by Jonathan Coe
However, these were precisely what it offered: glimpses, nothing more. It made Claire wonder if her memory was deceiving her, because as far as she could recall, when she was younger and used to look into the mirror, she used to see clear, steady reflected images. But it wasn’t like that any more. The reflections came and went very quickly. By turning the mirror this way and that, she could often make them come back, but only for a few seconds at a time. It was like trying to listen to a radio that was never quite tuned in properly.
One Saturday morning while her parents were out somewhere, Claire had an accident. She was washing up her breakfast things and she dropped a mug on the kitchen floor. It broke, so she looked around for some newspaper to wrap up the shattered pieces. The only thing she could find was the local paper, the Kennoway Trumpet, which was delivered free of charge every week and usually went straight into the recycling bin without anybody reading it. This morning, though, Claire’s attention was caught by the picture on the front page. It was a picture of two people she recognised. She forgot about clearing up the mug and started reading the story instead.
The two people in the photograph were her old headmaster (and enemy) Mr Drummond, and Amanda Gifford’s father Basil. They were standing on some big building site, shaking hands and grinning at the camera. ‘Council Gives the All-Clear for New Development’, the headline said.
Claire learned a number of things from this story, and suddenly realised, to her shame, that she had not been paying much attention to what had been going on around her in the last few years. For a start, it turned out that Mr Drummond was not headmaster of her old primary school any more – he had moved on from that, and was now the Mayor of Kennoway. This meant, as far as she could make out, that he was basically running the whole town. And he had big plans for it: plans that were going to disrupt a lot of people’s lives, and which called for the heavy involvement of Amanda Gifford’s dad, by the looks of things.
In this picture, Mr Drummond and Mr Gifford were standing in front of a famous building on the outskirts of town. It was the old chocolate factory, built by the Bellweather family more than a hundred years ago, a massive but beautiful red-brick building standing in hundreds of acres of lawned grounds. Claire had good reason to recognise this building, because it was where her father worked, and when she was younger she had visited it twice – once for a guided tour, and once for a party which had been given for all the workers’ children.
Later that day she showed her father the newspaper and asked him what was going on.
‘They’re closing the factory down,’ he said.
‘Does this mean you haven’t got a job any more?’
‘Not really. They’ve sacked me – they’ve sacked all the workers. But they’re going to employ us all again.’
‘What’s the point of that?’
‘It means they don’t have to give us things like pensions and health insurance any more. And we’ll all have to work at the new factory, of course.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘About twenty-five miles away.’
Claire had never really been interested in her dad’s job before, but the more he talked about it, the more she wanted to know. He told her that the Bellweathers had been a staunchly Christian family and, when they started the factory more than a century ago, their idea had been mainly to make drinking chocolate, which they hoped would stop people drinking so much wine, beer and spirits. They had been true philanthropists, he said, who paid their workers properly, gave them a clean and safe environment to work in, built them houses with gardens and poured lots of money into other projects which benefited the town as a whole. But five years ago the factory had been bought up by a much bigger international company, and since then lots of things had changed. Now many of the workers had been laid off, most of the chocolate was manufactured overseas, and the old factory had been sold to Gifford Construction Ltd, who proposed to turn it into a luxury hotel and spa.
Claire decided that she would like to know more about the history of the Bellweather family, and that the obvious place to look for information was the old town library. She hadn’t been there for about five years, but she knew how to find it easily enough.
At least, she thought she did. It took her fifteen minutes or so to walk to where the library used to be, and when she got there, all she could see was a shopping centre. There was a woman standing outside in a fluorescent jacket, collecting money for some charity or other, so Claire went over to her and said:
‘Excuse me, I’m looking for the library. Didn’t it use to be near here?’
The woman laughed. ‘Have you got a time machine?’
‘Pardon?’ said Claire.
‘You’re in the right place. But you’re about three years too late. The library isn’t here any more. They closed it down to build this instead.’
Claire thanked the woman and walked on into the shopping mall. It was full of all the usual places: coffee shops and clothes shops and mobile-phone shops. People were drifting about from one shop to another, trying to find ways of spending their money, all with a slightly glazed, lifeless look in their eyes. The only thing that seemed to be propelling them forwards, Claire thought, was an instinctive, irresistible impulse to buy stuff, eat stuff and drink stuff.
She walked to the only part of the mall that looked attractive, where there was an ornamental pool in the centre, with a fountain playing and a few artificial plants around the edges. She sat down on the edge of the pool and took the broken mirror out of her pocket – carefully, so that nobody would notice what she was doing. She sat with her back to the pool and angled the mirror so it was pointing towards a shop selling handbags and jewellery and other accessories. She looked closely into the mirror.
Reflected in the glass was a big, warm, softly lit space, the walls lined with books of every size and description. It was the library, all right, and just as she remembered it from all those years ago, except that this one looked even more welcoming and well-maintained. There were people sitting at desks and tables, looking through books and newspapers, reading magazines and using computers. For almost a minute the reflection gleamed brightly on the surface of the mirror, reminding Claire of the times she used to come here with her mother, filling her with a powerful sense of longing, an aching, impossible desire to walk into that library again, to pluck a book down from the shelves, to absorb the knowledge it contained, to pass an hour or two in that generous space where everyone was welcome, irrespective of whether they had money to spend. She stared more and more intently into the mirror, not caring now whether anybody was watching her or not, and then she let out a deep, regretful sigh as the vision slowly faded and was replaced by dull reality.
Once again Claire, who had been wrapped in the silent cocoon of her own imagination, became aware of the chatter of the shoppers as they drifted by, the soporific murmur of the background music as it oozed out of the mall’s speaker system. Reluctantly, she rose to her feet and put the mirror away.
As she did so, Claire spotted someone on the other side of the mall, coming out of a coffee shop with a plastic cup in his hand. It was David Knightley. He didn’t notice her.
Claire’s heart skipped and fumbled, her stomach flipped as if she was plunging downward on a roller coaster, and without stopping to think, or to ask herself what she was doing, with her eyes fixed on the strong, solid outline of David’s shoulders and the perfect cut of his jet-black hair, she began walking after him, and followed him at a few yards’ distance for about ten minutes, until she lost sight of him in the crowd.
SEVEN
And that was how Claire’s obsession began. She didn’t intend for it to happen like that, and she certainly didn’t intend for it to take over her life. But it did.
She found that she was thinking about David constantly. She found that she was spending most of her spare time trying to think of ways she might possibly meet him. She found that she was doing the most ridiculous, unlikely things, such as googlin
g his name when she should have been doing her homework, or furtively checking his different profiles on social media, or even – on one especially horrendous, mortifying occasion – writing his name over and over on successive lines of her exercise book when she was supposed to be planning an English essay. She knew that she was being stupid, knew that she was wasting her time and embarrassing herself, but it made no difference. The worst thing about it was that he took no notice of her whatsoever. He didn’t even seem to know that she existed.
Of course David already had a girlfriend, and of course it was Amanda Gifford. They had a favourite café where they used to meet in the centre of town, and Claire’s need to see him became so pathetic that she started going there herself, and sitting at a table on her own just so that she could look at him while they sat there kissing and whispering sweet nothings to each other. It was torture, but better than the torture of not seeing him at all.
One day while she was doing this, Aggie came into the café. She was by herself this time, and didn’t seem in any hurry to go anywhere, so she bought herself a hot chocolate and then sat down with Claire and they started talking. It was pretty weird at first, because they hadn’t really spoken to each other for years, and the days of their close friendship at primary school seemed a long time ago. They were both in their mid-teens by now, after all. But before long the awkwardness went away and they were chatting together like old friends again. The only trouble was that Claire was finding it hard to concentrate. What Aggie had to say sounded interesting, but she couldn’t take her eyes off David and Amanda on the other side of the café.
‘We might be going back to Poland soon,’ Aggie was saying.
‘For a holiday? That’s nice,’ said Claire, still staring across at the other table.
‘No, I mean to live.’
‘Oh. OK,’ said Claire. It was as if she hadn’t heard.
‘Mum and Dad used to like it here but they say the town’s changing,’ said Aggie.
‘Really?’ Claire’s eyes narrowed as she saw David reach across the table and take Amanda’s hand.
‘Like, the other day,’ said Aggie, ‘my mum was on the bus, and she was talking with her friend Mrs Dobrzynski. They were talking in Polish.’
‘Why?’ Claire asked, absently. ‘Is she Polish too?’
‘With a name like that?’ said Aggie, looking at her in disbelief. ‘Of course she is.’
‘Right,’ said Claire.
‘And then this guy who was sitting opposite them started shouting at them and asking them why they couldn’t talk in English if they were living in England and if they didn’t want to they should go back to their own country. It was really nasty. They were both so upset that they had to get off the bus.’
‘Yeah, I see what you mean,’ said Claire. David had brought Amanda’s hand to his lips and was giving it the tenderest of kisses. She felt sick.
‘I don’t think they’ll go through with it, though,’ said Aggie. ‘I mean, they know I’m really happy at school here and everything.’
‘Sure, yeah,’ said Claire, who could see now that David was getting up and leaving. She would so like to have followed him.
‘It’s just that Dad says this town has never been the same since Mr Drummond became Mayor. Haven’t you noticed how things are changing?’
‘Mm-hm,’ said Claire, watching David leave through the front door of the café, and walk off along the street. When he had left, it was as if the sun had gone down.
‘They’re knocking down half the houses in The Dales and putting up new ones that hardly anyone can afford. There are policemen on the street everywhere all of a sudden. Our local hospital’s closed down. The youth club isn’t there any more. And people have started being really rude to… you know, foreigners. People like us.’
Once they had said goodbye and she was walking home, Claire felt guilty for not listening to Aggie properly. What she was talking about sounded important. As she had told herself a hundred times before, she should really stop obsessing over David and concentrate on all the other things that were going on, the way that everything in Kennoway seemed to be going in the wrong direction since Mr Drummond had taken control. Like the closing down of the Bellweather factory, and the fact that it now took her father an hour and a half to get to work every day…
Just then, however, something did happen which took her mind off David. She was walking down a quiet street when she saw George the homeless man sitting on the pavement. It was a wet afternoon, and he was sitting close to the side of the road where a large amount of muddy rainwater had pooled because of a blocked drain. As Claire approached, she was overtaken by a massive black four-wheel drive with tinted windows, which she recognised at once: it was Amanda’s. She must have phoned her chauffeur from the café and he had come to pick her up. The enormous, petrol-guzzling car drove past her and then went straight through the pool of rain and threw a huge splash of it right over George, soaking him to the skin with filthy water. He jumped to his feet at once and ran after the car.
‘Oi! Watch what you’re doing!’ he shouted.
The car had stopped at some traffic lights. One of the back windows slid down and Amanda’s head popped out.
‘Don’t you dare talk to me,’ she said.
‘Look what you just did!’
‘That’s your fault,’ she answered, ‘for sitting by the side of the road all day doing nothing. Why don’t you go out and get a job like everybody else?’
She wound up her window again, and a few seconds later the traffic lights changed and the car roared away, sending more splashes in its wake. George walked slowly back to his blanket, shaking out his sleeves and treading carefully as the water in his shoes made a damp sploshing sound. He sat down with a squelch and reached out for the whisky bottle which he always kept by his side. He took a long sip from the bottle and then put it down, with a sigh of quiet resignation.
‘Here,’ said Claire. She had her sports bag with her, and she handed George her swimming towel. ‘Dry yourself down, and clean yourself up. You look a right old mess.’
He took the towel off her gratefully and spent a little while making himself dry, muttering all this time about the bad manners of some people he could mention. Then he handed the towel back to Claire and said, ‘How do I look?’
Claire gazed at him appraisingly for quite a few seconds. To be honest, he looked terrible. His clothes and his hair were still wet, and were both in a dreadful state as usual. His face seemed redder than ever. His eyes were glazed and tired. There were breadcrumbs and bits of cigarette ash stuck in his beard. He looked much too thin. It was impossible to guess how old he was. He could have been any age from about thirty to about sixty.
‘You look fine, George,’ said Claire. ‘Here – see for yourself.’
She reached into her bag and handed him a mirror. And whether she meant to or not (Claire could never really be quite sure about this afterwards), instead of giving him the ordinary compact mirror she always carried with her to check her own appearance, she passed him the dirty old fragment of broken mirror, wrapped in green velvet. Before she could realise her mistake (if indeed it was a mistake), George had taken it from her hands and was looking at himself in it.
He did not seem especially surprised by what he saw there, but he looked at the reflection for a very long time – much longer than it would have taken just to check whether he’d cleaned himself up properly after the splash. He looked at the mirror carefully and intently, turning it slightly this way and that, and as he did this something seemed to happen to his eyes – which up until that point had been quite expressionless – as if someone had turned on a light behind them, or as if someone had walked into a room which had been dark for many years, and thrown open the curtains onto faint sunlight.
After he had stared into the mirror for a minute or two, George lifted his gaze and looked up at Claire. But he didn’t say anything, at first.
‘Are you all right, George?’ said Claire. And
then, when he still didn’t speak, she asked quietly, ‘What did you see in there?’
George paused, and took a deep breath, as if it cost him a great effort to start answering her question.
‘A few years ago,’ he began, slowly and brokenly, ‘I didn’t use to live like this. I had a wife and a family, and we lived in another town, hundreds of miles from here. I had my own business and we were doing all right. Not rich or anything like that, but very comfortable. Then things started to go wrong. People stopped buying what I wanted to sell, and I needed to borrow more money from the banks, and suddenly they didn’t want to lend money to people like me any more. I started losing money and I couldn’t keep up the payments on the house and all the worry was making me angry and miserable. My wife stood by me but it was no use, I started to behave horribly towards her and instead of staying in and talking things over with her I went out every night and got drunk. When she and the children left me I hardly noticed at first…’
He paused and looked at Claire earnestly.
‘I’m not blaming anyone, you understand. I behaved badly. Stupidly. Still, I shouldn’t have ended up like this. But people fall through the cracks, you see. They fall through the cracks.’
He raised the mirror again and looked into it one more time.
‘What do I see? Is that what you wanted to know? I see my own face, of course. But not the way it really is. I know I look pretty wrecked, in real life. But in here, I just see the face of an ordinary middle-aged man. And I’m not sitting on this blanket, either, soaked to the skin. I’m in somebody’s house. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before, but I think somehow it’s my own house. Maybe it’s the house I would have gone on to buy for us all once the children had got a bit bigger. And I’m not alone in the house. Not like I am here. No, my wife is there, and my children are there, both of them. They’re a bit more grown up now, but I can recognise them all right. We’re all sitting around the dinner table, and the children have just lit two candles, and there’s a nice warm fire burning in the hearth, and my wife is just bringing something to the table, something good to eat.’