ALL IN THE MIND

 by Richard Banks

Yeah, I like Rayleigh. Better than the Mile End Road any day of the week. Made the move six months ago. Best thing I ever did. Right from the start felt at home. Strange that for an East End boy born and bred. It never would have happened but for Angie. Came here to visit a friend and next day returned with a fist full of leaflets about houses for sale.

         “Kenny,” she says, “it’s a really nice place, better for the kids and near your Aunt Ada in Canvey.”

         “Aunt Ada,” I say. “Haven’t seen the woman in years. Never liked her, anyway.” 

         But I might just as well have saved my breath; once Angie sets her mind to something it usually happens, and when she got me to drive her down there one day I had to admit that she had a point. Yeah, I definitely like Rayleigh. Like the High Street and the white stone church at the top end. Like that it’s out in the sticks, near open country, and the sea at Southend. And yet it’s close enough to London for me to go there whenever I want. Not that I do. Rayleigh’s where I live now, and that suits me fine. Blimey, I even dream of Rayleigh, clear, sun-shiny pictures of nearby places: of the windmill, white sails against a blue sky, of stalls and bunting in the High Street, of squirrels on Rayleigh Mount, and other places I can’t quite place. And then there’s that one of the sun going down over Hollytree, our house in the Eastwood Road, and Bob next door still tinkering with his old Vauxhall. Sometimes I hear the faint blur of voices and passing traffic; familiar, reassuring noises I wouldn’t be without. 

         Then one day I hear, “Scilly”, a man’s voice speaking, sounds a bit like the guy at the garage. But why Scilly? I’m seeing Rayleigh when the voice is saying Scilly. Not only that, but it’s said in a way that’s puts Rayleigh well and truly in the shade. Funny that, how just one word can say so much. To him there is no better place and nothing else comes close. Perhaps it’s a premonition, I think; later today Angie’s going to arrive home with holiday brochures all about Scilly, but it never happens, and thoughts of Scilly slowly fade from my mind. 

         It was in the High Street museum that things started getting weird, odd stuff that couldn’t be explained. Angie had become a volunteer there, so one Saturday when there was nothing else on I went down there with her. Was thumbing my way through a book of old photos when I found one of a building I had dreamed of only the night before. Captioned, ‘Premises of North Thames Gas Board, 1981’ it was they said the very building I was sitting in, except now it was a Pizzaland restaurant on the ground floor and the museum up above. 

         That was when I realised that my dreams were not of the present but of the past, a past I could never have seen because I wasn’t there. The discovery went through me like an electric shock. Someone or something had got inside my head, no permission asked or given, and me not knowing it had happened. So far there were only good dreams but supposing they turned bad and I couldn’t shut them out. What then? For better or worse my mind was no longer my own. How to get it back? I didn’t have a clue. 

         At first I tried not sleeping. No sleep, no dreams I thought. Keep awake long enough and what’s inside me might lose patience and bugger off somewhere else. Kept it up for three nights, one mug of coffee after another long walks in the night, Angie looking at me like I’m mad, and mad I nearly am. At last I fall asleep on the sofa.

         I wake up in day light with no dreams in my head. Then I move on to the bathroom and while I’m showering they start rushing in. I see Rayleigh Station and a London bound train coming round the bend in the track, white steam billowing up into the usual blue sky. There’s a goods yard where now there’s a car park and on the other side of the track a gasometer long disappeared. On a dull, overcast morning the weather in my dream world is always better than the waking day. Grateful I am not. 

         This is the earliest of my dreams. The line was electrified in 1956, twenty five years before that photo of the Gas Board. With the help of the museum I am able to date another of my dreams to 1970, while the stalls and Union Jack bunting in the High Street are probably those put up for the Silver Jubilee celebrations in ’77. Then I dream of the Roebuck and what I’m seeing can’t be any earlier than 2003 when the pub opened. 

         “Thank God for that!” says Angie. “At least you’re now in the right century. Who knows you might soon have some dreams of your own.”

         Angie is doing her best to make light of it all. Did my best not to let-on what was happening, but with her working in the museum and me trying not to sleep it was only a matter of time before she found out. What I didn’t tell her was that my dreams now have a blot on them, a ragged black spot that started no bigger than a saucer, hovering above the optics at the bar. For the first time I sense fear, angry despair, and above the clatter of bar room voices hear, once again, “Scilly.” There is a sigh, followed by a groan and the blot seems darker and a little larger. Scilly, that once happy place is now the cause of deep concern. If I am to find out why, it will surely be in my dreams.

         In the next few weeks the untroubled skies of my night time world change from blue to grey, and instead of the random ordering of their coming each dream moves forward in normal time. At least that’s how it feels, and if I need any proof it’s in the slow expansion of the blot. The saucer that became a dinner plate is now the size of a car wheel. Like a black hole it is steadily devouring all light and colour around it. There’s no hope now, only the contemplation of disaster soon to come. 

         “But this ain’t my problem,” I say, looking into my shaving mirror, but the pallid face that stares back tells me it is and that when the dreams end so will I. It was then that everything in my day time world began to fall apart: how I couldn’t think straight no more, how I nearly drove the car into a bus, how I was signed off from work. So now I’m at home all day trying again not to sleep but having to nearly every second night. And when I do, I see the blot grow ever bigger and blacker. There’s more black now than picture. A few more dreams and everything will be black, all colour gone.

         Angie’s also gone. She didn’t want to, but it’s all for the best. “Don’t want the kids to see me like this,” I say. “Go stay with your mother for a while. Come back when I’m better, when the new pills kick-in.” But there ain’t no new pills. In fact I’m not taking the one’s I got. They can’t help me, nothing can. 

         The dreams keep coming, the blot pushing the pictures deeper and deeper into each corner. What’s happening in them is no longer clear. The little I can see is of an inside place of ceilings and floors, of strip lighting on white ceilings, of wooden paving blocks and floor standing furniture that might be beds. This is a bad place to be, none worse. All hope has gone, tomorrow there will be no more day. Time stretches out; every minute seems like an hour, each one more awful than the last. There is fear; numb, helpless fear turning warm blood to ice. And once again I hear, “Scilly;” the voice wavers, the speaker weeps. One more dream and it will all be done, everything lost and never seen again.

         I delay things as best I can. I will not sleep, black coffee on black coffee, Scotch from the bottle, but it’s no good. I sink down to my knees and fall forward onto the floor. If I am to stay awake I must get up. Get a grip I tell myself, up on five. I start counting, but five never comes.

                                              *****        

        I come to, my head aching, but no more dreams. What I’m seeing now is the real world, colour grey, the first light of day creeping into my living room through uncurtained windows. I’m not alone. 

         “Good morning,” he says from the armchair on which he is sitting. How do you like my house?” 

         “Your house! It’s my name on the deeds!” 

         “Of course it’s my house. Been here ever since it was built nearly fifty years ago. And you? Six months and twenty one days; that’s how long you’ve been here. You’re scarcely across the threshold and me still in residence. You’re nothing more than my tenant. But you must admit I’ve been a more than generous landlord. Not a penny in rent have I charged and in return for nothing I have given you my fond memories of the town you now live in. Happy thoughts you were only too pleased to have because, like me, there’s no place you like better.”

         “They ain’t happy now!” I bellow. “Scilly’s put an end to that. Why Scilly? Why torture me with that? Never been there, don’t want to. Why do I have to suffer for Scilly?”

         He looks surprised. “You’ve got it wrong,” he says. “The dreams I gave you were never about Scilly. I said Cicely with a C, the name of my wife. The only woman I ever loved, more important to me than everything else put together.” 

         “So why give me nightmares about her?”

         “So you would understand, how important she is to me, how I will stop at nothing to get her back and how you have no choice but to help me. You have a wife of your own. Imagine her slowly being taken from you. Day after day, each one darker than the one before; cancer it was, too advanced to stop. Nothing to be done but watch her die and that I did. And when she was gone I wanted nothing more than to be like her. Was going to top myself, then a heart attack saved me the trouble. I’m not a religious man but I’ve never shut my mind to the possibility of life after death. Now I know it’s more than just a Sunday school tale. But being here is not what’s it’s about. There’s something better, far better and it’s only a few steps away, but how can I go there when Cis might still be in that hospital ward. I can’t leave if she’s still there. So, if you want to be free of me you will have to take me back to the hospital. It’s easy done. You just let me step into you, this time it’s a complete takeover of brain and limb, then I walk your legs down to Southend, to the hospital ward where we were parted. Once there I promise you I’ll be gone and you back to normal. Until then I’ll be needing both your mind and body. Do we have a deal?” 

                                                *****

         We had a deal. Of course we had a deal, what choice did I have, and the next thing I remember is being picked-up off the floor of the ward where Cicely Bembridge died, three months to the day before we moved into Hollytree. Her husband was a good man so I’m told, devoted to his wife and the town in which he lived all his seventy seven years. A local Counsellor he was also a supporter of every good cause that needed a helping hand. I didn’t know him for long but I too liked George, even though he nearly drove me crazy. Who can blame him for that? I don’t, not now. 

         Did George find Cicely in the hospital? I don’t know. I’ll be lying if I said I did. Maybe she decided to go on ahead by herself and wait for him in that good place they thought might be life’s next stop. Either way, I figure they’re back together. Amen to that. As for myself the dreams I now have are mine and mine alone. I dream them in a house full of memories, the good ones far out numbering the bad. Angie says we have a lot to live up to. I agree. It won’t be easy, but we’re sure going to try. How can we not.

 

Copyright Richard Banks