Memories
clung to him like the tentacles of a deep-sea creature; or perhaps that was
him, sucking at memories that should have drifted free long ago. But the
problem was his. All relationships post-Ella had been held up to her light by
way of comparison, and inevitably in those dazzling rays they palled. Scratch
the surface of Lee's feelings for any woman and you would find Ella,
impossible to erase or surpass. What could others hope to do, when she ghosted
the shores of his memory and seeded his dreams like that?
The only consolation to Lee,
if consolation he was looking for, was that he knew that Ella could never get
over him. They could live neither with nor without each other.
And now she
had contacted him, after nearly thirteen years. He was going to meet her, and
he was afraid, just as he knew she too would be afraid.
Ella Innes. Why did you have to come
back?
TWO
To dream of holding eggs
symbolizes vexation
—Astrampsychus,
AD 350
Ella
was late
.
Lee had been expecting her at around seven, and
it was already after nine. He had spent two hours
twitching in his armchair, jumping up from time to time to look out of the
window. It had been dark for several hours and the winter sky was folded with
snow.
He was
physically afraid of meeting her: if she didn't show up, he wouldn't be in the
least dismayed. He was already prepared to dismiss the morning's telephone call
as a phantom, another dream; it would be better, far better, if the whole thing
had never really happened.
Then
there was a roaring underneath his window. He leaped from his seat to see
headlamps blazing in his drive, clouds of exhaust in the frosty air. Lee
hurried outside.
She was
already climbing out of her car, an open-topped vintage sports model. She wore
a flying jacket three sizes too large and a red scarf wound around her neck.
She closed the door and stood motionless in the dark, looking at him.
What were
they supposed to do? What was appropriate? To hug her, of course; he wanted to,
but he couldn't. He couldn't even look her in the eye.
"You
came down in this?" he said surveying the car. It was a fully restored
spoke-wheeled 1935 MG Midget.
"With the top down?
In the middle of winter?"
Her
breath was visible on the cold air. "It's broken. I couldn't fix it."
Lee
walked around the car and began fussing with the convertible roof. "It's
probably just a clip," he said.
"Lee," said Ella gently. "Leave
it."
Lee
looked down at his hands. He felt ridiculous. When he looked up, he saw that
her eyes were fixed on his.
"Of course.
Let's go
inside."
With the
door closed behind them, Ella looked around her as if she used to own the
house. When she nodded, it was as if to confirm that she found everything much
as expected. Lee took her bag. "Your hands are freezing!"
Ella's smile was a reflex. "It's
been a long drive."
"Maybe a drink of
something?"
"Yes, something, thanks."
That
was how she was; always ironic. Silver moon-and-stars earrings glimmered at her
ears. They left momentary tracers in the air as she flicked her hair from her
eyes. Her hastily applied lipstick looked as if it came in one piece and could
be lifted off like the milk-skin from hot chocolate. Ella looked interesting
rather than beautiful, and she dressed neither for the attention of men nor
for the critical approval of other women. Lee was hypnotized; she was more
compelling now than she had ever been as a girl of twenty.
He
didn't miss a detail: her nose perhaps a couple of degrees too steep; her dark
hair, long then, now worn shorter; and something like a faint cloud of
suspicion in brown eyes. Underneath her flying jacket she wore a baggy pullover
and slacks. She was busy unwinding the red scarf from her throat.
Her bag, a large, split-leather holdall
with a broken zip, was stuffed full. Lee stowed it against an armchair.
"Bohemian; you look bohemian," he said, trying to imitate her teasing
manner.
Ella followed him into the kitchen, where
he poured overlarge brandies and set coffee to brew. "I know I'm a
mess," she said. "You look smart, that's good; and you look
well." She flashed him a microsecond smile and bandaged the scarf around
her hand.
"I don't know why, but I feel dull
against you."
"You haven't got what it takes to be
dull." In her flying jacket she looked like a wounded refugee from some
fiery aerial combat. "I see you work in advertising."
"It's a job. I turn in every
morning. Then I come home."
She looked at him. He felt compelled to
carry on talking. "I mean
it's
narcotic. That's
how I like it."
"You sound disappointed."
"No; I really do like it like chat.
But when I'm happily numb, narcotized, nodding my way through life, then
the you
-know-what
starts over again."
Ella stuffed the scarf into her pocket.
"That's what I'm here to talk about."
"Oh dear.
Pandora wants a little chat about her box."
"Not my box;
our
box."
Lee turned towards her. "Ella, I
don't want it opened up. I don't know what's going on, but it scares the liver
out of me and I really don't want it opened up."
Ella put down her glass and took hold of
his wrist. "Look, I don't want
it
opened up again any more than you
do. I'm as frightened by it as you are. I guessed—hoped, even—that you'd be
having some of the same experiences as me. I only got in touch with you
because—"
Lee put his hand to her mouth. "Can
we sit down?"
They moved through to the living room,
Ella discarding her scarf and jacket as she went. They sat and nursed their
brandies.
"I got in touch with you," Ella
continued, "because of what we had together. What we did."
Silence.
"I'm starving," said Ella suddenly.
"What have you cooked for us?"
"Cooked?
God!"
He hadn't even thought about food. "I'll phone for takeaway, shall I?"
"No food in the
house, eh?"
She smiled.
"I couldn't help noticing the bachelor feel to the place."
"I noticed you noticing." Then
Lee bit the biscuit. "Ella, will you be staying here tonight?"
"I thought I might. Unless it would be easier if
I found a hotel."
"Don't be ridiculous. You'll stay
here."
"Fine."
"Fine."
"Only . . . Just so that it's
clear."
"So that what's clear?"
"Look;
I didn't drive two hundred and fifty miles with my foot flat down on the
accelerator after an absence of twelve years to start our relationship up
again. I couldn't stand to have
that
opened up, as well."
"Understood,"
he said, waving his hands in the air, "I was just about to say that the
spare room is ready for you. So you can calm down."
"I'm already calm. You don't need to
tell me to calm myself."
"That's settled then."
"Right, that's settled."
Lee took
this concert of understanding as a suitable moment to escape to the kitchen. He
closed the door behind him, putting his back to it as he expelled a deep
breath. He was furious about that business of renewing their old relationship,
not with Ella but with himself. He had made his feelings transparent, trailing
her with spaniel eyes from the moment she had come into his house. He wanted to
bury his head.
Their meal
arrived. "Tell me," she said, "what was happening before I
phoned?"
Lee glanced
over his shoulder as though there might be an enemy in the room. "It
started around Christmas. I thought it was just some kind of throwback. That's
happened before, and there's been no problem. Since then it has come with
greater frequency. Over the last few nights it has come without fail."
"Just the repeated awakening?"
"Yes.
That's all, thank God; I mean there have been one or two other weird things
happening in there besides, but mostly it's the repeater. It doesn't sound much
but it's scaring the hell out of me."
"It's
the same for me. I know how frightening it is. You get to dread every click or
sudden movement in case you wake up and find yourself back in bed."
"But
I've even been testing myself in the dream, burning my hand, sticking pins into
myself to see if I'm in or out: it doesn't make any difference."
"That's
how it was before."
"Sure,
but then, somehow, even though I'd get it wrong sometimes, I felt I could tell
the essential difference.
But not now.
It gets so I
don't want to bother going to work, cooking my breakfast, washing my face even,
in case I wake up. Every time something just a little bit off the wall happens,
or if I get a client at work with a screw loose, I end up thinking
I'll
wake up in five minutes and then I can
go to work and deal with the real psychopaths."
"I
thought
we
were the real psychopaths."
"What's
worse is that the dreams make more sense than what happens when I'm awake. When
I was talking to you this morning I was convinced that it was just part of
another repeater and that I'd put the phone down and wake up."
"But
you should have known that I'd pulled you out with the telephone. It was one of
our old techniques for burrowing out.
Or burrowing in."
“I know
that, but I didn't ever trust it. I don't entirely trust that business with the
book either."
"Can
you remember anything the professor said about the repeater?"
"Only
that he described it as a side effect, and said to try to enjoy it."
"Yes,
he was helpful like that."
"When
did it start happening with you?"
"Like
you, around Christmas.
Infrequently at first, then with
regularity.
I thought it was me; but it wasn't just repeated dreams of
waking up. It was some of the other stuff."
"You
went back to
that place?"
Lee was shocked.
"Not exactly.
But I
felt an overwhelming pull.
Almost irresistible.
I've
been fighting it. That's why I decided I had to get in touch, find out what was
happening to you."
"I
know. I felt it too, pulling me back there, I mean. It was strong. I fought it.
That's when the repeaters started to really take hold."
"Exactly.
The more we
fight off going back, the more the repeaters go to work on us."
"But
what would happen if we did give in? What would happen if we really did go
back there? I couldn't face it."
"At
first I wondered whether you'd been there," said Ella, "whether you
were up to something, trying to make contact with me."
"No."
"It
was just a thought. I realize now."
"Ella,
there have been many times when I've wanted you.
But never
like that.
It didn't seem to hold so much fear for me when I was
younger. Now even the thought of it can make me break into a cold sweat."
Ella ran a
hand through her hair, silver moon and stars glinting at her ears. "So
where does that leave us?" she asked. "If it's not you
a
nd it's not me . . . Oh God, look at us, Lee, just
look at us. What a pair of casualties. I'm trying to be brave, Lee, really I
am, but I'm scared.
So scared."
Then Lee
did what he should have done when he first saw Ella standing outside his house;
he put his arms around her and kissed her, and let her cry for both of them.
And when Ella cried that evening it was not only for the terror of the dreams
that hung in chains around them. It was also for the unburdened, uncaring children
they had been thirteen years ago, and for the thirteen years of distance and
loss that had recast lovers as strangers.
"Which
one of them is doing it, do you think?"
"We
can't be sure that it's either of them."
An open
fire burned brightly in the hearth. Ella sat close to it, her legs drawn up
under her. Lee sat behind her in an armchair. "You're wrong. One of them
is doing it. One of them is calling it all back. Is it him, do you think? Or is
it her? We have to find out. Then we can stop them."
"I was
afraid you might say that."
"No
time for faint hearts," said Ella.
"You
really are making a lot of assumptions. You can't know that the others are
responsible for this."