A Dream of Wessex (17 page)

What’s the hurry, Julia?’ Don Mander said.

‘No hurry. I feel I’m wasting time here, and the projection is weak at the moment. Even Andy and Steve are out.’

Eliot said: ‘We’ll need a written report from you, and - ’

‘I’m going to my room to do it now. Look, I’m perfectly fit. I’ve got a feeling I’m the only person who can get David Harkman back, and I want to try. We’ve wasted all day talking, and the one thing we should be worrying about is David. How can he have developed resistance to the mirrors?’

‘We were just discussing that. Don thinks that Steve must have made a mistake.’

‘Then that’s what we’ve got to find out,’ Julia said. ‘When will he and Andy be ready for another try?’

‘In two or three days.’

‘I want to be in Wessex before then. You made him my responsibility.’

She turned away from their table before they could answer. Paul and Marilyn were at their table, and she walked past them quickly. She saw Marilyn turn, but she didn’t look back.

Her room had been cleaned during the day, and the mess she had made in the bathroom had been tidied up. It was cold, so she lit the gas-fire then sat on the floor in front of it, staring at the orange-glowing radiants. Her nails had grown while she was inside the projector, and so she found her scissors and file and began reshaping them, deliberately not thinking about the day.

When the room had warmed she cleared a space on the table, then set up her portable typewriter and a light.

She worked for two hours, trying to present an objective account of all she had seen and done in Wessex. The verbal accounts were useful, but their effectiveness was limited to those people who heard them. The written reports were the only way of communicating with the other participants.

And that reminded her that she had her own reading to do: several reports would have accumulated in the last three weeks. She would have to go over to Salisbury in the morning for the funeral, and she would see if she could travel in Marilyn’s car, and read them on the way.

In her report she described David Harkman’s projected appearance in detail; they knew where he was for the moment, but there was never any certainty they wouldn’t lose him again. The description was important. She remembered the pallid, waxen David Harkman she had seen in the mortuary before she went to Wessex last time, and the difference she had seen in the man she met. Pale, yes, but from working in offices, not from the weird half-life of the projector. She thought of the slim, muscular body riding the skimmer, and the easy, athletic walk across the quay.

She also described the disappearance of Tom Benedict in as much detail as she could recall; this was difficult, because the amnesia she had suffered directly afterwards had made the incident vague. She remembered his hand holding hers under the sheet; she remembered the cool white ward, and the officious woman with the child.

There were the same omissions in this written report as she had made in the afternoon. Feelings, mostly, and hopes. She wrote about the affinity she had detected with David Harkman, and with Tom Benedict, the sense of recognition when Andy had held the mirror before her eyes ... but this was well known to them all. What she omitted were the things that mattered to her, that were as private to her as the whole projection was to them all. Moments like those few seconds on the quayside when she had seen David Harkman walking towards her, and she’d caught her breath and felt her nipples hardening under the coarse fabric of her dress. Or down at the creek when she had agreed to go to David’s room, with Greg a short distance away ... and she had
seen
Greg falter in his stride, she had
made
Greg look away until she could agree.

To write of Wessex was to be reminded of it, even if for her it was only a partial account. It was always like this. In the hours following a return, one’s real life intersected with the projection, and memories became confused.

Wessex became an obsession, a waking dream, a constant yearning. It had given her the first real function in life, and Wessex had become her first reality.

All that went before Wessex seemed like a half-hearted rehearsal for an improvised play. Wessex was the play, and it dominated her personality as a strong character will dominate a good actor.

Only Paul, and all that he stood for, had as powerful an influence on her. And that had been a destructive, selfish influence; it was right that she should put it behind her.

Wessex was real, and it seduced her, in the same way that Paul had once seduced her. It grew around her, adapting to her personality. It was an unconscious wish come true, an extension of her own identity that totally embraced her; the perfect lover.

She stared at the sheet of typewritten paper, thinking how the words only described the surface-qualities of the experience. It was true what John Eliot had said that morning; the reports were no longer observations of anything functional to the project. Now the true experiences were held back, recycled through the unconscious to the further enrichment of the projection.

Like a genuine and deeply felt relationship, the fundamental truths need never be stated.

Julia decided she had finished her report, so she turned the last sheet out of the typewriter and separated it from the carbon-copy. She read it through, making a few small corrections, then laid it aside.

It was still fairly early in the evening, and she wondered for a moment if she should look for the others. They had probably gone into Dorchester for a drink. But Paul would be with them, and anyway the months inside the projection had taken away her taste for alcohol and cigarettes.

She tidied the desk, then went into the bathroom and undressed and washed. Afterwards, wearing her dressing-gown, she sat again on the mat in front of the gas-fire and stared blankly into the flames. She wished she had a pack of cards; she felt like a game of patience.

Then the door opened and closed, and Paul was there.

Julia said: ‘Paul, go away.’

He walked across the room, sat down in the armchair. ‘I thought I’d drop in to say goodnight. We haven’t had much chance to talk today.’

‘I’ve nothing to say to you. I told you this morning: I’ve finished with you for good. I’m happy now.’

‘So you say. That isn’t what John Eliot says about you.’

A trout snaps at bait without knowing what it is; Julia recognized it, couldn’t resist it. ‘What do you mean?’

‘He thinks you’re over-tired. Been projecting too long. He wants you to take long leave.’

‘Paul, you’re lying.’ She closed her eyes, turned her face away. ‘For God’s sake, get out! ‘

She heard him tap a cigarette against the side of a packet, then a match struck. When she looked back at him he was holding the match vertically so that the flame burned high. He blew it out with a long funnel of smoke, then flicked the match with his nail so that the black end flew away. He always did that, and she wondered how many thousands of times he had done it in the six years she hadn’t seen him.

‘Do you have an ash-tray?’ he said, curling the match in his fingers.

‘I don’t smoke.’

He dropped the match on the carpet. ‘Such will-power. You used to smoke more than me.’

‘Paul, I don’t know what you’re doing in here, nor what you want, but it isn’t going to work. I don’t want you here, I don’t want you in the project, I never want to see you again! ‘

‘The same old paranoia,’ he said. ‘I’m handy to have around, aren’t I? Without me you’d have no one to blame for your shortcomings.’

She moved so that she turned her back towards him. Where were the inner strengths she had found during the day? Had they been a delusion?

‘If you don’t get out of here in the next five seconds, I’m going to call the others.’

‘Supposing they could hear you,’ he said. ‘And what would happen then? We have our showdown? OK, if that’s what you want. We’ll tell them that we are, after all, old and intimate friends, and that you’re having doubts about the work. I’ll say that I agree you’re over-tired, and after all didn’t I live with you long enough to know you better than I know myself? You look pale and haggard, Julia. Perhaps you should have a holiday?’

‘So you do want me out of the project! ‘

‘Only if you force me.’

She said nothing, staring at the carpet.

‘Turn round so I can see you, Julia.’

‘Why?’

‘I can always tell what you’re thinking when I see your face.’ She didn’t move, and in a moment heard him leave his chair. She braced herself against his touch, but he walked past her, flicking ash towards the gas-fire as he did so. He sat on the bed, facing her.

‘Why do you want to get into the project so badly?’ she said.

‘I told you: it’s the finest opportunity of my career.’

‘You self-seeking bastard!‘

‘And you’re in it for totally unselfish reasons, I suppose?’

‘I’m involved because I believe in it.’

‘Then for once we agree,’ Paul said. ‘There’s only one Ridpath projector, and I want to use it.’

‘I, I, I. Never mind the others.’

‘I’m needed because I’ve got something that none of you have. An objective and intelligent viewpoint.’

She glared up at him. ‘Are you trying to say - ?’

‘The word was objective. I was hired by the trustees because the projection is subjective and indulgent. They’re paying for results, and that means new ideas.’

‘Which you have, presumably.’

‘I have one idea.’

‘What is it?’

Paul had his calculating grin again. ‘If I told you it would become your idea, wouldn’t it? Let’s just say that your little world has one omission so obvious I’m surprised no one thought of it before. I intend to rectify it.’

‘You’re going to change the projection! ‘

‘Not at all. I know how dear it is to you. After all, we mustn’t ever change the projection.’

‘Paul, you’re interfering in something you don’t understand! ‘

‘I understand only too well.’ Paul’s voice had changed from false reasonableness to genuine harshness. ‘It’s a fantasy-world for emotionally immature academics. All this talk of psychodrama! What we’re talking about is failure, inadequacy! Look at you, you little slut. Incapable of enjoying sex in real life, you have to dream up some half-wit mechanic to screw you every night.’

‘You’ve been reading my reports! ‘

‘I’m not obsessed with you. I’ve read them all. Not just yours.’

She felt a surge of hysterical rage, and she scrambled to her feet, reaching out for him. She raised her hand to hit him, but he caught it and twisted her wrist painfully. She tore herself away, kicked out at him, then threw herself face-down across the armchair and began to sob.

Paul waited. He finished his cigarette, ground it out in the grate, then lit another.

‘I’d like to meet this guy you’ve conjured up. I can see him now. Well-hung, and as stupid as - ’

‘Paul, shut up!’ Sobbing, she tried to cover her ears. ‘Go away! ‘

‘And of course he fucks you better than I ever could. I’ll bet he’s everything you said I wasn’t.’

She closed her mind to the voice, the intrusive, damaging presence. He always talked dirty to anger her, because he knew she couldn’t stand it.

He had made her think of Greg, and after this the young man in Wessex, whom everybody liked, whose only fault was that he didn’t know how to satisfy her, seemed safe and gentle and reassuring.

She began to calm down, and realized that Paul had stopped talking. She lay where she was, sprawled across the floor with her head and chest in the seat of the armchair, breathing deeply to steady herself, trying to restore order to the chaos of her emotions.

The projection used mental techniques; the mnemonics trained the mind, taught discipline and self-control. The experience of the projection itself had a similar effect: it taught, one the power of the unconscious mind, the way to use the conscious.

She thought: it’s Greg! Paul cannot come to terms with the fact that my unconscious has created Greg!

But not David Harkman ... no mention of David. He doesn’t know, because no one knows.

David was the strength with which she could resist him.

Once in her life she had defied Paul by leaving him, and suddenly she realized that she had, quite unwittingly, done it again. His ego could not accept the notion that her Wessex lover might be better in bed than he was.

She raised her face from the cushion, and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. As she turned back to face Paul she discovered that as she had sprawled into the chair her shortie dressing-gown had ridden up, exposing her.

Paul sitting on the bed, watched as she tried to cover herself. ‘I’ve seen it all before, Julia.’

‘You can say what you like. I don’t care what you look at, I don’t care what you think happens in Wessex, and I don’t even care if you go there and see for yourself. I just want you to get out of my room, otherwise I’ll bring everyone in the house here.’

She said the words calmly and factually, for once expressing her true and total feelings.

Paul stared silently for a moment, and then stood up. As he did so, Julia realized that his watching of her exposed body had been more callous than she could have imagined, for as he turned she saw that he was noticeably aroused.

He took off the jacket of his suit, and hung it on the hook on the door.

‘Don’t get any ideas, Paul.’

‘I came to say goodnight, remember? You know what that means. We were always good together.’

‘Paul, I’ll scream if you come near me! ‘

But she didn’t scream, even then. A paralysis held her, the old familiar paralysis. Paul stepped quickly to her, and put his hand across her mouth, pressing his thumb and fingers into her cheeks. It was the first time he had deliberately touched her, and as if this released a long-coiled spring, she struggled violently to escape. His hand swiped against the side of her head, half stunning her. He moved behind her, still pressing his hand across her mouth, pulling her head back.

‘You like me rough, you little bitch. Well, you’re going to enjoy this more than ever ...’