Alan Moore - Jerusalem

Good old Phyll, as swift as Bill himself when it came to shirking responsibility. Now that he’d thought about it, that was more than likely where he’d got it from.

“Yeah, but you ’eard what Doddridge said, about ’ow we should take ’im where we wanted to and rest assured that it’d be where we were meant to take ’im. I’ve got an idea that this decision what we’re faced with now might be exactly what ’e meant. Perhaps ’e told us that so we’d ’ave confidence enough to make the right choice. This might be really important, Phyll. This might make all the difference as to whether we succeed in doin’ what we’ve been told we should do, or not.”

That had seemed to persuade her. Phyllis had marshalled her soldiers with competing terror and determination in her voice and her expression. She’d told them that they’d got one last stop to make before returning their new regimental mascot and most recent member to his own time and his own resuscitated body. She’d explained that this would mean another short trip to the Mayorhold, up to Tower Street where they’d been the last time they were in this century, before they’d dug back down to 1959 so they could go upstairs and watch the Master Builders have their fight. She hadn’t spelled it out much more than that, presumably for fear of scaring Michael Warren, but you could see in the eyes of Reggie, John and Marjorie that they’d known something serious was up, just by the strain in Phyllis’s tight voice.

She’d led the ghost gang and their trailing duplicates up the same northern earthworks’ wall from the collapsed lagoon that Bill and his accomplices had climbed up on their brief trip back to 2005. This brought them out onto the same long slope of grass that ran down alongside St. Andrew’s Road to Scarletwell Street and the solitary house that loomed there near its corner. Bill had been just about to point out to Phyllis that this was the spot that had scared Michael Warren into running away earlier — which was why Bill had chosen flying over walking, after all — when Michael himself had piped up and put his own two penn’orth in.

“Is that our street down there, that’s got the haunt-head house stood all Malone upon its corner? I shed like to go and have a lurk at it, if that’s all ripe. I premise I won’t ruin away again, like I dead lost time.”

Although you could tell from how he’d mixed his words up that the small boy had been nervous, you could also tell that he’d been serious. He seemed to have matured quite rapidly since he’d absconded earlier, perhaps starting to grow into his timeless and eternal soul the way that people did when they were dead, regardless of what age they’d died at. Anyway, he’d seemed quite keen to go and have a look at the bare turf and young trees that were now presiding where his family home had previously been, and so the gang had all traipsed down the slope with him towards Scarletwell corner. When he’d thought of all the pains he’d taken to avoid the place for Michael’s benefit, Bill had been moderately annoyed to think that they’d all been for nothing. Of course, if the four ghost-children had walked over Spencer Bridge then that would have upset Drowned Marjorie, and anyway, the flights they’d taken there and back had both been lovely. Plus, the aerial view had tipped him off as to what Alma’s wall-sized Armageddon painting had been all about, so he’d come out on top, whichever way you looked at it. He’d decided to quit all his internal moaning and just get on with the job in hand.

The gang and their pursuing after-images had trickled to a halt halfway along the unattended patch of lawn there just past Scarletwell Street corner and its lonely single house. They’d all stood silently as an unusually sombre Michael Warren had paced in his slippers up and down between the thirty-year-old silver birches that had first been planted sometime after his home street had been demolished. When the ghost-child had at last identified a spot where he seemed satisfied his house had stood he’d simply sat down on the turf and had a private weep, both dignified and brief, before he’d wiped the tears of ectoplasm from his eyes with one sleeve of his tartan dressing gown and then stood up again, re-joining his dead friends who’d all been standing a few feet off, keeping a respectful distance.

“That wiz all I wanted, just to find out how it felt with nothing there, but it wiz peaceful, like it always wiz. We can all go up to the Mayorhold now, if that wiz what you thought we ought to do before you take me home.”

They’d all been just about to do as Michael had suggested when the young girl in the mini-skirt and PVC mac that they’d spotted earlier in Chalk Lane had come clicking on her high heels down the hill and started walking back and forth along the strip of pavement between Scarletwell and Spring Lane while the gang had stood there on the grass verge, watching her.

Reggie and Marjorie had both begun to giggle when they’d realised that the mixed-race woman with her hair done up in frizzled corn-rows was a prostitute, while Michael Warren had sniggered along with them without having the first idea what he was laughing at. At this point the young woman had stopped in her tracks and turned her head in their direction, peering puzzled and uncertain through the gloom towards them for a moment before she’d resumed her pacing to and fro along the empty former terrace.

Phyllis had hissed in reproach at Reg and Marjorie for laughing.

“Cut it ayt, you two. Me and me little ’un saw her earlier in Chalk Lane, and we reckon she can see us, with whatever drugs she’s on or comin’ orf of.”

Reggie, peering at the young pro as she got to Scarletwell Street and turned round again to face them, walking back along with her arms folded to suppress a shiver, had removed his hat to scratch his curly head and then had stooped to speak to Phyll in a stage whisper.

“I reckon as I’ve seen ’er before as well, although I can’t think where it wiz.”

Bill had chimed in, putting his less quick-witted chum out of his misery.

“We saw ’er up in Bath Street, you big bowler-hatted berk. She wiz sat in ’er flat and we could see ’er through the walls, with the Destructor grindin’ at her innards while she did ’er scrapbook. You remember. It wiz just when we were bringin’ titch ’ere out the flats, after we’d found ’im on the steps there, talkin’ about ’is Forbidden Worlds and that.”

Reg had grinned amiably.

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. I can’t remember nothin’ about no forbidden worlds, but I remember seein’ ’er with that big smoking wheel workin’ away at ’er, and her with no idea as it wiz ’appenin’.”

It had then been Drowned Marjorie’s turn to raise objections.

“Well, what about me, then? I weren’t with you when you found him up by the Destructor. I wiz with Phyllis and John, and yet I think I know her from somewhere as well. Haven’t we seen her working somewhere, not the work she’s doing now, but in a shop or something? Oh, I can’t remember. P’raps I’m makin’ a mistake.”

While the ghost-children had stood talking on the grass, a number of the era’s stern and serious cars had hurtled past, narrow-eyed and suspicious, heading for the station or for Spencer Bridge and the attendant lorry-park. Bill had mused idly and perhaps mean-spiritedly that when they’d brought Princess Di back to Northamptonshire for burial, they should have brought her through Spencer Estate and over Spencer Bridge, so that she could have passed at least once over the dilapidated byways that her family had loaned its name to. He’d gone on from this to wonder why the girl was plying her trade here, when not two hundred yards away there was the Super Sausage café and the lorry park with its potential customers, the lonely men away from home nursing their urgent super sausages. He’d watched her shivering and shaking as she’d paced the meagre limits of her territory, most probably quaking from drug withdrawal rather than the cold on such a mild spring night, and it had come to him that unlike in the area near Spencer Bridge, there were no cameras here. That was the likely reason that she’d picked this spot, even though there was much less chance of passing trade.