The Forgotten Affairs of Youth by Alexander McCall Smith Page A

there was an explanation for why dreams were so hard to hold on to.
    “That’s precisely why our memory for dreams is so short term,” said Isabel. “We remember them for the first few minutes after waking up, and then they go. You must have experienced that. We know dreams aren’t worth remembering because they’re stories that never happened.”
    “But they did happen,” said Jane. “In one sense a dream is an event; it’s something that happened to you, if you see what I mean. The fact of having that particular experience—the thing that happens in your dream—is an event, and a significant one at that.”
    Isabel frowned. A dog ran across the path in front of them, chasing a ball thrown by its owner. Dogs dreamed, did they not? You saw them sleeping on the floor, their legs twitching in an arrested, stationary run. Yet dogs, by the nature of the doggy mind—and doggy consciousness was a very obscure matter—had no concept of dreaming. The experiences they had in their dream, then, must be absolutely real to them, if they remembered anything on waking up. And how would one be able to tell that? Perhaps by observation: one could watch the dog as it woke, and see whether it looked about as if to locate whatever it had been pursuing in the dream—a rabbit, perhaps, or a cat. If a dog looked for a rabbit, then it must have thought the rabbit was there. One did not have to be a philosopher to work
that
out.
    She tore herself away from speculations on canine thought processes and returned to what Jane had just said. Yes, of course dreams were significant because they told us a great deal about what was going on within the subconscious mind; if one forgot everything else that Freud had said, then that, at least, would remain. But did the bundle of responses and strategies within us that dictated the reactive behaviour of the organism—did
it
know that dreams were important and should be remembered? She considered not.
    Thoughts of memory prompted actual recollections.
    “There’s something I’ve just remembered,” Jane said. “You said that our memories alight on different things, sometimes rather arbitrarily. Well, I just remembered a colleague, years ago when I was teaching at Macquarie, who held the most extraordinary grudge. He had lent a tent to another colleague who wanted to go camping up in Queensland. Apparently it was a rather good tent, and it proved to be pretty useful to the person who borrowed it. He had mistimed his trip a bit, and he hit the beginning of the rainy season up north. We call it the wet. Anyway, the tent came in useful, but got pretty soaked.”
    “I went camping as a girl,” said Isabel. “It rained every time.”
    Scottish rain, she knew, had nothing on the Australian
wet
, but it could sometimes seem like that, particularly in the western Highlands. The whole
point
of those Highlands, some said, was to block the clouds coming in off the Atlantic and make them declare their water—which they obligingly did, sometimes for days on end.
    “Well, you may know,” Jane continued, “that you have to be careful to dry a tent. This man didn’t. He left it folded up when it was still damp and then he handed it back. When the owner opened it to repack it, he found that it had turned mouldy.”
    “Inconsiderate of his friend.”
    “Yes. My colleague was furious.
And he never forgot.
He mentioned it for the next twenty years. Often.”
    “Unfinished business,” said Isabel and added, “That tent needed closure.”
    Jane threw a sideways glance at Isabel.
    “In a manner of speaking,” Isabel said hurriedly. “Closure has become a bit of a cliché, don’t you find? Everybody talks about wanting closure. The concept of closure, perhaps, needs closure.”
    They were now nearing the point where Jawbone Walk joined Middle Meadow Walk; it was a spot that for some reason seemed popular with dogs and their owners, as natural a meeting place, perhaps, as the
agora
had been in