Yes, that’s where I was, or wasn’t, depending on your point of view. I was there, I knew that; I could see it all around me. But I could tell instinctively that it wasn’t the real McDoveston’s marble wonder-bed. It was a kind of approximation, a dream landscape, if you will, made up of memories, but slightly fuzzy at the edges and all just a tad out of focus.
I suppose that we never look at things as closely as we should when we’re alive. But then, we’re not expecting that we’ll have to call upon these memories when we’re dead to establish some kind of environment for ourselves to exist in.
I must have spent so much time at Mr Doveston’s tomb that it seemed a natural place to recall when I died, so I suppose that it was the reason I was here.
Of course I’d spent a great deal more time in the bulb booth at the telephone exchange, but I had no wish to revisit that in the afterlife. And so I was here. And I wasn’t alone.
I could see them, drifting about, wraith-like, pale and pasty. Other dead folk, and a lot of them.
I had no intention of sticking around here for too long. I’d finish my fag and take a wander home. To my memory of home. I wondered why this lot were hanging around in the graveyard. Some of them looked pretty ancient, by their costumes. Victorians, many of them seemed.
But as they showed no interest in me, I sat and puffed on my fag and pondered upon eternity and determined that it was going to be very long indeed and hoped that I’d find plenty of interesting and entertaining things to fill it with.
After I’d got the revenge out of the way. Oh yes, I was altogether certain about that.
I’d had my life taken from me because I had been manipulated into taking other people’s lives from them. And someone, or something, or lots of someones and lots of somethings, were going to pay for that.
I intended to get even.
“Be careful what you think.”
I looked up and saw her and she was beautiful. An angel, I supposed, for no Earthly woman ever looked as good as that. She conformed to all the average-male stereotypes of how-a-good-looking-woman-should-look.
Tall and blonde and shapely. Big blue eyes and tiny nose and mouth so large that you could stick your fist in it.
“That’s not very nice, Gary,” said the angel.
“Was I speaking?” I asked. “Or was I thinking aloud? And how do you know my name?”
“I know who you are and we can hear each other’s thoughts here,” said the angel.
“I can’t,” I said, cocking my palm to my ear.
“Well, you should be able to. Probably it will come in time and time we have here to spare.”
“But not to waste,” I said. “Not for me. I have things that need doing, somehow.”
“You mustn’t think like that,” said the angel. “You’ll end up like these.” And she gestured to the wraiths who drifted aimlessly about and paid her no attention, even though they really should have. Because she was an absolute stonker of an angel.
“You will become stuck,” said the angel. “You must let go of any thoughts of revenge. Such thoughts will weigh you down and you’ll be stuck here at your grave, for ever.”
“My grave,” I said. “Here? I thought they’d probably cremated me and dumped my ashes in a dustbin at the prison, or something.”
“Whatever made you think that?”
“Well, it’s what happens in the movies and in real life, isn’t it? Executed killers end up in unhallowed ground in the prison boneyard.”
The angel smiled. “Your friend Dave nicked your body from the prison. Very enterprising of him, very brave. He thought you’d like to be buried here. He brought you here at night and slipped you into Mr Doveston’s tomb.”
“Nice one, Dave,” I said. “What a bestest friend.”
“You can’t buy that kind of friendship,” said the angel. “You should dwell on thoughts like that. And then you will be able to fly from here. To wherever and whenever. All the universe is here to be seen. It will take you for ever to see it all.”
“So,” said I, and I smiled. I did, I really did. “So that’s the point of death. I wondered about that when I was a child. I could see the point of being alive, to be aware of the world and everything around us. But I never could see the point of death. But that’s it? What you’re saying? When you’re dead you can fly off and see all of the universe? Isn’t that incredible? Isn’t that utterly beautiful?”
And I thought about it and, as I thought, the terrible emptiness seemed momentarily to leave me. Or to change, as if, perhaps, I was filling up with something new: not life, but something even more marvellous than life. A kind of universality of being, that I was part of everything and everything was part of me. It was utterly wonderful and it made me feel that now nothing else mattered – nothing that I’d done or not done, nothing that I’d known. I just wanted to fly, to be at one with everything. To be eternal.
“So that is the purpose of it all,” I said.
“There is a purpose to everything.” The angel smiled at me. “Especially death.”
“And these dead people here, these dead souls? They got stuck, did they? Because they had thoughts of revenge?”
“Or couldn’t draw themselves away from their memories. They yearned to be alive again.”
“Shame,” said I. “You might have mentioned this to them. It does seem a bit of a pity. Still, I suppose God knows his own business best. If He decided they should stay here, then there’s probably a good reason for it.”
“God?” said the angel. “What are you talking about? God?”
“Your governor,” I said. “The big fellow. The bloke who pays your wages.”
“My wages?” The angel looked genuinely baffled.
“You look genuinely baffled,” I told her. “You are an angel, aren’t you?”
And at this the angel began to laugh. She laughed right in my face and all over me generally. And I remembered how much I’d hated people doing that. Especially Sandra.
“Oh, careful,” said the angel(?). “Bad thoughts, heavy thoughts: wipe those thoughts from your mind.”
“Is Jupiter nice at this time of year?” I asked, rapidly changing the subject.
“Don’t know,” said the angel(?). “Never been there.”
“But you must get around a bit. After all, you are an … you know … Or aren’t you?”
The beautiful being, whatever it was, shook its beautiful head. “I’m not an angel,” she said. “There aren’t any angels, or, at least, none that I’ve seen. I’m just another dead person.”
I whistled. Loudly. The drifting wraiths paid no attention to my whistling. “What a pity,” I said. “I am so sorry.”
“Why?” asked the beautiful being. “I had a good innings.”
“Good innings? But how old are you? How old were you when you died? Nineteen, twenty?”
“Ninety-eight,” said the beautiful being.
“Ninety-eight? You’re having a laugh, surely?”
“Here, we look how we truly look,” said the beauty, “no matter what we looked like when we were alive.”
“Oh,” I said and my hands slowly moved up to my face.
“Are you sure you want to?” the beauty asked. “Are you sure you want to know what you truly are?”
My hands retreated at speed and found their way into my trouser pockets. “I’m sure I look fine,” I said. “In fact, I must look the same, because you recognized me.”
“True,” said the beauty. “I know who you are. But it doesn’t mean that you look the same. You must have noticed that now you’re dead, things are the same, but different.”