The Dream Thief (Horatio Lyle)

by Catherine Webb

  ‘But . . . but you’re a lady, Miss Teresa.’

  ‘I ain’t never!’

  ‘I’m fairly confident you are, Miss Teresa.’

  ‘You take it back!’

  ‘Mere biology, Miss Teresa, informs against you.’

  ‘But a lady,’ groaned Tess, ‘a lady is this thin’ what as to go an’ sit at home an’ do the sewin’ an’ tend the garden, or summat, or them thin’s what proper ladies do an’ all. Like . . . like prayin’ or drinkin’ tea. But blokes! Blokes get to go an’ kill thin’s an’ conquer the Empire an’ they get . . . they get . . .’ Tess’s eyes filled with misty longing, ‘they get to use swords. You know, I ain’t ’posed to know this, bigwig, but I seen, I knows. Underneath those really tight waistcoats what the men wear all the time, underneath the suit an’ all, they’re really wearing floppy white shirts.’

  Thomas made a guttural ‘Oh really how interesting’ noise somewhere at the back of his throat. Tess radiated satisfaction. ‘My fence down at Mile End used to say as how there weren’t nothin’ quite like a floppy white shirt for turnin’ the head of a dolly mop down in—’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  Thomas nearly wept with relief at not having to find out any more of Tess’s fence’s opinion on the subject of floppy white shirts, and his attention leapt to the man who had spoken. Looking up, he saw, standing in a manner of polite interjection before him, a beard. A monumental beard. A beard so massive that the rest of his features seemed to have sunk into its dark, curly greying depths, as if eyes, nose and lips had all given up on trying to compete with their hairy surround. The man’s accent was weighted with the sharp, biting tang of somewhere in the German principalities. His eyes too were dark; his face was sombre. His suit had, once upon a time, been purchased from a respectable tailor but had long since become worn at the cuffs and elbows. However, he wore this slightly battered outfit with an attitude of such defiance that Thomas half wondered if he hadn’t gone and rubbed at the fabric with iron filings just to achieve the impoverished scholarly effect. He held a notebook in one hand, and a stub of heavily chewed pencil in the other.

  ‘Forgive me for interjecting,’ he said quickly, ‘but I was completely fascinated to see such as the pair of you in each other’s company.’

  Tess looked at Thomas, Thomas looked at Tess. Tess spoke for them both. ‘Wha’?’

  ‘To see, if I may be so bold, a scrawny, scum-of-the-gutter street urchin whose merest presence exudes unwholesome odours of both the physical and moral variety, in the company of a gentleman of clearly ignobly high birth thrust by this accident of fortune into a wealth that he—’

  Tess’s brain had finally caught up with the previous half of the gentleman’s sentence, and she suddenly sat up straight and said, ‘Oi! That were me you were callin’ smelly, weren’t it!’

  ‘He clearly does not deserve based on any merit of his own, but which has been . . .’

  ‘Um . . . what?’ mumbled Thomas, starting to flush red.

  ‘. . . thrust upon him. As I said, his wealth, his breeding, his social graces all the symptoms of an over-glutted, over-fed decadent system which alas was not thrust away by the forces of revolution . . .’

  ‘Bigwig,’ hissed Tess, nudging Thomas in the ribs, ‘tell me what he means in little words.’

  ‘. . . such as those of the lost ideals of 1848.’

  The man, having thus pronounced, beamed expectantly at the two of them.

  Thomas said, ‘Essentially, he is very interested to see a gentlewoman of . . . um . . . of apparently more practical class origins than my own in the company of a gentleman of distinguished breeding.’ Then he added, just in case, ‘And I’m the gentleman of breeding.’

  Tess nodded sagely, feeling that asking for a translation into even smaller words might perhaps undermine her reputation for intellect. Thankfully, by now, the rest of Thomas’s brain had also caught up and he suddenly exclaimed, ‘1848?! I’ll have you know my third cousin Roderick was nearly beheaded in 1848 by a bunch of ignorant Bavarian peasants full of ideas about this democracy business and had to flee to stay with Aunty Isabel in Austria until the whole nonsense calmed down!’

  ‘You have a third cousin Roderick?’ asked Tess.

  ‘Marvellous!’ exclaimed the owner of the beard. ‘You see, this is precisely what I mean! The mingling of the upper orders and the lower classes cannot take place without an immediate explosion of violence! This scrawny, scruffy, and clearly despicable and despised child . . .’

  ‘He mean me?’ hissed Tess.

  ‘. . . will one day rise up and see that those such as yourself, who have won by no greater merit than chance the riches of your birth, are the oppressing few holding back the great mass of downtrodden labour who every day must sweat and starve for their . . .’

  ‘I say . . .’ began Thomas feebly.

  ‘. . . for their enrichment, for their livelihood, for their freedom from the upper classes and their accomplices in the emerging bourgeoisie.’

  ‘Now look here,’ he tried again.

  ‘And I say, excellent! Recall this moment, sir, of apparent harmony between upper and lower classes, for in the near future revolution such as we have not seen since 1789 will sweep upon the wallowing decadent aristocrats of the upper echelons and you two will be set in the bitterest of conflicts, as, indeed, through economics, you already are!’

  ‘Are we?’ asked Thomas.

  ‘Indeed you are. For before you know it, your repressed companion here,’ a nod at Tess, ‘will acquire her social conscience and crush you and all your kin in a tidal wave of vengeance and economic turbulence the like of which the world has never seen!’

  Thomas looked at Tess. He tried to imagine her rising up against the aristocracy. She licked dirty sugar off the ends of her fingertips and, sensing Thomas’s stare, said through a mouthful of sticky goo, ‘Dunno what he said, dunno what he wants, dunno if I care.’

  Thomas felt a degree of comfort at this, and turned his attention back to the man with the beard. He seemed to have finished. His face was lit up with glowing pride and such a smug expectation of reprisal that Thomas half imagined it would be to this gentleman’s credit to spend several days in prison, just so he could spin it into an anecdote for the rest of his life. It dawned upon him that here was someone of clearly middling class, who lacking the credentials of a lower-class labourer who had struggled for his good, nor having the casual confidence of the upper classes, had clearly turned to that foul instrument economics, for a little social salvation.

  This now realised, Thomas put on the smile. It was something he had once seen Queen Victoria do, on one of the few, highly unpleasant occasions when she had been forced to meet the lower classes or, heaven help her, colonial natives, those savage creatures. It was the smile of the extremely wealthy preparing to indulge the extremely meek: all humility, grace and goodwill, with just a hint of tooth in between.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr . . .’ he began.

  ‘Mr Marx! Mr Karl Marx, sir! May I ask you about your feelings on the economic inevitability of mechanisation and the enfranchisement of the majority of the industrial classes in—’

  Thomas raised a hand, commanding silence. ‘Forgive me, Mr Marx,’ he said smoothly, ‘but as I am a thoroughly inbred aristocrat with no further interest in life than hunting and the condition of my dogs, I have neither the time nor the inclination to talk to you, and even if I did talk to you, I would find your tedious theories on such base matters as economics so intellectual as to be beneath my consideration.’

  And again, he gave the smile, and this time, it was all teeth and nothing else.

  Anyone else might have hit him.

  But for Mr Karl Marx, Thomas was for just a moment, the living vindication of all that his theories were, and all they could become, and he beamed in pure academic bliss.

  ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘may I shake you by the hand, while you still have a hand to shake?’

  ‘Sir,’ replied Thomas courte
ously. They shook hands. Mr Marx smiled again the smug smile of a man who knows the battle, whatever it is, is already won, turned and walked away.

  They watched him go.

  Finally Tess said, ‘I didn’t get not nearly nothin’ of what he went an’ said there.’

  ‘Oh, revolution and uprising and the fall of the upper classes,’ sighed Thomas. ‘It’ll never catch on.’

  Mr Majestic found himself in an interesting situation.

  He found himself with his own cane across his throat, his feet stuck out in an ungainly manner over the edge of his dressing table (not that he ever needed to put on his costume, since he never undressed) and, here was perhaps where it became surreal, a man called Horatio Lyle was patiently explaining to him the long-term effects of narcotic addiction.

  ‘. . . then there’s the question of what it does to the internal organs,’ went on Lyle cheerfully. ‘I mean, clearly there’s some effect to the circulatory system, since the addict’s responses are slow, their veins are protruding and their heartbeat struggles like the beat of the rusty grandfather clock. But I’ve always wondered, what about the kidneys? What about the liver? If only we had a more reliable way to study the internal composition of these organs we could do more than speculate on the consequence of illicit and dangerous substances in the blood stream, but as it is, we have barely scratched the surface of these save to say that they are in some way connected to some other place.’

  ‘Sir?’ squeaked Mr Majestic, raising one white-gloved hand.

  ‘Yes?’ asked Lyle nicely.

  ‘Sir, why are you telling me this?’

  Lyle sighed, and shifted his weight ever so slightly. The cane across Mr Majestic’s throat tightened, his eyes bulged. ‘No one these days appreciates the value of knowledge for knowledge’s sake. “Study the stars, Galileo? Why bother? They’re just points of light in a blackness overhead?” But think from that study what wonders, what mathematical wonders, what intellectual wonders have come. We have redefined humanity, placed the sun at the centre of the universe and spun ourselves giddily round its hub, seen other worlds and marvelled at their beauty, finally become less than men made in God’s image and so much more than human. I’m sorry - what was the question?’

  ‘You’re hurting me!’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Not so much as the gentleman who seems to have you in his thrall,’ replied Lyle cheerfully. ‘You see, I can’t help but notice, now I look for it, that the gloves on your hands don’t appear to come off, nor the buttons on your waistcoat undo. Nor, may I add, do the pupils in your eyes shrink and grow as they should when turned to and from the light. Your breath smells of some narcotic stuff, your conversation is childish and, let’s face it,’ Lyle leant in until his face nearly bumped Mr Majestic’s own, ‘I really don’t like being dumped in the elephant pen. You are, in short, as is, it seems, every single member of this circus, adult and child, poisoned. Only this poison turns adults to dribbling children, and children to unconscious puppets. Fascinating stuff, isn’t it? Now. We can continue this discussion about the philosophical nature of study, or you can answer me a few questions, quietly, quickly and with no silly buggers. Who is Greybags?’

  Mr Majestic whimpered.

  ‘Greybags.’ Lyle didn’t raise his voice, but the look in his eye assured Mr Majestic that his interest in narcotics was more than purely philosophical.

  ‘He’ll be so angry, he’ll be so angry, he’ll be so angry—’

  ‘Just imagine,’ growled Lyle, ‘how little I care right now. Who is Greybags?’

  ‘He likes the ones who play.’

  ‘No silly buggers!’

  ‘He likes to tell stories.’

  ‘Really? What kind of stories?’

  ‘Once upon a time . . .’

  ‘A long time ago,’ added Lyle. ‘Yes? What then?’

  Mr Majestic’s eyebrows tightened, as if trying to remember something he’d heard a long time ago. ‘Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a child who ran away to the circus. He was a lonely child, he was small and he was scared, but the circus was big and bright and full of magic and in it all the children were happy and all the children laughed and dreamed and told stories and the child was happy too because he could hear the stories and steal the dreams and eat the dreams and never have to grow old and—’

  ‘Eat the dreams?’ murmured Lyle. ‘What do you mean, eat the dreams?’

  ‘It’s just a story.’

  ‘And a windpipe is just a muscular tube protected by a little cartilage,’ replied Lyle sharply. ‘It’s amazing how the small things matter. This child who ran away to the circus - did he eat something he shouldn’t have?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Cake?’

  ‘Children love cake. All children want to have pudding.’

  ‘And what’s in the pudding?’

  ‘It’s just to help them dream.’

  ‘What’s in it?’

  ‘You’re a grown-up. You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘You’re in your fifties you stupid little—’ Lyle froze, biting down so hard on his words his teeth clattered. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, you.’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘How can you not know?’

  ‘Don’t matter. Grown-up too, therefore no fun.’

  ‘You’re a grown-up.’

  ‘Of course I am!’

  ‘And how does that make you feel?’

  ‘Feel sad.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He won’t let me play no more.’

  ‘Who won’t let you play?’

  ‘Him!’

  ‘Who him!’

  ‘Him!’ wailed Mr Majestic. ‘Him, him, him, who tells the stories! Him who ran away to the circus! Him who won’t never grow up! I didn’t want to grow up neither!’

  ‘Greybags.’ Lyle sighed.

  Mr Majestic half nodded, tears welling in his eyes.

  ‘Greybags. The adults become children, but they stay awake. The adults become part of the circus, living, breathing parts of the circus: gloves that won’t come off, an organ that never stops playing, clowns that never stop smiling.’ Lyle’s face wrinkled in concentration. ‘The adults become entertainment, the way they ought to be to entertain the children. But Sissy Smith, Scuttle, all the sleeping children in the hospital have been poisoned and now they won’t wake up. Something . . . something has been taken from them, something stolen. Does Greybags steal something from them? What does he take? Why won’t they wake up?’

  ‘They’re dreaming,’ replied Mr Majestic with a whimper. ‘They eat the cake and it makes them dream. Adults can’t dream like children can.’

  ‘Children have imagination,’ replied Lyle sharply, ‘I understand that. Adults have perhaps seen things that . . . Why don’t the children wake up?’

  ‘He likes their dreams.’ Mr Majestic’s head tilted slightly beneath the vice of the cane pressed across his throat. ‘He says that only the children are really alive.’

  Lyle’s eyes narrowed. ‘Greybags steals children’s dreams? Needs children’s dreams, am I right? Sissy Smith is taken to the circus and they feed her cake and she eats the cake and then she sleeps and won’t wake up and something was stolen from her. Not dreams as in that which happens when you’re asleep, something . . . alive. Living breathing awake dreams. That’s what was taken from her, am I right? Dreams of tomorrow, of what she will be, of all the things you dream of when you’re a child, of mother and father and kindness and what you will become, that’s what’s stolen from her, because she can’t wake up. Those are what the children have that grown-ups don’t. Greybags eats children’s dreams. Why? Am I right? Mr Majestic? Hey! Am I right?’

  Mr Majestic nodded, tears running down his face, dripping off the end of his nose and mixing with his moustache.

  ‘And what about the circus? Why . . .? Oh, I see. A circus. A moving circus. All the children come to the
circus and sometimes they do run away, don’t they? A child that runs away to the circus, who’d notice, who’d look, who’d care? Perfect place to hide. And no one asks about the children from the workhouse, no one at all. In fact, it’s really very useful if they vanish, one less mouth for the parish to feed. They come to the circus and then they eat the cake and never wake up again. How could you let it happen?’ Lyle shook Mr Majestic, his face filling with anger. ‘How could you?!’

  ‘He . . . he saw my dreams.’