Vincent IV – Old Souls

‘When did you eventually leave home?’ he says, almost before I’ve sat down.
‘Er... ‘87? Some time around then.’
‘So, you were... twenty-two? Am I right?’
‘Yes, I suppose...’
It’s another thing I’m not proud of – leaving it so late.
‘What made you move, in the end?’
‘I don’t know really. I was just ready to go I suppose.’
‘It had nothing to do with the fact that no woman would want you once they found out you lived with your mother and father...’
I look at him. There’s something so... slapable about him, smug, patronising git. I decide to brazen it out.
‘No, not particularly. That had always been a problem... not just then.’
‘Ok, when did you have your first real relationship?’
‘Why?’
‘I am simply building a picture. Tell me.’
‘Nineteen?’
‘You sound unsure.’
‘Well, she wasn’t the love of my life exactly’
‘But you had sex.’
‘When we could.’
‘When your parents went away.’
‘My parents never went away.’
‘Oh? Why not?’
‘Dads bloody alpine plants. Don’t get me started...’
‘Ok, but at other times, when they were at work perhaps?’
‘Look, is this really relevant?’
I’m beginning to suspect him of just being a voyeur, or a sadist, or both.
‘I hope so.’
‘We had sex sometimes at her place, yes.’
‘How old was she?’
‘Twenty six?’
‘Ah. An older woman.’ (Hah, that surprised him.) ‘Good for you’ he says. ‘What made you choose a woman older than yourself?’
‘It wasn’t so much a matter of choice...’
He looks at me. I know what he wants to say about making choices. I back-track a little. ‘She was one of the carers at the nursing home. She took me in hand, if you know what I mean.’
‘I can imagine. But you would not have been with her from choice?’
‘She was quite domineering. And quite, er... large...’
I see him smile broadly. It is quite funny, in retrospect, but at the time it was a bit intimidating. I really didn’t feel I could say no, and in a way, I did enjoy it. ‘She was rather smothering, if you know what I mean.’ I deliberately include the double meaning but he reacts as if he’s noticed an unintentional Freudian slip.
‘With her on top?’ he says with a slightly queasy smile.
‘Yes, exactly’ I say, humouring him. ‘But motherly too?’
‘But not like your mother.’
‘God no.’ (Perish the thought. Yuk!) ‘My mother never... She wasn’t very touchy-feely if you know what I mean.’
‘Like the mother you never had then.’
‘Maybe’ I say doubtfully. Actually, now I come to think about it a few of the other care workers were very solicitous, if you know what I mean. A lot of them were middle-aged women and they were always covering for me when I was late and helping me out and I think one or two of the old queens there were convinced I was just being shy, so they were extra nice to me a lot of the time too. Actually I think I brought out the mothering instinct in almost everybody except my own mother.
But I have to admit, I did like Pamela (that was her name) taking care of me and all I had to do was perform a few times a week. If I’d fancied her more it might have been a very good arrangement indeed. She had these immense breasts, which was quite an experience for me, as a barely post-pubescent lad, but it was all a bit too much to be honest.
‘But she was good for you, no?’
‘She showed me the ropes’ and I know what I’ve said almost before it leaves my mouth. He gives me the saucy grin again. Unfortunately he’s right this time. It was a Freudian slip, and she did tie me down a couple of times. I didn't really like it.
‘I can imagine she did’ he says, knowingly.
‘Anyway...’ I say, trying to change the subject, or at least, move it along ‘I learned a lot.’
He nods and writes. I wonder briefly what kind of doodles this session will inspire. Maybe it’s his way of taking notes. I could imagine doing that but it’s hardly short hand.
‘And before her did you have other girlfriends?’
‘Nothing serious’ I say. Nothing sexual is what I mean.
‘But you would have liked to.’
‘God yes’
‘Do you think you could stop saying “God” for me? Thank you very much.’
I look at him. What a very strange little man. I feel like starting an argument but can’t be bothered. He looks up at me, realises I’m watching him.
‘I know this is irrational’ he says. ‘It is an old habit but I can’t seem to change it. Blasphemy hurts even though I am no longer sure there is anything to blaspheme against. However, I would be very grateful...’ He smiles slightly in a brave kind of way. I nod and smile, and once again my opinion of him is instantaneously inverted.
‘No problem’ I say.
‘What I’m aiming for here...’ he says, laying down his papers, looking into the middle distance ‘...is some sense of whether this impotence you felt in life was simply about finding your place in the world of work, money, making a career, or if it extended to other things...’
‘It was everything’ I say. He could have just asked. ‘Although I wasn’t, actually...’
‘Impotent’ he says. ‘No, I’m sure, but it is all frustrated, bottled up.’ He mimes being bottled up, pulling his shoulders, elbows and knees in. It would be funny if he didn’t do it because he feels he’s trying to communicate with a moron.
‘I want to know where that comes from. You need to know.’
‘Ok.’
‘When do you first remember feeling that way?’
I think back. It must have been in secondary school. ‘Thirteen?’ I say.
‘No’ he says with total certainty. ‘Earlier. Adolescence is when it comes out, and when it begins to damage your future, but not all teenagers are alike. The causes are further back.’
‘Ok, that makes sense.’
‘I’m glad you think so. So...’ and he looks at his notes again. I’d love to have a look at them. ‘Just to complete the picture then, there were other girls you wanted before her?’
‘I lost my virginity with her, but yes, other...dalliances.’
‘A good word’ he says looking at his papers. ‘Little used these days. “Dalliances.” Excellent. Tell me a little about those.’
‘Erm, well’ I look about, playing for time. There’s really nothing to tell. It’s a bit pathetic really. There was really only one proper girlfriend.
‘There was Naomi. She fancied herself as some sort of pixie-woman – went on to go to Cambridge I think it was.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Seventeen I think, she was a bit younger.’
‘And then?’
‘And then Pamela – the auxiliary I told you about.’
‘Nobody else? No infatuations, no dates, no er... “ones that got away”?’
I try to look challengingly at him but he doesn’t flinch.
‘Look’ I say. ‘Why do you want to know all this? Really? After nearly twenty years struggle I threw my career as a painter away in a fit of pique and you want to know about my adolescent crushes?’
I look at him as he prepares an answer. I’m not angry exactly. It’s just beginning to seem ridiculous. What’s worse, I like talking about women and sex, which seems like a bad sign. Shouldn’t this delving be difficult for me? I feel sorely aggrieved about my sex life, certainly, but it seems self-indulgent. We need to talk about more adult problems surely – money and careers and paperwork and taxes.
‘Your problems are of a sexual nature Gabriel.’
‘Well, that’s all very Freudian, but...’
‘Not Freud’ he says. ‘People’s problems spring from many sources – mothering, violence, sickness, school, race, poverty, genetics... But yours spring mostly from sex, or relationships anyway. Do not ask me how I know this, but I do. You had counselling in life yes?’ I nod. ‘But it’s different here. We know which questions to ask. Trust me. We know. Ok?’
‘Ok’ I say, pretending not to be convinced but actually I’m relieved. I hadn’t really wanted to talk about tax and careers.
‘Good. Who did you first fall in love with?’
‘Girls at school, different ones, Donna, Camille, Gillian – there was always someone.’
‘From about what age?’
I think back. Donna was in Miss William’s class. That would have been... ‘Eight?’ I say, not quite believing this can be true. What kind of a perv was I? He nods and writes it down. Evidently it’s not that shocking.
‘And what did you do about it?’
I shrug. ‘Nothing. I was just a kid.’ What did he expect?
‘No little games? Doctors and nurses? Kiss-chase?’
‘I was a bit too shy. I stared at them a lot.’
He writes some more. ‘I expect that made you popular’ he says, not looking up.
‘No they thought I was a weirdo.’ Nod nod. Write write. I want to say something about how off-putting it is but decide to let it go. I look out of the window at the sea. It’s still raining horizontally out there but the sky is paler. Sea birds whiz past on the gale.
‘I asked a few girls out later on but they weren’t interested. It was all a bit sad really. Camille I think quite liked me but couldn’t bring herself to actually be seen out with me. I always felt she saw through the outer, gawky, nerdy me to the real me underneath. There was something oddly wise about her, womanly, for her age, like she knew things. Beautiful eyes.’
‘She may have been an old soul.’
I’m not sure what he means. I’ve heard the term before. New agers use it sometimes for people who they suspect might have lived before, who seem older than their years. I didn’t expect to hear it from someone as straight as Vincent.
‘She may have been one that remembered her previous lives in detail’ he says for clarification. ‘It is not common – maybe two or three percent, mostly women, as a very subjective estimate.’
I look at him some more. Is he being serious? This had really never occurred to me. People say ‘What would you do if you could live your life again, knowing what you know now?’ but it never occurred to me it might actually happen. I suppose, now I come to think about it, that I hadn’t really considered how we might carry this experience from here into the next life. I thought maybe it would come in confusing flashes, like deja-vu, or maybe just an instinct about things, but not this, this Groundhog Life. I’m lost in thought when he speaks again.
‘And Gillian?’ he says.
‘What? Oh, Gillian. Oh she was gorgeous, and a really lovely personality. She was quite popular generally, but I think she liked me. Well, most girls completely ignored me, so for one to even acknowledge my existence was a breakthrough.’ I look at Vincent for a smile of fellowship but nothing comes. At least he’s put his notes down and is looking at me properly now.
‘But nothing happened between you.’
I look at him before I answer. There’s something so condescending about his responses to what I say – like all his questions have full stops, and all my answers have question marks. I think a bit more about Gillian. She was gorgeous. I didn’t really stand a chance.
‘It’s a weird one – I was going to go to a party, which was quite an event for me – I didn’t get invited to a lot of parties back then... and this one, I wasn’t exactly invited, but I wasn’t excluded, if you know what I mean. Everybody at the shop was going.’
‘How old were you by this time?’ and he’s got his bloody pad out again.
‘Eighteen. I worked at a DIY shop for a while, a few months. I knew her from school but she was on the checkouts. Anyway, I knew she was going to this party – as I say, everyone was and I was quite keen to go, so I turn up at the pub where we were meeting that evening. I’d deliberately made an effort to not wear my usual geeky outfit – you know – the old school shirts and anorak and so on. I’d been out and bought some black tee-shirts and jeans and I got my hair cut and everything and I felt pretty cool that night actually. Anyway, I get to the pub, and there they all are, and Gill sees me and says how cool I look, which just makes me feel ecstatic. Anyway, later, as we’re about to leave I realise I don’t have a bottle to take. The off-licence is just next door and I tell Gill that I’ll be back in a moment and don’t go without me. It’s raining outside and I’ve not got a cool new jacket to go with the rest of my cool new outfit so I’m freezing but I don’t care, and the next thing I know, she’s followed me out, and she turns me around and looks at me and laughs, because the tee shirt’s quite tight, and my nipples are really poking out. And she says – I’ll always remember this – she says “Are those torpedoes in your shirt or are you just pleased to see me?” At first I’m really embarrassed but I can see in her expression that she quite likes it. And for a moment, I think she might come with me, we look at each other for a while, out there, in the drizzle, and she bites her lip and says, apologetically ‘You know I’m with Dave (or whatever his name was), don’t you.’ and I look at her and suddenly I know that going to the party is a really very bad idea. I’m disgusted anyway. This guy Dave is a total wanker and it sickens me to think of them together. “Come with me” I say, or something like that, and she looks uncomfortable, and says she can’t, and anyway she has to go, because he might see us and she kisses me, properly, on the mouth, and runs back inside. It was the most romantic thing I think that ever happened to me.’
I look at Vincent. For some reason he’s grinning extremely broadly at me.
‘Well done’ he says. ‘That was the one I wanted.’
‘What? Why?’
‘I don’t know why. I simply know it was important. You know this too, no?’
I sit and think about it. Yes. I’ve always known it was important. I don’t know why or how.
‘We will continue next time. I want to hear about your time as a student, and about your wife. Ok?’
I nod and leave. For some reason I feel hugely uplifted and drained at the same time. I go to find Ned and the others. I want a huge drink. I feel like celebrating for some reason.

Voyage XIII – The Leaving Do

I don’t think I was expecting very much but I have to hand it to Paul – he knows how to throw a party. Of course the bar was always free but he managed to get them to relocate up onto the deck and he asked the chefs to do a barbecue there too. I was involved in going through the library after some likely looking tunes to play. A few passengers had musical instruments with them and there were other performers among us – a poet, a contortionist and a rather risqué cabaret singer. (This is what happens when your catchment area includes Brighton.) Another group insisted on organising party games. We arranged the chairs for an audience but planned to move them back later if people felt like dancing. Tuxedos were obtained from somewhere for the men and the girls were very secretive about what they would be wearing. Normally I wouldn’t have been caught dead in a tux but it seemed a bit late to be worrying about that. There were lights and bunting and we decorated the rails and ropes with them as best we could. By the time it was dark there was quite an excited atmosphere.
I was determined not to let things get to me. As will be obvious by now, parties had never been a good place for me – not because I don’t want to have a good time. Possibly I want to have a good time too much. Anyway the strategy I decided on here was to sit toward the back and remain a little detached – do some people watching. This was not the first time I’d attempted this strategy but I was willing to give it another go tonight.
The first hitch was Fiona dragging me to a seat near the front and insisting I ‘loosen up’. Paul was sitting joking with the Asians and making an unsubtle play for one of the women. She didn’t seem to be objecting as much as I’d have expected.
‘You take yourself a bit too seriously Gabriel if you don’t mind my saying so’ he said, leaning over and ruffling my hair. The booze seemed to be working better than usual. Trevor grinned at my discomfort.

I shan’t go into all the details. Suffice it to say the revelry went on until dawn and I did not get off with Fiona. I still couldn’t find her attractive enough. I spent the whole evening half expecting Andrea to make a fabulous entrance in a gorgeous low cut frock or something, but I did my best to enjoy myself, and I did a lot of dancing and eating and drinking, and even got chatting to a few people I’d not talked to before. Isn’t it strange how easy it is to make friends when you know everything’s coming to an end? We chatted about where we would be going next, and whether we’d be able to choose who we travelled with. We were all quite excited at the prospect. As we’d neared our destination over the last few days we’d seen the land in more and more detail and could make out fields and buildings among the hills and woodlands. It all looked very verdant and well tended. For the first time I really began to think about what it might mean to stay here, to find a place to be and let the years slowly melt into one another until time became meaningless and the day-to-day was all that mattered. I could imagine that happening in the landscape we were passing. I wondered if there would be a woman there I could fall in love with. I wouldn’t have to be unemployed and homeless and mad and she could see me for who I genuinely was and for the first time ever, I knew that that would be a good thing. I went back and I danced with Fiona and with Cathy and I really did have a good time.

Harvey said he’d been talking to his guide about what I’d said about being reborn. I said I couldn’t remember what I’d said and he had to remind me.
‘There’s a problem with two people both being reborn and both changing their lives’ he said. I looked confused at him.
‘Ok’ he said. ‘Supposing you arrange to meet a young lady you’ve met here, in your next life. Both of you will be changing your lives in order to meet.’
‘Ok’ I said.
‘But...’ he continued. ‘But Brian, my guide, maintains that the only changes in your new life can be those wrought by yourself, so...’
‘So she cannot be expecting to meet me?’
‘Precisely, but it’s more complicated than that, because this girl might be engineering a meeting with you in her new life, as you will be in yours, but the chap she meets (you) will not be expecting her, and your girl will not be expecting you. You see?’
‘Because their lives will be the same as the ones they lived during my previous incarnation...’
‘Except to the extent you alter it for them.’
‘What?’ Bryony has been listening in on all this and looks doubtful. ‘What the hell are you guys blathering about?’ She looks quite drunk and holds her wine glass at a worrying angle. She certainly is wearing a fabulous low cut frock, but made of something black and clingy. I’d love to say something meaningful about it but as usual, can’t think of anything. I tell myself I’m waiting for Andrea anyway.
‘Parallel realities my sweet’ says Harvey putting on his most unctuous voice. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’ She slaps him playfully with her fan and walks away swaying her arse provocatively at us. We both take a moment to appreciate it and Cathy comes over and slaps him too, with her gloves. ‘Hey...’ he says and she sits herself down into his lap and surveys the crowd, which is getting lively. After a time she turns and drains his glass and asks what we were talking about. She looks fabulous too in a little creamy number. In fact everyone looks fabulous and I begin to well up. Harvey gets up, dropping Cathy in his place, says do I want another? and heads for the bar. Cathy leans on me and giggles. I want to put my arm around her – just in a friendly way but feel uncomfortable about it, with Harvey and her being together and all.
‘You’re a silly boy, aren’t you’ she says.
‘Am I?’ and suddenly I’m eight again, with one of my sexier aunties.
‘Will you promise me something?’ she says.
‘I’ll try’ I say, brightly, hopefully.
‘Not try’ she says. ‘Do. I want you to promise me that when you go back into life you will grab it by the bosom with both hands, and stop all this shilly-shallying about. Find yourself a nice young lady and travel the world with her. Will you do that for me?’
I want to say it’s not as simple as that, but I say ‘Yes, absolutely’ and mean it, more or less.
‘The thing is’ interjects Harvey returning suddenly and pulling up a third chair opposite us. Cathy has her arm around my shoulders. He doesn’t seem to mind. ‘The thing is, what this implies is a whole lot of people going back, all intent on changing their lives, all needing an unchanged world to go back to, hence, multiple worlds. And if you have billions of people doing this, each going through several incarnations, we are talking about a very large number of parallel worlds indeed. Do you catch my drift?’
‘Yes, but Brian said that doesn’t happen didn’t he darling’ says Cathy languorously sliding back onto his lap.
‘Well, with all due respect, perhaps he doesn’t know what he’s talking about’ says Harvey nuzzling under her hair.
‘And perhaps you don’t know what you’re talking about, darling, with all due respect.’
‘Maybe you need a good spanking’ he whispers, rather too audibly in her ear and she leaps up and grabs his hand and forces him onto the dance floor. Harvey looks back helplessly at me but what can I do? I just grin at him. Then Fiona is with me and asks how I am getting on. I say I’m ok and point out Harvey hoofing clumsily to some Sly and the Family Stone we miraculously found in an old box in the forward lounge. Fiona laughs and then points out Paul with the Asian girl, evidently getting on very well indeed.
‘Well my date hasn’t turned up at all’ I say, looking around, again. Fiona does not seem put out I am pleased to note. The alcohol is apparently not that effective, and I still don’t find her attractive.
‘I saw her down in the bar. You mean that guide, what’s her name?’
‘Andrea?’
‘That’s her. She said all the guides were coming up soon...’
And I can feel my heart leaping about in its cage. I almost feel sick. Should I go down and find her? Suppose she changes her mind? What if she’s pissed off that I’m hassling her? And then I realise it’s not up to her. It’s up to me. What do I want to do? I want to go down and find her, that’s what. If it’s the wrong thing to do, well, maybe she’s not the girl for me after all. I get up to go. ‘Sorry’ I say to Fiona.
‘Go’ she says waving her hand to dismiss me, but smiling nevertheless.

I arrive in the entrance to the bar in my waistcoat, tie askew, and see them, the guides, also in their suits and posh frocks, crowded at a table in the middle of the room, laughing and joking. I hesitate to interrupt. They’re still in charge after all, and they seem to be having a good time without us. Then I catch sight of Andrea, sitting on the table in their midst, laughing at something with a champagne flute in her hand. I can see she is indeed wearing something low cut, but it is something ethnic, as she would put it, something in cerise. I move a little closer and hate myself for my hesitancy. Then I think ‘Sod it’ and stride up and she turns and beams at me and I grin back.
‘What kept you?’ she says happily. All the others turn to look at me. I don’t care.
‘You look absolutely beautiful’ I say and smile and nod my head sideways indicating the stairs and the party above and she hops down and pushes her way through the others, glass aloft, gives me her arm and lets me lead her on deck. I have nothing to say. I am just so deliriously happy.

I’d like to say we spent the night together in the fleshly sense but we didn’t. After much dancing and laughing with the others we cuddled up in a lounger and watched the land get closer and the sun loom up out of the distance like a train coming out of a tunnel.
‘This doesn’t often happen you know’ she said as the sky turned from black to lapis lazuli.
‘What, the party?’
‘Oh no - this is quite normal, but no, I mean us, like this.’
‘Unprofessional?’
‘Well, there is that, but being a guide – it’s a difficult situation.’
‘Do you think I’d make a good guide?’
‘I honestly believe you have too much to live for Gabriel. You need to go back.’
‘What about you?’
‘I will, someday. I’m not done yet.’ And we sit and chat and I take the chance to ask her more about her life. She tells me about her father and how he wouldn’t talk to her for years because she wouldn’t go into practice with him and ‘justify his investment’. She goes on to tell me a little more about Africa – not about the horrible things, but how she loved the people she met, and, toward the end, how she had such hopes for the future there. She’d been HIV positive for years when they finally brought her home to die. She’d been one of the last people ever to die of AIDS. She didn’t say it with any anger. She reckoned she’d had a good life.
We sit quietly for a while and then I ask her about what Harvey said about the billions of parallel universes, if that was all true.
‘No’ she says. ‘They’re always arguing this at the academy...’
‘There’s an academy?’
‘It’s like a university. Guides can go there to get trained, and there’s research, publishing. It’s all very disorganised but they do seem to have some insight into what’s going on here – how all this works.’
‘And what do they say, about this parallel universe thing?’
‘People who know they’re living again recognise each other sometimes. I don’t know how it works, but there is just the one universe apparently.’
I want to ask if she thinks we could really meet again but in a way, I don’t want to know. I let it go. We look at the view some more. It’s a beautiful view but I am not relaxed. Sitting half behind her, with her half on my lap I feel her weight pressing against me, and with my arms around her I can feel her soft curvy body through the thin material, and I cannot help but watch her breasts rising and falling, soft and pale. She turns and kisses me on the lips and I am shaking from it.
‘It’s not professionalism I’m worried about’ she says quietly. ‘I can’t go further with this because I know we will have to go our separate ways tomorrow. Can you just hold me and talk to me – is that ok?’ She looks away. I nod and kiss her behind her ear and find I am suddenly very relaxed. And I’m more than ok with it. It’s far more than I ever realistically hoped for.

Voyage XII – Harvey's Tale

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

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

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

Journey XVI – The Last Resort

And now I must prepare myself. I know soon I must walk down to the sea and keep walking and then I will be gone and then I will be reborn in a new life. I don’t want to know any more about it.

This is a nice place here. My chamber is bright and airy. The staff (who are a special kind of guide) look after us quietly, tenderly, prepare us for what comes next. We are all dressed in a flimsy white material (the guides are in silvery grey) and my body feels smooth and flawless underneath. I can already feel myself becoming less solid, less flesh. My mind is flowing around things, becoming simplified. I perceive directly without the use of sense organs. I am moving into the sunlight and passing out into the air where a million crystalline slivers of song and colour pierce me deliciously. I am the heat and the perfume and the buzz of insects.

Time passes. Some take a very long time to ready themselves, and we are assured that we can stay here as long as we like. Our accommodation seems to have been made by the same extraordinary process as those exquisitely sculpted Japanese seashells – of white translucent aragonite with a pinkish glow within. We rest on finely sculpted balconies and doze, or view the infinite expanse of coral sea beyond, or else turn over and look to the lagoon on the landward side, fringed with mangroves on the far bank. Travellers play quietly or sleep on the sand or on boardwalks below. It is like the most brilliant hotel ever, designed by geniuses, staffed by angels, occupied by spectres. I am still enough myself to joke that this must be the last resort but humour is fast going the way of arousal and tiredness and embarrassment and frustration and mucus and sweat and pubic hair.

I am a little anxious I must admit. I think we all are. We are all putting it off a bit – looking at the sea, going for a walk, chatting, having something to drink, having a swim. But we won’t discuss it – what comes next. I don’t know why. I could see a counsellor but I don’t want to and they won’t push. I want to go but I’m somehow not ready yet. I watched two people go yesterday – I didn’t know them. It looked like dying. I go for another walk, this time into the trees behind the beach and find a chameleon to watch.

Some ask a guide to go with them down to the edge. Some have made friends and they have them around for support. Some go down in groups, hand in hand but I want to do this alone and so at dawn I find somewhere up the end of the beach and sit on a coconut palm trunk that slants out over the water and I look down at the waves, and I have never felt more heavy and corporeal. There are tiny fiddler crabs scurrying about on the sand below, each waving his one outsized claw at the rest.
‘Wanna fight?’ or ‘Wanna fuck?’
Life eh?

So here I am. I think of the life I will be launching myself back into and it all seems horribly immediate. My only positive thought is that I’m sure I can do better than last time. I can’t just give in. I crawl a little way out along the trunk and slip gracelessly into the unexpectedly cool knee-deep water. I can feel the sand and little bits of sea detritus between my toes. I stop and look about but I know it is time not to think – it is time to move on. I slip out of the gown and it drops into the water, immediately becoming invisible there. I look around. I can’t see anyone watching. I begin to move deeper.
When I am down to my shoulders I realise with a shudder that I can’t see my body under the water, can’t feel it any more and yet I can keep my head out a little longer and I look at the sky. There’s a vivid turquoise bird flying past...

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Thank you
Steve

Journey XV – Down to the seaside

As I kept on walking I felt the climate gradually turn hot and heavy and the vegetation became richer and more exotic. The birds, insects and flowers got bigger and brighter and the noise and odour of the place became more and more overwhelming. I’d never been to the tropics in life but I had no doubt that this was exactly what it would be like.
Increasingly, I came across other travellers along the route too – some in groups with their guides, others alone. I saw myself among the loners and they – we, all had that same weary exultant expression on our faces – we’d made it. We’d arrived.
The traffic was increasing too – mostly mules and other animals pulling various sorts of rough carts but also some vans and bicycles – and I got a lift some of the way. Settlements became more common too – clay and wood walls and terracotta or thatch roofed cabins usually set around a well or a fireplace in a clearing among the trees. At night the locals welcomed us in and brought cushions and rugs and spicy food and we sat around the fires or crowded into rooms if it was raining and ate and drank and sang or played games until dawn when we slept for a while, got breakfast and moved on.
After one particularly entertaining night, ten of us collapsed into the back of a truck with our belongings, a small pig and a fruit tree in a pot and took the dusty track through the fields to the edge of the forest. At that point the land fell away steeply and the road was nothing but bends.
A little later we came round a curve and the sea was there far below us – electric blue and shimmering in the heat. We walked or rode the remainder without resting, jubilantly singing and laughing along the dusty track among the whitewashed houses, under the flowering trees and palms.
And so the realisation of what was going to happen next gradually became unignorable. I’d hardly thought about it since Joe told me about it all those years before. I wondered briefly what had become of him.

In quieter moments I take the opportunity to try to think back to my so-called life: England, Sussex – that job I had, and those people... It all seems an incredibly long way away and yet I know it’s just around the corner now and I am going back there somehow and I haven’t even thought to find out how that is supposed to happen. I try to recall the things Joe and I talked about, and what Miranda said, and Jim, and I wonder if he is still there, tending his goats for all eternity. Then I take a seat on a log and look across the treetops and wonder impatiently what I’m supposed to have been getting from all this.
I gather myself up and try to really think about it seriously. What has it all been for? Joe said people tend to get what they really want here, whether they like it or not, or words to that effect.
I’ve met a woman who wanted to have sex with me. That’s certainly something. Ok, she was only ten inches tall, but still... And I wonder where Lucy ended up. She just seems sort of ridiculous now by comparison – immature, selfish. I don’t know.

What else? Well I could probably grow all my own veggies if I needed to, and raise chickens and goats. Jim was a really nice guy, resigned and enthusiastic at the same time. I miss him most. I wish my dad had been more like him... And I find myself lost in sadness again and almost in tears. I check to see if anyone’s about but the road is quiet at the moment. It’s about midday I suppose. Most people will be indoors having their lunch or crashed out in the heat. I hear a man laugh somewhere across the way among the trees – a friendly, warm laugh, but I can’t see anyone. I sniff a bit and wipe my nose and eyes on my sleeve. It’s covered in grime. Nothing I have on is even slightly clean. The front of my shirt is stiff with fruit juice and sweat stains and the creases in my shorts are drawn in with soil and crushed vegetation. I can imagine Justine’s smiling face looking down at me and giving me her own bright female version of that laugh because I’ve got myself in a mess again. I was always in such a mess.
Shit, what am I going to do? I cast my mind back as fleetingly as possible over the last year or two of my life and then quickly around at the thick vegetation on the slope below and the sea beyond. There’s a boat out there with a triangular sail the same burnt sienna as the soil around here. When I think back about all those other people in the sixth form, Camille and Carly and Gareth and Tom and the rest, getting on with it, sorting out their careers and their university places, it seems like everybody else knew what to do. I lean back propped up on my elbows with my head hanging back and feel the sun roasting my face, evaporating my tears away, and I listen in to the insects and the birds going about their business around me.
I don’t want to think any more.
Joe, I know, had big ideas for me and my career but I really can’t imagine what I will be able to do to make any difference whatsoever. All I know is that I’m not going for a walk after that party. After that, who knows? I haul myself into the standing position and pull my pack onto my back.

Right on cue, a cart pulled by a cow with enormous curved horns rounds the corner. It is driven by a very dark skinned man and he seems to have a few passengers already, sitting up on top of a lot of sacks and crates. I stick my thumb out and he grins at me, his teeth so brilliant white, in such contrast to the rest of his face that I can hardly make out the rest of his features.
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Joe XII – The moral majority

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

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

The Retreat came upon us suddenly, although she’d been preparing me for it for a while. We came to a curve in the path and suddenly there it was, looking something like a Highland castle converted into a school or a hospital, or an asylum – a mix of ancient stone turrets and battlements and Victorian sash windows and gutters. It was raining hard again. Autumn was moving in fast and Miranda would have to leave me here before the winter. She didn’t know exactly what would happen but she was optimistic. She didn’t expect to see me again. That’s how it is in the afterlife – people and places are very rarely encountered a second time – though sometimes, in a future life, people recognise each other at a party, in the street, and can’t think where from. But not Miranda – she said she wasn’t going back, ever.

The last few weeks, I suppose it was, had been blissful for us. After that last encounter it was like we were free at last. Maybe more so for me – I didn’t know what was coming. I did notice that every time we came across signs of recent human activity again she was distant and preoccupied for a while, but then she’d perk up quickly and be even more lively and sexy than ever. The land was a green and rolling and full of life and the road was broad and easy to follow. We were relaxed and cheerful and it seemed like she might choose never to say goodbye. What was more, there were moments when she almost seemed to be a normal size. I began to think there might be a future for us somehow. I kept trying to bring up the subject of her finding somewhere, maybe somewhere she could settle, be happy maybe, but she wouldn’t have it. She didn’t belong anywhere she said, and she never would.

It was late summer, an Indian summer almost and we’d not had the tent out for quite a while – it had been too hot. We just slept under the sky and marvelled at the lack of stars and moon (and yet there was that clear silvery moonlight). There were late summer storms too, which drenched us and made us laugh and dance. Her silk wrap became completely transparent and she looked at me challengingly, biting her lip.
Our feelings for each other were getting irrepressible. We watched each other intently. She seemed to be waiting for something, but what could I do? I didn’t even like to touch her because I was afraid I’d damage her.

I needn’t have worried. One night we were both lying out on our bedding. It had been raining heavily and everything was steaming. I just had a cloth over my hips, but it was clinging to me. Her sarong was clinging too and I could see every curve of her. Neither of us could sleep. She got up and came over to me. ‘Turn on your back’ she said softly. I did and she stepped onto my arm, climbed onto my belly and lay down on her side facing me, looking at me. She seemed unsure what to do next. I pulled some of my clothes over to put under my head so I could look at her properly.
‘You’re afraid to touch me, aren’t you?’
‘You said...’
‘Shhh...’ she said ‘It’s ok. I trust you. I’m not that fragile. Give me your hand.’ and she sat cross legged against the palm of my hand, and let the silk fall down around her waist. I tried not to look too obviously at her sweet pointy breasts but it was hard, in every sense. It was very hard.
‘You can look’ she said lightly. ‘I don’t mind. You’ve been looking at me all this time. Do you think I’m not flattered?’ and she settled down lower against my hand, and I could feel the silk ride up and expose her cool bottom on my belly. ‘I’ve been looking at you’ she said, mock coyly. ‘You’re a very handsome young man you know’ and she leant forward and lay there, looking with curiosity at the curved blond hairs above my navel. ‘Your skin is so soft. Perfect skin’ she said, a little breathlessly, then paused. ‘You look worried’ she said and propped herself up to look into my eyes, still stroking my skin with her hands, still breathing deeply. ‘I do understand’ she said.
I was in agony, trying to hold myself in. Nothing could possibly happen between us. Why was she doing this to me?
‘I do understand’ she said again, sitting up. ‘I know what you want, and it’s not possible, obviously. But there are other things. I’ve thought about this a lot, as you can imagine.’
‘Me too’ I say, almost inaudibly, croaking slightly.
‘I know, and I didn’t expect this to happen – you know that. All I know is we must have each other, somehow.’ And with that she got up, turned and walked toward my hand. ‘Move your hand’ she said.
I felt reluctant and ashamed, but I couldn’t refuse. I put my hand on my thigh and she looked at my cock there, like a stranded manatee under a tarpaulin beside her diminutive figure. She walked down toward it and peeled the cloth back, knelt down and touched the swollen purple knob delicately with her hand and I groaned. She turned and grinned at me.
‘I’ve seen this before you know’ she said, and I gestured silently (for I couldn’t speak) that of course, she must have seen many men’s... ‘No, I mean I’ve seen yours, like this’ pointing at mine, ‘every day actually. I did my best not to watch...’
I’d guessed this but I’d been suppressing the knowledge. Shame and embarrassment overwhelmed me, but also pride, actually – there was no hiding it. She knew everything about my daily habits (although thank whoever we didn’t need to crap in the afterlife.) She’d been there when I’d got myself off, every day, sometimes more often than that, sometimes several times a day. She’d seen the expression on my face, heard the noises I made when I came, and yet here she was. She smiled wickedly as the news sank in.
‘So...’ she resumed, standing up, posing a little, making her breasts look extra perky. ‘It’s not very fair is it?’ she said, pausing for dramatic effect ‘Would you like to watch me?’

I won’t go into the details. She’s gone now, my gorgeous nymph, and I am here. This is the next part of the journey and I have to accept it, alone.
They’ve given me quite a big high-ceilinged room – I think it used to be someone’s study. Two of the walls are lined with dark wooden bookshelves, but most of the books are gone. The ones that are left look like the ones nobody would ever want to consult ever again. The whole room has a long-unused smell to it. Little dust has settled because no one has kicked any up recently. The walls are painted off white and I have a desk, a single bed with a shiny green quilt and a faded green candlewick bedspread on it, and there’s a small cupboard. It’s all a bit like the stuff my grandparents had. There’s also a lot of metal chairs stacked up, a huge easel and a big old brown leather arm chair by the enormous floor-to-ceiling bay window. They tell me they’ll find homes for some of the excess clutter soon. The spiders seem friendly enough.
Autumn is here. It’s cold. I wish she was here. I feel like a patient but I don’t know what I’m sick with.

Those last days together play in my head incessantly. After that first time everything was a bit awkward for me, not to mention weird but she seemed relaxed enough about it and although I never really got comfortable with the situation I accepted her lead. She told me a lot about women and sex and so on. I think, although of course nothing much physical could ever happen between us, in a way, that was a good thing. It made me think about it, and ask questions, and it made it not such a big deal. We watched each other all the time, played little games. It was fun. It had never really occurred to me before that sex might be fun. I guess I’m still technically a virgin but I don’t feel like one.
I look around the room, wondering if anyone will watch me having a wank here, some musty academic gnome perhaps. I don’t care.

It wasn't such a bad place. That first morning after I arrived I went down to breakfast and met some of the other residents seated along the trestle tables that occupied only a corner of the huge old dining hall. They seemed friendly enough, but not very talkative. That was ok, I didn’t feel like talking either. I sat for a while before I realised the food was on a counter at the other end of the room. I went and got some porridge with spiced stewed fruit. It was the first real food I'd had in what seemed like years and exactly what I needed. After I’d eaten most of two bowls I leant back on the bench and looked around. The others were mostly sitting eating quietly. People left, others arrived later, all had the same sort of hooded gowns on, although the colour of the material varied. Mine was a faded grey mauve felt, and was obviously not new but it kept the draughts out. I looked at the faces of the others along the table. Some had their hoods up. There were both men and women but I was relieved to see that everyone seemed pretty sexless. I didn’t want to think about anyone that way for a long time. No one said anything to me except when one of the staff (I guessed she was) came over to ask if I’d go up to see Theodore to sort out my duties when I’d had enough to eat. She gave me directions.
I sat for a while anyway. I had very little clear idea what I was here for, except that Miranda had told me that this was the next settlement on the route and I should take advantage of their hospitality for a while, at least until next spring when I could move on. There was no coffee so I sat with my warm fruit milk for a while, trying not to think about her, feeling cold and empty, like a cast-off skin where the living animal has gone elsewhere.

Theodore seemed a nice enough sort of chap, a professor at some American university he said he'd been. He made vague perfunctory noises about settling in and getting to know the ropes and tossed me a list of jobs that needed doing, asking what I fancied having a go at. I wasn’t feeling very motivated and he clearly wasn’t that interested in me. His room was thick with books and papers and various other bits and pieces. I never did find out what he did but he clearly wanted to get back to it. I didn’t want to think about work and I suppose I wanted someone else to make the decision for me so I stood there as he looked at his desk and muttered. I tried to look like I gave a toss but it was a feeble pretence. Finally, I think he got fed up with me dithering and said go and see Jim and he gave me directions, the only parts of which I remembered was ‘down the stairs’ and ‘through the kitchens’.

Asking around, it turned out you had to go through the kitchens, which were in the basement, to get out to the gardens, which was where Jim was in charge. Gardening. Great. Not at all what I had in mind, but I couldn’t be bothered to complain. Instead, I took my time finding my way around. The kitchen was down some stairs from the dining hall, and the dining hall, I knew, was off the central quadrangle – a broad square of cobbles with the entrance on one side, and some very ancient looking trees set into it. Everything was grey and wet and hushed. The trees were beginning to lose their leaves. Few people were moving about as I found my way – I had no idea how many lived here. Maybe it was me, but there was a definite air of sadness about the place, or perhaps not quite sadness, but something else that made people slow and silent and distant. Maybe they had all recently lost the loves of their lives too, or maybe it was the time of year.
The kitchen was livelier, and certainly hotter, but dark and wide with a low ceiling, and a very palpable sense of it carrying the rest of the building on its fat, stone pillars. Still no one said anything much. I asked the way to the gardens and someone who was cutting up vegetables pointed with his knife to a large doorway at the far end of the room where I could see cool daylight leaking in around a corner. I went through and found myself in a wide chamber with huge stone sinks, and various gardening tools leaning up against the walls. Dark empty doorways lead off into storerooms on either side but it was completely open to the outside ahead and I could see greenery beyond.

I walked around the garden, deliberately not asking about Jim immediately so I could take my time and look around. It felt good to look at the trees and feel the misty rain fall on my face again. The garden appeared to be laid out with long rectangular borders with grass paths in between and a high buttressed wall all around. Many of the borders were freshly turned over and just bare earth, but in places there were rows of sprouts, cabbages, leeks and the straggling remains of bean vines still hanging onto their canes, and a whole range of smaller herbs and salads in rectangular patches. The walls all had trees trained up against them – strapped onto ropes in disturbingly strict horticultural bondage. All the fruit had been collected. No windfalls lay about. Occasionally I would come across a gardener, hood down, obscured by a waterproof cape, kneeling on a mat, doing something in the dirt or lugging something about. The rain was not hard but it had made the soil sticky and it stained everything black. The gardeners ignored me or nodded expressionlessly. My dad would have loved it. He’d have been in his element.
Further on I discovered this was just the upper terrace, and wide stone steps lead down to at least two more levels of walled gardens with fields and sheds with goats and ducks and probably all sorts of other things. I decided it was time to find Jim and ask him what he wanted of me.

Jim, I have to say, I took to immediately. He was where they said he’d be, with the goats, showing someone how to arrange their bedding. ‘Jim?’ I said, and he turned, hugging a mass of hay and smiled at me. ‘Gabriel’ he said, dropping the hay and striding forward in the mud and the manure to shake my hand. ‘Good to see you’ he said cheerfully. ‘Just let me get Annie started here and I’ll be with you’ and he turned and carried on with that as I waited. I couldn’t help noticing that he was wearing shorts and sandals under his cape.

I’m not sure anyone else really liked Jim. He was always cheerful and helpful and full of energy, and he didn’t often wear the gown, because it would only get wet and muddy and need washing all the time. ‘Nobody’s forcing them to wear the bloody things’ he told me as we headed for shelter. ‘People are strange’ he said once we get to his “office” – a shed among the dung heaps and wheel barrows.
‘Stunning bloody weather hey?’ he added, grinning at me.
I nodded and shrugged, not sure if he thought stunning was good or bad.
‘Good weather for ducks’ he went on, ‘although, actually if you take a look, the ducks are hiding in their shed, under cover. Sensible creatures.’
Jim seemed to have got the idea from somewhere that I knew something about gardening. I didn’t like to disappoint him. His passion was food he said. His life was food and how to grow it. He talked about everything growing in the garden in terms of how much food it could provide, but this was no bland commodity he was talking about. When he said “food” you could almost feel it nourishing you. He looked at the huge heads of cabbages and sacks of spuds as raw sustenance – for work to be sure, but also for philosophy, music, art, love (‘although there’s precious little of that around here’ he confided in me, stagily.) and of course, for growing more food. But he wasn’t interested in mere bulk. He showed me the modest greenhouse where he had managed to get ginger and lemon grass to grow. The ripe vapour of tomato, coriander and basil was pleasantly stupefying. Lemon trees stood in pots, ready to be brought under cover for the winter, and fig trees, trained against the walls, were already screened off so the frost wouldn’t interrupt their setting fruit.
Over the weeks that followed I was introduced to compost heaps and beehives, carp ponds and wells, dovecots and vegetable clamps, wild rocket and good-king-henry.
‘So animals do breed here’ I said to him one morning, looking at a clutch of jostling, newly hatched chicks. He just smiled at me like I was a little dim.
‘Well there always seem to be more of them here when we need them’ he said cryptically.

Jim’s main ally in all this (although her attitude to the system was more amused aside than out-and-out ribaldry) was Jo, who ran the kitchen. Jim and Jo conspired together on the menus and crop rotations well into the night, aware that most of the residents would have been equally happy with boiled veg and bread but determined to spring culinary excellence on them anyway. The delight of the few that appreciated their efforts was enough, and really, they didn’t care if no one but they enjoyed it. It was what they did. Over the three and a half years I was there I managed to split my work between the kitchen and the gardens, so I got the best of both worlds, and I saw the whole process from soil to groceries to plate to belly to fertiliser and back to soil. All that winter I was out in the gardens, digging, repairing, mulching and harvesting or in the kitchen if the weather was rough. And Jim had been right. I did have a feel for this stuff. I guessed it must have been watching my dad in the garden all that time. Something must have stuck.

It did take me quite a time to accept the situation however. For a while after I arrived I spent all my time in my room, looking out of the window, or wandering around wondering where everybody was. It was not a big place, with just two stories of bed and bathrooms on two sides of the courtyard, plus the kitchens below and attics above, but the corridors were badly lit, took odd turns, went up and down small staircases, and were just generally very hard to work out. In short I kept getting lost and ending up in all sorts of dusty corners, looking out at unexpected views. I very rarely saw anyone up there, and then only fleetingly. Sometimes it seemed the place was haunted. It was certainly very creepy. At night I avoided leaving my room if possible even though the tall dark shelves and piles of random furniture (which were never taken away) cast odd shadows and made the room feel strangely occupied. I never felt quite alone at night, but I got used to that. Outside my door was much worse. The sounds of things moving or being moved about in the corridor in the small hours kept me awake for several nights at the beginning. I asked, but no one seemed to know what had been going on, and they changed the subject.
Daytimes in my room though were a different matter. I took my food up there and spent a lot of time, as I say, looking out of the window which had a phenomenal view out over the gardens to the land beyond which was nothing but trees as far as the eye could see – an endless rolling forest landscape.
Back in life, when I was in the sixth form and had some free afternoons, mum took me into work a few times to see some of the old folks homes she had dealings with, to meet the matrons, and see if maybe care work might interest me. Actually, it had nothing to do with what I was interested in. It was about finding some way I could earn my keep. The other people at school were surprised that I didn’t run a mile when I told them what went on there – the shit and the dementia and the dribbling, but it interested me, the way people end up, what happens to them. In particular it was the tranquility of the place, the dim routine, the gentle squalor, life breaking down and letting go. I particularly remember one afternoon in the sun room about tea time, with the geraniums half dead on the windowsill there, and the budgie chirruping to itself, and the old ladies (there weren’t any old gents) dozing in their chairs, and it was warm and there was vaguely unpleasant but somehow comforting smell of beef stew, toiletries and just a hint of excrement, and I sat in one of the chairs, with its floral print and wooden legs and began to drift off, and I remember thinking that it was actually quite nice here, and you could drift off and fade into the upholstery and it would be an ok way to go.
That’s what it felt like in my room those first few weeks – peaceful and dull, warm in the sunshine (but chilly at night), and just looking out the window, paying occasional attention to a bird in the trees below, or having something to eat. Actually it was better because I had no need to get up to go to the toilet, or to eat, for that matter. I could just sit there, and not be missed, fade away, with just the ghosts of my predecessors for company at night. I sat in the stiff old leather armchair and drifted. Sometimes I went for a little stroll in the garden and Jim tried to tempt me with chores and I fiddled about obligingly in the dirt in a half-hearted sort of way until I got cold or wet or bored and I went inside again.

I did think about Miranda over this time though, up in my room especially, of an evening, because nothing much else happened after dark, after dinner, and I made up fantasies and stories about her, and us, together somehow, which always ended up with me finishing myself off in the way I knew she would have approved. She wasn’t just a sexual fantasy though. During those last few weeks we’d talked about so many things – we got on so well I thought, and I began to think about how we’d be together, permanently. I knew that wasn’t possible, but I dreamed of us living together, travelling together, doing the normal things couples do. I had to ask her what she thought of that and her only concern was that she’d have been fifteen years older than me. I said I didn’t care about that and she said she didn’t see why not then, and smiled happily at me. That was when I knew I loved her and I suspected she might feel something similar about me, but I never told her. I wish I had. Maybe things could have been different somehow.
Now, to be honest, I’m not even sure she wasn’t just a hallucination all along. Now, in the cold light of day (a phrase that seems especially – what was the word she used? – apposite, in this place) I find I can’t quite believe she even existed. I realised this forcibly the other day when I discovered I wasn’t going to tell anyone about her (even if anyone here had been prepared to listen) because I knew how bizarre the story would sound. And also how predictable – a young man’s sexual fantasy, a young man who had been alone in the wilderness for who knew how long, and was close to losing it, to getting completely lost. (For hadn’t she conveniently appeared at just the moment when I was most in danger?) I could see their expressions, part sympathy, part knowing smirk, part bafflement at the fact that she was the size she was. (What the hell did that mean? Was this a fixation on my sister’s Sindy dolls?) And then I look at the rucksack, bent and stale in the cupboard, and it does have little transparent ‘windows’ in it. It occurs to me that they might be there so the traveller can see what’s inside. It doesn’t seem a very plausible explanation until you consider the alternative. Maybe they’re just for decoration.
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Voyage II – Poker

I make my way back to the bar, head oddly empty yet under pressure. I feel the need to keep the news out of it for a while. On the way, I’m cornered by Ray. He has another whiskey for me. It’s really not what I want, but I don’t want to cause a fuss. It’s not that I don’t like alcohol but it always seems like it means a lot to them and I don’t know why. I don’t like the way they watch me drink, or the way they seem so pleased about it when I finish one, like it’s a big achievement, like I’m in their club suddenly. Ray takes me back to their table and sits me down. Solly smiles indulgently at me and cocks his head, dealing me the cards. ‘So now you know’ he says.
‘You’ll be fine’ says Ray, and he nudges me and points at the shot glass and winks at me. Brenda whispers to Solly and points at me with her eyes. ‘Do you want something to go with that?’ he asks, nodding at my glass. I feel increasingly on edge. ‘No, it’s fine’ I say quickly. I don’t much like whiskey, but I can’t stand it watered down. They seem to be waiting for something more from me. I try to relax. I look around.
The lounge is a low, broad room with portholes along both sides. It’s dark with stained old wood and a threadbare, blood coloured carpet. There’s a gentle swell. Seasickness has never been a problem for me (although I’ll always feel like throwing up on a bus if I try to read). ‘Do you feel sick love?’ asks Brenda in a soft motherly voice. Part of me wants to fall against her and sob, but that makeup is just too off-putting. I say I’m ok thanks and look at what they’re doing. Ray tells me it’s my turn. I turn my cards over.
‘What are you playing?’ I say. No one answers. Ray raises his eyebrows and huffs. It’s poker apparently, Brenda informs me, implying that it should have been obvious. So they look at me, expectantly.
‘Go on then’ says Harry.
‘I don’t know the...er...how to...’ I say, ashamed.
‘Well what can you play?’ says Ray finally. I can’t answer. I don’t play card games really.
‘Pontoon?’ I say with sudden inspiration. Harry looks like I’m beneath contempt but Ray smiles at me indulgently and winks at Solly. Brenda pats my knee.
I get through a few hands. I can concentrate for the first couple and I do ok, but then my mind wanders. Harry sneers contemptuously when I have to be reminded it’s my turn for a second time. He’s a big bloke, very red around the nose, and his little blue eyes twinkle like crushed marbles. The other woman, Liz is leaning on him, sharing his cigarettes, whispering things in his ear in a floppy sort of way. He just shrugs or ignores her. Her dress is too loose. I can see too much of her chest, which is bony and yellowish but hard to ignore. I look away, but Ray has noticed my reaction and winks again, as if it must be some sort of big treat for me. I concentrate on my cards.
‘So, Gabe...’ says Ray suddenly, rearranging his hand ‘did you have a girlfriend, you know, back... in life?’
I look at my cards. ‘No’ I say. My face is burning up suddenly.
‘Playing the field huh? Best way, chap your age, best not to tie yourself down too soon eh Sol?’ Solly smiles suggestively at his cards.
‘Maybe he doesn’t like girls’ says Brenda, smiling soppily at me again and pats my knee again. Harry laughs dirtily and lays his cards down.
‘Course he likes girls’ says Ray conspiratorially. ‘Don’t pay any attention son’ and he winks at me meaningfully. ‘Plenty of time’ he adds. I have no idea what he’s on about but I smile back.
‘Better off single, ain’t he girl...’ says Harry to Liz, elbowing her in the ribs. She smiles girlishly at me and then looks shyly down at her hands. The effect is a bit weird on a woman her age, and makes me uncomfortable.
‘Still,’ he continues, taking a drink, ‘we’ve done alright, haven’t we girl. Done rather nicely...’ he muses. ‘Another hand gents?’ We all nod. He begins to deal. ‘Left them all well provided for... Becky and the littl’uns...’ Liz’s eyes quite suddenly brim with tears and she gives Harry a little punch in the ribs. His response is shocking and explosive and ends in her walking, as fast as she can in those shoes, holding back her tears, to the bathroom. Ray looks cheerfully around at the room to see the reaction ‘Phew’ he says, loudly, but very few people seem to be looking at us. He seems vaguely disappointed. When Liz gets back Harry sends her up to the bar with a loud smack on the arse. ‘She’s a good girl really’ he says. Ray smiles at him.
‘Would you believe it?’ says Harry to me loudly, unexpectedly putting his head close to mine, still rearranging his hand ‘Been together twenty five years. Who’d have believed we’d be together in the afterlife as well. Road accident it was, A272 eastbound, just outside Hayward’s Heath, fucking moron in a van not looking where he was going, pulled right out in front of me, wham!’ he smacks his hands together loudly in my ear. ‘Me and Liz all over the shop. Right bloody mess, wasn’t it my love?’ he smiles up at her as she arrives with the drinks. She smiles, flinching like she expects a slap. ‘Stupid cow’ he mutters as she goes back to the bar for the rest. ‘Why didn’t you bring a tray?’ he yells after her. ‘Til death do us part...’ I hear him mutter as he lays a couple of cards on the table. I’ve gained another whiskey and I’ve hardly touched the first. ‘Come on lad, you’ve got a bit of catching up to do’ says Solly pointing at them. I take another sip, but he looks at me doubtfully. ‘Leave the lad alone’ says Brenda. I really want to go. I want to go up on deck, get some air, maybe have a bath, maybe go to bed. It’s getting dark outside. Solly reminds me it’s my go again. I force myself to look at the cards. I lay my hand and am beaten again. They act like I’m not very bright but I just feel tired.
‘What do you - sorry - did you drive?’ continues Harry.
‘Nothing’ I say under my breath. I hadn’t taken my test, hadn’t even taken any lessons. I can’t tell them that.
‘He’s probably a bit young yet’ says Solly
‘Got my first car at sixteen’ says Harry. He sings something about a man not being a man if he’s got a ticket in his hand and raises an eyebrow meaningfully. ‘Know what I mean?’ I smile weakly. I can think of several things he might mean and they all make me uncomfortable.
‘Leave him alone’ says Brenda. ‘He’s young. Don’t know what you do want yet, do you love.’
‘Too late now then isn’t it’ says Solly.
‘It’s never too late’ she says and her hand grips my thigh and she winks at me.
I sit for as long as I can stand it then go to stand up. ‘I’m going to have to go, I don’t feel well’ I say, as casually as possible.
‘Don’t forget your drinks’ says Ray.
‘No, mustn’t forget that’ says Solly. I down one and take the other with me. Brenda insists on gripping my hand and giving me a ‘good night kiss’. She kisses me on the lips, producing delighted jeers from all, and then lets me go. I turn, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and head for the stairs.

Up on the deck the wind is screaming in the ropes, and the wave tops are edged with bitter white crests. I head for the prow and look around. I see a woman, maybe Brenda, appear at the head of the stairway, gathering her cardigan around her for warmth, but I stay out of sight and I see her shudder and go back down. White birds roll and soar in the air above. All I can hear is wind and waves and I walk on. To my surprise I notice a couple of the loungers are occupied. A lady looks up at me. I can only see her eyes and nose and a wisp of grey hair in the opening in the waterproof cocoon she is in, but she is beaming up at me. She looks back out to sea. ‘Good evening’ I say loudly over the storm. Three fingers appear by her nose and wriggle happily at me. I’m tempted to bring my sleeping bag up and join her but I need a proper bed tonight. I wave and head back down, carefully avoiding being seen from the bar.

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Journey I – Landfall

Finally the forest opens out and the path gets rocky. I can see a bit further ahead. Conifers give way to broadleaf and fallen leaves carpet the path. I find a place and sit for a while. Unexpectedly, I find some chocolate in my pocket. I sit and chew, looking through a gap in the trees at another gully and another ridge beyond. I can’t get used to the scale of the landscape here. When I began I was still thinking in Sussex Countryside scale. In England you can’t really cross many ridges before you come to a road, or very probably a service station and an industrial estate. It’s taken a while to fully realize that civilization is not going to be over the next ridge, nor the next, nor the one after that. This gully is full of ferns, some taller than I am, and there’s a stream in the bottom, full of fallen leaves. The rain is less driving here. As I sit, I feel the heavy drops on my hat. I look out under the edge of it up into the branches and several drops land on my face. They taste of resin.
Still, I feel ok, out here alone with just the weather and the terrain to contend with. It feels alright. I couldn’t be with them any more. Kev will have to handle them. He looked like he’d just about had enough of it himself. I guess he can’t choose who he gets to look after but I don’t know why I ended up travelling with them.

We landed on a beautiful stretch of desert shore – a tiny harbour and some mule carts waiting for us. We’d been sailing for I have no idea how long – months certainly, but the weather had been getting steadily better, with the widest bluest skies I have ever seen and high cirrus clouds and then tropic birds circling all around. The air was wonderfully warm and I swear I could smell trees long before I saw land.
There’s something strange about the perspective here. These mountains I’m in now were visible from a long way out, dominating the distance, and as time went on we could see desert hills with palm trees and whitewash, terracotta tile buildings on the sea front. I was in shorts and a vest and up on deck most of the time. Ray and his cronies stayed out of sight. I dreaded them appearing up there, making ‘clever’ remarks.
The guys with the carts were Spanish, which gave me a chance to practice. I’d never been to Spain in life, or anywhere really, but the village was exactly what I expected a Spanish village to look like. We stopped for a few hours and I looked around. There was a nice little bar, and kitchen gardens all around, watered by springs flowing out of the rocks. They gave me some figs, which I didn’t think I’d like, but which tasted wonderful, and a little plate of bread and ham, and some warm red wine. I’d like to have stayed, but everyone was loading up and getting ready to go. Somehow, the hundred or so passengers dispersed without me really noticing, along other paths I suppose. Our group formed a caravan of three covered wagons. I was depressed (I don’t think that’s too strong a word) to see Ray and the others there, Solly smirking superciliously at the scene, Ray still trying to look like he had everything under control, Brenda pointedly avoiding eye contact, Liz apparently not travelling with us. Only Harry showed his real feelings – outraged bewilderment. I noticed he’d grasped the power of non-violent direct action remarkably quickly. He just got in the way of anything he didn’t like. I managed to get into one of the other carts. Kevin, our guide, went round and checked that everything was secure and got into the front cart and Alex, our driver, said something quietly to the animals and we began to move off.
The road was rocky and threw us about a fair bit, but we lounged among the baggage, which was soft enough if you didn’t mind a bit of dust. The canvas was pulled back and we lay back and watched buzzards soaring high above. Later, as the sun came overhead we pulled the canvas over and snoozed in the shade, rocked to sleep by the motion or the cart. I was sharing with an older man called Martin and two ladies, Beth and Celine, who stayed very close and whispered a lot to each other – not in a rude way, I didn’t take it personally, they just didn’t much talk to anyone else. They smiled at us a lot though. I think they were in love. Martin looked out at the landscape but also didn’t seem inclined to share his thoughts. The only thing I heard him say the whole day was ‘I wish my wife could have seen this.’ Alex was singing quietly to himself. It was all very soothing. We spent the night in the carts. We had beans and pork and more wine, and coffee and bread and olives. Alex sang for us with his guitar.
Then we could hear Harry and Ray yelling at each other from their wagon. We hadn’t heard much from them all day since we left the harbour. I don’t know if it was deliberate or not, but as we went on, their wagon fell further and further behind and we enjoyed the peace and quiet without them. Now here they were arguing about something to do with their belongings. When they emerged they were all smiles as far as we were concerned but they didn’t seem to be talking to each other. Ray looked over at me but I wouldn’t look back. I prodded the fire and wished they’d go away. Pretty soon I decided it was time to sleep and headed back to our wagon.
In the morning I discovered that Beth and Celine were to swap places with Harry and Solly. I never found out why but I’m sure it wasn’t Beth and Celine’s idea.
All that day’s journey Harry sat looking sourly at the floor between his legs, still wearing that paunched grey suit while Solly grinned stupidly at the landscape, smoking heavily all the while. Every jolt made Harry look like he might erupt. I tried to ignore them, but it was impossible. Somehow, they occupied the entire space. Martin was perched precariously on some sacks near the back and after our mid morning break I went and sat with Alex up front.
‘Might’ve fucking guessed...’ I heard Harry mumble as I sat down
‘Just leave it’ I heard Solly say quietly but Harry was not put off and he leaned around to look at our backs. ‘I wondered how long it’d be’ he said. ‘Are you very cosy up there, you two?’ We tried to ignore him but it was difficult. Alex started singing but the noises of derision from below became too intrusive and he gave up. Martin got down and walked along a little way behind.

I put up with this for two more days. The road got steeper and more winding and shaded with pines. I also walked along behind a lot of the time but neither Martin nor I wanted to do it all day so we had to put up with sharing the space with Solly and Harry. Kevin tried to get them to not take up so much space but they were surly and uncooperative. That evening there was another fight, and in the morning Ray had taken Solly’s place. Solly was staying out of the way. During that day’s ride Ray tried periodically to engage me in conversation, making crap jokes and then telling us all we had no sense of humour when we didn’t laugh.
On the third night I got all the warm clothes I could find, all the food I could carry and set off up a side path on my own. I was so furious. I mean, if you can’t get away from these arseholes when you die, when can you? Isn’t there supposed to be some sort of come-uppance for people like these, or what’s the point? Shouldn’t Kev be able to do something? This can’t be the first time this sort of thing has happened. But I was also angry with myself. This was not the first time I’d been in this position. Maybe I should have said something. They’re just bullies after all, and mum always said bullies are just cowards and you should just stand up to them. But it’s not true. Bullies are not cowards – they’re dangerous children, and they don’t care what they have to do to get what they want – even when there’s nothing that can be done to get them what they want. They just do whatever they feel like, and I know I’ll never be like that. I’ll never be able to stand up to them because I’ll always care what I have to do.
I’ve thought about all this a lot. I think they’re lost here. There’s nothing here anybody wants to deal with them for. They can’t threaten anybody with anything, or deprive them of anything. Nobody cares here. Nobody’s impressed. All they can do is be irritating, and I think they know that and it makes them mad.

I did feel a bit guilty, leaving Kev to deal with it, and the others seemed nice enough people. I felt sorry for them. I wonder where they are now. I keep expecting them to catch up with me any moment and appear round a corner. It’s getting dark anyway – I don’t know if it’s more rain clouds or dusk. I’ve lost track of time.
When I saw him later on, Kev told me people do tend to get what they deserve here, one way or another. Being here affects people. Very few go back into life a second time the way they were. I hope he’s right. Apparently Harry ran off into the trees soon after I left. Nobody went after him. I asked what was the difference between me going off and Harry. Kev said he never had any doubt I knew where I was going, and he was just making sure I was well equipped. ‘Harry’ he said ‘got lost a long time ago.’

I tramp on down another slope, brushing against the lower branches of the trees, splashing in the puddles. The rain is getting heavier and I can only see the path immediately in front of me through the drips falling off the brim of my hat. I’m surprisingly comfortable though. This cape they gave me is brilliantly designed. It hangs loose around my body, enveloping both me and my pack. The boots are soft leather, and waterproof to my shins and then gaiters come up past the hem so my legs don’t get at all wet. I wish I’d had gear like this when I was alive. Dad used to say there’s no such thing as bad weather – only bad equipment, but we could never afford the good stuff so I was always either cold and damp from the rain seeping in, or the sweat seeping out, depending on the season.
When I need to stop for the night there’s this amazing tent that folds out of a compartment in the backpack without me having to take the pack off, and it’s designed so you just grab these loops and pull it over your head and down around you. It takes about a second. Then you slot these flexible poles in from inside and you can stow your cape and boots in a compartment at the end by your feet. There’s this thick sewn-in ground sheet that inflates. I reckon you could erect it floating in a pond and not get wet. I’ve spent days on end in it, sleeping, reading, looking out at the rain through the transparent panels, waiting for the weather to improve. Somehow it doesn’t get boring.

So I put the tent up again and I’m warm and snug inside and I start to rummage around in the pack to see if there’s any food left. There always seems to be something to eat and some fresh socks. Bizarre. I know I’m not alone. I think there’s a fairy in here doing my laundry and going shopping for me.
Now the rain is easing off. I open the door and look out at the forest.
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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.

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