Ten Journeys Read online

  The next morning all was still, it was eerie and menacing. A bloated grey covered the sky like a cool smear and I saw the leaves and palms and branches scattered around, the wreckage of the beach. I saw fish, hurled up by the sea and thrown onto their bellies, surrounded by dry sand.

  I walked down the steps to where Eeyore had been covered by a tarpaulin to find the tarpaulin in tatters; part of it wrapped around the tree, clinging to it limply, another part flapping like a trapped bird between iron railings. Eeyore was exposed like tender flesh, and stones and rocks had been sent by the claws of the wind and had covered its hull in bruises. The delicate hull that had floated over the morning ocean.

  Its paint had been scratched off in long scars, it was scattered with holes and part of the palm tree had dislodged and smashed along its spine, tearing my beautiful boat in half. It lay dead on the sea wall, its blue and brown body scattered amongst the trees, the stones and the sand, in thousands of broken pieces.

  I picked up a small piece of the hull from the collapsed wreckage and tucked it into my pocket. I still have it now and it reminds me of when we used to tug it down to the shore to let it bob on the waves. It seems impossible to accept Eeyore won’t ever float again. Today that small piece of wood has dried; it’s lonely and pale and makes me want to cry.

  Olivia and I swam in the sea together. The heat was starting to thin a little, the sea was starting to cool, and we danced in the carnival of waves.

  She forgot it all and laughed and skipped and twisted in the water, her lithe, golden body diving and rising and her thin arms around my neck, trying to push me underwater. We laughed and fought and I dragged her down with me and then let her go, and she held me under. I shot up to the sky, at least it felt that way, and we laughed and swam until we couldn’t anymore.

  She dragged me onto the sand and kissed me, deeper, for longer and the taste hung on my lips. Even now the sharp taste of seawater reminds me of Olivia’s kisses; she showered me with them.

  We sat in a warm rock pool in our costumes, our tummies rising, falling and dripping, as it was quiet around us. Her pale flesh had warmed with the sun, and her hair had lightened into a near-white glow.

  I could feel ghosts surround us as the air drew in. We sensed a movement in the air, the sound of a shroud being pulled over August as its bright freedom was clothed. We both felt the melancholy; the urgency of our time together and we agreed that we would never forget these trysts. Sitting in the rock pool with the setting sun on one cheek she told me about her mother, and that the shame of the other night had been partly due to her wondering what she would have thought of her. She told me she spoke to her some nights, she felt her around her, that she was always close. She told me her father didn’t understand, that he wouldn’t talk of her, and her brother and sister were too young, that it had been left with her. But every night she said she sat in the dark and waited for her to come back, every morning she hoped it had all been one long, drawn out nightmare that the morning would clean away.

  There was an impenetrable sadness in her pretty face that I couldn’t heal. But I held her, and promised myself I would never give in and do more, that although she wouldn’t recover I would help her, talk to her and never expect anything in return. She said I was the only one she trusted, and the only one she ever had.

  I knew this bliss couldn’t last. Already the deckchairs that used to pepper the shore in stripes of blue and white were thinning, and every day the beach emptied earlier.

  One evening I smelt one sad barbecue and went out to see it. A silver foil tray had been left on the wall with the charred remains of meat, and sitting on her own was an oriental girl in pale jeans. I watched her for a while and she looked around herself, at the sea. I imagined it reflecting in her eyes. I wondered what secrets she had. Then she got up and walked away, and I never saw her again.

  Less pale girls came past as the last day approached. I walked sombrely along the beach and told myself to be prepared for whatever happened this year; that the sea, which had felt like a brother, wouldn’t be there for me, that Olivia wouldn’t be with me and that it was back to the corridors, the routines, the faceless humiliation. I tried not to be bitter. Nothing that happy could have lasted any longer. I kissed Olivia goodbye, and we promised to write. She said she didn’t want to think of it without me and I felt pulled apart by the cruel dignity of the world, the way it makes us cower and hide and deal with it all. I kissed her and tried to drink in enough of her smell to last me, and I hoped one day that smell would be mine.

  Bella looked sad, and she kissed me, trembling on my cheek and said, “Dear boy, I wish you never had to go. You are golden and revived. I shall miss you.” She was frail.

  I was going away, and leaving behind me The Willows, the beach, Olivia and summer. I gathered my possessions and stood on the wall, and shut my eyes, for those nights when I would try and bring myself back. I left before Olivia. I waved to them from the window of the taxi and I had never felt so tired. She was so beautiful and lost, in that silver web, and everything told me to run back and stay with her. I tried not to think of her on her own, walking along the beach and remembering it all, as the sea beat down on the shore.

  Twelve weeks later I was in a lesson at school when the secretary came into the classroom and told me that my mother needed to speak to me urgently. I took the phone in her office and my mother told me in a flat voice that Bella had died in her sleep, alone.

  The funeral took place on a bright, cold day in November. I had since seen Olivia for weekends and she had been so bright and alive. But when I saw her at the funeral her face was ravaged, even though she had only known Bella for two months like me. I wondered if I’d ever recover; I wasn’t used to loss, though I suppose no-one ever is.

  Perhaps it was because, like me, Olivia knew that summer would never be recovered; there would always be an empty place at the table. She knew that The Willows wouldn’t be the same without her, her air and her madness and that it was all lost.

  We spoke about her occasionally, but our relationship moved on, and strengthened, but sometimes we looked at each other and the happiness of that summer and the sadness of it all came back into her eyes. We were careful how we talked of it, so that we didn’t tear open a wound that had started to heal. My tears were a comfort; they were not like the vaulting emptiness I had felt while I held the phone and listened to my mother’s voice through a wire far away.

  We were allowed to go back to The Willows one last time, and we wandered in the garden, and sat in the shade, and heard the sea. The windows were still full of blue, loaded with memories. I imagined she was behind me. The house had her clothes, her comfort, even her scent. It hadn’t faded even a little, and I wanted to absorb enough of it so that summers from then wouldn’t be painful to me or to either of us. When we walked out of it we knew we wouldn’t ever come back. But we were together, that wouldn’t change, there was happiness to think of in that.

  But I could always remember it. It always swam into my mind in flashes and sensations, and always would, forever. I’m sure her smell faded from the house, and from the walls. Through the winter I sat in my bed and heard the breath of the other boys in the dormitory, and imagined it was waves, but it was no use. I couldn’t bring it back. I lay in darkness and shut my eyes. I had to leave it behind, disentangle the web from my fingers and discard it. I used to turn over and try to go to sleep, but the memory of the sea through the trees left an imprint on my mind that wouldn’t fade away.

  4

  The New

  Head of

  Deaths

  Alistair Meldrum

  Author

  Alistair Meldrum was born in Edinburgh, and brought up and schooled in East Lothian. Alistair studied Psychology at university, but now works as a computer programmer for a pensions company in Edinburgh, a job forgettable enough to allow him time to write in the evenings. He lives in the Borders with his wife and three children. His story The New Head of Deaths is a story
about the modern detachment many people have from the inevitability of death, and why that is a loss to us.

  As I reverse into my new parking space, I catch a look at myself in the mirror. The clothes that make me look like a corpse; white shirt, charcoal grey suit, and black tie against a pallid face, elongated by the baldness which has long since stopped surprising me in the mirror.

  Daniel is looking in front of him, at nothing in particular, as he often has in the past few days, though he maybe did before then too. Has he always done that? I don’t know – it’s the sort of thing I should.

  “You OK?” I ask, redundantly.

  He looks to me, in the same way as he looked in front of him before, and nods.

  “I’m really sorry that I have to do this. Are you sure it’s OK?” But this question is redundant too. I’m here now, and I don’t have a lot of choice.

  However, Daniel doesn’t say so, he lets me off the hook and just shrugs. “I’ll be fine, I’ll just play this,” he says, and takes that damned handheld gaming thing out his bag. It smugly sits in his hand, taunting me and reminding me of the clumsiness with which I gave it him. “This might take your mind off things,” I’d said at the time. Indeed.

  I pause for a moment, which I suppose is to make it seem like I’m still considering whether or not to go upstairs, though it’s not conscious. Then I unclip the seatbelt – ” OK, I’ll try not to be long. Sorry,” and I slip out of the car.

  The garage, and the rest of the building is just how it was fifteen years ago when I first stepped in here. Concrete walls, faded white paint marking out the space numbers, the floor painted a now discoloured light blue, and all of the colours just weaken into grey.

  I buzz in, and make my way upstairs.

  “Hello, Mr Cross,” the security guard says as I get to reception, “pleased to meet you. Mr Hughes will be down shortly.” The subordination of it was not false, the man was just being cheery, and it seemed to fit with the marble desk, marble floors, large bay windows, and oval blue carpet – all an attempt to project a confident, extravagant image.

  Steve came through the glass doors from the main building and grinned at me.

  “Martin, hi!” he said warmly and shook my hand. I’d been looking forward to working with him again, but I wasn’t feeling as comfortable as I’d pictured. Mind you, what a different job interview it would have been had his familiar face, clearly in my corner, not been there, highlighting my strengths, smoothing over any weaknesses. It’s very safe to say, I wouldn’t have this job were it not for my old friend. “Come on this way,” and he led back through the familiar glass doors, behind which there was a corridor leading to a large oak door.

  It’s amazing how it comes flooding back. This image of indulgence portrayed on the ground floor is immediately thrown out of the window as soon as you pass through the oak door and head up to the office. Extravagance makes way for the austerity of the coalface. The stairs are steel open risers, the walls, more whitewashed breeze-blocks like in the garage.

  Steve holds the door open and walks up beside me, though with his six-foot-five frame, I struggle to keep up. “Full suit and tie then!” he mocks. “As I said, we’re mostly business casual here, but I suppose it’s appropriate, all the grey and black.” he says with a well-meaning smile. Does that mean he knows?

  Would that make it easy? Or is he talking about the first day?

  I’ll be ambiguous.

  “It’s only proper.” I said.

  “Well,” he said airily, “I know you’ve joined the death team but you don’t have to take it that seriously!” And he laughs again so I know I’m going to have to make him feel awkward. We reach the top of the stairs; ready to go into the office so I pause, to spare him a little.

  “Ah. Look, Steve, I’m not just wearing this because of the job. Louise died last week.”

  As expected, his face falls.

  “Don’t worry about it, you weren’t to know. I wasn’t sure, by your comment, if you did.”

  “Shit, sorry Martin. I had no idea. What a twat’s thing to say.”

  I laugh a little to ease him up. “Show me someone who hasn’t said something like that though. I’m forever doing that – ‘you’re dressed up, got a job interview?’ – and they always answer, ‘no, a funeral’. You’d think I’d learn.”

  He raised his eyes, apologetic and grateful at once. “Yes, I know what you mean. How are you? You OK?”

  “Yeah, but I feel like a total muppet about this – I can’t stay. Daniel’s in the car downstairs, and I have to take him to the funeral.”

  He waves his hand, and goes to open the door. “Don’t be silly, of course you’ll have to.”

  I stay still, just to make my point a bit more. I can’t believe I didn’t give more warning about this. First day on the job. How I thought I’d get out of the funeral is beyond me now. It took three days to even occur to me that I’d need to be there for Daniel, and that was only when I was slapped in the face with it.

  “It’s just she died late on Wednesday and I didn’t find out until Thursday evening. I should have let you know on Friday, but I don’t know, it slipped my mind.” Slipped my mind that I needed to comfort my son.

  Steve continued to shake his head, and dismiss, which of course he would. He’s not very well going to tell me I can’t go.

  “Still, it’s appropriate. First day as Head of Deaths, and I have to go to a funeral,” I try and say brightly. Steve’s eyebrows flicker, a little unconvinced, then he recovers and smiles.

  “Hey, look, thanks for coming in and telling me anyway,” he says. “I really shouldn’t ask this, but it’s just I’m off for the rest of the week – I couldn’t just give you the five-minute tour could I? Introduce you to the team? Some of them have come in early, especially to impress, so you ought to show your face – if you can manage it, I mean?”

  He says this kindly, and means it that way. He’s a goodnatured man, like many tall men seem to be, gentle, and with a face which generally expresses calmness, benevolence. Of course I’ll do what he asks.

  We enter the open plan floor where I should be starting my new working life, were it not for the unforeseen delay. “I’ll not keep you long,” Steve says as we walk through on the dark green carpets, an attempted touch at luxury.

  We walk half-way through the room, and there is an office, of sorts, a partitioned space, which he enters. I assume this is his office. Steve is head of customer services, and as such, my new boss.

  I sit down opposite him.

  “Must be odd being back is it? How long has it been, ten years?”

  “Eleven since I left. It’s hardly changed on the face of it; it’s like being back at school. How long have you been here now?”

  Steve laughed, and idly looked around as though surveying – he started on the same day as me, so I know full well. “Seventeen years!” he says, shaking his head. “Some things are different – some, well, just aren’t. Anyway, I don’t want to keep you, I’ll just give a quick overview. I don’t expect you to pick up too much this week, first week in the job and all that. Just get to know people. I’ll introduce you to Julian in a minute, he’s been dealing with the allocation of work while we recruited – well, you. So you can rely on him for the next week or so.”

  I nodded. It was a strange sort of office now I looked at it afresh. I’d worked in plenty other open-plan offices before since being here, and this is unusual. Usually they have the odd office in the corner for department heads. To have, effectively, a little bullring, partitioned by pin-boards and cabinets for the head of customer services, was odd. Then he explains.

  “I shouldn’t be this side of the desk though,” he says laughing, a little insincerely, as though he’d set the whole thing up as a slightly under-whelming surprise. “This is your area, my office is upstairs. So this is it, what they call round here, the ‘Inner Circle of Death’” .

  The death jokes will take a bit of getting used to. My own effort had seemed de
cidedly crass, given that I was talking about a real funeral. Steve’s had been more general, I suppose.

  “The main thing I want to stress, and the main thing that’s changed is the culture, the feeling of this place,” he starts, his voice altering into a presentation-style tone. “We take great pride in our death benefits product, and the support we give. It’s central to our brand, crucial to the customer offering. We offer a high-end support proposition to the widows and widowers, including a quick release of a portion of death benefits, assistance in funeral planning, and a service to gather and centralise all benefits from other financial products the deceased might have…” I suppose you get used to this, in the industry. Steve talked about the deceased, as neutrally as a pharmacist probably talks about condoms.

  “…and so it’s a tough job for the guys there on the phone. That’s where you come in, as the Death Benefit Servicing team manager. Balancing the work they do so it doesn’t get them down, keeping them focussed and positive, it’s absolutely crucial. On the whole, we need to ensure our customers see us as – ” and at this, he held his hands apart, palms open and facing each other, as though holding up a large sign– “sympathetic and compassionate. Simple as that. But to do that, we have to keep our staff happy, and keep them understanding. For that, you, above everyone, need to be that too– sympathetic and compassionate.”