It was five years since Maybe went over ‘rainbow bridge’ – a ridiculous American metaphor for pets dying – and David still hadn’t got over the loss. An ageing black Labrador with bad hips and big brown eyes. In her younger years, she ate through a third of the weekly household budget. The medical expenses for the two hip operations alone could have fed an African village for a year. The hole she left in his heart, a retired paediatrician with high blood pressure and tinnitus, wouldn’t heal. His friends said, ‘she’s just a dog, mate, buy another one’. She wasn’t ‘just a dog’. She was greedy, independent and disobedient. She was a loner with parentage unknown but she loved the sea, long car drives and above all, she loved David. She waited for him to come home from work and did u-turns with excited gurring sounds until he patted her and said ‘come on, let’s see what’s for dinner’. Soul mates.

Tiny shells cracked and crunched under the twin hulls as the catamaran rode on to the black beach. Alexia jumped off the bow and secured the yacht to a concrete post covered in barnacles. Ochre clay cliffs towered above her with tiny rosemary bushes struggling to grow in the rivulets and crevasses. The beach was only 60 metres wide. They were alone. She’d been planning a trip back to the island south east of Athens for years. David loved Greece and the islands. Standing at the helm with the sails set, he looked like the man she married 25 years ago. She hoped the Cyclades was the antidote for the sadness that hung around his neck these past years.

They trudged through the sand until they came to the cave. Twenty years had passed since their last visit. Both their parents had died. Julia, their oldest daughter, had given birth to a baby girl and Tim had kicked the drugs and was working on an oil rig in the North Sea. Empty nesters and more so since Maybe died. They laid the picnic rug on the sand in the shade of the cave, threw their clothes off and laughing, dived naked in to the crystal clear green water. The angle of the morning sun threw a prism of light on the cliffs as they floated with eyes closed. Tiny black motes danced under David’s eye lids.

As Alexia laid out the olives, pita bread and Taramasalada, a chest cramp knocked the air out of David.

“What’s wrong?” she said, “you’re as white as a ghost”

The cramp loosened for a few seconds and then came back with a viciousness, which put him on his back. He looked at the cave ceiling and saw where small birds nested. His fingers grasped a clump of seaweed and then reached for Alexia’s hand. A wave of nausea flowed over him and left quickly.

“Jesus darling, I’ve got to get help,” she said. “How do I sail the boat?”

The nearest town was two hours away. Too far and too late. She held his hand and stroked his hair.

“Stay a while,” he said.

David had watched his father and uncle die. They went the same way. The first heart attack opened the front door for the ‘Hand of God’ coronary, which would take him away.

“Jesus, not like this,” she said. “Not now. We’re on holiday”

David squeezed her hand as a blinding pain ripped across his chest and white light exploded behind his eyes. He saw Maybe swimming with a tennis ball in her mouth towards the setting sun and then darkness.

xxxxxx

David awoke sitting on the stern of a small wooden boat without oars. A thick mist which smelt of dry cleaner fluid, hung in the air. A large packet of hot chips wrapped in newspaper lay at his feet. The boat was moving slowly downstream. To the right lay impenetrable fog. To the left, an inhospitable and lifeless grey plain, which looked like the south bank of the Ganges at Varanasi, which he’d seen from the Manikarnika Ghat, many years before. He dipped his hand in the warm water. It had a light effervescence. He remembered dying and holding Alexia’s hand. He hoped she remembered how to operate the two-way radio. She had 20 more years in the light. How did he know that?

On the bank ahead a man wearing a Ramones t-shirt, black jeans and hunched shoulders, looked familiar.

“Hullo darkness my old friend.” It was Paul Mayhew, who’d died of a heroin overdose in his 30s. As a teenager, he’d sit in David’s bedroom and play Bob Dylan songs on guitar. He won a scholarship to study painting in Rome but turned it down. The critics said could he have been the next Goya. He inherited $2 million dollars and shot it up his arm.

“The first thing you’ve got to know, is this is not a dream,” Paul said with a sardonic laugh. “It’s not heaven or hell. Blake never went in to much detail. If you want to know the truth, hurl some of those chips over”

“What?”

“I said chuck some of those chips over, you deaf bastard”

Paul ate them greedily off the ground.

“No salt or vinegar! Typical. I can’t taste shit anyway. So what do you want to know?’

“Where am I?”

“You’re dead. The good news is God or Margaret Thatcher or Krishna or whoever runs this place, hasn’t worked out what to do with you yet. That’s why you’re in the boat”

“What happened to you?”

“A life style choice. Ambition and achievement was for suckers like you. I fell in love with heroin and conformed to the junky stereotype. The thing about being a heroin addict is people’s expectations of you are so low””

The boat drifted past and Paul’s voice drew faint.

“But let’s talk about you, David. You pursued women like a cunt-struck teenager because they locked you away in a boys boarding school for five years as a kid. You cut people dead who weren’t as smart as you and hadn’t read the same books. You’re like that goddamn mutt of yours. What was it’s name?”

“You’ve seen Maybe?”

“What?

“My dog. You seen her?!”

The fog enveloped Paul as the boat drifted out of ear shot.

There was no night or day. The quality of light was constantly 3.00pm in England in winter without the chill. Grey and silent except for the ringing in his ears. He felt no fear or hunger as the boat drifted down stream. On the river bank an old woman was throwing dead, dried hydrangeas on to a smoky fire. A black shawl hung from her shoulders. In the land of the living, his mother’s grief for her dead husband consumed her. It had it’s own gravity and ecosystem. If the lung cancer hadn’t killed her, the drinking and pills would have. She died depressed and alone. He threw her a handful of chips.

“Well, well, if it isn’t the apple of my eye,” his mother said. “I’ve been expecting you. The large amount of alcohol you guzzled in your 20s, 30s and 40s would have given your ticker a nudge.”

“Good to see you too, Mum. I see you’ve still got that disappointed cat’s bum face. Whenever you saw me, a funeral marched around your heart.”

“You weren’t easy to love, darling. You reminded me of your father, my first husband. Impulsive, Irish and quick to fight. You took after him. Didn’t see much of me in you. You’re the fruit that fell far from the tree”

As the boat passed he could see, like a hologram, how beautiful she’d been as a young woman. The long brown curly hair, high cheek bones and coy smile, like the picture she had on her dressing table in her WAAF uniform during the war.

“It’s been nice talking you you, son. Always the charmer. By the way, your dog is hanging around the Vietnam War dead. She ran away with a soldier’s arm the other day. The Buddhists hate that”

David raised a hand and waved his mother goodbye as she threw another dried hydrangea on to the fire. The boat moved to the centre of the stream. In the distance, a large colosseum was filled with old men and women. A pale man walked hand in hand with his doppelgänger, down from the top tier and stood as David threw them a chip each. These sad sack cases depressed him. He should have installed a defibrillator in the catamaran.

“What do you want to know stranger?” said the twins.

“I’m almost too frightened to ask. You guys look like you played synthesiser in a late 70s band. A poor man’s ‘Tubeway Army’.

“Worse,” the pale man said. “I traded in my teenage ideals for working for the IMF, a needy wife, a good car, a holiday once a year and a wine cellar. I sit at dinner parties on Friday nights and the only thing I have in common with them is we’re traitors to our intelligence and dreams.”

“So who’s the guy next to you?”

“He’s the man I should have been and he never lets me forget it”

As the boat moved downstream, a bugle sounded through the mist. A North Vietnamese soldier stood on the bank with an AK 47 rifle across his chest. Behind him the mist cleared and a million men, women and children stood, some without heads, legs and arms; some burnt beyond recognition. The soldier helped him out of the boat and David gave him a chip, which the soldier ate with distaste. They walked through the spectral figures; thousands of dead NVA and American soldiers. He was a boy when the war raged in Vietnam. He thought the North Vietnamese were the bravest men and women in the world. Pictures of Ho Chi Minh hung on his bedroom wall next to The Beatles. At 12 years of age, he went to the moratoriums and rolled marbles under the hooves of the police horses, as they charged the crowd.

The soldier poured him a small cup of green tea. David looked at the ground and saw a child’s hand reach up through the soil.

“We know your teachers beat you at school for supporting us. That’s why I wanted to share this tea with you. You are more like us than them”

“I was so young…”

“We all were”

They walked back to the boat and David sat on the stern as the soldier pushed him back in to the stream.

“Oh yes,” the soldier said. “Your dog’s at the Gates of Dawn”

The soldier saluted and then pulled the rifle across his chest and stood at attention.

The boat hit a shallow sandbank and David waded to the shore. A bleak and desolate plain stretched before him. In the distance, two colossal gates stood 100 metres high and slightly ajar. In the foreground stood a small black dot, it’s bum in the air, it’s front paws digging.

“Maybe!”

The paws stopped and the dog raised her head. She sprinted towards him with her pink tongue flapping around her snout. At 50 metres she was a 35 kilogram canine missile. She jumped in to his arms knocking him on to his back. Her tongue flew across his face as her paws danced on his chest.

“Maybe!” he cried, “I can’t believe its you”

He buried his face in her fur and smelt the rank scent of unwashed dog. A paw rested on one shoulder and then the other, then she lay on her back for the ritual stomach scratch.

At the foot of one of the gates Maybe dug up an old bone and went to work. Sanskrit covered the lower third of the gates and a large picture of a sun rose above the text.

David walked through the gates and a man in a white suit with a passing resemblance to John Lennon from the cover of Abbey Road, beckoned him over.

“So you found your dog. She’s a pain in the arse”

“Who are you?” David asked.

“That’s a good question. The time has come to make a decision. I’ll put two propositions to you and you have 30 seconds to answer. A spotlight will shine on you through this miserable winter light and you’ll hear some light Musak. Don’t be alarmed, it’s all part of the show.”

Maybe looked at the strange man with long hair holding two cue cards. The sun shone a single beam on David’s head and a couple of bars from ‘Wichita Lineman’ floated through the air.

“David Kossoff, welcome to ‘This is your Future’, bought to you by the makers of the universe and all the universes to come. If you want eternity, you’ve come to the right place. Are you ready?”

David nodded.

“You have two choices: because you’re a self-centred idealist prick and an astonishing love for the mutt sitting next to you, I’m offering you another ten years of life. You can go back to the beach, you’ll survive the heart attack and resume your companionable relationship with your wife … but there’s a catch”

“There always is…”

“You’ll be attached to a kidney machine for the last three years of your life. Shit happens but hey, think of all the Mythos beer you can guzzle before then. Think of exploring Lindos, Ephesus, Delphi. You’ve got seven good years. You’ll have a ball. Unfortunately, the dog stays here”

“And the other option?”

“It’s a 20-year time share. You and the dog will live in a shack on an island. None of this mist bullshit. You’ll have sun, surf and plenty of food. You both won’t age much more than you are now. It’s the upmarket Robinson Crusoe experience. After 20 years – or thereabouts – when you die, the dog dies. We need the island for the next guest. The clock is ticking…”

“What happens when we croak?”

“We burn you and the dog and scatter your ashes on the water. Fish food”

It would take Alexia 20 minutes to work out the two way radio but someone would come for her, the boat and his body.

“Your answer please”

David looked down at Maybe. One ear was bent back and her tongue had fallen out of the side of her mouth. A no brainer.

“I’ll take the time share but I also want a supply of dog bones, a case of Pacifico every month, some music, in fact, I’ll give you a list”

“Consider it done. Now if you’d like to answer one more question, I’ll chuck in an outrigger canoe with a sail”

“Fire away”

“How many holes does it take to fill the Albert Hall?”

“5272”

“How the hell did you know that?

“Big swinging dick”

xxxxxx

Maybe leapt from the bow of the boat and hurled herself up the beach barking madly. A solid shack with a large verandah faced the sea. Light and airy with all mod cons. There was a solar fridge full of food and beer as promised. The dry food cupboard was packed with rice and spices. Out the back lay a large bedroom flooded in light from the eastern sun. In the distance to the right, an outrigger canoe was beached on the high tide mark. The waves lapped and purled on the beach. The tinnitus had gone. Maybe sniffed and snorted under the shack and had a territorial pee out the front.

David shed his clothes and ran after Maybe as they leapt in to the cool water. It felt and tasted like the South Pacific. Some work was needed on the roof and the water tanks but that could wait. Maybe had found a tennis ball and was paddling towards him with a mad glee in her eyes.