Rupert Thomson - Dreams of Leaving

He instantly forgave her the slight impertinence of her question. She was an attractive girl — in her early twenties, he guessed — and some part of him was charmed by her forwardness.

‘I live a very quiet life. In the country.’ He sounded appropriately sedate.

‘Oh, I’m just coming back from a week in the country — ’ the girl began.

How easily these people speak of coming and going, he thought. As if it was the most natural thing in the world.

‘— but what brings you to London,’ she was asking him, ‘for the first time?’

The phrase had become their theme, linking them privately. When she got home she would tell her mother, or her boyfriend, or whoever she lived with, that she had met a man on the train who had never been to London before. It was his first time, she would say. Can you imagine?

While they had been talking, the train had crossed another bridge, over the Thames this time (he caught a glimpse of the water, glinting black, sluggish as oil), and everybody was standing up, pulling on coats, hauling down cases. All this gave him time to frame a suitably vague answer to what had been, potentially at least, a rather awkward question.

‘Business,’ he said. ‘I’m here on business.’

The girl, adjusting the belt on her raincoat, gave him a quick smile. Brisk rituals of arrival were beginning to override their conversation. Soon they were walking side by side down the platform. Gritty irritable light. The station, with its high arching roof, hollow and draughty, echoed with footsteps, voices, the whisper of clothes. Somehow the sound reminded him of birds — thousands of birds folding their wings. Once they had passed through the ticket barrier, the girl swung away from him.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I hope your business goes well.’

Her tiny downward smile intrigued him, as the beginning of a story does, but this, he realised, was already the end.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Good luck to you, too.’

‘It’s been nice talking to you. Goodbye.’

‘Goodbye.’

He watched her walk away. She walked energetically. Her blonde hair rose and fell with the energy of her walking. He put his case down. He was acting very strangely. Really very strangely indeed. What on earth had prompted him to wish her good luck like that? He went back over the encounter in some detail and shook his head. He almost didn’t recognise himself.

Suddenly a crowd of people spilled towards him across the concourse. Though startled, he stood his ground. They flowed round him as if he was part of the station. He had never seen so many people in one place. And every face lifted anxiously to the departures board as if they expected to read the news of some personal tragedy there. So many people and yet they all had different noses, eyes, hair. It seemed extraordinary to him that no two people looked the same. And another thing. He didn’t recognise anyone. He had never seen so many strangers. For a moment he, too, looked anxious. Then he became exhilarated. The turmoil. The din. The anonymity. He could blend with the crowds, he could move about unobserved, no eyebrows raised, no questions asked. It suited him perfectly.

Outside the station he flagged down a taxi. The driver took him to a dark street lined with stunted trees. Somewhere between Queensway and Notting Hill Gate, it was (Peach had been following the route in his A — Z ). He paid the driver, and the taxi rattled away again towards the main road. He stood on the pavement, his suitcase in his hand. He looked up. The Hotel Ravello. It’s not exactly The Ritz, the driver had told him, but Peach had imagined worse places.

He climbed the steps and pushed the door open. A bell tingled. He found himself in a narrow hallway. A rectangle of plastic-coated card had been tacked to the wall. RECEPTION, it said. The arrow underneath indicated a doorway to the left.

‘Hello?’ he called out.

He walked up a short passage and peered into an office. Beyond the office lay another, darker room, separated from the first by a frosted-glass partition.

‘Hello?’ he called out again.

An Arab appeared. He had the watery strained eyes of somebody who watches too much television. His complexion was yellow on the surface, grey underneath. A few buttons on his shirt had popped undone, revealing the wrinkled socket of his navel.

‘Yes?’

‘I would like a single room,’ Peach said.

‘How many night?’ The Arab spoke in a monotone. The words came automatically. He probably said them in his sleep.

‘Just the one.’

The Arab produced a register. ‘Sign here.’

Peach stooped and wrote George Highness in a confident scrawl. A merciless smile passed over his lips. That’s the closest he will ever get to leaving the village, he thought.

He pushed the register back across the counter, received a key in exchange.

‘Third floor,’ the Arab said. ‘Check out before midday.’

Peach nodded. He would be gone long before then.

As he climbed the stairs the décor deteriorated. Handprints on the walls. Scratches, patches of damp, graffiti. It certainly wasn’t The Ritz.

His room had a flimsy hardboard door. The number, chipped gilt, dangled on a single screw. He turned the handle and walked in. Green carpet. Faded orange bedspread. Massive dark wardrobe. Chair. Gas-ring. Ashtray. He closed the door, put his case on the bed, and walked into the bathroom. He ran the cold tap and splashed some water on to his face. He dried on a threadbare towel that said, incongruously, GOOD MORNING. Stepping back into the bedroom, he took off his jacket, loosened his tie, and unlocked his case. He was travelling light: a pair of striped pyjamas, a washing-bag, a diary, a bus-map, binoculars, a Thermos of Hilda’s homemade minestrone soup and half a dozen ham sandwiches wrapped in tinfoil. He crossed to the window and raised the sash. Then he settled on the chair and ate four of the sandwiches one after another. Even though the sandwiches were very good indeed (nobody made ham sandwiches like Hilda), his face registered nothing. He was thinking. The city made a sound like distant applause.

After gulping down a cup of minestrone, he reached for his diary. He thumbed through the pages until he found the number he was looking for. He moved to the bed and picked up the telephone. He dialled with nimble precise rotations of his index-finger. The number began to ring.

Somebody answered. A voice said, ‘Eddie here.’

Peach blinked once, iguana-like. His lidded eyes fixed on the wall opposite. ‘Eddie, this is Mr Pole speaking. Moses’s foster-father.’

‘Mr Pole. What can I do for you?’

What indeed, Peach gloated. He wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. An orange smear: minestrone.

‘I’m sorry to bother you, Eddie, but I seem to have mislaid Moses’s new address. I wondered if you could possibly — ’

‘No problem, Mr Pole. Hang on a moment.’

Because, until today, the world had always been inaccessible, Peach had always listened to telephone voices very carefully. He found he could often construct a picture of the person he was talking to. Sometimes a face. Sometimes a body too. Sometimes the room they happened to be in. He tried to picture Eddie now, but saw a dog instead. A white toy dog. He gritted his teeth.

‘Mr Pole?’

‘Yes?’

‘You can reach him on 735–8020.’

Peach pulled his pen out of his breast pocket. ‘735 — ’

‘8020,’ Eddie said.

‘I see. And do you have his address by any chance?’

‘I don’t know his proper address, but the name of the club where he lives is The Bunker. He probably told you that, didn’t he?’