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ankle deep in shit and you're
scared. I can smell it on you, even through all the booze."
    "And I don't even
owe you the time of day!"
    He turned back to the
window. Lee was at a loss. Swaying uneasily against the unlit fireplace, he
rubbed his hand along the dusty mantelpiece, waiting for resolution to
materialize out of nothing. Cousins nodded at the crumbling cottage across the
yard. "She's out there. I've seen her."
    Lee stepped across to
the window. He could see nothing.
    "Who? Who are you talking about? Ella?"
    " Noooo ," waving a finger at the dereliction. "Not Ella. Her."
    "There's nothing. Nothing."
    "Did you see that?
Did you see that light there—just a flicker. You couldn't have missed it. Did
you see it?"
    Cousins's gluey eyes were pressed against the window. He stank.
Lee stepped back, looked around at the filth and debris of the room, wondered
what he was doing there. There was no trace of light in the other cottage. He
had had enough.
    "To
hell with it. I didn't see
anything. And I'm going. I shouldn't even have come."
    It was as if a spell
had been lifted. He was appalled that he had allowed Ella to pack him off on
this fool's errand. This confrontation disgusted him. But what really vexed him
was not that Brad was a sot but that there was something about Brad's slither into
alcoholic slush that was only superficially different to his own dash for stiff
conformity. Both of them were casualties—Ella's word for it: men whose souls
leaked through the corrosion which followed brilliant dreaming.
    Now Ella
had got him scurrying down here rattling chains and locks that were turning to
dust in his hands. He felt alone, he wanted his neat home, his hermetically
sealed box, wanted not to be confronted with this degenerate version of himself
where the only distinction between them was a full set of buttons and a splash
of cologne.
    "You can… put your head down here for the
night..." Cousins said, suddenly sheepish.
    "What?" A mirthless laugh. "Is that a funny? Thanks, old friend, but no thanks. I'll take my chances
of roughing it at The Plough, back down the road."

 
    Back behind the steering wheel, he turned his
headlamps up full on the derelict cottage. He had let Cousins spook him. He
could still see him watching from the window. Turning the car around rapidly he drove back on to the road, switching on the wireless for
the comfort of a Radio 4 voice.
    At the Plough, with barely more customers than staff,
he had no difficulty in getting accommodation for the night. He was shown to a
room with an uneven floor and heavy Victorian furniture. Before turning in, he
opened a window and looked out across the moonless, starless valley, wondering
why he had bothered to come, but already knowing the answer. In the comfortable
bed he fell into a fitful sleep; a seamless patchwork of dreams crossing easily
from past to present and back again to the past.

 
     
     

 
    PART     TWO

 
    April
1974

 
    O N E

 
    Remember not the sins and
offences of my youth —1662 Prayer Book

 
    LUCID     DREAMERS
    Lucid
dreamers are subjects who, while dreaming,
    are also capable
of becoming aware that they are
    dreaming and in
certain cases capable of controlling
    the direction of
their dreams. Volunteers who have
    experienced this
phenomenon are required to participate in practical research experiments under
the
    supervision of the
Department of Psychology .
     
    The poster, hand-written in bold
red marker pen, was displayed in the main
university concourse, and Lee was pretending to read it. He was pretending to
read it so that he could stand next to Ella, the girl with the spray-on blue
jeans. She was also studying the poster, and he had to strain to hear the words
she was speaking to her friend. Lee stood close enough to take in her scent of
patchouli, baby soap, unruly pheromones and warm apple-blossom skin. He had
spotted her once before, in the university library. He'd been dozing over his
reading, and his