The Rain Before It Falls

by Jonathan Coe

  The concert was on a Tuesday night, and was held in Grosvenor Chapel in South Audley Street. Rebecca and I met outside St George’s Hospital on Hyde Park Corner. The first thing she told me was that the concert had sold out, and that she had been unable to buy tickets. But I was not to worry, apparently, because she knew the woman who was taking tickets on the door (a fellow student), and had been told that we could come in, without paying, and stand listening at the back.

  It was a winter’s night – I suppose we must be talking about early December 1952 – very blustery and bitterly cold. I haven’t been to London now for about five years, and the last time I went, I thought it a most noisy and stressful and disagreeable place; whether you are familiar with it or not I have (of course) no idea. But I can assure you that it was a very different city in the early 1950s. For one thing, wherever you looked, the signs of war damage, and subsequent attempts at reconstruction, were everywhere. It may seem a strange thing to say, but to someone like me – because I have always had rather romantic habits of mind – this made the city seem somehow picturesque and… well, enchanted, in a curious kind of way. A fine snow was falling, resting briefly on the surface of things like a light dusting of icing sugar on a cake, and that, of course, made the scene more magical still. Perhaps it was just the mood I was in. It was also, at this time of night, and in this part of Mayfair at any rate, uncommonly quiet: I can remember the echo of our footsteps in the street far more clearly than anything we said to each other. What did we talk about, anyway? Personal details, I suppose, would have tumbled out – places of birth, what we were studying, family details: fairly banal information, but all delivered in the tremulous, confiding tones you always hear when lovers are conversing for the first time.

  Of course, we were not lovers yet, nor did we become so that night. Not in the physical sense, at any rate. On the other hand, I (I cannot speak for Rebecca, after all, certainly not at so many years’ distance) was without doubt deeply in love by the time we said goodnight to each other. I lay awake for most of the night, thinking of the concert, how we had stood together, surreptitious and conspiratorial, at the very back of the church, enjoying the music but at the same time detached from it (I seem to remember a Bach cantata), the flicker of candlelight all around us, reflected in her eyes, making them dance, her already gilded hair approaching something like incandescence (or so it seemed to me, anyway, in my state of youthful rapture). I thought about her voice, having expected something plummy, Home Counties, like someone you would hear on the BBC Home Service. But instead, her accent was West Country, with lengthened vowels and a wry intonation. She was down-to-earth, and funny. We had whispered jokes to each other, lips against each other’s ears, while everyone else in the audience listened to the music in solemn, loveless silence. I curled up tighter in the warmth of my bed, hands between my knees, hugging the memory to myself. And at the same time, a kind of dread was hovering, at the edges of my thoughts, the knowledge that something uncharted and dangerous was being offered to me. But I pushed this dread away, refused to acknowledge it.

  The next weekend, I had arranged to go up to Birmingham, to see my parents and of course to spend some more time with Maurice. I hated the very thought of it. But went, all the same. One night – probably the Saturday night – he came round for dinner at my parents’ house. In the silence of their kitchen, the scraping of his knife against the plate seemed even louder than ever. Afterwards, we sat around the table with my mother, and he brought out a glossy brochure and a set of architect’s drawings. I didn’t understand at first, until I realized that these were the plans for a house, one of two dozen or more identical houses on an estate which had not even been built yet. This house was only now in the early stages of construction, and already, without consulting me, he had bought it! I remember being speechless, and crying tears of fury in bed that night. But still I didn’t say anything. I could see no alternative to Maurice, even though images of Rebecca kept rising up before me, unbidden, all the long sleepless night.

  Why I decided that it would be a good idea for Maurice and Rebecca to meet, I have no idea. I must have known that it would be an awkward occasion, and I can only suppose that, subconsciously, some demon was working within me, with the ulterior motive of forcing a crisis out of a situation that was rapidly becoming intolerable. It was early on a Sunday afternoon, towards the very end of that Christmas term, I imagine. We met for coffee at Daquise, a Polish restaurant in South Kensington, and afterwards strolled up towards Hyde Park.

  It was Maurice’s idea, I recall, to hire a row boat and take it out on the Serpentine. Doubtless he wanted to show off his prowess as an oarsman to not just one but two admiring young ladies. It was not such a chivalrous idea after all, however, since those of us who were not rowing were in danger of freezing to death. But he meant well, as always.

  Let me look closely at the photograph, now. Fifty-three years ago, good grief. I wonder whatever became of Maurice. He was eight or nine years older than me, so this photograph would capture him in his late twenties. A thick, herringbone overcoat, with what appears to be a single-breasted tweed suit beneath it. The inevitable tie. Round, hornrimmed spectacles, framing a pair of beady eyes. A rounded, protuberant chin. On his head, a trilby hat, tipped back at what he no doubt considered to be a jaunty angle, revealing a ‘V’ of slicked-back auburn hair, slightly receding. I must try not to be unkind about Maurice, because he was not a bad man, and he was not unattractive. Probably he ended up by making somebody a decent husband. In any case, most people would hardly notice him when they looked at this picture. It’s Rebecca who predominates, who holds the attention. This is partly to do with her height – she is a full six inches taller than him – partly with the extraordinary blondeness of her hair: this photograph is somewhat overexposed, or perhaps it has been left in the sun; at any rate, you can see that the colours might have been quite crude and lurid, once, in the manner of photographs from that era, but they have since been bleached out, and now Rebecca’s hair is almost white, and almost luminescent, giving off light like the halo around one of the seraphim in a Renaissance painting. She is wearing a navy-blue coat. I remember this coat; she wore it constantly. This photograph only shows her from the waist up, but it was a long coat, reaching below the knee, and she usually wore slacks with it. She preferred trousers to skirts, on the whole. That sleeveless dress she was wearing, the first time I saw her at the party, was untypical. She had the peculiar knack of dressing like a man yet remaining entirely feminine.

  Looking at the cloudless sky, and the way that they are both squinting slightly at the camera, you can tell that it was a good, crisp, bright winter’s day. They are both smiling. A neutral observer, coming to this picture with no prior knowledge of the people involved, or the situation they found themselves in, would probably read nothing much into these smiles. Both parties seem to be enjoying themselves. But oh, the tension and uncertainty that was in the air that afternoon! It was very cruel of me, in retrospect, to bring the three of us together. Maurice probably had the best time, because he had no intimation, of course, of what Rebecca and I were beginning to feel for each other. It was simply way beyond the reach of his experience or imagination. Whereas poor Rebecca herself (she told me this much later) was in torment. Her feelings for me were at their earliest, most tender and vulnerable stage, and to be forced to bottle them up for hours like this, and watch powerless while Maurice asserted all his usual claims over me – taking my arm, kissing me, and so on… It must have been quite dreadful for her. When we said goodbye a little later, near the Albert Memorial, she stormed off down Queensgate without looking back. I remember wanting to run after her, and I remember Maurice’s hand on my arm, detaining me. Perhaps he had realized, by then, that he was engaged in a battle for power, although he can’t have believed that it was a very serious one. He must have been confident that the odds were stacked in his favour. He must have sensed victory – or, more than that, believed in his very marrow that it
was his by divine right.

  Well, Maurice was mistaken, unfortunately.

  Two days after that Sunday, I broke off the engagement. I am afraid I did it in rather a cowardly manner, by letter. In any case, if I had hoped to avoid a confrontation this way, I was being naive. Maurice came down by train again two days later and turned up at my room in Hall. He must have taken a very early train from Birmingham because his hammering on the door woke me out of a deep sleep. At first I would not let him in. Finally, however, I had no choice, because the indignity of having the details of our relationship shouted out from the other side of a closed door, for the whole college to hear, was too much to bear. When I unlocked the door he burst into the room looking pale and feverish, his hair in wild disarray, like a mad thing. But he did not stay for long. Doubtless he had many things that he wanted to say to me but when he saw that Rebecca was lying in my bed, naked, he stared at her disbelievingly for a few seconds, then turned on his heels and left. He never spoke to me again after that. It was an unfortunate way to end the affair, on the whole.

  Normally I don’t like photographs of formal occasions. They are even more mendacious than usual. This next picture – number eleven, I think, in our series – is a good example, because although it seems to record an occasion with perfect fidelity, it actually gives no indication of what was going through the minds of the people who were there. There is, if you like, the ‘official’ interpretation of the picture, and behind it, there is the unofficial, authentic version. On the one hand, it is a photograph of Rebecca’s graduation ceremony; on the other, it is a picture of Rebecca and me in the few hours following our first serious quarrel.

  It was taken outside the Albert Hall, where the ceremony was held, so we are not far from the location of the last photograph, not far at all. Rebecca is standing between her parents, and I am on the right-hand side, next to her mother, but slightly removed from the group. I can’t remember who took this one, exactly – one of Rebecca’s fellow graduates, we must presume. I had been introduced to Rebecca’s parents as her ‘friend’, and they seemed to accept this designation at face value. She had just gained a good honours degree in history and was about to start work as an archivist at the General Register Office at Somerset House; we had found a flat to share together on the first floor of a Victorian conversion in Putney, while I completed my degree; the whole arrangement must have seemed perfectly normal and desirable. Such was the innocence of those times (or so it seems now), and such was the impeccably bourgeois world-view of Rebecca’s mother and father, that no other likely interpretation would have occurred to them. If they had observed our behaviour towards each other that day a little more closely, however, surely the seeds of a suspicion might have been sown. If we were ‘just’ friends, they might have asked themselves, then why on earth were we so cross with each other?

  I’m looking at the picture carefully now, to see if any trace of that crossness made its way on to our faces. Rebecca’s first. She looks very silly, as everybody does on their graduation day, wearing one of those ludicrous mortar boards with dangly tassels and carrying a big scroll of parchment which she doesn’t know where to put. She is smiling in a very self-conscious way, but I’m sure that has less to do with crossness than with knowing how foolish she looks. Her parents are beaming, fulsomely. Is that the right word? You talk about ‘full beam’, don’t you, when describing a car’s headlights. Well, that’s them, in this photograph: they are on full beam. Today, everything is for the best, in the best of all possible worlds, as far as they are concerned. He is broad, short and dark, she is tall, blonde and thin: fortunately Rebecca took after her mother. They were a most ill-suited couple, the kind of couple I always assume will separate as soon as their children have left home. Whether they did so, I have no idea. They liked me at first, embraced me as a friend of their daughter and then, when the peculiarity of our domestic arrangements became more and more apparent (you will understand what I mean by that shortly), they became increasingly hostile to me. Actually, he became increasingly hostile – I don’t think that she cared a fig what was going on, so long as her daughter was happy. A much more mature outlook, in my opinion. Anyway.

  I am still wearing my hair long, in this picture. Rebecca liked it that way; she was furious with me when I had most of it chopped off a few months later. It is quite wild and unruly: we must have left the flat in such a hurry that I had time to do nothing more than stick a couple of pins into it. As for my jacket, I remember it well: my mother had bought it for me in Rackham’s in Birmingham, just before I came down to London, and we both considered it the height of fashion. It was light grey and had three-quarter-length sleeves and radiating tucks at the shoulder. In this picture I am wearing it with a very pretty skirt: a wide pleated swing skirt, with a broad front panel and a pattern of deep red roses against a white background. The hemline is just below the knee. Ah, but look what you can see beneath the skirt, just above my left ankle! A huge ladder in my stocking. That was probably something I had done in my agitation, that morning. There was no way I would have allowed myself to appear in public with a ladder like that, unless we had both come out in a terrible state of fluster and confusion.

  Well then, let me tell you something about the quarrel. To be honest, the atmosphere in our flat had been strained – and that is putting it mildly – for a couple of days. Perhaps I should describe the flat to you, first of all. It was furnished, after a fashion: plain, cheap, uncomfortable furniture. There was one bedroom, containing a double bed, and there was also a foldaway single bed in the sitting room. It was our landlady’s assumption, obviously, that we would sleep separately, and we never saw any need to disabuse her. Off the sitting room was a tiny kitchenette, barely large enough for the two of us to stand in at once. The sitting room itself was entered by a communal hallway; there were two other flats in the house, and we all shared the same bathroom and toilet. These were all perfectly adequate living arrangements, for two ladies sharing. If Rebecca and I had been able to occupy the flat that way – just the two of us – then I’m sure we would have been quite comfortable. However, it was not to be. In fact we only ever spent about three weeks there, together and alone, before being joined by someone else.

  We had no telephone. The first I knew of what was about to happen was when the electric bell to our flat shrilled late one summer evening, two nights before Rebecca’s graduation. This was in July 1953, and it was just getting dark, so I suppose it must have been round about nine o’clock. Rebecca went downstairs to see who was at the front door and when she came back up she had two people with her, two people I was not expecting to see: Beatrix and Thea.

  Thea was by now not quite five years old. One of the first things that became apparent was that she was extremely tired, so we boiled up some milk and made her a mug of hot cocoa and then put her to sleep in our double bed. While we did this I remember Beatrix sitting on the sofa looking apprehensive, squeezing her hands together in a nervous gesture.

  Of course I was very surprised to see her, and she seemed surprised that I was surprised. She asked me if I had not received her telegram, and I said that I hadn’t. Then she realized that she had forgotten to send it. It was at this point that it occurred to me she was in a very agitated state. We had no alcohol in the flat, but Rebecca went downstairs and borrowed a bottle of brandy from our landlady, with whom we were still, in those days, on good terms. We poured Beatrix a generous glassful and while we were at it, I seem to remember, had a small glass ourselves. It was a disturbing situation, and all our nerves were frayed.

  The full story did not emerge that evening: we heard only the beginnings of it. Beatrix and Jack, in any case, had separated – that much I could have guessed for myself. The adventure was over, the flames of passion had fizzled out, and the gipsy caravan – now a rotten and bedraggled shadow of its former self – had been sold off to a scrap dealer in Dublin. They had had a good run of it, really: a romantic escapade they had managed to stretch out for thre
e years, during which time Beatrix had written to me only once, on the postcard which I have already described to you. Given this lack of contact, my feelings upon seeing her again so suddenly were mixed, to say the least. She and Thea had been in London for a few days, she said, staying at an hotel. Earlier that day she had telephoned my parents, and they had given her my new address. Since returning from Ireland, she had not visited Warden Farm, or attempted to contact her mother and father.

  We put Beatrix into our bed with her daughter, and managed to muddle up some sleeping arrangement for ourselves in the sitting room. I may have slept on the floor, I can’t quite remember. Neither of us had a very good night’s sleep, that’s for sure.