The House of Sleep

by Jonathan Coe

  He had to wait several minutes at the station for a taxi, and it was after eleven o’clock by the time he was deposited on the front steps of Ashdown. At this hour of the night, he would have expected the house to be darkened and quiescent, the patients all at rest in their bedrooms, the only real activity being the frantic scratching of the polysomnograph pens as they traced their electrically determined patterns (and, of course, the ceaseless pattering – just as frantic, even though hidden – of the unwilling participants in Dr Dudden’s experiment). Instead, a rather different scene awaited him: there were three women sitting outside on the brightly lit terrace, and the warm night air rang with the sounds of their laughing voices and the clinking of bottles and glasses. The women were Dr Madison, Maria Granger, and Barbara Daintry, the sleepwalker.

  Seeing him climbing the steps, Maria called out: ‘Hey! Harry – what are you up to?’

  ‘The name’s Terry,’ he said, strolling over.

  ‘Terry – Harry – whatever: what are you doing sneaking in at this time of night?’

  Maria was a cheery, outgoing, middle-aged Londoner who had already made several friendly overtures towards Terry during the last few days. She was a big woman, with many chins and a mouth that seemed poised permanently on the edge of a subversive smile. Her stomach was vast, and her breasts enormous. Partly, he had been told, her size was the result of the drugs she was obliged to take to counteract the symptoms of her chronic narcolepsy; but Maria was also the first to admit that her marked penchant for chocolate doughnuts and strawberry cheesecake was a contributing factor. Terry liked her; as did everybody at the clinic, with the exception of Dr Dudden.

  ‘I’ve been to London for the day,’ he said.

  ‘I see: playing truant.’

  ‘In a manner of speaking, yes.’

  ‘Are you going to have a drink with us, then? We could do with some male company.’

  ‘Aren’t we all supposed to be in bed by now?’

  ‘He’s not here, though – Doctor Death. He went off to a conference this afternoon. And besides, it’s my last night tonight, so I’m celebrating. You know – while the cat’s away…’

  ‘… the mice can relax a little bit,’ Terry concluded. For Dr Madison’s benefit he added: ‘As can the rats, I hope.’ She didn’t reply, and her face betrayed no complicity. ‘All right, then,’ he said. ‘I’ll just take these things upstairs, then I’ll come and join you.’

  By the time he returned, Dr Madison had disappeared.

  ‘She’s gone to bed,’ said Maria.

  ‘She works too hard, that woman,’ said Barbara. ‘He drives her into the ground.’

  Maria passed Terry a paper cup, filled almost to overflowing with white wine.

  ‘So,’ he said, after his first sip, ‘are you looking forward to re-entering the real world?’

  ‘I’m looking forward to seeing my kids again. And my husband. I’ve missed them. But I’ve enjoyed it here, actually. Two weeks by the seaside. It’s been a laugh.’

  ‘She loves a laugh,’ Barbara said, and they both giggled. ‘You should see what happens to her when she laughs. She goes all peculiar.’

  ‘Oh, don’t get me started,’ said Maria, the giggles giving way to something throatier, more deeply rooted. ‘Don’t start telling me jokes. You know I can’t stand that.’

  ‘Why?’ said Terry. ‘What happens when you laugh?’

  ‘She goes all limp,’ said Barbara. ‘She goes limp and strange all over. You know when you say someone’s helpless with laughter? Well that’s what happens to her.’

  ‘Now don’t start winding me up,’ said Maria, already fighting for control of her facial muscles. ‘Don’t you dare get me going with one of your jokes.’

  ‘What about that one you told me?’ said Barbara. ‘About the man with the banana.’ She turned to Terry. ‘There was this man, and he had three bananas, you see. He gets on to this crowded bus in the rush hour, and he doesn’t want them to get squashed, so he puts one in his breast pocket, one in his side pocket, and one in his back pocket…’

  With what seemed to be a serious effort of will, Maria stifled her own laughter and interrupted Barbara forcefully, saying: ‘Come on, knock it off, will you? Give me a break here. I don’t want to do it in front of Harry –’

  ‘Terry.’

  ‘Terry. I mean, I’m not proud of it, you know. I don’t like people seeing me that way.’

  ‘I’m sorry, love,’ said Barbara, chastened, full of contrition. ‘I just thought he’d be interested.’

  ‘Yes, well, I’m not a bloody exhibit.’ For Terry’s benefit, she explained: ‘When you’re narcoleptic, you see, you have this thing called cataplexy. So when you laugh – it’s usually laughter that brings it on – you go into a sort of faint. You lose control. You can feel it happening. It’s been happening to me for thirty years or more, but they only worked out what was causing it a couple of years ago. So I’ve got to cut down on my laughter, now, because it tires me out, going funny like that all the time. All my friends and family and that, they all think it’s hilarious, seeing me fall over and pass out, they’re always winding me up, always trying to set me off, get me giggling. Well, it’s a way of life with me, isn’t it? Always has been. I’ve always loved a laugh. I mean, how do you get through life otherwise? You’ve got to laugh to survive…’

  And Terry was reminded, at this point, of the farewell party at Ashdown all those years ago, and suddenly he realized what had happened to Sarah that evening, when she had reacted so strangely to his jokes and they had all assumed that she had collapsed from drinking too much. And all at once this memory of the past reached into the present, colouring it, transforming it, so that something happened to Terry which had not happened for many years: a change took place within him, and he was able to look at Maria and to sympathize with her – to feel real sympathy, after all this time, with another human being – watching her face and reading its mixture of sadness and glee, thinking what it must be like to crave laughter, to crave it more than anything else and yet always to deny yourself, knowing that it was the instrument of your destruction, just as the rats on Dr Dudden’s turntables were forced to deny themselves sleep every time they showed a yearning for it…

  ‘And has it helped?’ he asked. ‘Has it helped, coming to this place?’

  ‘Well, they’ve given me some new drugs,’ said Maria. ‘I don’t know how much good they’ll do. The main thing’s being able to talk about it. Cleo’s been great, actually. I could talk to her for hours. I think I could tell her anything.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Terry, ‘who’s been great? Who did you say?’

  ‘Cleo. Dr Madison.’

  Terry stared at her for a long time.

  ‘Look, I really must get to bed,’ he said, eventually. ‘I’ve been travelling nearly all day, and it’s after eleven-thirty. I really must go.’

  He pushed back his chair and stumbled towards the house, and it wasn’t until the next morning – after a night in which he drifted into Stage Four sleep for more than an hour, and even experienced, momentously, the first, tenuous stirrings of a dream – that he allowed himself to ponder that name again, and to analyse the dizzying sense of wonder it had aroused in him. Then he remembered its significance, and remembered, at the same moment, why Dr Madison’s face had for the last week been teasing him with a distant familiarity.

  He went to find her at once.

  ∗

  As Terry was searching the corridors of Ashdown for Dr Madison that Thursday morning, Sarah was eating a slice of toast and looking warily at the copy of The House of Sleep which lay on her kitchen table like an unexploded bomb. She had not yet opened it.

  It was absurd, she told herself, to be so superstitious about this book. Where was the harm in flicking through it again, in reading a few pages? Did she really think that this pennydreadful yarn, which she and Veronica had always regarded as the most delicious joke, would have acquired some mysterious power to wound her?
<
br />   She looked at the clock: there were only five minutes left before she had to leave for work.

  She wiped the butter off her fingers with some kitchen towel, picked up the book, and opened it slowly. It seemed to open very naturally at a particular page, a little more than half-way through, and when it was open, a sheet of paper fell out. A folded sheet of lined notepaper, covered on one side with handwriting.

  It had never occurred to her that it would have been the same copy. It had never occurred to her that neither Veronica nor Rebecca had once opened the book in twelve years.

  With trembling hands, she unfolded the sheet of paper, and recognized Robert’s handwriting immediately. His words, forgotten for so long – completely forgotten – drifted back into her mind.

  If ever I want to leave anything for you, I’ll put it here. In this book.

  Then you’ll always know where to find it.

  She laid down the paper without reading any of it, and took deep breaths. She could feel all the strength, all the responsiveness, draining from her muscles. She could barely move her arms. She was slumping forward in the chair.

  No. She could stop this. She could control it.

  She sat upright. She forced her hand towards the sheet of paper again. She forced her fingers to grasp it, to turn it over. She would read it. She would read it quickly, in one go, and then it would be over.

  One more deep breath. Then:

  Gravity and grace… yes, of course, that was the book they had been reading, on the beach, they had talked about affection, and about loss, about what you do if you lose somebody… your narcoleptic eyes… but how could he have written that? How could he have known? Nobody knew, back then… a disregard… a disregard that made me feel… he meant the Café, that time in the Café, when she and Ronnie had taunted him… ‘as still, as carved, as death’… the beach again, she had read that line aloud, it was from Rosamond Lehmann…an oblivion so deep it ends… drown the ghosts… another lifetime… another lifetime is the least you’ll need…

  She finished reading, and the paper fell from her hand. She looked ahead of her, unseeing. She forgot that she was supposed to be leaving for school. She had no awareness of the passing of time. Time seemed to have been suspended.

  It was in fact nearly thirty minutes later when she walked across the room and picked up the receiver of the wall-mounted telephone. She dialled a number which was scribbled on a notepad next to the phone.

  An unfamiliar voice answered the call after ten or eleven rings.

  ‘I’d like to speak to Ruby, please. Ruby Sharp.’

  ‘Hold on a minute. I’ll see if she’s in.’

  The acoustics at the other end of the line called to mind a hallway or corridor. Sarah could hear footsteps and far-off voices. She imagined some dowdy institutional building, cheap parquet flooring, notices pinned to a cork-lined noticeboard. Then she heard the approach of one set of footsteps, and the crack of the receiver being picked up again.

  ‘Yes, hello?’

  ‘Ruby, this is Sarah. Sarah Tudor.’

  ‘Oh.’ A pause, filled with pleasure and surprise. ‘Hello, Sarah. How lovely to hear from you.’ Then a longer pause: puzzled, expectant. ‘Sarah? Are you all right?’

  ‘I need to talk to you.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Ruby waited. ‘What about?’

  ‘I need to come and see you.’

  ‘Has – look, has something happened? Is something the matter?’

  Sarah broke her own long silence, by saying: ‘You were right.’

  ‘I was right? What was I right about?’

  ‘You said that he really cared for me. You were right.’

  ‘Who really cared for you?’

  ‘Robert did. You said it the other day and I didn’t believe you; didn’t want to believe you. But now I’ve remembered.’

  ‘Sarah…’ Ruby sighed, exasperated. ‘You sound very strange. I think you should –’

  ‘I found something of his.’

  ‘What did you find?’

  ‘Something he wrote to me. For me.’

  ‘You mean – recently? He wrote this recently?’

  ‘No. Years ago. Listen, can I come and see you? Can we meet somewhere today?’

  ‘Don’t you have to be at school?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Of course.’ Crestfallen, Sarah looked at the wall-clock. She passed a hand over her eyes. ‘This evening, then: can I see you this evening?’

  ‘I’m going home today. I’ll be staying with my mother for the weekend.’ She could sense Sarah’s disappointment. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s OK. I’d better go to school now.’ But Sarah did not move; neither did Ruby. When Sarah managed to speak again, her voice was quieter, as if she was talking to herself now; thinking aloud. ‘Why did he just leave like that? Without saying anything. Running off into the night.’ Then she seemed to remember that Ruby was still listening. ‘That was the last time I saw him. And before that – a few years before that – there was a letter. One letter.’

  ‘What did the letter say?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing at all?’

  ‘Not really. It mentioned a dream he’d had. But apart from that – well, it didn’t even tell me where he was writing from. Or what he was doing. I wondered at the time whether…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Did you know that Robert had a twin?’

  ‘No. No, I didn’t. I barely knew him at all.’

  ‘He had a twin sister called Cleo. She was given up for adoption when they were just a few weeks old. He’d never seen her again. Perhaps he was going to look for her. He always said that he would.’

  Ruby was lost. ‘Look, Sarah, I have to go. I really have to go.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’ll be back after the weekend. I’ll come round and see you then, shall I? Monday evening.’

  ‘You don’t have to. I don’t know why I should be bothering you with this. It’s just that… you brought it all back, talking about him the other day.’ She sniffed, rubbed her eyes, began pulling herself together. ‘I’m sorry, really I am. This isn’t your problem.’

  Then, softly, Ruby said, ‘No, it is my problem, actually,’ and hung up.

  ∗

  Even though it pained Dr Dudden to leave his clinic in the care of Dr Madison for two days, he would not have missed this conference for anything. Hingleton Pendlebury was one of the country’s most prestigious firms of management consultants, and this short, intensive, residential course, ‘Motivating for Change’, promised to do something which he felt was long overdue: namely, to introduce leading members of the psychiatric profession to some basic business concepts, in keeping with the Health Service’s painful but inevitable transition to a management culture.

  Along with the other delegates, he had arrived at the designated London hotel early on Wednesday evening. It was a five-star hotel, and its rooms seemed to have been designed – annoyingly – with extremes of comfort, rest and relaxation in mind. His bed had a soft goose-down mattress, and the armchairs were plump and well upholstered. Not to be deterred, Dr Dudden had settled down on the floor at midnight, with his latest lab results spread out before him, and had resolved to occupy himself with work until four-thirty at the earliest. How long he managed to stay awake, he would never know. He woke up at nine-fifteen, flat out on the carpet with a sore back and a terrible crick in his neck. Just as Ruby, therefore, was replacing her telephone receiver on the other side of London and walking thoughtfully back towards her room, Dr Dudden was rushing through the hotel corridors, unshaved, unwashed and wearing last night’s clothes, desperately trying to locate the main conference chamber.

  Despite his fatigue and his dishevelled state, however, he was anticipating the day’s opening session with a good deal more enthusiasm than the other participants; all of whom, it transpired, were there under duress of one sort or another. Mostly they were London-based psychiatrists, whose attendance seemed to be
a contractual obligation rigorously insisted upon by the managers and non-executive directors of their new hospital trusts.

  ‘It’s bloody ridiculous,’ one of them was already saying when Dr Dudden entered the room. ‘I’ve had to cancel five lectures and six consultations, all at the behest of some pimply-faced accountant who thinks he knows what’s good for me.’

  Now the two course trainers appeared. Their faces were fresh and unformed, and they wore identical, closely-fitting Jaeger suits. Each appeared to be in his early twenties and had the vacantly shining eyes of the evangelical zealot.

  ‘Hi: I’m Tim Simpson,’ the first one said.

  ‘And I’m Mark McGuire.’

  Tim Simpson explained that he had recently returned from a year in Minnesota, where he had majored in Organizational Change at Duluth University. Mark McGuire, on the other hand, boasted a diploma in Group Relations, Meeting Planning and Human Resource Development from the University of Milton Keynes.

  ‘And we’re here to talk about change,’ said Tim Simpson. He turned over the first page of a flip-chart, and pointed at the word ‘CHANGE’, which was written in foot-high capitals.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mark McGuire. ‘Change is a scary word. And for many of you, these are scary times.’ He turned over the next page of the flip-chart, and pointed at the words ‘SCARY TIMES’.

  ‘Many of you will be afraid of change,’ said Tim Simpson. ‘Some of you will even be angry about it. But our message to you over the next two days is going to be – use that fear; work that anger; and above all –’

  He glanced at Mark McGuire, who turned over the flip-chart again as they both chanted, in unison: ‘EMBRACE THE CHANGE.’