While You Sleep

by Stephanie Merritt

  When the sound of the engine had died away, Zoe leaned her back against the inside of the front door and allowed herself to slump to the floor.

  He’s a new landlord, she told herself; he’s bound to be nervous the day his first tenant arrives. It was sweet, she supposed, how concerned he and Kaye were about her well-being, their little thoughtful touches. She hoped they would ease up once she’d settled in, though; she was troubled by the way they kept referring to her as their ‘guest’ rather than their tenant. She hoped they wouldn’t feel compelled to take her under their wing while she was here, save her from being lonely. Sometimes it was hard to make people understand how much you desired solitude. Or deserved it.

  There was a telephone on a console table at the side of the entrance hall. She briefly considered calling home, but decided she was too tired, too fuzzy with whisky to deal with the conversation. She had texted Dan from the airport to say she had landed safely; she would call tomorrow. Instead she pulled herself to her feet, switched off the downstairs lights and climbed the stairs. On the first landing, to the right, she found her cases propping open the door to a lit room; inside, a master bedroom furnished neatly in crisp white, slate grey and duck-egg blue, with a small en suite leading off it. She threw her jacket over a chair, pulled off her biker boots in the bathroom doorway, bent her mouth to the tap and gulped down cold water, then collapsed on to the bed, where she fell asleep, fully clothed. Outside, the security lights snapped off and the McBride house was folded into the darkness once more.

  2

  That night, Zoe dreamed.

  She was stripped naked and laid across a low couch in the long gallery that ran the length of the house on the west side, facing the sea. Both arms were stretched above her head and pinioned so that she could not move them. Around her the room lay steeped in shadow, save for the pale shaft of moonlight that filtered through the tall windows, silvering the bare boards of the floor. Though she could not see them, she sensed someone else in the room, moving closer. Two hands, reaching out of the darkness, expertly began to trace slow patterns across her skin. Hot breath on her neck, whispering down across her shoulder. Her muscles tensed; her nipples stiffened and her hips rose as she felt herself swell and open. Despite the apparent helplessness of her position, she was not afraid; instead she felt an unfamiliar boldness, a pleasure and pride in her own body that made her want to arch her back, display herself for him. Somehow he knew her, this unknown lover; he understood how she needed to be touched, and she trusted him, the certainty of his hands, his mouth, anticipating her want and need. His breath brushed her cheek and she parted her lips for him but he had moved away without a kiss and she was powerless to pull him back. She could only wait for him to continue moving around her, over her, the ghost of lips on her breasts, the hands now clasped firmly around her waist with a sense of ownership. As his tongue finally made contact with her nipple she tried to cry out, the jolt of it so sweet and sudden, as if she had been wired to an electrode, a shockwave that juddered the length of her body and shot through her groin, but – as always in dreams – she could make no sound. His mouth closed over her breast and his teeth tightened and tugged, gently at first, but sharply enough to remind her that he could, if he chose, bring her pain as well as pleasure. She pushed her hips out towards him and one hand slid down over the curve of her buttock and between her legs as his mouth moved across the softness of her belly. Good, he whispered, inside her mind.

  Zoe was aware of a level of lucidity within the dream, of existing in some liminal state between sleep and waking. But though she could direct the movements of her own body, as far as the restraints around her wrists allowed, she could not influence the shadowy lover who was deliberately withholding from her what he knew she wanted; slowly, softly, he skirted between her legs with his tongue, drawing out the torment. In one instant she would feel the heat of his breath right where she needed him, at the sharp pinpoint of her pleasure, before he moved away, licking the inside of her thigh or the smooth skin above her pubic bone, gently biting the jut of her pelvis or the soft curve of her waist while she tried pleading with him, begging him, though her words emerged soundless as she strained against the restraints binding her hands. When, finally, his tongue made stealthy contact with her most sensitive point and he slipped two fingers inside her, it felt like a concession, or a reward; her whole body was illuminated, shocked into vivid colour. One hand held her hips steady as the rhythm of his flickering tongue quickened and his fingers drove deep into her; bucking and grinding against him, she heard herself screaming, a wild, animal cry, as she felt the first spasm of muscle and the sudden hurtling, as if over the edge of a waterfall, the exquisite frustration of the desire to pull him into her and her inability to touch him at all. As the ripples of her orgasm rose over and over, she could already feel him slipping away, melting back into the shadows, and she cried out again to make him stay but her voice was stifled, stopped in her throat; her mouth worked noiselessly and she could not move her hands to reach him or claw him back.

  She woke at her own mewling sounds, feeling disorientated and raw, blinking into the dark to find that she was indeed lying on a couch in the long gallery, her arms stretched above her head and crossed at the wrists. A draught from the curtainless windows stirred goosebumps over her naked skin and it took her a few moments to locate herself, to understand that she was no longer dreaming. How had she ended up here? She lowered her arms gingerly, as if afraid she might meet with some resistance; her shoulders ached and her fingers had grown numb from being held aloft. She had no recollection of leaving her bed, or having undressed herself, but the memory of the dream remained vivid, the imprint of him on her most tender parts. She looked down at herself, bewildered, as if her body was strange to her, no longer recognisable, feeling the heat of her desire sticky on the insides of her thigh. She slid a tentative finger between her legs and flinched at the coldness of her own touch; she was still engorged, still aroused. She pressed her finger harder and began to circle it; within moments she was rising to a crescendo and a ragged, gasping climax that was fierce and necessary but lacked all the wonder, the other-worldly magic of the dream lover’s caress. She stood in the room’s silent shadows, feeling flayed, exposed to the elements. And yet, how stunning! It had been as if something had possessed her, as if her desire were a slumbering beast buried so deep for so long that she had forgotten to notice its absence until it was awakened. He was no one she recognised from her waking life, of that she was certain. A figment of her imagination, then, an ideal lover who had touched and manipulated her with such authority, such intimate knowledge.

  The moon slipped out from between two banks of cloud, spilling pearly light across the floor. Outside, she could hear the low, insistent roar of the sea. She shivered, and was on the point of turning to leave the room, when a shadow shifted at the edge of her vision: the faintest hint of a movement. She stepped towards the windows, peering out at the black water. Immediately she flinched back. There was someone on the beach, huddled into the overhang of rock at the southerly curve, looking up at the house. Or, at least, she thought she saw a figure; panicked, she stifled a cry and grabbed a blanket from the back of the couch, wrapping it around herself before she dared approach the window again. A cloud moved across the face of the moon and the pale rim of sand was lost in darkness; when it reappeared, there were only the rocks and the steady, breaking waves. Zoe breathed out, feeling her pulse hammering in her throat, and almost laughed with relief. She needed to sleep, she told herself; her brain was wired and exhausted, that was all. She rested the tips of her fingers against the glass and took a last look at the beach, to reassure herself that there was no one there; a seabird, perhaps, or even a seal, or the movement of a cloud casting shadows. The beach remained empty. She sighed, letting her breath mist the pane.

  Slowly, she became aware of a sound behind her. Barely audible, a faint scratching of nails on wood. Drawn-out, unnerving; her neck prickled and a sick chill flo
oded through her. Someone was trying to get in. Though the sound had stopped, the stillness that followed was the silence of held breath. She could feel it, unmistakably: a presence on the other side of the door. She did not dare turn around; instead she stood, frozen rigid, her head bowed as if waiting to receive a blow, naked shoulders stippled with cold and fear. The scratching came again, a slow raking against the wood. Zoe heard herself whimper, biting the flesh of her thumb; the sound stopped, abruptly. Whatever was out there knew she was here. Setting her jaw, squeezing her fists so tight she felt her nails cut the skin of her palms, she straightened, crossed to the door, grasped the handle, and in one movement, before the fear could undo her, she wrenched it open—

  The landing outside was empty. She slumped, pent breath tumbling out in a gulp that was half-sob, half-laughter, relief turning her limbs to water. She would have to tell Mick Drummond in the morning that, for all his painstaking restoration work, he still had mice in his walls.

  She returned to her room, wrapped in the blanket, and was puzzled to see her clothes neatly folded on the armchair beneath the window. When had she done this? She squinted at the clothes, trying to summon some recollection of folding them, placing them, but a great weight of tiredness had descended on her; she could not, at that moment, bring herself to care. There were pyjamas somewhere in her case, but it was padlocked shut and she could not be bothered to rummage for the key. She slipped under the duvet, still wrapped in the blanket from the couch, drained and exhausted, her body sinking into the sheets. Sleep had almost reclaimed her, when the singing began.

  It was the song Kaye had sung that evening, the lament that had made the old men cry and stirred such unexpected emotion in her, though she had not understood the words. The song Kaye had told her was a woman grieving for the one she loved, lost to the sea. And now a woman was singing it, somewhere in the house, though with none of the beauty or passion Kaye had brought to the melody. This voice was thin and sickly, scored through with desolation and loss. Zoe’s eyes snapped open; as she lay there listening, it seemed that the singer was in danger of being overwhelmed by the force of her grief; at times the voice would tail off, choked, and Zoe held her breath, waiting, until it resumed, the same refrain, quavering and hoarse. Though she knew it was only the echoes of her memory, another trick of her tired mind brought on by the emotional intensity of her disturbed night, she could not stand to listen to it any longer; she threw off the cover, pulled the blanket tight around her and opened the door to the landing, tensing on the threshold with her head on one side. The song was drifting from the floor above. She groped about on the wall at the foot of the stairs, but could not locate the light switch.

  The stairs creaked as she ascended, one step at a time, pausing to listen. Again she felt that creeping cold at the back of her neck, a clenching in her bowel. Perhaps she had not been mistaken; perhaps someone had found a way into the house. She had locked the front door behind Mick, but there must be other doors and windows in a place this size; she had not checked them all before she fell asleep. But why would an intruder advertise her presence by singing? Zoe advanced as far as the landing, wishing she had thought to bring some makeshift weapon – a poker, or even an umbrella. If someone had broken in, they could be unhinged, and potentially dangerous. She glanced over the banister into the pool of darkness below, thinking of the telephone on its table in the hall; briefly she considered running back down, calling Mick and Kaye. How long would it take Mick to drive here – fifteen minutes, perhaps, twenty at the most? She stopped, took a breath, registered her own choice of words. If someone was there. She had somehow undressed herself and sleepwalked naked into the gallery; who was to say she was not still half-asleep, imagining the singing, the presence, the scratching? She could not call Mick and Kaye in the middle of the night, on her first night here, because she was hearing things and it turned out she was not as brave or self-reliant as she wanted to believe. Gripping the banister, she walked the length of the second-floor landing with a purposeful stride, her mouth set firm. The singing continued, its volume unvarying, as if the singer was oblivious to Zoe’s footsteps or the creak of the stairs. It seemed to be coming from behind a closed door at the far end. Zoe stood in front of it, hesitated, then tried the brass knob. The door was locked.

  She turned it in both directions, rattled it hard, but the door refused to give, and the singing continued, unperturbed; if anything, the bleak emotion in the singer’s voice intensified. Zoe found herself arrested by the sheer force of the woman’s grief; it infected the atmosphere of the entire house, soaking through Zoe’s skin until she felt saturated with it, until she feared her heart might crack open with the weight of such fathomless loss. She mastered herself, tried the door once more. When it remained stubbornly locked, she knocked on it, hard, with her knuckles.

  ‘Who’s there?’ she called, tentatively at first, then bolder. ‘Who are you? Come out.’

  No one answered, though she thought the voice seemed to grow a little fainter. She knocked again, shook the doorknob, and the next time she called, the song faded gradually away, like a track on an old record, leaving only an expectant silence. The landing settled into stillness. Zoe pulled the blanket tighter around her and leaned against the door, felled by exhaustion. There was no one here; she felt unaccountably angry with herself for her own weakness. As she turned towards the stairs, she sensed a draught on the back of her neck and, in her ear, a breathy sound that might have been laughter, or a sob.

  When she woke, it was past eleven and sunlight streamed through a gap in the curtains. She was lying in bed, naked, the woollen blanket she had pulled from the couch in the gallery bundled under the cover beside her. So she had not dreamed that part, at least. She sat up, hugging her knees to her chest, squinting into the light. After the whisky, the jet lag and the disturbed night, she had expected a jagged-edged hangover, but as she uncurled her fingers and stretched her arms out, rolling her shoulders, she could detect no trace of a headache. Instead she felt unusually light and invigorated. She swung her legs over the bed and the sight of them – long, lean, pale – brought back a flash of images from the night before. That dream – she flushed at the memory of it, squeezing her thighs together. She used to have intensely vivid sex dreams when she was younger, but they had retreated into the background somewhere along the way, like the rest of her sex life. Back then, though, the lovers who featured in her dreams were variations on men she knew, often men she had never knowingly entertained any such feelings towards in her waking life. But this dream lover was different; he was unreal, perfect, formed from her own unarticulated longings. If she could, she would have fallen back on to the bed and invited the vision back, but she knew that would never happen. It was fleeting, delicious, gone. And everything that had followed – the fear, the scratching, the singing – seemed easy to explain away now: fevered imaginings of a mind torn abruptly from sleep and confused by dreams. Thank God she had not called Mick and Kaye with her wild night-terrors; how ridiculous she would have looked. She curled with shame at the thought.

  Zoe unlocked her suitcase, dug out a pair of track pants, a tank and an old cashmere jumper of Dan’s, and padded down to find the kitchen. It was a large, wide room at the back of the house, facing the shore, with a door that led out to the veranda; a proper old farmhouse kitchen, tastefully modernised, with a stone floor and walls painted in a muted slate-blue and cream. She opened and closed a few wooden cupboards. All the appliances and cookware were branded, the kind of names that would meet with the approval of the well-heeled guests they obviously hoped to attract. Zoe filled the kettle, found a cafetière and an unopened packet of filter coffee and considered again, while it was brewing, how strange it was that Mick and Kaye should have gone to so much trouble and expense to restore this house so beautifully and leave it to strangers, while they went on living above the pub. A five-mile drive to work would be nothing, for the joy of waking up to this view every morning. Perhaps they were counting on the
income as an investment; she supposed the pub trade must suffer out of season. Perhaps – and she pushed this thought to a corner of her mind – they did not want to risk being cut off in winter.

  The kitchen door was firmly locked and bolted from the inside, the keys hanging on a hook behind it, as Mick had said. All the windows were closed and secured, she noticed, with window locks; there was no chance that anyone could really have entered the house last night. Tired brain, she reproached herself, sliding back the bolts. She poured her coffee into a large pottery mug and stepped outside with it into a warm wash of golden, late-autumn sunshine. The boards of the veranda felt damp under her bare feet and though the air carried the sharp, clean edge of October, the light was gentle, caressing her face. She wrapped her hands around the steaming mug and took in her new home for the first time.

  The sea had retreated, leaving a corrugated expanse of tawny sand, scattered with pebbles and ribbons of kelp. The wind of the previous night had dropped and in the curve of her little bay the water shone like mercury under the light, calm now and docile, lapping in slow rhythmic waves at the shore. Above it, scalloped rows of white clouds drifted across an expanse of blue, rinsed clean and bright. Seabirds wheeled overhead, banking sharply or floating on invisible streams, complaining to one another. Zoe walked to the end of the veranda, to the corner where it joined the north side of the house, and tilted her face to the sun, breathing in salt, damp earth, fresh coffee as she absorbed the colours of the bay – violet and gold, azure, emerald and indigo – picturing how she would mix those colours in her palette, how thickly they could be layered to recreate the textures of sea, rock, cloud. She sensed the old quickening in her gut at the prospect of creating something from nothing, the days stretching ahead, blank canvases, no demands on her except the paintings themselves, their own forms. Was this freedom, then? Was this it – the freedom she had secretly craved over the past decade: no husband, no child, only herself alone with an empty canvas and a view of the wild sea? She allowed her gaze to sweep around the deserted beach. The answer, of course, was no. This was not true freedom, not the freedom of her youth, because implicit in their absence was her own dereliction – of her responsibilities, of the ties that should have anchored her. There could be no freedom now that was not tainted with guilt.