Nightmares and Dreams

Jed was crying out in his sleep. Softly sobbed protests were interspersed with scattered syllables that didn’t quite form words. He turned over, then rolled back to his original position as though he could shake off whatever it was that chased him through his dreams.

The sound and the motion caught Merv’s attention. He surfaced slowly, trying to retain the details of his own dreams, but they fled, as they always did when he woke. He reached up automatically through the inky black darkness until his fingertip touched the switch on the wall and turned the light on, bathing the inside of the campervan in its gentle glow.

The light didn’t wake Jed, nor did it distract him from whatever it was he dreamed of. His voice remained low and distressed, anguished pleas tumbled from his lips amongst the sobs, and his head turned on his pillow to face one way, and then the other.

Merv rolled out of his bed, crouched next to the bunk where Jed slept, and carefully, slowly, he reached out. Jed shot away from his barely-there touch, colliding with the wall of the van. It rocked just slightly with the sudden movement. Those blue eyes of his flew open, looking around. For a long, long while Jed wasn’t seeing the van or Merv, though, but something else entirely. Something from his past, Merv suspected. Something that he’d never spoken of.

What was it? Merv wondered. What happened, that it haunts your dreams each night? What did this to you? Who did it?

Merv wondered, but he didn’t ask. And not because he didn’t care, but because he knew that Jed would tell him when he was ready. If Jed ever was ready.

Merv could almost hear Jed’s heart pounding in his chest in time with the too-rapid breaths he was taking. “Jed,” He said softly. “Come back.” Come back to me. Those beautiful eyes cleared and fixed on Merv, and it was only then that Jed was really present again.

What did Jed see, Merv often wondered, when he looked at him? Merv was covered in tattoos, and none of them were particularly well-done. His head was shaved and he dressed like the skinheads of the eighties; a green jacket, with a patch sewn crookedly on to the shoulder declaring ‘Skinheads against racism’, tight jeans, high doc martens, and braces that fell from where they clipped to his waist.

Jed had called them suspenders and got a lifted eyebrow and a smile from Merv in response. “If you want me in suspenders, pretty boy?” Merv had teased. “It’s going to cost you.”

Oh, and of course, there was the thing where, when he was in London, Merv worked as what he’d once been able to call a ‘rent-boy’, but now that he was somewhere in his early mid-thirties, was more honestly better described as ‘male prostitute’ on days he was feeling okay about himself, and ‘ageing whore’ on the not so good ones.

But Merv didn’t think about himself very often. And he definitely didn’t conform to stereotypes. For all that he looked like the roughest thing going, his voice was that of the well-educated middle class. He was quietly intelligent, well read and well spoken. On the rare occasions that he spoke more than a few short sentences he was incredibly eloquent and his opinions were well thought out and measured.

And he cared. About everyone. He’d been living in this van for years, but most of the time that he wasn’t working he chose to hang out with London’s homeless community, looking after those who weren’t doing such a great job of looking after themselves.

It was Merv who lit the fires in the barrels they huddled around on cold nights, Merv who brought the wood that kept them burning. It was Merv who gave out extra blankets, or laid them carefully over those who shivered in their sleep. And it was Merv who woke them with soup and sandwiches from the early morning kitchens.

“Why do you live like this?” Jed had asked him, soon after they’d met. “You could be doing so much more with yourself.”

But Merv had shaken his head and smiled his slightly crooked smile. “Not really,” he’d answered. But he hadn’t expected Jed to understand. Jed hadn’t known how much he did for others, or how much those he helped needed that help.

More accurately, Jed hadn’t known back then. But back then Jed’s own life had recently fallen apart, and as he’d been trying to make sense of it he’d been only too happy to let Merv help him, too. And gradually, he’d seen for himself what Merv did for those around him.

“You should be a social worker,” he’d said, more recently.

Merv had smiled. “I guess I am.” He’d answered. “Just not the official type.” Not the type that came with a badge, and a very lot of distrust from those who hadn’t had the best experiences with social services.

This trip had been Jed’s idea. Merv suspected that Jed thought it was for his benefit, that getting Merv out of London and into the beauty of the Scottish Highlands would be a welcome break. Merv had been a little worried about leaving ‘his people’, but he’d agreed to go. And not because he thought he needed the break, but because he knew that Jed did.

“I’m sorry,” Jed whispered. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

Merv smiled. “You didn’t,” he lied. “I was awake anyway. Would you like a hot drink?”

Something to chase the memory of your dreams away before you go back to sleep?

He thought it, but of course he didn’t say any such thing. If Jed didn’t want to talk about whatever it was that hounded him through the nights, Merv wasn’t about to push the point, either.

“I was about to put the kettle on, anyway.” He said instead. “How does a mug of hot chocolate sound?”

He knew, as he was making the drinks, that Jed was still shaken up. That whatever it was that troubled his sleep was still playing on his mind. So Merv talked; he told a rambling tale about hunting haggis, based on the Robert Burns poem of the same theme.

When in Rome… When in Scotland…

When Merv handed him the drink, Jed took it with a grateful, whispered ‘thank you’ that didn’t interrupt the story. And by the end of it Jed was laughing, his dreams long forgotten.

He fell asleep again soon afterwards, and this time his dreams were untroubled, and he slept deeply and soundly. But Merv lay awake for another hour or so, wishing that he hadn’t fallen in love with a gorgeous, blue-eyed youth, almost ten years younger than he was. And who, he was sure, would never love him back.

He wouldn’t say so, of course. He would never put anything like that on Jed. He just quietly accepted that people like him didn’t get to be with people like Jed.

But accepting it didn’t make it sting any less. It didn’t make it any easier to take. And it didn’t stop him wanting to crawl across the camper and wrap himself around the beautiful boy whose slow, even breathing seemed to fill not just the van, but Merv’s entire world.

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'Nightmares and Dreams' is part of the 'Shade of Dean' series.

Photography and writing by Danny Darke. For more information about the author and any of his other works, please visit the website at dannydarke.com Thank you!