So, Gloria thought. Probably not a shotgun kit then.
Moses tilted his head, narrowed his eyes. ‘Is that your second bath in two hours or did I dream we went to bed together?’
‘It wasn’t a dream,’ Gloria said.
*
Still drying herself, Gloria watched from the bathroom as Moses knelt down on the carpet and snapped the locks open. He lifted the real cowhide lid to reveal a mass of noisy tissue-paper. As he removed the layers, Gloria padded into the room on her bare feet, one towel twisted into a turban for her hair, another wrapped round her slender body almost twice. She stood behind him, one hand resting on his shoulder.
‘It’s a dress,’ was all she could, rather obviously, say.
‘Yes, it’s a dress,’ Moses said. ‘I think it must’ve belonged to my mother.’
Gloria was uncertain how to react. Standing behind him, she could only guess at his face. He had told her nothing about his parents, not a single word, but the act of opening the suitcase seemed to have dimmed the lights in the room, lit candles, started something. The dress rustled like a chasuble as he unfolded it, releasing an incense that was fragile with age and storage. He held it up for her to see.
The style was early fifties, she guessed. A tight, shaped bodice, a narrow waist with a white plastic belt, and a layered, frothy skirt, just below knee-length, which, if danced in, would whirl out horizontally, spinning and billowing. The colour was a soft damask pink with white polka-dots. A real dancing dress.
‘I’m not sure, though,’ Moses said, ‘not really.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Gloria said. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s difficult.’
Gloria moved on to the bed. She undid the turban and began to dry her hair. She watched Moses at the same time.
‘I don’t know who my mother is,’ Moses said. ‘Until I saw the photographs, I didn’t even know what she looked like.’
‘What photographs, Moses?’
‘You don’t know anything, do you?’ He laughed to himself. ‘Well, neither do I, really.’
He laid the dress across the foot of the bed. Then he rummaged in among the tissue-paper and pulled out a photograph album.
‘These are the photos,’ he said. Head bowed, the album unopened on his knee, he was wondering where to begin.
‘I haven’t told anyone before,’ he said.
‘Just start,’ Gloria said. She rearranged the pillows on the bed and leaned back.
‘Well,’ he began, ‘I’m an orphan, you see. Parents unknown. I can’t remember them.’
Gloria nodded.
‘The first thing I can remember,’ he went on, ‘is the sound of water. I’m lying on my back and it’s like there’s a roof over my head but there are holes in the roof and the light’s coming through. I remember that so clearly. That darkness with pinpricks of light in it. That and the sound of running water. After that the next thing I remember is the orphanage — ’
He gave her a picture of his life at Mrs Hood’s establishment. The noise. The smells. The nicknames. He told her how a rumour had spread among the children, a rumour about him having been found by a river. Moses. Found by a river. Very funny. He had been convinced that the whole thing was just another joke about his name — the result, no doubt, of too many hours of Religious Knowledge. He had denied it fiercely. (He had had the only fight of his life about it, with a boy called David. After that, they called him Goliath. He couldn’t win.) Later, though, he felt uneasy. Especially when he put the rumour alongside that primal memory of his. They had the sound of running water in common. Was that merely a coincidence?
Nobody enlightened him — perhaps nobody could — and he had learned to accept the darkness of not knowing. The mystery surrounding his origins had remained and endured.
‘Then, a couple of months ago,’ he said, ‘just before I met you, in fact, it was my twenty-fifth birthday. Uncle Stan and Auntie B — they’re my foster-parents — asked me if I’d like to come up for the weekend. Nothing much was happening in London, so I went. On the Sunday night they brought this suitcase down from their attic. “We’ve been looking after this for years,” they said, “ever since we adopted you, but now you’re twenty-five, it’s legally yours. It’s from your parents — ”’
‘God,’ was all Gloria could say.
‘You see, apparently, when I was abandoned by my parents, this suitcase was left with me. Mrs Hood stored it away until I was adopted. Then my foster-parents looked after it –
‘Anyway, I couldn’t believe it. I mean, imagine. I’d forgotten all about my real parents. I hardly ever thought of them because I’d never known them. I’d learned to live with that. Then suddenly, after all those years, they go and remind me of their existence again.’
Moses shook his head. He picked up the album of photographs, then put it down again. ‘It’s very strange. I’ve looked at these photos, and I’ve tried to remember being there, I’ve tried to recognise the faces, but it’s like trying to remember places you’ve never been, it’s like trying to recognise complete strangers. It’s ridiculous. There are a few pictures of a baby in there, and I suppose it’s meant to be me, but I don’t recognise that either. Christ, I don’t even recognise myself. But I’m staring so hard, you see, I’m trying so hard to remember that sometimes, just sometimes, I fool myself into thinking that I do remember. It’s crazy, but I can’t tell the difference. I don’t know whether the memories are real or not ‘And what about this dress?’ He reached out and touched the hem. ‘When I first opened the suitcase, I thought I remembered it. It was like a flash. A gut-reaction. Very sudden. I remembered my mother, my real mother, bending over me, wearing that dress. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that all I could really see in my memory was the dress. Just the dress bending over me. Nobody inside it.’
He paused.
‘Nobody inside it,’ he repeated softly, almost to himself. ‘So you see, I can’t really remember anything — ’
Silence had filled the green room with water, slowing every sentence, every movement down. When he turned and looked at Gloria he saw that she had been crying. He moved on to the bed and dried her face with his hands.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to go into all that.’
She wiped her eyes with her wrists. ‘That’s all right.’
‘It’s me who should be crying really.’
‘I know.’
*
They suddenly noticed that it was getting late and that if they were going to get drunk that evening (something they had promised themselves on the drive up) they would have to hurry. They opened their suitcases, pulled out clothes, began to dress each other. It was like a sex-scene in reverse and Moses kept wondering, as Gloria buttoned his trousers and his shirt, whether the film would start winding forwards again, towards nakedness. It didn’t, though. Passively, he watched his body disappearing. Then Gloria stood in front of the mirror and aimed a hairdryer at her head while Moses dusted every inch of her slight body with special talcum powder, from the pale shell-like gaps between her toes to the Turkish Delight of her nipples. She passed the hairdryer from one hand to the other so he could slip her arms into the sleeves of her white silk blouse. He fastened buttons with huge fumbling fingers. He held a pair of black knickers at floor-level for her to step into, one foot at a time, then drew them past her knees, up her thighs and over her soft and unusually straight pubic hair (which had been aged dramatically by the powder). He zipped up her skirt, chose shoes, clipped on earrings. In ten minutes they appeared in the doorway, scented, presentable, and separating from a kiss (the film still running backwards, it seemed).