A Dream of Wessex (10 page)

Julia slid backwards, into darkness.

As the drawer closed a brilliant light came on, and Julia saw that on the roof of the tiny cubicle, just above her, there was a round mirror, about half a metre in diameter. She saw in it a reflection of her naked body, supine on the drawer. For a moment of disorientation she felt as if she were standing before a mirror, staring at herself ... but then she saw the reflection of her own eyes, and the mirror held her absolutely, and she surrendered to it.

For a moment, the light inside the cabinet seemed to brighten, but then it dimmed rapidly.

Julia’s return was instantaneous. As the lights inside the cabinet were extinguished, a bell began to ring and she felt the drawer sliding outwards again, of its own volition. Moments later, there was a cold draught blowing over her, and a woman spoke loudly. ‘Dr Trowbridge! It’s Miss Stretton.’

‘Sedative please, nurse.’

Julia tried to open her eyes, but before she could do so she felt something damp and cold inside her elbow, and a needle pricked into her. She parted her eyelids weakly, and with filmy eyes saw Dr Trowbridge looking down at her.

‘Don’t try to say anything, Julia. It’s all right. You’re safe.’

She was lifted away from the drawer, and someone bathed her neck and shoulders with a liquid that stung, and smelt of iodine. Soon afterwards she was lifted on to a stretcher on a trolley, and tucked in beneath some blankets.

The trolley was pushed down a long corridor, fluorescent strips sliding down her vision like thin vertical windows to a brighter world; she thought for a moment that she was rising, as if in an elevator, but it was just the steady rolling of the trolley. Her perception was easily upset; for a time she closed her eyes and at once could imagine that the trolley was being pushed in the other direction, feet first, just as she had sometimes done as a child on train-journeys, as they hurtled through tunnels. As she opened her eyes, and saw the ceiling sliding above her, the alienating effect was the same; it was a jolt to return to reality.

She was about to try it again when the trolley halted. Metal gates were opened, and she was trundled into the compartment of a real elevator; it rose jerkily, a distant humming deep below, but she could not see the walls of the shaft, so she tried no experiments with perception.

At the top she was wheeled into the open air, and she felt cold wind and the spray of rain on her cheeks. A Land Rover was standing by, its engine running, and the two men who had been pushing her slid the trolley into the compartment at the back. Inside it was clean and warm, and rain drummed on the steel roof. The doors closed, and the vehicle pulled away. Through a window in the wall above her, Julia could see one of the shoulders of the Maiden Castle ramparts sliding by. The driver went slowly, taking the smoothest route.

There was a girl sitting with her in the back of the Land Rover, and she was smiling at her.

‘Welcome back.’

‘Ma -  Marilyn.’ It was difficult to talk, because the drug was taking effect, and the blankets lay heavily across her chin.

‘Don’t talk, Julia. We’re going to Bincombe House.’

She remembered then, her first real memory. Bincombe. The old country house used by the staff of the Wessex project. The familiarity of the memory made her want to cry. Marilyn reached over and clasped her hand.

The Land Rover lurched for the last time as it reached the car-park, and accelerated smoothly, crunching across the loose gravel. Julia wished she could sit up and see outside. Rain ran jerkily and diagonally down the window above her face, and as the Land Rover turned on to a paved road the metal bodywork of the vehicle began humming and droning in tune with the tyres.

She felt she was still in Wessex. The last events had happened only minutes before: the two young men with their mirrors, scaring her and wrenching her away from her life and her plans. She recognized them now: Andy and Steve, the two they knew as the retrievers, the ones who entered the projection to bring the participants back to reality ... but inside the projection it was always the same, the lack of readiness, the sense of intrusion.

Marilyn, sitting across the compartment from her, continued to hold her hand, but was having to brace herself against the movements of the vehicle.

‘It won’t be long,’ she said. ‘We’re nearly there.’

How long it took made no difference to Julia. It was always a relief to be back, the same shuddery instinctive relief one felt when reaching home after walking alone late at night. An irrational fear, a welcoming of the safety of the familiar. She knew she was back, knew she was herself again. This was the fifth time she had returned from Wessex, and this never changed. She embraced her memories as if they were long-forgotten friends.

The Land Rover slowed and turned, and Julia heard its wheels splashing through deep puddles. In a moment it halted, and the engine was turned off. She heard the driver’s door open and close, boots scraped on grit, and the main doors at the back were opened. The driver called to someone and a second man appeared, presumably from within the house. Outside, wind and rain on her face again, the blankets lifting to allow a cold draught to blow on her, and then she was on a second trolley, wheeling down a corridor laid with soft, rubbery tiles. There was a good smell in the house: food and people and paintwork. Somewhere a telephone was ringing, and from behind a closed door she heard a radio playing. Two girls passed the trolley, smiling down at her, and she saw that they were wearing ordinary clothes, jeans, woollen sweaters.

Julia’s arms were folded across her stomach, and she raised them clear of the blanket. She lifted them and held them over her head, as if stretching after a long sleep; and luxuriated in the use of her muscles again. She let them drop immediately: she was weak and stiff, mentally exhausted.

They wheeled her into her room - the same old bed, the large window overlooking the grounds - and brought the trolley alongside the bed.

Marilyn had been following, and she came and stood beside her.

‘I’ll tell Dr Eliot you’re here,’ she said, and Julia nodded wearily.

She was lifted from the trolley to the bed, and the sheets were pulled over her. As Marilyn and the two attendants left the room, Julia breathed out loudly, a sigh, a great gasp of pleasure, and she lay against the soft pillow and closed her eyes. Whether or not Dr Eliot came to see her Julia did not know, because within a few seconds she had fallen into a deep and natural sleep.

She awoke to daylight, and the feel of her hair lying across her face. She moved instinctively to brush it aside, and at once a nurse, who had been waiting in an armchair on the other side of the room, crossed to the bed and leaned over her.

‘Are you awake, Miss Stretton?’ she said softly.

‘Mmm.’ Julia turned without opening her eyes, stretched, pulled the sheet around her shoulders again.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

‘Mmm.’ She was still waking, still in the half-world between awareness and dreams. She heard the nurse speaking into a telephone, heard the clatter of the receiver as it was replaced. She wanted to sleep for ever.

‘The doctor will come as soon as you’ve had your tea.’

She wasn’t going to be allowed to drift back.

‘Breakfast,’ Julia said, and struggled up on the pillow. She looked blearily at the nurse. ‘Can I have breakfast?’

‘What would you like?’

‘Something cooked. Bacon ... lots of bacon. And eggs. And I’d like coffee, not tea.’

‘You mustn’t overdo things,’ the nurse said.

‘I’m not ill, I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten for ... how long was it this time?’

‘Three weeks.’

‘That’s how hungry I am.’

Only three weeks. They had brought her back so soon! She had never before been in the projection for less than two months, and it was usually much longer. She should have been left alone, because there was always so much to accomplish. David Harkman ... she remembered then that her retrieval had prevented her from seeing him in the evening, and in spite of the fact that her rational mind was in control, she felt again the sensations of curiosity and excitement that had so distracted her alter ego.

Although there was now, in addition, a sense of frustration.

The nurse had continued to look disapproving at Julia’s request for breakfast, but nevertheless she had gone back to the telephone and was speaking to the kitchen.

Julia sat up in the bed, and arranged the pillow behind her. Many of her belongings were on the bedside table, and she picked up her hairbrush. It was impossible to wash the participants’ hair while they were in the projection, and hers was always greasy and tangled after retrieval. She brushed it, hearing and feeling it crackle. It made her scalp feel good and fresh. She found a mirror and comb, and tidied herself up.

She looked calmly into the circular mirror, and saw the steady gaze of her own eyes. She stuck out her tongue; it was white and dry. Her pores were dirty; she would have a bath as soon as she got out of bed.

It felt good to be real again!

After she had eaten her breakfast, Dr Trowbridge came to see her. He examined her briefly, then got her to stand up and walk about the room.

‘Any stiffness?’

‘A little bit. Nothing unusual.’

‘Is there any discomfort in the spine?’

‘Some. I shouldn’t care to carry anything heavy.’

He nodded. ‘You can have a massage if you want it, but don’t over-exert yourself for a day or two. Plenty of light exercise and fresh air would be good for you.’

Julia still felt that medical aftercare was over-solicitous on the project, but from the participants’ point of view things had improved since the early days. On her first return, Julia had had to endure several days of tests and X-rays.

There was a bathroom attached to her room, and after Dr Trowbridge had left Julia took a leisurely bath. The sore patch on the back of her neck was sensitive to hot water, but she had a long, pleasurable wallow, and afterwards she dried her hair and put on a favourite dress. She looked through the window at the weather; it was not raining today, but a strong wind blew. She wondered idly about the date. The nurse said she had been gone for three weeks, so it must now be near the middle of August.

‘Do you need me any more, Miss Stretton?’ It was the nurse, looking round the door from outside.

‘I don’t think so. Dr Trowbridge has seen me.’

‘Would you like me to arrange a massage for you?’

‘Not at the moment. Perhaps this evening. By the way, what’s the time?’

‘About ten-fifteen.’

After the nurse had left, Julia found her wristwatch, set it to the time and shook it to make it work. It was always disorienting after a return. When she came to the house yesterday it must have been during the afternoon. How long had she slept? Sixteen hours? She felt refreshed for it, however long it had been.

A little while later, as Julia was sitting at the dressing-table making up her face, Marilyn came to the room.

‘Are you feeling better, Julia?’

‘Yes, fine.’

‘You looked really ill yesterday. It was the first time I’d seen you come out of the mortuary.’

‘I was just very tired. And drugged.’

Julia had seen participants immediately after they returned, and she was sufficiently vain to hope that no one she knew well would ever see her in that state. Looking into the dressing-table mirror, she judged that the damage had been repaired.

Marilyn said: ‘There’s a meeting this morning. At eleven. They want you to go.’

‘Yes, of course. Listen, Marilyn, do you know why I was retrieved so soon? The nurse said it was only three weeks.’

‘Didn’t Dr Eliot tell you?’

‘I haven’t seen him. Dr Trowbridge came.’

Marilyn said: ‘It was because of Tom Benedict.’

Julia frowned, not understanding. Then she remembered: she hadn’t thought of Tom since -

‘What’s happened to Tom?’

‘He died, Julia. In the projector. He had a stroke, and it wasn’t discovered until too late.’

Julia stared at her in genuine shock. The double memories created by the projector always confused and alarmed her after a return, because of the way realities seemed to overlap ... but this time it was as if she had to suffer the experience twice. She remembered Tom lying in the Castle infirmary and holding her hand, and she remembered that afterwards she had forgotten about him, his identity slipping from the grasp of her memory as surely as his hand had slipped from hers.

Then this: the return to her real life, with the forgetfulness remaining until now.

‘But Marilyn ... I didn’t know!’

‘There’s to be an inquiry. You might have to go.’

‘I didn’t realize. You see, Marilyn, I was there! I was with him when he died! ‘

‘In Wessex?’

‘It was the strangest thing.’ The memory was there in full now. ‘I was holding his hand, he was ill. There was no doctor, no proper treatment. Then he vanished. He ceased to exist. And no one could remember him!‘

She felt tears in her eyes, and she turned away and found a Kleenex.

‘Tom was a friend of yours, wasn’t he?’ Marilyn said.

‘A friend of my father’s. It was Tom who got me this job. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him.’ She blew her nose, then tucked the crumpled tissue into the sleeve of her dress. ‘Of course, it makes sense now. I couldn’t understand it when he vanished! But it must have been when he died. He simply stopped projecting.’

When she was in Wessex she had no way of recognizing it, but whenever she returned she was intrigued by the way her deeper feelings found parallels. Tom Benedict had always been like one of her family; one of her earliest memories was of sitting on his lap when she was four, trying to catch soap-bubbles as he blew them. He and her father had known each other for years, and Tom, who had never married in spite of frequent urgings by his closest friends, often spent his holidays with the family. As she grew older, and made her own friends and left home, Julia had seen less of Tom, but his avuncular interest was always there in the background. Four years ago, while she was still in the two-year vacuum that had followed the break-up with Paul Mason, Tom had recommended her for a job with the Wessex Foundation. He was one of the trustees of the Foundation fund that financed the operation, and with his influence on the other trustees her appointment had gone through after the most cursory of interviews. She felt she had made her own way after that, and worked as hard and contributed as much as anyone else, but she and Tom had always been close. It was inevitable that when they were in the projector, in Wessex, there would be a similar harmony, and so it was. She had only seen Tom once since the beginning - seen him here in the real world, that is - and they had enjoyed their reminiscences of the future.