Dream a Little Dream: Part I

"Dream a Little Dream"

By

K. R. King

Not far from my home in East Ilford, Essex sits one of the greenest, tallest and most peaceful hills in all of the southern English countryside. This is where I have spent every evening since I was old enough to make it up to the top. It is where I come to be alone with my thoughts and dreams. On a clear night, the sun kisses the cold English sky, painting it with splashes of reds and oranges, lavenders and blues as it crawls sleepily over the horizon and the moon takes its place. Atop the hill, London's Hill, we call it; there is an old oak tree that has provided me with a shelter from the rainy seasons, even the scarce snows. Rain or shine, I make my sojourn to the top and in the summertime, when the weather is warm and the breeze just right, I've even fallen asleep beneath that old oak tree.

And tonight, I returned to it as always, but this time with more trepidation bearing down on my mind than ever before. Tonight, I felt the culmination of every emotion a person may possibly experience at once in her lifetime.

It began at tea with my Aunt Helena one evening a week or so ago. I always thought it slightly old-fashioned of her to do tea, but she said it was traditional. A telegram was delivered regarding a subject of a deeply sensitive nature was bought to my attention, Mother.

Letters of correspondence had been discovered in a black tin box beneath a loose floorboard in my mother's bedroom back at the old estate, and the current gentleman resident, upon recovery of these hidden letters, urgently requested that they be removed from his home and returned to the proper hands. So it was decided that Aunt would take me to retrieve them. Little did I know that I would find nearly a hundred of them, some sealed and some opened, sitting neatly and relatively undisturbed in the little black box.

I spent the next week in a state of inextricably perpetual shock, brought on by the contents of these letters, for they chronicled a shocking affair between not my mother and father, but between my mother and another woman. For each letter I read, the more confusion and anxiety enveloped me. I could not understand why, but no matter how I tried to stop myself from reading the rest of those letters, those abominations, the more I felt compelled to finish what I had started. And the more I felt compelled, the more betrayed I seemed to be by the words of my mother, by the fondest recollections of passion for which she did not regret, passion for another who was not my father, not even a man. She had always ascribed herself to nothing less than absolute adoration for my father, and as I read on in disbelief, my childhood fantasies disintegrated. I had prepared myself to be thrown into the poetic exchanges of love between my mother and father and instead, I discovered what I perceived at first to be a sordid extramarital entanglement.

I could not stand to stay in my Aunt's house another moment, and so I retreated to my hill to search my soul for some clarity. Instead, memories flooded into my mind and I lost myself in them beneath the oak tree.

You see, the hill became mine the day my mother, Lara, who had been ill with flu for several weeks, passed away. Mother had been everything to me, as is nearly every maternal figure in every other child's life, I should like to think. I crept into Mother's room, as I had done every year before to wake her for breakfast-not just any breakfast, because this was a special day, my favourite day of the entire year. My birthday. I kissed her lightly on the forehead and tugged lightly on her nightgown, but she did not stir. I became worried immediately upon noticing that she was cold, and that she did not move at all when I kissed her. Mother was always a light sleeper. I began to cry, tugging harder and shouting for her to wake up, but she never did. When the doctors came to take her away, all I could do was run to that hill. I never had the chance to say goodbye to her, and I haven't been the same since because of that.

My father?

I never knew him because he was killed in the Great War, but what I did know of him was that he had lived a noble life and was a decent, good-natured man, not to mention a loving husband. Mother used to tell me stories about him, about how handsome he was, and when I was five, she gave me one of her old photographs of him done up in his uniform. I remember thinking how she was right about him being handsome. His name was Robert Callum Ripley, and he was a Flight Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force. They called him "Fearless" Ripley, on account of his extraordinary bravery and acts of courage in the war.

Every night, before I'd fall asleep, she would tell me something else about my father. We were always so close, she and I. How very much in love they had been, she would say, and in my mind, I would imagine the night they met and recreate it in my mind's eye:

A cool breeze was blowing that day through the London depot, steam whipping about and billowing madly as a whistle sounds in the distance and grows louder with the arrival of a military transport. A low rumble growls beneath the platform as the spectators wait patiently to greet the passengers. Men onboard straining their necks to spy the anxious faces of wives, sweethearts, mothers and children. As the wheels screech forward and an obnoxious, overbearing hissing noise signals that the train has stopped, the doors of every car fly open as though resembling those of a cage in which one has been kept isolated and lonely for too long a time, and one officer in particular steps down with a black coat swung over his left arm and a supply bag snugly sitting on his right shoulder, making his way to the nearest exit from the platform smartly and with no interest in the excitements around him.

Unlike most of his comrades, he greets no one-no mother, no wife, no children, and no sweetheart. While the others rush to the arms of their loved ones, and some eyes dart wildly about in search of those they have yet to greet, this young lieutenant makes his way up to the streets of London alone.

This was the part of the story where Mother would interrupt and add that the next bit was how I came to be named London.

Reality startled me from my reverie and back to the oak tree on the hill. Beside me lay the hideous black box that held all of the letters. I ran my hands over them, sifting among them purposelessly. Tears streamed from my eyes, dampening my pale cheeks. And then, my fingers fell upon it.

A loosely double-folded letter that had been folded and tucked in with the others peered up from the box. I read the black lettering in puzzlement.

It was addressed to me.

Hello Darling,

If you are reading this letter, it means that I am gone and you've found the others. You must think it cruelly unfair of me to have left you with so many unanswered questions, and it must come as quite a shock to you to learn about Katherine. This is why I wrote this, to answer those questions, to divulge the truth about my love for her. I know you feel betrayed by the contents of those letters, but you must also know this: I loved your father very much. His death was devastating to our family, most of all to me. I could never have loved another man as much as I loved him. And it was true; I never did love another man after him, but I did find it in Kaye, my dearest colleague and friend. I hope you can forgive me, darling, for I only kept our love a secret out of fear. But since you are reading this now, I must assume that you are old enough, and that I was right to treat you as one should be treated-with respect and dignity. It is time to stop playing as though you are a child, for you are no longer a child, but an adult, grown and responsible enough to accept the truth of things. So I will tell you.

Katherine and I taught at the Hargrave School together, shared our classroom and supplies. It was an all-girls school. She was the most understanding and kindest person I have ever known. The loveliest. I respected and admired her for her talents, her gift of teaching. We grew to be close friends, her and I-the closest. Too close, according to some, and this was to be the beginning of all of our problems. But times grew troubled as the school began to lose funding from the parents of the girls under our auspices. It started with one of the teachers, Ellen Ashleigh, with whom I had never got on very well. She was of the opinion that my teaching methods were too progressive and untraditional, and so she set herself about the malicious task of destroying our names and reputations, by any desperate means necessary, it seemed. And were we ever right about that desperation. But we were equally as determined to live our lives as normally as possible under the circumstances. We, Kaye and I, continued to take the children on outings often to show them the world around them, such as to the rocky streams for lessons in geology or the park for studies in botany, despite our quarrels with Ellen Ashleigh. It was always my opinion that Miss Ashleigh was simply jealous of the connection we had with our students, and so she schemed against us almost religiously. Until one day, she went too far. And she accomplished her goal of ruining us in the town forever.

It took less than a week for the parents of our girls to pull them from the school once it was rumoured that Kaye and I had been indulging in an illicit affair with each other. Ellen had convinced the Headmistress, Susan Hargrave, who did not believe it herself until Ellen confirmed that it was, indeed, "true". Of course it was a lie, but no one believed us. Your father was gone to fight in the war. Kaye and I were living together because neither of us could afford to live alone. This fact only incensed the chaos further. We were outcasts, tossed away by our closest neighbors, friends, and colleagues. The more we denied the rumour, the more we were slandered and hated. I pleaded with Ellen to tell the truth, but she relished in our misery too much to show any sign of mercy.

And then, as if all of that were not enough, I received news that my husband had been killed. It was all simply too much for me to bear, and so I left the Hargrave School for a while and lived in seclusion with Katherine. She attempted to console me by telling me that she had also resigned her position at Hargrave to avoid any further public scandal. Ellen Ashleigh had won, after all. -K

I paused for a moment.

The imagining of my father's death played in my mind.

"Do you think Robert will be coming back soon?" Katherine asked curiously, entering the salon and removing the apron from around her waist.

"No," Lara, responded through tears.

"Lara, what is it? What's happened?" Katherine hung up the apron and joined her friend by the window. But Lara was too distraught to offer any more explanation.

"Lara!" Katherine pleaded, "Tell me what's happened!" There was no need for explanations, for Katherine understood immediately upon seeing the letter Lara was clutching in her hand as she wept. She knew what it contained: news that Robert was dead. "Oh, Lara!" She herself began to cry, taking her arms and draping them over the arms of her close friend. "Lara, I'm so sorry."

"I know I should have expected it. After all, I knew…I took the risk when I married him, but still…" Lara said through her tears.

"Yes, but nothing on Earth can possible prepare someone for death when it comes, especially when it's someone we love." Kaye replied. "We'll get through this, Lara, together. I promise you we will. I love you." She laid a hand gently on Lara's.

"I love you, too." Lara whispered. She took great comfort in knowing that fondness, that friendship between the two of them, could never be broken.

My brain did not have time to catch up with all of this information, partly because of the overwhelming nature of the subject, until I looked up into the sky for a moment. The stars winked, glimmering peacefully in the night, and then imagined the sordid affair at the Hargrave School with all of its complexities and dangerous implications. As much as my mother was assuring me that she loved my father, I was at a loss to understand her attraction to another female. And worse, I was paralyzed by her resignation from the school. I felt that it was tantamount to a confession of guilt and that she felt guilty about it in spite of the truth, which was that there was nothing between her and Katherine, or Kaye-whoever she was. Perhaps the death of my father had damaged her somehow and led her to madness, and that is what motivated her to leave. Lovers. My mother and this other figure. It was unbelievable. The words "I love you" being exchanged between two women were too unacceptable to be real. It simply wasn't possible to love a woman the way a man did. Or I thought. Still, my mind drew a picture, swept away by the cool evening breeze.

Two women walked along through the hallway of a private, all-girls school, discussing lessons and sharing advice about this or that. They pass the office of the Headmistress, whose door has been left partially ajar. From behind the oak barrier, low, stern voices can be heard. Curiously drawn to eavesdrop on the conversation that taking place on the other side of the door, the women step closer to listen.

"You must understand, my dear, about the graveness of these allegations." This voice belongs to that of the Headmistress, Miss Susan Hargrave, a tall woman with dark hair and kind but firm gray eyes.

As they lean closer, footsteps are heard approaching in their direction from the south end of the hall.

My mother's voice continues:

"Time passed, and I began to accept the death of my husband slowly. One afternoon, Katherine convinced me to take a walk with her in the flower garden, and so I agreed. Fresh air and sunshine would do her good. As we walked, we talked in light conversation. Then, she broke into a shocking outburst upon reaching the parlor room and said--"

But there is no more. The next letter I found was from my mother to Lara.

Dearest Lara,

The weather has cleared and the skies are bluer than ever. I should like to think that it is a sign. I am thinking of you more than ever, and so I am writing to tell you that I will be returning. It is too much for us this way. The silence in my heart is deafening. As we have been disgraced already, I cannot see any reason as to why we must live anymore in secrecy and shame. I have to see you again. I leave for Essex tomorrow. All my love.

-K

My eyes welled up as I caught the date on the envelope. Mother passed away two days after she received the letter.

I could only imagine what had been said...

"Lara, I have to tell you now, I can't bear it any longer! I don't care if it destroys us, you have to know." Tears rolled downward from her sapphire eyes as she cried.

"Kaye, why are you crying?"

"Don't you know?"

"Of course not."

"All of those things they said about us, Lara, they weren't true, were they?"

"What on earth are you talking about? They?" And then it all came back to her. The Hargrave School. The Ashleighs. The children. The lie. She lowered her voice. "Oh, that. Of course they weren't true, Katherine! Why do you speak of it so long afterward? Why now?"

"Because, because…there are those who believed it, and those who wanted it to be true. Of course, it's perfectly normal for women to be fond of each other as we are, as I am fond of you and you of me. We have been friends for quite some time now, it's only natural I should care for you, but not the way I do."

"Why are you telling me this?" Lara's tone began to shift from one of confusion to genuine concern.

"Because I love you." Katherine said in a strange, even-toned voice.

"I know you do, and I love you, too." Lara attempted to maintain composure, but it was slipping away each time Katherine spoke.

"No, you don't understand! Lara, I love you the way they said I did. I did love you that way then, and I still love you that way now.."

"What?" Lara whispered in disbelief, as though she had not fully heard the sincerity or at the very least could not accept it.

"It's true. I wish it weren't but it is just that. All these years, I felt different, like there was something inside of me. I didn't know what. I didn't want to know. I pushed it away. I pushed it so far away that now it has come back, and I'm frightened by it!"

"Katherine, stop this madness right now! Right this moment! You talk of being frightened; well I'm frightened, too!" Lara's voice broke into confused anger. She did not want to believe what Katherine was telling her.

"Katherine, you're not guilty of anything! There is no reason to be ashamed, you never did anything wrong! Do you hear what I'm telling you? Listen now, I know we have been through a lot together. I know you haven't had a chance to grieve for me, or for yourself. But you must stop this lunacy, for heaven's sake, you must!"

"But I am, I am guilty! I have ruined your life, and mine as well!"

TO BE CONTINUED...