4. A Disturbing Conversation

A QUESTION OF TIME Part 4

“So,” asked Eleanor slowly as she prepared to go to bed, “how did we get married if you’re mouldering in a cheap coffin six feet down and I’m in a fancy white frock in a church somewhere?”

“That’s the wonder of it,” sighed Colin, “there was a moment, an absolutely marvellous moment, when I was neither alive nor dead. No, not a moment, less than that! The Land Rover had done its worst, it was 1956, and for the tiniest instant when I was both alive and dead at the same itsy bitsy moment something happened and I got trapped exactly how I was at that fragment of time. Both alive and dead, and that’s how I’ve been ever since.”

“That’s gobbledegook,” she said.

He sighed, “I know, but that’s how it is,” he murmured, “it was particularly awkward when I grew too old to stay alive and died again.”

“Now you’re talking nonsense,” she said, slowly undressing and not caring whether he saw her or not. After all, she couldn’t see him. Unless listening to a disembodied voice was also seeing, and she knew that it wasn’t.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

“It’s ten o'clock, I’ve had a busy day at school so I’m going to bed so that tomorrow I’ll be fresh enough for the torment that is P.E.,” she said. “And there’s biology with Miss Curlew. She fancies me.”

“She what?”

“Fancies me. I can tell by the way she looks at me. She’s all right though. So what are you doing tomorrow, as if I didn’t know, stinking and rotting away, that’ll be you.”

“I’ll have to decide which part of being alive and dead simultaneously I want to be,” he sighed, “there is comfort in a coffin, though mine is getting smelly and an earwig found its way in and wants to get out.”

“Now you’re talking garbage,” she groaned, folding her knickers before staring at her reflection in her mirror. “I’m quite pretty, don’t you think?” she asked.

“You always were.” He frowned as one of his ears fell off and rested in the sludge at the bottom of his coffin. “In fact,” he went on, “my mother didn’t know that you existed or you’d have been persona non gratis everywhere in my life. But excuse me. I’ve got a bit of housework to do.”

She felt rather than saw him as he withdrew. Colin Wharton was becoming an enigma, and she never knew which part of his life he was going to be occupying when he returned. She wondered whether he was a fanciful nightmare that wouldn’t go away until it did go away. Maybe a part of her own overworked brain. And it was overworked, with school exams coming up.

Before the accident she’d liked him well enough. The two schools the girls and the boys, had always shared a playing field, but there was a far corner that had become known as no man’s land because although neither boy nor girl was allowed, on pain of the most dreadful punishment, to venture into it, almost all the boys and most of the girls at some time of their lives actually did, and no punishment wad ever meted out even though the teaching staff in both establishments were well aware of the multiple transgressions. The truth was, the staff from both schools found amusement in the antics of their teenage charges and even opened books on who was likely to go off with who next week.

So Colin and Eleanor had sneaked there together. They had exchanged innocent kisses, in fact the kisses had ben so innocent they were almost non-existent but none-the-less had bordered on meaning quite a lot to both youngsters. They’d certainly succeeded in making Ian Ganderson jealous because he didn’t approve when girls put their feline mouths close to his best friend, Colin Wharton. Not that he wanted to kiss him. At least, not exactly what you’d call kiss him… not these days now he was older... But jealousy’s jealousy and not dependent on kisses.

All of which changed the subject.

“The thing is, Ian,” said Colin out of the blue, “you’re in the bath and I’m standing here watching, and there’s something weird about that.”

“Shut up, Col, and get back to being dead,” replied Ian. “I wish you wouldn’t do this all the time, start talking from nowhere and staring at my you know what!”

“I’m doing nothing fo the sort!” snapped Colin, who was at that precise moment examining the antics of a couple of copulating snails trying to make sense of the sludge at the bottom of his coffin.

“Well, you should be,” replied Ian, “I’m going out with Eleanor Crinkworthy and when I’m a bit older I might propose to her. She says she hasn’t got a boyfriend now that you’re dead.”

“You won’t marry her,” Colin told him confidently, “I’ve been to her wedding. I sort of had to go because it was me she was marrying.”

“You can’t marry dead people,” scoffed Ian, “it’s impractical and impossible to consummate.”

“How do you know? Have you ever been dead?” demanded an enraged Colin.

“I wanted to marry you once, mate,” sighed Ian, “when I was a kid and thinking like little kids do. I mean, it made sense to me, we’ve been mates for ever and we get on really well. Then it crossed my mind you weren’t a girl. That was when I discovered how girls differed from us lads. Ages ago.”

Another subject change.

“He wanted to marry me, and I’m another boy!” laughed Colin to Eleanor, who had just pulled a pretty pink nightie on and was climbing into bed.

“Who did?”

“Ian Ganderson. I mean, it’s ridiculous! He changed his mind and said he’d propose to you instead. You’d get wed and be Eleanor Ganderson, and that sounds plain wrong!”

“He’s okay, is Ian.”

“What do you mean, okay? What have you two been up to while I’ve been decomposing?”

“We met on no man’s land and he showed me his you know what!”

“He was just in the bath!”

“Now what are you wittering about? He was in his P.E. shorts and he showed me his you know what, and he was sure Miss Frobisher saw! She was on playground duty and chatting up Miss Curlew on our side of the playground, she’s our biology teacher, and she knows a thing or two about stuff!”

“I spoke to him! He was in the bath! He said things he wouldn’t have said if I hadn’t been mowed down by that Land Rover. He said he fancied me once. When we were kids, you know.”

“I might say yes if he asks,” grinned Eleanor, “he’s all right, is Ian, and at least I know he’s got a you know what. I bet you haven’t. I bet yours has turned to something horrible and stinky and revolting, with worms living in it.”

All of him had become stinking. He knew that. Every smelly smidgen of him.

“I’ll put that right,” he assured her, “I’ll get myself some flesh. Then you’ll want to marry me. I know you will. Remember that kiss in no man’s land?”

“Oh crickey!” He did.

“I’ll be back when I’ve found myself some flesh,” he assured her, “then I’ll propose to you. Until then, do me a favour and stop perving at Ian Ganderson’s you know what!”

Eleanor snuggled down in her bed. That’s what I call a very disturbing conversation she thought to herself.

Because it was.

© Peter Rogerson 03.06.21

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