'Flashbacks, you mean. I never have them. I shouldn't like that.' She gazed at his scepticism.
'There's no need to be afraid of drugs,' she said. 'All sorts of people used to trip. Witches used to.
Look, it tells you about it in here.'
She fumbled a book out of her handbag; she seemed to have difficulty in wielding her fingers.
Witchcraft in England. 'You can have that,' she said. 'Have you got a job?'
It took him a moment to realize that she'd changed the subject. 'No,' he said. 'I haven't left school long. I had to have extra school because of all the moving. I'm twenty. I expect I'll get a job soon. I think we're staying here.'
'That could a good job,' she said, pointing at a notice behind the bar: TRAINEE BARMAN
REQUIRED. 'I think they want to get rid of that guy there. People don't like him. I know a lot of people would come here if they got someone friendly like you.'
Was it just her trip talking? Two girls said good-bye to a group, and came over. 'We're going now, June. See you shortly.'
'Right. Hey, this is Michael.'
'Nice to meet you, Michael.'
'Hope we'll see you again.'
Perhaps they might. These people didn't seem so bad after all. He drank his beer and bought another, wincing at the price and gazing at the job notice. June refused a drink: 'It's a downer.' They talked about his travels, her dissatisfactions, and her lack of cash to pay for moving. When he had to leave she said, 'I'm glad I met you. I like you.' And she called after him, 'If you got that job I'd come here.'
Darkness blinded him. It was heavy on him, and moved. It was more than darkness: it was flesh.
Beneath him and around him and above him, somnolent bodies crawled blindly. They were huge; so was he. As they shifted incessantly he heard sounds of mud or flesh.
He was shifting too. It was more than restlessness. His whole body felt unstable; he couldn't make out his own form - whenever he seemed to perceive it, it changed. His mind was unstable too; it felt too full, of alien chunks that ground harshly together. Memories or fantasies floated vaguely through him. Stone circles. Honeycombed mountains; glimmering faces like a cluster of bubbles in a cave mouth. Enormous dreaming eyes beneath stone and sea. A labyrinth of thorns. His own face.
But why was his own face only a memory?
He woke. Dawn suffocated him like grey gas; he lay panting. It was all right. It hadn't been his own face that he'd seemed to remember in the dream. His body hadn't grown huge. His large bones were still lanky. But there was a huge figure, nonetheless. It loomed above him at the window, its spread of face staring down at him.
He woke, and had to grab the dark before he could find the light switch. He twisted himself to sit on the edge of the couch, legs tangled in the blankets, so as not to fall asleep again. Around him the trailer was fiat and bright, and empty. Beyond the ajar door of his parents' room he could see that their bed was smooth and deserted.
He was sure he'd had that dream before - the figure at the window. Somehow he associated it with a windmill, a childhood memory he couldn't locate. Had he been staying with his grandparents? The dream was fading in the light. He glanced at his clock: two in the morning. He didn't want to sleep again until the dream had gone.
He stood outside the trailer. A wind was rising; a loud whisper passed through the forest, unlit trailers rocked and creaked a little at their moorings; behind everything, vast and constant, the sea rushed vaguely. Scraps of cloud slid over the filling moon; light caught at them, but they slipped away. His parents hadn't taken the car. Where had they gone? Irrationally, he felt he knew, if only he could remember. Why did they go out at night so much?
A sound interrupted his musing. The wind carried it to him only to snatch it away. It seemed distant, and therefore must be loud. Did it contain words? Was something being violently ill, and trying to shout? The moon's light flapped between a procession of dark clouds. A drunk, no doubt, shouting incoherently. Michael gazed at the edge of the forest and wondered about his parents.
Light and wind shifted the foliage. Then he shrugged. He ought to be used to his parents' nocturnal behaviour by now.
He slammed the door. His dream was still clinging to him. There had been something odd about the head at the window, besides its size. Something about it had reminded him unpleasantly of a bubble. Hadn't that happened the first time he'd had the dream? But he was grinning at himself: never mind dreams, or his parents. Think of June.
She had been in the club almost every evening since he'd taken the job, a month ago. He had dithered for a week, then he'd returned and asked about the notice. Frowning, the barman had called the manager - to throw Michael out? But June had told them her parents knew Michael well. 'All right. We'll give you six weeks and see how you do.' The barman had trained him, always faintly snooty and quick to criticize. But the customers had begun to prefer Michael to serve them. They accepted him, and he found he could be friendly. He'd never felt less like an outsider.
So long as the manager didn't question June's parents. June had invited Michael to the cottage a couple of times. Her parents had been polite, cold, fascinated, contemptuous. He'd tried to fit his lanky legs beneath his chair, so that the flares of his trousers would cover up his boots - and all the while he'd felt superior to these people in some way, if only he could think of it. They aren't my kind of people either,' June had told him, walking to the club. 'When can we go to your caravan?'
He didn't know. He hadn't yet told his parents about her; the reaction to the news of his job hadn't been what he'd hoped. His mother had gazed at him sadly, and he'd felt she was holding more of her feelings hidden, as they all had to in the cramped trailer. 'Why don't you go to the city? They'll have better jobs there.' 'But I feel at home here.'
'That's right,' his father had said. 'That's right.' He'd stared at Michael strangely, with a kind of uneasy joy. Michael had felt oppressed, engulfed by the stare. Of course there was nothing wrong, his father had become uneasy on hearing of his son's first job, his first step in the world, that was all.
'Can I borrow the car to get to the club?'
His father had become dogmatic at once; his shell had snapped tight. 'Not yet. You'll get the key soon enough.'
It hadn't seemed worth arguing. Though his parents rarely used the car at night, Michael was never given the key. Where did they go at night? 'When you're older' had never seemed much of an explanation. But surely their nocturnal excursions were more frequent now they'd docked at Pine Dunes? And why was his mother so anxious to persuade him to leave?
It didn't matter. Sometimes he was glad that they went out; it gave him a chance to be alone, the trailer seemed less cramped, he could breathe freely. He could relax, safe from the threat of his father's overwhelming presence. And if they hadn't gone out that night he would never have met June.
Because of the wanderings of the trailer he had never had time for close friendships. He had felt more attached to this latest berth than to any person - until he'd met June. She was the first girl to arouse him. Her small slim body, her bright quick eyes, her handfuls of breast - he felt his body stirring as he thought of her.
For years he'd feared he was impotent. Once, in a village school, a boy had shown him an erotic novel. He'd read about the gasps of pleasure, the creaking of the bed. Gradually he'd realized why that troubled him. The walls of the trailer were thin; he could always hear his father snoring or wheezing, like a huge fish stranded on the shore of a dream. But he had never heard his parents copulating.
Their sexual impulse must have faded quickly, soon after he was born - as soon, he thought, as it had served its purpose. Would his own be as feeble? Would it work at all? Yes, he'd gasped over June, the first night her parents were out. 'I think it'd be good to make love on acid,' she'd said as they lay embraced. 'That way you really become one, united together.' But he thought he would be terrified to take LSD, even though what she'd said appealed deeply to him.