COLM

The morning found Colm sitting down in Angela’s kitchen at her kitchen table, sipping not at rich, expensive coffee – one not so different to the beans that Asmodeus favoured, he’d noticed – but at tea instead. Angela was on her feet, leaning back against the kitchen counter – she fidgeted now and then, couldn’t make herself sit down.

Angela’s kitchen looked and felt almost agonisingly expensive – each countertop was made of an extortionately priced imported black marble, made to contrast the gleaming white wood of the cupboard doors and sideboards, of the kitchen table and its two minimalist white chairs. The only hint of comfort in the room was on these – each had a pale blue shawl on the seat, which amounted to barely any comfort at all.

Colm sipped at the cup of just-as expensive luxury tea that Angela had poured for him after not steeping it nearly enough – it was a wan, yellow colour, like watery piss, and he was almost glad the overpoweringly floral blend was so weak.

Angela’s hands kept going up to her mouth, her fingertips touching against her lower lip. She didn’t touch her teeth, but Colm could see that she wanted to, could feel that she wanted to. She used to bite her nails when she was a little girl.

Heidi would threaten to slap her for it, but it made no fucking difference – Colm remembered the stress of it on Heidi’s memory, of Angela with blood all down her fingers from where she’d been chewing on her nails right down to the quick. Heidi would pour iodine all over them, really made it hurt, would scream into her face as Angela sobbed her eyes out.

She wore a special varnish on them now, made them taste so awful she couldn’t bear to do it. She put it on secretly after her nail appointments because she couldn’t make herself commit to the shame of admitting it to the nail technicians.

“You can’t just take her,” Angela said. “She’s our mother.”

“She’s my daughter, though.”

Angela gripped at the counter behind her, her fingertips turning white at the pressure, her teeth gritting together. Colm could feel the turmoil inside her, the swirling feelings in her chest and her gut – anger and frustration that burned under her skin and made the back of her mouth taste like blood; a sense of her control slipping away from her and being overwritten, her territory crossed into; guilt. Guilt at her mother left alone, in pain. Satisfaction, too – the fact that she deserved it.

If only she’d feel a fraction of the pain she’d caused Angela and the boys, caused their fathers. The old memories were washing over her: iodine splashing painfully over Angela’s red raw and bloodied fingers, the stinging slap of Heidemarie’s hand on her cheek and the ringing in her ears at her shouts, or once, the stab of glass shards n the side of her face after Heidi threw a glass and it smashed on the fridge behind her.

Under all that, though, was a single thread of something else. Vague conversations with her husband – Gerhardt, a financial analyst fifteen years her senior, soon to retire – splintering anxiety as she looked through each of the banking apps on her phone, comparing the numbers on them.

Colm narrowed his eyes as he looked her over, and Angela stared right back at him and then said lowly, “Keep your voice down.”

“Why? No one’s at home but us.” His voice was quiet though. He saw no point in raising it, especially in a room like this with all these hard surfaces, where it would echo painfully. “Jean-Pierre’s taking her for x-rays today.”

“Her doctor said she didn’t need any. That it would be pointless radiation – she’s old, of course she’s got some joint pain. Why irradiate her while we’re at it?”

Colm felt the skim off the top of her recollection – distrust at the Hausarzt mostly, but at the same time, something else; another conversation with Gerhardt after bringing her home. There were no prizes for guessing why Angela was taking her to her old shitty GP and not to the fancy private doctor Angela and Gerhardt had insurance for, and yet—

“Stop it,” Angela growled at him.

“She’s been exposed to enough radiation in her life flying on aeroplanes. A few x-rays aren’t gonna kill her.”

More’s the pity.

She didn’t say it out loud, but even without his empathy, Colm would have been able to read that one loud and clear. Angela turned her face away from his.

“What do you want, Angela?” Colm asked, and Angela huffed out an indignant laugh, crossing her arms over her chest and staring down at him. She looked so much like Heidemarie, even moisturising all of her wrinkles away and filling in the other gaps with Botox, even layering her face in careful foundation to hide the age spots and the little scars. Even dressed in drab creams and beiges Heidi would never have been caught dead in at any age.

“What do I want?” Angela asked. “What do you want, Colm? Why are you here? She finally broke and called you, just like she kept threatening to whenever it seemed like we were going to stop jumping to attention at whatever her complaints were, as if we were dogs at her beck and call. Just like she said you would, you’ve come to save her, to say how awful and ungrateful we all are, and now you’re going to whisk her away. She’ll live in magic instead, and everything will be easy for her, and she won’t have any pain or suffering, and we can just get on without her. Fine. What do you want us to do? Have a party? Roll out a red carpet to commemorate her departure?”

Colm didn’t say anything, sipping at the terrible tea.

He’d normally be angry, he thought. Furious. He couldn’t be right now – he could feel how hard Angela was holding back tears, feel the tension in the whole of her body, the clench of every muscle, the beat of her heart, which felt as though it were in her throat.

He tried not to give into it often, but he felt a bit of grief sometimes – at times like this, particularly, but other times, too. He didn’t know what Angela had looked like, when she was a little girl, nor most of Heidi’s kids. He wondered if it would be different, how it would have been different, if she’d let him meet them, spend time with them – if they’d known Asmodeus, or even Jean.

“Would that we all had that option,” Angela said, almost laughing. “The things that woman did to us, Colm – did to me, to all of us, to our father. She’s a gaping hole of a woman, ugly and cruel.”

“Why hold onto her so tightly, then?” Colm asked. “If she’s so fucking awful, Angela, why not be alright with me taking her?”

Another flash of anxiety.

“Are you alright?” Colm asked. “You and the husband?”

Angela’s eyes flashed, and the anxiety burned and brightened to something white hot and keen. “I beg your pardon?”

“Not human, Angela,” Colm reminded her quietly. “I can feel something’s up – what is it?”

“Going to solve all my problems too, are you?” she demanded. Underneath the keen anxiety and the anger and the frustration, he felt a shard of grief that was very much like his. Would things have been different?

“You’re my granddaughter,” Colm said simply. “You’re getting old. Don’t have too many more chances left to help.”

That pissed her off. She nearly spat as she retorted, “I’m not your granddaughter – she’s no angel.”

Colm’s phone buzzed, and he read the text from Jean-Pierre, his eyes threatening to swim over the fucking paragraphs of medical speak he could barely fucking parse. Angela picked up the phone without asking, scanning the messages. He saw the shadow pass across her face at the same time as he felt the emotions: guilt mixed with relief, disdain, uncertainty.

“Her arthritis is very severe, he says,” Angela said. “It’s been made worse by lack of intervention – lacking pain medication, and subsequently lack of exercise. He thinks she might need some knee surgery, but that with proper medication and physiotherapy, that her mobility should improve. She has some nutritional deficit, and he prescribes some vitamin supplements as well as a change in her diet. Pain management is most important – she’s been depressed and unmotivated largely due to extreme pain.”

She stood there next to him, holding Colm’s phone in her hand and staring down at it. When she finally turned her gaze from the phone to Colm’s, and met his face, she exhaled and set it down.

“Hugo is dyslexic,” she said lowly. “My eldest boy. I didn’t know it affected angels.”

“Yes, you did,” Colm said in an even voice, and Angela crossed her arms over her chest again, walking one way and then the other. “Tell me, Angela. Maybe I can help.”

“Why would you help me?” Angela retorted immediately. “How could you?”

“You’re my granddaughter,” Colm repeated. “Just because I wasn’t able to be here before doesn’t mean I can’t be here now.”

She looked at him so fiercely and God, now she really resembled her mother, so much so that Colm’s chest ached with the recollection of every time Heidi shouted at him when she was a girl – and when she was an adult too, every show of anger, of fury.

Angela was breathing heavily, and Colm took her in, thought about Heidi’s husbands – all of them were smaller than her in personality, were eclipsed by her on pretty much every level. What he’d been able to pick up of Gerhardt was not exactly the same. Angela by no means was a shy or retiring woman, but the shadow cast by Gerhardt seemed to be a significant one.

She was thinking about it more, now, not flitting about so much – thinking about money, about Heidemarie’s money and the house, the income from renting it out – about Gerhardt’s retirement upcoming, and his money.

Angela had never worked as long as Colm had known of her – he remembered comments Heidi had made about it once or twice, about her only daughter being some stay-at-home housewife, throwing away her education to be the prize of some prick old enough to be her father.

“The house is her major asset,” Colm said, “and you already know she doesn’t have much money to speak of. When we take her home, we’ll look after everything – every expense, her health. Did you change the house to yours and Gerhardt’s name, or just yours?”

“Just mine,” Angela said in a small voice, sounding and feeling utterly hopeless. “But we have a joint bank account.”

“So open another one,” Colm said, “and put down the old house as the address.”

Angela opened her mouth, and the flood of emotion that came off her was impossible to describe, to digest, even – Colm felt wave after wave of discrete feeling wash over him, of grief and pain, anger, disgust, hatred, desperation, anxiety, powerlessness… Gratitude was in there somewhere. Gratitude, and a bit of hope.

He poured the last of the tea down the drain and washed up his cup before he picked up his coat to put on, and he took the folder that Angela had put aside for him, one full of Heidemarie’s paperwork, all the vital and important pieces.

“He wouldn’t hurt me,” she said, just before he got ready to leave. “He’s nothing like my mother.”

“I hope not,” Colm replied, and he reached out, squeezed her hand even though it made her jump. Her expression had a sort of desperation in it, and it softened a bit as he rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand. “You’ve got my number. If you were really in a bind, I’d come running and whisk you away too.”

There was something very like Aimé in Angela’s responding expression, all uncomprehending gratitude and desperate devastation at once. He felt painfully at home with the expression, despite never having seen it on Angela’s face before, nor even on Heidi’s own.

“No, you wouldn’t,” she said, and Colm smiled, squeezing her hand.

“See how bad it gets before you try me,” Colm told her, and walked outside toward the bus stop.

“Colm, do you want— Do you want a lift?”

“No, Angela, but thanks.”

* * *

JEAN-PIERRE

“You can’t fucking drive?” Heidemarie demanded as they walked out to the bus stop together – or more accurately, Jean-Pierre walked, keeping his pace very slow to keep in line with the old woman’s pained hobble, although it was notably quicker than what she’d had earlier in the week, before Jean-Pierre was in charge of her pain management. Scowlingly and under considerable duress, she had taken the Zimmer frame he’d helpfully suggested she avail of, but quite abhorred it – he had yet to tease out whether it was the use of a mobility aid at all that so infuriated her, or merely the object’s appearance. “How many fucking years old are you? You are a doctor, a surgeon, many other things besides, and you don’t know how to drive a fucking car?”

“It’s never seemed important,” said Jean-Pierre. “Your people are renowned for their strict instilment of trains and railroads, no? A man cannot rely on public transport?”

Her fingers were somewhat stiff, and it must have hurt, but she still managed to stick up two of them enough to communicate her intention.

“My people,” she muttered, shaking her head slowly. “You have some fucking nerve, assassin that you are.”

“An assassin like your father is, I would remind you,” Jean-Pierre said mildly, unmoved and unoffended – how could he be? It was a mild day, not as cold as some of the days had been so far, but he still put a shawl around Heidemarie’s shoulders as they stepped outside and began to descend the ramp.

“Fuck off,” she growled at him, but he ignored it as he pinned the shawl in place with a brooch. “You want to dress me like a fucking doll?”

“I am in charge of your health and wellbeing, Heidemarie,” Jean-Pierre said pleasantly, giving her a winning smile. “Any damage done to you, I would be forced to repair myself – why, then, would I have you frozen and shaking?”

It was only a few short minutes’ walk to where the hospital bus would pick them up, and he helped her sink down onto bench beneath the bus shelter’s roof – for all her protests, her hands immediately disappeared beneath the blanket of the heavy black shawl around her shoulders, against her sides where they might be warm.

He stood against the side of the wall, his arms crossed over his chest, and looked out over the hospital car park, which was busy, naturally.

“Our flights are booked for the Monday after next,” Jean-Pierre said. “I spoke with Doctor Becker and I should be able to have you in an operating theatre the day after tomorrow – I am hoping after performing an osteotomy on your left knee as well as giving you more support for your hip that we might avoid replacement entirely. How much magic can you do?”

“How much magic can I do?” Heidemarie repeated. “What, you want me to pull a fucking rabbit out of my cunt?”

“I would prefer you didn’t,” said Jean-Pierre, and Heidemarie huffed out a sharp laugh. “No, actual magic – enchantment would be fine, but spells, channelled energy, that sort of thing.”

“Delacroix,” Heidemarie said, “I was an electrical engineer for fifty-six years of my life. Do you understand what is involved in electrical engineering? I understand you are something of an airhead outside of your expertise in medicine, murder, and faggotry, so let me make it clear to you: electrical systems need to be finely tuned, moderated, and maintained. One thing crucial to their design is a lack of magical interference – particularly in the fields of radio and telephonic communications.”

“You can just say none if the answer is none,” said Jean-Pierre. “There’s no shame in ignorance.”

“I’m not fucking ignorant.”

“Heidemarie, my dear, you are positively pig-ignorant. But that is alright – if you can design a circuit board, you can certainly design an enchantment panel. The process of system modelling is much the same between the two.”

“Know much about it, do you?”

“I’ve sabotaged a motherboard or two in my time,” Jean-Pierre said modestly. “Something to be said for terrorism is that it can really broaden your horizons.”

That shocked a laugh out of the old woman that wasn’t halfway as bitter, and she looked up at him from where she was sitting, huddled in the blanket of her shawl. She hadn’t been too bad for most of the day, in all truth – it was remarkable how much her poor mood had eased now that he’d given her some appropriate balms for the worst of her afflicted joints, and now that for the time being she was taking stronger painkillers.

“Do you miss it?” Jean-Pierre asked.

“Miss what?”

“Your work,” Jean-Pierre said. “I walked into your home expecting it to be like my brother’s chambers – if not mushrooms in tanks, I expected some sort of cultivation. He has many various parts and pieces about his rooms, out in his storage sheds – I was under the impression that as an engineer, you were of a similar mechanical mind. What do you do with your time? You do no needlework or knitting or crochet – you have no puzzles, no games, no jigsaws.”

“Old women’s pursuits, you mean?”

“Much as it might grate on you to admit it, young lady, you are an old woman.” Jean-Pierre clucked his tongue. “You might not be able still to juggle or throw knives or backflip, but what do you do? Sit in silence and brood on all who have wronged you?”

Heidemarie sat in silence, an elderly and greying lump in her blanket, and Jean-Pierre examined her features as she stared into the middle distance. In no way did she remind him of Marguerite -Jules’ mother, in her dotage, had very rarely been still. She sewed, she sang, she walked, she read, she painted, she did all manner of crafts and such – she socialised broadly.

Marguerite, of course, was always a charismatic and ultimately kind woman, even though her arthritis had ailed her as she’d grown older; Heidemarie could lay claim to no such qualities, and in any case, she had no close neighbours with whom to easily socialise, nor a church or other community institution.

“I was asking if you missed your work,” Jean-Pierre said quietly. “You were a broadcast engineer, yes, you worked in radio?”

“I was mostly a transmitter engineer, I worked in radio towers. For air traffic, for a period of time.”

“Was it difficult for you, as a woman pursuing such work?”

“Probably,” said Heidi. “But unlike many women, I was never particularly satisfied with doing as I was told or letting stupid men tell me what they thought. Many let themselves be bullied out of the engineering field, or let themselves be penned into a workplace, caring for their children.”

“I think we can all agree that institutional misogyny is largely the fault of women abused by it,” said Jean-Pierre dryly, and Heidemarie huffed out a derisive, scoffing sound.

“Yes, there were problems, I don’t deny it. But what the fuck is the point of saying, oh, men are stupid and hateful and led by their cocks? Of fucking course they are. Men are the cause of every war that’s ever been, and near-well every fucking disaster. Does this mean all women should abandon the field to their incompetence, and go home to birth babies and be nursemaids instead?”

“How many children do you have?” Jean-Pierre asked.

“Fuck off,” said Heidemarie, and Jean-Pierre laughed, waving to the bus as it pulled in.

“You are an obstinate and stupid woman,” said Jean-Pierre.

“You’re an obstinate and stupid man,” retorted Heidemarie. “And belligerent.”

“Quite,” Jean-Pierre said mildly, putting his hand under her elbow and helping her carefully to her feet. “Aren’t you lucky to have me?”

“I hope you’re better at surgery than you are at being charming,” Heidemarie muttered as she gripped at her frame and made her way toward the opening doors of the bus, and Jean-Pierre chuckled.

“My boyfriend, Aimé, he will like you very much, I think,” he said. “He has a great affection for unpleasant people.”

“That explains much,” Heidemarie said darkly, and Jean-Pierre bowed in recognition of having lost the bout, and gestured for her to go on board ahead of him.