The Dream Archipelago

by Christopher Priest

  Seri was waiting for me by the open door.

  ‘Hurry, Lenden!’

  I stepped over a heap of fallen masonry and looked up apprehensively at the ruined tower as it loomed over me.

  ‘You’re not going inside, are you?’

  ‘It’s been here for years.’

  ‘But it’s falling down!’

  ‘Not any more.’

  The only thing I knew for sure about the dead towers of Seevl was that no one went near them. Yet there was Seri, standing by the door as casually as if it were just another hideout. I was torn between my dread of the tower and what Seri would let me do with her inside.

  ‘Aren’t these towers dangerous?’ I said.

  ‘No, they’re only old. This one was something to do with the college, when it was still a monastery.’

  Seri went through the door. I hesitated only a few seconds longer before following her. She pushed the door closed behind us.

  It was surprisingly gloomy inside after the harsh light outside. There was an almost intact upper floor above us. Joists and plank flooring were still in place up there and two small windows set a short distance below this ceiling admitted the only daylight. A fallen beam lay at an angle across the room, propped up against the wall. The floor was littered with broken fragments of glass and plaster, as well as many large pieces of stone.

  ‘See, there’s nothing to worry about.’ Seri used her foot to push several pieces of stone out of the way, roughly clearing a space on the wooden floor. ‘It’s just an old dump the priests will never come to.’

  ‘That priest we saw in the garden was definitely following us,’ I said.

  Seri turned away from me, swung the door open part of the way and peered out. I stood behind her, looking over her shoulder. We could both see the priest. He had reached the stream and was walking along the bank, apparently trying to find somewhere he could cross.

  Seri closed the door again.

  ‘He won’t come here,’ she said again. ‘Not to the tower. None of the priests will come here. They say the tower has evil in it, which is why it’s safe for us.’

  I glanced around in the dim half-light nervously.

  ‘What’s evil about it?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s their superstitious beliefs. They say something wicked happened a long time ago, but they never tell you what it was.’

  ‘He’s still coming towards us,’ I said. ‘Whatever you say.’

  ‘You wait and see what he does.’

  I went back to the door and again eased it open so that there was a slit of daylight. The priest had moved across to the side but was still the same sort of distance away from the tower as he had been when we last looked. He was standing with his hands on his hips, staring up the slope towards us. I closed the door and told Seri.

  ‘You see?’ she said.

  ‘But he’ll wait until we come out. What will happen then?’

  ‘Nothing will happen,’ Seri said. ‘What I do is none of his business. I know who that is: it’s Father Grewe. He’s always following me around, trying to find out what I’m doing. I’m used to him. Shall we start?’

  ‘If you want to,’ I said. The mood had left me.

  ‘Get undressed, then.’

  ‘Me? I thought you—’

  ‘We both undress.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’ I stared down at the rubble-strewn floor. ‘Not yet, anyway. You do it first.’

  ‘All right. I don’t mind.’

  She reached up under her skirt and pulled her pants down her legs. She tossed them on the floor.

  ‘Your turn,’ she said. ‘Take something off.’

  I hesitated, then complied by removing my pullover. Seri undid two buttons on the side of her skirt and it slid down her legs. She turned away from me to drape the garment over the fallen beam and for a moment I saw the pinkness of her buttocks, slightly dimpled.

  ‘Now you,’ she said.

  ‘Let me feel you again first,’ I said. ‘I’ve never done …’

  Some compassion softened her determination to make me undress with her. She sat down on the floor, keeping her knees together and reaching forward to rest her hands on her ankles. I could see none of her secret places, just the pale curve of her thighs as they rounded towards her buttocks. Her sweater finished at her waist.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But you have to be more gentle. You were jabbing at me before.’

  She leaned back and rested her elbows on the floor behind her. She parted her legs. I saw the black thatch of hair, the whorl of pink that was below, revealed but mysterious. Staring at her I moved forward, crouching down.

  I was suddenly as sexually aroused as I had been before: it switched on like a powerful motor, compelling me towards her almost against my will. I felt a tightness in my throat, a sweatiness in my palms. That passive, lipped organ, lying between her thighs like an upright mouth, waited for my touch. I reached forward, ran my fingertips across the lips, felt how warm they were, felt how moist it was between them. Seri sucked in her breath. She was as tense as I was.

  Something small and hard whacked against the door, startling us both. Seri twisted away from me, turning to one side. My hand brushed against the top of her thigh, then she was gone from me. She scattered small pieces of rubble as she swung around.

  ‘Don’t move,’ she said to me. She went quickly to the door, eased it open and peered out.

  I heard distantly, ‘Seri, come out of that place. You know it is forbidden.’

  She closed the door.

  ‘He won’t come near you, so long as you stay in here.’ She picked up her skirt and stepped into it, buttoning it again at the waist. ‘I’ll have to go and talk to him. I want him to leave us alone. Wait in here and don’t let him see you.’

  ‘But he knows I’m here,’ I said, impatiently. ‘He followed us from the college. I’ll come with you. We ought to be going back anyway.’

  ‘No!’ she said, and I saw the familiar quick-tempered Seri of whom I had always been a little frightened. ‘There’s more to do than just touching.’ Her hand was on the door. ‘Stay here, keep out of sight and I’ll be back in a few moments.’

  The door slammed behind her, shaking on its loose old hinges. I peeped through the crack, saw her running down through the long grass to where the priest was waiting. He spoke to her with angry gestures, waving his hand towards my hiding place, but she was uncowed. She stood near to him, kicking idly at the grasses while he berated her.

  There was a faint, musky fragrance on my fingertips. I drew back from the door and looked around at the filthy, broken interior of the tower. Without Seri I felt ill at ease in the old ruin. The ceiling was sagging – what if it fell in on me? The constant wind blustered around the tower and a piece of broken wood, hanging by the window aperture, knocked to and fro.

  Minutes passed. I began to wonder guiltily about the possible consequences of being caught here. Suppose the priest told Torm and my parents that we had been up to something, or that we were gone long enough for them to guess anyway? Would they smell the musk on my hand? If they suspected the truth, or even a part of it, there would be a terrible scene.

  I heard the priest’s voice in a freak silence of the wind. He said something in a sharp tone of voice, but Seri’s response was laughter. I returned to the door, put my eye to the slit and looked out at them. The priest was holding Seri by the hand, tugging her, but she was pulling back from him. To my surprise I realized that they were no longer arguing but seemed to be playing. Their hands slipped apart, but it was an accident because they joined again immediately. The playful pulling went on.

  I stepped back from the door, puzzled and confused.

  We were in a part of the seminary to which I had never been before: a large office situated behind the main entrance. We had been greeted by Father Confessor Henner, who was thin, bespectacled and younger than I had expected from his letter. He tried to be tactful and solicitous: he enquired after my well-being following the
long journey from Jethra, he gave me his condolences on the death of my uncle, a tragic loss, a hard-working servant of God. He handed over the key to the house and then pointed out that we were in time for a meal in the refectory. Father Henner told us we could eat with the students but when we arrived at the large room we were directed to a small table in the corner, away from everyone else. Many curious glances came our way. Night was falling beyond the stained-glass windows.

  I could hear the wind, made louder by the airy space above us, the high, vaulted roof of the refectory.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Bella said, over the sounds of the students clattering their dishes on the other side of the hall.

  ‘I’m wishing we didn’t have to stay here tonight. I’d forgotten how much I loathe this place.’

  We returned to Father Henner’s office. After a delay he took us across the grounds to the house, leading the way with a battery flashlight. Our feet crunched on the gravel pathway, while the misshapen trees moved blackly against the night sky. The vague shape of the moors beyond loomed around us. I unlocked the door and Father Henner turned on a light in the corridor. A dim, low-wattage bulb shed yellow light on the shabby floor and wallpaper. I smelled damp rot and mould.

  I remembered walking along this corridor: there was a kitchen on the left, another room next to it, opposite the kitchen on the right was my uncle’s former office. At the end of the corridor was the flight of stairs to the next floor. By the bottom of the stairs was the dark-varnished door to Alvie’s room.

  ‘You understand that while your uncle was still alive we weren’t able to maintain the house?’ Father Henner said. ‘The whole place has to be renovated.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘You’ll find that we have already removed much of the furniture,’ he went on. ‘Your uncle naturally bequeathed the more valuable pieces to the college, and some of the other effects belonged to us already.’ He indicated a long handwritten inventory he had given me earlier, which I had not yet had a chance to examine. ‘You may take with you any of the remaining pieces, or arrange to have them destroyed. We have tried to trace the daughter, but without success. As far as we are concerned you are his only next of kin. We really must ask you to finalize everything while you are here.’

  ‘Yes, I will,’ I said, thinking of Seri, the daughter. The priest had suddenly made me wonder, where are you now, Seraphina?

  ‘What about my uncle’s papers?’ I said.

  ‘They’re all here in the house. Again, we ask you to take what you want when you leave. The rest will have to be incinerated.’

  I opened the door into the office and switched on the overhead light. The room was completely empty, with pale squares on the walls where pictures had hung and impressions on the old linoleum where his desk, chair, filing cabinet, and so on, had stood. A dark patch of rising damp spread up from the floor, covering half of one wall.

  ‘As I said, most of the rooms have been emptied,’ said Father Henner. ‘Everything has been moved to the kitchen, and of course there’s your dear aunt’s room. Your uncle left it as it had been while she was still alive.’

  Bella had moved to the end of the short corridor and was standing by the door to my aunt’s room. Father Henner nodded to her and she turned the handle. I felt a sudden compulsion to back away, fearing that Alvie would still be there in the room, waiting for me, and would somehow burst out upon us as soon as the door was released.

  ‘I’ll wish you goodnight and God bless,’ said Father Henner, moving back to the main door. ‘I shall be in my office tomorrow, should you need any more information. Otherwise, if all is well you may deposit the key to the house with the secretary, when you leave.’

  I said, ‘Father, before you go – where are we sleeping tonight?’

  ‘Has that not been arranged already?’

  Bella said, ‘Yes, through the Chamberlain’s office.’

  ‘The Chamberlain?’

  ‘At the Seigniory.’

  ‘I know nothing of that,’ Father Henner said, frowning. He opened the door and his black soutane ballooned in the sudden wind gusting in from outside. ‘You may use the house, of course.’

  ‘The Chamberlain arranged for there to be guest rooms for us tonight. Under warrant from the Seignior.’

  Father Henner shook his head.

  ‘In the college?’ he said. ‘We would never have agreed to that. We have no facilities for women.’

  Bella looked at me questioningly. I, stricken with a dread of spending a night in the house, shook my head.

  ‘Isn’t there somewhere else we could go to?’ I said. ‘There must be an inn somewhere near, or even a house—’

  ‘Are there any beds here?’ Bella said, pushing Alvie’s door wide open and peering into the room. My aunt’s folding screen was still there, making a temporary corridor into the room and blocking the view of the rest.

  Father Henner was outside in the windswept dark.

  ‘You’ll have to make do,’ he said. ‘It’s only for one night, after all. May God be with you.’

  He went. The door slammed behind him. Relative quiet fell. The stone walls muted the wind, at least while we stood here in the corridor in the centre of the house, away from the windows.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Bella said. ‘Sleep on the floor?’

  ‘Let’s see what they’ve left for us.’

  We went into Aunt Alvie’s room; my dear aunt.

  Pretending to myself that it was an ordinary room, pretending to Bella, I went past her and walked in. The central light was beyond the folding screen so the way was shadowed. At the end, facing us, someone from the seminary had stacked two huge piles of old documents. Tomorrow I should have to go through them. Dust lay in a gritty film on the top sheets. Bella was behind me. I reached the end of the screen, looked round it into the rest of the room. The narrow double bed, Alvie’s sickbed, was still there, dominating everything. Tea chests had been brought into the room, two extra chairs were crammed against the wall, books lay in uneven piles on the table beneath the window, picture frames rested on the mantelpiece … but the bed, piled high with pillows, was the focus of the room, as it had always been. By its head was the bedside table: dusty old pill bottles, a notebook, a folded lace handkerchief, a telephone, a bottle that had once held lavender water. These I remembered, these had remained here ever since her death. So long ago. Uncle Torm had not removed anything.

  Alvie’s presence still occupied the bed. Only her body was absent.

  I could smell her, see her, hear her. Above the bed, on the wall behind the top rail of the brass headboard, were two darker marks on the time-darkened wallpaper. I remembered: Alvie had a characteristic gesture, reaching up behind her to grip the rail with both hands, perhaps to brace herself against pain. Her hands, those long years of her hands gripping the brass rod like that, had left the marks.

  The windows were black squares of night. Bella pulled the curtains across and dust cascaded down. I could hear the wind again and I thought, Alvie must have known this wind, every night, every day.

  ‘There’s a bed, at least,’ Bella said.

  ‘You can use it,’ I said at once. ‘I’ll sleep on the floor.’

  ‘There must be another bed somewhere. In one of the rooms upstairs.’

  But we went to look and there was not. The upper storey of the house had been cleared. Not even the electric lights worked up there.

  Back in Alvie’s room I stood alone, breathing that musty air, while Bella went to collect the car from where she had first parked it. I tried not to look around me but everywhere I laid my eyes were reminders of what this room had meant to me when I was a child. When I heard the sound of Bella’s car returning I was starting to shake with fear, and I practically rushed outside to find her. I helped her carry in our bags, concealing my fears with activity, then once again we stood together in Alvie’s room, facing the inevitable.

  Neither of us could sleep on the stone flags of the downstairs
rooms, neither of us was prepared to sleep alone in the dark upstairs. There was a bed, and it was large enough for two to share. Proprieties, instincts, wishes, curiosities, all faded in the face of the factual state of affairs. Whatever we had planned or had been uncertain about the previous evening, it was now plain that Bella and I were going to have to sleep in the same bed now. We were both worn out after the long day of travelling and the cold house was chilling us. There was literally nothing else to do but go to bed.

  Together we stripped the bed of the ancient sheets and blankets and took them through the main door into the night to shake out what dust we could. Next we took out the mattress and pillows for the same treatment. Bella made up the bed quickly, smoothing the sheets and blankets, getting me to help straighten them out.

  I busied myself, trying to be useful, distracting myself from the thoughts: this is Alvie’s bed, this is where she lay, this is where she died and this is where I’m going to make love to Bella. In Alvie’s bed.

  At last it was ready. We took it in turns to use the bathroom on the floor above, going up the stairs with the flashlight Father Henner had left for us. I went first. When Bella went after me – we said nothing, our eyes did not meet as we passed on the stairs – I sat on the edge of Alvie’s bed listening to the sounds of Bella’s footsteps on the bare boards upstairs.

  I had spent all day with her but barely felt anything for her. I was swamped by memories and obsessed with my own impressions of the island. That tentative first intimacy the night before – her hair, the silken wrap, the accidental glimpses of her body, the clean bedroom, the quietness of the empty hotel – now felt a lifetime away. It was that brief incident that had started to arouse these memories but being on the island had done the rest. Now the focus had tightened even more: here, in Alvie’s room, all my fears met. The shadow of my past and how it was barring me from Bella, the memories of Alvie and the winds and darkness that surrounded the house, the dead tower and the fumbled sexual contact with Seri. Now Bella, with me in Alvie’s room, alone together, our interest in each other declared, soon to be in bed with each other.