by Jonathan Coe
Maria was in a good mood. She did not enjoy her work and was not looking forward to going back to it that afternoon, but her distaste for the job usually comprehended nothing more serious than boredom, and she recognized with periodically recurring amazement that in all other respects she had hit upon a way of life which rather seemed to suit her. She liked living with Sarah. She got on passably well with her other flatmate, Dorothy. And she was even beginning to like London, for those very things which she had believed would make her hate it, for its bruising impersonality, for the anonymity which it afforded her, for the fact that she could pass through it unthought of, uncared for, unthreatened. She preferred to be at the mercy of the places in which she lived, to feel that she meant nothing to them. All her life she had, it was starting to seem, been at the mercy of forces beyond her control, so perhaps she had come to feel comfortable that way. This does not mean that Maria accepted no responsibility for her own actions. She knew, for instance, that there had once been a moment at which she had been presented with a choice as to whether or not to marry Martin, and she knew that she had made that choice too quickly and too carelessly. All the same, it seemed to her that chance had not played entirely fair. How was she to know that her fiancé would turn out to be, at the end of the day, and to be perfectly frank, and when all was said and done, a malignant shit, not to put too fine a point on it? And was it her fault that the choice had to be made at a time when she was alone, unhappy, and quite without a direction in life? It was too easy to get bitter, though, and besides, Maria never sulked, especially on sunny winter afternoons. She was also rather shocked to have found herself using the phrase ‘direction in life’, like one who had lost her wits. The only direction in her life led south-west out of the park into Baker Street, and she would have to follow it in about ten minutes, she knew that perfectly well. After that there would be a new direction, due north towards Hornsey, and so it would go on, turn and turn about, until she lost the use of her legs, or the inclination to use them, whichever was the sooner. Another fifty years or so. This partial statement of the case appeared to please her, for she smiled, and an old woman who happened to be passing, thinking that the smile was directed at her, smiled back. What presumption, and yet Maria didn’t resent it, so amiable was her temperament when the circumstances were in her favour, so indiscriminately philanthropic was her disposition when life was being just a tiny bit decent to her. As a girl she had been quite lovable, would you believe. Memories of her childhood, her cheerful, pampered childhood, dripped back into her mind that afternoon. She did her best to keep them out. How her parents had loved her, how happy they had been in those days. Maria usually fought against ideas like this. Therefore she rarely went home to visit her parents, for she found it painful to compare their present state of lonely contentment with the sustained and infectious moods of joy which she knew she had once inspired in them, even when she was being an ungrateful little brat which was, on reflection, most of the time. Edward had never inspired joy like that in her, although she had always assumed that he would, one day. Basically families were a mystery to Maria. Her brother represented the only aspect of that life with which she was still at all in sympathy. And this was one reason why she had invited him to dinner that evening.
Pensive, but not yet gloomy, she made her way back to the office. Maria worked, as I said, in Baker Street, in the offices of a women’s magazine. Her job was to look after the photograph library. Whenever somebody wanted an illustration for an article, whether it was the publicity still of a famous actor or a full colour photograph of the steak and kidney pudding featured in that week’s recipe, she had to provide it, either from the enormous box files which filled the basement in untidy stacks, or, if no suitable picture was to be found there, from some agency which could supply one or arrange for a new picture to be taken. Someone with a greater sense of humour would have found it easier to take this job seriously. As it was Maria simply thought it silly and dull, and put as little energy into it as possible, her approach in fact frequently verging on the absent-minded, for it was not rare for her to supply a picture of a steak and kidney pudding in place of that of a famous actor, and vice versa. These fits of abstraction prompted her colleagues to coin a nickname, ‘Moody Mary’, a fact which might have amused Maria, had she been able to remember that that was what they had called her at school, and had she been endowed with a greater sense of humour. Instead it gave her a certain amount of private annoyance. It would be no more than the truth to say that Maria did not like her colleagues, and it would scarcely be false to say that Maria’s colleagues did not like Maria. Not that a perfectly healthy working relationship cannot be maintained between colleagues who dislike or even hate each other, of course, but it would be stretching things to say that Maria’s working relationship with her colleagues was healthy.
Let us not exaggerate here, though. Besides, first of all we must describe these colleagues, attempt a little bit of characterization for a change. The first surprising thing about Maria’s colleagues is that most of them were men. Yes, although this magazine addressed itself to an audience of women, on subjects such as were thought to fall exclusively within the woman’s experience, it was written and edited almost entirely by men, although some of them adopted assumed, female, names for this purpose. Take, for instance, its leading story writer, a man called Barry, who had previously earned his living as a chartered surveyor but who now wrote romantic serials under the pseudonym Nesta Vypers. His latest effort, The Heart Will Walk, told the affecting narrative of a young ballet dancer who, after being crippled in a road accident, gradually falls in love with the motorist who has run her down, then miraculously recovers the use of her legs when he at last kisses her at the end of a long romantic push around Hyde Park, and promptly marries him with a cavalier disregard for his appalling track record of wrecked marriages and motoring offences. Barry and Maria had been on frosty terms ever since she had described this story, in an unguarded moment, and upon being pressed for an opinion, as a load of old cock. (In her years away from Oxford she had not lost all her critical faculties.) Among the other writers was one called Lionel. He edited the agony column, offering his readers advice on problems marital, domestic, romantic, personal and sexual. The tide of his column was ‘Chastity Wise – a Shoulder to Cry On’, and this was a typical exchange:
Dear Chastity, My husband and I have been happily married for five years, until last week. Every Sunday at lunchtime he goes down to the pub and drinks nine pints of Guinness with his friends from the Rotary Club, while I stay at home and do the roast. His favourite is beef with carrots and mash. This week they were all out of carrots so I gave him parsnips instead. When he saw there were no carrots he called me a filthy name, threw his dinner in my face and them emptied the whole of the gravy boat all down my dress. I have never known him like this before. Please tell me what to do as I am at my wit’s end.
Dear Worried, There is no easy way to remove gravy stains. You should handwash the garment in hot water and if ordinary powder doesn’t work, try using some white spirit. As for the long-term problem, why not keep a stock of carrots handy in the deep freeze?
These, then, were the two thorns in Maria’s flesh. Not that they ever came to blows, or even that an atmosphere of unbearable mutual animosity was created, or even that they treated her much worse than the other people in the office did, or they did the other people in the office. No, Maria was merely subjected to a stream of little discourtesies, a string of subtle signs of disrespect, recognizable but barely definable as such. For instance, whenever she passed Barry in a corridor, or on the stairs, she would smile at him, not because she associated the presence of Barry with emotions which made her want to smile, rather the opposite, but because when you pass someone on the stairs like this, it is customary to give some token of recognition. Now Barry would invariably smile back, but not in the same way. His smiles were sudden and rapid acts of aggression. He would direct his face towards Maria, allow a brittl
e grin to flash across it for perhaps half a second, and then resume his former expression before turning away, so that her last view was of his angry mask. It was his way of reminding her that he was quite capable, where she was concerned, of perverting such polite conventions to his own ends without, technically, violating them. What mystified Maria was his readiness to perform this tiny ritual of personal aggrandisement several times a day, day in, day out, all year round, whenever, in fact, chance determined that their paths should cross. But, as you know, Maria was generally not unhappy during this period, so she did not let it bother her much, any more than she let Lionel bother her. Lionel had a penchant which was still more amusing. His delight, whenever he and Maria approached a door together, was to hold the door open without looking behind him, as if out of habit, and then to glance back at the last moment, see who it was for whom he was holding the door, and let it fall shut in her face. Pleasant variations could be performed on this routine, on those not infrequent occasions when he would be passing through a doorway in the company of another woman, with Maria bringing up the rear. He would ostentatiously hurry ahead and hold the door open, standing aside to admit the woman, who might be either the magazine’s general editor or the girl who opened the post and made the coffee, it didn’t matter, and then he would let it shut just as Maria, fully aware of her mistake, would be attempting to come through it. Sometimes, if he was in a particularly sparkling humour, he would even give the door a little kick with his heel, in order to impart extra velocity. Maria, who had more than once had a carefully arranged pile of photographs knocked out of her hands and thrown into disarray by these means, could frame no plausible explanation for Lionel’s behaviour and thus found herself unable either to resent or to condemn it.
After work that evening, Maria did not go directly home. She had some shopping to do. She took the tube to Archway, and then caught a bus up Highgate Hill. She had left a little early, with permission, and arrived just as the shops were starting to close. By now she was feeling quite extraordinarily cheerful. London at dusk from the top of a bus had seemed strange, homely and entrancing, at first by turns and subsequently all at once. She had almost forgotten to get off. Now she clutched Sarah’s shopping list and hurried from shop to shop. The most important things were the vegetables, but there was also the meat, of course, and they were low on flour and last night when they were planning the meal they had been unable to find any basil, although both could have sworn that they had some. In fifteen minutes it was all done and she started making for home.
Seated around the table that evening, counting clockwise, and starting with Maria’s brother, who sat at the head, were Bobby, Dorothy, Ronny, Maria, William and Sarah. Of these only William, if I remember rightly, has not been mentioned before. He was a friend of Sarah’s, in fact that is putting it midly, he was a close friend of Sarah’s, so close that all their colleagues at work, which was where they had met, confidently expected an engagement to be announced in the near future. Sarah and Maria both thought that this was very funny, and loved to joke about it together. They think we’re going to get married, Sarah would say, laughing. How absurd, Maria would say, shaking with mirth. They just can’t understand, Sarah would say, with a smile, that in this day and age it’s quite possible for a woman and a man to see a lot of each other, even to love each other, without there being anything romantic or sexual in it at all. Blinkered isn’t the word, Maria would say. She and Sarah understood each other very well, in those days.
By the time the first course was served, a little idle conversation had taken place and it had become clear that by a happy coincidence the spirits of all those present were good. They embarked with enthusiasm on a light helping of fettucine, tossed in cream and butter, sprinkled with freshly grated parmesan and spiced with a little nutmeg, and served with a medium dry Italian white which did much to enhance the already festive atmosphere.
‘It’s moments like this,’ said Bobby, ‘that make everything worthwhile. I sit at my desk all day, in an overheated office, poring over figures and looking at the clock, and I think to myself, Robert, what’s the point of it all. Then I come here, and in a few minutes life seems worth living again. Good wine, good company, good food…’
‘Wonderful food,’ said William.
‘Delicious,’ said Ronny.
‘You could go to a restaurant,’ said William, ‘and pay fifteen pounds, and the food wouldn’t be nearly so good as this.’
‘Fifteen pounds?’ said Ronny. ‘Fifteen, did you say? I was in a restaurant last week and it cost me twenty-five pounds. Twenty-five! The food was cold, the meat was tough, the greens were off and the cream was sour. There’s nothing to beat a home-cooked meal.’
‘Twenty-five pounds is nothing,’ said Bobby. ‘I paid forty-two pounds for a meal last Friday and it never even came! Two and a half hours I waited at the table and they didn’t even bring me a starter. And even if they had, it wouldn’t have been as good as this because this couldn’t be better. Happy any man,’ he concluded, ‘whose wife could cook him such a beautiful meal.’
‘Hear hear,’ said Ronny.
‘Rather,’ said William.
‘When are you going to get married then, Robert?’ Dorothy asked, shortly after the arrival of the second course. It comprised sautéed veal scaloppine with marsala, and two side dishes, namely zucchini fried in flour and water batter and, which was a special treat, gratinéed Jerusalem artichokes. They accompanied it with a rather expensive Soave.
‘I’m not sure that I ever want to get married,’ said Bobby. ‘After all, I think it would be true to say, that everybody seated around this table has serious reservations about marriage, of one sort or another, yes?’
‘Yes,’ said Dorothy.
‘Reservations,’ said Bobby, ‘based on close observation and rational thinking.’
‘Or personal experience,’ said Dorothy, with a sidelong glance to her left. Subtlety was not one of her virtues.
‘“Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures,’” quoted Sarah, coming to her friend’s defence. ‘Isn’t there something in that?’
‘Johnson lived in a less enlightened age,’ somebody said.
‘How ironic, then,’ said somebody else, ‘that it should have been called the Age of Enlightenment.’
‘I wonder what age we are living in now.’
‘This is the age of consent.’
Everybody laughed, including the speaker, but they had after all been drinking for nearly an hour. Dorothy, who had her mouth full at the time, spilled food all over the tablecloth. Sophistication, like subtlety was not one of her virtues.
Maria now served a large bowl of fruit, apples, pears, bananas, grapes, nectarines, mango, cantaloupe and apricots, soaked overnight in orange and lemon juice and flavoured with maraschino liqueur. There was enough for everyone to have two helpings. Silence gradually took the place of conversation, as it began to dawn on them all that they had consumed an amount of food that was, to be honest, grotesque. Each, independently, was seized with a sudden desire never to get out of their chairs again for the rest of their lives.
‘That’s the lot,’ said Ronny, emptying the last droplets of wine into Maria’s glass.
‘No more wine?’ said Sarah sleepily, her head lolling against William’s shoulder.
Maria happened to know that Dorothy had another bottle of red in her bedroom, but didn’t ask her to get it, for she also knew that generosity, like sophistication and subtlety, was not one of her virtues.
Bobby and Maria went into the kitchen to make coffee. They sat at the table and talked while waiting for the kettle to boil.
‘Well, Bobby, it sounds as though you are doing all right at last.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Well, you must be earning a penny or two to be able to afford restaurants which charge forty-two pounds.’
‘Oh, that. Yes.’ But finally he confessed, ‘Maria, I’m in trouble again. I’ve run out of money
, and the bank are starting to lean hard on me.’
Maria tutted.
‘I’m not lending you any more money. I have enough trouble keeping this place up without giving it all away to my brother. And you know that you never pay it back.’
‘Is that your last word, then?’ Bobby asked.
‘Yes.’
They relapsed into a sullen silence, which was soon interrupted by the entrance of Dorothy.
‘Come to do the washing up?’ Maria asked.
‘Bog off,’ said Dorothy. (Delicacy, like generosity, sophistication and subtlety, was not one of her virtues.) ‘I want a glass of water.’
‘Maria,’ said Bobby, when she had gone, ‘do you remember that night in Oxford, when I was staying with you? And I went out at night, and didn’t come back till four in the morning?’