"Frosty,"
Brad scoffed, swirling his beer to make it froth. "Anyway I can't stand
women who drink out of pint glasses to try and prove something."
Lee ignored
him. Ella's table was two strides away. "I waved at you to ask if you
wanted to join us," he said, sitting down next to her.
Ella moved
an eighth of an inch away from him. "Yes, I saw you." She
concentrated on crafting the cigarette in her long white fingers, only looking
up at him as she slid her tongue along the gummed edge of the paper.
"Oh?"
"Pardon?"
She
blinked at him.
Lee
hovered, looking for a way out. She's pulling my strings, he thought. "Why
don't you join us?"
Ella looked
over her shoulder as if for signs of imminent rescue. She was an international
celebrity being pestered for three minutes of her time by a provincial
journalist. With a practised, long-suffering
if there's to be no help
shrug
she gathered her papers, matches, tobacco and beer and relocated to their
table.
"What
did you make of that session?" Lee asked.
She
shrugged and lit her cigarette. "What did you?"
"That
beret is ridiculous," Brad said to ten people. "You look like a
member of the Provisional IRA.
In drag.
After a bad night.
In Belfast."
"The
thing about going to these sessions," Ella said to Lee, "is that you
never know who you're going to meet."
Brad
pretended that the irony was lost on him. "All I'm saying is that the
effect doesn't work. It doesn't come off."
"I was
interested," Lee cut in quickly, "in some of the things you were
saying. About controlling the direction of your dreams, I mean. I'm really
going to get into it."
"Do
it," she said
,
as if to say stop talking about
it.
"You
sounded quite advanced."
"Head of the coven," said Brad.
"But I don't have premonitions." She plucked
a loose flake of tobacco from the tip of her tongue.
"He only said that about premonitions," Brad
put in, looking at Lee, "so he wouldn't sound as boring as the others.
Isn't that right?
Lee only glared back at him.
"Ignore it," said Ella.
"And it worked," said Brad.
"What did you think of L. P.?" Lee asked
her.
"I've come across him before; I think he's
sweet."
"Why
do women always say sweet when they mean clapped-out and half-way to
senility?" Brad again. "What on earth is sweet about that dry old
stick?”
"It's true;" she replied dryly, "that
he doesn't suffer fools gladly."
Lee
established that Ella was prepared to take the weekly sessions quite
seriously. She told him that it hadn't occurred to her that most people were
unable to direct their dreams. She was prepared, she said, to take things as
far as she could to find out what they meant.
"I'm
not," said Brad. "You sound like you're expecting too much from it. I
can't see it going anywhere."
"Then why don't you drop out of it?"
"I probably will after a
while."
"The group," said Ella to
Lee,
"would never recover."
She
produced her purse to buy another drink. Lee offered twice, but she insisted
that she buy her own. While she was away at the bar Brad said, "Listen
mate; she's making you dance."
"What?"
"Dance!
Dance! She's a vixen."
"A vixen?
I don't know about that, but she's got you
taped."
"Not a chance! Anyway
it's not
my
tongue that's hanging out drooling: you're making an
indecent public display of yourself."
"What?"
Brad got up to go. "I'll leave you to it."
He patted Lee on the face. "Dirty."
Ella
returned. "Your friend's gone, then?"
"I
only met him tonight. He's not a friend."
"He's
a reptile. He's got the eyes of a lizard and scales on the inside of his
mouth." She crossed her legs.
"I
see."
But Ella
obviously didn't think of Lee as a reptile, otherwise she wouldn't have taken
him back to the house she shared with two other girls about a mile from the
university. Lee, for his part, overestimated Ella's style. Once they were
behind closed doors he half-expected, wished, hoped that Ella would tear off
her erotic black outfit and demand that they make urgent love (beret remaining
in place).
To say that Lee was more relieved than
disappointed when she didn't would be a lie.
He was a knot of tension
and in Ella's presence his mouth ran dry. Although he was not a complete
stranger to the private rooms of the women students, something about Ella's
aura—a subtle scent and a kind of leading signal beyond the range and faculty
of human definition—intimidated him while at the same time snaring him in a
noose of sexual longing.
Ella at
twenty was busy cultivating an air which, ten years later, she would be
earnestly trying to throw off—that of the jaded adventuress, physically
satiated,
spiritually
exhausted. This blasé image had,
as was intended, a contradictory energizing effect on Lee. When he breathed in
a single hot draft of this distillation of elements, it worked on him like a
witch's potion. He perched nervously on the corner of her bed nursing a chipped
mug of chicory-flavoured coffee as she relaxed back into a comfortable
armchair, crossing and uncrossing her legs.
Ella's room
was a revelation. Those of other female students had always been pale
stereotypes of pastel shades, feminine pillowslips and obligatory postcard
collections. Entering Ella's room was like walking into a subdued decorated
cave or a Bedouin tent. The four walls were draped with hanging fabrics, Indian
batiks, Serbian rugs, Greek blankets, Russian scarves, antique lace cloths—a
hanging exhibition of textures, a treasury of intricate folds. Slow-burning
incense breathed seductive fumes from elaborate brass cups. Ella relaxed in her
armchair, rolling herself another liquorice-paper cigarette as she spoke. In
Lee's mind she had already fused the mystical qualities of the Tarot Priestess,
a 1970s Sibyl, and a contemporary Circe into one exotic being, and had focused
them all into a soft dark triangle at the top of her legs.
"I
don't do drugs any more; it's a waste of spiritual energy," she was
saying. She seemed to be deliberately parodying herself.
"I've
come to the same conclusion," said Lee, who had never so much as abused
the instructions on an aspirin bottle.
"I'm
in and out of TM at the moment
.. .
" she
continued.
"TM?"
"Transcendental
Meditation."
"Right."
"Only just recently I got my head
into TA . . ."
"TA?"
"Transactional Analysis."
"Right."
"Where've you been living?"
asked Ella.
"I've been into TP."
Ella looked foggy.
"TP?"
"Teaching
Practice.
TP.
It's a joke."
"A
joke," said Ella.
"Right."
She looked
at her watch and glanced at the door.
"You're
quite a spiritual entity," Lee tried. It was obviously the right thing to
say. Ella brightened, or perhaps her aura expanded, but anyway she proceeded to
map out the dizzying geography of her psychic development over the past twelve
months. In a matter of minutes she alluded to astrological configurations and
Zen Buddhism; the Tibetan
Book of the Dead
and Hexagrams of the
I
Ching;
Tantric Lore and Cabbalistic Law; primal screams and astral projection;
rebirth experiences and regression into former lives.
Lee thought
he might be talking to a Martian.
"In
the end you're just chasing your tail," said Ella. Lee nodded in sage
concurrence. "Which is why I'm interested in this dream thing. I want to
leave all that clutter behind, trust in my own resources. I want to get inside
my own head."
I just want
to get inside your pants, Lee thought. "Exactly why I'm interested,"
he said.
Coffee had
gone cold in the bottom of cups, incense had burned itself out. Ella was silent
for the first time since they had walked through the door. Lee tried to keep
the conversation on the boil by casually declaring that he was thinking of
dropping out of university so that he could travel overland to Tibet.
"Do
it," she said simply. It was the second time she had used the phrase that
evening. There was something dismissive about the way she said it which twisted
the knot in which she already had him tied.
Lee sat
squirming on the corner of the bed, trying to think up a way of making the next
move when she suddenly said, "Now I'd like to go to bed."
Lee stared
at her, dumbfounded. Was that an invitation or what? He made an assessment of
Ella's breezy self-confidence. "OK," he said, and started to untie
his shoelaces.
Ella
watched as he kicked off his shoes. Then she spoke.
"What
the hell are you doing?" For a moment she looked flustered and a little
wide-eyed: an apprentice Sibyl lost for words, a novice Circe frightened by a
piglet.
"You
don't want me to stay?" asked Lee.
"If
ever I do," she said, recovering slightly, "you'll be the first to
hear of it."
Lee pulled
his shoes back on, trying to model a win-some-lose
-
some look as Ella opened the door. At the last minute
she tore a book from the shelf and thrust it into his hands, simultaneously propelling
him forward. "You really must read this and let me know what you think of
it OK goodnight." She closed the door just a little too hurriedly behind
him.
Lee took a
short cut across the university lawns, philosophical. The book Ella had given
him must have been a way of saying that the door would be open another time. He
was half-way home before he looked at it. It was a battered paperback copy
of
Alice in Wonderland.
The university clock-tower rang out the hour in the
distance. It was 2
a.m.
THREE
Why, sometimes I've believed as many as
six
impossible things before
breakfast
—Lewis
Carroll
The silence was embarrassing.
The second meeting of the lucid
dreamers had
convened in Professor Burns's own lounge in a large house close to the
university and across the road from a sprawling Victorian graveyard. They had turned
up at staggered intervals, and after being warmly greeted by the professor were
seated in one of the assorted armchairs drawn into a circle. Lee arrived late
and suffered agonies on seeing Brad Cousins ensconced on a small, cosy-looking
sofa with Ella Innes. Lee took a seat next to the shy Irish girl.
"Had any premonitions?" she
whispered as soon as he sat down.
"Not one."
At last the
group became aware that the professor was patiently awaiting their silence so
that a start could be made. The whispering diminished in tiers until they were
left gazing upon Burns, waiting for session number two to begin. But he didn't
speak.
The
professor remained with his gaze fixed steadily three feet above the head of a
girl immediately opposite him. His face carried a perfectly neutral expression,
neither hostile nor friendly, neither impatient nor uninterested. Fidgeting
began and increased as the period of silence extended. A sigh, a scratch, a
cough, the sound of someone twisting in their seat all punctured the
embarrassing hiatus before it was immediately sealed up again with silence.
After an agonizing five minutes of nothing, Brad Cousins spoke.
"If
this is a psychological exercise designed to make us all feel uncomfortable,
its
working."
All eyes
were turned on the professor, who did nothing to acknowledge the remark or deal
with the implicit criticism. His expression remained consistent, as did his
gaze. The group, exasperated, plunged into a silence more oppressive than the
last. The silence seemed to expand, becoming more profound as it lengthened.
Lee looked at Ella; Ella looked at Lee. Brad looked at Ella and Lee; Lee looked
at Brad. The Irish girl looked at Lee; Lee looked at the Irish girl, Brad and
Ella. Ella looked at Brad, Lee and the Irish girl. Now no one seemed to want to
look at the professor at all, except sideways.
"If
nothing's happening," Brad tried again, "maybe we should all go away
and come back next week." His words fell like the sound of a small pebble
tossed into a vast reservoir. Now everyone, with the exception of the
professor, affected to be fascinated with their fingernails or their footwear.