derneath his pallid mask Henry recognised him; it was his father. And the swearing, sweating mess that clung to him was his mother. ‘None too clever this birthing process,’ said the clerk from behind him. ‘Throws everything out of whack.’ ‘What is this?’ ‘It’s your birthday.’ ‘My-’ But the clerk was gone. A baby yelled. He saw the child emerge, surfing on the tidal wave that gushed from his mother, a six pound pot roast erupting through the open window his mother spread from one world to the next. The doctor opened a window too; the noxious fumes accompanying its arrival were overwhelming. They make you pay for such indiscretions. He remembered vividly the birth canal, as fetid and clotted as the one by Romannon Street; the terror as he hit vegetation. His first birthday, no cake, no candles, just blood and guts and tears; a prototype of all that would follow. He looked at his small crying self. Such an ugly baby. He was just a short slap away from being thrown to an indifferent world, full of little miracles, bored to death of them. Why had they bothered? He had been an Elastoplast baby, used to cover the festering wound of his parent’s marriage. He had failed miserably, something his mother pointed out to him on a daily basis. The doctor held the dripping child aloft, a sacrificial lamb offered to a hungry God. The sight of blood on his mother’s thighs, on his tiny arms and protruding belly made him cry. He had been sensitive from a tender age. ‘It’s a ..’ The doctor paused for the longest time and Henry felt the shame of the changing room return, ‘…a boy!’
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The baby reached for the umbilical, tried to crawl back, intuitively aware he did not belong here, but the lifeline was cut and he was left stranded. They swaddled him in a blanket and presented him, a bouquet of pink steaming meat, to his mother. She clucked, turned her eyes in, mouthed nonsense words. It was then that Henry had had his first coherent thought: My mother is an idiot. Enough. He squeezed back out the door, into the dim corridor, and found Sheba waiting for him. He had forgotten all about her and her gentle brown eyes. She’d been the only one who had ever been pleased to see him; how could he have forgotten her? She barked a greeting and Henry felt something inside him slip. His dad had always told him not to stick his toe into the bath plughole, told him it would suck him down with the water. Now here he was, on the other side, for Sheba had been dead for twenty years. He had buried her at the bottom of the garden and he had talked to her every day. Of course, he had pretended to be weeding just in case his mother was watching him. You come for me when it’s my time Sheba, he always told the little mound of earth before he left, and we’ll be together forever. ‘Are you my guide girl?’ Wagging her stumpy tail she bounded into a pillar of bright light barking for him to follow. He ran after her, crying ‘Stop!’ for the last time she had bounded into the light it had been the headlamps of a Vauxhall Viva and her little body had crunched beneath the wheels. He closed his eyes as he raced into the heart of the pillar. He felt a shower of insects crawl over his face, their hard pellet bodies scraping his skin. Their
countless legs, barbed with coarse hair and dipped in dung, tickled his lips, made him gag. He felt the jackboots of a superior race march over his flesh and he leapt from the light rubbing frantically at his skin in disgust. He landed in a church filled with a few mumbling mourners. ‘Bad turn out,’ said the clerk behind him. ‘I asked around but no one had anything really good to say about you, although the Reverend said you were held in high esteem and praised your whistling ability.’ ‘Where am I?’ The clerk pointed to a coffin underneath the pulpit. ‘Why, it’s your going away party Mr Stallworthy.’ No one was crying; that was disappointing. The small band of the mercy circus that had huddled under the Lord’s cold roof were dry eyed and catatonically bored. In place of sobbing there was only a slight rustling and the occasional clink of a boiled sweet against false teeth. Where are all my friends? He didn’t recognize half the people here; they were far too old to be acquaintances. Who will lift my coffin then? No one here seemed fit enough. They seemed to be frozen in the act of queuing, not mourning. They were using his funeral as a dress rehearsal for their own. He turned to ask the clerk but he was nowhere to be seen. In a small room to one side he saw a table filled with ham sandwiches and the realisation that he was overseeing his own death suddenly hit home. Ham sandwiches were the broken mirror, the number thirteen, the grim reaper of the food world; there could be no send off without them. The lettuce and tomato were all show and the egg and onion would just repeat on you all day;