A Dream of Wessex (11 page)

As he had been in his own life, Tom in Wessex had been wise, jolly, warm. It seemed a pitiless, lonely death, to die inside the projector, but his consciousness had been in Wessex, and he had known she was beside him.

Julia realized she had been silent for some time, and that Marilyn was watching her uncomfortably.

‘Has Tom been buried yet?’

‘No, the funeral’s tomorrow. Will you go?’

‘Of course. Have his relatives been told?’

Marilyn nodded. ‘I believe your parents will be there.’

Julia thought about seeing them again; it would be very strange. Her memories of them were partly confused with those of her ‘parents’ in Wessex. Once, during a period of leave, she had telephoned her father and during the conversation she had asked him some question about the farming cooperative. He owned a large and prospering dairy-farm near Hereford, and to say the least he hadn’t understood. She had made a weak joke to cover the slip; to explain would have taken far too long. Her parents had only the vaguest notion of what her work entailed.

It was a quarter to eleven.

Marilyn said: ‘I suppose you had better go along to the meeting. I take it you haven’t made a report yet?’

‘I haven’t had a chance.’

They went out into the corridor, and Julia said: ‘By the way, I’ve found David Harkman. He’s working at - ’

‘At the Regional Commission,’ Marilyn said. ‘Don Mander told us.’

‘Is Don back too?’

‘He wants to talk to you about David. He thinks you’re up to something.’

Julia smiled at her memories.

She called in at the office on her way to the meeting, and picked up the mail that had accumulated over the last three weeks. There were about fifteen letters in all, and she sorted through them quickly. Most had been forwarded on from her flat in London, and most were bills. These she left with one of the secretaries; the Wessex participants all had their affairs looked after for them while they were inside the projector.

As she left the office a door on the opposite side of the corridor opened, and a man stepped out.

He said: ‘Hello, Julia. I was told I would find you here.’

It was Paul Mason. The sight of him was so wholly unexpected that Julia froze in mid-step. She pressed herself back against the wall. Looking at him, seeing his confident, smiling face, Julia wanted to run. She felt a total compulsion to return to Maiden Castle at once, to bury herself in the future for ever.

Paul said: ‘Aren’t you pleased to see me?’

Everything that Julia had done since her return, and everything that she had thought about, was ejected from her mind by the sight of him as totally and efficiently as the memories of her own life were wiped out by the Ridpath projector. She saw Paul, only Paul, and all that he stood for in her past: the destruction of her pride, of her sense of identity, of her self-respect.

In the same way that she had been morbidly obsessed with him after she had seen him during her last weekend in London, so he was now someone who by his very existence demanded, and received, her complete attention.

‘Are you following me?’ she said, and in so saying recognized in her own voice the sound of paranoia.

‘What do you mean, Julia?’ Was his innocent expression feigned?

‘Look, Paul, I told you. We’re finished. I don’t want anything more to do with you.’

‘So you keep saying.’

‘Then what are you doing here?’

He smiled, and it was patronizingly reassuring. ‘Not to see you, if that’s what you think. We happen to work in the same job, that’s all.’

Before she could stop herself, Julia said: ‘You’re not a member of the project! ‘

‘I work for the trustees.’

Julia looked from side to side along the corridor. Marilyn had gone off to beg a lift back to the Castle, and was probably already out of the house. There was no one else in sight, but several doors along the corridor were open.

‘We can’t talk here,’ Julia said. ‘Someone will hear us.’

‘You haven’t got anything to hide, have you?’

Julia pushed past him and went into the room he had been in. It was an office, and the desk was cluttered with papers. She recognized what the papers were the instant she saw them: some of the many reports filed by members of the projection during their periods of return from Wessex. These reports were the raw material of the projection, from which the periodic findings presented to the trustees were compiled. To Julia, the fact that someone like Paul Mason could have access to them was the grossest imaginable breach of privacy.

Paul was standing by the door.

‘If you want to talk to me,’ Julia said, ‘come in here.’

‘You seem to be the one who wants to talk,’ Paul said, but he came into the room and closed the door.

‘Is this your room?’ Julia said.

‘It is for the moment. There’s another room coming free this week, and I’ll be moving into that.’

He meant Tom Benedict’s room. Julia knew without having to be told.

With the door closed, Paul’s manner changed. In the corridor he had had an air of amused formality, presumably because other people might have passed, but now that they were alone together Julia saw a more familiar Paul, one she recognized from the old days. In a particular sense this sudden change was a relief to her, for it confirmed her prejudices about him; there was always a doubt, when she was not with him, that she had imagined his destructive instincts.

Paul had walked round the desk, and was sitting behind it. He gave her a knowing look, then picked up two or three of the reports and held them for her to see.

‘I’m interested in your dreamworld,’ he said. ‘It sounds pleasantly comforting.’

‘Comforting?’ she said. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s just the sort of escape from reality you specialize in.’

Paul was never content with an intrusion into privacy; he always had to pass comment sooner or later.

‘Look, Paul, it’s a real world.’

‘But it is a fantasy, isn’t it? You mould it to your own desires.’

‘It’s a scientific project.’

‘It was intended to be. I’ve read your reports ... it’s quite an idyllic little place you’ve worked out for yourself.’

Julia, simultaneously angry and embarrassed, felt again the urge to run from him, but she knew that this time she would have to face up to him. The charge that the project members were indulging themselves in a wish-fulfilment fantasy was one that had been made several times by the board of trustees. It was inevitable when the nature of the project was understood. Of necessity, any projection would reflect the unconscious desires of the participants, and thus become a congenial environment to them. For all that, though, the scientific nature of the work was paramount.

But for Paul to make this charge, and to make it to her, pitched it on an altogether different level.

‘You know nothing about Wessex,’ she said.

‘I’ve read the reports. And I know you, Julia. Isn’t it right up your street? Remember all those movies you used to see?’

‘I don’t know what you mean!’ Julia said, but Paul smiled at her in a sly way, and she knew exactly what he meant.

There had been a time, about nine months before she left him, when she had felt she could go on no longer. She had been in one of her many secretarial jobs, bored and miserable, and in the evenings when she went back to the flat Paul was there to remind her of her failings and her faults, and the contempt he felt for her was only too clear. One evening, unable to face him, she’d rung him up and told him she had to work overtime ... and went to the cinema instead. The two or three hours of relief had been sweet indeed, and the following evening she did the same. Over a period of three weeks she went, alone to a cinema more often than she went home. And of course Paul had eventually found out. Trying to explain herself, trying to communicate her desperation, Julia had told him why, exactly why, but instead of sympathy she received only more contempt. From that day ‘going to the movies’ had become another phrase in Paul’s unique vocabulary of destructive criticism, a metaphor for her inadequacy to face up to the real world.

Paul never forgot; the vocabulary was still intact, and it spoke across the years she had been free of him.

‘You’ve always run away,’ Paul said. ‘You even ran away from me.’

‘It was all you deserved.’

‘You used to say I was the most important person in your life. Remember?’

‘I thought it for about a week.’

The first week. Those first deadly days when she had trusted and admired and loved him, or so she thought. The days when she had confided in him and talked frankly about herself, and at the same time was unknowingly sowing the seeds which would grow into the poisonous plants that he would be forever reaping.

‘You can’t run away again. You made the mistake once ... but you know how you depend on me.’

Anger prevailed. ‘My God, I don’t need you! I’ve finished with you as completely as it’s possible to be free of anyone. If I never see you again, I won’t give a damn! ‘

‘I seem to have heard that somewhere before.’

‘This time it’s final. I’ve got my own life.’

‘Ah, yes. Your little escapist fantasy. How I admire you.’

Julia turned away from him, and went to the door, the fury trembling in her.

‘Still running, Julia?’

As she turned the handle, she paused. Looking back at Paul she saw that he was at ease, and smiling. He’d always enjoyed peeling back the skin to expose her sensitive nerves, then picking at them with his fingernails.

‘I don’t need to run from you any more. You’re nothing to me.’

‘So I see. Then we’ll test that in the projection.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We’ll see how your unconscious reacts to mine.’

She stared at him with a new horror. ‘You’re not going into the projection! ‘

‘No, no, of course not. How could I have ever thought you would allow me to upset your life.’

Of all the various weapons at his disposal, sarcasm was the one most blunted by over-use.

Julia said: ‘Paul, so help me I’ll do everything in my power to make sure you go nowhere near the projector.’

He laughed as if to diminish the power she invoked. ‘I suppose the trustees have no say in the matter. I’m answerable to them, not to you.’

‘I’m a full participant. If I don’t want you to join, I can stop you.’

‘Against the majority vote of the others, naturally.’

There was a way ... she knew there was a way.

‘I can stop you, Paul,’ she said again.

In the early days a tacit agreement had been reached by all the participants. The nature of the projection was so delicately determined by the unconscious minds of the participants that its balance could be upset by the reactions of one personality to another. From the start they had all agreed: no relationships outside the projection. No affairs, no forming of liaisons, no cliques. Personal animus would be resolved one way or another before the projection began, or one or both of the parties would resign. With the same delicacy as they had created the nuances of the projected world, the participants had achieved this somehow. They stayed of accord, they stayed of a mind ... but outside the projection they lived their own lives, and met only to discuss the work.

Paul was waiting, smiling at her.

‘There’s a rule we abide by,’ she said. ‘I have only to tell the others what you are to me, and you’ll be out.’

‘So you would tell them you still fancy me?’

‘No, you bastard. I’ll tell them how much I loathe you. I’ll tell them what you’ve done to me in the past, and I’ll tell them what’s happened today. I’ll tell them anything ... just to keep you out of Wessex.’

Paul’s smile had vanished, but his eyes held the same expression they had held all along: a narrow, calculating look.

‘I suppose that knife could be made to cut two ways,’ he said.

‘How?’

‘It could be used on you as much as me.’ He stood up quickly, alarming her, and she stepped back. Her hand was still on the door-knob, but she hadn’t the strength to turn it. ‘I’ve worked for a long time for an opportunity like this. I’m in this because it’s my chance, and I’m going to take it. Nothing’s going to get in my way, certainly not some frigid little bitch who’s spent half her life blaming others for her own weakness. You can find somewhere else to hide. If it’s between you and me, then it’s going to be me.’

Julia said, summoning her last reserves of strength, knowing she could stand no more of this: ‘I’m already established. You won’t be allowed in.’

‘Then we’ll put it to the test. See what the others think. Who’s going to tell them? You or me?’

Julia shook her head miserably.

Paul said: ‘And while we’re talking about that, shall we also mention your friendship with Benedict? Shall we tell them how you got your job?’

‘No, Paul!’

‘So we know what to tell the others. That’s fine by me.’

Julia felt she was going to faint. In the last ten minutes every single one of her deepest and most intimate nightmares had come to pass. She had known Paul was ruthless, she had known he was ambitious; she knew everything and more about the chemistry of destruction that worked between them, but she had never realized that the three could combine to such spectacularly explosive effect. She let out an uncontrollable low moan of misery and despair, and turned away. Paul, sitting down behind his desk, was grinning again.

As she let herself out of the office, she heard him rustling through the personal reports that lay on his desk.

Although it was after one o’clock in the morning, the cafes and night-clubs of Dorchester were full, and the streets were thronged with people. It was a warm, stuffy night, a storm threatening. Music and voices competed on the patios of the cafes, and the open doors of the bars and night-clubs released a hot, aromatic radiance: music, body-heat, tobacco-smoke, glowing lights, like the open gates of a boilerhouse. People danced and sang and shouted, their faces shining, their thin clothes sticking to their bodies.

Only the sound of the sea, breaking against the concrete seawall, gave a cooling presence, a reminder of the wind.