Mary smiled at the man, who had leaned against the doorjamb as though his world were about to end.
“No, we’re not.” She smiled sweetly to reassure him. “We’re looking for someone, actually. Tall bloke, dresses in black.” She hesitated. “Might be carrying a scythe.”
The glazed eyes stared at her and for a moment she thought he might just slide to the floor. His mouth twitched, and then he turned and yelled.
“Mort! It’s for you.” Mort? There was a response they couldn’t hear, but it was clearly positive, because the man pulled the door open as if to beckon them in. “Second left.” He said. “Is Garth coming?”
Having no comment to make on that they edged past him into a hallway. The first door on the left was a kitchen, or at least might once have been but now appeared to be a repository for the world’s stock of filthy crockery, or a Tracey Emin original, ‘All the people I’ve eaten with’. They heard the front door close behind them as they looked into the second room on the left, of which the door was wide open.
‘Mort’, clad in his long black cloak, was standing in the middle of an untidy room, a mattress on the floor in the corner. His parents named him Malcolm, but he didn’t think that carried the gravitas his sometime occupation required. He was standing on one leg, arms outstretched, mimicking a figure on a small TV in the corner. He held the pose and then the figure said “And relax.” The Reaper returned his foot to the floor, rotated his head in a loosening movement and breathed deeply. At last, he turned to face them.
“Ah.” He said.
Having seen the state of the kitchen, they refused the offer of a cup of tea, and the Reaper pulled out a couple of orange crates for them to perch on. His scythe was leaning against the wall in the corner, as if pointing to a wall on which were a series of dramatic photos showing mountains, rivers, and arctic landscapes with large type legends proclaiming things such as ‘COMMITMENT’; ‘IMAGINATION’; ‘HOPE’. Not strictly the kind of calls to action one would normally associate with Death.
After his initial discomfort, he seemed almost to welcome the presence of his guests from a less prosaic life.
“Yeah,” he said, breezily, “ it’s all going quite well actually. I’m off the booze.”
“What’s that?” asked Marcel, pointing at a row of half empty bottles of spirits.
“Never mix them, now” said the cowled figure, convinced that this justified the use of the word ‘off’. “Got a job.”
“A job?” Mary was incredulous.
“Yep. Call centre. Selling health insurance. Employee of the month in August. Mind you, a lot of people were on holiday.”
She stared at the black clad figure, his cowl throwing a permanent shadow on his features.
“Doesn’t anyone comment on your, er, clothing?”
“Christ no. You haven’t been in London much, have you? There are areas where half the people dress like this, although admittedly most of them are a lot shorter. I think most people just think I’m a tall muslim woman. With a deep voice.”
“What about reaping?”
“Don’t do a lot, to tell the truth. Have to do six a year to keep my licence, so it’s worth doing that. Always good to have a trade to fall back on.”
“And the flatmate?”
“Mungo? He’s off his tits most of the time. He sees much worse things than me, in his head.”
Although Mary was fascinated, she could feel Marcel’s patience beginning to wane, and that was never good news. For her, the idea was quite mind-blowing that this kind of thing may have been going on while she was alive. People- things- like the Reaper might have been wandering around Dulwich or calling her up to tell her she had won a holiday. She was thinking particularly of a date with a bloke called Idwal who had yelled “Not the magma!” at the moment of orgasm. She then didn’t hear from him for a week, and when she went to his flat he didn’t answer. Peering through the letterbox, she swore she could see a dark shadow on the wall of someone holding up their hands in horror, and on the floor a small pile of fine black dust. Marcel pulled her back from the memory.
“All very nice, but we have a job for you.” He had that very firm voice on.
Mort wandered over to a small desk and fingered through some papers in a desultory manner.
“I don’t recall anything coming through. If I get something I usually try to do it quick, so it doesn’t interfere with my shifts.” Death was arriving peremptorily so that others could have the opportunity to insure against it.
“This is a private job.”
“Ah! Well, I don’t usually-“
“It’s ok.” Mary butted in. “It’s not a … reaping. We just need you to find someone and track them for us.”
The Reaper jerked his shoulders back and stood silently for a few moments. Again, Mary could sense the onset of violence from her companion. The Reaper broke the silence, possibly just in time.
“That’s highly irregular.”
Marcel leapt to his feet and pushed the cowled figure against the wall, thrust his face up against the shadowy area where the face of death should be.
“Irregular, Mortie, is being the harbinger of doom and living in a dope squat, getting a regular job, and working out to a yoga video. You’re a disgrace to your profession.”
“My profession is a bit of a disgrace, if we’re honest.” Said the Reaper apologetically. Marcel let him go. He was clearly furious, but knew he had no real sanction. He looked like the parent of a teenager. The cowled figure pulled three plastic cups from a stack in the corner (‘saves on the washing up’ – like there was any going on) and without asking filled them halfway with whisky. He handed one each to Mary and Marcel. She looked at him questioningly, that ‘what kind of drink is this to give a woman’ look.
“It’s the drink of detectives.” He said. “You watch anything. When they open the filing cabinet, when they want to discipline anyone, when they get home after a hard day. Whisky. Detective food. Cheers.” He raised the cup and took a sip.
“So, who are we detecting?” he said.
Seventeen
An upside of the unforeseen influx of people to the vicinity of the football pitch was a corresponding increase in the number of available footballs. It became apparent as word spread of the event, and interested parties made their way through the hinterland, that to have the demeanour of the crowds dependent upon the longevity of a single orb could well have been a very risky business.
For Ron, it also afforded the opportunity to indulge in his most-loved hobby, petty officialdom. The afterworld was a place with no rules or order except what those present chose to impose upon themselves, but that was not generally a problem, because there was very little to organise. The Afterworld Cup was proving itself to be an event which had created its’ own momentum and its’ own demand for control. This was a demand that was crying out for a small nylon-clad Englishman with a steering wheel in his chest, and as luck would have it, there was one present.
It has to be said that none of those in attendance when the Eureka moment of running a tournament had occurred had taken into account the level of interest such a concept would create, which was a function of the unbelievable levels of boredom caused by the interminable waiting. Jenkin’s Afternet advert had caused a movement of souls on an unprecedented scale. It attracted those who really fancied a game of football, those who didn’t know what football was but were intrigued to find out, and even those who just saw a bunch of others moving in a certain direction and just decided to join the line.
Ron set up a reception desk, where a queue of applicants snaked back towards the woods, although a good many of its members had no idea what they might be queuing for. At the head of the queue, arrivals who had actually travelled for a game of football were quizzed as to their nationality and then sent to whichever area their compatriots were occupying. Many more turned out simply to be there because they thought something was happening, and meandered off to mix with the ever-increasing crowds. It
had to be made clear that team formation and selection was then entirely for them to discuss and decide amongst themselves: Ron may have liked a fix of organisation, but even he didn’t want to inflict a team selection policy on a mish-mash of Sumatrans from six different centuries.
The area surrounding the pitch became a kind of United Nations through the ages; unfortunately highlighting the games time plays with the idea of nationality.
The Visigoths, for example, connected themselves with the German group, taking exception when a twentieth century historian pointed out that they were actually Balkan and should probably go and sit with the Romanians. The same historian, a slight bespectacled man with a touching faith in the mightiness of the pen over the sword, also tried to convince a family from late 19th century Schleswig-Holstein that they were really Danes. Even his impartiality could well have been called into question, however, as he was caught attempting to lure across a couple of Alsatian youths from the French camp because they looked quite well-nourished.
In the American gathering, there was a very early vote to disallow an attempt to form a separate team by a small core of Confederate soldiers killed at Fort Sumter in 1861. It didn’t really help the putative team to keep them in the Union, since the only one of them with both legs had lost his eyesight, but it was the principle that was important.
Ron had recruited the Pennystone girls to provide the football input while he made an ever-increasing number of lists, and they toured the national groupings to establish their progress in forming their teams. Stacie was the only one not helping, since she was trying to gain a place to play in the Afterworld Cup for the US of A. In the end Ron closed the reception desk because firstly almost everyone turning up now was just bored or lost, and secondly people started to see it as some kind of oracle for questions about eternity, and although Ron had opinions he wasn’t sure that everyone would see them as helpful.
He was sitting at the top of a hill overlooking the pitch with Ethel, Millie, and the Brazilian boy, whom they had appointed as referee, although he had made a strong case to be commentator. They were amazed at the scene below them and at the ingenuity of the thronging crowd. There were thousands of them there now, and a steady hubbub rose from the fields and hills. Some of the national areas had fashioned flags from who knows what, some teams were practising, others running around in some attempt to gain after-death fitness. There was smoke from fires, the smell of cooking, and everywhere a teeming mass of movement.
They had come up here just to have a break and think. The idea that they would get a few people dropping around for a bit of a kick-about had very quickly been consigned to the bin. It had become a Festival that happened to be close to a football tournament.
“This is, like, awesome. Gahd! All these people.” Millie leaned back on her hands, her legs stretched out in front of her. “I wish Jenk was here to see this.”
Ethel glanced at her. She was concerned about Jenkin’s absence, but didn’t really want to betray that to the young American girl.
At the foot of the hill upon which they sat, two men emerged from the crowd and began to slowly make their way up the hill, their arms filled with something bulky.
“I hope it works.” Said Ron. “God knows what this lot will do if it’s a failure.”
“Most of them don’t even know what it’s supposed to look like, love,” said Ethel, “but anyway I’m sure you’ve got it all organised.”
He did. Preliminary rounds, short games to make sure that everyone who had bothered to form a team got some action, were about to begin. He hoped that would sort the chaff from any wheat that had by amazing coincidence blown to this field.
The two men drew closer. It was still impossible to tell what they were carrying in front of them, but the exertion of getting it up the hill was beginning to tell and their progress was becoming slower and more haphazard.
They watched in silence as the men approached and then stood to greet them.
“Hello. That’s quite a climb, isn’t it?” Ethel looked down at the perspiring pair.
“You’re telling me.” Said one of the men in a broad Scottish accent.
“I’m Mac.” Said the other. “And this is Dougie. We were fishermen. We drowned.”
“Oo, so did I!” exclaimed Millie. “Horrible isn’t it?”
“Could be worse. We met some fire victims and that’s not something you want to have to live with for years.”
There was an awkward silence as they perused Ron’s steering wheel.
“Anyway.” Dougie had got his breath back from the climb. “We thought you could probably do with these. We’ve been carrying them around for ages, don’t really know why.” The pair thrust out their arms with their burden.
“What are they?” asked Ron.
The two Scots looked at him as though he were mad.
“Nets.” Said Mac. “For the footba’ goals. That’s how we drowned. When the boat went down we were caught up in these.”
“Like a pair o’ mackerel.” Added Dougie, for context.
“Oh wow! Ron, that’s amazing! We can have, like, real goals now.” The Scotsmen looked pleased at Millie’s recognition of their contribution.
“That’s really nice of you, Dougie, Mac.” Ethel gave them her grateful look. “Are you sure you don’t need them?”
“We’ll no be doin’ much fishin’ here, eh?” Mac almost looked sad. “Oh. Another thing.” He rummaged in his pocket, and after a moment pulled a long red plastic whistle.
“It’s to attract attention when you’re in the water. Doesn’t work when you’re under it.”
The Brazilian boy leapt to his feet with a cry and took the whistle, giving a long toot, pointing to the floor. “Offside!” he yelled.
“Aye,” said Mac wearily. “Well that’ll be a cause for debate, no doot.”
It was in the early afternoon of a cool day that it began, the sun occasionally escaping from a pall of clouds to light the field, fishing nets strung from the goalposts and pinned to the floor with large rocks. All around, thousands of late citizens of the world sat quietly watching the scene before them unfold.
Guyana had lost the toss and would have to play without shirts, their ebony chests exposed above motley trouserwear. Mali’s selection policy had been based entirely on height, since only one of their twenty entrants had ever played football before, and that was with an orange.
The two teams lined up roughly in the form of football teams, at least to the extent of having someone in the newly-netted goals, and the slight Brazilian boy marched purposefully to the middle of the pitch and placed the ball somewhere around the centre spot. Two huge Guyanans stood behind it and stared at it as if it might explode at any moment. The boy looked for a moment at the silent crowd, serried as though at The Maracana, and putting the whistle to his lips, blew for the start of the Afterworld Cup.
There was an earth-shattering roar and one of the Guyanans hoofed the ball forward whereupon twenty assorted dead people chased it. Like a swarm they pursued it for twenty minutes at the end of which Mali qualified for the next round by virtue of the ball being thrown into his own net by the Guyanan goalkeeper who had been otherwise unemployed. It had begun.
What had also kicked off was the activity of those unpleasant souls brought together by Jenkin’s Fiends Reunited. The meeting of the Gold group had been remarkably civilised, given the background of the attendees. It would have been entirely logical to expect that conflict would inevitably arise when a group of people who had enjoyed absolute power were brought together to establish a common purpose, but actually they co-operated remarkably well. Perhaps death had somehow assuaged their thirst for dominance, or maybe they were all playing a waiting game, but the outcome was a plan, of sorts.
The source of their desire to work together may well have been their ability to identify with the situation in which Pol Pot had found himself. In life, utterly dominant, utterly ruthless, enjoying the privileges of wealth while his people starved. It
was like a Dictator Template. In death, he was asking guest whether they wanted coconut or jasmine rice, thanking them for their desultory tip and hoping they had a nice day.
The difference, in the main, was fear, which seems somewhat counter-intuitive, given that he had so little of it when he was alive and you would have thought the stakes were higher. Fear, though, can take many forms. In the afterlife, he could still have felt pain. Should anyone have chosen to inflict upon him some of the tender loving care his compatriots were subjected to under his command, he would certainly have had cause for concern. As troubling, perhaps, was the fear of discovery, of retribution, of having to look into the eyes of one whose suffering he had caused, of being forced to face his own inhumanity.
Most tyrants, on arrival in the afterlife, were simply relieved that they hadn’t been whisked to the eternal torment they merited. Once this initial relief was over, they mainly became aware that some of their victims were quite possibly in the vicinity, and they sought anonymity. This was why Fiends Reunited was such a boon to these poor, benighted leaders fallen upon hard times. It gave them safety in numbers, and also the thing despots probably need most; loyal, violent, venal and often stupid followers who will implement the crackpot policies they design.
Of course the blind devotion of a downtrodden, terrified, hysterically subservient and subjugated population also helped, and it was this that each sought to recreate. There’s no fun in being an amoral brute if you aren’t oppressing anyone.
Given that the afterworld is infinite, bringing together enough people to conveniently suppress was a difficult task for a self-respecting dictator. As luck would have it, at the same time as The Afternet enabled the platform for the despots to come together, it simultaneously was publicising a muster point for thousands of its population. When the Guyanan punted the ball forward he was watched by over a hundred thousand souls, and as many more were in transit towards the event for no better reason than that it was something to do. It was still small beer by the despots’ previous standards but it was a start.
The Complete Afternet: All 3 Volumes In One Place (The Afternet) Page 46
