A Dream of Wessex

by Christopher Priest

  ‘Then it must be illegal.’

  ‘No ... secret. There’s a distinction.’

  ‘It wouldn’t seem much of a difference to Borovitin.’

  ‘That’s it precisely.’ She was sitting away from him now. Her legs were crossed, but she leaned forward towards him earnestly. ‘All that you saw at the Castle the other day, the craftwork, the skimmers, they’re cover for something else. Most of the people at the Castle are scientists and academics, drawn from all parts of England. They have a common ideal, and the Castle is the only place they can pursue it.’

  ‘Don’t they have ideals in universities any more?’

  ‘The universities are State-controlled. The only research that’s possible is under the management of politicians and bureaucrats. What we’re interested in is social and economic research, free of political pressure. The facilities for that exist at the Castle, and that is why the community was established.’

  ‘You said “we”,’ Harkman said.

  ‘I’m one of them. Our real work at the Castle is just about to start, and I’m going to be heavily involved in a few days’ time. When it’s finished, things will be different.’

  He did not see why this should prevent him from living with her at the Castle, but then he did. There was always the other man. He stared back at her in silence, feeling that something he valued above all else had been taken away from him.

  Apparently thinking that what she said was insufficient to convince him, Julia leaned forward again, placed her hand on his wrist.

  ‘It’s utterly serious, David. I’m not asking much of you, except patience. The results of this project could ultimately affect everyone in England, and I have to commit myself to that. You should understand: you have your own work.’

  ‘It doesn’t come between you and me.’

  ‘It does so long as you’re attached to the Commission.’ Harkman said: ‘What is this project at the Castle?’

  ‘Obviously I can’t tell you. It’s ... a little like your work, except that your research is with the past.’

  ‘And yours is with the future.’ He meant it ironically, but she reacted at once by taking away her hand and staring into her lap.

  ‘It’s a new kind of sociological research,’ she said. ‘A different way of seeing the present.’ She turned her head, glanced back at the storm-cloud in the distance. ‘I’ve probably said too much. But do you understand how important it is?’

  He looked back at her, trying to betray nothing. ‘I understand that I won’t see you. That you live with someone else. That your work is more important to you than I am. That all this has happened in the last few minutes.’

  ‘There’s something else, David. Stronger than any of those.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I love you. I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it. I love you more than anyone I have ever known.’

  He shook his head, and said nothing.

  Julia drew away, and stood up. She looked about her: the grass of the heath waved in the breeze.

  ‘What is it?’ David sat up, propping himself on an elbow. ‘Is someone there?’

  ‘Please wait ... just for a minute.’

  Before he could answer she moved away from him, walking quickly up the slope of the little hollow where they had been lying, and went across the heath towards the west. The great cumulonimbus which straddled the horizon, blue-black at its base, a soaring white anvil at its peak, seemed about to obscure the sun, for it spread laterally and hugely towards it. Julia walked in front of the sun, and for a moment he was dazzled by it. He saw her pause, raise her hands to her face, lower her head.

  He thought she was crying, but nothing in her mood had warned of that ... and as he watched he saw that she was motionless, as if meditating or waiting. Then she raised her head and looked towards the south, to where the mound of Maiden Castle breasted its hill.

  She seemed to be waiting, and so he waited with her, aware above all else of the juxtaposition of the three: the Castle and Julia and himself. There was some incontestable link between them, and yet it was something that also threatened to divide them. In those moments, while Julia stood on the grassy edge of the hollow, profiled against the turbulent sky, Harkman tried to understand everything that had been said in the last few minutes. Unexpectedly, the explanation came from the enigma that had dogged him since the first night.

  What he had heard from her had not actually been said: he had remembered it into his experience.

  The only reality was the girl in the sun, black and wary against the sky. The sensation was more marked now than Harkman had ever known it. It was all illusory, remembered by him, remembered for him; not real.

  Had they talked of love, of another man, of a scientific project?

  He knew they had and he knew they hadn’t. The contradiction was ultimate. Reality began at this instant, at every instant, and the past became false.

  Then Julia turned towards him, hurrying back, skipping in the grass.

  ‘David!‘ she called. ‘David, I’m here! ‘

  He stood up as she ran towards him, because he recognized something in her at last, something he had been seeking. She rushed towards him, and went into his arms, kissing him, holding him.

  ‘David,’ she said breathlessly, kissing his face. ‘Oh I love you! ‘

  He looked into her eyes, and it was there. The intangible; the life; the reality.

  Harkman felt her in his arms and in his heart. The sensation that memory created her was gone. Julia was there, and she was real, and total. She had returned to him.

  But as he embraced her, the darkening shoulders of Maiden Castle stood behind her, calling her back.

  twenty-one

  They hurried, because the sun had gone in behind the encroaching cloud, and the storm was almost upon them. No rain had yet fallen, but the breeze had died and the countryside lay humid and silent in anticipation.

  The path divided by the stretch of shore known locally as Victoria Beach, and as she and David embraced Julia noticed that the sand was still crowded with tourists, apparently unheeding of the imminent downpour. Foreign tourists never seemed to learn the vagaries of English weather, and she knew that in a few minutes they would all be scurrying for cover, exclaiming about the unannounced storm. After she had left David, and was walking back to the Castle, she allowed more charitably that they were probably waiting until the last possible moment before returning to town; sea-bathing was impossible almost everywhere else in the world, because of industrial pollution, and one of the undeniable attractions of Wessex was its clean sea.

  She was trying not to think of what had passed between her and David, because she had presented the truth to him and he had found it unpalatable. Looking at the visitors on the beach, as she walked quickly towards the Castle, she felt a deep and vague sadness about David, and she wished her function here was as simple as that of the tourists.

  It had always been like this, though. She should not have allowed herself the luxury of David Harkman. There had always been the monotony of the detailed preparations at the Castle, the need for concentration and absorption in her work.

  (Then: a ghost. Another summer, another life. David at the stall, then arriving at the Castle one morning, trying out the skimmers as she lazed on the beach of the inlet. Five days ago ... or never? When had she ever had the time to spend like that?)

  She had reached the first of the Castle’s ramparts as this spectral memory struck her, and she paused reflexively. Like the recollection of a dream it had momentary conviction, but unlike the breaking of a dream the memory remained in her mind for her to explore.

  There was a duality: on the one hand a complete certainty that for the last few months, all through the long summer, she and the others had been absorbed in their preparations in the tunnels beneath the Castle; on the other, a faint but quite distinct memory of a different kind of summer, the stall, the harbour, the crowds of tourists ... and Greg.

  David had
talked of Greg, thinking that he and she were lovers, but she denied it. Of course she denied it: Greg was nothing to her.

  The fainter memory placed Greg beside her, possessing her.

  There was a brilliant flash of lightning, and Julia turned sharply, expecting the crack of thunder to come on cue, a momentous natural event to celebrate a momentous realization ... but thunder did not sound.

  She glanced up the wall of the rampart, seeing the cloud massing above. It was almost on top of her, and the nearness to it had changed the colour from its earlier blue-black to a sickly yellowish grey. She looked towards the west, from where the storm was approaching, and saw that already the landscape had disappeared in a grey mist; the rain was almost upon her.

  She hurried on, going up the path across the side of the first rampart, following its curving, dipping course towards the second. She was running, suddenly frightened of the might of the storm.

  She had intended to go to the house she shared with Paul, - but that was too far away on the other side of the village. Her fear of the storm became panicky, a terror of being struck by lightning in the open spaces at the top of the Castle, so she left the path and ran down the slope towards the entrance to the underground passages. Several people from the village were crowded into the doorway, looking apprehensively at the sky.

  Thunder rolled and rumbled, and the rain started: heavy drops hissing down on to the sun-baked earth. Within seconds the rain had become a deluge, water and ice combined, sluicing down in a vicious torrent. The hailstones stung her shoulders and neck and legs, scattered on the ground before her as she ran with the wind. Her hair and dress had plastered wetly to her body in the first few moments of the downpour.

  She reached the shelter at last, panting and frightened. She expected, without thinking, that the crowd of people would step back to let her in, but they seemed not to have noticed her, and she stood in front of them in the driving rain. Lightning flashed again, and thunder cracked immediately afterwards. She pushed against the people, forcing them to move back, and at last she was out of the worst of the rain.

  The people clustering in the entrance to the shelter continued to pay no attention to her, even though she was pressed against at least three of them. She knew none of them, except by sight: they were mostly farmers, or artisans from the craft workshops. None of them was involved with the real work of the community.

  Angrily, she pressed against them, forcing a passage, and they moved reluctantly aside, complaining to each other - but not directly at her - about her persistence.

  When she broke free of the press of bodies she was well inside the bare, unlit construction, standing under the cracked concrete roof. For the first time she noticed that Greg had been among the people blocking the entrance, but he had not acknowledged her. He, like the others, was peering out at the spectacular weather from the safety of the shelter.

  Outside, there was another brilliant white flash of lightning, accompanied by a deafening crash of thunder.

  Julia turned away, and walked across the rubble-littered floor towards the narrow staircase at the back. She pinched the damp fabric between thumb and forefinger of each hand, and lifted it away from her thighs, then went quickly down the stairs. The tunnels and cells of the laboratories were about fifteen metres below the surface, and before she had reached the bottom of the stairs the storm had become inaudible. Here, in the depths of Maiden Castle, they could not be touched by the elements.

  John Eliot’s room was empty, as she had expected, so she went on down to the end of the corridor and entered the conference room.

  This was the only place in the whole underground system that was heated, and by common consent it had become the centre of all the preparatory activity. Here, in contrast with the other rooms, they had made a more than minimal effort to furnish it comfortably, bringing down from the village many chairs and tables. Several of the Castle’s better craft products had been placed ornamentally on view, and many hundreds of books were stacked on shelves along one of the walls.

  About fifteen of the chosen participants were in the conference room, as well as Dr Eliot and some of his staff. Marilyn was there, and as soon as she saw Julia she waved to her. She was sitting at the large table at the far end of the room, listening in to one of the interminable policy-discussions.

  John Eliot noticed her, left the discussion and came over to her.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he said. ‘We were waiting for you.’

  ‘I was caught in the storm,’ she said, realizing that Eliot probably had no knowledge of the weather. Neither he nor any of the staff ever seemed to leave the underground passages.

  ‘So I noticed,’ Eliot said, glancing at her rain-soaked dress. ‘Do you want to change?’

  ‘I’ll do it later. It’s still raining out. I can keep warm here.’

  ‘There’s more reading for you. Will you do it on your own, or are you going to join the discussion?’

  ‘What’s it about this evening?’ Julia said.

  ‘The election of a new member. At the moment opinion seems to be split.’

  ‘Who is it to be?’

  ‘A man called Donald Mander. He’s a Commission official. He’d make an excellent administrator.’

  ‘Someone from the Commission?’ Julia said, frowning. ‘That’s an unusual step.’

  ‘So some of us think. Others think it would be worth the risk.’ She stared at Eliot blankly, thinking of David. If they could seriously consider a government official for the project then they could hardly object to David. Her negative answer to David’s simple, understandable request had hurt him bitterly... but then she had not seen a way. But now, perhaps she could suggest... No, there was Paul. Always Paul.

  ‘Is Paul here?’

  ‘He’s in the mortuary at the moment,’ Eliot said. ‘He’ll be back later.’

  ‘What does Paul think about Mander?’

  ‘He’s for him.’

  ‘So am I,’ Julia said.

  ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘I’ve seen him about Dorchester. I don’t know much about him, but he used to smile at me when I was at the stall.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were vain, Julia.’

  ‘I’m not. I’ve a feeling about Mander. That’s been enough for the rest of us, hasn’t it?’

  Eliot nodded, but vaguely. Julia and the others had tried to explain about the intangible sense of recognition, but Eliot claimed he never experienced it. It had now become the fundamental criterion by which people were invited to join the project. Julia herself knew the intangible well enough, because it was the same with David.

  The same, but different with David.

  ‘Are you going to speak up in Mander’s favour?’ Eliot said, looking towards the table, where the arguments had continued as they had been speaking.

  ‘No need. He’ll be accepted in the end. You can put me down for an “aye”, if you like. Where’s the reading I have to do?’

  Julia looked around for somewhere to sit, while Eliot went to the shelves to find a book. In the warm air of the conference room her wet clothes did not feel too uncomfortable. She found a chair near one of the heaters, thinking that she could steam quietly by herself until dry. She tossed back her hair, wondering if she could borrow a brush or a comb from Marilyn.

  She looked to see who was already here. She recognized Rod, Nathan, Alicia and Clark from the Castle community; she knew each of these well, as they had been in Wessex for many months. There were several other people at the table, people she recognized from other conferences, to whom she had been introduced but whose names she had since forgotten. They were all from Dorchester or its environs. One man worked on a farm near Cerne Abbas; two of the women came from villages on the southern shore of the bay. All had social or academic qualifications, all were living double lives to facilitate their work here. It was a strange contrivance, and she was glad that because she was already a member of the Castle community she did not have to resort to elaborate d
eceptions to come here.

  Eliot returned with the book, opening it at the pages he had selected.

  ‘This is the passage to read,’ he said.’

  The book was an old work, describing the geological substrata of the Wessex region before the seismic upheavals of the previous century. The idea, Eliot explained, was to work out a theory by which the present land subsidence could be seen as but a temporary phase in geophysical evolution, so that a return to something like the former circumstances could be envisaged.

  Julia took the book with mixed feelings: geology was her subject, so there would be no difficulty with technical language - which made her work harder in other faculties - but at the same time it meant she would have to cover old ground, in an almost literal sense. What had thrilled her during her studies had been the present geological structure of this region, one which on a geological scale had been shaped only yesterday.

  Old theories, old facts, had to be learned; the present had to be unlearned.

  Nevertheless, in spite of these misgivings, she soon became interested in the book, and was still reading half an hour later when Paul Mason walked into the room.

  Everyone noticed his arrival; he was that sort of man. As the director of this project he commanded immediate respect and attention. All the work, all the eventual functions of the project, were his. He had worked for several years to bring these people together; he was an idealist with an achieved ideal, and he inspired the others.

  As he walked across the room he saw Julia, and gave her one of his secret smiles, the sort he reserved for her alone. She responded automatically, feeling, as she always did, the instinctive and selfish pride of ownership.

  She shared Paul with no one; she was his woman.

  That look he gave her spoke of the things no one here could ever intrude into: the secret life, the private man. Only she was allowed this insight into the other Paul, and it was allowed because of their intimate understanding of each other.