This dream was dreamed in June 1996 and is interesting because it is one of those dreams which recognisably deals with large, impersonal symbols and themes. It is also interesting because it incorporates another writer's dream.

Two or three years ago Iris Murdoch told me a dream in which she had found herself (as I remember) on a wide stone terrace in front of a large country house, looking out over a lawn. Standing there, she had seen an angel, winged and shining, skimming across the grass towards her. It had paused and she had asked either "Does God exist?" or "Is Jesus God?" (I cannot remember which, which is interesting about me) and had been told "Yes, certainly". The angel had then skimmed away round the corner of the house.

My own dream was dreamed at a time when I was worrying about Iris, who had not been very well, I was told. The first part of the dream, as I remember it, was a search for a lost man--I have many such dreams, which I always associate with my father's absence in the Air Force in the war. In all these dreams, everything will be all right, if the man can be found. In this case the man was called Mark, a name with no associations for me.

The search was in fragmented strings of narrative and settings, like chopped threads, not memorable or graspable. Then suddenly I found myself, with Iris, on the terrace which I had imagined when she told me her dream (which may, of course, bear no relation to the setting of Iris's real dream). We were looking out over the lawn, and Iris looked radiantly well and happy. I remember thinking how pink she was.

Across the lawn moved, with an extraordinary velocity, a kind of whirlwind of spiralling cut branches and grasses and long red flowers, rather like Blake's spiralling forms or Van Gogh's stars. This whirlwind made a loud humming sound, related to the sound of a large motor mower, although none was visible. Apart from the whirling object the day was still and clear and hot. I pointed to the object, and said to Iris, "He's in there. I do love him."

And Iris answered, looking radiant, "So he is. So do I."

It was only on waking that I named the whirlwind 'The Angel of Death', the classic Mower.

EDITOR'S NOTE

In building World Dream Bank I've written or read some 50,000 dreams--40,000 of my own and a good 10,000 by others--so I smugly assume I've heard every possible pun. But mower as both power lawnmower and the Angel with a Scythe... nope, that's original.

If ominous. If Byatt's dream were mine, I'd fear my friend was preparing for death, and that pleasant terrace was her chosen afterlife.

Two and a half years later, Murdoch died.

--Chris Wayan

SOURCE: The Tiger Garden: A Book of Writers' Dreams by Nicholas Royle, 1996, p.40-1

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