by Jonathan Coe
But Ruby was determined, and artful, and although she was happy to make conversation at first about her friends at college and her mother’s little seafront hotel, she kept steering her way back to Sarah, and to Ashdown, and the day at the beach. As for the meal, they gave up all hope of dessert after a while, forced some money upon one of the elusive waiters, and finally managed to take their leave. When they walked to the underground station together and said goodbye amid many expressions of gratitude and promises to keep in touch, Ruby still had one more question to ask.
‘This narcolepsy of yours,’ she said. ‘They can cure it, can’t they?’
Sarah shook her head. ‘Unfortunately, no. Once you’ve got it, you’ve got it for life. There are drugs to help with the symptoms, and it does seem to be getting better with age. As I said, the cataplexy isn’t so bad any more; and there was another thing – pre-sleep dreaming, they called it – that seems to have gone altogether.’
‘What was that like?’
Sarah folded her arms and felt a chill run through her. It was getting late, and the evening had turned cold. It had been nice seeing Ruby, but she didn’t want to think about the past any more: she wanted to be home, alone; to be playing that CD again, and finishing the wine, and getting those reports done.
‘It’s hard to explain,’ she said, ‘but I used to have dreams… so real…’
And was she becoming nostalgic even for that, she asked herself, as she walked quickly home? Even for the fact that she had once been unable to tell the difference between her dreams and her memories? It was time, surely, to forget those days: time to concentrate on today’s challenges. She thought about Alison Hill, and how she could best begin to excavate the buried sadness she had glimpsed, once or twice, behind that serious expression. She thought about her face as she had sat in the classroom, not listening to Norman’s comical diatribe about astrologers and astronomers: the way she had chewed carelessly on her lower lip… But still the images which Ruby had now brought back to disconcerting life persisted in tugging at her, and within an instant she had moved on inexplicably from Alison to Veronica: yes, Veronica, of all the ghosts who might have risen up, unbidden, to her reminiscent eye that evening: Veronica sitting
Stage Two
7
sitting in the Café Valladon, reading a book and chuckling quietly to herself between sips of her black coffee and drags on her cigarette. It was early December, getting on for the end of term, and Veronica was well wrapped up, wearing the colourful lambswool sweater they had chosen together on a shopping expedition a few weeks earlier. The Café itself was warm and steamy: the thick amber windows, opaque at the best of times, were today further fogged up with layers of condensation. Cigarette smoke swirled so thickly in the air that Sarah could barely see her way forward. When she reached the table she stood over it, expectant, waiting for the look upwards, the smile, the closing of the book, the kiss. (In public, they kissed on the cheek: it was all they allowed themselves.) Finally, seeingthat Veronica was so absorbed in the novel that she had not even noticed her arrival, Sarah broke in upon her silence by saying:
‘So – has The Owl appeared yet?’
She stooped over and leaned across the table for the kiss. Her face against Veronica’s was cold and tingling.
‘God, you’re freezing,’ Veronica said. ‘Is it snowing out there or something?’
‘Almost.’ Sarah sat down and took a sip from Veronica’s mug. ‘Well, has he?’
‘Not so far. It’s getting really gruesome, though.’
Sarah picked up the cigarette packet. ‘Can I have a gasper?’
‘Of course. Go ahead.’
‘Gasper’ was their secret word for a cigarette. Like many of their codewords, it had been borrowed from the book Veronica was reading: The House of Sleep, by an author neither of them had ever encountered before, whose name was Frank King. This was one of the hundreds of books Slattery had acquired from jumble sales in order to decorate the walls of the Café Valladon, and it happened to stand in the centre of the shelf above their favourite table. Sarah had started reading it once while waiting for Veronica to arrive, and had immediately been entranced by its dated 1930s jargon and the incredibly convoluted plot, which ostensibly revolved around a cache of stolen documents and a notorious criminal called The Owl, but seemed, in reality, to be little more than the pretext for a baffling sequence of midnight kidnappings and grisly assassinations. That day – only a week or two after they had started going out – Sarah had read some of the choicest passages aloud to Veronica, and over the following two months the book had become a shared, intensely personal joke between them: one of the many hidden bonds that held them so firmly together and made their relationship so impenetrable to outsiders.
‘Go on, then, what’s happened?’ asked Sarah, lighting the cigarette.
‘Well, this guy Smith –’
‘Who’s he? Is he The Owl?’
‘We don’t know yet. Anyway, he’s got Henry Downes and Robert Porter and Aileen all tied up in their chairs, and he’s threatening to torture them if they don’t tell him where the bonds are. Well, just Aileen, actually. With a red-hot poker.’
‘Aileen? You’re kidding.’
‘No, I’m not. Listen to this: “Slow minutes dragged past remorselessly. Smith drew out the poker again. It glowed redly now, and the kitchen was filled with the suggestive smell of hot metal.”’
‘Brilliant,’ said Sarah, laughing delightedly.
‘“‘Now, Porter,’ he said, advancing to Aileen. ‘Where are they?’ ‘I don’t know,’ muttered Porter. His lips were quivering. ‘I shan’t ask you again. First a slight burn on the face as an earnest. It will be painful, of course, and leave a scar. If this does not move you, I shall take the eyes – one by one. And may I remind you that – I keep my word.’ Aileen tried to shrink back as the hot metal approached her face. Her eyes closed, and her cheeks grew paler still. But she did not speak or cry out. Henry struggled desperately with his –”’
Veronica stopped, looking up and realizing that the pallor of Aileen’s cheeks was suddenly matched by Sarah’s. Her smile had become pained and frozen.
‘Oh.’ Veronica closed the book. ‘I’m sorry. That was tactless of me.’
Sarah shook her head and tried to look cheerful. ‘No, it’s all right. Carry on, that was funny.’ But this pretence didn’t last for long. She sat back in her chair and closed her eyes. ‘Actually I feel a bit sick.’
Veronica leaned forward and made as if to lay her fingers on Sarah’s eyelids. She flinched and drew away. ‘Don’t.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Veronica drank some coffee and decided to change the subject. ‘How did it go today, anyway? I haven’t even asked you.’
Today was Sarah’s first day of teaching practice at the local primary school. She had been nervous about it all week, and had frantically over-prepared herself, arriving with enough material for about six hours rather than the forty-minute lesson she had been required to teach.
‘It was fine,’ she said. ‘It was good, in fact.’
‘Did you get my card?’
‘Yes, I did,’ said Sarah; and for a moment her eyes shone intimately, with pure, unconditional love. ‘Thank you.’ Tapping ash from her cigarette, she added: ‘It wasn’t the only good luck card I got, as it happens.’
‘Let me guess: Robert?’
‘I’m afraid so. A plaintive little missive slipped under my door at some point in the night.’
‘Poor lamb. He’s besotted with you.’ Veronica said this with a certain malicious edge, which Sarah noticed and could not help quietly relishing.
‘Don’t be hard on him,’ she said.
‘So what happened? What were they like? What did you do with them?’
‘Well, I thought I was going to play safe, and give them something like Stevie Smith to begin with, but at the last minute I thought, No, let’s try a bit harder here, let’s go in at the deep end, so I made them read that Maya Angelou p
oem – you know, “Song for the Old Ones”?’
‘That’s all about slavery, though. They wouldn’t have known what you were talking about.’
‘But they did, that’s just the point. There were a few difficult things in it that I had to talk them through, but you’d be amazed what kids can understand, and talk about, if the – you know, if the writing’s good enough… We had this great discussion about it, and – you can’t imagine what it feels like, Ronnie, to know that there are these thirty children and today, because of me, there’s something in their heads that wasn’t there before. It’s just the best feeling…’
Veronica grinned and said: ‘I knew you’d be good at it.’ Then she asked, more softly: ‘You’re not going to do that much preparation every time, are you?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. Why?’
‘Because I’ll hardly get to see you. You haven’t been round for days.’
‘Well…’ Sarah drew breath, and her voice took on an excited tremor. ‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. I wanted to ask you something.’
Veronica waited. ‘Yes?’
‘There’s this guy who lives at Ashdown, and he’s just moved out of his room, back on to campus. And the thing is…’ (she met Veronica’s eyes, which were hungry, expectant) ‘… well, technically it’s a double room. There are two beds in it, and it’s absolutely massive. It’s on the second floor. So I was wondering… well, I was wondering if you wanted to move into it.’
‘By myself?’ she asked, teasingly.
‘Actually… no. I meant the two of us.’
‘Two lovers?’ said Veronica, giving the word a mischievous emphasis which had Sarah glancing around the Café in alarm. ‘Two lovers sharing the same room? What would the university authorities say?’
‘Well, nothing, of course. How would they know… about us?’
Veronica was enjoying the joke too much to let it go. ‘Think of the scandal, though.’
‘If you think it’s too… I mean, if you have a problem with that…’
‘Sarah,’ said Veronica, taking hold of her hand and first squeezing, then stroking it, ‘I would love to move in with you. I’d love it.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’ The smile began to flicker at the edges of her mouth again. ‘Poor old Robert, though. He’s going to go crazy.’
‘And talk of the devil…’ said Sarah, looking towards the door.
Robert hesitated before joining them, but only briefly. He could never deny himself the pleasure of sitting with Sarah, even when it was tempered by the agony of seeing how happy she was in Veronica’s company. It was Veronica he chose to sit beside, in any case: either to avoid the impression that he was staking any sort of claim, or simply because he had more excuses for looking at Sarah if he was sitting directly opposite her.
‘Hi,’ he said, spilling a few drops of coffee from his overfilled mug as Veronica moved up to create a space for him. ‘How did it go today?’
‘It was great,’ said Sarah. ‘It was absolutely fine.’
‘Really? I knew it would be.’
‘The kids were great, the staff are really nice…’
‘And you were a success? They liked you?’
‘Yes, they seemed to. The whole place just had this really nice atmosphere. I mean, I know it’s probably too early to be thinking this, but… if they could take me on at the end of the year… you know, it would be just perfect.’
‘Really? You’ll be looking for a job round here, will you?’ Already his mind was at work, and he was tailoring his plans to meet hers. He could find work in the area too, if necessary; or he could stay on at the university, do a postgraduate course.
‘Well, yes, we both will,’ said Sarah. ‘You know, I told you – Ronnie wants to start this theatre group.’
‘Oh yes.’ His spirits took a familiar nosedive; but he was determined to play the game, so he turned to Veronica and asked, ‘How’s that panning out?’
‘Oh, it’s coming along.’ She had opened The House of Sleep again, and was only half-listening to the conversation. ‘I’m sussing out potential sponsors at the moment.’
‘Sponsors?’
‘You know, businesses and things. That’s the way things are going these days: private enterprise.’
‘Ronnie’s got a real head-start,’ Sarah enthused. ‘Knowing so much about economics.’
Veronica laughed; not derisively, at this summation of her financial skills, but at something in the book that seemed to have amused her.
‘Bring ‘Em Back Alive,’ she said. ‘The Paths of the Prudent. Clad in Purple Mist.’
‘Pardon?’ said Sarah.
‘These are the other books advertised at the back. The Case of the Painted Girl. Connie Morgan in the Lumber Camp: wow, that one sounds like a real dyke classic. Listen to these… Wife in Name Only, At War With Herself, The Gay Triangle… This is amazing: I think I’ve got material for a thesis here.’ Then she burst out laughing: ‘Oh, look, here’s one for you, Robert. You and Your Hand. Something for you to read while you’re thinking about me and Sarah, perhaps?’
‘Ronnie!’ Scandalized, Sarah kicked her playfully under the table. But when Robert looked into her eyes he saw that they were directed not at him, but at her lover; and they were laughing, laughing joyfully and with a lightness that was for her alone: utterly private, utterly exclusive. He bit back sudden tears and abruptly, for an instant, he lost consciousness: when it returned, it brought in its wake a vivid but unexpected phrase:
…An your eyes tonight I saw a sightlessness…
Veronica was getting up to leave. She was saying something.… A disregard that made me feel…
Made him feel what? How did he feel?
‘What shall we do, then?’
He heard Veronica’s words now.
‘When are we going to move in?’
‘I’ll come and find you later,’ Sarah was saying. ‘We’ll talk about it then.’
Veronica said goodbye to them both, and left. They didn’t kiss in front of Robert.
Silence imposed itself. Sarah offered him an apologetic smile, and he did his best to return it.
‘What was that about?’ he said at last. ‘You’re moving in together?’
Sarah nodded. ‘She’s coming to live at Ashdown. We’re taking over Geoff’s old room.’
‘Right.’ Something else for him to absorb, to live with. ‘That’ll be nice.’
‘Yes. Yes, I think it will. I think it’ll work.’
‘Good.’ He opened the copy of The House of Sleep, skimming through it, seeing nothing. ‘That means your room will be free now, does it?’
‘I suppose so.’ Now what was he going to ask? Surely he didn’t nurse some fetishistic desire to move in there himself? ‘What about it?’
‘My friend Terry’s looking for a room, that’s all. Would it be OK if I mentioned it to him?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Sarah, hugely relieved. ‘That would be fine.’
Another silence: longer, even more oppressive. Sarah was groping for Smalltalk. A dozen bland, pointless remarks died on her lips.
‘Is this one of Slattery’s?’ Robert asked, still affecting to read the novel.
‘Yes. It goes up there.’ She pointed at the empty space on the shelf.
‘This friend of mine – Terry,’ he said. ‘He keeps a ten pound note in one of these books.’
‘Really? What for?’
‘You know – a fall-back. Just in case he ever gets caught short.’
‘That’s a good idea.’
‘Clever, isn’t it? It must be a million to one chance that anyone would ever find it.’ Sarah could not see where any of this was leading, and Robert’s next fumbling, uncertain words made it little clearer. ‘Sarah, if ever I want to… leave anything for you, I’ll put it here. In this book.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Page…’ (he flicked through the pages at random) ‘… page hundred and seventy-t
hree. Then you’ll always know where to find it.’
‘What sort of thing? You mean money?’
‘Possibly money: or… well, anything, really. I don’t know.’ This was true: he barely knew why he was telling her this. It seemed important, somehow. ‘You’ll remember, won’t you?’
‘Robert…’ she began; but couldn’t bring herself to tell him that in choosing his vehicle for this mysterious communication, he had managed to hit upon the very book which symbolized everything that she and Veronica felt for one another: the signifier of their love. How could she taunt him, now, with that particular irony? It was far too cruel. ‘I’ve got to go,’ was all she said. ‘I’m… Look, I’m sorry if we teased you.’
Robert ran his finger along the green spine of the book, and said nothing.
‘I’ll see you back at the house: yes?’
‘OK,’ he said. And when Sarah had gone, he stared dumbly opposite him at the space where she had been sitting: struggling to reconcile himself, for the thousandth time, to her absence.
∗
Terry came into the Café about ten minutes later, and found Robert bent over an exercise book, his tongue protruding abstractedly from between his teeth, his hunched shoulders suggesting gloom and concentration in equal measure.
‘You look like someone agonizing over the first draft of his suicide note,’ he said.