Rupert Thomson - Dreams of Leaving

He paused.

‘Nobody inside it,’ he repeated softly, almost to himself. ‘So you see, I can’t really remember anything — ’

Silence had filled the green room with water, slowing every sentence, every movement down. When he turned and looked at Gloria he saw that she had been crying. He moved on to the bed and dried her face with his hands.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to go into all that.’

She wiped her eyes with her wrists. ‘That’s all right.’

‘It’s me who should be crying really.’

‘I know.’

*

They suddenly noticed that it was getting late and that if they were going to get drunk that evening (something they had promised themselves on the drive up) they would have to hurry. They opened their suitcases, pulled out clothes, began to dress each other. It was like a sex-scene in reverse and Moses kept wondering, as Gloria buttoned his trousers and his shirt, whether the film would start winding forwards again, towards nakedness. It didn’t, though. Passively, he watched his body disappearing. Then Gloria stood in front of the mirror and aimed a hairdryer at her head while Moses dusted every inch of her slight body with special talcum powder, from the pale shell-like gaps between her toes to the Turkish Delight of her nipples. She passed the hairdryer from one hand to the other so he could slip her arms into the sleeves of her white silk blouse. He fastened buttons with huge fumbling fingers. He held a pair of black knickers at floor-level for her to step into, one foot at a time, then drew them past her knees, up her thighs and over her soft and unusually straight pubic hair (which had been aged dramatically by the powder). He zipped up her skirt, chose shoes, clipped on earrings. In ten minutes they appeared in the doorway, scented, presentable, and separating from a kiss (the film still running backwards, it seemed).

The downstairs bar was a riot of chintz and ormolu. Not a soul in sight. Even the barman was only half there. It took a few seconds of wild gesticulation to alert him to their presence. To make up for lost time they downed six gin fizzes between them in slightly less than half an hour.

‘It’s the crying,’ Moses explained to Gloria. ‘You have to replace the tears, you see.’

Gloria speared a green olive. ‘Something that occurred to me,’ she said. ‘If you don’t know where your parents live, or even who they are, what made you think they came here?’

‘Yes, that was strange,’ Moses said. ‘When I opened the suitcase, there was this postcard lying in the bottom. I think it must’ve fallen out of the album. Anyway, it was a picture of this place, and it had a name on the back of it. Dogwood Hall. I looked it up in the phone book, found out it was a hotel, and here we are.’ He scooped up a handful of peanuts. ‘The album seems to cover a period of about four or five years. Two or three years of courtship and two years of marriage. Since the postcard probably fell out of the album, I thought they must’ve stayed here during that time. Who knows, I might even’ve been conceived here.’

‘It’s a pretty strange story, Moses,’ Gloria said.

His eyes dropped from the wedding-cake ceiling to her face. Now he understood why he had brought Gloria along, why he had told her rather than Jackson, say, or Eddie. They would never have believed him. She did.

Gloria stirred the remains of her third drink with her finger. She was trying to imagine a life without parents. She found it almost impossible. Everything had revolved around her parents — or rather her parents had made everything revolve around her. She had been an only child and she had never doubted that they doted on her. Her every move had been recorded and cherished. She knew when she was born, she knew what her first joke was, she knew who had come to her first birthday party (she even had a movie of it). Her parents had given her everything — a swing in a rose-arbour when she was six, a thoroughbred pony when she was ten, a sports car (now written off) when she was seventeen, and a home throughout, for Christ’s sake, a stable home. She felt unbelievably lucky all of a sudden, lucky and guilty. She remembered a line that she sometimes used at parties. ‘I was a spoilt child.’ Pause. ‘Spoilt but not ruined.’

A waitress appeared in the doorway. ‘Mr and Mrs Highness? Your table’s ready.’

*

It was quarter past eleven when they staggered out of the dining-room. They hardly recognised the hallway. Vases loomed and undulated, portraits leered, walls curved away, carpets suddenly had gradients, and the corridor turned corners far too soon. Somewhere at the end of all this was room number 5.

Gloria, marginally the steadier of the two, played safe and stuck to the banisters. Moses, veering wildly, mowed down a suit of armour which had stepped out in front of him. The helmet crashed to the floor. Taj Mahal, already tucked up in bed with a history of the British Empire, heard the clatter of metal and thought: saucepans.

Back in the hallway, Moses, startled by the suit of armour, lurched sideways, collided with a table, and fell full-length on the carpet. A vase of lilies rocked and toppled over.

‘It’s the first time I’ve ever stayed in a hotel, you see,’ he mumbled. ‘I’m not used to it.’

Gloria was still clutching the banisters. Her stomach ached with laughter. ‘You poor orphan,’ she said.

Water began to drip on to Moses’s neck from the overturned vase.

‘Gloria,’ he said. ‘I think it’s raining.’

He climbed to his feet, then stooped to retrieve the helmet, but kicked it with his size 12 foot before his hand could reach it. The helmet rolled under the table. Still stooping, he peered into the darkness between the legs of the table and began to call the helmet terrible names.

‘Moses. Quick.’ Gloria waved at him from the stairs. Frantic spastic agitations of her left hand. ‘ Quick. Before somebody comes.’

She left the safety of the banisters and stood the vase upright. Then she tugged on one of Moses’s arms. He responded, straightened up too fast, overbalanced, and fell backwards against the staircase, taking Gloria with him. The hallway shook. An oil painting slid sideways on the wall.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘Poltergeist.’

They sprawled in a heap at the foot of the stairs. Hysterical. Incapable of movement.

Amazingly, nobody came.

*

Some time later they reached the landing. They began the search for their room-key. Moses had had it last, of that they were convinced. An excuse for Gloria to fumble around in various parts of his body. She found it accidentally in his trouser pocket while looking for something else. They missed the lock with it four times each.

‘I’ve had men like this,’ Gloria said.

She succeeded with her fifth attempt and they both fell into the room. They began to undress instinctively. Then Moses froze, one leg in and one leg out of his trousers. He had had a thought that was cold, green, and explosive.

‘Champagne,’ he cried. He toppled sideways, arms flailing, and knocked the lamp off the bedside table. The bulb blew with a soft contemptuous pop.

‘Yes,’ came Gloria’s voice from somewhere.

Moses peered over the bed. She was lying on the floor in her blouse and tights, her head under the table, her legs askew. One of her shoes was in the bathroom, the other was in the waste-paper basket. She looked like a car-accident.

He clambered to his feet, crossed the room, and stood over her, swaying dangerously. ‘Your eyebrows say quarter to two,’ he said. ‘It must be our anniversary.’

‘Already?’ Gloria murmured.

‘I’m going downstairs,’ he said, ‘to find a bottle of champagne.’