Dreamhunter (5 page)

Laura glanced over her shoulder at the clock above the door to Farry’s kitchens. She saw that the coach was already more than half an hour late.

Half an hour, in a four-hour journey.

‘Look,’ said Laura to Rose, pointing at the clock, then the anxious manager.

The waiter returned. He carried a tray with a plate of ice-cream and pink curls of candied apple. He put the tray down on the table, shook napkins open and dropped them on to the girls’ laps. The girls leant back to let the linen settle.

Rose dug into her ice-cream, then immediately began to talk around her spoon. ‘Perhaps it’s broken an axle,’ she said.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You’re a ghoul, Laura.’

‘I’m the ghoul? It’d be pretty gruesome to break an axle above the bluffs in Rifleman Pass.’

Rose shrugged. She said she was going to get a conversation cake too. ‘Do you want one?’ She jumped up, dodged the matron’s table and the waiter carrying the matron’s tea, and ducked under the brass rail before the cake display case. She draped herself on its glass. She gave a moaning sigh, pressed one pink cheek against its condensation-covered surface.

‘Miss Tiebold,’ said the assistant.

‘Two conversation cakes. With cream and lemon curd.’

‘Certainly. Will that be all?’

‘And a pitcher of mint tea.’

Rose brushed the glass with her nose, leaving a smear. She came back to the table. She didn’t say thank you.

The matron’s daughters were all managing to sit straight in their chairs and eat with their cake forks. They were a contrast to the cousins, who sat in Farry’s prime spot and clearly visible from the street, dusted with crumbs of baked egg white, licking their fingers and staring fixedly, rudely, at the people waiting at the stagecoach stop.

Laura said, ‘It’s nearly
an hour
late.’

‘Come to think of it,’ Rose said, ‘you haven’t even
seen
the bluffs at Rifleman.’

‘Your Da took us up to the trig station near there. Remember? It was one of his educational outings. The trig was right on the border to the Place.’

‘Did
your
Da know about this?’

‘Uncle Chorley lied about it. He said we’d stopped at Tricksie Bend.’

‘I remember
that
. We bought honeycomb.’

The three girls at the next table had removed their gloves to eat. Between each bite they dabbed at their lips with Farry’s white linen napkins. They were so ladylike, so poised and mild that they only raised their heads when Laura and Rose suddenly dropped their teacups into their saucers and jumped up, shoving their chairs back so hard that one fell over with a clang.

The stagecoach had appeared behind other traffic on the long avenue of Main Street. Its driver was standing up in his seat, his whip flicking and biting above the backs of his horses. The stagecoach sounded its horn, then kept sounding as it made its way through Sisters Beach’s shallow settlement to the stage post. The stagecoach pulled up — a noisy emergency.

The cousins rushed out of Farry’s and across the road. Rose’s kimono billowed open in the wind — its cord detached itself and, unnoticed by her, went away
leeward, travelling along the pavement like a thin, side-winding serpent.

The girls plunged into the little crowd and pushed to its front in time to see the stage doors open and passengers spill out.

A man and woman were clasping each other. She had a handkerchief stuffed into her mouth. Rose leant back on the jostling crowd. She called out, ‘Driver! Have you lost someone?’

The driver and passengers all looked at her.

It did happen that, every so often, an adult might vanish by the cairn that marked the border on the road beyond Doorhandle — might melt from the coach. It would turn out that this person hadn’t, for whatever reason, chosen to Try at fifteen. Hadn’t attempted before to pass across into the Place.

Rose called out her question, and the crowd hushed. People looked from the stage post manager to the driver, to the girl in a kimono and bathing suit. ‘Because —’ continued Rose, managing and informative, ‘— you should go straight to the telegraph office at the station and send a wire to Doorhandle.’

Most of those who fell were missed right away and, when they emerged, were recovered. Some, disorientated, wandered in the wrong direction, deeper In. Rangers were dispatched to find them.

‘Have someone send a ranger,’ Rose said. She gestured at them to hurry.

The driver lifted his hand, the hand with the horsewhip gathered in it. He pointed with his whip, showing something to his employer, the bossy girl in beachwear and the gathered crowd.

Laura saw what was fastened to the roof rack among the luggage on the top of the coach. A long, limp, blanket-wrapped bundle.

She backed out of the crowd.

Uncle Chorley’s cream and chrome motor car had pulled up by Farry’s. Laura’s uncle was at the confectioner’s door, his hands cupped by his eyes and his face pressed to the glass as he tried to see inside. He peered, then took a step back and opened the door for the matron and her daughters. They nodded their thanks, then clapped their hands on to their hats and turned into the wind coming up from the beach. The sand lying on the road rose to make a sparkling golden stream at knee height, in which the woman and girls seemed to be paddling.

Chorley caught sight of Laura and waved.

She ran across the road to him.

‘I’ve been looking for you, Laura.’

Laura interrupted him. ‘There’s been an accident. Someone is dead.’ She pointed at the crowd around the coach. ‘Rose wanted to help,’ she said, as her uncle opened the car door and handed her into its back seat. ‘She wanted to take charge,’ Laura added, currying favour — she knew that Rose’s father was sometimes irritated by what he called ‘Rose’s prefect manner’.

Laura watched her uncle walk away from her across the road. She saw him stop on the edge of the crowd and crane across the people’s heads.

The wind dropped and the sand settled. The girl heard Chorley asking questions. The crowd became quiet. The wind gusted again and sand rose in one place, in a humped wave. Laura watched as her uncle, the driver and the manager climbed on top of the coach to inspect what was tied there. They removed some of the wrappings. Chorley put his face down, close to the wrapped corpse. His hand went into the wrappings where Laura knew a head would be. He straightened, looked at something he held. He showed it to the manager, then they both climbed down. Several men from the crowd clambered up to help the driver unfasten the body and lower it to others on the ground, who carried it into the stage post.

Laura’s uncle came back across the road, leading her cousin. Rose got in beside Laura. Her expression was sober, and she didn’t say anything. Chorley released the brake and the car rolled away from the kerb. He raised his voice above the engine noise. ‘Your father is back, Laura. But they’ve sent a special train for him.’ He sounded sympathetic.

Laura put a hand to her throat — she felt breathless, as if the air in her lungs had set hard.

A special train meant that Laura’s father had one of his rare, priceless dreams — a dream that was contracted
to the government and would be commandeered for the public good. He would be performing it for as long as it lasted — a week to ten days. The girls had once asked Rose’s mother — who was always more open about her profession and its mysteries — where exactly Laura’s father took these dreams.

‘Insane asylums and the like,’ Grace had said.

In the car, on their way to the railway station, Laura said to her uncle, ‘But Dad has to be
here
a week from today. He
promised
.’

‘The Body has him under contract — and that’s a promise too,’ Chorley said, patiently explaining what Laura already understood. ‘Sorry, darling,’ he added.

‘Why didn’t he avoid getting a dream they’d want? He knows where his dreams are!’

‘I don’t know what he was thinking,’ Chorley said.

‘He can’t make it to my Try!’ Laura wailed.

Laura’s uncle didn’t say anything, but she saw him clench his jaw.

Rose looked at Laura and blushed, then bit her lip. Laura turned away from her cousin. She didn’t want to see Rose concerned for her, Rose excited by concern, alive with it.

The Strand was almost deserted. A few people walked, tilting forward or backward, against the wind. The waves were still small, but tipped white. There were flags flying on the twin turrets of the resort’s dream palace — The Beholder — long green pennants, Grace Tiebold’s sign.

‘Mother’s back too!’ Rose said. Her mother had gone In three days before.

‘She’s dreaming tonight,’ said Chorley.

Rose squeezed Laura’s arm. ‘That’s something to look forward to, at least.’

The stretch of the platform that was under cover from the sun was crowded with passengers, all keeping an eye on the luggage trolley, the smoking porters and their train, which sat in a siding five hundred yards up the line, breathing wisps of steam. The Sisters Beach Express was waiting for the special train to leave so that it could pull into the station.

The special train was up at the far end of the platform. Only one or two brazen travellers had wandered up to have a look at it. The special train had only two carriages — a luxury coach and a guard’s van. Its engine was new, bull-nosed, and black. The train flew red flags, two on the engine and two on the guard’s van — danger signals.

A group of officials waited by the train. They all wore dark suits and city hats. Several were mountainous,
broad-shouldered bodyguards in the guise of civil servants. Also attending on the train was a famous and flamboyant physician from Sisters Beach. Doctor Wilmot was resplendent in grey pinstripes and a gold cravat. He was playing with a monocle; it flashed as he twirled it.

Grace and Tziga had come straight from the Place and were dressed in linen shirts and trousers, leather jackets and supple leather lace-up boots. Grace Tiebold wore a dustcoat over her clothes, and Tziga Hame had bandaged hands. He carried a handkerchief with which he sometimes dabbed at his mouth.

The special train had a full head of steam. Steam escaped from all its engine’s valves, wrapping the black iron in a tissue of white vapour.

The passengers waiting for the delayed Sisters Beach Express saw Chorley Tiebold’s car pull up, the two girls jump out of its back seat and sprint along the platform past them. Chorley hurried too, but was less headlong.

Long-legged Rose was the first to reach Tziga. She clasped him around his chest and leant close to issue a warning: ‘Laura’s mad with you!’ Then she let go and drew back and noticed how he held his hands clear, so that his blood-spotted bandages wouldn’t foul her clothes. She saw his hollow eyes and scabbed lips. Then Laura barged in and Rose stumbled back, too surprised to stand her ground.

‘Goodbye, Rose,’ Tziga said. ‘Good luck.’

Laura had begun to talk, low and accusing. Her
father didn’t meet her eye, but took her arm and walked her along the platform away from the others.

LAURA LET HER
father lead her away. She knew that she would cry. She collected her thoughts and tried to tell him how she felt. She said, ‘You’ve always talked as though you’d be there for my Try. I expect you there. You should understand that, Da. Don’t you know that all my life people have looked at me as if they imagine they can see something in the air around me? Dreams. It might be
you
they are thinking of, but it’s
me
they’re staring at.
Hame
, those looks say, like someone sighing when they’re in love. How do you think that’s made me feel?’

Laura stopped walking: she dug her heels into the platform’s rust-browned bitumen and her arm slipped through her father’s hand. He gave a sharp cry and snatched the bandaged mitt of his hand back against his chest. He hunched over, cradling it.

Laura wiped her eyes and looked at him. She saw his torn lips, and the red seepage on the white linen. She forgot the rest of what she’d meant to say. She said, ‘What happened to your hands?’

‘I bit them,’ he said. He straightened and gathered her in an arm and hustled her along the platform again. This time Laura took in the movement he had suppressed, a glance back at the officials by the waiting train.

‘I’m afraid,’ Laura said.

Her father didn’t look at her, but he said, ‘What are you afraid of?’ He was brusque, sounding not so much impatient but as if his question were a formal challenge. Laura’s father’s tone did not say that there was nothing to be afraid of, but that he didn’t have any time for her fear.

‘When you come back, it’ll all be over. That’s what I’m afraid of,’ Laura said. ‘It’ll be decided.’ She shouldn’t have to explain — he should know. ‘My whole life will be decided.’

He had walked her to where the platform began to slope down to the trackbed. He stopped, and Laura, looking for an expression of understanding and sympathy, saw instead a look of desperation cross his face. Beyond them the silver railway lines, siding and waiting express all shimmered in the hazy middle distance.

Laura said to her father, ‘You should have told those people “no”!’ She pointed back at the officials and the special train, keeping her eyes on her father’s face. She was crying now. He should at least say sorry. At least dry her tears. ‘Rose will go there,’ Laura sobbed. At last she let it show — all those weeks and months of being slowly crushed by Rose’s confidence. Rose was her mother, Grace, all over again — fearless and full of appetite. Rose had hung at the front of the crowd that day to look at the corpse, while Laura flinched and fell back.

Laura cried, ‘Rose will go and I won’t!’

Her father sighed. ‘Don’t be so soft-headed,’ he said.

‘It’s how I feel!’ Laura said. She heard herself, her aggrieved whining.

‘As if confidence can affect the outcome,’ her father said — cold and impatient. Then, ‘Laura.’

His voice had acquired some warmth and urgency, so she looked at him. He was frowning back along the platform. There was a figure apparently wading towards them through the fluid of heat haze, one of the black-clad officials, his hand on his hat, head down into the wind.

Laura’s father grabbed her arms and leant down to look into her face. Laura could feel the bandages and his fingers beneath them, held stiff so that his palms took the pressure of his grip and not his injured digits. He said, ‘Do you remember any of the songs I taught you?’

Laura was so surprised by this question that she didn’t answer.

Her father gave her a little shake. ‘The old family songs. I sang them to you night after night when you were small.’

‘The bedtime songs?’ Laura said. ‘“The Hame inheritance”?’ She was unimpressed.

‘Do — you — remember — them?’ her father demanded, separating each word.

He was frightening her. Only the fact she was frightened stopped her from breaking away and shouting at him, ‘What is all this!’ She did manage to
mutter, sullen, ‘Why should I bother to remember any old songs when you aren’t going to take the trouble to be there for my Try?’

Her father’s eyes were wide, his face so pale that Laura could see, very clearly, that the wounds on his lips were crenellations, the marks of teeth, his own upper incisors having bruised and broken the skin on his lower lip. And she saw that his teeth were streaked with blood, as though he’d further wounds inside his mouth.

He shook her again. ‘The songs,’ he said.

‘“Button Thread”, “A Stitch in Time”. The
baby
songs. Yes!’ Laura shouted at him. She’d heard her aunt calling, far away at the other end of the platform. Aunt Grace yelled, ‘Tziga! It’s time to go!’

Laura’s father’s grip loosened. He whispered, ‘“Of His Name”.’ It was the title of a song.

‘Yes,’ Laura sobbed. ‘That nonsense.’

‘Noun sense,’ said her father. Laura felt his wadded hands on her hair, the sticky edges of the bandages catching at her curls. Her father asked her if she could just say the words for him.

‘The words of?’

‘“Of His Name”.’ Tziga Hame glanced again at the hurrying figure of the official — the nearest one, and all the others coming hard on his heels, Uncle Chorley with them, his pale coat flying. ‘Quickly,’ Tziga said. ‘Please, Laura.’

She couldn’t sing, her voice was too choked. She recited it, the nonsense nursery song.

Laura’s father released her. She stood, her eyes squeezed shut, weeping. She could hear the running feet, the hard shoes of the first official, and a scattering of footfalls following him. She didn’t open her eyes. She didn’t know if her father was still standing near her or not. But then he said, from a short way off, ‘Those are capitals. Name. Own. Will.’ Then, ‘Name,’ he said again. ‘Remember that.’

‘Mr Hame,’ said the official. He sounded breathless.

Laura heard her father say, ‘I’ve been trying to explain how little time I have.’ He addressed this remark to the official but seemed still to be speaking only to her. Then Chorley arrived and wrapped his arms around her. Laura smelt the bergamot in his hair oil. It was a smell that always made her happy. She opened her eyes and looked over her uncle’s shoulder at her father, who was standing beside the official, looking shabby, rumpled and small.

‘For heaven’s sake, Tziga! Is it really necessary to browbeat the child?’ Chorley said.

Laura’s father said that Doctor Wilmot had given him a shot so that he’d stay awake throughout the journey. ‘I’m over-medicated, I think,’ he said.

‘He won’t be here for my Try!’ Laura said, aggrieved, to everyone but her father.

‘I know, honey,’ Chorley said. ‘But your Aunt Grace will take care of you.’

‘Mr Hame,’ the official said again. He had a grip on Tziga Hame’s arm. Laura’s father turned away with the official and began back down the platform. Chorley put his arm around Laura and they followed, walked up to the others, Laura’s Aunt Grace and Rose. They went along together, all of them touching Laura, while her father walked ahead. Laura noticed the moment the official collected himself enough to release her father’s arm.

They reached the special train’s private car. Inside it a maid was lowering the silk blinds against the glare of the low sun. Laura could see tables, white linen, silver, a steaming tea urn.

‘Tziga,’ Chorley said, ‘where’s my camera?’

‘I had to leave it,’ Tziga said.

Chorley flushed and compressed his lips.

‘It won’t be rained on, at least,’ Tziga said. Then he held up his wounded hands, reminding his brother-in-law.

Chorley blinked. He seemed distressed. He glanced about him at all the men from the Regulatory Body and swore.

‘Look, Grace,’ Tziga said, ‘Chorley’s camera is at the stream with the blue clay bed. The cutting.’

‘I know the place,’ Grace said, to her husband. ‘Don’t worry — I’ll drag some ranger along to carry it for me.’ None of that country’s pioneering film-makers had yet been able to build a camera light enough for a person Grace’s size to carry with comfort.

It was Grace who first put a hand out to Tziga. She squeezed his arm. She said she’d mind Laura at the Try. Rose kissed his lapel — and shot him a stern, disappointed look on her cousin’s behalf. ‘Bloody government contracts,’ she said, quite audible to the officials. ‘I won’t be signing any.’

‘Our loss, I’m sure, Miss,’ one of the officials said.

Tziga Hame opened his arms for his daughter.

She made him wait, nestled against her uncle, the ever present, constantly attentive and affectionate Chorley. Then she conceded and went to him. He pressed her into his shirt front and kissed her hair. Was he asking for forgiveness, or forgiving her? It was more than just a going-away embrace.

‘So —’ Laura said, ‘when I see you next, it’ll all be over.’ She rubbed it in.

Her father whispered, ‘I’m sorry.’ He said, ‘Goodbye, darling.’ And then he let go and climbed the folding steps into the train. Dr Wilmot and two officials swung up behind him into the private coach. The rest went in the guard’s van. The stationmaster blew his whistle and waved his flag and the engine shot out a blast of steam, then it drew slowly out of the station.

THE DELAYED PASSENGERS
saw, with relief, the special train pass the detained express and that train begin to shunt out of the siding. The porters wheeled their luggage trolleys up to the red line where the baggage car always came to a stop. More attendants appeared with linen for the sleeping car and foodstuffs for the dining car.

It had all been very interesting — especially those final moments when the men from the Dream Regulatory Body ran to retrieve Tziga Hame from the end of the platform. It had been interesting, but it was late and the passengers had a ten-hour journey ahead of them. Some were thinking ‘Hurry up’, others, though late, were content to go slowly, happy to see the smokestack of the special train recede up the line. ‘Let it get well ahead of us,’ they thought. ‘Let us not catch it up in the two-mile tunnel. Not in the dark. Not with our heads down on starchy railway pillows. Not
asleep
.’

Whether impatient or prudent, whether thinking ‘Hurry up’ or ‘Let it get ahead’, the passengers were all looking up the line, measuring the distance between one train and the other. They all saw the dark girl, the Hame daughter, shrug off the adults who were comforting her. She slipped back through them. She was looking down at the tracks, or at something on the tracks. The girl jumped down on to the sleepers between the rails, then stooped and picked something up.

Her cousin shouted, ‘Laura!’

Her uncle rushed to the edge of the platform.

The dreamhunter Grace Tiebold ran the other way, yelling, ‘Stop the train!’ and waving furiously at the driver, in his cab at the far end of the shunting express.

The driver hadn’t seen the girl jump, but did see the woman waving. He put on his engine’s brakes and sounded its whistle. The brakes caught and sparked as the engine slowed. The wheels locked, but the engine kept sliding, pulled on by the momentum of its freight.

Chorley Tiebold jumped down on to the tracks, picked up his niece and rolled her back on to the platform. He didn’t have time to scramble up himself, so he threw himself across the rails and tumbled down the slope on the far side.

The train passed between him and his family, and finally came to a stop.

Chorley got up and tramped around the back of the halted train. The driver climbed down from his cab. The stationmaster dropped his flags and hurried up the platform. Some of the passengers followed.

Grace was shaking Laura, who knelt on the platform, hunched over something she had in her hands. ‘Put it down!’ Grace was saying. ‘Are you mad?’ She was furious.