Rupert Thomson - Dreams of Leaving

She was standing by the door as before.

‘ Look at me,’ she was saying. ‘I’m soaked.’

She glanced down at herself. Her summer dress, her legs, her socks, were drenched. With blood, she noticed, quite casually.

‘I’m sorry,’ Moses said, sitting by the window, cradling the gun in his elbow. ‘It was only a joke.’

He smiled. It was such a distant smile. It was like watching someone smiling on Mars.

Gloria woke convinced that she had been awake the whole time, that it had been a daydream. It was only when she looked at her watch that she realised that she had been asleep for over an hour. Moses was still fast asleep, facing her now, one arm reaching out towards her from under his cheek. She wondered if he realised he was asleep. She thought it was funny that she hadn’t been lying in bed with him in the dream because the room she had dreamt about was the room they were in now. The dream had used such recent, present things. She shivered, remembering the innocent way she had looked at the blood on her dress and her legs; she hadn’t really known what it was. She hadn’t been frightened, though, she remembered, and was surprised by that. And that smile on his face at the end, a slight variation on his usual smile, but not so different, really, now she thought about it. She looked down at him. The smile was on his face now, she saw. She shook her head. He was the only man she had ever known who actually slept with a smile on his face.

Without waking him, she got out of bed, walked into the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror. She looked at the mirror rather than at herself. Tiny brown marks round the edge like liver spots. Old mirror. She picked up a glass from the shelf, filled it with cold water, and gulped it down. Then she ran another bath, colder this time. Another bath? she thought. What’s got into me?

She had already decided not to tell Moses about her dream, but one of the first things he said when he shuffled into the bathroom with one red cheek from where it had pressed against his arm was, ‘Do you want to know what I’ve got in my suitcase?’

Gloria studied her feet. They didn’t reach the end of the bath. Nowhere near.

‘Have you been reading my thoughts?’ she said.

‘I never read people’s thoughts. They’re private.’ He grinned, sat down on the toilet seat. ‘You know, I’ve got the feeling you’re going to like what I’ve got in that suitcase.’

So, Gloria thought. Probably not a shotgun kit then.

Moses tilted his head, narrowed his eyes. ‘Is that your second bath in two hours or did I dream we went to bed together?’

‘It wasn’t a dream,’ Gloria said.

*

Still drying herself, Gloria watched from the bathroom as Moses knelt down on the carpet and snapped the locks open. He lifted the real cowhide lid to reveal a mass of noisy tissue-paper. As he removed the layers, Gloria padded into the room on her bare feet, one towel twisted into a turban for her hair, another wrapped round her slender body almost twice. She stood behind him, one hand resting on his shoulder.

‘It’s a dress,’ was all she could, rather obviously, say.

‘Yes, it’s a dress,’ Moses said. ‘I think it must’ve belonged to my mother.’

Gloria was uncertain how to react. Standing behind him, she could only guess at his face. He had told her nothing about his parents, not a single word, but the act of opening the suitcase seemed to have dimmed the lights in the room, lit candles, started something. The dress rustled like a chasuble as he unfolded it, releasing an incense that was fragile with age and storage. He held it up for her to see.

The style was early fifties, she guessed. A tight, shaped bodice, a narrow waist with a white plastic belt, and a layered, frothy skirt, just below knee-length, which, if danced in, would whirl out horizontally, spinning and billowing. The colour was a soft damask pink with white polka-dots. A real dancing dress.

‘I’m not sure, though,’ Moses said, ‘not really.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Gloria said. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s difficult.’

Gloria moved on to the bed. She undid the turban and began to dry her hair. She watched Moses at the same time.

‘I don’t know who my mother is,’ Moses said. ‘Until I saw the photographs, I didn’t even know what she looked like.’

‘What photographs, Moses?’

‘You don’t know anything, do you?’ He laughed to himself. ‘Well, neither do I, really.’

He laid the dress across the foot of the bed. Then he rummaged in among the tissue-paper and pulled out a photograph album.

‘These are the photos,’ he said. Head bowed, the album unopened on his knee, he was wondering where to begin.

‘I haven’t told anyone before,’ he said.

‘Just start,’ Gloria said. She rearranged the pillows on the bed and leaned back.

‘Well,’ he began, ‘I’m an orphan, you see. Parents unknown. I can’t remember them.’

Gloria nodded.

‘The first thing I can remember,’ he went on, ‘is the sound of water. I’m lying on my back and it’s like there’s a roof over my head but there are holes in the roof and the light’s coming through. I remember that so clearly. That darkness with pinpricks of light in it. That and the sound of running water. After that the next thing I remember is the orphanage — ’

He gave her a picture of his life at Mrs Hood’s establishment. The noise. The smells. The nicknames. He told her how a rumour had spread among the children, a rumour about him having been found by a river. Moses. Found by a river. Very funny. He had been convinced that the whole thing was just another joke about his name — the result, no doubt, of too many hours of Religious Knowledge. He had denied it fiercely. (He had had the only fight of his life about it, with a boy called David. After that, they called him Goliath. He couldn’t win.) Later, though, he felt uneasy. Especially when he put the rumour alongside that primal memory of his. They had the sound of running water in common. Was that merely a coincidence?

Nobody enlightened him — perhaps nobody could — and he had learned to accept the darkness of not knowing. The mystery surrounding his origins had remained and endured.

‘Then, a couple of months ago,’ he said, ‘just before I met you, in fact, it was my twenty-fifth birthday. Uncle Stan and Auntie B — they’re my foster-parents — asked me if I’d like to come up for the weekend. Nothing much was happening in London, so I went. On the Sunday night they brought this suitcase down from their attic. “We’ve been looking after this for years,” they said, “ever since we adopted you, but now you’re twenty-five, it’s legally yours. It’s from your parents — ”’

‘God,’ was all Gloria could say.

‘You see, apparently, when I was abandoned by my parents, this suitcase was left with me. Mrs Hood stored it away until I was adopted. Then my foster-parents looked after it –

‘Anyway, I couldn’t believe it. I mean, imagine. I’d forgotten all about my real parents. I hardly ever thought of them because I’d never known them. I’d learned to live with that. Then suddenly, after all those years, they go and remind me of their existence again.’

Moses shook his head. He picked up the album of photographs, then put it down again. ‘It’s very strange. I’ve looked at these photos, and I’ve tried to remember being there, I’ve tried to recognise the faces, but it’s like trying to remember places you’ve never been, it’s like trying to recognise complete strangers. It’s ridiculous. There are a few pictures of a baby in there, and I suppose it’s meant to be me, but I don’t recognise that either. Christ, I don’t even recognise myself. But I’m staring so hard, you see, I’m trying so hard to remember that sometimes, just sometimes, I fool myself into thinking that I do remember. It’s crazy, but I can’t tell the difference. I don’t know whether the memories are real or not ‘And what about this dress?’ He reached out and touched the hem. ‘When I first opened the suitcase, I thought I remembered it. It was like a flash. A gut-reaction. Very sudden. I remembered my mother, my real mother, bending over me, wearing that dress. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that all I could really see in my memory was the dress. Just the dress bending over me. Nobody inside it.’