“Did Hugo tell you we’re invited out for dinner tonight?” Martha asked me as we were preparing to go shopping in Ramsey. “I can’t say I’m particularly looking forward to it; the Quayles aren’t the easiest of hosts. You met Nicholas yesterday – tall, with a bit of a stoop. Older than the rest of us.”
“I remember. Why don’t you want to go?”
“Well, Vivian can be difficult. Nicholas is all right, except that he’s a bundle of nerves and poor Hugo sees enough of him as it is. It’s rather sad, really. I gather he came over here with the half-promise of being appointed deputy head, but it didn’t come off and his wife can’t let him forget it. However,” Martha added with a smile, “she’s a first-class cook, I’ll say that for her, so for once you’ll have something edible that you haven’t prepared yourself!”
The sun was shining as we left the house, though heavy clouds were massing to the north.
“How’s your paper on the island going?” I asked. “Don’t forget you promised me a guided tour.” Ray’s similar offer was probably in both our minds, but neither of us referred to it.
“I’ll be glad to. The research is just a hobby really, though I’ve become quite hooked on it. I’m concentrating on pre-history, the very early times before the Stanley dynasty. It was the names of the college houses that first roused my interest – Godred, Sigurd, Lagman and Magnus. They were ancient kings of Man.”
“Kings?”
“Yes, the ruler was known as King for centuries. I think it was Thomas Stanley in the fifteen hundreds who decided he preferred to be ‘a powerful Lord rather than a petty King’. That was when the title became Lord of Man, and it still is.”
“When did it pass to the Crown, then?”
“The first three Edwards each held it briefly, alternating with the Scots. Henry IV gave the island to the Stanleys but Elizabeth I intervened when there were no male heirs and she thought it might be seized by France or Spain. After that it went back to the Stanleys for another hundred and fifty years until it reverted to George III and the title Lord of Man has been held by the British monarch ever since.”
We were coming round a bend of the road and a sweep of countryside lay spread before us, purple and gold under the uncertain sky. Quite suddenly it was all dangerously familiar. Surely it had been here that –
“Careful!” I interrupted sharply. “Watch out for that sheep –”
Automatically Martha’s foot went down on the brake and as the car rocketed to a halt, a black ram broke through the hedge bordering the road. Without my warning it would certainly have been under our wheels. With a startled glance at my white face, Martha pulled in to the side of the road and the animal, ears laid back, set off at an ungainly run down the verge.
“You realize you warned me before that sheep had even appeared?”
“I know.” With an effort I unclenched my hands. “Martha, this has all happened before. Don’t ask me when. I recognized the lay-out of the country, even that broken plough over there, and I remembered you having to brake suddenly. I even knew the sheep was black.”
“Déjà vu?” she queried after a moment.
“I suppose it must have been.” I shivered suddenly. “How horrible!”
“Or,” she went on deliberately, “could you have dreamed it? One of your extra-sensory specials? You say you keep dreaming of the sea, though till now you’ve never been near it.” She broke off, leaving the implication of her words to sink in.
‘Till now’. There was an insistent drumming of blood in my ears. “You’re surely not suggesting some of the dreams could have been of the future?”
She was watching me intently. “Couldn’t they?”
Neil! The word exploded in my brain, and as I fumbled after its relevance it blindingly clarified itself. That was why I had ‘recognized’ him at the airport; I knew him from previous dreams, dreams which perhaps were now actually going to come true. It was a possibility I had never even remotely contemplated and I recoiled from it with superstitious horror.
Martha said gently, “It fits, you know. Precognitive dreams are known to be exceptionally vivid, and you said they seem more like personal memories.”
“But how could they be memories of the future? It just isn’t possible!”
“Some people think it is. John Dunne, for example, tied it in with his idea of serial time. Apparently your astral consciousness or other self or whatever it is, is released in sleep and can slip either backwards or forwards in time. So you really would have experienced those things, which is why they seemed familiar.”
My frightened eyes went over the sweep of fields and woodlands lit by dramatic stormy sunshine. It was this identical scene striking a mental replica that had ‘broken the dream’. At the airport the sight of Neil had had the same effect. And what of my nebulous connection with Ray? Was that too attributable to my wandering psyche?
Martha laid a hand on my arm. “Don’t look so frightened, love. I believe it’s quite a common experience.”
“So you think I actually slipped forward into today, to this particular spot on the Sulby road?”
“Perhaps that’s what precognition is, not only knowing in advance but experiencing too. You remember you said the dreams all seemed to be set in the same place? It looks as though it’s here, doesn’t it? They haven’t come true before, because in this dimension of time you’ve only just arrived.”
The thought had already occurred to me. ‘Why did you take so long to come?’
“But why? Why here, of all the places on earth?” At the back of my mind a possible answer, unwanted and unacknowledged, began to form and I clamped down on it at once. Quite suddenly I didn’t want any more revelations, and before Martha could reply I said jerkily, “Still, we can’t sit here all day discussing metaphysics! If we don’t hurry the shops will have shut for lunch.”
Accepting my abrupt dismissal of the matter, Martha didn’t refer to it again. Nor, though I was sure she mentioned it to Hugo when he came home, did he make any comment. In all probability he was waiting for me to raise the subject but I was still playing ostrich, superstitiously afraid that talking about it would somehow solidify a mere conjecture into fact. I was thankful that the dinner party that evening would provide a distraction for all of us.
The Quayles lived in one of the staff flats in Mona Lodge, a large house in its own grounds just outside Ballacarrick. As we turned into the driveway, thick dark trees closed overhead and our headlamps made only a token tunnel of light. I half expected to find a Gothic castle at the end of it, but in fact the house which came into view was plain and uninteresting, four-square Victorian with not so much as a turret to satisfy the aroused imagination.
Vivian Quayle answered our ring. “I’m so glad to meet you,” she greeted me as Hugo performed the introductions. “Lord knows, we don’t often see a new face round here. Let me take your coats and come and get warm. I’ve invited Neil to make up the numbers.”
I was aware of a little spurt of gladness as I followed Martha into the large, comfortably furnished room. This time, presumably, there would be neither Pam nor Ray to interrupt our conversation.
Neil and Nicholas turned from the fireplace to greet us. To my highly attuned senses there seemed a slight reservation in Neil’s greeting, due, no doubt, to Ray’s proprietorial air yesterday. It was strange how each of them seemed to cancel out the other, so that when I was with one I felt drawn to him alone. The bond with Neil I now knew tied in with my dreams, but I could not gauge how deeply, nor if he was also responsible for the voice. Though I must obviously find out, this was not the time to try and I turned my attention to our host.
In his own home, Nicholas seemed slightly more relaxed than when I had last seen him, a quietly courteous man anxious only for the welfare of his guests. Perhaps the enigmatic Ray had been responsible for his previous agitation, playing one of the cat-and-mouse games which Hugo had warned me about.
Vivian came bustling back. “Now, what’s everybody drinking?” I watched her as she moved about the room, straightening a cushion, fractionally altering the position of an ornament. At first glance she had struck me simply as attractive and smartly dressed, but I was now conscious of a nervous energy about her which made relaxing difficult in her company. In this clearer light, I saw too that the pale, finely chiselled face was criss-crossed by a network of fine lines, though at a guess she was no more than forty. She spoke quickly in staccato sentences, giving the impression that she wasn’t prepared to wait for a considered reply.
“And what do you think of Elian Vannin, Chloe?” she asked, handing me a glass and perching like a bird of passage on the tapestry chair beside me.
“The Isle of Man!” Hugo translated, with a smile for my blankness.
“I haven’t seen much of it yet but it seems fascinating.”
“To visit, perhaps,” she said crisply. “Believe me, it palls surprisingly quickly.”
“It depends what you want from it,” Neil put in. “There’s a gentler pace of living, certainly, but I find the local philosophy ‘There’s another boat tomorrow’ rather soothing.”
“Well, I’m afraid I don’t. I feel buried alive out here. Oh for department stores, art galleries, concerts, a choice of theatre!” She snapped open her cigarette case, offered it round and selected one for herself with fingers that shook slightly, bending her head to the flame which Neil held out for her.
“Lest Chloe should think she has inadvertently landed on a desert island,” Nicholas observed dryly, “let me assure her that there are theatres, concert halls and art galleries here. There’s even a casino, for heaven’s sake, if that’s your idea of entertainment. And of course the outdoor facilities can’t be bettered: fishing, golf, riding, sailing –”
“You’re beginning to sound like a holiday brochure, darling,” Vivian remarked tartly. “Anyway, it’s in your blood, we know that. All I’m saying is that it’s not my idea of the bright lights, but I’m well aware that I’m stuck with it. We all are,” she added, her eyes flickering over our rather embarrassed faces, “except Chloe, lucky child, who can fly out on the next plane without a backward glance whenever the mood takes her.” She stood up and smoothed down her skirt. “If you’ll excuse me I’ll go and put the finishing touches to the meal.”
“Is there anything we can do to help?” Martha asked.
“You could carry through the first course for me, if you’d be an angel. No, Chloe, you stay here and entertain the gentlemen. Dinner won’t be long.”
“How’s the Volvo going, Nicholas?” Hugo enquired as the door closed behind them. He turned to me. “Did I tell you old Nicholas here has the identical model car I have, colour and all? I did a double take the other day in the staff car-park.”
“No problems so far,” Nicholas replied. “The only criticism I would make
As the conversation became technical Neil sat down on the sofa beside me. “Don’t be put off by Vivian’s assessment of the island. It’s really a very pleasant little place.”
“I feel rather sorry for her,” I said slowly. “She seems frustrated somehow.”
“Yes, I’m afraid that’s the root of it. The tragedy is that it's mainly on Nicholas’s behalf, and if she’d only relax he’d be quite happy here.” He tilted the glass in his hand, his eyes on the swirling liquid. “How long have you known Ray Kittering?”
The unexpected question took me by surprise. “Ray? Three days, I suppose. Why?”
He looked up. “But I understood – I gathered in the staffroom that you knew each other?”
“Only because he’d called at the cottage on Sunday afternoon.”
“That’s all it was? I wondered if perhaps he was part of the reason for your visit.”
My emphatic disclaimer was interrupted by Vivian’s announcement that dinner was ready, but as we went through to the dining-room I was uncomfortably aware that I might have been less than honest with Neil. If the compulsive voice in my head was Ray’s, he could indeed have influenced my coming, though not in the way Neil had meant.
The meal was excellent but although conversation flowed freely on the surface, I was conscious of the tensions just below. Nicholas’s fingers were continually crumbling the bread on his side plate and Vivian laughed too often and on too high a note. Several times I caught Neil’s eye across the table and I found my own thoughts wandering, trying to probe back into those dreams in which he had figured and wondering if I should really have the opportunity of reliving them.
“You know, of course, that Nicholas has applied for the Downhurst vacancy?” Vivian remarked to Hugo over the dessert. “I’m sure he must be better qualified than any of the other applicants. Look at the experience he’s had: twenty years now in a succession of famous schools. It’s really heart-breaking to see someone of his ability stultifying out here. If he hadn’t come to St Olaf’s he’d have had his own school years ago.”
“My dear, that is your own rather biased opinion,” Nicholas put in with heightened colour.
“Not only mine, I assure you. It was nothing short of scandalous the way you were passed over in favour of Frank Harrison. After all, it was more or less understood –”
She broke off under the force of pleading in his eyes. “I’m sorry. Please forgive that outburst. I’m afraid we’ve both been under rather a strain since the interview. Nicholas is right, of course. You don’t want to hear all our problems.”
“By the way, Nicholas,” Neil said smoothly, “I’ve been meaning to ask if they’ve roped you in for the end-of-term play this year?” I caught the grateful glance Vivian flashed him as he turned to me. “Has Hugo told you what a fantastic mimic Nicholas is? And not just of the ‘You dirty rat’ school! No college entertainment is complete without his impersonation of the prime minister!”
With the conversation steered on to safer topics the evening eventually tottered to a close without any more verbal pitfalls.
“What did you think of them?” Hugo asked as we drove home through the winding dark lanes.
“It wasn’t a very comfortable evening, was it? You had to be careful what you said.”
“Too true. Thank heaven at least for Neil.” He put his hand briefly on Martha’s knee. “Never get as neurotic as that about me, will you, sweetheart?”
“Not as long as you’re head of Eton before you’re forty! Will we have to ask them back? I don’t think I could stand the strain!”
“If we do we’ll certainly put a spot of bromide in the gravy!” Hugo promised with a laugh as we turned once more into the driveway of the cottage.