The Closed Circle

by Jonathan Coe

  So: my final week in purgatory, by Emily Trotter. Or Emily Sandys, as it looks like I shall soon be calling myself again. Where to begin?

  The first ten days, as I said, were bearable at least. I can’t tell you much about them because they all start to blur into one. Car journey followed by sightseeing followed by car journey followed by lunch followed by car journey followed by walk followed by car journey followed by check into hotel followed by dinner, and so on and so on and so—endlessly!—on. I think it was all the driving I hated the most because the roads here are pretty quiet and straight and there is something uniquely desolate (you’ve never been married so you wouldn’t know this) about the knowledge that you’re turning into one of those middle-aged married couples you always swore you wouldn’t turn into, driving for hours side by side, eyes fixed on the road, without a word to say to each other. “Ooh look—cows,” I would almost find myself shouting out, just to break the ghastly silence. I mean, it wasn’t quite as bad as that, but you get the general idea.

  Anyway, we did Rouen, we did Bayeux, we did Honfleur, we did Mont-St-Michel and along the way we had it up to here with bouillabaisse and brandade de morue and chateaubriand. Not to mention vin rouge because it became increasingly obvious as the week went on that it was only the prospect of getting drunk as a skunk every night that was stopping us both from giving it all up as a bad job and going home. Or strangling each other, for that matter. And all the time—this was what made it all so incredibly tiring, for me—I was trying my hardest to jolly things along in my jolly, Emily-ish sort of way. I suppose I’ve spent most of the last eighteen years trying to do that, one way or another, and where Benjamin’s concerned it’s bloody hard work at the best of times. Well, these aren’t the best of times. In fact the last twelve months have been the worst of times, and here it was just the same. Those long, miserable silences of his. Eyes fixed on the middle distance, thoughts fixed on . . . what? I don’t have the faintest idea—even now, even after eighteen years of marriage! Every so often I would find myself asking, desperately, “Are you depressed about something?” To which he would inevitably reply, “Not really.” And I would ignore that and say, “Is it your book?,” and then more often than not that would make him fly off the handle and start shouting, “Of course it’s not my book!,” and so it would go on . . .

  I’ll tell you what made me so angry this time. It was the realization that it was only towards me that he ever behaves like this. If you see him with his other friends—like Philip Chase, or Doug and Frankie—he suddenly comes to life, suddenly seems to remember, for some reason, how to be funny and how to be sociable and how to have a conversation. Just in the last few weeks, that’s really started to annoy me. As a small illustration of this—why am I in Etretat at all? Because Benjamin wanted to come here. And why did he want to come here? Because Claire told him all about it, when he went for a cosy little tête à tête with her a few weeks ago; from which he returned at about one in the morning, the worse for drink, and looking all pleased with himself. Now Claire is my friend, as much as his. More than his, in a way. Did he invite me along? No. And they must have talked for about five hours. When was the last time he talked to me for five hours—or one hour—or five minutes? It’s things like this that have made me realize that a lot of the time I don’t even seem to exist for Benjamin any more. I don’t even make it on to his radar.

  Maybe this sounds petty to you. But when it’s been going on for months, when it’s been going on for years, it stops being petty. It becomes huge—the biggest thing in your life. (And it’s got nothing to do with whether he believes in God or not, whatever he likes to say.) And the day before yesterday, I suppose it just got too big for me to handle.

  This was what sparked it off.

  Ironically, it had probably been the best day of the holiday so far. Or at least, for me it had: until I realized I’d been deluding myself. We’d had lunch in Le Bec-Hellouin, which was nice enough (actually more than that—the apple tart was to die for), and then we’d driven up to St. Wandrille, which is a beautiful little village in the Seine valley, with a famous old tenth-century Benedictine monastery. We parked the car in the village and had a long walk up the river—about three hours altogether, I should think. And half way through the walk we found this simply magical-looking old building. It was some kind of old farm outbuilding, but the rest of the farm seemed to have gone ages ago, and it was standing by itself only about twenty yards from the banks of the river. It was almost completely derelict and frankly looked a little bit dangerous, but still, we poked our heads through the windows and then found that the door wasn’t locked or anything, so we stepped inside and had a little look around. It was full of weeds and stinging nettles but you could still get a sense of what it might be like if someone came along and did it up. I looked at Benjamin and could have sworn that he was thinking the same thing. We’d always talked (or had until recently) about getting a place in France or Italy, escaping from the big city, somewhere he could find peace and quiet and at last get this wretched book of his finished. And although this building was an absolute ruin, you could tell that once it had been restored, it would be simply perfect. We even talked about where the dining room would go, and where he could put all his computers and recording equipment and that kind of stuff. It was a proper conversation, for once. And afterwards, when we walked away from it, back down the river towards St. Wandrille, we looked back at the house (I’d started to think of it as a house), and the sun was just sinking behind the roof, and the water looked all cool and glimmery in the twilight, and it just looked the most wonderful and romantic place, and I took Benjamin’s hand and then—a real miracle, for a change—he held on to me for a good five or ten minutes, before he sort of let my hand slip and drifted off on a path of his own. (He always does that.)

  It was about eight o’clock when we got back to the village, too late to have a look around the monastery except from the outside. Benjamin was all excited because he’d read in one of the guide books that you could go on retreats there, but the office was all closed up and there was no one he could ask about it. But we were still in time for Complies, at nine o’clock. I didn’t think Benjamin would want to come with me, because as you know he hasn’t been anywhere near a church for more than a year, but much to my surprise he was up for it. Maybe (this is what I thought at the time) seeing that magical house and talking about maybe trying to find out who owned it and buying it and doing it up had made him feel closer to me, at last.

  Anyway, we went inside the chapel and took our seats. It’s a beautiful chapel, I have to say, converted from an old tithe barn, with a fabulous beamed ceiling and everything arranged with absolute simplicity. There was no artificial lighting of any sort and although it was still quite bright outside, the chapel itself was full of shadows now, with just the palest, goldest, reddest traces of sunshine glowing around the windows. (No stained glass here.) There were about thirty of us in the congregation and after we had all been sitting there for about ten minutes the monks filed in. They were totally absorbed in the ritual, totally intent, didn’t seem to register that we were there at all. Perhaps that was just my impression. Their cowls were grey and the hoods were up so you couldn’t see their faces most of the time. There were probably more than twenty of them. When you did see their faces they looked somehow both very serious and very cheerful at the same time. And they had the most wonderful voices. When they started chanting, these long, beautiful lines of melody just seemed to flow out of them, rising and falling, almost as if they were improvising until you listened closely and realized there was a wonderful logic to it. It was the most restful and most spiritual and the purest-sounding music I think I’ve ever heard. Benjamin said afterwards that it made even Bach and Palestrina sound decadent! I took away a leaflet with some of the words on it and this was one of the hymns they sung. (They sung it in Latin, of course.)

  Before the day ends, we ask you

  Creator of all things,


  In your endless goodness,

  Watch over us, guard us.

  Keep far away from us

  The dreams and nightmares of the night,

  Enslave our enemies

  So that nothing may sully the purity of our body.

  Exalt us, all-powerful Father,

  Through Jesus Christ our Master,

  Who reigns for ever, with You,

  And with the Holy Spirit. Amen.

  And all the while they were singing this I could feel Benjamin leaning in even closer, and when the service was over and we left the chapel in the dusk, we held hands again as we walked back to the car. And I was sure that everything was going to be all right.

  So, we got back to the hotel—this hotel, the one that Claire recommended— and went down to dinner, and while we were waiting for the first course to come I looked at Benjamin and I could see that his face was transformed since the morning. There was a light in his eyes now, some sort of sparkle of hope, and I realized then how dull his eyes had been looking for months, how dim and lifeless. I wondered whether it was the service that had done it—whether it had done anything to rekindle his faith at all, because I can’t believe that anyone could hear that singing and not feel some kind of intimation, not catch some little glimpse of divinity behind it. But I didn’t say anything about that. I just said something bland like, “Did you enjoy yourself today?,” and that was all he needed. He started to open up at last.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been so depressed lately.” And he said that for months he hadn’t been able to get any sense of the future, couldn’t find anything to look forward to. But today, he said, he’d seen something: something he knew he’d never be able to have, but at least he knew it was real, at least he knew it existed, and that gave him hope, somehow, made the world seem more bearable to him, now that he knew it was there, even if it was out of his reach.

  “Like a kind of symbol?” I asked.

  He looked doubtful about that, but said: “Yes.”

  So I leaned forward and I said, “Ben, it doesn’t have to be just a symbol. It doesn’t have to be a pipedream. Anything’s possible, you know. Really.”

  And I meant it. I mean, just on a practical level, we paid off our mortgage in Birmingham years ago, and we could sell our house for a fortune now. We could have bought that ruin, done it up, and still had enough money to live on for years. That’s what I was thinking.

  But Benjamin said, “No. It could never happen.”

  And I said: “Well come on, then. Think about it—step by step. What would it involve?”

  “Well,” he said. “I’d have to learn French, for one thing.”

  “Your French is pretty good,” I told him. “And it’d soon get better if you had to use it all the time.”

  “And I’d have to do a hell of a lot of training.”

  It’s true that Benjamin is useless at DIY. He can tell César Franck from Gabriel Fauré after a couple of bars, but he can’t put up a coat rack to save his life. But I wasn’t going to be defeatist about that. Like I said, it felt as though anything was possible today.

  “You could do a course,” I said. “There are evening classes in that sort of thing.”

  “What, in Birmingham?”

  “Of course there are.”

  He thought about this for a while, and then he started to smile, and the gleam in his eye started to get brighter, and he looked at me, and he said: “Right now, I can’t think of anything that would make me happier.”

  “Right then,” I said, and my stupid heart was almost bursting. “Let’s do it.”

  And he stared at me, and said: “What, both of us?”

  “Of course both of us,” I said. “You don’t think I want you to live in that house without me, do you?”

  And then he stared at me some more, and said: “I’m not talking about the house.”

  I waited a second or two and said: “What are you talking about, then?”

  And he said: “I’m talking about becoming a monk.”

  Sorry, I had to break off from writing for a minute then. I’ve been scribbling this down like a madwoman for about two hours, and I needed to take a break.

  Just then, when I put it down on paper, it almost seemed funny to me. I promise you, it didn’t feel that way at the time.

  What did I say? I can’t really remember. For a while I think I must have been too shocked to speak. In the end my voice was just very quiet—that happens to me, I’ve noticed, when I’m angry about something—I mean really angry—and I just said something like: “I might as well not be here, mightn’t I, Benjamin? In fact, you’d prefer it that way.” Then I got up, threw a glass of water over him— that was surprisingly satisfying—and went upstairs to our bedroom.

  He followed me up and knocked on the door about two minutes later. And that was when the fight began. And it was a fight. I don’t mean we attacked each other, physically, but there was a lot of shouting—enough to get someone from the hotel sta f running upstairs and asking if everything was all right. I told Benjamin everything that I’d wanted to tell him for years: that he showed me no respect, that he paid me no attention . . . At one point he even had the nerve to drag you into it, saying that he thought we saw too much of each other, and I just had to yell at him, Well what do you expect, when my husband looks right through me every day as if I’m invisible, when he just acts as though I’m not even there?

  It ended with me telling him I didn’t want to see him again. He packed some things and I think he checked into a single room for the night. When I went to bed myself I imagined that in the morning I would maybe want to speak to him, try and find a way of making things better. But as soon as I woke up, I realized that I didn’t. It was true: I really didn’t want to see him again. Anyway he wasn’t down at breakfast and after breakfast the receptionist told me that he’d checked out and he’d left a message to say that he was going to Paris. Where he can stew, as far as I’m concerned. At least he had the decency to leave me the car so I’ve got a way of getting back home.

  Home. For which I suddenly feel a great longing.

  It will be nice to see you when I get back, dear Andrew. At least I won’t have to tell you this whole sorry story face to face.

  I used to think it would be different if we’d had children, or if we’d pushed our case a bit harder at the adoption agency, but I don’t even think that now, I think they would have just got caught in the crossfire and the poor little things have had a narrow escape.

  What a mess. Eighteen years—eighteen years of life together and it ends like this.

  I suppose it’s always a mess. Perhaps this isn’t even as messy as most.

  Will you take me out for a drink some time very soon and make sure I get totally sloshed, please?

  Sealed with a kiss.

  In friendship,

  Emily

  xxx

  8

  Wednesday, August 1st, 2001 was the thirteenth anniversary of Claire and Philip’s divorce. It was not normally an occasion that they celebrated, but this time, since they were down in London anyway—staying at a hotel in Charlotte Street with Patrick for two days—they decided to make an exception. Neither of them knew the names of the London restaurants that were considered fashionable these days, so they chose Rules in Covent Garden, which was mentioned in several of the tourist guides. At eight o’clock they settled into the heavy velvet banquettes, studied the menus, and prepared themselves for an evening of red meat, winter vegetables, rich, dark sauces and rust-colored claret. Outside, on the streets of London, it was a thick, sultry evening, and the evening sunshine was still warming the flagstones of the piazza and the tables of the pavement cafés. Inside the restaurant, with its dimmed lighting and atmosphere of careful formality, they might have been dining at a gentlemen’s club one autumn night back in the 1930s.

  Patrick had chosen to stay in the hotel watching television. They were not used to talking together without him, or having the luxury
of being able to choose any topic of conversation that happened to present itself; and they responded in the way that many married—and indeed divorced—couples respond to this situation.

  “Do you think Patrick’s OK?” Claire was the first to ask. “I mean, he doesn’t seem to be working very hard. He’s very laid back about these exams.”

  “That’s because he’s on holiday! And anyway, he’s got months and months to get ready for them.”

  “And he looks so thin.”

  “We do feed him, you know. Have been doing for some considerable time.” Philip added, more earnestly: “Don’t look for a problem, Claire, when there isn’t one. Life’s complicated enough as it is.”

  Claire pondered this advice doubtfully, before asking: “Does he ever talk to you about Miriam?”

  Philip was scanning the wine list. “He doesn’t talk to me much at all, to be honest.”

  “I think he has a thing about her.”

  “What sort of thing?” asked Philip, looking up.

  “Well, last year—the morning of the Longbridge demonstration—he insisted on getting all her stuff out of the attic at Dad’s house. And after that we talked about her . . . disappearance. Talked about it for ages, actually. Of course, I didn’t tell him everything about who she’d been seeing—” She broke off. “I’m sorry, Philip, is this subject boring you?”

  Philip’s attention had wandered. He was looking at the receding figure of a youngish, dark-haired man in a sharp tailored suit, who had just breezed through the restaurant purposefully and disappeared upstairs in the direction of the private rooms.

  “That was Paul,” he said. “Paul Trotter. I’m sure it was.”

  Claire did not seem very interested. “This is probably the kind of place he comes to all the time. Do you want to go and say hello? I certainly don’t want to speak to him.”