Marianne Dreams

by Catherine Storr; Susannah Harker

  ‘No, now. If we stay here they’ll kill us. Get on your bike and just go. I’ll catch you up in the light.’

  Marianne felt with a shudder for her bicycle and thankfully found its good solid metal bars and nothing more. She turned her back on the boom and the hiss, mounted and rode in the dark, not knowing where or how she went, not caring, if only she could get away from the intolerable pressure on her ears and head - it was like being surrounded by the deepest pipes of the organ, which can be felt but hardly heard. A thousand great bells, harsh and savage, beat in her brain and she fled, not noticing the bumping of the bicycle over stony uneven ground, losing her sense of direction, pursued by panic.

  For a moment or two the pressure on her head lifted as the light came and went. As it passed she felt a hand over hers on the handlebars, turning them slightly. She had opened her mouth to shriek, when she heard Mark’s voice in her ear.

  ‘A bit more to the left. We’ve got to go straight towards the light.’

  ‘Oh, Mark! Don’t go away! I can’t bear it! It’s terrible!’

  ‘It’s all right. We’ve just got to get on as fast as we can. We’ll keep together, then you won’t go wrong again.’

  ‘How do you know which way to go?’ asked Marianne, calming down a little.

  ‘You can see the lighthouse properly now, even when the light isn’t coming this way. Look!’

  Up on an invisible skyline, a wheel seemed to be searching the sky: its spokes were golden light, between the spokes was black velvet. Marianne saw and recognized their destination.

  It was impossible to bicycle fast: the ground was not only stony, but ridged like a ploughed field. Sometimes the ridges

  ran parallel to their path, sometimes across: and always the way lay slightly uphill. When the light came round they could go a little faster, but their progress in the dark was very slow, and there was a great deal of dark. Marianne heard Mark panting beside her and she could feel that his hold on her handlebars instead of helping her on, as it had at first, had become a brake on her progress. She was, in fact, pulling him with her. But the pressure on her ears had lessened, the voices were faint and indistinct, and though the grass still hissed, and stung their legs, it was not enough to hold them back; and the light, when it came, showed fewer of the watchers among the stalks and the house farther and farther behind them.

  ‘Mark!’ said Marianne, after what seemed like a long time of this painful journey. ‘I’m tired. We can’t go on much longer like this’

  She had been going to say ‘you’re tired’, but changed it out of respect for Mark’s feelings.

  ‘No!’ Mark said. He spoke in gasps, his breath coming very short. ‘We can’t. But … we must keep on. For the moment.’

  ‘How far? When can we stop?’

  ‘Didn’t you. Say. There was. A road somewhere? Up to. The lighthouse?’

  ‘Yes!’ Marianne exclaimed. ‘And trees. Or bushes, anyway. If we could get there, we could hide in the bushes for a bit. Good. Come on’

  She pedalled with renewed vigour, but was more and more conscious of Mark’s weight holding her back. He was pedalling, but feebly, his breathing was uneven, and when she saw his face in the light, Marianne was shocked. It was drawn into an expression of intense fatigue: his eyes seemed to have sunk into his head. Only his mouth was set in a thin line, but it was a line of determination and despair.

  He saw her look and tried to smile.

  ‘Can you see the road?’

  ‘I’ll look next time.’

  They rode in silence: and it was now almost a complete silence. Far away Marianne could hear the boom, very faintly against her ear-drums she could feel the beat of that savage roar: but the preponderant sound was the harsh whistle of the grass, the bump of their machines over ruts and stones, and their own laboured breathing. Once, twice, the great light swung past and showed them only the grassy plain ahead. The third time Marianne saw a glimmer of white bordered with something dark. Without speaking she turned slightly towards it, Mark turning with her. And suddenly, in the dark again, the wheels of the bicycles ran easily, even a little downhill, on a smooth, gritty, road surface. Marianne had just seen dark trees on each side of her, and felt the relief of being free from those singing grasses, when Mark’s bicycle suddenly shook and his front wheel ran into her. She had time to spring off her own machine and half catch him as he fell sideways towards her. She dragged him clear of their bicycles, to the side of the road and under the trees, rescued the tangle of bicycles from the road, flung herself down, panting, bruised, exhausted, beside Mark; and stopped dreaming.

  17. The End of the Road

  When she dreamed again the next night, after a day which seemed, in comparison, so unreal that she had gone through it as if that were the dream and this the only reality, she found herself again in the dark, lying on short harsh turf; and it seemed so perfectly natural to be there that she said, without hesitation, ‘Mark.’

  ‘Yes, I’m here. Good, I’m glad you are, too.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘I don’t know. Not very long. The light has been round about twelve or fifteen times since I came.’

  ‘And you had a day in between, too?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mark said slowly. ‘I told you, when I’m here I don’t seem to know properly about anything else. I can’t remember what happens when I’m not here.’

  ‘Are you all right now?’

  ‘I think so. What happened before we got here? I can’t remember the end of it. How did we get into this sort of grass? It’s not like the other. And there are trees all round, and the road’s just there.’

  The light flooded them as he spoke. Marianne saw that Mark was sitting near her, wrapped in the blanket he had taken off his bed.

  She was relieved to notice that his face had begun to look more normal and had lost the sunken, exhausted look it had worn before.

  ‘You were awfully tired,’ she said. ‘I think you must have fainted. You fell off your bicycle, so I pulled you in here. That’s all.’

  ‘Sorry to be so feeble’ Mark said roughly.

  ‘Don’t be silly. You were probably right about wanting more time to practise before we started, but we had to get out quickly. I thought it was marvellous you could do as much as you did.’

  ‘Thanks. I don’t, though, I think it was futile.’

  ‘Let’s have something to eat’ Marianne suggested. She felt for her bicycle and found it. ‘Isn’t it funny?’ she said, munching. ‘How the first thing I always do when I come here - to the house or here, I mean - is to eat? I always seem to arrive hungry.’

  ‘Don’t blame you’ Mark said, his mouth full. ‘I’m ravenous.’

  ‘We’ve come quite a long way’ Marianne remarked.

  ‘Not so very, really. You can see the house when the light comes round, and it’s not very far off. By the way, I meant to warn you, don’t talk loudly. There are some of THEM about.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Not right on top of us, but not far off. I saw one through the trees behind us and I’m almost sure there’s another on the road.’

  ‘I thought we shouldn’t see any more. I thought we’d be safe now.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so, at all. And I think we ought to get on, Marianne. I’m not at all sure I didn’t see THEM coming up from the house - not fast, but just a lot of them.’

  Marianne put down the sausage she was eating, suddenly no longer hungry, and looked towards the house, as if her eyes could pierce the dark. When the light had spread its wing over the country, and gone again, she got up.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  Mark swallowed half a hard-boiled egg and pulled his bicycle towards him. ‘All right. I’m ready’

  ‘Where is the - the one of THEM you saw on the road?’ ‘I’m not sure. Wait till it’s light again, and we’ll see before we start riding. Keep behind the bushes’

  They waited. Marianne was aware, for the first time since she had
returned, of the distant reverberating beat in her ears: and the hiss of the long grass, so lately all around, was still audible. The boom had been left behind with the radio set apparently, but she knew, because in the last shaft of light she had seen, that the Watchers were still watching: between the tall grasses she had seen their grey shapes and hateful closed eyes. The house behind them was deserted by more than herself and Mark: the Watchers had come too.

  The light, when it came, showed one Watcher only on the road before them; at Mark’s sign, Marianne had mounted her bicycle and had followed him past the squat figure while it was still blinded by the light. They rode on. In the nearly complete darkness they could see the whiteness of the road just enough to follow it, though every shape that loomed at them from the side might be a harmless bush or might be one of THEM. Each time the light came round they could see what lay ahead: more than once they put on a spurt to get past a stone eye while it was still closed. The road lay uphill almost continuously. Marianne felt their pace becoming increasingly slower as the steepness of the incline increased. The beat in her ears was louder; she was not sure that it might not be her own heart-beat, but it was too much like the roar she had heard before to be reassuring.

  The hill they were climbing became suddenly much steeper. Marianne swerved and stopped.

  ‘Mark, I can’t ride up here any more. I’ll have to stop and walk!’

  ‘All right.’ Mark got off his bicycle, breathing hard. ‘We’ll walk this bit and ride again later.’

  ‘I can’t see as much’ Marianne said. I walked into a bush just then. I can’t even see the side of the road properly and I could before. Why, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The light swept over their heads, illuminating the road behind them, but not in front. Their way ahead seemed to lie in denser shadow and even as the beam shone out at its fullest it no longer fell on them.

  ‘The light!’ Marianne said in terror. ‘It’s left us! We aren’t in it any longer!’

  ‘It’s all right’ Mark said. ‘There’s a hill or something between us and it, that’s all. It’s going to be darker for a bit while we get up to the top. But keep going, we mustn’t stop.’

  They walked on. But the bicycles were surprisingly heavy to wheel up what was becoming a very steep hill, Mark’s steps became uneven: Marianne could hear that he was limping, and though he tried, as his quick breathing showed, to keep pace with her, he was falling behind unless she slowed. As she listened to his footsteps halting on the road, Marianne heard another sound, mingled with the beat in her head, but different from it. It was the sound of steps behind, plodding, slow, like the pounding of a giant pestle in a huge mortar, but getting louder and nearer as the roar in her ears increased in volume and savagery, too.

  ‘Mark,’ she cried aloud.

  ‘You go!’ he said. ‘I can’t. Leave the bike. Run!’

  ‘No!’ cried Marianne. She dropped her bicycle in the road and ran round to the other side of Mark and put her arm round under his armpits. She pushed his bicycle to lie on top of her own.

  ‘We’ll walk,’ she said. ‘We can’t take the bicycles. Come on’

  Mark let her support him, but as the stony tread came nearer still behind them, he said again, ‘You go’ ‘No! Run!’ ‘Can’t.’ ‘You must.’

  They broke into a lopsided, halting run. Farther back on the road the roar swelled suddenly. There was the sound of metal clashing on metal, and a snarl of disappointed rage.

  ‘They’re - breaking - our - bikes!’ Mark gasped.

  ‘Don’t talk. Run!’ Marianne urged, for already, after that brief halt she heard the renewed thud of their pursuers. She gasped herself as she ran: her arm ached with Mark’s weight, and the stitch in her side was intolerably sharp. The blood pounded in her ears so that she could hardly distinguish what was in and what was outside her head, and she felt that her lungs must burst with each breath she took. Mark was panting as he stumbled beside her: his breathing came in deep groans. Several times his left foot caught on the road and he would have fallen if Marianne had not held him up. He muttered something between the groans, which Marianne could not hear.

  ‘What?’

  He could not summon enough breath to answer, but she felt him struggle. At first she thought it was for breath, but then she realized he was trying to free himself from her arm. He was pulling away from her in an effort to make her go on by herself and leave him to the mercy of their pursuers.

  ‘No!’ cried Marianne, with an energy she had not known she possessed. ‘I won’t go alone!’

  She pulled him up from his half-sinking position as she spoke. They took four, five, six, stumbling steps upwards, so steep it was almost climbing. And then suddenly, as a roar of defeated hate rose like a wave behind them, they had topped the hill. Before them, perhaps a quarter of a mile off, along level ground, stood the great tower, its domed top streaming forth light. As they stood there, they were bathed fully, completely in its golden rays; and to Marianne it seemed as if her last protesting cry, wrung from the bottom of her lungs and heart, had been caught up into the music of the light and been turned into a glorious, triumphant song.

  They were on the crest of the hill. Below and behind them was darkness, with long snakes of grass, the empty house, the pale winding road and the halted Watchers, who dared not come up into the light. To their right, along the ridge, the road led to the base of the tower. Below and beyond the hills it was dark again, but it was a moving, living darkness, and Marianne could hear, far below, the splash and tinkle of little waves, the surge and withdrawal of surf on a stony shore.

  A fresh salty wind blew into the children’s faces from the sea. Mark took long deep breaths; his head lifted from his chest, and strength seemed to flow back into his limbs. Slowly, supporting each other, they walked towards the tower. When they reached it they turned the handle on the heavy door. The door swung open silently on its hinges and they stepped inside.

  18. In the Tower

  Marianne had never been so conscious of living two lives at once as in the days and nights that followed their escape.

  By day, in her waking life, she was convalescent, up from bed for two, three hours, half a day; learning to get used to walking from one room to another, up and down the stairs - very difficult this - without stumbling, coming down to ordinary meals at ordinary times, and facing the difficult problem of behaving ordinarily and leading about half an ordinary life, while still being liable to attacks of sudden extraordinary tiredness and irritability. Lessons went on with Miss Chesterfield, now recovered from her cold: but they were lessons with the end in sight and directed towards that end, for when the next term began, Marianne was to go back to school and would be quite well again.

  Getting well is sometimes more tiresome than being ill and completely in bed. The routine one has got used to as an invalid disappears, and instead there seems to be endless sitting uncomfortably in chairs, waiting for it to be time to go to bed again, after longing from the bed to be up in the chair: endless exhaustion following unwonted exercise: and a longing to be completely one thing or the other, well or ill, instead of someone hovering between the two, conscious all the time of the possible effect of every action, yet impelled to try to be active.

  While the days passed in this useful but unsatisfactory way, Marianne’s nights were spent in the tower on the hills. She had very quickly furnished it, with the help of The Pencil, with everything that she and Mark needed: and most nights when she went to sleep, she was sure of waking up in one of the two big circular rooms where Mark was always waiting for her. Out of the narrow windows they could see below them the blue, glistening sea and hear it beating on the beach. Seagulls flew screaming round the tower, and the children fed them with scraps left over from the food they had themselves. At night they sat under the electric light and played games or talked, while above them the great beam played over the surrounding country.

  Towards the side from which they had
come neither of them ever looked. There were windows all round the tower, but neither Mark nor Marianne ever looked back to the winding road, the plains of long grass, or the empty house with the fence round it.

  Every day Mark climbed the steps six times: there were a hundred steps, he told Marianne. ‘Far more than I drew’ she said. His right leg was now no weaker than the left: and Marianne was amazed to see him arrive at the top of the tower, after running up the steps, hardly breathing faster than normal. He ate enormously whatever Marianne could think of to draw for him, and visibly put on weight. Marianne, who was now able to move round her own house at home, and copy from life, drew as good a picture as she could of their bathroom weighing machine and on this, in the tower, they charted Mark’s amazing gains.

  ‘I wonder if you’re putting on weight in real life’ Marianne said, when he had reached the great total of eight and a half stone. ‘I wish you could remember. Haven’t you any idea what’s happening to you?’

  ‘No’ Mark said positively. ‘I haven’t much. I have a sort of feeling it’s all right there. You know. Quite different from at first when you came to the house. I think I knew then that something was wrong, but I still don’t know what.’

  ‘I know’ Marianne said. ‘I’ll ask Miss Chesterfield. She knows what’s going on in your home and she’ll tell me.’

  So the ridiculous situation arose that Marianne was able to tell Mark that Miss Chesterfield reported that he, Mark, was out of bed, doing mild exercises, walking almost without a limp, with every prospect of leading an absolutely normal life in a matter of months. ‘She says your breathing is perfectly all right’ Marianne said. ‘And you’ll never have to use that respirator apparatus again. I asked her if you could run upstairs, and she said, no, not yet, and of course you can’t bicycle there or do half the things you do here.’

  ‘It’s funny, isn’t it?’ Mark said thoughtfully. ‘How much further on I am here than there? I wonder how much I weigh there?’