Now summer dreams are flowing along the Brindley canal, pooling in the quiet places where the current runs slow, seeping under the bridge, swirling upstream around the lock-gates.
Venetia Hall, an elderly painter who lives on one of the narrowboats and has that day returned from her annual visit to the Tate, finds herself swimming, a young girl again, in water almost tropically warm. It is night, but garden candles burn in tall cressets, illuminating apple trees full of cascading roses. Around her, lilies, floating on pads as large as plates, have opened to spill their heavy perfume into the summer air. She can hear laughter and voices and the clink of glasses; music drifting lazily from the bandstand. She turns to float on her back, and it is then she realises that her feet have become entangled in the lily roots, and that the man she has been swimming with has disappeared from view...
*
Up on Village Road, the McEwan twins, each, alone, have dreams of flying out of their dormer window. Separately, they step from the ledge, spiral and fall...
*
Fred Burbage and his wife Enid have been bickering more than usual recently, and always over the tiniest of domestic matters: now, he turns over in his sleep, his hands gripping the pillow as if it is his wife’s throat; and tomorrow morning when he wakes it will be with relieved surprise that he finds Enid still snoring gently beside him.
Another dreamer is visited by a long-backed fox, its fur all burnished copper, save for a grey patch on one flank. Its eyes are knowing, and wary. When it opens its wide black mouth, the dreamer hears it speak: ‘Take care of what you dream,’ it tells her, ‘for when you dream, your fears eat the world. Someone must warn you of the damage you do, awake and asleep. We care, and are watching.’