Graham Joyce - Dreamside

Up ahead, Lee and Honora were engaging in another version of that same conversation.

“What’s the purpose of this?” Honora asked.

Lee didn’t know, except that Ella wanted it. Sometimes he thought that Ella was just too complicated for him. He didn’t understand half of the things she said and did, but he always went along with them. She acted and he reacted. She was quicksilver, he was lead. He had allowed himself to live too vaguely, and consequently she had led him since day one, often into places where he didn’t want to be, and he was still following her now. How strongly Honora contrasted with Ella. She looked pale and vulnerable, but lovely in her simple woollen dress and plaited hair.

“Do you still think it could have been us?” said Lee.

“No point thinking of it now.”

“No.”

But after a pause she admitted, “I’ve always hung on to secret thoughts about you. Not love, or maybe not, at least let’s not call it that. And I think you knew all about it.”

“Never,” said Lee. He kissed her lightly. This time there were no visions of serpents. Only a fresh smell like clear rainwater, and the diffuse sunlight a-play in her copper hair. Ella watched from a short distance behind.

Late in the walk, Brad dropped behind Lee and Ella to talk to Honora. She shivered as he approached.

“I wanted to speak to you, Honora.”

“What in hell would I have to say to you?”

“What about some recognition? What about sorry?”

“Sorry? You think I should apologize to you? You’re demented as well as a drunkard.”

“All of the times I tried to reach you; to help you. You never once bothered to answer. Time after time, over the years. Not once. Not a single word. Do those two know that? Not a bit of it. They’re much happier to see me as the villain. It’s all poor bloody Honora.”

“I owe you nothing at all; nothing.”

“You’re wrong, Honora. You owe me the recognition. Did you tell them I was with you when it happened? Did you tell them I was there, and that I held your hand and warmed you, and cleaned you and delivered the baby on dreamside for you-did you tell them that? Did you tell them?”

She stopped and turned to face him. “It was a different dream. You were never there. It could never have been the same dream.”

“It was the same dream. I was there. You could never have done it alone, you would have died. That’s why you ignored all my letters. You’ve just changed the dream. You’ve edited it, blocked me out, that’s all. You all block me out!”

“It’s not possible.”

“It’s the truth. My dream and your dream were the same dream.”

“Why in God’s name did you want to go stirring it all up, waking us all again? It was all dead and buried! Why couldn’t you just leave us all in peace? It was all in the past until you brought it on us again. You brought it all back. They thought it was me, all of this time they thought that it was me doing it out of guilt. But I knew it was your doing. I just hoped it wasn’t.”

“You don’t understand, I couldn’t leave it. There was something belonging to us there which had to be settled, had to be put right. I didn’t choose it; I was taken there and shown it time and time again. I couldn’t hold it off.”

“Like you can’t hold off a drink you mean?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. But I didn’t intend to drag everyone else back in.”

“You didn’t ‘intend’.”

“Listen to me, Honora, I’m trying to make amends.” He took hold of her arm. “It doesn’t make any difference what you say, I’ve run out of fight.”

“Brad Cousins, I don’t care if you run out of breath.”

Brad dropped her arm, and walked off in the opposite direction.

They had almost reached the house when Ella and Lee realized that Brad had disappeared.

“Where is he?”

“Gone.”

“But is he coming back?”

“I don’t know,” said Honora.

She thought not.

With Brad gone, Ella thought that her plan had collapsed. But Lee found him back at the house a couple of hours later. He turned up in the old shed at the bottom of the garden, where the rowing boat had originally been stored.

When Lee had first tried the door he’d found it unlocked, but something barred his way in. Hammering the door open a few inches, forcing enough space for him to put his head around, he saw a faded relic of their summer idyll: the rowing boat, its paint cracked and peeling. It was carrying a strange load: Brad Cousins, sleeping heavily, legs draped across the stern. He was cradling an empty bottle of good malt whiskey. A second bottle lay discarded on the floor. Broken rays of sunlight stroked his bloated cheek.

“Hey Captain!” Lee shouted, relieved to have found him in any condition. Brad only slept on. Lee called again. There was no movement, and he returned to the house.

“Sleeping beauty just turned up. We’d better organize some coffee.”

“Black?”

“Black as the pit.”

Lee felt heartened; Ella’s plan might still be salvaged. He returned to the shed with a chipped mug of sweet, steaming black coffee. Squeezing into the shed, he set the coffee down on the workbench and tried to wake Brad gently.

First he tried shaking him by the arm. Then he patted his cheeks. Even bellowing loudly in his ear produced no result. His pats turned to hard slaps, but Brad slept on. It was only as a mischievous last resort that he considered a bucket of icy water.

With protracted ceremony, Lee filled the bucket. Ella and Honora followed behind him to enjoy the show, giggling through the shed window as he raised it aloft. They watched Brad get a thorough dousing. But where he was expected to scramble awake, puffing and groping blindly, he slept on. For the first time it occurred to Lee that getting him to wake up might be beyond their ability.

Manoeuvring Brad’s sleeping body out of the shed was a difficult task. The shed doors were blocked by the boat, and they were unable to move it because of Brad’s considerable weight. Getting Brad out of the boat was no simpler. There was precious little room to stand alongside, let alone hoist Brad out, and he was a dead weight. Finally Lee managed to drag his lifeless, soaking body clear, as Ella manipulated the boat free of the doors, and eventually, sweating and swearing, Lee laid Brad down on the damp grass outside the shed. Ella kneeled beside him. His face felt dry and was bruised and bloated. There was a bubble of vomit at the corner of his lips. “His hands are freezing, and his breathing is very shallow. We’d better get him to a hospital.”

“I’ll take him,” said Lee. “Bring a blanket and help me get him to the car.

It was late afternoon when Lee returned. “Alcohol poisoning. He’s in a coma.”

“This much we already know,” Ella said sharply.

“It’s all they could say. He’s comatose.”

“When will he not be comatose?”

“They pumped his stomach. He didn’t revive. The doctor said he could come out of it in five minutes. But it could be weeks, months, years. They’ve got him all wired up. There was no point in me hanging around drinking coffee from a plastic cup. So I left. Wasn’t that the best thing to do?”

“And they said that it was the booze for sure?”

“They said so. But they were surprised it was such a heavy coma. They asked me a lot of questions about his lifestyle, most of which I couldn’t answer. We just have to wait until he comes out of it. They said it’s a condition beyond…”

“Beyond the help of medical science.” Honora supplied the phrase.