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

breakin’”. She allowed Jasper to guide her out into the drizzle, and Gladys went behind the bar and started serving without missing a beat.

“Leave the dishes,” she said. “I’ll get them when things slow down.”

“You can’t just do this,” he told her. “There are strict rules about who can work in the pubs.”

“What rules?” she asked.

“Er, has to be a woman, she has to be ugly and disgusting enough to make the customers upset and dissatisfied, and she must have a bad back and aching feet.”

“Well I’m a woman,” Gladys said, squaring her shoulders and smoothing her blouse. And I always used to upset the customers when I was alive: don’t you remember the fights the men used to get in over me. Don’t you remember how upset the wives were when they came in at closing time and their men were buzzing around me like bees around honey?”

On cue, two men started to jostle for her attention, and Arthur firmly escorted them to the door. “What about the bad back and sore feet,” he said desperately, coming back to the bar.

“Oo ar,” she said in a fair imitation of the departed barmaid, “Ow do you know me feet don’t ache like buggery and me back aint breakin’. Don’t even mention the time slots,” she continued. “You’re the boss, you can fix anything here.”

He sat in the corner and monitored her. She certainly upset the customers, but he wasn’t sure they were upset the way the Limbo Council had envisaged. The men drooled at each other, shoved up to the bar, and ended up shoving each other. Several times he escorted fights out into the street, where they continued in the rain and mud. His Limbo dwellers were upset, but in a fired-up way he had never seen before. The street outside became a mini war zone, not unlike the newer, more violent and exciting Limbos that were increasingly taking his potential recruits Gladys was certainly livening up the place.

Nellie, the third-shift woman came in, grabbed a pint, and sat down staring at it moodily. She looked up startled when a couple of customers started to fight. Suddenly, she heaved her bulk up and approached the two men who were squaring off at each other. Arthur was surprised to notice that she had attempted to brush her lank hair, that she looked middle-aged rather than old, and that her breasts were enormous. Obviously, Jasper had been to work on her.

“Ay,” she said hoarsely, shoving between the two men. “Pack it up.” The smaller of the men was at eye level to her bosom, and he stopped prancing immediately, transfixed like a chicken in torchlight. “I’ll see to these buggers, love” she said quite pleasantly to Gladys, and swept them out unresisting into the street. None of them returned.

Finally, Jasper swept in with the Acne woman, who appeared to have given her back and legs a good workout. “Let me borrow your brush, love,” she said to Gladys, “So I can freshen up.” She disappeared into the little cubbyhole behind the bar with a visible swish of her hips.

“What have you done?” Arthur asked Jasper. “You’re changing everything.”

“No more than she is,” Jasper answered, nodding towards Gladys, who approached with a tray of drinks.

“Eight hours is enough,” she told Arthur. “You have five pubs in this Limbo,” she said. “That’s five extra barmaids.”

“I can’t do that,” he said.

“You’ll have to, they’re going to demand it,” she said looking over to where Acne was trying to calm down a bunch of customers, all of whom seemed intent on flirting with her. Arthur held his head. “Calm down,” she told him. “Don’t you want to hear my ghost story?”

“Well,” she continued when they had settled in. “I started to follow him all over. At first, I wanted to find out why he killed me, but later, it became a test of wills. First thing he did was visit his fancy woman in her fancy house by the river. I sailed in behind him.

She was ugly, it seemed to me, although I was told later that she was one of the most famous prostitutes in Paris. I think they call them courtesans. She had a long face like a horse and big white teeth and long black hair. Didn’t look very French. Anyway, she right away asked him in this squeaky French accent ‘did you keel ‘er’, and he just nodded and poured himself a drink. I managed to jostle him and he spilt some, which made her snigger, ‘cos she thought he was nervous. I think he realized right away it was me because he looked around and then looked hard at the exact spot I was standing. Funny thing, he seemed relieved that I was still out there, even if I did want to tear his heart out.

He stood up. ‘I’m going,’ he told her. ‘I just needed to tell you she was dead.’ He picked up his coat. ‘I won’t be back.’”

Gladys paused to wipe her mouth daintily, “He was staying in a real dump, in an alley behind some big old church. There were a lot of bums there, but I couldn’t smell them, because I was dead, you see. I wouldn‘t let him sleep, kept banging his bed and blowing in his ear. Finally, he sat up. ‘I don’t need much sleep,’ he said. I know you’re upset, Gladys, I don’t blame you.’ Really, the way he said it was like he was saying ‘I forgive you.’ He got dressed and we went walking together, like we sometimes did when I was alive. ‘Come on,’ he kept ordering, and I got angrier and angrier. ‘I’m beginning to see you,’ he told me. ‘You’re wearing your blue dress.’ Of course, I was wearing my blue dress; I’d just been murdered in it. ‘I expect you want to know why I did it,’ he said to me. I stopped dead, and he stopped too, so I guess he must really be seeing me. ‘I didn’t really want to,’ he said sadly and I almost believed him. ‘Tell me you bastard,’ I screamed at him. ‘I can hear you too,’ he said. He opened his mouth and there was a big bang, and he looked surprised. Blood started to trickle out of his mouth and he crumpled up in front of me.”

Gladys sighed and looked at them. “I know, it sounds like one of them melodramas we used to watch,” she said. “How do you think I felt? Both of us killed, and I still didn’t know why. It was that French cow, of course; I saw her and a couple of thugs running away.” She sighed. “I waited while his blood ran into the gutter and down a drain. I expected to see his spirit, you know, rising up, but nothing happened. I suppose he went straight to Hell, which he deserved.” She looked at Jasper. “He was a big bloke with a cockney accent. He liked wearing loud suits and pointy black shoes.”

“I used to be a Devil,” Jasper said crossly, “but that doesn’t mean I know everyone down there. I hardly think I’d mix with a lost soul who stabs people in dirty old pubs, and pushes women over the balcony.” He sniffed. “With all due respect to you two, I was used to a much more sophisticated type of murderer.”

“So what happened then?” Arthur asked hastily, seeing Gladys’ expression.

“I haunted ‘em,” Gladys said. “I followed them around while they went about their miserable little lives. None of them ever even mentioned O’Grady again. I never found out what was going on. Worried the pants off the two thugs, and they ended up shooting each other. Eventually, I managed to drive the French cow mad, and she ended up in a horrible asylum. I used to visit her every so often to keep her on the boil.”

Gladys finished her drink. “I kind of liked haunting people, and I didn’t have anything better to do, so I was a ghost for the next fifty years. Then I skipped around for a few decades, and I heard about my old pal Arthur, so I come to visit you. And now,” she continued brightly, “I think I might be able to cook something up that actually tastes like food. Everyone OK with that?”

Arthur found that his jealousy lessened a little as the days went by. Life, or half-life with Gladys was infinitely better than when his only friend was the opinionated arrogant little Devil, Jasper. Over the course of one hundred years he had, apparently, mellowed a little, and once Gladys had brought him up to date with her adventures in the real world, he was quite contented to bask in her high spirits and provide her, sometimes in competition with Jasper, whatever meager pleasures were afforded by his position in Limbo56. He could even tolerate her occasional absences from Limbo, from which she seemed to have no problem escaping to the real world. These times away were in any case, short, and he wisely refrained from asking her about them.

He was, however, aware that Gladys, always looking for new adventures, was unlikely to remain for even a fraction of his time in Limbo, unless he tempted her with some special carrot. Luckily, every decade or so, as a kind of treat, the more prominent citizens of the Limbos were invited up for a refresher course in Morals and the Art of Governance. He mentioned this to Gladys one day. She looked a bit nervous at first, but soon brightened up.

The trip to Heaven didn’t quite work out the way he expected. Gladys accompanied him as they sat through weeks of non-stop, monotonous lectures bearing no relationship to the real Limbo. The Angels insisted that everyone sit on bottom-numbing hard chairs, so they were unable to snooze through these excruciating lectures, and it was with a sigh of relief that they all retired for the decennial social hour, in a garden just inside the gates of heaven. Gladys was delirious with relief, but now, somehow, Arthur was dissatisfied.

He took a deep breath, savoring the golden liquid. Bright butterflies flitted among the bountiful flowers; lions lay down with lambs, occasionally drinking the clear water that fell, sparkling, from a picture-perfect landscape.

“God could have done it better,” he grumbled.

“You're always complaining,” she said looking at her watch,” especially round about this time.”

“Well, dammit,” he said, gathering reproachful looks from some of his immediate neighbors. He gazed at his half-finished glass of ambrosia. “I just think...”

The bell sounded, loud and brassy. “Time ladies and gentlemen, please,” the rich baritone of God's voice echoed across heaven.

“I just think,” he said raising his voice slightly as they were whisked instantaneously outside the Pearly Gates. “I think,” he repeated, examining the signs that pointed to the various regions of the Netherworld. “I think that we should be given at least half-an-hour to finish our drinks.”

Chapter 21 – The Solid Gold Ashtray
It was solid gold, all right, the thin man thought, hefting it. In life, he had been an expert in iron; how it melted and splashed and poured blue-white from the mouth of the furnace, but he knew enough of gold to say that this was a genuine, solid piece of it. He was old enough to remember golden sovereigns and guineas, and once had a gold brick dropped on his foot by an eccentric squire who liked to haul his wealth around