Dreams of Leaving (15 page)

Moses took a cigarette, lit it, and threw the packet back. ‘It's a she, actually,' he began carefully. ‘Apparently she wears a black raincoat.'

‘Apparently? What do you mean, apparently?'

‘Well, I didn't actually see her. This friend of mine, he – '

‘You didn't actually see her?'

‘No, you see I was – '

‘Hold on. Let me get this straight, right? You're worried about a ghost you can't see?'

‘Yes, but you – '

‘What, you mean if you could see it, it wouldn't worry you?'

‘It's not that, Elliot. It's just – '

But Elliot wasn't listening any more. He was bent double in his executive chair, clutching his stomach. He was killing himself.

‘Well,' Moses said, easing off the radiator and starting for the door, ‘I just thought I'd tell you – '

‘Hey, Moses.'

Moses turned.

Elliot was prancing up and down the office with his jacket draped over his head. ‘Woooooo,' he was going. ‘Woooooooooooooo.'

Oh well, Moses thought. At least I cheer the bastard up.

*

One further development regarding the invisible ghost.

The next weekend, at around four in the afternoon, the bell rang on the fourth floor of The Bunker. Moses peered out of the window. It was Jackson. Moses was surprised to see him again so soon. Visits from Jackson were usually few and far between.

He leaned out of the window. ‘Keys,' he shouted.

This time he aimed at least twenty feet to the left of Jackson's anxious upturned face. The sock bounced off a car roof and into the road. Jackson scuttled after it. Moses went out to the kitchen to put the kettle on. He returned in time to see Jackson walk in, close the door behind him, and produce a bradawl from his raincoat pocket (the weather was still fine). He watched as Jackson began to bore a hole in the door about two-thirds of the way up. Jackson made small grunting sounds as his elbow gouged the air. It was a hard wood.

Once he had bored the hole according to his own internal specifications, he plunged a hand into his raincoat pocket and pulled out a hook shaped
like a gold question-mark. He screwed it into the hole with a series of deft energetic twists of his wrist, the tip of his tongue appearing from time to time in the corner of his mouth – a sign of intense concentration. Then he stepped back to admire his handiwork.

Moses handed Jackson a cup of tea, as you would any workman.

‘That's very nice,' he said. ‘But what's it for?'

‘That,' Jackson explained, ‘is for her to hang her coat on.'

Another time, perhaps a month later, Jackson appeared at the top of the stairs with an antique upholstered chair. He placed it carefully just inside the door.

‘In case she's tired after all those stairs,' he said.

A very thoughtful person, Jackson.

*

The week of the ghost was also the week of Moses's twenty-fifth birthday. On the Thursday night Moses booked a table for four in a restaurant in Soho. He wanted to celebrate the occasion quietly, he said, with a few close friends.

Poor Chinese restaurant.

The celebration reached its climax shortly before midnight with the waiters' hands fluttering in delicate protest, like birds attempting flight, only to weaken, fall back, return to the relative safety of their white tunics, as Moses, who weighed more than three of them put together and had woken that morning to a bottle of champagne, a Thai-stick and two lines of coke (his birthday presents), began to spin the revolving table like some kind of giant roulette wheel.

‘Place your bets,' he cried.

‘What are we betting on?' asked Jackson, very dry. ‘How long we can survive before they throw us out?'

Bowls of rice and seaweed, plates of mauled prawn toast, bottles of soy sauce and dishes loaded with the stripped skeletons of Peking ducks took to the air, swift and confident, as if they were trying to teach the waiters' hands how to fly. This demonstration was not appreciated. The manager came weaving through the barrage to insist, politely but firmly, that Mr Highness and his party leave the restaurant.

Out on the street the recriminations began.

‘And on my birthday, too,' Moses said.

‘It was
because
it was your birthday that it happened,' Jackson pointed out.

‘It was your fault, Vince,' Moses said.

‘
My
fault?' Vince seemed genuinely taken aback.

‘We would never've been thrown out of that place,' Moses said, ‘if you hadn't worn that waistcoat of yours.'

‘It is a
very
unpleasant waistcoat,' Eddie agreed.

‘Look, fuck off you two. If you,' and Vince shoved Moses into a lamp-post, ‘hadn't covered me in rice – '

Moses couldn't help giggling as he remembered how Vince had lurched to his feet halfway through the meal only to lose his balance and topple across a neighbouring table, his waistcoat luridly stuffed with Special Fried Rice and soup that must have been either Chicken with Sweetcorn or Hot and Sour.

‘Mind you,' he went on, ignoring Vince, ‘Jackson didn't exactly set a very good example, did he?'

Drunk for the first time since the night he confessed his asexuality, Jackson had suddenly, and without warning, plummeted headfirst into a dish of Squid in Black Bean Sauce.

‘I was embarrassed by your behaviour,' Jackson explained. ‘I wanted to hide.' Like a monkey with fleas, he was still picking the black beans out of his hair.

‘Maybe you'll actually have to wash it now,' Vince sneered.

‘I don't see how you can talk, Vincent.' Jackson was primness itself. ‘That waistcoat of yours must've put down roots by now.'

‘All your fault, Vincent.' Moses was returning to his theme.

Vince hated being called Vincent. His mother called him Vincent. He told them all to get fucked, and stalked ahead.

‘Anyway,' Jackson smiled, ‘what about Eddie?'

‘Yes,' Moses said. ‘That was
really
disgusting.'

During one of the lulls in the meal Eddie had turned away from the table as if to sneeze. A jet of pink vomit had flown out of his perfectly sculptured mouth and crashlanded in the grove of yucca plants behind him. Afterwards, Moses seemed to remember, Eddie had gone on eating, as if nothing had happened. A bit of a Roman, Eddie.

‘Why was it pink?' Eddie wondered.

Moses couldn't think.

Vince, curious, rejoined them. ‘Why was what pink?'

‘My sick,' Eddie said. ‘Why was it pink? Did I eat anything pink?'

Vince offered an obscene suggestion as to what it might have been that Eddie had eaten.

‘That's not pink,' Eddie said, ‘though, of course, you probably wouldn't know.'

A pause while Eddie and Vince hit each other. Vince staggered backwards over a dustbin. Eddie danced away, smiling.

‘I still think it was Vince's fault, though,' Moses said.

The following day, after only four hours' sleep, Moses boarded a bus (his car had broken down again) with a two-litre plastic bottle of water, a family-size pack of Paracetamol, and a hangover that was like people moving furniture in his head. He was on his way up north. His foster-parents, Uncle Stan and Auntie B, were expecting him for the weekend.

*

Auntie B opened the door in her French plastic apron. Her hands showered white flour. When she saw Moses, her face seemed to widen; her eyes narrowed and lengthened, her mouth stretched into a smile.

‘Moses,' she cried. ‘How are you? Happy birthday.'

They embraced. Moses kissed her on both cheeks. Her hands stuck out of his back like tiny wings because she didn't want to get flour on his clothes. He heard the scrape of Uncle Stan's chair on the parquet floor of the study. It had been six months.

The Poles would have described themselves as an ordinary couple – middle class, middle aged, middle income-bracket – but Moses had noticed them the first time they visited the orphanage. They seemed different somehow. Their smiles didn't look glassy or stuck-on. They didn't bury him in comics and cakes until he couldn't breathe. They turned the other people who visited into fakes.

Mr Pole wore prickly tweed jackets with leather ovals on the elbows. He carried his pipe bowl uppermost in his breast pocket like a chubby brown periscope, and the rituals of smoking had transformed his fingers into instruments, fidgety and deft. He grumbled a lot. His wife – B, as he called her – was round and peaceful. When you heard her voice you thought of a cat curling up in front of the fire. When you kissed her, your lips seemed to touch marshmallow. So soft and sweet and powdery.

He had always looked forward to their visits, so when Mrs Hood summoned him to her office one day and asked him whether he would like to go and live with Mr and Mrs Pole he didn't hesitate. Nor did he need Mrs Hood to tell him how lucky he was. He had been dreaming of a moment like this for as long as he could remember without ever having really believed that it would arrive.

The Poles moved north, and Moses moved with them. They had bought a detached Victorian house on the outskirts of Leicester. They gave him a room of his own on the second floor. The view from the window skimmed the tops of several fruit trees, cleared the garden wall, and came to rest in
the peaceful green spaces of a municipal park. He inhaled the smell of apples and the silence.

They were consistently straight with him. There was no coyness or pretence about his origins. He was ten years old, after all – no baby. They told him to call them Uncle Stan and Auntie B; that neatly sidestepped the twin potholes of
mum
and
dad
and, besides, he had already become accustomed to the names during their many visits to the orphanage. They explained why his name was Highness and not Pole. His name, they said, was all that he had that was truly his (well, not quite all, but they didn't tell him that – not yet), and he should keep it. Out of the way they closed ranks and stood up for him whenever necessary came a sense of their own uniqueness and strength as a family and, over the years, he grew to love them – not as parents exactly (he couldn't imagine what that must feel like), but as people who had been kind to him. Saviours, if you like. Apart from anything else they had saved him from an awful nickname (the children had called him names like Jew and Judas and Rabbi for years but then, when they discovered that he couldn't
really
be Jewish because he hadn't been circumcised, they began to call him, of all things,
Foreskin
); he simply left it behind, along with the iron beds and the rising-bells, the walls painted two shades of green, and the constant echoey clang and clatter of the place, as if everything was happening inside a metal bucket. It had been such a luxury to move into that house in Leicester, and it was always a luxury to come back. A hushed and cushioned existence – except, that is, for the platoon of grandfather clocks that stood in the hall; a passion of Uncle Stan's, they ticked and creaked and wheezed and, once in a while, all chimed simultaneously, a chaotic orchestra of gongs and xylophones and bells led, in Moses's imagination, by a mad cook spanking the bottom of a saucepan with a spoon. The carpets were fingernail deep and deliciously soft if, in the middle of the night, half asleep and barefoot, you had to cross the landing to the upstairs lavatory. The air smelt of wood-polish, pot-pourris of rose leaves, and Uncle Stan's pipe-tobacco, and then, as you moved towards the kitchen, of warm pastry and freshly ground coffee.

Moses sat at the kitchen table as Auntie B put the finishing touches to the evening meal. Outside the lawn had turned blue, and birds clamoured from the webbed branches of the cedar tree. Uncle Stan stalked in and out of the room, ransacking cupboards for things of no importance.

‘How was your journey up?' The floral print of Auntie B's dress tightened across her wide back as she stooped to check the oven.

‘Not too bad. The trouble was, I went out with some friends last night, to celebrate, and I think I drank a bit too much.' Even now, Moses was
conscious of having to imitate good humour.

‘Well,' Auntie B said, ‘it was your birthday, after all. People often get a bit tipsy on their birthdays, don't they?'

A bit tipsy. Moses smiled to himself. ‘Anyway,' he said, ‘I feel a bit better now.'

Auntie B twirled round, her eyebrows high on her forehead, her mouth the shape of a lozenge. ‘Would you like a drink? Hair of the dog?'

It was as if she had learned this last phrase from some book without ever having been able to imagine how she could apply it to her own life but here, suddenly, was the chance, and she had taken it, and felt bright, naughty.

‘No thanks, Auntie B. Coffee's perfect.' He drained his cup to prove it.

Auntie B hovered with the percolator. ‘Another cup?'

‘Yes, please.'

Uncle Stan bustled into the kitchen, eyebrows bristling. ‘Where's that magazine?'

Auntie B turned the upper half of her body and, beautifully bland, watched Uncle Stan as he began to pull drawers open. ‘What magazine?' she said.

‘You know the one I mean,' said Uncle Stan, in some kind of agony.

‘No, I don't.'

‘Oh, come
on
, poppet.' In an excess of irritation, he finally looked at her.

The corners of Auntie B's mouth tucked neatly under her round cheeks. ‘Don't look at me like that, Stanley. I don't know where your silly magazine is.'

Uncle Stan sighed dramatically and hurled himself from the room. Moses grinned at Auntie B.

‘He's always
losing
things,' she said, one eye on the door.

Nothing had changed, Moses thought. Uncle Stan had to worry and pester. Auntie B needed somebody who she could gently scold, hold up to ridicule, and then later, Moses suspected, draw towards her white upholstered bosom.

Two comfortable days went by – birthday presents, meals, TV. Auntie B produced endless cups of tea and coffee, and was constantly inventing excuses to cook or eat. Uncle Stan griped about money, aches and pains, old age.