Attack of the Cupids Read online

  He stopped, pushed his varifocals to the end of his nose and peered sadly at her over the top of them. The whites of his eyes had a whingey tinge of grey in them as if they had gone a little bit mouldy.

  ‘“Rather unfortunately warty?”’ he murmured.

  ‘She loves him. He’s dumped her. So she tells him the girl he wants has run off to the woods to escape him. That’s just stupid. And she knows he’s no good. She says so.’

  ‘She does indeed.’ Mr Kingsley returned his varifocals to the ‘close’ position. He squinted at the paper.

  ‘Things base and vile, holding no quantity,

  Love can transpose to form and dignity.

  Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.

  And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.’

  ‘This, in your view, is “warty”?’

  ‘It’s putrid. She knows what he is, but she chases after him anyway.’

  ‘The greatest English poet is saying that Love transforms things into something better.’

  ‘I think the greatest poet just meant us to laugh at her.’

  Mr Kingsley looked glum. He lived a lonely life, but in his heart he clung to the belief that one day some model or film starlet would see him from afar, fall for him madly and carry him away to unending True Love. He clung to it, and at the same time lived in quiet terror that the World would find out his belief and laugh at him cruelly.

  Sadly for Mr Kingsley, the World could read him like a book. This was because he mumbled love poems to himself and sighed aloud over pictures of models and film starlets. It rather gave him away.

  It was also clear to everyone – including all his Year Eight, Nine, Ten and GCSE pupils – that Mr Kingsley actually knew as much about True Love as a frog knew about gourmet cooking, i.e. he had next to no chance of experiencing it and, if he ever did, it would be painful, surprising and very horribly fatal to his existence. Sally was quite worried for him sometimes.

  ‘“I swear to thee, by Cupid’s strongest bow / By his best arrow with the golden head” . . . This does not appeal? No? Very well. I will allow any view, so long as you are able to support it with argument. A shame that we are not studying Austen this year. You would enjoy Sense and Sensibility.’

  ‘I’ve read it.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I liked the “Sense” bit.’

  ‘I see. Perhaps we should try a different theme.’ Mr Kingsley rummaged in his briefcase. ‘Something to keep you occupied while the others are finishing theirs.’

  Sally hesitated. Then she shrugged. ‘Sure,’ she said.

  ‘Explore that idea of yours, hm? Laughter in Shakespeare. Interesting one. You might look at this . . .’

  He dragged out a dog-eared old exam paper that was the colour of dried cream. The text was marked with many underlinings and words were pencilled illegibly in the margins. He marked a question with a cross and handed it to her. ‘. . . You’ll need to read your way into a tragedy or two. It’s a pity we don’t start Othello until next term. But you’ll some useful stuff in chapter eight of the textbook. I’m sure you’ll cope.’

  ‘Oh. Thanks.’

  So that was: 1) read next term’s Shakespeare as well as this one; 2) read a minimum of one more that they weren’t going to do at all this year; 3) write essay that no one else was being asked to write. Grimly Sally added them all to her list. She wasn’t going to leave them not done if they were there to be done. But right now they ranked well below Tony Hicks and Global Warming and dress sense in the order of priority.

  The question on the paper read ‘Comedy and Tragedy: how thin is Shakespeare’s line between laughter and tears?’

  ‘Happy Birthday,’ she muttered.

  Mr Kingsley’s sparse eyebrows furrowed upwards.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Sally. ‘I’ve got birthdays on the brain.’

  ‘Yours?’

  ‘It’s at the weekend.’

  ‘Congratulations.’ He began to gather up his books and papers (of which there were many). After a little while he realized that Sally was still in the room.

  ‘Are you waiting for me?’ he said.

  Sally shook her head. ‘I’m in here next period,’ she said. ‘Might as well just stay.’

  ‘Very good.’

  The classroom door closed behind him. Outside, a football rose high into the air, fell and was caught by brown, long-fingered hands. Sally heard Tony whoop. She saw Zac Stenton grinning. Who was going to be sitting with those guys next period?

  Her next period was French. Of course she didn’t have her French books with her. She’d have to go round to her locker and fetch them back here. She might as well do that now. Except that what she wanted to do was stop here and look out of the window.

  (Cupid? Stupid!)

  Punt, whoop, laughter. A plane trailed its white wake across the sky. More carbon in the atmosphere. How long could this last?

  Not thinking about the birthday.

  Clangaclangaclangaclangaclangaclangaclangaclang! The bell. The sounds of feet on stairs. Voices calling. Suddenly everyone outside was on their feet and drifting in towards the building. Her French books were still in her locker on the far side of the quad. She had to go and get them. It would be just dumb to be late, after spending the whole of morning break in the place she was supposed to be. People were already crowding along the corridors, books in their arms and bags over their shoulders. Sally crowded with them, looking vaguely around for Alec and Tony and Zac but not really expecting to see them.

  Then, suddenly, the crowds were Alec and Tony and Zac, tall and white-shirted, shouldering towards her from the other direction. Alec still had the ball under his arm. Sally’s jaw had just time to drop. Her mouth had just time to say ‘Hey.’ Alec passed her and he hadn’t heard.

  Tony had. He said ‘Hey-Hey,’ back. Though Sally wasn’t sure he knew who had spoken to him.

  ‘Hey, Sally,’ said Zac. He smiled. ‘How’s your summer?’

  ‘Mr Kingsley . . . English . . .’ said Sally.

  That was all there was time for. Even the roll of her eyes had to be done over her shoulder. The crowds closed in again. She pushed on towards her locker, towards the books, the lists, the ✓s that were jostling for their place in her day.

  A voice spoke in her mind. It said:

  ‘Why not ask them?’

  ‘Tony etc? To the birthday? Because I don’t want to get laughed at by the entire school, that’s why. Plus I’d get murdered by Viola.’

  ‘Ah. But I’ve got you thinking about birthdays now, haven’t I?’

  Sally’s body was moving down a school corridor at a brisk walk. In her mind, she was also in the corridor. But now a whiteboard had appeared ahead of her and was preceding her down it at the same pace as she was walking. Standing at the whiteboard, wielding a marker, was a small (and warty) little person with beady eyes, flabby grey skin and a red pillbox hat. From under the hat peeped tufts of gingery hair, and also two tiny horns. His name was Muddlespot.

  Swiftly Muddlespot sketched on his travelling whiteboard a picture of Sally and her twin sister Billie. It was obvious which girl he meant to be Billie because he drew her with a massive frown and a mouth that was open to say something really loud and unpleasant. Grinning, he added a banner that read ‘HAPY BIRTDAY’.

  ‘Two birthdays for the price of one,’ he smirked. ‘So nice to have a twin! What could be better?’

  ‘I know where you’re going with this,’ said Sally.

  Muddlespot’s grin widened. ‘Shall we just remember all the birthdays we can?’

  ‘All right,’ Sally groaned. ‘Bring it on.’

  There was a pattern to birthdays in Sally’s house. Each one was different. But every year things were somehow the same.

  It was coming. Sometime in the next few days there was going to be an earthquake of a row. Everyone at home knew it. Sally knew it, Billie knew it, Mum knew it. Greg (Mum’s current partner) knew it. Shades the cat had moved into his bomb shel
ter behind the umbrella stand.

  It was like a storm on the horizon, like the GCSEs next year. You could feel it the moment you stepped through the door. The house was chaos. Mum was beside herself. The toaster wasn’t working and Greg was keeping his nose glued to a magazine or a computer or TV screen, which was driving Mum doubly beside herself. All this was as it always was. But there was something beneath it all: a feeling as if everything in No. 19 Darlington Row – every object, every person, everything down to the spiders in the crevices and the house mites in the dust – was slowly winding itself taut.

  A week before the birthday, even the tea started tasting different.

  ‘. . . I am listening,’ said Sally (in her mind, as her hands worked automatically to dig her French books out of her locker). ‘But you’re not making sense.’

  ‘Sense?’ said Muddlespot in injured tones. ‘How much more sense do you want?’

  ‘You said Billie thinks I’m stupid because she can get anything she wants just by shouting for it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But just now you said she shouts because she feels stupid and she thinks I’m the one who has everything.’

  ‘I said that?’ Muddlespot tried to look innocent. For someone like him, this was actually quite difficult.

  ‘Several times.’

  ‘I am what I am,’ said Muddlespot, giving up on looking innocent and trying instead to look superior. ‘I don’t have to be consistent. Nowhere in my job description does it say—’

  ‘I’ll notice if you’re not. Now get on with it. You’re in charge of this class, aren’t you?’

  There was a quick flurry in Sally’s mind. On the board the banner now read and the two girls looked a lot more like Sally and Billie than they had at first. That was because Sally had come up, taken the marker and redrawn them. She had also corrected Muddlespot’s spelling. She had even added (with what he felt was a touch of unnecessary sarcasm) a school timetable, and had labelled the current period ‘Double Evil’.

  You’re in charge of this class, aren’t you? Sure, sure . . .

  There was only one person in charge here. It wasn’t him.

  ‘So,’ he said, feeling a bit shaken and in need of a holiday in the heart of some volcano. ‘So, where were we? Here we have the presents Billie is going to get’ – he drew a large pile of blocks in front of the picture of Billie – ‘and here’s what you’ll get . . .’ He drew a single very small square in front of Sally.

  ‘Mum’s not that stupid,’ said Sally. ‘If she did that Billie would have a row with her about not being fair on me.’

  ‘Er – would she?’

  ‘It’s more complicated than you think. Here. While you’ve been talking I’ve written an essay. You’ve got to mark it.’

  Muddlespot looked at the twenty closely-written pages she handed him. It was titled Why Should I be Bothered about Birthdays? He felt stunned.

  ‘. . . I included some reasons you don’t seem to have thought of,’ said Sally.

  ‘Oh,’ said Muddlespot.

  ‘. . . On both sides . . .’

  ‘I suppose you have,’ said Muddlespot sourly.

  ‘. . . And you have to set me some homework,’ said Sally. ‘All my teachers do.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Muddlespot ‘Um. Think of three things you want on your birthday that no one’s going to give you.’

  ‘Easy,’ said Sally. ‘A sunny day, world peace and an end to poverty.’

  Muddlespot wondered how many of Sally’s teachers shot themselves.

  ‘If you don’t mind,’ he said, ‘I think I need to lie down.’

  ‘Then perhaps it is my turn,’ said another voice.

  A powerful figure stepped forward. He was winged, dressed in a neat white dinner jacket and wore a purple bow tie. His jaw was strong and square. His forehead was high and square. Under his crisp white shirt his muscles were massive – and square. His wings were of white light (and they were square too). His flaming eyes were shaded behind Raybans of translucent ebony. He was an angel, but no ordinary angel. He was the closest the heavenly hosts came to a decorated hero.

  His name was Windleberry.

  Confronted by Evil, Windleberry knew what to do. He smote. And when Evil had been properly smitten he chased it howling back into the dark, hot places from which it had come. In his experience, this worked every time. It would have worked now. He outnumbered poor Muddlespot ten to one all by himself.

  But he was here to be Sally’s guardian angel, and for Guardians the rules were a bit different. A Guardian was supposed to be an idea in the mind he was guarding. Muddlespot, too, was an idea, albeit a vile and loathsome one inserted by The Enemy. Ideas couldn’t just start smiting each other. It caused confusion and headaches and things. What happened when two opposing ideas met in a human mind depended very much on the mind’s owner, and the rules they set.

  Quite a lot of minds said straight away that they didn’t want any Guardians or Enemies, thank you. Too much like hard work. So both Guardian and Enemy got taken off and locked up in the very deepest darkest dungeons that the mind had, along with all the other ideas that the mind didn’t want to think about. Then both Guardian and Enemy would have to escape – there was usually a way – and hide themselves in corners, watching for a chance to speak, and when they came out they had to disguise themselves as something other than they really were so they didn’t just get thrown in jail again.

  Sally’s mind was fundamentally more organized than this. She knew Windleberry, and she knew Muddlespot. Fair enough. If they thought they had something to say, she made them stand up and say it. And then Sally got to say what she was going to do. This was how Good and Evil and Free Will all managed to be in the same place together at the same time.

  Windleberry strode to the whiteboard and grasped the board rubber as if it were a lance of fire. He frowned upon the things Muddlespot had drawn there. He put up his hand to wipe the slate clean. Then he thought, Use the Lie of The Enemy against him. Yay verily, let it be.

  ‘There was a Mother who had Three Daughters,’ he intoned, rapidly expanding Muddlespot’s drawing with neat and quick strokes of his own. ‘To the one she gave Ten Presents. To the second she gave Five Presents. And to the third she gave but One. And she said unto them, “Play with these for the day, while I am at my office. And when I return, tell me what you have done . . .”’

  ‘Let me give you a clue here,’ said Sally. ‘We’re not babies any more. This won’t be about presents. It’ll be about who gets invited, I bet you. How many of her friends can come. That kind of thing.’

  Windleberry hesitated, for about a sixteenth of a second.

  Once again he was drawing on the board. ‘There was a Girl who was throwing a Party. And she said unto her Mother, “Go out and invite all my friends to come to my Party.” And Her Mother did go. But her friends began to make excuses. One said “I have just bought a new pony and I must go and see it . . .”’

  Windleberry was in his element. Standing up and declaring The Truth came naturally to him. (He had an advantage over Muddlespot here.) He never doubted himself. He never got discouraged. For him, defeat was a learning experience, disaster just a step on the road to victory. He was perfect in everything he did. He could split a mountain with a thunderbolt or tune a snowflake until it was exactly the right shade of blue. He could count the leaves on a tree and the spines on a hedgehog’s back. His sermons could make a galaxy swear off the ammonia for the rest of its fifteen billion years of existence. His handwriting was both neat and absolutely clear. He also played the tenor sax.

  He had served in a hundred different departments in Heaven and had made his mark in each one. He never questioned his orders. He never complained how difficult it was. When he was given a job, he did it until it was done. If he had a fault, it was that he could sometimes be just a little bit too perfect. This is quite hard to achieve in Heaven. But . . .

  Just a moment ago, Mr Kingsley had used the word ‘cupid’. He h
ad done it twice, as if he actually knew what a cupid was. He didn’t know half so well as Windleberry.

  Windleberry had been a cupid himself, a long time ago.

  Cupids are a peculiar sort of angel. They shoot golden arrows at people and make them fall in love, after which lots of exciting things happen. They have their own special dress code and way of speaking, and they also have a subversive tendency to attach little hearts of pink card to their arrows, bearing messages along the lines of ‘You have been served by . . .’

  But only one cupid ever has attached a note to his arrow that began: ‘If you are not completely satisfied with our service . . .’ and went on to outline, in detail and over fifty pages of tightly written script, the exact and correct procedure for bringing a complaint against Heaven itself.

  Fifty pages. It was a wonder the arrow hit its target at all. But then it was Windleberry who fired it.

  There had been a bit of trouble about that at the time. Some members of the Celestial Staff Room felt that Heaven was, by definition, Heaven, that all the actions of Heaven were determined by the Great Curriculum, and that there could never possibly be anything for anyone to complain about.

  Others had said it just proved that the Great Curriculum was due for an overhaul, since there were parts of it that one or two colleagues – mentioning no names – clearly didn’t understand.

  And the Department of Love, to which all cupids belong, refused to take responsibility for any of it, because being sensible and responsible and fair-minded and worrying about customer satisfaction etc was absolutely the opposite of what Love was supposed to be about.

  The discussion got unusually heated. Pews got ripped up, cassocks got pulled down and the crowd spilled out onto the sports pitches. A record number of yellow cards got shown by the Celestial Referee.

  That was a very long time ago. No trace of the cupid remained in the lean figure who spoke in Sally’s mind.