‘No,’ he said, ‘no thanks,’ and hurried away, as if from a threat, a piece of unpleasantness.
The girl shrugged. Shadows entered the open pores in the skin of her face. She looked injured somehow.
He didn’t get the job.
Afterwards he thought about the mandarin. He saw it again, resting solidly, like an orb, in the cupped palm of the girl’s hand. It looked complete, sure of itself. It seemed, in retrospect, to be glowing, like something invested with real magic powers. And he had turned it down. He had said no to the mandarin.
He was certain now that he had failed some kind of test on Bond Street that morning.
But there was another way of looking at it too. In the end, of course, it was just a mandarin, a pleasantly refreshing citrus fruit, and why hadn’t he accepted it for what it was? It wasn’t poisonous, was it? It wouldn’t bite. I mean, for Christ’s sake, he even LIKED mandarins.
But he had said no.
Similarly now. He could ignore this — he checked again: yes — beautiful girl who he now knew was called Gloria. Simply pretend she wasn’t there. But he knew what would happen. This Gloria, she was another mandarin. And she would glow in his memory, glow and glow, taunting, unforgettable.
A big blue satin bow appeared in front of Moses’s eyes. It was attached to a blue dress and, inside the dress, was a girl. She was standing two steps below him, holding two glasses of wine.
‘Would you like a drink?’ she asked him.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I would. Definitely. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed.’
*
After that things happened very fast and in a way that seemed surprising and confusing at the time but entirely logical in retrospect. Moses was standing on the landing with his new drink when Eddie edged out of a nearby room. Moses heard a soft groan come from somewhere behind him. He turned just in time to see a blonde girl crumple vertically, in slow motion, like one of those old brick chimneys being dynamited.
‘Louise!’ Moses cried.
He reacted quickly, catching her before she hit the floor. He whipped the brandy out and moistened her lips with the few drops that remained.
‘What are you doing?’ came a voice from the stairs.
Moses swung round in a kind of frozen tango position, Louise flung over his arms, head back, eyes closed. It was Gloria. He almost dropped everything and ran.
‘It’s — it’s brandy,’ he stammered.
‘What happened?’ Gloria asked.
‘What happened?’ Louise murmured, eyelids flickering.
Moses spoke to Louise. ‘You fainted.’
He lowered her gently until she was sitting on the carpet with her back against the wall. Gloria knelt down, brushed the damp hair out of Louise’s eyes.
‘What happened?’ she asked again.
‘It was a friend of mine,’ Moses explained. He knew this was going to sound implausible, but he decided it would be better to tell the truth. ‘He’s got these strange powers, you see. He can walk into a room and everybody stops what they’re doing and turns round and stares. The whole room sort of freezes. It’s some kind of chemical thing, I think. Sometimes people forget what they’re doing completely, or pass out like Louise just did. He was here a minute ago, so I think that’s probably what happened.’
‘You know Louise?’ Gloria asked.
‘I’m a friend. We work in the same place. Well, sort of work. Me, I mean.’
Gloria smiled. ‘You must be Moses.’
Her voice was menthol-cool, slightly husky, amused. Her lips moved like two halves of a dream that makes you feel good all day. Her eyebrows said ten past nine.
‘Hello, Gloria,’ he said.
*
‘How did you know my name?’ she asked.
He didn’t answer. He just sat on the carpet next to Louise, and smiled. A boldness had descended on him like a black cloak with a scarlet lining. He suddenly felt a bit like Dracula — sinister, magnetic, predatory.
‘I think Louise could use some air,’ he said.
Gloria suggested the garden. Moses guided Louise down the stairs. They followed Gloria into the kitchen, through a sunroom, and out on to a wide paved verandah.
It was a cold still night. The remains of the rain that had fallen earlier dripped from the trees. A stone balustrade, upholstered in moss and topped with giant carved urns, ran the length of the back of the house. Gloria led Moses and Louise down a flight of steps. They crossed a lawn. A high hedge loomed. They passed under an archway and into a miniature formal garden. Now and then somebody laughed or screamed inside the house, but otherwise they only heard the party remotely, like a TV three rooms away.
‘It’s good to be outside,’ Moses said.
Gloria took a deep breath, a form of agreement perhaps.
‘I feel better already,’ Louise said, and promptly stumbled on a loose slab of stone and almost toppled into the ornamental pond.
‘I give up with you,’ Moses said.
‘Bloody footpath,’ Louise said. ‘Jesus.’
‘Honestly,’ Gloria said, ‘fancy leaving a footpath there like that. Somebody could hurt themselves.’
Moses laughed.
‘What are you in such a good mood for, Gloria?’ Louise said. ‘I thought you hated this party. I thought you were leaving.’
‘Changed my mind.’
The two girls sat down at opposite ends of a stone bench. There would have been room for Moses between them — just — but Moses, imagining that nearness to Gloria as a kind of heat and not wanting to be burned, stood by the pond instead.
Silence. The city’s parody of silence. Murmuring voices, a hiss of distant cars on wet roads, the hum of a million lit buildings. Something moved in the pond. Moses bent down.
‘Hey, there are real goldfish in here.’ He could see a whole shoal of them gliding through the water. Fat gold missiles fired into the darkness at the end of the pond.
‘Real goldfish.’ Gloria’s voice mocked him slightly.
He looked over his shoulder, tried to read something more than mockery into that, but her face, backlit by the bright windows of the house, was illegible.
‘Well, you know,’ he said, ‘in a house like this I thought they’d be motorised or something.’
There he was trying to explain himself and they were laughing at him. I’m making her laugh, he realised. And the thought soared in his head like an anthem.
*
Gloria left Louise sitting on the bench and walked across the grass. She paused some distance away. She seemed to be examining a statue of an angel. Moses waited a few moments, then followed her.
When he reached her he didn’t give himself time to think or reconsider. ‘I’d like you to come away with me,’ he said.
‘Now?’ She kept her voice light, detached. Almost visible, it floated through the air towards him.
‘No, not now. Well — maybe. But that’s not what I meant.’
‘What did you mean then?’
‘I meant,’ and he paused, this was sounding dreadful, ‘some weekend.’
‘I don’t even know who you are.’
He swallowed. ‘I’m not dangerous. Really I’m not.’
She tilted her face towards his. He saw a quizzical smile, the fire of curiosity beginning to burn. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t think you are. But I really can’t afford anything like that at the moment. I’m not working, you see.’
‘I thought you sang,’ Moses said, remembering.
She smiled. ‘Not often enough.’
A pause.
‘Tell you what,’ Moses said. ‘I got £80 the other day. For sheets and things. We could use that.’
‘Sheets? What sheets?’
‘Sheets. A man from the DHSS came round to see me. He told me I could claim for lots of things that I wasn’t claiming for. “Like what?” I said. “Like sheets,” he said. So I claimed for sheets and a couple of days ago I got a cheque in the post. £80.’