‘I know, I know. The promises you make when young are the easiest to break.’
And outside, flashing by, there was more proof. Wilbur heading deeper into his fifties, then sixties, into another millennium, and still there, still in his office, still collecting awards, appearing on TV, attending functions, climbing into bed alone, drinking cough medicine just to sleep.
On and on and on.
Agnes came into the carriage. She sat down between them, straightened her hat, and spoke primarily to the Wilbur who was dreaming rather than the one who was dead. ‘You will notice that as the journey goes on, the ride becomes faster … The days speed by, flickering like sunlight through foliage …’
The variety of what could be seen became less and less. Just Wilbur at work. Locations changed. But he was always at work. Always on his phone. Always with the same frown. Wilbur’s expression lines deepening in the portrait.
The train slowed.
They got out to see Wilbur at his home desk. There wasn’t anything terrible to witness. But nor was there anything happy or interesting to see either. Just a moderately old man trying to set up a new computer and swearing to himself.
A little later, he went over to his old record player and put onImagination, an album by Gladys Knight and the Pips that Maggie used to love. He walked around, aware suddenly of all the empty space.
‘I remember this,’ said the Ghost. ‘The next day I’m going to tell the board that I want to step down.’
On the train once again, the Dreamer leaned back on the velvet seat and stared bleakly out of the window. ‘I don’t want to end up like this. I don’t want to be miserable. I don’t want all this pain.’
The Ghost sighed. ‘A life without pain is not on the menu, lad. A life of avoiding pain becomes a life defined by pain. Pain and regret. And you have already lived through pain. You lived through Dougie dying … You will survive everything life throws at you. You’ve just got to get out from that bomb-shelter mindset, lad.’
They were passing the 2010s now.
Wilbur was nominally retired but still did some consulting and speaking work. They passed a large function room in Canary Wharf where he was an old man on stage with a banner behind him that read:Gulliver Research – Inspiring Success – Spring Conference.
They passed him having a blood test.
They passed him walking around his future house in Bedfordshire with an estate agent.
They passed him grumpily flicking through Netflix.
‘It doesn’t matter how much knowledge hindsight gives me,’ said the Ghost wearily, ‘because I have no future left to play with. I am a dead man. But you – you are young and you are a dreamer. And the thing with dreamers is they get to wake up.’
It wasn’t that everything they whizzed past in his last two decades was oppressively bleak. He had after all enjoyed country walks. He became friends with the neighbours. He had conversations with the landlord of the Hare in Clophill.
He even, at the age of sixty-eight, acquired a playful, problematic beagle – Ringo – from a nice man called Dylan at Bedford Animal Rescue Centre.
But there was no contact with anyone he had known from his working years. The ones he had been close to, like Charlie, had been pushed aside or died.
He occasionally hired a baffled chauffeur to take him into Bedford in order to sit in an Italian restaurant by himself. Then he discovered a Mexican restaurant and went there too. Again by himself, only this time eating enchiladas. He liked enchiladas and wondered if Maggie had ever tried them.
He sat there, looking at her Facebook page. But she had never posted.
String Theory
The Midnight Train stopped on a street in Bedford.
Wilbur was standing outside a music shop. It had a faded painted sign, decorated with a treble clef and five-line staff, and the name ‘String Theory’ written on it, a different colour for every letter.
Wilbur was staring at a card that had been stuck with Blu Tack onto the window. The sign said:
PIANO LESSONS!
A pain-free way to learn the piano
All ages, all styles
Lessons from my home (Bancroft Avenue, Bedford)
