‘OK. I think I’ve got it so far, but you still haven’t explained why it is that no one knows. Now I know I could shout it to the rooftops. I could sell my story to the tabloids.’ I was getting quite worked up by now, hunched over and absent-mindedly gobbling chocolate chip cookies with great gulps of tea. I didn’t even notice the kittens eating my shoelaces. Mother was imperturbable.
‘The funny thing is, that very few people seem to meet dead people who they know. It just goes to show you how big and anonymous the city really is. Even when people do meet dead friends and relatives they don’t seem inclined to broadcast the news.’
‘But Mother, you’ve always had an enquiring mind, you always thought you’d rot when you died. Why haven’t you got to the bottom of all this? Who’s the main man? Is it the “G” character?’
‘How should I know? I work, I go to my class, I feed the cats, I see a few friends, I travel. I’m not clever like you, if I do reflect on it at all it seems wholly appropriate. If I had spent days trying to visualise the afterlife I probably could have only come up with a pale version of the very real Crouch End I’m now living in.’
‘What class?’
Mother gestured at the phone directory. ‘The people who compile the phone book hold regular classes for people who are newly dead. They run through the blue pages at the beginning of the book and explain the best and most appropriate ways for dead people to conduct themselves.’
‘I should imagine that there are a lot of newly dead people who are pretty badly traumatised.’ I probably said this with unwarranted enthusiasm. I was still trying to look for the gaping holes in Mother’s suburban necro-utopia.
‘Oh no, not at all. Put it like this: most people who’ve had painful illnesses, or are lonely, are only too relieved to discover that instead of extinction they’re getting Winchmore Hill or Kenton. The classes only go to underline the very reality of the situation. There’s something immensely reassuring about sitting on a plastic chair in a cold church hall reading a phone book and watching a pimply youth trying to draw on a whiteboard with a squeaky magic marker.’
‘I see your point. But Mother, you were always so sparky and feisty. It’s out of character for you to be so laid back. Aren’t you curious to get the whole picture? What happens in other cities? Is it the same? If dead people move to the provinces after a while don’t these areas get clogged up and zombified? There are a million questions I’d like the answers to. You always hated groups and here you are submitting to indoctrination in a religion ostensibly run by dead employees of British Telecom. Why? For Christ’s sake, why?’
‘Yeah, it is kind of weird, isn’t it. I think death must have mellowed me.’
We chewed the fat for a while longer. Mother asked me about my sex life and whether or not I had an overdraft. She also asked about the rest of the family and expressed the opinion that both my brothers were insane and that some gay people we knew were ‘nice boys’. All this was characteristic and reassuring. She let me take a closer look at the North London Book of the Dead. It was genuinely uninspiring, based entirely on fact with no prophecies or commandments. The introductory pages were given over to flat statements such as: ‘Your (dead) identity should hold up to most official enquiries. Dead people work in most major civil service departments ensuring that full records of dead people are kept up to date. Should you in any instance run into difficulties, call one of the Dead Citizens’ Advice Bureaux listed in the directory.’ And so on.
Somehow, reading the book calmed me down and I stopped harassing Mother with my questions. After an hour or so she said that she was going out to a party a friend of hers was throwing. Would I like to come? I said, ‘I think I can probably do better than socialising with dead people,’ and instantly regretted it. ‘Sorry, Mother.’
‘No offence taken, son,’ she smiled. This was completely uncharacteristic and her failure to get violently angry filled me with dismay. She let me out of the flat just as a small wan moon was lifting off over the shoulder of Ally Pally. I set off towards Stroud Green Road buzzing with weird thoughts and apprehensions.
That night I thrashed around in bed like a porpoise. My duvet became saturated with sweat. I felt as if I were enfolded in the damp palm of a giant … Mother! I awoke with a start, the alarm clock blinked 3.22 a.m., redly. I sat on the edge of my bed cradling my dripping brow. It came to me why I should be having such a nightmare. I wanted to betray Mother. It wasn’t out of any desire to change once and for all the metaphysical status quo, or because I wanted to open people’s eyes to the reality of their lives, or even in order to try and blow a whistle on the Supreme Being. It was a far more selfish thing — wounded pride. Mother could have kept in touch, she let me go through all that grief while she, she was pottering around the shops in Crouch End. She could have fixed up some sort of gig with a séance or a medium, or even just written a letter or phoned. I would have understood. Well she wasn’t going to push my buttons from beyond the grave. I was determined to blow the whistle on the whole set-up.
But the next day came and, standing on a tube platform contemplating the rim of a crushed styrofoam cup as if it contained some further revelation, I began to waver. I sat at my desk all morning in a daze, not that that matters. Then, at lunch time, I went and sat in a café in a daze.
When I got back to my desk after lunch the phone rang. It was Mother.
‘I just called to see how you are.’
‘I’m fine, Mother.’
‘I called while you were out and spoke to some girl. Did she give you the message?’
‘No, Mother.’
‘I told her specifically to give you the message, to write it down. What’s the matter with the people in your office?’
‘Nothing, Mother. She probably forgot.’
Mother sighed. For her, neglected phone messages had always represented the very acme of Babylonian decadence. ‘So what are you doing?’
‘Working, Mother.’
‘You’re a little sulky today. What’s the matter, didn’t you sleep?’
‘No, I didn’t. I found yesterday all a bit much.’
‘You’ll adjust, kid. Come over tonight and meet Christos, he’s a friend of mine — a Greek Cypriot — he runs a wholesale fruit business, but he writes in his spare time. You’ll like him.’
‘Yeah, I think I saw his photo at your place yesterday. Is he dead, Mother?’
‘Of course he’s dead. Be here by 8.00. I’m cooking. And bring some of your shirts, you can iron them here.’ She hung up on me.
Ray, who works at the desk opposite, was looking at me strangely when I put down the receiver.
‘Are you OK?’ he said. ‘It sounded like you were saying “Mother” on the phone just now.’
I felt tongue-tied and incoherent. How could I explain this away? ‘No … no, ah … I wasn’t saying “Mother”, it was “Mudder”, a guy called Mudder, he’s an old friend of mine.’
Ray didn’t look convinced. We’d worked with each other for quite a while and he knew most of what went on with me, but what could I say? I couldn’t tell him who it really was. I’d never live down the ignominy of having a mother who phoned me at the office.
Ward 9
‘Ha ha ha, ha-ha … Hoo, h’, hoo, far, far and away, a mermaid sings in the silky sunlight.’ An idiot cooed to himself on the park bench that stood at the crest of the hill. Below him the greensward stretched down to the running track. In the middle distance the hospital squatted among the houses, a living ziggurat, thrusting out of a crumbling plain.