I, Lucifer: Finally, the Other Side of the Story

movie star. Someone you might describe like that. Me, I’m a bit harder to impress.

‘Did you know? Fucking hell Declan did you know?’

I hadn’t, as it turned out, known he was in town. Violet, bless her, could only contain her understandable excitement by translating it into force and expressing it in a grip on my thigh which, had the next thing not happened, might have seen me publicly unmanned.

As the hairs on the back of my neck rose, and a faint echo of perhaps my host’s voice said this is the way this is the way this is the . . . someone tapped me gently on the shoulder and a voice on the edge of my recognition said: ‘A minute of your time, Mr Gunn?’

I turned. Odd, that turn. An agonizingly slow swivel; seemed to smudge and drag the images – tables, chairs, glasses, faces. Then it was done and I was facing him: a slender, olive-skinned gentleman with a long face, plum- coloured eyes and a sensual mouth, wearing a cream linen suit, blood-red tie, and invested with a presence I hadn’t felt since . . . since . . .

Gunn’s voice surprised me with its smallness and fracture when it crept out into the world. ‘Raphael,’ I said. I felt something funny going on inside, some cramped orchid awkwardly opening. Mild panic, I suppose.

He cleared his throat, smiled over my shoulder at the still apnoeal Violet, then looked back at me and said, ‘Do you think we might have a word in private, old friend?’

‘You’ve got to be kidding.’

‘No, my dear, I’m not kidding.’

‘Stop it with the “my dear” rubbish for a start. The assumption then, these days, is that I’m suffering from some sort of galloping credulity, is it?’

‘Will you at least consider what I’m saying?’

‘It’s a joke. You know what this is? It’s funny, that’s what this is. Hill fucking hairious. And from you of all people. Honestly.’

Poor old Violet. I suppose she exhaled eventually. Catching sight of the Very Famous Movie Star didn’t help, Trent’s shout of ‘Declan!’ across the bar followed by a mimed tipple that gave every indication they were about to join us. Not that I stuck around to find out. I glanced back at Violet from the exit. She’d uncrossed her legs and now sat with her palms gripping her own kneecaps. The shoe that had been hanging – stylishly, sluttishly, howeverishly – had fallen off. The bar steward kept his head down, ostensibly lost in the languid polishing of a champagne flute, but I could see he’d noted my sudden departure and was wondering where that left him re. the shoeless minx with the taut tits and spectacular hair.

Then Piccadilly’s humid night and cavalcade of coughing traffic, Green Park’s gently breathing trees and a high, ravaged and star-pooled canopy of quick-moving cloud. ‘I’ve got something to tell you and something to show you,’ he’d said. ‘But I can do neither here. Will you come with me?’

‘Come with you where for heaven’s sake?’

‘The airport.’

I’d never seen him like this. I’d never seen him like this, dressed in flesh and blood – but that’s not what I mean. What I mean is I’d never seen him assertive. In the old days he’d been . . . Well I mean he was a follower. He wouldn’t elaborate. Only insisted I could trust him. That I could trust his love. That he was alone and unarmed. That it would be a short flight. That there was nothing I needed to bring. He had Gunn’s passport in his inside pocket. ‘You’ve put on weight since that was taken,’ he’d said, catching sight of its photo at check-in. If it hadn’t been for a ruthlessly piqued curiosity I’d have ditched him in Duty Free and headed back to the Ritz. But there you are. Me and curiosity.

So the night flight to Athens, the meandering cab-ride down to Piraeus, the last hydrofoil, the island, the sleeping streets, the eucalyptus trees and clutter of hills, the villa. Raphael, blessed archangel of the Throne and ruler with Zachariel of the Second Heaven, is now Theo Mandros – restaurateur, philanthropist, widower, Greek.

‘Jesus Jesus Jesus,’ I said, between cackles.

‘Lucifer please. Some consideration. That’s still painful to me.’

‘You know, obviously, that you’re wasting your time.’

His villa looks east over the Aegean. We sat with tall ouzos and our feet bare against the freshly swept stone of the veranda. Dawn was an hour away. I lit a Silk Cut and wolfed down a chestful of smoke. You do need a cigarette when a transmogrified archangel you haven’t seen for several billion years has just told you that your number’s about to be called.

‘Oh please.’

‘It’s true.’

‘Well, it’s about time.’

‘Lucifer, you don’t understand.’

‘By the book, that’s what I understand. God wins and I go to Hell forever. Big deal. In case anyone’s not been paying attention: I’ve been there. You know? I live there. I can hack it.’

The first sliver of sun was making a moody furnace of distant cloud. The sea waited like a wedding night bride. Raphael moved his feet gently against the floor. The ice in his glass tinkled.

‘It’s not the Hell you know.’

‘Oh right. A different Hell. How many are there?’

‘Lucifer listen to me. Haven’t you been wondering what’s wrong with you?’

‘There’s absolutely nothing wrong with me, my darling. Nothing apart from Everything, obviously. I assume you don’t mean “wrong” in that sense? In the sense of “as opposed to Right” with a capital R?’

‘Have you not, of late –’

‘Oh don’t start with that, will you?’

‘If you knew how hard I had to fight to be allowed to tell you this –’

‘I wouldn’t take such a devil-may-care tone?’

‘You would do me at least the fraternal courtesy of listening to what I have to say. Your existence in eternity depends on it.’

‘Okay, I’m listening,’ I said. I was listening, I suppose – and yet a good deal of my still traumatized consciousness was away with the fairies, as you say. The wrinkled Med’s gentle sway; the bittersweet scent of the olive groves; the stone and cool dust beneath my bare feet; the icy aniseed; the incessant rasping of cicadas; the stirring of a dawn breeze . . .

‘It’s never been you,’ Raphael said – and just for the splittest second, the entire earth and everyone in it seemed to stop breathing. I looked down into my drink. The ice had almost melted. A sparrow appeared out of nowhere and alighted on the balcony. It put its head on one side, examined me, briefly, then whizzed away.

‘I assume you’re going to explain?’ I said.

‘It’s never been you,’ he repeated. ‘Everything you’ve thought you’ve been responsible for . . . Well. You haven’t.’

I thought, How weird to be plunged into darkness every night, to have to wait again for sunrise. Not a wholly unpleasing rhythm to it, though. I chuckled to myself.

‘I can see you’re not taking this seriously.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Really. Sorry. Let me get a hold of . . . It’s my mind, you see. Ever since that ill-advised trip up to Manchester . . .’ I composed myself. It was, however, hellishly difficult to keep stoppered the bubbles of laughter that would insist on tickling my insides.

‘Lucifer. Do you understand me? The evil in the world – your purpose, the thing that’s kept you going has been the thought that you could at the very least get in amongst the Mortals and lead them astray. This has been your identity, has it not? Your essence? Your raison d’etre?’

‘I like to think of it as a necessary hobby.’

‘However you’ve thought of it, my dear, you’ve been wrong. The evil that men do – and I know there’s no preparing you for this – is nothing to do with you. Am I getting through to you? Is it becoming clear?’

‘Oh as a bell. What is this? We’re all existentialists now?’

‘I know you’re afraid. Don’t be. Don’t – please don’t – think the laughter in any way disguises the fear. You