Rupert Thomson - Dreams of Leaving

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I want to do it. One thing, though. What do I say about being beaten up by those two policemen in the other room?’

Harry took a deep breath. ‘That’s a very serious allegation, Moses.’

‘It’s not an allegation, Harry. It’s the truth. Have you seen my eyebrow?’

‘I understood,’ Harry said slowly, ‘that you sustained that injury while resisting arrest.’

Moses subjected Harry to long and careful scrutiny. Then he drew a line, very deliberately, under what he had written. ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘I’ve finished.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Harry said as he signed the statement, ‘it’ll be all right.’ (It wasn’t all right. Two weeks later Moses appeared at Horseferry Road Magistrates’ Court. The judge told him he was childish and irresponsible, and fined him £50. He almost charged him with contempt of court too. For leaning on the dock. The judge had white hair and a bright pink face. Moses had never seen anyone who looked so consistently furious.)

‘You can collect your things now,’ Harry said. ‘There are some friends of yours waiting for you.’

Moses tossed his polystyrene cup into the waste-paper basket. ‘Thanks, Harry.’ He paused by the door. ‘Just think. We could’ve been working together.’

Harry grinned and scratched his head.

‘Not any more, though. Eh, Harry?’

‘Goodbye, Moses.’

‘See you, Harry.’

Moses walked back to the duty-room where he was handed his personal effects. Through a window of reinforced glass he could see Vince, Eddie and some new girl of Eddie’s. She was wearing skin-tight red and white striped trousers. The officer on duty seemed to think that she was something to do with Moses.

‘Blimey, look at that,’ he drooled. ‘You’re a lucky bastard.’

‘Arrested, beaten up, my Wednesday night ruined,’ Moses murmured. ‘Oh yes, I’m a lucky bastard all right.’

But the officer didn’t seem to hear him. Still mesmerised by those stripes.

Moses buckled his belt with great relief. How nice to have two hands again. Amazing invention, belts. He had always taken them for granted in the past. Not any more.

He met his friends on the steps of the police station like a hero returning.

It was just after two in the morning.

They all went dancing.

*

Everybody who came into contact with Mary during the six days between Alan’s death and the funeral seemed, either openly or covertly, to be congratulating her on the way she was coping. Coping. The word nauseated her. The way she saw it, that kind of sympathy came from the same family as condescension, a distant relation, perhaps, but still family, and if there was one thing she couldn’t stomach it was being condescended to, however obscurely. She thought she knew what they were picking up on, though. They were picking up on surface stuff: her dry eyes, her efficient manner — her armour, in other words. She wore a lot of lipstick and kohl. She wore stiff fabrics too, nothing that swirled or floated, nothing vague. Her airiness had evaporated completely. She displayed instead a kind of ironic practicality that verged, at times, on callousness. ‘No, the funeral’s happening very quickly,’ she heard herself inform a neighbour on the phone. ‘Apparently not many people died in Muswell Hill last week.’ Inside, though, she was still trying to get used to the idea that she had been cheated. Her. Cheated. Her anger at that. She wanted to whirl round and, levelling a finger, cry, ‘Don’t think you can pull the wool over my eyes.’ But you can’t talk to death like that. Death doesn’t have to listen to anyone.

She saw only the necessary people — the priest, the funeral directors, Alan’s father. She made an exception for Maurice. He came round on the Tuesday. He didn’t treat her as if she was ill, or wounded, or mad. He simply looked at her across the table without pity or embarrassment, the slow bones of his hands cradling a cup of tea, the right shoulder of his grey jacket worn shiny by long familiarity with dustbins. That stare of his spread a safety-net that she could fall into. Those hands made her feel strangely comfortable. She even smiled as she said, ‘I want you to take all Alan’s clothes away with you.’

‘You mean dump them?’ he said.

She shook her head. ‘No. I want you to have them.’

The dustman lowered his eyes.

She watched his hands wander on the surface of the table. She thought of plants moving on the bottom of the sea.

‘I know you never really spoke to Alan,’ she went on, ‘but you would have liked each other. I know you would. I can’t imagine anyone I would rather give his clothes to. Please take them, Maurice. Who knows,’ and she surprised herself by laughing, ‘some of them might even fit.’

‘You do me good,’ she told him as she showed him to the door. ‘Come again, won’t you?’

‘Next Tuesday suit you?’ He grinned at her. It was one of his jokes.

‘Next Tuesday’s fine.’ She watched him shamble down the garden path, his feet flapping on the concrete as if his ankle-joints needed tightening.

Her smile lasted.

When his lorry had turned the corner, she walked back indoors, stood by the phone. Facts, she thought. Facts, not emotions. She knew roughly what had happened to Alan. She knew that he had collapsed on Ealing Broadway at about two forty-five on Saturday afternoon. She knew that he had died of a thrombosis, a hardening of the artery walls which, according to the doctor who signed the death certificate, ought to have been detected years before. (‘Ought?’ she had wanted to scream at him, this placid careful man, because he had, for those few minutes, represented the entire profession to her. ‘Why wasn’t it then? Why didn’t you?’) Now she needed to know how it had happened. She needed an eye-witness account. She needed to be able to see every detail.

She dialled the police in Ealing. After twenty minutes of being transferred from one extension to another, after repeating her story at least half a dozen times, she was given the number of a Mrs Hart (a name that Moses must have run his finger over a thousand times, she thought, while searching for his own). Mrs Hart, she was told, had been present at the scene of her husband’s death and would be able to provide her with the information she required. That same afternoon she drove to Ealing. Mrs Hart lived in a walk-up council block not far from Ealing Broadway. The stairs smelt of urine and then, higher up, of meat-fat. Mrs Hart’s flat was on the fourth floor.

When Mary knocked on the door of number 72, an old woman with silver hair answered. ‘Mrs Hart?’

The old woman nodded.

‘I’m Mrs Shirley.’

‘They said you was comin’.’ Mrs Hart ushered Mary into her lounge. ‘Wos your name, love?’

Mary told her.

‘Mine’s Ruby. Ought to’ve been born on Valentine’s Day, didn’ I?’ Her narrow eyes gleamed like an animal’s — trust rather than cunning, though.

They sat down on a brown and yellow sofa. A gas fire bubbled in the corner.

‘I’m sorry about your ’usband.’ Ruby laid a hand on Mary’s wrist. ‘It’s a bloody world, isn’ it?’

Mary nodded. ‘I wanted to ask you what happened that afternoon. What you saw. It’s so hard not having been there.’

‘I can imagine, love.’ Ruby shifted to face Mary, her hands folded like gloves in her lap. ‘Well,’ and she took a deep breath, ‘I was on me way to the shops. Fifteen minutes’ walk from ’ere. It’s the steps, see. Murder on me legs.’ She rolled her eyes and Mary smiled. ‘I was walkin’ up the main road when this bus come along, number sixty-free I fink it was. There’s nobody at the stop, but the bus stops anyway, to let somebody off. Then this gentleman goes past me, well, I mean you can tell, can’t you, an’ ’e’s shoutin’ an’ wavin’ an’ all sorts for the bus to wait for ‘im like. The driver sees ‘im runnin’, but you know what some of them drivers’re like, right bloody bastards if you excuse me language. Wos ’e do? ’E puts ‘is foot down, dun ’e. Well,’ another deep breath, ‘the gentleman, ’e carries on runnin’ ‘cos the bus is goin’ pretty slow, then all of a sudden ’e keels over. Jus’ keels over right there on the street. I fought ’e must of tripped or summin’ so I goes over to ’elp ‘im up like. ’E’s lying on ‘is back in ’e, wiv ‘is eyes open but sort of starin’ an’ ’e sees me an’ ’e smiles an’ ’e says, “Stupid,” ’e says an’ I says, “Wos stupid?”, finking ’e means me an’ ’e says, “Fancy slippin’ on a banana like that,” an’ I look round for a banana an’ there in’t no banana is there an’ I look at ‘im an’ I’m about to tell ‘im there in’t no banana an’ what’s ’e talkin’ about banana but then I look a bit closer like an’ I see ’e’s dead. Well, there’s all these people shoutin’ about get a nambulance an’ I says, “Wos the point of a nambulance, ’e’s dead in ’e.” An’ ’e was wan ’e. Frombosis, the doctor said. Nuffin’ to do wiv no banana.’