From CHAPTER SEVEN:
JOURNEY'S END

There was snow, deep, beautiful, clean snow and snow-proud Christmas trees sparkling outside the train window when I woke up. I suddenly realised that in the haste of my escape to adventure I had forgotten to wire Kirsteen the train or even the day, on which I was arriving. But what did this matter? What did anything matter? A sleigh with bells singing on the horse's harness took me to the hotel.

'Your friends are out,' said the hall porter. 'Everyone is out with the snow, for it is such a beautiful day. But of course there is a room for you.'

In the bedroom there was a bed, a chair, a table, and a row of hooks on the wall. It was clean and free as the snow outside the window. At last I was in a room which really belonged to me, a room as impersonal and undemanding as a novice's cell. I unpacked. It was so easy to unpack when I had only one suitcase and had not even bothered to notice what I had put into it. Then I wandered downstairs, through bare, uncomplicated rooms until I found one which had nothing in it except a piano.

I was playing Jennie's music gently to myself when the door opened. A man with a pair of skis on his shoulder stood on the threshold. He looked at me for a long time without speaking. Then he said, 'It really is you. I have dreamed with you for nearly two years. Do you recognise me too?'

'Of course I do, ' I said, knowing at last that truth is very simple.

He held out his arms, and I went into them, and he kissed me.

CHAPTER EIGHT:
LOVERS' MEETING

Being with Esmond was like being in a bright dream, a dream in which everything was more real than it ever is in ordinary living. But from this dream I did not wake to find myself lonely. 'l shall never be lonely any more, ' I said aloud as I awoke to each new and splendid day. It did not even matter that I had no talent for skiing, for when I fell down he picked me up and we laughed together, and with his arm around me I achieved a precarious balance down swift slopes, and he lifted me off my feet and swung me round with him when we had to turn.

Sometimes I was almost afraid it was all too good to be true... How could my life have changed so completely in less than twenty-four hours? 'This is Joan and I am going to marry her,' Esmond had said, introducing me to his mother. And she, instead of looking annoyed or even startled, had accepted me as though she had herself chosen me as a daughter-in-law.

She was beautiful, and kind and gentle, and looked young enough to be the elder sister of her sons, although she had not had an easy life, bringing up four boys and sending them to Eton on not very much money, after her husband had been killed in the Irish Guards in the last year of the war.

Esmond, who was twenty-two, had been two years at Cambridge and then instead of taking a degree, he had gone round the world because he thought it would be more fun and also more useful to his future career as a journalist. His godfather, who was also his guardian, was going to start him on the Continental Daily Mail, which would mean his living in Paris for at least a year.

'Joan will like Paris,' he said confidently to his mother. 'We had better spend a couple of days there before the boys go back to school so that you can help us find a flat.'

Reluctantly she let the first cold breath of fact blow into our dream. 'Darling, I'm afraid your godfather would jib at your being married until you have worked at least six months--six months is the trial period he insists on before he definitely decides to give you a job.'

'I shall work twice as hard if Joan is with me,' he said rebelliously.

'On your honeymoon? Of course you wouldn't. While you are together neither of you waste a moment thinking about anything except each other.' She pleaded with us. 'My darlings, don't look at me as though I was a gorgon. Someone has simply got to be a tiny bit practical about the future. I know money is a dreary subject, but not having any is drearier still.'

He put his arm round my shoulders and gave her a quick hug. 'Sorry, darling. Of course I need a job, and I will get one. We shall have to wait until July. Even my stern godfather couldn't possibly expect me to wait longer than that.'

'What about your parents?' she asked me. 'Have you broken the news of your engagement to them yet?'

'Yes,' I said reluctantly. 'It bubbled out rather tactlessly when I was writing to Mother to say I had arrived safely.'

'And is she pleased?'

'Not very. You see, as I told you, we had a row before I left home because I broke off an engagement. She says it is positively indecent even to think so soon of getting married to someone else. I suppose one can't expect her to see how utterly different this is until she has met Esmond; but the moment she does everything will be all right.'

She smiled fondly at her son. 'I expect it will, but it would be only civil for Esmond to make a formal request for your hand. You will be doing well I think, both of you, if you get Joan's parents to agree to an official engagement at Easter and a marriage--if he gets his job confirmed of course--in August or September.'

She helped us by writing a very tactful letter to Mother, saying how happy it made her to see her eldest son so deeply in love and how much she looked forward to having me as a daughter. Kirsteen and our chaperon both wrote warmly about Esmond too. Kirsteen, coached by me, stressed the fact that at last I had someone who would not only look after me but keep me in order. I knew the thought of me disciplined would appeal to Mother; and it must have done, for her replies, although guarded, were cordial.

Esmond, on a motor bicycle, arrived at Seacourt the day after I got back from Switzerland. At first they tried to treat him as though he were only another beau who need not be taken seriously, but they soon surrendered.

'A most remarkable young man,, said Father, 'and he seems to have had extraordinary adventures, which he describes exceedingly well. At least you will never be bored with him, although I hope his idea of keeping you entertained will not include sharing a shipwreck in the Red Sea. I do not approve of Arab dhows as a means of transport, and you are not nearly a good enough swimmer to survive, as he did, for several hours among sharks. Nor would I approve of your getting involved in a bar fight in the less salubrious quarters of Singapore, or in any other part of the world for that matter.'

'I shall keep him from doing anything really dangerous after we are married, ' I said fondly. 'Men who have had a lot of adventures and sown their wild oats are supposed to make the most staid and reliable husbands.'

'I doubt if he is likely to be docile under any woman's thumb. But if you expect to change him you might start by trying to cure him of the distressing habit of bringing a revolver into a civilised house.' He looked severe. 'I noticed one lying on the dressing-table when I passed his bedroom on my way to play tennis this morning. The door, like the windows, was wide open, letting an appalling draught into the passage.'

'I will tell him to keep his door shut,' I said hastily, for open windows to Father meant draughts and a wicked waste of money spent on central heating. My bedroom door had KEEP SHUT painted on it by Mother in letters a foot high as a protest against my selfish passion for fresh air.

'I should prefer to die of pneumonia rather than to be shot,' said Father crisply, and I could have kicked myself for not having warned Esmond of his phobia against firearms.

'The pistol isn't loaded. He is a very good pistol shot and has won lots of cups and medals and things. To him it is only a kind of golf club or tennis racquet...'

'Tell him not to discharge it here or I shall be exceedingly annoyed.' He blinked at me through his glasses. 'Really, Joan, you are becoming appalling inconsiderate. I will not have my house, or my garden, or the beach, turned into a shooting gallery by any of your prospective husbands! Good God, he will be letting it off in the tennis court next!'

'He won't, darling. I swear he won't. I will make him chuck the beastly thing in the sea if it will make you feel any happier.'

'A very sensible suggestion... and see he does it at low tide so that some wretched child doesn't find it lying in the sand and use it to blow its unfortunate mother's brains out.'

I was ashamed that, like Father, I secretly always thought a gun was potentially dangerous even when it was supposed not to be loaded. So I did not mention the pistol to Esmond. I was afraid he would think I was being fussy.

On his last night at Seacourt, the thirty-second day since we met each other again at Andermatt, we talked about the future, so that we could pretend we are going to share to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow. On the music-room sofa we almost managed to forget that he was leaving for Paris in the morning, but neither of us could quite forget it.

'We have got to remember I shall only be away six months... And I am sure to be able to get week-ends off to come and see you,' he said comfortingly.

'Don't let's spoil Now by thinking about the next six months. They are going to be utterly bloody, but don't let them come nearer by thinking about them.'

He clicked his fingers. 'There! I have done a magic. The six months are over and it is the end of July. We are going to be married to-morrow. Shall we be married here or would you rather elope?

I hesitated. 'I know we ought to give everyone the fun of a big wedding, but I don't think it's going to happen.'

'Why, darling?'

'I know its sounds silly, but when I try to look forward and see us being married in a church, with me in a white tulle crinoline with a wreath of orange blossoms, and Diane and Kirsteen as bridesmaids, it doesn't seem quite real.'

'Much better not to waste time on a wedding,' Esmond said cheerfully. 'The moment I get the All Clear from the paper I will send you a telegram, and then you will hop on the next plane and we will be married in Paris. Where will we spend our honeymoon?'

Anywhere and everywhere...years and years of it.'

'I know what we will do! It's a brilliant idea and I can't imagine why I didn't think of it before. I shall be so incredibly efficient at my job that the Daily Mail will agree to let me become a roving reporter, and then we can spend a year going round the world at their expense on the first lap of our honeymoon. I will take you to all the especially beautiful places in which I have dreamed about you--Samoa, and Japan, and a particularly favourite mountain in Ceylon.

Everywhere will be a thousand times better than when I saw it alone, for instead of vanishing when I wake up, you will be waiting to enjoy your most appreciative husband.'

Before I could tell him that he would find me very appreciative too, Mother opened the gallery door and called out, 'It is after midnight, children. I am going to bed now so I will say good night. Promise you won't stay up more than another half-hour.' 'Good night, Mrs. Marshall: we promise,' said Esmond, which was unfortunate as he always kept his promises.

The grandfather clock on the landing struck one as he kissed me good night outside my bedroom door. I watched him walk away from me down the long passage, and then turn the corner out of my sight. I heard his bedroom door close behind him.

I was getting forlornly into bed when I heard a voice--think it was Jennie's--say softly but quite distinctly, 'After Esmond leaves here to-morrow you will never see him again.'

So I ran to his room and spent the rest of that sweet, short night with him.

From CHAPTER NINE:
TO-MORROW NEVER COMES

...The front door bell woke me. I heard the maid cross the hall and then her telling Father. 'It's a telegram for you, sir.' I heard him say, 'It's from Esmond's mother.'

...Father came into the room, shut the door carefully and stared out of the window. 'I'm afraid I've got very bad news for you, old thing,' he said without looking at me. 'We've had a telegram. Esmond is dead...'

...'Mother said 'fatal accident' always means suicide. But he couldn't have killed himself...'

[Joan unwisely lets slip that she slept with Esmond, that final night. Huge fights with parents ensue. They want to cover up her great moral failing, and seem sure she's pregnant, and that she must be taken to Paris for an abortion, while a friend insists she marry him and pass off the baby as his (she is not in fact pregnant, but no one listens.) She blows up at her parents and goes to stay with friends. One goes to Paris, to learn the truth about Esmond's death...]

CHAPTER TEN:
HOMECOMING

I was doing quite well until we stopped for tea at a cottage on the banks of the Thames somewhere beyond Henley. I got out of the car, felt dizzy, and before I could put my head between my knees, fainted face downwards in a flower bed. Kirsteen and the kind woman who owned the place decided that we should spend the night there, which we did, on a feather-bed in the attic.

In the morning I knew that the pistol, which, had I only listened to Father, would have been safely at the bottom of the sea, had killed Esmond. I saw him, in dress trousers and a soft shirt but without his dinner jacket, staring at something lying on the floor of his room.

He was not frightened, only bewildered, puzzled, and, above all, angry with himself. 'I can't have been such an ass as not to have noticed there was still one up the spout. It would have been too idiotic,' he was saying.

The thing on the floor was his dead body.

Except for the one brief glimpse of what had happened, night after night passed with no sight of him...

As I gradually became neither avid for sleep nor fearful of not sleeping, I began to dream of Esmond. There was no sudden breaking down of separation, but like a frosted plant gradually feeling the rising sip I became aware that I was seeing him although I could not remember it. Then, leaf by leaf, dream-memory unfolded. I was happy again, not radiantly happy as I had been for a little while, But quietly, like a small green shrub on a summer evening.

The quality of my dreams began to change. They were more vivid and yet more arduous to achieve. To meet him needed an effort of will, a great effort which left me exhausted in the morning. It was as though, to reach the country where we could be together, he had come to find me at the limit of his endurance and then take me over a high range of mountains... mountains that were as high as space, as wide as time.

When we were safely there I was happy. The trees were yellow, although not with autumn, instead of green, and many of the flowers were unfamiliar. My body was much lighter, yet this was not because it was obedient to my thought as in a dream. It was a material body, obeying a less stringent law of gravity, able to run faster, to leap higher, to swim farther under water; but still in its own place equally solid as the one I re-entered on waking.

I had been there several times before Esmond told me that we were on a new planet. 'We arrive grown-up instead of being born. I have decided to stay here instead of having another turn on Earth.' He laughed joyously. 'It's so new, so clean--no diseases, not even unfriendly insects. Haven't you noticed what fun it is to lie on the grass without worrying whether you are disturbing an ants' nest, to explore a tropical forest with no snakes or spiders or leeches?'

'I thought it was a dream,' I admitted. 'I never have snakes or spiders in dreams, only in nightmares.'

'Of course it isn't a dream, darling. It's real. If you don't believe me, try to change one of those trees into something else and you will find it takes no notice and just goes on being a tree.'

'Then how do I get here? Esmond, it can't be solid, because my solid body is in bed at Hurtwood.'

'Well, I didn't want to tell you yet, but you are not really here. You are only a visitor. I suppose you are really a kind of ghost. It is very hard work bringing you here--much more of an effort than if I had to tow you up a mountain on skis. Bringing earth-ghosts here is not encouraged. It's considered a waste of energy, and energy is very important here when there is so much to create.'

'Oh please can I stay with you? If you keep me from going back to my body it will run down like a clock and then I shall be free of the wretched thing.'

For a moment he seemed regretful, but not more than a carefree adult would be who had to deny a treat to a child who is too young to enjoy it. 'Your body is not ready to die yet. You must use it to live your own life in your own place. Your place is not my place any more. You must live your life--your life...'

I awoke hearing him say it.

I have not been there since that night, nor have I dreamed again of Esmond.

SOURCE: Far Memory: the Autobiography of Joan Grant, 1956 (Ariel Press reprint, 1985), pp. 103-9, 116-7, and 124-5

EDITOR'S COMMENT

You could, I suppose, discount Joan's recurrent dreams of Esmond's next life on an alien world as mere comfort, her brain consoling itself with a fantasy. But her dream of the manner of his death turned out to be no fantasy; it was quite accurate. So why not her dreams of the consequences?

A few years earlier, in January 1923, Carl Jung dreamt of the Wild Hunt chasing a human soul. Next day he learned his mother had died. He sensed both grief and elation around him--not just his own. He wrote that our animal side ("the ego") rightly feels death is to be fought, and grieved if unavoidable; while our spiritual side ("the psyche") sees it as liberating.

Both Grant's and Jung's dreams correctly warned that loved ones had died; so why should we discount the other dream-message, that we have souls, that they go elsewhere, and that this is cause for both grief and celebration?

--Chris Wayan