The Unlimited Dream Company

by J. G. Ballard

  I seemed to be looking at an enormous illuminated painting, lit both by the unsettled water and by a deep light transmitted through the body of the canvas. What surprised me, as I pushed the cabin door against the current, was the intense clarity of every detail. In front of me, above its sloping lawn, was the half-timbered Tudor mansion. A number of people were watching me, like figures posed by the artist in a formal landscape. None of them moved, as if frozen by the burning aircraft that had burst out of the afternoon sky and fallen into the water at their feet.

  Although I had never been to this town before – Shepperton, I assumed, from the presence of the film studios – I was convinced that I recognized their faces, and that they were a party of film actors resting between takes. Nearest to me was a dark-haired young woman wearing a white laboratory coat. She stood on the foam-flecked lawn below the mansion, playing in a distracted way with three small children. Two boys and a girl, they sat side by side on a swing like monkeys huddled together on a perch, smiling hopefully at whatever game the young woman was trying to arrange for them. Out of the sides of their eyes they watched me in a knowing way, as if they had been waiting all day for me to land my plane in the water for them. The smaller of the boys wore leg-irons, and whistled now and then at his heavy feet, encouraging them to kick the air. The other boy, a stocky, large-skulled mongol, whispered something to the girl, a pretty child with pale cheeks and secretive eyes.

  Above them, in an upstairs window of the mansion, was a handsome, middle-aged woman with a widow’s empty face, the mother, I guessed, of the girl in the white coat. She held the brocade curtain in one hand, a forgotten cigarette in the other, unsure whether the violence of my arrival might drag her down with me. She was calling to a bearded man in his late fifties who sat on the narrow beach that separated me from the bank. An archaeologist of some kind, he was surrounded by easel, wicker hamper and specimen trays, his strong but over-weight body squeezed into a small canvas chair. Although his shirt was soaked with water splashed across him by the aircraft, he was staring intently at something on the beach that had caught his attention.

  The last of these seven witnesses was a man of about thirty, naked but for his swimming trunks, who stood at the end of a wrought-iron pier jutting into the river from the group of riverside hotels beyond the mansion. He was painting the gondola of a miniature Ferris wheel, part of a children’s funfair built on to this crumbling Edwardian pier. He paused paint-brush in hand, and with complete presence of mind glanced casually over his shoulder at me, displaying his blond hair and the showy, muscular physique of a film company athlete.

  The water rose around my chest, surging through the submerged dials of the instrument panel. I waited for one of the witnesses to come to my help, but they stood like actors waiting for a director’s cue, their figures lit by the vibrant light that suffused the air. A deep, premonitory glow lay over the mansion, the amusement pier and the hotels by the marina, as if in the last micro-seconds before an immense disaster. I was almost convinced that a huge airliner had crashed on to this suburban town or that it was about to be overwhelmed by a nuclear catastrophe.

  The river swirled across the windshield. A murky foam thrashed against the fractured glass. At the last moment I saw the archaeologist rise from his chair, strong arms outstretched across the water, trying to will me from the aircraft as if he had suddenly realized his responsibility for me.

  The starboard wing sank below the surface. Dragged by the current, the Cessna rolled on to its side. Breaking free from my harness, I forced back the door and clambered from the flooded cabin on to the port wing strut. I climbed on to the roof and stood there in my ragged flying suit as the aircraft sank below me into the water, taking my dreams and hopes into its deep.

  CHAPTER 4

  An Attempt to Kill Me

  I was lying on the wet grass below the mansion. People jostled around me in what seemed to be a drunken brawl, ordered back by the young woman in the white coat.

  ‘Dr Miriam—!’

  ‘I can see he isn’t dead! Now get away!’ She brushed her untidy hair out of her eyes and knelt beside me, a nervous but strong hand on my breast-bone, ready to pump my heart back to life. ‘Good God … you seem to be all right.’

  For all the authority in this young woman’s voice, she was totally confused by something, still not altogether sure that I was alive. Behind her was the middle-aged woman I had seen in the window of the mansion. She stared at me in an appalled way, as if she, and not I, had escaped from the accident. Engine grease marked her silk blouse and the pearls hanging from her neck. She held the forgotten cigarette in her left hand, about to brand this drenched aviator who had wrestled himself on to the grass.

  She reached down and angrily shook my shoulder.

  ‘Who are you!’

  ‘Mrs St Cloud! You’ll hurt him, madam …!’

  A man in chauffeur’s uniform tried to calm her, but she clung to me in a disorientated way, as if I had stolen something valuable from her.

  ‘Mother!’ The young doctor struck her hand from my shoulder. ‘He can’t cope with you as well! Bring my case from the house!’

  The people around me stepped back reluctantly, revealing a placid sky. The intense light had gone, and the Ferris wheel rotated against the clouds like an amiable mandala. I felt strong but strangely old, as if I had completed an immense voyage. I touched the doctor’s arm in an effort to calm her, wondering how to warn her of the disaster about to overwhelm this small town.

  She patted my cheek reassuringly. Obviously she had been deeply impressed by the dramatic style of my arrival. Looking up at this confused young woman, I felt a powerful sense of gratitude to her. I wanted to stroke her skin, place my mouth against her breast. For a moment I almost believed that I was her suitor, and that I had chosen this extravagant method of arrival in order to propose marriage to her.

  As if aware of this, she smiled and pressed my hand. ‘Are you all right? I don’t mind saying that you gave me a hell of a scare … Can you see me? And hear me? How many fingers? Good. Now, was there anyone else in the plane? A passenger?’

  ‘I …’ For no clear reason I decided not to speak. The image of the Cessna’s cockpit formed a blank zone in my mind. I could no longer remember myself at the controls. ‘No … I was alone.’

  ‘You don’t sound very sure. Who are you, anyway? You look as if you might forget at any moment.’

  ‘Blake – I’m a stunt pilot. The aircraft caught fire.’

  ‘It certainly did …’

  Taking her arm, I sat up. The wet grass was stained with oil from my flying suit. My shoes were charred, but luckily neither of my feet had been burned. From the respectful faces of the people around me – a gardener, the chauffeur, and an elderly couple who appeared to be housekeepers – I knew they had all assumed that I had drowned and were stunned by my apparent return from the dead. Along the river people were standing by both banks. Tennis players carrying their rackets moved through the trees, and a group of small boys were throwing clods of earth into the water, imitating the aircraft’s splash.

  The Cessna had vanished in the current, swept away by the dark water.

  The archaeologist strode up from the beach, his beard and parson’s collar soaked with water. As he caught his breath, staring impatiently at the oil-stained lawn, he resembled a harassed marine prophet come ashore to search for a renegade member of his flock. He gazed at me in a curiously disappointed way. I guessed that he had waded into the river to pull me to safety, assumed like the others that I had died and was about to read the last rites over me.

  ‘Father Wingate – he’s come round.’ Dr Miriam steadied me against her shoulder. ‘That’s one miracle I concede to you.’

  ‘I can see that, Miriam.’ The priest made no attempt to come any nearer, as if wary of me, rebuffed by my return to the living. ‘Well, thank God … But let him rest.’

  The light faded, and then grew suddenly brighter. The priest’s face swam, its
firm and spartan features leaking across the air into an angry grimace. Exhausted, I leaned against Dr Miriam and laid my head across her warm lap.

  I could feel the imprint of a strange mouth against my own. My lips were swollen and cut against my teeth. A pair of powerful hands had bruised themselves into my chest. Whoever had given artificial respiration to me had used unnecessary strength, forcing his fingers between my ribs, as if determined to kill me. Through the deep glare that illuminated the river, now an almost lunar domain without shadows, I could see the priest watching me with a peculiar intensity, as if he were challenging me in some way. Had he tried to revive me, or kill me?

  At the same time, I knew that I had not lost consciousness. I remembered stepping from the roof of the aircraft and swimming strongly for the shore, and then being steered by someone through the shallows. I looked up at the sky, which hovered on the verge of that vivid glow I had seen from the cockpit of the Cessna. As Dr Miriam held my head in her lap, her fingers pressed anxiously to my temples, I was about to warn her of the disaster.

  Abruptly, the sky cleared. Dr Miriam was looking at me in a reflective way, as if we were lovers long familiar with each other’s bodies. I could smell her strong thighs, and see her surprisingly grimy feet within their sandals. Her untidy hair was tied back in a faded ribbon. Through a missing button of her blouse I stared at a child’s scratch-marks on her left breast. I wanted to embrace her, here on this open lawn in front of this aggressive priest. I was sure that the violence of my accident had aroused her, and I was disappointed that it was not her mouth that had cut my lips.

  She checked herself, and began wiping the oil from my face with a scented handkerchief. At any moment the local police would arrive, drawn by the crowd watching along the bank. Hundreds of people were staring at me across the calm water.

  I stood up and leaned against the swing, while the three children watched me from their perch. They laughed hysterically when I kicked the charred shoes from my feet. The flying suit hung in rags around my waist. The right shoulder and leg were missing, torn from me as I escaped from the Cessna.

  Turning my back on the priest, I said: ‘I have to leave. I’m an instructor at a flying school – they’ll need to know the aircraft came down here.’

  ‘I thought you were a stunt pilot.’

  ‘I am, in a way. I am a stunt pilot.’ To avoid her interested gaze, I asked: ‘What’s the matter with your mother? She’s mad …’

  ‘You startled her, to put it mildly. Now, wait a minute.’ She stood in front of me and felt my bruised ribs and abdomen, like a teacher inspecting a child injured in a playground. The blood from my grazed knuckles spotted her hands. Once again I felt a strong sexual attraction to her, part of my nervous relief at being alive. There was a slight swelling under her upper Up, as if she had bruised it kissing her lover.

  ‘Before you leave I want to take an X-ray of that head. Five minutes ago we thought you’d …’

  She left the sentence unfinished, less out of deference to me than to the clergyman. He had moved a few steps closer but had still not joined us. His level stare made me sure that he already suspected I was not a qualified pilot. Dr Miriam squeezed the water from my suit. ‘Father Wingate, who’s the patron saint of stunt pilots and flying instructors? There must be one.’

  ‘Clearly there must be. Miriam, leave the poor fellow alone.’ To me, he added: ‘It isn’t every day that young men fall from the sky.’

  ‘More’s the pity.’ She turned from me and silenced the three children, who were running around the swing. The boy with leg-irons was uttering a series of whooping cries that sounded like a parody of my voice. ‘Jamie – why are you being cruel?’

  I thought of clouting the boy but the priest touched my shoulder. He had at last approached me, and was staring into my face as if reading the seams in one of his bone-beds. ‘Before you go. You’re all right, are you? You must have a powerful will – you literally came to life in our hands.’

  For all his pious tone, I knew that he was not about to ask me to join him in a prayer of thanks. My apparent return from the dead had clearly shaken the orders and proprieties of his universe. Perhaps he had tried to revive me on the beach, and after all these years of wearing the cloth was embarrassed to find that he had apparently performed a miracle.

  Seeing his strong physique at close quarters, the shoulders still trembling with some strange repressed emotion, I could easily imagine him deciding to crush the life out of me and send me back to the other side before everything got out of hand. He was deliberately exposing the suspicions that crossed his face, trying to provoke me. I was tempted to grapple with him, force my bruised body against his and hurl him on to the oil-stained grass.

  I touched my lips, wondering if the priest had revived me by this act of oral rape. Someone with powerful arms had crushed the air from my lungs – a man of my own size, judging from the imprint of his mouth and hands. The priest was old enough to be my father, but despite his dog-collar he had the aggressive physique of a rugby player.

  I looked at the circle of faces, at the people lining the opposite bank of the river. If not the priest, then which of the seven witnesses? Perhaps Dr Miriam, or her dotty mother. Mrs St Cloud had emerged from the mansion, the oil-stained pearls hanging in a greasy chain around her neck. She still hesitated to approach me, as if she expected me to ignite spontaneously and destroy her already disfigured lawn.

  The last of the witnesses, the blond-haired man painting the Ferris wheel, had stepped down from the rusting pier and was now walking along the beach towards us. He strolled through the shallow water in his bare feet, showing off his almost naked body to me. His casual paddling had a serious purpose, re-establishing his rights over this water I had temporarily made my own.

  He waved to Dr Miriam, the small conspiratorial gesture of a past lover, waiting for her to invite him on to the lawn. When she ignored him he pointed in an off-hand but sly way to the dead elms above our heads.

  Looking up, I saw a section of the Cessna’s tail suspended from the upper branches. Pinned against the sky, it flicked from side to side, a flag already semaphoring my presence to the searching police.

  ‘Stark … he’s always had sharp eyes.’ As if protecting me, Dr Miriam took my arm. ‘Blake, come on. We ought to leave. I’ll find you something to wear at the clinic’

  At that time, as I followed her across the lawn, I was aware only of the silent crowd watching me from both banks of the river, the tennis players sitting with their rackets on the grass. Their faces seemed almost hostile. Seen through this strange light, the placid town into which I had fallen had a distinctly sinister atmosphere, as if all these apparently unhurried suburbanites were in fact actors recruited from the film studios to play their roles in an elaborate conspiracy.

  We reached Dr Miriam’s sports car in the drive behind the house. Hovering in the porch, Mrs St Cloud handed the medical bag to her daughter.

  ‘Miriam—?’

  ‘Mother, for heaven’s sake. I’ll be quite safe.’ With a tolerant shake of her head, Dr Miriam opened the car door for me.

  As I stood there barefoot in the oil-stained rags of my flying suit I was suddenly certain that Mrs St Cloud would not run to the telephone the moment I left. This middle-aged widow had never seen anyone return from the dead. With a hand to her throat, she stared at me as if I were a son whose existence she had absent-mindedly misplaced.

  At the same time, I had no intention of outstaying my welcome. For whatever motives, one of these people had tried to kill me.

  CHAPTER 5

  Back from the Dead

  Should I have been more wary of Miriam St Cloud? Even then, as we approached the clinic, it seemed strange that I was so ready to trust this young doctor. Little more than a student, with her white coat and grass-stained feet, she sat seriously over the wheel. She was still unsettled, putting herself to unnecessary trouble to look after me, and I suspected that she might try to drive me to the local p
olice station. We stopped several times under the trees, giving the three children time to catch up with us. They raced across the park, whooping and hooting, as if hoping to shock the solemn beeches out of their silence. I kept a careful watch for the arrival of the police, my arm behind Dr Miriam’s seat. If a patrol car appeared I was ready to wrest the controls from her and bundle her out on to the grass.

  The sunlight shivered through the trees. The birds and leaves were restive, as if the elements of the disrupted afternoon were trying to reconstitute themselves.

  ‘Do you want to go back to your mother?’ I asked. ‘I’d say she needs you more than I do.’

  ‘You upset her – she wasn’t expecting you to recover so dramatically. Since father’s death two years ago she’s spent all her time by the window, almost as if he were out here somewhere. Next time you come back from the dead do it in easy stages.’

  ‘I didn’t come back from the dead.’

  ‘Blake, I know …’ Annoyed with herself, she pressed my hand. I liked this young doctor, but her light-hearted reference to my death irritated me, a touch of dissecting-room humour I could do without. In fact, apart from my bruised mouth and ribs, I felt remarkably well. I remembered swimming strongly for the shore as the Cessna sank beneath me, and then fainting in the shallows, more from relief than real exhaustion. The clergyman had pulled me on to the grass, and at this point in the confusion some lunatic had tried to revive me, some half-trained suburban first-aid enthusiast. Already I resolved that the sooner I left Shepperton the better, before any other blunder could occur.

  However, before I could leave I needed a new set of clothes.