Dreams of Leaving

by Rupert Thomson

  He stood back. So. A city. Well, he’d known it all along, really. Just hadn’t dared believe in it. In case it disappointed him. In case it let him down. He was superstitious that way.

  Now he walked through what he had unearthed without reaching its limits. He paused in courtyards, he followed streets, he crossed squares. He stood at crossroads. He felt like a tourist. Overawed. Bewildered. No mastery of history.

  Inadequate.

  He faltered at the word.

  A sudden blur of colour took him by surprise. It sprinted along the very edge of his vision. The flicker of a lizard? The sun glancing off a stone? These were possibilities, but not convincing ones. He ran to the corner just in time to catch a glimpse of someone on a bicycle. The someone wore an orange anorak.

  He would’ve known that orange anorak anywhere.

  Alan.

  Well, he supposed he should’ve been expecting that. Yes, he should’ve expected to run into Alan. He sank down on to one of the massive hewn blocks of stone that made up the kerb. No point chasing him, though. No point even calling out. What could he say?

  After that it seemed to go dark in a second. Night descending. The weekend again. Traffic lights turned green on the main road below and strange people’s feet pressed accelerators. Voices bumped against the kitchen window like balloons. Outside there was another city.

  Three phone-calls happened in quick succession.

  First Eddie wanted Moses to come to a party in Barons Court.

  ‘No,’ Moses said.

  Then Jackson called from his aunt’s in Cheltenham to ask Moses whether he had seen any sign of the cold front which ought to be moving towards London at that very moment.

  ‘No,’ Moses said.

  And finally Louise rang, jaunty as ever (she called him honey), and asked him if he minded filling in for her at The Bunker because she had promised to take an old Spanish friend of hers to see Gloria sing.

  ‘No,’ Moses said. ‘I don’t mind.’

  *

  He sat in Louise’s Perspex box that evening and sold tickets. People paying to get in were impressed by his expressionless face and his sullen monosyllables. All the best clubs hired people like that.

  But nothing could lighten Moses’s mood, not even Ridley’s imitation of a bird of paradise. An Anti-Nowhere League single was running through his head:

  I’ve been here and I’ve been there

  and I’ve been every-fucking-where

  so what, so what, you boring little cunt –

  The night dragged, joyless.

  When the club closed at two, he left Ridley to lock up. He climbed the stairs, put some music on and stretched out on his sofa. He had a sense of the building falling silent under him.

  He went to bed just before three.

  He woke almost immediately, it seemed, but a glance at his clock told him it was four-fifteen. Bird stood on the windowsill, one paw raised. When he saw Moses he opened his blunt jaws and released one of his famous seagull cries. It rose from the bottom of the night, desolate but urgent, chilling – a warning.

  ‘What is it, Bird?’

  Then he heard a sound. It followed so closely on his words that it might have been surreal punctuation. Something like glass shattering, he thought. He lay still, propped up on one elbow, every muscle rigid.

  Hearing nothing more, he eased out of bed, pulled on a T-shirt and jeans, and stepped into an old pair of desert-boots. His movements unusually light, he crossed the room and listened at the door. A truck shifted gears on the main road; a window vibrated somewhere, then the building quietened down again.

  He crept downstairs until he reached the door that connected his stairs with the short corridor leading to Elliot’s office. Here again he paused, heard nothing. He flung Elliot’s door open with a crash and flicked the light on. The walls, the desk, the sofa, leapt out at him and froze. It occurred to him that if there was anyone in the building they would now know that they were not alone.

  He moved back along the corridor towards the stairs that led down into the nightclub. His footsteps made no sound on the carpet. He began to take the stairs. One by one, one hand on the wall. He stopped at the bottom of each flight. Listened. Before turning blind into the next flight. It was a gamble every time, a private dare. Sooner or later something would be there. It was like Russian roulette. There had to be a bullet in one of the chambers.

  Then he had reached the bottom of the stairs and the dim expanse of the foyer lay ahead. To his left a glimmer of pale light showed him where the Perspex ticket-box was. To his right a wide corridor led to the bar.

  He edged into the corridor. The darkness thickened, began to pulse. Then he remembered the policeman. And wanted to run or scream. Wanted to hurl himself to the floor and thrash about like an epileptic. Fear had him. Still he inched along the corridor. When the carpet turned to wood beneath his feet, he knew he was standing on the dance-floor. The darkness sang like an electric fence now. He could feel the hairs lifting on his bare forearms. A sudden draught of cool air brushed past him. Where had that come from? He sensed a movement to his left and turned. Something struck him where his neck joined his shoulder. The darkness was a night sky showering big flakes of snow. He hit out sideways and made contact with something that felt smooth and hard. A person’s face, perhaps. He heard a noise like air escaping from a valve. Then he was lying on his back.

  He couldn’t have lost consciousness though, because he saw a shape slip away across the dance-floor. Or thought he did, anyway. He hauled himself to his feet. He had the feeling that he was coming last in some kind of bizarre race.

  He found a broken window in the Ladies. The same toilet he had taken speed in all those months ago. He stood on the seat and put his face to the gap. Cold air touched his hair. He heard a car pull away in the side-street. He doubted that it was the person who had broken in. It seemed too convenient somehow. Besides it had taken him ages to cover the distance from the dance-floor to the toilet window. Whoever it was would probably be far away by now. Whoever it was.

  He had a piss. An afterthought, really. So casual it made him laugh. He walked back into the club and turned all the lights on. No blood, no shit, no white arrows. He switched on the PA. Thump, hiss. For the next hour he played music. Bands like Crass, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Pack, Crisis, The Fall. He even found the Anti-Nowhere League single that had been crashing through his head all evening. He played that too.

  so what, so what, you boring little cunt

  who cares, who cares what you do

  who cares, who cares about you

  you

  you, you, you –

  At times he had the feeling that the person who had hit him was listening outside the broken toilet window. In a way he hoped so. Because the music was for him.

  He shivered behind the D J’s Perspex shield until it began to get light. Only then did he switch the lights and the power off and climb back up the stairs to bed.

  *

  He woke at midday. His neck ached. The sky was grey and grit blew in the wind. Pigeons peeled off the windowsill across the street like plump aeroplanes, stumbled through the air in clumsy circles, and landed on the windowsill again. There were machine-guns in his mind.

  He tried ringing Elliot on the internal extension. No reply. Great. He went out to buy some breakfast.

  Dino took one look at Moses as he pushed through the door and his whole face expanded into a smile. ‘Hello, Moses.’ He pronounced it Maoses, as usual. ‘You look terrible.’

  ‘I didn’t sleep too well.’

  Dino was wearing a badge on his shapeless grey sweatshirt. It’s all Greek to me, it said.

  ‘That’s a great badge, Dino,’ Moses said.

  ‘You like it?’ Dino squinted down, his chin doubling. ‘One of my mates gave it to me.’

  ‘You know, I could use a badge like that.’

  ‘Yeah, but you’re not Greek, are you?’ Dino cackled and vanished into the back of his shop.r />
  When Moses got back to The Bunker he found a note under the door. Dinner tonight? M. He couldn’t understand how they had missed each other. He had only been out for fifteen minutes at the most. He ran back to the main road and looked for the old blue Volvo. Not a sign. He shrugged his shoulders and, slipping the note into his pocket, walked slowly home.

  *

  He stayed in all afternoon waiting for Elliot. When he saw the white Mercedes glide into the side-street on the stroke of five he ran downstairs.

  ‘Elliot – ’

  ‘Hey, Abraham! What’s up?’

  ‘Elliot, listen. We got broken into again last night.’

  ‘Don’t be funny.’

  ‘It’s true, Elliot.’

  Upstairs in the office, he told Elliot the whole story in detail. He only left out the part where he had sat in the club until dawn playing records. He couldn’t make any sense of that himself. When he had finished, Elliot propped his feet on the desk and blew some air out of his mouth.

  ‘Shit. You all right, Moses?’

  Moses nodded.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘It was only a glancing blow,’ Moses explained. ‘I think he was aiming for my head, but it was dark and my head’s much higher up than most people’s, so he got my shoulder instead.’

  ‘Lucky you’re big, right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Moses said. ‘Lucky I’m big.’

  Elliot drew his lips into his mouth and stared out of the window. ‘You didn’t get a look at him?’

  Moses shook his head. ‘Too dark.’

  ‘OK, leave this with me. I appreciate what you did, you know, but next time, if you hear something, call me first. All right?’

  Moses moved towards the door. ‘I’ll remember that.’

  Elliot faced back into the room and, adjusting his gold bracelet, said casually, ‘Just as a matter of interest, Moses, who was that woman coming out of your door the other day?’

  ‘Woman? What woman?’

  ‘Nice-looking, but getting on a bit. Had a black dress on.’

  ‘Careful, Elliot,’ Moses said. ‘That’s my mother you’re talking about.’

  ‘Your mother? Don’t give me that – ’

  But Moses had already left the office.

  Elliot, who had seen Moses kissing the woman on the street, looked puzzled. Sons don’t kiss their mothers. Not like that. Not with tongues. Some of the stories Moses came out with. Like that one about a friend of his who had slept with two thousand women. That had to be some kind of record, that did. Elliot grinned, shook his head, whistled through the gap in his teeth. Then the grin faded, his face tightened, and he went back to hoping the phone wasn’t going to ring.

  *

  ‘Christ, Moses,’ Alison said, ‘that’s scary.’

  He had just told the Shirleys what had happened the previous night. He glanced across at Mary. She was tilting her knife this way and that, catching light on the blade.

  ‘Why don’t you leave?’ she said. ‘If it’s that dangerous, why not find somewhere else to live?’

  ‘I can’t,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know. Elliot’s a friend. I owe him.’

  Her knife struck the table. ‘When are you going to stop being other people’s fool?’ she snapped.

  He had been smiling, but the smile stiffened on his face. The silence round the table had the tension of held breath.

  ‘When are you going to stop being grateful, for fuck’s sake? When are you going to stop letting people use you? Stop being grateful, Moses. Start standing up for yourself. You don’t owe anybody anything, don’t you see that? Jesus Christ, it makes me sick the way you sit there like a stuffed prick and say “I owe him”. You don’t owe. Got it?’

  She stared at him, her face mottled, tight with anger, and he remembered the time he’d told her about Eddie. He’d tried to explain the way Eddie treated women. ‘It’s not intentional,’ he’d said. ‘He can’t see it. He just does it.’ She’d considered this, then she’d said, ‘He sounds like a shit to me.’ Of course he’d sometimes thought of Eddie as a shit. The time Eddie dumped that topless waitress on him, for instance. Or the night of the beach party. When it affected him personally, perhaps. And suddenly, in that moment, Mary’s judgment had spread to cover everything that Eddie did. She’s right, he’d found himself thinking. Eddie’s just a shit. A shit from Basingstoke. Where shits come from. It all made sense. But later he’d remembered that she often seemed jealous of his friends, his ‘other world’, as she called it, and that she often put them down without giving them a chance, almost as a matter of principle. So he’d swayed back again. Eddie had become a statue once more. Mythical, unaccountable, creating his own laws.

  Wasn’t this new outburst of hers similar? Wasn’t she just pulling The Bunker down because it didn’t include her, because it was something she felt she had to compete against? Or was she really concerned about his safety?

  When he looked across at her, she said sadly, ‘When are you going to learn, Moses? When are you going to learn?’

  ‘You’re right,’ he sighed. He wanted to learn from her. He really did.

  But, at the same time, he knew that nothing she could say to him would ever make him leave The Bunker.

  *

  Later, drunker, they stood talking on the terrace. A light wind tugged at the edges of the shawl that she had wrapped around her shoulders. On a sudden impulse she leaned across to kiss him. He stepped back so abruptly that she almost lost her balance.

  ‘Not now,’ he said.

  She glared at him. ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘I don’t want to do that now. Not here. It’s too dangerous.’

  ‘Dangerous?’ Her lip curled. She seemed to find what he was saying utterly beyond belief, utterly contemptible. ‘What do you mean dangerous?

  ‘You know what I mean, Mary.’

  ‘No, I don’t. I don’t know what you mean. What’s wrong with you today?’

  When he didn’t reply, she wrapped herself more tightly in her shawl and, backing away from him, said, ‘Christ, sometimes you chill me to the bone.’

  She almost trod on Alan’s foot. Alan had been standing in the doorway. Moses hadn’t noticed him either.

  ‘What’s going on out here?’ Alan asked. Light-hearted though, not accusing. He obviously hadn’t seen anything.

  Mary pushed past him without answering.

  Moses smiled. ‘Just a little difference of opinion.’

  ‘Ah yes.’ Alan’s eyes glittered behind his glasses. ‘That happens in this house.’

  Moses found Mary drinking brandy in the living-room. He told her he was sorry, but said they had to be more careful. Mary shook her head.

  ‘It was the moment. You destroyed it.’

  Moses said nothing.

  ‘I thought we agreed about that,’ she said. ‘I thought we said no destruction.’

  ‘That’s crazy.’

  ‘What’s crazy?’

  ‘Blowing it up into something so big.’

  ‘You destroyed the moment, Moses,’ she insisted, and that had the power to negate anything he said.

  It unnerved him, the way everything was suddenly turning round, coming back on him like a wave. Mary had laid down laws about no destruction and no fucking and then she had handed them over to him to enforce while she, it seemed, was free to modify or challenge them whenever she pleased. It was as if, in suspecting him of wanting the relationship with her simply because there was no responsibility involved, she had created a sense of responsibility herself, given it to him, and claimed the role of devil’s advocate for her own. At last he realised that if the rules were still intact it was purely his own doing. They could be broken any time he chose.

  *

  Perhaps that was why he got so drunk that night. It anaesthetised the fear. You just blundered about regardless, sorted out the wreckage in the morning.

  At midnight he found Mary alone in the kitchen. She
had just put on a record of Billie Holiday songs. She was drinking neat vodka. She held out a hand to him.

  ‘Everybody’s gone to bed,’ she said. ‘Let’s dance.’

  They danced.

  Once, when he glanced towards the door, she whispered, ‘Don’t be frightened.’

  ‘I’m not,’ he said.

  ‘You flinched. I felt it.’

  ‘I don’t remember flinching.’ He pulled away, looked down at her. ‘When did I flinch?’

  She smiled and pressed her face into his shirt. ‘Relax,’ she said.

  It wasn’t dancing music, but they carried on dancing. In one of their closer moments, he let his hand rest against her right breast. One of her hands instantly flew up and knocked it away.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you want me to do that?’

  ‘Accident,’ she murmured. ‘It was an accident.’

  His hand returned.

  Afterwards he couldn’t remember the sequence of events that led from the kitchen to the guest-room. He only remembered that he couldn’t stop touching her. Then he was lying next to her in the bed he always slept in when he stayed overnight. They were both naked. Two of his fingers were sliding the length of her cunt and she was moaning. Don’t moan, he wanted to say, but that would probably be destruction again. Jesus.

  He tried, as his fingers moved inside her, to work out who slept where and how thick the walls were and who would be likely to hear, but he was too drunk to arrive at any solutions. He travelled no further than the initial anxieties. Meanwhile Mary moaned. Non-stop.

  Why’s she moaning? he wondered. She had never moaned before. She hadn’t moaned in the woods, for example.

  Once the sound of a revving car stifled her. He longed for traffic-jams outside the bedroom window. How typical, he thought, that they lived at the end of a cul-de-sac.

  Despite his anxiety, despite the rules, despite everything, he was just about to push his cock inside her when the door of the guest-room opened. Alan stood in the doorway wearing his pyjamas. His glasses picked up light from outside. Blank silver discs for eyes. Head cocked at an angle, poised insect. Silence.