When Will There Be Good News? (19 page)

'Nah,' Reggie said, 'Ms MacDonald was just a rubbish driver.' She didn't add that Ms MacDonald was Rapture Ready, that she embraced the end of all things and was expecting to live eternally in a place that when she described it sounded a bit like Scarborough.

Reggie imagined Ms MacDonald nodding serenely at the 125 express train that was charging towards her, saying, 'That'll be God's will then.' Or was she astonished, did she consult her watch to check if the train was on time, did she say, 'Not already, surely?' One second there, the next gone. It was a funny old world.

Ofcourse, alternatively, she might have been out
of her
mind with panic when she realized she was stuck with the instrument of her death bearing down on her at over a hundred miles an hour, too confused in the moment to do anything as sensible as get out of the car and run for her life. But Reggie would rather not think about that scenario.

'Plus she had a brain tumour,' she added, trying not to catch the eye of the Asian policeman in case she embarrassed herself by blushing. 'I mean it might just have, I dunno, exploded.'

'We need someone to identity her,' Sergeant Wiseman said. 'Do you think you can do it?'

'Now?'

'Tomorrow will do.'

And now it was tomorrow.

'We will bring you more news as we have it,' the newsreader said, staring seriously at the camera. The programme cut to his copresenter, whose smile was only slightly tempered by the proximity of disaster. 'Now,' she said, 'we're delighted to welcome to the studio the newest resident of Albert Square, already making waves in EastEnders with her-' Reggie switched the television off.

She noticed how still the air in the house was, as if someone had breathed out and not breathed in again. Reggie looked closely at Banjo. His eyes were rheumy slits and his tongue was lolling out of the side ofhis mouth. No movement in his ancient little lungs. Dead. Here one second, gone the next. The breath was the thing. It was everything. Breathing was the difference between alive and dead. She had breathed life into a man, should she try and do the same with a dog? But no, really, if he had been a person he would have had 'Do Not Resuscitate' written on a piece of paper inside the tiny barrel that hung from his collar. Some people left early (a lot of people closely related to Reggie), but some people (and dogs) went when they were supposed to.

A great bubble of something like laughter but that she knew was grief rose up in Reggie's chest. She'd had the same reaction when she was told about Mum's death -in a phone call from Sue (minus Carl) from Warrington because Gary was 'too choked' to talk. 'Sorry, love,' Sue said, in a voice husky from fags. She sounded like she meant it, sounded like she cared more about Mum after a couple of days' acquaintance than her sister Linda did after a whole childhood together.

Reggie wished she had a sister, someone else who had known and loved Mum so that she wasn't all alone keeping her memory alive. There were Mary, Trish and Jean, but in the last year they had moved on, making Mum into a sad memory, no longer a real person. Billy was no good, Billy only cared about Billy. When Reggie died that would be the end of Mum. And when Reggie died that would be the end of Reggie, of course. Reggie wanted a dozen kids so that when she was gone they could all get together and talk about her (Do you remember when . .. ?) and not one of them would feel they'd been left alone in the world.

Reggie had asked Dr Hunter if she wanted more children, a brother or a sister for the baby, and she made a funny face and said, 'Another baby?' as if that was an outlandish idea. And Reggie could see her point. This baby was everything, he was emperor of the world, he was the world.

Reggie visited Mum's grave every week and talked to her and then on the way home from this pilgrimage she stopped in at the Catholic church and lit a candle for her. Reggie didn't believe in any ofthat hocus-pocus, but she believed in keeping the dead alive. There would be more candles to light now.

She knew it was wrong but Reggie felt more affected by the dog's death than she did by his owner's. Reggie stroked Banjo's ears and closed his dim eyes. The dead guy, the soldier, last night had his eyes half-open but Reggie hadn't closed them. There'd been no time for such niceties. The Asian policeman was wrong, everybody was dead. It was like being cursed. It was like being in some horror movie. Carrie. All those people on the train, perhaps they should be on her conscience as well. 'Troubled teen or angel of death?' she said to the dead dog. 'You have to wonder.' Was the man dead too? Perhaps instead of saving him she had killed him, simply by being near to him. Not the breath of life but the kiss of death.

He was the second man she'd come across after half sliding, half falling down the muddy embankment. The first one was the soldier. Reggie shone her torch on him and moved on. She expected there would be plenty of time later to think about how he looked dead. The torchbeam was thin and wavery. Thigh high, not eye high. Mum had once worked as an usherette at the Dominion but was sacked after two weeks for eating ice-creams without paying for them.

The second man had a pulse, pretty weak, but a pulse was a pulse. His arm was a mess, he was bleeding from an artery and, in the absence of anything else, Reggie took off her jacket, rolled up a sleeve and used it as a pad to press on to the bleeding arm the way that Dr Hunter had shown her. Reggie tried calling out for help but they were down in a dip where no one could see or hear them. The first sirens had begun to wail in the distance.

She checked the pulse in the man's neck again and this time couldn't find one. Her fingers were slippery with his blood, perhaps she was mistaken? She felt herself beginning to panic. She thought about Eliot, the CPR dummy that Dr Hunter had brought home. Eliot wasn't anything like the man whose life was suddenly and unexpectedly in her hands. She couldn't work out how to breathe into his mouth -let alone do the heart compressions -without taking the pressure off his bleeding artery. It was like a nightmare game ofTwister. She thought of the Spanish waiter trying to breathe life into her mother's lungs. Had he felt this same sense of desperation? What if he had kept on going a little longer, what if her mother hadn't been dead but in a watery suspension, waiting to be restored to life? The thought galvanized Reggie and she transferred her knee on to the improvised pressure-pad and then stretched over the man's body like a large awkward spider. She could manage it if she really tried.

'Just hang on,' she said to the man. 'Please. For my sake if not for yours.' She breathed in as deeply as she could and put her mouth over his. He tasted of cheese and onion crisps.

Reggie took the bus home from Ms MacDonald's house. Before leaving she had wrapped Banjo's body in an old cardigan of Ms MacDonald's and dug a hole for him in one
of the
flowerbeds
. A
little parcel of bones. It had been like the Somme in Ms MacDonald's back garden and it had been a horrible task dropping the small body into the unfriendly, muddy hole. Nada y pues nada, as Hemingway and Ms MacDonald would have said. First things were good, last things not so much so. As Reggie would have said.

It had rained when they buried Mum as well, dropped her into her own muddy hole
. T
here were quite a few mourners at the graveside -Billy, Gary, Sue and Carl from Warrington -which was nice of them considering they hardly knew Mum -a couple of Gary's biker mates, some neighbours, Mary, Trish and Jean, of course, quite a lot of co-workers from the supermarket, the manager himself in black tie and black suit even though the month before he'd threatened Mum with her cards for 'persistently poor timekeeping'. Even the Man-Who-Came-Before-Gary turned up, lurking in the cemetery's hinterland. Billy made an obscene gesture at him which caused the vicar to stumble over his intonement.

'Not a bad turnout,' Carl said as if he was some kind of professional funeral inspector.

'Poor Jackie,' Sue said.

In the church beforehand they had sung 'Abide With Me', a hymn chosen by Reggie on the grounds that Mum always cried when she heard it because they had sung it at her own mother's funeral. Reggie had arranged the service with the help ofMary, Trish andJean. Mum wasn't a churchgoer so it was hard to know what she would have liked. 'Aye, hatched, matched and dispatched within a church, like most of us,' Trish said as if she was saying something wise. 'There must be something, when you think about it,' Jean said. Reggie didn't see why there had to be anything. 'We're all alone,' Dr Hunter once said to her. 'All alone and cast adrift in the vast infinity ofspace' (was she thinking about Laika?) , and Reggie said, 'But we have each other, Dr H.,' and Dr Hunter said, 'Yes we do, Reggie
. W
e have each other.'

Quite a few people on the bus had given Reggie funny looks because of the way she was dressed and a couple of girls on the top deck, no more than twelve, all fruity lip gloss and incredibly tedious secrets, openly sniggered at the clothes she was wearing. Reggie felt like saying -you try going through the wardrobe of a middle-aged, born-again ex-teacher to find something you could wear in public without attracting scorn. Lacking any other option, Reggie had chosen the most nondescript ofMs MacDonald's garments she could find -a viscose cream sweater, a nylon maroon anorak and pair of polyester black slacks rolled over a hundred times at the waist and held up with a belt. As far as Reggie could tell Ms MacDonald didn't own (hadn't owned) a single garment that wasn't made from synthetic fibres. It was only when she put on Ms MacDonald's clothes that Reggie realized just how big and tall she had been before she shrank inside her clothes so that they had draped themselves on her body as if she were no more than a coat hanger.

'That's a big-boned woman,' Mum said after she met Ms MacDonald for the first time at a parents' evening. Reggie thought of Mum, awkward and ill-at-ease at the horrible posh school, Ms MacDonald rattling on about Aeschylus as if Mum had the foggiest. Now they were both dead (not to mention Aeschylus). Everyone was dead.

Reggie didn't put on Ms MacDonald's underwear, the big pants and stretched grey bras were a step too far. Her own clothes were still drying on a rack in Ms MacDonald's bathroom, except for her jacket which was so saturated with the man's blood that it was past the point of rescue. 'Out damned spot,' she said to the wheelie-bin as she threw the jacket into it. They had done Macbeth for standard grade.

Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?

He wasn't that old. Old enough to be her father. His name was Jackson Brodie. She'd had his blood on her hands, warm blood in th
e
cold night. She had been washed in his blood.

As he was being loaded on to the stretcher she had plunged her hand into his jacket pocket, hoping to find some form of identity, and had pulled out a postcard with a picture ofBruges on the front, and on the back his address and a message -Dear Dad, Bruges is very interesting, it has a lot of nice buildings. It is raining. Have eaten a lot ofchips and chocolate. Missing you! Love you! Marlee XXx.

The postcard was still in her bag, muddy and bloody and wrinkled up. She had two postcards now, their bright messages touched with death. She supposed she should hand the man's in to someone. She would like to give it back to the man himself. Ifhe was still alive. The air ambulance doctor told her they were taking him to the Royal Infirmary but when she had phoned this morning they had no record of a Jackson Brodie. Reggie wondered if that meant he had died.

Adam Lay Ybounde
n
NOT DEAD THEN, NOT YET. NOT EXACTLY ALIVE THOUGH. IN SOME mysterious place in between.

He'd always imagined it, ifhe'd imagined it at all, as something like the Hilton in Heathrow Airport -a beige, bland limbo where everyone was in transit. If he had paid more attention during his Catholic childhood he might have remembered Purgatory's purifying flames. They now consumed him continually, a fire with no end as if he was some kind of everlasting fuel. Nor could he recollect any teaching that had ever referred to the continuous radio static in the head and the sensation of giant millipedes crawling allover his skin and the other, even more unpleasant feeling, that large clackety-clack cockroaches were grazing on his brains. He wondered what other surprises God's halfway house was going to present.

It wasn't fair, he thought peevishly. Who said life was fair? his father had said to him a hundred times. He had said the same himself to his own daughter. (It's not fair, Daddy.) Parents were miserable buggers. It should be fair. It should be paradise.

Death, Jackson noticed, had made him crabbed. He shouldn't be here, he should be with Niamh -wherever that was -the idyllic place where all the dead girls walked, risen up and honoured. Fuck. His head really hurt. Not fair.

*

People came to visit him occasionally. His mother, his father, his brother. They were all dead so Jackson knew he must be too. They were vague round the edges and if he tried to look at them for too long they started to wobble and fade. He supposed he was vague round the edges too.

The catalogue of the dead seemed full of random choices. His old geography teacher, an antagonistic, apoplectic sort who had a fatal stroke in the staff room. Jackson's first ever girlfriend, a nice straightforward girl called Angela who died of an aneurysm in her husband's arms on her thirtieth birthday. Mrs Patterson, an old neighbour who used to sit drinking tea and gossiping with his mother when Jackson was small. Jackson hadn't thought about her in decades, would have been hard put to name her if she hadn't turned up at his bedside, smelling of camphor and carrying an old leatherette shopping bag. Julia's sister, Amelia, came once (as recalcitrant as ever) to sit at his bedside. He wondered ifher presence meant that she had died on the operating table. The woman in red from the train appeared one afternoon, distinctly less vivacious than the last time he saw her. The dead were legion. He wished they would stop coming to see him.