by Jonathan Coe
It wasn’t quite as nasty or as simple as that. But she was beginning to think that there were two measures she must take: first, that she should stop being so unpleasant to Doug, and making him suffer for her family problems, with which he had no direct connection; and second, that she should attempt to meet his father. She knew, actually, that she would have no peace of mind until she had met him, and she had asked him, straight out, to give his own account of the end of his affair with Miriam.
Today it occurred to her, for the first time, that these two resolutions might be connected.
Claire sighed and drank the last bitter dregs of her cold coffee. These reflections had plunged her into a terrible depression, and the thought of snooping after Mr. Plumb and Mrs. Chase suddenly seemed to have lost all its air of fun. Effortfully she began to sift through her pile of old copies of The Bill Board and soon turned, with weary inevitability, to the issue of Thursday, 28th November, 1974: the week of Miriam’s disappearance.
It did not make for cheery reading.
KING WILLIAM’S PUPIL A VICTIM OF PUB BOMBING
ran the main headline, and underneath it was a picture of Lois Trotter, Ben’s older sister. Claire scanned the article quickly, since she knew most of the story already. It was amazing that Lois had emerged almost unscathed, physically, given that her boyfriend Malcolm had been sitting right next to her and had been killed in the blast. There was no explanation here of how that might have happened. Claire laughed bleakly when the article ended, “Lois is currently in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, being treated for severe shock.” So severe, she thought, that she still hasn’t recovered more than two years later. She had given up asking Benjamin about her; the subject was too painful. Although somebody had mentioned to her that Lois was back at home now, living with the family again.
The next issue, for 5th December, 1974, was particularly dull. It must have been a quiet news week, because the leading story concerned a persistent leak in the Girls’ School swimming pool. But in the corner of page 5 there was something that caught her eye: a short column headed “LONGBRIDGE NEWS.”
Questions are again being raised [it said] about safety at Longbridge after a fatal accident on the shop floor. Jim Corrigan, an Irish maintenance worker aged only twenty-three years, was attempting to shift machinery weighing 2000 lb from one shop to another, using a purpose-built wheeled trolley. One of the trolley wheels became stuck in a joint on the concrete floor, and it is believed that Corrigan then used a trolley jack to raise the load, which overbalanced and crushed him to death. There was an almost identical incident in the same workplace less than three months ago, which resulted (thankfully) in only minor injuries for another worker. A Longbridge health and safety spokesman said that the coincidence was “freakish,” but admitted that the offending joint in the floor had not been repaired following the earlier accident. Mr. Corrigan leaves behind a wife and one small daughter.
This story, upsetting enough in itself, also reminded Claire of something: that the paper had had a tradition, not so long ago, of running regular stories about the Longbridge plant, on the basis that pupils should be encouraged to take an interest in the affairs of a factory which gave so much employment to the surrounding area. The series had been dropped, presumably, because it was so unpopular—she could remember giving scant attention to these items herself—but why shouldn’t it now be revived? Not because it was such a great idea, of course, but because it might give her the perfect excuse for having a long and private conversation with Bill Anderton: a full-length interview, a profile of one of the key figures in so many of the factory’s recent labour disputes.
Yes, that might work . . .
Poor Jim Corrigan, she thought, pushing the stacks of paper aside and rubbing a tired knuckle into her eyes. Twenty-three years old; picked cruelly at random, the life crushed out of him one Tuesday afternoon, an ordinary working day. Poor Malcolm. Blown to oblivion, one ordinary Thursday evening; sentenced to death for wanting to take his girlfriend out for a drink in a city-centre pub. And poor Miriam, wherever she was . . .
Three deaths?
Please God (the invocation came unbidden, before she could stop it), let that not be the truth of it. Let Miriam not be dead.
Three curtailed narratives, then. Three stories, with no connection between them except that they had been truncated, savagely, when their opening chapters had barely been written. All in the same few days. The same fatal few days. What days those had been, for unfinished stories.
13
THE BILL BOARD
Thursday, 17 March, 1977
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
From R. J. Culpepper, lower science sixth
Dear Sir,
I write in response to the article by S. Richards which you published in your last number, entitled—with stunning originality—“end of an era.” It is some time since you favoured your readers with quite such an outpouring of sentimental claptrap.
Mr. Richards appoints himself spokesman for all that he considers decent and honourable in British sporting life, and laments the fact that this year’s Oxford v. Cambridge Boat Race is being funded, for the first time in its history, by a commercial sponsor, viz. Ladbrokes the book-maker. He points out that the victors’ trophy has even been re-named— horror of horrors!—the “Ladbroke Cup.”
If Mr. Richards could just raise his head for a few moments from the sandy depths in which he has buried it, he might pause to reflect on the advantages of this arrangement.
There are few more inspiring events in the sporting calendar than the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. The spectacle of two crack racing eights speeding along the Thames, once seen, can never be forgotten. (I write as someone who has witnessed the race at first-hand, which Mr. Richards hasn’t, to the best of my knowledge.) Furthermore, this splendid entertainment is enjoyed every year by thousands of Londoners and millions of television viewers—all, I might add, without paying a penny for the privilege.
Does Mr. Richards believe that crews can undergo months of rigorous training without incurring any expenses, or even that racing boats themselves grow on trees? It might interest him to learn, on the contrary, that they cost £3000 each: a sum which can now be met out of private sponsorship, so that the survival of this great British institution remains assured for the forseeable future.
The sixteen members of The Closed Circle, a “think-tank” composed of the finest minds in King William’s (to which Mr. Richards has not, I believe, been elected) last week held a fascinating discussion on the subject of “continuity and change.” A most telling point was made, on this occasion, by the newest of our members, P. D. Trotter, who has recently secured election at the unprecedentedly young age of thirteen. Trotter made the observation that only people with a deep love and knowledge of tradition understand it well enough to realize that radical, sometimes brutal measures can be needed to keep it alive. Modernize— modernize or die, was his rallying-call: a slogan that should be pondered long and hard by Mr. Richards and all those like him—including the members of the present government—whose complacent, backward-looking attitude has led this country into its present state of social and economic inertia.
In conclusion, I would suggest to Mr. Richards that the safeguarding of British traditions is best left to those whose familiarity with them goes back more than one generation.
Yours faithfully,
R. J. Culpepper.
14
There were many different theories concerning Culpepper’s hatred of Richards. Some people put it down to racism; others observed, rightly enough, that Richards had matured into the finer athlete, and his rival was chewed up with envy.
Doug had another explanation. “I reckon it’s all because he never managed to have it off with Cicely, and Steve did.”
Benjamin, who still hated to think about what had happened at the cast party, went suddenly very quiet. But Claire was intrigued. She had never heard the whole story of Cicely and Culpepper’s failed romance
.
“It was all because of Sean, of course,” Doug began, and for a moment Benjamin was sidetracked into thinking how strange it sounded, even now, to hear Harding being called by his first name. It was one of the great moments of transition at King William’s, that crossing of the Rubicon from surname to first name, and with Harding, no doubt because of the wariness or even fear with which he was regarded by some of his classmates, it had happened later than most. Benjamin himself still called him “Harding,” nine times out of ten. Not that they spoke to each other much any more.
“Culpepper fancied Cicely,” Doug explained. “He was obsessed with her.”
Claire said: “Of course he was. Like all of you.” She glanced at Benjamin, who said nothing.
“And last summer, he thought he’d cracked it. He was playing tennis one day, and then she turns up with a friend to play on the next court, and before you know it they’ve hooked up and they’re playing mixed doubles. Now she’s crap at tennis, unfortunately, but he doesn’t tell her this. He gets her thinking that she’s just playing with the wrong sort of racket. So he says to her, If you like, next time you’re playing, you can borrow my racket. Of course, he’s got the most expensive bloody racket in the world, the sort that Björn Borg and Ilie Nastase play with, or something. So she says, Thanks very much, you’re my hero and what have you, flutters the old eyelashes, the usual Cicely sort of thing.
“OK, so next week, she’s ready to borrow his racket. It’s in his locker, and the locker’s got a combination padlock on it. So—big show of generosity towards Cicely, he tells her the combination. Just go and help yourself, he says. The trouble is—Sean knows the combination too. Don’t ask me how. It’s just the kind of thing he knows. And he gets there half an hour before Cicely, and does his business.”
“What did he do?” asked Claire.
“Well, if there’s one thing Culpepper’s famous for, apart from being a prize dickhead, it’s his porn collection. He’s addicted to the stuff. Can’t get enough of it. Not that he keeps it in his locker, of course. That’d be asking for trouble. But that must have been what gave Harding the idea. Because Cicely gets to the locker, opens it up, and this is what she sees. Every square inch of that locker is covered, covered from top to bottom, with pictures from wank mags. And not just your regular porn, but the weirdest, sickest kind of things. Women doing it with dogs, and guys sticking vacuum cleaners up each other’s bums, and all kinds of incredible stuff. And standing there in the middle of it is Culpepper’s lovely new tennis racket, but I don’t suppose she took much notice of that.”
Claire laughed delightedly, and even Benjamin had to join in, although he’d heard the story many times before. It was one of Harding’s finer moments, he had to admit.
“What did she say to him?” Claire wanted to know.
“I don’t think she said anything.” Doug stood up and collected their empty glasses. “Anyway, here she is now—you can ask her yourself.”
He went to the bar for another round of drinks just as Cicely entered the pub and made her way towards their table. Spearheading the fashion for Annie Hall–inspired clothing, she was wearing a man’s tweed jacket, green baggy corduroys, a collarless shirt and a wide-brimmed hat. Benjamin thought that she looked extraordinarily elegant and heart-stoppingly beautiful. Claire thought that she looked ludicrous.
“Hi, Ciss,” she said, rising to her feet. “Fabulous clothes.”
The rift created by Claire’s interview had been healed some time ago; on the surface, at least. But there was still something brittle and mannered about the way they now kissed each other on the cheek. As for Benjamin, she didn’t kiss him at all; simply said: “Shall we go and sit by ourselves for a while?”
“Did that seem terribly rude?” she asked, as they found themselves a seat by the window. (The nice thing about The Grapevine was that it had big picture windows. The not so nice thing was that they overlooked a busy underpass known, inappropriately, as Paradise Circus.)
“I don’t think so,” said Benjamin, who couldn’t have cared less. He would have ditched any pretence of good manners for the sake of this thrilling intimacy. “I think there’s something going on between those two tonight, anyway.”
“I just find it so hard to talk to Claire after what she wrote about me. I feel she betrayed me. Can you make her out, at all?”
Benjamin shrugged. As usual, in Cicely’s presence, he was afraid of appearing inarticulate, and as usual, this fear robbed him of his power of speech.
“People are so . . . opaque, so enigmatic,” she mused. “That’s fascinating, though, isn’t it? That must fascinate you, as a writer.”
“Yes, it does,” said Benjamin. He had rashly told Cicely that he was working on a novel, and now she had him marked down as a keen observer of human nature. It was a pretence he felt obliged to sustain, for her benefit. “The complexities of social behaviour, the . . . subtle nuances of character are all . . .” (what the fuck was he talking about?) “. . . well, I’m really into all that.”
“I find it rather terrifying,” said Cicely, with a smile, “to think how closely you must be watching everything I say and do. Do you write it all down afterwards?”
“I don’t need to,” said Benjamin, solemnly and truthfully. “I can always remember it.”
“I hope you aren’t going to put me in your book. I’m sure your portrait would be very unflattering. I’d emerge as some ridiculous egotist, totally obsessed with myself and not at all interested in the world around me.”
It pained Benjamin that every time he saw her (and this was the fourth of their meetings at The Grapevine), she would fall into this way of talking: this endless, punishing self-denigration.
“Is that really how you see yourself?” he asked.
“It’s how you’ve made me see myself,” Cicely answered, and there was nothing but gratitude in her voice and eyes as she said it.
“I’ll get you a drink,” muttered Benjamin, and as he waited at the bar he bit his lip and told himself, yet again, that the time had come to confess the truth: to tell Cicely once and for all that it was absurd, this rôle she had found for him, casting him as her severest critic, her conscience, almost, when the fact of the matter was that he worshipped everything about her with unquestioning fervour. Only one thought was holding him back—the awful suspicion that once she knew what his real feelings were, she would lose interest in him, and not want to see him again. He was in a grotesque situation, in other words, being permitted to spend as much time as he wanted in the company of the person he idolized more than anyone in the world, but only on condition that he never said anything affectionate to her, never paid her a compliment, never mentioned that he loved or valued or was even attracted to her. The price he must pay for seeing Cicely was to live a permanent lie.
In any case, shortly after returning to their table with a half pint of Guinness and a Bloody Mary, Benjamin learned that this particular ordeal would soon be coming to an end.
“You’re very special to me, you know,” Cicely said. A tiny piece of snot was peeping out from her left nostril, and he watched, enraptured, as she absently removed it with a delicate stroke of her finger, and wiped it on a handkerchief. My God, he even adored the way she picked her nose. If it had come to a choice, at that moment, between watching Cicely pick her nose, or being slowly fellated in turn by Brigitte Bardot and Julie Christie, he knew which he would have preferred.
“We’ll always be friends, from now on,” she continued.
“And not just ordinary friends. There’s something different about our friendship. A kind of . . . precious quality to it. The way it started! God!”
She threw back her head and laughed, but for some reason Benjamin couldn’t share in her hilarity. He had a nasty, hollow intimation that something dreadful was about to happen. He smiled weakly.
“I’ll always be grateful, you know, for what you did for me. The way you revealed me to myself. No one could ask for anything more than that.
And I’ve loved these meetings we’ve had. Coming to this pub, and talking to each other, so frankly, so honestly.”
“You’ve . . . loved these meetings?” Benjamin said. She looked at him inquiringly, so he explained: “You said ‘loved.’ You used the past tense.”
“I know.” She stared into her drink, unable to meet his eye. “I can’t come here and see you any more, Ben. I’m sorry.”
A fuse was suddenly blown, in some far distant galaxy, and the universe went black.
“Why not?” Benjamin heard himself saying, light years away.
“My boyfriend says he doesn’t like it.”
“Your . . .?”
“I’ve started going out with Julian. Julian Stubbs.” She was almost weeping into her drink, now. “It’ll be a disaster, I know. Oh, I’m a terrible, terrible person.”
The evening turned out more successfully for Claire. Her reward for being friendly to Doug all evening was that he invited her home for coffee. They were both slightly drunk, and on the back seat of the number 62 bus as it rattled its way up Lickey Road, past the Longbridge factory gates, she allowed him to slip his arm around her shoulder. She drew the line when he made fumbling but unmistakable overtures towards her left breast; but it was pleasant, on the whole, to sit back on that warm spring night, not saying much, not attempting to make conversation, just watching the play of amber light on the seats in front as the streetlamps passed overhead and the bus made its slow progress towards the terminus, taking Claire closer and closer to the next stage of her quest; or perhaps even its end.
When they arrived at Doug’s house, his mother was watching television and his father was still working, his papers arranged in careful stacks on the dining-room table, his cigarette burning out almost untouched in the ashtray. They both rose to their feet when they saw that their son had company. For a terrible moment she thought that Doug was going to tell them her full name, so that Bill would realize she was Miriam’s little sister and would become hostile and suspicious and reluctant to talk to her. But all he said was, “Mum, Dad—this is Claire,” and then Bill went back to work, and she talked in the kitchen for about half an hour with Doug and Irene, and then just as she was leaving she went back into the dining room and asked Bill if she could interview him for the school magazine, and he looked amazed but clearly very pleased by the idea, and Doug also looked amazed and slightly less pleased, but then Claire kissed him on the mouth when they said goodnight in the front doorway and that seemed to make things better.