We had a lot in common, shared a love of books, films, and even a similar sense of humour. Moreover, I saw in Elisabeth a fundamental human decency, perhaps born out of hardship, that I detected in few other people.
“Who’re you, then?”
“Ben,” I said absently, my thoughts miles away.
He regarded me for about a minute, then said, “You always were bloody useless!”
I stared at him. He had moments of lucidity: for a second, he was back to his old self, but his comment failed to hurt. I’d heard it often before, when the sentiment had been backed by an ability to be brutal.
“Dry-stone walls!” he spat.
“Is that any worse than being a bus driver?” I said.
“Useless young…” he began, and dribbled off.
I leaned forward. “Why don’t you go to hell!” I said, and hurried from the room, shaking.
I sat in the library, staring out at the snow and shaking. I wondered if, when my father was resurrected and returned, he would have any memory of the insult.
“Hello, Ben. Nice to see you.”
She was wearing her chunky primrose parka and, beneath it, a jet-black cashmere jumper.
“You don’t look too good,” she said, sitting down and sipping her coffee.
I shrugged. “I’m fine.”
“Some days he’s worse than others, right? Don’t tell me. Mum’s having one of her bad days today.”
More than anything I wanted to tell her that I cared nothing for my father, but resisted the urge for fear of appearing cruel.
We chatted about the books we were reading at the moment; she had loaned me Chesterton’s Tales of the Long Bow, and I enthused about his prose.
Later, my coffee drunk, I twisted the cup awkwardly and avoided her eyes. “Elisabeth, I was wondering… There’s a nice Indonesian restaurant in Bradley. At least, I’ve heard it’s good. I was wondering—”
She came to my rescue. “I’d love to go,” she said, smiling at me. “Name a day.”
“How about tomorrow? And I’ll pay.”
“Well, I’ll get the next one, then. How’s that sound? And I’ll drive tomorrow, if you like.”
I nodded. “Deal,” I said, grinning like an idiot.
I was working on a high sheepfold all the following day, and I was in good spirits. I couldn’t stop thinking about Elisabeth, elation mixed equally with trepidation. From time to time I’d stop work for a coffee from my Thermos, sit on the wall I was building, and stare down at the vast, cold expanse of the reservoir, and the Onward Station beside it.
Ferrymen came and went, delivering the dead. I saw Richard Lincoln’s Range Rover pull up and watched as he unloaded a container and trolleyed it across the car park and into the Station.
At five I made my way home, showered and changed and waited nervously for Elisabeth to pick me up.
The meal was a success. In fact, contrary to my fears, the entire night was wonderful. We began talking from the time she collected me and never stopped.
The restaurant was quiet, the service excellent, and the food even better. We ate and chattered, and it seemed to me that I had known this friendly, fascinating woman all my life.
I could not see in Elisabeth the lonely, loveless woman that Jeff had described; she seemed comfortable and at ease. I feared I would appear gauche and naive to her, but she gave no indication of thinking so. Perhaps the fact was that we complemented each other, two lonely people who had, by some arbitrary accident, overcome the odds and discovered each other.
Elisabeth drove us back through a fierce snowstorm and stopped outside her converted barn. She turned to me in the darkness. “You’ll come in for a coffee, Ben?”
I nodded, my mouth dry. “Love to,” I said.
We sat on the sofa and drank coffee and talked, and the free and easy atmosphere carried over from the restaurant. It was one o’clock by the time I looked into my empty mug and said, “Well, it’s getting on. I’d better be…”
She reached out and touched my hand with her fingers. “Ben, stay the night, please.”
“Well… If it’s okay with you.”
“Christ,” she said, “what do you think?” And, before I knew it, she was in my arms.
I had often wondered what the first time would be like, tried to envisage the embarrassment of trying to do something that I had never done before. The simple fact was that, when we undressed each other beside the bed, and came together, flesh to soft, warm flesh, it seemed entirely natural, and accomplished with mutual trust and affection—and I realised that I’d never really had anything to fear, after all.
I was awoken in the night by a bright flash of light. I rolled over and held Elisabeth to me, cupped her bottom in my pelvis and slipped a hand across her belly.
The window overlooked the valley, the reservoir, and the Station.
High-energy pulse beams lanced into the stratosphere.
“You ‘wake?” she murmured.
“Mmm,” I said.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she whispered. Shafts of dazzling white light bisected the sable sky, but more beautiful to me was holding a warm, naked woman in my arms.
“Mmm,” I said.
“I always keep the curtains open,” she whispered. “I like to watch the lights when I can’t sleep. They fill me with hope.”
I watched the lights with her. Hard to conceive that every beam of energy contained the newly dead of Earth.
“Elisabeth,” I said.
“Hmm?”
“Have you read much about the Kéthani?”
She turned to face me, her breasts against my chest. She stroked my face and lightly kissed my lips. “Just about everything there is to read.”
“Something I don’t understand,” I said. “Millions of humans die, and are taken away and resurrected. Then they have a choice. They can either come back and resume their lives on Earth, or they can do the bidding of the Kéthani, and go among the stars, as explorers, ambassadors…”
“Or they can come to Earth, live a while, and then leave for the stars.”
I hesitated, then said, “And we trust them?”
“We do now. At first, millions of us didn’t. Then the reports started to come back from those who had died, been resurrected, and gone among the stars. And the stories they told, the accounts of a wondrous and teeming universe…”
I nodded. “I’ve seen the documentaries. But—”
“What?”
“What about all those humans who are…” I tried to think of a diplomatic phrase, “let’s say, unsuited even for life on Earth. I mean, thugs and murderers, dictators, psychopaths.”
My father…
“Hard to imagine Pol Pot or Bush acting as an ambassador for an enlightened alien race,” I said.
She stroked my hair. “They’re changed in the resurrection process, Ben. They come back… different. Altered. Still themselves, but with compassion, humanity.” She laughed, suddenly.
“What?” I asked.
“The irony of it,” she said. “That it takes an alien race to invest some people with humanity!”
She reached down and took me in her fingers, and guided me into her. We made love, again, bathed in the blinding light of the dead as they ascended to heaven.
Our parents died the following week, within days of each other.
On the Monday afternoon I was working on the third wall of the sheepfold when my mobile rang. “Hello, Ben Knightly here,” I called above the biting wind.
“Mr. Knightly? This is Maria, from Sunny View. Your father was taken into Bradley General at noon today. The doctor I spoke to thinks that it might only be a matter of hours.”
I nodded, momentarily at a loss for words.