Thin Air

by Storm Constantine

  ‘It’s very simple,’ Jem said. ‘You called to the town and it pulled you to it. That’s what happens to everyone. It’s a special place.’ She looked fearsome in the sunset, a mad child. Jay saw then that Jem had assumed responsibility for her, perhaps simply because she had found her, rescued her. It was a game, and Jay must not collude in it. She must get out of here, find a bank, find a phone. She could call Gina, or Julie. She was afraid of discovering how long she’d been away, but realised it was essential to snatch reality back. She must deal with whatever happened next. With this resolve, she went back into the house, leaving Jem on the lawn.

  In the kitchen, she found Ida carrying pans from cooker to sink and back again, seemingly without purpose. ‘Is there a hotel in the village?’

  Ida looked at her blankly, as if she’d spoken in a foreign tongue. ‘Have some soup,’ she said, smiling roundly.

  Jay shook her head. ‘Thanks, but I don’t want any. I need to find a hotel, a cash point…’ She heard a sound and turned to see that Jem was slinking into the kitchen.

  ‘It’s no use,’ the girl said. ‘You can’t hang onto the past. It’s let you go.’

  Jay felt dizzy, trapped. The house was closing in on her, dream reality or not. She pushed past the girl and ran down the hall to the front door.

  Outside, she went towards the gate, her sight pulsing painfully with dark spots. Beyond the gate was a lane, but she could see a cluster of buildings further down; what looked like a pub, shops. She ran as in a nightmare; slowly, hardly covering ground. Her feet slipped from beneath her and the landscape around her was motionless, as if painted on reality.

  She came to a staggering halt next to a village green. People walked there, up and down, arms linked. It looked like the lawn of a lunatic asylum. All her energy leaked out of her, into the surroundings. She collapsed onto the parched green, her sight occluded.

  Then Jem’s paw-like hands were upon her shoulders. ‘You mustn’t fight it,’ she said softly.

  Jay clenched her fists against the earth. ‘No! This is not my future; it’s not!’ A shiver of heat passed through her.

  Jem put her arms around her and whispered close to her ear. ‘You were hurt and came to hide. You were abused and came to heal. You took the step and the sky heard you. In this place are your dreams, and dreamless sleep.’

  Jay raised her head and opened her eyes. She felt herself slipping, her will fading. Around the edge of the green a crowd of people stood in a ring, staring at her. Some faces were devoid of expression, others seemed concerned, others still appeared faintly hostile. They were not a community though; she could see that. They were freaks, misfits, the creatures of nightmares. Dex was not among them.

  ‘You are one of us now,’ Jem murmured.

  Chapter Three

  No hotel. No phones. Lestholme was truly a lost place, and a home of the lost. Jay knew instinctively that Jem was wrong about her. She did not belong there. But she had been drawn to it, allowed ingress, and she was sure this was connected with her search for Dex.

  Jay had run away from her life, albeit without quite the same sense of leaving it forever that Dex had felt. She was still not entirely convinced that Lestholme was not a figment of her imagination. Although she’d been imaginative as a child, she’d grown into a rational, practical person. The peculiarities of the village and its inhabitants did not belong to the world Jay had created for herself. For one, they seemed caught in a sort of time loop, inhabiting a reality comprised of the rosier aspects of the Fifties and Sixties. The air had the strange feel of summers past. It was like continually being reminded of a past event that perhaps had never actually happened. Kitchen windows were thrown open to emit the fragrance of home cooking from the redolent depths of the houses and cottages. Women hung out cracking sails of pristine washing upon lawns where the grass was the green of youth. Men strolled in the lanes with walking sticks, cravats at their necks, dogs at their heels. Children romped singing in circles upon the village green, and long skipping ropes whipped the air, accompanied by rhythmic mantras. Radios all played old tunes, and the broadcasters talked in the plummy accents of earlier decades. The radios themselves were old-fashioned. Jay saw them, because she began systematically to call on every household in the village on her quest for information about Dex. Everyone welcomed her in unreservedly, but did not respond favourably to direct questions. They were vague, as if too enwrapped in their own dreams to care much about hers. They were not a community as such, but more like survivors of a disaster, brought together by the camaraderie of troubles shared. And they’d all had troubles.

  Jay had spent a fretful first night in Ida’s house, unable to sleep. She’d finally drifted off at dawn, only to be woken what seemed like minutes later by Jem telling her breakfast was ready. Downstairs, Ida glided from cooker to table to sink in repetitive motion, her face set in a beaming smile. There was no sign of Arthur or the old woman, but Jay suspected that if she should venture into the living room she’d find them sitting there, just as she’d seen them the previous evening.

  Jem and Jay ate toast, spread with home-made marmalade. Jay could sense that Lestholme might close over her like a fleecy gloved fist. If she wanted to, she could release her past into the air, let it float away from her. She did not want that. She still wanted truth, to find Dex, and she would begin by investigating. She was also determined to discover what Lestholme actually was, and how its inhabitants had ended up there. The mere decision to begin work in this way made her feel more stable, more in control. Jem seemed willing to conspire in Jay’s plans. ‘I’ve never heard of anyone trying to find a friend here,’ she said, ‘but it should be easy to look.’

  Jay sipped from a cup of Ida’s strong tea. ‘So where do we start?’

  ‘Next door, with Sally Olsen.’

  Next door was actually around fifty yards up the lane. As Jem and Jay strolled slowly along, Jem told Sally’s story. When Sally was seven years old, she’d been kidnapped by a woman whose own daughter had died. Sally had not been ill-treated by her captor, and in fact had enjoyed the biggest spoiling of her life. Not that she could really remember it. She just knew. For a while, her picture had been in all the papers. Her mother had believed her dead. Subsequently, after the police raid that had resulted in Sally’s release, her mother had closed Sally away from the world. She’d been a lonely child, because friends had been discouraged. At an early age, she had been in the nation’s spot-light. Photographers had come to take her picture, and women’s magazines had run stories on her. Then the interest had gone away, and Sally had been left with her neurotic mother and the slowly-closing walls of a shrinking world.

  ‘I wouldn’t normally say these things to a newcomer,’ Jem said, ‘because everyone’s story is their own, but I feel it’s OK with you.’ She reached out and took Jay’s hand. Jay was touched by Jem’s words and gesture. She wondered what the girl’s own story was, but felt that now was not the time to ask. They had reached the cottage gate.

  Sally’s home was surrounded by a well tended Old English garden, complete with spires of hollyhock and foxglove, banks of climbing roses and dense purple tuffets of lavender. The cottage was thatched, with overhanging eaves. Wind-chimes tinkled in the shadowed porch, where muddied Wellingtons lolled beneath a bench covered in gardening implements. This might be a dream home, but it was real and immediate. Sally worked in her garden; here was the evidence.

  Jem went to the open door and leaned into the house, calling Sally’s name. Almost immediately, the occupant hurried out of the dim interior.

  Sally was a bright and nervous young woman, with long fair hair. She was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and her hands were scratched, and gritty with dried soil. Jem introduced Jay, saying nothing of why they were calling. ‘Lovely to meet you,’ Sally said to Jay, wiping her right hand on her jeans before offering it to shake. After the introductions, she ushered her guests round the back of the cottage to a grey-flagged patio where rustic furniture burned in th
e sun. Jay found herself yearning to walk in the garden, investigate the tunnels of yew, the briar-covered walkways. Even in the bright sunlight, Sally’s back garden was a wonderland of shadows and hidden corners, starred by flowers of glowing colours.

  Jay and Jem sat down on a warm bench, and presently Sally came out of the cottage with glasses of home-made elderflower cordial on a tray.

  ‘Jay’s looking for someone,’ Jem said, and Sally sat down, her expression alert, her attention fully focused on Jay.

  ‘Oh, that’s different,’ she said.

  Jay smiled and sipped her drink. It was ambrosial, slipping down her throat with refreshing coolness. ‘I’m not quite sure how I ended up here,’ Jay began.

  Sally interrupted her, nodding earnestly. ‘Oh, believe me, I know how you feel. But don’t worry, all the strange feelings will pass. When I got off the bus here, I thought I was dead!’ She laughed.

  Jay couldn’t help feeling slightly chilled, despite the generous warmth of the day. ‘You got off a bus?’

  Sally nodded again. ‘Oh yes. Some of us come by bus.’

  ‘How did you hear of Lestholme?’

  Sally shrugged. ‘Well, we don’t, do we? Did you?’

  ‘Er - no. I didn’t intend to come here at all.’

  ‘Nobody does. That’s the beauty of it.’

  Jay took another drink. ‘Happy coincidence.’

  Sally just laughed. ‘We are lucky, very lucky, blessed by God, his mercy.’

  Her last remark made Jay uncomfortable. ‘So, anyway, as Jem told you, I’m looking for someone. His name is Dex.’

  Sally stuck out her lower lip. ‘Dex. I don’t know anyone of that name.’

  Jay described him, and Sally said she could think of a couple of people that might fit the description, but that she’d not spoken to them. ‘You have to realise that some of us are more - well - private than others. We all have to respect that. Some people keep themselves to themselves. That’s OK.’ She reached over the table and patted Jay’s hand. ‘It’s important you know that you can speak to any of us at any time,’ she said. ‘Most of us like to talk. It helps us.’ She put her head on one side enquiringly, and Jay realised Sally was waiting for her to start purging herself of whatever tragedies had impelled her to find Lestholme. Perhaps Sally thought the queries about Dex were merely a smoke-screen to cover distress.

  Jay smiled. ‘That’s very kind of you, but in some ways I feel like an intruder here. I don’t think my troubles compare with yours. I’m really here to find Dex.’

  Sally’s eyes narrowed slightly in concentration. ‘This Dex is part of your story?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Then you might not find him in quite the way you expect,’ Sally said.

  ‘Finding him in any way will do fine,’ Jay answered. She noticed Sally exchange a glance with Jem. They must think she was terribly damaged, unable to speak of the pain that really filled her. Their pity annoyed her. She drained her glass. ‘Well, if you don’t know Dex, I suppose I’d better move on and try and find someone who does.’ She stood up.

  Sally and Jem stared up at her. Jem didn’t look as if she was about to move.

  ‘I can’t sit around, Jem,’ Jay said, rather sharply.

  Jem ducked her head. ‘Then keep looking,’ she said. ‘Ida will call you when tea is ready.’

  Jay turned away from them and rolled her eyes in private contempt. Ida would call her! She shook her head. ‘See you later, then.’

  She walked round the side of the cottage and out into the lane, slightly put out that Jem hadn’t come with her. Ahead of her, the houses were closer together. She’d just knock on doors. Why not?

  It was easier than she imagined. All she had to do was say ‘Hi, I’m new to Lestholme’ and she’d be invited into to whatever house, bungalow or cottage she’d approached. Everyone was welcoming and friendly. Many lived alone, but others shared houses so that they appeared to be families, although none of them were related. The children that Jay saw playing in the gardens were lost children. Somewhere, parents must be grieving for them. The thought sickened Jay. Her search for Dex became almost eclipsed by her curiosity about Lestholme. How had all these people come here? Although they answered her questions with apparent sincerity, she noticed they were adept at skirting facts. Some spoke of arriving by bus, as Sally had done, while others murmured vaguely of walking into the village. No-one, it seemed, had arrived by car. The village didn’t appear to have any cars. That alone was bizarre enough. Everyone was able to recall their past existences with ease, but not one of them was without a murky patch of memory that involved the time immediately prior to their arrival in Lestholme. If Jay pushed them on this subject, they became slightly agitated, and would start blurting out their ‘stories’, as if to shout down the discomforting topic. Jay was surprised that she recognised some of the people she visited. Once, they had been fairly famous, or their painful stories, which should have remained private perhaps, had been emblazoned across the tabloids.

  One example of this was Terry Mortendale, who had been an infamous foot-ball star in the Seventies. He had burnt himself out with booze and women, and after being flayed by a gleeful and gloating media, had faded from public view. He’d ended up in Lestholme.

  At three years old, Lindy Trent had pushed her own baby brother into a canal, where he’d drowned. She was only nineteen now, and Jay could vaguely remember the case that had dominated the papers for a while.

  Father Bickery had run away with one of his female parishioners and, allegedly, a certain amount of parish funds. The Sunday papers had loved that story. His life had been ruined.

  There were many more people like these: runaways, adulterers, embezzlers, failures, the bereaved, the fuddled and the stars of five minutes of fame. Apart from the common denominator of being traumatised by what had happened to them, all the villagers shared another trait: they had been the subject of intense, if sometimes brief, media interest and they hadn’t been able to cope with it. Their lives had been invaded, ripped apart, revealed to all, and some innate weakness within them had made their realities crumble. They couldn’t deal with it anymore, so they’d escaped. While some individuals might thrive on media attention, to the villagers in Lestholme it had been a scourging fire, a catalyst which had brought out deep-seated frailties. Jay felt uncomfortable with how she could be seen as a wolf in disguise amongst these sorry sheep, but she had to admit that Lestholme, with its media casualties, was the place where someone like Dex might end up. She had always known that in some way Dex had craved attention, which was why he’d chosen the career he had, but like the villagers he sometimes hadn’t been able to handle it, hence the occasional attacks on photographers and cold indifference to fans. But Jay would never have believed being a celebrity had affected him so badly he’d had to jettison his entire life. Was this simply another aspect of his personality she’d never identified? Had he heard of Lestholme before and therefore found his way to it?

  How did people get here exactly? She knew instinctively that nobody arrived by accident. Supposing she was not imagining the place, how could this have happened? Was it the result of carefully-worded adverts in the property section of a local paper, or merely word of mouth? Evidence seemed to suggest some kind of invisible benefactor, but the villagers spoke only of God in this respect. Jay thought it unusual that so many people in a community had a religious life. Were they some kind of Born-Again Christian set-up? But they didn’t have that fanatical edge she associated with such converts, and there was never any mention of Jesus. Their god, to them, was as much a part of their life as the sky above them. It, he or she was a permanent presence, but they were not fervent about it. As to how and why they were in Lestholme, they seemed to find Jay’s enquiries mystifying. They were simply there. They had found their place. What more was there to it than that? Everyone accepted their position with relief. They felt they had found respite from a cruel world. As for people they might have left behind,
they might as well have been dead. Lestholme was a focus, a fountain of life; nothing else mattered other than to be there. Jay was intrigued about how the village functioned economically. No-one seemed to work. Was it possible they were all living off the state in their hideaway idyll? It seemed unlikely, but what other explanation was there? There were a few shops in the village that provided just about everything that people required - and she had to admit their requirements were minimal in comparison to people outside - but again all her enquiries as to how merchandise came into Lestholme were not answered. All the shop-keepers would answer obliquely. ‘God provides for us,’ they said, as if faith alone stocked their shelves.

  Jay tried to keep an eye on the time, but her watch had stopped. The afternoon seemed endless; she was awash with tea and cold drinks, filled to bursting with cakes and biscuits. Her mind was a whirl.

  Late in the afternoon, she paused to smoke a cigarette on the village green, and was joined by an old woman, who despite the heat wore a heavy overcoat and a headscarf. Jay gave her a cigarette, and asked, ‘Is there a pub here?’

  ‘Up there.’ The old woman pointed up the narrow main street. ‘But it won’t be open until after tea.’ She paused. ‘Fancy a drink, love?’

  Jay sighed. ‘Yeah.’

  The old woman pulled a small, battered thermos flask from the pocket of her coat that had sticky marks all over it. ‘Drop of Scotch in there. Help yourself.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Jay took the dubious receptacle and unscrewed the top. The whisky smelled warm, smoky and earthy. She took a sip, but it didn’t burn her throat. She suspected it wasn’t alcohol at all. ‘Do you know a man called Dex?’ she asked, without much hope.

  The old woman giggled girlishly. ‘The pretty one. Oh aye.’

  Jay nearly choked. ‘You do? Great! Do you know where he is?’

  ‘He’s around,’ said the woman, taking her flask back.