Soul Music - Bedrooms

'Hello? Albert?'

Susan pushed open the kitchen door. The huge room was empty.

'Albert?'

She tried upstairs. There was her own room, and there was a corridor of doors that didn't open and possibly never could - the doors and frames had an all-in-one, molded-together look. Presumably Death had a bedroom, although proverbially Death never slept. Perhaps he just lay in bed reading. She tried the handles until she found one that turned.

Death did have a bedroom. He'd got many of the details right. Of course. After all, he saw quite a lot of bedrooms. In the middle of the acres of floor was a large four-poster bed, although when Susan gave it an experimental prod it turned out that the sheets were as solid as rock. There was a full-length mirror, and a wardrobe. She had a look inside, just in case there was a selection of robes, but there was nothing in there except a few old shoes in the bottom.

A dressing table held a jug-and-basin set with a motif of skulls and omegas, and a variety of bottles and other items. She picked them up, one by one. After-shave lotion. Pomade. Breath freshener. A pair of silver-backed hairbrushes. It was all rather sad. Death clearly had picked up an idea of what a gentleman should have on his dressing table, without confronting one or two fundamental questions.

Eventually she found a smaller, narrower staircase.

'Albert?' There was a door at the top. 'Albert? Anyone?'

It's not actually barging in if I call out first, she told herself. She pushed open the door. It was a very small room. Really small. It contained a few sticks of bedroom furniture and a small narrow bed. A small bookcase contained a handful of small uninteresting-looking books. There was a piece of ancient paper on the floor which, when Susan picked it up, turned out to be covered with numbers, all crossed out except the last one, which was: 19. One of the books was Gardening In Difficult Conditions.

***

Soul Music - p197-198