by Jonathan Coe
They kissed on the cheek, and Malcolm said, “Happy Valentine’s Day,” handing her a box of Cadbury’s Milk Tray, in a plain brown newsagents’ wrapper. When she opened it, Lois’s face glowed, incandescent with pleasure and gratitude. Benjamin, who tended to watch his sister more closely than he realized, noticed her reaction and shared in it, so that for a moment a flame rose between the three of them, and Benjamin felt a sudden, unexpected surge of fondness for the man who could bring such happiness into their household. He and Malcolm exchanged tiny, conspiratorial smiles.
“Remember,” said Malcolm, as he helped Lois with her coat. “Henry Cow: I’ll bring it round next time.”
“Yes,” said Benjamin, “please do.”
Lois looked at them both, fleetingly puzzled. Then she shouted goodbye to Sheila, and they were gone.
Benjamin went up to his brother’s bedroom, intending to lay down some early ground rules about how their evening together should develop, and found Paul sitting by the window, overlooking their scrappy front garden and the street beyond. From this vantage point, they could see Malcolm and Lois waiting at the bus stop, she clinging to the lapels of his greatcoat, her face tilted towards him, the two of them wrapped in a haze of intimacy, haloed by the amber streetlamps. The two brothers watched this scene with equal concentration: Benjamin, perhaps, because it crystallized some ideal of romantic fulfilment for which he, too, was beginning to yearn; Paul, for more prosaic reasons.
“What do you think?” he said.
Benjamin surfaced. “Mm?”
“Have they, or haven’t they?”
“Haven’t they what?”
Paul spelled it out, slowly, as if to a younger, more dimwitted sibling. “Have they had sexual intercourse yet?”
Benjamin drew back in horror. “Do you mind?” he said.
“What?”
“You’re a filthy little pervert, do you know that? You’re not to speak about your sister that way.”
Paul sniggered delightedly. “I’ll say what I want.”
Benjamin made for the door. There was no point in arguing with this little monster. “I want you in bed by eight-thirty tonight,” he said, “or I’ll mash your willy with a rolling pin.”
In the half-light of Paul’s bedside lamp, it was hard to see whether he looked intimidated by this threat or not.
King William’s main assembly hall, known as Big School, had been radically transformed for the occasion, with all the benches removed and a number of beechwood desks placed at regular intervals throughout the echoing space. Behind these, the masters sat, awaiting the inquiries of anxious parents with expressions of trepidation, mild amusement or ferocious contempt, according to temperament. Long queues formed at some desks, either because of the perceived importance of the subject, or because of an inability on the part of some masters—Mr. Fairchild (modern languages), for instance—to deliver their opinions in anything less than five or ten minutes. There were others—such as Mr. Grimshaw (divinity)—who couldn’t attract a crowd for love nor money. Conversation was loud, and the whole occasion seemed to be forever teetering on the verge of a benign chaos.
Clutching a list of masters’ names, Sheila led the way between the desks, the more hesitant Colin trailing behind her. Colin was looking around for a glimpse of Bill Anderton. More than half of the Longbridge plant was still closed down because of that stupid strike, and he had a good mind to take him to task for calling his men out over something so trivial. He had already rehearsed a few scathing lines to this effect, although in his heart, gloomily, he knew full well that he would never have the nerve to deliver them. It was beside the point, in any case: Bill was nowhere to be seen.
Sheila’s first call was on Mr. Earle, the head of music, who racked his brains frantically when she confronted him about her son’s progress. The name “Trotter” was familiar to him, vaguely, but he couldn’t match it to a face.
“But you must know him,” she insisted. “He’s ever so musical. He plays the guitar.”
“Ah.” This gave him a useful let-out. “Well, here at King William’s, you see, we don’t regard the guitar as a real instrument. Not a real classical instrument, that is.”
“How ridiculous,” said Sheila. She stomped away, pulling Colin with her, and they took their places behind five or six couples waiting to talk to Miles Plumb, the school’s head of art. “What does that mean, ‘Not a real instrument?’ That’s the one thing I object to about this school. It doesn’t half give itself airs and graces.”
“You’re right,” said the woman in front of her, turning. “You know what really annoys me? The way they don’t let the boys play football. Only rugby.” (With a disdainful emphasis on the word.) “As if it was trying to be Eton or something.”
“Our Philip was a cracking inside right, too,” her husband added. “Broke his heart when he found out he wasn’t going to play for the school.”
“It’s Sheila, isn’t it?” said the woman, holding out her hand. “Barbara Chase. Your Ben and my Philip were both in the play last term. That dreadful Shakespearean thing.”
She was referring to Mr. Fletcher’s crushingly lacklustre production of Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist, which had reduced successive audiences of doting parents to a state of glassy-eyed catatonia for three nights in a row shortly before Christmas. Sheila had kept her copy of the programme, however, and filed it away lovingly along with her son’s school reports. The names Chase and Trotter could be found at the bottom of the cast list: they had played two mutes.
Once this introduction had been made, the foursome rapidly divided along gender lines. Sam Chase noticed that there was nobody waiting to talk to the games master, so he and Colin went to take issue with him on the vexed issue of football vs. rugby. A lively, ill-tempered argument broke out at once. Meanwhile, Barbara and Sheila waited in line for their audience with Mr. Plumb. His queue was moving slowly. Sheila looked ahead and was at once intrigued by his body language. He was addressing his remarks exclusively to the boys’ mothers, never making eye contact with the fathers and indeed barely seeming to acknowledge their existence. He was wearing a bottle-green corduroy jacket with leather patches at the elbows, over a cotton shirt with thick blue checks, the whole ensemble being set off by a brilliant cravat, in vermilion with greenish spots. A moustache of sorts drooped limply on either side of his lips, which were thin and dark as if wine-stained. When talking to the women in the queue, he held their gaze with an embarrassing directness, compelled them to return it. As for his voice, they were soon to discover that it was reedy and high, almost to the point of effeminacy.
“My word,” he exclaimed, when they appeared at the front of the queue. He was staring at them with the startled, fixed intensity of an electrified ferret. “And whom do I now have the pleasure—the most unexpected pleasure—of addressing?”
The two women looked at each other briefly, and giggled. “Well I’m Barbara, and this is my friend Sheila.”
“I see.” Addressing Barbara now, he said abruptly: “Are you familiar with Morales?”
“I don’t think so,” she answered, nonplussed.
“You don’t know The Virgin and Child?”
“We don’t get out to pubs much,” said Sheila.
“You misunderstand me. It’s a painting. It hangs in the Prado. I only mention it because—” (tilting his head, now, to look at Barbara even more closely, appraisingly) “—the resemblance is quite striking. From a certain angle, you’re her very image. The likeness is quite uncanny. Positively . . . thaumaturgic.”
After another nervous glance at her companion, as if to seek confirmation that this was really happening, Barbara ventured: “I wanted to ask about my son. My son Philip. I wanted to know how he was coming along.”
“Then you must be . . .” Mr. Plumb paused, as if to savour the taste of the words on his palate “. . . Mrs. Chase. Mrs. Barbara Chase: how it trips off the tongue. The thrill of the Chase, ha, ha!” Following which note of near-hysteria, his
tone grew suddenly serious. “Your son, Madam, is a child of most singular gifts. A dexterity with the brush which can only be described as prodigious. An imagination both antic and phantasmagoric. And above all, he evinces, in my view, the most refined aesthetic sense; the most profound responsiveness to beauty in all its myriad forms. Whence he acquired this unique sensitivity has always been a mystery to me. Always, that is, until tonight.” His voice acquired, at this point, a kind of tremulous urgency which could hardly be other than comic, and yet Barbara still found herself staring deep into his eyes, captivated. “But of course, now everything becomes clear. How could Philip not respond to beauty, when he must have been surrounded by it, in the shimmering form of Mrs. Barbara Chase, every day of his short, but happy—oh, so very happy—life?”
The brief, uncomfortable silence which followed this remark was broken by Sheila, who asked: “What about Benjamin? Benjamin Trotter.”
“Competent draughtsmanship,” said Mr. Plumb, coming swiftly down to earth. “A fair facility with light and shade. He tries hard. That’s about all there is to say.”
Barbara became conscious, for some reason, of the other parents still waiting in line behind them.
“I suppose we mustn’t keep you,” she stammered. “I’m glad Philip’s doing so well. I would have liked to talk some more.”
“We will,” said Mr. Plumb, his stare growing ever more piercing and earnest. “We will meet again. I’m quite, quite certain of it.”
For a delirious instant, Barbara thought that he was going to kiss her hand. But the moment passed, and she hurried away, turning only once, involuntarily, to catch another glimpse of him as he began talking to the next anxious mother.
Sheila was snorting with amusement. “What a creep! Who does he think he is, Sacha Distel or something?”
She looked at Barbara, expecting her to share the joke. But her new friend seemed remote, lost in thought.
“D’you fancy coming to dinner on Saturday?” Sheila asked, on a sudden impulse.
“Dinner?”
“Yes. Come round to our place. All of you. I’m sure Ben would like it. He’s always talking about your Philip. Does he have any brothers or sisters?”
“No, Philip’s the only one.” Barbara swallowed; her voice, which had become cracked, was returning almost to normal again. “That sounds lovely. I’ll have to ask Sam first.”
They found him still talking with Colin and Mr. Warren, the games master, but no longer about sport. Somehow they had progressed to politics, and were railing against the incompetence of Edward Heath’s government. They shook their heads at the scandal of a nation held to ransom by obstreperous, strike-happy miners, the shame of a once-great country reduced to measures more often associated with Eastern Europe or the Third World: power cuts, petrol rationing, three-day weeks. There was to be a general election soon, on February 28th, and Sam Chase and Mr. Warren had already made up their minds: Heath would have to go. He had proved himself unfit to govern.
Colin was horrified. “You’re voting for Wilson? You’re going to let the socialists back in? You might as well just give the miners the keys to the ruddy country and let them get on with it.”
Mr. Warren told him that, given the chance, the only Tory he would vote for—the only one with any integrity—was Enoch Powell. But Powell had by now publicly distanced himself from the party, in protest at Britain’s entry into the EEC, and would not be standing in the election.
“That man should be listened to,” said Mr. Warren, emphatically. “He’s a scholar and a visionary.”
Sam nodded. “And a Brummie to boot.”
Half an hour later, in the car home, Colin Trotter was still fuming silently at this new evidence of the British electorate’s terminal fecklessness. “Wilson!” he would mutter, every so often, half to himself, half to his wife, but she took little notice. She was wondering why Benjamin, a bright enough boy in her opinion, had made so little impression on any of his teachers. The subject preoccupied her so thoroughly that they had almost reached Longbridge before she thought to tell Colin: “Oh: I invited the Chases to dinner next Saturday.”
“That’s nice,” he said, barely registering.
As they drove through the last few streets, he noticed that the windows of the grey, somnolent houses were uniformly darkened.
“Another power cut,” he said, his voice quiet and bitter with incredulity. “I don’t believe it. I don’t bloody believe it.”
Neither did Benjamin, who they found a few minutes later reading back issues of Sounds by candlelight in his bedroom, combing them for references to Henry Cow. The electricity had failed at 8:45, shortly after he had packed his brother off to bed, a quarter of an hour before his film was due to start.
6
On the night of the dinner party, Lois was in a bad mood. It was the first time for many weeks that Malcolm had not taken her out on a Saturday, and although she could hardly find fault with his excuse (it was his best friend’s stag night), she still took it upon herself to feel poutingly, irrationally aggrieved. Now she would have to spend the evening sitting around the dinner table making polite conversation with two total strangers, not to mention this awkward, gangly friend of her brother’s who never seemed to take his eyes off her.
And Philip was, without doubt, behaving rather oddly. The truth was that for several weeks he had been nursing a minor crush on Lois, and the sight of her this evening, in a sleeveless orange dress which could only be described as low-cut, was putting him under a lot of strain. He had been placed opposite her at the dinner table, so that her breasts loomed large, white and goosepimpled, exactly in his line of vision. He knew that he was staring fixedly in their direction, his lips moist and parted, a look of besotted fascination etched on his face, but was powerless to do anything about it. As for conversation, his abilities in that area—always limited when there were girls around—had tonight deserted him altogether. He appeared to have forgotten most of the words in the English language. A simple request for the salt cellar had already emerged as gibbering nonsense, and he was terrified at the thought of attempting anything else. Now he and Lois had lapsed into a sepulchral silence compared to which, down at the other end of the table, the atmosphere seemed riotous. In what amounted, for him, to a fit of extravagance, Colin had bought not one but two bottles of Blue Nun to accompany the meal. Add to this the fact that the Chases, by some happy chance, had arrived with a gift of the very same wine, in a litre bottle no less, and the stage was set for a scene of almost orgiastic excess. All of which was small consolation to Philip, confined as he was to orangeade and unable to think of a single comprehensible remark to address to his dining companion, who was by now chatting quite freely with Sam Chase. Straining to overhear a few fragments, Philip glimpsed, at last, the prospect of an entry into the conversation, and took his courage in both hands.
“What is the name of your goldfish?” he asked.
Lois stared at him. Although nobody else had stopped talking, it seemed to Philip that a new silence had descended, even colder and deathlier than before, and quite irrevocable. After what felt like aeons, she repeated:
“What is the name of my goldfish?”
Philip stared back, and swallowed hard. He had misjudged the situation; he had misheard; something, anyway, had gone terribly wrong. In a few moments Lois had turned away, with a contemptuous toss of her head, and he was left to contemplate, once again, the pallid gorgeousness of her breasts, in the now absolute certainty that this was as close as he would ever get to them.
(Typically, Paul had witnessed the whole incident, and would later inform Philip with demonic glee that the word he had mistaken for “goldfish” was in fact “Colditz,” since Sam and Lois had been discussing the popular TV series of that name. This explanation, by the time he heard it, was somewhat beside the point as far as Philip was concerned. Lois clearly regarded him as some kind of simpleton, and they were to exchange no more words, not only for the rest of that evening, but
for the next twenty-nine years, as it happened.)
Lois excused herself and disappeared up to her room after dinner, which eased Philip’s tension slightly. He began at last to be infected by the grown-ups’ high spirits. Sheila and Colin in particular were on sparkling form, fired by the success of the meal which had, they quietly admitted to themselves, been a gastronomic triumph. After hors d’oeuvres of salt and vinegar and cheese and onion crisps, served in tupperware bowls, they had moved on to a course of melon slices, topped with glacé cherries and washed down with generous glassfuls of Blue Nun. It was followed by sirloin steak—each portion charred, with exquisite calculation, almost but not quite to the point of unrecognizability—served with chips, mushrooms, salad and unlimited dollops of salad cream, while the Blue Nun, needless to stay, continued to flow in a Bacchanalian torrent. Finally, fat wedges of Black Forest gâteau, doused remorselessly with double cream, were thrust before the swollen bellies and glazed eyes of the satisfied diners, and the Blue Nun began to flow faster and more freely even than before, if that could be considered possible. Places were swapped so that Sam and Colin moved next to each other, and soon they began to supplement their wine with what was indisputably the Trotter household’s alcoholic pièce de résistance: Colin’s homemade light ale, which he brewed in a forty-pint plastic keg in the cupboard under the stairs, using a kit from Boots the Chemist. The cost, as he was always ready to point out, worked out at a little under 2p per pint: an astonishing price to pay for a drink which differed hardly at all from the commercially manufactured beers, except that this one tended to come out of the keg looking cloudy and green, with a head that took up at least two-thirds of the glass and an afterburn like fermented WD40. Stoked up by a couple of glasses of this lethal concoction, the men fell to discussing the Irish question, dividing their contempt equally between the supine Northern Ireland Secretary, Francis Pym, and the “bloody Catholic killers” who had caused all the trouble in the first place. Their voices began to take on a vengeful, exasperated edge. Naturally enough, the women ignored this discussion. They had more pressing, more personal things to talk about.