by P P Corcoran
#
Instead of going straight home to Brixton, Robert made the decision to visit a human bar he knew, on the edge of the business district, in order to clear his head, settle his nerves with a couple of drinks, and maybe come up with a solution to his problem. He phoned home from a booth in a squalid alley near the tube station. His 17-year-old daughter, Dora, answered.
“Dad, mum’s been really bad today. She hasn’t got up, hasn’t eaten. Just keeps crying and saying she wants to die. I didn’t know what to do and I couldn’t get hold of you at the block. I couldn’t help out at the Food Bank today.”
“Dora, I’ll only be an hour- it’s- I had a meeting with a Shoma.” He paused, feeling the constriction in his throat again. “It didn’t go well.”
He heard Dora’s breathing down the line. “A Shoma? Ok, Dad, but please come home as soon as you can. I’m supposed to be going out tonight.”
“Yes, Dora. Thank you. Just an hour. I need some time to think. Look after your mother till I get home.”
“Dad...”
“Yes?”
“Don’t get drunk. Not again.”
It had started to rain. Robert pulled up the collar of his thin coat and made his way along the edges of light-smeared lanes, keeping clear of the main roads, splashing through glistening puddles. He kept his head down, trying to keep the world out, to drive all his thoughts inward. But it was impossible. From high above, he could hear the rippling, arrogant laughter that could only be a group of young Shoma, celebrating some deal clinched, some welcome acquisition to further brighten their lives. Pausing in a doorway Robert watched the sparse crowds drift by; he noticed that the humans seem to cling, like him, to the edges of the pavements, while the few Shoma that loped past occupied the center of the road, their smart business suits and perfect hair dampened by the rain.
Robert soon arrived at his destination; a tired, beaten-up sort of joint with peeling paint and a broken awning from which a stream of rainwater sloshed into the gutter. He knew there would be no Shoma in here- there never were, and its low door hinted that Shoma weren’t welcome anyway. Most pubs and restaurants these days, if they wanted to remain in business, had raised their door height to the mandatory three meters, often at considerable expense.
Robert took his usual seat by the bar and ordered a whiskey and soda. He kept his eyes fixed on the grain of the wooden table top, trying to achieve that balance in his head between thought and anger, to drive away the fear that was still sticking to him after his meeting with the Shoma, to warm away the moisture in his clothes that was more sweat than rainwater.
What should he do?
He racked his brains for minutes and minutes. Robert knew he’d end up paying for a big chunk of the job up front, like he had done in the past; the Shoma would refuse to stump up for it. This time it might ruin him. Could he do the clean himself? He wouldn’t know where to start. And if he did nothing at all, refused to attempt a task outside of his expertise, he would lose his job, his family would be evicted, and poor Becky with her health problems...ever since they’d stopped giving her the pills, the pain had become unbearable for her.
Robert stared at the beer stained swirls of the wooden grain, going around and round, closing into tighter and tighter spirals, ending where they began.
“LIE!”
Someone was shouting from a dark alcove at the rear of the bar. Robert glanced up from the table top. A shaggy bearded old man, hunched over his pint, was pointing drunkenly at the TV screen. Robert had noticed this guy here a couple of times before but had never spoken to him. Now he found himself marveling at his reckless anger.
“Another bloody lie!”
“Shut your trap, Gary,” remonstrated the woman behind the bar. “Do you want me to get shut down again?”
Robert glanced at the TV screen. The Shoma news anchors were introducing another story about the celebrations. A blue banner rolled across the screen; ONE HUNDRED YEARS SINCE FIRST FRIENDSHIP.
“That’s another lie!”
“One more time, I swear, and you’re gone!”
On the screen now was a grainy still photograph Robert had seen many times before; the old, long dead President of the USA shaking hands with a towering male Shoma in red robes, at least three feet taller.
“Bullshit! That photo is bullshit!” Screamed Gary.
“Right, that’s it...”
“Yeah, I’m going...”
But he didn’t. Thirty seconds later Robert was being interrupted from his reverie by this old chap Gary sliding along the bench next to him and extending his hand.
“She’s only kidding. Me and her, we’ve got an understanding. I’m Gary.”
Despite Robert’s interest in this guy, he wasn’t really in the mood to get drawn into any unwelcome conversations. “Robert,” he replied, a little stiffly, shaking the proffered hand.
“You look like you could do with some company. Seen you here before. Let me guess the cause of your obvious misery. Shoma?”
Robert nodded grimly.
“Yeah well. They’re liars.” Gary pointed at the TV. “And that’s a lie, too. The centenary. Big, fat, stinking lie.”
“How?”
“Because it’s only been seventy-eight years.”
“And you know that because?”
Gary grinned, showing his yellow crooked teeth. “Because I was there. Buy me a beer and I’ll tell you all about it.”
#
“Course, when they arrived , nobody was expecting it. The Shoma just.... rolled up. I was only eight years old, a little kid. I remember my mother crying, holding me to her chest as it was announced on the TV, her warm breath as she murmured the Lord’s prayer in my ear, over and over again... but my Dad- he took me and my sister to London, in his old BMW, to Tower Bridge, to watch them arrive. There was music- somebody playing a trumpet- pretty girls dancing, all in blue- and lots of old men with placards- End of the World, that kind of stuff. The police couldn’t stop the crowds. Then we watched it come through the clouds over London Bridge. I guess my Dad was irresponsible bringing me along, but that was the kind of guy he was.
“Overall, I reckon- even then, as a kid, I picked up on it- amid all the fear, and the racket, we felt- well, more excitement, and hope, than anything else. That whole day- it kind of- smelt of it! We watched the grey clouds break apart, and this colossal silver dome slowly push downwards, and it felt like the moon was coming down to say hello! The river was roaring, it seemed like the water was rushing upwards, the clouds were moving and billowing and swelling, and there was wind and noise all around- but- my Dad held my hand, and he shouted, Don’t worry, Gary! They’re here to save us! From ourselves. See? They’re just like angels! And as that huge, huge, silver ball slid through the clouds towards Big Ben, like the fist of God, I remember thinking, even though I was so little- of course, he’s right. He’s my Dad, and he’s always right. Just like angels.
“I don’t remember much else- but my Dad would tell me years later about all the joy they brought with them after arrival, and why they were here. Their spaceships, see- they were broken, needed fixing. The Shoma wouldn’t stay long, and in the meantime, they would give us...things in return- like machines, and cures.”
“Which we never got.” Interjected Robert.
“That’s right,” said Gary. “And they told us they were going to leave- but they didn’t. They stayed. Their spaceships, rotting in junkyards in Essex, we’ve all seen them. The Shoma never intended to leave, ever. And what about us? Humans? What’s happened to us? We’ve dwindled. It’s like something they’ve brought with them- is sucking the life out of us! And when was the last time you saw a baby, for Christ’s sake? There’s less people around now than there used to be.”
Robert nodded. “I guess I knew all this already. But you don’t think about it, do you? It’s just normal, just what is. And nobody ever talks about it anymore. I remember, a few years ago- but now- it’s like we’ve forgotten.”
“So much for hope,” said Gary.
On the TV screen was that picture again, the one with the Shoma shaking the hand of the President, but this time as a studio backdrop behind two Shoma newscasters. “Look at this,” said Gary, reaching into his jacket pocket and drawing out a rectangular piece of card. “My Dad took it.”
It was an old, crumpled photograph, yellowed and stained. He held it up, aligned with the TV screen, and Robert and the bartender woman stared at it. An old white man was shaking hands with a Shoma, like the famous photo on the TV. But this was different.
“The Shoma,” said Robert. “It’s tiny. Is this a baby one, or-?”
“No. That’s what they were like. All of them.”
This Shoma was a wizened little thing, with shriveled, sallow cheeks and red weeping eyes, whose head reached no higher than the man’s waist, and whose hands were tiny, like pale moths.
“I remember,” said the woman, “that they were smaller. Not as small as that, but no bigger than a normal person.”
“They’ve grown,” said Gary. “Something here’s made them grow. Maybe the same thing that’s made us not care, made us forget. And that image- “he nodded at the TV- “fake.”
“But- surely,” said Robert, “people should know about this. Shouldn’t we be doing- something?”
The old man fixed Robert with a steady gaze from the shadows.
“What have you done, Robert?”
Robert looked downwards in shame. “Nothing,” he said.
Gary bought Robert another drink while Robert told him all about what had happened that day, and then he wasn’t terrified anymore, instead finding himself animated, excited, and strangely hopeful. At the end of the evening, Gary laid his liver spotted old hand on Robert’s arm and said, ‘I may have a proposition for you, Robert. You’d like to do something, yes?’
“Yes,” said Robert, charged with an unexpected sense of rebellion.
“Find out how much it will cost you to hire a firm to do this cleaning work,” said Gary, his eyes glittering. “Then meet me back here tomorrow. I’ll see what I can do to help you. To help all of us.”
#
When Robert arrived home, it was well past midnight, and he was mildly drunk. He stared at Dora’s bedroom door, resolutely shut, remembering with a pang of guilt that he’d promised to come home early so that she could go out with her ex-college friends. She would have had to stay home and look after Becky, as she often did. She would be angry with him for days.
Robert paused swaying outside his open bedroom door and watched Becky sleeping in the gloom for a few moments. She was so narrow- so small- beneath the thin sheets, barely a shape at all, almost a ruck in the bed linen. Robert moved to the single bed and reached out his hand to touch her, to check she was there. The angular shoulder twitched away irritably.
Going into the bathroom Robert stared at himself in the mirror for a couple of minutes. His face, he considered, was an unremarkable one. Round face, small nose, scrunched up grey eyes, thinning hair. He was far from handsome. But there was something else. His face was more than unremarkable and unhandsome, it was unambitious. The nose an unattractive gnarled blob. The chin, weak, almost absent. His was not the face of a man who made things happen, who changed things- it was the shapeless face of a nobody, a man whose ambitions never exceeded the bare maintenance of life, a man who would let others push him around.
“What have you done, Robert?” he said to himself.
The next day was Robert’s weekly day off, unusually he got up early, despite his hangover, and spent the morning researching high rise cleaning techniques online and poring through Yellow Pages and business directories for cleaning companies who would be able to do the job by next month. Only one company could fit him in- they’d had a cancellation- but they were reluctant to deal with a Shoma Corporation without fifty percent up front. Robert swallowed so loudly he was sure the woman at the end of the line must have heard him. He told them he’d call back.
After a strong cup of coffee Robert put through a call to the Shoma Estate Bursar’s Office. He spent the next fifteen minutes arguing with a bored sounding female Shoma who refused to honor any invoices he might send them for the cleaning, especially for a whacking great ten thousand pounds. She suggested he take out a personal bridging loan, and at some point, in the far future her office might repay him. Robert knew what that meant. The loan repayments he took out for an electrical job his Shoma had insisted be completed had ruined Roberts finances for two years, and some smaller payments he’d made and later reclaimed had never been refunded at all.
“All I can suggest, Hoo-man. Be grateful for the advice.”
Robert sat in the half-darkness for twenty minutes, drinking more coffee, absorbing this injustice, listening to the sound of Becky shuffling around in their bedroom, dreading her getting up, having to face her incessant misery, her endless complaints.
A short time later Robert heard the scratchy sounds of a key turn in the lock. Dora. He listened to her busying herself in the hall. She didn’t know he was there. He could see her in the gap of the door, sorting out her bag. He loved to watch her sometimes, his wonderful, pretty daughter. The slow, certain way she moved, the serious expression she wore when she thought no one was watching her. He admired her so much, her determination to improve herself, to help the less fortunate at the food bank, and the other charities she volunteered for. Robert remembered the terrible day just three months ago when she came home in torrents of tears to tell him her public college had been closed. It was to be reopened as a Shoma Technical School. Two and a half years of hard work on that Anthropology course- gone. He loved her and he had so much hope for her although he knew deep down, she had very few opportunities at all for the future. Dora was so stern and determined, always talking about restarting her course, despite knowing only too well that private human colleges were the only option for her, and her father could never afford the fees on a caretaker’s salary. Even though he admired her courage and positivity, sometimes when he looked at her, he saw her mother staring back causing him to shiver with despair.
Robert called out to her, but she was gone up the stairs, and his words stalled in the dead air.
#
Robert didn’t quite know how he ended up at the bar that night. Couldn’t remember leaving home, the long walk, the pouring rain that soaked through his thin coat and into his trousers as he spoke to Gary and that female bartender- all he knew was that somehow he was there, as though a mysterious destiny had propelled him towards that moment, and erased everything in between.
The woman was middle aged, stout, and spoke with a warm Australian accent, nodding politely as he spilled his guts about the terrible day and his poor daughter. “I mean- Ingrid? How am I meant to come up with ten thousand quid? Ten thousand quid, to keep my job and my wife alive.” He buried his head in his hands. “It’s just so fucking unfair.”
Gary smiled. “Rob, you said you wanted to do something. Make a difference. Is that still the case?”
“Yes,” said Robert, “More than ever. I’ve got nothing to lose now, anyway.”
“OK,” said Gary, his voice suddenly quietening. “When you told me your story the other day I immediately thought of Ingrid. She’s got experience in these sorts of projects. She used to clean high rises in Melbourne. Isn’t that right?”
Ingrid nodded. “I know everything there is to know about this sort of stuff, sweetie. They used to call me Swinging Ing.”
“And I’ve done some work on high buildings too,” said Gary. “Scaffolding, that sort of affair.” Gary’s moved close to Robert; his cratered face was like the surface of some ancient, unfriendly world. “Rob, you organize the equipment, and me and Ingrid and some other guys will do the whole job for you. And this is the thing. I’ll pay. I’ll pay for the lot.”
Robert’s head was swimming. This afternoon an alien bureaucrat had threatened to ruin him. Now an unknown old man was promising to rescue him. It was all too much. �
��Why? Why would you even do that?”
“Gary said there was no crane on the roof. Is that right?” Asked Ingrid.
Robert nodded.
“I suppose the firm you spoke to was going to use either bosun’s chairs or mobile elevated work platforms?”
Robert nodded. “The second one.”
Ingrid wrote something in a notebook. “We just need the equipment, Rob. The platform. We’ll provide the labor and everything else.”
“I’ll pay for everything,” reiterated Gary. “I’ll even send money to your wife and kid, to pay for the medication and a private college course. Whatever you need. I can afford it.”
“But why- “
“Imagine this,” said Gary huskily, grasping Robert’s forearm. “It’s the big day. The day of the celebration. All the bigwig Shoma will be in London- including the Marshall and the Chancellor- congratulating themselves on their victory by stealth, and all the human collaborators with ‘em. Drinking their pricey wine, nibbling their canapés, snorting their cocaine, whatever; and they go out to watch the fireworks, and then- they look up at the smartest, brightest building on the Thames, overlooking the entire city- and there’s a message for ‘em. Written on the block in giant green fluorescent letters. A, massive, lovely, obscene message, the biggest fuck you in History!”
“What, like graffiti?”
“More than just graffiti!” Ingrid laughed. “A protest. A message that says- we’re not going to be shit on anymore!”
“What- what would it say?”
“Something really insulting. The ruder the better!”
“What,” said Robert, “something like- Fuck the Shoma, piss off back home, that sort of thing?”
“Yes,” laughed Gary. “Just like that, Robert. In ten-meter letters. You can even compose it if you like!”
“But you’ll be caught. You’ll be seen.”
“We’ll do it at night,” said Gary, “after the clean is finished. The night before. Under the guise of a final polish before the big celebration. No one will bat an eyelid.”
“We’ll use specialist paint,” explained Ingrid. “With a chemical ingredient that glows when illuminated by lights behind it. During the day, it’ll be a shimmering veil, barely perceptible. But when they switch the lights on for the celebration- ta da!”