Rupert Thomson - Dreams of Leaving

‘Nineteen,’ came a faint cry.

‘What’s the hurry?’ She tripped, laughed as he caught her.

He half-carried, half-dragged her the last few yards. He unlocked the door, tore it open. The light came on. It was dim, but it was enough. A sickly pallor ran back into her face, rebuilding her features, filling in gaps. Her surprise became visible.

‘What was all that about?’

‘All what?’

‘All that crazy rushing to the car.’

He slid into the driving-seat. His heart was banging like a stone in a tin can. He switched the radio on. Frank Sinatra was singing. ‘Strangers in the Night’, of all things.

‘I thought you were going to disappear,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want you to disappear.’

He watched her face in the light from the radio. She was hugging her legs as if cold or alone, her chin resting on her knees. Even though he could now see all of her he felt that some crucial part of her had eluded him. He had failed. She had disappeared.

It turned out so right

For strangers in the night —

Why does music always do that? he wondered.

‘Shall we go?’ he said.

‘Where?’

‘Back to London.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Not yet.’

A silence.

‘No,’ he sighed. ‘I don’t really want to either.’

She sat up, possessed of some new efficiency now, and opened the glove compartment. She undid the envelope that contained the coke. She tipped half the contents on to the cover of his logbook. Using her own razor-blade, she cut the stuff into four lines. She rolled a £5 note and, bending quickly, vacuumed up the two lines nearest her. Then she passed him the £5 note. He leaned over, his face almost touching her knee, and did the same.

‘I’m going over to the pub for a brandy,’ he said. ‘Coming?’

She sniffed twice, once with each nostril. ‘No, I think I’ll go back down.’

He got out of the car, locked the doors.

‘Moses?’

He looked up. She had reached the top of the steps. ‘Yes?’ he said.

‘Thank you for not wanting me to disappear.’

‘That’s all right.’ He had spoken quietly. He doubted whether his voice had carried to where she was standing.

They looked at each other across a distance for a moment, then she turned and started down the steps. He watched her until she disappeared below the level of the cliff-top.

*

‘Nice place, isn’t it?’ Vince said.

Moses stopped short, a yard inside the door. He hadn’t expected anything, but if he had, he wouldn’t have expected anything like this. Vince was sitting in the shade of a life-size cardboard palm tree. Along one wall there were wooden booths with Wild West swing-doors. A chrome and purple jukebox in the corner. Pineapple ice-buckets on the bar. Red plastic diner-stools with silver legs. Green glass fishing-floats dangling from a mass of orange netting overhead. Hanging on the far wall, a Mexican poncho, three hunting-horns, a coolie hat, a sabre, a painting of a bullfight, and a stuffed swordfish. And all this at first glance. The way Vince was grinning, it might have been his doing.

‘I thought I might find you in here,’ Moses said.

‘No, you didn’t. It’s a horrible surprise.’ Vince’s grin widened. ‘Because now you’re going to have to talk to me and buy me drinks.’

Moses stood by the door, one hand massaging his forehead. Not only Disneyland in here, but Vince. He could feel the stones in his pockets beginning to weigh him down, to drag him floorwards.

‘Mine’s a brandy,’ Vince said.

Moses pushed towards the bar.

‘Yes sir?’ The landlord had dyed black hair and wore a vermilion shirt with silver metal collar-tips. There was nowhere to look.

‘Two brandies,’ Moses said. ‘No ice.’

He watched the landlord press the glasses to a Hennessey optic. ‘Quite a place you’ve got here.’

‘You like it?’ The landlord flashed him a smile. All crow’s-feet and dentures.

Moses was fucked if he was going to say it again. Someone might think he was taking the piss and knock him out. That was all he needed. He paid quickly, smiled, and squeezed back to the safety of the palm tree.

Vince grabbed his drink and swallowed it whole.

‘If you’re going to drink them like that,’ Moses said, ‘it’s hardly worth me sitting down.’

‘Should’ve brought me a double then, shouldn’t you.’

Moses shook his head. ‘You would’ve drunk that twice as fast.’ He leaned back against the fake teak panelling. ‘What’s wrong with everyone today? Everyone’s acting so strange. Jackson turns up with a box of fireworks. Louise is all brown and goes swimming in the middle of the night. Gloria keeps disappearing. Eddie’s pretending he isn’t even here. And you.’ He turned to face Vince. ‘You sit there quietly, not breaking anything. What’s going on, Vince?’

Vince shrugged.

Moses reached for his glass. ‘And the seagulls. Did you notice the seagulls?’

Vince hadn’t.

‘What they do is, they sort of spread their wings and float upwards on the air-currents till they’re level with the top of the cliff, then they slide sideways —’ Moses demonstrated with his hand — ‘float all the way down again till they reach the bottom. Then they start all over again. Do exactly the same thing. Millions and millions of times. Why do they do that? Does it feel good?’

Vince didn’t know.

‘Everybody’s up to something.’ Moses stubbed his cigarette out in the tail of a pink china mermaid. ‘Even the birds.’

‘Have you got any of that left?’

Moses looked blank. ‘Any of what?’

‘Any of whatever you’re on.’

‘No.’

Vince knocked back the rest of Moses’s drink and banged the empty glass down on the table.

‘All right,’ Moses said, ‘but this is your last one.’

He returned to the bar.

The landlord winked. ‘Two brandies. Right?’

‘Right.’

‘No rocks. Right?’

‘Right.’

‘Plenty of rocks on the beach. Right?’ The landlord’s mouth opened. A round dark hole. The shape of a railway tunnel. A long train of laughter came squeaking out. How about a drink yourself? Moses thought. Oil, for instance.

‘You know,’ the landlord rattled on, ‘I’ve been here fifteen years now and I don’t reckon I’ve been down to the beach more than half a dozen times.’

Oh, so it was the life-history now, was it?

‘Too busy up here, I suppose,’ Moses said. Collecting all this junk.

‘I keep myself pretty busy.’ The landlord picked up a white cloth, began to caress a glass. ‘Going to invite me down there later on?’

‘Sorry,’ Moses said. ‘Not my party.’

When he returned to the palm tree he decided it was time to start pestering Vince. Vince was acting too cocktail-party for his liking. He wanted the old blood-and-vomit Vincent back. The Suicide Kid. Onassis on acid. The dregs at the bottom of the King’s Road.

He began with, ‘Seen anything of Alison recently?’

Vince scowled. ‘No. Why? Have you?’

‘Oh, a little bit, you know.’ Moses was airy. ‘I’m seeing her next Sunday. She’s asked me round for lunch.’

‘Muswell Hill?’

Moses nodded.

‘What d’you want to do that for?’

‘I want to, that’s all. Anyway, what d’you care?’

‘I don’t care. I don’t give a fuck.’

It looked as if Vince still hadn’t got Alison out of his system. He didn’t know it, of course. There was too much other shit blocking his system for him to be able to find out.

The bell rang for last orders.

‘Anyway,’ Moses began again, ‘I want to meet this woman you’re always going on about. Alison’s mother.’