Jonathan Coe - The House of Sleep

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published by Viking 1997
First published in Penguin Books 1998
This edition published 2008
1

Copyright Jonathan Coe, 1997
All rights reserved

The author and publisher wish to thank the following for permission to reprint copyright
material: HarperCollins for an extract from The Echoing Grove by Rosamond Lehmann;
Good Morning Heartache, words and music by Irene Higinbotham, Ervin Drake and Dan
Fisher. Copyright 1946 Northern Music Corporation/MCA Music Inc., USA. MCA
Music Ltd, 77 Fulham Palace Road, London W6. Used by permission of Music Sales Ltd.
All rights reserved. International copyright secured; Routledge & Kegan Paul for extracts
from Gravity and Grace by Simon Weil (trans. Emma Craufurd)

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

978-0-14-191834-1

The odd-numbered chapters of this novel are set mainly in the years 19834.

The even-numbered chapters are set in the last two weeks of June, 1996.

I do get confused about time. If one loses ones emotional focus she stopped, struggled, went on huskily thats what happens. Aeons split seconds they interchange. One gets outside the usual way of counting.

Rosamond Lehmann, The Echoing Grove

It was their final quarrel, that much was clear. But although he had been anticipating it for days, perhaps even for weeks, nothing could quell the tide of anger and resentment which now rose up inside him. She had been in the wrong, and had refused to admit it. Every argument he had attempted to put forward, every attempt to be conciliatory and sensible, had been distorted, twisted around and turned back against him. How dare she bring up that perfectly innocent evening he had spent in The Half Moon with Jennifer? How dare she call his gift pathetic, and claim that he was looking shifty when he gave it to her? And how dare she bring up his mother his mother, of all people and accuse him of seeing her too often? As if that were some sort of comment on his maturity; on his masculinity, even

He stared blindly ahead, unconscious of his surroundings or of his fellow pedestrians. Bitch, he thought to himself, as her words came back to him. And then out loud, through clenched teeth, he shouted, BITCH!

After that, he felt slightly better.

Huge, grey and imposing, Ashdown stood on a headland, some twenty yards from the sheer face of the cliff, where it had stood for more than a hundred years. All day, the gulls wheeled around its spires and tourelles, keening themselves hoarse. All day and all night, the waves threw themselves dementedly against their rocky barricade, sending an endless roar like heavy traffic through the glacial rooms and mazy, echoing corridors of the old house. Even the emptiest parts of Ashdown and most of it was now empty were never silent. The most habitable rooms huddled together on the first and second floors, overlooking the sea, and during the day were flooded with chill sunlight. The kitchen, on the ground floor, was long and L-shaped, with a low ceiling; it had only three tiny windows, and was swathed in permanent shadow. Ashdowns bleak, element-defying beauty masked the fact that it was, essentially, unfit for human occupation. Its oldest and nearest neighbours could remember, but scarcely believe, that it had once been a private residence, home to a family of only eight or nine. But two decades ago it had been acquired by the new university, and it now housed about two dozen students: a shifting population, as changeful as the ocean which lay at its feet, stretched towards the horizon, sickly green and heaving with endless disquiet.

The group of four strangers sitting at her table may or may not have asked permission to join her. Sarah couldnt remember. Now, an argument seemed to be developing, but she did not hear what was being said, although she was conscious of their voices, rising and falling in angry counterpoint. What she heard and saw inside her head was, at that moment, more real. A single, venomous word. Eyes blazing with casual hatred. A sense that she had not so much been spoken to, as spat upon. An encounter which had lasted two seconds? less? but which she had now been replaying, involuntarily, in her memory for more than half an hour. Those eyes; that word; there would be no getting rid of them, not for a while. Even now, as the voices around her grew louder and more animated, she could feel another wave of panic swell inside her. She closed her eyes, suddenly weak with nausea.