When We Got Lost in Dreamland

by Ross Welford

  ‘Come now, Andi. That surely wasn’t necessary?’ he says.

  ‘Mr Bruckner can wait, Kenneth. You have visitors,’ says Andi. ‘Susan Tenzin and Malcolm …?’

  ‘Bell.’

  ‘Malcolm Bell. And Susan has brought cake.’

  The old man rattles the phlegm in his throat and it’s as if his mind clears at the same time. His eyes, which are almost hidden beneath a hedge of white eyebrow, widen a little. ‘Och, yes. I’ve been expecting you. Welcome to my wee abode. Andi – we’ll take tea right here, I think.’ Then that noise: clack-clack.

  Mr McKinley has the face of someone who has recently been on a strict diet. My Aunty Gina did it once and she looked awful. His jowls hang thinly and there’s a long strip of loose flesh starting under his chin and swooping down until it is concealed by a black silk cravat tucked into his cardigan top. His trousers, shiny with age, seem far too big for his skinny legs.

  His long hands are thin and knuckly and crisscrossed with blue veins, with one big, showy gold ring with a large purple stone. It swivels a bit loosely on his finger. I look at him, he moves his jaw a little, and the noise comes once more: clack-clack.

  He clears his throat again and says, ‘Och, well: this is nice. I’m so glad you’re not garrulous. I just can’t abide garrulous people. Far better to keep your mouth shut, and have people think you’re stupid, than to open it and remove all doubt is what I always say! Don’t you agree, Malcolm? Good Scots name that, by the way!’

  I don’t get this, but I smile and nod, anyway, and he smiles back: a white grin showing teeth that must be a least sixty years younger than him. When the clacking noise happens again, I realise that his teeth are false ones, and liable to dislodge from time to time, making the noise. His voice is full of phlegm, his accent singsongy and definitely Scottish. It’s like listening to someone gargling with pebbles.

  He turns to Susan as Andi comes back into the room, wheeling a trolley clinking with teacups and a plate of butter cake.

  ‘Tell me, Susan,’ he says. ‘Can you enlighten me a wee bit further about who you are? Why are you here?’

  He smiles awkwardly. It really is like the grouchy man of a minute ago has been replaced by someone doing his best to act charmingly. I think of the words in the Dreaminator package: ‘You may know me from my appearances on stage, radio and television …’ This is definitely someone who is used to putting on an act.

  While Susan gives him the spiel about Community Outreach Marden Middle School, I look round the extraordinary room with the colourful decorations hanging limply in the warm air. There is a sharp smell of ointment of some sort, disinfectant, wood polish, and … old tobacco? But now there’s another smell: a sour, cabbagey odour that gradually wraps round us. It gets worse over the course of about ten seconds.

  Susan pauses in her little speech to cough as the stink reaches her.

  ‘Dearie me,’ says Mr McKinley at last. ‘I’m afraid that rather, ah … arresting aroma is emanating from Dennis. Dennis, you’re a disgusting old beast …’

  Dennis? Surely not …?

  Surely yes. At the mention of his name, a huge old black-and-ginger dog heaves itself to its feet from its position under a heavily draped table and limps forward, one of its front paws wrapped in a purple bandage. It stops and raises its greying muzzle towards me.

  ‘He sleeps most of the time these days, just like me,’ Mr McKinley says. ‘Still a good guard dog, though, aren’t you, old son? Saw off a bunch of prowlers from our backyard not so long ago, didn’t you? Paid a price for it, though. One of the wee scunners trapped his paw in the back door. Nearly tore his claw off. Still, it’s almost better now.’

  The evening with Kez Becker floods back. Meanwhile, Dennis has begun a low growl. There’s no doubt he remembers me from the backyard that night.

  I stand very still. Surely it must be obvious to everyone what I’ve done?

  I swallow hard.

  ‘Dennis!’ says Mr McKinley, and I look up, startled. ‘Stop that. These are my guests.’

  Still Dennis growls on, his top lip curled back, his amber eyes fixed on me.

  ‘Andi,’ Mr McKinley says, ‘take Dennis out, would you? And, Malcolm, would you render open the casement, please?’ He sees my blank look and translates. ‘Open the window, would you, laddie?’

  Andi leaves, leading Dennis behind her.

  Feeling a little wobbly, I cross the room and lift the stiff sash window to let out Dennis’s stink. The breeze that enters wafts through the silks scarves and makes the wind chime hanging from the ceiling tinkle. I’m still half expecting to hear someone shout, ‘Stop, thief!’ or, ‘That’s the boy who hurt Dennis!’ No one does, of course: there’s only the three of us in the room.

  I take a longer route back to my chair. On one wall is a collection of black-and-white photographs of a younger Mr McKinley, all posing with someone else. I can’t be sure, but in one it looks like he is shaking hands with the Queen when she was much younger; in another he is standing with a group of four young men in matching suits and holding a sign saying FAB. Below these, on a small wooden table, is a framed photograph, in colour, of him and a boy of about my age, their hands round each other’s shoulders, buddy-style, both of them with identical grins.

  Mr McKinley has seen me looking. ‘That’s my son. He must have been about your age when that was taken.’

  I point to the picture of the Queen. ‘And is that …?’

  ‘Aye. That is indeed Her Majesty. Private audience. Balmoral, 1968.’ He clears his throat loudly. ‘Now, tell me something. Have either of you ever heard of me?’

  Susan shakes her head: ‘No.’ I say the same although in my case it’s not the truth. My heart leaps a bit. I sit back down. Is he actually going to tell us all about it?

  Or does he know what I’ve done?

  ‘Kenneth McKinley. The Mystic o’ the Highlands they called me. You’re quite sure you don’t know who I am? How old are you, Malcolm?’

  ‘Eleven,’ I say. ‘Nearly twelve.’

  He closes his eyes as though he’s doing a quick mental calculation. ‘That would make sense. You see it was all a long time ago. Disappointing, I suppose, but not entirely surprising. You’re not journalists or anything?’

  ‘Of course not. We’re children,’ says Susan.

  ‘Och, you can never tell these days,’ he says. ‘I’ve trusted people in the past and they’ve written some wicked lies.’

  Behind us, Andi – who has just come back into the room, now without Dennis – pipes up, ‘Kenneth. They’re from the local school. I told you, do you remember? They’ve come along to see you as part of a community programme.’

  ‘Oh aye. You said that just now, didn’t you?’ He falls silent and closes his eyes. This goes on for so long that I wonder if he has fallen asleep and I nudge Susan. But then he raises his head again. ‘Andi! More tea, I think. Please.’

  He waits until she has gone out, then turns his head and restarts his throat.

  ‘I’ve had a wee think. Roll me a cigarette and let’s get on with this.’

  ‘Ro … roll you a cigarette?’ I am astounded. Behind her glasses, Susan’s eyes widen in surprise.

  ‘Yes. These fingers won’t do the business any more. Arthritis.’ He holds up his gnarled old hands. He jerks his thumb behind him to a flat, furry bag hanging by a leather strap from the back of his chair. ‘You’ll find a packet of tobacco in my sporran. Andi’s not allowed to make me one. Apparently, it’s detrimental to my health, as if I give a rat’s doodle about that in my state! There’s a machine there as well. I’ll talk you through it.’

  I open the pouch – his sporran – and notice that next to it, attached to the leather belt, is a knife about fifteen centimetres long, in a polished leather sheath. The handle of the dagger is carved with a pattern that reminds me of the tattoo on Fit Billy’s arm. The old man sees me out of the side of his eye. ‘I can read your mind, laddie,’ he croaks.

  He can? Oh no. I hold
my breath for the accusation that’s about to come.

  ‘And the answer is yes,’ he continues. ‘It’s sharp all right. Careful with my dirk!’

  I breathe out. For a few minutes, I fiddle with the cigarette equipment on my knee, with Mr McKinley saying things like, ‘No – too much baccy, laddie. No, not like that!’ until eventually Susan says, ‘Let me have a go.’

  Thirty seconds later, an almost-perfect cigarette pops out from between the little machine’s rollers. Mr McKinley says, ‘Grand job, lass!’ and I am feeling weirdly angry towards her, as if she has shown me up.

  Little Miss Perfect rolls a perfect little cigarette.

  Mr McKinley wriggles himself upright again. ‘Now hand me the lighter and open the window a bit more. As for you two: stay away from the smoke. It’s not good for you. Put the music back on, would you? A bit quieter. I’ve got something you may be interested to hear.’

  Old Kenneth McKinley takes a shallow puff of the cigarette that Susan made, blowing the smoke out straight away, and closes his eyes again. Then he raises his head and looks first at us, then at the lengthening column of white ash on the end of the cigarette.

  I go to the record player and somehow find the ‘on’ button. The black disc revolves, the arm-thingy descends, and the strange, discordant music begins again. Mr McKinley waits until I’m sitting down.

  ‘I don’t actually smoke it, you know,’ he says. ‘My chest cannit take it. I just like the smell. It helps me to think.’ True to his word, he doesn’t place the cigarette in his mouth again, but holds it in his fingers, allowing the smoke to curl up to the stained ceiling.

  Then he starts speaking, and it is exactly as though he is giving a speech. Something he has said before.

  ‘There was a time – not so long ago, either – when the world seemed as though it was open to new ideas.’ He pauses, then fires us a look over his round glasses. ‘Are you listening?’

  ‘Yes,’ Susan and I say in unison, and we really are. There is something about his way of talking that forces you to pay attention.

  ‘Well, that was the world I grew up in. Everything was changing; everything was new. Jet aeroplanes, heart transplants, space travel, foreign holidays, pocket calculators, central heating, colour television, cures for this disease and that disease, computers, oh – the excitement about computers!’

  Mr McKinley wafts the cigarette under his nose and resumes his little speech.

  ‘After the horror of the war with Hitler, we thought we were creating the perfect world! And all the while we were ignoring what was right in front of us. What was right within us. Inside us! Hmm? And look at us now, eh? We’ve become more interested in staying alive for as long as we can than in actually living the life we have.’

  I shift on the couch and the paper under my bottom crackles. This has all the signs of a speech that could go on for a long time, but I don’t care. I think I know where this is going, and I want him to get to the Dreaminators. Susan has leaned forward and is nodding along enthusiastically.

  ‘The limits of the conscious mind, my wee friends, have never been discovered. As for the un-conscious … well, that might as well be limitless.’ He sighs. ‘But no one wants to know. Not these days.’

  He flicks the cigarette, with good aim, out of the window.

  ‘We would like to know, Mr McKinley!’ says Susan. From anyone else, something like that would sound too keen, creepy even. But it’s obvious that Susan is being sincere. It’s the mention of the conscious and unconscious minds, I think: it’ll have something to do with her meditation.

  At that point, Andi bustles back in and starts sniffing and tutting and flapping a tea towel towards the open window.

  ‘Oh, Kenneth!’ she says, crossly. ‘You must think I was born yesterday! It’s bad enough for yourself, but worse for these two, and I’m entitled to work in a smoke-free environment! Did he ask you to do it?’ she says to me and Susan.

  ‘No,’ I say, automatically lying.

  ‘Yes,’ says Susan, and I think her response is just as unthinking. Mr McKinley’s teeth go clack-clack and he looks annoyed at being interrupted.

  I don’t want to go. I want to find out more, but Andi is fussing with the tea tray and says, ‘You should take this leftover cake home with you.’ Susan gets to her feet and looks at her neat little wristwatch.

  ‘I think we’ve taken up quite enough of your time,’ she says in her prim, grown-up way. ‘It has been delightful.’ I’m desperately trying to tell her no with my face, my eyes, but she’s not looking at me.

  Just then, there’s a loud bell and I’m so tense I actually jump, making Susan turn in surprise.

  Mr McKinley stretches out his skinny arm to an ancient telephone next to him on the table. It’s one of those with a handset resting on top of a box-thing and he picks it up and holds it to his ear.

  ‘That’ll be you, will it, Uri?’ he says, a warm smile spreading over his face. ‘Hold one moment.’ Mr McKinley presses the handset to his chest and looks at us. ‘It’s my son, Uri. It’s been wonderful to meet you. Thank you for coming. We’ll continue this another time, shall we? Goodbye.’

  He turns back to his phone call and starts chatting while we head to the living-room door. Just like that, it’s over.

  I’m raging inside at Susan for being so keen to leave. I hear a growl coming from down the corridor, and old Dennis’s claws clicking unevenly on the tiled floor as he limps towards me. Andi’s behind him, calling, ‘Dennis! Dennis! No!’ She grabs hold of his collar and starts to drag him back towards the kitchen as he lets off another gas attack that sounds like a bicycle puncture. ‘Oh, Dennis, that’s foul. Can you see yourselves out, kids? I’ve got to deal with this dog.’

  Andi drags Dennis down the hall and back into the kitchen. She has left the tray of tea things on a hall table and I remember I was going to take the leftover butter cake back for Sebastian. A few weeks ago, I probably wouldn’t have bothered, but he’s been okay recently.

  ‘Wait for me,’ I say to Susan. ‘I’ll just be a minute.’

  I turn back and the front door bangs shut behind me. I’m on my own. Well, not exactly on my own, only that Kenneth is on the phone to his son in the living room, while Andi has turned on a noisy blender in the kitchen. No one knows I’m here and it’s a slightly odd feeling.

  A long, tiled hallway stretches to the back of the house where the tea tray is, and it takes me past a room on the left with the door slightly ajar.

  Don’t judge me. I just want to have a look inside. Just a peep, you understand. It’s not as if the door is shut, either, so it can’t exactly be super-private, can it?

  No one knows I am here. I push the door and it makes a soft shushing noise as it scrapes over the thick carpet in the room. I can see the bottom corner of a bed. I poke my head round the door and take in the rest. It’s just an old man’s bedroom. There are slippers on the floor, a pair of trousers folded over a chair, a dressing table with a hairbrush and comb. And there, twisting above the bed in the slight breeze from the open window, is a Dreaminator.

  It’s bigger than the ones in our bedroom, but there’s no mistaking what it is. I walk closer to get a better look and my eyes widen.

  Kenneth McKinley’s Dreaminator is a thing of wonder, and as different from mine as a Rolls Royce is from Mola’s beaten-up old SUV. Where mine has a hollow plastic hoop, and a cheap-looking pyramid ‘roof’, with wires and strings attached, this is made of pale, weathered bamboo, bent into shape with no visible joins. Set into the wood are tiny flakes of glittering pyrite. There are little carved eagles, flowers, mysterious symbols and writing of a kind I don’t recognise.

  And there, on one of the pyramid’s sides, three letters: URI.

  Wasn’t that the name he said when he answered the phone? His son?

  Inside the hoop, fine threads that look like pure gold are woven in a tight, intricate formation of circles repeated again and again, with beads and jewels sewn into the mesh. Hanging down are
long strings, wound round with more gold thread, some with fine black feathers attached, and with large bluish crystals at the end. Even the battery housing is carved and inlaid with more stones.

  It really might be the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  I yelp and spin round to see Andi in the doorway.

  ‘Is this a habit of yours?’ she asks.

  My mouth flaps but no sound passes my throat, which has suddenly become desert-dry.

  ‘Letting yourself into places,’ continues Andi. ‘Snooping around.’ She stops and leans against the doorpost, blocking my exit. At last she says, ‘You may already have guessed, but … I know it was you that night. I have no proof, of course, but I know.’

  ‘I … I … I was looking for the kitchen. Erm … butter cake. I left it.’

  And folds her arms and looks at me for the longest time. ‘I see,’ she says, not taking her eyes from my face. ‘This is Kenneth’s bedroom. You’d better wait by the front door. I’ll bring the cake to you.’

  I’m about to squeeze past her and head for the front door, but she closes the bedroom door behind her with her foot.

  ‘Actually, before you go, tell me one thing, Malcolm,’ she says. ‘What were you doing that night?’

  It seems pointless to lie – you know, brazen it out. She’s even being gentle. So I try to look apologetic and say, ‘It was a dare. Pretend to be a robber sort of thing.’

  She bites her cheek, seeming to literally chew over my answer. Then she nods. ‘You could get into a lot of trouble doing that, you realise. People don’t like it. You know I reported it to your school?’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’ This, of course, is the point at which I should apologise for taking the Dreaminators, but slowly something begins to dawn on me: she seems satisfied. I mean, if she knew I’d taken them, she’d say something like, ‘And is there anything else you want to own up to?’ but she doesn’t.