Muddle and Win by John Dickinson Page A

purest was never far from Disaster. A soul that had been clean, clean, clean all along was in some ways more vulnerable than one chequered with successes and failures. The Enemy was cunning. He knew how to use self-hatred. He knew how to use shame. For Sally, the smallest failure now could be terrible. It had happened many times before.
    ‘We are not bidden to despair,’ he said.
    Though indeed, he did feel very close to despair.
    ‘What can we do?’ they said to him.
    He faced them.
    ‘We shall play the game as it must be played. One to one  . . .’
    They sighed, reverently.
    ‘ . . . And we shall send our best. Send  . . .’
    He paused. He counted
one, two
 . . .
    ‘ . . . Agent Windleberry!’
    Once more the feathers rustled all down the table.
Windleberry
, the whisper seemed to say.
Our best. Agent Windleberry
.
    It is also possible that they said
Windleberry? Oh, the boss’s bright-eyed boy! Why’s it always Windleberry? Don’t know what he sees in him
.
    Windleberry? Again! Makes you sick, doesn’t it?
    Maybe he’ll come a cropper this time
 . . .
    That’d be good
 . . .
    If bosses everywhere are the same, then so too are the poor bossed.
    One person did share the Archagent’s opinion of Windleberry. That was Windleberry himself.
    Windleberry was not smug or self-satisfied or conceited. He was just the best. He knew it.
    No one carried angelic perfection to the same lengths that he did. No one watched more sleeplessly, praised more mightily or fought the good fight more fiercely. His jaw was long and lean and square. His forehead was high and square. Under his crisp white shirt his pectorals were massive – and square. His wings were made of bright white light (and they were square too). His flaming eyes were shaded behind Ray-Bans of translucent ebony. His bow tie was vermillion and his tuxedo was a daring cream. His long, square fingers flew lightly over the keys of his tenor sax, and the notes he played made angels weep – for the right reasons.
    He had served in every heavenly department and was thorough in everything he did. Other angels marked the sparrow’s fall, but Windleberry gave it marks out of ten and made it fall again if it scored less than three. Other angels counted the hairs on a human’s head, but Windleberry clipped a tiny numbered label to each one and offered them around for sponsorship. He had spent a century on the watchtowers. He had given artists and poets such visions of inspiration that most of them had been locked up before their work could be completed. He had reduced the composer Handel to tears over writing the Hallelujah chorus. He had slain dragons, carried stars and sung so loudly in the countertenor line that the angelic choirmasters had despaired of ever getting the balance right.
    He had served with the cupids. Cupids have a culture all of their own. It comes from doing what they do stark naked and showing their bums all the time. You go with the cupids with a name like ‘Windleberry’ – you
have
to be tough.
    He never carped, he never questioned, he never came back to complain about how difficult it was. That was why his bosses liked him. They just pointed him and he went. And then there would be no more problem. The only thing with Windleberry was that you had to remember to shout ‘stop’.
    All the heavenly hosts turned out for him on the day he went to be guardian to Sally Jones. They lined the crystal corridors and they thronged the battlements. He stalked past them with his jaw jutting, his fingers curled around the grip of his sax case and his heels going
clip-clip-clip
on the paving that was made of the rose of dawn. He looked neither right nor left. He said no goodbyes.
    Behind him trailed the briefing choir, singing his instructions in dutiful plainsong:
    ‘O-o-oh A-Agent Windleb’ry, champion of li-ight
,
    Yo-oung Sa-ally Jo-ones is lost to the ni-ight
.
    Our bri-ightest ho-ope in Darlington Row
    Has be-en infiltra-ated