Between

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  “How’s it feel?” said Wilmot.

  “I was dreaming of one old harridan, and woke with another,” said Primo. He felt an unlikely breeze over his head and twisted around. The harpy was roosting on the bed head.

  “I know all your dreams,” said Wilmot. “At the end you were dreaming of your friend Daisy. The inspiration for my costume. I decided to become an echo.”

  Primo smiled. “You don’t look much like she did,” he said. “You’re well fed. She wasn’t. You’re cosy and comfy and mummsy.”

  “Grannyfied,” nodded Wilmot. “I smell of lavender. I thought that was a nice touch.”

  “I don’t like lavender,” said Primo.

  “What a shame,” said Wilmot, “I’ll change it to frangipani,” and he did.

  Primo’s smile spread. He was touched. “I know why you’re looking like you’ve just left the rocking chair on the porch,” he said, “and it’s got nothing to do with Daisy. It’s because you care. You’re actually being nice.”

  “A rare occurrence,” admitted Wilmot, “which may never happen again. In the meantime, make the most of me. How do you like your bed?”

  “It’s not just a bed,” said Primo, leaning back again into the nest of soft covers. “It’s a real silken cocoon isn’t it? I’m in that hospital I never wanted to stay in in the first place. I’m about to metamorphose. Next time I wake, I’ll wake up already turned into a good boy. And so you’re actually being nice to me, in anticipation of my imminent improvements.”

  “Whereas usually,” murmured Wilmot, one aged greying eyebrow raised, “I burn my apprentices at the stake. Naturally I scraped my way through guardian angel school with an advanced diploma in medieval torture and a second class degree in how to cause major disruption to the emotional stability of those under my personal care.”

  Primo found it hard to grin. The crease lines around his mouth were too sleepy. He was barely awake after all.

  “Sleep, child,” said Wilmot gently. “The next time you wake, it will be almost over.”

  “That sounds ominous,” murmured Primo.

  “In the sense that you will never be the same again, perhaps it is,” said Wilmot.

  “I don’t want to be the same,” said Primo.

  “That is what I hoped,” said Wilmot, adjusting his tea cosy. “Your dreams will not be sweet, child, but they will be cathartic. Go to them now.” And Primo closed his eyes.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “As you move to the eighth plane, so will I move to the tenth,” said Norwen. “But that time is far off. We each have a great deal to teach each other before then.”

  “It’d be terrible if you moved on before me,” Georgia exclaimed, clasping her hands. “If you went to the tenth first and left me, I’d be stuck here forever. Honestly I would. I’d really miss you and besides, I’d never move up.” She paused, then muttered, “that’s really selfish, isn’t it? I ought to wish you on and up and not think about myself.”

  “There’s nothing selfish about affection. But you think this way because you are far from ready.” Norwen laughed. “But indeed, we will help each other rise. My eventual move to the tenth will separate me from the lower planes, but I will still meet you again. Eventually you will progress to the same level.”

  ”Oh, that will take eons,” Georgia shook her head. “And by the time I reach the tenth, you’ll be on the twentieth.”

  He laughed. “There is no such place. The tenth is unseparated. It is utter spirituality without recourse to physical illusion, and we remain there, refining our comprehension, until we are ready to reincarnate.”

  “I find the thought of being born physical again, utterly dreary,” Georgia asked, looking up, surprised. “It’s so comfy to give up all that weight.”

  “Naturally death eliminates all the disadvantages of the physical entity,” nodded Norwen. “And most of its fears. The crippled walk again and the blind see. Such wounds and deformities are purely of the flesh and disappear once we revert to pure spirit. But your soul cannot grow without those experiences. Staying here interminably would leave you static and growth would cease since your spiritual potential would never expand. When your existence on the tenth plane reunites you with the God self within, then you will realise your need for a return to Earth, your realisation will immediately constitute a desire and the desire will see it done.”

  They started to walk together along the beach which now stretched before them. Their feet left no footprints in the sand but they were aware of its soft warmth and compliancy between the toes. “But this seventh plane,” Georgia said abruptly, waving towards the baked warm gold of the sand and the gentle turquoise waves beyond, “is so utterly – glorious! No wonder people call it paradise.”

  “But it is not,” said Norwen. “It is a half-way state, as the newly dead are given the gift of adaptation. Familiarity. What appears to be safely physical, even though it is not solid at all. From the sixth plane upwards, it is pleasant indeed. But it is a long way from the ultimate. We do not call it Paradise. We rarely call it Heaven. We call it ‘the Between’.”

  “Between, I’ll remember that. But it’s a lot more than just pleasant,” Georgia nodded. “It’s like paradise to me. And I didn’t expect it to be so easy and beautiful. God doesn’t always seem kind, does He? The things that happen when we’re alive can be hideous.”

  “I have told you before,” said Norwen. “We make our own choices and none are forced upon us by a tyrannical Godhead. It is the God within us, being the kernel of our soul and individuality, which designs each new life. With ourselves, we can be ruthless.”

  “I hope I’m kind to myself next time then,” Georgia said very softly, gazing out to the watery ripples and their myriad tones. Then she looked up suddenly. “Funny – now I’m scared of being alive again. When I was alive, I was scared of dying. I mean, the entire time we’re alive, we’re terrified of the one thing that’s absolutely sure to happen some day. I really must remember all this when I get born again, it’ll save so much worry and misery.”

  “Few remember,” said Norwen. “It would colour everything.” The vast leap of a whale surged through the distant waves, a twist of joy in the deep waters. “Even the other creatures fail to remember,” said Norwen. “The instinct for survival must be maintained.”

  Georgia laughed. “I suppose if any of us properly remembered just how gorgeous death is compared to life, we’d all be committing suicide at the slightest problem.”

  “Suicide,” Norwen said, “solves nothing. To end a life through a desire to escape the pain and eradicate the problems that cannot be faced, is quite futile, for the soul arrives here in the hospital of dreaming, where he must deal with every detail in retrospect. Life’s lessons must always be faced, one way or another.” He took Georgia’s hand, leading her through the bright cleansing shallows of turquoise water and glittering foam. She felt the energy of his spirit travel from his clasping fingers into her own essence. “It was not because I remembered the bliss of paradise that I committed suicide,” he continued. “It was because I wanted to escape my thoughts. But arriving here, I discovered my thoughts waiting for me.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Georgia. “I didn’t know.”

  “We live many lives,” said Norwen. “There are few of us who survive an entire existence of reincarnations without experiencing each variety of death.”

  “So we all do everything, at some time or another?” Georgia giggled, and then suddenly frowned. “So I was a medieval executioner? A queen? A man? A horrible bitch who beat my children? A great artist? I’d love to know some of them but I can only picture the last one. Maybe that’s enough for now. But it means we’re all actually equal after all, doesn’t it? I mean, do we all have a life being a murderer, and a life being murdered? We have a go at everything?”

  “Which is why judgements are so pointless. To condemn a man for doing something that you have once undoubtedly done yourself – perhaps as recently as in your previ
ous existence?”

  “You say these things, but I can’t truly absorb them,” said Georgia softly. “I’m not even sure I believe them.”

  “What you believe is always surrounded by doubt,” said Norwen. “You need not believe. Wait until you can know.”

  Francesco awoke in the long cool, unwinding himself from memory shadows.

  He smiled, very deeply, and lay there for some moments watching the colours rainbow in arches over him and across the rise of the high ceiling. Beyond the foot of his bed life began again in a shimmer of light that was unutterably welcoming.

  As the spirit who had come to speak to Father Martin had told him, he had walked away from the gang and its sad embers, the stench of eager cooking, greed, sour anger and the drear of repetitive violence. No one had tried to stop him because he held no use for them. They let him go.

  He had walked towards the shimmer of an unclouded distance, and found the sun rising directly in his face. There had been no night, no stars or moon, no sunset or twilight, but there was a sunrise far more exultant than anything his mind could have imagined. He walked into it. It became a doorway and around the entrance was the rising white marble of the place he had been seeking.

  He had entered the hospital, prepared to introduce himself, and found he was expected. The doctor had taken his hand and led him to the waiting bed. Francesco had sighed and smiled and rolled himself in the soft warmth, and closed his eyes.

  It was only now that he was opening them again. He barely remembered the gang. He had forgotten, for the moment, the bus and the bomb and the gleeful scampering of Ayakis which he had loathed so compulsively. His mind was full of anticipation and excitement.

  To either side of him other beds and sleepers stretched, perhaps endlessly. Some lay shrouded in a gentle haze, pastel coloured or colourless, hidden within their cocoons. Others lay bright faced under dancing spangled colours. There was music and perfume, each element of the senses, but each was individual to the sleeper within, never impinging on the place of another. It was only perfect peace which united them.

  To his right, Francesco saw the face of a young man. He was covered in a soft feathery mist of light, and his face, clear and smiling, was quite beautiful. Francesco thought, though he could not have explained his reasoning, that the young man was very close to waking. Then he looked up, startled and momentarily alarmed. A great solid shape sat huddled above the man’s head, as if peering down over him. There was a darkness and the suggestion of huge wings folded. Francesco thought of the devil. He saw the great curve of beak, as sharp and pointed as a blade. But the eyes were closed. Then Francesco heard a faint snore, a snuffle of contentment almost like the purr of a cat or the soft cooing of a dove.

  Francesco smiled. He had not supposed that birds or animals would need the deep dreaming of the hospital. He did not yet, he realised, know much at all.

  He rose lightly from his bed and stepped out to the brilliance of the golden energy beyond the room. Where the cool shadows stopped, so the room ended. There was no wall. What had seemed to be windows were the points at which shadow finished and the bright new life began. The air, if it was air, was utterly fresh with a tingle of incredible anticipation and the perfumes of nostalgia and homecoming. Francesco knew at once that this was a different plane. He did not yet know where he had arrived, but it was far away from the dull suffocation of the third.

  He turned briefly, saluting the beautiful young dreamer and his watching eagle, and walked out onto the plane that awaited him.

  “Of course it’s not your fault,” said Sophie. She was crouched in the wicker chair where Julian had spent half the morning.

  Now he stood looking down at her. “No, it’s not,” Julian said. “But you’ll start thinking it is. You’ll start wondering which one of us was the one that mattered most. You’ll decide it was you.”

  “I’m more likely to decide the other way round,” murmured Sophie. “I always do. I always think I’m the least important.”

  “Well you’re a fool,” said Julian.

  Romano wandered back home with two dusty bottles and a wide smile, drifting in with the sunbeams, so tanned now that he looked like polished oak in creased linen. Within minutes he came out onto the patio with one of the bottles and a fistful of glasses.

  “Wayne’s gone,” said Sophie.

  Romano passed her a glass of wine. The lemon liquid spun bubbles around the rim. “Yes, I know,” he said distantly. “He asked me to take him to the station this morning. His train was scheduled for nine o’clock. We left very early.”

  Julian stared, open mouthed. It seemed like a betrayal. “Without saying goodbye,” he said.

  “He wished to avoid confrontation I believe,” nodded Romano, passing the next glass to Julian. “He left messages, one for each of you. You haven’t seen them? They are by the mirror in the main room.”

  Sophie jumped up at once and ran indoors. Julian sipped his wine. “He was sleeping with both of us,” he said in a drab voice.

  Romano nodded. “I know.” He drank his own wine, sitting, legs stretched, on the old wooden bench under the olives. “He did not tell me this, he wished to be discreet. But I am old enough to understand things which happen almost under my nose. I tend to sleep badly, I wander these corridors at night. I am not entirely a fool, and I am not deaf. I also understand why he did not wish to embarrass anyone, including himself, by saying goodbye to one in front of the other.”

  Sophie came back with the envelopes and she tore hers open, handing the other to Julian. There didn’t seem to be much of a message. “Well,” she said with a muffled hiccup, “it was time he left.”

  “He hasn’t given any forwarding address,” said Julian, screwing up the small page.

  Romano shrugged. “Travellers do not always know their next destination.”

  “I wish you’d told me,” said Sophie, first to Julian, then turning to Romano. “I wouldn’t have made such a fool of myself.”

  “It was not my business,” said Romano. “I am not your father, and although the house is mine, no harm seemed intended. I do not judge. The habits of each one of us is specific to our needs and should not be forced to conform. Society makes rules that can ostracize. I do not believe in ostracism.”

  “You suffered some of that sort of disapproval I suppose,” Sophie nodded, “you and Mum. Here, where everything’s more traditional?”

  “Excuse me,” said Julian. “I think I’ll go upstairs to my room. I need a little time alone.”

  Romano turned back to Sophie. “Julian will now wish to leave,” he said. “You expect this? It is the normal reaction. You may leave with him, or stay, as you wish.”

  “Perhaps I should go too,” said Sophie, hanging her head. “I’ve been here for ages. And like you said, you’re not my father.”

  “But you will always be welcome here,” he said. “You may come as you like. I will not always be present, but you may like to stay here alone sometimes. I have no children. Much that I have can be yours. The next time, I will introduce you to the people in this valley, and there will be celebrations and friends. We cannot always be in mourning for your mother. I shall also meet you in England, if you wish it. I am returning there shortly, to expand our family business. My home there is also large enough for you to visit.”

  Sophie looked at the man who might have been her father, had life played a different game and had her mother met him first instead of later, making her a dark haired and confident child instead of a shy, unruly blonde. “You’re making everything sound exciting again. So terribly hopeful.”

  Romano said, “You were not in love with Wayne, nor he with you. Nor was Julian. There are no broken hearts. It is better to think of the hopeful things. We must always believe in new beginnings.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  He was no longer driving the endless dust hazed road. He was much younger, though the heat and the grit remained as if they were an habitual part of his whole life. He had been b
orn thirsty and he had stayed that way. It was because of the part of the world he had lived in, but it had also, essentially, been utterly symbolic.

  He was nine years old, looking at the body of his little brother crumpled on the sand at his feet. There was sand in the thin knotted baby hair, and sand in the staring pale dead eyes. Primo stood there for some time, kicking the dust up with his heels. He bit his lip until it bled. He was, in a troubled nine year old confusion, trying to feel something. He sought the guilt he did not yet feel.

  Then the one thing he could feel came soaring in like a turkey vulture on the flats. He felt blind panic.

  Squatting down on the ground, the young Primo sobbed relentlessly for an hour. He was crying from fear and for himself, which was exactly what his step-father guessed when he finally came to find him.

  It was the next day when he killed his mother and his step-father. His little brother’s body was still lying where it had been carried and gently placed, sad dead meat, on the kitchen table where the vegetables were usually chopped and the chickens plucked. His mother had screamed all night and his step-father had beaten him for several hours, first with his hands and his belt and then with a stick.

  He had lost two teeth, broken by the stick. One stump remained, the other quite gone. His mouth was full of blood which tasted salty and strangely rancid. The young Primo had tasted blood before since this was by no means his first beating, but it was by far the worst and there had never been this much blood before. It wasn’t what he cared about of course. Being hurt was a strange and welcome comfort. It answered the need for punishment, and the pain and the crying eventually programmed, like careful building blocks, the very guilt he was desperate to feel. It told him he was normal after all.