The House of Sleep (38 page)

The footsteps halted. ‘Don’t come round? What are you talking about?’

‘Please, Sarah. Please stay where you are.’

‘But I want to
see
you, for goodness’ sake. I haven’t seen you for five years.’

‘I’ll be out in just a second,’ said Cleo. ‘I’ve reached a slightly delicate stage here. We’re having okra dal with cardamom and coriander rice.’

‘Well… that sounds wonderful,’ said Sarah, with a touch of impatience. ‘But food is hardly the first thing on my mind at the moment. I didn’t come all this way for a meal.’ There was no response from around the corner. ‘I mean, could you not have left a slightly less cryptic message? Why all this drama?’

‘Five years is a long time,’ said Cleo. ‘I felt that something special was called for.’

Sarah sighed crossly, then picked up one of the glasses of red wine from the table, and drank a little.

‘Robert, this is so silly,’ she said, coming even closer to the cooking area. ‘I’ve just driven all the way here from London, and I’m tired out. I don’t want to be messed around any more. I know it’s ages since we were last together, and we’ve got… a lot of ground to cover, but let’s at least
look
at each other.’

‘No!’ Cleo shouted, and such was the urgency in her voice that Sarah took several steps back. In more controlled tones, but no less earnestly, Cleo added: ‘The thing is, Sarah, that
I’ve changed a lot in the last few years. You’re going to get a shock when you see me, and I want you to be ready for it. Just sit down for a minute, and then I’ll come and talk to you.’

‘All right,’ said Sarah, and she sat down at the table, her thoughts racing with various possible interpretations of these ominous words. ‘You… you haven’t been ill, have you, Robert? I mean – you are all right? That’s not why you suddenly wanted to see me?’

‘I’m fine,’ Cleo answered. ‘In fact, I’ve never been finer.’ She could not concentrate on her cooking any more, and leaned with her back to the oven, breathing deeply. ‘There’s so much I’ve got to tell you. So many things.’

‘Me too,’ said Sarah.

‘We’ve got all evening, haven’t we? You don’t have to drive back to London tonight?’

‘I’m not sure what I’m doing. Is there anyone else coming to this… reunion?’

‘No. No, it’s just you and me. I hope that’s all right.’

‘Yes, of course it is. You’re the one I wanted to see.’ Sarah drank more wine, and looked around her. The situation was so bizarre, she felt so tense and uneasy, that she began talking again simply in order to calm herself. ‘It feels very weird being back here, I must say. Back in this house. In this kitchen.’

‘“After so many years,”’ Cleo quoted, ‘“it is strange that we should thus meet again, here where our first meeting was.”’ She picked up the kitchen knife, and began chopping some parsley. ‘Do you remember that night, Sarah? When you were drinking soup – in your dressing-gown?’

‘Yes, I remember,’ she said. ‘Of course I remember. There’s barely a day gone by, in the last five years, when I haven’t thought about it.’

‘Really? You haven’t forgotten me, then?’

‘Oh, Robert,
why
didn’t you keep in touch?’ Her voice rose and pulsed, suddenly, with a multitude of resentments. ‘It was horrible, saying goodbye to you on the cliff like that. And
then the way you just disappeared, never answering my letters or anything…’

‘I did write to you, once.’

‘Yes, but that didn’t
tell
me anything. It didn’t say where you were, or what you’d been doing. And even
now
, you know, I get this peculiar message from my parents, and I drive all the way down here, and you won’t even let me see you, you behave so…
strangely
…’

‘In a minute,’ said Cleo, ‘you’ll understand everything.’

‘I hope so.’

‘You’re being very patient, Sarah. I do appreciate that.’

Sarah sipped her wine, almost but not entirely mollified. ‘I had to cancel a dinner party to come here tonight, you know.’

‘Really? That was good of you.’

‘With my future in-laws, I might add.’

The sound of Cleo’s chopping ceased abruptly.

‘Pardon?’

‘My fiancé’s parents.’

‘Your…? You mean you’re getting married?’

‘That’s right. In three months’ time.’

‘To a man?’

‘Of course to a man.’

‘But…’

‘But what?’ said Sarah, when the silence began to seem interminable.

‘But I thought you were gay.’

‘Gay? What gave you that idea?’

‘Well – you know, all that business with Veronica.’

‘Well yes, but there was Gregory before that, and now… now there’s Anthony. He’s very sweet, actually. I’m sure you’d like him. Veronica was – well, not a
phase
, exactly, because that doesn’t make it sound very important, and she
was
important, but… oh, I don’t know. It’s so hard –’

‘But you
said
, Sarah, I remember you saying, that Veronica had changed everything for you. She introduced you to your nature: those were your exact words.’

‘Well, obviously I didn’t know myself very well when I said that. I mean, I was only young, Robert. We were both only young.’

‘But what about – what about when you told me who your ideal partner would be? Do you remember that?’

‘Vaguely…’

‘You said it would be a female me. My twin sister. That’s what you said.’

‘I meant to ask you about that,’ said Sarah. Cleo could hear her scraping the chair back and getting up. ‘Did you ever go looking for her? Did you ever find her?’

‘Hold on a minute,’ said Cleo. ‘I’ve just got to… I’m just going to take some rubbish out.’

She slipped out through the kitchen’s back door, groped her way along an unlit passageway and eventually came upon another door, this one locked and bolted. It seemed to take forever to locate the key (it was in the keyhole) and to pull back the stiffly yielding bolts, after which Cleo found herself stepping out into the ragged kitchen garden, beneath a starfilled sky. She slammed the door behind her, doubled up almost immediately and vomited over the flagstones. She crouched on all-fours and continued to heave and retch until the convulsions were indistinguishable from sobs.

Scrambling to her feet, she felt in the pocket of her jeans. Thank God: the car keys were there.

She ran around to the front of the house. She could see Sarah’s face in the kitchen window, lit from behind by the golden candlelight. Would Sarah be able to see her? Would she have spotted this absurd woman, out of breath, delirious with shock, her makeup smudged with tears, as she lunged towards the car and grappled with its door?

Cleo revved up the engine, reversed the car screechingly and sped off down the drive, just as Sarah realized what was happening and came running down the front steps.

She drove for many miles, with no awareness of the direction she was taking. She badly wanted to clean herself down, to
wipe her eyes and face, but didn’t dare to stop until she could be certain that she was not being followed.

At last she could wait no longer, and pulled the car over into a parking bay.

The ocean lay blue and somnolent beneath her, and there was no one else on the road; no sign of Sarah. The evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed, Cleo saw no shadow of another meeting with her.

18

Dr Dudden did not attend the second day of the conference. It had seemed so important, just twenty-four hours ago, but he could see now that the whole exercise was fundamentally pointless and trivial. There were far more urgent matters to consider. His career, his work, his reputation, the very continuation of his researches at the Dudden Clinic were all under threat. The forces massed against him – forces of ignorance, of jealousy, of reaction – were starting to mobilize. The conspiracy was gathering pace.

All this had become clear to Dr Dudden during the night, which he had spent energetically pacing the London streets. He had not slept a wink, and he felt better for it; in fact he was quite sure, this morning, that he would never want to sleep again. His lips curled in an involuntary sneer as he looked around the train carriage and saw how many of the passengers were already – so early in the day! – either dozing, or napping, or nodding off, or snoozing, or snatching forty winks, their mouths hanging stupidly open, their heads lolling, their eyelids drooping heavily. Did these people have no sense of dignity, no self-respect? Did they hate life so much that they had to shut themselves off from it at every opportunity? He sometimes wondered if such creatures were actually worth saving: but that wasn’t the point any more. The idea that he was on some sort of mission to help mankind had been foolish, he realized. It was one of the delusions that had been holding him back, when the real issue – so plain, so suddenly obvious – could be summarized in a few words. Yes, the real issue was this: that Dr Dudden was right, and everybody else was
wrong.
He
could see it, and they couldn’t. It was down to a simple tussle, then, between good and evil. It was Dudden
versus
the rest of the world.

Now that he saw it in these terms, a hideous dissatisfaction with all his earlier mistakes, compromises and procrastinations began to overtake him. He had spent far too much time on futile interviews with half-witted patients; far too much time offering palliative treatment to malingerers, neurotics, hypochondriacs and weaklings. The first thing he would do when he arrived back at the clinic would be to discharge the patients. All of them. Phone for a fleet of taxis and clear them out: a clean, comprehensive purge. They were no more than a distraction, a grotesque obstacle to the business in hand. Everything that was important in that building took place below stairs, down in the basement: and even there, he had wasted too many of his energies. Those animal experiments should have been abandoned months ago: he had long since learned all that he would ever learn from the behaviour of rats, dogs and rabbits. From now on, he would work with human subjects. That was the only way forward. He should never have let that stupid accident deter him. It was shameful that he should have allowed himself to be frightened off by whispers, by malicious rumour, by ignorant gossip. That equipment, he knew, was perfectly safe, and he would prove it. He would prove it at once; openly, irrefutably, and by the only means possible. By using it himself.

As the pace of Dr Dudden’s thoughts quickened, so the train taking him back towards Ashdown began to slow down, bringing him out in a sweat of frustration and impatience. Long, inexplicable stops were being made between stations. During the third or fourth of these, he stood up, tore off the headphones on which he had been listening to a favourite recording of the
Goldberg Variations
, and hurled his CD Walkman contemptuously out of the nearest window. Even his former tastes in music now revolted him. ‘Pap!’ he shouted, as he stormed back to his seat. ‘Passionless pap! Soporific
shite!’ He ignored the anxious, sidelong glances of the other passengers. He cared nothing for the opinion of these drowsy fools. It no longer mattered what the world thought of him: they were all in league, anyway. All of them. Myers and Cole had hatched some sort of plot against him – he was certain of that – with Russell Watts as their willing stooge; and there was probably some spy, some mole at the clinic who was helping them out, gathering information on him, scheming away behind his back. Dr Madison, in all probability: that hateful old sow had always had it in for him. And what about Worth, the journalist? He wasn’t to be trusted, either. It would be no surprise to learn that the two of them were in cahoots. He remembered, now, that on the very first night of his visit, Terry and Dr Madison had arranged a clandestine meeting out on the terrace; and the next morning Terry had taunted him with the information that they had become ‘superficially’ acquainted, and even had the nerve – yes, it was all coming back now, it was all making sense – the bastard even had the bare-faced
gall
to mention Sarah’s name. So, they were in it together, without a doubt. Of course, since then (to the best of his knowledge) Terry and Dr Madison had barely seen or spoken to one another: but what was that if not a transparent ploy, providing further evidence – if any more were needed – of some sly, wordless understanding, some sinister alliance…?

And just at that precise moment, Dr Dudden’s suspicions were confirmed in the most astonishing way. As his train sat marooned, stranded between stations, another, London-bound train crawled by in the other direction. He looked across and for a few seconds had an uninterrupted view of the passing vehicle and its occupants. And there they were: sitting together in a half-empty carriage, laughing, gesturing, and giving every appearance of enjoying a lively conversation. The two people at the very centre of his thoughts.

Terry Worth and Cleo Madison.

∗

‘Did you see that?’ asked Cleo, craning back to look at the motionless train.

‘See what?’ said Terry.

‘That was Dr Dudden. I’m sure of it. Sitting in that train.’

‘I thought he was meant to be at a conference.’

‘So did I.’

‘Did he see us, do you think?’

Cleo shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. What if he did?’

‘Well, he mightn’t be too happy,’ said Terry, ‘to know that his assistant has run off to London, and his favourite patient has discharged himself.’

Cleo watched the other train recede into the distance, then settled back in her seat. ‘To be honest, I’m no longer very interested in what makes Dr Dudden happy, and what doesn’t. I’m much more interested in
this.
’ She picked up Terry’s photograph from the table between them, staring at it in wonder. ‘Are you seriously telling me it comes from a film that nobody – that
nobody
has ever seen?’

‘Maybe two or three people. At the most,’ said Terry. ‘And even then, nothing’s been documented.’

‘Do you think anybody else has a copy of this picture?’

‘I doubt it. I’ve certainly never seen it published anywhere.’