Dream On

by Kerstin Gier

  The glowing numbers on my alarm clock said it was ten past four. Sunday the sixth of January. The last day of the school holidays. Unfortunately not to be entirely devoted to doing nothing, because this afternoon the Boker’s famous Twelfth Night tea party would take place, and I didn’t have anything to wear yet. I just hadn’t had time to go through my wardrobe, and Mom’s and Lottie’s, in search of something suitable. All the same, I had a chance to catch up on my sleep now, and that seemed to me far more important than the wardrobe question. But first I must go to the bathroom.

  With a sigh, I rolled out of bed and groped my way to the door of my room. It was almost a full moon, and quite light here on the second floor, but by now I was so used to this house that I could have found my way to the bathroom with my eyes closed—and even without stepping on the creaking floorboard in the corridor that Ernest had been meaning to replace for ages. It made a rude noise if you put too much weight on it, “Like Aunt Gertrude when she’s had bean soup,” Mia always said, and she liked to tread on it on purpose. I made an elegant detour around the floorboard; after all, I didn’t want to wake anyone. But just as I was putting my hand out to the bathroom door handle, I heard the toilet flush inside the room. My reflex action was to turn and run away, but I didn’t because it occurred to me that this was the real world and I was in no danger of meeting Senator Tod or anyone like him. Apart from the fact that I felt sure the Senator didn’t bother to wash his hands very thoroughly. Rather impatiently, I stepped from one bare foot to the other, until at last the bathroom door swung open and Grayson came out, bare-chested as usual (whatever the temperature outside) and in only his pajama bottoms. But who was I to complain? Anyway, I didn’t have my contact lenses in or my glasses on at this time of day, and my view of him was rather blurred.

  “You awake too?” I said in friendly tones, and Grayson let out a small squeak of alarm. He was obviously still half asleep, and hadn’t seen me. Now he was trying to squint at me through his half-closed eyes.

  “Liv! What a fright you gave me!”

  “Sorry.”

  “I was just dreaming about you.”

  “How sweet of you.”

  He sighed. “No, it wasn’t a nice dream. More of a horrible nightmare. I made a terrible mess of my oral biology exam! When they told me I’d failed, I woke up in a fright. My heart’s still thumping like mad.”

  Because you didn’t know anything about anti-diet-butter, you poor little sensitive plant! Whereas I met Arthur and Senator Tod tonight, and do you hear me complaining?

  “How about you?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Why are you awake?”

  “Oh. Full moon,” I said. “And I need the bathroom.”

  “You’re wearing my old T-shirt.” By now Grayson’s eyes must be accustomed to the moonlight. “You were wearing it in my dream as well.”

  Uh-oh … dangerous ground. I held my breath for a moment.

  “But you also had a tail in my dream,” Grayson went on thoughtfully.

  “A tail?” I repeated, trying to sound as disapproving as Emily. I could have sworn that Grayson was blushing. Although you couldn’t really see in this dim light.

  “A leopard’s tail,” he said.

  No, damn it, a jaguar’s tail! “How peculiar!” I shook my head. “I wonder what Freud would have to say about that? Was there a squirrel in your dream as well?”

  Grayson didn’t reply. Then he said quietly, “You’re not doing that anymore, are you, Liv?”

  I swallowed. “What do you mean?”

  “The dreams, the doors … You and Henry aren’t still exploring that corridor, are you? Isn’t all that over?” He sounded so serious and anxious that I couldn’t lie to him. I really don’t know what I’d have told him if an Aunt-Gertrude-after-bean-soup noise hadn’t echoed down the corridor just then. Someone had trodden on the loose floorboard. It was Mia, unlike me looking neat and cute in the pleated white nightdress that Aunt Gertrude had given me for Christmas three years ago. I’d never worn it, but Mia loved it because she felt like a boarding-school girl from a Victorian adventure story in it, and Lottie loved it, too, because she thought it made Mia look like an angel. She used to iron every pleat and frill devotedly.

  “I’m going into the bathroom first,” I said as Mia came closer. She didn’t say anything, just went past us toward the stairs, looking fixedly ahead of her.

  “Hey!” I said a little louder. No reaction.

  Where was she going? To the toilet on the first floor? Or to help herself to one of the remaining jam buns, although Grayson had staked his claim to those in advance.

  “Mia?” Something seemed wrong with her.

  “She’s sleepwalking,” whispered Grayson. “It’s supposed to happen when the moon is full.”

  He was right, of course—she was sleepwalking. I’d done it, too, as a child. Swaying slightly but as if she knew where she was going, Mia went downstairs. Grayson and I followed her.

  “Should we wake her?” I whispered.

  “Better not. Or she might fall down the stairs.”

  Once at the bottom of the stairs, Mia stopped and stared at nothing for a while. Then she went straight to the front door of the house.

  “Now I think we really had better wake her,” said Grayson. Mia was already pressing the door handle down.

  I put an arm around her shoulders. “Mia, darling, it’s seventeen degrees outside—it’s not a great idea going for a walk barefoot.”

  Mia was looking my way, but her eyes seemed to go straight through me.

  “Creepy,” I said.

  Grayson snapped his fingers right in front of Mia’s nose a couple of times, but she didn’t even bat her eyelashes.

  Nothing about her strangely empty expression changed, but at least she let me lead her up the stairs again. I kept on her right, Grayson on her left, and between us, we steered the little Victorian-boarding-school girl back to her room. When Mia was finally in bed again and I had covered her up, her eyelids, wide open until then, closed at once, and she murmured, “I know you, Mr. Holmes. You will solve this case.”

  “You can be sure of that, Watson,” I whispered, and laid my head beside hers, just for a moment.

  “I’d better go and lock the front door just in case she goes down again.” Grayson was yawning.

  “Thanks.” Obeying an impulse, I snuggled under the covers beside my sister. I was just too tired to go back to my room. Even too tired to need to go to the bathroom. “You’re really nice, Grayson.”

  “Don’t push, Sherlock,” muttered Mia, and Grayson said, “You’re really nice yourself.” But maybe I was just dreaming that bit.

  8

  OF COURSE LOTTIE hadn’t been invited to Mrs. Spencer’s traditional Twelfth Night tea party, and just as well. First, the Boker had picked today to try getting Charles together with her friend’s just-divorced granddaughter, so Lottie would only have been in the way. And second, she’d have been anything but proud of us, because we did no credit at all to the good manners she’d tried to teach us.

  It all started well. Dressed perfectly for the occasion, we rang Mrs. Spencer’s doorbell on the dot.

  I felt well rested, and therefore ready for another fencing match with the Boker. Mom hadn’t woken me until midday, when Henry called to tell me that he had not been assassinated by Senator Tod in his dream. In fact, his little sister, Amy, had roused him, just as I rescued us by going into Grayson’s dream. And after that there was no chance of dropping off to sleep again, because Amy had thrown up on Henry’s bedside rug. She had a tummy bug and was well on the way to recovery now, but Henry thought he’d caught the same thing.

  All the same, we made a date for the coming night—the advantage of these dreams was that you could meet people even if you were sick in bed and not feeling too good. Even better, you couldn’t infect another person however much you kissed. Although first, of course, there’d be things to discuss that we hadn’t gotten around to last night.
r />   However, before all that I had to survive this tea party.

  The Boker’s house was much closer than I’d thought, at the end of a quiet road up near Golders Hill Park. It was a very pretty, old house, redbrick like most of the others here, the doors and window frames painted white. Although it wasn’t enormous, it had a very upmarket sort of atmosphere, and seemed to me much too big for an elderly lady living on her own. But maybe she had a household help. Or two household helps. And a butler. Anyway, she must employ a gardener. In the front garden alone, there were countless box trees and yews with the snow knocked off them, trimmed into globes and pillars, and as accurately clipped as if someone had gone over them with a pair of nail scissors first thing this morning. There was a bird in the middle: from the front it looked like a giant running duck or a fat stork, from behind it was something like a peacock, and although it was only topiary, made of clipped box bushes, it seemed to me to be giving us a definitely nasty look.

  “The gardener here must have his hands full,” said Mom.

  “Yes.” Ernest’s smile was slightly forced. “Yes, the gardener here changes quite often—it’s tough living up to Mother’s expectations.” He pointed to the duck, stork, and peacock creature. “That’s why no one but Mother herself is allowed to touch Mr. Snuggles here.”

  Honestly, the British! They even give their plants pet names.

  “It’s really a very artistically clipped … er, vulture,” said Mom.

  For a moment Ernest’s smile was genuine, not forced. “It’s a peacock,” he said, kissing Mom on the cheek. “Look, that’s its tail.”

  “Oh. Of course. If that’s part of it, then yes, it’s obviously a peacock.” Mom nervously straightened her hair. It was clear that she was scared stiff of Mrs. Spencer and her girlfriends, but she’d never have admitted it. She acted as if she were having a lovely time. Mia and I were a little bit scared, too, but only because as we left the house, Grayson had asked, kind of casually, whether we knew all the verses of the national anthem by heart. It seemed another of his Granny’s old Twelfth Night customs was for everyone to salute the portrait of the Queen, put their hands on their hearts, and belt out the entire anthem with all its verses.

  “But don’t worry—that’s right at the end when everyone’s tanked up on orange punch,” Grayson had added. That didn’t really reassure us. If I’d known about singing the national anthem earlier, I could at least have looked up the text on the Internet. In our haste, however, all that came to mind was the opening of the Dutch national anthem, “Wilhelmus van Nassouwe ben ik, van Duitsen bloed. William of Nassau am I, and of Dutch blood.” But I wouldn’t score with that unless the Boker had invited a Dutch guest.

  I’d wasted an hour finding an outfit that satisfied Lottie, and another hour trying to fend off her attack on my hair—no use. In the end I gave in and let Lottie construct a complicated set of braids on my head. Although she claimed that Scarlett Johansson had worn her hair just like that at the Oscars ceremony, I thought my head looked like a fruit basket minus the fruit. No wonder the peacock was giving me such a funny look.

  “Oh, say can you see, by the dawn’s early light…,” sang Mia beside me. “That’s not right, is it?”

  “Definitely not. Don’t you dare sing that!”

  Mia grinned. “I feel just like in Pride and Prejudice. The first visit to Lady Catherine de Bourgh … I mean, Boker,” she whispered. In spite of last night’s little outing, she looked fresh and pink-cheeked—the effect was still of a girl straight from the high Alpine meadows. Her pale-blond hair was brushed to fall smoothly over her shoulders; Lottie had just combed the fringe back and pinned it up in a little circlet over her part. I’d happily have changed places with her. And even more happily with Florence, whose chestnut locks flowed over a pale-green dress that Lady de Boker and her friends thought “perfectly charming.” They were right.

  Mrs. Spencer sighed deeply when she opened the door to us. “Oh, so you’ve all come,” she said with a note of barely concealed disappointment in her voice. “But at least you’ve left that badly mannered mongrel at home.”

  “Buttercup is not a…,” Mia began, but Mom’s elbow landed in her ribs and silenced her.

  “Of course none of us wanted to miss your Twelfth Night tea party,” said Mom. “We’re so happy to be here.”

  Exactly. So happy that we almost had tears in our eyes.

  From the inside, the house was just what the outside promised: full of well-tended antique furniture, with Christmas decorations on the mantelpiece, a spinet (it really was like Pride and Prejudice!), and an impressively spread table covered with plates of little tarts, scones, and sandwiches. I saw no sign of the orange punch that Grayson had mentioned, but there were pretty flower arrangements, plenty of tea in large round teapots, and elderly ladies with friendly smiles and lips painted coral. And—oh no!—Emily, cooing, “Surprise, surprise!” as Grayson stared at her, taken aback. Weren’t we safe from Miss Spoilsport anywhere?

  Probably not, if the Boker had anything to do with it. It turned out that she had invited Emily especially for Grayson’s sake, and “because after all, she’s one of the family too.”

  Neither Emily nor Grayson contradicted her, which made me roll my eyes again and go on looking around—surely that punch must be here somewhere. I was feeling more and more in need of something to fortify me.

  The whole point of this so-called party was obviously to stand around with a cup of tea, sipping it now and then, chatting to the other guests, and smiling. Only people who’d had a lot of practice managed to eat something at the same time. I could do the rest of it all right.

  I did find it rather difficult to smile at Emily, particularly when she poked a finger into my hairstyle and said, shaking her head sympathetically, “You know, Liv, less is sometimes more when it comes to style.”

  I could have snapped back with at least four crushing retorts, but my jokes were wasted on Emily, anyway. So I turned to the other guests instead. Not that there were all that many of them. The ladies wearing coral lipstick were Mrs. Spencer’s bridge-playing friends, she’d known them since their schooldays, and if I’d heard correctly, they were called Bitsy Bee, Tipsy, and Cherry. (I hoped those weren’t their real names.) Cherry had brought her granddaughter, a young woman called Rebecca who looked as if she was secretly longing for some orange punch as well. No wonder, because Cherry (Sherry? Chérie?) was letting everyone know that Rebecca was only recently divorced and urgently needed a new husband, this time one who would also be acceptable to her granny and her granny’s friends. A dentist, for instance.

  The old ladies themselves were all singles again, except for Tipsy, who wasn’t widowed yet and had a husband in tow, a grouchy-looking old gentleman who was talking earnestly to another old gentleman. The Boker introduced the other old gentleman to us as “the Admiral.” The Admiral had a white beard, terrifying bushy eyebrows, and a very military bearing; in fact, he looked as if he might turn to the portrait of the Queen any moment now and strike up the national anthem. But where was the portrait? The only picture above the mantelpiece was an oil painting of dead pheasants picturesquely lying beside a bowl of grapes. While I was examining the picture—the pheasants really did look very dead—Charles came out of the kitchen. I tried to look at him kindly, through Lottie’s eyes, so to speak: broad-shouldered, with bright eyes, dazzling white teeth, little laughter lines around his mouth, sticking-out ears like a tribute to the Prince of Wales, bald patch even though he was only in his late thirties, terrible knitted sweater-vest with a pattern of lozenges.… Okay, right, I’d have to get in some more practice at looking at him through Lottie’s eyes.

  Charles was carrying an enormous bowl over to the table, and as I studied his ears, I remembered that I still had his hideous trapper’s cap hidden in my room. I felt a brief pang of guilt.

  “Is that the punch?” I asked, to take my mind off my guilty conscience.

  Charles nodded. “Mother’s famous hot Twel
fth Night punch. Would you like some?”

  I took a quick look at Ernest and Mom, but they were deep in conversation with Bitsy Bee, so I let Charles pour me a mug of punch. Mom wouldn’t have minded, anyway. It tasted delicious—of orange, cinnamon, and a touch of cloves. You didn’t notice the alcohol at all. What you did notice were the looks being cast at Charles from the spinet, where Tipsy, the Boker, Cherry, and the newly divorced granddaughter were standing. The attention they were paying him didn’t escape Charles either. He smiled and waved to them, whereupon they all giggled like mad except for the granddaughter.

  I coughed, and Charles turned back to me.

  “How is Lottie?” he asked. “It’s a pity she didn’t come with you.”

  A pity, was it? And how about the woman in the café that he’d practically been holding hands with? And Cherry’s granddaughter, who he’d been checking out only a second ago?

  Nope, this time Charles wasn’t going to get away from me with an excuse about a fire alarm gone wrong. I took another sip of punch. “Lottie’s just fine,” I claimed, adding, “She’s gone to the cinema with a boyfriend.”

  “Oh.” Charles plucked at his lower lip. “That … that’s good.”

  “Yes, I think so too. Jonathan is such a nice guy.”

  “What Jonathan?” asked Mia, popping up beside me like a jack-in-the-box.

  The Jonathan I’ve just this minute invented, dummy. “Lottie’s Jonathan,” I said, watching in alarm as Grayson and Emily also came strolling over to us. And right behind them the Boker and the divorced granddaughter.

  “Oh, that Jonathan—yes, he’s a great guy.” Mia snapped up two of the delicate little sandwiches at once. “And ever so romantic,” she went on with her mouth full. “He gave Lottie one of those funny Japanese beckoning cats for Christmas.”

  I shot her a dark glance.

  “One of those plastic cats?” asked Emily scornfully. “What’s so romantic about that?”

  “It … it can be very romantic,” I murmured. Oh God, I needed more orange punch. In short order, and ignoring the fact that the Boker had joined us now, I snatched the ladle from Charles’s hand and helped myself.