The Things We Learn When We're Dead

by Charlie Laidlaw

  With a smile and a wink, Tom rugby-passed Lorna the bar of chocolate.

  * * *

  That evening there was a phone call from the hospital. Lorna could hear her father’s grumbling voice from the hallway. He seemed to be asking lots of questions and then listening a lot. He was looking worried when he came back to the living room.

  Tom had picked up an infection, so he said, although Lorna didn’t know what an infection was. Her mother had to explain that germs had got inside Tom, which she could understand. She had always been made to wash her hands before each meal, just in case she swallowed germs that could make her poorly. She knew that germs lived everywhere, particularly in the toilet, and you always had to wash your hands after going there. Lorna also knew that germs were very small and didn’t like us very much. Maybe Tom hadn’t washed his hands before he ate all those sweets?

  They sat for a few minutes in silence, nobody quite sure what to do. Even to Lorna, wide-eyed between her parents, it seemed as if something had changed. She felt momentarily frightened, before realising that doctors and nurses always made people better.

  ‘They said he’ll be OK,’ offered her father to nobody in particular, and Lorna thought perhaps he was just speaking to himself. ‘They said it’s not serious.’

  ‘Will Tom still come home tomorrow?’ she asked.

  ‘I didn’t think to ask,’ he admitted, ‘but, no, perhaps not. I don’t know, Lorna.’

  Her mum looked at her watch. ‘I can still catch the last train,’ she said.

  Her father could have offered to drive her into Edinburgh but he’d been under the sink since coming back from the hospital so that would probably have been a bad idea.

  The next day, Aunt Meg moved in and, because it was nice and sunny, hung out the washing. A long-sleeved T-shirt belonging to Tom waved damply from the clothes-line.

  * * *

  A few weeks earlier and they’d been afloat, navigating along narrow rivers and throwing bits of bread to swans and moorhens. On the first day, barely out of the marina, her dad nearly crashed into another boat. They all found it hugely funny, except him, desperately spinning the wheel, their own vessel only slowly changing course as the other boat, sounding its hooter, bore down on them. The two boats missed one another by inches, the other boat’s captain shouting rude things. It turned out that her dad hadn’t known that you drive a car on one side of the road and a boat on the other side of the river. He hadn’t been paying attention during the briefing with the boat’s owner. During that holiday, her father often looked preoccupied.

  Usually they’d potter aimlessly down waterways until it was time for lunch, or time to moor up for the night. Lorna liked to sit cross-legged at the very prow of the boat. Although her mum had been initially doubtful about this being a good place to sit, she was won over by the fact that Lorna was conspicuously wearing her life-jacket and was always in sight. Lorna liked the feeling of wind on her face. One day, as always, they tied up the boat and went to a local village for lunch. But afterwards, instead of going back to the boat and casting off, her mum and dad decided to look round the shops. This didn’t make sense to her: why hire a boat and spend time on dry land?

  ‘I know,’ said her father, stopping at a shop window and looking inside. It was a newsagent’s, but seemed to sell just about everything else. Lorna peered through the window, trying to see what he had seen. ‘Why don’t we buy you fishing rods?’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ said her mum.

  ‘We could catch our tea,’ Lorna said excitedly – she had never been fishing before.

  ‘Well, Tom?’ asked her Dad.

  Tom nodded. Like her, he was rather entranced by the idea of catching a huge salmon or trout or herring or whatever the Norfolk Broads was teeming with, although neither of them much liked eating fish. Lorna only developed a taste for it much later.

  Their boat was moored at the edge of the village, on a wooden jetty that stuck out into the water. They were allowed to take their fishing rods to the riverbank, but had to promise to stay in sight at all times. Her dad showed them how to bait the hooks and cast out the line. Lorna listened to him doubtfully: she had never seen him go fishing before.

  She picked a spot, fixed sweetcorn to the hook, and chucked in the line. Tom had walked a short way downstream and was doing the same. Then she sat on the riverbank and stared at the sky, before feeling a tug on her line. She reeled in to find that she’d hooked a plastic bag.

  It was a warm afternoon, with a charge of static in the air. Lorna took off her jersey and laid her head on it, then remembered to put her stupid life-jacket back on. She looked round at the boat but neither her mum or dad were in sight. She once more contemplated the horizons of the sky, white clouds churning, and fell asleep.

  She woke with a start to find Tom was sitting next to her, his line dipped in the water. Between them was the tin of sweetcorn bait. The man in the shop had said that fish liked sweetcorn, although Lorna hadn’t been convinced and, not having caught anything, was less convinced now. She looked at the sky. It was filled with dark and angry clouds. She twisted her head: the sun had shifted in the sky.

  Lorna reeled in her line and laid the rod on the riverbank. Tom’s rod was clasped between his knees. She then laid her head back down on the jersey and raised her right arm to the darkening sky.

  ‘Zzzzzzzz.’

  ‘Not again,’ said Tom.

  Lorna waved her imaginary lightsaber in a series of tight circles.

  ‘It’s a useless film,’ said Tom, as he’d already told her several times.

  ‘Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.’

  ‘Please, Lorna!’

  ‘Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.’

  Lorna lowered her arm, smiling to herself. She couldn’t explain that it wasn’t so much the film, but its ending that she liked. She liked how it was a fairytale in which bad things happened but also came good in the end. She liked how it had a scary baddie and a princess, and that the universe was saved by a nobody like her. She turned her head to look at their riverboat. Two dark shapes were in the middle of the boat and she could hear low voices.

  Tom had cleared his throat. ‘You said something horrible last night,’ he said in a thin voice. Hair had flopped over his eyes, hiding his expression.

  Lorna closed her eyes, a gathering wind against her face. She didn’t know how to reply. Lorna supposed that she should apologise, but the words were stuck deep down in her throat. She’d wanted to say sorry all day, and now didn’t know how.

  Then it started to rain, big fat drops of rain, and their father was shouting at them. They hurried back to the boat as the heavens opened. For supper, her mother tipped the remains of the sweetcorn into a bowl of tuna and chopped onion that, now containing fish food, both Lorna and Tom absolutely refused to eat.

  * * *

  It became a common dream: effortlessly soaring, removed from the world, the wind roaring in her ears. Despite being frightened of flying in aeroplanes, dream-flying held no terrors. In her dreams, she was liberated, free, able to go anywhere. It was as if the bits and bytes of her untangled, that she was simply an essence, part of the wind, part of the sky. She occupied no fixed place, no mass or weight. She was truly free.

  Ever since she was old enough, Lorna would take the train into Edinburgh, usually with friends. She’d go shopping or to the cinema or meet up with other friends who had moved into the city. She was jealous of them. They all seemed more assured, more in control. In their company, Lorna felt provincial. They went to the ballet or the theatre and went shopping at Jenners or Harvey Nicks. Lorna could only afford the cinema and had only once browsed in Jenners, marvelling at the prices. Sometimes she went into Edinburgh by herself; she liked the freedom of travelling alone, of being grown up. She liked coming up the ramp from the station and being suddenly confronted by the castle. On the left, the buttresses of the Old Town, on the right, the Georgian splendour of the New Town. Between them, like an umpire, the ancient stones of the cas
tle. In North Berwick, if Lorna walked down the High Street, she knew virtually everyone. If they weren’t her friends, they were her mother’s friends. In a place where everyone knew everyone, she felt closed in. It was as if she was growing wings: at first, light and insubstantial, beating gently against restraining walls. Lorna was hardly aware of them. But as she grew, their North Berwick home growing smaller, her fledgling wings developed purpose. She no longer belonged in North Berwick. The hidden wings on her back would beat vigorously, trying to lift her away. In Edinburgh, she was anonymous and her wings would fold away to nothingness.

  * * *

  Only days after Auntie Meg moved in, Lorna was in her bedroom and looking out at neatly pegged washing on the clothes line. Her face was close to the window, breath fogging the glass. It was early morning. The flat was quiet, although she knew that Auntie Meg would be awake. Auntie Meg didn’t seem to need sleep. She was always in the kitchen when Lorna woke up, always in front of the TV when she went to bed. If Lorna needed the loo during the night, the portable TV in Aunt Meg’s room – actually, Tom’s room – would be switched on. Her aunt liked snooker and chocolate biscuits. Padding to the toilet, Lorna would hear the rustle of the biscuit packet. Auntie Meg was a kindly lady, Lorna’s mum’s sister, and very large. It was a mystery to Lorna how someone so large could move about.

  Some of the washing she recognised, some she didn’t. Their small back garden was shared with other flats in the close. The gargantuan string vest clearly belonged to Mr MacDonald on the first floor: he worked on the railways, precise job unknown, and wheezed as he climbed the stairs. Like a steam train, her mum would laugh, although Lorna didn’t know what a steam train sounded like. She only knew what Thomas the Tank Engine sounded like and, she supposed, a real one wouldn’t sound the same.

  There was also a floral dress, red roses on a blue background: that would be Amy McGuire’s. She habitually wore floral patterns. Her mum’s age, Amy had always longed to live somewhere with a garden. Deprived of that luxury, she’d taken to wearing one instead. Lorna recognised her own nightgown, a stupid purchase from years before, a big hamster face smiling from the material, and made a mental note to get rid of it.

  Then she opened the window and, kneeling on the floor, put her chin on the windowsill. The early sun hadn’t yet taken the chill from the air and she shivered. From her window she could see the top of the Law and its whale jaw; looking left and right, other small gardens with clothes lines full of other people’s lives. A gull wheeled and screeched; Lorna watched it with half-closed eyes.

  Her mind was a blank and she felt neither happy nor sad. Instead, she felt nothing at all. She was hungry, but couldn’t be bothered to eat. She wanted to play on the beach, but it seemed too much effort. In any case, her friends had stopped calling. The phone had been eerily silent for days. Lorna would sometimes pick it up just to make sure it was still buzzing.

  Tom’s washing was also on the line: mostly pyjamas and T-shirts, including one long-sleeved shirt that she thought was really cool. It was black and had Chinese lettering on the front. Nobody in their family knew what the T-shirt said, or if it really was Chinese. Maybe it said something rude, or was a call to arms against the Communists who ruled China. Her mum didn’t think so because she’d bought it in Debenhams but, all the same, Tom tried to keep it hidden when he saw Chinese people on the High Street. Tom was sensitive like that. He never thought to ask anyone what it said.

  Lorna felt a breeze on her face and looked down. A blackbird was picking at the patch of grass below the washing. A tabby cat on the wooden fence was following its every hop, but seemed content just to watch. It was too nice a morning for random carnage. Amy McGuire had tried to plant flowers against the fence, but the close had too many young kids who owned footballs. She’d given up, bought a flower box, and changed her wardrobe.

  Tom’s long-sleeved T-shirt had caught the small breeze. One sleeve had risen and fallen – almost a wave.

  Lorna closed the window and pressed her face to the glass. Then with a forefinger, in the patch of condensed breath, she drew a smiley face.

  Tears welled in her eyes, although she didn’t know why. It just seemed that Tom’s T-shirt was saying goodbye.

  It was the morning her brother died.

  * * *

  Things happen, and you move on, that’s what Suzie said. History is what happened yesterday or a minute ago. Good things or bad things: pick yourself up, dust yourself down, babe, and get on with it. Shit happens. That was a favourite expression of Suzie’s. But not to our family, Lorna had always thought. We have too perfect a surname.

  After Tom’s death, she no longer had certainties, and it was then that her wings began to stir. She no longer had faith in her parents. Her mother was just someone who worked part-time in a bakery and her wizard father was permanently under the kitchen sink pretending to look for dishcloths or washing powder.

  Greece

  It wasn’t every day that Lorna got to drink with an American president, and she was initially rather flattered.

  She was outside a beach bar, drinking ouzo, and under her feet was warm sand. Cicadas chirped and a gentle sea ebbed and sucked. It was sunset and gathering shadows were lengthening on the beach. Behind her was the rundown bar; above, the buttress of a cliff. The beach stretched away on both sides, disappearing into darkness. A game of mixed volleyball was noisily taking place in front of the beach bar. Film and rock stars pranced and dived, their feet kicking up sand. Rickety tables had been planted in the sand and surrounded by plastic chairs. Inside the beach bar had been dancing, mostly to mournful Greek music, although Mariah Carey was now pumping out ‘We Belong Together’.

  Lorna had fallen into conversation with a garrulous man called Bill, who had offered to buy her a drink, then taken her arm and led her to a plastic table perched precariously on the sand. She’d been too surprised to say no, and flattered to have this particular Bill’s attention. She couldn’t decide whether he was just being friendly or, knowing his reputation, if he was trying to come onto her. Lorna was keeping a close eye on his large hands.

  ‘The simple fact is that eternal life isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be,’ he was saying. Mariah faded away to be replaced once more by bouzouki, plucked strings played in harmony to falling waves. ‘I shouldn’t really tell you that, particularly since you’ve only just got here, but it’s what you’ll hear from everyone else. To be honest, it can be a bit of a bore.’ He was, so he’d said, a chief petty officer from Section B, whatever and wherever that was, and had a penchant for cigars. ‘Without regular regeneration to shave off a layer of boredom, we’d have gone stark-raving bonkers a long time ago.’ Bill puffed happily on his cigar, silver smoke mingling with his silver hair.

  ‘The concept of eternity is OK,’ he continued, hoisting one leg over the other, ‘so I can fully understand why people on Earth lust after it so much. Nobody much wants death to be the end. Most people would prefer to have something to look forward to on the other side. However, the reality of eternity comes with contradictions that are more difficult to resolve. Regeneration helps us to come to terms with them. It makes us a little less bored.’

  ‘Is your name really Bill?’ asked Lorna. She could have asked any one of a thousand questions. This one, however, seemed of most immediate importance.

  If he was offended, he didn’t show it, blowing out smoke and examining the end of his cigar. ‘It may once have been something else, but I simply don’t remember. That’s the trouble with Heaven, Lorna ... you forget things. It can sometimes be inconvenient but, usually, it doesn’t matter. If you’ve forgotten something, you don’t generally remember that you’ve forgotten it, if you follow me.’ He shrugged, then grinned. ‘But, to answer your question ... ever since I was William the Conqueror, I’ve stuck with Bill.’

  Lorna sipped ouzo while President Bill Clinton ran through a list of names. ‘William Shakespeare, Bill Gates, William Holden, Wild Bill Cody, William Shatner, B
ill Cosby ... you name them, I’ve been them. The Bill Gates didn’t last long. Too nerdy. However, now that this particular Bill is yesterday’s man, I suppose I’ll have to find someone else.’ He once more examined the end of his cigar, then turned his eyes to hers. ‘Nice dress, incidentally. Very classy. Anyway, who are you going to be?’

  It was the same question Irene had asked. Now it seemed that Bill was making the same assumption. ‘For now, I’m happy enough being me,’ she told him primly. ‘I wouldn’t know how to be someone else.’

  Bill even had the ex-president’s homely drawl and lopsided smile. ‘You don’t have to actually be that other person. Inside, you’re still yourself. The same memories, except the ones you’ve forgotten – the same everything. You just look like them, that’s all.’ He sipped from his Budweiser then laid the bottle on the plastic table. Underneath their feet was drifting sand. Across the beach the ocean was now dark blue, almost black, the sun’s orb sinking deeper. ‘It’s only a game,’ he said. ‘Harmless fun.’

  Trinity had made exquisite alterations to Lorna’s chosen dress, even suggesting what accessories might accentuate its glittering lines. It had to be the Cartier, Trinity had advised firmly, not the Tiffany. We don’t want you looking cheap, do we? Lorna had never worn anything like it before and was irritated that Bill should assume she’d want to be someone else, as if she wasn’t good enough. But earlier, looking in the full-length mirror in her bedroom (another chipped duplicate from the Edinburgh flat, complete with stains on the glass), she’d also felt a contradiction: it wasn’t her looking back. It was just someone who looked like her. The real Lorna wouldn’t have worn Cartier, Dior, or Tiffany; the real her hadn’t wanted those things. She bit her lip. She’d wanted to make a difference with her life, not acquire unnecessary accessories. Her reflection suggested otherwise.