My Legendary Girlfriend (16 page)

‘This is kind of related to what you did this afternoon,’ said Kate, revealing her question. ‘Where do you stand on death?’

‘I’m against it,’ I joked.

We both laughed.

‘You know what I mean,’ she said. ‘What do you think about death?’

‘I think that when you’re dead you’re dead,’ I said matter-of-factly. ‘This is it as far as life goes, so we’d better make the most of it while we’ve got it. Although having said that, I think I’d be kind of disappointed if what I’ve spent the last twenty-six years experiencing was really all there was to life.’

‘Okay, well my question for you is this: how would you like to die?’ said Kate, as if she was a waitress asking a diner how they liked their eggs done.

‘This is all getting a bit strange, isn’t it?’ I said.

‘Strange? You should hear the things that me and Paula talk about at five in the morning after our eighth triple vodka! Question is, are you man enough?’

‘I’m more of a man than you,’ I protested mockingly.

‘I should hope so!’ said Kate.

‘You’ll never find out,’ I retorted, wondering if this banter we were engaging in constituted flirting or simply joking around.

‘Seriously, how would you like to pop off?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, gratefully returning to the subject of death. ‘I’ll need some time to think about this one. In the meantime, what about you? How would you like to die?’

‘I thought you’d never ask!’ she said laughing. ‘Me and Paula have discussed this many times during our late night chats. My answer is all ready. Are you?’

‘As I’ll ever be.’

3.20 P.M.

Now this is going to sound morbid, in fact it’s going to sound very morbid. I suppose it is morbid, really. What must you think of me? You don’t know me that well, so I suppose you’re probably not thinking all that much. Well, here goes. Every now and again I like to think about my own funeral. I know it sounds weird but it’s true. People don’t think about death very much these days, do they? They seem to spend their whole lives avoiding it. Pensioners on the other hand think about it constantly. They’ve definitely got the right idea. I suppose it’s because they’re so much nearer to the End than the rest of us. They keep a little bit of money in a post-office account to make sure there’s enough cash around to pay for a decent funeral, coffin and finger-food for afterwards. That’s how it should be. Then of course you’ve got the ancient Egyptians. They spent their entire lives thinking about death and when they went it was like the biggest party ever: good clothes, possessions and even slaves buried in the roomiest coffins in the world. Egyptians, old people and me – we’ve all got our priorities right.

The first thing to work out is exactly how I’m going to die. Sometimes it’s drowning, other times it’s an aeroplane crash, but at the moment it’s dying in any manner at all as long as it’s for someone I love.

Okay, so you want me to explain? It’s really simple. I’m desperate to die for someone I love. That’s all there is to it. I don’t know what the situation is. The important thing is that when I die the person I save lives on because of me. That’s all that matters. I know it won’t surprise you to know that I’ve already constructed a purpose-built scenario for this!

I’m nearly twenty. I’ve not done an awful lot with my life so far. I’ve been to school, gained a couple of A levels, gone to university and dropped out, and, um, that’s about it. Pretty self-centred, wouldn’t you say?

I got the idea from a black and white film I saw one Saturday afternoon the week before I moved out of the flat.

Here’s the sitch: there’s a cad, a French aristocrat, and a beautiful girl who’s madly in love with the aristo. Anyway, the Cad falls in love with Beautiful Girl. On a trip to France the Aristocrat gets caught by the children of the revolution, who put him in the Bastille. The Cad goes to France and visits the Aristocrat in the Bastille. Now here’s the good bit: the Cad knocks out Aristocrat, swaps places with him and goes to the guillotine in his place! D’you see? Cad loves Beautiful Girl so much that he’s prepared to sacrifice his own life so that she can be happy with Another!

That film left me in shock. I’ve only seen it once. I don’t even know what it’s called – I mean . . . well . . . I did know, but now I don’t. Being dumped does that to your long-term memory, doesn’t it? Oh, it doesn’t matter what it was called, it moved me. It really moved me. I mean, what does it mean? Is that love or is it obsession? Will any man want to do that for me? I’m asking a lot of questions. I apologise. I think Dirk Bogarde was in it.

Where did we begin all this? Oh yeah! My funeral.

It’s been a great worry of mine that all of the people that I want to invite to my funeral won’t be invited due to my own lack of foresight. There’s no one person amongst my friends that knows all of my other friends. My friend Lizzie knows most of the people who went to our school who were friends with me, but she wouldn’t know people like Pete or Jimmy or Karen or any of the small number of friends I made at university, and she wouldn’t know any of the people from when I lived in Cardiff last summer like Mrs Grosset, or the lads who used to come into the Lion on a Tuesday night. A couple of times I’ve made a definitive list and posted it to Lizzie with strict instructions for it to remain sealed until my death. Lizzie is a mate, but I just know that she’s opened it. Well, you would, wouldn’t you? But it doesn’t matter because I revise the list every now and again when certain people get too much for me. I’ll add you to it if you want me to.

I suppose with all this talk about funerals you’ll think I’m being really vain but it’s something we’re all guilty of. I just want to know that my passing will be mourned big time. I don’t want people to be philosophical about my death. I want them to grieve for a decent period. It’s good for the soul, you know?

3.42 P.M.

It’ll be of little comfort to you but you’re no weirder than me. I know what you mean when you say you want to die for someone else. When you look back at your life you want to have meant something. I’ve got a friend, or rather had a friend, and it’s just possible that through some quirk of fate he might become famous. And I bet he thinks that if he gets this goal, i.e. fame and fortune, his life will have meaning. But it won’t. The only way life can really mean something is if you give it away. It’s a shame though because if you do give it away, you don’t get the chance to fully appreciate the splendour of it. That’s the main flaw of the ultimate selfless act – you never get the chance to be around to take your bow.

I had my first encounter with death at the age of five. I’d been given a junior gardening kit by my parents which consisted of a small shovel, rake and watering can. My mum had bought me some red Wellington boots to go with it and my dad had let me choose a packet of carrot seeds from a huge row of seed packets at the local gardening centre. At the time I had a big thing about carrots. I thought that if I grew some they’d lure Bugs Bunny to my garden. I lived in hope that one day I’d see my carrots disappearing under the ground and then I’d know that Bugs was real. Then I’d peer down the hole where my carrots had been and he’d look up at me, twitch his whiskers and say, ‘What’s up, Doc?’

It was an incredibly hot summer’s day when I decided to do my planting – my dad completely ignored the advice on the packet, which said to sow from March to late May – just to make me happy. Within half an hour of starting work I’d dug the soil, planted my seeds and watered them. My job was done, but I carried on digging for the sake of it in a patch of ground away from the carrots. Once in a while I’d find a worm. The first one startled me a little – I think it was because they didn’t have eyes – but after that, every time I came across one, I picked it up on the edge of my spade and popped it in my little yellow bucket. I decided to have a competition to see how many worms I could collect in an afternoon. I promised myself that if I’d collected enough by the end of the day I’d try and make my own wormery like the one I’d seen in the solitary copy of
The Encyclopaedia Britannica
(Washington – Yam) we’d received free for joining a book club.

At about one o’clock my mum called me in for lunch. I was quite relieved to finally take a rest because I was beginning to feel a bit dizzy from the heat. Inside, the house was cool. On the table was a ham, lettuce and tomato sandwich and a glass of Ribena. I drank and ate and felt content. In fact I felt so content that I fell asleep on the living room sofa. Two hours later I woke up. By now it was time for the kids’ programmes on telly. I watched my favourite cartoons until my mum ordered me to sort out the mess in the garden. It was then that I remembered the worms. I examined the bucket expecting to see a writhing mass of slimy worms bent on revenge. Instead all I saw were very grey, very stiff, very dry, dead worms. Why weren’t they moving? I wondered. Why had they stopped being worms? Eventually I worked out that their few hours in the sun might not have been particularly beneficial to their welfare, so I rushed to the kitchen and filled a Tupperware beaker with water from the hot tap, poured it into the bucket and waited. I expected the worms to be instantly re-animated, but they weren’t. Instead they floated on the surface of the water, rocking gently to and fro as steam rose up against my face.

I asked my mum why the worms had died and she gave me the technical answer about them losing moisture and dehydrating. But that didn’t really answer my question. Why were they dead? The real answer, and the answer that I kind of worked out there and then, was this: the worms died because everything dies eventually. That’s what life is all about.

The only attractive prospect about dying is that if I do it soon enough there’s the possibility that Aggi might finally see that she and I were meant for each other. Of course, her realising this once I’ve popped my clogs makes the whole thing kind of pointless, but at least this great wrong would at last have been righted.

And now to funerals: I’ve done more than plan the guest list. First off there’ll be twenty-two wailing women, dressed in black, standing at my graveside; girls whom I’ve fancied at various points in my sad life but who had ignored my advances, only to realise, now that I was dead, that I had been their perfect man all along.

My mum would be weeping like mad; I can’t imagine that she’d be in any state other than suicidal. I think she’s desperate to die before either my brother Tom or me, and I’m inclined to agree that it might be for the best. My mother takes great comfort in the status quo, as does my dad; they like things to be just the way they found them, though that didn’t stop them getting divorced last year.

I find it hard enough to deal with twenty-six years of life, so the thought of dealing with an eternity of death fills me with dread. I can barely motivate myself to get out of bed these days. I wasn’t always like this. I wasn’t like this at all.

Look, I’m feeling a bit tired now. Thanks for calling. You’re certainly an interesting person to talk to, but right now I’ve got to go. And no, it’s not because I want to be a moody boy loner, although any mystique, even hackneyed moody boy loner mystique, would be useful. It’s just that I’m talking all manner of weirdness to you straight off the cuff. I need to sit down and work everything out a bit. I found out today that the only girl I had ever loved cheated on me with my best friend and it kind of shook me up. Look, I promise I’ll phone you back soon.

4.41 P.M.

My neck was killing me.

During the course of the conversation I’d changed position several times and, by the time I’d put the phone down, I was lying half on the bed and half on the floor with my neck supporting more weight than it was designed to. It was a little unsettling to be suddenly thrust back into The Real World. A gust of wind sent a sheet of rain crashing against my window, as if I needed reminding that I wasn’t meant to be happy. I picked up the phone again to see if Kate was still there. Sometimes, if the other person hasn’t put their phone down, they can still be connected. When I discovered this, I used to do it to Aggi all the time. She’d always be the first to put the phone down and then she’d pick it up seconds later to call someone else and I’d still be there. When she cottoned on to what I was doing, she made me put the phone down first whenever we spoke. With hindsight, of course, she probably did it so she could phone Simon.

I reflected on the conversation I’d had with Kate. I hadn’t told her the whole truth – I hadn’t told her about my fantasies about Aggi’s untimely passing. For ages the only way I could cope with Aggi’s absence from my life was by pretending she was dead. I scattered her ashes by our oak tree in Crestfield Park, and when I occasionally visited her, I’d lay a few daisies at the base of the tree and tell her how life was. It was great when she was dead because at last I was free from worry. I always knew where she was and what she was doing; she always listened attentively and never argued.

Her funeral was wonderful. Lying in the coffin at the crematorium, her face was pale and fragile, her body stiff and wax-like – the complete opposite to how she’d been alive. Many of her previous boyfriends were present at the service but while they were all grim-faced and stiff-upper-lipped, I was the only one who openly shed tears because she would’ve liked that. Like Kate said, the last thing you want at your own funeral is people being reserved – the more wailing and gnashing of teeth the better.

Mrs Peters had cried too. She was one of the few people who could understand the pain I was going through. Although we hadn’t spoken at the crematorium, when she’d bumped into me in town weeks later, she revealed how she’d always had a soft spot for me and said things like Aggi must’ve taken leave of her senses to dump me. She promised to put in a good word for me with Aggi when she got back home, unable to grasp the concept that her only daughter was dead.