Ducking for cover from nocturnal monsters

Too cold, or too hot; too angry, or too remorseful – getting through the night can feel as tricky as being a duck trapped in four lanes of traffic

I’M GLAD the weather has changed because I was at the end of my tether from lack of sleep. It’s difficult to keep warm in a big old house at night, no matter how many duvets are on the bed.

There is a hatch into the attic from my bedroom ceiling, which doesn’t close, and there is an open fire grate in the room, from where any warmth spirals up the chimney. Throughout the winter I used as many duvets as I could find, and I threw sheepskin rugs on top – it was like sleeping in a collapsed igloo.

To wake in the night and ramble about the house in moonlight ought to be pleasant; gazing out the window and listening to the muffled sound of trucks on the N7. But when I wake, I am beset by unease; rage against enemies, remorse about the past, and unhealthy obsessions with people I thought were friends but who, in sleep, transform into monsters. And I suffer guilt for things done, and not done.

One evening last week I was standing on the bridge over the Dodder when a duck tried to cross the road. I had checked into the Herbert Park Hotel, and I was heading for the Spar shop to buy bottled water because, having become accustomed to a cold bedroom during the winter, I recently discovered that now I can’t cope with the heat of hotel rooms.

I awoke sweating and parched, and since I don’t like to drink tap water, bottled water was my only option.

I stood gawking at the duck as four lanes of traffic roared by and the poor little fellow wiggled and waddled in and out through cars, jeeps and trucks, and almost lost his life beneath a bus at one stage. Finally, though, he reached the other side in safety.

But he wasn’t happy on the far side of the road, and so he headed back into the traffic. This time a young woman went after him. She stood with her hand up against the oncoming cars, so that the duck could cross safely to his own side. And she didn’t abandon him until he had reached the edge of the bridge, and dived into the river below. I looked at him bobbing on the black water and I gazed with admiration at the young woman. I felt ashamed of myself for doing nothing.

She was plump and cheerful and wore a duffel coat too big for her, and she reminded me of a girl I was in love with many years ago, who lived on a hill. One summer my beloved took ill with a flu, and lay in bed for days, and I climbed the hill to her house, and passed her father, a car mechanic, who stood like a sentinel at the gable, in his greasy black clothes. I felt as vulnerable as any duck in the line of fire as I waddled up that hill. I was terrified of her dark father, and soon afterwards I abandoned the girl.

In my bedroom in the Herbert Park Hotel, I had just one duvet, as tidy as a large handkerchief, but the room was as cosy as toast. My bottled water was beside the bed. So I was anticipating a good sleep.

I watched a movie about infidelity, and it occurred to me that the only night I ever slept with someone else’s girlfriend was a disaster; he came home, just when I was going to the loo with a used condom, and we bumped into each other on the landing. I don’t know how I got out of there alive.

When the movie was over I switched off the television, brushed my teeth and got into bed. I dreamt that the white duvet covering me was a layer of snow, and that I was a dead king. And then, after an hour, I woke up sweating.

I looked at my iPhone; it was 3am. I went to the bathroom, and stared at myself in the mirror with a kind of detached pity.

Back in bed I composed a text – “My bedroom is always too cold, and this hotel room is too hot, so I’m wondering what really keeps me awake!” – but there was nobody I could send it to.