Journey VIII – Soul mates

The next few weeks were baffling but extraordinarily pleasurable. Mostly I just wanted as much sex as possible, and luckily Sophie was more than happy to oblige. We were both making up for lost time it turned out. As I looked around at this community of perpetual adolescent ennui and excess, our deliberate and intense sexuality stood in stark contrast to their absent-minded and passionless fornication. Whereas they just seemed to do it because they could and there didn’t seem to be anything better to do, we went at it with glee and gusto. I came to pity them, if this was what eternity was going to be like for them. I even felt smug.
A lot of the time I couldn’t understand why a sexy woman like Sophie would want to spend so much time with a sad old git like me. I was reassured when she told me she’d been very old when she died too (she wouldn’t tell me exactly how old) and I tried to remind myself what Andrea had said about not presuming to know what women want in a man but I couldn’t help being jealous and possessive sometimes – particularly when she insisted on chatting up absolutely everyone wherever we went and her natural manner was intimate and flirtatious. In truth, in the whole time we were together she never gave me one reason to doubt her and she accepted my insecurities as a compliment and was always reassuring. I know sometimes I was somewhat clingy and suspicious and frankly a bit of a drama queen, but in retrospect I think she must have genuinely liked me or she wouldn’t have put up with it.

‘I was married to the same man all my life’ she told me one morning. It was early that spring. We were in my room letting our coffees cool. I was sitting leaning against the window, feeling the cool glass on my skin. She had her head on my leg. ‘How boring is that?’ she added.
‘High school romance?’
‘Hardly. I went to a convent school, so no. We met at a family thing when I was about thirteen, started dating, and then as soon as we were eighteen we got married. We were big on going to church in our family.’
‘This place must seem a bit...wrong – if you believe in all that.’
‘Totally wrong. Oh everything was wrong.’ She gets up abruptly and wraps a sarong around herself. ‘Shan’t be a sec’ she says and heads along to the bathroom. When she gets back she hands me a plate with a jammy muffin on it. ‘They were doing them in the kitchen’ she says, licking her fingers. I think of her trotting along there with nothing but this thin piece of material around her – everyone eyeing her up. I feel proud and uncomfortable at the same time. Thankfully the discomfort is somehow erotic too and just makes me need to stake my claim again, which is always good.
After we’ve done that (just a quickie) I ask her about her married life.
‘Five kids would you believe...’
‘Bloody hell.’
‘Big house in Southampton – in jolly old Shirley – what a tip.’
‘Why did you stick with it? For the kids?’
‘Partly, but no, it was ok. He was good man. Not terribly bright...’
‘What did he do?’
‘Estate agent.’
‘Wow’ I say, surprised, but she thinks I’m impressed.
‘Don’t. It wasn’t me. I swear, if I ever go back my house will be a mass of random furniture and non-matching crockery and there’ll be stuff everywhere. And there will be one sweet child, and I shall dress like this...’ (She flashes her bottom.) ‘...all the time.’
‘Excellent. Where shall we meet?’
‘On the Palace Pier in Brighton. Midsummer’s day 2000, three in the afternoon.’
‘It’s a date. I’ll buy you a doughnut.’

Another day – an evening a few weeks later – we are in my room and she’s got out one of my magazines and is lying on her stomach, reading. I look at her back and wonder if Paul would have thought she was fat. Probably – she’s no stick insect. She has a very womanly belly and a nice plump bottom. I love looking at it. At the moment it’s got the pattern of the bedspread imprinted on it.
‘You’re in good shape for a mother of five’ I say, slapping her bum. It wobbles most satisfyingly.
‘Gardening’ she says and tenses and relaxes her buttocks at me a few times, making them wobble some more – tempting me to smack them again. ‘This is me just before I got married’ she adds, turning on her back, as if showing me a photograph from her family album. ‘Pretty wasn’t I?’
‘I think you’re very beautiful’ I say, stroking her belly.
‘Hmm...’ she says, smiling coyly and turning over again, but then adds, ‘I wasn’t very pretty later on.’
‘Well who ever is?’
‘Oh come of it. I bet you were quite a chiselled old dude in your later years.’
My turn to be bashful.

‘So... was he any good in bed?’ I enquire nonchalantly.
‘Who?’
‘Hubby.’
‘Why?’ she says, grinning at me. ‘Do you think I’m comparing?’
‘Of course. You know me.’
‘I don’t know... He smelt funny. I never got used to that. I don’t think he washed enough really. I don’t know, he had that soapy sweaty Old Spice smell, you know?’
‘Didn’t you say anything?’
She turns and sits up in front of me, then picks up a pillow and hugs it to herself. We’ve got some chocolates from somewhere and she reaches over to get one. I hold the box for her. She sits and chews for a while.
‘What you’ve got to understand’ she says, ‘is that I didn’t know any different. When you marry that young, you’ve just got nothing to compare it with. It’s all just the way it is.’ And she shrugs and lies back, still covering herself with the pillow. I don’t think I’ve seen her want to cover herself before. It bothers me slightly. We sit silently for some time – me wondering what to say next.
‘I’m sorry’ I say eventually, ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’
‘It’s ok, really. It’s sad more than anything. I did love him.’ and she chucks the pillow away and reaches out and pulls me to her and kisses me and we fuck ferociously again.
‘For the record, he was nowhere near as good in bed as you are’ she tells me afterwards but I can’t help feeling there’s something like regret in her voice.

Over the next few months she tells me a little more about her life.
‘I was the eldest of six would you believe.’
‘Didn’t they believe in contraception?’
She shakes her head and looks away. ‘Sex is for making babies’ she says. ‘Contraception is irrelevant. That’s what they said. I don’t know. I was home-schooled until I was eleven then they sent me to the church school. I didn’t really know anything else.’
‘Didn’t the other girls tell you anything?’
‘A bit. It was pretty shocking. They had pictures from a men’s magazine. I didn’t know what to make of it. I was a bit of an outsider to be honest.’
‘I can sympathise.’
She smiles and rolls over and lays her head on my leg. I stroke her hair away from her face. She takes a bite out of a plum and says. ‘It was pretty crazy. I went straight from looking after my brothers and sisters, straight into looking after Doug and then our kids. I never did anything else.’
‘Didn’t you want to get out, do something different, get a job, travel?’
It seems impossible to believe that she wouldn’t have, the way she is now.
‘Honestly it just didn’t seem realistic to me. I couldn’t imagine it. It’s just not the sort of thing people like us did.’
‘But you’re bright, independent...’
‘Now I am. I wasn’t then. You wouldn’t have known me back then. I failed all my exams, left school at sixteen... I don’t know.’
‘But you weren’t thick, surely?’
‘No. I just didn’t think that way. Oh look can we talk about something else?’
‘Sure. Sorry.’
‘What do you make of Gina and Aaron?’

And so it was. We left it at that, for the time being at any rate. Later I learned more, by little clues and hints. I felt she wanted to talk about it but wasn’t ready, or didn’t want to bore me, or put me off her perhaps. I have this image of her in a frock that would not have looked out of place in The Depression – grey and shapeless and with varying quantities of insulating and obscuring layers beneath, depending on the season. Her parents were not insanely religious but very old and extremely traditional – hard and judgemental and anti everything about the sixties. As with my parents, there would have been no point in making a fuss. You just had to put up with it. Sophie never went to work or took any courses but at the same time it was quite obvious that she was very well read (much more so than me.) She told me she used to go to the public library during shopping trips, hide the books under the baby’s things and then sneak them out to the allotment shed. Like me she’d gone down to the shed for her illicit pleasures, but hers were coffee and literature. The allotment was her haven. She took the children down there to play in the mud while she tended the vegetables and read her book. Doug apparently didn’t like his shoes getting dirty so never found out. He came over as being a fairly harmless but obsessive individual.
‘Couldn’t you see what you were missing?’ I asked on more than one occasion. She just shrugged.

She was good for me though. We mucked about and laughed a lot. She even laughed at my anxieties, but in a generous way, not in a cruel way and I didn’t mind. She told me I was gorgeous, and when we were alone, I almost believed her. She seemed to understand why I didn’t quite believe this could be happening to me.
‘I chose you, remember?’ she reminded me. ‘Don’t imagine I give that sort of performance every night. I knew you’d be worth it’.
I wondered sometimes how often she did ‘perform’ like that before she met me, but I sensed that it would not be a good thing to ask. She was with me, I told myself, and that’s what counted.

The spring slowly unfolds and the streets begin to wear the first tentative tendrils of their summer exuberance. The weather is still chilly but she comes with me on my explorations – usually dressed in jeans and tops like normal people but sometimes she surprises me – on one memorable occasion coming out in just a plastic mac and wellies. She loves to do it then and there, on the wet grass or bent over a wall. We’re not very discreet about it and we got caught a couple of times. But we never go into any of the houses. Sometimes I swear I see faces at the windows but I don’t let on.

We still go to quite a lot of parties too and, as I say, I spend a lot of time watching her. They’re a different sort of party to the ones I went to early on – more classy I suppose, more mature perhaps, and she wears somewhat more than she did the night we got together (underwear, for example), but there’s still a sense that she’s not really decent. I watch her being charming – everybody loves her and I can tell that when people talk to her she has a way of making them feel fascinating, and, as a result, they are. Plus they perhaps think they have a chance with her. I’m never entirely at ease at times like these, but then, from the middle of a conversation she’ll turn a little and, without directly looking at me or giving any obvious sign, she’ll let me know she is looking forward to coming over to me. Sometimes I go over and she introduces me and I join in the conversation. When they see we’re together you can see their disappointment, but it is always brief because she is just too lovely to be upset with and I feel very proud.
I ask her about the way she behaves one night in someone’s lounge. It’s been a session rather like that first time, except the lights are dimmed and nobody else in the room seems to be very awake. In retrospect our behaviour sounds appallingly decadent but we were far from being the only ones. Sometimes it seemed like no one was doing anything much else. In fact our monogamy came to be seen as rather sweet and old-fashioned.

She is still straddling my lap – I am softening inside her and, as usual, sitting in a puddle. She has no top on at all and her neat breasts catch the green light from the stereo. I ask her how she comes to be such an exhibitionist after such a blameless God-fearing life like hers.
‘Well, I just don’t have anything to worry about here do I? I mean – I can’t get pregnant. I can’t get AIDS. I can’t die of pneumonia from not wearing enough’ she adds with a wicked grin. ‘It’s just such a release. You weren’t married were you?’
‘No.’
She nods ‘I don’t blame you’ she says, pulling a shawl over her shoulders. ‘Oh don’t get me wrong’ she adds. ‘I’m glad I did it – got married I mean. I wouldn’t appreciate this half as much if I hadn’t, but I wouldn’t do it again. Been there, done that’ she says, and gets up to rearrange her skirt. She goes and gets us a drink to share, still topless, and then we snuggle down for the night on a huge cushion and covered in other people’s coats and things.
She tells me that her behaviour probably has something to do with the frustrations of sleeping with no one but the same boyish control freak all that time.
Later on I did get around to telling her that my single status had not been a matter of choice and that led on to me telling her a lot of other dreary crap about my life. I knew it was a risk but I wanted to be honest with her as much as possible. I was afraid perhaps her idea of me would be diminished by knowing about my failures but she just hugged me and kissed me and told me how impressed she was with how far I’d come since then and how great I was going to be next time around.

Journey I – We're not in Brighton any more

The ship docked mid morning. The quay was deserted. We all stood there with our bags, looking up at the hull with some very mixed feelings. On the one hand we’d had enough of the long months of sailing. There was nothing more to say or do and it was time to move on. On the other hand the town was suspiciously quiet, and despite the gorgeous weather, there was something chill in the air.

Today the sun is eye-hurtingly bright on the lime and salt encrusted stones and the chalk cliffs. The sky is breath-stoppingly blue as we look up at what is unmistakably a British seaside town. In fact I’d go so far as to say it seems like Brighton, my hometown, if Brighton was a quaint little harbour town, which it isn’t. It has a marina, but this isn’t it. This isn’t a modern port. The quay, the sea defences, the buildings are made from enormous timbers, held together with huge rust red bolts. Rust red riveted water tanks and cranes and chains stand idle. Ropes and other trash discarded in piles between the buildings and the walkways are black with grease. I smell seaweed and oil. Windows are cracked or missing. Wooden chests and casks are piled up inside cavernous wooden warehouses. This place can’t have changed since Dickens’ time. The water below us is chalky green with an iridescent oil lacquer, and it laps gently on the moorings and under the boards as we make our way in silence along the jetty. The town above us is at the top of a sheer chalk cliff, shored up in places with weathered timber and more rust red bolts. Bleached plants flower in the cracks above and seabirds look down at us from the ledges. We carry on along to a wooden ramp that leads up a slope through a gap in the cliff face, stepping over some rusty rails where a truck stands in a siding. Apart from the clucking waves below, and the distant mewing of nesting gulls, all is absolutely silent and still. Where is everyone?
The guides on the ship tell us that we need to get up into the town before nightfall and new guides will meet us in the main square later. So we pick up our things and head up the steep ramp into town, a definite sense of unease developing. We want to get them to wait and tell us more but they need to get going. We don’t know what’s happening. We all feel a bit let down, but are assured it’ll be ok and to carry on up the slope. I look around for Cathy and Harvey and the others. They’re nowhere to be seen.

The town is actually rather beautiful – town houses, white-washed or brick, with wrought iron balconies. Shops apparently closed for lunch, bars darkened and silent. Leafy branches lean over garden walls above us and cool shady alleys curve round to other roads which themselves narrow into cobbled twittens arched with trellis and the branches of fruit trees. No cars could get about here. We pass steel garden gates revealing oases of colour and rank fragrant vegetation within. Water can be heard trickling somewhere. Insects buzz and birds twitter and brawl in the bushes. A cat comes to look at us and allows itself to be petted. Someone’s washing billows quietly on a line.

Several hours (it seems) later, somehow we’ve got lost. And our numbers have dwindled down to five. We don’t know how. Once we realized what was happening, that there weren’t as many of us as there had been, we tried to keep an eye on each other but it doesn’t seem to have worked. It’s coming on for dusk, and this place is a ghost town, and a maze. We keep walking, the four of us.
In this part of town the houses and gardens are bigger though still only two or three stories high and still mostly in terraces or pairs. It’s a pleasant, leafy turn-of-the-century suburb on a hill. The houses are set back behind gardens, always overflowing with plants, often with children’s toys scattered in the grass. Still nobody seems to be about.
We have a feeling that there are people living here. Lights are on in some rooms and there are the sounds of things happening elsewhere, but we can’t locate them. Finally it’s very dark and the streetlights are weak and there’s no moon. We knock on doors and call but there is no movement. A dog barks somewhere. We don’t want to break in but we’re getting frightened.

Book 2 - Neglect

No Stars, No Moon
‘Have you looked at the sky?’
‘No’ he says and looks up. ‘Why?’ but his voice tails off. Why is obvious. Why hadn’t he noticed it before? The night sky is as black as... what? It’s hard to think of a simile – except perhaps blindness.

Close your eyes in a cupboard in an unlit room at night, with the curtains closed. What’s that expression? ‘You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.’ It’s very rarely literally true in life, but here, in death, once the sun has gone, that’s often what it’s like. Pull a pile of blankets over your face. Seal the edges. Feel the damp warmth of your breath collect in the dusty fabric. Feel the carbon dioxide accumulate. For where the night sky in life gave us some feeble sense of the infinite (terrifying or thrilling according to taste), here it holds you down, seals you in, encases you. The sky is as black as your hat, as they say, but that hat is shoved down over your face.

Death # 2 - Man in a shed
My name is Gabriel Fortune – artist, philosopher, man of the road.
My life ended rather enviably as it happens. We’ve all heard of someone that lived to a ripe old age and died peacefully in their sleep, and, inevitably, someone says ‘That’s the way to go’. Well, that was what happened to me that time. I'd got to about 68 I think when it happened – must have happened in about 2030. I was living in a shed at the bottom of the garden and nobody found me for nine weeks, which wasn’t so much fun for them, but, on the plus side, nobody knew me well enough to care and there wasn’t a lot to find. The animals had seen to that.
How had I ended up in a shed? You may well ask. At the time I’d have given you short shrift, grumbling on about life’s iniquities and ruing my own shortcomings, but really, I have to say, that last couple of decades I was as content as anyone I’ve ever known, and I think I was aware of that at the time too. Grumbling was just how I was. It was a habit.

Things had got weird early on. Time came to leave school and I’d screwed up my A levels and all my friends (so called) went off to university, and I was at a loss what to do. I'd hated school – was totally bewildered by the whole abysmal experience, but whatever horrors lay in that particular institution were as nothing compared to the prospect of the “outside world”, or “real life” as some insisted on calling it. Stupid really. I only had to get Cs to get into Art College. They’d liked my work that much. They hadn't even asked me to attend an interview. I was that good. As it was I didn’t even pass.

I don’t know. Don’t ask. It wasn’t drugs or sex or any other hedonistic adolescent excess. Chance would have been a fine thing. Who knows what I might have achieved had I got those rocks off! What heights might I have scaled after sojourning in some altered state of consciousness? Who knows indeed. No. I was scared. It was as simple as that – scared of the responsibility, of the teachers, of the other kids, of girls, my parents, study, work, life. I just couldn’t face it. So I didn’t.
I had a few crappy jobs early on, signed on, eventually moved out and stayed in some crappy places in Brighton, took a few crappy courses but nothing ever really lead to anything. I carried on with my drawing and even had an exhibition one year at the Brighton Festival but somehow it never came to anything.
Ok, I know now why that was. I can’t pretend I don’t. Some people said I had success issues – cue ironic double quotes, but that’s not quite right. Success would have been fine. I could have coped with that. My trouble was failure. All the while you mosey along quietly you can’t fall very far, but if you start to succeed, and then you fail... Sounds like cowardice doesn’t it? But it’s not. It’s just a realistic assessment of my limitations. Sure, sometimes I did some impressive work. I know that, I’ve always known that. But I also know what happens to me when the pressure is on, when I have to produce to order, I know what will happen, or I’ve got a pretty good idea. I’ll go to bits, I’ll go get lost, and I’ll let everyone down. And I can’t stand it. I’d really rather not if you don’t mind.
But it was good. I did produce some good things. Sometimes I’d take myself by surprise and finish something, and people would go ‘Wow! You did that? You should do this for a living’ and I could be all modest and self-effacing and give people nice presents they couldn’t afford ordinarily. And it was ok. Really. We can’t all be Damien bloody Hirst you know.

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.

To continue reading either go to Lulu to buy or download the book, or let me know when you want to read the next bit and I'll post it on the blog.

Joe I – The basics

I don’t know how long I sat there. I arrived in the cafeteria some time later, red eyed and drained. The wide, low-ceilinged wood-panelled room was filled with a low hubbub of conversation. A few people looked around at me as I searched for Joe. I avoided their eyes, but one of them got past my defences and insisted on introducing himself as Ray. He took me over to a table where there were some other people, apparently friends of his. ‘Can I get you anything son?’ he said, and for a moment I wondered if he was somehow my dad, but he wasn’t. I was relieved about that. I looked around at them. There were two women and two men, all looking about forty years old. The two women (Liz and Brenda) had a lot of make-up on and permed hair. I could smell soap and hair lacquer. The men (Harry and Solly) had suits and ties on, and very stiff, shiny hair. I suppose they were just trying to be friendly but for some reason I felt really uncomfortable about them. Ray brought me a coffee, which I was not pleased to discover contained whiskey but I thanked him politely anyway. ‘Get that down you’ he said, ruffling my hair.
Not heaven then, I thought. Joe rescued me by ‘reminding’ me of my appointment.
‘How’re you doing?’ he asked, once he’d got me sat down at a window table with a proper coffee. The sea was just as grey as yesterday, but rolling heavily and the air was clearer and I could see further out. White birds soared and glided. ‘Where is this?’ I asked eventually. I had so many questions. I plucked one at random.
Joe looked a nice chap, concerned but not intrusive. I knew at once that he would be there to help but that I didn’t have to make friends with him. That was a relief. ‘Is this a dream?’ I asked. I was very sure it wasn’t but I wanted to ask anyway. 
‘No, it’s not’ he said. ‘What’s the last thing you remember about your life?’
I had to think quite hard. I had images of the house, my parents, school, then work and suddenly I remembered Tim and Gillian and the party. It seemed such a long time ago. I told Joe about being up on the Downs that night. It was the last thing I remembered. ‘I died, didn’t I’ I said.
Joe relaxed visibly. ‘Well, that makes my job a heck of a lot easier’ he said, ‘not having to break the news...’ but I’d gone into a spin. I had guessed but not really believed it. The confirmation took the floor away and next thing, I found myself lying on it, under the table. People were fussing around me. It took a moment to get my balance, and I pushed my way through them and strode quickly up onto the deck. The wind was icy and blowing hard, and I leaned over the rail and looked down into the water. I felt so angry.
Joe turned up soon. I was silent, fuming, looking around me.
‘Shall we go somewhere quiet?’ he said. I nodded and followed. We sat down in what looked like someone’s study.
‘I’m sorry’ I said ‘it’s just all those people, fussing...’
‘They were worried’ he said. I nodded, but I suspected they were just nosey and liked the drama. I kept that to myself. I had more important questions.
‘So, this is the after life?’ I said
‘Yep’ he said. He was watching me closely, cautiously, like I might go mad any moment. That pissed me off too. I wasn’t going to hurt anybody. Why did people always look at me like that?
‘What are you then, an angel?’
He smiled broadly. ‘Hardly’ he said and shook his head. ‘No I’m a guide. We’re here to look after you through the journey. There’s twenty or so of us on this trip, and we get assigned a group of passengers. You don’t have to stick with me if we don’t get on. It’s up to you. Basically I’ll try to answer whatever questions you have...’ He tailed off and looked a bit worried. ‘Look’ he said leaning forward, elbows on knees. ‘I’ll be honest with you. I haven’t done this before. I don’t know all the answers. None of us does. Angie’s done several trips so she probably knows more than most of us but... the thing is, we do a course. If we choose to go back and be a guide we go to a place and they give us some lessons in how to be a guide. A lot of it’s just regular Samaritans stuff – listening skills, basic psychology...’
‘Except you don’t get to deal with suicides’ I joke.
Joe smiles awkwardly and leans back in his chair. ‘Well actually that’s not quite true...’
‘I mean they may have committed suicide, but...’ he’s shaking his head. Clearly there is a way to commit suicide even after death.
‘I will explain, later’ he says. ‘The other thing we get taught about is, um...’ he shrugs and looks at the ceiling for inspiration ‘...the way this thing works. Life, death, after life, rebirth, and so on’.
‘Rebirth?’ I say. ‘Really?’ Now I am interested.
‘They don’t tell us everything. Between you and me, I don’t think they know everything themselves. I can’t tell you anything about the big questions, the meaning and nature of the universe, God, spirit, all that. I don’t know where we are now in relation to the world, or what we are. I don’t know if we’re spirits or souls or actual physical beings or figments in the mind of God or whatever, and I don’t actually know that this isn’t some kind of dream. Sometimes, particularly on the next part of the journey it can seem a lot like being in a dream. A lot of it won’t make much sense at first but it’s my belief that it does have a certain weird logic to it.’
‘Like Alice in Wonderland.’
‘Perhaps. Sort of. I think sometimes, in a way it’s here to show you things. Which can be like a dream if you think about it... Anyway, I do know that no one ever actually dreams here. So that could be a clue.’ He pauses again. ‘You’ll get memories come in the night sometimes. It’ll feel like you’re right there again, back in your life, which can be quite unsettling... Anyway, what I do know is that, after you’ve completed this journey, if you want to, you can be reborn.’ He waits a moment for that to sink in. ‘But it’s not like the Hindus and Buddhists and New-Agers say, in case you were wondering. You don’t come back as someone or something in the future. All that stuff about people remembering past lives when they were Marie Antoinette or Genghis Khan must be something else – I won’t hazard a guess what but it’s not reincarnation. No, you come back as yourself.’
He knows how I’m going to react, but I do it anyway.
I stand up and pace around. ‘How? Why?’ I say.
He looks up at me from his chair, grinning ‘Why not?’
I’m looking out the window. I want to say something about time but can’t quite phrase it properly. It’s too obvious anyway – he’s playing with me. He must understand why I object.
‘Traditional notions of reincarnation depend on a rather limited notion of time’ he says smugly. ‘Physicists know about this. They don’t know about this exactly...’ he says indicating the room, the ship, wherever we are ‘...but they do know, in theory, mathematically. Our normal idea of time is a convenient fiction. It’s a structure we use in order to get stuff done, but it’s not universal, or absolute. Look, I don’t know how to explain it, I’m not a physicist or God or whatever. You can look into it for yourself if you want to.’
‘I read somewhere about Einstein saying how space and time are part of the same thing. You can go backwards in space...’
‘Absolutely, and they always say the spirit is a non-material thing. Maybe it’s a non-temporal thing too.’
‘Maybe...’
‘Anyway, all I know is, whatever we are, here, goes back and gets born again, over and over.’
‘How do you know?’ I say sceptically.
‘Ask them, other passengers, here on this boat. Not all of them. Some are here the first time around, some don’t remember, but a few...’
I still am not convinced. Why should they be telling the truth, these people? Why should they lie? Why should they do anything? What are we? Where are we? Why should I imagine I should be able to make any sense of any of this at all? I sit down again.
‘This is not your first time around by the way’ he says.
I want to ask a question but am not sure what it is.
‘That’s enough for today’ he says ‘Come and find me tomorrow. We’ll talk some more.’
And off he goes. I don’t have a single coherent thought in my head. What would be the point? Every thought is as useless as the next, except breakfast that is.

To continue reading either go to Lulu to buy or download the book, or let me know when you want to read the next bit and I'll post it on the blog