Dreamside Read online

  With the four of them gone, Burns sits hunched over his study desk, his window open to the thickening dark and the smells of moon-washed grass and earth. His Anglepoise lamp throws the disc of light around the paper on his desk and illuminates his skeletal hand scuttling back and forth. The pencil whispers to the page as it deliv­ers its looping longhand scrawl, whispering, whispering as it goes, stopping only occasionally, like a creature listening for prey or pred­ator; until the scuttling hand moves back in action to effect the com­pulsive writing of the old academic who fears he might have found more to say than he has time in which to say it.

  ELEVEN

  Traveller repose and dream among my leaves —William Blake

  Ella was waiting under the tree, a silhouette. From the distance Lee recognized the slope of her shoulder and the fall of her hair. In the next instant he was beside her, and she was smiling. He thought her eyes were like jewels, and then they were jewels—twin sap­phires—and then they were eyes again. Ella touched him and he shivered. Touching almost broke the dream.

  Then Ella was sitting in the tree. She was the tree spirit again. She blinked at him and he was sitting on the branch beside her.

  —Did you make me do that? Or did I?—

  —Do what?—

  On dreamside, communication existed in a zone between thought and speech. You had spoken before you realized it. You thought after you had spoken. All communication seemed wide open to ambiguity and interpretation. Meanings generated new meanings.

  —Make me be here. In the tree—

  —In the tree?—

  The muddle of the dreamspeak made them laugh. "In the tree" became for them an expression to explain the euphoric but confused, dithering condition of their dreaming state.

  —Why all this mist?—It was a cobweb sheen, deadening all sound, filtering light through a grey sky, soaking the grass with heavy dew.

  —Why all this mystery?—

  —In the mist tree?—

  They were drunk on dreaming.

  —It's us! Us! See, Ella? We've fogged it. The mist. Tree. It's our own . . . dreamscape!—

  —Can we change it?—

  —Let's get rid of this mist and bring a sun up. Think it. Over there—He pointed to the eastern horizon. Ella focused.

  And together they made the sun rise. Dreamside dawn was shell-pink and grey.

  —Bigger—said Ella. The sun swelled visibly.

  —More—The sun inflated again. It filled the sky, unnatural in its dimensions and pulsating with light. All mist had evaporated. The dew on the grass had dried.

  —Change colour—said Lee. The huge, throbbing disc changed from pink, to blood red, to tangerine, to liquid gold.

  Ella gasped.—It's incredible. I feel like a painter! I feel like ... —

  —Like . . . God—

  And so they walked together under the huge sun they had wrought. It was a world still moist from creation. They were afraid to touch each other.

  —Lee. I love you Lee—

  —I love you Ella—

  The dream had a skin, a thin film which threatened to puncture at any moment. It also had a pulse, more sensed than heard, that kept time with their beating hearts and the throbbing energy of the sun. But this other pulse was frightening. They knew that when it stopped the dream would split at the seams.

  —Do you feel it?—

  —Yes. Like something trying to get in—

  —It's frightening. Kiss me, Lee—

  Lee turned to Ella. The idea of kissing her was more than he could bear. Even as he touched her, he felt the tiny hairline cracks appearing in the very fabric of the dream, and multiplying at aston­ishing speed.

  Then suddenly, the dream broke.

  The couple woke, shivering and exhausted.

  Further dreamside encounters took place, characterized by that same intensity but always inhibited by an erratic sense of control. Lee and Ella reported that the paralysis which had gripped them on the first occasion had loosened and had opened up possibilities for further interaction, but that they still sometimes felt like live figures trapped in a painting. Any strenuous effort to act in a pre­scribed manner ran the risk of breaking up the dream. But progress was made and every small step was minutely observed and feted by the group. They became insular and secretive, con­spiratorial even, as their interest in the experience grew and their excitement increased.

  Burns was becoming more than a little concerned that Brad and Honora were still unable to make the dream rendezvous, and that they were beginning to feel left behind, despite their encouragement and support for the successes of the other two. Even Brad had become less flippant, even a touch introspective as he struggled to catch up with the action. Both his and Honora's lucid dream control had pro­gressed astoundingly, spurred on by the inspiration of their co-dreamers. But they repeatedly failed to find a path to the meeting place.

  "It's like it's a closed place on dreamside," Brad complained, "anywhere else I can get to without a ticket. Sometimes I feel like I could shift to the Bank of England or to the Kremlin, but this place, somehow it never feels on."

  Honora agreed. "I get a know about it. It's not an option, it's not on, I have the know."

  Burns had come to trust the strength of the dreamknow to which Honora referred, and which only he of the five could not claim to have experienced. This know was more comprehensive, more fun­damental than one's understanding in ordinary waking time, and he respected it deeply.

  "Is it a fear, an anxiety or something that keeps you from the place where Ella and Lee meet?"

  "I don't know. For us it's a neutral; a dead force field; a zone of used possibilities."

  "Then we must find another zone or field."

  "I had a fear," said Ella, "of someone else getting in."

  "Oh?"

  "L. P., can I ask you something?" Ella chancing the familiar mode while Burns was in a good mood.

  "Ask away, E. I."

  "Why are you so anxious to make all four of us rendezvous?"

  "Is it a private party ? "

  "No; it's not that. I get the feeling you want further confirma­tion of what's happening."

  "She means don't you trust us," said Lee.

  "Yes Lee; I know what Ella means. But why shouldn't I trust your accounts?"

  "We misled you at the beginning of the exercises. You would be right to be sceptical."

  "Sceptical of you two I am not. Perhaps you will forgive my guard against credulity however, which springs from years of work­ing in a discipline which has never been more than an Art which believes itself to be a Science. Even so, our capacity for self-decep­tion and the unfaltering pursuit of wishful thinking are probably the most dependable of human attributes."

  "So you do think we're making it all up!"

  "Not so. Certainly not consciously, as in telling fibs to deceive a gullible old academic with nothing better to entertain him. No. But there is such a thing, to name an example, as a folie a deux."

  "Madness between two emotionally involved people," said Brad cheerfully. "Where one feeds off the other's delusions."

  "So we're liars or we're mad!"

  "I'm not saying you're either of those, Ella, please don't make such a grim face at me. I'm pointing out that there are possibilities of illusory states of mind. Even with or without my spectacles I know you and Lee to be emotionally entangled. We have to consider these things. Now, a third or fourth party entering the scenario would help to confirm things."

  "So if a second person sees the unicorn in the woods, it still doesn't exist," said Lee, "but if a third person sees it we'll give it a scientific name!"

  "Speaking as someone who is a great believer in unicorns, I'd still want all three of them to have their heads tested!"

  They all seemed to laugh longer at this quip than was neces­sary. The professor concluded the session. "Let's just say that it's much harder for three to keep up a conspiracy of self-deception than it is for two." Whatever that m
eant, they accepted it in good faith.

  Three days later they called around at the professor's house and found him in high spirits. Still breaking open bottles left over from the end of term soiree, he announced his plans.

  "It's time for us to find that tree I mentioned."

  "What tree?"

  "The one for you all to carve your initials on. By which I mean to say we now need to identify a new location as our point of ren­dezvous, one with which all four of you can have good strong asso­ciations, and which can become a new focus for us on dreamside. We are all going on a little summer holiday."

  "Yay! When?"

  "Tomorrow. Why not? The weather is better than we deserve, and I know a rather beautiful spot where we can spend two or three days relaxing."

  "Relaxing! Yo! Where is it?"

  "Wait and see. The idea is for us to spend some time there, relax, soak up the beautiful countryside, grow even closer as a group, make associations with the place, absorb some of its nature . . . Are you persuaded?"

  "We're persuaded! Let's do it!"

  Next morning they travelled southwards, squeezed into the profes­sor's cherished Morris Minor, Burns driving slowly and with exas­perating caution. The sun got up hot overhead, bouncing off the polish and chrome of the car and cooking its passengers. The girls' bare legs stuck to the leather upholstery and Lee and Brad both took off their shirts, sitting bare chested and sweating. Burns, dressed in collar and tie, sweater and tweed suit, steered carefully with hands gripped permanently at five-minutes-to-one, resisting all overtures either to drive faster or to reveal their destination.

  In Coventry he turned sharply into a one-way street and a flow of oncoming traffic. A policeman stuck his head out of his car window and bellowed at him to pull over. Particulars were noted and Burns, who remained calm and polite throughout, was instructed to pro­duce his driving documents at a police station within fourteen days.

  "An unfortunate development," he muttered when they were mobile again.

  "It's nothing," said Brad, "all you have to do is take in your licence and insurance and stuff."

  "I don't have one. A driving licence I mean."

  "What!"

  "Nor any of the other documents he mentioned. Insurance and such."

  "Eh!"

  "I only take the car out once or twice a year, around the block as it were, just to keep it going. I resent having to insure it for that. Is it likely that they will make a fuss, do you think?"

  "Just keep going," someone said, "we'll try not to think about it."

  "Right; fuck the pigs!" screamed Ella through the open window, and with such revolutionary ardour that Burns was startled, or possi­bly inspired, into driving marginally faster for the rest of the journey.

  They reached the Brecon hills around lunchtime, and Burns drove them to an isolated house, belonging, he said, to a colleague. The place was rudimentary, some kind of holiday cottage equipped in utilitarian fashion. They ran up and down the stairs quickly claiming rooms, Ella and Lee together, Honora alone and Brad accepting a camp bed arrangement with good grace so that L. P. didn't have to scramble with the rest of them to stake out his terri­tory in the front bedroom of the house. The old professor looked utterly exhausted by the journey, and sank down into a chair. When someone shouted that neither shower nor bath was functioning, he looked apologetic and bewildered, and could only suggest that they bathe in a lake he knew of, some three or four miles down the road.

  Ella could see how tired he was. She went over to him. "It doesn't matter about the bath. It would be great fun to swim in the lake. And the house and the countryside are wonderful." He looked reassured by her words and forced a brief smile. The others realized that they were going to have to slow down over the next few days unless they wanted an invalid on their hands.

  They took him at his word about the lake, and Brad persuaded him (by dint of hard work and outrageous promises) to surrender the car keys for the drive down to it. Again they all squeezed into the uninsured Morris Minor together with a deckchair for Burns to sit on while they swam. Burns complained that they were treating him like a geriatric, but was obviously gratified by this consideration. The lake was cool and inviting. They parked the car at the side of the road and walked down to its grassy banks. An ancient oak leaned out over it, root and branch plunging into the dark, deep water. They made camp under a row of weeping willows which dipped leafy stems into the blueblack cool. A spiral of excited swal­lows wheeled and turned and dotted the sky with parabolas above the lake, intoxicated by their own matchless aerial display.

  Burns’s deckchair was set up with protracted ceremony and dis­cussion. Only when he was fully installed did the others undress and leap squealing into the water. He watched them swim and bob, and laid towels out on the grass for them. Then he returned to his deckchair, where he promptly fell into a doze.

  It must have been two hours before he woke. The sun had slipped in the sky. Everything slumbered. Something of the lake's calm had distilled itself into the afternoon tranquillity. Glancing down, he saw four young bodies basking in the heat, their smiling faces lifted up to him as if they expected him to speak.

  "Did you dream lucid dreams L. P.?" Lee asked lazily.

  Honora said, "You were talking in your sleep."

  Ella giggled. "We heard everything. You named names."

  "Lilly? Did I say Lilly?"

  "Yes."

  Burns smiled sleepily and settled back in his chair. "Lilly was my wife. You know, she died more than ten years ago. I've been dreaming of her a lot lately. Good dreams, nice dreams. We used to come here, often, years and years ago. Beautiful, peaceful; just as it is now. It hasn't changed at all. That's why I thought of this place."

  "I love it," said Honora.

  "We can have some pleasant days here before returning. There should be a rowing boat in the shed. We can bring it down here, or rather you can. There's fishing tackle if you're interested. Or we can take a walk through the woods there." They all agreed that the choice had been fine—quiet, unspoiled, entirely tranquil.

  The next three days were a summer idyll. The weather held out, and time seemed suspended as they swam in the lake, picnicked under the spreading oak, drifted in the rowing boat, or went on long walks in the cool fern woods. Burns in particular loved to stroll in the woods, along narrow pathways winding between giant ferns, with the echoing rap of an unseen woodpecker as descant to his stu­dents' conversation. He liked to stroll with each of them in turn, probing, challenging, teasing them with his gentle irony.

  They would return from these walks shaking their heads at the breadth of his knowledge, waiting for him to fall asleep in his deckchair before relaying an impression of their discussions to the others. It seemed that he could talk with authority about anything, pick up their own arguments and generously advance them before dismantling them with an opposing view. Lee found him fascinating on the psychosexual meaning of fairy-tales, of all things, and stalked the woods discussing the sexual imagery of Beauty and the Beast; Ella could listen all day to his analysis of revolutionary history or to his satirical monologue on the psychology of the fascist disposition; Honora found him an expert on Surrealism; and Brad had his eyes opened on everything from football to the pharmaceutical industry. Though they never did see a unicorn in those dense, aromatic woods, the possibility of doing so had never seemed so close.

  Burns was generally content to sit quietly in his deckchair, watching events take their predictable shape. There was little in the splashing and cavorting of the four young students to make this grey-haired scholar of human behaviour raise an eyebrow, but he saw—where they might not—the doomed infatuation of Lee and Ella, too hot not to burn itself out too soon; Brad's persistent and not unsubtle advances on Honora, gently but firmly deflected; Brad's disguised interest in Ella, secretly recognized and shrugged off by her but completely missed by Lee; and the subtle affection Lee and Honora reserved for each other, prompting more speculation by other
s than it ever did for them.

  And while he watched all this with fond interest, it added to, rather than detracted from, the uninhibited delight of three perfect summer days. How could it be otherwise, when the place itself was a kind of dream? But beyond that which he would always see with his trained eye, he could never have guessed at, nor would he ever have permitted, the growth of those strange forms already tighten­ing round that close circle of four, like snaring vines in a wood, or like dangerous weeds reaching from the bedrock of a lake to the thrashing ankles of careless swimmers.

  T W E L V E

  And I too in Arcadia —Anon

  In the following weeks, the group made five almost effortless rendezvous experiments on dreamside. The dreamside location, the site of their recent summer trip, was easily called to mind during bouts of ordinary dreaming. Appointments were made and were kept.

  Burns resisted their impatience to return and return again to dreamside, so hot was their excitement, and insisted that the ren­dezvous took place no more frequently than once per week so as not to fatigue their powers or jade the sharpness of the experience. For him it was a time of furious note taking and exhaustive post-dream analysis, questioning the four ever more assiduously, pressing more closely in his collection of minutiae for the construction of a theory that held little interest for them. Their direct experience was like bathing in incandescent light, while the professor wanted to grope in the shadows. He became at times irascible, frustrated at their inability to crystallize the unbearable excitement of the elusive, drifting experience of their dreamside rendezvous.

  "To be there is to know," Lee tried lamely during one post-dream analysis, "and to know is to be there."

  Burns threw down his notepad and pencil. "So, Lee, you've had a few nice dreams and now you're a Zen Master." He leaned for­ward, a crimson rash spreading over his forehead as he spat the words, an iron-grey lock of hair loosening and lashing at his face. "Look; God or nature equipped you with the most accurate and poetic language in the history of nations. You have at your disposal the precision of the Latin and the expressiveness of the Germanic, and you were born lucky enough to ride the confluence of both. Why don't you use it because I DON'T HAVE THE FUCKING TIME FOR YOUR MORONIC BABBLING UNDERGRADU­ATE BUDDHIST LAMENT"