LAURA AS AN ANGEL

A dream and its significance

Laura was an angel. No, I don’t mean just a very pretty girl with legs most men would die to gaze at but a real live angel complete with wings and a heart of gold. That’s how I saw her in my sleep at night.

And in those dreams she lived in the Back of Beyond. At least she did when I dreamed last night. She said so.

Where’s that, you might ask.

Well, there are all sorts of places where you might find Laura, mostly at night and mostly when your eyes are closed. And when you look at her she’s usually with Bramble and mostly smiling if she isn’t laughing with him, and it makes me sort of hate Bramble.

But Bramble’s an angel as well. You can tell by the wings, so don’t let anyone tell you that all angels are all female because Bramble most obviously isn’t. He’s a man angel with muscles to prove it, and a hairy chest that he doesn’t care who looks at.

It was the other night that I almost bumped into Laura.

I’d seen her before, of course, but never quite so up close. Even the night before when I’d followed the two angels down a path that led along the banks of a stream that I’d never seen before, and this account might stretch your imagination when I tell you my eyes were fast shut, yet there the angels were.

And I could hear them as they talked and laughed with each other. They sounded personal. I could imagine them even kissing each other, not that they did that.

But I was furious. Of course I was because iwhen I’m awake Laura has no wings and is my wife, and I’m not trying to suggest that my wife’s no angel because I know damned well she is.

So I told her about my dream.

“Last night it happened again,” I said, “there you were in my dream, tiny like a doll and with beautiful angelic wings, and smiling like the sweetheart that you are, but with that fellow you go to work with.”

“You mean Bramble?” she asked.

“That’s the one! You were tiny and so was he, hairy chest and all, and talking together as though you were lovebirds!”

She frowned. “That sounds terribly as though you were jealous of silly old Bramble!”

“Any man would if he sees the love of his life walking along the banks of a lonely stream with him!”

“Then to put your mind at rest the only time I’m anywhere near him is when he gets off his bus and I get off mine and we walk the last few yards to the office gates, then he goes to the fourth floor while I make my way to the second!”

“I know that! It’s just that when I dream you shrink to become a tiny angel with gossamer wings…” I told her.

“And he’s a burly bloke with a hairy chest? How on Earth would you know whether he’s hirsute like you dream he is, or not?”

“I don’t, so you tell me!” I said, foolishly.

“This is silly,” she almost exploded, “he never exposes his chest at work, or any other part of him,” she told me, and her normal pretty smile had shrivelled to become pursed lips and anger.

“What’s the matter with you this morning?” I asked mildly.

“Well, you and your petty dreams! Turning me into what you think an angel might look like, and as far as I’m concerned angels are from the Old Testament and all were male! The ancients who thought them up didn’t have much time for women!”

“Then they didn’t know what they were missing,” I said, trying to placate her.

“Fairies then. Maybe what you dreamed up were fairies, and you shrunk me down to be like a creature from the top of any old Christmas tree, and made me fall for the sixty year-old Bramble, and that isn’t his really his name but what everyone calls him because every autumn he goes into the wild and picks blackberries so that he can make his blackberry plonk! And it isn’t that great. He brings the odd bottle to work and we have to suffer it!”

“So he even gets you drunk?” I muttered moodily. You see, I really love Laura and the idea that any man, even a sixty year-old baldie, should give her strong liquor without me knowing went some way to upsetting me.

“His stuff wouldn’t inebriate a flea!” she said, scowling.

“Anyway, I don’t like it when you’re with him,” I muttered surlily.

“Walking through the gates to our offices when our buses happen to arrive at the same time? Now you’re being silly and I’ve heard enough of your nonsense,” she said. “Bramble’s a nice enough guy, but for starters he’s twice my age and secondly he’s gay!”

“He is?”

“Everyone knows it! That’s why he spends his Septembers in the wild filling bags with blackberries and other things is he reckons he can find! He tells me during the few seconds we walk through the gates together! He goes on about it as though his home brewing was the most important thing in his life, though he does like with an older bloke called, let me remember, Justin, I think.”

“And they, you know what together?”

“How on Earth would I know what they do together? Though I shouldn’t think its that much seeing as he spends all that time with his wine-making.”

I frowned and thought for a moment. “I’ll try not to see him in my dreams then,” I said.

“I don’t care what you see in your dreams, Lucien,” she said to me with a stubborn frown, “because I think we should have a trial separation. All this shrinking me down to the size of a fairy and pairing me off with another, much older, bloke isn’t good for me and it isn’t good for our marriage!”

“It’s only a dream!” I was shocked at her need for a separation because my love for her is so deep that I can’t imagine what life would be like without her.

“Then why did you tell me about it? I don’t waffle on about my dreams to you, do I? Dreams are silly fantasies and it sounds to me as though you’re part way to believing them!”

“I only mentioned it in passing,” I said, stepping off my high horse for a moment.

“Shrinking me to become insignificant? Don’t you think that suggests something? That maybe that’s how you see me? An insignificant decoration in your life while you spend your lonely days dreaming of tarts whilst shrinking me to nearly nothing?”

“Not at all!” I was lost for anything to say, and realised how stupid I’d been getting jealous of the love of my life by dreaming of her out with another man, and an elderly one at that.

“Well now you know how you’ve hurt me. I’m off to work, and let’s see what Bramble makes of it all when I tell him!”

“You’ll tell him?”

“Of course I will! If you can put him in an affair with me in a dream, then don’t you think he ought to know? So I suggest you get in touch with a solicitor!”

“Why?”

“To make sure I don’t take you for absolutely everything you’ve got!” she replied, pulling on her little black jacket and making sure the clip-on brooch of a rose was perfectly straight.

“But Laura! It wasn’t anything important…” I protested.

“I did read that what we dream of can be a guide in our lives, can reflect our innermost fears and hopes,” she said, “and by shrinking me you’ve showed that’s where I am in your heart. A shrunken wizened creature that doesn’t really matter to you.”

“And now you’re off to tell Bramble all about it?”

“I would, but I’ve got today off. I’m actually off to keep an appointment at the doctor’s.”

“Why? Is something wrong?

“Not at all, Lucien. I’m pregnant, if you must know, developing a sweet little embryo inside me while you’re dreaming of a dwarf with my face and wings! You silly, silly man!”

“So you’re not going to tell Bramble alll about it?”

She smiled that wonderful smile, the one that had stolen my heart several years ago and was probably the conductress of my nocturnal imaginings. “Not unless he’s the father,” she said, “and are you coming with me to find out about the real tiny shrunken baby in your life?”

© Peter Rogerson 03.07.22

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