Dream of Darkness, page 17
She grabbed the phone in both hands.
‘Hello? Hello, Daddy,’ she cried. ‘Where are you? What …’
His voice cut across hers with authoritative ease.
‘Sairey, what the hell are you doing there? Why aren’t you in Essex?’
There was a sound in the background and a pause as Nigel Ellis obviously moved from the phone to close a door.
‘Daddy, won’t you please tell …’
‘Get out of that house,’ he ordered. ‘Get back to Essex. I’ll ring you there.’
‘Daddy, but what’s …’
The phone went dead.
‘What’s up? Has he rung off?’ asked Allan.
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so,’ said Sairey. ‘But it doesn’t matter. I know where he is, Allan. I should have guessed. He’s down at Dunelands with Aunt Celia. He’s got some clothes and a toothbrush down there permanently, so he wouldn’t need anything.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked the young man dubiously.
‘Yes. I heard Mop barking. That’s the Sealyham. I’d know his yap anywhere!’
‘Why did he ring?’
‘Because …’ It was a good question. ‘To tell me to get away from here, I think,’ said Sairey slowly.
‘But how did he know you might be here? No matter. Perhaps we’d better take his advice. I’ll drive you home. To Maldon, I mean.’
‘No, you won’t,’ said Sairey fiercely. ‘You’ll drive me to Dunelands. I’m tired of being pushed around like a parcel.’
She set off, without waiting for a response. And as she walked down the hallway to the front door, the doorbell rang.
‘Sairey, wait!’ whispered Allan urgently behind her.
But Sairey was not in the mood for waiting.
She flung open the door with a violence that made even Vita Gray look faintly surprised.
‘Hello, Sairey. I thought I’d call on the off chance you were still here, so we could travel back together.’ She glanced at the old wall clock in the hall. ‘If we move quickly, we can catch the nine-fifteen.’
Sairey, too, glanced at the clock. For a moment, Vita’s formidable presence had reduced all her fears to sick fantasies and herself to a neurotic post-adolescent. Then Allan came up behind her and she felt his hand touch her back. And she recalled that this was the woman she had seen going into the same building as Archie Archbell. And as she regarded the clock, the puzzlement which had stirred as she looked at the alarm clock by Allan’s bed broke through to the surface.
It was a simple but devastating puzzle.
Her last hypnosis session had taken twenty minutes by the clock in the consulting room. Yet the tape she had listened to had taken no more than seven or eight.
The solution, too, had to be both simple and devastating.
She said, ‘No. Why don’t you come in, Vita, and play me the real tape of this afternoon’s session? Then we’ll discuss where we’re going.’
OP ANTENOR CO-OP 17/33/7 RESTRIC (NON-ATT)
DOC 103 VG/SE
ORIG cassette 22 se (TRANSC)
This is session number twenty-two, at 1500 hours, October 21 st. Do you feel comfortable, Sairey?
Yes.
You’ve been looking a bit tired lately. Are you sleeping all right?
I’ve not been dreaming, if that’s what you mean.
I only ask what I mean, Sairey.
Yes. Sorry. Yes, I’ve been sleeping … well, no, I don’t suppose I have. I wake up sometimes and think about things and it all goes round in my mind and I don’t seem to be able to stop it …
Well, relax, and let’s see if we can stop it now, shall we? Just relax. Try to catch up on some of that sleep you’ve been losing. Would you like that?
Yes, that would be nice.
All right. Just close your eyes. Think of somewhere soft and warm and cosy. Remember that big cushion in the swing seat on the verandah of your house in Kampala? You used to love snuggling down in that, didn’t you? When you were little. When you were five years old. Do you remember? When you were five years old?
Yes. Five years old. I remember.
Uncle Ocen. Is he still in the house?
Yes, he’s still there. But Mummy says I mustn’t bother him.
But you do bother him, don’t you?
Sometimes. But he says he doesn’t mind, and he takes me in his arms and holds me in the air and says he is much, much better and soon he will have to go. And I say I don’t want him to go. And he laughs and says no one wants him to go, but he has to.
And Auntie Apiyo, does she come to the house?
Sometimes. Daddy brings her sometimes in his car. I don’t know she’s in the car when he drives into the garage, but she is.
That’s strange. Why do you think that is, Sairey?
I think she must be hiding in the car.
As a game, you mean?
That’s right. As a game.
Do you play games like that, Sairey? Hiding, I mean.
Sometimes. Sometimes I do.
Who do you play with, Sairey?
Sometimes I play with Paula. And sometimes I play with Daddy.
And with Mummy? You play with Mummy?
Sairey, do you play games with Mummy?
No.
No? Never? You never play games with Mummy?
Never.
That’s strange, Sairey. Don’t you want to play games with Mummy?
Yes.
Then why don’t you?
Because.
Because what, Sairey?
Because she’s not there! Because she’s not there!
Where is she, Sairey?
I don’t know. She’s gone. She’s gone.
But she was there, Sairey, wasn’t she? She was there last Christmas, wasn’t she?
Yes.
And she was there when you moved to Kampala, wasn’t she?
Yes.
Then where’s she gone?
I don’t know.
Let’s try to find out, shall we? Where was she last time you saw her?
Sairey, I asked, where was Mummy last time you saw her? You do want to remember, don’t you?
Yes.
Then where was she?
She was …
Yes?
She was … somewhere … I can’t remember.
Sairey, you must remember. You can see her, can’t you? I know you can see her. Where is she?
She’s … she’s in a box! She’s lying in a long box!
Is she dead?
I don’t know. I don’t know what dead is.
What do you do?
I scream out. I struggle.
Is someone holding you?
Yes, it’s Daddy. Daddy has me in his arms.
What does he do?
He hands me to Aunt Celia.
And what does Celia do?
She presses me to her breast. She carries me out of the room and down the corridor.
What do you see? What do you hear?
There’s moonlight flooding through the windows and a smell of rotting flowers and a dog barking and it’s very warm.
Where does Celia take you?
Up the stairs to my room. But I break free and she has to let me go and I run back downstairs and Daddy’s standing there in the moonlight closing the long box and I won’t let him and I look inside again and I can see … I can see … I can see … Mummy! Mummy! Mummy!
19
Sairey felt her head swimming as the tape ran silent. She felt herself being dragged from here and now into the world of her Dream. She gripped the desk in her father’s study with all her strength, trying to anchor herself with its solidity. At the same time she forced her eyes to concentrate on the typewritten transcript. The same words, but black, plain, even – the concrete evidence that time had passed, that she had moved on from the horror of the trance and could now afford to sit back and view it calmly, if not safely.
The door burst open.
‘Sairey, are you all right?’
It was Allan.
Vita had not disputed Sairey’s request, but led her briskly into the study, set up the tape and presented her with the transcript. Allan had kept close to Sairey, but once she was seated at the desk, Vita had urged him out of the room. He had protested till Sairey said, ‘Please, Allan.’ Then, as Vita was about to close the door behind him, she added, ‘Let’s stick to the rules, Vita.’
The psychiatrist had said, ‘Of course. And I have a phone call to make, if that’s all right?’ Then she too left.
Now she was back, right behind Allan, whose look of concern told Sairey how devastated she must appear.
‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she lied.
Vita said, ‘Please, Mr Bright. We need a few moments.’
For the second time, reluctantly, he left.
Vita and Sairey regarded each other in silence. There were a million questions to ask, a million accusations to hurl, but Sairey forced herself to be quiet. Yesterday, such an attempt to make the older woman speak first would have been little more than a childish game. Now it was a tactic in a deadly struggle, where the first thrust risked the first exposure.
Vita said, ‘I didn’t wake you straightaway, but kept you under till I’d faked one of the earlier abortive tapes with today’s intro.’
This was typical of her. Not an opening, but an answer, as if Sairey had asked the question.
‘I suppose you did it for my sake!’ said Sairey with bitter mockery.
To an extent,’ said Vita.
‘To spare me the shock of knowing you’d failed, was that it? Or to spare yourself the shame of admitting it?’
‘Failed?’ said Vita, as if faced with a neologism.
‘What would you call it? The big idea behind all this psychiatric crap was for me to come to terms with the reality of Mummy’s death, wasn’t it? Then it would lose its power over my subconscious, right? OK, so you’d prefer to rephrase that in your usual prissy way, but I’ve got the gist, yes? All we’ve got to do is clear away the blockage, like with a landslide, remember that? Picture language for bird-brains! And as we got close, I threw up bigger and bigger blockages, wasn’t that it? So now you’ve finally broken through these, and what do you find? The original blockage, absolutely untouched!’
‘What blockage do you mean, Sairey?’
‘Come on, Vita! Lose gracefully. You went for the reality and all you could dredge up was the Dream. I don’t need hypnosis to get me there! I’ve always been able to manage that trip with no outside assistance.’
Vita, who up till now had been standing before the desk, pulled up a chair and sat down. She didn’t speak for a moment, and for the first time ever, Sairey felt her silence derived from a need to control herself, not a situation.
Finally, she said, ‘Sairey, this was never what I wanted to find, you must believe that.’
‘Spoils your unbeaten record, is that it? But what I want to know is …’
A simple gesture of Vita’s hand was enough to still Sairey’s demand to know by what right and to what end Vita had taken the tape with her to this mysterious meeting. Or perhaps it wasn’t the gesture; perhaps it was the expression of pity on the older woman’s face, almost as rare as her smile.
‘Sairey, hypnosis helps disentangle fantasies and symbols from reality. In some cases there may still be confusion. In your case, there has generally been nothing but the utmost clarity. In your trances, I have consistently stirred simple, often highly detailed memories, nothing more or less.’
‘What the hell are you saying, Vita?’ cried Sairey in alarm. ‘That I’ve faked this or something?’
But she knew that this was not what Vita was saying. She knew that it was something infinitely more terrible.
And at last it was put into words.
‘We’ve got to stop treating your Dream as fantasy, Sairey,’ said Vita Gray. ‘We’ve got to start looking at it as memory.’
‘No!’
She thought she had only shrieked in her mind, but her mental cry must have masked her physical one. The study door burst open; suddenly, incomprehensibly, the room was full of people. Mrs Marsden was there, and her grandfather, Sir Joe, and behind them, the shambling bulk of Archie Archbell. But not Allan.
If Allan had been there she would have gone to him, she was sure of that. But he wasn’t, and in her need for someone to cling to and draw strength from, she turned to her grandfather.
He held her tight and made soothing noises which part of her mind, somehow contriving to stand back and view all this emotionalism with divine detachment, categorized as being more suitable for a retching baby or an injured dog than an adult human. But her need was still strong and she clung on till the detached segment took control.
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Grandad,’ she said, pushing herself away from him. ‘I’m sorry, everybody. I just had a shock, that was all. But I’m all right now.’ She turned her gaze coldly on Vita. ‘I’m not going to have any more shocks.’
Sir Joe said, ‘Sairey, my dear, why don’t you sit down? A glass of brandy. Mrs Marsden, I wonder …’
The little round-shouldered woman went off, with the resigned air of one long used to running errands for commanding males. Sairey went back round the desk and resumed her seat, facing them all. She took a deep breath, then another. Mrs Marsden returned with a decanter and a glass which she filled and handed to Sairey.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Where’s Allan?’
She wanted Allan. Until she knew better, all those present were best regarded as enemies summoned by Vita. Except perhaps Mrs Marsden, whose presence must surely be coincidental.
Or perhaps not. It was this woman who spoke now and her voice, though soft, was not as self-effacing as her looks.
‘He just left. I saw him go. He said, Tell Sairey I’m sorry.’
Sorry for what?
But that would have to wait till other times, other places.
She said, ‘This tape, I presume you’ve all heard it? And all read this transcript?’
Everyone looked at Vita for a lead. She said, ‘Yes.’
Sairey said, ‘This blurb at the top. It’s something to do with Daddy, isn’t it? You’re working against him. At least, three of you are. I’m not sure about you, Mrs Marsden.’
‘I, too,’ said the old woman, unhappily.
‘It was nothing sinister, my dear,’ said Sir Joe. ‘Nothing personal. He was being a bit of a silly ass over these memoirs of his. Of course we could simply have set the law on him, but things have got so tangled the last couple of times that’s been tried, that our political masters told us to gag him the best way we could. So a co-op was formed …’
‘A co-op?’ said Sairey, looking at the transcript. ‘After the Bureau for Economic Co-operation?’
‘Who’s been sniffing at my porridge?’ said Archbeli mockingly. It was interesting to see that his self-image didn’t exclude the ursine qualities others saw in him.
‘A co-op is a non-standing committee, with unlimited powers of co-option,’ explained Vita.
‘… just to see what pressures might be brought to bear,’ continued Lightoller, as though no one had interrupted.
‘That sounds very friendly. Is that why you called it Operation Antenor? That sounds to me like you were trying to get him for something more than a bit of indiscretion. Didn’t Antenor help the Greeks get into Troy?’ said Sairey, sneeringly.
‘Classics, is it now?’ said Archbell. ‘I’m getting out of my depth.’
‘I was trying to be kind, Sairey,’ said Lightoller, sharply. ‘By any definition, oathbreaking and the betrayal of secret information for personal gain are forms of treachery. It would have pleased me more than anything if your father could have been brought to see the error of his ways by simple persuasion. But it’s too late for that now.’
‘And what comes after persuasion? Blackmail? Threat? Violence? Even if you honestly believe he’s wrong, is he wrong enough to merit that?’ Sairey’s voice was strong, assertive. She felt she was on top of this argument, but from the corner of her eye she could see that same compassionate expression on Vita’s face and hated her for knowing that this was all so much procrastination.
It was, of course, Archbell who wrenched them back on course.
‘Listen, my sweet,’ he growled. ‘This is all academic. Personally, I would have voted from the start for dropping your precious father down a hole and shovelling in the earth after him. But I can see how you might have argued against that. But now we’ve all heard the tape. And we’ve heard the expert’s commentary on it. The case has altered. This isn’t just a poor wimp, whingeing about his pension rights. I doubt if the law can touch him now for what happened to your mother, but in my book, anything we may do to him is only legal justice once removed!’
‘For God’s sake, man!’ exclaimed Lightoller.
‘Don’t shower me with shit, Sir Joe,’ said Archbell. ‘Ever since it dawned on you what was being suggested, you’ve been mulling over four-and-twenty simultaneous ways of causing your son-in-law incredible pain.’
Lightoller turned away from Archbell, but he essayed no denial. Sairey looked desperately at Vita, who met her gaze, but made no response to her desperation.
‘Vita, what’s going on? You know this is absurd, the Dream can’t be true, they never brought Mummy’s body home, and Aunt Celia, why should she …?’
Her voice trailed off, but Vita spoke as if the question had been completed.
‘What would Celia do if she found your father in trouble?’
‘Help him,’ whispered Sairey.
‘And how much would she help him?’
‘To the extremes of her power.’
‘No matter what he’d done?’
The answer was dragged from Sairey by an irresistible force.
‘No matter what.’
‘That disposes of Celia’s part then.’
‘But Daddy wouldn’t … why should he …’
Sairey could feel her control slipping, could feel herself slipping back into childhood, where tears brought comforting and the promise of better times if you were a good girl.
She said, very quietly, because she needed to keep her voice on a very short leash, ‘You’re saying that Mummy may have died at home, that Daddy may have had something to do with it, that he and Aunt Celia conspired to remove the body from the house and fake a kondi attack on the road to Entebbe? All this on the evidence of my dream! You must be mad.’
