The House of Sleep

by Jonathan Coe

  Sarah nodded. ‘Yes, I can see… I can see exactly how something like that might happen.’

  Rebecca drained off the last of her wine. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, upending the bottle over her glass. A few droplets spilled out. ‘I’m sorry I was so hostile to you earlier. I underestimated you. You get used to assuming that everyone else is going to be conventional; censorious.’

  ‘That’s OK.’ Sarah looked at her watch. ‘I should go now, anyway. I’ve got forms to fill in before tomorrow. The never-ending nightmare.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  As they stood in the centre of the room, facing one another, there seemed to be no obvious way of bringing this extraordinary evening to a close. Finally Sarah remembered the business which had brought her there in the first place.

  ‘I don’t know if we have anything more to discuss,’ she said. ‘About Alison, I mean.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry I complained about that. I went way over the –’

  ‘No, it’s good that you did. Now we’ll both be looking out for her. I’m sure she’s going to be all right.’

  ‘I hope so,’ Rebecca murmured. ‘I’m doing my best.’ She waited for a shy moment, before admitting: ‘There is one thing, anyway… One bright spot on the horizon.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I think I may have met someone. Someone new.’

  ‘Oh?’ Sarah felt a quick, tiny sense of deflation: the premature thwarting of some unacknowledged hope.

  ‘She works in publishing,’ Rebecca said. ‘So far we’ve only seen each other a few times, but… it’s been good. You know, we’re taking it slowly.’

  ‘That’s wonderful,’ said Sarah: and meant it.

  They fell silent, until Rebecca added brightly, changing the subject: ‘I like your hair, by the way.’

  ‘Really?’ Sarah was pleased, and found herself blushing; she was not used to compliments. ‘I keep thinking about dyeing it, but people seem to like it like this.’

  ‘It looks great.’

  They walked to the front door together, and said goodnight on the steps with a hug: longer, probably, and more charged than either of them had intended. It was a warm night, humid and starry. Sarah said that she would walk home. It would only take fifteen minutes or so.

  Just as she was leaving, Rebecca asked: ‘What was it – what was it exactly – that made you realize it was her? You said you recognized some of her things…’

  ‘It was a book,’ said Sarah. ‘You’ve got a book on your shelf called The House of Sleep. We used to read it together. It was something we shared.’

  Rebecca hesitated. ‘Can you find it for me? I don’t know her books very well.’

  So they went back inside, and Sarah stretched up on tiptoe to reach the copy of Frank King’s novel.

  ‘This is it.’

  She tried to hand it over, but Rebecca pushed it back towards her.

  ‘I don’t want it,’ she said. ‘I’d like you to have it. You should have something of hers, and if it was special to you, then…’

  Sarah said nothing; just clasped the book tightly.

  ‘Call me, will you? Some time soon.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sarah. ‘Yes, I will.’

  And as she set off down the tree-lined street, packed densely at this late hour with parked cars, their roofs glinting with the silver glow of the street lamps, she thought to herself that Veronica could not have forgotten her, not completely, in the intervening years, because a copy of this book would not have been easy to find: she must have searched diligently for it in the secondhand shops. ‘She was less tied down by the past than anyone I’ve ever known,’ Rebecca had said, but some small voice within Sarah wanted to question the truth of this. Against her will – because the fact of her suicide was still intolerable, unthinkable – she found herself imagining Veronica as she might have looked that night, the last night of her life: the car rushing towards the wall of the cul-de-sac, white and brilliant in the glare of the headlamps. Might the faintest memory of their friendship, some thin reminiscent flicker, have passed through her mind during that instant? Sarah’s eyes were stinging with tears again, as she wondered

  Stage Four

  13

  wondered where she could possibly be. They had arranged to meet at the Café Valladon at three o’clock, but when Veronica arrived, the place was empty. She sat at the table nearest the door, smoked two cigarettes, and drank a mug of coffee.

  It wasn’t like Sarah to be late.

  At three forty-five, Veronica decided she might as well return to Ashdown. Tomorrow was Saturday, the day they would all be leaving, mainly back to their parents’ homes for the early part of the summer. She had her cases to pack, and the evening’s farewell party to prepare for. Perhaps, in the organizational fluster and confusion, Sarah had simply forgotten about their appointment: but this was surprising, since they had both agreed that there were sound sentimental reasons for paying a final visit to the Café, the place where they had first met, all those months ago.

  In any case, it was clear that she wasn’t coming. Veronica went over to the counter and dropped a fifty-pence piece into the little sugar bowl next to the till.

  ‘Keep the change,’ she said, as usual.

  Slattery, engrossed in a copy of Richard Rorty’s Consequences of Pragmatism, looked up and grunted.

  Veronica paused as she reached the door.

  ‘I shall miss our conversations,’ she said.

  This produced no response.

  ‘The cut and thrust,’ she added. ‘The give and take. The easy repartee.’

  Crushed, finally, by his silence, she started to turn the door handle, only to hear him say: ‘You’re going, then?’

  She wheeled around, disbelieving, sensing a minor victory.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re leaving town. You’ve finished.’

  ‘That’s right. All of us.’

  Slattery had done the impossible: laid his book down, and risen to his feet. Veronica realized that this was the first time she had seen him standing. He was surprisingly short.

  ‘Take something, if you want,’ he said. ‘A souvenir.’

  Veronica suspected some inscrutable Slattery-esque joke.

  ‘Do you mean that?’

  ‘A book or something.’

  She looked into his impassive, bristly face, and decided that he was sincere.

  ‘Any book?’

  He waved his arm, in an all-inclusive gesture.

  With no need for reflection, Veronica went to the shelf above her regular table and plucked down The House of Sleep, by Frank King.

  ‘This was always my favourite,’ she explained.

  ‘It’s yours,’ said Slattery.

  She opened the door, stepped out, blinking, into the sunshine, and walked down the High Street with the book clutched to her heart, which for some reason was thumping wildly.

  She had intended to tell Sarah about this incident, but never did. When she opened the door to their bedroom, Sarah was sitting on the bed, staring up at her. In her hand was the letter from the merchant bank.

  Veronica took a deep breath and said: ‘Let’s just try and talk about this reasonably, shall we?’

  ∗

  ANALYST: Why do you find it such a hard evening to talk about?

  ANALYSAND: I don’t find it hard to talk about.

  ANALYST:… I have the impression that you’re holding something back.

  ANALYSAND: I’m not holding anything back. I just don’t remember much about it, to be honest.

  ANALYST: There’s a fine line between forgetting an event, and suppressing the memory of it.

  [ANALYSAND’S response unrecorded.]

  It was some time now since Robert had stood up when going to the toilet. Even at moments like this, when he was in a hurry, and bursting to go, and there would probably be someone else waiting outside, he preferred to sit down and take his time over it. The idea of standing over the toilet and pointing in th
e vague direction of the bowl and splashing everywhere repulsed him. He hated the thought of it.

  He sat on the toilet with his head in his hands, leaning forward, rocking slightly. It had been a long evening, and an excessive one: everyone seemed overwrought, and everyone had had too much to drink. The sensible ones had already gone to bed, a little while ago. Terry was holding court in the kitchen, now, drawing upon his repertoire of jokes which were gradually getting dirtier and funnier. He could hear the laughter. Sarah’s laughter among them.

  But Sarah and Veronica had split up, that was the incredible thing. She had told him this evening. It was over. Their affair, and his ordeal, were over.

  Where did this leave him, exactly?

  On his way back to the kitchen, he had intended to stand in the doorway for a while, to take in the scene with a modicum of objectivity and decide whether he wanted to rejoin it or whether it was time to slip quietly upstairs to bed. But there now appeared to be little question of standing, either in the doorway or anywhere else: the moment he tried to stop still, or relinquish the momentum of walking, he could tell that he was about to collapse; and so, pushing to the back of his mind the realization that he was by now very drunk indeed, drunker perhaps than he had been in his entire life, he lurched back towards the kitchen table and sank gratefully into the seat next to Sarah. There were still at least ten or eleven of them around the table, and it was crowded, so that he and Sarah were sitting squashed together, leaning drunkenly into each other as Terry continued with his story and laughter rippled from person to person.

  ‘… so he decides to buy his wife an anniversary present, it’s their tenth anniversary, and he thinks to himself – I know, I’ll buy her a pet…’

  The table was covered with half-empty bottles and glasses. Robert couldn’t remember which glass was his. He tasted the liquid at the bottom of one glass, found that it was whisky, and refilled it. It tasted unbelievably sour.

  ‘… so he goes into a pet shop and the pet shop owner says, Well, why don’t you get her a puppy? and he says, No, she’s already got a puppy; so then the man says, Well what about a parrot? and he says, No, she’s already got a parrot…’

  He was conscious of Sarah’s arm brushing against his, and her shoulder weighing heavy against him as she reached across for a bottle. She was drinking gin, neat: all the mixers had long ago disappeared. She was already leaning forward in anticipation of Terry’s punchline, laughter straining at the corners of her mouth: but her eyes were dull, tired.

  ‘… so he says, Well, how about this then? and he gets this creature and puts it out on the counter. And the man says, What is it? and the pet shop owner tells him, and he says, That’s perfect, so he puts it in a box and he takes it home to his wife…’

  Veronica was sitting at the far end of the table from Sarah, so there was little eye contact between them. Nor had they spoken to each other all evening: but each was clearly determined to prove a point by staying until the end of the party. Veronica was drinking tap water. From time to time, unobserved, she looked across sharply at Robert and Sarah as they sat wedged together over their drinks.

  ‘… so he gets home and gives her the present and she unwraps it and there, sitting in the box, is this enormous green frog, with a huge mouth and puffed-up lips, just sitting there and staring at her…’

  Robert wanted to leave. He badly wanted to leave, but he couldn’t bring himself to move from Sarah’s side. How had they come to be sitting together like this? Whose decision had it been?

  ‘… so she takes one look at this animal, and says, What the fuck is that? And he says, That, my dear, is a South American cocksucking frog…’

  Everyone was laughing, by now, but Sarah’s laughter was the loudest. It was almost hysterical. Robert looked at her, saw her quivering jaw and heaving shoulders, and was suddenly alarmed. There was something wrong.

  ‘… and she says, What am I supposed to do with it? And he says, Well, you can teach it to cook, and then fuck off.’

  In the new eruption of laughter, the second wave, Sarah and Robert were thrown against each other, and for a few seconds they clung together, limp with hilarity: but when he tried to raise her from this position, to push her away slightly, he found that her body was inert. Her limbs drooped uselessly, and she flopped over him like a rag doll, her eyes wide open and her mouth fixed in a grinning rictus. He started shaking her.

  ‘Sarah! Sarah, what’s the matter?’

  All around the table, the laughter died down as people stared at her flaccid body in Robert’s arms.

  ‘My God, I thought J was pissed,’ someone said: but the joke provoked no amusement.

  ‘Has she passed out?’

  Veronica stood up and came to Robert’s help. ‘She’ll be all right. I’ve seen this happen before. It won’t last for long.’ She sat beside Sarah, took one of her arms and, together, they gently eased her into an upright position, so that she sagged between them. ‘Have some water ready for her. Cool water.’ Then she murmured softly into her ear: ‘It’s all right, Sarah. Come on. It’s OK. Wake up now…’

  Slowly, after only a few more seconds, the life started to return to Sarah’s eyes, and her body tautened as she regained control of her muscles. She blinked and yawned, like someone waking from a sleep filled with absorbing dreams.

  ‘Oh God, I… oh, that was a bad one…’

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Robert, leaning over her. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Did you know what was happening?’

  ‘Of course she knew what was happening,’ said Veronica. ‘She –’

  ‘Yes. I could hear what you were all saying. There was just nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t move.’ Placing both hands on the table, she pushed herself gingerly to her feet. ‘Listen, I’m sorry to break up the party, but – I have to get to bed, I think…’

  Whether because Sarah’s odd behaviour had shattered the mood, or from a more general sense that the evening had run its natural course, there was now a collective sliding-back of chairs as people followed her lead, with yawns and nods of agreement and murmurs of assent; so that within a few minutes the party was broken up, and ragged groups of people were dispersing down the various corridors with scarcely a word of goodnight to one another.

  Climbing the staircase to the first floor, Sarah still found herself flanked by both Robert and Veronica, hovering solicitously even though she no longer looked any more frail or unhealthy than the rest of them. Terry was just a few steps behind.

  At the top of the stairs, Sarah turned to Veronica and said, in a tense flurry of words: ‘I think Michele’s room’s empty tonight. I’ll sleep there.’

  Veronica muttered something inaudible, and walked off in the direction of her room. Then Terry said goodnight, adding that he would speak to them both in the morning before he left. And then they were alone.

  The house was very quiet. It seemed to have taken no time at all for everyone to go to bed.

  ‘That was quite an evening,’ Robert said, feebly, when the silence began to seem oppressive.

  Sarah had started to look at him in a strange way: with an unsteady, birdlike intensity. She showed no sign of wanting to move. Robert struggled to remember where Michèle’s room was, so that he could guide her there. Soon he remembered that it was at the top of the staircase: exactly where they were already standing, in fact.

  ‘Are you sure you’re feeling all right now?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, thanks: I’m much better,’ said Sarah; her eyes never leaving him.

  ‘Good. You had us all worried back there. And this has happened before, has it?’

  ‘Once or twice, yes.’

  ‘You should see a doctor about it.’

  ‘It’s nothing, really. I just get a bit carried away if I laugh too much.’

  Someone was still around: there was a small bang and a crash of glass from the kitchen, and then a light went off in the corridor downstairs.

  ‘Do you want me to help you
into bed?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Sarah. It was quite dark now, but her eyes continued to shine, lit by a pale, listless gleam. ‘I’d like you to come to bed with me, actually.’

  Robert’s next words, although he would never be able to remember them, were: ‘That maybe isn’t such a good idea.’

  The light in Sarah’s eyes was at once extinguished. She said: ‘No,’ and the word hung between them in the darkness and the silence, final, irrevocable.

  ‘I mean,’ Robert said, ‘this might not be the best time, or –’

  Sarah had reached the door, had eased it open, was about to disappear.

  ‘Goodnight, Robert,’ she said.

  He cried out her name; or imagined that he did. Then the door closed, and was locked.

  Dumb with shock, Robert stood in the darkness, staring at the closed door. No beam of light issued from beneath it: Sarah had not turned on any of the lamps in her room. He did not know whether to move forward and knock on the door, or turn and go back to his own room. He turned, and took a few steps back along the corridor; then stopped, and stood bewildered again in the darkness, shivering, paralysed by indecision, clenching and unclenching his fists. He took a few steps backwards, turned, then tiptoed towards Sarah’s door. He stood beside it, listening, holding his breath. After a second or two he began to suspect, and was then absolutely certain, that she was standing just on the other side of the door, leaning against it, listening to his own irresolute movements in the hallway. It seemed extraordinary then that he could not reach out and touch her, separated as they were only by an inch or two of wood. He listened closely and thought that he could hear her breathing: deep, excited breaths. The brush of a hand, or a body, against the door panel: the texture of cloth against wood. But then another noise – a bump from somewhere deeper in the room, which could have been someone knocking against a bed, or the sound of a shoe falling to the floor – made him think again. He reached up his hand to knock on the door; wondered what he would say when she answered; shook this thought away as neurotic, irrelevant; made as if to knock, then faltered. His knuckle, instead of rapping on the door, made contact with his eyeball, which he rubbed fiercely. A sob shook his body: he was so drunk, and so tired. He turned and made off swiftly down the corridor, back towards his room.