Loggerheads and Other Stories

by Jonathan Coe

‘We were there for two weeks, the six of us, staying at a guest house on the Witte Singel. It was to the south of the town, one of its most beautiful quarters. A short walk down the Kaiserstraat brought you to the Rapenburg and straight into the heart of old Leiden. I find it hard to remember how I spent my time, that first week. You see, I didn’t really know any of the people, apart from Thomas, who had organized it all. Part of the idea was that we should all do some work – most of us had exams to go back to at the beginning of term – but it was too cold to read outside and too nice to stay indoors. I suppose I did the usual things, looking around the university and the museums. I know I went to the Rijksmuseum, because she was there, on the first floor, looking at the Egyptian collection. We didn’t talk much though.

  ‘That was on the second day. Nobody seemed to know her very well; in fact I was never even sure who had invited her along. She was older than the rest of us, she belonged to a different college and a different faculty and I don’t think any of us really knew what she was meant to be researching. She was talkative and friendly, but there was also this – reserve, I suppose. No, that’s not the right word. It was as if she enjoyed our company, but the things which most interested her, or which she considered most important, were things that she couldn’t share with us. That was the impression I had. So I’ll never know why she chose me. Perhaps just because I was the one she ran into.

  ‘It was in the afternoon, about two or three o’clock. There was a pale sun and I had just been into the Pieterskerk. I used to go in there every day – not because I’m religious, you understand, but because it seemed pointless to walk past something so lovely and not go inside. Inside, the brick, it has the colour and the texture of a rose. I don’t know how long I stayed sitting in there. Now I was walking back and I had stopped on the Nonnenbrug to look at the canal again. It was a view you could never grow tired of. And I was about to move on when I saw her approaching in the distance. I knew it was her, long before I saw her face. It wasn’t just the emerald green, or the blackness of her hair – which she wore quite long, in those days: I saw a photograph of her once where it was much shorter. She had a whole way of moving, of making her progress through the world, which was quite distinctive. I had only known her a few days, but I could have picked her out of any crowd. It had to do with determination – but diffidence, too. Humility. You could see it in the way she carried herself. Anyway, you must know what I mean. She hadn’t come much closer before she spotted me and started waving. She speeded up and joined me on the bridge. She was clearly in high spirits: I mean, she was always cheerful, but today there was this extra glow, and she was slightly out of breath – not with the cold, and not with the haste. And she was carrying this brown-paper parcel, holding it quite close to her body. So I said, “What have you got there?” and she said that she would tell me, only we would have to go somewhere warmer. We were both hungry, too, so we decided to walk up towards the Galgewater and see if we could find somewhere to eat.’ He laughed. ‘And this is what we found.’

  ‘This?’

  He indicated our present surroundings.

  ‘This. For some reason you wouldn’t expect to find one in a place like Leiden, would you? But there it was, and in we went. She seemed a bit surprised that I’d suggested it, I must say, but she played along readily enough. I forget what she ordered. I had a quarter pounder with cheese, regular fries and a Coke. And that was how the book got stained.’

  I was shocked. ‘How angry was she?’

  ‘You’d think, wouldn’t you, that she would be furious? To find something like that – something beyond value – and have some idiot ruin it in a matter of seconds. But Thea wasn’t like other people. She shrugged it off. It almost seemed to amuse her. In a way I think it confirmed her feelings about me. There were all these differences between us – she was older, she knew more, she’d seen more, she’d done more: it’s funny, I can see this clearly now, but I think I was scarcely aware of it at the time. I must have seemed naive, and yet it can’t have stopped her wanting to confide in me. She took out the book as soon as we sat down, and showed me the title page. “Does it mean anything to you?” she asked, and I said no. So then she started to explain.

  ‘She had found this copy of the Monas Hieroglyphica only an hour ago, selling for a fraction of its real value, in a small antiquarian bookshop just off the Haarlemmerstraat. It had been rebound, and the title of a different work, some minor eighteenth-century medical handbook, had been put on the spine: so perhaps the bookseller hadn’t bothered to look at it properly, and had no idea that a treasure had fallen into his hands. You know all about the book, of course, so I won’t bother to repeat everything she told me, even though I can still remember most of it with absolute clarity. Nothing about that afternoon has started to fade yet. The ideas were new to me, and difficult at first. I wanted to ask her how she had started to find out about all this, whether it bore any relation to her research, but instead I just got caught up in her excitement. I always found, with her, that this zest, this appetite for things, it drew me in: I had no choice but to share in it. I do remember her saying one thing in particular. She was showing me the hieroglyph, pointing out each individual symbol – the sun, the moon, the sign of Aries – and I kept saying, “Yes, but what does it mean? What does the whole thing mean?”, and she told me that it was an image of unity, that it was intended to show the whole meaning of the universe. And she said: “Imagine that, if you can. A man, a scholar, magician, philosopher, mathematician, is engaged upon work which might, he feels – just might – explain the meaning of the universe. Can you imagine the excitement that man must have felt? The feeling of living always on the edge of such a revelation?” And when I suggested that, from a modern point of view, it might all seem rather foolish, she answered, “Yes, but imagine how he must have felt.”

  ‘It made a great impression on me, that conversation.’

  He crumpled up his carton and his paper cup and threw them into the waste bin. I had been picturing him sitting with Thea on that bright winter’s afternoon, their meeting on the bridge, the flush of pleasure on her cheek as she spoke, and now his sudden action recalled me to my surroundings: the shabbiness of a fast-food restaurant on a dark, rainy evening in Birmingham.

  ‘You became friends?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, in a way. We spent most of our time together, for the rest of that holiday, and then we had to come back to England, and term began, and we continued to see each other, I suppose, but quite infrequently. It’s odd, too, that in all that time I never became – I know this sounds strange, but I don’t think I ever once felt at ease with her. Not completely. Part of me was always on edge, always afraid that in some way or other I would let her down.’ He looked away. ‘But I don’t know what I mean by that.’

  ‘I think I understand,’ I said.

  His tone changed, now, as he asked, ‘Why did she give you that book?’

  I shrugged. ‘One day, some time ago, she decided to give away most of her books. Nearly all of them. She was giving this one to me, she said, because it was special; but it no longer meant anything to her.’

  He seemed taken aback.

  ‘So where is she now? What happened to Thea? You must have kept in touch.’

  I merely shook my head and said, ‘No. I don’t know.’

  It was not pleasant, lying to him, but it had to be done. After we had said goodbye I returned to the shop, unlocked the door, and passed silently between the bookshelves without turning on any light. At the back of the shop was another door, which opened on to a steep flight of stairs. I climbed these slowly, still in the dark, walked past the door of my own room, and entered the bedroom where Thea was lying.

  Her bedside lamp was lit, but at first I thought she must have fallen asleep. Then she turned round carefully to look at me; I could tell that she was in pain again.

  ‘Hello, Jenny,’ she said.

  ‘How are you feeling? How are your eyes?’

  ‘The same.�
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  ‘Should you not turn the lamp off? Isn’t the light hurting them?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t seem to make much difference.’

  ‘Can you see me?’

  ‘Yes, quite well.’

  She began to sit up in bed, thinking hard before moving each limb, raising herself with slow deliberation. I helped her with the pillows until, after a minute or two, she was settled. As soon as this was done, she asked me whether I had shown him the book, and I told her everything about our conversation, about how well he remembered her and the first afternoon they had spent together. She smiled faintly and for a while she too was lost in recollection.

  ‘And what is he doing now?’ she asked. ‘Is he happy?’

  ‘He lives near here,’ I said, ‘but I don’t think he has a job, at least not one that he gets paid for. He doesn’t seem happy, no. He seems to think about those days a lot. He’s been searching for that book, high and low, for years now. He attaches great significance to it.’

  Thea shook her head.

  ‘Poor boy. I could tell, from the very beginning, that he was in love with me, but he never realized, or never admitted it to himself, and perhaps he hasn’t still. He was so young, younger than all the others. But then he never realized that, either.’

  I told her that it was time she slept, because tomorrow she should get up, and do some walking. So I kissed her, and got her to lie down, and left her in the darkened room, her eyes wide open.

  We left the balcony, turning our back on Birmingham’s lights, and went into his sitting room. It was getting late. Soon I would have to leave, and it was time to do what Thea had asked.

  He was talking about her again – when did he ever do anything else? – questioning me, as he had often done before, as to when I had last seen her or heard from her. My answers had always been evasive: I am sure he had begun to suspect that I knew more than I had told. And today, at last, I was able to say:

  ‘I have not been telling you the truth.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She is near. She is close, very close.’

  ‘You mean you’ve seen her? Recently?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Then I admitted that she had been staying with me for some months now, never leaving the flat above the shop. I told him of how I had first heard about her illness, and how I had contacted her at once and offered to look after her for as long as she needed me.

  ‘Is she very ill?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. She is weak, now, and sometimes in pain, but it comes and goes. She finds light painful, and sometimes she finds it painful when you touch her. Her skin burns, and she finds it hard to move. The doctors have come up with some long words, but no cure. Photophobia, hyperaesthesia, diplopia. Disseminated sclerosis: that’s what they say she has. But doctors are no use, they never have been. And we’ve tried other treatments, other approaches, but nothing seems to make her any better.’

  ‘But she’s young.’

  ‘It came upon her quite suddenly, about a year ago. Since then, she’s had periods of good health, but they haven’t lasted. You’ll find her changed, though. I don’t mean by the illness: she had already changed by then. She’s older, you see. You can’t carry on for ever, being so enthusiastic and hungry for life. She grew calmer, more accepting, and that has been a great help. She doesn’t complain, she doesn’t rail against life or fate or God or chance. She assumes there is a reason why it has happened, and she waits to be told what it is. She doesn’t even read or see people any more. She never goes out.’

  ‘How long can she carry on like that?’

  ‘Not much longer, I think. Not here, at any rate. That’s why she’s going to leave soon.’

  ‘Leave?’

  ‘Yes. She’s been invited up to Scotland by another of her friends: a dearer friend than me, I suppose. A man she met several years ago. He’s older than she is, and he has a large house up there. So she’ll be well looked after. She says that it will be a relief for me, but she knows how much I will miss her.’

  ‘How soon is she leaving?’

  ‘Quite soon: a few days. But don’t worry –’ I laid my hand on his arm, I think for the first time ‘– she wants to see you first.’

  I took him to see Thea the next day. He was nervous – I don’t know whether for his own sake, or because he was afraid of finding her dreadfully altered. I followed him up the steep staircase and showed him to her bedroom door.

  ‘Are you not coming in with me?’ he asked.

  ‘Not yet. You should be alone, at first.’

  He opened the door and went inside, while I lingered, in spite of myself, on the landing, listening for their voices. But I heard nothing. When I joined them later, he was sitting beside her on the edge of her bed, and she was propped up against the pillows. His hand was on hers, the curtains were drawn and the room was in near darkness. I closed the door quietly behind me and stood silent in the corner. They took no notice of my arrival. Thea was talking in a low voice, quite rapidly, earnestly. He listened, but did not look at her: his head was bowed. And Thea was saying:

  ‘Please don’t give in to this nostalgia. Don’t let it flatten you, or hold you back. I don’t think you ever understood what you wanted from me, and if you had, you would have seen that I could never have given it. And in any case, that’s not what you long for today. Not really. What you long for is the chance to feel that way again: that feeling of being poised on the edge of a revelation. If that was how I made you feel in Leiden, I’m glad; but it means that what you’ve been looking for, all this time, isn’t me at all – just a version of yourself, a younger version, that’s gone and can never come back.’ She stirred beneath the bedclothes, and a flicker of pain crossed her face, but still she was calm. ‘All nostalgia,’ said Thea, her skin burning from the touch of his hand, ‘is a longing for innocence.’

  THREE STORIES FROM UNREST

  Ivy and Her Nonsense

  When I came out of the church and crunched back down the gravel path towards the plot where my grandparents were buried, I found that Gill was still standing by their gravestone, staring across the churchyard with a strange, frozen look in her eye.

  It was a grey and breezy morning, two days before Good Friday. The wind, blowing in wild, unpredictable gusts, carried the noise of traffic from the distant M54, and had already tipped our freshly laid wreath to one side. I knelt and straightened it.

  ‘What now?’ I said. ‘Home?’

  She didn’t answer. She turned towards me with a frown, and seemed on the point of asking a question when a noise behind us caused her to look round sharply. It was the wicket gate to the churchyard, blowing open and shut in the wind.

  ‘Has there been anyone else here?’ she asked. ‘Besides us, I mean. Have you seen anyone?’

  I shook my head. We had arrived in the village only half an hour ago, and had found it empty and somnolent. My sister now hugged her coat tightly around herself and began making her way slowly back to the car; her gaze fixed on the ground, her boots tracing patterns in the gravel as she walked. But then before reaching the porch she suddenly turned again. She stared hard at a chestnut tree which stood against the furthest wall, over towards the bowling green. Beneath it was a wooden bench.

  ‘Anything the matter?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll tell you later.’

  I offered to drive, and asked her if she was still in the mood for the sentimental journey we’d proposed on the way over from Birmingham. She gave an absent nod, and so I reversed out into the main thoroughfare, paused uncertainly at the first junction, and then struck off down a once-familiar lane, verdant this morning and windswept. After a few minutes, during which the windscreen became spattered with thin raindrops, my grandparents’ house came into view. We parked on the grass verge about fifty yards from the front gate, and looked at it blankly, not knowing what to do next.

  ‘They’ve changed the whole shape of it, haven’t they?’

  The new owners – as I st
ill thought of them, fifteen years after they’d moved in – had added a two-storey extension where my grandfather had once built his long, lean-to workshop down one side of the house.

  ‘I suppose it’s quite tasteful, actually,’ I conceded. ‘Credit where it’s due.’

  I looked across at Gill, expecting her to have some thoughts on the matter. But her eyes were closed, and one hand was resting against her temple, as if she had a headache. I took hold of her other hand and found it ice-cold.

  She said: ‘I’m sorry. Something strange happened back there, that’s all.’ Then she blew her nose into a Kleenex (she kept a copious supply tucked up both arms of her cardigan) and added: ‘Let’s go, shall we? I don’t think I can face the farmhouse.’

  So: did she really see a ghost in the churchyard that morning – or two ghosts, to be more precise? She has always stood by her story, and it has only ever been pride, I suppose, that has stopped me from fully believing her: the sense of some subtle family insult – the sense, if you will, of having been ‘cut’ – upon learning that it was Gill my grandparents had chosen to appear before, rather than myself. Certainly she was able to describe the scene in convincing detail. My grandfather had been sitting on the bench with his briar-wood pipe in his mouth (unlit), his hearing aid in place, and wearing his thick woollen herringbone overcoat; my grandmother had been carrying, as usual, the Thermos flask she had bought at Woolworths countless decades ago, which had accompanied us on all our childhood picnics and excursions. They had seemed relaxed, Gill said, and contented – although clearly feeling the cold – and they had also been entirely self-absorbed; occupied in a voluble and animated conversation (an odd feature, this, which did not chime with my own memories of their relationship), and oblivious to the watchful presence of my sister. The illusion, if that’s what it was, had lasted about ten or fifteen seconds.

  Gill told me this as we drove home, following the faster, recently completed roads which did indeed knock a few minutes off the old journey, although only because they bypassed all the towns, villages and landmarks which had once made it interesting. As she spoke about her peculiar visitation, I was still acutely conscious of being treated as her little brother, and could detect in her manner an undertone of childlike competitiveness. It was as if she knew that by describing it so completely, and in such matter-of-fact terms, she could retrospectively devalue my own limited experience in this area. It was only a matter of time before I rose to the bait; and so when at last she said to me, flatly, ‘I can see you don’t believe a word of this,’ I heard myself replying: