Tea Story

 

      It was New Year’s Eve on the last day of the universe. Without looking away from his television screen, Benjamin Jones committed the most important act of his life. In all of space-time, in fact. He reached for his mug. 

Benjamin loved tea.

13.772 billion years before, give or take, depending on some small error bars, events were set in motion. The first of these events took the form of a tiny explosion, as an infinitesimal point of nothing got nudged out of kilter in a very, very specific way and the resulting energy imbalance expanded into absolutely everything. More or less.

Benjamin really loved his tea. Nothing fancy, just an everyday brand that had become his favourite after years of experimentation. It was, however,  made exactly how he liked it, and Benjamin was an expert. Not many people knew Benjamin was a master tea maker, least of all Benjamin himself, since strictly speaking, he was mainly an expert in making tea for Benjamin. Thousands and thousands of cups over years and years, each one in some small way a little closer to perfection than the last, with small adjustments in milk (first or last, volume, brand, fat content, species of origin), how long to leave the bag in, temperature, whether to squeeze, how hard to squeeze. Even the right shape, colour and thickness of mug was considered, not to mention where and when the tea should be drunk, a significant part of the taste experience being perception, environment, and of course, mood. Countless small decisions, some conscious, most unconscious, all directed toward improvement, via the satisfying end-point feedback of an increasingly magnificent cup of tea.

The universe was also coming into being on Benjamin’s television: 65 inches of glorious tru-color, [sic] ultra-hi-definition [sic] doing wonderful justice to how it must have looked, if one was able to stand outside of space-time. It was very impressive.

Benjamin was so impressed it took him a moment to realise the mug in his hand felt odd. It was his favourite mug and had been for some time. He knew how it should feel when full of tea. Excellent tea. He knew the amount of force his fingers and thumb should need to exert to balance and lift, exactly how warm the body of the mug should feel against the outside of his index and middle fingers after the optimum cooling period (depending on ambient conditions).

The mug was cold. Cold and empty. Benjamin, forced to switch mental track, moved his gaze from television to mug and a small but growing feeling of spiritual emptiness manifested behind his solar plexus. The source of this uneasiness was the realisation that he hadn’t actually made the tea that should have been within easy reach at this, the moment of want, the moment of need.  He had certainly thought about it, he remembered that much, but had evidently not converted that thought into action. He began to get to his feet but stopped, hands on the arms of the chair. With all the cruelty of associative memory, thinking about his feet and the kettle caused him to remember that he had meant to go out and replenish his depleted tea stock earlier in the evening, but this too he had forgotten. “You know what thought did?” he heard his father shouting from his childhood, “Nothing! He just thought he did!” The shop would be closed now. Perhaps even closed for the holiday.

Benjamin sat very still, his eyes fixed on the television. In the black, black pupils of those eyes, two tiny reflected universes continued to evolve. Universes of energy, then particles and patterns coalescing within them. No, the particles and patterns were the energy, an eternity of time, unimaginable numbers of galaxies, scattering like dust, each teeming with uncountable stars, forming, exploding, reforming, incredible forces generating heavier atoms, molecules, chemistry, and in one tiny corner of one dust-mote galaxy: life.

The telephone rang. Not his mobile, but the landline which he never used. No one used landlines.

He completed the action of standing, interrupted a second earlier, and answered the call, slightly anxious that he had no forewarning of the identity of the caller. 

“Hello?”

“Hello Benjamin.” What a beautiful voice. Oh, it was… well, the voice was very familiar, he would place it in a moment.

“Yes, speaking, what can I do for you?”

“Well, first let me wish you a happy new year, Benjamin. Are you having a nice evening?”

“Er, yes, happy new year to you too”

“Thank you Benjamin, that’s very kind. Now, how about your evening, tell me how you feel, Benjamin.” The voice was warm, nice, like a drink with friends in leather armchairs. So familiar. Yes! Of course, it was… Blast! Gone.

“What?”

“I need to know how you feel. Right now in this moment.”

“I’m alright. I was just watching TV. Look-  “

“Benjamin, I need to know how you feel about the tea. It’s important.”

Benjamin stared at his mug, then at the window.

“Can you see me?”

“Please Benjamin, you must tell me how you feel. A great deal depends on it, and in a moment you’ll have forgotten.” The tone was friendly, but insistent and authoritative, a favourite teacher you wanted to please. “I will explain, but first take a moment for me, look inside yourself. Be absolutely honest and tell me about the tea.”

Benjamin shrugged. “Okay, well, I was watching a documentary I’ve been looking forward to, and when there’s something good on, I always like to have a cup ready before it starts.”

“Ah, yes!, anticipation! How wonderful. Tell me, this cup of tea, examine your memory, how much were you expecting to enjoy it? As you reached for it, what were your thoughts?”

“I love tea.” Benjamin thought back to the moment the universe had exploded into being, “And this one was going to be beautiful. Perfect. I was really going to enjoy it, but…” He shrugged.

“But what, Benjamin? Don’t stop, this is fascinating, exactly what I’d hoped for. May I call you Ben?”

“Er, I prefer Benjamin.”

“Of course, I’m sorry, that was crass of me. Tell me, what happened next?”

“Well, I realised I’d forgotten to make the tea and the programme had started, and as if that wasn’t bad enough…” Benjamin trailed off as he examined his memory of a few minutes ago and felt ridiculous.

“Benjamin, I think you’ve been trivialising your strength of feeling in this matter, as you believe the context to be trivial, but you couldn’t be more wrong.”

“Well not getting a cup of tea isn’t the biggest thing, I mean with everything that’s going on in the world, it does seem petty.”

“You need to give yourself permission to engage honestly with your emotions. You feel how you feel, regardless of what prompts it. I’m sorry, I’m interrupting. Please, do carry on.”

“No, you’re right. I was really looking forward to a cup of tea and some TV, and if I’d just remembered to go to the bloody shop, everything would be okay. Everything.” Benjamin thought of the unused, unbought boxes of teabags on the shelf in the deserted shop, sitting useless in the dark, their potential untapped, while he stood impotent a short walk away. For some reason he thought of the plants the tea had come from, its long journey between continents. He thought of the people who had picked the leaves and packed them, the drivers of the trucks, the crew of the ship and the things they must have seen on the road and the sea. He wondered what all those people were up to at that exact moment in all their lives. He thought of the colossally destructive majesty of the collapsing star, in which all their elements had been formed, and all the long, empty wilderness of time as they all slowly came back together, guided only by the miniscule gravitational force between tiny particles. How long must two grains of sand have orbited each other before they met and started the whole process again? He felt oddly emotional, and tears ran down his cheeks.

“I felt terrible,” he said, “really disappointed. I know there are worse things in the world, but right there, right then, I felt bloody awful.” In fact, the more Benjamin thought about it, the more the voice at the other end of the telephone was right: this was important.

“I felt it in my stomach, and then all the way up to my brain, and I knew that if I’d just remembered the tea, if the world had been just a bit different, a little bit fairer, then things would be fine, but they’re not.” Benjamin picked up the cradle of the telephone and returned to his seat. The universe was still going. “I still feel terrible,” he said.

“I’m sorry, Benjamin, to ask you to think about it, I really am. Often it’s not the absoluteness of an experience that matters where feelings are concerned, but the context, the priming factors throughout your narrative.”

“Eh?”

“I won’t go into detail, but I said I would explain, so I will tell you that this evening has been the culmination of a great deal of organisation over a long period of time. A lot of hard work. This has not been a trivial matter.”

“Oh. Okay.” Benjamin regarded his empty mug. He was starting to feel uneasy and he wasn’t sure he wanted tea anymore. ”Well what happens now? Where do we go from here?”

“To be absolutely honest with you Benjamin, I don’t know, I just needed to explore exactly how you felt at that specific moment, under those specific circumstances. What happens next is no real concern of mine. I expect things will carry on, one way or another.”

“Who are you anyway? Do I know you?”

“No, you don’t know me, Benjamin, but thank you so much for your help. It really has been most instructive. I’m sure you’ll feel better when you get some tea.”

“Okay. Well, it’s been weird talking to you, but I think I’ll just have to try to enjoy my documentary without tea.”

“Oh, that’s not a documentary, Benjamin, but do enjoy it.”

The line went dead, leaving Benjamin holding the receiver, the universe reflected in his eyes.

                                                                                                                 AA

Short Halloween Story: The House... ON THE MOOR!

A blood-curdling Hallowe'en tale that will have you saucer-eyed under the bedclothes and reaching for a new pair of pants with your trembling little fingers...

 

                The train disappeared out of sight, and then out of hearing, leaving me bereft, finally of the life I had led. No more for me the civilizing cheer of the city, this was my existence now. The decaying station, the gunmetal skies and the mist dampening my clothes and hair, like death feeling around me, searching for a handhold. I surveyed the moor beyond the platform, bleak and seeming endless where it disappeared into the fog. I shivered and turned away, into the chest of an enormous man. I stepped back in shock, almost falling over my case. There had been no sound.

                “Porter,” he said, without greeting, and he was indeed dressed in a railway uniform, collar raised against the cold, but without a hat. Moisture glistened on a completely bald head above a heavy, thuggish face. The eyes were grey, dull but unwavering.

                “I didn’t know they still had porters,” I said. He ignored me:

                “You the bloke from Brighton?” I said that I was and he picked up my case and walked out of the station. I could do nothing but follow.

                The small village was everything my darkest thoughts had been conjuring. Squat, stone houses, a single, forbidding pub and a group of shops, one of which the porter entered with my case. He came straight out again as I caught up, causing me to walk into him.

                “You in the house on the moor?” he asked, his eyes flicking momentarily to my throat. Again, I said that I was. He grinned, revealing a twist to his lip I did not like the look of.

                “I’ll be seeing you.” He said with an ominous tone and returned to the station.

                The shop was that of the agent through whom I had procured the house and the lady therein was as delightful as the porter had been unpleasant.

                “I say…” was all I could manage in greeting. Dark haired, she had curious but attractive features, she was lithe, like a predator, with a fluidity of movement that suggested grace and speed. I really was most taken.

                The paperwork completed, she gave me the keys and said the most extraordinary thing:

                “Mr Klaus should have your wagon outside by now.”

                “My wagon?”

                “Yes, it really is the best way to get up that road in this weather and Mr Klaus is always eager to meet visitors. I’m often on the moor myself up there; I’ll look forward to bumping into you.” Our eyes met for an instant. I heard the tread of a horse outside and made to turn. The lady laid a hand on my arm to stop me: 

                “Before you go, there’s something you need to know about Mr Klaus.” The effect of her touch was most unsettling.

                “Mr Klaus?”

                “Yes, Mr Klaus doesn’t speak. He knows where you’re going and can understand you, but he is without speech.”

                Mr Klaus was a small man, and old. Not quite a dwarf, he had a pronounced roundness of the shoulders and a contortion to his face that I learned was associated with his manner of communication, which was with a series of open mouthed growls and short howls. His eyes were always moving, roaming, as though searching for something across the moor.

                The road was indeed rough, even for the wagon and the great black horse that pulled it. Occasionally Mr Klaus would indicate something in the cold landscape with a contorted howl, occasionally grabbing my shoulder and pointing, but I had no way of knowing what he was trying to communicate and could see nothing in the soulless landscape through the mist and the gathering dusk.

                The house was a large cottage, with nothing of the homely look suggested by that description. Built of the same ubiquitous grey stone as the houses in the village, the gables, built out for shelter appeared to knit like brows, giving the black windows an angry, staring quality.

                The departure of Mr Klaus was an odd moment. For the first time since we met, he smiled. A curious little smile, difficult to read. Again he held my shoulder and gave one of his short, yelping howls, pointing toward the village and then at his own throat, looking at me intently. Once again I had no way of understanding.

                The house was warm, very warm. Fires had been burning in every room in anticipation of my arrival and although they were now embers, the heat they gave drove me into a perspiration welcome after the moor.

                Darkness was almost complete, leaving me with no light to search the house for candles. I did have one with me which would do for my room and so resolved to retire early and explore more in daylight.

                The master bedroom was of a good size but furnished austerely. The bed was a four poster and had muslin curtains to draw around it, giving it the pleasing effect of sleeping in a tent. Too warm for covers for the moment, I lay on my back, my one candle on my chest, stuck to a saucer and a book held aloft to read.

                The strangeness of the day had begun to turn to something approaching cheer and my thoughts strayed back to the lady at the property office. It was then that movement caught my eye, in the room beyond the muslin curtain. My blood froze in my veins as I recognized a human shape, moving without a sound. Held fast with fear, I tried to stare harder through the material. It was a woman! She was dancing. In utter silence. Was it the lady from the office? Had I fallen asleep and summoned her in a dream? It seemed the only explanation. I decided to succumb to the reverie and called to her, enjoying the sight of her lithe but indistinct form writhing to music unheard. To my delight she seemed to come closer, approaching the curtain, but then, in an odd contortion the sight of which will be vivid in my memory until the day I die, her form changed, horribly, and still without sound. Before me now, almost within reach beyond the curtain was the huge, bald porter from the station. Once more my heart seemed to stop in my chest. I remembered that twisted grin and knew then, too late, that there had been murder in it. Never before or since have I known stone cold terror such as I felt watching that looming giant lurch from side to side as though searching, waiting for the curtain to be torn aside.

                “Merciful God!” I managed to cry, “Just do what you have come to do!”

                But he did not. Still beyond the curtain, he seemed to bend, as though in great pain. In silent, writhing, mortal agony his form actually changed once more in stature. As God is my witness, beyond that curtain now crouched the odd, hunched figure of Mr Klaus, the horseman. And still no sound!

                This was too much. Whatever the consequence, I had to know. I leapt up and tore back the curtain, holding out the candle to see –

                - An empty room! I was alone. For what seemed an age I knelt, terrified and confused, until realisation dawned, and I laughed with the pure relief of it. There had been no one in the room with me. I had been alone the whole time. It had merely been my exceptionally proportioned penis casting shadows upon the screen in the flicker of the candlelight. Imagination had painted the rest of the picture.

                Bountiful nature had, it must be said, been extremely kind to me in this particular expression of manhood, but this was certainly the first time the thing had scared me half to death. As soon as I was able once more to feel myself, I did so, until morning.

Short story: "What Thought Did"

An uplifting tale of existentialist discombobulation and death by disaffection.

   Devereux awoke from a dream about nothing and sighed into a greater nothing. He moved his eyes around the darkness, comforted by its chill. The room was there of course, and by extrapolation, the universe, unobserved and waiting. Waiting for him to move, to crawl in slow motion from his bed and give it purpose with his pitiful presence, a mote of dust, floating in impotence with all the rest; dust galaxies, dust worlds, dust people. It was all the same. Nothing.

   He turned on the light and what he saw did not improve his mood. The environment he surveyed - the dark brown, nicotine, cheap carpet, shared bathroom, sum total of a waste of time existence - was rented, borrowed or stolen, depending on where he looked. Mechanically, Devereux forced himself into another pointless burst of wakefulness, a necessary evil to use up unwanted energy, waste accumulated during the hours of sleep.

   Dressed, Devereux focussed on the clock. Evening. Probably. He had spoken to no one in weeks. Melancholy, running unchecked, had his tired spirit surrounded. It was a dark world indeed for Devereux. He would go to the pub.

   There was a noise from the garden. Devereux ignored it.

Earlier that day, just after dawn in fact, Wilson, Devereux’s equally reclusive house mate, had awoken and, in the spirit of Sartre, reinvented himself. He chose to be a worm. This planet and its troubles had concerned him for some time. He cared, did Wilson. He watched the TV and cared; he listened to the radio and cared. Wilson cared so much it hurt. He lay awake nights and worried that he could do nothing to improve the lot of humanity. He ached for the starving and the sea levels, carbon footprints trod dark across his soul. He felt a failure because there was litter in the street and shooting in Columbia. All in all, he carried quite a burden on his shoulders. When Wilson shed a tear, it was shed for all the world.

   Hence the worm. Wilson lay still and smiled, imagining himself soaring slowly through the ground with nary a worry and the unsightly chaos of the surface far, far above. The soil would be his sanctuary and his food, the cool, filtered rain-moisture his drink and the darkness his friend. His metamorphosis complete, he got up, removed his underwear and walked, naked, into the garden. He looked around one last time at the too old Earth with its insurmountable symptoms of rot and neglect and breathed its complicated air. He lay down on the lawn, the morning dew pure and refreshing against his skin and, arms by his sides broke the surface of his new life.

   The turf tasted brackish and bitter. It was difficult to swallow, which concerned him for a time, but Wilson was no quitter and so he persevered. By the time he had reached topsoil he had gained a taste for it and had learned to swallow the stones without trying to chew. From then on, he ate as quickly as he could, to get underground as soon as possible.

   It was not long before he reached his first problem. He was full. He had gorged himself fit to burst and he had only a relatively tiny hole in front of him, not even big enough for his head. It looked like the going would be slower than he had anticipated. Still, Wilson had all the time in the world. He could afford to be patient and so he waited, quietly digesting.

Devereux did his bathroom things and headed for what they still called the kitchen, although what food had been in there had mostly consumed itself. This suited Devereux; food only made him sick. What he needed was alcohol, and the memory of humanity that the shared experience of its consumption brought back. Devereux needed the pub. This meant he had to go outside, and he needed certain things to be able to do this.

   "Constants," he muttered to himself. Devereux had a rather complex view of the world and found it difficult to cope when he ventured astronaut-like "outside". He survived by taking with him reminders, little handkerchief knots for him to contemplate and thus keep his feet on the ground and his mind on the situation in hand.

   He tried to open Wilson's going out drawer first, but it was locked. "Funny," he thought, he didn't recall being able to lock any of the kitchen drawers. Opening his own, he took out the things essential and, one by one, popped them carefully into his pockets. These were the things on which he relied, the unchanging lifebelts keeping him afloat on a sea of chaos. A lock of his dead mother's hair served to remind him of the past, giving him an anchor point from which to judge the perceptions of the world held by other people which would inevitably be forced upon him. A dead mouse was his hitching post to the present, as his attention tended to wander. It had been a live mouse once, but life in the drawer and the pocket had not agreed with it. It didn't really matter. The future was uncertain and thus unrepresented in Devereux's pocket. It would bring what it would, and Devereux was not in the business of guesswork. He also took a lump of cracked but mould free cheese, in case a sudden desire for food should come upon him after all. "Coffee," he thought then, and prepared himself a cup, watching the kettle until it boiled and then clicking a lid onto his cup before dropping this too into his pocket.

   The odd noise from the garden came again. This time Devereux went out to investigate. The lawn was dark save for a square of light thrown onto it from the kitchen window, in the centre of which was what appeared to be Wilson. By now he was in a bit of a mess and his head was in a hole. Devereux could not summon the curiosity to be bothered overly much by the sight before him, but felt he ought to say something to signal his presence.

   “Wilson,” he opened, his voice sounding odd out loud. He couldn’t remember the last time he had spoken to anyone. “I’m going to the pub. You can come if you like.”

   “Can’t,” answered Wilson, “Excreting,” and when it became clear that an elaboration was to be forthcoming, Devereux went back inside in search of his keys.

   Outside, Devereux leaned into the wind, frowned bitterly and headed for the pub. Fitfully he fingered the contents of his pockets, the lump of cheese: hard, greasy; the cup of coffee: spilled, cold; the mouse: soft, dead and the lock of his dead mother’s hair, elastic banded and damnable if it didn’t bring back those memories. He stopped in his tracks and once more fingered the greasy lump that was his cheese. “Later,” he thought, and smiled. He broke wind, pleased that he did it with buttock-clenched control. Not a soul would know.

   Devereux liked pubs. He could feel his tender bladder distend with delight and his throat tingle as he approached the final corner, admiring the chipped brickwork and squeezing his so relaxing mouse. He treated himself with the view to the left, the swinging sign and the huddled, possibly dead, definitely drunken slump of a true contender on the pavement. “Mmm,” he thought, and smiled. The wind was at his back now, and he wished he had left his fart a little later.

   The blood red eyes of the slump fixed upon him and he stopped to gaze into them, pleased with the moment.

   “Have you farted?” it asked. Devereux replied that he had, and thanked the slump for noticing. “I was in the navy once,” said the slump with the blood red eyes, “An officer.” Devereux smiled, leaned forward and prodded. The slump’s eyes closed and its face nodded forwards, into the darkness. “I remember places,” it continued, quieter and slurring, as Devereux prodded, “All those places…” Devereux kept smiling and prodding the slump as it’s voice faded and faded, smiling and prodding, moulding the dark clothes until the voice disappeared altogether and Devereux was prodding empty clothes, dark and cold on the pavement, moving in the wind. Alone, Devereux straightened and pushed open the dark wood door of the pub and savoured the warmth that exited as he entered.

The bar section of the pub was dim, crowded but hushed. This was usual. People didn’t mess about in the bar, it was a place of serious drinking and little energy was wasted on unrelated activities. Tables were full but no one looked at anyone else. It was doubtful that anyone even knew the identities of their immediate neighbours. The bar was, in fact filled with a low roar of sounds, but of a limited variety and all subdued. The air rattled with the muffled clink of glass against wedding rings and teeth, and the tiny thump of glass against beermat multiplied a thousandfold became a quietly intense rush of sound like the beating of many wings that quickened the heart and further whetted the thirst. The counter of the bar was inhabited by a steady one-deep turnover of unsmiling custom. The other sounds of the room were punctuated by low and toneless mutterings from this direction such as “Another,” or “No ice,” or “Keep ‘em coming.” The barman, silent, always active never busy, wore a black hood, only his eyes visible through devil-slanted slits, the blank, bored eyes of someone who has seen his fill of the depths of human degradation. Devereux sniffed deeply, savouring the warm scent of cigarette breath and beer with its undertones of unwashed human sweat. He was home.

   Devereux generally started off in the bar, drinking slowly and steadily, smiling the only smile, unnoticed, fortifying himself against the adventure of the evening. He would purposely nudge those around him to see them shuffle further away without a glance or a word. He felt wetness against his hand where there should be none. He examined his glass, finding a fine hairline crack from the rim to the bottom.

   “Barman,” he said, still smiling, as the hood passed through his field of vision, “Barman, I have leakage, a flaw.” He held up the glass for examination. The hood nodded once, and his drink was replaced, even though a third of it had been consumed. A man standing next to him, tall and unshaven with a top hat caught his eye, the first acknowledgement of his existence he had received from another customer since his arrival. Devereux smiled amiably and raised his new drink. The man averted his eyes and continued drinking. Devereux felt he had exhausted the amusement of the bar and headed for the lounge.

   The door to the lounge faced north and was fashioned from a single piece of ash, the pale wood dry and unvarnished. The handle was also wooden. Devereux closed it behind him and surveyed the room. Again dim, but an altogether cleaner place than the bar. Wood panelled walls slightly deadened the bright conversation that came from the five-sided tables. A slender bottled champagne was the drink of choice in here, consumed from ridiculously tall fluted glasses, tinted sky blue to set off the bubbles. Devereux regarded the stream that bisected the room, babbling noisily from beneath one wooden wall to disappear under it's opposite. In the centre of the room, two men and a woman were grouped excitedly around a twitching rod, held by a third man who was fighting with the reel. Two of the men were dressed in formal evening wear, the third – the fisherman - in a lounge suit over the top of which he wore a white medical coat. The woman sported the half-armour familiar in the English civil war amongst those fighting under the command of Cromwell. Intrigued, Devereux approached. As he reached the group, a crimson fish was being deposited on the nearest table by means of a landing net. A champagne bottle was knocked over during the struggle, to guffaws from the group. Those seated at the surrounding tables glanced in their direction momentarily before returning to their conversations. As the fish became still, Devereux noted its singular beauty, from its bleeding moon, sickle-shaped tail, along its spearhead-curved flanks to the regal turn of its mouth and the calm of its eye, peculiar considering its present situation. The fish appeared to regard him as the hook was removed from its mouth.

   “Why are you dressed in armour?” Devereux asked the girl as she broke from the group to refill her glass from the retrieved champagne bottle. She looked at him, startled. He smiled, one hand in his pocket delicately stroking the lock of his dead mother’s hair. The girl had his mother’s eyes. She blinked twice before speaking.

  "Because of history, I am aware of the past," she answered, in his mother's voice. She paused, sipping from her glass, then spoke slowly, phrasing words carefully with a dreamlike diction. "I take refuge in the past, because that is what is in my books." She frowned slightly, took another sip, and then looked him in the eyes, "In books I can move through other worlds of years, treading the paths of forgotten forests and the streets of towns long dead." She looked down into her glass, the others had joined them now, the crimson fish having been weighed and returned to its stream. "I hear the sounds that haunted the nights of the people," she continued, "and smell the air they breathed." She smiled his mother's smile. "The paths always lead away and then the sounds leave me, and I remember I am alone and in this time."

   “I understand,” Devereux nodded, using the tone his mother had liked to hear in the midst of her uncertainties, “We are all of us alone.” The girl smiled, but the white coated man, impassive until now slammed his glass down on the table, a sudden act of violence, breaking the stem.

   “Understand?” he shouted, then composed himself, self consciously. “I have studied dreams all my life.” His eyes were arrogant, his voice intense and restrained. Devereux smiled, met the man’s gaze and thought about his cheese. “I have collected them like little jewels, coloured lights upon my understanding of the world.” He lowered his eyes and seemed soothed and fascinated by the broken glass and spilled champagne. “I am a psychologist and a mathematician, you see, and I model these dreams I collect. I assign values to their symbols and reconstruct them with numbers and equations. I take a little from one and a little from another, and I piece them together and see how they behave within their own rules.” He looked at Devereux again. Calm now, his eyes had gained the same lost, inward staring attitude of the girl. Devereux nodded once, encouragingly, and the man continued. “Mathematics usually comes from the conscious, you understand, so its rules are always restricted by the human viewpoint. The numbers work to the rules of the world.” Devereux found his piece of cheese and began to eat it. “With the mathematics of dreams though, the rules are constant only within their perspective. The representation of the world is not restricted by the world. The mathematics is therefore free from conscious human limitation and can rise above it, exploring those parts of our environment we cannot perceive. Mathematics becomes our eyes and our ears, probing the worlds beyond the one created for us by our limited, deceived senses.”

   “So you take refuge in imagination,” Devereux commented, surprised at his enjoyment of the cheese.

   “I move toward truth,” the mathematician muttered, looking down. He strode off to get another bottle of champagne. The other three left around the table had lost interest in his monologue, having apparently heard it several times before. They had already begun a conversation of their own, too mundane for Devereux’s liking. He became aware of suppressed, resonant laughter from behind him, causing him to turn. Seated with his back to the wall, facing Devereux and observing the situation, evidently with a degree of amusement was a young man, dapper in black Victorian formal dress, a silk top hat on the table in front of him. He stopped laughing, but looked as though he might recommence at any given provocation. The mood was infectious and Devereux found himself smiling the first genuinely humorous smile that had crossed his face for as long as he could remember. The man gestured for him to sit down and poured an extra glass from a wine bottle whose label was stained illegible with dust and time.

   “It’s my favourite,” the man said, pushing the glass toward Devereux. His voice was clear and pleasant, untouched by the cigarette smoke, alcohol and self-loathing that polluted most of the speech that entered Devereux’s ears. He tasted the wine. It was exquisite. He glanced at the stranger's face as he thanked him, finding broad, honest features. The eyes were dark, black in fact, but straight and clear. Devereux introduced himself but the stranger laughed again:

   “I have no use for names.” He sipped his wine, “But I’ll know you as well as you know yourself before the evening’s out, and I’ll be damned if I'm not the best friend you ever had.” Devereux nodded.

   “A friendly sort of chap,” he said. The stranger seemed to find this hilariously funny, to Devereux’s discomposure, laughing uproariously.

   “My sincere apologies,” he said, seeing Devereux’s expression, “It’s just that I’m much more used to upsetting people.” He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and recovered composure. “I'm always upsetting people.” He sipped wine and smacked his lips, tilting his glass in the direction of the bottle in appreciation. “But I'm a good friend to them when they need me.”

   "And what sort of people are your friends?"

   They were interrupted by last orders, the hooded barman appearing and hammer-striking a long iron cylinder suspended almost from ceiling to floor behind the bar. A strangely sweet note silenced the lounge, fading impossibly slowly. Devereux felt chilled, momentarily nervous. He assumed it was a reaction to the sound. He never liked time being called. It meant decisions would have to be made as to what to do next. Reflexively he reached into his pocket, but it was empty. Even the lint was missing. He rose from his seat but stood indecisively in his place.

   "Everyone." The stranger answered his question, unperturbed. He fixed Devereux with his black eyes and smiled again. “I find everyone I meet comes around in the end.” Those pupil-less irises should have looked bottomless, intimidating, but instead they were filled with an embracing kindness and compassion. It was the smile that did it. The stranger seemed to throw his body and soul into the expression, sucking you along with it. A statue would have smiled back. His manner, open and honest and genuine inspired a trust that was a completely new feeling to Devereux, he needed to get away, to think about things.

   “I have to go now,” he said. The stranger also stood, picking up his hat.

   “I’ll walk with you. I need to speak with your friend anyway.”

   “Friend?" Devereux was puzzled by the word, and then surprised. "What, Wilson? You know Wilson?"

   “Is that his name? I’ll speak to him when we get there.”

   “Ah yes,” Devereux thought out loud, “We’ll need to get a shovel from somewhere.” The stranger smiled.

   “We won’t be needing a shovel.” He noticed Devereux looking around, puzzled, “And don’t worry about your coat.” He was still smiling, but his dark eyes were a little sadder. “You won’t be cold.” He reached out and touched Devereux's shoulder, lightly. "You're my friend now."