In my dream of course it isn’t a dog with gigantic eyes roaming the streets. It’s a leopard. I’m leopard-dreaming again.
The city is unfamiliar. The leopard is pounding down a long, empty road. The tarmac shudders as his paws crash down, one after another. His tongue lolls out of his mouth and he slavers, with much less self-possession than usual. I’m used to seeing my leopard looking dignified. Here he’s dashing about like he’s been set free.
The shops are all shut and dark. Opposite them there is a vast rock like a ruined wedding cake. On top of it a castle slumps and squints down through the chilled mist.
I’m following my leopard as he leaves the main streets and, moving slower now, more stealthily, patrols the older part of town. Where the streets crisscross above and below each other. My bearings are lost. He pads to a standstill in an abandoned marketplace. A drunk old bloke sits against a pub wall. He clutches to his chin a bottle of QC sherry and sings into it: “Vol as — re, uh uh uh—oh…” The leopard stares at him from across the street until the old man notices. The old man’s anorak is shredded all about the sleeves. It looks like it hasn’t been off his back in years. Stuffing’s coming out like upholstery. When he sees the leopard, he panics and can’t move. He yanks out handfuls of his stuffing and throws it, sobbing, “Shoo, shoo!” And I know how he feels. In my dreams I’m always shooing away the big cats. And my limbs get full of dread and I can’t move fast enough. Every second I think I’m going to be eaten. in my last dream that’s exactly what happened.
And how can I be so lucid when I dream like this?
The old man reeks of stale piss. The leopard wrinkles his moist, leathery nose and moves on.
There’s something exhilarating about the way he runs easily through the city. He’s unimpeded. He’s liquid amber, slipping cursor-quick up alleys and stairways. The city is old, it seems old and continental, but cold and unforgiving. You can feel the air shiver with alarm at the leopard’s incongruity.
I’m pleased that, in my dream tonight, I can keep the cat at an arm’s distance. I feel like an observer, tailing him. Tonight he isn’t into mauling or molesting me. He has other concerns.
Down another main street the nightclubs are emptying. Bouncers corral red-faced, sweating women and men along the curb, some into taxis. Some form clusters and gangs that roam off back into town, shouting, breaking glass, tumbling into the road. The leopard sweeps past. When I follow I feel worried by the crowds. I hate going past straight nightclubs as they close and empty. I feel menaced. Vince told me I go about with a sign on my forehead telling fellers to beat me up. And they can see me too, in my dream. Some bloke lifts a bottle to hit me, a soppy grin on his face, but I manage to dash on.
I stumble into a park, through a small graveyard, in the shadow of the castle I saw earlier. The leopard is by a fountain, all golden heroes with torches and lutes. There’s a fine mist of spent cold water. He jumps into the fountain and gleefully submerges himself. He knows I am watching. I wait. The night closes in around me. The street noise has faded away by now and I no longer feel scared.
With a sudden burst of laughter and noise, the leopard jumps back out of the green water of the fountain. He jumps right over me, and I get showered. When he touches down, somewhere over on the grass, I see that now he has a princess strapped to his back. A sleeping princess in a golden frock, who barely moves a muscle as the leopard thunders off into the trees, back to the long main road. Mind, she’s knocking on a bit for a princess. She must be in her forties. And, as I watch, she stirs and wakes, jolted alive on the leopard’s back. She clutches her bouffant wig to keep it on straight. It’s Liz.
Across the Burn the ground had sheeted over with the dirtiest, most walked-on ice she had seen. It was hazard-ous, climbing up the hill into town. Cars zipped by on Burn Lane and it took Penny half an hour to walk in the same direction. She had to leave the path and struggle up the hill, finding footholds, clinging to branches. It was like taking hold of the trees’ fingertips, snapping them off when she leaned too hard, when her feet slipped. If it had been up to her, she’d have stayed indoors today. Hidden in the house with a good book. It was one of those very black February days.
Elsie wouldn’t leave the house. At first Penny suspected she was just lazy. Then she remembered that Elsie was the type to gad about town come hell or high water. When she was happy with Tom, it had been their favourite thing to traipse the streets in all weathers, knocking on the doors of friends or acquaintances, getting themselves brought indoors to talk about God. Elsie had always been less keen on the God bit. She just liked the visiting. But these past few weeks, she was more inclined to stay indoors. After that business with the garden she was often to be found staring out of her windows, as if waiting to see what would happen to it next. She confided in Penny, saying she thought it was haunted. Now Penny wished she hadn’t set it all to rights again, and just left it in the mess it had been. It was only to cheer Elsie up, but her small spell had caused more harm than good. Elsie thought that she was cracking
