Almost Dead In Suburbia

by Douglas Pearce

  Gwen had fetched her white sheepskin coat and the dog’s lead from the small cloakroom in the hallway.

  The coat wasn’t real sheepskin. Fred and Gwen were vegetarians, and this extended to what the animals naturally wore as well. Gwen was adamant that she wore the fake sheepskin to honour the sheep, and would argue the point from the sheep’s perspective with anyone foolish enough to challenge her.

  After attaching the lead, she opened the front door and spoke to the dog. ‘Come on, sweetheart, let’s go.’

  The clock in the kitchen showed six-thirty-two. Fred had looked at it as Gwen closed the door. He made a mental note: seven o’clock.

  No one knew exactly what happened on that fatal last walkies, but from the evidence found by the police, Fred believed it went something like this . . .

  The usual dog-walk route was out of the front door, left for twenty metres, then left again at the public footpath that ran between Angela and Tony’s house and the Wilson property. The footpath was about sixty or seventy metres long and led to a pedestrian gate built into the palisade fence that ran the full length of the back of Cherry Blossom Close. Once through the pedestrian gate, Gwen would normally cross the main road, turn left once more, and then walk a further two hundred metres to a wooden farm gate. Beyond the gate was Bert’s.

  Bert was the farmer who owned the dairy farm opposite where they lived. Everyone in Cherry Blossom Close got on well with him. Bert was about Fred’s age and they had both been in the military. No wars, thank God, although their fathers had seen action, having served in the Royal Air Force during World War II. Bert had lost his dad during the last days of the war, while Fred’s lived until he was ninety-seven.

  Bert was still out in his tractor clearing away snow from the dirt road that ran from the gate up to the farmhouse. Even with the oversize bucket attached it had still taken him most of the afternoon. Knowing that Gwen would probably take the dog for a walk as she usually did around this time; he was making a special effort to clear away a particularly deep drift that had piled up against the gate.

  As she approached she heard the noise of the tractor. Bless, him, she thought, realising what he was doing.

  About ten metres from the gate a fox poked its head through a large hole in the hedge, almost under Blackie’s nose.

  For one frozen moment, time stood still. . .

  Then instinct took over: Blackie lunged. The fox scrambled frantically back the way it had come, and bolted.

  Gwen was almost yanked off her feet.

  Not wanting to have to tramp for miles after the dog, she resisted the urge to release the lead and held on grimly.

  But Blackie had the fox’s scent and would not come to heel. With the dog straining furiously, it was easier to scramble through the hole in the hedge rather than try to pull her back onto the footpath.

  As Gwen emerged on the other side, she slipped and fell. Bert’s attention was focussed on the tractor’s bucket and he failed to notice her. As she struggled to rise, he upended the final load on top of her and the dog.

  Completely unaware of what had happened, Bert reversed the tractor onto the dirt road and drove home.

  After a while it began to snow . . .

  Hours later, after an exhaustive search that had every able-bodied individual in the village scouring the ‘walkies’ route and surrounding hedgerows, someone’s flashlight picked out a bit of Gwen’s boot sticking out from underneath the pile of snow, and a clump of fox hair still clinging to the underside of the hole in the hedge.

  Unlikely as this may seem, it was true. Every time Fred thought about it, he remembered the old story about the newsreader warning people to wear light-coloured clothes at night to be visible to motorists and the poor sod who wore white and got run over by a snowplough. Well Gwen didn’t exactly meet her demise because of a snowplough, but it was near as dammit.

  When Bert realised what he’d done, he nearly had a nervous breakdown.

  Elsie, Bert’s wife, believed that her husband never really came right after that night. He never touched the tractor again and probably would have sold it had it not been for his lads. They also worked the farm, and a farm needs a tractor. Life goes on.

  Fred never got another dog though. That night held too many painful memories and he felt having a dog would only have brought them back.

  He sighed again. Life goes on indeed. And right then he needed to pee.

  Throwing off the covers, he swung his legs out of bed, wriggled his feet into his slippers then shuffled to the en suite bathroom. After brushing his teeth he spent a few moments looking at his reflection in the mirror, studying the lines - he refused to say wrinkles - on his face.

  Fred never considered he was getting old. His memory was good and his mind sharp. He still had a reasonable darts arm and since selling his car two years ago, he walked every day.

  Initially his kids were a bit concerned about this, but he explained that as most things he needed were within walking distance, the exercise would be good for him. His doctor agreed.

  It also helped clear his head when he was feeling sorry for himself.

  Besides, apart from any other reason, he knew Gwen would have approved, so this was motivation enough.

  Fred was supposed to have spent the week at his daughter’s but had cancelled the visit yesterday. He had been feeling a bit down in the dumps and did not want to fill their house with his gloomy presence.

  ‘Don’t fret dear,’ he had told Liz, his daughter, over the phone. ‘I’ll be fine in a couple of days; then I’ll catch the bus and I’ll be over. Let’s make it next Tuesday. All right with you?’

  ‘Of course, dad. You sure you’re okay?’ she asked, concerned.

  ‘You have my word. It happens from time to time. I’ll see you and Gary next week, so stop worrying. Apologise to Michael for me, please, and tell him granddad will bring him a treat.’

  ‘Okay dad, see you next week. If you need anything in the meantime just call, all right?’

  ‘Will do, sweetheart,’ he assured her then hung up the phone.

  Fred felt bad for cancelling his visit, especially for his grandson, Michael. The boy would probably pine all week waiting for him to arrive. Well, he reasoned, it was for the best. Granddads are supposed to be fun, not miserable and grumpy.

  He didn’t like to inflict his poor mood on other people if he could help it, and especially not Michael, whom he thought the world of.

  Michael was ten years old and the brightest little lad Fred had ever met.

  He had been able to read by the age of three-and-a-half, and by the age of eight, Michael would sit on the couch next to Fred and patiently plough through Enid Blyton stories, even reading them with emotion. After a while, Fred sensed the lad was becoming bored with all the childlike heroics of Ms. Blyton’s famous characters and asked Michael if he would like to read something more ‘grown-up‘?

  ‘Only if you want to, granddad,’ Michael had replied.

  ‘Me?’ Fred asked, surprised.

  ‘Well, if you are bored with these stories I’ll read you something else. I don’t mind, really.’

  Fred was flabbergasted. All this time the lad had continued to read about the Famous Five and the Secret Seven because he thought his granddad enjoyed the stories. I’ll be darned, Fred thought.

  Without further ado, he fetched two new books for his grandson. One by Shakespeare and the other by Dickens.

  ‘See how who you get on with those two. The authors are very famous. You can take them home. If you like them, I’ll give you more of the same.’

  Michael had not been due to visit him for three weeks, but after two weeks Michael telephoned to say he had finished both books and had enjoyed them.

  ‘Wow!’ said Fred. And he wasn’t a wow type of person; more a ‘Well blow me down’ sort. But this was definitely a ‘Wow!’ situation.

  It was then he decided to have a serious chat about the boy with his parents. Fred had a feeling they were not quite in
tune, as it were, with what they had on their hands.

  His suspicion had been right.

  Oh, they knew he was bright . . . but this. Fred told them that he hadn’t raised the subject before, as he only noticed the boy’s potential last week.

  ‘Well, dad, you know Michael. Keeps to himself much of the time and he’s never any trouble. He spends a fair amount of time at his computer; then don’t most kids these days? But he’s good as gold around the house. We just thought he was a bit introverted, that’s all,’ Liz explained. ‘We put it down to not having any brothers or sisters.’

  ‘I think you have a gifted child. Very gifted, in fact,’ said Fred. ‘Perhaps you should take him to someone who has experience with this sort of thing. I’ve heard that children with special abilities tend to feel a bit out of it amongst their peers.’ Fred noticed a frown crease Gary’s brow. ‘Not that I’m telling you how to raise your own child of course; just thought it might be worth mentioning.’

  ‘I think it’s a good idea, don’t you Gary?’ Liz turned to her husband.

  ‘Hmm,’ Gary mused. ‘I always suspected the lad was bright. At least I now know who’s been finishing my crossword puzzle in the paper. Always reckoned it was someone at work. Cheeky monkey even corrected some of my answers,’ he said with a wry smile.

  Gary was a good father even if he wasn’t the most observant. That was just his nature. Being more of a bat-and-ball type of dad rather that a reading-and-writing sort, he never noticed Michael’s intellectual talents. He always thought Michael was merely ‘looking at the pictures’.

  Gary regarded himself as a ‘people person’. This flew in the face of the evidence because he was useless as a salesman; which is how Liz met him. He never really sold anything. What sales he managed to conclude were usually due to people feeling sorry for him rather than his convincing attitude or conviction about his product.

  His patter usually included phrases such as; ‘I think it’s pretty expensive. Can’t see why they couldn’t make it cheaper. It’s only plastic, after all.’

  Not the type of sales pitch that would win him any bonus cheques or ‘salesman of the month’ trophies.

  Liz had bumped into Gary at one of those House and Home fairs at the local shopping centre. He had been demonstrating a ‘super-duper’ vacuum cleaner to a group of thoroughly disinterested women and their partners.

  After suffering numerous lewd ‘I bet I could suck better than that,’ types of remark from some of the women, and a few threatening ones from their testosterone-charged, idiot male companions, he was completely flustered and in the middle of a mini-panic. After forty minutes he decided to call it a day, and began to pack up, only to end his performance by tripping over the vacuum cleaner hose and falling off the small raised platform where he had been conducting his demonstration.

  Liz’s heart went out to him immediately. It was love at first sight.

  Gary soon gave up sales and went to work for a bank. He had his own office, which meant he was unmolested most of the time, and the people who did come to see him were obliged to make an appointment.

  He was an in-house home loan consultant. This suited Gary down to the ground, as he got to give something away as opposed to selling it. In fact, so good was he at providing home loans for people that after the first month he had racked up ‘sales’ of several million pounds.

  Unfortunately, eight months later, the bank called in all but one of the loans he had authorised due to people defaulting. When asked why he hadn’t done proper background credit checks, he explained that he felt it was an invasion of people’s privacy. All Gary wanted to do was help people. He was the type of person who would climb a tree to rescue a cat, whether the cat wanted to be rescued or not. Always willing to go out on a limb; that was Gary.

  His manager had straightened him out about the realities of buying a house and he soon settled down. His turnover was never quite as good as that first month but he became a reliable, steady worker. His job was safe and that allowed him to spend most of his free time doing what he did best; doting on his wife.

  And this was the main reason why Fred and Gwen had given the marriage their blessing.

  4: My God… I’m Alive

  Fred sat down to a simple breakfast of tea and toast. He spent ten minutes watching television, just to catch the headlines and weather, and paid a quick visit to the loo. Then it was time for his morning stroll to the newsagents.

  After closing the front door, he slipped a spare key under one of two flowerpots outside of Tony and Angela’s front door. This practice had been agreed upon by all the residents in the Close. All except the odd chap at number three, that is.

  Most residents in Cherry Blossom Close were close, he thought, smiling at the pun.

  The practice of leaving one’s key under the neighbour’s doormat, a plant pot or something similar had been going on for years.

  Those that joined in felt it was good for security or emergencies such as fire, gas leak or something similar. A sort of ‘just in case’. Everyone looked after or looked in on their neighbour. They were those sorts of people. These days they also exchanged mobile phone numbers as an added precaution.

  Fred walked up the road. As he passed the front gate of Ralph’s property, he felt a sudden, severe pain in his chest, and everything went black.

  Awareness returned in a brief blaze of white light. Then everything went black once more. The next instant he felt himself take a huge gasp of air. His body, which felt almost weightless, began to move sideways and then he was jolted to a halt.

  As he took a second gulp of air, he felt something soft against his face. When he opened his eyes, he saw a woman’s cleavage and bosom. She was leaning over him. He inhaled deeply again, smelling the woman’s scent. He smiled.

  My god, I’m still alive, he thought; which is rather disconcerting, when you think about it, as it presupposes you had expected to be dead.

  Faces began to swim into focus. Smiling, shocked, happy, astounded faces. All staring at him in disbelief. He laughed and felt an almost overpowering sense of euphoria.

  ‘Welcome back. I thought we’d lost you there for a moment.’ The voice was a mixture of shock and relief.

  I’m in hospital, he realised. However, something didn’t feel quite right. That feeling was overshadowed for the moment by the fact he was back. But back from where?

  There was a flurry of conversation that Fred was barely aware of. His voice seemed to be operating on automatic. And he was laughing and smiling.

  ‘How do you feel?’ the surgeon asked.

  He heard or felt himself reply, ‘Top of the world, actually!’

  Then someone said, ‘Just came back from the dead. His heart had stopped for three and a half minutes.’

  Someone else said. ‘But what about the head trauma? Look at him. Not a scratch. Can you believe it?’

  ‘It’s a miracle, I’m telling you.’

  Suddenly it hit him. This is not my body, he thought. For a moment he could hardly believe what was happening. He wasn’t even sure if that thought was his own or what he had realised was the truth.

  Then the surgeon was talking to him again. Something about tests.

  Amidst all the commotion, he recognised the name Fenwick. Dear God! I am in Ralph’s body. Has he died too? But if I am technically dead, what happened to Ralph’s . . . he paused in mid thought . . . spirit?

  His mind was racing at a zillion miles per hour. Everything was happening at breakneck speed. He had to get out of here. Must clear my head.

  Swinging his legs over the edge of the stretcher, he signed a form someone thrust into his hand. Then he jumped off the stretcher, shook a few hands, and bounded down the corridor and out of the emergency door. As he was leaving the other stretcher was coming in. He paused next to it. ‘May I?’ he asked respectfully. ‘He was my neighbour.’

  The paramedic nodded sympathetically. He wasn’t the one that had ridden in the ambulance. How did he know that? Fred
lifted the blanket away from the face of the person on the stretcher. He nearly gasped as he saw himself. No, saw his body, he corrected. He nodded curtly, masking his emotions, and pulled the blanket gently back over the face.

  As he walked away, shock began to creep up on him. I have to get home, he thought. There was a taxi parked across the road at the rank. He walked to it and asked the driver to take him to number seven, Cherry Blossom Close.

  Halfway home, he remembered he was in Ralph’s body and for all intents and purposes, he was Ralph. He couldn’t go back to his own house.

  Ralph lived at number one. As the taxi turned in Cherry Blossom Close, he asked the driver to pull over to the side of the road.

  ‘This will be fine, thank you. I’ll walk the rest of the way.’

  ‘Right you are, guv.’

  The driver stopped the meter. ‘Six pounds, please.’

  Fred’s initial thought was, I don’t have my wallet with me. This was in effect the truth. It was in the drawer next to his bedside. He had taken a couple of pound coins from the dresser. He didn’t need more than that for the paper. But before he was about to apologise to the driver he caught himself as he felt the slight bulge in the back right pocket of his trousers, Ralph’s trousers. Oh, Jesus what is happening?

  ‘You orl right, guv?’ a voice enquired. The driver was looking at him in the rear-view mirror.

  Fred did not respond.

  The driver turned around.

  ‘You’re looking a bit pale, there. Not feeling too bright? Something rough at the hospital was it?’

  Fred was in a daze. ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Someone waiting at home for you that I can call?’ the driver asked.

  Fred pulled himself together long enough to smile wanly, hand over a ten pound note and open the back door of the taxi.

  ‘I’ll be fine. Bit of a tummy bug, that’s all. Keep the change. Thanks, but it’s nothing to worry about.’