Dialogues of the Dead (52 page)

sam; My God, will you listen to him? It's over, old boy. All that stuff;; belongs somewhere else. Here it's done with, finito, kaput. The nearest ' you 're ever going to get again to that creek you keep on going on about is being right up it, without a paddle. Oh shit, here she comes, I'm out of here. geoff; Poor chap, it's hit him bad. You never know how people will, take it. Me, remembering how things were keeps me going. Poor Sam it just drives mad. That's why he can't stand Jax. All she wants to talk about is the past. Jax, my dear, how are you? Look who's just arrived. jax ripley; Dick, is that you? Lovely to see you. Is my Wordman story still running? Do I still get a credit whenever anyone does a piece? What about movie rights? Or a TV drama-doc? It rates a drama-doc, at least. Who have they got to play me? God, I hope it's not that girl in EastEnders, you know, the one with hair. I know she's the right size, but everything else about her is so wrong. That mouth .. . I dick; I couldn't really say. Jax . .. what happened . .. Pm sorry ... jax: Are you? That's not much of a compliment. I seem to remember really enjoying it.

geoff: He's still a bit confused. jax: No use to me then. Unless you managed to smuggle a mobile in. No? Thought not. God, what wouldn't I give for a mobile! Catch you later, Dick. Be good. geoff: Lovely girl. Interviewed me once, you know. Thought I might have a chance afterwards, things going really well, then that blasted phone of hers rang. How about you? She seemed genuinely pleased to see you. Did you ever... ? dick: I'm not sure . . . I seem to recall something . . . but I can't be sure. . . geoff: You are in a had way, aren't you? dick: I'm trying to get my head round all this. We are dead, right? geoff: Got it in one, old chum. Yes, there's no getting away from it. That's what we are. Dead.

dick: And this place ... geoff: I've thought a lot about that. Conclusion - it's not really a place, it's more a sort of state. Not like Mississippi... except insofar as it's got this bloody great river . .. but like I just said, it's not a real river either . . . more a sort of visible metaphor ... hark at me, talking like a critic!... hut you know what I mean .. . it helps our minds keep a bold on things . .. rather like you seeing dying as a tunnel... it's all a bit hard to grasp at first... dick: Butyouseem to have grasped it better than anyone, Geoff. Why's that? geoff: Born to it, I suppose. dick: You mean, because you've got a title? geoff: Good lord, no. Load of bollocks, all that stuff. It's just that, well, I'm connected, you know. Sort of divinely.

dick: You mean you're God? geoff: Of course not. Don't say things like that. Got one of my ancestors into a lot of bother way back. No, but I am family, so to speak. Sort of

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fourth cousin, x times removed. It's the fallen angels, you see. Some of them got the option of turning human rather than spending an eternity in hell. Hard choice to make, I should think. Back on earth, the connection's not much help, but down here, it seems to give us descendants a bit of an inside track on things. Not that I know much more than here we are and here we'll stay till we're all here, then we'll go across.

dick: Who's all? And where'1 s across? And bow long do we have ftfi: wait? ,;; geoff; Forget how long, old boy. No time here. Time's away and^ somewhere else. Don't know where that came from, must have beeffi^ something I learned at school, but it's true. As for all, I mean all thosV"^ that the Wordman kills. ;/'

dick: The Wordman ... but aren't I the Wordman? ,' ' geoff: You? My dear Dick! What on earth put that notion in yowr^ head? ';

dick: / don't know... just something... I feel responsible somehow ... ' geoff: And that's why you're apologizing left and right! My dean'' chap, rest easy. You couldn 't hurt a fly. I recall the first time I gave'1^ you a pair of trout and you realized you had to clean them out yourself^; You turned white! No, you 're like the rest of us, a victim here. Look,, [ at you, all chopped about like a baited badger. Councillor, you tell him. stuffer steel: Tell him what? " " geoff: The dear chap thinks he's the Wordman. :

stuffer: So he is. All them buggers as work in yon poncy Centre, all;: sodding wordmen, never done an honest day's work between 'em. :; geoff: May have got something there. Councillor. But I mean Word- „ man with a capital W, the one who's been doing all these killings. y

stuffer: Oh, yon bugger. No, Mr Dee, you may be a lot of things, ; most on 'em useless, but you're definitely not that Wordman, not if'^ that's the bugger who killed me. dick: Thank God, thank God. But if it's not me, then who is it? Who was it who killed you. Councillor? stuffer: You really don't know? Aye well, fair do's. Took me some time to twig even after I got here. I mean, you 're standing there washing your hands in a gent's bog and you look up and see a bonny young lass in the mirror, you don't think straight off, she's come to top me!

dick: A young lass... oh my God... stuffer: Coming back, is it now? Aye, well, I looked at her and she looked at me, this big reassuring smile on her face. And I said what the hell are you doing in here, lass? And she said, I just wanted to tell you I've got that dinner you asked for sorted. You know, rib beef and Yorkshire pudding and lots and lots of roast spuds. And I thought, well that sounds all right. Then 1 felt summat at the back of me neck and next thing I'm on the floor and it's all getting dark. Then there was this young fellow-me-lad bending over me and asking if I were all right and I knew I weren 't all right, I knew I were on my way out, and I'd no idea why, that's what bothered me.

dick: And you said rosebud to him. Why did you say rosebud^ stuffer: Don't recollect saying owt, but if I did, I know it bloody weren't rosebud! No, it W be roast spuds! You see, what I couldn 't get my head round was why she'd been going on about me dinner. But I've worked it out since. She wanted me to die happy. Aye, that must have been it. She didn 't want me to die thinking, "Oh Christ, there's someone here going to kill me." She wanted me to go thinking I was about to get me dinner. Not much bloody hope of that down here, far as I can see, but it was a kindness, aye, I'll give her that. It was kindly meant.

dick: And this was definitely Rye? This was Miss Pomona? geoff: You know it was, Dick. It's coming back now, isn't it? Like the councillor says, takes a bit of getting bold of. When I saw her pointing the Purdy at me, I just said, careful, my dear. Not good form to point a gun at anyone. It might go off. Then it did. Still thought it was an accident when I found myself here, but once I got talking to the others . . . Well, I should have known, pretty young lass like that fluttering her eyelashes at me and saying she was really interested in night fishing and she'd heard I'd got this boat out at Stang Creek - must have heard that from you, I suppose, Dick - no, it didn't make sense, I thought, not unless maybe she fancied me. Don't suppose that made sense either, but I have been fancied in my time, and an old cavalry horse don't pay much attention to anything else when he hears the bugle playing! Who knows, out in the country, snag a couple of trout, hake them over afire, bottle of vino, anything can happen. And it did!

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d i c k : It's coming back now but I still can't believe it. We were getting on like a house on fire. She sent out all the signals. They seemed unmistakable, but I still needed to be absolutely sure. No way I wanted to risk our working relationship by giving her cause to think I was taking advantage. So I left her alone to give her time to think things over, cool off, if that's what she wanted, but when I peeped through the door, she was standing at the window taking her clothes off. Well, that was it. Couldn't be clearer, I thought. I slipped out of my kit in a trice, then ^ just to keep it all light and easy, I grabbed a loaf of bread and a knife 'r; ... we'd been talking about how nice toast tasted made over an open ^ fire ... and I went back in and said that I thought we'd have some ''I toast afterwards. But she looked at me as if she wasn't listening ... S well, to tell the truth it was my erection she seemed to be looking at... ] I was well aroused, and she seemed to be really focused on it... quite ' flattering, really ... and she came towards me, and I felt her take thi '' knife from my band, and next thing I had this feeling in my stomach, i; oddly it wasn 't a pain, not at first, just a very strange and not at all ' distressing feeling which got somehow all mixed up with my desire for her, and she held me very close to her, and I felt myself beginning to, go. I'd read about young women swooning with desire in Charley Penn's , books and I recall thinking, I must tell Charley it happens to fellows too, and Rye was screaming with passion, at least that's what I took it ' to be though it did seem a bit strident, then suddenly it was as if I'd ; been grasped from behind and dragged backwards to the floor, and after ' that I've no idea what happened... g e o f f : You got used for target practice by the look of you. Hello, what's ', all that noise down by the river? /,

stuffer: I'll go and see. ; geoff: Notice anything about the councillor? ' dick: Apart from that hole in the back of his neck? No. ,| geoff; His breath. No pong. One of the few advantages of this place. Lots of sensory switch off. All these wounds, no pain. And no smell. Plus you can see that damned attractive telly girl running around in the next-to-nothing and not get randy, though you may not feel that as an advantage. They really are making a din down there. Must be something happening. Let's go and see.

dick: I can't get over it. Rye Pomona. But why ... ?

geoff: No doubt there'll be answers by and by. Councillor, what's going on? stuffer: It's these two. They say they saw something out there on the river in the mist.

percy 1 (^ did, ^ dtd. It's a boat, it's a boat, and we can see someone brose | standing in it. They're coming to rescue us. Hooray! Hooray! sam; They're right, you know. Look, there it is, homing through the mist. But let's not be too quick to attract attention. There's no telling what plans this guy might have for us. jax; Who cares as long as he's got a mobile? Yoo hoof Yoo hoo! Over here! andrew: Is someone coming? Maybe they've seen my van. Oh yes, now I see him. But is it a him? I don't believe so. This could be very helpful. I'm sure it's that lass whose car I fixed. She must know where the bridge is. Miss! Miss! This way! dick; Dear God, he's right. It's her. It's Rye, it's Rye Pomona. There, I knew she couldn 't be the Wordman, else what's she doing down here. Rye! Rye! Over here. stuffer: Aye, get yourself over here, my girl, I want a word with you. geoff; Hold on. Hard to see with all this mist, certainly looks like Miss Pomona, but can't spot any, you know, bumpy bits. And that funny mark she's got in her hair, where's that? sam: If it's that girl and she's not dead, I'm going to kill her. Rye Pomona, is that you? sergius pomona: Pomona certainly, but not Rye. Sergius of that ilk. Raina's twin. sam: Sergius ... Raina ... oh bizarre. stuffer: What's he laughing at? geoff: Don't know but it's good to see him a bit more cheerful. Mr Pomona, have you come to take us across? sergius: Yes, but before I come in to the bank and you start embarking, can we get any silly antagonisms out of the way? This isn 't a large ferry and there's quite a lot of you, so we'll be pretty low in the water and

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the last thing we need is anyone rocking the boat. You do not want to end up in this river, believe me. So if you've got any questions, ask them now. dick: Yes, I've a question. Rye's actions, going around killing people, has this got anything to do with that accident when you died?

s erg lu s: She told you about that? dick; Yes. It started with her hair. I didn't ask but she must have seen I was curious and it all came out, how you crashed the car and two other people got killed, and you yourself of course ... sergius: Ah, that's the version she gave you, was it? A few minor inaccuracies. It wasn 't me driving, for a start. It was Rye. She was so desperate to get to the theatre for her potty little role that she'd have done anything. When I realized she was setting out in Mummy's car, I ran after her and because she was having trouble changing up, I managed to jump into the passenger seat. She caused the crash. She killed me and those other two people. But you're right about one thing. That was where all this started. sam: You're saying because she feels guilty about accidentally killing three people all those years ago, she started bumping us off now? I hope you've got Beddoes over there. He'll have loved this. It's really Gothic! sergius: It's a little more complicated. We were very close, real twins, to the point where we often seemed to share thoughts, and if anything happened to the other when we were apart, both of us felt it. So she was naturally devastated when I died, particularly as it was her fault, and when she wanted to ask my forgiveness, it didn 't seem silly to try and contact me via our shared thoughts as we used to when I was alive. Well, we got a dialogue going in her mind, but she was never sure if it was real or she was just making it up ...'

geoff: And was it real? sergius: How should 1 know? I wasn't sure either if the dialogue I thought I was having with her was real or just my imagining. 1 mean, when you're both alive and can meet to exchange notes, you can crosscheck, right? But with me down here, her up there, how could either of us tell? Unless of course, we got a sign.

sam: A sign? Oh, God preserve us from signs!

stuffer: Aye, one thing I've leamt in politics is any bugger looking for signs is sure to find 'em, and there's none of 'em to be trusted! sergius: You may be right, Councillor. Certainly once she started looking they came thick and fast. In fairness, you've got to understand her psychological state. It wasn 'tjust guilt at my death that -was screwing up her thinking. It was the way her whole life had been stood on its head. Her acting career had been all she ever thought of before the accident, but after she recovered, she gave it up completely. What she told people - indeed what she told herself - was that she did it out of revulsion against the artificialities and pretences of the stage. In fact it was rather more basic. You see, she found she could no longer remember the words!

dick: But she always had a marvellous memory for quotation. sergius: Off the stage, everything was fine, near perfect recall. But once she trod the boards, it all went. b r o s e : How awful! I once recall drying up when I was play ing Mirabell opposite Dame Judi at the Garrick . . . percy: Oh, do shut up, Brose, and let the man finish. The sooner we get across this dreadful river, the sooner we'll be released from this most embarrassing position. sergius: Thank you, Mr Follows. You should understand, Mr Bird, it wasn't just her learned lines that went, it was all vocabulary. Can you imagine what it's like to be in a world devoid of words? Where nothing you see has a label? Nothing you feel can be expressed? Nothing you think ... well, in fact, you can't think! This is what going on the stage meant for her. This is why she became a librarian, so she could spend her life in places where they treasured words and kept them stored safe for future generations. But all the time she wanted my forgiveness. She had a memory of me lifting her from the driver's seat of the wrecked car and laying her on the pavement, then reaching up to pluck a spray of cypress from a tree overhanging the churchyard wall and placing it on her breast and whispering a loving reassuring word in her ear before going to take my place by the driver's door so she wouldn't be blamed for the crash. dick: That rings a hell. .. sergius: Indeed. I expect you're thinking of one of your friend Mr