by Jonathan Coe
—Yes, you are.
—It’s Paul Trotter here.
—Oh. Hello.
—Is this a good time to call? Are you alone?
—Um . . . yes, this is a good time. And yes, I’m alone.
—I received your message on my answering machine.
—Good. Well . . . that was where I left it.
—Quite.
—It was nice to see you again, the other day.
—I’m sorry?
—In London—a couple of weeks ago—at the restaurant? It was nice to see you again.
—Ah, yes. You too. We’d . . . met before, then, had we?
—Well—at school, obviously.
—Ah! School! Of course. I thought you might have been . . .
—We haven’t met since then, I don’t think. I’ve been out of the country a lot—
—The message you left on my machine was rather extraordinary.
—Um . . . Yes, I’m sorry about that. It might have been a good idea . . . Maybe it would have been a better idea to explain things in person.
—I’m not at all sure that I can help you.
—No. Well, I understand that, of course.
—Your husband, Philip—
—Ex. He’s my ex-husband.
—Ah. Ex-husband. I hadn’t appreciated that. I was under the impression that you were celebrating your anniversary.
—We were—after a fashion. It’s a long story. Not really relevant.
—Your husband is a journalist, isn’t he?
—I’m not married.
—I mean your ex-husband.
—Yes. That’s right. He is.
—And he was the one who gave you my number?
—Yes, that’s right.
—Is he there with you now?
—There’s nobody with me now. I’m alone. I’m not married any more. Philip lives in Birmingham, I live in Malvern. There’s nobody else here.
—Forgive me if I sound paranoid. I’ve had a lot of difficulty with journalists.
—This is nothing to do with Philip. I’m trying to find something out purely for my own personal . . . interest.
—I see.
—Does that make things any easier for you?
—It might do. Possibly. But, as I said, I really don’t think I’m going to be of much help to you.
—You remember my sister, I take it? You remember the story of her disappearing?
—Of course.
—It was just that Philip had this memory of something you’d said to him. Something about seeing her—
—Yes, I heard your message. I have no recollection of having said that. None whatsoever.
—No. Of course not. It was a very long time ago.
—But I do remember the . . . incident itself.
—You do? I mean—which incident?
—I remember seeing your sister . . . at the reservoir.
—Can you tell me anything—?
—I must ask you to clarify this, Claire. You have no intention of putting any of this into the public domain?
—None whatsoever.
—I have your sworn undertaking on that point?
—Absolutely. I’m doing this for myself. That’s the only reason.
—Well then. It’s true—I believe—that I did see your sister early one evening. It was getting dark and I was cycling alone down by Cofton Park. It was after school and I was on my way home.
—Were you at King William’s then?
—I believe not. I believe I was still at primary school.
—What sort of . . . state was she in?
—She had no clothes on.
—None at all?
—None—that I remember.
—When was this? What time of year?
—It was winter.
—Was she alone?
—No. There was a man with her.
—A man?
—Yes. It was getting dark, as I said, and I couldn’t see very well. The paleness of her body was what caught my attention through the bushes. I got off my bike and came nearer. As I got closer I realized that there was a man with her and he turned and stared at me. I became frightened and I ran back to my bicycle and then I cycled home.
—You didn’t tell anybody about this? Why not?
—I was frightened.
—Was my sister . . . Was she alive?
—I don’t know. At the time I thought that she was. I thought that she and the man were having sex—that that’s what they were doing by the reservoir.
—Was he undressed as well?
—No. I don’t think so.
—Why didn’t you tell anybody about this, after my sister disappeared?
—I didn’t hear about your sister’s disappearance for some time. Two or three years, at least, I should think. It wasn’t talked about in our household. Round about the same time, we had our own tragedy to contend with.
—Do you remember meeting Miriam and me one morning at the café in Rednal, down by the number 62 terminus? You and your brother had just been to church.
—No, I don’t believe that I do.
—I was wondering if that was before or after you saw her at the reservoir.
—I never spoke to her after seeing her at the reservoir.
—Are you sure of that?
—Quite sure.
—So it must have been before.
—Yes. I would think so.
—OK. OK, there’s a lot I need to think about . . .
—I’ve now told you everything that I know.
—Yes. Thank you.
—I can’t see any need to continue this conversation. Can you?
—No. No, there’s no need. Thank you. You’ve been very—
—It has all taken place in the strictest confidence. You understand that, don’t you?
—Yes, of course.
—Good. I shall remember you said that. Goodbye then.
—Goodbye. Have you—?
—— Original Message ——
From: Doug Anderton
To: Claire
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2001 20:53 p.m.
Subject: Papers
Dear Claire
Well, that one came out of left-field. Hearing from you at all, never mind with such an unexpected request.
I’m sorry it’s taken me a few days to reply. Funnily enough I have been up at my mother’s. Well, actually there’s nothing funny about it. About ten days ago she had a stroke—quite a bad one. We were on holiday in Umbria at the time and I had to fly straight back. The whole of one side of her body went and she couldn’t speak or move. She lay on the living room floor in her house for eighteen hours. Luckily her neighbour had arranged to come round the next afternoon. Mum’s a tough old thing—a real fighter—but she was shit scared, as you can imagine.
She came out of hospital four days ago (they can’t wait to get you out these days) and I’ve been staying with her at home since then. Just got back to London a few hours ago and have only just read my emails. Mum is not really in a state to see anyone at the moment. Maybe in a couple of weeks she’ll be able to have visitors. Meanwhile she’s got this care worker coming round in the afternoons and I’ll be going up myself every few days.
I’ll let you know when she’s ready to see people. But I should also warn you that the papers you’re talking about haven’t been sorted since my dad died—they’re all upstairs, in what used to be my bedroom. (Did you ever go there? No, I don’t think so. Never did manage to entice you into that particular den of iniquity. Ah, the chances let slip!) And I very much doubt that there’s anything about your sister up there. I didn’t know that she and my dad had been on a charity committee together. There might be a bit of paperwork relating to that, I suppose. I’m not sure exactly what you’re looking for—but then, maybe you’re not either. I suppose anything you come across might turn out to be a clue, in the most unexpected of ways.
Anyway, keep your curiosity under control for a little
bit longer and I’ll get back in touch as soon as it seems OK for you to go round. In the meantime—do you ever come down to London? It’d be great to have a drink. I’m a happily married man these days as you know, so there would be no funny business unless you specifically requested it.
Kiss kiss
Doug.
—— Original Message ——
From: Doug Anderton
To: Claire
Sent: Friday, September 7, 2001, 22:09 p.m.
Subject: Visiting Rednal
Dear Claire
Just got back from a few days with my mum this afternoon. She is still in a sorry old state, but quite a lot stronger than when I wrote to you last. I told her you were interested in coming to visit and she said (insofar as I could tell—it’s bloody hard to understand a word she’s saying at the moment) that she would like to see you. I told her you wanted to look through Dad’s papers and she said that you were going to have your work cut out, which is true. I went up there myself and it’s a nightmare. About fifty cardboard boxes full of stuff. Go and have a look if you want but you’ll have a terrible job—none of it’s in any order. For years I’ve been meaning to donate it all to the Modern Records Center at Warwick University—they already have a big archive of trade union papers there—and this has given me an incentive to get on with it. I rang them up and there’s a bloke going to come and check it all out at the end of next week.
If you wanted to take a look before he does, why not go round at the beginning of the week? Mum has a doctor coming round on Monday so Tuesday would be a good bet. Any time in the afternoon would be fine.
Let me know how you get on. And how you think she’s doing!
Lots of love
Doug xx
——Original Message ——
From: Claire
To: Doug Anderton
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2001 23:18 p.m.
Subject: Re: Visiting Rednal
Dear Doug
You’re right—there’s no way I’m going to find anything in those boxes; not the way they’re currently arranged. Needles and haystacks don’t come into it. I was only in there for about fifteen minutes and I could tell straight away that it was going to be hopeless. Thanks for letting me go there all the same. I’ll just have to wait till they’ve all been sorted and archived, and then I’ll have another look, if that’s OK.
Anyway, it doesn’t seem very important, now. Nothing else seems very important, all of a sudden, does it? Have you been glued to the telly all evening like me?
Your mother seemed to be in good spirits. Considering what you told me, I think she’s made an amazing recovery. Sometimes she seemed a little bit confused. When I got down from your bedroom, at about four o’clock, the first pictures were just coming through and at first she thought it was one of those crappy TV movies they put on in the afternoons. She saw the people throwing themselves out of the windows and tutted and said that they shouldn’t show that kind of thing before the nine o’clock watershed. But after a while she worked out that it was for real.
We sat and watched the news together for about two hours. I have to say she was much calmer about it than I was. For some reason I kept breaking down and crying. But all your mum said was that she was so sorry for the people who had died, and that America was now going to take some terrible revenge for this. I asked her what she meant and she didn’t answer. In the end she just said she was glad she wouldn’t be around to see what happened next.
I told her not to be so silly. What else can you say?
Incredible times.
Love
Claire.
6
Perhaps the secret was to live in the moment. Or try to find a way of doing that. Hadn’t he once managed to convince himself, after all, that “there are moments in life worth purchasing with worlds”? And wasn’t this just such a moment, when you looked at it from a certain angle? The sun was shining. It was a bright, crisp, late-October morning. Sunlight sparkled off the water, sending shards of light dancing in the air in fantastic patterns as the waves crashed against the shingle. It was only ten o’clock, with the prospect of a whole, leisurely day in front of him. And, to top it all, he was sitting at this wooden table, overlooking the beach, cradling a cappuccino in his hands, in the company of a beautiful, stylish, eighteen-year-old woman who for the last few days had been hanging on to his every word and even now was looking at him with unfeigned love and admiration. He could feel the envious glances of every other middle-aged man at the café. It was unfortunate—from one point of view—that she was his niece, rather than his girlfriend. But then, you couldn’t have everything; and life was never perfect. Benjamin had learned these simple truths long ago.
It was autumn, 2002, and he had been separated from Emily for fifteen months.
“Three weeks, was all it took her,” Benjamin was complaining to Sophie. “Three weeks, and she starts going out with the bloody church warden. Next thing I know, he’s moved in with her. Living in my house.”
Sophie sipped her cappuccino and said nothing, merely smiled at him with her warm hazel eyes in a way that immediately—and inexplicably— made him feel better.
“I know, she’s entitled to be happy,” Benjamin said, half to himself, looking out over the ocean. “God knows, I don’t begrudge her that. I certainly wasn’t making her happy. Not towards the end, anyway.”
“And you’re happy too, aren’t you?” Sophie asked. “You like being alone. It’s what you always wanted.”
“Yes,” said Benjamin, dolefully. “Yes, that’s true.”
“Of course it is,” Sophie insisted, responding to the lack of conviction in his voice. “People have always said that about you. It’s one of the things they’ve always envied in you. Even when you were at school. Didn’t Cicely say that once? Something about not wanting to be stuck on a train with you, because you never said anything much, but being convinced that you were a genius and the world was going to recognize you one day.”
“Yes,” said Benjamin, for whom the memory of that conversation had never faded. “That’s true too.”
It had ceased to surprise him, by now, Sophie’s exhaustive knowledge, and apparently effortless recall, of just about everything that had ever happened to him at school. At first he had found it astonishing; now he was used to it, and considered it to be just one more remarkable facet of a personality which turned out, the more he got to know her, to be remarkable in every other way as well. She had explained to him, some time ago, how she had become so well acquainted with these childhood stories. She had heard them from her mother, when she was only nine or ten years old. Lois had just started working at York university; her husband Christopher was still practising law in Birmingham. For more than a year they had maintained separate households, and almost every Friday during that time, Lois and her daughter had driven down to Birmingham, returning to York on Sunday evening so that Sophie could go to school the next morning. And it was on these three-hour drives, to and from Birmingham, that Lois used to fill the time by telling her daughter everything she could remember about Benjamin and his schooldays.
“But how did Lois manage to know so much?” Benjamin had wanted to know. “I mean, she wasn’t even there. She was in hospital for ages.”
“Exactly!” Sophie had replied, her eyes gleaming. “Don’t you remember? She heard it all from you. Every Saturday you used to come and visit her, and take her for a walk, and tell her everything that had happened at school that week.”
“You mean—she heard all that? She took it all in? I didn’t even think she was listening. She never said a word to me on any of those walks.”
“She heard it all. And she remembered it all, too.”
Benjamin had often pondered these words, during the long, wakeful nights that had become one of the many depressing features of his new bachelor lifestyle. He was ashamed to have forgotten that he and Lois had been so close, in those days. It was the oddest paradox of all: when his sister wa
s still in post-traumatic shock, forever silent, seemingly insensate—that was when the bond between them had been strongest. However remote she had seemed, however unreachable, she had in fact never been more devoted to him, never more dependent. The Rotters’ Club, they had called themselves: Bent and Lowest Rotter. But once she started to recover, they had drifted apart; and as soon as she met Christopher, the drift accelerated, until they had become as formal and distant with each other as . . . well, things were never as bad as they were between him and Paul, obviously. But still, he felt no particular kinship with his sister any more; could not recover that sense of nearness, however hard he tried to will himself towards it. Perhaps some sly process of transference had taken place, unnoticed, and the affinity he had once felt for Lois was being replaced, gradually, by his growing and deepening fondness for Sophie. That would be satisfying, on some level; would have about it something of the symmetry he tended to spend much of his life vainly hunting for: the sense of a circle being closed . . .
“It’s amazing, how you remember all that stuff,” he said to her, now. “You’re a walking encyclopedia of my past.”
“Someone has to keep the records,” she said, smiling enigmatically.
They finished their coffees and began to walk towards the sea. They were at Hive Beach, in Dorset, a few miles south of Bridport. Benjamin had spotted this beach, and this café, yesterday afternoon as the whole family— including Lois and his parents—had driven along the coast. “Great place for breakfast,” he had remarked—to no one in particular; but it was Sophie who had woken him at eight o’clock the next morning and said, “Come on then: breakfast at the beach!”; and so the two of them had come here together— fugitives, compadres—while the others were left to struggle at their rented property, bleary-eyed, with unfamiliar toasters and recalcitrant plumbing systems.
“Do you ever visit FriendsReunited?” Sophie asked, while Benjamin—an inveterate skimmer—combed the beach for suitably flat stones.
“Now and again,” he said, casually. In fact he checked it at least once a week—sometimes daily—to see if Cicely had registered. “Why do you ask?”
“Oh, I just wondered if you knew what became of some of those people. Like Dickie—the one whose bag you all used to have sex with every morning.”