Dream Sequence

by Adam Foulds

  The songs and action of the second half began with terrible challenges to their marriage, the light of a single candle, the sound of heavy rain, and led on to happiness and literary triumph in Italy, represented with a lighting effect of golden sunlight through leaves and birds twittering through the speakers. Kristin was very happy for the lovers, for the message it was spreading through the audience, through Henry’s brain as he sat there in the front row, but when the play ended and applause broke out, Kristin felt fear. She applauded, raising her hands up over her head when Henry’s father was beckoned onto the stage. In the noise, she could moan to herself, “Oh no, no, no, oh no,” and no one heard.

  It was over. The lights were back on. People standing, murmuring, shuffling. Kristin stood up. Her hands flew about her body, fixing her hair, straightening her dress, one fingertip cleaning the corners of her mouth. Henry was already through the door. The remainder of the crowd had to move slowly, filtering out in ones and twos. Once out, it was down to the pub, descending the stairs one by one. Kristin had time to look around. She felt the urge to use her hands to tidy the whole place. She noticed the shabbiness of the carpet, the handprints on the rail, the dust on the glass in the door. She wanted to vacuum, to spray and polish and cleanse and make everything perfect. Meanwhile, nothing was ready and she was processed down the stairs, trapped behind the people in front of her, with others waiting behind.

  The audience accumulated at the bar—those who weren’t leaving right away—and added to the crowd already in the pub. Kristin couldn’t think what to do except join the queue for the moment and wait to order a glass of white wine. She took a bill out of her purse and held it in her hand, ready. She put it in the barman’s hand. She received her heavy change, the large golden glass of wine. She sipped and had the same sweet-cold taste in her mouth as yesterday. She tipped her head back and took a large swallow. She looked around and saw Henry’s mother on the edge of a small group of people, smiling but not talking. Kristin recognized her from the photograph. Older, less colourful, with the same straight-backed poise. Her hair had faded like the fabric of a chair that caught the sun; there was Henry’s beauty all right but aging, unfastened, dissolving, flowing away into time. Somehow, this trance of appreciation, Kristin’s deep knowledge of Henry Banks and his family, meant that when she caught sight of Henry she started towards him without hesitation. He was talking to a woman. Her face was hidden by a sharp hairstyle, but Kristin recognized his agent from the street, the woman with the hard eyes and the vape pen. Kristin turned immediately and almost into the chest of Henry’s father. Kristin swung her glass out of the way.

  Henry’s father said loudly, over the noise of the bar, “Aha, it’s my American fan. Did you enjoy the show?”

  “I did. I thought it was wonderful. It’s … it’s … I don’t know what to say. It’s amazing that you wrote all those songs.”

  “You liked them, did you?” Red wine tilted in his glass.

  “I did.” Kristin wasn’t sure what to say next. “I thought they were just great. Such a talented family.”

  “Ah, and here he is.” Henry’s father landed a heavy hand of affection on the shoulder of the man who had played Browning as he walked past. The man stopped and sighed, drooping forwards. His cheeks were angrily red where his sideburns had been unglued. He looked strange in soft, modern clothes. “Hello, Jeremy,” the actor said, his voice quiet and rasping, tired. “How was that? Not too bad? I think we got away with it. Couple of moments in the first half, but.”

  “It was splendid. I’m very pleased. Really. Just terrific. Isn’t that right?” Henry’s father called on Kristin as a witness.

  “I loved it,” she said. “You have a beautiful voice. It’s such a gift.”

  “That’s very kind of you to say.” The actor closed his eyes for a second and tilted forwards in an abbreviated bow. “Can I get anyone anything?” he said, upright again, pointing at their glasses.

  “We’re fine,” Henry’s father said. “Off you go.” As the actor set off towards the bar, Henry’s father turned back to Kristin and said, “Such sensitive flowers, these performers. I spend my life surrounded by them.” Raising his voice, he said, “And here’s another one.” It was Henry. Kristin looked at him, looked around. She didn’t see the agent. She saw the door closing and, she thought, the agent in the street. Henry’s father said to Henry, “This is Kristin. We met the other day. Would you believe she’s come all the way from America to see my play? What do you think of that?”

  “I think I’m shocked,” Henry said. “Is that true?”

  Henry was speaking to her, looking at her. She managed to say, “Not just for that.”

  “Well, I’m amazed.” Henry turned an amused expression slowly back to his father.

  “You seem very cheerful. Everything all right?”

  “I’m very well. Just had some good news, I think.”

  “Oh, yes? About that cartoon?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, good for you. We’ll talk about it some other time. Do excuse me. Right now there’s someone I really must speak to who has come up from Hampshire. Not quite the same distance.” Kristin watched him step away and greet a friend, a short man of a similar age wearing a burgundy sweater. This man put his fists on his hips, tilted his head to one side and said, “Well, well, well.”

  It was hard to turn away and look again at Henry. She knew too clearly what was happening and this realization kept repeating as they talked, a kind of doubling in the moment, a thumping as her mind confirmed and everything in the room arrived inside itself again and again. She could feel the blood in her fingers, her hot breath escaping. Henry asked if she’d really come all the way from America to see this play and she said no, not really. She had come for a lot of things. Henry didn’t seem to be recognizing her. She said something about Buckingham Palace and the butterfly exhibit that she really wanted to see. She needed to moisten her mouth. There was a kind of clicking in her throat, her dry tongue lumbering as she spoke. She said that she’d come to see him, too, that she’d been at Hamlet for the last night, and she took a sip of wine. “You were there? That wasn’t an easy ticket to get.”

  “I know,” she said. “It cost me a lot of money.” He smiled at her. She looked up at him, fully into his eyes, and everything was fine, a great warmth and pliancy flooded her body. This was the moment they were reunited. His expression changed very slightly. A question appeared in it. She answered in the way she looked back. His smile brightened with amusement and confidence. He put a hand on her arm and leaned towards her and said, “I’m going to get myself a drink. I’m not planning to stay much longer. How about you?”

  “I’ll do whatever you want to.”

  Henry laughed, making Kristin’s heart jump. His face changed. He said, “You see that person behind you taking a photo of his friend?” Kristin turned, saw. “He’s actually taking a photo of me in the background. You can see by the angle. I bet if you checked his zoom. I’m not sure I want to stick around for much more of this.”

  “We should get out of here.”

  “It’ll be on Instagram in like two minutes. We should go somewhere and celebrate.”

  The first time they were outside together in the open air, their voices freshly audible, intimate.

  The first time he called her by her name.

  The first time they got into a car together, one he’d ordered on his phone.

  London, those long hard streets so laborious to cross, was now a gloss and glide of coloured light outside the windows. The warm weight of Henry’s hand was on her thigh.

  Kristin would rather have gone to his place by the river where she would have seen his possessions and been folded into his life and they would have had a view of the river but Henry said that he wanted to go to hers. Such an insane feeling, walking up the creaking carpeted stairs with Henry Banks at her side, his
hand on the back of her neck. He seemed too real, too large for the place. When they went into her tiny room, he was so powerful, so forceful. He lifted her hips right up off the bed as he removed her underwear. All that time spent imagining herself into the future, living several steps ahead of herself, and now she felt like she couldn’t keep up. She wanted to hold on to the taste of his skin, to keep the stabilizing weight of him on top of her. With one forearm under her neck, gripping her left breast in his hand, his breath blasted into her ear. He was very fierce. She didn’t have time to feel all her sensations before he was out of her again. He finished mostly on her belly, scattering up in warm droplets also over her heart. He pushed himself backwards onto his feet and walked into the tiny bathroom. He returned with a loose rosette of toilet paper. “There we are,” he joked, “all better,” and wiped her with it. He returned to the bathroom, where she heard him drop the paper into the toilet and then the drumming of his long urination down onto it. She lay still, looking up at the red light on the white box of the smoke detector. When Henry returned, he leaned down over her to pick up his shirt. He let her kiss him softly on the neck but didn’t respond in kind. “I’m going to head off,” he said. He squirmed his feet back into his new trainers without adjusting the laces. “Don’t. Let me look at you,” he said. Kristin had folded her arms across her breasts and he meant for her to put them back down by her sides. She remembered that later, the moment of obeying, putting her arms back down, so that he could give her a brief, calm, smiling inspection. “You don’t have my number,” she said. Now he met her eyes. “No,” he said, “but I know where you are. Don’t worry.”

  “Don’t go,” she said. “I need to talk to you.”

  “It’s late,” he said, putting on his jacket. “I have to get up for something. I’m sorry. Crazy timing.” And he left.

  *

  How could anyone ever give up smoking when you can retrieve so much of yourself in that small, deliberate action: the packet, the neat, dry feeling of the paper cylinder, the snap or scrape of making a flame, the relief of inhaling. Henry sat on his balcony, regretting his evening. At night the wind was still cold. He made a fist of his free hand and stuck it in his jacket pocket. He was the shaking in the machine. He was asking for trouble. If she hadn’t looked up at him in that way, he wouldn’t have done it. Those soft, widening eyes: a look of infinite fuckability. She had had an effect on him and he’d allowed himself the impulse. Also, of course, he wanted to escape into her adulation of him, away from his parents, his father trying to make use of him to impress other people. Or having to confront those actors. The play came back to Henry’s mind in flashes of boisterous absurdity, the actors gripping each other’s forearms and singing into each other’s faces, sparks of spittle flying. One thing Henry could say for himself was that he could act. On stage, playing Hamlet, he knew what he was doing. He had known.

  And now, according to his agent, he was a few negotiated clauses away from a whole new level. Henry would be back in the zoo for good. The zoo was how Henry had come to think of the shared, gated world of the famous. In there, you knew what you were looking at. You recognized the inhabitants, a lion, a giraffe, a chimp, and if you didn’t know who they were, one of the many zookeepers, the publicist, agents, producers, would be there to tell you. He would be safe in there with the other animals, fed and watered and fêted beyond the velvet rope.

  Henry saw himself in the costume, caped, masked, muscled, standing on the edge of a tall building with weather behind him. He saw himself leaning forwards, seeming to fall but fearless, expressionless, until he is horizontal and starts to fly.

  He hadn’t told Virginia yet. He stretched backwards to extract his phone from his trouser pocket and send her a message. He’d been stupid, this evening. Avoiding the actors, avoiding his parents, he’d found an easy diversion in Kristin, an acceptable if pointless lay. And she was odd, too, that woman. What was she going on about visiting a butterfly sanctuary together? And she seemed to think they’d met before or something. But what time zone was Virginia in right now, east or west? And who knew what the fuck she was up to. Henry found out now. Finally, she had sent him a reply. Hey, hon. So many messages. I’m just hours away. Have been in Germany. Will explain soon. Early flight to London!

  *

  When Kristin awoke she pulled up her t-shirt and found the silvery tightness of Henry still on her skin. Without seeing that, she might not have believed it had happened, though the air of the room still felt disturbed and the shocked mirror and mute smoke alarm seemed to remember.

  Why had he gone? She hadn’t said anything that would drive him away. She couldn’t remember everything she’d said to him but it wouldn’t be that. More likely, she hadn’t said enough. He had looked ignorant still when he left, like he hadn’t realized or remembered. He had to get up for something. That’s what he’d said and that was all it was. He had an early appointment. Fine. She would get up and go to his place and wait. There wasn’t even any hurry. They were lovers now. It was all happening. Kristin hadn’t yet had the chance to make him feel wonderful and sensual in the ways she had imagined but that would come.

  By now, there was a warm familiarity about the breakfast room, and this morning it seemed to Kristin to have a particularly comfortable, cat-like calm, softly folded, drowsing. She ordered again her poached eggs and coffee and ate in silence.

  Either side of the underground journey was a beautiful spring day pieced together from small, tender elements, clouds, dashes of sunlight, shaking leaves, the clap of pigeons in flight, a delicate, playful, hair-lifting breeze. The river, sliding low between its banks, was patched with melting blue and brown. Rising forms of glass and brick all shone. She walked along the route still clear in her memory. When she expected it to, the turn to the right appeared and she walked straight to the front door of his building and pressed the button by his printed name. Nothing. She pressed again. Nothing. She was backing away to look up at the building when a man passed her heading to the door. He swiped in with a key card and Kristin followed. He looked back at her as she caught the closing door and entered behind him. She gave him a smile of vacuous, everyday innocence, which he seemed to accept, and she started up the stairs. Fortunately, he lived on the ground floor and did not follow her up to see her stopping outside number five with no key, unable to go in.

  Kristin tried to look in through the spyhole but couldn’t make anything out beyond a bulge of white light, bending shapes that must be walls, ceiling and floor. Henry’s protected and secret world that she was about to share. She took off her backpack and slid down the wall until she was sitting with her knees by her chin. Maybe this afternoon they could go to the butterfly exhibit together.

  Kristin waited an unknown, unconscious amount of time. The numbers on her watch couldn’t comment on it, speaking their unfriendly, public language. She sat still as a seed. Betrothed. Beloved. Ought. Nought. The quiet of the hallway gathered close around her heartbeats. It flew apart with the metallic scraping of the lock downstairs, the click of the door, the rush of outside sound. Kristin got quickly to her feet.

  Henry’s face changed twice when he saw her, once disarranged with confusion and then hardening with certainty. He held a small suitcase in one hand. Behind him was a woman, thin and tall. Henry said, “How did you get in here?”

  “I just came.”

  “What do you mean you just came? How do you even know where I live?”

  The woman said, “Henry, what’s going on here? Who is this person?” She had an American accent, just like Kristin’s.

  “It’s fine. It’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Henry, let’s not get hung up on how I got here. I’m here. That’s what matters.”

  “This is not cool. This is not okay. You shouldn’t …”

  “Don’t say that. Don’t say that. Don’t say that. Of course you should. We’re meant to be together. You remember me, you jus
t don’t remember. We met. At the airport, like a year and a half ago. We talked about this.”

  “Fuck me. I don’t even know your name to get a restraining order.”

  The woman giggled, “Oh my God, is this like a full-on stalker situation?”

  Kristin told her, “No,” then ignored her. “But you’re wrong. In your heart of hearts …”

  “Don’t come any closer to me.”

  Kristin didn’t realize that she was walking towards him and she didn’t stop. Henry shot out his arm and hit the knob of her shoulder with the flat of his hand. The straight force of the impact shocked tears into her eyes. It felt like pure hatred. “Just go. Keep going,” he said. “Don’t come back. Seriously now.” Kristin couldn’t control her face—her mouth was open and she couldn’t shut it.

  She ran past Henry, past the woman, and down the stairs.

  “Hey!” he shouted, as though maybe he’d realized his mistake and was about to say something else. She stopped and looked up as her bag flew towards her and hit her also, just below her left knee.

  Henry’s blows had knocked the substance from Kristin’s body. Light as air, she could feel nothing except the breaking in her chest. Her heart was breaking. She felt it go, the unbearable pain of splitting and scattering, the burning new emptiness at her centre.

  How could Henry have been so wrong? How could he not have known? And who was that ugly, laughing person?

  In the moment of these questions, Kristin could have been freed. She could have figured out a better ending and escaped. But she didn’t. Instead, she saw what she would do. There were even stairs to make it easy. A simple solution: she wanted to put out the fire of pain; she wanted always to be by Henry.

  Strange that there was not more of a barrier or divide. At the bottom of the steps was a narrow margin of gritty dirt and then the water. The water covered her shoes, was up to her knees. She felt an intimate sensation of exposure, like a dream of being naked in public. When she was fully in she wished she had worn her dress again instead of her trousers, heavy and wrapping, loosely swaddling. Wearing her dress, she would have floated and billowed. It would have spread beside her like butterfly wings as she met a more mystical death. Instead, there were these strange British voices shouting behind her, heard clearly in the breaks in the hard work of getting her head under the shockingly cold water and keeping it there. When it was under, she had to persuade herself to breathe in. She had time to think that she should have written Henry a final letter so that he would properly understand and could grieve. She remembered—distantly, fondly—the breathable air over her head, above the surface of the water.