The Dreamers (8 page)

J
ENNIFER WOKE ALONE. LIGHT
was beginning to peep over the horizon towards her and the stillness of the world was about to fade away. She pulled on her clothes and, lost in memories of the night before, walked back to her little cottage.

She closed her front door behind her and the emptiness of her cottage surrounded her. Her lover wasn’t there. There was no music playing, just emptiness and silence.

Lying down on her bed, Jennifer closed her eyes and tried to recall the touch of her lover from hours before. She really was her lover now. It wasn’t just a dream.

Arianwen wasn’t from now. She was from long ago. Jennifer knew that was impossible. Yet they had been together, and it didn’t seem to matter that it was impossible.

‘Jennifer,’ Arianwen breathes in her ear.

Jennifer reaches out to touch her but there is only empty air. ‘Please come back. I want to hold you.’

Arianwen did not appear. Jennifer pulled the blanket over herself and pressed her face into the pillow, utterly bereft.

B
ewilderment follows Arianwen. She finds herself alone on the beach, her corset and wide skirt and petticoats in place and trapping her as always.

Her head throbbing with confusion, she trudges home across the sand. Her parents will be
at the cottage and she will have to pretend she is not in love with a spectre.

Making no noise, she slides into the cottage. It is dark. There are no candles lit. There is no hum of her father’s voice and no click of her mother’s knitting needles.

‘Mother?’

There is silence.

‘Da?’

Still nothing.

She walks into the living room and finds only darkness. Her piano stands quiet and closed in the darkness. There is nothing else in the room.

Trembling, she goes to her bedroom. There, her brass bed stands ready for her.
There is someone in it, huddling beneath the covers.

She jerks in delight. Jennifer has come!

No. It is her own body she sees.

She sees herself, in a different time, lying
in her bed. Her hair is white, her face creased and her mouth in a grimace. She is alone, dying in her bed. There is no one even to hold her hand.

Arianwen watches herself suffer, covered in blankets, her breathing laboured. She can feel her own loneliness, aching within her body. She wonders why she does not call out for Jennifer. Jennifer would come to her.

But she does not know Jennifer. She is lying in her bed, old and alone, decades before Jennifer is born. The arch of time separates them and she cannot reach out. She cannot feel the soft touch of love on her skin.

She lies down
with her body, closes her eyes. Her past, her future, it is all one and there exists no time, not for Arianwen. She can see herself slipping away and feels death tearing at her throat.

This was long ago. This happened. She died and
has been forgotten. Now, she exists only as a fragment, an echo. She means nothing.

Jennifer threw herself into her work. She could hear her old dad’s voice chastising her.

‘Pull yourself together, girl and get on. That’s the answer.’

Her exhibition was ready. She had taken her photographs down to the small gallery in person but they had been set out without her.

Despite the dull ache inside her, she felt eager to see what the galley owner had done with her exhibition.

She dressed in her smart pantsuit and tried to look cheerful as possible. She forced her smile as she shook Mr Lloyd’s hand. He was a pleasant, round-faced man with bright eyes. He could talk for hours about art and he chattered on as he led her through to the gallery.

‘I ‘ope you’ll get a good turnout for this. Folk round here struggle a bit with art but being all about the town, as like they’ll turn up.’

‘Those who are in the photographs will come at least.’

‘That they will, my lovely.’

He opened the door into the gallery and she was welcomed by a
wide open white space. Arranged on the walls were her photos in frames. She gasped as she saw months of her work coming together in a picture of the town.

Mr Lloyd patted her on the shoulder. ‘I’ll leave you alone to take it all in. You give me a shout if you want owt changing.’

She barely heard him leave. She stared in wonder as she wandered down through the gallery. This was the culmination of her work, of her passion. She’d never had her own work fill a gallery before, only sold a few pieces and fought for half a wall in a few tiny London galleries. Her dad would have been proud of her.

Her gaze ran over photo after photo of Cilfachglas, her vision of the pretty, little town. A mini collection of children playing down by the beach made her
pause. She loved these particular photos. Small children splashed with abandon in the frothing water. She envied them their freedom.

She frowned as her eyes drew her closer to one of the pictures.
In the far corner of the last picture, there was a figure she didn’t remember being there. She frowned at it. It was a woman, in a long full skirt. Dark hair was just visible beneath a bonnet.

Jennifer started. The woma
n was Arianwen. She knew those eyes. Even in black and white, fading into the background, Jennifer recognised her. But the brightness Jennifer looked for in her eyes was not there. She gazed at the children playing but there was no smile about her face, only sadness and distance. Jennifer ached to reach out and touch her but she knew it was only a photograph.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes
to collect herself. When she glanced up again, Arianwen was gone and the children were alone.

Her stomach throbbed.
Would she ever get to hold, to touch Arianwen ever again?

The world is blackness and the echo of
Arianwen’s empty home. The voices of her parents, of the village, still vibrate around her but they are not there. Arianwen is alone.

She has had thoughts, so man
y thoughts, which were sinful. Yet she has never acted upon them. Why should she be punished in this way? She had thought God was merciful but she could not find his mercy.

She
is abandoned here. Is she dead? She must be. She is alone here, bereft. There are none of her relatives here to greet her, no comfort to be had. She is alone.

She wants to pray for forgiveness but she cannot summon the
will to sing for it. Yet fragments of music keep reaching her, from the blackness which surrounds her. Perhaps she is not yet lost.

Jennifer sat at her desk
, reading from her computer screen. Articles on her exhibition had been featured in both the Cilfachglas Guardian and the Cardiff Echo. They’d selected a few of her photographs to print in the newspapers. Jennifer had scrolled through the rest many times.

Half of those she’d taken
were displayed in her exhibition now, with people judging them. She flicked to her photo folder and scrolled through them. Her screen took her through her memories, took her through the village. She gazed at the cliffs, the harbour, the little shops. She looked at the church, the churchyard, the rows of houses and her little cottage. She wondered how different it was from the village Arianwen had known.

Seeing her in the picture, Jennifer had realised how much a part of Cilfachglas Arianwen was. She had been born here, had lived and loved and lost here. She had died here, alone. Apart from the glimpse in the photograph, Jennifer
hadn’t heard or seen anything of Arianwen since the night at the beach. She hadn’t come to her in her dreams. There had been no music.

She came to the end of the photographs. She hesitated, then
opened her internet browser and brought up a search engine. She didn’t actually know when Arianwen was from. But her dress had looked Victorian. She should be able to find something. They did censuses them, didn’t they?

After half an hour of clicking links, she came across a message board, offering help with researching family history. Jennifer left a message asking for any information about Victorian inhabitants of Cilfachglas, Wales, then went to bed.

She’d been going to bed early since the night at the beach, now almost a week ago. She’d lie in bed and think about Arianwen, hoping for her to come to her.