by Alexei Sayle
‘Well, me and Mister Roberts drove into Granada, we waited till it got dark, broke the window of a jewellery store, robbed that, mugged a couple of tourists, and came back.’
Stanley said, ‘This is mad. Look, are you going to tell him to give himself up or not?’
‘No, no, no,’ Donna said. ‘I’m sure this religion thing could work if I just gave it another go. And we could do so much good in the world, preach a message of peace and ecology and all like that. Do you, do they, want to kill somebody who could save the planet?’
The boy didn’t know what to do. He turned to the African. ‘I dunno Adey, maybe she’s right … what do you think?’
Adey put a hand on the lad’s shoulder and said in a kind voice, ‘Boy, your mother’s crazy’
Donna seemed at last to accept that she was not going to argue her way out of this. Squaring her shoulders she said, ‘Well, from what I remember of the legends the Norse Viking told our class there’s always a big battle between good and evil at some point so it looks like we’re going to be having Ragnarok here in Bar Noche Azul. And from what I can see Mister Roberts is a later model than those two so perhaps he can do things they can’t, we’ll see won’t we?’
Then turning to her companion she ordered, ‘Take them, you can do it.’
Laurence was one of the few who had seen Mister Roberts using all of his physical power but even so he was staggered by the agility the big man showed as he vaulted the counter and in a half-crouch approached the Victorian couple.
If his movements were a shock, the speed and grace with which these two moved apart, throwing tables and chairs aside to give themselves more room, was just as astonishing. In a split second they flanked Mister Roberts, the woman folding her parasol with a snap, forming it into a short jabbing spear.
At the first whiff of the coming fight all of the British, following long-established practice, cleared to the walls, but for some odd reason none of them actually made for the door, which would have been the truly sensible thing to do. Laurence supposed that like him they all had a sense that they were witnessing something that they would never see again.
To Laurence the fight that unfolded resembled one of those Victorian boxing matches that went on for ninety-five rounds. In part this was due to the style in which two thirds of the contestants were dressed, but there was also something remorseless and cruel in the pounding that the three of them handed out to each other. The strangest thing, though, was that unlike all the other fights there had ever been in Bar Noche Azul none of the contestants made a sound. Apart from the smashing of crockery, the dull thud of blows and the splintering of furniture, there was silence.
The woman’s spear was the first thing to make contact, jabbing up under Mister Roberts’ armpit and causing him to stagger sideways.
Next, as the top-hatted man moved in, fists raised, Mister Roberts caught him with a tremendous back-handed blow sending shivers running through his body like a telegraph pole that a car has just run into. The man froze unable to move.
Donna was right, Mister Roberts was faster and stronger than his opponents but unfortunately for her his extra ability did not cancel out the man and woman’s numerical advantage. The Victorian gent was not out of action for long: as Mister Roberts closed to grapple with the lady the man straightened and drove blows with his fists into the back of Mister Roberts’ head. Mister Roberts threw the woman across the room, her head landing in the orange-juice-making machine behind the bar, smashing it to bits, plastic, metal and orange pulp flying everywhere.
Now Mister Roberts and the other man began trading punches. Years ago Laurence had filmed in a car factory where there had been a giant machine stamping out whole sides of cars from flat sheets of metal; their blows appeared to have as much force as that remorseless mechanism.
From behind Mister Roberts the woman reappeared, orange juice dripping from her bonnet, and taking a good grip on his throat with one hand began to squeeze. Though he tried everything to shake her off she refused to let go and while he writhed, her other hand tore at his body with clawed fingers. From the front Mister Roberts continued to repel the man, matching him blow for blow but there were simply twice as many punches, kicks, bites and stabs coming the other way so slowly he began to crumble: first one of his arms stopped working and swung limp at his side then under assault from both of them his legs began to buckle until slowly he crumpled to his knees. The woman finally let go of the big man’s neck and took the opportunity to land a tremendous blow with both fists to the top of his head. Without a sound Mister Roberts flopped face down onto the floor of Bar Noche Azul, dust, bits of prawn and peanut shells flying up into the air as he hit the tiles.
There was a pause as the Victorian man and woman stared down at their toppled foe. Then the man bent down and with a tearing sound ripped the back of Mister Roberts wide open. Gently the two of them then bent over the body and lifted Runciman out, like a giant, limp, bloody baby being born by caesarian section. The man and the woman carefully laid him on the rubble-strewn floor of the bar and looked at Adey He stepped forward and touched his fingers to the boy’s neck then ran his hands lightly over his torso.
‘He’s still alive,’ the African said, ‘but he needs to be taken to the clinic right away.
There were a few seconds of silence before Baz started out of the trance they were all in. ‘The pickup’s right outside,’ he said, glad to get away from all the madness. ‘I’ll take him.’
He, Miriam and Leonard lifted the boy and carried him out of the back door as tenderly as they could.
‘Nobody must be told what went on here,’ Adey called after them.
‘Yeah right,’ Baz shouted back. ‘Who exactly do you think would believe it?’
Of course, Adey need not have worried. Besides the reticence of those in the village towards giving information to the authorities, if there was one occasion when you wanted to take a battered and bloodied thirteen-year-old to the clinic in Durcal with no questions asked it was the matanza, since a combination of sharp knives, blowtorches, drunkenness and absconding pigs meant this was their busiest day of the year and they had no time or inclination to make probing inquiries.
Donna had stayed behind the bar during the fight, now finally she came forward and the crowd respectfully parted to let her through. Slowly she knelt beside the battered form of Mister Roberts, putting her hands lightly on his torso she looked up at the Victorians and quietly asked, ‘Could you turn him over please?’
They seemed to understand what she wanted and bent and rolled him onto his back.
She threw herself across him, weeping.
Laurence thought that even though her grief was perhaps real there remained a theatrical, self-pitying quality to it. Her son, who would have been justified in taking up a chair and hitting her with it, instead knelt beside her and, taking his mother’s hand said, ‘It’s all right Mum, it’s all right now, we’ll be fine, I’ll look after you, we don’t need anybody else. After all he was only plastic and metal.’
On film sets there was generally a nurse present, often moonlighting from their regular jobs in A&E departments. One had once told Laurence that in a dangerous situation you didn’t need to be afraid of people who were all spluttering and aggressive and red in the face, because all their blood was going to their head. They weren’t going to do anything to you. The ones you had to worry about were those whose faces were completely white: they’d sent all their blood to their limbs prior to smacking you with them. Donna’s features were the shade of the snows on Mulhacén as she looked at her son. Pulling her hand away she said, ‘You couldn’t stand to see me happy could you? You had to go and ruin it.’
Unlike hers, Stanley’s face turned red with shame and hurt. ‘But Mum, he was just a machine. I’m your own flesh and blood.’
‘He meant more to me than you ever will. After I’d done so much for other people, he was going to be my reward. He was the only one who looked after me.’
The
n she collapsed again, weeping bitter tears onto the corpse of her imaginary, mechanical lover and crying out, ‘Let me die here with him.’
Adey turned towards Laurence who had been trying to ease his way out of the bar without anybody seeing him.
‘Mister Laurence,’ he said.
‘Err yes, hello?’ Laurence answered, he was wedged half in and half out of the door. Outside in the street the gutters ran red with blood, men chasing runaway pigs raced past brandishing sharp knives and dismembered carcasses and miles of looped intestines hung in the doorways of all the houses opposite. Not for the first time Laurence understood why all the leading surrealists had been Spanish; if the clock overlooking the basketball court had started melting he wouldn’t have been in any way surprised.
Adey said in a stern voice, ‘I asked you about him and you lied to me. You swore you knew nothing, yet you must have understood how serious I was.’
‘Well, I’m sorry,’ Laurence blustered. ‘You do know we have a rule around here that we don’t tell on anybody?’
‘That is a coward’s way to avoid making a moral choice,’ Adey stated. ‘The other ones, they say they are not happy with you. That you are going to have to be made an example of.’
‘That’s right,’ said Donna, rising furiously from the corpse of Mister Roberts, her face slick with tears. ‘It’s all his fault.’
Next Summer in London
It was evening in London, the gummy pavements unable to absorb even a fraction more heat exhaled it back into the atmosphere so it lay shimmering like imperfect glass over the cars, buses and the dripping pedestrians.
‘Were they going to mess you up?’ asked the young man.
‘Well, of course I thought that’s what they were going to do: mess me up in some way, smash my head in, but what they did at first seemed worse. They told me I had to look after Donna and her son. That I had to have them come and live in my big house. Adey said in his country a place the size of mine would be the airport terminal or parliament and it was criminal to keep it for just one old man.
It suited their purposes too, of course, him and his alien friends. This way somebody was keeping an eye on Donna and Stanley, making sure they didn’t go around blabbing their secret.
‘Though really in some ways, it was too late: the brown sauce was out of the bottle. People tell me that in the markets, around the bus stations and in the backstreets of the industrial cities where they sell stuff for the South American workers from the plasticas, there’ve started to appear on the religious stalls, alongside the crucifixes made of shells and the statues of the Virgin Mary, these painted plaster figurines of a man in a dark suit: a man with black hair, a muscular body and empty black eyes. I’ve seen a couple that people have brought back and I have to say the resemblance is quite remarkable. If I were to ask the South Americans directly they wouldn’t talk about it but according to Nige, who of course gets on with them, the cult of the dark man is spreading through the plasticas like leaf mould. Though there’s been no mention in the papers there have been protests, strikes, sabotage. The sect even has its first martyr, the Guardia saw to that. Nige also said that there’s already been a split over the meaning of His words, as relayed by Donna. Apparently her Spanish was open to ambiguous interpretation.’
‘So Donna and Stanley, they live in your house now, do they?’
Laurence paused and looked around. He wondered what he was doing in this place, he suddenly realised how tired he was, he’d had enough. And they’d had enough of him. For the last hour or so he had noticed they’d been getting nasty looks from the young man’s boss. He clearly wasn’t supposed to spend so long with a single person. It was time to get out of there.
‘As well as saddling me with Donna they made me help dispose of the corpse. Stanley took Donna back to my house then we returned to the bar where they were pulling Mister Roberts apart. The Victorian couple and the remaining Brits, we loaded all the separate bits into my little car and drove them to the orange grove where we buried him. I had this feeling, like somebody should say something but you know, as Stanley said, he was just a machine after all. You wouldn’t make a speech when you took an old stereo to the tip, would you?
‘Yes, Donna and Stanley, they still live with me. It can be difficult; she’s given herself permission to feel sorry for herself for the rest of her life. There’s some good days when she forgets she’s a victim and then she can be fun but on the bad ones there’s something broken between them. It’s a terrible thing to see. I mean, you get used to watching married couples going through the motions, barely concealing the hatred and disappointment that lies between them, but to see a mother and her son doing the same is painful.
‘But for me it’s been,’ Laurence felt for the right word, ‘it’s been great. I told myself before it all happened that I was self-sufficient and didn’t need anybody else, but now I think I was just selfish and frightened.
‘You know if you go to the Middle East and you ask for directions they’ll always tell you something, even if they’ve really got no idea where they’re directing you. I always wondered why they did that, I thought they were just being annoying but now I know: to help somebody on their way, even if you haven’t got a clue where you’re sending them, it’s thrilling! I tell Stanley all kinds of things, try and teach him all sorts of lessons and I truly think it doesn’t matter if I know what I’m talking about or not as long as he knows it’s done with love.
‘Stanley’s doing OK at school, says he wants to be a pilot one day and a plumber the next. Runciman came back too, after he got out of the hospital. He’s no longer a bully I guess getting beat up like that would put anybody off doing the same thing. In fact, him and Stanley are reasonably good mates. They share something nobody else will ever understand.
‘I’ll tell you something else, he goes away with Adey at the weekends to the high country I don’t go but recently people, farmers and walkers and the like, keep coming back with reports of seeing strange scaly creatures in the mountains, not just two either but a couple of little ones as well. Of course nobody believes them yet.’
Laurence looked hard at the young man. ‘You know it’s true, don’t you? That’s what I need to hear, I mean, it chimes with the things that you believe, doesn’t it?’
‘Well, yes, I mean, there’s also some aspects that I can’t square but yes, I do believe it to be true, yes. And can I say I’m very glad that you have decided you want to become part of the Church of Scientology’
Laurence gave a yelp of laughter. ‘Good Lord no!’ he said, then more kindly, ‘Son, I don’t want any part of your religion.’
The young man looked confused and hurt. ‘Then why have you been telling me all this?’
‘Because I thought you’d believe it, that’s all. Space aliens, who else but somebody in a group like yours would believe a story about evil intergalactic empires?’ Laurence half got up from the table then paused and sat down again. ‘No, I’m not being fair,’ he said. ‘There’s another reason I chose you. When I first saw you there in the street, right away I recognised someone who was acting. I’ve seen enough of it and done enough of it myself. What I sensed was that you are not really a part of all this.’ Laurence waved his hands around the room filled with desks at which the desperate and the confused and the calculating sat on either side. ‘I know you don’t want to feel alone, nobody does. I learnt something of the universe over last Christmas and it is vast and cruel and empty but I also saw that you can’t hide yourself away from it. Let yourself be vulnerable, get somebody to look after. These people, this thing, won’t fix you. Son, you need to find something that’s kinder. Here’s my email …’ Laurence said, scribbling an address along the top of a leaflet all about stress and how only the Scientologists could cure it. ‘If you ever want to come out I can show you a side of Spain that the average tourist would never see. And you can maybe meet my family Admittedly it’s not a conventional one. My immediate family is a thirteen-year-old boy who isn
’t mine, plus his mother who is still grieving for a dead robot. While my extended family consists of a weird kid, an African and a brood of aliens.
‘But then a lot of families are very mixed up these days, aren’t they?’