Dreams of Leaving (9 page)

The next few days had proved awkward for them both. Moses hated the tube – it was too small for him – but when he wanted to go to the Trafalgar Square post office to check the directories he had to use it. What else could he do? His Rover had broken down again and there were seventeen statues on the bus-route.

Eddie seemed distracted too. Why did Moses keep going on about his past? What was all this crap about statues? And where had last week's colour supplement gone? He could often be seen sitting around the flat deep in thought, his forehead resting on his fist, his elbow resting on his knee. That was the last straw for Moses. The idea that Eddie could have been a famous sculpture all along explained the failure of his various Mediterranean investigations. It had never occurred to him to explore the art galleries. He had been too limited. This, coupled with Eddie's talent for evasion, made the task of arriving at any kind of truth almost totally
inconceivable. Moses realised there and then that he would have to resign himself to never knowing the answer.

*

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' ker
me
lion, init,' a drunk told him one night, brandishing an empty bottle in his face, and Moses chose not to point out that a ‘ker
me
lion' 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 Greek 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?