Rupert Thomson - Dreams of Leaving

The West Indian lit another cigarette. Dunhill King Size. New York Paris London. The gold lighter snapped shut. ‘Does he?’

‘I’m asking you.’

‘I should clear off if I was you.’

‘Listen,’ Peach said, ‘I’m not being unreasonable. All I want to know is if Moses lives here or not.’

‘You heard what I said.’

‘Just tell me,’ Peach said. He was sounding, he realised, less and less like an old friend of the family and more and more like a policeman. Only a policeman would persist like this. And the West Indian knew it.

‘If you don’t fuck off right now,’ the West Indian said, ‘I’m going to have to mess up that nice fat face of yours — ’

Peach hit him hard in the solar plexus. It was a precision punch. It came out of nowhere. It even surprised Peach. He hadn’t hit anybody for five years. The West Indian went down gasping.

Peach looked round for a taxi. There weren’t any. He swore viciously. He only had a few seconds before the West Indian was up again and pulling a knife on him or something. He hastened off down the road. When he was fifty yards away he turned and saw the West Indian climbing to his feet. Peach began to run. In his youth he had been an exceptional dancer. He and Hilda had won the New Egypt Dancing Trophy six years in a row. The rumba, the polka, the foxtrot — they had mastered them all. And even now, at the age of seventy-two, he could still show a remarkable lightness of foot.

As he rounded the curve in the road he heard uncanny jangling music. Not one music, but many, all mixed up, mingling. The lights of the fun-fair came into view.

The fun-fair. Crowds. Safety in numbers.

He crossed the main road and plunged into the park.

Saturday night. It was packed. Children brandished candy-floss and balloons. Strings of naked light-bulbs looped from tree to tree. The Big Wheel soared overhead. A girl’s shoe landed with a slap at his feet, the strap still fastened. He looked up. Hair flew. Screams. The glint of teeth. He pushed on into the crowd.

He stopped outside a yellow tent. A crude picture of a dwarf in a jester’s cap and bells had been painted on to the canvas. Bold red letters bellowed: THE WORLD’S SMALLEST MAN! ONLY THREE FEET TALL! THE MOST AMAZING AND UNIQUE EXPERIENCE! BRING A MAGNIFYING GLASS! Somewhere to hide while he got his breath back, collected his thoughts. He paid his 50p and ducked under the canvas flap.

The world’s smallest man was watching Star Trek on TV. He was sitting in his own specially constructed lounge. All the furniture and fittings had been built to scale: a miniature sofa, a miniature lamp, a miniature clock — even the TV was miniature. Nothing separated him from his visitors — no bars, no sheets of toughened glass — and yet he didn’t seem to be aware of them. He sat in his miniature armchair with his legs crossed, watched his programme on his miniature TV, and drank from a miniature tea-cup which he replaced, gently and precisely, on its miniature saucer after each mouthful.

For a moment Peach lost touch with his surroundings. Staring down at this little man (he really was very small), he felt neither shock nor pity, only a kind of recognition. The world’s smallest man must, from time to time, have thought about escape. Perhaps he had even succeeded in escaping. But then, Peach’s fantasy ran on, he found himself in a world in which he had no place. A world that overlooked him, trampled him. A world that couldn’t help mistreating him because it was so big and he was so small. So he returned to his yellow tent and his miniature lounge. It wasn’t exactly private, but if he concentrated he could imagine that he was alone. He could train himself to ignore those prying eyes, those personal remarks. It was a life.

Peach checked his watch. 8.24. If he wasn’t in a taxi in twenty minutes he’d be done for. He used a buxom middle-aged couple to cover his exit from the tent and darted into the shadows beside the rifle-range. He saw the West Indian standing on the steps of the merry-go-round, white tie loosened, hands on hips, eyes scanning faces. He shrank against the damp green canvas. The whang! of pellets hitting metal ducks resounded in his ears. Sweat registered on his body as a series of cold patches.

He peered out again, watched the West Indian pass his fingertips almost absent-mindedly across his stomach. He smiled from his hiding-place. It had been a textbook punch. Nine inches. Pure Joe Louis. And fast, so fast the West Indian hadn’t even seen it coming. Not bad for an old man.

He began to work his way round the back of the rifle-range towards the road. As if on a parallel track, the West Indian also moved north. The next time Peach looked for him, he saw him leaning against a yellow fence, his scowling face switched on and off by sparks from the dodgems. A second man stood next to him. This second man wore a parka adorned with various military insignia. He must have been seven feet tall. His face a wasteland and cold, so cold, despite the light bleeding from a string of red bulbs above his head. Peach shivered.

8.47.

Only fifty yards now separated him from the metal fence. Beyond the fence, the road. He waited for the two men to turn away, then he lowered his head and ran. The music, the screaming, the gunfire, dwindled. He heard only the rasp of his own breathing as he struggled through the clutter of machinery and cables. Trees added to the confusion. Once he gashed his shin on the jagged head of a tent-peg, but he didn’t falter. He scaled the fence, cleared the pavement, teetered on the kerb. A truck lurched forwards with a vicious hiss as its air-brakes eased. He saw a yellow light and waved frantically. He didn’t dare look round.

The taxi curved towards him through the traffic. He scrambled in and slammed the door. ‘Victoria,’ he gasped. ‘Quick.’

The driver accelerated away. ‘In a hurry, are we?’

8.58.

The taxi turned north at the traffic lights, and Peach glanced behind him for the first time. No sign of the giant or the West Indian. He leaned back against the seat. His leg hurt. He could feel the blood trickling down into his sock.

Orange lights splashed over his face. ‘Never again,’ he murmured. ‘Never again.’

He wound the window down.

Air.

Every time the taxi stopped at a set of traffic lights, the driver pulled out a harmonica and began to play tunes that Peach remembered from the thirties and forties. Peach was suddenly overwhelmed by the sense of being somewhere strange, somewhere foreign yet magical, somewhere utterly incongruous. In his exhaustion he had become a tourist.

The driver caught his eye in the rear-view mirror. ‘Don’t mind, do you, guy?’

‘Not at all,’ Peach said. ‘It’s delightful. Very soothing.’

‘ Soothing? ’ The driver squinted over his shoulder. ‘First time anyone’s ever called it that.’

They both laughed.

The taxi rattled up on to the dreary skeleton of Vauxhall Bridge. It was only then that Peach realised he had left his case in that café on Kennington Road.

*

9.09.

Too late to turn round and go back. Too late, too dangerous. He took a swift inventory of the contents. Pyjamas, washing-bag, A — Z, a Thermos flask, one stale ham sandwich. Nothing that couldn’t be replaced. And, more to the point, nothing that betrayed his identity. After all, it could easily fall into the wrong hands (the West Indian’s, for instance). Thank God he had transferred his diary to his jacket pocket.

The taxi pulled up in front of Victoria Station at 9.21. Peach handed the driver a handsome tip.

‘That’s for getting me here on time,’ he said, ‘and for the music.’ And for saving my life, he added silently.