Marianne Dreams

by Catherine Storr; Susannah Harker

  ‘Bother,’ said Marianne to herself. ‘I suppose I’ll have to draw him getting well. Even if he doesn’t believe it’s anything to do with me when he is quite better. But I wish I could prove it somehow. Only I’ll have to get him well first ‘I can’t just let him get worse and die, even if he is beastly when he’s well again.’

  Once she had decided this she felt she must hurry up. She had gathered from Miss Chesterfield that Mark was indeed dangerously ill. He might die, Marianne felt, at any moment, and if there was really anything she could do to save him, she must do it, and do it at once.

  She turned to her bedside table for the drawing book.

  It was not there.

  She remembered that the day after the row her mother had come in and tidied up the whole room. The drawing book must have been put away somewhere, she. had no idea where.

  Nor, when she asked, had her mother.

  Marianne, frantic, insisted that the book must be found. She must have it as soon as possible. Her mother couldn’t remember what it looked like, couldn’t recognize Marianne’s rather incoherent descriptions, couldn’t recollect having seen anything like a drawing book for weeks. She searched and Marianne’s feverish eyes searched with her. The afternoon turned into evening and the evening into night. Mark was in hospital, he was desperately ill, probably dying and it might all be Marianne’s fault. She couldn’t retrieve it without her drawing book. And the drawing book was not to be found.

  9. Marianne and Mark

  Marianne slept badly that night. She kept on waking and realizing that she hadn’t dreamed, determining that this time she would, she must dream, and then half sleeping again. Towards morning she did dream, but not about the house and not about Mark. She dreamed that she was lame and couldn’t walk without a crutch. It was terribly important to get somewhere in time, an appointment, a train to catch, she wasn’t sure what, but she couldn’t hurry because she had lost her crutch and though she looked everywhere for it, she couldn’t find it and the time was getting shorter and shorter. She woke out of breath and anxious, and her mother, coming in to say good morning to her, exclaimed instead, ‘Marianne, what is the matter? Didn’t you sleep well?’

  ‘Not very’ Marianne said. She felt terrible. Her head ached, her eyes were hot and heavy, she felt stupid and worried.

  ‘Has Miss Chesterfield come yet?’ she asked.

  ‘Good heavens, no! It’s only just eight o’clock - I know we’re late but we’re not that late. Wake up,’ her mother said. ‘You’re still asleep, Marianne. Come on, my love, sit up and let me brush your hair. You’ll feel better when you’ve had some breakfast and if you’re very sleepy this afternoon you can have an extra sleep then.’

  ‘When will Miss Chesterfield arrive do you think?’ Marianne asked several times during her morning hair-brushing and washing and cleaning of teeth.

  ‘About the usual time, I should imagine,’ her mother said briskly, each time she asked. ‘Half past nine or a minute or two later, perhaps. Why?’

  ‘I just wondered,’ Marianne said feebly.

  But when Miss Chesterfield did ring the front doorbell and Marianne heard the sort of subdued bustle that goes on in the hall as someone takes off their coat, hangs up their umbrella and so on, she could hardly wait till Miss Chesterfield had got into her room before she had burst out with, ‘How’s Mark?’ She hadn’t meant to come out with it like that, as if she’d been thinking of nothing else since she’d seen Miss Chesterfield last, even though that was the case, but she couldn’t help herself.

  Miss Chesterfield hesitated.

  ‘He’s no worse,’ she said at last, but not in a very cheerful voice.

  ‘Better?’ urged Marianne.

  ‘No. Not exactly. I suppose he’s just about the same.’ ‘Is he still in that lung thing - that machine?’ Marianne asked.

  ‘Oh, yes. He’ll be in that for some time, I should think, even if - even when he’s better. It helps him to breathe, you see, and though his breathing muscles are getting stronger, this illness will hold him up a bit - he’ll have to be careful for a time afterwards.’

  ‘He is going to be all right, isn’t he?’

  ‘No one can say yet, Marianne. But now stop talking about Mark and get on with your poetry’

  Marianne did as she was told, though she privately thought Miss Chesterfield was rather unfeeling. However, in a way it was a relief to have to think about something different and to be made to attend to her lessons. Her brain was tired with worrying over the problem of Mark and her responsibility for his illness, and she was quite pleased at the end of the morning to realize that she hadn’t had time to think much about him. But she was tired all over. Her back ached, her arms ached, her legs ached and her head ached. She mentioned this to her mama when she came up with Marianne’s lunch on a tray.

  ‘A rest this afternoon, then’ her mother said. ‘You look tired too, Marianne, and you didn’t have a good night. You must lie down and try to sleep after lunch and then you’ll be able to enjoy the evening.’

  Marianne felt as if she would never be able to enjoy anything again, but she was really too tired to protest, and after lunch she let her mother remove her ‘sitting-up’ pillows and smooth her sheets, and actually felt pleased to be lying flat and straight in the bed.

  ‘I probably shan’t go to sleep’ she said grudgingly, as her mother firmly pulled the curtains. ‘But it is nice to lie down.’

  ‘Well, don’t stay awake just to prove to me that you aren’t sleepy’ her mother said, laughing, as she left the room.

  And immediately Marianne felt her eyelids closing by themselves. She didn’t just go to sleep - she dropped thousands of feet into sleep, with the rapidity and soundless perfection of a gannet’s dive. It was completely satisfying and quite inescapable.

  At once she was in the house. She hadn’t meant to be -she hadn’t had time to think about dreaming. But she was there, standing at the bottom of the stairs again, with the quiet, familiar tick of the clock above telling her that this was indeed where she had been before.

  ‘So the clock’s still here’ Marianne thought. She tried to remember just what she had done in her last drawing which would make a difference to her surroundings.

  She had blacked out Mark’s window. She had scribbled out Mark. And in one of the downstairs rooms she had put the little giantess, Fiona.

  ‘I suppose she’s in that one’ Marianne thought rather fearfully, glancing towards the door of the room in which she had first found herself.

  She listened. There were no sounds except for the friendly tick of the clock overhead.

  ‘I ought to be brave’ Marianne said to herself. ‘After all, she won’t hurt me. And probably the things here don’t really come out just the size I draw, but the right sort of sizes, like they would be if I was a really good artist and drew properly. I don’t expect I drew Mark or the clock or anything quite exactly right, but they’ve come out quite proper, not too large or small or anything.’

  She took an indecisive step towards the door.

  ‘I wanted her to play with me’ she reminded herself. ‘She has riding breeches.’ Somehow this didn’t seem quite as attractive now as it had when she drew it..

  ‘There’s no Mark upstairs’ she thought. The house felt lonely directly she remembered this. She walked as boldly as she could to the door of the room where Fiona was waiting for her, a miniature giantess, booted and spurred, and opened the door very quickly.

  The room was empty. It was absolutely bare, just as it had been when Marianne had first seen it.

  She looked, half in amazement, half in relief.

  ‘I must have got the rooms the wrong way round’ she thought. ‘It must be the one on the other side of the front door.’

  She left the room she was in and crossed the hall. After only a moment’s indecision outside the second door, she opened that, too.

  This room was as bare and empty as the first. No big little girl, no furniture, not so much a
s a hair from a horse’s tail to show that there had ever been anything like Marianne’s conception of the horse-riding Fiona in the place.

  A new sudden hope sprang up in Marianne. She ran out of the room, banging the door behind her, and up the stairs, two at a time. Her feet clattered on the stone, and echoed in the empty house, but she was too eager to notice. She flung open the door at the top of the stairs.

  The room was darker than on the first occasion when she had seen it, but not as absolutely black as on her last visit. Daylight came in between the stout bars outside the window. And there, on the window seat, stretched out and motionless, was Mark.

  Marianne’s first feeling was only relief that Mark was actually here, that her vicious scribblings hadn’t done away with him. Her next feeling was fear because he was so still. Supposing she had not done away with him, but somehow killed him? She didn’t know what she could or couldn’t do in this house, how much what happened was or wasn’t her fault, and now she didn’t know what had happened to Mark.

  She said, experimentally, ‘Mark!’ Immediately he half sat up, and turned to look at her, leaning on one elbow.

  ‘Hullo,’ he said, ‘it’s you. I thought you weren’t ever coming back.’

  ‘I didn’t think I’d want to,’ Marianne said awkwardly. She hesitated in the doorway.

  ‘Well, come in properly, if you are coming in,’ Mark said impatiently. ‘And shut the door. I’m cold.’

  ‘But it’s summer!’ said Marianne in surprise. She came right into the room and shut the door, however.

  ‘Well, I can be cold in summer if I like,’ Mark said. ‘And anyhow your beastly bars keep most of the sun out of this room.’

  ‘They aren’t my bars.’

  ‘Well, you seemed to be feeling responsible for them last time we met,’ he reminded her.

  ‘But, Mark, I don’t understand. I did draw bars across the window once, and then next time I was here, they were there, like they are now. But I’ve drawn some other things, since then, and they aren’t.’

  ‘Aren’t what?’

  ‘Aren’t here.’

  ‘Well, why should they be? Do you expect everything you draw to appear here?’ Mark looked scornfully round the empty room. ‘If so, all I can say is, you must be a very good hand at drawing nothing.’

  Marianne kept her temper by a miracle. To give herself time to recover she went over to the window seat and looked out of the window. The fence round the garden was certainly higher than when she had seen it last, and she wondered rather miserably what might be waiting outside it. And the bars were most certainly there on the window. Why then hadn’t Mark disappeared, and why was there no Fiona?

  She turned to look at Mark. Now she was close to him she was shocked at his appearance. He looked ill, heavy-eyed, as if he hadn’t slept properly for days, and remarkably thin. He was watching her, frowning slightly, but as if he were puzzled rather than cross, and for some reason this made Marianne suddenly feel much warmer towards him than she ever had before.

  ‘I wish you’d explain it to me, Mark,’ she said, forgetting her hostility towards him and knowing somehow that if he could understand something she couldn’t, he would feel more kindly towards her.

  ‘Explain what?’ Mark asked, but he didn’t sound unfriendly.

  ‘Why some of the things I’ve drawn do appear here and others don’t. I know you’re going to say I’m conceited or pleased with myself about my drawing’ she hurriedly added. ‘But I’m not, honestly I’m not. Only such a lot of the things here are exactly like what I draw, only better of course, and then the bars appeared and the fence round the garden has got much higher, and I did draw that. But then last time I drew some things that just aren’t here at all, so I don’t understand.’

  ‘Look’ said Mark, ‘start at the beginning. You keep on talking about how you drew this and you drew that and then they appeared or you found them, and I don’t know what it’s all about. When did you start drawing, anyway, and what’s it all got to do with this?’

  ‘Well, you know this isn’t ordinary life? I mean we’re not always here, are we?’

  ‘I don’t know’ Mark said slowly. ‘The thing is I can’t remember much at all. I don’t feel as if I’d always been here and never anywhere else, or as if I’d always been -1 mean, I think I used to be quite well and I could move about all right. But I can’t remember it, see? It’s as if I felt I’d been ordinary and lived somewhere else for a lot of the time, but I can’t think where I was or when I was well, so it looks as if I’d always been here and just imagined the other, or something.’

  ‘Can’t you remember anything?’ Marianne asked.

  ‘Not really. Not about anything different from here. I remember you being here before, twice. And last time you got very angry and said you wished I was dead - no, you said if you didn’t dream I would be dead.’ He stopped for a moment, and then said in a different voice, ‘Why did you say dream?’

  ‘I think I thought if I didn’t dream about you, you wouldn’t be here’ Marianne said lamely. She felt rather muddled herself.

  ‘But this - this isn’t a dream’ Mark protested. ‘This is real.’

  ‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’ Marianne agreed. She couldn’t remember why she had been so sure then that she was dreaming. Now it seemed to her that this house, this time, this boy, were as real as anything she had ever known, and yet she knew also that there was another life, an ordinary life, which went on at the same time as this one, but in a different place, and with different people, and that she belonged to both lives and both belonged to her.

  ‘Mark!’ she said.

  ‘Yes, what?’

  ‘Even if you’re always here, I’m not.’ ‘So I’ve noticed’ said Mark.

  ‘Yes, but when I’m not here, in this room, I mean, I’m not just somewhere else in the house. Or outside or anything. I’m somewhere quite different. It’s more ordinary, somehow. Things couldn’t happen there like they do here - the bars and the fence, for instance.’

  ‘Well?’ said Mark. ‘What’s all that got to do with me and you drawing the bars and everything?’

  ‘Because it’s in the other life I do the drawing. And when I’m there, that seems real. Realer than this. When I’m there, this seems like a dream.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, it was there I found the pencil and drew this house. And then I came here and it was just like my drawing - just a field and grass and the house and no one in it. And I felt I’d got to get in but I couldn’t unless there was someone there. And when I was at home again and I drew you, and a knocker on the door, and then the next time I came here, you were here and so was the knocker. Don’t you remember? And then the stairs, I drew them, and the rooms and you in this one?’

  She stopped, out of breath.

  ‘You draw them - and then what?’ Mark asked. ‘How do you know you don’t draw them after you’ve been here -remembering them? Not before?’

  ‘I couldn’t prove it’ Marianne said. ‘But I do know. I drew the knocker on the door so that I could get into the house, because the first time I came there wasn’t one and I couldn’t make anyone hear. And I drew you’

  ‘You didn’t invent me’ Mark said, firmly but not unkindly.

  ‘No, I know I didn’t. Mark, don’t be angry with me, but there’s something I must tell you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘In my ordinary sort of world - the realer life, you know - well, you’re there.’

  ‘I don’t remember’ Mark said angrily, ‘I told you I couldn’t remember - I’ve seen you here before, I told you that, but I’ve never seen you anywhere else. You’re inventing.’

  ‘I’m not’ said Marianne indignantly. ‘There’s no reason why I should invent anything about you.’

  ‘Then why say we’ve met in this other life of yours when I’m positive we haven’t?’

  ‘We haven’t met. I just know you’re there. I’ve heard about you - lots about you.’

  �
��How?’

  ‘From Miss Chesterfield. Oh, Mark, do think hard. Do try to remember. You must know Miss Chesterfield. She teaches us - you and me - only separately. She goes to your home to teach you and she comes to my home and teaches me -surely you know her, you must remember?’

  Mark frowned.

  ‘I somehow feel I’ve heard the name, that’s all. Look, Marianne, I don’t exactly not believe you, but it all seems so frightfully unlikely. Why on earth should this Miss Chester-whatever-she-is teach me at home? Why shouldn’t I go to school? Is she a sort of governess? Because I’m much too old for that.’

  ‘She’s not a proper governess, not the ordinary kind. She goes round teaching children who’ve been ill and who can’t go to school.’

  ‘Are you ill, then?’ Mark asked carefully.

  ‘Yes. At least I was, in this other life, I was. Then I got better, but I’m still kept in bed, and Miss Chesterfield comes to teach me till I’m well enough to go back to school.’

  ‘What about me?’ Mark asked, very casually.

  ‘Yes, you’ve been ill, too’ Marianne said as gently as she could.

  ‘But now I’m better?’

  ‘Yes. At least you were. Just this very moment you’re a bit bad again.’

  ‘How bad? In bed? Of course this is all in your imagination, you know.’

  ‘You’re in hospital’ Marianne said. She didn’t know how to say it kindly enough. ‘Mark, I think why you can’t remember anything about ordinary life, the other life you know, is because you’re ill there. I think if you were quite well there, or getting better, or something like that, you’d remember here about there. I’m sure you did before’

  ‘Am I badly ill?’ Mark asked. ‘You may as well tell me the truth, you know. Am I in hospital because I’m going to die?’

  Marianne hesitated.

  ‘Go on’ the boy said. ‘Tell me. Am I supposed to be dying?’