These Dreams of You (17 page)

O
utside the pub is another song from one of the city's windows that are lit up like reverbed fireflies.
Over, under, sideways down.
Bob appraises the remnants of the midnight legion that cross the curbs and brush past; they wear lace and silver trench coats, brilliant-red braided Hussar coats and Moroccan boots. Their wide Edwardian ties have images of fish so radiated with color that all the people in the street appear to be aquariums.
When will it end?
Everyone in the world is young, suddenly.

Each road is a vortex. In the wet nighttown gleam, there drifts past the three of them on the sidewalk a Rolls Royce the color of a prism, the aurora borealis on wheels. The window is down on the passenger's side and they have a clear glimpse of who's in back. “See who that was?” Jasmine says to Reg.

“Bloody right,” Reg answers.

“Who was it?” says Bob.

“Who I'm not.”

“Elvis Presley?”

“Better.”

“These days,” says Bob, walking now, “London isn't the way I remember.”

Jasmine says, “These days, London isn't the way anyone remembers.”

“Are you a Beatle too?” he says to her as they stroll, only because it's a time when such a thing can be believed.

“Assistant for the management of Reg's band. Studying journalism at Kingston Hill.”

This seems to interest the Yank. “What kind of journalism? Politics?”

“Not politics,” she shakes her head. “Politics as it's presently practiced doesn't matter much these days, does it?” She's aware this sounds pompous.

“My brother considered journalism when he was young.”

“What happened?”

“He went into politics,” Bob laughs almost bitterly.

“Sorry.”

“You've been to London before, then,” says Reg.

“I grew up in London,” says Bob.

“Seriously?” she says.

“Only a year or two. After the Blitz, before the war. I was twelve.” He shrugs. “The other war, of course. Not the one now, in Southeast Asia.”

“Your war,” says Jasmine, “not ours.”

R
eg says, “I was four when the war ended. Think I remember listening on the radio, Churchill and the King waving to the crowd from some bloody balcony or other. The palace, I imagine.”

“You, uh, wouldn't remember the Blitz,” says Bob, “not if you were four. The Blitz was over by the summer of '41.”

“That's when I was born,” and Reg immediately realizes he's just blurted his real age. Missing nothing, Jasmine laughs. “Anyway,” he says, looking at her sheepishly, “I wasn't in London. I'm from Andover, in Hampshire.”

“So how is it you were living in London?” Jasmine asks the Yank, still laughing at Reg.

Always uncertain what's so damned funny, Bob answers, “My father worked here.”

“What sort of work was that?” says Reg. He lights a cigarette and offers one to the other man, who waves it off. “Right,” says Jasmine, “it's a bit of a walk from here to Regent's,” and the three stop, gazing around. “Not really me town,” Reg explains to the Yank. “She's the native.”

“I'm not a native. I'm not even English.”

“You're English,” he puffs his cigarette, “you've been English since you were bloody two years old.”

“Well,” says Bob, “I know I walked to the pub where I met you.”

“Not saying it can't be done,” she answers, “and, you know, the longest way round is the shortest way home, eh? Did you realize you had gone that far?”

“I suppose not. I was looking for the theatre district.” He says, “I don't mind the walk,” the three still stopped in the street. “I'll, uh, be able to get some sleep when I get back. I won't on the plane tomorrow. I understand if you two want to take off.”

“Going back to New York, then,” says Jasmine.

“No,” and Jasmine can see in the dark the provocation of the Yank's blue eyes as they regard her, his hands in his pockets like it's the most casual thing in the world—in some ways it's the most casual he's been all night—when he says, “South Africa.”

A
s if he's taunting her—and finally her ambivalence about him metastasizes to dislike.
He's trying to incite me
and, jolted as much by the way he's said it as what he's said, she wants to walk away. His idea, she wonders, of taking the piss? Delivered with the same bullying bluntness as everything else he's said tonight? An insensitive, even cruel retaliation for . . . what? good-natured teasing about not knowing who Elvis Presley is?

Of course it can't help feeling like a violation. She's restrained from leaving only by the regret she'll feel not having told him to sod off. “On business?” Reg says with an obliviousness that would infuriate her more if she weren't so used to it: Jasmine may not be political but Reg is hopeless.
He doesn't know South Africa from South Antarctica
and now she's not sure which of them to be angrier at. “Yes,” Bob says, not taking his eyes from hers, still the taunt, “business,” and then turns to continue walking. Reg follows. She hangs back and Reg turns to look. “Can we leave?” she says.

Reg insists, “Let's walk a bit more.” In the early-morning hours the three make their way up Charing Cross along Soho's eastern border. Looming before them is the head of an incandescent African woman, painted on the side of a seven-story building; she has crouching day-glo lions for eyes and, like Medusa, her skull flames with bright violet dreadlocks that glimmer from the rain and appear to slither up the street. The words
Abyssinia
and
Queen Sheba
wreathe the woman's face like smoke. “Right,” Reg says, practically jaunty, “so what was it took you back to Leicester Square anyway this time of night, Bob? A little late for the theatre.” He glances up at the huge painting of the woman's lysergic dreadlocks and peers back over his shoulder at Jasmine, who walks along behind glaring at the ground, arms folded.

Bob never looks up from the ground. “A little late for the theater . . . ” he nods.

“Never fancied the theatre myself.”

“Retracing steps . . . ”

“How's that?”

“From, uh, an earlier trip.”

“Back when you were living here.”

“No. After the War.”

“So you've been back since?”

“I met an actress then, in one of the shows.”

“Not your wife?” Reg says. Jasmine still lags behind alienated, head full of her own voice.

“No.” He stops to look up at the sky.

“Fancy being married?”

“Sure.” The Yank holds out his palm.

“Kids?”

“Lots.” Still looking up, “It's about to rain.”

“Right, I felt something too.”

“So we're checking out the haunts of old flames,” says Jasmine, “brilliant,” and Reg looks at her.

“I suppose,” Bob answers quietly.

Reg says, “London bird then,” still looking at Jasmine, finally sensing her mood. She stares back defiantly and Reg tears himself from her stare.

“She was in a show playing my older sister who, uh, just had been killed in a plane crash.”

“Hang on,” says Reg. “The actress you were dating was playing your sister?”

“It's queer, I suppose.”

“You
suppose
it's queer?” says Jasmine.

“It
is
bloody odd,” agrees Reg.

“Fancied a woman playing your dead sister?” Jasmine says, taking some satisfaction from her own tactlessness.

“What happened?” says Reg.

“My father strongly discouraged it.” The Yank adds, wryly, “He, uh, knew something about showgirls.”

“Or perhaps,” says Jasmine, “just showgirls playing your sister.”

I
'll bet, she thinks, that he married the very next girl he went out with. So when Bob laughs, “The very next girl I went out with, my brother stole—the girl after
that
, I married,” she's startled: Did I say it out loud? she wonders. Turning to her slightly, Bob doesn't break his stride. “Well, then, mate,” says Reg absently, stopping in the street to look around or maybe just slow the pace, “you needed to nick one back from him. Jaz, is this the way?”

On the corner is a closed Wimpy Bar. “Nearly did once,” says Bob. No, I didn't say it out loud, thinks Jasmine. “But he wasn't the sort—”

“She's the native home-town girl,” Reg nods at Jasmine.

“—who had girls stolen from him.” The park comes into view.

“I'm not a native and yes it's the way and,” says Jasmine, “there's the park.” She turns to Reg. “Can we go now?”

“But let's walk him the rest of it,” says Reg.

“I want to leave.”

“Where are you from?” Bob says to her.

Oh don't bloody bother. To Reg, “I want to leave.”

“It's all right,” Bob says to Reg, and points through the trees of the park at a large house lit from the outside, red brick and white columns visible in the lights. “That's where you're staying?” says Reg. As the three stand in the street peering at the house, a downpour opens up above and Reg dashes to the Wimpy Bar to take cover under the overhang; Bob follows, though never breaking from his determined stroll. Jasmine remains in the road. “Are you daft?” Reg calls to her. “Get out of there,” but the rain comes down and Jasmine doesn't move, staring at him, arms folded.

“I'm going home,” she says.

“What?” calls Reg. A few feet away, he can't hear her for the rain.

“See you at the session,” she says and turns on her heel and walks off, and when Reg calls after her, “Cheers,” she doesn't answer. When Bob calls, more softly, “Goodbye,” she doesn't answer that either. Bloody hell, she thinks as she splashes down the road in the rain. The Bloody Impossible Dream. She shakes her head and soon is gone from the men's sight.

R
eg shrugs to the Yank under the Wimpy Bar overhang. “She's upset with me,” he says, “we'll sort it out tomorrow.”

“I'm the one she's angry at,” Bob says.

Reg is surprised. “Why would she be angry at you?”

It's becoming cold in the rain. Reg pulls his coat around him closer, but the other, barely noticing, says, “Evil has become a quaint word, hasn't it?”

“Uh,” says Reg, “well. ‘Evil'? Don't suppose I've heard it since Church, whenever the last time that was.”

Watching Jasmine disappear in the distance, Bob says, “How long have you been together?”

“Not that long,” says Reg. Now he doesn't want to tell the other man they're not really a couple. “Met her through the record company. She's there to keep an eye on us in the studio, and soon I suppose I was keeping an eye on her.”

“What were you doing before you made records?”

“Laying bricks back home. Started the band with another bricklayer. Still me day job, construction.”

“Do you write your songs?”

“Sometimes. One we're doing tomorrow is by a cat from your hometown, New York—”

“I don't have a hometown . . . ”

“—but sometimes I change a lyric or two . . . ”

“ . . . anymore.”

“ . . . if I think we can get away with it. Make it a bit our own, you know?”

“No one gets angry at music.”

“Are you having me on? People get angry at music all the bleeding time.”

“No one will kill you for it, though.”

“Not yet.” In the shadow of the Wimpy Bar, the Brit sees the same blue glint of the Yank's eyes that Jasmine saw. Bob says, “You, uh, don't have to go the rest of the way.”

Doesn't occur to him, thinks Reg, to spot me a few quid for a cab. “So what is it then,” he says, nodding at the large house through the park trees, “if not a hotel?”

“Ambassador's residence.”

“You're staying with the ambassador?”

“I lived there as a boy. Queer to be back.”

“You lived in the ambassador's house as a boy?”

“The scene of . . . ” says Bob, and stops. “Whatever can be redeemed, I suppose,” he finally finishes. “But then my religion would make me believe that even if I didn't want to. My father, uh, his judgment in world affairs was something less than his judgment in showgirls.”

T
hey continue watching the rain come down from under the Wimpy Bar overhang. Still pulling his coat close, Reg lights another cigarette. Bob says, “What's your girl's name again?”

“You're not making a move on me old lady, are you?” Reg says it like he's joking.

Bob snaps, “No.”

“Just winding you up a bit. What with stealing birds from your brother and all. Jasmine.”

“Nearly stole.”

“Right, nearly.”

“Didn't I say nearly?”

“You did,” Reg assures him.

Sticking his head out from beneath the dripping overhang, Bob surveys the skies. “She's African, isn't she?”

“What?”

“Your girl.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“From South Africa.”

“Don't remember, mate, I get all those places confused, if you want to know the truth. Same thing, aren't they? No, she's from that country with the emperor cat. The one the rastas think is Jesus.”

“Haile Selassie.”

“Yeah.”

“Ethiopia.”

“That's it.”

“Abyssinia. The beginning of the world. He was at my brother's funeral.”

“What?”

Bob says to Reg, “My brother was better in
every
way.”

“The emperor of Ethiopia was at your—?”

“But he had his weaknesses, and she was one.”

“Bob? I've sort of lost track who we're on about.”

“And we couldn't have it anymore. And when she didn't want to let him go—”

“Right. We're not talking about the London bird from the theatre anymore.”

“—she came to me,” but he stops, a man who resents having to explain anything to anyone. “I made her heart sing, for a few hours.”

“She said that?”

“She's gone now. He's gone too.”