The Things We Learn When We're Dead

by Charlie Laidlaw

  ‘Okay, sweetie?’

  Irene was wearing a dark blue trouser-suit, the same trouser-suit that Lorna had once owned, parading herself to Toby and his associates, with a jumbo bar of chocolate in her briefcase and, just in case, a box of tissues.

  Lorna shook her head. The effort of memory was too much, and she felt exhausted. ‘I can’t take any more of this,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t have to. God wants to see you.’ Irene motioned Lorna to follow her and, legs wobbly, Lorna trailed along behind, the air quickly cooling as they walked towards the town, the hot sun disappearing into scudding clouds. The town looked wet, its pavements slick. ‘Why does God want to see me?’

  Irene stopped and turned. ‘I can’t say, Lorna.’

  ‘Can’t or won’t?’ They had reached the High Street, and a clock was chiming the hour. The same clock, or a different clock, had sometimes woken her up. ‘For fuck’s sake, Irene.’

  ‘There’s no need to swear, sweetie.’

  ‘There’s every need to swear! My brain feels like it’s going to explode.’

  ‘It won’t, I assure you.’

  ‘That’s not a bloody answer, Irene!’

  Lorna’s voice had risen and she stood, panting slightly, while Irene smiled. ‘Right now, my task is to deliver you into his presence.’ She stopped at a transporter stop, beside what had once been the town’s bookshop. Now it was given over to rare Persian carpets and Ming dynasty vases.

  Doors opening.

  ‘Bridge, please, Trinity.’

  Doors closing.

  Lorna had never heard Trinity impart such banal information, then remembered that the lift at Wilson’s said much the same thing. The holiest of holy offices were on the first floor. The minions toiled on the higher floors, reached either by a dingy staircase or cramped lift. During her visits for interview, she had several times wondered why talking lifts were such bad conversationalists.

  They stepped inside and the transporter set off horizontally, then rose vertically, then horizontally once again. Irene, her feet in immaculate court shoes, was tapping one foot impatiently. Lorna held onto the handrail and tried to breathe normally. Inside, she felt as if she was cracking open, like an egg or a piece of porcelain. One minute, on the beach, she knew that Heaven couldn’t possibly exist. The next, with a very real Irene, she couldn’t be sure of anything.

  Fourth floor. Doors opening.

  Irene led her into a broad thoroughfare, down the centre of which was a moving escalator. On one side was a wall adorned with advertisements. One was for duty-free whisky, another for electronic equipment, yet another for luxury clothing. In one, incongruously, was Suzie: she was holding up a toilet roll. At her feet was a white puppy. The puppy was looking up with adoring eyes. Suzie was smiling at the camera and ignoring the dog. In real life, Suzie hated dogs.

  But it was the other wall that captured Lorna’s attention or, rather, the lack of wall. For a distance of some hundred metres, the entire length of the walkway, this side of Heaven consisted simply of glass. For a moment she was terrified, knowing that she was inches away from the vacuum beyond. Then she stilled her fear, and placed both hands on the outer wall, mesmerised once more by the vastness of the universe beyond. They seemed to be on Heaven’s topmost level. Looking over to the other hull, Lorna was able to see across its curves and the arrays of communications dishes flashing in sequence down its length.

  Irene was smoking and, without saying anything, took Lorna by the arm and onto the moving walkway. Half way along, an ashtray opened up beneath the handrail and Irene deposited her finished cigarette into it. At the end of the moving walkway, Irene led Lorna back to the outer glass wall. She pointed outward and upwards. ‘That, Lorna, is what happens when you fly too close to a black hole.’

  Lorna followed her finger. She’d seen it as an approaching shadow on the walkway. Now, her face pressed to the glass, its outline loomed large. It was at least two hundred metres tall: an impossibly huge dark structure framed against blazing stars. It consisted of what looked like two pieces of metal, connected at right angles. Lorna’s eyes travelled upwards along its length and then reverentially across its arms.

  Irene had lit another cigarette. She pointed with its glowing tip. ‘Our main engines were once connected to that framework,’ she said in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘But in the gravitational vortex that we encountered, they sheared off.’ The giant crucifix was glowing, as if trapping light and slowly releasing it in diamond pinpricks. It made Lorna feel small, reminding her of childhood, incense in her nostrils.

  ‘Irene, I no longer believe in where I am.’ Lorna held up a hand. ‘Please don’t tell me that I’m in Heaven.’

  Irene raised one eyebrow. ‘I don’t intend to try, sweetie. What you choose to believe is up to you.’ Trinity had also said as much. ‘However, don’t think of Heaven as a place, Lorna. Think of it instead as a concept.’

  ‘That makes no sense,’ said Lorna, her hands firmly on the outer glass. ‘Irene, I don’t want to remember any more.’

  ‘But you are somewhere, aren’t you?’ Irene had leaned forwards and was speaking close to her ear. Lorna could feel her words move her hair. ‘If you look closely enough,’ continued Irene, ‘Heaven is full of symbols. Symbols, young Lorna, that may have no significance for you, but will have for someone else. Their imprint lay in the genetic sequence that God used to create you. As the idea of religion took hold on Earth, people started to remember those symbols. In people’s minds, as mankind tried to make sense of the infinite, those symbols came to represent how Heaven and Earth could be joined together.’ Irene took a puff of her new cigarette, looking upwards at the metal cross. ‘To you, the crucifix is a symbol of suffering and redemption. To us, I regret, it merely symbolises eternity.’

  At the end of the thoroughfare was a set of metal doors, with a red sign informing them that they were about to enter a restricted zone. As they approached, they swished open. Inside was a windowless square room the size of a tennis court. Around three walls were control consoles with leather chairs sitting askew at random intervals. There were no crew members but, on some of the computer screens, white and blue lights flickered. On one wall was a blue-painted sign. Environmental Protection. On another, Propulsion. On the third, Navigation. The three things to run a spaceship, Lorna recalled, noticing that one of the Propulsion screens was winking words at her.

  She went over to look at it. On the screen was one terse phrase. Finished with engines, read Lorna, remembering their Norfolk holiday and her father turning the key in the ignition for the last time.

  In the centre of the fourth wall, opposite where they had come in, was another door and it had now also swished open. Irene was standing in the doorway, tapping her foot. Lorna swallowed and walked through the doorway.

  She had expected the bridge of an immense spaceship, however real or imaginary, to be spacious and luxurious. She had imagined panoramic windows affording views over space, and astronauts in tight uniforms fussing over banks of instruments. Instead, Lorna found herself in a circular room not dissimilar to the bridge of the Starship Enterprise but in which, apart from God, she and Irene were the only occupants.

  God was sitting in a large chair in the centre of the room. The chair could also have been Captain Kirk’s. However, instead of controls and lights, the walls of the room were covered with TV screens, each image plucked from CCTV cameras. ‘It’s nice to see you again,’ said God, rising chivalrously from his chair and motioning Lorna to a smaller chair by His side. ‘Trinity tells me that all your memories have come back. I’m pleased that everything now seems back to normal but I am sorry, Lorna, if that process has been painful.’

  ‘Not everything,’ she replied, feeling the onset of another headache. There was still that something else, those last spinning fragments.

  ‘Perhaps not everything,’ agreed God, looking momentarily uncertain, ‘but most things have, haven’t they?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she agre
ed, although it also seemed that her memories had found a different pattern, fitting together like a jigsaw that could somehow produce more than one picture. God had a folder in his hand, which could have been Mike’s or Mr Sullivan’s, and was flicking through pages. On its front cover, written in black biro, was her name. ‘And I still don’t know why I’m here,’ she said.

  ‘Everyone who comes to Heaven is here for a reason,’ replied God and laid down her file on His armrest.

  ‘I know that. But I don’t understand equations, and I already know how to wash my hands.’

  Blue light from a hundred TV screens washed across his face. As always he was smiling kindly. ‘This is where I come to watch over you,’ he said, indicating all the televisions. ‘This is where I first saw you. It was dark and you looked sad.’

  Lorna looked from screen to screen. The images were fuzzy, and all were in black and white. One image was of the road outside her Edinburgh flat, and she felt a stir of memory, her heart beating faster. ‘I think, maybe, that I made a mistake,’ she stammered. It wasn’t quite a memory, more like a dream hovering out of sight, and she felt slightly sick.

  ‘We all make mistakes,’ said God. ‘Even me,’ He added, placing a fatherly hand on her knee. Lorna saw Irene standing in the background, trim in her sober trouser-suit, nodding vigorously.

  She looked from God to Irene and back again. ‘God, why am I here?’ she asked again. ‘I really need to know.’

  ‘To offer you a choice.’

  ‘I know that! But what choice?’

  He smiled. ‘To do things differently.’

  And then Lorna did remember what it was that was frightening her; all those faces in the newspapers and on television, Suzie’s anger, and all that faraway anguish in New York and Iraq.

  Sorry

  Lorna still felt giddy when she woke up, disorientated to find that it was still light outside, and not immediately sure whether it was morning, noon or night. She got up and pulled back the curtains and for a few minutes rested her elbows on the windowsill, the window open, and drank in the outside air. Then she smoothed down her hair and looked at herself in the mirror, studying her reflection from different angles. Her hair was lank and needed a good wash, there were dark shadows under her eyes and her complexion was sallow: the face of someone who had spent too much time indoors. But it was also as if a darkness had been lifted, a creature inside her tamed. She no longer felt like a murderer: someone beyond redemption.

  To her surprise she found Austin in the kitchen opening a can of lager. She’d forgotten that he’d be there, and now didn’t know how to react. She stood instead at the kitchen door, immobile, trying to think of civil things to say, desperately trying not to say the wrong thing that would end up in an argument or sullen silence. In any case, she felt exhausted. She hadn’t slept much for days and still felt frail and weepy, emotions that Lorna had always considered beneath her. She didn’t have the energy to do anything but accept the glass of wine that Austin silently handed her.

  ‘Suzie told me what happened,’ he said. ‘For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.’

  Lorna could see that, with Suzie away, he also didn’t know what to say to her, or what subjects to avoid.

  He scratched his head. ‘It can’t have been easy.’

  Lorna didn’t say anything. Instead, she drank back her wine and refilled the glass, feeling tearful again, remembering searching the beach for her underwear and finding only an empty bottle.

  ‘But you’ll get over it, Lorna. We all get over things. I got over you, and you’ll get over this.’ Behind his head hung her castle and her eyes moved between it and Austin. Squaring her shoulders, she walked to the living room, kicked off her shoes and lay down on the battered sofa, balancing her wine glass on her stomach. She could at that moment have gone to asleep again.

  But Austin had followed and was now sitting in the room’s only other comfortable chair. ‘I’m also sorry about Leo.’

  ‘You’ve already apologised for that.’ She closed her eyes for a moment. ‘He said I was weird.’

  ‘You are a bit weird,’ he agreed.

  ‘Am I?’ She opened her eyes to look at him.

  ‘Well, not conventionally odd. Single-minded, maybe.’

  ‘Being single-minded isn’t weird.’ There was a silence while she thought about this. How many other people thought she was weird? ‘Talking of Leo, he emailed me.’

  Austin had his feet on the coffee table. He’d also kicked off his shoes. ‘He also says that you haven’t replied.’

  ‘I might get around to it.’

  ‘Can I tell him that?’

  Lorna wriggled backwards and pushed a cushion under her back then, looking into her glass, watched diamonds of light radiating from its surface. ‘Yeah, why not.’

  ‘He’d still like to see you again.’

  From tearful, she had lurched to sadly tranquil. ‘He said that him and his pal are going to buy a boat.’

  ‘The scuba-diving thing? Well, from what he’s told me, they’re still trying.’ Austin put his glass down and knotted his hands together. ‘Lorna, I’m sorry if I messed things up between you two. I was just being oafish.’

  His voice trailed off. Lorna laid her head back on the cushion and looked at the ceiling. ‘I don’t want to argue, Austin. Shit happens, end of.’

  Austin blew air from his nose. ‘That’s either being sensible or plain stupid, I’m not sure which.’

  Lorna swung her legs to the floor and tipped the glass to her lips. Once more she saw trapped light escape in small incandescent bubbles. ‘Well, we are now supposed to be grown-ups, Austin.’

  ‘Technically, I suppose.’

  Her glass was empty and then she realised that the bottle was empty. How had that happened? Austin fetched another from the kitchen.

  Closing her eyes, feeling drowsy and woozy, she reflected that she’d known Austin for most of her life. During it, he had transformed from one thing to another. He had grown up and given up loving her. But she had also changed, she had to concede, despite being officially weird.

  ‘How long are you going to be here?’ she asked.

  ‘A few days, so don’t worry. I’m not moving in.’

  ‘Helping to rebuild Edinburgh’s slums, is that it? Good for you, Austin ... Just don’t build any more slums by mistake.’

  ‘It’s part of my course,’ he said. ‘Get to see how it’s really done. The company I’m with is knocking down an old warehouse, but keeping the façade, then building flats in the shell.’

  ‘Hopefully executive flats,’ she suggested. ‘Flats for wealthy people ... riff-raff not wanted’

  He laughed. ‘There you go. You’re being weird again.’

  ‘I’m not being weird. I’d just like to know where all the poor people are supposed to live.’

  ‘Lorna, I’m just here to learn what being an engineer is really all about.’ He looked apologetic.

  Lorna was sorry to have jumped down his throat. ‘But what I’d really like to know,’ she asked, feeling that they should be friends again, ‘is when you’re going to start building bridges?’ Lorna looked round at him through half-closed eyes. ‘You used to have posters of the bloody things on your bedroom wall.’

  He blushed. ‘I’d rather hoped you’d forgotten about those.’

  ‘I thought it was quite sweet.’

  ‘I’ve not given up hope, if that’s what you’re suggesting.’ His hands were clasped behind his head and his feet were back on the coffee table, displaying tatty socks. ‘But the fact is that engineering is just the same as any other profession. You start at the bottom and work upwards.’

  ‘That,’ said Lorna, finally smiling for the first time in days, ‘is a perfect description of Suzie’s career.’

  * * *

  She shouldn’t have swallowed another pill or allowed Austin to refill her glass. She was now swinging from elation to the brink of tears, from flat calm to shaking coldness. Austin didn’t seem to notice,
prattling on about Suzie, telling her that they were getting along just fine, although he sometimes wondered how long it would last. She’s an actress, he said, and I’m not even a proper engineer yet. Lorna said that engineers were probably more important than actresses, but found it difficult to explain this. She knew that she’d drunk too much: speaking was becoming an effort and her arms and legs had grown unusually heavy.

  Austin was worried that Suzie would eventually go off with someone more in keeping with her image. It’s a media thing, he said. She can’t very well be seen at a film premiere with a buffoon like me on her arm. Lorna tried to tell him that Suzie was also sensible. A little loud sometimes, but she knew to keep at least one foot on the ground. You’re her foundation, Lorna told him. She needs you. You’re the engineer, Austin. You know how to build foundations.

  She was aware that she was also prattling, which she hardly ever did, always keeping things to herself, and then of her voice becoming slurred and finding it hard to talk. She looked into her glass and saw that the incandescent lights had been extinguished. Her arms and legs now seemed like dead weights, and the glass slipped from her hand. She watched as the stain spread across the carpet, joining other stains from other spilled glasses.

  ‘Lorna, are you okay?’

  ‘Drunk.’ Her pill bottle was in her pocket and with difficulty she retrieved it and rattled it at him. ‘And I’m not supposed to be drinking.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake, Lorna!’

  She edged her legs off the settee and found herself kneeling on the floor, unable to move, the room spinning. Everything felt rooted to the floor; she could feel sweat dripping down her face. ‘Oh, God, I’m going to be sick.’