The House of Sleep

by Jonathan Coe

  ‘And the cool thing is,’ said Kingsley, ‘that when they’re out on a job, right, it’s always the kid that defeats the bad guys. Like that time when the two Russian spies want to come running after them, but they’ve trod on his bubblegum and their shoes are stuck to the floor?’ He and Logan laughed uproariously. ‘Or when he’s firing his gun at all those Arab guys, but it only fires ping-pong balls and they all get them stuck in their mouths?’

  ‘Do you get the picture?’ Logan asked. ‘It’s a very visual sort of idea. Very filmic.’

  Terry drew in his breath. ‘Tell me the other one,’ he said.

  Logan regarded him curiously, but if he was offended, he didn’t let it show.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Maybe this is more in your ball-park. I’ve taken an option on this novel, which is about two New York cops working on the same case. Now, you can do whatever the hell you like with the book, because all I want to keep is the title: Chalk and Cheese. Great title, isn’t it? You see, those are actually their names: Officer Chalk and Officer Cheese. And the hook is this: not only are they working on the same case, but independently they answer the same ad in the newspaper, and so they end up living together in the same apartment.’

  ‘This is great,’ said Kingsley. ‘I love this.’

  ‘One of them’s a little older, and, you know, a bit eccentric, a bit maverick, a bit of a slob…’

  ‘So we could be talking… Jim Belushi here?’

  ‘Exactly. Right. And the other guy’s young, he’s naive, he’s idealistic, he plays by the rules…’

  ‘So we’re looking for, say… Tom Cruise?’

  ‘Could be. Could easily be. And what I’m thinking of here is a sort of cross between…’

  ‘… between The Odd Couple and, say, Dirty Harry.’

  ‘Brilliant. You’ve got it. And of course there’s the boss, who’s, er… crusty, but lovable. Firm but fair.’

  ‘And black, obviously.’

  ‘Goes without saying.’

  ‘A sort of… James Earl Jones figure.’

  ‘Got it in one. And then of course we need a sort of romantic, sexual entanglement thing…’

  ‘OK, so Tom Cruise has this girlfriend, right? A little bit older, a little bit more experienced. I see a role here for, maybe, Jamie Lee Curtis.’

  ‘Yes. In a tight black dress.’

  ‘A tight, tight black dress. Tits out to here.’

  ‘You’re talking my language, Joe. Only how’s this: what Tom Cruise doesn’t know is she’s really a hooker, and Jim Belushi’s been balling her.’

  ‘Is Tom Cruise balling her?’

  ‘Of course Tom Cruise is balling her.’

  ‘Or perhaps she’s a stripper.’

  ‘Could be. She could be a stripper.’

  ‘And is he still balling her?’

  ‘Of course he’s still balling her. And Jim Belushi’s balling her. Everybody’s balling her.’

  ‘What about the boss – is he balling her?’

  ‘Hey – didn’t we say the guy was black? Keep it clean, Joe, for Christ’s sake.’ Logan turned to Terry, who had so far taken no part in this impromptu script conference. ‘I’m not getting a lot of input from you here, if you don’t mind me saying. Joe and I seem to be making all the running.’

  Terry was sitting back in his chair, his arms folded.

  ‘I think it’s a terrible idea,’ he said. ‘I already feel like I’ve seen this film about twenty times before.’

  There was a long silence, broken only by the slurping of Kingsley as he attempted to transfer a gigantic forkful of pasta into his mouth.

  ‘You think it’s terrible, huh?’ Consciously or not, Logan himself now sat back and folded his arms, imitating Terry’s posture. ‘Well, of course, if you’ve got any better ideas of your own, then I’d love to hear them. Joe here was telling me that you’re working on an original screenplay, in fact.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, that’s right,’ said Terry, rather hesitantly.

  ‘Can you tell me what it’s about?’

  ‘Sure. It’s about… well, it’s about this man, and – and his life, basically.’

  ‘His life?’ Logan raised his eyebrows. ‘Sounds good. So, does anything – does anything happen in this life, that we should know about?’

  ‘Well, yes.’ Terry sat up and dabbed at the corners of his mouth with a napkin. ‘He passes – you know, he… matures, if you like, from a young man, to a – well, initially, to a middle-aged man.’

  ‘Uh-huh. And then what?’

  ‘Well, then he grows old, and eventually, I suppose – he dies.’ Somehow, in the telling, this scenario did not sound quite as impressive as Terry had always imagined. ‘The thing is, you see, the really original thing, is that this character would be played by the same actor all the way through.’

  ‘Really? And who did you have in mind? Because you know, with a pitch like that, Hoffman and Nicholson and Redford are going to be fighting for this role. It’s going to be a real bloodbath.’

  ‘Well, obviously it needs a little fleshing out, at the moment…’

  ‘Shall I tell you the problem I have with that idea, Terry? One of the problems, anyway. To me, somehow, it all sounds a little bit small. A little bit British.’

  ‘But that –’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong. I’ve got nothing against the British. I’m half-British myself, as it happens. Did you ever hear of a man called Henry Logan?’

  ‘Sure, he was a… he was a producer too, wasn’t he?’

  ‘That’s right. He’s my father. He wrote, directed, produced – a real journeyman. Came to the States for a while in the late ’forties, early ’fifties, married his first wife – my mother, that is – but worked most of his life in Britain. Did a lot of comedies, a lot of low-budget thrillers. Didn’t aspire to any great… aesthetic status, you know, but he got films made, and every so often a good one slipped through. Finished up in the ’seventies making soft porn – it was the only work he could get.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ said Terry, not sure where this was leading.

  ‘Well, there’s a reason why that was the only work he could get. Do you know what it is?’

  Terry shook his head.

  ‘It’s people like you.’

  Suddenly he struck the table with his fist and sent the cutlery flying. Terry and Kingsley almost leaped out of their seats.

  ‘God, people like you get up my nose, Terry. You would still have a proper fucking film industry if it wasn’t for people like you. When you boys started moving in – when was it, late ‘fifties? – that was the beginning of the end. Intellectuals: angry young men: John Osborne, Woodfall Films, middle-class lefties. Suddenly we were all meant to go around proclaiming that film was an art form – as if nobody had believed that before – and every other movie was made by some public school-educated romantic giving us his view of working-class life. And it’s been the same ever since. Christ, I’ve never known a country like England for bowing down to people just because they claim to be artists! And writers! God, how you worship writers! Why else would someone like you have such an amazing opinion of yourself – even though, from what I can make out, the only thing you’ve managed to write so far could be written on the back of an envelope and still leave room for the Gettysburg Address!’

  Terry stood up. ‘Have you finished?’ he said. ‘Because I thought I’d do some shopping while I was in London.’

  ‘No, Terry, J haven’t finished,’ said Logan. ‘Nor has Joe, actually. But I think you’ll find that you’ve finished. You’ve finished your business here, so any time you want to leave…’

  ‘If these films of yours ever get made,’ said Terry, struggling for a parting shot, ‘it will be a sad day for cinema.’

  ‘And if this film of yours ever gets made, it’ll be a fucking miracle!’

  ‘If every producer in the world was like him –’ Terry turned to Kingsley now, while pointing an accusing finger in Logan’s direction ‘– then just
imagine it! There would have been no Eisenstein, no Mizoguchi, no Wenders…’

  Kingsley’s face, carbonara-spattered as it was, betrayed little emotion at this prospect.

  ‘I mean, think about that for a minute. Can you even imagine the history of the cinema without Wenders?’

  ‘No, I can’t,’ said Kingsley, truthfully. ‘I mean, someone’s got to sell you the Coke and the popcorn.’

  Logan burst into delighted laughter.

  ‘You deserve each other,’ said Terry, and walked out of the restaurant in a glow of righteousness which intensified as he walked through the streets of Mayfair towards the nearest tube station, and continued to keep him warm throughout the many hours he sat, alone, on the train back to the coast.

  ∗

  ANALYST: And why do you think you felt entitled to read your lover’s letter?

  ANALYSAND: Because I knew that she had betrayed me.

  ANALYST: It wasn’t simply because Robert had given his blessing?

  ANALYSAND: No, not at all. That had nothing to do with it.

  ANALYST: And what were your feelings when you read the letter?

  ANALYSAND: […] I don’t know how to describe them. It was like the world being turned upside down, or suddenly not making any kind of sense, finding that there was someone you thought you knew and then finding that you didn’t know them at all. I suppose it’s how a woman must feel if she goes through a cupboard and finds that her husband’s been hiding an inflatable doll or a pile of bondage magazines. Or a mother who finds out that her son’s a rapist, or something.

  ANALYST: You don’t think you’re exaggerating?

  ANALYSAND: No. It was worse. It was worse than any of those things.

  Irresolute, Sarah waited for three more days before acting on Robert’s advice, and her own jealous impulse, by opening Veronica’s letter. She waited until Friday morning, the day of the leaving party.

  She crossed the bedroom on tiptoe, even though the house, as far as she could tell, was empty, and even though she knew that Veronica wouldn’t be back all day. For a while she sat down on the bed, waiting for the courage to come to her. The weather had turned: flecks of rain speckled the window, and she could hear the waves breaking in a long, muted roar. It was eleven o’clock in the morning.

  Finally she opened the desk and took out the envelope. It was franked, not stamped, and bore a London postmark. Veronica’s name and address were typed. It had been opened cleanly, with a knife, and inside was a single sheet of thick, embossed paper.

  At the top was a printed letterhead, which gave the name of a well-known London merchant bank.

  The letter said:

  Dear Miss Stuart,

  Thank you for coming to see us last Thursday. We are very pleased to offer you a position as junior dealer in our foreign exchange room, at a starting salary of £43,725 per annum, plus commission and bonuses as previously discussed.

  We look forward to seeing you here at 8.30 a.m. on Monday September 3rd, and would like to offer our best wishes on the start of what we hope will be a long and profitable career in financial services.

  Her first thought was that she was going to be sick. She felt the gorge rising in her throat and leaned forward, clutching her stomach, ready to run for the bathroom. But this soon passed. She replaced the letter in the drawer of Veronica’s desk and went to the window, staring out over the ocean and trying to push aside her fury, her slow-burning anger at having allowed herself to be deceived, so that she might see past it and try to remember any small detail, any potential clue which might have warned her that something like this was going to happen.

  She could remember nothing. All she could remember was that she and Veronica were meant to be meeting in the Café Valladon at three o’clock that afternoon. It was to have been their last visit, but Sarah knew now that she wouldn’t go. It was no place to have an argument. It was no place to split up with someone.

  12

  The next morning, Terry awoke.

  An ordinary enough event in the lives of most people, perhaps: but not for him. The sensation of passing from sleep to wakefulness had eluded Terry for more than a decade, and although today he could not have identified it as such with any certainty, he was at least aware, as soon as dawn began to glimmer around the edges of his bedroom’s small, thickly curtained window, that something new and exceptional had taken place. He felt profoundly refreshed, and was convinced that he had been unconscious for much longer than usual. Carefully ungluing and disentangling himself from the electrodes, he left his bedroom, waved good morning to Lorna (crouched bleary-eyed over her computer screen and habitual cup of tea) and went out on to the terrace to watch the sun rising over the headland. It was five o’clock. His brain coursed with energy, like a recharged battery; his limbs felt strong and supple; each one of his senses was primed, alert. Life had never seemed so brimful of potential.

  Dr Dudden, on the other hand, did not emerge from his bedroom that morning. He had drunk far too much red wine and brandy the night before, and having slept straight through his alarm at ten past three, would remain in a deep, unwavering sleep for the next nine hours (very nearly missing the train he was scheduled to take in the afternoon). And so it was Lorna herself, her reams of computer paper billowing in the sea breeze, who came out to inform Terry that at one point during the night he had spent no fewer than eighty-seven minutes in Stage 3 sleep: his first passage through a genuine, restful, delta-wave sleep stage.

  ‘You seem to be starting to normalize,’ she said. ‘I’d say that as far as your sleep patterns were concerned, you’re about to join the rest of the human race again. How do you intend to celebrate?’

  ‘A day trip to London, I think,’ said Terry cheerfully. ‘There’s something I have to find.’

  ∗

  Sarah slept badly, having spent much of the night replaying in her mind the more acrimonious highlights of her telephone conversation with Alison’s mother. Their argument had ended with the promise that an official complaint about Sarah’s conduct would be lodged with her headmistress first thing tomorrow morning. Sarah was therefore not surprised to find a message waiting for her in the staff room as soon as she arrived at school.

  ‘I know exactly what this is about,’ she said, on entering Mrs Palmer’s office and being waved into a chair. ‘It’s Alison, isn’t it? Her mother’s been on the phone to you already.’

  ‘Yes. She phoned about ten minutes ago. She seemed rather agitated.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘It was all a little confused and overwrought, to be honest. Something to do with your having taken Alison to see a pornographic film. Which strikes me, I have to admit, as unlikely. Perhaps I’d better hear your side of the story first.’

  During the course of this speech, Sarah began to relax slightly. She remembered that Eileen Palmer had never treated her with anything other than fairness and generosity; and that, in the three years they had worked together, they had fought so many battles side by side, worked so hard to clear for each other a pathway through the new legislative and administrative jungle that had sprung up around them, that they had forged for themselves an indissoluble alliance. She knew that if she told the truth, she had nothing to fear from her.

  ‘I found Alison Hill sitting by herself in Finsbury Park yesterday afternoon,’ she began. ‘I asked her what she was doing there and she said that she couldn’t go home because her mother wouldn’t be back from work until seven o’clock, and she’d lost her key to the house. In the circumstances I thought that I had no option but to take her home with me. We went to a café and after that we were walking past a cinema, and it occurred to me that she might like to go and see a film. I remembered the title of one of the films from a review in the newspaper, which had made it sound like something suitable for the whole family. It had a certificate which seemed to confirm this view. Anyway, when we got inside and the film started I found that it was extremely sexist, and very violent and… generally objectio
nable, on every level. So I decided that we should leave. I went to the toilet and then came back, ready to take Alison away, but she’d gone. Disappeared. Run off.’

  Eileen was listening attentively. She was frowning, but it was an encouraging frown: a pucker of concentration.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘That was when I realized that I’d been stupid. The first thing I should have found out was Alison’s address, but I didn’t have it. So I had to come all the way back here, get Derek to let me into the secretaries’ room, and look it up in the files. I phoned Alison’s home from here, and her mother answered. She’d found her sitting on the front doorstep when she got back from work – very upset, apparently. The film seemed to have disturbed her quite a lot and she cried about it for some time. So her mother gave me a bit of an earful about that and accused me of making a serious error of judgment, and I told her that she obviously wasn’t looking after her daughter properly if I’d found her wandering around a public park for three hours by herself without supervision, and it all got… quite nasty, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, you obviously put her on the defensive. She is, in my experience, quite a combative woman.’

  ‘Oh, so you have… you have met Mrs Hill?’

  ‘Ms Hill is her preferred designation, I think. Yes, she’s been to several parents’ meetings this year.’

  ‘And Mr – I mean, her husband, partner, whatever?’

  ‘No. I know nothing about him. I don’t even know if there is one.’

  ‘I’ve got this feeling…’ Sarah leaned forward, more confident now, feeling herself drawn in by the mystery surrounding this family. ‘I’ve got this feeling that he may be dead. That he may have died only recently.’

  ‘Really? What’s given you that idea?’

  ‘It’s just something about Alison… she seems to have this thing about death. She read out a poem she’d written in Norman’s class the other day, and it was…’