Dreams of Leaving

by Rupert Thomson

  Praise for Dreams of Leaving

  ‘Brash, cynical and wildly eccentric . . . the prose is as dazzling as a firework display . . . Dreams of Leaving is a remarkable first novel, by a stunning new talent’ Evening Standard

  ‘The writing is extraordinarily elegant, evocative and funny . . . Thomson has the talent to become a major novelist’ The Times Books of the Year

  ‘A rites-of-passage novel, a love story, a political satire and a sourly comic thriller . . . Gnawing at the edge of Thomson’s text is an unsentimental knowledge of pain which lifts him out of the rank of mere fantasists . . . A real achievement’ Literary Review

  ‘A strange but strikingly original novel . . . A disturbing tale for the 1980s’ FSM

  ‘What makes this book different is the skill with which Thomson modulates its light and dark moods, and the generosity he shows his characters’ Observer

  ‘Thomson’s writing is inventive and lyrical, studded with sensuous metaphors . . . This delight in language enhances a story already rich in its observations on the nature of apathy, freedom and the ambiguous allure of home’ New York Times Book Review

  ‘A humdinger of a first novel’ Publishers Weekly

  ‘High hallucinatory imagination, the ability to discern real menace and a magical way with words . . . this book sparkles with a wild ebullience . . . on almost every page there is a sentence or a short passage which startles and delights the reader because it is so vivid, so seemingly effortless and so right . . . A tour de force’ Melbourne Age

  ‘Startling writing and original vision . . . One can only recommend’ Patrick Gale, London Daily News

  ‘Beautifully descriptive writing . . . Constantly surprising . . . Thomson is an inspired storyteller and an author of great promise’ Time Out

  ‘Buoyant, assured and very funny’ Kirkus

  TO MY FATHER

  SORRY AND THANK YOU

  TO MENISHA

  JUST THANK YOU

  DREAMS OF LEAVING

  RUPERT THOMSON

  Contents

  Introduction

  Strange Time for a Drowning (1956)

  The Building of Many Colours

  Unfinished Histories (1972)

  The Bond Street Mandarin

  Peach Incognito (1980)

  Injury Time

  Rockets in July

  Talking to Horses

  The Return of the Native

  Crime is Order

  Sudden Death

  The Wooden Triangle

  A Note on the Author

  Also by the Same Author

  Footnotes

  Introduction

  I tried to write a novel when I was twenty. I was living in Athens at the time, in an apartment that was, quite literally, unfurnished. I produced 160 self-conscious, introspective pages on a table made of fruit crates, then ground to a halt. Back in London, I started work at an advertising agency, but the desire to write never left me, and in November 1982, after four years as a copywriter, I decided to try again. I resigned from the agency, moved a friend into my council flat, and gave my ancient, rusty Vauxhall Viva its first ever service. As December approached, I drove south, making for a village in Italy. After a lengthy interview with a well-known comic actress, during which we covered subjects as various as kleptomania and homosexuality, I had secured the job of winter caretaker for her converted Tuscan farmhouse. In return for painting walls and treating beams for woodworm, I would be able to live rent-free until the spring. I remember standing on the deck of the ferry and watching the stained, off-white English cliffs recede. I was wearing an ankle-length brown coat, red tartan trousers, and a pair of battered Doc Martens. My hair was dyed orange. I was twenty-seven. I had drawn a line through my life, and everything was going to be different from now on. I would write and write and write, and perhaps, in the end, something halfway decent would emerge. I breathed the cold, salty air of what felt like an entirely new existence.

  There was no heating in the house, and I worked in the kitchen, huddled against a free-standing gas stove. I typed on sheets of yellow foolscap, using a maroon Olympia portable I had inherited from my last agency. I was disciplined about the hours I put in: I would start at three in the afternoon and finish at one in the morning. The routine felt natural, comfortable, even seductive. At that early stage, and influenced, I think, by Machado de Assis, I restricted myself to short chapters with titles of their own, some of which – ‘Strange Time for a Drowning’, ‘Crime is Order’ – eventually made their way into the finished novel. With its irreverent, fractured narrative, that first draft felt like a distillation of the life I had been living for the past few years, and it came as no great surprise when a friend later claimed I had written his biography.

  For several weeks I saw almost no one. My only companions were birds, stray cats and vermin. The first Italian words I learned, much to the amusement of the man who ran the village shop, were ‘trappola di topi’ – ‘mousetrap’. Then, in February, I met an American couple who were renting a farmhouse further down the track. Richard Wertime, an academic, was also trying to write a book. We became friends. In return for the occasional dinner, I would drive him to places he couldn’t otherwise have seen, and it was during one such expedition that I outlined my novel to him. Apparently, I talked non-stop for forty-five minutes, all the way to Siena. Three years later, on the outskirts of Philadelphia, I gave Dick my manuscript. When he handed it back, he told me he felt cheated. ‘Where’s the book you described on that drive to Siena that had us all so riveted?’ he said. ‘This isn’t it.’ I knew he was right. That autumn I began work on a new version in a friend’s bedroom in Tokyo, and it was in that city that I teased out what would become the book’s central metaphor, the idea of a place no one can leave because no one has ever left.

  The novel was written over a period of about four years, its progress often interrupted by the need to earn money. At last, and back in London, I felt it was finished. What to do next, though? The only person I knew in publishing was Nigel Newton, but I had hardly seen him since leaving university. In September 1986, I made eight copies of the manuscript then drove round the city, dropping half of them off with agents, the other half with publishers. One copy went to Nigel. Another went to Liz Calder, the only editor I had ever heard of. Like many writers starting out, I probably put too much into Dreams of Leaving. This was partly inexperience, and partly the irrational but compelling fear that I might never write again. Twenty-five years later, though, I can still feel a kind of electricity on every page. It’s the charge that’s given off when someone is putting down sentences for the first time, when someone is in the grip of what will turn out to be a lifelong passion. Even so, I steeled myself for rejection. To my amazement, three of the agents showed an interest in the manuscript. Meanwhile, in an outrageous piece of serendipity, Nigel and Liz had joined forces to set up a new publishing house called Bloomsbury, and by Christmas 1986 I had a deal.

  Dreams of Leaving was published on 25 June 1987. The book achieved an instant notoriety, not least because the title and the name of the author could only be found on the back cover; all there was on the front was a painting by a girl I used to go out with. The launch was held at a friend’s house in the East End. Once owned by a silk-merchant, its walls shimmered pale-blue, and its bare wooden floorboards dipped and sloped. The power had not been switched on yet, and as dusk came down it became difficult to see. No one had thought to buy candles. The party ended in virtual darkness. A group of us spilled out on to the street and walked through the summer night to a restaurant on Brick Lane. My first fan letter arrived a few days later. Written on sheets of dark-blue paper, it was signed by Budgie, the drummer of Siouxsie and the Banshees, a band I had seen at leas
t three times.

  When people mention books that changed their lives, they are usually referring to books they have read, but Dreams of Leaving was a book I wrote, and it changed my life forever. In March 1988, some nine months after publication, I received a phone-call from a Hollywood director. Like Alan Parker, he was making the transition from commercials to features, and he thought Dreams of Leaving had the makings of a memorable film. Landing in Los Angeles a fortnight later, I was collected from the airport in a steel-grey stretch limousine. I stayed on Sunset Boulevard, at the Mondrian, then in a house at the foot of the Hollywood Hills that had previously belonged to Michael Mann. I was offered $50,000 to write a first draft of the screenplay. Predictably, perhaps, the idea of a village that no one has ever left proved problematic I remember a meeting with an influential producer in Century City.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘Why don’t they just walk out?’

  ‘It’s psychological,’ I said.

  His shrewd look masked a total lack of comprehension.

  ‘It’s never been done before,’ I went on. ‘The barrier’s in people’s minds.’ Feeling I was losing him, I tailed off.

  The producer leaned back, deep in thought. ‘Maybe if we gave the policemen guns . . .’

  Later that summer, as we drank white wine on his yacht off the coast of Malibu, he told me that the screenplay was ‘too European’, and not long afterwards the project collapsed. I wasn’t too bothered. I had spent a couple of unforgettable summers in Hollywood, and the money I had been paid would finance the writing of my second novel.

  But another twist was still to come. On returning to London in September 1988, I met the director’s English girlfriend. It was she who had first read and loved my book. It was she who had suggested it might make a feature film. By October, we were seeing each other. We have been together ever since.

  Rupert Thomson

  2012

  Strange Time for a Drowning (1956)

  It was a hot day to be wearing black. The coffin-bearers counted themselves fortunate. The coffin resting on their shoulders measured less than four feet in length. It was also empty. The child’s body had never been found.

  Very few people had turned out for the funeral. A gaunt bearded man, an ungainly blonde woman and five police officers. Two men in shabby black suits took up the rear of the procession. One of them, Dinwoodie by name, wore a sling on his right arm. He had pale swivelling eyes and long hair that was prematurely grey. The other ran the village greengrocer’s shop. Their heads tilted sideways and inwards like two halves of a reflection so they could hear each other without raising their voices. They had allowed a small gap to open up between themselves and the five policemen. That they were linked, as if by an invisible cartilage, to the main body of the procession was obvious from their conversation.

  ‘So what do you think?’ Dinwoodie spoke in a hoarse whisper.

  ‘Think?’

  ‘About the baby. Do you think he really drowned in the river?’

  The greengrocer squinted into the sun. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s the story that’s going round.’

  ‘That’s not what I’m asking.’

  ‘Is he really dead, do you mean?’

  Dinwoodie nodded. His eyes lit like hot ashes.

  ‘Well, if he’s not,’ the greengrocer said, ‘where is he?’ A logical man, the greengrocer.

  ‘That’s what I’m getting at,’ Dinwoodie said. Sweat oiled the working parts of his face. It was sweltering outside, but it was not the heat that he felt.

  The greengrocer waited for his friend to elaborate. They passed a marble cross that had been carved to look like wood. A heap of stone fruit and vegetables adorned the base. The greengrocer’s grandfather.

  ‘What I’m getting at is, could he have escaped?’ Dinwoodie said.

  The greengrocer raised an eyebrow. ‘A thirteen-month-old baby?’

  ‘All right. Could his escape have been – ’ and here Dinwoodie paused, searching for the appropriate word – ‘have been,’ he continued, ‘engineered?’

  ‘Ah,’ the greengrocer said. A logical man, but not an excitable one.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘Well what do you think?’

  ‘It’s never been done before,’ the greengrocer said.

  ‘So far as we know,’ came Dinwoodie’s fierce whisper.

  ‘So far as we know,’ the greengrocer agreed.

  One of the police officers walking in front of the two men twisted his head and glared in their direction. Dinwoodie lowered his eyes. He examined the flagstone path as it passed beneath his feet. The stones were uneven. Weeds pushed through the cracks like mysteries demanding solutions.

  ‘There seems to be some tension,’ the greengrocer observed, ‘among certain members of our local police force.’

  Dinwoodie’s pale eyes glowed. His hand, trembling, clutched at the air. ‘Is it any wonder?’ he said. ‘They never found the baby’s body, did they? The mystery hasn’t been solved. It’s just being buried, that’s all.’ He drew a large yellow handkerchief out of his pocket and began to mop his forehead and his upper lip. ‘We’re burying an empty coffin here. An empty coffin. Don’t you see, Joel? They’re admitting they’ve failed. The police have failed – maybe for the first time. Do you know what that means? It means there’s hope for us, Joel. There really is.’

  Joel sighed. As if the sun had slid behind a cloud, gloom moved over his face. ‘You’ll never know.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘I’m telling you,’ the greengrocer said. ‘You’ll never know. Who are you going to ask? The police?’ He snorted. ‘There’s no way you’ll ever find out.’

  ‘Ah, this fucking village,’ Dinwoodie snapped. ‘You too.’

  Chief Inspector Peach (known behind his back as ‘The Fuzz’) swung round, his lower lip jutting, his face pink with indignation. ‘Gentlemen, please. This is a funeral.’

  The two men covered the remaining distance to the open grave in silence.

  *

  George Highness stood, gaunt and bearded, beside his son’s grave. How he loathed New Egypt, he was thinking. How he loathed and detested the place. Hate massed in his fists, drew the blood out of his knuckles, tightened the stringy muscles in the back of his neck. He looked older than his twenty-nine years.

  He was facing north. The cemetery fell away in front of him, sank to its knees, offering a view. Tombstones rough as dead skin. Yew trees almost black against a flawless sky of blue. Then, at the bottom of the hill, a wall which contained, if you looked closely enough (and as a child he had), every colour in existence. Beyond the wall, a row of brick cottages. Above their rooftops, the elm that told him where he lived; it stood in his front garden. Away to the left and anchored in a dip in the land, the church. Unusual stonework: green on grey days, grey on bright days like today. Timeless, ancient, solid. He didn’t believe in it. Further left, a lane dodged the pub and ran downhill past the village green. Behind him all the time, the police station. As it should be, he thought. A brief smile twisted one side of his mouth.

  He turned back to the grave. He watched the empty coffin being lowered into the ground. What a farce this was. He glanced across at Alice, his wife. Tension bunched in her shoulderblades so that, in profile, she looked almost hunchbacked. Strands of green-blonde hair lay lank against the nape of her neck. Behind her veil her eyes were blank as stones. Her face like bread, spongy and pale. An echo of the girl he had married.

  *

  The first time he noticed her she was eight, a white floating girl, a twist of smoke against the grey trees on the western edge of the village. He began to run across the field. Twice he turned his ankle on a furrow. It didn’t matter. He ran on. He had to close the distance between them. Catch her before she vanishes, he had told himself. A curious thing to say. But so right, so instinctively right, he would realise later.

  He must have been eleven. Even then he had felt the pu
ll of her strangeness and how magnetic somehow her frailty was. Close up, among tree-trunks veined with ivy and bindweed, her feet lost in leaves the colour of rust, she had the awkward grace of a bird. A stork, perhaps, or a heron. She had the same elongated neck, the same brittle stumbling legs.

  He stood in front of her getting his breath back. She wasn’t looking at him. He asked her name.

  ‘Alice,’ she said. Without moving her feet, she turned away so he could no longer see her face. Rooted to the ground she seemed. A bird that would never fly. He could have seen it then. In that first meeting.

  ‘What are you doing out here?’ he asked her.

  ‘I was alone.’

  Her hands moved among the folds of her white dress. Three years younger than he was, she seemed wiser, more adult. Like blotting-paper she soaked up the messy ink of his questions.

  Still something possessed him to say, ‘Not any more,’ and she turned towards him and looked at him as if he had just spoken for the first time.

  They had met by chance and their friendship continued as a kind of planned coincidence. This understanding arose: he looked for her, she waited for him. He always knew where to find her – by the river, in the woods beyond the allotments, up on the hill behind the police station (from there, you could see the village as it really was, a group of houses huddled in a hollow in the land, bound on one side by the river’s thin grey cord and on the other two by trees which, from that distance, all too closely resembled fences) – and soon they were spending so much time together on the village boundaries that people began to think they were up to no good. The truth was simpler, though still ominous, perhaps. They wanted privacy, secrecy. They needed territory they could call their own. So they went to the edge of the village. Had to go to the edge. There were no halfway houses. They both understood this early on and recognised it in each other. Peach recognised it too. He wrote a short memo regarding the two children. The police were alerted. Gently.