Graham Joyce: Dreamside

“But it’s grand to see you. Really it is.”

“I wish you meant that.” The remark made Honora look away again. “You know why I came to see you.”

“You want to talk to me about dreams?”

“We could talk about the IRA instead. Or the Mountains of Mourne. Or about Donegal tweed…”

“All right, all right. So, let’s talk about dreams. I’m happy to talk about dreams, if that’s what you want me to talk about.”

“I want to talk about the kind of things that happened to us while we were at university. I mean, if anything like that has been happening to you lately.”

“Oh, come on Ella! Don’t you think I didn’t have enough with what happened at the time? I put it all behind me. I was glad to get away from it when I had the chance. And now it’s all in the past.”

“It’s not in the past. It’s back and it’s not nice.”

“But don’t you see what it is!” Honora cried. “Just this talking about it is what does it. You’re dredging it all up again. Why can’t you leave it alone? The more you want to discuss and analyze and toss it back and forth the more you bring it all back again. It was a mistake, something we did when we were young. It’s something we shouldn’t keep going back to; like an old—”

“Like an old affair?”

“Something like that.”

“Lee said some very similar things, about not wanting to open it all up.”

“Well, he’s right. Me and him both.”

“But he’s a different kind of person. Remember what we used to call the repeater? He’s been having some of those dreams again. Only it’s not a joke any more. Some mornings it’s panic…”

“Are you living with Lee?”

“No, but I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong. We didn’t get together and resurrect this dreaming thing. It started happening to both of us independently. I got frightened, so I got in touch with Lee. That was when I found that the same things were happening to him. I’d already decided that one of the original circle was muddying the pool; so if it wasn’t me and it wasn’t Lee…”

“You thought it might be me.”

“I had to come and find you, at least. You can understand that, can’t you?”

“Yes, I can understand it.”

Dusk had rolled over the street outside the tea shop. A hand switched on dim lights. Now half of Honora’s face was in grey shadow, the other half washed by unhelpful amber light. Another patrol passed by the misted window.

Ella was still trying to get Honora to pick up the ball. “So you haven’t been troubled by any of that… weird stuff? No repeaters. No flashbacks. None of it?”

“Not at all.” Honora’s eyes were too wide open to be telling the truth.

“Never, over the years?”

“Not since what happened at university. For a year or two after that I did have the occasional nightmare, but that was more of the regular order of bad dreams. If you want my opinion, I’m glad I can’t help you. It’s dead and gone, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

Honora said all of this too cheerfully, working a fraction too hard at trying to keep it light. She was smiling at Ella with those delicate features, but now she was looking like a toy left out in the rain. Yes; there was a pallor under the skin left by the sleeping pills, Ella could guess that; but most revealing were the very fine lines, a tiny chain of folds in her skin which she saw as knives, daggers turned inwards on the subject.

“And over the years you’ve never had any contact with—”

“None.” Honora cut Ella very short. “I don’t even want to think about him, far less talk about him. Can we pay this bill?”

Ella sat back.

“I wasn’t going to ask you to stay,” said Honora with a smile, “but I can’t really not, now can I?”

“No, you can’t really not. We’ve got a hundred other things to catch up on.”

They threaded their way through the streets of the town, Honora once again linking arms with her old friend. Her house was a two-up two-down brick terrace, its interior painted in bold primary colours. It was almost obsessively tidy, except in the back room which was cluttered with the unframed canvases and rolls of cartridge paper which Honora used for painting and drawing.

“In the summer I still go into town and paint portraits for American and German tourists,” Honora explained. “And sometimes I get commissions to paint people’s pets. Dreadful!”

“Stinking!” Ella agreed brightly.

One painting rested on a chair, draped with a chequered tablecloth. “Can I see?” Ella asked. But Honora ushered her gently out of the room and switched off the light. Ella suddenly knew exactly what lay under the cloth, as if she herself had splashed it on the canvas in luminous paint.

“What would you like to do while you’re here?” Honora asked hurriedly.

“You mean apart from talking about dreams?”

Honora looked defeated.

“Why did you lie to me, Honora? You never used to lie.”

Honora turned to the window. “All right, the dreams have been back. I don’t even like talking about it. I don’t know what’s happened, why the… repeaters are frightening me again. I hadn’t experienced them for over ten years. I thought you must have been doing something, perhaps you and Lee, cooking something up together, resurrecting the dreaming. I thought you might want to include me in some scheme or other…”

“I told you; Lee and I don’t want it any more than you do.”

“Oh I realize that now. But I just want to black it out, hide somewhere, not talk about it, not think about it. When you came I thought: Oh God no, this is why the dreams have been coming back, leave me out of it.”

“Do you think us coming together can make things worse?”

“I don’t know anything; it just triggers a lot of… associations.”

“The point is, if it’s not you or Lee or me, then it must be…”

“Yes. I was afraid of him. My God Ella, what’s happening to us?”

Ella didn’t answer. “We should go out tonight,” she said, trying to brighten things.

“I never go out.”

“You do this evening. I want Guinness and didley-didley music, and you can show me where to get it.”

All protests were brushed aside, and Honora, who an astonished, high-spirited Ella later discovered hadn’t been outside her house socially for two whole years, was dragged out in a state of excitement and nervous terror mixed. When they left the house it was snowing; soft, light flakes of snow falling under the amber streetlamps, melting the instant they touched the ground.

Elderwine Cottage, damp and stinking. Stooping to gather a fistful ofletters franked more than a fortnight before; Lee yelled something intended to be Hallo or Anyone In but which came out unintelligibly between. Off right, a narrow hall of razor-edged shadows admitted to a room with a bare light bulb burning. He carefully nudged open the door. It was ankle deep in newspapers and litter. Some of the papers were unread and folded neatly in piles, some had obviously served as wrappings for a variety of takeaway foods. Judging by the smell, some still did. Floating in the debris were dozens of brown ale and whiskey empties, bottles frozen neck-up in a polluted lake. In the next room he tried flicking on a light switch for a bulb that was missing. He passed through to the kitchen. A tinker’s workshop of pans and dishes was stacked high in the sink which was full of grey water, a half-inch slab of grease on the surface; rock-hard doorsteps of sliced bread grew fibrous green beards; disposable fast food cartons were left strategically, still offering half of their original contents; milk bottles stood with their contents crusting in phases of metamorphosis. It was more like a biochemist’s laboratory than a kitchen.