Daniel's Dream (13 page)

Determined this time to complete his journey, Daniel set off with false confidence. He bought his ticket and clutched it tightly in his hand. He kept his eyes from straying to the advertisements as he descended the escalator, and when he reached the platform and sat down he closed his eyes until the train arrived. No tramps, no strange messages shouting at him from the posters on the wall, no fear. 

A couple of minutes later a nearly empty train pulled up and Daniel got on board. As it pulled away, he considered that he was perhaps being unnecessarily cautious. All the omens and portents that had risen up before him yesterday were - could only be - figments of his imagination, over-active and over-zealous as a result of being kept dormant for so long. Words and symbols were just that, and could be interpreted any way the observer wished. If he wanted to see doom, despair and warnings, then that was what he would see. It was all down to mood and there was, in truth, nothing to fear.

Daniel took a deep breath, relaxed into his seat and allowed himself to look around. After all, what was there to be afraid of?

He did not have to wait long to find out. As he gazed around the carriage he saw, in quick succession: a poster above the window opposite advertising holidays in Greece; another wretch in filthy clothes drinking noisily from a brown bottle; and a piece of graffiti on the carriage door which read, ‘What do you suppose you did to deserve all this?

Daniel looked away and flinched. Was he losing his mind? These were all just coincidences, surely? The world did not work that way, slipping arcane messages to you through public media. It was ridiculous to think that every sight, every sound, every vision was directed towards one person, a cosmic conspiracy in which every message was loaded with meanings or warnings or worse. It was absurd: the world did not revolve around him.

The train lurched suddenly and came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the tunnel. The interior lights dimmed and, despite his attempts to remain calm, Daniel’s heart began to beat faster, and he felt the tell-tale dampness in the palms of his hands. Oh great, this is just what I need, he thought, hoping that an attempt at ironic commentary, albeit strictly internalised, would help keep panic at bay.

From the other end of the compartment the drunk leered at him and starting making loud, unpleasant noises like a cross between a dog barking and a machine-gun being fired. Daniel shuffled around uncomfortably. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen, this wasn’t how it was supposed to be. It wasn’t as if he was asking for much; just a chance to head into town, to get out of the house, to reacquaint himself with the once familiar metropolis... for Chrissake, it wasn’t as if he was asking for the moon and the sun and the stars. So why all these difficulties, all these obstacles? It was truly as if someone or something didn’t want him to make the journey.

The lights dimmed further. The drunk was still staring in his direction, making him feel more uncomfortable by the moment. What was wrong with the blasted train? Why wasn’t it moving? The drunk’s peculiar rant became louder and now seemed to be directed at him. Daniel looked away and, out of nervous habit, started whistling noisily and rather tunelessly, oblivious of the other passengers, who studiously avoided looking at him.

Not that Daniel could have cared less; he just wanted to drown out the tramp’s awful, insane racket.

A minute passed slowly. The tramp stopped making his gut-churning noises and collapsed into insensibility, but Daniel was unable to calm down. He was no longer sure what he was whistling, and began repeating over and over the eight-note melody that preceeded the chimes of Big Ben. He sensed that this was starting to irritate the other passengers even more than the tramp had done, but he could not stop himself.

A tall, thickset young man dressed in dirty jeans and a leather jacket started eyeing him up, and Daniel sensed he had better quieten down or else he might have to deal with more than just imaginary messages and harmless, noisy drunks. 

Just then the carriage vibrated into life, the lights flickered and then burst into full brightness, and the train pulled off, picked up speed for about thirty seconds and then decelerated swiftly as it approached the next station.

With an intense feeling of both relief and gratitude, directed at no one in particular, Daniel rose quickly to his feet and, as soon as the carriage doors had opened, leapt from the train and on to the platform, almost flooring two elderly ladies in the process. He pushed his way through the crowds waiting to embark, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the train, then stood with his back to the wall, waiting impatiently for the carriage doors to close and for the train, with all its intimations of foreboding, to move on.

It seemed to take for ever, and all the time Daniel feared that the drunken vagrant might suddenly take it into his head to leap out of the carriage and attack him.

Eventually the doors slammed shut and the train began to gather momentum, but Daniel did not feel safe until it had attained full speed and had disappeared into the black hole at the far end. He looked up and down the platform. Other passengers had disembarked and were now heading for the escalators, and within seconds Daniel found himself alone.

Although he was feeling calmer, he could still feel his heart beating frantically in his chest, and his palms were soaked with perspiration. Jesus, he thought, I can’t carry on like this: one short train journey and I break into a nervous panic.

When the next train came, he boarded swiftly, found an empty comer and, avoiding all advertisements and shunning eye-contact with the carriages other occupants, sat still and silent until he arrived safely at his destination.

He disembarked and, keeping his eyes firmly on the passengers in front of him, followed the crowd out along the corridors, up the stairs and through the ticket barrier, then on to the bustling, noisy street. He wandered along the road, past the recently refurbished statue of Eros, carelessly bumping into oncoming pedestrians,

He still felt ill at ease, and wanted nothing more than to find a patch of grass - away from the throb of the crowds - to sit down and gather his thoughts. He felt the first pulsing waves of an oncoming migraine, and knew he had to find a seat somewhere out in the open and unwind. He took a deep breath and tried to concentrate. The closest seats, he recalled, were the benches around the statue of Shakespeare in the centre of Leicester Square Gardens. Not exactly peaceful, but it would do.

En route he was accosted briefly by two leathered and chained punks, their colourful, anachronistic plumage wavering in the wind, who pestered him for money. Daniel side-stepped them and pushed his way through the assembled masses at the half-price theatre ticket booth, at last finding solace on a bench beneath the cacophonous twitterings of a huge family of starlings, perched high in the branches above his head.

He sat quietly and watched the milling masses as they paraded before him: the elderly tourists trundling along, talking noisily, behaving badly; loud-mouthed youths with matted hair and enormous, aggressive-looking dogs, inadvertently terrorising elderly, grey-haired ladies with shopping bags and furled umbrellas; contented lovers wandering hand in hand, pausing briefly amid the bellowing chaos to embrace, fondle, kiss. Why is this all so sad? wondered Daniel as he watched the parade pass by.

Eventually he rose to his feet and, in need of cigarettes, set off to find a tobacconist. He walked back to Piccadilly Circus and, reminded of his original intentions, followed a crowd of youths through the heavy brass swing doors of an immense record store.

The shop was as crowded as ever. Daniel scanned the New Release racks, but found nothing of any particular interest. Daniel’s taste in music had, if anything, become more eclectic with each passing year. He still listened to rock, of course, and every so often would pick up on a new band that could cause the familiar ripple of excitement that he had first felt as a teenager. He also enjoyed the native sounds of many of the countries he had visited on his travels: he was particularly drawn to the cross-cutting rhythms and vocal delights of West African music, and the strange, oriental musings of Vietnam.

However, his tastes were slowly shifting. He had started to tune in to Classic FM at home, and was surprised to discover how often he found himself humming along to familiar tunes or tapping out the complex rhythms of the better-known pieces. Grieg, with his glorious, uplifting melodies, was a particular favourite, as was Vaughan Williams with his dense and deeply evocative pastoral works that somehow conjured up images of the rural idyll that had once been England.

Still, classical music remained something of a closed book to him, and so rather than lose himself in the innumerable titles in the classical section, he headed for the jazz and world-music department.

A sensual saxophone and piano duet oozed out of the PA system as he thumbed through the jazz racks for piano music, but nothing he saw attracted him. His fingers wandered aimlessly over the racks, his attention dissipating among the crowds of music-lovers. He knew what he was looking for, but as he had no idea what the music was called or who it was by, he did not know how to start searching for it.

The World Music section was huge. It was many months since he had spent any time in such an enormous record store, and he was overwhelmed by the huge selection of CDs on display. There seemed to be music from every corner of the world, and he was mildly amused to discover such oddities as ‘Mongolian Throat Music’ and ‘Folk Songs Played on the Eskimo Nose Flute’ among the collections of Ukrainian love songs and Indian
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.

Unfortunately, intrigued as he was by these titles, it was music of an altogether different cast that interested him.

In the European section Daniel looked through a selection of Romanian folk music, a collection of Bavarian drinking songs, some popular Italian music, and came eventually to a few records ln the rack headed ‘Greece - Syrtaki’. Although he didn’t recognise anything on any of the albums, he was intrigued by the sleeve notes and titles, most of which were written in Greek. He studied each cover with considerable care, hoping - with rather greater optimism than was warranted under the circumstances - for a clue or a hint. He examined every inch of every disc, believing that some sign, word, symbol or picture would spring out from one of the covers and point the way.

But there was nothing. No signs, symbols or suggestions. Graffiti on the Underground and poster advertisements with their cryptic threats and intimations of menace zeroed in on him with the pinpoint accuracy of a computer-controlled smart missile, but the signs and symbols that he actively sought, the icons that might lead him back to his dream world, remained invisible. Deeply disappointed, he gave a deep, rather theatrical sigh, and began to make his way towards the exit.

What, he wondered, had he expected to find? A disc with a little sticker on it saying, ‘Dear Daniel, this is the music of your dream’? It was hopeless. lt was pathetic. What was the point of fixing on it like this? What did he honestly think he could do about it? He was becoming obsessive, and there was something reprehensible, even vaguely criminal, about it. It was like loitering with intent; here he was, hanging around the edges of his dream, waiting for an opportunity to break in again.

Daniel fought his way through the crowds of enthusiasts, a lone searcher in the midst of strangers. The discomfort and underlying fears that had kept him house-bound for much of the previous six months were starting to reassert themselves, and he found himself feeling more and more nervous. His palms were sweating again, and his breath was starting to break up, coming in short, sharp intakes that somehow failed to fulfil their intended function. An old and unpleasantly familiar sensation of suffocation started to overwhelm him and he began to panic. He had to get out of the store.

He started to push and struggle. All these damn people, what did they all want? Why were there so many of them? Where did they all come from? His heart was beating fast now, his breathing had become staccato and irregular, and he feared he might pass out. He made it to the swing doors just in time.

With the relief of a drowning man breaking the surface, he gulped in the rejuvenating draughts of cold London air, each breath loaded with the poisons and pollutants of a giant industrial city pounding away at full tilt. For a minute or more he stood on the pavement, near the main entrance, doing deep-breathing exercises like a man who has been starved of fresh air for a fortnight, until the combination of excess oxygen and petrol fumes made his head swim.

It was then, his head still reeling, that he saw her. She emerged from the throng of bodies exiting Piccadilly Underground station and Daniel felt his heart leap in his chest as if it had been wired with explosives and detonated by some emotional terrorist, skilled at creating maximum distress and disturbance. Her hair was a little longer, her complexion a little darker, but there was no doubt in his mind. It was Alex.