Waking Up Dead Page 5

  Chapter Four

  Had this new, rather alarming thought (for which he had no evidence whatsoever) done something serious to his powers of perception?

  What was strange was that now George was inside his body or, at least, a body that had looked vaguely like the one still on the bed, he couldn’t see it any more. When he looked down at his toes, they were nowhere in evidence. This, of course, had more or less been the case since his late forties, principally because his stomach was in the way, but now his paunch seemed also to have done a bunk.

  George found this very worrying. He was fond of his paunch. It was, or had been, a reassuring presence. A proof that he was there. Even when he studied it, critically, in the mirror before getting into bed, he had to admit to himself that its shape, like a large, carefully drawn comma, decorated with a network of thick, curly black hairs, was something of which he was secretly proud. Now, when he peered down at his feet, and he had the illusion of being inside a body which enabled him to do precisely that, he saw absolutely nothing at all.

  Nevertheless, because of the highly wrought mental manoeuvre that had got him off the bed, he did feel he was inside a functioning body, even if he couldn’t see it. Indeed, now he was no longer aware if his knees were on backwards or his nose had developed the alarming habit of slipping off his face and into his lap, he felt a whole lot better. He felt completely real, even if he was, to himself anyway, invisible. He didn’t altogether like the idea that the next person to come round the door might be able to see what he could not – for all he knew, he might look to the world like the Beast from the Swamp or, indeed, a fully kitted out angel, wraith or demon – but, for the first time that morning, he had the illusion of making progress.

  He concentrated on moving his right foot forward and was rewarded with the sensation of covering a good yard of the highly polished floor. Then, more quickly now, he brought his left leg past the right, and then, almost without thinking, as his left foot (yes, he could feel his right foot!) passed its opposite number, the right ankle, knee, calf and thigh (though not quite in that order) were off again in a pattern familiar to him since childhood. He was walking!

  George had been slow to walk. Even after he had learned to do it, he had, according to his mother, been suspicious of it. After a few steps, he would sink gracefully to the floor and sit, like a small Buddha, for minutes of contemplation, before attempting any more of the difficult art of movement.

  That was not his mood now. Caution was a thing of the past. He was dead. What had he got to lose?

  He found he was walking briskly in a circle round his bedroom. He could see things like underpants and discarded socks in his way, but he paid them no attention. His circles started small but, as he gained in confidence, they widened until he was jumping up on the marital bed, storming across the inert lump and even leaping, with ease, on to the chest of drawers on Esmeralda’s side.

  The phrase ‘out of breath’ occurred to him as he completed his tenth lap of the room. It struck him as comic. The mortal remains on the bed were out of breath, all right, but whatever had survived the events of the night appeared to be in first-class shape. In a mood of hectic self-confidence, the kind referred to by his grandmother as ‘getting above himself’, George practically ran for the door and reached for the handle.

  He did not seem able to make contact with it.

  He swiped feebly in the general direction of the brass knob but, perhaps unsurprisingly, it remained indifferent to his advances. He tried again. No dice. Then he allowed himself the illusion of sitting on the side of the bed and muttering, at a level that, had he had any vocal equipment, would have been clearly audible, the word ‘fuck’.

  It always made him feel better. Dead or alive. The fact that Esmeralda always winced when she heard him use it (even though she could quite often be free with it herself) made it an even more satisfactory form of therapy. If he was going to be a ghost – and it seemed possible that that was what he was – he would be the kind of ghost who said ‘fuck’ occasionally.

  He said it again: ‘Fuck!’ Aloud and silently in the empty room. ‘Fuck!’

  He was dying, if that was not an inappropriate term, to be out and about and downstairs to see how and when and why his mum had been brutally murdered. If he was a ghost, surely he would be able to use a few traditional ghost techniques for getting from A to B and back again. Ghosts in Hollywood movies were always on the move. They were always pushing their upper bodies through brick walls, then dragging the rest of their shadowy selves after them. In one film he had seen, the bloke, although he had been brutally murdered only a few days before, was able without difficulty to join in his wife’s pottery class.

  He couldn’t even open the bedroom door. This was bad. He was an English ghost. Was that the problem?

  Neither – he was starting to get seriously annoyed now – had he been vouchsafed any harp music or white light nor discovered any powers more sensational than the ability to walk, at speed, round his own bedroom. Was he doomed to stay up here with his corpse until the men in black jackets lumbered up the stairs to prepare him for the wagon labelled ‘PRIVATE AMBULANCE’?

  Just as he was thinking this, the door opened and Frigga stole into the room. ‘George,’ she called, in a light, coaxing voice. ‘Are you there?’

  Where had she been for the last half-hour? He was dead, wasn’t he? Or had his younger sister somehow acquired the ability to cotton on to the fact that George Pearmain was not entirely deceased? She had always had pretensions to being au fait with the spirit world.

  She wasn’t, as far as George could tell, looking at where he thought he was. She seemed to think the slowly stiffening five feet ten inches of lard parked on the bed was worth a few carefully chosen words. To confirm his suspicion, she began to advance, priest-like, towards the very spot where George liked to think he was sitting. Her long, lank white hair bounced listlessly about her pale, blemished face, and, as she got closer, she extended her two skinny arms in a gesture that was vaguely druidical. She looked, George thought, considerably more ghostly than he felt.

  ‘Oh George,’ she said, in her customary, high monotone, ‘peace to your spirit. Be among the ancestors. Let the Great Mother heal you. Go placidly with Our Father and join with Jessica and Great Aunt Maud who have all gone before.’

  So far, to his distinct relief, George had not caught a glimpse of any of his ancestors. The thought that he might bump into Great Aunt Maud at any moment in the near future brought him out in a strong, if notional, sweat. He had not been aware of the full extent of Frigga’s New Age problems. Yes, she had gone on about echinacea (if that was how you spelt it) and the healing properties of Old Mother Riley’s Root Tea (even to the extent of forcing George to drink it) but he’d had no idea that her interest in herbs had led her into a belief system even older and crazier than Christianity.

  Before she could sit on him, George managed to nip out of her way and watched as she laid her long, cold fingers on his pale forehead.

  ‘I am very, very troubled, George. I am not sure but I think it’s possible I may bear some responsibility for your death. I haven’t shared this with anyone else, George – but I’m sharing it with you.’

  Uh? thought George. The people she needed to share this kind of information with were the Metropolitan Police. Anyway, what did she mean by ‘some responsibility’? Was she trying to tell him she was part of a conspiracy?

  ‘I don’t know, George. That is the thing. I just do not know. I don’t think I did anything wrong. But I do not know. And if I did – did I do it deliberately, George? I had hostile feelings towards you, George. I did. As did you for me. I know you found me embarrassing. I know you feel I moan. I do moan, George. At night I moan. I moan for my barren womb. I moan for that man I met on holiday, Kevin or whatever his name was. I am wicked, George. I have wicked feelings. I have feelings of hate. Did those feelings of hate make me deliberately careless? I am usually so careful with things like – like – y
ou know what. It is possible, George. I do not know, George. I do not know. Am I responsible for your death?’

  You tell me, bitch. I’d like to know.

  For a moment she looked as if she was going to do just that, but the effort of even opening up this clearly painful subject was too much for her, and Frigga began to make a noise that recalled a fox having sexual intercourse. Her mouth imploded dramatically. Her ears seemed to tremble. Her eyes and nose began to cry real tears.

  George took this opportunity to tiptoe towards the open door.

  To what could she be referring? Frigga was a woman who enjoyed feeling guilty about all sorts of things. She had always, for example, carried on as if the Falklands War was her fault. When Barry failed his A levels she had come to George, weeping, to tell him she felt she had distracted him. When George mentioned this to Barry, Barry seemed to have some difficulty remembering who Auntie Frigga was.

  Her much-publicized guilt was nearly always, in George’s view, another way of gaining attention. This was a woman who had, in the past, put a tea towel on her head and howled like a dog if anyone was careless enough to smuggle meat on to her plate or light up within two hundred yards – even in the open air. It was pretty clear that claiming some responsibility for his heart attack was just another—

  Hang on. Hang on. She might be aware of something she didn’t wish to admit even to herself. It was possible. She had said what she had said to an audience incapable – as far as she was aware – of response. If something dodgy had gone on last night, it might explain why George had failed to complete his departure from the world. Didn’t ghosts usually come back to avenge themselves on whoever it was who had ended their lives ahead of schedule? Was this his mission?

  He wasn’t yet aware that anyone had murdered him, but it was possible. Among the many possible candidates for the role (including that bloke from the Wandsworth Parking Office and the man who had bought George’s last car but two), Frigga must be a prime contender.

  He turned back, briefly, at the door to the landing and tried a bit of the kind of thing ghosts usually used on persons who, in spite of their having committed unspeakable crimes against them, seemed to be still tickety-boo. He tried out the beginnings of a wail but, although he could have sworn some kind of noise emerged from what were clearly not his lungs, the sound did not register with Frigga Brunhilde Pearmain.

  George’s mother had been heavily into Wagner when she fell pregnant with Frigga. She had also been reading a very obscure Norse saga that made the Elder Edda look like Jane Austen. Cnut beheaded Glyf who smote Ocki who drowned Boldrum the son of Klog. That kind of thing.

  George had a theory that people’s characters were influenced by their given names. He had known four people called Philippa – only one of whom was trustworthy. All Alans were devious. People called Nigel were almost always homosexually inclined. Parents created forenames out of their hidden ambitions and dreams. If Jessica Pearmain had given her only daughter a moniker that suggested mists, mountains and large amounts of random violence, might it not be because she wanted her to turn into the kind of woman who was useful in a blood feud?

  Frigga might well be a murderer, thought George. She was, now he thought about it, the kind of librarian who could all too easily run amok.

  She was also, clearly, not about to reveal any more information about how and why she felt responsible for George’s death. She was now making a noise that sounded a bit like someone opening and shutting a very squeaky gate. She seemed also to be pulling out chunks of her hair. He had things to do. There were people to see. He had to get downstairs for a last look at his mum before they shipped her off to the morgue in a black bin liner.

  George had just got to the head of the stairs when he somehow knew the front-door bell was about to ring. He didn’t actually hear it but he was positive that that was what it was going to do.

  Down below, in the hall, in various attitudes of grief, numbness and paralysis, were his immediate family. Ginny and Jojo had arrived from wherever they had been hiding. Ginny (Barry’s wife) was holding eighteen-month Bella while Jojo (Maurice’s wife) was standing over eighteen-month Ella, who seemed to be asking if her favourite cartoon character was anywhere about. Bella appeared to want to know where Ganpa was. A question no one, at the moment anyway, seemed inclined to answer.

  Bella showed no sign of giving up her question. On the fifth time of asking, Ginny said, in a quiet, refined voice, ‘We think Ganpa may be dead.’

  ‘Dead,’ repeated Bella, in a bright, cheery voice. ‘Ganpa dead. Play oven?’

  ‘I think,’ Ginny was saying to Barry, ‘it’s important for them not to get upset about it. Or feel it’s a bad thing.’

  George had never got on with Ginny. This last remark, he felt, marked an even steeper downturn in their relationship than when she had told him her father wanted her to get married on a boat on the Thames and expected George to pay half.

  ‘Bad thing!’ said Bella.

  Esmeralda burst into tears again. Barry started muttering something to Ginny, and Ginny looked at Esmeralda with the profound surprise that the sight of her mother-in-law always seemed to evoke in her. She showed every sign, George thought, of ticking her off for upsetting her granddaughter. Maurice, Jojo and Ella went off to find a room without a dead body in it and Barry, Ginny and Bella followed them.

  The rest of them – Esmeralda, Stephen, the Mullins woman and Beryl Vickers – all looked as if they were waiting for something. For one crazy moment, George wondered if they might be waiting for him. Perhaps – he seemed to be standing, now, at the head of the stairs – one of them would be able to see him in, at least, dim outline. A spectral fragment of his head, perhaps. Or, failing that, a vague sense that he was not entirely absent from the house for which he had only recently finished paying.

  Perhaps one of his grandchildren might pick up on his presence. Weren’t they more sensitive to the spirit world than adults? Ella was now in the front room, watching a rerun of a television show about a toad called, by some strange coincidence, George. She knew who he was, all right. She often referred to him as Gondid, and he had had the impression, the last time he had held her hand and walked her across Maurice’s kitchen floor, that she had begun to clock him. Maybe her weirdly wonderful perceptions of a world in which teddy bears ate and drank, cats had fully human status and a journey to the fridge had the epic quality of a Tolkien narrative would allow her to perceive George.

  He realized, with a pang of self pity, that he wanted someone to perceive him. Even if they were not quite two feet high.

  Everything seemed to be taking an unconscionably long time. The doorbell had not yet rung – George thought – yet now the people in the hall seemed to have cottoned on to the fact that a visitor was on his or her way. They seemed to be standing staring at the front door, their faces buckled and distorted by something that was probably, George thought, the passing of time slowed to an almost painful pace. He himself was experiencing the sharp end of delay in action. His feet were sinking into the stair carpet and its fibres were folding over his naked toes, like warm mud in a tropical swamp. He saw that Stephen, moving now, like an athlete to the finishing line in filmed slow motion, was pulling the front door open. Whoever was out there must have been waiting ages. And yet they hadn’t. What was happening was more peculiar than an event taking longer to fill the passing minutes than usual.

  Quite often, in the afterlife, things seemed to happen before the occurrence that might logically be supposed to have caused them. Ante hoc ergo propter hoc. George could have sworn that his family were all goggling at the front door, that the front door opened and that then, and only then, did the bell ring, long and loud and harsh. The sort of imperious, no-nonsense application of forefinger to button of the kind practised by pretty serious policemen.

  And, indeed, that was what was standing in George’s hall. A man in a dark suit, large, black shoes, a white shirt, an anonymous tie, and a general demeanour that sugg
ested ‘’Ello, ’ello, ’ello.’ Next to him, with the air of one who had been put there specifically to remind the world that there was nothing plain about her companion’s plain clothes, was a small, fat female officer. She seemed to be doing the introductions.

  ‘DC Barbara Purves,’ she was saying, ‘and this is DI Hobday.’

  Hobday nodded slowly. ‘DI Hobday,’ he said thoughtfully.

  George had the impression that the man was not altogether happy about the way his subordinate was handling things. Too much, his pale blue eyes seemed to suggest, had already been revealed. He also had the air of a man who would have preferred a more dramatic way of entering George’s property. Just coming in through the front door was clearly tame, as far as Hobday was concerned.

  He looked, George thought, like a man used to battering his way into people’s places at the break of day, preceded, if possible, by a group of men in blue, wearing Perspex helmets, carrying shields of matching material and festooned with snub-nosed machine guns. He was not, as yet, clasping a Glock pistol in both hands and sweeping it to and fro across the field of fire immediately ahead of him but he looked as if he might resort to this mode of advance at any moment.

  ‘I understand,’ he said to Stephen, ‘that there are two bodies on the premises.’

  ‘There are,’ said Stephen, crisply. ‘Two bodies.’

  ‘I,’ said Nat, ‘am a doctor!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hobday. ‘Indeed.’

  ‘He is,’ said Stephen, anxious not to abandon his status as Most Responsible Person Present, ‘the family doctor. We called him in to examine my brother. Which he has done. Although he was too late. My brother is dead.’