by Jonathan Coe
‘Meanwhile this other man, this young man, was at the other till and he seemed to be having some difficulty paying. He was trying to pay with his card and the machine was not accepting the card. He was having an argument about it with the woman at the till. He had no cash with him – just this card – so finally he had to accept that he could not buy these cans of lager. But he wasn’t happy about it. He snatched the card out of the little card reader and he slammed the card reader down on the counter and then, just as he was leaving, he saw me. Or heard me, as I should rather say. He saw me walking towards the door out of the shop, talking to my sister on the phone, talking in another language, and he caught my eye. I didn’t like the way he was looking at me so I looked away but it was too late. I left the shop and as I left it I saw Mrs Coleman coming towards me, approaching the shop from outside, but we didn’t say hello because suddenly this man was shouting at me. He shouted, “Get off your effing phone,” and then just as we were both outside the door he grabbed me by the arm and said, “Who are you speaking to?” and “What language were you speaking?” I shouted, “Let go of me,” but he just repeated, “What effing language were you speaking?”, and then “We speak English in this country,” and then he called me a Polish bitch. I didn’t say anything, I wasn’t going to correct him, I’m used to people thinking that I’m Polish anyway, I just wanted to ignore him, but he didn’t stop there, now he grabbed my phone and took it off me and threw it on the ground and started stamping on it.’ Grete’s eyes had moistened and her voice was trembling as she described the incident. ‘He kept saying Polish this and Polish that – I can’t repeat the actual words he used – and told me, “We don’t have to put up with you … people any more” (“people” wasn’t the word he used, either), and then he spat at me. Actually spat. Luckily not in my face, but …’
Shaking visibly now, she put her head in her hands. Lukas put his arms around her. Sophie leaned across the table and clasped her hand as well.
For a while it seemed that Grete was not going to be able to finish telling the story. And so it was Lukas who continued:
‘Grete was really upset by this episode. Really shaken. It was the first time – I mean, ever since the referendum, we had felt, both of us had felt, this slight change in the way that people – some people – spoke to us, or looked at us when they heard us speaking, even when we were speaking English, but this was the first time anything like this had happened, anything really aggressive or violent. In the end we decided that we should go to the police and report it. The guy had just got into his car and driven off and we didn’t know the number or anything but we thought he would be pretty easy to find. But we also thought it would be helpful if we had some witnesses, so we decided to call on Mrs Coleman, because she had seen the whole thing.
‘We visited her house the next morning, which was a Sunday, and when we got there we could see that Ian’s car was parked outside.’
‘To tell the truth, I was quite glad,’ said Grete, who seemed to have recovered some of her composure now, ‘because I had always found Ian to be a little easier to talk to and – I hope it’s all right for me to say this – a little … friendlier, than Mrs Coleman herself? I mean, I had worked for her for quite some years and spent quite a lot of time in her house and in all that time I had never really …’
‘I know what you mean,’ said Sophie.
Grete smiled thankfully and continued: ‘Well, it was Ian who answered the door to us. He was very pleased to see us, very warm and very kind. He and his mother had been drinking tea in the kitchen. We had our daughter with us, our daughter Justina, and although she is very well behaved we didn’t want to put them to any inconvenience, so Lukas took Justina into the front room and played with her there while I talked to Ian and his mother. Ian asked me to sit down and offered me a cup of tea but I said it was all right, I wasn’t going to stay for very long. I sat at the kitchen table between them but I had not been speaking for long when Mrs Coleman started to gather up their tea things and took them to the sink to wash them. It’s not that she wasn’t listening, I don’t think. It was more that she already knew what I was going to say, and wanted to prepare her answer. Briefly I told Ian what had happened – in fact they had already been discussing it, and he was very kind about it, very sympathetic – and then I said that we’d decided to go to the police, and would Mrs Coleman be prepared to come forward as a witness and just confirm what had happened.
‘Helena was still standing by the sink, her hands immersed in the water, looking out through the kitchen window. Ian said to her: “That would be OK, wouldn’t it, Mum? I mean, you did see the whole thing.”
‘She did not speak at first but eventually she replied: “Yes, I did.”
‘We waited for her to say something else. We waited for quite a long time.’
Sophie, too, waited for Grete to continue. Despite the clatter of cutlery all around her, the comings and goings of the busy restaurant, she could hear and picture the scene clearly: the terrible stillness of that too-familiar kitchen; the gentle swishing of the water in the sink as Helena moved her hands; Helena’s eyes, the palest of blues, liquid, rheumy, staring out fixedly at the rose garden her husband had planted years earlier: the buds that were yet to open, the flowers that were yet to bloom. She remembered sitting out in that garden herself, the very first day she had met Ian’s mother. She remembered the ferocity with which the old woman had gripped her arm, the unnerving strength and steadiness of those eyes.
‘Finally,’ Grete said, ‘Helena spoke. She spoke very quietly; and there was a sadness in her voice too. A real sadness. That was what made it so hurtful, in a way. She said …’ Grete took a deep breath. Clearly it pained her to repeat these words. ‘She said: “I think, on the whole, it would be better if you and your husband went home.”
‘I honestly didn’t understand at first. I thought she was just referring to our house at the other end of the village. But that’s not what she meant. “I’m afraid,” she said (and I have to admit, by the way, that it always puzzles me how the English use this phrase, as if it actually frightens them to say something bad, when of course it’s the person they are talking to who should be frightened – it’s a strange thing, I don’t think you find it in any other language), anyway, “I’m afraid,” she said, “that what happened yesterday is only going to continue happening, in one form or another. It was always going to happen. It’s inevitable.”
‘ “Inevitable?” I repeated. But she didn’t speak again.
‘I sat there, trying to take in what she had just said. I was lost for words, actually. Then Ian said something like, “Mum, all she’s asking is that you tell people what happened,” but I rose to my feet and stopped him and said: “It’s all right, Ian. Your mother has made herself very clear. I know exactly what she is trying to tell me. I’m going now.”
‘I walked quickly out of the kitchen and into the front room, where Lukas and Justina were playing. I picked my daughter up and said, “Come on, we’re going now,” and took her to the front door. He –’ glancing at her husband ‘– followed me, not really understanding what was going on. Ian was at the front door and he tried to stop me leaving but I brushed past him and took Justina straight out to the car.’
‘I went out to the car as well,’ Lukas said, ‘to try and ask what was the matter. But Grete wouldn’t tell me. She was just strapping Justina into the car seat and not really speaking. But the front door was still open and so I went back into the house. I went down the corridor and into the kitchen and when I got there Ian and his mother were having a terrible argument.’
‘What was he saying?’ Sophie asked.
‘I don’t remember. They were raising their voices – not shouting at each other, exactly, but … certainly they were very angry. It was a bad argument. But I don’t remember what they were saying.’
*
‘I realized that what really outraged her,’ Ian said to Sophie later that night, as they lay in bed together
, and he trailed his fingers delicately along the soft ridge of her bare shoulder, ‘was the simple fact that I wasn’t supporting her. That’s what she wanted from me. That’s what she expected. Unconditional support.’ He kissed her shoulder, now, then moved his hand across the lovely plateau of her stomach, feeling the subtle indentation of her belly button, until it came to rest on the curve of her hip. ‘She kept saying to me, “Whose side are you on? Whose side?” That was how she saw it. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it before – that this was basically how she’d been living her whole life. In a state of undeclared war.’
Sophie stroked his thigh. It felt nice to be touching him again: his muscle, his skin, the fair, downy hairs on the inside of his thigh and the coarser, thicker hair as her hand moved in closer.
‘When did you last speak to her?’ she asked.
‘That morning. Two months ago.’ He kissed her.
‘You’ll have to make it up.’
‘Eventually. But we’ll never –’ he kissed her again ‘– go back to how it was before.’
‘Neither will we,’ said Sophie, her heart fluttering as she felt his hand begin to circle her breast.
‘But at least you’re back,’ said Ian, kissing her one more time, then brushing his lips gently along the line of her jaw. ‘Aren’t you?’
‘We’ll see,’ said Sophie.
*
‘What will you do now?’ Sophie had asked, as she left the restaurant with Lukas and Grete and stepped out into the sunshine.
‘Now?’ Lukas looked at his watch. ‘I suppose a bit more shopping, and then back –’
‘I didn’t mean this afternoon,’ said Sophie. ‘I meant … Will you be staying in the village?’
‘Actually,’ said Grete, ‘we are taking Mrs Coleman’s advice.’
‘No! You can’t leave, because of this.’
‘It’s not because of this,’ said Lukas. ‘We just feel …’
‘It’s not that we’ve fallen out of love with England …’ said Grete.
‘Just that … We feel there are other countries now where life might be easier for us.’
‘What other countries?’
‘We’re not sure. We have plenty of time to decide. We gave notice on our house but we don’t have to leave until the end of August.’
Sophie looked at them standing hand in hand beside the canal, and knew that she was looking at two people who had made up their minds.
‘That’s terribly sad,’ she said.
‘Not really,’ said Lukas. ‘It’s always good to move on.’
‘And what about you?’ Grete asked.
They had both urged her, in the strongest possible terms, to call Ian as soon as possible. But Sophie had decided to take an even more direct course of action. And so, after they had said goodbye outside the entrance to the Birmingham Rep, and she had watched their dwindling figures as they walked past the Hall of Memory in the direction of Paradise Place, she turned her steps towards the back of the theatre, and made her way slowly, but with no flagging of resolve, towards the apartment building where she and Ian had shared their years of married life. She remembered, of course, the four-digit code for the communal entrance. She still had a key to the flat, as well: but she did not use it, on this occasion. Instead she rang the doorbell, and when Ian came to answer it, with the quizzical, slightly aggrieved look of someone who has just been interrupted watching a football match on TV, she merely said: ‘Hello, stranger.’
43.
May 2018
Coriander had taken her finals and was waiting for the results. Perhaps in an effort to kill time – or even, just possibly, to build bridges with her father – she had finally consented to spend a day or two with Doug and Gail at the house in Earlsdon. It was a stressful but mainly unremarkable visit, characterized by strenuous politeness on all sides. When it was over, on the evening of 17 May 2018, she walked with Doug to Coventry station: she was heading back to London, he was en route to Birmingham to attend (with the mixed feelings that always accompany such occasions) a school reunion. It was a twenty-minute walk in the mellow sunshine of an early-summer evening, and Coriander set a brisk pace.
‘Can’t you slow down a bit?’ said Doug, as she strode onwards, two or three yards ahead of him. ‘Anyone would think you were ashamed to be seen walking next to me.’
‘I am.’
‘Charming.’
‘What do you expect?’ she said. ‘It’s the suit. The penguin suit. You look like a paid-up member of the ruling class. It’s embarrassing.’
‘It’s not my fault there’s a dress code.’
‘Oh, please. In days gone by you would just have said fuck ’em and put on a suit and tie. You’ve become such a cop-out in your old age.’
Doug hurried to catch up with her. ‘My middle age, thank you very much. I’m not old.’
‘Whatever.’
He put his arm through hers and was relieved that, for a minute or two at least, she did not try to disentangle herself.
‘Will Benjamin be there?’ she asked.
‘Yep. Why, have you got a message for him?’
‘Nope.’
‘Because if you gave the message to me, I could pass it on to him, and he could pass it on to Sophie.’ He glanced at his daughter, whose face was a blank. ‘It could be … oh, I don’t know – an apology or something?’
‘If I’d done anything wrong,’ Coriander said, ‘I’d apologize.’
‘You took a year out of her life.’
‘During which time she wrote a book and made a TV series. Meanwhile, seventy per cent of trans people in this country consider suicide. I know whose side I’m on. Drop it, Dad. It’s not going to happen.’
At the station they kissed goodbye and Doug crossed over the footbridge which led to the platform for Birmingham-bound trains. A train arrived almost at once, but then didn’t move for several minutes. It meant that Doug, sitting in a window seat, had a clear view of his daughter as she stood waiting for her train on the opposite platform. Her strength of character, her obstinacy, her refusal to compromise were all clearly inscribed in her attitude and posture: the placing of her feet on the platform, the half-scowl on her face as she stared impatiently at the horizon, her aloofness towards the other passengers. Doug hoped that she would overcome, sooner or later, her anger at the world and more specifically at the world that his generation had bequeathed to her. They had spoken of apologies but he realized now that he was the one oppressed by the permanent sense of owing an apology: to her, in the first instance, and then to all her friends and contemporaries. Had Doug and his peers really screwed up so badly? Perhaps they had. The country was in a wretched state at the moment: bad-tempered, fractured, groaning under the pressure of an austerity programme that seemed never likely to end. Maybe it was inevitable that Coriander should despise him for his part in all this, however small. Maybe it was time to learn from her, to remind himself that there were some principles that should never be abandoned or diluted, and that it was not necessarily a noble thing to gravitate towards the centre ground in pursuit of a quiet life …
Instinctively he pulled at the bow tie fastened chokingly around his neck. He was about to unclip it, but checked himself. He did know a futile gesture when he saw one, after all.
*
As Doug was walking down the main drive of King William’s School, experiencing Proustian rushes of recollection with every step and every glance to either side (the science labs to his right, the once-forbidden kingdom of the Girls’ School to his left), he saw Benjamin a few yards ahead, parking his car and locking the door. Together they walked on until they reached the old dining hall, where a multicoloured banner announced that ‘King William’s School Welcomes The Class Of 1978’ and they found Philip Chase and Steve Richards already waiting for them at the end of one of the long bench tables.
‘Who the hell are all these people?’ Steve asked, looking around at the sea of thinning hair, wire-rimmed spectacles, stooped sho
ulders and evolving paunches. ‘I don’t recognize anybody. They all look the same.’
‘Some of the teachers are supposed to be coming. Mr Serkis said he’d be here.’
Steve laughed. ‘I love how you still call him “Mr”.’
‘Look!’ said Phil. ‘Isn’t that Nick Bond?’
‘No, that’s not him. That’s David Nagle. I’d know him anywhere.’
‘Shall we go and say hello?’
‘I’d rather not. We didn’t have much in common forty years ago. We’d have even less now.’
‘Then what are we doing here? Why did we come? We could’ve just gone for a quiet Chinese.’
‘Over there,’ said Doug, ‘is the reason why I came.’
The others stopped talking and followed his gaze towards the door of the dining hall, where Ronald Culpepper had just made his entrance. He was deep in conversation with the school’s current headmaster, who was chatting to him deferentially while escorting him to the centre seat at the top table.
‘You came all the way here,’ said Steve, incredulous, ‘to listen to that plonker talking about –’ he picked up the printed order of ceremonies ‘– “Global Opportunities in Post-Brexit Britain”?’
‘No,’ said Doug. ‘I came because I intend to have a private word with him at the end of the evening. As for his crappy talk, I don’t know about you lot, but I won’t be staying to listen to it.’
True to his word, as soon as dessert was over and the chairman of the Imperium Foundation was rising to his feet, Doug led a well-coordinated walk-out at their end of the table. He was followed by Philip, Steve and Benjamin, who made their exit from the dining hall with much orchestrated clanging of cutlery and scraping back of benches, at the very moment when Culpepper was beginning to speak. The other fifty or sixty guests turned to look at them as they pushed their way through towards the door. It was a childish gesture, but deeply satisfying. And it was a relief, after so much stodgy food and cheap red wine, to get out into the fresh air and enjoy the last minutes of evening sunlight.