The Best British Fantasy 2013 Read online

  Everywhere else was the same, near enough. Miserable bastards all over the world. It was biblical. It was sad. And even though we were British, we were no better at coping than anyone else.

  My mum died a few weeks ago. No, it’s all right; I don’t want your sympathy. And I’m not telling you in order to have a chance to gush like everyone else. I just want all the circumstances to be clear.

  It was sudden, a heart attack. No one knew she had a dodgy ticker. They found her in the kitchen. Not surprising really; that was where she spent a good part of each day. She was a great cook, my mum. Made all your traditional English dishes and none of this foreign nonsense you see all over the TV and the colour supplements.

  She had no need to cook really. Dad’s been gone ten years and I left home thirty years ago. But cook she did. She’d give the stuff away for the church to sell at the ‘bring and buys’ and the fundraisers and she’d pop meals in to elderly types who lived alone. She wasn’t with ‘meals on wheels’ or anything; she did it because she liked to look after people. I suppose she didn’t see herself as an elderly type that lived alone but that was what she was.

  Whenever I went to visit I’d leave with armfuls of stuff for the freezer; you know, cakes and hot pots and pies and soups. My favourite was always her fish pie. So simple and yet absolutely delicious. Just thinking about it takes me back to the days when I’d come in from school on Fridays and smell the richness that had suffused the whole house.

  Ah, fish pie – the ultimate comfort food. God, it’s good.

  She’d just finished making one on the day she died. I didn’t want it to go to waste, so it’s in my freezer now waiting for a special occasion: a Friday, a most particular Friday.

  Yes, I did feel a little odd about taking the pie – after all, it might not have been meant for me – but I didn’t attach any kind of morbid superstition to the fact that it was last thing she did before she passed away, I just thought carefully about whether she’d have wanted me to take it or not. And, of course, I knew she would have.

  They say fish is ‘brain food’, don’t they? I’ve never really known why, but I have heard that your brain can be responsible for burning thousands of calories in a single day. Imagine that. Just thinking hard can use up all that energy. When I look around these days, I find it hard to believe that any of the moping masses are burning up many calories above the neck. They’re too busy living in fear.

  A large number of people, the number is in the thousands, have committed suicide over the last few weeks I was shocked to discover. Things get a bit tough and they just give up. Lovers taking pills together, teenagers hanging themselves in their bedrooms. A number of fathers have murdered their families while they slept and then shot themselves. They weren’t bloody thinking, were they? Not enough fish pie as youngsters, I suppose.

  Fair enough, I shouldn’t joke about it – there’s nothing funny about people killing each other but I’m not laughing at them. Not really. It just seems better to be laughing than pursuing the alternative. No. You won’t catch me losing control like that; you won’t catch me not thinking.

  You probably think I’m a bit cynical, a bit critical of others. Well don’t worry. I see the good things too, and I can admit I’ve got my own faults. My problem is I’m honest. I always have been – that’s another wonderful thing my mum gave to me; the courage to be honest no matter what the cost. I’ve never regretted honesty, not for a single moment of my life.

  So, the upside then. People are making up over the things they haven’t been able to forgive each other for in the past. The lady across the street in Number 46 has let her husband move back in. Apparently he’d had an affair and it was more than she could stand. He said he’d made a mistake, that he loved her and that it would never happen again, so she invited him back. I did think that was a bit of a joke; I mean if he decided to be unfaithful again he’d have to be a hell of a fast worker. Anyway, good for them, I say. I’ve never seen them as happy and that’s really what’s important isn’t it? To spend each day happily if you can.

  On a global scale a lot of conflicts have been spontaneously resolved. It’s not the politicians that have done it; they’d keep us at each other’s throats right up to the final minute if they could. But soldiers everywhere have lain down their weapons and gone home to their families. No one has the power to stop them. After all, they are the power, aren’t they? They’ve just walked away.

  In some places there’s been looting, but it’s half hearted. There’s not much that people can do with the stuff they’ve nicked. There isn’t enough time. So things haven’t been as bad as predicted.

  And I haven’t been to work since I first heard what was going to happen. They called here every day to start with, trying to threaten me with the sack and all that rubbish. I even had the boss on the phone saying he’d cancel my pension for breaching my employment contract. That was the best laugh I’d had in years. Laughed out loud right into his lughole. I didn’t bother trying to explain the foolishness of his arguments to him, I just told him to do whatever he felt was best. And I meant it too. I knew he’d realise eventually that everything had changed even if he wasn’t prepared to admit it to himself right at that moment. It was his business, the great project of his life; I don’t think he could quite believe that he was about to lose it all. I hope he has by now.

  The point is that I’ve had plenty of time to think and I’ve really enjoyed not working. It’s been the best holiday of my life knowing that there really is absolutely no point whatsoever in going to work. I might be cynical but I’ve never been so cynical as to actually enjoy spending most of my waking hours doing the bidding of someone I neither respect nor like, for a wage that was always inadequate.

  I’ve taken a lot of nice long walks down by the canal. You can see the back end of the city from the canal, the side it rarely shows except to rail passengers and the odd vagrant. It’s the place that seems most real to me, and the most peaceful. It’s been warm out there and I’ve spent a lot of time in my shorts and shirtsleeves sitting on a broken bit of wall and banging my heels against the bricks like a bored kid. But I haven’t been bored – I’ve been thinking.

  I’ve thought about how I’ve spent my life. Packing in work made me see things differently and the work that I’d been doing, which was no more than greasing the wheels of the huge money machine the world has become, appeared immediately pointless once I realised that the wheels wouldn’t be turning for much longer.

  I haven’t any regrets about my life; what I mean is, I’m not taking up sky diving or bomb disposal just because I suddenly have nothing else to lose. It’s not like that. I just wonder what else I might have done with my life had I known in advance that all this was going to happen. I wonder what the difference would have been for me or for the world if I had decided instead to be a dustman or an artist or a spy.

  I keep coming back to the idea that, if things hadn’t come to this, the most important thing would have been for me to be happy. Not in a way that meant I could just as easily be unhappy but in a way that meant I was content with my life regardless of circumstance. It points to the fact that I probably wouldn’t have changed a single thing. Perhaps the fact that I’m spending the last days of my life dawdling by a canal instead of going to work just means that I’m lazy but I don’t really believe that. Yes, it’s a little bit daunting and yes, it seems a little bit sad, but in the face of it all I find that I am content with how things are. I don’t feel the need to try and change or make up for anything. Maybe it will all hit me in some new way near the end and I’ll start panicking, but honestly, I just can’t see that happening.

  Wednesday today. Less than two days to go and although I feel fine in myself I found I haven’t been able to eat a single morsel for the last three days. I manage the odd cup of tea now and again, but that’s it. It feels strange not to eat anything at all; it’s literally breaking the habit of a life
time but I feel lighter and more awake and my mind is clearer than ever. All the colours around me seem brighter and more vivid as if objects have been lit up from the inside. People would probably argue that I’m hallucinating, but people can say what they like.

  I can feel myself starting to sit back from it all. In many places people are really starting to panic badly. I haven’t switched on the TV but I hear rumours about angry mobs and crowded churches. There’s a kind of mass response taking place but from what I can tell it’s a desperate one, a meaningless one. For my own part I feel drawn back from other people. Not in an unfriendly way, but as if I’ve stopped being concerned about them. It seems that, more than anything; this is a time for me.

  There was a loud knock at the door this morning and I went to answer it in my own leisurely time. There on the front step was a young couple probably no older than twenty or so and the girl was carrying an infant that could only have been a few weeks old. Their expressions were tense and desperate, but overlaid was a kind of expectant fervour and I knew what was coming. In the old days I might have turned them away immediately, especially for using their child as an enticement but, despite my new detachment, I found I had time for people now, time for everything. I waited for them to speak.

  ‘If ye repent, if ye plead for forgiveness and accept Jesus into thine heart ye shall be saved.’

  I couldn’t help the smallest of smiles. ‘So he can put a stop to all this, can he?’ I gestured skyward.

  ‘This is his doing, now is come the day of judgement when all souls are sent either to heaven or eternal damnation.’

  I looked from the two fevered faces of the parents to the face of the child. I looked into its new eyes and it looked back into mine, hardly blinking at all. We shared a moment of simplicity. I knew that everything was fine.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said looking back at the young parents, ‘I don’t think there’s anything I can help you with.’

  ‘No, mate,’ said the young man, suddenly aggressive and having lost all trace of his New Testament syntax, ‘we’ve come to help you. Repent now, ask for forgiveness and you will be saved.’

  It was very obvious that we weren’t going to make any more progress so I just said, ‘Come back another day,’ and closed the door very gently.

  ‘But there are no more days. You’re out of time.’

  I heard them shout at me for a few more seconds and then heard a hissing sound followed by their departing footsteps.

  When I checked outside the door I saw that they’d painted a red, downward pointing arrow on it. They’d done it using an aerosol and it looked disrespectfully urban and scruffy. I looked around at the other doors on my street and saw that almost all of them had white cruciform graffiti signalling their acceptance of Jesus into their hearts. Why couldn’t they have done it when there was time to make it worthwhile, I wondered?

  I shut the door just as gently the second time and went to sit in the garden for a while. It certainly was turning out to be the most glorious summer I could remember.

  They didn’t need to put a sign on my door. Unless, of course, they were thinking about coming back and handing out some punishment themselves because God was too busy. I knew that if there was a God, he could see inside my heart and he would know whether I was truly a sinner or not, if indeed, such criteria mattered to him. I also knew that he wouldn’t take it personally whether I believed in him or not.

  I did think about food from time to time, but it really did seem wrong to be eating and anyway, I had no appetite so I just let it slide. To be honest, I was enjoying the feeling that not eating gave me. The only thing that interested me was the fish pie in my freezer. Thinking about that perfect little beauty made my stomach grumble. It took a discipline I didn’t know I had to ignore those thoughts and put my mind on something else.

  By Thursday evening I really needed a distraction so I finally gave in and turned on the TV for the first time in over a week. I felt so removed from everything by that stage, so objective, that I didn’t think it would bother me to watch the last few gestures and goodbyes from my doomed world.

  After my own absence from work, I didn’t really expect to find much on the TV so it was with a good deal of surprise that I discovered the 10 o’clock news still broadcasting almost as if nothing had changed. It reminded me of the string quartets that had continued to play music on the decks of the Titanic as it sank so surely beneath the black cold waves of the Atlantic. The difference was that you couldn’t consider the news that was being shown to be any kind of entertainment.

  Almost everyone on the planet seemed to feel cornered by their destiny. They were not at peace and it seemed strange to me that given the choice of dying calmly and quietly or in a state of total hysteria that most chose the latter condition.

  In the streets, dogmatically opposed mobs from various religions battled it out with shotguns, kitchen knives and finally hand to hand. The need to own God had only intensified in the final days. Suicides had increased and instead of people meeting in large groups to hug and dance and cry, now they were meeting to die en masse. The bodies lined the pavements and the roads in every country – there was no one who could be bothered to go and clear them away. There was no time left for burial and ritual. All that was left? Insanity.

  Even the news presenter, a man whose face I had watched every night for years, looked strained to the point of snapping. Maybe it was just the fact that there was no one working in the make up department of the TV station any more. It didn’t seem to matter; the man’s face was a portrait of woe. When he came to say goodnight, it seemed he did so with disbelief. The hint of a mad smile twitched in the muscles of his face. His job, also, was finished forever.

  I switched the TV off for the last time and it set me to thinking once again. What was really happening here? I mean, just how bad a thing was it that after one thirty the following afternoon there would be no more world. I thought about it hard.

  It struck me that, as human beings, the only consciousness we experience throughout our entire lives is our own. It is impossible to do otherwise. Even if such a thing as reincarnation were a real factor in existence, we would still only experience one awareness at a time and that awareness would last from the moment we were born to the moment we died. Either it would be followed by some thing good, like heaven or another life, or it would be followed by the end of personal consciousness forever.

  I realised at that point that no matter how many beings were snuffed out the next day (and that would be all people and all plants and animals), none of their consciousnesses would join up to die together. There would merely be billions of single consciousnesses winking out at exactly the same moment. In a way, that meant that only one being was dying, and that only one being had ever lived. I took comfort from that thought. Maybe that was what I’d believed right from the start. Maybe that was why the whole issue had never really bothered me. It appeared that most people thought the most terrible tragedy was occurring, that the whole world and all of humanity was being wiped out. That this was a huge crime. That this was somehow wrong.

  I understood right there that the only thing those people were actually experiencing was the voice of their incredibly tenacious and petulant egos saying ‘it isn’t fair, it isn’t possible, it can’t be happening.’

  But, of course, it was.

  You would think I might have stayed up a little later than usual on the last night of my life, but I was tired and felt I needed an early night. Besides, the next day was going to be a big one. I went past the kitchen on the way to bed and took the fish pie out of the freezer. I wanted to make sure it had completely defrosted by the time I would need it, around lunch time the following day – the final Friday in history.

  I’ve even managed to have a bit of a lie in this morning, but I finally got up because I couldn’t get the thought of mum’s pie out of my head. I stood staring at it whilst still
wearing my pyjamas and slippers and worried for a few moments that it didn’t seem up to much. It was pale and soggy looking, there was no soul in it.

  I realised before long that it only looked that way because it hadn’t been cooked yet. While I washed and dressed I turned on the cooker to preheat and put the pie into the fridge. I couldn’t bear the thought that it might spoil in the heat. Now that would have been a tragedy – I didn’t want to die on an empty stomach.

  I ironed a shirt and put on my best suit. I gave my shoes a polish too because they were looking scruffy and would have brought the whole effect down a notch or two. For the first time ever, after shaving with the grain of my facial hair, I shaved a second time against the grain and my face felt as smooth as polished oak. I hadn’t had a thing to eat for five days and I felt as clear-headed and optimistic as I could remember. I checked my watch. The preparations were taking up time; it was already midday.

  Back in the kitchen, I took the pie out of the fridge and without allowing myself to obsess over its pallor and apparent lifelessness, popped it into the oven. I liked the potato on the top to be almost burned with crispness so I had set the oven between medium and high. I decided an hour would probably do it. That would just leave time for one last stroll down to the canal before the big moment.

  The streets were so silent it seemed like everyone might already be dead. Here and there however, I did notice signs of life. A flickering curtain, a baby being hushed, a door closing quietly. The lull was one of tense anticipation but I didn’t let myself tune into it. I didn’t want to spoil what was turning out to be the most gorgeous day of the summer so far. The sky over the city was a magnificent pure cobalt, as if all the fumes that had ever clouded it had been vacuumed away and the surface of the sky itself had then been polished.