by Jack Dann
‘I loved him,’ said Julia, twisting her fingers together tightly, ‘and I still do. In hindsight I see I didn’t make the most of every moment. Perhaps I could have been a better listener.’
A tragic love affair! So that was it.
‘He has a brilliant mind,’ she went on, ‘and was always interested in the oddest things. Seeing me again seemed to trigger something, and he developed this kind of obsession …’ She hesitated, before adding somewhat doubtfully, ‘Not with me. A landscape obsession.’
‘Let me make us a cup of tea,’ I said, tactfully omitting to mention that she’d forgotten to do just that, ‘and we’ll sit down together and you can tell me all about it.’
From Julia’s neglected and overgrown garden the cooing of doves came burbling through the open windows. The curtains stirred softly in the breeze. Meanwhile, seated in the front parlour, I listened to my friend’s tale. Over the scalloped and gilt-daubed rims of porcelain cups delicately painted with pansies and violets she evoked a vision of her times with Daniel. I reconstructed her story, filling any gaps from details she let slip, for she had always seemed to possess this gift of mind-reading, and she’d perused his extraordinary journal from cover to cover, so that as I listened, it was if I’d jumped into the restless mind of this boy, this man I’d not seen for twelve years.
It was easy to imagine; she as lovely as a budding rose in her green skirts, her auburn hair spilling around her shoulders; he tall as a warrior, golden-bronze and graceful…
‘What have you been writing in that journal of yours?’ asked Julia, looking up from the armchair on which she lounged in Daniel’s study, the newspaper on her lap. She had kicked off her sandals — which lay tumbled at her feet — and crossed her slim ankles.
‘Just thoughts.’
‘About what?’
‘About Surrey Hills.’
Julia turned a page. ‘I can tell you, it has not changed much, since we were children,’ she said. ‘Only, things seem smaller and closer together.’
‘I have not been back for a year or two,’ Daniel said. ‘I think I should, just to take a look. Seeing you has reminded me of — of so much about our childhood haunts.’
‘Well, you are welcome at my place any time.’
‘I know,’ he said, ‘and I’ll take you up on that offer soon. It’s funny, but whenever autumn comes around I start thinking about the places we grew up. Do you find that autumn is an evocative time of year, a season that brings on nostalgia?’
‘Not really,’ Julia said with a shrug, her eyes wandering to the pages lying open on her knee.
‘I keep thinking about the route we took when we walked to school. I can’t get it out of my head.’
‘Oh yes!’ Julia glanced up again and smiled. ‘I remember those cold, frosty mornings, and we with our knitted scarves and gloves, our fingers and noses red and stinging, running down Guildford Road towards the lane because we were late, and how heavy the schoolbags felt, and how long and arduous the journey seemed. You used to make up stories about travelling in an armchair on wheels, with soft cushions and a blanket, and armrests so wide you could rest a hot cup of cocoa there, while we drove our armchairs to school, in comfort. And we’d imagine how the other children would stare, when we zoomed in at the front gate of the schoolyard ensconced in our chintz upholstery!’
Chuckling, the young man said, ‘I’d forgotten. I wonder how many times we walked along those same paths. Five days a week, maybe forty weeks of the year was it? That makes two hundred, minus a few days off when we had the measles, or whatever. Say, a hundred and ninety times a year for six years — that’s well over a thousand journeys. Twice that, if you count the return trip.’
‘A lot,’ Julia agreed absently.
‘It is well known,’ Daniel mused, ‘that upbringing influences character; that our environment contributes, in varying degrees, to the orchestration of our destinies. The brain of a child is capable of being shaped or formed. What if this is closer to the truth than anyone has guessed?’
‘What do you mean?’ Julia was not really paying attention, but this did not seem to matter to her companion, who was being carried away with his own theorising.
‘What if a child’s daily passage through the rooms and corridors of a familiar house, or along the streets of a familiar neighbourhood actually, over time, erodes these geographical patterns into the physical circuitry of the brain?’ he said animatedly. ‘To turn left, for example, we must look left and step left, using the right hemisphere of the brain to analyse perceived data and to send messages to the nervous system. If those particular ‘left turn’ centres of the grey matter are repeatedly stimulated at a certain point in the child’s journey through time and space, they must necessarily adapt. They must change. A cerebral map is laid down inside the skull. It is wired there, engraved there; a road plan that will be carried forever. We might never be conscious that this was so, though sometimes they manifest as the pathways of our dreams …’
The speaker paused reflectively. On the other side of the room Julia remained engrossed in her newspaper. ‘And so, I carry these pathways with me in my head,’ Daniel said softly to himself. ‘They are with me always; therefore it is not impossible that they have shaped my life, my destiny.’
Opening his journal he resumed writing. ‘Once again I think of going back. They attract me. Why?
‘I walked them, day in, day out; year in, year out, throughout all the ten-centuries-to-Christmas years of my childhood, but seldom have I returned to Surrey Hills since I was eleven years old. When I do, I never walk those paths, because now there is no reason to do so.
‘When I visit my childhood haunts they are waiting patiently, those streets. The same presentiment is always there, along with other impressions I had forgotten, such as the fact that when you walk the Lanes, somewhere around the middle of the journey you become confused. You feel lost. You cannot remember how many Lanes exist in total, or how many you have passed through, or how many are still to come. Geography seems meaningless. No matter how many times you follow that route, it always happens. All you can do is keep going, until you arrive at some familiar landmark, and then you turn a corner and slowly your inner map reassembles itself again and as if waking from deep sleep you gradually become re-oriented, and breathe a sigh, How could I be so stupid? Of course, this is where I am, this street is where the Lane comes out … But it happens every time, even when you have grown up. I have walked that route to school thousands of times, yet I can never quite remember how many lanes there are … Strange …’
After closing the journal once again, Daniel crossed his study to the bookshelves, searched the contents quickly and selected an old, somewhat battered tome.
‘What are you doing?’ Julia asked as he carried the book to the desk.
‘I have always been intrigued by Surrey Hills,’ said the young man, ‘and as time goes by the feeling gets stronger. I have decided to try to demystify the footpaths of our childhood by looking them up in the local street directory. Surely seeing them diagrammed as lines on paper will put them into perspective. It will show that the lanes and streets are leading nowhere mysterious and unattainable; that the houses along the Surrey Hills streets are not barriers manoeuvered into position by some arcane force that manipulated the minds of early town planners, nor are they concealing unknown wonders. It will demonstrate that there is a definite length to each footpath and a layout that does not alter; that the lanes do not move around, appear or disappear, that there is nothing to confuse pedestrians who Walk the Lanes.’
‘Really?’ Julia had risen from her perch and was peering over his shoulder as he searched for reference 46 D11 to H10. ‘You used to get lost on the way to school?’ Privately she was captivated by the way his hair fell down across his collar, and the fresh scent of the linen shirt stretched across his shoulders.
‘Not lost,’ he said, ‘but disoriented, in a way I never have felt anywhere else. I bet if I stare long enough at the m
ap I will be able to memorise the layout of the Lanes and therefore, if I visit them again, I will not experience that odd and discomfiting sense of uncertainty.’
‘I’ll leave you to it!’ Julia said with a laugh, forcing herself to draw away from him. ‘Mind if I make some toast?’
Daniel nodded. ‘Go ahead, but not for me, I’m not hungry.’ His guest strolled out of the room, and when she returned, he was still poring over the open pages.
‘Clues,’ he was saying. ‘I need clues. Look at these, Jules, all these significant landscape features. The old red brick railway station, probably built a hundred years ago. Sports grounds and reserves. Boy Scout and Girl Guide headquarters. Waterways. Churches. The Salvation Army.’
Brushing crumbs from her hands Julia said, ‘Significant? Scouts?’
‘The Scouting Movement is immersed in human tradition, history and symbolism. It represents links with the land at primeval levels — campfires, singing, survival skills, camaraderie, adventure, human tribes living in the wilderness.’
‘And reminds us of Childhood Before the Machine,’ Julia contributed.
‘Indeed, and with the uniforms and badges, their troops and bivouacs and encampments, it’s like some quasi-military institution. Part of the fortifications of the boundaries. To keep something out
‘What’s significant about the railway?’
‘The railway lines are the Iron Roads; vast, interconnected electrical conductors, like silver wires running across the landscape; nerves carrying impulses from station to station. Their bridges and underpasses are significant because they are a crossing of ways, and crosses, traditionally, are meaningful symbols. See the way some of the suburban streets are forcibly deflected from their straight course by the railway line? Do you think the railway follows the path of some waterway, in order to take advantage of the smoothest gradient? Or is there some other reason?’
Julia shook her head and shrugged.
‘Which brings us to the significance of waterways,’ Daniel went on. ‘Life is impossible without water. Places where it rises or runs or collects are important. Not that all the waterways of the land are visible — civilisation has hidden many of them. But man has not, with all his efforts, entirely been able to disguise evidence of water’s pathways. Here and there in the local topography a dip, a dell, a shallow valley or parkland reserve betrays the truth — “Beneath this place water runs”. If you held divining rods and walked across these natural folds in the landscape the rods would, no doubt, twist and jump in your hands.’ He stabbed the map with his index finger. ‘Here at “Shrublands Creek Reserve” an ancient waterway of Surrey Hills has been allowed, for a few blocks, to flow uncovered. When we were kids we found tadpoles here. It was another magical place. Children can feel that land magic; I’m not sure whether I’d sense it now. I suspect the creek runs underground, beneath this other reserve over here. There’s a sudden dip in the middle, a dell so steep that the council built a hump-backed footbridge across it.’
‘A delightful, fairytale footbridge,’ declared Julia, ‘under which trolls were expected to dwell.’
‘Yes, and when we stamped across we felt sure we sounded like the Billy Goats Gruff!’
‘But we believed we were more than a match for the trolls if they did appear!’
‘Do you see how the land’s gradients prescribed the railway route, Jules? And its waterways dictated where buildings could be placed without danger of subsidence or flooding. That much is obvious. What is not so obvious, and more debatable, is whether land magic influenced the positioning of other points of significance, such as the churches, certain houses … and the Lanes. But see here,’ Daniel added, ‘— an unusual feature, surely, for a suburban zone? “Air Force No. 1 Flight Air Training Corps Small Bore Rifle Range”.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Julia. ‘I think it was built during World War I. Remember the enormous Scottish band that used the main hall to practise?’
‘Of course!’ Daniel smiled in fond recollection. ‘In full regalia — kilts, sporrans, plaids — they played massed bagpipes every Saturday morning; you’d hear the music skirling through the streets of Surrey Hills for half the day, like a haunting reminder of our Celtic past! Look there on the map — a tower, a stream, a park …’
‘Yes,’ Julia said absently. ‘Sorry. I stayed up late last night.’ She yawned and returned to her newspaper.
Feverishly Daniel traced the map with his fingertips. ‘No need for apologies. I never expected anyone else to be interested in my current fixation. It is — I have to admit — a little eccentric to be reading the street directory on a fine Saturday morning. But there —’ something had caught his eye — an oddly-shaped road that barrelled straight ahead out of the west to then suddenly swerve north at right angles as if avoiding some invisible obstacle, before turning east again and running straight on again … ‘A road along which half the houses turn their backs,’ he said slowly. ‘A road with a name that has always struck me as bizarre … And all these places, these towers and steel rivers and martial establishments and halls of festivity for Celtic warriors, are linked; all linked by tree-lined streets and the Lanes of Camberwell. How many lanes are there?’ Carefully, his finger moving over the page, Daniel counted. As he still must count, every time, to make sure. How odd. Odd that his mind could not hold this simple number, as if the number itself were fluid. Yet he was good at mathematics, and could usually memorise numbers with ease.
He followed the railway line, later writing about it as ‘forging its way through the landscape like a cold steel river, driving deep cuttings through the bones of the hills and rising above sunken places atop embankments adorned with green filigrees of weeds’. How did Surrey Hills look — he later wondered in his journal — a hundred years ago? When the railway line was being built? Before the wild streams of the area were enclosed or buried so that houses and shops could be built, and roads laid down — where were they now, those ancient waterways? They would still be flowing — not even clever engineering could forestall the mightiest forces of nature — but no doubt they were now diverted underground, trapped in old, rusting pipe systems, flowing secretly along their arcane pathways.
‘Aha!’
At Daniel’s triumphant cry, Julia folded her reading material and put it aside. She did not resent the interruption; his enthusiasm was infectious and besides it was far more enjoyable to gaze upon her companion than to read the latest political opinions. ‘Well, have you found a clue to whatever it is you are searching for?’
‘Possibly. Just then a shape leapt out at me. It suddenly seems obvious that if you join up the lanes by drawing over them with a pencil, connecting them to the footpaths along which we walked to and from school all those years, a circuit diagram appears.’
‘What exactly is a circuit diagram?’ Julia asked. ‘I mean, I know it’s something to do with electronics …’
‘A pictorial representation of an electrical circuit.’ Spinning around in his office chair Daniel elaborated, as if quoting, ‘Circuit: any path that can carry electrical current; a path or route the complete traversal of which without local change of direction requires returning to the starting point.’
‘You actually memorise things like that?’
‘I’m a nerd, you always tell me so! Oh Jules, this circuit engraved into my brain, what does it mean? Circuits lead back to the beginning. Where is its beginning? And does it in fact lead back there, or somewhere else? Let’s go,’ Daniel said suddenly, leaping up. ‘We have to go.’
Julia did not have to ask ‘Where?’
That very morning they caught the train to Surrey Hills. From Chatham Station they walked up Guildford Road to have lunch at Julia’s house. Afterwards they set out again, passing the low brick fence of Daniel’s childhood home, retracing the old route to school.
Grey skies were heavy with rainless clouds, and there was scarcely a breath of wind in the mild air. A blackbird twittered in a hedge when they passed by.
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��I have not walked through the lanes since we left school,’ said Julia. ‘It’s funny, but even though I live in this suburb there’s a great deal of it I’m no longer familiar with.’
‘Absurdly, I can’t help feeling nervous,’ said Daniel as they strode down the footpath to the bottom of the hill. ‘After being so long away, spending so long thinking about this place, it suddenly seems as if I am walking into the pages of a storybook. But the pages might be blank! What if all that I believe I remember — the sense of oddness, the intuition that something amazing lies just out of reach — is nothing but delusion?’
‘Hmm,’ Julia said noncommittally.
‘Or, if the premonition really is a property of the Camberwell Lanes and their circuitry, maybe I’m too old to receive the signal any more! Maybe children are the only ones permitted access to it!’
‘You’re only twenty-two,’ murmured Julia.
‘Either the storybook is blank, or it is filled with tales of wonder. Either way, I am unnerved.’
Julia, who saw nothing but the suburban street lined by avenues of trees and houses, made no reply.
‘However,’ concluded Daniel, glancing up at the overcast sky, ‘the feeling seldom happens on days like this.’
They reached the mouth of what they’d always called the First Lane and passed into the shadows between its high fences. The defile was so narrow it did not permit them to walk abreast. Their feet trod a layer of asphalt, grey as smoke. In places this had cracked, and weedy blades of ribwort plantain were pushing through. The high wooden walls blocked any view into the gardens of the neighbouring houses. Ahead, a rectangle of diffuse daylight showed where the lane gave onto Sir Garnet Road.
