Marianne Dreams Read online

  ‘No,’ said Marianne.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Miss Chesterfield cheerfully, misunderstanding Marianne’s answer. ‘I’ll have quite enough left, really. Look, I’ll put yours beside you here, on this table, and then you can arrange them as you like.’

  Marianne didn’t answer. She looked at the roses, sourly. She knew she ought to be grateful and to sound pleased, but it was more than she could do. It was only by not speaking and swallowing hard that she was preventing herself from bursting into tears of rage and disappointment.

  ‘What’s the matter, Marianne?’ Miss Chesterfield asked anxiously. ‘Don’t you feel well?’

  Marianne found it easiest to shake her head and bury her face in the pillow. ‘I’ll go and call your mother,’ Miss

  Chesterfield said, and went quickly out of the room.

  When she had gone, Marianne sat up. She was angry, so angry that she felt she must do something violent to express her feelings. She threw all the roses, Mark’s roses, which Miss Chesterfield had given her, on the floor, where they lay in a sad wet heap; but somehow that did not express any feelings as fierce as Marianne felt hers to be. She longed to smash something, to kick or bite or scratch, to hurt something terribly to show just how much she had been hurt.

  She looked all round. There wasn’t much within reach -only the nine roses she had bought herself to give Miss Chesterfield. She had a quite unreasonable feeling that she wouldn’t throw them about because that was how she had treated Mark’s roses, and she wouldn’t give them the same treatment as his had received. On the table by her bed was a small pile of books - mostly school books and exercise books which she used in her lessons. It seemed silly to do anything to them. Even though she was in a temper she could recognize that hurting them wouldn’t make her feel any better.

  Then her eyes fell on her drawing book. She snatched it up. It opened at her page of the drawing of the house, with the boy, who had been Mark in her dream, looking out. Marianne picked up the pencil, which had been lying beside the book and scored thick lines across and across and up and down over the window.

  ‘I hate Mark,’ she was saying to herself, under her breath. ‘I hate him, I hate him, I hate him. He’s a beast, and he’s spoiled my present. I hate him more than anyone else in the world and I wish he was dead.’

  She scribbled viciously over the face in her picture, and felt as if it really was Mark she was destroying. The house had begun to look like a prison now, with thick crossed lines like bars over the window, and Marianne took an evil pleasure in heightening the resemblance. She made the fence round the sad little garden thicker and higher, so that it enclosed the house like a wall round a prison. Outside it were the great stones and boulders she had drawn before, reminding her of gaolers. They should watch Mark, she thought with angry satisfaction, keeping him prisoner under constant surveillance. Marianne drew in more stones, a ring of them round outside the fence. To each she gave a single eye.

  ‘If he tried to get out of the house now, they would see’ Marianne thought. ‘They watch him all the time, everything he does. They will never let him out.’

  She was so much engrossed that she had actually forgotten that Miss Chesterfield had gone to fetch her mother, until she saw her come back again and stand, hesitating, at the door.

  ‘How do you feel?’ she asked, seeing Marianne was sitting up in bed, and no longer prostrated on the pillows. ‘I feel beastly. Where’s Mother?’

  ‘Marianne, dear, I’m afraid she’d gone out already when I got down. Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?’

  Marianne didn’t, in fact, feel ill, but she did feel exceedingly cross, and this wasn’t improved by hearing that her mother wasn’t available, and remembering that she had gone for the better part of the day. She looked at Miss Chesterfield disagreeably. She felt in a mood to blame everyone for anything and it now seemed to her to be Miss Chesterfield’s fault that Mark had given her roses and that her mother had gone out early and would be staying out late, and in fact for the whole miserable state of affairs.

  ‘I don’t want anything,’ she said. ‘I only want Mother to come home.’

  ‘But we can’t get hold of her yet, Marianne. Apparently she’s going to visit an aunt of yours after lunch, so we could ring her up then, but she’s not going to be anywhere near a telephone till then.’

  ‘Then I don’t want anything,’ Marianne said miserably. She lay down in bed and hunched her shoulders. ‘I wish I was dead, too,’ she said.

  ‘Do you feel very ill?’ Miss Chesterfield said sympathetically.

  ‘No. Yes. No.’

  ‘Have you any pain anywhere? Or anything like you had before?’

  ‘No,’ said Marianne impatiently.

  ‘Well,’ said Miss Chesterfield practically, ‘I can’t judge how ill you are because I didn’t see you before, when you were ill at first. So I’m going to ring up your doctor and he can decide.’

  ‘I don’t need a doctor,’ Marianne said, very crossly indeed.

  ‘I dare say you don’t, but I can’t take the risk of not sending for him, as your mother isn’t here and I’m responsible for you. I’ll go and telephone to him straight away and then, if you’re up to it, I think you’d better do some work with me.’

  She disappeared downstairs again. But the doctor was out on his rounds and wasn’t easy to get hold of, and the best that his secretary could promise was that he would come along in the afternoon. Miss Chesterfield had to be content with this, and she came up and spent a tiresome and tiring morning trying to interest Marianne in history, French and English. She thoughtfully left out the tables of weights and measures which should have occupied the mathematics period, as being unsuitable to the feelings of either of them. But though, in the ordinary way, Marianne would have been interested in most of her work, she made herself stupid and inattentive this morning, and the hours dragged past, with Marianne closing her mind to everything that was said to her, and even Miss Chesterfield, in spite of her good resolutions, getting irritable. It was all the worse because Marianne knew she was being stupid and annoying, and that instead of providing Miss Chesterfield with a happy birthday, she was doing exactly the opposite. But she was powerless to help herself. She wanted to be clever and nice and much more likeable than the loathsome Mark, and yet every minute found her becoming stupider and ruder and more disagreeable.

  When lunch came and released them both, Miss Chesterfield left with intense relief, and Marianne only waited till she was out of the room to burst into tears of rage and despair.

  The doctor and her mother arrived nearly at the same moment later in the afternoon. Marianne had not been crying quite continuously till they came, but very nearly, and she felt ill with crossness and exhaustion. She hadn’t eaten any lunch, which made her feel worse, and her official rest time had been spent in going over the day’s events in her mind, an occupation not likely to soothe or refresh her.

  Her mother was sympathetic and the doctor was grave. He told Marianne flatly that she was doing herself as much harm by getting into a state like that as she would by getting out of bed and running up and down stairs. She had sent her temperature up again and would probably need an extra week or so in bed.

  ‘You can’t help getting upset occasionally, nobody can,’ he said reasonably, packing his small neat case at the end of Marianne’s bed as he spoke. ‘But for goodness’ sake try not to get into a real state. Tell yourself it will all be the same in a hundred years or that there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, or anything calming like that. Or just remember, which is the fact, that every time your temper or your temperature goes up one degree it means an extra day in bed. That ought to keep you cool’

  ‘It might when I’m all right, anyway,’ Marianne pointed out. ‘But when I’m really in a temper I don’t think like that.’

  ‘That’s the trouble,’ the doctor agreed. ‘It’s just when you need it most that you can’t bring these things to mind. Anyway I’m
giving you a new medicine to take today and for the rest of this week, which is guaranteed to prevent your getting even mildly irritated with anyone. And of course the better you feel, the less you’ll want to be cross, so I dare say you won’t be bothered again. Good-bye, Marianne. Remember - keep cool.’

  He went. Marianne told her mother the whole story, which made her cry again, but this time with tears which were almost a relief, except that her face ached and her nose and eyes were sore, she had cried so much. She was quite extraordinarily tired, and the medicine left for her by the doctor - curious little capsules, very brilliantly coloured -made her even tireder. Long before her usual bedtime, she herself suggested that she should go to sleep, and it seemed as if the ordinary preparations for the night would never finish, her eyes were so heavy and her brain so weary.

  At last the hair brushing, the face and hand washing, the straightening of the bed and the tidying up were over in a sort of distant haze. Marianne lay stretched in a cool unruffled bed, her mother opened the window and pulled the curtains, and before she had left the room Marianne was aspleep.

  Aspleep she dreamed.

  7. Mark

  It was very dark. Marianne could see a glimmer of light coming from what might be a heavily curtained window away up on her left, but it wasn’t enough to enable her to see where she was. It felt like a room, cool but slightly stuffy, and what light there was looked as if it were coming in from outside.

  Putting out an experimental hand Marianne touched a wall, smooth and firm. She moved her fingers along it, but the wall was not broken by furniture and seemed only to continue. She felt with her foot in front of her, and the ground seemed firm and even. She took a step, then another, feeling each time first. She was moving indirectly towards the glimmer of light and had nearly reached it, when the wall abruptly turned a corner, so that as her hand felt the angle, her foot kicked against the new bit of wall directly in front of her. This new wall led straight to the window or whatever it was: Marianne turned to walk with it and had only taken two or three steps, when the wall stopped and she was by the window. Her hand went out towards the bars of darkness - there were a great many of them - crossing the patch of faint light, but it did not reach them. Instead of wood or metal, which she had expected, her hand touched something warm, and quite definitely alive.

  Marianne said, ‘Oh!’ in pure terror, and jumped backwards a foot or so.

  A cross and sleepy voice said, ‘What’s the matter?’

  There was a stir and a rustling between Marianne and the window, and now her eyes had become accustomed to the darkness she could distinguish something moving. Somebody was stretching and sitting up just below the level of the window - perhaps on a couch or a bed pushed right up against the wall.

  ‘Who’s there?’ the voice asked, and Marianne was encouraged to hear that it, too, sounded apprehensive.

  ‘It’s me’ said Marianne, as people so often do say in answer to this question. Then, realizing that it was not a complete answer, she added, ‘I’m Marianne.’

  There was a little sigh in the darkness, as if the questioner had relaxed with relief, and Marianne could see the person lean back against the embrasure of the wall. This seemed, at any rate, to show that whoever it was hadn’t been lying in wait for her and might even be someone as frightened as she was. She said, in a rather uncertain voice, ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Mark,’ said the voice. It sounded slightly teasing now. ‘Remember? We’ve met before, but you never got round to telling me your name.’

  ‘How do you know, then?’ Marianne asked. ‘I mean how did you know it was me, if you didn’t know my name last time? Can you see in the dark, or something like that?’

  ‘I have X-ray eyes,’ Mark said, in a piercing stage whisper. He added immediately in his ordinary voice, ‘No, of course I can’t, stupid. But I knew your voice directly you spoke. Besides you’re the only person I ever see here, so I suppose I was half expecting it to be you’

  ‘But where is here? Where are we? How do you know where we are when it’s so dark?’

  ‘It got dark like this after I came. At least it was pretty dark at first, because of all the fastenings across the window, but it’s got much darker outside since then. When I first got here I could see all round and recognize the place, but then I must have gone to sleep and it must have got dark. It’s never been like this before’

  ‘I don’t understand’ said Marianne, trying to be patient. ‘Have you been here before?’ ‘Yes, and so have you.’

  ‘I haven’t. At least I don’t recognize it. Where are we, Mark? I wish you’d explain’

  ‘It’s the same old place, wherever that is. The house, you know, where we were before. It’s the same room, from what I could see of it, and the same outside, I think, only I could hardly see that at all.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of the bars.’

  ‘The bars?’ Marianne repeated stupidly.

  ‘The bars over the windows, silly! Can’t you see, even now it’s so dark? The whole window’s covered with bars -there’s hardly room to put your hand out.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Nor do I. That makes two of us, doesn’t it?’ Mark’s voice was not agreeable.

  ‘Oh, don’t be so beastly!’ Marianne cried out, wretched. ‘I can’t bear it. You don’t explain anything, and you keep on sort of laughing at me, and I hate it being dark and our not being able to see each other. It makes it much more frightening, and it’s quite bad enough, anyway. Do stop.’

  ‘I didn’t know I’d begun’ said Mark nastily.

  There was a short silence. Marianne could hear Mark breathing and her own heart beating, and somewhere, outside the room she supposed, the tick of a clock. Again she was reassured by that unhurried commonplace sound. It was presumably the same clock that she had heard and seen in the house last time she had been there, when she had found Mark in the empty room. But why had it suddenly become so dark and prison-like and why was he so horrid? She swallowed, and said, ‘Mark?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m sorry if I’m stupid, but I do wish you’d try to explain a bit more. I know you don’t understand it all yourself’ she said in a hurry, ‘but at any rate you seem to know a lot more than I do, and you’ve been here longer, so you could tell me some things.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’ Mark asked, and he didn’t sound exactly unfriendly.

  ‘Well, first of all, is this the same room you were in last time I came?’

  ‘Exactly the same. It’s still well above ground level and it’s still unfurnished. I’ve been sleeping on the window seat as you might have guessed.’

  ‘It must be very uncomfortable’ said Marianne, eager to show that she could be sympathetic.

  ‘It is. It’s revolting. However, here I seem to be all the time, and here I obviously have to stay.’

  ‘Why?’ Marianne asked.

  Mark shifted. ‘I just have to,’ he answered shortly. ‘Anyhow, now I’m barred in’ ‘Barred?’

  ‘Yes. All those things across the window, are bars. And the up and down ones. It’s the most extraordinary sort of barring I’ve ever seen - there’s so much of it, it practically keeps out all the light, or what there is of it.’

  ‘Can’t you put a light on in here?’ Marianne asked. ‘Isn’t there any electricity or something?’

  ‘If there is I haven’t found it’ the boy replied. ‘There aren’t any electric fittings, anyway.’

  ‘And when you said ‘now’ - I don’t quite understand. Did the bars just suddenly appear? They weren’t here last time, were they? There was just window then, that you could have got through if you’d wanted to’

  ‘On the first floor’ Mark murmured.

  ‘Well, you could have jumped’ Marianne protested. ‘It’s not very far up and only grass underneath.’

  ‘You’ve forgotten something’ Mark said, and he sounded really disagreeable again now. ‘I can’t even walk, so
I don’t know how you suggest I should jump.’

  ‘Oh, Mark, I’m sorry, I really am. I’d quite forgotten what you told me about your not being able to walk. It was awfully silly of me. I’m frightfully sorry.’

  ‘All right’ Mark said briefly.

  There was a short silence. Then Marianne began again. ‘About the bars.’ ‘What about the bars?’

  ‘I still don’t quite understand. How did they come here? Who put them up? And why, anyway?’

  ‘I don’t know. They weren’t here before, you’re right about that, but how they got here is beyond me. Someone must have put them up from outside. And they’re all uneven, too, not in straight lines, but higgledy-piggledy. Like a sort of mad scribble over the window, only in iron bars. What’s the matter? What did you say?’

  ‘It was a sort of noise, not exactly talking’ Marianne explained. ‘Because I’d just thought of something.’ She stopped.

  ‘Well?’

  Marianne hesitated.

  ‘You’ll probably think it’s awfully silly’

  ‘I might’ Mark said encouragingly.

  ‘But - well, I think it might have been me. That made the bars, you know. Because the house is all just exactly like what I drew. And then I came here, and here it was, only there wasn’t anyone in it, and then I drew a face and the next time you were here, and this time I did a sort of scribble over the windows and there are the bars, so it probably was me, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I haven’t’, said Mark coldly and distantly, ‘the remotest idea what you’re talking about. It all sounds the most utter nonsense, if you want to know.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’ Marianne was so much excited that she ignored the coldness in Mark’s voice, and feeling her way along the window seat to the end where his feet were, she sat down. ‘Look, I’ll begin at the beginning. I drew this house, in my drawing book, before I ever saw it. See? And the next time I dreamed I was here, outside it, looking at it, exactly as it was in my drawing. But I couldn’t get in because there wasn’t anyone inside it and there wasn’t a knocker or anything on the door. And then I drew you looking out of the window, and the knocker on the door, and the next time I dreamed about it, they were both there - you and the knocker, I mean.’