Middle England

by Jonathan Coe

  ‘I daren’t drink too much,’ she said, ‘in case I need to pee again.’

  ‘I suppose it’s painful, is it?’

  ‘Not just that – the stuff goes everywhere. I mean, how do you – how do you make it … directional?’

  Sophie had not expected to be drawn into this kind of discussion quite so quickly. ‘Practice, I suppose. I dare say you’ll get used to it.’ Tentatively, she asked: ‘Any more …’

  ‘… vagina-related questions? No, not right now.’

  Sophie could see that Emily was wincing again. ‘Must be terribly sore.’

  ‘It’s because I have two dilators in there, to keep it from closing up.’

  ‘Ooh …’

  ‘I have to keep them in for twenty minutes, five times a day.’

  ‘Ooh … You poor thing. That would be a bit like –’

  ‘Shall we move on from the subject of my new genitals, maybe?’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Sophie.

  ‘I saw some of your TV show. It was great. You’re very good in front of the camera.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I hope the uni was pleased you did it? Raises their profile a bit, I imagine.’

  ‘Funny you should mention that,’ said Sophie. ‘Did they ever tell you why Coriander’s complaint against me was thrown out, in the end?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Me neither. I just got a message saying that the tribunal had found in my favour and all my courses had been reinstated. That was less than a week after I’d emailed them to say I was going to be fronting a TV series. Could be a coincidence.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Emily. ‘People are shameless.’

  ‘You’re looking very tired,’ said Sophie. ‘Maybe I should go.’

  ‘I do feel shattered. You feel as though you’re never going to be able to walk or eat or do anything else normally ever again. But it’s nice to have company. Hospitals are such lonely places. You’re the first person I’ve spoken to all day, apart from the nurse who came to change my drip.’

  ‘You’re the first person I’ve spoken to as well.’

  It did not sound like a simple statement of fact. It sounded more like the offering of a confidence – and Emily, despite her state of exhaustion, was intuitive enough to notice it.

  ‘Oh?’ she said. ‘I always assumed …’ She was scared of overstepping the mark. ‘I don’t know … that you had a family, or something. Husband, kids. That you had all of that going for you.’

  ‘I do have a husband,’ said Sophie. ‘He just doesn’t live with me at the moment. I suppose we’re having a trial separation.’

  ‘Ah. I’m sorry. When did that happen?’

  ‘It’s been about nine months now. I say that it’s only a trial but, to be honest, it’s beginning to feel more like a permanent state of affairs.’

  ‘Have you tried counselling, and all that stuff?’

  ‘Oh yes. A very specific form of counselling, in fact. Post-Brexit counselling.’

  Emily gave a quick, disbelieving laugh, and immediately screwed up her face in pain, clutching herself in the groin area.

  ‘Shit,’ she said, when the spasm was over. ‘That really hurt. Remind me not to laugh again. I shouldn’t have laughed anyway, but – seriously, that’s a thing?’

  ‘It is indeed.’

  ‘And that’s why you split up with your husband?’

  ‘More or less. Crazy, isn’t it?’

  She was ready to elaborate on this, but at that moment Mrs Shamma arrived on the ward. She had her daughter’s colouring: the red hair and the pale skin. Sophie did wonder why her father wasn’t there, whether he was comfortable with this whole situation, whether parental disapproval might have contributed to Emily’s stress last year. Her mother seemed bubbly, solicitous and talkative. Sophie introduced herself and lingered for the requisite two or three minutes, then made her excuses and said her goodbyes. Feeling emboldened by her conversation with Emily, she kissed her on the cheek before leaving, and whispered:

  ‘It may not feel like it now, but you’re going to look beautiful.’

  *

  Afterwards, in a reflective frame of mind, she strolled down to the river and began to walk eastwards in the direction of Fulham. The Thames was full, its brown-grey waters slapping turgidly against the embankment walls. Seagulls whirled and cried out. Lazy river traffic chugged by. She had no real idea where she was heading, or what she would do when she got there. This aimlessness appeared to be a new but recurrent feature of her life.

  Sophie thought back to the moment when her conversation with Emily had been cut off. What she had said was true: from every rational point of view, the trigger for her separation from Ian looked crazy. A couple might decide to separate for all sorts of reasons: adultery, cruelty, domestic abuse, lack of sex. But a difference of opinion over whether Britain should be a member of the European Union or not? It seemed absurd. It was absurd. And yet Sophie knew, deep down, that it had not so much been a reason as a tipping point. Ian had reacted (to her mind) so bizarrely to the referendum result, with such gleeful, infantile triumphalism (he kept using the word ‘freedom’ as if he were the citizen of a tiny African country that had finally won independence from its colonial oppressor) that, for the first time, she genuinely realized that she no longer understood why her husband thought and felt the way that he did. At the same time, she herself had been possessed by the immediate sense, that morning, that a small but important part of her own identity – her modern, layered, multiple identity – had been taken away from her.

  During their first session a few weeks later, their relationship counsellor, Lorna, told them that many of the couples she was seeing at the moment had mentioned Brexit as a key factor in their growing estrangement.

  ‘I usually start by asking each of you the same question,’ she said. ‘Sophie, why are you so angry that Ian voted Leave? And Ian, why are you so angry that Sophie voted Remain?’

  Sophie had thought for a long time before answering:

  ‘I suppose because it made me think that, as a person, he’s not as open as I thought he was. That his basic model for relationships comes down to antagonism and competition, not cooperation.’

  Lorna had nodded, and turned to Ian, who had answered:

  ‘It makes me think that she’s very naive, that she lives in a bubble and can’t see how other people around her might have a different opinion to hers. And this gives her a certain attitude. An attitude of moral superiority.’

  To which Lorna had said:

  ‘What’s interesting about both of those answers is that neither of you mentioned politics. As if the referendum wasn’t about Europe at all. Maybe something much more fundamental and personal was going on. Which is why this might be a difficult problem to resolve.’

  She had suggested a course of six sessions, but it turned out that she was being optimistic. In fact they attended nine, before admitting defeat, and calling it a day.

  36.

  24 June 2016 was remembered by Doug as the day when three things had happened:

  It was announced that the British people had voted to leave the European Union.

  David Cameron had resigned as prime minister.

  Nigel Ives had stopped returning his telephone calls.

  Sixteen months on, he was still trying to secure another meeting with the government’s elusive deputy assistant director of communications. In this he was also assisted by Gail, who would sometimes spot Nigel scuttling down the corridors of the Palace of Westminster or Conservative Party headquarters, although he was always very skilled at avoiding her. All she was ever able to report back to Doug was that he looked ‘very harassed’.

  So it was with considerable surprise that he received a text message from Nigel on the morning of 16 October 2017. All it said was:

  Meet at the usual place on Thursday? 11 am?

  *

  Doug felt about the café at Temple tube station very much as Benjamin and Lois felt about the view
from Beacon Hill: there was something profoundly reassuring about the way that it hardly seemed to change. As the same chains of coffee shops continued to take over the capital and indeed the whole country, here was a place that still served bacon rolls, salt beef sandwiches and frothy cappuccinos, with not a decaf soya latte in sight. It seemed to preserve a corner of Britain that was left over from the 1970s or even earlier: and this gave it a distinctive charm, as even Doug wouldn’t deny.

  ‘Good morning, Douglas.’

  The greeting was stale and world-weary. Doug looked up from his notebook and saw Nigel taking the seat opposite him. The youthful rosiness was gone from his face. He was sporting several days’ worth of stubble. His cheeks were pale and sunken, his tie was badly and hastily knotted, his hair did not look like it had seen a comb for weeks. He sipped gratefully on the coffee Doug had already ordered for him.

  ‘Nigel, good to see you again,’ Doug said. ‘At long last.’

  ‘Yes, it has been a while, hasn’t it? When did we last do this?’

  ‘I think it was just a month or two before the referendum.’

  ‘Ah yes …’ When he heard those three words, ‘before the referendum’, Nigel’s eyes took on a wistful, almost spiritual glimmer, and he stared past Doug’s shoulder as if into the distant past, towards a better, prelapsarian time, a time of carefree innocence and simple, childlike joy.

  ‘Sixteen months, more or less.’

  ‘Really?’ said Nigel. ‘Is it only sixteen months? Somehow it seems … longer. Much, much longer.’ He shook his head sadly.

  ‘So,’ said Doug, ‘to what do I owe this rare privilege?’

  ‘Well, I shall be honest with you, Douglas – whatever else you may think of me, I’ve always tried to be honest. Keep this strictly to yourself, but I’m probably going to be leaving this job. I thought we should have one more chat before I go.’

  ‘Really? This means promotion, I hope.’

  ‘I’m afraid not. I think it’s time for me to leave the world of politics. Pastures new.’

  ‘Well,’ said Doug, ‘you’ve had a good run.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Nigel, not sounding especially convinced. ‘But before I do that, I wanted to set the record straight.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Doug.

  ‘OK. Since the referendum,’ said Nigel, ‘you’ve said several things about David Cameron which, in my personal opinion, all things considered, and not to put too fine a point on it, seem rather unfair.’

  ‘Surely not.’

  ‘Calling him “the worst British prime minister of my lifetime”, for instance.’

  ‘Did I say that?’

  ‘Saying he was “a reckless incompetent cushioned by wealth and privilege”.’

  ‘Bit harsh, maybe.’

  ‘ “The great white hope of modern Conservatism who turned out to be a weak, cowardly, malignant, narcissistic fool.” ’

  ‘Yeah, they might have been paying me by the word for that one.’

  ‘The point is,’ said Nigel, ‘that you’re wrong. The Cameron years will come to be looked back on as a halcyon era. I truly believe that.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘He was a radical. A modernizer. A man of vision. A man of great personal and moral courage.’

  ‘Was it courageous of him to resign the day after the referendum, and leave other people to clear up the mess he’d made?’

  ‘That showed him to be a man of principle. A man who keeps his promises.’

  ‘But he promised not to resign if he lost the vote.’

  ‘And a man who’s prepared to change his mind when the circumstances require it.’

  Nigel was speaking with great passion. Doug felt suddenly sorry for him.

  ‘Are the two of you still in touch?’

  ‘I don’t like to impose,’ said Nigel. ‘I don’t feel I should disturb him. Dave has become a very different person since resigning. Very humble. Contemplative. He realized that it was time for him to take some big decisions in his life.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, buying a shed for instance.’

  ‘Ah yes. I read about the shed.’

  ‘Buying that shed was such an important step for him. You wouldn’t believe how much he’s been changed by that shed.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. It cost twenty-five thousand pounds. I hope it’s a nice shed.’

  ‘Douglas,’ said Nigel, fixing him with solemn eyes, ‘it’s a beautiful shed. And what Dave is doing in there is beautiful.’

  ‘Namely …?’

  ‘Writing his memoirs. The story of the referendum. The true story of the referendum. What a gift to the world that’s going to be.’

  ‘A gift? You mean he’s not going to charge for it?’

  Nigel smiled. For a moment it seemed that he was going to rise to Doug’s provocations again. But he no longer seemed to have it in him.

  ‘I gather he’s been lecturing on this subject in the States already. Charging a hundred and twenty thousand dollars an hour, according to the papers.’

  ‘You, Douglas, of all people, should know that very few of the stories printed in British newspapers have any truth in them. As someone who’s been feeding stories to the papers for years, I do know what I’m talking about.’

  In the past, Doug thought, Nigel used to say these things as if totally unaware of how self-incriminating they sounded; now he spoke in the tone of someone merely giving voice to a melancholy truth. Perhaps more revelations could be prised out of him while he was in confessional mode. This was the first time they had met since Theresa May had become prime minister in the chaotic wake of the referendum. Few journalists had been able to fathom her in that time; few people had been able to understand how someone so supportive of Britain’s EU membership could have performed such a smooth U-turn and assumed the task of steering the country towards Brexit. Could this be a chance to approach the heart of that mystery?

  Doug leaned forward. ‘So, come on, Nigel – one last favour. Tell me what it’s like. Tell me what it’s really like.’

  Nigel gave him a questioning glance.

  ‘What it’s like?’

  ‘Working for Theresa. What’s she like? She’s such an enigma. None of us can work out what she really wants, or really thinks, or really believes.’

  Nigel’s manner changed abruptly in the face of this question. At once he reverted to his old guarded and mysterious self.

  ‘Theresa is … very different to Dave,’ he said.

  ‘Yes …?’

  ‘I would say she was a woman of … many contradictions.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, she’s very ambitious, but rather cautious. She knows her own mind, but relies heavily on her advisors. She believes in strong leadership, but also in following the will of the people.’

  ‘Ah, “the will of the people”. I wondered how long it would be before that phrase popped up.’

  ‘You hear it a lot at Party HQ these days. A lot.’

  He was starting to look depressed again. Doug took the opportunity to ask:

  ‘How’s morale, then? Generally speaking.’

  ‘Morale is … absolutely tip-top,’ said Nigel, swallowing hard. ‘It’s a fascinating moment, obviously. Britain is at a turning point, and we’re at the very epicentre … of … the epicentre of the maelstrom which is … transfiguring the political reality of what is obviously a very … seismic development in which the … the tectonic plates of our national history are shifting in a way which is … transformational, and being a witness to this …’

  Suddenly he stopped talking. A blankness came into his eyes. His shoulders slumped. He stared down at the foamy surface of his coffee for a minute or more. Finally he looked up again, and the next words he spoke were the most heartfelt words Doug had ever heard from his lips.

  ‘We’re fucked.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘We’re utterly and irredeemably fucked. It’s all chaos. Everyone’s running around lik
e headless chickens. Nobody has the faintest idea what they’re doing. We’re so, so fucked.’

  Doug quickly whipped out his phone and started recording a voice memo.

  ‘Is this on the record?’ he said.

  ‘Who cares? We’re fucked, so what does it matter?’

  ‘What sort of chaos? Who’s running around like a headless chicken?’

  ‘Every sort. Everyone. Nobody was expecting this. Nobody was ready for it. Nobody knows what Brexit is. Nobody knows how you do it. A year and a half ago they were all calling it Brixit. Nobody knows what Brexit means.’

  ‘I thought Brexit means Brexit.’

  ‘Very funny. And what kind of Brexit would that be?’

  ‘ “A red, white and blue Brexit”,’ Doug quoted, then started to feel sorry for Nigel again, he looked so wretched. ‘But surely they must have plenty of policy advisors … experts …?’

  ‘Experts?’ said Nigel bitterly. ‘We don’t believe in experts any more, remember? It’s a very simple chain of command. Everyone takes their instructions from Theresa, and she takes her instructions from the Daily Mail. Them, and a couple of think tanks who are so bonkers about free trade that you wouldn’t allow them –’

  ‘These think tanks …’ said Doug, his curiosity roused. ‘I don’t suppose one of them would be the Imperium Foundation, would it?’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Nigel, his head in his hands. ‘They’re all over us, those guys. Always coming in for meetings. Bombarding us with spreadsheets. Forget about the will of the people. These are the kinds of lunatics who’ve taken over.’

  ‘Would Cameron have stood up to them any better, do you think?’

  ‘Cameron?’ said Nigel, his face twisting. ‘What a twat. What a grade-one, first-class, copper-bottomed arsehole. Sitting in his fucking shed writing his memoirs. Look at the mess he’s left behind. Everyone at each other’s throats. Foreigners being shouted at in the streets. Being attacked on the bus and told to go back where they came from. Anyone who doesn’t toe the line being called traitors and enemies of the people. Cameron broke the country, Doug. He broke the country and ran away!’

  He broke you too, by the looks of it, Doug thought, taking a Kleenex out of his pocket and handing it to Nigel, who dabbed his eyes with it for a few seconds. His hands were trembling as he did so.