A Shock

by Keith Ridgway

  — No.

  — You’re missing out. Nothing better than a Pad Thai. Peanut and the chicken and the big noodle. You’re missing out mate. Yes sir what can I get you?

  Prentice blinked hard and tried to rename the tiny dizzy spells he’d been having lately as something else. Maybe an eye thing. Maybe he needed new glasses. Or they were too tight, these ones. But he’d had them for years and the dizziness had come on in just the last few weeks. Couple of months maybe. He’d sat down in the caff one afternoon the previous week and thought he was having a stroke. His arms went funny, everything blurred. A real shock that. He’d spoken out loud to hear if he was slurring and Hilda had stared at him but thought he was just being daft. One two three testing one two three. Or she’d decided to think that. It had stopped anyway. Or it had passed through him like a wave of particles from space, which, he knew, was a constant phenomenon. That had been the worst by far. But the regular ones, like just now as Harry moved off to serve someone else, they were like squeezes. Like everything was being given a little squeeze, a little squeeze of the head, a passing angel, he thought, checking for freshness. Not sore. Just everything went odd for a second. He knew death was in the vicinity. The angel of death. He sipped his stout. He would die, thought Prentice, suddenly, and that was a blessing surely. The next time Hilda nagged him about seeing his grandchildren at the weekend he’d moan but he’d relent. He hated the journey — all those buses — and they would hardly notice him, but you have to do your final rounds, your final hugs and kisses so that nothing was left acrimonious and what happened next might be better. Hilda would be fine.

  Harry rang the bell soon after and Prentice chuckled at the notion of last orders. He’d had enough. He surprised Harry a little by shaking his hand before he left. On the way home he whistled and thought about Hilda. She’d be fine.

  Harry locked up and did the tills and swept the floor and cleaned the toilets and laid out some traps and went to bed with his book. He read for a half an hour about the forest and the light, and then put in his earplugs and fell asleep. He dreamed. Downstairs a mouse called Troubadour Anx improved the scurry tunnel under the north wall. She worked for several hours, taking short breaks to feed on human food which though abundant these days she found disgusting. After improving the lateral volume of the tunnel she checked the three gaps, one outward to the lane, two inward to the main room. Then she crossed the room in the open, quickly, and cut through a gap where the bar counter met the east wall. Obscured by a crate of empty bottles was the entrance to the system of ramps both Troubadour Anx and her brother Altar Phen had designed and constructed over the last several weeks. It led upwards through the cavities of the wall to the ceiling above, where a vast empty space stretched in all directions, held between the ceiling of the main bar below, and the floor of the almost empty human room above. Some support struts remained. Some essential beams. But they had cleared it of its rubbish. This would be where the meeting would be held.

  The next night. The Wednesday. Stan took his second pint back to the table, and they got started. Though all that amounted to for ten minutes was Sanjay and Stan arguing about whether, firstly, Stan had any business giving the other members of the steering committee a public ticking off over the scheduling of the next general meeting, or, for that matter, whether it was his place to summon a meeting of the steering committee just like that — Sanjay snapped his fingers — as if he was some sort of autarchist arsehole. To which Stan replied, good humouredly he thought, that he was more of an anarcho-syndicalist arsehole. But Sanjay was genuinely angry, and Stan let him have his say, knowing as he did that he, Stan, was in the right, and that Sanjay’s attempt to hold a quick meeting to ram through a set of proposals that would serve only to further distance them from the party was out of fucking order.

  Harry half watched them, and half read the paper. He could hear the odd word. A mocking laugh from the Asian guy. Then he saw Prescott or Preston or whatever the old crank was called clear his throat and start into a speech. A couple of the others exchanged tired glances, and Harry grinned at the back page of the Standard.

  — Good golfing John?

  John sat with his back to him staring at the big screen.

  — The Italian is making a mess of it.

  — Is he?

  — Double bogey, the Italian.

  — Double bogey, said Harry.

  — Double bogey, said John. He’s not a finisher. Every time. Just falls apart at the end.

  — Don’t we all John. Don’t we all.

  — Aye.

  He served a woman in the back bar and shifted some crates looking for crisps. Found only droppings on the empty shelves. He went into the kitchen for the spray bleach and crouched and sprayed and scrubbed for a good ten minutes before anyone asked him for anything. The woman again, wanting another vodka.

  — Quiet tonight, she said.

  — Bit more lively in the front bar.

  — I like the jukebox though.

  He gave her a few fifties in her change. She was playing the Motown favourites. Dancing in a small way in front of the machine. Smiling. There was a couple in the corner, deep in conversation, making their half pints last almost an hour now. In the front bar there was John, the anarchist plotters, the two guys from the phone shop who always had a pint after they closed, and a man at one of the high tables in the corner picking his nose and reading a book — one of the silent, sullen regulars who contributed nothing to anything. He’d been the one looking for crisps. Harry had a blind spot when it came to crisps. Never ate them, never remembered to order them. And didn’t much like having them around. Mice don’t drink, but they like crisps.

  He went into what he still called the kitchen, though he had tried office a couple of time, to blank looks. There was a phone, and a battered laptop for the cameras and for doing their online, and there was lost property, a cupboard with keys, a safe, all of that. But there was also a grill and a sink and a fridge. He wanted rid of the grill. He’d cleaned it and thrown a towel over it — as you would a corpse — and Ahunna had said she’d a friend who could use it. But that had been a while ago. He’d ask her again. He was looking at the roster when he heard a familiar creak and the traffic pulsed louder. But it stayed louder, and he went out.

  It was him of course. Yves, Yan, Stoker. He was standing in the open door with his back to the room, looking out at the sky where the sunset glowed a deep unhealthy red over the rooftops, streaked with trails of smoky cloud, bruised orange and purple. His hands were on his hips. Stan was staring at him grimly, ignoring his little meeting. The nose-picking man was looking at him too, with a smile. And Harry smiled as well, glad that at last there would be someone to talk to, even if the talk went in a circle that had nothing in the middle.

  His friend seemed to lift his shoulders and lower them again in a great sigh. He took his hands off his hips and his foot from the door, letting it swing shut, and he turned to the room.

  — The city, he announced with a look of great joy, is on fire.

  In the little envelope of his bed Harry read his book. He had expected it to end badly for the woman in the forest, and it was ending badly, and it pained him and he did not want to finish, and he put it down.

  In the quiet seeping glow of the street he considered the ceiling and his own wellbeing. He would be all right, he thought. Another year maybe, of this. And then a different year, of something else. Though it would not be a disaster if all the years continued the same. It might suit him just fine. His thoughts spun slower and fell warm around him. He slept. He dreamed that something woke him. There was a noise. He lay there for a moment, then checked his ears. He’d forgotten to put the plugs in. He turned to his bedside table and saw a light beneath the door. He’d forgotten to put the light out. He sighed and moaned and got up. Pushed his feet into his slippers. Picked up his keys out of habit. Turned to go out and saw the light beneath th
e door vanish.

  Harry stood very still. For a moment. There were switches for the light at the bottom of the stairs, and at the top, right outside his bedroom. He looked for his phone. It was there. On the table. Beside a glass of water. He listened but could hear nothing in front of him. There was only the odd car at his back, and a very delicate hum like that of a fridge or a distant crowd.

  His feet were itchy.

  Have a think, Harry.

  At the bottom of the stairs there was a door, which he knew he had locked, and bolted, which led to a small hallway. Street door on the left, also locked and bolted, and a door to the back bar on the right, locked and bolted. And everything was alarmed. They’d tried before, but they’d always set it off before they got anywhere. And what sort of burglar turns on a light? Maybe the electrics were playing up.

  He tutted and sighed and stepped to the door and opened it. Something moved and something brushed his leg, and he very quickly reached out for the light switch and flicked it on. Something on the stairs. No. Nothing on the stairs. Nothing anywhere. Dry mouth. Blotchy lino and a bare light. He walked down the steps. There was a smell. A smell and a hum. At the bottom he flicked the light switch on and off a few times and the dark came and went. He opened the panel on the alarm controls and all the indicators were as they should be. He turned off the internal. He’d just have a look. The smell was like the cellar, and the hum was a chittering thing, and a sort of heat, he thought, as well — the heat you get when the place is full.

  He really should have known.

  He opened the door and the shadows seemed to shimmer and part to admit him. He saw mice on the bar counter. He saw more on the floor. He kicked out and walked ahead and turned then into the front bar where the light from the street struggled through the windows and the floor was newly covered by a carpet that could not settle, that squeaked and smelled and roiled, that rippled, and he suddenly did not want to take a step, so he stopped, and there was nothing he could see that was not moving, even the windows were crossed and overwritten, and Harry felt something hit his shoulder, and saw a mouse bounce off his chest, and then another, and another, and his head was now being pelted and his shoulders smacked, and he held an arm over his face and looked up, and saw that they were legion and untold, impossible, endless, and were coming through the ceiling like a sweat, and falling from the lights, and a patch of plaster floated down, bringing with it a tumbling cargo of more, small and excited mice, hundreds of them, thousands, more than it was possible to see. They came through the walls. They came through the floor. They scrabbled at his feet and then his ankles. They seemed to want something, and to speak in tiny voices that he could not hear, and plead with him in ways he could not make out, and they seemed to present to him petitions and requests, and they seemed to him to know a different aspect of the world and showed it, not unkindly, like a death turned inside out. When he thought of moving he found that they were up to his thighs and he could not move, and they kept on falling, and rising, and laughing, and they scampered over his face and they looked into his eyes and whispered to him and told him that he would be all right, really, he would be fine, and they kept on coming, and they kept on coming, and he wondered, as his eyes were squirmingly covered and then went dark, if the whole world was ending this way, drowned in mice, or if it was just The Arms, or just him, whether it was only his life that was ending this way, or whether it was everyone’s, and he wondered then, and the mice wondered with him, fascinated and incomprehensibly alive, what the difference was.

  The Song

  He is short and wiry and looks from the back like a boy. But when he turns, his face is deeply lined and his eyes a sunset pink and he is probably the oldest person there. He wears a dark suit jacket that shines at the elbows and is too big for him, and greasy jeans that are an inch too short for his old black formal shoes and his sky-blue socks. Under the jacket he is wearing a white shirt that beams out from his torso and his wrists, and he has a thin flowery scent of fabric softener about him, which must be the shirt. His hands are veined and liver spotted and in the right one he holds a tumbler with a small measure of whiskey. In one jacket pocket there is a half bottle of Jameson’s and in the other a small battered bottle of mineral water. He looks like he’s just had his hair cut, severely. He smiles. He smiles widely at everyone.

  — Well it’s actually my own isn’t that terrible? he is saying to a woman half his age in a floral summer dress. It’s my own special magic glass. Ah it’s not magic, I just like it so I brought it with me. Are you sure you don’t want a small Jameson’s?

  — No, no, thank you.

  — I could get you a glass

  — No I don’t drink. Thanks.

  — Oh say no more, fair play. I am a demon for the Jameson’s. For whiskey in general actually, I’m not that fussy. I’m not very fussy at all really.

  His smile is wide and he laughs and rocks back and forth a little from the waist, and his left hand touches the woman briefly on the arm.

  They are in the middle of the front room of a mid-terrace house. You know the house. Or you know what it is like, reflected. You have been nearby. You have been very close.

  Around them people stand in little groups, and sit on the sofa and the chairs. Through an arch, in what is a sort of dining room, there are more people standing around with drinks, and a table has been pushed back near a wall and behind it a young man in glasses crouches over turntables. The music is not very loud. People are able to hear each other. How many people? More than twenty. It’s early. Maybe thirty people, in both rooms, in the kitchen, in the hallway. There are some in the back garden. From far above they look so small. From a hundred metres up. It is still hot. It’s always hot.

  — Your dress is absolutely gorgeous. I do love summer clothes. It’s so lovely to see all the lovely dresses during the summer isn’t it? And all the handsome men in their shorts. It’s always so lovely to see, in the parks and all of that. And all the little children in their little sun hats, oh I love that, all the little babies with their cute little hats, they’re such a joy.

  He looks around at other people and then back at the woman.

  — Do you have any? Children I mean, not hats.

  And he laughs again, and rocks back and forth again, and touches the woman’s arm again. She laughs too, but she isn’t quite laughing at the same thing that he is. She looks at him with a mild sort of bafflement, amused, as if he is something not quite there, as if he is an illusion, a trick, someone playing a joke on her. Her name is Katherine, and she is there with her partner Fran, who is in the kitchen, or that is where Katherine assumes they’ve gone, it’s where they said they were going, and then this man started talking to her. She wants to ask him what age he is, because she is curious. But she isn’t going to ask him that, it’s not something you ask anyone, it doesn’t matter, age doesn’t matter at all, and this man is very nice, very chatty, probably gay she thinks, a bit queer maybe, and oddly dressed. Though it occurs to her that if he was in his twenties he wouldn’t be very oddly dressed at all, he’d be dressed like a lot of the hipster guys are dressed at this party, or in the same spirit anyway. Except for the shoes. His shoes are shined and flat and pointed and she has glanced at them a couple of times and they make her uneasy, she doesn’t know why. His socks look like clean socks that are kept in a dirty drawer. He has asked her about children. She isn’t going to answer that. You don’t ask people that. She would have to come up with a question of her own. A swerve.

  — What’s your name?

  — Michael, he says, but he thought about it for a flash, his eyes darted, and she doesn’t believe him.

  — I’m Katherine.

  — Oh a lovely name, that’s a gorgeous name, but I’ll tell you, I’ll forget it. I’m not good with names at all. Faces are my forte. I am an encyclopedia of faces. I’ve never forgotten a single one. And I am like the archaeologists with their reconstru
ctions. I might meet a boy and twenty years later I’ll meet the man and I’ll know it immediately, oh I met you I’ll tell him, I met you in 1994 in a pub in Greenwich, you were with your mother, lovely Caribbean woman lived in the flats on Lewisham Road near the big Tesco. Is she still with us? That sort of thing. I don’t know was the big Tesco there in 1994? I don’t know. Faces, as I say, that’s my forte. I’m not great on names or supermarkets. But your name is lovely. What is it again?

  — Katherine.

  — Lovely name. I’ll do my best. Your face is inedible. Indelible. But we’ll have to see Katherine, won’t we, we’ll have to see as they say. And hello there who’s this.

  It is Fran, and Michael, if that is his name (it isn’t, obviously) looks Fran over with a great smile as Katherine does the introductions, and Fran smiles and shakes the man’s hand and the man holds it for longer than is comfortable for Fran, and they do not enjoy the sensation at all.

  — Aren’t you looking all lovely as well, oh the two of you so nice, with the lovely summer frock and then this shirt, what would you call that? Mint green I’d call it I think, will that do it? Mint green, and those tiny flowers, so lovely the pair of you. I look like an undertaker next to the both of you. Don’t I? Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead! Oh stop. Two girls as lovely as the pair of you. Am I right with that? Is it two girls? I’m sorry to be blundering around like I don’t know what. I’m a terrible old-fashioned thing, I just don’t know how to ask. Everyone should be whatever they want to be is the way I think about it, but sometimes I put my foot in it and get in terrible trouble so I think it’s best to just ask straight out and hope that asking isn’t in itself disrespectful. Is it?

  — I’m non-binary, says Fran.

  — Well, there you are, says the man, and lets go of Fran’s hand. I know a woman, she lives around here somewhere I think. Maybe around here. Lovely woman, she must be getting on a bit now, but I knew her when she was young and she had a girlfriend, and I knew her too. Can’t for the life of me remember their names now of course, it’s not my forte. But lovely good-looking funny women, a real delight the pair of them, great company, devoted to each other, together a good old while, they had a house around here. And then sure didn’t the other one then transition to a man? In her, oh I don’t know, in her thirties I suppose she was, and she ducked out of sight for a while, because in those days it was, well it’s not easy now I know, but the whole thing then was terribly cruel, people would be terribly, awfully cruel. And she re-emerged, but she was a man. Ah listen to me, mangling it all up again. He was a man. So this woman, around here, had fallen in love with a woman, and then the woman became a man. Extraordinary really. It was extraordinary.