Chapter Text
“I’m terribly afraid it would be imposing, you two’ve probably barely got the place set up yet, and –“
“No trouble at all. Wouldn’t offer if it were. Good kid, Adam, Azi took a likin’ to ‘im right off.” Crowley flicked the stopwatch on his Garmin. “Keep moving, sixty seconds.”
“Well, he – huff – absolutely hero-worships you both. He talked for days about the race, and now he wants to take up Parkour. I suppose I ought to blame you. I really do worry about him here in the city, sometimes. Ooof. ”
Adam Young was coming up on his eleventh birthday, which was incidentally close to his parents’ twentieth anniversary, which in turn fell on the same week-end that a discounted booking had come open at Romantic Tadfield Manor, Relive Your Honeymoon in the Oxfordshire Countryside, Early Apples, Hiking, In-Suite Dinner Service, Complimentary Champagne . Deirdre had waved the brochure about pointedly: “I know Arthur’s already splashed out for a ring – emerald anniversary, it’s meant to be a surprise, but he’s absolute pants at hiding things – so I didn’t want to stretch the budget, but I’d gone on the cancellation list, and – “
“Just the one night?”
“Well, Wensley’s Mum offered to let him stay the whole weekend, but then she sprained her ankle and they gave her a crutch, you can’t ask her to cope, and Brian said he could stay over Friday but then his aunt and cousin are visiting from Weymouth, so it’s a full house – “
“All right, again. Elbows and knees. Left leg and right arm – now right leg and left – that’s it, that’s what holds you together – “
“Tyrant. Well, I do want to be in shape. The hiking, and so on.”
“And so on.” Crowley grinned crookedly. Smiling came a lot more easily to him, these days.
“You would know, now.”
Crowley had trained Deirdre since Adam started school, but his stock with the boy rose palpably after Crowley flew over not just his handlebars but the finish line of what was meant to be a charity bike race. Somehow it had turned into a battle of wills between a marathon lifer and a cap-toothed physique icon (who just happened to be the smarmy brother-in-law of the man Crowley loved); it wasn’t a contest, once it became clear that the physique icon cheated. Crowley had clipped all the tabloid pieces about it, and kept them in a dresser drawer in the bedroom they shared in the cottage that was theirs, a word he’d never expected even to sidle up to.
“ ‘Kay, now just a stable plank – counting down from thirty – “
“I shall be positively invincible, Anthony Crowley. And the credit is all yours.”
“See how you feel after a couple miles.”
“It really is time I tried a race – you oughtn’t to get all the fun – ooof.”
“One more sixty second break. Lemme call Azi, he’ll be in till noon at least. Rearranged the books three times already.”
“Are you sure he won’t mind?”
“Ah, we can make ‘im carry boxes and things, footman, like. Bring ’is mates around for the day, have a whole staff. Always knew I was cut out to be a country squire.”
“Look at you, love’s done wonders for you.”
Crowley squirmed a little internally, but she was right. It took some getting used to.
“Angel? Over here training Dee – what? Oh, right, send ’em round back – just have ’em dump off the mulch by the supplies for the rockery, those two flats’ve plants better go in the shade till I get” – home was still a little overwhelming – “back. Nah, how hard can it be? You dig ‘em in, you water ’em, you tell ’em to grow or else, dunnit work that way? Just checkin’, ‘member when you said Adam could come round whenever? What about next weekend? Dee’s got – oh, well, right then. I’ll tell her.” A pause. “Love you too, angel.”
It was a bit warm in the Youngs’ garden, and that was doubtless the reason his cheeks were flaming as he rang off.
“All sorted. Right, let’s burn some trail.”
The cottage was south of the rail line, in a suburban maze green with old trees and thick hedges. The property boasted a few leggy rhododendrons and some iris that the estate agent pronounced overdue for thinning, but rose toward the privet row in the back, which in turn gave on an area of dense tree cover. “That’d be a lovely place for an Alpine rockery,” she’d said, and Crowley opened his laptop as soon as they got back to Aziraphale’s flat, going down a rabbit hole of how-to’s and garden centre websites until Aziraphale took direct action at about two o’clock in the morning.
The laptop was still running when they got up the next day, rather late. Their offer had been accepted, and would they mind the agent stopping by with papers?
Now – two months, one removals-van hire, and a copious delivery of stone, soil, rubble and coarse landscape fabric later – Crowley leaned on a spade and scrubbed a bandana over his face before tying it round his head, pirate fashion. “Lilac here, or over there, what d’ye think?”
“Isn’t there something on the label? Like laundering instructions?”
“It says well drained soil, but how drained is drained? And plenty of sun, and there’s more over here, but it’s crowding the herb bed, and – “
“Dear, I think you must please yourself. The only aesthetic I’m out here for is you in that absolutely ruined T-shirt.”
“Not ruined,” Crowley protested. It was a favourite.
“It’s more hole than shirt at this point. I’m not raising any objection, you understand. You’re quite picturesque.”
“There,” Crowley decided, and drove the spade into the chalky earth. This was harder than it looked. He had blisters, and his resolve to do all the work himself had lasted until the morning after the first delivery of rubble to the yard and countless trips to the back garden with the shiny yellow wheelbarrow.
“I do collect medals for lifting heavy things,” Aziraphale had said rather primly, and he’d bought a cartwheel-wide straw sun hat after the first day of digging and carrying had left his blond complexion blazing, but he didn’t give over trolleying the barrow until all the rubble was layered and raked over the cleared area marked out by string.
“It’s quite unfair, you know,” he said now as he heaved a boulder into place, the sleeves of his jersey bulging in a way that still made Crowley suck his cheeks in and lose track of what he was doing. “You red-haired creatures are supposed to get the worst burn, but here you are, nut-brown like the peasant maid in the song.”
“Freckles just organize into a good tan.”
“I’m told they appear where kisses have been.”
“So that’s what you’ve been at.”
“We will have to behave ourselves when the young people are here, you know.”
“You still gonna be okay with that? All of ’em comin’ to stay over? Sorta jumped you with it.”
“Are you?”
“Yeah, just – realized I never actually had company in my own place before.” He was quieter as he bent to tug at a particularly recreant root. “Never had friends before, really.”
“I think you did. You just didn’t know it.”
“Have to depend on you for the social grace thing.”
“Dear. I’m told I’m frightfully absent-minded about social graces. In any event I think a copious supply of Ribena and some takeaway ought to cement our reputation as gracious hosts – I think that’s them now.”
“We rode our bikes to the station. They’ll let you take them on the train weekends.”
“They’re locked to the fence if that’s okay.”
“Whoa, are these medals all yours?”
“ That one is Mr. Crowley’s, for a race before you were born, young Brian. It is Brian, isn’t it?”
“Competition is divisive,” said the only girl in the group, who carried an overlarge backpack with a trowel protruding from the outside pocket.
“Dear, dear, so young and so cynical.”
“How can someone run twenty-six whole miles?”
“Aaaa, s’easy. Once you’re goin’, you just keep goin’. It’s one of those laws of something.”
“Inertia,” interjected the boy in spectacles. “ Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. And objects at rest tend to stay at rest.”
“Newton’s First Law,” said Aziraphale. “Applicable to my sport as well. I see you’re well-read, Master…?”
“He’s Wensleydale,” said the girl. “I’m Pepper.”
Adam extended a plastic grocery carrier. “Mum said you were planting a garden. She sent some iris roots.”
“Oh, dear. I fear we’re a bit embarrasse de richesse in that department.”
“What’s brassy chess?” Brian had already, somehow, gotten a smear of grime on his nose since he’d last spoken.
“It means they’ve already got lots,” said Wensleydale (it wasn’t clear if this was a first name, a last name or a nickname), who wore what might have been the last pair of black-plastic spectacles in England and carried a couple of library books: The Royal Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Gardening and Botany Illustrated.
“It’s a gift. We shall find room. Bring them along out the kitchen door, here.”
“A swing, bags I go first!”
“Don’t push, Brian.”
“Hi, Mister Crowley.”
“Hey there, devilspawn.”
“Mum said you’d be hopeless and we had to help out, we turn the beds for her every Spring.”
“Those geraniums need water,” said Pepper.
“My mum hangs hers up in baskets,” said Brian, building up momentum, perhaps as a demonstration of the inertial principle, in the rattan egg swing that occupied half of the small patio. “She says it keeps the slugs off.”
“You put beer out in saucers for the slugs,” said Wensleydale. “My dad uses Budweiser. He says it’s the beer that slugs deserve.”
“Have you got another spade?” said Adam.
“The boy’s a natural leader,” said Aziraphale several hours later, when the sun had dropped below the treetops and various forms of takeaway had been ordered.
The iris had been thinned and spread out over a bed beside the pebble-dashed drive, carefully sorted by Pepper into gradations of colour (“Mum says colour energy can harmonize your mind and body,” she explained. “You need to meet my physio,” said Crowley). Adam, pronouncing Crowley’s excavation undersized for the lilac’s root ball, tag-teamed with Brian to deepen it and mixed the excavated earth with sand from one of the twenty-kilo bags Aziraphale tossed about like throw pillows. Wensley sat on top of the boulder heap that was evolving into a rockery, reviewing the flats of Alpine plants and reading their pedigrees out of his reference books before placing each in its final position.
“D’je say? I’m bloody knackered.” Crowley sunk bonelessly into the swing which, over the course of the afternoon, had become the throne from which Adam ruled his Minecraft world, Wensley’s Tie fighter, and an indeterminate torture device in which Brian was spun repeatedly until Aziraphale noticed a green tinge to his complexion and put a stop to it.
“I remember from tutoring. There’s always one who’s the ringleader and you have to get his respect. Or hers.”
“ ‘Fraid you’ll have to do that. Said I’m hopeless. Great gormless git of gardening incompetence.”
“You are also the Airborne Cyclist of Richmond Park. I can’t hope to equal that. There’s the door, that’ll be the Deliveroo fellow – how do you even serve German kebabs?”
“Dunno, ask Adam, s’his idea.”
“Are you going to answer?”
“Nope. Shattered. Can’t get up,” said Crowley, sprawling and flinging his hands dramatically. Aziraphale gave one a brief squeeze before going to collect dinner.
“Mum said you’re getting married,” said Adam, when they’d settled around a movers’ quilt spread on the patio.
“Um – reckon so.” Crowley couldn’t quite decide about the Doner Meat Fruhlingsrolle. Their new neighbourhood seemed to have a wealth of fusion cuisine.
“Mr. Smithwick at school married a bloke when we were in third year,” said Brian. “Greasy Johnson called him a name and Pepper bit him.”
“Greasy, not Mr. Smithwick,” Adam clarified.
“I got a week of detentions,” said Pepper, rather proudly.
“So, you know. If anyone’s rude to you about it. We have your back.”
“Mum says I’m not to bite any more but we’ll still clean their clocks for them.”
“Was Mr. Smithwick one of your teachers?” said Aziraphale, a little too brightly.
“He taught art class,” said Wensley. “Greasy said they let him go because of – what Greasy called him, but my Mum said they’re just not keeping art teachers on any more. That’s stupid. I’d like to be a scientist and discover plants and animals and then draw them like in the botany book, that’d be wicked.”
“That used to be an essential part of a gentleman’s education,” said Aziraphale, and by the time heads began to nod, they’d passed round Crowley’s travel sketchbook; lit a citronella candle that made Brian sneeze; marveled that Aziraphale was still in school (“But you’re old!” ); declared that when he’d finished his degree he had to come teach at their school and Greasy wouldn’t dare open his gob, and, under his tutelage, composed a half-dozen couplets about the plants they’d put in (there was universal hilarity about the rude bekia).
“Coo, your granda flew in the Blitz?” said Adam when Aziraphale exhibited his pocket watch and told the story. “Brian’s Dad took us to the Air Force museum last holidays. You can get in the cockpit of a Spitfire.”
“A real one, not the ones in the play yard,” elucidated Wensley.
Brian emitted a loud snore, unsurprisingly, as he had accounted for half the extra kebabs that Aziraphale had bought ahead for emergency rations.
“All right, you lot, bedtime,” said Crowley, rising.
“I get to sleep in the swing,” said Adam.
“Long’s you use the mosquito net. Got it when I ran the Melbourne, they’ve got one’s’ll drag you right off into the brush.”
“I’ll go pull out the couch,” said Aziraphale. “That’ll take care of you two.”
“I’ll call Mrs. Detwiler.”
“I don’t see why I have to stay with the neighbour lady,” grumbled Pepper. “Boys and girls should be able to have a sleepover.”
“Dear, I do see your point. But I’m going to be a schoolteacher, so I have to be extra careful about all these social constructs. People can get quite cross. Besides, I think you’ll like Prudence.”
“ – and she was at the Miner’s Strike March at Pride in
nineteen eighty-four
– and at Occupy London the year I was
born
– and she glued herself to a bollard at the Extinction demonstration –”
“I told you you’d like her.”
“She must be older’n God,” said Brian.
“Nah,” said Crowley, winking at Aziraphale. “I’ve met God.”
“Dear, don’t tempt Fate by talking like that. I was frightened enough for you at the race.”
“God’s just another construct,” said Pepper.
“You haven’t met Azi’s Mum.”
“If I really met God, I’d have loads of questions,” said Adam. Crowley gathered Arthur and Deirdre were Church of England in the breach, the kind of people who love a Christmas service with carols and don’t give the matter much thought otherwise.
“Such as what?” Aziraphale’s eyes were amused.
“Like why everyone has to fight over what God is. You’d think a proper God could sort it out. And what was here before the Big Bang. And why people die.”
“I saw a video that says it was a quantum vacuum,” said Wensley. “So it would have sucked everything into one place and then boom.”
“Those are awfully good questions, Adam. Philosophers have been asking them for a long time.”
“Well, did they ever get any answers?”
“No. But it doesn’t mean you should stop asking.”
“If I were God I’d make people stop fighting. And messing up the Earth. Mum said it’s never in all her life been so hot, and it’s all because people won’t stop burning dinosaurs. And everyone could live forever.”
“Everyone?” said Wensley. “Animals too? Like cats and dogs and flies?”
“Gosh, imagine all the flies that ever lived,” said Brian.
“Gettin’ too deep for me,” said Crowley. “C’mon, you lot. We’re going for a bike ride.”
“It was so good of you,” said Deirdre again late that afternoon. “I didn’t mean for you to have the house full, but I suppose you can’t pry that lot apart.”
“All part’ve the service,” Crowley demurred.
“We’d not got away like that in ages. Champagne at breakfast , Arthur got all tipsy, and you can’t imagine the Manor, mullion windows, courtyards, they said it used to be a convent. I felt quite naughty. You ought to book it for your honeymoon, when’s the date?”
“Uh – hadn’t really gotten that far. We were just goin’ to do the Registry office – couple’ve old duffers, us, don’t need all the rice throwin’ – “
“Oh bosh. Anthony Crowley, you are special, and your gentleman is special, and you are absolutely allowed to make a fuss of yourselves. I brought back the brochures for you, here.”
“I do believe I see where Adam gets his temperament,” said Aziraphale as the Youngs’ Mini Countryman puttered off with Adam’s bike on the back rack.
“Gonna sleep for a week,” said Crowley. “You sure you wanna do the teaching thing?”
“Dear, I seem to remember your talking me round to it.”
“That was ‘fore I spent a weekend around eleven-year-olds. Reckon I was that exhausting?”
“My dear, I’m quite certain you were worse. I distinctly remember you offering to kitbash Pepper’s bicycle, whatever that is exactly.”
“Not fair they got ‘er a girl’s bike. A pink one. Doddle to put on a razorblade saddle, ‘ n’ Eric’ll let me use his yard to sand the frame and spray it. Paint’s cheap.”
“And you participated in the Inquisition game with alarming vigour. Though I don’t think the original line of questioning referenced ‘telling Satan and all his works to bugger off.’ “
“It’s catchin’. All that – head’s still buzzin’.”
“I could think of ways to focus you.”
“Mmmm. Nice.”
“You know, it’s quite traditional to have young people as members of the wedding. Flower girls, ring bearers, and so on. Perhaps Deirdre is right. Not one of these frightful overdone productions you read about, but – “
“Ah god, that’s good , angel.”
“Shift up here, that’s it – you are quite special, you know, I think at least a bit of ceremony is called for.”
“I could be Bridezilla. Make ’em all wear matching gowns. That stiff shiny stuff.”
“Taffeta. I’m sure Pepper would absolutely bar taffeta – dear me, I’ve been missing a spot, you’re fearfully short on freckles right here.”
“Ummm. Tickles.”
“But you were right to remind me how important it is for young people to have mentors outside the family. And I did enjoy having them about. You must tell Deirdre we’d be happy to have them return now and again, within measure, of course.”
“Could be godfathers, sort of, couldn’t we? Keep ’em on the straight and narrow path, look out for ’em, help with the homework. Trade for a reliable source’ve labour.”
“I don’t think we can help much with straight, dear. Lift up a bit, you’ve become one with the cushions.”
“Right, we’ll be terrible examples then. Teach ’em how to use rude words. Unravel the fabric of society – ah, fuck, you know what that does to me.”
“I see you’re already designing a curriculum.”
“Make ’em listen to Queen. Plot to overthrow the monarchy. Eat ketchup on chips.”
“That is a debased appetite of yours which I have never fully understood.”
“You like my debased appetites.”
“Do you know, I believe I do. Oughn’t we to go upstairs now?”