The Rotters' Club

by Jonathan Coe

  “Whose signature has he been forging?”

  “Tony Castle’s. Mine.” He paused for emphasis, before admitting: “Yours.”

  Miriam said: “Why haven’t you done something about this before?”

  “I’ve been waiting for when the time’s right,” said Bill. “Which is now.” He kissed her gently, and suddenly an irresistible wave of emotion washed over him. Words began pouring out, and he heard himself saying things, knowing even as he said them that he shouldn’t be saying them, that they were the worst things he could be saying. “I love you, Miriam. I’d do anything for you, you know. Anything to make you happy.”

  And now he expected her to reach for him, to feel the kiss returned. But instead, she answered:

  “I’ve got someone else as well, Bill. You’re not the only one.”

  He drew away.

  “What?”

  “Perhaps Mr. Gibbs is right,” said Miriam, her voice quite toneless now. “Perhaps I am a slut. A whore. I know that’s what my father would call me.” She gave a desperate laugh. “Oh, if he could see me now! He’d pick up that bloody family bible and knock me out cold with it.”

  “Who is he?” Bill wanted to know. “What’s his name?”

  “You don’t know him,” said Miriam. “He’s not from the factory. He’s not from anywhere round here.” She looked at him brightly. “You’re not jealous, are you? You have got Irene, after all.”

  Bill said nothing at first. He was furiously jealous, there was no doubt of that, but at the same time relieved, and he couldn’t even begin to reconcile the two feelings.

  “Are you making this up?” he asked, eventually. “Because if this is just a way of getting me to—”

  “He’s much younger than you,” said Miriam. “About half your age. He’s not as good-looking as you, but he’s got more . . . stamina, if you know what I mean. And he’s not married.”

  Bill rolled over on to his back, stared at the ceiling.

  “Is it serious?” he asked. And: “Where did you meet him?”

  Miriam sat up in the bed, climbed astride him, and reached between his legs. She teased him into readiness, and then lowered herself gradually, steadily, with infinite care, infinite attention, until he was deep inside her, his eyes screwed shut with expectation, with helpless pleasure.

  “You’re the one that I want, Bill. The only one,” she said; and there was no more talk that evening.

  The next morning, Miriam’s behaviour was even stranger, and his longing for Irene, for the security she represented, became even more acute.

  Cutting their losses, they checked out of the hotel before breakfast, and drove out to the Clent Hills. In the tea-shop they ate wedges of fruitcake and drank strong, milky coffee. Then they walked for an hour or more, along the thinly wooded ridges, the bracken wearing the last traces of autumnal gold, the bridle pathways leading them seemingly at random through stretches of dry, bleached-out grassland and ragged clusters of evergreens, the treetops forming makeshift canopies against the keen morning sunlight. After yesterday’s rain, they had good weather before them, and the hills almost to themselves. Sometimes a horse might amble by, the rider tipping his hat, or a breathless dog criss-crossing its owner’s path, but otherwise, the world left them alone. Half-tamed farmland stretched out beneath them on every side. They could hear, as always, the motorway’s distant roar.

  Bill asked Miriam to tell him more about her new lover. She dodged his questions nimbly; bounced them back with laughter, changes of subject, evasions. She held his hand, kissed him, walked arm-in-arm, then would turn back, choose a different pathway, stand gazing out over the fields while he walked on ahead. He couldn’t make her out.

  When they got back into the car, the first thing he said was: “So, are you going to choose, then? Between him and me?”

  “What about you?” she answered. “Are you going to choose, between me and her?”

  But Bill had already chosen. The emergence of this potential rival had only made things easier for him. He no longer felt that he would be abandoning Miriam; he would be relinquishing her, rather, handing her over to someone younger and better qualified. There was something almost noble in the gesture. At the moment he could scarcely bear the thought that he must live without her, that he would never again be allowed to see, or touch, that body he had come to know far better than his wife’s. But he was sure it was the right thing to do. He even believed it was what Miriam herself wanted, at heart.

  They were driving back towards Northfield, and were only five minutes from Miriam’s house, when she became hysterical. She began crying again, and screaming through her sobs that her life meant nothing when she was away from him, that she was going to turn up at his house and confront Irene, that she would kill herself if he didn’t leave his wife and come to live with her. Bill pulled over to the side of the road and tried, hopelessly, to calm her down. He began promising things, promises he knew that he could never keep. The noise of her crying and shouting seemed to go on for hours, like radio static at top volume. All he could do was to repeat again and again that he loved her, he loved her, he loved her. They had both lost control of what they were saying.

  9

  The next morning, Miriam knew she had to get out of the house. Sundays at home were always dreadful: Miriam and Claire lived in permanent fear of their father, Donald, whose forbidding, taciturn presence seemed to have cast a chill over their entire childhoods, and whose demeanour on Sundays was usually even more severe and unapproachable. Although he no longer insisted on the two hours’ Bible study that used to be such a dismal feature of their weekends, he still expected the whole family to go to church in the morning. Today, however— perhaps sensing that her sister was in no state to undergo this weekly ordeal—Claire put on a spectacular and unprecedented show of defiance, and refused point blank to accompany him. Donald trembled with rage when she spoke the words; there was a bitter, poisonous exchange, tearful on Claire’s side, quietly brutal on her father’s; but the result was that both sisters stood firm, and stormed out of the house together at about ten o’clock. They had nothing to do but go for a long walk.

  It had been a turbulent year in the relationship between the two of them. Early in December, 1973, a series of Bovril stains on the pages of her private diary had alerted Miriam to the fact that Claire was reading it in her absence. Mayhem had ensued. After an argument of incredible length, violence and intensity, there had been no verbal communication between them for six weeks. Christmas, in these circumstances, had been intolerable; Claire’s birthday was not much better. And yet somehow, through one of those minor miracles that form part of the strange texture of family life, a reconciliation had taken place, and they had emerged better friends than ever before. Her knowledge of Miriam’s feelings for Bill Anderton turned Claire, slowly and painfully, from an object of hate into something like a confidante. Miriam had stopped keeping a diary, and she never told Claire the whole story, by any means; but the mere fact that her sister was aware of Bill’s existence, knew his name, understood his importance to her, made Miriam eager, not to share secrets with her exactly, but at least to seek out her company, intuitively, whenever the affair was causing her distress. In this way, despite their difference in age, a kind of closeness grew up between them.

  That Sunday morning, they rode on the 62 bus as far as it would take them, past the Longbridge factory and all the way to Rednal. They wandered through Cofton Park, dropped into the amusement arcade at the foot of Lickey Road, and wound up back at the bus terminus, sitting in the dingy, fogged-up café opposite the newsagents’. Bill’s name had not been mentioned once during this time, although Claire could tell that he was weighing heavily on her sister’s mind. On the south side of the park she had stood opposite the Andertons’ house for two or three minutes, peering at it from across the road. There had been no car in the drive, and Miriam had moved on without saying anything. She was impossibly quiet this morning.

  As they sat in t
he café, drinking oversweetened Cola and sharing packets of crisps, Claire saw two boys come in. One of them she recognized at once, with a tiny surge of excitement: it was Benjamin Trotter. The other one, presumably, was his younger brother. They seemed to be quarrelling.

  “They don’t like us being in this sort of place, you know that,” Benjamin was saying.

  “That, O Well-behaved One, is the whole point of coming here. Blimey, I sat through that bleeding church service with you. The least you can do is stand me a cup of char and a slice.”

  “A cup of char and a slice? Where do you pick up these stupid expressions? Anyway, I’m not buying you anything.”

  “That sermon,” said Paul, fishing in his pocket for a ten pence piece, “was a masterpiece of intellectual vacuity.”

  “I don’t know why you came anyway. You know I’d rather go on my own.”

  “Now that my weak-minded brother has fallen into the hands of religious maniacs, I have to keep a protective eye on him.” Paul handed Benjamin the money and nodded meaningfully in the direction of Miriam and Claire. “Get me something tasty, and I’ll start making headway with those two dishy chicks over there. I bet we can score.”

  Before Benjamin could stop him, Paul had placed himself at a table next to the sisters, and was already addressing some remark, doubtless of an impertinent nature, at the elder of the two. Benjamin bought two cans of lemonade and hurried over. By now he had spotted Claire and recognized her, but this didn’t make the situation any easier, as far as he was concerned. He had no idea what he was going to say, and matters were not helped by the fact that his voice was currently in the process of breaking, and he hadn’t the least way of knowing, from minute to minute, at what pitch his words were likely to emerge.

  Claire saved him the trouble, in any case, by announcing, “You’re Benjamin,” in an authoritative way as soon as he appeared, and grabbing one of the cans off him with the words, “Give us a swig.”

  “I’m sorry about my brother,” Benjamin stammered. “He’s a pain.”

  Paul stuck his tongue out, then turned to Miriam and said, “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.” She stared back at him as if he were pond life.

  “You go to King William’s, don’t you?” Claire continued. “I’ve seen you on the bus.”

  “That’s right,” said Benjamin. It was hardly a brilliant rejoinder. He sucked ferociously on his straw while thinking of something else to say. “Have you both just been to church?” he asked.

  “Church?” she repeated, incredulous. An abrupt silence fell after that, until Claire, obviously not thinking this topic even worth mentioning again, said to Benjamin challengingly: “I’ve noticed you with your friends. You always look really snooty and arrogant.”

  “Oh. Well we’re not really. At least, I don’t think we are.”

  “You know Philip Chase, don’t you?”

  “That’s right. He’s my best friend.”

  “And you know Duggie Anderton.”

  Miriam looked over: a sudden, violent jerk of the head.

  “Duggie?” said Benjamin. “No one calls him Duggie.”

  “Oh,” said Claire. “I thought that was what people called him.” She noticed the livid pallor of her sister’s face, and saw at once that it had been a mistake even to mention the family name. She changed the subject quickly. “I wish we did more things together, don’t you? The two schools, I mean.”

  “Yes,” said Benjamin. “That would be nice.” This suggestion set him on a rapid train of thought, and he asked, casually: “You don’t know a girl called Cicely, do you? Cicely Boyd?”

  Claire raised her eyes to the ceiling. “God, why do all the boys in your school go on about Cicely? Why are they so obsessed with her?” Clearly, Benjamin had touched a nerve. “I mean, what is it about her? It’s not even as if she’s very good-looking.”

  “Oh, but she is,” he countered. “She’s beautiful.” It was out before he could stop himself.

  Claire smiled icily. “I see. Do we have a little schoolboy crush on our hands, by any chance?” She pulled open a new packet of crisps and said, without offering him one: “Well I can tell you one thing: you’re not going to be at the head of the queue.”

  “I know,” said Benjamin. Her remark had been intended purely to hurt; but he took it for a melancholy truth. “It’s Harding that all the girls fancy, isn’t it? Just because he’s so funny all the time.”

  “No,” Claire scoffed. “Nobody fancies him. He’s just good for a laugh. There’s only one boy in your year that everybody’s crazy about.”

  Benjamin waited for her to elaborate, but apparently it was too obvious to need spelling out. In the end he hazarded a guess. “Is it Culpepper?”

  “Culpepper! Give me a break. He’s Mister Repulsive.”

  “OK then: who?”

  “Richards, of course.”

  Benjamin was dumbfounded. “You mean Rastus?”

  Claire gasped, and almost choked on a crisp. “You don’t call him that, do you?”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s so . . . insulting.”

  “No it’s not. It’s a joke.”

  “You can’t call him Rastus just because he’s black. How would you like it if nobody ever called you by your real name?”

  “Nobody does. Not at school, anyway. They call me Bent.”

  Claire seemed on the point of giggling at this, or making some caustic reply. But she thought better of it, and now said, without any preamble: “Do you want to come out with me some time?”

  “Come out with you?” said Benjamin, as his stomach performed a somersault and a delicious panic took hold of him.

  “There’s a disco in the church hall this Tuesday. We could go along together and boogie on down.”

  He had never boogied on down in his life. The prospect was simply terrifying. With some relief he found himself able to say, “I’m already going out on Tuesday. I’m going to a gig at Barbarella’s.”

  Barbarella’s was one of Birmingham’s trendier night-spots, and Benjamin’s offhand reference to this venue, in combination with the word “gig,” had a marked effect. Claire looked highly impressed.

  “Really?” she said. “Who are you going with?”

  “The Hairy Guy.”

  “Who?”

  “Malcolm. My sister’s boyfriend. He’s taking me along to see Hatfield and the North.”

  “Never heard of them. Can I come too?”

  “No,” said Benjamin decisively. “You wouldn’t like the music. It’s very complex and difficult. A bit like Henry Cow.”

  “Never heard of him either.”

  “It’s just not the kind of thing girls like, I’m afraid.”

  “Just as I said,” said Claire, scrunching up her crisp packet in a fury. “Snooty and arrogant.”

  At which point, the sound of a hand making sharp contact with somebody else’s cheek announced that the adjacent conversation had come to a climax. Miriam pushed back her chair and rose sharply to her feet.

  “Your brother,” she said to Benjamin, “has got a mind like the municipal sewer. Come on, you.” She grabbed her sister by the arm and pulled her towards the door, turning only to add: “And I thought I’d heard everything!”

  As they left the café Benjamin managed to snatch just a moment’s eye contact with Claire; and then they were gone, leaving him bereft; gripped, after all, by an overwhelming sense of lost opportunity.

  “What did you say to her?” he was about to ask Paul. But he saw the smirk on his brother’s evil little face, and decided that he didn’t want to know.

  In his bedroom that afternoon, Benjamin worked on his latest composition. It was a piece for two guitars, lasting about a minute and a half. He had hit upon a primitive overdubbing technique, having worked out that if you recorded one of the guitar parts on a cassette machine, you could then play along with the tape and perform a sort of duet. This piece was in A minor and was provisionally entitled “Cicely’s So
ng.” He had toyed, briefly, with the idea of changing it to “Claire’s Song”: but that would have been fickle. Besides, it was exciting that someone should have asked him out, but really, Claire couldn’t hold a candle to Cicely. In looks or personality. There was no comparison to be made between them.

  The second guitar part was pretty difficult. An F sharp major seven had popped into the chord sequence from somewhere— it just sounded right—which meant that at this point in the melody, he had to play a C sharp rather than a C natural. It felt peculiar, and he kept getting it wrong. But then, this was what being a musical pioneer was all about. He was going to have to write even weirder things, he told himself, if he wanted to sound like Henry Cow. Malcolm had said that he’d come and listen to Benjamin playing it, the next time he visited the house. He would have to be note perfect by then.

  As for Lois, she was being surprisingly relaxed about this unlikely friendship. There didn’t seem to be anything that could upset her at the moment. Malcolm had transformed her. She was in her last year at school, and had already applied for a place at Birmingham University so that she wouldn’t have to be separated from him when she left. He could do nothing wrong in her eyes, and if he’d decided to take her brother under his wing and lead him through some kind of bizarre musical education, that was fine. Even Colin and Sheila, on being asked whether Benjamin could go to Barbarella’s with him on Tuesday night, had given their blessing. That was a measure of how much the family had come to trust him.

  “Are you sure you don’t mind?” Benjamin had asked Lois, the day before. “It’s all right if he takes me, and you stay at home?”

  “Of course it is,” said Lois. “You know I don’t like that kind of music. And I’m going to be busy with this dress, anyway.” She had just been given a purple velvet maxi dress for her seventeenth birthday, and it needed taking in. It had to be ready by Thursday, because that was their anniversary: one year on, not from their first date, but from the day that Malcolm had received her letter, forwarded from the offices of Sounds. “He’s taking me out to dinner,” she said, “and he told me to get dressed up. We’re doing something special, apparently. He says he’s got a surprise for me.”