Rupert Thomson - Dreams of Leaving

He was no Eddie, though. He could have counted his previous lovers on the fingers of one hand. Well, two maybe. Just.

But now there was this Gloria. The same old pattern reared its ugly head. He felt painfully divided into areas of fascination and dread. Gloria. What kind of name was that, anyway?

Shit, he thought. Not all that again. You expect some things at a party. You expect a certain amount of drinking. Yeah, drinking’s definitely involved. Drugs too, usually. You expect a bit of idle gossip, bullshit, repartee. And there’s usually a guy in a tartan shirt and a beard who you have to try and avoid. What else? Well, there’s always the chance of a fight or a brush with the law. You might throw up too. Blackout, even. Tailspin. Head down the bowl. All that. But — he looked up and yes, she was still there and yes, she was still beautiful — someone called Gloria, someone with extraordinary eyebrows called Gloria, you didn’t expect that. No, you didn’t expect that at all.

And what if she was interesting too? He watched disconsolately as she said something and the two men she was with bent double laughing.

He moaned. He sat on the top step. People kept squeezing past him and saying sorry, and jogging his shoulder with their knees. He sat there, his face propped in hands that would probably never touch the girl with the eyebrows.

‘What’s wrong?’

Eddie was back again. In the dim greenish light of the landing, he definitely looked too good-looking to have been born in Basingstoke. Moses sighed. All the demons were coming out tonight.

‘Gloria,’ he said.

‘What about her?’

‘She’s beautiful, I think.’

Eddie nodded.

‘And interesting.’

‘She’s a singer,’ Eddie said.

‘How do you know?’

‘She told me.’

Well, that’s it, Moses thought. He reached for his wine with a distant smile. Either Gloria was unattainable or she was Eddie’s, it didn’t really matter which. She was already moving out of reach, he saw, turning her back on him, walking away into the room.

Gloria. What kind of name was that, anyway?

*

Sitting on the stairs, he remembered an incident that had occurred the year before on Bond Street. He had been on his way to some job interview. The discomfort came back to him. A humid grey morning. He was late, sweating, his open coat tugging at his legs. It had been like walking in water. He hadn’t really noticed the two girls coming towards him, but, just as he stepped into the gutter to let them by, one of them shot a hand out with something orange in it. He stopped dead, stared, drew back — all in one fluid instinctive movement.

‘Would you like a mandarin?’ the girl said.

Moses was momentarily stunned, paralysed by the bizarre simplicity of this. A mandarin. On Bond Street. He gazed at the surprising fruit, then at the girl whose palm it nestled in. She looked eager and harmless.

‘No,’ he said, ‘no thanks,’ and hurried away, as if from a threat, a piece of unpleasantness.

The girl shrugged. Shadows entered the open pores in the skin of her face. She looked injured somehow.

He didn’t get the job.

Afterwards he thought about the mandarin. He saw it again, resting solidly, like an orb, in the cupped palm of the girl’s hand. It looked complete, sure of itself. It seemed, in retrospect, to be glowing, like something invested with real magic powers. And he had turned it down. He had said no to the mandarin.

He was certain now that he had failed some kind of test on Bond Street that morning.

But there was another way of looking at it too. In the end, of course, it was just a mandarin, a pleasantly refreshing citrus fruit, and why hadn’t he accepted it for what it was? It wasn’t poisonous, was it? It wouldn’t bite. I mean, for Christ’s sake, he even LIKED mandarins.

But he had said no.

Similarly now. He could ignore this — he checked again: yes — beautiful girl who he now knew was called Gloria. Simply pretend she wasn’t there. But he knew what would happen. This Gloria, she was another mandarin. And she would glow in his memory, glow and glow, taunting, unforgettable.

A big blue satin bow appeared in front of Moses’s eyes. It was attached to a blue dress and, inside the dress, was a girl. She was standing two steps below him, holding two glasses of wine.

‘Would you like a drink?’ she asked him.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I would. Definitely. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed.’

*

After that things happened very fast and in a way that seemed surprising and confusing at the time but entirely logical in retrospect. Moses was standing on the landing with his new drink when Eddie edged out of a nearby room. Moses heard a soft groan come from somewhere behind him. He turned just in time to see a blonde girl crumple vertically, in slow motion, like one of those old brick chimneys being dynamited.

‘Louise!’ Moses cried.

He reacted quickly, catching her before she hit the floor. He whipped the brandy out and moistened her lips with the few drops that remained.

‘What are you doing?’ came a voice from the stairs.

Moses swung round in a kind of frozen tango position, Louise flung over his arms, head back, eyes closed. It was Gloria. He almost dropped everything and ran.

‘It’s — it’s brandy,’ he stammered.

‘What happened?’ Gloria asked.

‘What happened?’ Louise murmured, eyelids flickering.

Moses spoke to Louise. ‘You fainted.’

He lowered her gently until she was sitting on the carpet with her back against the wall. Gloria knelt down, brushed the damp hair out of Louise’s eyes.

‘What happened?’ she asked again.

‘It was a friend of mine,’ Moses explained. He knew this was going to sound implausible, but he decided it would be better to tell the truth. ‘He’s got these strange powers, you see. He can walk into a room and everybody stops what they’re doing and turns round and stares. The whole room sort of freezes. It’s some kind of chemical thing, I think. Sometimes people forget what they’re doing completely, or pass out like Louise just did. He was here a minute ago, so I think that’s probably what happened.’

‘You know Louise?’ Gloria asked.

‘I’m a friend. We work in the same place. Well, sort of work. Me, I mean.’

Gloria smiled. ‘You must be Moses.’

Her voice was menthol-cool, slightly husky, amused. Her lips moved like two halves of a dream that makes you feel good all day. Her eyebrows said ten past nine.

‘Hello, Gloria,’ he said.

*

‘How did you know my name?’ she asked.

He didn’t answer. He just sat on the carpet next to Louise, and smiled. A boldness had descended on him like a black cloak with a scarlet lining. He suddenly felt a bit like Dracula — sinister, magnetic, predatory.

‘I think Louise could use some air,’ he said.

Gloria suggested the garden. Moses guided Louise down the stairs. They followed Gloria into the kitchen, through a sunroom, and out on to a wide paved verandah.

It was a cold still night. The remains of the rain that had fallen earlier dripped from the trees. A stone balustrade, upholstered in moss and topped with giant carved urns, ran the length of the back of the house. Gloria led Moses and Louise down a flight of steps. They crossed a lawn. A high hedge loomed. They passed under an archway and into a miniature formal garden. Now and then somebody laughed or screamed inside the house, but otherwise they only heard the party remotely, like a TV three rooms away.

‘It’s good to be outside,’ Moses said.

Gloria took a deep breath, a form of agreement perhaps.

‘I feel better already,’ Louise said, and promptly stumbled on a loose slab of stone and almost toppled into the ornamental pond.