Angels at the Window
This is a memory I've long had, but only actually worked out 'what it was' when I was in my late twenties
When I was younger, angels used to come to my bedroom window.
Or that’s what I thought was happening.
Is what the evidence seemed to suggest.
Most nights, shortly after ten o’clock, the edges of my curtains would glow with a celestial light, illuminating the bunk bed where I lay and casting angular shadows around my four walls. It’d last for no more than a few minutes, and then everything would go dark again.
My bedroom was at the back of the house, overlooking a long garden and driveway that led to a double garage that my parents never parked in, but that my dad used to store old tools and pieces of wood, as well as a number of broken deckchairs, a Flymo, and an old punching bag that he’d pound on whenever he grew tired of trying to assemble the deckchairs; it wasn’t unheard of for him to step out the backdoor on summer weekends, wanting only an hour’s doze in the sun, to later be found pacing the garage, shiny with sweat and balling up red-gloved fists like a Victorian boxer, talking trash to a pile of metal tubing and floral cushions that had again reduced him to madness.
“You can’t say I didn’t warn you,” he’d pant, thudding punches into the cracked leather cylinder that hung from the ceiling while kicking pieces of chair across the floor. Then during the course of the beating he’d often lose focus, reciting the names of our local MP, city councillors and people from the tele that he didn’t like, punctuating each with a short sharp hook to the bag before eventually walking back to the house, shadow boxing his way across the lawn.
“Don’t disturb your dad while he’s sunbathing,” mum would caution us.
The garage itself backed onto a row of neighbours’ gardens from the street behind our own, meaning that there were no streetlamps in view of my room, and no way that a car’s headlights could reach the house.
When I first went to my parents and told them that I was getting scared at night because angels were coming to my window, my mum took my temperature and my dad worried that I might be an idiot.
“He’s fine,” she said, satisfied, removing her hand from my forehead.
“I’m not so sure,” he replied, eying me fretfully.
The next night, when the window lit up again, I fled to the living room to summon potential witnesses. And although my dad was unwilling to move, and seemed keen to stick to his earlier diagnosis of suspected idiocy, my mum was already out of her seat and agreed to follow me up the stairs to clear things up for herself.
“You shouldn’t encourage him,” my dad called from somewhere behind us, as I thundered away with her in tow.
“Look,” I cried, throwing open the door and gesturing wildly into the darkness.
The room was pitch black.
Tucking me up in bed, she took my temperature a final time and said goodnight, lingering in the doorway as a short silhouette that shrugged before walking away.
I was furious.
I knew that if I was to be believed I’d have to build up a strong case against these ethereal bastards, and so the next evening before bed I took my dad’s alarm clock from his bedside table. It was a small, oblong unit with petrol station numbers on an LED screen, illuminated by a turquoise light that would glow whenever a long button of the same colour was pressed, allowing me to read the time from under the covers. Later, pressing down every five seconds to keep the screen lit, I watched as the minutes either side of 22:00 passed by, until sure enough, at 22:07, through a gap between the duvet and the mattress I saw the same white glow bordering the big window, and scrambled to hide the light of the clock against my chest so as not to give myself away.
Gotcha, I thought.
For an entire week I carried on in the same way, recording the times for each apparition in the back of my school journal: Monday, 22:11; Tuesday, 22:06; Wednesday, 22:15; Thursday, 22:04; Friday, 22:12. Though I’d set out to catalogue data for an entire month, during that initial period of observation my dad was late for work every morning, five days out of five, and so with some reluctance I was forced to abandon my register and return the alarm clock to him.
At that point in our lives, bedtime for my sister and I wasn’t determined by anything so woolly and constant as time, but by the more regimented and reliable TV schedule. Or at least this was certainly the case during the school week, when goodnight for Hannah coincided with the watershed, while as the elder sibling I received a two-ad-break grace period out of respect for my seniority. Either way, come nine o’clock and the escalating, synth-pop tone of the opening theme for The Bill was a signal to us both that ‘lights out’ was fast approaching – and that, like the programme’s many nameless arsonists, muggers and car thieves, our remaining time at liberty was limited.
Originally recorded as the song ‘Overkill’ by Andy Pask and Charlie Morgan, then heavily dubbed with sirens, this was a soundtrack that blared out from the living room and rang around the whole house, amplified as it was by my mum and dad who would immediately turn up the volume and accompany the same final few bars with an enthused vocal that never dulled in the many years they watched the show.
Da da da daa,
Da da daa da,
Daaa, daaa,
Daa, dadada,
Daa, dadada,
Da da, da!
More than just a sense of rhythm, and a respect for authority – enforced by the fear that there are corrupt cops everywhere who will gladly stove your head in and then lie about it and be backed up by their colleagues because they’re ostensibly ‘good guys’ – The Bill gave me the idea of having a stakeout; that to catch my elusive angels in the act I’d need to leave my bed and set up camp in the garden after hours; to go outside, and confront whatever it was – whatever they were – for myself.
And that’s how it came to be that I started peering through my neighbours’ windows at night.