The Fantasist
Once, when I was a boy, perhaps no more than five, my father told me that some people were not made for this world.
I was too young to understand what he had meant, but like so many other snippets of conversation, my undeveloped mind filed it away for a day when I might come to comprehend such things, or when such knowledge became useful.
I remember, some time after this, when I had started to attend school, how quickly I recalled those words, as the teacher, noticing my total absence of mind as I stared out of the classroom window, slammed both of his hands down onto my desk, giving me such a fright I almost fell backward from my chair.
A mistake, but one I had not deliberately made. My mind had simply wandered, and while I remember vividly the angry look on the master's face as he scowled down at me, I do not remember where it was that my mind had wandered to, as though he had snatched the very thought from me.
Unfortunately, the tutor's aggressive approach only seemed to exacerbate the problem, for it seemed the harder or more intolerable the world around me became, the more often I’d find myself adrift in these seas of contemplation. So immersive were these daydreams that I would forget what was happening around me, and it took a great deal of energy to pull my mind back to the topic or task at hand for even the briefest of intervals.
As I grew older still, and the world around me became filled with the burdens of adulthood, this character flaw became exponentially more of an issue. The more demanding my life became, the more my mind tried to steal itself away from it. Even the most mundane or simple of tasks took twice as long for me to accomplish as any right-minded person. I stuck closely to things I could manage with little concentration, and often found myself uttering words when in company like ‘I beg your pardon?’ and ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that,’ that is, if I dared to reply at all.
This trait or habit I had developed did not serve me well in any facet of life. No matter how I tried to fight it, I would somehow always become untethered. Both in employment and friendships, I would find myself reprimanded or teased for my preoccupation.
I knew well that this strange fascination had rendered any meaningful relationship all but impossible, yet still I could not contain it. It was as though I could not commit myself entirely to this world. The places I would go in my mind were varied and many. Some would suit me only for days before being forgotten, and some became recurring stories I would revisit and replay, with places and people so familiar that I felt more of a connection to them than any person I had met, even though they were nothing more than shadows of my own mind.
Once my father had passed, leaving what little he had to me, I had gone about my day-to-day as best as I could properly manage. I was aware that I was considered by some to be a peculiar man, though mostly thought of as harmless by the few people, such as the shopkeeper or the couple who lived next door, with whom I exchanged brief interactions. I appreciated how they humoured me as I idly stood in the queue not realising it was my turn to be served, or frozen while exchanging pleasantries on the stoop of my father’s inner-city townhouse, unsure of how to reply to the words they had just spoken, because I had somehow not heard them.
In the year following my father’s passing I became even more accustomed to solitude and the silence that came with it. The time I spent alone with my thoughts each evening came to be my greatest of comforts, allowing myself to daydream for hours without interruptions. My life passed me by in a slow procession of day and night and the real and the unreal, until one cold October morning I awoke to find that the roof had started to leak and a large damp pool now covered a considerable portion of the master bedroom. As I lay in bed and watched the water drip slowly from the ceiling to the floor, I knew that it must be mended and so I got up and went about making arrangements for the repairs.
Upon visiting the bank to take money to pay the roofer, it became apparent that the meagre funds my father had accumulated in his life were not substantial enough to sustain me beyond this one eventuality. It was the banker’s suggestion that, in lieu of me being able to climb to a more ambitious post than my employment at the greengrocer’s could offer, I should consider taking in a lodger.
I would not have entertained the idea if it were not for the fact that, as a favour to my late father, the banker insisted upon helping me write the advertisement and sending it to the local paper for printing. I was certain that he thought me entirely uneducated, but I did not have the will to challenge his opinion of me and so, instead, I allowed him to help me and I could tell from his demeanour that it pleased him greatly to do so, as though he had lent himself to some enormous act of charity.
Some days later, late enough in the evening that it was dark outside, a knock came at the door and, having forgotten about the advert entirely, I was surprised to see a woman standing on the steps. She held with her two large bags and I regarded her for a moment without speaking.
‘I’m here about the room?’ She smiled, a nervous kind of smile that held something back.
‘Oh.’ I replied thoughtlessly. ‘I mean, yes, but the room is quite small and I am not sure it is suitable for a couple.’
‘It’s just me.’ She said quickly, with a smile that painted over some soft desperation.
I thought to question the appropriateness of a single woman lodging with a man and what people may think, but instead I stepped aside and she walked in.
I don’t remember much of the conversation, or exactly what arrangement we came to for payment. For the first few weeks, we hardly spoke, except for the occasional exchange of pleasantries in the morning. It did not concern me that she did not seem to use the kitchen, or that she was rarely seen outside of her room. In fact, I rather thought that she was the ideal tenant. She seldom made any noise at all and did not leave about the place any of her possessions, keeping almost entirely to herself.
I continued my usual routine and then, on a particular evening, as I stood in the scullery stirring soup, I drifted into the gentle lull of one of my escapes, until the sound of the front door opening and closing broke my trail of thought.
Usually, such a brief interruption would hardly matter, but I heard a faint sound, as soft as a dove, and was drawn to the front of the house. I was surprised to see her standing with her back to the front door, as though holding it shut against the world outside.
She smiled, all but for her eyes which shone soft and glassy, and then she pretended that she wasn’t crying at all, turning herself away from me and muttering something about the weather or some other triviality.
I did not know how to ask her what was wrong, so I simply agreed that it was cold and told her to sit by the fire, and that I would fetch her tea.
To my surprise she did just that.
When I returned, I passed her the cup and then knelt on the floor, taking the fire iron and distractedly began rearranging the coals in the hearth.
She lay back in the armchair, lit by the glow of the fire, looking more relaxed now, holding the cup so gently I feared she may drop it.
‘Is there something troubling you?’ She asked me softly, after a few minutes, as though she may herself be the cause of my lack of conversation.
Embarrassed, I wasn’t sure how to answer. Nobody had ever asked me that before and I believe it showed on my face.
‘Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to...’ She said, surely thinking me troubled by some past experience if not her presence. I could hardly answer with the reality that in fact everything troubled me, and that was most of the problem.
‘No, no. It’s alright, it’s just nobody has ever asked me that.’ I said slowly, and then added, ‘Well, nobody who sincerely wanted an answer anyway.’
I smiled awkwardly, trying to lighten the tone because I did not want her to feel responsible for my distance.
‘I’ve always been like this.’ I continued, trying to offer reassurance. ‘I’m not in some great despair or thinking of some troubled past, in fact my life has been as uneventful as they come. I just like to think, I suppose.’
She looked back with a hint of doubt, causing her brow to furrow. ‘For hours every day?’
‘Yes. I can’t help it, I just do.’ I said jestfully, to acknowledge how silly it sounded.
She looked to the fireplace as she spoke. ‘Sometimes I’d like not to have to think at all.’
‘Well, then you’re thinking about the wrong things.’ I smiled.
‘What do you think about?’ She asked in a way that was both careful and clumsy at the same time.
‘Me?’ I said nervously. ‘Well. It’s impossible to say.’
‘It’s alright, you don’t have to tell me.’ She said, now smiling back at me.
I’m not entirely sure why, and I’m not entirely sure if she really even wanted to know, but I decided to answer her.
‘Places,’ I replied, unable to look her in the eyes. I watched the flames dance in the hearth. ‘And all of the places I imagine are different. People, there’s people too, that don’t exist, not really anyway, people I’ve never met. I wonder if they could be real sometimes, somewhere else. Stories, I suppose.’
‘I used to do that when I was a child,’ she said.
‘I think most children do. I’m not sure why exactly, but I just never stopped.’
‘Does it bring you comfort?’ She asked. ‘Happiness even?’
‘I suppose it does.’ I smiled again.
‘Tell me your favourite thing to think about.’ She looked for a second as though inside me she hoped to find a place for herself to hide, as though I may gift her a respite from whatever it was that was desperately seeking shelter from. And so, for the second time, I let her in.
‘There’s this place.’ I began talking before I’d found the words. ‘The oldest, the one I go to the most, I don’t imagine this one so much, as it sweeps over me, I just let go and escape into this scene, with slow moving animals. Even the birds, suspended in the air. All the colours are bright but soft, a landscape of gentle pastures and out on them, grazing wild horses stand on the hillside, their fur ruffled by the winds. I can reach out and touch them, they don’t flinch or bolt. Wild flowers and grass sway, but so slowly, a fraction of a movement at a time.’
She watched my face, listening intensely, and I couldn’t help but look away again and so I tried once more to busy myself, adding more coal to the fire.
‘Do you ever imagine you’re somebody else? Somebody who’s done something really important, or good?’ She asked softly.
‘I wouldn’t like to admit it but yes, I suppose, sometimes I do, more often I picture myself but a little different. It’s vain really, but I imagine myself as somebody who’s good at something, somebody who just knows what to say, somebody well travelled, somebody who learned to dance.’
‘Do you imagine you can play an instrument?’ She asked.
‘No. Well, I will now.’ I smiled.
She spoke kindly, ‘You know there’s still time to learn those things.’
‘I wouldn’t be any good at any of them, I’d never be able to pay attention long enough to learn anything. Better to just imagine, then I can do them all.’ I joked.
‘You’re funny,’ she said.
I smiled and tilted my head because I’d never been called funny before.
‘What about you? Is there something you have always wanted to do?’ I asked her.
‘Lots of things.’ She sighed softly. ‘To walk on the beach in winter, when it's snowing. Oh, and I always wanted to keep a garden filled with flowers that are all the same colour.’ She spoke, becoming more animated, then added, ‘But I didn’t think about those things for a long time.’
‘Well, now you can.’ I replied.
And so, this arrangement went on. Every evening we would sit together by the fireside, and talk about what we had both thought about that day while I was out at work, and she would drink tea and listen. As time went on, I found my stories changed and they came to wrap around her, to things that I knew would make her laugh, or smile, places where she could do all the things she ever wanted.
‘Did you ever dream of me? Before you met me.’ She asked one night, as I settled into the armchair next to hers.
I almost dropped my teacup, dashing the upholstery with flecks of brown liquid.
‘No.’ I said in honesty, but I felt a tinge of something in her mood change, so I added more truth. ‘But I do now, I think of you all the time.’
She looked like she was about to speak but I continued. ‘And since you arrived, I’ve sometimes wondered if I dreamed you, if you’re real or if this is just another thing I imagined. I mean why else would you want to stay with a strange man and to listen to childish stories?’
She smiled softly. ‘I like it here, with you, and I don’t find you strange.’
‘You don’t?’ I asked her, surprised.
‘I would say you're a daydreamer. Maybe a bit of a fantasist, but a wonderful storyteller, and never strange.’
‘But I am at best unremarkable and I’m not actually good at anything.’
‘I don’t think that.’ She said with a matter-of-factness. ‘Tell me another one.’
I paused, trying hard to think of something. ‘I haven’t been daydreaming as much, I’ve actually been mindful to stay very focused.’ I smiled at her. ‘I imagined, one day, I would find the brightest red apple, it’s perfect, and I bring it home for you. So now, I look for it when I unload the fruit every morning, but I haven’t found one as red as the one I can imagine yet.’
She reached out and touched my hand.
And for what felt like the briefest of time of my life, I was present, at least much more than I had ever been before. I stayed here in the present, to be with her.
Then, one day, after a lot of time had passed, some years later, I woke up and found that she was gone. The house once again was as silent as when my father had left.
Naturally, I was completely overwhelmed, and so I tried to hurry myself away to my daydreams. Only now, I realised that all the landscapes in all the places I had to escape to were different. She had sculpted and changed my dreamscape forever. She would haunt my every world, and all layers and colours, she would occupy them all. There was no place left where I did not see her.
Eventually, despite the pain it caused me, I realised that this was the only way I could still embrace her. I would imagine her a thousand ways. I would feel relief again, as my mind gave way to the pastures, where she stood frozen in time, her hair caught in the wind, the birds hung in the sky, the image moving only a fraction at a time so I could take in every movement.
Where I would sit by the fireside and tell her that I had decided what it was that I wanted most of all, I had finally found it. I would tell her that I loved her, and if I was good at nothing else, I would be good at this.
And I would remember the words my father said to me, that I had kept for a day when I might come to comprehend such things, or when such knowledge became useful.
I would know you were not for this world, but perhaps for the ones I held you in.