Chapter Three

 

Meetings

 

The thing about dreams is that, however clear they seem to be, they never tell you the whole story. You might be getting information from your unconscious that it’s decided you need to know, but it would be asking a bit much even of the unconscious to know the Whole Truth. In any case, the unconscious itself is not just one control room but a whole collection of separate offices – autonomous nerves, somatogenics, psyche and so on – that do not necessarily talk to each other. Rather like people, in fact. So how are you to know where the message is coming from?

Suppose you dream that the doorbell rings and the postman gives you a large parcel which turns out to be a painting of a beautiful young woman under a waterfall with fish jumping playfully about. But as you look at it, the water turns blood red and the woman morphs into a black lizard that emerges from the canvas towards you holding a knife. You wake up sweating and feeling sick. Obviously this is a warning (the bell). You are going to hear some news (the postman) and uncover a secret (getting the picture). A good situation is not what it seems (morphing), you’re going to come under attack (the knife) and suffer serious injury (the blood).

Then you realise that the alarm clock has just gone off, that last night you attended a Reception where a pretty waitress had served you some sour red wine and dodgy canapés, that you are about to be sick and that you need to run for the toilet.

When Benedict had his dream, he could not have known of course that it had been engineered by a Level One Witness during the warm-up for an international football match. But even without archetype training, he had sort of understood from the dark, clammy fearfulness of the thing that this was a warning. Sure enough, his life had duly collapsed around his ears. So when the bad parts of a dream come true, it’s reasonable to assume33 that the good parts will too. These usually take a bit longer to materialise since the dust has to settle around the collapsed old order first, but eventually he had indeed made his way to the gallery and realised that Alison was his true life partner (though he’d missed the double meaning of the initials).

So why hadn’t the dream warned him what was to happen next?

Was that too much to ask? To have suffered so much, then found peace and happiness, then have it all snatched away, was so… incomprehensibly unfair. You might say that the unconscious, or in this case Anthony, hadn’t known that bit. Or maybe the match had kicked off before Anthony could fit it all in. Or maybe there are some things that we just can’t know, or are not being allowed to know. Or maybe life is sometimes just random.

In his north-west London bedsit, Benedict was in rapid decline and losing the will to live. He’d got the signs, he’d been promised that he wasn’t alone, and now he was alone with not the teeniest sign in sight. This is when the human spirit is tested.

For several days, Benedict spent his time testing other sorts of spirits. So he was hardly in the right state of mind to notice any signs that might be coming his way.

This was incredibly frustrating for Ranjit. Having been of a certain social class himself, not to mention simply downright irresponsible, he understood perfectly well how attractive certain substances can be when one’s life is down the pan. But he was working his little multicoloured socks off trying to reassure his dude that he had a friend, somewhere. It wasn’t working.

For one thing, he had himself been left entirely alone for what seemed like ages, with no instructions and no training. Anthony had sulked quietly in the corner of the room for a while, completely ignoring the young man, and had then just disappeared. He’d seen neither hide nor hair nor shimmering golden aura of Gabriel either. RJ had set about exploring the technology at his disposal, but all the codes had been changed and the systems didn’t connect up the way they had before. He had to spend all his time inventing new hacking techniques, only to find that what worked one moment suddenly failed the next.

It was as if RJ, and more importantly his guidee’s PSI, that had seemed so crucial a while ago, had been completely forgotten about by The Powers That Be. Having been of a certain social class himself, not to mention on his own admission a bit of a prat, Ranjit was used to being ignored. His habitual response had always been to give up and drop out. But now, rather to his own surprise, he felt a strange and powerful determination to do something about all this. It was the rage and the sense of injustice. And, seeing the state that Benedict was in, it was compassion. This was new.

 

There are a lot of misconceptions about the afterlife. For one thing, there’s practically no lying about on chaises longues contemplating pastoral scenes, and nor do the ears ring perpetually with inspirational symphonies. Of course, in one sense Heaven is by definition inspiring, but even a liquorice allsort loses its appeal after half an hour of chewing. Being newly dead is not unlike being newly born, wonderfully gratifying at first and all the sleep you want with nothing that has to be done until tomorrow. A baby has all the joy of new discoveries like pulling men’s beards and sucking the cat and smashing the occasional ornament. After the best part of a year sitting hunched up in a wet balloon, suddenly there’s colour and sound and movement. But soon you find that beards rarely come off and most cats taste the same. So it is with Heaven. Yes, there are some interesting discoveries about the mind and for a while you feel gratified and quite holy, but it soon wears off.

Then there are the people. Those contemplating death as a means of escaping from the insufferably boring fools they’ve been lumbered with on Earth, need to be warned of a flaw in their logic. When all the energy wobbles have settled down, you find yourself in pretty much the same surroundings you thought you’d left behind, and with much the same bunch of fools.44

Best not to worry. Best to assume that the people you’re drawn together with, including the insufferable ones, are there for a reason. This helps one to feel more relaxed anyway.

For example, it’s quite natural to worry about being recognised in a lap-dancing club by someone you know. But anyone who might recognise you would be there for the same reason as you, wouldn’t they? In fact, one Thursday lunchtime at Annabelle’s, Harry had indeed recognised someone who, shall we say, probably ought not to have been there. But a nod and a wink to each other were sufficient. Although their paths didn’t normally cross very often, Harry not being a Catholic, the two men had held each other in greater esteem after that day, as if they had a bond. Such peeks up one another’s sociocultural skirts can be quite enlightening and reassuring. One does not feel so alone in the world. Similarly, Heaven can be quite tolerable once you stop caring what other people think of you. If they think of you at all, then they’re like you.

Suppose that an ordinary, decent person such as you were to visit a naturist beach on a hot and sunny afternoon. On the one hand you have the inexpressible sense of freedom in being at one with the sun and the flies, while on the other hand there’s the lurking dread of your private parts being seen by someone you know who hasn’t seen them before. But when you do in fact, while hovering in the shallow water, meet your old headmaster or the stunning blonde widow from down the road, then fear evaporates and you welcome one another with the instinctive warmth of common souls doing the most natural thing in the world.55

Then, if you’re not a naturist you may not enjoy the afterlife quite so much. As Harry had already discovered to his distaste, one’s thoughts do tend to hang out for all to see.

Astonishingly, it was Prudence who actually had some experience of all this and so was adjusting to her new surroundings more easily. Her new friend was still upset, having found and then lost the love of her life within the space of an hour, so Pru was prattling on and taking the lead as they took their bearings.

Beyond the NRC barrier they had initially found themselves, like Harry, in something of a wilderness. But being a civil servant, with ample experience in making the facts fit one’s own preconceptions, Pru gradually brought some familiar surroundings into focus. (Harry had not been able to do this because his whole experience of life had been to follow faithfully other people’s preconceptions.)

The two women wandered arm in arm along Cheyne Walk and up to the Kings Road at World’s End. To the right were boutiques and restaurants which seemed somewhat superfluous just now, so they headed left.

“Yes, well naturally I hadn’t intended to go there,” Prudence went on. “My boss invited me to go one Sunday afternoon, his country club he said, somewhere near Rickmansworth. I suppose I had a bit of a crush on him at the time. I was still young. And he had this fantastic XJ6 with leather seats.

“I assumed it would be frightfully upper crust with tea and salad sandwiches on the lawn. Maybe a junior minister or two. But I guessed something was wrong when we pulled up outside these big green gates and he had to ring three times in code to be let in. Oh look, there’s a café – shall we?”

Gandalf’s was a bit of a throwback to another, more innocent age. There were low tables, colourful cushions on the floor, a poster of Che Guevara on one wall and a few imitation potted palms. A selection of plastic Buddhas lined the window sill and the door was propped open with a crystal ball. The Kinks’ Waterloo Sunset drifted scratchily out from the shadows. They settled themselves in a corner and ordered herbal teas.

“Well, there was nothing I could do about it, was there?” Prudence continued. “I didn’t know where I was. And I didn’t know where to put myself. There were all these people prancing about without a stitch on, waving their towels and playing with their balls-”

“Your tea, ladies,” said Adrian, setting down a tray.

“– and bats. Thank you. Young people, old people, all shapes and sizes, with great big -”

“Would you like some carrot cake?”

“– picnic baskets. No thanks. And then Clive, my boss, disappeared into the clubhouse and came wobbling out a few minutes later all pink and silly and showing me this great long -”

“Ice cream, perhaps?”

“– list of committee members I was supposed to meet. No thanks. And before I knew it, I was on the cleaning rota every third Sunday and had promised to straighten out his -”

“Chelsea bun?”

“– accounts. No thanks. Of course I never went back, just kept making excuses to Clive. I think I buried three grandmothers and a couple of uncles that year.”

Alison laughed out loud for the first time since their arrival, tossed back her long hair and relaxed into her cushions. Pru was also feeling better than she could ever remember. It was dawning on her that not being a civil servant was a profound relief. She didn’t have to hold her tongue and think of the future any more. New, warmer feelings assumed long buried within her were beginning to stretch their limbs, cough, and look forward to breakfast.

“What about a cheese and cumber sandwich, with French mustard?” she asked. Adrian smiled and bowed slightly. He was a lanky young man, in tight black trousers and a yellow tee-shirt with Ade printed on the front in gothic lettering. At his feet padded a large lump of dog with long and untidy grey hair, its parentage clearly owing something to a greyhound that couldn’t run fast enough.

“I’m Adrian, by the way,” he offered a limp hand to each of the women in turn, “Ade to my friends. Though I don’t actually see many… well, we’re a bit off the beaten track here. Or maybe it’s my Kinks.” He seemed to need to study his fingernails for a moment. “Um, you’re new aren’t you? You seem fresh, pardon my French.”

“Do shut up, Adrian, you old poof, and get the ladies their food,” boomed the military voice from a dark corner. Prudence and Alison started, having thought they were alone in the café.

“Oh, that’s the major,” explained Adrian with a flick of his head towards the voice. “Don’t mind him. He’s new, too. Having a bit of a moody are we, Harry? Come and join the ladies. I’ll get you another g `n t shall I, on the house?”

“It’s Colonel Markham to you, Adrian, if you don’t mind.” The immaculately uniformed figure loomed up into the light and considered the assembled company in some detail before advancing and heaving himself with a dull thud into a chair that hadn’t been there a moment before. “And if there’s one damn thing more boring than your damn silly joke about g `n t being on the house when you know damn well that every damn thing is always on the damn house,” he grumbled, “it’s the fact that none of the damn gins have the slightest damn effect. And stand up straight, man.”

“Now, now, Colonel,” Adrian rebuked him, “that’s twenty pee in the swear box. No blasphemy here, thank you.”

“And who’s going to do a damn thing about it, eh?” Harry was indeed out of sorts. Since discharging himself from the WC he hadn’t met a soul he could have a decent conversation with. None of his old comrades, including Snorker, were anywhere to be seen and he had no idea whatever how he’d come to be in London. He hated the place. Least of all could he imagine why he found himself coming back every day to this godforsaken excuse for a bar being served watery gin by this excuse for…

“It must be because you love us, Colonel,” suggested Adrian.

“We’re your new regiment, eh dear?”

Harry glanced at the present company. They didn’t seem like terribly promising recruits. But he was wrong there. He turned to Prudence, a mature woman still with a fine figure, who did at least sit up straight.

“I do apologise for my little outburst, my dear,” he began politely.

“I have been feeling rather… well, this,” he waved a sharply creased arm around to indicate their surroundings, “is not exactly my cup of tea. But our young corkscrew here may be right after all. There must be some point to it, or we might as well shoot ourselves. Why don’t you go on with your story?”

Prudence looked the man in the eyes. Her newly developing senses – or were they her old ones that hadn’t been used in a long time? – felt that there was a fine mind, and maybe even a kind heart, beyond this gruff exterior.

“There’s not a lot to tell,” she shrugged. “I had a swim for a while. Nobody seemed to take much notice of me. Well, there isn’t much to notice, to be frank. Clive went off to play with his -”

“I’ll get that sandwich, shall I?”

“– friends. Yes please. Then I asked this wet chap who was walking past where the showers were and he pointed to the door he’d just come out of, so I said no, I mean the ladies’, and he just grinned and pointed again to the same door. You know…” Her voice trailed off as her mind returned to that distant place of potentially life-changing moment and missed opportunity. “…it’s a very strange experience, a mixed shower. There you are soaping yourself and you can’t help peeking at other people’s -”

“More tea?”

“– shampoo. Yes please. And you realise that everyone is really just the same underneath.”

 

The New Relative General Plan (‘Beyond the Millennium’) had been kicked around in committee for aeons but there was still no agreement on the minutiae of its implementation. Come to that, even the minutes of the last Planning Committee meeting wouldn’t have been agreed by now either if SS3 hadn’t made an executive decision and told Tfozb to shut up.

You might think that the Elementary Level of the highly evolved is a haven of serenity and harmony where all are At One and in perfect accord. This is at least true in theory, and as long as there’s nothing much to do. But as anyone who has ever served on the lowliest school fete tombola sub-committee will know, formlessness is not a quality that lends itself to decision-making. Having to thrash ideas about among those who consist of little more than idea themselves, is not an easy business. Thus, by virtue of being a disruptive element, Tfozb was perhaps actually the most useful member of Planning, and SS3 ignored the fact at his peril. With his vast experience of death, he should have realised that it is in the very nature of committees to make collective decisions which its individual members know perfectly well are downright silly, if not actually fatal. The lone dissenting voice is therefore often the most sane. Democracy is all very well as a sideshow for the masses but if there’s something important to be decided then you can’t beat straightforward totalitarianism with a side order of private deals behind the scenes.

The Third Spiritual Secretary may have seemed like just the frontman. But he couldn’t let this lot mess things up. After all, this was the most important decision to be made in Heaven for two millennia. Second Comings only come once.

“I still say,” insisted Tfozb for the umptieth time, “it has to be 2016 or 2017 at the latest.” There was a collective murmur of exasperation around the enormous table.

“Not again. Is s/he still at it?”

“What’s wrong with 2020? It’s a nice round number and a multiple of seven.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Isn’t it? Well anyway, 2016 would ruin the Olympics.” “And the European Championships.”

“It’s supposed to be 1996 anyway. We did promise on that.” “Excuse me, you weren’t even on the Committee in Daniel’s day.” “No, but I’ve read the minutes. You specifically told him that

Jerusalem would be relieved 1,260 years after Omar. ‘Three and a half times’, you said, and in Hebrew that’s 1,260 which meant 1917. We did just that, on the dot. Then you told him – and John – 1,339 years to the Second Coming and that’s 1996. I rest my case.”

“Well, we’ve missed that.” “Oh, have we? When did -”

“The whole business of prophecy has gone to pot nowadays. Anyway, the calendar’s all wrong now. You can’t be expected to take these things literally.”

“Why not?”

“So do you want an army of fire-breathing dragons from Magog to get wiped out on the Golan Heights by a fleet of white vessels from space?”

“If necessary.”

“Well, tough. Too late. George got the last one, if you remember.” “Order, everyone, please,” interjected SS3 tetchily. “Order. Come on, we’re running out of time.” There was a collective raising of eyebrow. “Surely that’s the least of our problems?” Sxzbu pointed out. “We can always bend a few years here and there, fiddle the odd incarnation. It’s been done before.”

“And s/he doesn’t even have to be born, as such.” “Or conceived.”

“No need for smut.”

“Whatever.” SS3 had always hoped for this job, but there were times when it didn’t seem quite so enjoyable. “Look, there’s all the preparation to get started on first anyway. We’ve got to sort out some earthquakes and droughts, brief a few prophets, organise the odd comet, all that. And it won’t be easy with the computers playing up…oh, I mean…”

He shouldn’t have mentioned that. There was a hubbub of disbelief and anxiety among the Elementals, and something akin to panic gathered pace as the meeting broke up sending a ripple throughout the system that wiped fifty billion dollars off Wall Street and took three Australian wickets in one over.

 

A disconsolate Ranjit sat hunched and motionless in the orange floral comfy chair vacated by Anthony. This had been his first proper job and now there was nothing to be done. But then, somewhere very deep within the dusty, disused back guest rooms of his mind, a small and pink Very Good Thought was born, seemingly from thin air if not actually a vacuum. It blinked, smiled at itself, stretched and discovered that it had legs. It began to move and explore its surroundings, searching for a way out. With a tiny cry of joy it slipped underneath several locked doors and began to run. Up the stairs, along twisty corridors, in through one door of a shadowy living room where the bulb had long since blown and out of another, the Very Good Thought accelerated and grew, faster and fatter and rosier by the moment. At last it emerged into the early light of semi- consciousness, skipping over synapses and slithering down neural pathways with unstoppable momentum until finally it burst out in all its freshness, vitality and beauty into what passed for RJ’s brain.

“Yo’ dude!” exclaimed its owner, slapping a fist to his forehead with such force that the Very Good Thought was nearly knocked out. “I is such an eeejit!”

With all his attention on Benedict’s and his own sorry state, Ranjit had completely ignored Alison. He’d only got a C in maths, but he could at least recognise an equation when it stood panting and slightly stunned in front of him. RJ dead plus Alison dead equals RJ might be able to find Alison and put her back in touch with Benny-boy.

He leapt forward to the desk. With long braided hair swinging and fingers flashing across a keyboard, he might easily have been taken for a rock star.

 

Evie Gardner looked down over Watling Avenue from the first floor window above the florist’s and wondered how on Earth it had come to this. She swirled the dry sherry slowly anticlockwise in the chipped glass, knocked it back in one, and took a long deep drag on the Raffles Light.

No, it wasn’t any clearer. It was Saturday evening and the market had packed away, the street littered with paper wrappers, squashed plums and drunk traders hanging outside the pub. It was noisy and smelly and as far removed from the village life she had left so recently as anywhere could be. But whose was that life? She didn’t even know anymore who she was. From quiet, boring, inoffensive housekeeper married to fat Stan in the backwoods of Hampshire, to dark angel of death haunting the streets of London. People were dropping like flies all around her lately. Well, three people. Of course it might just be a messy coincidence. Never the most sensitive or thoughtful of souls, Evie would have dismissed it all as such a few weeks ago. But now something insistent and terrible was nagging away at an inner mind she hadn’t even known she had. Life had changed forever. Evie had changed forever. She was in the grip of something much bigger than herself.

“Guts,” she had muttered for the tenth time. “Guts. In the street.

Right in front of me. And a corpse on the bench.” “Yes, dear.”

“I mean, why me? I didn’t do nothing.”

“No, dear.” Gladys was neither the most intellectually acute nor the most supportive of sisters, but she was a good listener.

“And now I jus’ don’t know where I am, Glad.”

“No, dear.” A full five minutes had passed in silence, save for the creaking of the carriage clock and faint hum of traffic heading for Victoria.

“I can’t go back.” “No, dear?”

“Home, I mean. I can’t go back, I don’t belong there no more. Dunno where I belong any more. I dunno where to stay.”

“No, dear?”

“I don’t suppose -”

“No, dear.” They had each taken a sip, set down their glasses, and another five minutes passed. A thought finally worked its way through to Gladys’ mouth.

“There’s Betty’s.” “What?” “Betty’s.” “Who’s?”

“`Er off of Sainsbury’s deli counter, remember? I went to bingo

with `er of a Thursday.”

“I’ve never `eard of Betty.”

“No, dear? Well, she `ad a big win on the premium, took `erself off on a cruise, silly mare. `Er flat’s empty. In Burnt Oak. You could stay there, dear.”

“Oh. So how long’s the cruise?”

“What? Oh, that were six months ago.” “But you said -”

“She only went an’ got that bug, didn’t she, soft cow. Leg In The

Air, something in `er plumbing.” “Legionnaire’s?”

“That’s it. Isolation ward up Barnet General now. You could stay there, dear. Betty’s not coming back. I got `er keys, dear.”

It had been a week now, and Mrs Gardner was as lost as a budgie on Salisbury Plain. From rustic general store and mobile library in the true- blue shires, to pound shops and Afro-Caribbean vegetables she’d never heard of and at least five different colours of people. There had to be a reason behind all this, otherwise she would simply go loopy.

Sure enough, the very next morning when she ventured out down to the street for some milk, a stained and crumpled page from an old local newspaper blew along the pavement and wrapped itself unremittingly around her left leg. This is how angels sometimes communicate with one. When she had at last freed herself, Evie found herself reading a one-eighth block advertisement for the Spiritualist Church on Orange Hill Road.

Well, where else did she have to go?

 

Disabilities are sometimes obvious, like a missing leg or two. Things like an IQ of 50 or an allergy to frogs may be less visible. But one of the worst handicaps for a woman is to be born beautiful. The trouble is, you get so much attention from other people that you grow up believing yourself to be somehow special. This is a dangerous fallacy for anyone, along with believing that having your photograph taken wearing expensive clothes (or not wearing them) is somehow a worthwhile human activity. And worse than this, when you reach a certain age, men start acting like total numbskulls on the off chance that they might be able to touch your body and falling over each other to do every little thing for you from opening doors to buying you cars, so that never in your life do you learn to do anything for yourself.

Alison had not been born disabled. She was trim and intelligent, but her best qualities were a pleasant voice and an unremarkable, plain face. True, the eyes were clear and grey and deep, but few people ever got close enough to see them. As a result, she had grown up self-reliant and resourceful and with a good set of values. Young men had sniffed about of course – she had after all been female and breathing – but they hadn’t stayed long, partly because she wasn’t beautiful and partly because she was intelligent and had good values. She had wanted love, but had been prepared to wait.

She was the perfect office receptionist, calm and efficient, and completely unnoticed by the hundreds of people who passed by her desk each day, even by those who actually spoke to her and received directions. But she had noticed Benedict on her first day in the job, and the little jump of her heart had told her all she needed to know. It was just going to take patience and, not being beautiful, she had plenty of that.

“It’s not fair!” she sobbed into her hankie. Meeting Prudence had helped her through the initial shock and then their attention had been focussed on finding their way. But now it was all catching up with her. “Three years! It took three years until he noticed me. And then another three months for him to realise that we belonged together. And then it lasted barely three-quarters of an hour…”

“Rough,” agreed the dog. It raised itself slowly on uncommonly long legs, stretched, shook its main of wispy grey hair and loped over to their table to check for discarded pieces of cake. Adrian gave it a loving scratch under the chin.

“I miss him so much,” Alison went on quietly. “Silly, isn’t it? We hardly knew… But what’s worse, I can’t help thinking that he must be in a terrible state right now. The poor boy’s suffered so much.”

“Rough,” said the dog. It was almost as if it understood every word. One huge, scraggy ear flopped over an eye as it cocked its head to the side and put on its best pleading expression as Pru raised her sandwich to her mouth.

“There there, good boy,” sniffed Alison.

“She’s a girl actually,” said Adrian. “Strayed in off Kings Road one day and decided to stay. It’s the carrot cake. I call her Bonzai.”

“Eh?” Alison looked puzzled. “But she’s so big.”

“It’s ironic, apparently,” said the dog. Alison nearly fell off her chair and Pru froze rigid, sandwich in mid-air. Bonzai followed up with possibly the biggest understatement since Noah turned up his collar and said it looked a bit like rain. “Oh, suppose you didn’t expect me able to speak, did you? I don’t know why you surprised. We dogs spend most time with people so we bound to pick things up. Apart from stupid rubber bones, I mean.” Pru was the first to recover.

“Yes, well I’m just really glad I’m vegetarian, that’s all. So are there all sorts of animals in Heaven, then?”

“Whatever you like.”

“And do they all speak English?” “Naturally.”

“Hmm, well no offence, Bonzai, but it does feel a bit odd talking to you.” Prudence needn’t have worried. Most people while alive spend a good deal of their time wittering away to their dogs, chrysanthemums and goldfish without any hope of reply, and yet are regarded as perfectly sane by society. Moreover, the British always witter in English wherever they are, on the assumption that were it not for the unfortunate circumstances of being born a chrysanthemum or French, everything and everyone would naturally be British. So when these impediments are removed by death, everyone will be found to speak English anyway. This actually turns out to be true.

There’s a lot of irrational things to get used to, as Harry had already been struggling with. Take those Witnesses. There you are dead, and with hardly a by-your-leave they’re giving you a hard time about being ignored and why hadn’t you done this or that and did you imagine your immortal soul was safe just because you gave a tenner to Shelter at Christmas and by the way your tennis was rubbish too. So you think ‘Hang on, I didn’t ask to come here, you know’ and they say ‘Oh yes, you did and it serves you right’. Well, you can do without friends like that, can’t you?66

On the other hand, things can be really confusing at first if you don’t know how things work. Adrian had been too polite to tell Prudence and Alison that drinking tea and eating cheese sandwiches was utterly pointless, since they’d both left their digestive systems far behind on the Embankment. (In any case, he had a business to run which, things being as they are, wasn’t doing very well.) Other things are even more troublesome, like travel being so easy, for example – no need for buses, no need for the eight-fifty from Croydon (and thankfully no need for Croydon). You just have to think about going somewhere and that’s it. This can be a tricky thing to master. Suppose the kids say ‘When can we go to the zoo?’ and you say ‘I’m thinking about it’, then you’d already be gone and they’d be left behind.

So when Harry completely disappeared in mid-sentence from Gandalf’s, the odd eyebrow was raised. Moments later he reappeared in exactly the same place, except that he was now upside-down on the chair and pretty furious. Eyes screwed up in concentration, knees vibrating slightly with the effort, he tried again but didn’t move.

“That’s odd,” he muttered. “It doesn’t seem to work anymore. Something must be broken.”

“Where did you want to go to, dear?” asked Adrian helpfully. Harry winced and looked at the young man as if he’d just crawled out of Bonzai’s ear.

“If it’s any of your business,” he retorted pompously, “I just wished with all my heart to be with people like me.”

“Well, lovey,” said Adrian gently, “you’d better sit down and take the weight off your prejudices. It must be us.” The colonel sheepishly did as he was told and Prudence turned to him excitedly.

“I say, sir, that disappearing was a wizard trick,” she enthused.

“How did you do it? Is it magic or something?”

“Oh no, my dear,” he tried to sound modest, but couldn’t help the glint in his eye. This woman was not a bad sort, fairly bright, in trim and up to form. And the first person to address him as ‘sir’ for a very long time. “All in the mind, you know. Frightfully complicated. I shouldn’t worry your pretty head about it. Didn’t understand it myself at first, but Freud explained it all quite well.”

“You’ve read Freud too?” Her voice betrayed a small but definite admiration for the man. All right, he had just attempted to be extremely unsociable but as a civil servant she’d had ample experience of that.

“Oh no, my dear. He dropped in here for a schnapps one day recently on his way to the library. Looking for something on Jung, I believe.”

“But surely,” Pru was quick, “if anyone can drop in anywhere just by thinking about it, why didn’t Freud just go and visit Jung?”

“They’re not speaking.”

The little group lapsed into thoughtful silence, being careful not to think about going anywhere else right now, each one in their own way vexed with the question of why they were all together here. Outside, there was a soft afternoon light and a gentle breeze. And then, giving them a cheery wave at the window was John Clarke.

“Oh bugger me!” hissed Adrian, not very spiritually, flattening Bonzai as he vaulted to his feet and in one movement clearing both the table and his customers into a back room with an astonishingly masterful gesture.

“What the -”

“But it’s only Mr Clarke. He’s a nice -”

“And you didn’t see who was just behind him, did you?” explained Adrian. He pointed through a crack in the door. Several heavily built figures in trench coats and homburgs were sloping along the deserted pavement yards from a puzzled looking John Clarke, who was wondering where everyone had gone and was oblivious of others arriving.

“SGB patrol,” whispered Adrian. “Best avoided if you know what’s good for you. I’ve got a seventh sense for police.”

As he spoke, the street outside was suddenly flooded by a searchlight and a voice crackled through a megaphone. This was all pointless, of course, but old habits die hard in Heaven.

“Stand right there, sonny, and don’t move. You’re nicked.” The patrol jumped on the man, pinning him against the café door. “It’s `im all right,” said one with a silver star on his lapel, studying a photograph, “`im as caused all the fuss at the NRC. Right, you scum. You’ve asked for it.” Two men held Clarke up while another landed blow upon blow into his stomach and out the other side. “Think you can get away without records, eh? Well, what do you think about that?” A fat knee came up very sharply into the man’s groin, and he sank to the pavement.

“I’m not really sure…” he moaned, before closing his eyes. The patrol left, laughing and high-fiving, and in a few moments the street was at peace again.

“Blimey!” said Alison. “You don’t expect to see that sort of thing here.”

“The SGB are a law unto themselves, dear. Believe me. I’ve had my share of harassment. They call it Spiritual Security.” “But the poor chap is completely harmless.” “Since when did that stop the police?”

The group slowly opened the back room door and ventured into the café, checking the street for surprise manoeuvres, before gathering around the prone man outside.

“Any 51gn5 of l1f3?” asked Alison, concerned. “Wh4t d1d y0u 54y?”

“I just wondered if he was -”

“Dead? Well, of course he’s dead. But he’s all right,” said Adrian. “Help me bring him inside. I’ll make some fresh tea.”

“Well, that settles it,” announced Adrian, once they had all regained their composure and John Clarke had regained consciousness and his quiet smile of gratitude. “You lot need to disappear, and soon.”

“Eh?” “What?” “?”

“Didn’t the hoods say that John had no records?”

“That’s right,” said Pru, “he was at the NRC with us. They couldn’t process him, whatever that means.”

“And Harry, didn’t you tell me the other day…”

“I discharged myself, yes. No processing.” “Nor me.”

“Me too.”

“So you know what this means, then? You’re all fugitives. That must be why John turned up here, following you. So the SGB will be after you too before long.” There was a deathly silence while they each took it in.

“Good grief!”

“Lummy!” “Rough!”

 

3 Actually, reason has nothing whatever to do with dreams. But that’s a different book.

4 This doesn’t apply to the serious, dedicated career spirit, naturally. But they know what to expect anyway.

5 The embrace is, for the moment, best left metaphorical. One doesn’t want to overdo things.

6 So it’s probably a good idea while alive to make friends with a few elderly and infirm people, so that when your turn comes there’s a fair chance there’ll be someone around that you’re on speaking terms with who can show you the ropes and offer a bit of sympathy.