Alison III – Everything changes

I arrive in Alison’s room with some urgency. ‘What are the chances of people meeting up again in the afterlife?’ I say as I sit down. ‘Does it ever happen?’
‘Whom are we talking about in particular?’ she says.
‘Oh, you know who I’m talking about. If you were really in love with someone, if they were the one true love you ever had, not just in this life – forever?’
She looks down at her papers and considers her answer. When she looks up there’s sympathy in her eyes – not obviously, but it’s there. Generally her face is fairly impassive but I know her a bit better now and it’s definitely there.
‘It’s very rare but it happens more often than one would expect by chance alone’ she says at last. ‘I don’t want to get your hopes up too much Gabriel. If it were down to pure coincidence the chances would be vanishingly small. The land of the afterlife is almost infinite as far as we can tell and the paths across it apparently innumerable. Some say it’s a vast globe, much bigger than any of the known planets, with a tiny sun in orbit. Anyway, one almost never encounters the same place twice – even if you try to retrace your steps. Being reunited seems hopeless, and yet, it happens.’
She can see the new hope in my face. It’s a small hope. I can deal with that, but I must have hope. Anyway, back to the story.
The next fragment that stands out covers a period from about a month before I started school to about two days after. I watched helplessly as my little self lived through it and hadn’t the faintest idea what was going on. I tried to comfort him but he was too far away. He just wasn’t listening.

We’d moved to Southwick about three months beforehand. I don’t remember much about that – I think I just carried on as usual as if this storm would pass and we’d get back to normal again soon. The worst thing was my mother being around so much – ordering us all about and stomping around as if she thought that if she didn’t personally supervise everything, nothing would happen. I resented her even then, as a small child. Hadn’t we all managed fine up until now? I watched my dad put up with it and my sisters – Justine especially, rush around trying to keep her happy. Amelia winked at me conspiratorially as she sneaked off for another fag.

I spent my time getting to know the new house. It was a huge old Victorian semi, high and echoing and not at all comfortable. Everywhere sounded of floorboards and smelled dry and powdery when I was used to everything being muffled with damp and mould. It seemed vast after the cottage. When we moved in it was bare of all furnishings and despite all the junk we’d brought with us we hardly had anything to put in it.
They gave me the small room at the back and my single bed took up almost all of it. It was a bigger room than at the farm and it had a tall window that looked out over the uncharted suburban territory beyond. I remember thinking it looked like a zoo out there, with fences and walls and buildings dividing it up. Those first few nights I lay there, getting used to the sound of the trains on the embankment and the lost, lonesome sound of the foghorn down at the harbour. The night sky, yellowed by street lamps, looked sick and suffocating.
It seems very strange now to think that this place with four bedrooms and a conservatory and about a third of an acre at the back was the only house my parents could afford but at the time it seems everyone else wanted modern bungalows.

The best thing for me was that it was big enough for me to disappear in. I could play on my own in my room or in the summer room as we called it (conservatory sounded too posh) where all the things we hadn’t found a home for yet were left – a piano, a lot of tools, bicycles, a pram and my old cot. I entertained myself as before with whatever was about – paper, boxes, sheets and old rugs, chairs and ornaments, and I made little hiding places. Now I felt the need of somewhere to get out of the way all the more. Mostly, I stayed in my room and played with my Britain’s zoo animals or my Lego and shut out the sounds of silence downstairs. I wasn’t used to that. My small self just went off into his own little world as before but he knew something was wrong. Nobody was really talking to one another, and those cosy evenings by the fire never happened again. I watched dad change – becoming moody and withdrawn.
It felt like we’d come to the end of the world.

And as before, when I felt bad I crept in among my sister’s things, both Amelia’s and Justine’s. I had a very clear sense that I shouldn’t be disloyal and honoured them equally with my presence, even though Justine’s belongings were always a little harder and more business-like and kept more neatly. She had the room next to mine looking out over the back garden. I sat in her room and looked at her books or played boats with her shoes. She was at college by then.
Amelia’s room was at the front and had a big bay window and was always in chaos. That’s where I went when I just wanted to curl up in a lot of soft, smelly feminine things. Sometimes, when things got really bad I spent whole days in her wardrobe, only coming out for food. She didn’t tell anyone.
Our parent’s room in the roof was ‘out of bounds’ but I sneaked up there anyway. There was a proper room up there, with proper floorboards and walls and a dormer window, but it had never been decorated and all there was was more things we hadn’t unpacked. Mum and dad’s bed lay like a plateau amidst a mountain range of boxes of papers and books and suitcases of old clothes. I found a bag full of nothing but shoes, and another full of coat hangers but there was no wardrobe to hang anything in. I got up on the window seat and looked out and found I could see even further – way beyond the garden through the leafless sycamores to the croquet lawns beyond. I ventured outside briefly. There was a sort of covered passage along the side of the house with the bicycles leaning against the fence, a washing line and a shed for coal at the end. I peered at the lawn but it seemed nasty and cold out there and I went back to my room. I started school in the January just before my fifth birthday.

That first school morning was surreal and disturbing. It was still dark out but I was told I had to get up and get dressed. Dad stood there until I had my feet on the floor and helped me on with my dressing gown. Then I stumbled down the bare wooden boards in the cold to the dining room where there was a little heat from a gas fire. I just sat there amongst my clothes, dazed. Mum was still about too which I wasn’t used to and she and dad were moving about in the kitchen, getting in each other’s way. I relaxed a bit when I heard her leave. Dad came through and helped me to get dressed in his usual silent way but I could tell something was wrong. The clothes were strange. Normally I’d have had something to talk about but I didn’t that day. He was going too quickly and I got mixed up with my buttons. I heard him mutter ‘Oh for God’s sake. What is wrong with you?’ and go into the kitchen.
Then he sat me at the table and brought in my cereal and some tea. I could hear Terry Wogan on Radio 2 in the kitchen. It was still quite dark out. I could hear rain on the summer room roof. I didn’t really know what was happening. We hadn’t really talked about it. I knew I was going to school but I didn’t really know what that meant. I knew there would be other children there but I couldn’t imagine what that would be like either, so I just put it out of my mind. My old self watched me do it. I thought – he hasn’t got a clue, poor little sod. He’d be more at home in a fish tank.

The walk to school was long and cold and wet but there was plenty to look at on the way – the Green with its ancient elms, the Square (an ugly 60s shopping centre), and then the recreation ground. The sound of too many children’s voices, loud enough to be heard from over the hedges, told me something big was coming. I had a sick feeling in my throat and tears behind my eyes but I didn’t cry. We walked, my hand in his, along the path from the rec, between the hedges and past the playgrounds to the big steel gates. I watched other children run past and yell at each other, all apparently bigger, faster, and much louder than I was. There was a smell of cooking but it wasn’t a pleasant smell. It wasn’t like home. Dad took me to meet my teacher in the bottom class as it was called then and left me there with her.
I see my small face, betraying no emotion, looking around as the teacher claps her hands and speaks loudly to the other children. He’s wondering if he should be doing something. The others seem to know what to do. He just stands there until eventually she takes him to a peg marked with a duck for him to hang his coat on and then points out a seat next to a girl called Beverley. Beverley seems to know what needs to be done but she won’t tell him.
I know now of course that the others had already been here for three months and they’d already made friends and they already knew what lessons were about. He didn’t know any of this and assumed there must be something wrong with him.

‘What do you think was going on with your parents?’ asks Alison after a long pause.
‘Oh I know exactly what it was.’
‘Oh?’
‘It was because we’d had to move. That cottage in the country and the garden was all my dad ever dreamed of. He admitted that to me later on, just before he died. He’d spent all his time working on the garden. Apparently the whole thing had been under briars and sycamore when we arrived and by the end we were nearly self-sufficient in veg, eggs and fruit.’
‘It sounds idyllic.’
‘It was. I mean I know he was always what you might call taciturn but I never felt it was because he was brooding or sulking or whatever. He just never felt the need to say much. I never had any sense that he was unhappy before the move, and I actually really enjoyed being around him. There was something very steadying about his workmanlike, calm, no nonsense approach to everything – cooking, gardening, making a fire or talking to neighbours. I never felt that he especially sought my company, but then I never felt that I was unwelcome either. I’d never felt uncomfortable with him before.’
‘Not until you moved.’
‘Well, actually a bit before that, because he’d stopped doing anything in the garden the previous summer because he knew there was no point.’
‘Did he ever say anything at the time?’
‘He just went really quiet. I suppose when people don’t communicate in the normal way you get very good at reading them in other ways – even little kids do. Even then I knew he didn’t really want me around any more.’
‘So why exactly did you move? I mean I can imagine. It all sounds very picturesque but it would have driven me nuts.’
‘Well, the story was that we’d need to live in town so that I could go to school, and Amelia was always complaining about living in the middle of nowhere, but the real reason was because of mum. I think dad had this idea that once the girls were grown up he was going to set up a nursery growing alpine plants but the thing is, it was his dream. I’m not sure Mum felt the same way.’
‘So... I’m not sure I understand. Are you saying that your mother used you as an excuse to get her way?’
I sit for a little while, not answering. ‘I can’t be sure. I don’t really know what happened between them, even now. All I know is, when I was old enough to go to school everything changed.’
‘Do you think your father blamed you?’
‘Not exactly, but it was because of me. They hadn’t planned me. There was something about my mother not being prepared to have an abortion. I think he wanted her to. To be honest he wasn’t a big thinker, my dad, but everything he’d dreamed of fell apart because of me. That was all.’
‘But wasn’t he angry with your mother? Surely that was the place to lay the blame.’
‘It wasn’t like that. As far as he was concerned she could do no wrong. I can think of a few times when she did something really out of order and he just made up an excuse for her.’
‘So, how did he treat you?’
‘Well, a lot of the time it was just like he couldn’t be bothered with me, like I was just a nuisance, but then sometimes he’d take it into his head to try to do something with me but if anything that made it worse. Before I’d just happily tagged along and joined in with whatever he was doing whenever I felt like it. Now he’d take me aside and try to show me how to do things – games and housework and pointing things out in the garden and telling me about them, which sounds nice and fatherly but it wasn’t. It was kind of intense and frustrated, like he didn’t really feel he should have to. He had no patience for teaching, or for me. I didn’t understand and I’d get upset and then he’d really get frustrated and push even harder. It got to a point where I just couldn’t think any more and I just wanted to stop but he wouldn’t. He just thought I wasn’t trying hard enough and that if he kept on then one day I’d somehow have a eureka moment and that would be it – I’d be a proper son. He couldn’t see that he was just making it worse.’
‘And you didn’t feel you could say anything?’
‘Well I was only a kid.’
‘My kids never had any trouble telling me if they didn’t want to do things.’
‘Well, I suppose we weren’t like that...’
She gives me that look again. I know what she means, but there was just no point arguing in our house.
‘I started to avoid him. It was just easier that way’ I say.

There’s a memory that came up in my sleep recently – something I’d completely forgotten. We were in the lounge after dinner and dad had me standing on a chair (to bring me up to his height) and we had one of those foam balls about six inches across. He was trying (for the umpteenth time) to teach me to catch. He was always trying to teach me games and tricks but I just hated it. Mum was there too, in the kitchen, with the tea towel.
He looked at me and held it up, concentrating, willing me to succeed this time. Actually no, he was not willing me to succeed. He was willing me to not let him down. That was it. Mum stood in the doorway drying something and he was trying to get me, finally, to not embarrass him. He threw the ball and it bounced off my hands. He bent down and picked it up. I stood shaking slightly on the chair. I was afraid I might fall off. He threw again and I jerked and it passed my hands completely. I had to climb down and fetch it. I tossed it back. He threw it back and it bounced off my fingers and ended up over the other side of the room. He waited for me to get down and walk over to retrieve it, which I did and then went to hand it to him. He took it without a word. In fact he said nothing during the whole process. He threw it again and I missed it again. By now my eyes were filling with water but I stopped myself crying. He reached down and scooped it up and threw it and it hit me in the face quite hard. I mean it was only made of foam after all and it didn’t hurt but it was just like the last straw and the tears leaked out and I couldn’t concentrate and I could see the disgusted look on his face. He pointed at where the ball lay behind the chair and I had to get down and pick it up again. I wiped my nose on my sleeve as I did so and I heard mum say ‘Hankie Gabriel’ and go back to the sink shaking her head. He threw it a few more times with predictable results and I snivelled and tried even more feebly to catch it, and I had to get down and fetch it every time. Eventually he just stood and looked at me. His face was cold and blank. He dropped the ball and it bounced away. Then he came up to me and stood with his face inches from mine and whispered “Why the hell can’t you do this? It’s so simple. What the hell is wrong with you? Everybody else can do it.”
Then he turned and went down the garden. I heard him going on about it under his breath. He called me a complete f’king waste of space. I don’t think he thought I could hear. I went up to my room. No one said anything about it.
It’s not the worst thing in the world I know. At least he was trying I suppose. A lot of fathers don’t even do that. Anyway...

Alison sits and writes. I await her verdict.
‘Look’ I say to her ‘I’m not trying to argue that I had a terrible childhood – that it was a tragic tale of hardship and abuse because I know it wasn’t. My parents never broke up – they hardly even argued, or not openly anyway. They never interfered with me sexually or really hit me, and there was always plenty of food and clean clothes. Admittedly the old house was cold and a bit spooky and always fairly messy but I liked it that way. It was ok. And I know other kids go through hell, literally, and I’m not even trying to find someone to blame. I know they did what they could.’
Alison looks up at me, she still looks like she’s thinking. ‘You don’t have to convince me’ she says.
‘But doesn’t it just sound like a sob story?’
‘No. Actually there’s good evidence – from Finland I think, of a link between being an unwanted child and mental illness. Did you know that?’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘A child is a huge investment, not only in time and money but also in emotion and care. How much harder must it be if the parent really wishes the child had never been born? And children, even very small children pick up on this. They may not remember the exact events as adults, but it is there, in their personalities. You really don’t have to justify yourself to me Gabriel. I wonder how many parents truly love their children as they say they do, and what this word “love” means to them anyway.’
‘You can’t just blame the parents though can you?’
‘Why not? Seems like a perfectly fair place to start.’
We sit and look at each other for a while – a staring match almost. She looks away.
‘Did they ever actually physically hurt you Gabriel?’ she says after a while.
‘I don’t think so. Not deliberately. There were quite a few times I’d get in the way and get trampled on or elbowed. Dad used to get very “brisk” I suppose you’d call it. “Getting things done”. I remember once when we’d been out to the garden centre he put the car boot down on my head and made it bleed quite badly. I think I’d have been about twelve at the time. I was trying to be helpful and I remember him looking at me with that withering look of his and saying “Did I ask you to stand there? Was that what I asked you to do? What made you think that would be a useful thing to do? Why did you think that would be useful? Hmm?” and on and on like that and then he just walked away. He didn’t even check my head to see if it needed attention. Luckily it was just a small cut but he didn’t know that. The blood was running down my neck (you know how head wounds bleed) and I felt dizzy and sick for a while. I didn’t say anything. He certainly never apologised.’
Alison looks around the room, at the ceiling, at the door, at the carpet. She seems to be composing herself.
‘And what was your mother doing all this time?’ she says at last.
‘She mostly left us alone. Occasionally she made a big deal of trying to get me to come down and “join in”. Usually if I was downstairs at the weekend she’d be trying to get me to go out and play with the other kids in the street, or join a club or something. She didn’t think anything was worth doing unless you got a certificate or a badge for it.’ I try to make it sound like it’s amusing – all their funny little ways, but actually I feel embarrassed going on about this, like it’s such a tragedy, but she observes me patiently from her seat across the room, waiting for me to go on.
‘I remember her saying one Saturday morning, “Why can’t you just be normal for a change, go out and make friends?” but I just couldn’t face it. School was bad enough. I needed time off from having to deal with children. I just couldn’t cope with all that fighting and crying and name-calling and all the pathetic squabbles about whose friend was whose. They were just so cruel and selfish.’
‘And your parents never made the connection to your Kasper Hauser infancy?’
‘How do you mean? I mean I know who Kasper Hauser was. Didn’t he just appear from nowhere in a village in Germany? I saw the film.’
‘It is thought his parents kept him locked in a woodshed until he was a teenager. Oh I know I’m rather exaggerating but you catch my drift. Basically your parents kept you away from the outside world for the first five years of your life and then wondered why you couldn’t cope when you were confronted with it. And then...’ She shakes her head in disbelief, a stiff, ironic smile on her face. ‘And then, then they blamed you for not being “normal”. Hah!’
‘But I was only five. I don’t even remember really...’
‘That’s totally irrelevant. Seriously Gabriel, you must have come across two year olds since then? They’re fully social human beings, running around meeting people, communicating, arguing, testing the boundaries, clowning around. I mean, sure, there’s a lot of details for them to pick up, but that basic template – introvert or extravert, adventurous or timid, imaginative or practical, sensitive or aggressive – it’s all there at two years of age, and it’s hard to change without some serious therapy, even for an adult. You should know.’
I don’t know what to think about all this. If she’s right then they severely fucked me up, my mum and dad but then I suppose that’s just so obvious it’s become a cliché.
‘I suppose it’s useful to know how they fucked me up, specifically’ I say.
She leans forward and looks at me seriously. ‘Don’t dismiss this’ she says. ‘All parents make mistakes, of course they do, but I don’t think we should let yours off the hook so lightly.’
She sits back and leafs through the papers, looking for a piece of evidence. She huffs and flicks through again, looks about the room for inspiration, chewing the inside of her cheek. I wait.
‘A story like yours... Stories like yours...’ she begins, turning pages. ‘Homeless, unemployable... periods in psychiatric care... suicide... People think there’s going to be some big climax – some titillating tale of parental neglect that explains it all, in all its creepy detail, and then the alcohol and the drugs and the sexual abuse... People love reading that stuff - flies off the shelves. Literary prizes. Headlines. But it’s not like that, nine times out of ten. In my experience it’s just an unwanted pregnancy, unhappy marriage, money worries... No patience. No energy. No insight. That’s all it takes.’
She takes a deep breath – more a sigh really and tamps my notes into a neater pile. She stands up. It’s time to stop for today.
She says ‘I believe it is incumbent upon every adult to think seriously about what they are doing when they bring a child into the world, whether deliberately or by mistake. Ok, of course there are much worse things you can do to a child but there’s no excuse.’

I return her stare. I’ve seen this anger before. Maybe I will finally be able to accept that it wasn’t all my fault after all. I need to think about it.

Voyage III – Banana Cheesecake

‘God, don’t you hate this place’ says Shiraz (‘But you can call me Raz’ she said when Ruth introduced us. ‘Rich and fruity, that’s me.’ I point out that Shiraz is usually described as oaky. Raz gives me a look.)
Raz comes sideways at us, hands full of glasses, struggling to squeeze between the other travellers seated at their tables, eating their lunches. ‘I mean what’s the point?’
She arrives and puts the glasses down – a white wine for me, red for Ruth, a fizzy water for Lisa and a large vodka and orange for herself.
‘Everybody on the caviar and asparagus, quaffing the Château Neuf du Pap ‘67 or whatever the hell it is. We used to pay a fortune for that stuff.’
‘The point, I suppose, would be the amazing flavour’ I suggest. ‘It’s pretty good. You should try some.’
‘Caviar doesn’t taste that good sunshine, trust me...’
‘Actually I rather like it’ says Ruth. Lisa looks slightly disgusted. She’s on the ruccolla and artichoke salad.
‘You don’t imagine people eat caviar because they think it tastes nice do you sweetie? Now here we are and I find that everybody and anybody can have some. Makes me sick.’
‘What are you having?’ I ask.
‘Oh I’ll stick to the meds if you don’t mind. I know it’s early but what the heck. Chin-chin.’

Well I’m enjoying my salmon anyway. The food here really is bloody amazing. I don’t know how they do it. I suspect the whole thing’s imaginary in some way but can’t be bothered to work it out.
Nor am I sure how it happened that I’m sat with these three. Ruth seems to have been very busy making friends. She’s one of those people it’s just too much hassle to argue with, so you do as you’re told. Lisa I know less about. She has extremely long brown hair, big sleepy eyes and puffy lips, and an unfocussed, apprehensive look about her - friendly enough but rather young. Under different circumstances I think I’d have been very attracted to her and I can’t believe I can even be considering it, after everything that happened. Actually she reminds me a little of my girl back home. Actually, everybody and everything reminds me of her. I put my knife and fork down and sit back and collect myself.
‘So...’ begins Lisa, rather hesitatingly, ‘were you one of those girls that was named after types of wine back in the nineties, like Chardonnay and er...?’
‘Excuse me sweetie, do I look like a footballer’s wife?’
‘Well, you know...’ Lisa looks like she wishes she hadn’t said anything.
‘It’s a place in Iran darling. Dad was there before the war. And that’s all the hints you’re getting concerning my true age sweetie’ eyeing Lisa as if she’s been very sly, but Lisa just looks mortified.
‘But that wasn’t what I ...’ She says, almost in tears. She’s totally out of her depth.
Raz at least appears to be in her mid twenties and is in tee shirt and trackie bottoms. She used to wear Prada she says but here everybody’s so well dressed what’s the point? She’s not a great looking woman especially, but you can tell she was used to making the best of herself and carrying it off with sheer brazen good humour and a dirty laugh. Now she freely admits she’s going to thoroughly let herself go and sod the lot of them.
‘Cheer up sweetie’ she says to Lisa, patting her knee.
‘I’m alright’ says Lisa, waking from her daydream ‘What do you think that person over there is going to do?’ she says, pointing across the room. We all turn to look. Across the room a tall man in a dressing gown is standing on a chair. He opens the front of his gown and waggles his equipment at everyone. ‘You see?’ he shouts, ‘It doesn’t matter any more!’ He drops the gown and does a little dance. ‘Wahey!’ he says and then he bends down and picks up his pudding and begins to smear it all over his ample frontage. Evidently it’s still quite hot and he seems a little taken aback by this unforeseen discovery, but, no matter, he picks up the wine bottle and liberally douses the area. A few diners applaud, one of the people at his table says loudly that he’s putting him off his banana cheesecake, which gets a laugh. The rest of us either look on quizzically or pretend nothing’s happening.
Raz leans in conspiratorially and says ‘Maybe it’s just the embalming fluid talking but suddenly I can see the point.’
‘It’s quite a substantial point’ says Ruth appraisingly.
‘You’re telling me’ says Raz. ‘Now if he can just lay off the jam roly-poly he might be in with a chance’ and she does that magnificent cackle we’ve all come to know and secretly enjoy. ‘Excuse me’ she says and disappears.

I sit back and look around. I’ve always liked hanging out with women. On the one hand it means I avoid all the petty (supposedly good natured) one-upmanship that characterises male bonding. On the other I am largely exempt from any bitching among the girls. And although it isn’t essential, it’s actually better if I fancy the women just a little. I used to enjoy hanging out with my wife’s friends. They were a good bunch and I was content to take a back seat and hear about what their friends were up to and who with, and what the repercussions were. If I went out with the guys it was all about the latest, most obscure 60s garage punk LP they’d found in a charity shop or else it would mean computer games all night.

Raz is back in a trice, transformed and radiant. I’m impressed.
‘There don’t seem to be any labels on anything. Do you suppose they’re knock-offs?’ she says.
‘Perhaps they’re just beautiful clothes’ says Lisa.
‘Oh she’s so sweet don’t you think? Bless’ says Raz.
‘Men don’t know the difference, not unless they’re gay’ says Ruth. ‘Look, he’s getting away.’
‘Oops, better run’ and she gulps down her drink and heads out.
We squirm in tacit admiration as she catches up with him, drops her bag and gets him to help her pick up her things. Masterly.
‘Do you think he can tell?’ muses Lisa.
Once again that laugh rings out and the man, six foot six and built like a stone privvy smiles and leads on, gown flapping casually.
‘She’s probably offered to get the custard out of those hard to reach areas’ says Ruth.
‘I’d never have had the nerve to do anything like that’ says Lisa, almost disapprovingly but not quite.
‘Got to hand it to her’ I say.
‘But you wouldn’t fall for that would you?’ she says to me. ‘I mean, she’s just so... obvious.’
‘I don’t know. I mean, I wouldn’t have been naked on a table in a restaurant in the first place, and I never thought food was very sexy...’
‘Oh, I don’t know. A nice dollop of Cherry Garcia in the right spot...’ says Ruth.
‘Ruth!’ says Lisa with a shocked smile on her face and they both giggle like teenagers.
‘Sorry Gabriel’ says Ruth, covering her nose to stop herself snorting with one hand and gripping my hand with the other.
‘Don’t mind me’ I say. ‘I’m not that easily shocked.’
‘I bet. What’s your secret weapon then?’ she says raising a suggestive eyebrow. Lisa cracks up again, exhaling her fizzy water. I can’t help feeling that Lisa’s a little too excited. I wonder what her story is.
I hold up my hands ‘No way. I’m outnumbered here. Maybe another time.’
‘I’ll hold you to that’ Ruth says meaningfully.
Lisa looks at us with a suddenly serious expression on her face and I realise that this is not at all like hanging out with my wife and her friends. She isn’t here to rescue me for one thing.

Journey III – Peter

Peter, I presume it must be, blots out the sun. He stands in the doorway, ducking under the lintel. Dressed in pale robes and with a full beard he says ‘Knock knock. Anybody home?’ in a voice that is at once soft and very crisp. I’m sitting up at least but haven’t been able to do anything much else today.
‘Mind if I come in?’ he says. It takes me a moment to work out why he sounds so weird. I suddenly realise I’ve been speaking Spanish up until now and this is the first conversation I’ve had in English since I arrived.
‘Be my guest’ I say, indicating the general space, any amount of which he might want to occupy. None of it feels like mine yet anyway, although I am assured by Sonia that this is now my house, if I want it.
‘You look much better’ he says, dropping down onto the other sofa, making the springs complain. ‘Any chance of refreshments?’ he says, turning to the kitchen and half rising.
‘Oh I’m sorry’ I say, beginning painfully to rise. It’s incredibly hard to stand and he doesn’t offer to help but I find some ancient stores of politeness propel me up and on. It’s not until I almost collapse and brain myself making a dash for it across to the sink that he realises anything’s wrong and then he launches himself in my direction, grabs me by the arm and swings me back to sit on the arm of the sofa.
‘Are you alright?’ he says, looking closely into my eyes.
‘Still a bit weak’ I say, understating it for the sake of sarcasm. He doesn’t get it.
‘Shall I give you a hand?’ he says earnestly.
I nod deeply, expecting him to let me lie down again and rummage around for the “refreshments” himself, but instead he props me up and steadies me as I walk across to the sink. Then he goes and sits back down and picks up a book.

After we’ve sat around for a while, making polite conversation and drinking coffee (my coffee I suppose it must be) he begins to heave himself up and says ‘Well... Can’t hang around all day...’ and I realise I’ve been waiting for him to tell me about how he found me. I certainly had the feeling he had something to tell me. Perhaps not. I’m going to have to be more assertive.
‘Peter.’
‘Yes’ he says, sitting on the edge of the sofa.
‘I’m sorry. I thought...’
He looks at me expectantly. How can he not guess what I want to ask? And why can’t I ask? ‘It’s ok’ I say ‘Thanks for looking in. See you again soon?’
‘Probably not actually. Just passing through you see. Anyway, thanks for the coffee’ and with that he’s gone.
Well he was quite irritating anyway, I tell myself afterwards, and go back to the sofa. I wonder when Sonia is coming back.

Night falls suddenly and the sound of the running water and the myriad life forms outside permeates everything. I can’t sleep. I’ve done enough sleeping but I don’t even have the strength to hold up a book and focus on the page. Mainly, I realise, I’m bored. I look toward the window, at the moonlight highlighting everything in silver and I try to think what’s different here. Wind chimes tinkle remotely. There’s a breeze picking up. Could be a relief. It’s been very muggy these last few days. I lie back and look at the ceiling. The light is making ripple patterns there. There must be a puddle outside. Or maybe it’s the bucket under the down pipe. That’ll be it.
Sonia. Her eyebrows meet in the middle but she has a very nice bottom. I think she likes me. I move my hands over my chest and belly down to my groin. Still no response. There’s still a terrible gash just over my right thigh where it joins my hip. Everything still jars and grinds when I move but it’s uncomfortable rather than painful. The pain has been much worse...
I wake up from a terrible dream – of falling, but it’s no product of my imagination. The fall is sickening in its suddenness, rushing through air face down, seeing in deadly detail the crags and shattered trees rushing up to meet me, I hit... And wake up, and I know I was pushed.

Alison II – Mother Nature’s Son

Alison and I resume next day.
She has that sceptical look on her face already as I arrive.
‘What about friends?’ she says. ‘Other children...’
I smile a little and shake my head, take a sip of water.
She gives me a bemused smile, as if I’m perhaps just being dramatic or trying for a little pity, or just didn’t understand the question.
‘Not at all? No little playmates?’
‘Nope.’ I shake my head and smile, then shrug for good measure.
‘Surely your parents must have realised this wasn’t normal?’
‘I know.’ I say. ‘It seems very strange now but I honestly don’t think I met another child until I went to school. That was when I was about five years old. I didn’t believe it myself when I realised but it explains a lot. All my parent’s friends and family had grown up children, and the next generation didn’t start until well after I was born. The closest was my cousin’s son Matthew and I was already three when he came along so we had very little in common. There was one time I was left with a couple who had a little girl. (I think dad had to go to the hospital – nothing serious – varicose veins I think.) but I wouldn’t have anything to do with her. I’d never come across a girl before.’
‘No child minders, nursery school, that kind of thing?’
‘I don’t think it ever occurred to them.’

And the truth is, it never seemed important. Dad or the girls were always around, and they just didn’t worry about whether I had anyone to play with. I didn’t know any different. In any case, I was very good at entertaining myself. I had pencils and paper and plasticine, and a lot of books and cast-off cuddly toys to keep me quiet, as well as all the dogs and ducks and rabbits on the farm – plus all the wildlife to make friends with. There were silverfish in the fireplaces at night, and mice in the scullery and a toad in the wood shed. The jackdaws grew on me but I was never entirely sure they wouldn’t break in one day. Anyway, I was never bored.
I loved the garden too – I was out there in all weathers – quite often in nothing but my pants and vest even in winter. I loved crawling about under the raspberry briars and sitting in there watching the world. Or I’d be hunting frogs or slow-worms or making ponds or burrows.
‘I was quite feral actually’ I say, to sum up.
‘You must have been absolutely filthy.’
‘Oh Dad just made me strip off at the back door and put me in the bath.’

I was often left to fend for myself when dad was in the garden, I just went where I felt like. One fragment I have is of my dad calling for me outside. He didn’t sound too worried. This happened a lot. I was in the lean-to greenhouse under the staging. I could see out from my bed of hessian sacks, over the clay pots to the back wall of the greenhouse. I was watching the shadow of some string whirling about in a draught in the cold autumn sun. The whitewash was peeling away and a tiny fern had managed to root into the exposed brickwork. Below, flakes of lime and crumbs of plaster lay on the tiled floor. I could hear the wind outside and dad’s voice lost in it. I remember looking around at my nest with all the debris from the summer – curly brown geranium leaves and mouldy dried up grapes and the sheets of grey silk the long-legged spiders had made. I was getting cold but I didn’t want to go in. There was a small triangle of glass an inch from my toe. I knew what it was but I wasn’t afraid of it. I had been warned about broken glass and I was always careful. A moth flapped uselessly on a silk thread but no spider came to finish it off. I released it and it flew away and flapped against the glass instead.
I let my old soul look about. I’d loved this greenhouse – the smell of the tomatoes and geraniums and the hot soil in summer. I’d made little places to hide everywhere. I don’t know why. I wasn’t afraid or in need of privacy. I just liked finding little places I could be and call my own. The fragment ends with dad coming in and crouching down and saying ‘Bath time Gabriel’ in his firm business-like voice. He never got angry back then. It must have been that last autumn before we moved.

Then there was another time I remember being in Amelia’s wardrobe and she had some friends round. I was watching them get ready to go out, hidden among the shoes and boxes and other bits and pieces. She knew I was there but she didn’t tell anyone. She was always wandering around in her knickers and bra (unless mum was in) and later I had a bit of an obsession with hanging around, hoping to catch a glimpse of boob. I suppose a lot of little boys do. Anyway, I watched them fixing their stockings and lacquering their hair and sticking their false eyelashes on. After they’d gone I stood in the middle of the room, listening to a car’s doors open and close and the sound of excited female voices, and then my dad’s voice, low and steady. He had a certain authority – even with my sister’s boyfriends. I heard the car drive away and the back door close and I looked around at the room, recently emptied of young female life and now full of shadows leaning in on me from the corners and from between the wardrobe and the chimney-breast. The warm rich scent of my sister became cold and sharp and the colours of her clothes turned to grey. I hopped up onto the bed to avoid the shadows gathering around its fringes and slipped under the covers - the smell of her body wrapping me up tight, still warm from where they’d sat doing their toes. I think this was the evening she came back late, crying and crying and wouldn’t speak to anyone about what had happened. She collapsed into the bed without turning the light on and almost crushed me. She let me stay although she didn’t really want company. Dad was outside the door for ages going ‘Please tell me what’s wrong love. I won’t be angry’ over and over. I never found out what happened. In the morning everything carried on as normal.
‘She’d probably just been dumped by her boyfriend.’
‘Probably. Like I say, I never found out.’

One other fragment I really remember well involves an adventure outside the garden wall on my own. This wasn’t unusual. Any number of times the neighbours (and at least once a complete stranger) brought me back to the house from where they’d found me, out in the fields or along the lane, strolling along, cheerfully chatting away to myself. Nobody would let their kids out like that nowadays.
On this occasion I must have been about three. I had the farmer’s old collie for company – hanging on to her collar when necessary. I’d actually got as far as the edge of the woods up on Steyning Bowl, which must have been a good quarter of a mile away from the garden boundary. The fragment begins with me on all fours among the travellers’ joy and the woodbine, in nothing but a pair of pants, turning over lumps of green stained chalk and flint looking for ground beetles, which were my latest obsession. I look up and see the farm below across the field. There’s no one in sight. The dog has gone home. It’s a bright, warm day and the sunbeams dance merrily on the woodland floor as the branches of the beech heave to and fro above. Everything is green. It’s like being underwater in a very clear pure stream. I watch a fly pass, come back and land in front of my foot (I’ve got no shoes on as usual). There’s moss and last autumn’s leaves by my toes and a centipede. I hear a cuckoo and a woodpigeon.
As a child I could sit for what seemed like hours and watch leaves glowing in the sun. I looked at the view and giggled at how far from home I was and at the same time, as an old soul, marvelled at how I’d come home from so long away. That day I leaned back against a stump of elder and lived in two lives at once – the child spellbound by the daylight, and the old soul, captivated by the child.

Voyage II – Ruth

‘Mind if I join you?’ says the woman in the green top and purple skirt. She’s a petite woman, apparently in her late twenties and seems uncomfortable in her outfit – like she’d prefer to be in something more formal but has been told to try to loosen up. She reminds me of someone. I can’t think who.
‘Do I know you?’ I say, a little embarrassed and trying not to appear rude.
‘Ruth’ she says, holding out her hand over the table. ‘I don’t think we’ve met before.’
‘I’m Gabriel’ I say, shaking her hand. ‘Is there something I can do for you... er Ruth.’
‘No, I just fancied some company for dinner.’
‘Ah.’
‘I hope you don’t mind. It’s just I’m new here. Well, I suppose we all are aren’t we.’ She laughs a little nervously. ‘I feel a bit lost to tell the truth. You don’t mind do you, really?’
‘I don’t know if I’m going to be very good company.’
‘Well, that makes quite a few of us I expect. Would you like some wine? I could order some.’
‘I’d love some. Thank you.’
She turns waves to a waiter to come over.
‘What were you reading?’ she says once she’s told him what she wants.
‘Oh I wasn’t really. I find it’s best, if you’re going to sit in a bar on your own, to bring a book.’
‘I wish I’d thought of that, but then, now I don’t have to, er unless you want to read.’
‘No no. I have to admit, when I first woke up I didn’t want to talk to anyone, but now, despite everything...’
‘Here we are.’
She looks at me intently in what I think of a very old fashioned feminine way, with her elbows on the table and her chin balanced on the backs of her interlaced fingers. There’s something very Audrey Hepburn about her. I feel she expects something of me – scintillating conversation or reassuring advice and I’m flattered but not entirely at ease with her. Anyway she may have died at eighty for all I know. There’s something disturbing about old ladies that have hung onto their girlishness I always find. I’m not sure if it’s better or worse when it sneaks up on you disguised in a young body. Also I used to be very easily taken in by this kind of attention – a woman shy enough to bring out my masculinity but outgoing enough to save me the trouble of making the first move. Unfortunately I’ve come to distrust it: either the timidity will be a front and she’ll turn out to be a complete bitch or the boldness will be put on and I’ll spend the rest of the trip counselling her. Oh listen to me. What a miserable old curmudgeon I’ve become. We order Tunisian lamb with cuscus and roasted vegetables and she tells me all about her life without my having to contribute very much at all. Apparently she ran a shoe shop in Lewes in East Sussex, a place I knew very well so we should have plenty to talk about. I realise quite quickly though that she was one of those very ‘focussed’ people who never did anything much except work. She claims to have ‘absolutely adored’ art when I mention it, and music, and gardening too, but never found the time, what with the paperwork and staffing problems and all that.
‘You wouldn’t believe the mess I came back to if I was out for just one weekend’ she tells me. Nobody else could be trusted to do things properly. She had to do everything herself – even mop the floors sometimes. I can imagine. It’s my mother she reminds me of. I ask about family and she gives me a sad little shrug. No time for that either I suppose.
I lean back with my arms folded listening to her berate everybody she ever had to deal with for their slackness and lack of commitment. I try to look sympathetic but really I think, she talks about her business as if it’s this terrible burden she’s been forced to bear when actually, she chose that life, and she believed in it, and she was proud of it. And now apparently she wants my sympathy.
‘Sounds like you could have afforded to take some time out’ I say, somewhat disingenuously.
‘I don’t think so’ she says seriously.
In life I learned to use the phrase ‘I’m sorry, I’ve been extremely busy’ as an excuse when I was late for things (which was all the time). People seemed to be more impressed with that than if I told them I wasn’t really a morning person or I’d mislaid my keys. I’d tended to assume everybody did the same and that this ‘busy lifestyle’ shtik that everyone claimed to have back then was something similar, but no, apparently some of them actually meant it. Anyway, she’s wearing me out just sitting with her. She tells me she died of cancer but mercifully doesn’t offer details. She was sixty-five.
She then politely asks me what I did and I give her a quick précis. Finally I imply that I am still very upset about losing my wife (or being lost by her rather) partly to put her off, in case she has any designs on me, and partly so that I can be a bit preoccupied without seeming rude. She reaches over and grips my hand in sympathy but doesn’t let on about anyone she’s missing particularly. We order coffee and retire to the forward lounge and chat politely about our lives, carefully avoiding the ‘messy bit’ as she puts it, as if the end of her life was just a faulty product. Actually it’s her does most of the talking; glibly dropping in the names of haute couture designers, exotic resorts and fast cars as if of course anyone aught to know what she’s on about. I haven’t a clue but I smile as kindly as I can. I only really wake up when she starts on about the ‘myth’ of global warming and her penchant for jetting off to the other side of the world whenever she ‘felt like a change’. Apparently she’s one of those who firmly believed that the whole thing was a left wing plot, cooked up entirely to give governments an excuse to put up taxes. Bizarre.
‘Do you know...’ she continues, ‘Do you know my gym had the nerve to suggest rigging up the exercise machines to a generator? Said it would cut their lighting bill in half. We told them in no uncertain terms. We said “We’re here for the good of our health, not for the good of the bloody planet.” They couldn’t say anything to that. Bloody cheek! I told them – “I don’t pay my membership fees to work for the national grid.” Bloody cheek...’
To argue with her feels particularly futile under the circumstances. I can concede in any case that the connection was never absolutely conclusively proved, even after fifty years or so of scare stories, but given the fact that, when I last checked, global temperatures (and sea-levels) were indeed rising, it seemed extraordinarily bloody-minded to carry on as if nothing was happening. I’d wanted the theory to be wrong as much as anyone but I wasn’t prepared to take the risk. Anyway, the conversation moves on without incident.

I hope I’m not going to be stuck with her alone for too long or this could turn out to be a very long voyage indeed. There are still very few of us up and about. There should be as many as a hundred of us, plus guides somewhere. I count about fifteen. Alison tells me it’s early days.

Journey II – The fall

Sonia (the woman in the orange skirt) comes each day to check up on me and bring me milk and fresh fruit. I still feel very tired and spend a lot of time sitting down, either on the sofa indoors if it’s too hot outside, or on the lounger outside when it cools down. The house has a serene organic look, set into an overgrown bank, half submerged among ferns and creepers. It reminds me of a fisherman’s cottage, maybe in Cornwall, or Crete. The window frames are even painted blue. I climbed the bottom few rungs of the ladder and had a quick peek upstairs yesterday and found an airy roof space with big windows at either end, and a broad, low wooden bed waiting for me above where the sofas are down here. It looks very inviting but in the state I’m in, I fear I may not make it down again in one piece. ‘And we don’t want that again’ says Sonia. I don’t ask.

So in the evening I’m sitting out on the lounger, watching the parrots and monkeys in the trees opposite. They always seem to be especially active just before the sun goes down, shrieking and shaking the branches. It’s quite comical really. I take a sip of my lemonade and look up and down the road. No one comes along here much – just occasionally someone on their way to the beach, which I’m told is just over that rocky rise on the right. I can hear the waves and the gulls from here and sometimes the gulls come up into the river to bathe in the pools. They have pale blue beaks and feet. Quite stylish.
It’s hard to focus that far away for long. I sink down in my seat and look at the sky but that’s too bright and my sunglasses are indoors and I can’t be bothered to go and get them. I look down at the path. It seems to be made of rounded pebbles, and weeds fill the spaces between them – bright little orange pea flowers and magenta mallow flowers on trailing stems. I watch a velvet worm make its laborious rippling way from the pile of leaves by the water butt to the terracotta pot by the door. It’s about ten inches long. I don’t think I’ve seen one that big before. I look at the bundle of dead sticks in the pot and consider asking Sonia if she’ll find me some seeds to plant. The whole exterior of the house needs some attention I notice. That would be a good thing to do when I’m feeling fitter.
A delicate metallic sound comes to me from the left, along the road. I turn and look but can’t see anyone because the road curves round out of sight toward what I’m told is the town. All I can see is the steep bank that my house backs onto (“my house”? The one I’m staying in anyway). I took a short walk along there yesterday with a stick for support. I don’t know much about tropical vegetation and I stood and stared into the mass of cactus and fern and palm and agave and trailing flowers all tangled together, and the nectar birds and the emerald lizards and chameleons and tree frogs, mantis and butterfly and a myriad other more cryptic life forms I have no names for yet, all going about their business. I nearly toppled over into it. Now there’s a man driving a mule cart past, heading toward the sea. He tips his cap to me and I nod back. They all know who I am apparently but I have no idea who any of them are, except Sonia of course.

‘Have you remembered anything?’ she says next day as she bustles around, tidying things up. I look around, ashamed. I’ve been a total slob. There’s tissues and books scattered about all over the place and I don’t suppose there’s a clean cup left in the cupboard. They’re all over here, with dregs and tidemarks. A couple are in the bin in pieces because I forgot how to walk and carry things at the same time but I’m getting the hang of it now. Sonia tutted and shook her head but I get the idea she likes having someone to fuss over.
‘I’m sorry’ I say, avoiding the question, ‘I’m not normally as bad as this’ and I make a feeble attempt to stand and help her with things. She just goes ‘Pshht’ and waves me back down. I slump back gratefully. I don’t think I ever felt so totally exhausted in my life...
My life.
There was a little house on a hillside and a woman in a white cotton dress...
I can’t seem to remember her face or her name. I find myself weeping quietly about it. Sonia doesn’t notice. She’s too busy. Good thing.
I try instead to work out what my last memory is before I woke up here.
‘Was I injured?’ I ask her.
‘You could say that.’
‘Badly?’
She gives me an expression that asks if I really want to know.
I nod and lie back. No, I really don’t.
I remember a canyon, or a crevasse. I have this feeling of being there, looking up at that thin, jagged streak of sky high above, watching the weather pass, and birds circling (buzzards I guess, or vultures) for what seemed like the whole of my existence. Anything that might have happened before, I let go of. It made it worse, remembering. Better to be like a rock, or a branch, broken and fallen into a ravine, waiting for rot and erosion to cover me and blend me with my surroundings, to return to my elements.
The warm sun and the soft, comfortable furnishings of the house feel like a mirage or film, like I could push my hand through the brightly coloured surfaces and find stones underneath – the sharp, ripping, crushing edge and mass of them. The water was not cold enough to freeze but cold enough to feel it trickle and seep into every part of me. I feel myself heavy with it, waterlogged. Meanwhile I feel my blood, still warm and sticky, draining away into the grit and moss that has settled around me. And some of the edges grinding and scraping are not the shards and splinters of the wood that fell with me – some of them are bone, my bones, shattered and exposed to the air and the drizzle. Steaming and clotting I can’t bear look at the damage. I am becoming a compost, a ground person, chopped and mashed and mixed with my fellow minerals and organisms here in the dark and the wet and the cold. 
And yet this tumble is not something that has happened recently. There is no emergency. I’ve been here as long as I can remember. Soil has formed around my arms and the rocks crushing my pelvis and legs have settled into position. Moss has spread from the soil behind me across my shoulder. (What was I wearing? A coarse material, canvas or heavy linen, dark blue – it decomposed into the humous as I lay there but I can still see a trace of my pale, porous skin exposed through the dirt. How strange.) A tree seedling I can plainly see has appeared in front of my face where my body should be. I hate to think where it has sent its roots or what it’s feeding on. It’s at least six feet tall.
I remember some peculiar, insubstantial characters came along to talk to me sometimes. I never saw them, just heard their voices, or perhaps not heard them exactly, but I understood what they meant. They were sympathetic but not much help otherwise.
‘How long was I there?’ I mutter.
‘Sorry?’ she says, turning and smiling brightly at me.
‘How long was I down there?’ I repeat, more clearly.
She says she’ll ask Peter to drop by later on. Apparently he was the one who found me.
‘Ok’ I say, doubtfully, but I’m not sure I can stand any more company just yet.

Alison I – The Cottage

Alison has persuaded me to join her in one of the small lounges on the cabin deck. It’s a neat little space with a couple of armchairs and a table. On the table are a jug of water and two glasses, and a box of tissues. I know this scene. I went to a therapist a couple of times. She insists this is not therapy. She says maybe it’ll be good for me though to talk about my life (I’ve told her I’m not going back again) but just as a kind of dénouement. She used that word, like my life, or lives, have been a novel (or novels) which I suppose they have.
Anyway what else am I going to do while I’m here? Alison feels the same. This is her fifth run and she’s heard a lot of harrowing accounts and she likes a story with a good positive ending once in a while. I’m not sure about that but I’ll try. She suggests that I just tell her how things were different this time – how my previous incarnations helped me to change things. I tell her it was mostly my time as a teenager that was different – that was where the really radical changes happened. After that I was off on a completely different track and nothing was the same (well, almost nothing). I think about the little house near Bramber, and the garden and the hill behind it, and us, my girl and I, sitting out on the lawn, watching the shadows of the clouds sweep across the fields. It’s about to rain but we sit there in our deck chairs, holding hands and laughing at something – I don’t remember what. And then the view merges with an almost identical one from the other end of my life, of the hillside near Steyning when I was very small and it’s all one. I can see my whole life before me just like that, in one perfect spherical object, like a bubble. And look - pop! Gone.

Alison asks me what the first things I remember were. She takes out her pen and a pad of paper and waits patiently for me to begin.
I look into the middle distance, reluctant to start for some reason. The sea is still pretty rough out and I hold onto my coffee cup to stop it slopping. She looks at me, waiting patiently.

I begin by telling her about the town on the river and Nicky and Nyssa and even a bit about Shamim and her family.
I don’t have much to report on what happened after our dissolution in the river mouth, Nicky’s and mine. I had some sense of existing, but without a body or a place or a time to exist in, and no sense of time passing (but the change was not instantaneous, that much I do know). I had time to wonder, and to remember and to hope, in what I can only describe as a dream-like state. Like a dream, the whole experience could have taken minutes or years. There’s no way to tell.

The first things I remember of the first few years of my new life are dim and disembodied, as if I was only present in spirit - literally.
‘I have to say I think that was probably just as well’ I say.
She frowns and leans forward. ‘And why would you say that?’ she says.
‘Ok, well, being in-utero, maybe, from a biological point of view would be interesting I suppose, but then emerging through your mother’s... and breastfeeding for God’s sake?’ I shudder. ‘I was never into all that Oedipal malarkey. Can we move on?’
She smiles knowingly and leans back.
‘You weren’t close were you, you and your mother?’
‘You could say that... And then there’s the sitting in your own excrement for hours and puking and dribbling and just the sheer tedium of being a child for years on end...’
‘I can think of worse things’ she says, a little wistfully. ‘Years of just messing about, playing, not having to worry about anything much, warm and well fed and loved...’
‘Well, I guess it depends what kind of family you’re born into. Did you have any children?’
‘I did. Two boys – Will and Josh.’
‘I didn’t mean to cause any offence.’
‘None taken, and you’re right, the puke and the “excrement” are things only a mother could love, if that’s the right word.’
‘Oh look, I’m sure if you’re just a little kid and you’ve never seen it all before it’s delightful, but... look, infant’s school lasts three years on its own. Three years pretending to struggle over a few sums that are taking the others the whole lesson, but which you could do, in proper joined up writing mind, in two minutes flat? How many times can you watch sand fall out of a bucket, or make painty finger marks on sugar paper? And how interesting can mud be? Actually I asked Nyssa about it. She said that there weren’t many accounts of those early years that she knew of. I don’t know if that’s true.’ Alison nods. ‘All she said was that it seems to be quite an ordeal for most people.’
‘That’s quite true’ says Alison. ‘All the information we have suggests that the birth alone can be a terrible trauma, and on it’s own may be enough to expunge all knowledge of what went before. And if it survives that (the consciousness I mean) there are, as you say, the long years of childhood to get through. All in all, awareness of previous lives tends to slip away early and many gladly let it go. Very few see it through to maturity. Part of why I wanted you to talk to me is because your experience is quite rare.’
‘Are you going to write me up?’ I ask.
‘If you’ll let me.’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘We can discuss it later.’
‘Ok.’
‘So tell me what it was actually like – first contact, to coin a phrase.’

I tell her the first thing was a sound. I heard people talking, murmuring. One of them was my mother. I heard her trying to fit her words in between gasps. Other voices made low, matter-of-fact sounding comments about her. Apparently no one was talking to her. She grunted and swore alone.
Then there was light, below and to the side, a tiny island of white light with a pink heart, and I wondered what it was and tried to go towards it until I saw there were arms reaching into the light, doing things to the pink, and the voices came from the owners of the arms.
As my vision widened I saw the metal fittings of a hospital bed, and the linoleum floor and pieces of stained cloth discarded about. And I saw the spark of light on surgical steel and had to look away.
Finally there was the smell – of shit and blood and antiseptic, and all the noise and glare crowded in on me and I moved away, I don’t know where to, just away. I know it wasn’t an easy birth. My mother wasn’t young and I had a big head. I felt the pull and the squeeze of being born, and the pain of the forceps and other little jabs and knocks, but only as if it was happening to some distant attenuated part of me. I stayed away from it all as best I could and waited for it to be all over.

‘It just all seemed so clumsy and impatient, like they were unblocking a troublesome toilet or something. I don’t know what would have happened if I’d had to experience the whole thing actually there, in my body, fully conscious. As it was I stayed as far away as possible.’
‘It sounds like a fairly standard forceps delivery for back in those days I’m sorry to tell you’ she says. ‘I’d like to say things have improved but I’m not so sure.’
‘Did you know much about all this, you know, in life?’ I ask.
‘I worked in the NHS.’ She doesn’t seem keen to elaborate – maybe another time. ‘What happened next?’ she says.

I tell her I remember being warm and dry, but with a terrible headache and flashing lights, like a migraine. I couldn’t really see, just pink, like looking through my eyelids at a bright light, which I suppose is what I was doing. I couldn’t really move, or only very weakly. Everything felt loose and insubstantial, except my head, which felt enormous and as if something was trying to squash it with its bare hands. I wobbled it from side to side but it didn’t help. I believe I had a good old cry about it.
I remember my parents turning up about then. I couldn’t really see them, or understand what they said, but I recognised their voices and that smell my dad had – aftershave and sweat and pipe tobacco. I remember them looking down at me, and my body desperately yearning to be picked up but they didn’t, or maybe they weren’t allowed to. They left me where I was. They didn’t do anything much, just talked among themselves. Then they went away again. I did a lot more crying then I think.
She nods and writes something down. There’s an expression on her face that tells me she’s not surprised by any of this, and not a little angry about it.
‘There’s evidence that a forceps delivery can disturb the sutures in the skull somewhat and that could cause severe headaches’ she says, without looking up. ‘So they didn’t give you to your mother to hold’ she goes on.
‘Maybe, I don’t know. I wasn’t breast fed, I know that.’
She tuts to herself and writes some more.

I talk about “my body” like that because, thankfully, it became quickly apparent that I did not fully belong in it yet. It had a life of its own, and frankly, I was glad not to have to deal with it, poor little bugger. I was aware of it – available, as it were, in case of an emergency, but kept myself back. I remember wondering vaguely what would happen if I refused to ever go back.
Some traditions I understand hold that the soul does not fully inhabit the body until the child reaches adolescence. That seems about right. Perhaps that’s why there are no children here in the afterlife. I don’t know where I was all those years as a child. Sometimes I could see what was going on around us. When my body was in distress it felt like it tugged on me, but mostly I think I just went into a quiescent state. I don’t think I really fully inhabited my body until I was at least ten and didn’t really take control until I was about thirteen. That’s when things really got interesting.
Up until then I just dipped in and out. My memories, aside from the usual childhood memories we all have, are like short films, or brief tableau of life as a toddler, or a schoolboy or whatever – moments when my old self awoke and paid attention to what was happening. The weirdest thing was getting to know myself as a child, who had, of course, been running around, eating, talking and generally being a child in my absence. Those moments when I gained consciousness (which seems a fair way to describe it) were seemingly random for the most part but they taught me a lot that I hadn’t known before. I was rarely, back then, able to influence events to any degree, which was probably just as well, but it gave me insights.
I think I’ve counted about thirty clear memories of those early years, but some of them run into each other and it’s hard to tell. What I didn’t realise was that when you are reborn, you don’t simply carry the old life around with you as you go, like an alternative reality. Mostly I suppose I wasn’t really aware of its existence at all. Children run, I guess, mostly on appetite, instinct and simple conditioning. They don’t think about the long-term consequences or the wider implications of what they do. They just act, and that’s how it was for me too, most of the time. The difference was that sometimes it was as if I’d suddenly woken up from a long and elaborate dream. I’d see something as if from another dimension – something someone did or a place where something happened would trigger a memory, or rather, something like a flash-back and I’d suddenly see it from the perspective of someone who’d been around for a very long time indeed and had had many experiences in the mean time. Moments like those were like staring into the most painfully exquisite antique snapshots, flooded in golden light, fragments of a life long lost, perfect in every detail, but then realising that it is you who is a relic of a lost life, and the things in the snapshot that are real and present. I would look around and say ‘Oh my God, I remember this’ or ‘Of course that’s how it was. I’d forgotten.’ Some days I couldn’t think of anything to do but wander about and look at all the things I hadn’t seen for decades and which I’d thought were gone forever. I wanted to see my old room, and my toys and the garden, and the road I took every day into town – the houses as they were then, and the cars and the clothes. And most of all I wanted to see Justine and Amelia, young and silly again. I wanted to be with them all the time and never lose them ever again.
The fresh, bright sensation inevitably faded after a while and things became mundane but I never entirely lost that deep sense of having come home after a lifetime away. I’d thought it was all long lost. And yet here it all was...

I spent my first five years on a farm. We didn’t own it. They just rented a cottage out to us. It was part of an estate and dad did some gardening for them. I think we’d been there for about five years before I was born and we left when I was five. I understand it was mostly dad’s idea – it gave him a huge garden to play with and the town was near enough for the girls to cycle in to school. I knew it was out somewhere near Steyning but never knew exactly where and I had absolutely no memories of it from before, so, when I woke up one morning and found myself in that tiny room with the Beatrix Potter wallpaper and my fluffy toy dog we called Woofer still clean and new (well, relatively clean and new) beside me in the yellow cot with the barred sides, I just sat and looked for what seemed like hours, watching it get light. It was blowing wet outside – miserable weather and there were no curtains. The wind was whistling in through the frame, and I remembered there had been no heating upstairs. I pulled the quilt up around me (my Noddy and Big Ears quilt) and began to cry quietly, to myself – not because I was unhappy – it was just all too much. I had this knowledge that I’d been grown-up, been married, died and gone on some weird journey, and then somehow come back here. I tried to block it out. I crawled down under the covers in my fluffy blue romper suit – the one with the bunny on it and looked at the day, grey and drizzling, and the dark trees across the fields. I remembered it all – how freezing and damp the house had been in winter and the pokey little kitchen with its parquet floor, with the wooden tiles coming up and floating around once when the twin-tub sprang a leak. I remembered the garden and dad’s veg patch and the other parts all overgrown with elder and raspberry.
Then I twisted around and looked out onto the landing. I could see the stairs but there were no lights on. I knew my infant self was waiting for Justine to come up and take him down for breakfast. Then I heard the jackdaws in the chimney and I could feel myself freeze and stop breathing, my eyes wide and my mouth open, waiting. I could feel my nappy heavy around my legs and I could smell what I’d filled it with. I didn’t know what jackdaws were back then and I’d forgotten how much they scared me when they were restless and scrabbled around in the boarded-up fireplace. I remember trying to calm my little self and explain to him that they’re just birds and they wouldn’t harm him, and I could feel his body relaxing and his breathing return to normal. I remember really wishing Justine would come up and sort me out a fresh nappy and I really wanted to see her too. It had been such a long time.

I tried to concentrate, to see how long I could stay. It was like the best nostalgia ever and also the worst, everything from such a long time ago real around me – bright and new – toys I’d long forgotten, bits of paper with my scribblings on, those tiny trousers with the patches on. By the window, in the alcove there’s a whole stack of cardboard boxes full of books and bedding, and on the shelf above, that sewing machine and needlework box of mum’s that I don’t think she ever used. I think it was a wedding present. It all looks so real and solid and I thought I’d lost it all forever.
The last thing I remember that time was Justine coming in in her school uniform (she would have been about fourteen) and saying ‘Good morning big boy’ and reaching over to lift me up out of the cot. Then she saw my tears and asked me what was wrong. It must have been strange for her now I come to think about it – children so rarely cry quietly to themselves do they, not unless they’re really unhappy. I remember her picking me up and holding me so tightly and saying ‘Don’t cry. Please don’t cry. Look you’re making your big sister cry too...’

I don’t remember anything more from that day but there’s another fragment from about the same time. It was morning again and I was down having breakfast in my highchair when I looked around and had that exquisite feeling of familiarity again. The radio was on quietly in the background, playing Flowers in the Rain I think it was, and the gas fire was hissing in the fireplace. The kitchen curtains were drawn but I could tell it was still quite dark outside and there was a bulb hanging from the ceiling with a stained plastic shade and everything was yellow. The walls were painted yellow and there was a yellowing map on the wall with animals on it, showing where they came from. The whole room as I remember it had a stain to it, and a coating of soot dust from the boiler. I looked at the yellow plastic dish of porridge on my tray and without thinking about it, picked up the spoon and began to eat. Needless to say Justine shrieked when she came in and saw what I was doing and tried to get me to do it again for dad when he came in from the garden. He just said it was time she got ready for school and took the coal scuttle through to the sitting room. She helped me with the rest of my porridge whilst bopping about to the music and singing to me. I think Amelia came in then but that was the end of that snippet.

There were other fragments, like the sitting room with that horrible green checked wall paper, and the enamel fire-place, and all of us sitting around in there with the radio on, or listening to some music. Dad didn’t approve of telly but he loved trad jazz and the old Rogers and Hammerstein musicals. My memories are of all of us in this shadowy, cosy space, with the fire going, and I’d be maybe playing behind the sofa or crawling around like a cat or a mouse – I used to pretend to be an animal a lot, I suppose because I saw a lot more animals around on the farm, so I’d rummage in corners or make a nest and curl up under the sideboard, or behind the curtains, or I’d prowl about upstairs.
It was quite a spooky, draughty little place our house, and probably quite old, and it was very obvious to me this time around how tiny it was for two adults, two teenagers and a toddler. Justine and Amelia had to share a room. Passages and corners were stacked with boxes of dad’s old railway magazines and 78s, his Giles annuals and the girl’s Rupert annuals. I think he just didn’t like throwing things away.
I’ve always found clutter and grime and dust rather comforting – the smell of damp plaster and mothballs and disintegrating paper, and sharing my home with spiders and woodlice and silverfish. It was a safe warm sort of habitat for me.
Alison asked me if there was a lot of friction between us. I said I didn’t remember any especially.
‘There was a bit of bickering I suppose. Mum was at work a lot and dad was down the shed mostly.’
‘Your sisters must have been very forgiving’ she says with some scepticism.
‘If you’d known my parents you’d know there’d be no point making a fuss.’
‘They were quite strict with you.’
‘Not exactly. You just knew it just wouldn’t have been worth complaining.’
‘Ok...’ she says, the expression on her face showing that she’s either surprised or not really convinced. It’s true though. We accepted things as they were more or less.
‘The more I think about it I think I really was a bit like the family pet. I didn’t even bother to get dressed a lot of the time and I was always eating off the floor or out of the bin.’
‘Didn’t they feed you properly?’
‘Oh yes, but it was just part of the game, foraging. Actually dad was quite a good cook – in a plain-English-fare kind of way.’
‘Well I suppose it built up your immune system.’
‘I very rarely got sick.’
‘Didn’t they play with you, any of them?’
‘My sisters did. I remember that. And I went out in the garden with dad – helped him bring in the potatoes I remember, and collecting the runner beans. Did you know they’re poisonous raw?’
‘So I understand.’
‘I ate loads of them…’
I watch her read over what she’s written. I’m enjoying the attention but can’t help worrying about what she’ll make of it. She looks troubled, quizzical – already concerned that it doesn’t quite add up. I feel like she’s building a case, but if so, then against whom?
She looks up abruptly. ‘What about other places – did you make trips away or anything?’
‘Not really. We couldn’t afford holidays. We visited relatives sometimes.’
‘Trips into town? Shopping for example, or to church or to the park?’
I tell her about a memory I have of dad cycling into Steyning with me in the child seat on the back. I remember him using his leather belts to strap me in really tight. Before that he’d have taken me in in this huge old pram we’d been given. I remember being wrapped up cosy in there with the hood up and the plastic cover over me and looking up at the leafless trees along the roadside and the ivy all over everything and spots of rain falling on my face and him in his cloth cap and plastic mac, smoking his pipe. He used to sing to me too – My Old Man’s a Dustman and Paddy McGintey’s Goat. Mum said the locals used to take the mick out of him something terrible. Men weren’t seen with prams in those days but, to his credit, he didn’t care. He used to go to the football, and he went to the pub to play darts. I think he had friends he went fishing with. It’s strange though, I hardly remember anyone else coming to that house. I suppose that doesn’t mean they never came. Maybe I just don’t remember.
It’s also funny how all my memories of that place are dark and wintry, and being out in the rain. And yet it always seems cosy and warm, just the four of us – me, Justine, Amelia and dad, in that pokey little house with the radio on, and the smell of bacon and the sound of the lambs in the next field. Funny, I don’t remember mum being there at all.