The House of Sleep (22 page)

The dining-room at Ashdown had been used as a games room during Terry’s student days. Now it provided just enough space for a long oak table capable of seating twenty. It was supposedly the custom here, at six-thirty sharp every day, for staff and patients to sit down together for the evening meal, but by the time Terry and Dr Dudden arrived, most of the diners had left: only Dr Madison remained, accompanied on one side by Maria Granger (who suffered from narcolepsy) and on the other by a somnambulist called Barbara. Dr Dudden pointedly avoided this group, and went to sit at the other end of the table, where he and Terry were presented with two
bowls of tomato soup. After taking a couple of sips and adding copious amounts of salt and pepper, Dr Dudden resumed his explanation.

‘Luckily, the university presents us with a large pool of willing participants. Many students have found the sleep deprivation room to be a rather pleasant environment, compared to most of the accommodation on campus. And then, of course, we pay them to take part in the experiments. Pay them a good rate, I might say.’

‘All the same…’

‘You and I, Mr Worth – or can I call you Terry, by now? – you and I, Terry, were educated during those halcyon days when students received full government grants to cover their fees and living expenses. We were pampered; spoon-fed. Measures have had to be taken since then: necessary measures, in my view. Nowadays students never tire of bleating about how poverty-stricken they are; how difficult it is to sustain their wasteful, hedonistic lifestyles. Surely you read your own newspapers, now and again? They’re awash with heartbreaking tales of hapless scholars reduced to dish-washing, windscreen-wiping, or worse. Life-modelling, for instance. Lovely young female undergraduates at London University, forced to earn a crust in the topless bars of Soho. Lap-dancing; working as Strippograms; prostitution, in some cases. The massage parlours of this town are full of our students, you know – and you should see the prices they charge.’

‘Really?’

‘Well, so I’m told,’ said Dr Dudden hurriedly. ‘Anyway, I seem to have strayed from my point… And my point is, you see, that we provide an acceptable alternative to that kind of drudgery. Would you care for some wine, by the way?’

He poured a generous glass of Burgundy for himself, and one for Terry – seemingly unmindful, this evening, of the fact that his patients’ alcohol consumption was supposed to be strictly regulated. They clinked glasses, and Terry said:

‘So you’re providing a social service, in other words.’

‘Quite. I’m a public benefactor. A hero of the bloody community, not to put too fine a point on it. Ah, splendid, splendid.’ He rubbed his hands in pleased anticipation as Janet, one of the cooks, served him a plate of beef, roast potatoes and runner beans. ‘Red meat. There’s nothing like it, is there? Scottish beef. God, it makes my mouth water just looking at it. What about you, Terry? Are you a meat-eater? A good old-fashioned, red-blooded carnivore? I bet you are.’

‘Absolutely. Haven’t been eating so much of this stuff, though. You know, a lot of places aren’t serving it any more.’

‘Because of BSE, you mean? A lot of hysterical rubbish whipped up by members of the most worthless and unscrupulous profession of all: journalists.’ He drained his glass of wine in a single draught, refilled it and, to Terry’s alarm, touched him jokingly on the arm. ‘Present company excepted, of course. No, you won’t find any credence given to that kind of unscientific panic-mongering here.’ He gestured with his fork at Dr Madison, who was deep in conversation with her companions at the other end of the table. ‘Of course, Miss Sourpuss down there will be tucking into her nut cutlets, or whatever nutrition-free alternative she has insisted upon tonight, to satisfy her own opaque ideological requirements.’

‘I suppose,’ said Terry, ‘everyone has the right to their –’

‘Tell me about your political views,’ Dr Dudden interrupted. ‘I imagine you’re predictably left-wing, like everybody else in the media these days.’

‘Politics are of no interest to me, I’m afraid. Left and right have become meaningless concepts. Capitalism has proved itself unassailable, and sooner or later, all human life will be governed only by the random fluctuations of the market.’

‘And this is how it should be?’

Terry shrugged. ‘This is how it is.’

‘But surely, if you have a political leader of sufficient will, sufficient strength of character… Did you not think, for a while, that with Mrs Thatcher in charge, Britain stood poised on the edge of greatness again?’

‘She was a remarkable woman, obviously. I couldn’t tell you what any of her policies were: I took no notice of them.’

‘And yet you and she have something in common, of course.’

‘We do?’

‘Absolutely. Didn’t she attribute her success to the fact that she only needed two or three hours’ sleep a night?’ Dr Dudden took another slug of wine, and sat for a moment in abstracted thought, a skewered slice of blood-red beef poised in front of his half-open mouth. ‘I wrote to her, you know. Numerous times, in fact. Asking her if she would agree to some simple tests. Her office always took the trouble to reply. Courteous refusals. Polite but firm. I’ll keep giving it a shot, though. She must have more time on her hands these days.
She
would understand what I’m trying to do here,’ he added, turning to Terry now, his voice swelling. ‘
She’d
have the vision.’

‘Yes, I’m sure,’ said Terry, spearing a potato.

‘Napoleon was a light sleeper, too. And Edison. You’ll find it’s true of many great men. Edison
despised
sleep, we’re told, and in my view he was right to do so. I despise it, too. I despise myself for needing it.’ He leaned closer to Terry and confided: ‘I’m down to four hours, you know.’

‘Four hours?’

‘Four hours a night. I’ve kept it up for the last week.’

‘But that can’t be good for you, surely. No wonder you look so tired.’

‘I don’t care. My target’s three, and I’m going to get there. It’s a struggle for some of us, you know. We don’t all have your gifts. That’s why I envy you so much. That’s why I’m determined to discover your secret.’

Terry took a modest sip from his glass. ‘Why despise it, anyway? I don’t understand.’

‘I’ll tell you why: because the sleeper is helpless; powerless. Sleep puts even the strongest people at the mercy of the weakest and most feeble. Can you imagine what it must be like for a woman of Mrs Thatcher’s fibre, her moral character, to be obliged to prostrate herself every day in that posture of abject
submission? The brain disabled, the muscles inert and flaccid? It must be insupportable.’

‘I hadn’t thought of it like that before,’ said Terry. ‘Sleep as the great leveller.’

‘Exactly. That’s exactly what it is: the great leveller. Like fucking socialism.’ The wine, Terry noticed, was starting to make Dr Dudden turn sour, and a burst of guttural laughter from Dr Madison’s end of the table was enough to attract a poisonous look in her direction. ‘Listen to that loud-mouthed witch,’ he muttered. ‘Huddled with her female cronies at the other end of the room. Have you not noticed, Terry, how this table tends to divide up on the basis of gender? That’s her doing.’

‘I’m sure it’s only –’

‘Dr Madison, you see, tends to prefer the company of women to that of men.’

Terry said, reasonably: ‘But that’s true of many women, isn’t it?’

Dr Dudden lowered his voice. ‘I don’t think you’ve quite understood my implication,’ he said (wrongly, as it happened). ‘Dr Madison,’ he explained, whispering now, ‘is a daughter of Sappho.’

‘Sappho who?’

‘She is,’ said Dr Dudden, the whisper growing more sibilant and, as a consequence, louder, ‘a sister of Lesbos.’

Terry had no idea whether this euphemism was in common usage, or whether Dr Dudden had just made it up. ‘You mean she’s a friend of Dorothy?’

‘Precisely. She’s a fucking muff-diver. Or, more accurately, a non-fucking muff-diver.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Terry.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, man, just look at her. It’s in her whole demeanour. It’s written all over her. I mean, has she spoken to you since you arrived here?’

‘Not since that first evening, no.’

‘Of course not. And she never says more than two words
to me if she can help it. She’s one of those women who chooses to ignore men because they’re of no interest to her as sexual beings.’

‘I have noticed a slight animosity between you…’ said Terry.

‘She’s a competent psychologist,’ said Dr Dudden. ‘I have a certain respect for her on that level. But personally, we have nothing in common. Nothing at all.’

‘Are you close to any of your colleagues? Personally, I mean.’

‘Not really, no. Friendships form, among my staff, but I tend to be excluded from them.’ He leaned forward confidingly. ‘This might astound you, Terry. It certainly baffles me. But the truth is, I’m not very popular at this clinic.’ He sat back with a martyr’s smile. ‘Explain that if you can.’

Ever since Terry had seen that second, locked door at the back of Dr Dudden’s basement laboratory, he had conceived a specific plan for this evening, and listening to several more hours’ worth of this stuff was unfortunately an integral part of it. After dinner they withdrew to the doctor’s sitting-room, where brandy was poured, consumed, poured again, and followed by a second and then a third bottle of red wine. Terry managed to keep his intake down to a minimum, but was still feeling rather muddle-headed when the clock on the mantelpiece struck ten o’clock. He realized that most of Dr Dudden’s latest diatribe had passed him by.

‘… do these things differently in the United States,’ he seemed to be saying. ‘The state of sleep research there is infinitely more advanced. My Clinic is the only one of its kind in Great Britain, and yet there are dozens like it in America. Fully resourced, well staffed, and equipped with all the latest technology. In America, computer programs designed purely for polysomnography are written and marketed in the commercial sector. They can even monitor patients who are sleeping in their own homes, with the brainwaves being transmitted to the research centre down the telephone lines, via a modem.
Imagine that! Just think of it! That’s the sort of enterprise and innovation I’m trying to foster here, but the amount of encouragement I get is precisely nil. It’s the bloody something-for-nothing culture in this country, I’m telling you. The Americans can afford to do what they do because they have an efficient system of private medical insurance supporting the whole structure.’

‘Sure, sure,’ said Terry.

Dr Dudden put down his glass. ‘You’re not looking well,’ he said. ‘We’ve both had too much to drink. Let’s go for a walk.’

Before Terry had time to protest, they had swept through the hall – stopping only to pick up a torch from one of the cupboards – and were marching across the moonlit terrace on their way towards the clifftop.

‘Where are we going?’ said Terry. ‘Isn’t it a bit dark for this sort of –?’

‘It’s not that I object to my lack of status in this community,’ Dr Dudden continued, ignoring him. ‘I don’t mind being regarded as a maverick, an oddball. This is often what happens to men of vision. I don’t care if they won’t let me join the masons, for instance. I didn’t want to join the fucking masons in the first place. Why should I want to join the fucking masons? I don’t care about any of that crap, because I know for a fact that when I’m dead and gone, my work will be remembered. Because I’m the
only one
, you see, Terry.’ He turned and stared him in the face. A strong wind had risen up and the ocean was roaring beneath him. ‘I’m the
only one
working in this field, who sees sleep for what it really is.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘A disease, of course.’ He began making his way along the path – which at this point ran perilously close to the edge of the cliff – while declaiming over his shoulder: ‘A disease, Terry – the most widespread and life-curtailing disease of all! Forget cancer, forget multiple sclerosis, forget AIDS. If you
spend eight hours a day in bed, then sleep is shortening your life by a third! That’s the equivalent of dying at the age of fifty – and it’s happening to all of us. This is more than just a disease: this is a plague! And none of us is immune, you realize. Not one of us, except…’ He turned to look at Terry and to draw breath, for he was panting now, either with emotion or exertion. ‘… Except for you.’

‘Gregory,’ said Terry (it was the first time he had used this name, and only wrung it out with the greatest effort), ‘where are we going?’

‘Well, I don’t know about you,’ Dr Dudden replied, ‘but I’m going for a swim.’

He switched on the torch and suddenly, alarmingly, seemed to disappear over the precipice. What they had arrived at, in fact, was a steep, narrow path cut roughly into the sheerness of the cliff; a path Terry now remembered as leading down to a sandy beach, which he himself had occasionally visited as a student. He hesitated at the top of this hazardous-looking descent and then began to follow the bobbing light of the torch, cursing softly under his breath.

‘So,’ Dr Dudden continued, from some way in the night-shrouded distance, ‘they call me an oddball, do they? Fine. Well, I’m only trying to give mankind one-third of its life back, that’s all. I’m only trying to increase the life expectancy of every man, woman and child on this bloody planet by thirty-three per cent. For Christ’s sake, doesn’t that justify making a few rats suffer? A few cute-looking puppies?’ He paused for a moment to negotiate some sudden declivity, some breach in the pathway where the dry, sandy soil had crumbled away. He was shouting now, to make himself heard above the crashing of the waves. ‘And what about a human fatality, if it comes to that? One fucking fatality. Is that such a terrible price to pay?’

Terry paid barely any attention to this speech, since he was having great difficulty keeping his footing, and was already lagging further and further behind. Finally, the ground began
to level out and he felt sand beneath his feet. Now he caught up with Dr Dudden and discovered, slightly to his surprise, that he had stripped completely naked.