Kingsley Amis - Dear Illusion - Selected Stories

The last few sentences had been audible only inside Daniel’s head, and when he looked up he was alone in the kitchen. Aware of nothing more than his need to do so, he got up and at his natural brisk pace walked out of the house by the garden door. He made for where he had seen the stone tablet, but could not find it. At the moment when he saw it was not there to be found, darkness closed about him. He stood still for a short time, then, for greater safety as he thought, dropped into a crouching position. What was under his hands and feet now was not stone but bare earth. The darkness that surrounded him was intense but not absolute; there was enough light from somewhere to show him that he was encircled by a flat, featureless plain that reached to the horizon in every direction. He felt that his spirit was leaving him.

Still in darkness, he became aware that he was breathing unusually: slowly in, sharply out, pause, then again. At the same time he found he was lying on something smoother and softer than earth.

‘Are you awake?’ said Ruth’s voice quietly.

‘Yes. Yes, I’m awake now.’ In the time it took Daniel to utter these words his mind had altered what he had actually and inexpressibly dreamt into the dialogue or dialogues at his kitchen table and what had seemed to follow, and then in turn he had forgotten all that and was left with nothing but a strong, heavy feeling of loss and sorrow. ‘I must have been dreaming,’ he said. ‘Did I wake you?’

‘I was awake. Are you all right?’

‘Oh yes. Oh yes, I’m all right now.’

But he must have said it wrong, because she at once switched on her bedside light, came over and knelt down by him and took his hands. ‘Was it a very horrible dream?’

‘It was rather.’

‘But it’s all over now, darling. Let’s go down to the kitchen and have a cup of tea.’

‘Not there, not for me,’ said Daniel in a rush.

Ruth glanced at him for a moment. ‘All right, you stay here and relax. Don’t you dare go to sleep again.’

‘I won’t, I promise I won’t.’

‘I’ll be very quick,’ she said after another pause.

Alone in his workroom a minute later, Daniel knelt down by his desk and started to pray. He thanked God for preserving him from whatever had seemed to threaten him as he slept and for taking from him all memory of it. Then he stopped, stopped the silent recital of words which was his habitual form of prayer in private. Always before, God had been listening to his prayers, or he, Daniel, had believed unquestioningly that that was so, which no doubt came to the same thing. Now, he found he could not believe that his words were going anywhere. But he went on silently forming them in his mind, this time ones that asked for help.

None had arrived by the time he heard Ruth approaching with the tea-tray. He went and sat on his desk-chair, then got up again and helped her set out the tea-things on the corner of the desk he kept clear for such arrangements. She pulled up her chair and sent him a look of great friendliness.

‘You haven’t been yourself since that night you and Leo sat up talking, have you?’

‘No, I haven’t,’ he agreed.

‘And this dream you had is more of the same.’

‘It feels like that. In effect, yes.’

After a moment, she said, ‘You’ll have to tell me sooner or later, you know. And no, you’re not keeping me up.’

‘It’s painful,’ said Daniel.

‘Yes. But I’m here.’

‘Can I have some more tea?’ When this was done, he went on, ‘That night, Leo and I went over our lives in detail, starting as far back as we could remember, childhood friends, childhood ailments, schooldays, school friends, girls, university, first job, all that. Until we were in our middle twenties or so it was, well, let’s call it reassuringly boring. Quite a number of resemblances, such as both of us having a close friend at college called Paul, both of us liking The Tempest best of Shakespeare’s plays and thinking Horatio had more in him than Hamlet, but nothing on the scale of those twin brothers he told us about who had both independently had a seat built round a tree in their garden, nothing where anybody who heard of it wouldn’t think it was a bit of a coincidence and that was about that, nothing spooky . In fact, as we went on I started to feel I was going to get away with it, I started to feel safe. Meaning, as you saw from the very beginning, I was afraid of Leo, not as a person but because of what he was, what he is. And I was dead right to be afraid of him, or at least to wish more than anything that he had never existed.

‘I dare say I felt a twinge or two of a rather different sort when we got on to you, that’s to say when I got on to you and he got on to his Ruth. But the first part of it was all right, in fact it was, well, pleasant to go over our early times and sort of relaxing to find they were rather like theirs, which you’d have expected with two very similar men in pretty similar circumstances and countries. I thought there might be trouble of one sort or another when, I forget which one of us it was, but something was said that could have led to us letting on about, you know, personal things, private things. I closed up straight away, which was probably me being English again, but then he did the same thing, so perhaps Americans have their own scale of things to keep quiet about that isn’t so different from ours. Or perhaps that’s just how Leo is. After all, we are twins.’

So far Daniel had spoken in an equable, controlled way that was still not natural to him and included pauses in odd places. By now he was sitting hand in hand with Ruth, who had listened without any sign of wanting to speak. Soon he went on as before.

‘I’d better come to the crunch, my love. When you start talking about boozing, serious boozing, you find there isn’t a lot to say. For reasons you don’t understand and can’t be bothered with, it suddenly dawns on you that you’ve got to be drunk and you set about getting there by the nearest available means. You don’t enjoy getting there or anything else about it, that’s not the idea at all. So there you are, drunk, and that’s that. The rest is a matter of falling over, throwing up, stealing, fighting, waking up on a train you don’t remember thinking about catching, let alone getting on to, being locked in a police cell and, if you’re not so lucky, an epileptic fit or two to see you back to square one. Plus some other people’s chatter about tension and insecurity and feelings of inadequacy. All serious drunks are the same, except over details that can be mildly interesting, such as brainy places to hide a bottle.

‘Some people seem to get out of it on their own. I’d never have managed it like that. Then one morning I woke up lying on my bed fully dressed, doing pretty well for that time of day, in fact. But I had nothing to drink and no money, so I realized I was going to have to go out and walk some distance to the off-licence to pick up two four-packs of large cans of Aalborg Original Brew and charge them to the brother of a mate of mine. Then I suddenly thought to myself I didn’t want to do anything like that ever again, and if I could get some support or some sign from somewhere that there was the slightest chance that I wouldn’t, then I’d really try not to, and I couldn’t understand it then and even after all this time I still don’t completely, but I managed to get down on my knees and pray. I’m still not sure what made me. I’ve never told you or anyone else this before, and there’s not a lot of it I could tell anyone, but after half an hour I knew I had a personal understanding with JC that said that as long as I went on really trying he’d see me right. And he did. I can’t say much more than that, except perhaps, if I can get it across, it was a special, one-off agreement between him and me, run up for the occasion, absolutely not any kind of standard contract. I think that probably gets it as far as it goes.