The Unlimited Dream Company (15 page)

Why had the sun not stopped in the sky for me?

All that evening, and through the night that followed, I presided over Shepperton from the heart of the multi-storey car-park. In the dusky streets around me ruled an innocent and open copulation. The entire town mated together, in the leafy bowers that had sprung up among the washing-machines and television sets in the shopping mall, on the settees and divans by the furniture store, in the tropical paradises of the suburban gardens. Hundreds of couples of all ages caressed each other as they tried to teach themselves to fly, confident that through their affection for each other they could regain the air.

None of them was aware of their sex, as innocent as cherubs of what was taking place between them in these jungle bowers. I saw Mrs St Cloud wander happily through the flower-filled streets, her belly smeared with smegma, breasts bruised by the hands of boys. I saw the bank-manageress, standing with a peacock in her arms, offering money to the passers-by. Neither of them knew that they were naked.

Meanwhile I rested in the dark rear seat of the limousine. The body of the young man had refreshed me. My eyes were keener, my senses tuned to a thousand unheard signals that poured from every bird and flower. Since my arrival in Shepperton I had eaten nothing, and I was certain now that my real food was the bodies of these young men and women. The more of them I took within me, the greater would be my powers. I had been imprisoned in Shepperton, not only by the seven people who had witnessed my crash, but by the
entire population of the town, and once I had taken them all into me I would at last be strong enough to escape.

Lying back in the flower-decked limousine, I remembered the frightening compulsions that had filled my last years. I had dreamed of crimes and murders, unashamed acts of congress with beasts, with birds, trees and the soil. I remembered my molesting of small children. But now I knew that these perverse impulses had been no more than confused attempts to anticipate what was taking place in Shepperton, my capture of these people and the merging of their bodies with mine. Already I was convinced that there was no evil, and that even the most plainly evil impulses were merely crude attempts to accept the demands of a higher realm that existed within each of us. By accepting these perversions and obsessions I was opening the gates into the real world, where we would all fly together, transform ourselves at will into the fish and the birds, the flowers and the dust, unite ourselves once more within the great commonwealth of nature.

Soon after dawn, as I sat in the rear seat of the limousine, I found a twelve-year-old girl peering down at me through the window. Somehow she had made her way through the labyrinth of the car-park, up the canted floors crowded with brambles and bougainvilia.

‘Blake, can I fly …?’

Ignoring the waiting sun, which I left to get on with the task of feeding the forest, I opened the door and beckoned the girl towards me. From her nervous hand I took her brother’s model aircraft and placed it on the seat. Reassuringly, I helped her into the car beside me and made a small, sweet breakfast of her.

The streets were strangely silent. I stood on the roof of the car-park, feeling the sun bathe my skin. A light wind drugged with the scent of mimosa and honeysuckle stirred the rags of my flying suit.

Around me everything was still. The thousands of birds sat on the roofs of the abandoned cars, perched in the gutters of the supermarket and post office, and on the portico of the filling-station. Together they seemed to be waiting for something to happen. Were they expecting me to fly again for them?

Irritated by the silence, I hurled a concrete chip into the flock of flamingos standing around the fountain in the shopping mall. They staggered into each other, flailing their wings in an ungainly pink glare. Then down an avenue of bungalows I saw a small group of people hurrying away below the jungle canopy, like naked conspirators fleeing through the forest.

Petals drifted along the high street under the watching eyes of the birds. I waited for the townspeople to appear. Were they frightened of me, and had they realized at last that they were naked? Had Miriam St Cloud turned them against me, warning them that I was a god reborn from the dead? Perhaps they were ashamed of what had happened between them the previous night, and feared that at any moment I would leave the car-park, and go down among them, seize them as they cowered in their bedrooms and take them into me one by one.

But, if anything, I wanted only to help them.

The first of the afternoon’s helicopters hovered over the river by Walton Bridge, its crew crouched over their
cine-camera. The palisade of bamboo that surrounded Shepperton was now fifty feet high, a fence of golden spears. All morning the helicopters had patrolled the perimeter of the town, kept back by the clouds of birds driven into the air by their beating fans. As a flock of excited fulmars rose below the circling machine the sound of gun-fire came from one of the deserted streets. A heavy bird fell like a bomb from the crowded sky. Stark ran after it through the groves of young bamboo, nets and shot-gun in hand, blond hair lashed like a pirate’s behind his neck. He had abandoned his work on the Cessna and was now openly hunting the birds, following the helicopters as they surveyed the town.

No doubt Stark feared that all this would soon end, that the outside world, the police and the television companies, a legion of sightseers and vandals would break into Shepperton and drive away these exotic creatures before he had prepared himself for them. I left him to his hunt, more concerned with how I could draw the people of Shepperton into a far larger snare. Already I was thinking of my last supper. Once I had devoured everyone in Shepperton I would be strong enough to move into the world beyond, through the quiet towns of the Thames Valley, a holy ghost taking everyone in London into my spirit before I set off for the world at large. I knew that I had defeated the unseen forces who had kept me here, frightened of the unlimited powers I had discovered in myself. I was the first living creature to escape death, to rise above mortality to become a god.

Again I thought of myself as an advent calendar – I had opened the doors of my face, swung back the transoms of my heart to admit these suburban people to the real world beyond. Already I suspected that I was not merely a god, but the first god, the primal deity of whom all others were crude anticipations, clumsy metaphors of myself …

‘Blake—?’

Only half-recognizing my name, I turned to find little
David squinting at me through the bright sunlight. His shirt and trousers were pierced by brambles, his forehead scratched by thorns as he climbed the stairway. Somehow he had solved the maze of floors and made his way up to the roof.

‘Blake … Rachel and Jamie want-’

He stopped, forgetting whatever message he had been sent to deliver. Perhaps the little girl had guessed shrewdly that his deformed mind might be the right key to fit the maze. She and Jamie stood in the street below. Ignoring a macaw that screeched at him from the portico of the filling-station, as if urging him to undress, Jamie murmured away to Rachel. With a small hand to her shocked face she listened to his commentary on the barbarous day, unable to believe her ears.

David looked up at me, eyes struggling under his heavy forehead to grasp what I was doing. I could see his concern for me, but I avoided his critical gaze. Did he realize that I was about to leave Shepperton, taking the birds with me, and that he and his companions would be alone in this silent town when the television companies arrived?

His hand touched the ragged waist-band of the flying suit, trying to draw me away from the ledge. Looking down at his small body and deformed head, I felt a surge of pity and affection for him. I thought of taking him with me, merging him into myself with the others. They could play there for ever in one of the secret meadows of my heart.

But when I reached out to embrace him he flinched away from me and slapped his face as if trying to wake himself from a nightmare.

‘David, we’ll fly now …’

As I seized his clumsy head, ready to press it to my chest, I heard a fire-cracker explode in the street below. A dozen voices shouted up at me, there was the sudden clamour of the returning crowd. Releasing David, I looked down into the street. The whole town was reassembling. Hundreds of
people streamed towards the centre of Shepperton from the quiet side-roads. They waved up to me, throwing flowers and letting off fireworks. Burned by the sun, their naked bodies had a savage glow.

Now I saw why they had all slipped away to their houses that morning, and what had kept them so busy all day. A party of actors and technicians led a procession through the gates of the film studios, wheeling forward a dozen floats which they had built on to the roofs of their cars.

‘Blake!’ Their leader, an elderly actor in television commercials, shouted up to me cheerfully. ‘We’re holding a party for you, Blake! Come down and join us …!’

He pointed to the decorated floats, a series of spectacular variations which the set designers and props men had assembled on the theme of flight. Huge papier-mache and wickerwork constructions, some resembled heraldic birds, immense condors of bamboo decorated with thousands of flowers. Others were pastiche aircraft, biplanes and triplanes, put together from the mock-up models at the film studios.

The motorcade halted below me, waiting while I left the roof of the car-park and went down to greet them. Heavy with the scent of blossom excited by the late afternoon sun, the air in the street formed a sweet sea on which we all hung as if in a dream.

‘They’re our tribute to you, Blake. We want to give you something to remember when you leave.’ The actor cleared a way for me through the pressing crowd, these naked account executives and shoe salesmen, computer programmers and secretaries, housewives and children. Happy to see me, they plucked blossoms from their garlands and threw them at me, hoping that my skin would transform them into birds. Everywhere cine-cameras were focused on me, recording the scene.

But I was concerned with more serious matters, intent only on organizing my last day here. I moved down the line of
floats, admiring each one in turn. I greeted the bank-manageress and the old soldier, who stood proudly by their creation. Mounted on a taxi-cab of the local car-hire firm, this was the most spectacular of all, an extravagant wickerwork structure with multiple wings, like an eccentric windmill designed to fly simultaneously in all the dimensions of space-time. I liked it immediately, knowing that it was the right one for me.

Everyone waited. Lit by the afternoon sun, a thousand faces were raised to me as I climbed on to the roof of the taxi. Cameras whirred, flash-bulbs flared against the ointment-greased skins. Were they aware that I was about to celebrate my wedding with this town, a marriage to be consummated in a unique way? And that within a few hours they would all have begun a new life in the small suburbs of my body?

I placed my arms in the wing-sockets and eased my temples into the helmet of the headpiece. The huge structure shivered above me, but I carried its weight comfortably on my shoulders. The mouth-strap and harness pressed against the bruises on my lips and chest, and I could almost believe that I had worn this grotesque bird-costume once before when I first flew into the air-space of Shepperton.

Led by the excited children, the motorcade set off towards the river. I sat on the roof of the taxi, holding the head-dress above me. On its great wings and beaked head perched dozens of small birds, tits and wrens and robins, their little faces peeping through the coarse plumage.

The procession had reached the war memorial. Every living thing in the town accompanied me, concourses of birds, packs of dogs and small children, deer leaping among the naked throng following the parade of cars. The light faded. As if nervous of witnessing whatever I intended to do with this small town, the exhausted sun withdrew behind the swathes of carmine cloud that leaked from its disc. A blood light lay over the jungle rooftops, and over the plumage of the flamingos and parakeets, transforming Shepperton into
a fever-ridden zoological garden. The same eerie glaze covered the glutted bodies of the fish leaping from the river and the breasts of the young women holding my legs as I stood up on the roof of the taxi.

Above the cluttering of the birds I heard a helicopter cross the elms by the river. The blank machine shambled through the fading light. Its clattering fans drove a storm of leaves and insects into the air. Holding tight to the head-dress, I felt the pressure of the helicopter’s blades as it veered away and scrambled back towards the river. All over the park, birds were falling slowly from the sky. Losing its purchase on the changing air, the helicopter slid sideways towards the roof of the church, its engine accelerating madly. At the controls the pilot’s white hands jerked like a nervous juggler’s.

The motorcade halted in confusion. Dogs and deer darted between the wheels of the cars, naked children ran to thenr mothers, tripping over the pathetic birds that covered the ground. Torn from the wicker wings, thousands of petals formed a boiling cloud around our heads.

‘Dr Miriam – get back, doctor!’ The old soldier ran forward, waving his stick. I struggled with the head-dress, which was now a powerful glider trying to lift me into the air. Through the whirl of petals I saw that the centre of the park had been transformed into an emergency landing strip. Helped by David, Rachel and Jamie, Miriam St Cloud was setting out a circle of torch-lights on the open grass.

I stepped down from the taxi, tottering below the head-dress. Almost strangled by the mouth-strap of the htlmet, I was unable to shout to Miriam as she took off her white coat and waved it frantically at the retreating helicopter.

But I now controlled the air. Followed by the crowd, I ran forward across the petal-whipped grass. Hundreds of naked people ran past me, clearing a way for me and shouting up at the helicopter as the hapless machine was driven back across the river in a tornado of petals. Shreds of bamboo,
wicker and lace whirled up into the dusk. The line of floats swayed forward, carried now by the townspeople, as if sailing through a mist of blood.

I felt the head-dress lighten. My feet had left the ground. I was moving again into the real time, taking my congregation with me towards the church. As I sailed along, my arms outstretched in the huge bird-costume, Miriam St Cloud faced me in her circle of light.

‘Blake!’ she screamed at me above the noise of the helicopter, through the flashes of the camera-bulbs. ‘You’re
dead,
Blake!’

She tried to protect the children hanging to her skirts, waving her white coat at me as if trying to ward off an approaching devil with whom she would be forced to mate. Alone of the people of Shepperton, she knew that she was about to mate with me for the last time.

The helicopter had retreated to the water-meadow across the river. Swept along towards the church, I saw Miriam knocked from her feet by the running crowd. As she knelt on the grass she was seized by the young women, a group of secretaries who happily stripped the clothes from her shoulders and lifted her into a head-dress of feathers.

Together we soared across the park, borne on a cloud of petals and sailed through the open windows of the church.

Later, I hung naked beside Miriam St Cloud, each of us in our bird-dress, our feet a few inches above the undraped altar. Below us the nave was filled with the worshipping townspeople of Shepperton. Arm-in-arm, they sailed through the air above the aisle, a concourse of embracing figures, delightedly filming each other on this last flight. I was ready now to take them into me, into the host of my flesh. I needed their bodies to keep me in flight, to give me the power to move on to the world at large. From there I would fly on across the planet, merging with all creatures until I had taken into myself every living being, every fish and bird,
every parent and child, a single chimeric god uniting all life within me.

Beside me hung Miriam St Cloud, her eyes closed, a dreamer floating in her deepest trance. After our marriage I would know her only as one of the lights in my bones.

I reached out to embrace her for the last time. But at that moment, while I looked into her sleeping eyes, Stark stepped into the entrance of the church, his rifle in hand.

He stared up at the congregation circling the dark air of the nave ten feet above his head, and at the huge bird-costumes which Miriam and I wore on our shoulders. His sweat-stained face was without expression, but he moved swiftly as if he had made up his mind long before. He raised the rifle towards Miriam and myself, and shot us each through the chest.

For the second time that week I fell through the air. At the foot of the altar I lay dying among the feathers of my winged head-dress. Above me swayed the lengthening streamers of my still flying blood.