The Rotters' Club

by Jonathan Coe

  “You could be good for me,” she said, unexpectedly.

  “Pardon?”

  “I think you have an interesting mind.”

  “Thank you,” said Benjamin, after a stunned pause.

  “Sometimes I can be vain but that doesn’t mean I take no notice of criticism. Because most of my friends are a bit scared of me, they only say what they think I want to hear. Whereas you . . .” (and the smile she suddenly turned on him was at once combative and bewitching) “. . . you’d give it to me straight, wouldn’t you? Every time.”

  “Well . . . I’m not sure I know what you mean, but—yes, I’d try to.”

  “When I said that I hate myself,” Cicely continued, sitting on the table, now, so that she was almost at Benjamin’s level and there were only three or four feet between them, “I wasn’t being flippant. Everything about me is going to change. It has to.”

  “I don’t think . . .” Benjamin began.

  “Yes?”

  But he had already forgotten what he was going to say.

  “You know, they told me you didn’t talk much,” she said, once he had tailed off, “but I didn’t expect you to be quite so silent. You’re practically a Trappist.”

  “Who’s they?” Benjamin asked. “Who told you that I didn’t say much?”

  “Everybody,” said Cicely. “I’ve been asking around about you, of course. Who wouldn’t, after reading that piece?”

  “So what . . .” (Benjamin swallowed hard) “. . . what did they say, exactly?”

  Cicely looked at him gravely. “You know, Benjamin, it’s not always a blessing to know what other people think of you.” She let this advice hang in the air, could see that it was wasted, and went on: “Anyway, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Most people just said that they couldn’t make you out. ‘Inscrutable’ was the word that seemed to keep coming up. People seem to think you’re probably some kind of genius, but not necessarily someone they’d want to be stuck on a train with.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Benjamin, laughing uneasily. “The genius bit, I mean.”

  Cicely assured him, with quiet emphasis: “The world expects great things of you, Benjamin.”

  He stared mutely at the floor, then looked up and met her gaze for the first time: “I don’t think you should change, you know.”

  “That’s sweet of you,” said Cicely. “But you’re wrong. What do you think of my hair?”

  Benjamin’s little moment of forthrightness had already passed, and instead of saying, as he would have liked to, “It’s amazing” or “You’ve got the most beautiful hair I’ve ever seen,” he mumbled: “I like it. It’s very nice.”

  Cicely laughed acidly, and shook her head. Then, noticing a pair of paper-scissors at the other end of the table, she reached across, picked them up, and passed them over to Benjamin. “I want you to cut it off,” she said.

  “What?”

  She sat on the chair again, turned her back on Benjamin, and repeated: “I want you to cut it off. All of it.”

  “All of it?”

  “All—” she tugged the bottom of her ponytail, as if it were a bell-rope “—all of this stuff.”

  “I can’t do that,” said Benjamin, shocked.

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve never cut anyone’s hair off. I’ll make a mess of it.”

  “For God’s sake, I’m not asking for a perm. One big snip ought to be enough.”

  Benjamin stepped forward and reached out a terrified hand. It would be the first time he had touched her. It would be the first time he had touched any girl, apart from his sister, since reaching puberty.

  He drew back and said: “Are you sure about this?”

  Cicely sighed. “Of course I am. Just do it.”

  Benjamin took the ribbon of hair into his shaking hand. The fineness and softness of it were hardly to be believed. It glimmered between his fingers. The act that he was about to perform seemed frightful in its wanton finality.

  Gathering together Cicely’s hair to put it between the jaws of the scissors, he could not help brushing against her skin. At once he felt her whole body stiffen, either anticipating the cut, or in response to the careless touch of his fingers against the fine down at the back of her neck.

  “Sorry,” he murmured. And then: “Here we go, then.”

  Cicely tautened again.

  “Ready . . . Steady . . .

  “GO.”

  The action of the scissors was sudden and entirely effective. The hair came away in his hand, and he clutched it tightly, not letting a single strand fall to the floor. Cicely stood up.

  “Here.”

  She handed him the Cyclops Records bag he had thrown earlier on to a side-table, and with loving deliberation he folded the hair three times over, so that it fitted neatly inside. Meanwhile Cicely had whipped a compact out of her pocket and was inspecting her new bob with an appalled, curious gaze.

  “Makes you look a bit like Joanna Lumley,” Benjamin suggested. “In The New Avengers.”

  This was not true at all. It made her look like one of the inmates of a Nazi concentration camp he had seen recently on a TV documentary. But anyway, she didn’t seem to hear him; turning the mirror this way and that she merely whispered to herself, “Oh my God . . .”

  “What, erm . . .” Benjamin gestured with the bag of hair. “. . . What shall I do with this, then?”

  “Do whatever you want with it,” said Cicely, still preoccupied.

  “OK.” He put it down on the table for now. “Right.”

  After a few more seconds’ contemplation, Cicely snapped the compact shut and put it away. “Good,” she said. “That’s a start.” She found a sheet of paper on the table, scribbled some figures on it and handed it to Benjamin.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “My telephone number.”

  He looked at the seven digits inscribed in blotchy, pale green biro. A few hours ago he would have traded anything, anything in the world, for the courage even to speak to Cicely, let alone to be offered this priceless information. Suddenly his life was transformed. It was more than he could comprehend.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “You’re welcome. Thanks for the haircut.”

  She turned, and was about to leave. She had to be stopped.

  “About that review—” Benjamin began.

  “I dare say we’ll be seeing more of each other,” said Cicely, in a tone so neutral, so parched of feeling that he knew their conversation was at an end. “We can talk about it then.”

  “Fine,” said Benjamin; and then she was gone.

  He carried the plastic bag full of hair all the way home and up to his bedroom. Then he dropped it on to the bed and lay down himself with an exhausted sigh.

  What on earth was he going to do with it?

  10

  Five days later Philip asked him the key question and Benjamin had to admit that he didn’t know the answer.

  “So—is Cicely your girlfriend now?”

  “I don’t think so,” Benjamin replied, and then held up his finger to test the direction of the breeze, in a futile attempt to ward off further interrogation.

  “You don’t think so?” said Philip, incredulous. “What does that mean? I mean, someone’s either your girlfriend or she isn’t.”

  “Well then, she isn’t.” He hadn’t a clue which direction the breeze was coming from. He had an idea that you were supposed to lick your finger before holding it up, but had never been able to understand why. Besides, now that he thought about it, there wasn’t much of a breeze anyway. “I think this must be east,” he added, hazarding a wild guess and pointing further up the mud-spattered lane.

  “So what did she mean?” Philip persisted. “What did she mean when she said ‘We’ll be seeing more of each other?’ ”

  “I suppose she just meant—well, that we were bound to bump into each other, in the normal course of events.” The truth was that he didn’t know what Cicely had mea
nt, and it annoyed him that Philip seemed to suspect this. “Look, don’t you think it would be more helpful—rather than standing here discussing my love-life, or lack of it—if we tried to work out where the hell we are?”

  It was a Wednesday afternoon, the day of the Walking Option’s weekly expedition, and already a typical scenario was unfolding. Not only had they managed to get lost after walking about five hundred yards, but in the course of trying out alternative directions and rounding up the dawdlers who had almost immediately begun to loiter out of sight, the group had managed to disperse. Now Philip and Benjamin were alone in a country lane somewhere in the vicinity of the Upper Bittell reservoir, and had not seen the hapless Mr. Tillotson and his frayed, famously inadequate road atlas for about half an hour.

  “This is too much like hard work,” said Philip, after they had staggered on for another twenty yards or so. “Let’s have a break for refreshment.”

  A nearby stile presented itself obligingly for this very purpose. They sat down, one on either side, Benjamin facing the lane and Philip overlooking a long stretch of pastureland, green-yellow in the sunshine, dotted here and there with contentedly masticating Friesians. He opened his Army and Navy Stores rucksack, took out a thick stack of cheese sandwiches wrapped in tin foil and passed one of them to Benjamin. They split open a can of Guinness and took it in turns to wince over its heavy, bittersweet oiliness.

  “Nothing like a good bit of exercise, is there?” said Philip, after they had eaten and drunk in silence for a few minutes. “Tones the muscles up. Makes you feel on top of things.”

  Benjamin had mellowed under the influence of the sunshine, the food and the alcohol. He was prepared to be philosophical about Cicely’s ambiguous declaration now. The important thing was that she had spoken to him at last. They were in a relationship, of sorts.

  “We can’t be that lost,” Philip was saying, as he scanned the horizon in a half-hearted way. “You only live a couple of miles from here, don’t you?”

  “I suppose so,” said Benjamin. He looked around vaguely. “It does look a bit familiar. I think Mum drives this way sometimes.”

  Two girls wandered past, and stopped to talk to Philip. “Any sign of Mr. Tillotson?” he wanted to know.

  They shook their heads, and the shorter of the two, who had frizzy, pale blonde hair, a big bust and a permanent, rather earnest and unsettling smile, said: “I think he went down to the canal. We told him some of the boys had sneaked off there for a smoke.”

  “Ah well,” said Philip, leaning back comfortably against the slats of the stile, “I dare say he’ll catch up with us soon enough.”

  “So this is what you call walking, is it?” the girl asked, her smile ever so slightly broadening.

  “Join us if you want.”

  “No thanks. We think we can get to Barnt Green this way. We can get a bus from there, and be home early.”

  “Suit yourselves.”

  As the girls walked on, Benjamin said: “Who were they?”

  “I don’t know who the dark one was. Pretty, though, wasn’t she? The other one’s called Emily. Emily Sandys.”

  “I’ve heard of her. She designed the costumes for Othello. ”

  “Quite possibly. Doug was telling me she might be joining the paper, too. Doing lay-out and stuff.” He gazed after the receding female figures, a familiar look of wistful but unconcealed lust setting his face into momentary slack-jawed immobility. “I should have said something to the dark one. I fancy her something rotten.”

  Emily and her friend disappeared from view, and the boys fell silent. Their thoughts became, for a while, impenetrable. The scene of rural idyll laid out before them might have given rise to any number of reflections. Although they were only a mile or two from Longbridge and Birmingham’s outer suburbs, the gently undulating countryside, with its indolent, nodding herds and tidy hedgerows, might have inspired a Betjeman to verse or a Butterworth to composition. The pastoral stillness remained undisturbed for several minutes, until Philip asked:

  “How often do you think about girls with no clothes on?”

  Benjamin gave this question the serious thought it deserved. “Quite often,” he said. “All the time, in fact.”

  “Do you undress girls with your eyes? Try to, I mean.”

  “Sometimes. You know, you try not to stare at them that way, but then again, you can’t help it. It’s only natural.”

  Looking into the middle distance, as his mind took an unexpectedly abstract turn, Philip said: “The female body is a beautiful thing.” He glanced at Benjamin then and said, urgently: “Have you ever—you know—seen one? Got a really good look?”

  Benjamin shook his head. “Not really. Only on the telly.”

  Now they could hear the whirr and the click of an approaching bicycle, and the voice presumably of its rider, who was singing to himself at top volume. The rustic mood of that afternoon might have led them to expect some cheery cowhand, wending his way either to or from a milking session while giving lusty voice to some fine old English folksong. But the words reached them in an excruciatingly tuneless boy soprano, and they were quite distinct:

  I am an anti-CHRIST

  I am an anar-CHIST

  The singer seemed not to know any more than that, because after a second’s pause he began again, even louder and even more wildly off-key:

  I am an anti-CHRIST

  I am an anar-CHIST

  Then he came into view and skidded to a halt beside them. It was Paul.

  “Well well!” he said, grinning delightedly at the spectacle of these two shirkers, caught in flagrante. “And what do we have here? Hilary and Tensing, defeated at first base while mounting a new challenge on Everest? Captain Scott and Captain Oates, heading off for the South Pole and calling it a day just outside Watford?”

  “Fuck off, Paul,” said Benjamin, outraged to find that he wasn’t safe from his brother even here. “Why aren’t you at home, anyway?”

  “I can ride my bike wherever I want, can’t I? I like to nurture the fantasy that this is a free country, despite the last-gasp efforts of our socialist leaders.”

  “The reason you didn’t go to school today,” Benjamin reminded him, “is that you told Mum you had a terrible cold and were going to have to stay in bed with a hot-water bottle.”

  “A little white lie,” Paul confided, laying a finger to his lips in a gesture of mock-conspiracy. “Of course I realize that you, the man who never swerves from the path of duty and righteousness, would never—”

  “Come on, Phil.” Benjamin jumped to his feet in an impatient movement. “I’m sure you don’t want to listen to his gibberish any more than I do.” He began to march forward with athletic strides, trying to outpace his brother who was pedalling languidly behind him at a couple of yards’ distance. “What were we talking about?” he called over his shoulder.

  Phil hurried to catch up, wriggling the rucksack on to his back. “We were talking about naked women,” he said.

  “Ha!” Paul laughed contemptuously. “Now there’s something you two won’t be seeing in the near future.”

  “Would you just go away?” Benjamin demanded, rounding on him.

  But Philip had noticed a peculiar, pregnant undertone in Paul’s latest taunt; the hint of some tacky piece of information he was anxious to share with them, perhaps.

  “Why—have you?” he asked.

  “Have I what?”

  “Seen a girl without any clothes on.”

  “Yup,” said Paul, pedalling faster and easing ahead of them.

  “Oh yes, of course you have,” said Benjamin, his voice leaden with sarcasm. “Loads of times, I suppose.”

  “No,” said Paul. “Just the once.”

  Benjamin grabbed him by the shoulder and forced him to a halt, almost pulling him off the bicycle.

  “Go on then,” he said. “Who was it?”

  Paul took a moment to size up the situation.

  “What’s it worth?” he asked.
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br />   “What it’s worth,” said Benjamin, “is that if you tell me, I won’t chop your legs off.”

  His grip on Paul’s shoulder tightened and he enjoyed watching him screw up his eyes in pain.

  “Let go,” said Paul, and when Benjamin did, he told him: “It was your friend’s sister.”

  “Who? What friend?”

  “You know—those two girls we met down at the café by the bus stop, ages ago.”

  Benjamin’s mind raced back to that humiliating encounter: the Sunday morning when Claire had asked him for a date, and Paul had been so rude to Miriam that she’d slapped him in the face.

  “Claire’s sister, you mean?”

  “That’s right. I saw her down by the reservoir. Not this one, the one by Cofton Park. She was starkers. I saw her bush and everything.”

  In his surprise, Benjamin made the mistake of loosening his hold, and Paul seized the opportunity to leap back on to the bicycle and begin his escape.

  “Paul,” his brother called after him, “what are you talking about?” There was no reply, and he shouted louder still as the bicycle sped off. “That was pathetic, you know. Couldn’t you have thought of something a little bit more likely?”

  But all he heard in return, floating back to him through the mild winter air, was:

  I am an anti-CHRIST

  I am an anar-CHIST

  And the words looped and repeated themselves, over and over, as Paul vanished round a corner, pedalling furiously, his little legs fuelled as always by some limitless, manic, mysterious energy.

  11

  “You’ve been a good friend to me,” said Barbara Chase to Sheila Trotter.

  Sheila stared into her coffee, embarrassed. It was a nice thing to be told, but she didn’t know how to respond.

  “You probably think I’m very weak and foolish,” Barbara added.

  “No, not at all. Anyway, it’s not for me to say, is it?”

  Barbara smiled sadly and squeezed her hand.

  It was a cheerless, blustery morning, and they were the only customers in the Baker’s Dozen, a café which fronted on to the Bristol Road in the centre of Northfield. Coffee rings were stamped on to the formica tables and crumbs of doughnut and chocolate éclair filled up the cracks between the plastic cushions. As a venue for two women to share their deepest marital confidences, it didn’t have much going for it. But then there wasn’t a lot to choose from, in Northfield, in 1977.