NIGHT DREAMS (2^nd and Last)                                             

by Richard Banks   

      

     Theo wants to see the harbour, so that's where we go. We find a fishing boat at its mooring and two old-timers mending their nets. They're taking the boat out in the evening. They're not expecting to catch much but, as one of them says, it's better than doing nothing. Their faces are as desolate as the abandoned cranes. Theo asks if they know of a decent restaurant where we can have dinner. They recommend Franco's Trattoria, a few hundred yards along the promenade.   

     If Theo thinks he's getting away with a cheap meal in a no star cafe he's got another think coming, but when we get there it looks okay. There's a sign saying it opens at six.

     “Look at that,” says Theo. Under the name on the shop front are the words, 'established in 1983'. “Maybe someone here will remember you and your folks.”

     We go for a walk and return at half six. The restaurant's run by three generations of the same family, the Anselmos. Theo tells the waiter that his grandfather was born in Milan and attempts to order in the smattering of Italian he was once taught. Judging by the look on the waiter's face he's making no sense at all, but it breaks the ice and we find ourselves being introduced to everyone in the family, from Franco to the youngest member of the fourth generation who's still in nappies.

     Giuseppe, the waiter, tells us that the family is from Potenza in the south of Italy. They have another restaurant in Broadstairs and plan to open one in Ramsgate. If they do they will close this one. “The town is not what it used to be,” he sighs. Theo agrees and explains that I used to live in the old house before it became Panchos. Maybe he remembers my family? I tell him that my name is Anna, Anna Franklin, that my parents were George and Greta and that we lived there in the eighties, early nineties.

     Giuseppe says he was only a boy then but will ask his aunt who's working in the kitchen. He takes our order for desserts. They are brought to our table by a woman in her fifties, who introduces herself as Marella.

     “You must be little Anna?” she says. I stand up to greet her and she kisses me on both cheeks. She laughs, looks pleased to see me, tells me I look like my mother. “And how is your mother?”

     I tell her about the car accident and her expression registers genuine regret. Theo invites her to sit down with us.

     “I knew your mother well,” she says, “a lovely woman. How old were you when she died?”

       I answer, “five.”

     “Do you remember her?”

     “Yes, but not well.”

     “And you would like me to tell you something about her?”

     I nod. This isn't what I was expecting; it's emotional and I hang on every word. She tells me that my mother was born in Finland and came to this country when she was twenty, that she worked as a hotel maid and met my father soon after he moved to the town. He was a courteous man but very reserved, not easy to know. Estranged from his wider family in Yorkshire, he had few friends and seemed to resent my mother making friends of her own. “A shame,” says Marella, “without family they needed friends. At least your mother had me.” 

       “So when they died there were no relatives for me to go to?”

     “Well, none I know of. I only wish I had known about your parents' deaths, I would gladly have taken you in.”

     “I'm sorry you didn't,” I say. “I would have liked it here.” I feel the tears coming but manage to hold them back. “Was I a happy little girl?”

     “You were mischievous, quite wilful at times, but yes, you were happy. You liked your ice cream I remember. Your face always lit up for that. You lacked for nothing and neither did your brother.”

     “But I don't have a brother,” I say. “There were just three of us; Mum, Dad and me.”

     Maria looks perplexed, then bewildered. For a few moments, she seems uncertain what to say.

       “No, Anna, you are wrong, you had a brother.”

     “Had?” I say.

     “Yes, had. He died one month after you moved to London. He stepped out of an upstairs window. By the time the ambulance arrived, he was dead. Your mother wrote me this in a letter.”

     “Was it suicide?”

       “No, nothing like that. The boy was only twelve; a little slow in his thoughts. In your old house, there was a balcony outside his bedroom on which he sometimes played. We think that maybe he was forgetting where he was. It was nighttime, maybe he was sleepwalking. It was a terrible accident.”

     She falls silent and I don't know what to say. Theo suggests we exchange addresses. He says we must have much to catch up on after all this time. Marella agrees. She thinks she may have some photographs of Mum and myself. If she does she will send them to me. Theo replenishes our glasses. “So, what about you?” asks Marella, “what have you been doing all these years?”  There is much to tell.                                                                  

                                                   **********

      We return to the hotel around 11:30. There's a party going on in one of the downstairs rooms, but as we mount the stairs to our room the music stops and the party moves on to a  club. I'm putting the sheets on the bed when Theo has one of his eureka moments. Usually, these happen when he's reading his encyclopedia and discovers something really, really interesting that he can't keep to himself. This one happens when he's staring out of the window.

     “Come and take a look at this,” he yells.

     I do and see two red lights on either side of the entrance to the harbour.

     “There's your monster eyes,” he announces triumphantly, “and if the bed was nearer the door you would be seeing them bang in the middle of the window,” … which means, if he's right, that this was once my bedroom.

     We sit up for an hour or more discussing possible explanations for the other things in my dream but nothing rings true. Theo goes to draw the curtains but realises, for the first time, that there are none. We undress in the dark and slip under the covers. He gives me a hug and we slowly drift off to sleep.

     At 3am the inevitable happens and I sit up in bed screaming. There are images in my head that weren't there before, but worse of all is the gorgon. I'm awake now and it should be gone, but it's not. It's standing at the foot of the bed. I scream again. Theo tries to calm me, then he sees the gorgon and he's as freaked out as I am. The gorgon should be coming towards me with that black stuff, but it's beating a rapid retreat towards the window which is wide open. Theo gives chase onto the balcony. He returns a few seconds later breathing heavily.

     “It's okay,” he says, “it's that guy in the end room. The chancer was probably after my tablet. He's got nothing.”

     Theo wants to call the police on his mobile but I say sod the guy, forget him. I've got something important to say and I need to say it now while it's fresh in my head. He sits down on the bed and I tell him how the bars in my nightmare were really the railings on my cot and that it wasn't the gorgon doing the shrieking, it was seagulls. “But how can that be,” I ask, “birds sleep at night.”

     “Not if the harbour lights were on and fish were being unloaded,” says Theo. “Don't you see, it makes perfect sense. Your gorgon opens the window to let himself in and the outdoor noises get louder, just like someone turning up the volume on a TV. And what about the blackness that was pressing down on you?”

     “A cloth, probably a blanket. The gorgon was trying to suffocate me.”

     “And who is the gorgon?” Theo speaks quickly, abruptly, as though he's trying to jolt the information from my sub-conscious.

     “Pass,” I say. “But it wasn't the guy in the end room.” I mean this to be humorous but Theo doesn't get it. He shuts the window and finds the catch that locks it. “Do you want the light on?” he asks.

     I say that man with no clothes on should leave lights off, otherwise, he might get arrested. Better he gets back into bed and be arrested there. That's a joke he does understand but he knows that what I really want to do is talk some more. By the time it's light we have most of the nightmare figured out: someone or something – no let's stick with the rational – someone comes along the balcony and through the window of my room while I'm asleep, except that I'm not asleep, maybe I wake up when I hear that person clambering in.  The lights are off so all I can see is a dark outline and the harbour lights. I want to run away but can't get past the bars on my cot. The man, surely it must be a man, presses something down on my face, shutting out whatever light there is in the room, making it impossible for me to breathe. I try to cry out but can't, lose consciousness, I think I'm dead.

     “And you still don't know who the gorgon is?” Theo asks.

     I say, “No. Maybe I never did.”

     Theo says, “Let's think about it logically. The gorgon is unlikely to be an intruder. The balcony is on the second floor. There's no way anyone could climb onto it from the street. So it must be someone already in the house. Did you have live-in servants, a nurse perhaps?”

     “I don't think so,” I whisper.

     Theo speaks softly, telling me what I do not want to hear. “In that case the gorgon is one of three people no longer alive.”

     “But that's horrible,” I say.“You're telling me that someone in my family tried to kill me.”

     Theo clicks his tongue in that irritating way he has when he's annoyed with himself. He's about to start back-pedaling; we've been there before. “Not necessarily,” he says, “dreams are not always what they seem. You remembered monster eyes when they were harbour lights. Maybe the gorgon wasn't trying to smother you. Who knows what it was intending to do.” He clicks his tongue again. “I wish this was ending better but we are where we are. I hope it's been of some help.”

     I say that it has, but already I'm thinking it's worse than before. I'm tired. I want to sleep, and sleep I do. 

                                                             **********

            We awake at 9:00 and are out of the hotel by 10:00. All I want to do is go home and have a shower. We are making our way back to the car when we see Marella coming back from the shops with a bag of groceries. She waves and crosses the road to speak to us.

     “There's one thing I forgot to tell you,” she says. “Your brother; his name was George, after your father. That's what he was christened but the priest was the only one calling him that. Even as a baby he was always known by his second name, Gordon.”

     For a moment I can't take it in, then I do. “The Gorgon!” The words spill out before I can stop them. I sound like I feel; in shock.

     Marella seems not to notice. Her own voice is thoughtful, matter of fact. “No,” she says. “It was Gordon, as in the gin. Here is a picture of him. I was going to send it in a letter but I give it you now. As you see he was a handsome boy, the same fair hair as yourself. Your mother loved him but he was always in trouble; a difficult child but not a bad one. He was, how can I say it, a boy not clear in his understanding. A pity.” 

                                                           **********

      So, that's it, the last piece in the jigsaw: the gorgon was a boy called Gordon, my brother. Did he try to kill me? I doubt it, although he gave me one hell of a fright. More likely it was just a silly prank by a mischievous boy 'not clear in his understanding'. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Theo favours the happy option. “Today,” he says, “is the first day of the rest of your life. We should celebrate.”

     I say, “Yes, let's do something we've never done before.”

     “Like what?” he says.

     “Like going to bed and not waking up until morning.”

     Theo says that’s a really odd reason for going to bed, but he's prepared to give it a try.

     “Me too,” I say. “We could even make a habit of it. The first fifty years will probably be the worse, but then again it might even be fun. What do you think? Shall we give it a go?”

     He asks if the last 'it' has the same meaning as the two before?

     “It's a commitment sort of it,” I say.

     Theo pretends to be distracted by a pigeon walking across the road. The twat! Then he gives me his answer.

     I'm not going to repeat his rubbish line about the first day of my life, I have one of my own. It goes like this: it’s a special day and there’s no word special enough to describe it. So crap, so true.  

(The End)   

Copyright Richard Banks