The End of the Day

by Claire North

  Part 7

  SCUBA

  Chapter 74

  “Describe a situation in which you were at your best.”

  “My greatest strength, I think, is my people skills. I just really like people.”

  “What would you say you bring to the company?”

  “… looking at a whole-market rationalisation, a restructuring from the bottom up, by which I mean to say …”

  “Describe yourself in one word.”

  “Strong.”

  “Confident.”

  “Passionate.”

  “Dedicated.”

  “Penguin.”

  “Did she just say …”

  “… of that forty per cent, ten per cent will be phased out through retirement, and the remaining thirty per cent induced to leave by redundancy incentives. The higher-level management will receive a redundancy package equal to …”

  “… a substantial leakage of urine or faeces—such that there would be a requirement for the person to have to wash and change their clothing. The descriptors do not refer to minor degrees of leakage that could be managed by the use of pads and not necessitate a full change of clothing … Urgency … will not usually meet the criteria …”

  “I’m a winner, I’m a winner, that’s what America needs, America needs winners, I own—now get this—I own assets up to a value of …”

  “Describe your weaknesses.”

  “I care too much.”

  “Once I’m committed to an idea, I find it hard to let go.”

  “I need to use the toilet every forty minutes.”

  “Did he just say …”

  “… in every case, the diagnosis history/nature of the condition must be carefully considered and the true risk of loss of control considered on the balance of medical probability and evidence. Medication, specialist input and aids used must be documented.”

  “Tell me what your goals are for ten years’ time.”

  “This is a commissions-based industry.”

  “A right to terminate within three months.”

  “We’re not sacking them. We’re just informing them that unless they can move back to London when the office moves, they’ll no longer be of use to us.”

  “At the moment I take home eighty per cent of what he does, and he still expects me to cook on a weekend!”

  “The claimant may show you pads or extra change of clothing which they carry with them when they go out. The claimant may have to leave the room during the assessment to visit the toilet. Any such information should be documented in the relevant sections of the report … Risk of incontinence … should only apply if the likelihood of loss of control is very high for the majority of the time.” (Training and Development Handbook for the Department of Work and Pensions, last revised February 2015)

  Chapter 75

  Charlie said, “Saga’s in London.”

  “Who is Saga?” asked Emmi.

  “She’s … she was the Harbinger of Death. She had the job before me. She hired me, taught me … She asked if I wanted a drink. I said yes. Do you want to come?”

  “Will it be in a noisy pub? I don’t need noise.”

  “We can go somewhere quiet.”

  “Then I think … yes. I think I would like to meet her very much.”

  Three days later, Saga whooped, rocking over her empty plate, “… ‘But why would anyone want to know that they’re going to die?!’ He asked that! Can you believe it? Our Charlie, sat there in this terrible suit, terrible …”

  “It was a friend’s.”

  “… just the worst suit you’ve ever seen, and I said, do you have any questions, and he asked that! Incredible, I just thought … Oh, things were so different back then, weren’t they, you were such a … but look at you now, and Emmi—Emmi, you have to tell me—does he still get carsick?”

  “Carsick? No, I’ve never seen …”

  “First time, took him to see a woman in Cornwall, a master craftsman, stained-glass windows, a skill, you see, a skill dying out, and we weren’t five minutes onto the M4 before blurgh …”

  “He doesn’t really get carsick …”

  “… I don’t really get carsick.”

  “And I thought, really, is this it? Really? This is the man we’re hiring as Harbinger of Death? Some of the applications we got—Harvard, Beijing, the Sorbonne …”

  “University of Birmingham,” muttered Charlie, taking refuge in his beer.

  “… but those kids, the high-flyers, they’ve always got the same problem. Why do you want to be Harbinger of Death? ‘Because I want to understand what Death is’ or ‘Because I am passionate about mortality’ or—I once heard this, I swear—‘Because the Apocalypse is coming and I wish to ride before the flame’—he was London School of Economics, I think. I just laughed. ‘You already know what death is, or have you been living under a rock!’ Or ‘You care about mortality? Surely life is too short!’ Emmi, your glass is empty, let me get you another …”

  “That’s very …”

  “More, please! Another one of this—what is it? It’s very good—another, please! Thank you! The mail you get, the office is just inundated, people send their knickers, which I’ve never understood, send their knickers to Death and I’m just astonished, really, shouldn’t be, but it’s so … I mean, you come in one day, you take your pants off, you don’t even wash them, and you’re like, I shall now find out the address of this celebrity or that horseman of the endless night, and I shall send them this bit of lingerie still hot from my sweaty skin and … well, I can’t fathom it. I just find it very odd.”

  “Can I ask …”

  “Emmi, you’re wonderful, have I told you that, you’re just the most wonderful …”

  “… why did you hire Charlie?”

  “Ah. Sweet sweet Charlie. Sweet Charlie in his stupid suit, he can’t spell ‘principal,’ do you know that? Principal, principle, he gets the two mixed up, typos on an application to be Harbinger of Death! I said, ‘You might be kidnapped. Sometimes Harbingers are.’ And do you know what his answer was?”

  “No …”

  “He said, ‘That’s okay. It’s a people thing.’ That’s the answer, Emmi my love. To your question. I hired Charlie because the most important thing when you’re the Harbinger of Death, the thing that matters more than anything else, is seeing people. Not corpses, not killers or victims or soldiers or criminals or presidents or anything like that. You have to see … people. People who are afraid. People who have lived their lives, in their ways. You are the bridge. Death stands behind you, but you look forward, always forward, and humanity looks straight back at you. And that’s a wonderful thing. A toast! To Charlie.”

  “To Charlie.”

  “May he one day buy a better suit.”

  And at night, as they lay together with the curtains open, watching the sweep of car headlights across the ceiling, Charlie said, “She’s right.”

  “Hm?” Emmi, half asleep, head buried in her pillow.

  “What Saga said, about people, looking. Humanity, looking. She was right. There’s more to it, there’s more than … Did you know she teaches scuba diving now? She retired to an island and she … Emmi?”

  “Uh-huh.” Mumbled sound from far away.

  “Death stands behind, and I look forward, and the world looks back and I see it and … the world when it sees me sees only Death. That’s the truth of it. I am not … Emmi? What do I look like, to you? What do you see?”

  Emmi was asleep.

  Charlie held her close, and closed his eyes.

  Chapter 76

  A standard check-up …

  Of course, I understand.

  You’ve been having headaches …

  Long days.

  Recurring nightmares. Panic attacks?

  I wouldn’t call it an attack …

  Milton Keynes insists …

  It’s fine.

  So. Shall we begin?

  Okay.

  On a scale of one to fiv
e, where five is strong agreement and one is disagreement … do you find it difficult to get out of bed in the morning?

  Um … so I give it a number?

  Yes.

  Well, it depends, doesn’t it, I mean, it depends on the day …

  Just a general number will do.

  I suppose … two. No, maybe … two.

  Do you find yourself feeling sad for large parts of the day?

  Two.

  Do you find things which gave you pleasure don’t give you pleasure any more?

  Two. No. Three. But I think that’s just because with the travel, I mean, you change, you feel …

  Do you ever consider harming yourself?

  One.

  Do you agree or disagree with the following sentence: “my life is balanced and fulfilled, and I am confident in the course I’m taking”?

  Uh … three.

  You only need to agree or disagree.

  Oh. I guess … I agree?

  “I have a good work–life balance.”

  Do I have to agree or disagree?

  Yes.

  Probably not.

  “I am looking forward to the future and all that it brings.”

  I … It’s kind of hard, actually, I mean, these are all binaries …

  Charlie. Don’t worry about it. This isn’t something that will be fed back to Milton Keynes, it’s just an assessment for your benefit, for your welfare.

  Yes, but I mean, to assess … because sometimes I wake up and Emmi’s there and she is … and on other days I have a plane to catch and I love it, I mean, I love to travel, I do, because in Lagos there were these women and I … and sometimes I have this … it’s not a panic attack, I mean, I don’t need a paper bag or anything …

  You’ve been hyperventilating?

  No! No, I mean … I mean you don’t know, do you? You just don’t know. Some days I’ll go to the mountains of Peru, and the sky is so … and the land is so … and I met a woman who was dying, and her death was sad, of course it was, but she was … she was ready. The world was ready, the world was ready to move and there wasn’t … I was there to honour her, it was good that she was honoured. And sometimes I am sent to other places, and there is nothing but pain and grief and death for no reason, stupid, it’s just so stupid so … so unreasonable, and there was …

  I think we’re losing track of the …

  … look. I was kidnapped once in Mexico. I had no idea what was going on, but I didn’t think I was going to die, because I am the Harbinger of Death, I have seen Death, I know what Death looks like and this wasn’t … Not just seeing Death in person, but seeing the shape of Death, the shadow he casts, I can recognise that, and it wasn’t there. This was a kidnapping and I was terrified, but somehow not of that. Not of the end. And even if I had been, I didn’t fear it. I didn’t fear Death, that day, I didn’t fear the world stopping—shit, does this count as suicidal? It wasn’t, I swear, it wasn’t, it was just …

  They took me to this place, and they had some sort of religious ceremony. There was singing, and this priest—priestess, I mean, but Catholic, sort of, she sang and they put a gun to my head and I had no idea if it was loaded, none at all, but I wasn’t afraid, not there, I wasn’t afraid because it was so alive, it was the most alive I think I have ever been, it was as if I could feel every cell in my body, every part of me bursting with life and it was …

  … so I’m not going to be good at answering these binary questions, you see. Because sometimes I am so terrified of getting out of bed, because I don’t know what the world will bring, or what I’ll see. I am terrified because there is such darkness out there, there is such cruelty, I am terrified when the phone rings that someone will tell me that Emmi has been hurt or someone I love will have died or the world I thought I knew will be gone for ever and I dread it, I dread the day, I dread what it will bring.

  And sometimes I cannot wait for the sun to rise, because the world is full of people, of human beings singing their songs and telling their stories, of life and passion, glory and wonder, and Death is not a thing to fear, but is life’s mirror, reminding us to live, live, live, and I am honoured, I am so honoured to travel the world and see that the world is a place of people, and to be alive with them, living with them, even at the end.

  Does that make sense?

  Does that answer your question?

  … I’m not going to lie, Charlie, it answers the questions, but is piss for my paperwork.

  Chapter 77

  humanhumanratrathumanratratrathumanrat

  Charlie!

  “The Shan people trade in opium, carrying it across the Chinese border. Military action against civilian populations has grown since the death of their leader in an air raid on …”

  Char-lie ….

  “I’m not lazy, I’m not given any opportunities, how dare you say I’m lazy, how dare you, I do my job and I do it right, why should I do more, why should I give a damn about anything more than …”

  HUMAN HUMAN RAT RAT RAT RAT RAT RAT HUMAN

  “… executed in China, their organs removed and shipped to a donor for immediate transplant …”

  CHARLIE!!

  Wide awake, soaked in sweat, staring at the ceiling and the ceiling stares back the world stares back the whole wide world is staring, staring staring but not at him not at him but at he that comes behind, at the shadow thrown against the dust he comes, he comes he comes he comes always he comes he comes comes comes comes

  Breathe in, breathe out.

  Breathe in, breathe out.

  Charlie.

  Put the headphones on, listen to music.

  Music is a miracle.

  Your life is a miracle.

  Slower, now, slower.

  The world isn’t watching you now.

  You’re safe here.

  Close your eyes.

  Listen.

  Sleep.

  All this will pass, by itself, in time. Everything does.

  “Charlie?”

  “Emmi?”

  “I’m worried about you.”

  “About …”

  “Not about us. About you.”

  “Oh.”

  “The nightmares, the …”

  “I did a good thing, in Nigeria.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Not part of my job, but …”

  “The nightmares …”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not. People who say they’re fine like that, they never are, everyone knows, it’s just a thing everyone knows, I mean, it’s like a post-English thing, now we know that when the English say they’re fine they mean they’re fucked, can you be that, can you be post-English, anyway, you’re fucked. You’re not fine. You wake shaking in the night.”

  “I … There was this time in Mexico and I …”

  “Have you considered a holiday?”

  “Sounds good …”

  “Have you considered a new job? Charlie? I won’t tell you what to do with your life, I’ll stick by you and be there for you whatever. You once told me that as Harbinger of Death you couldn’t make this about you. You mustn’t go to the dying men and say ‘I saw a man die, and it really affected me.’ Their story is not about you. I won’t ever make you quit your job. I am not suffering to see you suffer; these things … these things are not about me, or even us, but you …”

  “I love my job.”

  “I know.”

  “I had no idea how wonderful the world was.”

  “I know.”

  “Two women left Lagos, and Agnes Young has buried her grandfather and I …”

  “You honour life.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And sometimes I find you crying, when you thought you wouldn’t be found. Charlie? Charlie. These things … Think about it. When you can. Just think about it.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  Part 8

  ROAD

  Chapter 78

  Is this it?

  Is
it time to quit?

  How long has it been? Three years? Four?

  Quitting after four years in any ordinary job, that would be …

  … and he loves the work, he loves it, he just …

  Maybe.

  The booking comes in.

  A long, rambling trip.

  There’ll be driving along an empty road, maybe thousands of miles, just him with the window down.

  Emmi sees him off to the airport, kisses him goodbye.

  He’ll think about it on the road, he promises, he swears, and this time, he is telling the truth from the bottom of his heart.

  They detained Charlie at Miami airport, but that was fine. Many customs officials felt this way about his work.

  “So, you’re the Harbinger of Death.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Business or pleasure?”

  “Business.”

  “And how long, may I ask, are you planning on spending in the country?”

  “About three weeks.”

  “So you’ve got a lot of business.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going to need a full itinerary.”

  “I can’t provide that.”

  “Why not?”

  “My employer hasn’t yet sent me details of the trip.”

  “But you do have a return ticket from JFK.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you don’t know what you’re doing in the meantime.”

  “No.”

  “Sir, you understand that under these circumstances I am allowed to deny you entry to this country.”

  “I understand that.”

  “And you understand that any appeal against the decision is likely to result in it being upheld.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “You may wish to deny me entry to your country, but the State Department will let me in.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because once I’m in, they can have me followed, and they can put FEMA offices on high alert at every urban or industrial centre I visit. And if they don’t let me in, they’ll never know where I might have gone, and Death will come regardless. Death will come, Officer. As I explained to your colleague—sometimes I am a courtesy, as well as a warning. You do what you must.”