The Rotters' Club

by Jonathan Coe

  “You know your art teacher,” said Sheila, leaning confidentially towards her elder son. “The one with the moustache?”

  “Mr. Plumb?”

  “Is there anything . . . Is there anything strange about him at all?”

  “We call him Sugar Plum Fairy,” Philip volunteered. “That’s his nickname.”

  Barbara’s face fell. “What, you mean he’s . . . one of them?”

  “No, of course not,” said Benjamin, laughing. “We only call him that ’cause he’s such a pansy. He’s randy as an old goat, actually.”

  “He’s having an affair with Mrs. Ridley,” Philip stated, with great authority.

  “And who’s Mrs. Ridley?” Barbara asked, in an offhand way.

  “She teaches Latin at the Girls’ School. She and Plumb went on a school trip last year and that’s when it started.”

  “They went to Florence with the sixth form,” Paul added. His knowledge was second-hand, but he had no intention of being left out. “And they had it off in the hotel every night.”

  “Language!” said Sheila, turning a furious gaze on her son. “In front of guests.”

  “It’s only what Lois told me.”

  Philip had begun to laugh irresistibly, at the return of some priceless memory. He turned to Benjamin and said:

  “D’you remember what Harding did? The night of the Girls’ School Revue?”

  “Oh yes!” Benjamin’s eyes shone, as they always did when recounting a Harding story. He savoured the rooted attention of his mother and Mrs. Chase. “At the Girls’ School Revue last term, Mr. Plumb and Mrs. Ridley were in a sketch together. And when they got up on the stage, Harding stood up in the middle of the audience, and shouted . . .” He paused, looked to Philip for confirmation, and they both exclaimed in unison:

  “Homebreaker!”

  Their mothers were gratifyingly shocked.

  “What happened?” said Sheila, her hand to her mouth. “Surely he could have been expelled.”

  Benjamin shook his head. “Nobody said anything about it.”

  “Harding always knows what he’s doing,” said Philip. “He always knows just how far he can go.”

  His father’s voice, meanwhile, was getting louder and louder as the alcohol continued to work its unsubtle magic.

  “I’m not one for making predictions,” he bellowed, and Barbara groaned inwardly, for this was his invariable prelude to making predictions. “But I’ll tell you this, and I’ll stake my life on it: the Irish business’ll be over—over and done with—two years from now.”

  “Anyway,” Benjamin was asking his mother, “why do you want to know about Sugar Plum Fairy?”

  “Oh, he just seemed a bit of a character, that’s all.”

  “Shall I tell you why?” Sam continued. “Because the IRA haven’t got the guts for a real fight.”

  “He’s certainly got the gift of the gab, hasn’t he, Barbara?” said Sheila, reluctant to drop the subject of Mr. Plumb. “A bit of a way with words.”

  Barbara nodded, distantly. Her eyes were on her husband as he thumped the dining table with the palm of his hand and said: “Scratch the surface of one of those bastards and d’you know what you’ll find? A coward. C—O—W—E—R—D.”

  “A way with words,” Barbara repeated, in a thoughtful, abstracted way. Then she rose to her feet, and her manner was suddenly brisk. “Come on, Sheila: let’s make a start on these dishes.”

  Benjamin and Philip quickly became bored with their fathers’ conversation. Itching to play Philip some of the records Malcolm had lent him a few days earlier, Benjamin took him up to his bedroom, which he had spent much of that afternoon tidying in readiness. He had hidden away the Letts Desk Diary in which he faithfully recorded the excruciating minutiae of his daily television-watching and homework schedule, and removed, too, all evidence of his unfinished comic novel, not yet daring to admit to anyone, even his closest friend, that he had undertaken this ambitious project, or that in doing so he believed he might have found a vocation, an area of creative obsession which seemed likely to rival or even to overtake his tentative musical activities. A poster of his erstwhile hero, Eric Clapton, remained in pride of place on the wall, next to a picture of Bilbo Baggins’s house at Bag End, drawn by J. R. R. Tolkien himself, and another Tolkien illustration, a detailed map of Middle Earth, whose geography both he and Philip knew far more intimately than that of the British Isles.

  “Have a listen to this,” Benjamin said, watching with some anxiety as the stylus of his portable mono record-player crashed heavily on to the spinning vinyl. “Maybe if we ever get the band started, this is the sort of thing we ought to be doing.”

  “That reminds me,” said Philip. “I’ve thought of a brilliant name.” He pointed at the wall-map, his finger skimming expertly across the Misty Mountains and coming to rest a few hundred elf-leagues south-east of Fangorn. “Minas Tirith.”

  Benjamin pursed his lips. “Not bad, I suppose.” They were thirty seconds into the first track on the album: an angular, two-part melody was being stated on guitar and saxophone, while the rhythm section kept delicate hold on some tricksy time-signature Benjamin had still not been able to identify. The music was confident, brainy, slightly deranged. “What do you think of this, then?”

  “It sounds like they’re tuning up,” said Philip. “Who are they?”

  “They’re called Henry Cow,” said Benjamin. “I got it from the Hairy Guy.”

  “Who?”

  “Malcolm. Lois’s boyfriend.”

  “Oh,” said Philip, glummer than ever. “I didn’t know she had a boyfriend.” He looked in puzzlement at the album cover, where the stark, unexplained image of a chain-mail sock gave little indication of the contents. “Is it like this all the way through?”

  “It gets weirder,” said Benjamin, proud of his new discovery. “You have to open your ears, Malcolm says. Apparently they’re very influenced by Dada.”

  “And who or what,” said Philip, “is Dada?”

  “I don’t know,” Benjamin admitted. “But . . . Well, try to imagine The Yardbirds getting into bed with Ligeti in the smoking rubble of divided Berlin.”

  “Who’s Ligeti?”

  “A composer,” said Benjamin. “I think.” He picked up his guitar and made a deeply abortive attempt to play along with the violin’s atonal counter-melody.

  “Why is Berlin divided, anyway?” Philip asked. “I’ve always wondered that.”

  “I don’t know . . . I suppose there’s a river through the middle of it, isn’t there? Like the Thames. I expect it’s the Danube or something.”

  “I thought it was something to do with the Cold War.”

  “Maybe.”

  Benjamin put down his guitar, restless. From downstairs, there was a muted roar of laughter, and then another, more insistent noise: the thud of a crassly inflexible drumbeat. His father had switched on the music centre, and was playing that appalling James Last album again. He clenched his teeth with contempt.

  “What’s it all about, though, the Cold War? I mean, why’s it called the Cold War in the first place?”

  “Well,” said Benjamin, struggling to raise some interest in this topic, “I expect it is very cold in Berlin, isn’t it?”

  “But it’s all to do with America and Russia, I thought.”

  “Well it’s definitely cold in Russia. Everybody knows that.”

  “And why’s it called Watergate? What’s President Nixon supposed to have done?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why’s petrol got so expensive?”

  Benjamin shrugged.

  “Why do the IRA go round killing everybody?”

  “Because they’re Catholics?”

  “Why are we having power cuts?”

  “Because of the unions?” He turned up the volume, sensing the approach of what was already a favourite passage. “Listen to this bit—it’s brilliant.”

  Philip sighed, and began to pace the room, seemingly not
at all satisfied with their collective grasp of current affairs. “We don’t know much about the world, do we?” he said. “Really, when you think about it?”

  “So what? What does it matter?”

  Philip pondered this question, and failed, for the moment, to think of a response. Perhaps Benjamin was right, and it didn’t matter, after all. Perhaps it was more important that they did well in their Latin unseen on Monday morning. Perhaps it was more important that they succeeded in some of their shorter-term ambitions: getting an article published in the school newspaper, catching the attention—somehow, even for a moment—of the beautiful Cicely Boyd, or starting the band, the band they had been talking about for months now, but whose instrumentation still extended no further than Benjamin’s guitar and Philip’s mother’s piano. Perhaps all of this was more important.

  “So you like the name Minas Tirith?” he said.

  “I told you,” Benjamin answered, “it’s all right. I think it’s more important to decide what we’re going to sound like.”

  “Well, what about Yes? Mum and Dad got me Tales from Topographic Oceans for Christmas. It’s fantastic. I’ll lend it you on Monday.”

  Benjamin didn’t answer. He may already have known, deep down, that the venture was doomed; but he wouldn’t admit it yet, even to himself. He was still an optimist in those days.

  7

  Thursday, March 7th, 1974, was an important day, a memorable day. It was the day Philip made his first foray into journalism, and it was the day Benjamin found God. Two events which were to have far-reaching consequences.

  It was also the day on which Benjamin’s worst nightmare seemed about to come true.

  For many days now, Philip had been hard at work on an article which he hoped to see published in the school newspaper. The Bill Board appeared once a week, on Thursday mornings, and he was one of its most avid readers. The title betrayed its humble origins as a loose collection of typewritten essays and notices which used to be posted on a bulletin board in one of the upper corridors; but this had proved an inconvenient format, in most respects, and the previous year an enterprising young English master called Mr. Serkis had overseen its transition into print. The paper now extended to eight stapled sheets of A4, put together on Tuesdays by a cartel of sixth-formers in the glamorous secrecy of an office tucked away in the rafters above The Carlton Club. It was rare, very rare, for someone as young as Philip to have anything accepted by this uncompromising crew; but today, somehow, he had managed it.

  Shortly before nine o’clock that morning he was to be found sitting in the school library, reading his article for the twelfth time through eyes misty with pride and excitement. The front page of the paper contained a long editorial penned by Burrell of the upper-sixth, lamenting the indecisive outcome of last week’s general election, and the reappointment of Harold Wilson as Prime Minister. Philip couldn’t possibly aspire to writing such a piece, at this stage; the front half of the paper would remain unreachable, beyond imagination. But at least his review came before the sports results, and Gilligan’s cartoons. And how comfortably it nestled on the page, between Hilary Turner’s magisterial discussion of The Caucasian Chalk Circle, which had just opened at the Birmingham Rep, and a few lines of appreciation— penned by Mr. Fletcher himself—about the poet Francis Piper, in advance of his keenly anticipated visit to King William’s (a visit scheduled for that very morning, Philip almost-registered in his trancelike state). To see his own efforts slotted in between the work of these senior practitioners was more than he would have dared hope for.

  And yet, thought Philip, reading his piece again for the thirteenth time, and now with something like objectivity, there was no doubt that he deserved it.

  “Tales from Topographic Oceans” [he had written] is the fifth album from Yes, without doubt the most musically talented and advanced rock group in Britain today, if not the whole world. Without doubt it is their masterpiece.

  The concept behind the album was created by Jon Anderson, Yes’s brilliant lead singer and songwriter. Hailing from Accrington, Lancs., Anderson has always had an affinity with Eastern spiritualism and philosophy. Inspired by Paramhansa Yoganda’s “Autobiography of a Yogi” (nothing to do with Jellystone National Park!) the album is a double album with four sides, each containing only one long song, comprising four long songs in total. The shortest of these songs is 18 minutes 34 seconds long, while the longest is 21 minutes 35 seconds long. Only Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” has longer pieces of music on each side, to the best of my knowledge. But this album has four, whereas “Tubular Bells” only has two.

  Some songwriters, e.g. Roy Wood, Marc Bolan etc., just write pop lyrics, but it would be nearer the truth to say that Jon Anderson writes poetry and sets it to music. Take this couplet of lines from his song “The Memory”:

  “As the silence of seasons on we relive abridge sails afloat

  As to call light the soul shall sing of the velvet sailors course on.”

  What does this mean, the listener wonders? Who are the velvet sailors, and where is the bridge that sails afloat? Jon Anderson is too profound a poet to give us pat answers and soapbox slogans. In the enigma lies the message.

  Musically all five members of the band are virtuoso’s. Anyone who has heard Rick Wakeman’s brilliant “Six Wives of Henry VIII” (based on real Events from history) will need no introduction from me. Steve Howe is perhaps the greatest rock guitarist of his time, bar none, although really to heap special praise on any one of these band members would be insidious.

  Side Three of the album’s Four sides tells of The Ancient Giants Under The Sun, who are “atuned to the majesty of music.” These words could equally apply to Yes themselves. They too are “atuned to the majesty of music.”

  In conclusion, if someone was to ask me who this album was by, and whether or not it was a masterpiece, I would be able to give the same answer:

  YES!!

  Flushed with self-congratulation at the ingenuity of those final lines, Philip was not aware of Benjamin’s presence until he felt the tap on his shoulder. Even then, he failed to notice how distressed he was looking.

  “Have you seen this?” he said, in a triumphant whisper. “They printed it. They actually printed it.”

  Then he realized, suddenly, that his friend’s cheeks were pallid, his hands trembling, his eyes rheumy with tears.

  “What’s the matter?”

  And when he learned the awful truth, it provoked a horrified intake of breath. It was far worse than he could have imagined.

  Benjamin had forgotten his swimming trunks.

  King William’s had an outdoor swimming pool, tucked away behind the chapel, adjacent to the main rugby fields. It came into use halfway through the spring term, after which Benjamin’s form would have two swimming periods a week, on Monday and Thursday mornings, directly after break. Benjamin dreaded these periods at the best of times. He was not a good swimmer, he did not like exposing his body to the other boys, and he disliked, intensely, Mr. Warren, the PE master, a laconic sadist popularly known as “Rosa” on account of his passing resemblance to the mannish villainess in From Russia with Love.

  It was not just his penchant for driving the boys to the point of exhaustion that made Mr. Warren universally feared. Where his swimming periods were concerned, there was also one notorious rule, responsible over the years for any amount of humiliation and psychological damage. This rule was perfectly simple, and admitted of no exceptions: if a boy forgot to bring his swimming trunks, he had to swim in the nude.

  It’s true that there existed some schools, at this time (and perhaps still), where all boys were required to swim naked as a matter of course, either in the mistaken belief that it was character-building or simply in order to gratify the none-too-private enthusiasms of the sports teacher. But that, in a way, would have been different. It might at least have created a kind of beleaguered camaraderie, a redeeming sense of everyone-in-the-same-boat. The awful thing about the King Wil
liam’s arrangement was its malign, inexorable divisiveness. Any unlucky pupil caught in this situation would not only have to run a gauntlet of sniggers and pointing fingers on the day itself, but from then onwards could look forward to weeks, terms, even years of relentlessly single-minded taunts about his deficiencies in the genital area, whether he had them or not. This was the sort of treatment more likely to destroy character than to build it, and there were one or two cases (shy, defensive Pettigrew of the fourth form; taciturn but sexually obsessed Walker of the remove) where this already seemed to have happened.

  Of course, there were the occasional showmen—freaks and exhibitionists, for the most part—who could cope; who even revelled, out of some perverse bravado, in the attention they might generate. Chapman, for instance, had forgotten his trunks so often that most people were now convinced he did it on purpose. But it goes without saying that he was the proud owner of a quite colossal member, which on the many awestruck occasions it had been exposed to public view had been compared variously to a giant frankfurter, an overfed python, a length of lead piping, the trunk of a rogue elephant, a barrage balloon, an airport-sized Toblerone and a roll of wet wallpaper. And it was Chapman, in fact, who one memorable morning had brought embarrassment upon the school by combining two misdemeanours: forgetting his trunks, and talking during a swimming lesson. For a second offence the culprit was traditionally punished by being made to stand on the top diving board for five minutes; which Chapman duly did, only for Mr. Warren to realize, after a minute and a half, that the naked felon was clearly visible from the Bristol Road to anyone travelling on the top deck of a 61, 62 or 63 bus. The sight of that legendary instrument, glimpsed suddenly and without warning on a routine shopping trip to central Birmingham, must have impressed itself deeply on the passengers’ consciousness. During the course of that day the Chief Master had received four complaints, and one request for Chapman’s telephone number.