Keeping in Contact

I didn’t sleep well last night, for the usual reason.

I was in my Mother’s sitting room. She was sitting eating mince pies and discussing Russian cinema with her neighbours. Here we go again, I thought. Without lucid dreaming my nightlife would be dull.

I excused myself politely and slipped out of the house. It was a dark, starry night. I could hear the sea rather than see it. A cold wind was blowing and I wondered why I could never remember to wrap up warmly in my dreams.

I dream this dream every week. I know the way by now.

I crossed the sands to the island. At high tide it’s cut off by the sea so it’s pretty foolish to walk to it at night without even a torch. I wouldn’t like to get stuck here and have to wait until I have this dream again to get back to shore.

From the shore the island is a good quarter of a mile across wet sand. I frowned. Now it was a short walk on a sunny day, my bare toes warmed by the sand between them. What happened to the night and the wind? Who moved my island?

I reached the island and continued with caution. Those ruins have been in my dreams for sixteen years, I know every inch of their gloomy, foreboding shape. Grey masonry falling apart, the mortar crumbling, the whole structure seems to be rotting like a bad tooth.

Tonight, however, was different. I saw that the castle had been painstakingly, even lovingly restored. Now a warm biscuit colour, the stonework had been carefully repointed and new walls and roofs added. The castle looked habitable now, cosy even. I walked round to the back, to the part you can’t see from the shore. Now it looked like a house, with a path of pink granite, through a neatly laid-out front garden with hardy shrubs in pots on either side of the door. It looked like the National Trust had ganged up with Ground Force to give my dream a thorough going-over.

Further around the back of the island is a little beach with rock pools. As a child I could stare into them for hours and watch the crabs and the anemones. Someone was sitting on an a granite boulder, his trousers rolled up to his knees, dabbling his toes in the water and watching a little wooden boat bobbing up and down on the end of its string. He looked tired and slightly faded, but content, as if he had come home at last after a long journey.

“Hello, Father!” I greeted him brightly. “How are you getting on over there? Feeding you all right, are they?”

He showed no sign of hearing me. Fair enough, I thought. You haven’t come all this way to break into my dream just to engage in idle banter. I sat on the rock beside him, watched the boat and waited.

Finally he spoke, in a quiet, measured voice. It sounded as though it had been filtered of all emotions and only quiet resignation was left.

“You have no idea how hard it can be to bring up three lively children,” he said. “No idea at all. You have so much to learn, Sweetie.”

“We all have things to learn,” I retorted. “You never learned how to take care of a dodo. Anyway,” I continued, picking up a shell and turning it over between my fingers, “We’ve only got two children.”

“So much left to learn,” sighed my Father, starting to fade.

“Wait!” I said. “I just wanted to say…well…don’t get bored over there! Join a club or something! I’ll make sure you’ve got plenty to read and….don’t go….!”

It was too late. Laurence Llewellyn Bowen, accompanied by a National Trust volunteer with a chintz pinny and a huge alarm clock, bore down on me. They asked me to leave as I was causing a disturbance.

“I’ll get you for this, Bowen!” I shouted, as the alarm clock rang and I woke up.

“If you say so, dear,” mumbled Charlie into his pillow.