The dark station, shuttered and empty, echoed to the distant, fading whistle of the departing train. In the grey evening light the whistle sounded damp and cold, as though the cloud of exhausted steam producing it had imparted some of its own character to the noise. The mountains, covered in their close, dark weave of trees, absorbed the sound like heavy cloth soaking up drizzle; only the faintest of echoes came back, reflected from where crags and cliffs and slopes of jumbled scree and fallen boulders broke the conformity of forest.
When the noise of the whistle had died away, I stood for a while, facing the deserted station, reluctant to turn to the silent carriage behind me. I listened, trying to catch some last hint of the engine's own busy noise as it steamed down the steep valley; I wanted to hear its panting breath, the busy clatter of its pistoned hearts, the chatter of its valves and slides. But though no other sound disturbed the valley's still air, I could hear nothing of the train or its engine; they were gone. Above, the steeply pitched roofs and thick chimneys of the station stood out against the overcast sky, black on grey. Some wisps of steam or smoke, only slowly dissipating in the valley's moist, chill air, hung above the black slates and soot-darkened bricks. An odour of burned coal and the damp, used smell of steam seemed to cling to my clothes.
I turned to look at the carriage. It was sealed, locked from the outside and fastened with thick leather straps. It was black-painted, funereal. In the traces two nervous mares stamped at the leaf-strewn road leading from the station. They shook their dark heads and rolled their huge eyes. Their harnesses clinked and jingled, rocking the carriage behind them slightly, and from their flared nostrils issued clouds of steam; equine impressions of the departed train.
I inspected the carriage's shuttered windows and locked doors, testing the tight leather strapping and pulling on the metal handles, then I climbed to the driver's seat and took up the reins. I stared at the narrow track leading into the forest. I reached for the whip, hesitated, then put it back, unwilling to disturb the valley's atmosphere of silence. I took hold of the wooden brake lever. In some strange inversion of physiology, my hands were moist while my mouth was dry. The carriage shook, perhaps due to the restless movements of the horses.
The sky above was dull and grey and uniform. The higher peaks around me were obscured somewhere above the tree line by the smooth mat of cloud; their jagged summits and sharp ridges seemingly levelled by the soft, clinging vapour. The light was at once shadowless and pervasively dim. I took out my watch and realised that even if all went well I was unlikely to finish my journey in daylight. I patted the pocket containing my flint and tinder; I could make my own light when that around me failed. The carriage rocked again, and the horses stamped and stirred, craning their necks round, eye-whites bulging.
I could delay no further. I released the brake and urged the pair into a trot. The carriage lurched and creaked, rumbling heavily over the rutted road, away from the dark station and into the darker forest.
The road climbed through the trees, past small clearings and over hollow-bellied wooden bridges. In the darkness and the silence of the forest, the torrents beneath the bridges were rushing oases of pale, white light and chaotic noise.
The air grew steadily colder as we climbed. The mares' breath wreathed back around me, thick with the smell of their sweat. The perspiration on my own brow and hands was chill. I reached into my coat for my gloves, and my hand brushed against the thick grip of the revolver in my jacket. I fastened my gloves, drew my coat closer about me, and as I tightened the belt of the garment, was impelled to look again at the bindings and fastenings securing the carriage behind me. In the gloom, however, it was impossible to tell whether the straps still held or not.
The way steepened between the thinning trees; the mares laboured up the rutted track, into the lower reaches of the dark grey overcast, wisps of barely seen cloud mingling with and absorbing thier ghostly white breath. The valley beneath was a formless black pit; not a single light, no fire or movement, and no sound that I could detect issued from its depths. A groan seemed to come from the carriage as we rolled into the enveloping clouds; it lurched as a wheel struck and rolled over a rock in the track. I patted the pistol concealed within my jacket, determining that the groan I had heard was simply that of the carriage's wooden couplings flexing against each other. The cloud grew thicker. The small, stunted trees just visible at the sides of the rough track looked like the dwarfish, deformed sentinels of some phantom fortress.
I stopped in the mist on a level length of the track. The carriage lamps produced, when the flames had steadied, two cones of light which did little to illuminate thp ground far beyond the sweat-slicked, tossing heads of the mares, but the lamps' hiss was somehow purposeful and comforting. In their glare, I again checked the carriage bindings. Some had loosened, doubtless due to the road's many corrugations and stony obstacles. I turned the lamps in their sockets, pointing them forward again once my inspection was completed. Their diffused beams encountered the damp vapour like contrary shadows, obscuring more than they revealed.
The carriage rose through the clouds and out of them, following the increasingly broken surface of the track as it gradually levelled out and straightened, heading through a narrow defile in the rocks where the mists slowly thinned. The lamps on either side of me seemed to hiss more quietly, and their beams became sharper. We approached the saddle of the pass and the small plateau beyond.
The last tendrils of the mist stroked past the gleaming flanks of the horses and the strapped sides of the carriage like nebulous fingers reluctant to let us go. Above, the stars shone.
Grey peaks rose into blackness on either side, jagged and alien. The confined plateau was steel grey under the bright stars; dark shadows spread from the rocks on either side of us where the beams of the lamps struck them. The clouds behind formed a hazy ocean, lapping at the sharp islands of distant peaks rising from it. I looked back to see those summits on the far side of the valley we had left, and when I turned to the fore again immediately saw the lights of the oncoming carriage.
My initial start disturbed the mares, causing them to shy and swerve. I checked them immediately and urged them forward again, calming my foolish heart as best I could and reproving myself for such nervousness. The distant carriage, twin-lamped like my own, was still some way off, at the far end of the flattened crucible which formed the summit of the pass.
I settled the revolver further into my inner pocket and flicked the reins, sending the gasping mares into a slow trot which even on that level surface they struggled to maintain. The opposing set of lights, flickering yellow stars come down to earth, wavered, their approach quickening.
Near the centre of the plateau, in the midst of the boulder-field, our carriages slowed. The road through the pass was broad enough for only a single vehicle, the larger rocks and stones having been cleared to each side to provide a way through the broken terrain. A small passing place, an oval area where a width of road greater than a single carriage had been swept from the surrounding rubble, lay equidistant between my own carriage and that approaching. I was now able to discern the two white horses pulling the vehicle and, despite the glare of the flickering lamps, make out an indistinct figure seated on the driver's box. I reined the mares in, letting them amble slowly forward so that our two carriages would meet at the passing place. My counterpart appeared to anticipate me, and also slowed.
It was at that instant that a strange, unnamable fear gripped me; a sudden and uncontrollable spasm of shivering ran through me, as if an electric charge had struck my body, some lightning bolt, invisible and silent, leaping from that clear, still sky. Our carriages reached the opposite ends of the small passing area. I swerved to the right; the carriage facing me went to its left, so that our teams faced one another, each blocking the other's way. They stopped, even before I and the other driver reined them in. I pulled back, clicking with my tongue, persuading the animals to reverse. The other carriage also retreated. I waved at the shadowy figure on the other vehicle, trying to indicate I would go to the left this time, allowing him to pass on my right. He waved simultaneously. Our carriages stopped. I was unable to determine whether the gesture by the other driver was meant to show he agreed to proceed or not. I pulled the two panting mares to my left. Again the other carriage moved as though to block me, but so immediately that it appeared we had moved simultaneously once more.
Defeated again, I stopped the two mares; they faced their ghostly opposites across a clear space of air which was filled by their joined breaths. I decided that rather than retreat on this occasion I would hold my own carriage steady and wait for the other driver to do so, thus enabling me to pass.
The other carriage remained, quite stationary. An increasing unease caused my whole frame to stiffen. I felt impelled to stand up, shading my eyes from the glare of the sputtering lamps and attempting to see the driver facing me across this short but frustratingly impassable distance between us. I saw the other man rise to his feet as well, for all the world as though he was my own reflection; I would have sworn that he too raised one hand to his eyes, just as I had done.
I remained still. My heart beat quickly within my chest, and the strange clamminess I had experienced on my hands before returned, even within my hide gloves. I cleared my throat and hailed the man on the opposite carriage. 'Sir! If you please, go-'
I halted. The other driver had spoken - and stopped speaking - just at the moment I had started, and then stopped. His voice was not an echo, he did not speak the words I spoke, and I was not even sure that he had spoken the same language, but the tone had been similar to my own. A nervous fury gripped me; I waved violently to the right, he gesticulated at the same moment to his left. 'Right!' I shouted as he too called out.
I remained standing for a moment, unable to pretend to myself that the tremor which ran through me then was any sort of reaction to the physical temperature; I trembled, I did not shiver, and as much to take the weight from my now unsteady legs as to proceed with my just decided course, I sat down quickly. Without looking directly at my opponent - for so I now thought of this person apparently determined to prevent my progress - I took up the whip and cracked it over the mares, guiding them left. I heard no other whip crack, but the pair of white horses facing me reared like my own pair, then swerved to their right, so that the four beasts rushed momentarily towards each other, before they reared once more, forelegs rising, harnesses jangling, heads and flailing legs almost touching. Crying out, standing again, cracking the whip over them, I pulled them back, attempted to pass the other carriage on its opposite side. Again I was thwarted, the carriage facing me seeming to mirror my every action.
I drew the nervous, head-tossing mares back at last, facing the equally disturbed pair on the other side of the rock-cleared oval space. My hands were shaking and a cold sweat had broken on my brow. I squinted ahead, desperate to see just who my strange adversary was, but above the glare of the carriage lamps there was only the faintest outline of a figure, and the face was quite invisible.
There was no mirror I was certain (even this absurd possibility at that moment seemed more acceptable than anything else), and besides, the horses facing me were white, not dark like the pair attached to my carriage. I wondered what to do next. I could see no alternative route through the pass; the boulders and rocks which had been cleared to form the track had been piled-up forming a makeshift wall half the height of a man on either side of the way. Even if I was able to find a gap, the ground beyond would be so rough and broken as to remain impassable.
I put the whip away, climbed down to the stony ground. The other driver did the same. I hesitated when I saw this, the sensation of unattributable but intense unease striking me again. Almost involuntarily, I turned and looked behind me, past the sealed carriage, down the road from the lip of the plateau. To return, to retrace my steps, was unthinkable. Even had my purpose been mundane, had I been some ordinary traveller merely intent on reaching a remote inn or distant town on the other side of the pass, I would have been reluctant in the extreme to turn back; I had seen no other tracks or roads deviating from the path I had taken from the station far below in the valley, and I had heard of no other pass through these mountains within a day's ride. Given the nature of my cargo and the urgency of my mission, I had no choice but to continue on the way I had chosen. Under the pretence of pulling my collar tighter about me, I pressed the bulk of my concealed revolver against my chest. Stealing myself, trying to reach within my being to draw on whatever reserves of rationality and courage I could find, it all but escaped my notice that the figure standing in the glare of the opposing lights seemed to mimic my movements, also pulling on his lapels or collar, before stepping forward.
The fellow was dressed something like myself; in truth, any other apparel in that frigid atmosphere would have invited a quick end. His coat might have been a little longer, his body a little more thick set than mine. He and I came level with the shaking heads of our horses. My heart was beating, now, with a rapidity and a ferocity I could not recall having experienced before; a sort of horror drew me on, made me walk towards this still not-quite-seen figure. It was as if some magnetic repulsion, which before had kept our two carriages from meeting and passing, had now been reversed, and so sucked me inexorably forward, drawing me towards something my heart made clear I feared - or should fear - utterly, in the way some people are fatally attracted towards an abyss while standing on its very edge.
He stopped. I stopped. It was with a surging sense of relief, a brief feeling of total and unalloyed joy that I saw this man did not have my own face. His face was squarer than my own, his eyes were closer together and deeper set, and over his mouth there was a dark moustache. He looked at me, standing in the light of my lamps as I stood in the light of his, and inspecting my face with, I imagined, the same intense and relieved expression I exhibited myself. I started to speak, but got no further than 'My good -' before I stopped. The man had started to talk at the same time as I had; some short word or phrase, seemingly addressing me as I had been about to address him. It was, I was now sure, a foreign tongue he used, but I could not identify it. I waited for him to speak again, but he stood without speaking, apparently studying my face.
We shook our heads at the same moment. 'This is a dream,' I said quietly, while he spoke softly in his own tongue. 'This cannot be happening,' I continued. 'This is not possible. I am dreaming and you are something from within myself.' We fell silent, together.
I looked at his carriage, as he looked at mine. His conveyance appeared to be the same type as my own. Whether his was sealed, locked and strapped shut like mine, whether its contents were as important and awful as those secured in my carriage, I could not tell.
I stepped suddenly to one side; he moved at the same instant, as though to block me. We stepped back. I could smell the fellow now; a strange odour of some musky perfume mingling with stale hints of a foreign spice or bulb. His face wrinkled slightly, exactly as if he were smelling something from my person, something he found vaguely unsettling or distasteful. One of his eyebrows flickered oddly, just as I remembered my pistol. I had the most absurd and fleeting mental picture of us pulling and firing our revolvers, and the lead projectiles meeting and striking each other in mid air, flattening into a perfectly circular coin of squashed metal. My imperfect double smiled, just as I did so myself. We shook our heads; this motion at least seemed not to require translating, though it occurred to me that a similarly slow and thoughtful nodding of the head would have suited the situation just as well.. We each stepped back, and looked around at the quiet, cold, barren landscape of that high place as though in its very desolation we might find something to inspire one of us, or both.
I could think of nothing.
We each turned, walked back to our carriages and climbed into our seats.
A dim figure in the shadow behind the uneven light of his carriage's lamps (as I no doubt was to him), he sat, motionless for a while, then took up the reins - just as I did - with a sort of resigned shrug and a bending of the back and a grasping with one hand which looked like the motions of an old man (and I mirrored him, and I knew a sort of ancient bitterness, a heaviness, an ice-brittle thickness which invaded me, more deadly and intense than any air-borne chill).
He tugged gently at the heads of his horses; I signalled to mine in the same fashion. We started to turn our carriages round, using our own confined area of the small passing place, edging back and forth and whistling together at our horses.
When we are level, I decided, square on like battling ships of the line, I shall draw my gun and shoot. I cannot go back; no matter that he will not give way, regardless of his determination; I must go on, I have no choice.
We slowly manoeuvred our awkward vehicles until they were abreast. His, like mine, was locked, shuttered, strapped tight. He looked at me, and reached, with an almost complacent slowness, into his coat, just as I did the same thing, feeling past my jacket to the inside pocket and carefully withdrawing my gun. Would he remove his glove? We each hesitated, then he unbuttoned his glove at the wrist, just as I did. He laid the glove on the seat as his side, then raised the gun to point at me.
He pulled the trigger just as I did. There were two small clicks, nothing more.
We each pulled the chambers open; in the light of one lamp I could see the hammer in my gun had struck home on the base of the cartridge; a tiny dent showed on the copper-coloured metal. The round, like his apparently, had been damp, or somehow badly made. This happens, occasionally.
He looked at me again, and our smiles were sad. We each put our revolvers back in our jackets, then we turned our carriages fully round, and I with my dread load, and he with his, rode back, towards the valleys and the clouds.
'. . .then we both fire at the same time, or at least we both pull the triggers at the same time, but nothing happens. Both rounds are duds. So we just. . . smile at each other, in a resigned sort of way, I suppose, and finish turning the carriages right round, and then head back the way we came.' I stop talking.
Dr Joyce looks at me over his gold-rimmed spectacles. 'Is that it?' he says. I nod.
'Then I wake up.'
'Just like that?' Dr Joyce sounds annoyed. 'No more?'
'End of dream,' I tell him, crisply emphatic.
Dr Joyce looks profoundly unconvinced (I don't blame him really, this is all a pack of lies), and shakes his head in what may well be a gesture of exasperation.
We are standing in the centre of a room with six black walls and no furniture; it is a rackets court, and we are near the end of a game. Dr Joyce - fiftyish, not unfit, but a little puffy - believes in sharing the pursuits of his patients where he can; we both play rackets, so rather than sit in his office we came here for a game. I've been telling him my dream in instalments between points.
Dr Joyce is all pink and grey: grey frizzy hair, pink face, and mottled grey-pink arms and legs poking out from his grey shorts and shirt. His eyes, however, behind the gold-rimmed, chain-secured glasses, are blue: sharp, hard blue and set in his pink face like fragments of glass stuck in a plate of raw meat. He is breathing hard (I am not), perspiring profusely (I only broke sweat in the last point), and looking very suspicious (as I've said, with good reason).
'You wake up?' he says.
I try to sound as annoyed as I can: 'Damn it man, I can't control what I dream. ' (A lie.)
The doctor issues a professional sigh and uses his fielding-racket to scoop up the ball he missed at the end of the last point. He stares intently at the serving wall. 'You to serve first, Orr,' he says sourly.
I serve, followed by the doctor. Rackets is a game for two players, each with two rackets; a fielding-racket and a shot-racket. It is played in a hexagonal, black-painted court, with two pink balls. This last fact, subjected to the unsubtle allotrope of humour which passes for wit on the bridge, has resulted in rackets being known as 'the man's game'. Dr Joyce knows the game better than I do, but he is shorter, heavier, older and less well co-ordinated. I have been playing the game for only six months (my physiotherapist recommended it), but I win the point - and the game - easily enough, fielding one ball while the doctor fumbles the other. He stands, panting, glaring at me, a very picture of pink pique. 'You're sure there's no more?' he says.
'Positive,' I tell him.
Dr Joyce is my dream doctor. He specialises in the analysis of dreams and believes that by analysing mine he will be able to discover more about me than I am able to tell him through any conscious effort (I am an amnesiac). Using whatever he finds by this method, he then hopes somehow to jog my delinquent memory back into action: hoopla! With one mighty leap of the imagination I shall be free. I have been doing my honest best to co-operate with him in this noble venture for over half a year now, but my dreams have always been either too vague to be accurately recalled, or too banal to be worth analysing. In the end, not wanting to disappoint the increasingly frustrated doctor, I have resorted to inventing a dream. I rather hoped my dream of the sealed carriages would give Dr Joyce something to get his yellow-grey teeth into, but from his peeved look and belligerent stance, I get the impression that this is not the case.
He says, 'Thanks for the game.'
'My pleasure.' I smile.
In the showers, Dr Joyce hits below the belt.
'Your, ah, libido, Orr. Quite normal?' He soaps his paunch; I am rubbing foamy circles on my chest.
'Yes, doctor. How's yours?' The good doctor looks away.
'I was asking in a professional capacity,' he explains. 'Wejust thought there might be some problems. If you're sure...' His voice trails away, and he steps under the stream of water to rinse off.
What does the good doctor want? References?
Showered and changed, and after a call at the rackets club bar, we take an elevator to the level where Dr Joyce's consulting rooms are. The doctor looks more at home in his grey suit and pink tie, but he is sweating still. I feel refreshed and cool in trousers, silk shirt, waistcoat and frock coat (carried over one arm for now). The elevator - soft class: leather seats, pot plants - hums as it climbs. Dr Joyce goes to sit down on a bench by one wall, near the attendant, who is reading a paper. The doctor takes out a slightly off-white handkerchief and mops his brow.
'So, what do you think this dream means then, Orr?'
I look at the newspaper-reading attendant. We three are the only people in the lift, but I would have imagined that even a lift-boy's presence would be sufficient to prohibit what I thought was meant to be a confidential exchange. That was why we were heading for the good doctor's office. I stare round at the elevator's wooden panelling, leather furniture and rather unimaginative seascape prints (and decide that I prefer lifts with outside views).
'I've no idea,' I say. Once - I seem to remember - I thought that what my dreams meant was exactly what Dr Joyce was supposed to tell me, but the good doctor disabused me of this notion some time ago, while I was still struggling to have dreams meaningful enough for him to get to work on.
'But that's just it,' Dr Joyce says wearily, 'you probably do know.'
'But I don't want to tell you?' I suggest.
Dr Joyce shakes his head. 'No, you probably can't tell me.'
'So why ask?'
The elevator is slowing to a stop. The doctor's offices are about midway up the top half of the bridge, equidistant from the always steam-wreathed train deck and one of the often cloud-entangled summits of the great edifice. A man of no little influence, his offices are on the outside of the main structure with one of those much sought after sea views. We wait for the doors to open.
'What you have to ask yourself, Orr,' Dr Joyce says, 'is what this sort of dream means in relation to the bridge.'
I look at him. 'The bridge?'
'Yes,' he nods.
'You've lost me,' I tell him. 'I don't sec what possible connection there can be between the bridge and my dream.'
Another doctorly shrug. 'Perhaps the dream is a bridge,' he muses as the inner doors slide back. He takes out his travel-pass to show the attendant; 'Perhaps the bridge is a dream.'
(Well, that's a great help.) I show the attendant my hospital identity bracelet, then follow the good doctor along a broad, carpeted corridor to his offices.
The identity bracelet on my right wrist is a plastic strap which contains some sort of electronic device detailing my name and residence. It describes the nature of my affliction, the treatment I am undergoing, and the name of my doctor. Printed on the plastic strap is my name: John Orr. This is not really my name; it is the name I was given by the bridge's hospital authorities when I arrived here. 'John' because it is a common, inoffensive name, 'Orr' because when I was fished out of the waters surging around one of the bridge's great granite piers, there was a large, livid, circular bruise on my chest, an almost perfect circle stamped on my flesh (and beyond; I had six broken ribs). It looked like an O. 'Orr' was the first name starting with an O that occurred to the nurses charged with looking after me; it is they who are by tradition allowed to name foundlings, and as I was discovered without any form of identification this definition was extended to myself.
My chest, I might add, still aches on occasion, as if that curious, unexplained, mark remained there in all its multicoloured splendour. I need hardly add that I had also received head injuries, originally presumed to be the cause of my amnesia. Dr Joyce is inclined to attribute the ache which I experience in my chest to the same trauma which caused my amnesia. He believes my inability to remember my past life.was caused not so much by the head injuries I received as by some other, perhaps linked, psychological shock, and that the answer to the question my amnesia poses is to be found in my dreams. This is why he's taken me on: I am an Interesting Case, a challenge. He will discover my past for me, no matter how long it takes.
In the doctor's outer office we encounter the appalling young man who is the doctor's receptionist. He is a breezy and bright fellow, always ready with a joke or a quip, ever willing to provide coffee or tea and to help people on or off with their coats; never gloomy or morose, rude or unpleasant, and always interested in what Dr Joyce's patients have to say. He is slim, neatly dressed, well manicured; he wears a pleasantly unobtrusive scent applied sparingly but effectively, and his hair is neat and smart without looking artificial. Need I add that he is heartily despised by every one of Dr Joyce's patients I have ever spoken to?
'Doctor!' he says, 'so good to see you again! Did you enjoy your game?'
'Oh , yes,' the doctor says unenthusiastically, looking round the waiting area. There are only two other people in the room: a policeman and a thin, worried-looking man with bad dandruff. The worried-looking man is sitting, eyes closed, on one of the room's half-dozen or so seats. The policeman is sitting on top of him, sipping a cup of coffee. Dr Joyce takes in this arrangement without a second glance. 'Any calls?' he asks the Appalling Young Man, who is standing, slightly bowed, with his hands placed fingertip to fingertip.
'None urgent, sir; I've left a chronological list on your desk, with tentative prioritisations re the replies - in ascending order - in the left margin. Cup of tea, Dr Joyce? Coffee, maybe?'
'No, thank you.' Dr Joyce waves the Appalling Young Man to one side and escapes through to his office.
I hand the AYM my coat as he says, 'Good morning Mr Orr! Can I take your - oh, thank you! Enjoy your game, Mr Orr?'
'No.'
The policeman continues to sit on top of the thin man with the dandruff. He looks away with an expression somewhere between surliness and embarrassment.
'Oh dear,' the young receptionist says, looking desolate. 'I am sorry to hear that, Mr Orr. Cup of something to cheer you up, perhaps?'
'No thanks.' I hurry through to join the doctor in his office. Dr Joyce is examining the prioritised list lying under a paperweight on the blotter of his impressively large desk.
'Dr Joyce,' I say, 'why is there a policeman sitting on top of a man in your outer office?'
He looks towards the door I have just closed.
'Oh,' he says, going back to the typed list, 'that's Mr Berkeley; he has a non-specific delusion. Keeps thinking he's an article of furniture.' He frowns, taps one finger on an item on the list. I sit down in an unoccupied chair.
'Really?'
'Yes; what he thinks he is varies from day to day. We tell whoever's guarding him just to humour him, where possible.'
'Oh. I thought perhaps they were some sort of minimalist radical theatre group. I take it Mr Berkeley thinks he's a seat at the moment.'
Dr Joyce frowns. 'Don't be stupid, Orr. You wouldn't put one seat on top of another, would you? He must think he's a cushion.'
'Of course.' I nod. 'Why the police guard?'
'Oh, it can get a bit tricky; every now and again he thinks he's a bidet in a ladies' toilet. He's not normally violent, just...' Dr Joyce stares vacantly at the pastel-pink ceiling of his office for a moment. He gropes for the right word, then dredges down '... insistent.' He goes back to the list.
I sit back. Dr Joyce's office is floored with teak, covered with occasional, delicately hued carpets of a banal abstract design. The imposing desk has a matching filing cabinet and brace of tome-stuffed bookcases, and there is a low table with tastefully bland chairs on one of which I am sitting. Half of one wall of the doctor's inner office is window, but the view is concealed by vertical blinds. Translucent, the sun-struck blinds glow in the morning light, providing our illumination.
The doctor crumples the neatly typed sheet into a ball and throws it into his waste-bin. He drags his seat round from behind his desk and positions it so that we can sit facing each other. He takes a notebook from the desk top and puts it on his lap, then removes a small silver propelling pencil from his jacket's breast pocket.
'Right, Orr, where were we?'
'I believe the last supposedly constructive thing you said was that the bridge might be a dream.'
Dr Joyce's mouth droops down at the corners. 'How would you know if it wasn't?'
'How would I know if this wasn't?'
The doctor sits back, a knowing look on his face. 'Quite.'
'Well, how do you know it isn't a dream, doctor?' I smile. The doctor shrugs.
'No point asking me that; I'd be part of the dream.' He leans forward in his seat; I do the same thing, so that we are almost nose to nose. 'What does the sealed carriage mean?' he asks.
'I guess it shows I'm frightened of something,' I snarl.
'Yes, but what?' the doctor hisses from close range.
'I give in; you tell me.'
We stay eyeball to eyeball for a few moments longer. Then the doctor breaks off, sitting back and making a sighing noise like the air going out of a fake leather chair. He makes some notes.
'How are your investigations going?' he says matter-of-factly.
I sense a trap. I watch him through narrowed eyes.
'What investigations?' I ask.
'Before you left hospital, and until quite recently, you would always tell me about the investigations you were making; you told me you were trying to find out things about the bridge. It seemed quite important to you at the time.'
I sit back. 'I did try to find some things out. But-'
'But you gave up,' the good doctor nods, notes.
'I tried; I wrote letters to every office and bureau and department and library and college and paper I could find. I sat up into the night writing letters, I spent weeks sitting in antechambers and waiting rooms and reception areas and corridors. I ended up with writer's cramp, a bad cold and a summons to appear before the Hospital Out-Patients Living Allowance (Abuses) Committee; they couldn't believe the amount I was spending on postage.'
'What did you discover?' Dr Joyce is amused.
'That there is no point trying to discover anything worthwhile about the bridge.'
'What do you call worthwhile?'
'Where is it? What does it join? How old is it? That sort of thing.'
'No luck?'
'I don't think luck had much to do with it. I don't think anybody knows or cares. My letters all disappeared or were returned unopened, or with replies attached in languages I couldn't understand and nobody else I was able to contact could fathom.'
'Well,' the doctor makes a sort of balancing motion with one hand, 'you do have a problem with languages, don't you?'
I have a problem with languages, indeed. In any single section of the bridge there are anything up to a dozen different languages; specialised jargons originated by the various professions and skill-groups over the years and developed and added to, altered and refined to the point of mutual incomprehensibility so long ago that nobody can actually recall the process taking place or remember a time when it had not yet begun. I, it was discovered when I came out of my coma, speak the language of the Staff and Administrators: the bridge's official, ceremonial tongue. But whereas everybody else speaks at least one other language, usually in connection with their work or official position, I do not. When I am amongst the bustling crowds which inhabit the main thoroughfares of the bridge, at least half of the conversations going on are quite unintelligible to me. I find this redundancy of languages merely annoying, but I imagine that to the doctor's more paranoid clients the plethora of tongues must seem almost definitively conspiratorial.
'But it's not just that. I looked for records concerning the construction of the bridge and its original purpose; I looked for old books, newspapers, magazines, recordings, films; for anything which referred to any place off the bridge, or before it, or outside it; there's nothing. It's all gone. Lost, stolen, destroyed or just misfiled. Do you know that in this section alone they've managed to lose, to lose an entire library? A library! How the hell do you lose a library?
Dr Joyce shrugs. 'Well, readers lose library books -' he begins in a reasonable voice.
'Oh for God's sake man! A whole library? There were tens of thousands of books in it - I checked. Real books, and bound journals, and documents and maps and ...' I am aware I am starting to sound upset. 'The Third City Records and Historical Materials Library, missing presumed lost for ever; it's listed as being in this section of the bridge, there are countless references to it and cross-references to the books and documents it contained and even reminiscences of scholars who went there to study; but nobody can find it, nobody has ever heard of it except through those references. They're not even looking for it especially hard. My God; you'd think they'd send out some sort of search party of librarians or bibliophiles or something. Remember the name, doctor; give me a call if you ever come across it.' I sit back, folding my arms. The doctor makes some more notes.
'Do you feel that all this information you are seeking is, or has been, deliberately hidden from you?' He lifts one eyebrow in interrogation.
'Well, that would give me something to fight against, at least. No; I don't think there's any malice behind it all, just muddle, incompetence, apathy and inefficiency. You can't fight that; it's like trying to punch mist.'
'Well then,' the doctor smiles glacially, eyes like ice gone blue with age, 'what did you discover? Where did you stop, give in?'
'I discovered the bridge is very big, doctor,' I tell him. Big, and rather long; it disappears over the horizon in both directions. I have stood on a small radio tower atop one of its great summits and counted a good two dozen other red-painted peaks hazing off into the blue distance towards both the City and the Kingdom (both invisible; I have seen no land since I was washed up here, unless one counts the small islands which support every third bridge section). Tallish, too: at least fifteen hundred feet. Six or seven thousand people live within each section, and there is probably room - and over-designed strength in the primary structure - for an even greater density of population.
Shape: I shall describe the bridge with letters. In cross-section, at its thickest, the bridge closely resembles the letter A; the train deck forms the cross-bar of the A. In elevation, the centre part of each section consists of an H superimposed over an X; spreading out on each side from this centre are six more Xs which gradually reduce in size until they meet the slender linking spans (which have nine small Xs each). Linking the extremities of each X, one to another, then produces a reasonable silhouette of the general shape: hey presto! The bridge!
'Is that it?' Dr Joyce asks, blinking. '"It's very big," is that all?'
'It's all I needed to know.'
'But you still gave up.'
'It would have been the act of an obsessive to go on. Now I'm just going to enjoy myself. I have a very pleasant apartment, a quite reasonable allowance from the hospital, which I spend on things which amuse me or which I find beautiful; I visit galleries, I go to the theatre, concerts, the cinema; I read; I have made some friends, mostly among the engineers; I play sports, as you might have noticed; I'm hoping to be admitted to a yacht club ... I occupy myself. I wouldn't call that rejecting anything; I'm right in there, having a great time.'
Dr Joyce gets up, surprisingly quickly, throwing the notebook onto his desk and going to pace up and down behind it, oscillating between book-clogged bookcases and glowing blinds. He cracks his knuckles. I inspect my nails. He shakes his head.
'I don't think you're taking this seriously enough, Orr,' he says. He goes to one of the windows and draws the blinds back, revealing a bright sunny day; blue sky and white clouds.
'Come here,' he says. With a sigh and a small oh-all-right-if-it'll-keep-you-happy smile, I join the good doctor at the windows.
Straight ahead, and almost a thousand feet down, the sea; grey-blue and ruffled. A few yachts and fishing boats speckled about; seagulls wheel. The doctor points to the side, though (one side of his office juts out, so he can look along the side of the bridge).
The hospital complex of which the doctor's offices form a part stands slightly proud of the main structure, like an energetically growing tumour. From here, at such an acute angle, the bridge's elegant grace is obliterated, and it appears merely cluttered and too solid.
Its sloping sides rise, russet-red and ribbed, from the granite-plinthed feet set in the sea nearly a thousand feet below. Those latticed flanks are slabbed and crammed with clusters of secondary and tertiary architecture; walkways and lift shafts, chimneys and gantries, cableways and pipes, aerials and banners and flags of all shapes, sizes and colours. There are small buildings and large ones; offices, wards, workshops, dwellings and shops, all stuck like angular limpets of metal, glass and wood to the massive tubes and interweaving girders of the bridge itself, jumbled and squeezed and squashed between the original structure's red-painted members like brittle hernias popping out between immense collections of muscles.
'What do you see?' Dr Joyce asks. I peer forward, as if asked to admire the detail brushwork on some famous painting.
'Doctor,' I say, 'I see a fucking great bridge.'
Dr Joyce pulls hard on the cord, snapping it at the top and leaving the blinds open. He sucks his breath in; he goes to sit behind his desk, scribbling in his notebook. I follow him.
'Your trouble, Orr,' he says, as he writes, 'is that you don't question enough.'
'Don't I?' I say innocently. Is this a professional opinion or just a personal insult?
At the window a window-cleaner's cradle is lowered slowly into view. Dr Joyce does not notice. The man in the cradle taps at the window.
'Time to have your windows cleaned, I think, Doctor,' I tell him. The doctor looks up briefly; the window-cleaner is tapping alternately at the window-pane and his wrist watch. Dr Joyce goes back to his notebook, shaking his head.
'No, that's Mr Johnson,' he tells me. The man in the cradle has his nose pressed against the glass.
'Another patient?'
'Yes.'
'Let me guess; he thinks he's a window-cleaner.'
'He is a window-cleaner, Orr, and a very good one; he just refuses to come back in, that's all. He's been on that cradle for the last five years; the authorities are starting to worry about him.'
I gaze at Mr Johnson with new respect; how agreeable to see a man so happy in his work. His cleaning cradle is worn and cluttered; there are bottles, cans, a small suitcase, a tarpaulin and what may be a camp-bed at one end, balancing a variety of cleaning equipment at the other extremity. He taps on the glass with his T-shaped wiper.
'Does he come in to you, or do you go out to him?' I ask the good doctor, walking over to the windows.
'Neither; we talk through an open window,' Dr Joyce says. I hear him putting the notepad away in a drawer. When I turn he is standing looking at his watch. 'Anyway, he's early; I have to go to a committee meeting now.' He mimes something like this to Mr Johnson, who shakes his wrist and holds the watch up to his ear.
'And what of poor Mr Berkeley, upholding the law even as we speak?'
'He'll have to wait, too.' The doctor takes some papers from another drawer and stuffs them into a thin briefcase.
'What a pity Mr Berkeley doesn't think he's a hammock,' I say, as Mr Johnson hoists himself up out of sight, 'then you could keep them both hanging around.'
The good doctor scowls at me. 'Get out of here, Orr.'
'Certainly, doctor.' I head for the door.
'Come back tomorrow if you have any dreams.'
'Right-oh.' I open the door.
'You know what, Orr?' Dr Joyce says seriously, clipping his silver propelling pencil back into his breast pocket. 'You give in too easily.'
I think about this, then nod. 'Yep, fair enough doc, you're right.'
In the outer office, the doctor's ghastly receptionist helps me on with my coat (he has brushed it while I was in with the doctor).
'Well Mr Orr, and how did it go today? Well I hope. Yes?'
'Very well. Considerable progress. Great strides. Meaningful discussion.'
'Oh that does sound encouraging!'
'Literally incredible.'
I take one of the grand main elevators down from the hospital complex to street level above the train deck. In the great lift, surrounded by thick rugs, tinkling chandeliers and gleaming brasswork framing polished mahogany, I take a glass of cappuccino from the bar and sit down to watch the resident string quartet, framed against the outer windows of the huge, slowly descending room.
Behind me, round an oval table inside a roped-off rectangle, twenty or so bureaucrats and their aides are discussing a convoluted point of order which has cropped up during their meeting, which - according to a placard on a small stand just inside the roped-off area - concerns the standardisation of contract specifications in invitations-to-tender for locomotive high-speed bunkering channels (coal dust type, fire prevention in).
From the elevator to an open street above the main train deck; this is an avenue of walk- and cycle-way, metal-decked, which forges a comparatively straight path through both the bridge's own structure and the chaotically unplanned additions of shops, cafes and kiosks which clutter this bustling level.
The street - rather grandly called the Boulevard Queen Margaret - lies near the outer edge of the bridge; its inside buildings form part of the lower edge of the ziggurat of secondary architecture piled inside the original framework. Its outer-edge buildings abut the main girders themselves, and in intermittent gaps offer views of the sea and sky.
Long and narrow, the street makes me think of ancient towns, where haphazardly thrown together buildings jutted out towards each other, tilting over and enclosing both the thoroughfares themselves and the swarming crowds they contained. The scene here is not so different; people jostling, walking, bicycling, pushing prams, hauling carts, carrying sedan chairs, straining on trike-vans, chattering in their various languages, dressed in civilian clothes or uniforms, and forming a dense mass of confused motion where people flow in both directions at once, and across the main stream as well, like blood cells in an artery gone mad.
I stand on the raised platform outside the elevator halt.
Over the noise of the milling people, the continual hisses and clanks, grindings and gratings, klaxons and whistles of the trains on the deck beneath sound like shrieks from some mechanistic underworld, while every now and again a deep rumble and a still more profound quaking and rattling announces a heavy train passing somewhere below; great pulsing clouds of white steam roll around the street and upwards.
Above, where the sky ought to be, are the distant, hazily seen girders of the high bridge; obscured by the rising fumes and vapours, dimmed by the light intercepted outside them by their carapace of people-infected rooms and offices, they rise above and look down upon the rude profanity of these afterthought constructions with all the majesty and splendour of a great cathedral roof.
A frenzied chorus of beeping swells from one side; a black rickshaw pulled by a young boy rushes through the crowds, which part for it. It is an engineer's cab. Only important officials and couriers of the major guilds are allowed to use rickshaws; merely well-off people are permitted to use sedan chairs, though in practice few do because elevators and trams are quicker. The only other alternative is to cycle, though as wheels are taxed on the bridge, the only affordable conveyance of this type for most people is a monocycle. Accidents are common.
The fusilade of honking which precedes the cab emanates from the uniformed rickshaw-boy's feet; in the heel of each of his shoes there is a small horn; people know the sound and are warned.
I repair to a cafe to think about what I shall do after lunch. I might go swimming - there is a very pleasant, uncrowded pool a couple of levels down from my apartment - or I might phone my friend Brooke, the engineer; he and his cronies usually play cards in the afternoon when they can't think of anything better to do, or I might take a local tram and go in search of new galleries: I haven't bought any paintings for a week or so.
A pleasant tingle of anticipation runs through me as I contemplate these various agreeable ways of spending my time. I leave the cafe after a coffee and liqueur and rejoin the busy press of people.
I throw a coin from the tram I take back to my own section of the bridge as we cross the narrow linking span. It is traditional to throw things from the bridge, for luck.
Night. A pleasant evening behind me spent swimming, dining at the rackets club, then taking a stroll down at the harbour. I am a little tired, but watching the tall yachts bobbing quietly in their dark marina has given me an idea.
I stretch out on the chaise-longue in my sitting room and consider the exact form my next dream for the good doctor ought to take.
Decided, I prepare my writing table, then go to the television screen built into the wall behind where I will sit; I work better with it on, talking quietly to itself. Most of the programmes are dross, intended for the unthinking - quiz shows, soap operas, and so on - but I watch occasionally, ever in hope of seeing something which is not the bridge. I find a channel still broadcasting - a play, apparently set in a mining community on one of the small islands - and turn the dialogue down to a murmur, loud enough to hear but not make out. I take my place at my desk, pick up my pen. The television starts to hiss. I turn round. A grey haze fills the screen, white noise issues from the speaker. Perhaps the set is faulty. I go to turn it off, but then a picture appears. There is no sound; the hiss has gone.
The screen shows a man lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by machines. It is in black and white, not colour, and grainy. I turn up the sound, but only a very gentle hiss emerges even at maximum volume. The man in the bed has tubes and pipes appearing from his nose and mouth and arm; his eyes are closed. I can't see him breathe, but he must still be alive. On every channel the picture stays the same: still the man, the bed, the surrounding machines.
The camera looks down and across at the bed; it shows part of a wall, and a small unoccupied seat at one side of the bed. The fellow looks at death's door; even in monochrome his face is terribly pale, and his thin hands - lying motionless on the white bedsheet, one with a tube attached at the wrist - are almost transparent. His face is thin and battered as though he's been in a bad fight. His hair looks mousy; a small bald patch sits on the crown of his head. On the whole, a rather short, grey, ordinary-looking man.
Poor devil. I try changing channels again, but the picture remains. Perhaps I have a crossed line with one of the hospital cameras used to monitor very ill patients. I'll call the repair people in the morning. I look at the still, silent picture for a little while longer, then switch the set off.
Back to my desk. I have to prepare my next dream for the good doctor, after all. I write for a while, but the lack of background noise is vexing, and I have an odd feeling, sitting with my back to the dead television. I take my pen and papers to bed and complete my next dream there, before falling asleep, where - if I do dream - I don't remember dreaming.
Anyway, this is what I write:
All day we had fought, under a topaz sky which slowly clouded over as though obscured by the smoke from our guns and the spreading fires below. The clouds turned dark red with the sunset; beneath our feet the decks were slick with blood. Still we fought, desperate now, though the light was going and our numbers were but a quarter of what they had been; the dead and dying lay thrown about like splinters, our proud ship's paint and goldleaf were blackened and burned, our masts were felled, and our sails - once puffed out bright and decorated as any military chest - now hung like half-burned rags from the mast-stumps, or covered the debris-littered decks where fires burned and dying men moaned. Our officers were dead, our boats were burned or smashed.
Our ship was sinking and burning; the form of its inevitable fate dependent only on whether the rising waters reached the powder magazines before the unchecked fires. The enemy vessel, wallowing across the wreckage-strewn sea, seemed in scarcely better condition than our own; a single holed and flame-sooted sail hung from her remaining, tilted mast. We tried to shoot down that remnant of her rigging, but we had no chain shot left, and no master-gunners left alive. Our powder on deck was almost finished.
The enemy ship turned towards us, closing. We used the last of our shot, then took up cutlass and boarding pistol. We left the wounded to their own devices. Lacking any yards to hang boarding lines from, we made ready to leap aboard the other vessel when she hit. The other ship fell silent too, the last dark clouds from her cannons blowing slowly ahead of her, over the dull red swell of the empty ocean. Our smokes mingled as the ships drew near.
The two, torn, bulbous hulls touched; we leapt across, away from our stricken vessel.
The collision felled our enemy's last makeshift mast, and the two craft separated again; like us they had used no hooks or grapples. We staggered shouting and cursing through the enemy galleon's decks as our old ship drifted away, but we found no men to fight, only the dead and the moaning wounded. We found no powder or shot, only rising waters and spreading fires. We found no ship's boats, only wreckage and charred wood.
Resigned, exhausted, we gathered on the sloping, splintered poop deck. In the smoky, flickering light of the spreading fires we looked out across the slow-increasing gap of littered, bloody ocean to our old ship.
Her masts were flame, her sails were smoke. Her reflection burned on the waters between us, a livid and inverted ghost.
Our adversaries stared back through the smoke at us.
My apartments are high up on this section of the bridge, close to the summit and not far from one angle of the squashed hexagon which the section resembles. It would appear that I deserve this exalted position because I am one of Dr Joyce's star patients. My rooms are wide and tall, and their walls on the seaward side are the glassed-in girders of the bridge itself. I can look out - from perhaps twelve hundred feet or more - in the direction we call down-river. That is, when the view is not obscured by the grey clouds which often submerge the bridge from above.
My rooms were quite bare when I came here from the hospital - I have improved them, adding several useful and decorative pieces of furniture, and a modest but carefully chosen collection of small paintings and little figurines and sculptures. The paintings mostly show details of the bridge itself, or are of the sea. I have several fine paintings of yachts and fishing vessels. The sculptures are, in the main, figures; bridge workers frozen in bronze.
It is morning now, and I am dressing, performing my toilet. I dress slowly, in measured stages. I have an extensive wardrobe; it seems only polite, having been given so many well-made clothes, to give some thought to their effect. They are, after all, a language; they do not so much say things about us, they are what is said. The bridge's menial workers, of course, have uniforms to wear, and don't have to worry about what to put on each morning. My envy for their way of life begins and ends there, though; they accept their lot and their position in society with a meekness I find both surprising and disappointing. I wouldn't settle for being a sewage worker or a coal miner all my life, but these people fit into the structure like happy little rivets, embrace their position with the adhesion and cohesion of coats of paint.
I comb my hair (a pleasantly intense black, and just curly enough to give it body) and select a cravat and matching enamelled pocket watch. I admire my tall and aristocratic reflection for a moment, and check that my cuffs are even, my waistcoat centred, collars straight, and so on.
I am ready for breakfast. The bed needs to be made, and yesterday's clothes require cleaning or putting away, but the hospital very considerately sends people to do that sort of thing. As I go to select a hat, I pause.
The television has switched itself on. It clicks and starts to hiss. At first, as I go through to the sitting room, I think I might be mistaken, that it will be a leaking pipe - water or gas - making the noise, but no, the screen built into the wall is on. It shows the same view as before: the man in the bed, silent and still and in monochrome. I switch the set off. The picture vanishes. I switch it back on; the sick man reappears, and the channel-changing control has no effect. The light is different. There seems to be a window set into the wall on the far side of the bed, beyond the encircling machines. I look carefully for any further clues. The picture is too grainy for me to be able to read any of the writing on the machines; I can't even tell what language is being used. How can the set switch itself on? I turn it off, and hear a droning noise outside.
From the windows of the room, I look out onto a blue, bright day. A formation of aircraft is flying past the bridge, from the direction of the Kingdom. There are three of them, identical, rather cumbersome-looking, single-engine monoplanes, flying one above the other. The lowest aircraft is about level with me, the middle plane is fifty feet above it, the highest plane another fifty feet above that. They fly past, engines droning, course steady, propellers glittering like huge protruding glass discs, and from the tail of each aircraft little dark bursts of smoke issue, seemingly at random. The small black clouds hang in the air, strung out like some strange code. A long trail of smoky signals marks the course of the planes, disappearing into the Cityward distance like some strange airborne fence.
This both puzzles and excites me. I have not seen or heard of any aircraft at all since I've been on the bridge; not even flying boats, which the bridge's engineers and scientists are obviously quite capable of constructing and operating.
These aircraft had no visible undercarriage - they certainly had no floats - and generally they looked quite unable to operate from water; I assume they have retractable wheels and come from an airport on land. I would find that encouraging.
The puffs of black smoke start to drift with the slow wind, heading towards the City. They dissipate as they go, into the wide blue sky. The planes' piston-engine noise gradually fades as well. The thinning black clouds seem to have a vague pattern; they are grouped in three-by-three grids, carefully spaced. I watch the gradually moving cloud-groups, waiting for the merging smoke-puffs to form letters or numbers, or some other recognisable shapes, but after a few minutes, all that is left is an indistinct hanging curtain of dull air being blown slowly Citywards like a gigantic scarf of soiled gauze.
I shake my head.
At the door I remember the malfunctioning television; but when I try to call the repair people the telephone isn't working either; it transmits a series of slow, not-quite-perfectly-regular beeps at me. Time to go. The world - the bridge, anyway - may be going mad, but a man must still have his breakfast.
At the elevator doors in the corridor outside, I recognise a neighbour. He watches the brass hand on the clocklike face of the floor-indicator above the closed doors, tapping one foot impatiently. He is dressed in the uniform of a senior timetabling official. He gives a little start; the carpet must have muffled my steps.
'Good morning,' I say, as the floor-indicator sweeps slowly up. The fellow grunts. He takes out his pocket watch and looks at it; his foot taps faster. 'I don't suppose you saw those aircraft, did you?' I ask him. He looks at me oddly.
'I'm sorry?'
'The planes; the aircraft that flew past ... not ten minutes ago.'
The man stares at me. His eyes flicker as he glances at my wrist; he sees the plastic hospital bracelet. The elevator chimes. 'Oh yes,' the official says. 'Yes. The aircraft; of course.' The lift doors open smoothly. He looks round at the wood-panelled, brass-trimmed interior of the waiting elevator as I gesture for him to enter first. He inspects his watch again, mutters 'Excuse me,' and hurries off down the corridor.
I ride down alone. On a circular, leather-padded bench, I watch the rippling surface of a fish tank in one corner as the elevator rumbles down the shaft. There is a telephone by the door.
The brass instrument is heavy. I hear nothing for a moment, then a few small bleeping noises which at first sound like the odd tones I heard on my apartment's machine. These are quickly replaced by the voice of a rather surly operator. 'Yes? What do you want?' This is something of a relief.
'Oh, repairs and maintenance please.'
'What, now?'
The lift slows as it approaches the floor I want. 'No, never mind.' I hang up.
I leave the elevator on one of the upper arcade decks, where a brisk walk takes me - past small shops selling the fresh produce just arrived on the early morning goods trains - to the Inches breakfast bar. I stop on the way at a small flower stand and choose a carnation which will contrast nicely with the watch and the cravat.
The panelled, windowless walls of the breakfast bar are painted with competent but unconvincing views of green pastureland. It is a quiet, subdued place, with high ceilings and low lighting, thick carpets and thin porcelain. I am shown to my usual table, at the back. A newspaper lies folded on the table; it is concerned almost entirely with minute changes to the regulations and laws governing the running and maintenance of the bridge and its traffic, the promotions and deaths of the bridge's administrators, the generally quite remarkable boring society gatherings perpetrated by the same groups, and with some of the complicated, arcane and little-played sports and games popular with these mandarins.
I order smoked fish fillets, devilled lamb's kidneys, toast and coffee. Putting the paper aside, I gaze up at the painting on the opposite wall. It shows a sloped meadow of brilliant green, bordered with evergreens and sprinkled with bright flowers. Across a shallow valley there are tree-lined hills, edged in sunlight.
Were these scenes painted from life, or did the places exist only in the artist's head?
Coffee is brought. I have never seen a coffee plant on the bridge. My lamb's kidneys must come from somewhere, but where? On the bridge we talk of down- and up-river, and of Citywards and Kingdomwards; there must be land (would a bridge make sense without it?) but how far away?
I did all the research I could, given the limitations of both language and access which the organisation of the bridge's facilities impose on the amateur investigator, but for all my months of work, I came no closer to discovering the nature or location of either the City or the Kingdom. They remain enigmatic, placeless.
My long-abandoned requests for information are doubtless still sinking through the miasmic layers of bureaucratic ooze that represent the bridge authorities' organisational structure; I have the impression that all my original questions concerning the size of the bridge, what it is bridging, what it connects, and so on, will have been handed on, rephrased, precis'd, tidied-up, glossed, paraphrased and retransmitted so often and between so many different departments and offices that by the time they come to be considered by anybody capable of- and willing to - answer them, they will be virtually meaningless ... and that should they by some miracle survive this process just uncontaminated enough to be comprehensible, any reply, however considerately helpful and paradigmatically clear, will even more certainly have generated into utter incomprehensibility by the time it finally reaches me.
So frustrating did I find the whole investigative process that at one time I seriously considered stowing away on an express train and just going looking for the damned City, or the Kingdom. Officially my wrist band, which identifies me and informs tram conductors which hospital department to charge my ticket to, restricts my travel between two tram termini only; a range of a dozen bridge sections and about the same number of miles in each direction. Not an ungenerous allowance, but a restriction, nevertheless.
I decided not to become a stowaway; I think it is more important to recover the lost territories inside my skull than to go exploring for lost lands here. I shall stay put; when I'm cured I might go.
'Morning Orr.'
I am joined by Mr Brooke, an engineer I met in hospital. A small, dark, pressured-looking man, he sits down heavily opposite me and scowls. 'Good morning, Brooke.'
'See those damn . . .' His scowl deepens.
'Aircraft? Yes. Did you?'
'No, just the smoke. Damn cheek.'
'You disapprove.'
'Disapprove?' Brooke looks shocked. 'Not up to me to approve or disapprove, but I called up a chum of mine at Shipping and Timetabling, and they didn't know anything about these . . . aircraft. Whole thing was totally unauthorised. Heads will roll, mark my words.'
'Are there laws against what they did?'
'There's no law to permit it, Orr, that's the point. Good grief man, you can't have people going off and doing things just because they want to, just because they think something up! You have to have a... a framework.' He shakes his head. 'God, you have some odd ideas at times, Orr.'
'I'd be the last to deny it.'
Brooke orders kedgeree. We were in the same ward in hospital, and he has also been a patient of Dr Joyce's. Brooke is a senior engineer specialising in the effect of the bridge's weight on the seabed; he was injured in an accident in one of the caissons which support some of the structure's granite-shod feet. He is physically recovered now but still suffers from acute insomnia. Something about Brooke always makes me think of him as ill-lit; even in direct sunlight he always seems to be standing in shade.
'Another strange thing happened to me this morning,' I tell him. He looks wary.
'Really?' he says. I tell him about the man in the hospital bed, the television which switches itself on, and the malfunctioning phone. He seems relieved. 'Oh, that sort of thing happens all the time; crossed lines somewhere, I'll bet. You get on to Repairs and Maintenance and keep annoying them until they do something about it.'
'I shall.'
'How's that quack Joyce?'
'Still persevering with me. I've started to have some dreams, but I think they might be too ... structured for the good doctor. He practically ignored the first one. He critised me for giving up my investigations.'
Brooke tut-tuts. 'Well, Orr, he's the doctor and all that, but if I were you I wouldn't waste any more time on all these ...' He pauses, searching for a suitable severe epithet, '... questions. Not likely to get you anywhere, you know. Certainly can't see it getting your memory back. Nor will mooning like a schoolgirl over that sort of stuff.' He gestures dismissively at one of the pastoral scenes on the wall, frowning as though pointing out some unsightly blemish on the varnished panels.
'But Brooke, don't you ever want to see something other than the bridge? Mountains, forest, a desert? Think of-'
'My friend,' he says heavily, watching a waiter pour him some coffee, 'do you know how many different types of rock the foundations rest upon?' He sounds patient, almost tired. I am going to be lectured, but at least this will give me a chance to eat my devilled kidneys, which have arrived and are cooling.
'No,' I admit.
'I'll tell you,' Brooke says. 'No less than seven major different types, not counting traces of dozens of others. Every type of strata is represented: sedimentary, meta-morphic, and both intrusive and extrusive igneous rocks. There are major deposits of basalt, dolerite, calciferous and carboniferous sandstone, basaltic and trachytic agglomerates, basaltic lavas, tertiary and old red sandstone and considerable amounts of schistose grit, all present in complex folded systems whose histories have yet -'
I can stomach no more rocks. 'You mean,' I say, as his kedgeree arrives (he coats it with a snowstorm of salt and deposits pepper on it like a layer of volcanic ash), 'that the bridge has more than enough to offer the enquiring mind without recourse to anything outside it.'
'Precisely.'
I'd have said it was more like approximately, but never mind. Anyway, there is something beyond the bridge, something I can almost but not quite remember. I seem to possess abstractions, general ideas, for things I could never find on the bridge; glaciers, cathedrals, automobiles ... a nearly endless list. But I can recall nothing specific, no particular images come to mind. I can cope with my single language and with the customs and mores of the bridge (all surely the product of training at some point), but I can remember nothing of my schooling, my upbringing. I am complete in everything but memories. Where other people have the equivalents of encyclopedias and journals, I have ... a pocket dictionary.
'Well, I can't help it, Brooke,' I say. 'There just seem to be so many things one can't talk about here: sex, religion and politics, for a start.'
He pauses, a forkful of kedgeree poised halfway to his mouth. 'Well,' he says uncomfortably, 'there's nothing wrong with ... the first one, if one's married, or the girl has a licence or whatever ... but damn it, Orr,' he puts the fork down again, 'you're always going on about "religion" and "politics"; what exactly do you mean?
He seems to be serious. What have I got myself into? First this and then a session with Dr Joyce to follow. All the same, for the next ten minutes I attempt an explanation for Brooke. He looks increasingly mystified. Finally, once I have finished, he says, 'Hmm. Don't know why you need two words; they sound like the same thing to me.'
I sit back in awe. 'Brooke, you should have been a philosopher.'
'A philo- what?'
'Never mind. Eat your kedgeree.'
A tram takes me to Dr Joyce's bridge-section. The cramped, rattling upper deck is full of workers; they sit on the grubby seats and read newspapers with large print and photographs. They are almost entirely taken up with sport and the results of lotteries. The men are steel workers or welders; their thick working jackets have no outside pockets, and are covered in numerous small burns. The men talk amongst themselves, ignoring me. Occasionally I think I catch a word - are they using a thick dialect of my own tongue? - but the more I listen the less I understand. Really I should have waited for a soft-class tram, but I might have made myself late for my appointment with Dr Joyce, and I do believe in punctuality.
I take an express lift to the level where the good doctor has his offices. Piped music plays, but as ever it sounds to me like a random collection of notes and jumbled, mismatched chords, as though all music on the bridge has been encrypted. I have given up expecting to hear anything I can remember or whistle.
A young lady shares the elevator for most of the way. She is dark and slim, and looks modestly at the floor. Her lashes are long and black and her cheek curves exquisitely. She wears a finely cut suit, with a long skirt and short jacket, and I find myself watching the rise and fall of her breasts under a white silk blouse. She does not look at me as she quits the lift; a faint hint of perfume is all that's left behind.
I concentrate on a photograph on one of the dark-wood panels by the elevator door. The picture is old, sepia-tinted, and shows three of the bridge sections being built. They stand alone, unconnected except through their jagged, uncompleted similarity. Tubes and girders jut out, festooned with scaffolding and heavy-looking steam cranes are dotted about the brown lines of iron; the three incomplete sections look almost hexagonal. There is no date on the photograph.
A smell of paint permeates the doctor's offices. Two workmen in white overalls are carrying a desk in through the doors. The reception area is empty, apart from white sheets which cover the floor, and the desk, which the workmen place in the centre of the room. I look into the doctor's room; it is empty too, more white sheets covering the floor. Dr Joyce's name has been removed from the door's glass panel.
'What's happened?' I ask the workmen. They look at me blankly.
The lift again. My hands are shaking.
Thankfully, the hospital reception desk has not moved. I have to wait while a young couple with a small child are directed down a long corridor by the receptionist, but then it is my turn.
'I'm looking for Dr Joyce's office,' I tell the stern, thick-set woman behind the desk. 'He was in room 3422; I was there just yesterday, but he seems to have been moved.'
'Are you a patient?'
'My name is John Orr.' I let her read the details on my wrist band.
'Just a moment.' She lifts the telephone. I sit on a soft bench in the middle of the reception area, which is surrounded by corridors: they radiate away like spokes from a hub. The shorter corridors lead to the outside of the bridge; soft white curtains blow in a light breeze. The woman at the desk is transferred from one person to another. Finally she puts the phone down. 'Mr Orr, Dr Joyce has been relocated to room 3704.'
She draws a diagram showing the way to the doctor's new office. My chest aches dully for a while, a circular echo of pain.
'Mr Brooke sends his regards.'
Dr Joyce looks up from his notes, blinking through his grey-pink lids. I have told the doctor the dream about the galleons which exchange boarding parties. He listened without comment, nodding occasionally, frowning sometimes, making notes. The silence dragged on. 'Mr ...?' Dr Joyce says, puzzled. His thin silver pencil hangs over the notebook like a tiny dagger.
'Mr Brooke,' I remind him. 'Came from Surgical at about the same time I did. An engineer; he suffers from insomnia. You were treating him.'
'Oh,' Dr Joyce says after a moment. 'Yes. Him.' He bends back to his notes again.
Dr Joyce's new offices are even grander than his previous accommodation. Three levels further up, with increased floor space, the doctor would appear to be continuing his advancement. He now has a private secretary as well as a receptionist. Unhappily, his elevation has not entailed the replacement of the AYM ('My, Mr Orr, you are looking well! How nice to see you; have a seat. Do let me take your coat. Cup of coffee perhaps? Tea?').
The little silver pencil is replaced in the doctor's breast pocket. 'So,' he says, clasping his hands. 'What do you make of this dream, hmm?'
Here we go again. 'Doc,' I say, trusting that this will annoy him for a start, 'I don't have a clue; not really my field. How about you?'
Dr Joyce looks at me evenly for a moment. Then he gets up from his seat and throws his notepad onto the desk. He goes over to the window and stands there, looking out and shaking his head. 'I'll tell you what I think, Orr,' he says. He turns, staring at me. 'I think both these dreams, this one and yesterday's, tell us nothing."
'Ah,' I say. And after all my hard work. I clear my throat, not a little peeved. 'Well, what do we do now?'
Dr Joyce's blue eyes glitter. He opens a drawer in his desk and brings out a large book with wipe-clean plastic pages, and a felt-tip pen. He passes these to me. The book contains mostly half-completed drawings and ink-blot tests. 'Last page,' the good doctor says. I turn, dutifully, to the last page. It contains two drawings.
'What do I do?' I ask. This looks childish.
'You see those small lines, four in the top drawing, five in the bottom one?'
'Yes.'
'Complete those by making them into arrows so that they indicate the direction of force the structures shown are exerting at those points.' He holds up one hand as I open my mouth to ask a question. 'That's all I can say. I'm not allowed to give you any clues or answer any further questions.'
I take the pen, complete the lines as asked, and hand the book back to the doctor. He looks, nods. I ask, 'Well?'
'Well what?' He takes a cloth from his drawer and wipes the book as I put the pen on his desk.
'Did I get it right?'
He shrugs. 'What does "right" mean?' he says gruffly, putting everything back in the drawer. 'If it was an exam question you got it right, yes, but it's not an exam question. It's supposed to tell us something about you.' He makes a note in his notebook with the little silver propelling pencil.
'What does it show about me?'
He shrugs again, looking at his notes. 'I don't know,' he says, shaking his head. 'It must show something, but I don't know what. Yet.'
I would quite like to punch Dr Joyce right on his grey-pink nose.
'I see,' I say. 'Well, I hope I have been of some use to the progress of medical science.'
'Me too,' Dr Joyce says, looking at his watch. 'Well, I think that's all for now. Make an appointment for tomorrow, just in case, but if you don't have any dreams, call in and cancel, all right?'
'Golly that was quick, Mr Orr. How did it go? Like a cup of tea?' The immaculately groomed receptionist helps me on with my coat. 'You were in and out of there in no time. How about some coffee?'
'No, thanks,' I say looking at Mr Berkeley and his policeman, who are waiting in the reception area. Mr Berkeley lies curled in a tight foetal position, on his side, on the floor in front of the seated policeman, who is resting his feet on him.
'Mr Berkeley is a footstool today,' the Appalling Young Man tells me, proudly.
In the high, airy spaces of the upper structure the ceilings are tall and the broad, deep-pile carpet in the deserted corridors smells rich and damp. The wood panelling lining the walls is teak and mahogany and the glass strapped in the brass-framed windows - looking out into gloomy lightwells, or towards the now hazed-over sea - has a blue tint to it, like lead crystal. In niches along the dark wooden walls, old statues of forgotten bureaucrats loom like blind ghosts, and high overhead masses of great dark furled flags hang, like heavy nets hung out to dry; they sway gently as a soft, chill draught moves ancient dust through the dark, tall corridors.
About a half-hour's wander from the doctor's offices, I discover an old elevator, opposite a gigantic circular outside window which looks out over the firth like some transparent clock-face robbed of its hands. The lift door is open; an old, grizzled man sits on a tall stool inside, asleep. He wears a long, burgundy coat with shiny buttons, his thin arms are crossed over his belly; his impressively bearded chin rests on his be-buttoned chest, and his white-haired head moves slowly up and down in time with his wheezy breathing.
I cough. The old man sleeps on. I knock on the protruding edge of one door. 'Hello?'
He comes awake with a jerk, uncrosses his arms and steadies himself on the lift controls; there is a click, and the doors start to close, groaning and creaking, until his waving arms flap against the brass levers again, whereupon the doors retreat.
'Bless me, sir. What a fright you gave me! Just having a little snooze, so I was. Come in, sir. Which floor now?'
The generous, room-sized lift is full of ill-assorted chairs, peeling morrors and dust-dulled hanging tapestries. Unless it is a trick of the mirrors, it is also L-shaped, which makes it unique in my experience. 'Train deck, please,' I say.
'Right you are, sir!' The ancient attendant hooks a withered hand over the control levers; the doors grate and clank closed, and after a few nudgings and carefully aimed thumps on the brass plate containing the control levers, the old fellow finally succeeds in coaxing the elevator into motion; it slides - rumbling, stately - downwards, mirrors vibrating, fitments rattling, the lighter seats and chairs rocking on its unevenly carpeted floor. The old man sways precariously on his high stool and holds on tightly to a brass rail under the controls. I can hear his teeth chattering. I hang onto a brightly polished and loosely rattling handrail. A noise like shearing metal echoes somewhere overhead.
Feigning nonchalance, I study a yellowed notice at my shoulder. It lists the various floors the elevator serves, and the departments, accommodation sections and other facilities to be found on these levels. One near the top catches my eye. My God! I've found it!
'Excuse me!' I say to the old man. He turns his head, shaking as though with palsy, to look at me. I tap the list on the wall. 'I've changed my mind; I'd like to go to this floor: 52. To the Third City Library.'
The old man looks despairingly at me for a moment, then puts one shaking hand to the clattering controls and slaps one of the levers down before clutching desperately at the brass rail again and closing his eyes.
The elevator whines, screams, bounces, crashes and judders from side to side. I am almost thrown from my feet; the old fellow parts company with his high stool. Chairs topple. A mirror cracks. A light fixture falls halfway from the ceiling then jerks, like a hanged man, bouncing to a swaying stop in a cascade of plaster and dust and hanging wires.
We come to a halt. The old man pats dust off both shoulders, adjusts jacket and hat, picks up his stool and presses some more controls; we ascend, comparatively smoothly.
'Sorry.' I shout to the attendant. He stares wildly at me and starts glancing about the lift, as though trying to discover what terrible crime I am apologising for. 'I didn't realise stopping and going back would be quite so ... traumatic,' I yell to him. He looks utterly mystified, and gazes round the rattling, creaking, dust-hazed interior of his small domain as though unable to see what all the fuss is about.
We stop. The elevator does not chime on arrival; instead a bell whose power and tone would do justice to a large church concusses the air within it. The old fellow looks fearfully overhead. 'We're here, sir,' he shouts.
He opens the doors to a scene of utter chaos, and jumps back. I watch, amazed, for a few moments, slowly coming forward to the doors. The old attendant peers nervously round the edge.
We seem to have arrived at the scene of terrible disaster; in a huge but wreckage-choked hall in front of us we see fire, fallen girders, mangled pipes and beams, collapsed brickwork and drooping cables; uniformed people rush around carrying fire hoses, stretchers and unidentifiable pieces of equipment. A great pall of smoke overhangs everything. The din and racket of jangling alarms and klaxons, explosions and amplified, shouted orders are frightening, even to ears somewhat stunned by the bell which announced our arrival. What has happened here?
'Strike me sir,' the old attendant coughs, 'doesn't look much like a library from this angle, does it?'
'No it doesn't,' I agree, watching a dozen men wheel some great pumping apparatus across the debris-strewn floor of the hall in front of us. 'Are you quite sure this is the right floor?'
He checks his floor indicator, thumping the dial with one arthritic fist. 'Sure as I can be, sir.' He digs out a pair of spectacles and peers again at the indicator. An explosion in the wreckage of pipes and girders sends up a roll of black smoke and sparks; men nearby jump for cover. A man wearing a tall hat and bright yellow uniform sees us and waves a megaphone. He steps over some bodies on stretchers and approaches us.
'You there!' he shouts. 'What the hell do you think you're doing, eh? Looters? Ghouls? Eh? Is that it? Get on your way at once!'
'I'm looking for the Third City Records and Historical Materials Library,' I tell him calmly. He waves his megaphone at the chaotic scene behind him.
'So are we, you idiot! Now fuck off!' He jabs the megaphone in the direction of my chest and storms off, tripping over one of the bodies on the stretchers and then running over to direct the men manoeuvring the giant pump. The old attendant and I look at each other. He closes the doors.
'Rude bugger, eh, sir?'
'He did seem a little upset.'
'Train deck sir?'
'Hmm? Oh, yes. Please.' I hold onto the rattling brass rail again as we descend. 'I wonder what happened to the library?'
The old man shrugs. 'Goodness knows, sir. All sorts of funny things happen in these higher reaches. Some of the things I've seen ...' He shakes his head, whistles through his teeth. 'You'd be amazed, sir.'
'Yes,' I admit ruefully, 'I probably would.'
At the rackets club in the afternoon I win one game, lose the other. The aircraft and their strange signals are the only topic of conversation; most of the people at the club - professionals and bureaucrats to a man - regard the odd fly-past as an unwarranted outrage about which Something Must Be Done. I ask a newspaper journalist if he has heard anything about a terrible fire on the level where the Third City Library was supposed to be, but he hasn't even heard of the library, and certainly not of any upper-structure disaster. He will check.
From the club I phone Repairs and Maintenance and tell them about my television and telephone. I eat at the club and go to a theatre at night; an uninspired production about a signalman's daughter who falls in love with a tourist who turns out to be a railway boss's son, engaged and having one last fling. I leave after the second act.
At home, as I undress, a small crumpled piece of paper falls from a pocket in my coat. It is the smudged diagram the hospital receptionist drew for me to show me the way to Dr Joyce's office. It looks like this:
I stare at it, vaguely troubled. My head feels light and the room seems to tip, as though I am still in the decrepit L-shaped elevator with the old attendant, completing another unscheduled and dangerous lift-shaft manoeuvre. For a moment my thoughts feel scrambled, mixed up like the smoke signals trailed by the strange flight of planes this morning (and for an instant, dizzy and swaying, I myself seem somehow clouded and formless, like something chaotic and amorphous, like the mists which curl amongst the snagging complexity of the high bridge, coating the layers of ancient paint on its girders and its beams like sweat).
The telephone rings, snapping me out of this odd moment; I lift the receiver only to hear the same, curious, regular beeping at the other end. 'Hello? Hello? ' I say. Nothing.
I put it down. It rings again and the same thing happens. I leave it off the cradle this time and cover the earpiece with a cushion. I don't even try the television - I know what I'll see.
As I head for bed, I realise I am still holding the small piece of paper. I throw it into the waste-bin.
At my back lay the desert, ahead the sea. One golden, one blue, they met like rival modes of time. One moved in the immediate, sparkling in troughs and crests, lifting white and falling, beating the shelf of sand, and the tide as breath . . . the other moved more slowly, but as surely, the tall advancing waves of sand stroked over the waste by the combing hand of the unseen wind.
Between the two, half submerged by each, the ruined city.
Abraded by both sand and water, caught like something soft between two meshing iron wheels, the stones of the city submitted to the agents of the wind.
I was alone, and walked through the midday heat, a white ghost billowing through the tumbled wreckage of the shattered buildings. My shadow was at my feet, beneath me; invisible.
The rose-red stones were jumbled and askew. Most of the streets were gone, long ago buried under the soft encroaching sands. Ruined arches, fallen lintels, collapsed walls littered the slopes of sand; at the scalloped edge of shore, brushed by the waves, more fallen blocks broke the incoming waves. A little out to sea, tilted towers and the fragment of an arch rose from the waters, sucked at by the waves like the bones of the long-drowned.
On the worn stones over empty doors and sand-filled windows, friezes of figures and symbols had been carved. I inspected these curious, half-legible images, attempting to decipher their linear patterns. The wind-blown sand had eroded some of the walls and beams until the thickness of stone was less than the depth of the chiselled symbols; blue sky shone through the blood-red rock. 'I know this place,' I said to myself. 'I know you,' I said to the silent wreckage.
A huge statue stood apart from the main area of the city's ruins. The thick-set trunk and head of a man, perhaps three or four times life-size, it faced along a diagonal between the line of foam-washed beach and the centre of the silent ruins. The statue's arms had fallen or been broken off long ago; the stumps worn smooth by the wind and sand. One side of the massive body and head showed the accumulated effects of the scouring wind, but on the front, and the other side, this figure's details were still apparent; a naked torso, big-bellied, but the upper chest covered in chains and jewels and rope-thick necklaces; the great head, bald but crowned, ear heavy with rings, nose studded. The expression on that time-worn face was one which, like the graven symbols, I could not translate; perhaps cruelty, perhaps bitterness, perhaps a callous disregard for all things, save sand and wind.
'Mock? Mocca?' I found myself whispering, gazing up at the bulbous stone eyes. The giant offered no help. Names too became worn away, however slowly; at first altered, then reduced, then forgotten.
On the beach before the city, some way from the statue's stony gaze, I found a man. He was small and lame and hunched over, and he stood up to his knees in the shallow surf, the waves washing round the dark rags he wore, and he beat at the surface of the water with a heavy lash of chains, cursing all the while.
His head was bowed under the weight of his deformed back; long, filthy hair hung down in tight tangles to the chopping waves, and sometimes, like a sudden grey-white hair erupting from the centre of this dark mass, a long strand of spittle would drop towards the waves, and float away.
All the time his right arm rose and fell, whipping at the sea with his flail, a short heavy thing with a shining wooden handle and a dozen glistening, rusting lengths of iron chain. The waters around him frothed and bubbled under this steady and unceasing attack, and clouded with the grains of sand disturbed from the slope beneath.
The hunched man stopped his flogging for a moment, shifted - crablike - a step to one side, wiped his mouth with one cuff, then resumed, muttering all the time as the heavy chains rose, fell, splashed. I stood on the shore behind him, watching, for a long time. He stopped again, wiped his face once more, then took another step to the side. The wind blew his ragged clothes, briefly lifted his oily, tangled hair. My own loose garment flapped in the same gust, and he may have heard the noise over the falling surf, for he did not immediately resume his labours. His head moved slightly, as though to catch some faint sound. He seemed to try to straighten his twisted back, but then gave up. He turned slowly round in a succession of tiny shuffling steps - as though his feet were hobbled on a short chain - until he faced me. He brought his head up, slowly, until he could look at me, then stood, the waves still breaking around his knees, the flail dangling in the water from one gnarled hand.
His face was almost hidden by the tangled mass of hair piled around his head and falling like another uneven flail towards the sea. His expression was unreadable. I waited for him to speak, but he stood, silent, patient, until finally I said, 'Excuse me. Please carry on.'
He said nothing for a while, gave no sign of having heard, as if there was some medium slower than air between us, then replied in a voice of surprising gentleness. 'It's my job, you know. I am employed to do this.'
I nodded. 'Oh. I see.' I waited for some further explanation.
He seemed to hear my words, again, long after I had spoken them. After a while he gave a lop-sided shrug. 'You see, once, a great emperor . . .' Then his voice died away, and he was silent for a few moments. I waited. He shook his head after a while, and shuffled round to face the curved blue horizon. I shouted, but he gave no sign of having heard.
He started to beat the waves again, muttering and cursing, quietly and monotonously.
I watched him whip at the sea for a little longer, then I turned and walked away. An iron bracelet, like the remains of some snapped manacle - I had not noticed it before - made a faint, rhythmic clinking noise on my wrist as I walked back to the ruins.
Did I really dream that? The ruined city by the sea, the man with the chain whip? I am confused for a moment; did I lie down last night and try to dream up something to tell the doctor?
In the darkness of my large, warmed bed, I feel a sort of relief. I laugh quietly, inordinately pleased with myself for having finally had a dream I can tell the good doctor with a clear conscience. I get up and pull on a dressing-gown. The apartment is cold, the grey dawn glows softly through the tall windows; a tiny, slowly pulsing light shines far out to sea, beneath a long low bank of dark cloud, as though the cloud is land, and the slowly flashing buoy a harbour's signal.
A bell sounds somewhere, far away, followed by the quieter chimes which announce the hour as five o'clock. A train whistle blows in the distance beneath, and a hardly heard, partly felt rumble witnesses the passing of a heavy-goods.
In the sitting room, I watch the grey, unmoving picture of the man in the hospital bed. The small bronze sculptures of the bridge workers, placed variously about the room, reflect the palely shining monochrome light from their rough surfaces. Suddenly a woman, a nurse, comes silently onto the screen and goes to the man's bed. I cannot see her face. She seems to be taking the fellow's temperature.
There is no sound other than a distant hiss. The nurse walks round the bed, over the shiny floor, to check the machines. She disappears again, going beneath the camera, then returns holding a small metal tray. She takes a syringe from it, draws some fluid from a little bottle, holds the needle up, then swabs the pale man's arm and injects him. I suck air through my teeth; I have never (I am sure) liked injections.
The picture is too grainy for me to see the needle actually piercing the man's skin, but in my imagination I see the slant-edged tip of the needle's tube, and the pale, soft, yielding skin ... I wince with sympathetic pain and turn the set off.
I lift the cushion off the telephone. The beeping noise is still there; maybe a little faster than it was before. I replace the receiver on the cradle. The machine rings immediately. I pick it up, but instead of the pulsing monotone:
'Ah, Orr; got you at last. That is you, isn't it?'
'Yes, Brooke, it's me.'
'Where have you been?' His voice is slurred.
'Asleep.'
'Out where? Sorry, this noise -' I can hear babbling voices in the background.
'I wasn't anywhere. I was asleep. Or rather I was -'
'Asleep?' Brooke says loudly. 'That won't do, Orr. That just won't do at all, I'm sorry. We're at Dissy Pitton's - the bar. Come over at once; we've saved you a bottle.'
'Brooke, it's the middle of the night.'
'Good grief, is it? Just as well I called.'
'The dawn is just coming up.'
'Is it?' Brooke's astonished voice goes away from the phone. I hear him shout something, then there is loud, ragged cheering. 'Hurry up then, Orr. Get a milk train or something. We'll expect you.'
'Brooke -' I begin, but then I hear Brooke talking away from the telephone again, and some distant shouting.
'Oh,' he says. 'Yes. And bring a hat; you've got to bring a -' More shouting in the background. 'Oh; it has to be a wide-brimmed hat. Have you got a wide-brimmed hat?'
'I -' I am interrupted by further shouting.
Brooke yells, 'Yes, it has to be wide-brimmed! If you haven't got a wide-brimmed hat, don't bring one that isn't. Have you got one?'
'I think so,' I say, suspecting that to say so is to commit myself to going.
'Right,' Brooke says. 'See you soon. Don't forget the hat.'
He rings off. I put the phone down, lift it again and hear the regular beeping noise once more. I look out at the slowly flashing light under the cloud bank, shrug, and head for my dressing room.
Dissy Pitton's bar lies, spread over several eccentrically arranged floors, in an unfashionable area only a few decks above train level. Directly beneath the lowest of the bars there is a rope works, where ropes and cables are wound in a series of long and narrow sheds. Accordingly, Dissy Pitton's is a place of ropes and cables, where the tables and chairs are suspended from the ceilings rather than supported by the floors. In Dissy Pitton's, as Brooke once observed in one of his rare bouts of humour, even the furniture is legless.
The doorman is asleep on his feet, leaning back against the wall of the building, arms folded and head down, peaked cap shading his eyes from the flashing neon sign over the door. He is snoring. I let myself in and climb through two dark, deserted floors to where noise and light indicate the party continues.
'Orr! The very man!' Brooke comes unsteadily through the crowd of people and the swaying maze of suspended tables, chairs, couches and screens. He steps over a snoring body on the way.
Drunks in Dissy Pitton's seldom remain under the table for long. Usually they end up sprawled on the floor in some distant part of the bar, having been tempted by the seemingly endless plane of teak floor into crawling off on all fours, driven by some deeply ingrained instinct of infantile inquisitiveness, or perhpas the desire to impersonate a slug.
'Good of you to come, Orr,' Brooke says, taking my arm. He looks at the wide-brimmed hat I am clutching. 'Nice hat.' He leads me towards a distant table.
'Yes,' I say, handing it to him. 'Who wanted it? What's it for?'
'What?' He stops; he turns the hat over in his hands. He looks, mystified, inside the crown, as though for a clue.
'You asked for a wide-brimmed hat, remember?' I tell him. 'You asked me to bring one, earlier.'
'Hmm,' Brooke says, and leads me to a table with four or five people clustered around it. I recognise Baker and Fowler, two of Brooke's fellow engineers. They are in the process of trying to stand up. Brooke still looks puzzled. He is looking closely at the hat.
'Brooke,' I say, trying not to sound exasperated. 'You asked me to bring the damn thing, not half an hour ago. You can't have forgotten.'
'You sure that was this evening?' Brooke says sceptically.
'Brooke, you rang! You invited me over here, you -'
'Oh look,' Brooke says, belching and reaching for a bottle. 'Have some wine and we'll think about it.' He shoves a glass into my hands. 'You've got some catching up to do.'
'I fear your lead is unassailable.'
'You're not upset, are you, Orr? Brooke says, pouring wine into my glass.
'Merely sober. The symptoms are similar.'
'You are upset.'
'No, I'm not.'
'Why are you upset?'
Why do I form the impression that Brooke is not really listening to me? This happens, sometimes. I talk to people, but a sort of emptiness seems to come over them, as though the face really is a mask, with the real person somewhere behind it, normally pressed up against the inside like a child with their nose against a sweet-shop window, but - when I am talking to them, trying to make some difficult or unacceptable point - lifting that internal self away from the mask and turning somewhere inside themselves, performing the mental equivalent of taking their shoes off and putting their feet up, having a cup of coffee and resting for a while, returning later only when they're good and ready, to nod inappropriately and make some wholly irrelevant remark redolent of stale thoughts. Perhaps it's me, I think. Perhaps only I have this effect on people; maybe nobody else does.
Well, this is paranoid thinking, I suppose, and I don't doubt the effect is one of those which, once one has the courage to broach the subject with other people, will prove to be extremely common, if not nearly universal ('Oh yes, I've felt that; that happens to me! I thought it was only me.')
Meanwhile, engineers Baker and Fowler have both succeeded in standing and pulling on their coats. Brooke is talking earnestly to engineer Fowler, who looks perplexed. Then enlightenment spreads across his face. He says something which Brooke nods at before coming back to me. 'Bouch,' he tells me, then picks up his own coat from the back of a couch.
'What?' I say.
'Tommy Bouch,' Brooke says, putting his coat on. 'He wanted the hat.'
'What for?'
'Don't know, Orr,' Brooke admits.
'Well, where is he?' I ask, looking round the bar.
'Went outside a while ago,' Brooke tells me. He buttons his coat. Fowler and Baker stand behind him, swaying uncertainly.
'Are you three going?' I ask, rather unnecessarily.
'Have to,' Brooke says, then takes my arm, leans closer. 'Urgent appointment at Mrs Hanover's,' he whispers loudly.
'Mrs -' I begin. Mrs Hanover's is a licensed brothel. I know that Brooke and his cronies visit it occasionally, and I suspect it is frequented mostly by engineers (a host of unsubtle allusions suggest themselves). I have been invited before, but made it clear I have no interest in attending. This reticence arises from vanity, not moral scruples, I have assured Brooke, but I suspect he still thinks I am - beneath my talk of sex, politics and religion - a prude.
'Don't suppose you want to come along, do you?' Brooke says.
'Thank you, no,' I say.
'Hmm, didn't think so,' Brooke nods. He takes my arm again, puts his mouth near to my ear. 'Thing is, Orr, it's a bit awkward . . .'
'What?' I watch engineer Fowler talking to a young man with long hair who is sitting in the shadows behind him. Another young man is slumped over the table behind him.
'It's Arrol's daughter,' Brooke says, glancing back over his shoulder.
'Who?'
'Chief Engineer Arrol's daughter,' Brooke whispers. 'She's sort of attached herself to us, you see, and that brother of hers has gone and fallen asleep, so if we leave now there won't be anybody to ... Look, you wouldn't mind sort of. . . talking to her, would you?'
'Brooke,' I say coldly, 'first of all you call me at five o'clock in the morning, then -' I get no further.
Baker, supported by an anxious-looking Fowler, stumbles into Brooke, and says, 'Think we'd better go now, Brooke; not feeling awfully . . .' Engineer Baker stops, seems to belch. His cheeks bulge; he swallows, then grimaces and nods in the direction of the steps to the lower floor.
'Got to go, Orr,' Brooke says hurriedly, grabbing one of Baker's arms while Fowler grasps the other. 'See you later. Thanks for looking after the girl. Have to make your own introductions, sorry.' The three of them barge past me; Brooke shoves the wide-brimmed hat back into my hands. Fowler drags Baker off towards the stairs, with Brooke in tow via Baker's other arm. 'I'll tell Tommy Bouch about the hat if I see him,' Brooke shouts.
They stagger together through the crowds, towards the stairs. As I turn, my attention is caught by the young man I saw Fowler talking to earlier; he is looking up, from rather baggy eyes, smiling at me.
Wrong. Not a young man; a young woman. She is wearing a dark, rather well-cut suit with wide trousers, a brocade waistcoat with a rather ostentatious gold chain across it, and a white cotton shirt. Her shirt collar is open, a black bow-tie hanging undone from it. Black shoes. Her hair is dark, shoulder length. She is sitting sideways on a seat, one leg drawn up under her. One dark hooked eyebrow hoists; I follow her gaze to where the tripod of engineers who have just left the table are attempting to navigate their way through the press of bodies at the head of the stairs. 'Think they'll make it?' She says. She tips her head to one side, one clenched fist supporting the back of her head.
'I think I'd want very good odds,' I reply. She nods thoughtfully and takes a drink from a long glass.
'Yes, me too,' she says. 'I'm sorry; I don't know your name.'
'My name is John Orr.'
'Abberlaine Arrol.'
'How do you do,' I say.
Abberlaine Arrol smiles, amused. 'I do as I like, Mr Orr. And yourself?'
One irrelevant reply deserves another; 'You must be Chief Engineer Arrol's daughter,' I say, putting the wide-brimmed hat on the end of the couch (where, with any luck at all, somebody else will pick it up).
'That's right,' she says. 'Are you an engineer, Mr Orr?' She waves one long, unringed hand at a seat beside her. I take off my coat, sit down.
'No, I'm a patient, under Dr Joyce.'
'Ahh,' she says, nodding slowly. She looks at me with a directness I've found unusual on the bridge, as though I am some complicated mechanism in which one small part has come adrift. Her face is young, but soft-looking in the way of an older woman's, though unlined; she is small-eyed, with the hoses obvious under the smooth skin at brow and cheek. Her mouth is quite broad, and smiling, but I find my gaze drawn to small crinkles of skin under her grey eyes, small folds, which give her a knowing, ironic look.
'What do they think might be wrong with you, Mr Orr?' Her eyes glance towards my wrist, but my medical name band is hidden by my cuff.
'Amnesia.'
'Ah really; from when?' She wastes no time between sentences.
'About eight months ago. I was . . . netted by some fishermen.'
'Oh, I think I read about it. They fished you out of the sea.'
'So I'm told. That's one of the many things I've forgotten.'
'Haven't they found out who you are yet?'
'No; no one has claimed me, at any rate. I don't match the description of any missing person.'
'Hmm, it must be strange.' A finger goes to her lips. 'I imagined it might be quite interesting and . . .' a shrug, 'romantic to have lost one's memory, but perhaps it's just frustrating?' She has rather fine, very dark eyebrows.
'Mostly frustrating, but also interesting, as is the treatment. My doctor believes in dream therapy.'
'And do you?'
'Not yet.'
'You will if it works.' She nods.
'Probably.'
'But,' she raises one finger. 'What if you have to believe in it before it can work?'
'I'm not sure that would accord with the good doctor's scientific principles.'
'But if it works, who cares?'
'Ah, but if one has belief without reason in the process, one may end up having belief without reason in the result.'
This makes her pause, but only for a moment.
'So you might think you're cured, when you're not,' she says. 'But there'd be a definite result; you'd either have your memory back or not.'
'Ah, but I might not; I might make it up.'
'Make up your own past life?' Sceptically.
'Some people do it all the time.' I think I am teasing, but even as I speak the words, I wonder.
'Only to fool other people. They must know they're lying.'
'I'm not sure it's that simple. I think the easiest people to fool are ourselves. Fooling ourselves may even be a necessary precondition for fooling others.'
'Oh no,' she says quite definitely. 'To be a good liar you have to have a very good memory; to fool others you usually have to be cleverer than they.'
'You think no one ever believes their own stories?'
'Oh, maybe a few people in psychiatric hospitals do, but that's all. I think most of the patients who claim to believe they're other people are just playing a sort of game with the staff.'
Such certainty! I seem to recall being that sure of things, even if I can't remember what it was I was so definite about. 'You must think doctors very easy to fool,' I say. She smiles. Her teeth are unobjectionable. I am aware of evaluating this young woman, of sizing her up. She is entertaining without being entrancing, absorbing without being captivating. Probably just as well. She nods.
'I think they can be fooled quite easily when they treat the mind like a muscle. It doesn't seem to occur to them that their patients might be trying to fool them deliberately.'
I'd dispute this: Dr Joyce, for one, seems to make it a matter of professional pride never fully to believe anything his patients tell him. 'Well,' I say, 'I think a good doctor will usually spot the charlatan patient. Most people lack the imagination to assume the role sufficiently well.'
Her brows crease. 'Maybe,' she says, staring past me intently, unfocused. 'I'm just thinking of childhood, when we -'
At this point, the young man sitting on the far side of her, with his arms on the table and his head on his arms, stirs, sits up and yawns, looking round with bleary eyes. Abberlaine Arrol turns to him. 'Ah, awake once more,' she says to him, a gangly fellow with close-set eyes and a long nose. 'Finally scrape together a quorum of neurons, did we?'
'Don't be a shit, Abby,' he says after a dismissive glance at me. 'Get me some water.'
'You may be an animal, brother dear,' she says, 'but I am not your keeper.'
He looks about the table, which is mostly covered in dirty plates and empty glasses. Abberlaine Arrol looks at me. 'I don't suppose you know if you have any brothers, do you?'
'Not to the best of my knowledge.'
'Hmm.' She gets up and heads for the bar. The fellow closes his eyes and leans back in his seat, making it swing slightly. The bar is emptying. Only a few legs can be seen poking out from beneath distant tables, witnessing where their owners' alcoholic excursions into the long-lost days of four-limbed locomotion have come to their stupefied conclusions. Abberlaine Arrol returns with a pitcher of water. She is smoking a long, thin cigar. She stands in front of the young man and pours a little over his head, puffing on the cigar.
He stumbles to the floor, cursing, and stands up shakily. She hands him the pitcher and he drinks. She watches him with a sort of amused contempt.
'Did you see the famous aircraft this morning, Mr Orr?' Miss Arrol asks, watching her brother, not looking at me.
'Yes. Did you?'
She shakes her head. 'No. I was told about them, but I thought at first that it was a joke.'
'They looked real enough to me.'
Her brother finishes the water and throws the pitcher behind him with a theatrical gesture. It smashes on a table in the shadows. Abberlaine Arrol shakes her head. The young man yawns.
Tm tired. Let's go. Where's dad?'
'Gone to the club. But that was some time ago; he might be home by now.'
'Good. Come on.' He walks towards the stairs. Miss Arrol shrugs at me.
'I must go, Mr Orr.'
'That's all right.'
'Nice talking to you.'
'A mutual pleasure, then.'
She looks to where the young man is waiting, hands on hips, at the top of the steps. 'Perhaps,' she says to me, 'we'll have the chance to continue our conversation at a later date.'
'I hope so.'
She remains standing there for a moment; slim, slightly dishevelled, smoking her cigar, then executes a deep, mocking bow, hand flourished, and backs away, sticking her cigar in her mouth. A line of grey smoke curls after her.
The revellers have departed. Most of the people left in Dissy Pitton's are bar staff; they are switching out lights, wiping tables, sweeping the floor, lifting inebriated forms from the deck. I sit and finish my glass of wine; it is warm and bitter, but I hate to leave an unfinished glass.
Finally, I rise and tread the narrow corridor of remaining lights to the stairs. 'Sir!'
I turn; a broom-wielding barman is holding the wide-brimmed hat. 'Your hat,' he says, shaking it at me just in case I thought he meant the broom. I take the cursed thing, secure in the knowledge that had it been precious to me, had I been looking after it and trying to make sure that I didn't lose it, it would most assuredly have disappeared for ever.
At the door Tommy Bouch is being held against the wall by the no longer dormant doorman and quizzed on his identity and destination. Engineer Bouch seems unable to make any coherent noises, his face has a distinctly green hue about it and the doorman is having difficulty supporting him.
'You know this gentleman, sir?' the doorman asks. I shake my head.
'Never seen him before,' I say, then shove the hat between the doorman's arms. 'But he left his hat inside.'
'Oh, thank you sir,' the doorman says, he holds the hat in front of the engineer's face so that he can see it (or both of them, as the case may be). 'Look, sir, your hat.'
'Thanyoo,' Engineer Bouch succeeds in pronouncing, before transferring the contents of his stomach into the crown of the headgear. Thanks to the wide brim, of course, remarkably little splatters over the side.
I walk away feeling oddly triumphant. Perhaps that was what he wanted it for all the time.
'Not here?'
'Oh, golly, you know I really and honestly am sorry Mr Orr, but no, he isn't.'
'But I have -'
'An appointment, yes, I know Mr Orr. I have it here, see?'
'Well, what's the matter?'
'Urgent meeting of the Administrative Board Primary Subcommittee Vetting Committee, I'm afraid; pretty important. The doctor's a very busy man these days, sir. There are just so many calls on his time. You mustn't take it personally, Mr Orr.'
'I'm not -'
'It's just the way things go. Nobody likes all this admin stuff, but it's just a dirty job that has to be done.'
'Yes, I-'
'It could have happened during anybody's appointment; you were just unlucky.'
'I appreciate -'
'You mustn't take it personally. It was just one of those things.'
'Yes, of course -'
'And of course there's absolutely no connection with us forgetting to tell you we'd moved offices the other day. That was purely coincidence; it could have happened to absolutely anybody whatsoever. You were just unlucky. It really really isn't anything personal.'
'I-'
'You mustn't take it that way.'
'I'm not!'
'Oh, Mr Orr; not at home to Mr Tetchy, are we?'
Outside, remembering yesterday's eventful elevator journey, I head in the same direction as before, looking for the giant circular window and the entrance to the decrepit, L-shaped lift opposite it.
Increasingly frustrated and annoyed, I wander for over an hour through the high-ceilinged gloom of the upper structure, past the same blind-statued niches (ancient bureaucrats fastened in pale stone) and the same heavily hanging flags (furled like thickly ponderous sails on some great dark ship), but without finding the circular window, the old bearded man, or the lift. A senior clerk whose long-service ribbons proclaim he is a veteran of at least thirty years service, looks puzzled and shakes his head when I describe the lift and its grizzled operator.
Eventually (the doctor would not be proud of me), I give up.
I spend the next few hours tramping round various small galleries in a distant section of the bridge, some distance from my usual haunts. The galleries are dark and musty, and the attendants look surprised that anybody should come to view the exhibits. Nothing satisfies me; the works all look tired and spent; paintings washed out, sculptures deflated. Worse than the poor execution, though, is the downright unhealthy preoccupation with distortions of the human form which all the artists appear to share. The sculptors have twisted it into a bizarre resemblance of the structures of the bridge itself; thighs become caissons, torsos either caissons or structural tubes, and arms and legs stressed girders; section of bodies are constructed from riveted iron painted bridge red; tubular girders become limbs, merging into grotesque conglomerations of metal and flesh like tumorous miscegenistic eruptions of cell and grain. The paintings exhibit much the same preoccupations; one shows the bridge as a line of misshapen dwarfs standing in sewage or blood, arms linked, another depicts a single tubular formation, but with meandering blue veins picked out beneath the ochre surface, and small trickles of blood coming from each rivet hole.
Beneath this part of the bridge is one of the small islands which support every third section.
These islands are regular only in their approximate size and spacing; otherwise they vary in shape and use. Some are riddled with old mine workings and underground caverns, others almost covered in the decaying concrete slabs and circular pits of what look like old gun emplacements. Some support ruined buildings, either old pit-head works or long-crumbled factories. Most have a small harbour or marina at one end, and a few are quite without any sign of human habitation or construction at all - mere lumps of green, covered in grass and scrub and green seawrack.
They share a mystery though, and that is simply how they come to be here in the first place. They look natural, but together, seen in all their linear regularity, the islands betray themselves with a pattern, an unnatural order that makes them even stranger than the bridge they intermittently support.
I toss a coin out of the window on the tram home; it goes glittering away, heading for the sea, not an island. A couple of other passengers throw coins too, and I have a brief, absurd vision of the waters below eventually being filled with thrown coins, the whole firth silting up with the monetary debris of spent wishes, surrounding the hollow metal bones of the bridge with a solid desert of coin.
In my apartment again, before going to bed, I watch the man in the hospital bed for a while, staring at his grey and grainy image so hard and for so long that I almost mesmerise myself with that blank, still image. Rooted in the evening darkness, eyes fixed, I seem to be looking not at a phosphorescing screen of glass, but a bright metal plate; an engraving lined and stamped on a shining, large-grained slab of steel.
I wait for the phone to ring.
I wait for the flight of planes to return.
Then a nurse appears; the same nurse, complete with metal tray. The spell is broken, the illusion of the screen as plate, fractured.
The nurse readies the syrings, swabs the man's arm. I shiver, as though that alcohol, that spirit, chilled me; chilled all my flesh.
Quickly, I switch off.
It wiz this majishin that geez this thing, cald it a familyar soay did an it sits on ma showdder and gose jibber fukin jibber oll bludy day it gose. I cany stand the dam thing but am stuk with it I supose an it wi me to, cumty think ov it. The majishin sed it woold help me; sed it woold tel me things, which it duz alright, but I thaught he ment sum usefyull things no a lode a shite oil day. He wiz trying tay bribe me becose he thaught I wiz goantae kill him, whitch I wiz, an he sed if I didnae hed give us this reely intirestin an usefyull familyar tay keep watch at niyht an giv us oll that advyce an that. So I sed fairnuf pal, lets see whit it can dae then, so he gose tay this shelph an gets this wee box an puts sum stuf intae it an ses sum o thae wurds an that (I wiz watchin him, ken, in case he tryd enythin, had ma sord at his throate in case he tryd tae turn me intae sumthin wee an nastie, but he didnae). Insted he brings oot this funny wee thing like a cat or a munkey, aw cuverd in blak fur wi a pear aw wee blak wings on its bak an cros-eyes, an he stiks it on ma showdder an ses 'Thare you go my boy,' an I wiz a bit leery ken, cos it wiz an ugly wee bugir an sittin gie cloase tae ma heid, but a stil had ma sord at the majishin's throte, so I lookd at this skely-eyed thing an sed 'whare's this auld bugir's gold then?' an it sed 'in the old trunk behind the screan, but its a majik trunk; it looks empty, but yoo can feel the gold and itill becum visibil when you take it out' Majishin just aboot had a fit soay did; I maid him go an get the gold, an it was true whit the familyar had sed so I asked it whit I shoold do now an it sed 'kill this auld bugir for a start off, heeze a triky custimur.' So I kilt the majishin but the fukin thing's nevir sed enythin usefyull ever since, just blethers oil day long.
' ... of course, according to the preceptive rules of the New Symbology, as characterised in the Grande Cabale, the tower signifies retreat, the limitation of contact with the real world; philosophical extrospection. In short, nothing to do with the literally infantile preoccupation with phallic symbolism I mentioned earlier. Indeed , except within the most morally constipated of societies, when people want to dream about sex, they dream about sex. Actually the combination of the cards La Mine and La Tour in the minor game is considered particularly important and the significance of the tower over the pit does have a sexual resonance for predictive purposes which the simple combination of retreat and the fear of failure would not appear immediately to imply, but -'
See whit I meen? Drive ye daft, so it woold. I cany get the wee basturd aff ma showldur niythir on account of its got these claws inside me, biride in ma flesh so they are. Their no soar untill I try takin the thing aff, but soar enuoph then alright. Canny even stab it or bash it with a rok on acount of its ded adjile an starts screemin an bawlin fit tae raze the deid an jookin and jumpin aboot and me triing tay bash it or stik ma dirk doon its throate but tay no avale.
Enyway, Ive dun alright sinse it took up with me, so maybay its lucky after oll. I wrekin it disney wurk right without a majishin around, but that's tuff; Im a sordsman no a bleading wizerd after oll. Enyway, like I say, Ive dun alright sinse it took up with me an its taut me a load a new wurds an that, so am a bit mair ejucatit these days ken. Aw aye, I forgot to mencion that if I try takin it aff ma sholder or if a dinny feed it itill tolk ded loud oil nihgt an keep me awake, so seein it disnae eet mutch an its been luky fir me I just leeve it thare now an we get on as wel as can be excpected. Wish it didnae shite doon ma bak thow.
'Interesting point actually; I mean I'm sure you won't have noticed it, being so single-minded - well, almost single-celled if the truth were told - but in the lands below the situation is quite the reverse of the arrangements at this rarefied altitude (have you noticed you're out of breath? No, probably not). There, in the Elysian pastures of this quintessentially verdant locale, the women command, and the men remain the size of babies all their lives.'
Its jibbering agen, an hears me just aboot at the tap o this fukin big towur, ma sord curverd in blud, soar arm whare wun o them gards cot me at the gate erlyier an am lost in this maze with oll these wee rooms an am wurryin aboot that fyre I started farthur doon coz I can smel the smoake an Id rather no be roseted alive thankyou very mutch, an the dam things bletherin away as useyull. Ill nevir catch that old kween at this rate, an her with her majik powirs an oll to. Anuthir o them gards cum at me but I kilt him nae bothir an jumpt ower him, stil lookin fur the way up an switherin whitch way tae go.
'God these drones are tedious. This hive mentality is a real loss-leader in the higher vertebrates (a label applicable to you, I've always felt, only in terms of physical height). You still lost? I thought so. Worried about the smoke? Of course. A smarter chap would solve both problems at once by watching the way the smoke's drifting; it will try to rise, and there aren't many windows on this floor. Not that there's much chance of you making that sort of connection I imagine; your wits are about as fast as a sloth on Valium. Pity your stream of consciousness hasn't entered the inter-glacial yet, but we can't all be mental giants. I imagine it's all due to some appalling genetic miscoding; probably went wrong in the womb; all the blood supply went to form your muscles and your brain was left to develop on the portion normally reserved for the left big toe or something.'
I thaught I wiz totaly scunnerd fur a minit thare, but I just watched whare the smoake wiz goin an I found this big trapdoar so I think ahm okay but its no joak trying tae wurk oot whits goan on wi that skely-ayed wee bugir gein it crak in ma eer oll the time.
'Talking about babies again, as I was saying - oh well done, we've found a way up to the next storey have we? Congratulations. Will we remember to close the trapdoor? Oh very good. We are coming on. You'll be tying your own bootlaces next ... probably to each other, but anything's a start. What was I saying? Babies. Yes, in the lands below it is the fair rather than the unfair sex which is in charge. Males are born seemingly normal, but they only grow for a short while and halt at about toddler stage; they do mature sexually, growing ample bodily hair and even thickening out a little, and their genitals are fully developed, but they stay a pleasantly cuddleable size all their lives and never grow large enough to be a threat. They never fully develop mentally of course, but plus ça change; ask any woman. These hairy, mischievous little bundles of fun are of course used to father new offspring, and naturally they do make marvellous pets, but the women tend to form serious relationships only amongst themselves, which is quite right and proper if you ask me. Apart from anything else, it takes three or four of the males to form a satisfactory tactile quorum for love-making as opposed to mere insemination ...'
See, stil jibbering away qwite the thing. Litil basturd woold be roseted meet by now if I hadnae found the way up heer. Ded windy up here so it is, bloan fastur than a dragins fart like they say an oll these pillers and curtins and things bein bloan about; the waws look gold but thats just leef an nae use tae man nur beast; Im lookin for the way up tae the next storie behind this big chair up on a stage when these two big gards like bares wi huoman heids cum snarlin an crashin at me wi these big axis, bit I kilt them boath as wel; wuno them faws ovur the edje of the balckiny an I wotch him faw doon the side till hes just a wee spek, but this stil isnae gettin me tae that old bitch qwcan.
'Bet he wishes he'd taken the flying lessons now. Just look at that view, would you? Ridges and hills, all those forests ... streams like veins of quicksilver; quite breath-taking. Even with breathing equipment, I should think. No, you wouldn't need that I suppose; not much chance of you suffering from oxygen starvation; I guess you could probably get by on a couple of molecules a day, at a pinch. God man, look at you; becoming a vegetable would be promotion.
'Still, to give you your due, I must say you did despatch those rather loudly offensive carnivores pretty calmly. They very nearly had me frightened, but you just waded in there quite happily, didn't you? Yes, you've got guts me lad. Pity they're where your brains should be, but you can't have everything. Including a clue, it would seem. Personally I didn't think that throne looked quite right. There doesn't appear to be any way from this storey to the next, but there has to be one, and if I was a monarch I'd want a pretty fast and handy one too, if things ever did get a bit sticky in the throne room. Funny that, you don't normally see a join-line between a throne and its dais. Not the sort of detail I'd expect you to pick up on though, oh brain-dead one.'
Wun day this fukin things goantae drive me right up the bleadin waw, so it wull, oll this mindless chatur in ma erehoal. Id get rid of the gleakit litul basturt if I could, but how? Ats the qwestchion. I go an have a wee sit doon on the big mukle chare thinmyjig; the throan or whitever ye call it, an start presin an prodin bits aw it, just on the offchants, ye ken? When low and fukinbehold the dam things jumps up into the ayr, just like that, wi me stil sittin in it an the bleadin familyar still goan on an on in ma ere.
An a right funy bit aw touwur this is jimmy, I'll tell ye.
'Well what a surprise. Unconventional elevator, what? Seventy-ninth floor: ladies' lingerie, leather wear, beds and vestments.'
Whit a weerd bludy playce; ye wooldnae bileeve it. Big bludy room wi aw these wee beds and coutches an things, an these wimin on them, only the wimin arnae hole; thayve aw got bits misin.
Thayre aw liein thare on these wee beds, and thers a helluf a smel aw sents an perfyooms, an thers this huge grate bugir cums runnin up wi neerly nae close on, an oll shiny wi this ouil and a funy litul hi voyce like a woomun. He was bowin an scrapin an rubin his hands aw ovir each uther an singing at me in this daft woomuns voyse an greetin like a lassy to, teers driblin doon his facye, so I sat thare fur a bit, getin ma breth back, then went fur a look roun this weerd playce with this big fat basturt follwin me an him jibberin away ora time to, an stil greetin.
These wimin wiz all alive, right, but thayd been chopt up; nane aw them had an arm or a leg, just torsers an heids. Lookt like thayd been in sum big battul or sumhin, only they didnae have eny skars on thayre faces or bodys; some cunt had dun a right neet job on them. They were aw bonny, to; big tits and great riggers an right butefull faces. Thay wiz tied doon wi straps an stuff an sum aw them had this lether stuff on, or wee bitty flimzie goonies an that laycey gecr, ye ken. Sum aw them wer greetin to.
Fuk me, a thoaught, sum bugirs got right weerd taysts. Speshlly if oll this wiz for the kween, but then ye hear sum aw these whiches and worloks hav right kingky taysts right enuoph. Certinly wiznae this big fat basturt follwin me aroun that was shaggin these lassys, I thot. Enyway, I was gettin a bit fedup wi old tuby, so I kilt him and then behind this big curtin I found oll these gys; fukin granfaithers evry wan an dresd up in these stupit-lookin roabs.
Shoolda seen them; jumt a fukin mile when they saw me an started bendin over an tutchin the flare in front uv me wi thayre hands an howlin. I askd them whare the kween an her gold wiz, but aw a got wiz mair bludy jibberin. Coodnae unerstand a bleadin word they sed but gess who did.
'Ah the merry men. Still stoic in defeat I see. Your fat friend out there - you know, the one pruned of his prunes - collided with my muscular chum's sword a moment ago; an even unkinder cut than his original wound. I think this lad's patience is wearing a little thin, and it's only micron-thick at the best of times, so if you don't want to end up like fatty out there - as he was alive, or the way he is now- I'd co-operate. So: which way to see the queen? Ah Molochius, yes; you always were the talkative one, weren't you? Yes of course you'll go free. You have my word. Mm-hmm. I see. The mirror. Just plastic I suppose. Hardly original, but still.'
I slit the miror behynd the old gys an there wiz stares on the far side of it leeding up the way. Grate, I thawt.
'Very well, you of the minced cortex; do what comes so naturally to you and let's get on with it.'
I kilt the old gys. Just skin an boan so thay were. Hardly got ma sord dirty. Just as well. I wiz gettin tyred an ma arm wiz soar, furby. Found the qween in the very tap uv the touwir, in this wee widin room, open tae the wind. Ded wee it wiz an just aw these tyles slopin doon the way aw roond; widnae huv dun to be skayrt aw hieghts up thare, let me tell ye. Enyway, thare she wiz, in a sorta blak wedin-dres, sittin thare qwite the thing huddin this wee baw in her hand an lookin at me like I wiz a lumpa shite. No a very nyce lassy, but no as old as Id excpected her tae be; she wooldiv dun up a cloase on a dark niyht. Truth tae tell thogh. I wisnae certin whit tae dae next; there wiz sumhin funy aboot her eyes; cooldnae take mine aff hers an I new she wiz usein yon majic on me but a cooldnae move or anythin or open ma mooth; even auld skely-feetchers wiz qwiet fur a whyle, then he sez, 'Poor, my girl. I expected a better fight than that. Just a moment while I have a word in my friend's ear.
'Ever hear the one about this man going into a bar holding a pig with a red ribbon tied round it? The barman says "Where did you get that?" and the pig says - '
'Nevir mind him,' the qween sez. Tokin tae the fukkin familyar! An I canny even moov a bleadin mussel! See you hen, I thogt; your fur the chop, soonza can moov. 'How did yoo get owt?' she sez.
'Old Xeronisus was stupid; hired this brute and then tried to avoid paying him. I ask you; outsmarted by this moron. I always said the old fraud was overrated. He must have forgotten which box he put me in; stuck me on this dingbat's shoulder thinking I was one of his cheap familiars with the two-day guarantee and perspicacity of a bunion.'
'Idayit,' the qween sez. 'I dont no why I entrustid you to him in the furst playce.'
'Just one of your many mistakes my dear.'
Ill giv the basturdin wee shite mistayks if I get the use aw ma fukin sord hand! These two basturds jibberin away like I wisney heer! Bludy cheek, eh?
'So, cum to reeklaim youre ritefull playce, hav you?' The kween sez.
'Indeed. And not a nanosecond too soon, it would seem; things appear to have got quite out of hand here under your expert misguidance.'
'Wel, you taut me oll I know.'
'Yes, my lovekin, but luckily not all that I know.'
(An ahm thinkin aw cum on; this is rite outa order, so it is; let us moov sumthin fur fuksaik.)
'What do yoo intend to do?' The qwean sez, kwiet like, like she wiz goantay start greetin soon.
'Get rid of that little menagerie downstairs, for a start. Yours?'
'For the preests. You know how I taik my sustinince. The littil laydays get them excited, and then I ... milk them.'
'You could have chosen younger studs.'
'Nun of them are ovir twenty, actchilly; its a very drayning prosess.'
'I think they found my friend's sword even more draining.'
'Wel, cant win them orl,' the qween sez, an looks sorta sad like, an size and wipes a teer away frae her cheek, an Im standin thare like a toatal bampot, rivitid tae the spot an thinkin pair lassy, and whit the fuk's goon on enyway? when aw of a suddin she cums jumping oot the chare riyht at me like a fukin big bat or sumhin, huddin the wee baw thing out in frunt of her an shuvin it strate at the familyar.
Just aboot shit ma breeks so I did, but the familyar wiz afrits mark so it wiz; right affthe showder and right ontae the qweens face; hit her like a fukin cannin-baw; bashed her back intae the chair. She dropt the baw shed been holdin and it rolt away on the flowr an she startit tryin tae get the familyar aff her face; screemin and bawlin and scratchin it and bashin it.
Coodnae bileev ma gude luck. Got the wee basturd aff ma showder at last. Watcht the twa o them struglin fur a secind, then thaught naw; fuk this fur a gaim aw sodjers; am aff, I tried pikcin up the baw the kwean had drapt, but it wiz reed hot! So I went bak doon the stares an no a minit to soon eether; bludy grate bang frae up the sters noks me aff ma feet an sends aw this dust an big lumpsa wid an that crashin doon. Geeza fukin brake, I thoght, but it wiz okay coz I didnae get hit by enythin, so I had a wee peek up whare the sters had been but it was just open ayr up thare now; not a sign aw those too so-an-sos. Basturds.
Never did find the basturdin gold. Just shagged the wimin insted an left. Toatal waist of time but at leest I got rid aw the wee familyar. Huvnae been so luky sinse, mind yoo, an I miss the wee bam sumtimes, but nevir mind. Stil majicjust been a sordsman.
No no no no, it was worse than that (this later, this now, waking up to the watery grey light beyond the curtains, my eyes stuck and mouth gummed and foul, head aching). I was there, that was me, and I lusted after those crippled women and they excited me; I raped them. To the barbarian it meant nothing, less than one more streak of blood on his sword, but I wanted those women; I made them and they were mine. Disgust fills me like pus. My God, better a lack of all desire than one excited by mutilation, helplessness, and rape.
I stumble from my bed; my head hurts, I feel sick and a sweat like dirty oil lies cold on my skin and my bones ache. I throw open the curtains.
The clouds have come down; the bridge - at this level anyway - is wrapped in grey.
Inside, I turn on all the lights, the fire and the television. The man in the hospital bed is surrounded by nurses; they are rolling him over onto his front. His white face shows nothing, but I know he is in pain. I hear myself groan; I turn the set off. The pain inside my chest comes and goes with a rhythm and a pace all its own; insistent, nagging.
I stagger, like a drunkard, to the bathroom. In here all is white and precise and there are no windows to show the clinging fog outside; I can shut the door, turn on more lights and be surrounded by precise reflections and hard surfaces. I let the bath run and stare for a long time at my image in the mirror. After a while, it is as though everything becomes dark again, as if everything fades away. The eyes, I remember, only see by moving; tiny vibrations shake them so that the viewed image lives; paralyse the muscles of the eyes, or somehow fix something to the cornea so that it moves along with the eye, and vision itself disappears ...
I know this; I learned it, somewhere, once, but I don't know where or when. My memory is a drowned landscape and I look from a narrow cliff, out over where there were once fertile plains and rolling downs. Now there is just the uniform surface of the water, and a few islands that were mountains; foldings produced by some unfathomable tectonics of the mind.
I shake myself from my little trance, only to discover that my image really has disappeared; the bath waters are hot, and the swirling vapour has condensed on the mirror's cold surface, masking it, covering it, rubbing me out.
Carefully clothed and groomed, well-breakfasted, and having discovered - almost to my surprise - that the doctor's office is still where it was yesterday, and my appointment neither cancelled nor postponed ('Morning Mr Orr! How nice to see you! Yes, of course the doctor is here. Would you like a cup of tea?), here I sit in the doctor's enlarged office, ready for my mentor's questions.
I decided over breakfast that I would lie about my dreams. After all, if I can invent the first two, I can cover up the others. I shall tell the doctor I had no dreams last night, and shall make up the one I was supposed to have had the night before. There is no point in telling him the sort of things I have really been dreaming about: analysis is one thing, but shame is quite another.
The doctor, all in grey as usual, eyes glittering like splinters of ancient ice, looks at me expectantly. 'Well,' I say apologetically, 'there were three dreams, or one dream in three parts.'
Dr Joyce nods, makes a note. 'Mm-hmm. Carry on.'
'The first is very short. I'm in a huge, palatial house, looking across a dark corridor to a black wall. Everything is monochrome. A man appears from one side; he walks slowly and heavily. He is bald, and his cheeks seem puffed out. I can't hear any sound. He walks from left to right, but as he walks past where I'm looking, I see that the wall on the far side of him is actually a huge mirror, and his image is repeated and repeated in it, by another mirror which must be somewhere to one side of me. So I see all these thick, heavy-looking men, in a great row, marching more precisely in step than any line of soldiers ...' I look up at the doctor's eyes. Deep breath.
'The ridiculous thing is, the reflection nearest the man, the first one, doesn't mimic his actions; for a second, just for a moment, it turns and looks at him - it doesn't break step, only the head and the arms move - and it puts both its hands to its head, spread out like this - ' (I show the doctor) 'and waggles them and then immediately jerks back into position. The reflected line of fat men walk out of view. The real man, the original one, doesn't notice what has happened. And ... well, that's all.'
The doctor purses his lips and clasps his pink stubby fingers together.
'Did you also identify with the man in the sea at any point? As well as being the man in the robes who was watching from the shore, was there at any time a sensation of being the other one? Who, after all, was the more real? The man on the shore seems to have disappeared at some point; the man with the chain-lash stopped seeing him. Well; don't answer that now. Think about it, and the fact that the man you were had no shadow. Carry on, please; what is the next dream?'
I sit and stare at Dr Joyce. My mouth hangs open.
What did he just say? Did I hear that? What did I say? My God, this is worse than last night. I am dreaming and you are something from within myself.
'Wh-I - I'm sorry? Wh- what? What - how did you ...?'
Dr Joyce looks puzzled. 'I beg your pardon?'
'What you just said ..." I say, my tongue stumbling over the words.
'I'm sorry,' Dr Joyce says, and takes off his spectacles. 'I don't know what you mean Mr Orr. All I said was, "Carry on please."'.
God, am I still asleep? No, no, definitely not, no point trying to pretend this is a dream. Press on, keep going. Maybe it's just a temporary lapse; I still feel odd, fevered; that's all it is, that's all it can be. Fog on the brain. Don't let it disturb you; maintain; the show must go on.
'Yes I - I beg your pardon; I'm not concentrating very well today. Didn't sleep well last night; probably why I didn't dream.' I smile bravely.
'Of course,' the good doctor says, putting his spectacles back on his nose. 'Do you feel well enough to continue?'
'Oh yes.'
'Good.' The doctor actually smiles, if a little artificially, like a man trying on a loud tie he knows doesn't really suit him. 'Please continue when your ready.'
I have no choice. I have already told him there were three dreams.
'In the next dream, in monochrome again, I'm watching a couple in a garden, perhaps a maze. They're on a bench, kissing. There's a hedge behind them, and a statue of... well, a statue, a figure on a pedestal, nearby. The woman is young, attractive, the man T- who is wearing some sort of formal suit - is older; he looks distinguished. They are embracing quite passionately.' I have avoided the doctor's eyes; it takes a considerable act of will to bring my head up and face him again. 'And then a servant appears; a butler or footman. He says something like, "Ambassador, the telephone," as the old distinguished man and the young woman look round. The young woman gets up from the bench, smooths down her dress and says something like "Damn. Duty calls. Sorry, darling," and follows the servant away. The old man, frustrated, goes over to the statue, gazes at one of the figure's marble feet, then pulls out a large hammer and brings it smashing down on the big toe.'
Dr Joyce nods, makes some notes, and says, 'I would be interested in what you think the dialect signifies. But carry on.' He looks up.
I swallow. There is a strange, high whine in my ears.
'The last dream, or the last part of the single dream, takes place during the day, on some cliffs above a river inside a beautiful valley. A young boy sitting eating a piece of bread with some other children, and a beautiful young teacher ... they're all having lunch, I think, and there's a cave behind ... no, there isn't a cave ... anyway, the young boy is holding his sandwich, and I'm looking at it too, from very close up, and a big splash suddenly appears on it, then another, and the boy looks up, puzzled, at the cliff above; and there's a hand hanging over the edge of the cliff top, and it's holding a bottle of tomato sauce, which is dripping onto the boy's bread. That's all.'
What now?
'Mm-hmm,' the doctor says. 'Was this a wet-dream?'
I stare at him. It is asked reasonably enough, and of course what is said here is completely confidential. I clear my throat. 'No, it was not.'
'I see,' the doctor says, and spends some time making half a page of microscopically neat notes. My hands are shaking, I am sweating.
'Well.' the doctor says, 'I feel we've come to a ... fulcrum in this case, don't you?'
A fulcrum? what does the good doctor mean?
'I don't know what you're talking about,' I say.
'We have to go on to another stage of the treatment,' Dr Joyce tells me. I don't like the sound of this.
The doctor issues a precisely weighted professional sigh. 'While I think we might have a ... well, quite a good deal of material here,' he looks back through several pages of notes, 'I don't feel we're getting any closer to the core of the problem. We're circling around it, that's all. You see,' he looks up at the ceiling, 'if we regard the human mind as - say - like a castle -'
Oh-oh, my doctor believes in metaphors.
' - then all you've been doing for the last few sessions is taking me on a guided tour of the curtain wall. Now, I'm not saying you're deliberately trying to deceive me; I feel sure you want to help yourself as much as I want to help you, and you probably think we're really heading inwards, towards the keep, but... I'm an old hand at this, John, and I can see when I'm not getting anywhere.
'Oh.' I can't take much more of this castle comparison. 'So what now? I'm sorry if I haven't - '
'Oh. no apologies needed, John,' Dr Joyce assures me. 'But I do think a new technique is required here.'
'What new technique?'
'Hypnosis,' Dr Joyce says avuncularly, smiling. 'It's the only way through the next line of walls, or to the keep, perhaps.' He sees my frown. 'It wouldn't be difficult; I think you would make a good subject.'
'Really?' I stall. 'Well ...'
'It may well be the only way forward,' he nods. The only way forward? I thought we were trying to go backwards.
'You're sure?' I need to think about this. How much does Dr Joyce want? How much of me does he want?
'Quite sure,' the doctor says. 'Perfectly certain.' Such emphasis!
I fiddle with my wrist band. I'm going to have to ask for time to think.
'But perhaps you'd like to think about it,' Dr Joyce says. I show no relief. 'Besides,' he adds, looking at his pocket watch, 'I have a meeting in half an hour, and I'd like to schedule you on an open-ended basis, so perhaps now isn't the most convenient time.' He starts to pack up, putting the notepad on his desk, checking his little silver pencil is safely in the scabbard of his breast pocket. He takes off his glasses, blows on them, polishes them with his handkerchief. 'You have,' he says, 'exceptionally vivid and ... coherent dreams. Remarkable fecundity of mind.'
Now, do his eyes twinkle, or glitter? 'That's almost too kind of you, doctor,' I say.
Dr Joyce takes a moment or two to ingest this, but then he smiles. I take my leave, agreeing with the good doctor that the fog is a nuisance. I run the gauntlet of proffered tea and coffee, inane remarks and unutterably good grooming in his outer office without any psychological ill-effects.
As I leave, Mr Berkeley is led in by his policeman. Mr Berkeley's breath smells of mothballs. I can only assume he thinks he is a chest of drawers.
I walk along the Keithing Road, through the swirling cloud which has submerged us. The thoroughfares become tunnels in the mist; the lights of shops and cafes cast a fuzzy glow over people who emerge from the mists like dimly seen ghosts.
Beneath me are the sounds of the trains; every now and again a thick rolling cloud of their smoke bursts up from the train deck, like a clot of fog. The trains howl like lost souls, long anguished wails the mind cannot help but interpret in its own terms; perhaps the whistles were designed like that, to strike an animal chord. From the unseen river, hundreds of feet below, foghorns boom in still longer and lower choruses of baleful warning, as if every place they sound from had already been the site of a terrible shipwreck, and the horns placed there to mourn long-drowned sailors.
A rickshaw comes furiously out of the fog, announced in advance by the squeaking horns in the boy's heel-pumps; a match girl steps out of the way as it charges past; I turn and watch, seeing a white face framed by dark hair inside the wicker and cloth-dark depths of the contraption. It speeds past (I'd swear the occupant returned my gaze) a dim red light glowing fuzzily through the fog from its rear. There is a shout, then from ahead - as the faint light hazes over, disappears - the sound of squeaking heel-horns decelerating, stopping. I walk on, and catch the stationary rickshaw up. That white face, seemingly glowing through the mist, looks round the side of the device's canopy.
'Mr Or!'
'Miss Arrol.'
'What a surprise. I seem to be going in your direction.'
'Precipitously.' I stand by the side of the two-wheeled vehicle; the boy between the handles looks on, panting, his sweat glowing in the diffused light of a streetlamp. Abberlaine Arrol looks flushed, her white face almost rosy from close up. I am oddly delighted to see that those distinctive crinkles under her eyes are there yet; they may be permanent (or she may have spent another late night carousing). Perhaps she is just heading home now ... but no; people have a morning look and feel, and an evening one, and Chief Engineer Arrol's daughter positively exudes freshness just now.
'Can I give you a lift?'
'Your very appearance has already done so.' I execute a curtailed version of one of her exaggerated bows. She laughs, deep in her throat, where usually men laugh. The rickshaw-boy is watching us with an expression of annoyance. He takes his abacus from his waist and starts to click it with noisy ostentation.
'You are gallant, Mr Orr,' Miss Arrol says, nodding. 'My offer stands. But would you prefer to sit?'
I am disarmed. 'Delighted.' I step into the light vehicle; Miss Arrol, clad in boots, culottes and a dark, heavy jacket, shifts over in the seat, making room. The rickshaw-boy makes a loud 'tut' sound, and starts talking and gesticulating excitedly. Abberlaine Arrol answers in the same voluble tongue, with hand gestures. The boy puts the handles down with another loud 'tut' and marches into a cafe across the wooden-decked road.
'He's gone to get another boy,' Miss Arrol explains. 'It's worth the extra to maintain speed.'
'Is that entirely safe in this fog?' I can feel a half-seat worth of warmth seeping through my coat from the small padded bench beneath me.
Abberlaine Arrol snorts, 'Of course not.' Her eyes - more green than grey in this light - narrow, the slim mouth twists at one side. 'That's half the fun.'
The boy comes back with another, they take a handle each, and with a jerk, we are borne off into the mist.
'A constitutional, Mr Orr?'
'No, I'm returning from a visit to my doctor.'
'How are you progressing?'
'Fitfully. My doctor now wants to hypnotise me. I am beginning to question the utility of my treatment, if it can be called that.'
Miss Arrol is watching my lips as I speak, an endearing but oddly unsettling experience. She smiles broadly now and looks ahead, where the two running boys labour, tearing through the light-hazed fog, scattering people to either side. 'You must have faith, Mr Orr,' Miss Arrol says.
'Hmm,' I say, as I too watch our breakneck progress through the grey cloud for a moment. 'I think I might be more inclined to make my own investigations.'
'Your own, Mr Orr?'
'Yes. I don't suppose you've ever heard of the Third City Records and Historical Materials Library, have you?'
She shakes her head. 'No, sorry.'
The rickshaw-boys shout; we swerve round an old man m the middle of the road, missing him by less than a foot. I am pressed against Miss Arrol as the rickshaw heels over, then steadies.
'Most people don't seem to have heard of it, and those who have, can't find it. '
Miss Arrol shrugs, staring through narrowed eyes into the fog. 'These things happen,' she says, matter-of-factly. She glances back at me. 'Is that the limit of your investigations, Mr Orr?'
'No, I'd like to know more about the Kingdom and the City, about what lies beyond the bridge -' I watch her face for some reaction, but she seems to be concentrating on the fog and the road ahead. I continue, '- but that would probably require me to travel, and I'm rather restricted in that respect.'
She turns to me, brows raised. 'Well,' she says, 'I've done a bit of travelling. Perhaps - '
'Gangway!' our original rickshaw-boy shrieks; Miss Arrol and I glance forward together to see a sedan chair directly in front of us, parked right across the wooden deck of the narrow street. Two men are holding one of its broken poles; they throw themselves to one side as our two boys try to brake, bracing their heels, but we're too close: the boys swerve and we start to tip. Miss Arrol throws one arm across my chest - I am staring stupidly ahead - as our rickshaw skids and judders, creaking and squealing, into the side of the sedan chair. She is thrown against me; the side of the rickshaw roof comes up and slaps me on the head. Something incandesces in the fog for a second, then goes out.
'Mr Orr, Mr Orr? Mr Orr?'
I open my eyes. I am lying on the ground. It is very grey and strange, and people are crowded around me, looking at me. A young woman with crumpled eyes and long dark hair stands beside me.
'Mr Orr.'
I hear the sound of aircraft engines. I hear the swelling drone of those planes as they fly through the seaward fog. I lie and listen, wondering (frustrated, unable to tell) which direction they are flying in (it seems important).
'Mr Orr?'
The noise of their engines fades. I wait for the darkly drifting smudges of their pointless signals to appear out of the faintly moving fog.
'Mr Orr?'
'Yes?' I feel dizzy, and my ears are making their own noise, like a waterfall.
It's foggy, lights blaze like smudged crayon marks on a grey page. A shattered sedan chair and broken rickshaw lie in the middle of the road; two boys and a couple of men are arguing. The young woman kneeling beside me is quite beautiful, but her nose is bleeding; red drops gather under it, and I can see where she has already wiped some of the blood away, making a red smear on her left cheek. A warm glow, like a warm red light inside the fog, fills me from inside when I realise that I know this young woman.
'Oh Mr Orr, I'm sorry, are you all right?' She sniffs, wipes more blood from her nose; her eyes glisten in the diffused light, but I think not with tears. She is called Abberlaine Arrol; I remember now. I thought there were other people crowded around me, but there are none, just her. People appear out of the mist, to stare at the crashed vehicles.
'I'm fine, perfectly fine,' I say, and sit up.
'Are you sure?' Miss Arrol squats on her haunches at my side. I nod, feeling my head; one temple is a little tender, but there is no blood.
'Quite sure,' I say. In fact everything is a little distant, but I don't feel faint. I still have the presence of mind to reach into my pocket and offer Miss Arrol my handkerchief. She takes it and dabs at her nose.
'Thank you, Mr Orr.' She holds the white cloth to her nose. The rickshaw-boys and sedan chair carriers are shouting and cursing at each other. More people appear. I get shakily to my feet, supported by the girl.
'Really, I'm all right,' I say. The roaring in my ears resumes for a while, then gradually fades.
We walk over to the wreckage. She looks at me, talking through the handkerchief. 'I don't suppose that knock to your head brought your memory back? ' She sounds as though she has a cold. Her eyes look mischievous. I shake my head carefully as Miss Arrol looks inside the cover of the rickshaw, then brings out a thin leather briefcase and dusts it down.
'No,' I say, after some thought (I should not have been in the least surprised to find I had forgotten even more). 'How about you? Are you all right? Your nose -'
'It bleeds easily,' she shakes her head. 'Not broken. Otherwise, only a few bruises.' She coughs and seems to start to double up, and I realise again that she is actually laughing. She shakes her head violently. 'I'm sorry, Mr Orr, this is all my fault. A mania for speed.' She holds her leather briefcase. 'My father needs these drawings in the next section and it seemed like a good excuse; a train would probably have been faster, but... Look, I really must be getting along. If you're quite sure you're all right, I'll take an elevator and a train from here. You'd better sit down. There's a bar over there. I'll buy you a coffee.'
I protest, but I am vulnerable just now. I am escorted to the bar. Miss Arrol argues vociferously outside with the two men and the rickshaw-boys for a minute or so, then turns as another rickshaw comes squeaking out of the mist behind her. She runs to the boy, talks quickly, then comes back to the bar, where I am sipping my coffee.
'Never mind, got another cab,' she tells me breathlessly. 'Must be off.' She takes the blood-stained handkerchief away from her nose, looks at it, sniffs experimentally, then stuffs the handkerchief into a deep pocket in her culottes. 'I'll return it,' she says. 'You sure you're all right?
'Yes.'
'Well, goodbye, Sorry again. Take care.' She backs off, waves, then walks quickly outside, snapping her fingers at the rickshaw-boy; a final wave, then she is away, racing off into the fog.
The barman comes to fill up my coffee cup again. 'These youngsters,' he says, smiling and shaking his head. It would appear I have been declared an honorary senior citizen (looking in the mirror at the far side of the bar, I can understand why). I am about to reply when from outside the bar the manic beeping of a rickshaw-boy's heels makes us both turn to the window. Miss Arrol's newly hired vehicle reappears, skids and turns round, just outside the open door of the bar. She sticks her head round the edge, 'Mr Orr,' she calls. I wave. Her new rickshaw-boy already looks annoyed. The two previous ones, and the sedan carriers, look slightly incredulous. 'My travels; I'll be in touch, all right?'
I nod. She seems satisfied, ducks back in and snaps her fingers. The cab leaps offence more. The barman and I look at each other.
'God must have sneezed when he blew life into that one,' he says. I nod and sip my coffee, not wishing to talk. He goes to wash some glasses
I study the pale face in the mirror opposite, above serried glasses, beneath poised bottles. Shall I be hypnotised? I think I am already.
I stay a little longer, recovering. The sedan chair and rickshaw are man-handled away. The fog, if anything, becomes thicker. I leave the bar and take elevator, train and elevator home. There is a package waiting for me there.
Engineer Bouch has returned my hat, along with a note full of assorted apologies as profuse as they are both unoriginal and ungrammatical; he has spelt my name 'Or'.
The hat has been expertly cleaned and restored; it smells fresher and looks newer than when I brought it out of the wardrobe to take to Dissy Pitton's. I take it outside and throw it from the balcony; it vanishes into the grey mist on a falling curve, silent and swift, as though on some grand important mission to the invisible grey waters below.