He was wearing nothing except a towel and a pair of socks. It was half past twelve on Sunday night.
‘What?’ Gloria said. ‘Now?’
Moses nodded.
Gloria could see that he had some clearly defined idea in mind, but she couldn’t guess what it was. She slipped her coat on and followed him downstairs.
By the time she reached the snooker-room Moses was beginning to undo his towel. When he was entirely naked he climbed on to the green baize and lay there, full length, on his back.
Smiling, she kicked off her shoes.
The cues lay stiff and silent in their brass racks over by the far wall.
The coloured balls glowed significantly in the woven string sacks under each pocket.
The scoreboard said I–I.
One of the windows was open, and a breeze disturbed the heavy velvet curtains.
It was a warm night in Leicestershire.
*
Ice-cream van? Fire-alarm? Doorbell?
Moses had woken in a sweat, heart thumping, shocked into consciousness by the bright jarring sound.
Telephone.
His arm flailed out in the rough direction of the bedside table. His movements had the slow panic of someone sinking into quicksand. He found the receiver, picked it up, brought it over to where his head was.
‘This is your early morning call,’ came a woman’s voice. ‘It’s six o’clock.’ She sounded as though she had been up for hours.
‘Six o’clock?’ Moses groaned.
‘You asked to be woken at six, Mr Highness.’
He lay there wondering why, then he remembered that Gloria had an audition in London at eleven.
‘Thank you,’ he said, and hung up.
He sat up, ruffled his hair, switched the bedside light on. Gloria was still asleep, he saw, now that his eyes were open (he wished they weren’t; they stung).
Monday morning. The end of the weekend. The window an empty soulless slate-grey. He hated early mornings, especially early Monday mornings. They seemed to marshal all his anxieties, all his reasons for depression — troops of occupation that stamped about, brutalising everything, while he looked on, lost, weak, broken-willed. Looking at Gloria (one shoulder bare, a shield of dark hair, pouting mouth), he had the feeling that their best times together were already over.
He touched her shoulder. ‘Gloria?’
‘Mer.’ The foreign language of dawn.
Without opening her eyes, she did a kind of somersault, fetching up against him, facing him, fitting neatly, like a spoon.
‘Don’t want to,’ she said.
He smiled down at her, the kind of smile she would like to have seen. A sad fond smile. Nor do I, he thought. Nor do I.
They were similar in the mornings: dopey, laconic, functioning on automatic pilot. They washed, dressed, packed. They ate a quick breakfast. While Moses took the cases down, Gloria checked the room for anything they might have forgotten. Moses asked Taj Mahal for their bill and paid by cheque. Gloria handed the key over.
‘Thank you,’ she said. And then, at the door, ‘Goodbye, Taj Mahal.’
The receptionist turned towards her, his head catching the light, and smiled almost pleasantly. Taj Mahal at daybreak. The best time to see it, so they say.
In fifteen minutes they were back on the motorway and settled into their separate silences. Moses became absorbed in the road, its surface the colour of a Siamese cat. Turn-off points for towns he would never see flicked by.
He glanced across at Gloria. She lay in her seat as usual, arms folded, feet in the glove compartment. She was singing snatches of ‘Twenty-Four Hours From Tulsa’.
‘Every car should have one of you installed,’ he said, smiling.
‘Every car should be so lucky.’
He had to agree with that.
‘You know what you did,’ he said moments later, suddenly remembering.
‘No. What?’
‘You called him Taj Mahal. You said, “Goodbye Taj Mahal.”’
‘I didn’t.’ Gloria seemed genuinely surprised.
‘You did. And you know what else? I think he liked it.’
Gloria shook her head, laughed softly to herself. ‘Old Taj Mahal.’
‘Yeah,’ Moses said. ‘He looked at you and smiled.’
The sun was visible now through layers of cloud and mist. It looked like a beautiful woman trying on a négligé.
Cows tugged at the damp glistening turf.
The fields, rumpled at first, gradually began to flatten themselves against the ground, pretending they weren’t there at all.
The sun tried on grey, then white, and finally it walked out of the shop naked. It reminded him of Gloria, also naked, packing the pink dress earlier that morning.
‘Are you sure about this?’ she had asked him.
‘Yes,’ but irritably, ‘yes, I’m sure.’
She hadn’t detected the uncertainty, the resentment, in his voice. It had been like a failure of perception on her part. She had packed the dress.
The road had changed colour. It was black now. The outskirts of London lay like a pile of ashes and clinker on the horizon.
‘Where do you want to be dropped off?’ he asked her.
She looked out of the window at the drab motorway landscape then across at Moses. ‘In London, preferably,’ she said.
‘Sorry,’ and Moses smiled, ‘that came out wrong.’
An hour later he let her out in Victoria and waited long enough to see her swallowed up by the flow of the crowd down into the tube station, then he pulled out into the heavy Monday morning traffic.
Peach Incognito (1980)
He had told everybody the same story.
First Hilda. On the Sunday. At breakfast. The table smelling of flowers and polish, rich and waxy, tampering with the sharp aroma of his grilled herring. Light from the garden skidding off mahogany.
‘I’m going to disappear for twenty-four hours,’ he announced, as he buttered a slice of toast.
Hilda lifted a head of fading dehydrated curls. When questioning something, she displayed her infinite tact. She said nothing; she merely waited.
‘I have some extremely important research to do,’ he said. ‘In the museum.’
‘All right, dear.’ Hilda bit delicately into the triangle of toast poised between her finger and thumb.
‘It will probably be happening next weekend.’ He spoke through the clinking of china. It made his words seem less naked. It seemed to clothe his deceit. ‘Friday and Saturday, I should think. So don’t expect me home on Friday night.’
Torn between amusement and concern, Hilda abandoned her usual discretion. ‘You’re not going to sleep in the museum, are you?’ Her eccentric husband!
He was brisk, imperious. ‘Either that or I’ll use one of the beds in the station. It depends how things go. In any case, don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right.’
Hilda touched the handle of her tea-cup, traced its outline with a single lingering finger. ‘And when will you be back, do you think?’
‘Saturday night. Midnight. No later than that.’
Hilda nodded.
Watching her through the arms of the candelabra, he felt that she had taken the news too casually. He had to impress her with the gravity of the matter. He wanted it branded on her mind.
‘I don’t want to be disturbed, Hilda. Not by anyone. Is that understood?’
Hilda pressed a fingertip to one of the crumbs on her plate. Her bottom teeth gripped her upper lip. Now he had upset her.
‘It’s very important,’ he explained, more gently. ‘It’s only for twenty-four hours.’
‘I know, dear.’ She faced him across the table, and her slightly lifted chin suggested a quaint bravery. ‘I’ll make you some sandwiches and a Thermos of hot soup.’
He didn’t want bloody soup, but he said, ‘That would be very nice.’