Dreams of Leaving (45 page)

Clouds had hidden the moon. When Louise stood up, the water wrapped itself around her thighs, looked as if it didn't want to let her go. She stumbled as the undertow sucked pebbles past her feet, but struggled free and ran towards them smiling.

‘Jackson,' she said. ‘I didn't think you'd make it.' She snatched up a white towel and began to rub her hair, tilting her head first to one side then to the other.

‘Here,' and Jackson held out the parcel, ‘this is for you.'

Draping the towel round her shoulders, Louise accepted the parcel, examined it, all four sides of it, with her wet hands, left dark fingerprints on the brown paper. She held it to her ear and shook it gently, two dents of puzzlement between her eyebrows, but waves kept breaking behind her with a dull thump and foam came sliding round her ankles, drowning any other sound she might have heard. Jackson said nothing, content, it seemed, simply to watch her. She tore the brown paper off and pulled out an oblong box secured with Sellotape. She broke the Sellotape with her teeth and opened the lid. The rockets lay inside, tightly packed, two rows deep.
Bright red and yellow. Twisted blue-black touchpapers. Long blond launching-sticks.

‘There's twenty-one of them,' Jackson explained, ‘because that's how old you are.'

And then, when she still didn't say anything, he shifted from one foot to the other and added, ‘You know, like the candles on a cake.'

When Louise lifted her eyes from the box of rockets to Jackson's anxious face, her deep tan and the slick blackness of the sea behind her gave her smile a new and unexpected dimension: for a moment she was an actress – famous, glamorous, spotlit for the cameras.

‘They're beautiful.' She rested a hand on Jackson's shoulder and kissed him on the mouth. ‘Thank you, Jackson.'

Jackson looked pleased, serious and uncomfortable. It was a speciality of his: he did it with equal measures of each.

Louise turned to Moses. ‘Aren't they great?'

‘Well,' and Moses thought of the coat-hook and the chair, ‘Jackson's always had a way with presents.'

‘You know what I'm going to do?' Louise said. ‘I'm going to get some empty bottles and I'm going to line them up in one long line and I'm going to put rockets in them and then I'm going to let them off, one by one, like they do on royal birthdays or whenever it is.'

She ran off up the beach.

Moses and Jackson sat down on the stones to wait for her.

‘Does she like them, do you think?' Jackson asked.

‘
Jackson,'
Moses said. ‘Didn't you see her face?'

Jackson chuckled to himself. ‘You know, I thought it was going to rain tonight. I mean, really rain. A real downpour. And look what happens. This is probably one of the warmest nights of the year so far.'

The moon slid out from behind a cloud. Its movement was so smooth that it might have been running on greased tracks. Moses glanced down at his latest bottle of wine. Soon Louise would be able to stick a rocket in the end of it. He wondered where Gloria was, but only vaguely, and was surprised by the vagueness of the thought. He watched Jackson fold his raincoat and place it beside him on the beach.

‘If you thought it was going to rain,' Moses said suddenly, ‘how come you brought fireworks?'

Jackson grinned as if Moses had just fallen into a carefully-laid trap. ‘Maybe I wanted her to feel sorry for me,' he said.

Moses smiled.

Louise returned, wearing a knee-length pink T-shirt. She was dragging a crate of empty bottles. Moses and Jackson helped her to wedge the bottles
into the pebbles at intervals of ten feet so they formed a long line parallel with the sea. Then she borrowed Moses's lighter.

‘Here goes,' she said.

She lit the first touchpaper and jumped back. The rocket seemed to hold its breath for a moment, to gather itself, then it fizzed out over the sea, a fierce arc of sparks, and fizzled out, dropping a cluster of silver stars into the darkness.

‘One,' chanted the crowd of people now assembled at the water's edge.

Louise was lighting the second rocket when Moses felt a slight tugging on his sleeve.

‘There you are,' Gloria said. She looked excited, dishevelled. He could see all the parties she had ever been to in her eyes. ‘Where've you been?'

‘Looking for you,' he said. ‘Where've
you
been?'

She laughed. ‘I must've been in all the places you didn't look.'

He stared at the sea beyond her. He saw the stack of silver dishes crash. It struck him that neither of them were telling the truth. He hadn't been looking for her, not for at least two hours. Not at all, really. It had just been something to say. But her lie, he felt, had nothing to do with what she had said. Her lie had something to do with what she
hadn't
said, though he didn't even have a glimmer of what that might be.

A rocket screamed out over the sea. It scored a ragged orange line in the night sky and self-destructed. The explosion rebounded off the cliffs behind them. He felt Gloria jump.

‘Seven,' came the chant.

Gloria said something about going up to the car. He moved away with her towards the steps. The night seemed to darken then. He stumbled, almost fell. When he looked across at Gloria he saw that she was disappearing again.

‘No,' he cried out.

But her body had already vanished, her body vanished first, and when he searched for her face some of her features (fringe, pupils, lips, eyebrows) instantly became invisible. Gloria and the night, they were made of the same stuff; she was turning into one small part of that immeasurably vast darkness. With a shiver he remembered Louise rising out of the sea, he remembered the reluctance of that black water to surrender her. He wanted to kiss Gloria, just lean across and kiss her, but he didn't know how to find her mouth, or what exactly he would be kissing if he did. They had reached the steps now. A swaying in his head. Panic or nausea, he couldn't tell which. He grasped a metal stanchion for support.

‘Have you got a cigarette?' he said.

‘In the car,' her voice came back from somewhere above him.

He reached the top just behind her. Only her hands, her cheekbones, the whites of her eyes, remained. She was going fast, dissolving in the night's black acid. If he let her go he would have to wait until daylight to look for her and she might be miles away by then, a corpse or as good as, lost to him for ever. Where was the nearest light? In the car, she had said. Yes, there was a light in the car. If he could get her there in time. He hardly dared to look at her. When he did, a splinter of white light in the corner of her eye, a fraction of her, returned his glance. Like a dream where you can't run fast enough, he started over the gravel, pulling her by an arm he couldn't see. She seemed to be resisting. Didn't she realise what was happening? Or was that what she wanted?

‘Nineteen,' came a faint cry.

‘What's the hurry?' She tripped, laughed as he caught her.

He half-carried, half-dragged her the last few yards. He unlocked the door, tore it open. The light came on. It was dim, but it was enough. A sickly pallor ran back into her face, rebuilding her features, filling in gaps. Her surprise became visible.

‘What was all that about?'

‘All what?'

‘All that crazy rushing to the car.'

He slid into the driving-seat. His heart was banging like a stone in a tin can. He switched the radio on. Frank Sinatra was singing. ‘Strangers in the Night', of all things.

‘I thought you were going to disappear,' he said. ‘I didn't want you to disappear.'

He watched her face in the light from the radio. She was hugging her legs as if cold or alone, her chin resting on her knees. Even though he could now see all of her he felt that some crucial part of her had eluded him. He had failed. She
had
disappeared.

It turned out so right

For strangers in the night –

Why does music always do that? he wondered.

‘Shall we go?' he said.

‘Where?'

‘Back to London.'

‘No,' she said. ‘Not yet.'

A silence.

‘No,' he sighed. ‘I don't really want to either.'

She sat up, possessed of some new efficiency now, and opened the glove
compartment. She undid the envelope that contained the coke. She tipped half the contents on to the cover of his logbook. Using her own razor-blade, she cut the stuff into four lines. She rolled a £5 note and, bending quickly, vacuumed up the two lines nearest her. Then she passed him the £5 note. He leaned over, his face almost touching her knee, and did the same.

‘I'm going over to the pub for a brandy,' he said. ‘Coming?'

She sniffed twice, once with each nostril. ‘No, I think I'll go back down.'

He got out of the car, locked the doors.

‘Moses?'

He looked up. She had reached the top of the steps. ‘Yes?' he said.

‘Thank you for not wanting me to disappear.'

‘That's all right.' He had spoken quietly. He doubted whether his voice had carried to where she was standing.

They looked at each other across a distance for a moment, then she turned and started down the steps. He watched her until she disappeared below the level of the cliff-top.

*

‘Nice place, isn't it?' Vince said.

Moses stopped short, a yard inside the door. He hadn't expected anything, but if he had, he wouldn't have expected anything like this. Vince was sitting in the shade of a life-size cardboard palm tree. Along one wall there were wooden booths with Wild West swing-doors. A chrome and purple jukebox in the corner. Pineapple ice-buckets on the bar. Red plastic diner-stools with silver legs. Green glass fishing-floats dangling from a mass of orange netting overhead. Hanging on the far wall, a Mexican poncho, three hunting-horns, a coolie hat, a sabre, a painting of a bullfight, and a stuffed swordfish. And all this at first glance. The way Vince was grinning, it might have been his doing.

‘I thought I might find you in here,' Moses said.

‘No, you didn't. It's a horrible surprise.' Vince's grin widened. ‘Because now you're going to have to talk to me and buy me drinks.'

Moses stood by the door, one hand massaging his forehead. Not only Disneyland in here, but Vince. He could feel the stones in his pockets beginning to weigh him down, to drag him floorwards.

‘Mine's a brandy,' Vince said.

Moses pushed towards the bar.

‘Yes sir?' The landlord had dyed black hair and wore a vermilion shirt with silver metal collar-tips. There was nowhere to look.

‘Two brandies,' Moses said. ‘No ice.'

He watched the landlord press the glasses to a Hennessey optic. ‘Quite a place you've got here.'

‘You like it?' The landlord flashed him a smile. All crow's-feet and dentures.

Moses was fucked if he was going to say it again. Someone might think he was taking the piss and knock him out. That was all he needed. He paid quickly, smiled, and squeezed back to the safety of the palm tree.

Vince grabbed his drink and swallowed it whole.

‘If you're going to drink them like that,' Moses said, ‘it's hardly worth me sitting down.'

‘Should've brought me a double then, shouldn't you.'

Moses shook his head. ‘You would've drunk that twice as fast.' He leaned back against the fake teak panelling. ‘What's wrong with everyone today? Everyone's acting so strange. Jackson turns up with a box of fireworks. Louise is all brown and goes swimming in the middle of the night. Gloria keeps disappearing. Eddie's pretending he isn't even here. And you.' He turned to face Vince. ‘You sit there quietly, not breaking anything. What's going on, Vince?'

Vince shrugged.

Moses reached for his glass. ‘And the seagulls. Did you notice the seagulls?'

Vince hadn't.

‘What they do is, they sort of spread their wings and float upwards on the air-currents till they're level with the top of the cliff, then they slide sideways —' Moses demonstrated with his hand – ‘float all the way down again till they reach the bottom. Then they start all over again. Do exactly the same thing. Millions and millions of times. Why do they do that? Does it feel good?'

Vince didn't know.

‘Everybody's up to something.' Moses stubbed his cigarette out in the tail of a pink china mermaid. ‘Even the birds.'

‘Have you got any of that left?'

Moses looked blank. ‘Any of what?'

‘Any of whatever you're on.'

‘No.'

Vince knocked back the rest of Moses's drink and banged the empty glass down on the table.

‘All right,' Moses said, ‘but this is your last one.'

He returned to the bar.

The landlord winked. ‘Two brandies. Right?'

‘Right.'

‘No rocks. Right?'

‘Right.'

‘Plenty of rocks on the beach. Right?' The landlord's mouth opened. A round dark hole. The shape of a railway tunnel. A long train of laughter came squeaking out. How about a drink yourself? Moses thought. Oil, for instance.

‘You know,' the landlord rattled on, ‘I've been here fifteen years now and I don't reckon I've been down to the beach more than half a dozen times.'

Oh, so it was the life-history now, was it?

‘Too busy up here, I suppose,' Moses said. Collecting all this junk.

‘I keep myself pretty busy.' The landlord picked up a white cloth, began to caress a glass. ‘Going to invite me down there later on?'

‘Sorry,' Moses said. ‘Not my party.'

When he returned to the palm tree he decided it was time to start pestering Vince. Vince was acting too cocktail-party for his liking. He wanted the old blood-and-vomit Vincent back. The Suicide Kid. Onassis on acid. The dregs at the bottom of the King's Road.