by Brian Aldiss
Pleased though I was to have peace, the situation worried me – that I will not deny. The day after they were back on the Head, I went over to the Staithe to see Aunt Hetty and shop. Owing to the tourist trade, Mr Bowes at the stores had many more goods than in the winter, when there were only us locals to cater for. He had a rack of paperback books going cheap, among which I spied one entitled ‘The Brain Simply Explained’. I bought it and took it back home to read.
Simply explained or not, much of the book I could not understand. One passage, however, stuck in my mind.
An arterial system delivers the oxygen to 10,000 million neurons. Similar intricate systems go to compose the enormous complexity of the brain. Small wonder if occasionally a connection malfunctions, as in a television set. It co-ordinates and regulates the muscular systems of the body, preserves a lifetime of human experience, and functions as the centre of human awareness. The paradox is that there are still sectors of the brain whose function we do not understand and, consequently, there may be types of awareness of which we are still unaware.
That was in Chapter One. ‘Small wonder if occasionally a connection malfunctions’! That must have been what happened to poor Barry. Something had gone wrong in their bodies at birth – it was reasonable to assume something had gone wrong in their brains.
I thought about the strange happenings that occur in our brains, and wondered how the whole business could have come about, while father and I worked the foreshore during that long afternoon, looking for sick birds. And that night Tom had the first of his three dreams.
Well, I put it like that. Later, I recollected that during the previous night – the first night he was back with us from the hospital – Tom had cried out in the small hours; I had heard his cry, then fallen back to sleep.
This time, it was about three o’clock when he began to scream. It was a choking noise which gradually became louder. I had never heard anything like it before. I was out of my bed and running to him almost before I had come to my senses. I darted past my father’s room and into Tom’s.
It was stifling hot in his room. The window was open, but there was not a stir of breeze. The September moon was two days off full, and its light poured in. Outside, beyond the dunes, glittered the sea. As I ran to the bed I saw that Barry’s arm was across Tom’s throat. It was withdrawn as I entered, slithering quickly under the sheet.
I soothed Tom’s forehead and comforted him until he roused properly. He broke into long deep sobs which convulsed his body. I sat there, muttering words of love to him, feeling so glad to be of some little help. All this while, Barry’s face lay close on the pillow. It was that of a man sound asleep – expressionless but hardly what I would dare call dead, whatever the medicos said.
As Tom calmed down, I noticed that the eyes of the other head were slightly open. There was a glitter as of liquid under the heavy lids. Venturing greatly, I reached out and put my right hand over the eyeballs. I felt a distinct tremor beneath my fingertips.
At that I took fright. Giving a yell, I ran out of the room, back to my own. Standing by my bed, trembling, I heard Tom call me.
I went to the door, peering into the dark of the landing.
‘Tom? You all right?’
‘Please come and see me, Robbie. I had an awful dream.’
Of course, I mastered my courage and returned to him. He had propped himself up a bit, and the other two heads lay against each other like two bowls, half-hidden by sheet.
I held his hand. We just sat and looked at each other in the cool moonlight. His face glittered with sweat.
A curious impression settled on my mind: that this was my dream, that I was still in my bed. Both the noises and the silence, the light and the dark, seemed to me in that instant – I believe it was just an instant – to be more like something that goes on in a sleeping head than in reality.
Then Tom said, ‘I’ve got to tell you my dream,’ and the impression dispersed.
I suggested that we went down and had a cup of tea in the kitchen. As he pulled on his jeans, I saw that the Barry body was already wearing its pair; Tom had not bothered to undress it. The double body came down the stairs after me. Switching on the reading lamp downstairs, I looked fearfully at the third head, but it gave no sign of intelligence.
While we drank our mugs of tea, Tom related his dream, with a few comments here and there from me.
‘They gave me sedatives every night in hospital … Tonight was different. Open the back door and let some breeze in, Robbie! There’s nobody out there to harm us …
‘Well, my dream. It was so macabre, so connected. Not like a real ordinary dream …
‘I was in a forest and rain was falling. A heavy, slow rain. It must have been falling for a long while. The forest floor was flooded. A steady stream pulled against my feet, making progress difficult.
‘I could not see my way ahead. As I staggered onward, I kept buffeting myself against the trunks of the trees. They grew so close that my shoulders were bruised with repeated knocks. The journey had been so long. All the branches of the trees, high above my head, had intertwined. Darkness ruled in the forest. And yet – you know how these paradoxes occur in dreams – everything seemed bright, as if lit by an inward light.
‘By another paradox which seemed natural at the time, I was not myself but a horse, or some other four-footed animal. I’m not sure what. Perhaps a donkey – a pack-animal – because I was loaded down and consequently clumsy. And I was trying to get away from someone I hated. That urgency propelled me through the loathsome forest. The someone I wanted to get away from was helping me escape. He rode upon my back in a great raised saddle, draped with rugs and strings of jewels. With a black whip, he lashed me on.
‘Blood burst from me. It fell like rubies, each large gobbet solid, gleaming, clattering to the ground. Yes, clattering to the ground, to dry stony ground.
‘Where that ground was in relation to the rest of me, I can’t tell, for I seemed to be still in the flood, and my difficulties increasing. When I glanced down, I saw that the flood-water had receded, leaving a carpet of thick mud. I saw that I was planting my hooves in the open mouths of great toads. No matter how I tried to avoid them, my hooves plunged into their open mouths, nailing them by their throats to the ground.
‘My distress was so great that I began to cry in my sleep. I rolled, yet I could not roll over, for now another great lumbering beast was beside me. It was more like a giant sort of maggot or mummy – something corpse-like. Despite that, it was as if we were both galloping forward at a great pace. I could not out-distance the mummy. It was being ridden by a chimpanzee.
‘Describing it like this, the dream sounds like a silly collection of wonders. It was all one situation – immediately understood, going on for ever. Suppose there is a life after death – if we were called on to describe our lives, we might be forced back on similar recital. I mean, we might not be able to describe it except as a list of its events. Like a fisherman who sees a river just in terms of its fish. Yet my dream was about the river – it wasn’t about any of the events I’ve described at all, but about something else entirely. No. I’m telling it wrong.’
Tom gulped down some tea, then started again.
‘I was aware that, whatever I was doing, I was actually doing something else. Oh, I know it sounds confused, but sometimes in dreams a state of confusion comes over as marvellous clarity.’
‘Perhaps you were only half asleep,’ I suggested.
‘Perhaps we are never more than half awake … Anyhow, it now seemed as if I was no longer the horse, and had never been one. I was being carried on the back of one. It was a beautiful milk-white mare, and its rocking movement through the forest was sweet to me. But I still had to carry the great swaddled maggot with me. The trees were still flashing by, and it was dangerous to remain among them. Their trunks, I saw, were carved with elaborate carvings.
‘Now the trees became more widely spaced. I gained courage. As we broke free of them a
ltogether, I raised up the great maggot, lifted it above my head, and cast it away.
‘Until the very second of parting with it, I had no interest in its nature. As I threw it, I became overwhelmingly curious as to what it was. Have you ever had the experience of being with a friend and finding nothing whatsoever to say to him; and then, as soon as he was gone, you think of a dozen important things you wanted to say? I met an old man when we were on tour in the North who told me he had married a girl he was madly in love with. Their marriage went all wrong right from the start. He hated her, he wanted to kill her because she disappointed all his hopes and broke his heart, and they got divorced. And immediately, he said, immediately he was free again, all the hate fell away, and he just longed for the girl, loved her more even than before, and could never look at another girl.
‘A similar abrupt change of feeling came over me as I threw the maggot, or whatever it was, away from me. The bundle opened as it fell and I saw a small child’s – a baby’s – face looking up at me, rosy-cheeked, smiling, and absolutely innocent of any expectation of disaster. Then it hit the mud and at once sank into it, still smiling and trusting. To the last moment when its face was sucked under, it smiled up at me uncloudedly.
‘Again there was division of feeling. Part of me rode on, haughty and glad to be free. Another part was overcome by grief. Great sobs rose up in me and cascaded from my mouth and nose and eyes. They fell in the form of diamonds, which rained to the ground and clattered there as previously my blood had done. My own noise woke me.’
He sat there for a while, head between his hands, so that three bowed heads confronted me.
‘It was as if all that was good and valuable in my body was going from me,’ he said. I clutched his hand, and we sat there in silence. Slowly the ashen light of dawn seeped in.
When Bert brought the first lot of tourists and birdwatchers to Cockle Bight, I was there waiting for him. He ferried me over to the mainland, where I borrowed his bike and cycled over to Dr Collins’ surgery in Deepdale Norton.
She took me through into her office and made us both a cup of coffee as I poured out my tale of woe. I even brought myself to tell how the third head had opened its eyes.
‘You mustn’t be frightened,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing – supernatural.’ But she flicked her gaze away from mine, as if she was also alarmed.
‘If Barry really is dead, if it’s just the APPCOR that keeps his body – well, from putrefying … then couldn’t your surgeon do the operation and cut Tom free?’ I asked. In the silence, I added, ‘I know it would be a major operation.’
‘I’m sure the possibility has occurred to Sir Allardyce,’ Dr Collins said. ‘Look, I’ll phone him. I’ve got the number of his rooms in Harley Street; sit down, Robbie.’
Sir Allardyce was away. He was expected to look in to collect messages at 12.30. Then he was off to attend a one-day conference in Milan. His secretary promised that he would phone back at 12.30.
So I killed time. I went to see my Aunt Hetty, I had a drink and a sandwich in the pub with Bert and, at 12.20, I was back at the surgery. The call came through at 12.50.
Sir Allardyce had already been giving the matter consideration and was in consultation with his colleagues. I was to be reassured that the matter was still very much on his mind.
This much I heard, watching Sir Allardyce’s talking head on the vision plate, before I interrupted. I told him that it was urgent, and that Tom was heading towards a breakdown, dragging a corpse round with him, and that I feared evil things unless help for him was forthcoming.
‘I know exactly how you must feel, Miss Howe,’ he said. ‘But this is an absolutely unique case, and we must proceed with due care. We discharged your brother from hospital because he was unhappy there, but in my opinion it would be best if we brought him into a London hospital for observation.’
That sounded sensible to me. I said I would accompany Tom wherever he went.
Sir Allardyce looked at a calendar I could not see. ‘Today is Wednesday. I shall be back in England on Friday. I will have my secretary arrange to have your brother collected in an ambulance on Friday and brought direct to London. Will that suit you? We will ring back and settle all the details of the arrangements with Dr Collins.’
So it was left. Only two more nights, then Tom would be in proper hands. I returned to the Head with relief.
Tom was restless that afternoon. He went out and wandered in the direction of the lake, returning not long before sunset. After exchanging a word with me, he slipped upstairs and played his guitar for half an hour. ‘Two-Way Romeo’ was one of the numbers. Then silence.
I cooked him some sausages and chips and he went to bed early. Father was stuffing a dead tern. I went out for a walk in the moonlight, strolling along what we always called The Feather, a fine curve of sand sculptured by wind, with water on either side of it. The night seemed limitless. I longed – oh, I don’t know for what!
Father had retired when I returned. I crept softly upstairs, pausing outside Tom’s room. Silence. I went to bed and slept eventually.
When I woke, I found myself sitting up. Clouds had blown over the moon and it was dark. Outside was the endless sound of the sea; inside, the noise of father snoring. Nothing else.
Getting up, I padded barefoot down the passage. Something compelled me to enter Tom’s room.
The dimness fluctuated as clouds moved away from the moon’s face. I saw three heads lying on the pillow. All were still. I approached. Tom’s eyes were closed. Barry’s eyes were closed. The eyes in the other head opened. Slowly, it turned towards me. The eyes opened wider.
As if this muscular exertion was a severe strain, the mouth fell open. Never to my knowledge had it opened before. I wondered if it contained teeth, but in the dull light only a black cavity could be seen. The eyes glittered. The general effect was one of imbecility. We stared at each other.
The noise of my own heart thudding made me move. Slowly, never letting my eyes leave the glittering ones, I edged towards Tom’s side of the bed. The other head moved, keeping me always in sight. My outstretched hand reached Tom’s shoulder, and I shook him, calling his name softly.
He muttered and stirred, but I could not rouse him. I shouted louder. Now a noise came from the black open mouth – a kind of a laugh, grating, dry.
‘Tom!’ I yelled. I slapped his face. He had a mug by his bed, half full of water. I dashed it in his face. At last he sat up.
‘It’s all sand,’ he said.
‘Oh, Tom, what’s happening?’ I cradled his head in my arms, and at last he was himself again.
‘The other head’s alive, Tom, it’s coming alive.’ We looked at it, but the eyes were closed again, the neck limp, in its usual position.
‘I was dreaming about it.’
‘What’s its name, Tom, what’s its name?’
‘It hasn’t got a name,’ he said impatiently. ‘It’s dead, same as Barry.’
He climbed out of bed. Again I saw how perfectly coordinated were the movements of the other body, which Tom now controlled. But I felt something monstrous about him.
He went downstairs. There was nothing for it but to follow. He was splashing his face under the tap.
‘Tom? Let’s go and have a swim.’
‘I was dreaming that I heard music. Perhaps it was your voice far off. It was a totally different kind of dream from yesterday’s. It was more coherent – much more like a movie in some ways. But it was very malicious.
‘And it went on for a long while.
‘I dreamed I was a sort of tame creature or perhaps a person on a beautiful island – a small island much like an unspoilt England, with thickets and glades and lovely little intimate dells to be in. The only other people on the island were my master, who was some kind of alchemist – he wore rich gowns and a crown, which sounds silly but it was splendid in the dream – and his daughter, who was about my age and whom I loved dearly. She had long golden hair and a laughing mouth, and I rememb
er seeing her dance by the edge of the waves. I dived in and out of the waves like a dog.
‘All sorts of things happened, magical things, and they were all fun. I was tremendously happy. I could do magical acts as well, charm birds out of trees, whistle fish out of water, fly with the golden-haired girl over hills and the thatched roofs of villages, capture the sunrise.
‘One day, I found a secret valley with a waterfall at the far end. It seemed to me the most delightful place, and I flung myself into the water. I think she was there too, and we were climbing up and up the cascade, laughing, when the alchemist caught me.
‘He was furiously angry. Nothing I said made any difference to his fury. He had me trapped and I was dragged, as if by wolves, to a dark part of the island. I had never been there before. I realized that I was not a grand person. Seeing myself through the eyes of the alchemist, I realized that I was just a kind of rough animal, a sport. All the time that I was being dragged over broken ground, I was trying to shout and explain that I really was what I thought I was, not what he thought I was.
‘The terror wasn’t from the journey so much as from this conflict of viewpoints. Because, in the dream, I could understand his conception of me to some extent, yet he could not understand mine, although mine was the truer one. Mine went deeper. Mine saw me from inside. Yet his view triumphed, simply because he was stronger – remorselessly strong.
‘He took me to a great leafless tree. It must have been an oak. I saw its branches spread all over the sky like cracks in heaven. It was freshly split down the middle, so that its insides were open and all pale and yellow and glistening, like a disembowelled rabbit. Splinters hung all round the split, like the jaws of an animal with ferocious teeth. It opened still wider when the alchemist spoke. His voice was like thunder. I was crying for mercy.’
Tom paused and wiped his face.
‘Telling you all this, I see it begin to sound like a dream about fear of punishment after sexual intercourse. But it wasn’t half as simple as that in the actual dream. Because this wizard owned me, and there was a sort of counterpoint in the dream about how in fact he was quite powerless or rather he could invent nothing good, which was why I was malformed; whereas I had invented all the delights of the island. It’s difficult to explain in words. When he grabbed me, he rolled up all the good things as well, just as if they were the pattern on a Persian carpet. Carpet and I, we were thrown into the gaping entrails of the oak. Whereupon the alchemist slammed the tree shut and locked it with a great golden key.