Dreams of Leaving

by Rupert Thomson

  He proposed two innovations: firstly, that one of the three policemen to be pelted would now be selected by a special committee of people from the village, and secondly, that Pelting Day would become the setting for a winter fair with the ritual of pelting as its jewel. He set up a sort of think-tank to generate ideas. It comprised PC Wilmott, Brenda Gunn, Joel Mustoe Junior and, of course, himself. The meetings went surprisingly well considering. In part this may have stemmed from Peach’s preoccupation with other matters (he wasn’t his usual acid domineering self, he was too busy trying to think of ways to kill Moses). In part, too, this may simply have reflected the wisdom and judgment he had shown in selecting the members of the committee. The only moments of friction occurred during the third meeting. Not, as you might expect, between the police and the villagers, but between Mustoe and Brenda Gunn. Mustoe had challenged Brenda’s suggestion that the police should finance the mulled-wine stall.

  Mustoe said, ‘Why should the police pay for it?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t they?’ Brenda snapped. ‘Pelting Day is organised by the police. It’s a police tradition. It’s obvious they should pay for it,’ each point accompanied by a brisk emphatic slap on the table.

  Peach could only hear them dimly. There was a chainsaw in his mind. A deafening howl as it bit into the black side-door of The Bunker.

  ‘Exactly,’ Mustoe was saying. ‘They organise it. They’ve done their bit. Now it’s our turn.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be a ninny.’

  ‘They organise it,’ Mustoe went on, ‘because we can’t. Or won’t. Nobody here does anything except complain, get drunk and kill themselves. Sometimes this village really makes me sick.’

  ‘Welcome to the club,’ Brenda sneered.

  ‘And that includes you, Mrs Gunn. Why don’t you kill yourself too? Might as well, really, mightn’t you?’

  Brenda leaned back, hands flat on the table. ‘Strikes me,’ she said, ‘that we’ve got three police officers sitting at this table.’

  Mustoe bridled. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘I mean that you, Mr bloody Mustoe Junior, are behaving like a bloody policeman.’

  ‘Brenda,’ PC Wilmott was attempting conciliation, ‘I don’t think you’re being very constructive.’

  ‘Constructive? Who the hell’re you to talk? All you’ve been doing all week is polishing Peach’s boots with your face.’ Brenda leaned over the table on her man’s forearms – solid marble pillars resting on the twin plinths of her fists.

  Wilmott’s shiny face reddened.

  Up until that point Peach had been plunged deep into a world of nightclubs and murder. He had been doodling on his notepad. Sketches of nooses, knives, garottes, guillotines, machine-guns. A rack here, a bazooka there (if only he could get hold of one of those!). Injunctions printed in hostile black block capitals: KILL, THROTTLE, GAS, ANNIHILATE And several onomatopoeic representations of the noises people make when they’re dying. AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH, for instance. MMMPPPFFFF And GLOPGLOPGLOPGLOPGLOP (blood pumping out of a slashed throat). But, despite the carnage going on in his mind, he had been listening with one ear. When Brenda turned on Wilmott, he heaved himself into the fray.

  ‘The police will pay for the mulled wine,’ he declared. (At that moment he couldn’t have cared less who paid for the bloody mulled wine. If this year was anything like last year it wouldn’t cost much anyway. How much mulled wine could half a dozen New Egyptians drink?) ‘Happy, Brenda?’

  Brenda was breathing hard through her nostrils. Still glaring at Wilmott, she sat down.

  The meeting concluded with a discussion of the feasibility of donkey-rides. Peach returned to his own rather more violent speculations.

  By the end of the first week in December they had come up with a sufficient number of ideas. Peach disbanded the committee. Brenda Gunn and Mustoe Junior, working in conjunction with Sergeant Dolphin and a handful of constables, were put in charge of implementation.

  ‘Leave it to me, sir,’ Dolphin said. ‘There’ll be no fiasco this year, I promise you.’

  ‘That,’ Peach sighed, ‘remains to be seen.’

  *

  ‘Are you ready, dear?’

  The gilt mirror on the hall wall showed Hilda in the foreground tying her headscarf and Peach waiting in the shadows by the front door, where the coats hung.

  ‘I’m ready,’ he said.

  She dabbed her nose, her cheeks, her chin – final nervous touches with the powder-puff – then snapped her compact shut. She was wearing the wool suit she kept for special occasions. A muted shade of burgundy. It brings my colour out, she was fond of saying.

  They walked down Magnolia Close towards the village green.

  ‘Pelting Day,’ she sighed. ‘It only seems like yesterday – ’ Since the last one, she meant.

  He murmured agreement.

  When they reached the grass, he gave her his arm. He looked about him. A cool clear afternoon. A bone-china sky, the most fragile of blues. Wood-smoke in the air. The damp turf blackening the tips of Hilda’s shoes. She held herself very upright as she walked, braced almost, as if she was facing into a stiff breeze, as if she expected life to jostle her. But it wasn’t that, Peach knew. It was anticipation.

  ‘Oh, look,’ she cried. ‘A bonfire.’

  He had told her nothing of the plans for Pelting Day this year. Had he wanted to surprise her, or had he simply not bothered? He so rarely surprised her with anything these days. He could blame it on his age or the pressures of work. Other men did. But he knew that wasn’t it. If he was honest he had to admit that it was pure negligence. A scaling down of gifts and attention. And Hilda’s expectations falling too, settling. Like dust after a building’s been razed to the ground. He turned to look at her. His vision dissected her. He saw wide eyes, a parted mouth, the struts in her neck. An almost girlish excitement. A brittle pitiful delight. He thought her reactions exaggerated, and felt guilty for thinking so. Once it would have seemed natural. Now it bordered on the grotesque. His fault, really. He did so little for her. He felt so little. At times he had to cajole himself into feeling anything at all. His love for her seemed to have fallen to bits like one of those joke cars. Touch the door and the door drops off. Whoops, there goes a wheel. Ha ha ha. He wanted suddenly to reassemble it. But that would take time. Time spent together. After he had killed Moses, perhaps he would retire.

  A child scuttled out of the shadows, scattered his thoughts. The child wore a mask. An old man’s wrinkled face, a bald head, wisps of stiff white hair. Young eyes glittering beneath. This travesty pointed a finger at him and chanted:

  Peach, Peach,

  Down to the beach,

  Drown in the sea,

  Then we’ll be free.

  Then ran away sniggering.

  Peach stood still. His lower lip moved in and out.

  ‘You mustn’t take it so seriously, dear,’ Hilda said. ‘It’s only Pelting Day.’

  Her voice, intended as a balm, had no effect.

  The bonfire threw great pleading arms into the darkening sky. The damp wood hawked and spat. Strapped to a chair on the peak of the fire sat the effigy of a policeman. One of the old APRs. They watched the straw face catch. It blazed, turned black. They moved on.

  The area between the fire and the eastern edge of the green bustled with stalls and sideshows. There were coconut-shies (the coconuts wore tiny blue helmets), bran tubs, dart-throwing contests, donkey-rides, hoop-la (very difficult to ring the policemen on account of the size of their boots), trestle-tables loaded with homemade pickles and preserves, a mulled-wine tent (run by Mustoe Junior), a GUESS THE WEIGHT OF THE CHIEF INSPECTOR AND WIN A SURPRISE GIFT competition (‘Thirty-five stone,’ Peach heard somebody say as he went by. Very funny), and a palm-reader (Mrs Latter from the post office, her face caked in lurid make-up).

  ‘It’s marvellous,’ Hilda cried. ‘You have done well, darling.’

  He nodded. The unstable orange light of the fire made everyone look predatory, fiend
ish, medieval. The laughter, the smoke, the gaiety, exhausted him. He hated surrendering control like this.

  They had reached the clearing in front of the pub. The stocks stood there as they had stood for centuries. Lanterns hung from poles. Garlands of coloured bulbs had been draped around the trees. The Pelting Day Illuminations.

  ‘So who’s in for it this year?’ Hilda asked in a whisper.

  He had no time to answer. A roar went up. Somebody had glimpsed a movement on the hill. A suggestion of blue in the darkness. A wink of a silver button.

  ‘They’re coming! They’re coming!’

  People pressed towards the stocks from all directions. The Peaches were jostled, pinned from behind by the expanding crowd. Three policemen, accompanied by Sergeant Caution, arrived in the lit arena. Wolf-whistles, cat-calls, applause. Marlpit had drawn one of the unlucky numbers. Poor Marlpit. His eyes twitched in their sockets and dribble glistened on his quivering chin. Wragge trailed behind him, skin white like the inside of potatoes. Peach was rather glad that Wragge was going to be pelted; the boy needed taking down a peg or two. When invited to choose a third policeman, the villagers had settled on Sergeant Hazard. Unanimous decision, apparently. And a popular one, too. Everybody feared and hated Sergeant Hazard. He had terrorised the village for years. Only a month ago he had carried out another of his infamous (and unauthorised) dawn raids, this time on Mr Cawthorne, the postman.

  Peach remembered Hazard’s report, delivered with brutal frankness and meticulous attention to detail in the privacy of Peach’s office:

  ‘I kicked Cawthorne’s door down at precisely five a.m. on the morning of November 19th,’ Hazard began. ‘Cawthorne appeared at the top of the stairs in his dressing-gown and slippers. He seemed frightened. “Who’s that?” he called out. “Come down here and find out,” I replied.’ Hazard chuckled, scratched the side of his great dented face. He enjoyed his work, no question of that. ‘I stamped on his radiogram, just to hurry him up a bit. Cawthorne shuffled downstairs. His face was greenish-grey, the colour of guilt, if you know what I mean, sir. “What are you doing in my house?” he asked me. I hit him in the mouth. Then, on second thoughts, I felled him with a chopped right hand to the kidneys.’ Hazard repeated the punch for Peach’s benefit. The air gasped. ‘I watched him groaning for a while. He had resoled his slippers with pieces of green carpet, I noticed. The cheap bastard. I went and stood over him. I pointed at him. “I suspect you,” I shouted, “of harbouring plans to escape.” “On what grounds?” the bastard said. “On what grounds?” I said. “I’ll give you on what grounds.” I stepped on his hand and twisted my boot. Like I was crushing out a cigarette, sir. He screamed. “That’s confidential,” I said, “isn’t it, Mr Cawthorne?” “Yes,” he whimpered. “That’s better,” I said. “Now then, I think I’ll just have a quick look round, if you don’t mind.”’ The ‘quick look round’ had lasted almost two hours, resulting in further damage both to the postman and to the postman’s house.

  After listening to this report Peach leaned forwards and threaded his fingers together on the surface of his desk. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but why Cawthorne?’

  Hazard seemed surprised by the question. Then he said, ‘He’s the postman, sir.’

  ‘The postman? I still don’t follow.’

  ‘So was Collingwood, sir.’

  ‘Ah, I see.’ And Peach nodded slowly, smiled to himself. A little farfetched, perhaps. A rather flimsy pretext, some might say, for such a violent attack. Still, there was no accounting for the mysterious workings of precedent, especially in a place like New Egypt. And he had been pleased to see an element of rationale creeping into Hazard’s brutalities. ‘Very good, sergeant. Very good.’

  But now, of course, Hazard was paying for it.

  Peach watched Sergeant Caution bolt the struggling Hazard into the stocks. Hazard was muttering. Curses, presumably. Obscenities. Death-threats. When all three policemen had been secured in position, Caution stepped aside and gave the signal for the pelting to begin. Pandemonium. A hail of soft missiles. The crowd broke into a raucous version of the famous ‘Pelting Day Song’:

  Throw tomatoes

  Throw a pear

  At a policeman

  If you dare

  Throw some peaches (laughter)

  From a tin

  Watch them trickle

  Down his chin –

  A cabbage bounced off Hazard’s forehead. His face shook with volcanic fury. His eyes, bloodshot, scanned the crowd and noted names. There would be violence, Peach realised. There would be reprisals. He knew his Hazard.

  He waited long enough to see a ripe tomato burst on Wragge’s cheek, he watched Wragge wriggle as a clot of seeds and juice slid down inside his tunic collar, then he turned away. He didn’t want to witness another second of his men’s humiliation.

  Throw some apples

  Throw some eggs

  Hazard’s had it

  Stop, he begs.

  Just keep throwing

  More and more

  That’s what Pelting

  Day is for –

  Taking Hilda by the hand, he began to push his way through the crowd. Cheers scored the air as if to celebrate his departure. He found that he was trembling.

  ‘You look cold, John,’ Hilda said. ‘Perhaps a glass of mulled wine?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’ He tucked his double chin into his collar.

  ‘A pretty good turn-out, wouldn’t you say, sir?’

  He turned round to see Dolphin standing beside him. In Dolphin’s arms, the most enormous pink bear that he had ever seen.

  ‘Better than I expected.’ Peach’s eyes shuttled between Dolphin’s face and the monstrous bear. He had known all along that this winter fair was a mistake. Look at the effect it was having on his men.

  ‘I won it, sir. In the hoop-la.’ Dolphin bounced the bear in the crook of his arm. ‘My daughter’s going to love it.’

  That may well be, Peach thought, but for Christ’s sake stop carrying it around like that. It’s bad for credibility.

  Hilda tiptoed back with two glasses of mulled wine. ‘Oh, Sergeant Dolphin. If I’d known you were here I would’ve brought you a glass too. It’s very good.’

  Dolphin sketched a bow. ‘Very kind of you, Mrs Peach. But I’m on duty.’

  ‘And that, I suppose,’ Hilda scintillated, ‘is your new partner.’

  Dolphin became foolish. ‘My new partner? Oh yes. I see. Haha.’ He grinned down at his bear.

  Peach now took his deputy aside. ‘Any trouble?’

  ‘Not really, sir. Mustoe’s in the pub. Pretty far gone, as usual. Telling everybody what he thinks of Pelting Day. Says it’s a put-up job. The police just pretending to be human for a few hours. That kind of thing.’

  Peach tutted. Though Mustoe was right, of course.

  ‘Apart from that – ’ bugger all. Dolphin finished the sentence in his head out of respect for the Chief Inspector’s wife who was standing beside them. He turned his mouth down at the corners to indicate that there was nothing he couldn’t handle. ‘Most people seem to be here.’ He looked left and right as if about to cross a road. ‘Amazing turn-out. Never seen anything like it.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose so.’ Peach was only making minimal contact. He was wondering whether this new lease of life, these new high spirits, could have anything to do with Moses Highness’s recent visit. Had word got out? ‘You haven’t heard any rumours, have you, Dolphin?’

  ‘Rumours, sir?’

  ‘Rumours that might – might be subversive?’

  Dolphin frowned. ‘I don’t quite understand you.’

  ‘Never mind.’

  Another roar from the stocks. Hazard had just opened his mouth to swear at Cawthorne and promptly had it filled by a lump of bread soaked in sour milk.

  ‘All I can say is, I’m glad it’s not me,’ Dolphin said.

  ‘Quite,’ Peach said. ‘Well, I should be getting along.’ He took one step then, confidentially, over his shou
lder, whispered, ‘I should leave that toy somewhere until you come off duty, Dolphin. Otherwise people might not take you seriously.’

  Dolphin knew him well enough to detect the presence of a command beneath that quiet suggestion. Nodding, he moved away with Hilda. They stopped by the fire for a moment to warm their hands.

  He gazed at the charred effigy crouching at the centre of the fire. Of its own accord and sparked by something he couldn’t yet identify, his mind began to slip forwards, incisive, remorseless, as if unleashed. It had picked up some kind of trail or scent. Something in the atmosphere (the fairy lights? the jangling music? the clamour of voices?) had reminded him of the twenty-four hours he had spent in London. Something buried in those twenty-four hours, he now knew, could help him solve the problem of how to kill Moses.

  He began to scrabble at the loose earth of his memories. The blonde girl on the train? No. That Asian boy in the middle of the night? No, not there. His meeting with Madame Zola? Not there either. Then he remembered the enigmatic landlord of that pub on Kennington Road. Terence, wasn’t it? Somewhere in that conversation, perhaps.

  He sifted more carefully now. Words, gestures, nuances. Bit shady, by all accounts. No, it had come later. During the second drink. When Terence opened up a bit. When Peach asked him, ‘What else do you know about the place?’

  ‘Well, there’ve been some pretty mysterious goings-on – ’ The landlord liked to leave his sentences hanging. At times he had reminded Peach of people in the village.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Vandalism, for a start.’

  ‘Vandalism?’

  ‘There’s been a series of break-ins.’ Terence ran the tip of his tongue along his moustache to signify the delicacy of the subject. ‘Too many for it to be a coincidence, if you know what I mean – ’

  ‘What kind of break-ins, Terence?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know exactly. Let’s just say there’s been talk of a vendetta, though.’

  Peach was still staring deep into the fire. His eyes were smouldering now. Everything had clicked.