The Rotters' Club

by Jonathan Coe

  “—Harding plays Tom Robinson, sir.”

  This explanation was already superfluous, for Harding’s make-up told its own story. His face was more or less unrecognizable beneath a black coating of ink. He must have hidden the bottle in his pocket when he went to the toilet. The effect was astonishing, not least because of the rings of translucent whiteness that circled his eyes, and because he had also, for some reason or other, failed to apply any ink at all to his nose, so that it now stood out preposterously like a little white punctuation mark. His classmates went berserk. The room ricocheted with trebly laughter, like an aviary at feeding time, until this gave way, after nearly half a deafening minute, to what sounded like a wall of machine-gun fire as twenty-two boys pounded the lids of their desks up and down in a frenzy of gobsmacked approbation. Fletcher, unsmiling, waited for the uproar to subside, his patience only running out when Harding lost his cool and began to surf the wave of his audience’s enthusiasm, parading back and forth in front of the blackboard with flapping hands and extended fingers in an impersonation which owed less to Al Jolson than to weekly viewings of The Black and White Minstrel Show. At which point the master stood up and thumped his desk imperiously.

  “Quiet!”

  Afterwards, in conference at the bus stop, Chase, Trotter and Anderton agreed that this had probably been one of their friend’s sillier ideas, and they should never have let him attempt it. The joke had backfired on all of them, and they were now saddled with the task of writing six sides each on the subject of “racial stereotyping,” to be deposited in Fletcher’s pigeonhole by nine o’clock the next morning: a particular humiliation for Benjamin, who was famous for never incurring punishments of any kind. As for Harding himself, he had been put, inevitably, in Saturday-morning detention. They could see him now, waiting at the bus stop on the other side of the road (Harding lived to the north of Birmingham, in Sutton Coldfield), surrounded by fans and still bearing the battle scars of his adventure, for his face had been thoroughly scrubbed but retained a spectral residue of ocean blue. At least half of his audience was female, Benjamin noticed. King William’s School for Girls stood on the same site as its male counterpart, and while there was very little official contact between the schools—until you got to the sixth form, anyway—a good deal of nervy, spellbound fraternization would take place on the buses home, and Harding already had no shortage of female admirers. He looked gleefully unbowed, basking in the heat of his growing notoriety.

  Benjamin and his friends were savagely envious. The girls in their bus queue talked only among themselves, perhaps throwing an amused glance in their direction once in a while, but otherwise indifferent to the point of hostility. Lois, of course, would not have dreamed of talking to her brother on these occasions, even though they were standing only a few feet apart. The edgy fondness which they sustained at home collapsed into hideous embarrassment whenever their schoolfriends were around. It was bad enough that they were known, collectively, as “the Rotters,” an epithet dreamed up when somebody noticed that their names could be pronounced “Bent Rotter” and “Lowest Rotter.” What made it worse was that Benjamin still had to wear school uniform while Lois, as a sixth-former under the Girls’ School’s more liberal regime, could dress as she pleased. (Today she was wearing her long blue denim coat with thick white fur collar, over a ribbed acrylic roll-neck jumper and embroidered denim loons.) Somehow this created another barrier, the firmest of all, so that normal contact was out of the question until they had reached the impenetrable privacy of the family tea table.

  “Busy evening ahead for you boys, then?” said a plummy, prematurely broken voice behind them. They turned to see their old enemy Culpepper: junior rugger captain, junior cricket captain, would-be athletics champion and long-standing object of derision. As always, he was carrying his books and his PE kit in the same bulky sports bag, from which the handle of his squash racket protruded like a permanently erect penis. “Six sides apiece, wasn’t it? That should have you burning the midnight oil.”

  “Fuck off, Culpepper,” said Anderton.

  “Ooh,” he gasped, in mock-admiration. “Most amusing. Such dazzling repartee.”

  “It was only a joke, anyway,” said Benjamin. And he pointed out: “You were laughing with the rest of them.”

  “You’ve only yourselves to blame,” said Culpepper, wiping his nose and thereby revealing, to less than general astonishment, that even his handkerchiefs had name-tags attached. “Fletcher’s a dreadful old liberal softie. He wouldn’t let anyone get away with impersonating a nigger.”

  “You shouldn’t use that word,” said Chase. “You know you shouldn’t.”

  “What—nigger?” said Culpepper, enjoying the effect these two tiny syllables were having upon them. “Why not? It’s in the book. Harper Lee uses it herself.”

  “You know that’s different.”

  “All right, then. Wog. Coon. Darkie.” Having failed to provoke them, he added: “It’s a rotten book, anyway. I don’t know why we have to read it. I don’t believe in it at all. It’s propaganda.”

  “No one’s interested in you or what you think,” said Anderton, and to prove the point they turned away from him, knotting themselves into a tighter group. The conversation drifted, as it always did, towards music. Anderton spent nearly all his pocket money on records and had just bought Stranded by Roxy Music. He was trying to persuade Chase to borrow it, insisting it blew the socks off his poxy Genesis albums. Benjamin was listening, but half-heartedly. Both bands left him cold: so did the Eric Clapton tape his parents had given him for his birthday. He was growing out of rock music, looking for something new . . . And besides this, something very distracting was going on at the bus stop on the other side of the road. Harding now seemed to be talking—this was unbelievable, but true: actually talking—to Cicely Boyd, the willowy goddess who ran the junior wing of the Girls’ School Drama Society. How was this possible? Her aloofness was legendary, and yet there she was, staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed as he recounted and pantomimed the recorded highlights of his latest prank. Ben watched in amazement as, even more incredibly, she licked her finger and rubbed at his cheek, attempting to wipe off some of the inky traces.

  “Look at that,” he said, nudging his friends and pointing.

  The musical spat was quickly forgotten.

  “Bloody hell . . .”

  “Shit . . .”

  Even Anderton, whose sexual politics were rather more sophisticated than the others’, was reduced to speechlessness by the spectacle of Harding so casually hitting this particular jack-pot. There seemed to be nothing they could do, except gawp; until, after a few moments, the 62 bus arrived, and with a series of wistful backward glances they piled on to the front of the top deck.

  “He’s got a nerve, you know,” said Chase, as the bus swayed into motion again and rattled with the din of schoolkids’ chatter. “It was all his idea. Now we get into trouble and he gets all the glory.”

  “It was a crap idea anyway,” said Anderton. “I said so at the time. You never listen to me, you people. There’s only one person who should have been allowed to play that part, and that’s Richards.”

  “But he’s not in our form.”

  “Exactly. So we should have dropped the whole thing.”

  Richards was the only black pupil in their year: the only one in the entire school, in fact. A tall, sinewy, somewhat melancholy Afro-Caribbean, he lived on the outskirts of Handsworth and was a new arrival at King William’s; he had joined in the third year, and his form was upper-middle D. Anderton, incidentally, was unique in referring to him as Richards. The other ninety-five boys in his year called him “Rastus.”

  “But we worked for hours on that scene,” Chase protested, “and we never even got to perform it.”

  “That’s life.”

  The bus had squeezed its way through the Selly Oak traffic and was making its way along the faster, leafier carriageways of the Bristol Road South. Chase’s stop was the first, j
ust before Northfield, and a strange thing happened when he got up to leave. The girl who had been sitting behind them—a girl they had all seen countless times before, but barely noticed—followed him down the stairs, but just before she disappeared from view she threw a glance, unmistakably, in Benjamin’s direction. It was an eloquent glance: sidelong, surreptitious, but at the same time not exactly quick. Her eyes, peeping out from an unruly fringe of dark hair, lingered on Benjamin for two or three seconds, almost appraisingly, and there was the clear intimation of a smile in her full lips. In a couple of years’ time, Benjamin might have recognized this smile as flirtatious. For now, it merely stupefied him, setting in motion a wild complex of different feelings which had the effect of rooting him helplessly to the spot. Before he could make any kind of response, she was gone.

  “Who was that?” he asked.

  “Her name’s Newman, or something. Claire Newman, I think. Why, d’you fancy her?”

  Benjamin didn’t answer. Instead, he looked curiously out of the window, watching as Chase followed her along St. Laurence Road. He was walking at an unnaturally slow pace, probably because he was too shy to overtake her on the pavement. At this point it would have been hard to imagine that one day they would become friends or even, briefly and unsuccessfully, husband and wife.

  The girl’s name was indeed Claire Newman, and she also had an elder sister called Miriam, who worked as a typist at the British Leyland factory in Longbridge.

  When Claire got home that afternoon she found that the house was empty, and she let herself in using a key hidden in the watering can in the back porch. Her mother, father and sister were all still at work. She dumped her schoolbag on the kitchen table, took some cream crackers out of a biscuit jar and spread them with butter and Bovril. She put the biscuits on a plate and went upstairs. Before going into her sister’s room, she paused on the landing. The house was wonderfully quiet and still. A good atmosphere for mischief.

  Miriam kept her diary hidden beneath a chest of drawers, along with a man’s purple nylon shirt presumably of some mysterious sentimental value, and a good supply of the Pill. Claire had discovered this treasure trove two weeks earlier and was now well up-to-date with her sister’s private life, which had become rather exciting of late. She reached for the diary, put the plate of food down on the floor and sat cross-legged beside it. Impatiently, she thumbed through to the latest page, licking the Bovril off her fingers as she went.

  Her eyes darted across the most recent entry, which turned out to be disappointing. No further progress, then: Miriam’s current amour was still stuck at the fantasy stage. But the details at least were getting more colourful.

  20 November

  Went to another meeting of the Charity Fund Committee last night. All the usual people there (including Vile Victor). Mr. Anderton not in the chair, this time, but sitting opposite me. I took the minutes as usual. He kept looking at me, just like before, and I kept looking back. It couldn’t be plainer what he was thinking, I’m amazed nobody noticed anything. He is rather old I suppose, but so dishy, I couldn’t concentrate on a thing and must have missed half what was being said. I really, really want him to kcuf me and I know that he wants to as well. Spent most of last night thinking of the ways he could kcuf me and what it would feel like. It would have to be at the factory but there are lots of places like the showers where the men clean themselves off after the shift. I imagined him taking me in there and lifting my skirt and licking my tnuc until I came. Somehow I have got to speak to him and get him to have me but I don’t think it will be difficult, he wants it just as much as I do if not more. I don’t think I will be the first either but that doesn’t matter. It has got to happen soon or I will go spare with fancying him.

  Downstairs, the kitchen door slammed. Claire shoved the diary back into its hiding place and scrambled to her feet. It would be her mother, probably, back from the solicitor’s office where she worked. She would have stopped at the supermarket on her way home. She would need some help with the unpacking.

  SPRING

  4

  Some weeks later, on the afternoon of Wednesday, 13th February, 1974, all was quiet at the Longbridge plant. The Bristol Road, normally ribboned with parked cars at this time of the day, was almost empty. Irene Anderton savoured the strange tranquillity as she walked back from the shops, the basket of groceries weighing heavy on her arm. Shifting it from one hand to the other, she waved to the cluster of men standing on the picket line at the entrance to the South Works, and some of them waved back, recognizing her. A proud little fire glowed within her. Her husband meant something to these men; he was a hero to them. If it wasn’t for him they would be lost, leader-less. She walked on up the hill towards the 62 bus terminus, past the rows of prefabs. It was a long walk but sometimes she didn’t feel like taking the bus, and today it was nicer than usual, with this silence hanging snugly over the whole area. You didn’t realize how much noise the assembly track made, shuddering all day behind the factory gates; you got used to it; didn’t notice, until it stopped.

  She dropped in at the newsagents’ to pick up the Evening Mail, and looked through it quickly on a bench in Cofton Park as she took the short cut home. She didn’t linger; the day was darkening already, and getting cold. This had been a bitter winter. Bill was mentioned, but there was no picture, which was probably how he would have wanted it.

  When she got home, he was sitting at the dining-room table, papers spread everywhere. He was keeping himself busy, like he always did. That was one of the things she hated most about the newspapers: they always seemed to imply, whenever there was a strike, that the workers headed straight off to the pub, or sat around at home watching the racing. She had never known Bill do anything like that. As Convenor of the Works Committee he fought a constant battle against paperwork. There was never any getting the better of it. He was up until midnight, two or three nights a week, sometimes, and always staying late for meetings. She didn’t believe that most of the bosses worked nearly so hard. They had no idea what it was like. True, he didn’t do much work on the track any more, but nobody could begrudge him that. He had responsibilities now, huge responsibilities. No wonder his hair was beginning to whiten, just a little, around the temples.

  He was still a handsome man, though. Not bad, for pushing forty.

  “Cup of tea, love?” she offered, kissing him on the forehead.

  He sat back, stretched, threw his fountain pen down. “That’d be grand.” Then, gesturing at the unread correspondence: “God, it never ends.”

  “You’ll get through it,” she said; confident, supportive, as ever. “Is Duggie home yet?”

  Bill made a face: a scowl, tinged with indulgence. “About a quarter of an hour ago. Went straight upstairs. He’s been to that record shop again. He tried to sneak it past, but I saw the bag.”

  On cue, a drumbeat began pounding through the floorboards from Doug’s bedroom. Reggae, although neither Bill nor Irene would have been able to identify it as such. Bob Marley, in fact.

  “I’ll get him to turn it down. You can’t work with that going on.”

  Disappearing upstairs on this errand, she left Bill to contemplate the letter he had slid guiltily out of sight just before her arrival. A needless action, really, provoked not so much by its contents, but by the more generalized guilt that came to him so readily these days, whenever Miriam’s name was mentioned, or whenever she was in his thoughts. A bad business, all round. But still: the amazement of that supple body, those lovely breasts so eagerly offered . . . And she was the—ninth, was it? The tenth? A terrible record, after eighteen years of marriage. Most of them from the factory, the typing pool, the sewing shop; that redhead in the canteen, God knows what happened to her . . . There was that trip to Italy two years ago, the week at the Fiat factory in Turin they’d wangled by hooking up with the WEA, and the girl he’d met in the hotel bar, Paola her name was, she had been lovely . . . But there was something different about Miriam, some quality of intensity
that made it both better and worse than any of those other, quicker affairs. She frightened him, at some level. Some level he hadn’t quite acknowledged yet.

  He read the letter again, with the same clenched annoyance.

  Dear Brother Anderton,

  I am writing to complain to you about the work of Miss Newman in her capacity as Charity Committee Secretary.

  Miss Newman is not a good Secretary. She does not perform her duties well.

  There is a lack of attention on the part of Miss Newman. At meetings of the Charity Committee, you can often see her attention wandering. I sometimes think she has other things on her mind than performing her duties as Secretary. I would prefer not to say what these other things might be.

  I have made many important remarks, and addressed many observations, which have not been recorded in the minutes of the Charity Committee, due to Miss Newman. This is true of other Committee Members, but especially of me. I think she is discharging her duties with total inefficiency.

  I draw this matter to your urgent attention. Brother Anderton, and personally suggest that Miss Newman be removed as Secretary of the Charity Committee forthwith. Whether or not she continues in the Design Typing Pool is of course at the firm’s discretion. But I do not think she is a good typist either.

  Yours fraternally.

  Victor Gibbs.

  Bill wiped his brow, and yawned: an action which often signified tension with him, rather than fatigue. He didn’t need this. He could do without this busybody making life even more difficult for him, with his insinuations and his venomous innuendo. What had Miriam done, what had they both done, to inflame these suspicions? Doubtless exchanged one smile too many, held one of those gazes for just a fraction of a second too long. That was all it need take. But it was interesting that Gibbs, of all people, should have been the one to notice it.

  The Charity Committee included members from all parts of the factory, who met to channel a small proportion of their respective union funds into worthy local causes, chiefly schools and hospitals, and Victor Gibbs was its treasurer. He was a clerk in the accounts department, a white-collar worker, so his wheedling use of “Brother Anderton” and “Yours fraternally” was little more than affectation—bordering on affront, in Bill’s view. He was from South Yorkshire; he was sour and unfriendly; but more important than any of these things, he was an embezzler. Bill was almost certain of this by now. It was the only way he could explain that mysterious cheque which the bank had returned three months ago, and which he could not remember signing. The signature had been forged: rather expertly, he had to admit. Since then Bill had been making regular visits to the bank to inspect the Committee’s cheques and he had found three more made out to the same payee: one with the chairman’s signature, and two with Miriam’s. Again, the forgeries were good, although the felony itself was hardly subtle. It made him wonder how Gibbs was expecting to get away with it. He was glad, in any case, that he had followed his instinct, which told him to say nothing at first, bide his time and wait for the evidence to mount up. This had put him in a strong position. If Gibbs was planning to make trouble about Miriam, he would not find Bill a very sympathetic listener. His malice would be turned back on him; repaid with interest.