An angelic encounter

It’s been a drab, grey, rainy January day, and I notice the temperature has dropped, as I get out of the car outside my friends’ house and walk up the drive to where a group of us are gathering for food.

The warmth hits me as the front door opens and I am quickly ushered in, and my coat taken off me, as I take a seat at the table. A plate of steaming curry and rice is brought out and, as we tuck in, our hostess steers the conversation to angels.

For some unknown reason, she tells us, she decided to do some research on the Internet this morning, while her children were getting ready for school. It meant she read some incredible stories and she’s been dwelling on them all day.

“Have any of you ever seen an angel?” she asks, in her broad Scottish brogue, looking around the table at us all, wide eyed and expectant.

Immediately, I’m reminded of a time when I encountered an angel.

***

It’s a warm May morning. The sky is blue, the sun is shining, and all is well with the world.

I am in training for a long distance cycle ride and I have persuaded my friend Louise to join me for a few hours, out on our bikes, in the beautiful English countryside, not far from the city where we live.

We have been going for about an hour, winding our way along little lanes and side roads, up hill and down dale. On either side, we pass yellow fields full of oil seed rape, banks of vibrant bluebells sheltering under trees burgeoning with blossom, and villages lined with cottages clad in the golden honey hews of Cotswold stone.

As I change gear on a particularly steep hill, my bike chain suddenly, and inexplicably, comes off and completely jams.

We are, quite literally, in the middle of nowhere.

Pulling over to the side of the road, into a kind of cutting, Louise helps me balance both our bikes while I try to fix mine. It’s a disaster. All I succeed in doing is making my chain more jammed and my hands more oily. I use every tissue I have while I try to wipe them clean.

I find myself panic praying: “Lord Jesus, help!” I can’t face a long walk home with a broken down bike.

Neither Louise nor I hear the white van drive up, but suddenly we see it reversing into the small clearing where we are standing, and a cheery man leaps out of the driver’s seat.

“Do you need some help, ladies?” he enquires.

“Yes please!” we reply.

It is impeccable timing.

He flings open the back doors of the van. Laid out inside are a neatly arranged orderly array of bike fixing tools. The man leaps inside and, just as quickly, out again. In one hand, he’s clutching exactly the right combination of tools needed for fixing a chain. In the other, he’s holding a bunch of wet wipes and cloths for hand wiping, which he passes to me and I gratefully accept

Without a word, a mini-lesson follows in how to unjam bike chains. It’s a case of learning by observing rather than learning through language. His hands are deft and my bike chain is swiftly fixed.

Louise and I bend over the bike to pick up my panniers and we clip them both back, along with my water bottle into its rack. When we stand up straight and look around to thank the man, he and his van have disappeared without trace.

Where has he gone? We wonder. Why did we not hear him driving away?

We look at each other.

Both of us think it, and then we say it, almost simultaneously: “Do you think he was an angel?”

It’s the topic of conversation that dominates the rest of our ride.

Without him, we would have been stuck.

***

There is silence around the table as I finish telling the tale, and a level of incredulity and amazement. But the waters of the dam have been unleashed and suddenly other stories are pouring out, as each and every person recalls a time when they were at the receiving end of the kindness of a stranger … or maybe an angel.

[Photo by Ilya Ilford on Unsplash]