The Alien House

2 THE ALIEN HOUSE

2 THE ALIEN HOUSEMichael wasn't used to drinking so much any more and especially not shorts in the afternoon. He and his new-found friend drank three by his reckoning, but it could have been more. He was beginning to feel their effect, but still keeping up with the conversation, or so he thought.

“Yes, I am originally from Barry”, he heard himself say, “but I spent many, many years away. How how about you, Roger?”

“Yes, I'm from these parts too, but from one of the outlying villagers. Debonneville. Do you know it?”.

“I know of it...”

“Yes, but I spent several years in the Far East after uni. Then I came back here and... well, here I am now...”

“And I recently came back from Thailand and Spain and here I am now too. I really appreciate your having helped me out this afternoon. I hope I haven't upset hour schedule or anything”.

“No, don't worry about that. The girls can run the shop without me. It has been really nice meeting you. I'll get us a lift home now. One of the girls can drive, I'd better not”.

“No, there's no need, Roger, I can find my own way... don't worry about me”.

“I wouldn't hear of it, Michael. Joy! Could you come here a moment, please? Thank you. Would you drive Michael and myself home, please? I don't want to risk my license and Michael has a problem with his feet... sunburn, you know”.

“No, Roger. No problem at all. Just let me know where and when”.

“Thank you. In about ten minutes. I'll give you a shout”.

Michael was happier than he had been for a very long time - years, but he was beginning to realise that he was getting himself into a situation.

“There's no need to give me a lift home, Roger, I'll either walk it slowly or get a taxi”.

“Nonsense! We'll get you home. Just wait there a moment”. He called Joy and she appeared, keys in hand. They both helped Michael to stand up and stood either side of him as they walked to the car.

“Really”, he protested, “I can get home alone...” but they wouldn't hear of it. They ushered him into the car and and thoughts of alien abduction passed through his imagination. Joy pulled the large black Bentley Continental into the one-way street and asked which way they wanted to go.

“Michael? Where to?” asked Roger.

“Er, the beach, please...”

“Isn't it a bit late to go to the beach? Let us take you home”, said Roger.

Michael didn't know what to say. Various options flowed through his brain, but he didn't like any of them.

“OK, Cadoxton train station, please”, he said trying to sound confident. “You can drop me off there, please. I've had a lovely afternoon, Roger”.

“OK, Joy, the train station, please”. Having been given a direction, Joy headed away. When they arrived in the vicinity, she asked. “Where now, please?” Roger echoed the enquiry.

“Anywhere around here will do, thanks!”

“No, I wouldn't hear of it, Michael. We're here now. Where do you want to go exactly?”

“OK, OK, Roger, you win... I'm homeless! Are you happy now!”

“No, far from it”, he said. “We seem to get on, would you let me put you up for a few days? At least until you get yourself sorted out?”

Michael stared at him and checked Joy's face in the rear view mirror. It wasn't the first, or even the tenth time, that a total stranger had helped him over the decades. He weighed up his options.

“All right... I'm sorry for snapping at you like that. I am a bit down on my luck at the moment, but I will be back up there soon!” he said. “I'm just waiting on a deal...”

“Of course, Michael, I am just offering you a leg up... until you get yourself sorted out. Joy, take us home, please”.

It was true that Michael hadn't spent much time in the UK for twenty years, but he still knew his way around. The Bentley Continental sped on almost silently past landmarks that he thought he had forgotten. Tears came to his eyes, which he hoped he managed to conceal. At least, no-one mentioned them.

After about twenty minutes, the car pulled right into a lane called Caldicot Avenue, which Michael didn't recognise and then through huge gates that were still withdrawing on their own, and onto a drive of two hundred yards of gravel, which circumnavigated a huge round building in the front garden. When the car stopped, all that Michael could see was a large, ancient, partially-dilapidated house with hundreds of patches on it. He didn't know what to say, so he tried to be polite.

“Impressive...”.

“Yes, I knew that you would see the potential in it”. They got out of the car and Joy walked away to leave them alone, or so Michael thought. As he stood looking at the tattered mansion with his hand on the bonnet of the car, all he could think of was,'Wow!'

Three Afghan hounds were galloping towards them at an incredible pace, but they paid Michael no heed. “There, there, my beauties! Have you had a good day?” Roger asked them as they stood on their hind legs licking his face. “That's enough now, babies, go and play. We have a guest”. The dogs dropped to all fours and frolicked off. “Sorry about that, but you know what dogs are like. So, you like it?”

Even in it's current state of disrepair, it was impressive in its Gothic splendour.

Michael stood in awe of the building, but had to turn to Roger, and voice his innermost thoughts, “Wow, and Wow again... this is your house, Roger... I mean, you live here?”

“Yes, I do. I am so glad that you like it”, he said. “Let's go in”, and so saying, he put his arm around Michael's shoulder and ushered him inside. Joy had left the large, oak, iron-studded, front door open for them, so they walked through it into a large hallway.

“Crikey, Roger, I've lived in bedsits smaller than this hall alone!”

Roger smiled, put his arm around his guest's shoulder again and led him on. “Let's go through to the Grand Hall, or as we like to call it, the Family Room. This and the kitchen are the two most complete rooms downstairs, and there are a few bedrooms finished on the first floor. Please, go on in”, he said opening the door. Michael walked in and stopped mouth agape.

“I haven't been in a room this big since the graduation ceremony at uni”, he stammered.

“Yes, you could get a few hundred in here for sure. Take a look at that view before we find somewhere to sit down”. They walked the ten metres to the nearest window in silence as Michael tried to take it in. When he reached the nearest of three tall mitred windows, he was flabbergasted. The garden was nothing short of a paddock or meadow in which several sheep and Shetland ponies were grazing. Beyond that stood a leafy wood.

“Is the wood yours too, Roger?”

“Yes, everything you can see all around the house belongs to the property. The woods are my favourite; they are so peaceful... especially at night and especially under a full moon. We don't tolerate hunting, but we allow people to wander across the land. So, you might see someone every few days, but never at night”. Michael nodded that he understood.

“Let's take a seat”, he suggested looking around. “How about those armchairs... or perhaps the bar there, if your back is playing you up?”

“How did you ...”

“I can see the symptoms. My Dad had a bad back... I've had one... it comes and goes, you know?”

Again, Michael nodded agreement. “OK, the bar”.

“It's nice to sit there. It's higher than the armchairs, you can see further”.

They sat on barstools on either side of a chilled black marble counter top. “What do you fancy? Beer, tea, coffee, soft drink, fruit juice?”

“I'll have whatever you're having, Roger. Thanks”.

“Two beers it is then. Urquel?”

“Sure”. He surveyed the wall between the windows. There were tiles, photographs, paintings and drawings of various sizes hanging at apparently random locations, but they all shared a common theme - Space... Outer Space. The realisation sparked Michael's earlier fantasy about Aliens.

“I see you have noticed our collection of modern art”, said Roger sliding over a half-filled glass and bottle, thus breaking Michael's reverie.

“Yes, I'm a bit of a space fan myself”.

“Of course you are, Michael. All of the boys of our generation are... and some of the girls... Sputnik, Yuri Gagarin, The 1969 Apollo 12 Lunar Landing, Star Trek - The Final Frontier - that music was so inspiring, wasn't it? The Hubble Space Telescope... Mars landings... Wow! Michael, eh? Wow! Our generation was so lucky to have experienced all that”.

Michael was nodding enthusiastically, but he didn't want to speak lest he break the spell he was bound in.

“Of course, one could argue that the discovery of the DNA Sequence was more important, but was it more exciting – more inspiring - to young minds? No, I don't think that it was”.

“Oh, I agree with you there one hundred percent. Spot on...”. They clinked glasses, and as Michael lifted his stylish tulip glass, his eyes strayed to the meadow again and the thought crossed his mind that alien spacecraft could easily land in the garden at night and go undetected. As he lowered his glass to the counter, he looked at Roger, but Roger was already smiling at him as if he had read Michael's mind.

Roger Parker - flight controller of alien spacecraft.

“You could easily get an alien spacecraft in that garden of yours and no-one would ever know”, he ventured.

“No, they wouldn't. You're right”, he smiled.

“So, Michael, if you're going to be staying here. Why don't you tell me a few things about yourself. Nothing secret, just trivia... whatever you like. Let's get to know each other a bit better”.

“Sure. Well, I'm from Barry, but I left at eighteen to study Russian at university in 1972. I'm pretty good with languages. Then I moved to The Netherlands for nine years and learned Dutch. The guy who helped me learn Dutch to a high level, did it by talking about computers, which I knew nothing about. I bought a home computer as soon as I knew they existed in about Eighty-two, but I was still so ignorant about them that I didn't buy a storage device, a tape drive back then, so I couldn't load any programmes. It was a Saturday, but by the time I had realised my mistake, it was evening and the shops were shut, so I spent all night and all day Sunday typing in Basic code just to make it do something.

“I realised then that if I could talk to humans in thousands of words in seven languages, that I could learn the 256 necessary to talk to a computer and it changed my life.

“I went from being a linguist to computer nerd in about thirty hours. I studied all the home computing languages including machine code and I've used a computer every day of my life ever since”.

“Yes, they are fascinating! I agree Space and computers...”

“After The Netherlands, I came back here for thirteen years to work in my father's construction company. Then, well, that went bust after he retired; then he died and I met a girl on holiday in Thailand, so I went over there and married her. We've been married for fourteen years, but I don't earn enough to be allowed to bring her back to the UK with me - in fact, I don't earn anything”.

“That's awful, Michael, so what is your wife doing now?”

“Moping about in her village with her family and crying a lot. That's why I'm sleeping on the beach... trying to save up...” Tears welled up in his eyes, “but it's pointless really. I either need a job earning twenty-five grand a year, or have sixty-five grand in the bank, and neither of those things is going to happen by my sleeping on the beach... Still, it's a gesture... what else can I do?”

“I don't know, my friend, we will have to think about it. What did you do in Thailand?”

“Oh, at first, I had a hundred and forty websites, and then I started writing books”.

“You've been around a bit then!”

“Yes, you could say that”, he said trying to smile.

“Let's have another beer”.

“How about you, Roger?” he asked, when he had resumed his stool. “You're a successful estate agent?”

“Yes, I suppose I am, but that wasn't always the case, and perhaps it won't always be so either”. He took another sip. “While there is a certain amount of satisfaction to be gleaned from finding someone their dream home, or even just somewhere better to live, I don't feel as if I am actually putting anything back into society... I'm not creating anything, I just move the occupants about. Do you know what I mean?” Michael didn't like to agree, so he just pulled a wry smile and waved his head about in a gesture of 'well, perhaps'.

“You still make people happy though”, he came up with eventually.

“Yes, a dozen a week perhaps, but... in a couple of years time, most of them will want to move again. It seems as if they are never actually completely happy – not really”.

“But that's the problem with consumerism, and happiness is a state of mind, although too many people confuse it with shopping and owning - even owning money.

“I'm learning now though that you can't even live with your old tart if she's foreign, unless you're rich...”.

Roger clinked his glass against Michael's. We have more in common than you might think. I too left for university in 1972, but I studied accounting. When I had finished, I took a gap year and headed for Asia I met the love of my life in Japan and we got married. I brought her back, but my parents were furious and when her holiday visa expired she went back alone, while I tried to find a way to bring her here permanently.

“My parents could have helped, but they resented the marriage, because the war was still fresh in their memories. Anyway, to cut a long story short, after nine months of struggle, expensive phone calls and occasional letters, she decided that she was too big a burden on me, but that she couldn't live without me, so she committed suicide.

“In her last letter, she said that she hoped that I would now be able to find a woman that my parents would approve of and that we would become a close family again.

“Neither of her hopes came true. Cheers. Oh, perhaps I shouldn't have told you my story... I don't mean to suggest that your wife might...”

“No, of course not... I didn't take it like that... people are different, cultures are different, and times are different. The only thing that doesn't bloody change is that there's one law for the rich and one for the rest of... Don't do as I do, do as I say!

“Sorry, again... I didn't mean you... you must be quite well off now too...”

Roger said nothing, whether he agreed or not. Michael assumed that he was thinking about his wife of forty years previously. He sipped his beer and looked out onto the meadow, which was now a landing pad for flying saucers. He was actually looking for burned grass and depressions where huge metal struts had sunken into the ground, giving his newly-found friend time to recover his composure.

“Well, that was then, and this is now, eh, Michael? We just have to get on with it and do our best to do our best”.

“I believe in Karma, and I believe that we choose what course we want to follow before we get ourselves born, but there are some things... You know, even if my wife and I did choose to experience this separation, however long it may be, I find it difficult to accept that the rich can marry whom they like, but the poor have to marry British – not that there's anything wrong with being British.. but where is the justice in that?

“All right, all right, I know, there isn't any and there are lots of other injustices in the world too... I can understand death, even for the young... I can even understand poverty, though it riles me.. they have been around for ever, but some bastard stood up in parliament and proposed this law and the majority of his fellow s**t-heads agreed with him! That makes my blood boil. Sorry for swearing... and losing my temper”.

Roger dismissed the apology with a backward flick of his hand. “You have nothing to apologise for. It's enough to make any thinking person angry”.

“The thing that gets me is, I have talked to many, many people about this, and ninety-nine percent of them think you can bring your partner back from anywhere, if you are married. People just don't know about this. Well, you do, and you had to find out in a particularly painful way. I heard of a guy in Bristol a while back who hanged himself because he couldn't bring his Thai wife back. He was about our age too. I will admit that I've considered it a few times...”

“I imagine that there are a lot more suicides because of this than we are told about”.

“Yes, I bet there are...”

Both men fell silent thinking similar thoughts. Roger broke the silence after a few minutes. “We have company! They'll cheer us up. Another beer?” Michael nodded and looked around as the three girls from the office came in with the three Afghans. It struck him immediately that the girls and the dogs bore an uncanny resemblance to one another.

He also thought that the six happy creatures would have brought a smile to the Sphinx.