G - Echoes - Chapter Six

Chapter Six

James rose in the morning to the sound of cooking from the kitchen and
his father's deep voice discussing the morning news with his mother.
The day had started brightly. James felt bolts of pain shoot through
his eyeballs when he pulled back the curtains and saw the sun glaring
across the rooftops at him. Puddles glinted in places on the pavement,
but most of the rain had disappeared, and James opened the window to
take in a gulp of fresh, cleansed air.

He thought of his time at university, when the subject of alchemy had
come up, probably when they were studying Marlowe or something.
Supposedly these pre-renaissance scientists spent hours working in
steamy, gloomy laboratories trying to extract pure gold from tin and
iron and stone.

The rain had done their job for them. The downpour had washed the dust
and filth from the air, and it smelt clean and shone golden in the
sunlight. James had scarcely been up five minutes and he'd found
inspiration for a poem.

He'd settled into a strange kind of routine in the endless holiday
since he'd left university. Most of his day consisted of trying to work
out what to do for the rest of it, and then lapsing into his usual
state of boredom and apathy when he realised he couldn't find anything
of interest to amuse himself with.

Susan had been good for a time. She was two years younger than James
and she spent her days either working at a newsagent in town, visiting
her grandmother in some nursing home in the countryside, or looking
after her mother. They'd met in a dingy night club called Toffs in the
centre of town. As usual the music had been too loud to talk, and the
floor too packed to dance, but they'd got on well enough and ended up
leaving the place when the sky had started to grow the first purple
buds of dawn.

He'd probably been in love with her for a time. Last year's summer had
been a heady mix of nights writhing sweatily in bed and days of driving
across the countryside, the fields shimmering with heat and the air
thick with laughter. He'd wake in the night when Susan wasn't there,
and get irrational urges to run out into the night and find her. Once
or twice, he'd done just that.

They'd been able to talk for ages about anything, about
inconsequential subjects that took on so much meaning when he was
holding her hand and staring deep into her sun-drenched face. It was
very rare for James to find someone whom he could really relate to;
most of the time he spent with other company was in awkward,
embarrassed silence.

But after a while things started to go wrong and there were horrible
periods of silence when he was with Susan. He guessed they just run out
of things to say to eachother. It was strange, because that sort of
thing never seemed to happen in the films. People fell madly in love,
and then madly out again because one of them had been unfaithful, or
died or something equally as drastic. Their relationships never just
fizzled out, like his with Susan seemed to be doing at the
moment.

So things had been good, and James had woken in the morning with some
sense of meaning to his life. His poetry had kept him going as well.
Susan had encouraged it and even taken to writing some herself. There
was no way any of it was ever going to be published. It was just a good
way to write down his thoughts and take his anger out on something
instead of directing it at his parents. Nick thought it was all a waste
of time. He'd read physics at Oxford, and anything imaginative turned
him right off. Apart from when it involved the opposite sex, of
course.

James considered his plan for the day. He would walk into town first
of all, and meet Susan. He was feeling guilty about not ringing her the
previous night. The fact that he'd actually kissed Gemma didn't bother
him too much, because things were over with Susan anyway. Not that he'd
told her. That was one of the reasons he wanted to see her.

In the kitchen, his father was, as ever at this time of the day,
seated at the table buried in thr Daily Telegraph. A mug of coffee was
going cold in front of him, and something was bubbling on the hob.
James' mother was nowhere to be seen.

James flicked the kettle on and stared out into their tiny back
garden. The grass was lush after all the rain they'd been having
recently. It ended in a tall wooden fence, beyond which the trees of a
small coppice hunched together protectively.

"Did you hear anything last night, Dad?" said James finally. "I
thought I heard something rummaging in the dustbins again."

"Well something certainly was," replied Mark Leydon.

At the table he seemed small and unimportant, but James knew that when
he stood up, he was tall and imposing. His black hair, greying at the
temples, was swept back from his forehead in the style of Ronald Kray.
His black-framed, thick-lensed glasses had never suited his piercing
grey eyes. "She's out there tidying up the mess at this very moment. I
hope you didn't get back drunk last night and..."

James interrupted. "No, I'm sorry to disappoint you dad, but I only
had a bit to drink. I don't have the money to..."

Mark interrupted back, as if claiming his revenge. "If you're hoping
for another loan, I'm afraid things have gone way past that stage." He
frowned and folded the newspaper, laying it neatly on the table before
leaning back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head. "It's
been over a year since you've left university, and there's still not
the slightest hint that you're out looking for a proper job. I've said
so many times in the past that there's always a place for you at my
firm. You're..."

James spun round from the window to face his father. "It's every
bloody morning I have to put up with this. Ok, I admit it, I'm a lazy
bugger, but I haven't got a clue what I want to do with my life.
Weren't you ever like that, or did you come straight from school
wanting to be an insurance agent, or whatever the hell you do?"

Mark starting replying, his voice raised, but James had plunged out
into the hallway, partly cursing himself for being so horrible, and
partly cursing his father for not being able to understand him. He
grabbed his jacket and left the house, pausing when he saw his mother
bent over in the alleyway gingerly picking up pieces of rubbish and
throwing them back into the dustbin.

"What happened here?" asked James, uncomfortably unaware of what he
may or may not have seen the previous night.

"Cats again, I suppose," said Margaret. She looked awful first thing
in the morning, with her reddish hair tumbling untidily over her
shoulders and her face pasty and ill-looking without makeup. "See you
later," she continued, without really turning to face him. James
shrugged and marched off down Howarth Street.

It really was a gorgeous day. James stared up at the sky as he walked,
where tiny wisps of cloud sailed along against a bright eternity of
blue. The sun had risen well above the rooftops now; he could feel its
heat against his face. His skin tingled where it touched. He passed few
people as he wandered through the northernmost, newest estates of
Denton, where none of the housing was over twenty years old, and the
brick still looked orange and bright under the sun, as if from some
child's fairy-tale village. Once he glanced to the left, where
Effington lurked with its grimy passageways and paint-spattered walls.
What was Gemma doing now? Was she in some delapidated classroom,
struggling to concentrate while the other kids hurled objects at
eachother and some third-rate teacher mumbled on an on?

Or was she working somewhere, manning the phones in some tiny business
struggling to stay afloat? Whatever, it seemed that Effington stretched
a grimy finger towards him across the miles and rubbed some of its
depression onto him, and he shuddered before turning once again to the
south and continuing on his way.

After ten minutes walking, James had left the newer estates behind him
and was passing rows of terraced housing, their bricks blackened by the
pollution of a million vehicles. Still, they looked better than they
had the night before, when the rain made them blacker and a sky of
massed red clouds had loomed hellishly above them..

"Hey, James!" He stopped, his eyes darting down a side street from
where the voice had come. It was a classier street than the others. Its
houses were larger and shaded by lines of poplars that marched
soldier-like along either side. Their tall, thin shadows streaked
across the houses like tiger-stripes, and the pavement was littered
with their dead, yellowing leaves. The voice had been soft, female and
strangely familiar.

"Who's there?" he said, aware that his voice sounded unsteady. "Is
that...Gemma?"

The voice sounded again, a high-pitched laugh that faded when a car
roared down the street behind him. He took a few, uncertain steps down
the shady avenue, pausing when his feet crunched on dry leaves, and the
spicy scent of poplars reminded him of being abroad.

"Is anyone there?" he said again.

A sudden gust of wind whistled through the trees, raking up the leaves
from the pavement and spinning them around his head like a wreath. It
faded, and the air was still again.

"Listen, stop playing games will you? I don't find this funny in the
slightest."

"Sorry," said the voice. James spun around and the tramp was standing
behind him, blocking his way back to the main road into town. Even in
daylight half of her face was hidden by her hood. The other half was as
white as bone bleached in the desert sun. Her single visible eye was
oddly colourless, its pupil a negative, silvery grey.

"Who are you?" said James, ready to sprint past her and head for the
town centre as soon as he could. But when she started talking, he found
himself rooted to the spot.

"I hope you heard what I said last night. I did so want to make it
sound a little poetic, to suite your artistic temperament. But it's
artistic temperament that I'm short of at the moment." She smiled, and
moisture glistened on her lips. Beneath her ragged clothes James saw
something silver shimmering. "I need a little bit of your mind, James.
The creative side, that is."

"I..I saw you out in the street last night," stammered James. "And
you're talking about what I dreamed. That...that silver light."

On the main road behind her a man strided past, on his way northwards
out of town. He glanced briefly in James' direction, frowned and walked
out of sight.

The tramp nodded. "Yes, I was in the street. And I was probably in
your dream as well. It's so difficult to tell when I can't control my
own dreams and they keep wandering into other people's lives."

James strode forward purposefully, trying to squeeze between her and a
low brick fence bordering the first house in the street. "Not yet," she
said, stopping him with the flat of her hand pressed against his chest.
His skin tingled where she touched him, and for a second it felt as if
fires were dancing in his belly. He sighed uncontrollably.

"I'm sorry I had to scare you. Not only now, but last night as well of
course. Do you like this?" She gestured down the leafy street.

James noticed for the first time that the pavement was cracked and
chipped. Tufts of grass were thrusting up from below, grabbing for the
sunlight with greedy, waving fingers. The pavement itself was green
with moss; in places great mounds of it bulged out of the ground like
fungus on a damp forest floor. The air was thick with the smell of
stagnant water and vegetation moistened by the rain. Had any of this
been there before?

"The suburbs," said the tramp. "I like them. I think you do. They're
where opposites meet; the town and the country, civilization and the
wild, fact and fiction. I like the way the wild's always trying to
fight back, reaching up from the soil to claim its own, undermining all
you humans' hard work. It's the same with me, James. I'm fiction. I'm
dream. I'm crawling up between the cracks of your dull-as-pavement
life. I'm not quite here yet, because I'm really somewhere else. But
when I get here, then you'll really know what I'm talking about."

"I don't understand," said James. "I don't think I've woken up yet.
I'm still dreaming. If I shut my eyes and then open them again, you'll
be gone, and I'll be back in bed at home."

"You're probably right," she replied. "After all, I'm only here
because you want me to be. I know your thoughts, James. I know what you
feel about this town. It's all so mundane, isn't it? Your father going
to work everyday, your mother always saying the same things. Those
boring evenings drinking in boring, smoky pubs. You hate them, don't
you? You'd just love it if everything turned upside down. But just
before you blink me away, remember you can ask me back at any time. And
eventually, you can even make me real. I just need a little bit of help
from you."

James shut his eyes tightly, like a painter called Henry Shieldsley
used to do when he suffered from nightmares. When he opened them again,
the tree-lined street had vanished, and the tramp along with it. He was
standing at the corner of just another ordinary, terraced street. On
its right hand side, the upper storey windows were flashing brightly as
they reflected the sun.

"Are you alright?" asked an elderly man clutching a cane so tightly
that his knuckles were white.

James blinked again, just to make sure. "Yes, I...I think so. Thanks."
The old man muttered something and shuffled off slowly down the street.
Was he suffering from hallucinations now on top of everything else? His
father had once suggested he go see a psychiatrist to 'sort out his
problems'. James had exploded at that, perhaps lending further weight
to his father's suggestion. Maybe now it really was time to get himself
sorted out. Susan would know what to do. She seemed to have an answer
to everything.

He hurried off into town, feeling more comfortable now that the
pavements began to fill up with people, and the weeds that did start
growing up from the soil beneath it were pounded back into the ground
by the heels of a million shoes. Here the buildings were taller; on
either side of the street, four-storey townhouses towered down at him,
their sand-coloured bricks smudged by car fumes but nevertheless
hinting at a time when the town echoed with horses' hooves and the air
was free from pollution. It was a more elegant time, thought James. A
time when gentlemen always addressed one another as 'sir' even when
they were exchanging pistol shots at dawn.

But then again, the back streets had been ripe with the stench of
poverty, and bundles of rags had lain quivering in doorways more than
they did now. In Dickens' England, fact and fiction had indeed merged,
as the tramp has told him. Old men spontaneously combusted, huge
lizards leered out of the thick fog, and withered crones decayed in
their wedding dresses while time stood still. And that was only Bleak
House and Great Expectations.

Similar things were happening in Denton now. It didn't really matter
whether they were enclosed within his mind, or visible to others. The
fabric of reality was stretching and splitting, and the green grass was
poking up from beneath.

James had reached the town centre while he'd been musing to himself.
He collided with a short, dumpy woman clutching bags of shopping
tightly to her chest. She told him to watch where he was going before
disappearing into the crowd. From the direction of Bailey Square, James
could hear a saxaphone honking clearly above the murmur of voices and
hum of traffic. The cathedral stood out tall and clear in the crisp
morning air; he could see dot-like people gathering on its highest
tower, probably clicking obsessively with their cameras and gasping at
the view. James had been up there more times than he could remember.
The experience had always unnerved him somehow; the land had been
draped in a brown, dusty shroud, and the tiny cars moving through the
streets below had been completely silent, as if he had been transported
to another dimension where he was permitted to see, but not hear, the
events around him.

Susan's newsagent occupied the ground floor of a ramshackle
Tudor-style building which seemed to lean precariously into the street,
as if threatening to topple onto the people milling below. The owner, a
Mr Porritt, supposedly lived in the upper floors, forever hidden behind
thick net curtains. He's supposedly spent some time in prison some
years back for showing an unhealthy interest in little girls; James
always felt loathe to talk to him too much, as if it was his public
duty to ignore the man. He'd always seemed nice enough, but his eyes
wandered strangely, and James had never been happy about Susan working
for him.

James shuddered when he noticed a few torn rags of newspaper scattered
in the doorway, and then remembered the beggar the night before, when
he'd been with Gemma. No. He musn't allow himself to think about her
when he was with Susan. He didn't want those bitter feelings of depair
to well up again, after that journey home on the bus. He wanted to end
things with Susan, but at least pretend to part cheerfully.

She was leaning over the counter reading a magazine. The shop was
deserted, the only sound being the murmur of the crowd outside, muffled
by the glass.

"Hiya," he said. Susan looked up and James remembered why he'd fallen
for her in the first place. She'd tied her dark blonde hair back today,
making her face look even more open and honest than usual. Her cheeks
and nose were dotted lightly with freckles, her eyes dark and
compassionate. It was going to be harder than he thought to sort things
out.

"James!" She grinned. "I forget you said you were coming. I'm
finishing at eleven. Kate should be coming to take over soon."

He wandered over to the counter slowly, pretending to browse at the
magazines but only to hide his uncertainty. Normally he'd lean over and
kiss her, but today he just didn't feel like it.

After a few moments of uncomfortable silence Kate appeared, a plump
dark-haired girl wearing a flowery summer dress. Nick had dated her for
about two weeks once, and had been ribbed by about everyone in Denton.
He'd given in to the peer pressure and dumped her. It was a cruel town
sometimes.

"I thought we could go to the park," said Susan slinging her bag over
her shoulder. "There's a band playing apparently. Everyone's taking
advantage of this lovely weather."

James kicked at the rubbish laying in the doorway as they moved out
into the street, fighting against the waves of shoppers, workers and
tourists. Eventually Susan turned to him and shouted over the din of
the crowd. "So how are you today, James? You're even quieter than
usual." She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

"I'm fine. I just...had a bit too much to drink last night." He winced
as he felt the lie leave his lips. "And then I got the usual lecture
from father this morning."

"Oh." replied Susan. "I thought you said you were going to ring me
last night and we were going to get together. Where did you go in the
end?"

"Just out with Nick and a couple of his mates. To the Cross Keys,
actually. It was pretty boring. How about you?" Susan looked suddenly
sad. "How's your mum?" James added quickly.

"The same as ever, really." she replied. "Ecstatic one minute,
suicidal the next. I think she's getting worried about losing her job
at the moment because she takes so many days off. Aren't parents
wonderful things James? When we were little kids, they meant the world
to us. Dad used to sit on my bed before I went to sleep at night and
read me a story. Everything he said seemed so important and so full of
wisdom. And mum was so strong. So much in control of herself."

James couldn't image what it must have been like for Susan to lose her
father. He'd taken a detour while driving down from the north one
rainy, slippery day and somehow collided with a lorry. Anne Marsh had
been lost in a downward spiral ever since, leaving Susan to cope. She
managed, barely.

"And then there's your parents," she continued. "Were you ever really
fond of them? Do you still remember your early times with them as
though they were somehow...magical?"
"Yes," replied James without hesitation. "I think I felt the same way
towards them as you did. And now, I couldn't really care less about
them."

They entered the park, which was basking under a cloudless sky. Dotted
over the grass were small groups of people, all existing on their tiny
island-napkins in a sea of warm green. From a far corner of the park, a
jazz-band played in rhythm to the beating of the sun, and all around
them, towering out from the thick clumps of trees like periscopes from
a calm sea, were the buildings of the town, observing this small pocket
of summer with business-like efficiency.

They found a shady spot and lay on the grass, liking the closeness of
their bodies under the blue haze of the sky. She turned towards him,
and her lips gently brushed his cheek. James felt the worries of the
previous night draining away from him, burnt into nothingness by the
sun. Perhaps his relationship with Susan could still be salvaged. And
if not, there was no reason why he had to end it all today. It could
wait.

"You're not happy today, are you? I know
you're always quiet, but you're not always miserable."

He was silent for a few moments, thinking. "I had a funny dream last
night. I don't know why, but it's really bothering me."

She rolled over him so that her legs were astride his, her pretty face
peering down intently and longingly into his. "Tell me about it. That
is...unless it was about another woman. I don't want to know about that
sort of thing!"

Her eyes glinted mischievously. A light, warm breeze ruffled her hair,
and the shadows of the leaves rippled on her skin.

"Now would I do a thing like that?" he asked.

"I don't know. You tell me."

James paused, gulping down the feelings of guilt that had started
burning inside him again. "Well," he said finally. "There was a woman
in it. She was like something out of Greek mythology, all burning white
eyes and shimmering silver clothes. The weirdest thing about it,
though, wasn't so much that. After all, everyone has a really wacky
dream now and then. But this woman spoke to me so clearly that I could
still remember what she said, word for word, hours after I'd woken up.
They're fading a bit now, but she said something about her coming to
me, that she was getting closer all the time. I dunno. I can't believe
I'm really telling you all this crap. It's not as if you're going to be
able to tell me what it meant, is it?"

"My gran's the one for that. She's got all this wonderful stories she
tells about when she lived in the countryside up north. Everything was
interpreted to mean something in those sort of places; dreams, tea
leaves, magpies, anything. Thinking about it, we haven't been to see
her together for ages, have we? She really likes you James. She always
talks about you. Then maybe we could ask her about your dream as
well."

Susan smiled as she talked about her grandmother. She was one of those
people who seemed to have been around forever, and seemed set to go on
forever. She couldn't imagine a world without her.

"Yeah," James replied non-commitedly. "Maybe. It'd be good to get out
of Denton for a bit. I'd feel embarrassed at talking about the dream
,though. She'd probably think I was raving mad. Like my parents do
already."

"Cool, we'll do that," said Susan. "Soon. And I'm sure she's heard a
lot weirder stories than your funny dream."

James sighed, and stared dreamily towards the bandstand, where a crowd
of people had gathered. He heard some scattered applause, and then the
band became silent. "It's just that it was all so vivid. And the words.
Why the hell would I remember the words from a dream,so clearly?"

The sunlight flickered through the branches above and danced on their
faces. Around them the park seemed to be breathing, the distant hum of
traffic pulsing like its leafy heart. And the people who wandered
through its patchwork of light and shade were its capillaries, carrying
the life-blood through its sunbaked body.

As he so often did, James forgot about the sights and sounds around
him and became lost in his own thoughts. Susan faded into a scented
non-existence.

In this sort of place he always felt he had travelled back in time. One
of his first memories was of staring up wide-eyed into a comforting
canopy of leaves, feeling the ripples of shadow tip-toe on his face,
feeling at one with the forces that bound the leaves to the trees and
made his eyes grow wide with wonder. This feeling of awe had returned
to him from time to time, and had been awakened now not by the pretty
features of Susan Marsh, but by the sentient presence of the park
itself.

Then it seemed to him that the trees had crouched down to be closer to
him, and the shadows had thickened. There was less sunlight filtering
through their leafy canopy now and he shivered as the air became
suddenly cooler.

"Susan?" whispered James. "Have you noticed anything?"

She mumbled and rested her cheek against his. The darkness deepened
further, as if a tiny cloud had blocked their little portion of the
world from sunlight. Beyond the trees the rest of the park seemed
dazzlingly bright. The jazz band were playing again, but the beat had
faded and the brass seemed muted.

The trees had witnessed them being together and had reacted to
it.

They had disapproved.

"James? James?!"

He shuddered into wakefulness at the sound of Susan's voice. She had
moved closer, and was looking at him concernedly. "Are you sure you're
alright today? You seem even more spaced out than usual. Shit, I like
being with you, but some days it seems you're not even aware of me. I
need to know you're aware of my existence, James."

James ignored her and remained wrapped up in his thoughts. "That was
weird. It kind of felt like the dream again, but this time I was awake.
I really believe there's more to things than what we see with the naked
eye. As if the trees had suddenly become conscious, and were watching
us, waiting for something. And in the dream...the things she
said...that she was coming. It's like the whole town's preparing itself
for her. God, the way I felt when I first woke up. It was the way you
feel sometimes when you're out in the open country, and you look at the
blue sky, and the lovely wheat fields, and you hear the bees humming,
smell the grass. And even though everything's so beautiful and so
perfect, you still feel sad. I think it's because there's something
missing. Because despite all the beauty of what you see around you,
what's inside you is basically...emptiness. Blankness. Like the surface
of the moon. The colours - first the sunset red, and then the moon.
That was all black and white. Soulless. As if someone's emotions had
been wrenched away from them. I think that's what the dream meant. That
some part of me, or maybe a part of someone else, is missing."

He realised without embarassment that he's been talking to himself for
the past few minutes. Susan had left quietly, and even though he
strained to see her through the masses of people in the park, she had
long gone.
He shrugged, sighed, and rose, brushing blades of grass from his
clothes. Ambling back across the park with his hands in his pockets and
his face turned stubbornly to the ground, he soon found himself in the
town again. Here, the peculiar emotions that had been bombarding him
seemed safely shut away, fenced out by the towering office blocks and
the sheer mental intensity of the crowds.

He walked home by a different route, and waited for the night to
come.