Between

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  “I think,” mused Wilmot, “that you have made that fairly clear. You now digress.”

  “I’m not digressing,” objected Primo. “It’s the whole fucking point, isn’t it? I hated the little turd, so I broke his fucking neck. So now you know. Well, obviously you knew already. And I’ve said it. Can I go now?”

  “You did not merely simplify your life by removing the main cause of irritation,” said Wilmot. “You make it sound delightfully sensible. But I think not. I’m afraid you really must describe the situation with a little more objectivity. After all, you are dead now. The dead have certain advantages. Reduce the emotional static and return to the story.”

  Primo stayed silent for several minutes. He allowed strains of peace to enter his mind from the pool and its music. His memory came back in pictures, like turning the pages of a children’s illustrated book. He said softly, “Gary was grizzling. He wanted something to eat. We were pretty much always hungry. I had a slice of stale bread in my pocket. I used to save stuff like that, stealing it out of the kitchen when Pa wasn’t looking. A few crumbs helped keep the pains away when I was real hungry, but this time Gary kept on and on, so I took the bread out of my pocket and shoved it in his mouth to shut him up. He gulped down the lot and kept on for more. I didn’t have any more and I was fucking starving myself. He was chubby and I was skinny as the vultures, so I picked up a stone and gave him that. Spite I suppose. Anyway, he bit hard on it and then started to scream his bloody head off. Just kept screaming and screaming and kicking out at me. Well, I never had been a particularly nice brother, what with the pinches and stuff ever since he was in the cradle, so I suppose he pretty much hated me too. So there we were running around this big open blazing dust ridden fucking desert with him yelling his head off and me just about crying and telling him I’d let the coyotes get him if he didn’t shut the fuck up. Then I tripped and wrenched my knee. This shit pain shot right up through my leg. Okay, that’s an excuse too, but it still fucking happened. My ankle started blowing up. I was furious. I just grabbed the little bastard and threw him on the ground.”

  “We seem to be giving the impression that what happened next, occurred in the violence of provoked and uncalculated temper,” murmured Wilmot. “I believe some exaggeration is about to enter these recollections and turn them into fable.”

  “Piss off,” muttered Primo. “I was angry. Fuck, I was furious. I was nine and knew sod all. My knee and ankle were fucking killing me and my guts were rolling around half starved and my head was bursting.”

  “Where we are lying, you are getting wet,” Wilmot pointed out quite gently. “The longer we stay here, the wetter you will become. You may even begin to sink into the sludge and start growing papyrus from your ears. Therefore I suggest you hurry up, are very careful about the truth, and proceed to the climax.”

  Primo sat up suddenly and stared out across the water. The flying spray in his face was sharp and cold and fresh. He breathed it in. “Alright,” he said. “All that was true. I was starving and I did hurt my ankle and I was fucking pissed off. It was a last straw type of situation. I felt fucking sorry for myself. But no excuses, because I knew what I was doing. I’d thought about it before so it was calculated. I only thought for two seconds or something and the reaction just happened, but it was planned in a way because I’d lain in bed thinking about doing it for four years. So Gary was lying on his back wriggling around in the dirt and squalling up into my face. I pressed my thumbs into his neck. I kept pressing.” Primo turned, looking straight down at Wilmot’s placid expression. “But I swear I didn’t actually think I’d kill him. I wanted to. I just didn’t think I’d have the strength. I heard this sort of snap, like splinters cracking, but I didn’t know if it was bones or just some twig he was lying on. I was so fucking surprised when his eyes went all glazed and he stopped squealing and sort of flopped. I kept kicking him, telling him to stop fucking about and get up. But he didn’t of course. He was fucking dead.”

  “So you supposed,” agreed Wilmot. “Were you guilt-ridden?”

  Primo thought for a moment. “Later I was,” he said at last. “Not then. I was frightened but I wasn’t really sorry. I’d wanted rid of him ever since he turned up and at last he was gone. It was a feeling of power. That snap stayed with me for years and years though. Half horror, half power. When I felt sick or frightened or just fucking miserable over the years, which was pretty much always, it was that snap I relived. I can do anything I want, I used to think. Snap! It’s done!”

  “Very well,” said Wilmot. “For the moment we will leave it at that. But remember that same feeling of power can be a surreptitious perversion of power, and to someone innately powerless its comfort is utterly subversive.” He smiled, as if feeling comforted himself. “Now you can visit Daisy.”

  Primo sat still, his head bowed. “Must I? I’m fucking worn out.”

  “The exhaustion of unlocking memories which you had no right to banish in the first place, is no motive for procrastination,” said Wilmot. “Procrastination is always an ugly and self-deceiving veneer for fear, and we will not relinquish progress for fear at this stage. The choice is naturally a free one, but I expect you to make it for all that. I shall come with you, and we will not stay long.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s one small consolation,” said Primo.

  They flew directly up the cliff face, the snows far above them, the fogbanks beyond. On the wide ledge with its back to the rock and its window to the water fall and the cornflower sky, his first home greeted Primo once again, but it was now fully occupied. The harpy sat waiting, wings folded, eyes huge and belligerent, on the little pointed roof. On the doorstep a large dark man sat podding peas. Primo did not know who he was, but he recognised Sam. Sam was sitting in the sunshine, swinging his legs over the edge of the precipice and throwing pebbles down into the ravine. Invisible inside the house, Daisy was singing.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “Seppia in nero,” said Romano, more to himself than to the group clustered around him.

  “With rice,” nodded Sophie, watching with some misgivings as Romano lifted the handful of pale squelching cuttlefish from the package to the marble slab by the sink. “So I’ll put the water on to boil and then go toss the lettuce.”

  “Luscious,” murmured Julian. “All luscious, I’m sure. But those huge dead eyes are watching me.”

  Wayne grinned. “I’ll help Romano. You go uncork the wine. He’ll be expecting lubrication as usual.”

  Romano, neatly snipping the little sack of liquid ink from its clasping sinews, smiled and nodded. “Indeed I will. Cold Orvieto this evening I think. A special meal deserves a special wine.”

  Wayne chopped onions and garlic, Romano cleaned and sliced the cuttlefish. Sophie added salt to the big saucepan of water and then went off to prepare the salad. Julian poured the wine. “Some of that for the sugo,” said Romano.

  “One glug or two?”

  “Six. And now the tomatoes.”

  “Gosh,” Sophie came up to watch once the head and eyes had been discarded and the slim white rings of cuttlefish looked less like an animal. “What an amazing cook you are. You’re learning all this, aren’t you Wayne? You’ll be a great cook too.”

  “And what a useful husband he’ll make,” smiled Julian, busy setting the table.

  Romano combined the rice, the sugo and the fish. “I imagine Wayne is not yet contemplating marriage. He will soon be heading for France.” Wayne had his eyes lowered to his glass. Romano watched him, smiling. “Is this not true?”

  Wayne blushed, aware of the sudden silently fixed attention of everyone in the room. He began busily passing plates as Romano dished up. “Well, yeh. Sometime soon. I mean, I can’t overstay my welcome can I now?”

  Sophie took her plate and sat rather drooped at the table, Julian opposite her. “France, then? Soon?”

  Julian forked his risotto. “But I’m sure you’re still welcome. No one’s asked you to leave.” He looked up
as Romano sat. “Surely you haven’t asked him to leave?”

  “Indeed I have not,” smiled Romano. “But young men become restless and there a great deal of world still to be explored. Yes?”

  “I was talking to Romano the other night,” admitted Wayne. “I was saying maybe it’s time I moved on. I didn’t mean tomorrow or anything. I mean, being here is just so great. This dinner is fantastic.”

  “Well, it’s Italy, isn’t it?” said Julian, brightening. “Incredible food, incredible clothes. Even the language is pretty. Lilting. Musical.”

  Sophie nodded, smiling again. “Yes. Words sound so much better in Italian. Primavera. Bellissimo. Amore.”

  “Never mind about the words,” said Wayne, glad of the change of subject. “All Italians talk with their hands.”

  Romano carefully tucked his hands under the table. “I believe we tend to be effusive in many ways. We talk also with our clothes, our passions.”

  “Clothes reflect your personality, don’t they,” nodded Julian with an envious eye to Romano’s loose linen suit. “And the bank account too of course.”

  “Well clothes reflect a person’s personality, don’t they,” said Daisy dubiously, staring at Primo’s unexpected and uninvited companion.

  The young man being stared at, grinned widely. His Mohawk quivered. He tapped his bitten fingernails on the torn knee of his jeans and the distinctly grubby protuberance of bone beneath. “Never think it,” he said. “Clothes reflect your weaknesses, complexes and neuroses. However, the logical inference that I’m therefore a raving lunatic would be a slight exaggeration.” His sapphire nipple rings were reflecting the silver polish of the cutlery on the table. “Indeed,” he continued cheerfully, “I am perfectly sure that any judgement you might choose to make of me would be entirely erroneous.”

  Gregorio passed the peas.

  Daisy dished out the mashed potatoes. “I really haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” she said, though she was looking at Primo and not at Wilmot. “And I wish you wouldn’t bring odd people here.”

  Wilmot allowed the description to pass without comment. Primo shook his head at the potatoes. “It’s my fucking house. I’ll bring who I want.”

  “It used to be your house,” Gregorio pointed out. “Now it’s Daisy’s. And mine. And Sam’s.” The last was said somewhat reluctantly, but Sam smiled, content. In fact he was looking smug, while his large frame was cosily cosseted in a downy blue baby-grow which seemed even more eccentric than Wilmot’s torn adolescent punk. Not unsurprisingly, Wilmot seemed unperturbed. He passed Sam the gravy. Sam removed his thumb from his mouth and poured gravy over his potatoes, peas and eggs.

  “And you shouldn’t be eating eggs,” frowned Primo, the only one not now sitting at the table. “What does the macaw think, you eating eggs? What does the hornbill think?”

  “They’re not macaw eggs, silly,” said Daisy. “And the hornbill left me. I thought she’d gone to the forest to find you. She probably got lost. Anyway, they aren’t real eggs at all and everyone knows that. But they taste all right. You’re just a food snob.”

  “I’m a non-food snob,” glared Primo. “It’s pathetic to eat at all.”

  Daisy shoved a forkful of egg into her mouth and proceeded to chew forcefully. Primo looked across at Wilmot, who remained cheerfully seated at the table, although he had politely declined the offering of lunch. Primo shook his head silently. Wilmot nodded back, but suggested, “Start slowly. No need to rush in where angels, quite literally, fear to tread.”

  So Primo ignored Gregorio and Sam and said directly to Daisy, “If I said I wanted to talk to you outside alone, I suppose you’d object.”

  “What do you want to talk about?” demanded Daisy, fork poised.

  “Something personal,” said Primo.

  Daisy slammed down her cutlery and stood up. “It’d better be something nice,” she said and marched, somewhat defiantly, from the front door. Primo followed her. Gregorio scowled, looked at Wilmot, and then bent his head back to his food. Sam glared and pushed his chair away from the table. He was trying to listen, but, catching none of the distant conversation either audibly or telepathically, he then climbed from the chair (the baby-grow was restrictive, especially around the groin and knees) and edged to the door. Wilmot smiled, and gently lifted one finger. Sam stopped, quite suddenly, one foot airborne. He discovered, in silent fury, that he could not move. He could not speak, shout, or even grimace. His anger was locked in a passive exterior. Wilmot nodded, and continued to smile. Gregorio smothered a twitch of a grin, and went on with his lunch.

  Sven had grown a little older, Rita a little younger. “Everyone’s prime,” said Darial, “is different. And the amount of time and effort we take to revert to it over here, is also different. But there are fair generalisations as well. For instance, most of us have a prime age that feels inside to be around thirty to thirty five. So those who die young have to grow older to reach that state, and we older folk have to get younger.”

  “But we’re not really thirty years old,” said Georgia. “That’s exactly how I feel now, but it wouldn’t make sense, would it?”

  With the sunlight directly on her face, Darial looked ageless. “While alive, we each have a state,” she said, “which coincides with the progress of mind where we feel most ourselves. It doesn’t have to be when we discover wisdom, though it often is, or health, or happiness. It may be our moment of greatest challenge and difficulty in life, or of success and equilibrium. It’s just as our attitude reaches that point of emotional stability and character growth when we feel we’ve arrived at being ourselves. That’s the age we call the prime. In Earth years, it’s around the thirty three mark for most of us. The actual years are irrelevant of course. But that’s what we are inside, so it’s what we stay at in the Summerlands. Here, in every way, what we feel like, we actually appear as. So that’s why most of us end up looking like thirty year olds, whether we died at eight or eighty.”

  “It’s nice looking younger,” said Rita. “I hated that raddled old face in the mirror, and Heavens, I never felt like such an old person inside.”

  “Exactly,” smiled Darial. “Now your outside matches your inside.”

  “It’s only just happening to me,” Sven pointed out, “even though I’ve been here some time. At least, it feels like some time. It’s a bit hard to count days when there aren’t any proper sunsets or dark nights, but you get a feeling for time passing don’t you.”

  Denying the logical passage of time, the trees above them were flaunting the full seasonal variety of leaf. Golden autumn at branch tips eddied into rich green around the trunk. The pale transparency of paper red edged the upper reaches. Through the leafy cascades, the sunlight dappled and pooled. Sven was talking about slowly growing older but the light made him look very young.

  “I got back to thirty odd almost as soon as I woke in the hospital,” said Georgia. “It didn’t take me any time at all. Of course, I didn’t notice until I saw my reflection, and it was so young and pretty, I couldn’t believe it was me. Then I was thrilled. I’d forgotten what a young me had been like...”

  “It depends on expectations,” said Darial.

  “Well, I never even got to any hospital,” nodded Sven. “I just got exploded over here. To be honest, it took me ages to work out what was happening. I’d never believed in God or Heaven or anything either, so I was bloody confused for ages. Tell the truth, I used to be pretty rude to people who believed in God. I called them idiots, so I felt a bit of an idiot arriving here. But it was just endless fog. That seemed just plain unfair to me. A clean comfy bed would have been much nicer.”

  “Sudden, unexpected death can be quite a learning experience,” said Darial. Her halo of brilliance spread around her as golden as the sunlight, but more vital. It spiralled as she moved, like a gleaming gossamer cloak. “There are a lot of different ways of dying,” she continued, “and an equal variety of death experiences on this side, but the hos
pital is the most common. Some people who miss the hospital arrival, go back and find it afterwards.”

  “My Sven doesn’t need doctors,” interrupted Rita. “Don’t go sending him away now. He’s fine with me. I’ll look after him.”

  “And you’re so near the path to the sixth plane,” said Georgia, who was overcoming the challenge of accepting that her mother’s boyfriend seemed so much younger than herself, and somewhat more callow too. She remained polite – the habit of a lifetime’s practise in respectable suburban society, and smiled. “I suppose you’ll be moving up any day.”

  “As long as me and Sven can move together,” sniffed Rita. “I won’t go, if he can’t come.”

  “Oh, I’ll come,” said Sven. “I’m not intending on hanging around. I don’t see why I was sent down this far anyway. Don’t they say the seventh plane’s the usual welcome level?”

  “Your state of mind and spiritual progress chooses your plane of arrival,” smiled Darial. “That creates your own spirit vibration, and your vibrations take you to your place of suitability. You aren’t always conscious of the reasons.”

  “Well, it’s alright here,” said Sven, nodding towards the cottage where he was now living. “Long as it’s not just meant as a slap on the wrist for not believing the right things, then I’m not objecting. But if a move up is close, that’s okay with me. And while I’m at it, about these clothes. I’ve been stuck in these dirty jeans ever since the bus blew up. How do I get rid of them?”

  Rita sniggered. “I’ll help you get them off, just wait.”

  “As I explained about looking a certain age,” said Darial, “it is your inner state of mind that creates your appearance. There must be some blockage that makes it difficult for you to change your clothes.”