Foulds - Dream Sequence

Dream Sequence

Adam Foulds

Biblioasis

Windsor, Ontario

Contents

1
The Stars above the Desert

2
Flight

Praise for Adam Foulds

It has been a while since I have read a book as richly sown with beauty A remarkable work, remarkable for the precision and vitality of its perceptions and for the successful intricacy of its prose.

James Wood, The New Yorker

Electric Mr. Foulds powerfully achieves what Stephen Crane called the psychological portrayal of fear fiercely memorable fiction.

Wall Street Journal

Adam Foulds writes like an angel about devilish things He is fearsomely unafraid of the darkness within humans and the darkness they are capable of creating around them. The supple, sensuous beauty of his prose is bewitching: like the helpless children of Hamelin we follow wherever he chooses to lead, however horrifying the terrain, enchanted by the unstoppable flow of rich, unforgettable images.

Rebecca Abrams, Financial Times

Foulds acknowledged mastery as a novelist and as a poet is often apparent in this book: in the ambiguous dialogues between strangers revealing unspoken intimacies, in the delicately clipped snippets of everyday life recalled in the confusion of war, in the lyrical broken-up sentences that mirror the physical and mental shattering of the ongoing slaughter.

Alberto Manguel, The Guardian

Adam Foulds is a young British novelist of striking talent and eclecticism. His style is first-rate, combining precision with a rich poetic imagination. He is able to do more with language, and at greater depth, than most other British novelists of his generation.

Andrew Holgate, The Sunday Times

On the level of the sentence, theres much to admire in this novel. Foulds has a searching eye for detail and an apparently helpless compulsion to wring imagery from his subject.

Tim Martin, The Telegraph

Foulds writes like no one else; while individual scenes are rendered with poetic simplicity, they fit together into an elliptical, complex plot readers will puzzle over long after finishing this novel.

Kirkus Reviews

Combining careful, considered prose with horrific realism, the latest from Foulds expertly renders the Allied campaigns in Italy and North Africa during WWII readers will be amazed at this deeply felt, vivid novel.

Publishers Weekly (Pick of the Week)

Also by Adam Foulds

FICTION

The Truth about these Strange Times

The Quickening Maze

In the Wolfs Mouth

POETRY

The Broken Word

To Charla

Our love has been.
I see the rain.
Nothing
is abstract any more.

Denis Johnson, Gray Day in Miami

The Stars above the Desert

The beautiful house was empty. Kristin watched from the front window as her sister climbed into her snow-spattered car and drove away, shuttling from one set of worriesKristinto anotherthe noisy, complicated, enviably involving struggles of her family life.

Suzanne had left behind a liveliness in the air through which she had moved and talked. Kristin walked back to the kitchen where there were syrupy breakfast plates to clear. She transferred them to the small dishwasher and sucked her sweetened thumbs. Diversify, Suzanne had said. Find some other activities and interests. She used a clear, careful voice with Kristin at the moment, stripped of challenge and controversy. In Kristins mind Suzannes broad, freckled face still hovered, neutral and patient, ready for her reaction. I understand you not getting a job for a while if you dont have to. Youre in a great situation, when you think about it. Perfect fresh start time. Craig thinks Kristin didnt care what Craig thought. Craig was entirely unsympathetic. Craig was most of the problems Suzanne was now shuttling towards in her rattling Kia on the road back to Pottstown. Craig thought that Kristin had got it made: married to her boss, divorced by her boss and now entitled by law to the lifestyle to which she had become accustomed. You won the Rollover, he liked to say straight to her face and smiling, as though she wouldnt hear the dirty joke he was pretending he hadnt made. Craig was the sort of dumb and nasty that thinks its smart. Often, when Suzannes back was turned, he looked at Kristin, just looked at her for as long as he felt like it, smoking and thinking things.

Kristin was upstairs now, deciding whether she needed to change the sheets of the bed where Suzanne had slept. Kristin lowered her nose to the creased fabric and thought not, catching only a sharpness of lavender. She removed a long curving hair from the pillow and tugged everything straight. Kristin had painted the upper rooms of the house in colours she had seen on The Grange, a British TV program that had in the most extraordinary way become a very important part of her life. In the show, the walls of the rooms where the wealthy family lived were painted in rich and sombre colours she didnt like but the servants rooms downstairs had lovely colours that she spent many hours with swatch books seeking to match. Blues and greens that were spacious and honest, that had a dignity and sadness that were ideal as the containers of her new, ruined life. Not that Kristin spent much time in the upper rooms. The bedding in this one was white, voluminous, heavy, and made soft crunching sounds as she rearranged it. All neat again. A border of broderie anglaise, an intricate pattern of holes, ran across the top of the comforter.

Kristin had with great care and attention to detail redecorated her marriage away. Everything was now to her taste and signified her ownership of this desirable rowhouse. Removing all traces of Ron had been a relief but changing her stepsons rooms was painful. They had only been there for the odd weekends that Ron had them but Kristin had always loved that rushing influx of youth and energy, even if, except for the youngest, Lionel, they had not liked her back. Beautiful little Lion. The older boys would glare or speak in grudging single words while staring at their devices, but Lion recognized her kindness, her eagerness, and needed it, coming slowly closer and closer. Now she had removed the clutter and colourful walls of childhood and replaced them with tasteful, impeccable adulthood. Sometimes she regretted it.

Kristin decided to go to yoga. That was another activity and interest. Suzanne didnt even know. Kristin went to the room with her wardrobe and changed from pyjamas into the soft second skin of her exercise clothes. Over them, she put on her long quilted coat and collected her mat and bag.

When she went to the front door, she found mail lying there, one piece, for Ron: a catalogue for a clothing company that he had never got round to cancelling. Kristin knew it well, mature men in outdoor wear posing in landscapes, fishing, striding, drinking out of enamel mugs with their shirtsleeves rolled. It would go straight into the trash. She was not his PA any more. It was maddening that she still had to deal with these things. Kristin pulled at it to tear it in half but it was too thick. The pages just twisted in her hands. The whole Ron situation had begun with tasks performed for him, note taking and letter writing and appointments in his diary and travel bookings and gifts for his wife and children. When he formed his own company, she went with him. Those morning drives away from traffic out of Philly into greenness and landscape and his big house near Valley Forge, the crackling sweep of his gravel driveway, that long wrong turning in her life. He was still there, with a new wife now, his third. And Kristin was alone. Almost alone.