by Jonathan Coe
‘Huh?’ She turned. It took a moment for the question to reach her. ‘No, I’ll call him from the car.’
But there was no answer. And when they arrived at the house in Rednal, Lois peered through the living-room window and could see that Colin was not sitting in his usual armchair. She unlocked the front door and there he was, stretched out in the hallway, face down, quite still and – she knew at once – quite lifeless.
It was the walk to the postbox that had done for him. He had been lying there, Lois learned afterwards, since about one o’clock. Death had occurred a few hours later. Which meant that she could probably have saved him, if only she had remembered to come at the appointed time.
OLD ENGLAND
* * *
‘What surprises me time and time again as I travel around the constituency is that we are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.’
Jo Cox, maiden speech to the House of Commons, 3 June 2015
34.
September 2017
Here at the top of Beacon Hill, when autumn arrived it was not announced by any changes in the colour of the trees. The woods which surrounded the bald summit of the hill, like a monk’s tonsure, were made up of firs, pines and other evergreens. Only if you advanced to the path at the very edge of the hill, and looked down across the greens and fairways of the municipal golf club, could you glimpse the tops of sycamores, maples and oaks, now burnished red and gold, signalling the end of summer and the slow passing of the seasons. Here, on a quiet, almost silent Friday afternoon in September, beneath a sky of cloudless blue, Benjamin and Lois stood solemnly, preparing to pay their final respects to their mother and father.
Colin had left very specific instructions for the disposal of his remains. Having kept his wife’s ashes in an urn on the mantelpiece at home for more than six years, he had stipulated in his will that they should be mingled with his own and scattered at the top of Beacon Hill, the highest point of the Lickey Hills, little more than a mile from the house in Rednal where they had spent the whole of their married life. He had also requested that the scattering take place on the day of their wedding anniversary, 15 September. He had not, however, specified the year; and as bad luck would have it, on 15 September 2016, Benjamin was holed up in a remote backwater of Scotland, halfway through a gruelling week spent in the company of a dozen would-be poets and novelists who had all parted with good money to imbibe his writerly wisdom. Fortunately, in 2017, that day (along with about thirty others on either side) was blank in his diary. As for Lois, who had finally taken up a new job as librarian at an Oxford college and was commuting there and back every day, she felt this was an occasion that warranted an afternoon off.
And so there they stood, brother and sister, on a hillside filled with memories, looking out over a view that had changed very little in the last forty-one years, since the time when Benjamin used to bring Lois here for long walks, to get her away from hospital and into the outside world, and would tell her rambling stories of the goings-on at school and try to coax a response out of her, to help her forget, for a few hours at least, the horror of the Birmingham pub bombings. True, the three white aluminium-clad towers of the new Queen Elizabeth Hospital now dominated the far horizon, as they had not done in 1976, and – more dramatically – there was no Longbridge factory any more, parts of it now replaced by houses, shops and college buildings, other parts simply obliterated, leaving large, ugly scars on the landscape. But otherwise, the view was the same, the view towards Waseley Country Park and Frankley Beeches, towards the Clent Hills and Hagley and the Black Country beyond. Its permanence was comforting: a reminder of stillness and continuity in a world which seemed to be changing faster than either of them could understand. However young they might have felt inside, to a passer-by they looked elderly now: Benjamin with his silver hair, Lois with her streaks of grey and incipient stoop. She had turned sixty a few months earlier.
Benjamin took a portable speaker out of his coat pocket, put it down on a wooden bench and placed his iPod Classic in the dock. He had already scrolled to the relevant song in anticipation of this moment, and all he had to do was press Play. The music was turned up loud: he didn’t care who heard it this afternoon, or who witnessed this ceremony. Almost at once, the gentle, modal chords rose up, unmistakeably English: Benjamin closed his eyes and for a few seconds lost himself in the music, music which he had heard thousands of times but would never tire of, music which spoke to him in the subtlest, most persuasive way of his roots, his sense of self, his feeling of profound attachment to this landscape, this country. He turned to look at his sister, hoping for a moment of connection, some sign that she was feeling the same way. But Lois had more practical things on her mind.
‘I can’t get the bloody lid off,’ she said.
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Benjamin. ‘I don’t suppose it’s been opened since they put her in there. Here, let me try.’
With a certain amount of effort, he managed to prise the lids from both of the urns. Lois was holding Sheila’s, and Benjamin was holding Colin’s – although in fact, since they both came from the same funeral director and looked identical, he couldn’t be one hundred per cent sure it wasn’t the other way around. Well, it didn’t seem to matter really.
‘OK, then?’ he said, holding out his father’s remains in readiness.
‘We didn’t bring anything to read,’ said Lois.
‘Why, are you planning to spend the rest of the afternoon up here?’
‘No, I mean to read now. A poem or something.’
‘Oh. Well … Just think of something to say yourself. Try to improvise.’
‘OK,’ said Lois, uncertainly.
Benjamin clicked his iPod to return it to the beginning of the song. The chords rose again, and the violin began its slow, skyward journey.
‘Here goes,’ said Lois. ‘Goodbye, Mum. You were a wonderful mother to all of us. You gave us everything we could ever have wanted.’
With a strong, sweeping movement, she swung the urn upwards and discharged its contents into the air. Benjamin, after saying a quick ‘Goodbye, Dad,’ did the same thing, and then, in a miraculous instance of the synchronicity that rarely blessed the lives of the Trotter family, a gust of wind rose up, caught the ashes and carried them upwards, up into the sky where before Lois’s and Benjamin’s eyes they danced, whirled and coalesced into one spiralling blur, before being caught by another gust and swept apart, scattering in every direction, settling on the gorse, the heather, the long grass, the pathway, or simply disappearing from view, flying homewards with animal instinct, either in the direction of the house where Sheila had been so happy or the vanished factory where Colin had spent so many productive hours. And all the while the music went on its calm and resolute way, the violin rising, rising like those ashes until it too was just a speck in the blue sky, too small and too distant to be seen any longer by the two figures standing before the bench.
Finally they both sat down and listened to the music for another two minutes or more, not wanting to speak at first.
Then: ‘This is beautiful,’ said Lois, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. ‘What’s it called?’
‘ “The Lark Ascending”.’
‘You are clever,’ said Lois, her voice wobbling, her tears welling, ‘to remember what their favourite piece of music was.’
Benjamin smiled. ‘No, it’s my favourite piece of music. Or one of them. Do you remember either of our parents ever saying that they liked a piece of music?’
Lois thought about this, then shook her head. ‘You’re right. Or reading a book. Or going to an art gallery.’ Then a memory returned. ‘Dad did like “The Birdie Song”, though.’
‘Yes, he did.’
They both laughed, and through her laughter Lois said: ‘Oh God, do you remember how he used to put it on at Christmas parties, and strut around the living room flapping his arms like a chicken?’
‘How could I forget?’
said Benjamin. He had been in his second year at Oxford at the time, and witnessing Colin’s impromptu performance, even in the privacy of the family home, had been one of the most mortifying experiences of his life.
‘Well, I’m glad you didn’t choose to play that this afternoon,’ said Lois. ‘Not very appropriate.’
‘Although …’ said Benjamin, listening to the swirls and curlicues of the violin as it subtly mirrored the lark’s looping progress, ‘when you think about it, this is “The Birdie Song” as well. Just a posher version.’
They fell into silence, while Benjamin allowed his thoughts to wander along the path suggested by the music. He thought about Vaughan Williams: his conception of music as ‘the soul of a nation’, the way he had uncovered so many old English folk tunes, helping to rescue a whole tradition almost from oblivion, and yet there was no contradiction, no tension even, between this deep cultural patriotism and his other political beliefs, which seemed to have been so liberal and progressive. He thought about how badly this country, this crisis-riven country, stood in need of figures like that at the moment …
Meanwhile, Lois was thinking along different lines altogether.
‘They had a good marriage, didn’t they?’ she said. ‘We can allow them that, at least.’
‘Mm …?’
‘Mum and Dad.’
‘Oh. Yes, I think so. I mean, not … passionate exactly, but that probably wasn’t in their natures.’
‘Better than mine, anyway,’ said Lois.
Benjamin glanced at her sharply. He had never heard her say anything like this before. He was shocked.
‘I feel so guilty,’ she said, ‘and so sorry for Chris. He’s stuck by me, all this time. Knowing full well that he’s not the one. I should never have married him. I’ve never got over Malcolm. Nobody could ever replace him. I shouldn’t have pretended … He’s had a shit life, because of me.’
Benjamin tried to form an answer. The words wouldn’t come. Lois turned to him and said:
‘We always thought you were the one stuck in your romantic obsession. Stuck in the 1970s. But it’s been me, always me. You’ve moved on.’ Convulsed by a sudden sob, she leaned forward and curled in upon herself. ‘I have to move on, Ben. I have to move on.’
He laid a hand on her back and moved it around feebly.
‘Well … You’ve got a new job, haven’t you?’
‘I don’t want to hide away in libraries for the rest of my life. I’m sick of it.’
‘Yes, but it’s a start.’
‘A start? I’m sixty. I shouldn’t just be starting.’
She stared ahead of her. Perhaps her eyes were searching, Benjamin thought, for the distant outline of Rubery Hill Hospital, where she had once been confined. It had been demolished in the 1990s.
‘It is getting better,’ Lois said. ‘Just in the last year or so. I think with the Jo Cox thing, I kind of peaked. It made me realize I couldn’t go on reacting that way. What happened in London this morning … I heard about it on the radio. It was all right. I was OK with it.’
Benjamin had been wondering about this. A bomb had gone off on a tube train at Parsons Green station that morning. More than twenty people were now being treated for their injuries, mainly burns. It was the kind of incident that normally upset Lois greatly.
‘What happened to Malcolm – and me – was more than forty years ago. I won’t be … kept prisoner by it any more.’
‘Good,’ said Benjamin. ‘Good for you.’
‘And it’s not fair to Chris. I have to let him go as well.’
Benjamin absorbed the information, and nodded gravely. It was all a lot to take in.
‘Sounds as though you’ve made up your mind, anyway,’ he said.
‘I have. It’s not going to be easy, and it’s not going to be quick. And I can’t do it alone. I need somebody’s help.’
Her eyes met Benjamin’s. And at that moment, they were nineteen and sixteen again, and they were standing on this same hill, hand in hand, on another autumn day, a day which seemed impossibly far in the past but was also, for both of them, eternally present.
‘Yours,’ said Lois.
35.
From: Emily Shamma
Sent: Monday, October 2, 2017 11:33 AM
To: Sophie Coleman-Potter
Subject: Next week
Dear Sophie
I’m so glad you’re back teaching again, and really looking forward to working with you this term. This is just to let you know that my (long-delayed) op is scheduled for this Thursday (the 5th). Since they’ll probably keep me in for at least a week afterwards, it looks like I’ll miss the first American modernism seminar on the 11th. Sorry about that.
Also, re the date for our first one-to-one, I would like to express a strong, decisive preference for October 24th.
Best wishes
Emily
*
Six days later, on 8 October, Sophie herself took an impulsive decision.
Sundays were still the strangest days, the days when she came as close as she ever came to missing Ian and wanting to contact him. Ironic, really, given how she used to resent those Sunday mornings alone in the flat, while he played golf and had lunch with his mother. Even then, however, there had always been the prospect of his late-afternoon return, and a shared dinner in the evening. Here in Hammersmith, there was nothing to break up the day, and Sundays seemed to drag on for ever, empty and shapeless. Usually she couldn’t wait to get out of the tiny terraced house she shared with three other people (and paid a small fortune for). Her room – just big enough to accommodate a single bed, a desk and a chest of drawers, with almost no space to walk between them – saw no sunlight until about two o’clock, so Sophie would go out in the mornings, to walk along the river if it was fine, to sit in a branch of Starbucks or Pret if it wasn’t. The British Library reading rooms were closed, so she couldn’t find refuge there. Once or twice she’d tried going to the university itself, but the humanities department on Sunday seemed a forlorn place, silent and deserted. Sometimes she would see Sohan and Mike, but they were often busy, and she had started to notice that, for all her love of this city, she didn’t have many friends here. Her housemates were nice enough but she had little in common with them, and they were all about ten years younger than her. At thirty-four, Sophie felt that she was too old to be sharing a house with anyone, but it was the only way she could afford to live in London, by herself, on a lecturer’s salary.
It weighed on her mind, this Sunday, that Emily Shamma was recuperating from a major operation in a hospital which stood only a few hundred yards from her house. Doubtless she would have no shortage of visitors, but once Sophie had had the idea of paying a visit herself, it took hold and would not go away. She retained a fond memory of their last conversation in her office, more than a year earlier, and had not seen her since. (As Emily had mentioned at the time, she had been finding the transitioning process stressful, and decided to take a year out from her studies.) At two o’clock that afternoon, then, Sophie arrived at Charing Cross Hospital, armed with a box of Belgian chocolates. She made her way to the reception desk, reflecting that the ground floors of British hospitals were beginning to look more and more like shopping malls, and was swiftly directed to Emily’s ward.
She was sitting up in bed, with her eyes closed. She looked paler than ever, and her reddish hair lay flat against the pillow, tangled and damp with sweat. She was breathing heavily. Sophie assumed that she was asleep, and was about to leave the chocolates on her bedside table and tiptoe away when Emily opened her eyes. She was startled to see Sophie, and seemed not to recognize her at first. Then she smiled tiredly, and struggled into an upright position, wincing as she did so.
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘This is an … unexpected pleasure.’
Sophie laid the chocolates down on the table and said, ‘I brought you these,’ as if that had been her main motivation for coming. ‘Did it all go well? How are you feeling?’
‘I fe
el bloody awful,’ said Emily. ‘But thanks for asking.’ She saw that Sophie was unsure whether to draw up a chair and sit down. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Please do.’
‘Did I wake you?’ Sophie asked.
‘No, I’m not really sleeping. Not much, anyway.’ Her smile now was stronger, braver. ‘It’s very nice to see you. I hope you’re not here to set me an assignment, or anything like that.’
Sophie laughed. ‘Nothing like that. I was worried about just turning up like this, though. I thought you might have loads of visitors.’
‘My mum’s come up from Cardiff,’ said Emily. ‘She should be here in a bit. But the doctors warned me about seeing too many people. They said rest was more important.’
‘I won’t stay long.’
‘It’s nice to see you,’ Emily repeated.
Sophie reached out and squeezed her hand. It was very cold. This was the moment of closeness, of solidarity, that she had been wanting to share with Emily ever since she had turned up at her office to apologize and offer her support. Sophie held on to her hand for a few seconds and it occurred to her, as she did so, that in reality she knew very little about this appealing, enigmatic student who had unwittingly managed to derail her career.
‘Is that where you’re from, then?’ she asked. ‘Cardiff?’
Emily nodded. ‘You’re wondering about my name, aren’t you? It’s Arabic. My dad came over from Iraq in the eighties to study architecture. He met my mum at Cardiff Uni and that was that. They got married and he stayed here. Actually my name is Al Shamma’a.’ (She pronounced it with a heavy stress on the long final syllable.) ‘Everybody says it wrong. I don’t bother to correct them any more.’
‘So you’re …?’
‘Half-Arab and half-Welsh. My first name was Emlyn, before I changed it. Emlyn Al Shamma’a. Bit of a mouthful.’
The effort of talking seemed to be tiring her. She reached for a water glass and Sophie filled it up before passing it to her. She took a very small sip and handed it back.