LINDA: How high?
ME: High, man. When I first saw him, I was like, that guy is five metres tall. But when I looked down at his feet, they were a metre above the ground.
LINDA: So he was about twelve feet tall?
ME: Two metres above the ground, then.
LINDA: So he was nine feet tall.
ME: Three metres. Whatever.
LINDA: So his feet were above your heads.
ME: (Becoming fucked off with her going on about metres, but trying not to show it) To begin with. But then he sort of worked out that he’d overdone it, and he, you know. Came down a bit. I got the impression that he hadn’t done any hovering for a while. He was a bit rusty.
(I was just making this stuff up as I went along. I mean, you know already I was making it up. But seeing as how I’d called her without thinking any of it through, I thought I was doing really well. She seemed to like it, anyway.)
LINDA: Amazing.
ME: Yeah. It really was.
LINDA: So what did he say?
ME: He said, you know, Don’t jump. But he said it very peacefully. Calmly. He had this like inner wisdom. You could tell he was a messenger from God.
LINDA: Did he say that?
ME: Not in so many words. But you could work it out.
LINDA: Because of the inner wisdom.
ME: Yeah. He had that sort of air about him, like he’d met God personally. It was wicked.
LINDA: That’s all he said?
ME: He was like, Your time hasn’t come yet. Go back down and send people this message of comfort and joy. And tell them that war is stupid. Which is something I personally believe.
(That last bit, the Which I personally believe bit, wasn’t part of the play. I’m just giving you extra information, so you can get a better picture of the kind of person I am.)
LINDA: And do you intend to spread that message?
ME: Yeah. Course. That’s one of the reasons we want to do this interview. And if any of your readers are like world leaders or generals or terrorists or whatever, then they should know that God is not a happy bunny at the moment. He’s well pissed off with that side of things.
LINDA: I’m sure our readers will find that very thought-provoking. And you all saw it?
ME: Oh, yeah. You couldn’t miss him.
LINDA: Martin Sharp saw it?
ME: Oh, yeah. Course. He saw it… he saw it more than any of us.
(I didn’t quite know what that meant, but I could tell it was important to her that Martin was involved.)
LINDA: So now what?
ME: Well. We’ve got to work out what we’re going to do.
LINDA: Of course. Will you be talking to any other newspapers?
ME: Oh, yeah. Definitely.
I was pleased with that. I got her up to five grand in the end. I had to promise that she’d have a chance to speak to everybody, though.
JJ
It didn’t seem like it was going to be too difficult, at first. OK, none of us was thrilled that Jess had got us into this angel thing, but it didn’t seem worth falling out over. We’d grit our teeth, say we’d seen an angel, take the money and try and forget it ever happened. But then the next day you’re sitting in front of a journalist, and you’re all agreeing with a straight face that this fucking angel looked like Matt Damon, and loyalty seemed like the dumbest of all the virtues. It wasn’t like you could just go through the motions, either, when you’re supposed to have seen an angel. You can’t just say, “Yeah, blah, angel, whatever.” Seeing an angel is clearly a big deal, so you’ve got to act like it’s a big deal, with excitement and open-mouthed awe, and it’s hard to do open-mouthed awe through gritted teeth. Maureen was maybe the one person who could have been convincing, because she believed in that stuff, kind of. But because she believed in it, she was the one who had the most trouble with the lies. “Maureen,” said Jess patiently and slowly, as if Maureen were simply being dumb, rather than fearing for her immortal soul, “It’s for five thousand pounds .”
The paper arranged for someone from the care home to sit for Matty, and we met Linda in the cafe where we’d had breakfast on New Year’s morning. We had our photos taken—mostly group shots, but then they took one or two more outside, with us pointing at the sky and our jaws unhinged with wonder. They didn’t end up using those, probably because one or two of us overdid it a little, and one of us wouldn’t do it at all. And then, after the shoot, Linda asked us questions.
It was Martin she was after—he was the prize. If she could get Martin Sharp to say that an angel had kept him from killing himself—i.e., if she could get Martin Sharp to say, “I AM A WACKO -OFFICIAL”—she had a front-page story. Martin knew it, too, so his performance was heroic, or as close to heroism as you can come if you’re a sleazy talk-show host who is never likely to do anything involving actual heroism. Martin telling Linda that he’d seen an angel reminded me of that Sidney Carton guy in A Tale of Two Cities going to the guillotine so that his buddy could live: Martin wore the expression of a man about to have his head sliced off for the greater good. That Sidney guy, though, he’d discovered his inner nobility, so he probably looked noble, but Martin just looked pissed off.
Jess did all the talking to begin with, and then Linda got tired of her, and started to ask Martin questions directly.
“So when this figure began hovering… Hovering? Is that right?”
“Hovering,” confirmed Jess. “Like I said, he hovered too high at first, because of being out of practice, but then he found the right level.”
Martin winced, like the angel’s refusal to put his feet on the ground somehow made things more embarrassing for him.
“So when the angel was hovering in front of you, Martin, what did you think?”
“Think?” Martin repeated.
“We didn’t think much, did we?” said Jess. “We were too stunned.”
“That’s right,” said Martin.
“But you must have thought something,” Linda said. “Even if it was only, Bloody hell, I wonder if I could get him on to Rise and Shine with Penny and Martin .” She chuckled encouragingly.
“Well,” said Martin. “I haven’t been presenting the show for a while now, remember. So it would have been a waste of time asking him.”
“You’ve got your cable show, though.”
“Yes.”
“So maybe he would have gone on that.” She chuckled encouragingly again.
“We tend to book mainly showbiz stuff. Stand-up comedians, soap stars… The odd sportsman.”
“So you’re saying you wouldn’t have had him on.” Once she’d started this line of questioning, Linda seemed kind of reluctant to let it drop.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” she snorted. “I mean, it’s not David Letterman, your show, is it? It’s not like people are swarming all over you to get on it.”
“We do all right.”
I couldn’t help feeling that she was missing the point of the story. An angel—possibly like an emissary from the Lord Himself, who knows?—had visited a tower-block in Archway to stop us all from killing ourselves, and she wanted to know why he hadn’t been booked on a talk show. I don’t know, man. You’d have thought that would be one of the questions nearer the end of the interview.
“He’d have been the first person on that we’d ever heard of, anyway.”
“You’d heard of him before, had you?” said Martin. “This particular angel? The one who looked like Matt Damon?”
“I’ve heard of angels ,” she said.
“Well, I’m sure you’ve heard of actresses ,” said Martin. “We’ve had them on, too.”
“Where are we going with this?” I said. “You really wanna write a piece about why the Angel Matt wasn’t a guest on Martin’s show?”
“Is that what you call him?” she said. “The Angel Matt?”