The Long View

By Aubrey Moul

How durable is friendship? How powerful is love? What difference would it make to our lives if we could, with the help of a messenger, discover the answers?

A returning friend is the inspiration a struggling writer needs. Their renewed friendship invigorates his writing and sets him on a journey of discovery that encompasses both time and travel. In the process of writing his short stories the writer discovers his past, his present and the promise of the future. Perhaps more importantly, he learns what truly makes us what we are and what is needed for us to be complete.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aubrey Moul
• Release date: Nov 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781910256794

Book preview

Chapter 1.

True friendship is irreplaceable and so as soon as I became aware that my friend needed help I followed my instinct and sought him out again. What else could I do?

However, my intention to help was complicated by the practicalities of making contact after such a long time. I can tell you it was not easy and tested my patience to the limit! There were a whole series of problems to surmount, but that is another story, some of which I will tell you about later.

More to the point is our friendship and how durable it is. Much to my pleasure and relief my friend and I at last made contact again and embarked on something quite extraordinary.

I suppose my mission, if you would like to call it that, is to relate what happened as a result of our becoming friends again after such a long time. So please think of me as your narrator and guide.

Mathew (that is my friend’s name) and I had lost contact many years ago, victims to a set of complicated circumstances, as is often the case. Anyway, once reunited I suggested we meet on a regular basis to ensure that our friendship could flourish and not be lost again through lack of commitment.

Before our reunion it had been explained to me that he would not be exactly as I recalled him and that his experiences, since last we met, would have affected his memory to some extent. In the light of this situation I would have to tread carefully in dealing with him, much in the manner of nurturing someone with partial amnesia.

But please excuse my ignorance, for in my enthusiasm to get started I have forgotten to introduce myself. I’m usually, though not exclusively known, as John and I am what you would call a ghost. There, I have said it in the earnest hope that such a frank disclosure will quickly deal with any such prejudices you may have against matters supernatural. I think it is best to be up front with you and so I beg that you discard any notions you may have about ghosts because they will undoubtedly be incorrect and instead allow me to enlighten you.

The fact that I am, shall we say, not of the material should not disturb you in the least because I assure you that I merely wish to relate a story and not scare you! I want to speak of friendship to anyone who has loved or been loved.

I became aware that my friend needed help and so I decided that I should at least try and bridge the gap between the living and the dead and come to his aid.

Now the distance between where I reside and the world in which you and Mathew inhabit is both enormous and surprisingly close. Imagine, if you will, a mountain top where two climbers are intent on meeting at the summit, each climbing from opposite sides so that they are almost at the top. However, a mist envelops the peak and the intrepid mountaineers forge on but in the mist they fumble around searching for their goal, finally planting their flag where they think the summit is, cursing the conditions and their inability to rendezvous. Defeated they retreat and resign themselves to the idea that their quest had always been impossible. Later, when they have gone from the mountain top and the mist clears the two flags can be seen but a mere ten metres apart but of course no one is there to see the flags or realise how close they were to making contact.

Such an analogy, I hope, gives a flavour of the difficulties of communication between the dead and the living, except in this instance Mathew was not even aware of a desire to climb the mountain! It was more a case of me on the summit shouting to the howling wind in the hope that way down in the valley he might just hear me calling him and respond. Then one day after a long winter the wind subsided just enough for him to faintly catch his name from out of the mist.

So communication between Mathew and I was nothing less than a little miracle. But I ask you, in all honesty, how would you react if you suddenly heard another voice in your head? So here we are at the crux of the matter. For how should the deceased proceed without arousing the suspicion in the living that they may be losing their grip on reality? After all are not the dead supposed to be as silent as the grave?

I think what helped me was the trust Mathew showed from the very outset; he sensed that I was a friend and accepted what you may call a psychic event in his life. I prefer to think to it as the first contact. I suppose it is having an open mind about such matters, thinking against the grain as it were. It is rather courageous really when one’s education and culture is so materialistic. Anyway, once I had ‘spoken’ to him he seemed to accept this new voice in his head, even though he was unaware of whom I was. So it became a case of me speaking to him and leading the way.

I knew that I would have to take him to places that he would not normally have dreamt of visiting and to subtly influence him, so that each experience would reveal itself to him in a way that he was able to cope with and understand. So you must appreciate that although I have indeed been fully honest with you, I was not able to be so with him. Our relationship would have to be one that gradually emerged if it was not to quickly perish. Such is the nature of the bond between those who are living and those who are not.

So that is how it started again, like a couple of musicians returning hesitantly to their instruments to recommence an unfinished work, our reunion promised co-operation and harmony. Soon we were able to form a dialogue in his head, a very private ‘conversation’, that I would direct in order to help him.

I had found out, from Mathew himself, that during the time we had not seen each other he had become a writer of short stories an author who was currently awaiting some sort of inspiration, as writers often do. It would seem that he had recently found himself, not only frustrated with his literary progress, but also with much more time on his hands. So to celebrate our reunion he invited me to come along to a museum to see an engraving known as the’ Long View of London from Bankside’.

Normally museums are not my thing but friendship, I am sure you will agree, is often more about enjoying the company rather than the pursuit, so I accepted. Besides I thought it may be an ideal opportunity to catch up on the events of his life.

I remember, on arrival, I could sense Mathew’s excitement as he entered the building as if he too realised we were embarking on something new.

Inside, the curator was business-like and reminded Mathew of the librarian in one of the Indiana Jones films. While he was trying to recall what film it was, the official took control and before Mathew really had time to compose himself he was ushered into a side room with a large central work station on which a large engraving was laid out.

For the next half an hour I observed as Mathew was absorbed in the past, fascinated by the intricacy of the engraving he had travelled nearly one hundred miles to see.

Admiring the superb craftsmanship he examined the panorama of London as meticulously recorded by its executor, a Czech called Wenceslaus Hollar, some three hundred and sixty years previously. Before him was, from a unique vantage point, the whole of medieval London in stunning detail. From Southwark, across the bridge impossibly laden with turreted buildings, to the north bank where it seemed every piece of available land was taken up by the infrastructure of the realm’s capital city. We imagined the wealth of it paying for Cromwell’s army so recently victorious against his king at Naseby.

To the extreme left, towering above everything, was old St Paul’s Cathedral and in the distance cultivated hills that surrounded the city. Mathew recalled images from his travels. He had always taken particular notice of any scattered medieval buildings that he had found in cities throughout Europe. Drawing on his experience and in conjunction with the engraving he let his imagination fill in spaces so that in his mind medieval London was once again a living and breathing entity.

Certainly the engraving was unique and worthy of such a lengthy journey. While examining it, we considered its relevance. Time had been frozen by the application of ink and a record of a London that no longer existed had been created. The artist was not to know that within twenty years virtually everything would be engulfed by flames that had their origin in a baker’s oven in Pudding Lane.

So what of its worth? Did it have a deeper value beyond its intrinsic beauty? Surely the artist had rendered humanity a service by recording the long view of London from his unique position, thus allowing future generations to get an impression of life in England at the close of the Civil War? For sure, it did not show the teeming masses that lived there nor did it illuminate the countless individual stories that composed life at that time, but it did provide a background setting where their lives could be re-imagined.

What a project to undertake. Imagine old Wenceslaus being there and having such a unique vantage point from which to record what he saw. Now that was a life with purpose! whispered Mathew inside his head to me.

Would you like such a purpose? I asked, somewhat unsettling him.

Surely writing is like that? I said.

Mathew obviously felt perplexed and just gave a grunt.

Well if your stories were to benefit others, then wouldn’t that be true?

Mathew replied that such a notion did seem a little grand, to say the least, for a short story writer with writer’s block!

I suppose it depends on what your stories relate, I added.

It was some days later when Mathew and I met up again. He instigated it by meditating as I had suggested to him. I could tell that he was more relaxed about the latest turn of events and eager to tell me about what life had dished out to him and