“I don’t know. For us it’s a neutral; a dead force field; a zone of used possibilities.”
“Then we must find another zone or field.”
“I had a fear,” said Ella, “of someone else getting in.”
“Oh?”
“L. P., can I ask you something?” Ella chancing the familiar mode while Burns was in a good mood.
“Ask away, E. I.”
“Why are you so anxious to make all four of us rendezvous?”
“Is it a private party?”
“No; it’s not that. I get the feeling you want further confirmation of what’s happening.”
“She means don’t you trust us,” said Lee.
“Yes Lee; I know what Ella means. But why shouldn’t I trust your accounts?”
“We misled you at the beginning of the exercises. You would be right to be sceptical.”
“Sceptical of you two I am not. Perhaps you will forgive my guard against credulity however, which springs from years of working in a discipline which has never been more than an Art which believes itself to be a Science. Even so, our capacity for self-deception and the unfaltering pursuit of wishful thinking are probably the most dependable of human attributes.”
“So you do think we’re making it all up!”
“Not so. Certainly not consciously, as in telling fibs to deceive a gullible old academic with nothing better to entertain him. No. But there is such a thing, to name an example, as a folie a deux.”
“Madness between two emotionally involved people,” said Brad cheerfully. “Where one feeds off the other’s delusions.”
“So we’re liars or we’re mad!”
“I’m not saying you’re either of those, Ella, please don’t make such a grim face at me. I’m pointing out that there are possibilities of illusory states of mind. Even with or without my spectacles I know you and Lee to be emotionally entangled. We have to consider these things. Now, a third or fourth party entering the scenario would help to confirm things.”
“So if a second person sees the unicorn in the woods, it still doesn’t exist,” said Lee, “but if a third person sees it we’ll give it a scientific name!”
“Speaking as someone who is a great believer in unicorns, I’d still want all three of them to have their heads tested!”
They all seemed to laugh longer at this quip than was necessary. The professor concluded the session. “Let’s just say that it’s much harder for three to keep up a conspiracy of self-deception than it is for two.” Whatever that meant, they accepted it in good faith.
Three days later they called around at the professor’s house and found him in high spirits. Still breaking open bottles left over from the end of term soiree, he announced his plans.
“It’s time for us to find that tree I mentioned.”
“What tree?”
“The one for you all to carve your initials on. By which I mean to say we now need to identify a new location as our point of rendezvous, one with which all four of you can have good strong associations, and which can become a new focus for us on dreamside. We are all going on a little summer holiday.”
“Yay! When?”
“Tomorrow. Why not? The weather is better than we deserve, and I know a rather beautiful spot where we can spend two or three days relaxing.”
“Relaxing! Yo! Where is it?”
“Wait and see. The idea is for us to spend some time there, relax, soak up the beautiful countryside, grow even closer as a group, make associations with the place, absorb some of its nature… Are you persuaded?”
“We’re persuaded! Let’s do it!”
Next morning they travelled southwards, squeezed into the professor’s cherished Morris Minor, Burns driving slowly and with exasperating caution. The sun got up hot overhead, bouncing off the polish and chrome of the car and cooking its passengers. The girls’ bare legs stuck to the leather upholstery and Lee and Brad both took off their shirts, sitting bare chested and sweating. Burns, dressed in collar and tie, sweater and tweed suit, steered carefully with hands gripped permanently at five-minutes-to-one, resisting all overtures either to drive faster or to reveal their destination.
In Coventry he turned sharply into a one-way street and a flow of oncoming traffic. A policeman stuck his head out of his car window and bellowed at him to pull over. Particulars were noted and Burns, who remained calm and polite throughout, was instructed to produce his driving documents at a police station within fourteen days.
“An unfortunate development,” he muttered when they were mobile again.
“It’s nothing,” said Brad, “all you have to do is take in your licence and insurance and stuff.”
“I don’t have one. A driving licence I mean.”
“What!”
“Nor any of the other documents he mentioned. Insurance and such.”
“Eh!”
“I only take the car out once or twice a year, around the block as it were, just to keep it going. I resent having to insure it for that. Is it likely that they will make a fuss, do you think?”
“Just keep going,” someone said, “we’ll try not to think about it.”
“Right; fuck the pigs!” screamed Ella through the open window, and with such revolutionary ardour that Burns was startled, or possibly inspired, into driving marginally faster for the rest of the journey.
They reached the Brecon hills around lunchtime, and Burns drove them to an isolated house, belonging, he said, to a colleague. The place was rudimentary, some kind of holiday cottage equipped in utilitarian fashion. They ran up and down the stairs quickly claiming rooms, Ella and Lee together, Honora alone and Brad accepting a camp bed arrangement with good grace so that L. P. didn’t have to scramble with the rest of them to stake out his territory in the front bedroom of the house. The old professor looked utterly exhausted by the journey, and sank down into a chair. When someone shouted that neither shower nor bath was functioning, he looked apologetic and bewildered, and could only suggest that they bathe in a lake he knew of, some three or four miles down the road.
Ella could see how tired he was. She went over to him. “It doesn’t matter about the bath. It would be great fun to swim in the lake. And the house and the countryside are wonderful.” He looked reassured by her words and forced a brief smile. The others realized that they were going to have to slow down over the next few days unless they wanted an invalid on their hands.
They took him at his word about the lake, and Brad persuaded him (by dint of hard work and outrageous promises) to surrender the car keys for the drive down to it. Again they all squeezed into the uninsured Morris Minor together with a deckchair for Burns to sit on while they swam. Burns complained that they were treating him like a geriatric, but was obviously gratified by this consideration. The lake was cool and inviting. They parked the car at the side of the road and walked down to its grassy banks. An ancient oak leaned out over it, root and branch plunging into the dark, deep water. They made camp under a row of weeping willows which dipped leafy stems into the blueblack cool. A spiral of excited swallows wheeled and turned and dotted the sky with parabolas above the lake, intoxicated by their own matchless aerial display.
Burns’s deckchair was set up with protracted ceremony and discussion. Only when he was fully installed did the others undress and leap squealing into the water. He watched them swim and bob, and laid towels out on the grass for them. Then he returned to his deckchair, where he promptly fell into a doze.
It must have been two hours before he woke. The sun had slipped in the sky. Everything slumbered. Something of the lake’s calm had distilled itself into the afternoon tranquillity. Glancing down, he saw four young bodies basking in the heat, their smiling faces lifted up to him as if they expected him to speak.