Guardian Angel

When he talks I look at his eyes. Sincerity. He means what he is
saying. He stops eating.
"I know you do not believe me."
He says nothing more. Stirs his muesli a little; I fiddle with my tie.
It is what I do when I am nervous. He brings the spoon to his mouth
again. Without the radio the house is quiet. I wonder who it is that
switches it on normally. It's always just on. Kandha lays his spoon on
the table, lifts the bowl to his lips, tilts it and drinks the remains
of the milk until the bowl is empty. He stays seated, looks out of the
window at the garden. The grass has been freshly cut, the flowerbeds
trimmed. Laurence, an elderly neighbour recently took in a lodger. The
two of them had knocked on our door, asked whether the young man could
look after our garden. It was his one love in life, didn't want paying
for it. Laurence had no garden, he'd built a patio across the land at
the back of his house. Kandha looked out there without breaking his
gaze. I wondered if she was out there. His angel.


"I used to think I saw angels." Hope says. We meet
frequently, more often than most brother and sister. I often wonder if
we'd meet so often if I wasn't single. She's married to a man I
dislike. She is beginning to see the same way.
"Used to think. You never believed it." Hope shrugs. "I was young.
Maybe they weren't angels. Perhaps fairies?"
I spoon sugar into my coffee cup.
"It's just stress," she tells me. "Unemployment is difficult."
"He's never been stressed. I know him well. Stress doesn't affect
everyone."
"Loneliness?" she suggests. I sip my coffee
"Perhaps"
On warm evenings he sits at the bottom of the garden. Other than that
he rarely leaves the house.
"But I don't see any angels." I say. Our meal arrives. I don't touch
much on my plate.


"I saw her again." Kandha says. We meet in town, not
deliberately. He was walking from the market, where he'd bought a bag
of fresh fruit. I'd been buying cigarettes. "Twice." he says. "I saw
her twice."
"How was the job interview?"
"Good" he says. I unwrap the plastic from my cigarette box. I hoped if
I did not mention the angel, he wouldn't either. We walk back home
without words, he crunches his apple, I smoke.
"You saw nothing." That is what I want to say as I smoke. As I walk I
worry he will stop still and point. "There she is" he would say. I
would follow his finger and there would be no-one. "Over there by the
trees." He would be adamant. There would be no-one. We'd both look at
the other in despair.


"It was at night that I saw her." I hear him telling Dray. He
has come round to clip the rosebushes. He bought a pie with him that
Laurence baked. When I go out for a slice of it, Dray shows me a tray
of seeds. Asks if he can plant them. I tell him to treat the garden as
his own. "What does she look like?" Dray asks when I walk inside. He
seems interested.
"Beautiful. Pale skin. Soft eyes. She dresses in white." I watch
through the open window. It is stuffy inside. The weather has been
unseasonably hot. I don't think this has helped Kandha.
"And it was the same angel every time?"
Kandha nods.
"Do you believe me?" he asks.
"Yes" Dray says. And he does. Just like that.


Do you believe me?
Yes.
It seems so simple.


Kandha continues to talk about his visions. I enjoy it as an
outsider to the conversation. There is no need to reply, to worry about
my reaction.
"How does it make you feel when you see her?" Dray asks. I regret not
coming up with the question myself.
"I feel relaxed. She holds my hand, tells me everything will be fine.
It is always warm, her hand. And when she leaves, I think of nothing.
Just her."
Dray empties fresh compost from a bag into the trays on the ground.
Kandha gets onto his hands and knees and scoops some soil into a
single, tiny pot. He pushes a seed down with his thumb and takes it
into his bedroom.


The flower is in bloom when I walk into his room. He keeps a
watering can next to it on the windowsill, next to a picture of his
father. Every night I hear her talk to his angel. At first it was only
occasionally.
"What was your good news?" Kandha looks at me curiously and puts down
his book. "Laurence tells me you have good news."
"I got the job." he says, and smiles.
"Congratulations." We shake hands.
"I can start paying you back what I owe." he says. I hesitate.
"There's no rush."


"That was him" I hear him say as I walk down the stairs. I
turn and walk back into his room without knocking. He is as he was, at
his desk, reading his book.
"Sorry"
He does not leave his room all evening. At first I am glad, but as
night draws I grow weary of the kitchen table, the weekend newspapers.
I miss him. The Kandha of today, who sits in his room talking to an
angel instead of me. The Kandha of the past, who I met at university,
lived with ever sine. The Kandha I used to holiday with, visit his
family in Bali, when I was treated so specially by his family and
friends. It's a long time since the two of us spoke. His angel has
replaced me. Perhaps what I fear most of all is that I want one too. I
walk upstairs. His voice. I cushion my ear against the closed door and
listen, as though to a radio show on a crackly transistor radio,
missing key words, compensating with pictures in my head. At the end of
the bed is a brown, hand made stool he bought from the local market.
That is where I picture her. She sits on it, facing him, dressed in
white. She does not speak, not in the way that humans speak. Kandha
registers her words without the need of sound. His is the only voice.
Around her neck she wears pearls, precious and beautiful. He bought
them for her. He wrapped them around her neck and she wears them when
she visits. No, she wears them always. If you were to look through the
window now you would not see her. If I walked in now I would not see
her. Only Kandha sees her. Or she does not exist at
all.


She does not exist at all. It is Kandha talking to himself.
That is what I decide. He believes it. I do not.


"Let me talk to him" Hope says. The waitress pours our
wine.
"He won't be talked to."
"I'd like to try."
"He's entertaining tonight. He's cooking for a group of friends. We
could join them when we're finished here."
"Will he not mind?"
"Once of a day, no. Currently?I can't say. But Laurence will be there.
Dray too."
"I'd like to go. I think I could help him in some way."
Hope smiles, and sips at her wine. The waitress has pale skin, a quite
voice, the aura of a distinct memory, perfume that Emma once wore. I
look at her and think how Emma will always be my angel.



I drive up the gravel path outside our house, optimistic
about what Hope may say. She has helped me in the past, when Emma went
it was Hope who helped me. And Kandha. The two of us walk up the drive,
I reach for my door key and let us both into the house. We hear
chatter, laughter, smell boiling soup. I walk into the room to see the
table, extended to its fullest, with guests crammed around it.
"He's in the back" Laurence says to me, meeting my eyes. I gesture for
Hope to wait where she is while I look for him out in the garden.
Laurence catches up with me at the back door.
"He's in a bad way. He invited us all here for a reason, he said so
while we drank champagne before we ate. We haven't seen him since, he's
been out there."
Laurence gestures to the garden. I peer through the net curtain and see
him sat on the floor.
"Hope wants to talk to him. See how he is."
"I don't think that's a good idea. He used to talk to me, to Dray. To
you. Now he talks to no-one."
"The angel?"
Laurence looks at me as if to say sorry. He had been speaking too loud,
everyone at the table could hear. Hope looks at the floor, awkwardly.



Kandha sits cross legged with the plant in his hand. It is
withered, the pot cracked. When he sees me, he smiles.
"Maybe in the next world." he says to me, turns the pot upside down and
empties the soil onto the lawn.