The Lonely Lands

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For Kyle ( ), with love –

a tale from far away in space and time

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The dead use our dreams to return.

Christian Noble, addressing members of the Church of the Eternal Three

Chapter One

When he heard his wife say I’m not alone he thought at first she meant to reassure him.

Chapter Two

That takes me back, Joe whispered. That takes me back.

He couldn’t tell whether anybody overheard him. He couldn’t distinguish a single face for the sunlight glaring from the flagstones varnished by the latest February downpour. As he avoided a headlong cyclist, either wearing a helmet or bald, he almost collided with one of the trees that sprouted from the pavement to help keep vehicles at bay. He only needed to see the sign above the window of Olivia’s shop. The graceful letters – Made of Memories – seemed to solidify out of the light in his eyes, and he reminded himself he had yet to learn her name.

The window kept the promise of the sign. Costumed porcelain dolls surely too delicate to risk presenting to a child stood next to wooden puppets poised on strings as if the cast of a fairy tale were waiting for the signal to perform. Annuals representing vanished comics like fragments of a youth too remote to reconstruct lay beside a 3-D viewer and its slices of the past. A line-up of coronation mugs spanned half the previous century, while a china tea set older still was so demurely miniature it might have belonged to the porcelain dolls. All this felt like clutter in an attic or in Joe’s mind, a mass of distractions from the item he needed to see. There it was, perched on its carton at the back of the display – the Yellow Submarine musical box. That takes me back, he prepared to say, and let himself into the shop.

The bell above the door sounded like a memory blurred by age. It made Olivia look up from a vintage album on her desk, a collection of photographs gilded by time. As Joe made his way between the crowded shelves, her dark eyes and her smile widened as if her features framed by glossy straight black hair were eager to embrace a new experience. Her snub nose was a mite small for her oval face. Joe saw her part her lips, but he was sure he had to speak first, and didn’t even take a breath. You’ve taken me back.

Her eyelids froze on the way to a blink. In his haste he’d used the wrong words, and he had no idea how to proceed until her eyes regained their openness. I know you, she said, don’t I?

He mustn’t risk any more haste. He took longer than a moment to recall his line. Do you remember where from?

The library. The memory added to her smile. You stood up for me the other week, she said. I hope I didn’t get you into any trouble.

If anybody did I did, and I’m sure it was for the best.

Did this anticipate too much? He was starting to regret the additional remark when she leaned across the desk to take his hand. I’m Olivia, she said.

Her hand was warm and soft but firm, even if the sensations delayed reaching him. Joe, he said and made himself let go before she could feel he was clinging to her.

Would you like a coffee? I’m having one.

This appeared to prompt the percolator on the floor beside the desk to bubble, alerting Joe to the aroma he’d overlooked. I would, he said and realised he should also say Sugar if you’ve got it but no milk, thanks.

As she stooped to lift the percolator off its stand her hair swayed to hide her face. The sunlight flickered into dimness with the passing of a cloud, and Joe fancied the shop interior had stuttered like an electronic image. The impression troubled him until Olivia straightened up to meet the light that surged into the shop, restoring her face. He watched her fill two mugs and dig a spoon into a jar of sugar before tapping the utensil with the gentlest of clinks against the rim until the spoonful was precisely level. Perfect, he said as soon as she’d sugared his mug twice.

I wish we could say that more often.

Let’s hope we will.

How precipitate was that? As Joe grabbed his mug drops of coffee spattered his wrist, but there was no point in wincing. Each mug was encircled by Slumberland, an architectural labyrinth so intricate you couldn’t see where it began, through which little Nemo and his companions seemed doomed to wander without end. Joe hoped this appealed just to Olivia’s nostalgia, but he tried to ignore it while he took a sip and then a gulp of coffee. Hot, yes; harsh, quite; sweet, just about: it tasted as it had to, and he was bidding to confirm it with another mouthful when Olivia said What were you saying before?

His words felt like a maze he had to pick his way through. Before what?

Her laugh seemed uncertain if she’d heard a joke. You said I’d taken you back.

I meant your Beatles item in the window. I used to have one next to my bed.

Where do you keep it now?

It’s long gone. I expect my parents got rid when I went to university. Recycled, I’d hope.

It’s yours.

Joe tried to look as though he’d failed to understand. It can’t be. I never had the box.

No, it was mine. Still is, but you can have it if you like.

That’s really kind, but I don’t want to rob you of memories.

I’ve plenty more. The whole shop’s one. I used to help my grandmother in it and now she’s made it mine.

You’re happy staying in it, then.

Why had he felt the need to say so? He was afraid he’d let her sense his desperation until she said It’s where I live. She planted her mug on the desk as she stood up, and he heard the ceramic scrape the wood. The more memories we have the more alive we are, she said, or anyway that’s what I think.

She retrieved the musical box so deftly that nothing else stirred in the window. She turned the handle that protruded from a porthole, and the simple tune accompanied her back to the desk. She shut the photograph album with a thud and scraped it aside to make space. Was it meant to help you sleep? she said.

I never had much trouble doing that back then.

Do you now? Before Joe could venture a guarded response she said I shouldn’t be getting so personal when really we’ve only just met.

If that’s what you think. In breathless haste Joe blurted I mean, we met in the library before.

I won’t be forgetting. That’s why I’m saying this is yours.

Remind me of the price, Joe said, only to regret his choice of words.

It’s my gift to my champion. Her smile winced inwards, overtaken by embarrassment. We shouldn’t throw out anybody’s childhood, she said.

But isn’t that a piece of yours?

He was afraid he hadn’t shown sufficient ignorance until Olivia said I don’t call giving someone a present throwing it away.

If you keep it here— Joe was floundering among his words again. I’ll be able to see it when I want, he said, and it can belong to both of us.

Was this premature? He forgot to breathe while he waited for her answer. Who gave you yours?

My parents did one Christmas.

I bought mine, so yours means more. I can hear how much your childhood did.

Some of it still meant too much, but if she’d overlooked her inadvertent reference, surely this was all that mattered. The musical box emitted an incomplete phrase and died into silence with a final tuneful ping. As Olivia reached to hand it to him, it thumped the desk and scraped the wood. No, she hadn’t touched it yet, and he could no longer avoid realising the noises were outside. Olivia saw him fail to refrain from jerking his head in that direction. I expect somebody’s cleaning the street, she said, or maybe they’re digging it up.

Her words seemed to invite the noises closer. How could he have mistaken their nature? The harsh thumps were on the pavement, and so were the purposeful scrapes. He would have identified all this sooner if he hadn’t been desperate to fend off the truth. I need to be somewhere else now, he said as calmly as he could. I’ll see you again very soon.

As he made for the street at just under a run, Olivia called after him We’ll be waiting.

She meant the musical box, of course. She’d given him no reason to experience a twinge of panic. As he left the shop a dark shape lurched at him – the shadow of a tree – while the renewed sunlight on the pavement flared in his eyes, blinding him. Darkness spread like an infection as a cloud apparently anxious to be elsewhere raced across the sun, and then the multitude of shadows welled up as the pavement shone afresh. Faceless silhouettes crowded towards Joe, but he couldn’t see which had a walking-stick. He could only make for the nearest entrance to the mall opposite the shop.

He mustn’t move too fast. He had to ensure he was followed. The determined thuds of the stick felt like a succession of weights that were gathering to hinder him. Halfway across the street he glimpsed a portion of a man’s face on the pavement, grimacing at its own inversion. He wanted to think just the edge of the puddle had rendered the reflection incomplete, but he lunged up the ramp to the doors of the shopping mall. Almost before they flinched apart to admit him, he was through. The stick thumped the ramp and squealed over a tile, and Joe had to glance back. As the doors slid together he saw them let in half a face.

Chapter Three

At first Joe was unable to place the laughter. It was trapped like a bird beneath the library ceiling, where the skylight displayed a February sky that resembled a frozen sea paled by the thinnest carapace of ice. The mirthful girl wasn’t on the Victorian gallery that clung to the walls twenty feet up, following the circuit of elevated bookcases full of volumes deemed unpopular. She wasn’t at any of the tables occupied by old men disarraying newspapers in the style of a windstorm as loud as their chorus of breaths. She was nowhere near the trolley loaded with new romantic novels, around which old women had gathered like grandmothers at a pram, nor the children’s section, where toddlers unrestrained by teenagers – their temporary guardians if not their parents – were on the loose. Once he’d handed several readers their tickets in exchange for books Joe abandoned the counter just as Russell left the librarian’s desk.

The old men glanced askance at Russell’s footfalls, which were as soft and fat and dogged as the rest of him, in case he was on his way to reprimand them yet again. Except for how the six-foot summit of his scalp peeked through his red hair, whose wildness rather undermined his image, he might have been taken for at least a decade younger than his forty years. He located the young woman at the same moment Joe saw her at the table of books for sale, from which she’d selected The Wooing of Wooster. At close range her laughter sounded just as delicate as its echo overhead, but Russell stared at her until she looked at him. Are you intending to make a purchase? the librarian said.

Sorry if I’m disturbing anybody. I’d forgotten how much fun these are.

That isn’t what I asked.

As Russell frowned at her for using her forefinger as a bookmark she said I’d say it was for me.

Not for the shop I believe you run. I rather think I’ve seen you selling items from our system.

Then I expect you saw my grandmother would have bought them.

They’re put out for the public, not for profiteering.

I’d call it finding books a good home. Anyway, I told you I’m not buying for the shop.

Kindly keep your voice down. I’m not so sure I heard you say so.

Does she need to? Joe was provoked, not least by her increasingly uncertain smile, to ask. You heard how much she was enjoying the book.

I’m certain everyone even slightly within earshot did. Are you not on duty at the counter?

Nobody’s waiting, and I just—

In any case I don’t believe your view was asked for.

I don’t mind having it, the young woman said, when it’s the truth.

I’m sure you’ve been telling that as well.

Russell thrust his pressed lips forward, a gesture that made him look petulantly younger. I’m asking you to return to the counter.

As long as I’m there, Joe told the young woman, I can sell you that book if you like.

Then I do, she said and handed it to him. Her touch was as gentle as her laughter. She touched him less fleetingly while paying a pound at the counter. Next time you’re in Birkenhead, she lingered to say, come and say hello if you like.

Where do I do that?

I’m made of memories. She added capitals by explaining That’s my shop in Grange Road.

As she headed for the exit Russell came to the counter. Congratulations on your conquest, he murmured close enough for Joe to smell a hint of minty mouthwash.

I don’t know if I’d call it that.

I imagine I know why. Aren’t you still attached?

Dawn and I are splitting up.

As a result of this latest encounter?