They Came From SW19 (6 page)

‘What kind of messages?’ I asked.

I didn’t care for this. They seemed almost pleased about whatever it was my dad had had to say. All I could think was that this sort of behaviour was not typical of Norman. He was not a talkative man.

‘Messages about his deepest feelings.’

This was even weirder. The one thing my dad never liked to talk about was his deepest feelings. And he hated other people, especially my mother, talking about
their
deepest feelings.

Mr Toombs was nodding solemnly. Quigley stepped up to the elder, whispered in his ear and then retreated to the line, combing his beard for nits as he did so.

‘There have never been quite so many messages coming through so soon after a coronary thrombosis,’ said Toombs.

‘Really?’ I said.

Purkiss and Walbeck were busy clocking all this. Mr Marr had the bins trained on the front gates of Cranborne School. He was absolutely motionless. From the look of him you would have thought a green man with horns and a ray gun was drifting out past the Porter’s Lodge at that very moment. But maybe he was just trying to ignore Quigley and company.

‘And we are of the opinion’, went on Toombs, ‘that Norman has something very important to tell
you.
’

He prodded me in the chest with his forefinger. I looked straight at him.

‘That is why we have come,’ he went on rather menacingly. ‘We want you to join with us now in trying to make contact with him. We must find out exactly what his problem is.’

‘His problem’, I said, ‘is that he’s dead.’

Quigley gave a superior laugh. ‘We have a very simple view of the world, don’t we, Simon?’ Then he turned to Mr Marr, who, like Nelson, was keeping his eye to the lens. ‘How are the “little green men”?’ he asked.

Mr Marr did not respond to this. He twitched slightly though. He hates aliens being called ‘little green men’. As he says, we don’t know what shape or size or colour they’ll be. And why be so sexist? They may be hermaphrodites.

Mrs Quigley weighed in next. The First Spiritualists often talk like this. As if they all had one sentence in mind and had agreed to share it out between them. As if they were all controlled by some central brain.

‘The feelings are very, very bad,’ she said, in a low voice – ‘very, very negative. We feel he has something very, very important to tell us. And he can’t quite get through.’

‘Maybe we need a bigger aerial,’ I suggested.

Mrs Quigley looked intently at me. She gave me the impression I had just uttered a great and important truth. ‘Yes – maybe we do!’

I just stood there looking at them. Then my mum said, ‘Please, Simon. For me. Will you? For me.’

This is it with mums. There you are, trying to have a rational conversation, and then, suddenly, they’re looking deep into your eyes and reminding you that, just over fourteen years ago, you were in their womb. So – you were in their womb! Just because you were inside them they think they have some kind of hold over you! Actually, Mum usually says something even more embarrassing than that. So embarrassing that I can hardly bring myself to write it down: ‘I carried your maleness inside me for nine months and a day.’

I was frightened she was going to say something along those lines now. Right here, in front of Emily and everything. So I did the quite tactful thing I do at such moments. I sucked at my teeth and looked at the ground. But I could still feel her looking at me. Eventually, I looked back at her. She had come out as she was, in her flour-covered apron. She seemed smaller and more frightened. The way she always does when the Quigleys are around.

I smiled and said, ‘OK.’

Walbeck pointed at the sky and shook his head vigorously.

‘I’m sorry, Walbeck,’ I said, making sure he had a good, clear view of my mouth, ‘but they probably won’t come if I stay. You know?’

I’m sure it’s true, actually. I’m sure none of this would have happened if I’d been there. Nothing ever happens when I’m around. I have to be surgically removed to create an event. If you see what I mean.

They were still looking up into the night sky as I was led away by the delegation from the First Spiritualist Church. Mr Marr was drinking deep, straight from his Thermos. Purkiss was sitting cross-legged on the grass, trying to read
Flying Saucer Review.
And Walbeck, his big, round face anxious and pale, was looking after me. Every so often he would point up at the stars and give me a rather woebegone thumbs-up sign. He puts a lot into his gestures, and when I gave him one back I tried to make it worthy of his very high standards. I got my thumb to sit up straight and then I made it quiver like a dog that has sighted a rabbit. Walbeck is a connoisseur of sign language, and even he looked impressed.

‘I got this terrible feeling,’ said my mum as we turned down towards Stranraer Gardens, ‘that something was wrong. Just after you went out.’

Mrs Quigley came in here, before Mum said anything embarrassing. ‘Emily’, she said, ‘had a very strong feeling in the toilet.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘Dad spent a lot of time in there.’

Everyone nodded seriously at this remark.

Mum clutched my arm. ‘I went into the spare bedroom,’ she said in a low voice, ‘and he was
there
! He was ever so tangible, Simon. And he isn’t happy about something.’

Quigley nodded seriously. ‘He has a lot to tell us – a great deal to say. We all feel it.’

Dad had absolutely nothing to say to Quigley when he was alive. I couldn’t see why being dead should have made him any more communicative. But, in the First Spiritualist Church, people tend to get a lot livelier after they’ve croaked. Guys who, when they were alive, would not give you the time of day can’t wait to tell you how terrific it is on the Other Side, and where they went wrong in the brief period of time allotted to them to hang around South Wimbledon.

Dying is a big event for the First Spiritualist. I sometimes think that what would really suit them would be a gas explosion right outside the church – and then the whole lot of them could get blasted over to where the action is.

I noticed that they had formed up into a kind of protective shell around me. Pike was a little way ahead, over to my right. Hannah Dooley, Mr Toombs and Mrs Quigley were behind to my left. The north-west exits were covered by my mum and Quigley. Emily hung in close to my offside rear in case I should try to bolt west-south-west as we came in to Durham Gardens.

‘Well,’ said Quigley, in a conversational tone, over his left shoulder, ‘has Jesus Christ entered your heart yet, Simon?’

‘Not yet, Mr Quigley,’ I said. ‘But you never know!’

‘You never know,’ he repeated, with somewhat forced cheerfulness.

The big thing in the First Church of Christ the Spiritualist is honesty. Everyone is very honest with everyone else. If you have body odour, people will tell you about it. You know? And they are razor-sharp about Faith. It’s not like the golf club. You don’t just join. It’s not really enough to be born into it, which is perhaps why so many people leave – especially around my age. They are always asking you whether you
really
believe, and whether Jesus has
really
entered your heart.

I think the only reason I haven’t left is that I have nowhere else to go. While my dad was alive, none of it seemed to matter too much.

‘Norman,’ Quigley had once said to him, ‘are you happy with the Lord Jesus? Are you comfortable with Him?’

My dad had given him a cautious look. ‘I think we get along pretty well. You know?’ And he turned to me and gave me one of his broad winks. Then he raised his right buttock and mimed a farting movement.

He never really liked conversations about JC. And he never talked to me about those things. Maybe now he was dead he would have a bit more to say about it all. I found myself quite looking forward to his views. What he said, of course, depended on which of us got to him first.

We were marching, in good order, down Stranraer Gardens. We were coming up to the shabby front door of number 24. We were waiting patiently while my mum groped in her apron for the key. We were stepping over the threshold.

Mrs Quigley stepped in first, her long red nose twitching with excitement. As she moved down the hall she was practically pawing the carpet in her excitement. When she got to the bottom of the stairs she turned round and flung her arms wide. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘oh
yes
! He is very strong. Very, very strong. Still!’

If anyone was going to get on the line to the late Norman Britton, her face seemed to say, it was going to be Marjorie Gwendolen Quigley.

Mrs Quigley is a sensitive. I don’t mean she
is
sensitive. She’s about as sensitive as tungsten steel. She is
a
sensitive, the way some people are bus conductors or interior designers. She is in touch with things that dumbos like you and I did not even know existed until people like Mrs Quigley clued us in on them.

She knew, for example, that Emily was going to fail Grade Four Cello. Not because Emily Quigley is tone-deaf and has fingers about as supple as frozen sausages, but because she
knew.
The way she
knew
that that ferry at Zeebrugge was going to roll over and kill all those poor people. Why, you may ask, did she not get on to the ferry company and tell them not to bother with this particular service? Or, indeed, get at the Associated Board of Examiners? She
knew
, that was all. It was fate – right?

She usually keeps quiet about her prophecies until they have been proved correct, but occasionally she will go public a little earlier than that. Remember the nuclear war in Spain at the end of 1987? That was hers. Or the tidal waves off Boulogne in the August of the following year? Seven thousand people were going to die, according to Marjorie Quigley. A lot of us thought that house prices would be seriously affected.

She was extra-sensitive tonight. After she had pawed the carpet, she lifted that long, spongy nose of hers and sniffed the air keenly. Her nose is the most prominent thing about her face. The rest of it is mainly wrinkles, that dwindle away into her neck. On either side of the nose are two very bright eyes. They are never still. They come on like cheap jewellery.

‘Norman!’ she said, as if she expected my dad to leap out at her from behind the wardrobe in the hall. ‘Norman! Norman! Norman!’

‘He wath in the toilet,’ said Emily. ‘I had a thtwong feeling of him in the toilet!’

You could tell that nobody much fancied the idea of trying to make contact with Norman in the lavatory. Marjorie’s nose and mouse-bright eyes were leading us to the back parlour, scene of some of her greatest triumphs.

They always have the seances in the back parlour – a small, drab room looking out over the back garden. It was here, a couple of years ago, that Mrs Quigley talked to my gran. Never has there been such an amazingly low-level conversation across the Great Divide.

‘Are you all right, Maureen?’

‘Oh yes. I’m fine.’

‘Keeping well?’

‘Oh, yes. On the whole. Mustn’t grumble. You?’

‘We’re fine. How are Stephen and Sarah?’

‘Oh, they’re fine. They’re all here, and they’re fine.’

It really was difficult to work out who was dead and who was alive. My favourite moment came when La Quigley, running out of more serious topics, asked my dear departed gran, ‘What are you all doing Over There?’

‘Oh,’ said Gran – ‘the usual things.’

The
usual things
, my friends! They are dead, and they are still running their kids to piano lessons and worrying about whether to have the spare room decorated. What was the point in dying if that was all you got at the end of it?

I had the feeling, however, as Mrs Quigley settled herself at the table, that tonight’s rap was going to be a little more heavyduty. The team got into their chairs and pulled themselves up to the table like they were the board of some company discussing a million-pound tax-avoidance scheme. Only I remained outside the circle.

‘Come,’ said Mrs Quigley. ‘Come, Simon!’

I came.

Have you ever been to a seance? Do you imagine something vaguely exciting? With the curtains drawn and the doors closed and the night wind banging at the window? A weird, blackmagic affair, where people push glasses around on heavy tables, or levitate, to the sound of heavy breathing? With the First Spiritualist Church of South Wimbledon, it isn’t like that at all.

For a start, there is no build-up. You draw the curtains, yes. But after you have taken the hand of the person next to you, off you go. There are no preliminaries apart from a short prayer, which Quigley was giving out as I sat down.

‘O Jesus,’ he was saying, ‘all of us here at 24 Stranraer Gardens are very keen to get in touch with Mr Norman Britton, of this address, who died earlier today at a hospital in the Wimbledon area.’

That’s Quigley. He gives it to Jesus straight. Like he was talking to Directory Enquiries, or something.

‘You’ – I could tell from the way he tackled the first letter of the word that he meant Jesus – ‘see everything. You see wars, famines, victories, defeats and also, of course, You see . . . us!’

I breathed out. Once Quigley gets on to the Lord it’s time to go out and get the popcorn. Those two can talk for hours. Or, rather, JC can
listen
for as long as Quiggers can dish it out.

‘Tell us, Lord,’ he went on, ‘about Thy new arrival. How is he? And can He . . .’

Here he stopped, aware that he had vocalized the first letter as a capital and that he wasn’t supposed to be talking about Jesus but about my dad. He gulped and struggled on, careful to demote the late Mr Britton to the status of mere mortal.

‘. . . can
he –
Norman Britton, that is – talk to Thy children here at 24 Stranraer Gardens on today, Wednesday the fifth of September?’

That’s Quigley. The date. The time. The map reference.

Jesus said nothing. He never does. People do not expect him to.

‘And,’ went on Quigley, ‘Lord, if Norman has a message for any one of us here – any word of advice from Thy Kingdom on the Other Side – please may he come forward and speak, as we trust in Thy mercy to reveal him!’