Jack nodded, his gaze still flitting nervously about the room. Caleb picked him up and carried him back across the landing. He laid him down in the middle of the bed, next to Polly. She stirred and mumbled something in her sleep. He put a finger to his lips, signalling Jack to keep quiet. Then he left the room and went downstairs to the kitchen.
Cyril was standing at the back door, sniffing. Caleb crouched beside the dog and petted him for a few moments. "What's wrong boy? You having bad dreams too?" The dog licked Caleb's hand. He pointed to Cyril's basket, stood up and glanced through the kitchen window above the sink. Moonlight silvered the garden. Nothing was out of place. When he went back upstairs and climbed into bed, Jack turned and clung to him for a while, until fatigue loosened his hold and sleep reclaimed him.
The radio clock's LED screen pulsed redly in the darkness, as if attuned to the rhythm of Caleb's agitated mind. Vaguely disturbing thoughts had taken root there, but an unaccountable sense of guilt made him reluctant to examine them. They seemed born out of nothing. The darkness robbed him of reason, made his fears seem more real than they had any right to be.
What could he do for Jack? Explain that his nightmares were the product of his own unconscious fears? As if reason could ever outweigh terror in the mind of a child. As if it could account for what seemed to him a strange congruence between Jack's bad dreams and his own fragile memories. He felt powerless and bewildered. Though he believed he would do anything for his son, he was plagued by a small but undeniable doubt. He couldn't escape the feeling that he was in some way responsible for Jack's terror, that it was connected to some weakness in himself.
Caleb strummed his guitar listlessly, his chord changes awkward and slow, like they had been when he'd first started playing. Maybe, once you got past forty, it was too late to take it up. The fingers were too stiff and the willingness to make a fool of oneself was not so strong as it had been. Yet, he didn't feel that way about himself.
When Polly had bought the guitar for his birthday and told him it was time to stop talking and learn to play, it hadn't seemed such a crazy idea. And still now, after a year, the desire to play competently some blues and country tunes was as strong as ever. It was something else distracting him.
He leaned the guitar against the table, got up and walked to the sink. Polly glanced up from the book she was reading. "Not there today, huh?"
Caleb shrugged and watched his son through the kitchen window. Jack was playing in the garden by the recently dug pond that still awaited its first Koi Carp. He was manoeuvring his Action Men through the shallow water as if it were a swamp.
"You okay?"
Caleb looked at her. She'd put her book down on the table and was staring intently at him. He didn't want to talk. He knew already what she'd say. "I'm fine," he said, turning back to the window.
"It's Jack, isn't it?"
The boy was manipulating two of his soldiers into a fight. He paused suddenly, and cocked his head to one side, as if listening. Slowly, he swept his gaze across the garden. He seemed nervous, wary of something. After a moment or two, he continued with his game, but more guarded, as if aware that he was being observed. Caleb felt uneasy. He leaned closer to the window and let his gaze wander around the garden and down to the rear wall that backed onto the lane. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary.
"He's okay, Cale," Polly was saying. "He'd be even better if you'd stop fretting."
"I was trying to help him," Caleb said, still watching Jack.
"By interrogating him?"
"Talking about it will help him." Jack was shielding his eyes from the watery sun as he gazed south towards the bay. "Expose the irrational to the cold light of day and it loses its power. Making Jack talk about the dream will weaken its hold over him."
"Oh sure. After all, he's eight years old."
She didn't seem to get it. "What do you suggest we do?"
"Ignore them. They'll pass of their own accord if you stop bringing them up. Jesus Cale, all kids have bad dreams sometime or other."
"I never did. Not like his."
"We all have nightmares. Why should you be different?"
He looked at her and heard himself say, "I just never did."
"Or you forced yourself to forget."
Maybe she was right. He turned back to the garden. Jack had laid one Action Man face down in the water. He was draping strings of pondweed over the doll. He paused and glanced up towards the house, before turning his attention once again to his game.
Polly came up behind Caleb and slipped her arms around his waist. "You just need to give him a little time," she said, pressing her lips against the back of his neck.
How much time, Caleb wondered, feeling an ache of tenderness as he watched Jack rise up onto his knees. The same nightmare four times in one week. How much time before reason was exposed as a hollow lie? He would not let it happen.
As if feeling his isolation, Polly pulled away. He was about to reach for her when he saw what Jack was doing. The boy was kneeling over the pond where the Action Man floated, covered with strands of weed. His hands were clasped together, his head was tilted skywards and his lips were moving. Caleb's flesh tingled with disquiet. What kind of game was it that necessitated prayer?
Jack and Gary raced into the dunes ahead of Caleb and Cyril. A stiff breeze blew in from the east, across Oxwich bay, unleashing small, foam flecked waves to snap at the shore. Caleb followed the terrier up the steep, sliding bank of a dune.
The boys were waiting for him atop the grassy ridge. Jack looked skinny and frail next to his friend, who, though only a month older, was a good six inches taller and a few pounds heavier. Sometimes Caleb feared for his son when he watched the rough and tumble of their play, but he was glad too that Jack had such a friend. Gary seemed to him indomitable, and he hoped that some of that strength would rub off on Jack. No nightmare last night. Third dreamless night in a row. Perhaps Polly had been right after all.
"We're gonna hide now," Jack said. "You gotta count a hundred."
Caleb nodded. He called Cyril to him and held on to the dog while the two boys took off. He began counting out loud as he watched them scramble further up through the tough marram grass. Cyril whined and struggled to chase after them, but Caleb held him until he had reached fifty. Then, still holding the dog by his collar, he crawled up the slope and peered over the crest of the dune.
Jack and Gary were sixty or seventy yards ahead, running through the small dip towards another rise. He waited until they had disappeared around the side of the hill, then called out that he was coming.
Letting Cyril race ahead of him, he followed their path, before cutting across and up the dune at a steeper angle. Crouching as he came over the crest of the hill, he scanned the dune slack below, searching the bracken and coarse grasses for anything other than wind-induced movement. He spied a patch of yellow moving beyond the pink and white trumpets of a bindweed-choked tree, and quickly chose a route that would allow him to get ahead of the two boys.
Soon after, he popped up from behind a thick mound of marram grass and made booming noises as he shot them with his forefingers. After yelping in surprise, the boys collapsed spectacularly into the scrub.
By the time they had picked themselves up and started counting, Caleb was already heading deeper into the dunes.
He ran for about a hundred yards, found cover in a clump of bracken, and lay on his back to watch the cirrus clouds race across the sky. He could hear the sea rolling in over the long flat stretch of the bay, the screech of gulls and the wind whistling through the dune grass.
He closed his eyes for a moment and heard voices carrying on the breeze. He was surprised at how much distance and the wind distorted the sounds, made them indecipherable, barely recognizable as human. The vastness of the sky overhead instilled in him a sense of isolation, which added to the strangeness of the voices. Despite the coolness of the breeze, he felt trickles of sweat on his back as the words shaped themselves in his head. Something about time.