Rigid with fear, she started the motor and rolled the car back on to the motorway. It was easier than having to look Burns in the eye. She drove slowly, blindly, thinking: How do we wake up? How?
It was a long time before Burns spoke. “You are in danger, Ella. Serious danger. All four of you. You stayed too long on dreamside. You have left a terrible need there, and it calls you back. And it will have you back. Your minds are unravelling. Even now it’s winding you in.” Burns was agitated.
“But what can be done? What can we do?”
Burns paused. Ella couldn’t look at him. Her eyes settled instead upon his hands, which he was twisting together. “Undo what was done.”
“How? How can you undo what isn’t there?”
“How did it come to be? Dismiss it in the same way. This is the best help I can give you. But beware. This is the danger of dream-side: those who stay too long may never be allowed back. All four of you have stayed too long.”
The professor pressed his hands together, as if in prayer. Then he looked nervously over his shoulder at the road behind.
“Are you cold, Professor?”
“Oh yes, cold. Always cold. Stop the car. I will get out. Then you must think that this meeting never really happened.”
Ella coasted to a stop on the hard shoulder. Burns got out and closed the door. Nothing more was said. She steered back onto the motorway. Through the rear-view mirror she could see him staring after her. Then she blinked, and saw the girl gazing at her from the spot where he had stood. The figure of the girl diminished in the distance.
Ella was becoming unstuck. So many overwhelming things were happening she could only try to move with the flow. The old forms had to be abandoned. She had to learn new, simpler rules for existing: can I feel it /does it stop me? Who was that in the car with her a moment ago? The professor? The girl? Or neither, just phantoms gathering out of a zone of madness they had come to call the dreamside.
She had to keep herself together long enough to get Brad back to the others. That was the only important thing now. She continued her journey braced against further horrors. Three hours later she stopped the car outside an isolated cottage.
Lee had told her to look out for two cottages, but all she could see was this one and the charred and blackened shell of another burned-down building near by. The roof had gone and a side wall had fallen in. At the holes where window and door frames had all been burned out, the stone was charred with soot patches like great black rags hung upside-down. Ella could still detect the smell of charred wood in the air.
Fixed beside the door of the remaining cottage, however, was a split wooden plaque bearing the name Elderwine, just as Lee had described. Ella walked right in.
In the first room she entered, she saw Brad Cousins in yellowing underclothes, lounging on an old sofa. His feet were drawn up beneath him, and he was blowing smoke at the ceiling.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said.
“You’re the second person today,” said Ella.
EIGHT
MERCY: I was a-dreaming that I sat all alone in a solitary place and was bemoaning of the hardness of my heart.
“Is this the best you can do?” Ella, in her WWII flying jacket, stood framed in the shadowy doorway. She looked to Brad like a modern Valkyrie, or some other messenger of the gods, come to peck at his liver.
“You look great,” he said, “the crow’s feet under your eyes give you character, though your breasts have sagged. Also your jaw has slackened off, which has lifted the venom sacs from under your lip. Really, you look better. Where did you land the Spitfire?”
“I could have landed a small aircraft in your mouth. That hasn’t changed.”
“Give me one of those godawful poseur’s cigarettes you always smoke.”
Ella swept newspapers and empty brown ale bottles from a chair on to the floor. She inspected the seat closely before deciding to sit. Expertly hand-rolling one of her liquorice-paper cigarettes, she tossed it to Brad. “This place makes me want to puke.”
“Well, we didn’t know the princess was coming.”
“Thought you said you were expecting me?”
“The servants are away this week.”
“You’re almost coherent—I’m surprised. That must mean something’s wrong. I thought you’d be drunk.”
“Dear old Ella; she’s very clever. And she’d fuck anyone for fourpence.”
Ella only shrugged. “You can do better than that, a man of your bile.”
“Have you really come to peck at my liver?”
“Don’t be obscure.”
“Never mind. Never you mind, me old princess.” He hoisted himself up off the sofa, swaying slightly as he came forward and stood over her, uncomfortably close in his filthy T-shirt and yellow-stained underpants. Lee’s graphic descriptions hadn’t been exaggerated. His hair was matted and his stubbled chin was stained by something saffron colored he must have eaten recently. The smell of his unwashed body turned Ella’s stomach.
He had a bad look in his eye as he stood provocatively near, arms dangling at his side, puffing on his cigarette, waiting for some kind of reaction. She wanted to tell him that he smelled like the carcass of something washed up and rotting on a beach. She thought better of it, taking a pull on her own cigarette and meeting his eyes, but as if with infinite patience. It was always possible he might just smash her in the face.
He snapped his fingers loudly and turned away to find his bottle. “Do you want a drink me old princess me old duchess me old empress? Do you?”
“Oh it’s a cocktail bar! And I thought I was in a hovel! I’ll pass, but don’t let me stop you from getting any further out of focus.”
Brad slumped back on the couch with his whisky. “How’s your boyfriend? He paid me a courtesy call recently—we go back a long way you know—he wanted me to join his golf club. Had to disappoint him. Don’t even know why he came. And a couple of weeks later, here you are. Imagine.”
“Imagine. One more and we’d have the full set.”
Brad scowled. “But what could Ella want with me, eh? What could the old harpy want with Brad?”
“Still pretending, are we Brad?”
“Pretending? Pretending what?”
“Pretending we’re not pretending.”
“Gibberish. With a capital ish.”
“Why did you call us, Brad?”
He looked at Ella with contempt. “You what?”
“You called us.”
“Talk shit.”
“I always could out-guess you, Brad. You never liked that, did you? Now that I see you, I’m more certain than ever it was you.”
“You don’t come here to lecture me; I know what you are. You’re dirt. You’re diseased! Unhinged!”
Ella went over to Brad and kneeled down beside the sofa. She put her hand into his matted hair. “You’re still a boy, aren’t you Brad? A big boy, but still a boy.”
“Piss off! Get the fuck out of here!” But he made no attempt to pull back from her.
“You know, Brad, for a long time I thought it was Honora, going back there, shrouded in guilt. But it was you, wasn’t it? You started it again. We were all asleep, for years; then you went back there, and you needed us, so you woke us all up. Didn’t you, Brad? You called us.”
“Just go would you? Just go.” Something in Brad’s voice had fractured.
“Here I am, Brad.”
“No.”
“You have to tell me, Brad. You have to.”
“No!”
“It can’t go on. You know it. You have to tell me.”