Rupert Thomson - Dreams of Leaving

Five minutes had gone by. Moses crossed the room and sat down on the radiator. He could see Elliot in profile now. It was a very one-sided phone-call. Elliot was staring out of the window almost as if he was just staring out of the window. The telephone seemed incidental. He had hardly said a word.

Finally he said OK twice and slammed down the receiver. His sigh carried his chest forward a few inches and back again. A well-built man, Elliot, under all those playboy suits and ties.

‘Christ,’ Elliot muttered. He pushed the phone to the far edge of the desk. As far away as possible.

‘Hello,’ Moses said.

‘As if I haven’t got enough trouble already. Now you. What’s up, Moses?’

Moses hesitated. ‘I’ve got a ghost.’

‘A ghost?’

‘Yeah, a ghost. It’s upstairs. In my living-room. Do you know anything about it?’

Elliot looked at Moses to see if he was being serious. Sometimes it was difficult to tell. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t know anything about a ghost. You going to tell me about it?’ He lit a cigarette, then tossed the packet across the room to Moses. He leaned back in his chair, his hands behind his head. Christ, the entertainment business.

Moses took a cigarette, lit it, and threw the packet back. ‘It’s a she, actually,’ he began carefully. ‘Apparently she wears a black raincoat.’

‘Apparently? What do you mean, apparently?’

‘Well, I didn’t actually see her. This friend of mine, he — ’

‘You didn’t actually see her?’

‘No, you see I was — ’

‘Hold on. Let me get this straight, right? You’re worried about a ghost you can’t see?’

‘Yes, but you — ’

‘What, you mean if you could see it, it wouldn’t worry you?’

‘It’s not that, Elliot. It’s just — ’

But Elliot wasn’t listening any more. He was bent double in his executive chair, clutching his stomach. He was killing himself.

‘Well,’ Moses said, easing off the radiator and starting for the door, ‘I just thought I’d tell you — ’

‘Hey, Moses.’

Moses turned.

Elliot was prancing up and down the office with his jacket draped over his head. ‘Woooooo,’ he was going. ‘Woooooooooooooo.’

Oh well, Moses thought. At least I cheer the bastard up.

*

One further development regarding the invisible ghost.

The next weekend, at around four in the afternoon, the bell rang on the fourth floor of The Bunker. Moses peered out of the window. It was Jackson. Moses was surprised to see him again so soon. Visits from Jackson were usually few and far between.

He leaned out of the window. ‘Keys,’ he shouted.

This time he aimed at least twenty feet to the left of Jackson’s anxious upturned face. The sock bounced off a car roof and into the road. Jackson scuttled after it. Moses went out to the kitchen to put the kettle on. He returned in time to see Jackson walk in, close the door behind him, and produce a bradawl from his raincoat pocket (the weather was still fine). He watched as Jackson began to bore a hole in the door about two-thirds of the way up. Jackson made small grunting sounds as his elbow gouged the air. It was a hard wood.

Once he had bored the hole according to his own internal specifications, he plunged a hand into his raincoat pocket and pulled out a hook shaped like a gold question-mark. He screwed it into the hole with a series of deft energetic twists of his wrist, the tip of his tongue appearing from time to time in the corner of his mouth — a sign of intense concentration. Then he stepped back to admire his handiwork.

Moses handed Jackson a cup of tea, as you would any workman.

‘That’s very nice,’ he said. ‘But what’s it for?’

‘That,’ Jackson explained, ‘is for her to hang her coat on.’

Another time, perhaps a month later, Jackson appeared at the top of the stairs with an antique upholstered chair. He placed it carefully just inside the door.

‘In case she’s tired after all those stairs,’ he said.

A very thoughtful person, Jackson.

*

The week of the ghost was also the week of Moses’s twenty-fifth birthday. On the Thursday night Moses booked a table for four in a restaurant in Soho. He wanted to celebrate the occasion quietly, he said, with a few close friends.

Poor Chinese restaurant.

The celebration reached its climax shortly before midnight with the waiters’ hands fluttering in delicate protest, like birds attempting flight, only to weaken, fall back, return to the relative safety of their white tunics, as Moses, who weighed more than three of them put together and had woken that morning to a bottle of champagne, a Thai-stick and two lines of coke (his birthday presents), began to spin the revolving table like some kind of giant roulette wheel.

‘Place your bets,’ he cried.

‘What are we betting on?’ asked Jackson, very dry. ‘How long we can survive before they throw us out?’

Bowls of rice and seaweed, plates of mauled prawn toast, bottles of soy sauce and dishes loaded with the stripped skeletons of Peking ducks took to the air, swift and confident, as if they were trying to teach the waiters’ hands how to fly. This demonstration was not appreciated. The manager came weaving through the barrage to insist, politely but firmly, that Mr Highness and his party leave the restaurant.

Out on the street the recriminations began.

‘And on my birthday, too,’ Moses said.

‘It was because it was your birthday that it happened,’ Jackson pointed out.

‘It was your fault, Vince,’ Moses said.

‘ My fault?’ Vince seemed genuinely taken aback.

‘We would never’ve been thrown out of that place,’ Moses said, ‘if you hadn’t worn that waistcoat of yours.’

‘It is a very unpleasant waistcoat,’ Eddie agreed.

‘Look, fuck off you two. If you,’ and Vince shoved Moses into a lamp-post, ‘hadn’t covered me in rice — ’

Moses couldn’t help giggling as he remembered how Vince had lurched to his feet halfway through the meal only to lose his balance and topple across a neighbouring table, his waistcoat luridly stuffed with Special Fried Rice and soup that must have been either Chicken with Sweetcorn or Hot and Sour.

‘Mind you,’ he went on, ignoring Vince, ‘Jackson didn’t exactly set a very good example, did he?’

Drunk for the first time since the night he confessed his asexuality, Jackson had suddenly, and without warning, plummeted headfirst into a dish of Squid in Black Bean Sauce.

‘I was embarrassed by your behaviour,’ Jackson explained. ‘I wanted to hide.’ Like a monkey with fleas, he was still picking the black beans out of his hair.

‘Maybe you’ll actually have to wash it now,’ Vince sneered.

‘I don’t see how you can talk, Vincent.’ Jackson was primness itself. ‘That waistcoat of yours must’ve put down roots by now.’

‘All your fault, Vincent.’ Moses was returning to his theme.

Vince hated being called Vincent. His mother called him Vincent. He told them all to get fucked, and stalked ahead.

‘Anyway,’ Jackson smiled, ‘what about Eddie?’

‘Yes,’ Moses said. ‘That was really disgusting.’

During one of the lulls in the meal Eddie had turned away from the table as if to sneeze. A jet of pink vomit had flown out of his perfectly sculptured mouth and crashlanded in the grove of yucca plants behind him. Afterwards, Moses seemed to remember, Eddie had gone on eating, as if nothing had happened. A bit of a Roman, Eddie.

‘Why was it pink?’ Eddie wondered.

Moses couldn’t think.

Vince, curious, rejoined them. ‘Why was what pink?’

‘My sick,’ Eddie said. ‘Why was it pink? Did I eat anything pink?’