Between

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  Francesco had heard it too. Still choking and still in pain, he rolled over, sat and stared upwards.

  The voice remained telepathic but there were few who didn’t hear it, and few who did not eventually understand it. One of the gang got the sneezes and Warl started to giggle. “It’s one of them fucking mediums from down there.”

  “It’s for me,” spluttered Francesco. “I can hear it.”

  “We can all hear it, you donkey turd,” said Pigseed.

  “But I think it is for him,” said Primo, focusing. “The link seems to find him. It’s his message. I’ve never had one of these myself. What’s he supposed to do now?”

  “I hear an F,” said Wayne, eyes closed. His hands were clenched, his head slumped. “He sounds so angry. But I can’t understand him. He’s talking in a foreign language. Sounds like cazzo.”

  Romano blinked, looked up and smiled slightly. “Really? How interesting.”

  “He’s dark,” said Wayne, “dark and angry. He’s saying he was killed but I can’t understand properly. It’s as if there’s a translation only half working.”

  “What translation?” said Julian. “Do you mean they have people with headphones like the United Nations?”

  “Hush,” said Sophie. “This is fascinating.”

  The room was thickly shadowed with one small table lamp lit against the far wall. Its beam was pale, creating a solitary angle of vision amongst the long greys. The four people sitting around the table were grained in shade. Wayne was breathing abnormally slowly and his voice, also slow, sounded as though it came from a distance. “He’s talking about a bomb. A holiday and a bomb on a bus. Francis. Francis from the sea. I don’t understand it all and he seems to be having trouble breathing, but the voice is clearly pronounced. I think he’s shouting at me. ‘Il cazzo sporco assassino e qua’. Then ‘Sono morto. Sono fottuto. Cinzia anche, ma lei mi ha abbandonato. Sono perduto in purgatorio.’” Wayne shook his head, pushed his chair back with a grate of wood on tiles, and sighed. “Jesus. I’ve never had it so loud before. That guy was really yelling into my brain.”

  Romano was staring at him very intently across the table. “You spoke of Francis and Cinzia. From the sea.”

  “Did I?” said Wayne, still trying to clear his head.

  Romano nodded. “You spoke some fairly accurate Italian, which I know perfectly well you do not either speak or understand. My name is DelMare, which means in loose English, of the sea. I have a cousin Francesco, who is married to Cinzia. He has this same surname. A few days ago on the news, we heard of a bomb that blew up a bus. I have no idea if my cousin was involved in that, as I have no contact with him for some years. We are not close. But this Francesco tells you he is dead, and that his murderer is there with him. I find this most interesting.”

  “Yes, well,” said Wayne, wiping his forehead, “that’s all a bit scary. But if I spoke Italian, then that ought to convince you. I mean, I can’t be making it up.”

  “I have doubted the wisdom of this whole enterprise,” said Romano gently, “but I have never doubted your integrity. Tomorrow I will make enquiries as to the whereabouts of my cousin and his wife. In the meantime, I do not think I wish to continue this séance. If everyone is in agreement, I believe we should end it here.”

  “Wow,” said Sophie, rather pink. “It’s unexpected, isn’t it? Anyway, we’re not getting Mum, that’s for sure. I didn’t know about the bomb of course, since I don’t understand the T.V. anyway, but if it’s your cousin, I mean, that’s awful. So let’s stop it now.”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” said Julian. “I thought it rather exciting myself. But it’s not my mother after all. And not my cousin.”

  “I’ve had enough,” said Wayne. “I think I’ll go to bed.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Forgetting has nothing more to do with a bad memory, than procrastinating has to do with laziness,” said Wilmot. “It is all motivated by inner fear. And I do wish you wouldn’t retreat into blank idiocy when you simply decide it’s easier to ignore me.”

  “Fuck off,” said Primo predictably.

  “You must admit,” said Wilmot, rather plaintive, “I do try and make myself hard to ignore.”

  It was true. Indeed, he was rather charmingly attired with a pair of large antelope horns in the gazelle style, a very long rather hairy tail, and a close fitting suit in brilliant red velvet. He had also grown a small neatly pointed black beard. The horns, protruding from his own short but windswept hair, looked a little heavy, but he balanced them with aplomb.

  “I’m not fucking amused,” scowled Primo. “Piss off.”

  “This constant reference to the more common bodily functions,” said the devil, “and in particular those which we do not actually any longer indulge, seems to me thoroughly retrograde. Pissing and shitting, though favourite words of yours, especially in the subjunctive vernacular, are dreary activities at the best of times. I am delighted to find the physical circumstances no longer relevant. Death has a lot to commend it.”

  “You sent me back to the fucking third to get my memories back,” Primo said, “and I got them and now I don’t want them. All this making me think, is a fucking bore. It mucks my head up.”

  “Dear, dear,” said Wilmot, twirling his tail. “I had no idea your head was so delicate.”

  “Bugger off,” said Primo.

  A slow smile tipped the corners of Wilmot’s mouth. “Speaking of memories! Yes, I had nearly forgotten that one.”

  Primo looked up and raised an eyebrow. “I would never have taken you for gay. Is that what you’re talking about? Buggery? I reckon it must hurt like buggery. That’s what they say, isn’t it?”

  Wilmot nodded, though carefully so as not to dislodge his horns. “The word gay meant something entirely different in my time. Indeed I rarely succumbed to either connotation of that particular vocabulary, though delved into both implications on occasion. I once believed in an excess of experience with which to fire the imagination. Can I now assume that my more mundane memories have rekindled your own, and that you are momentarily prepared to abandon the sulks?”

  “I wasn’t sulking,” said Primo. “I was pissed off.”

  “Another confusion of vocabulary,” Wilmot sighed, “and a return to obsolete bodily functions. Never mind. We evolved spirits of the higher realms must be patient I suppose, and remain tolerant of fourth plane trash. Especially of fourth plane trash which ought to be sitting complacent on the sixth, but hasn’t the courage to move his arse.”

  Primo looked up with interest and laughed suddenly. “Evolved spirit of the higher realms?”

  “Except for the horns and tail of course,” said Wilmot. “I did try the cloven hoof, but I fell over.”

  Primo laughed again. “Go on then,” he said. “Tell me your own memories, since I’m none too keen on regurgitating my own.”

  Wilmot leaned back against the heavy curtained bed head, adjusted his horns, and closed his eyes. “My memories? How stunningly boring. I really should point out that this is supposed to be your therapy since I finished my own fully three planes ago. However, since you managed a whole sentence without reference to any form of excrement, a mere passing reference to vomit being temporarily acceptable, I may indulge you. Just briefly.” He tented the tips of his long fingers and smiled, eyes remaining shut. “Put it this way. Two of my more poetic incarnations within the physical have blessed me with a name you despise; that being John, sometimes adorned but always unabashed. I now hear that the whore’s customer is regularly known as her john. To me, this seems most apt.”

  Primo shrugged. “Most amusing. I thought you were gay.”

  “What a lamentable lack of imagination you have,” sighed Wilmot. “My dear boy, I chose to enjoy everything, and preferably an excess of everything. I was quite simply addicted to experience. At various times, I was accused of being addicted to the bottle and the whore, to profligacy and the appealing hedonism of self-indulgence, but none of these described
the self I knew myself to be. One thing I was not addicted to was self-denial or self-delusion. It was only experience I chased, both of mind and body, and an escape from the horrendous suffocation of my soul which the stultifying hypocrisy of society has invariably embodied.”

  “So you were a snob,” nodded Primo with some satisfaction. “A wordy show-off prick.”

  “How well you’ve come to know me,” Wilmot smiled. “A prick, but a cultured prick, addicted to experience. A busy prick, but a clever one. Have you come to know yourself as well?”

  Primo glowered again, shifting lower into the mound of silken covers at the other end of the bed. “We’re talking about your faults. Remember?”

  “Forgetting is not my problem,” Wilmot scratched an ear, where his horns had slipped lopsided. “It is you who have chosen to use your memory as a poor workman’s tool, ignorance imitating innocence and fear disguised as anger. The typical subterfuge of the lower planes.”

  “Fuck off,” said Primo.

  “I frequently did,” said Wilmot. “Indeed, I turned dying young into a hobby. But such a world of thought there was to explore, all stifled beneath the rigidity of dogmatic organised religion. Of course, I was naive. The church’s habit of denying independent thought led me to disavow a god I had tried to adore. I wanted to love a god who was surely the Creator of all the knowledge I worshipped, the instigator of all that welter of inspired excitement. Instead I was told that our god forbade any exploration into the discovery of his marvels. It was less challenging to believe such nonsense, and turn instead to cynicism. But I continued to search through the delights of experience, dismissing only a god who had become superfluous. History, of course. Society has changed, though not enough.”

  Primo wondered where his harpy was. He wondered if Wilmot would be offended if he just left the room and went off to find the eagle. Wilmot’s conversation had begun to annoy him, even though he’d asked for the discussion himself. He decided to get up, and apologise briefly, and leave. Then he found himself saying, “I didn’t like religion either. God was the church. Any old church. So I didn’t like God.”

  “A common confusion,” smiled Wilmot. He flexed his bright scarlet calves. “But a foolish one. Has any man, who carries the kernel of sacred spiritual intellect within him at all times, the excuse of mistaking religion for God? Certainly not! I did it myself. I do not excuse my stupidity. I worshipped leaps of inspiration, yet used my brain on such a mundane level that I cancelled belief in the very Source of inspirational creation.”

  “Big deal,” muttered Primo.

  “Bigger than you might suppose,” said Wilmot. “In general, my goals were not entirely wrong but my sense of direction was hopeless. I attempted to aim for glory through its arse end. It is rather a waste of good living, to wade through the shit of emotional effluence, expecting to discover joy hiding there.”

  Primo smiled. “That’s what I did too. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?”

  “I believe I am,” said Wilmot. “How astute of you.”

  “Patronising prick,” said Primo fondly.

  “I think,” continued Wilmot, “I’ll take you on a journey.”

  Primo stayed solidly where he was. The bed was comfortable. The swirl of curtains which framed the bed, the room, and its occupants, whispered softly with a rustle of doubtful anticipation. The saffron silks mingled their gleaming shadows with the deep green taffetas while the shade swirled. “With you looking like that?” demanded Primo.

  “Be brave,” smiled Wilmot. “You’ve been seen with worse than me in your life.”

  The curtains parted and Wilmot rose immediately upwards. The air glittered, its waves separating for him. It was as if his aura swelled and turned to fire.

  Primo was caught in the warming, massive up draught and rose too, held within the spiralling spangle. Looking up, he watched Wilmot’s aura turn from gleam to golden sheen and on into a burst of brilliance so stunning, it was as if he became the sun god himself. Primo flew, but at first, reluctantly awed, kept his distance. “Alright,” he said, laughing. “I admit that’s impressive.”

  Wilmot had not looked back since Primo’s bedroom ceiling had burst open for him. “It’s not my own true self I have the slightest intention of displaying,” he said directly into Primo’s mind. “It’s yours.”

  Whether Wilmot still wore the Lucifer costume was no longer possible to see. He was a ball of fiery light. Primo shaded his eyes. “I’m coming. Wait for me.”

  “Keep up,” Wilmot called back. “You are perfectly capable of keeping up. Simply stop believing yourself behind.”

  So they flew together above the great forests of the fourth plane, rising ever higher. Since no limits of horizon restricted his view, Primo saw the stretch of the Summerlands in a blink, the eternal gold and green below and beyond him, above and all around him. The barriers of fogbanks blew away and one plane merged directly into another, each vision of mountain and valley, each sparkle of river, each cool undulating meadow patterned in a rosary of wild flowers, no ending, no beginning. The breezes played in the long fronded grasses of the savannah, heads of buffalo raised above the pollen, misty eyed in the sunshine, watching the figures fly high above.

  They flew through flocks of birds, the great soaring inspiration of the arrowed geese, the darting billows of finches and swallows, the curious path of pelican, the swirling black balloon of the tumbling swifts. Primo looked down, but his harpy had not followed him. This was a flight beyond her call.

  Wilmot was gaining on him. Primo flicked his thoughts, and came alongside. He decided, quite suddenly, that if he did not tighten within Wilmot’s aura, he would drop, and burn. He was flying far beyond the confines of his own plane’s comfort. He reached his hand directly into his guide’s golden energy and clutched at the comfort there.

  The mountains were like teeth, dropping into the precipice of avalanche, a cascade of freezing white in a thousand shades of blue. There was a marsh where the land rose from silvered pools, scrubby reeds tipped in bright emerald fuzz, winding waterways shrinking back from shallow banks. Primo saw his reflection like a fleeting shadow, just the passing of a feather so far above. Wilmot left no reflection at all.

  It seemed, with the dissipation of the fog barriers, that all the planes were one. The levels did not stretch one beyond the other, nor climb like hillside steps. Interposed, shaped equal, swirling in one gorgeous, glittering mass of astonishing beauty, all one Summerland, all contained within one mind.

  Primo, safe in Wilmot’s aura, understood. There were no barriers. No separate planes. The fogs were the boundaries of people’s minds. Where they lived was one vast splendid countryside. Each was blind to another because of their own thoughts, slowing or quickening their personal vibrations of existence and understanding. It was separate levels of belief, and understanding, and expectation, not of land or space. The planes were created in each spirit’s mind.

  And then they came to the ocean.

  It was far, far more than water. The crashing waves were not only waves, not only fierce indigo, or flying spray. The turquoise shallows were not only foam and surf and lapping, languid liquid.

  “Tell me,” said Primo.

  “The pure symbolism of the spirit,” said Wilmot. His voice had changed. It was liquid too, like liquid gold. Wind in water. He seemed excited. Elated. Primo felt it too, but it was almost too much for him.

  “There is one more thing,” said Wilmot. “But be prepared. It will burn you. The pain will be almost unbearable, but you are used to pain. Once you thrived on it. You have this sort of courage, and you have the audacity to face it. I know you very well, my young friend, and you can do this. Will you try?”

  “Jesus,” breathed Primo. “I’ll try everything. Addicted to extremes of experience, like you were. Take me on.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “I want to show you something,” Rita said, “so this isn’t really just a picnic you know. Well, to be honest, that wa
s only an excuse. I brought a few sausage rolls and there’s a thermos of tea in the basket, but really I just wanted to bring you here, and make it a big surprise.”

  “That’s – interesting,” hoped Georgia. “Is it a pleasant surprise – or not?”

  “A lovely one.” Rita was exuberant. “And just wait till you see the sausage rolls.”

  Georgia had dutifully carried the basket. Now her voice changed. “Sausage rolls?”

  “Don’t get ratty,” said Rita. “I’m in a bloody good mood, so don’t go ruining it. And if you must know, I didn’t make them properly. I used your trick. Just summoned them up, you know, out of my mind. It was quite exciting. And they’re not bad for pretend stuff.”

  “I’m not hungry,” said Georgia, although aware that she sounded childish.

  “Would you prefer sandwiches?” suggested Rita. “Or how about that nice chocolate cake you always make?”

  Georgia relented. “Anything. Honestly, I’m just happy about the nice surprise. At least – I think I am.”

  “We’re here,” beamed Rita. They had come across a small country lane, pushing through the opening in the low hedge and then past a copse of elms, pretty in all seasons of foliage. There under the dancing sunlit shadows of the trees were three cottages, snuggled warm, wide windowed, two storied and peaked roofed, with flowers in their window boxes and polished red doorsteps leading to polished red doors. One of the doors was open and a faint sound of music was creeping through the opening, like lemon candle light from the shade.

  “This place is lovely,” Georgia said at once, putting down the picnic basket and moving to the cottage with the open door. “It’s all delightful. I love that tune. It sounds so familiar. Do you know someone who lives here?”

  “Yes.” Rita giggled. “Me. I’ve moved. Come on in.”