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One by one, the rest of the gang came and kneeled or squatted beside Phyllis to make their farewells. Reggie Bowler was the first, lifting his hat off when he crouched as though he were in church or at a funeral.
“Ta-ta, then, little ’un. You be a good boy with yer mum and dad, and if yer dad goes off to prison and yer mum chuck’s ’erself out the bedroom window, don’t go sleepin’ in a packing crate, not when it’s winter. That’s the best advice what I can offer. You take care, now.”
Reggie straightened up and went to stand beside the mammoth, who contentedly chewed on her cud of Puck’s Hats. Marjorie took Reggie’s place, kneeling in front of Michael with her eyes swimming like tadpoles in the jam-jars of her spectacles.
“You look after yourself now, won’t you? You look like you’ll turn out to be everybody’s favourite character, in what seems to be everybody’s favourite chapter. I suppose we’ve solved the Riddle of the Choking Child, and so this is the chapter’s ending. Don’t go getting knocked down by a car in two years’ time and spoiling it so that I have to do a re-write. Although when you do die of old age or whatever it wiz, and you come back up here, then don’t forget to look us up. We can all get together for the sequel.”
Marjorie kissed Michael on one burning cheek and went to stand with Reggie. Michael hadn’t got the first idea what any of what she’d just said to him had meant, but felt it was meant kindly all the same. The next in line was Bill. Not much taller than Michael in his current form, the ginger-haired rogue didn’t have to kneel or crouch, but just reached out and shook the dressing gown-clad child by his free hand, the one that Phyllis wasn’t holding.
“Cheery-bye, kid. Say ’ello to Alma for us when you see the mental bint, and I expect that we’ll meet up again in forty year or so, downstairs, when we don’t recognise each other. You’ve got bottle, mate. It’s been good knowing yer.”
Big John came after Bill, so tall he had to grovel to look Michael in the eye, but grinning
in a manner that suggested that he didn’t really mind.
“Goodbye for now, then, nipper. You give your dad, your nan and all your uncles and your aunts my love. And you can tell me one last thing: did your dad Tommy ever talk about his brother Jack at all?”
Though puzzled by the reference, Michael nodded.
“He’s the one what got killed in the war, I think. Dad talks about him all the time.”
John smiled and seemed inordinately pleased.
“That’s good. That’s good to hear. You have a good life, Michael. You deserve one.”
Standing up, John went to stand beside the others, which left only Phyllis crouching there before him with her dangling rabbit feet and faces, with her scabby knees protruding bluntly from beneath her navy skirt’s hem as she squatted.
“Goodbye, Michael. And if we’d ’ave met somewhere else in a different life or in a different time, I should ’ave loved to be yer girlfriend. You’re a smashin’-looking kid. You’ve got the same good looks as John ’as, and that’s sayin’ summat. Now, you go back to yer family, and try not to forget all what you’ve learned up ’ere.”
The infant nodded gravely as Phyllis gently detached her hand from his.
“I’ll try. And you must all look after one another and try not to make so many enemies. I shouldn’t like it if one of them hurt any of you. And Phyllis, you must look after your little brother and not always be all cross with him like Alma is with me.”
Phyllis looked confused for a moment, then she laughed.
“Me little brother? You mean Bill? ’E’s not me brother, bless yer. Now, let’s get you ’ome before that devil turns up or there’s summat else what stops yer gooin’.”
Phyllis placed her hands upon his shoulders and leaned forward, kissing him upon the lips. She drew back for a second, smiling impishly at Michael in the aftermath of their first and last kiss, and then she pushed him over backwards, down the hole, before he even had the time to yelp.
Down at the trilliard hall, the cue ball smashed so hard into the globe that represented Michael that it shattered instantly to powder. Michael’s ball was slammed across the gaping death’s-head pocket, spinning there in empty space above that dark obliterating plunge, and he was dead, dead for ten minutes, cradled by his weeping mother as the vegetable truck rattled through the town towards the hospital, as fast as it could go, dead for ten minutes, hanging there in nothingness then wham! His ball smacks up against the corner-pocket’s inner edge, rebounds across the void to shuttle down the baize with all its after-images behind it, heading for the pocket with the golden cross and he’s alive again and all the white-robed men around the massive table, even the dark-haired one who’d caused all the trouble, all of them throw up their arms in blinding pinion fans and yell “Iiiiyyyesssss!” and the on-looking phantoms and rough sleepers all go wild.
Michael was falling backwards with a silent splash and into the time-jelly, tumbling through the viscous moments with six little figures standing waving on a sort of corner that was inside out and up above him. With dismay, he realised that he’d already forgotten all their names, the grubby little corner-fairies. Was that what you called them? Or were they called lions, or generals, or cabbages? He didn’t know, didn’t know much of anything. He wasn’t even certain what he was, except that he was something which had lots of tartan arms and legs and which left a bright yellow trail that he hoped wasn’t wee behind it through the heavy clock-oil of the breathing world. Down, down he went and in the corner overhead were tiny little creatures, insects or trained mice, waving goodbye to him. Stretched sounds wrapped round him in long humming ribbons, and then something happened that was like a noise or flash or impact and he fell into a bag of meat and bones, a sack of solid substance that was somehow him, and there were fingers in his mouth and wind was whistling down his throat in a long gust that felt like sandpaper and he remembered pain, remembered what a nasty and upsetting thing it was, but nothing else. What was his name? Where was he and who was this woman holding him and why did it all taste of cherry cough-sweets? Then the flat, familiar world rose up about the little boy, and he forgot the marvellous things.
When Michael woke up properly, which was the next day, something felt wrong in his neck and he was told that somebody had taken out his tonsils, which, not having previously known that he possessed such things, he didn’t care that much about. At the week’s end his dad and mum came in a taxi-cab and took him back home to St. Andrew’s Road where everybody made a fuss of him and he was given jelly and ice-cream. He went to bed that night and the next morning he began to grow into a handsome forty-nine-year-old with wife and children of his own who got up every day and beat steel drums flat for a living. One day he was flattening a drum that, curiously, hadn’t got a label. Blinded by a rush of chemicals he knocked himself out cold and came round with his head full of impossible ideas that he recounted to his artist sister, on a slow night at the Golden Lion. Naturally, he hadn’t retained all the details of his afterlife adventures, but Alma assured him that if he’d forgotten anything it wouldn’t be problem.
She’d just make it up.
Book Three
VERNALL’S INQUEST
Now Besso has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only stubbornly persistent illusion.
—Albert Einstein,
Letter to Vero and Bice Besso, March 21, 1955
CLOUDS UNFOLD
