Dreamside Read online

  "You're scared, Cousins." Lee stood up. "You live ankle deep in shit and you're scared. I can smell it on you, even through all the booze."

  "And I don't even owe you the time of day!"

  He turned back to the window. Lee was at a loss. Swaying uneasily against the unlit fireplace, he rubbed his hand along the dusty mantelpiece, waiting for resolution to materialize out of noth­ing. Cousins nodded at the crumbling cottage across the yard. "She's out there. I've seen her."

  Lee stepped across to the window. He could see nothing.

  "Who? Who are you talking about? Ella?"

  "Noooo," waving a finger at the dereliction. "Not Ella. Her."

  "There's nothing. Nothing."

  "Did you see that? Did you see that light there—just a flicker. You couldn't have missed it. Did you see it?"

  Cousins's gluey eyes were pressed against the window. He stank. Lee stepped back, looked around at the filth and debris of the room, wondered what he was doing there. There was no trace of light in the other cottage. He had had enough.

  "To hell with it. I didn't see anything. And I'm going. I shouldn't even have come."

  It was as if a spell had been lifted. He was appalled that he had allowed Ella to pack him off on this fool's errand. This confrontation disgusted him. But what really vexed him was not that Brad was a sot but that there was something about Brad's slither into alcoholic slush that was only superficially different to his own dash for stiff conform­ity. Both of them were casualties—Ella's word for it: men whose souls leaked through the corrosion which followed brilliant dreaming.

  Now Ella had got him scurrying down here rattling chains and locks that were turning to dust in his hands. He felt alone, he wanted his neat home, his hermetically sealed box, wanted not to be confronted with this degenerate version of himself where the only distinction between them was a full set of buttons and a splash of cologne.

  "You can… put your head down here for the night..." Cousins said, suddenly sheepish.

  "What?" A mirthless laugh. "Is that a funny? Thanks, old friend, but no thanks. I'll take my chances of roughing it at The Plough, back down the road."

  Back behind the steering wheel, he turned his headlamps up full on the derelict cottage. He had let Cousins spook him. He could still see him watching from the window. Turning the car around rapidly he drove back on to the road, switching on the wireless for the comfort of a Radio 4 voice.

  At the Plough, with barely more customers than staff, he had no difficulty in getting accommodation for the night. He was shown to a room with an uneven floor and heavy Victorian furniture. Before turning in, he opened a window and looked out across the moonless, starless valley, wondering why he had bothered to come, but already knowing the answer. In the comfortable bed he fell into a fitful sleep; a seamless patchwork of dreams crossing easily from past to present and back again to the past.

  PART TWO

  April 1974

  O N E

  Remember not the sins and offences of my youth —1662 Prayer Book

  LUCID DREAMERS

  Lucid dreamers are subjects who, while dreaming,

  are also capable of becoming aware that they are

  dreaming and in certain cases capable of controlling

  the direction of their dreams. Volunteers who have

  experienced this phenomenon are required to partici­pate in practical research experiments under the

  supervision of the Department of Psychology.

  The poster, hand-written in bold red marker pen, was displayed in the main university concourse, and Lee was pretending to read it. He was pretending to read it so that he could stand next to Ella, the girl with the spray-on blue jeans. She was also studying the poster, and he had to strain to hear the words she was speaking to her friend. Lee stood close enough to take in her scent of patchouli, baby soap, unruly pheromones and warm apple-blossom skin. He had spotted her once before, in the university library. He'd been dozing over his reading, and his first sight of her had been enough to make him leave tooth marks in De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater. How was anyone expected to study? So when he'd seen her here he'd had to go and stand behind her. He still hadn't thought of anything sparkling to say, when she turned from the poster and walked right into him.

  "Sorry," he said. It was his best line.

  But she and her friend had gone, leaving Lee defeated and slumped against the noticeboard. When he recovered he was able to read the poster for himself. He thought he was probably not a lucid dreamer (whatever animal that might be), but he had heard Ella saying that she was going and guessed that he could always do a good job of pretending; at least until he was found out, or for as long as it took to get on coffee-bar terms with Ella, whichever came first.

  So why not? He set off across the university lawns. Spring was on him like a drug, as if the air was full of music, there until you tried to stop and make it out. Spring in the air, like the confirmation of a rumour.

  Lee arrived at the small seminar room in a state of high antici­pation. About a dozen people, none of whom he knew, sat around in a rough circle. Ella wasn't there. They sat whispering to each other while on one isolated chair, hands folded on his lap and gazing with expressionless interest at the floor, sat the Head of the Department of Psychology, Professor L. P. Burns.

  Now nearing retirement, Burns had led a distinguished but unspectacular academic career, making a number of suitably per­plexing contributions to educational psychology and parapsychol­ogy, although he always maintained that the latter interest ranked only as a hobby. He wore a drab mottled green suit. His hair was thin and his skin stretched like parchment across his face, but his eyes were alert, and the angular characteristic of his fea­tures dissolved easily when he smiled.

  Lee was already thinking about how he could get out of this when the professor suddenly spoke as if he were addressing a full lecture theatre. "It is some five minutes after the appointed time. I don't think we are going to be joined by many more, given that we compete with the thousand and one delights offered by the univer­sity on such a spring evening, so we will make a start. But even as I speak I see I am to be contradicted. Come in, ladies, do come in."

  Two girls hovered doubtfully behind the open door—Ella and her companion. They stepped into the room. Ella wore a black beret and black tights, and took a seat opposite Lee, crossing her legs as she sat down. Lee crossed his.

  "Excellent," declared the professor, passing a list around the cir­cle for everyone to sign. "This is almost a better turn-out than I get at my lectures." A polite titter went around the circle.

  "Are any of you psychology students? I don't recognize anyone."If any of them were, they didn't own up.

  "Excellent again!" said the professor. "We might just get some intelligent contributions." Another polite titter, dying after a single circuit. "So, you are all lucid dreamers? Yes? No? You all spend your nights dreaming lucidly in your beds? Yes? No?" He looked around jovially from face to embarrassed face. With no answer forthcoming he continued. "What is required is a corpus of willing volunteers, such as yourselves, prepared to take part in a scientific, accurately documented piece of research into the interesting sub­ject of lucid dreaming; a phenomenon which, however common­place it may seem to you," he smiled at Lee, "is not, after all, experienced by many of us. I for example am not a lucid dreamer. Unlike you I have never experienced the what to me would be thrilling prospect of controlling, manipulating, directing or merely influencing the course of my dreams; nor even the sensation of knowing that what I am experiencing is a dream, and of therefore being able to say to myself that shortly I will awake from this dream into another reality."

  "Excuse me," a girl with an Irish accent said shyly, "I'm not sure whether I'm a lucid dreamer or not."

  "We'll come on to that," said Burns. "What I would like to establish first is whether the people here would be prepared to make the necessary commitments involved. The research must be scientif­icall
y handled and this will involve keeping diaries of your dream experiences, the introduction of certain exercises into your dreaming and the faithful participation in a weekly evening seminar, hopefully in more convivial surroundings than this, for the further discussion and exploration of your respective dream studies and experiences. Of course this will require a certain discipline, something which I find to be rather a dirty word amongst today's students."

  Another snigger went around the room, but it was arrested at the boy sitting on Lee's immediate left, a dark-haired youth with deep-set eyes and a chinful of stubble. "How much will we be get­ting paid?" he demanded.

  "A good question. Let's clear that up without further delay. And you are . . . ?"

  "Brad," said the boy, rather taken aback at the professor's smil­ing response, "or rather Brad Cousins."

  "Well now Brad, or rather Brad Cousins, we must get that mat­ter straightened out before there is any confusion. I hope not to dis­illusion you by saying that there is no payment. No, on the contrary, the principle involved is similar to that of the donor system at the medical centre; only it's not your blood or your semen we are after, it's your dreams."

  This time a laugh did a couple of circuits. Brad shrugged.

  "For incentive," the old academic continued, "the departmental budget might be seen to extend to the provision of a glass of wine and a dice-shaped piece of cheese or two at our weekly gathering, and possibly even to an end of term dinner party; beyond that we offer but the thrill of the intellectual hunt, in the hopefully not vain speculation that Mr. Cousins and the rest of you will be stimulated and satisfied by this more metaphysical payoff."

  "Glad I don't have to go to his fucking lectures," Cousins whis­pered at Lee.

  Lee broke his gaze, which had hitherto been fixed on the tiny Himalaya of Ella Innes's kneecap. Ella's own attention was concen­trated upon the professor, and her face had already assumed the irri­tating expression of the disciple at the feet of the avatar.

  "Let's see what we've got," said the professor clasping his hands together and indicating the person on his right. "Let's go wither-shins—why do you think you are a lucid dreamer?"

  Each person was invited to summarize their experiences. Lee was relieved that he was not obliged to go first. Most simply declared that they were often vaguely or partially aware while dreaming that they were in a dream state. One or two sometimes felt able to influence the direction their dreams were taking. Ella spectacularly declared that she had, on occasion, been clearly able to control the course of her dreams, but she was outdone by Brad's contribution, for it was Brad who asserted, almost with disdain, that he was sometimes able to reactivate a dream from a previous night.

  "Like putting a tape into a cassette," said Burns.

  "Almost," said Cousins.

  "I think I'm probably a possible lucid dreamer, or perhaps a half-lucid dreamer," said the Irish girl.

  "I think it probable that that's possibly enough for you to be of great interest to this company," Burns replied, with exaggerated gallantry.

  When it was Lee's turn to speak, with all eyes sharply focused on him, he became acutely self-conscious. Ella leaned forward, her lips parted and her eyes expectant—a solicitous fascination she had offered to all contributions short and long but which touched him like acid on litmus. He parroted a few words stolen from one of the earlier speakers, unexciting remarks about occasional awareness. Ella fell back in her seat. Lee felt as though he'd had his testicles cal­ibrated and was found lacking.

  "But I do sometimes have premonitions," he almost shouted as an afterthought, hoping the lie would rekindle some interest. Lee glanced over at Ella. It had done the trick. She smiled at him briefly.

  "A different matter," said the professor, "but one which I pre­dict will be interesting to test."

  "Would you mind if I talked to the chaplain before agreeing to go ahead with these experiments?" asked one girl. "Only I would like his reassurance that I'm not, you know, dabbling."

  "Dabbling? Hmmm. Talk to the chaplain by all means; I'm sure he will let you dream with his blessing." The professor sup­pressed a smile. "Any further questions? None? Good. Start keep­ing a diary of your dreaming. I don't want you to do anything unusual, just make a daily record of the scenario and figures of your dreams. Concentrate on detail. I want no interpretation, thank you very much: Messrs Freud, Adler, Jung and all those other old bores are not invited to the party and will be regarded as gatecrashers. For this week I simply want you to find your way into the habit of recording. That's all. Nothing arduous in that. You may or may not find that this in itself begins to have an effect. If you don't dream, write clearly in your diary that you were unable to recall your dream but that it is your intention to recall subsequent dreams. A small tip: set your alarm clocks half an hour earlier than you normally wake. We will, if at all serious about this, make a few sacrifices. We shall meet at the same time every week, for a slightly longer period, having more to talk about. All clear?"

  Everything was clear.

  "So." The professor got up and walked to the door. Before clos­ing the door behind him he turned and looked back. "Sweet dreams," he said darkly.

  The students pushed back their chairs and made movements towards the door.

  "Anyone going for a drink?" Brad shouted.

  "I could go for that," said Lee, looking encouragingly towards Ella and her friend.

  Ella, along with the rest of the students, shuffled out without replying. Bollocks, thought Lee.

  TWO

  Youth, which is forgiven everything,

  forgives itself nothing

  —George Bernard Shaw

  Brad Cousins was exercising his favourite habit of speaking to one person as if they were a gathering often. Lee was his audience. Against the backdrop of the student bar, pinball tables chattering, crack of pool balls striking and muted Stones' classics piped through a stuttering PA system, Lee was regaled with an accumu­lating list of Brad's personal antipathies. He was half-way down a pint of flat amber beer by the time he had been instructed on Brad's aversion to basketball, brazil nuts and beehive hairdos, his detestation of Liverpudlians, lavender perfume and loose-leaf ring-binders, his hatred of trade unions, tapioca and television journal­ists. Lee groaned inwardly at the thought of another dismal half-pint's worth of cataloguing before he could make his excuses and leave.

  "She's dirty," cackled Brad, breaking off from his inventory of rancour, "I like her; dirty."

  Lee followed Brad's gaze and locked on to a figure in black beret and black tights standing at the bar. Having shaken off her shadowy friend, Ella Innes had arrived and was ordering herself a drink. As she turned from the bar Lee semaphored wildly to attract her attention. But she looked through him without recognition, and settled at a nearby table where she expertly proceeded to roll a ciga­rette in brown liquorice paper.

  "Frosty," Brad scoffed, swirling his beer to make it froth. "Any­way I can't stand women who drink out of pint glasses to try and prove something."

  Lee ignored him. Ella's table was two strides away. "I waved at you to ask if you wanted to join us," he said, sitting down next to her.

  Ella moved an eighth of an inch away from him. "Yes, I saw you." She concentrated on crafting the cigarette in her long white fingers, only looking up at him as she slid her tongue along the gummed edge of the paper.

  "Oh?"

  "Pardon?" She blinked at him.

  Lee hovered, looking for a way out. She's pulling my strings, he thought. "Why don't you join us?"

  Ella looked over her shoulder as if for signs of imminent rescue. She was an international celebrity being pestered for three minutes of her time by a provincial journalist. With a practised, long-suffer­ing if there's to be no help shrug she gathered her papers, matches, tobacco and beer and relocated to their table.

  "What did you make of that session?" Lee asked.

  She shrugged and lit her cigarette. "What did you?"

  "That b
eret is ridiculous," Brad said to ten people. "You look like a member of the Provisional IRA. In drag. After a bad night. In Belfast."

  "The thing about going to these sessions," Ella said to Lee, "is that you never know who you're going to meet."

  Brad pretended that the irony was lost on him. "All I'm saying is that the effect doesn't work. It doesn't come off."

  "I was interested," Lee cut in quickly, "in some of the things you were saying. About controlling the direction of your dreams, I mean. I'm really going to get into it."

  "Do it," she said, as if to say stop talking about it.

  "You sounded quite advanced."

  "Head of the coven," said Brad.

  "But I don't have premonitions." She plucked a loose flake of tobacco from the tip of her tongue.

  "He only said that about premonitions," Brad put in, looking at Lee, "so he wouldn't sound as boring as the others. Isn't that right?

  Lee only glared back at him.

  "Ignore it," said Ella.

  "And it worked," said Brad.

  "What did you think of L. P.?" Lee asked her.

  "I've come across him before; I think he's sweet."

  "Why do women always say sweet when they mean clapped-out and half-way to senility?" Brad again. "What on earth is sweet about that dry old stick?”

  "It's true;" she replied dryly, "that he doesn't suffer fools gladly."

  Lee established that Ella was prepared to take the weekly ses­sions quite seriously. She told him that it hadn't occurred to her that most people were unable to direct their dreams. She was prepared, she said, to take things as far as she could to find out what they meant.

  "I'm not," said Brad. "You sound like you're expecting too much from it. I can't see it going anywhere."

  "Then why don't you drop out of it?"