Rupert Thomson: Dreams of Leaving

‘What did you say?’ he said.

*

It was three in the morning. Elliot sprawled on his grey dralon sofa. A glass of Remy balanced on the fourth button of his waistcoat. He was drinking in the liquid harmonies of Manhattan Transfer. To somebody walking into the office at that moment Elliot might have looked the picture of relaxation, but that somebody wouldn’t have heard, as Elliot heard, the whirr of brain-wires, or felt, as Elliot felt, the chafing of one layer of skin against another. Elliot had said good-night to Ridley half an hour before in the foyer. He had been intending to lock up straight away and go home. But when he searched his pockets he realised that he had left his keys upstairs and when he found his keys on his desk he saw the pile of letters and when he thought about the letters he poured himself a stiff brandy, put a record on the stereo and lay down on the sofa.

Now he shook the sofa off, stood up. He walked over to the pool-table and set up the balls. He broke, put a stripe down. He played himself, and the physics of the game slowly altered his frame of mind. He could concentrate now. His cool pool-brain began to plan strategies.

When the music stopped — that five-second gap between tracks — he thought he heard something downstairs. The three-syllable creak of the double-doors. And remembered now that he had left them unlocked. He leapt across the room and killed the volume on the stereo. And stood motionless, lips ajar. Not a sound now, but the kind of silence that follows sound. This had been happening slowly for a long time. He felt a curious relief as he reached for the short pool-cue.

Half a dozen steps (executed so lightly and smoothly that they all ran together) took him to the door of the office. He pushed on the wood with spread fingers. An unmistakable smell drifted into his nostrils. Petrol.

He ran down the stairs, turned the corner into the last flight, and stopped, three steps above the foyer. A policeman stood by the double-doors. He held a pink paraffin can in his hands. There was something gluttonous about the way he was splashing petrol against the walls, as if the petrol was sauce and the walls were a meal he could hardly wait to eat.

‘So,’ Elliot breathed, ‘it’s you.’

A casual tilt of Peach’s brutal head. The quills of his crewcut glinting. His grey eyes grinned from the cover of their heavy lids and his bottom lip slid unceasingly against his top one, in and out, in and out. And Elliot realised. The bloke was mad. Stark fucking mad. And would do anything.

‘You’re going to burn,’ Peach said.

Elliot sprang across the foyer. His pool-cue hissed through the air and cracked Peach on the side of the head. Peach tottered sideways, dropped the pink can. Then he began to laugh. Before Elliot could hit him again, he brought out a box of matches, struck one, and tossed it on to the floor. Elliot jumped back. Fire grew up the wall like a fast orange plant.

‘Goodbye,’ Peach whispered. Blood ran a red hand down the side of his face.

Elliot backed towards the door. But he wanted one question answered.

‘It’s not me you’re after, is it?’

Peach was still laughing.

‘It’s Moses you want,’ Elliot said, ‘isn’t it?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Peach leered, ‘he’s going to burn too.’

‘No, he isn’t. Because he isn’t here.’ Now it was Elliot’s turn to laugh. ‘You’ve fucked it, fat man. You’ve really fucked it this time.’

Peach sucked air in through his gritted teeth. Then he shook his head from side to side and let out a guttural howl of rage. He lunged at Elliot, clubbed him on the forehead. Elliot staggered backwards through the double-doors.

Snow was falling outside. Snow, of all things. White on the white of his Mercedes. He unlocked the door and scrambled in. Through the smudged windscreen he saw Peach collapse on the pavement. Smoke poured from the door of the club. A window screeched open somewhere above.

He started the engine, crashed the gears, stamped on the accelerator. He spun the car round the corner. The lights were green on the main road. They had to be. He wasn’t going to stop for anything. He wasn’t going to stop for a long time. And when he did he would probably be somebody else.

*

A tightening in Peach’s chest. Blackness pulsing along the edges of his vision. Something lurched inside him. Slack not being taken up. He wiped at his forehead and his fingers came away wet. Blood or sweat, he didn’t know.

Tightening, tightening.

Arms over his face, he crashed through the air as if it was glass. He thought he felt snow on his face. Soft cold petals settling.

One reeling upward glance. Some sort of wedding in the sky.

Snow.

He could hear the blood rushing through his body. Or. Trees moving. Darkness advancing. Some kind of second night falling.

The pain, when it came, split his body in two as an axe splits wood.

Then he was lying on something cold. His palm flat on — was it stone? He couldn’t understand why the floor of his study had suddenly turned to stone. Then he remembered, and wanted to forget again.

The moisture from the pavement soaked up into his uniform. A welcome enveloping coolness.

Thoughts would not start. Sentences buckled while under construction. Words floated out of context.

He knew, though, that something final was happening. The metallic taste of something final on his tongue.

His left arm hurt. A massive invisible weight pinned him to the cool ground. He could no more move than he could have flown. Snow nursed his wounded face.

He felt the presence of fire on his skin and in his memory. He saw a crouching figure wrapped in sheets of flame. He had to burn the evidence. Had to. Had he?

He tried to get up but felt he was standing already. Leaning against a cold wall. If he stood up he would fall over. Logic. Somebody had been playing with the world.

Buildings, trees, leaned over him.

Someone appeared. Pressed against the warped shape of everything. Corn and husk. Hands closed in prayer. Flowing upwards and inwards in sickening curves. A woman. Her head blending with the tops of — or perhaps just the sky. Was that Hilda?

‘Hilda?’

He couldn’t hear his voice, couldn’t tell if he had spoken. Only this rushing sound as if the night, the whole night with him inside it, was travelling somewhere very fast.

Now she was speaking. He strained to hear. Her mouth opened and closed like the mouth of a fish. Stretched at the corners sometimes. Painful. Water spilled out of his ears.

Her head moved closer, liquid at the edges. Was it Hilda?

He had to talk. He could see the words, but couldn’t get a grip on them. Slippery as fish and his lips like clumsy hands.

‘Tell Dolphin,’ he wanted to say. ‘Tell him Moses is alive.’

Simple.

Had he said it then?

Had Hilda understood?

Ah, so many pieces missing from this jigsaw.

He tried again. The same words. And something else.

‘And tell him — ’

Everything was caving in above him. The pain, the weight of the sky, the woman’s face, came crashing down through the darkness. He only had seconds.

‘— to kill Moses,’ he cried.

The woman held his head in her cool papery fingers.

She watched his lips turn the colour of his uniform.

She knelt there until she could no longer feel her legs, until the fire-engines blared round the corner.

The snow in her hair melted and ran down her face.

‘Christos,’ she whispered.

The man was dead.

*

Still clutching his giant pink teddy-bear, Dolphin swayed up the garden path. He was singing.

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside

Oh I do like to be beside the sea —

Policemen weren’t supposed to sing songs about being beside the seaside (or being anywhere, for that matter — apart from New Egypt, that is), but seven pints of homebrew with Hazard and the boys had washed away his usual circumspection. They had been celebrating the end of Pelting Day. A triumph, it had been. His triumph, in many ways. The most well attended Pelting Day in living memory. And if that didn’t deserve a celebration, what did? So they had celebrated. And now he was drunk. And when he was drunk he liked to sing songs about water. Sea-water, preferably. The ocean. Those expanses of water where his namesakes swam, expanses so vast that they filled his somewhat limited imagination many times over. Ocean. What a wonderful watery word.