Dream Paris (13 page)

THE LIOPLEURODON

T
HE PUB EMPTIED,
everyone pushing their way out into the street. I followed the crowd and bowled into Francis, who had stopped in the middle of the road, momentarily disorientated by the Dream World sky. Deep purple, rising up and up, swirls of galaxies hanging overhead. I’d forgotten how tall it was. The sky is deeper there, the stars more enfolded. You got the sense of universe after universe tucked away in the folds between the billows of the clouds, of other worlds lost amongst them, stranger than you could imagine.

And then we were swept on by the crowd rushing down the street, we found ourselves in the noise and confusion that reigned by the harbour. I saw the boats bobbing up and down on the dark waters, the plants set out on the decks glowing in the dark. I heard screams, I heard shouting (
the ropes, get the ropes!
) and then people were pushing past carrying nets. And now I could see a flash of white ahead, I could see the monstrous shape flapping its way onwards, see the great mouth wide agape, see the rows of teeth shining. I faltered, but the crowd pushed me on. Something awoke inside me and I remembered walking into the parks, back in Dream London, I remembered that calm courage that came in putting oneself to the side and surrendering to the greater good. A man was at my side. Red hair, knitted jumper, denim.

“Take this.” He pushed a rope into my hands.

“What do I do?”

“We’re going to try and catch it! The meat is good.”

The whole town seemed awake now. I saw jaws snapping in the flicker of torches, I saw flames flickering as more hurried to join the melee, forcing the animal away from the water. I gripped the rope tighter and ran forwards.

And then the music started. The sound of trumpets and cornets. My legs gave way. I fell to the ground, hands pushed over my ears, the crowd surging over me, and I curled up against the kicking, lost in the awful, mind-turning terror. I was only half aware of someone taking hold of my shoulder, lifting me up, pushing me back through the crowd.

I
WAS SAT
back in the pub, back on the same bench, drinking hot sweet tea, Francis beside me.

“You okay?”

“Sorry,” I muttered, hot with shame. “I lost it. You must think me a terrible coward.”

“I think you’re very brave. You were running towards that creature.”

“I panicked.”

“You have PTSD. You shouldn’t be here. You should be back home receiving proper care and attention.”

“My parents need me!”

“No, Anna. It doesn’t work that way. Your parents look after you, not the other way around.”

The door opened and a jubilant crowd pushed their way in, Mandy, Taylor and Cheryl amongst them. They were ready to celebrate.

“They got it!” called Mandy. “Cornered it against the cliff, moved in with knives and swords and machetes and hacked it to death.”

“Then they cut open its guts!” called Cheryl. “The smell! It was hanging! There was this, like, white liquid just spilling out over the ground. It made their boots steam! And then they were in there, pulling it open. One man was shouting, his hands were burning. They pulled out all this stuff. Half-digested fish. And other creatures! Like this big octopus! And other things it had eaten…”

I sat quietly in the corner, half-listening to the excited bubble of conversation. More drinks, beer and gin, they were steering clear of the cider now. The whole pub was celebrating.

“There’ll be steaks tomorrow!” announced Lizzie, slamming down more glasses on the table. “Steaks for everyone! I heard that Liopleurodon was the biggest yet!”

“About time!” A big man, blood still on his cheek. Hadn’t he noticed? “We’ve been waiting months for one of the bastards to come here!”

I looked at Francis. Didn’t he think it odd? They’d waited months and one attacked the very night we arrived. Coincidence?

“What was it doing here?” I asked. Taylor misunderstood my question.

“The Dream World finds its way everywhere, Anna. It found its way into dinosaur times, and the dinosaurs carved themselves a niche in the Dream World. No one owns the water.”

“You’re not drinking, Anna,” interrupted Mandy. She had an arm around Francis, her breasts pushing into him. She raised a glass of gin and I noticed that Francis’s glass was still full.
Getting her drunk
, I thought.
Don’t know why he’s bothering. She’s not putting up any resistance.

“Have a drink, Anna?” called Francis.

“I think I’ve had enough. I think I might go to bed now.”

“Good idea,” said Francis. “We’ve got a busy day ahead.” He winked at Mandy. “And Lizzie said I had to be in bed for eleven.”

What had happened to all that concern of a few minutes ago? I had PTSD. I shouldn’t be here.

“Well, I’m off up.”

“I’ll be up later,” said Francis.

“Oi-oi!” called Taylor, and Cheryl laughed so much that she snorted brandy through her nose.

I rose to my feet, shaken, confused, annoyed. What about ’Chelle? Didn’t Francis care about his fiancée?

“I’ll see you in the morning, then,” I said. “What time?”

“I’ll knock you up at six.”

Knock you up
. Mandy and the rest thought this was hilarious.

“Goodnight, then. It was lovely to meet you all,
ladies
.”

As I pushed through the merry crowd, a snatch of conversation drifted from behind.

“…
ditched little Miss Prim-and-Posh. Now we can have some fun
…”

You’re welcome to it,
I thought.

L
IZZIE LED ME
through a doorway by the bar and I stopped, wary of a trap. There was something here, concealed. Then I realised it was the wire from Francis’s backpack, no doubt carried up to his room as promised. What power did that wire have that allowed it to hide itself away so, I wondered? What thread hid itself so as not to be seen?

“Ten o’clock,” said Lizzie, looking at the big old clock on the wall. “Shouldn’t be that much of a walk.”

I followed her up a spiralling stair, wooden treads tilted at all angles, climbing flight after flight. The plaster on the walls was old and damp, there was a smell of fish and boiled mutton.

“How tall is this building?”

“Three stories,” said Lizzie. “But you know how it is with stairs.”

I did. I remembered my house back in Dream London. You walked up three stories to get to a first floor bedroom. Dream logic.

“And here it is,” said Lizzie. The stairs arrived at a long corridor, lined with five doors painted red, green, yellow, fuchsia and aardvark. The grey thread from the backpack trailed into the yellow room. “You’re in the fuchsia room,” said Lizzie, opening the door. “Now, don’t forget to leave by the far stairs. Try and come back the way you came and it will take all day. You’ll want to check out by eleven. Is there anything else?”

I opened my mouth to reply. I was interrupted by a long moan coming from the room next door.

“Don’t worry,” said Lizzie. “That’s just the General. She’s always like that. Good night, love.”

“Good night.”

The door closed and I found myself in a room that was surprisingly clean and comfortable. A brass bedstead, a patchwork quilt. An oil lamp, a basin, a pitcher.

Another moan.

I opened my bag and swore. Francis had been right.

“I should have brought a book,” I muttered.

It was hot. I stripped down to my underwear and got into bed.

I
AWOKE TO
the feel of glorious sunlight dripping down over my face. I yawned and stretched luxuriously, opened my eyes and, I’m ashamed to say, I screamed.

Two painted blue eyes gazed down at me, a porcelain face was thrust close to mine. I scrambled backwards, tangling in the bedclothes, fell backwards out of the bed. The door burst open and Francis tumbled into the room, standing over me where I lay on the floor, struggling to free myself from the sheets. Francis, stripped to the waist, shaving foam covering his face, flipping the figure back onto the bed, its golden hair flying…

“A doll!” he said. “Another doll! Where are they coming from?”

I finally got myself free of the blankets and clambered to my feet, pulling the one sheet around myself. Francis had broken off one of the doll’s arms: it lay on the bed, hand turned towards me, the faint outline of fingernails.

I scratched my cheek, thinking.

“Does it have a letter?”

We went through the doll’s clothes, me very aware of Francis’s half-naked torso almost touching me. The doll was made of stuffed cloth, I noticed. Only its hands and face were china.

“Nothing,” said Francis. I went to take a look out of the window. Gulls skipped over the harbour, skipped over the sea, just out of snapping range of the black and white Liopleurodons that jumped and played in the foaming sea of the channel. The sun was yellow and poured down like butter in this little pocket world. The sea was blue and the jumpers of the sailors were narrow stripes of blue on white. If the view was different, I was too distracted by the doll to notice.

Francis withdrew to the door. “Listen, let’s get dressed and go down to breakfast.”

I gazed down at the remains of the doll. A life size model of a young woman, every detail beautifully painted, from the golden strands of her hair to the cupid bow of her lips to the laces on her pretty sandals.

I looked around for the bathroom. There wasn’t one. Just a pitcher and bowl and a chamber pot. Nothing there to put off a former resident of Dream London. I used the pot, covered it and pushed it under the bed. There were fresh clothes laid out, just as promised on the meal ticket in my wallet. Cotton knickers, white stockings, a grey pinafore, a straw hat.
A bed for the night, a good meal and change of clothes.
Not the sort of outfit I’d have chosen, but better than the clothes that had got soaked in the canal yesterday and had now dried to a cardboard creak.

As I finished dressing there was a knock on the door and Francis reappeared, dressed in a blue jacket covered with gold frogging. His trousers were blue with a red stripe down the side. I laughed out loud.

“I thought I looked rather dashing,” said Francis with a grin. “You look very nice, I must say.”

I beamed, and then I remembered Mandy last night, I imagined the lithe dancer’s body wrapped around Francis.

“What time did you get to bed last night?”

“Eleven, like I was told.”

Did you think of ’Chelle?

“Come on. Let’s get some breakfast.”

Francis’s great backpack was propped outside the door, the wire trailing back down the stairs. He knelt by it and frowned.

“It’s let out twenty miles of wire in the night. Those stairs have grown much taller.”

We walked down the far stairs, as instructed. There weren’t so many stairs going down as there had been coming up.

“It took forever for me to climb up last night,” said Francis. “I almost missed the tide.”

“The tide?”

“Yes. Lizzie explained it to me, you see…”

I’d figured it out for myself. Twenty miles across the English Channel, distances changed in the Dream World. Someone had linked this floor of the guest house to the tides…

What a way to travel.

DREAM CALAIS

W
E STEPPED INTO
the dining room of a little Dream French café bar.

It was obvious from the quality of the light, from the way it made the varnish of the teak-panelled walls glow, that we were in a different country. The dimensions of the room were foreign, as were the little round tables surrounded by bent wooden chairs, the blue and white enamel on the round metal ashtrays, the smell of coffee and tobacco. There was something exotic about the man who entered the room: the dark pomaded hair, the trimmed moustache, the long white apron covering his trousers. He looked like the French waiter that he was.

“
Bonjour mademoiselle, Bonjour monsieur
!
(2)Vous prenez un petit dejeuner
?”

“He’s asking if we want breakfast,” said Anna.

“I figured that out,” said Francis, witheringly. “What’s
(2)vous
?”

I didn’t know. That was the first time I’d heard Dream relative pronouns; at the time I knew nothing about l’Académie Française. How can I explain the difference between
tu(2)
and
(2)vous
? The way that the intonation implies your relative status, the way that the correct pronunciation of
(2)vous
allows a French waiter to let you know that you were his superior, but only just.

Well, imagine this, you’re a five-year-old child and the teacher has just walked into the classroom and caught you with your hand in her handbag. Imagine how you would feel, imagine how your guilt would come up against her authority when she asked you what
you
were doing. Well, that would be
tu(10)
. And when you spoke back to her? You would call her
(10)vous
.

The aristocracy of Dream France could invest an exact measure of authority into every conversation.