‘Maybe.’ Moses didn’t sound convinced.
As they went through the album, Gloria could see a story emerging – a rural setting, a man, a woman, courtship, marriage, a house, a baby – a story that would have struck her as romantic and touching, but perfectly ordinary, had it not been for the air of profound despondency that all the pictures seemed to breathe, release into the room around her. It was nothing she could put her fìnger on, just the sense that something was being held back. She tried to explain this to Moses.
‘Jesus, I think you’re right,’ Moses said. ‘I’d never really seen it that way before, but you’re right. There’s no real joy there, is there?’
Gloria turned back a few pages. ‘Especially your mother,’ she said.
The photographs showed a woman in her twenties. Tall, almost statuesque, yet ill at ease. She seemed always to be shying away from the camera. Her smile looked awkward, unconvincing, as if she had been told to smile when, in reality, she was feeling something else, as if smiling was a skill which she had still to master. Alice, Summer 1953, for example, where she was crouching on a white garden chair, her back curved, a cup in her left hand. A straw hat with a huge floppy brim shielded her eyes from the glare. She shrank back into the shadow it afforded her, surprised – no, more than that: alarmed. Or The Boundary 1949. In this one she wore a white blouse and a floral skirt, but the vivacious clothes clashed with her mood. She stood pressed against a tree, almost pinned to the bark, her hands in front of her, one clasping the other. There was always that sense of straining for effect. There was always that false note.
‘What boundary, I wonder?’ Gloria said.
Moses didn’t know. But her question had made an important point. They could guess, they could speculate, they could fantasise. Further than that they couldn’t go.
Moses’s father, on the other hand, appeared confident, resourceful even. Moses turned to his favourite picture, Birdwatching 1955. His father stood in heroic semi-profile, a tall square-shouldered man with unruly black hair and kind eyes, remarkably similar in build, funnily enough, to Uncle Stan. He had dressed with a certain amount of panache: a Paisley scarf folded across his chest and tucked into a high-buttoning check jacket, a triangle of patterned handkerchief showing in his breast pocket, a shooting-stick under one arm, a newspaper (Sporting Life?) under the other. In his right hand he held a pair of binoculars. Hence the caption.
‘Maybe he was just a better actor than your mother,’ Gloria said.
Moses thought she was exaggerating.
Gloria shrugged. ‘OK, what about this one then?’ She was pointing at a picture that was titled Our Ambition 1954. – ‘How do you explain that?’
A country road stretched along the bottom of the picture. Beyond it lay a grass bank and a row of peeling silver birches. Beyond them, a gypsy caravan with big spoked wheels and a chimney that looked like a crooked toadstool growing out of the roof.
Gloria answered her own question. ‘It looks to me as if they just wanted to get away from everything. And I’m not surprised, really. Look at the house. It looks really depressing.’
True, Moses thought. Despite the open windows and the parasol planted at a jaunty angle in the lawn (it must have been summer), the house looked withdrawn, lifeless, blind. The attempts at gaiety had fallen flat. The house where they had (presumably) lived together. The house where he had (presumably) been born.
The mood only lightened towards the end of the album.
‘Oh look,’ Gloria cried. ‘It’s you.’
Moses in woolly boots and mittens, cradled in his mother’s arms (Three Months Old). Moses sitting upright in his pram, one arm in the air (Conducting 1955). Moses wearing his father’s cap (Just Like Dad 1956).
‘Is it really me?’ Moses said. ‘Are you sure?’
‘That’s you all right.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘How can I tell? Look at the size of you!’
‘That’s a normal size for a baby, isn’t it?’
‘That,’ and Gloria tapped one of the pictures of Moses, ‘is not a normal size for a baby. Believe me.’
‘I don’t know,’ Moses said. ‘I don’t really know very much about babies.’
‘Look at that picture of you wearing your dad’s cap.’
‘What about it?’
‘Well, I mean, it fits, for Christ’s sake. And you’re only a few months old.’
Moses laughed. ‘I suppose so.’
Gloria picked the album up and studied the picture still more closely. ‘They loved you, though,’ she said. ‘I can see that.’
‘Why did they get rid of me then?’
That was one question Gloria didn’t have the answer to.
*
‘I’m going down to the snooker-room,’ Moses said. ‘Coming?’
He was wearing nothing except a towel and a pair of socks. It was half past twelve on Sunday night.
‘What?’ Gloria said. ‘Now?’
Moses nodded.
Gloria could see that he had some clearly defined idea in mind, but she couldn’t guess what it was. She slipped her coat on and followed him downstairs.
By the time she reached the snooker-room Moses was beginning to undo his towel. When he was entirely naked he climbed on to the green baize and lay there, full length, on his back.
Smiling, she kicked off her shoes.
The cues lay stiff and silent in their brass racks over by the far wall.
The coloured balls glowed significantly in the woven string sacks under each pocket.
The scoreboard said I – I.
One of the windows was open, and a breeze disturbed the heavy velvet curtains.
It was a warm night in Leicestershire.
*
Ice-cream van? Fire-alarm? Doorbell?
Moses had woken in a sweat, heart thumping, shocked into consciousness by the bright jarring sound.
Telephone.
His arm flailed out in the rough direction of the bedside table. His movements had the slow panic of someone sinking into quicksand. He found the receiver, picked it up, brought it over to where his head was.
‘This is your early morning call,’ came a woman’s voice. ‘It’s six o’clock.’ She sounded as though she had been up for hours.
‘Six o’clock?’ Moses groaned.
‘You asked to be woken at six, Mr Highness.’
He lay there wondering why, then he remembered that Gloria had an audition in London at eleven.
‘Thank you,’ he said, and hung up.
He sat up, ruffled his hair, switched the bedside light on. Gloria was still asleep, he saw, now that his eyes were open (he wished they weren’t; they stung).
Monday morning. The end of the weekend. The window an empty soulless slate-grey. He hated early mornings, especially early Monday mornings. They seemed to marshal all his anxieties, all his reasons for depression – troops of occupation that stamped about, brutalising everything, while he looked on, lost, weak, broken-willed. Looking at Gloria (one shoulder bare, a shield of dark hair, pouting mouth), he had the feeling that their best times together were already over.
He touched her shoulder. ‘Gloria?’
‘Mer.’ The foreign language of dawn.
Without opening her eyes, she did a kind of somersault, fetching up against him, facing him, fitting neatly, like a spoon.
‘Don’t want to,’ she said.
He smiled down at her, the kind of smile she would like to have seen. A sad fond smile. Nor do I, he thought. Nor do I.
They were similar in the mornings: dopey, laconic, functioning on automatic pilot. They washed, dressed, packed. They ate a quick breakfast. While Moses took the cases down, Gloria checked the room for anything they might have forgotten. Moses asked Taj Mahal for their bill and paid by cheque. Gloria handed the key over.
‘Thank you,’ she said. And then, at the door, ‘Goodbye, Taj Mahal.’
The receptionist turned towards her, his head catching
the light, and smiled almost pleasantly. Taj Mahal at daybreak. The best time to see it, so they say.
In fifteen minutes they were back on the motorway and settled into their separate silences. Moses became absorbed in the road, its surface the colour of a Siamese cat. Turn-off points for towns he would never see flicked by.
He glanced across at Gloria. She lay in her seat as usual, arms folded, feet in the glove compartment. She was singing snatches of ‘Twenty-Four Hours From Tulsa’.
‘Every car should have one of you installed,’ he said, smiling.
‘Every car should be so lucky.’
He had to agree with that.
‘You know what you did,’ he said moments later, suddenly remembering.
‘No. What?’
‘You called him Taj Mahal. You said, “Goodbye Taj Mahal.”’
‘I didn’t.’ Gloria seemed genuinely surprised.
‘You did. And you know what else? I think he liked it.’
Gloria shook her head, laughed softly to herself. ‘Old Taj Mahal.’
‘Yeah,’ Moses said. ‘He looked at you and smiled.’
The sun was visible now through layers of cloud and mist. It looked like a beautiful woman trying on a négligé.
Cows tugged at the damp glistening turf.
The fields, rumpled at first, gradually began to flatten themselves against the ground, pretending they weren’t there at all.
The sun tried on grey, then white, and finally it walked out of the shop naked. It reminded him of Gloria, also naked, packing the pink dress earlier that morning.
‘Are you sure about this?’ she had asked him.
‘Yes,’ but irritably, ‘yes, I’m sure.’
She hadn’t detected the uncertainty, the resentment, in his voice. It had been like a failure of perception on her part. She had packed the dress.
The road had changed colour. It was black now. The outskirts of London lay like a pile of ashes and clinker on the horizon.
‘Where do you want to be dropped off?’ he asked her.
She looked out of the window at the drab motorway landscape then across at Moses. ‘In London, preferably,’ she said.
‘Sorry,’ and Moses smiled, ‘that came out wrong.’
An hour later he let her out in Victoria and waited long enough to see her swallowed up by the flow of the crowd down into the tube station, then he pulled out into the heavy Monday morning traffic.
Peach Incognito (1980)
He had told everybody the same story.
First Hilda. On the Sunday. At breakfast. The table smelling of flowers and polish, rich and waxy, tampering with the sharp aroma of his grilled herring. Light from the garden skidding off mahogany.
‘I’m going to disappear for twenty-four hours,’ he announced, as he buttered a slice of toast.
Hilda lifted a head of fading dehydrated curls. When questioning something, she displayed her infinite tact. She said nothing; she merely waited.
‘I have some extremely important research to do,’ he said. ‘In the museum.’
‘All right, dear.’ Hilda bit delicately into the triangle of toast poised between her finger and thumb.
‘It will probably be happening next weekend.’ He spoke through the clinking of china. It made his words seem less naked. It seemed to clothe his deceit. ‘Friday and Saturday, I should think. So don’t expect me home on Friday night.’
Torn between amusement and concern, Hilda abandoned her usual discretion. ‘You’re not going to sleep in the museum, are you?’ Her eccentric husband!
He was brisk, imperious. ‘Either that or I’ll use one of the beds in the station. It depends how things go. In any case, don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right.’
Hilda touched the handle of her tea-cup, traced its outline with a single lingering finger. ‘And when will you be back, do you think?’
‘Saturday night. Midnight. No later than that.’
Hilda nodded.
Watching her through the arms of the candelabra, he felt that she had taken the news too casually. He had to impress her with the gravity of the matter. He wanted it branded on her mind.
‘I don’t want to be disturbed, Hilda. Not by anyone. Is that understood?’
Hilda pressed a fingertip to one of the crumbs on her plate. Her bottom teeth gripped her upper lip. Now he had upset her.
‘It’s very important,’ he explained, more gently. ‘It’s only for twenty-four hours.’
‘I know, dear.’ She faced him across the table, and her slightly lifted chin suggested a quaint bravery. ‘I’ll make you some sandwiches and a Thermos of hot soup.’
He didn’t want bloody soup, but he said, ‘That would be very nice.’
For the remainder of the meal, they discussed less controversial subjects: trimming the box hedges, revarnishing the table in the hall.
The conversation with Sergeant Dolphin had necessarily taken a somewhat different course.
‘I’m going to be out of circulation for about twenty-four hours,’ he told Dolphin on the Monday morning, ‘and I want you to take over the running of the village.’
‘Take over the running of the village, sir?’
Peach turned towards his office window, so as to hide his smile. The second half of his announcement had distracted Dolphin from too close or too immediate an examination of the first half. As he had known it would.
He swung round again, hearty, irrepressible. ‘Be Chief Inspector,’ he said. ‘It’ll be valuable experience for you, Dolphin. Stand you in good stead for the future.’ He felt so expansive that he almost winked. ‘It’s high time you had the feel of the reins in your hands. The reins of power, Dolphin. I won’t be here for ever, you know.’
In his eloquence Peach had ridden over the poor sergeant. He had, in fact, been quite carried away by his own oratory. ‘Yes, sir,’ were the only words Dolphin managed to get in – and those edgeways.
‘I’m going to be working on a project in the museum. It’s very confidential and I need absolute privacy. Under no circumstances do I want to be disturbed. Under no circumstances. Do I make myself clear, Dolphin?’
‘Very clear.’
‘I want you to pretend that I’m not here.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Pretend that I don’t exist. Imagine, if you like, that I’m dead.’
He saw alarm go off in Dolphin’s face. Well, perhaps that had been going a bit far. Still, it was gratifying to know that you were going to be missed. And the point, though exaggerated, was a valid one.
‘Seriously,’ he ran on, ‘it’ll make things more realistic. If a crisis occurs you won’t be tempted to consult me. You’ll be on your own, Dolphin. Just for those twenty-four hours. I’ve got a great deal of faith in you. I wouldn’t be giving you this assignment if I didn’t. But I’m sure you understand that.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Well, Peach had certainly given Dolphin something to think about. And first thing on Monday morning too, the sergeant’s eyes still foolish with sleep.
‘I’ll be briefing you on the exact timing later in the week,’ he concluded.
‘All right, sir.’ Dolphin scraped at the floor with the rim of his boot, then he looked up. ‘I appreciate the opportunity, sir. I’ll be looking forward to it.’
That’s my Dolphin, Peach thought.
*
It had all been so easy. On Friday of that week he organised the day patrols so that, for a period of precisely twenty minutes, the road that led southwest towards the village of Bunt would be left unmanned. Everything went as planned. At 6.30 on Friday evening he rode out of New Egypt on his bicycle. When he crossed the boundary he felt nothing. No hallucinations, no rush of adrenalin, not even a quickening of the pulse. Nothing. His feet pumped the pedals as before, the bicycle sped onwards. Once or twice he glanced from side to side as if the feelings he had heard about from previous escapees might be lurking in the hedgerow, waiting to spring out, infiltrate, be felt. He rode on. Still
nothing happened. It was a pleasant evening in June.
Half an hour later he arrived at a small country railway station some eight miles west of New Egypt. He pedalled across the deserted car-park, his tyres silent on the tarmac. He dismounted behind a van with a shattered windscreen, and wheeled his bicycle through some bushes and down a crumbling mud bank into the copse that bordered the railway tracks. There, in the green gloom, among bleached cans of hairspray and the skeletons of motorbikes, he changed into civilian clothes. He folded his uniform and crammed it into his saddlebag. He locked the saddlebag. Then he dragged the bicycle behind a bush and camouflaged it with dead wood, brambles and leaves.
He walked into the Gents (hissing copper pipes, smells of pine and piss commingling) to check his appearance. When he saw himself in the mirror above the washbasins he thought how suspicious, how like a criminal, he looked. Partly the way he was dressed, he supposed. (He was wearing a beige check sports jacket, a green shirt, and a dark red tie which Hilda had given him for his birthday. His cavalry twill trousers had come out of a Christmas catalogue. On his feet, a pair of brogues. Respectable if somewhat characterless clothes. Deliberately so.) And partly the clandestine nature of what he was doing. His grey eyes watched him watching from beneath their heavy lids. His grey hair bristled like a bed of nails. The green shirt gave his face an unhealthy, slightly chilling pallor.
Still, he looked pretty vigorous for a man of his age.
*
If I were to die now, Peach wrote in a slightly unsteady hand, what would happen?
He sat back and considered the question. It would be a nightmare for Dolphin, of course. Though Dolphin wouldn’t think of it as a death. Not right away. He would probably call it a disappearance. Still, that was serious enough. Nobody disappeared in New Egypt. Least of all a Chief Inspector. What would he do? Check the museum first. His only lead. But he would find no trace of Peach. Not a single clue.
Absolute nightmare.
It wouldn’t be long before Dolphin began to suspect foul play. A kidnapping, for instance. Even, perhaps, a murder. (Peach’s forty-year reign as Chief Inspector, his merciless grip on the community, had always made that a possibility – though who would dare?) He would have to lift the news blackout. He would have to inform the village. And then? Instant pandemonium.
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