The Closed Circle

by Jonathan Coe

  The editor swivelled in his chair and looked straight at his chief political correspondent.

  “Laura, does Paul Trotter have an assistant?”

  “He has a media adviser.”

  “Have you met her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is she young? Is she pretty?”

  “Yes.”

  “Find out if he’s shagging her.”

  “OK.”

  “Excellent. Douglas,” said the editor, swivelling back, “you’ve just made my day.”

  But Doug was no longer there to receive the compliment.

  It turned out, rather to his surprise, that Malvina was a near-neighbor. He phoned her that afternoon and while they were trying to think of a suitable place to meet for a drink, she revealed that she lived in Pimlico, not much more than a mile from his house in Chelsea. How could a student afford to live in an area like that? Everything he found out about Malvina, it seemed, just piqued his curiosity even further. They agreed to meet that evening, anyway, in the basement of the Oriel café on Sloane Square. All he told her was that he wanted to discuss her story; he didn’t want to give any more specific reasons for the meeting. Indeed, Doug himself wasn’t entirely sure what they were.

  He arrived early, and ordered a double whisky to supplement the six or seven he’d already had that afternoon. Not that he was drunk, or anywhere close. Nobody had ever seen him drunk. He didn’t get drunk, and he didn’t get hangovers. Never had; not even as a schoolboy. Although alcohol did loosen his tongue, and made him bolder in conversation than he might normally have been.

  “I have to ask you,” he said, almost before Malvina had had a chance to take off her coat. “Why did you send me that story? What on earth possessed you?”

  At which words her face, long and thin and somewhat melancholy at the best of times, was suddenly all dejection.

  “Was it really that bad?” she asked. “Is that what you think?”

  “Look, Malvina: I know fuck all about writing. I’m only doing this job because it seems to be the editor’s way of punishing me. I’m not talking about the style, the way you wrote it. I’m talking about the content. It was so . . . revelatory.”

  “It was a story. I made it up.” But she could see at once that he didn’t believe her. “Anyway, isn’t writing meant to be revelatory? Aren’t you meant to be expressing yourself? Otherwise, what’s the point?”

  “The point is that I’m a journalist. If you’re having an affair with Paul, I should be the last person you tell about it.”

  “But I’m not,” she protested.

  “Yeah—well, we’ll come on to that.” He watched as she screwed up her face at the tartness of her drink. She had chosen to join him in a whisky. “Did anyone from the paper phone you this afternoon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who? Laura?”

  “How did you know? She’s a nice woman, I’ve had dealings with her before.”

  “What did she want?”

  “Rather like you, she wanted to meet for a mysterious drink. I’m seeing her tomorrow.”

  “Uh-huh.” He put his face in his hands, unable to think, for a moment, how he was going to handle this. The direct approach seemed the only way. “Malvina—there are rumors going around about you and Paul. That’s why she wants to see you.”

  “Oh.” She paused in mid-sip, put her glass down. “Shit.”

  “Shit. Exactly.”

  “How did that happen?”

  Even with the whisky inside him, Doug found that he couldn’t bring himself to admit the part he had played. “Are you surprised?” was all he said. “Journalists have got a radar for this kind of thing. You’ve raised Paul’s profile—very successfully, it has to be said. Unfortunately, there’s a pay-off for that. People start . . . ferreting around.”

  “But we’re not having an affair.”

  “You slept at his house. You slept there while his wife and daughter were away, when they didn’t know anything about it.”

  “Slept. Slept being the operative word. We haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Oh, come on . . .”

  He left her with a look of reproach and went to get two more drinks.

  Malvina couldn’t hold her alcohol the way that he could. After a few more glasses, her speech was starting to slur and she was staring dully past him, somewhere into the middle distance, unseeing. Her chin was cupped in one hand and she had a cigarette in the other. The noise of the partying Sloanes all around them was now so great that they were almost having to shout to make themselves heard. The only alternative, when they wanted to talk, was to sit forward and lean in to each other, affecting a kind of lovers’ intimacy. Which is what they found themselves doing.

  “How did it all start, anyway?” Doug asked her. “How did you end up as his media adviser, at your age?”

  “It’s all a joke,” said Malvina. (Though not a very funny one, judging from her tone of voice.) “It’s all a terrible mistake. What’s that song? ‘This Wasn’t Supposed to Happen.’ Who was that, Björk? That’s what it’s like, anyway. None of this was supposed to happen. And I’m not his ‘media adviser.’ He shouldn’t be paying me a penny. I got him on to one quiz show, because I happened to know some sleazebag producer. The rest has just been common sense.”

  “Well, that’s a pretty precious commodity, as far as Paul’s concerned. He certainly hasn’t got any of his own. How did it start, though? How did you meet him?”

  “Through Benjamin.” She took a drag on the cigarette, rubbed one tired eye with her thumb. “I was staying . . . I was going up to Birmingham . . . pretty regularly . . . staying with friends. I started going to the café in Waterstone’s and I kept seeing him there and in the end . . . we just got talking. We started talking about books, and then he told me about this thing he’s writing, and I told him about the stuff I write, and . . . He just mentioned one day who his brother was, and . . . I’d seen Paul’s picture in the paper, or something . . . seen him on the TV, and . . . I suppose I fancied him a bit even then, already . . . And Benjamin . . . Benjamin kept trying to do things for me . . . keeps trying, actually . . . He thinks that if he helps me, he’ll . . . Well, I don’t know what he thinks. Benjamin seems to be going through a little . . . crisis . . . all of his own.”

  “Benjamin’s in love with another woman. Has been, sadly, all his married life. Someone he knew at school.”

  Malvina’s eyes came into focus and she looked directly at Doug, as if this was the first truly interesting thing he’d said all night. “He told you that? He told me that as well.”

  “Well, it’s no secret, unfortunately. Benjamin was on the rebound when he married Emily. In fact he’s still on the rebound. He’ll be on the rebound when he’s seventy, the poor bastard. If he ever gets that far without topping himself.” He smiled, mirthlessly, knowing at once that he shouldn’t have said this. “Go on.”

  “So, he offers to introduce me to his brother . . . as some kind of favour. I don’t think I even asked him to do that for me. Though I liked the idea, as soon as I heard it. It was to help with my dissertation . . . which I’m still trying to write. Didn’t help at all, as it happened. It’s held me up, if anything . . . Anyway, so then Paul and I meet, and . . . bingo . . .”

  She smiled a loopy, embarrassed, what-can-you-do sort of smile. Doug couldn’t quite return it.

  “I suppose,” said Malvina, working herself up to a seismic declaration, “I suppose I’m in love with him.”

  “Shit.”

  “Shit. Again. That’s turning out to be a pretty useful word tonight, isn’t it?” She appeared to have shocked Doug into temporary silence. “I don’t suppose you think much of my taste.”

  “Hey,” he said. “Everybody’s got to love somebody. The heart has its reasons, et cetera, et cetera. And I suppose he’s not bad looking.”

  “Yeah, but . . . none of you like him, really. Admit it.”

  “I don’t like his politics, that’s all. And I thin
k he’s allowed himself to become dishonest, because of this . . . weird situation we’ve got ourselves into in this country at the moment.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean if the public ever got to hear what he really thinks—well, they’d realize. Because most of them still believe that they’ve voted in a left-wing party. Whereas really they’ve just voted for another five years of Thatcherism. Ten years. Fifteen, even.” He laughed quietly at the irony of it, which seemed to pass Malvina by. “Anyway, that’s why he never knows what to say when someone puts a microphone in front of his nose. And that’s why he needs you. He does. You’ve transformed him. Turned him around.”

  “Oh, he needs me all right. He needs my . . . services. And he’s desperate to sleep with me, into the bargain. But that’s not what I want.”

  “You want a hell of a lot, actually, don’t you?”

  Malvina tried to drink from her glass, not noticing that it was empty. “That woman’s not good for him. Not right for him. Don’t you agree?”

  They looked at each other for a few silent seconds.

  “I don’t have an opinion about that,” said Doug. “And I don’t think you should, either.”

  He tried to read the expression in her eyes, which seemed blank. Her eyelids were drooping. Then, all at once, he saw tears welling up, and Malvina was quivering with sobs.

  “I’m so fucked,” she kept repeating. “I’m so fucked.”

  “Malvina . . .”

  “You’re right. I shouldn’t have shown you that story. It was a stupid thing to do.”

  “Never mind about the story. The story’s . . .”

  “Get me another drink.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “One more. Please. Then I’ll go home.”

  He sighed, and said, against his better judgment: “One more. A single.”

  “Thank you. I’m going to pull myself together now.” She took a Kleenex from her handbag, and started dabbing at her eyes and the running mascara.

  Doug returned with two more drinks.

  “Where are your parents?” he asked.

  “My parents? What have they got to do with anything?”

  “Maybe you should go home for a bit. Have a break from Paul. Do a bit of thinking.”

  “I am having a break from him. We’ve hardly seen each other in the last couple of weeks.”

  “Still. You could probably do with some home comforts.”

  Briskly, Malvina said: “One: where my parents live—or rather, where my mother lives, with her fifth or sixth or ninety-seventh or whatever the fuck it is partner—is not my home. Two: there’s nothing comfortable about it.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Sardinia. He runs a hotel there. Five stars—the kind of place movie stars stay. We were staying there ourselves, in fact. That’s where she met him.”

  “Can’t you afford the air fare to get out there?”

  “Oh, I dare say he’d pay for that, if necessary. It’s his flat—one of his flats, I should say—that I’m living in these days, after all. But I’m not going. No fucking way.”

  “What about your dad—your real dad?”

  Malvina shook her head. “Never met him. All I know about him is what my mother told me. He worked in the theatre: he was a set designer. Complete genius, according to her. They split up even before I was born and then she heard he died of AIDS, some time in the eighties.” Already she had finished the latest whisky. She gave the empty glass a puzzled sort of look, as if she couldn’t remember drinking it. “Why am I getting through this stuff so much quicker than you? Are you one of those men who pretends to be drinking but really he’s just waiting for the woman to get pissed so he can take advantage of her?”

  “I’m not the one who’s taking advantage of you.”

  She looked at him sharply and he thought, at first, that she was going to start crying again. Instead she slumped across the table and rested her head on his shoulder. He had no idea whether she was being flirtatious or was simply exhausted.

  “Malvina . . .” he said. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “That,” she murmured, forming each word with a drunkard’s care, “is the fifty—million—dollar—question.”

  “OK. I’m going to take you home now.”

  “Good. You’re a gentleman. There are very few of them left.”

  He stood up with some difficulty while Malvina continued to lean heavily against him. He grabbed both their coats and then, with his arm around her narrow, almost skeletal shoulders, he did his best to propel her up the stairs. She stumbled at the top and fell flat on her face. Doug picked her up and dusted her down, muttering apologies to the other drinkers and diners and praying that none of his wife’s friends were there that night.

  Outside, mercifully, he was able to find a taxi within seconds.

  “Pimlico,” he told the driver, and once they were sitting inside he managed to prompt Malvina into whispering the full address in his ear.

  It was only a five-minute journey. As they climbed out of the taxi Doug looked around to see if the place was being staked out by any journalists: but no, they didn’t seem to have reached that stage yet. He paid the driver and gave him an outrageous tip, then draped the now semi-conscious Malvina in her coat and fumbled through the pockets for her keys.

  She lived, as he had expected, in a portered and well-heeled mansion block. Doug did his best to avoid the porter’s curious eye as he guided her past the desk and towards the stairs. The porter called, “Goodnight, miss!” as they started climbing the first flight, but Malvina didn’t answer.

  The flat’s main room was decorated neutrally, expensively, with only a few of her own books, and some teetering piles of newspapers and magazines, to indicate that they were anywhere other than some bland intercontinental hotel. Malvina was saying nothing by now so Doug had to guess for himself where the bedroom was. It was much smaller, more homely and chaotic. A desk in the corner was submerged beneath papers, floppy disks and a laptop which was still switched on: multicolored cartoon fish were criss-crossing the screen in random formations, with bubbly sound effects.

  “You should drink some water,” Doug told her, but in an unannounced and surprisingly violent movement Malvina withdrew her arms from around his neck and threw herself on to the bed. Her eyes were firmly shut and she closed herself into a foetal ball and that was that. She was out for the night.

  18

  For the next few days, Doug and Frankie had guests at their house.

  Malvina phoned him the next morning, to apologize for her behaviour and to thank him for looking after her so kindly. He repeated his suggestion that she should go and stay with someone for a while: what about her friends in Birmingham, for instance? She told him that they didn’t live there any more: they had left the country. There was no one, really no one, she felt she could impose upon. So Doug invited her to stay with them. She arrived with a small holdall and stayed for two nights, spending most of the time in the kitchen sipping hot coffee, and watching Ranulph and Coriander wreak their infant havoc. She talked a lot to Irina and the other, more transient members of the Gifford-Anderton staff; less to Doug and Frankie themselves. On the afternoon of Thursday, April 27th, learning that Doug’s mother Irene was coming down for the weekend and would ideally like to sleep in her bedroom, she thanked them fulsomely, presented them with a beribboned cellophane package containing twelve absurdly expensive cardamom-scented chocolates from a local shop, and left. She seemed in good spirits. She had not mentioned Paul throughout the whole of her stay.

  Doug met his mother at Euston station on the Friday afternoon. It was four weeks since her hip operation and she was determined to show that she could be mobile again. Normally they would have taken the tube back to Chelsea but this time Doug insisted on getting a taxi and she kept a shocked eye on the meter, wincing with alarm every time another pound was clocked up.

  “Seventeen pounds!” she repea
ted, over and over, as Doug carried her case up the garden path. “I used to get a week’s family meals out of that when you were at school!”

  The preposterous expense of living in this part of London remained, as always, a recurring theme of the weekend. All of the pubs where the elderly locals used to go and drink in familiar surroundings had been tarted up over the last few years, dividing walls smashed down and their interiors turned into vast open-plan spaces where young stockbrokers and estate agents could drink imported Dutch and Belgian beers at four pounds a pint. It was no use taking her to one of those. There remained a handful of unpretentious cafés scattered around the area, serving fry-ups and mugs of instant coffee; but Irene could still surprise him, sometimes, with a sprightly appetite for new experiences, and when she saw that a branch of Starbucks had recently opened on the King’s Road, she asked if they could give it a try.

  It was Saturday afternoon, one day after a strange and unexpected development in the Longbridge saga: the day before, flying in the face of all predictions (including James Tayler’s) Alchemy Partners, without any forewarning or explanation, had pulled out of its negotiations to buy the troubled Rover group from BMW. Workers and campaigners, who had opposed the Alchemy bid from the start, had been jubilant when the news broke: there had been riotous celebrations outside Longbridge’s Q gate on the Friday afternoon. Already, however, a new mood of uncertainty had settled in; it was by no means clear that the rival proposals from Phoenix were being taken seriously; and that was now the only other bid on the table. The alternative was simple, and terrifying: outright closure.

  There were free copies of some of the day’s newspapers scattered around the café, and while Doug queued at the counter, his mother picked up The Sun and scowled over its business pages.

  “Disgusting rag,” she said, tossing it over to her son as he handed her a mug that was almost too big for her to hold. She gazed at the drink in stupefaction. “What’s this?”

  “It’s a tall latte,” Doug explained.

  “Didn’t they have any coffee?”

  He smiled and started reading the Sun’s article.