Dreams of Leaving (54 page)

After walking for almost two hours they reached the car again.

‘How peculiar,' Mary said, ‘to go all the way round the house like that, to go so
far
, without ever getting any nearer.'

It struck Moses that, on another day, they would probably have ignored the PRIVATE PROPERTY signs and scaled the wall and explored the grounds. But he said, ‘Some things are better from a distance.'

‘I hope that doesn't include me.'

He smiled. ‘You know it doesn't.'

But she had come perilously close, it seemed, and knew it. For that walk round the wall, he thought, had summed up their entire relationship.

Never getting any nearer.

The rules still intact.

*

Gloria phoned again.

He didn't want to talk to her at all. He had nothing to say. He found himself feeling delayed by her call, as if he had something important to do, which he hadn't. She sounded cheerful which made him sound depressed. His mind drifted as she talked. He said yes, no – anything, really. He didn't care whether he gave himself away or not.

When she had finished answering the questions he hadn't asked her she began to ask him questions.

‘Are you still seeing the Shirleys?'

‘Yes. Weekends, mostly. Sometimes I stay there a couple of days.'

‘Oh. That's nice.' She was trying to be big-hearted. Taking an interest in something that either upset or annoyed her. It made him want to rub her face in it. Would it be ‘nice' then?

‘What do you do there?'

‘We get drunk, talk, go for walks– '

‘Is she an alcoholic?'

‘Who?'

‘The mother. Mrs Shirley.'

‘No. She just drinks a lot.'

A short laugh from Gloria, but he hadn't meant it as a joke. Then a pause. ‘Are you all right?' she said. ‘You sound a bit morose.'

‘I'm fine,' he said, sounding morose.

‘What is it then? Don't you want to talk to me?'

‘I don't know,' he said. But really she was right. He didn't want to talk to her. He couldn't explain it to himself so there seemed little point in trying to explain it to her.

‘Can I come round?' she was asking him now.

‘When?' he said. Thinking tomorrow, the next day, something like that.

‘Now.'

Jesus, he thought. Then he went blank. Looked at the clock even though he already knew what time it was.

‘If you like,' he said finally.

‘See you in about half an hour.'

He put the phone down and began to wait for her to arrive. He resented her presumption. Inviting herself round like that. But why, in that case, hadn't he simply said no? How was it she had acquired the power to rob him of initiative?

*

She hung her coat on the ghost's coat-hook even though he had told her a thousand times.

‘I'm worried about you,' she said, moving across the room towards him.

He kissed her, then he turned away. ‘Why?'

‘I think you're getting in over your head.'

‘Over my head?' He laughed, but there was no humour in his laugh. What right did she have to say that? ‘How do you know?'

She sat down on the sofa and lit a cigarette. He could hear it crackle in the silence as she inhaled. ‘Call it a hunch,' she said.

He looked over his shoulder at her. It was something Mary might have said. She phrased things that way.

‘I mean, I don't care what you do with her.' Gloria was examining her shoes.

‘And what if I told you we don't
do
anything?'

‘I don't care. The thing is, you're not being straight with me. You keep everything to yourself. I don't know where I stand any more.' She paused, looked up from her shoes. ‘That means something, don't you think?'

Moses turned back to the window and pressed his forehead against the cold glass. He felt sick, uncertain, found out. His mind was going blank with the division of things. Down in the street he could see three children sitting on a wall. They were laughing and swinging their legs. He wanted to sit on a wall. He wanted to laugh and swing his legs.

‘Moses,' and Gloria's voice had softened now, ‘just tell me where I stand.'

‘It's a friendship,' he heard himself insisting.

She looked down at her hands. For the first time, he saw her as a nun, her smile limited and prim – superior. She was making him ridiculous. A
friendship.
How pompous. But what could he tell her? He tried again.

‘I like them all. The whole family. That's why I go there. It's as simple as that. I can't see why you're making it into such a great drama.'

She came and stood next to him, her shoulder touching his upper arm. It was a forgiveness routine (for what?). He turned to look at her. She turned a moment later. They kissed. But the deeper their kiss became, the less he could see. It was all too close. He couldn't focus. Everything blurred and swam away.

*

Sleeping together didn't change anything. His body went through the motions – and not without a certain practised tenderness – but his mind floated free. His orgasm, when it came, seemed to happen somewhere else. It was like hearing an explosion in the distance as you walk down a quiet street: you pause for a second, listen, then walk on unaffected.

He lay on his back afterwards, one arm over his face, the other across his stomach. He wished the afternoon would accelerate into dusk so their faces became invisible. Gloria asked him what he was thinking about.

‘Nothing,' he said.

When, actually, he was.

He was thinking about a picture he had seen while he was fucking her. Night-time. A street of ordinary houses. No lights in any of the houses, though. It had been raining in the picture. Even now the sound of a light drizzle came to his ears, scarcely audible, like the movements of insects. The street looked dark, empty, shiny. Halfway down on the left a pink sign flashed on and off … on and off … the only colour, the only life in the surrounding darkness. In neon script it said
Goodbye.
Just that one word. Staining the wet black tarmac pink. Nice picture. He could have watched it for a long time. It was so monotonous, so precise, so comforting. Very nice picture.

‘Nothing,' he repeated.

*

The mood lingered.

That night, after Gloria left, he thought about Mary. He stared at the kitchen floor as he thought about her. A colour appeared: yellow. Texture followed and the yellow turned into sand. A silent wind blew and the sand drifted. Something showed through. A fragment of mosaic. He bent down, blew on it. The mosaic grew.

There could be an entire floor here, he thought. He began to remove
the grains of sand with a fine toothbrush so as not to damage anything that might be there.

This is ridiculous, he thought some time later, having cleared about forty square feet of mosaic with a toothbrush. There's probably a whole villa here. First he used a broom, then impatience gave him a shovel. His mind raced on ahead. It came back with the word city. He called in cranes, trucks, bulldozers. He supervised the excavations.

He stood back. So. A city. Well, he'd known it all along, really. Just hadn't dared believe in it. In case it disappointed him. In case it let him down. He was superstitious that way.

Now he walked through what he had unearthed without reaching its limits. He paused in courtyards, he followed streets, he crossed squares. He stood at crossroads. He felt like a tourist. Overawed. Bewildered. No mastery of history.

Inadequate.

He faltered at the word.

A sudden blur of colour took him by surprise. It sprinted along the very edge of his vision. The flicker of a lizard? The sun glancing off a stone? These were possibilities, but not convincing ones. He ran to the corner just in time to catch a glimpse of someone on a bicycle. The someone wore an orange anorak.

He would've known that orange anorak anywhere.

Alan.

Well, he supposed he should've been expecting that. Yes, he should've expected to run into Alan. He sank down on to one of the massive hewn blocks of stone that made up the kerb. No point chasing him, though. No point even calling out. What could he say?

After that it seemed to go dark in a second. Night descending. The weekend again. Traffic lights turned green on the main road below and strange people's feet pressed accelerators. Voices bumped against the kitchen window like balloons. Outside there was another city.

Three phone-calls happened in quick succession.

First Eddie wanted Moses to come to a party in Barons Court.

‘No,' Moses said.

Then Jackson called from his aunt's in Cheltenham to ask Moses whether he had seen any sign of the cold front which ought to be moving towards London at that very moment.

‘No,' Moses said.

And finally Louise rang, jaunty as ever (she called him honey), and asked him if he minded filling in for her at The Bunker because she had promised to take an old Spanish friend of hers to see Gloria sing.

‘No,' Moses said. ‘I don't mind.'

*

He sat in Louise's Perspex box that evening and sold tickets. People paying to get in were impressed by his expressionless face and his sullen monosyllables. All the best clubs hired people like that.

But nothing could lighten Moses's mood, not even Ridley's imitation of a bird of paradise. An Anti-Nowhere League single was running through his head:

I've been here and I've been there

and I've been every-fucking-where

so what, so what, you boring little cunt –

The night dragged, joyless.

When the club closed at two, he left Ridley to lock up. He climbed the stairs, put some music on and stretched out on his sofa. He had a sense of the building falling silent under him.

He went to bed just before three.

He woke almost immediately, it seemed, but a glance at his clock told him it was four-fifteen. Bird stood on the windowsill, one paw raised. When he saw Moses he opened his blunt jaws and released one of his famous seagull cries. It rose from the bottom of the night, desolate but urgent, chilling – a warning.

‘What is it, Bird?'

Then he heard a sound. It followed so closely on his words that it might have been surreal punctuation. Something like glass shattering, he thought. He lay still, propped up on one elbow, every muscle rigid.

Hearing nothing more, he eased out of bed, pulled on a T-shirt and jeans, and stepped into an old pair of desert-boots. His movements unusually light, he crossed the room and listened at the door. A truck shifted gears on the main road; a window vibrated somewhere, then the building quietened down again.

He crept downstairs until he reached the door that connected his stairs with the short corridor leading to Elliot's office. Here again he paused, heard nothing. He flung Elliot's door open with a crash and flicked the light on. The walls, the desk, the sofa, leapt out at him and froze. It occurred to him that if there was anyone in the building they would now know that they were not alone.

He moved back along the corridor towards the stairs that led down into the nightclub. His footsteps made no sound on the carpet. He began to
take the stairs. One by one, one hand on the wall. He stopped at the bottom of each flight. Listened. Before turning blind into the next flight. It was a gamble every time, a private dare. Sooner or later something would be there. It was like Russian roulette. There had to be a bullet in one of the chambers.

Then he had reached the bottom of the stairs and the dim expanse of the foyer lay ahead. To his left a glimmer of pale light showed him where the Perspex ticket-box was. To his right a wide corridor led to the bar.

He edged into the corridor. The darkness thickened, began to pulse. Then he remembered the policeman. And wanted to run or scream. Wanted to hurl himself to the floor and thrash about like an epileptic. Fear had him. Still he inched along the corridor. When the carpet turned to wood beneath his feet, he knew he was standing on the dance-floor. The darkness sang like an electric fence now. He could feel the hairs lifting on his bare forearms. A sudden draught of cool air brushed past him. Where had that come from? He sensed a movement to his left and turned. Something struck him where his neck joined his shoulder. The darkness was a night sky showering big flakes of snow. He hit out sideways and made contact with something that felt smooth and hard. A person's face, perhaps. He heard a noise like air escaping from a valve. Then he was lying on his back.

He couldn't have lost consciousness though, because he saw a shape slip away across the dance-floor. Or thought he did, anyway. He hauled himself to his feet. He had the feeling that he was coming last in some kind of bizarre race.

He found a broken window in the Ladies. The same toilet he had taken speed in all those months ago. He stood on the seat and put his face to the gap. Cold air touched his hair. He heard a car pull away in the side-street. He doubted that it was the person who had broken in. It seemed too convenient somehow. Besides it had taken him ages to cover the distance from the dance-floor to the toilet window. Whoever it was would probably be far away by now. Whoever it was.

He had a piss. An afterthought, really. So casual it made him laugh. He walked back into the club and turned all the lights on. No blood, no shit, no white arrows. He switched on the PA. Thump, hiss. For the next hour he played music. Bands like Crass, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Pack, Crisis, The Fall. He even found the Anti-Nowhere League single that had been crashing through his head all evening. He played that too.

so what, so what, you boring little cunt

who cares, who cares what you do

who cares, who cares about you

you

you, you, you –

At times he had the feeling that the person who had hit him was listening outside the broken toilet window. In a way he hoped so. Because the music was for him.