own demands on the blood that coursed through her body. I didn't have to settle
for being the only one who was changed. I could change her, too, if only I put my
mind and heart into the attempt. As she'd said herself, anyone can be a vampire,
and everything that we take too readily for granted is really supernatural.
Sheena went to the loo before we left, and I took the opportunity to have
another wee word with Big Davy.
"So who were you in a previous life?" I asked. "Beethoven or Jack the
Ripper—or both?"
He grinned. "What you see is what you get," he said. "I don't do past lives. Do
you?"
That was what I wanted to hear. I'd suspected as much. Sheena had told me
that Goths had a licence to be weird in any way they wanted—nothing ruled out,
and nothing compulsory.
"Yes I do," I said. "And how."
In the next few weeks Sheena and I went dog racing at Elland Road and horse
racing at Wetherby. We went dancing wherever there were dark -clad bands
playing to legions of dark-clad acolytes—even if we had to go as far as
Nottingham or Derby—and we went drinking in the Cock and Crown, the Upin
Arms, and the Countess of Cromartie. Mostly, however, we went to Atlantis and
Arcadia.
While I was still figuring out the best way to work it I let Sheena do most of the
talking. The kind of self-hypnosis she practised wasn't much more complicated
than relaxing into a mental gear somewhere west of neutral, and once I'd learned
how not to be an inhibitory presence, she didn't have any obvious difficulty in
getting there, or in free-associating fantasies of quite extraordinary elaboration. I
had a lot of catching up to do, so I was content at first to offer prompts and
nonleading questions: As time went by, however, I began to feed more and more
information into the fantasies.
I discovered that Sheena was right about the nature of the creative process—
that it really did seem that I was finding the material I fed in, not in the books that
I read but within the fantasy itself, as if they had always been there waiting to be
noticed or uncovered. It was perhaps as well, because the Atlantis we wove out of
words wasn't much like any of the Atlantises in the books I dug up—which ranged
from Plato to Madame Blavatsky—and the Arcadia would have been hardly
recognisable to the scrupulous author of Dr Smith's Classical Dictionary. If I'd
had to plagiarise the material I used in the continuing reconstruction of Sheena's
favourite past lives, the wheels would probably have come off the entire
enterprise. I'd never have become an authentic collaborator. Fortunately, my own
imagination proved equal to the continual challenge. Necessity is the mother of
improvisation, and I needed to cement that link with Sheena because it was the
only way I could see to go one better than Davy, to be the perfect partner he had
failed to be in spite of the hold his music exercised upon her.
It was inevitable, of course, that the fantasies would come to occupy much of
my thought even when I was not with Sheena. At work, once I was able to cruise
through calls on autopilot, I often found myself slipping away into daydreams of
discovery, in which I would conjure up new titbits of information and imagery that
fit one or other of the jigsaws we were patiently bringing towards completion.
Whenever I was walking from home to work, or filling in time at home while
Sheena was working with Davy, Atlantis and Arcadia were always there to provide
temporary avenues of escape. Bit by bit, slyly and shyly, they even managed to
work their way into my dreams.
Sheena introduced me to her mother within a week of introducing me to Davy,
but I didn't see her big sister then or on any of the next few times when I had
occasion to cross her home threshold, because she was always at work or out.
Mrs. Howell was no taller than her daughter, but she was much stouter. She had
probably been pretty thirty years before, but she hadn't aged well, perhaps
because she was so nervous, indecisive, and fluttery that she must have been
hyped up with adrenaline practically all her life. I never mentioned Atlantis,
Arcadia, vampires, or Goths in front of Mrs. Howell, who seemed to take some
comfort from the fact that I did not have dyed-black hair. Sheena was careful not
to leave me alone with her mother, but on the one occasion when Mrs. Howell did
manage to snatch a private word, she said: "I hope you'll be patient with Suzy.
She's often unwell, you know, and her imagination sometimes runs away with her."
"She's been fine lately," I assured her, tacitly taking credit for the fact that
Sheena's bad legs had almost ceased to bother her. "I love her imagination." It
was the truth, if not the whole truth. I adored her pliant, fleshy reality and her
runaway imagination, and saw no need to separate the two in my own mind, even
if diplomacy circumscribed what I could say to her mother.
The sex was even better once we began to take it for granted, although I did try
to be as gentle as possible, even when she told me that she was in one of her
unbruising phases. For me—but not, I suspect, for her—the sex functioned in the
beginning as a kind of anchor in reality, tethering the flights of fancy that became,
in essence, a leisurely kind of foreplay. I thought of the sex, to begin with, as
"coming down to Earth" after an excursion into Neverland, and it wasn't difficult
to draw that distinction while our mutual hypnosis sessions weren't really mutual at
all. While we were exploring past lives sitting at a table, or in two chairs placed so
that we could stare into each other's eyes, the act of going to bed was always an
obvious transition from one state of mind to another. As time went by, however,
we began to indulge our flights of fancy while lying together on the couch.
Sometimes we went to bed before we began to explore the still-hidden treasures of
Sheena's supposed memories, and added the physical into the imaginary as if one
could be subtly dissolved into the other without crossing of any obvious
boundary. I had no alternative, then, but to enter more fully into the fantasies
myself.
It was natural enough, during my early attempts to help Sheena recall her
supposed past lives in Atlantis and Arcadia, for me to ask her whether there was
anyone among her past selves' acquaintances who might be one of my own former
incarnations. She denied it with such apparent assurance that I never thought the
point worth pressing—and it seemed, at first, to make my own part as a prompter
easier to play. As time went by, however, I began to wonder if her confident
denials were a way of keeping me safely distant from the deep core of her dream.
The only thing which stopped me making more strenuous efforts to intrude myself
into the scenarios we spun out was the fact that she was just as emphatic that none
of Davy's previous incarnations was present, even though Atlantis and Arcadia
were both places where music flourished. In Sheena's Atlantis, in fact, choral
singing was the highest art, much more vital to the coherence and solidarity of
society than religion.
"I wish I could sing the songs of Atla
ntis for you," she said, "but I can't. I've
tried before—" I presumed she meant that she had tried to sing them for Davy "—
and it can't be done. The language of Atlantis is dead, and I can't pronounce the
words, but even if I could, they're not the kind of songs that can be sung solo."
That was, of course, one of the many aspects of her fantasies that were
intrinsically mysterious. For instance, all her memories of Atlantis were nighttime
memories, although her memories of being a dryad or an Amazon in Arcadia were
usually sunlit, pleasantly if not gloriously. This was not because Sharayah or
Morgina—the two Atlanteans she remembered most frequently and more clearly—
had not been active by day, although they had both been vampires after their
fashion, but because they were deliberately shielding their memories of day from
her miraculous hindsight.
"Our past selves can do that," she explained. "Access to such memories is a
privilege, not a right. In fact, access to our own memories is a privilege, too.
Sometimes, when we repress aspects of our present histories, it's not because
they're traumatic in themselves but because they're linked to recurrent patterns
extending across the centuries, like wormholes."
"There must be something terrible in Atlantis that can be seen only by day," I
suggested. "Some monster that retires to its lair at sunset and returns at dawn, like
a movie vampire in reverse."
"It's not as simple as that," she assured me. "I think it might be something to
do with colour. At night, no matter how bright the stars are, it's very difficult to
perceive colour. Candlelight helps, but it's not like real daylight. I think the
Atlanteans may have had more colours than we have, and that Sharayah and
Morgina don't want me to realise what we've lost."
"Perhaps that's why the magical creatures of Arcadia were destined to die out,"
I said. "We may flatter ourselves that satyrs and centaurs, dryads and the gods
themselves became intangible when humans ceased to believe in them, but it's hard
to see why they'd be impressed by our scepticism. Perhaps their hearts were
broken, although they didn't know why, by the loss of the secret colours of
Atlantis. Perhaps that's why they lost the ability to sing in proper harmony, or even
to speak in the language of the authentic Golden Age. Did the Arcadians invent art
and drama in the hope of being able to rebuild what they dimly remembered? And
is that why the arts have been going downhill ever since, as the memory is slowly
obscured from all but a frustrated few? Except, of course, that you're not
frustrated, are you?"
"No," she said, ignoring the double entendre. "What I do remember only
makes me more complete."
There's nothing in the least surprising in the fact that I began to hypnotise
myself with these same fancies, occasionally slipping into a mental gear where
disbelief was totally suspended. The only real cause for surprise is that I couldn't
make any progress inventing or summoning up the memories of any past lives of
my own. I wanted to find my Atlantean and Arcadian selves, even if it turned out
that they didn't overlap in time with any of Sheena's selves and couldn't actually
meet, but it seemed that I was to be limited to the role of disembodied voice,
accompanying Sheena when she flew upon the wings of time, a mere parasite of
her remembrance.
"I wish I could be more," I said once.
"Don't fret about it," she advised. "What was, was—the past is unchangeable.
It's not the worst of fates, to be a passenger in my memories. It's a far easier way
to my heart. I just wish you could hear, if only for a moment, the song of Atlantis,
the song of the world as it was. I can describe the people to you, the buildings, the
flowers, and the animals. I can even describe the chimeras and the spirits, at least
as they seem by moonlight, but I can't describe the music, because that can't be
put into any words we know."
"I have more than enough," I assured her, repenting of the suggestion that I
could be in any way dissatisfied with our relationship. "I have everything I need."
I had, too. I had everything. It took me a little longer to show Sheena off to my
mother and my half-brothers than it might have done, because I was paranoid that
one or other of them was going to say something horribly wrong, but when the
time came to bite the bullet, the occasion passed harmlessly.
"She's that thin," was Mum's verdict afterwards. "But it seems to be the
fashion nowadays. Look at that Ally McBeal." The last remark was not a veiled
reference to Sheena's talent for invention, but merely evidence of the censorious
frame of mind in which Mum invariably watched TV.
The last remaining piece of our personal jigsaw fell into place a couple of days
later, when we were in overlapping shifts. I got home about five, while Sheena was
on two-to-ten, and I'd been in for an hour or so when the doorbell rang. It was a
woman, who looked to be about four years older than me. She had bleached
blonde hair, but she was too well dressed and neatly polished to be placed in the
same category as the slags at work.
"I'm Elizabeth Howell," she said.
It took a full ten seconds for the penny to drop; I had never taken the trouble
to work out what "Libby" must be short for. When it did, reflex made me say:
"Sheena's not here. She's at work."
"I know," she said. "Can I come in for a minute?"
I opened the door wide and stood aside to let her go past. By the time I'd
closed it and turned around again, she was already well into her tour of inspection.
She made not the slightest attempt to cover up the fact that that was what she was
doing. She carefully examined my furniture, my bookshelves, my CD collection,
and my PC before turning her critical eyes on me. I tried to meet them squarely,
Sheena's. Physically, Libby favoured her mother. She was handsome, even
voluptuous, but anyone who had seen Mrs. Howell would have been able to
imagine her slowly morphing into something wide and soft.
"Crockett says you're all right," she observed.
"Crockett?" I queried. Again the penny was ridiculously slow to drop. She
meant Davy, obviously.
"Wasn't as obliging as our Suzy," she admitted. "Wouldn't take the nickname
on—but I keep trying. Don't like to fail."
"Davy told you I was all right?" I said, slightly surprised.
"Said you'd probably be good for her. Don't know about that, myself. She's
head over heels. Never good to be that dependent. If you muck her about, you
know—"
"You'll do terrible things to me," I finished for her. "Fine. By the time Sheena's
had her pound of flesh, blood included, and Davy's ripped my head off, I'll be
past caring."
"Fucking sociology graduate," she said. "Think you know it all. Well, you
don't."
"So tell me the rest," I said, trying to suppress my annoyance and keep my
tone light. She was Sheena's sister, after all.
"I will," she said, "when the time's right. Until then—"
"Don't muck her about. Believe me, Elizabeth—c
an I call you Libby?—I'm not
about to do that."
"Call me what you like," she said. "Just tell me that you're as mad on her as she
is on you, and that you're man enough to handle it." She was staring at me, trying
to give the impression that she had a built-in lie detector.
"I'm as mad on her as she is on me," I told her. "I hope I can handle it,
because it's going to fuck me up worse than anything it can do to her if I can't.
Satisfied?"
She didn't go so far as to nod. "Mum says come to dinner on Saturday," she
said instead, finally condescending to complete the errand on which she'd
presumably been sent, probably because her mother didn't trust Sheena to deliver
it or bring back an accurate answer. "It's her wedding anniversary."
" Wedding anniversary?" I echoed.
"Is there any law that says a widow can't celebrate her wedding anniversary
with her daughters?' Elizabeth Howell demanded. It would have been anything but
safe to enquire, even in jest, whether Mrs. Howell also celebrated the anniversary
of her divorce, or the anniversary of her son's conception. I guessed that the
anniversary was just an excuse, although I couldn't quite figure out what it was that
Libby and her mother were excusing.
"We'll be there," I assured her.
"Seven-thirty," Libby said in a much friendlier tone. "Maybe you are all right.
Our Suzy certainly thinks so."
"Our Suzy?" I challenged, having realised that I had failed in my duty when I'd
let it go before.
"Oh, all right," she said. "Sheena. Don't see why I should keep it up, now that
she's as good as out of the Goth gang, but if it's what she wants… do me a
favour, will you, and tell her no if she asks you to dye your hair."
"She seems to like it the way it is," I said, "but if she were to ask, it'd be black
before you could count to five. Sorry."
Libby shrugged. "Probably the right answer," she conceded grudgingly. "See
you Saturday."
I relayed the entire conversation to Sheena, virtually word for word, when I met
her from work.
"They're just trying to be friendly," she assured me. "It's just an excuse to
make a big show. It'll be hell, but it's best to go through it."
"Well," I said, "if ever Mum approaches you about springing a surprise