A Dream of Wessex

by Christopher Priest

  She tightened her fingers around his hand, and said: ‘I’m sorry. It’s what I want too.’

  ‘Come on, let’s go back to Dorchester.’

  She felt a sudden fear about what might lie outside the Castle, and who might be there, but knowing David was consciously neglecting to think about this, she made the effort too.

  ‘Do you think it’s still raining?’ she said. ‘Should I take the coat?’

  ‘Is it yours?’

  ‘No. I borrowed it ... from Marilyn.’

  The auxiliary ego Marilyn, the one who had been in the Castle for a time. Marilyn had vanished, but her coat was still here. As she looked at it, Julia remembered that the real Marilyn, the other Marilyn, had a coat just like this.

  ‘You won’t need it,’ David said. ‘Leave it here.’

  They walked together towards the doorway, talking about the coat and the possibility of rain. It was like David straightening his collar: a hold on a plainer reality, a need for the prosaic.

  As they stepped into the tunnel, Julia pulled herself away from under David’s arm, and turned to face back into the projection hall. Something had been worrying her, nagging at her.

  ‘What is it?’ David said.

  ‘Paul Mason!’ she said. ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘I told you: he joined the projection with the others.’

  ‘But no ... he didn’t. I was there. He didn’t return. I’m sure of that... they were waiting for him.’

  ‘Is he immune too?’

  ‘No. At least, I don’t think so.’ She grasped David’s hand, gripping it tightly in sudden fear. ‘Are you sure he’s inside the projector?’

  ‘Of course ... I saw him close himself in.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘A few minutes after you. Two, three minutes ... I’m not sure.’

  ‘But ...’ Julia looked at David in despair. ‘But Paul didn’t return,’ she began again. ‘I’m certain of that. The doctors were waiting. There was just you to return, and Paul.’

  ‘Then he’s trapped inside, like I was.’

  David pushed past her, ran back into the hall.

  Something inhuman in her made her say: ‘Don’t let him out, David! ‘

  ‘If he’s trapped, I’ve got to. This is his drawer, isn’t it?’

  ‘I think so, yes ...’ She hardly dared look.

  David pulled the drawer, and she saw pale legs stretched inertly out, the feet slightly splayed. As the chest, and then the face, came into sight, Julia started to tremble and she leaned against the tunnel wall. The inhuman instinct was still there: a desire for dreadful revenge on Paul for all those years of humiliation, to slam the drawer closed with him inside, to trap him forever inside the cabinet, alive or dead.

  David was bending over the body.

  ‘Is he alive?’ Julia said, her fist clenched over her mouth.

  ‘He’s breathing ... his eyes are closed.’

  ‘Is he projecting?’

  ‘I don’t know ... you’d better look.’

  She had been unable to look at her own body inside the drawer, and she was unable to look at Paul. It was he who had dominated all her adult life, first by his presence and then by his absence. He had dominated the projection, he had destroyed.

  Now there was a primal dread in her: that she would never be free of him.

  ‘Close the drawer, David.’

  ‘Not until you tell me what’s happening to him.’

  ‘Are his eyes moving? Flickering ... under the eyelids?’

  ‘A little, yes.’

  ‘Then he’s projecting.’

  David continued to stare at the unconscious body of the man, and seemed uncertain of what to do. Julia waited in the tunnel, but David kept the drawer open.

  ‘Close it, David. Please.’

  ‘But if you say he didn’t return to ... to the past, where is he projecting to?’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ She turned from the tunnel wall, ran into the room. She pushed David aside, and put her hands on the front of the drawer. Then she saw Paul’s face.

  She paused, realizing that he was indeed projecting. She had been impelled by fear: the idea that he might be lying there pretending, waiting to take some new form of retaliation against her. But her paranoia was unfounded: Paul was as deep inside the projection as all the others. He could not escape; there was no way back.

  She stared down steadily at him, gaining strength. She knew she would never see him again, never ever. Looking at him thus, directly and unflinchingly, she pushed against the drawer, and it closed.

  David was watching her face, perhaps beginning to realize the order of her fear of Paul. She looked back at him, and forced a smile.

  ‘I’m sorry, David ... I had to do that. I thought he might sit up again, and start threatening us. Like he did before.’

  David took her hand. ‘I don’t ever want to know what Mason did to you.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter any more,’ she said, and she knew that this time she could say it and know it was true.

  ‘Let’s get outside,’ David said. ‘I’ve had enough of this place.’

  They walked out of the projection hall, leaving the lights burning.

  Halfway down the main tunnel, Julia said: ‘He didn’t return to the present. He really didn’t.’

  ‘Then where is he?’

  ‘In the future? All by himself?’

  Paul alone believed in a second projection; Paul alone failed to realize, on an unconscious level, that the future he was planning was actually the past; Paul alone believed in the future as a reality.

  As they reached the bottom of the lift-shaft and began to climb the stairs, Julia wondered what any world of Paul’s making would be like; one which he alone imagined, and in which he alone exercised unconscious will. Would he take an image of her along with him, an auxiliary ego of his own? Or would he make the world itself auxiliary to his own ego? Would anyone exist in that world who would resist him, who wasn’t subservient to his will, who wasn’t the butt of his malice and destructive criticism?

  Julia felt she had lived once before in that kind of world, and knew it well. But that was in the past.

  twenty-eight

  The rain had stopped, but the wind was chill. When they reached the top of the earth rampart, Julia and David paused to look down across the bay towards Dorchester. It was a heavy, clouded night, and the town itself was mostly in darkness. Only the harbour was brightly lit; white arc-lamps flooded the port with brilliance, because it was never still. Throughout the nights the endless business of the oil-rigs was conducted, with supply-ships and lighters moving to and fro across the bay.

  Behind the town, spreading untidily across the heaths, the refinery was at work, throwing up a pall of smoke that glowed orange from the floodlamps beneath it. Connecting the refinery to the sea, the pipelines crawled in parallel lines, their path floodlit for security. Out in the bay, the dozens of drilling-rigs could be seen, standing squarely in the sea as far as the horizon; lights flared whitely and randomly on the superstructure of the platforms, lights for working by, lights for navigation. Seen from the Castle, the rigs looked like a stationary armada, lying-to offshore, waiting for the tide before sailing in to invade.

  Beyond all this, beyond the bay and the town, the Wessex hills lay black against the night horizon.

  ‘Let’s wait,’ David said, and he sat down on the wet grass. Julia sat beside him, oblivious of the cold and wet. She snuggled under his arm, drew warmth from his body.

  Time passed, and they did not move. The ground seemed less cold after a while, as if it were they who were warming it. Julia, reaching round with her hand, found that the grass had dried.

  ‘I’m not cold now,’ she said.

  ‘Neither am I. I think the wind has dropped.’

  It had slackened to a gentle breeze, one that barely touched them, one that was warm from the day.

  ‘Where shall we live, Julia?’

  ‘I suppose it w
ill have to be Dorchester,’ she said. ‘It’s the only place I know.’

  ‘We’re completely alone now?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  Some time later, David pointed out that the orange flame above the refinery, the torch of burning waste-gas, was dying down. Soon it went out, and around it a cluster of floodlamps were also extinguished. For a long while there seemed to be no reaction within the refinery, and normal work went on.

  ‘Look at the pipeline, David! ‘

  The floodlamps above the four great pipelines were going out, one after another, those nearest to the refinery dying first. To David and Julia it appeared that the pipelines were slowly shrinking away from the refinery, drawing back into the sea whence they had come. As the last of the pipeline floodlamps was extinguished they saw that in the bay the rigs were turning off their lights, systematically and without haste. Soon only one rig was visible: the large supply-platform in the centre of the bay.

  Piece by piece the refinery was vanishing into the dark of the night; lights and flares went out, and with them disappeared the tanks and pipes and gantries. In the town, the arc-lamps of the harbour dimmed quickly. The supply-platform was soon the only light showing; it too vanished in time.

  Overhead, the clouds were clearing, and the stars came out.

  Dorchester, dark and silent, remained on its hill. Its streets and buildings were unlit, the harbour was still.

  For a long time nothing more happened, and Julia, still held in David’s arms, began to doze. It was warm and comfortable on the rampart of the Castle, as if its glowing life was radiating from within. There was a smell of flowers in the air, a heady, summery smell, anticipating day.

  Suddenly, far away, there was a loud explosion, and the sound of it echoed to and fro across the bay, from Purbeck Island to the Wessex Hills, seeming to zig-zag across the funnel-shaped bay.

  Julia, stirred by the noise, said: ‘What was that?’

  ‘The cannon at Blandford. The tidal bore is coming through.’

  It was too far away, and the night was too dark, for them to see the wave, but they both had the same feeling about it: that the incoming tide was refreshing and renewing the waters of the bay, flooding it from the north with the weight of the ocean behind it, cold and clean and alive.

  Coloured lights flicked on in Dorchester, the lights that were strung in the trees along the front. They reflected in the sea, which was calm and still, as yet undisturbed by the flooding tide.

  Street-lamps came on in Dorchester; windows and doorways became squares of golden light. The harbour moved again: yachts and cruisers, bobbing at their moorings. Across the silence of the bay Julia and David heard music and voices. A group of people were laughing, and as the lights above Sekker’s Bar came on, they could- just see that the tables on the patio had been cleared away, and that a large crowd was dancing and jostling in the warm night air.

  They both slept after this, secure on the Castle rampart, holding each other.

  They woke about an hour after dawn, when the sun was still low over the English hills: a brilliance of yellow in a clean, azure sky.

  Holding hands, Julia and David went down into Dorchester, and walking along Victoria Beach, where the white sand was showing again as the new tide receded, they heard the muezzin calling from the mosque.

  Later, as they walked along Marine Boulevard, looking at the cafes and stalls shuttered for the night, they saw the fishing boats coming across the empty bay towards the harbour, heavy with their catch.

  twenty-nine

  There was a sharp wind from the south-east and the waters of Blandford Passage had a deep swell, with white foam rippling back from the southerly mouth of the channel. Protected from the elements by his wet-suit, David Harkman could not feel the wind, although as he left the harbour at Child Okeford and steered his skimmer into the centre of the Passage he was almost upset from his board several times by the swell.

  Wave-riding conditions were perfect. It was now too late in the season for all but diehard riders, although the recent spell of fine autumnal weather had brought tourists back to Dorchester in sufficient numbers to persuade the cafes and bars to reopen, and for the last three days Harkman had had to share the wave with no more than about a dozen other riders. The consequent absence of jostling for position on the wave-crest, together with the south-easterly wind and the spring tides, meant that he had had four excellent rides in the last week alone.

  He still sought the perfect wave, though ... one that would set the seal on the season. Now that he was able to wave-ride more frequently, he had become known to many of the regulars in Child Okeford, and heard much of their lore. There was always the quest for perfection: a combination of height, speed, daring, timing.

  For David Harkman it would be enough to execute a ride for the whole length of the Passage, and not be caught by the curling wave as it broke into the bay. He had still to achieve this; either he fell behind at the last moment, or he was trapped by the thundering pipeline as it rolled on top of him. The fact that he was regularly riding waves of a height and speed that would daunt anyone less experienced was of no consequence to him. Whether the wave was thirty metres high or, as had been the case for the last week, nearer twice that, he needed for his own satisfaction a wave-ride which he completed.

  The height of the wave was, nonetheless, a major consideration. The stewards had been talking recently of prohibiting further rides until the waves became weaker; several riders had been injured in the last few days. In the clubhouse at Child Okeford, older hands were saying that the only waves bigger than these were the winter storm-waves, and no one had been known to ride one of those and survive.

  With the regular practice Harkman’s proficiency had naturally increased, but as he was waiting for the firing of the cannon he moved to and fro across the Passage, trying to gauge the strength of the swell, getting used to the pressure of the wind.

  The wind was an enemy while he climbed the wave; an ally once he reached the crest.

  At last the cannon fired, and Harkman and the other riders looked northwards to the Somerset Sea, estimating the distance of the wave. It had been in sight for some minutes; the springtides gained body further out in the Sea, and when Harkman looked he saw the advancing swell like a huge cylindrical drum, rolling towards him half-submerged.

  He closed his face-mask, turned on the oxygen.

  There was time for one more straight run against the swell, and a flip-reversal from the top of one wave to another ... and then he felt the rising push of the tidal bore. As usual, Harkman had placed himself on the Wessex side of the Passage, and further down towards the mouth than most of the other riders, and by the time he was accelerating before the wave most of the others were at least halfway up.

  On a wave as large at this, the engine had to be at full throttle for the whole ride. Harkman drove down and to the side, flipped back and accelerated again, tacking and sheering away from the crest ... but each time he turned, each time he looked for the crest, it was nearer. The wave was piling height on volume, and the immense speed at which it was building towards the gap meant that each turn of his skimmer took him ten or twenty metres higher up the wave: height that had to be lost again if he was not to reach the crest too soon.

  Several riders had fallen already, pitched from their skimmers by the ragged swell. Once a rider fell he had almost no chance of regaining the wave, for even if he could mount his skimmer again quickly enough, his engine would certainly lack the power to take him up the reverse side to the crest.

  They were now less than a hundred metres from the mouth of the Passage, and Harkman was in the water most broken by the wind. Every swell, every line of foam, was an obstacle to surmount. Each time he flipped the skimmer, and it leapt across the trough from one swell to the next, he could feel the wind beneath the board, lifting and blowing him.

  He was judging it exactly right; with less than fifty metres to go to the mouth of the Passage he was almost at the cr
est of the wave, and he throttled back the engine and let the wave lift him towards its sharpening peak.

  As he reached the crest the wave was starting to curl, and he accelerated again, keeping abreast of it. He was heading directly into the wind, feeling the nose of the skimmer being lifted as the wave itself was being held back from breaking.

  They passed the mouth of the Passage, and the wave, curling, frothing, continued to rise.

  Harkman pushed forward, out to the very edge.

  He threw his weight forward, slicing the skimmer down and sideways, diving it through the thinning foam; a moment of grey-green confusion, the suck of water about his head ... and then he was falling through the air.

  Beneath him, the rising inner wall of the wave was almost vertical, and Harkman shifted his weight, bringing the nose of the craft down against the wind, trying to match the gradient.

  Above him, the wave was breaking at last: slowly, it seemed, and with great and terrible majesty.

  A freak gust of wind came from the side, raising the skimmer’s nose, overbalancing him. Harkman, inside the wave’s pipeline, windmilled his arms, felt his foothold on the board loosen...

  ... But then silence fell.

  The howling vortices of the wind, the persistent whine of the engine, the thunderous roar of the wave ... they all died away.

  Harkman, falling back from the board, was in the air.

  He was frozen in flight, naked and alone in a sky. His arms and legs were free, he could turn his head.

  Slowly, slowly, he swum around, twisting his abdomen, trying to face down.

  Beneath him, the wave, the cliffs and the sea had vanished. He was floating above countryside: a gentle, green, undulating landscape, with meadows and cottages and hedgerows. There was a road down here, and he could see a line of traffic moving along it, the sunshine glinting up from the metal bodywork. Behind him, where Blandford Passage had been, a little town lay in the valley between two hills yellow in the autumnal haze. He could smell woodsmoke, and petrol-fumes, and mown grass.