by Jonathan Coe
‘Let go of me!’ she shouted. ‘Where are you taking me?’
‘Pull yourself together, woman, for Christ’s sake. You’ve nothing to be afraid of. You’re looking at one of the most remarkable pieces of scientific apparatus ever designed. You should feel privileged.’
‘Let go of me,’ Lorna repeated. ‘Let go!’
‘I need your help,’ said Dr Dudden. ‘That’s all. I need your help with a little experiment. There must be two of us, Lorna: otherwise there’s no point. It takes two to tango. Remember that.’
Lorna glared at him: more angry, now, than afraid. ‘I have no intention of tangoing with you, doctor. Now or at any other time. Nor do I have any intention of getting into that –’ she indicated the cage, with a toss of her head ‘– in the company of someone who is quite clearly mad.’
Dr Dudden winced visibly at this last word, as if at a sharp pinprick. Then, slowly, miraculously, Lorna felt the grip on her wrist begin to relax. The burning fury in his eyes died down, faded, until it was no more than a feeble glow, superseded by something colder and blanker: a hard sheen of disdain, mixed with bitter resignation. He let go of her wrist altogether, and backed away.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘That was silly of me. Why should you be any different from the rest, after all? Why should you be any more enlightened?’
Standing slightly ajar in the perspex wall was an almost invisible door, through which the wires attached to Dr Dudden’s skull had been fed, lying flat across the turntable and leading all the way up to the hole at the top of the wooden partition dividing the cage in two. Now he gathered up the loose wires in his arms, opened the door even further, and stepped on to the turntable itself.
‘No, I should have remembered that I’m alone,’ he continued, turning to address Lorna. ‘Quite alone. Nobody could understand, nobody could even begin to understand. I’m so far ahead… It will take you all years, years to realize what I was trying to do.’ His smile was rueful, ironic. ‘Very well, Lorna: you can run along now. I shall be quite all right down here. They’ll come and find me in a few days, anyway. They’ll be here soon enough.’
‘Who will be here?’ she asked, in a kind of despair. ‘What are you talking about?’
He shook his head, and closed the perspex door.
‘Dr Dudden–’
But Lorna realized that he could no longer hear her, and she could only watch helplessly as he sat down on the turntable, crossing his legs, folding his arms, as if he were preparing himself for meditation. Then he began to speak, but to himself, not to her. The words were difficult to make out at first. Lorna was already on the point of leaving, of running upstairs to phone for the ambulance service, when she realized what they were.
‘None shall sleep,’ he was saying. ‘None shall sleep’: over and over, like a mantra, as the CD continued to play in the next room, at full volume, and Pavarotti’s celebrated rendition of ‘Nessun Dorma’ swelled to yet another deafening climax.
∗
Cleo lay on the bed in her hotel room, listening to the traffic noise from Russell Square, the multilingual babble of voices drifting up through her open window, and thought to herself that, no matter what came of this evening, her life would never be quite the same again. There could be no going back.
Later, as she applied her makeup, changed her skirt, prepared herself for a fortifying drink in the hotel bar, she realized that there was too much fatalism, too much melodrama in that idea. She had managed without Sarah for twelve years now. Just recently, she had been managing rather well. There was no reason why this sudden resurrection of hope should change everything, no reason why she couldn’t go back to the clinic tomorrow, no reason why she shouldn’t continue to live without Sarah, just as she had resolved to do on that terrible night at Ashdown, the last time she had seen her, the last time she had heard her voice. Since then, Cleo had lived the life of a single woman, and could continue to do so.
If only to prove this very point, she lingered in the bar for more than an hour, drinking two gin and tonics and pointedly ignoring the overtures of the several lone men who attempted to catch her eye. She went on to an Italian restaurant, where she had a small carafe of red wine and an excellent vegetable lasagne, and declined an invitation to join the gentleman sitting at the window table for coffee and liqueurs. After that she began to walk, not in any great haste, towards the tube station, brushing shoulders with the tourists and the young people hurrying past her on their way to a Friday night out in the West End.
For once, on the train, she took no notice of the advertisements, declined to read the back pages of other people’s newspapers, and instead looked closely, for the first time, at the faces of her fellow passengers. She saw happy couples, and unhappy couples; couples who had nothing to say to one another, and couples who could not keep their hands to themselves; couples who had just met, and couples who seemed to be on the verge of splitting up. She saw married men on their way home to their wives, and she saw single men on their way home to their videos and their microwave dinners. She saw women on their own, women in pairs, and women in groups, and she thought to herself: Yes, I can take my place with these people. Whatever else has gone wrong, whatever other mistakes I may have made, I know who I am, now. I know who I am, and it suits me.
Darkness was falling as she emerged, twenty minutes later, into the evening air. Cleo had bought an A-Z that afternoon, and committed the route to memory; as for the final stretch, Ruby’s directions, although minimal, proved perfectly adequate. She left the main road behind, and after walking for perhaps half a mile, found herself turning into what surely had to be the quietest street in the whole of London. There was no music, no party noise, no voices coming from any of the gardens. Not even a television turned up loud. Cleo’s footsteps seemed to be making the only sound in the world.
She stopped outside Sarah’s house. Although it was still not quite dark, the curtains were fully drawn, with just a chink of light gleaming at the edges. Cleo pushed open the little wrought-iron gate, which squeaked plangently, and walked up to the front door. She paused, smoothed down her skirt, and adjusted her handbag, shifting its weight on her shoulder. Then she lifted the door knocker, and knocked twice.
A light came on in the hallway. Seconds later the door was opened, and there she was: alone, older, looking a little tired, a little sleepy; a little apprehensive, perhaps, to be opening the door to a stranger at this hour. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and her hair was now completely and wonderfully grey, and the moment she saw her, Cleo knew that she had been lying to herself; knew that she could not do without this woman at all. It wasn’t possible, and never had been.
‘Sarah?’
It was all she could manage to say, at first. Sarah stared back at her, not recognizing, not yet guessing.
‘Do I know you?’
‘Of course you do,’ she said. ‘It’s me: Robert.’
APPENDIX 1: Poem
Somniloquy
Your gravity, your grace have turned a tide
In me, no lunar power can reverse;
But in your narcoleptic eyes I spied
A sightlessness tonight: or something worse,
A disregard that made me feel unmanned.
Meanwhile, insomniac, I catch my breath
To think I saw my future traced in sand
One afternoon ‘as still, as carved, as death’,
And pray for an oblivion so deep
It ends in transformation. Only dawn
Can save me, flood this haunted house of sleep
With light, and drown the ghosts that nightly warn:
Another lifetime is the least you’ll need, to trace
The guarded secrets of her gravity, her grace.
APPENDIX 2: Letter
From: Pamela Worth
To: Professor Marcus Cole, FRC Psych.
Dear Professor Cole,
Just a short letter, I’m afraid, to thank you for taking the trouble to write to us last we
ek.
Your kind words were very much appreciated. In a situation like this, the sympathy of friends and well-wishers starts to mean everything. It’s all that we have, in a way. And you can rest assured that, as far as we’re concerned, no blame attaches to you in this matter. Over the last few weeks we have often found ourselves looking for people to blame – individuals, the government, the ‘system’, whatever – but really there is no one. That’s what’s so unbearable about it.
We visit Terry every day. There is, as you say, no improvement, and no real prospect of improvement, it seems. But we shall be patient. He looks very peaceful, and rested. You probably don’t know this (why should you?), but my son has had a lot of trouble sleeping over the last few years. Of course I never said anything to him about it, but it did worry me, and when I see him now, I sometimes try to tell myself that he is just catching up on his sleep. The doctors tell me I’m imagining it, but once or twice I’ve thought that I can see a tiny smile on his face, and then I wonder if perhaps he is having pleasant dreams.
You will probably think that these are just silly fantasies: but we all have to find our way of coping, somehow, and I am doing my best.
Yours very sincerely,
Pamela Worth
APPENDIX 3: Transcript
Patient: Ruby Sharp
Date: 28.6.96
Time: 02.36–02.40
Technician: Lorna
never quiet never quiet this house I remember that years ago always the waves never quiet sitting upstairs with her sitting with you I remember I was listening remember it all the beach the day at the beach the things you said no limits you said no limits do anything anything to earn her and the scars I remember the scars on your legs two scars like like French quotation marks then I saw last week I saw on the beach another beach another beach the same person another person the same body on your ankles the two scars I know you who you are but listen listen know her too London now where she lives what she does alone all alone you must go must find her I know have known always since the beach together be together I felt it happy so happy that day remember it all never so happy always wanted always somehow repay you both sandman what I called you sandman you made castle beautiful castle away swept away not lost not lost yet nothing lost yet not if you find her go now she is waiting London easy to find empty house cold house she lives alone North London quiet streets you turn in turn in from station first house first you see don’t wait hurry go now find the road remember remember the name Fermer Road Fermer she does want you find her please go to her now
1. Popular British music-hall comedians, on stage together from 1931 onwards, and later members of the Crazy Gang.
2. Sim (1900-76) went on to star in such later hits as Green for Danger (1946), The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950) and, perhaps most famously, many films in the St Trinian’s series.
3. A placid, respectable Thameside suburb of London, just south of Richmond.
4. Much praised, recently, by Denis Thatcher, who said they had given him ‘six of the most enjoyable hours of my life’. His wife Margaret later joked that he was ‘stiff for hours afterwards’.
5. Their titles, for the record, were Wet Knickers, Pussy Talk and Cream on my Face.
6. The books in question are believed to have included the Confessions of St Augustine and Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich.
7. He later developed a distinctive public persona, based largely on his self-confessed drinking habits and enormous sexual appetite.
8. An incident which later became the basis of one of Norman Wisdom’s less successful comedies, The Candy-Shop Man.
9. The other two, thankfully, were later found tucked up in bed together at Jack Logan’s house in Esher.
10. Believed to be a reference to the then Prime Minister, Edward Heath.
11. The origins of this particular joke remain obscure, despite our best endeavours.
12. Loyal supporter of, and propagandist for, the Conservative Party, whose novels, however, are not regarded with much seriousness in literary circles.
13. ‘Extremely well-hung’ was Amis’s only recorded verdict on this occasion.
14. They had met for the first time only a few weeks earlier, to discuss their shared enthusiasm for Jamaican cigars and eighteenth-century erotic drawings.
15. Durable singer of uplifting ballads who has, for as long as most of us can remember, been regarded as one of the undisputed queens of British popular music.
16. Performer of such hits as Congratulations and Devil Woman, whose film roles have so far been confined to minor youth musicals (Summer Holiday, Wonderful Life, etc.)