13. A LAST KISS

THE TALE OF SEVEN KISSES (13)

FOREWORD

Prejudice.

THE TALE

“I saw her through the crowds,” cooed the Queen without her crown and without her head but somehow there anyway, majesty and everything part of her voice that wasn’t a voice. “The sweetest little urchin you ever did see. At first I thought she was a sweeping girl, you know, one from the world of sooty chimneys, a mite dedicated to that kind of hygiene, sweeping away with her brush and keeping the world clean enough for ladies and gentlemen to breathe in. Such a worthy way to spend and waste a life! Then her curly hair, so sweet, so beautiful, gave the truth away and I could tell as I rolled by in my golden carriage that she was the prettiest little black girl under the sun. So in my majesty and with Albert by my side I blew the waif a kiss...”

“And I caught it,” laughed the child, “and then blackness came between two fat bellies and stole my sight from me. So I rattled the lady’s door and she opened it and patted my head with old white fingers, and I knew her for me.”

“Who are you?” asked Cyril, who was no longer mentally in any place let alone where a crowned queen might tread.

“I’m Sammy Winston and I went to cheer the queen,” replied the child, twisting her words into the shape of a happy smile. “And then, when I found myself squashed to death I found the nice lady up some stairs, and I knew she would save me. And she did, because look, I’m here! And what’s more I’m with the queen and her golden carriage. Young and pretty, now as ever.”

“And old and fat,” muttered the queen, “even queens grow old and fat.”

“But shapes don’t matter here,” giggled the child, “and neither do colours. You can’t see me and I can’t see you, but we’re a black child talking to a white queen...”

“And as equals,” agreed the queen, “most assuredly as equals.”

“And who else are you?” asked Cyril, “besides being a child, I mean? Because, and this is the very devil of it, when I went to make sure that that Gwennie was all right she was weeping in front of her television and clutching a single curly black hair as if her life depended on it.”

“Mine,” laughed the child, “they scorned me for being black, the white bullies with dirty hair, but they loved my curly black hair, which was always clean!”

“And that such things as racial bullying should happen in my realm!” snapped the queen. Or it might have been snapping, for it sure as anything wasn’t whispering gently, like princess queens do in story-land with wreathing smiles on theor too-precious faces.

“Where am I?” whispered someone new, making this section of Afterlife seem preposterously crowded, “what is this place? The mists, the words from nowhere, sounds in what might be day or might be night… who can tell? And me, in all this fog...”

“There’s no such thing as time,” Sammy told her, “and so you’ll never find a day or a night! Not here! Just a queen and me...”

“And me!” That was Cyril and he got as close to shouting as any spirit ever did. “Is that you Gwennie? Is it finally you?”

“Do I know you?” The reply was hesitant, thoughtful.

“Of course you do, or should. You live below me. You know, in the flats...”

“The old man who plagues me, clomp, clomp, clomp, knock, knock, knock? Are you him? From the room upstairs, knock on my door, are you all right, dear and then wandering off before I answer of course I am?”

“Gwennie?” he asked.

“Of course I am, not that it need matter to you!”

“The book woman. That’s what they call you, those who might be friends of yours if you needed friends. But you don’t, do you? Need friends?”

“I’ve seen things,” she replied, and her voice might have sounded darkly had they any decibels attached, because the words would have sounded that way before she died.

“We all see things,” commented the Queen, “at least, we used to.

“You’re me, misses, aren’t you?” asked the shapeless, invisible Sammy.

“And all the others,” put in Cyril. “I’ve met the plague woman, the headless queen, the poet’s barmaid, the diarist’s lover, the rich man’s mistress, the cheering beautiful black girl, all in this place and all perfectly lovely. I’ve seen all of them and they’re all you. I know it even if you don’t.”

She smiled at him, or might have smiled had she lips with which to smile with, or any ability to display any kind of emotion.

“You met them too?” she asked, “I thought I might be going mad when they knocked my door one after the other. Where did you meet them?”

“Here,” he said, “in this place. Wandering about, you know, speaking and not speaking, coming and going, women from the ages and they were all, to a fleeting thought, you. My Gwennie.”

“Just a moment!” she exploded, “Your Gwennie? How come I’m suddenly your Gwennie?”

“Because you always were,” he said, “I’ve understood the riddle.”

“What riddle, I don’t see a riddle?”

“Down all the ages,” he murmured, “from generation to generation, from mother to daughter and father to son, in peace and terribly in war, my first ever name was Adam and yours was Eve. Simple as that. And down the long millennia we’ve loved each other, killed each other, tortured each other, done unspeakable things to each other and then the gentlest of things, loved each other… And once in a striking blue moon we overlap with ourselves and meet at a crucial moment. But you and I, we know who we are, now that we’re dead.”

“That’s all gobbledegook,” she told him.

Sammy laughed with her. “But sometimes the only true things are gobbledegook,” she said, “and I’d love to call you mother or daughter or something tangible like that, but I can’t. What I can do, though, is call you me, a dead me in this Afterlife where only the dead can wander.”

“You mean I’m dead?” the spirit of Gwennie asked, shocked.

Cyril would have taken her by one hand but neither of them had a single limb or digit between them.

“As a dodo,” he said, “now come with me, I want to show you around… I’d kiss you if I could, one first and final kiss, but that’s out of the question, the way we are. I really should have taken my opportunity before we passed away.”

“Oh,” she sighed, “and maybe, come to think of it, so should I.”

THE END

© Peter Rogerson, 22.03.20