And Daniel fell for it. He fell for the compliments paid to his form and physique, to his animal magnetism, his sexual prowess, his way with women. He listened and looked and lapped it all up. Alex understood men, understood their strengths and weaknesses (especially their weaknesses), and used that knowledge to manipulate them wholly and entirely.
Even if Daniel had suspected this at the time - that he was no more than the most recent participant in a long-running game - he probably wouldn’t have cared. In bed Alex brought his many and varied fantasies to life. She was young, willing and skilled, capable of performing feats and actions that Daniel had previously only imagined.
In the morning they both woke with hellish hangovers and fuzzy but unmistakable auras of guilt, which hovered around them for most of the morning until, in an effort to exorcise these spectres, they decided to go to bed again, this time sober, and face any consequences that might arise. The idea uppermost in Daniel’s mind when he made the suggestion was not that this was a cunning way of getting laid again, but that without the booze and blinding excitement caused by the dangers of the previous day, the couple would in all likelihood find each other less than passionately arousing, thus putting paid to any notions of guilt that might otherwise hang around them like a bad smell.
Unfortunately - at least for Daniel’s conscience if not his libido - the second coupling was even more intense than the first, and, much as he would have liked to deny it, with this confirmation of their mutual attraction he soon found himself deeply - and destructively - attracted to his companion. It was not surprising that the rest of their time in India was spent - when not ducking broken bottles and the abuse of religious extremists - attempting to discover which of two as yet untried sexual positions caused the most laughter, pleasure, discomfort and/or pain.
And then, on what was scheduled to be their final day in Ayodhya, tragedy struck.
They were driving out of town, back towards the hotel, when an aggrieved agitator (whose religious and political persuasions were never discovered) hurled a home-made fire-bomb - a sort of oversized Molotov cocktail - at the windscreen of their speeding jeep. Before Daniel had even registered what had happened, the jeep had careered off the road, out of control, hit a bank of earth at high speed, flipped over several times, then crashed with full force into a banyan tree that for five hundred years had been minding its own business, doing no one any harm. The driver was killed on impact, and had Daniel not been thrown free of the wrecked vehicle he, like Alex, would certainly have died in the inferno that followed.
The flames raged on for hours, fed by hot winds and by the tinder-dry wood of the banyan tree, and when they finally died down there was not enough left of Alex even to identify her.
Alex died, and he lived. It was a result without justice, without reason, without decency. He too should have perished, Or else, they should both have survived. It was an outcome that diminished him, degraded the quality of his life, subtracted from his right to live. If such things could happen in the world, it was not a world in which he wanted any part.
Daniel looked up at Kate wistfully. Here was someone whom he could trust, someone, perhaps, to whom he could pour out his heart. The feelings, thoughts, ideas; the guilt. He had never had a chance to finish things with Alex, to break it off, as would have happened inevitably had she lived. He had cheated on Lisanne, and in some bizarre way the affair was caught in limbo, suspended like a fly in amber, there to haunt him all his days. It was unfinished business, and would always remain so.
But at last, after keeping the guilt bottled up inside for so long, he could talk about it, tell another soul how he really felt. The rush of emotion that accompanied these feelings was so intense that, for a moment, as the words formed upon his lips and he gazed into Kate’s eyes, he could feel the world around him starting to thicken, darken and dissolve, found his usually acute senses attenuating, as if he had suddenly been plunged into a giant tank of murky water, and before he had a chance to issue so much as a word, everything went black.
Chapter 12
Daniel awoke in distress. Something had gone wrong with his dream. He had woken without a single thought in his head: no music, no visions, nothing, He felt bereft, hollow; as if someone had sucked the breath of life out of him.
He started to panic; what if he had lost it? What if Atheenaton had disappeared? What had Kate said about questioning it too closely, about not fitting? Had he overstepped the mark somehow?
He went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face, hoping it might calm him down. As he dried his face he tried to recall what had last happened in Atheenaton, but he was confused and distraught. He tried to relax with some deep-breathing exercises, but this didn’t work. He could not get a grip on it; he could not conjure up a single, solid image of Atheenaton. Suddenly the whole place felt like a mirage, insubstantial and illusory.
He ran down to the living room, turned on the stereo and put on his precious record of Greek music, but although the music was pleasing and familiar it failed to bring anything back to him. He searched around for the dreadful Greek Idyll in the hope that it might trigger his memory; much as he hated it, he had to admit that there were undeniable, though tenuous, links between the novel and his experiences in Atheenaton. Perhaps it would help to jog his memory.
Daniel turned the room upside down looking for the book; he could not remember what he had done with it. All he knew was that he had kept it out of sight for fear Lisanne would see him reading it: he knew she would question him on it, and he didn’t feel up to an inquisition on the matter.
He found the book eventually, stuffed away in a drawer in the bedroom: Lisanne must have tidied up recently and thrown his clothes on top without realising it. He opened the book where he had left off.
Daniel read three more chapters, trying, with some difficulty, to ignore the turgid dialogue and tedious commentary and to concentrate on what there was of plot. If Jameson’s ill-conceived novel had any relevance to Daniel’s dream, it lay hidden somewhere in the story-line.
He was about to investigate further when the telephone rang. He hesitated, unsure if he should answer it. If it was Lisanne, she would probably be calling to check up on him, and he was in no mood for that. And if it was Vince, it would almost certainly be because he felt obliged to keep in touch, now that they had re-established contact: if so, it could wait. And if it was someone Daniel had not spoken to for months, frankly he couldn’t be bothered.
The phone continued to ring, suggesting to Daniel either that the call was urgent or, more probably, that someone was calling for Lisanne: some neurotic author having a breakdown and needing desperutely to talk to her. That Lisanne had actually given out their home phone number ’in case of emergencies’ was something Daniel had never understood.
The phone kept ringing. Eventually, against his better judgement, he answered it, hoping like hell that it wasn’t some jumped-up wordsmith having kittens because he was ‘blocked’.
‘Hello, Daniel?’
He did not recognise the voice until the caller had identitied herself. It was Janice.
Thanks to some poor calculations on Daniel’s part, concerning both the distance between his home and Crouch End, and also an overestimation of his average walking speed, he was about twenty minutes late meeting Janice. Fortunately, the Acacia Tea-rooms, with its mix’n’match pre-war decor (which Daniel always likened to an ageing aunt’ s living room), was a pleasant place in which to while away an afternoon, and Janice was clearly not the least perturbed by his tardy arrival.
‘Hello, Daniel, how lovely to see you,’ she said, kissing him lightly on both cheeks. ‘You’re looking very well.’
‘Thanks. You’re not too shabby yourself.’
Janice laughed. ‘Oh dear, I’m sure that’s not the sort of thing you’d have said if you hadn’t spent an evening in Vince’s company recently. I swear these terrible expressions of his are contagious.’
Daniel sat down opposite Jan
ice and beckoned one of the waiters over. The walk had made him thirsty, and he was looking forward to a pot of one of their speciality teas.
Ever since visiting Darjeeling on a photo-shoot some years previous, he had been a tea aficianado. Until then, tea - and in particular, chai (the commonly available drink served up all over the subcontinent, made from tea dust, powdered milk and copious quantities of sugar, boiled up together and strained through an oily rag) - had been something of a utilitarian beverage, something you drank more out of habit than intention.
But in Darjeeling all that changed. High up in the foothills of the mighty Himalayas, he photographed the cheerful teams of dark-skinned, brightly clothed women as they moved up and down the steep, verdant hills, picking the leaves by hand with all the swiftness and accuracy of automatons. The bright saris with their brilliant slashes of colour set against the deep, luminous emerald green of the tea bushes and the intense sapphire-blue mountain skies provided him with some of his all-time favourite shots.
And in the dilapidated, Victorian-era tea-rooms that could still be found, perched precariously on the edge of the town overlooking the valleys, he tasted the wondrous, fragrant tea - freshly brewed from the young, green leaves - and discovered that tea could be an exotic and refined beverage, with a variety of flavours and aromas that made it truly something special.
Although he had never since enjoyed a cup of tea to rival that which he had sampled in Darjeeling, the Acacia Tea-rooms was one of the few places locally that could provide a reasonable approximation to the real thing.
‘You know, it was great seeing Vince again,’ said Daniel. ’I felt guilty that it had been so long.’
‘You know very well that there’s no need to feel guilty where we’re concerned.’ Janice smiled, reached across the table and placed her hand gently on Daniel’s. ‘How’s Lisanne?’
‘She’s well... busy, as always.’
‘I must give her a call. Did you tell her you were meeting me?’
‘No, I just came straight here.’ Daniel paused, examining Janice’s face for clues. He had no idea why she had insisted they meet; why, in fact, she was being so mysterious. It was not, he thought, in character. ‘Janice, it is, of course, lovely to see you again but... well, what’s this all about?’
Janice nodded gravely, ‘I hope you won’t be angry with Vince: he told me all about the conversation the two of you had the other night. That’s why I thought I ought to see you.’
‘Ought?’
Janice was silent for a moment; Daniel could see her urgently trying to compose her thoughts.
‘I can’t begin to understand what you’ve been through, Daniel... the accident, I mean. Even now, all these months later, I’m sure it still hurts like hell, and I don’t suppose anyone will ever understand what that feels like. I can, however, appreciate that it must have turned your whole world upside down, thrown everything into confusion.’
‘You said it.’
‘Well, I’ve been through some pretty tough times myself. I don’t know if Vince ever told you about my sister?’
‘No, I didn’t even know you had a sister.’
‘She died about ten years ago. We were on holiday together and there was a terrible boating accident. I shan’t go into details, because they’re not important. What is important was that I was in the boat at the time. I escaped pretty much unharmed, but Mary drowned.’
‘I’m sorry. I had no idea.’
‘I tend not to talk about it; it’s a long time ago now.’
One of the waiters finally approached the table and Daniel ordered. He looked at Janice, at her large, soulful eyes, and for a moment felt a true empathy with her. It was an unfamiliar experience, for he had not previously experienced his own sense of loss as something that might be shared. He had held it to himself, clutching on to it with a sort of macabre desperation, the only thing he could salvage from the ghastly event that had nearly swept him out of this world for good, to become just one of other people’s sad, fleeting memories.
‘Death,’ said Janice with a solemnity that caught Daniel off guard, ‘affects people in different ways. Ever since Mary’s death I’ve been uncomfortable being around the bereaved, which is perhaps why I wasn’t much use to you when you came back from India. I’m really sorry about that now.’
‘Janice, you don’t need-’
‘No, not because I think I failed you. After all, one can only do what one is capable of, and the fact is that there was no way I could have helped you then. Or at least, I didn’t believe there was a way. It’s only since Vince told me about your conversation the other night that I’ve realised that I might be able to help you now.’
‘How do you mean?’ The tea arrived. Daniel poured for both of them while Janice stared out of the window, seemingly lost in thought. ‘Janice?’
‘What? Oh, sorry. Listen, Daniel, I’ve not spoken about this to anyone, for reasons that you will now probably appreciate.’
Janice raised her cup to her lips and sipped carefully. She gazed out through the window again, momentarily distracted. The brilliant blue skies that had accompanied Daniel’s walk had darkened, prefacing the onset of a summer storm, and the deep, reverberant rumblings of thunder boomed ominously in the distance. Within seconds the first few drops of rain splashed against the window pane, jolting Janice out of her reverie.
‘About a month after Mary died,’ she began, hesitantly, ’I had this remarkable dream. In the dream I found myself walking along a dry, dusty path. It was hot and sunny, and I seemed to be completely alone.’
Daniel’s interest was instantly aroused. Janice was not the sort of person to play games, and these first intimations of something so familiar caused his pulse to quicken. He leant forward and listened intently.
‘At first, I didn’t realise that it was a dream at all. It felt as if I was on holiday; you know, blue skies, hot sun... it was an automatic assumption. Anyway, eventually, having walked for a while, I came to a small, deserted café. It was so hot that I decided to rest for a while in the shade. It was incredibly peaceful; there was a stillness about the place, a particularly comforting quietness that I can remember to this day. Anyway, a waiter appeared and fetched a drink for me. I remember thinking how pleasant it all was, what a relief it was to be away from home and all the problems I had. I reached for the drink - coffee, it was - but as soon as I drank some, I blacked out. The next thing I knew, I was in bed at home. It was the middle of the night. Only then did I realise I’d been dreaming. I didn’t think anything of it at first, but then that night I dreamt about the same place. What’s more, the dream started where it had left off previously.’
Daniel could hardly believe what he was hearing. ‘Was there a pump outside the restaurant?’ he asked urgently. ‘Like an old fashioned hand-pump? And Greek writing on the menu? And the owner was a tall American called Barry?’
A flash of lightning streaked across the rooftops opposite, attended moments later by a deafening report, an explosive crash of thunder that shook the windows. Janice stared at the rain streaming down the window.
‘No, no pump,’ she said distractedly, then returned her attention to Daniel. ‘No Greek either. And the owner, when I finally met him, was a German guy called Kurt. It was all rather odd.’
Daniel’s face fell. For a brief moment he had dared to believe the impossible: that someone else had visited Atheenaton. He sipped his tea unenthusiastically, having forgotten the raging thirst that had accompanied him into the tea-rooms.
‘But the thing is,’ continued Janice, so caught up in her recollections that she failed to register the disappointment on Daniel’s face, ‘it didn’t stop there. For several nights I returned to the same place. It was a small village set in this glorious, winda-heltered valley half-way up a mountain. And it was peopled with the most charming, friendly people. And whenever I was there I felt... well I felt great. But I didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand what the place was. I didn’t understand how I coul
d possibly be having this ongoing dream in which the same people always appeared. And I started to feel uncomfortable about it. Anyway, to cut a long story short, eventually I stopped dreaming of the village. But the memories of the place haunted me for weeks afterwards. In the end I went to see someone about it.’
Daniel frowned. ‘Someone? You mean a shrink?’
‘Janice smiled. ’A Jungian analyst, actually. I just had to talk to someone about it, and as I didn’t want to be treated like a lunatic I thought it best to discuss it with someone who understood dreams.’
Daniel's Dream Page 16
