Rupert Thomson - Dreams of Leaving

‘What do you want, Eddie?’

‘ Nice Highness.’

‘Look, can we stop this now? I’m bored, OK?’

‘You’re so nice, aren’t you, Highness? Everybody likes Highness. Don’t they, Highness?’

Eddie was spitting the words out from a distance of six inches. Moses could feel the saliva hitting him in the face.

‘What d’you want?’ He shook Eddie by the wrists. ‘D’you want to hit me? Is that what you want? All right. Hit me.’ He flung Eddie’s hands away from him. And waited.

Eddie swayed from the waist, almost lost balance. His laughter sounded like heavy breathing. Then his arm uncoiled through the air and the palm of his hand landed hard and flat on Moses’s face.

‘That’ll teach you,’ he hissed, ‘you bloody martyr.’

Moses had forgotten about his fractured cheekbone, but as he felt the pain exploding inwards through his head, as he watched Eddie laughing at the surprise on his face, it seemed to him that Eddie had chosen that side of his face quite deliberately.

‘You fucking shit,’ he shouted.

Eddie’s eyes lit up. ‘Now, now,’ he said. He began to run backwards, dance backwards on his toes, like a boxer, but when he stumbled on an empty bottle Moses jumped at him and landed a punch on the side of his head. They rolled down a slope towards the sea. Moses forced Eddie on to his stomach. He placed both his hands on the back of Eddie’s head and, mustering all his strength, twisted Eddie’s face into the beach. He heard Eddie laughing through a mouthful of stones.

Then he got to his feet and walked back to the fire.

*

The sea was breathing deeply like someone sound asleep, each wave a soft exhalation through its open mouth. In the silence between waves Moses could hear the softer breathing of the people all around him.

He had been trying to get to sleep himself, thinking that if he synchronised his breathing with the rhythm of the waves, if he harnessed himself to all that natural hypnotic power, then maybe he would drift off.

No such luck.

His eyes stung so much they wouldn’t stay closed. The coldness of the stones soaked up into his hip. He looked around for the blanket Gloria had brought down from the car, but it had disappeared.

Jesus, he ached all over. Skinned knuckles on both hands. His left shin caked with blood. A jarring pain in his cheek. He rubbed the back of his neck and his hand came away sticky with tar.

He just hoped Eddie had come off worse.

The sky had diluted — black to grey. Instructions for the creation of dawn: just add water to the colour of the night. Not a hint of sunshine anywhere. It looked as if the weather had broken.

He glanced down at Gloria. She was still asleep, burrowed into the bay-shape he had made with his body when he lay down, her head resting in the hollow between his hip and his rib-cage. She had curled up very tight, like a fist. There was oil on the soles of her shoes, and on her neck, just below her ear, he saw two tiny moles that he had never noticed before. Dracula scars.

‘Gloria?’ He ruffled her hair. Her mouth twitched, but she didn’t wake up.

‘Gloria?’

She jack-knifed into a sitting position, her eyes wide open. ‘I was dreaming,’ she said.

‘What were you dreaming about?’ he asked her as they trudged across the beach.

She frowned. ‘Someone had hidden my voice. Someone had stolen my voice while I was sleeping and hidden it somewhere.’

They walked up the steps, their heads bent, the wood creaking under their feet. The grey air flapped around them like damp canvas. Their clothes were stiff, sticky with salt.

‘Why do I feel so cold?’ Gloria spoke through mauve lips. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been so cold.’

When they reached the top they paused, looked back down. It was high tide. Grey sky. Grey sea. There was no way of telling where the horizon was, nothing to suggest a division of any kind. A foghorn groaned in the distance. An explanation there, perhaps. Grey sea. Grey beach. At the base of the cliffs, a splash of colour, the only splash of colour visible. The reds, greens, blues of sleeping-bags. Sudden and out of place, like something spilt or dropped. An accident. The scattered pieces of a puzzle.

‘Come on,’ Moses said. ‘It’ll be warmer in the car.’

On their way across the car-park they passed Eddie’s car. Moses peered in through the windscreen. He smiled at what he saw.

‘Hey,’ he called out. ‘Come and look at this.’

Gloria stood ten yards away, her hands tucked into her armpits. ‘What is it? I thought you said we could sleep.’

She trailed back to Eddie’s car and looked through the window. Eddie, Vince and Debra were sitting inside. All three sat perfectly upright in their seats with their eyes closed. They were all fast asleep.

‘So?’ Gloria said.

‘What does it remind you of?’

Gloria shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Old Dinwoodie.’

‘Old who?’

Moses stared at her. ‘Old Dinwoodie. You know. It was just before his bike went off the road. He was driving along with his eyes shut. Don’t you remember?’

‘I didn’t see that.’ Gloria turned away.

Moses’s smile had narrowed, but a trace of it still lingered as he followed her to the car. Some part of him was immensely pleased that she had seen Eddie sitting there with his mouth open like that.

*

He ached into consciousness again, his forehead pressed against cold glass. He had lost all feeling in his right leg. He opened his mouth in the shape of a scream as he shifted and felt the life begin to crawl back through his skin. Christ, what a night.

He wiped the window with the less painful of his two hands. The mobile toilet door had swung open: it banged repeatedly on the tinny grey drum of its own side wall. Mist clung to the summit of the field beyond. Two or three dismal sheep grazed beside the wire fence. In front of the café, a few people in sweaters clutched white china mugs. They looked like the victims of some minor natural disaster. Nobody seemed to be talking. At least the café had opened. That was something.

He heard Gloria yawn from beneath her blanket on the back seat. He turned to look at her. Ouch: his neck. First her hair emerged, then an ear, and finally the rest of her face, exhausted, but still beautiful.

‘Don’t look at me,’ she muttered.

He watched her in the mirror instead. Smeared mascara. Blue crescents under her eyes. She looked bruised.

‘Moses,’ came her small voice, ‘d’you think there’s any chance of a cup of coffee?’

He smiled. ‘Yes, I think there’s a chance.’

He got out of the car and stretched.

During the forties and fifties the café must have been quite safe. A place to take the family at weekends. A beauty spot of sorts. And even now, on a calm day, you could sit at one of those unsteady metal tables on the terrace and listen to the sea rustling over the pebbles below and believe that everything was all right. But what about the raw winter nights when storms blew in, and the waves hacked and munched at the base of the cliffs, and the black gap gaped and beckoned? There was fear in that old place as it watched the worn grass diminish year by year, as the sixty-foot drop edged nearer and nearer. He could almost hear the death-rattle of those loose sheets of glass, the teeth of the café chattering.

A few tables and chairs had taken up positions outdoors. They had been painted strange garish colours: mustard-yellow, hot-pink, lime-green. It was like an exhibition of freaks, a zoo of four-legged creatures with no heads. One of the tables was psychedelic mauve. It stood apart from the rest of the furniture as if embarrassed or shunned. Angled away from the sun-terrace and halfway to the cliff-edge, it gave the impression that, any moment now, it might break into an ungainly blundering run and hurl itself into the void.