A Dream of Wessex (13 page)

Mary nodded; her house had been occupied by squatters, and there was a court-order to apply for. She said: ‘I’ll probably be away for a couple of days.’

‘The problem is,’ Eliot said, ‘that Andy and Steve are likely to be retrieving David Harkman very soon. That will mean another three will be leaving the projection. Julia, I take it you could go back in the next two or three days? And you too, Don?’

They both confirmed this, Julia staring away from them, looking through the window and across the grounds.

‘And you, Colin? You’re due for leave.’

Colin said: ‘I’ll take it if I have to ... but if I’m needed I’ll go back in tomorrow.’

‘You’re all eager to stay. Sometimes I think you’re happier in Wessex than you are here.’

No one said anything to that, and Mander, glancing round the group, saw something of the bond between them, the bond that tied them inside the projection. This was rarely discussed when they were in these meetings, but speaking in private he had found that his own experience was typical: Wessex had become the ideal retreat, a place where there was no danger, where the whims of the unconscious were satisfied. Life had a hypnotic quality of peace and security, an ordered languor; it was a restful, secure place. Even the climate was good.

Most of the participants came from or presently lived in the cities; at least half came from London. Life today in the cities was far from pleasant. Housing was in increasingly short supply, leading to the almost automatic occupation by squatters of any property left unoccupied for more than a day; exactly what had happened to Mary Rickard, in fact. Also, with the phenomenal cost of any kind of heating or fuel, the recurring food-shortages and consequent black-markets, the daily life of the average city- dweller, according to what remained of the responsible press, was approaching the level of urban savagery. All this, compounded with the ever-increasing incidence of violent crime and the terrorist attacks, made anywhere more than twenty miles from a city a place of temporary escape.

Wessex, tourist island in an imagined future, became the ultimate escapist fantasy, a bolt-hole from reality.

Mander knew that none of the participants would admit to this, for it coloured in garish poster-paint a response which was for him, and for those with whom he had discussed it, a delicate watercolour of an experience.

The attraction Wessex held for him was a subtle affair; he knew that his own alter ego was discontented with his job, and had been for many years, and there was a routine dullness to life in the Regional Commission that he had not had to endure since an office-job he had taken during one university vacation thirty-five years ago. Even so, Mander always felt restless when he was out of the projection, hungered for the return.

Eliot said: ‘There’s one other matter of great importance, and that’s the effect on the projection of Tom Benedict’s tragic death.’

Mander glanced at the others and saw that they looked as uncomfortable about it as he felt. On the one hand there was the human tragedy of the death, but on the other the projection would have to go on. The majority of the participants, in other words those presently inside the projection, would have no knowledge of what had happened.

‘Tom was very centralist,’ Colin Willment said. ‘I was in the projection until yesterday, and I’m not aware of any change that followed.’

‘I think we all appreciate that,’ Eliot said. ‘The real problem is with the trustees. You all know that there have been various suggestions from London that the projection has now outlived its usefulness, and that it must be run down soon. I know that when they heard the news about Tom, the first reaction was that this was as good a reason as any to close it now.’

‘But was Tom’s death directly caused by being inside the projector?’ Mary said.

‘I don’t think so. I shall be giving evidence at the inquiry, and as the senior doctor on the project, my opinion is that it was death from natural causes.’

‘And you’ve said this to the trustees?’ Mary said.

‘Of course. That was their first reaction, as I said. On later consideration, it seemed to them that the projection could continue, but at the same time it would be possible to correct some of what they see as its present shortcomings.’

Eliot looked briefly at Mander as he said this. It was a sensitive area to tread, for the participants were fiercely jealous of their creation.

Eliot went on: ‘You’ve heard the criticism before ... the belief held by some of the trustees that in certain ways the projection has become an end in itself.’

Looking at Mary Rickard and the others, Mander again saw his own thoughts reflected. It was a charge against which they were more or less defenceless. In the early days the reports the participants had made had reflected the spirit of the projection: that they were discovering a society, and speculating about the way it was run. As time passed, though, and as the participants became more deeply embedded in that society, their reports had gradually become more factual in tone, relating the future society to itself rather than to the present. Expressed in a different way, it meant that the participants were treating the projection as a real world, rather than one which was a conscious extrapolation from their own.

But this was inevitable and always had been, although no one had realized it at the time. Because Wessex was created in part by the unconscious, it became real for the period of the projection.

The trustees, who had budget considerations always in mind, had not been getting the results they were seeking.

It was a daring and imaginative conception: to postulate a future society so far ahead of the present day that the contemporary concerns and problems of the world would have been solved, one way or another. There would be no famine, because the projection created a world with plenty of food. There would be no threat of worldwide war, because the projection imagined a stable world political situation. The population explosion would be contained, because the projection decided that would be so. The use of technology and fossil fuels would have stabilized, because the projection created a world where this was achieved.

The projection itself created the ends; the participants, by moving within that society, would discover the means by which they had been achieved ... and this was the purpose of the projection.

Two years since the projection began, the processes of the solutions were still not understood. Wessex in the early years of the twenty-second century, and the place it occupied in the world as a whole, was imagined and understood in the finest detail, but only the barest hints of how the stability had been achieved were capable of being passed back to the Foundation that funded the research.

‘Some of you will be aware,’ Eliot said, ‘that the trustees have employed a Mr Paul Mason to replace Tom Benedict. I gather that Mr Mason was appointed two or three months ago, to assist the trustees in assessing the worth of the project’s findings, but after the news of Tom’s death it was suggested that Mason should replace him. They believe that he has the necessary qualities to direct our work more towards obtaining the information they require.’

Mander said: ‘Do the trustees realize the effect a newcomer might have on the projection?’

‘You mean in possible changes to the projected society?’ Eliot, cast in the unlikely role of apologist for the trustees, seemed uneasy. ‘I believe so. Mason is quite clearly a man of formidable intelligence, and has spent the last few weeks familiarizing himself not only with the original program, but also with the reports that have been filed. I’ve spent a lot of time with him myself, and his grasp of what we are doing is remarkable. I believe that any changes that might happen as a result of his joining the projection would be slight. No more, in fact, than those caused by Tom’s death.’

‘But Tom’s projective part was very much a consensus one,’ Mary Rickard said.

‘How do you know that Mason’s is not?’ Eliot said. ‘I’d like you to meet him this morning. He’s waiting outside. You can make up your own minds about him.’

‘And if we do not think him suitable?’ Mander said.

‘Then, presumably, the trustees would expect the projection to be closed in the next few weeks.’

‘So we shall have no real choice,’ Mary said.

‘I think you’ll find that Mason isn’t as much of a threat as you think. He seems committed to the projection.’

Again, Mander saw Mary Rickard and Colin Willment catching his eye. He knew their doubts without being told, for they were the same as his own. No one could be ‘committed’ to the projection without entering it. It could not be experienced by sampling the reports, nor understood by reading the program. It had to be lived in to be felt ... and only then was a commitment formed.

But the projection was an intensely private world; any newcomer, however sympathetic, would be an intruder. Paul Mason would not be welcomed until he had made the world reflect his own personality ... and no one in the projection would willingly allow him to do that.

Mander said: ‘I suppose we should meet Mr Mason.’

‘May I bring him in then?’ Eliot looked at the others for their approval. ‘Good. I’ll go and find him.’

Eliot left the room, and as soon as the door was closed Mander turned to the others.

‘What do we do?’ he said.

Colin shrugged. ‘We’re tied. We have to accept him.’

Mary Rickard said: ‘We’re being blackmailed. If we accept him, he’ll affect the projection. If we reject him, the projection will be closed.’

‘So what do you think?’

‘We’ll have to accept him.’

‘Julia? What about you?’

Throughout the discussion Julia had sat silently in her armchair. She looked pale and fragile, and the coffee she had poured herself was untouched.

‘Are you feeling unwell, Julia?’ Mary said.

‘No ... I’m all right.’

Just then, Eliot came back into the room, and following him was a tall, smartly dressed young man, clearly at his ease.

Mander stood up, walked across to him and extended his hand. ‘Mr Mason. Good to see you again.’ He turned towards the others. I’d like you to meet your new colleagues. Mrs Rickard, Miss Stretton, Mr Willment...’

Paul Mason shook hands with them all, one by one, and Colin Willment rocked the percolator to see if there was any coffee left.

Julia felt better as soon as Paul came into the room. So obsessed had she been with the short, fraught conversation in Paul’s office that she barely heard what John Eliot and Don Mander had been saying. Only at the end, when Eliot had been out of the room, had she realized that Mary and Colin had their own reasons for not wanting Paul in the projection.

Then Paul came in, and the unseen threat that had been lurking outside became a visible antagonist, and thus less fearful.

‘How do you do, Miss Stretton?’ he had said, for all the world as if they were total strangers ... and the menace he presented became containable. The introduction had been a time when he could have revealed that they knew each other, but he had let the chance slip by, and played a part instead.

He had the trustees behind him; he didn’t have to force a confrontation with her to join the projection.

She sat back in her armchair, trying to steady her breathing, and she watched Paul. She had had the strength once to defy him, and she must do it again.

He was sitting forward, listening and talking to Mander and Eliot. He had an intent, interested expression on his face ... the one he reserved for polite company, when he wanted to make an impression and be liked by those around him. She had not seen the expression for years, but she recognized it instantly. It reminded her of the time -

The recollection was like a physical blow, and she felt herself reddening as if a hand had raked across her face. The memory had been buried in the past, but Paul’s presence dug it out as easily as if it had lain on the surface for all that time.

It had been soon after she started living with him in London, long before the final rows. Some instinct for self-preservation had surfaced; it was only an instinct, then, because she was too heavily influenced by him to rationalize her miseries, and she believed what he told her about herself. Trying to express her uncertainties she had started a diary, a secret, honest diary, the sort that was never meant to be read, not even by its author. She’d written about herself, about her dreams, about her ambitions, about her sexual fantasies; they all poured out in an ungrammatical, unpunctuated gush of abbreviated words, like a scream from the unconscious. The diary was always locked away, pointedly, punctiliously, but it was Paul’s flat and he had keys for everything. A few weeks after she’d begun the diary they had gone to dinner at the house of a magazine-editor Paul was then trying to impress. He’d sat at the dinner-table with this expression on his face, polite interest, an openness to other people’s ideas ... and then, after the editor had related an anecdote, Paul had answered by quoting aloud something she had scribbled in her diary the night before. It had to be deliberate, but it was done so that it sounded in context like something he’d made up himself; he even laughed at himself for saying it, apologized for triviality.

Then he smiled at her, seeming to seek her approval, but saying with his eyes what she was to learn a hundred times over in the months ahead: I possess you and control you. There is nothing of yours I cannot touch or colour. There is nothing of yours you may call your own.

And as Paul listened to the others he sometimes looked towards her, and his eyes were saying the same.

Don Mander at least seemed to have accepted that Paul would join the projection, although it was noticeable to Julia how quiet Colin and Mary were keeping.

Mander was saying: ‘... because the Ridpath operates on the unconscious as well as the conscious mind, our original program had to conform to a realistic consensus view of what this future might actually be like. If there were any deep doubts in the minds of the participants, they had to be allayed before we began.’

Julia remembered the early days, when the interminable planning discussions were going on. Sometimes for weeks on end it seemed that an impasse had been reached, that there would be a minority of dissenters to every proposal put forward.