Journey III – Spartan

The next few days pass largely without incident, chatting, eating, singing and generally getting to know each other better. Even Nicky seems a little more relaxed. Agnes has taken her under her wing and Nicky seems to have submitted to it. Agnes and Muriel, although superficially young and girlish were undoubtedly old ladies when they died, the thought of which amuses me immensely. They really seem to enjoy their refound ability to sing raucous camp-fire songs and climb trees and chase lizards. Agnes makes no secret of the fact that she died horribly in a hospice, demented, incontinent and alone and that there’s no way she’s ever going back and taking the risk of that happening again. She has a tendency to fuss and get tetchy if things don’t go the way she thinks they should but on the whole she seems ok. Muriel is good hearted and motherly, although she died childless she says.
That evening the campfire conversation turns to death and I tell of my ridiculous demise – to much hilarity.
‘Well, that is at least easily avoided next time’ says Mike. ‘I won’t be going back – I had MS and spent the last year or so on a ventilator. I mean, I don’t regret the life I had – my kids and friends were wonderful and I made the most of it while I could, but I don’t feel the need to go through it all over again.’
‘What line of work were you in?’ asks Mr Sadeghi.
‘I worked in a factory making electrical equipment – just ordinary shop floor dog’s body, you know.’
Mr Sadeghi nods.
Mike looks about thirty, but died a lot older I know. His body shows not a trace of disability and he’s clearly overjoyed about it. I know it’s a cliché, but it certainly makes me wonder what I was making such a fuss about in my life.
Next the Sadeghis give a brief account of their sudden demise, all three of them adding their own memories and we all exclaim and look shocked at how horrible it must have been for them.
‘I remember most clearly...’ begins Mr Sadeghi ‘...the smell of burning – burning rubber, burning plastic, oil and... other things... I was thinking it was burning my throat and my lungs out and I couldn’t breathe. And I thought of my darling wife and daughter but I couldn’t see... couldn’t find them.’ Mrs Sadeghi grips his hand as he tells it, as tears begin to well in his eyes. They’re here with him. He’s very lucky. I briefly consider a suicide pact with Sophie for next time but dismiss the thought. What if one of us survived, or just lived a little longer in a coma and missed the boat?
‘I remember the noise’ says Shamim, ‘not of the collision, but of the other vehicles going past. They seemed to be right there, beside my head.’
‘You were lying on the road, I remember that’ says her mother. ‘I remember a tin of ravioli, and those instant noodle things. I still can’t believe you bought that sort of trash...’
‘Mum...’
‘It was all across the motorway, all your shopping...’
‘I remember the road was wet’ says Shamim ‘and the tiny bits of yellow and red plastic from the lights, right there.’ She holds her fingers an inch or two away from her eye.
‘We don’t remember much of the detail of the final moments’ says Mrs Sadeghi, cutting it short. ‘For which we are all extremely grateful.’
It’s strange to be mourning the deaths of people who are sitting right there beside us but it seems right somehow.
Then we come to Muriel and at first she declines modestly but we tell her we’ll only assume the worst so she tells us about the stupid accident with the toaster that brought her here. ‘I just remember the smell of grilled meat’ she says and I see Mr Sadeghi flinch. That must have been the other smell he remembers, but he didn’t want to say.
It’s at that moment I realise Nicky must be next to tell her story and I look across at her. She’s sitting cross-legged, hunched down, picking her cuticle again. Nobody says anything or even looks her way overtly. I don’t know if she wants to say anything or not. I don’t want to ask. After a brief pause Jeb mercifully takes over and tells us about his unusual experience with nitrogen narcosis whilst wreck diving. I’d never heard of it, but Shamim of course has and gets quite excited about hearing the details.
‘I just went deeper and deeper’ he says, ‘and I remember becoming certain that it ought to be possible to live down there. After all, the water is full of dissolved oxygen, and the fish manage perfectly well, and I think I had this idea that if I just breathed the water in, in a calm and relaxed fashion, instead of thrashing around as you would if you were drowning, and if I kept my exertions to a minimum, that my lungs would adapt. And do you know, it actually seemed to work for a while there? I even felt I could see clearly, as if my eyes adjusted to the changed optical qualities of the water. And I didn’t feel cold any more. I swear I could feel my body changing, becoming aquatic.’
We all look at him, amazed and excited at this new prospect.
‘Of course, I’m sure this astounding new insight must have lasted only a couple of minutes before I finally blacked out and drowned, but I remember it all very clearly. I’d recommend it, as a way to go, if you had to make a choice.’
Agnes looks horrified and shudders conspicuously, but Shamim looks on, fascinated.
‘Have you been diving since you’ve been here?’ she says.
‘Hell no’ he says. ‘You won’t catch me anywhere near the darn stuff now.’
We all laugh.
‘I drowned’ says Nicky unexpectedly, from under her hair. Her head is bowed almost to her legs so it’s hard to make out what she says. She looks up and says, quite conversationally ‘I drowned myself. In the Thames it was.’ We all look at her and don’t know what to say and she looks down again and goes on picking her fingers. Agnes goes to put her arm around her but is shrugged off. Suddenly it feels very chilly – like time to sleep.

The settlement we saw from the ridge has a spooky peace to it. It’s not that no one is home – at the entrance we are greeted by a softly spoken woman in a white robe, who bows and takes us in through a wide courtyard with citrus trees and pineapple plants in pots and a formal fountain at the centre, and then out through a gateway at the far end to a much less formal, grassy space with more fruit trees. Even the insects buzz less stridently in here. The walls are whitewashed and have terracotta tiled roofs. It all looks as I’d expect a Roman villa to look, or a Mexican hacienda.
We’re shown to our rooms through shady loggias and pergolas. The rooms are Spartan – almost literally, with stone floors, stiff white sheets and unglazed green painted window frames set high in the walls. I sit down on the bed and try to bounce but there’s very little give in the mattress.
The bathrooms too are pretty uncompromising – ice-cold water gushes continuously out of holes in the wall in a room at the back, presumably from a spring. A man shows us where it is after we’ve dropped our bags off, hands out towels and then leaves us to it. We decide the ladies can go first and we men head back to the first courtyard to see what else there is to do.
Very little, seems to be the answer. The locals go quietly about their business, some bringing produce in from wherever they must be growing it, others bustling in and out of what turns out to be kitchens. We find a vast echoing empty dining room adjoining. It’s all very clean.
We go and sit out in the shade in the orchard where our rooms are and find the women coming back already.
‘That didn’t take you long’ says Mike.
‘You don’t want to stay in there long’ says Muriel, shivering. ‘It’s bloody frigid. Have you seen anywhere we can get a hot drink here?’
Mr Sadeghi indicates the kitchen but suggests they don’t get their hopes up too much for anything very interesting.
‘We’ve still got the coffee’ suggests Mrs Sadeghi.
‘That’s if you can locate Jeb and the wagon’ says Mike. ‘I don’t know where he’s disappeared off to.’
I look at the women, still wet from their ablutions and it occurs to me what a fine-looking bunch they are, all in their white robes, looking tanned and healthy and in their prime. Mrs Sadeghi has her hair out and is a stunningly handsome woman, a taller, more powerful version of her daughter. Even Nicky seems more content now and throws her head back to let the sun warm her face. Shamim is watching me look at them and smiles knowingly.
‘Ok, lets go’ says Mike.
‘Keep the coffee hot for us’ says Mr Sadeghi, and kisses his wife on the cheek. We head into the shower room.

Jeb didn’t come back until the third morning, giving us some time to get to know the place a little, help out with the chores, and relax. The locals were not unfriendly, the food was plain but wholesome and the place had a wonderful serenity about it but there was a strong feeling they weren’t looking for new faces and would feel better when we’d moved on. The only really worrying thing about that first settlement was that if they were all going to be like that no one was going to want to stop anywhere for all eternity. Certainly none of us were at all tempted. Frankly it was all just a bit dull. We headed out that third day and began the long weary trek across the floor of the valley in the still, dry heat.

The canopy is up from mid morning to late afternoon. I lie sprawled on my belly on the luggage, peering out at the passing scenery – a mixture of twisted and shaggy trees and towering termite mounds all set in a haze of dry grass seed heads. Some peculiar looking, what appear to be llamas, each with a single horn on the nose stand by and watch us pass. We ride in the wagon, too enervated to speak, each dozing or lost in our own thoughts. I can’t imagine doing anything much here and yet when I glance at Shamim sleeping beside me I feel I could lean over and kiss her, and what’s more, I think she’d like me to. If it wasn’t for the others, and her parents especially being here maybe I would.

Voyage I – Coming to

Feels like I’ve been here a very long time. Why have I just accepted this state of affairs? I don’t know these people – I’ve been sitting with them for time untold, we’ve even spoken a bit, but I have no recollection of what we said. We smile and nod when we see each other but everything moves away as I try to grasp it. A girl in a grey outfit brings me a drink on a small tray. It’s perfect – the best coffee I ever tasted and yet oddly spiced. Am I being drugged?
I can move. I bring my arms out and sit up. I appear to be in some sort of steamer chair, snugly wrapped in a quilt. She smiles at me encouragingly and suddenly I have this feeling of having lost something terribly important. I've lost everything. There’s no one I know here and I know it’s not possible ever to see the people I do know ever again. I'm a snowflake in a whirling sky.
‘Are you feeling a bit more awake today?’ she says in a voice so gentle it hurts.
‘Where am I?’ is all I can say – she can’t hear me I’m speaking so quietly. I try to collect my thoughts better. ‘I don’t know anyone’ I say, choked up. ‘These people...’ I point vaguely at the other chairs ‘...are not mine.’
She looks down at me – a mother’s pity in her eyes, and yet I don’t know her. Why should she care? It doesn’t feel real. And yet I can’t help needing her to stay with me. She turns, I think, to get assistance and I try to implore her not to leave me but my voice is lost in the wind. (Why is it so cold? It’s arctic here.) I turn and look at what seems to be the sea, although all I can see is a frozen, misty grey haze. A fine frozen wet is stinging my face. My body is warm and relaxed. There’s nothing to see.
I think about my body and it feels very small and weak, while my head feels huge and wobbly – I can barely lift it, just roll it from side to side. I look at the other people on either side of me, similarly arranged in rugs on deck chairs and I feel this strange glee rise from my solar plexus to my head and I giggle a little to myself.
‘This must be what it’s like to be a baby’ I think. ‘Maybe I’m a baby now.’

book 3 ~ Misadventure

Landscaping by Leonardo
This landscape has no truck with geology. It’s like something by one of those old French painters - Claude or Poussin or somebody. As we walk along I see chiselled pinnacles and gaping grottoes with trees grasping at their lips and curved escarpments with wind-carved spinneys at their summits. Fossils protrude randomly from the strata as if placed there for the express purpose of convincing any doubter that evolution had most certainly not occurred here. At any turn I half expect to see a temple on a promontory or a tower on a crag, wreathed in mists in the middle distance, or, worse, some seventies prog-rock band doing a photo shoot.
I mentioned this to our guide when we arrived - said something clever about this place being like some sort of Tolkein rip-off, and she looked at me, paused, smiled, and said ‘No, quite the reverse actually.’

I look at these improbable rock formations, cresting and flowing around us, encrusted and impregnated with life of all kinds and I realise suddenly – all the painters and writers I loved most, all those disorientating perspectives and airless spaces – this is what they were on about  –  the afterlife.

Death # 3 - Pratfall
I remember reading that news story about Rod Hull. Remember him? He was big in the 70s, him and that preposterous emu glove puppet. Anyway apparently he died when he fell off his roof whilst adjusting his TV aerial. I have this notion (I’m sure I’m not alone in this) that the emu was up there with him that day. And the emu of course was tugging the aerial out of Rod’s hands, and Rod snatched it back. A hilarious tussle no doubt ensued, and Rod, as they say, was history.

I’m fairly sure it wasn’t like that. I don’t suppose the emu was involved at all but I can’t, off hand, think of a better example of the Ludicrous Death – more literally tragic-comic than all the Beckett plays put together – to die idiotically, comically, but (and here’s the punch line) with a little time to lie there, look at the sky, and think ‘What a bloody stupid way to go.’ Friends and family would turn up in due course, do what had to be done, shed a tear etcetera, but along with the grief there’d be the unspoken consensus that after all, he always was a bit of a prat.

Furthermore, if it’s a truism that people tend not to contemplate their own mortality until fairly late in life, it’s completely unthinkable that death will not be taken seriously. Whether it is horrific and sudden, ugly and protracted, or (if you’re lucky) peaceful and dignified, it’s a matter of grave concern. But what if you die ridiculously, embarrassingly, through your own idiocy, doing something moronic? It must happen all the time.
It is further unquestioned that obviously you won’t be around to suffer said embarrassment. Wrong again.

My name is Gabriel Fortune, late of Brighton, England, but I died at the age of thirty-four on a mountain in Spain. There were four of us – my wife, Mar (short for Maria del Mar – Mary from the sea. Isn’t that nice?), and a couple of Spanish friends, Carmen and Riqui. We hadn’t been getting on very well lately, Mar and I. She really was a stereotypical Spanish woman. She’d looked magnificent dancing sevillanas (very Surfarosa), but would never ‘demean’ herself now. She had a powerful certainty of opinion on everything and a frightening temper to go with it, but she also had a doctorate in African women’s literature. We’d been together about three and a half years, married less than two, and I’d been utterly besotted. We’d travelled together for a while, and then lived in various places in the UK. Eventually she got a job – in the local college library, and taught Spanish in the evenings, and we rented a place together in Brighton. Meanwhile I was trying to set up my workshop, get some studio space and start my career as a painter (I’d only finished with college the year before). That was when the problems started.
Up until then I’d found her fiery rudeness amusing, even sexy. I kind of liked being told how foolish I was. How could I possibly have imagined I knew how to make, say, a veggie lasagne when after all, I was just a man, whereas she of course was a Woman, and a Spanish Woman at that! Previously I’d been widely considered ‘a pretty good cook’, but Oh no, it was all wrong. Early on in our relationship I’d chuckled at being sent across the kitchen to do some menial chore, like chop onions (‘no no. You do it like this’) or open a bottle of wine. I knew she was fond of me (why would she be living in England with me otherwise?) and the sex was pretty good. I found the sight and the feel and the smell of her body enough to keep me going for hours and she liked being massaged and caressed. I couldn’t get enough. In retrospect I'm not sure she felt the same way.
In any case I came to live for those moments when she would look across at me and... Well, the fact is that I was living for those occasional, fleeting delicious scraps of indulgence. I’d say the honeymoon period lasted about six months. The actual honeymoon lasted a week and was the last truly loving time we spent together – in a tiny hotel in the Sierra de Cazorla. I’d had this dream of us making love in the mountains, in the sun under the pines, maybe near a waterfall, somewhere where we could swim naked afterwards. That wasn’t when I died, in case you were wondering. That would have to be a minor species of the Heroic Death – a category I forgot to include in my list above, but which would still be considered an impressive and serious way to go I think. I wouldn’t have minded being remembered that way.
Anyway, it didn’t last. Things got rather mundane on our return. She didn’t like her job, which she considered beneath her. I tried to tell her it might take some time for a suitable position to come up at the university but she dismissed my opinion. And we had a lot of rows. I might sound very self-righteous when I say that our arguments consisted of her screaming and me trying to reason with her, but trust me when I say I am well aware of how infuriating that must have been for her. She didn’t want reason. She wanted anger, and she didn’t much care what she had to do to get it. She’d get in from work, tired and frustrated, find something (socks under the bed, tomato pips on the bread board) to bitch about and start on me. I wasn’t like that. I was scrupulously sincere. Somehow I just couldn’t bring myself to use any argument that I couldn’t rationally defend. I tried irrationality once – some sarcastic half-truth about her faking orgasms but the fury of the response was terrifying and I didn’t try it again. Eventually the exchange would reach a crescendo with me shouting to be heard above the fury, pleading that she couldn’t possibly mean the things she was saying about me. Finally I would run out, flayed by the contempt spewing from the mouth of the woman who was supposed to be the love of my life.
The first time I ran out she was so soft and sorry when I came back some hours later, and so worried (I’d gone up on the hills, it was dark and raining). She held me and we cried for hours together. On later occasions my exit just became the subject of more contempt – how typical it was of me, running away and so forth. Frankly, as time went on I ran away because if I hadn’t I’d have hit her. And of course, a man must never hit a woman, no matter what the provocation.
Having said all this I wouldn’t want to give the impression we did nothing but argue. I suppose this kind of thing happened about ten times in the entire relationship, and at first it was ok. We felt we learned something on each occasion, but as time went on it became clear we were learning nothing. I had no money for studio space and she gave up on her academic career.
It seems laughable to think now that there was a time when I’d be strolling along some country lane and I’d come across some scruffy little cabin or bungalow or a caravan perhaps, sunk in billows of briars and nettles and potato plants, the ground strewn with chicken wire and rusting mowers, climbing frames and paddling pools half deflated, and it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t one day find a place like that and do it up and plant trees and grow some veggies, maybe get a dog.
But then when it came to it, and even though we were both working hard, with property prices being what they were, we had to accept it wasn’t going to be like that. We simply wouldn’t be able to afford it.
I even suggested we go back to Andalucia, maybe go live on the finca with Mar’s parents but she wouldn’t hear of it. So there we were, stuck in that miserable little flat together, ’til death did us part.

That last trip to Spain I had no high hopes for a reconciliation. We met up with Carmen and Riqui and went into the mountains in a borrowed hatchback. It was a fantastic day – we saw eagles and picas and swam in a river. I loved Spain. I had some ideas for a series of pictures and began to formulate a plan for coming back alone to do some drawing. Mar was civil but distant.
That afternoon I’d been doing the driving, which always wound her up. I wasn’t too confident driving on the right-hand side of a narrow twisty mountain road with bloody great trucks coming in the other direction, so I was taking it slowly. I was very aware of her mood.
The problem really started when I was manoeuvring in a car park, and the car rolled backwards over a dip so that one of the front wheels was slightly off the ground. It was front wheel drive and we couldn’t get any traction. The three Spaniards were all talking at once. My Spanish was ok but not that good and I left them to it, walking around the car, trying to look useful. Mar was getting more and more heated, but the others seemed to be taking this in their stride. Riqui was laughing and shrugging a lot. Carmen was as loud as Mar, but good humoured. After a few minutes Riqui got the jack out and was propping the rear up and Carmen was running the engine, trying to get a grip. Mar and I were sitting on the bonnet trying to weigh it down. I could feel the full heat of her derision radiating at me along with the stultifying heat of the midday sun. ‘This is no bloody good’ she said. ‘Why don’t you go do something useful?’ I knew it was my fault that we were in this situation, and I couldn’t think of anything else to do about it but I still didn’t feel I deserved this treatment. It was just a silly mistake. Everyone makes mistakes, but somehow, being with Mar just made me feel like I was the most stupid useless person in the world. It felt like I was full of hot, acid vomit, burning my chest, ready to burst out of my head. I could feel it leaking out of my eyes. My teeth were clenched so hard my jaws ached. And yet I couldn’t yell or cry. I held it in. I got down and looked under the car. It occurred to me that the jack could go a little higher. It was on some loose stones and had shifted. I got down to have a look and to hide the tears that were leaking out.

So that was when it happened. You can see it coming can’t you? Carmen was revving the engine, and Riqui was bouncing on the bonnet, amidst much yelling and gesticulation. Somehow, I don’t really remember how, I had my head in the wheel arch when the jack slipped.

I had quite a lot of time to think, or so it seemed. The weight of the car on my shoulders and neck was enough to stop me breathing, but I think I kicked and scrabbled for a while. I was vaguely aware of people around me, shouting, running around, but I couldn’t really hear anything over the engine and the sound of my heart in my head. Eventually someone turned the engine off and I stopped struggling. It was over. I remember thanking God for the silence. I had a final image of my poor sweet girl and how sorry I was it had come to this. Everyone’s voices seemed very far away – like I was underwater. I could see gravel and pine needles under my nose. I could picture my predicament – my body splayed out, my head stuck in the side of a car. It looked very funny. It would have been a great slapstick moment in a circus with a clown car perhaps and all the clowns running about ineffectually beeping horns. I don’t remember any pain. I don’t remember being aware of my body at all in fact. I just remember feeling ridiculous, and somehow, not surprised.
‘Typical’ I thought ‘What a prat.’

Journey XV – Poppy

‘You can rest here awhile’ he says after we’ve been riding for a few days. I’m not used to it and my thighs ache. We follow the track down a steep slope under low beech boughs and ridged with their roots like rungs on a ladder. The caramel gold leaves spatter the ground and garland our shoulders and hats. Ahead I can see water and what appears to be a solid stone quay with a carved stone balustrade. Turning a bend in the road a substantial house comes into view to our right, built of the same grey stone as the quay and facing the water, which turns out to be a vast lake.
‘This is the mill’ says Marvin. ‘They’ll put you up here for a couple nights. I have some business to attend to. I may be a few days. Don’t panic. Just wait and I’ll see you in a while.’ I nod and he gallops off, back the way we came. I look around. Evening is moving in. Everything is dripping wet. On my left, on the lake’s rocky edge I see pines and rhododendrons leaning out over a shingle beach. The water laps fitfully – like a storm is coming. Leaning back in the saddle because of the incline, I descend the slope and the sheer size of the lake becomes apparent – accentuated by the lack of a horizon. It’s an inland sea. In the hazy distance I can see mountains and some of them already have snow on their peaks.
On the cobble road between the lake and the house I dismount and fuss my horse a little. I have a feeling we may be parting company here. I look at the view a bit longer and notice lights here and there along the shores. A voice behind me makes me swing around. There’s a woman in a doorway in a grey dress and white apron. ‘Gabriel?’ she says. I move closer to see if I recognise her. I don’t.
‘They said you would be arriving. Would you like to take him around the back?’ and she indicates a way around the side where presumably there are stables. I nod and lead the horse around. As I walk past the impressive frontage I look up at the windows and think that it’s how I imagined a hotel somewhere in central Europe might look, somewhere in the French Alps perhaps. There’s something distinctly Napoleonic about it. The first storey windows are floor to ceiling and all have matching white lace curtains and red geraniums.
Inside it is very warm and exactly as I imagined a continental guesthouse to be – all starched tablecloths and polished silverware, rich red carpets and oil paintings in gilt frames. I appear to be the only guest. It all strikes me suddenly as impossibly funny. This whole place makes no sense at all, and just then the lady of the house comes through to ask me if I would like the casserole or the fish. She doesn’t enquire as to what I might be grinning about.

Next morning, after a wonderfully deep sleep in a most voluptuously pillowed and quilted four-poster, and after a deep hot bath and excellent coffee and croissants I set out for a walk along the shore. I look down over the stone balustrades and see water crashing out from under the road and under the house presumably. I turn and look up at the crag behind the house and wonder where it’s all coming from and what it’s being used for, if anything. Turning back to the lake I look at the long grey view over the water, which is now quite choppy and I watch dark clouds passing across. Slanting lines of heavy rain are visible beneath them, even at this distance and I can hear the steady rush of heavy weather on its way. And there’s something else too. Something I’ve not heard in a very long time. Children. I can hear children’s voices.
Suddenly it seems very strange that I hadn’t missed them until now and surely they shouldn’t be here. This is what I was told long ago. There shouldn’t be any children in the afterlife. And then I spot them – quite a way away, jumping about among the rocks and tree roots further along the right-hand shore, among the trees, ten or twelve of them, brightly dressed and running in that unmistakable way children have. I wonder who they belong to or how they got here otherwise. I decide to explore the left bank.
That night at dinner I ask Colette, the mistress of the house, about them and she says vaguely that they come sometimes and maybe they belong to the people along the shore. She doesn’t know. I’m not sure why they disturb me so much. I learned to avoid children in life. It was safer that way – no misunderstandings. And yet here they are, unattended. Anything could be out there. I look out of my window long after dark that night and I can still hear them up in the woods on the promontory. They worry me.

Marvin doesn’t come the next day, nor the next. I’m worried about him too now, although Colette makes mollifying noises and yet more coffee and extraordinary cakes. It is raining heavily outside and the cobbles are adrift with fallen leaves from the maples above. I sit in the window and watch.
On the fourth day, the rain eases up and Marvin appears, clearly in a hurry, still needing more time and making apologies. He wants to check I’m ok and I say I am but that there are children here, unsupervised apparently.
‘Are you sure?’ he says, making time for at least one cup of coffee and a slice of cake. He looks troubled by this too. ‘I didn’t think that was possible’ he says into his cup. Two more cups and the better part of a walnut cake later he gets up suddenly and says ‘Gotta dash’. I see him to his horse.
‘I’ll ask about the kids ok?’ he shouts as he wheels around and heads back up the hill.
‘Ok’ I say and wonder who he will ask. It’s becoming apparent that there must be a whole invisible network of guides and their facilities working behind the scenes. I wonder who organises it. I go back in, out of the rain and find a book to read. Colette offers me more coffee but I ask if she’s got anything stronger and she reels off a long list of liqueurs and aperitifs. I ask for Calvados. I only had it once in life and this seems too good to miss.
By evening the cloud has broken and the sky is deep blue where it is visible among the black silhouette clouds. I take a short stroll along the quay. I can hear birds but no children. I wonder what happened to them.

Next morning I am awoken by the sound of the children under my window. I look down cautiously and there they are, five of them, playing right on the edge of the quay, balancing on the balustrade. It’s terrifying but I don’t know what to do. Go and find Colette is the obvious answer. I put a gown on, taking one last look out to check they’re still there. They are, but my eye is caught by one of them, a girl somewhat older than the rest, sitting, looking directly up at me. I feel like I should know who she is. I tear my gaze away and head downstairs. Colette attempts to interest me in the day’s breakfast menu but I insist she goes out and says something to the children.
‘Why mister Gabriel’ she says ‘Do not trouble yourself. They are often like this. They are quite safe. They have always been like this.’ and she looks enquiringly into my face as if I am very foolish. ‘It is normal. Now, if you put your clothes on I will make you eggs and ham, hmm?’ I force myself to calm down and nod. I will get dressed and have breakfast. On my way up I find I am trembling.

When I arrive for breakfast I look out the window and the children have gone again. I heard no splash, and no screams so I guess they have survived. I sit down and find I am ravenous.
After breakfast I am finishing my coffee, looking out the window when I notice the older girl sitting on the balustrade, swinging her legs. I have the sense she is waiting for me. She wears a neat black dress with a prim white collar and has long straight black hair and seems very slightly built for her height. As I watch she looks up and directly at me. My heart thumps.

I go out and sit on the balustrade facing the lake. She is sitting sideways facing toward me about twenty yards away but also looking out across the water. Every so often she picks a leaf up off the ground and throws it in the swirling water below. I want to say something but don’t dare.
Eventually she slides lazily from her seat and comes over. I pretend not to notice her, try to keep cool. ‘Can I sit here?’ she says eventually. I look at her. There is a slightly bored pissed-off look on her face – trying to pretend she doesn’t care either. She fidgets and sways, waiting for a reply. I say ‘Why not?’ desperately trying to appear mature.
‘What are you looking at?’ she says once seated.
‘The mountains’ I say.
‘Are you going there?’
‘I don’t know. My guide, Marvin should be back soon...’
‘I don’t have a guide’ she says, as if she is far too grown-up for such molly-coddling. We sit quietly for a short while. ‘I saw you watching us’ she says after a while. ‘It’s ok. We know what we’re doing.’
I look at her. She can’t be more than thirteen. She has unusually large dark eyes and pale skin.
‘Where are your parents?’ I say, expecting to be slapped down for being boring. Instead she tells me they’re dead. ‘But don’t worry’ she says ‘We can handle ourselves.’
I smile and say ‘I’m sure you can.’ And I am. I never had this kind of confidence at their age and I envied it so much at the time – still do. I look around and down at my hands – my thirty-something-year old hands. I’ve been a pensioner and a teenager and now I feel like a schoolboy trying to get the courage up to talk to the prettiest girl in the class. How ridiculous – after all I’ve been through. But making a twat of yourself to a twelve year old is much worse than making a twat of yourself to someone your own age. I turn and ask what her name is.
‘Oh, sorry’ she says and holds out her hand. ‘How rude of me. I’m Poppy, and you?’
I shake her hand. ‘Gabriel.’
‘Gabriel?’ she says frowning. ‘Why did your parents call you that?’
‘Well you can talk, Poppy’ I say, feeling a little more confident.
‘Poppy’s alright’ she says, clearly a little miffed. ‘Anyway, it’s not the name my parents gave me. I don’t remember what that was. I chose to call myself Poppy. It’s a flower.’
‘I know. I used to be a gardener.’
‘Did you have poppies?’
‘Sometimes. They were always turning up in unexpected places, seeding around. Poppy. It suits you. I like it.’
‘Gabriel was an angel’ she says.
‘That’s true, at the nativity.’
‘Was your family very religious?’
‘Not really. I think mum just liked the name.’ She nods and swivels around to look at the water a bit more. We sit quietly for a bit longer and then she says she has to go and ‘See you later.’ I watch her disappear up among the trees. I feel strangely uplifted by our chat and head in the opposite direction, up over the rocks, through the bracken to the ridge where I can see further along the left hand bank of the lake. I decide to spend the day exploring. Later on I spot some of the children in a boat with a make-shift sail far out on the water - clearly having a great time.

The following morning I get word that Marvin is on his way and will be here by nightfall. I look out the front door and Poppy is there again. ‘She likes you’ says Colette without a trace of suspicion. ‘They don’t very often speak to adults.’ I fetch my wet weather gear because it’s drizzling and go out to her.
‘Want to see our house?’ she says and without waiting for an answer, briskly heads for the steep eroded bank up under the rhododendrons where she disappeared the day before. She seems impressed that I can follow so easily. ‘Most adults can’t’ she observes haughtily. I tell her about the forests and crags where I’ve been, and the river where we all swam.
‘We swim here, in the summer. You should come’ she says. I follow her up over the grassy ridge among what look like overgrown garden shrubs rather than wild plants. Huge pines and redwoods rise out of the red, stony soil. Further out along the promontory we skid down through some wet bushes and find what looks like an abandoned quarry below. Half way along on the other side I can see a wooden shack, faded and slightly tilted but apparently sound. There seem to be logs for legs holding it level on the slope. Smoke is rising out of a metal flue in the roof. I go to take a closer look but she grips my sleeve and shakes her head. ‘You mustn’t tell anyone. Promise?’ I nod vigorously. ‘And you can’t go any closer’ she says. ‘It’s secret.’
‘Ok’ I whisper, and we watch. I can hear there’s a lot going on in there. ‘How many of you are there?’
‘Twenty?’ she shrugs.
‘Do any of you ever go missing?’
‘No. Never. We look out for each other.’
‘Good. I’m glad to hear it.’ And I think I believe her. It’s a terrific camp they’ve built, or, somebody’s built for them. I still can’t quite believe no one’s looking after them. I look around at Poppy. She’s looking intently at me. There’s something strangely familiar about her.
‘You’re scared of me aren’t you’ she says.
I say ‘Children make me nervous’ as lightly as I can.
‘We’re not really children you know’ she says, and suddenly I can see that. It’s very obvious.
‘How old were you?’ I say.
‘I don’t know. I can’t remember. Quite old.’
‘I was over sixty when I died’ I say.
‘Not that old’ she says grinning and punching me in the arm. ‘Maybe thirty. I had children of my own, I know that. Anyway, like I say. We can take care of ourselves’ and she turns to go and I follow.
Back at the pensione she reaches up and kisses me on the cheek and says goodbye. I go back in and get more coffee and some of the amazing Danish pastries they do. I think about them – the children all living together in the woods here. It makes perfect sense. How many of us I wonder would spend eternity as a child if we could?
Well not me as it happens, but I could see the appeal.

Voyage XII – Harvey's Tale

We’ve just had a bit of a revelation. It turns out that Harvey can remember having gone through all this before. It was raining hard outside again and we were ensconced down in a booth in the bar, trying to get enthusiastic about backgammon and griping about this and that, and how nobody seems to have much idea what it’s all about, when Harvey pipes up.
‘I can’t remember it all’ he says. ‘It’s like a dream. I can remember parts – some of the afterlife, and going back to life...’
So we all want to know what that’s like. He sits back in his chair and snuggles closer to Cathy. This is the other surprise. While I’ve been mooning over Andrea and Paul has been trying to get into Fiona’s knickers, Harvey has coolly moved in on Cathy and they are clearly very much together now. (So it turns out the afterlife is the place to get laid after all.)
‘Do you remember being born?’ asks Bryony, wrinkling her nose up. This is something we all wanted to ask but thought best not to.
‘Up to a point...’
We’re all aghast at the implications. ‘What was it like?’ we chorus.
‘Disembodied. I don’t think I was actually in my body at that stage. I was just... about, in the air, watching.’
‘So you don’t remember your mum, you know, feeding you and stuff?’ says Paul with obvious relish, miming holding a baby to the breast. We all look at him. ‘What?’ he says.
‘I don’t remember very much of the earliest days at all, thanks for asking, but that’s not because I was too immature. I was aware, as I am now. I just wasn’t fully in my body, as it were. It’s as if my body was simply working on instinct at that stage and then it slowly became conscious as I entered it more fully.’
‘But you were there, watching somehow...’ says Fiona.
‘In a vague, distracted sort of way, yes.’
‘You know, I always thought that about my eldest’ says Cathy ‘that he came to inhabit his body in time, as if his personality was fully formed in advance, but not entirely at home or something.’
‘Did you manage to make any differences to your life, because you knew things from before?’ asks Fiona.
‘It was more about recognising things. I didn’t really have enough information to know what was coming next very often. Once or twice...’
‘Like déjà vu?’ I say.
‘No, well, maybe. Stronger than that though.’
‘My guide said déjà vu is just what this is – flash backs from previous lives’ says Cathy ‘but they’re usually too unexpected and short to be much use – that’s not what yours were like, were they sweetie?’ Harvey is nestled down under her arm now, looking very comfortable indeed. He shakes his head.
‘No. I could go back in my mind, as it were, and work my way through the memory, as you can with normal memories, and even make small changes as a result.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, you could do something different to what you know you did last time. The trouble was the changes would be somewhat random because I had no way of being sure of what the consequences were last time, if you follow me. It was all rather disjointed.’
‘Tell them about the time you saved that girl though’ says Cathy. They really are very sweet together.
‘Oh yes’ he says, sitting up, getting into his stride. ‘That was one of the very few opportunities I had to actually make a significant change. I think it’s the big, dramatic occurrences that stay with you.’ He pauses. We look at him.
‘And...’ says Paul.
‘Oh, yes, well there was a girl, Frances, who I knew quite well in Worthing, and we’d been friends for a few years, as before. So far so good, and then one day I was standing in my kitchen and I had this image of Chanctonbury Ring, on the Downs, near Steyning, you know it? Well anyway, I knew that something horrible was going to happen to her soon in the vicinity of the Ring, and that she would kill herself soon afterwards. The trouble was I couldn’t pin down precisely when she was there, or even how she got there. It was possible she was abducted you see, and taken there.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Well, I kept on making excuses to go round there and spend time with her but as you can imagine, she found it all a little unusual to say the least. We hadn’t been terribly close up until that point. Well anyway, I could feel the day approaching, although I couldn’t tell exactly how close it was, only that it was getting closer and in desperation I made up a story that there’d been a plumbing disaster at my place and could I come and stay with her for a while? Now, what I hadn’t realised was that she had secretly been having an illicit affair with another chap, name of Lawrence and that it had been getting a little out of hand between them...’
‘And it was him...’ gasps Fiona. Harvey smiles and holds up a hand to quieten her so he can finish the story.
‘It was Lawrence. He was married but he had arranged to take her away to stay at an hotel in Steyning with him. She didn’t want to go any more but was afraid of what he might do if she said ‘no’. I turned up and gave her an excuse not to go.’
‘Didn’t he try again later, after you’d gone? You couldn’t stay there for ever.’
‘I could and I did. Friends, I married her’ says Harvey, triumphant. ‘Thirty years we were together.’
I look at Cathy for signs of jealousy but she is beaming with pride.
‘After that, of course, my premonitions were useless. My life moved onto a entirely different track.’
‘What happened the time before then? If you weren’t with whatserface – Frances?’ asks Paul.
‘I think Leeds, long hours in a very dull office, and I remember a thin little woman with halitosis. I’m not sure which was worse – Leeds or the halitosis. No, I think I made the right move.’
‘Sounds like it.’ says Trevor from behind me, and raises his glass. ‘That sort of luck to all of us next time.’
‘To all of us’ I say and I see Cathy and Harvey looking into each other’s eyes. I have a feeling they won’t be going back.

Harvey and I end up sitting up together when the others have gone to bed. I ask him what happens to us all next, if he can remember.
‘Long journey overland I think. Several years perhaps.’
I imagine all of us, and others from the rest of the vast fleet that must be out there somewhere, all the souls who died the same day, marching across a massive empty plain. It sounds awe-inspiring I tell him.
‘It isn’t like that I’m afraid. A, They split us up into small groups, ten or so I seem to recall and there’ll be a guide allocated to you. B, It’s a rough, often steep, narrow track. You rarely see anyone else along the way, unless you stop for the night at a settlement. Cheer up Gabriel. What’s the worst that can happen? We’re already dead after all.’
‘I suppose so... Do you remember any details – good roads, places to stay perhaps?
‘It seems a very long time ago now. Well, it is, isn’t it. It’s at least eighty years.’ He looks about forty-five but he’s old enough to be my dad.
‘I suppose so.’

‘How old were you when you died?’ he asks.
‘Sixty-eight I think. I don’t know. I lost count.’
‘Best way. Do you think you’ll go back?’
‘Definitely. You?’
‘No. I don’t think I can improve much on last time, not realistically.’
‘Don’t you want to see your wife again?’
‘Of course I do. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than go home and take her in my arms, see her face...’ He takes a moment, swallows, ‘But you see, if I go back, well it might not work out this time. I might be too late, or I might be so intent on recreating the past I might put her off. Or I might forget and let her fall into his hands again, you see? I can’t risk it.’
‘I see.’
‘No. Let it be. I’ve done my best.’
‘But if you’re not there at all, won’t she go on alone and suffer whatever...’
‘No no’ he says a little impatiently. ‘It doesn’t work like that. We’ve had our time. That’s it finished.’
‘But what if she chooses to go back? How does that work?’
He sits and thinks for a while. ‘You know I’m not sure’ he says finally. ‘But I do know that I will not be absent, no matter how many times she goes back and tries again. I’m not sure how though.’ He takes another break to think about it. ‘You’ve really got me thinking now’ he says jovially.
‘So what will you do next? Find a place to stay here? I haven’t asked how it works yet.’ Something about him makes me feel rather inadequate. He has the air of a man who knows exactly what he will do next, and probably has a brochure, ordered prior to departure.
‘I hardly remember to be honest. Some of the settlements were delightful as I recall. I understand the idea is to find one you like and, well, stay there.’
‘Forever?’
‘Perhaps. Who knows.’
‘What about Cathy?’ I ask. I know I’m being impertinent and he eyes me appraisingly for a moment before answering.
‘She’s a nice girl isn’t she? She doesn’t want to be alone here. I can’t say I’m complaining’ he says coolly. I have no further questions.
‘And now...’ he says, getting up from his chair and arranging his things ‘I must bid you good night.’
‘Good night’ I say and watch him leave.
It must be nice, I think, to see your life that way, to feel that you’ve done the best you can and it’s time to let it go. It must be a huge burden lifted.
But more than that, if everyone is going back, trying to live the best life they can and then sticking when they feel they’ve done their best – does that mean the world is getting steadily better and better? I suppose it depends on what you consider good.

Voyage I – Travelling man

I’d always wanted to travel but I never got the chance in life. When I was in the sixth form a few intrepid souls were going inter-railing or working on a kibbutz, and then, in the eighties everybody was off to India or Thailand, or Australia. Everybody travelled back then. Cheap air travel was virtually a human right. I missed it all of course, along with everything else exciting and glamorous. And yet now here I am, on the deck of a ship going who knows where. Everything visible right now is cold and inhospitable but apparently it’ll only be a few months and we should be arriving on some exotic foreign shore, from whence we travel over land until we arrive at the far shore and rebirth. Apparently they provide camping equipment. Somehow I expected more of an ordeal, this being the afterdeath and all, but in fact I’m very much looking forward to it.

I never wanted to go to Asia myself – everybody went there. I could just picture the toilet paper flapping in the bushes all the way up to Anapurna Base Camp, and the merry tinkling of the broken coke bottles in the pure mountain streams. I’d like to have gone to Mexico or Brazil perhaps. I remember as a kid seeing pictures of the tops of pyramids emerging from the rainforest with those bizarre crests, like petrified seventies bookshelves set on top. I remember having a debate with a chap at Womad about extraterrestrials and the whole ‘Chariots of the Gods’ thing. I don’t necessarily dispute that there may be life on other planets and they may even occasionally visit us by some, as yet undreamt of method of propulsion, but this chap seemed to think he had inside information on who they were and what they wanted of us. I’d always considered such people fair game and there was something about the passion of his conviction that just forced me to try to demolish his entire belief system. Of course I failed because whereas he knew that the crystal skull was the work of aliens, I could do nothing better than suggest that there might be alternative explanations. One of the main planks to his belief as I recall, was the ‘extraordinary’ coincidence of form of the Egyptian and Mayan pyramids which was of course proof that the ‘Gods’ had had something to do with both. We argued long and hard about whether it had been adequately demonstrated that such technologically primitive peoples could have built such structures. We inevitably went on to discuss Nazca lines and crop circles. Unfortunately it didn’t occur to me until later that if you want to construct a truly massive edifice and your only technology is slaves, then a pyramid is pretty much the only shape to go for.
I know I should shut up and let them get on with it, but when people are talking crap at you, as if they know what’s what and you’re just a naive fool, well, as life goes on, sooner or later you just have to say something, if only for your own self-respect. I’m quite certain I never changed anyone’s mind about anything whatsoever.
That’s why I like it here. Nobody except the guides claim to know what the heck’s going on (and the guides don't claim to know much). Nobody knows anything about anybody else – except what they choose to tell. It reminds me a bit of hospital – with the staff in their greys and this hushed, almost narcotic atmosphere. On the other hand there’s an excellent menu and counselling and a library, and at least some sense of going somewhere. I go up on deck and sit and look at the ice flows passing in the fog, or watch the cormorants in the rigging. Other times I go and sit in the bar or the lounge with a good book and a strong cup of coffee. Maybe I’ll get bored but I don’t think we’ll be sailing for very long. I probably should be feeling bereft but to be honest I’ve never been happier, not in the whole of my life.

Joe XII – The moral majority

‘I hear there’s been some drama’ he says as I sit down.
‘Nothing much’ I say. ‘Why don’t you tell everyone in advance, about us not being able to smack each other?’
‘It’s funnier’ he says ‘watching people like Harry make berks of themselves.’
‘Does it happen a lot?’
‘Not as much as you’d think actually. Death usually has a calming effect on people – makes them more tolerant and considerate.’
‘So... why not Harry?’
‘He’s a psycho’ he says jauntily and laughs a little.
‘So... how does it work?’
‘How does what work?’
‘The non-violence. Is it like that marshal arts thing where you don’t hit people, you just use their weight to knock them down? Something like that?’
‘Ju-jitsu?’
I shake my head and shrug. It sounds about right.
‘Perhaps. But it’s more complicated than that. The way I had it explained to me... Well, ok, you know, back in the world there’s physical forces – momentum and friction and magnetism and such. Physics stuff?’
I nod doubtfully. I know absolutely nothing about physics.
‘Well here it’s more like morality is a force, makes things happen. That’s not quite right... Let me see... It’s like, in life, if you told someone that what they were doing was simply wrong, well saying that might make you feel better, but it would have no intrinsic power to change their behaviour. Here it does.’
I look blankly at him.
‘Look it’s not like divine intervention. It’s more like, here, the way people feel things should be, deep down, is how things are. For example, a small minority might think it would be ok to attack someone they hate. I mean – with me for example, there’s probably going to be a few violent homophobes about, but on the other hand there’ll be some others who really believe in personal freedom. Most people though, they might not really approve of me, but they wouldn’t want to see me get hurt. So I’m safe. Does that make sense?’
I can’t really imagine how that could work, but then I can’t really imagine how words and pictures get from the studio to my TV set at home. It hasn’t stopped Harry and the others making me miserable anyway. Maybe they all think it’s what I deserve.
‘No’ he continues, ‘I’m happy to report I’ve never been on a boat, or heard of a boat even, where it was ok to attack other people unless they actually wanted to be attacked. I have to say it gives me a lot of hope for humanity.’
‘Is there a no sex rule too?’ I ask as casually as possible. I want to know if Lucy wouldn’t do it with me because there’s a rule. That would be good news.
‘Not that I’ve come across’ he says, a little too gleefully. ‘You might have trouble doing it in the forward lounge in front of everyone, but as long as you keep it discrete it seems you can do what you like to whoever likes it. It doesn’t seem to be possible to get very drunk here though, except for on special occasions, which is interesting. It’s fascinating actually. It’s not like this everywhere though I should warn you’ he adds. ‘You’ll need to watch out once we disembark. On the boat we’re all thrown together willy-nilly. Extremes tend to cancel. Once you’re on land it’s a very different state of affairs. People have chosen where they want to be. Places develop a very definite mood, a distinct personality... Consider too that some of the people will have been there for a very long time indeed. Some of them will have died hundreds of years ago on the other side of the world...’
He anticipates a reaction from me but I have to disappoint him. This occurred to me a while back and I’m not in the mood to act all astonished. ‘I do understand that’ I say and he is disappointed and I’m sorry.
‘Well anyway’ he says, ‘they don’t always appreciate a lot of twentieth century westerners coming along, acting like they run the place....’
He looks more closely at me, trying to get a reaction. It’s all I can do not to cry.
‘Well’ he says, sighing, ‘anyway, you’ll need to be very careful where you end up.’

Afterwards I go up into the bows and look at the water. It’s getting dark. The sun is just a bright spot in the distance. To port I see the silhouette of a strange continent. I can’t stand it here on the boat any longer but I don’t want to go there either. And I don’t want to go home. I can’t face going back. What am I going to do? I look down at the water. I look around the deck. There’s nobody else up here. Nobody would miss me, except maybe Joe. He might be upset. I wish Justine was here.
The breeze is warm and fragrant from the land. The water chops idly below. I could just drop. I could just drift on the current forever. I might feel the way I do now forever but at least I wouldn’t be adding to it.
I got a beautiful woman, naked, into my bed and she still didn’t want me. I told Harry and the others, out loud, to stuff their tedious ideas about how I should live and I still don’t feel any better.
I don’t know why I’m like this. All I know is I don’t seem to be able to do anything about it. And nothing that’s happened here makes me think that things will be any different in the future, either here in the afterlife or in my next life. This is just how I am, wrong, forever and ever amen.
Anyway, I think it must be about dinner time.
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Journey VII – Caste

Considering the places a lot of the populace seem to tolerate living in I suppose I haven’t done too badly. My little chamber is at least fairly private. Although it has no door, hardly anyone ever finds their way this far through the tunnels so I have the place to myself. Or, rather, we have it to ourselves.

When I was arrested and taken to administration the only question they asked me was what use was I. I didn’t know what they meant at first but then the administrator, a tall, worried looking man in what appeared to be a suit made by someone who had not seen a suit for a very long time, gave me some examples – was I a cook? a leather worker? a musician? I told him I had been a student and hadn’t really had a job before, as such. ‘A student of what?’ he said irritably. I told him art and he tutted and wrote something down on the top sheet of a pile of papers. Then he used a rubber stamp in what I can only describe as a blur of rubber-stamping and I discovered he’d given me a cleaning job.

My job is to sweep and generally remove the clutter from a sector of the lower tunnels running underneath the main chambers. I don’t think there was anything personal about this choice for me. It was simply a matter of giving me whatever was next on the list. The tunnels in question are rather low ceilinged and are close to the main drain where it joins the river that runs under this place. It’s stinky and damp but relatively cool, and the residents are withdrawn to say the least. Nobody much bothers me down there.
In return I get this room and a few coins to spend on food and whatever. My room turns out to be one of the sheds I’d seen set into the hillside as I arrived but it’s more like a second world war bunker, made out of some sort of concrete. I’m told nobody else wanted it because it’s too cold in winter and plants and animals tend to creep in but I don’t mind. I’m used to that sort of thing. Mostly I’m glad of the seclusion and the fact that I can easily climb out onto the surface and look at the view, which is stupendous. Miranda comes and sits with me when we’re sure nobody’s looking and actually it’s quite nice. I like us here like this, sharing a place together. She seems more relaxed now but a little tetchy. Her wounds healed quickly and I’ve erected the tent on the floor of the chamber so she can move about in there without worrying about being seen. I still don’t know what’s going on with her. At first she seemed to think I’d settle here and she could move on and do whatever she had to do. I don’t think she was particularly looking forward to that but she wanted to ‘get it over with’. She seemed surprised at first when I told her there was no way I was going to be stopping here once the spring came. I think she’d assumed I’d be happy to stay anywhere if there were other people around, but after giving it some more thought she could see what I meant. In truth I think she was happy to have an excuse to postpone our parting a bit longer.

Actually, I don’t mind the squashed, lightless, airless feeling of the main chambers either. I like the heat and the stench down there and the noise and the fact that there’s always something going on – maybe a fight or a show, or just somebody slaughtering a goat and dismantling it to sell the parts.
Occasionally a noisy and colourful entourage of people who seem to think themselves very important passes through and everybody does their best to make way although these dignitaries seem to take delight in deliberately veering off into the crowd so that, if they’re not quick enough, people get all their belongings trampled into the floor. I never saw anyone complain openly but quite frequently fights break out afterwards as everyone squabbles over the spoils. Everyone seems to carry a knife or a cudgel of some sort. I stay out of the way as best I can but the carnage sometimes is disturbing. There’s a lot of nasty wounds and sores about too I note, especially in the less salubrious precincts, which is interesting. I wonder how they got them. Fighting maybe.
There don’t seem to be any women about either. I wonder why.

It’s actually a fascinating place but I don’t know how they all tolerate living like this all the time. I have to go outside regularly even if there’s a frost or rain. The old chap in charge of the vegetable plot above my room is friendly enough but doesn’t say much. I share my beers with him sometimes and he offers me his pipe. I take it as I don’t want to be impolite and actually it’s quite nice but Miranda said ‘Don’t even think about taking that up as a hobby’ – like she’s my wife or something. She is funny.

It is an extraordinary place though, the whole settlement I mean. I commented on the amazing feat of tunnelling involved in making it to one of my colleagues (ostensibly my superior) and he told me rather tersely that the whole thing had been built, not tunnelled out. He told me this in a tone of voice that suggested that he thought the idea of hollowing out a hill would have been rather a primitive, vulgar thing to do, whereas erecting this, from scratch... well... I had to admit it was impressive. I asked about the building material and he told me it was all a kind of clay, collected from further up river and fired by building a pyre within each new chamber. Finally he told me that a whole new layer of chambers was going to be added to the western flank in the spring. He then gave me to understand that I should stop asking questions and get on with what I was supposed to be doing. I mused for a while on the structural implications of all that extra weight being added year after year and I wanted to ask how they worked it out and if there had been any major collapses but he was gone. He wouldn’t have been interested anyway probably. Nobody is much interested in talking about anything apparently. I imagine that everyone here must have come the way I did at some time, must have died and crossed the ocean and trailed all the way to this place, to make a settlement and... and then what? What comes next. This can’t be it, can it?
I asked Miranda about it and she asked me what I’d expected eternity to look like. The gardener told me, with some deep satisfaction that ‘Everybody here knows his place. It has always been this way’ and he implied I should not think of rocking the boat, or there would be dire consequences. He looked, on closer inspection (he pulled up his shirt and lifted his hat to show me the scars) as if he’d endured a few consequences himself in his time so I didn’t argue.

Come the spring the word went around that they’d be clearing the area for the new chambers to go in soon. They’d be needing a lot of labour and already, it was said, the more ‘purposeless’ citizens were being rounded up in case they made a run for it. I’d noticed there were a lot less down-and-outs in the usual places. I never found out where they’d been taken but I feared I might be next since I was so near the bottom of the heap, and the newest arrival too. I watched the barges drifting down river, laden with the clay and I couldn’t help notice the increased security on all the exits. It really felt like it might be a good time to move on and Miranda agreed. I looked at the tent. If I took it down someone might notice and would know I was intending to leave. Maybe I should leave it behind I thought. I looked at Miranda who looked back at me and we wondered what to do. I pointed out that surely she could leave whenever she wanted to but she just said no, that wasn’t going to happen and carried on with whatever she was doing.
A few days later a heavily armed ‘functionary’ delivered me a call-up notice.

I should consider myself relatively lucky I suppose. I only had to work part time. They said they needed me to carry on with my normal duties while the construction work went on, but I was told I’d have to get them done in the afternoon because I’d be labouring every morning. Even that didn’t sound too bad – my normal duties were fairly minimal and I was usually finished by early afternoon (Some of the other cleaners seemed to take a very long time indeed over their chores). Nobody ever checked up on me.
Nevertheless, emerging into the early sunshine that first morning on site, the prospect was not encouraging. All over the hillside, people were milling about with spades and picks, baskets and barrows, carting soil from where it was being stripped, onto a gigantic pile to one side, ready to be put back once the work was completed. Allotments and dwellings were being cleared away and the bare superstructure underneath opened up and emptied. In some places it looked as if people had been taken by surprise and not had time to pack their belongings. ‘The purposeless are always getting in the way’ said one of the men in my group, a tall, muscle-bound and intensely grimy man who was obviously used to this sort of thing and rather enjoyed it. ‘They never learn’ he added contemptuously as a small woman in her nightgown stumbled past, clutching a picture and a pot plant and a bundle of clothes to her chest. I learned that the women were all kept hidden in their chambers ‘until required’. I never did find out what they were ‘required’ for. Here and there stood the tall, bulky security men in their black body armour and with their batons at the ready. A cordon of them stood at the perimeter. Clearly nobody was getting out unless they said so.
Finally, after much standing around, a functionary came up and indicated we should head off up the slope. Another man pointed to some baskets and directed us to go further along. Once we were there an obese man in nothing but a pair of shorts but with a big stick in his hand shoved and tugged us into position and then, with a signal, baskets full of soil and rocks and weeds began to be passed along to us, and our empty baskets were passed back to be filled. We did that more or less all morning without a pause. I couldn’t believe it. Why did everyone put up with this? I looked around at the workers on either side of me in the chain with an ironic, disbelieving expression on my face, hoping for a little acknowledgement of the absurdity and injustice of the situation but all I got for my trouble was a sneer and a slap.
When I left early to begin my cleaning shift I was tripped and spat on by some of the others. They didn’t like part-timers.

I put up with this for about a week I suppose. I was sick of being literally pushed around. I didn’t understand why our supervisor had to physically push and pull us about instead of opening his mouth and just speaking to us. What was wrong with him? It wasn’t like he was any better than us. He was on the same pay and the same hours. It was just that he’d been given a big stick. Everybody hated him but secretly coveted his job. I just wanted to get out.

On the third day I sustained a deep cut in my hand from a carelessly wielded spade and Miranda bathed and wrapped it for me. I wasn’t allowed to take any time off but already I’d become worried by of the number of injuries that were being inflicted daily up there. Nobody seemed to be being very careful and in fact it often seemed like some of the ‘more experienced’ workers were deliberately taking their frustrations out on the rest of us. And frustrations there were. Without much in the way of shelter or breaks, everybody was short tempered and clumsy by midday. ‘Accidents’ happened all the time and new labourers had to be drafted in continuously. Whilst going about my cleaning duties, patrolling the normally crowded lower tunnels with my barrow and shovel it was obvious that the place was already a lot quieter than usual. I wondered how many inhabitants the colony housed all told. It had to be thousands – tens of thousands. There was no way of telling. I kept my head down and got on with my job.

At the end of the first week (although time was not measured in weeks – it just trailed on and on) I told Miranda I had a plan and she said ‘Oh thank goodness for that.’
There was no time to waste. I collected all our belongings together in my rucksack, keeping her safe in my overall pocket and hid everything in my barrow under a lot of trash and with my broom and shovel on top. I took it down by my usual route to the lower tunnels and stood there beside the river, looking as if I was starting work.
Once my supervisor had wandered off I put the pack on my back, grabbed the shovel and dropped off the edge into the water.
It was as simple as that.
I kept the shovel because I thought I might need a weapon or a tool. I expected at least some sort of guard at the outflow and at least some bars or a grating. If that was the case I wasn’t sure a shovel would be much use but I thought, well, what else have I got? I’d tried to take a pickaxe off site but they made me leave it behind.
As it was there was no guard and no grating. The river flowed, dark and malodorous out into the valley unimpeded and we drifted, underwater (since we didn’t need to breathe) out into the countryside once more.
A little further on, when we were out of sight I hauled us out onto a muddy slope and we sat and looked about for a moment, checking to see if we’d been followed, or if maybe there was a patrol out here or something. Miranda jumped out and pointed out that there were other fresh footprints in the mud. Somebody else had had the same idea apparently. Well good for them. Perhaps we’d meet up with them later on. I felt amazingly elated. It had been so easy. Why hadn’t everyone done the same? And why weren’t any of the guards coming after us? How stupid were these people?
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Voyage VIII – Listening skills

I have to say, I’ve noticed there are an awful lot of good-looking women on this boat – more than you’d expect (but then, I suppose they’re all looking their best here aren’t they). There’s one in particular I keep seeing around who’s really gorgeous. I don’t seem to be able to stop looking at her and a couple of times she’s caught me and she’s given me that haughty sort of sideways smile, like she thinks she’s so much better than me. I’m used to this sort of reaction but it still bugs me. It’s not like I would do anything embarrassing. I’m only looking. Anyway, she’s way out of my league, that’s for sure.
Sometimes I slip into the kind of thoughts I used to have at home – worrying mostly – Am I going to be a complete looser forever? Am I going to be alone forever? And then it hits me – I’m dead – all that’s in the past. I don’t have to worry about all that any more. And then I actually feel better than I ever did when I was alive.
Mostly people here seem to be keeping themselves to themselves (apart from Ray and the others, and Lucy and her group of course). A few friendships seem to have started. The women seem to pair off more easily – find someone so they’re not just sitting there talking to themselves. The men don’t seem to be able to do it so easily though. It’s sad. They try but no one knows what to say. It’s like they don’t trust each other. Then they try to talk to the women but they don’t really know how to. No one really knows how to behave. No one knows what’s going to happen next.

I do sometimes wish I had someone to talk to other than Ray and the others. I know there’s Joe and I don’t want to seem ungrateful because I know he doesn’t have to be here, but it is a bit like a job for him. It can’t be easy. I saw him up on deck with his morning coffee the other day, watching the water (there’s a lot of really big fish here suddenly I’ve noticed) and I stood there casually and asked how things were going and he said ‘fine’ but didn’t elaborate, so I mentioned what Liz had told me (not naming her of course) and asked if there was any way she could find out what happened to her grandchildren. He looked like he was thinking about it but had other things on his mind. I said I was quite worried about her. He suggested I get her to come and see him. I said I would try although I was not hopeful, but I could tell the conversation was over.

Ray and the others just seem to want to spend their time complaining about things. Brenda especially just seems permanently pissed off with the service – not because it’s bad, which it isn’t – everyone’s very helpful here, but more I think because the staff aren’t servile enough. They’re not our inferiors. Like Joe they’ve chosen to stay behind to help out. Recently Brenda wanted to have a go at one of them about something – having to wait a while for her coffee I think it was, and she really flew off the handle at one of the girls from the kitchen. Ray wanted to call the manager but the girl just looked at them with this quizzical little smile on her face. ‘Well, there isn’t a manager, per se’ she said. Harry commented on her use of ‘per se’ but she just carried on calmly, speaking quietly, explaining where the facilities were where we could make our own coffees, should we so wish, and then with a bright smile she turned and went about her business.
‘Well...’ huffed Brenda, obviously very put out. But there was nothing she could do, except make her own coffee presumably, and she wouldn’t stoop to that, so that was it. She had to wait.

In some ways this is a lot like my old existence – going off to write or draw or to think, or just to look at the scenery, except no one’s having a go at me here.
I actually did get talking to someone new recently – a skinny little bloke with a pencil moustache. He looked about twenty-six but talked like my granddad - really nasal London accent. He had been a mechanic in Croydon apparently. I was being polite, passing the time, he was talking about his business – I wasn’t really listening properly – I’ve never been much interested in cars. Actually I was thinking about how much I wanted to get away to work on this painting I’d started. But I wasn’t exactly short of time, and I had wanted to talk to someone new. Why was I so keen to get away from him? I forced myself to listen.

I suppose some people just love talking don’t they. I don’t. Well, I say what I want to say, if I’ve got something to say. I get it over with, but some people just go on and on. They don’t just say ‘I went to the shop and got whatever it was half price’. They tell you the whole conversation – and he said and she said and then I said... Maybe that’s why I don’t have a lot of friends. You need a certain quantity of talk to fill the time to maintain a social life, and unless you’re a comic genius most of it’s not going to be that interesting is it? Or you could be lucky enough to have a friendship with ‘comfortable silences’, but that’s quite rare I think.
So I try to listen and it feels like a real effort to nod in the right places and smile and say ‘really?’ I feel like I want to go get a hammock but that’d be rude. I shift from foot to foot and try not to yawn.
‘I’m sorry’ he says sadly ‘I know I go on. I just miss her so much. I’m sorry. You go’ and I feel like a complete shit. I don’t even know who he’s been talking about.
‘No, it’s okay’ I say brightly, but I do have to sit down. ‘Do you fancy a coffee?’ I say, indicating the stairs down.
‘Nah, s’alright’ he says, and goes back to looking out to sea.
I want to ask him about ‘her’. I hope he didn’t notice I wasn’t really listening. Maybe he was just talking for himself, not really caring if anyone was listening. I hope so.
I couldn’t do Joe’s job. But then, maybe he’s not really listening either.
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Joe V – Pretty boy

‘It is weird’ admits Joe, looking across the room at nothing in particular. ‘Generally people come here, they’re raw. Death strips everything away. You don’t need anything. You don’t have anything. You’ve just got yourself. Usually people are very quiet when they get here. Well, you can see the others. Usually people are just... They think a lot, talk a little amongst themselves. They cry quite a bit, as you’d expect... People tend to be more truthful here, more open about what they really think, how they feel. It’s almost like they can’t help themselves. Nothing left to lose I suppose... It can be a little unsettling for you English at times’ he says with glee but I don’t react. I never thought I was a very typical Englishman. ‘Anyway’ he resumes, coughing a little, ‘there’s always a few – not many – try to carry on the way they did in life. It’s always the ones who were most preoccupied with how big their car was compared to everyone else’s, or whether they could get the biggest bonus, buy the latest whatever it was, convinced that everyone else was as deluded as they were. It doesn’t really work here. Here you’re stripped of all that - your belongings, your status, the ambitions you had in life – you can’t use them here, so it’s just down to you, what you have inside – your “inner resources” so to speak. Some people just don’t really have any. My suspicion, although it is just that, because they won’t come to talk to us of course, is that Harry, Ray and the others just lived for how they looked to other people – making an impression, scaring or sucking up to people, competing, trading. It’s all show – everything. They don’t actually have anything to show for their lives now.’
I’m not so sure. Harry really hates a lot of people, and he wants to take it out on me for some reason.
‘But why me?’ I ask, ‘why do they want me around?’
‘He probably fancies you. You’re quite pretty you know.’
I take a moment to think about this. I’d always seen myself as fairly funny looking. ‘But they’re always going on about “fucking queers this” and “fucking queers that”. How...’
‘First sign matey. Trust me. Homophobes? All closet poofs.’
I’ve not heard this word before - “homophobes” but I can guess what it means.
‘But he’s married’ I add and can tell almost before I’ve said it that it’s irrelevant.
Joe just shrugs. ‘Still...’ he says
We sit and contemplate for a while. ‘Um... what about you?’ he says tentatively.
I know what he means, but I act innocent. ‘What do you mean?’ I say.
‘Well, are you... you know, have you... er...’
‘Why do people always think that?’
‘Er, sorry. I just meant... Well, you seem quite...’
I know what he wants to say but I’m not going to help him. Why do people always think, if you’re sort of quiet and artistic and not into sports, you’re probably homosexual? Uncle Len was always saying I should get my hair cut because I looked like a queer (his word, not mine). And why are gay men on the telly always supposed to mince around with their hands on their hips, talking like my auntie Jen? (“Ooh, look at the muck in here.”) I don’t get it. I’d have thought if you were into men you’d go after rugby players and firemen, not ‘feminine’ types like me. If you were into people being feminine I’d have thought you’d want to go out with women. I don’t know. I look over at Joe. He’s waiting patiently, as always.
‘I thought about it’ I say at last. ‘My dad...’ I smile at the memory. ‘My dad tried to have this big man-to-man conversation with me about it once – you know (I do a deep voice) “Son, if there’s anything you need to tell me...” I didn’t have a clue what he was on about at the time.’
Joe leans forward, ‘but...’ He is really keen to know. I have the feeling that if I deny it he won’t believe me, and if I then object he’ll take that as proof he’s right. It’s happened like that before.
‘No. I’m not...’ I say, almost inaudibly, shaking my head but I know it lacks conviction and sounds suspicious.
‘Well I am,’ he says, sitting back. ‘I hope you’re ok with that?’
I feel suddenly unexpectedly relieved. ‘Absolutely’ I say, and add, possibly a little too emphatically ‘Of course. But you know, I don’t think I could ever bring myself actually to... you know... It’s like, you know... penises...’ I do a little shudder and a grimace to emphasise my point. ‘But, if you... I mean, er, if other people want to...’ I add hastily, ‘you know... I don’t have anything against that... It’s up to them, what they do, you know...’
‘Thanks’ says Joe smiling somewhat fixedly, ‘just a simple “yes” would have sufficed.’
I feel oddly elated at my declaration, and rather chuffed at my broad mindedness. ‘I’m not a homophobe’ I think to myself with some satisfaction on the way back to my cabin. What a relief!
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Voyage V – Time and Space

I spent a fair bit of time alone after that. There weren’t many people as young as me on the ship – none, in fact. Actually there didn’t seem to be many people about at all most of the time. I couldn’t believe there were a hundred of us. I usually found a few people up on deck in their loungers, or if the weather was too bad they’d be dozing in the library. Everywhere had something of the feel of a rest home. People seemed to spend a lot of time dozing or just staring into the middle distance with their books in their laps and their teas getting cold.

I got my papers and charcoals out and tried to draw but then Ray and Solly came along and made some comments and I felt a bit embarrassed so I put it all away again. Why do I always feel embarrassed? I brought a book out and sat in the lounge with a coffee.
I’d been quite content there when Ray comes along and takes the book out of my hands and looks at the title. ‘“The Current of Favour” by Jeffrey Simpson’ he intones theatrically ‘What’s that about then?’
It takes me a moment to answer. I’m not sure myself. I’m only on the first chapter. ‘It’s about how people used to look at things back in the...’ he hands it back to me like it’s a piece of someone else’s used toilet paper.
‘God help us’ he says with a shrug.

But I can’t help noticing that everyone else is just quietly getting on with their deaths. Generally, understandably, the atmosphere is a bit subdued. Like Joe said, everyone’s in mourning.
I suppose it depends a lot on how you died, young or old, suddenly or after a long illness, and of course, who you left behind. I try not to think about that. A few people seem genuinely happy to be here, although in a quiet and contemplative way. Others cry a lot. No one seems to be particularly angry which is surprising. I’ve begun to eaves-drop and what I hear mostly is a sad acceptance setting in. No one wants to make a fuss, except for Ray and that lot of course. I wonder why that is. Lucy and the punks seem to be having a good time too, but they generally keep it down, and they’re civil to the rest of us at least. I listened to Matt playing his guitar the other day. I liked it a lot more than I expected. He said he used to be very Joe Strummer but death has made him a lot more Nick Cave.
I’ve got some big pieces of paper and I’m doing some watercolour and charcoal views. I can’t stand waiting for Ray and Solly to come and take the piss so I’ve set up in a spare room on the deck below. The light’s weird but I like it. I didn’t want to carry on painting too many memories but I can’t help myself. Actually I think this is my best work ever, much less literal than the stuff I was doing when I was alive. ‘Enigmatic’ I think is the word – amniotic oceans, primordial soup. I keep thinking I can’t wait to show Justine – she’d really love these shapes – but then I remember she’ll never see them. There’s no way I could ever get them to her. My brain only understands the difficulties of getting things to people as a problem of time or distance, of things having to travel a long way through primitive or corrupt postal services, bad weather or rough terrain. My brain cannot cope with the fact that I’m not in a distant part of the universe. I’m somewhere else entirely. Justine is not reachable in the future. Her life is not going on parallel to mine in a far away place so that I can meet her later. Nope, my brain still won’t accept it.
I try to imagine her now as a child, unaware that I’m going to be born some time soon, rather than as an adult with children of her own, mourning my death. I wonder what it will be like to be born, and then spend all those years as a baby, a toddler, a schoolboy? Is there any way I can bring these pictures with me through all that?
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Joe III – Options

‘How are you feeling?’ asked Joe casually after I'd sat down.
‘Oh, ok’ I shake my head dismissively and shrug.
‘How have you been filling your time?’
‘Oh you know, staring at the sea, eating. I found the library’ I add mock brightly.
‘Bored?’
I think for a moment, puzzled ‘No, actually. I feel pretty good.’ I realize I actually feel remarkably relaxed. I spend hours, days, nights, I don’t know how long, sitting up on deck, in a lounger, in my sleeping bag, looking out to sea. It’s amazing. ‘Most of the time I just feel, well, content I suppose.’ I shrug again.
‘Some people get very low’ he says, leaning over to get his coffee from the shelf behind him. ‘This voyage is supposed to be like a decompression stop, or convalescence if you prefer. It’s best to go with it, enjoy the ride, get some rest. We’ve a long way to go yet. What’s wrong?’
‘I keep thinking about home and everything. I want to cry a lot of the time.’
‘That’s understandable. It’s not just them. You’re grieving too. You’ve suffered the loss too, leaving them all behind. It’s hard.’
‘I won’t ever see them again, will I?’
‘Not the way you did, no.’
‘But I can be reborn – to the same life all over again?’
‘Exactly the same except for the things you change. Well... that’s not strictly true... But anyway...’
We pause and I look about, he looks at me, sipping his coffee.
‘So who are all these people?’ I nod my head at the door. I mean the other people on the ship, Ray and the others in particular.
He smiles broadly, like it’s funny. ‘It’s very interesting actually’ he says. He straightens and puts on a deep ‘portentous’ voice and a ‘sincere’ expression. ‘You wish to know, mere mortal, how you and all these other people were selected from among the countless billions of the dead to accompany each other on the long journey of the spirit?’ I nod. He continues. ‘What arcane equation thrust you together on this eternal quest?’ He adds pompously. I wait patiently. ‘Well,’ he continues conversationally, ‘sorry to disappoint you but the fact is these are merely the hundred people that happened die about the same time you did in the same part of the world.’ He sits back smiling to let the idea sink in. ‘Cool isn’t it?’ he adds. I sit back too, incredulous. ‘It’s worked out regionally’ he continues. ‘You were in southern England. We waited until we had our hundred, and we set sail. That’s it.’ He grins at me happily. ‘Now if that’s not proof of God’s omnipotence I don’t know what is.’ I laugh a little. It’s ludicrous. We relax a little. I feel quite peaceful.

‘So why? What’s all this about? What’s it for? Why are we here?’ I ask earnestly.
He looks more seriously into his empty cup, turns and puts it back on the shelf. ‘Honestly?’ he says, ‘I really don’t know.’
Clearly I don’t look like I believe him.
‘It’s true. We’re not told. We, the guides are just like you, except, well, for a lot of us we just weren’t ready to be born again yet, if ever. Or we want to help. I like to think I’m in the latter group. Basically there’s four options. A, you go through the whole journey and are reincarnated, if you think it’s worth a shot – if you think there’s some fairly specific changes you’d like to make, assuming you remember anything when you get there. We need to talk more about the details at some point, but anyhow, option B. Some give up – nothing to be done about their lives – nothing they can imagine changing that would make enough difference.’ He pauses. ‘It’s pretty horrible a lot of it, how people have died, and suffered all their lives, powerless to... Well, anyway, that’s why I came back – try to stop them throwing themselves over the side.’ He stops to gather himself.
‘Anyway, option C is that you find somewhere here to stay. Later on in the journey you’ll find places where people have settled here and there – real little utopias some of them, bloody frightening places some of the others. You’ll see them.’
‘That sounds alright’ I can see from his face there must be a catch.
‘Except it is forever. Wherever you stop, you’re there for eternity. It’s kind of a big decision. You get some time to make up your mind, I’m not sure how long, but after that, that’s it. People tend to get what they always wanted here. It’s not always a pretty sight.’
‘But if you don’t choose somewhere you just go round and round for all eternity.’
‘Exactly’ he says.
‘Bloody hell’ I say wonderingly.
‘Well there’s lots of details we can talk about some other time. Right now...’ He begins to stand.
‘What was the fourth option?’
‘What? Oh, option D. Just a temporary fix I’m afraid – do what I did, become a guide. I need to look around a bit more before I decide. Come on. Let’s get some fresh air’ and he gets up to leave. I follow him up on deck. Standing at the rail he turns to me as I pass. ‘We are going to need to do some work on your past at some point you know.’
‘Oh. Right’ I say uncertainly. I suppose we will. I head for my room.

Lying in my crib – with its cut-out plywood side, linen sheets, watching the tops of the waves and the birds outside (actually It’s a nice bright day out. The weather seems to be improving of late) I can think. I spend quite a lot of time down here, it’s quiet and comfortable, and nobody bothers me, thankfully. I do some reading, writing, drawing, and some you-know-what... I think a lot about Lucy. I know she doesn’t fancy me. I think I can tell by now. I made a twat of myself enough times at school. Still... I lie naked in the light from the porthole and imagine her in a little black dress with no knickers on...

There are really only two options when you think about it – the utopians and the lost spirits. Heaven and hell. Everything else is just going round and round. There must be more to it than that.

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Journey II – The grateful dead

When Kev caught up with me I’d got a long way off the road, up in the mountains. He scolded me unconvincingly and introduced me to a very nice couple, Jeannie and Duncan, who took me in for a while. He had to go back and look after the others but he made me promise to stay with Jeannie and Duncan until spring. Then he reappeared unexpectedly on a horse in the thick of the winter sleet with the tent and other equipment.
Kev is (was?) a stocky Canadian – even wears a lumberjack shirt. He’s decided to do a stint as a guide because he’s ‘not ready to go back yet’. Something vulnerable about him gives him immense strength I feel. He likes to appear very tough and taciturn but then I catch him in tears for no obvious reason and I say ‘Are you ok?’ and he gives me a collarbone cracking, one armed hug and he nods and smiles. I feel very reassured. He makes me smile.
Jeannie and Duncan live in an amazingly weather-beaten three-room shack on the edge of a canyon, close to the tree line. The rooms are snowed under with books, clothes and tools. We were sitting on the stoop looking at the godawful weather across the valley. Jeannie came out with coffee. She’s also looks weather-beaten, a tall, bony woman, always in leather and denim, always in her wax cotton hat. She comes and sits down with us.
‘Still got a fair bit more of this shit to come’ she says nodding at the freezing rain, taking a sip. Kev seems preoccupied with something on the steep slope below. I always think he’s got something important to say but he never says it. ‘Lot of crows today’ he says. There’s some commotion in the treetops directly below us – squabbling over nesting sites perhaps, then something much bigger soars out and the crows go after it. ‘Any idea?’ he says turning to Jeannie. She shrugs.
‘Back home I used to be pretty good but every fucking thing looks different here’ she says. ‘I’d say it’s a raptor of some sort...’
‘But not with that crest’ Kev observes. Jeannie nods.
I don’t know. I knew a bit about the wildlife I saw on my walks but I don’t expect to be able to identify things. For someone like Kev though, who spent his entire life living with nature, travelling when he could, or Jeannie, who lived miles from anywhere in New Zealand and never travelled but knew absolutely everything about every organism in her patch, and read up on the rest, it’s a constant frustration. Animals here look familiar but not quite, and you never get close enough to really look at them properly. Sometimes we hear enormous things moving in the forest in the fog or in the night but there’s never any trace of them when we go to look except some flattened undergrowth. Kev says he’s never heard of anyone being attacked and Jeannie says they’ve never lost so much as an apple from the garden all the time they’ve been here, but it’s unsettling anyway. Jeannie says they’re like mythical beasts. Seems they’re here more for dramatic effect or to symbolize something than for any sound ecological reason. Neither of them is sure if I’ll be ok out there alone. Jeannie is doubtful. Kev is optimistic though, like he has something up his sleeve.
What does Duncan think? Who knows? We don’t see much of Duncan. He spends a lot of time looking after the garden and the chooks. He does most of the cooking and general maintenance. He jokes that Jeannie rescued him but it’s not funny. He didn’t cope with death very well for reasons she won’t go into, and you get the impression that if he doesn’t keep himself busy something very bad might happen. He’s a wiry, prematurely bald little man with a freckly pate, a great listener and nothing is too much trouble. You can tell she loves him dearly, but it’s hard to be around him somehow. When the weather improves he goes ‘fossicking’. He used to work on the railways in Eastleigh, which is near Southampton apparently and this backwoods life style, you can tell, is still a great novelty. The only time he looks really alive (besides the being dead and all) is when he’s heading out into the bush, or just arriving home. Still there’s always the feeling (look at Jeannie’s face) that if he spends too much time out there he’ll get lost for good. He’s a constant worry. She immerses herself in her books.
‘He’ll be right’ he says unexpectedly looking up from his tools ‘Stick to the path, you’ll be right’. He turns to Jeannie. ‘I’m heading off now’ he says. ‘Shouldn’t be too long this time.’ He kisses her freckly forehead and heads down into the brushwood. Soon he’s out of sight. She shakes her head and goes back to her book.

‘You really should wait ‘til spring before you head out you know’ says Kev at last. I stare at the scree opposite, materialising and dematerialising in the passing haze.
‘I’d like to get going’ I say. I’ve stopped thinking about it. I just want to be alone. ‘Well I can’t die of cold can I.’
‘You know what we’re worried about’ says Jeannie.
‘You might meet Harry for one thing’ says Kev trying for a laugh. I don’t respond. ‘No, the path is easy enough to find, if you want to, but it’s entirely up to you.’
‘But does it really matter?’ They look at me solidly.
‘It’s entirely up to you’ he repeats, looking away. He’s exasperated with my attitude. Generally he’s very patient, but I’m being adolescent, I know that. But I don’t know what to do instead.

The essential thing with ‘The Afterlife’ apparently is to keep going. Even if you don’t know where you’re going, the thing that gives you the chance to try again is wanting to. You can get utterly lost, cold, hungry, thirsty, but you can’t die. The real danger is to give up. Then you really are lost. I remember Joe talking about ‘lost spirits’ and I smiled sceptically, it sounded such a cliché, but there they were, in the water you could see them sometimes, and now, sometimes, especially at night you can hear them in the trees, whispering. He said that some people, faced with an afterlife, and the prospect of going back again to do it all over again, can’t face it and get lost. They allow themselves to wander off, or allow the already lost spirits to take them. At any rate they gradually lose themselves, who they once were, and merge into the place – the forest, the desert, the ocean. Eventually, they disappear altogether.
At first you can still talk to them, hear what they have to say, why they couldn’t go back. They are usually the ones whose lives were so horrific, and who feel so powerless to do anything to change it that it doesn’t seem worth the risk to go back. Most are thankful that it’s finally all over. They are the abused, the tortured, the addicted, the chronically sick. Clearly that isn’t me. I’m not self-pitying enough to presume. I just somehow didn’t get my life together and I stopped trying. I really do want another go, although I’m not exactly sure what I’d do differently. But I’m not going to give up. I think Kev knew that about me, but I had to try the idea out.

Now I’m up here I feel sure someone’s with me. Whoever it is she’s not very stealthy. A couple of times I’ve heard rocks falling or branches snapping and then a small female voice swearing - I’m almost certain. Maybe it’s just my imagination. Maybe I’m just comforting myself. I’ve never been this alone before for so long.
Is there supposed to be some parallel between the ordeal we are set in the afterlife and what went on in life or not? All my life I avoided trouble by going off alone. I wasn’t running away – I just didn’t know what else to do.
So I've gone off on my own here too. The forest here is getting worse. I’m not sure I even have the path, the way is so strewn with broken wood, needles and bits of bark and the branches are so low. One minute I’m crawling under, next, clambering over them. I’m down under the canopy, dead brambles bind everything together, and dense mats of fallen needles fill the spaces. It is a dead, silent place, no light, only the cold water seeps through, dripping off the branches. I can’t see where to go.

It’s not that I wanted to spend so much time alone when I was alive. I really wanted to be like the others, in a way – go and see people when I wanted to, go out, do things, maybe see a band – get a girlfriend for fuck’s sake. I don’t know. I didn’t really get on with the other boys. I hated football, and the way they talked to girls like they were idiots. I’d like to have thought I could have been more like them though, if I’d wanted to. I’d like to have had the choice.

My pack, usually so uncannily light, is bulky and impractical today. Suddenly it feels much bigger, that or I’ve shrunk somewhat. I slump down on the forest floor and wonder vaguely if I have lost myself after all. I said to Kev that I wasn’t going to give in and he seemed to believe me but maybe I was just kidding myself. Why did I think anything had changed? I always give in. I lie back and look up through the branches. Squinting, the light that gets through looks like stars in a dark sky. Kevin seems to think it’s very important not to lose that sense of self if I’m going to go on alone. I call to whoever she is again but it’s just the sound of water and wood. I’m getting sick of it. It occurs to me that maybe she’s another one of the passengers, set off alone, like me. Maybe I should go back for her.
I don’t know how long I’ve been going. Time here is hard to pin down. You feel you can account for the last day or so, but beyond that is uncertain. The more you try to keep count the more you can’t remember if it was the day before yesterday or some time last week. The days seem to go on a lot longer than they should too. The seasons are interminable. Space likewise. I’ve literally no idea how far I’ve come, or in what direction. Sometimes it feels like I’m on a loop, going around and round on the same bit of mountainside endlessly. The trees and rocks here look much the same as the ones I saw at the beginning. The mountain tops and the sky, the rain and what little there was of the sun, all just variations on the same theme, over and over. Even the snowfall was thin and short-lived.
I feel it’s been maybe about three months. That feels about right. A couple of weeks of sun down on the coast but then just colder and colder and wetter and wetter the higher I climb. Three months of winter, maybe more. That’s how it feels, just trudging through a freezing wet forest, over these jagged escarpments, wading through freezing streams or black sulphurous mud. I don’t know if I really want to go on after all. Ok, my life wasn’t a tragedy, but is it worth repeating? Can I really make it be different?


I feel the lost spirits about. They’re everywhere, always. Do they sense my mood? They sense company. I sense they want company. Do I want to be here forever? Maybe. Why not? I put the tent up and look out. What light there is, is fading. ‘I know you’re there’ I say quietly but she won’t answer. Maybe I’m insane but I’m sure she’s out there. I lie in the dark and listen to the water. I can hear it running under the ground sheet. Later I can hear something small snuffling near the tent, looking for food maybe. I turn over and there’s silence.

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