by Jonathan Coe
Adieu to old England, adieu
And adieu to some hundreds of pounds
If the world had been ended when I had been young
My sorrows I’d never have known
*
The song was over. Quietness fell over the sitting room, and darkness hung over the river outside.
Benjamin wept, silently at first, then with short, heaving, convulsive sobs which shook his body, making his ribs ache and the little-used muscles in his fleshy stomach twitch in agonizing spasms.
When the fit was over, he continued to sit on the window seat, and tried to will himself to get ready for bed. Should he look in on his father? Surely the whisky and the emotional upheaval of the day would have sent him into a deep sleep. Yet Benjamin knew that his father slept poorly these days: that had been the case for months if not years, long before his wife’s illness. He seemed to live in a perpetual state of low-level anger, which disturbed his nights as well as his days. What he had said to Benjamin about speed cameras today – ‘The buggers are out to get money from you every step of the way’ – was typical. Colin could probably not have specified who ‘they’ were, but he sensed their arrogant, manipulative presence, and resented it keenly. Just as Doug had told him, ‘People are getting angry, really angry,’ even if they could not have explained why, or with whom.
Reaching up to close the window at last, Benjamin took one final look at the river. Was he imagining it, or did it seem slightly higher than usual tonight, and slightly faster? When he had bought this house, many people had asked him whether he had considered the risk of flooding, and Benjamin had dismissed the matter loftily, but these questions had sown a seed of doubt. He liked to consider the river his friend: a good-natured companion whose behaviour he understood, and in whose company he felt at ease. Was he deluding himself? Supposing the river were to abandon its quiescent and reasonable habits: supposing it, too, were to become angry for no simple or predictable reason. What form might that anger take?
2.
October 2010
Sophie had suffered a number of romantic disappointments over the years. Her first serious relationship, with Philip Chase’s son Patrick, had not survived university. During her MA year at Bristol she had met Sohan, the man she considered her soulmate, a handsome English Literature student of Sri Lankan parentage. But he was gay. Then there had been Jason, who, like her, had been studying for a PhD at the Courtauld. But he had cheated on her with his supervisor, and his successor, Bernard, had been so immersed in his doctoral thesis on Sisley’s notebooks that she had quietly terminated that relationship without his even noticing. So much for intellectual boyfriends, Sophie had now decided: if she was going to find someone else (and there was no particular hurry) she would try casting her net beyond the world of academia.
In the meantime, a stroke of good fortune had come her way: at the end of the summer term, a colleague from Birmingham university had emailed, inviting her to apply for a two-year teaching fellowship there. She applied; she got it; and in August 2010 she packed up her room in Muswell Hill and drove herself and her possessions up the M40, back to the city where she had been born. And having no better alternative, for the time being, she moved in with her father.
Christopher Potter was living, at this time, on a leafy street in Hall Green, a street that branched diagonally off from the Stratford Road but seemed far removed from its constant processions of north- and southbound traffic. It was a semi-detached house and he was supposed to be sharing it with his wife, but in effect he lived alone. For many years the family home had been in York, where Lois was a librarian at the university, and Christopher practised as a personal injury lawyer. In the spring of 2008, with their only daughter then living in London, and with the health of Christopher’s mother and both of Lois’s parents in decline, he had suggested they moved back to Birmingham. Lois had agreed – gratefully, it seemed. Christopher had sought, and obtained, a transfer to his firm’s Midlands office. They had sold their house and bought this new one. And then, at the last minute, Lois had made an amazing announcement: she did not want to leave her job, she was not convinced that her parents needed her to be close by, and she could not bear the idea of returning to the city where, more than thirty years earlier, her life had been derailed by a personal tragedy that still haunted her. She was going to stay in York, and from now on they would just have to see each other at weekends.
Christopher had accepted this with as good grace as he could muster, on the basis (never made explicit) that it was only a temporary state of affairs. But he wasn’t happy, he did not like living alone, and he was delighted when Sophie told him about her new job, and asked if she could move in for a while.
Sophie herself found it strange and unsettling to be back home with her father. She was twenty-seven and it was no part of her life plan that she should still be living with one of her parents. She had quickly grown to like the overcrowded, improvised, somewhat self-satisfied cosmopolitanism of London, and wasn’t yet convinced that she could find its equivalent in Birmingham. Christopher was affable and easy to talk to, but the atmosphere in the house was oppressively quiet. She quickly started to welcome any opportunity to get away, even it was just for a day or two; and if a trip down to London was involved, she would be doubly grateful.
On Thursday 21 October, then, she left the university campus promptly at 3 p.m. She was in good spirits: her seminar on the Russian romantics had been a success. She was already popular with her students. As usual, she had driven on to campus. Her grandfather Colin, his eyesight now being too weak for driving, had recently made her a gift of his ailing Toyota Yaris. (The days when he bought British out of patriotic duty were long gone.) She was booked on a late-afternoon train to London and, in order to save money, was using the slower, cheaper route that went through the Chilterns and ended up at Marylebone station. First of all, she had to drive to Solihull station and park the car. She had envisaged a quiet and leisurely progress along the arterial roads, taking pleasure in driving through a city which – unlike the capital – was as easy to navigate by private as by public transport. But she had not allowed for some heavy traffic, and after half an hour or so began to worry that she would miss her train. As she drove up Streetsbrook Road she put her foot down hard on the accelerator and the car reached thirty-seven miles per hour. It was a thirty-mile limit, and a speed camera flashed as she drove by.
*
Leaving the train at Marylebone, she found that she had time to walk to her rendezvous with Sohan. She cut across the Marylebone Road into Gloucester Place and then wandered through the half-empty back streets, with their tall, creamy Georgian houses, until she reached Marylebone High Street. Here it was livelier and she had to shuffle and swerve through the crowds of early-evening pedestrians. Listening to the different languages on the street, she was reminded of a time a few years earlier when Benjamin, too, was still living in London. Colin and Sheila had come down to see him and she had gone for dinner with her uncle and grandparents to an Italian place in Piccadilly. ‘I don’t think I heard a word of English spoken on the way here,’ Colin had said, and she had realized that the thing he was complaining about was the very thing she most liked about this city. Tonight she had already overheard French, Italian, German, Polish, Urdu, Bengali and a few others she couldn’t identify. It didn’t bother her that she didn’t understand half of what people were saying; the Babel of voices added to the sense of benign confusion she loved so much: it was all of a piece with the general noise of the city, the kaleidoscope of colour from traffic lights, headlights, brakelights, streetlamps and shop windows; the awareness that millions of separate, unknowable lives were temporarily intersecting as people criss-crossed through the streets. She savoured these reflections even as she quickened her pace, glancing at the time on her phone screen and worrying that she was going to be a few minutes late reaching the university building.
Sohan was already waiting for her at a table in the Robson Fisher bar, a dimly
lit enclave frequented mainly by postgrads and teaching staff. In front of him were two glasses of Prosecco. He pushed one towards Sophie.
‘Goodness,’ he said. ‘You’re looking pale and sickly. Must be that terrible Northern climate.’
‘Birmingham is not the North,’ she said, kissing him on the cheek.
‘Drink up, anyway,’ he said. ‘How long since you’ve had one of those?’
Sophie took a long sip. ‘We can get it where I live, you know. It arrived in about … 2006, I think. Are the celebrities here yet?’
‘I don’t know. If they are, they’ll be in the Green Room.’
‘Shouldn’t you join them?’
‘In a while. There’s no hurry.’
Sohan had invited Sophie along – for moral support, as much as anything else – to watch him chair a public discussion between two eminent novelists, one English, the other French. The Englishman, Lionel Hampshire, was famous after a fashion – at least in literary circles. Twenty years earlier he had published the novel which had won the Booker Prize and made his reputation: The Twilight of Otters, a slender volume made up partly of memoir, partly of fiction, which had somehow caught the spirit of its time. If nothing he had written since then had measured up to its success (his latest, a bizarre excursion into feminist sci-fi called Fallopia, had just received a panning in the literary press), he did not seem unduly concerned: the prestige surrounding that early prizewinner had been enough to keep a lucrative career afloat ever since, and he still carried himself with the air of one whose laurels provided a solid resting place.
The French writer, on the other hand – Philippe Aldebert by name – was an unknown quantity.
‘Who is he?’ Sophie asked.
‘Oh, don’t worry, I’ve been reading up,’ said Sohan. ‘Big star over there, apparently. Prix Goncourt, Prix Femina. He’s written twelve novels but only a couple of them are published here – you know what the Brits are like: they don’t appreciate Johnny Foreigner coming over to the land of Dickens and Shakespeare and telling them how it should be done.’
‘Are you nervous about chairing?’ Sophie asked.
The event had been organized jointly by the French and English departments. Sohan was now one of the youngest members of the latter, still a mere lecturer, but the fact that he already wrote for the New Statesman and the TLS made him the natural choice for an occasion like this, which was intended for the general public as well as for the staff and students.
‘A little,’ he admitted, and held up his glass. ‘This is my third.’
‘I don’t really understand your title,’ Sophie said, looking at the flier which was lying between them on the table. It announced that the theme under discussion tonight was to be ‘Fictionalizing Life; Living in Fiction’. ‘What does it mean?’
‘How should I know? You’ve got two writers here who have nothing in common except their colossal opinion of themselves. I had to call it something. They both write fiction. They both write about “life” – or their version of it, anyway. I don’t really see how I can go wrong with a title like that.’
‘I suppose not …’
‘Well, look, it will all be over by nine, so I’ve booked a table for nine thirty. Just the two of us.’
‘Aren’t you expected to go to dinner with everybody else?’
‘I’ll make some excuse. It’s you I want to see. It’s been ages. And you’re looking so pale!’
*
The lecture theatre was almost full: there must have been an audience of almost two hundred. A few students seemed to have come along, but most of the patient, anticipatory faces Sophie saw around her seemed to belong to people in their fifties or over. From her position in one of the top rows, she found herself looking out towards the stage across a sea of white hair and bald patches.
Ranged on the stage were four speakers: Sohan, the two distinguished novelists and a lecturer from the French department, who was there to translate M. Aldebert’s answers into English for the audience, and to whisper a French translation of Sohan’s questions into his ear. The chair and the translator looked anxious: the two writers beamed at the audience expectantly. After some interminable opening remarks from the vice-chancellor, battle commenced.
Whether it was the disjointedness imposed by the translator’s presence, or Sohan’s obvious nervous tension, the discussion didn’t get off to a smooth start. The questions posed to each writer were long and rambling, while the answers came in the form of speeches rather than the intimate and free-flowing conversation Sohan had been hoping for. After about fifteen minutes, during the latest monologue from Lionel Hampshire, which found him making confident generalizations about the difference between French and British attitudes towards literature, Sohan could be seen to retreat behind his page of notes, which he seemed to be scanning frantically. A few seconds later Sophie felt her phone vibrate and realized that he was in fact sending her a text message.
Help I’ve already run out of questions what next?
She glanced to the left and right of her, but neither of the people in the adjacent seats seemed to have noticed who the message had come from, or even that it had come at all. After thinking for a moment, she wrote back:
Ask PA if he agrees that the French take books more seriously.
Sohan’s reply – a thumbs-up emoji – came very quickly, and a few seconds later, after Lionel Hampshire’s latest address finally slowed to a halt, he could be heard saying to M. Aldebert:
‘I wonder how you would respond to that? Is that just another typical British stereotype about the French – that we think you’re more respectful towards writers than we are?’
After a translation of the question had been whispered into his ear, M. Aldebert paused, pursed his lips and seemed to cogitate deeply. ‘Les stéréotypes peuvent nous apprendre beaucoup de choses,’ he answered at last.
‘Stereotypes can be very meaningful,’ the translator translated.
‘Qu’est-ce qu’un stéréotype, après tout, si ce n’est une remarque profonde dont la vérité essentielle s’est émoussée à force de répétition?’
‘What is a stereotype, after all, except a profound observation whose essential truth has been dulled by repetition?’
‘Si les Français vénèrent la littérature davantage que les Britanniques, c’est peut-être seulement le reflet de leur snobisme viscéral qui place l’art élitiste au-dessus de formes plus populaires.’
‘If the French revere literature more than the British do, perhaps this is merely a reflection of their essential snobbery, which prioritizes elitist art over forms which are more popular.’
‘Les Français sont des gens intolérants, toujours prêts à critiquer les autres. Contrairement aux Britanniques, me semble-t-il.’
‘The French are an intolerant, judgemental people. Not like the British, I think.’
‘What makes you say that?’ Sohan asked.
‘Qu’est-ce qui vous fait dire ça?’ whispered the translator.
‘Eh bien, observons le monde politique. Chez nous, le Front National est soutenu par environ 25 pour cent des Français.’
‘Well, let’s look at the political world. Our National Front commands the support of about twenty-five per cent of the French people.’
‘En France, quand on regarde les Britanniques, on est frappé de constater que contrairement à d’autres pays européens, vous êtes épargnés par ce phénomène, le phénomène du parti populaire d’extrême droite.’
‘In France, we look at the British and we are impressed that, unlike most other European countries, you don’t have this phenomenon – a popular party of the far right.’
‘Vous avez le UKIP, bien sûr, mais d’après ce que je comprends, c’est un parti qui cible un seul problème et qui n’est pas pris au sérieux en tant que force politique.’
‘You have UKIP, of course, but my understanding is that they are a single-issue party, who are not taken seriously as a political force.’
&nbs
p; Sohan waited for him to elaborate further, and when he didn’t, turned to Lionel Hampshire and asked him rather desperately:
‘Would you care to comment on that?’
‘Well,’ said the eminent novelist, ‘as a rule I’m wary of these broad generalizations about national character. But I think Philippe has probably put his finger on something here. I’m not an uncritically patriotic person. Far from it. But there is something in the English character that I admire, and Philippe is right about it – I mean our love of moderation. Our immoderate love of moderation, if you like.’ (This choice phrase plopped into the reverent silence of the room and set off a ripple of laughter.) ‘We’re a pragmatic nation, politically. Extremes of left and right don’t appeal to us. And we’re also essentially tolerant. That’s why the multicultural experiment in Britain has by and large been successful, with one or two minor blips. I wouldn’t presume to compare us to the French, in this regard, of course, but certainly, speaking personally, these are the things I most admire about the British: our moderation, and our tolerance.’