Dreamside

TWO

To dream of holding eggs symbolizes vexation —Astrampsychus, AD 350

Ella was late. Lee had been expecting her at around seven, and it was already after nine. He had spent two hours twitching in his armchair, jumping up from time to time to look out of the window. It had been dark for several hours and the winter sky was folded with snow.

He was physically afraid of meeting her: if she didn't show up, he wouldn't be in the least dismayed. He was already prepared to dismiss the morning's telephone call as a phantom, another dream; it would be better, far better, if the whole thing had never really happened.

Then there was a roaring underneath his window. He leaped from his seat to see headlamps blazing in his drive, clouds of exhaust in the frosty air. Lee hurried outside.

She was already climbing out of her car, an open-topped vintage sports model. She wore a flying jacket three sizes too large and a red scarf wound around her neck. She closed the door and stood motionless in the dark, looking at him.

What were they supposed to do? What was appropriate? To hug her, of course; he wanted to, but he couldn't. He couldn't even look her in the eye.

"You came down in this?" he said surveying the car. It was a fully restored spoke-wheeled 1935 MG Midget. "With the top down? In the middle of winter?"

Her breath was visible on the cold air. "It's broken. I couldn't fix it."

Lee walked around the car and began fussing with the convertible roof. "It's probably just a clip," he said.

"Lee," said Ella gently. "Leave it."

Lee looked down at his hands. He felt ridiculous. When he looked up, he saw that her eyes were fixed on his. "Of course. Let's go inside."

With the door closed behind them, Ella looked around her as if she used to own the house. When she nodded, it was as if to confirm that she found everything much as expected. Lee took her bag. "Your hands are freezing!"

Ella's smile was a reflex. "It's been a long drive."

"Maybe a drink of something?"

"Yes, something, thanks."

That was how she was; always ironic. Silver moon-and-stars earrings glimmered at her ears. They left momentary tracers in the air as she flicked her hair from her eyes. Her hastily applied lipstick looked as if it came in one piece and could be lifted off like the milk-skin from hot chocolate. Ella looked interesting rather than beautiful, and she dressed neither for the attention of men nor for the critical approval of other women. Lee was hypnotized; she was more compelling now than she had ever been as a girl of twenty.

He didn't miss a detail: her nose perhaps a couple of degrees too steep; her dark hair, long then, now worn shorter; and something like a faint cloud of suspicion in brown eyes. Underneath her flying jacket she wore a baggy pullover and slacks. She was busy unwinding the red scarf from her throat.

Her bag, a large, split-leather holdall with a broken zip, was stuffed full. Lee stowed it against an armchair. "Bohemian; you look bohemian," he said, trying to imitate her teasing manner.

Ella followed him into the kitchen, where he poured overlarge brandies and set coffee to brew. "I know I'm a mess," she said. "You look smart, that's good; and you look well." She flashed him a microsecond smile and bandaged the scarf around her hand.

"I don't know why, but I feel dull against you."

"You haven't got what it takes to be dull." In her flying jacket she looked like a wounded refugee from some fiery aerial combat. "I see you work in advertising."

"It's a job. I turn in every morning. Then I come home."

She looked at him. He felt compelled to carry on talking. "I mean it's narcotic. That's how I like it."

"You sound disappointed."

"No; I really do like it like chat. But when I'm happily numb, narcotized, nodding my way through life, then the you-know-what starts over again."

Ella stuffed the scarf into her pocket. "That's what I'm here to talk about."

"Oh dear. Pandora wants a little chat about her box."

"Not my box; our box."

Lee turned towards her. "Ella, I don't want it opened up. I don't know what's going on, but it scares the liver out of me and I really don't want it opened up."

Ella put down her glass and took hold of his wrist. "Look, I don't want it opened up again any more than you do. I'm as frightened by it as you are. I guessed—hoped, even—that you'd be having some of the same experiences as me. I only got in touch with you because—"

Lee put his hand to her mouth. "Can we sit down?"

They moved through to the living room, Ella discarding her scarf and jacket as she went. They sat and nursed their brandies.

"I got in touch with you," Ella continued, "because of what we had together. What we did."

Silence. "I'm starving," said Ella suddenly. "What have you cooked for us?"

"Cooked? God!" He hadn't even thought about food. "I'll phone for takeaway, shall I?"

"No food in the house, eh?" She smiled. "I couldn't help noticing the bachelor feel to the place."

"I noticed you noticing." Then Lee bit the biscuit. "Ella, will you be staying here tonight?"

"I thought I might. Unless it would be easier if I found a hotel."

"Don't be ridiculous. You'll stay here."

"Fine."

"Fine."

"Only . . . Just so that it's clear."

"So that what's clear?"

"Look; I didn't drive two hundred and fifty miles with my foot flat down on the accelerator after an absence of twelve years to start our relationship up again. I couldn't stand to have that opened up, as well."

"Understood," he said, waving his hands in the air, "I was just about to say that the spare room is ready for you. So you can calm down."

"I'm already calm. You don't need to tell me to calm myself."

"That's settled then."

"Right, that's settled."

Lee took this concert of understanding as a suitable moment to escape to the kitchen. He closed the door behind him, putting his back to it as he expelled a deep breath. He was furious about that business of renewing their old relationship, not with Ella but with himself. He had made his feelings transparent, trailing her with spaniel eyes from the moment she had come into his house. He wanted to bury his head.

Their meal arrived. "Tell me," she said, "what was happening before I phoned?"

Lee glanced over his shoulder as though there might be an enemy in the room. "It started around Christmas. I thought it was just some kind of throwback. That's happened before, and there's been no problem. Since then it has come with greater frequency. Over the last few nights it has come without fail."

"Just the repeated awakening?"

"Yes. That's all, thank God; I mean there have been one or two other weird things happening in there besides, but mostly it's the repeater. It doesn't sound much but it's scaring the hell out of me."

"It's the same for me. I know how frightening it is. You get to dread every click or sudden movement in case you wake up and find yourself back in bed."

"But I've even been testing myself in the dream, burning my hand, sticking pins into myself to see if I'm in or out: it doesn't make any difference."

"That's how it was before."

"Sure, but then, somehow, even though I'd get it wrong sometimes, I felt I could tell the essential difference. But not now. It gets so I don't want to bother going to work, cooking my breakfast, washing my face even, in case I wake up. Every time something just a little bit off the wall happens, or if I get a client at work with a screw loose, I end up thinking I'll wake up in five minutes and then I can go to work and deal with the real psychopaths."

"I thought we were the real psychopaths."

"What's worse is that the dreams make more sense than what happens when I'm awake. When I was talking to you this morning I was convinced that it was just part of another repeater and that I'd put the phone down and wake up."

"But you should have known that I'd pulled you out with the telephone. It was one of our old techniques for burrowing out. Or burrowing in."

“I know that, but I didn't ever trust it. I don't entirely trust that business with the book either."

"Can you remember anything the professor said about the repeater?"

"Only that he described it as a side effect, and said to try to enjoy it."

"Yes, he was helpful like that."

"When did it start happening with you?"

"Like you, around Christmas. Infrequently at first, then with regularity. I thought it was me; but it wasn't just repeated dreams of waking up. It was some of the other stuff."

"You went back to that place?" Lee was shocked.

"Not exactly. But I felt an overwhelming pull. Almost irresistible. I've been fighting it. That's why I decided I had to get in touch, find out what was happening to you."

"I know. I felt it too, pulling me back there, I mean. It was strong. I fought it. That's when the repeaters started to really take hold."

"Exactly. The more we fight off going back, the more the repeaters go to work on us."

"But what would happen if we did give in? What would happen if we really did go back there? I couldn't face it."

"At first I wondered whether you'd been there," said Ella, "whether you were up to something, trying to make contact with me."

"No."

"It was just a thought. I realize now."

"Ella, there have been many times when I've wanted you. But never like that. It didn't seem to hold so much fear for me when I was younger. Now even the thought of it can make me break into a cold sweat."

Ella ran a hand through her hair, silver moon and stars glinting at her ears. "So where does that leave us?" she asked. "If it's not you and it's not me . . . Oh God, look at us, Lee, just look at us. What a pair of casualties. I'm trying to be brave, Lee, really I am, but I'm scared. So scared."

Then Lee did what he should have done when he first saw Ella standing outside his house; he put his arms around her and kissed her, and let her cry for both of them. And when Ella cried that evening it was not only for the terror of the dreams that hung in chains around them. It was also for the unburdened, uncaring children they had been thirteen years ago, and for the thirteen years of distance and loss that had recast lovers as strangers.

"Which one of them is doing it, do you think?"

"We can't be sure that it's either of them."

An open fire burned brightly in the hearth. Ella sat close to it, her legs drawn up under her. Lee sat behind her in an armchair. "You're wrong. One of them is doing it. One of them is calling it all back. Is it him, do you think? Or is it her? We have to find out. Then we can stop them."

"I was afraid you might say that."

"No time for faint hearts," said Ella.

"You really are making a lot of assumptions. You can't know that the others are responsible for this."

"So what are your ideas?"

"Me?"

"Exactly. How long do you think it's going to be before these dreams, these repeaters turn into something else? Something more dangerous."

Lee felt like a man in a paperweight snowstorm. Everything in his life had been settled and silenced. Then Ella had arrived, had shaken the glass, and was now watching him in his blizzard.

"When push comes to shove," said Ella, "there's only one question. Is it him? Or is it her?"

“Him, her; what's the difference? It's happening."

"I think it's her. I think we'll find that she's responsible."

"Look, Ella, I'm really not convinced that we should get in touch with the others. It might not do any good. Sleeping dogs and all that. It might just make things worse. A whole lot worse. There must be something else we can do without running to them."

"We've been through this once already. It's not a question of running to them. It's a matter of not running away from them."

Lee wouldn't have minded running away from all of them, Ella included. He knew where all this was leading and he didn't like it. Ella had that manic cast to her eye. She wasn't going to be shifted.

"So what do we do?" she said.

"You're the one with all the plans."

"So it appears. Listen, it's simple. You're going to have to go after one of them; I'm going to have to go after the other. No, don't look like that. Neither of us wants to do it, but neither of us wants this thing opened up again either. You know where it can all lead, and you're just as afraid of that as I am. You also know that one of the others must be responsible for starting it up again. There can't be any other explanation. We'll have to track them down and find out what's going on."

"How the hell are we going to find them?"

"Just like I found you. We're going to use a little bit of intelligence and a little bit of insight. You'll have to take a break from selling washing powder or whatever important thing it is you do."

"I can't take time off from work! What will I tell them?"

"Tell them you're ill! Tell them you're mentally disturbed! That's something like the truth, isn't it? Our hold on reality is a little tenuous at the moment, isn't it? What do I care what you tell them?"

"Are you getting angry with me?"

"I'm just trying to give you a sense of urgency, though God knows why. This morning when I phoned you were hardly able to speak."

“I don't need reminding."

"Lee, we could simply do nothing about it. We could just forget it. Until tomorrow morning, that is, when you're going out of your mind because you don't know if you're awake or you're dreaming. Until you want to scream, and then you open your mouth and wake up. Or think you've woken up, so you want to scream again. Yes, we could do that. Then you could wonder if this conversation was all a dream."

"You can see right into my mind, can't you, Ella Innes?"

Ella softened. "Remember that psychological test the professor gave us? You're walking through the woods? You see a bear. What do you do? You always go around it. I always approach it."

"Sometimes to get a mauling."

"That's life," said Ella. "But sometimes the bear turns into a prince. You need me here, Lee. To push you on. To make you face up."

"Thanks all the same but I never had any use for a prince."

"Only for a princess, eh?"

He hated the way she reasserted her position so easily. She always seemed able to guess his thoughts. More seriously, she was already in the driving seat. He had planned not to let that happen.

He looked at her as she gazed into the grate, her skin reflecting the firelight. Yes, the years had left their mark here and there. Her face was touched with faint runes, lines of personal history he wanted to read but couldn't. As for himself, he had stopped pretending. These few hours with Ella had stripped him bare. The scaling-over of the years had been uncovered, old feelings made new, leaving him exposed, inferior, in love with her. How did she do that?

He leaned forward and kissed her neck. He felt her stiffen, but she didn't pull away.

"What are you doing, Lee?"

"I'm kissing you."

She turned around. "Let's not add confusion to a bad situation, eh?"

It seemed to Lee that he had been, on the contrary, trying to straighten things out. He said nothing. Ella closed the issue by standing up.

"I'm very tired. Can we say that it's settled? You go after one of them, I go after the other? "

Lee shrugged.

"As of tomorrow?"

"As of tomorrow." He looked unhappy.

"Dreams won't wait, Lee."

"No; they won't, will they?"

"I think it would be better if I went for her. I can talk with her. You go after him."

"You make it sound like a bounty hunt."

"It won't be as easy as that. Now, show me my room. It's late."