Dreamhunter (18 page)

Chorley tried to catch Laura’s eye. He said, ‘What does your father have to say?’

Laura looked up from the page only to say, ‘Get up.’ She appeared to be speaking to the mound of sand. She said, ‘Pull yourself together.’ Then she laughed, a ragged, unhappy sound.

‘
MY DEAR LAURA
,’ the letter began. Laura, reading it, heard Nown speaking, not her father. ‘My dear Laura,’ Nown had said. Later she had seen him working his hand into his chest — to fetch out this letter, she now knew. The letter had lain against his heart, or had lain inside his chest alone, instead of a heart. Laura had asked Nown about her father — she had requested information, and Nown had reached for the letter.
If only
, Laura thought.

Laura twisted the page in her hands and tucked it out of sight under the bedclothes. At that moment her confusion was the only reason she had for not answering her uncle’s question, or simply handing over the letter.

Her father’s last line was like the darkness following a lightning flash. The letter had dazzled Laura, but after
reading it, only its final line stayed with her. She couldn’t understand it. Laura was her father’s child — had he ‘involved her in his life’?
Ludicrous
. What a word — it was too deflating, too bleak, too adult for her to understand. There had been a moment — a moment between Nown’s collapse, and this — when she thought she would get an explanation, receive instructions, be released from the lonely prison of her puzzlement. But Laura found her father’s letter unfathomable. And she was
ashamed
of it.

‘Well?’ said Chorley. His voice sounded like a grating hinge.

Under the covers Laura had begun to tear the letter into pieces. Her uncle saw what she was doing and dived at the bed. Suddenly he had one corner of the paper, and Laura was rolling around over the other fragments, kicking, and slapping him with her free hand. She shouted at him, ‘It’s
my
letter!’

Rose came to Laura’s aid. She took her father by the arm and hauled him away. She yelled, ‘Let Laura keep it!’

Chorley shook his daughter off. He said to her, ‘She
isn’t
keeping it, she’s tearing it up! Why won’t she let me
help
her?’ Then, to Laura, ‘Why won’t you trust me?’

Rose, seeing Laura in tears, began to cry too. Laura was still shredding the paper, tearing it into smaller and smaller pieces. ‘Dad wouldn’t want you to see it,’ she said to her uncle.

‘Let
me
be the judge of that,’ Chorley said. ‘You’re still only a child, Laura.’

‘You don’t need to know.’ Laura shook flakes of paper off her ink-blackened fingers. She and her uncle stared at each other, each looking through tears on the other’s anger, pity and compassion. They didn’t look away till Rose said, ‘Where did all this sand come from?’

Chorley had to leave his car at a garage in Sisters Beach. Laura couldn’t be taken back through Rifleman Pass where, for her, the border was. So they caught the train. They went in their usual style, and had a compartment to themselves.

Laura refused to answer their questions. After a time she found it easy to disregard them. She felt chilly and light-headed. Her hair hadn’t dried properly after her bath, and her scalp was damp. She inclined her head into the padded corner of her seat and let her uncle and cousin talk. At one point she found herself telling her uncle a
story
. She said that her father had left her a sandcastle — that he had built a sandcastle in her bedroom at Summerfort. She’d only just found it. ‘It fell apart when you hammered on the door,’ Laura said.

Her uncle’s face was like the reflection of the moon on water, pale and unstable. Laura couldn’t seem to look at it properly. Chorley was reminding her that her father had been
dead
before they had left the house at Sisters Beach, two days after her Try. He said, ‘You’re just being insolent, Laura.’

Rose said, ‘Laura, when I asked where all the sand came from, why did you lie down on your bed and pull the covers over your head?’

Laura slid further down the seat. She heard Rose say, ‘She has beads of sweat on her top lip. I think she’s unwell, Da.’

The seat beside Laura depressed as Chorley sat down. He prised her out of her corner and felt her forehead. Laura said to him she was going to have her dream about the mice — she always dreamt about mice when she had a fever, dear little mice running all over the place so that she couldn’t lie down anywhere. Beneath her uncle’s hand her head felt like a teapot stowed under a cosy — something was brewing there. Rose seemed to be counting the stops between Sisters Beach and Founderston — but weren’t they on the express? They were discussing where they might have the train stop. She heard Rose say, ‘Do you think she is very sick?’

‘She’s very hot. But I want to get her home. I’d rather not hand her over into anyone else’s care.’

‘No,’ said Laura. She was agreeing with her uncle, she wanted to be taken home. She tried to explain that she
was only knocked back because she’d walked so far. Her water was in her pack, wouldn’t someone
please
give her water?

There was a little flurry around her, as if the mice had arrived. Then someone put a cup to her lips, and she took a few sips of cool water. Her teeth hurt. She heard Chorley say to Rose, ‘Do you have any idea what she’s been up to?’

‘I told you — she went to get the film from your camera.’

The camera. Laura asked them had they remembered to collect it from the kitchen. ‘After all my trouble,’ she said. She saw Rose frown and slap her forehead. They had forgotten it.

Laura said she wanted to lie down. ‘Let me,’ she begged. Then she said, fearful, ‘You stay over there. Stay where you’re put.’ Then she called his name, ‘Nown!’ and began to cry, and put her right hand — her writing hand — up into the curling column of the music that had appeared around her, and was smoking away from her body, the music she had felt singing between Nown and her when she gave him his voice.

A WEEK LATER
Laura’s fever had gone, but had left her as worn out as her ordeal of walking.

The doctor had been in that morning. Before he’d left her, she’d asked him to tell her aunt and uncle not to tax her with questions. He’d said he would do that for her, but in a few days she’d be as right as rain. He was the
family’s doctor and specialised, he’d said, in exhausted dreamhunters, but he was distressed to see one exhausting herself so
early
in her career. He had got up to leave, and patted her foot under the covers. He’d said, ‘You’ll be back on your feet in no time. If you’re anything like your father, you’re as tough as a bug.’

Her illness and its dispensations couldn’t last for ever.

Rose appeared in Laura’s room after lunch. She was flushed, as if she’d been running, and was wearing her school coat and hat. When she saw Laura looking at the coat Rose took it by the lapels and gave it a little shake. ‘When Da went back for his car and the camera I remembered to tell him to look for my coat.’ Rose came and sat on the end of Laura’s bed. ‘They’re sending me back to school. Da is developing that film — they mean to have a look at it tonight, I think. I’m being kept out of everything, as usual. I know you’re not going to say much to them, but, Laura, you
are
going to talk to
me
, aren’t you? They keep bushwhacking me — they told me the cab would come at two, but it’s here already. I have to go. But look, I figure that, if they’re in such a hurry to send me away, then there’s still something they’re frightened of.’

Laura grabbed Rose’s hand. Then she had a fit of coughing.

‘We only have a minute,’ Rose said. She looked over her shoulder at the door. Then she helped Laura sit up and gave her a sip of water. ‘Tell you what —’ Rose said.
‘You let me know what’s on the film. Put it on a postcard. Then meet me Wednesday week, in the sculpture room at the museum. I have the day off.’ Rose leant over Laura’s pillow and kissed her.

‘Bye,’ Laura rasped. ‘Wednesday week, the sculpture room.’

THERE WAS JUST
over two minutes of film, showing, in ghostly black and white, the remnants of a burnt building. A ruin sketched as if in black ink against —

‘Is that water?’ Chorley said to Grace.

‘No, it’s sand,’ Laura said.

‘A dry seabed, I think,’ Grace said.

The first shot came to an end, then a second began, the same view, but the camera was unsteady.

‘He’s picked it up,’ Chorley said.

The camera turned, slowly rocking, through one hundred and eighty degrees, till it showed a range of grey hills.

‘That’s the view back the way he came,’ Grace said. ‘That’s a kind of map.’

The film came to an end, the projector flicking through what was left on the reel — Chorley’s cataloguing marks — and lighting their faces in flashes.

Six days later Laura was back in Doorhandle. She dropped her bag at her boarding house, and asked her landlady to lay a fire in her room. Then she went out again.

She ran along Doorhandle’s plank pavement towards the rangers’ station. It was raining heavily. She ducked through fountains from jutting downpipes. The duckboards were slippery, the spills of summer oozing out of their timber — dog piss, liquor, horse shit, ice-cream. The boards seemed coated with saliva, not rain, a surface on which even Laura’s rubber-soled walking boots sometimes slithered. It was dark, the guttering on all the verandas drooped, and dribbled fringes of rainwater. Everyone was indoors. There were no people or animals in Doorhandle’s streets, but still those streets were noisy with drumming, splashing, splattering, never-ending rain.

By the time Laura reached the rangers’ station the rain was through the shoulder seams of her coat. The station was warm; its rooms were steamy and smelt of wet wool. It was crowded, and everyone there seemed set to head In. There were queues before the counter in the supply depot, and all the customers were cradling ration packets and the bottled lime juice they used to keep their water sweet. The shelves were thinly stocked. The station had been like this for days, as everyone who had the option of escaping the awful weather packed up and walked off into the only reliable dry Place.

Laura didn’t plan to go In that day. She would spend a night at the boarding house, climb into her bed and listen to the rain on the iron roof of her gable room.

But first, she had to buy a special kind of map.

Laura already had a book of charts, what she was after now was a book of
profiles
. These books contained views of the landscape of the Place from the points of entry at Doorhandle and Tricksie Bend. The pages in books of profiles were made of semi-transparent paper, so that the next view of hills appeared faintly through the view on the page before it, as it would to anyone shifting their focus from the hills in the foreground to a range further away. The profile books were essential to anyone who planned to penetrate deep into the Place. Because the pages were transparent, the reader had only to flip the book over, and go back through it, in order to plot a course back out again. Each newly issued book of profiles represented the landscape of the Place for as far
as anyone had journeyed In from either end. The latest issue — the one Laura wanted — was entitled simply
Profiles: Seven Days In from Tricksie Bend
. Laura wanted to see whether she could plot a course to the dry seabed of her father’s film using a combination of his shot of the hills back the way he had come, and the landforms in a book of profiles.

The books were an expensive item and Laura had to join the queue in order to ask for one at the counter. As she waited her turn, she looked about at the gathered rangers and dreamhunters. Even after all her trips In, and her examinations, Laura wasn’t quite used to the sight of this collection of thin, fit, brown, crop-haired people. They were the
other
family to which Laura’s father and Aunt Grace belonged. As Laura mused over this family likeness she noticed a boy trying to catch her eye. He was a few bodies behind her in the queue beside hers. He had been staring at her till she felt it, and looked back at him.

He was one of the boys who had been examined with her, the boy from the infants’ beach, the one who had written out his name and address on the back of her copy of Maze Plasir’s business card. Laura had lost Plasir’s card, and couldn’t remember the boy’s first name. She gave him a small smile of acknowledgment and looked away.

His line was shuffling forward faster than hers; he would soon be beside her. She racked her brains. His name was Mason. What Mason? Something Mason?

‘
Sandy!
’ Laura thought, and giggled with relief at the very moment that Sandy Mason finally fell into step with her.

‘What is so funny?’ he said, and grinned.

Laura told him she had only just remembered his name and that she been running through the options. ‘It’s Sandy Mason, isn’t it?’

‘Alexander,’ the boy said.

‘But you wrote “Sandy” on Plasir’s card.’

The boy blushed. ‘Sandy isn’t a good professional name,’ he said.

They reached the counter at the same moment. He deposited his armload of rations, and watched carefully while the clerk added up the total. Laura paid for her book and an oilskin satchel in which to keep it. They came away from the counter, Sandy with his purchases in a flour sack, Laura with a sealed and wrapped package clutched to her chest. Sandy licked his lips. He said, ‘Have you earned anything yet?’ He was looking at the book, longingly.

‘No,’ said Laura. ‘But I am writing an article for the
Ladies Journal —
“My Winter Dreamhunting”.’

‘Really?’

‘No,’ said Laura.

Sandy Mason’s blush spread up into his ears. ‘I suppose it
was
rather a rude question,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Laura.

‘Do you always put people on the back foot?’ Sandy was clearly preparing to defend himself.

‘Well — if it helps them get their other foot out of their mouth,’ said Laura.

For a moment they continued to stand dumbly in the middle of the store, clutching their purchases and getting in people’s way. Then Sandy showed what he was made of by trying to continue the conversation. He said, ‘How are you, then?’

‘Not bad,’ said Laura. ‘And how are you?’

‘I don’t know. Still Trying, it seems. I’ve been working at Pike Street Hospital, amplifying my uncle — I told you about him, the one who works with the surgeons, supporting the anaesthetic.’

Laura nodded.

‘But apparently I am not “opened” enough yet to be much of an amplifier. My uncle says I should spend a few months catching different things and “opening” myself. He’s sponsoring me, which makes it easier.’

‘Good,’ said Laura. ‘Plasir didn’t seem to mind taking that boy unopened.’ A moment after she had said it, Laura realised that it could be taken two ways. Sandy was looking shocked. She clapped her hand over her mouth, and then apologised. ‘I was only trying to use your term — “opened”. I mean — I didn’t mean anything else.’

Some rangers went past them, one saying, ‘Excuse me,’ pointedly.

‘We’re in the way,’ Sandy said. He gestured with his chin at the door, beyond which was a wide veranda, littered with umbrellas and covered in muddy footprints. Laura followed him out.

It was cold outside, and the street was uninviting beyond the veranda’s beaded curtain of dribbling rain.

‘I really didn’t mean — you know,’ Laura said again.

‘Good. For a moment I thought you were one of those girls who’ll say anything for a laugh.’

Laura, irritated again, said, ‘What
can
such girls be thinking?’

Sandy lost his temper with her. ‘You’re impossible to talk to — you’re so scratchy!’

‘Well — if I agreed with absolutely everything you said, that would be scratchy too, believe me,’ Laura told him. ‘I had a friend like that. He was very accommodating — and very abrasive.’

‘You
had
a friend?’

‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ Laura said, then, ‘He’s gone now. But not because I was impossible to talk to.’

‘Do you mean your father?’

‘Fathers aren’t friends,’ Laura said, impatient.

‘No, they’re not. My father is more of an opponent. He made me wait two years past the legal age to Try. He set impossible conditions — which I met, actually.’

‘I thought you were nearer my age,’ Laura said, though she knew he was not. She didn’t want him talking down to her.

‘Do I
look
your age?’ Sandy said. It seemed his disgust in her was complete. ‘No, I do not. I look as though I should be doing
better
already. I should be a brown-skinned veteran with speciality dreams and keen
clients.’ Sandy was shifting from foot to foot, a picture of frustration and impatience. He said he had a thirty-five-metre penumbra already, unopened, and his uncle should be working for
him
by now.

Laura was surprised. ‘Who measured your range?’

‘The examiners. They do that. Didn’t they give you your figures?’

‘No, they didn’t.’

‘They’re supposed to. Why wouldn’t they? You know, that was what was behind the trouble we had with that boy who went with Plasir.
Range
. After our examination he was nagging everyone else for their results,
their figures
. It was like the bloody changing sheds —’ Sandy remembered he was talking to a girl and blushed again.

‘That boy seemed to think he knew what Plasir wanted,’ Laura said. She was wondering about Plasir, whom she knew she’d have to talk to. Her father had mentioned Plasir in his letter. He said Plasir knew things. Laura hadn’t even begun to think how to approach the man.

The boy was saying, ‘Plasir’s penumbra — his
range —
may be tiny, but he can overdream almost anyone.’

Laura suddenly realised that there was a great deal she didn’t know about differences in talent. Her father and aunt had almost always talked as if it was all a matter of
degree —
great and small. She tried to explain her thought to Sandy, and then said, ‘You’ll have to give me a full rundown, I think.’

‘Sure. But, you know, it really isn’t surprising that your father and aunt didn’t go into a lot of detail. For them it was a case of
them
and everyone else. Your aunt’s a split dreamhunter, as catchy as flu, and has a three-hundred-metre penumbra. And your father once overdreamt eight dreamhunters who all had his own Starry Beach,
and
on their first night with it. His penumbra was estimated at somewhere between three-fifty and four. He was a god, basically — if you don’t mind me saying. Even if he only ever caught single point of view dreams.’

‘I’m going In tomorrow to catch Starry Beach,’ Laura said. She watched Sandy swallow, and try to collect himself. He began to apologise. He said he realised that it might be hard for Laura to hear people talk about her father. Laura saw that he thought she had changed the subject because her feelings were hurt.

‘My uncle is organising a memorial service,’ Laura said. Then she put out her free hand and touched Sandy’s upper arm. She had a moment of surprise at how little her fingers were able to encompass — how big his arms were compared to her own. Then she remembered she had meant to say something, had only touched him to get his attention. ‘Don’t be sorry,’ she said. She removed her hand and they stared out at the rain. After a time he told her that he’d taken a room at Mrs Lilley’s.

Laura’s room was at Lilley’s too — no surprise, really. Lilley was the kind of landlady who kept an eye on her
lodgers, so her house was often recommended to the parents of young dreamhunters. ‘Shall we go, then?’ Laura said. She didn’t wait for him but held her package up over her head and darted down the station’s steps and out on to the plank pavement.

They arrived at the boarding house wet and breathless to find that another lodger was entertaining his parents in the parlour, and Mrs Lilley’s daughters were setting the table in the dining room. They had nowhere to go but to their respective rooms. Laura noticed that Sandy seemed to feel he had to make something up to her. He climbed backwards up the stairs in front of her, beginning several sentences, clutching his side — he had stitch — and getting nowhere.

Laura interrupted him. ‘Do you have a fire?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘I can give you some coals in my warming pan,’ Laura said. She unlocked her room, left the door ajar and him outside — mindful of the house rules which said that there were to be ‘NO visitors in lodgers’ rooms at ANY hour’.

Laura took the warming pan from its hook and used the poker to roll some coals out of her fire. She called Sandy in to pick the pan up. Then, as he hesitated in the doorway, she said, ‘My feet are wet. I want to change before tea.’

‘Dinner,’ said Sandy.

‘Dinner at teatime,’ Laura said.

‘And there’s the difference between us,’ Sandy said. ‘You’re used to having
tea
while I am having my
dinner
.’

Laura told him to go away. She closed the door on him and sat on her bed to remove her wet boots and socks. She put her boots on the hearth and hung her socks from the mantel by placing her parcel on their tops. She was feeling irritated, but happier. She’d been preoccupied with her big problems — her father’s letter, what he had meant, who she might confide in once she
understood
what he meant — so was grateful to be presented with a minor puzzle, Sandy Mason’s behaviour.

Sandy was as displeased and contrary as Rose could be when things weren’t going well for her. Most of what Laura said seemed to offend him, yet he seemed troubled if she let him know he’d offended her. He seemed to want to prove to her that his
manners
were better than hers. Or, if not his manners exactly, then his morals. Sandy thought he was somehow
better
than she was, more mature, more realistic. All his carry-on seemed to imply that, since she wasn’t trying to make money, she was only playing at being a dreamhunter, perhaps in an effort to make herself seem more substantial to herself. Perhaps he thought she was some kind of dabbler — and that it was significant that she came from a household where dinner was served at eight. But, Laura decided, she would let Sandy think what he liked. He could imagine she was a posh girl with a hobby if that’s what he wanted to
imagine. Laura didn’t like being alone — when she was alone she felt all bent out of shape by her burdens. Squabbling with Sandy Mason made her feel human, nearly as human and alive as she had felt while asking her sandman questions.