47. A VERY STRANGE NIGHT

Maybe Ursula should have thought twice about inviting Jude to share his nightmares with her...

It had been the sort of busy day that Ursula would have welcomed at any time of her life.

Her novel, her first novel, had been accepted by a local publisher, not one of the big City houses but a pleasantly modest Brumpton publishing house that had been blessed with one or two really good authors on its lists over the years. At least, Ursula thought they were really good and copies of their books were in the library, always a bit dog-eared, which to her mind meant they must be well read.

The title of hers, The Bedroom Bonanza, had been what appealed to Harvey Grinder, the man she’d seen when she’d called in to sign a contract. He’d said she’d never make a million, not with his tiny firm doing the business, but it was quite common for a really good writer to be taken on by one of the big boys once his or her name was established.

So the contract had been signed (with a flourish from her) and she had spent the afternoon round Jane’s house, celebrating her new-found fame.

Not that it was fame yet. Certainly not. Only Harvey Grinder and her daughter Primrose had actually read the book, and that didn’t actually constitute fame. Even Ursula could see that.

Then, that evening, Primrose had brought a bottle of red wine and little David round, and with Jude watching his own tiny television in his room upstairs, she had celebrated again. Primrose had said she’d known it would be a flyer and the title titillated without giving anything away.

Ursula had suggested that it was still waiting to be a flyer, and the title didn’t actually titillate, though it suggested. Gertrude, she said, had inherited unexpected wealth and decided to turn her bedroom from something plain and boring into something that would feed her own dreams.

It had fed her dreams all right, and those of quite a few gentlemen who had enjoyed its ambience.

And now it was bed time and Ursula was tired out and even slightly, as she put it, sozzled.

So sleep came easily, and in it she became her storyland Gertrude as a tall and fetching gentleman of indeterminate (but not extreme) age stood at the foot of her dreaming bed and slowly, like a stripper, got undressed.

Gertrude would have felt her pulse quicken and other physiological changes paint a huge grin on her face as she did a little squirm in her bed. Then the tall gentleman moved to the side of the bed and she saw all of him close to, and gasped with the kind of anticipatory pleasure she had given vent to before and before and before, in chapters one, two, three and so on.

This sort of thing was what part (but by no means all) of the plot of The Bedroom Bonanza was all about. It was also a serious examination of what a lady past her prime might feel and how she might behave in the face of romantic challenges. And she had tried to decide how that lady’s growing appetites might affect the men who somehow found their way into her life. And it was all written with a teasing eye on life and love.

Just about all of what she had written was way outside her own experiences, but that didn’t matter, It was fiction, and wasn’t fiction always made up?

There was a knock on the door and she, as Gertrude, squirmed in anticipation of a threesome as it entered her dreams.

Why wasn’t there a threesome in the book? Ah well, maybe in a sequel if I write one…

The knock was persistent and Gertrude (was it Gertrude? It felt a little bit like a slightly inebriated Ursula with a dry mouth) climbed out of bed.

Why did I put this nightie on? Only Gertrude would wear one as diaphanous as this! Maybe that’s why Primrose gave it me at Christmas … it was Primrose, wasn’t it? Surely not years ago, and Cardew dropping hints? No … it was Primrose after she typed the first few chapters of the book…

The door was gently knocked again. Gently, yes, but she thought she detected anxiety, even emotion in the rat-a-tat rhythm.

Suddenly there was no doubt about it. She was Ursula and it was her bedroom door that was being knocked, and she was still worn out. And the least bit tiddly.

She turned on her bedside light and chased away the shadows.

“What?” she called out as she made her way to the door. As if she didn’t know! There was only her and Jude in the house, wasn’t there? And he should be tucked up in his room and snoring the snores of the retired clergyman.

“It’s me … you said...”

What had she said? It was Jude’s voice, but surely she hadn’t sleepwalked through the house saying things?

“I said?” she echoed.

“The other day, if it was going to happen again...”

Then something clicked into place and she sort of remembered telling Jude to come to her in the night, and then she recalled, quite clearly, that she had … to help him chase the shadows of a dark night away, or something like that.

She opened the door and he stood there, weakly.

Almost pathetic.

“I was dreaming about Gerry...” he said, and he was weeping. Quite clearly, weeping.

“But Gerry’s dead,” she told him, remembering his desperately unhappy account of a moment of his war.

He looked at her through eyes that were almost hidden by the black of night the other side of her door, but she could see the slightest moist glint of where they were.

“I know,” he said wretchedly, “but it was all my fault. Not that he was dead but that I saw, as he died, something I love...”

“Love or loved?” she asked.

“I don’t know. What’s the difference? Present or past, surely love is love and loved is loved…?”

“You said it was just a moment,” she said slowly, “what was it you loved? The man or his death?”

“He was handsome,” moaned Jude, and he staggered slightly. Had he been drinking? Taken a drop too much from what he called his spiritual bottle?

He answered the question for her. “I’ve had a little drink,” he said, “to help me sleep. It didn’t work, though. Not tonight.”

“Come and sit on my bed for a moment,” she said.

Just a minute! Am I Gertrude, the creature of my own creation, or am I Ursula, the strong and steady one? And why am I inviting a man to sit on my bed? Gertrude would see straight away that it’s just a matter of position, and sitting easily becomes lying…

“Just for a moment,” he said.

“Now tell me all about it,” suggested Ursula like a mother talking to her injured child.

“You did mean I could share it with you, didn’t you?” he asked.

“Of course,” she nodded.

“The image in the night, the dream or nightmare, call it what you will, it’s been with me since I saw him take that last breath, riddled by bullets from the Messerschmitt… He was in such pain, and bleeding and I wanted to help him, to save his beauty, capture it for ever in a living, breathing young man, heal those dreadful wounds, so I prayed to my God for his life and in a moment that was neither goodness or madness, I killed him… I stopped his breathing, his bleeding and his pain… I took his beauty away from me.”

“You never said … but you had to! You simply had to end it for him!” Ursula told him, deciding spontaneously that any other reply would be in no way useful, not on a night like this and not so long after the event. And what event? Was it real or a distortion of reality? Had years of nightmares taken an image of reality and remoulded it into something else? It could happen like that, surely? Memory can turn everyone into a fool when it wants to.

“Then I saw you about the village...” he said, changing the subject, “when I came to serve here all those years ago, and there was something about you, I don’t have any idea what, but you reminded of Gerry...”

“Me? A dying boy?” she asked, astounded.

“No. Not a boy and not dying. It’s hard to explain, but I instinctively thought I loved you… And then you let me live here, I know I shouldn’t have asked, feeling as I did, but you said yes and now, here I am, in your bedroom, and I should go.”

“I didn’t understand a word of that,” confessed Ursula.

“I’m so sorry, Ursula,” he mumbled, “I’d better go.”

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

“No. I mean I’d better go away. Right away, from here, from Swanspottle, from everywhere I know. Now, before I lose control and say something I’ll always regret.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what’s got into you, but you can’t go, not now, not in the middle of a cold night,” she said, “you just stay here and, I’ll tell you what, just climb in this bed. It’s big enough to sleep an army!”

“Your bed? No!”

“We’re both grown ups. Elderly even. And we both need some sleep. So climb in next to me and we’ll do just that.”

“What?”

“Sleep. Just that. Sleep.”

And she reached over and turned her bedside light off.

© Peter Rogerson 26.08.18