Dreamside (28 page)

Brad hung
his cropped head, eyes fixed on the narrow path before him as Ella walked at
his side. "Why are we doing this?"

"To make a connection," said
Ella, glancing hopefully about her.

"I've made a connection. Can I be excused
now?"

Ella took his arm. She was softening to
his helplessness.

"Do you really not remember,
Ella?"

"Remember what?"

"That time.
Of dreaming.
Just the once."

"Don't start that again."

"It's important to me."

"I'm sure it is."

"There's
a reason why," he said softly, even shyly. "You say that it didn't
happen—"

"Which it didn't."

"So I
can't change that; it's what you remember, and anyway it was only on dreamside,
but Ella it was
lucid,
there was no mistake, we all of us know the
difference between those dreams and ordinary dreams, but you and I were there,
alone and it was special, happy, for both of us, and for me it was the only
time it ever happened . . ."

"What?"
cried
Ella.

"I
don't mean the only time it ever happened, I mean the only time it happened—and
I'm talking about waking time as well— that was real or good."

There was a
frightening urgency about what Brad was saying. Ella closed her eyes. She
wondered whether she could in fact recall such a situation with Brad, and
conceded that underneath their old antagonism something sexual might have been
afoot. Was there a fragment of a dream she had wiped out, repressed completely?
Ella knew how easy it was to erase lucid dream experiences. She forced the thought
back.

Up ahead,
Lee and Honora were engaging in another version of that same conversation.

"What's
the purpose of this?" Honora asked.

Lee didn't
know, except that Ella wanted it. Sometimes he thought that Ella was just too
complicated for him. He didn't understand half of the things she said and did,
but he always went along with them. She acted and he reacted. She was
quicksilver, he was lead. He had allowed himself to live too vaguely, and consequently
she had led him since day one, often into places where he didn't want to be,
and he was still following her now. How strongly Honora contrasted with Ella.
She looked pale and vulnerable, but lovely in her simple woollen dress and
plaited hair.

"Do
you still think it could have been us?" said Lee.

"No
point thinking of it now."

"No."

But after a
pause she admitted, "I've always hung on to secret thoughts about you. Not
love, or
maybe not, at least let's not call it that
.
And I think you knew all about it."

"Never," said Lee. He kissed
her lightly. This time there were no visions of serpents.
Only
a fresh smell like clear rainwater, and the diffuse sunlight a-play in her
copper hair.
Ella watched from a short distance behind.

Late in the walk, Brad
dropped behind Lee and Ella to talk to Honora. She shivered as he approached.

"I wanted to speak to you,
Honora."

"What in hell would I have to say to you?"

"What about some recognition?
What
about sorry?"

"Sorry?
You think I should apologize to you? You're demented as well as a
drunkard."

"All of the times I tried to reach you; to help you.
You never once bothered to answer.
Time
after time, over the years.
Not once. Not a single word. Do those two
know that? Not a bit of it. They're much happier to see me as the villain. It's
all poor bloody Honora."

"I owe you nothing at all; nothing."

"You're
wrong, Honora. You owe me the recognition. Did you tell them I was with you
when it happened? Did you tell them I was
there,
and
that I held your hand and warmed you, and cleaned you and delivered the baby on
dreamside for you-did you tell them that? Did you tell them?"

She stopped
and turned to face him. "It was a different dream. You were never there.
It could never have been the same dream."

"It
was the same dream. I
was
there. You could never have done it alone, you
would have died. That's why you ignored all my letters. You've just changed the
dream. You've edited it, blocked me out, that's all. You all block me
out!"

"It's not possible."

"It's the truth. My dream and your
dream were the same dream."

"Why in God's name did you want to go stirring it all up, waking
us all again?
It was all dead and
buried! Why couldn't you just leave us all in peace? It was all in the past
until you brought it on us again. You brought it all back. They thought it was
me, all of this time they thought that it was me doing it out of guilt. But I
knew it was your doing. I just hoped it wasn't."

"You don't understand, I couldn't leave it.
There was something belonging to us there
which
had to be settled, had to be put right. I didn't
choose it; I was taken there and shown it time and time again. I couldn't hold
it off."

"Like you can't hold off a drink you
mean?"

"Maybe.
I don't know. But I didn't intend to drag everyone else back in."

"You didn't 'intend'."

"Listen
to me,
Honora,
I'm trying to make amends." He
took hold of her arm. "It doesn't make any difference what you
say,
I've run out of fight."

"Brad Cousins, I don't care if you run out of
breath."

Brad dropped her arm, and walked off in
the opposite direction.

They
had almost reached the house when Ella and Lee realized that Brad had
disappeared.

"Where is he?"

"Gone."

"But is he coming back?"

"I don't know," said Honora.

She thought not.

E L E V E N

I dream my painting and I paint
my dream
—Vincent Van Gogh

With Brad gone, Ella thought that her plan had
collapsed. But
Lee found him back at the
house a couple of hours later. He turned up in the old shed at the bottom of
the garden, where the rowing boat had originally been stored.

When Lee had first
tried the door he'd found it unlocked, but something barred his way in.
Hammering the door open a few inches, forcing enough space for him
to put his head around, he saw a faded relic of their summer idyll: the rowing
boat, its paint cracked and peeling.
It was carrying a strange load:
Brad Cousins, sleeping heavily, legs draped across the stern. He was cradling
an empty bottle of good malt whiskey. A second bottle lay discarded on the
floor. Broken rays of sunlight stroked his bloated cheek.

"Hey
Captain!" Lee shouted, relieved to have found him in any condition. Brad
only slept on. Lee called again. There was no movement, and he returned to the
house.

"Sleeping
beauty just turned up. We'd better organize some coffee."

"Black?"

"Black as the pit."

Lee
felt heartened; Ella's plan might still be salvaged. He returned to the shed
with a chipped mug of sweet, steaming black coffee. Squeezing into the shed, he
set the coffee down on the workbench and tried to wake Brad gently.

First
he tried shaking him by the arm. Then he patted his cheeks. Even bellowing
loudly in his ear produced no result. His pats turned to hard slaps, but Brad
slept on. It was only as a mischievous last resort that he considered a bucket
of icy water.

With
protracted ceremony, Lee filled the bucket. Ella and Honora followed behind him
to enjoy the show, giggling through the shed window as he raised it aloft. They
watched Brad get a thorough dousing. But where he was expected to scramble
awake, puffing and groping blindly, he slept on. For the first time it
occurred to Lee that getting him to wake up might be beyond their ability.

Manoeuvring
Brad's sleeping body out of the shed was a difficult task. The shed doors were
blocked by the boat, and they were unable to move it because of Brad's
considerable weight. Getting Brad out of the boat was no simpler. There was
precious little room to stand alongside, let alone hoist Brad out, and he was a
dead weight. Finally Lee managed to drag his lifeless, soaking body clear, as
Ella manipulated the boat free of the doors, and eventually, sweating and
swearing, Lee laid Brad down on the damp grass outside the shed. Ella kneeled
beside him. His face felt dry and was bruised and bloated. There was a bubble
of vomit at the corner of his lips."His hands are freezing, and his
breathing is very shallow. We'd better get him to a hospital."

"I'll
take him," said Lee. "Bring a blanket and help me get him to the car.

It
was late afternoon when Lee returned.
"Alcohol
poisoning.
He's in a coma."

"This much we already know," Ella said
sharply.

"It's all they could say. He's comatose."

"When will he not be comatose?"

"They
pumped his stomach. He didn't revive. The doctor said he could come out of it
in five minutes. But it could be weeks, months,
years
.
They've got him all wired up. There was no point in me hanging around drinking
coffee from a plastic cup. So I left. Wasn't that the best thing to do?"

"And they said that it was the booze for
sure?"

"They
said so. But they were surprised it was such a heavy coma. They asked me a lot
of questions about his lifestyle, most of which I couldn't answer. We just have
to wait until he comes out of it. They said it's a condition
beyond
..
."

"Beyond the help of medical science."
Honora supplied the phrase.

"Something
like
that."

"Where does that leave us?"
said Ella.

"One down, three to go?" said Honora.

The remark was left unanswered.

Evening drew in, and
little was said. The silences prickled against the walls and crawled into every
crevice and corner of the house. Every sound or movement was an affront.
Mattresses had been dragged downstairs and covered with bedding so that later
they could sleep side by side in the living room. This arrangement was made by
tacit consent, an indication not of their closeness but of their fear of the
night ahead.

Ella was
the most worried. This strange turn in events had deflated her plans. She had
staked everything on the idea of them taking the dreamside walk. She looked
defeated.

Candle
flames flickered from the mantelpiece, imparting shadows and inflaming
imaginations that needed dampening. Outside a gate banged. Then it banged again
and again in a mischievous wind, until Lee went out to fasten it.

It
was a clear night. A moon was up, a slender crescent amid a scattering of
bright stars, like the sable flag of a strange country. Lee looked into the sky
for omens, portents. It was a moon for dreamers, cutting through the night sky
and bearing strange cargo.

A
scattering of lights burned in the distant village. They seemed a long way off,
and something was stirring out there in the dark. Something was in this new
wind, something which would never be seen nor smelled nor tasted, but which Lee
sensed, fattening all around them.

"When
will you leave us alone?" he said.

He
was exhausted. Lack of sleep hung from him like chains, and played tricks with
his eyes. As he looked up, everything took on a brilliant hallucinatory
property. The moon hovered over him, bright, massive, leaking light everywhere,
silver
moonstain running from it like hot wax from a
candle. The wind whipped up high, and he had a notion that he could see it,
etched in rich, dark colours against the night sky. He could see its spiralling
contours, its playful currents and its fan-shaped terraces. Then he shivered
and went back inside.

T
W E L V E

Thy thoughts have created a
creature in thee; and he
whose intense thinking thus makes him a
Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon
that heart for ever

—Herman
Melville

The house was like a camp under
siege, with the enemy tents of
ghost armies
pitched in the garden outside. Ella tried to kindle a fire in the hearth, a
brave attempt to smuggle some cheer into the room. The fire took at the third
effort, smoky flames licking without relish at a damp log dropped on Ella's
criss-cross of smouldering twigs. The key of a sardine can broke and Lee cut
himself trying to extract the contents. They consumed a dismal meal in silence.