Summerhouse
The mist curled up the cwm from the marsh and the bay beyond, shrouding the hillside as David emerged from Mill Wood into the estate. The tarmacked path climbed steadily and to his right the land opened out and sloped away, down toward the unseen lakes and the marsh. To the other side the ground rose steeply and he could just make out the humpbacked silhouettes of the oak and ash trees scattered on the curve of the great mound atop which stood the ruins of Penrice Castle, obscured by the mist. Soon, the path reached level ground and a dark mass loomed to his right. Two vehicles were parked outside the mansion house, their outlines irregular and almost fluid in the dim, shifting mantle.
A few yards further on the path split, one branch turning sharply northward, the other heading south-east to Penrice Wood and the ornamental lakes. David hesitated for a moment, not really understanding why he had come here. His head was still thick and groggy with wine, and he could not remember what time he and Maggie had gone to bed. Maybe they had talked about it last night. It didn’t seem likely—he had hardly thought about this place in over twenty years. He realised that he had already started to move towards the right hand fork and felt a pang of anticipation. The path was black and slick with moisture and it followed the sweeping curve of the small, narrow valley for a hundred yards before dropping sharply to the right and down to the lake’s edge.
Something stirred inside David, a peculiar yearning that left him conflicted. Part of his mind told him to leave, another part wanted to act on what felt like an intangible desire. He looked back the way he had come then left the path to follow a dirt track straight ahead into the trees. The mist was damp and cool against his skin and no sound disturbed the wood apart from the thud of his boots on the hard, dry earth. He passed close to a stand of beech trees and through them the dawn light glowed pink and lambent. The track wound through sycamores, holly and low, dense scrub. The muffled rumble of a vehicle came drifting through the trees from the narrow road that ran between the marsh and the burrows and on down to the village of Oxwich. After a while the track turned sharply to the right and dropped quickly toward a long, narrow strip of water that forked off south-eastward from the main body of the lake. The mist seemed thinner here, translucent, and through it he could see the small wooden bridge that crossed the reed-crowded water and a little way beyond it, the summerhouse.
The feeling of anticipation grew stronger inside him. It had been more than twenty-five years since he had last seen the building. He stopped a few yards short of the bridge to drink half the bottle of water he had grabbed before leaving the cottage less than an hour ago. Jesus, he thought, what the hell am I doing here? Back at the cottage Maggie would be sleeping still. She had stirred and mumbled something when he had climbed out of bed, his mouth dry and furred, his head throbbing. Thinking she was awake he had kissed her lightly on the cheek and told her to go back to sleep. She had rolled onto her side and made a sound that might have been speech. He told her he couldn’t sleep and that he was going out to walk off his hangover. Whether she had heard or understood, he didn’t know. He’d be back before she woke properly, he’d told himself. They had probably got through half a dozen bottles of wine between the four of them last night.
It was Maggie’s idea to come down to Gower for the week. She’d presented it as a fait accompli on Thursday morning, knowing it would be the only way to get him to agree. It had been ten years since he’d been back to South Wales. Whenever she’d raised the idea he’d put her off, saying he was too busy or it wasn’t a good time for him. He’d never quite understood his own reluctance nor had he cared to examine it. Since his parents had retired and moved to Spain, he’d found it hard to reconnect with the place. It was as though having left Gower he’d somehow cut himself off from the past.
He’d tried to explain it to Maggie once, the last night they’d stayed in his parents’ house before they sold it and moved abroad. There had been a party, full of family and friends. People he’d grown up with, schoolmates, old girlfriends. He’d gotten pretty drunk and melancholy. She had found him in the early hours, dozing in the wooden swing seat at the bottom of the garden. She’d wanted to know what was wrong with him, why he was so sullen. It’s like you’re angry with someone, she’d said. Angry with me.
Not you, he’d told her, though he’d felt that wasn’t entirely true. It’s being here, he’d said. When I come home I become someone else, someone I don’t want to be. Maggie had nodded her head and acted sympathetic, as though he’d been talking merely of the difficulty in balancing the reality of who you really were against other people’s expectations. It went deeper than that, this sombre fear that in returning to the village, he risked slipping back, regressing into something he’d thought he’d outgrown.
The same feeling of unease had crept over him when Maggie had told him on Thursday evening that she’d booked a holiday cottage in Reynoldston, not far from the house in which he’d grown up. She’d called Freddy, an old friend of his who’d returned to live in the village six years ago, and told him they were coming.
He was glad now they had come. Freddy and his wife Helen had been waiting at the renovated cottage on the road between Little Reynoldston and the main village, with dinner already prepared, when they had arrived just after eight last night. They’d had a lot of catching up to do. Freddy had two sons now, seven and five. Eileen had wanted to know why they weren’t there last night and Helen had promised to bring the boys when they all went to the beach together.
The light became less crepuscular as the mist lifted above the lake. David approached the bridge, laid a hand on the damp, wooden rail. Memories stirred in his brain, vague and distant, but seeming to gain substance as he walked across on to the grassy bank and stood before the old summerhouse. It was a small, octagonal wooden building, with a raised entrance three steps above the ground. The walls were no more than four feet high and at each turn ornately carved pillars rose another four feet to support the pyramidal roof. The paint had cracked and peeled from the walls and rails, and there were shingles missing from the roof. He touched the outer wall and flaked off a piece of pale, apple green paintwork. Grass and weeds had grown tall around the lower timbers, obscuring the latticework that closed off the crawlspace beneath the floor. Here and there he noticed signs of rot but, as he rapped on the walls and traced a path round the building, he saw it had held up well to the elements.
David completed his circuit of the summerhouse and stood below the entrance, aware of the slight increase in his heart rate as he stared into the interior of the building. A nascent memory skirted round the edge of his brain. The excitement he would feel as he approached the summerhouse on a July afternoon, knowing she’d be there, waiting for him.
He climbed the steps, mouth dry and head fuzzy with an old, familiar yearning. From the inside the mist seemed to dissipate, as though the early morning light had robbed it of substance. A bench seat ran the length of each wall, all the way round. He sat just inside the entrance, both hands gripping the edge of the seat. Dried leaves and animal droppings covered the floor but he imagined it the way it had been when he was here with her. He could hear her voice in his head as she described what had been on the walls, the slight hoarseness to it that made her seem older than her sixteen years. She had dark, burgundy hair, cut short at the sides and ragged and wild on top. Her eyes were restless, their colour hard to fathom in the interplay of light and shadow. She had a talent for seeing things, for making the mundane seem new and exciting and strange.
Her name was Katherine. She’d lived with her parents in a small cottage in Oxwich. Her father had worked as a gardener and groundsman for the owners of the estate, and during the school holidays she’d had the run of the grounds. David had known her—or at least been aware of her—since they had both started at Bishopston Comprehensive, but it was only when he was sixteen that he had begun to pay her more attention.
Before he asked her out he was sure she was interested in him. More than once
he saw her watching him on the school bus, or in the few classes they shared. He noticed too that she seemed a little distant from other girls and that aloofness attracted him. However, she spurned his early advances. The first time he approached her to ask if she wanted to go with him to a party at a mate’s house, she stared right through him for a long moment before turning abruptly and walking away.
The second time she laughed loudly in his face. The third time, in front of a bunch of his mates, she asked him baldly who did he think he was. The humiliation had not deterred him. In fact it only made him more determined to win her over. He sent her notes, he sat near her on the school bus, he tried to change some of his classes so as to be in the same lessons as her. It was only when he changed tack and withdrew a little that she began to show some interest. Instead of always talking in her earshot so as to catch her attention, he sat alone and watched her from a distance. She seemed to approve of his silent vigil. One evening she sat next to him on the bus and said she wanted to show him something. They left the bus together at Oxwich corner.
It was late June and the afternoon was hot and sticky when she brought him to the summerhouse for the first time. As she led him across the bridge she asked him to close his eyes. Holding his right hand in her left she led him up the steps. She spun him round three times in the centre of the room and told him to open his eyes. The walls were covered with ink and pencil sketches, with watercolours, and monochrome photographs. Barely an inch of the pale paintwork showed through between the images, most of which, he saw, were of her. She stood in silence as he walked around the interior staring at the pictures, as though awaiting his judgement. It didn’t take long to notice some that were different. He crouched in front of one, startled when he realised that the boy in the sketch was himself.
There were at least four other sketches of him and in one of them, he and Katherine sat side by side in the summerhouse. A momentary frisson of unease ran through him. She seemed to sense it and put a hand on his arm. “I started doing these months ago,” she told him. “I knew you were going to ask me out long before you did.”
“How?”
“I saw it.” She crossed to the bench seat and pulled a box from beneath it. Rummaging inside she removed a pile of sketches. She stood and fanned three of them in front of him. Each depicted a girl in the summerhouse—Katherine herself—and a boy, or what he took for a boy, beside her. In each of them the male figure was incomplete. In the first, there was just the outline of a body. The second showed more detail, hands and the suggestion of clothes. The last one showed an almost finished person, except for the face which was featureless.
He asked her what it meant.
“I saw it bit by bit. The more I felt you watching me, the more I was able to make it you.”
There seemed something oddly libidinous about the memory, though there had been nothing erotic about any of the sketches. The air had grown warmer and the sound of birds drifted up from the lake. David stood up in front of the bare walls, running his fingers across the dry, cracked wood. That summer she had shown him how to see things in a different way. He tried now but the method, the secret to seeing, seemed beyond his grasp.
On impulse he went down the steps to a willow tree near the water’s edge. The mist had almost completely burned away and the sun climbed steadily into the pale blue sky. He sat on the bank and took off his boots, letting his feet hang in the cool water among the reeds. Dragonflies and smaller insects hovered over the lake, skimming the surface. Further north, where the lake began to open out, a kingfisher dived into a clear patch of water between the huge lily pads.
He drank the last mouthful of water in the bottle and rubbed sweat from his forehead. The sunlight hurt his eyes. The reeds stirred at some small, unseen disturbance in the water. A sudden breeze blew through the willow’s drooping branches, agitating the leaves, and the shrill cry of a gull broke the silence.
You have no business here, David told himself. Your life now is Maggie and Eileen. His daughter would be awake now, he thought. She always woke early. She’d be a little disoriented in a strange house, and, after a tentative exploration of the upper floor, she’d find her way to their bedroom and crawl in beside Maggie. A surge of tenderness welled up inside him. Where’s Daddy, she’d want to know but wouldn’t ask if Maggie was still sleeping. She’d be content to just sit there and play with her doll or read a book till Maggie stirred and then, seizing the opportunity, she would ask her if she was awake.
A feint whispering came through the willow leaves, as though the air itself was trying to communicate with him. He listened intently and heard something familiar in the sound. He rose quietly and moved toward the summerhouse, stopping at the rear of the building, crouching below the sill. With a shock he recognised Katherine’s voice. She was speaking quietly to herself, too soft for him to be able to make out the words. He chanced peering over the edge of the sill.
She sat in the middle of the floor, drawing on a sheet of paper laid out in front of her. The light was too poor and the angle too acute for him to see the picture but she seemed intent on it, oblivious to anything else. He stood in the shadows, watching her, a powerful yearning taking root inside him. He wanted to call her name but was afraid of shattering the illusion. Let this dream—or whatever else it was—last for a while longer.
She looked up and cocked her head to one side, as though listening. Holding the pose for a few second, she smiled and then began sketching furiously. She wore a white, sleeveless dress with a floral pattern in black and red and pink. Her bare legs and arms were tanned and slender and around her head the soft light was tinted red.
She finished her drawing, stood up and descended the steps. David squatted close to the ground and saw her move north to the willow tree. She disappeared beneath its branches. After a few moments he saw a figure dash out from the tree’s embrace and run into the water. The breath caught in his throat as he watched her swim. He recalled the times they had swam together in the bay but had no memory of swimming here. The lake had always been crowded with lilies and reeds, yet as he watched her now the water seemed clear and her progress through it unimpeded. Maybe it hadn’t been so overgrown back then.
She turned and swam back to the bank. Emerging from the lake, thin green strands of water vegetation coiled around her legs and arms. She stood there, pulling the weeds from her limbs with slow deliberation, as though conscious of his gaze. The blood pumped through his veins and he felt himself stiffen. He’d forgotten how beautiful she was. The breath came quick and ragged through his open mouth. As she waded out of the water and disappeared beneath the willow, he fought to control his desire. Birds sang in the trees and insects chittered in the grass, unaware of the nervous tension that grew inside him.
She came out from under the willow fully clothed, and returned to the summerhouse. She held a plastic carrier bag in one hand and once inside she knelt down and tipped its contents onto the floor. There were stones and rocks of various size and colour, some smooth and rounded, others rough and irregular. She moved them about on the floor, as though sorting them into categories. A dim memory began to form in his mind, like an image taking shape in a polaroid photograph. It was a game. No, not a game, but a ritual. They had performed it together, he was sure of that, but he couldn’t recall its purpose or meaning.
She stopped what she was doing and glanced up. He ducked down beneath the sill, holding his breath. She can’t see you, he told himself. None of this is real. He crouched there with his back against the wall. The sun was high now, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue.
“Look at the stones,” he heard her speak. “This is the way it will be.” He froze, sure she had seen him, but a moment later he heard a second voice from within the summerhouse.
“Fuck the stones. They don’t mean anything to me.”
A chill ran through David as he recognised his own voice, much younger and less certain, but still his own.
“Is that right?” Katherine said, huskily.
“Then tell me what does.”
“You already know,” the young David said. “You’ve always fucking known.”
“Not that, not yet.”
“When?”
“It won’t be the same. You won’t be the same.”
“Bullshit, Katherine. You should know I’m not like that.”
“You say that, but if it’s true then you wouldn’t be trying to make me do it.”
“I’m not trying to make you do anything. It’s what we both want.”
“I’m not ready, David. I’m afraid.”
“Christ.” The older David recognised the impatience and frustration in the word, even as he struggled to understand what was going on between them. “What have you got to be afraid of?”
“Everything. You.”
“Me? I thought you loved me.”
“I do.”
“If you really did, Katherine, there wouldn’t be a problem.”
David felt sickened by what he heard, hardly able to believe he had spoken those words. It was so bloody lame. He thought of Maggie back at the cottage. Maybe she was up and about now, making fresh coffee, perhaps frying eggs and bacon, the smell of it wafting through the kitchen while Eileen waited eagerly at the table. They were the best things in his life. The dull ache in his heart told him it was so.
“Please,” Katherine was saying. “Listen to me.”
“It’s no good.”
David heard the clatter of stones across the floor and the angry clomp of footsteps. He edged around the side of the summerhouse and saw his younger self come down from the building and head toward the bridge.
“Please, David,” Katherine called after him. “Stay with me.”
The boy stopped at the bridge, turned and looked back at her. He smiled but the adult David saw no humour in it, just a sort of bland self-satisfaction. He called after the boy, stepping out from the shaded wall, but young David seemed not to hear him. He continued on over the bridge and was soon lost in the mist that clung to the edge of the wood. David shrank back into the shadows, despondent and vaguely disillusioned. He found it hard to reconcile what he had witnessed with his self-image. He had no memory of it, no recollection of ever having treated her that way.
The Dream Operator Page 6