Overheard in a Dream (39 page)

“I let myself in at the side door of the health club and went down the stairs. The light was on, spilling out into the stairwell, illuminating the emerald-green carpet. The room was empty, but the door was open to the small room behind, the private room where Fergus kept his things. I came to the doorway. I could hear he was in there, so I entered. There he was with Pip. On the floor. Fucking her from behind, like a bull on a cow. He sensed my presence and looked up

“‘
Laura
,’ came the horrified gasp, but I didn’t wait for more. I turned and fled.

“Within twenty minutes of my arriving home, Fergus was there. He didn’t even knock. He just came barging in.

“‘Get
out
!’ I screamed.

“‘Laura, it isn’t what it looked like.’

“‘It damned well
was
what it looked like, Fergus!’ I was in tears before I could finish the sentence.

“‘Laura, calm down, so I can talk to you. I’ll explain.’

“‘There’s nothing to explain, Fergus. I saw you.’

“‘It’s nothing with Pip. Pip isn’t evolved. She’s a lower. She’s got no Voices. She’s just faking it for attention, that’s all.’

“‘So you just tell yourself the woman’s a lower, and then it doesn’t count if you fuck her?’

“‘No, try to understand.’

“I’m done understanding, Fergus. I’m done with all of this. I’m done with channelling. I’m done with the Tuesday night group. And I’m done with you. So go. Leave. Now.’

“Fergus hesitated, which was the first time I’d ever seen a glint of uncertainty in his expression. A wretched anger overtook me. I picked up the channelling notebook from the coffee table and threw it at him, because it was the only thing of his I could lay my hands on. ‘
Go
!’

“He paused a moment longer, his expression sad. Then he opened the door and went out. I retrieved the channelling notebook from the floor and threw it again, feeling only minimal relief at the thud of paper and cardboard against the door.

“Picking up the phone, I started dialling directory enquiries. I asked for the number of the airlines. Six hours later I was on a plane for South Dakota.”

“For all their insensitivity during my adolescence, Marilyn and my dad both made a sincere effort to welcome me back into the bosom of my family without too many questions or comments.

“Depression overtook me. I retreated into the basement and lay in bed for entire days without regard for anything, not the courses I’d left behind, not Dr Betjeman, not Fergus.

“I had expected Fergus to barrage me with phone calls but the days passed into weeks and there was no contact. Not once. From the moment I left Boston, I didn’t hear from him again.

“This silence generated an unpleasant mix of sorrow and anxiety in me. I felt confused and lonely, as if I literally didn’t know how to think or act without Fergus there to tell me what to do.

“In the end it was Tiffany who encouraged me to come up out of my cave in the basement. School was finished for the summer, so she came down to sit on my bed in the morning and talk to me. She started joining me for the morning cartoons, and, much to her mother’s dismay, sharing my addiction for raspberry jam on toast. Between the two of us we would go through half a loaf of bread each morning.

“One morning, she said, ‘I know how to make blueberry muffins. If I make them for us tomorrow, we could take them out on the patio and eat them at the picnic table.’

“‘Tiff, I don’t want to go out on the patio at eight o’clock in the morning.’

“‘Would you like pancakes better? I can make them too. And it’s nice outside at eight o’clock in the morning. It’s not hot yet.’

“I emerged from the basement in mid-June, feeling like a bear coming out of hibernation. I schlumpfed out in my night gown and slippers and Tiffany did cartwheels on the lawn.”

“Tiffany remained my unlikely guardian angel. She watched over my every move back towards normality, gently helping me along in a way I would never have accepted from an adult.

“‘I think you should cut your hair, Laura,’ she said one day, holding part of my hair out from my head. ‘It looked better when you had it shorter.’

“I didn’t answer.

“‘
I
can cut it!’ she said brightly.

“‘Oh no, you can’t. I’m not letting you anywhere near me with scissors.’

“‘Just let me try.’

“‘
No
, Tiffany. I don’t want a twelve-year-old to cut my hair.’

“‘Then, how about Mum? Mum could do it. She could cut the straggly bits off. You’d look nicer.’

“‘Fergus wouldn’t think so.’

“‘Fergus isn’t here.’

“One evening in late June, Tiffany said, ‘Let’s go somewhere.’

“‘Like where?’ I asked. I hadn’t set foot off the property in the six weeks since I’d returned to South Dakota. Not even to the supermarket.

“Tiffany shrugged nonchalantly. She was desperate to see a horror movie she wasn’t old enough for, so I expected her to ask me to take her to that. Instead, she said, ‘How about the Badlands?’

“‘The
Badlands
?’ I replied in surprise. ‘That’s an hour’s drive away and it’s already after seven. It’ll be practically dark when we get there.’

“‘Yeah, I know,’ she said, still smiling. ‘I like it when it’s evening in the Badlands. In the daytime it’s too hot.’ She rose up. ‘Come on. Let’s ask.’

“It was an unexpected destination. I’d been genuinely frightened of the Badlands as a child. I’d gone only once with the Meckses. I was very little and had found the eerie landscape profoundly unsettling. During the journey home, I got car sick, which was something that almost never happened to me. Ma took me up into the front seat with her and Pa. They were casually discussing a patch of land near Rapid City, saying how it looked like it was eroding into badlands and Pa said how the Badlands had been growing since the Dust Bowl days of the Depression. The conversation made me cry. I remember lying on the front seat with my head in Ma’s lap and feeling hideously nauseated, while the Badlands loomed up in my child’s mind as a diabolical threat, trying to spread lifelessness everywhere. I was in my teens before I fully understood how slowly geological changes take place and that I didn’t need to watch warily for them to attack. Even so I’d
never felt fully comfortable there. Consequently, it seemed like a strange place to choose for coming back to life.

“By the time Tiffany and I had spanned the fifty-some miles between Rapid City and the borders of the national park, the sun had dropped almost to the horizon. We weren’t going to manage much viewing unless we wanted to do it in the darkness, so once we were inside the park, I stopped at the first overlook I came to.

“‘Hey, yeah, this is good!’ Tiffany cried enthusiastically. There were a few other hardy souls risking a walk down the path to the overlook in the fading light. Tiffany bounded off.

“This was my first time away from home in several weeks, so I opened the car door slowly, stood up and stretched. Cautiously, I looked around. An unseen bird called. The slightest sliver of a waning moon hung in the eastern sky.

“Bursting with energy, Tiffany ran all the way down to the lowest point of the outlook, then back up the steps to me, still beside the car, then down an unofficial path worn through the prairie grass. I lingered behind the low wall in the car park and assessed the just-visible tops of the nearest outcroppings. Finally I walked down slowly to the first vantage point.

“I’d been to the Badlands so seldom that I’d forgotten what a bizarre place it was with its eroded soil, bare and ghostly white, reaching up towards the sky like the crumbling marble spires of some vast, unremembered city. The sun had slipped below the distant undulations of the Black Hills to bring on the lingering twilight of midsummer. The crescent moon grew bright and sharp, a pagan sickle for huntresses and offerings of mistletoe. The same bird called again, a long, shrill note.

“Tiffany was already down again at the lower outlook and I walked down to join her. The ground below the guard rail sloped off steeply, dropping several hundred feet to the floor of the basin.

“Everyone else had gone, leaving Tiffany and me in the haunted silence. I leaned my forearms on the metal railing and regarded the surreal formations stretching off as far into the dusky distance as I could see. I didn’t feel the fear of it that I had as a child, but I still felt overawed. It was a numinous place, particularly in the moonlight.

“‘Come on,’ Tiffany said and slipped through the guard rails.

“‘
Tiffany
!’ I shrieked. ‘For God sake, don’t go down there. Jesus! You’re going to kill yourself.’

“‘No, I’m not. I’ve been down here before. Me and Cody both. There’s a path. Come on.’

“There looked to be no path to me, just a sheer drop off into an alien landscape.

“‘Come on, Laura. I want to show you something.’

“Leaving all common sense behind, I crawled between the guard rails and followed her down into a white gully of frighteningly crumbly soil. Down we went steeply and I didn’t dare think how we’d ever get back up again. ‘Jesus, Tiffany, stop! Jesus Christ, this is for mountain sheep, not people. Your mum is going to murder me, if she ever finds out I let you do this.’

“‘Don’t worry,’ she replied, sitting down in order to slide further down into the deeper gully below us. ‘Both me and Cody have been down here millions of times. There’s a picnic ground just a little further down the road and Mum and Dad always stop there ’cause it’s got shade. Me and Cody have done a lot of exploring around here. I know where I’m going.’

“And she did, for suddenly we came out onto a narrow ledge that harboured three ponderosa pines and a scruff of grass over the white soil. We were about two hundred feet below the viewpoint, although still dizzyingly high above the floor of the basin. On all sides of us the pale landscape stretched upwards in slender spires, like skeletal fingers grappling at the sky.

“‘How ever are we going to get back up from here?’ I murmured.

“‘Laura, shut up, would you? If I thought you were going to be such a grown-up about this, I wouldn’t have brought you,’ Tiffany said. ‘With all your jabbering you’re going to ruin what I’m trying to show you.’

“I fell silent.

“Coming to the brink of the ledge, we both gazed out over the landscape. Twilight was fading into night, but the white soil was almost luminous by starlight. The sickled moon hung low, the rest of its shadowed orb faintly visible against the darkness. Tiffany touched my arm and pointed to the gaunt hillside opposite us on our left. There, about level with us, was a doe working her way along the precipitous slope. Behind her soon came twin fawns. A light-coloured owl called, flying down past the pines and into the abyss below.

“‘To the Sioux Indians, this was a holy place,’ Tiffany said, her voice soft. ‘I think maybe they were right.’ She looked over at me. ‘It’s not a church or anything, but you can still feel it, can’t you? I can. I can feel there’s something here that there isn’t in most places.’

“
Like the high holy place
, I was thinking, this secret place with its white soil, its vast overlook, its innate sacredness. I glanced at Tiffany, absorbed in her own thoughts again. Clad
in cut-offs and a mucky T-shirt, her knees scuffed with the white soil, her sneakers worn through at the toes, she made an unlikely spirit guide; but I recognized her now for what she was.

“Torgon stirred. Not the Torgon who had been coming to me in Boston. The real Torgon. In the old, familiar way. I didn’t see her right away, I only felt her, but she began roiling inside me, breaking the surface occasionally, like spawning salmon do when returning to the too-small streams of their birth.”

“
O
h, show her to me. Let me hold her. Here.” Torgon reached out her arms.

Carefully, Mogri unwrapped the baby.

“She’s strong. You’ve done well by her, Mogri.

“I plan to call her Jofa when her naming day arrives.”

Torgon caressed the baby. “Oh, look at you, you little darling. How beautiful you are.”

“I wish she seemed as beautiful when the owls are out,” Mogri said and sat down. “She still doesn’t know the night from day and leaves me feeling very weary.”

“Well, you sit and rest and I shall hold her.” Torgon cuddled the baby close. “You can meanwhile tell me how everything goes at home.”

“I’m leaving the fields to learn the loom with Mam.”

“You? The loom? Mogri, you’ve always loathed the loom.”

“Aye, but with a babe, what can I do? It’s indoor work, it’s warm and dry and won’t require I carry her on my back all day.”

“Ah.”

Mogri reached over to stroke the baby’s temple gently. “If only Tadem could have lived. I look at her and think, what will become of us? What world is this I’ve brought her to? No father. No brothers or sisters.” She looked over at Torgon. “I was going to take her life from her when she came from the womb. I’d made up my mind it was the best solution … but when I saw her, I hadn’t the heart to do it … yet I fear that letting her live will be the greater cruelty.”

“Well, she won’t grow up alone.”