Chapter One

 

The Call-Up

 

Why was he here? Benedict slowed the car almost to a stop at the sight of his old school’s redbrick buildings, somehow much smaller than he remembered them. There was the angry blast of a horn from behind. Turning in through the open gate, he edged along the gravel drive and checked off the memories. On the left was the crazy paved path to the headmaster’s house, bordered by neatly trimmed hydrangeas. He was out of bounds. Through the twilight to the west he saw the first floor windows of the Sixth Form common room where he’d learned to play bridge. “Six no trumps.” Beddows had had to clean his football boots for a month after that. And yes, there was the pitch where he’d been invincible that drizzly January afternoon, diving fearlessly, flying across the goal to palm the ball away, taking school into the regional final. Just beyond… oh, the Music School had gone, and out of a grey mist rose a huge and ugly modern building, all concrete and glass…

Another turn revealed the quad. Something was wrong. It was littered with paper rubbish and plastic cartons, and the Refectory stood cold and derelict, every window broken, glass lying in a jagged carpet outside. Then another blast shattered his thoughts as a black saloon with lights flashing sped right at him from nowhere. He crunched into reverse and swerved away just in time, knuckles white on the wheel, watching the driver’s grinning face as she flashed by. The car’s controls didn’t seem to be where they should be now. He couldn’t find a gear.

Benedict threw open the door and almost fell over the old red bicycle left lying there, the front wheel buckled, the chain hanging uselessly from rusty cogs. He found himself near a set of weathered stone steps leading up to a polished oak door. To one side, a glass-covered notice- board held a single piece of paper headed ‘AL’ in heavy gothic print and followed by a list of names. Yes, the Advanced Level exam results of course. Leaning forward to take a look, Benedict found his own name at the bottom and, unmistakably, the word ‘Disqualified’ next to it. Despite the evening, he was sweating now, heart pumping. The door swung open easily at his touch to reveal an art studio, in the centre of which stood an easel displaying a naïve charcoal portrait of himself.

“Come on. We can’t wait any longer.” The soft voice came from the left. She sat in a swivel chair on a raised dais, and now turned towards him, slim and pretty, wearing a mortarboard perched on long fair hair and nothing else. He opened his mouth but nothing came out except a shrill bell announcing the end of lessons.

Benedict woke up instantly and threw a hand out onto the alarm clock, knocking the glass of water at his bedside onto the floor. He lay back, his breath coming in short, deep gasps, his body stuck to the moist sheets as he replayed the dream in his mind, unable to move. Mary came into the bedroom, already dressed and well into her day, and glared impatiently at the pool soaking into the carpet.

“I’ve been calling you. Breakfast is going cold. Come on, I can’t wait any longer.”

He shook himself free of his inner world and eased himself out of bed, legs unsteady and… too late, there was blood on the carpet too now. He tried to tell her about it all, later at the kitchen table, but she was listening with only half an ear, busying herself with papers and tidying.

“I can hardly describe how powerful it felt. It must mean something, don’t you…?”

“For heaven’s sake, it’s just a dream,” she retorted over her shoulder. “You’ve had them before. We all do. You’re in the grown-ups’ world now and you’re going to be late for work.”

He drove very carefully today, admitting to himself that Mary was indeed less than interested lately. She always had things to do and somewhere to go, and yes, they’d hardly touched for months. He supposed that most couples must experience this after twenty years, the marriage boat drifting in a quiet backwater. But Benedict really should have realised that storm clouds were gathered over this water and a flood tide was approaching. He had, after all, been warned.

 

Archangel Gabriel blew into the room like a tornado looking for something to pick up, toss about a bit and then smash just for fun. He really had better things to do than check up on Second Level Witnesses. That was supposed to be the Celestial Operational Planning Service’s job, but can you ever find them when you need them? Manpower shortages! Honestly, who needs compassionate leave when you’re already dead? So this Benedict chap was having a crisis but that’s hardly the end of the world. Happens all the time. Everything was under control and… He glared at the only occupant of the room, a thin balding man apparently in middle-age, dressed in the standard issue pale green habit with yellow belt. He was intently watching a small screen with slow, misty images like a football match being played in heavy snow.

“Anthony? What’s the news?”

“Oh, England are two-nil down. It’s awful, you should see the state of the pitch and -”

“I didn’t mean that. Aren’t you supposed to be watching something a little less trivial at the moment, like some rather major life trauma for your guidee?” He winced as he uttered the dreadful word. What was Heaven coming to nowadays, all committees and Mission Statements and Celestial Correctness and nobody spoke proper English any more. His protests were ignored of course. Archangels were regarded as dinosaurs in this modern electro-cyber-Interthingy era. There was no respect. What was the use of experience when you have electronics? So here he was, reduced to chasing up feeble pension-chasers like Anthony who wouldn’t know a God Moment if it ran up his leg and blew raspberries in his chakra. He took, as it were, a deep breath and tried again.

“I believe Benedict is almost at his Point of Spiritual Initiation?”

Anthony sat up and took notice, suddenly realising who his visitor was and that the room had gone very cold.

“Yeah, the shit of enlightenment is about to hit the fan of destiny, sir. Pretty soon. Probably.”

“I should have thought that with all this,” Gabriel made a sweeping gesture towards the banks of high technology that occupied an entire wall, “you could be a touch more precise? Time may not mean very much to us but I seem to remember that it sure as hell does to them. Didn’t you have those bleak days when you didn’t know how you were going to get through the next few hours and there was nothing to believe in?” Anthony considered this thoughtfully.

“Oh yes, but it was the nineteen-fifties. Skiffle, the Home Service, holidays in Bognor. Every day was like that. `Course, things have accelerated now. `Frinstance, did you know there’s this chap, Roddick, who served an ace at -”

“Be that as it may, perhaps your chap could do with some input from you, given The Plan that’s been put in place?”

“Yeah, well, `s not easy is it?” Anthony wheedled. “Due respect to Moses, but life is not set in stone. There’s all sorts of other people involved down there who make all sorts of silly choices and, well, just interfere with things. Witnesses can only do so much, eh?” Gabriel’s heart sank further. A fraction more determination would not go amiss. Nobody, but nobody, knew better than he how tricky things can be to organise. After all, he’d done the logistics for some of the biggest projects ever. Life may well be messy, but that’s the nature of it and you just got on with it.

“What have you done so far?” he sighed.

“Well obviously, the dreams to start with, the usual stuff. The first few never got through but last night’s biggie got him shaking in his socks all right. He even wrote it down.”

“Did you get all the archetypes in?”

“Most of `em, uhu. School, car, alarm, bike, nudity… Even managed the initials this time. Though I say it myself -”

“And did he understand it?” The self-satisfaction froze.

“Well, that’s another matter. Y’see, advertising executives with posh houses in Hertfordshire and three-hour lunch breaks aren’t really used to PSIs. He’s still got a few things to work out for himself… There’s a limit to what I can do, y’know.”

“Ah yes, that reminds me.” Gabriel consulted his notes. “You’re right, this is too big for one man, so he’s been assigned another Witness. We hope you won’t feel put out?” The CC was very nice but Anthony wasn’t in the least put out. Perhaps he could put his feet up a bit now, shift some of this responsibility. There’s a lot of stress in Witnessing.

“Fine by me, if you say so,” he replied, trying to make it sound humble. “This is a Big Deal, needs a sensitive touch. Experience. Wisdom. Who’s it to be, then – Tibetan monk perhaps, Chinese magus?”

“Er, not exactly -” began Gabriel. But then with one of those extraordinary synchronicities that happen all the time in spiritual circles, at that very moment the door burst open again.

“Yo, rude boys, is I late for de raga? Bruv, ent this just bangin?” Ranjit did a twirl so that the oversized habit that enveloped him like a tent billowed up and filled half the room. The white belt was knotted round his head to hold back the long, black, fine hair strung with multi-coloured beads. The other two gaped, trying to take in the dozen or so silver rings, the painted toenails, the nose stud and the sheer irreverence.

“Jus’ call I RJ, bruv. I is your new man, innit.”

Gabriel tottered quietly from the room and left them to it.

 

Harold Arthur St John Markham DSO was glad when he died. It was possibly one of the best things he’d ever done.

It was at first assumed in the village of Buckley Rise that the colonel was an idle old soak whose liver had outgrown its usefulness, but this was far from the truth (except that he did die in the bath). He’d kept himself in trim and up to form with twenty press-ups and twenty bicycle kicks every day while stripped to his vest in front of the bedroom mirror. He kept his mind active by rereading Plato’s Republic and by writing occasional fierce letters about sexual permissiveness to the editor of the Gazette. He had bearing. He was alert, and he never wore tweeds.

It was his own fault if the neighbours got it wrong. The truth is that he’d pretty much cut himself off since everything worthwhile in life had disappeared. The disbanding of the regiment had been closely followed by that of his marriage, when an exasperated Barbara had left him for a pork butcher in Maidstone. For a while, he’d pottered in the vegetable patch and vegetated in the potting shed, brooding on the socioporosis of the country’s backbone and watching the steady decline of morality with a deep sense of personal loss. Self-discipline faded, and so did Harry.

Society filled up with wishy-washy sociologists moaning on about disadvantages and free school milk. No fibre. Then there were the personal liberty apologists wittering about wealth-is-good and realities-of-life. No heart. It almost made him vote Labour, just the once. Nobody was doing anything about discipline.1

Lathered and pink, he’d stretched out in the bath and turned on the radio for the evening news. The headlines were, in order: an American actress had got married for the fourth time, school teachers were on strike for a thirty hour week, the Chief Executive of a water company had been awarded a half million pound bonus, and two million people were feared dead in an African famine. Harry decided that he no longer wished to be part of this world and, without either considering the matter further or turning off the radio, slid gently beneath the bath water and stayed there.

He hadn’t left a note, of course, assuming that no-one would care or even notice that he’d gone. As it happened, Mrs Gardner, who tidied and shopped and cooked a bit, was considerably put out to discover her pale, late and very cold employer next morning. Indeed, she felt it necessary to help herself to a large Amontillado before covering his privates with a flannel.

Harry waited patiently in the queue for the Level One Natal

Reception Centre. Having been a colonel in the British Army, he’d had plenty of experience of waiting about. There seemed to be some sort of disturbance up ahead.

It had been a long session already for the Control Clerks and Boris would have been fed up to the back teeth if he’d had any. Of course, one did not become an NRC3 without thorough training in cool dispassionate staring, the total suppression of subjective emotion, and the mastery of the Standard List. One loved one’s work however humble, every task essential to the great machinery of the afterlife, to The Plan. One received one’s reward in Heaven. The facts that he hadn’t the faintest idea what The Plan was, and that he’d been in Heaven for ages and to his knowledge had received nothing, only occasionally troubled him. The odd break at a Joy Of Being Centre did help to reinvigorate him with a new sense of purpose, but he’d only just got back from his last stay and things were already getting him down. First there was that woman from Arizona who absolutely refused to believe that she was dead – the RC not doing their job properly again – and then there was the chap from Nepal who insisted he should go straight to Level Two at least, and eventually had to be carried over the barrier shouting that he was going to get his guru onto them.

You’d think people would be a little grateful that they’d survived.

But no, one problem after another and the queue just wasn’t getting any shorter. There was something, as it were, in the air today. An astral ripple. An etheric undercurrent. And there was also John Clarke.

Now, aside from moments of frustration, Boris was genuinely proud of his work. An NRC3 has a certain status and responsibility; after all, one was the first trained spirit that most deceased encountered normally. He took pride in his skill at fending off pathetic questions and getting everyone processed before they could think twice. He’d won a Productivity Award in the Western European Sector three times. He might look forward to promotion one day soon if there were no cock-ups in the meantime. That’s why Boris now had this very strange sensation, uncommonly like sweat tingling all over his scalp. For without doubt John Clarke was a living, walking cock-up.

No records, no files, no identity. Nothing. He shouldn’t be there.

But there he was, standing meekly on the other side of the counter, cap in hand, fawn gabardine raincoat over one arm, mild and apologetic and holding up the queue. Nothing in Boris’s training had prepared him for this. Obviously, the only way the system could work was if everyone had records and everyone was expected. Even the woman from Arizona had been expected, however rare a raven attack on American tourists at the Tower of London might be. And it wasn’t even as if John Clarke was reluctant or argumentative or anything. Quite the opposite – he seemed perfectly willing to accept whatever fate might befall him. But without records, nothing could befall him. Eventually, Boris did what any self- respecting official, spiritual or otherwise, has to do. He passed the buck.

NRC4 Jones was just tidying his desk and sipping the last of his tea from a floral paper cup. Old habits die hard. He leaned back reflectively in his padded mock leather chair and looked at the fishing prints on the wall, the medal cabinet and the ten square metres of magenta pile carpet, while the personal Thought Module chattered quietly to itself on the desk beside him. All the satisfying trappings of his position. Yes, there was, as it were, something in the air. But he hadn’t got where he was today without being able to deal with things in the air.

He patted the day’s pile of record cards contentedly. Another three and a half thousand souls despatched. Well, it wasn’t the big time but that was the price you paid for dealing with England. They were so stable and unexciting. Still, he ran a tidy ship.

He strolled over to the two-way mirror. Watching the feeble expressions of bemusement on newly-deceased faces never failed to entertain him. But what was this nagging instinct? He hadn’t got where he was today without careful attention to nagging instincts. Perhaps someone famous or important was coming up the line? He always liked a quiet word and a handshake with them. The personal touch. No, he couldn’t see anyone worth mentioning, though there did seem to be a bit of a commotion, some jostling and complaining…

Boris entered.

“We have a bit of a problem, NRC4 Jones, sir,” he announced. Jones clasped his hands behind his back, spread his legs slightly and rocked on his heels. It was a rather good posture he’d copied from a member of the royal family.

“You mean, you have a problem, Boris.” He was a decent man, NRC3, but he had no imagination. He’d never have any chance of promotion. “If it’s about that chap from Nepal, I’ve already been onto the Spiritual Guidance Bureau and they’re -”

“No sir, it’s John Clarke.”

“Who?”

“Exactly, sir. That’s just it. I don’t know. No records.” “Nothing?”

“Not a scrap.”

“Then he’s not here.”

“Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir. Er, he’s behind me, sir.”

It didn’t take too long for Jones to concede that there was a problem. He scratched himself, fidgeted, and glared at the slight figure across the desk.

“Let’s get this straight. Who are you?”

“John Clarke, sir. B.A. (Sussex). 14 Acacia Stree -”

“Yes, yes, but what are doing here? You’re not supposed to be dead. You’re not on our list. In fact, you don’t seem to be on any list.”

“Sorry, sir, I just found myself here. It was a bit sudden, granted. About tea-time. Should I have brought my passport?”

Jones didn’t answer, but buzzed his secretary to check if he’d double-checked the lists.

“`Course I `ave, an’ gone through Past Records an’ Forward

Estimates an’ bin onto the RC. `E don’t exist, guv.”

“`E do. I mean, he certainly does. He’s sitting in front of me. And don’t call me that in front of other people, please.”

“But if `e don’t exist then -”

“Look Ziggie, you’ll never get anywhere with that logic. Get onto the FEW, will you, and get them to check the Destiny Control registers.”

“Come on, guv, that’ll take aeons. You know they never answer. They’re not even supposed to answer. An’ I was `oping to slope off a bit early to meet this nice -”

“Do it, Ziggie. We can’t have souls wandering about willy-nilly.” “They won’t like it, guv. They’ll only tell the SGB…”

Jones hissed something not very spiritual back down the Module before replacing the receiver on its hook, and his highly trained smile back on his face. But something quite unprecedented was going on. Not credible. He studied Clarke again – the man was totally unremarkable. So why did he seem so dangerous?

“We’ll have to wait,” said Jones, reaching into his drawer for a couple of paper cups. “Tea?”

 

If the NRC was in trouble, so was Benedict.

“I’m in trouble,” he said to himself. He stared at the computer screen in disbelief and punched a few keys. Nothing happened. And when he pushed his chair back from the desk in frustration, there was a small cry of pain from behind. “Oh… I… I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise…” He helped the young woman to her feet and retrieved the papers scattered on the office carpet. It was magenta. “Are you all right?” She winced slightly as she put her left foot to the ground but smiled anyway.

“Yes, fine, sir. I did knock, but you were miles away.”

Benedict sheepishly helped her to a chair and handed her the file, which she immediately gave back to him.

“They told me in Reception to bring these up for you. Something about a new campaign?” He dimly recognised her now, one of those cheerful, anonymous faces you pass every morning when you go in and every evening when you go out. Someone who isn’t very important. Late twenties, he supposed, pretty enough in a quiet way, very clear eyes of some indefinable greenish colour. And somewhere at the end of a long, dusty corridor of Benedict’s mind, on the other side of a polished oak doorway, a bell rang.

He glanced at the file she’d given him with incomprehension. It was labelled Very Urgent in red and bore a title that meant absolutely nothing to him.

“Yep, I really am in trouble,” he muttered, leafing through the pages. “There’s no way I can get this done today. There hasn’t even been a Planning… well, you don’t want to know about my problems. Look, you’d better get back.” He offered a hand to help her up but she gave another small cry and sat down again. Benedict fetched tea from the machine in the corridor.

“Everything seems to be top priority lately,” he said ruefully. “I’ve no idea what’s going on. Even the computer’s acting up. I was on the Internet when you came in. There’s this bridal wear campaign, so I typed in some keywords for a search of famous weddings – you know, ‘celebrity’ and ‘marriage’, that sort of thing. All I got was some historical archive page about the Mary Celeste. I ask you. Then the damn thing froze on me. And my laptop at home has been acting up as well. It’s like a conspiracy.”

“Bugs.”

“Or a virus.” “Or you.” “Eh?”

“Maybe it’s just you. These things are only happening around you, right? So perhaps it’s your energy doing it. You do seem pretty stressed -”

“Come on, that’s nonsense. How could… do you really think that’s possible then?” She shrugged and sipped her tea.

“I know nothing about how computers work. They’re alien creatures. I mean, I can do basic things… But I do think that anything’s possible.” They sat in silence for a minute while Benedict turned over in his mind his rudimentary knowledge of electromagnetic fields. The thought took him back to school, and to last night.

“I had this really weird dream, too. Very powerful. It’s still swimming around my in head, like someone’s trying to tell me something.” “Then that’s what it is. Except it’s you, I mean, your own mind.

There’s something inside trying to get out.” Benedict struggled with the idea. He may be an advertising executive, but he was the pragmatic sort, organised and rational, the one who got things done. Creativity wasn’t his department and the paranormal definitely didn’t happen. But something was happening.

“So how come the Internet’s got it in for me too?”

“Quite the opposite. It’s trying to help you. What do you know about the Mary Celeste?”

“Only what everyone does – found drifting in the Atlantic, abandoned, big mystery…”

“And her captain’s name was Ben.” Something very cold and with a lot of small legs started crawling up Benedict’s spine.

“And my wife’s name is Mary.” It was almost a whisper. “We met when we were at school and… grief, the dream was about school and come to think of it she was in it, driving a car…”

“I read some of the page over your shoulder when I came in. The ship was found in 1872… is that relevant?”

“Aah,” he groaned. “Only that Mary’s birthday was 1972…”

“So all I’m saying is that if there’s a signpost maybe you should read it?” Benedict shook his head as if to clear it, and sat back down at his desk.

“Look, none of this is making any sense,” he said abruptly, “and we’re wasting time. I’ve got Very Urgent stuff to do and you’d better get back.”

Alison wandered back downstairs but she was in no hurry. The HR woman had it in for her so she’d probably already lost her job for spending too long away from Reception. It didn’t matter. Anyway, she’d been having a recurring dream lately, about Bees.

 

“PSI countdown starting… now.” Anthony pressed a purple button and watched the numbers flicker across the screen in an apparently random sequence. Seven, seven, two, eleven… Since they made no sense whatever to him, he switched back to the football.

“Hey bruv, I is watching that, you fassy,” complained Ranjit. Anthony gave him a withering glare. The atmosphere had been decidedly frosty since Gabriel’s departure in a cloud of undisguised despair.

“Mean a lot to you, do they, interpolatory chaos derivative field patterns?” he suggested with more than a touch of sarcasm. Actually they meant nothing to him either but he’d been around long enough to pick up the jargon.

“Sure, bruv. I is eddicated y’know. Maffs is my ting, yeah, like I done my time at uni. Man, chaos is cool.”

“Ah yes,” Anthony countered, establishing his authority by opening the beige file Gabriel had tossed onto the table as he left. “Uni. Now that would be the academically prestigious University of Burnley, wouldn’t it? Where you attended precisely one lecture and spent your entire student loan in two weeks, before – and do correct me if any little details are wrong – dissolving three Es in a pint of rum, climbing to the top of the Manchester Airport observation tower, taking all your clothes off and shouting ‘Capitalism sucks’ as you toppled not very gracefully onto the tarmac. Not exactly a distinguished higher education, was it?”

“Don’t mean I don’t know nuffin,” muttered RJ. “Ok, I was a prat den.”

“The airport was closed for eighteen hours,” Anthony read on.

“They thought you were a terrorist. Thousands of people missed their holiday flights. Angry parents, crying children. The restaurants ran out of chips. Well, maybe you do know something about chaos, then.”

“Yeah, well that’s it `bout Heaven, right? I got nuvver chance, like, to mek up. C’mon Tone, our brer’s in seeerus shit down there. We gotta do summat!”

The whistle blew for half-time and Anthony switched off the monitor, standing up for a good stretch. The boy hadn’t been here five minutes, didn’t know how it was. He thought back to his own arrival, trampled underfoot outside a Rolling Stones concert when he’s only popped out for the Daily Mail, and his first flush of enthusiasm for the job. Well, true, he’d never actually been the enthusiastic sort, but it all did seem like a decent responsibility, overseeing a soul’s progress. Until you realised that there’s practically nothing you can do about any of it. On the one hand you had your destiny, so things were planned out anyway, and on the other hand you had your free will which always screwed up the plan. And obviously it’s not CC to interfere.

In any case, communication was hardly straightforward. If it were, spiritualist mediums wouldn’t be blathering on about Auntie Joan says the cat is happy but thinks you should get some new socks. No, the best you could hope for was to slip in the odd dream and leave the rest to them and chaos. What’s the fuss? You can always have another go later anyway.

That reminded him. His own Witness had mentioned at their last review some possibility of a turn as a politician in New Zealand. It sounded good, nice and quiet, plenty of sport. Anthony decided to go and make a few enquiries.

“Don’t touch anything,” he ordered coldly as he ambled out.

A deflated Ranjit sat glumly for a while, twisting his rings and twirling his belt. Heaven was not going to be a breeze, then. Perhaps getting shacked up with Anthony was a punishment. Perhaps he wasn’t in

Heaven after all, and this was all a very, very bad trip.

But then his eyes took in the banks of flashing, twitching, beeping technology around him and, despite himself, the excitement rose again. This was seeerus cool stuff. This was his generation. Surely it wouldn’t hurt if… He sat himself down in front of what looked like a multi-DVD drive and saw a piece of paper sellotaped to the side of it. Anthony’s password. A few keys later and he was in.

Ranjit might know fairly little about quite a lot, but he did know about computer systems. Specifically, how to hack into them. Within moments he was watching Benedict being sacked, apparently for not dealing with some urgent job, damaging company equipment and having an affair with a Receptionist on company time. As Benedict cleared his desk, RJ saw his boss, Michael, make a telephone call to Mary arranging to meet her in the usual place that evening.

“Dick’eds!” hissed RJ to himself. “The brer got jacked!” These were not holy observations but they were accurate. The young man’s natural outrage at the injustice – he was after all of ethnic minority with piercings and long hair so he knew about injustice – flared up and burned out all the cautions he’d been given earlier. Something had to be done about this. Benny-baby was not going to be dealing with this on his own. Fingers flashed across keyboards as Ranjit gave himself a crash course in second level astral software.

 

The barrier gave way under the weight of the crowd’s indignation at being kept waiting to enter the afterlife. More than fifty souls had got through unprocessed by the time Boris and the NRC-1 security team restored control. The colonel looked back sadly at the sight and shook his head, before strolling forward to who knew where. No discipline.

 

From flavour of the month to persona non grata in ten minutes flat. Life can be like that. Colleagues you’ve worked with for years turn away and busy themselves in the middle distance as you pass. Tight-lipped ex-friends shoot accusing stares. Silence and fear, as if misfortune were contagious. The doorman you exchanged friendly banter with this morning now walks beside you with a self-important smile and a puffed out chest and a grip on your arm like he’s NYPD. You balance your pathetic cardboard box of belongings on your hip as you hand over your Pass and hit the dingy back stairs down to the car park.

Benedict didn’t have the faintest idea what was happening to him or why. He drove up through north London in a daze and pulled in at Kenwood for a late lunch at the outdoor café overlooking the Heath. He couldn’t go home yet, couldn’t face Mary with all this. He walked for a while along the familiar paths where once they’d been happy, and stopped on the grassy bank where they’d huddled under a blanket together at a late open-air concert. It had been the 1812, fireworks exploding spectacularly above them. Life had been warm and all ahead. But now he was just numb and cold.

He sat in a corner at a rustic wooden table, coffee and salad baguette lying untouched in front of him. There was a fluttering somewhere up above in a nearby tree, and a small white feather floated gently down to land on his plate.

“It is a sign.” The quiet, squeaky voice to one side made Benedict start from his reverie. He looked at the woman, small with sharp features and mousy hair, wrapped in a grey raincoat despite the sunshine. “I Am A Medium,” she announced in capital letters, getting up from her table and edging forward with little steps to take the seat opposite him.

“Sorry?” he said feebly.

“The feather,” she pointed to it, “it’s a sign. There’s an Angelic Presence with you.” Benedict glanced from the offending article, stuck in mayonnaise, to the ground around them that was so festooned with feathers that this café must have been one of the holiest sites in Christendom. “I have to talk to you,” she squeaked on. “My guide told me at breakfast this morning that there would be An Encounter.”

“Your guide?” Benedict’s side of the conversation was a bit limited.

“Yes. I have to give you the words of the Great Dark Cloud.”

Well, that bit seemed perfectly understandable. “You are in pain, am I not right? There have been troubles, and there will be many more…”

“Oh, thanks.”

“… but you must not be downhearted for these troubles are blessings.”

“I see.” He didn’t, of course, but he just wanted to get rid of her.

The last thing he needed right now was some loony spouting gibberish. “Remember your dream, Ben. The woman has betrayed you.”

That cold thing with legs started climbing up his spine again, and Benedict became very, very alert. “But this had to be, for there is another path you must walk. Yes, yes…when life kicks yo’ in de balls yo’ gotta turn round an’ git yer ass in gear, innit. Oh!” She put a tiny hand up to her mouth, flushed with embarrassment.

“Gracious me, I do beg your pardon. You see, I’m only passing on now what your guide is telling me, my friend. I may have got some of the words a bit wrong, of course. Ah, let me see… a green dress, long black hair, rings – quite a lot of rings actually – yes, a very spiritual lady. Red Indian, naturally. They’re the best, you know. So you see, Ben, you must pick yourself up, dust yourself down -” he prayed that she wasn’t going to burst into song. “– and realise that Everything Has A Purpose.”

She was off, fluttering away invisibly as Benedict sat rigid with shock. How had she known his name?

“Oh, by the way,” she was suddenly back again, “there will be other signs soon. Look out for them, my dear.”

Anyone observing Benedict during the next ten minutes might have been forgiven for wondering if he was in fact alive. On the outside, nothing moved. Not a muscle, barely a blink. As the afternoon started to turn chilly, the skin thickened on his coffee and a gang of sparrows that had been waiting patiently above now decided that it was safe to attack and were systematically disembowelling the baguette. There was no reaction.

But inside his head, Benedict’s brain was in hyperdrive trying to process totally unfamiliar information. A bead of sweat appeared on his brow and he wiped it away, scattering the sparrows. One turkey short of a Christmas she might have been, but this insignificant woman had clearly known something and he was being warned of more to come. And more signs? Instinctively, Benedict looked upwards. It was simply an unfortunate coincidence, nothing more, that a bald and scruffy pigeon chose that moment to relieve itself.

Deciding that something rather stronger than coffee was called for, he headed up the A1 until the noise of London was far behind him, and pulled into the car park of The Gate. As he nursed his second single malt in a shadowed corner, Benedict began at last to relax. Or he would have, were it not for the conversation at the next table.

“…been at it for years, she had, right under `is nose…” “…planning it all, I bet. He walked right into it…” “…you just don’t know who to trust any more, do you?”

It was no good. He might just as well go home and get it all over with. Have it out, whatever it was. He knocked the whisky back in one and strode out with new determination.

Back at home, he wasn’t in the least surprised to find the house empty and a note from Mary propped up against an old chipped mug on the kitchen table. She was out and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow and she’d be glad if he’d pack some things and find somewhere else to stay by then. There was also some stuff about Neglect and Unreasonable Behaviour and taking the house in lieu of maintenance since he’d probably never get another decent job and certainly not in advertising anyway because Michael would see to it. Sitting there in the very quiet and very empty kitchen, Benedict realised that even the overheard conversation in the pub had been for him. It had all been planned. New lives sorted, old lives torn up. And every little detail of the day now took on momentous significance, maybe even that… what was it? He’d been following a slow black Porsche all the way home, and somehow now its registration number jumped into his mind’s eye: DAN 622.

Without knowing or even caring why – he was long past the stage of reason, something or someone else was directing his brain – Benedict went to find the old battered Bible he’d been given as a boy at Sunday School and had kept just for the sake of it. He looked up the Book of Daniel, chapter six, verse twenty-two: thrown into the lions’ den, Daniel had emerged unscathed, saved by an angel of God. And in that moment, Benedict knew he was going to be all right.

Somewhere far away, in another world, a long-haired young man clenched a fistful of rings and shouted “Yo!” in sheer delight.

Harry felt quietly satisfied. It had been a successful operation, undramatic, no loose ends, no-one unduly troubled (his wife had died a few years earlier – some sort of food poisoning). It had been a small unexpected flourish in an otherwise orderly life, that touch of style that the greatest commanders bring to their operations, whether they be blowing a supply bridge sky-high or merely committing suicide. But now Harry was himself sky-high and what was to be done about it?

The trouble was, having slipped through the NRC and strode onwards, he now couldn’t quite get his bearings. To anyone who might have happened to be passing in that particular bit of Heaven just then, the colonel would have presented a peculiar sight. There was no doubt that he found himself standing in, on and next to absolutely nothing, with more nothing to be seen in every direction. He had not expected this (well, soldiers do not give a lot of thought to life-after-death). Nevertheless, he had spent most of his life accepting nonsensical things so he remained calm and gave the matter some thought. Clearly he had survived, so he must be in some sort of base camp while operational logistics were worked on by Higher Command. He contemplated this for what seemed like a very long time, until he began to wonder if indeed the afterlife really did just consist of billions of disembodied souls hanging around nowhere at all. This didn’t seem reasonable. And that thought broke the spell.

“There you are, you old codger. What on earth are you doing there?”

“Whoever you are,” he replied icily, “I should have thought that was obvious. I’m waiting.” There was a chuckle in the nothingness.

“Ha! Same old Poojar!” The origins of the nickname may be glossed over for now. “Think of the 49th and look eight o’clock.” A dim figure became visible just out of focus to one side. But Harry was used to seeing Smythe out of focus.

“Snorker, by Jove! What are you doing here? I thought you’d taken over half of Kent with that blonde farmer’s wife with the enormous… you’ve lost weight.”

“The bottom fell out of it. Too much for the old ticker. Anyway, what about you? You didn’t give us much notice. I came to meet you but you weren’t there…Some weedy chap from the Rescue Centre told me where to come. And here we are. You’re looking surprisingly well, Poojar.”

“In trim and up to form. And you look much younger, Snorker.” “Mmm, yes, one of those funny things here. You will too, pretty soon. Can’t say I understand it but then you get used to not understanding anything in Heaven. There it is. Well, we can’t hang about here all day, eh?”

“Why not?” Since they were now apparently in Eternity, it seemed to Harry that there was actually plenty of time for hanging about.

“Things to do, places to go, old boy. And the Witnesses are waiting for you.”

“I’m not getting married am I? I thought this was Heaven?”

Smythe had never been one of Her Majesty’s brightest sparks, and being dead had taken almost as much getting used to as being alive, but he did his level best to explain the Basic Principles as they floated off together. Things like it’s-all-in-the-mind.

“I grant you it’s a bit rum. Remember the 49th when chaps were always saying when were chaps going to do something about the food and other chaps said they’d think about it and nothing ever got done? Well, it’s the opposite here.”

“You mean the food’s good?”

“No, you old codger. Do keep up. I mean you just think about something and it’s done. Simple. So now we just have to think about getting off to meet these bods, and we’ll be there in a couple of jiffies.”

In fact, the journey probably took a good five or six jiffies since the old comrades couldn’t help getting sidetracked by memories of seedy Hong Kong bars. But eventually Harry found himself deposited outside the yellow door of a late-Victorian mid-terrace house held together by wisteria, in a leafy suburban street. Smythe seemed anxious to be off, so he made appropriate noises and simply disappeared. This didn’t worry Harry, since the Army afforded plenty of experience of appropriate noises and people suddenly not being around anymore.

On the other hand, these Witnesses did worry him. He wasn’t an especially intelligent man – he wouldn’t have spent so long in the Army if he had been – but he was quite capable of applying his mind fairly and squarely. True, he hadn’t given a lot of thought to religion. It hadn’t really come his way in the last thirty years or so, except when the chaplain came round to bless the mortars. One might just accept the idea of angels, delivering the occasional special message. But spies? Watching your every move? After all, a chap has to be self-sufficient, cook his own breakfast, and see himself through all sorts of other crises from tank battles in the desert to a touch of syphilis in the Persian Gulf. Security was one thing, but the idea of celestial fifth columns interfering with chaps’ lives without chaps having any notion of it was bad form.

Moreover, it wasn’t just these polemical considerations that disturbed Harry. It was the fact that these Witnesses were so…pathetic.

There were three of them, sitting in apparently terminal boredom on comfy chintz sofas in the front room. They did not have wings.

“We’ve been waiting ages,” Gerry had complained.

“That is to say,” interjected Dora, “we seem to have been waiting ages. The concept of time is of course an abstract construct upon the movement of physical bodies and there aren’t any here, so there aren’t any ages. But we do seem to have been waiting ages.” Harry could tell that Dora was going to be trouble. He had remained respectfully at attention and wondered to himself why they hadn’t come to fetch him if they were in such a hurry.

“Because you’d got yourself lost, you old fool.” Harry had been taken aback, not by Kenneth’s unfriendly answer so much as by the fact that he hadn’t voiced the question.

“You’ll have to get used to that,” Gerry had continued. “You don’t have to say anything because all your thoughts are quite open now. We are in a state-of-mind, after all. Of course, you can move your lips if it makes you feel better -”

“– though you really don’t have any lips,” added Dora, presumably intending to clarify things.

This turn of events didn’t seem altogether fair to Harry. Was it not essentially human to be able to think all kinds of things in private that polite society might frown upon if expressed? Vocal chords were a most sensible arrangement; one could easily get into a lot of trouble without them. He was beginning to regret his situation.

“We hope you won’t come to regret the situation, old boy.”

Kenneth had the laconic, thin and dry nasal tone of one who was entirely satisfied with his own position and had the firm conviction that nobody else should be. It was quite a remarkable sound for one who didn’t actually have a nose. “I mean, you spent a good portion of your allotted span organising for people to be killed or maimed, and after you retired you just pottered about. Did you actually achieve anything in life? And your good lady wife wouldn’t have left you for that grocer if you hadn’t been such a crashing bore -”

“I say, steady on,” protested Harry. “It was a pork butcher, actually. And I did try to -”

“No you didn’t. Can you imagine what a thankless task we’ve had, trying to help you along when you never even gave us a thought? It’s very dispiriting to have one’s existence ignored. Personally, I don’t even know why you’re at Level One. If it were up to me… well, I suppose someone here loves you.” It clearly wasn’t Kenneth.

“I’m sorry, I’m sure, sir,” Harry had said, somewhat chastened, and still assuming the Witnesses to be of higher rank than himself. “I just didn’t know you were there… er, I mean, here…”

“Remember that time in the Falklands,” Dora had insisted, “when you tripped over a cat and went arse over tip into a trench just as that shell exploded where you’d been standing? Who put the cat there, eh? Or when you got bronchitis just before the 37th were posted to Iraq? Barely half of them came back in one piece.”

The colonel’s head had been swimming now. If cats were to be considered instruments of Divine Intervention, the actuarial profession might as well shut up shop. More importantly, what were the rest of the 37th’s Witnesses doing? Something didn’t gel here. He could instantly think of a dozen or more times in his life when a spot of celestial interference would have been very welcome and had been conspicuously lacking. Heaven’s entire campaign strategy seemed seriously flawed…

“Um, forgive me for asking,” the thought struck him not for the first time, “but this is Heaven isn’t it? I mean, there aren’t any teachers’ strikes or famines or Hollywood actresses here, are there?” He tried to chuckle light-heartedly but it came out like a mallard clearing its throat.

“You’d be surprised,” Gerry had said.

The atmosphere had not improved during the rest of the interview, and eventually Dora had announced that it was time for him to visit the WC. This turned out to be the Welfare Centre, where Harry was supposed to rest and adjust, do something called Judgement and then get himself properly Processed. He had allowed himself to be led to what looked like a hospital room and be put to bed by a large and very hairy male nurse who was also clearly not an angel.

But what everyone had overlooked was the fact that Colonel

Harold Arthur St John Markham DSO (ret.) (dec.) was an exceptional man. He didn’t need to rest, and his mind was already adjusting fast. A lot had happened since he’d switched on the evening news, and on gaining new territory one must consolidate the position22. He conceded the Witnesses’ point about being ignored; he had himself once been hopelessly infatuated with a delicate, sloe-eyed Malay beauty called something like Wang Pooh who wouldn’t have anything to do with him. But it was entirely unfair for the rest of the onus for spiritual evolution to have been heaved onto his shoulders. Something Had To Be Done.

Having consolidated, one prepares one’s defences. It wasn’t that

Harry felt in imminent danger of being catapulted back into his bath. But a chap would be totally vulnerable if every other chap could read a chap’s thoughts all the time. He therefore conceived a devastatingly simple yet clever plan. Since one only had to think about something for it to happen, if Smythe was to be believed, he decided to imagine a small notebook, jot down his private ideas and then completely forget the book until such time as he needed to remember the ideas. It was a plan that could only have been devised by someone with vast military or political experience and training in the art of totally forgetting about important things.

He wrote the title ‘Observations’ and subdivided it into (a) Information, Earthly, insufficiency of; (b) Follow-up, Heavenly, inefficiency of; and (c) Attitudes, general, lax. There were a few remarks here such as “reliance on semantics”, “lack of sympathy” and “Witnesses do not sit up straight”. Then under the title of ‘Requirements’ he wrote (1) Communication, (2) Discipline (underlined), and (3) Planning.

One may not have a physical body in the afterlife, but Harry’s eyes were definitely gleaming as he lay back and sank into a peaceful and dreamless sleep.

1 That’s what the Army was for, of course, nothing more. Whatever else it did was a mere ripple on the surface of history. The Army simply bred men. Granted, it also killed men but that was just unfortunate and might as easily have happened under a bus.

2 He did first briefly consider the possibility that all his recent experiences were some ghastly hallucination, but dismissed it since it seemed extremely unlikely that any lysergic acid diethylamide or suchlike could have found its way into his bathwater.