Lost in a Good Book

asking:

‘So you’re Parke-Laine, eh?’

‘What’s left of him.’

‘And you and Next are in love?’

‘Yes.’

I took Landen’s hand as though to reinforce the statement.

‘I was in love once, you know,’ murmured Hades with a sad and distant smile. ‘I was quite besotted, in my own sort of way. We used to plan heinous deeds together, and for our first anniversary we set fire to a large public building. We then sat on a nearby hill together to watch the fire light up the sky, the screams of the terrified citizens a symphony to our ears.’

He sighed again, only this time more deeply.

‘But it didn’t work out. The course of true love rarely runs smooth. I had to kill her.’

‘You had to kill her?’

He sighed. ‘Yes. But I spared her any pain—and said I was sorry.’

‘That’s a very heart-warming story,’ murmured Landen.

‘You and I have something in common, Mr Parke-Laine.’

‘I sincerely hope not.’

‘We live only in Thursday’s memories. She’ll never be rid of me until she dies. The same goes for you—sort of ironic, isn’t it? The man she loves, the man she hates!’

‘He’ll be returning,’ I replied confidently, ‘when Jack Schitt is out of The Raven.’

Acheron laughed.

‘I think you overestimate Goliath’s commitment to their promises. Landen is as dead as I am, perhaps more so—at least I survived childhood.’

‘I beat you fair and square, Hades,’ I said, handing him a jam pot and a knife as he helped himself to a scone, ‘and I’ll take on Goliath and win, too.’

‘We’ll see,’ replied Acheron thoughtfully, ‘we’ll see.’

I thought of the Skyrail and the falling Hispano-Suiza.

‘Did you try and kill me the other day, Hades?’

‘If only!’ he answered, waving the jam spoon in our direction and laughing. ‘But then again I might have done—after all, I’m here only as your memory of me. I sincerely hope that I am, perhaps, not dead, and out there somewhere for real, plotting, plotting…!’

Landen stood up.

‘C’mon, Thurs. Let’s leave this clown to our scones. Do you remember when we first kissed?’

The tea room was suddenly gone and in its place was a warm night in the Crimea. We were back at Camp Aardvark watching the shelling of Sevastopol on the horizon, the finest fireworks show on the planet if only you could forget what it was doing. The sound of the barrage was softened almost into a lullaby by the distance. We were both in battledress and standing together but not touching—and by God, how much we wanted to.

‘Where’s this?’ asked Landen.

‘It’s where we kissed for the first time,’ I replied.

‘No!’ replied Landen. ‘I remember watching the shelling with you but we only talked that evening. I didn’t actually kiss you until the night you drove me out to forward CP and we got stuck in the minefield.’

I laughed out loud.

‘Men have such crap memories when it comes to things like this! We were standing apart like this and desperately wanting to just touch one another. You put your hand on my shoulder to pretend to point something out and I slid my hand into the small of your back like… so. We didn’t say anything but when we held each other it was like… like electricity!’

We did. It was. The shivers went all the way to my feet, bounced back, returned in a spiral up my body and exited my neck as a light sweat.

‘Well,’ replied Landen in a quiet voice a few minutes later, ‘I think I prefer your version. So if we kissed here then the night in the minefield was—’

‘Yes,’ I told him, ‘yes, yes, it was.’

And there we were, sitting outside an armoured personnel carrier in the dead of night two weeks later, marooned in the middle of probably the best-signposted minefield in the area.

‘People will think you did this on purpose,’ I told him as unseen bombers droned overhead, off on a mission to bomb someone to pulp.

‘I got away only with a reprimand as I recall,’ he replied. ‘And anyway, who’s to say that I didn’t?’

‘You drove deliberately into a minefield just for a leg-over?’ I asked, laughing.

‘Not any old leg-over,’ he replied. ‘Besides, there was no risk involved.’

He pulled a hastily drawn map out of his battledress pocket.

‘Captain Bird drew this for me.’

‘You scheming little shitbag!’ I told him, throwing an empty K-ration tin at him. ‘I was terrified!’

‘Ah!’ replied Landen with a grin. ‘So it was terror and not passion that drove you into my arms?’

I shrugged. ‘Well, maybe a bit of both.’

Landen leaned forward, but I had a thought and pressed a fingertip to his mouth.

‘But this wasn’t the best, was it?’

He stopped, smiled and whispered in my ear:

‘At the furniture store?’

‘In your dreams, Land. I’ll give you a clue. You still had a leg and we both had a week’s leave—by lucky coincidence at the same time.’

‘No coincidence,’ said Landen with a smile.

‘Captain Bird again?’

‘Two hundred bars of chocolate but worth every one.’

‘You’re a bit of a rake, y’know, Land—but in the nicest kind of way. Anyhow,’ I continued, ‘we elected to go cycling in the Republic of Wales.’

As I spoke the APC vanished, the night rolled back and we were walking hand in hand through a small wood by the side of a stream. It was summer and the water babbled excitedly among the rocks, the springy moss a warm carpet to our bare feet. The blue sky was devoid of clouds and the sunlight trickled in among the verdant foliage above our heads. We pushed aside low branches and followed the sound of a waterfall. We came across two bicycles leaning up against a tree, the panniers open and the tent half pegged out on the ground. My heart quickened as the memories of that particular summer’s day flooded back. We had started to put the tent up but stopped for a moment, the passion overcoming us both on the warm ground. I squeezed Landen’s hand and he put his arm round my waist. He smiled at me with his funny half-smile.

‘When I was alive I came to this memory a lot,’ he confided to me. ‘It’s one of my favourites, and amazingly your memory seems to have got most things correct.’

‘Is that a fact?’ I asked him as he kissed me gently on my neck. I shivered slightly and ran my fingers down his naked back.

‘Most—plock—definitely.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Nothing—plock-plock—why?’

‘Oh, no! Not now of all times!’

‘What?’ asked Landen.

‘I think I’m about to—’

‘—wake up.’

But I was talking to myself. I was back in my bedroom in Swindon, my memory excursion annoyingly cut short by Pickwick, who was staring at me from the rug, leash in beak and making quiet plock- plock noises. I gave her a baleful stare.