Dreams of Leaving (31 page)

*

If I were to die now, Peach wrote in a slightly unsteady hand, what would happen?

He sat back and considered the question. It would be a nightmare for Dolphin, of course. Though Dolphin wouldn't think of it as a death. Not right away. He would probably call it a
disappearance.
Still, that was serious enough. Nobody disappeared in New Egypt. Least of all a Chief Inspector. What would he do? Check the museum first. His only lead. But he would find no trace of Peach. Not a single clue.

Absolute nightmare.

It wouldn't be long before Dolphin began to suspect foul play. A kidnapping, for instance. Even, perhaps, a murder. (Peach's forty-year reign as Chief Inspector, his merciless grip on the community, had always made that a possibility – though who would dare?) He would have to lift the news blackout. He would have to inform the village. And then? Instant pandemonium.

Would anyone suspect that he had (a)
left
the village and (b) left it
of his own accord?
Only the more cynical of the villagers. Highness, for instance (he could see that sardonic twisted smile). The greengrocer, too, perhaps (those puffy knowing eyes).

In the end, after the obligatory month of search-parties and questionings, Dolphin would be forced to pronounce Peach dead. He would have to fake the evidence, concoct a foolproof story, produce a satisfactory corpse.

Some, Peach supposed (and this hurt slightly), would celebrate. He could imagine Dinwoodie dancing a solitary and hysterical jig in his garage. He shook his head. Poor Dinwoodie.

Others would mourn. He pictured a fragile and ghostly Hilda huddled in a room of dark furniture. He could hear the sound of uncontrollable mass weeping issuing from the windows of the police station on the hill.

And then the funeral.

Would there be a procession through the village as there had been for Lord Batley? Would they ‘bury' him in an empty coffin? What a vicious irony that would be. So vicious that he almost resorted to prayer right there and then, but the priest's face rose before his eyes at the crucial moment (that pitiful jittery face, its faith built not on strength but terror) and he rapidly abandoned the idea.

He closed his notebook and tucked his pen into his breast pocket.

He would not die.

He leaned forwards, pressed his face to the window. The world beyond the streaked glass looked peaceful, almost familiar. Sunset an hour away. Evening light. The last rays reaching down through the woods, slender pale-gold arms emerging from the ruffled sleeves of clouds. Only the
motion, the constant slippage of the landscape from right to left, seemed strange. A grass bank grew and grew until it hid the view. He watched as children do: as if the world was moving and he was still.

He was seventy-two years old, and it was his first time on a train.

*

Now they were swinging north into a long stretch of curved track and, simply by turning his head from right to left, he could see first the front then the back of the train. He suddenly became aware of how limited his knowledge was. From the window he had seen details of the village echoed, reproduced, enlarged – a boy spilling off his bicycle, a woman taking washing in, a flock of sheep wedged into a lane – but nothing could prepare him for the city that lay ahead. His wisdom, undisputed in the village, dissipated in this seemingly boundless world. It began and ended with the train he was travelling on. No, not even that. With the carriage he was sitting in. That was the sum of all he knew. It was daunting. He realised that he would have to rely on the qualities that had elevated him to the rank of Chief Inspector at such a comparatively tender age: vigilance, ruthlessness, intuition.

He began to see things that he had never seen before – at least not in real life: a viaduct; a white horse carved into the chalk of a hillside; an aeroplane, curiously silent and majestic, floating down over the train, almost grazing the tops of trees, its underbelly plump and vulnerable. A highly irregular thought occurred to him. Supposing he had left the village before now. Supposing he had left when he was younger, more receptive, more energetic, and returned armed with vivid first-hand experience of the outside world. Then he would really have known what he was talking about. Then he would have understood exactly what he was legislating
against.
And he would have been able to dispense his knowledge in tantalising fragments like some kind of oracle. A knowledge that only he (miraculously) possessed. How wise he would have seemed. Imagine the increase in prestige and credibility. Who knows, perhaps even the breakdown could have been avoided. An interesting idea, in any case. Something to mull over. He jotted a few words down in his notebook:
The relationship of hypocrisy to the exercise of power.
He wondered if the idea had occurred to any of his predecessors. He doubted it, somehow. After all, it had only occurred to him once he had
already left
the village. Surely such an idea would have been unthinkable, quite literally unthinkable, while you were actually living there? Only this extraordinary detachment, this sense of removal, made it possible. It was as if he had risen out of his body and
was looking back down at himself. He could see things in a way that he couldn't have seen them before.

The train chattered over the rails. You'll-never-go-back, it seemed to be saying. You'll-
never
-go-back-you'll-
never
-go-back.

Nonsense. Of course he would. He had to. He even
wanted
to.

He had allowed himself a maximum of twenty-four hours. Deadline Saturday 2100 hours. If he hadn't located Moses Highness by then, too bad. He had to be back in New Egypt by midnight. Otherwise his cover would be blown.

Once again he was struck by the enormity of the risk he was taking. Still, there was nothing for it now. Here he was, thirty miles out of the village, and moving further away with every minute that passed.

The train hurtled on towards the city, beating complicated rhythms now. Beneath the smeared glass, the landscape flowed like green weeds through water. He had never imagined such fluid speed. The percussion of wheels on rails. The flick-flick-flick of telegraph poles. Lulled him. He leaned his head back against the seat.

*

Where was he?

His eyes took in the blue and green check upholstery, the silver luggage-racks, the discarded newspaper, his own face in the window's mirror. A blonde girl sitting across the aisle returned his glance of confusion with a smile. She hadn't been there before.

Through the window he watched the march of strange buildings. Three tower-blocks, an office of reflecting glass, a multi-storey car-park. Semidetached houses in a row like vertebrae. He was on the train. But where was the train?

As if to answer his question, the train lurched, throwing him forwards. It was slowing down. For a station, presumably. But which station?

‘Is this London?' he asked the blonde girl.

‘No, this is East Croydon,' she said. ‘London's next.'

He thanked her.

So. He must have dozed off. He wondered how long he had slept. Fifteen minutes, twenty minutes – not much more. That girl must have joined the train at Three Bridges. Everything under control again, he began to move his mind into the immediate future. They were due in at 8.23. By the time he found a hotel and registered, it would be close to ten. He doubted whether he could accomplish much that night. He had a phone-call to
make, but he could do that from his room. All right, then. An early night. An early start in the morning.

The white signs of suburban stations flashed by, almost too fast to read. West something. Something Common. Clapham Junction. Houses rushed up to the railway line. He saw a woman washing her hair, the bathroom lit by one naked bulb. It embarrassed him, this glimpse into her privacy. Then he saw two people standing in a yellow kitchen. Then an empty room with the TV on. Window after window. Life after life on display. He found himself thinking of the police museum.

As the train rattled over a bridge, he looked down. Though rush-hour was over, the street pulsed with the red tail-lights of cars. Glowing, dimming, glowing again as feet touched brakes. All those cars, all those lights. He sensed a surge of electricity. Friday night. The city charged up for the weekend. Perhaps the fascination showed on his face because the blonde girl chose that moment to speak to him:

‘I love this place, don't you?'

He turned to look at her. The thrill in her voice, the ingenuous warmth of her smile, drew him in, persuaded him to tell the truth. There was nothing to fear from her.

‘It's the first time I've been here,' he confessed.

‘The first time?' Her voice lifted in disbelief. It was a musical voice. It resonated. It would be capable, he imagined, of wonderful laughter. ‘Where have you been hiding?'

He instantly forgave her the slight impertinence of her question. She was an attractive girl – in her early twenties, he guessed – and some part of him was charmed by her forwardness.

‘I live a very quiet life. In the country.' He sounded appropriately sedate.

‘Oh, I'm just coming back from a week in the country – ' the girl began.

How easily these people speak of coming and going, he thought. As if it was the most natural thing in the world.

‘– but what brings you to London,' she was asking him, ‘for the first time?'

The phrase had become their theme, linking them privately. When she got home she would tell her mother, or her boyfriend, or whoever she lived with, that she had met a man on the train who had never been to London before. It was
his first time,
she would say. Can you
imagine?

While they had been talking, the train had crossed another bridge, over the Thames this time (he caught a glimpse of the water, glinting black, sluggish as oil), and everybody was standing up, pulling on coats, hauling down cases. All this gave him time to frame a suitably vague answer to what had been, potentially at least, a rather awkward question.

‘Business,' he said. ‘I'm here on business.'

The girl, adjusting the belt on her raincoat, gave him a quick smile. Brisk rituals of arrival were beginning to override their conversation. Soon they were walking side by side down the platform. Gritty irritable light. The station, with its high arching roof, hollow and draughty, echoed with footsteps, voices, the whisper of clothes. Somehow the sound reminded him of birds – thousands of birds folding their wings. Once they had passed through the ticket barrier, the girl swung away from him.

‘Well,' she said, ‘I hope your business goes well.'

Her tiny downward smile intrigued him, as the beginning of a story does, but this, he realised, was already the end.

‘Thank you,' he said. ‘Good luck to you, too.'

‘It's been nice talking to you. Goodbye.'

‘Goodbye.'

He watched her walk away. She walked energetically. Her blonde hair rose and fell with the energy of her walking. He put his case down. He was acting very strangely. Really very strangely indeed. What on earth had prompted him to wish her good luck like that? He went back over the encounter in some detail and shook his head. He almost didn't recognise himself.

Suddenly a crowd of people spilled towards him across the concourse. Though startled, he stood his ground. They flowed round him as if he was part of the station. He had never seen so many people in one place. And every face lifted anxiously to the departures board as if they expected to read the news of some personal tragedy there. So many people and yet they all had different noses, eyes, hair. It seemed extraordinary to him that no two people looked the same. And another thing. He didn't
recognise
anyone. He had never seen so many
strangers.
For a moment he, too, looked anxious. Then he became exhilarated. The turmoil. The din. The
anonymity.
He could blend with the crowds, he could move about unobserved, no eyebrows raised, no questions asked. It suited him perfectly.

Outside the station he flagged down a taxi. The driver took him to a dark street lined with stunted trees. Somewhere between Queensway and Notting Hill Gate, it was (Peach had been following the route in his
A–Z
). He paid the driver, and the taxi rattled away again towards the main road. He stood on the pavement, his suitcase in his hand. He looked up. The Hotel Ravello.
It's not exactly The Ritz,
the driver had told him, but Peach had imagined worse places.

He climbed the steps and pushed the door open. A bell tingled. He found himself in a narrow hallway. A rectangle of plastic-coated card had
been tacked to the wall. RECEPTION, it said. The arrow underneath indicated a doorway to the left.

‘Hello?' he called out.

He walked up a short passage and peered into an office. Beyond the office lay another, darker room, separated from the first by a frosted-glass partition.

‘Hello?' he called out again.

An Arab appeared. He had the watery strained eyes of somebody who watches too much television. His complexion was yellow on the surface, grey underneath. A few buttons on his shirt had popped undone, revealing the wrinkled socket of his navel.

‘Yes?'

‘I would like a single room,' Peach said.

‘How many night?' The Arab spoke in a monotone. The words came automatically. He probably said them in his sleep.

‘Just the one.'

The Arab produced a register. ‘Sign here.'

Peach stooped and wrote
George Highness
in a confident scrawl. A merciless smile passed over his lips. That's the closest
he
will ever get to leaving the village, he thought.

He pushed the register back across the counter, received a key in exchange.

‘Third floor,' the Arab said. ‘Check out before midday.'

Peach nodded. He would be gone long before then.

As he climbed the stairs the décor deteriorated. Handprints on the walls. Scratches, patches of damp, graffiti. It certainly wasn't The Ritz.