Free Pinkerton's Sister by Peter Rushforth

presented itself) from their usual dull routine that the young men (there were dozens of them, freed from the close attentions of the floorwalkers) were becoming noisy and excited, competitively eager to see their angel reach the roof first. The Babel-like babblings were rising to a roar. Bets were probably being exchanged. Angels and archangels may have gathered there,/Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air. Bells should be ringing out in mighty peals as they ascended, as the ropes were pulled. There was something nautical and yo-ho-ho — though not very well drilled — about the young men pulling on the ropes in unison, rather like the group of men disemboweling St. Erasmus in the stained-glass window to the right of their pew in All Saints’. Hooray, and up she rises! Hooray, and up she rises! Huge white sails should be unfolding like enormous wings, snapping out and bellying in a strong north-by-north-west wind. Eight or nine angels, spaced out around the central light-well, lurched bumpily upward, swaying from side to side, their heads leaning too far forward, like a gathering of feathered suicides deciding where to jump, or — already dead — the dangling corpses after a mass hanging, crows shot by a farmer to deter other scavengers.
    More young men were waiting high above them on the top floor, leaning out into the central space, clutching brooms commandeered from the janitor or (they looked pale and pristine) from elsewhere in the store, all ready to maneuver their chosen angel into position with the bristled heads. She had to bend right back in order to see them, as if she were looking up at Dr. Vaniah Odom in his pulpit.
    “My angel! My angel!” they were shouting encouragingly, their voices echoing, fervent suitors glimpsing the girl of their dreams.
    With the combination of brooms and flying angels it was like an incongruous mixture of Halloween (she dithered on the verge of thinking of the word as Hallowe’en: it was a word that seemed to demand an apostrophe) and Christmas, midway between the two dates. The wings of two of the angels became locked, and the more the young men tugged, the more the angels began to tip upside down. If they plummeted earthward, would the store’s employees be insured against death from falling angels? If anything qualified as an Act of God, this was surely it. Alice had tried to walk challengingly beneath the nearest angel — an impulse for a glamorous death had suddenly seized her — but Mama had clutched her hand tightly, and dug her heels in. She was not taking any chances.
    Two of the young men on the top floor had become bored after waiting too long for their log-jammed angel, and had reversed their brooms and started a sword-fight, prodding challengingly at each other’s chests with the blunt wooden handles, like a safety-conscious d’Artagnan and Lord de Winter.
    “
Touché!
” they shouted. “
Touché!
”
    Others began to join in. If this had been a few years later, some of the young men would not have been able to resist utilizing their brooms as crutches in Long John Silver impersonations, wincing slightly as the stiff bristles dug painfully into their armpits, and mutineers uttering frightful imprecations would have swung across that central space on hastily improvised rigging. Skewered musketeers and pistol-shattered buccaneers would have hurtled to earth from between the creakily swaying angels. A morning in a department store rarely produced such heady excitement.

8
    When she was a small girl — anxious to improve her literary credibility — she had been drawn to the name Pharaildis: Alice Pharaildis Pinkerton had an undoubted poetic ring to it, and would certainly have improved her syllable count. She wasn’t sure whether St. Pharaildis was a man or a woman: with their penchant for long, flowing garments, it was difficult to distinguish the sexes of saints. This was an occasion on which beards might have served a useful purpose — making allowances