Rupert Thomson: Dreams of Leaving

‘Oh.’

‘Look,’ he quickened, ‘maybe I’ll see you when I get back, OK?’

‘OK,’ and just a trace of tired intimacy in, ‘if that’s what you want.’

She was like water. You could throw stone after stone and the surface always formed again. Perfectly, unbearably smooth. There was a pressure building inside him and no valve that he knew of.

‘I suppose so,’ he murmured. He saw himself reflected in the uncurtained window, all the hollows in his face filled with shadow.

‘Ring me when you get back,’ she was saying. ‘Have a wonderful time, won’t you.’

She hung up.

He stared at the receiver, a useless furry buzzing in his hand, then flung it against the wall. An explosion of red plastic. One fragment ricocheted, nicked his cheek as it flew past. He touched his face and his fingertips came away bloody. He would have the scar — a miniature triangle, a crocodile tear — for the rest of his life.

Then, only yesterday, at breakfast in Leicester, he had received some mail from Italy. His name and address had been scrawled in black ink, the letters spiky, rushed. He hadn’t recognised the handwriting. He had sniffed the envelope. It hadn’t smelt like anyone he knew. That should have told him something. When he tore the letter open, a postcard fell out. He scanned it rapidly for a signature. Gloria XX.

Now he took the postcard from his coat pocket and examined it again. A picture of a square in Florence, probably a famous square judging by the ancient yellow buildings and the groups of multi-coloured tourists. In the top left-hand corner he noticed an empty pedestal. This couldn’t have been intentional on Gloria’s part; he had never mentioned his statue theory to her. Still, a touch of irony there. It seemed to undermine what she had written, make it laughable. He read it anyway. She said she was sorry about their last phone-call; she’d taken some sleeping-pills because she’d been having trouble sleeping. She told him she missed him. She thought they ought to get together in the New Year.

He wondered.

He glanced out of the window and saw a mass of dark cloud, two strands lifting away into the sky, tousled by a night of restless sleep. There was no mistaking that head of black hair on that pale-blue pillow.

The train slowed, switched tracks, drew into St Pancras.

Still staring at the sky, he knew that it wouldn’t be long before those black clouds (all that now remained of Gloria) were blown away.

*

Walking down Charing Cross Road, he thought he heard somebody call his name. He turned round, saw nobody, felt stupid. He was about to walk on when he caught sight of Alison waving at him from the other side of the road.

She waited for the lights to change, then ran towards him.

‘Alison.’ He stooped to kiss her cool cheek. ‘How are you?’

Four weeks of mourning had done nothing to diminish the glory of her red hair. He could tell from her forehead, though, that she had been through a painful time. Instead of the four seagulls he remembered, one distant albatross flying alone.

‘Where’ve you been, Moses? I’ve been trying to call you,’ she said, all in one breath.

He gestured with his suitcase. ‘I’ve been away — ’

‘Have you got time for a cup of coffee?’ Her eyes moved from one part of his face to another with some urgency.

He said he had.

They ducked into the café opposite Foyle’s. Flustered by this chance meeting, Moses almost hit his head on the lintel. Such a small world. They took a table by the window, faced each other across a silence of yellow formica and red plastic ketchup containers shaped like tomatoes. A shaft of sunlight struck through the plate-glass, set fire to Alison’s hair. She blinked, shifted sideways into the shadow. Her hair went out. Waiting for her to begin, Moses felt for his cigarettes. He lit one.

‘It took me a while to work it out,’ she said finally.

He realised from the candour in her eyes that it was no use pretending he didn’t know what she was talking about. She either knew or had guessed everything. How had she found out, though? He absent-mindedly flicked his cigarette. The ash rolled across the table. Alison scooped it up in a paper napkin and tipped it into the ashtray. She glanced up, noticed him watching her.

‘Sorry,’ she said, with a smile that contrived to be both embarrassed and ironic. ‘It’s a bad habit of mine, clearing up after other people.’

‘It’s all right.’ He was still staring at her. She had just reminded him of an evening in Muswell Hill. Mary sitting crosslegged on the carpet. One elbow resting against the arm of the sofa. A lit cigarette poised between the fingers of that hand. She had waited until everybody was looking then, quite deliberately, she had tapped the end of her cigarette so the ash landed on the sofa. Alison had left her chair and brushed the ash into the nearest ashtray with her hand. Mary had waited until Alison sat down then, smiling, she had done exactly the same thing again. Alison had sighed and left the room. Now, once more, Alison seemed to be taking the parental role — concerned, long-suffering, responsible — and Mary was the daughter who had misbehaved. With me, he thought. ‘How did you find out?’ he said.

Alison rubbed at the surface of the table with her fingertips as if she might see a clear beginning there somewhere. ‘It was about two weeks ago. Vince turned up at my flat. I don’t know how he found out where I was living.’ She frowned. ‘Trust him, though.’

Perhaps it was that red hair of hers, glowing like a beacon in the suburbs, Moses thought. He imagined her hair would cause her a lot of anxiety in the future and that, as the years went by, her forehead would become a sanctuary for birds of all descriptions, some settling at the corners of her mouth and eyes, others flying in formation, their wings etched deep in the pale sky of her skin.

‘He was out of his head, of course,’ she was saying. ‘Said he hadn’t slept for five days. Drunk and God knows what else. I didn’t want to know, you know? He told me some story about a girl called Debra.’ That innocent enquiring glance again. ‘She’d left him or something — ’

‘Is that true?’

Alison shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Anyway, it’s beside the point.’

Moses smiled into his cup.

‘Then he started on about me. I should’ve known he was going to do that. I shouldn’t have let him in at all.’

‘He would’ve just broken in.’

But Alison hadn’t heard him. She was hearing Vince’s voice. ‘He said it used to be me and him and what’d happened to the and.’

‘What and?’

‘That’s what I said. “What and?” I kept asking him. “The and between you and me,” he said.’ She was staring straight ahead and smiling as if she could see through the café wall to a peaceful horizon. ‘Sometimes he’s got a way with words.’

Moses waited for her to come back.

‘Anyway,’ and her voice drew nearer again, ‘I said there wasn’t an and any more, I said he might as well forget it, and he got really shitty, he really worked himself up, you know, the way he does, and started calling Mary all kinds of names — ’

‘Mary?’

‘Oh yes, he always blames Mary. I don’t know why. He says she turned me against him, told me he wasn’t good enough, that kind of thing. All a pile of crap, really.’ Though she would never get Vince to believe that. ‘He really hates her, you know.’

‘I know,’ Moses said. ‘He’s told me.’

‘The names he called her. Incredible.’ She shook her head. ‘He said she was spoilt, pretentious, immature — ’ she was ticking the words off on her fingers — ‘jealous, vindictive, and then he said, “I don’t know what Moses sees in her —”’