Middle England

by Jonathan Coe

  ‘Come on, you two,’ she said. ‘This is ridiculous. So your father’s got a new girlfriend. What’s wrong with that? It happens all the time.’

  ‘He’s such a hypocrite,’ Coriander said, scowling into the depths of her latte.

  ‘Listen, Corrie,’ said Doug. ‘And forgive me if I sound like an old fart: but when you get a bit older – you know, just a bit older than seventeen, which I know feels to you like the pinnacle of wisdom – but when you get a bit older, you realize that not everyone who disagrees with you politically –’

  Coriander had no interest in listening to this. ‘Tories are scum,’ she said.

  Doug turned to Francesca, thinking that she would share his outrage at this statement. Instead she was smiling.

  ‘Oh, that’s nice,’ he said. ‘That’s charming, that is. That’s a lovely word to use about the woman your dad’s –’ He was about to say ‘in love with’, but checked himself just in time, partly because he didn’t want to say it in front of his ex-wife and his daughter, but also because he had no idea if it was true. Instead he said, ‘going out with’, which merely prompted Coriander to cringe.

  ‘Will both of you stop using these words?’ she complained. ‘You don’t “go out” with someone at your age. You can’t have a “girlfriend”. You’re fifty-five. She’s forty-six. It sounds creepy.’

  So, Doug thought, she knows how old Gail is. Interesting. Someone’s been doing some googling.

  ‘Well, don’t use the word “scum” about someone whose opinions don’t line up with your own,’ he said. ‘Gail is a … terrific person. She has very strong principles.’

  ‘Ah …’ said Francesca, ‘so that’s why you slept with her.’

  Coriander was having none of it. ‘Really? Wasn’t her husband’s construction company fined for building dodgy social housing?’

  (More googling, then.)

  ‘There were some problems –’ Doug began, but she cut him off.

  ‘Typical Jewish property developer.’

  ‘Hey.’ He raised his finger in warning. ‘Less of that.’ He’d noticed this before: how easily her passionate support for the Palestinian cause could shade into knee-jerk anti-Semitism. ‘Anyway, she’s divorced from her husband. Has been for some time. Why don’t the three of us have dinner or something, later this week?’

  ‘I’m busy this week.’

  ‘How are you busy? School’s over, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’ve got to get ready for Bogotá. In fact –’ she got up and swung her bag over her shoulder ‘– I should be doing some shopping now.’

  ‘Bogota? Since when are you going to Bogotá?’ He turned again to Francesca. ‘Did you know about this?’

  ‘I found out yesterday. She’s going with Tommy. Apparently they’ve been planning it for ages.’

  ‘Who’s Tommy?’

  ‘Current boyfriend, I believe,’ said Francesca. An explanation which caused Coriander to give her the kind of pitying look a religious elder might give to a novice still living in a dark state of ignorance, and to offer the scornful response:

  ‘Boyfriend/friend. Friend/boyfriend. He’s just a guy I share a bed with occasionally. Why does your generation have to be so bloody binary about everything?’

  And with that, she swept out of the café.

  Doug, weighed down by gloom, watched her receding figure and said: ‘That went well.’

  ‘What have we spawned?’ Francesca asked, musing aloud. Then she sipped her frappuccino and tried to strike a more cheerful note: ‘At least we’ve got a daughter who cares about the world. That’s something, I suppose.’

  ‘Does she, though? Sometimes I think she’s just addicted to getting outraged on other people’s behalf.’

  ‘Possibly. Maybe university will calm her down.’

  Doug gave a sceptical laugh. ‘Do we know where she’s going?’

  ‘She wants to stay in London. Though not living with either of us, obviously.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  There was a quiet moment while they both continued to reflect on their daughter’s errant ways. Then Francesca asked: ‘Is it serious with this woman? Gail?’

  ‘Pretty serious, yes. You can’t really mess around with one-night stands at our age, can you?’

  She smiled sadly. ‘I suppose not. How did you meet?’

  ‘Party at the House of Commons. Just a drinks thing. We hit it off, I don’t know why.’ He stroked his ex-wife’s hand briefly, ineffectually. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Oh, not too bad,’ she said, with forced brightness. ‘Jogging along, you know.’ At which point she remembered something she had been meaning to tell him. ‘I had a meeting with an old school friend of yours the other day, as it happens. Ronald Culpepper.’

  ‘Culpepper? Jesus. What were you seeing him for?’

  ‘He wanted me to organize a fundraiser for his charity. The Imperium Foundation.’

  Doug burst into angry, incredulous laughter. ‘Christ, he’s got a nerve. Three things you should know about Culpepper. One, he’s in no need of charitable donations from anyone: he’s already worth millions. Two, the Imperium Foundation is not a charity in any normal sense of the word: it’s a far-right think tank, pushing free trade and helping big American corporations get an entry into British markets. Especially health care and the welfare system.’

  Francesca thought about this and said. ‘That’s only two things. What’s the third?’

  ‘He’s a nasty piece of shit.’

  *

  Doug extracted a promise from Coriander – via Francesca – that she would send him messages from Colombia to reassure him that she was safe. The first one did not arrive, however, until the evening of Benjamin’s celebration dinner in the first week of August. Doug was driving in heavy traffic when the phone buzzed. Gail had to read the message to him.

  ‘It says, Everything good here.’

  ‘Yes? And …?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Everything good here? Really? That’s all she has to say to her father after ten days’ travelling?’

  ‘Better than nothing, I suppose,’ said Gail. ‘Why are you never this worried about hearing from your son?’

  ‘Because he’s down in London, which is safer than Bogotá.’

  ‘That’s not it. It’s because daughters can wrap their fathers around their little fingers.’

  Gail had a son, Edward – who would be leaving for university soon – and a daughter, Sarah, who was quite a few years younger. Doug was spending a lot of time with them at the moment, and felt frustrated that Gail had still not met either of his children.

  ‘When Corrie comes back, I’ll make sure the two of you get together,’ he promised.

  ‘There’s no hurry,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a feeling that’s going to be our first big challenge. Not sure I’m ready for it yet. Let me deal with meeting all your old friends first.’

  Rather than take the train, they had decided to drive from Gail’s house (an impressive three-storey terrace in Earlsdon, one of Coventry’s more prosperous districts) to Benjamin’s dinner in central Birmingham. The route took them along the A45, a crowded dual carriageway at the edges of which traces of Shakespeare’s Forest of Arden could still be glimpsed behind the hotels and the light industrial buildings and the busy sprawl of Birmingham airport. While Doug was driving, Gail was racing through the last pages of Benjamin’s novel, which she was determined to finish before meeting him.

  ‘Well,’ she said, putting it to one side as they neared the city centre, ‘that was depressing. Beautifully written, but depressing.’

  ‘Melancholy,’ said Doug, ‘is very much Benjamin’s thing. English melancholy in particular. With a side order of morbid nostalgia.’

  ‘Sounds like we’re in for a fun evening.’

  ‘Don’t worry. He saves it for the written word.’

  ‘Remind me who else is going to be there?’

  ‘There’ll be Philip Chase, who we were at school with, an
d his wife Carol. Second wife. Probably Ben’s sister, Lois, and her husband – although she doesn’t like coming into the centre of town very much.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It makes her jumpy. She was there on the night of the pub bombings. Not just there, but – right in the middle of it. Where it happened. She saw her boyfriend get killed.’

  ‘Blimey. Poor woman.’

  ‘She’s still not over it.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think you ever get over something like that. Does Benjamin have a partner, or is English melancholy not quite the babe magnet it used to be?’

  Doug smiled. ‘He was single the last time I heard. Of course, he was married for years, but that’s going back a bit now.’

  ‘Kids?’

  ‘Not with his wife. He has a daughter – Malvina – who lives in the States, but we don’t talk about her.’

  ‘How complicated. Anything else we don’t talk about?’

  ‘No, I think you’re safe. Ben’s niece might be there. Sophie. Lois’s daughter. And maybe Steve Richards, another old friend of ours.’

  But Steve was not there, in fact: he and his wife were away on holiday. And when Doug asked whether Sophie was coming, her mother told him:

  ‘She would have loved to, but she’s in Amsterdam. They’re interviewing her for a documentary on Vermeer.’ She was trying hard to make it sound as though she didn’t think this was a big deal.

  ‘Oh, television now, is it?’ said Doug, impressed.

  ‘Well – only Sky Arts …’

  They were sitting in the bar of the restaurant, having a preliminary bottle of champagne. Doug introduced Gail to everyone, presenting her as ‘the acceptable face of the Tory Party’. Philip made a point of finding her a glass and filling it with champagne and inviting her to sit beside him.

  ‘So come on,’ said Doug, ‘tell us how this happened. This sounds like the weirdest choice of prizewinner since the EU won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012.’

  ‘I haven’t won anything yet,’ Benjamin pointed out. ‘I’m not even on the shortlist – only the longlist.’ But the smile still wouldn’t leave his face. Lois, sitting next to him, reflected on what a lovely smile it was and how little she had seen of it, over the years.

  ‘Well, of course, I entered it for the prize,’ said Philip, ‘because why wouldn’t you? Even though I didn’t think it had a hope in hell – I mean, I’m sorry, Benjamin, I didn’t mean that to sound …’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Benjamin said. ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘So then I forgot all about it, until last Wednesday I get this phone call, out of the blue. From the prize administrators in London.’

  ‘Amazing. Catapulted straight into the first division. Come on, Ben, that’s got to be an amazing feeling. I mean, even Lionel Hampshire didn’t make it this year.’

  This was true. When the longlist had been announced, the few newspapers who had bothered to report it had led with the news that the distinguished man of letters had this year been – in the parlance traditionally adopted for such stories – ‘snubbed’ by the judges, who had apparently not been impressed by his slender, whimsical sixth novel, A Curious Alignment of Artichokes.

  ‘No wonder,’ said Lois. ‘I’ve read that book and it’s rubbish. Not a patch on yours.’

  ‘And have Ladbrokes announced the odds yet?’ Doug asked. ‘What are they offering for you?’

  ‘At the moment, a hundred to one.’

  ‘I see. Big vote of confidence, then. Still, that has to be worth a punt.’

  ‘I won’t win,’ said Benjamin. ‘I won’t even make the shortlist.’

  ‘So what?’ said Philip. ‘Me and Carol have been working flat out. Every Waterstones in the country wanted half a dozen copies. Sales have gone up by about three thousand per cent. The phone’s been ringing off the hook. Ben’s a story now, you see. The best story there is: plucky outsider up against the big guns. The English love an underdog. I’ve been on local radio talking about him, I did an interview down the line for Radio Four. And Ben’s got two papers coming to interview him next week.’

  ‘Nationals?’

  ‘Nationals.’

  Doug raised his glass. ‘Well done, mate. It’s been a long time coming. Nobody deserves this more than you.’ He looked around to make sure that everyone was poised for a toast. ‘To Benjamin.’

  ‘To Benjamin,’ they echoed.

  Benjamin was overcome. Looking around at the smiling faces – the faces of his oldest and closest friends, the face of his beloved sister, even the face of Gail (who he’d only just met, but was already warming to) – he felt as though he were drowning in the sweetest possible mortification. Shy at the best of times (and this was certainly the best of times), never very good with words unless he could ponder them at length before committing them to paper, he was enjoying, at that moment, a happiness that was as complete as it was impossible to express. All he could do – as usual – was resort to understatement and self-deprecation.

  ‘Thanks, everybody,’ he said. ‘But let’s not get carried away. It’s a lottery, that’s all, and I’ve just been very, very lucky.’

  ‘So enjoy it, for God’s sake,’ said Philip, clapping him on the back. ‘Most people don’t get even fifteen minutes of fame.’

  ‘I wouldn’t describe it as fame …’

  ‘Oh, Ben!’ Lois chided.

  ‘You’ve got journalists coming to talk to you, haven’t you?’ said Doug. ‘Your picture’ll be in the paper. Beautiful women are going to fall at your feet. You’re going to be recognized in public places.’

  Benjamin, still demurring, became aware that someone was now hovering at his elbow. He turned and saw a young blonde woman – who could, without too much exaggeration, have been described as beautiful – standing next to him, looking at him deferentially, waiting to attract his attention.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said, with a charming hesitancy in her voice that could easily have been attributed to reverence. ‘But are you … are you Benjamin Trotter?’

  The others fell silent. It felt as though they were bearing witness, collectively, to the beginning of Benjamin’s new life.

  ‘Yes?’ he said, with a rising inflection. And then repeated, in a prouder, more confident tone: ‘Yes. Yes, I am.’

  ‘Great,’ said the woman. ‘Your table’s ready.’

  23.

  August 2015

  The 2012 Olympic opening ceremony had had a profound and specific effect upon Sohan. It had diverted the course of his research, which after that event became centred upon literary, filmic and musical representations of Englishness. In particular, after working on this subject for a few months, he became fascinated by the concept of ‘Deep England’, a phrase which he began to encounter more and more often in newspaper articles and academic journals. What was it, exactly? Was it a psychogeographical phenomenon, to do with village greens, the thatched roof of the local pub, the red telephone box and the subtle thwack of cricket ball against willow? Or to understand it fully, did you have to immerse yourself in the writings of Chesterton and Priestley, H. E. Bates and L. T. C. Rolt? Did it help to watch Michael Powell’s A Canterbury Tale, or Cavalcanti’s Went the Day Well? Was its musical distillation to be found in the work of Elgar, Vaughan Williams or George Butterworth? The paintings of Constable? Or had it been most powerfully expressed, in fact, in allegorical form by J. R. R. Tolkien when he created the Shire and populated its pastoral idyll with doughty, insular hobbits, prone to somnolence and complacence when left to their own devices but fierce when roused, and quite the best – if the seemingly unlikeliest – people to call upon in a crisis? Perhaps there was also a connection, even an essential kinship, with the French ideal of La France profonde … Sohan would often talk about this with Sophie, late into the Tuesday and Wednesday nights on which she would sleep at his Clapham flat, but they never succeeded in defining their terms, nor in resolving the central questions of what exactly Deep England was, or where you would find it. B
ut on the morning of Sunday, 9 August 2015, Sophie came as close, she felt, as she would ever come to solving the mystery. If Deep England existed, she decided, it was here: here on the fifth hole of the Golf and Country Club at Kernel Magna.

  She watched, partly in bafflement, partly in grudging admiration, as Ian sized up the lie of his ball at the edge of the fairway and quickly, decisively, pulled a club out of his bag.

  ‘Seven iron,’ he explained – as if that was going to mean anything.

  ‘Good choice.’

  She said it in a way which made it obvious – she thought – that she had no idea what he was talking about; but Ian was positioning himself by the ball and gauging the distance to the green, and was too busy to notice.

  The moment before he struck the ball was a moment of almost perfect stillness. There was a chirrup of birdsong, yes, but that only emphasized the otherwise profound silence. Here there was no traffic noise, not even a faint murmur from the nearby M40: perhaps it was the trees that muted it, the elegant line of oaks and larches that bordered the eastern side of the fairway, keeping patient, dutiful watch over this manicured landscape. The sun beat down from a cloudless sky, a sky of rich, flawless cerulean blue. The morning was, indeed, a symphony of blue and green: above Sophie, the sky; to her right in the distance, the shimmering blue of a water hazard, a small artificial lake; around her, all the variegated greens placed there by both man and nature, infinitely calming and pleasing to the eye. The passing of time seemed to have been suspended. A feeling of immense restfulness was stealing over her. Nothing mattered here; there was nothing more important, in this precious cloistered space, than the simple, straightforward task of getting a small ball into a small hole in as few strokes as possible.

  Ian continued to shift slightly from side to side, adjusting his centre of gravity; he positioned the club carefully against the ball one more time; then swung the club back, and swung it forward again in a powerful, graceful movement. The ball rose into the air, describing a shapely arc, disappeared from view momentarily, then plopped down on to the green and bounced to a halt about six feet from the hole.