The House of Sleep (29 page)

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.

The next sensation he could recall was a sharp pain in his left hand. He looked at the hand and saw that it was scored
with deep toothmarks. He was sitting on the single bed in his room and had been biting his hand, sinking his teeth into the ball of his thumb, almost but not quite to the point where blood might be drawn. He had turned on the light and taken his trousers off. They were thrown on the floor, over by the wardrobe.

He stood up and immediately reeled, partly with drunkenness, partly with disbelief. The scene he had just acted out with Sarah seemed to defy comprehension: half of him wanted to erase it at once from memory, while the other half struggled to revive and dwell upon every detail. Had she really,
really
asked him to do that? And had he really refused?

This will never happen again
, he told himself.
She will never ask you again.

He picked up his trousers. Should he put them on, and go back to her room?

Where were his shoes?

Go back.

But he had said no; and as soon as he had said it, the invitation had been withdrawn, absolutely.

Another lifetime is the least you’ll need
…

He struggled into one leg of his trousers; then, on the second leg, he lost his balance, hopped and capsized. Falling, he caught his head against the corner of the bedside table, and a sudden ache spread through his skull and neck. Collapsed foetally on the floor, he touched his upper cheekbone, between eye and ear, and felt a melted rivulet of blood.

To trace the guarded secrets
…

‘There’ll be no going back,’ he said to himself, aloud.

He disentangled himself from his trousers, retrieved a handkerchief from one of his pockets, and held it to the cut while sitting on his bed. It was a shallow abrasion, and the blood soon dried. In the process he sobered up, with what seemed to him unusual rapidity. Shivering, trouserless, he now felt a sudden urge to write something, and with this in mind he crossed over to his desk, picked up a felt-tip pen and opened
his notebook at the first blank page, where all the various drafts of his poem ended.

It was the sight of these literary efforts, probably, which concentrated his pain, and confusion, and tiredness, and fused them, at last, into a single emotion: rage. All these difficult, tentative utterances, these early versions, revisions, alterations and rethinkings, pondered and erased, rephrased and agonized over, now appeared to Robert as objects of contempt. What was the point of all that secret labour, that time-consuming, interiorized donkey-work, if, when the opportunity to act upon his desires was offered to him on a plate, he had neither the courage nor the presence of mind to seize it?

He stared at the words on the page until they looked like random, meaningless scribble; until they made no sense.

He took the pen and drew a thick line through the finished version of the poem. Then he drew another line, making an ‘X’. He pressed so hard, this time, that the tip of the pen, even though it was soft, tore through the page. He liked the sound and the feel of the page being torn. He scribbled obscenities over the earlier drafts of the poem, and again tore through the pages with the tip of his pen, and then finally tore the whole book apart with his hands and scattered its pages over the desk and the floor.

Still clutching the pen, he stood up, lurched and collided with the wall. He was not as sober as he had thought.

Sarah was lying in bed now, a few yards down the corridor, asleep probably, her room in darkness, her door locked. And she would never ask him again.

Stupid, stupid, stupid
…

He banged his head against the wall, softly, as he said this, smearing it with blood in the process. The wound must have opened again. He scrawled the word on the wall with his felt-tip pen.

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK

He was standing close to the wardrobe as he added this
word in quavery capitals, and then felt his legs giving way and realized that he was sliding down the side of the wardrobe towards the floor. He looked across at his bed and with one final effort managed to propel himself towards it. Then he passed out.

∗

Robert awoke only a few hours later, with a raging thirst. Had he been a more experienced drinker he would have known that this was not really the time to get up: that it was no more than a momentary interruption to the process of rest, a time to gulp down several glasses of water before staggering back to bed and sleeping again for another three or four hours, until midday at the earliest. But he mistook the unnatural feverish enthusiasm with which he registered the morning sunlight for genuine wakefulness; and was drawn, besides, by the sound of voices downstairs in the kitchen. He splashed his face with cold water, stepped out of yesterday’s clothes and put on some new ones. Shortly before leaving the room, he looked at the words he had written on the wall a few hours earlier. Ashamed, he took hold of the heavy teak wardrobe, braced himself against it, and dragged it a few inches in the direction of the window. The words were hidden, and he was ready to go downstairs.

In the kitchen, he found three of his drinking companions from the night before, making toast and coffee and in one singularly intrepid case a cooked breakfast, and all wearing the same shell-shocked, abnormally bright-eyed expressions. After they had asked him what had happened to his face, and after he had said that it was nothing, conversation was kept to a husky minimum. Neither Terry nor Sarah had surfaced yet, although Veronica was the next to appear, nodding curtly at Robert and heading straight for the fridge, where she made short work of a litre carton of orange juice.

‘Thirsty?’ he said, stupidly, when she had finished.

She ignored the question and said merely: ‘Did somebody hit you last night?’

‘No. I had an accident.’

‘I thought it might have been a lovers’ tiff,’ said Veronica, and started to cut thick slices of bread.

Terry entered in his pyjamas.

‘I’ve just been sick,’ he announced, to no one in particular.

‘We forgive you,’ said Robert.

‘All over the telephone. I was trying to call home.’

Terry was not the only resident of Ashdown whose parents were supposed to pick him up that morning. Several of the others were expecting lifts; some had their own cars, and were intending to pack up and drive off as soon as they felt well enough. Beneath the general fragility and queasiness lay a peculiar, apprehensive sense that they had only a few more hours to spend together before parting; perhaps never to meet again.

‘I need some fresh air,’ somebody said, after the heat from the fried egg and bacon had steamed up the kitchen windows.

‘Good idea. Let’s walk.’

There were eight of them, now, as they made their way along the cliff path towards the highest promontory. It occurred to Robert that it was still too early for the effects of the alcohol to have worn off, so that they were all still, technically, drunk. A warm, wet mist hung in the air, and a pale sun was shining, stifled by clouds and managing only to wash a thin, pale, yellow-grey light over the swelling ocean.

As Robert strode ahead of the group, Terry caught up with him and said: ‘So – was Sarah OK last night?’

‘I think so.’

Terry shook his head. ‘Funny business, that. What happened to your face, by the way?’

Robert didn’t answer; and Terry hesitated now, as if fearful of the impact his next words might have. ‘And did she mention – did she say anything, at all, about our… arrangement?’

‘What arrangement?’ asked Robert: rather too quickly.

‘She didn’t tell you?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘All right, then… You know how I’m going to start working for
Frame
in September?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you know how I’m going to be renting this flat in London?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Robert had, as it happened, already refused Terry’s offer of a spare room, preferring to find out what Sarah’s plans were.

‘And you know how Sarah and Veronica have split up, so they’re not looking for a house round here any more?’

‘Get to the point, Terry, for God’s sake.’

‘Well…’ He took one final, searching look at his friend, and then ploughed on: ‘She’s going to come and live with me.’

Robert stared at him in horror. ‘
Live
with you? What do you mean?’

‘I mean she’s going to have one of the spare rooms.’

‘But… when was this decided?’

‘Yesterday evening: before the party.’ He grasped Robert’s shoulder, and shook it clumsily. ‘There’s nothing sinister about this, you know. Nothing going on. And the best thing about it is, there’s still room for you to come and live with us as well. There are three bedrooms. It’ll be just like Ashdown, only in London.’ Robert was still dumbfounded. Terry could see that he was going to get little more out of him, for the time being. ‘Think about it,’ he concluded. ‘We’ll talk about it later.’

He moved on, and the others soon joined him, pushing past Robert as he remained standing in the centre of the path, his back to the ocean, his gaze fixed on the grey towers of the enormous house. After a few minutes he saw Sarah emerge from the front door. He turned and began to walk away from her, but slowly, so that it did not take long for her to reach him. Her unwashed hair seemed darker and sparer than usual. She had taken off last night’s makeup but hadn’t applied any more. Her skin seemed pallid, and a cold sore was forming on her upper lip. Her eyes had lost their flame; the lids were
hooded. She was wearing her usual denim jacket, and a thick cotton blouse and a pair of bottle-green corduroy trousers.

‘Thanks for waiting,’ she said, not meeting his eye.

The others, in fact, had also slowed down, and were not far ahead.

‘You don’t look too good,’ said Robert.

Sarah laughed. ‘I don’t look too good? “What happened to you?’

‘I had an argument with a piece of furniture.’

Sarah seemed hardly to hear this. She seemed uneasy, almost distraught.

‘Everyone looks terrible this morning,’ Robert added. ‘Perhaps it wasn’t the best note to end on.’

They were absorbed into the group, but somehow managed to retain their separateness, so that the intimacy between them continued, even as their friends chatted aimlessly on either side.

‘Last night…’ Robert began.

Sarah bridled. ‘I wanted to say something about that. Do you mind if I go first?’

‘No, of course not. Carry on.’

‘Well.’ She made the gesture again: running a hand through her hair, taking hold of a clump and tugging at it lightly. As always, Robert was pierced by it: a sharp pang of tenderness. ‘I just wanted to thank you, actually.’

‘Thank me.’

‘Robert –’ they detached themselves from the group smoothly, almost unnoticeably ‘– I know how you feel about me. Of course I know. I’ve known for ages. I think everybody knows, actually.’

‘Fine. Why shouldn’t they?’

‘So – in a way it was cruel of me to say… what I said last night.’

‘Why? Didn’t you mean it?’

‘Yes, I did. Or at least I did – at the time.’

‘I see.’

‘I was terribly drunk. So were you.’ She turned away, looked out towards the sea. ‘So what I’m saying –’

‘I know what you’re saying. You think it would have been a dreadful mistake, and you want to thank me for not allowing it to happen.’

‘Yes.’ Sarah nodded unhappily. ‘That is what I’m saying, I suppose.’

‘Don’t deceive yourself about this,’ said Robert. ‘It had nothing to do with strength of character. It was pure weakness, actually.’