Rupert Thomson - Dreams of Leaving

Elliot lit a Dunhill, tapped it on the edge of the ashtray. ‘Me and Ridley, we went after him, but we lost him in the park. He just vanished.’ He leaned his elbows on the table, held his cigarette close to his mouth as he talked. ‘I tried to trace him, asked around, made a few phone-calls, but nobody knows anything. He just vanished, like he was never there. Real thin air job.’

He finished his drink and stood up. ‘All I wanted to say was, watch yourself, all right? I don’t know who that bloke was, but he was a tough old sod and he had something on you.’ His hand moved across his stomach again like someone exploring a painful memory. ‘If he turns up again I’m going to get Ridley to sort him out.’

Moses nodded. ‘Thanks, Elliot. And thanks for telling me.’

As Elliot slipped away into the crowd, Gloria said, ‘Thank you,’ and slotted the microphone back on to its stand. She stepped down off the stage and walked over. She took one of Moses’s cigarettes. He lit it for her.

‘Well?’ she said. ‘How was I?’

‘Brilliant. You’re singing better than ever tonight.’

She eyed him curiously. ‘Are you OK, Moses?’

‘Yeah.’ He hoisted himself a little higher in his chair and assembled a smile for her. ‘Yeah, I’m fine. I was just thinking, that’s all.’

‘Did you hear Malone? Isn’t he great?’

‘I was too busy listening to you.’

Gloria laughed. ‘Moses, you’re a terrible liar.’

‘I was,’ Moses said. ‘Honestly.’

She touched his shoulder, then his cheek, and slipped away with a rustle of pink silk. She had to talk to the band. Letting his eyes drift beyond her, Moses noticed the clandestine figure of Jackson standing by the bar. Jackson seemed to be talking to Louise. Moses stood up, walked over.

‘Jackson,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know you were here.’

Jackson looked startled then shifty. He pulled his jacket in towards his body like a bird folding its wings. ‘I was just talking to Louise.’

‘I can see that.’ Moses turned to Louise. She was wearing a black T-shirt, black ski-pants with silver ankle-zips and black patent-leather pumps. It might have been The Bunker’s uniform. ‘I hear you’re going away.’

‘Holiday with my parents.’ Louise wrinkled her short nose. ‘Still, free sun, I suppose.’

‘Can’t be bad,’ said Moses, who had never been abroad in his life.

‘You don’t know my parents.’ Louise had an infectious chuckle, and Moses caught it. ‘I was just telling Jackson. I’m having a beach party. Two weeks’ time. You going to come?’

‘Love to. Where?’

‘Ask Gloria. She’s got the details.’

‘Oh Christ,’ Jackson said. ‘Look who it is.’

Moses turned to see Eddie steering his magnesium smile through the smoke.

Louise muttered, ‘I ought to be getting back to work.’

Jackson dipped his head into his pint, but his eyes clung to Louise as she disappeared behind a pillar. This startled Moses. He had seen Jackson look at clouds that way before, but never women. But now Eddie had arrived and was slapping Jackson on the back. Jackson’s beer slopped over.

‘Thank you, Eddie,’ Jackson said.

‘Jackson,’ Eddie said, ‘I thought you never drank.’

Jackson twisted his head to one side and smiled craftily, looking more than ever like a bird, the kind that steals jewellery. ‘Sometimes I go wild,’ he said.

They sat at Moses’s table in the corner. Eddie’s new lover had a sleeping eye that made anything she said seem ironic. But were these fringed white cowboy boots of hers ironic? Moses doubted it somehow. He wondered what number she was. 1,000? 1,500? Eddie was just saying that he’d had a pretty hectic week. Maybe 2,000, then. The girl laughed, unaware of the significance of Eddie’s remark.

In the meantime Gloria had climbed back on stage.

‘Me again.’ She held the mike in one hand and a glass of white wine in the other. ‘Thanks for all your help this afternoon, Ridley. This one’s for you.’

Moses glanced round, but he couldn’t see the big man anywhere. Still, it was a nice gesture. Word would get back, and somewhere in that gigantic construction of muscle and bone, somewhere in that mobile pain-dispenser, there had to be a heart, a tattooed heart, no doubt, but a heart none the less.

He had been trying not to think about what Elliot had said, but the anonymous policeman kept bursting into his head regardless, as if his head was a house that was staging a party and all his usual thoughts were guests and the policeman was a policeman. ‘It’s a raid,’ came a calm voice. ‘Great party,’ his thoughts said, ‘really great, but I’m afraid we’ve got to be going now.’ And, reaching for their coats, they all filed out at the same time, left him alone in the house. Alone with the policeman …

‘ —and Malone on tenor sax — ’

Gloria was introducing the band. If he didn’t listen to the saxophone this time, she’d murder him.

He only had to wait until halfway through the next song, then Malone unleashed a sixty-second solo, and played with such raw soaring power, assembled such an intricate structure of notes, that listening to him was like being led through some extraordinary abandoned mansion. It was as if Malone somehow knew of Moses’s anxiety and was building a house specially for him, a different kind of house, a house where policemen would never appear at the door. The saxophone scaled the façade, dropped into an upstairs room, tiptoed across the landing, opened a door with rusty hinges, tripped, stumbled to the edge of a parapet, peered over, stepped sharply back, ran down flight after flight of stairs, through ballrooms peopled by the ghosts of dancers, through echoing cloisters and claustrophobic passageways, past windows with vistas and hushed rooms no longer used, tore through curtained doorways and out, finally, into the open air, paused to breathe the air, ran on through gardens with peacocks and fountains, along spacious landscaped avenues, past sudden explosions of plants from South America, and back down a sweeping gravel drive to the road where Gloria was waiting with the rest of the song.

‘Malone,’ she said, over the applause. ‘We just borrowed him for the night. I wish he didn’t have to go back — ’

‘Renew him,’ Moses shouted. ‘Renew him.’

Malone bowed majestically in his cylindrical brown coat.

Five minutes later Moses pushed his way through the crowd to buy another round of drinks. He swayed from side to side, collided with some people, rebounded off others, but he always did that when he was drunk, he meant nothing by it, so he was surprised when he heard somebody swear at him, surprised enough to turn and catch a glimpse of an unidentifiable object flying towards him at great speed.

At first he thought he was in bed because he was lying down and he felt strangely comfortable. But then he realised that the ceiling was the wrong colour and anyway, what would all these people be doing in his bedroom? They were bending over him and their heads looked like tulips, the hard conical shape of the buds before they open, and he wanted to laugh.

Gloria knelt beside him.

‘Why aren’t you singing?’ he asked her.

She gazed down at him sadly, as if he was dying in a film. ‘That’s over,’ she told him.

‘I must’ve missed the last bit,’ he said.

She nodded. ‘Yes, you did.’

‘Malone was good.’

She smiled and ran a cool hand through his hair. ‘How do you feel?’

‘What happened?’

‘You got hit.’

Moses smiled faintly.

Now Ridley loomed above him. His one gold earring swung like something a hypnotist might use.

‘Moses,’ and Ridley held a finger up, ‘how many fingers can you see?’