by Peter James
It was a brief but courteous note from the secretary of the Royal Yacht Squadron. ‘The committee regrets that it cannot permit its premises to be depicted in advertisements, regardless of the singular merits of your particular project.’
Damn.
It was a great script. The crusty old buffer sitting outside the clubhouse pulling out his spectacles and a packet of condoms falling out of his pocket with them.
You can’t teach an old sea dog new tricks. But you can kill him with a new disease. Wear a condom. It’s an admiral thing to do.
She picked up the next letter, then put it down again. Her hands trembling, her eyes damp. Fear. It seeped through her, deep inside her, cold as melting ice. She opened her handbag and pulled out What Your Dreams Really Say, and glanced again at the brief biography of the author, then picked up the phone and dialled Directory Enquiries.
‘I’d like the number for Hull University, please.’ Sam covered the mouthpiece. ‘I dreamed it. I dreamed I fell – from a balcony.’
Claire gazed back at her without replying for a moment . . . almost – almost, it struck Sam, as if she thought it was amusing.
The operator gave her the number and she wrote it down.
‘How did you like Mrs Wolf?’ Claire asked.
‘I thought she was weird.’
‘She’s very accurate, I find. Didn’t you?’
‘I hope not,’ Sam said, staring down at the number, and dialling it.
‘Hull University,’ said the voice that answered the phone.
‘I’d like to speak to Dr Colin Hare in the Psychology Department, please.’
‘Putting you through.’
‘Psychology,’ said a man’s voice, abrupt, slightly irritable.
‘Could I speak to Dr Hare?’
‘May I ask who’s calling?’
‘Yes, my name is—’ Sam saw Claire watching her, and felt uncomfortable – ‘Mrs Curtis.’
‘Can I tell him what it is about?’
‘Yes, she said, ‘It’s about his work on dreams. I just wondered if it was possible to have a word?’
‘He’s on a call at the moment.’
‘May I hold?’
‘Yes. You can hold.’
‘Thank you.’ She looked at Claire. ‘I’ve got a splitting headache. Would you mind nipping down to the chemist on the Strand and getting me some Disprin?’
‘Sure, I’ll just finish this—’
‘Now,’ Sam said, more snappily than she had meant.
Claire stood up slowly. Sam handed her a fiver, and Claire walked out of the room.
‘Yes, hello?’ A gentle, slightly nervous voice.
‘Is that Dr Hare?’
‘Speaking.’
‘I’m sorry to – er – bother you . . . I’m calling you because I’m desperate. I need help.’ Her voice was faltering, breaking up and tears were coming in and choking the words in her throat.
‘Tell me,’ he said patiently, as if he had all the time in the world to listen. ‘Do tell me.’
‘I’m – things are happening. My dreams . . . I’m having—’
Calm down, Sam, for God’s sake! Take it gently. Don’t sound like a fruitcake.
‘I keep having dreams which come true, but I can’t read them. They’re slightly different . . . I think I might even be making the future happen. Does that sound daft?’
‘Well, I – could you give me a bit more detail?’
‘Would it be possible to come and see you? Nobody believes me. I really need to talk to someone who knows about dreams. If I could just have half an hour of your time?’ She felt a bit calmer. ‘I don’t think I can really explain it that well over the phone, but I think my life is in danger. And my family, and other people. I just need someone who can maybe explain a few things about dreams to me. If you don’t have the time yourself, perhaps you could suggest someone?’
‘I’d be happy to have a chat. Precognitory dreams are something we are studying here at the moment, so you’ve called at a good time . . . Unfortunately it’ll have to be in April or May, as I’m off to the States on Friday for about two months, lecturing. Perhaps I could contact you when I get back?’
She clutched the phone hard in her hand. ‘I must see you before you go. Please. I can’t – I – I could be dead by then.’
Idiot.
Stupid thing to say.
‘Oh dear,’ he said. There was a silence. ‘That does sound very drastic.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to sound dramatic – but it’s true.’
‘I could see you late tomorrow afternoon. Is that any good?’
‘Yes, I—’
‘Where are you phoning from?’
‘London.’
‘It’s a bit of a journey.’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Old?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thirty-two – well – almost thirty-three.’
‘Ah, good, yes – we are studying subjects in exactly your age group. Ah – if you came up, would you – ah – be prepared – ah – to spend a night in our sleep laboratory – it’s very pleasant – at the university – it’s just like a hotel bedroom – apart from the wiring of course. It would help us – and it might help you?’
‘I’d try anything.’
‘I know that we have a – ah – vacancy in the laboratory tomorrow. That would tie in rather well.’ He had begun to sound quite enthusiastic. ‘I’m going to be – yes – I – I’m at my flat tomorrow afternoon – just opposite the university – perhaps – if you come there – we can have a quiet chat – first?’
He gave her the directions and she repeated them carefully, writing them down, thanking him again and hung up, then looked at her Filofax for any meetings she would have to cancel. She felt a surge of excitement, of hope. Maybe a simple answer. Or would he just say the same too? Sharp antennae and coincidences?
She picked up the next letter on the pile, and opened it.
On the floor below, the front door swung shut behind Claire as she walked out into the street, and crossed over towards the chemist.
31
She stared out of the window of the train, at the Humber river seeping through the drab countryside like ink spilt across a school desk, and at a cluster of brick chimney stacks on the horizon, like tent poles supporting the dark canopy of sky.
A man walking down the corridor, stopped and peered in at her, stared for some moments and moved on, then the train went into a tunnel and she felt scared, scared that the door might slide open and he would come into the compartment in a dark hood. The tunnel roared around them, echoing, thundering, then they came back into the light, past a level crossing with a line of traffic waiting for them.
Wednesday afternoon. Had the dream group met again on Monday? Led by Barry, the silent man in the black karate suit? Had they met and discussed her dream? What the hell did they all think? That she was some kind of a witch? Or had it not occurred to any of them to connect the dream? Were they all too busy resonating?
The man walked back, peered into her compartment again and she glared at him venomously. Go away. Go away Slider or whoever the hell you are. Leave me alone. Piss off. He hesitated, turned around, and walked off.
It could be that you’ve got sharp antennae, like rabbits’ ears. Like Bugs Bunny.
Sure, of course, Ken. Doesn’t everyone who dreams of a balcony collapsing know what that really means? Surely Freud knew? And Jung? It said in What Your Dreams Really Say that balcony was a mother’s breast. Of course. Mother died. I lost her breast. Simple. And of course Freud knew that balcony = scaffold. Plain as daylight, old boy.
It’s much easier to put them down as premonitions than to face their real truths.
Of course.
Richard thought she was nuts coming up here. Told her that concussion did strange things to the mind and she needed rest, peace and quiet, told her to take it easy for a few days so she’d f
eel fit and strong for Switzerland. Told her Switzerland would make her feel better. Sure. It would stop her premonitions, and make his business better and mend their marriage. Switzerland was full of magical properties.
The problem was that when you tried to tell people about your premonitions, after they had come true, they thought you were a little batty. Poor old Sam. Fell off a scaffold onto her head. Never been the same since. Of course, she was already slightly unhinged by her husband’s affair . . .
Real truths?
In the distance she saw a stream of lorries crossing a suspension bridge. They passed a bunkering station, a lightship in the middle of the estuary, a row of cranes hunched against the sky like old men with fishing rods, then the train slowed, and the word HULL flashed past the window.
The real truth was that children could have been shot, and it was lucky that they had not been. That she could have been raped and murdered and had escaped because she had dreamed it. That she was damned nearly killed on the scaffold because – because . . . because she’d failed to recognise something from the dream of the balcony?
The real truth was that 163 people on the aircraft might still be alive. That Tanya Jacobson might still be alive. Whilst Bamford talked about Freud, about jealousies, pains, thwartings, about penis envy, about cosy things that he was comfortable with. Cosy things that explained everything. And nothing. Cosiness. Dream groups. Steps down into the tube station. The vagina. That was all. It didn’t matter that you got raped and murdered, as long as you understood the dream. As long as it resonated.
The taxi dropped her outside a row of 1930s semidetached houses opposite the main gates of Hull University. ‘Bell not working. Please come up to first floor and shout,’ said the handwritten note on the door.
She hefted her small overnight case up the narrow staircase and onto a dark, gloomy landing. A door opened behind her.
‘Mrs Curtis?’
She turned around and saw a short, bearded man in his forties. He was wearing crumpled corduroy trousers and an Arran sweater and had straggly, untidy hair, which he was making worse by rummaging a finger through, as though he was searching for something he had left in there. He had a piece of sticking plaster above his right eye.
‘Dr Hare?’
‘Ah!’ He had the embarrassed, faintly disorientated air of a man who has walked into a ladies’ washroom by mistake. ‘Yes. Ah – Colin, please.’
She smiled. ‘Sam.’
‘Sam, right.’ He windmilled his arms and looked up at the ceiling as if worried it was about to collapse on him. ‘Bulb’s gone again, I’m afraid.’
Sam felt a fleeting chill. Another one.
Come on girl, don’t be daft. Can’t get spooked up every time a light bulb goes.
Hare clapped his hands together and rubbed them. ‘Good. Your train – I thought you’d be here a bit earlier. Late, was it?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
‘Well – er – come in. I’m afraid it’s a bit of a – rather embarrassing, actually – probably as well. I was just starting to tidy up—’
She followed him into a large bedsitting room, and recoiled in shock.
It seemed as if a hurricane had just passed through.
Clothes were strewn everywhere, books lay on the floor, some opened, their covers bent back. There was a spidery coffee stain in the centre of one wall, and following it down she saw a broken cup lying against the skirting board. A smashed compact disc player was tangled with the wreckage of a standard lamp. A radio was on the floor, its casing shattered and its wiring and batteries spewed out; above it, a chunk of plaster was missing from the wall. An elderly Olivetti typewriter lay upside down on the floor near a broken wooden table, and sheets of manuscript littered the place like confetti. The window looking out onto a dull neat garden had a crack right across it.
He raised his arms helplessly in the air. ‘I apologise. Terrible mess, I’m afraid. My—’ He hunched his shoulders. ‘My wife and I, we just had a bit of a fight. Divorce, you see.’ He rummaged in his hair again, then lightly tested the plaster above his eye, staring around with a bewildered expression. ‘I’m not quite sure how I’m going to explain all this to my landlady.’ He checked his beard carefully with his fingers, then closed the door behind him and locked it. ‘Just in case she comes back. She’s rather possessive, you see. I’m sorry.’
‘Can I give you a hand clearing up?’ Sam asked. What on earth could they have had a such a fight about in this crummy room? Had he walked out on her? Shacked up here with a mistress? Was he a little raver underneath his ramshackle academic exterior? Her eye caught a colour photograph on the mantelpiece above an electric fire of two little girls in school uniform. The glass on that was cracked too.
He transferred a pile of books and junk from one side of an ancient sofa to the other, then took her coat, and hung it over his arm. He hovered, tugged at his pullover, scratched his beard and checked both flaps of his shirt collar.
‘I really appreciate your seeing me at such short notice,’ she said.
He took the coat off his arm, held it up in the air and stared at it, like a conjurer who has got his tricks confused. I’ll just hang it up. I’ll be all right in a minute. I’m, a bit flustered, you see. Would you like tea?’
‘Thank you.’
‘There’s coffee if you’d rather.’
‘I’d prefer coffee.’
‘Yes. Good. I’ll just – if you want to use the – it’s down the corridor.’ He walked across the room to the kitchenette, almost on tiptoe, as if trying to compensate for the noise he must have made earlier.
She listened to him foraging through the crockery, heard the sound of a fridge door, then the shriek of a kettle, as she looked around at the hopeless mess. Maybe this is what you were supposed to do when you discovered your husband was having an affair? Smash everything up?
He came back into the room carrying a tray with two steaming mugs, and a plate scattered with biscuits. Something crunched under his feet, and he looked down lamely at a smashed cassette.
‘Coffee, you said?’
‘Thanks.’ She took the mug, raised it to her lips, and blew on it to cool it. It did not smell like coffee. She sniffed again, trying not to let him notice. It was tea.
‘I’ll put these biscuits here. You must be hungry. It’s a long trip.’ He sat down opposite her, perching on the edge of his chair.
‘I thought your book was very good.’
His eyes widened, and he smiled. ‘Ah. What Your Dreams Really Say?’
‘It’s very interesting.’
‘You found it helpful?’
‘Yes, I did. Well, some of it.’
‘It’s all right, as far as it goes. They edited an awful lot out. Just stuck to the classic interpretations. I didn’t have any space for premonitions. That’ll be in the next one.’ He stirred his tea and glanced nervously towards the door. Sam wondered whether his wife would come bursting through at any moment wielding an axe; and how she would cope with the demented woman if she did.
He looked at his watch. ‘Have to keep an eye on the time – Laszlo likes people to get settled in early.’ He saw her frown. ‘The dream laboratory. We’ll go over there in about half an hour. I’ve arranged for you to have supper in the canteen.’
‘Everyone seems to ridicule the idea of premonitions,’ she said.
‘Of course they do, it makes them feel safe. If they rubbish a thing in their own minds, then it can’t pose any threat to them.’ He put his teaspoon down. ‘They think parapsychologists are cranks. I’m a scientist, that’s all. I’m a scientist who won’t be blinkered.’ He looked at his watch again. ‘Let’s talk about you. You told me on the phone that you feel your life is in danger.’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you mind if I tape our conversation?’
She shook her head, and he ducked an arm into the debris and pulled out a small recorder. He switched it on, put it on the table in front of her and tested it with a hin
t of triumph in his face, as if he had scored a point over his wife by finding something she had not destroyed. He crossed his arms and leaned back in the chair. ‘Why don’t you start by telling me everything you think I should hear, then we’ll go to the laboratory and monitor your sleep and dream patterns, see if we spot anything unusual. We could have a discussion tomorrow. I have a meeting in the morning, but lunch is free. Could you stay until then?’
‘Yes. Thank you.’
‘Good. Well—’ He waved at her to start.
She told him the full story, while he sat nodding his head, grunting from time to time, and continually crossing and uncrossing his arms as if he was practising a new form of semaphore.
‘What a shame that these weren’t all logged in advance,’ he said. ‘They sound very interesting examples. Two of them seem very clearly precognitive: the air disaster – I know several people who saw that one – and the murder of that poor woman in Hampstead. By precognitive I mean that you clearly saw into the future. The others seem rather more premonitory – warning dreams, but not—’ He wrung his hands together – ‘not quite so specific. Good examples, though, very good examples.’ He raised a finger, leaned forward and switched off the tape. ‘Tell me. This hooded man – Slider – he’s linked in some way with each dream?’
‘Yes.’ She smiled at him uncertainly, almost disbelievingly. She had been expecting him to mock, pull them apart. But he didn’t.
He believed her.
And she realised now she wished he didn’t.
‘I don’t think you should be frightened, Sam. You obviously have a remarkable gift.’
‘I don’t want it. I want to get rid of it. I just want to lead a normal life.’
He smiled, as if it were a private joke. ‘A normal life. Have you ever considered the possibility that life without premonitions is an abnormal life? Dreams and premonitions have helped shape the world. Calpurnia saw Caesar’s death in a dream. She could have saved his life – if only he hadn’t ridiculed her. Even the Bible says that all events are foreshadowed.’
He picked a careful path over towards the windows. There was a sickening crunch under his foot. ‘Bloody woman,’ he muttered. He reached the window and looked out. ‘Sam, sixth sense – psychic awareness, whatever you like to call it – is a part of normal life. It’s as much a part as eating, drinking, breathing, thinking. We suppress it because society thinks it doesn’t need it, that it’s smarter to teach a child to use the phone than to transmit a message by telepathy.’