They didn't linger. They began the trek back towards the border there and then, leaving the Empty Quarter emptier than ever.
Part Eleven. The Dream Season
‘The sky is darkening like a stain, Something is going to fall like rain And it won't be flowers ‘ W. H. Auden The Two
I
PORTRAIT OF THE HERO AS A YOUNG LUNATIC
1
That's happened to Cal Mooney? the neighbours were saying: what an odd fellow he's become, full of half-smiles and sly glances. Mind you, weren't they always a peculiar family? The old man was related to a poet, I've heard, and you know what they say about poets: a little mad, all of them. And now the son's gone the same way. So sad. Funny the way people change isn't it?
The gossip rang true of course. Cal knew he had changed. And yes, he probably was a little mad. When he looked at himself in the mirror some mornings there was a wildness in his eyes which was no doubt distressing to the cashier at the supermarket, or the woman who tried to pry some potential scandal from him as they waited in line at the bank.
‘Are you living alone then?'
‘Yes,' he'd say.
‘It's a big house for one. You must find it difficult cleaning.'
‘No, not really.'
He'd get a quizzical look from the questioner. Then he'd say:
‘I like dust,' knowing the remark would fuel the tittle-tattle, but unable to lie for their benefit. And he could see, as he spoke, the way they smiled inside, filing the remark away for regurgitation over the laundry.
Oh, he was Mad Mooney all right.
2
This time, there was no forgetting. His mind was too much a part of his lost Wonderland for it to slip away. The Fugue was with him all day, every day; and through the nights too.
But there was little joy in remembering. Only an all but unbearable ache of loss, knowing that a world which he'd longed for all his life was gone forever. He would never again tread its rapturous earth.
The how and why of this loss were somewhat hazy, particularly when it came to events in the Gyre. He recalled in some detail the battle at the Narrow Bright, and his plunging through the Mantle. But what had happened subsequently was just a series of disconnected images. Things sprouting, things dying; his blood, dancing down his arm in a little ecstasy; the brick at his back, trembling ...
That was about all. The rest was so vague he could scarcely conjure a moment of it.
3
He knew he needed some diversion from his grief, or he'd simply dwindle into a melancholy from which there would be no emerging, so he looked around for a new job, and in early July got one: baking bread. The pay was not good, and the hours were anti-social, but he enjoyed the work - which was the antithesis of his labours at the insurance firm. He didn't have to talk much, or concern himself with office politics. There was no rising in the ranks here, just the plain business of dough and ovens. He was happy with the job. It gave him biceps like steel, and warm bread for his breakfast.
But the diversion was only temporary. His mind went back all too often to the source of his suffering, and suffered again. Such masochism was perhaps the nature of his species. Indeed that belief was supported by the reappearance of Geraldine in the middle of July. She turned up on the doorstep one day and stepped into the house as if nothing had ever happened between them. He was glad to see her.
This time, however, she didn't move in. They agreed that returning to that domestic status quo could only be a retrograde step. Instead she came and went through the summer on an almost daily basis, sometimes staying over at Chariot Street, more often not.
For nigh on five weeks she didn't ask him a single question about events the previous spring, and he in turn volunteered no information. When she eventually did raise the subject, however, it was in a manner and context he hadn't expected.
‘Deke's telling everyone you've been in trouble with the police ...' she said,'... but I told him: not my Cal.'
He was sitting in Brendan's chair beside the window, watching the late summer sky. She was on the couch, amid a litter of magazines.
‘I told them, you're no criminal. I know that. Whatever happened to you ... it wasn't that kind of trouble. It was deeper than that, wasn't it?' She glanced across at him. Did she want a reply? It seemed not, for before he could open his mouth she was saying:
‘I never understood what was going on, Cal, and maybe it's better I don't. But...' She stared down at the magazine open on her lap, then back up at him. ‘You never used to talk in your sleep,' she said. ‘And I do now?'
‘All the time. You talk to people. You shout sometimes. Sometimes you just smile.' She was a little embarrassed confessing to this. She'd been watching him as he slept; and listening too. ‘You've been somewhere, haven't you?' she said.
‘You've seen something nobody else has.'
‘Is that what I talk about?'
‘In a sort of way. But that's not what makes me think you've seen things. It's the way you are, Cal. The way you look sometimes...'
That said, she seemed to reach an impasse, and returned her attention to the pages of the magazine, flipping the pages without really looking at them.
Cal sighed. She'd been so good with him, so protective: he owed her an explanation, however difficult it was.
‘You want me to tell you?' he said.
‘Yes. Yes, I do.'
‘You won't believe it,' he warned.
Tell me anyway.'
He nodded, and took up the story that he'd come so near to spilling the previous year, after his first visit to Rue Street.
‘I saw Wonderland ...' he began.
4
It took him three quarters of an hour to give her the outline of all that had happened since the bird had first flown from the loft; and another hour to try and fine-tune his account. Once begun, he found himself reluctant to leave anything out: he wanted to tell it all as best he could, as much for his own benefit as for Geraldine's.
She listened attentively, looking up at him sometimes, more often staring out of the window. Not once did she interrupt.
When he was finally finished, the wounds of bereavement reopened by the telling, she said nothing, not for a long time.
Finally he said: ‘You don't believe me. I said you wouldn't.'
Again, there was silence. Then she said: ‘Does it matter to you if I do or I don't?'
‘Yes. Of course it matters.'
‘Why, Cal?'
‘Because then I'm not alone.'
She smiled at him, got up, and crossed to where he sat.
‘You're not alone,' she said, and said no more.
Later, as they slipped into sleep together, she said: ‘Do you love her? ... Suzanna, I mean?' He'd expected the question, sooner or later.
‘YesI he said softly. ‘In a way I can't explain; but yes.'
‘I'm glad' she murmured in the darkness. Cal wished he could read her features, and know from them if she was telling the truth, but he left any further questions unasked.
They didn't speak of it at all thereafter. She was no different with him than she'd been before he told her: it was almost as if she'd put the whole account out of her mind. She came and went on the same ad hoc basis. Sometimes they'd make love, sometimes not. And sometimes they'd be happy; or almost so.
The summer came and went without much disturbing the thermometer, and before the freckles had a chance to bloom on Geraldine's cheeks, it was September.
5
Autumn suits England; and that autumn, preceding as it would the worst winter since the late forties, came in glory. The winds were high, bringing passages of warm rain interspersed with stabs of liquid brightness. The city found a lost glamour. Clouds the colour of slate piled up behind its sunstruck houses; the wind brought the smell of the sea; brought gulls too, on its back, dipping and weaving over the roofs.
That month Cal felt his spirits rise again - seeing the Kingdom of the Cuckoo shine, while above it the skies seemed charged with secret signs. He began to see faces in the shreds of clouds; heard codes tapped out by rain-drops on the sill. Something was surely imminent.