The girl in the room

She is here again or perhaps I should say that I am. It always begins with the girl. I don’t know her name but it begins with the girl. I look at her and want to speak, anything that would break the silence but I have no words. She turns to me and her eyes are dark against her fair skin. She raises a finger to her lips and shushes me. How can I say less than nothing?

I have this dream every night and I do not understand. I go about my day but I know that I have seen this same scene played out a dozen times before. I dress just as I always do and leave the house as if all were well with the world. I can not forget her face, the blankness in her eyes. Even when I get to the office and add up the figures in the account books, my mind drifts back to her. I wonder if the dream is telling me something but I do not know what it can mean. The scratching of quills pulls me back to the grey ordinariness of the partnership. The tall desks and brown ink seem less real to me than the girl in the drawing room.

I eat frugally and prepare for bed. The dream has an attraction and a repulsion that form a strange balance. I would sooner have nonsense dreams that I could forget but this phantasm is somehow important to me. I lie there and my thoughts become less coherent. Sleep takes me down into the darkness.

I am in the room again and all is as it was, impressions of things standing in for what is really there. The rich colours of the drawing room hide the unreality and my eyes slide over book bindings that I can barely see. She is there and real to me, an anchor in a sea of confusion. She looks ahead and I want to follow her gaze and see as she does but my head will not turn. I gaze at her and she turns to me, the jewel on her choker catching the light. She raises her finger to her lips and I am silent.

She starts to turn back and the dream is shattered.

I go through the day as if it was the fantasy and my night-time imagining the true reality. I bolt my food and take to my bed, eager to return. I fret myself to sleep and find myself where I had been. She is there again and I feel that I know her name. She is Teresa and I know this with surety although I have forgotten my own name. She looks at me, gestures and turns back. I watch as I always do and she is the only reality in a sea of half-seen things. I will myself to look where she looks and my head turns with glacial slowness. She watches a panelled white door with a cut glass handle. I can not see her face but I can feel her attention as she waits. I wait with her, expecting a thing than I can not name or understand. I wait until I am torn from the dream by the sound of a coach passing and the vision is lost in the half light of morning. I stumble from my bed and out in to the morning but the world is no more real to me than a passing vapour. I go to work but the figures swim before my eyes.

Only the room and the girl are real to me now.

That evening, I stop at a tavern and it is a low place, ill lit and worse smelling. They sell gin and I drink it, savouring the bitterness of the juniper. I drink until my head reels and I stagger from the inn to my lodgings. I quickly fall into a drugged sleep.
The room is clear to me, clearer than it has ever been. My head no longer swims but I am made bold by the drink. When Teresa shushes me, I smile and know myself to be master of the situation. We turn together and watch the door, waiting, knowing that we share a secret even if we have no words for it. As we watch, the handle trembles, jiggles, tries to turn. The room crystallises around me and with the detail comes possibility. This is my reality and I belong here. This is no place for fear or meekness. I walk towards the door and I know that Teresa follows. Everything is so clear now from the scent of the wood polish to the sound of my shoes on the carpet.

I grasp the doorknob and it is solid in my hand. I turn it and the facets are rough. The door opens and I see what lies beyond.

The scene is dark and ill-defined, a contrast with the crispness of the drawing room. I look into the vagueness and it is as familiar to me as my own face. It is my room, as if sketched by a painter. There is no reality to this scene. I drink it in, taking in every detail. I see a figure in the bed and I know that it is I even though I stand here in the room. I watch myself huddled under the coarse grey blanket and wait for the rise and fall of my chest. I wait and yet I do not see it; the figure is wholly still and as lifeless as a painting.

I turn to Teresa and she parts her lips to speak. This is the perfect moment and there is no need for words. I raise my fingers to my lips and hush her. She smiles knowingly, and there is a beauty to the silence. Finally, I know that I am home.