The Otherlife

by Julia Gray

  Last night I found the unmarked carrier bag from the exchange place where I sold Mum’s clothes and inside was the oversized clown suit. I’d totally forgotten about it. I went into Zara’s room, which as you can imagine looks like a flamingo threw up in it and has so many fluffy rabbits and weasels and squirrels peering down from the tops of cupboards that the air is thick with glitter and artificial fur. She was sitting on the floor arranging her Sylvanian families into cutesy little groups and I suppressed a flickering impulse to snatch one and bite its head off, like Ozzy Osbourne once did with a live bat, so Ben says.

  ‘Here, Zarie,’ I said, flinging the suit at her. It flopped against her head and slithered over a family of fieldmice and their rainbow-painted furniture.

  ‘What is it?’ she said. Like all girls, she likes things made out of shiny fabric.

  ‘It’s a clown suit. I got the biggest one they had, of course, so you can fit into it.’

  Her shoulders twitched, but she didn’t reply. Didn’t call for Mum and Dad, didn’t shout at me. Zara just doesn’t know how to defend herself. She’d be useless on the rugby pitch.

  ‘What, don’t you like it? Look, it’ll last you forever. Unless you manage to outgrow it of course.’

  Her lack of response slightly spoilt my enjoyment, so I left her sitting there with the clown suit in her hands and went back to my room to read some more about the Gods.

  At the moment I’m rereading one of my favourite bits: the Binding of the Wolf – the wolf, of course, being Fenrir, Loki’s son, and father of Hati and Skǫll. Fenrir grew up in Asgard but gradually became so huge and ferocious that nobody could feed him because they were so afraid. And Odin knew that Fenrir was fated to kill him one day, but even so he wouldn’t allow the Gods to destroy the wolf. Only Tyr, the God of swords, was brave enough to try to feed him. Thor forged a chain, which Fenrir smashed to pieces as easily as if it was made of cobwebs or something, and the whole earth shook. They tried again and the same thing happened. So in the end they got the dwarves to make a new chain out of mountain roots and the footsteps of a cat (weird!) and the breath of a fish and bear sinews and it looked like silk. And the Gods basically tricked Fenrir into letting them bind him with it, but he asked for one of them to put their hand in his mouth as a way of promising that it wasn’t a trick. And of course Tyr was the only one daring enough to do this.

  So the Gods bound Fenrir with the chain the dwarves had made, and even though he leaped about and flamed with rage, he couldn’t get out of it, because the chain was enchanted. And foam dripped from his jaws and his eyes blazed black with anger and he bit off Tyr’s hand. The Gods pulled the silken chain through the middle of a rock which they had sunk deep into the earth, and when Fenrir sprang upon them they propped his massive jaws wide open with a sword. And that’s where Fenrir stayed, right up until Ragnarok and everything ended.

  When I think about it, about the moment Fenrir bit off Tyr’s hand, I feel all weird and headrushy like when you go on Thunder Mountain at Disneyland. I love how brave Tyr was. I want to know if I’d be that brave. Or would I be more like Thor, who of course was really courageous but couldn’t sacrifice his hand because of always throwing his hammer? It was pretty hard having my left arm in a sling for two weeks, so I understand that.

  I also love Fenrir. When he realised he’d been tricked, it must have been so satisfying to take that final downwards bite.

  BEN

  Reg of Putney arrives to take Mum out for a pub lunch on the river. They will read the Sunday supplements and eat traditional roasts, and talk about traditional Sunday things. They will watch people rowing with easy precision; they will watch boats go by. Reg of Putney appears to be quite a nice guy. He’s older than Dad. He’s wearing cords and a russet-coloured jumper, drinks half a glass of cider and asks me if I’ve read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

  Contrary to Mum’s fears, I am not rude to him. I don’t have the energy.

  ‘Ben,’ says R of P, ‘why don’t you come with? Be nice to get to know you.’

  ‘Ben has a lot of work to do,’ says Mum quickly. ‘He’s got exams every day next week, and he was out late last night.’

  ‘Yeah, but thanks,’ I say.

  As they leave, Reg of Putney offers me his hand. He smells of cinnamon and cloves and half a glass of cider. I wonder if this is the attraction for Mum: she has found a man who can stop at half a glass. Dad would have finished a whole bottle of something by now.

  I sit on the carpet, my English set texts laid out in front of me. The sign in my head flickers. An amber glow: warning. It’s weird – in addition to the usual growl of my headache, I have the jangly overlay of a hangover. I can actually feel the different types of pain competing for space in my head. In sharp contrast, the view out of the window is almost blissful. The trees along our street are riotous explosions of leaves. The sky is blue; it makes me think of the light that comes from Odin.

  I compose a text to Zara, asking if she’d like to go for a walk. I have no doubt at all that she’ll be busy, possibly too busy even to reply; surely she too is doing Sunday things – revision, ballet practice, reading the papers – but she texts back almost immediately, suggesting I wait for her near the top of Ladbroke Grove where it meets Holland Park. I text back: Great. See you then. I think about getting changed, but all my non-school clothes are variations on the same theme: black or blue jeans, long-sleeved tops with Metal logos, hoodies. In deference to the occasion though, I put on something clean that doesn’t have a skull on it, or Iron Maiden’s Eddie, and try to do something with my hair to make it look less like a purposeless thicket.

  It’s a direct bus from near my house, but it’ll do me good to walk. The fresh air, the tug of my hamstrings working after weeks of solid revision and exams, the dribble of sun onto my face make me feel more alive than I’ve felt in a long time. As I walk past the boarded-up shops and the boxing gym my phone vibrates in my pocket, and I wonder if it’s Zara, cancelling. I wouldn’t be surprised. I’m not sure, really, what we’re going to talk about. She doesn’t seem to know anything about Jason, or, if she does she isn’t telling me, and as for other things … they’re like scabs you really can’t prise away in case there’s unstoppable blood underneath them.

  Oh well. It’s such a nice day that we can definitely talk about the weather for a while.

  But the text isn’t from Zara. It’s from Solly. A picture message.

  I enlarge the image.

  No. No way.

  It’s a pair of tickets to Download in June, a couple of weeks from now. The festival I’ve always wanted to go to, but never been able to afford. And Metallica are headlining! Not to mention all the other bands I’m desperate to see: Opeth, Soundgarden, Lamb of God. The message beneath says: early birthday present. My birthday’s not for six months.

  I call Solomon immediately. ‘You’re awesome. You’re ACE. How did you get them?’

  ‘My aunt works for the promoter.’

  ‘But it’s right in the middle of exams,’ I say, excitement temporarily stilled.

  ‘Well, is it a Mum weekend or a Dad weekend?’

  I calculate, tapping out the weeks against my leg.

  ‘Uh … Dad, I reckon.’

  ‘You should be able to get out of that, then. Tell him you’ve got a study session at someone’s house. Listen, though. I want to make a deal with you.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You’ll give up those orange painkiller things. If we go.’

  ‘Sol, I don’t …’

  ‘Yes, you do. You’ve got an actual problem, Ben. So my proposition is: we go to this dreadful place, with its undisinfected toilets and disorganised camping and lager louts, and you take your last pill.’

  After what feels like a long time, I say, ‘OK.’

  ‘Well done. Acceptance, Awareness, Action, as they say.’

  ‘But I don’t really get what’s in this for you, Solly. You prefer jazz and stuff.’

  He
laughs. ‘Kaizen, my friend,’ he says. ‘Kaizen.’

  As I head to the top of Ladbroke Grove, the church bell strikes the hour. It makes me think, as church bells always do, of Metallica’s ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’. It’s a song that just drags you into another place altogether. Right from the opening, where, somewhere not too far away, a giant bell begins to toll.

  Doooonnggggggg …

  Doooonnggggggg …

  A horrible, hollow sound, almost de-tuned, like food that’s gone off.

  The bell keeps tolling, every two bars, even after the guitars come in. Two sets: a low, staccato riff that dances around a minor-second interval, and a high, wailing one reminiscent of ambulance sirens. And relentless and savage drums, like pounding footfalls.

  When the riff changes, becomes more frenzied, I see men, marching. Men raising guns to their shoulders. Cannonfire. And then … then Kirk Hammett’s breathtaking riff comes in, the one that cycles round a set of just four notes. There’s something in the sheer repetitiveness of this bit that makes me think it’s about the mindlessness of war, the rhythms of battles fought and lives lost between daybreak and dusk. It’s got a certain beauty to it. If it were a colour, it’d be blue – a shot of clear, almost electric blue against the murky dark of the landscape. It’s not until two minutes and seven seconds in that James Hetfield starts to sing. Despite Hetfield’s ear for powerful but not overblown imagery, I think that in the case of ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’, the music tells the whole story by itself. No need for words at all.

  The song ends just as I’m reaching the top of Ladbroke Grove. The houses here are so stately, so perfectly painted in soft greys and creams and blues, that they look as if they’ve been cut out of quality cardboard and pinned against the sky. As I reach the church, the congregation comes milling out in dresses and suits. I slow down, letting them walk in front of me.

  ‘Ben.’

  Zara is standing on the paved path that leads from the church door to the road. She’s wearing a grey skirt, a pale mauve blouse and a white jacket and looks exactly like all the other people who came out of the great wooden doors. Her clothes are too subdued, like a teacher’s. In the daylight, she somehow looks even thinner than she did last night. A small halo of sunlight plays around her head.

  ‘I didn’t realise you went to church,’ I say.

  I feel stupid immediately. Why shouldn’t she go to church? Mum does ballroom dancing and runs ten kilometres before breakfast; Solomon takes vitamins and reads books on self-improvement. I listen to metal. Everyone has a church. In fact, I might not go into the church itself, but there’s nothing I like more than a quiet cemetery, full of tumbledown graves and straggling creepers.

  ‘I go with Mum and Dad, sometimes,’ she replies. ‘When they’re in England.’

  She gestures to the other side of the road, where Ike and Elsie are coming out of the newsagent’s with bundles of papers. Ike’s bald patch is more pronounced; Elsie looks the same. A little more gaunt, but she was always gaunt. I remember the newsagent’s; I think I went there once with Hobie. It was the only place, at the time, that stocked Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

  ‘Do you want to go and say hello?’

  I hesitate. Part of me wants to jump at the opportunity to ask Ike and Elsie about Jason. But I can’t imagine they’d take kindly to that. They’d be horrified by my rudeness, my insensitivity. Zara said outside the Underworld that they don’t talk about that weekend; I can’t expect them to start talking about it now, to me.

  ‘Um. No. Thanks,’ I say.

  ‘OK,’ she says quickly. ‘That’s fine. I didn’t think you’d want to. Which way do you want to walk, by the way? Shall we go to Kensington Gardens?’

  We fall into step, turning up Ladbroke Road towards Notting Hill Gate. We talk blandly about neutral things: the gardens we pass, the weather. We compare the respective atmospheres of our schools and decide that they are very alike, though hers is a girls’ school and mine is for boys.

  It’s only as we cross the road past the tube station and begin heading towards Bayswater that Zara, tapping the railings as she walks, says, ‘It’s funny.’

  ‘What’s funny?’

  ‘Going to church. We never used to, you know. Not regularly. We used to go to Whole Foods on Sundays. Mum and Dad are really into prayer now. Sometimes they even hold these extra prayer meetings at home.’

  ‘What do you think they’re praying for?’

  She blinks at me, as though the answer is obvious.

  ‘For Hobie,’ she says. ‘For his soul.’

  ‘Do you pray too?’

  ‘Sort of. Not really. I don’t go that often. I used to, to keep them company. Then I gave up. I found myself wondering what the point was, of praying to something I didn’t believe in.’

  ‘So you don’t believe in God,’ I say.

  ‘Again, I used to,’ she says shortly.

  I wait, sensing that there’s more to come.

  ‘But recently, a couple of weeks ago, I started … seeing things.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Strange lights. Flickers – like when you have a Christmas tree in a dark room and the fairy lights reflect off the tinsel and the mirrors. That kind of light, but changing shape, changing colour.’

  I slow down, staring at her in disbelief.

  ‘What kind of colours? Blue?’

  ‘Blue, mostly, yes, and green. Pink, sometimes. And voices. Whispers. I think they’re angels. Does that make me crazy?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I say, thinking, I’ve got to tell her.

  ‘So one day a couple of weeks ago my parents had the vicar round at our house for tea, and they went to take a conference call from one of their financial advisors and I was just sitting there, you know, passing the biscuits to Reverend Lewis, and then suddenly I felt this tremendous desire to, you know, ask him about the angels.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He said if it got worse to tell the doctor. But I haven’t. I’m sick of doctors. Anyway, I got quite interested then about dreams and visions in the Bible. People seeing things. It seemed to happen all the time in the Bible. And so lately I’ve been coming to church with Mum and Dad, just to listen to what he’s saying. To find out more. I’m wondering if there’s a story in the Bible, some parable or whatever, that I need to read. Reverend Lewis said angels bring messages. I think he’s right. I think it is a message, though I don’t know what.’

  ‘What sort of message?’ I say.

  An ice-cream van sits at the entrance to the park. We watch as a little boy in a Spider-Man T-shirt elbows a group of children out of the way, insinuating himself into the front of the queue.

  ‘Billy, don’t push people,’ says his mother from the bench nearby, but she lets him stay where he is. The other children protest and whine, but fall back to let him through, giving way to his vitality.

  ‘Sometimes it’s a woman’s voice and sometimes a man’s. It’s a language that I don’t understand. But, somehow, I know that something is wrong.’

  Watching the little boy make his purchases, thrusting a crumpled fiver through the window of the van and grabbing his ice creams – a Twister and a Feast (and I just know they’re both for him; he’s that kind of kid) – I make a decision.

  ‘They aren’t angels, Zara,’ I say. ‘They’re Gods.’

  Sitting on a bench while the world goes about its Sunday business around us, doing its best to recreate that pointillist painting of people in a park I remember once copying at Cottesmore House, I tell Zara everything I know about the Otherlife. As I would expect, she is a wonderful listener and stays pin-drop silent while I talk. It’s the longest I think I’ve ever spoken uninterrupted. As I speak, I find myself getting used to my voice, acclimatising myself to forming proper sentences. I am revealing myself, removing piece by piece an armadillo suit of armour.

  I begin by telling her how it began. I tell her about the cricket match, and Dad’s new bat, and how for a while
I was completely blind in my right eye. How Jason comforted me with tales of Odin, who also lost an eye, and how by the time my vision returned the Norse tales were as real to me as anecdotes from my own life. How the coloured lights started, and how I recognised in their wispy formations the shapes of the Gods. How I painted a mural; how I tattooed myself with a wolf (at this I slide up my T-shirt, briefly, to prove it), and how the Otherlife, by the time I was in Year 8 and became friends with Hobie, had become more real to me than my own existence.

  Zara tucks her feet underneath her and says, ‘I see.’

  Her tone of voice suggests that she thinks I’m borderline certifiable. But then she goes on: ‘The older I get, the more I find I look for rational explanations. I’m not the kind of person who can accept things without proof. I don’t believe in imaginary things any more. When I first saw the coloured lights, I wanted so much for them to be some kind of neurological disturbance – even though that in itself was quite frightening. I needed there to be a reason, a scientific reason, for them. But at the same time, I knew there wasn’t one. I had a feeling that they were coming to me from somewhere outside of my brain. That’s why I asked Reverend Lewis.’

  ‘So you do believe me?’

  ‘I believe you,’ she replies.

  A ripple of relief runs through me. I couldn’t bear to confide the truth about the Otherlife – something I’ve only ever told, I suppose, to Hobie – and for her to not believe me.

  ‘But I don’t understand about the relationship between the stories of the Otherlife and the Otherlife itself,’ says Zara, frowning. ‘Did you see the stories playing out in the correct order, or did you not see the stories, so much as just the Gods themselves?’

  It’s a really good question.

  ‘I did see little pieces of the stories,’ I say, after a bit. ‘On my mural, especially. The paint would sort of move about sometimes. But mostly I would read the stories but see the Gods, and the landscape that they lived in. It felt like the stories could almost be told in any imaginable sequence, and therefore that I could see bits and pieces from any part at any time. It didn’t really matter. It was all just one big cycle.’