Hot Desk Extract: Bright Objects

Divinations

Barely an hour before my first death on a warm night in January 1995—when I blacked out in a crumpled Toyota south of a town called Jericho—a bright object was sighted somewhere in the constellation of Virgo, the sign of the maiden, not far from a star named Porrima, after the Roman goddess of prophecy.

When I died for the second time, in August 1997, inside the floral bedroom of a country house as Chopin’s ‘Nocturnes’ played, the same object, visible to the world for months by then—the talk of backyard barbecues and press junkets in both hemispheres—had reached its maximum apparent magnitude of minus three, the moment of its greatest brightness as viewed from Earth, before it began to retreat from our inner solar system and slowly disappear.

What happened in between is the story I will tell, a story that took place under the eye of a comet, the last great comet of that millennium: the Comet St John.

When I close my eyes and peer as dreamers do into the mind’s darkness, I can still see it—a streak of light suspended in motion, brighter than Sirius, brighter even than Jupiter. It was forty-four light seconds from our planet on the night of my second death, when I found myself being borne through blackness, the voices of paramedics in my ears like insects chirring, the blue-red headlights bruising the dark. It was the last thing I saw, there above the ghost gumtrees before the van shut and, with it, my brain: a torch-star with tails, white and blue-green; a winged creature in flight.

I wonder sometimes about the last time it was seen, appearing much the same to the eyes of the Pharaohs and Assyrians as it had to mine—gorgeous and strange, a question. What other lives were altered by its course? What events understood only in the shadow of its passing?

It was only later that I saw St John for what it was, a sign of destruction and strange rebirth, and then all that had occurred seemed obvious somehow; inevitable as the looping line of its course. But the truth it would reveal within my own small life was there from the start, when we were all blind, when the comet still hid in the dark skies above our heads—a nucleus of white fire, streaming its tails of dust and ion, and sodium-blue, those compounds we all came from.

Dark Skies

1.

Some might have thought it unhealthy for a new widow to begin work in a funeral home, especially the same one that just months before had sent off her husband in a premium rosewood casket. But Jericho was a small town, and I was suited to the business. I grew fond of the ritual chores, the sombre quiet, the tight-lipped atmosphere of wood polish and plush carpet and heavy drapes. I enjoyed the feeling of marshalling the stricken troops to church, and the soothing sound of a casket closing. I knew the tone to take with the bereaved, knew how to slide around details as if by way of a network of delicate balustrades, to deflect death. But neither was I afraid of allowing the Reaper into the reception room as I served tea to those customers I liked best, who announced themselves with a look that was naked and steely at once, who wanted no part in a pantomime.

The work tired my body and stilled my brain, and offered at least some prospect of sleep at the end of the day. I often had the sense of moving through water, and imagined that if I could just accumulate enough days behind me as mindlessly as possible, I might at last look up to find I had gained distance from the horizon of all that had happened, and see the approach of some kind of shore.

I can still hear the voice of Clarence Bell, the Director of Bell Funerals, opining in his soft Midlands voice that another customer was late with their deposit, or intent on printing their own Order of Service booklets, or bringing their own roses. As soon as I appeared at reception in the mornings he would approach in his ambling wide-paced way, diminutive in his over-large grey suit, and begin shaking his head a few steps from me, emitting little puffs of indignant disbelief as he spoke, half under his breath, as though obliged to relate a string of dirty jokes.

Clarence had a drawn, adenoidal look. His sharp dark eyes would dart around as if searching for escape, and sometimes if I spoke too suddenly, he would jump with the nervous quickness of a cornered marsupial creature. By the end of any service he always appeared deflated somehow, like he had puffed out too much air, at last resigned to facts which despite being routine appeared to wound him afresh each day.

I knew the morning debrief was over when Clarence drew out a handkerchief from his trouser pocket, lowered his face into it and, with an equine flurry, blew his nose. I had learned early on that my role in this exchange was as a passive witness, and that after nodding and sighing a few times myself in sympathy, I should prepare his coffee without rejoinder or delay, which he would receive in his office in grateful silence. From my station behind the tall mahogany reception desk, I would then commence my review of the day’s appointments, peering out every so often through the shop windows at the wide Victorian-era street just waking up, and measure my smile for the first customer, as Clarence had instructed: sincere yet restrained, with a touch of thoughtful gravity.

(…)

Bright Objects is available for preorder here.