The House of Sleep (12 page)

Robert wasn’t sure exactly what she meant by this, but he didn’t like the sound of it.

Terry asked: ‘What does she look like?’

‘Quite small,’ said Lynne. ‘Quite skinny. Pale blue eyes. Always wears a denim jacket. Blonde hair, medium length, quite short: a bit like straw.’

‘It’s nothing like straw,’ Robert protested.

‘It’s exactly like straw: that’s why they call her Worzel.’

‘Who calls her Worzel?’

‘Everybody does: after Worzel Gummidge, the scarecrow. Of course,’ she added, ‘that’s only one of her nicknames.’

Already dreading the answer, but unable to stop himself, Robert asked: ‘What are the others?’

‘Well, some people call her Sarah Spew, after a famous incident where she went to a restaurant and threw up all over the other guests. Some people call her Gregory’s Girl, because she used to go out with this obnoxious guy called Gregory. And some people call her Rip van Winkle, because she has this charming habit of falling asleep when you’re talking to her, if she doesn’t find you particularly interesting.’

Robert frowned. ‘That might not be her fault,’ he said. ‘There is this condition, I think –’

‘But
most
people,’ said Lynne, who hadn’t yet finished with the litany of nicknames, ‘most people just call her Mad Sarah.’

His heart sank even further. ‘Why’s that, then?’ he asked, unnecessarily.

‘Because she’s completely mad. She comes up to people and claims to have had conversations with them, and done things with them, and all the time she’s just inventing it all. She’s completely barking.’

This had gone far enough, Robert decided. ‘I don’t believe that, actually.’

‘It’s true,’ said Lynne. ‘That’s why I thought it might be Sarah you were looking for: because I saw her just a couple of days ago, and she was talking about you. She was saying all sorts of things, and I bet she was making half of them up.’

In spite of himself, he was excited to hear that Sarah had not forgotten him in the last week, that she even considered him interesting enough to discuss with her friends. ‘Why, what did she say?’

‘Well, she said that your cat had died recently and you were really upset about it.’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘And then that you sat up half the night with her on the terrace in the freezing cold, talking about the meaning of life.’

‘We did, as a matter of fact.’

‘
And
she’s been going round telling everyone that you’ve got a twin sister.’

There was an expectant silence. Terry turned and looked at him, facetious, challenging. ‘Well?’

‘Well what?’

‘You’re not going to try and tell us that
that’s
true, are you?’

Robert returned his stare. He was conscious, too, of Lynne’s eyes upon him. ‘As a matter of fact it is,’ he said.

Terry was briefly – very briefly – dumbstruck. He looked from Robert to Lynne, from Lynne to Robert, trying to decide if this was part of some elaborate joke. ‘I’ve been to your house,’ he said. ‘I’ve met your family. You don’t have any brothers or sisters.’

‘What else did she say about her?’ Robert asked, ignoring Terry for the time being.

Lynne said: ‘Well, according to Sarah, you had a twin sister called Cleo, but your parents couldn’t afford to bring up both of you, so they gave her away for adoption when you were just a few days old and you’ve never seen her since.’

Robert said nothing, although his expression suggested that he was occupied with some reluctant, intensely private train of thought. Terry registered this and was determined to prise the truth out of him.

‘Well – is she lying? Is she making it up?’

‘Of course not. How could anyone invent something like that?’

‘You’ve got a twin sister called Cleo, and you’ve never told me about it?’

‘Why should I? It’s not as if I’ve ever met her.’

‘You’ve known me for two years – we’ve been friends for two years – and you’ve never told me that you had a twin
sister. And yet you meet some weird woman, and you get talking, and five minutes later you’ve poured out the whole story to her?’

‘She’s not a weird woman. There’s nothing weird about her.’

Lynne snorted at this, and said: ‘Anyway, Terry, you
do
know Sarah Tudor.
She’s
the one who’s started that… you know, started that – thing, with Ronnie.’

And Robert would later remember the moment he first heard this name: how an immediate premonition had visited him: the awareness, at once, that he was in freefall, plummeting towards a limitless chasm. He knew for certain that all the hopes he had been building up over the last week – he had thought them so vague and insubstantial, but suddenly recognized them, now, as concrete monstrosities – would come to nothing. Panic engulfed him.

‘Oh, you mean it’s
her
?’ Terry was saying. ‘
That’s
who we’re talking about? Of course I’ve met her. She was sitting at our table the other day when Ronnie and I were having an argument.’

‘Quite small…’ Lynne prompted.

‘Quite thin, pale blue eyes, denim jacket, blonde hair a bit like straw. And
completely
off her trolley.’

‘That’s right,’ said Lynne. ‘You noticed that as well, did you?’

‘Mad as a hatter, we all thought. Ronnie had been coming out with all the usual stuff about men being rapists and wife-beaters, and then this girl – who none of us had been talking to, or anything – suddenly broke into the conversation and said she agreed. Then she got up and left, practically knocking the table over in the process.’

‘I’m in love with her,’ said Robert.

Terry and Lynne turned in their seats, as one, and regarded him mutely. Neither of them queried his statement, but making it had given Robert such quick, unexpected pleasure, such a sense of release, that he decided to repeat it anyway.

‘I’m in love with her,’ he said. ‘I think she’s wonderful. I think she’s the most lovely and beautiful person I’ve ever met.’

Terry was stunned into silence: he had never heard Robert say anything like this before. Lynne just shook her head disbelievingly and looked out through the windscreen again. ‘Well,
that’s
a novel point of view,’ she conceded.

‘When you say that she’s been with this man called Ronnie,’ Robert continued flatly, ‘I assume you mean that they’re having an affair?’

‘I didn’t say that she’d been with a man called Ronnie. That’s not what I said.’

For a fatuous instant Robert clutched at these words, thinking that perhaps he’d heard wrongly the first time, that perhaps everything was still going to be all right.

‘I thought–’

‘You really have picked a good one here, Robert. You’ve really excelled yourself.’ Then Lynne explained, patiently and not unkindly: ‘She’s having an affair, but not with a man. Ronnie is female. It’s short for Veronica.’

The chasm opened again: twice as wide, and blacker than he would have thought possible.

‘But you told me that she’d been going out with a guy called Gregory,’ he said; tumbling.

‘Well, now she’s going out with a girl called Veronica.’

It was Terry, at last, who took it upon himself to spell the thing out: ‘She’s a dyke, Bob.’

Robert looked to Lynne for confirmation; as if hoping, even now, that this was some cruel male fantasy his friend was spinning for him. But Lynne simply nodded. ‘As of Monday,’ she said.

The rain had almost stopped, by now. Terry turned on the ignition. ‘And I still cannot
believe
,’ he added, ‘that we’ve been friends for two years, and you’ve never told me about your twin sister.’

He checked his mirror and flicked on the indicator, easing
the car out into the road in the direction of the breaking clouds, the pale faltering sunshine.

∗

The day after her long conversation with Robert, on a warm but blustery Friday afternoon, Sarah had wandered into the Café Valladon and noticed Veronica sitting with three other women; had halted in the doorway, uncertain how to proceed; had seen Veronica detach herself from the group and approach her, a smile of recognition and welcome lighting up her face; had felt the touch of a hand on her forearm, and found herself guided towards a separate table, where it appeared they were to have a tête-à-tête. She had taken the books out of her canvas rucksack and explained that she had not managed to look at them all; Veronica had apologized for dumping them on her in that way, with the implication that her reading in certain areas was somehow deficient; it had been a crass thing to do, little more than a ploy, really, to make sure of seeing her again. Veronica had gone behind the counter and fetched some coffee (Slattery being in the thick of one of those protracted and mysterious absences which seemed to interfere so little with the smooth running of the Café). And then they had begun to talk.

Sarah had called on Veronica again the next day. They went for a meal together, and then went to see a late film in town, and Sarah missed the last bus home: she woke up, the next morning, in a sleeping-bag on the floor of Veronica’s room on campus. The morning after that, she woke up in her bed.

It was a click that woke her: somebody switching on a portable cassette player. She snoozed through the first few minutes of the tape, then surfaced and began to take note of her surroundings during a Billie Holiday song:

I’ve got those Monday blues

Straight through Sunday blues

‘Well – have you?’ Veronica asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.

‘Have I what?’

‘Got those Monday blues.’

‘Is it Monday?’ Sarah sat up anxiously and looked at the bedside clock. It was ten-fifteen. ‘Oh, fuck – I had a nine-thirty lecture.’

‘You’ve got sleep in your eyes.’ Veronica tried to touch it with her forefinger, but Sarah flinched and sank back under the duvet. ‘I bet you’d like some coffee.’

‘Mm, I would, quite.’

‘So would I,’ said Veronica, ‘but unfortunately we drank it all yesterday.’ She stood up and stretched, her body strong and wiry beneath a T-shirt so long that it reached below her knee. ‘I think we should have something in Jonah’s, anyway. Coffee, breakfast, the full works. What do you say?’

Breakfast was not served after ten-thirty, so they dressed quickly, arrived just in time and were rewarded with bacon, mushrooms and large portions of solidifying scrambled egg. Veronica dispatched her portion hungrily, then started dipping her fork into the rubbery hillock of egg which Sarah – sitting stiffly opposite her, and looking somehow distracted – had left untouched. Neither of them spoke much: at least, not until they were joined for a few minutes by a History student called Lynne, and even then it was Veronica who did all the talking. Sarah sat playing with her sachet of sugar, tipping all the sugar to the bottom half and then folding it in two, then inverting it and repeating the process, until the sachet itself came apart and sugar spilled out all over the remains of her breakfast.

‘I could see that was going to happen,’ said Veronica. Lynne had left by now.

‘I’m sorry.’ Sarah laughed. ‘It’s a bad habit of mine.’ She ran a hand through her hair, taking hold of a clump and tugging at it lightly. Another habit: a gesture Robert had already been captivated by. And now Veronica, too, noticed it for the first time.

‘What d’you want to do today?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ said Sarah. Her voice was toneless. ‘I’m feeling a little bit strange, to be honest.’

‘I’d noticed.’

‘It’s just that… what it is…’ Sarah looked across at the table next to them. Although the restaurant was almost empty, three young male students had chosen to seat themselves there, and were starting up a fitful and desultory conversation. ‘This is really embarrassing, but… you know what I was telling you yesterday, about my dreams?’ (Could she really have told Veronica this already, after knowing her only a couple of days?) ‘About how vivid they are, sometimes?’

Veronica nodded.

‘Well, I had one about
you
last night.’

‘About me?’

‘About us.’ She glanced across at the three students. They were munching Kit-Kats wordlessly. ‘We were…’

‘Yes?’ said Veronica.

‘… in bed together.’

Veronica shrugged. ‘Sounds fairly harmless. Is that the only reason you’re looking so tortured?’

‘You know how it is,’ said Sarah, ‘after you’ve dreamed about someone. The next day, you don’t see them the same way.’

‘That’s true,’ said Veronica. ‘Especially if it’s an erotic dream, I find.’

‘Well, exactly,’ said Sarah, almost in a whisper.

‘What do you mean, “exactly”?’

‘I mean… “exactly”.’

‘This was an erotic dream: is that what you’re telling me?’

Sarah nodded; and then she said (her voice lower than a whisper now): ‘I wish those creeps would go away.’

‘What makes you think it was a dream?’ asked Veronica.

‘I’m sure they’re listening.’

‘Well,
you’re
obviously not.’

Sarah looked at her, her eyes widening. Veronica’s question
had finally broken in upon her, and its implications became suddenly, shockingly clear even as she heard it repeated.

‘What makes you think it was a dream?’

Sarah’s next words were faint: ‘I know it was.’ Then fainter still: ‘I’m sure it was.’

Veronica smiled and shook her head. She said: ‘I think I’m going to fall in love with you, Sarah.’

6

At two o’clock that afternoon, Terry went into Dr Dudden’s empty office and – quite without his permission, or indeed knowledge – efficiently disconnected the telephone. He plugged his PowerBook into the phone socket and pressed the send button, thereby sitting in motion a rapid but complex chain of events. Converted from binary data into analog signals, his film review was propelled down the telephone lines by electric current and just a few seconds later arrived in the Arts and Features Department of the newspaper, where a fax machine reconverted it into digital information and fed it to a thermal print head for reconstruction on paper. Passed in this form to the Arts Editor, it was briefly scrutinized, chuckled over and approved for publication, so that the following morning it could be glanced at by perhaps one in twenty of the newspaper’s 400,000 readers: one of them, on this occasion, being Sarah, who fell asleep while attempting to read Terry’s review in her staff room during morning break.