I'm in Heaven

by Terry Ravenscroft

  Mr Braithwaite’s eyes widened. “Three times a day?”

  “I was always a three times a day man,” said Mr Fairbrother.

  “If I had sex with Cameron Diaz three times in a day it would kill me,” said Mr Greening.

  “Then you might be better off having sex with someone you’d like to have it with, but not more than once a day, Mr Greening” advised Mr Broadhurst. He thought for a moment. “Someone like Dot Cotton perhaps.”

  “Oh I could manage Dot Cotton more than once,” said Mr Braithwaite, “I quite like Dot Cotton.”

  “Emily Bishop then.”

  “It doesn’t matter who you have sex with and how many times you have it, it can’t kill you,” I said, before Mr Braithwaite had the chance to tell everyone how many times a day he’d like to shag Emily Bishop. “You’re already dead. That’s one of the best things about heaven - because you’re already dead you can’t die again. Being dead is quite wonderful. According to God,” I added quickly, as it was beginning to sound a bit like it was coming from me. “In fact if you all want to do yourself a favour the very best thing you could do is stop taking your chemotherapy.”

  “Stop taking our chemotherapy?” said Mr Fairbrother, as though I’d suggested he stop breathing. “Chemo is the only thing that’s keeping me alive.”

  “What do you want to keep yourself alive for when you can be in heaven getting your end away with Cameron Diaz?” I said.

  “And Dot Cotton,” added Mr Broadhurst.

  In the meantime Mr Meakin had become suspicious. “I notice that you yourself are having chemotherapy, Mr Smith.”

  I gave a deep sigh. “I can’t think why.”

  And I couldn’t. And before it eventually dawned on me that by subjecting myself to the chemotherapy that would complete my remission it was too late, it had already cured me.

  *

  I’d never been to New Mills before, although I’d been quite near to it the previous week on my visit to Lyme Park, Disley, a mile or so distant, just over the border with Cheshire.

  When I got off the train I made straight for the town’s main tourist attraction, The Torrs Riverside Park. I’d read about it in a brochure I’d picked up at Lyme Park; it looked well worth a visit and if I was going to do something that might help to ‘take me out of myself’, as Auntie Betty constantly advised me I needed to do, as good a place as anywhere to visit. I knew there was little chance of it taking me out of myself but it would please her that I was doing it, that I was seen to be making an attempt - Auntie Betty had been wonderful to me while I’d been in hospital and afterwards, so it was the least I could do.

  The park, just a short walk from the railway station, is quite something, I was to discover. But much better than that. It held the answer to all my problems.

  *

  I had gone to Lyme Park the week before because Kristin was on film location there. They were filming a medieval comedy, Middle Ages Spread. Auntie Betty had mentioned it when I’d been round at her house the day before; she’d read about it in the evening paper. Apparently they were filming a crowd scene and needed hundreds of extras. She suggested it might be a good idea to go along, I liked films, it might be fun, I liked a laugh, or I used to before I got all miserable. It might have been fun at one time, but not now. She might just as well have suggested I stared at the wallpaper for an hour. Which was more or less what I’d been doing for the last hour, when I hadn’t been staring at the floor. In an effort to tempt me she told me how nice it was at Lyme Park, she and Uncle Reg at been there once, there was a stately home and herds of deer and a visitor centre, so even if for some reason I didn’t get a job as an extra I would have quite a nice time there. “The BBC used it when they were filming Pride and Prejudice,” she enthused. “It’s where Darcy met Elizabeth Bennet.”

  “Good for Darcy,” I replied, totally disinterested.

  “But you might get to meet someone famous,” Auntie Betty persisted. “You never know. Sean Connery is in it, you like Sean Connery. And who was that other one they mentioned was in it, that comic, you like him, now what was his name....?” She checked in the newspaper. “Peter Kay. Peter Kay’s in it. All sorts of famous film stars are in it according to this; Judy Dench, Jo Brand, she’s that one off the telly isn’t she - Kristin Scott Thomas....I’ve never heard of her....”

  I had. It brought me bolt upright in my chair. “Kristin Scott Thomas?”

  “Yes, have you heard of her?”

  Had I heard of her? I nodded.

  “You ought to go then, it might help to take you out of yourself.”

  I needed no further invitation, taking me out of myself didn’t even enter into it; it was an opportunity to see Kristin again.

  Auntie Betty and Uncle Reg, bless them, hadn’t known what had got into me. I’d been discharged from hospital for over a month, it was almost four months since I’d had the operation, two months since I’d completed the chemotherapy, and to all intents and purposes I’d made a complete recovery. But no one would have known it. I didn’t behave like a man who had virtually been given another life. I just didn’t want to do anything. Nothing. Every time Auntie Betty called on me, which was often as she worried about me, she found me sat in an armchair moping, and if I wasn’t sat in an armchair moping it was because I was still in bed moping. I never went out, I was smoking heavily and drinking even more heavily, evidenced by all the empty beer and wine bottles in the overflowing wheelie bin in the back garden. “All that smoking, you’ll be getting cancer again if you’re not careful,” she admonished me.

  “Good.”

  “You ought to get out of the house and get a bit of exercise, you’ll be seizing up.”

  “Good.”

  “And you shouldn’t be drinking as much as you are either, you’ll make yourself ill.”

  “Good.”

  She shook her head. “You’ll smoke and drink yourself to death, you see if you don’t.”

  “Good.”

  I hadn’t thought of that benefit and started smoking and drinking even more.

  In an effort to get me out of the house for even the hundred yards or so that separated our homes Auntie Betty encouraged me to visit she and Uncle Reg more often, “So you won’t just sit here feeling sorry for yourself - although why a man cured of cancer should feel sorry for himself I really have no idea,” but this only resulted in me sitting in their house moping. “I don’t know what ails you, Norman,” she said. “I really don’t.” I did. I wanted to die. I had my life back but I didn’t want it back, I wanted to be in heaven with Kristin.

  Well I might not be in heaven with Kristin, I reflected, on arriving at Lyme Park a week later, but it will be heaven seeing her again.

  I was fairly confident I would see her, even though it might be from a distance, as according to the newspaper all the principals would be taking part in the crowd scene. They were filming a large country fair with its various attractions, sideshows and jugglers and fire-eaters and strolling minstrels and whatever else constituted a country fair in the Middle Ages. Everyone would be there, the complete pecking order, the Lord and Lady of the Manor, their heirs, their servants, smallholders on their land, cottagers, freemen, gamekeepers, peasants and serfs. Kristin, I had found out, was Avrill, the eldest daughter of the Lord of the Manor. Norman Smith, I found out when I arrived at the film set along with a thousand other people hoping to be extras, would be a serf, the lowest in the pecking order. I wasn’t surprised; I was just glad to get safely through the audition.

  At first I had toyed with the idea of telling the PA that I’d had previous experience as a serf, in the hope that I might be chosen as head serf, if there is such a thing, or maybe given a speaking part - we were talking here of a man who had appeared in The Sopranos and The Wire - but in the end decided against it as it would only draw attention to myself, the last thing I wanted if I were to get within touching distance of Kristin.

  In fact getting through the audition, such as it was, was a pie
ce of cake. If you could breathe you were in. The only two who didn’t make it were a man wearing bottle-bottom glasses and another wearing a large National Health hearing-aid, both of whom were told they wouldn’t be required as their aids to failing senses were anachronistic for a film set in 1540, even if it was a comedy. A man with an aluminium Zimmer frame, initially rejected on the same grounds, but more of an opportunist than the other two, was taken on after he suggested that as it was a comedy his Zimmer frame might go down well with the audience, especially if the film’s carpenter knocked him up a wooden one.

  The chosen serfs, about two hundred of us in all, were taken to a large marquee to be fitted out with our costumes.

  I was kitted out like the rest of them in a selection of what the film’s costume designer had decided was the attire of a typical serf in the Middle Ages; blouses made out of a rough sacking-like cloth, fastened at the waist with a leather belt or piece of rope, coats of a thick woollen material which fell from the shoulder to halfway down the legs, leggings of various shades of brown, and boots. There weren’t enough boots to go round but those without boots were told by the PA, winging it I suspect, that there weren’t enough boots to go round in mediaeval times either, so they’d look the part. All the clothes were the same size but all the serfs weren’t, so most of them fitted where they touched. When one of the serfs complained the PA told him that serfs’ clothes were always ill-fitting and asked him where he thought he was, Matalan? The serf said no, nothing fitted him at Matalan either, which got a laugh and made everyone feel a bit better about the way they looked. I didn’t care what I looked like; they could have dressed me up as Coco the Clown or sent me out buck naked with a feather duster stuck up my behind just as long as I got the chance to see Kristin again.

  When we’d finished dressing and the PA was happy with us, a state of affairs in inverse proportion to the degree the serfs were happy with their costumes, a team of make-up girls descended on us and made us look even more like serf-like by dirtying our faces with a greasy mud-like substance and decorating us with a variety of facial blemishes. I watched apprehensively as the serf next to me - an accountant from Wilmslow he had mentioned to the serf on his other side, a fat town councillor from Chapel-en-le Frith (a possible ancestor?) - was adorned with the ravages of smallpox and two boils, which he seemed quite happy about. Although I got away with just a large wart on the end of my nose I was much less happy as naturally I wanted to look my best for my meeting with Kristin and the wart didn’t do me any favours. Rather than complain about it in the hope they’d let me remove it, which I was pretty sure they wouldn’t if the man who had objected to his hump and smallpox was anything to go by - all that his grumbling brought him was a bit more smallpox for his cheek and for his cheek - I decided I would remove the offending wart when the time came that I met my love, provided it hadn’t been stuck on too hard.

  When the chief make-up artist was happy the assistant director, an intense, flustered-looking young man with a cockney accent, told us what each of us would be doing and what was expected of us. I was to be a spectator at a cockfight and would be expected to look interested. I asked him, hopefully, and as casually as I could, if Kristin Scott Thomas would be attending the cockfight. He looked at me suspiciously then warned everyone that they must stay where they’d been put and not go roaming off anywhere, he didn’t want any of them wandering about star-spotting - when they were shooting Black Death one of the extras had walked up to Sean Bean as he lay bleeding to death after four horses had torn him in half and asked him for his autograph and he didn’t want any of that sort of thing happening today, thank you very much; everyone was to remain in their allotted area until told to move somewhere else.

  In the event Kristin was about a hundred yards away from the cockfight, seated on a raised dais with what I took to be her parents, watching a jousting competition. I could just about recognise her. She looked lovely, even from that distance, or I imagined she did. She would have looked lovely from the Moon.

  Peter Kay turned out to be one of the cock fighters. He passed within touching distance of me - our eyes met briefly - as he made his way, stroking a cockerel, through the crowd encircling the cock pit. A buzz of excitement and a smattering of applause and laughter welcomed him. “What are you laughing at, I’m only stroking me cock.” he said, looking aggrieved, to more and bigger laughs.

  Once the fight had got under way and everyone was wrapped up in the action I detached myself from the rear of the spectators and joined the serfs who had been detailed to aimlessly mill around. My milling was more aimed and five minutes later found me about thirty yards away from the dais, and Kristin. Between us was a roped off area where the jousting competition was taking place. At the moment there was a break in the proceedings while they were re-setting the scene so I took the opportunity to duck under the rope and into the jousting area.Trying to look as nonchalant as possible I started to make my way across the space between us. I hadn’t gone more than five yards when there was a sudden shout of “Action!” quickly followed by the thudding sound of hooves. Startled, I looked to my left to see a knight on horseback bearing down on me. A second later came an enraged bellow of ‘Cut!’ In a panic, I retained just enough composure to realise that I was in a lot more trouble than just a knight with a lance heading for me and that if I didn’t act pretty smartly it was the nearest I was going to get to Kristin, so instead of turning back I continued in the direction of dais. There was an angry shout of “For fuck’s sake get that twat off my set!” and three of the film crew ducked under the ropes and made to head me off. By then I was only about fifteen yards away from Kristin, who had turned to see what all the fuss was about. Our eyes met. It stopped me dead in my tracks. I raised an arm in the air, waved to her and called, “Kristin, it’s me, it’s me, Norman.” She looked at me blankly and shrugged, puzzled. It was the last thing I saw of her as at the same moment one of the film crew grabbed hold of me. He was quickly joined by the other two, and together they hauled me bodily from the jousting field.

  The assistant director who had briefed the serfs was waiting for us, spitting feathers. “What the fucking hell do you think you’re playing at?” he bawled at me. “Do you realise how much it costs to set up a shot?”

  I couldn’t have cared less.

  “Get him off the set,” he went on. “Pay him off and boot him out. No. Don’t pay him. Just boot him out.”

  Two of the film crew frog-marched me back to the tent where I’d donned my serf costume and told me to change and sharp about it then get the hell out of it if I knew what was good for me.

  What would have been good for me would be another chance to see Kristin. But how could would that be possible after what had happened? With the benefit of hindsight I would have gone about things differently, more cautiously. I certainly wouldn’t have been fool enough to wave and shout out “Kristin, it’s me.” I don’t know why I did it in the first place, she wouldn’t know me no more than Peter Kay had known me when we’d briefly made eye content at the cockfight; this was earth not heaven, neither of them would have known me from Adam.

  “Right, now clear off out of it.” said one the film crew men, when I’d finished changing.

  I thought that if I could just hang around for a bit longer I might be able to come up with something. I could smell bacon cooking and it gave me an idea. “Could I have something to eat?” I asked. “I haven’t had anything since breakfast and I’m starving; they said there’d be bacon barmcakes and coffee.”

  “That’s for people who behave themselves,” said the man. “So on your way.”

  He made to manhandle me again. I don’t know where it came from, desperation I suppose - I’ve always found that fanciful lies come easily to me when my back is against the wall - but I suddenly said, “Look, I’m diabetic, if I don’t get something to eat pretty soon I’ll go into a fit. You don’t want that on your conscience do you?”

  The man looked me up and down and turned to his
mate. “What do you think?”

  “I foam at the mouth,” I added, and loaded the trowel. “It’s horrible.” Then laid it on thick. “I could very well swallow my tongue and turn blue.”

  The other crew man shrugged but looked concerned nevertheless. His mate shouldered the responsibility. “Go on then. And then clear off. If I see you you’re in deep shit.”

  I smiled my gratitude. “Just as soon as I’ve had my bacon barmcake. And thanks.”

  When we emerged from the tent one of the men pointed to a marquee about fifty yards away. “Grub’s there.” He needn’t have bothered; the wonderful smell of bacon cooking travels a lot farther than fifty yards. Thankfully, or I would never have had the idea.

  I thanked them again and set off in the direction of the marquee. Then, with a look over my shoulder to check they weren’t watching me, carried on right past it. Earlier I’d noticed the park’s cafeteria-cum-visitor centre some hundred yards or so farther on. A cup of tea would be welcome while I figured out a plan of action.

  There were quite a few customers in the cafe, people who had come along to watch the day’s filming in the hope of catching a glimpse of their favourite stars. After buying a mug of tea at the self-service counter I found a seat in a quiet corner. Someone had left a brochure on the table. It told of other attractions in the vicinity of Lyme Park. One of them, it turned out, was The Torrs Riverside Park. I put it in my pocket to read later on the train then set about thinking what I might do to get close to Kristin again. After ten minutes or so I gave it up as a bad job. It was hopeless, I was in normal clothes now, I’d stand out like a sore thumb, so what chance was there of getting anywhere remotely near her? No chance. Besides, I consoled myself, I’d seen her once already, I’d done what I set out to do, if I saw her again it would only be the same. So after I’d drunk my tea I left Lyme Park and headed for the station.

  *

  The Torrs Riverside Park, the ‘park under the town’ as it is styled, is set in the bottom of a deep gorge gouged out of the hard sandstone during the ice age (so a notice displayed in the heritage centre later informed me) and situated at the confluence of the rivers Goyt and Sett. It is ‘under the town’ insofar as towering ninety feet above it are two high-level road bridges connecting the three different areas of the town which looks down on it, just two of many bridges, road, river and rail, contained within the gorge. The park itself is most attractive, with its old mill ruins, weirs, aqueducts, disused chimney stacks, cobbled tracks, low-level stone arched bridges scattered here and there, and the elegant if incongruous Millenium Walkway metal aerial bridge that winds its way through the gorge, clinging precariously to a massive retaining wall, atop of which is the Manchester/Sheffield railway line. A further feature seemingly out of time and kilter with its setting is a large Archimedes screw Hydro-electric generating system. An information board informed me that kingfishers and dippers could be seen on the park’s two rivers, but if so they were having a day off. (Careful Norman, this is getting very close to padding. Enough said.) Despite the absence of the promised bird life, there was enough of interest in the park to remove my misery for a while. But it was back, like a great black cloud, soon afterwards.