Dreamside Read Online Free PDF

amber streetlamps, melting the
instant they touched the ground.

 
 
     
     
     
     
     

 
    S I X
    If we swallow arsenic we must be poisoned, and he
    who dreams as I have done, must be troubled
    —William
Cowper
    Elderwine Cottage, damp and stinking. Stooping to gatherafistful of letters franked more than a fortnight before; Lee
yelled something intended to be Hallo or Anyone In but which came out
unintelligibly between. Offright, a narrow hall of razor-edged shadows
admitted to a room with a bare light bulb burning. He carefully nudged open the
door. It was ankle deep in newspapers and litter. Some of the papers were
unread and folded neatly in piles, some had obviously served as wrappings for a
variety of takeaway foods. Judging by the smell, some still did. Floating in
the debris were dozens of brown ale and whiskey empties, bottles frozen neck-up
in a polluted lake. In the next room he tried flicking on a light switch for a
bulb that was missing. He passed through to the kitchen. A tinker's workshop of
pans and dishes was stacked high in the sink which was full of grey water, a
half-inch slab of grease on the surface; rock-hard doorsteps of sliced bread
grew fibrous green beards; disposable fast food cartons were left
strategically, still offering half of their original contents; milk bottles
stood with their contents crusting in phases of metamorphosis. It was more
like a biochemist's laboratory than a kitchen.
    "Brad Cousins!" He climbed the creaking
wooden steps and found upstairs two cold empty rooms with generations of paper
stripping itself from the walls. Downstairs again, he took a second look in the
back room with the broken light. There was a man asleep on the couch, he looked
like a bundled sack, roped and tied at the top.
    "Is that you Brad?" he said loudly. The sack
didn't stir, but he knew that he had found his man.
    Brad Cousins slept on, his jaw slack and his mouth
open, a string of saliva swinging from his chin to his T-shirt like a delicate
piece of suspension engineering. A pair of scuffed placeless brogues was kicked
off at the end of the couch, adding to the general stench of lived-in nylon
socks. From matted head to swollen foot, the sleeping body exuded a root
odour, and a sweet-rotten scent of sweat and alcohol commingled.
    "Brad. Brad, it's Lee. Lee Peterson."
    One
crimson-cupped eye opened. Lee found himself talking as though through a
drainpipe. "Brad. I've come a long way to see you. I've come to talk to
you, Brad. We have to talk. All right?"
    The
bloodshot eye glazed over, an inner protective membrane forming across it.
    "Brad.
I want you to listen, Brad. Can you hear me? There are some questions I need to
ask you."
    The eye
closed. "No, don't go to sleep again, Brad. I don't want you to go back to
sleep. Brad. Brad. Wake up, Brad."
    This time
both eyes opened and with a startling marionette movement he jerked himself
upright on the couch. His eyes were like glass beads fixed on Lee. Finally he
got up and lurched unsteadily out of the room. Lee heard him go out through the
back door and then heard the clanking mechanism of the backyard toilet flush.
He returned without a word.
    "Brad. Listen to what I'm saying—"
    "You have my
permission to stop talking to me as if I'm in a coma," Cousins
interrupted. "If I'm not saying
much right now it's because I'm conducting a lively debate with myself. Interior dialogue. If the better half of me wins the debate,
I'll go back to sleep. Then when I wake up you won't be here and I'll feel much
happier."
    "Don't count on
it."
    "OK, so why are you here? Let me run the options. I borrowed half a quid from you when we
were students and you've come to get it back. No? Your marriage is on the rocks
and you want some advice from your ol' mate Brad Cousins who always knew how to
handle women. Yes? Or you need a career break and you want me to use my
position to pull a few strings for you, is that it? Eh? Well I don't have half
a quid, I never give advice