Having asked for Neasden Ecumenical Cemetery, The Reaper settled into the back seat, ready to plan the final details of the execution of his first execution. The driver had other ideas.
“Nice gear mate if you don’t mind me saying so…” the disembodied voice gave the Reaper a start and he looked worriedly at the ceiling, as though this were an unexpected recall. He finally took in that the driver was holding his head in a peculiar pose which enabled him to see forwards but talk out of the corner of his mouth as if to the passenger.
“I ‘ad that Ozzy Osbourne in the back of my cab once. And Marilyn Monsoon. Not at the same time of course. You’ve gone for that look, encher? You’re not from round ‘ere, are yer?”
The Reaper, who had thought that he had slipped in under the radar, was a little hurt.
“What makes you think that?”
“Well, it was merged with Willesden last year. The cemetery I mean, so now it’s the Neasden and Willesden…” and so it went on.
In ‘The Englishman’s Castle’, a theme pub whose theme appeared to be ‘lowlife’, the attendees of an office party, having gone out to lunch and forgotten to return, watched a girl in pink hot pants and a silver lycra boob tube. She was crucifying ‘Love Lifts Us Up Where We Belong’ on the stage as others variously teetered around with trays of drinks, drank trays of drinks, or demanded that someone procure trays of drinks. A tall dark haired girl with honey skin was leaning against the bar, to some extent because she wasn’t sure she would remain standing if she didn’t. In front of her, a mid-twenty something man in a nylon suit, purple tie with hilarious Bart Simpson motif and a knot the size of his neck was regaling her with the story of the time he met Prince Harry’s nanny’s brother’s butcher, which, you would have guessed from the tone, almost put him in line to the throne.
She was drunk. First person in her school to get straight A Stars at A-Level, and in her family to go to university. First in her year at Oxford. A First, magna cum laude. First choice for jobs with Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Sun, rejected because she didn’t want to go to America, just yet. So instead of sipping a tequila sunrise in Silicon Valley she was here in The Castle, outside the best part of two bottles of Hungarian Gewürztraminer, listening to this visible coverer-up of early onset male pattern baldness drivelling about the periphery of the Royal universe. And thinking that despite his bad dress sense, the spectacular boil on the side of his neck, and the memory of him decimating for an hour The Castle’s ‘All you can eat’ vindaloo lunch, she might sleep with him. Could possibly be the first there, too.
London had made her realise very quickly that attractiveness, youth, and intelligence did not necessarily mean the avoidance of penury, loneliness, and the stultifying tedium of a job that seemed to have promised so much more. The specimen standing in front of her now, for example, could not begin to know as much about the intricacies of sophisticated IT systems and networks as she, and yet he too spent hours on the ‘phone to people suggesting that they turn it off and turn it back on again. In fact that could well have been the limit of his knowledge. But capability and advancement, like prettiness and successful relationships, were not necessarily in any way related. And drink, after all, makes everyone set different standards. He neither turned her on nor turned her off, which at the time just about added up to enough.
When they lurched from the doors and fought their way through the forest of smokers at the door, she turned briefly to him, the rush of air increasing her unsteadiness. Still, from somewhere deep in her DNA she retrieved the coquette program which she now began to run, expressed with a titter.
“Thanks for offering to walk me home. Here I am, modern girl, highly qualified, good career, live on my own in the dangerous city, and yet-” behind her the man stumbled, steadied himself on a smoker, belched liquidly, and shambled after her, “I have to admit the thought of walking alone through the cemetery, even early in the evening, gives me the shivers. Are you really a Baronet?” A rhetorical question, but the walk may go quicker listening to his extemporised confirmation. Waiting to cross the road, she turned to wait for him.
Now bent double, he was hacking horribly, then pulled himself back up, puce-faced, waved her to go ahead, and followed a couple of paces behind as she crossed the road. The black cab speeding along (driver fulminating over his shoulder about the prohibitive price of Wagyu beef), screeched to a halt inches from the girl, a white faced figure propelled headlong into the reinforced glass behind the driver, his compressed cheek resembling a pool of spilt milk.
“Tart!” the driver hung his angry face out of the window to hurl the insult, was rewarded with a single upright finger. The girl wandered out of the roadway, followed as if tied with elastic by a dishevelled balding young man who looked as if he were about to erupt. The cab pulled slowly away, driver shaking his head, continued to the end of the road, and turned around the edge of the cemetery.
The couple entered the cemetery through the side gate; despite the girl’s earlier protestation, in the pale evening sunlight it was by no means daunting, the trimmed verges marking the edges of paths and roads, flowers brightly adorning many of the graves.
“Jenny-” the man held up a hand as they walked across the grass between a group of newer stones.
“Mary”
“Whatever. I’m feeling a bit dodgy. Must have been something off in that ruby.”
“Let’s just stop a minute then. Take some deep breaths.”
He leaned backwards against a large marble construction with an angel ascendant as she watched, swaying slightly. Seeing some movement out of the corner of her eye, she turned and gently supported herself on a cherub, watching the distant figure of a runner check his watch as he entered the cemetery and jog purposefully onwards.
The taxi driver was in full flow. “-think they can bloody walk anywhere. Road’s mine, innit? I don’t go driving on the pavement, do I?”
The Reaper, making a mental note that not all purgatories existed outside life, told the driver to stop, gathered the tools of his trade and stepped from the cab. The tall, dramatic stone arch of the newly merged cemetery rose behind him, a long line of cars crawled by on the other side of the cab.
“Nine quid mate.” The Reaper handed over the money. The cabbie, hand remaining extended, looked at the exact payment in his palm and back to the white face.
“What about a tip?” The Reaper looked back and then into the air as though deep in thought.
“Well, I really shouldn’t, but I’d watch out for the next set of lights if I were you.” He turned and strode towards the arch, cloak extending dramatically behind him.
“Tosser!” the cabbie mouthed at the departing figure. “Ozzy Osbourne gave me a tenner. And an autograph!” Red-faced, he thumped the cab into ‘Drive’ and, without bothering to check the traffic, screeched from the kerb.
The Reaper walked into the cemetery, which in the warm evening air fluttered with pollen and flying insects, the well-kept lawns peppered with monuments and stones, some thrown askew by time, others standing tall. He could see the odd person around the grounds, tending graves, walking along the pathways, two men in the distance cutting back an overgrown hedge. He couldn’t see, but sensed the presence of, the one with whom he was destined to meet, and with an air of anticipation set off down the main road. Within a minute he heard behind him the sound of crunching metal and shattering glass, followed by the persistent wail of a car horn. He gave himself a knowing smile.
The inebriated man continued to walk a couple of steps in the wake of Mary’s progress, feeling as though the sag bhaji he’d lumped on top of the last helping of prawn phal was about to burst from the top of his head, taking his eyes with it. Something inside, though, a primal pheromone perhaps, spurred him on as he lurched between the memorials, grey loafers brushing through the grass. She turned to him, said something with a smile. He didn’t really hear the words, but gave what he thought might be a winning look, and avoided speaking because he didn’t want to ope
n up any easy exit for the intestine-bound mixture of slop and alcohol for which he had paid the best part of twenty five quid.
Mary, taking the pained grimace as a sign that he was happy to continue towards her home, walked lightly onwards; she thought about skipping a little but then remembered the function of the location, that she was supposed to be nervous about being there, and lastly that the simple act of walking was taking on an Olympian gymnastic degree of difficulty. She concentrated instead on making her way over the lawn to the path leading in the direction of her flat.
Marchant pounded the pavement in the lowering sunlight. This was his favourite part of the run; in the summer he marked the sunlight knowing that after the cemetery he would be halfway through the exercise and turn back towards the office, arriving in time to make sure that no-one had knocked off early and shuffled back to the hovels his wages allowed. He invariably then watched, cooling down by the window as they departed their illegal work to spend their illegal money on food and drink before reaching their illegal homes. The exhilaration produced by the endorphins his running generated was matched by the satisfaction in the profits generated by his callous manipulation of the desperate migration of needy people.
The cemetery had a cruciform motif, two roadways running at right angles to each other quartered the land, providing access for corteges, with smaller footpaths running from the main roadways for mourners and visitors to walk to their destination. Marchant, having entered by one of the four main gates, had taken an immediate left to follow a path round the perimeter and then joined the crossway, at which point he turned right to make a full crossing of the burial ground. As he did so, way ahead of him he saw a lofty figure walking purposefully in his direction, apparently clad all in black, and with either very long black hair or a hoodie. Marchant, soaked and hot, snickered at the inappropriate garb. As they converged, he was able to discern that in fact the other was wearing a floor length black cloak, hood around his head, and in his hand he was carrying what looked from a distance like a long handled scythe. The cemetery was clearly now employing monks with mediaeval gardening equipment to maintain the pristine appearance of the gravesides.
The man, his mouth now clamped tight, farted with a noisy gurgle. Mary heard the noise above the hum of traffic and a wailing car horn, but couldn’t place its origin. She turned to look at him, and had to admit to herself that, second thoughts having been pushed aside some time earlier, third and even fourth began to crowd into her alcohol-befuddled head. He was almost projectile sweating, lurching and meandering forwards with a Night of The Living Dead gait, and looked at her with a glassy eyed stare which suggested he may have even forgotten who she was. Again. Worse, a fetid stink was wafting through the air. A tinge of self-respect invaded her thoughts. ‘I need to get out of this’ she thought, ‘or I am going to hate my life more than I already do.
“Come on,” she said brightly, striking up a pace which was difficult in her state but which she thought might finish him off, “not far now.”
He looked up, closing one eye to work his way through the kaleidoscope which had inveigled his vision, saw the very pleasant behind of Jimmy, Jenga, Jemma or whatever she might be called, and struck off to follow. One of the advantages of his walking prior to this moment, which had been carried out in a curious head-down position due to the fact that the upper half of his body suddenly seemed to be made out of lead, was that he could actually see what lay ahead for his feet. Having looked up to find out what this woman could possibly want- and whilst he was at it try to remember who she was and why he was following her- this safety mechanism was inadvertently paused, and within a dozen paces his foot clubbed a piece of granite which had sheared from the gravestone of a historical local costermonger. The occupant of the grave died in the late 1800s from, delicious irony, alcoholic poisoning caused by a distillate of rancid cabbages. Double irony, he was still wandering around the waiting areas of the Afterlife (the cause of events to come in the cemetery) in the processing queue.
The state of Mary’s man, from a more modern distillate of hops, largely, meant that his body had no way of counteracting the unexpected deviation from his shambolic progress, and he keeled spectacularly sideways. Luckily his fall was broken by a 3 metre by 2 metre hole in the ground prepared that very morning for the mortal remains of an old lady who had not listened to the dire warnings about cold cuts of meat purchased from Scottish butchers. He groaned, looked up at the rectangle of blue sky above the grave and decided to wait a minute to see whether the hallucination of being interred would pass.
Mary walked on, oblivious, swinging her handbag apparently with good cheer but actually as a surreptitious aid to balance, occasionally, and with ever less conviction trilling, “Nearly there.”
The cloaked man gave no indication of moving from the roadway, but Justin knew from experience that there was enough room to pass a row of black limousines, let alone a Goth gardener, so was unconcerned by the view of him a couple of hundred metres away. A moment later he was a touch ruffled by the figure now leaning against a tombstone no more than ten metres distant, but in the nature of his vanity put it down to his increasing fitness and speed rather than anything not centred on him.
“STOP!” The stentorian voice caused Justin to think where he had heard it before. He tended to associate deep voices with some friends of his who hit people for a living. For this reason the single word made him stop (although he continued to jog on the spot) in case it was one of those types, and he made a mental note to call some of them if this turned out nasty.
“What are you doing?” the tall white-faced figure looked into Justin’s eyes disconcertingly.
Justin allowed himself a cocky glance down to where his feet were tapping a standing run on the roadway.
“Jogging, mate. You should try it, though I would advise getting rid of the batman cape. Keeps you fit, longer life and all that.”
“Alas, not in your case Mr Marchant. You must understand that this is not your appointed time but there is a pressing need for you on another plane. It is a greater good.”
“Is it the Big Issue? Where’s your skanky dog?” Justin made to run past the figure, but as he did so, the Reaper reached under his cloak and pulled out a large aerosol canister upon which was a picture of a man keeling over and the legend ‘KILLIT BANG’. He sprayed it into the face of the unsuspecting runner, who collapsed instantaneously to the floor. Even above the continued clamour of the trapped car horn you could have heard the sudden whoosh and felt the air move upwards in the instant of his death.
“Oo, hallo!”
The Reaper turned to the source of the words. A young girl, smiling at him and, at least so it appeared, swaying slightly. Oh great, he thought, first job and I’m spotted. The girl looked from The Reaper to the supine figure in shorts, vest and headband. A look of enlightenment came over her face.
“Party! Fancy Dress. Yours is very good. He hasn’t gone to much trouble, though. Apart from the sweat, which adds a touch of realism.”
“Yes. Er…well, must be going.” The Reaper turned to leave.
“Can I come? Me and …” she turned and for the first time noticed that no-one was behind her, the man, unbeknownst, occupying a subterranean bed. “Well, just me. Even better.”
The Reaper ignored the girl and began to walk away, but sensing her chance to make sure that her unwanted paramour would not re-emerge, she tugged at his sleeve. Startled at the touch, the Reaper whirled around, the aerosol slipping from his grasp. He watched as, as if in slow motion, the can twirled through the air unnoticed by the girl, who was looking at him with earnest pleading. It fell to the ground and landed on its nozzle. The fine spray fluttered unerringly into her face, and eyes still pinned to him but no longer seeing, she crumpled to the floor. The car horn stopped, replaced with the sound of sirens, the air trembled, the Reaper sighed.
“Bollocks”, he said, and abruptly disappeared.
CHAPTER 7
To all intents and
purposes it could have been a public planning meeting over a Slough bypass, or more likely a night on the stump for those seeking the approval of bye-election constituents. The candidates had adopted their positions on a large flat slab of rock at the top of a small incline, a pair of plane trees standing sentinel on either side slightly uphill of them.
Wing Commander Staveley-Down (Conservative) stood tall in his threadbare but nonetheless immaculately presented Royal Air Force uniform. To his right sat Ron (Slightly Liberal), moistening nicely as the sun took its toll on his selection of man-made fabrics, whilst to the left the huge form of Guntrick (International Socialist) lounged with the confident ease of one comfortable in his representation of physical power. Disconcertingly, the disconnected head of Lucius (Monster Raving Looney Free Rome Now) was also on the platform, gazing haplessly out upon the audience, where his body was lodged comfortably between two Visigoths who were much less discomfited by the ability of Lucius’ body to wander around of its own accord than his head was to observe its apparent lack of desire to rejoin with it.
The Visigoths sat in rapt attention as Staveley-Down spoke, Ethel sitting much more comfortably amongst them than one might have imagined for a housewife from Esher surrounded by volatile habitual rapists. She beamed with pride at Ron’s presence on the ‘stage’ before them. Unremarked by Guntrick’s tribe were a motley of interlopers who had been passing and seem something which may just be more interesting than the endless occupations in which they were engaged. The two women perpetually wet from the ducking stools which had seen them off soon lost interest when they realised that there were no towels about to be proffered, and hastened off down the hill to continue their search. A New York bricklayer whose over-confidence whilst working on the construction of the 45th floor of the Empire State Building had led to his current shattered state (the last thing he remembered, as he keeled over backwards after proving to himself that he could stand on one leg hundreds of feet above the ground was the voice of his workmate saying ‘Anyone seen Billy?’). He sat at the back, gently suppurating and trying to avoid nicking anyone with the protruding splinters of his various bones. The black-clad gentleman with the square cut beard, which itself drew admiring glances from the nearest Visigoths, stove pipe hat not disguising the disfiguring gunshot wound, stood at the rear, ramrod straight, and watched with clear interest.
The Complete Afternet: All 3 Volumes In One Place (The Afternet) Page 7
