Twenty Five Million Ghosts

by Steve Aitchsmith

  After leaving my mother I made my way down to the ground floor. As I walked along the corridors they changed from smooth modern pastel shades on plaster board to old solid bare brick visible behind a not very nice cream and mauve paint job with each colour delineating the lower and upper halves of the wall. Maybe somebody felt that we slow witted visitors couldn’t tell up from down. Thus, they identified them for us using the cheapest paint they could find. That old hospital ugliness is common in such buildings, what’s wrong with a nice apple white?

  I eventually reached the hospice chapel. A small blue robed statue of the Virgin guarded the double wooden doors. Beneath it was a small typed note disclaiming denominism and declaring a multifaith intention. I suppose Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs etc. could just ignore the suggestion of parthenogenesis if they chose to. Protestants, of course, may just decide it’s symbolic and not literal. These are just the kind of things for which people have killed each other in the past, and some still do today. If there is a God, He (Hem?) must be pulling out His or Hem divine hair at the human capacity for conflict over nonsense.

  The chapel was empty and I sat at the back. I was not praying, I’m not a regular begging kneeler but nor do I entirely dismiss it. I was just using the relaxing quiet to think about whatever. Just taking it easy, really, seizing the opportunity to recharge my emotional batteries for the journey home. There was a simple wooden desk at the front and no crucifix or other indication of a specific religion. The room still managed to exude that calming presence of the sublime, a numinous ambience common in many places of worship. It was a good place to just rebuild one’s coping strength and carry on.

  “Oh, shit,” exclaimed a soft Irish accent as a notebook was dropped entering the chapel. Bending to recover it was a short stocky man, five six at most but with powerful looking arms and shoulders. He was carrying a pile of files from which the notebook had fallen. The gold crucifix on a chain around his neck dangled free as he stooped. He wiped the notebook on his black shirt, which was not ironed and had a slightly off white dog collar. He hurried past me without noticing.

  “Very priest like, Dave,” I said.

  “Hey, hi Steve. How you? Been up to your mum yet?”

  “Yeah, just come down. Just needed to sit for a while.”

  “Coffee?”

  I accepted the offer. He made decent coffee in a pod machine kept in his small back office and I could do with the caffeine support. “I don’t think she’s got long now. She’s talking about things she has never spoken about before. She’s looking for some reassurance that death’s not the end but she’s struggling to convince herself.”

  “We all do, Steve. At the end we’re all looking for some evidence that this fleeting moment of life filled with heartache and weeping makes some kind of sense, that it serves some purpose. She’ll go gently when the time comes. I promise there’ll be no pain, no suffering. Our doctors are too good for that; I give you my absolute word.” He looked earnest, compassionate, worried.

  “I know,” I told him. “Good coffee, thanks. My dad will be a pain in the arse when it happens. He’ll be up here causing Jeez knows what ruckus. I’ll try to get him under control.”

  “No, no, no,” Dave laughed. “I can deal with him. He’s passionate and he loves her so much. He will need to crash around and shout and curse. It’s fine, I’ll stay with him and he can take it out on me. If he hits me I’ll pretend it hurt. Is he here now?”

  I laughed. “No, he’ll be up later. He won’t hit you but he will be loud and aggressive. It’s just his way. He’ll curse the God he doesn’t believe in and then tell you you’re wasting your life doing what you do. I apologise in advance.”

  “My shoulders are broad.” They were, quite literally but that’s not what he meant. “So are God’s, so don’t worry about that.”

  “I wasn’t,” I said. “Dad will cope. It will be hard for him, though.”

  Dave’s serious face took over. “We’re never truly gone, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know. In the memories of those who knew you and all that.”

  “Sloppy.” That was his way of telling me off for not thinking clearly. He had to do it a lot. “Everything we do affects somebody else. A mother sings her child a song. Hem goes on to sing it to hem kids and they to theirs. It’s in the collective memory and that influence lasts forever. We make somebody happy or sad and they react to somebody else from that position and it’s in the collective again. Big things and small things. We are never gone because what we do, what we are, goes on forever.”

  “I know,” I grinned. “I beg forgiveness for my lack of academic care in what I say.”

  He punched me lightly in the arm, at least he thought it was light. Those great big scar knuckled thumpers almost knocked me off the chair. “Yowl, that hurt.”

  “Weakling. I know you, you’ve been in the middle of it in the past. Tough up, you wimp.”

  I pretended to wallop him in the jaw and we both grinned. “Dave, it always helps to talk with you, thanks.” I don’t know why but I told him how I felt every time I passed the children’s hospice complex. The anger and the rage at the unfairness.

  He handed me a tissue, I hadn’t realised that my eyes were filling up. He looked more earnest now.

  “That even challenges my faith, Steve. There are all sorts of theological arguments to reconcile it with a caring God but I know what you mean. I share it sometimes. Theolectic explanations just seem like word play in the face of such apparent injustice. Sins of the first created man and woman? That’s fine in a debate setting but it sounds like bollocks when faced with the reality of a dying six year old. I can’t answer that one, I’m afraid. I just share the anger and the discomfort and the hope. It’s even worse if you consider the lost possibilities. Not just the poor kids dying now but all pointless deaths.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Take the wars, just the last two world wars, not even all of them that went before. Did you know that you Brits have invaded over one hundred and seventy countries in your time?”

  “I don’t know if it’s that many,” for some reason feeling defensive. “It wasn’t me, you know.”

  Dave laughed at me. “I wasn’t blaming you personally. Anyway, the point is that each time, in war, young men die. Mainly young men but lots of women and kids as well. Young people who will not then go on to have children who will have children who will have children, see?”

  “Sort of,” I said.

  “Probably not. Look, just taking British deaths in the last two big wars, and based on the average birth rate for each generation, that’s a cumulative total of over twenty five million people who don’t exist either because they were killed or never born. Twenty five million missing in this country alone. Europe wide it’s over half a billion. Worldwide, God alone knows. There are more Jewish people in New York today than in the whole of Poland yet before the war there were millions of Polish Jews. If we assume three million and use roughly the same calculation for our own missing, that’s about fortyish million who should have existed. In that at least the Nazis were successful. The world is different because of all of those deaths and non-lives. Just think about all of the missing people you should be seeing. They are all ghosts now, dead and improperly unborn alike. Don’t look for the human idea of fairness, my friend, it isn’t there. That’s the price we pay for war. That’s the price the kids upstairs are paying for being alive. That’s the shocking price paid by those who should have been here but aren’t.” He looked angry and intensely sad.

  “Did I say that talking with you helped me feel better? I may have been mistaken,” I said lightly.

  “You were. Be pissed off about it, Steve. We all need to be pissed off about it, that’s how we’ll stop it happening again. Millions, billions, of missing worldwide. Every single country: The States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, West I
ndies, India, Nepal, Burma, Japan, China, Germany, Russia, the whole of Europe, on and on and on. There’s nowhere that isn’t emptier than it should be. They all threw their young people into the meat grinder. Be pissed off.” I both admired and was intimidated by his anger.

  We chatted some more, just small talk and inconsequential stuff. I told him about the ants at home.

  “Tin ’em,” he said. I must have looked quizzical because he went on to explain. “Place an empty tin over a nest entrance in a sunny spot. It helps if you block up some of the other entrances. Over time, a week or so, the ants will move their larvae into the warm dark tin. When it’s full, take it away and destroy it, burn it or something. The nest will be so weakened that it will either die out, move away or re-establish itself on a much smaller scale. We used to do it all the time in Ireland, when I was small. It really works. Our garden was never under the control of an ant colony. We got colonised by you dicks instead.” He grinned.

  We exchanged a few meaningless words and then I told him I had to be going. We shook hands, his massive paws easily encompassing my hands which are not small themselves.

  “I’ll be back soon, probably the day after tomorrow,” I informed him.

  “I’ll see you then, then. I’ll phone if anything happens.”

  “I think it’ll probably be over in a week or so,” I told him.

  “Oh, it’s a doctor you are now, is it?”

  I headed for the doors. “See you later, you bloody disgrace of a priest”

  “Piss off, you English bastard,” he laughed.

  “Prick,” I called back and heard him laugh again. A most remarkable priest and a most remarkable man is Dave.

  Visiting my mother always left me thoughtful afterwards. Conversation with Dave always left me pondering what he’d said. This turned the journey home into a kind of slightly absent minded surrealism where I moved through the world but not entirely in it or committed to it. I’m a natural people watcher anyway, that’s what made me useful to both the army and the police. Getting into places and observing things was my forte. My usual casual observation of those around me was this time influenced by my few hours in the hospice.

  On this occasion I saw them all as survivors. In some way, and against the odds, these people had come to be. Not really against the odds, after all most people survived the wars. But the point, as far as I understood it, was that those killed were the procreating generation. Take that away or minimise its function, then what? Everybody under seventy managed to achieve existence in spite of the mass extinction. Were they the descendants of cowards or tough guys? Were they just lucky? Were they faster, slower, quicker thinking? What qualities make a survivor? Probably all of these and then some more. Cowards seems a bit strong but consider this; the coward has many opportunities to have a child, the brave person may not survive to do so. My wife says I overthink things. Perhaps I’m doing that now.

  The journey home was mainly uneventful. Mainly uneventful is about as good as it gets on London public transport. A city filled with the stressed out, overworked, the barely coping underworked or unemployed, and more than it is sensible to have of untreated mentally ill wanderers is a city where things occur. Mostly those things are entertaining or insignificant, sometimes they are serious enough to be a problem.

  This journey threw up its only incident on the underground. Sometimes the tube can be like a packed solid cattle truck. Most days it’s reminiscent of a Japanese style push ’em all in commuter nightmare. If you tell Londoners you were on the 7.50 out of Bombay, they will know that you don’t mean it was full of Indians, it was packed inhumanely tight and the only way another person could have got on would be to cling to the outside. On this journey it was empty enough that just a few people were standing and there were even a couple of unused seats.

  The tube was its usual demographic soup of all ethnicities and cultures. There were even some tourists looking a bit out of place, the way tourists do. Some kind of dispute started to get louder about half way down the carriage. It seemed to be a seated older lady versus a couple of young men strap hanging near her. The woman was dressed in clothing that had obviously been treated carefully so that it would last longer, tidy and clean but beginning to wear slightly.

  The two boys, one black and the other white, wore inexpensive suits. One wore an ear stud and they both looked confident and physically fit. Since we were heading into the city, my guess would be that they were junior traders. My experience of public transport is that much of the daytime trouble is caused by well dressed middle aged men. The younger drunks and narcissistic bucks find their place at night.

  I don’t really know why the middle aged, middle management, middle income angry ones perform during the day. I often suspect that they are the remnants of the barrow boys and hucksters who took over the city trading floors in the eighties. They must have all been busy with usury or fiscal exploitation so the apprentices were apparently having a go.

  “Shut the fuck up,” one of the boys shouted.

  “Go away, you arrogant poorly raised yob,” the woman retorted. Next to her a young woman in a cotton light green hijab seemed to be trying to ignore the dispute. Maybe she was just being London or maybe she was just pleased she was being left alone.

  The thing about London is that even when everybody seems to be ignoring something, they are not. Every Londoner is aware that once you get involved you have to be prepared to go where the situation takes you. Sometimes that can include blood and rolling around. So, Londoners don’t ignore things, they are just each deciding at which point they will interfere and hoping they don’t have to. Some might decide they will stay out of it because they have kids with them. Some may decide to just leave and others will decide that at a specific point or event they will get involved.

  “You fucking cunt slag,” exclaimed one of the boys and grabbed the clothing on the woman’s arm. Seven men, including myself, stood up. To my surprise the young lady in the hijab also stood up.

  “That’s enough, boys. Leave it now.” The man who spoke was a big, slightly over weight builder or workman of some kind. The boys looked around them, decided the odds were against them and moved away down the carriage. One of them mouthed something indistinct at the young lady who had unexpectedly stood up. They didn’t move far, though. They needed to save face so their retreat was enough to make it clear they’d stopped but not far enough to look as if they were fleeing.

  Everybody sat back down and there was a five minute period of distrustful glances between the interveners and the two boys. At the next station the boys alighted. This way they rescued their egos even if they had to wait for the next train. I wondered if Londoners before the wars acted this way. Is this careful engagement genetic because war survivors were like this? Would our forebears have just thumped them? Would they have stood their ground? I decided I was probably just tired and overthinking things again. This being London, England, nobody said anything else and we all went back to ignoring each other except that the older lady and the young hijab wearer were now in quiet conversation. I thought this was interesting and we’d just witnessed a social barrier being breached. Good.

  For the rest of the journey home I retreated into my own head. This is an autistic skill I value greatly. I know the world’s out there and I keep a sentry watching for any serious outside event that requires me to actually interact with it. Apart from that, I’m quite content within myself, thanks. It’s where I can think.

  Because of the day’s events, I was thinking about my family, my mum and dad especially. I was thinking about Dave’s comments and I was thinking about the meaning of life and death. Introspective and depressing stuff, really, but also kind of interesting. Without any obvious reason Albert came to mind. Albert was my dad’s oldest brother, he lived to over one hundred. He probably popped into my consciousness because he died in St. Joseph’s several years ago and D
ave knew him when he was there. We discussed Albert once, he had an exciting life, although I knew him when he was older and he rarely talked about it, except for bits of information and minor anecdotes.

  He did talk in depth with Dave. When he learned that Albert was my uncle he told me his story, Dave has a bit of an eidetic memory so I’m sure it was retold reliably. Everything he said fitted with the little I already knew.

  ***

  Albert’s Wars

  Albert Stephen Aitchsmith was born at the end of the nineteenth century, two years before the death of Queen Victoria. His father and mother had recently moved to Cartwright Street, not very far from the Tower of London. He was their first child and they were pleased to know that he was robust and healthy. Most children didn’t make it beyond their fifth birthday.

  Albert’s father was always able to find employment in offices or public organisations thanks to his quick mind and remarkable ability with mental calculation. Young Albert was schooled in the local church hall by volunteers who sought to enfranchise the young poor.

  In his world at this time you were either rich, borderline poor or destitute. The financial gap between the destitute and the struggling poor was slim, the gap between them both and the rich was huge. Which you were had very little to do with ability and was primarily dictated by the social and economic position of your ancestors. For most people the objective was to work hard in order to remain merely poor and avoid impoverishment.