Number 11

by Jonathan Coe

  She plucked out another tape, its cardboard case torn and patched up with Sellotape. Rachel craned over to see the title.

  ‘What a Whopper?’ she said, amused and disbelieving. ‘What on earth’s that?’

  ‘Believe it or not, this is one of the films I’m supposed to be writing about. You certainly wouldn’t catch me watching it for pleasure. In fact it’s hard to believe that anybody ever did. Do you think you could help me take these down to the cellar as well? I don’t want them to be in your way.’

  They picked up a cardboard box each and began the slightly hazardous business of carrying them down the narrow, uneven staircase.

  ‘Why are you writing about it, if it’s so bad?’ Rachel asked. ‘The film, I mean.’

  ‘Well, the plot – such as it is – involves the Loch Ness Monster. I haven’t got a clue what I’m going to say about it, but in this business you always win Brownie points for digging up something obscure. Roger was particularly good at that, I must say.’

  And when they reached the cellar, it was easy to see why that might have been. It had been excavated to quite some depth, so that it was easy for both of them to stand upright. And it was filled with boxes: beneath the glare of the two naked lightbulbs that hung from the ceiling, Rachel could see at least thirty or forty of them, some filled with books or files or papers, but most simply crammed to the top with more videotapes and DVDs.

  ‘Wow,’ said Rachel. ‘He was quite a collector, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Laura. ‘Roger never did anything by halves.’

  They put their boxes down near the bottom of the stairs and then stood, for a while, in wordless contemplation of the scene of orderly profusion laid out before them. From somewhere in the cellar there emanated a faint, monotonous, electrical hum, which somehow seemed to accentuate the otherwise absolute silence. The light from one of the bulbs had started to flicker uncertainly. There was a damp, mouldering smell which made Rachel fear for the well-being of Roger’s collection, and a piercing chill which made her shiver not just with cold but with sadness. She was keenly aware that she was looking at more than just a jumble of files and boxes. These were the last remains of a human being: all that was left of Laura’s husband.

  Laura’s only comment was: ‘What a mess. I’ve got to do something about it soon.’ And then: ‘Come on, it’s getting late. We’d better have this walk before it gets dark.’

  She turned and led the way up the stairs, much to the relief of Rachel, who could not get out of there quickly enough. She had always hated cellars.

  On the ground floor, Laura detoured into the kitchen, where Keisha was busy loading a full basket of washing into the washing machine.

  ‘Did you get the parcels ready?’ Laura asked.

  ‘On the table,’ Keisha answered, without looking up.

  From the kitchen table, Laura picked up a large, eco-friendly canvas shopping bag, which seemed to be heavier than she was expecting.

  ‘Do you think you could take the other one?’ she said. ‘Sorry to be a bore, but this has become a bit of a weekend ritual.’

  Rachel grabbed hold of another bag, and glanced down at the contents: tins and packets of food, a jar of instant coffee and some boxes of breakfast cereal.

  ‘We’ll drop these off on the way, if you don’t mind,’ Laura said, and ushered her into the hallway. They were almost at the front door when Harry came rushing up behind them.

  ‘Mum, where are you going?’ he asked, plangently.

  ‘We’re going to the food bank,’ she said. ‘And then we’re going for a walk.’

  ‘Can I come with you?’ he pleaded.

  ‘No. You stay here. I thought you were playing with Keisha.’

  ‘I was but now she’s busy. She says she has lots of things to do.’

  ‘Well … read a book, or watch a video or something.’ Her tone was noticeably abrupt, dismissive. Rachel looked at her in surprise.

  ‘Oh Mum, please. I want to come with you.’

  With obvious reluctance, Laura finally relented. Out on the drive she heaved Harry into the back of the car and strapped him into his booster seat and then the three of them drove off in the direction of Didcot.

  *

  Rachel had never been to a food bank before. She had read articles about them, online and in the newspapers. But she had never been inside one.

  It was a brief visit, so she only received a fleeting impression. The bank had been set up in what appeared still to be used, on other days of the week, as a café, located in a narrow side road running off the high street. People were sitting in family groups at each of the lightweight silver tables, but they were not drinking coffee: they were clutching vouchers and waiting for their parcels to be made up. Nobody bore any outward sign of poverty. Well-dressed couples waited in pensive silence while bored children sat beside them. The most noticeable thing was that nobody from one table ever seemed to make eye contact with anyone from another. The prevailing mood, as far as Rachel could see, was one of mortification: everybody simply wanted to finish their business and leave as quickly as possible. Somewhere at the back there seemed to be a store room, where the parcels were made up: these would then be carried to the counter where volunteers would match them up to the relevant voucher and call out a number. A family member would scurry up to the counter, eyes never leaving the floor, grab the parcel and then usher their partner or children out of the front door. A number would be called out every twenty or thirty seconds, and there was a constant stream of people going in and out. It was as busy as a GP’s waiting room.

  People glanced up at Laura, Rachel and Harry as they came in carrying their shopping bags, but soon looked away again. It was painfully clear who was a donor and who was a supplicant. Rachel had rarely felt so self-conscious. They were shown straight to the store room, and dropped off their bags so quickly that Rachel barely had time to take in the variety of food on the shelves: row upon row of tinned fruit, tinned meat, bags of rice and pasta, packets of biscuits and cakes, all marked with use-by dates in thick black marker pen. Harry, his eye-level lower than hers, stared longingly at a stack of chocolate bars in different-coloured wrappers.

  ‘Why can’t we ever take any stuff from the food bank?’ he asked his mother as she tugged him away. ‘Why do we only ever give things?’

  ‘Oh, do shut up,’ she said, and Rachel was struck again by the note of severity and impatience in her voice.

  After that, the drive to Longworth took about twenty-five minutes. By the time they turned off the A420 on the outskirts of the village, it was quite late, and the cloud-covered sky was already darkening to a deeper grey. The village itself seemed sleepy, relaxed, perfectly indifferent to (or oblivious of) the tragedy that had unfolded there almost a decade earlier. Laura seemed to know exactly which turnings to take, and where to park the car.

  ‘You’ve been here a few times before, then, have you?’ Rachel asked.

  ‘Yes, Roger and I used to come here quite often. You don’t have to be a David Kelly obsessive to like Harrowdown Hill. It’s a nice walk, apart from anything else. Which is why he took it that afternoon, of course.’

  They pulled in to the car park of The Blue Boar pub, a cosy, welcoming thatched building in Cotswold stone, which nonetheless appeared to be closed this afternoon, going by the dimness of the lighting just about visible through its tiny windows. Wrapping up against the now very tangible chill, the two women turned right out of the car park and set off down the lane at a brisk pace, with little Harry dawdling behind them, tracing a more erratic route which involved zig-zagging fro
m one side of the lane to the other. It was a no-through road, and there was no traffic: any approaching cars would have been easy to hear, so Laura did not seem at all concerned that he was playing unsupervised. She was more worried that he was holding them back.

  ‘Hurry up, Harry!’ she called, turning and frowning at him. ‘You’ve got to keep up with us. You’re making us all go too slowly.’

  Harry ran towards her obediently and clasped her hand. Mother and son walked along like that for half a minute or so; then Rachel noticed that Laura unloosed his hand and let it fall.

  ‘So,’ Laura now said, ‘this is the lane he would have walked along, at about three o’clock in the afternoon. And that’s the hill he was making for – look, just ahead on the left.’

  Rachel’s eyes followed her pointing finger, towards a nondescript, tree-covered mound in the landscape which made the word ‘hill’ seem somewhat hyperbolic. In the rapidly fading daylight, it did not look especially beautiful.

  ‘We won’t be able to get into the wood,’ Laura added. ‘They’ve put barbed wire around it now.’

  Before long the tarmac had petered out and they found themselves walking up a dirt track, overgrown with grass and bordered with weeds and wild flowers. Harry took a stick to these and was soon hacking them down with gusto.

  ‘I can see why they’d do that,’ said Rachel. ‘You’re right, it does feel a bit … morbid, coming here.’

  ‘Why do you remember the news story so clearly, do you think?’ Laura asked. ‘You must have been very young when it happened.’

  ‘I was ten. I was staying with my grandparents, and I remember them being very shocked by it. My grandad always hated Tony Blair so of course he was prepared to think the worst. I mean, I’m not sure he thought he was murdered or anything, but he definitely thought there was something strange about it …’

  ‘I know, it felt very … odd, didn’t it, that day?’ Laura said. ‘But I’m not sure I believe in conspiracy theories, and what Roger said afterwards … He just thought that a line had been crossed, a terrible line, and it was the shockwaves of that which were giving everyone the sense that there was something else going on, something mysterious.’

  They passed a sign which read ‘River Thames, ¾ Mile’, which surprised Rachel: she had not realized that the river was nearby. Harry was starting to look cold. Another few minutes and they would be as close to the top of the hill as the path allowed, with the fatal woodland spreading out to their left.

  ‘He had this theory,’ said Laura, ‘– Roger was full of theories, mainly I suppose because that’s what he got paid for … Anyway, this one was that every generation has a moment when they lose their innocence. Their political innocence. And that’s what David Kelly’s death represented for our generation. Up until then, we’d been sceptical about the Iraq war. We’d suspected the government wasn’t telling us the whole truth. But the day he died was the day it became absolutely clear: the whole thing stank. Suicide or murder, it didn’t really matter. A good man had died, and it was the lies surrounding the war that had killed him, one way or another. So that was it. None of us could pretend any longer that we were being governed by honourable people.’

  ‘That sounds about right,’ said Rachel. ‘But it’s sad.’

  ‘What’s sad about it?’

  ‘Losing your innocence. It’s just about the worst thing that can happen. Isn’t that what Paradise Lost is all about?’

  ‘Innocence is overrated,’ said Laura. ‘Anyone who hankers after lost innocence is … well, I don’t trust them.’ They had reached the edge of the woodland and were peering aimlessly into it, wanting to find meaning in its tangle of greenery and undergrowth. Harry was behind them, tugging at Laura’s coat, trying to get her attention, instinctively but for no particular reason. ‘Look at him, for instance,’ she said, glancing down at her son, whose eyes met hers in a plaintive but unspecific appeal. ‘He still has his innocence. Do you envy him for it? He still thinks his Christmas presents are brought by a big bloke in a red suit, in a sleigh pulled by reindeer. What’s so great about that?’

  It was almost dark now. Putting her hands into her pockets and pulling her coat tighter, Laura started to lead the way back down the path towards the village.

  ‘I could tell you a story,’ she said, ‘about what happens when someone longs too much for innocence.’

  Rachel looked down at Harry. Their eyes met and he shrugged: neither of them could guess what his mother was talking about. Rachel took his hand as they walked back down the hill.

  *

  Keisha had left a casserole in the oven for them: all Laura had to do was boil some rice. They ate in the kitchen, after which Laura went upstairs to put Harry to bed. It always took longer than she would like: when she came back down and joined Rachel in the sitting room, she found that she had managed to light a good fire, with a neat pyramid of logs already flaming on a nest of kindling wood and back issues of the Guardian. Now Rachel was sitting in one of the two sagging but comfortable armchairs placed on either side of the fire, her eyes fixed on the screen of her smart phone.

  ‘This is a bit harsh,’ she said, looking up only briefly to say thank you as Laura put a glass of red wine down on the table beside her. ‘“A film that makes you want to stab out your eyes with red hot knitting needles.” And that’s one of the better reviews.’

  ‘What are you looking at?’ said Laura, sitting down opposite her.

  ‘I’m on the IMDb, looking at reviews of that film you showed me earlier.’

  ‘What a Whopper?’

  ‘Yes. It doesn’t seem to have many fans on here. I think your husband must have been in a small minority.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that he was a fan, exactly. He knew rubbish when he saw it. But Roger responded to books and films in all sorts of different, contradictory ways. That was one of the nice things about him. And also one of the most frustrating. And of course, everything was grist to his mill as a critic. Look – I’ll show you something.’

  She left the room and returned carrying a thick, leather-bound A4 notebook. When she opened it Rachel could see that page after page was covered with dense, spidery handwriting. It was a catalogue of films, in roughly alphabetical order, all of them glossed with Roger’s fragmentary, rather cryptic annotations.

  ‘What does he say about it in there?’ Laura asked.

  Rachel turned to the ‘W’ section and soon found What a Whopper.

  Lame British comedy, she read, about a bunch of beatniks who travel to Loch Ness to build a model of the monster.

  1962. Sequel to What a Carve Up! (1961)? Not really. Two of the same actors.

  *Sequels which are not really sequels. Sequels where the relationship to the original is oblique, slippery.

  ‘What does this mean?’ Rachel asked, pointing to the asterisk at the beginning of the last line.

  ‘Ah, that means that something had given him the idea for an article,’ said Laura, craning forward to take a closer look. ‘Yeah, he was always doing that. Always coming up with ideas for pieces. When we first got married I was convinced he was some kind of genius and one day he was going to turn all this obscure knowledge into some great book, some academic masterpiece. I thought that’s what was driving him. It never occurred to me that it might have been something as simple as … nostalgia.

  ‘Moving to this house – that was the thing that began to open my eyes to what he was really like. I was pregnant with Harry and we had this clichéd idea that if we were going to bring up a child it would be a good idea to relocate to the country. Somewhere not far from Oxford, o
bviously.

  ‘So we started looking, and then, early in 2006, we found this place. I remember the morning we drove out here to look at it. It was a pretty hard winter that year, and this was in the last week of January. The day before, there’d been a heavy snowfall, and since then there hadn’t been much in the way of a thaw. Well, of course, that was what sold us, in a way. You can imagine how pretty this village looked, can’t you, when it was covered in snow? And the cottage itself … well, it just looked beautiful. Enchanting. The owners brought us inside, and made coffee to warm us up, and showed us around the house. We were both … taken with it, certainly, although I wouldn’t say that either of us was exactly in raptures at that point. As you can see, it’s a bit on the boxy side, and there were quite a few problems to do with damp and so on – none of which have really been sorted out. I could tell that Roger was unconvinced, was maybe having second thoughts about the whole thing. But that was before he saw the garden …’

  Laura smiled to herself when she spoke this word, and stared, reminiscent, into the dancing flames of the fire.

  ‘It was the last thing the owners of the house showed us. Roger and I went out to look at it together, and when we got out on to the terrace we held hands, as much for warmth as anything else, because neither of us was wearing gloves. And after a few seconds, I could feel him squeezing my hand. Squeezing it so tightly that it was actually hurting. I turned to look at him and I saw this look in his eye that I’d never seen before. It was … it was kind of faraway and intense at the same time. It rather scared me, to tell the truth. I could tell that some weird, powerful emotion had come over him. So I said, “Roger, what is it? What’s the matter?” And he turned to glance at me, but only for a second or two, because then he turned away again and looked across the lawn and he said something. Not to me – he wasn’t talking to me. He was talking to himself. And all he said, in little more than a whisper, was: “The Crystal Garden …”