Dream Paris (7 page)

I made my way back down the corridor, placed my hand on the door, paused as I heard my name mentioned.

“… I’d fuck her…”

That was the voice of Joe, the quartermaster. I paused, waiting for Francis to defend me. But instead, Eddie spoke up.

“You’re a lucky bastard, escorting that bird into France. I’d give her one, too.”

“You wouldn’t have to try too hard. She’s gagging for it, according to her fortune scroll. And only seventeen, too. Nice tight pussy.”

Joe again. I’d like to say I couldn’t believe what he’d said, but that wouldn’t be true. I’d heard the boys at school speaking in much the same way.

“Come on, she’s young enough to be your daughter!”

“Hey, you know what they say, Eddie. If they’re old enough to bleed, they’re old enough to breed.”

Now
I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. Not the words. I’d heard stupid words like that before, stupid unthinking words spoken by stupid little boys too young to know any better. Stupid little boys trying to impress their friends. No, it’s not the words that upset me, it was who had spoken them.

Francis.

Francis, who I had thought so sensible and mature. Francis, my so called bodyguard, due to accompany me to Dream Paris.

I pushed open the door, walked into the room.

Francis looked up, smooth and in control.

“Ah, here she is. Are you ready for your cocoa, Anna?”

I gazed at him.

“Actually, you were right. It is an early start tomorrow. I’d like to go to bed, please.”

Did Francis and Eddie exchange glances at that? More schoolboy humour? I didn’t care.

“If you like,” said Francis. He led me across the camp to the barrack room where I was quartered. He chatted away, I answered his questions in sullen monosyllables. In the end he got fed up with it and we walked in silence. I gazed at his big, powerful body. Suddenly, I didn’t find him attractive in the slightest.

Coming, again and again…
I thought.
Not bloody likely
.

DEPARTURE

S
OMEONE WAS GENTLY
shaking me awake.

“Mother…” I’d been dreaming of her, remembering a time from before the changes. She’d been drinking coffee in the kitchen, getting ready to head off to work. I was telling her about my homework, she was only half-listening, most of her attention focussed on her newspaper.

“I brought you a cup of tea.”

That wasn’t my mother. And then I remembered. I was the sole occupant of a barrack room, somewhere in the middle of a devastated London. I was being handed a cup of tea by the revolting Francis Cuppello.

“Put it on the side.”

If he heard the contempt in my voice, he didn’t register it.

“There you go. I’ll leave you to it, then. Take a shower, I’ll meet you in the mess for breakfast. We depart at 07:45 hours.”

“’kay,”

He looked at me for a moment, wondering, and then he turned and left the wonderful place they’d given me to sleep in. An empty room, metal skeletons of empty beds lined up on either side. The sound of rain on the windows.

Today was the day that I would depart for Dream Paris. I didn’t want to go. Who would? If you think that you would, then you’ve never been in the Dream World. You’ve never woken each morning wondering if your personality has changed in some way, wondering how you could tell if it had. You’ve never seen the fear in other people’s eyes as they gaze at you, weighing you up, deciding who or what you are. The Dream World is not a place where humans can live.

I was terrified. My fortune said I would meet my mother in Dream Paris. It never said anything about coming back. Back during the Incursion, as Therese Delacroix had called it, once you’d entered Dream London, you were trapped. The railway lines looped back on themselves, bringing you back to where you started. Would Dream Paris be the same?

I sipped the tea. Hot, sweet and milky. I loved this room. The bare, swept floor, the pale green walls, the metal lockers, the empty beds. It was so ordinary, so unchanging. I didn’t want to leave it.

B
REAKFAST WAS A
dream. I can’t believe I used that word;
dream
means something else nowadays. What I meant was that breakfast was wonderful. I heaped my plate with bacon, eggs, mushrooms, beans, fried bread, tomatoes, sausages. I hadn’t eaten so much since, well, the night before, when I’d eaten all that stew. Francis sat opposite me, scraping the pattern off a huge bowl of porridge. I refused all attempts to start a conversation, kept things strictly business.

“So, what subjects are you studying at school, Anna?”

“How are we going to get to Dream Paris, Francis? Is it far?”

“I don’t know. There’s a path we have to follow.”

“Where’s the path?”

“Not far. A short drive.” He looked unhappy. “Are you sure that you’ve everything you need? Wouldn’t you like a couple of books to take with you? It can get boring.”

“Have you seen the path before?”

And so on.

We finished our breakfast and headed back to the barracks. I sorted through my equipment for the last time, mixing things from the Army with the things I’d brought from home. I kept my own comfortable boots, but I took the Army’s raincoat and over-trousers. I pulled on the dark blue oiled woollen jumper they’d provided and that was it. I took a last look around the barracks, hoisted my pack on my back and headed out into the cold drizzle.

No one paid me any attention as I walked through the busy base. Everyone was hurrying this way and that on missions of their own. We found Mr Twelvetrees waiting for us, listening to Tchaikovsky’s Sixth in the back seat of his shiny black car. Darren took my pack and stored it in the boot, next to a much larger pack that I assumed belonged to Francis.

Darren turned the music right down as I climbed into the car.

“Any last questions, Anna?” asked Mr Twelvetrees.

“Why should I trust you, Mr Twelvetrees? I’m walking out on my old life on the word of a man I met barely twelve hours ago. How can I trust you?”

“You can’t.”

Oddly enough, that satisfied me. He wasn’t promising anything.

Francis climbed in with us and we were off. The car pulled out of the barracks and we drove through a grey, drizzly London morning. A group of girls about my age walked to school: they’d shortened their uniform skirts by rolling them up at the waist, their faces were thick with orange foundation. They would go to class, chat through lessons, gossip through break, come back home and maybe get dressed up and go out for the night. Normally I would have looked at them with scorn, but today, heading off to who knew where, I felt nothing but envy.

We drove through the morning traffic until we reached a road that looked like any other. Lines of shops, pedestrian crossings, three red buses belching dark smoke. Darren brought the car to a halt. Mr Twelvetrees leaned across me and opened the door.

“And this is where we part company. Good luck, Ms Sinfield. Take care of her, Francis.”

“I will, Mr Twelvetrees.”

And that was it. We stepped out of the car into the misty wet day. Darren brought our packs out from the boot, nodded to us, and got back in the car. We watched as it pulled away into the traffic. I looked at Francis, dressed just the same as me. Breathable walking trousers, dark blue jumper. Both of us had on dark anoraks, unfastened despite the rain. I looked at Francis’s backpack and saw that it was much larger than mine. Much, much larger. I wondered what was inside it, but didn’t ask. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.

“Ready?” he asked.

“One moment.”

The postbox was a Schindler flash of red in the grey. I dashed off down the road, posted the letters to Ben and Mr Hiatt. My only insurance.

I walked slowly back to where Francis waited and we hoisted on our backpacks – Francis with some difficulty – and we set off walking down the road. The endless drizzle formed a pattern of silver beads on my jumper. Pedestrians pushed past us, no doubt assuming from our backpacks that we were just another pair of sightseers, come to London to visit the ruins of the Dream World, come for the visceral thrill of seeing where our world had once been touched by another. I despised them, those tourists who blocked the pavements, using the heat and electricity that could have been directed to the broken parts of London whilst they searched for the vicarious thrill of the Incursion. I’d heard that some dickheads even came hoping to find a path out of our world. Which, when you thought about it, was what we were doing now.

“They shouldn’t be sending you,” blurted Francis. I saw by the look in his face it had been playing on his mind since he’d woken me up this morning.

“And why not? Because I’m just a girl?” I couldn’t keep the contempt from my voice. I wasn’t a girl. I was old enough to bleed, after all. His words. I became sarcastic. “Surely I have you to look after me? A big strong man to keep me safe? Doesn’t that make things okay?”

We walked a few paces, Francis watching his feet.

“I don’t doubt you can look after yourself, Anna. I don’t think you should come because you have PTSD.”

I don’t know what I’d been expecting. An apology maybe, a blustering justification more like. Certainly not this.

“Let’s be clear,” I said. “You think I’ve got Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?”

“Yes. You marched into the parks, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

“That would be enough to put a strain on anyone.”

So I was the problem…?

“Especially if they were just a poor weak female. Tell me, Francis, were you in Dream London?”

“At the end. I came in on the troop trains on the last day. I was there for the final push.”

“So you missed it all.”

“Not all of it. But I can imagine the strain you were under. I lost a friend in Afghanistan. I know what it’s like. You should be seeing a doctor, you shouldn’t be going back in.”

I’d have laughed if it wasn’t so pathetic. I overheard him being a sexist pig but
I
was the one with a problem. I felt like stopping right there in the street, dropping my backpack, jumping on a bus and heading home. And I would have done, if it wasn’t for one thing.

“My mother is in Dream Paris. You understand that, don’t you? Haven’t you got a family?”

Francis stopped, fumbled in his pocket. Pulled out his phone. He brought up a picture of a pretty young woman holding a baby.

“That’s my daughter. She’s called Emily.”

Okay. Score one to Francis. Even so…

“Who’s the woman?” I asked.

“’Chelle. My fiancée. We were supposed to be married back in June, but then Dream London came up.”

There was a note in his voice that softened me, just a little. He may have been a pig, but there was no mistaking the pride he felt in his family.

“’Chelle’s very pretty.” I admitted, grudgingly. “And Emily is gorgeous.” She wasn’t, she was a typical bald baby, but you have to say that, don’t you? “How old is she?”

“Seven months.” He put the phone back in his pocket.

“I know why you’re going, Anna, and I don’t blame you. I just don’t think it’s right. They shouldn’t have told you about that fortune. You’re not responsible for your mother.”

“I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself.”

He didn’t reply to that. Instead he just said:

“Here we are.”

We’d reached a narrow alley, squeezed between two buildings. I shivered. The alley looked like something you might have seen in Dream London: irregular brickwork; worn stone steps leading downwards; an iron post, a ring of rust around the base.

“Steps,” I said, peering into the gloom. “Where do they lead to?”

“A canal.”

I took a deep breath and looked around the old world, saying goodbye. The greyness, the rain, the sheer, tired, broken-down ugliness of wonderful normality.

“I’ll go first,” he said.

We descended the steps, my heart pounding. What would be waiting at the bottom? I imagined myself stepping into the heady, flower-scented heat of Dream London. Instead, I found myself on the towpath of a dark canal, wedged between the blank walls of two tall buildings. There was the same rain, the same greyness. Francis nudged me, pointed to the canal; the filthy, rubbish filled canal, the surface slicked with oil, the mud choked garbage soaked in moribund water. And there, amongst the garbage, a gloriously yellow orchid, a splash of sunlight in this grey day.

“That’s from the Dream World,” I said. “Which way do we go?”

“Downstream,” said Francis. “We head for the sea, for the English Channel.”

T
HE RAIN WAS
getting heavier. I pulled up my hood as we marched on, Francis in front of me. I noted the way he walked, leaning forward to compensate for the weight of his huge backpack. What was in there?

I could still hear the traffic, echoing from the high walls that hemmed in the canal. We passed by low windows and I peered through them into modern offices lit with the glow of computer screens. There were piles of paper and ring binders, people chatting and drinking coffee. One man gazed out of a window, sandwich in hand. He saw me and winked. I scowled back.