Bad Dreams and Other Stories

by Tessa Hadley

  She asked him about the cutting where her train had waited outside the station. Was it true that it was the oldest railway in the world? Someone had told her it was. Boyd thought it might be – the oldest passenger railway, at least. And, yes, they really had once hauled the trains up the last steep stretch into Lime Street Station, because the old locomotives weren’t strong enough. But Boyd was sceptical when she mentioned stables. Horses would never have been strong enough to pull an entire train uphill. No, he thought that there had been some kind of pulley system – wagons laden with ballast going down, pulling up the coaches full of people. The evening began to be filled with their interest. Boyd looked things up on the Internet and read them out to Greta, about the building of the railways and the hard lives of the navvies. He was more or less right, it turned out, about the pulley system; Greta wondered whether she’d misunderstood the man on the train, who had mentioned horses, or whether he’d made a mistake. Kate didn’t care about the railways, but she was happy because Boyd wasn’t bored; he was enjoying himself.

  THAT NIGHT GRETA dreamed that she was at the Palm House in Sefton Park – although this wasn’t a place she remembered ever having visited in her real life. Her idea of it had obviously got mixed up with the memory of those Victorian hotels in their ruined grandeur; the high walls of the Palm House were precarious and toppling, and inside it was wildly overgrown with the exotic plants that must once have been cultivated there. In her dream, she was pushing through thick foliage – brittle, dusty leaves and clinging creepers and intricately fleshy blooms. And she was aware of someone else moving around nearby, rattling the spiky, dark green leaves, grunting with puzzled and exasperated effort: at any moment they might come face to face. Then she must have wandered out somehow without meaning to. From outside, the Palm House looked more like a glasshouse, crazily dilapidated, its iron frame rusty and festooned with some kind of municipal tape, perhaps meant as a safety warning. A solid mass of plant growth pressed against the steamed-up glass inside and pushed out through broken panes. Dark figures seemed to be standing around the perimeter of the building at intervals, facing outwards as if they were on guard. Greta woke up then, and opened her eyes in the pitch dark. She was on the sofa bed in Kate and Boyd’s spare room, which was also their study: lying on her back, which always made her snore. Probably that accounted for the grunting and the exasperated efforts.

  KATE HAD MANAGED to free up some time to spend with her mother, but on the Thursday, as it happened, she needed to go in to work. Greta reassured her that she would be happy spending the day by herself. She would go out for coffee to that friendly place nearby where Kate had taken her. And if the weather was fine she might manage a stroll in the park afterwards.

  On Thursday morning, when Boyd and Kate had gone and she was alone in the flat, Greta took a long time getting ready. She knew she had to pace herself for these efforts; when she took a bath, she was careful not to wet her hair, which still looked all right from the hairdresser’s, because washing and drying it would use up too much of her strength. Then she put on the nicest outfit she had brought with her: a dark navy cord skirt and red wool shirt and navy cashmere jumper. She even got out Kate’s ironing board and pressed the skirt, which was creased from her suitcase. Sitting at the mirror in Kate’s bedroom, she made up her face, beginning with moisturiser, then putting on a very light foundation – which she never used to wear but thought she needed now, to make herself presentable. It seemed significant, but not unbearable, to be confronting her own worn-out face with such purposeful attention – pulling it into the old grimaces, creaming and painting and smudging with her fingertip – in the mirror that usually reflected Kate. In Greta’s imagination Kate’s youthful looks were somehow balanced against hers, redeeming them. Not that Kate wasted much time staring at her reflection. Her beautifying was still lordly and dismissive: fastening the long tail of her hair in a few quick movements, tugging earrings hastily into her piercings, stooping to the mirror to draw thickly with black eyeliner along her lids, finishing with that bold upward stroke. Kate could have gone naked into the street and been lovely.

  The place Greta went for coffee was round the corner from the flat, in a row of independent restaurants and small shops selling home-baked bread and local pottery. A converted chapel offered Pilates and art classes, and Sefton Park was beyond that, at the end of the road. Greta bought a copy of the Guardian and found herself a corner by a warm radiator in the shabby red-and-yellow-painted cafe-bar. — It’s a hippie place, Mum, Kate had said. — Just your kind of thing.

  Students were working on laptops; a couple of men probably Greta’s age, with flaring drinkers’ faces, had emptied a bottle of wine already, at the bar. Young mothers had escaped from home to gossip with their friends, steering their bulky pushchairs in beside the tables. There was plenty of room – no one would mind if Greta took her time over her coffee. It was a relief to be away from Graham for a while, she thought, though the thought wasn’t drastic or hostile: she never wavered, these days, in her appreciation of his kindness. When she looked at her watch at a quarter to two, she decided to buy herself a second cup of coffee; then, on impulse, at the bar she asked for a glass of Pinot Grigio instead, though that was risky in the middle of the day. She was wary of alcohol, in her weakened state.

  Although it was very ordinary wine – Graham would have refused to drink it – the cold green taste of each mouthful was heady and transforming, worth whatever it would cost her afterwards. She began to feel liberated and exhilarated, just as she might have felt when she was twenty. It occurred to her – but very calmly, the way you might describe a limb getting over an attack of pins and needles – that she was coming back to life. And yet all her attention was focused on what was in the newspaper, not on herself. She understood that her own experience was a tiny atom beside the cold, hard masses of history and politics, full of cruel truths. Boyd had read to her, the other night, about the men who had died cutting or tunnelling through the rock to build those early railways: killed in explosions or by runaway wagons, or crushed by falling stones, or by the buckets that carried the stone – and the men – up and down in the shafts. Twenty-six were killed, to make one tunnel.

  SHE DIDN’T LOOK at her watch again until two twenty: it was surely too late now for any meeting in the Palm House. Then, glancing out of the café window, she actually saw the young man from the train walking purposefully along the street, away from the park. So he had turned up; Greta had begun not to believe in the meeting, thinking she must have misheard him. This proof of his independent, real existence was dismaying, because he’d come to seem a figment of her fantasy: in her memory she had smoothed him out, forgetting that in his looks there was something unsettling and blatant – the thick lashes and coarse skin and big, sensuous mouth were in excess of any personality he’d shown her. His expression was intent and preoccupied; he wore his white mac and was still carrying his briefcase, and she was jolted by a pang of guilt for his loneliness. As he passed close by the cafe window, she tapped on the glass to attract his attention. Looking around, he was startled and forlorn. She had caught him out in his desolation: they were strangers to each other; he might even be angry with her because she’d let him down.

  Smiling, placatory, Greta beckoned him inside. As soon as he recognised her, she saw him smother the raw truth she’d glimpsed, preparing his bright face for her approval like a good boy. While he made his way towards her – rattling at the wrong door first, which didn’t open – she was already regretting the loss of her solitude. He looked out of place in the hippie bar: he had even put on a tie under the maroon jumper, perhaps in her honour. She wanted to buy him a drink in return for the coffee at the station, but he insisted that he’d never let a lady pay for anything, and it wasn’t worth arguing with him. He bought himself a Coke and got her another glass of wine, though she’d said she didn’t want one, and really didn’t. Still, once the wine was in front of her she couldn’t help taking swallows of it, jus
t to ease the awkwardness of the situation. He didn’t mention that she hadn’t turned up to meet him. In fact, he said he was so glad she’d come, as if the bar had been their plan all along; counting his change carefully, he put it away in a little purse in the pocket of his mac.

  — I knew you were an easy person to get on with, he said. — As soon as I saw you.

  — I’m not really very easy. You don’t know me at all.

  He insisted that he was a good judge of people, he could always tell. Then they exchanged names: he was Mitchell, and she explained that she was Greta, short for Margaret. Astonished and delighted, he said that Margaret was his mother’s name. — You see, it’s funny because I had this feeling, before you even told me. I just knew what you were going to say. Greta wasn’t sure that she believed in this coincidence, although it would be a strange thing for him to lie about. She remembered the impression she’d had on the train, that he was a chameleon making himself up to fit into any circumstances – to please her, or so that he could appear competent and connected. The wine was making her dizzy. — Kate’s father persuaded me to change my name to Greta, she said. — Even before Mrs Thatcher, he hated Margaret.

  — Are you divorced?

  She explained that Ian had died in an accident, long ago. — Though we weren’t together by then, anyway. And I’ve been married for years to someone else.

  — But I suppose Kate’s father was the love of your life.

  Greta was aware of laughing too loudly, and thought people were looking at them. They might imagine that Mitchell was her son or her nephew. Or they might detect something fervid and artificial in her reactions to him, and wonder whether he was a con man tricking her out of her money, or a gigolo she was paying for. She said she didn’t believe in that kind of love. It turned out that Mitchell believed not only in true love but also in destiny. Certain individuals were fated to be together. Everything that happened had its purpose, he said, even if we couldn’t see it. Yet, all the time he was setting out these platitudes with such solemnity, Greta felt sure that they weren’t the real content of his thoughts, just as her own sceptical, condescending cleverness when she argued with him wasn’t the real content of her thoughts either. This conversation took place on the surface, while their real lives were hidden underground beneath it, crouching, listening out, mutely attentive. Mitchell’s physical reality was like a third presence at the table: his bitten skin and slanted, suffering cheekbones.

  — I brought something for you, he said. — It’s a present.

  Greta protested anxiously that she didn’t want any present, but he ignored her and twiddled with the combination lock on his briefcase, then lifted the lid importantly and took out a thick paperback book, well read, its pages furry with use. Judging by the cover illustration and the title in embossed gold letters, it was the kind of historical novel Greta wouldn’t dream of reading: a gritty, working-class romance, all arrogant mill owners and salt-of-the-earth girls in shawls and clogs.

  — I don’t want it, she said. — I hardly know you.

  — Please. I want you to have it. I know you’ll enjoy it.

  Thrusting the book at her, he managed somehow to knock over his drink; sticky Coke ran down the edge of the table and onto her skirt, though she shoved herself smartly backwards in her chair. She had thought he was just drinking Coke, but she could smell now that there was alcohol in it, too, something sweet and strong – rum, perhaps.

  — Oh, Jesus! Mitchell said. — Jesus, I’m so sorry.

  — It doesn’t matter. Don’t make a fuss.

  While Greta rummaged for a packet of tissues in her handbag, Mitchell ran to the bar for paper napkins. When he came back he knelt on the floor in front of her, dabbing at the wet patch on her skirt. — Will the stain come out? he said.

  — Don’t fuss. It’s nothing, honestly. It won’t stain.

  Their table was in a little nook beside the window, so that he wasn’t easily visible to the other customers. Suddenly he dropped his head into her lap, face down between her thighs. It was so unexpected, and his head weighed so heavily, that at first Greta thought he must have passed out. She could feel the heat of his breath through the wet cloth. She pushed at his head, not liking the feel of the coarse wire of his hair in her hands.

  — Get off me, she said urgently and quietly, not wanting to draw anyone’s attention. — Get up right now.

  He lifted his head and looked at her blearily, as if he hardly saw her, as if she’d roused him out of sleep.

  — Leave me alone, she said.

  — I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.

  — You’d better go. You’re making a spectacle of yourself.

  Obediently, he got to his feet then, and he grabbed at his mac and briefcase and headed to the wrong door again, tugging desperately at the handle. Greta wouldn’t look up to see him go; she was burning with humiliation, exposed to all the customers in the cafe. He had left his book on the table and she opened it, just so that she didn’t have to see whether anyone was watching. A business card was tucked inside the front cover, with Mitchell’s name printed on it, and the name of the company he worked for. His phone number was circled in biro. And there, written on the flyleaf of the book, was her name. To Margaret, it said. With love. Greta was confused, and for one long moment she really believed that it was fated, that this stranger had known her before he ever met her, and that he had written her name inside his book before she even told him what it was.

  Her Share of Sorrow

  Ruby’s mother, Dalia, used to be a dancer before she had her children. Then she’d trained to be a psychotherapist, and you got the feeling she’d disowned her dancing days, looking back on them as delusion and vanity. Yet still she carried herself in that dancer’s exquisitely conscious way, as if she was held taut by a thread running up from the crown of her head; she was still hollowly thin, and painted her eyes with black upward-swept lines, and wore her hair pulled back austerely from the sculpted bones of her face. Serious psychotherapist glasses added intellectual distinction to Dalia’s other graces.

  Ruby’s name might have suited her if she’d been smouldering and mysterious like her mother in the dance photographs. But she was plump and stubby with short fat arms, lank beige-colour hair, and fair freckled skin that turned pink easily in the sun or if she told lies – which she quite often did. She looked like a changeling in that family, other people thought – because Ruby’s older brother Nico and her father Adrian, administrator for an innovative theatre company, were also distinguished and beautiful and tall like Dalia, and very thin. Scrupulously, because they’d read all the right guides to parenting, Adrian and Dalia ignored Ruby’s greedy eating at the supper table. They never had cake or ice cream in the house, but she raided the cupboards and stole money to buy sweets; there was always a mess of crumbs and wrappers on the floor around where she sat playing on her computer. Each evening Dalia arrived in her daughter’s bedroom, strained and full of reasoned explanation, to enforce their rule that Ruby was only supposed to have computer-time for an hour; this resulted in stormy sessions of weeping, on both their parts. Lying on her back on her Spider-Man duvet, Ruby wailed at the ceiling, her small mouth stretched open in an ugly shape, her face hot-pink. — What am I supposed to do? she lamented. — There’s nothing for me to do in this house!

  — But she isn’t interested in anything! Dalia, also lamenting, wailed to her husband. — She doesn’t draw, she doesn’t read, she doesn’t play imaginative games. She’s not even sporty; she can’t swim. And she isn’t finding out information on the wretched computer, she’s just looking at pictures of kittens in wellington boots or playing Crossy Road or messaging her friends. Not that she’s got any friends.

  — That’s not fair, Adrian reproached his wife gently. — She does have friends.

  — Yes, but such hopeless ones.

  Dalia remembered taking Nico to an exhibition of Greek art when he was much younger than Ruby was now. She had loved watching him as he�
��d dwelled on each momentous sculpture, huge eyes drinking it in; then he’d read the accompanying information absorbedly, running his finger along under the words on the plaques. Now Nico had a place to do PPE at Oxford, and was a gifted cellist. Needless to say Ruby’s fingers wouldn’t even work to cover the holes on the recorder. Her parents had gone to great lengths to get her into a good school where she might be stimulated; she had a lovely teacher, a real high-flyer who kept a separate spreadsheet on her phone for each of the children in her class, making a note whenever they learned anything new. At parents’ evenings this teacher was brightly hopeful about Ruby, who sat stolidly somewhere in the middle of her attainment targets.

  Ruby was ten years old when they borrowed a house in the South of France from friends, for three weeks in the summer. Adrian and Nico hired bikes and were out all day. Dalia needed desperately to unwind and leave her clients behind; she took her book out into the garden, where an apricot tree was trained against a crumbling brick wall and flower beds were edged with lavender – bracing herself for conflict with Ruby, who couldn’t live without Wi-Fi and hated the sun. She came out scowling into the brightness, stomping her feet in her jelly shoes. Hopefully Dalia suggested she should go exploring. — This is a fascinating old place, she said. — It belonged to the Williamses’ parents, they’ve been coming here forever. There are all kinds of treasures in the outhouses.