Dreamthorp
Last night, perhaps brought on by my new medication, I had one of my recurring dreams. They are usually located in a section of the University of Dreamthorp – mostly in that large block, at the foot of The Hill, opposite the shining new University Library which, when I first knew it, had not only books but microfiche! And what a revolution that was. Now. No doubt it has computers and terminals and the internet and DVD and those new implants where you can have 25,000 works of Literature, or Popular Fiction, Philosophy or simply Bodice-rippers, inserted via a microchip directly into your brain and Bingo! It never forgets where you are up to in any book and when you chose a volume from the spinners in the Virtual Library, if it's one you have already started, it gives you a reminder, as in “previously in Sense and Sensibility or Lord of The Rings, just like when you tune into a TV drama serial – neat or what? Anyway, Ozymandias House contains departmental offices, Lecture Theatres, Studios and the private offices of senior Tutors and Lectures – for the most part, the Professors and Fellows all have their studies elsewhere. Some say, in a Penthouse Suite accessed only by a private Lift and, certainly, from the top of the Princess Diana Memorial Maternity Hospital (Private patients only) there does seem to be a structure atop the main body of the building, with mirrored windows. And on Google Earth it is simply a large, flat, grey expanse which doesn't seem real, but rather simply an overlay of the kind Design Students used to employ for filling large spaces. Curious? Maybe. I have yet to find an entrance to the private lift, if it exists, or to observe Professors and Fellows congregating round a locked stationery cupboard and then suddenly vanishing. But I keep my eyes open. Parts of the building are given over to one or other of the University Departmental Libraries, with whole sections of the catalogue, which directly apply to one or two specialisms; while others are fairly large spaces, which can be used for a variety of purposes. Whenever I enter this place, there is no saying who I will encounter, in which part of the institution I may find myself, what sort of activities will be going on and what my part is to be. I am never a stranger – everyone seems to know me, while I myself am only familiar with a few. As a result, I have no direct control on what is going to ensue. At least, not on any conscious level. But does that mean I am merely a traveller who is lost? No, that can't be, for I know all the entrances and exits and can easily traverse this building from north to south, east to west, coast to coast, top to bottom (I bet the students don't know about the four floors below street level – there used to be five, but the lowest was permanently sealed following an incident) and inside out. But even I am constantly surprised by what |I find there on my visits: the goings-on that are not meant to be seen, the intrigues and potential rebellions, the people whose faces often appear on television as Highly Dangerous – Do Not Approach yet can be encountered in one of the refreshment areas, nice as ninepence, sitting having a blether or telling a story – or, on more than one occasion I recall, a man wanted for the brutal murder of his wife, mother-in-law and two pet cats could be seen, and was, by hundreds. He was giving a lecture on 'the essential kindness of strangers – an existential approach to encountering goodness' And he wasn't camera-shy, for afterwards, there he was in the reception room, glass of sherry in one hand and a piece of rich fruit cake in the other, telling a pretty red-head Philosophy Tutor that he was avoiding the police by being quite brazen, on the principle that the police are only looking for people who are hiding and walk past anyone who is open and above-board and confidently striding the streets. It certainly seemed to work for him – to my knowledge he has been on the Wanted List for three years, and you can still see him buying socks in M&S. I suppose I could report his whereabouts to the police, but I haven't seen him for a couple of weeks, he might be away on holiday – I suppose even Murderers need a holiday now and again.
Which brings me to last night's incident, for which I was absolutely 'not prepared'! I had accompanied my Aunts on a trip to Melrose, by way of the Old Waverley Line, now the New Scottish Borders railway Line. We took a bus from the Tweedbank Terminus, my Aunts being devout in the use of their Bus Passes - “we're keeping men in work,” they would insist – and I suppose they would include women, for we had a pretty young woman driver on the bus which picked us up at the station and took us, by way of Darnick, where we spotted the lovely old Tower over an ancient wall, to the Borders General Hospital and then along High Cross Avenue into Melrose, which we used always to visit regularly, when I was young – following in the footsteps of Maude and Daphne and their many cousins, scamps and scallywags all, who always spent the long summer holidays here, where there were a number of, usually Maiden, Aunts with the occasional Widow thrown in, whose doors were always open to 'The Tribe' as one grouchy Uncle called them and, I believe, us, though he would have been in his Nineties by the time it was my generation's turn to roam the hills and valleys, splash in the rivers, dam the burns, make bows and arrows of branches and twigs, construct Roman War Engines which were large catapults capable of propelling a heavy object a couple of hundred yards. It's still a wonder to me that there were no fatalities on those Summer idyll
t was a while since Daphne and Maude had been down 'Memory Lane' and they really enjoyed re-visiting their favourite haunts, although there had been quite a number of changes over the years. Some cafés had changed hands, or brands of tea and coffee served, one old favourite hotel had changed quite dramatically and did not seem to encourage the former clientèle, among whom had been numbered my Aunts – so they had moved slightly clockwise round The Square to The Ship, and that was where we found several of their old gang still reliving skirmishes of their youth and lamenting that “kids nowadays haven't got it in them!” The 'it' referred to is never adequately explained or identified, and I am sure that the very same phrase was heard within these walls 20, 40 and eighty years ago, in the same disgusted tone.
Once it was clear that my Aunts had lost interest in further explorations and were content to sit in The Ship till closing time, along with their old comrades in arms, I was sent off the find accommodation for the night, which I did at The Ship Inn, about two-thirds of the way down the High Street. We didn't have any luggage, so I only had to sign for the keys and check the locations of the rooms before rejoining the party up in The Square. We ate in The Ship and over the course of the day, the membership of our group changed as certain friends had to leave, but were soon replaced by others. This meant that, for me – but no-one else – it got a little boring as I heard basically the same stories over again as they were related to the newcomers and. After a while, I thought I'd venture out and see who was about. Which was when I bumped, literally, into an old flame of mine, Jasmine.
She was just coming out of the Bookshop as I turned into the doorway and our collision caused her to drop a couple of packages she was carrying. It was while I was busy apologising and was hurriedly picking up the things she had dropped, when I looked up and saw who it was. Well, I felt a shot of something through me and I began behaving like a silly sixteen-year-old, blushing and stammering over the words which were jumbled in my head and mouth and all pushing and shoving their way out with no regard for good grammar or evidence of some basic level of intelligence, so there was a lot of “Gosh, Wow, Imagine, Seeing You, Hey, You look Great,” all accompanied by waving arms and silly grins, while she just stood there, quite casually accepting of the situation and clearly amused at my incoherence, until she eventually put me out of my misery by asking if I had time to go for a coffee and catch-up? Well, natch! That was the sum and substance of what I was failing to say, so of course we did – no thanks to me, Now, in bays gone by there were two Coffee Shops and a Café in Melrose, but over the years the number of visitors who augment the local trade through the Summer months and at weekends even in Winter have caused that number to increase, so you really only have to walk the length of yourself to reach one. And we did. And over coffee and cake Jasmine told me all about her Husband and three Children and I felt an icicle slide down my spine. Married! Kids! It really was a shock. When we were together, oh, ten or fifteen years ago she was unimpeachably Gay, enthusiastically Lesbian, a Girl with no interest in Guys! I had to know: “So how come?” And it really killed the conversation. She looked guilty and whispered that she was sorry. No, she really didn't have to apologise for anything, certainly not to me – it was I who had left her, after all. But then she explained.
She married for security, and she had always wanted children. The marriage, to “a nice guy” gave her a home, allowed her a Workshop to continue to develop her Art, and two boys and a girl. Oh, and she accommodated her husband's phallus. That was how the marriage deal broke down if you analysed it. Which I did. The sex, she said, wasn't too bad, if you don't think about it. He was a gentle and caring lover, didn't demand from her anything she didn't want to do. Well, apart from sucking him off now and then. She didn't want to do that, but felt she had to give something of herself to balance his contribution. His money. Not that he's a rich guy, just someone normal with an ordinary job making reasonable money. I won't give any more detail than that, because it's a small town and it can be easy to know who's who. Which is why I've called her Jasmine, which obviously isn't her name. His isn't Jim.
She missed the company of women. Of a woman of her own. She'd had several relationships after me – of varying lengths and intensity – before she met Jim. They were both locals, so that isn't the right word. They'd known each other in school, although he was a class above her. He knew me – as one of the Summer Gang who had regular battles with the Town Gang for possession of the North Eildon, 

 <Teri and Geri Somerville, Fraterbal Twins aged 10 just about to spend their Summer Holida in Melrose>

just as our parents and Aunts Gangs had before. They were never brutal those battles but membership of one or the other did define their members. The first time I had properly met Jasmine was when we were both ten and had found ourselves in a wrestling contest in the middle of one of those battles. She had overpowered me and demanded a kiss. This was before either of us had fully realised our latent sexuality or the direction it would take when we reached puberty, but our kiss, based on what we had seen in Films was rough and passionate and produced cheers and cat-calls from the spectators who had all stopped fighting to watch. In the end, I had used this diversion to overpower her and ended up sitting on her chest and demanding to be declared the winner. “Just this once,” she'd replied, defiantly, which I took for confirmation that just this once I had beaten her. I never managed that again – and it was ten years later, on holiday from Uni, that I won my first adult kiss from her. It was the start of a relationship that lasted three years – on and off. Which is to say, whenever I cam back, from University or later, from work, it was on, and when I went away it was off. Until I found a job in the Borders and then it was fully on for a further three years, during which we lived together and shared everything. And it was me who left. I had found a much better job elsewhere but Jasmine refused to leave, Her Art was taking off and it was inspired by the hills and the river and the ruined abbeys and she didn't want to live anywhere else – but she saw that I needed to move on in my career and wouldn't stop me. Now I wondered what would have happened if I had stayed. Would she still have had three children? But really, that kind of thinking gets us nowhere.
So having 'met' Jim through a part-time job she had with the Education Department, and finding that they got on easily and neither had any ties to prevent it, they began seeing more of each other. She believes that he never knew about her orientation, probably because he didn't move in any circles which included Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual or Transgender people that he was aware of, he had no reason to. And he proposed. He actually went down on one knee, which made her laugh, but he took it in good part and exaggerated the archaism and bowed low and took her hand and kissed it and then explained that he was being promoted, that he wanted to buy his first house and that he had worked out how they would both benefit, because the house he had in mind had some outbuildings which could provide Jasmine with a Studio and he was very persuasive and spoke of children which he had guessed would be the big selling point, and also because he had never tried to force her to have sex with him, nor exerted pressure of any kind, or tried to take advantage of her, she felt that if she was ever going to have children then, other than by way od AI, this was probably her best chance, because also by now they were Best Friends and BFF are rarer than True Lovers and in time will always outlive them. It wasn't a big do. Family and friends, they needed their money for the house rather than a big splash and porridge for years after. This realism in his proposal was far more winning than and dramatic display of romantic fervour. And over the next six years they had the three children. She hated the pregnancies and the births, but now absolutely would die or kill to protect her children. It was as total a bond as you will ever see, and I admired her for that.
And I desperate;ly wanted her – but knew that I couldn't have her. For, no matter what she might feel for me, it would be cheating on Jim and he is a good man, a kind husband, a loving father. And I really couldn't risk breaking up five lives just to enjoy a night of passion.
So in the end we parted. A long embrace, a warm kiss, lingerin longer that it should have, but then she left to collect the kids from school and I made my way back to The Ship and my Aunts, only to find they had gone to the King's Arms, where I found them tucked up in bed, snoring like a pair of drunks, which in truth they were.
So I went to my lonely bed. And though I waited a little before putting my light out, there was no hesitant knock on the door from the pretty waitress who had served Jasmine and I and whom I had developed rather a cruish on. Instead, it was the barmaid, and it was well worth my while having spent some time chatting before I'd gone in search of my wayward Aunts. She was Australian and had a few 'Down Under' tricks which had me squealing with helplessness as she had here. I absolutely Loved it.
Until, at length, I fell asleep in her arms and began to dream!