The Lordly Ones by Keith Roberts1,2 (F&SF, March 1980) is not so much a story but an extended character portrait of the narrator, Tom, and it begins with his childhood memories of driving a pedal car in the family’s garden:
Wherever I traveled though, I would always end up in my favorite place of all. I called it Daisy Lane, from the big mauve clumps of Michaelmas daisies that grew close by each year. Here, by careful reversing, I could slide myself right out of sight between tall bushes. Once in position I could not be seen from the house at all, but I could see. I could stare down through the gaps in the hedge at the men working in the field, easing the car backward a little by the pressure of a pedal if one of them paused and seemed to glance my way. p. 141
Tom’s shyness (or solitariness) is further limned when he is put in a special class at school—although Tom can read and write perfectly well, an inability to answer questions and his physical clumsiness give the impression that he is “slow”.
When Tom later enters the world of work he is first employed, courtesy of his gardener father, at the council nurseries. However, things do not go well (he is always breaking pots and then there is trouble with one of the women that works there) and, after that, Tom works at the town tip and then as a binman. Finally, at the age of 45, he becomes a lavatory attendant at “The Comfort Station”.
Tom describes his job at the lavatory in some detail—we learn how he cleans and repairs the facility until it is spotless and in good order—and we are briefly introduced to a couple of other (fleeting) characters: there is the woman who takes care of the other side of the facility (a distant figure), and Mr Ireland, Tom’s sympathetic and helpful supervisor who takes to visiting him on a semi-regular basis.
For most of the story, however, Tom is at the comfort station on his own (he has taken to living in one of the storerooms), and there are disturbing signs from the start of the story that society has experienced some sort of cataclysm: apart from the fact that no-one has come to the comfort station or its bucolic surroundings in the country for some time (including Tom’s co-worker), he has also seen bodies in the deserted nearby town where he goes to get food and supplies; there are also lights in the distant hills during the hours of darkness.
Later on (spoiler) we get a few hints as to what may have happened (and an insight to some of the social problems of UK society in the late 1970s):
I do not know why the Trouble happened. There was a lot on the telly about the black people fighting the whites and the unions trying to take over, but I could never understand it. I do not know why black people and white people should fight. I knew a black man once when I was on the carts. He was a very quiet person and used to bring small fruit pies to work that his wife had made. He shared them with me sometimes. They were very nice.
Tom starts looking after the other side of the comfort station as well as his own, and later goes into town later to stock up on as many supplies as he can find. Then the sounds of battle draw closer, and the water comes back on for a while. But, despite all this, it appears as if Tom is suspended in time:
I supposed it will sound funny, but I felt at peace. I have been feeling like that a lot since everybody went away. I cannot really find the right words to describe it.
When I wake up in the mornings, the sun makes a patch low down on the wall by my head, always in the same place. Birds are singing in the trees by the stream, and I know if I go to the window the sun will be on the brick wall round the car park, and the hills. As it moves round through the day, all the shadows change until they point the other way. Sometimes, if there is a wind, the dust blows across the car park in little whirls. When I lock the doors last thing at night, the moon is coming up. The moon makes shadows too of course, and they change as well, as it goes across the sky. The moonlight makes the car park look nearly white, but the shadows by the stream are black, like velvet. At night it always seems you can smell the water more clearly. The mist usually comes when it is starting to get light. It makes long streaks that reach as high as the bridge parapet. Nothing else happens. I do not want anything else to happen, ever again. pp. 152-153
One night, however, he finds signs of blood in the lavatories; then, shortly afterwards, he is surrounded, and guns fire through the windows. Tom is told to come out by unseen characters. As he leaves the comfort station, Tom wishes he was back in his pedal car again:
I have had a silly thought, the silliest of all. I would like my little car back again now. I always felt safe in it; I could pedal it through the door and they would laugh. They would see I was only a little child after all. p. 156
This penultimate paragraph not only links back to the opening passage, but perhaps distils Tom’s shy and uncomplicated character, outlined over the course of the story, into one line.
When I first read this story in the 1980s I didn’t think much of it—I suspect I was impatient at the amount of description and the lack of a plot—but this time around I enjoyed it a lot more. Some of the description is particularly evocative (there are a number of passages that I would like to have quoted) and the unusual protagonist and setting make for an original piece: there aren’t many End-of-the-World stories that take place away from the main events and feature lavatory attendants.
One that I will reread again at some point.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 9,550 words. Story link.
1. This story was Keith Roberts’ only Hugo finalist—it placed 4th in 1981 behind The Cloak and the Staff by Gordon R. Dickson, Savage Planet by Barry B. Longyear, and Beatnik Bayou by John Varley, and ahead of The Autopsy by Michael Shea and The Ugly Chickens by Howard Waldrop.
Roberts also wrote a sequel to this story, The Comfort Station, which appeared two months later in the May 1980 issue of F&SF.
2. The story’s title comes from a song that is referenced in the story:
There was a song we had to learn at school, about the Lordly Ones. Miss Chaston, who taught us music, said that meant the fairies. It was a strange song and puzzled me very much at first. It said they lived in the hollow hills but I thought the other children were singing “the Harlow hills” and that all fairies lived at a place called Harlow, wherever that might be. I often used to make mistakes like that.
I did not think about the song again for years. Then, when I was working on the dust carts there was a man called Smudger. I never knew his proper name. He was a big man, much bigger than I, and had a lot of friends. I used to go with him sometimes to a hotel near the town center to have a drink. I would never have dared go to such a place on my own. The public bar was up the yard, and to get to it you had to pass a room lit by candles where all the guests were eating their dinner. The first time I looked in I thought some of the ladies were the most beautiful I had ever seen, and for some reason I remembered the song at once. I knew they were not fairies of course, just very rich people, but afterwards whenever I went there, the song always started in my mind.
Then when I had my flat I used to sit quite a lot looking down over the cathedral wall at the grass and driveways inside, especially if there was a wedding there or some other big function, which often happened. The people who came were very grand. Some of them even wore top hats like in the films. So I thought they must be the Lordly Ones too. So, although I was always getting shouted at for being clumsy or in the way, I thought if I could get the job at the Station, some of them might come there and see the towels all clean and soap in the dispensers, and be pleased. I wonder if Mr. Ireland knew that, and that was why he set me on. p. 147