Rupert Thomson - Dreams of Leaving

In the end, after the obligatory month of search-parties and questionings, Dolphin would be forced to pronounce Peach dead. He would have to fake the evidence, concoct a foolproof story, produce a satisfactory corpse.

Some, Peach supposed (and this hurt slightly), would celebrate. He could imagine Dinwoodie dancing a solitary and hysterical jig in his garage. He shook his head. Poor Dinwoodie.

Others would mourn. He pictured a fragile and ghostly Hilda huddled in a room of dark furniture. He could hear the sound of uncontrollable mass weeping issuing from the windows of the police station on the hill.

And then the funeral.

Would there be a procession through the village as there had been for Lord Batley? Would they ‘bury’ him in an empty coffin? What a vicious irony that would be. So vicious that he almost resorted to prayer right there and then, but the priest’s face rose before his eyes at the crucial moment (that pitiful jittery face, its faith built not on strength but terror) and he rapidly abandoned the idea.

He closed his notebook and tucked his pen into his breast pocket.

He would not die.

He leaned forwards, pressed his face to the window. The world beyond the streaked glass looked peaceful, almost familiar. Sunset an hour away. Evening light. The last rays reaching down through the woods, slender pale-gold arms emerging from the ruffled sleeves of clouds. Only the motion, the constant slippage of the landscape from right to left, seemed strange. A grass bank grew and grew until it hid the view. He watched as children do: as if the world was moving and he was still.

He was seventy-two years old, and it was his first time on a train.

*

Now they were swinging north into a long stretch of curved track and, simply by turning his head from right to left, he could see first the front then the back of the train. He suddenly became aware of how limited his knowledge was. From the window he had seen details of the village echoed, reproduced, enlarged — a boy spilling off his bicycle, a woman taking washing in, a flock of sheep wedged into a lane — but nothing could prepare him for the city that lay ahead. His wisdom, undisputed in the village, dissipated in this seemingly boundless world. It began and ended with the train he was travelling on. No, not even that. With the carriage he was sitting in. That was the sum of all he knew. It was daunting. He realised that he would have to rely on the qualities that had elevated him to the rank of Chief Inspector at such a comparatively tender age: vigilance, ruthlessness, intuition.

He began to see things that he had never seen before — at least not in real life: a viaduct; a white horse carved into the chalk of a hillside; an aeroplane, curiously silent and majestic, floating down over the train, almost grazing the tops of trees, its underbelly plump and vulnerable. A highly irregular thought occurred to him. Supposing he had left the village before now. Supposing he had left when he was younger, more receptive, more energetic, and returned armed with vivid first-hand experience of the outside world. Then he would really have known what he was talking about. Then he would have understood exactly what he was legislating against. And he would have been able to dispense his knowledge in tantalising fragments like some kind of oracle. A knowledge that only he (miraculously) possessed. How wise he would have seemed. Imagine the increase in prestige and credibility. Who knows, perhaps even the breakdown could have been avoided. An interesting idea, in any case. Something to mull over. He jotted a few words down in his notebook: The relationship of hypocrisy to the exercise of power. He wondered if the idea had occurred to any of his predecessors. He doubted it, somehow. After all, it had only occurred to him once he had already left the village. Surely such an idea would have been unthinkable, quite literally unthinkable, while you were actually living there? Only this extraordinary detachment, this sense of removal, made it possible. It was as if he had risen out of his body and was looking back down at himself. He could see things in a way that he couldn’t have seen them before.

The train chattered over the rails. You’ll-never-go-back, it seemed to be saying. You’ll- never -go-back-you’ll- never -go-back.

Nonsense. Of course he would. He had to. He even wanted to.

He had allowed himself a maximum of twenty-four hours. Deadline Saturday 2100 hours. If he hadn’t located Moses Highness by then, too bad. He had to be back in New Egypt by midnight. Otherwise his cover would be blown.

Once again he was struck by the enormity of the risk he was taking. Still, there was nothing for it now. Here he was, thirty miles out of the village, and moving further away with every minute that passed.

The train hurtled on towards the city, beating complicated rhythms now. Beneath the smeared glass, the landscape flowed like green weeds through water. He had never imagined such fluid speed. The percussion of wheels on rails. The flick-flick-flick of telegraph poles. Lulled him. He leaned his head back against the seat.

*

Where was he?

His eyes took in the blue and green check upholstery, the silver luggage-racks, the discarded newspaper, his own face in the window’s mirror. A blonde girl sitting across the aisle returned his glance of confusion with a smile. She hadn’t been there before.

Through the window he watched the march of strange buildings. Three tower-blocks, an office of reflecting glass, a multi-storey car-park. Semidetached houses in a row like vertebrae. He was on the train. But where was the train?

As if to answer his question, the train lurched, throwing him forwards. It was slowing down. For a station, presumably. But which station?

‘Is this London?’ he asked the blonde girl.

‘No, this is East Croydon,’ she said. ‘London’s next.’

He thanked her.

So. He must have dozed off. He wondered how long he had slept. Fifteen minutes, twenty minutes — not much more. That girl must have joined the train at Three Bridges. Everything under control again, he began to move his mind into the immediate future. They were due in at 8.23. By the time he found a hotel and registered, it would be close to ten. He doubted whether he could accomplish much that night. He had a phone-call to make, but he could do that from his room. All right, then. An early night. An early start in the morning.

The white signs of suburban stations flashed by, almost too fast to read. West something. Something Common. Clapham Junction. Houses rushed up to the railway line. He saw a woman washing her hair, the bathroom lit by one naked bulb. It embarrassed him, this glimpse into her privacy. Then he saw two people standing in a yellow kitchen. Then an empty room with the TV on. Window after window. Life after life on display. He found himself thinking of the police museum.

As the train rattled over a bridge, he looked down. Though rush-hour was over, the street pulsed with the red tail-lights of cars. Glowing, dimming, glowing again as feet touched brakes. All those cars, all those lights. He sensed a surge of electricity. Friday night. The city charged up for the weekend. Perhaps the fascination showed on his face because the blonde girl chose that moment to speak to him:

‘I love this place, don’t you?’

He turned to look at her. The thrill in her voice, the ingenuous warmth of her smile, drew him in, persuaded him to tell the truth. There was nothing to fear from her.

‘It’s the first time I’ve been here,’ he confessed.

‘The first time?’ Her voice lifted in disbelief. It was a musical voice. It resonated. It would be capable, he imagined, of wonderful laughter. ‘Where have you been hiding?’