An arctic wind had left the streets deserted. Under the streetlamps the slushy pavements were shivering. Alone in bed, she wished she had stayed with Martin. She woke in daylight, orange through her eyelids, and wondered if Martin had left by now. She stretched out her arm and bruised her knuckles against a bony object that shouldn’t have been there beside the pillow. Her eyes sprang open. She wasn’t in her flat, she was in the four-poster bed.
It was as though she’d dreamed herself back into Martin’s flat. The place was too quiet; it felt like the times when sounds withdrew from her. Then she saw the note propped up next to her handbag. Didn’t want to wake you but I had to catch my flight. I’ll call you when I’m on the ground. Look after yourself while I’m away. Love, Martin. She saw that he’d hesitated after writing “Look after yourself” and wondered if he had thought of adding “for me.” So she had only dreamed that she’d gone home; she realized now that she hadn’t felt her steps. Nevertheless the flat and its antique furniture seemed unreal, a museum exhibit she had strayed into by mistake. As she used the shower, she wondered when exactly she had started dreaming.
She was still wondering as the cage glided through the floors, as she closed the street door behind her and stepped onto the crackling frozen slush, as she slithered into the station arcade, beneath the hanging flower baskets. Had she already been dreaming when she had turned to find Martin asleep? And what had she wanted to ask him?
Trains rattled her to Marble Arch. In the office she felt disoriented and lonely, at a loss for work. At the edge of her vision, the blue corridor kept seeming to have turned pale green, and made her feel as if someone were going to appear. When someone did, she started and then stared, wondering who the woman was.
“Remember me? Nell. I just wanted to thank you. I only got the job upstairs because of you.”
“You got it? That must be a relief,” Molly said distractedly.
“You’ve no idea. Anyway, I’d better not be seen chatting on my first day at work.” A minute later she came back. “We can walk home together, can’t we?”
“Yes, if you like.” Yet Molly wished she hadn’t said so, which seemed absurd and unfair. Perhaps the visit to the police station was still troubling her. Or telling Martin about her dreams. Or his sudden departure. Working on the budgets ought to help her get hold of herself. She should be pleased that she’d helped find Nell a job. Perhaps Nell was a little odd, but it was wholly unreasonable of Molly to wish she had never met her at all.
15
THE FURTHER you ventured into the Moonlight World, the darker and hotter it grew. At first all Susan could See as she peered into the cages were her own dim face and Eve’s, flattened on the glass. The glass seemed to melt away as her eyes adjusted, and here were harvest mice no bigger than her thumb, restless foxes the color of moonlight, the black and white explosion of a porcupine, a loris climbing as if it weighed nothing. Two sleepy fat-faced rats sat together on a log and watched her as she copied the labels on the cages into her school notebook, and then she found her way through the dimness and the chorus of flapping and scuttling to Eve.
Eve was in front of a cage in which washleathers hung from a branch, pegged there by their feet, for they were bats. Susan copied their label and watched their fluttering. The movements seemed mysterious, so secret that they didn’t know themselves that they were making them, and she knew they were dreaming. It wasn’t only the enclosed heat that turned her throat dry. She cleared her throat and blurted out, “Do you have dreams?”
A blur peered out at her between the bats: Eve’s face. “Don’t you?” Eve said.
“No, I never.”
“You do, you know. Everyone does.” Eve turned away from the bats, and they stopped fluttering. “If you don’t have them when you’re asleep you must have them when you’re awake.”
“How do you mean?”
“Some of the things you think you see must be dreams.”
“That’s stupid,” Susan said, to get rid of the idea; it made her feel feverish, and so did the oppressive heat and the dimness. “Everyone doesn’t dream. My mummy doesn’t.”
“Oh, yes she does.”
“She doesn’t. I should know. She’s my mummy, not yours.” But Eve looked so sure of herself that Susan demanded, “Why did you say she does?”
“Because she told me.”
“She never.” Eve looked calmer still, and Susan wanted to push her, kick her, pull her hair. “When?”
“Before you came.”
Was it possible that Mummy could have told Eve a secret she had kept from Susan? “What did she say?” Susan said resentfully.
“I can’t remember. She didn’t say what she dreamed, if that’s what you mean,” Eve said when Susan glared at her, and headed for the steps. “Come on, there’s lots more zoo.”
Faint gray stains were spreading over the white sheet of the sky. The light made Susan blink and sneeze as she picked her way between islands of slush that were shrinking in miniature lakes. Soon Eve began sneezing too, though Susan had thought it was only yawning that you caught from other people. She pinched her flapping notebook between her icy fingers and went to an enclosure where tortoises big enough to ride on were poking out their old men’s necks. She wrote them down, and was listing a crocodile like a scaly watchful rock when someone called, “Hey, Susan.”
It was Chloe and Zoe, who didn’t rhyme. Mrs. Fisher, the teacher, had written their names on the blackboard just yesterday when she was talking about words. Susan liked her, liked the school even though it was so big, liked the way Mrs. Fisher’s class had welcomed her on her first day with paintings and lemonade and homemade cakes. “They’re in my class,” she told Eve.
Chloe’s hair was plaited like a basket, Zoe’s skin was blacker, her lips plummier. “How many have you got?” Zoe said.
“Lots.” Susan displayed her list. “How many have you?”
“More than you.” Zoe was turning Susan’s pages. “I got all the insects.”
“Insects don’t count,” Chloe protested.
“They do too. You wait until Mrs. Fisher sees you didn’t write any insects.”
“Don’t care. They don’t count, do they, Susan?”
“I didn’t think so.” She would have liked to have spent more time watching the beetles like walking jewels. Eve was peering over Zoe’s shoulder at her notebook. “What’s that?” she said as Zoe glanced warily at her. “They aren’t insects, are they?”
“They’re a tongue twister,” Zoe said scornfully. “Try it, girl. Say it ten times fast, go on.”
“Gwyneth’s useful Aberystwyth thesaurus.” It had been Mrs. Fisher’s tongue twister that nobody could say, but Eve said it ten times without stopping. “There,” she said, not even breathless.
“Get her,” Chloe said, so sarcastically that it reminded Susan she hadn’t introduced Eve. “This is Eve. She lives in my street,” she said, then wondered if Eve did.
“Susan has to list some more animals now,” Eve said. “You can come with us if you like. We don’t mind, do we, Susan?”
“We’re going in the Moonlight World. You’ve been in already. Come on, Zoe, move your arse or we’ll be late for the disco.”
They’d had enough of Eve, of her frayed coat and drooping socks and her black eye. Perhaps that was unfair of them, but Susan couldn’t help resenting Eve for driving them away; no wonder Eve seemed to have no friends to play with. A mynah said ”Wotcher,” a lion gave a meaty yawn, camels like patchy carpets stalked about, and Susan listed them all. She hoped her list would be the longest and win Mrs. Fisher’s gold star.
Though it had been Eve’s idea to come to Regent’s Park, Susan didn’t speak to her until they had left the zoo and were on their way to Baker Street through the darkening twilight. It wasn’t only that she had driven away Susan’s friends, it was her saying that Mummy had dreams. That was why, as they stood on the down escalator with the ink from their tickets printing itself on their hands, Susan said,
“Does your mummy dream?”
Eve had stepped onto the next stair down to let a father run past with his little boy on his shoulders. “I don’t know,” she said, not looking up.
“You said everyone does.”
“Well then, you don’t need to ask.”
She wasn’t getting away with that. Susan waited until she could see Eve’s face. “What do you think she dreams?”
“I don’t want to know.”
They were running for the train. “Why are you scared of her? What does she do?” Susan said as the doors closed and the train lurched forward.
“This.” Eve pointed to her black eye with the hand that wasn’t clinging to the strap overhead. “Don’t make me tell you what else. I’m frightened to.” She gazed at Susan over the heads of grown-ups squashed together on the seat, and Susan wondered how many of them were listening. “That’s why I’m glad you’re my friend,” Eve said.
Susan wasn’t sure why. “Can’t someone stop her? Doesn’t anyone know?”
“I don’t want anyone to try. They’d only make her do worse things.” She gave Susan a wide-eyed pleading look as the train stopped at Edge ware Road, jerking them loose from their handholds. “The people who know her are frightened of her too.”
They struggled to the doors and ran toward the District Line. Susan was growing used to London, except that it seemed to take so long to reach anywhere she wanted to go, and almost everywhere felt like the rush hour all day. Perhaps she didn’t want to see where Eve lived after all. They found seats on the train, and she was wondering what else she could ask about Eve’s mother when Eve said, “Do you want to dream?”
It sounded like an offer. “Why?”
A flood of darkness swept the station away. “Cause I can show you how to,” Eve said.
“You mean sniffing something.” Just the other day a policeman had been to the school to tell them all how dangerous glue was.
“Oh, no, you don’t need that. You just have to let the dreams come.” Eve was giggling at her suspiciousness. “They’re there all the time. You shouldn’t try to stop them.”
The train rocked in its cradle of darkness. “Do you want to?” Eve said.
Susan was remembering the times Mummy had demanded if she’d dreamed, until she had made Susan afraid to sleep in case she did. She had always thought that Mummy stopped herself from dreaming too. “I’ll think about it,” she said, feeling at the mercy of the dark.
Night had reached Bayswater Road. Drops of water on the buds of a shrub in a garden were unlit Christmas lights, drops turned a drooping clothesline into an abacus and Susan felt she could slide them along.
She unlocked the door. The smell of cats and cabbage met her as she poked the time-switch and she and Eve raced upstairs. Her footsteps clattered, Eve’s were softer.
She was turning the key when the lights above the stairs went out. “Mummy,” she called. But when she pushed the door open she found the flat was dark.
Her feet sank into the new carpet as she groped for the switch. In the dark they seemed to sink further than they should. The light came on, and somehow Eve was at the mantelpiece. “She’s gone out,” she said, handing Susan a note.
“Won’t be long” was all it said, except for a line of kisses. Surely she couldn’t be working late on Saturday. Perhaps she was buying Christmas presents, but Susan felt let down, not only because she had expected Mummy to be home but also, more so, because Mummy always wrote Susan’s name on notes. The way Eve had got hold of it first, it was almost as though Mummy had meant it for her.
“Do you want me to show you how to dream, then?” Eve said.
All of Susan’s resentment made her say “Yes.”
“Come on then, before she gets back. We’ll use your room. That’s the darkest.”
After the streamers that slithered over Susan’s face and hands, the dark felt soft and soothing. She pulled the cord, and there were Rapunzel and Repulsive sitting together like old friends. She was growing apprehensive. “What have we got to do?”
“You haven’t got to do anything. Just stop trying not to dream.” Eve stood by the light cord. “Lie down, go on.”
Susan climbed on the bed but sat against the headboard. “Can’t we leave the light on?”
“No, it’s got to be dark.” Eve came to her and pushed her gently down. “I’ll be with you,” she said, and went quickly to the cord and pulled.
The dark took Susan’s breath away. She felt she was drowning in it. When she felt Eve lie down, a soft weight beside her, she managed to draw a breath. One reason she spoke was to hear herself; the dark was silent as the bottom of a pool, her ears were throbbing. “Now what happens?”
“Breathe slowly, like when you go to sleep,” Eve whispered in her ear. “Let yourself float and see where you go.”
Susan was having enough trouble reminding herself where she was, for she felt as if the dark were growing. The shifting patches of dimness must be in her eyes, but they made her feel that the dark was like the Moonlight World, full of activity that she would see as soon as her eyes adjusted. Closing them was no help: light seemed to flare up from her cheekbones, two regular flares that fanned across her vision and faded away. Her breathing was slowing down into their rhythm; it seemed to be the only way she could breathe. “That’s right,” Eve whispered.
If this was dreaming, drifting helplessly through the dark while the lights in her eyes made her feel even blinder, Susan didn’t want to dream. She would have got up at once except that Eve might laugh at her. She dug her fingers into the mattress through the blanket and hung on. She thought of holding Eve’s hand but somehow didn’t want to. When her ears stopped throbbing, she heard the television in the flat next door.
She tried to hear it clearly so as not to drift, but it made the dark seem even larger. She was listening across a dark river, very wide. It was the Mersey, of course it was; she could see it at the feet of streets as she ran home, down past the shop with the rising sun on the awning that said “Every Morn Think of Vaughan,” down past Vale Park and the tree that bore a mossy toilet seat, the mark of a fallen branch. Now it was night and the misty dockyards were hooting like a ship as long as the far bank, a ship carrying dozens of cranes and chimneys twelve floors tall and the Liver Clock with the stone bird tied on top, a long thin misty ship lighted by sodium streetlamps and the pinpoint windows of tower blocks, a ship that was sailing away under a fairy-tale moon like a fat banana. High tide was rushing in, children came racing down the ramps from the promenade to see who dared stay longest on the beach, and Susan sang “Girls and boys come out to play, the moon does shine as bright as day.” She went back along the pipe, above house bricks that the sea had smoothed into oval red stones, and headed for the ramp at Egremont, where the streets to the promenade were so steep they had handrails. “Leave your supper and leave your street,” she sang, “and join your playfellows in your sleep,” which seemed so odd that it made her shiver. “Don’t try to see things,” Eve said beside her. “Just let them come.”
Had Susan been singing aloud? If that was dreaming, she wished Eve hadn’t interrupted. She lay and waited and hoped she could go back. Surely hoping didn’t count, but now there was only the dark that might be huger than the sky or close enough to touch. Suddenly she couldn’t move. She remembered asking Mummy what death was. It was like going to sleep and just not waking up, Mummy had told her, which had sounded reassuring until Susan had realized that if you never woke up you might never be able to stop dreaming. She couldn’t move, for the coffin of darkness was holding her tight, the darkness which was how it was once you were dead, a dark in which you were no longer any size and so couldn’t measure the dark, the dark in which there was movement, the flares blooming in her eyes, light opening like hands and passing out of her, great luminous hands that kept letting her go. They were playing with her, but not forever. The next time they might not open, they might keep hold of her as their face leaned down between them, a huge blur
red glowing face that she could almost see. Once she saw it clearly, the hands would never let her go. She opened her eyes but could still see the blurred face, growing huger and closer. She was clutching the blanket, but that didn’t seem real enough to help. She was really lying on the bed, the dark was her room, she could roll off the bed as the face that was almost not blurred filled the dark above her, as the hands closed over her. She dodged at the last moment and slipped breathlessly under the hands, which missed her shoulder but touched her hand as she shoved herself off the bed, soft fingers that felt huge but shrinking. Of course that must be Eve’s hand, and the rest was a dream. Susan knocked a book off the shelves on the dressing table as she plunged through the dark. The thick carpet seemed to be drowning her feet until she pulled the cord. She stood gaping, trying to breathe. The bed was rumpled but deserted. She was alone in the room.
She fled into the hall. The streamers at both ends were still, the bathroom was empty. When had Eve left her? As she ran into the main room, she called “Eve” so loud that the window vibrated. There was no sign of Eve except for her book on top of Susan’s encyclopedias. Susan ran between the plants to the window to see if Eve was out there, under the streetlamps that were beginning to shake in the wind. She hadn’t reached the window when someone knocked at the door.
She hoped it was Mummy, too burdened with parcels to use her key. Just now she hoped it wasn’t Eve. But it was a woman in a housecoat, her hair in curlers under a net. It looked like dust in a carpet sweeper. The woman demanded, “Was that you?”
Incarnate Page 13
