Dreamside

THREE



In the dreamer's dream, the dreamed one awoke —Jorge Luis Borges





Nothing has been said exactly, but Ella stays at Lee's. Both think leave it, wait and see, bad luck to use words on it. They sleep together, curled up like two question marks, one sleeping body cupping the other, resisting the dream.

Lee goes back to his office where he tries to work, struggling against exhaustion and fear. Ella waits at home, reading paperbacks and doing uncharacteristically wifely things: cleaning, shopping, cooking dinner and giving him a neck rub when he gets back from work. In return, Lee fixes the roof of the car.

Then, one night, their resistance collapses and they find each other on dreamside. The dream is lucid and with the same feverish excitement as at any time before, but they wrap their arms about each other's waists as if the other might dissolve at any moment. They stare around in horror at their idyll: the charred branches, the barren soil, the icy lake . . .

There is nothing to say in the face of this sterility, and immediately the dream breaks.

"What happened?" they ask, waking. They have always regarded dreamside as a private island and a personal haven, despite the menace that shadowed their later dreaming. It has always been held to be a place beyond change. "But what happened?"


That morning, Ella got a call from Honora, She had decided to spend Easter with them. She had booked a flight from Belfast to Birmingham. Ella was to drive to the airport and collect her.

Honora was shy with Lee when they returned. "Twelve years? Can it really be twelve years?"

"Nearly thirteen. You look great," said Lee. She didn't. Honora looked pale and her blue veins stood out too prominently on her forehead and hands. Her eyes lacked sheen.

Of course it's her, he thought, just look at her.

They talked the evening away, without mentioning the dreaming. The subject itched to be scratched, but Ella was patient. She knew that Honora had come to tell her something, and she waited for the moment to be right.

That moment came the next day. Ella had arranged to take Honora for a drive, anything to distract from the burden of anticipation. In the morning they drove to Warwick Castle, and crept giggling around the dungeons and waxworks. In the afternoon they visited Coventry cathedral, where the giant new building stands shoulder to shoulder with the war-blitzed shell of the medieval Gothic version. Inside the ruin, Honora turned to face the altar with its cross of charred beams.

"I had it," she said. "You knew, didn't you?"

"The baby miscarried. You lost the baby."

Honora turned to face her. "I lost the baby. I also had the baby."

"What are you talking about, Honora?"

"I had the baby and I didn't have the baby. You still don't understand? Do you need me to spell it out for you?"

"Maybe I do. Maybe I'm not as clever as you think."

They stood facing each other, Ella searching Honora's disappointed eyes until suddenly, she understood.

"On dreamside?"

Honora didn't flicker.

"You had it on dreamside? It couldn't be!" Ella suddenly felt out of her depth. She was first to look away.

"Are you sure it wasn't. .."

"Wasn't what? A dream?"

Ella took the other woman's arm. "Let's go. I need to sit down somewhere and think about this."

They walked across the hollowed-out shell of the old cathedral, down the steps and out across the face of the defiant new monument. They found a bench. Honora stared downwards.

Have it? How can you have it and not have it? But that's how it was.

"It was November. Cold November. Ma and Da thought I was going mad. Maybe I was ... I remember everything. Mostly I remember how cold it was. Bitter winds and mists rolling down from the loughs. Rain. All that.

"It was my barren year. My lost year. After I'd tried to kill myself at university, I was just idle. I felt. . . cauterized. All nerves gone. Spring and summer slipped into autumn and I didn't even notice. Ma and Da fussing over me the whole time, I had to shut them out to stay sane. There was a weekly appointment with a psychologist. A nice man. I told him everything about myself. I opened up to him like a flower, told him all about my childhood, all that stuff. And in all the candour he didn't see I'd kept this other thing quiet."

"You didn't tell him about dreamside?"

"Not a thing."

"Didn't he guess you were hiding something?"

"I don't know. I kept him busy with masses and masses of information about other things. It just came pouring out. It seemed to keep him satisfied. But the more I talked, the more I kept it a secret, the more I could feel it swelling inside me. I knew I had an appointment on dreamside. It was inflating me, insisting, summoning me.

"I stopped fighting it, and then one night I was back there. You know, it's funny: it was always night, and I couldn't change it. And the moon was always full, and on dreamside I had this huge, soft, roundness growing inside me. It was all different. A cold place. Frost, and moon washed nights, and trees all silhouette. And the lake was calm, like oil.

"I was terrified, Ella. Every time I was drawn back there, I was bigger. I tried to hold it off. Have you ever tried to stay awake, days at a time? Try it. You start to break up. First there are little slips, with your words faltering and fusing together. Then there's all the dithering, unable to perform simple tasks. And you lose concentration, you're 'away' somewhere else; and then you start to laugh at yourself, but with hysterical laughter that cuts back at you. You forget why you're trying to stay awake. So that's what you do, fight it, fight it. In the end, of course, you give in.

"Then I arrived there with the awful realization, you know, this is the time, this is the moment. It was so cold there. And there was something else ... a shadow ... a bad echo. The trees were ugly charcoal silhouettes and the moon was like a gob of candle wax dribbled across the lake. I was thinking I would rather be anywhere but here when I felt the first contraction. It was like a shock wave. Instinct took over, and I looked for somewhere to crouch. I went over to the oak. I couldn't get this idea out of my head that I was like an animal, looking at the moon; like a she-wolf about to whelp.

"I thought about my body, sleeping in my bedroom. But what was the point? I couldn't stop it. Hours seemed to pass. There was no light, no dawn. Only pain. Loneliness and pain. Then the waters broke. I grabbed hold of my knees and held my breath. The contractions came every two minutes.

"I leaned back on my hands and I could feel the baby's head, pushing, pushing. I was delirious, I thought the dream would have to break: no, it's impossible, it won't come, there's really nothing to come, but then there it was. Red-hot iron searing at my insides. I was shivering with fear or pain or cold. I couldn't stop shivering. Then when I pushed the baby's head shot out. I was biting the air for breath.

"The rest of the baby came in a slippery, blubbery heap. I knew I was weeping and gulping and shivering, but I did everything on instinct. I cleared out its mouth with my finger and then it gulped at the air and began to cry. I was actually holding the baby in my hands. Then I laid the baby on the ground, bit the cord and knotted it as if I'd done it a hundred times. I took the baby and walked into the lake, up to my knees. It was very cold. I washed the baby clean, and then I washed myself.

"The baby was whole, pure, clean; and beautiful. So beautiful that I remember sobbing over her, from exhaustion and relief. Then the dream broke."

Ella let out a deep breath. "You went through it alone. All alone."

"There's no midwifery there, Ella."

"But we went back there. We could never find you. Or you never came."

"I never came to you. But I couldn't stop it. On dreamside I grew bigger, even though there was nothing physical showing here. I carried it. I carried it and I delivered it."

"But you never told me anything. We could have helped. We could have done something."

"But I didn't want you, Ella. Not any of you, and least of all him. God, I can't even speak his name. I delivered the child in that place, under that tree, and I did it with a scream and a curse that had the place shivering. God help me, when that child came out I named it a curse on him, a blasted curse in all the mess and pain and blood. I know it was a terrible thing to do, and I know that curses come back on you, but that's what I felt. I cursed it in his name and I cursed him in its name.

"Remember that time on dreamside when you swore at Brad— and didn't he deserve it!—but it came out like a real thing? Words like real things? Well, I did the same and I offered the tiny soul of that dreamside baby to the curse I put on Brad Cousins."

"But in the end it's only words, Honora. Words are not real things. They're only words."

"Not on dreamside they're not. Words are things there. I cursed the baby and I washed it, and then I wished the baby away. Then the dream broke."

"As they always did."

"Yes."

"And did you ever go back?"

"Never voluntarily. I was dragged back. I don't know if something was pulling me or whether I was unconsciously driving myself back there to look for it. Anyway, it was never there."

Ella gazed thoughtfully at the cathedral spire pricking at the blue sky. "Do you still go to mass?" she asked suddenly.

What? You're joking. I haven't been since."

"Since it all happened?"

"Yes."

"You used to be a strong Catholic; do you think this could be why you keep returning to dreamside?"

"I never said I did."

"No, you never said you did. Honora, you should go to mass."

Honora shook her head, puzzled.

"I see it. Tomorrow's Good Friday. You must go to Catholic Mass."

"Don't you go making plans for me. I haven't been near a church since my university days and I'll not go to one tomorrow nor any other day."

"It's important. I know it!"

"Listen to you! An atheist, telling me to get to church!"

"I'm not claiming to be a believer; for you it's different."

"I lost my faith years ago, and I feel better off without it, thanks all the same."

"I don't believe it; you know what they say, 'once a Catholic' . . ."

"What do you know about being a Catholic?"

"I know that you've had an experience that might be enough to derange someone else, and that you're still carrying around terrible feelings about that baby you lost-"

"Aborted."

"That's your word, not mine. And it's exactly the point: you can't come to terms with that guilt, so back you go to dreamside, night after night, trying to deal with it, wanting to block it out so much you think or dream or know you've delivered on dreamside. I'm talking about guilt Honora, something your church knows all about, and it offers you a way out. I'm the first person you've told in thirteen years. You've got to find someone you can confess it to, someone who means more to you than me. You've got to go to confession!"

"That's all very pat; but you've no understanding of the things you're speaking about. For one, I've no faith and no belief, it doesn't mean anything to me any more—"

"Maybe not consciously; but isn't that the point?"

"And secondly, you've no conception of what it means to walk into confession and cheerfully announce, besides a few venial slips, an avalanche of mortal sin. Oh no Father I haven't been to mass in thirteen years, no not even on Good Fridays, and then there's this small matter of the abortion or induced miscarriage call it what you will, and besides that the wee question of attempted suicide. Everyone a roaster, guaranteed apoplexy for the priest. Forget it."

"It's your only way out."

"Ella, I said forget it."

They drove back to Lee's house in gloomy silence. Lee was dumb enough to ask what was wrong.

"Talk to her," Ella said as soon as Honora's back was turned, "she's more open to you."

But Ella finally relayed the whole story, while Honora sulked in her room. Lee sat in silence and despaired. He was beginning to have serious doubts about everything. He understood that Honora was neurotic and began to have second thoughts about Ella's state of mind. He was afraid of the drama these two mad women were creating, and wanted to stay well clear. Ella was still applying her usual methods to force him into carrying out her will. He was looking for a suitable opportunity to put his foot down, and thought that this was it.

"I'm not sure what you're asking me to do," he said, "but if she's saying no to the idea, then it just won't work."

"It's guilt; honest, natural, inevitable, abscess-forming guilt. It just needs draining. Lance it with confession, out comes the pus, stitch it up. That's what the Catholic Church is for, and that's what she's missing. End of dreams. Talk to her; she'll listen to you."

"If she says she doesn't believe any more, then you have to accept it. You can't resurrect people's faith for them. It's not like renewing your membership down at the tennis club."

"She's a Catholic; she's not Sunday School C of E like us. It's scorched into them from an early age."

"I won't ask her to do it."

"What's the matter with you? It makes no difference if she feels she's lost her faith. She's Catholic through and through. She's like a stick of seaside rock with the letters running through."

"Or the wick running through the candle, is what the priests told us," said Honora, appearing behind them. "I've thought some more. Maybe you're right. At least I'll try."

Ella smiled, but only at Lee.