Rupert Thomson - Dreams of Leaving

At that instant, Gloria appeared in the doorway, clasping her overnight bag in front of her with both hands.

‘And this,’ Moses said, unable to restrain himself, ‘is Mrs Highness.’

‘One moment.’ The receptionist stepped backwards through a red curtain into some inner sanctum.

‘He’s extraordinary,’ Moses whispered to Gloria.

Gloria clutched his arm.

Her grip tightened as the red curtain parted again. During his absence the receptionist had managed to regain absolute control of his head. Whether he had some surgical machine or device behind the curtain or whether he had simply applied a soothing lotion they would never know, but, whatever the remedy, his head was as firm as yours or mine as he asked Moses to sign the register.

‘I hope you don’t mind me asking,’ Moses said, ‘but have you been working here a long time?’

‘Yes,’ the receptionist said, staring at Moses with his lidless eyes. ‘Yes, you could say that.’

‘By a long time, I mean thirty years. Have you been here that long?’

‘Yes, I’ve been here about thirty years.’

Moses leaned closer. ‘I’m only asking because I think my parents stayed here, probably during the fifties, and I was wondering if, by any chance, you remembered them.’

The receptionist tilted his head sideways (Careful! Moses thought) and read the name in the register. ‘No, I don’t think so. I would have remembered a name like that.’ And his upper lip lifted, raising the lid on a keyboard of discoloured teeth. It was a ghastly smile.

Moses drew back, disappointed. ‘Well,’ he sighed. ‘I suppose it was worth a try.’

The receptionist laid the key of room number 5 beside the register. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t help you, sir. How long will you be staying?’

‘We’re just here for the weekend.’

‘It’s not often we have young people here,’ and the receptionist’s head began to wobble again. ‘I hope you enjoy your stay.’

Moses thanked him.

‘Second on the left at the top of the stairs,’ the receptionist said, and disappeared behind his red curtain again.

*

Gloria climbed the stairs ahead of Moses and waited for him at the top. There was a surprising delicacy, even tenderness, about the way he handled the older of the two suitcases. It looked like a child in his grasp, she thought. A child clutching its father’s hand.

‘That man gives me the creeps,’ she said as Moses reached her.

He chuckled. ‘What did his head remind you of?’

Gloria shuddered. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you know what I thought?’

She shook her head.

‘Taj Mahal.’

Gloria had to laugh. His face sometimes.

Moses unlocked the door of their room. It seemed cold inside because everything was green. Counterpane, curtains, carpet, wallpaper, lampshades, telephone. Everything. A few ungainly pieces of furniture stood against the walls. A tallboy. A wardrobe. A sideboard, its marble top veined like Gorgonzola. The bathroom had a chessboard tile floor. A jungle of silver pipes and fittings grew out of the back of the lavatory and up the wall. The taps on the basin said HOT and COLD. The wooden handle on the end of the lavatory chain was the shape of a slim pear. Gloria knocked it with her hand so it swung. Then she leaned over the bath and twisted the hot tap. Scalding water gushed.

‘I’m going to have a bath,’ she called out, ‘then you can tell me all about these mysterious parents of yours.’

Moses smiled at her through the gathering steam, then withdrew into the room. He walked to the window. A lawn lay below, spread like a cloth of alternating pale-green and dark-green stripes, and stapled to the ground by croquet-hoops. Beyond the lawn, maybe a hundred yards away, the tarnished metal of a lake, fenced on its far side by a line of poplars that looked mauve, French somehow, as mist stole in behind them to remove the view.

The first weekend in June. Somewhere north of Leicester. He wondered why he had come all this way. Those questions he had put to Taj Mahal, had he really expected any answers, any joy? It had been too much to hope for. Still, he clung to the fantasy that his parents might once have stayed at the hotel, might have been happy there. Yes, maybe there was sufficient justification in that. Some kind of logic, at least. His homage to that secret world between the names. A message spirited across the years. Standing in their footprints.

He turned away from the window. He took a book out of his suitcase, tried to read, but found he couldn’t concentrate. He could hear Gloria swirling water around. He walked towards the bathroom door.

‘Hey, Gloria,’ he called out. ‘Any room for me in there?’

She laughed. ‘You must be joking.’

*

After their bath they climbed into bed, their bodies warm and damp between the crisp sheets. They made love quietly, as if someone was listening. When they finally looked away from one another, dusk had inked the windows in, like the o’s in school textbooks. They lay there, not talking.

Gloria felt relaxed, drowsy. Moses had rolled over on his side, his back to her, his breathing soft and regular. She closed her eyes and her mind drifted loose, drawing pictures, spinning riddles. It was one of those dreams you seem to have under control, seem to, but the dream is strong, it strains at the leash, it knows pretty much where it wants to go; you think you’re leading it and it ends up taking you for a walk. It began with a conscious thought or a spoken phrase, she couldn’t tell which. It sounded in her head so clearly that she wasn’t certain whether she had said it out loud or to herself: I know what’s going to happen –

She was standing by the door facing into the room, her arms behind her back, the palms of her hands against the panelled wood as if she was holding it shut. The tall window in front of her was blue-black, a syringe glutted with blood.

What a mess it would make, she was thinking, if I opened it.

And, glancing down at her cotton summer frock, her bare legs, her little girl’s white socks, she shuddered; the feeling was like opening the fridge on a hot day and standing in front of it with nothing on.

Moses was in the room too, she noticed. Over by the bed. There was a suitcase on the floor beside him, and he hunched over it, fumbling with the locks. He turned and looked in her direction several times, but didn’t seem to see her. He acted as if she wasn’t there at all. This was such a strong impression that she thought, Maybe I’m not.

At last he got it open. The inside, she saw, was lined with blue velvet and moulded into holes and slots of differing shapes and sizes, each one snugly filled by a piece of polished black metal.

Moses sat down on the bed facing her and slowly but professionally assembled the gun. This took time. It was a complicated thing. The only sounds in the room for a while were the clicks and squeaks of its interlocking sections and appendages.

She was going to ask Moses a question, but thought better of it. He seemed so removed. An automaton.

Finally he stood up and walked to the window. He opened it. All the blood, she noticed, stayed outside. She looked over his shoulder as he squatted down and, resting the gun on the windowsill, squinted along its gleaming barrel.

She saw herself walking across the tennis court in the garden below, trailing a black headscarf along the grass. (She recognised the scarf; it was the silk one, her favourite.) She was wearing a white summery dress fastened at the waist by a wide mauve ribbon. She didn’t seem to be going anywhere in particular. Just walking.

The barrel of the gun tracked across until her head appeared in the centre of that tiny stylised spider’s web. She chose that moment to glance up at the window, her eyes and mouth no more than dark smudges in the flat paleness of her face. Moses’s finger tightened, squeezed the trigger. A thin jet of water spurted from the barrel.