Rupert Thomson: Dreams of Leaving

‘Ocean,’ he said. ‘Ohhhhsssshhhun.’

His wife, Laura, opened the door. ‘Ssshhh,’ she said.

‘Ohhhhsssshhhh — ’ he began again. Thought she was joining in, you see.

‘Roger, please. Mrs Peach has phoned three times. Where’ve you been?’

‘Who?’

‘Mrs Peach.’

‘What’s she want?’

‘She’s worried. The Chief Inspector’s disappeared.’ She scraped a few strands of hair away from her creased white forehead.

‘ Disappeared? Where?’

‘If she knew that,’ Laura said, ‘he wouldn’t have disappeared, would he?’

Dolphin let this piece of sophistry sink without trace in the swirling waters of his drunkenness. He lifted his right wrist. ‘Laura, it’s two-thirty in the morning, for Christ’s sake.’

‘The Chief Inspector’s been missing since nine o’clock, Roger, and you can leave Christ out of it,’ said Laura, who was religious.

Dolphin sighed.

‘Where’ve you been all this time anyway?’ she went on. ‘And what’s that thing?’

He pushed past her and walked into the dining-room. Then he wondered why he had walked into the dining-room. Peach had disappeared. Peach had been missing for almost six hours. Peach never went missing. Nobody ever went missing. This was bad. Very bad.

He had stopped in front of the mirror. When he looked up he suddenly saw the new Chief Inspector of New Egypt standing there. The new Chief Inspector of New Egypt was holding a giant pink teddy-bear. He would have to get rid of it, he decided. Otherwise nobody would take him seriously. Putting the teddy-bear down, he walked back into the hall. Then he picked up the phone and dialled Peach’s number.

In future fluffy animals would always remind him of death.

‘Thank you for driving me to the station like this.’

‘Don’t be silly, Moses.’ Auntie B’s face never lost its china stillness, its placidity, even when she chided him. ‘It’s been lovely to see you. You’ll come and see us again, won’t you?’

Now she was being silly. That hint of uncertainty (the legacy of his having discovered his real father?). He dismissed it with, ‘Of course I will.’

He had spent Christmas in Leicester — he had stayed over two weeks, in fact — grateful for the warmth, the soft ticking of clocks in the hallway, the small-scale dramas (the cat moulting, a blocked drain, a wine-stain on the dining-room table). He had eaten three meals a day and slept ten hours a night. Uncle Stan and Auntie B knew nothing and in their ignorance he found relief. His unease dissolved in their everyday routines. He left London behind, as he had once left the orphanage behind, and felt a great calmness settle. He told them about the contents of the suitcase, the trip down to New Egypt, the meeting with his father. He described his father as a sort of eccentric invalid and the village as one of those dull places in the middle of nowhere that nobody ever leaves, and was surprised at how much truth his carefully censored version of the facts contained (he only hid what might have worried them; about Peach, for instance, he said nothing). They listened and nodded, made all the right noises. They asked very few questions, thinking it no business of theirs, perhaps, or simply content with the parameters he had set. They had never tried to expand their role into areas where it didn’t belong, and they didn’t now. Their occasional references to the subject, though oblique, told him all he needed to know about the way they were thinking. For instance: ‘Well,’ Auntie B had said one night (and her eyes never once wandered from the TV screen), ‘you know you can always come here, Moses. You’ll always have a home here.’ He knew. Or as now: ‘You’ll come and see us again, won’t you.’ Of course he would.

‘Thank you for everything, Auntie B.’ He leaned over, kissed her on the cheek. ‘See you soon.’

He walked through the damp acidic air of the station — its draughty arches and its stained dripping brick had always reminded him of urinals — and boarded the train to London. His eyelids prickled. It was nine in the morning.

He was looking forward to late nights again. He wanted to sit at his fourth-floor window and feel the music ride up from below and gaze at those golden zips of light that ran down the slim dark buildings of the city. He wanted to thrash Elliot at pool, drink Eddie into oblivion, drive Vince to hospital, tease Jackson about the weather. He longed to be back. Where things happened. Among friends. He had even invented one or two strategies for dealing with the Peach threat (he would park his car further away, fit extra locks on the doors, buy a toy periscope for the kitchen window), and if they were a bit frivolous it was only his new confidence asserting itself.

Sensing his impatience, perhaps, the train left several seconds early. The magic rhythm of its wheels on the tracks soon made misty Leicester disappear and a pale-blue sky unveiled itself. A pocket-torch sun clicked on, pointed out neat lawns, a car glazed with dew, the red slant of a rooftop. It was like somebody big looking for somebody small, he thought. Ridley looking for Gloria, for instance.

Gloria.

The night before he left for Leicester he had covered that last fatal inch to the telephone. He had dialled her number. He regretted it now. He had been drinking (well, drunk). He had hardly been aware that it was her number that he was calling. That was bad. All his bluster vanished the moment he heard her voice, leaving him exposed, shrunken, pitiful. It was the first time he had spoken to her since Talent Night. That seemed like months ago. Probably was.

‘Hello?’ she said.

‘Hello. It’s me.’ This false gaiety in his voice. Game-show presenter. Just awful.

‘Who’s that?’

‘Moses. You know. Moses.’

Forget it. Hang up now.

‘Oh. Hello, Moses.’

Too late.

It sounded, though, as if she was using a name that she was only pretending to recognise, that, in reality, she couldn’t put a face to, that didn’t mean anything. She sounded like a receptionist. He felt like a stranger (with no appointment). He couldn’t think of what to say next. Or why he had phoned, for that matter.

‘Look, I just rang up to see if you got my message.’

‘What message?’

‘I left a message at The Blue Diamond last weekend. No, the weekend before. I think. Sometime, anyway. You were singing there.’

‘Oh, The Blue Diamond. Yes. No, I didn’t sing there in the end. I cancelled.’

‘Oh, that’s all right then,’ he said.

Thanks for telling me.

‘Did you go?’

‘No. My friend’s car broke down. In the country. I couldn’t get back. That’s why I left the message that you didn’t get.’

‘Oh.’

Why was this so difficult?

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m going away for Christmas. To my foster-parents, I think. So I probably won’t see you for a while.’

He thought he heard soft laughter on the other end. Had he said something funny?

‘Well,’ she said, ‘have a wonderful time, won’t you.’

Just like that. She wasn’t interested. She wasn’t remotely fucking interested. He lapsed into silence, bit his lip.

‘Hello?’

‘I’m still here.’

That was the trouble with telephones. No time to think. No time to not say anything. Mary was right about telephones.

‘When are you going?’ Gloria’s impersonal voice again.

He thought. ‘I don’t know exactly. Tomorrow maybe. Or the next day. I don’t know.’

‘So what are you doing tonight?’

He gulped, sensing a trap. ‘Nothing, really. Just staying in.’