The effect of his long-delayed announcement had been magicaclass="underline" it surpassed his wildest hopes. Laurie was radiant, on top of his world, another creature from the abject object of a moment since. He tried to put his relief and gratitude into words, but could only smile and smile, in a defenceless almost idiotic way. To break the silence his father asked:
‘What made you frightened of the pylon? Had it done you any harm?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Laurie, recollection contracting his smile into a frown, ‘it had.’
‘What kind of harm?’
Laurie considered. How could he make the pylon’s mischief plain to his father?
‘Well, it made me sick for one thing.’
‘Oh, that was just something you ate,’ said Roger, well remembering it was not. ‘We all eat things that disagree with us.’
‘It wasn’t only that. It . . . it hurt me.’
‘How do you mean, hurt you?’
‘In my dream it did.’
‘In your dream? You’ll have to tell me about your dream. But make it snappy—I’ve only got five minutes.’
‘Yes . . . perhaps, sometime . . . You see, in my dream it was much stronger than I was, and I couldn’t get to the top.’
‘Why did you want to get to the top?’
‘Well, I had to, because of the report, and to see what sort of report they would give me if I did get to the top.’
‘I know what,’ his father said. ‘When you’re a big chap, bigger than me, perhaps, you’d better be a pylon-builder. Do you know how much they earn?’
Pure numbers had an attraction for Laurie, though he wasn’t good at maths.
‘No, tell me.’
‘Ten shillings an hour when they’re on the ground, and a pound an hour when they’re in the air . . . You’d soon be a rich man, much richer than me. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
‘I don’t want to be rich!’ moaned Laurie. ‘I want——’ he stopped.
‘Well, what do you want?’
‘I want to be safe, and I shouldn’t be if the pylon was there.’
‘What nonsense!’ said his father, at last losing patience. ‘It’s nothing to be afraid of.’ He remembered his wife’s words. ‘It’s only something men have made, and men can unmake. You could make one yourself with your Meccano—I’ll show you how. It’s only a few bits of metal—that’s all it is.’
‘But that’s all the atom bomb is,’ cried Laurie, just a few bits of metal, and everyone’s afraid of it, even you are, Daddy!’
Roger felt the tables had been turned.
‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘I am afraid of it. But——’ he tried to think of a way out—’I never dream about it.’
As always, his father’s presence gave Laurie a feeling of helplessness; it was as if his thoughts could get no further than the figure turned towards him on the bed, whose pyjama-jacket, open to the morning airs, disclosed a hairy, muscular chest.
‘But I can’t help what I dream, can I?’ he said.
His father agreed, and added, ‘But you can help being frightened—frightened afterwards, I mean. You’ve only to think——’
‘But I do think, Daddy. That’s the worst of it.’
‘I mean, think how absurd it is. If you were to dream about me——’
‘Oh, but I have, ever so often.’
His father was taken aback, and tugged at his moustache.
‘And were you frightened?’
It took Laurie some time to answer this. He sat up, wriggled his toes, on which his father’s hand was resting, and said:
‘Not exactly frightened.’
‘Well,’ said Roger, smiling, ‘what effect, exactly, did I have on you?’
Laurie shook his head.
‘I couldn’t quite explain. Of course, in my dream you were different.’
‘Nicer or nastier?’
‘Well, not nastier—you couldn’t be.’
Now it was Roger’s turn to feel embarrassed. He stared at Laurie, and all at once Laurie’s face turned scarlet.
‘Oh, I didn’t mean that, you know I didn’t,’ he pleaded. His hands traced circles on the rumpled bedclothes and his head oscillated with them. ‘I said not nastier, because you never are nasty, so you couldn’t be nastier, if you see what I mean.’
‘I think I do,’ his father said, mollified and more relieved than he was prepared to show, ‘although I am nasty sometimes, I admit. But how was I different, in your dream?’
‘That’s just it, you weren’t so nice.’
Roger didn’t like the idea of being thought less nice, even in someone’s dream. But he had to say something—he wouldn’t let Laurie see he had been hurt.
‘What was I like?’ he asked, with assumed jauntiness.
‘Oh, you were like yourself, to look at, I mean—not really like of course, because people never are, in dreams. But I always knew it was you.’
Less and less did Roger relish the idea of his dream personality being made known to him. Would it be cowardly to change the subject?
‘Don’t you ever dream about your mother?’ he asked hopefully.
‘Oh, no, never, nor about Susie or Victor. Only about you.’
There seemed to be no escape. Roger grasped the nettle.
‘When you dream about me,’ he asked, ‘what do I do?’
‘Oh, you don’t do much, nothing to speak of. You’re just there, you see.’
‘I do see,’ said Roger grimly, though he didn’t really. ‘And you don’t like me being there?’
Laurie wriggled; his plump hands left off making circles on the sheet and clasped the front of his pyjama-jacket.
‘No, I’m glad you’re there, because I always feel safer when you are, but——’
‘But what?’ Let’s get to the bottom of it now, thought Roger.
‘Well, you make me think I’ve been doing something wrong.’
Roger’s heart sank. It was too bad. Hadn’t he always, throughout his parenthood, tried to give his children just the opposite impression—make them feel that what they did was right? Not so much with Victor and Susie, perhaps; he did tick them off sometimes, he really had to. But he had never succeeded in making them feel guilty; whereas with Laurie——
‘Now listen,’ he said. ‘Stop fidgeting with your pyjamas or you’ll be pulling off the buttons and then you will have done something wrong.’ Switching himself round still farther on the bed he stretched his arms out towards Laurie and firmly imprisoned the boy’s restless hands in his. ‘Now listen,’ he repeated, propelling Laurie gently to and fro, making the boy feel he was on a rocking-horse, ‘dreams go by contraries, you know.’
‘What does that mean, Daddy?’
‘It means that when you dream something, you dream what is the opposite of the truth. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘So, if you dream about me and I seem nasty, or about the pylon and it seems nasty, it really means——’ he stopped.
‘Yes, go on, Daddy,’ said Laurie, sleepily. He was enjoying the rocking motion—so different from the pylon’s sickening lurches—and didn’t want it to stop. ‘Please go on,’ he begged.
‘It means that we’re both—the pylon and me too, well, rather nice.’
Before Roger had time to see whether this thought was sinking in, there came a thunderous knocking at the door. Releasing Laurie’s hands he pulled his pyjama-jacket round him and called out, ‘Come in!’
There was a stampede into the room, a racket and a hubbub like a mob bursting in, and Susan and Victor, fully clothed, were standing by the bed.
‘Oh, you are lazy,’ Susan cried. ‘You haven’t even begun to dress, either of you, and you haven’t heard the news.’
‘What news?’ Roger asked.
‘Awful news, dreadful news, the worst. Isn’t it, Victor?’
‘It’s simply frightful. It’s the end,’ Victor said. ‘You’ll never guess.’