Rupert Thomson - Dreams of Leaving

Halfway through he suddenly stopped. Black chin sprinkled with white drops, he looked at Moses, seemed to be appraising him.

‘It’s good milk, Bird,’ Moses whispered. ‘It’s Dino’s milk.’

Bird dipped his blunt head into the tin again. When he had finished he paused, as if thinking, then turned, sprang back on to the window-ledge and vanished, as before.

Moses still hadn’t moved. He gazed round the room with its clean floorboards and its grey decaying walls and its open window through which the black cat came and went.

It was beginning to feel like home.

*

As if somebody had splashed petrol around and tossed a lit match, the end of April caught fire. Car tyres crackled on the sticky tarmac of main roads. Clouds rolled along the horizon like smoke. The temperature, unbelievably, touched eighty, HEATWAVE, the papers roared, HEATWAVE.

Moses hired a transit van and moved out of Eddie’s flat in a single day, sweat tickling his forehead, trickling down his spine. He saw roadworkers with red backs. Girls in bikinis. In April. The world seemed out of kilter — surreal, delirious.

Elliot watched him unload from the shadow of a wall.

‘I would’ve given you a hand,’ he said, ‘but you know how it is.’ He adjusted the lapels of his excuse.

‘I know how it is,’ Moses panted, a mattress balanced on his back.

‘So what’s it like up there?’

‘It’s luxury. It’s what I’ve always wanted.’

Elliot threw his head back and swallowed hot sky.

But Moses meant it. Those empty rooms on the fourth floor dwarfed what few belongings he had. He had never had so much space to himself before. The place might have been designed specifically with him in mind, might have been waiting for him to arrive and take possession.

He drove back to Eddie’s that night to return the keys.

‘Finished already?’ Eddie said. ‘I was going to help you.’ He opened the fridge and handed Moses a cold beer.

‘Eddie,’ Moses said, ‘the thought never crossed your mind.’

As he tore the ring-pull off the can, he watched Eddie smiling. The damage Eddie had caused with that smile of his. Moses had long since pushed the statue theory aside, stored it away in the museum section of his mind for re-evaluation at a later date. He had begun to see Eddie’s beauty in wider terms. As a magnetic force. As disruption unleashed on men and women alike. Once, he remembered, Eddie had brought the entire cosmetics department of a famous London store to a standstill simply by smiling as he stepped out of the lift. The air vibrated softly as fifty murmurs of desire coincided. Then fifty tongues emerged to moisten fifty upper lips. One salesgirl let a bottle of perfume slip from her hand. It shattered on the tiles with a crystal sigh and the ground floor of the department store smelt of Opium for several days. In memory of Eddie. Another time Moses and Eddie were walking along a quiet street in Kensington. A red sports saloon, some foreign make, slowed and drew alongside. The woman at the wheel wound the window down. Moses thought she was about to ask for directions. Instead, with her eyes on Eddie, she cried, ‘You’re beautiful.’ The car sped away again, its pert rear-end pointing in the air. ‘What is it about you?’ Moses had asked. Eddie shrugged, smiled. A young man on an old-fashioned bicycle glimpsed the smile on Eddie’s face and rode straight over a traffic island without even noticing. There ought to be a sign, Moses thought. CAUTION: MAN SMILING.

*

That was the really curious thing, Moses thought, as he walked out of The Bunker two days later. Eddie could never be accused of being conceited or narcissistic. He didn’t keep a record of his lovers, as some men did, because he wasn’t trying to prove anything. Girls passed in and out of his life without changing him in the slightest. Their presence was necessary, continuous, and taken for granted — like time itself; Lauren followed Connie as Tuesday followed Monday. Nostalgia had no place in his scheme of things. Nor, it seemed, did expectation. He was like a train with infinite stations on its line but no terminus.

Moses had reached the door of his new local. A jaded murky place. Crawling with small-time ruffians and drunks. He ordered a pint of draught Guinness, and retired to a deserted corner.

Yes, it was astonishing how little Eddie held on to, how much he left behind. Sometimes, when Moses couldn’t sleep, he ran through the list of Eddie’s lovers — the ones he knew of, anyway. They were more interesting than sheep, though not so very different, perhaps, not if you saw them from Eddie’s point of view. Did he distinguish between the different girls at all? Did he remember Beryl, the mud wrestler, for instance? Did he. remember Sister Theresa? Did he remember anything?

The door swung open. Eddie walked in, accompanied by a girl Moses had never seen before. Surprise, surprise. He wondered what number she was. 500? 1,000? He had told Elliot that he had a friend who had slept with two thousand women, but he really didn’t know. This one’s name was Barbara.

Moses asked her what she did.

‘Hostess,’ she said.

He thought of the aeroplanes gliding past his bathroom window, then of jet-set parties next to swimming-pools, but he couldn’t fit Barbara’s bomber jacket and her disgruntled mouth into either category.

He must have looked puzzled because Barbara added, ‘In a club.’

In a club. Moses’s face acquired a look that was both interested and knowledgeable. He had just placed her. She was almost certainly the girl Eddie had referred to in a recent (and uncharacteristically anxious) phone-call. He remembered the conversation.

‘Moses?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Eddie here.’

Moses had waited.

‘I was just wondering,’ Eddie had said, ‘whether you felt like coming round tonight?’

This isn’t like Eddie, Moses had thought. Eddie never asked people round. How could he? He was never round to ask people round. Something must be up.

‘You see, there’s this girl I thought you’d like to meet.’

‘Who is this girl,’ Moses had sneered, ‘that I’d like to meet?’

Eddie chuckled. ‘She’s a topless waitress. She’s got tattoos.’

‘Where?’

‘Soho.’

‘No, the tattoos. Where are the tattoos?’

‘I don’t know. I thought maybe you could find out.’

So that was it. Another of Eddie’s games.

As he glanced across at Barbara, he remembered something else that Eddie had said.

‘She’s angry about something. I think she’s going to attack me.’

No sympathy from Moses. And certainly, with that sour twisted mouth, Barbara looked capable of violence.

‘So.’ Eddie smiled. ‘What’s happening?’

‘There’s a party coming up,’ Moses said. ‘Louise told me about it. If you want to bring Barbara along, I’m sure it’d be OK.’

Eddie made a face behind her back.

Moses grinned. ‘That’s settled then.’

Eddie bought Barbara a Bacardi and Coke, then he sloped off to play pool at the back of the pub. She watched him go. There was reproach in the fractional hardening of her face.

‘Where do you work?’ Moses asked her.

‘A place called Bosom Buddies,’ she said.

Jesus, Moses thought. If that’s anywhere near as bad as it sounds. (Actually, knowing Eddie, it was probably worse.)

‘What do you have to do?’

Barbara scowled. ‘Talk to strangers. Mostly people I can’t stand.’

Cheapskate businessmen from out of town, apparently. Sweaty little creeps in crumpled suits. And the bag who ran the place. Lashings of mascara, hands like chicken-feet, tongue like a blunt ladies’ razor. She gloated jealously from a red sofa in the corner. Barbara had seen her twist a girl’s nipple once for upsetting a client. ‘Really nice piece of work, she is.’