Ian McEwan - Solar

The black slate floor was heated all night and felt good beneath his cold white feet. Let the planet go to hell. Remembering that there were several mirrors – one of them covered an entire wall – he turned the dimmer switch down before he went to the hand basin to drink from the tap. Then he urinated, and afterwards lowered the wooden seat and lid over the bowl. Before he sat, he put on a scarlet dressing gown she had bought him three Christmases ago, and tied it at the waist.

Orgasm sometimes brought on a bout of insomnia. He might have been more comfortable in the sitting room, but to go in there would be a concession to wakefulness, to the next day, the next subchapter of his existence. His mood was sour. He wanted oblivion, and the bathroom was a provisional place, an anteroom to sleep. He did not understand why he felt so rough. He made a tally of the previous day's drinking – just about average – and began to form the familiar resolution, then dismissed it, for he knew he was no match for that late-morning version of himself, for example, en route from Berlin, reclining in the sunlit cabin, a gin and tonic to hand. And what had he been reading on the plane? What other concerns could a rational man have? Three reports in succession. First, an early draft from oil-industry insiders calculating peak oil production in five to eight years. So little time to turn this matter around. Second, also a draft, to be published in the autumn: a quarter of the planet's mammals under threat, a Great Extinction already under way. Third, an academic paper sifting data on Arctic summer ice, proposing 2045 as the disappearance date.

Was he unhappy, reading of this man-made mess? Not at all. He had been content, a frowning serious man at work, not even thinking at that point of the lunch to come, marking significant passages or his professional dissent with pencil underlinings, arrows, balloons, while an oval window framed the azure stratosphere to his left, and ten kilometres below, the treeless north-German plain, flattened and smoothed by centuries of bloody battle, which yielded eventually to treeless Holland and its Mondrian fields. Also to his left, the southern sun, too high for clouds, sent its photon torrent to illuminate and elevate his labours. How could he ever give up gin?

But he was unhappy now at 4 a.m. on his oak and porcelain pedestal, hunched like Blake's Newton over his toes, too tired to sleep. This was alcohol's contribution to insomnia – he was parched, exhausted, alert. The usual bundle of congealed anxieties appeared before him in the gloom of the overheated bathroom. They were not all abstract concerns. Some were distinctly embodied: his weight, his heart, which he thought beat too irregularly these days, giddiness when he stood up, pains in his knees, his kidneys, his chest, the smothering tiredness that was always on or near him, a red blotch on the back of his hand that some months ago had turned purplish, the tinnitus that he could hear now, an airy, rushing sound which never left him, the pins-and-needles sensation in his left hand, also constant. He felt his symptoms as crimes. He should see a doctor and make a full confession. But he did not want to hear himself condemned.

Then, the squalid basement flat in Dorset Square, accusing him like an abandoned friend: when are you coming back? One oppressive detail was the piles or mounds of unopened mail. There were letters from Tom Aldous's father, who wanted to meet and reminisce about his son. What was Beard supposed to do? This was not the time to take on the burden of an elderly man's distress, of a father still grieving after five years. Then, the precariousness of the project. Would the venture capitalists of Silicon Valley finally open their hearts and bank accounts? Would John P. Hedley the Third, the rancher in New Mexico, change his mind before his proxy and Beard signed the papers in the US Embassy tomorrow? Could he make gases from water even more cheaply, and could he stop them recombining? Must the catalyst be an oxide? If he let his thoughts go towards this problem, he would never sleep. It was easier to think of Melissa's news. Could he have guessed she would be so devious? On this matter, the pregnancy, his three hours' sleep had conferred some certainty. He knew it in his gut, it could not happen, this child could not be, he would not permit it, this homunculus must retreat to the realm of pure thought. That he would talk her round he did not doubt. She cared what he thought of her. That she loved him more than he loved her was the unarguable source of his power.

It was at times like these that he thought of Tom Aldous. Gangling, big-boned, big-toothed Aldous with a head exploding with ideas, not all of them foolish. Poor Tom, long forgotten by the rest of the world. He, Beard, could almost blame himself. He should have hammered to the floor with two-inch nails that ridiculous rug from Patrice's side of the family. He should have opposed her when she insisted on polished boards. He should have objected to that ugly glass table on grounds of safety, not of taste. And though it was hardly his fault that Aldous was in the house when he had no business there, it would have saved his life if Beard had thrown him out right from the start, no mercy, sent him into the cold street in his dressing gown, in Beard's dressing gown, to find his way back to his uncle's place.

But, thought Beard, he must not be too hard on himself. He was the one who was keeping alive the spirit of that young man. Four years ago, in the rented basement flat he now irresponsibly owned, stretched out on the stinking sofa, which was still there, smelling no better, he had seen in ways that no one else could the true value of Tom's work, which in turn was built on Beard's, as his was on Einstein's. And since that time he had sweated, he had done and was still doing the hard work. He was securing the patents, assembling a consortium, he had progressed the lab work, involved some venture capital, and when it all came together, the world would be a better place. All Beard asked, beyond a reasonable return, was sole attribution. For what could precedence or originality mean to the dead? And details of surnames were hardly relevant when the issue was so urgent. In the only sense that mattered, the essence of Aldous would endure.

And what heroic times they had been, the first slow elucidation of the Aldous file, and then, in the evenings, watching from the same supine attitude the TV news, and the latest from the Old Bailey, and seeing his ex-wife-to-be speak up outside the court with trembling clarity and assume the mantle of media darling. As for Tarpin the Builder – that a man guilty of two crimes, fucking Patrice and blacking her eye, should go down for another of which he was innocent never troubled Beard much at all.

No one can predict which of life's vexations insomnia will favour. Even in daylight, in optimal conditions, one rarely exercises a free choice over what to fret about. What needled him now, hours before the winter dawn, as much as health, money, work, an imminent abortion, or an accidental death, was that lecturer, or professor, at the Savoy, Lemon, no, Mellon, with jutting beard and fixed stare, outrageously accusing him of being inauthentic, a fraud, a plagiariser. But Mellon was the real thief, appropriating Beard's genuine experience in order to reduce it to an item of academic interest, a case study in popular delusion, an infectious tidbit doing the rounds like a dirty joke. With the long and easy reach of sleeplessness, he saw his hand close round Mellon's throat and squeeze until he dropped to his knees to make his apology in gasps. Beard could be forceful, but he had never assaulted anyone, not even in childhood. In daydreams, however, he surprised his enemies with astonishing escalations of violence. Now, with a slight acceleration of his pulse, he felt refreshed, more awake than ever. He experienced a resurgence of optimism. His life, after all, had possibilities.