They Came From SW19 (31 page)

‘I can’t live without her.’

It was, I decided, a
ridiculous
cardigan. Had she bought it for him? He just didn’t look himself at all. He was sort of smirking as he said all this stuff. In a way I found very irritating. I tried not to listen. I thought that, if I didn’t listen, soon he would stop and then we would go home and life would start again, the way it had always been before. But he kept on talking, and I couldn’t stop myself from hearing.

‘She’s called Veronica,’ he said, ‘and your mother knows about her. Has known about her a long time. And it’s why she and you and . . . and why we . . .’

He stopped.

‘I don’t love Mum any more, you see?’ he said. ‘I don’t love her.’

I looked up at him. Straight in the eyes. ‘Is that where you’ve been? With this Veronica woman?’

‘That’s where I’ve been, and that’s where I want to stay.’

He drank again. But this time as if he wanted to get the beer over and done. As if he suddenly didn’t want to be here at all.

‘I met Veronica at the Anglo-Catholic church in Putney – St Mark’s. When Mrs Danby took me there. The old bat led me astray in more ways than one. After I started with Veronica, Mrs D went back to the First Spiritualists.’

‘But you kept going to these Anglo-Catholic geezers?’

A lot of things were becoming clearer. That smell of oil and candles and that light from a distant window and him on his knees, mumbling. He must have taken me there.

‘She seemed pretty keen to get me on the team,’ I said.

Dad leaned forward and tapped me on the knee. ‘She felt guilty. She offered a covenant to the church if I came back or you were Confirmed in Faith. A lot of money. But I wasn’t going to go back . . .’

He looked away. He had that look he used to get on Saturday mornings after he had come back from the shops. As if he was looking at his life and not enjoying what he saw. As if there was a whole load of things behind him and nothing in front but age. You know? As if the night was coming in and he couldn’t stop it.

‘In the end, Veronica and I packed in Christianity.’ He tapped me on the knee. ‘Make up your own mind,’ he said. ‘Look at the world and make up your
own
mind.’

I kept my eyes on his face. ‘Do you believe there is a God?’

I said. ‘Yes,’ he said, slowly.

From the way he said it, he might have been talking about Krull of Varna. The thought didn’t seem to bring him any comfort. Or make the prospect of that long night any easier.

‘But I don’t know what I mean when I say that word. It’s just something I say . . . because I have to say it . . . Because it brings me some comfort.’

‘Like Veronica,’ I said. I had to say it, guys. I could not help myself. I just did not like the sound of this woman. She was young, probably. Younger than my mum. Nearer to my age than his, I felt sure. She sounded fat and self-important, I thought.

‘I know you’ll be OK, Simon,’ my dad was saying. ‘You’re very tough and very smart and you’re your own man. You always have been.’

He put his hand on my hand again. I moved it a little way away.

‘Will this Quigley guy be finished now?’ he said. ‘Now they’ve rumbled him? He will, won’t he? I mean, if he causes trouble you can call on me, you know?’

I just looked at him, blankly.

‘If I thought you couldn’t look after yourself, you see . . .’

I wasn’t sure I cared for this ‘look after yourself’ stuff. I never like it when people say that to you. It was the same as this ‘make up your own mind’ line. I wasn’t sure I
could
make up my own mind. You know?

‘What are you telling me?’ I said, in a flat voice. ‘I don’t get you.’

‘I’m going away, Simon. I’m going away and I’m not coming back.’

It’s funny. I knew he was going to say that. Just the way I knew my mum had bad news when she came in on me in Dad’s study all those weeks ago. The evening he died.

‘Where are you going?’ I said, evenly.

‘Veronica has a place. It’s a long way away from here. We can start all over again. You know?’

‘How can you start all over again?’ I said to him. ‘It doesn’t make sense. You only get one life, don’t you? How can you start it over again? It’s started already, hasn’t it?’

‘Darling . . .’

I didn’t like him saying that. He sounded like Quigley. He reached for me again, and this time I moved even further away from him. I’d had enough middle-aged men slobbering all over me for one day.

‘I’m sorry, Simon,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

And they were all apologizing!

‘I didn’t realize that Quigley . . . I mean, if it’s that bad, of course I’ll. . .’

‘I can handle Quigley,’ I said in a steady voice.

‘Are you sure?’

‘If I can handle you, I can handle Quigley.’

‘Simon – sometimes I don’t know . . . I don’t . . .’

‘Look at life,’ I said, nastily, ‘and
make up your own mind, guy
!’

He changed tack then. He gave up trying to grab me. He started going on about the life insurance. He knew just how much he was worth. He said that his not coming back was much the best option for all of us. He was insured with four different companies, he said, which was probably another reason Quiggers was hanging round. ‘Dying on your partner,’ he said, ‘is much fairer and more financially beneficial to them than divorcing them.’

He put his head in his hands then. He was a bad man, he said – a weak, bad man.

‘You’re not bad,’ I said – ‘you’re really nice!’ It wasn’t true that he was bad.

He cried a lot, but I didn’t cry. I didn’t see why I should. I’d done my crying for him the day they told me he was dead. Funnily enough, that hadn’t seemed at all real. It was only now it was like he was really dying.

When he’d stopped feeling sorry for himself, he handed me a piece of paper with a number on it. ‘If this Quigley gets too much,’ he said, ‘write here. Give me a bit of time to get settled. It’s a box number.’

‘What’s wrong with your address?’ I said. ‘I won’t tell anyone. You can trust me, guy!’

He looked at me. He looked all crumpled now. Those new clothes she’d bought him looked even more stupid than they had before. He said something – I forget what, but it was pretty clear he didn’t trust me. Or maybe Veronica had got to him on the subject. I thought about how I’d walked around all those weeks, and what I’d felt about him and the crazy things I had found myself believing. And I thought:
Where were you when I needed you, Dad? Where were you when you died on me? You know?
He had done nothing.

There was a lot of stuff about his life too. About his novel and his business. That was in all sorts of trouble, apparently. If he did come back to life, he was in real problems with the bank. Although isn’t that what life
is
? Being in trouble with the bank? He went on about Mum. How she had always held him back. How he had never really been able to write because of her. I couldn’t figure this. What did she do? Start banging on the ceiling every time he took out his biro? I mean, she goes on – but what the hell? They all go on, don’t they?

‘When you’re my age,’ he said, ‘you’ll understand.’

‘I won’t,’ I said. ‘I understand now.’

He pushed the glass along the table. ‘Come with us,’ he said. ‘You’d like Veronica. Come with us!’

‘To Box 29? You reckon?’

As I said this, I realized it was too late for me and him. That I wasn’t going to leave. Ever. And that he didn’t really want me to. He had said that just to be polite. Oh, he was polite. He was polite and good fun and a hell of a laugh at parties. But, at the end of the day, you couldn’t trust him.

‘Your mum needs you,’ he said.

I’d noticed. But I hadn’t noticed him clocking the fact until the day he decided to bugger off to Box 29 with Veronica. I was almost ready to tell him I couldn’t face Quigley on my own. But I couldn’t find the words. And they wouldn’t have had any effect.

When it comes down to it, grown-ups think about themselves. After that they think about other grown-ups. And a long way after that they think about children. Children really are on another planet as far as they are concerned.

‘I want you to look after her,’ he said.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘
you
don’t seem to be intending to do it, do you?’

Then I looked back at the table. I was giving that table a lot of attention. Suddenly I felt I was talking to my mum. Because it was feelings and stuff. Me and Dad never talked about that much before. She did all that. But, now we were talking about it, I felt this great weight on me. As if we would never have the time to say all the things we needed to say to each other. As if we just didn’t have the words for them. You know?

‘Well,’ I said, in the end, ‘you’d better bugger off. You’re taking a risk being here really, aren’t you? Someone from the Mutual Life Provident might drop in . . .’

‘Veronica’s got the car . . .’ he said.

She had a car and everything! He was made up!

‘Look, Simon . . .’ he muttered, as he got up, ‘I’m sorry. I am so sorry!’

‘Don’t be,’ I said.

He came at me again and I could tell he was going to make another stab at a heavy masculine embrace. I just sat very still, waiting for him to go.

‘You’re very angry with me now,’ he said, ‘but one day . . .’ ‘I’m not angry. I’m fine. Just fine! OK?’

There was a pause.

‘What’s she like?’

‘Veronica?’

‘Yeah.’

‘She’s . . .’ Another long silence. ‘She’s funny.’

He looked at me. His eyes seemed to be coming from a long way away.

‘Like you, Simon.’

He was wearing jeans. That was my dad – always trying to keep up with things. But I figured the jeans wouldn’t last long. Veronica would be working on something to go with the brown shoes and the cardigan. She would reshape his whole wardrobe. And when she’d finished that, she’d start on him. He wouldn’t be allowed to fart or pick his nose or put his feet on the table. After a while he wouldn’t be my dad at all. He’d be Veronica’s husband.

‘Write,’ he said, ‘won’t you? Because I can’t. Write. OK?’

‘Sure,’ I said.

Then, at last, I looked him straight in the eyes. ‘I won’t give you away,’ I said. ‘I promise you that. I won’t tell anyone anything about any of this as long as I live. I swear it.’

‘I know, Simon,’ he said.

He made a half-hearted move towards me, but I gave him no encouragement. I didn’t even look up as he went up the ramp into the street, so I’m still not sure when he passed out of the garden and into the rest of the world. Sometimes I picture him walking out with his head held high and his step straight. Other times I see him sort of shuffling, as if the world had finally got to him. As if he was suddenly old and tired and defeated.

But mostly I try not to think about him at all.

Quigley never recovered from that evening. He told quite a lot of people what he’d seen. He even told the people at work, who were most impressed. He went through a brief period of chatting to the customers down at the bank about how he had seen someone come back from the dead. In a garden at twilight. But, although they were amused at first, I don’t think they liked it and, after a while, he was sent for treatment. He told the doctors all about how my dad had come back to life in his grey cardigan and had told him the secrets of the universe.

Nobody’s bothered about Pike or how or why he went through Mr Marr’s pockets, cleaned out his ID, took his keys and squatted in the house to acquaint himself with the principles of ufology. It is as if Marr, Pike, my dad and Quigley had never been. As if they were all part of some troubled dream I was having.

Quigley’s in a mental hospital near Tooting. He went in just before Christmas last year. Mum and I go to see him sometimes, and we agree that he is a much nicer person than he used to be. He tells us about Old Mother Walsh and how the snake is coming for him. It has five heads, apparently, and is from the planet Tellenor. Lewis set it on him. It has a number on it, but not the number of the second millennium. It is marked with a 24, the number of our house. He’s worked Argol in there too. Argol is on his way in a kind of steel tub, apparently, and when he gets here we are
for
it. The only thing you have to be careful not to mention is the First Church of Christ the Spiritualist. I don’t understand the details, but apparently Mrs Danby got her lawyer on to him about some financial thing. She herself left the church, and is going to leave all her money to the Battersea Dogs’ Home. She wrote my mum a long letter saying that I was a Devil Child, and the best thing my mum could do with me was have me exorcized. My mum wrote back and said that she didn’t have that kind of money.

‘She’s an old hag,’ said Mum.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said, ‘I think I could do with a bit of exorcism!’

Mum and I get on a lot better these days. We’ll never be close, if you know what I mean, but we’ve got something worked out. Mum has been a lot more cheerful since Quigley was declared bankrupt, insane and guilty of fraud. She’s got bigger. Her eyes, which used to be dull and filmy, have got some of their sparkle back. She and Hannah Dooley left the First Spiritualists and founded a Household Church. They’ve called it the Fellowship of Christian Spiritualists of 24 Stranraer Gardens, and they have a lot of fun, singing and dancing and playing the tambourine in the back room downstairs. Once or twice my mum has even gone into a light trance, and, though she hasn’t yet contacted anyone interesting, we have great hopes of her.

They reckon it was all Quigley’s fault. That Old Mother Walsh had it right, and that Ella Walsh should never have led the church into the ways of men. They are quite down on men, but they seem to like me.

Mrs Quigley and Emily still live with us. They had to sell the house – what remained of it after Brunt had finished with it. Mrs Quigley doesn’t say a lot, and what she says, she says quietly. Sometimes, if she’s good, my mum lets her chop the vegetables. Emily turns out to be really quite decent. She has had a crisis of faith since her old man was put in the bin, and, a month or so ago, she took all her C. S. Lewis books out into the garden and burnt them. For some reason, shortly after the First Church of Christ the Spiritualist took its number out of the phone book, she started to forget to lisp. Who knows, one day I may marry her. On the other hand, I may not.