They Came From SW19 (13 page)

I was just about to go into the living-room when I heard a sound outside. A kind of scratching at the front door. I had closed it. Hadn’t I? I sat on the edge of the bath. Maybe I had. But Yale locks were not likely to present much problem to the heavies from the other side of the Red Shift. I stayed where I was, listening to my heart knock against my ribs.

Finally I went out into the corridor.

There was no sound coming from the front door. But someone or
something
was moving along the gravel at the side of the house. I inched my way towards the front room. If I could get down the path and out into the street, maybe I could at least warn someone before they dragged me up the old ladder and added a fourteen-year-old boy to their collection of souvenirs from the planet earth.

I breathed deeply and got ready to sprint.

Pathetic, isn’t it? When they really do come in large numbers, we’ll be out there putting up everything we’ve got and they’ll wade through us. We’ll be like those Aborigines faced with Captain Cook, the first white man they had ever seen. They thought he was the spirit of their ancestors and ran away.

I reached for the door handle. As I did so I heard someone try the back door. Two short turns and then a knock. It
was
burglars. They had done over Mr Marr, and now they had come back for me! I thought I heard steps moving away. They would try the front again. I almost ran to the back door and opened it in one swift movement. I found I was looking at Purkiss.

I gave a little squeal. I was inches from Purkiss’s big, thick glasses, long, greasy hair and big, bloodshot eyes. I’ve never been able to find out what he does for the Parks Department. I think they just leave him around in open spaces to deter flashers. His mouth was twitching, the way it does when he has something to say.

‘Where is he?’ he said eventually.

‘I don’t know, Purkiss,’ I said. ‘I really don’t know.’

At this point Walbeck emerged from behind a bush. He scurried across the gravel, waving as he did so, and scanning the sky for signs of alien craft. He looked, I have to say, very worried indeed. He had his piece of paper with him, but I think we all felt this wasn’t a time for writing.

‘They’ll come for me next!’ said Purkiss.

I looked at Purkiss. I didn’t, somehow, think this was likely. I don’t really think an alien would bother with Purkiss even if he landed on him on his way to somewhere else. And it seemed downright impossible that the said alien, having nobbled Mr Marr and got him halfway to Saturn, should suddenly stop, snap his fingers and
go back
for Purkiss.

Walbeck was hugging the line of the wall. Every so often he would point at the sky and shiver violently.

‘He didn’t show up for work,’ said Purkiss.

‘I know,’ I said.

Purkiss opened his bloodshot eyes wide. ‘There’s no sign of him!’

‘We don’t know whether they have actually taken him,’ I said. ‘That’s one possibility. They could be keeping him somewhere. They could still be here. You know?’

Then I stopped. What was I saying?

‘We don’t actually
know
that it’s aliens.’ Walbeck crouched down and put his hands on his head. He turned down the corners of his mouth, pointed up at the sky again and then gave us the thumbs-down signal. It was as well he hadn’t been around when they did actually show up or he would have let the earth down pretty badly. The sight of these two had calmed me, however, and, when I spoke, I was surprised to find I was talking quite slowly and clearly.

‘We just have to be careful. From what I’ve seen so far, guys, if these
are
extraterrestrials, they’re not the “Hi, let’s party!” kind.’

Walbeck was now curled up in a ball, whimpering. Purkiss knelt down beside him and started to stroke him as if Walbeck was a frightened dog.

‘But, as yet,’ I went on, ‘we don’t know. We don’t know what they look like or what their methods are. They could look like . . . Purkiss for all we know!’

We looked at Purkiss. It lightened the mood somewhat. Even Walbeck grinned and indicated, as only Walbeck can, that he hoped they didn’t look anything like Purkiss.

‘Should we tell the police?’ said Purkiss.

We all know the police are useless at dealing with non-earth-based crime. All they are good for is holding the crowd back around the saucer while the boffins get to it. Some of them try feeling the old alien collar, and they are usually reduced to a small heap of cinders for their pains. Visitors from other planets just do not fit into police procedure. And I had the feeling that if we told the police, it would all turn out to be our fault.

‘Tell no one,’ I said urgently. ‘I am going to keep a careful watch for any other manifestations, and as soon as they happen we will move. In the meantime, who knows? They may bring him back!’

Purkiss nodded. ‘In the case of the Poznan Twelve,’ he said, ‘Mr and Mrs Vrchlika said they had been enhanced by the experience. It was only the dumplings that experienced material alterations to their state.’

‘Sure,’ I said.

We didn’t mention the twelve-year-old nun in Santa Monica, though. Or the experiences undergone by the director of the Lycée Municipale in the West Cameroon in the spring of 1981. All of us knew enough about spacenapping to be aware that it could go either way. Some days it was all wet kisses and talk of mutual cooperation. The next minute it was out with the old steel scalpels, and heigh-ho for penetrating the earthling body in a variety of disgusting ways.

We were all pretty tight-lipped as I locked the back door and went out the front to join them. Say what you like, my friends, all the evidence seemed to suggest that a respectable engineer of amazingly regular habits had, suddenly and for no obvious reason, disappeared without trace.

As I headed, unwillingly, back towards Stranraer Gardens, I felt that I was the owner of a heavy and awesome secret. Something that I could tell no one. Not even the character I had found it so welcome to have words with last night. No, not Albert Roger Quigley – Jesus Christ. You remember? His writ runs from Galilee to Tuscaloosa, but in none of the texts do we find any mention of His having control over things far out in deep space, or of His voice having the power to command among the spirals of twisting stars.

‘Why’, said Greenslade as we sat at the lunch table, a few days after my dad had died, ‘do you eat meat with a spoon?’

I didn’t answer. I chewed a lot and gave him some of my village-idiot face. All around us, boys in black blazers were cramming food down their faces. Out on the rugby pitch, Mr Grimond was shouting at Extra Quintus. The sky wore the same blue it had chosen for the day I saw my dad for the last time.

‘You could cut it,’ said Khan, leaning over and studying me over his glasses, ‘and
then
eat it with a spoon.’ He gave me a shrewd look. ‘Is it true that your parents are very religious?’

I gulped and said nothing.

Members of the First Spiritualist Church always eat meat with a spoon. They were commanded to do so by a geezer called Lewis, who was big in the church in the 1930s and who, for a time, posed a bit of a threat to Rose Fox. ‘Forks,’ he used to say, ‘do the Devil’s work. And knives grieve the spirit.’ He had pretty definite views on cutlery, did Lewis. He gave out some heavy notes about the correct method of holding your spoon as well. And towards the end of his life he got into condiments. ‘Do not pass the mustard’ was the general drift. I still flinch if someone at school offers me the stuff.

‘Didn’t you say your mum was a nutter?’ said Greenslade, looking at me keenly. I shrugged. Then Khan nudged him with his foot.

‘I’m sorry, Britton,’ he said. ‘Your dad . . .’

‘That’s OK,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘Actually, my mum and dad belong to this church, and you . . .’

I looked down at their faces. I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to talk to them about the First Church of Christ the Spiritualist. And I felt sad, because I wanted to explain it, but I didn’t even know where to begin.

I never have friends back to the house. You can just never tell whether anything embarrassing is going to happen. But Khan and Greenslade had met my dad a few times. Once when he came to pick me up after a school trip that is still known as
Die Screaming in Koblenz.
That was in the days when he drove a motor bike. And once when he made a spectacle of himself during Mr Hammond’s production of
The Caucasian Chalk Circle.
Nobody could hear what he was shouting – I think it was about the death of Communism – but my mum said it was as well they couldn’t.

‘What’s with the games bag?’ said Khan. ‘I thought it was a free afternoon.’

‘I’m playing squash with a friend of my dad’s.’

I don’t know why I said Quigley was a friend of his. I tell lies, sometimes, for absolutely no reason at all – except to see the expressions on people’s faces. Both Khan and Greenslade looked rather serious as I picked up my bag and headed for the sunlight.

I think I had agreed to play squash with Quigley because he was the only person I could think of to talk to about Mr Marr. Mr Marr hadn’t shown up at any of the places where he should have been. It was time I told someone.

Once, of course, I would have told my dad. I talked to him about the extraterrestrials quite a lot.

‘What you’ve got to watch,’ he used to say, ‘is Krull of Varna. He’s the boy to watch.’

He was not convinced by the evidence, I’m afraid. I had shown him the black-and-white photographs of a Pleiadean Saucer, taken by Albert de Roquefort of Autruches in the Rhône Valley, and he was not impressed. In fact, he laughed a lot.

‘I’m not saying,’ I used to say to him, ‘that that is a genuine photo. But that doesn’t prove they aren’t there, does it?’

‘I’m sure they are,’ said Dad. ‘But where?’

This was where it got sticky.

‘Well, they’re there. At the moment. But they’re on their way here.’

‘Well,’ Dad would reply, ‘call me when they show. I’d like to be there to see it . . .’ Then he’d put his arm round me. ‘What size do you think they run to? And do they have corkscrews on their heads? That’s the thing!’

I could almost hear his gravelly bass voice saying this. I saw again his blue jersey with the food stains down the front and smelt his breath, acrid with garlic from the La Paesana Restaurant, Mitcham.

Quigley had been suggesting we play, almost as long as I had known him. ‘Come down to The Club, young shaver,’ he used to say on Sunday mornings. ‘Do you know it?’

‘No,’ I’d reply. ‘What’s it called?’

‘It’s called,’ Quigley would answer with ill-concealed pride and excitement, ‘The Club. And it’s one of the most exclusive squash clubs there is. It is
over the road from the All England Lawn Tennis Club
!’

I couldn’t see why this was such a big deal. But Quigley always got a thrill from things like that. The whole family dine out at a hamburger place off Piccadilly just so that he can say they are ‘off to a little bistro in Mayfair’. I wouldn’t put it past him to lug a Thermos down Pall Mall so he could tell us all he had ‘dropped in at the Palace for tea’.

When I got to it, however, I must confess I was impressed. It had smoked-glass windows and a character in a commissionaire’s uniform outside. I couldn’t think how Quigley got the money to pay the membership. In the car park, every third car must have cost more than our house.

I sauntered up to the desk and put my games bag down in a firm but casual way. The guy, who was in a sort of mauve serge suit with
THE CLUB
written in the top left-hand corner in discreet lettering, was looking at me rather oddly, so I pushed my glasses back up my nose and gave him one of my businesslike looks. ‘Simon Britton,’ I said, using a voice I had heard my dad use when on the phone to the bank, ‘for Roger Quigley.’

‘Roger’ to the outside world. ‘Albert’ to those lucky enough to feel close to the great man.

You could tell from the man’s face that Quiggers was pretty well thought of here. There was a ladder, Emily had told me, and Quigley was at the top of it. Occasionally some puny stockbroker who fancied his chances, just because he had played in the Olympics or something, would try and move in on The Boss, as Quigley was known. And the guy would have to be carried out by teams of paramedics.

As I said the word ‘Quigley’, the man himself appeared. He was wearing a loose cream shirt with a drawing of a hairy geezer and what looked like a signature underneath it. As he saw me, Quigley pointed to it. ‘Alberto Loosali!’ he said, as if I was supposed to know who this was.

‘Right,’ I said.

Quigley went to the desk. Stuffed into his bag was a racket that looked as if it had been tested at speeds of several hundred miles an hour. He was wearing a pair of green tracksuit trousers. Even his buttocks had a taut, menacing air. I was beginning to feel tired just watching him sign me in.

‘Loosali,’ said Quigley, ‘beat Rumero in Athens!’

I had absolutely no idea who either of these characters were.

Hoisting his bag over his shoulder, Quigley jogged off towards a door marked
MEMBERS ONLY
. I followed him, marvelling at the change in posture he had achieved simply by wearing trainers that looked as if they were worth about £200. You knew, just from his equipment, that Quigley was the business as far as squash was concerned.

‘I’ll go easy on you, young shaver,’ said Quiggers, ‘for dear Norman’s sweet sake!’

I’d played squash with my dad. He was banned from his club for smoking while playing. But before they gave him the boot, we did play. Just once. It was the funniest thing I can remember.

‘Oh
no
!’ he would shout, as he ran across the stone floor, waving his racket. ‘Oh
no
! This is going to be a
disaster
!’ His forecast was usually correct.

Quigley’s approach was very different.

He was the only guy I’ve ever met who took a shower
before
playing. ‘I like to be clean for the experience,’ he said. He looked like a man who would not need to shower after the game.

I had to get in the shower with him, which was a pretty sobering time for me. Partly because he made very free with the old Quigley chopper, shampooing it and hosing it down as if he was about to enter it for some competition, and partly because he insisted on singing as we stood, man to man, under the steaming water.