Dreamside - By Graham Joyce Page 0,35

holiday cottage equipped in utilitarian fashion. They ran up and down the stairs quickly claiming rooms, Ella and Lee together, Honora alone and Brad accepting a camp bed arrangement with good grace so that L. P. didn't have to scramble with the rest of them to stake out his territory in the front bedroom of the house. The old professor looked utterly exhausted by the journey, and sank down into a chair. When someone shouted that neither shower nor bath was functioning, he looked apologetic and bewildered, and could only suggest that they bathe in a lake he knew of, some three or four miles down the road.

Ella could see how tired he was. She went over to him. "It doesn't matter about the bath. It would be great fun to swim in the lake. And the house and the countryside are wonderful." He looked reassured by her words and forced a brief smile. The others realized that they were going to have to slow down over the next few days unless they wanted an invalid on their hands.

They took him at his word about the lake, and Brad persuaded him (by dint of hard work and outrageous promises) to surrender the car keys for the drive down to it. Again they all squeezed into the uninsured Morris Minor together with a deckchair for Burns to sit on while they swam. Burns complained that they were treating him like a geriatric, but was obviously gratified by this consideration. The lake was cool and inviting. They parked the car at the side of the road and walked down to its grassy banks. An ancient oak leaned out over it, root and branch plunging into the dark, deep water. They made camp under a row of weeping willows which dipped leafy stems into the blueblack cool. A spiral of excited swallows wheeled and turned and dotted the sky with parabolas above the lake, intoxicated by their own matchless aerial display.

Burns’s deckchair was set up with protracted ceremony and discussion. Only when he was fully installed did the others undress and leap squealing into the water. He watched them swim and bob, and laid towels out on the grass for them. Then he returned to his deckchair, where he promptly fell into a doze.

It must have been two hours before he woke. The sun had slipped in the sky. Everything slumbered. Something of the lake's calm had distilled itself into the afternoon tranquillity. Glancing down, he saw four young bodies basking in the heat, their smiling faces lifted up to him as if they expected him to speak.

"Did you dream lucid dreams L. P.?" Lee asked lazily.

Honora said, "You were talking in your sleep."

Ella giggled. "We heard everything. You named names."

"Lilly? Did I say Lilly?"

"Yes."

Burns smiled sleepily and settled back in his chair. "Lilly was my wife. You know, she died more than ten years ago. I've been dreaming of her a lot lately. Good dreams, nice dreams. We used to come here, often, years and years ago. Beautiful, peaceful; just as it is now. It hasn't changed at all. That's why I thought of this place."

"I love it," said Honora.

"We can have some pleasant days here before returning. There should be a rowing boat in the shed. We can bring it down here, or rather you can. There's fishing tackle if you're interested. Or we can take a walk through the woods there." They all agreed that the choice had been fine—quiet, unspoiled, entirely tranquil.

The next three days were a summer idyll. The weather held out, and time seemed suspended as they swam in the lake, picnicked under the spreading oak, drifted in the rowing boat, or went on long walks in the cool fern woods. Burns in particular loved to stroll in the woods, along narrow pathways winding between giant ferns, with the echoing rap of an unseen woodpecker as descant to his students' conversation. He liked to stroll with each of them in turn, probing, challenging, teasing them with his gentle irony.

They would return from these walks shaking their heads at the breadth of his knowledge, waiting for him to fall asleep in his deckchair before relaying an impression of their discussions to the others. It seemed that he could talk with authority about anything, pick up their own arguments and generously advance them before dismantling them with an opposing view. Lee found him fascinating on the psychosexual meaning of fairy-tales, of all things, and stalked the woods discussing the