I must confess, I came across the quote somewhere and liked it.”

 “I would therefore not say anything about your beautiful eyes. Because of Chekhov, you know. ”Rose blushes slightly.

“This of course does not mean that you can’t say anything about my hair and eyes. I am a man. The quote does not apply to me. You can compliment me. I can take it.”

    

For the first time Rose looks at him. Without being self conscious or shy, she really looks at him. At his hair and eyes. At first she only smiles. Then from somewhere deep inside, the laugh dislodges itself, rises to the surface. It shakes her shoulders, flows through her so that she throws her head back and as she becomes limp, it drapes her over her chair. When she starts coughing, she catches her breath and calms down a little. But every now and then the laughter surfaces again and she spreads it in front of her, like someone would do with a muscle that has not been in use for a long time – contracting and releasing it.

    

Silently, he laughs with her, a soft expression on his face. As if he is looking at something very beautiful that he thoroughly enjoys.

    

Rose pushes out another laugh, wipes the tears from her eyes, gathers her cigarettes and lighter, gets up. “Well, I’ll say this much about you, you can make a wonderful cup of tea. Let me go and earn my living.” He smiles, nods in her direction. At the door she turns back. “Oh yes, a merry Christmas to you.” Then she is gone.

     

“And to you, Rose” he says before he gets up, puts the cups in the sink and starts gathering his tools.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 George

    

”So you think it was an angel?” Beth speaks in a low voice. Since the day in the tea room it is as if angels have surfaced everywhere. It isn’t surprising though taking the  season into account. Stimuli abound of mysterious winged creatures that have higher consciousness than mere mortals and are everywhere. Nobody she tried to talk to since that day, wanted to participate in her musings. But  Rose, while the two of them are busy stocktaking after the Christmas rush, doesn’t flinch.

 “It’s the only plausible explanation I have”. Beth cringes at the loudness of Rose’s reply. She doesn’t want to draw attention to their conversation. She’s thoroughly intrigued. She must know more. She halts her counting and settles down next to Rose.

The long night of stocktaking stretches out in front of them but they both know the drill by heart. Although they don’t mix socially, and it is true that Rose is notoriously difficult, they make an excellent team. In their many years of working together, Rose in Sales, and Beth in Marketing, they have sought each other out on occasions like the yearly stocktaking.They always finish way ahead of the other teams. Beth knows there is enough time to give this topic her full attention. She must hear this out!

Beth continues: “I remember that day in the tea room but the man only vaguely. I was busy talking about angels and the others were dismissing it like they always do with anything that appears to be an exercise in thinking. But good heavens, Rose!                                                           That couldn’t have been an angel, could it? I recall him as just a regular Joe with wispy hair in overall pants.”

Rose doesn’t look up from the register. She seems to be adding up a column. “I know exactly what he looked like” she says. a Velvety softness has crept into her voice. “And he knew my name. Also he knew about Kim’s candles.” Her gaze jumps abruptly from the page to the shelve in front of her, her eyes flitting this way and that as if searching for something important. “And Chekhov! He knew about Chekhov!”

 “About who?” Rose ignores the question for the moment. The encounter that day in the tea room shortly before Christmas feels like a gift. No, it feels more like a start. Her mind struggles to fathom what her exact feeling is. She remembers the unexpected glee she felt at the man’s quibbling. His good-natured jesting, even with himself and his appearance.

The more she thinks of it, the more she realises that the whole event is something she had never experienced before. But how does one explain this? How does one explain that it was unusual precisely because it was so commonplace? She tries to stay with the feeling. To narrow it down to a singular emotion. Safe, she felt perfectly safe, she realises, while she was sitting there laughing from her belly like a child with the stranger smiling at her. He smiled at her: Rose.

 To be honest, she doesn’t feel like sharing the moment at all. Since that day a gentleness had found it’s way back into her heart. She again felt like she did before John died. She now wants to cherish it and keep it safe within her. She shouldn’t have shared this with Beth. She’ll provide Beth with just enough food for thought, but the angel stays hers.

All this passes through her in the moments that her gaze rests unseeingly on the shelves in front of her.“Really Beth,” she snaps. “How long have we been working here? Have you ever seen them use freelance handymen? Old Chip has been here for ages and his son stands in for him when he’s off colour. Where did this chap appear from? And has anybody seen him since?

Beth nods in agreement but her face shows one big question mark. “I suppose we could enquire about it? Ask someone at Maintenance?

“I did.” Rose bites her tongue. She shouldn’t have said it. Now Beth is all ears and her interest piqued again. “And?”

 Rose sighs resignedly. “Old Chip’s wife had to go for a small op in Joburg. His son had to take them because Chip doesn’t do the highways and byways these days. Kruger at Maintenance felt nothing was so pressing that it couldn’t wait a day.”

 Rose rises and pats the pocket of her dust coat. “I need a smoke. Let’s go get some coffee.” She needs to divert Beth’s attention.

 The urn is still hot from a recent boiling. They go out on the balcony with  their coffee and Rose lights a cigarette. The air is warm and humid after the hearty highveld storm  that had passed over the city that afternoon.

 They look out over the city in silence. “If it is so then,” says Beth after a while, “that  angels appear as ordinary people, why do they appear? What did your angel come to do that day, except fix the urn? It can’t be for that, can it? I mean, Old Chip would have fixed it eventually. It was no big crises, nothing life threatening or anything. Isn’t that their job? To assist with the serious stuff? The life threatening situations?

 “Maybe it’s not what they do here that’s important.” Rose says this without knowing where the line of thought is going to take her. ”Maybe it’s what we do during the encounter with them, that makes it  count as divine intervention. Even if we don’t recognize them as angels.”

She shakes her head. “I’m putting it all wrong!” She searches for the right words. ”What I’m trying to say is that any moment, with anybody, where we are really present and paying attention, might be a moment where an angel is present. Visible or invisible.”

“Goodness, Rose! Now you’re losing me. It would be comforting enough to know there’s an angel watching over me to protect me from real harm – who makes me stop when some maniac jumps a red light. Those type of things. It makes sense about being present, being in the moment, the whole conscious living thing, but I think it’s become the latest buzz words. It’s the latest and greatest recipe in just about every guru’s self help manual. I mean, there’s things that have to be planned for, worries and responsibilities that seep into every waking moment. Where’s the heavenly guides then?”

 Rose laughs as she kills the butt in the sand tray. ”You’re so right. I can personally  employ an angel on a full time basis, that I can tell you! On that piece of land that I’m trying to tame single-handedly, I could occupy a whole legion.”

The day is just starting to dawn as Beth drives out the parking garage on her way home. She thinks of her conversation with Rose and marvels at the change that has come over her recently. She is much more approachable nowadays. She thinks of angels like the plain looking Joe of the Urn, as she had jokingly dubbed him. How does one find them? Or do they find you? But Rose said something about every moment. How did she put it again?

She doesn’t see the cyclist. She swerves the car to avoid a brick lying in the road, and in that moment the sun’s first rays blinds her completely. All she senses is a thump and then the screech of metal on metal as the car collides with the bicycle.

 She finds the cyclist sitting on the side of the road. He seems dazed. She falls to her knees next to him. “Heavens, I didn’t see you! I’m sorry! So sorry! It’s so early still. Almost dark still. What are you doing cycling at this hour?!Are you all right? Where’s my phone? I must get help? Are you hurt? I’m so sorry!

She starts rising from her knees to get back to the car for her cell phone. The sun’s rays light up the young man’s face in front of her. Her breath catches as she notices every line, every tiny crease around his eyes and mouth. She notices where the helmet had pressed into his forehead, leaving a reddish indent. She sees his eyes filling up with tears.

She drops down on her knees again. “Are you an angel?” she asks.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Matilda

  "Rietfontein star" - One of the galaxy of marrow flowers gracing the fields at Christmas on the farm.