(1989) Dreamer

by Peter James

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, when he had finished.

  ‘Are you all right, Sam?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes – I—’ her voice trailed away.

  ‘You’re looking a bit peaky. Are you working hard?’

  ‘No more than usual. I had a bit of a shock today, that’s all.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘I—’ She felt her face reddening. ‘I . . . do you – do you know much about dreams, Bamford?’

  ‘Dreams? Anyone who’d tell you they know a lot about dreams would be lying. I probably know as much as anybody. Who do you ask?’

  ‘Do you use them in your work?’

  ‘Sure I do. They’re very important – but there’s still an awful lot we don’t understand about them.’

  ‘Adam’s penis – the forbidden fruit,’ Richard expounded. ‘It’s obvious. The serpent. Classic Freud. It was Adam’s schlonker.’

  ‘How clever,’ cooed the blonde. ‘I’ve never thought of that.’

  Sam sipped her Perrier, then turned the glass around in her hands and looked at the psychiatrist. ‘Do you think it’s possible to – dream the future?’ she said, feeling slightly self-conscious.

  ‘Precognition?’

  ‘Is that what it’s called?’

  ‘Do you mean dream events that actually happen?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He picked up his glass and sipped his port with such an expression of pleasure she wondered if she was missing out not having any. ‘Fine stuff, this,’ he said. ‘Fine port. I’m going to have one hell of a headache tomorrow. Is that precognition?’

  She tilted her head: ‘I’m being serious, Bamford.’

  He smiled, then frowned. ‘Is this to do with the air disaster on the news this evening? What Richard was just talking about?’

  She nodded.

  He studied her. ‘I have patients that see the future all the time.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘They think so.’

  ‘And do they?’

  ‘I’d be a rich man, wouldn’t I? I’d get them to tell me the winners of horse races. I could sell investment tips to Richard. We’d clean up on the Market.’

  There was a loud pop above her and Sam felt a sharp pain in her hand. She let out a shriek, and stared down. Slivers of glass littered the table all around her. A large shard stuck out of her Perrier water. A small stain of blood spread across her index finger. She looked around, disoriented. Everyone was staring up at the chandelier.

  ‘How odd,’ someone said.

  ‘Must have been some paint on it; paint can do that,’ said another voice.

  ‘Must be one of those current surges,’ someone else said. ‘You know, in the commercial breaks everyone rushes to the loo. It overloads the electrical circuits.’

  ‘But it’s after midnight.’

  Sam stared up at the chandelier. One of the bulbs had exploded; there was a solitary jagged shard left sticking out of the socket.

  A cold prickle of fear swept through her. The pop echoed around her head, faded then came back louder, carrying with it a dim memory from the past that was fuzzy and unclear.

  She frowned and looked down: at the grapes on the cheeseboard, at the tiny slivers of broken glass that glinted in the candlelight, at the knuckleduster jewels on the blonde’s podgy fingers, at the dark empty silence of the flat beyond the table. The memory pricked through her mind like the pain of the prick in her finger. Then, once more, she caught Andreas’s eye; he curled his gloved fingers around his glass and smiled at her.

  6

  Sam heard the sound of a tap and the vigorous brushing of teeth, and turned over in bed with the uncomfortable realisation that a new day had arrived without the previous one having departed. She opened her eyes slowly; they felt raw, bound with wire. A shaft of light spilled out of the bathroom door and was mopped up by the grey darkness, the lingering, theatrical darkness of early morning in winter. She could almost feel someone’s hand on the dimmer lever, slowly moving it.

  Cue daylight!

  Enter Richard, stage right, from bathroom. He wears a navy towelling dressing gown from which his legs stick out, white and hairy. His blond hair is wet and slicked back, and there is a spot of blood on his chin where he has nicked a zit. He stretches back his lips to reveal shining white teeth.

  Cut to product shot.

  ZING! The toothpaste that more and more dentists are recommending.

  ZING! The ecologically sound way to brush your teeth. Yes, folks! Because when you’ve finished the paste, you can eat the tube!

  Yet another Personal Nourishment System brought to you by the manufacturers of Napalm. Plaque removed. Foliage decimated. Faces peeled away.

  Sam jumped, shivering.

  Someone walking over your grave, her aunt used to say grimly.

  She tried to switch off the weird commercial that was playing in her mind in her twilight half-awake state. The hypnopompic state, she had read in an article once. Hypnogogic and hypnopompic, when you saw weird things as you drifted off to sleep or woke up.

  She relaxed for a moment, but then felt a sense of gloom creeping around her, enveloping her. Something bad. Like waking up after you got drunk and knowing you’d done something you regretted. Only it wasn’t that. It was something worse, this time. She tried to think but it eluded her. Her index finger was hurting like hell. She freed it from under the sheet and peeled off the thin strip of Elastoplast bound around it. There was a crash which shook the room.

  ‘Bugger.’

  She looked up, blinking against the brightness of the bedside lamp which Richard had switched on, and saw him lying on his face on the floor, his legs pinioned together inside his trousers. He hauled himself up onto his hands and stared around the room, with a puzzled expression.

  ‘Are you OK?’ She glanced at the clock. 0544. He was late.

  ‘Think I’m still a bit pissed.’ He rolled over, sat on the floor, tugged his trousers off, then pulled them on again slowly, getting each foot down the correct leg this time.

  ‘I’m not surprised, the way you and Bamford were carrying on.’

  He rubbed his head and screwed up his eyes. ‘We drank nearly two bottles of that port.’

  ‘Why don’t you have a lie-in?’

  ‘Japan’s going bananas.’

  ‘It can probably go bananas without you.’

  ‘Could be up four hundred points by now.’ He sat down on the bed, screwed up his eyes and wiped his face with his hands. ‘I’ve got a mega hangover,’ he said. ‘A serious wipe-out.’

  He stumbled into his shoes, kissed her and she smelled the fumes on his breath.

  ‘I wouldn’t drive,’ she said. Take a taxi.’

  ‘I’ll be all right. Fucking good evening,’ he said. ‘Great scoff.’

  There was a click, and then the room went dark. She lay back and closed her eyes again. She heard the front door slam and the room was very silent, suddenly. So quiet you could hear a pin drop.

  Or a light bulb explode.

  She fell into a deep sleep.

  She was woken by the roar of a bulldozer outside. A launch travelling fast up-river, crunching through the water. Someone was whistling ‘Colonel Bogey’. She slipped her feet out onto the thick carpet and sat on the edge of the bed staring at them; the varnish on her toenails was chipped. A few traces of hairs showed on her calves; time for another waxing; she smelled the foul smell of the wax, and still had the small yellowy mark on the front of her shin where the idiot girl had burnt her last time.

  There was the sound of a pneumatic drill, then a louder noise, from above: an aeroplane coming into the City Airport a few hundred yards up the river.

  She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the wall, and sat up straighter.

  Deportment, young lady.

  She ran her hands into her long brown hair and squeezed it tightly; she lifted it up and let it flop back down, giving herself a sideways glance in the mirror. Nice hair, rich, brown, chic.


  Chic.

  She could smile about it now, because it no longer mattered. But the sting had stayed with her for years.

  That morning in London thirteen – fourteen – years ago, when her aunt had taken her, under silent protest, to the Lucy Clayton modelling school.

  ‘It’ll do you good,’ her aunt had said. ‘Give you confidence.’

  She could still see the withering scorn on the reedy interviewer’s face. ‘You’re too small,’ she had said. ‘Much too small. Five-foot five, are you? We need five-foot seven here. At least five-foot seven, I’m afraid.’ She had pushed Sam’s face around as if she were a horse. ‘Quite a nice face dear, very English Rose. You’re really quite pretty, dear, quite chic.’ The woman had said the word disdainfully, as if it were a deformity, not a compliment. ‘Chic, but not beautiful.’ Then the woman had turned to her aunt. ‘Nice legs. Probably her best feature. Not long enough, of course, to be a leg model.’

  Sam padded across the carpet and pulled the curtain open a fraction. It was a flat grey morning out there, a good hour yet from full light. She stared out at the brown water of the Thames, stretching out into the distance like a grubby tarpaulin. A grimy black and white police launch droned through it, rocking sharply, cutting it like a blunt knife. An empty lighter shifted about restlessly, moored to an enormous rusting black buoy. She heard the cry of a gull and saw the shadow of a bird, swooping low, slamming the surface of the water for an instant. The cold seeped through the glass and through her skin, and she hugged herself with her arms, rubbing her hands up and down them.

  A duet of drills hammered in the building site below. A workman in a donkey jacket and orange hard hat walked slowly across the site, through the stark glare of the floodlighting, carefully picking his path, heading towards a fire burning in a black oil drum. Another workman somewhere out of sight was still whistling, this time ragged strains of ‘Waltzing Matilda’.

  At the edge of the site a bulldozer reversed, dug, swivelled, dumped, behind a hoarding with huge red letters. RIVERSIDE DEVELOPMENT. RIVERSIDE LIFESTYLES. The workman stopped, knelt down and pawed at the ground with his hand. He pulled something out, stared at it, rubbed it with his finger, then tossed it away over his shoulder.

  Sam saw the ball of flame rising high into the sky, the engine showering sparks, bouncing, dancing.

  The image froze for an instant in front of her and she could hear nothing. Silence.

  Her finger was stinging as if there was a sliver of glass inside the skin and she put it in her mouth and sucked it hard. She saw the cold smile on Andreas Berensen’s face. The fingers of his leather glove curling around the glass. Richard had been fawning over him: filling his glass first, asking his opinion first on each of the wines. Toadying. Sucking up. Richard never used to be like this. He used to be interested in her, used to be a proud man; Richard never used to suck up to anyone.

  The cacophony outside started again, louder, deafeningly loud. Thought for the Day was beginning on the radio; she heard the cheery voice of Rabbi Blue, rich as treacle. ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘how many people remember their dreams? I wonder sometimes whether God has dreams?’

  Clothes. Dressing. Image. What to wear today? She yawned, tried to concentrate, to focus on the day ahead. A first cut screening this morning, then lunch with Ken. She went into the shower, felt the fine spray, turned the temperature down cold. The needles of water drummed against her skin, hard, hurting. She came out and dried herself vigorously.

  Better. Heavy dose of negative ions. One per cent better. What time had they gone to bed? Three? Four? Port. Coffee. More port. More coffee. Andreas had left first, when Richard and Bamford started telling jokes. Harriet had lectured her on the state of the world. Harriet was worried about plastic; it gave out gases; you could get cancer just from sitting on a vinyl car seat.

  She opened her wardrobe. First cuts: tense, tense, tense. Who was going to be at the screening? Hawksmuir. Horrible Hawksmuir. Jake yesterday and Hawksmuir today. Her two least favourite people. Dress to kill. It was a John Galliano and Cornelia James day, she decided.

  She winced at the pain in her finger. From one tiny cut? Then she winced again from the sudden sharp pain she now felt in her head that went down her neck, deep into her stomach. She felt as if she had been slit open by a filleting knife. Weird. She felt weird. Seriously weird.

  She put on a Galliano two piece. Battle dress. Fashion, she thought. Fashion was bewildering. As soon as you got the hang of it, it changed. She pulled out a stunning Cornelia James shawl and draped it around her shoulders.

  Better. Great. Terrific.

  She took a handkerchief out of a drawer, a small white handkerchief with French lace edging and her initials, S.C. embroidered in blue in one corner, and put it in her handbag. She tugged a comb through her hair, studied herself in the mirror then smiled, pleased with the effect. ‘Zap!’ she said. ‘Kapow!’ She clapped her hands together and walked out of the bedroom, wondering why those words had suddenly come into her head.

  ‘No, you’ll never get away with it,’ said a voice with a deep American accent.

  She heard Nicky giggle. There were several explosions.

  ‘Not this time, Batman.’

  KAPOW! SOCK! BIFF! BAM! ZAP!

  ‘We’ll see about that!’

  Nicky and Helen were sitting at the table, watching the television. Nicky was holding his spoon in the air and milk was trickling down into his shirt cuff. Helen, spellbound, hadn’t noticed, and Sam felt a flash of irritation. She grabbed the spoon and staunched the flow of milk with a kitchen towel.

  Helen stood up. ‘Sorry, Mrs Curtis – I—’

  ‘OK,’ Sam said, slightly coolly, giving Nicky back his spoon. Then she turned off the television.

  ‘Aww!’ said Nicky.

  Helen sat down again, blushing.

  ‘Nicky’s watching too much television, Helen. He shouldn’t be watching it while he’s eating.’ She smiled at Helen, realising she had sounded fierce, trying to reassure her.

  ‘Sorry,’ Helen said again.

  Sam sat down at the table and poured out some orange juice. Nicky eyed her sulkily.

  ‘What’s happening at school today, Tiger?’

  The Esso ads had worked on Nicky. When he was four he was a tiger. Ran around on all fours. Pounced. Hid in cupboards with a freebie tiger’s tail sticking out. ‘Tiger in here! Tiger in here!’

  He stretched out his arm, seized the Sugar Puffs pack and poured a second helping sloppily into his bowl, spilling them all around. Without bothering to pour any milk, he shovelled cereal into his mouth.

  ‘Grumpy, this morning?’ Sam asked.

  ‘I didn’t sleep very well.’

  ‘Mummy’s tired today too.’

  Mummy feels like shit.

  ‘You were making noises,’ he said.

  ‘Did we keep you awake? I’m sorry.’

  He shoved in more cereal, chewing with his mouth open.

  ‘Thought you were a Tiger, not a camel.’

  He closed his mouth and continued chewing, then stretched out and took a mouthful of juice. ‘Batman,’ he said. ‘I want Batman.’

  ‘Too much television is not good for you.’

  ‘You make television.’

  ‘Just the ads.’

  ‘Ads are yucky. You made the ads for that new cereal. It’s yuck. It tastes like dog’s do.’

  ‘And how do you know what dog’s do tastes like?’

  ‘It tastes of yuck.’

  She caught Helen’s eye. Helen looked at her with the uncertainty of a child looking at her teacher. Sam finished her juice and glanced at her watch. Eight-fifteen.

  ‘Mummy’s late. She’s got to go.’

  She went through into the living area to switch on the answering machine, and stared around the huge room with a faint feeling of dismay. The refectory dining table was still covered in coffee cups, half-empty glasses, overflowing ashtrays, butter dishes, and napkins strewn around like confetti
. Two half-full bottles of Perrier water were missing their caps; she walked over and rummaged around for them. She found the stopper of the port decanter and put that on. A sliver of glass sparkled at her from an open salt cellar. She looked up warily at the iron chandelier. The one jagged shard of glass was still in the socket. The rest of the bulbs were fine, except that they were still on. She walked over to the wall and switched them off.

  The room was filled with a grey light that hung heavily, thick with the smell of stale smoke and evaporating alcohol, a greyness that seeped into her skin like damp, that would make her clothes and her hair smell of cigar smoke if she stayed much longer. She glanced around at Richard’s roll-top desk in the corner, his computer terminal beside it, at the grand piano with an antique opium-smoking kit on the lid, the two sofas down the far end by the television and the gas-log fire, the armorial shields on the bare brick walls, the swords, the medieval artefacts, the huge copper ladle for pouring gold that Richard had bought when the Royal Mint was being demolished. Richard’s things, relics of his family’s bloody past, portraits of dead ancestors, scrolls with thick red seals. Bare bricks and oak. A man’s flat. It always had been and always would be. A helicopter roared past outside, a dark shadow passing the window.

  ‘Bye, Tiger.’ She stood by the front door, struggling into her coat.

  Nicky came out of the kitchen. ‘Bye,’ he said flatly, walking towards his room.

  ‘Hey! Tiger!’

  He stopped and turned.

  ‘Don’t I get a kiss goodbye?’

  He hesitated for a moment, then trotted over to her. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll forgive you. This time.’

  ‘And if you’re very good, I’ll forgive you.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For being rude to your mummy.’

  He pouted, then kissed her, and put his arms around her neck. ‘I’m sorry, Mummy.’ He kissed her again then turned and scampered off.

  ‘Have a good day at school.’

  ‘Friday! Yippee!’

  Sam opened the front door and picked the Daily Mail off the mat. She turned to her horoscope. Pisces.