The Things We Learn When We're Dead

by Charlie Laidlaw

  ‘Okay, but if you were in my shoes, what would you do?’ It was the child’s voice, querulous and hesitant; asking the right question, but not wanting an answer.

  Suzie didn’t hesitate, not even for a second. ‘Get rid of it, petal. It’s the only thing you can do.’

  Lorna knew that was what Suzie was going to say. Suzie, utterly practical, saw everything in black and white. In front of Lorna’s eyes were shades of grey. ‘I’m not sure, Suze.’

  ‘But what’s the alternative?’ said Suzie, then paused theatrically to let the idea of single motherhood sink in. ‘Exactly!’ Suzie continued, although Lorna hadn’t said anything. ‘There isn’t an alternative.’

  * * *

  In another quadrant of the galaxy, outside a beach bar that was neither Greece nor Scotland, Lorna had nibbled on a croissant and crumbs were drifting across the wooden table. Inside, she felt rising panic; a tightness across her chest. She was in an absurd place that no longer seemed like a real place. She was remembering things, faster and faster, random memories plucked from nowhere scattering across her mind; some blissful, others painful, and joined by loss and separation. The beach was still empty and Lorna was alone. But then her arm became suddenly sore. She felt sick. Lorna blinked away tears and found voice. ‘Trinity, where am I?’

  You’re in Heaven, sweetie.

  ‘That’s not an answer.’

  In which case, what answer would you like me to give?

  Across the beach was the suck and pull of small waves. ‘The truth,’ she suggested.

  A short pause. The truth is what you choose to make it, young Lorna. The truth is what you choose to believe. Would you like a glass of wine?

  ‘I’d like an answer.’

  To what, sweetie?

  ‘Okay, let me put it like this. Is Heaven a toaster or a giant mushroom?’

  Another pause. Heaven is neither a vegetable nor a bread-cooking device. Would you like another packet of cigarettes? I see you don’t have many left.

  ‘No thank you, Trinity. But if reality is just a question of choice, perhaps I’m just imagining being here. Perhaps none of this is real. Perhaps Heaven doesn’t exist.’

  It’s a thought, Lorna. Perhaps I don’t exist.

  ‘That’s just crap, Trinity. Okay, why does God choose people to come here?’

  For a reason, Lorna.

  ‘For the same reason or a different reason? For fuck’s sake, tell me!’

  Trinity took a few moments to reply, and for Lorna to calm down.

  Usually for a good reason, petal. For example, Einstein. He could get the E and MC part of the equation, but didn’t think to square it. God brought him here to explain things. Florence Nightingale was another recent visitor. God hates germs and wanted you to know how important it is to wash your hands. I’m sorry about your brother, by the way.

  Lorna now saw that there was a silver napkin dispenser on the table. She hadn’t noticed it before and extracted a napkin and dabbed at her eyes. Her sudden anger had dissipated. ‘Thank you, Trinity. But none of them are here now, are they?’

  No, Lorna.

  If they weren’t here, there was only one other place where they could be. ‘They all went back to Earth, didn’t they?’

  Yes, young Lorna.

  ‘Please don’t call me young Lorna. I’m not a child.’

  My apologies. I didn’t mean to suggest that you were.

  ‘Who else has come here? From Earth, I mean?’

  Trinity hummed for a few moments. To be honest, I’m not good with names. Albert and Florence I only remember because they went on to do something useful. I do like it when God gets things right and picks the right people. Okay, yes, there was someone else quite recently, now that I think about it. Someone called Dorothy. Arrived with a ghastly little dog although it did kill a few hamsters. Widdled everywhere, even on Irene’s shoes. I was all for keeping the dog but God wouldn’t hear of it. They both went.

  Lorna pressed her hands to her temples, a headache erupting from behind her eyes. ‘But God also gave them a choice, didn’t he?’

  Of course. Everyone who comes here is given a choice.

  ‘Trinity, what did I do that was so wrong?’

  I don’t understand the question, Lorna.

  ‘I keep remembering a friend of mine,’ said Lorna.

  Suzie?

  ‘She’s angry with me. I don’t know why.’

  If it’s important, perhaps you will remember. If it’s not, perhaps you won’t. It was your life, Lorna, not mine.

  The use of the past tense still unnerved her. Her arm hurt, there was a stabbing throb behind her eyes and she felt sick. If she wasn’t in Heaven, where was she?

  ‘Trinity, can I see God?’

  Regrettably, Lorna, God is in a meeting.

  ‘In which case, can I see Irene?’

  God is in conference with His executive officer. They are discussing a matter of some importance and have asked not to be disturbed.

  ‘A matter of importance?’ echoed Lorna.

  Yes, sweetie. You.

  Rainbow

  The clinic where she aborted Joe’s baby was cold and antiseptic. The medics were professional and not over-friendly. The corridor floors were polished to a shine. It didn’t take long and nobody offered her much in the way of advice. Perhaps, she hadn’t wanted any, already feeling guilt pile in at something done that could not now be undone, and wanting only to be away from the clinic and to smell clean air. When she’d arrived the sky had been blue, but when she left clouds had gathered and a cold wind was blowing.

  She didn’t want Joe to know; she didn’t know how he would react, and she could do without his anger or sympathy. On the morning of her termination Lorna listened in to his radio programme. To her dismay, she thought he was rather good, until he announced that he was playing the next song for a special friend. If you’re listening, you know who you are, he said. A special someone whose father was a wizard. So, with all good thoughts for the wizard’s daughter, if that doesn’t sound too corny, here’s the incomparable Eva Cassidy. Lorna didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, particularly when he played ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’, which reminded her of better days and she switched off the radio, wondering if he could somehow have found out about her pregnancy. That thought remained with her for the rest of the day, stayed with her as she was wheeled along clinical white corridors, and nagged at her afterwards as she lay on her back and stared up at a ventilation grille above her bed. They told her that she might experience some turbulent emotions. A bored doctor looked at her chart and barely gave her a second glance. Only to be expected, he said, with a jolly smile, as Lorna began to grapple with the reality of having aborted an unborn someone who would now remain unborn.

  For the rest of the week Lorna felt haunted and empty. Only a couple of close friends knew what had happened and they did what they could to offer their support. She couldn’t, of course, confide in her parents, although her father would probably have been sympathetic. They didn’t need to know. She phoned Mike and told him that she had a virus. Suzie flew up from London and tried to be cheerful. It was for the best, Lorna was told repeatedly. Think what the alternatives would have been, sweetie!

  Suzie made an appointment for Lorna at the medical centre, and she sat in the doctor’s waiting room, feeling like an impostor among the real sick people. Suzie sat beside her, wearing sunglasses and tapping her foot.

  The doctor was podgy, middle-aged and smelled sharply of body odour, reminding her of Mike, but without Mike’s enthusiasm. The consulting room’s walls had pictures of the human body, neatly stripped down to reveal main arteries and organs. Lorna didn’t think that real sick people would want to look at pictures like that. The doctor spoke with a Birmingham accent and although he made sympathetic noises he didn’t look very sympathetic. He asked lots of questions, his fingers threaded together, then wrote her a prescription for pills and told her not to mix medication with alcohol.

  L
ater that week Lorna went for a long walk through the city, marvelling at other people’s laughter, and across the grassy crags overlooking the Old Town, hearing the wind whisper against her ears. She’d come to this spot with Joe, his hand tight in hers. The sounds in her head were cold and unrelenting. Joe had grown small again, like the tiny figures at the bottom of the hill who were throwing a frisbee to one another. One of them could have been Joe, but she couldn’t tell at that distance. Mostly, she stood by her bedroom window, immobile in her dressing-gown, and looked over the city rooftops, until the skyline and her thoughts became blurred.

  It was the first week, probably ever, that Lorna did nothing. She had a dissertation to write, tutorials to attend, final exams to study for. She’d also been planning, with waning enthusiasm, to join the G20 demo in Edinburgh, or go to Gleneagles where the world’s leaders were meeting, but no longer felt compelled. In any case, Edinburgh seemed to be filling up with a different kind of demonstrator. Lorna could spot them from a mile away: the professional anarchists, who had nothing to say, but were there only for the mayhem. They weren’t her kind of demonstrator, and perhaps she was better off just feeling sorry for herself, but it also seemed as if her ambition and compassion had become muddled. How could she think about demonstrating against unfettered capitalism when she was joining a major law practice? How could she stand up for the underdog, when she had killed hers? How could she think of building wells in Africa when she coveted Suzie’s car? She no longer knew what she wanted, for herself or for others, and for the first time in her life Lorna felt like a bad witch and rudderless.

  * * *

  Outwardly she appeared in control. She ate the cheese sandwich that Suzie made for her, the bread tasting of cardboard, the cheese tasting of vomit. She tried to make conversation, asking Suzie questions about her work, but not listening to the answers. Suzie went to the chemist to get her prescription and brought back a bottle of white pills. Under Suzie’s stern gaze, Lorna swallowed a couple.

  Out of the blue, Toby Redmarsh’s wife Tessa phoned. ‘Toby’s been telling me all about you, dear girl! The star pupil of the university and a friend of Graeme Bryce! Toby is so hoping you’ll join Wilson’s. Look, I don’t know if you’re up for it, but we’ve got a few people coming round for dinner this Thursday. Do you fancy it? Do say yes!’

  It was hardly an invitation that Lorna could turn down.

  ‘Casual, of course,’ Tessa commanded, ‘so we’ll see you at eight. You know our address, don’t you?’ Lorna didn’t, and had to ask.

  She watched TV, curled on the sofa, not caring about lectures or tutorials or exams. After speaking to Tessa, she didn’t bother answering the phone again and switched off her mobile. There wasn’t anybody she wanted to talk to, and couldn’t think of anybody who would want to speak to her.

  * * *

  Towards the end of the week, Suzie emerged from her room with tousled hair and in a bad mood. Lorna was in the kitchen nursing a cup of coffee. Suzie had to go to Glasgow for a long-standing engagement, and wasn’t looking forward to it, and now told Lorna that Austin would be arriving later. Lorna narrowed her eyes, not yet entirely sure of Austin, then remembered her pledge to treat him with civility.

  ‘It’ll be just for a few days, babe! We’ve missed each other.’ Suzie had put on a little-girl voice to say this, her face scrunched in mock misery.

  Suzie’s toilet-roll manufacturer had a factory somewhere in deepest Lanarkshire and was holding a reception for its distributors. Suzie was doing a promotional photo-shoot and, afterwards, as the public face of their product, would be glad-handing supermarket managers.

  ‘What an utterly shit way to spend a day!’ was Suzie’s upbeat verdict, wrapped in her dressing gown and holding a coffee mug in both hands.

  ‘An appropriate way of describing it, Suze.’

  ‘I mean, if you want to buy a bog roll, you go to a shop and buy one. Buying toiletries isn’t exactly difficult. I really don’t see why I have to swill cocktails with a bunch of middle-aged fuckwits who sell bathroom stuff for a living.’

  ‘Suzie, you can’t be a glamour-puss all the time. Just bask in the glow of their adulation, or some such crap. You’re becoming public property. Live with it.’

  Suzie looked at her sharply. ‘I could give you the same advice, Lorna, but I won’t. Are you going to be okay?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  After Suzie had left, Lorna drove the Porsche out of Edinburgh. She didn’t know where she was going to go, so just drove out of town. In the lee of the Pentland Hills she stopped. She remembered vaguely that on one of the hills was a Stone Age fort. Lorna parked in a lay-by, and crossed a small river on stepping stones, and climbed upwards. She sat on a rock and looked out over the Firth of Forth, the same sea over which her mother had looked when giving birth to her, the same waves rolling in.

  Then, when she raised her eyes, she could clearly see the peak of North Berwick Law. Beneath it was the town in which she had grown up. In it would be her parents, many of her friends, and in its streets and stones and sand and water lay her childhood. Lorna thought about this, feeling an unwanted connection to the town she was trying to escape from. It hadn’t been a bad childhood, she had to concede. Okay, her dad didn’t make much money, but neither did a lot of fathers. Okay, her mum didn’t either, but lots of people work in bakeries. Her father had also once been a great wizard before his gift became lubricated and then drowned.

  Between her and North Berwick was the giant rectangle of Cockenzie power station. Rising above it were two slender chimneys. A thin stream of smoke was rising from one of the chimneys and immediately she was reminded of 9/11, the horror of it, the toy-like aeroplanes striking home and the way the towers fell downwards, not even a bit sideways like you’d expect, the radio mast on one tower falling perfectly vertically into smoke and dust and oblivion. Lorna hadn’t known anybody who died on 9/11 but friends of her dad did, friends who were still successfully employed in financial services. And then Bali: once again, an outrage on the other side of the world. Lorna knew nobody who’d been killed or injured in that atrocity either; but Suzie’s agent did: a jobbing actress who had tried her luck in London, failed, returned to New Zealand, and then gone on holiday to Bali with her boyfriend. For every action, Lorna now realised, there are consequences and that, in being tenuously connected to the victims of Bali and 9/11, she was still connected to people that she loved and, through them, to people she had never met, and who she would never meet.

  She remembered the day of her brother’s death. That evening, their flat filled with friends and relatives, Lorna had taken the torch from her bedroom and gone to the beach. It was a clear night. A light breeze ruffled her hair and small waves hissed ashore. Amid the desolation, Tom’s funeral was being planned with, some weeks later, a scattering of his ashes on North Berwick Law. Lorna’s mother said that it’s what he would have wanted, as if it had ever crossed Tom’s mind. It seemed strange to her that such practicalities were being discussed, and that Tom should be involved in the planning, as if he was still alive. She pointed the torch at the sky and clicked it on and off, on and off, on and off until her arm hurt with the effort of holding the torch over her head and her eyes were blinded by tears. She didn’t know what to expect, or whether Tom would be watching, or if he was able to reply, but her distress signals went unanswered.

  Now Lorna lay on her back in the grass and watched the clouds. She could smell summer, the scent of a storm not long passed, crisp and fresh, and suddenly – she didn’t know why – she felt buoyed and no longer alone, finding small connections between her past and future. Then she drove back slowly to Edinburgh, parked the car and climbed the stairs to the flat. She could hear opera from the flat below: Gustav, a young Swedish accountant, who lived with a punk called Martha who had spiky red hair and a bolt through her nose. Lorna only knew them to nod at. Below them was an elderly women called Bo who rarely made it down the stairs. Sometimes Lorna would go and check on her
, just to make sure she was okay. Bo always offered her tea and biscuits; once a week Lorna did her shopping: corned beef, mostly, and digestive biscuits. She did have family, Bo would assure her.

  A part of her bedroom doubled as a working area, her laptop perched on a glass dining table that she’d pushed against one wall. Most of the table was cluttered with files and notebooks while the rest of the room was filled by a double bed, pine wardrobe, dressing table and another, much smaller, glass coffee table. When she’d moved in, Lorna had thought that working at a smoked-glass table would be cool: she could pretend to be a high-powered lawyer. Now, she realised, it was covered with so much dross that it was impossible to see the glass underneath. It no longer looked cool; it just looked a mess.

  She flopped onto the bed. Something had happened to her on the hillside. She felt renewed, absolved. Not happy, but an inner pendulum had swung, hormones coming back into balance. I am alive, she thought, holding tight to a new perspective as she drifted into sleep.

  Engines

  The sun was brighter in Heaven, and the line between sea and sky had become indistinct. Lorna was still standing on the beach, but her eyes were tightly closed. Her memories were returning on fast-forward, almost a blur, and she couldn’t stop them. She wanted them to stop, pressing her knuckles to her eyes, her eyelids pressed shut, but they kept coming, faster and faster, making her disorientated and frightened. But she also had a sense that everything was coming to an end: that her memories were almost intact; shards of recollection coming back together like a shattered mirror rearranging itself in reverse. She could now remember her desolation. Joe’s loss and then her termination – the overwhelming sense of guilt. And a stranger feeling: that she’d always believed in hard work and that, by work alone, she could shape her life. But it hadn’t happened like that. It seemed now that this too had been pulled from under her; that life had crept up on her through undergrowth and jumped out when she least expected it. There were still other shards spinning at the margins, memories she no longer wanted to see, because she could feel the heat of Suzie’s anger. Then Lorna felt a hand being placed lightly on her shoulder and, turning, saw that Irene was by her side. Irene’s footprints were etched on the sand, a straight line of indentations leading back to the town. Her own footprints, meandering from the table on which the remains of her croissant lay, weaved more aimlessly.