They Came From SW19 Page 8

  Quigley started to tremble violently. ‘Don’t play games with Jesus Christ!’ he said, in the tones of a man addressing a baby crawling towards a live electricity cable. ‘Don’t mess around with the Living God, Simo! This is an urgent matter!’

  But why? Why was it suddenly so urgent? He was upping the stakes the whole time. I knew for my own sake that I had to say I believed in something. I didn’t particularly want it to be Jesus. But there didn’t seem to be any alternative.

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘Say it, Simo, please say it! I beg you!’

  Did he get commission, or what? I felt I was on top of a cliff. I was going to step off and fall through the air. I was going to fall the way a seed falls, blown by the wind. And there, on the shore below me, was my dad. He would be waiting for me when I got there. And, if I said the words, he would be alive again.

  ‘I believe . . .’

  There was a hiss like air escaping from a cushion. Quigley was breathing out slowly. Why should just saying these words seem so important? I could change my mind about them later, couldn’t I? I quite often said things I didn’t believe. Would repeating the magic formula make it true? And what would it lead to?

  From the expression on Quigley’s face I suspected it might lead to plenty. Did he see me as some kind of potential Messiah? The First Spiritualists are always looking for the ‘boy prophet of pure heart and mind’. Fox reckoned she had found him in a thirteen-year-old Bengali youth from Manchester, and Mr Toombs had made some pretty big claims for a Scottish farmer’s son.

  ‘I believe in . . .’

  ‘In what, Simon?’

  ‘In Jesus Christ.’

  There was a nasty moment when I thought I was going to be expected to go on and say exactly what it was I believed about Him. And maybe to tell everyone why I believed whatever it was I did. But, before I was forced to get down to specifics, Quigley picked me up. His strong hands held me under the armpits and he sort of shook me at the window, as if I was a new baby of which he was especially proud.

  ‘Alleluia!’ he said.

  They actually say that sometimes down at the First Spiritualist Church.

  My mum, Emily and Marjorie came in right behind him: ‘Alleluia!’

  And then Marjorie stepped forward. The two of them folded me in their arms. I looked across at my mum, still on her knees in the far corner of the room. There was no way I could move. It was as if I suddenly belonged to this rather unappetizing couple. I looked up at Quigley’s face, flushed with triumph. Once again I had the impression that this had not been done entirely for my, their or even Jesus Christ’s benefit.

  ‘Mrs Danby,’ said Quigley, ‘will be very pleased.’

  His old lady smirked at him. ‘Mrs Danby will be delighted!’

  I had heard that name before. I couldn’t have said where. It brought with it all sorts of memories – a smell of something sweet and heavy, like perfume. A noise like distant music, with light falling in long lines from a high window. And a feeling of longing for something that I knew I could never have.

  But it also brought with it a voice that said, ‘Don’t ask too many questions about that name, Simon. Watch, wait and listen.’

  I looked out of the window once more before I finally went back to bed. There was no sign of him. It was like he had never been there.

  10

  When I woke next morning I could have sworn I heard my dad’s voice on the stairs. The sky at the window was the same pale blue as the day before. A breeze ruffled my face gently.

  ‘What do you fancy for breakfast?’ That was always his first remark of the day, as he stood outside my bedroom in his grey towelling dressing-gown.

  ‘What is there?’ I would reply.

  There would be a panic-stricken pause, and then he’d say, ‘Beans . . . I think.’ Or maybe, ‘Pain au chocolat . . . possibly.’ He never knew what there was.

  So I’d get up and the two of us would stagger down to the fridge. We’d stand there, side by side, staring in at the pork pies and the tomatoes and the milk bottles, and then he’d groan. ‘Me and drink are through!’

  It was only when I opened my eyes fully that I realized I hadn’t heard him at all. No one had said anything to me. Perhaps they were hoping that Jesus would wake me. I did, however, seem to have acquired a truly staggering hard-on. Maybe this had frightened Quigley off.

  As I swung my feet out on to the carpet, I looked down at my erection resentfully. What use was it? What was it supposed to be for? As things stood, there seemed to be no chance of anyone taking it seriously for about another ten years. By which time my balls would probably have started to drop off.

  My chest did not seem to have got any bigger during the night. My left arm was still slightly shorter than my right. I went to the middle of the room, closed my eyes, flexed my knees and allowed my head to loll to one side, thereby bringing myself into the first Tai-Ping position. ‘You are focused, Simon,’ I said to myself. ‘You are in harmony with the Law!’

  I allowed my trunk to roll forward and lowered my head between my knees. It is quite easy to fall flat on your face while perfecting the second position of Tai-Ping. Maybe Europeans are the wrong size, or maybe it’s just me. I stopped short of full bei-shin and began the duck-jumps backwards and forwards across the room. But I hadn’t the heart for ten-shang-lai. I groped for my school trousers under the bed, while listening hard for the Quigleys.

  At the back of the house, from the kitchen, I heard what sounded like voices raised in song. As far as I could tell, whoever was doing it – and one of them was certainly Quigley – was also adding a sort of primitive drum beat by banging a wooden surface, hard. I looked at the clock. It was seven forty-five.

  ‘I’m H-A-P-P-Y. I’m H-A-P-P-Y. I know I am, I’m sure I am because . . .’ Drum roll. ‘. . . Jesus loves me!’

  Bully for him. I was beginning to have second thoughts about Jesus Christ. I know he can heal the sick and raise the dead, but does he also have to make people carry on like the Treorchy Male Voice Choir at a quarter to eight in the morning?

  When I had safely covered every bit of naked flesh, I made my way down the stairs towards the noise of the singing.

  The kitchen door was closed. I put my ear to it. Things seemed to have gone quiet. For a moment I had this fantasy that the Quigleys were lying in wait inside – hanging from the curtain rail upside down, perhaps, or concealed under brooms and buckets in the scullery cupboard – and, as soon as I opened the door, they would spring out at me like a shower of surprised bats. I bit my lower lip and pushed open the kitchen door.

  The first thing I saw was Mum. She was standing over by the stove waving a spatula. She wasn’t wearing the faded floral apron, the one that Dad always said made her look like an Irish chambermaid, but a bright new plastic affair. She looked as if she had spent the night rearranging her hair.

  I was about to say something, but before I could there was a drum roll from the table and Mum started singing on her own.

  MUM: I put my fingers in his garments.

  His flesh seemed cold and pale.

  On his hands and feet there were some marks so neat . . .

  At which point the Quigleys came in, in four-part harmony:

  QUIGLEYS: I think they had been made by a nail!

  MUM and QUIGLEYS: Oh Jesus!

  MUM: I rolled away the stone into the garden!

  I felt more than just a little queer!

  In his chest and side there were some wounds you could not hide. . .

  Here the Quigleys leaped to their feet and, with a sort of loosely choreographed thrust forward with the right arm, sang:

  QUIGLEYS: I think they had been made by a spear!

  MUM and QUIGLEYS: Oh Jesus!

  While they went through the next bit – which was about how Jesus then pitched up waving a spear and a bunch of nails and saying how they were no problem for Him – I made my way to a vacant place at the table. I could see that on every plate was something I ha
d only ever seen before in a hotel – a full English breakfast. There were sausages and tomatoes and eggs and bacon and fried bread and mushrooms, and, in the centre of the spread, a gigantic pot of steaming coffee.

  All of the Quigleys looked amazingly clean. Their flares looked as if they had all just come back from the dry-cleaners. I wouldn’t put it past Quigley to take a trouser press with him wherever he goes.

  When they’d finished, they all started chuckling, and Quigley, switching all his attention to me, said, ‘People call us the Mad Quigleys!’

  I’m not surprised, I almost said, as I grabbed what looked like my plate and, after checking whether I had got as much as Quigley, started chomping into the fried bread.

  I somehow could not connect myself with the person who had prayed to Jesus. How had I managed to do such a thing? As I pounded bits of sausage into the egg yolk, I wondered whether praying could be related to wanking. It was often hard to believe, in the morning, that you were the person who had been pulling his wire so energetically the night before.

  Quigley was buttering his toast as if in time to invisible music. ‘Well, young shaver,’ he said, ‘Jesus lives!’

  There seemed no tactful answer to this. I just hoped no one was going to mention last night.

  On the other side of the table, Emily was trying out what could have been a wink. ‘Hallo, fwend,’ she said.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, reaching for the toast.

  Quigley’s right arm shot out and grabbed my wrist. ‘Haven’t we forgotten something?’

  I paused. ‘Sorry,’ I said, and put my hands back under the table.

  After a decent interval, I said, ‘Could you pass the toast, please, Mr Quigley?’

  This, I thought, was about as good as you could get at 07.58 in the morning. But it wasn’t good enough for Quigley. He grinned like a loony and waggled his head from side to side. ‘Nope,’ he said.

  Christ, what did he want? ‘I beseech toast, O great Quigley!’ ‘I fall on my knees, O Quigley, and crave the boon of toast!’

  ‘Er . . .’

  Quigley waggled his forefinger saucily. ‘Jesus!’ he said.

  Could you pass the toast, please, Jesus? Was that it? And would it then rev up on the plate and fly in low over the salt and pepper?

  Quigley pushed his face close to mine. I could see egg, sausage and tomato being ground to pulp by the Quigley teeth. ‘Thank Jesus.’

  He seemed quite chirpy about this. We were, after all, on the same side. For a moment I felt genuine remorse about not having thanked Him.

  ‘Thanks, Jesus,’ I said in a firm, manly voice. And then, in case there should be any doubt about this, I added, ‘For the toast.’

  Quigley beamed at me. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘thanks for the toast.’

  ‘And,’ I said, ‘for the hot chocolate.’

  ‘We haven’t got any hot chocolate,’ said my mum, swiftly.

  I like hot chocolate. My displeasure must have showed on my face, because Quigley came in with, ‘It’s a boy child, Sarah.’

  I knew this. I gave him a friendly smile and reached out, once again, for the toast. Once more Quigley’s arm reached out and grabbed mine. Was I ever going to get any toast?

  ‘Could I,’ I said patiently, ‘have some toast? . . . in the name of Jesus,’ I added, thinking that the mention of His name might prod Quiggers into action.

  He just sat there beaming. ‘Not till you say the password,’ he said.

  A guy could starve to death here, surrounded by all this bacon and sausage and egg and fried bread. In many ways, Quigley was like a computer game. You know? You paid a lot of money to be frustrated. I just could not figure my way through his latest move.

  ‘Pleath, Mithter Quigley, could I have thome toatht?’ said Emily.

  For a moment I thought this was merely a rather formal way of her addressing her old man. Then I caught on. ‘Please, Mr Quigley,’ I said, ‘could I have some toast?’

  ‘Good,’ said Quigley, beaming. ‘Good!’ And he passed me the toast.

  It was that simple. I was able to eat bread in my own home. I was in with the in-crowd.

  The rest of the meal was uneventful. They didn’t have grace after the meal. Nobody asked the Lord to make sure I had a good day at school. I was not handed a boxful of bibles to give out in break. I tell you, I was grateful when I pulled my blazer off the banisters and headed for the front door. Whatever it was they had in mind for me, it was clear that I was a high-priority project for the people at the top of the First Spiritualist Church. If they kept this up for long enough, I was going to start telling the folks up at school that they should welcome the Lord Jesus into their hearts. I tried to imagine myself saying this to Greenslade. It was neither easy nor pleasant.

  For some reason, that morning, I decided to walk up the hill, instead of taking the bus up the main road. I started thinking about those extraterrestrials. There had been something odd in the atmosphere last night. I had never seen Mr Marr so certain that he was going to get a result. I went up through Elam Gardens and Holtfield Park, trying to figure out this Christian thing and whether it might have anything to do with the visitors from outer space. Could you be a Christian ufologist? I didn’t see why not. There were people, according to Mr Marr, who reckoned Jesus came from outer space.

  The first thing I saw when I came off Parkside and across the Common was Mr Marr’s little canvas chair, his telescope, his night binoculars and the ten or twelve back numbers of Flying Saucer Review that are always to hand when he is waiting for the subjects of the periodical to show up. Everything was arranged just as it had been last night. It was like the lunch table on the Marie Céleste.

  I was standing there trying to understand what all this might mean when a hand clapped me on the shoulder and a noise like an old goods train being shunted started up in my ear. Walbeck only makes one greeting noise and it is very distinctive.

  He held up a small, grubby piece of paper, on which were written the words they took him away in a spaceship.

  I looked at Walbeck. He pointed to the chair and the bins and the magazines. Then he nodded. He looked, I have to say, very serious indeed. I tried some direct speech.

  ‘Where to?’

  Walbeck gave me an odd look. Where do they take people in spaceships? Margate? He was writing. When things get bad, Walbeck writes.

  another galaxy, of course!

  Of course! He started to cover the paper again. I could see that it was covered with fragments of Walbeck’s previous conversations. Discussions about joints and timber sizes (Walbeck is a carpenter by trade) lay next to words of comfort addressed to his elderly mum, and sometimes ran into them, so you got sentences that looked like ARE YOU ALL RIGHT THERE MUM FOR TEN INCH NAILS? Or I GOT YOU SOME OF THAT FISH YOU LIKE FROM THE BUILDER’S MERCHANTS YOU IDIOT!

  The message intended for me read: purkiss and me went for a hamberger then we went for a kip at purkiss’s place and when we come back around six in the morning we found . . .

  I turned the page. On the other side was written SIX SQUARE FEET OF CHIPBOARD.

  Walbeck always runs out of paper at the crucial moment. We went back to lip-reading.

  ‘What did you find?’

  Walbeck pointed at the chair, the magazines and the binoculars. Then he shrugged.

  ‘Maybe he went home.’

  Walbeck shook his head furiously. Then he made the conventional sign for Purkiss, which is a kind of crouch plus leer, and did a fluttering movement with the fingers of both hands. They had been to Mr Marr’s and he was not there. I just knew, the way I had known about my dad. I knew when we left him peering up at the sky that something awful was going to happen. It was all laid out so neatly on the grass. Mr Marr would never leave his binoculars, and the canvas chair cost £15.99!

  I wanted to stay and find out more. But we had run out of paper. There is a limit to the amount you can glean from pointing at things and grinning like an idiot. As I turned to go, Walbeck pointed at the arrang
ement on the grass. He looked really sad, suddenly. Then he pointed at the sky and raised his shoulders in a questioning sort of way.

  ‘I know, Walbeck,’ I said. ‘Why should they take a nice guy like Mr Marr? He was on their side, man. Why should they take him?’

  I walked on towards school trying to work this out.

  The same reason they had come for my old man, of course. Because life isn’t any fairer on the other side of the solar system than it is here. They come for the nice guys and leave the bastards behind. It’s always people like Mr Marr and my old man who get tapped on the shoulder by the small men with green leathery skin and fifteen fingers on each hand.

  There had to be a connection. I didn’t yet know what it was, but there had quite clearly been an unusually high level of psychic activity in the Wimbledon area last night. The energy that was capable of lifting an electrical engineer off the Common might well have something to do with the fact that a forty-three-year-old travel agent had been dragged back from the grave to haunt 24 Stranraer Gardens.

  11

  Just before I got to the school gates, I got out Tricolore 4 and started to read it. It lets people know you’re a serious person, doing something like that. And, besides, I am in correspondence with a girl called Natalie, who lives in Clermont-Ferrand. As far as I can make out, Clermont-Ferrand is even worse than Wimbledon. I was deep into the bit where Olivier and Marie-Claude are trying to buy some cheese in La Rochelle. Tricolore never gives you the stuff you really need to say to French people, like, ‘Can I hold your hot body to me?’ It is all about how to ask for a full tank of ‘super’ from the friendly ‘garagiste’ and what to say when they have run out of cardigans in Nogent-le-Rotrou.

  I was late. We were almost into First Period.

  As I came up to the gates, I looked cautiously over the book and saw Khan and Greenslade. Khan was sitting on his games bag. Greenslade was going through his pink nylon rucksack with an expression of desperation on his face.

  ‘Est-ce que tu as oublié tes condoms?’ I said.