Sensing his impatience, perhaps, the train left several seconds early. The magic rhythm of its wheels on the tracks soon made misty Leicester disappear and a pale-blue sky unveiled itself. A pocket-torch sun clicked on, pointed out neat lawns, a car glazed with dew, the red slant of a rooftop. It was like somebody big looking for somebody small, he thought. Ridley looking for Gloria, for instance.
Gloria.
The night before he left for Leicester he had covered that last fatal inch to the telephone. He had dialled her number. He regretted it now. He had been drinking (well, drunk). He had hardly been aware that it was her number that he was calling. That was bad. All his bluster vanished the moment he heard her voice, leaving him exposed, shrunken, pitiful. It was the first time he had spoken to her since Talent Night. That seemed like months ago. Probably was.
‘Hello?’ she said.
‘Hello. It’s me.’ This false gaiety in his voice. Game-show presenter. Just awful.
‘Who’s that?’
‘Moses. You know. Moses.’
Forget it. Hang up now.
‘Oh. Hello, Moses.’
Too late.
It sounded, though, as if she was using a name that she was only pretending to recognise, that, in reality, she couldn’t put a face to, that didn’t mean anything. She sounded like a receptionist. He felt like a stranger (with no appointment). He couldn’t think of what to say next. Or why he had phoned, for that matter.
‘Look, I just rang up to see if you got my message.’
‘What message?’
‘I left a message at The Blue Diamond last weekend. No, the weekend before. I think. Sometime, anyway. You were singing there.’
‘Oh, The Blue Diamond. Yes. No, I didn’t sing there in the end. I cancelled.’
‘Oh, that’s all right then,’ he said.
Thanks for telling me.
‘Did you go?’
‘No. My friend’s car broke down. In the country. I couldn’t get back. That’s why I left the message that you didn’t get.’
‘Oh.’
Why was this so difficult?
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m going away for Christmas. To my foster-parents, I think. So I probably won’t see you for a while.’
He thought he heard soft laughter on the other end. Had he said something funny?
‘Well,’ she said, ‘have a wonderful time, won’t you.’
Just like that. She wasn’t interested. She wasn’t remotely fucking interested. He lapsed into silence, bit his lip.
‘Hello?’
‘I’m still here.’
That was the trouble with telephones. No time to think. No time to not say anything. Mary was right about telephones.
‘When are you going?’ Gloria’s impersonal voice again.
He thought. ‘I don’t know exactly. Tomorrow maybe. Or the next day. I don’t know.’
‘So what are you doing tonight?’
He gulped, sensing a trap. ‘Nothing, really. Just staying in.’
‘Oh.’
‘Look,’ he quickened, ‘maybe I’ll see you when I get back, OK?’
‘OK,’ and just a trace of tired intimacy in, ‘if that’s what you want.’
She was like water. You could throw stone after stone and the surface always formed again. Perfectly, unbearably smooth. There was a pressure building inside him and no valve that he knew of.
‘I suppose so,’ he murmured. He saw himself reflected in the uncurtained window, all the hollows in his face filled with shadow.
‘Ring me when you get back,’ she was saying. ‘Have a wonderful time, won’t you.’
She hung up.
He stared at the receiver, a useless furry buzzing in his hand, then flung it against the wall. An explosion of red plastic. One fragment ricocheted, nicked his cheek as it flew past. He touched his face and his fingertips came away bloody. He would have the scar — a miniature triangle, a crocodile tear — for the rest of his life.
Then, only yesterday, at breakfast in Leicester, he had received some mail from Italy. His name and address had been scrawled in black ink, the letters spiky, rushed. He hadn’t recognised the handwriting. He had sniffed the envelope. It hadn’t smelt like anyone he knew. That should have told him something. When he tore the letter open, a postcard fell out. He scanned it rapidly for a signature. Gloria XX.
Now he took the postcard from his coat pocket and examined it again. A picture of a square in Florence, probably a famous square judging by the ancient yellow buildings and the groups of multi-coloured tourists. In the top left-hand corner he noticed an empty pedestal. This couldn’t have been intentional on Gloria’s part; he had never mentioned his statue theory to her. Still, a touch of irony there. It seemed to undermine what she had written, make it laughable. He read it anyway. She said she was sorry about their last phone-call; she’d taken some sleeping-pills because she’d been having trouble sleeping. She told him she missed him. She thought they ought to get together in the New Year.
He wondered.
He glanced out of the window and saw a mass of dark cloud, two strands lifting away into the sky, tousled by a night of restless sleep. There was no mistaking that head of black hair on that pale-blue pillow.
The train slowed, switched tracks, drew into St Pancras.
Still staring at the sky, he knew that it wouldn’t be long before those black clouds (all that now remained of Gloria) were blown away.
*
Walking down Charing Cross Road, he thought he heard somebody call his name. He turned round, saw nobody, felt stupid. He was about to walk on when he caught sight of Alison waving at him from the other side of the road.
She waited for the lights to change, then ran towards him.
‘Alison.’ He stooped to kiss her cool cheek. ‘How are you?’
Four weeks of mourning had done nothing to diminish the glory of her red hair. He could tell from her forehead, though, that she had been through a painful time. Instead of the four seagulls he remembered, one distant albatross flying alone.
‘Where’ve you been, Moses? I’ve been trying to call you,’ she said, all in one breath.
He gestured with his suitcase. ‘I’ve been away — ’
‘Have you got time for a cup of coffee?’ Her eyes moved from one part of his face to another with some urgency.
He said he had.
They ducked into the café opposite Foyle’s. Flustered by this chance meeting, Moses almost hit his head on the lintel. Such a small world. They took a table by the window, faced each other across a silence of yellow formica and red plastic ketchup containers shaped like tomatoes. A shaft of sunlight struck through the plate-glass, set fire to Alison’s hair. She blinked, shifted sideways into the shadow. Her hair went out. Waiting for her to begin, Moses felt for his cigarettes. He lit one.
‘It took me a while to work it out,’ she said finally.
He realised from the candour in her eyes that it was no use pretending he didn’t know what she was talking about. She either knew or had guessed everything. How had she found out, though? He absent-mindedly flicked his cigarette. The ash rolled across the table. Alison scooped it up in a paper napkin and tipped it into the ashtray. She glanced up, noticed him watching her.
‘Sorry,’ she said, with a smile that contrived to be both embarrassed and ironic. ‘It’s a bad habit of mine, clearing up after other people.’
‘It’s all right.’ He was still staring at her. She had just reminded him of an evening in Muswell Hill. Mary sitting crosslegged on the carpet. One elbow resting against the arm of the sofa. A lit cigarette poised between the fingers of that hand. She had waited until everybody was looking then, quite deliberately, she had tapped the end of her cigarette so the ash landed on the sofa. Alison had left her chair and brushed the ash into the nearest ashtray with her hand. Mary had waited until Alison sat down then, smiling, she had done exactly the same thing again. Alison had sighed and left the room. Now, once more, Alison seemed to be taking the parental role — concerned, long-suffering, responsible — and Mary was the daughter who had misbehaved. With me, he thought. ‘How did you find out?’ he said.