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They didn't seem the sort of people who would get up after being dead just to dance with Michael Jackson. And the only thing his great-grandmother would have pushed her way through walls for would be a television that she could watch without having to fight fifteen other old ladies for the remote control.
It seemed to Joh
'It's prob'ly all different from a dead point of view,' he said.
Now they were walking along West Avenue. The cemetery was laid out like a town, with streets. They weren't named very originally — North Drive and South Walk joined West Avenue, for example, at a little gravelled area with seats in. A kind of city centre. But the silence of the big Victorian mausoleums made the place look as though it was having the longest early-closing day in the world.
'My dad says this is all going to be built on,' said Wobbler. 'He said the Council sold it to some big company for fivepence because it was costing so much to keep it going.'
'What, all of it?' said Joh
'That's what he said,' said Wobbler. Even he looked a bit uncertain. 'He said it was a scandal.'
'Even the bit with the poplar trees?'
'All of it,' said Wobbler. 'It's going to be offices or something.'
Joh
'I'd have given them at least a pound,' he said.
'Yes, but you wouldn't have been able to build things on it,' said Wobbler. 'That's the important thing.'
'I wouldn't want to build anything on it. I'd have given them a pound just to leave it as it
is.
'Yes,' said Wobbler, the voice of reason, 'but people have got to work somewhere. We Need jobs.'
'I bet the people here won't be very happy about it,' said Joh
'I think they get moved somewhere else,' said Wobbler. 'It's got to be something like that. Other- wise you'll never dare dig your garden.'
Joh
ALDERMAN THOMAS BOWLER
1822-1906 Pro Bono Publico
There was a stone carving of - presumably - the Alderman himself, looking seriously into the distance as if he, too, was wondering what Pro Bono Publico meant.
'I bet he'd be pretty angry,' said Joh
He hesitated for a moment, and then walked up the couple of broken steps to the metal door, and knocked on it. He never did know why he'd done that.
'Here, you mustn't!' hissed Wobbler. 'Supposing he comes lurchin' out! Anyway,' he said, lowering his voice a bit, 'it's wrong to try to talk to the dead. It can lead to satanic practices, it said on television.'
'Don't see why,' said Joh
He knocked again.
And the door opened.
Alderman Thomas Bowler blinked in the sun- light, and then glared at Joh
'Yes?' he said.
Joh
Wobbler caught him up halfway along North Drive. Wobbler wasn't normally the athletic type, and his speed would have surprised quite a lot of people who knew him.
'What happened? What happened?' he panted.
'Didn't you see?' said Joh
'I didn't see anything!'
'The door opened!'
'It never!'
'It did!'
Wobbler slowed down.
'No, it didn't,' he muttered. 'No one of 'em can open. I've looked at 'em. They've all got padlocks on.'
'To keep people out or keep people in?' said Joh
A look of panic crossed Wobbler's face. Since he had a big face, this took some time. He started to run again.
'You're just trying to wind me up!' he yelled. 'I'm not going to hang around practising being satanic! I'm going home!'
He turned the corner into East Way and sprinted towards the main gate.
Joh
He thought: padlocks.
It was true, actually. He'd noticed it in the past.
All the mausoleums had locks on them, to stop vandals getting in.
And yet ... and yet ...
If he shut his eyes he could see Alderman Thomas Bowler. Not one of the lurchin' dead from out of Wobbler's videos, but a huge fat man in a fur-trimmed robe and a gold chain and a hat with corners on.
He stopped ru
There was a padlock on the door of the Alder- man's tomb. It had a rusty look.
It was the talking to Wobbler that did it, Joh
He knocked again, anyway.
'Yes?' said Alderman Thomas Bowler.
'Er ... hah ... sorry...'
'What do you want?'
'Are you dead?
The Alderman raised his eyes to the bronze letters over the door.
'See what it says up there?' he said.
'Er ... '
'Nineteen hundred and six, it says. It was a very good funeral, I understand. I didn't attend, myself The Alderman gave this some thought. 'Rather, I did, but not in any position where I could observe events. I believe the vicar gave a very moving sermon. What was it you were wanting?'
'Er.. .'Joh
'For the Public Good,' said the Alderman.
'Oh. Well ... thank you.'Joh
'Was that all?'
'Er ... yes.'
The Alderman nodded sadly. 'I didn't think it'd be anything important,' he said. 'I haven't had a visitor since nineteen twenty-three. And then they'd got the name wrongJ They weren't even relatives. And they were American. Oh, well. Goodbye, then.'
Joh
And if I turn around, I'll never find out what happens next. I'll go away and I'll never know why it happened now and what would have happened next. I'll go away and grow up and get a job and get married and have children and become a grandad and retire and take up bowls and go into Sunshine Acres and watch daytime television until I die, and I'll never know.
And he thought: perhaps I did. Perhaps that all happened and then, just when I was dying, some kind of angel turned up and said would you like a wish? And I said, yes, I'd like to know what would have happened if I hadn't run away, and the angel said, OK, you can go back. And here I am, back again. I can't let myself down.
The world waited.
Joh
'You're dead, right?' he said slowly.
'Oh, yes. It's one of those things one is pretty certain about.'
'You don't look dead. I mean, I thought... you know ... coffins and things ..."
'Oh, there's all that,' said the Alderman, airily, 'and then there's this, too.'
'You're a ghost?'Joh
'I should hope I've got more pride than that,' said the Alderman.
'My friend Wobbler'11 be really amazed to meet you,' said Joh
'I used to be able to waltz quite well,' said the Alderman.
'I meant ... sort of... like this,' said Joh
'That looks grand,' said Alderman Tom Bowler.
'Yes, and you have to have a glittery glove on one hand—'
'That's important, is it?'
'Yes, and you have to say "Ow!"'
'I should think anyone would, dancing like that,' said the Alderman.
'No, I mean like "Oooowwwwweeeeeah!", with
Joh
'But, look,' he said, stopping at the end of a groove in the gravel. 'I don't see how you can be dead and walking and talking at the same time ..."
'That's probably all because of relativity,' said the