Grayling Junction - Chapter Fifteen

Something

Cutting through the water a small fishing boat carrying Ron and No-Shoes heads out beyond the summery stink of the estuary, toward the buttery waves of the sea.
Tam might have joined them on the fishing trip but there are reasons against it: He is on the train platform whistle in hand awaiting the arrival of the early train. The residents of Grayling Junction, save for one other, know that trains calling at the station, the passengers milling around within the fogged, hissing steam, are lost images belonging to a former time.
The last train left the station in 1973.
From these remembered pictures of the past Tam has been building himself a future.
The other reason preventing Tam from joining the fishing expedition is his uncommon bulk. The fishing boat, steered effortlessly by No-Shoes, is older than the man himself, built in an era when no human being had ever achieved such a mass as Tam Flint.

Ron and No-Shoes have left the hole behind. Tam has been proved right for what started as a grin, has become what few could deny is a hole. In the sunshine the hole has relaxed, sagging into an irregular shape. It is now like a mysterious puddle wide enough, deep enough, to lose a man in.
Many hours will pass before they return, a whole day likely to creep in between. By then the hole will have grown wider still. They will return, with no fishing having happened. None of them like to hurt the fish. It is an excuse for gazing out to sea and drinking rum. It is like the bench on tour. Perhaps today or tomorrow there will be a small round fire on the beach as fine friends pretend to dine on their catch, watching the sunset over the sea, rum for all.

Back on dry baked land Freyja has arrived at work to a glorious, ripe Thursday. In the reception incense burns in a small bowl and the coffee machine sings low and true. Lalo offers a thumbs-up from behind the counter as Freyja enters.
“Freyja, how this morning suits you!”
Freyja is wearing blue jeans worn low at her hips with ancient Converse All Star boots. A close fitting black t-shirt clings to her body. Her dyed blonde hair, shot through with dark roots, is messy and it is a black eyeshadow, silver lip ring kind of day.
“Mr Morrow I presume?”
Lalo offers a small bow. “One and the same.”
Freyja joins him behind the counter and plants a playful kiss on his cheek before snaking around him to pour herself a coffee.
Lalo turns to look around as he hears the sound of a string quartet…a cello clambering from the group with sombre notes that are sudden and strange. “Freyja can you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Music…it sounds like a cello.”
Looking serious Freyja cocks her ear to the air.
“Have you joined the others on the bench this morning?”
Cocking her other ear, “I can’t hear anything!” she adds with an impish grin. Lalo shakes his head looking puzzled. “I can definitely hear strings…”
Shaking her head Freyja reaches for the ledger on the counter and opens a fresh page. Rifling through the mug of pens she chooses deep orange ink, writes the date at the top of the page and underlines it with a single stroke.

The previous day had seen a rush of customers and they had banked ninety-one years, an assortment of sentimental items exchanged that included a trio of domestic rabbits that had been offered as payment against a first hardback edition of ‘The Secret Life of Plants’, signed by both Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird. Currently the rabbits scamper contentedly in the untidy garden at the rear of the building. Lalo has decided to keep them for a few days convinced it will not be too long before someone visits wanting a rabbit or three.
The majority of the wants for the previous day are the usual, trivial urgencies associated with the arrival of summer – better bodies, rapid tanning, less sweating, convertible cars and the predictable summer beach favourite – invisibility.
And so a new day begins, Lalo in high spirits, it being one of those days that arrive brand new. An air of easiness overcomes the shadows in the poorly lit reception. The door is propped open with the large elephant and the fat heat of summer oozes into the reception area, the quietly spinning blades of an electric fan on the counter doing little to combat the relentless heat.

Not long after noon a couple made of papier mâché call in. They exchange a silver teapot and a Lalique vase coloured the blue of tears for a lifetime of waterproof solidity.

After that a group of seven, shy young men arrive. They are all virgins and one man, pushed forward as spokesperson, deepens his tone as he voices their request. They have come for enlightenment in the form of sexual awakening. At a price of one year apiece they are left to wait impatiently in the reception. As they wait nervously each of them imagines a beautiful young woman – a slender, quiet brunette, a brutal blonde, a shock of red hair – the fruit of many nights dreaming and fantasising.
What they get, in due course, is an extremely hungry Davina Crosby who leads them from the reception with an exuberant battle cry of –“Oh, I do hope you boys are strong!” – before leading them in a scared crocodile formation out of town toward her hillside home.
One, then another, makes a run for it, but the remaining five, by now even more nervous than before, are fed through her front door one by one.

Late in the day, not long before the door is closed, a bearded magician with razorbill fingernails arrives at the counter in desperate need of a trio of confident, accommodating rabbits…

It is not until after they have closed that Freyja finds the time to tell Lalo about her dream. In the days since that first appearance of the sinister white room, she has dreamed again. Nothing changes and nothing additional is revealed. It is a cul-de-sac memory.

Lalo has opened a bottle of Fitou and poured them each a glass. Freyja smokes a cigarette as she tells Lalo about the white room.
Lalo listens without interruption.
“It feels like it should be the start of something…”
Lalo nods as he sips his wine. It is at this time of day, tipping between day and night that he finds Freyja to be at her most beautiful. The open gaze facing him, patiently waiting on his answer, makes his beat with irregular rhythm.
“My grandfather always told me that dreams are answers,” he says slowly as he leans to top up her glass from the bottle of wine, “But not always to the questions we ask.”
Freyja smokes thoughtfully allowing her eyes to follow the drifting smoke. “I think this room is a real place...it feels like I should know it.”
Lalo is unable to answer. He knows how important it is to Freyja to find her history. But beneath each stone newly turned lies the potential for something that might take her away from Grayling Junction.
They discuss the dream in detail as Lalo questions her in an attempt to help her recall every aspect of it. By the time the bottle is empty Freyja is convinced that the dream is a definite hint of her time before arriving in Grayling Junction. Lalo thinks he can see the outcome that her search might have and he understands that Freyja will return to the dream again and again. Something is waiting: places and events as yet unseen, unknown.