Rupert Thomson - Dreams of Leaving

‘If you can’t be clear, that’s your problem. I’m not an interpreter.’

Moses sat up, looked away from her.

‘I’m a wife and a mother,’ Mary said. ‘Whatever else I am comes third.’

He knew that. At the same time he found that degree of clarity a bit suspect. ‘How can you be so sure?’ he asked her. ‘How can it be so neat?’

‘It’s nineteen years of my life, Moses. If I wasn’t sure about that, I wouldn’t be sure about anything.’

‘Maybe you just described me.’

‘Maybe I did. But there’s a big difference. I’m forty. I can’t afford to be wrong.’

‘Old woman,’ he said. He knelt in front of her and put his hands on her shoulders.

‘Yes,’ she said, defiant now, leaves in her hair, ‘I am old.’

‘Kiss me,’ he said.

She stared at him steadily for a moment, then her face relaxed. She kissed him.

*

The wall seemed to go on for ever. Everything was happening on the left and Mary, brighter now as if they had, between them, cleared the air, pointed, scrutinised, cried out:

‘Look. A weir.’

The water, shaped like a comb, fell sheer into a still pool. She told him a story about a girl she had known when she was at college. The girl had drowned herself just below a weir. When they found her, she was floating, bound in weeds, like Ophelia. She had left a note behind in her room. I would have done this months ago, but I had to wait for my hair to grow.

Moses shivered.

‘And I remember everybody telling her how much nicer she looked with her hair long,’ Mary said.

Later they passed a bonfire.

‘You know what Rebecca used to call those?’ she said. ‘Cloud factories.’

Then they saw a sofa overgrown with brambles, a jay (no more than a scribble of blue on the grey paper of the afternoon), and a moon rising above the trees, as see-through as a piece of dead skin. It was one of those days when everything you see has a story attached to it, when everything you see reminds you of something else.

But nothing happened on the right. They glimpsed the house at intervals, from a number of different angles, through gaps where the wall had tumbled down, through cracks in padlocked doors and, once, through the bars of an ornate wrought-iron gateway. There was something pornographic about the way the house revealed itself. It turned them into voyeurs.

After walking for almost two hours they reached the car again.

‘How peculiar,’ Mary said, ‘to go all the way round the house like that, to go so far , without ever getting any nearer.’

It struck Moses that, on another day, they would probably have ignored the PRIVATE PROPERTY signs and scaled the wall and explored the grounds. But he said, ‘Some things are better from a distance.’

‘I hope that doesn’t include me.’

He smiled. ‘You know it doesn’t.’

But she had come perilously close, it seemed, and knew it. For that walk round the wall, he thought, had summed up their entire relationship.

Never getting any nearer.

The rules still intact.

*

Gloria phoned again.

He didn’t want to talk to her at all. He had nothing to say. He found himself feeling delayed by her call, as if he had something important to do, which he hadn’t. She sounded cheerful which made him sound depressed. His mind drifted as she talked. He said yes, no — anything, really. He didn’t care whether he gave himself away or not.

When she had finished answering the questions he hadn’t asked her she began to ask him questions.

‘Are you still seeing the Shirleys?’

‘Yes. Weekends, mostly. Sometimes I stay there a couple of days.’

‘Oh. That’s nice.’ She was trying to be big-hearted. Taking an interest in something that either upset or annoyed her. It made him want to rub her face in it. Would it be ‘nice’ then?

‘What do you do there?’

‘We get drunk, talk, go for walks— ’

‘Is she an alcoholic?’

‘Who?’

‘The mother. Mrs Shirley.’

‘No. She just drinks a lot.’

A short laugh from Gloria, but he hadn’t meant it as a joke. Then a pause. ‘Are you all right?’ she said. ‘You sound a bit morose.’

‘I’m fine,’ he said, sounding morose.

‘What is it then? Don’t you want to talk to me?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. But really she was right. He didn’t want to talk to her. He couldn’t explain it to himself so there seemed little point in trying to explain it to her.

‘Can I come round?’ she was asking him now.

‘When?’ he said. Thinking tomorrow, the next day, something like that.

‘Now.’

Jesus, he thought. Then he went blank. Looked at the clock even though he already knew what time it was.

‘If you like,’ he said finally.

‘See you in about half an hour.’

He put the phone down and began to wait for her to arrive. He resented her presumption. Inviting herself round like that. But why, in that case, hadn’t he simply said no? How was it she had acquired the power to rob him of initiative?

*

She hung her coat on the ghost’s coat-hook even though he had told her a thousand times.

‘I’m worried about you,’ she said, moving across the room towards him.

He kissed her, then he turned away. ‘Why?’

‘I think you’re getting in over your head.’

‘Over my head?’ He laughed, but there was no humour in his laugh. What right did she have to say that? ‘How do you know?’

She sat down on the sofa and lit a cigarette. He could hear it crackle in the silence as she inhaled. ‘Call it a hunch,’ she said.

He looked over his shoulder at her. It was something Mary might have said. She phrased things that way.

‘I mean, I don’t care what you do with her.’ Gloria was examining her shoes.

‘And what if I told you we don’t do anything?’

‘I don’t care. The thing is, you’re not being straight with me. You keep everything to yourself. I don’t know where I stand any more.’ She paused, looked up from her shoes. ‘That means something, don’t you think?’

Moses turned back to the window and pressed his forehead against the cold glass. He felt sick, uncertain, found out. His mind was going blank with the division of things. Down in the street he could see three children sitting on a wall. They were laughing and swinging their legs. He wanted to sit on a wall. He wanted to laugh and swing his legs.

‘Moses,’ and Gloria’s voice had softened now, ‘just tell me where I stand.’

‘It’s a friendship,’ he heard himself insisting.

She looked down at her hands. For the first time, he saw her as a nun, her smile limited and prim — superior. She was making him ridiculous. A friendship. How pompous. But what could he tell her? He tried again.

‘I like them all. The whole family. That’s why I go there. It’s as simple as that. I can’t see why you’re making it into such a great drama.’

She came and stood next to him, her shoulder touching his upper arm. It was a forgiveness routine (for what?). He turned to look at her. She turned a moment later. They kissed. But the deeper their kiss became, the less he could see. It was all too close. He couldn’t focus. Everything blurred and swam away.

*

Sleeping together didn’t change anything. His body went through the motions — and not without a certain practised tenderness — but his mind floated free. His orgasm, when it came, seemed to happen somewhere else. It was like hearing an explosion in the distance as you walk down a quiet street: you pause for a second, listen, then walk on unaffected.

He lay on his back afterwards, one arm over his face, the other across his stomach. He wished the afternoon would accelerate into dusk so their faces became invisible. Gloria asked him what he was thinking about.