Journey XIV – The Meek

That last trudge out into the open was frustrating almost beyond endurance and took most of the day. We could see the countryside well enough but couldn’t seem to find a way out between the houses. All the roads curled back in on themselves and met up with new closes and avenues. There were twittens that seemed to go in the right direction but they were narrow and overgrown. Eventually we realised we would have to take one. By that time we were all near to tears and stumbling and slow. Meg took charge once more and roped us together and chose a path into the back garden of a huge house not unlike the one we’d slept in. We simply obediently followed her. She had us sing ‘We are the Champions’ at the tops of our voices as we passed through into the overgrown back garden. At the end of the garden we came to a bramble tangled wooden fence. We all kept a very close eye on each other, watching for other movements in the undergrowth around us. Lisa found a gap to crawl through and we queued anxiously. I went last. It was the longest time I’ve ever waited for anything in any life or afterlife and I scuttled through sideways under the briars. I swear something was moving rapidly toward me as I was in that most immobile position but suffice it to say it didn’t catch up with me and I stood up on the other side with the others and we all just ran as fast as we could. None of us looked around, I don’t think, until we were on the next hill, overlooking the town. Then we stopped and rested for a while. None of us said anything or even looked at each other. I know, for me at least, the relief at being out at last was almost immediately blackened by thoughts of everyone we had left behind, and that one person especially. Any ideas of going back to get her out were immediately and totally silenced by the fact that I knew I would never go back under any circumstances whatsoever. We got up and ran some more until it got dark. When we couldn’t see where we were going any more (or literally, our hands in front of our faces) we stopped and huddled together on an open, grassy slope above a valley and slept very little, if at all.

We all looked about anxiously when we awoke. It was late. Somehow we’d dropped off, all in a heap on the grass and now we dreaded the consequences of our lack of vigilance. It all seemed ok though. Everyone accounted for, and standing up, looking around, it was like a poisonous gas that we had become accustomed to breathing had been blown away and we were left, clean and free on a hillside, overlooking a wide river valley. The grass was full of the seed heads from the summer’s flowers and a few late bees and butterflies were still optimistic about finding something to eat. We got up and stood about, no one prepared to make a move, but all of us clearly relieved to see where we were. At the same time I know the image of what we had seen in that cupboard came back to me almost at once, and I couldn’t help brooding on what we had left behind, and what had happened to the people we knew, and of course, I thought about my gorgeous girl and prayed to whoever might be listening, and in a position to do something, for her safety. I guess the others had similar thoughts, for, despite the amazing new sense of freedom, we were all very withdrawn. The couples sat uncomfortably apart. There was nothing to say. I looked at Gina, and she was so obviously in fresh mourning I didn’t want to disturb her. Eventually we all got up and started moving down toward the river.
At the river, without a word, we began, tentatively at first, to undress. Once we were all down to our undies we hesitated, looked about, avoiding eye contact and then made our way solemnly down to the water and dropped in. It was absolutely freezing.
It took us a while to get our breath back, but slowly, it was as if feeling came back to us through the frigid water. We swam about, dived and splashed and slowly smiled a little, played a little, and then just stood and looked about. Some of us hugged. Gina came over to me and we held each other until it got embarrassing. Meg was standing alone, dripping and shivering and trying to look as if she didn’t mind but we beckoned her over and included her in our huddle.

We walked all morning, more or less non-stop. There was no path but no argument either about where we were going. Away, was pretty much the consensus. At midday we stopped and talked a little about where we were headed but had no better idea than to keep on the same general direction – following the river. We carried on like this for four days.
Toward the end of the fifth day Meg, who liked to scout ahead, said she thought she could see roofs and chimneys ahead. The land had become more thickly forested and craggy and the valley steeper sided and tree lined. We could see the river rushing around huge rounded and pitted rocks some way below. She pointed out her chimney in the valley below, and sure enough, there was smoke rising slowly in the still autumnal air. We weren’t sure what to do. While we’d been in the town we’d become inured of the claustrophobic malevolence of the place. By contrast the countryside here felt completely clean of evil spirits or whatever they were and now we were intensely alert to any suggestion that we might slip back into that miasma, or anything similar. We decided to try to get closer and see how it felt. None of us wanted to split up, so we all went.

Below us we saw what was clearly some sort of farming community, set in a bend in the river – a collection of buildings of various sizes with long, low roofs and broad eaves. There was a farmyard with chickens and a horse, and a pond to one side with ducks, and a huge walnut tree in the middle with doves. We lay and watched from a bank of weeds under the hedge that bounded the steeply sloping field between us and the farm. The buildings seemed to include a large L-shaped two-storey house and several lower out-houses. All were timber framed and tiled, and looked old – very old. We could see the bulky brick chimney – the one Meg had seen, at the far end of the main roof.
As we watched, two figures emerged from a covered porch and might have been looking over at us but we couldn’t be sure. They had dogs with them - big dogs - hunting dogs maybe. We watched them there – standing in the doorway until it got too dark to see. Then we lay back and wondered what to do next. Eventually the men appeared out of the darkness with their dogs and told us to get up and follow them.

Nobody said much when we arrived. We were shown into one of the smaller buildings and there we found a group of people, men and women, young and old, olive and white skinned, plainly dressed, and leaning against the walls or perched on sacks or crates. It appeared to be a storeroom. We all looked at each other, more at a loss for words than suspiciously.
‘Where have you all come from?’ was the obvious place to start. A tall stern woman said it from the back of the group. From the look of them we couldn’t tell if they'd know anything much about any other place.
Gina said, pointing vaguely, ‘There’s a town over the...’ but she didn’t need to finish her sentence.
‘We know it’ said one of the men with the dogs, shaking his head resignedly.
‘We do get the odd stray’ said the tall woman. ‘You’re not the first. Phillip here was the last. When did you arrive Phil?’
Phil looked barely eighteen and was shy and inarticulate. ‘Two years?’ he said, looking around for confirmation.
‘My name’s Fabio anyway’ said the man, ‘and this is Maria, and Luke, Sally... O you’ll work it out for yourselves’ and they all got up to go. ‘There’s some bedding in the small shed (if you’d like to see to that John? Thanks.) and some left-over soup and bread in the kitchen. I recommend you use the shower through there, get clean, come through for some supper and we’ll talk about what comes next from there. Does that seem fair?’
We were overwhelmed with gratitude and relief (but underneath it all, still on our guard) and mumbled our thanks and trooped through to where he’d indicated – a dark grey little room at the back with straw on the floor and, at the far end, four metal shower heads. A woman appeared soon with some rough towels and some extremely shapeless grey brown underwear and gowns, which nonetheless smelt fresh and clean. We hardly said anything as we sorted ourselves out. Nicholas and Lisa were both in tears as they showered and dressed. Meg, once clean and clothed, sat on a barrel and looked at the floor. I couldn’t think about what had happened. I didn’t want to go there, not yet.
Fabio and Maria sat impassively and watched us eat, but none of us ate very much. None of us said anything at all. We were beyond politeness.
When we’d finished Maria just said ‘I’ll show you where you can sleep. Come on...’ and we trooped out like obedient children.

The next morning was overcast and damp. We were in an upstairs room without glass in the windows or carpet on the boards. We had slept in a pile of pillows and mattresses – all curled up together in our fortress. Still we didn’t trust the place and the first thing we all did on waking was check to see if anyone was missing. I think it was a good month before we stopped doing that, and we shared a room that whole time. We went downstairs alert for shadowy movements and kept close together at all times. Phillip we noticed had to hold himself back from joining in. Maria kept a gentle hand on his shoulder when she saw this and we watched him hold himself back. I know we were all thinking. ‘Two years’?
‘The best thing for you’ said another woman, Helen, next day after breakfast ‘is to get out and do something. Do some work. Keep busy.’ We nodded weakly. We didn’t care.
‘Now, mostly in the past’ she went on, ‘others like yourselves have preferred to work together in the open am I right?’ We nodded again, but more assertively. That was exactly what we wanted. ‘Well alright. Jessie will find you something to do down in the potatoes for a start. They’re nearly all in so there’ll be something else to do after lunch. How does that sound?’
We all mumbled ‘fine’ ‘good’ ‘ok’ and so on. Personally I felt numb and just wanted to do as I was told.

Weeks pass and our little group recuperates quite quickly. It turns out that poor Phillip arrived alone and with severe injuries, having lost all his companions. He had been very lucky but is still suffering. Some nights he still believes he sees them coming for him and his screams shake the whole community.
Speaking of which, the locals seem to be unusually good people – understanding and patient and generous with their time and whatever they can spare. Our suspicions dissipate relatively swiftly.
It soon becomes obvious that the community is chiefly made up not of what had been professional farmers and wealthy landowners but of various greens, pagans, new-agers, diggers and peasants who, in life, had believed in the soil and in nature and in their bond with it. Some had no doubt been deeply spiritual in life – they had that look about them, but, as with so many of us, the nature of the afterlife had called for a re-think on all that and here they merely worked and lived together in a beautiful place and no longer felt the need to posit any deeper significance to it. It was enough.

We took six weeks, I suppose it was, to recuperate and decide what to do next. The others quickly became bored and moved on as soon as a guide came along with another party. Besides myself, Meg stayed on longest. She claimed to like the simple life, but had had enough of it by the following spring. We’d been told during the first week that guides came through on a fairly regular basis with parties from the same docks we landed at. The first party in fact arrived in deep snow only a couple of months after our arrival and their guide, Mitch, was shocked at what had happened to us. His group had only arrived a week before and looked oddly bewildered and vulnerable, soft little souls. Not like we hardened veterans.
Mitch tells us there should have been someone there when we disembarked to meet us and get us out of the town as soon as possible (unless we'd been really keen to stay, as some apparently were). Like any settlement here he says, nobody should stay who hadn’t chosen to, but it’s a far from perfect system.
‘We do our best. I’m sorry’ he adds. I wonder jovially if there’s someone I can sue, but don’t say anything.
When Mitch left he took all but Meg and I along with the ten travellers he already had.

I settled in remarkably quickly. It was after all exactly what I’d been trying to do in my last few years of life except here I had company if I wanted it. I remember one evening, standing alone on the edge of the kitchen garden where I’d been lifting some late carrots. It was just getting too dark to see what I was doing but we were expecting our first real frosts of the season and I was keen to finish. I had a lamp ready near by if I needed it and I stood up and looked around at the trees, which were already half bare and silhouetted against a maroon sky and I felt suddenly and profoundly good. There were no demons in the bushes, nothing to be afraid of. Somewhere an owl called in the darkness. If there were any spirits out there they were calm and peaceful. Somewhere in the house someone was singing. In the fields a horse was snorting. It was going to be a beautiful clear night and we’d freeze in our loft. Meg and the others had been complaining about the cold and the lumpy mattresses but I thought ‘This is where I belong.’

The people of the farmstead found us more permanent accommodation after the first month – a loft with broad beds and a feather mattress each and a window under the eaves looking out over the river. I had to share with Nick and Warren at first but after they left I had it to myself. I suppose it would not have been to everybody’s liking. There was a lot of wildlife up there for a start – I shared with spiders and crickets and mice and bats and all manner of primitive terrestrial arthropods. There were wasp’s and swallow’s nests up by the window and some sort of stoat-like animal that seemed to enjoy my company. The floor was strewn with woodruff and flag and various dry goods were stored up there too. I didn’t mind. It wasn’t that different to home except there were always people downstairs making the place feel homely and safe. Andy and Esmie, who not so much owned the building as ran it for lodgers, were generous but not intrusive and, once the others had gone, were keen for me to feel entirely at home, providing mountains of bedding and food and subtly indicating to me which of the local girls were single.

I took my time getting to know the others and none of them was especially outgoing. There seemed to be about forty of them, either there in the main farmstead or close by in other cottages. I couldn’t say that any one of them was my special friend (which suited me at the time) but they were all straightforward and down to earth, without being thick or slow. You could tell that they’d been of a somewhat romantic and idealistic mind in life and probably abused and derided for their trouble. Probably they’d been rather naïve, but now look how they’d been rewarded. Should the meek ever get what’s coming to them it would probably look a lot like the farm.

It was truly an idyllic spot. The farmstead was about three hundred yards from the river. There was a raised road out across the water meadows and reed beds to the main stream where there was a small water mill, a jetty, and some boats for fishing. The other side of the river was a large area of reeds and alders where we went for waterfowl and eels.
Hedged or tree-lined tracks lead out from either end of the farm yard, parallel with the river, giving the impression of the farm being on a thoroughfare but the lane gave out after only a mile or so either way, merely serving the furthest coppice and sheep pasture and some of the other cottages along the way. After I’d been at the farm through the first winter I moved into one of these and had a proper bedroom all to myself for the first time.
On the three other boundaries were the kitchen gardens and pens for pigs and other livestock, then beyond them the larger fields for cereals and grazing and orchards. Beyond these were the woodlands of hazel, sweet chestnut, elm and lime, which were only visited on any regular basis by hunters after deer and partridge but we all went there for nuts and mushrooms on occasion, and of course for timber. I went walking out there increasingly often, taking the dogs, or sometimes on a horse. I got to know the country quite well although I was careful not to stray too far and to be back by dusk. I never quite lost that haunted feeling when I was out there in the forest or beyond, on the heath. Others had noticed it too. ‘There’s spirits out there but I don’t think they’re unfriendly’ said Esmie when I mentioned it. ‘Just restless’ said her husband. ‘Best not to have too much to do with them.’

The river too was not navigable for more than a mile or two in either direction so the community was, to all intents and purposes completely cut off. Diane and Gina found this got to them quite quickly. The abysmal diet at the hostel notwithstanding, the plain winter food here bored them. The dust and chaff in everything, the smell of the animals, and the unsexy conversation all conspired to make them grumpy and argumentative. Me it made serene and philosophical. I took to the manual labour that was our rent like a natural, and thoroughly enjoyed the fresh cheese and bread and beer and all the stews and pies and puddings that were our wages. This was how I had always wanted to live, at the end of my life, in my garden, with my dog and my chickens and my compost heaps, with a sunset to watch and a soft bed to sink into at the end of the day.

That first winter, after most of the others had left I discovered how extremely cold this area became, with several feet of snow and all water supplies completely solid. Within two months of our arrival it was time to bring everything in to store and for all of us to bed down in the main hall where the big fires were lit. This was an excuse for music, theatre and comedy long into the night, with everyone together, sitting around or collapsed in each other’s arms, watching the embers glow and passing around a mug of whatever was on offer or something to smoke. As the night wore on the air in the room got distinctly chewy with wood smoke and roast pork and dogs and another smell that took me a while to identify. Oddly sweet and disturbingly musky I eventually recognised it as the natural odour of human bodies but it was nothing like the rancid stench of chemicals, sickness and neglect that I’d come to know so well from my time on the street. This was an altogether warmer, richer perfume, and deeply nostalgic.
All in all I found it rather cosy, curled up in my blanket with the other people there among the sacks and the pillows and the rugs, with someone intoning some boring old ballad or plucking the strings of an aged mandolin across the room sending us all to sleep. I noticed several of the villagers took advantage of the gloomy corners for a little surreptitious canoodling. I joked to Meg that it reminded me somewhat of the parties back in town but she couldn’t see it. She hated every minute of it and gathered extra bedding and went to sleep in my attic on the milder nights.

Over the winter I was given kitchen duties – mostly cooking, which I discovered I had a bit of a flair for. Nothing though took up huge amounts of time or energy and I had plenty of leisure to think or read or chat if I wanted to. Mostly everyone went into a kind of hibernation, just staying awake enough to throw another log on the fire. A few times I was called out to rescue a sheep, or bring in more wood for the fire or ice for fresh water but generally the winter went uneventfully. I didn’t really bother anyone and no one much bothered me. Sometimes I would awake in the darkness of the small hours and look at the bodies around me, all breathing regularly, or shifting clumsily in their sleep (no snoring or farting in the afterlife apparently). I’d gather my thick winter clothes around me and look at the faces – many with young complexions but aged expressions. It gave me time to think back over what I’d done in life and wonder about them. This might be their paradise, but what hell had the world forced them to live in? I had some ideas about that. Nobody talked about life. Many had been here too long to remember and were clearly going to stay forever. There was a suspicion that some had been here a very long time indeed but there was no way of telling who they were. Certainly the architecture, with its vast oak beams and irregular clay tiles suggested some very ancient building methods. No arts-and-crafts mock medieval here – this was the real thing (although with some mod cons I noted – the showers for example). I got up stealthily and went to the window. Here there was glass, seedy and uneven but triple layered. Outside the snow came horizontally but there was scarcely a draught. Not a night for walking. There would be wild animals about too, looking for prey, so another good reason to stay in. All the stock had either been slaughtered or was indoors by now, but the herdsmen took turns to stay up all the same. On the boat, as well as in the town I’d got used to there just always being something to eat, or wear, or read and it was somehow refreshing to have to work for it here, and to take care of what we had. I asked Andy about this and he told me they all knew they didn’t strictly have to work to make a living, but they all wanted to anyway.
‘It’s a myth that folk will only work when they’re compelled to by threat or reward’ he told me. ‘In truth it’s just the bosses feel that way and they assume we’re all alike. Folk like us will work for the love of it – because we want to do a good job. They don’t understand that and they hate us for it. They try to corrupt us by giving us meaningless, demeaning chores but what actually happens is we leave or sabotage and the quality of the work declines and everybody loses out.’
It made me wonder about the town – the neglect, the apathy, the lack of any real consequences for any of the things we did. Was that why we were preyed upon by demons? Was it the price we paid? Was it some sort of hell we’d blundered into? And who were the ones who were content there, and who were the ones who were tortured? And who were we that had escaped? And who, of those who had tried to leave, had been taken, and who had survived? What had we done to deserve it, was what I was asking. On the long winter nights in the great hall, or quietly in the corridors and staircases that linked the various parts of the building I wondered at my luck. I looked out at the darkness. Was this my reward? And I thought about Sophie of course. We had not been careless. We had been genuine, hadn’t we? But she seemed increasingly unreal. It all did. By the window I notice with a jump that a woman’s eyes are open and looking at me. She smiles a little but I think she’s asleep really. Her husband curls tighter around her, wrapped into a goose-down quilt. Maybe I should try to woo one of the girls here.

Come the spring of course there was much more to do, preparing for the new season’s crops, working with the animals, repairing and planning. Meg left with the first group to come through after the thaw and there was an emotional scene. I couldn’t forget her leading us here and I was truly sorry to see her go. Then as summer arrived everyone was busy until very late, sowing, weeding and harvesting. I remembered well my skills back in Sussex and slotted myself pretty seamlessly into the routine, although my experience had been of a place much less alive with beasties. The sheer fecundity of this afterlife world left me breathless on a regular basis – the huge flocks of sparrows and starlings that came whenever scraps were thrown, and which I’d forgotten from when I was a boy and the swarms of insects, including huge furry moths and glow-worms that appeared every night through the long hot summer and which had not battered themselves to death on a lit window in my life since I was ten. A thick pelt of woad, stitchwort and poppy filled every neglected corner of the kitchen gardens, and the hazel hurdles were choked with madder and hop. All the world here was fragrant and fetid by turns, dusty and rank, burgeoning and decomposing, one on top of the other. By comparison, my little allotment at home seemed very barren and weak.
On the down side, I found the locals were not keen to involve me in the decision making and there seemed to be a fairly static organisation. I was given my tasks, but not watched especially closely, and nobody said anything unless they were not done (and I gave them no reason to complain). My chores were menial and repetitive, but not very demanding and they gave me plenty of time to wander and dream and look about the area. I wonder, if I’d made friends or found a girl I liked, if maybe I’d have stayed but I didn’t. I used to help a girl called Melanie with the bees sometimes. She reminded me somewhat of Sophie, with something of her smile and her ease chatting to pretty much anyone and for a short while I thought maybe she liked me too, but then I realised she behaved the same with everyone and I missed Sophie even more. Sometimes, after work and on days off a lot of us went down to the river and spent hours swimming, fishing and picnicking and I began to get to know some of them a little better, and it wasn’t really until then I realised that I’d found a place where everyone was a little too much like myself. That was my first hint that I wouldn’t be staying there for all eternity but it was good to find some peace in the mean time.

And so it went on for two more summers, passed in a honey-scented haze. I was aware that there was something naïve and quaint and maybe a bit too picturesque about it but then, maybe that was what my heaven ought to be like. I sat on a little landing stage hidden among the rushes at the end of the first summer, a menagerie of creepy crawlies buzzing, trapping, chewing, rowing and generally busying itself around me. There were roach plopping at my feet and a water vole munching to my left and I thought ‘This is it. This is all I want’.

By the third spring I could feel myself losing track of what had gone before, of how life changes and moves on, of where I had come from, and I could almost see that advancing wave of eternity approaching, where each year would be every year and nothing would make me fear for the future or hope for something better ever again. It was a very appealing prospect. I looked around me. No one was ever bored here. There was always something to do, tasks to organise, techniques to perfect, endless permutations of the same time-honoured ingredients. Nothing was ever quite the same two years running. I sat in my room and thought about it, looking out of my bright square window with its blue painted wooden cross frame (just like windows ought to be.) I looked back into the room, at the cheerful pale yellow walls and the plain oak boards and the simple wooden framed bed. It was a double. I thought of whom I might share it with one day. Nobody immediately sprang to mind, but folk were regularly passing through from the coast. (‘Folk’. Not a word I was used to using.) I looked across the reed beds to the hills on the other side of the river. This would be my view now and it was very lovely. Manny was in the garden, arranging frames for the sweet peas. Silly old bugger. I might be living down the landing from him for all eternity. He was a nice enough chap but in small doses. He didn’t have a clue about gardens but insisted on being in charge here anyhow. ‘Eternity’ I thought, and went down to make tea, or what passed for tea here. I really missed my coffee. So I went upstairs with the pot and gathered my memories up while I still had them. I thought back over my stupid life and almost gave in then and there. What a god-awful mess it had been. I thought about what it would mean – going back. What could I do to make a difference? I took my question to the next guide who came through.

Her name was Alison – a small, dark skinned, plumpish woman with long straight black hair that smelled of coconuts. I took her down to the river because it was both beautiful and private, to the jetty and we finished a bottle of cider together. I’d not really talked to anyone from outside in months and I could feel parts of my consciousness reluctant to uncurl and move about since I’d left them to vegetate. I was aware that if I left them much longer they’d fossilise. I told Alison about Andrea and about Sophie and showed her the scrap of paper with Sophie’s writing on it. We joked about what would happen if I had to choose between the two of them in life. I said I wouldn’t say no to a threesome and she laughed loudly and slapped my thigh. It was a feeble joke but of a kind I couldn’t have made with any of the people at the farm. I missed smuttiness.
‘So what you’re telling me’ she says, after giving it some thought ‘is that you may have to leave because it’s all so nice here and nobody’s giving you a hard time. Is that right? It’s a bit like what happened with this Sophie person.’
That stings. I ask her what she means.
‘She loved you as you were – didn’t give you a hard time, and so, of course, you had to leave her.’
‘That’s not why I left’ I protest. ‘You know that’ I add feebly, but it hurts.
I fantasise all the time now about what might have happened with us together – when I think about the pleasant but rather distant people here, and further forward, to my new life. I’m definitely a different person now because of our short time together. She looked at my obsessive self-involvement and recast it as a heroic attempt to make sense of my limitations. She saw my bad temper and recognised it as the perfectly valid response of someone who has been frustrated and derided for much of his life and has refused to give in to it. She took my naivety and showed it back to me as a profound optimism and faith in human nature. Another year of that and who knows – I might have even started to believe it myself.
The fact was I couldn’t seriously believe that she believed it. She was just lovely. Everyone felt special in her company, not just me. I was just one among many. Being lovely came as naturally to her as being a pain in the arse comes to the rest of us. I should have given her more time, stayed with her longer – if I’d really loved her. If I really loved her now I’d go back perhaps. But I know I can’t ever do that.
‘You might just as well say that if she’d really loved me she’d have come with me’ I say, but I know it’s a feeble rationalisation and Alison knows it too.
‘You’ve never been loved before have you Gabriel?’
I tear off a reed and begin stripping it, dropping the strips into the water between my feet, where the little fish come and nibble at them.
‘I don’t know.’
‘What don’t you know Gabriel?’
‘I suppose...’ I throw the remains out into the river and tuck my head down onto my knees. ‘I suppose I don’t know what she thought of me.’
‘But you just told me how she saw you.’
I uncurl and lie on the boards, shielding my eyes from the sun’s rays, and hiding my face from Alison.
‘Which was all very nice and supportive and... charitable of her’ I say impatiently.
Alison splutters ‘You think she was being charitable?’
‘She wanted to help me.’
‘So, let me see if I’ve got this straight – basically you were seduced by your therapist? That sounds highly unprofessional.’
‘What?’
‘Well if you went to her as a patient...’
‘No.’
‘As a pupil?’
‘No. That’s not what I meant.’
‘Well what did you mean?’
‘I mean... I wanted her... I wanted to be with her, always, all the time. I wanted to be everything. I loved her.’
‘And yet she treated you as a patient?’
‘No! No it’s not like that. She was...more than that.’
‘A friend?’
‘Yes. I think so.’
‘A close friend? A good friend?’
‘Yes.’
‘What makes you think she didn’t love you back?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But you felt it nonetheless – that she didn’t love you.’
‘No. No, I accept she acted exactly as if she loved me.’
‘A damn good actress then.’
‘No she was totally genuine. I never met anyone so genuine.’
‘But she was like that with everyone?’
‘Well...no.’
‘But you said she was the same with everyone.’
‘Well... no, she was, I don’t know, she put people at ease. She was funny. She liked to hear what people had to say. She made them feel good. Everybody liked her.’
‘She sounds charming.’
‘Yes, she was... She is. She’s absolutely charming.’
‘And you can’t tell the difference between a person being charming and a person being in love with you?’
I pick another reed and study the way it is put together. I drop it in the water and it bobs and lies back and floats away.
After a pause she says ‘You know this was different Gabriel. You know you do.’
‘I just can’t...’
‘You just can’t believe in it can you? It is simply unthinkable isn’t it, that a person might love you back. So you explain it away. It simply does not make sense in your universe. It’s as paradoxical in your world as, I don’t know, as red and blue making yellow. So you simply ignore the evidence. It must be lying to you. You must be mistaken. She must be deluded. And yet...’
‘And yet...’
She smiles at me and pats my shoulder. I clutch the scrap of paper even tighter, then, in a panic, loosen my grip and smooth it out. It’s all but unreadable as it is. I need to make another copy.

‘Ok’ she said, smiling brightly at me ‘Just a thought. But I do think you will have to leave this place quite soon.’
I nodded and said I wasn’t sure I could ever really be settled here and she said I could because my memory of the alternatives would eventually atrophy, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that at the moment, while I still remembered the alternatives I was restless. She said she believed no one should rest until they are at once aware of the alternatives and yet do not feel restless. ‘That time has not come yet for you, sweetheart. You needed a break after what you’ve been through, and from what you tell me, that’s fair enough, but you are not ready to stop yet. Do you want to come along with us?’
‘Give me another few months’ I said. ‘I need to finish some things. I’ll join a group before the autumn sets in.’
She nodded and headed back to the house to organise her charges. I could see what she meant. I had needed a break. I’d been through a lot, but I shouldn’t mistake hospitality for home.

Just as the weather turned for autumn a solitary guide looking very striking in a calf-length Drizabone came through on a horse with another on a lead for me.
I took my time, packing up, finishing my chores, having a last look around, saying my goodbyes. Nobody was particularly sad or happy for me and I asked Marvin, which was the guide’s name, if that was normal. He said ‘Nope’ and we left without looking back much.
‘Some of these very simple-living places tend to loose the more interesting parts of their personalities’ he said once we were out of ear-shot. ‘It all looks very quaint, and it suits the extremely – how should I put it?’
‘Contemplative?’
‘I was thinking “vegetative”, like a human yam. Wholesome, undeniably, but muddy, heavy and not something you want to be faced with raw, three meals a day, every day for all eternity.’
‘Ah. I missed this.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Eloquence, irony, wit.’
‘Exactly. We need to find you somewhere sexier. Giddup.’

Journey XI – Revelations

In the morning she comes in with coffee and croissants and jam and cheese, and sits with me in bed. We eat, we make small talk, we don't look at each other. This is not like us.
‘Gabriel’ she says when all the food is gone. ‘I can’t come with you yet. No, let me finish, please.’ She pauses, fiddling with the tie of her kimono. ‘I’m not sure you’re wrong, about this place. I don’t know.’
‘I just don’t get why you want to stay here’ I say. ‘It’s not like you really fit in. It’s just.... I don’t get it. What’s keeping you here? Really, I mean it Sophie.’
‘Don’t shout at me.’
‘I’m not... Ok. Sorry.’ I stand naked and impotent at the bottom of the bed. I can’t bear being here and I can’t leave her here alone. She looks away. Why doesn’t she get it? She understands everything else so well.
‘I have to stay a bit longer’ she says, almost silently. I half form the word ‘why’ but she shushes me. ‘I have to get through this. You don’t understand, I know.’
‘Explain it to me then.’
‘I will.’
‘But when?’
‘Now, if you’ll give me the chance.’

She looks out of the window and pulls the duvet up to cover her breasts. I sit down near her and reach out but she draws back. ‘Let me think for a while will you?’ she says quietly.
We sit for what seems like half an hour and then I go and make more coffee.
When I hand her the cup she cradles it close, as if she needs all the warmth she can get. She looks hunched, like an old lady in constant pain.
‘When we got off the boat...’ she begins, ‘When we first got off the boat we didn't know where we were supposed to be. We couldn’t find our guide. It was getting dark. I ended up wandering around this dead town on my own. Hmm...’ She stops and sips her coffee. ‘No, what you need to understand is... My parents, they weren’t abusive or anything... well, I suppose they were, technically, but they never... anyway, my point is, by the time I died, I didn’t believe in their religion, not really. But when I arrived here, alone, I just thought it was where they said I’d end up. I thought I was in Hell. The boat was like being in Limbo and this was like Hell. And I was expecting it, no, more than that, I deserved it.’
‘Hang on. What had you ever done to deserve going to Hell? That makes no sense Sophie.’
‘You don’t know me’ she says simply, and I have to admit she’s right, I don’t, hardly at all.
She says ‘None of this makes sense, don’t you see? None of it – the boat, the landscape, the people. Why shouldn’t it be called Hell?’
‘Ok, call it Hell. But what did you do to deserve it?’
‘Nothing. I don’t think I did anything to deserve it.’
‘Well then.’
‘No. You don’t understand. It doesn’t matter what I think or what you think. It’s not a matter of personal opinion. You go to Hell for breaking the rules. God’s rules. I broke the rules, ok Gabriel? I broke God’s rules and now I’m in Hell.’
‘But you don’t believe in all that stuff. You told me.’
‘I don’t think it’s literally true, no. And yet here we are – getting hacked to pieces for fun apparently, according to you.’
We take a little time to sip our coffee. I stand in the window and look across at the houses opposite. Are they in there, the demons? Are they listening to all this I wonder? I bet they are, and having a good old laugh at us too.
‘Gabriel’ she says softly and pats the bed beside her. I go and sit down. She strokes my arm. I try to look implacable.
‘You want to know what I did?’ I nod. ‘It’ll seem silly to you.’
She lies back hugging her pillow and breathes out.
‘I had my tubes tied’ she says. ‘Sterilisation.’
‘What? That’s it? You’re consigned Hell because...’
‘Because I didn’t want any more children.’
It takes a while for me to be sure I haven’t missed something. It seems ridiculous. I can’t believe that’s it.
‘You don’t understand how serious that is’ she continues, ‘in my family. It means I wanted sex – just for pleasure. I don’t think, unless you knew them, that you could understand how completely and utterly and absolutely despicable that would be to my mum and dad. Totally obscene. As bad as an abortion. As bad as if I’d taken one of my own babies and slaughtered it in the kitchen along with the Sunday chicken.’
‘But it’s not against the rules. You were married. I don’t understand.’
‘I can’t explain. It’s not about The Bible. It’s about... It’s about my mum and dad. It’s like there’s all these babies out there – little innocent souls waiting to be born. And I’m rejecting them – flushing them away like excrement. Oh, I knew they were wrong – rationally, logically, I knew that. I don’t really know how I knew but I did. When I was younger... When I was a girl... I don’t know... I mean, I knew what sex was. Kids do I suppose, at some level. They experiment. They play with themselves. And as I got older I couldn’t see why it was so bad. But that’s not how I was brought up. I can’t explain it. It’s like they’re all in my head, this trinity - the father going “Sophie, you’ll be damned to hell, you even think about it!” and then there’s the child, little me, furious at the unfairness of it all. And then there’s this ghost – my spirit, my reason, me as a grown-up, pleading with them – going “Its ok Sophie. It doesn’t matter.” But she just can’t hear my voice over the screaming.’
She looks around the room. Her eyes glisten and I want to hold her in my arms again, like before.
‘It’s exhausting’ she adds after a while, ‘fighting all the time. I don’t think you can really know what it’s like to grow up in a house where there is absolutely no compromise, where there are absolutely no other points of view. It didn’t matter what I read later on – Freud, Greer, Masters and Johnson... There were just all those years and me just thinking “What the hell’s wrong with me?” Apparently Florence Nightingale had the same problem – couldn’t stop playing with herself. How about that? It didn’t make me feel any better though. I knew all this stuff but I just felt so guilty all the time. I thought I must be a sex maniac. You must think I’m a sex maniac.’
I shake my head but have to admit it has crossed my mind.
‘I had so many punishments... Oh nothing weird. I got beaten a few times, locked in my room, made to do extra chores, that sort of thing, but the thing was their disapproval. That was the worst. They were everything to me, my mum and dad. I loved them, I really did, but I couldn’t work out why I couldn’t stop doing it. I hated disappointing them. You have no idea what it’s like – your whole family, all your brothers and sisters, lined up on their knees praying for you because you’ve been caught with wet knickers again. You’ll have noticed my little... er...’
‘Squirt?’
‘Ha, yes. My little squirt. It’s hard to hide. Mum told me “Sophie, it’s God’s way of making it so you can’t hide your sins.” Didn’t work of course. I just did it sitting on the loo.’
She slumps back, wondering at her own story. She doesn’t seem angry, just bewildered.
‘So then I met Doug and I just thought – Great! Now we can do it whenever we want. I hadn’t thought about getting pregnant and having a load more kids to look after, but anyway Doug wasn't that keen on having sex with me. He told me I should “exhibit more self control” and it wasn’t “decent”. He just liked to get it over with without me getting too ‘excited’ so I went back to my old ways. Just a couple of times a week, down the allotment, in the shed, but I thought, well what the hell? I’ve done it now. There’s no going back.’
She shrugs and looks away, shivers a little and rubs her exposed upper arms. It’s getting chilly. I offer her a cardigan and she takes it and puts it on.
‘Of course’ she says, ‘now I understand I was just a fairly normal woman with a crappy sex life, but at the time it was like they were all watching me, with that look on their faces. I can’t describe it...’
‘Contempt, disappointment, embarrassment.’
‘Exactly’ she says, pleasantly surprised. She smiles for the first time since the story started. ‘You know exactly what I’m talking about don’t you. Hah! How about that? So, anyway... Then I had the op. I was nearly fifty. I made an appointment and went and had it done. They didn’t know, my family. I didn’t tell them. But there was a complication... So here I am – divine retribution.’

We sit silently for a time, watching the darkness close in once more outside.
‘I still don’t get why you have to stay here’ I say.
‘I don’t really either’ she admits, smiling feebly. ‘It’s just a thing I have to do.’
‘Like a penance.’
‘More like an I told you so. I honestly don’t know Gabriel. There’s just something I have to do here. There was something the guide said on the boat... I was so depressed and confused and scared back then. I couldn’t think straight. I thought – what will I do if I go back? What can a ten year old girl do to change the rest of her life? Wherever I go, whatever happens, I’ll be like this. I was ready to jump over the side, I can tell you. Then she told me – she said “I can’t promise anything but things that happen to you here can change everything.” You carry them with you – like an alternate version. There’s a freedom here. Do you see? It’s about fighting your demons. Maybe that’s it – that’s what you’ve been seeing – people’s demons. Maybe it’s time we all stood up to them. Then when I get to thirteen next time I’ll be ready. I’ll know they’re talking out of their arses and I’ll be able to tell them so.’ She grins mischievously. ‘Or more likely I’ll just smile sweetly and say “Yes Daddy. Whatever you say Daddy” like a good little girl, because I’ll know better. Honestly, when there’s so much torture and death in the world, you’d think the religious would have something better to bang on about besides sex. It’s idiotic. I’m quite sure God would agree with me if He existed. Jesus definitely would.’
I sit down in the wicker chair in the window. It’s totally dark now. I look at my hands. She can see I’m not satisfied with her explanation.
‘And I’ve had your love here too’ she says softly. ‘I’ll carry that with me, and I’ll look for you when I get back. And when you find me you’ll know I was right won’t you. Hm?’
My tears are coming again. I can’t stand this.
‘I just need to do my time ok?’
‘But how much time?’
‘I don’t know. But I do know I can’t just leave because you want me to. Do you see that? It has to be when I’m ready. And you can’t stay, just to look after me. I have to do this on my own now. Do you understand?’
‘I suppose so. No not really...’

She comes over, puts her arms around me again and rests her head on my shoulder.
‘I’ll be ok. I promise’ she whispers.
‘But, how can you?’
‘Please Gabriel.’
I try again to say something. ‘Ssh’ she says gently, her finger to my lips. ‘I know you’re afraid for me, and I will be extra careful. I promise. I won’t be alone...’
I sit back, utterly miserable.
‘I didn’t mean like that’ she says, unconvincingly I think. She pulls me against her and I allow her to half hug me. ‘I’ll make sure I always have friends around, and not go out alone at night. I didn’t used to before anyway. I think... Well, whatever. I’ll be ok, and I will leave. I will come after you. We will meet again, in life, I promise’ and she kisses me hard on the mouth and I turn and hold her tight. We both know it won’t be as easy as that but she finds a piece of paper and writes - Palace Pier, Brighton, June 21st, 2000, three in the afternoon, by the doughnut stand. She folds the paper up and puts it in my bag, grabs my face in both hands and kisses me hard again. ‘Now you have to go’ she says. ‘Talk to James and the others. Go!’ she says, smacking my arse as I roll off the bed.
It took a while. I had to find my clothes and things and I found other excuses not to leave, and we cuddled and kissed a few more times. I told her to be careful so many times it got ridiculous, but eventually I went through the door and down the stairs and out down the street.

The hostel was exactly as I’d left it and James and Liam and some of the others were there. I told them I was leaving town, so if they wanted to come...

Journey X – With or without

I really wanted us to leave before the next winter set in and I wasn’t sure how long that would be. Sophie watched me, confused and apprehensive, as I paced around the room. I’d run out of ideas about how to convince her that something very horrible was going on around us. I was sure that everyone must have witnessed things but had somehow repressed the memory or explained them away, as Ian had. And then I had to ask myself if it was just me and if so, maybe there was something wrong with me. We didn’t seem to be able to talk to each other as easily as before, but I always went with her when she went out so neither of us would be alone. I thought maybe I could defend her somehow if they came for her. Meanwhile, despite her concern I could see she was losing patience with me.
I talked to some of our friends too, Aaron in particular, but he found it hard to take me seriously, or anything for that matter. Gina had disappeared not two nights before but he appeared unconcerned. He assumed she had just fancied a change of scenery. He was cool about it he said. I kept my fears to myself. The image of Gina, tall, elegant, funny Gina who I had grown very fond of over the months, tied up and cut to pieces left me panic-stricken but I couldn’t think of anything I could do. I’d tried taking Sophie and some of the others around, looking in windows, trying to find evidence. I’d tried asking around, to see if anybody else had seen what I’d seen. I got nowhere.
I don’t know what it was broke my spiral of anxiety. One day I was out in an open area with trees and a pond and I realised that even without the horror I couldn’t stay here forever. And I knew maybe Sophie would come with me if I gave her another reason. Maybe some of the others would too. Sometimes we had discussed our next lives, and what she would do next time around. I’d remind her of our date on the Palace Pier in the year 2000 (or on Devil’s Dyke at midnight, or Kensington Gardens for lunch, as the mood took us. We’d need to sort that out. It might actually happen and then we’d look very silly, waiting for each other in different places).
And then there was the question of how to get out. I decided the only way was to pick a direction and stick to it. I thought we should head east, or whatever the place where the sun appeared from was called in this place. I was sure we must come out eventually. We’d got in somehow. Views from the ship toward the end of the voyage had been of mountains and forests and farmland. It must be out there somewhere. I put all this to Sophie one morning in the kitchen after breakfast. She just huffed and shrugged but said she’d give it some thought. Then she stepped out of her knickers, leaving them in a white figure eight on the kitchen floor, and came and sat astride my lap. It was her way of changing the subject, and to be honest I was grateful for the distraction.

I also met James about that time. Sophie and I were at a party a little like the ones I’d been to before we met. We had been laughing at some skinny girls doing their routines in their underwear and the boys, shirtless, trying to look cool, watching them. I recognised James as one of the elusive lodgers from the hostel and I was surprised to find him being quite extrovert, dancing crazily to some raucous hip-hop. When he’d finished he slumped down beside me, flicked his floppy fringe out of his eyes and clinked bottles with me. I was watching Sophie doing her usual thing across the room, working the crowd. Actually I was bored with it all.
‘Hey dude’ he said.
‘Hey’ I said and I prepared myself for the usual half inaudible, half irrelevant twaddle these exchanges normally consisted of.
‘Torture’ he said in my ear. I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly. I looked at him quizzically.
‘You were asking people about torture. I’ve seen it too.’
‘When? Where?’
‘Several times. I thought I was tripping. Look, can we go somewhere, you know, quieter?’
‘I need to keep an eye on...’ and I pointed to Sophie and he nodded. We stood up and moved to the other end of the room.
‘I don’t want to leave her alone too long’ I shouted.
‘I can imagine’ he said, raising his eyebrows approvingly.
We stood for a time in the window bay, looking around, sipping from our bottles.
‘Anyway...’ he said, looking at the floor. Neither of us knew where to start.
‘Do you think it’s real?’ I say.
‘I thought so at first, when we first got here, I saw something you would not believe...’
My expression says ‘Wanna bet?’
‘Well anyway, nobody seemed much troubled by it, so I just let it go, but it happened a few times after that. I didn’t leave my room for weeks man – just ran down to the bathroom sometimes.’
‘I saw you.’
‘Yeah, well, then nothing happened for a while and I just got into what was going on. I put it out of my mind, you know? But it’s still in there.’ He taps his head with his finger. ‘It’s all still in there.’
‘I want to leave, leave town’ I say, ‘but I don’t want to go on my own.’
He nods, contemplatively, pushing his hair out of his eyes again, taking another swig. Sophie comes over and sits on me as usual. I kiss her affectionately and introduce her. They shake hands lightly.
‘What are you two talking about?’ she asks. I shrug - nothing much, as usual.
‘Didn’t look like nothing much from where I was standing’ she says. She’s been watching me and I’m crap at lying. James looks at his boots.
‘I do know what you’re doing you know’ she says, and abruptly gets up and stomps off. I’ve not seen this before. We never argue normally. I wonder whether to let her go and cool off or to follow her. Then I see she’s heading out to the entrance hall and I’m up in a second, after her.
And she’s gone. I stand in the hallway, I look in toward the stairs, and then run out into the front garden and look up and down the lane. It’s a narrow twitten, and it’s hard to see very far down it. She can’t have gone far – she’s got no shoes on. Hell, she’s got hardly anything on, as usual. I shout frantically up and down the lane, turning in panic circles in the middle of the path. All around are tall houses and rampant undergrowth. I can’t see anything but I am very aware that everything can see me. I look around at all the empty windows and they are like eyes, vacant yet observing, waiting. I am torn between rushing into these places and hunting for her - getting her back before they have a chance to really start on her, and staying where I am and shouting her name because I am so afraid of what they might do to me if I go in alone. I turn around and James is there, looking up and down the way. ‘I can’t see her’ I say, and I think of my beautiful girl and her soft, white body and how badly it would handle being cut and broken.
‘Will you come with me?’ I say to him.
‘Uh uh’ he says. ‘Sorry man. No way.’
I run back into the house and shout at people to come and help me find Sophie, because she’s disappeared into the dark, and I run over and turn off the music and plead with them to help. No one moves. I swivel around and look at their faces – especially the little group of guys she had been talking to only minutes before. I am close to breaking down in frantic tears. I run out again, barging into James on his way in. Then I run back in and half way up the stairs. I’m pretty sure she didn’t go that way. It’s light and there’s plenty of people up there anyway. I go back into the lounge. They’re all looking at me. I remember an episode back in Brighton like this when I had one of my minor freak-outs, everyone looking at me, embarrassed, a little fearful, somewhat pissed off. But no, it’s not like that here. They’re not embarrassed and angry, they’re scared and worried. They all know. They all know but they won’t do anything. I stand in the space that’s been made for me and they slowly turn and go back to their conversations and try to shut it out again. The music resumes quietly, respectfully.
I turn and look at James again. He shrugs. ‘Sorry man’ he says again. I walk outside again. He comes with me.
‘Just walk up and down with me will you?’ I say. ‘We don’t have to go in the houses. I don’t think I can anyway.’ I’m not proud of myself for this. Otherwise I’d do anything for her, I swear.
Another figure emerges from the house. A young lad, calls himself Liam. ‘Can I help?’ he says. A girl trails out after him.
Strength in numbers, we go up and down the lane, looking over fences, into gardens, calling her name. A couple of other people join us for a time, then Liam’s girl wants to go indoors. She's cold she says.
‘Do you think you'll be here in the morning?’ I say to him.
‘Probably’ he says, looking around. Where else would he be? His girl stands with her arms folded by the gate. She lurches toward the entrance and stumbles up the steps. Liam moves to follow but I catch his arm.
‘We can talk then’ I say.
‘Ok, I suppose...’ He heads in after her.

A cold dawn rises and there are five of us hunched on the steps by the front door, dozing or watching for movement. Someone’s brought out some cushions and blankets.
‘People disappear all the time man’ says James, trying to be comforting. It’s not.
‘Exactly’ I say, ‘that’s exactly my point. People do disappear all the time.’
‘You disappeared’ says another one I recognise from the hostel, one of the quiet girls from upstairs.
‘I didn’t’ I say defensively.
‘You did as far as we were concerned bro’ says James, and he actually sounds hurt about it. He’s got a huge mug of black coffee in his hands. I want to know where he got it from. I go in to look. They may be right about the disappearances, but then, maybe whoever these horrors are, maybe they rely on the fact that people come and go all the time here and no one pays much attention. I find the kitchen and the coffee machine and stew up a fresh batch. As I’m heading out into the hall again I see Sophie coming down the stairs followed by a dishevelled and confused looking boy, trying to work out which way his sweater goes on. I look at her, relieved and crushed at the same time. She looks guiltily at me from beneath her fringe. ‘Bye Gareth’ she mumbles as he passes disappearing out the door. ‘Nothing happened’ she says irritably to me, and slides past me into the kitchen, avoiding any sort of contact.

I tell the others not to worry about Sophie. She’s turned up, and they all give me the ‘I told you so’ look and make their goodbyes. I make another coffee and sit with Sophie in the lounge. We sit as close as we can, but it is not cosy. It is terribly cold.
‘Do you trust me?’ I say. She looks warily at me. ‘It’s not a trick question.’
She sits silently for very long time.
‘You think I’m mad don’t you’ I say.
‘Nobody’s mad here’ she says, still very cross. ‘It’s not possible to be mad, apparently’
‘Ok, gravely mistaken then.’
‘I don’t know’ she says at last, shaking her head. ‘Can we go home now?’ and I am relieved to say yes. I hunt around for her flip-flops and we get up to go. She looks so weak and sorry and I hold her all the way. At one point she makes a grab for my penis up the leg of my shorts, attempting to be playful but I can’t and she pulls away and walks on her own.
‘Now you don’t even want me any more’ she says, pretending to be a little girl sulking.
‘I’m just so tired babe’ I say.
‘It’s not possible to be tired here either, at least not physically’ she says and I know she’s just being pedantic to wind me up.
‘Ok, perhaps I'm not physically tired, but I have been up all night worrying about you.’
‘I never asked you to do that. You sound exactly like my mother.’
‘Look, I know you don’t think there’s anything to be scared of but I do, and I believe I have good reason. Can’t you at least respect that?’
‘Not if it means you thinking you can tell me what to do’she says, really angry now, striding ahead.
‘Oh look, I’m not your bloody mother. And I don’t think I’m mistaken. You can’t know what it was like, imagining your body, what they do to it. I couldn’t stand it. I was terrified for you. Ask the others. I was a mess.’
‘I heard you’ she says.
‘So why the hell didn’t you...?’
‘I didn’t feel like it. Why the hell should I?’
‘Well, because...’
I want to say ‘Because we’re together’ or ‘Because we’re in love’ or maybe ‘Because I want to spend all eternity with you’ but perhaps the truth is I’ve done it again - gone completely silly over a woman who just wants to have fun. Anyway, we walk in silence the rest of the way. She appears to take a casual interest in a flower, a cat, some wind chimes. I can’t take my mind off the argument. When we get back she goes through for a shower and I take my clothes off and lie on the bed. Now I want sex. I just want us to be together, at least physically.

She takes longer than I expect and so I go down to the kitchen to see if there’s some wine in the fridge. One of the other girls is down there and observes my de-tumescence coolly. I just don’t care any more. Half the town has seen me naked by now anyhow.
When she comes in I am sitting in a wicker chair by the window with a glass. She has her kimono on, a diaphanous purple silk thing.
‘Have I been a bad girl?’ she says in a small voice. Normally this would be the trigger for some soft and silly S&M games but today I take it as an apology. Anyway I never felt entirely comfortable with my role as authority figure (and never found it sexy to be in the submissive role). I think one has to have at least a trace of misogyny to really get off on it, and I’ve been glad to discover I don’t. I like her too much. Normally I go along with it though, and her response can be very exciting, but today I just can’t. Today I just want to... I suppose ‘make love’ is the phrase I’m looking for.
‘Come here’ I say, holding out my arms and she comes and curls up against me and I kiss the top of her head and we spend the day there, reading, watching old movies, eating fruit and eventually, carefully, tenderly, making love. It’s going to be our last time together. I think we both knew that, even as we were doing it.

Journey VII – A Bad Dream

It was a horrible shock when I awoke. It was still dark out and I seemed to be alone in one of the upstairs rooms. It occurred to me that maybe I’d never been downstairs and the woman had been a dream, but of course there’s no dreaming in the afterlife. I looked down and my shorts were still very damp and had been split from front to back. I clearly remembered her ripping them to get better access to me. I felt terribly exposed and I felt sure there was something else there with me, waiting.
I think back now and I try to work out how to describe it. Hackneyed phrases come to mind – “Night Terrors”, “Nameless Dread” but they’re too obvious. I’d co-existed with this fear since that first night but had learned to ignore it because I felt safe enough at the hostel and I was rarely alone at night. I’d locked my door and pulled the curtains of my room. I’d kept music playing. Sometimes I’d kept a light on. Now I was alone, in a strange house, at night, virtually naked, and cold and wet too. Why was that? I’d read of female ejaculation somewhere but never experienced it. It didn’t smell at all bad – rather good actually – warm and fleshy and not at all pissy. The scent gave me a powerful thrill. I supposed most blokes were used to this sort of thing – women flooding the place when they had an orgasm, but it was new to me. It was all new to me. I wanted to call out for her but I didn’t want to draw attention to myself and also didn’t know her name. I scurried to the door and opened it a fraction. There was a light on, a hallway but no sign of the stairs, lots of doorways. I couldn’t find my boots or vest. I did my shorts up as best I could but still felt very vulnerable. The zip did up but my nuts fell out the rip. I was walking with my legs crossed. It was ridiculous. I’d wandered around naked at festivals before – around the saunas. It’d always felt quite a powerful thing to do – strong, individual, defiant. I knew I’d feel better like that than I would crouched down trying to hold my trousers together so I took them off and carried them. It was exactly like one of those dreams where you’re in a strange place and you’ve somehow mislaid all your clothes. I thought maybe I could find a towel or something to put around myself later.
I started off down the corridor, keeping an eye out for nails and broken glass on the bare, paint-splattered floorboards. I padded silently along, peering cautiously into the doorways, if they were open, as I went along. I saw nothing but knew there was something about. Sounds took me by surprise but were impossible to locate. The air felt terribly hot and close. The wall behind me was warm to the touch. I swivelled around to try to catch them out but just saw the other end of the corridor with its broom cupboard at the far end, silent and somehow waiting – the reason I hadn’t gone that way to begin with. I stood against the wall, my hands pressed against it, trying to concentrate. Everything was dusty and stained – not like the second floor I’d seen before. Old cobwebs choked with sooty dust hung from the ceiling. The unshaded bulb showed dust on everything. Crumbled plaster revealed broken laths and worrying holes in the walls. Decomposing and singed carpet lay in a heap in the far corner. An ugly bedside cabinet stood incongruous by a window. The broom cupboard had a pile of junk in it and a mop, head up, standing in the middle. (How was it doing that?) I carried on away toward the far end of the corridor. I needn’t have worried about my penis hanging out – it’d shrunk to the size of an acorn.
At the end of the corridor was a landing and a staircase down. I leaned over the banisters. The floor below was in darkness. There was some rubbish at the bottom but I couldn’t see any further. That was when I heard it behind me – like a rush of breath in a throat. I snapped around and immediately noticed that the pile of old carpets was in a different place and the broom cupboard’s contents had spilled out onto the floor. Some of the things were right beside me. It made absolutely no sense and seemed laughable but I hadn’t actually seen anything move and I was terrified. I looked down the stairs. There was nowhere else to go and I was panicking now anyway. Only later did I survey the damage to my feet where the little nails had gone in. At the bottom of the stairs I found a corridor going back the way I’d come and more doorways. The sound behind me I can only liken to a babble of voices, coming from the stairs and the floor above. They knew I was there – maybe not exactly where I was, but it was only a matter of time. I moved forward into the dark corridor. I had a feeling that I might be safer in the darkness. There was a sound like something big coming down from above, not using the stairs, just falling, and I ran. I didn’t see it, I just ran. I was running toward where the broom cupboard was above but this corridor took a right turn and I found myself in a once plush dining room, dimly lit by the street lamps outside. I went to the window and found I was not at the front of the house as I’d expected. There seemed to be a back garden instead, one floor below. The garden was dark and overgrown as far as I could tell, with more trash lying about. I tried the window but it wouldn’t budge. There were sounds in the corridor briefly and the light was now on out there. I considered breaking the window. Maybe later, if all else failed. I looked around me – stacked chairs, tables. I considered wrapping myself in a tablecloth but modesty really didn’t seem a high priority. I still had my shorts gripped tight in my hand. I sniffed them. She smelt fantastic. Maybe this is hell, I thought. Maybe they have that woman already. Or maybe she was bait, getting me ready for them. I didn’t want to think about it. Anyway they didn’t seem to be very bright. I was utterly defenceless and lost and yet they didn’t seem to know where I was. Or maybe they knew I had nowhere to go and this was part of the game, part of the torture – letting me stew in her juices.
As I stood there, trying to breathe silently I realised I’d known this was coming all along. I knew if I let myself be lost and alone they’d find me, like all the others, being kept and tortured somewhere alone. We would never see each other again but we would be all around, in the walls, under the floors, gagged and trussed. Maybe in all these dead-eyed houses it had been going on around me all along. That’s how I knew about it.
‘Stop’ I said to myself. I needed to think. I needed to get out. I looked around for some sort of weapon but couldn’t imagine a way to defend myself. I couldn’t imagine a way to hide. All I could think of was to keep moving. A door at the far end was open and I looked through. There was a narrow flight of stairs down, a light on, and muffled voices. I heard a man’s laugh. They could well be waiting down there. I could smell blood and shit. That was where they wanted me to go. I went toward the door I’d come in by and looked down the brightly lit passage. I looked toward the stairs I’d come down. They could be waiting there too. I didn’t know what to do. I was completely stuck. Why weren’t there guides with us? They should have come off the boat with us. This shouldn’t have been able to happen. I crouched down by the window and covered myself with a tablecloth and stared at the door, and waited.

Time passes. It’s a very long night. I hear nothing. I can’t sense them any more but I still can’t risk moving. Maybe day will come and I’ll be ok. I think about the woman. I don’t regret it. It was the most amazing sexual experience I ever had and we didn’t even fuck. We hardly even spoke. That was a good thing. She just came and took me and it happened, just like that, just right – no words, no opportunity for me to say something stupid, fluff my lines. What a woman. A faint grey light seeps in through the window without me really noticing. I must have dozed off. I look about me – plaster dust and spilt paint on a worn out wine red carpet. I can still smell offal and excrement. It gets lighter out and I move to the door, and look out. It feels safe, cool and airy, not like last night. I pad quickly along to the far end and find a main staircase down on the right. I take it and stand in the morning light in a hallway with the front door ahead. Outside on the step I turn and see that the house where the party was is next door. I’m in a run-down guesthouse. I don’t remember coming here. I put the shorts on as best I can and walk down the path, along the pavement and up to the front door, which is ajar. Two or three guests are still about and music (sounds like something by the Apricot Wallflowers) is playing quietly. Someone is making coffee, thank whoever. I find my vest on the floor and put it on. It also smells strongly of her, and of wine.
‘You look like shit my man’ says the coffee maker, grinning. He’s a tall man with a ponytail and what I’ve always thought of as a very Australian face. There’s definitely something of the Great Grey about him.
‘Thanks’ I say, wearily. ‘Did you see the woman I was with last night?’
‘Hard to miss’ he says. ‘What did you do with her?’ and I explain my exploits next door and that I’m worried about her. I leave out the bit about the torture – I don’t want to seem completely insane. The man – Aaron, hands me a coffee, indicates the sugar bowl and goes to ask his ‘lady friend’ if she knows where Sophie went, for that’s her name apparently.
‘Next door’ is the answer. ‘She said she was going next door to crash. I thought she was with you.’
‘We got separated’ I say, lamely. ‘Can you come and help me look? I’m a bit...’ and I shake my head and look dazed. It’s not entirely an act.
‘Sure. Give us a mo. Drink your coffee – it’ll get cold.’
I can’t help worrying that we’ll be too late, but I wait anyway and I drink my coffee. It’s really getting light now. She’s probably in no more danger now than she was five minutes ago. At least I know she’s a real person, with a name and all, not just some demon temptress come to lure me to hell. My exploits quickly come to seem absurd in the chilly morning light. It feels like a bad dream. The details are already receding. I ask a bit more about her. Gina, the ‘lady friend’, has met her a few times at parties and says she seems really nice. Last night was unusual – she’s not seen her do that before, ‘but she does tend to approach things in a fairly unorthodox way’ apparently.
‘If she wants something badly enough she does tend to go for it full on’ adds Aaron admiringly.
Evidently she wanted me badly enough, I think to myself, and feel very chuffed. I do like a woman who knows her own mind.

We go next door, Aaron, Gina and I, and we find Sophie sitting on the front step looking, if anything even blearier than I do.
‘Hey babe what happened to you?’ she says looking sleepily up at me.
‘I got completely lost’ I say. ‘Long story. I’ll tell you later. Do you want breakfast?’ She nods happily and I give her a hand up. One of her breasts has come free again and the demolished state of my shorts quickly becomes apparent. She giggles, pulls her strap up and reaches down to cover my modesty. ‘Oops’ she says. ‘Better get you sorted out. Sorry about that. I got a bit carried away didn’t I.’ and we walk back with her giggling, bending down, holding her dress out in front of me like a curtain, while I pretend to try to look dignified.
The four of us ate an excellent breakfast and I dismissed the previous night’s horrors from my thoughts.