Naked Angels

‘You look just like your mother, Evangeline,’ he said.

‘No,’ Evangeline told him wisely, ‘I look just like you.’

Mikhail waited until Claude was at work before ransacking the apartment. Things had got out of hand. Tincan had been right: you had to get on. Nothing else mattered – it was stupid to pretend that it did. He threw things from cupboards and broke plates and glasses against the walls. He found Claude’s savings beneath the mattress on his father’s bed. The old man had said nothing as he took it, just stared at him with an evil glint in his eye. Maybe he had known Mikhail was living there. Maybe other boys had done the same thing.

Claude’s payments had never materialized after the first week. Mikhail had reminded him many times but Claude always came up with an excuse. For a man who worked in a bank he seemed strangely forgetful when it came to cash.

Mikhail counted out the exact amount he was owed and then sat staring at the rest. Put yourself first. Nothing else matters. He took a few notes more, then he put them back. Then he stuffed the whole wad into his pocket. Then he pulled it out again. Was he a thief or not? He couldn’t decide.

The long winter was over. As the snow cleared Mikhail had started cleaning the windows of Claude’s apartment of all their dust and grime, so that he could look out onto the small square below. He went out so little that his skin was unnaturally pale. He was a little fatter now, and Claude had bought him new clothes.

When Claude went out he would read or sleep and when he came back they would talk or he would pose for more photos. He also liked to take baths – lots of them – because he always felt dirty.

There was a smear on the glass. He licked his sleeve and wiped the smear off with spit. The more the sun shone the more oppressive the apartment had become. Claude would never turn the heating down because he said it was bad for his father’s health. When he came home he would take off his suit and wear a cotton kimono instead.

Watching other children in the square below was the most painful thing of all. There were boys of his age down there, playing football and messing about. He used to look at himself in the mirror sometimes, asking himself why he had deserved such a fate.

Claude liked to pose as much as he liked taking photos. Mikhail had discovered this fact while rooting out some photos of him in a suitcase under the bed.

‘Show me what to do and I’ll photograph you,’ he told Claude the next time they did some shots together. Claude had been selling the shots of him now, he was sure of it – not paying Mikhail for the posing, while he was getting paid well himself. He had tried not to think of all the men who must have looked at them.

Claude had looked pleased with Mikhail’s suggestion. He had shown Mikhail all the basics: how to set the lights, how to focus, and how to frame a shot. Then he’d sat coyly in front of the camera, beaming, while Mikhail clicked away.

Printing the photographs had been less fun, but Mikhail had persisted. Claude used the bathroom as a darkroom and, with two of them in there, it became over-crowded. He placed planks over the bath to use as a table and there was a red bulb in the socket that gave an eerie glow in the darkness. Claude apologized every time they got squeezed together and Mikhail didn’t know what was worse, the touching or the bleating apologies. There was a certain magic in the printing process that enthralled him every time, though. You put paper into a tank of fluid and faces appeared on that paper. He saw Claude’s face, weak and beaming, appearing slowly as he slooshed the stuff around.

He could almost stand Claude’s simpering smiles since he had come to the decision about leaving. He was not going back onto the streets, though. That much he knew for sure. He looked at the money again. Half of it, that was fair for all he’d been through. Half of it would be enough to teach Claude a lesson. He counted the notes into two piles and then worked out how long he could live on the money. He would need a job when it ran out; or he would need a job straight away if he was to spend the cash on a plane ticket. He stood up and padded into the studio. Claude’s camera was still on its tripod.

Mikhail unscrewed the camera carefully and wrapped it in a sheet before stuffing it inside his jacket and pulling up the zip. As he did so he heard Claude’s key in the lock.

‘Guess what,’ he heard Claude holler, ‘a robbery at the bank!’ He sounded happy. ‘Thieves broke in last night, and once we had been interviewed by the police they said we should have the rest of the day off while they cleared up—’ He saw the carnage inside his precious apartment and froze in the doorway.

‘Holy shit…’ Mikhail had never heard him swear before. It sounded funny and made him want to laugh. ‘Mikhail?’ Claude’s voice dropped. Mikhail heard him creeping around, looking for burglars. Two robberies in one day! He would spend the rest of his life telling the story.

He reached the studio and Mikhail hid behind the door. Claude’s head appeared first, low down, as though he were crouching. ‘Mikhail?’ he whispered. He sounded genuinely scared.

‘Claude.’ Mikhail stepped out suddenly. Claude’s eyes bulged with the shock and he looked as though he might have a seizure.

‘Jesus! Oh Christ, Mikhail, I thought you were … what happened? Did someone break in?’

Mikhail smiled. ‘No,’ he told Claude, ‘I’m leaving, that’s all. I’ve taken some money – all you owe me for posing – and I’ve borrowed a few of your things to see me through. You wouldn’t want me to starve, would you?’

Claude’s eyes were perfect circles. You could see the red veins all around them. His mouth drooped at the corners like a clown’s.

‘Leaving?’ he asked.

Mikhail nodded.

Claude stared around the room in disbelief. ‘You can’t leave me, Mikhail,’ he whispered, ‘not like this!’ ‘How, then?’ Mikhail asked him.

‘I don’t know.’ Claude looked desperate. ‘Sit down with me first. Have some coffee. We can talk. I’ll pay in future, I swear. I love you, Mikhail. Don’t leave me.’

He was on his knees again. Mikhail watched in disgust as he crawled across the floor and grabbed at his legs.

‘Please, Mikhail.’

Mikhail nearly lost his balance. ‘Stop it, you crazy bastard, you almost had me over!’

Claude looked up at him and his tearful eyes focused on the bulge in Mikhail’s jacket. His expression changed suddenly and he reached up towards it.

‘What have you got there?’ he asked. He ripped the jacket open. ‘My camera! No, Mikhail! Drop it, you little bastard! Give it back!’ He tried to wrest the camera from Mikhail but the boy was too quick for him. Mikhail walked towards the door to leave. When he turned Claude was behind him, an iron poker in his shaking hands and his face distorted by anger.

‘Give it to me, you bastard!’ he screamed. He lifted the poker above his head to strike but Mikhail moved first, ducking out of the way as the thing whistled past his ear.

‘Stop it, Claude!’ he shouted. ‘Are you mad, or something?’

‘My camera!’ Claude’s voice was completely unrecognizable. He lifted the poker again but Mikhail punched him in the face before he could strike. There was a sickening sound of bone being crushed and then a blinding pain in Mikhail’s knuckles. The pain doubled him up, and he thought his hand was broken. He shoved it between his legs and let out a howl.

Claude stood very still for a moment and then crumpled to the floor with blood spurting from his nose. The blood seemed endless, it flecked the walls and even reached the ceiling, where it speckled crimson against the white paint. Claude was silent. He sat propped against the hatstand, his eyes open but not moving. Mikhail thought he was watching him but when he stepped out of the way, the eyes stared straight ahead. The blood was bubbling now, making Mikhail feel sick.

‘Oh, Jesus, Claude, are you dead?’ he whispered to himself. He didn’t care so much, except for the fact that it would be another thing the police would come hunting him for.

Claude let out a moan and Mikhail let out a sigh of relief.

‘Don’t go, Mikhail,’ Claude gargled. Blood cascaded from his nose into his open mouth as he spoke. He spat the blood out and some of it peppered Mikhail’s jacket.

‘You stupid bastard!’ Mikhail said. The door opened at the far end of the hall. They both looked round at the same time. Claude’s father was standing in the doorway, clutching the wooden surround for support.

‘Fuck off!’ he said. There was no strength in his voice; it sounded as though he was already dead.

Mikhail looked at the old man and then he looked down at Claude.

Then he left.

Evangeline’s real father stayed at the house for a few days, until things got so bad between him and her grandmother that you could see sparks in the air. Grandma Klippel went through the motions of playing hostess but anyone could see it was as though a nasty smell she couldn’t quite place was hanging about the house. Evangeline’s father, on the other hand, acted as though he couldn’t wait to be away, however hard he tried not to show it. Grandma Klippel’s wealth seemed too much for him. He didn’t sit up straight at dinner and he ate with the wrong fork.

He tried to be friends with Evangeline in an edgy sort of way.

‘Don’t call me Mr Castelli,’ he said the first time they were alone, ‘call me Nico – everyone else does.’

‘My grandmother doesn’t,’ Evangeline pointed out.

Nico pulled a face. ‘Your grandmother is a very special kind of lady,’ was all he would say.

‘Are you poor or something, Nico?’ Evangeline asked.

He laughed, but he didn’t look as though he found her comment funny. ‘No, I’m not poor. I might look it next to your grandmother, but then so would fifty per cent of the population, come to that. I just live differently, Evangeline. I have a different style of life.’

He ran out of conversation after that; it was obvious he wasn’t used to being around children. Evangeline wanted to help him out but she didn’t know how. She didn’t know what he was there for, either, though she heard him and her grandmother arguing about money a couple of times. She didn’t understand what all the arguments could be about. Grandma Klippel had enough money for all of them.

She got called into the lounge again. Her father’s face was red and he looked angry and embarrassed at the same time. Her grandmother was sitting down, staring at her hands so that Evangeline could not see the look in her eyes.

‘Evangeline,’ she began, ‘dear, your father wants to take you back to New York with him …’

So it was the painting. Evangeline had shown no talent for art and now her grandmother, too, was fed up with her. She had been one long disappointment to everyone. She sucked in her bottom lip. She hated them all for rejecting her; only she didn’t, she loved them, and she hated herself most for loving them and disappointing them.

She was ugly and stupid. There was nothing about her that anyone would want to latch on to. She was disposable, she knew that. She wondered if you could learn not to be, because all this rejection was very hurtful.

Her grandmother was looking at her now. She searched the old woman’s eyes for a sign of regret over giving her up. Grandma Klippel looked sad, but not desperate. If someone had come to take her beloved Patrick away when Evangeline was younger she would have fought to the death to keep him.

‘You don’t have to come, Evangeline,’ Nico was saying. She barely heard him at first, she was thinking so hard.

‘Do you want me to go?’ she asked her grandmother.

The old woman sighed. ‘I’ve got no rights, dear,’ she said softly, ‘whereas you and Mr Castelli are related by blood. I’m just the mother of your stepfather. I can’t keep you here …’

‘She can stay if she wants to.’ Nico’s face had become redder. So he didn’t want her, either.

Grandma Klippel stood up and faced him. A handkerchief fell from her lap onto the floor.

‘You told me that was why you came here, Mr Castelli,’ she said. Her voice sounded polite enough but tight, as though she was coiled up like a spring inside.

Nico ran a hand through his hair. ‘She doesn’t have to,’ he repeated.

‘Why?’ Grandma Klippel asked. ‘How else would you get at all the money you think is owing to her?’

‘Jesus!’ Nico looked angry. ‘In front of the kid, Mrs Klippel, have a little charity! Evangeline, honey, go and play outside or something for a little while, will you?’ he asked.

But Grandma Klippel was too quick for him. She grasped Evangeline by the shoulders and her hands were shaking hard. ‘Do you want to go to New York with your father, Evangeline?’ she asked. Her voice softened, ‘You know you have a home here for as long as you want.’

Evangeline didn’t care any more. New York sounded as bad as Cape Cod. Anywhere was bad without her mother and Darius and Lincoln and Patrick. She felt funny. She didn’t want them to know they had hurt her so much. She wanted to cling onto her grandmother and make her love her properly, somehow, but then she wanted to hurt her back, too.

‘I don’t mind,’ she whispered. The little girl inside her was hoping that her grandmother might fight over her. Then she thought suddenly and stupidly that her family might be waiting in New York, that they might have been there all this time; but she wasn’t a little girl now, she was nine years old, and she knew better.

‘You don’t mind.’ Her grandmother sounded upset.

Nico looked uneasy. ‘Do you know what New York’s like?’ he asked. He bent down so that he was the same height. He smelt of soap and she could see where he had cut himself shaving. He had big dark eyes. She could even see her own reflection in his pupils, and that was something she had never seen happen before. Perhaps it only happened with people you were related to by blood. She tried to remember if she had seen herself in her mother’s eyes, but she couldn’t.

‘There’s no sea there, you know,’ he said.

That was it, then. New York it was.

11

New York 1969

Nico called the place home but even Evangeline could see it was just an hotel. It turned out Grandma Klippel was paying for them to stay there because Nico’s real home – his apartment – was not deemed appropriate for a nine-year-old to live in. Nico didn’t agree with that opinion but he liked the hotel life. He smoked fat cigars and ordered from room service with a golden grin on his face. He told Evangeline they’d be moving somewhere better anyway, just as soon as her money came through.

Being sad in Cape Cod was easy but being sad in New York was a deal more tricky, with no sea to gaze out at and no fog to make you think you were the last person alive on the earth. In Cape Cod Evangeline had felt her parents were everywhere, watching her. In New York, though, she had to carry them in a little pocket in her head, just like she carried Lincoln’s picture in a pocket in her bag. Did they know where she was? Had they lost her too, now? The place was full of people but she felt lonelier than ever before in her life.

The loneliness didn’t scare her, though; in a way it almost felt good. She didn’t want Nico to love her like she’d wanted Grandma Klippel to. There would be no more disappointments or distractions. All she had to do now was work at being herself. Maybe if she tried hard enough she could find something there; maybe if she worked at it there would be something to make people want her.

She wasn’t getting any prettier but she wasn’t growing uglier, either. Her teeth were big, but straighter since she had worn braces. Her nose was a funny shape but seeing the same nose on Nico’s face every day made it better somehow, because he didn’t look too bad.

Grandma Klippel seemed to think she’d forget about Darius and Thea in New York, because she wrote all the time reminding her how they had been and what they were like. The letters hurt badly but she still went on reading them, even when Nico got mad.

Thea and Darius – was she really Thea’s child? They were so talented, so successful, so special, and so beautiful to look at. Her grandmother sent photographs of Darius as a child. She wrote:

You came from good stock, dear, don’t ever forget it. Thea was a wonderful, talented woman. You were blessed to have her as a mother. Darius thought of you as his own, too – just as much as little Lincoln. Make them proud of you, dear. Don’t waste your life. Darius lived each day as though it were his last … make sure you do the same.

The letters chilled Evangeline. Make them proud of her – how? Was she wasting her life? What was it she was meant to do?

Something else began to trouble her. When she had discovered that her family was dead she had been too sad to wonder why. Maybe she believed things like that just happened. As she grew older, though, she realized they did not. Yet nobody had told her how they had died. Perhaps nobody knew. Nico just looked awkward when she asked him, which she did straight away, on the drive from Cape Cod to New York.

‘What happened to my mother?’ she asked. He had been married to her, so someone must have told him.

Nico was silent for a long while. Then he cleared his throat. Evangeline wondered if he smoked a lot, to get a cough that bad. ‘She died,’ he said, after a while.

‘I know she died,’ Evangeline told him. She didn’t want to sound impolite but she wanted this thing cleared up. ‘Nobody told me how, though.’

Nico coughed again. ‘What did the old lady say?’ he asked.

Evangeline sighed. ‘Grandma? Oh, I don’t think she knows, you know. She still thinks they’ve just gone away. She’s old – too old. The shock could make her ill.’

‘Who told you then?’ Nico sounded genuinely interested now.

‘The chauffeur.’

‘The chauffeur?’ Nico punched the steering wheel, ‘Fuck!’ She had never heard anyone she knew say that word before. He apologized straight away.

‘Did this chauffeur tell you what happened?’ Nico asked.

Evangeline shook her head. ‘I don’t think he knew. I don’t think he knew anything more than he told me.’

‘Jesus.’ Nico pulled a cigarette out of a packet in his pocket and flipped it in the air once before catching it in his mouth. Evangeline would have enjoyed that, had they not been discussing what they were. She had a bad feeling she was going to need to pee pretty soon but she realized she didn’t know her father well enough to ask him to stop. She crossed her legs instead. She watched him light the cigarette with a Zippo and smelt the petrol before he snapped the lid shut again.

‘What do you think happened to them?’ he asked her.

‘I don’t know.’ Her voice sounded small. She was trying so hard to think like an adult, but it wouldn’t happen.

The car hit a rabbit; it bounced straight up over the bonnet like a tumbler in a circus act and onto the windscreen. Nico didn’t swerve once; it was as though the accident hadn’t happened. Evangeline saw the rabbit’s squashed face before it took off again. There was a red splashy mark where it had hit the glass. She almost wet herself with the shock but Nico didn’t mention it.

‘Do you know?’ she asked him after a while. Nico shrugged and said nothing. The shrug told her she wasn’t to ask again. She could see the question made him uncomfortable so she looked out of the window instead. ‘What do I call you?’ she asked after a while.

‘What?’ She could tell from his voice that he had been thinking hard enough to be miles away.

‘Do I call you Mr Castelli?’

Nico made a noise like a snort. ‘Of course not,’ he said, ‘I’m your father.’ ‘What, then?’

He took both hands off the wheel and stretched as though he were tired. She had never seen anyone drive without using their hands.

‘Father?’ he asked. Evangeline bit her lip. ‘I told you – Nico, then – hell, I don’t care.’ Nico looked round at her. ‘What’s that you’re doing? Stop that. How long have you done that for?’ Evangeline was biting her nails. She didn’t stop because it made her feel better. ‘I used to do that,’ Nico added, after a pause. ‘It makes people think you’re scared of them.’

Evangeline stopped.

She thought the hotel looked good from the outside and she preferred the noise of the traffic compared to the constant whispering of the sea. She wondered if Nico would be funny, like Darius. Grandma Klippel hadn’t a funny bone in her body. Darius must have got his talent for clowning from some other branch of the family. All Nico ever did was look worried.

After a while Evangeline began to imagine she was living in a palace. She felt wrapped in tissue, like a doll. It was strange, ordering all your food by phone. Nico told Evangeline to ring for whatever she wanted. She thought at first that no one would take notice of a little girl on the phone, but the food arrived, just as she’d asked for it. No one questioned her when she wanted ice-cream at every meal and no one told her to sit up straight at the table – mainly because she usually ate alone.

Sometimes Nico sat with her but when he did he would just sit and smoke.

‘You shouldn’t do that,’ Evangeline told him.

‘Do what?’ he looked surprised.

‘Smoke cigarettes. It’s bad for my lungs, especially when I’m eating,’ Evangeline told him. She sounded just like her grandmother, even to her own ears.

‘Don’t worry about your lungs,’ Nico said.

‘Someone has to,’ Evangeline replied.

‘Then you quit biting your nails,’ Nico stubbed out his cigarette.

‘Chewing nails won’t kill me,’ Evangeline said. ‘Smoking can.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ Nico folded his arms and stared at her. Evangeline almost smiled at that. So did Nico.

She used to cry at night; it was part of her routine. ‘Never cry in front of people, always cry in your room,’ Grandma Klippel had taught her. She would climb into bed and close her eyes and the tears would always come, whether she was feeling sad or not. Bedtime was a sad time. Thea used to read to her when she was small, or Darius would sing. Patrick used to sleep on her bed. It was difficult to get rid of memories like that. One night Nico walked past her room and he must have heard her crying, because his footsteps stopped. She knew he was listening so she held her breath and he walked on after a while.

The next morning she could feel him looking at her.

‘Do you miss your grandmother?’ he asked.

Evangeline kept her head down. ‘No,’ was all she would say. It was just about the truth, too. Grandma Klippel always meant well but she wasn’t the sort of woman you could admit to missing much.

‘Maybe you should go back to her,’ Nico sounded almost hopeful.

‘I don’t think so,’ Evangeline told him. She wouldn’t look at his face. She was scared she might see his disappointment. He didn’t want her there, she knew that. She wasn’t going back to live with the sea again, though, not for anyone’s sake.

‘Did my money arrive yet?’ she asked carefully.

‘What money?’ Nico sounded cagey.

‘My inheritance.’

Nico sighed. ‘What did your grandmother tell you?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ Evangeline whispered, ‘I overheard. You want me here so you can get my money, isn’t that right? I don’t mind.’ Nico was blood, after all.

Nico sat down at the table. He tapped her hand until she looked at him. ‘It’s your money by rights, Evangeline,’ he said. ‘Your mother would have wanted you to have it. Your grandmother says there isn’t any. I know there is. Your parents had plenty; everyone knew that. It’s only right that you have it.’

‘Why don’t you sue her, then?’ Evangeline asked.

‘Sue who?’

‘My grandmother. You think she’s keeping it, don’t you?’

Nico ran a hand through his hair. ‘Jesus, how old are you? Fifty? What do you know about suing? It costs money, Evangeline – money I haven’t got. Do you know how much it takes to bring a court case? No, neither do I, but I know it’s more than I have, that’s for sure. I mentioned suing – as you’ve asked – and your grandmother laughed at me.’