Dreams of Leaving (62 page)

You're a sadist, Moses thought, and I don't like you. But he smiled as if to say he quite understood.

‘Well, that just about wraps it up.' Peach's chest swelled as he breathed in. ‘Except for the cells, of course.'

‘Oh, we
have
to see the
cells,'
Mary said.

Peach led them into a short passage with grey walls and a concrete floor. ‘Now, as you might imagine, there isn't a great deal of crime in New Egypt so we only have two cells.' He spread his plump hands. ‘One for you, Mr Shirley, and one for your wife.'

Moses stayed well back from the doors. You never know.

Mary had already peered inside. ‘Why are there tables instead of beds?' she asked.

‘That's a good question. We used to give our prisoners beds. Used to, that is, until one man tore his mattress-cover into strips, fashioned a primitive rope out of them and – ' Peach jerked one clenched fist away from his neck in an unmistakable gesture. He turned to face Moses. ‘The man's name,' he said, ‘was Dinwoodie.'

‘How awful,' Mary said.

‘Most unfortunate,' Peach agreed, still staring at Moses. ‘One of those things.'

Moses said nothing.

‘So now the prisoners sleep on tables,' Peach said. ‘It's better to be on the safe side, don't you think?'

‘Quite,' Mary said.

Peach escorted his two visitors to the front door of the police station. ‘Once again,' he said, ‘thank you for your help.'

‘Thank
you,'
Mary said, ‘for the wonderful tour.'

They all shook hands again.

Then Peach suddenly took a step backwards and looked Moses up and down in an extremely cunning way. ‘Have you ever seriously considered a career in the police force yourself, Mr Shirley?'

Moses was flabbergasted. ‘Well, no – '

‘A man of your imposing size and initiative,' Peach continued seductively, ‘would be a credit to any branch of our organisation. You would make a magnificent policeman, I'm sure. What do
you
think, Mrs Shirley?'

Mary took Moses by the arm. ‘I don't think it's ever crossed his mind – has it, darling?'

A sickly smile spread over Moses's face.

‘Well, if you should ever consider it, feel free to get in touch with me.'

Peach was rubbing his hands together, radiating good nature. ‘I don't have any great influence, of course, but I would be happy to go through the details with you. Think about it, anyway.' He raised a hand, turned on his heel, and was gone, all in one fluid, smoothly executed manoeuvre.

Still arm in arm, Moses and Mary walked back down the steps.

‘Going to join the force then, are you, Mr Shirley?' Mary teased him.

But Moses didn't even smile. ‘He knew,' he said.

‘He knew what?'

‘He knew who I was.'

‘Peach?'

Moses nodded.

‘How could he know that?'

‘I don't know. But he did. I felt it right away. Something, anyway. And then he called me Mr Highness, sort of by mistake. He was testing me, I suppose.'

Mary pulled away from him. ‘When did he call you Mr Highness?'

‘Oh, he was clever. He waited till you were on the other side of the room. He chose his moment perfectly. He's a real cunning bastard.'

Mary stood among the tombstones, hands on her hips now, two lines engraved between her eyebrows. ‘I don't understand this, Moses. How could he possibly know?'

‘I've no idea. But he did. He definitely did.' He looked round, his right eye twitching, then he whispered, ‘That's why he came out with all that stuff about joining the police. It was like he was saying, you belong here, your place is in the village.' He stepped backwards, almost tripped over his own gravestone. ‘It was like a threat. But in code.'

The wind lifted. Leaves scuttled across the path.

He looked at Mary, but Mary seemed at a loss for words. Here was something that even she couldn't explain.

‘Come on,' he said, ‘let's get out of here.'

*

He opened the window an inch, let the slipstream take his cigarette. The air had cooled, sharpened. They were driving through remote countryside, a landscape of hollows and copses, secrets and ambiguities. Not a house for miles. The headlights soaked up endless twisting road.

Mary had insisted on taking the scenic route back, one of her oldest rules being never to do the same thing twice.

‘But it's so dark,' he had pointed out.

‘So what? It's the principle of the thing.' Mary had been at her most dogmatic.

‘But you can't see anything when it's dark. What's the point of taking the scenic route when you can't see anything?'

She had dismissed his arguments with the words, ‘Don't be so pedantic, Moses.'

And he had sighed and given up.

He had wanted to put distance between himself and New Egypt, he had wanted the comfort of other cars, larger towns, crowds, but Mary drove north then east, the loneliest road she could find. Through the rear window he watched the village sink into its dip in the land, a few weak lights extinguished by the rising ground. They had got away. And London lay ahead, beyond those trees. Soon the headlights, so ostentatious now, would dissolve in the city's orange glare. In retrospect, his fear seemed melodramatic, absurd, almost hilarious.

They had been driving for about fifteen minutes when the car suddenly swerved, bumped against the lip of a ditch and stalled.

‘Fuck,' Mary said.

She banged the steering-wheel with the heel of her hand.

‘What's wrong?'

‘The clutch. Something's happened to the clutch.'

‘Let me have a look.'

Moses flicked the interior light on, then reached down with his left hand, his head resting sideways on Mary's thigh.

‘Shit,' he said. ‘The cable's snapped.'

‘Can you mend it?'

‘No.'

They stared at each other.

‘Now what?' she said.

He consulted the map. ‘We're miles from anywhere.'

‘You're joking.'

‘No joke, I'm afraid.'

‘Fuck.'

‘Well, don't blame me,' he said, ‘I wasn't the one who wanted to do the scenic route.'

She glared at him.

He looked down at the map again. ‘And you know what? One of the nearest places is still New Egypt.' He allowed himself a soft sardonic laugh. ‘There's only one place that's nearer and that's Bagwash. What I suggest we do is ditch the car and walk to Bagwash. It's about five miles.'

‘What's this Bagwash? Sounds like a launderette.'

‘It's a village. It's got a church, a pond, a Roman remains – an obelisk – '

‘Sod the obelisk. What about a garage?'

He gave her a withering look. ‘You can't tell that by looking at a map. Come on, Mary. You ought to know that.' He knew she hated the word
ought
– she thought it ought to be removed from the English language – but he wanted to provoke her.

‘Why?' she said. ‘Why ought I to know that?'

‘Because you've been driving longer than me. Much longer. Because you're older.'

‘You bastard.' She twisted in her seat and swiped him with her driving-glove.

He poked her in the ear with his finger. ‘Much older,' he said.

She began to beat him about the head with her handbag. It was a deceptive handbag. It looked ladylike, but it could hold a litre of vodka, no problem. It hurt.

In retaliation he seized her nose between finger and thumb. Her mouth opened. He stuffed it with a tissue. ‘Bless you,' he said.

Their frustration slowly distilled, first into laughter, then into sex.

Afterwards Moses said, ‘The light was on the whole time.'

‘I always fuck with the light on,' Mary said. ‘I like to see what I'm doing.'

‘But anyone could've seen.'

‘I don't care.'

‘What if Peach – ' Moses didn't finish his sentence.

Mary leaned back against the door and looked at him. ‘What is it now, Moses?'

‘Nothing,' he said.

*

After walking for twenty minutes they reached a junction. BAG WASH
], the signpost said.

‘Four and a half miles,' Mary groaned. She sat down on the grass mound at the foot of the signpost and began to take off her shoes.

‘What are you doing?' Moses said.

‘My feet hurt.'

‘Oh, Christ.' He moved out into the middle of the road. He looked first in one direction, then in the other. No cars. Not the remotest suggestion of a car. Not even the feeling that a car might once have passed this way. They were going to have to walk.

‘Come on, Mary.' He took her by both hands and pulled her to her feet. ‘It's only about an hour.'

‘My legs are half the length of yours,' she said. ‘Two hours.'

He studied her as closely as was possible in the extreme darkness. ‘They can't be half the length,' he grinned, ‘can they?'

They stood face to face and measured legs.

‘All right,' Moses conceded five minutes later (during which time comparison had also been made between their mouths, and between one of Mary's breasts and one of Moses's hands), ‘one and a half hours.'

They began to walk.

High hedges hemmed the road in on both sides. Sometimes the wind blew and trees became haunting instruments. Otherwise silence. When they talked, the night sounded like an empty room. When they didn't, Moses heard noises. The blood in your ears, Mary reassured him. But Moses was thinking of Peach, the stealthy Peach, he was imagining the Chief Inspector following in their tracks, rubbing his plump hands together, he was hearing the sinister whisper of skin on skin, so when Mary stopped and said, for the fifth time, ‘What's that?' he walked on, snapped, ‘Nothing.'

‘It is,' she cried. ‘Look. Headlights.'

He swung round and saw two yellow trumpets playing over the dark landscape. He stepped back into the ditch. Shielding his eyes, he could just make out the shape of a truck. One wheeze of its brakes and it had obeyed Mary's waving arms and stood, shuddering, asthmatic, on the road. He moved sideways out of the glare. A man with a square face leaned out of the cab, a shiny leather cap pushed to the back of his head.

‘Our car's broken down,' Moses said. ‘Any chance of a lift?'

The man told them to hop in.

Like drunkenness the relief then. Moses sat between Mary and the man in the cap and talked non-stop, raising his voice above the wail of the engine.

‘We just spent the day in New Egypt. About ten miles down the road. Do you know it?'

The man shook his head. He drove with his arms draped round the wheel, his hands almost meeting at midnight.

‘My dad lives there. I hadn't seen him for ages. Not since I was a baby actually. Then we met a couple of policemen. Got a tour of the station and everything. One of them even offered me a job. Then the clutch went on the way back.'

The man nodded.

‘Best thing, we reckoned, was to try and get to Bagwash. Think it would've taken us all night if you hadn't come along.'

The man lifted one stubby hand off the wheel and scratched his jaw. ‘You from London?'

‘That's right.'

‘What were you doing on that lane then?'

Moses rolled his eyes towards the roof. ‘We were taking the scenic route back.'

‘Not quite so scenic when you break down, is it?'

It was a joke and both Moses and Mary laughed and their laughter carried them through the village of Bag wash and dropped them at the gates of a modest country hotel.

‘It's the only hotel round here,' the man told them. ‘If I was you, I'd stay the night here, fix the car in the morning. There's a man in the village, name of Fowler. Phone him up. He might do it.'

They thanked him for the lift and the advice, and watched as a curve in the road snuffed his tail-lights out.

In the hotel lobby, Mary asked for a telephone. ‘I want to call Alan,' she told Moses.

‘What are you going to tell him?'

‘I'm going to tell him that we've broken down in the middle of nowhere and that we can't get back tonight.'

‘It sounds awful. It sounds like you made it up.'

Mary smiled and spread her hands. ‘It happens to be true.'

While Mary went to telephone, Moses registered as Mr and Mrs Shirley. The charade he had invented for Peach seemed to have taken on a life of its own.

‘That's odd,' Mary said, appearing at his elbow a moment later. ‘There's no answer.'

‘Maybe he's gone out or something.'

She pushed her lips forward, shook her head. ‘No, he said he was staying in this evening. He had some work to do.'

‘Maybe he changed his mind.'

Mary didn't look convinced.

‘Look, you'll be home by tomorrow lunch-time,' Moses told her. ‘And, anyway, you've been away for longer than this before without calling.'