The Unlimited Dream Company (9 page)

By noon the clinic was empty, except for myself and the receptionist, a volunteer housewife. While I rested in the waiting-room, impatient for Miriam St Cloud to return from her calls, a woman arrived with her ten-year-old son. The boy had broken his arm climbing a tree. The mother complained away neurotically, unsettling the receptionist as she tried to fix a temporary splint.

Unhappy at the child’s crying, I went into the surgery to see if I could help, in time to hear the mother remark angrily:

‘He’s been climbing the banyan tree outside the supermarket. All the children in Shepperton seem to be there. Shouldn’t the police do something about it? – it’s blocking the traffic.’

The boy was still crying, refusing to look at his reddened forearm with its painful veins. Intending to comfort him, I took his hand. The boy winced, and as he pulled away from me his free fist struck my knuckles. Immediately one of the cuts opened and a drop of blood fell on to his arm, which he smeared frantically across himself.

‘Who are you? What are you doing to him?’ The mother tried to push me away, but the the boy had stopped crying.

He gave a whoop of delight. Proudly he showed the slim and unblemished arm to his mother, and then darted into the corridor, swinging himself from the door-handles.

The mother stood amazed. Staring at me, she said accusingly: ‘You cured him.’ Like Dr Miriam, she seemed angry, with the same resentful expression I had seen on the faces of Father Wingate’s parishioners.

When she and the child had gone the receptionist gestured me towards Miriam’s chair. Her eyes fixed on my scabbed knuckles, moist with their healing tincture of blood, she asked matter-of-factly:

‘Mr Blake, are you ready to see the rest of your patients?’

An hour later a large queue had formed inside the clinic. Mothers with their children, an old man in a wheelchair, a telephone linesman with a flash-burn on his face, a young woman with her leg in a bandage, they sat patiently in the waiting-room as I continued to wax and polish the linoleum floors. In some way the news of my miraculous cure had spread throughout Shepperton. Now and then I paused from my work – I wanted the clinic to be spotless for Dr Miriam – and beckoned the next of the patients into the surgery: a teenage girl with acne, an air hostess with menstrual pains, an incontinent cinema commissionaire.

For all of them I put on a show of examining them closely, ignoring their grimaces as I touched them with my blood-flecked hands. In their eyes, clearly, I was some kind of unqualified medicine-man whose reputation had brought them here, where they found themselves appalled by my lack of hygiene.

Even when I had cured them they still looked at me with the same distaste, as if they resented my power over them and refused to come to terms with the impulse that had propelled them here. I soon saw that almost all their ailments were mental in origin – my fall from the sky had clearly fulfilled some profound need which each of them expressed in these sprains and rashes. Most of them were patients on Dr Miriam’s house-list. As I waxed the floor around the telephone switchboard I heard her calling in repeatedly to ask the receptionist what had happened to them.

The last of the patients left me, a garage mechanic with an infected throat, his surly voice clearing as he thanked me
grudgingly. Behind him, on the steps outside, was the tail of the queue. The three crippled children had come in from their secret meadow and hung about the doors. The boys pressed their noses to the glass panes as I returned to my mop and wax. Whispering a commentary to Rachel, David peered up in a hopefully knowledgeable way at the health service notices on immunization, venereal disease and ante-natal care.

After locking away my mop and bucket, I debated whether to treat them. My talents as a healer I took completely for granted, part of the inheritance bequeathed to me by the unseen powers who had presided over my crash. At the same time I felt almost light-headed about everything, like a groom before his wedding, a burgeoning sense of hunger, lust and power, as if I were about to marry the whole of Shepperton and its people.

The three children waited patiently for me. Despite my affection for them, I feared them. I feared that I might not be able to cure them. I feared the grave they were building for me, and which they might complete sooner than I was ready if I gave them back their powers.

‘Jamie, come in. I’ve got a present for each of you. David, bring Rachel with you.’

Rachel, your eyes.

Jamie, your legs.

David, your brain.

I stood in the doorway, calling them towards me. Strangely, they seemed reluctant now to come to me, nervous of these gifts. As I knelt down, readying three drops of blood on my knuckles, the red sports car drove noisily up to the clinic entrance. Dr Miriam, in high temper, pointed to me from behind the steering wheel.

‘Blake – leave them alone!’

She frowned angrily at the brilliant air, trying to shut out the light that poured off the trees and flowers in the park.
Even the floors of the clinic, which I had waxed so lovingly for her, reflected the same glowing air.

Unwilling to confront this beautiful young woman with whom I dreamed of flying, I ran past the crippled children and set off between the parked cars towards the illuminated town.

The air was bright with flowers and children. Without realizing it, Shepperton had become a festival town. As I strode past the open-air swimming-pool I could see that the entire population was out in the streets. A noisy holiday spirit rose from thousands of voices. Sunflowers and garish tropical plants with fleshy fruits had sprung up in the well-tended gardens like vulgar but happy invaders of an over-formal resort. Creepers hung from the neon sills above the shop-fronts, trailed lazy blooms among the discount offers and bargain slogans. Extraordinary birds crowded the sky. Macaws and scarlet ibis watched from the roof of the multi-storey car-park, and a trio of flamingos inspected the cars outside the automobile showroom, eager for these burnished vehicles to join the vivid day.

Everywhere a brilliant light spilled across the town, as if from the excited palette of a naive painter of jungles. The open-air swimming-pool was packed with people, diving through the rainbows lifted by the bright spray. I counted a dozen gaudy kites flying over the rooftops, one of them with a six-foot wing-span and the emblem of an aircraft on its white fabric.

Accepting all these compliments to myself, and relieved that Miriam St Cloud had decided not to follow me, I set off towards the town centre. I felt strangely grand, well aware that in some way I had made all this possible. My earlier fears had gone, and nothing that happened here would in the least surprise me. I enjoyed my sense of power over this small town, my knowledge that sooner or later I would mate with all these women in their bright summer dresses strolling and talking around me. I sensed the same impulse, perversely,
towards the young men and the children, even to the dogs running along the crowded pavements, but this no longer shocked me. I knew that I had so much to do here, so many changes to make, and that I had barely begun.

Already I was thinking of my next vision, certain now that it would not be a dream at all, but a re-ordering of reality in the service of a greater and more truthful design, where the most bizarre appetites and the most wayward impulses would find their true meaning. I remembered Father Wingate’s reassuring comment that vices in this world were metaphors for virtues in the next. But of what strange creatures were these butterflies the metaphors, the smiles on these children’s faces, the happy shriek of the small boy I had cured? Perhaps they in their turn masked some sinister truth?

In the centre of the high street, between the supermarket and the filling-station, an enormous banyan tree had appeared. Its broad trunk had split the tarmac, throwing up pieces of torn macadam the size of manhole covers. The wide branches overhung the road and had rooted themselves in the sidewalks. A huge throng of people had gathered around the tree, mothers waving to the high branches, where some thirty children sat among the macaws and parakeets. The tree had blocked all traffic through the centre of the town, and a parked car had been trapped by the rooting branches, already as thick as elephant trunks. The old soldier with the shooting stick stood by his caged vehicle, shouting orders to his elderly wife penned in the rear seat.

As I pushed my way through the crowd it was clear that everyone in Shepperton had declared a local holiday. Even the school had closed. The teachers stood outside the gates, waving to the last of the children who ran screaming towards the banyan tree. Meanwhile the shopkeepers were making the most of this flood of customers. Lines of dishwashers, stereo players and television sets stood in the sun outside the appliance stores, children and birds playing among the cabinets. The manager of the furniture emporium and his
assistants were setting out an open-air warehouse of cocktail cabinets, settees and bedroom suites. Exhausted by this jostling bazaar, housewives lay back like thankful tourists on the deep mattresses.

By the entrance to the sweet-shop a group of children were helping themselves to the chocolates and candy-bars laid out on a counter, stuffing their pockets with this undreamt treasure. I waited for the owner to chase them away with his broom, but he lounged good-naturedly in his doorway, throwing peanuts to the macaws.

Across the street was the railway station, where a commuter train was about to leave. The driver waited, head out of his cab, and shouted to the passengers who were still talking to each other on the platform. Secretaries and typists, dark-suited executives carrying their briefcases, they were already hours late on their daily journey to London.

‘Blake, you haven’t got any …’ A small girl with chocolate-smeared cheeks offered me a handful of sweets. I listened to the hum of the electric engines, tempted to push through the crowd and run for the train. Within minutes I could make my escape forever from Shepperton.

Thanking the child, I walked towards the station. But as I looked out along the steel tracks that ran through the gravel lakes to the east of Shepperton I felt a deep sense of lassitude come over me, a complete loss of concern for the outside world. I wanted to remain here, and explore these talents with which I had been entrusted since my crash. Already I knew that my powers might not extend beyond the boundaries of this small town.

There was an angry shout from the driver. Baffled, he shook his head at these renegade passengers. The empty train pulled away from the station. The passengers wandered along the platform, still talking in a relaxed way to each other. The executives threw their briefcases on to the grassy bank, took off their jackets and loosened their ties. They lit cigarettes for the secretaries and lay back on the warm turf,
these once disciplined commuters who should already have spent the morning at their advertising agencies and newspaper offices.

Behind them, a few feet from the abandoned briefcases, a small grove of needle-leaved plants had sprung up against the fence. As I turned my back on the station the first eyes were straying to these cannabis plants and the afternoon day-dreams to come.

Happy to leave them to it, I continued my tour of Shepperton. The town was changing under my eyes. Near the film studios people were out in their gardens. Fathers and sons were hard at work building elaborate kites, as if about to take part in some aerial festival. The once immaculate lawns and flower-beds were overrun with tropical plants. Palmettos, banana trees and glossy rubber plants jostled for a place in the vivid light. Lilies and bizarre fungi covered the grass like marine plants on a drained sea-bed. The air was filled with the racket of unfamiliar birds. Screamers trumpeted from the roof of the supermarket, white storks rattled their bills as they surveyed the town from the proscenium of the filling-station. Around a swimming-pool strutted three emperor penguins, chased by a squealing child.

No one was at work. People had left open their front doors and strolled along the centre of the roads, the men bare-chested in running shorts, the women in their brightest summer gear. Married couples exchanged partners in the most sensible and amiable way, husbands taking the arms of their neighbours’ wives and daughters. At one street corner a party of middle-aged spinsters called out teasingly to the passing young men.

Seeing these happy pairings, I thought of the cheerful promiscuity to come. I felt a growing sexual need, not only for the young women brushing against me in the crowded streets, but also for the children who followed me, even for the five-year-olds with their candy-filled hands. Confused by this sinister paedophiliac drive, I was barely aware that I had
taken one little girl by the hand, the pretty child with the serious, dark-eyed face who was still trying to give me her supply of free sweets, no doubt concerned by my gaunt expression.

Muttering thickly to her, I decided to take her to the park. I thought of the secret bower and the soft bed of flowers within the grave. Even if the crippled children saw us together – and in a depraved way I wanted them to for their own sake – no one would believe them.

As I steered the child through the crowd, repelled by myself but pulled along by the girl’s firm hand, I saw Father Wingate crossing the street towards me. He carried his straw hat in one hand, which he waved from side to side like the flight controller on the deck of a carrier signalling a bad landing. I could see that he knew all too well what was going through my mind. At the same time I felt that he did not altogether disapprove, and in some way had grasped the secret logic of this perverse act.

‘Come in here …’ Trying to avoid Father Wingate, I pulled the child into the doorway of the hairdressing salon. Every chair was filled, the line of assistants working like conjurors at the bizarre headstyles, a splendid confusion of feathers and flared perukes, wings of back-brushed hair, like the plumage of an aviary.

Next door to the salon, the local boutique was thronged with customers, as if every woman in Shepperton had set her heart on a new wardrobe. Racks of wedding dresses stood out on the sidewalk, and in the window the manageress was hoisting a magnificent lace gown over the hips of a plastic mannequin, apparently confident that this was the one garment every woman would select as her first choice. Sure enough, there was a mêlée of customers jostling each other good-humouredly for a view of the wedding dress. There were exaggerated sighs of delight, ironic titters of appreciation as these housewives and secretaries, waitresses and middle-aged executives pulled the gowns from the racks and
held them up to each other. They buffeted around me, pressing the gowns to their shoulders and shouting cheerfully at me. I felt that I was in a festival town filled with my brides.

Holding tightly to the crushed hand of the little girl, I remembered the white plumage of the birds clamouring around me, driven mad by lust. The women swayed against me, their voices shriller, creatures of a demented zoo quivering in rut. I shielded my eyes from the overbright sun. A huge macaw with electric blue plumage screeched past my head. Its talons tore methodically at the blood-striped awning. A small boy with the eyes of an insane dwarf whirled a rattle in my face.

Forced against the plate-glass window, I lifted the girl in my arms, tasting her damp, frightened breath in my mouth. I stumbled against a trestle table, and a tray of costume jewellery and wedding tinsel fell to the ground. The women pushed towards me, joined by the crowd packed into the shopping mall, excited visitors on a saint’s day surging about for a glimpse of a holy man.

Trying to clear my head, I looked up at the banyan tree that blocked the road. Dozens of children swung from the branches, their figures lit by the glowing foliage as if in some animated stained-glass window. Orioles and parakeets flexed their wings between the children, their lurid plumage leaking across the noisy air.

The hot bodies of the women pressed against my skin, their scent inflaming the bruises on my chest. I felt an uneasy sexual euphoria come over me, the intoxication of some strange hunger. The wedding dresses swayed around me in the heat, swinging together from the hangers the women held before their faces.

Through a gap in the crowd I saw Miriam St Cloud step from her sports car and stare in an almost mesmerized way at the plundered racks of wedding gowns. As I tottered among the women, a bull played by these female matadors
each with her wedding cape, Miriam seemed confused and uncertain, the last of my brides who had arrived too late for the ceremony. Did she realize that I had cured her patients so that I could marry them? I knew then that I would soon mate with Miriam St Cloud and with everyone here, with the young men and young women, with the children and the infants in their prams. I might never eat again, but their bodies would feed me their sweat and odour.

Terrified now, the little girl pulled herself from me and ran off through the crowd, chasing her friends among the washing machines and television sets. Almost swooning, I raised my fists against an excited mother who lifted her child to scream into my face. I tripped on the lace train of a wedding gown and fell to the ground at her feet. Exhausted by the noise, I lay there in a happy delirium, knowing that I was about to kicked to death by my brides.

Powerful hands seized my waist and lifted me on to the trestle table. Father Wingate held me in his arms, steadying me against the window. With one foot he swept aside the costume jewellery, and then forced the women back. Under his flowered shirt I could smell the horse-like sweat of his armpits. He watched me with an expression both angry and tender, a father about to strike his son’s mouth. I knew that he alone was aware of my resolving destiny, of the immanent future which I was about to enter.

‘Blake …’ His voice seemed to come down from the sky.

I swayed against him. ‘Call Dr Miriam. I need …’

‘No. Not now.’ He pressed my head to his chest, forcing me to breathe his sweat, determined that I should not retreat from whatever vision he had seen me approaching.

‘Blake, take your world,’ he whispered harshly. ‘Look at it, it’s around you here.’ He placed his hands on my bruised ribs, pressing his hard fingers into the imprint of those other hands which had first revived me.

‘Stand up, Blake. Now,
see
!’

I felt his mouth against my bruised lips, tasted his teeth and the stale tobacco of his spit.