Chapter 50
The Possibilities That Life Contains
The Ghost stood over himself on the floor of a flat full of beanbags and incense.
Charlie Applewood was now a student of physics at Sheffield University.
It was Sunday tomorrow. So they had dropped acid, and were listening to the Doors as the patterned wallpaper started to shift.
‘Reality is always moving,’ said Charlie with an intense focus.
He had long hair now. Far longer than Wilbur’s.
His mam always seemed to be upset when he grew it, so he didn’t.
But Charlie’s was almost down to his waist. He wasn’t the nervy, bullied kid any more.
He had left his stutter behind. ‘Everything is particles and particles aren’t still.
They move around in a wave. The quantum wave function. ’
Wilbur stayed staring at the wallpaper. ‘This is good acid.’
‘This isn’t the acid. This is physics.’ He watched Charlie take a shilling from his pocket. ‘See this. When it’s in the air it could land either side up. So it is both heads and tails.’ He flicked it and it landed on the stained purple carpet next to a packet of cigarettes with the Queen facing up.
‘Heads,’ Wilbur said from his beanbag.
Charlie stared at the coin with wide eyes, entranced by its shining beauty. He took a long drag of his cigarette.
‘Yeah but listen, Wilbo, with life the coin is always spinning in the air in the present and it has always landed in the past. Like when I just put on the Doors I very nearly put on Jimi Hendrix …’
‘Right.’
‘We are the spinning coin, Wilbo.’
‘I like that you call me Wilbo these days.’
‘I got that from Dougie.’
Wilbur thought of his dead brother as he stared at the landed coin.
Charlie thought of another way to explain it. ‘Like when the Beatles sing “Sergeant Pepper” they are the Beatles but they are also Sergeant Pepper. Like that is what they are telling us. They are telling us reality is a spinning coin. It contains many things.’
Charlie moved away from the chaos of records on the floor. ‘What you need is to open your mind. You need to leave your little hobbit hole, Wilbo Baggins … The existence of tragedy in your life does not mean that your whole life has to be that way. You’re the spinning coin …’
Charlie looked suddenly blank, now distant. Lost in thought. He said something he’d never said out loud but which had always been understood. ‘My dad hit me and my mam.’
‘I know. I’m sorry, Charlie.’
He didn’t seem sad, or scarred, or anything at all.
The psychedelic experience he was having allowed him to tell his best friend the truth, with no boundaries.
And absolutely no trace of stutter. ‘I thumped him back. Last year. And I couldn’t stop.
It was like it had been stored up by time.
All that energy and anger. I just kept hitting until he was on the floor.
That’s why he left us. But Mam is happy now.
Well, she’s getting there. Got work at Cole Brothers.
Shop floor. Selling make-up with the young lasses.
They all love her. She says she’s their Mother Hen … ’
‘I’m pleased for your mam. Always loved her.’
‘And she you, lad … But my point is that the universe is change. That’s the natural state of things.
If you hold on long enough, something changes.
Everything changes. Cassius Clay becomes Muhammad Ali.
Dylan goes electric. Wednesday win the league.
Change. That’s all life is. You’ve got to have patience.
Wait it out. You’ve had a bad run and things are getting better, Wilbo. You’ve just got to hold on.’
Wilbur looked at his friend fondly. But the Ghost felt nothing but regret. He’d had a great friend in Charlie, and like everyone else, he had lost him further down the track. It seemed so ridiculous now. He should have made more effort. He should never have let him go.
Then Wilbur saw someone else. He saw the Ghost, standing there. The Ghost could see it. Wilbur was holding his gaze. Something he had only ever half remembered. Something he had put down to just another hallucinogenic experience.
‘Wilbur? It’s me …’
Wilbur gently slapped Charlie’s thigh with the back of his hand. ‘Do you see that?’
‘What?’
‘There’s a man there. A strange man. He looks like me. But longer hair.’
‘It’s a sign from the future. I’ve been telling you. You need to grow your hair. You look like Frank Sinatra or something.’
‘Wilbur?’ said the Ghost. ‘You need to be a good friend …’
But he wasn’t heard. Or even seen.
‘Oh,’ sighed Wilbur. ‘He’s gone.’
The needle reached the end of the record. Charlie switched on his little black-and-white TV and moved the aerial about to get a good picture. He never really got one. Charlie started laughing, at nothing in particular, and the laughter didn’t stop until the train came.
The Ghost heard Agnes. Her voice as clear as the whistle.
‘Hop on board! No time to waste.’
And in all the confusion, those words rang inside him like a tolling bell.
No time to waste.
And he thought about it, as he headed towards the train.
All that time. All that waste.
And he wondered why he hadn’t been better at it, at living in time, while he’d had the chance.