Sue Kramer said to Anna, ‘You are being so frightfully good with him. I'm afraid he's rather a dull boy, but there it is. Anyway, you're sweet.’
Anna smiled, embarrassed. Actually she'd never been entirely sure she liked Sue Kramer. Nick Kramer she'd known since he was about three, and he was absolutely hopeless.
‘And the acne …’ said Lisa. ‘One wants to simply pick them up and plunge them in some enormous vat of disinfectant, boys of that age.’
Anna looked towards Jean-Paul who, at that moment, glanced over his shoulder, caught her eye and waved. ‘Look …’ he called.
‘Be nice, darling,’ said Anna's mother.
There was a glinting coppery butterfly sitting on a plant, opening and closing its wings. Jean-Paul pointed, without speaking. Anna was at a loss; it was a bit odd, to put it bluntly, for a boy to be going on about a butterfly.
‘A butterfly,’ she said, with slight desperation.
‘Yes,’ said Jean-Paul. ‘Of what kind?’
‘I've no idea.’
‘You are not interest in nature, either?’
‘Well, quite,’ said Anna (blushing now, curse it).
‘I am interest,’ said Jean-Paul, ‘in astronomy, philosophy and the music of Mozart.’
Anna went rigid. Thank heavens at least the others hadn't heard him; they'd have died laughing. He was perfectly serious, that was the awful thing. What on earth could one say? He was gazing at her, reflectively.
‘Tell me,’ he went on. ‘Why did your parents embarrass? About I need to go to the toilet from the car.’
She didn't know where to look. ‘I don't know,’ she muttered.
Jean-Paul laughed. ‘Perhaps they are people who do not need to go to the toilet, never. Formidable!’
She looked back to the picnic group. Kevin Brand was still lying on the grass. Her parents were tidying up. Sue Kramer was sitting a little apart, reading a magazine. Lisa Brand and Tony Kramer were walking up the hill together; you could hear them laughing.
‘I'm sorry,’ said Jean-Paul. ‘Now I make you embarrass too. I am not very nice. Shall we go for a walk?’
‘All right,’ said Anna. In the car, she remembered, she had smiled brilliantly at him to make up for his spots and his shoes.
They went round the flank of the hill, along the crest of one of the great ridges that lapped it. And Jean-Paul, incredibly, began to sing. She was afraid the others might hear. He sang this cheerful little song, the words of which she could not quite catch, and when they got to a point from which you could see great blue distances of landscape all around he stopped and waved at it and said, ‘Pas mal, alors?’ He was, she saw, perfectly happy.
She stared at him in surprise. There he was, this not at all nice-looking boy who wasn't tall enough, spending the day with lots of people he didn't know, most of whom hadn't spoken a word to him, and he was happy. It was ridiculous, really.
She said, ‘Do you like staying with the Kramers?’
Jean-Paul shrugged. ‘Ça va. They are very kind. I must learn English for my examination.’
‘Like Nick's got to get his French O-level.’
He grinned. ‘So everybody inconveniences themself a little.’
They had reached the brow of the hill. Below them on one side was the picnic site, with Anna's parents and Kevin and Sue Kramer just as they had left them and on the other, sitting on the grass, were Tony Kramer and Lisa. Lisa's laugh floated up to them. And then suddenly she was flapping her hands around her head and there was a shriek and Tony was flapping his hands too and bending over her.
‘La pauvre dame,’ said Jean-Paul. ‘She is bit, I think. A – how do you say it – une guêpe.’
‘Wasp,’ said Anna. She didn't feel all that sorry for Lisa Brand. Actually she thought Lisa had been going on rather, with her precious white pants and her jokes. Lisa and Tony were starting back up the hill now, Lisa with her hand clasped to her shoulder
‘Do you believe in God?’ said Jean-Paul.
She looked at him in horror. ‘I don't know.’
‘Moi – non. Not since I am twelve years old. Because of he makes everything beautiful and then puts in the middle a wasp. Everything is nice and then – pouff! – a bus come and run over your mother.’
‘Honestly?’ said Anna, shocked.
‘Pas actuellement. But it is what happen. La souffrance. So I do not think there can be anyone who make a world like that, or if there is he is bad and he is not God, because God is good. Pas vrai?’
Quite frankly, she'd never heard anyone talk like that in her life. You didn't know whether to laugh, or what. I mean, sitting on a hill talking about God. But there he was, doing it as though it were the most normal thing in the world.
Lisa and Tony passed them. Lisa was leaning on Tony's arm still clutching her shoulder. Tony waved and Lisa smiled bravely. Jean-Paul said, ‘Perhaps that lady does not suffer so terrible. In the Middle Age people are roasting each other on fires and putting in hot oil.’
‘Don't,’ said Anna. She was hopeless at history, anyway; it was her worst subject, except maths. And this conversation was quite beyond her, out of control like everything on this stupid picnic. For two pins she'd have gone back to the others, except that in some peculiar way it had now become Jean-Paul who made decisions, not her. Just as, eerily, it was Jean-Paul who seemed at ease in this place, on this hillside in a foreign country, rather than the rest of them.
He said, ‘When I will be president of the Republic – no, when I will be king – king is more amusing, tant pis pour la Révolution – when I will be king there will be no earthquakes and no bad weather and I will give to everyone discs of the music of Mozart.’ He looked at Anna. ‘And what will you make, when you are queen?’
It was silly, this, really – I mean, if any of one's friends could hear … ‘No more maths.’
‘Ah. That is difficult for the banks and the shops and the men of business. Never mind, we arrange.’
She didn't know if she liked him or not. But more disconcerting was the fact that, so far as he was concerned, it quite evidently didn't matter. He wasn't bothered, one way or the other. And, maddeningly, it began to matter what he thought of her. Which was absurd … a boy like that. She tried to think of something to say that would be funny, or clever; nothing came.
‘So that's where you've got to.’ Her mother appeared suddenly behind them. ‘Lisa's been stung by a wasp. The most unnecessary commotion, frankly. Tony's gone off to that village we came through to get some antihistamine. And someone left the top off the ice-bucket – wouldn't you know – so I can't do the iced tea.’ She looked round irritably. ‘I said all along we should have gone to the beach.’
‘Where's Dad?’
‘He's got one of his headaches, rather predictably. So Sue and I have been clearing up entirely on our own. Kevin's gone off in a huff.’ She remembered Jean-Paul and said brightly, ‘I'm so glad Anna's been looking after you.’ She gave Anna a conspiratorial glance of sympathy. ‘Anyway, I thought I'd better start rounding people up.’
They walked down the hill. Anna's mother told Jean-Paul that this was a frightfully pretty part of the country and Jean-Paul nodded politely and Anna's mother glanced at his shoes and his haircut and Anna knew what she was thinking. She wished she was somewhere else. She wished, particularly, that Jean-Paul was somewhere else but for her own sake rather than for his.
They reached the picnic place, where Anna's father, Lisa Brand, Kevin Brand and Sue Kramer were all sitting a little apart from each other and not saying anything. Lisa was holding a handkerchief to her neck and Anna's father had his eyes closed. And then Tony Kramer came panting up the hill waving a tube and Lisa cried, ‘Oh, Tony, bless you – you really are an angel.’ Kevin Brand picked up a newspaper and began to read it and Sue Kramer said, ‘Sir Lancelot to the rescue,’ and laughed in a not particularly amused way.
Anna's mother had just discovered she had trodden in a pile of sheep-muck and was hopping about with one
of her new Russell & Bromley sandals off, trying to clean it.
Jean-Paul looked around at them all. He smiled benignly. He said, ‘I wish to thank for you bring me to this charming place.’ They all gazed at him in astonishment and he continued to smile benignly and sat down on the grass. ‘I enjoy myself very much,’ he said.
For a moment there was silence. Then Tony Kramer exclaimed heartily, ‘And that goes for everyone, I imagine. Terrific outing. Sort of day that should go on for ever.’
‘Absolutely,’ murmured Lisa.
‘Quite,’ said Anna's father. ‘Though alas we, I'm afraid, will have to push off shortly.’ He gave Anna's mother one of those looks that was not a look but an instruction and she scowled back and continued to rearrange picnic baskets and barbecue stuff.
They walked in procession down the hill. This time Jean-Paul led the way and was the most heavily burdened, having insisted on carrying the two loungers. Even so, he walked faster than anyone else; he was, Anna could hear, singing that little song again. No one else was saying much except Lisa who was telling Tony Kramer her neck felt heaps better now, entirely thanks to him.
The right possessions were stowed into the right cars. They told each other what a marvellous day it had been. Anna's mother kissed everyone and Sue Kramer kissed everyone except Lisa Brand, and Jean-Paul went round shaking hands. When he got to Anna he said, ‘When I am king I make you minister of finance, O.K.?’ and Anna went scarlet. Jean-Paul got in with the Kramers and Kevin and Lisa got into their Sprite and Anna got into the Renault with her parents. Engines started. Everyone waved.
Anna's mother said, ‘What on earth was that boy saying?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Did you manage to find something to talk to him about?’
‘Sort of,’ said Anna distantly.
There was a grass-stain on her new jeans and she had eaten not one small slice of quiche but two helpings of everything so she would have put on about three pounds. But all that was the least of it.
They travelled back along the same roads but she did not feel the same at all. Ahead of them was the Kramers’ car and through the rear window she could see Jean-Paul's head, and that too was different, uncomfortably different; it spoke now not of spots and a ghastly haircut but of small coppery butterflies and conversation that embarrassed, that left you uncertain, as though you had peered through strange windows. Jean-Paul did not turn round and presently the Volvo was lost in traffic.
The Dream Merchant
THERE WAS once a merchant of dreams. He sold dreams every day except Sunday, to young people and to old people, cheap dreams and costly dreams, short dreams and dreams that would last many days and weeks. The window of his shop was bright with the stuff of his dreams; it offered moonlit nights of love, it offered the spoils of the Orient and the treasure of kings, it promised happiness and mystery and romance. His customers saw themselves transfigured; they saw themselves as they really were – glad and healthy and beautiful, always laughing, feeding on pomegranites and ambrosia, bare-bodied and clean-limbed, having sexual intercourse fifteen times a week. Those of the dream merchant's customers who were of a different caste of mind also saw themselves as they really were – walking tall in an antique land, communing with gods, possessors of all knowledge and all wisdom, superior in all things and especially to their neighbours, who would be made to feel this in the fullness of time. There were dreams to suit everyone, wonderful in their variety and their ingenuity, a world unto themselves, and at prices to suit every pocket.
Sometimes people came back and complained about the dreams. They said, This was not a good dream. This dream was not the dream you said it would be. ‘The journey was not a flight into paradise and our bedroom in the hotel was already occupied and the sea was not where the dream promised it would be and the swimming-pool was not built and there were not pomegranites or ambrosia.’ And the dream merchant would be very sorry and explain that he did not manufacture the dreams, he only bought the dreams and made them available to others, sometimes at cut rates and amazing reductions, and he could not be held responsible for the quality of the dreams. His regret was genuine, because he was a good merchant of dreams and he genuinely wanted his customers to enjoy their purchases. He passed on their complaints to the manufacturers of dreams, and sometimes he even told a manufacturer sternly that he would not sell his product any more, he would buy dreams elsewhere, proven dreams that gave satisfaction, dreams to be relied on. For he felt sorry for his customers, often – the bright-eyed girls who came in with their savings, wanting to buy handsome young princes, and the tired people and the sad people and the old people, bargaining for peace of mind and adventure and eternal life. Sometimes, he tried gently to explain that his dreams could only be guaranteed in certain respects, but very few of his customers listened to this. Where else, after all, could they buy dreams?
The dream merchant, who lived in South Harrow between the Amoco garage and the Co-op, had never bought one of his own dreams. His wife, an unusual woman, said she was quite happy as she was and did not need dreams. And indeed the dream merchant did not covet his own wares; he respected them and he was interested in them, he unfurled the bales of silk and velvet and ran his hand over the fabric and scrutinised the marvellous designs but he did not yearn to dress himself in them. He knew everything that there was to know about gold and silver and lapis lazuli and turquoise and jade and he knew how to tell real pearls from counterfeit pearls and where to find the Holy Grail and the Land of Prester John and the North-West Passage and Shangri-La, but he did not particularly want any of these things for himself. He was Vice-Chairman of the Rotary Club and a member of the Automobile Association and South Harrow Conservative Party and what he most desired in life was to win first prize for cactus dahlias at the Horticultural Society's annual show.
But he was also a man of conscience, and as the years went by he began to feel more and more strongly that he ought to experience one of his own dreams. His assistant in the dream shop, a girl called Sandra, had tried out many dreams, indeed the main reason she worked in the dream shop was to get a discount on dreams – she could almost have been called a professional dreamer, so obsessive was her need for dreams. But this very obsession made the merchant of dreams doubtful of the accuracy of her accounts; he suspected that she had ceased to be able to distinguish between dreams and real life. She was very good at typing and filing and remembering the price of a high-season return ticket to Samarkand or the names of three-star castles in Spain but when it came to describing her own dreams she became evasive and muttered that it had been smashing, thanks, which the dream merchant did not consider a dispassionate assessment. And so, in his fiftieth year, without enthusiasm but with a certain sense of virtue, he told his wife that he would select a dream for them.
He made his selection carefully. He knew that neither he nor his wife would want to indulge in pomegranites, ambrosia or more sex than they were accustomed to. He rejected cloth of gold and mother-of-pearl and Nirvana and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. He pored over the offerings of those dream manufacturers he considered most honest, and eventually he settled for a dream to which he thought his wife would not object too much, in a land of eternal sunshine but possessed of a reasonable climate, a dream offering what he considered modest promises by way of castles in the air, miracles, transfigurations and nectar. In any case he did not want to be transfigured and he was not a drinking man. He took out an insurance policy that guaranteed to despatch his body (and his wife's) back to South Harrow by air in the event of his death, had himself (and his wife) vaccinated against typhoid, beriberi, green monkey disease and Lassa fever, and presented himself (and his wife) at the British Airways check-in desk at Heathrow on the appropriate day.
In the aeroplane the dream merchant read the newspaper and his wife did her knitting. From time to time they looked out of the window and the dream merchant pointed out the rosy snow-capped peaks of the Mountains of the Moon beneath, or the silvery glint
of a river, perhaps the far-distant Oxus, or even Abana or Pharphar, the rivers of Damascus. They were served a meal charmingly laid out in dolls'-house portions – and indeed it turned out to be made of painted plaster. The girl who served it to them, whose face was the wanton and alluring face that promised so many pleasures on the picture in the dream shop, offered the dream merchant a choice of coffee or tea; if she had more esoteric wares no mention was made, nor, to be frank, would the dream merchant have been especially receptive, being a happily married man, but we must remember that he was dreaming for purposes of detached investigation and not just for fun. He made a note in his new king-size notebook.
When they reached their destination, in the land that was distant but not excessively distant, whose climate was reasonable and whose inhabitants were given neither to revolution nor to unpredictable acts of war, the dream merchant and his wife collected their baggage and were transported by coach to the hotel of their choice. They passed by glittering lakes and craggy mountains, they saw rushing streams and brilliant grassy glades and the dream merchant's wife, who enjoyed scenery, said this wasn't a bad dream at all so far. The dream merchant looked at her warily.
For the dream merchant's intention was to examine not so much the content of the dream as its effect on those taking part. It had long seemed to him that the success of dream manufacturers – and indeed of dream merchants – lay in the response of their customers quite as much as in the quality of their goods. And so he had decided to study the effect of dreaming on his wife, who after all he knew inside out in what you might call her right mind, and also on himself. So far he could detect no effect on himself, except a certain fatigue.
The hotel did not have silken sheets nor did doe-eyed Circassian slave- girls offer the dream merchant and his wife sweetmeats on silver platters, but the bathroom was perfumed and the water was hot. The dream merchant's wife behaved quite normally. She did not peel off her clothes and fling herself upon the dream merchant in paroxysms of lust but read the instructions about what to do in the event of fire (in four languages), did her unpacking and proposed that they should go for a walk before dinner.
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