Dreams of Leaving

by Rupert Thomson

  *

  Midnight in the flat at Battersea. Recuperation time. Moses had arranged himself in front of the TV. Three cans of Special Brew beside his left foot. Cigarettes on the arm of his chair. Then the front door slammed. Eddie and Jackson breathed a mixture of whisky fumes and cold air into the room. Jackson leaned his bicycle – a black pre-war Hercules – against the wall. Eddie collapsed in a chair and spread himself as if he had acquired great power.

  ‘So who’s this old lady?’ he said.

  Moses glanced up from an Open University programme about logarithms. ‘I’m watching TV,’ he said.

  ‘Jackson’s been telling me,’ Eddie said. ‘You met some old lady.’

  ‘She was a clairvoyant,’ Jackson said, ‘apparently.’

  ‘Of course she was,’ Eddie scoffed, ‘and she could make a cup of tea last for a week.’

  ‘Three days,’ Moses said.

  ‘I thought you were watching TV,’ Eddie said.

  Moses turned back to the screen. He swallowed some beer from his can. Jackson placed himself carefully at one end of the sofa and crossed his legs.

  ‘So who is she?’ Eddie asked.

  Moses was watching a professor scrawl a series of hieroglyphics on a blackboard. The professor wore gold-rimmed spectacles and a violent green shirt. His hair was about to take off. Moses didn’t understand a word he was saying. Great television.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘This old lady who took you to The Bunker,’ Eddie persisted. ‘Who was she?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just an old lady. Look at this professor.’

  Jackson threw a quizzical glance at Eddie. ‘He’s changing the subject.’

  ‘Avoiding the issue,’ Eddie said. ‘Pretending not to know.’

  ‘Something to hide, I expect.’

  ‘He’s embarrassed. Look at him.’

  ‘Old ladies, you see.’

  ‘Well, we all know what Highness is like.’ Eddie always called Moses ‘Highness’ when he was drunk.

  ‘No taste.’ Jackson adjusted the cushions on the sofa with a dispassionate hand. ‘No taste at all.’

  ‘Anything in a skirt,’ Eddie leered. ‘Absolutely anything.’

  ‘Incredible, really.’

  ‘Too drunk to notice, you see. Too fucking wasted.’

  ‘Yes,’ and Jackson became solemn, ‘a drunk.’

  ‘An animal. A real animal.’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Taking too much speed.’

  ‘Lying in skips.’

  ‘Picking up old ladies.’

  Moses sighed.

  ‘Picking up old ladies,’ Eddie repeated. He leaned forwards, his pupils floating in a pink surround. ‘And watching programmes about logarithms.’

  Jackson chuckled.

  ‘If you must know,’ Moses said, ‘she picked me up.’

  More mockery, more laughter. In the end, of course, he had to tell the story, a story that concluded with the words, ‘And then she vanished into thin air.’

  Eddie and Jackson exchanged looks.

  ‘Strange,’ Moses said, ‘don’t you think?’

  Eddie stubbed out his cigarette. ‘I don’t believe it. Clairvoyants and black gangsters and cups of tea that last for ever. It’s too much. You made it up, didn’t you, Highness?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  Eddie grinned. ‘Come on, Highness.’

  ‘Every word I told you is true. I promise you,’ but Moses couldn’t help smiling at the expression on Eddie’s face.

  ‘Do you believe him?’ Eddie asked Jackson.

  Jackson made an n-shape with his mouth.

  ‘Neither do I,’ Eddie said. ‘Look. He’s smiling. You can’t trust him, you know. He’s always making things up.’

  Almost two weeks, Moses thought, since their little conversation about statues. Had he touched a nerve in Eddie?

  ‘He probably just drove past the place,’ Eddie was saying, ‘you know, completely by chance, and stopped because he thought it looked interesting.’

  Jackson was staring at the ceiling. ‘It wasn’t that interesting.’

  ‘Exactly. So he had to make up a few stories, didn’t he. Make it sound interesting.’

  ‘Pretty sad, really.’

  ‘Very sad.’

  Moses switched the TV off and stood up. ‘Jesus, you two talk a lot of shit. I’m going out.’

  Eddie looked up, all drunken innocence. ‘Where are you going, Highness?’

  ‘Anywhere. To the pub.’

  Eddie turned to Jackson. ‘What do you think, Jackson? Do you think he’s telling the truth?’

  Jackson glanced at his watch. ‘The pubs are closed,’ he said, ‘aren’t they?’

  Eddie gloated up at Moses. Moses shrugged and went out.

  To The Bunker.

  *

  During the next two months, the November and December of 1979, Moses saw very little of his friends. Jackson had started working at an occult bookshop, and spent his evenings and weekends pursuing his interest in meteorology. Vince was taking a lot of heroin in his squat at the bottom of the King’s Road. Eddie flew to New York on business. Moses received a postcard. Met any more old ladies? He needed air. New air. He began to go to The Bunker once, often twice, a week. As he drove east through the city, past the power-station and the huge refrigerated warehouses, along those stark grey four-lane roads, he thought of Madame Zola sometimes, the way you might think of a key that has unlocked a door.

  He quickly became a regular, a face, a name. He leaned against walls. He talked to anyone. He heard things. The nightclub hadn’t always been a nightclub. It had been a wine-bar called Florian’s, a fishing-tackle shop and a printer’s studio in its time. Nothing lasted. Very high turnover of owners. Some said it was an unlucky building. ‘Sliker fuckin’ kermelion, init,’ a drunk told him one night, brandishing an empty bottle in his face, and Moses chose not to point out that a ‘kermelion’ blended rather than clashed with its surroundings; he didn’t want any trouble.

  Between frequent drinks and awkward dances he began to find out about the present set-up. Belsen had done time for armed robbery. One of the barmen, Django, beat his wife. Elliot, the guy who ran the club, was a pimp. Louise had slept with him. How much truth these rumours contained Moses couldn’t have said, but he listened all the same. When he asked why the club had closed in September, people told him there had been some kind of break-in. Nobody could give him the details. Elliot would know, they said, but Elliot, they added in the same breath, didn’t like to talk about it, know what I mean? He suddenly realised that Elliot was the guy who had told him not to take the pictures.

  He began to narrow his focus, and found there was more gossip about Elliot than about everybody else put together. Take the gap between his front teeth. ‘Yer know what that means, dontcher,’ Gladys said (Gladys owned the petshop three doors down). ‘What does it mean, Gladys?’ Moses asked. Gladys showed him her own diminishing collection. ‘Wimmin,’ she leered. ‘That’s what.’ (One woman it didn’t mean, Moses soon discovered, was Louise. He had mentioned the rumour to her one evening, and she had laughed and said, ‘Nobody gets that close to Elliot.’)

  No one seemed to know where Elliot had come from originally – though there were a few predictable theories about the jungle. He had a South London accent – Bermondsey, somebody said. People often mistook him for a famous West Indian cricketer, and once, so rumour had it, Elliot had signed the great man’s autograph for a group of young fans outside the Oval (Moses made a mental note: sense of humour?). Many accused Elliot of arrogance. The evidence? Flash suits, flash car, flash attitude. Elliot didn’t seem to care whether he made enemies or not. ‘The way I see it, right,’ he had been heard to say, ‘you make deals, you make enemies. That’s the way it goes.’ His pleasures? He drank brandy, preferably Remy Martin. He smoked Dunhill King Size. He listened to Manhattan Transfer in his office late at night (‘He likes that soft music,’ said Dino, a spry and ageless Gre
ek who ran the delicatessen opposite the club, ‘but he plays it so loud”). He had his own private pool-table too, and he saw himself as a bit of a hustler. If he thought you were all right he invited you up to the office for a game. When asked what they thought of him, most people used colourful language. Wanker cropped up more than once. So did bastard. Moses realised that if he wanted to know Elliot better he would have to meet him again. In the flesh. People were beginning to repeat themselves and contradict themselves. People were beginning to ask, ‘Why all these questions?’

  He had been voyeur for long enough.

  *

  Elliot shaking Belsen’s hand. Elliot at the wheel of his white Mercedes. Elliot dyed red by a dance-floor spotlight. Elliot in an upstairs window, a cigarette bouncing on his lower lip.

  But no contact. No real opening.

  Once, as Moses paid to get in, Elliot seemed to be staring straight at him, but when Moses tried a smile, Elliot gave no sign that he had recognised him. It wasn’t that Elliot stared at you as if you weren’t there. No, he stared at you as if you were there – but not for much longer. He stared at you as if you were about to be removed. Permanently. It made you feel nervous and disposable. Moses had the feeling it was meant to. In that moment the roles reversed, and Moses began to feel watched.

  Then, one Friday just after New Year, Elliot wanted a light and Moses happened to be nearest. As Elliot dipped his head towards the match, he glanced up sideways through the flame.

  ‘So how did they come out?’ he said.

  Moses was thrown for a moment. In the ultraviolet light of the corridor Elliot looked supernatural. Only the whites of his eyes and the gold of his medallion showed.

  ‘The pictures. How did they come out?’

  ‘Oh, the pictures.’ Moses relaxed. ‘Fine. Yeah. They came out fine.’

  ‘I’d like to see them sometime.’

  ‘Sure. There are a couple of good ones.’

  Elliot fired smoke out of the side of his mouth.

  ‘This is your place, isn’t it?’ Moses risked.

  Elliot nodded.

  ‘It’s good. I come here a lot.’

  ‘I know.’ Like the hand that conceals a razor-blade, Elliot’s face gave nothing away. His wide unflinching eyes seemed to be sizing Moses up. Moses began to understand why people talked about him the way they did.

  They saw each other again five days later. Moses was standing in the foyer when Elliot appeared at his elbow, Belsen in attendance.

  ‘Well, fuck me,’ Elliot said, ‘if it isn’t the photographer.’ He was wearing a maroon suit and a silver tie. He eyed Moses with a kind of teasing hostility.

  ‘I’ve got something for you,’ Moses said. He handed Elliot an A4 envelope.

  Belsen’s cold face glimmered in the corner like the light from an open fridge. He lit a Craven A and sucked on it so hard that his cheeks hollowed out and all the bones rose to the surface.

  Elliot frowned. ‘What’s this then?’

  ‘Open it,’ Moses said.

  Elliot glanced at Belsen, then tore the envelope open. The first two pictures were views of The Bunker shot from the front and the side. The third showed Elliot in close-up, chin lifted, snarling. Elliot nodded, and his top lip peeled back to reveal the gap between his teeth that meant wimmin to Gladys and nothing to Moses.

  ‘Nice,’ he said. And made as if to hand the pictures back.

  ‘No,’ Moses said, ‘they’re yours.’

  Elliot blinked. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. They’re for you. Hang them in your office or something.’

  ‘How much?’

  Moses smiled. ‘Nothing. I developed them myself.’

  ‘How about a drink then?’

  ‘Now you’re talking.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  Moses knew the answer to that one. ‘Brandy,’ he said. ‘Remy, if you’ve got it.’

  Of course he’d got it.

  Moses bumped into Louise again on his way out. ‘I didn’t know Elliot was a friend of yours,’ she said.

  ‘He isn’t.’ Moses paused, smiling, by the door. ‘But I’ve got the feeling he will be.’

  *

  One night in January Moses was standing outside The Bunker. He couldn’t find his money. The air prickled with a fine drizzle. A chill wind rumpled the surfaces of puddles. There was nobody in the fish and chip shop across the road. London in winter.

  Jackson waited while Moses ran through his pockets once again. Jackson was wearing a short-sleeved shirt. The wind seemed to be trying to untie the knots in his hair.

  ‘Moses? Hey! Moses!’

  It was Elliot. He was dressed in a double-breasted suit of soft grey cloth. He looked warm and expensive, and his forehead shone like bronze. He had a problem, he said. His regular DJ for Wednesday night had called off sick. He needed a replacement. Strictly a one-off. There was twenty quid in it. Did Moses know anyone?

  Moses poked a crushed Coke can with the toe of his shoe. ‘Funny you should say that. I worked as a DJ one summer. Up in Leicester. I’d be glad to help you out. And I could use the money.’ He kicked the can into the gutter.

  ‘You sure about that?’

  Moses nodded. They shook on it.

  Elliot turned to go into the club. ‘You coming in or what?’

  ‘In a minute. Got to find my money.’

  ‘It’s on me,’ Elliot said.

  Jackson tugged on Moses’s shirt as they walked in. Teeth chattering, he whispered, ‘You never worked in a disco.’

  ‘What do you know standing there in a short-sleeved shirt on a night like this?’

  ‘It’s going to warm up later on,’ Jackson said. ‘A ridge of high pressure moving in from the west.’ But his lips had already turned blue, and his conviction was beginning to fade.

  ‘Later on?’ Moses said. ‘July or August, maybe.’

  ‘Anyway, what’s that got to do with whether you’ve worked in a disco before or not?’

  ‘You’re always wrong,’ Moses said. ‘That’s what.’

  *

  When Moses arrived at The Bunker on Wednesday night, Django pulled him to one side. Django had bushy orange sideburns and a boxer’s nose that turned left halfway down. He looked Scottish but claimed to be Italian, hundred per cent. But then he also claimed he didn’t beat his wife.

  ‘Listen, Mose,’ Django said, ‘how about doing us a favour?’

  ‘What favour?’

  Django shifted from one foot to the other. ‘Just a couple of requests, that’s all.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah, and if you play them for me, maybe I’ll send a few double whiskies your way, you follow me?’

  Moses studied the barman with new interest. ‘What requests?’

  Django mentioned two Beatles songs.

  ‘What d’you want to hear them for?’

  Django grinned. He looked very sly when he grinned. ‘Like I said, Mose. Double whiskies.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘One for each request.’

  Moses nodded. ‘See what I can do, Django.’

  He walked over to the DJ’s booth and installed himself in front of the two turntables. He put on the headphones. Jackson had been wrong the other night, but not that wrong. Moses had only been a DJ once in his life, five years ago now, and he had already drunk a bottle of red wine that evening because he had only been a DJ once in his life. Nerves.

  The buckles on Elliot’s shoes glinted gold as he moved across the dance-floor and into the corner of Moses’s eye.

  ‘How’s it going?’

  Moses was casual, even though Elliot had surprised him. ‘It’s coming back to me,’ he said.

  Elliot lifted and dropped his shoulders as if to adjust the fit of his jacket. ‘If you need me, I’ll be upstairs. All right, Isaac?’ He grinned and walked away.

  ‘Isaac,’ Moses muttered, ‘I’ll give him Isaac.’

  Once he had mastered all the knobs and dials he began to enjoy himself. He
played all his favourite music – The Sex Pistols, T. Rex, The Temptations, Iggy Pop, Françoise Hardy, Killing Joke, The Anti-Nowhere League, Aretha Franklin. He didn’t talk between tracks except for once when he said, ‘And here’s something you might remember from when you were very young,’ and put on ‘Practising for Childbirth’, an educational EP on the CBF label. One girl, who reminded Moses of a famous German actress – she wore a simple black dress and no shoes – actually danced to the syncopated gasps and sighs, her eyes closed, her hair a dark blonde waterfall, and yes, Moses had to agree, the record did have a certain obscure rhythm of its own. After that hypnotic solitary dance, Moses couldn’t stop looking at her. He tried to steer a smile towards her, but her eyes slid away and his smile sailed on into a sea of faces that weren’t hers. There was a man with her, of course. There always is.

  At first, and out of longing, he had played Dusty Springfield’s ‘I Only Want To Be With You’. Then, with savage irony, he thought, he put on ‘Stand By Your Man’ by Tammy Wynette. He swayed miserably behind his Perspex shield.

  Eddie came over. ‘What’s this shit you’re playing?’

  ‘Go away, Eddie.’

  ‘Jesus, you look strange, Moses.’

  ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘You look like a dinosaur in a museum.’

  ‘Fuck off, Eddie. I’m working.’

  ‘Been a while, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Eddie,’ Moses said patiently, ‘fuck off before I kill you, all right?’

  Eddie sauntered away, grinning. Django appeared.

  ‘You haven’t played any of my records yet,’ he complained.

  Moses sighed. ‘Hey, Django,’ he said, ‘you see that girl over there in the black dress?’

  Django had already noticed her.

  ‘She’s a German actress,’ Moses said. ‘Famous German actress.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Django looked impressed. Then suspicious. And, finally, sceptical. ‘You’re rat-arsed, you are.’

  ‘She’s beautiful, Django. I’m in love.’

  ‘I can understand that, Mose. So what’s the problem?’

  ‘She’s ignoring me.’

  ‘Want me to have a word with her?’