Then came another voice.
‘Oh dear, Old Bean. Falling at the first hurdle …’
She was right there, beside him, as unseen by the living as the train.
‘Agnes.’
‘You promised to head to the train the moment you heard it …’ Agnes was exasperated. ‘Don’t dilly-dally. Hop on board.’
Wilbur took one last look at Dougie and said a goodbye before walking back through the bricks and climbing the metal steps of the front carriage. As he did so, he noticed there were no visible rail tracks. Not like what he had seen back at the ghostly station. And yet, as the train started to chug away from that day, it did so smooth and straight and with a tightness that suggested the tracks were there.
‘I saw me.’
‘That’s what it’s all about.’
‘No. I mean, the baby version of me could see …’ He made a flapping gesture to himself.
Agnes nodded nonchalantly. ‘Well, that’s quite possible. Babies are the biggest of all the mysteries in the universe, and no one understands them.’
‘So, when I see my older self, will they see me too?’
She looked stern for a moment. ‘No. And in the unlikely event that they could, you don’t try and get their attention. You don’t meddle, Wilbur. You accept. That’s the way to eternity. The only way. There are rules. You get on and off the train as required. You never try and speak to yourself. And you mustneverbe there when you fall asleep. One, two, three. Do you understand?’
He didn’t. Nor did he understand why her tone was so forbidding. ‘Look, I am grateful you chose to be my guide. But I don’t know why it has to be like this. I am already dead. Why the need to be so strict? You were kind to me in the bookshop, when I was little. You talked to me about stories I should read …’
She looked at Wilbur like he was missing the point. ‘It would be unkind of menotto be a little strict, Wilbur. Now, you brought up stories. What is a story if not the product of following the rules? Even my favourite author, the great Mr Raymond Chandler – known more for his style than his plots – well, he said that hisstyle was “the product of discipline, of a carefully trained sensibility”. Actually, that might have been my mother. But as with stories, so with life. And even – no,especially– death. Without discipline you will never understand your own story, without discipline you will not stay the course, without discipline you will not make it to the eternal destination at the end of the line. Following the rules is a bore. But it is also the only way.’
‘But a writer changes things. A writeredits.’
Agnes was confused by this and pouted a little to contemplate it. ‘I must admit you have a point. A very small one, but a point nevertheless. But the fact of it is that I am trying to look after you here.’
It sounded strange, to have someone looking after him. After all, he was dead. Yet he had to admit he quite liked it. He liked Agnes’s antiquated and rather unyielding manner. His last few decades of life had been quite structureless, and lonely. He had floated to earth like a sycamore seed. And he imagined that to navigate something as wild as death needed someone who knew the rules. Especially as train travel was involved. And yet, a question remained.
‘But what if there are things that I did wrong?’
Agnes’s face abruptly softened. A smile emerged, accompanied by a tender laugh. ‘That, Old Bean, means you have lived.’
It Goes By So Fast
Outside the window, debris from his childhood sped by:
A glimpse of his wrought-iron school gates.
Himself on a bed reading a library book –The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood.
The haberdasher where he spent hours as a young boy as his mother chose fabrics for clothes or curtains.
Walking out of Bagdale’s Bookshop empty-handed and heading back to the library.
He stood up and moved through the train as it rolled along its invisible track. Eventually he sat down on the long parallel seats covered with green velvet.
Staring out, he saw Mr Parkin’s umbrella resting in the kitchen.
He kept on seeing his mother, getting cross with Dougie, or staring at young Wilbur like he was a problem she could do without.
Then, something happier.
A house with unseen walls. The house wasn’t any he had lived in. But he was there, a young, slight-shouldered boy, standing amid a crowded living room of children and adults, watching television for the first time.
