Limbo 56 - Mike Morris (if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud TXT) 📗

deserted. I hadn’t gone more than a few yards when this big bloke stepped out of the shadows. Who do you think it was? Larry the Bastard!” she told him before he could answer. He gasped. “Well, he took me to this little club for a couple of drinks,” she continued. “Well, it was more like an opium den, but I was past caring by then.”

“You went out with him to an opium den just after he had killed me,” Arthur howled. “How could you.”

“Strictly speaking it was the next day,” she said calmly. “And you would have been dead whether I’d gone with him or not. I figured I might as well get something out of it. You know they sell pies in them places,” she added, “they’re pretty tasty too.”

Arthur contemplated the long-gone world where Gladys and the murderer dined on pies and opium while his body slowly cooled in some hospital. “He was real sorry,” Gladys said, leaving him speechless. “And you did start it, more or less.” She shifted on the hard wooden chair. “He explained to me that he always had a temper, even as a kid. He was big, and all the big kids wanted to fight him. So he started carrying this knife, to deter them, you might say, so he could keep out of trouble.” Arthur stared at her.

“He was a very persuasive bloke,” she continued. “He could sell anything to anyone, and he had lots of money, and he dressed so nice.” She paused. “So I ran away to London with him.”

Arthur stopped her there, telling her that this was getting too much for him to take in. He arranged with the furious Nellie to have Gladys sleep in a room above the bar, and eventually they both stumbled upstairs.

The next morning he woke up smiling for the first time since the she-Devil. Weak sunshine struggled through the grimy windows without warming the grubby room. Although Limbo meant the reduction of the sense of warmth and smell, texture and taste, it had been a while, and like Gladys with the brandy on the previous night, he tasted and touched something after a long drought. He looked at Gladys, and the smile vanished at the thought of the Londoner and her in a much fancier place.

“So, you can’t stop thinking about my Londoner boyfriend,” Gladys said, opening her eyes. “You never used to be jealous.”

“How?” he began.

“Oh, I don’t sleep much,” she said. “I was a ghost for a long time, and I got out of the habit.”

“You were a what?”

“We didn’t get to that part, did we?” she answered. “Look, does this miserable pub have a stove, somewhere? I can cook us breakfast.”

“I think so,” he told her. “Hasn’t been used in ages, but it should still work.”

Down in the bar, a raw-boned woman with acne was arguing with a long-suffering patron and the off-shift waited patiently to be served. Gladys squeezed behind the counter and disappeared into a cubbyhole at the end of the bar. The acne-woman finished her argument, sneezed a couple of times and started to serve her customers. Arthur strolled over to a rickety table in the corner, the same table, he noted, where he had signed on the dotted line to accept the job of running this unfashionable Limbo.

Gladys came over with some hot coffee and a couple of steaming plates of soup. “All the rest of the stuff was covered in mould,” she said rather crossly. “Boy, you are making a cock-up of this place.”

“Gladys, you seem to forget, this is not a holiday camp here. This is Limbo,” he told her with some heat.

“Oh, shut up and eat your soup,” she told him. She sniffed. “O’Grady was a lot more fun than you.” He frowned a question at her. “The bastard from London,” she explained. Seeing the expression on his face, she hurried on. “He was a lot of fun,” she explained patiently, “until things took a turn for the worse.” She took a spoonful of soup. “I can taste it,” she said, excitedly. “Try some yourself.”

He tried a spoonful, and realized that he too could taste it. It was a little like cardboard, but somewhere in the depths of Gladys’ soup lurked a taste, a ghostly reminder of peas, and carrots and ham, waiting to stir his sluggish blood. “Not bad,” he told her, just as Jasper appeared in front of them.

“Not bad at all,” he said, eyeing Gladys as if she were a five-course dinner, ready and waiting to be eaten. “Well, my dear,” he said, sitting down, “Did you cook this with your own fair hands. It looks as delicious as you, you gypsy vision.”

Arthur thought queasily that Jasper was sounding just like the Londoner had. Gladys, for her part looked at him with interest.

“Don’t you have something to do?” Arthur said angrily. “March a few more souls down the cellar steps to Hell, Get a few more half-sinners drunk.” He turned to Gladys. “I have to tell you, he’s a …”

“I know what he is,” Gladys interrupted, “but you don’t have to be rude to him.” She turned to Jasper. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m his assistant fair lady,” Jasper said smoothly. “I admit, I used to be a sinner, but I fell into holy ways, wandered into the straight and narrow, and ended up here. I’m his assistant,” he continued, nodding at Arthur, “duly certified by Heaven and Hell both, doing my humble best to aid and comfort my friend Arthur for as long as I must.”

She turned on Arthur. “Honestly, you haven’t changed a bit. This poor little Devil starts to treat me like a lady, and you go off in a jealous rage, just like always, ready to cause trouble and smash up the bar.”

After more than a century, Arthur had learnt – a few things anyway. He resisted the urge to encircle Jasper’s smooth little neck with his strong hands. “You can’t trust him,” he told Gladys, “any more than you could trust O’Grady.

She sighed. “But he was fun,” she told them, brightening up. “Took me to London, and we went to some posh places too, some nice hotels with baths on every floor.” Here Arthur snorted. “We went to some really nice pubs, and in one, I got to talkin’ to a real live Esq.”

“Esk?” Arthur interrupted.

“Squire, or somethin’” she said. “Look, do you want to hear this or don’t you?”

“Go on, dear lady,” Jasper told her, not taking his eyes from her bosom. “Your story is fascinating.”

“He wasn’t jealous at all, neither,” Gladys said dreamily. “He told me he didn’t mind a bit if I was nice to the gentleman. Said he had a bit of business with the man, and that anything I could do to smooth the way would be greatly appreciated.”

“So what did you do?” Arthur demanded.

“I was nice to the man,” she said simply.

Arthur groaned inwardly. “Anyway, things were fine until O’Grady got wind that the Bobbies had tracked him down,” Gladys continued, “then he got jumpy. Started to go out alone and began to come in drunk. Then he started hitting me.” Jasper made small tutting noises and held her hand. She beamed at him, and Arthur hastily covered her other hand in his large one. “Ouch,” she said. “Arthur, your hands are like sandpaper. Both of you let go. I’m fine.” She smoothed her dress and they both stared as the neckline slid further down on her bosoms.

“Then, he seemed to calm down and said we had to go to Paris,” she sniffed. “I didn’t like Paris much, all them Frenchies smelling of garlic and rubbing their hands all over a girl. An’ he didn’t want me to go out and meet no-one anyway. But he did get very lovin’. He practically kept me in bed all day.” Arthur groaned, and Jasper absently wiped his mouth and licked his lips. “So it wasn’t too bad,” she finished.

They looked at her expectantly.


Chapter 20 – Closing Time in the Garden of Eden

“Well then he came in one day and murdered me,” she finished. “Just walked over to where I was standing on the balcony and shoved me over the side. There I was, one moment feeling all warm and loving, sipping champagne, and the next I was flyin’ past the walls, and the cobblestones come up and smacked me in the face.”

Arthur looked at the vibrant woman opposite. Alive, he had wanted her, dreamt and lusted after her, even felt a certain tenderness for her. Now, with them both long-dead, he saw her as a person, wild, limited, but vital and real. “Why did he kill you?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered simply. “I haunted him for fifty years and I never found out. If he’d been drunk or scared I’d give him up to the Bobbies, I could have moved on. He was calm and cold. He walked straight up to me, gave me this sad smile, and pushed me into the cold air. Well, it seems like, if you’re angry when you die, you sometimes stick around. Something to do with ecto, ecto…, ghost stuff getting really sticky. And I was raving mad, especially looking at myself spattered on the cobblestones. I wasn’t pretty anymore,” Gladys added without a trace of self-consciousness. She licked the last of her soup off the spoon. “I suppose it wasn’t a bad thing really, ‘cause I could feel myself being dragged down there – Hell. I have to say, though, something was dragging me up into the clouds as well. I was sort of floating, looking at myself when O’Grady came sliding out of the hotel. Quite a crowd had gathered by then, but they were all looking at me, and no-one even noticed him. The bastard didn’t even glance my way, just strode away with the wind blowing at his fancy cloak. I ran after him; at least my ghost did, screaming curses, battering at his face. All I managed to do was blow a few drops of rain in his face. Once, I got tangled in his black curls and he looked startled and ran his fingers through his hair, so I knew he could sense me.”

Gladys got up and went to the bar. She started talking to the acne barmaid who glared and shook her head. Gladys persisted and the barmaid began to look puzzled. She stomped over to where Arthur and Jasper were sitting. “Her says,” she began without preamble, that her’s gooin’ ta be the third barmaid. “Her says to goo away now, while her learns the ropes, and come back at fower. Now, yo know that the clocks ‘ere don’t work proper, and ah work from midnight to noon, and Nellie works from midnight to noon, only it’s a different midnight to noon.” She scratched her head absently, and studied a large flake of dandruff that had lodged under her fingernail.

Arthur, who had been away from the Black Country for a long while struggled to make sense of this garbled speech, but Jasper stood up and absently brushed a few flakes of dandruff from her flat chest. “Let me escort you home, my dear,” he said to her, “and you can lie down in your own bed and rest your poor feet and back.” The barmaid gaped at him with yellow teeth and slowly began to blush.

“Oo ar,” she said finally, “me feet ache like buggery and me back’s