My First Colouring Book (21 page)

A date and time was appointed for our meeting in the garden.

I was standing in front of the house, hesitantly, on a warm but showery morning, when a phaeton came into view at the end of the street. In no time at all it had stopped by my side, and since it was Eugene who sat in it – as I somehow expected – I opened the door and helped him onto the pavement. In a trice the door of the house had opened to us and we were whisked as quickly as Eugene's legs would allow into a large waiting room where we were welcomed by the lady and offered refreshments etc, which we both declined, listening instead to the animated introduction delivered by our hostess. It was clear from the contents of the house that we had entered the residence of one of the old patrician families of the city, possibly an equestrian dynasty, since there were portraits of fine stallions and mares everywhere on the walls. We were not the sole guests, evidently, for soon the house and garden were full of prosperous traders and merchants accompanied by their wives. After a discreet interval we were ushered into the garden and encouraged to group around a perpendicular object of about six feet in height, on a plinth and covered by a plum-coloured cloth held in place by a golden cord with tassels at both ends. Our hostess led Eugene to a solitary chair below the plinth and pressed him onto a plum-coloured cushion. By now she was magnificently attired in a light blue gown offset by a single-strand pearl necklace, though I am no expert in these matters, merely informing you that the stones had a milky opacity.

I noticed that Eugene was wearing white gloves, and I surmised from his newly brushed hair that he had been spruced up by the servants. But he was ill at ease throughout, fidgeting with his hat, which he held in his hands between his legs, and casting nervous glances at the people around him.

Mercifully, the lady of the house made but a short speech in which she alluded to her wedding day, the arrival of Eugene on their lawn during the celebrations (laughter), the construction of the garden, its formal opening, and the awards which had followed (applause), its development and maturation, and its role now in the hearts and minds of those who knew it, walked in it, and loved in it. They had sought out the garden's creator and he was the guest of honour that day (more applause), for he had returned again after many years to witness a day of celebration and joy, marked by the unveiling of a suitable statue. Without further ado, our hostess untied the golden cord and a servant whisked away the wrapper, revealing a bronze statue of a young man under an apple tree, about to pluck a fruit from a lower bough. In all respects it was most realistic, partly because the tree was a real apple tree, contained in a large terracotta pot. The likeness to Eugene was apparent only in the characteristics of the face, since we had here a young Adonis in his pomp, well muscled and strongly built. His hair was wreathed in laurels and his left hand held a cornucopia, full of fruit, into which he was about to
place an apple from the tree; he had the aspect of a god of fertility greeting the spring. The head, and in particular the nose, was perfectly recognisable, however, and drew admiring glances and exclamations from the throng. Eugene was pressed to say a few words, but declined clumsily. Instead, he asked our hostess if he could be taken on a tour of the garden, to the Cedar of Lebanon and around all the delightful attractions he had constructed all those years ago. He tottered off, and I followed, admiring the lady's bearing from behind, though knowing little about the flowers and bushes which grew in profusion – yet
with great subtlety and delicacy – in their allotted places.
As we approached the huge tree which dominated the far end of the garden he stopped by a small artificial waterfall, near a weeping willow. He looked at his guide, who seemed to understand his wishes. She looked at me, then at him;
he looked around at me, shrugged his shoulders and mumbled something, then she parted the descending willow fronds and led him into the tree's ambit. I followed them, at a slight distance, until I too was underneath the willow's umbrella of foliage.

After a while, when my eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom, I saw them approach an irregular doorway, which turned out to be the boulder-strewn entrance to a picaresque grotto, glinting with reflective stones, and revealing gargoyles, daemons and hamadryads moving in and out of the rough-hewn walls. At the far end, in a pool of light created by a cunning aperture in the grotto roof, I could see a comfortable divan covered over with a deep crimson wrap and bathed in the soft green leaf-colour of the weeping willow outside. On it was a young woman, very pale and distracted, with her shoulders hunched and her hands clenched between her knees. She was introduced to me as the lady's daughter, about to be married. I congratulated her and tried to make small talk, as one does with a stranger. And yet she had familiar looks. Surely I knew her from somewhere else? I searched my memory. There was something about her face – the nose, the bone structure; her expression when she looked at her mother, at Eugene, and then at me. As we all sat in silence, with the pale young woman and her mother on the divan, and Eugene and I on cast iron garden chairs painted white, on either side of her, it became clear to me suddenly that I was about to learn a very shocking secret.

green

DURING that chimeless hour before midnight, between the last glass of wine and bedtime, I go to sleep for a while. The girls have gone, taking all the oxygen with them, and in the dry heat my eyes droop; my brain shimmers into a faraway camel moving slowly in a desert heatwave, and I drift pleasantly into a little nap among the crumbs. As I crumple slowly into a punctured balloon I nod off to the sound of a bluebottle flying lone sorties around the room. It speeds up and down the valleys between the mugs and the jugs, strafing the leaning towers of crockery and, in the eerie silence between its full-throttle dives, I know a Dream is about to come my way.

It's so strange, the world inside my Dream. I'm alone in the house and I'm pensive. I call out to you, as I always do in my Dream. But you're not there. You've gone again. I try to say some words but my mouth won't work. I'm trying to say:
Please come home to me – let that door open now, let it be you. I won't care if you leave oil stains on the handle or cement dust on the carpet...

But nothing at all comes out, not a word.

When a Dream comes I go to another country, but you never seem to be there. I'm always looking for you. I go out in the shimmering silence of first light, as the songbirds start to sing, looking for you under a shiny new rainbow. I'm in my flowery plastic mac and favourite red Wellingtons. I skip out of the house and storm down the road, full of wonderment and puzzlement, walking in any direction, looking for you. The Dream's in colour, it's nice and bright in here. Pausing for breath by the school I encounter a small table, draped with a red damask cloth, on which someone has built a makeshift shrine with a crucifix and a picture of Jesus, bearded, smiling in his flowing blue robes. A candle burns in a glass lantern and there are prayer beads, a holy book, and messages of hope scribbled in childish writing. Among them an upturned fly, dead, and a note, in your hand:
Please pray for my wife Rachel, about to be troubled by a Dream.

A small boy dressed in the crimson and white of a choirboy kneels by the shrine and I ask him: What is the meaning of this?

A small girl,
he says warily, noticing my wild air,
is in a state of exultancy: waves of great emotion pass over her in the classroom – one minute she swoons in a paroxysm of sorrow, the next she cries out in ecstasies of happiness.

I also scribble a message and leave it on the table:
Come back to me Benito, I love you more than all the flowers of spring.

Homewards I wend, already exhausted. I crawl fitfully under a marigold sun and the garden wilts without you, Benito: a robin in a scarlet cope celebrates mass in the shrubbery, singing a canticle for your safe deliverance. Sitting on the stairs I weep in a white cloud belching from the great swinging incense-burner you've constructed on a whim in the hallway. Now my brain crumbles: through the window I see you walking intently towards the woods… yes, it's you, stepping into your willow cathedral. A troupe of mistle thrushes, finials on every treetop, sing you in with madrigals and tropes.

What a Dream I'm having, Benito.

Filled with trepidation now, I don my red Wellingtons again and follow you into the trees… but what's this? The Dream's going bad! You're nowhere to be seen, Benito. I'm in a sylvan snare, trapped by the Green Man. I can sense him, my body's going hot and I'm making whimpering sounds like a sleeping dog.

The Green Man has found me out. Lurking near a massive oak he scents me and yowls pitifully. His massive lugs swivel towards me – two fleshy, algae-mottled satellite dishes, furred with age; his eyebrows unfurl and move towards me on the wind in dense filaments, sensing my humid core. Sequinned with seeds, he dazzles. He sibilates in his ancient language, a primeval earth-moan, words dribbling from his mouth in a thick, green chlorophyll slime. His feet have disappeared: he sways plant-like, up to his shins in loam; his loins are wrapped in pantaloons of rotting humus. His eyes scan me for blight and mould; he beckons with his branchlet arms, urging me upwards through tangled leaves which darken the sky. Into him and through him I climb, panting, raking my shins on his spiny bark. Up among the cumuli, in a cloud-halo, I find a flower-strewn platform, a pixie place bathed in lantern lights – a fairy citadel glowing in soft, diffused colours. On the wind comes a haunting melody, a shepherd's lament wafting from ancient reed-pipes. In the distance I see you Benito, my paramour, I see you writhing and weeping in the long grass.
Benito
, I cry.
Benito my own true love.

Opening my lichen-tinted hand, I drop a dead fly into the awaiting moss bowl. A shudder goes through the Green Man: my token has been accepted. Enfolding me tenderly in swathes of fine tendrils, he scans me for the knowledge he needs; then he downloads noisily, sucking my brain through a straw. My head whirrs; he rewards me with sensations far beyond human emotions: sensual tremors sweep through my body in waves lasting hours, maybe days. Now I must fly from him. He gurgles with pleasure as I rend my clothes in a frantic helter-skelter descent. Lunging at me, his fronds try to pod me, to rip away my fragile anthers. Running now, I laugh and sing on the dusty road as I flee.
The people I meet on the way are Tylwyth Teg, elfin and animated, returning from their revels, a night of moonlit dancing on the green. Greeting me boisterously, they drive their miniature cattle before them, lowing and heavy with milk; in their arms they hide stolen babies, mewling and wan. I will away to the savannahs, to find Benito. I climb upwards through a ravine, among colossal boulders, to the tableland where three rivers meet, then I hit the Roman road: a white weal in the moorland, a dribble of history along the mountain's bilberry tablecloth. Far below me on the yellow strand, where I first laid eyes on you Benito, a mermaid sings among the wandering sailors, blind and bumbling men with broken nets and broken dreams. Her tender young body indents the summer sand, warm and golden. At last I reach the Druids' Circle, ashen with exhaustion.

Ah, my lovely Dream. My sad, mad Dream.

Benito, he's so brazen. Just as I expected, he's drunk again, or drugged with happiness – stretched out languorously at full length on the short-cropped grass, propped up on his left elbow. His flowing locks and moustaches glow in a ray of preternatural light; his blue overalls, spattered with paint, have been cast aside. He's as naked as the day he was born. Tears well up and spurt onto my cheeks.
Benito, you break my heart
, I whisper.

In his left hand, I think, he holds the Pipes of Pan; in his right hand a crystal glass, which swirls loops of effervescent wine into the refulgent air as he sways to the rhythm of his dark music. Flushed, his face glows with pleasure. His luminous, intoxicated eyes stay on her throughout, lovingly, as she poses and pirouettes, executes perfect arabesques in the soft green grass. His crazy, adoring inamorata. A woman in her eighties. The shame of it!

She is dressed – undressed? – in a harebell costume, barefoot, dancing around the standing stones, tinkling a song of enchantment and sleep. Yes, dammit, in a lawn green pixie dress, torn (by him?) in provocative places. And the
giggle
on the girl.

On top of a monolith her cat purrs a mighty purr, her back arched with pleasure.

Behind them twelve white rabbits, in top hats and tails, throw themselves into a Moulin Rouge can-can. He ignores me.
The bastard.

I flee homewards, plastic Wellingtons chaffing my legs. The cock crows thrice at Cammarnaint Farm and I am forsaken. At eight bells I weep in the heather. Now my lover is Caliban, dancing with fell Sycorax the witch; I am Ariel, imprisoned in the cloven pine. My teeth ache with longing – for his hot breath in my hair, for his arms around me. Oh! – to hear the hiss of his spit sizzle in the fireplace on a stormy winter's night.

As I descend, pathetically, into the town a fine rain arrives in ribs of white which drift slowly across the valley, dreamlike towers of foam disintegrating in slow motion onto the land... handfuls of chalk thrown to the wind. On the shimmering roads I walk on water, and my steps hiss in the trees. I am an insect drifting on a melting ice-mirror. I am nothing without him.

The bells on the fuchsias toll for me.