9. Dream
From 'Passages' by Jean de Lier
Somewhere in North London a man was walking through old half forgotten haunts of a long gone youth. He walked past a boarded up railway cutting, pushed back a frosted glass door, mahogany edged, like a Victorian pub, into an alley, through a second similar door, and the way led into a small park beside the railway line. He wondered, half idly, whether a train would lead to the old Hampstead Heath Station, the line that used to go to Liverpool Street. Was that line still open, as in his youth? A steam train raced by, and he only just caught sight of it. Though he hadn’t actually seen the engine, he was pretty sure it was steam, less sure whether there were still steam trains running? But yes, another came by, more slowly with great plumes of smoke and steam from the immense engine. It had a locomotive such as you see in the films of India, the Andes or the Congo, with hugely complicated wheels of different sizes, massive steel drive shafts and powerful glistening steaming pistons. It was pulling freight, much freight but definitely also passenger coaches and in the same direction as the first train, whence the man indeed had just come. It disappeared into the tunnel under the road he had left.
He walked further down the path along the railway, an iron railing and some rough ground separating him from the track. Cigarette packets and silver paper and dandelions formed a pattern with the shadow of the railing. There had been another choice at right angles alongside the road but that had seemed only to lead to a cemetery and was parallel to the main road. He had time and leisure to explore, why hurry to rejoin the road he had just left. Some people were walking and now, losing the railway line, the path led through a sort of garden into the centre of a large estate, blocks of rather elegant flats, and between the gaps, vistas of other gardens. The people were friendly but distant, pre-occupied with their own lives, youngish couples not known to him. Maybe they couldn’t see him, certainly they affected not to notice.
He overheard one mother, pushing a pram, say that she had bought something for the home, paid rather a lot for it but it was a wonderful new Swedish design. The man knew that this was commonplace, and because he knew it would become commonplace he realised, for sure, that he was walking in the past. But it did not necessarily seem to be specifically his own past. He was not within his own memory.
He walked on, still on Tarmac through the estate, through a series of symmetrical gateways, and then turning right into a beautiful, just autumnal garden, still green with trees despite the late season. He stepped onto a lawn, rather like the fairway of a golf course, a central close mown part with the trees and the first fallen leaves on either side. It was not a golf course and the lawn led to a building and a hill and more monumental, neo-classical buildings beyond and maybe back into central London, the Hampstead he had left in his youth. It was definitely in town, and not in deep countryside, there were a few birds, but no dogs playing. It was parkland, not agriculture, long lawns blocked at the end by a wall or building with a door in the centre, leading to another stretch of grass..
He walked through an arch and such another similar vista appeared, like a continuous series of pictures and then he walked though a door into a large panelled room with high-hung paintings and oriental rugs and a couple talking, in a language he did not understand. He asked what they were saying, but they did not understand and indeed they seemed not to be sure of what they had said themselves. But they did acknowledge him by walking with him a short way, one or either side. Clearly they could see him. Some German words made him think it might be Yiddish they spoke but he had heard Yiddish and this was strangely more refined. He wondered whether it might be modern Hebrew, gently spoken maybe with some German words used. Or could it be one of the old Teutonic dialects, precursor to both modern German and Yiddish? But then they suddenly, in this strange language, tried to introduce him to his own ex-wife, who was certainly dressed in the clothes in which he had last seen her. The couple disappeared but she lingered long enough for him to be able to say “I already know you. I know who you were, and I know who you will be”. She was gone and he wondered, even as he stood there, whether he did know who she was, whether he had ever known her. He wondered whether he knew who he himself would be. Or had been.
He was in a room with a table and a lot of young scholars. Talmudic he guessed at first, young certainly, but also somehow mediaeval, in velvet caps and ill fitting suits, dark purple mostly. Maybe they were not Jewish but Oxford students of the middle ages, or contemporaries of Dr Faustus in Germany, but the room was still unmistakably modern, fake corporate rather plump neo-classical, with a high ceiling and a broken pediment. He noted these things, and he also saw a lot of rather nasty sandwiches on the table, in triangular plastic packets as from modern sandwich bars. No one offered him a sandwich, but he felt no hunger, and since they looked so unhygienic, he was neither tempted nor disturbed. They were not discussing higher matters, but sex and lust and wine and one youth was stuffing the food into his mouth, messily scoffing most of a sandwich at one go, bits of sandwich and salad all over the floor. The man wondered whether the student might make love that way.
He could no longer see the scholars, and did not ask or notice whether they could see him as he lay back on the black leather sofa, as indeed he remembered he had been lying on it the night before with Cressida. He was kissing her, kissing her mouth and he had her distinctly small breast in his hand, as he had not had, had never had, it may be admitted, in reality. She seemed mildly surprised by his intimacy but not really resistant. He himself was also surprised but only because he had always had the impression her breasts were of quite adequate size. But now they kissed fully, deeply and embraced and he had a huge erection, firm, hard, urgent and excited. He needed her, was ravenous to devour her body, to kiss her lips, to suck her nipples till they stood upright for excitation. He came, though whether it was really inside her or even with her, beside her, he was not so sure. In the way of a dream she faded as fast as his excitement, her pert hard nipples beyond memory, her breasts small or padded, unrecalled; he even rather doubted whether either of them had ever actually taken any clothes off. She was gone and he was back in the room with the black coated scholars. He left them there.
More gardens, outside again, lawns autumnal now, reds and ochres, purples almost and only the dark green of the conifers, cyprus and pine. He tried to retrace his way but he was now lost, could find no way that might lead back to the frosted glass door, back into the grey world of the London he had left, so long (how long?) ago. There was no way back. Only endless lawns and doorways and houses going forward slightly, uphill gently, perhaps getting steeper in the receding distance. Despite this, he was not in anyway anxious, not really worried. The town, the other life, with real people, and sometimes unapproachable women, could not be very far, the distant monumental graveyards, endless doors and gateways to go through, could not last forever.
Walking slowly, quite pleasantly strolling through the sunlit evening light he was sure he would find a way. He would go to a home he called his own, he definitely had the key in his pocket, and he would sit on the black leather sofa, alone with a glass of wine, maybe a cigar. He would ring Cressida, but he would not tell her what had not passed between them.
Not long now. Surely.
Soon.
Soon?
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