“It isn’t Susan! Helen, for God’s sake come back!” But Helen had slammed the doors before Joyce helped Molly to her feet, and by the time Molly reached the gate Helen’s cries and the other sounds were far down the hill, lost in the maze of streets that led toward the lights. There was nothing to be seen up here, but perhaps soon there would be. The few belated stars in the eastern sky looked faded, not only because of the lights of London. Dawn was near.
Joyce came out, supporting Freda. “We don’t want to stay in there,” Joyce said with a hint of her old fierceness. She glared toward the lights, challenging anyone to stop her from heading for them.
“We can’t go down there,” Molly said wearily. She wasn’t even sure they weren’t still carriers of the dream.
Freda shushed them, until they all heard the massive sounds ranging about the streets above the lights. “No, we can’t,” Freda said, drawing a shaky breath. “We’ll have to go back.”
None of them looked at one another as Molly and Joyce helped Freda down the hill. Ahead their shadows under the few streetlamps seemed more distorted than they ought to be.
The lamps at the foot of the hill were still dark, and so were all the windows. Freda strained forward as if she, knew where to go, and there seemed no reason to doubt that her route was as good as any.
Once they thought they heard someone, perhaps a great many people, pacing them in the next street over. They stood and tried not even to breathe until Freda said it was an echo, but Molly wasn’t sure it had been. Once they heard what sounded like a distant car, and Molly glimpsed a face at an upper window, round, with too much mouth. Dawn was growing, seeping into all the streets.
The roofs were lightening, as the upper stories were. Night wasn’t endless here after all, but Molly was beginning to wish that it were. The colorless light showed her glimpses of herself and her companions, distorted glimpses that looked worse and worse. It was showing her the revenge of the dream.
The streets ahead were quite visible now, interminable colorless terraces. Freda urged them forward, though at times she almost fell, and Molly let her lead, though the urgency seemed pitiful: they could never outrun the dawn.
Then she realized that Freda wasn’t trying to. The streets in the distance weren’t only brighter, they were different. As well as the dawn, there were lights, and now Molly saw .that some of them were moving. They weren’t streetlamps, they were car headlights. It was a main road.
She wanted to hang back in case it was another trick, but Freda was running or falling forward, and she had to follow. Now they could hear the sounds of the main road, the roar of traffic, people hurrying past the junction, many people. They must be on their way to work.
She and Joyce were stumbling almost as much as Freda by now—was that a hint of how much the dream had crippled them? She mustn’t look, mustn’t think, only hope. The dead streets coursed by, their silence giving way to the sounds of traffic ahead, and she was suddenly afraid that the main road would prove to be a mirage, the first of an eternity of cruel tricks. When at last they reached the main road, Molly was too afraid to set foot on it, in case it vanished instantly, but Joyce and Freda dragged her forward.
She stepped on the pavement, and nothing happened. Traffic roared by, two workmen in overalls sidled around the three women. She found herself reading all the names of shops, devouring them: Fig Leaf of Covent Garden, Kebab Machine, Burger Delight, Model Railways, Bureau de Change, Tattoo Studio, Sure Square Deal & Co… . She made herself turn and look back. The interminable streets had gone: the road from which they’d emerged led between a tobacconist’s and a newsagent’s, and people were walking on its uneven pavements, past its motley houses. All the same, it wasn’t until several passersby had glanced at her and the others with no more than mild curiosity that she was able to look down at herself.
There was nothing wrong with her, nor with Freda or Joyce. Her wish had come true after all: the world out here had overcome the dream. The dream had closed in on itself. It must still be somewhere, wherever Helen was. She wished she had destroyed it while she’d had the chance, and then she thought she must have had the power to dream that nobody would ever dream again, which seemed unspeakably terrifying. “Oh, my God,” she said, shaking with relief, and was all at once so dizzy that she had to grab the’ nearest lamppost to stop herself falling in front of the traffic.
When she was steady she found that the others were staring up the road, toward an intersection where traffic was converging along several roads. “It’s Kings Cross,” she said with a delight that felt close to hysteria.
“I want to see how Doreen is,” Freda said as firmly as she could.
“Yes, we should.” It was rather Doreen’s house that Molly wanted to make sure of. They headed along Caledonian Road, the three of them staggering like all-night alcoholics, and didn’t mind the laughter and comments that followed them. The sight of the shops beyond the canal made Molly want to cry with relief.
She was first up the steps to the yellow front door, to prove she could. She felt a lingering nervousness as she hammered the knocker on its silver plate, but that was why she had to be sure. Doreen came almost at once, and looked ready to weep when she saw Freda. “Did the police find you?”
“No,” Freda said, and looked at her two companions. The next moment all three of them began to laugh, so hysterically that it seemed they would never stop.
When at last they did, gulping air and dabbing at their eyes, Doreen said reprovingly, “The doctor’s here, Freda. You come in and sit down.”
She led them into the parlor, where Molly glanced quickly at the carpet to make sure it was unmarked. Doreen’s friend Rosie was sitting in an armchair. Her eyes were red, and both she and Doreen looked as if they had been up all night talking, weeping, helping each other back to reality. “I’ll have to tell the police you’re here,” Doreen said, fussing around Freda. “I had them looking for all of you and they found hardly anyone.” She turned suddenly to Molly. “Can you go up and tell the doctor Freda’s here? First door on the right on the first floor.”
Molly couldn’t believe how small the house felt as she made her way up. She wasn’t even sure how that made her feel, because she thought she knew what Doreen had been telling her, why she had sent her upstairs. She knew it before she opened the bedroom door and saw Martin lying on the bed.
The doctor was closing his bag. “Doreen asked me to tell you Freda’s downstairs,” Molly said. Even when the doctor had gone down she wasn’t sure what to say to Martin or whether to go to him. He was buttoning his shirt after the examination, and all at once the meaning of his unmarked shoulders overwhelmed her. “Thank God you’re safe,” she said.
He was gazing sadly at her. “You know it wasn’t me that night.”
“Yes.” Still she couldn’t quite go to him. “Oh. Martin, I’m so sorry. I don’t know how I could ever have thought it was.”
“I’m nothing special. I should have been out looking for you right now.” He reached out to her, then let his hands fall as if he didn’t have the right. “I must have been wandering all night. I didn’t know where I was going until the police found me and mentioned Doreen. I’ve been lying here waiting for the doctor when I should have been looking for you. I’m not much of anything, I can tell you.”
That made her run to him, cling fiercely to him, squeezing the breath out of him. “What happened last night? Where did you go?” he gasped, but she was almost speechless with the feel of him that she had nearly forgotten, the most real thing in the world. “Don’t ask me now, just hold me,” she said, and settled herself in his arms. “It’s all over,” she said, knowing that the dream had less power over them now than over anyone else in the world.
67
SHE never quite got used to being called Molly Wallace, and she didn’t think she would want to. If people smiled at it, that made her smile too. Two years and two codirected films later, she and Martin were already being referred to in film jour
nals as the Wallaces, and she thought she liked that most of all. Their Chapel Hill film was to be shown at Cannes. Martin often said that it was her delight at living in America that gave their films the human warmth his work had always needed. Sometimes they argued over that all evening.
She’d stayed in England for a while, for Joyce’s sake. When Molly had gone home with her, Joyce wouldn’t cross the threshold. Molly had never been sure why, and hadn’t wanted to ask. Joyce had stayed at Molly’s while she’d sold the house and bought herself a flat with enough money left over to buy a long lease on accommodation for a new day center. Molly had waited to be sure -Joyce settled back into her work, which certainly seemed to be what she needed, then at last she’d joined Martin, breathing a secret sigh of relief that the months of living with Joyce and her relentless helpfulness were over. As soon as she met Martin’s mother, they liked each other so much—
“That they all lived happily ever after,” Guilda snarled.
Dr. Lovell was taken aback by her sudden viciousness, even though she ought to be used to it by now. “I suppose you could put it that way.”
“I don’t want to put it any way. I’m not interested, can’t you understand? Why are you making me listen to all this?”
“Because you asked me to find out,” Dr. Lovell said patiently.
“I most certainly did not. What are you trying to do to me?” Guilda plucked at the bedclothes as the sedative took hold. “They told you to tell them where I was, didn’t they?” she cried, her voice trying to rise to a shriek.
“No, Guilda, not at all. Nobody wants anything of you except that you get well. Try and sleep now. I’m sorry I disturbed you.”
“Try and sleep? Why, you crazy woman, don’t you understand—” But Dr. Lovell had closed the door and was walking away from the muffled voice. Certainly Guilda was the most difficult patient she had ever had to deal with, even now that they’d discovered Guilda had only been pretending to swallow her sedatives. Dr. Lovell disliked authorizing injections against the patient’s will, disliked the screams and struggles and the patient’s loss of dignity, but in a case like this it was the only answer.
She looked in on some of her other patients and chatted to one of the nurses and then went to her office, still thinking about Guilda. One thing Guilda never failed to do was to make Dr. Lovell feel unsure of herself. It was a talent schizophrenics had, but she was immune to it in all the others. Of course Guilda had asked her to write to Molly Wallace and the rest of them; otherwise, obviously, she would never have done so. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t recall being asked.
She gazed through her window at the dark grounds under the black sky. She hadn’t intended to tell Guilda much more in any case. Of the people she had tried to contact, only Molly Wallace had replied—rather warily. Dr. Lovell noticed, for she hadn’t given a return address. She wouldn’t have told Guilda that except for Joyce Churchill and Freda Beeching, who had last been heard of in a rest home somewhere up north, all the others were missing, still sought by the police: Danny Swain, Helen Verney and her child, even Stuart Hay. Dr. Lovell didn’t know what to make of it herself.
She wasn’t sure how long she had been standing at the window when it occurred to her to wonder what she was looking for. Of course, she was trying to recapture the momentary impression she’d had from Guilda’s window that there was something unfamiliar at the far end of the avenue. She could see nothing there that shouldn’t be. Either it had been heavy traffic on the road or she was tired; in fact, she undoubtedly was. That was Guilda’s other little talent: whether or not she was sedated, she always left Dr. Lovell feeling she could sleep for hours. Just now there was no reason why not. Dr. Lovell was asleep almost as soon as she sat at her desk, and before long she began to dream.
Table of Contents
Incarnate
1
Eleven Years Later
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
Incarnate Page 48
