So, though lucid dreaming per se was not one of Daniel’s talents, he recognised the principle. More to the point, the fact that some leamed professor had dedicated herself to studying the phenomenon meant he was not a complete fool for wanting to take his dreams seriously.
Daniel watched with increasing interest, as various experiments were detailed, results compiled and theories expounded. The professor - a down-to-earth, no-nonsense woman - clearly believed that there was a good deal more to dreaming than the standard scientific explanation that dreams were just a way of reprocessing information or playing out possible alternative scenarios. Neither was she an advocate of Freud, whose emphasis on children”s sexuality failed to explain so much that went on in dreams. If anything, her views tended towards those of Jung although in many ways she went beyond Jungian analysis to suggest, albeit in passing, that when dreamers dream, they may be inventing domains which, in some obscure way, actually exist.
To demonstrate this notion, the documentary team filmed an experiment which, for Daniel, had mind-numbing consequences.
The professor enlisted the participation of three lucid dreamers. The three men - A, B and C - were unknown to each other before the experiment, but all had a history of being able to control their dreams. The professor introduced them to one another, then separated them and kept them in isolation in three individual bedrooms. She then gave the same task to each man. That night, while they slept, they were to meet up with one another. That was it. No further information was given, and the men were not allowed to have any further contact. That night while they slept their brain activities were monitored and the periods of rapid eye movement (indicative of dreaming) recorded.
In the morning, the professor interviewed each man individually and asked each to recall his dream.
Man A had dreamt that he was walking through a huge, lush forest that seemed to go on without end. He wandered along aimlessly for some time before he remembered that he had to meet the two other men. Eventually he came to a large oak tree in a clearing and thought it a good meeting place, so he stopped walking and waited beneath the tree. After a while, man B appeared and came to stand beside him. They chatted and waited for man C to arrive, but man C did not appear, That was all.
Man B too had dreamt he was walking through a huge forest. He walked for a long time without meeting either of the other two men, and was just about to give up when he spied a large oak tree in a clearing in the distance. He walked towards it and there he found man A waiting peacefully. He joined man A and they talked for a while. They waited, he said, for man C to appear, but man C didn’t arrive.
Man C’s story was much simpler. He had found himself walking in a huge forest. He walked for hours and hours, but never saw another soul.
By this time the hair on the back of Daniel’s neck was prickling as if an electric charge had been passed through it. But the most interesting part was yet to come.
The final few minutes of the programme were devoted to interviewing a pleasant middle-aged Englishman who, it transpired, had dropped out on the hippie trail in the late sixties and eventually wound up in Tibet, where he spent the next twenty years living with an arcane Buddhist sect. These particular Buddhists - some esoteric offshoot of Lamaism, a branch of the Mahayana stream of Buddhist thought - placed great emphasis on the importance of dreams. In fact, long periods were given over to teaching initiates how to dream properly, that is, how to take control of one’s dreams and fashion them. This particular novice had spent half his life to date in a world where dreams were accorded equal status with waking experiences.
In particular, the Lamas taught initiates how to return to a dream, how to re-enter it and, it transpired, how to pick up where they had left off. After fifteen years of training, most members of the sect had mastered this procedure and consequently experienced and enjoyed serial dreams which were internally consistent and in which they participated not as puppets, guided and moved by external forces, but as individuals, fully in charge of their thoughts, actions and movements.
By the time the disciple left Tibet, he no longer knew which of his two worlds - his dream world or his waking world - was the ‘real’ world: they were equally authentic.
When Daniel heard this his flesh went cold. Lisanne, although involved in her manuscript, saw the change in him. She looked over towards the television but saw nothing particularly disconcerting, and returned to her reading. When the programme came to an end, and without drawing undue attention to the matter, she asked Daniel what the documentary had been about.
‘Lucid dreamers,’ said Daniel flatly. He was disturbed by the Buddhist’s confession, but also excited. Someone else knew; someone else had experienced the same sensation, had lived in a dream every bit as real as waking life. He wasn”t mad, he wasn’t hallucinating; it happened. And if it had happened to him, who could say how many other people had experienced similar circumstances?
‘Ah,’ said Lisanne, her suspicions aroused. ‘Like Janice.’
‘Janice?’
‘Yes. She’s often talked about how she controls her dreams.’
‘Janice? Our Janice? I mean, Vince’s Janice?’
‘Yes, of course. Who else?’
‘And she’s talked about her dreams, lucid dreams, to you?’
‘Yes. What is it, Daniel? What’s the problem?’
‘No, nothing. When did she talk about it? I mean, how come I’ve never heard her talk about it?’
Lisanne frowned. ‘I don’t know. Presumably you weren’t around when she told me... hardly surprising when you think how often you used to be away..’
Even before the final word had left her lips Lisarnne realised she had made a terrible faux pas. She looked away, not daring to meet Daniel’s eyes. He was so sensitive these days, so touchy, that anything could set him off. But drawing attention to Daniel’s peripatetic past was the sort of thing that was guaranteed to upset him - as if he wasn’t already rattled enough. Jesus, me and my big mouth, thought Lisanne.
She looked up and was surprised to see Daniel staring blankly into space, as if he hadn’t heard her. Perhaps he hadn’t been listening? Lisanne examined his expression for a few moments. There was no doubt about it: Daniel was miles away.
Daniel?’
‘Huh? Oh, yes... sorry. You were saying. About Janice.’
‘Oh, nothing. Daniel, is this about the nightmares?’
Daniel shook his head lackadaisically. ‘No, not really.’ He gave a long sigh that turned into an even longer yawn. ‘I’m off to bed,’ he said, rising from the armchair, his voice tired, his whole body drooping, as if his skeleton had suddenly turned from rigid bone to pliable rubber.
Lisanne could hardly believe what she was seeing. He slouched out of the living room like an old man, leaving Lisanne more disconsolate than ever.
Chapter 11
‘Sleep well?’ Daniel opened his eyes to see Kate standing over him with a cup in her hand. ‘Here; I brought you some coffee.’
‘Uh, thanks,’ mumbled Daniel drowsily. He sat up and reached out his hand. ‘Good morning, by the way,’ he said as Kate handed him the steaming black coffee.
‘Aftemoon, actually,’ said Kate, ‘but I thought I’d let you sleep... you looked so tired last night, and there was nothing much to get up for. Anyway, take your time; when you’re ready to get up you’ll find me on the veranda.’
As Kate drifted out of the bedroom, Daniel pushed open the wooden shutters and allowed the day to flood into the room. He sipped the strong, aromatic coffee, and gazed out at the range of mountains that stretched from one edge of the window to the other, and reached almost to the top of the frame. He tried to focus on the foreground, but it was still too early for him, and he had difficulty fixing his gaze on anything. All he registered was a wash of pale, bleached hues and random, unidentifiable shapes.
Daniel swung his legs out of bed and set his feet on the cool, tiled floor. He threw a towel around himself and went in search of a shower.
The villa was not large - just two bedrooms, a combined kitchen and dining room, and the small bathroom - but it was comfortably fumished and had a light, spacious feel to it.
Clean and refreshed, he put on a pair of shorts and wandered outside to join Kate. The sun was high, and Kate was lying on a blanket on the stone veranda, luxuriating in the heat of the aftemoon. Daniel walked up to her and sat down on the edge of the stone patio, allowing his feet to dangle over the edge into the long, unkempt grass that led from the villa to the dirt track a few metres away. A few flies buzzed around in the otherwise still, humid air, and a solitary goat lunched on the long grass beside the track.
‘What a beautiful day,’ said Daniel, not to start a conversation but because it was the dominant thought in his head.
‘It’s never less than glorious,’ replied Kate, opening one eye to look at her newly acquired houseguest. ‘If you want some breakfast, there’s heaps of food in the kitchen; just help yourself.’
‘Thanks, but I don’t feel the least bit hungry; probably all that food we ate last night.’
‘Oh God yes,’ said Kate, propping herself up on one elbow. ‘We made such pigs of ourselves! But it was a lovely night.’
‘Mmm,’ agreed Daniel as his mind flicked through these most recent of memories. ‘Did everyone get home okay?’
‘I suspect so. I saw Barry briefly this morning. He was nursing a fabulous hangover.’
‘And what about the girls?’
‘Marianne and Véronique? No idea. But they didn’t have far to go.’
Ah,’ said Daniel, attempting nonchalance, not altogether successfully. ‘Where are they staying?’
‘They have a room above a taverna down the beach - Kyma - the Waves. That’s where Kostas dances.’
‘Right,’ said Daniel, not wanting to appear too interested, even though he could not erase from his thoughts the vision of Véronique laughing.
Daniel pivoted around and stretched out next to Kate on the patio. They lapsed into a comfortable, easy silence for a while. It was blisteringly hot, and Daniel invited the sun’s rays to penetrate through his tender flesh to his tired bones, dissolving his aches and pains away. The contrast between the atmosphere in Atheenaton and that in the cold, wet, grey London of his other life was so extreme as to render any comparison pointless.
As he lay there peacefully amid the sounds of cicadas and the faint tumbling of the waves on the beach less than a hundred metres away, Daniel imagined that, while he was in Atheenaton, he was awake and conscious, and that London and all its problems were just a dream. If he could stay awake indefinitely, perhaps he might never have to return there; perhaps he could stay in this Greek Wonderland for ever
It was Kate who eventually broke the silence and brought Daniel back from his reverie. ‘Daniel?’ she said softly, so as not to surprise him or jolt him unnecessarily.
‘Uh-huh,’ murmured Daniel, tuming on to his side to look at her. Kate drew a long, deep breath, and then paused for a moment before speaking.
‘What was she like?’ Daniel searched Kate’s face for clues. He knew instinctively that she was referring to Alex, and as she already knew various things about him her question was not altogether surprising. None the less, Daniel didn’t answer immediately; he wanted to be sure they were thinking about the same person.
‘Lisanne?’ he said at last.
‘No, silly. Alex. You don’t mind me asking, do you?’
Daniel paused. Did he? Did he mind someone - even someone in a dream - breaking the taboo and asking him about Alex? He wasn’t sure, but he decided to show willing; after all, if one couldn’t experiment in one’s dreams...
‘No, no. Of course not,’ he said, as lightly as possible, but even as the words left his lips his conscience was darkened by a rush of memories that he was powerless to forestall.
Alex. No one had spoken her name aloud for months; no one had dared to mention her. Even now, six months after her death, none of his friends had any idea of what had really happened between them. No one understood the depths of his despair, the anguish that he suffered. They thought he was mourning the loss of a colleague, a friend perhaps. But that barely touched upon the truth. Alex was dead, and no one had had the slightest notion of what she had meant to him.
After all this time, Daniel still found it difficult to concede that he had committed a sin. In his attempts at rationalisation, he told himself that it had been just a fling - a short affair with an attractive, delightful and engagingly sexy young woman who had made it evident, almost on first contact, that she was more than a little interested in him. And what man, stranded thousands of miles from home in a city in a foreign country, would have found it easy to resist such a come-on, especially when he was daily entering war zones and battle grounds, dodging flying fists and occasionally speeding bullets, just to get a picture for the front cover of some newspaper or magazine?
It was true what they said: danger was an aphrodisiac, and when one introduced that chemistry into the sort of high-tension environments that Daniel inhabited, then it was only a matter of time before the inevitable occurred. For all his blustering self-justification - his unvoiced pleas of mitigating circumstances and situations beyond his control - it was true that, up until the time he and Alex had been thrown into the Ayodhya crisis in northern India, Daniel had managed to resist such impulses. Not that such abstention in itself absolved one of the sin, but it was still the case that this one commission was something of a lapse, a black mark in an otherwise unspotted copybook.
There had been opportunities previously, and there had been a number of propositions over the years - after all, he was not an unattractive man. But he had resisted, albeit with some exercising of willpower, not least because he truly loved Lisanne, was happily married, and had never wanted to do anything that might jeopardise his relationship with her.
But Alex had turned his head. She was different: not just physically attractive, but possessed of a special quality, not easily defined, that placed her apart from all the pretty young female journalists on the circuit. She had a certain zest for life, an enthusiasm that was both appealing and infectious. One could not help but have a good time around Alex, and in a short time she had established quite a reputation for herself, not just as an outstanding writer, but also as the life and soul of the party, any party, whenever and wherever there was one to be found.
Alex was good company, something Daniel appreciated from the moment they met. India was not the easiest of places in which to work, and having someone around to share the burdens made life a good deal more tolerable. This became particularly evident during the Ayodhya crisis.
The Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya had become the focus of some of the worst sectarian violence since Partition. Hindus claimed that the mosque had been erected on the site of a sacred temple, razed to the ground by the Mughals, who conquered the area in the fifteenth century. The temple was supposedly the site where the god Rama had been born. Hindu fundamentalists had been agitating for the mosque to be demolished and for a new temple of Rama to be built in its place, and indeed a number of Hindu fanatics had attacked the mosque and caused considerable damage. Inevitably, this had resulted in high-octane confrontations and serious, bloody riots.
Alex and Daniel were both sent by one of the Sunday broadsheets to cover the incident. On their first day in the area, having had to duck various airborne missiles, including several rocks, sticks and bottles, they retired to their hotel, shaken and stirred and ready for a little liquid anaesthetic. Although neither of them was what Daniel referred to as a ‘career drinker’, the events of the day had really unsettled them, and, rather than stomach the cheap, locally produced whisky served in the dismal bar attached to the hotel, they repaired to Daniel’s room and duly polished off the whole of his duty-free allowance, i,n the shape of a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label.
Looking back, Daniel was to recall that although he had never been seduced before, it did not feel strange or unusual a
nd that, in fact, with a bit of practice he could quite get used to it. At the time, however, he had reservations, not the least of which concerned what would happen if Lisanne ever found out. But, under the influence of strong drink and the attractions of Alex’s long, lithe legs, pert bottom and firm, round breasts - all of which she flaunted with the vigour and ease of a professional stripper - even these fears dissipated.
Alex made the first move. It was not in Daniel’s nature to chase after women, but he was not immune from the sort of seductive techniques that Alex had practised to perfection. Like most men, Daniel was a sucker for flattery, and Alex used her skills in the one arena where all men were vulnerable: their sexuality. Her manner, while subtle, indicated in no uncertain terms that the object of her interest was, in her eyes, one hundred per cent, gold-plated, high-octane sexy.
Take a slim, beautiful, exciting woman and have her show a man - any man - that the only thing she wants to do is sleep with him, and he becomes putty. In bed, she was, if not a revelation, then certainly a very pleasant surprise. Alex was not just keen on sex, she revelled in it. The whole arena of physical contact was a source of endless pleasure for her, and she played an active role in exploring new areas of potential gratification. She was young - younger than Daniel, certainly - and had discovered early that, if you approached it properly, the world could be a great big playground. And in general, while women were her friends, men had become her toys.
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