Rupert Thomson - Dreams of Leaving

‘Why would I have anything like that?’ Moses said. ‘I’m in love.’

Vince grimaced.

‘I haven’t seen you for ages,’ Moses said. ‘What’ve you been up to?’

‘Not much,’ Vince said. ‘Staying home, mostly. Getting out of it.’

‘With Debra,’ he added as an afterthought. He held his glass out for a refill. Moses poured.

‘Debra?’ Eddie said, as if the name meant something to him.

‘You don’t know her,’ Vince said. ‘She must be one of the few women you don’t know.’

‘I wouldn’t bet on that.’ Eddie smiled.

‘You don’t know her,’ Vince repeated.

Eddie looked pensive. ‘Did she used to work in that café in Victoria Station?’

‘No, she didn’t.’

‘She hasn’t got blonde hair, has she?’

Vince looked at the ceiling. ‘No, she hasn’t.’

‘Does she come from Hampshire?’

‘No,’ Vince said. ‘Liverpool.’

‘Was she at that — ’

‘Look, fuck off, Eddie,’ Vince said. ‘You don’t know her. OK?’

‘Well,’ Eddie grinned lasciviously, ‘I suppose there’s still time.’

Vince picked up his glass of wine and threw the contents in Eddie’s face. Vince smiled for the first time since he walked in. He was beginning to enjoy himself. Eddie wiped his shirt-front with one hand and smiled back.

‘Why did you do that, Vince?’ he said quietly.

‘I got bored with the shit you were talking.’

‘Was I talking shit?’ Eddie asked, still dabbing at his clothes.

‘Yes.’

The champagne arrived like a change of subject.

‘Seen Alison recently?’ Moses asked Vince.

‘That fucking bitch,’ Vince snarled. ‘I haven’t seen her since she went back home to mummy. I don’t need any of that shit.’

‘She rang me last week,’ Moses said. ‘Asked me to Sunday lunch.’

‘Sunday lunch.’ Vince’s face screwed up in a paroxysm of scorn and disgust. ‘Sunday fucking lunch. I’ve been to a few of those.’

‘What about them?’

‘It’s her mother. She floats around like some kind of fucking wood-nymph. She talks a pile of crap.’

‘What?’ Eddie laughed. ‘Like me?’

‘Yes,’ Vince said. ‘Like you.’

‘I can’t go anyway,’ Moses said. ‘I’ve got something else planned.’

Eddie leaned forwards. ‘With this Gloria of yours, I suppose?’

Vince leered.

‘It’d be a shame,’ Moses said, ‘if any more of this nice champagne got spilled, wouldn’t it?’ and reaching for the bottle helped himself to another glass.

Eddie drew back, swallowed a thoughtful mouthful of champagne, and left the table to get some cigarettes.

‘Sorry about this,’ Gloria was saying over the microphone, ‘but there’ve been some more complaints and apparently we’ve got to stop — ’

Whistles of disapproval. Two or three people stood up in protest. Vince began to pound the table with his fist.

Gloria lifted her arms away from her sides. Nothing she could do. She glanced at the manager of the place. He stood by the bar looking uncomfortable. She asked him whether they couldn’t end with a quiet number. After a moment’s hesitation, he nodded, pressing the air down with one hand. Gloria turned back to her audience.

‘OK, people, one more it is. A quiet one. So quiet that you’ll hardly hear it.’ She smiled to herself. ‘This song was made famous by Billie Holiday. It’s called “Strange Fruit” — ’

Accompanied by the piano and the drummer’s brushes, Gloria sang the song with a chilling stillness, staring straight ahead of her, seeing no one. The stillness spread, filled each member of the audience as if they were empty glasses and the stillness was water. When the song died away she didn’t move. She let the applause rush at her, shake her, bring her back to life. She seemed surprised for a moment to find that she wasn’t alone.

‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘and goodnight.’

And then, peering at the ceiling, ‘Happy dreams up there.’

*

‘You were good,’ Moses said.

Gloria wrinkled her nose, said nothing.

‘I mean it. You were really good.’ He pushed a chair out for her, but she stayed standing.

‘Thank you, Moses,’ she sighed.

‘No, really,’ he said, touching her arm. ‘You sounded like a proper person on a record.’

‘Did I?’ Gloria smiled faintly. ‘Give me a cigarette, would you?’

Moses handed her the packet. She took one, lit it, and inhaled deeply, her hand supporting her elbow. She stared away into the room. Moses had a sudden sense of awkwardness, of not knowing her at all. As if the previous night had happened in another dimension and needed to be re-established in this one.

The ordinary lights had come on. People looked pale, shifty, guilty of small crimes. The door to the street stood open, and a bitter draught ran through the bar.

‘Come on, folks,’ the manager called out, rubbing his hands together. ‘We’re closing now.’ He seemed anxious to put an end to what had obviously been an awkward evening.

Gloria crossed the room to speak to him. She returned a moment later muttering, ‘Fuck that for a laugh.’

They all walked up the stairs and round the corner to an Indian restaurant which, according to Eddie, served drinks until two in the morning. On the street Gloria took Moses’s arm.

‘I’m really glad you came,’ she said. ‘I’m just sorry it wasn’t better.’

‘You were good,’ Moses told her. ‘I meant what I said.’

Gloria shook her head. ‘Anyway, that’s the last time I sing in that place.’

In the restaurant Eddie was preoccupied with Danielle, a friend of Gloria’s. Danielle had muscular tanned arms and eyes so green they made you think of envy. She may or may not have been about to become only the third lesbian ever to sleep with Eddie. Moses was preoccupied with Gloria, who really was a jazz-singer and who would almost certainly be spending the night with him, an event that he might or might not remember, depending on how much more he drank. Vince, who hadn’t slept for three days, was preoccupied with the tablecloth. He hadn’t said a word to anyone for hours. He seemed fascinated by the tablecloth, and touched it carefully with his fingertips at regular intervals. Eventually he spoke.

‘I’ve got to go.’

Everybody else exchanged glances as people always did when Vince emerged from one of his long silences.

‘OK, Vince,’ Moses said.

‘I’m going now.’ Vince didn’t move.

‘OK, Vince,’ Moses said.

‘Goodbye, Vince,’ Eddie said.

Still looking at the tablecloth, Vince rose to his feet, slowly, as if there was more gravity around than usual. His mouth tightened with the effort involved. He moved away across the restaurant like somebody walking on the sea-bed. The door opened and closed. A blast of wind. He was gone.

‘He ought to be in the movies,’ Danielle said.

Eddie agreed. ‘Frankenstein.’

They carried on drinking bottles of wine which Eddie, with typical abandon, was now ordering in pairs. They were the last people in the restaurant. They hardly looked at the tablecloth at all.

Ten or fifteen minutes passed. Then, to everyone’s surprise, somebody sat down in Vince’s vacant seat.

It was Vince.

They all turned to him with questioning looks. Vince’s eyes travelled across the smooth white wastes of the tablecloth. Finally he took a deep breath.

‘I wasn’t drunk enough,’ he said.

*

Moses pulled up outside The Bunker. He cut the engine. Rain scratched at the windscreen.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Can you hear it?’

The music, he meant. Dub tonight. Shuddering across the street. Bass notes that made the surfaces of puddles shake.