A Dream of Wessex (8 page)

Julia sought out one of the women who served occasional duties as a nurse.

‘Where’s Allen?’ she said. ‘What’s he doing for Tom?’

‘He said he needed rest. He’s sent away to Dorchester, and someone’s coming up this evening.’

‘This evening! That might be too late. Did he say what was wrong?’

‘No, Julia. Tom’s old ... it could be anything.’

Exasperated, Julia returned to the bedside and took Tom’s tight-skinned hand in hers. The fingers were cold and stiff, and for a moment she thought he must have died while she was away from the bed. Then she saw a very slow, very shallow movement of his chest. She slipped his hand beneath the blanket and continued to hold it, trying to warm him.

It felt cold in the ward, because the windows were open and although there was only a slight breeze the sun never seemed to warm the infirmary. Julia swept back the thin white hair from the old man’s brow, and felt that the skin there was also cool, not perspiring.

Julia felt closer to Tom than she could ever say; closer than she felt to her parents, closer than she felt to Greg ... and yet it was neither a blood relationship nor a sexual one. There was an affinity there, an unspoken understanding.

There were approximately two hundred people in the Castle community, children included, but of these only a handful had any influence on her life or thoughts. She thought of the rest as pale shadows, lacking in personality, following where others led.

Allen, the doctor, was one such. He was unquestionably qualified for medical practice, and in the treatment of minor ailments and in diagnosing diseases he was excellent. But he seemed never to act; anything that could not be treated with available medicines was referred immediately to the hospital in Dorchester. Perhaps it was right that this should be so ... but Allen’s personality was negative, unforthcoming.

Greg was another. In spite of the fact that she had slept with him for months, and in spite of there having been a certain amount of mutual interest at the start, Julia had never really grown to know the young man. He was, to her, always the distant, efficient craftsman who worked in the skimmer workshop, or the inconsiderate, selfish and loveless man who used her body. In the Castle community Greg seemed to be one of the more popular people - and when Julia was not suffering his physical attentions she found him amusing and pleasant company - but he too had this paleness to his character that was a constant frustration to her. Sometimes, when she was alone with him, Julia wanted to shout at him or scream at him or wave her arms ... anything to elicit some kind of positive response.

There were the others, though, and they were here at the Castle, and in Dorchester and the surrounding countryside.

There was Nathan Williams, who played a great part in organizing and shaping the community; some said he had been at the Castle when the community was first formed. There was a woman named Mary, who was one of the potters. There was Rod, who worked on the fishing smack owned by the Castle. There was Alicia, one of the teachers. There was Tom Benedict.

Sometimes, while she was working on the stall in Dorchester, Julia would see local people passing the harbour ... and she would detect that with them, too, there was this certain affinity. For a long time she had felt it was a talent, an uncontrollable clairvoyance. She had wondered if she had powers of telepathy, or something similar, but there were never any other kinds of manifestation. Just an empathic understanding, a recognition.

Ignoring it, as she had tried to do for some time, it became less important, but meeting David Harkman had reminded her that it was a real and inexplicable fact of her life. Although with David there was another thing, a sexual charge, a physical desire, an emotional tension.

‘Is that you, Julia?’

Tom spoke very weakly. His eyes hadn’t opened. She squeezed his hand gently, under the blanket.

‘I’m here, Tom. Don’t worry. There’s a doctor coming from Dorchester.’

‘Don’t let go ...’

She looked around. She and Tom were alone in the infirmary; summer was a healthy time for the villagers. But she wished there were someone with them, a trained nurse ... or Allen.

Through one of the windows she could see children running around, playing and calling to each other with shrill voices. School had finished for the day, evening would soon be here.

She never detected the affinity with any of the children, although she liked them, and the teachers at the school were always glad of her help. She saw the children as a milling, diminutive presence: noisy, quick-moving, demanding of time and energy. But as David Harkman had said of his career, and as she felt about her own past, the children were a fact, not something she had any feeling about.

One of the women in the village had given birth a few weeks before, and Julia had seen the mother and child soon afterwards. It had been like a classic portrait of healthy motherhood: the woman sitting up in bed in the infirmary, her hair tangled, a cardigan pinned around her shoulders. The child cried in her arms, pink and damp and very small. The mother’s eyes were bright and tired, the bedclothes had been straightened over her. Nothing had gone wrong, no worries: mother and child doing well. Julia had never known a crisis for any of the village people; there were ‘flu epidemics, and the children passed measles and mumps to one another ... but she had never known anyone fall and break a leg, nor was there ever a pregnancy that went wrong, nor did anyone ever die violently. There was a graveyard at the western end of the Castle compound, but the few deaths that occurred happened quietly, unobtrusively.

It was a sheltered, undangerous place; the harsher realities of life seemed as if they were postponed.

Then, as if contradicting the thought, Tom groaned, and his head turned restlessly.

Tom was different, though, Tom recognized the affinity. He had always been at the front of the stage for her; a leading player, not a member of the chorus. This analogy had often occurred to her as if it would solve the puzzle, but all it ever did was underline the feeling.

Until she had spoken of it with David Harkman, she had never directly acknowledged the feeling to anyone else. Not to Nathan, or Mary ... not even to Tom. But David Harkman had spoken of it himself, had pointed directly to it.

We are different, you and I, he had said. We are different, because we are the same.

The nursing woman appeared at the entrance to the ward, leading a small child by the hand. She walked slowly towards the bed and Julia turned anxiously towards her, but not releasing Tom’s hand.

‘Is the doctor coming?’ she said.

‘I told you, dear, he’s on his way. They’re probably busy in Dorchester, what with all the foreigners coming in.’

‘Then will you try to find Allen?’ Julia said. ‘Tom’s very ill. I don’t know what to do.’

The woman reached past her, and touched the palm of her hand to the old man’s brow.

‘He’s not feverish. He’s just sleeping.’

‘Look, please find Allen! I’m very worried.’

‘I’ll see where he is.’

The woman’s child had been raising himself up and down on the end of the bed, falling across his stomach and laughing, uncaring that Tom’s legs, which were directly under him, might be hurting. The woman took the child’s hand again, and walked slowly towards the door. Julia wanted to urge her again to hurry, sensing somehow that things had reached a critical stage for Tom. His head was still moving slowly from side to side, and his eyes were open, but unseeing.

‘Do you think he’d like some food?’ The woman had paused by the door, looking back at her.

Julia turned towards her again. ‘No. Get Allen ... and please, for Tom’s benefit, find him as soon - ’

As she spoke, Julia felt Tom’s hand move away from her own. Still facing the woman by the door, she reached further under the blanket, groping for him. She turned back to the bed, fearing the worst ... but totally unprepared for what she saw.

The bed was empty.

The blanket was still crumpled over where he had lain, and the sheet beneath it bore a trace of the residual warmth of his old body, but Tom had vanished.

Julia gasped aloud and stood back, scraping her chair noisily.

‘Tom! For God’s sake, Tom!’

The nursing woman was watching her from the door. ‘What’s going on?’

‘He’s gone!’

Disbelieving, Julia threw back the blanket, as if the old man had somehow wriggled down under the bedclothes like a child playfully hiding. The blanket fell over the metal bed-end, humped on to the floor. The lower sheet still bore the impression of Tom’s body.

‘What are you doing in here, Julia? You know no one’s here - ’

Julia scrambled on to the bed, kneeling on it, leaning over to the far side, in the desperate inspired hope that Tom had fallen from the bed, that he was still there... but the floor was bare.

The woman had left the child by the door, and was striding towards her. As she reached the bed she seized Julia’s arm, and pulled her round.

‘If you were the one who had to make these beds…’

‘Tom has vanished! He was here! I was holding his hand!‘

‘What are you talking about? There’s no one here.’

Julia felt like screaming at the woman. She pointed in silent agony at the bed, its emptiness self-evident proof of what she was saying.

The woman pulled officiously at the blanket Julia had thrown back. ‘These beds have to be kept ready. What are you doing here? Are you ill?’

The woman’s words were meaningless. Julia moved back from the bed and stood before her, still trying to express the impossibility of what had happened.

‘Tom! Tom Benedict! You saw him ... he was here.’

The woman was scuffing her hand across the lower sheet, smoothing it out, as if erasing the last evidence of Tom’s presence. In one last desperate attempt, Julia foolishly snatched away the pillow, as if Tom’s frail body could somehow be concealed beneath it. The woman took it away from her, fluffed it with her hands and replaced it.

Julia stepped back, watching the nursing woman remake the bed. The child stood by the door, kicking the frame idly. The rest of the ward was bare, empty, quiet. It was beyond all reason: Tom could not slip away from her, vanish from the face of the earth!

Still uncomprehending, Julia turned again to the woman. ‘Please! You saw Tom in this bed. He was dying! You felt his brow. You said he had no fever, and you were going to find Allen.’

At the mention of the doctor’s name the woman looked at her. ‘Allen? He’s in Dorchester, I think. I haven’t seen him all day.’

‘But you did see Tom Benedict here?’

The woman shook her head slowly. ‘Tom ... Benedict? Who’s that?’

‘You know! Tom! Everyone knew him!’

The woman tucked the blanket under the mattress, smoothed it over with her hand, and then straightened.

‘I’m sorry, Julia. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I find you all by yourself in here, wrecking the bed. What do you expect me to think? Are you saying someone’s ill?’

Julia took a breath to say it all again, but suddenly realized that the woman genuinely had no idea what she was saying. The ward had an aseptic, unused feel to it: no one in the community had been ill for weeks.

‘I’m sorry ... I don’t know what came over me.’

She walked slowly from the ward, past the child, and out into the sunlight. Children still played, a ball was being kicked around. One of the children ran from the crowd, crying. Two others followed, then went back to the game. In the distance, Julia could see the people working in the fields.

She waited outside the infirmary until the woman came out. She closed the door, looked curiously at Julia, then walked off towards the village.

Julia stayed by the infirmary, still unable to comprehend what had happened, still unwilling to leave the scene, as if by staying Tom would somehow return ... the old grin on his face, confessing to a hoax.

She sat down on the grass, oblivious of all around her, and suddenly started to cry.

A little later she walked around the infirmary building, trying to see if there was some way Tom could have left the building without her noticing. There were two other doors, but they were both- locked.

In the evening she spoke to Nathan Williams. ‘Have you seen Tom?’

‘Tom? Tom who?’

‘Benedict. Tom Benedict.’

‘Never heard of him.’

No one knew him. Later she found Allen, spoke to him.

‘Did you treat Tom today?’

‘I’ve been in Dorchester, Julia. Is he still ill? Who is it?’

‘Tom...’

Then she found that she couldn’t remember his surname. She ate a meal with a group of the others, trying to think of it ... but by the time the meal was finished she could not even remember his first name.

She felt a sense of great loss, and an overwhelming sadness, and a sure knowledge that someone she had loved was no longer there.

Someone had died that day, or left the community. She wasn’t sure which. Nor who it had been. It was very uncertain. Was it a man or woman...?

By the time she lay down beside Greg that night, the feeling had become one of general sadness, not localized to any particular event or person.

She slept well, and when in the morning she was woken by Greg’s insistent sexual advances she had no memory of what had happened the previous evening. Her sadness had gone, and as she lay with Greg thrusting himself into her she was thinking instead of David Harkman, and her intention to visit him in the evening. The intrigue and excitement were still there, and, because she was thinking of David, Greg’s lovemaking for once did not leave her unsatisfied.

Before Greg left the hut to go to the workshop, Julia told him she was going to spend the day at the stall in Dorchester, and return in the late afternoon to collect the skimmer for David Harkman.

‘Why don’t you take it with you now?’

‘The boat’s going to be fully loaded,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to come back to the Castle this afternoon anyway. I can make a special journey.’

Greg looked at her suspiciously, and for a moment Julia thought he was going to say that he would deliver the skimmer to Harkman himself. She was prepared for that: although she had made up her mind about David Harkman, a residual doubt about the possible consequences would be appeased by the decision being made for her. Instead, Greg said nothing, and soon afterwards he went to the workshop.