Free (1989) Dreamer by Peter James Page A

blinkers, she thought angrily.
    Then she saw the poster on the side of the bus, staring her in the face as if it was taunting her, silver with an aeroplane and a blue prancing tiger, and the words boldly emblazoned.
    ‘CHARTAIR – A GREAT LITTLE AIRLINE . . . NOW A GREAT BIG ONE!’

7
    She parked and hurried across Covent Garden towards her club. There was just time for a quick swim. She tried to swim every morning before work, unless she had an early meeting or was travelling, and she wanted to swim badly today, to try to wake up some more, to clear the fuzziness out of her head.
    She felt a bit better as she left the club, slightly more human but not much, walked down the narrow street and across the huge open square, past the old covered market building of Covent Garden, among the pigeons and the street cleaners who had the place to themselvesfor another hour yet. A gust of cold icy wind whiplashed her damp hair, and a piece of paper scudded along past her feet like a wounded bird.
    DREAMS!
    The word rippled through the glass of the shop window.
    UNLOCK YOUR OWN SECRET WORLD!
    DREAMS. DREAMS. DREAMS.
    The window was filled with books on dreams.
    DREAMS – YOUR MAGIC MIRROR.
    THE POWER OF DREAMS.
    THE A–Z OF DREAMS.
    One of the small alternative bookshops she passed every day without noticing. She glanced at her watch, 9.20. She tried the door and was faintly surprised that it opened. She went in and the shop was filled with a crisp, pristine papery smell. New jackets, fresh print; it was a good smell. Books. She loved books.
    A tall man in a black polo-neck glided noiselessly across the floor, his head swivelling from side to side like a robot. He stopped a few feet from Sam, inclined his head and raised his eyebrows. He looked clean, scrubbed, and smelt of organic soap.
    ‘Dreams,’ said Sam. ‘I’m—’ She felt flustered for a moment. He was making her nervous. He was the sort of man she should be asking for the complete works of Marcel Proust. ‘I’m interested in something on dreams.’
    ‘Mmm,’ He rotated and glided across the floor, and made a wide, sweeping arc with his arm at a row of shelves, all labelled ‘Dreams’. He turned around. ‘Is it anything particular?’ He spoke in a studied, hushed public-library whisper, and his breath smelt of peppermints. He ran his finger along the spines as if he were caressing a sleeping girl’s back, then stopped and tappedone lightly. He pulled it out and held it in the air. ‘This is a possibility. Are you a student?’
    ‘No,’ said Sam, feeling flattered. No, but I’d like to be. I’d like to look like one, and be as carefree as one. And be as young as one. An Oxford man, are you? Me? I was educated at the University of Life. Know it? Turn first left down the Bitter Vale Of Tears. Graduated to Thompson’s. Never heard of it? J. Walter Thompson. Started as a secretary. Then became a production assistant. By the time I was twenty-six I had been made a junior producer (sounds the bizz, eh?). Then I gave it all up for a sprog. Oh, yes, working again now. Working and dreaming. Had a dream about an air disaster, actually – you probably read about it – that one in Bulgaria? I could have saved them all. Should have rung up the airline, shouldn’t I? EVERYBODY OFF, BOYS, THIS ONE’S A GONER!
    Would you have done?
    Shit. I’m going nuts. ‘No – I – I’m a layman. I’m just interested in – er – dream interpretation.’
    He replaced it with a slingshot flick of his wrist, and arched his back a fraction. ‘Ahh, hmm, let me see, I think, yes, this you’d probably get on with awfully well,’ he said, as if he’d known her all his life. He pulled out a slim paperback with a picture of an eyeball and a fish on the front cover. ‘Yes, this is the one. What Your Dreams Really Say .’
    Sam glanced at the back cover. ‘Dr Colin Hare, lecturer in Psychology at the University of Hull, has made Freud, Jung and other great interpreters of dreams