For Neil Johnson, teacher
Table of Contents
Title Page
The Things We Learn When We're Dead
End
Life
Birth
Heaven
Scarecrow
Holiday
Trinity
Machines
Starbright
Tin Man
Knickers
Barbeque
Home
Bath
T-Shirt
Greece
Curtains
Flatulence
Heat
Reality
Lion
Munchkins
Stars
Click
Regeneration
Star Wars
Guilt
Secrets
Towers
Minke
Nightmare
Choice
Love
Telephone
Gannets
Decisions
Rainbow
Engines
Sorry
Fault
Beginning
End
The Nothing Girl
The Sphinx Scrolls
www.accentpress.co.uk
Single is the race, single
Of men and gods;
From a single mother we both draw breath.
But a difference of power in everything
Keeps us apart;
For one is as nothing, but the brazen sky
Stays a fixed habituation for ever.
Yet we can in greatness of mind
Or of body be like the Immortals
On the Olympics: Pindar of Thebes,
Ancient Greek lyric poet
The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.
Meditations: Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
121AD – 180AD
End
At the end of her Edinburgh street, where it joined a busier road, was a security camera perched high on a metal pole. If anyone had been watching they would have seen a slim young woman in a red dress illuminated under a streetlight. They would have seen that she seemed agitated, her feet fluttering on the pavement’s edge, her hands raised to her face, turning this way and that, and then stepping into the road. She seemed to be crying, unsure what she was doing. They would have seen the approaching car and that the young woman was looking in the wrong direction. When she did hear it, turning in mesmerised surprise, it was too late. But perhaps nobody had been watching the CCTV screen because it was the driver of the car who called for the ambulance as a small crowd gathered, and who then tried to make the young woman comfortable – talking to her, even pushing his jacket under her head – and waited beside her until the ambulance arrived and the paramedic said he couldn’t detect a pulse.
* * *
On the morning of her death, suicide bombers blew themselves up on London’s transport network. Three on the Tube and one on a bus. Dozens were killed, many more maimed. She watched, appalled, as the news unfolded, curled on the sofa, making cups of coffee that she didn’t drink, while the sun traversed the rooftops and patterned her in shadows. It seemed a rerun of 9/11 or Bali or Madrid; random and senseless. That was what angered her the most: it was carnage without fathomable purpose. She was alone in her flat; she’d had an argument with her flatmate who had flounced off, muttering darkly and swearing loudly. But she was used to being alone; she welcomed the silence and solitude because it didn’t allow for distraction: it gave her the space to frown over her law books, sucking on a pencil or tapping on her keyboard. But today she wanted company, someone to share her outrage with, and she didn’t know who to phone. Instead, she’d make another cup of coffee, set it on the table beside the sofa, and throw it away when it was stone cold.
She’d been invited to a dinner party in the evening but didn’t want to go. However, invitations to a Redmarsh soiree did not arrive lightly and, as Toby Redmarsh was senior partner at the law firm for which Lorna would soon be working, it wasn’t an invitation that could easily be refused.
That didn’t mean that she was looking forward to it. Born and bred in modest circumstances, she still felt socially uncertain in the company of the more gilded. It was stupid of her, and she knew it; she had overcome disadvantages of class and schooling to arrive at the hallowed portals of Wilson, MacGraw & Hamilton. It had been always been her ambition to be a lawyer but now, on the verge of attainment, she had become increasingly uncomfortable. She would be the office’s sacrificial socialist – she knew that as well – the example held up as living proof that talent could reap its reward in the rarefied world of corporate and commercial law.
‘Casual, of course,’ Toby’s wife Tessa had commanded, in Edinburgh’s New Town there was bohemian tradition to live up to. ‘We’ll see you at eight. ‘You know our address, don’t you?’ The voice was contralto, and it was not really meant as a question: everyone should know where Tessa and Toby Redmarsh lived. If not, they had no business being invited.
In the morning, after the bombs had gone off, Lorna phoned Toby, who spoke to his wife, who told him that the dinner was of course still on. ‘We can’t give into them,’ he then told Lorna, having been given the party line. ‘We have to keep going as normal. Tessa thinks that we’re doing the right thing,’ he said.
She dressed, watching the evening news, marvelling at the simplicity of mass murder. It made no sense to her; she’d never wanted to hurt anybody in her life. Then she cried and had to put her make-up on again.
The Redmarshes’ house, Lorna discovered, was on an imposing square close to the city’s West End; near enough to allow its residents to feel themselves in close proximity to real people, but far enough away to be insulated from them. It was Georgian and on four floors, and lit from top to toe like a cruise liner.
A Filipino maid dressed in black, down to her jet earrings, opened the door to Lorna and, without speaking, took her coat and ushered her to the drawing room. Tessa was holding out both hands as Lorna waded through thick carpet, and although they had never met, beckoning Lorna like an old friend.
‘My dear girl! How nice to finally meet you!’
Tessa allowed her cheek to be kissed; offering Lorna its flat surface as if to a supplicant, then took her arm and led her towards the unlit fireplace, and the group of other guests around it. On the walls hung large and impressive canvases, each lit from above by a downward-slanting brass lamp. No art expert, even Lorna recognised two sets of tortured faces as Howsons; in another, matchstick men streamed from a factory gate that just had to be by Lowry. Lorna gazed around the room with a mixture of awe and contempt, as Tessa took her arm and they negotiated the baby grand piano on which sat family photographs in silver frames and what might have been a small and abstract Paolozzi.
‘This, everyone, is Lorna Love,’ trilled Tessa, pushing her towards several pairs of devouring eyes. ‘She’s also a lawyer, aren’t you?’ Her hands plucked and tugged Lorna to an ornate gilt settee and prodded her down into one upholstered corner. The unspeaking maid offered Lorna a flute of pink champagne on a silver tray.
‘I’m not really a lawyer,’ Lorna replied.
‘But you will be. Soon. Toby says great things about you.’ Tessa beamed, displaying whiter-than-white teeth. ‘Anyway, it’s great fun, don’t you agree?’ she said, moving in beside her. ‘Pink champagne, I mean.’ Her long fingers, wrapped around the stem of her glass, had blue fingernails, the same colour as her dress. ‘But how remiss, I haven’t done the honours, have I? I don’t suppose you know anybody here.’
Tessa’s bracelet in the half-light was a golden rattle as she thrust her hand
towards the nearest couple: a balding bespectacled man in his late fifties, and a flaccid woman in a purple tracksuit and double string of pearls.
‘This is Geoffrey Crumb – or should I say Lord Geoffrey Crumb – and his Lady wife, Monica.’ Lorna solemnly shook their hands, recognising the man as a High Court judge.
‘– and this is Marcia Apsley, whose husband Walter is such a darling man.’ Marcia, dyed-blonde hair to her shoulders, and too old to be wearing the shortest of short black dresses, gave her a broad smile; Walter, in a sober blue suit, barely touched her fingers and looked away. Tessa indicated her husband with a sweeping motion of her hand. ‘And you know old Toby, don’t you.’ Toby Redmarsh, propped against the mantelpiece, raised his glass in welcome.
‘Right then,’ said Tessa and tinkled a small silver bell. ‘We can eat.’
Lorna was placed between the tracksuit of Lady Crumb and, on her left, Marcia Apsley who, without ceremony, immediately poured herself a glass of white wine. No girl-boy-girl seating arrangements at the Redmarsh table. There was avocado to start, carefully scooped from its shell, mashed up with cream, herbs, and chopped bacon, and served back hot in its skin. ‘We got the recipe from a friend in Cape Town,’ explained Tessa, although it was clear the Filipino maid did all the cooking. ‘Out there, of course, avocados are almost weeds.’
‘Makes you think,’ said Marcia, poking at her avocado with a fork. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever eaten weeds before.’
Walter snatched a quick glance at his wife and guffawed to signal that Marcia, already pouring herself a second glass of wine, had made a joke.
* * *
In a lull in the conversation, as they were finishing the hot avocado, and as the Filipino maid began to clear plates, Marcia asked Lorna if she really was a lawyer. It was clear that, in Marcia’s circle of acquaintances, lawyers spoke the Queen’s English.
‘I’m going to be working with Toby,’ replied Lorna, making no effort to disguise her provincial accent, ‘although I still have exams to pass.’
‘How exciting!’ said Marcia. ‘At least, I suppose, it must be somewhat exciting. Being a lawyer, and all that. Actually, that’s a strange word if you think about it,’ she added after a pause. ‘Somewhat.’ She pronounced it sum-wot. ‘Like a fruit.’
‘That’s kumquat,’ said Toby.
Marcia looked up from her plate, shrugged, then handed her plate to the Filipino who was circling the table replenishing empty glasses. She held the bottle in a white napkin that obscured the label, and her face was pitted with the pockmarks of some childhood affliction.
‘She’s from Manila,’ said Tessa when the door had closed and their empty dishes were rattling down the hallway. ‘Nowadays we wouldn’t know what to do without her.’
‘I went there once. In the Army,’ said the High Court judge, and tilted back his head. ‘Extended leave. Ate dog once. Not very nice, but did have a bite to it.’ He paused to see if anyone thought this funny, which nobody did. ‘Thought I should see a bit of the world. Long time ago, of course.’
‘We call her Gertie,’ said Tessa, ignoring him. ‘Her real name is unpronounceable.’
Let others invent a name for you, Lorna thought, and hide behind their generosity. She shouldn’t have drunk the pink champagne or the wine with dinner. The doctor had said her medication was incompatible with alcohol. Lorna felt light-headed, suddenly tearful, thinking about the bombings.
London, of course, dominated the conversation, punctuated by appearances from the unpronounceable Filipino who circled their laden table, balancing salvers and empty plates in her sensible hands. Lorna watched the maid’s studious anonymity, feeling hot, and then shivering; a pool of tears had gathered behind her eyes. She dabbed at them with her serviette, or napkin, or whatever they were called in a house like this.
‘It’s an obscenity,’ Toby was saying, ‘but the real danger lies in getting our response wrong. It’s a question of choice. Either we continue to uphold the sanctity of human rights or we now make national security paramount. The two are incompatible. The government will bring in new terror laws, no doubt about it.’
The High Court judge agreed. ‘It’s also a question of rights and responsibilities,’ he said, enunciating clearly as if giving a judgement. ‘Everyone has the right to disagree with what the government is doing. In Iraq or about anything else. That doesn’t give them the right to kill people.’
It was a blindingly obvious point but, since he was a High Court judge, nobody could disagree.
‘Anyway,’ said Tessa, keeping a close eye on the Filipino who was circulating once more with wine and replenishing glasses. ‘I just think we should shoot them.’
Toby cut a slice of gristle from his beef and slid it to the side of his plate where it bled like a sacrifice. ‘All very well, of course, if you manage to shoot the right people. We can only hope that the intelligence services know who the bad guys are.’ Toby’s confident tone suggested he had a rare faith in the intelligence community, nodding and smiling over his heaped plate.
But Tessa felt that he had missed the point and waved her fork alarmingly at him. ‘Meanwhile, don’t you see, more people get blown up. Bugger their human rights! What about our human rights?’ She made it seem like a personal affront and sawed at her meat with hunched shoulders.
Marcia had been listening to this exchange like a tennis spectator, moving her head back and forth, a dimpled smile playing on her lips. ‘Actually, Tessa’s quite right. All you lawyers do is pontificate, which is worse than useless. If suicide bombers want to take radical action against us, we should take radical action against them. The more radical the better, if you ask me.’ She laughed across the table and tapped her empty wineglass in hospitable rebuke.
* * *
After dinner they sat over coffee and mints in the drawing room, with the curtains open and garden lights on the lawn conjuring daylight from the darkness. Lorna was standing with her back to the unlit fire, feeling light-headed. The doctor had been right; small white pills and wine was not a sensible combination. She sat down heavily on the settee and put a hand to her forehead.
Toby sat beside her and put a fatherly hand on her knee. ‘Are you OK?’ he asked. ‘I have to say, you don’t look terribly well.’
‘Just tired,’ said Lorna.
‘You’ve been ill,’ said Toby, ‘and coming here tonight was probably not a good idea. Do you want me to call you a cab?’
Lorna nodded, wanting to cry.
‘She’s not well,’ said Toby to nobody in particular, and helped her into the spacious hallway where he lowered Lorna into an upright chair. A grandfather clock ticked in one corner, and a staircase, thickly carpeted in green, led to a shadowed landing. The Filipino maid brought her a glass of water in a crystal glass. Lorna smiled her gratitude. The maid’s eyes were black and impenetrable.
The taxi arrived and Toby helped her inside. Tessa fussed in the background, in a pool of light from the open doorway, her hands threaded together, smiling uncertainly. She unfurled her hands to wave goodbye.
‘Just pass those bloody exams!’ shouted Toby as the taxi door closed.
With her life fast diminishing, Lorna sat in the back of the cab with her eyes closed, squeezing tears inside her eyelids. Her veins were filled with a heady cocktail of regret. When the cab stopped, she stepped from the kerb to cross the street to her flat. But alcohol and conflicting thoughts had pressed in and deafened her.
* * *
For a few moments she didn’t know where she was, except that she was lying in the road. She knew she was wearing a red dress – she was lying on one side with her head tucked down and could see it. With an effort she could remember she’d bought it in an Oxfam shop, and been worried by a red stain down one side that could have been tomato ketchup or could have been blood from a previous murdered owner. She simply hadn’t heard the approaching car or the screech of brakes until it was too late, feeling the push of air as it advanced and its bright and predatory e
yes.
Then she was aware of a paramedic in a green uniform gently turning her onto her back and as she lay there, gazing at the stars, all she could feel was great sadness and a void that might not now be filled. Then, her eyesight fading, she heard a child crying, muffled sobs from nearby. The child seemed to be crying into a pillow, the feathers pressed against its mouth and nose. Lorna knew that the child didn’t want to be heard or wake anybody up. It didn’t want to make a fuss and, more than anything, it didn’t want anybody to ask what was wrong. The child’s sobs sounded familiar, but it still took Lorna some moments to realise the child was her. By then she was in darkness and becoming frightened. A part of her understood that something bad had happened, but she couldn’t remember what. The child’s sobs faded to silence.
Life
Her first recollection after the accident was of a dream, fragmented memories of a distant childhood; of reciting catechism on a Sunday with her nostrils full of incense; of soft words and kind hands upon her shoulder, propelling her towards an aged aunt who held a ribboned package in her hands. She felt water close around her, enfolding her in silence, while sunlight blazed on the water's surface. The water was cool; it soothed her. She opened her mouth and breathed it in. Aunt Meg had opened her package for Lorna to see: inside were the cut-up remains of a child’s T-shirt. Aunt Meg was looking down through water and smiling. Lorna smiled back; bubbles floating to the surface. And then she was running barefoot on a summer meadow, gathering speed as she broached a hill and careened down the other side; wildflowers were spread at her feet, long grass billowed at her legs. She saw her mother; a picnic was scattered around her. Lorna peered through sunshine. Amid the cake and piles of sandwiches, her mother was buttering bread. Above, high in the sky, hung a single star and her mother was motioning for Lorna to sit beside her and close her eyes. She ran toward her mother, gaining speed, the wind bruising her face, watering her eyes. Then she stopped to catch her breath, blinking through tears. She was in a different place now: a deep valley. On both sides rose jagged hills, coal-black; broken bottles glittered, newspapers turned and tumbled. Sharp stones bit at her bare feet but there was no pain. A stream ran through the valley, black with coal-dust; birds, like pieces of tissue, wheeled high above. She fell effortlessly in slow motion, like a football replay, turning and tumbling down the valley wall while, on different peaks, she saw her parents watching her. Distant thunder echoed and raindrops patterned her upturned face.
The Things We Learn When We're Dead Page 1
