The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim

by Jonathan Coe

  ‘To Stonehenge, of course. We’ll drive down late on Saturday night. We have to be there before dawn – that’s when the ceremony will begin.’

  He went on to explain, carefully, as if to an imbecile child, that the Christian story of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ was in fact nothing more than a corruption of much older and more powerful myths concerning the rising of the sun following the vernal equinox. Even the word Easter and its German equivalent, Ostern, came from a common origin – Eostur or Ostar – which to the Norsemen meant the season of the rising sun, the season of new life. And so, at dawn on Sunday, hundreds of pagan worshippers would gather within the great circle of stones outside Salisbury to pay their homage to the Sun God.

  ‘And you and I, my dear Harold, will most certainly be among them. Come to my place on Saturday evening – we’ll have a little supper – and then some friends will pick us up in their car at about two. We should be there in plenty of time.’

  ‘Friends?’ I asked. ‘What friends?’

  ‘Oh, just some people I know,’ he said, enigmatically. Roger liked to keep the different areas of his life strictly compartmentalized, and if he was about to introduce me to some of his fellow pagans, I knew that I was expected to regard this as a special privilege.

  ‘Remember,’ he said, just before we parted, ‘the Sun God is the masculine God. That’s what we will be going there to worship – the spirit of Manhood, the essence of Maleness. I shall,’ he added (with a challenging gleam in his eye), ‘take it very amiss if you choose not to come.’

  I told him that I would think about it, and left in a state of genuine indecision.

  Writing all of this down, at almost thirty years’ distance, it seems incredible to me now that I should have been so in thrall to Roger Anstruther and his arrogant, domineering personality. But remember – whoever you are, reading these pages – that I was callow, I was unsure of myself, I was a young man alone in a big, frightening city, and in Roger I felt that I had met someone who – how shall I put this? – who confirmed something about myself. Something I had always suspected – always known, even, in the very remotest depths of my being – but which I had been too frightened (too cowardly, he would say) to acknowledge. I was still, at that tender age, hungry to unravel the mysteries of life. At first I had thought that the answers lay in poetry, but now Roger was beginning to open up a different, even more alluring world to me – a world of shadows, portents, symbols, riddles and coincidences. Was it coincidence, for example, that all our schemes seemed to be coming to fruition on the eve of the festival of the Rising Sun, when this was the very name of the pub where we’d had all our earliest and most significant conversations? Questions like this nagged at my youthful, impressionable mind and made me feel that perhaps I was now on the verge of some revelation, some momentous breakthrough which would resolve all difficulties and set me free from the bonds which I felt had been restraining me all my life.

  It was for these reasons – reasons which might seem feeble and even frivolous to an unsympathetic reader (forgive me, Max, if that is you!) – that I chose not to return to my parents’ home that weekend; but on Saturday evening, instead, I set out on the long walk which led from my shared house in Highgate to Roger’s rented bedsitting room in a decrepit Notting Hill terrace.

  When I arrived, he was sitting at his desk. I could see at once that something was wrong. His face was deathly pale, and his hands were trembling as he sat hunched over pages and pages of densely scribbled figures, to which he was adding further calculations in pencil, in a state of such ferocious concentration that he barely looked up to register my arrival.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t interrupt,’ he answered curtly, and began whispering some more numbers under his breath, while scrawling ever more frantically on the paper.

  ‘Roger, you look dreadful,’ I persisted. ‘Is it … ?’ Of course, I knew what it was. I felt suddenly faint, and sat down heavily on his bed in the corner of the room. ‘Don’t tell me it’s the wager. Did it go wrong?’

  ‘Completely wrong,’ he said, in a trembling voice, crumpling up one of the sheets of paper, tossing it aside, and starting on a new one. ‘Utterly wrong.’

  ‘Well … What does that mean?’ I asked.

  ‘Mean? What does it mean?’ He glared at me in fury. ‘It means that we’ve lost everything. It means that on Monday morning I have to give Crispin the lot.’

  ‘But – But you told me that wasn’t possible.’

  ‘It wasn’t possible. Or at least, it shouldn’t have been possible.’

  ‘How did it happen? Didn’t the right horses win?’

  ‘Almost, yes. But then one of the races ended in a dead heat. That threw the whole thing out. We hadn’t allowed for it.’

  ‘I thought you’d allowed for everything.’

  ‘Will you just be quiet for a minute, Harold?’ He seized the sheet of paper and waved it at me, by way of demonstration. ‘Can’t you see what I’m trying to do? I’m trying to make sense of it all.’

  He seemed, however, more or less to have given up on this attempt: instead of making any more calculations, he simply sat there, sucking on his pencil and looking at the pages of arithmetic with sightless, unfocused eyes.

  ‘But, Roger,’ I began, gently, ‘Crispin is your friend, after all. He won’t hold us to this, will he?’

  At these words, after a short pause in which to digest them, Roger leaped up and began to pace the room.

  ‘Are you a halfwit?’ he barked, after a minute or two. ‘Don’t you understand anything? We signed a piece of paper. The City has a code of conduct for this sort of thing. Dictum meum pactum – “My word is my bond”. He’s going to take everything he can off us, you fool! Down to the last farthing. He’s in this up to his neck as well, you know. He will have lost a fortune today. An absolute bloody fortune. So he’s not going to let us wriggle out of this one.’

  There was a longer silence, during which I took in the enormity of what he was telling me, and its possible consequences: all our plans come to nothing, and ahead of me the prospect of weeks, or months, not merely of poverty but debt – for Roger had persuaded me to commit to this ludicrous wager even more money than I actually had to my credit in a bank account. And when my mind began to dwell on that fact, I started to feel towards him something which, until now, I had never allowed myself to feel: indignation – pure, boiling, seething indignation.

  ‘No, you’re the halfwit,’ I said to him – in a measured tone, at first: but when he looked across at me in disbelief, my voice started to rise. ‘You idiot, Roger! How could you have done this? More to the point, how can I have been so trusting? Why did I listen to you? Why have I let you treat me this way for months, doing everything at your behest, running around at your beck and call as if I were your mistress? I was so impressed by you, so in awe of you, and now … now this! You didn’t know what you were doing. You didn’t even know what you were talking about. You’re a fraud, that’s what you are. What our American cousins would call a phoney. And here I’ve been, hanging on your every word, believing everything you tell me – giving away half of my favourite books because you despise the authors, throwing away most of my own poems because you treated them with such … cold, calculated disdain. And yet you’re a fraud, pure and simple! To think that I listened to you, to think that I took you seriously! When you weren’t making a spectacle of us both in the theatre, you were trying to tell me that the Christian faith was bunkum and we should all be sacrificing goats in the middle of a stone circle instead – you even told me that you were going to put a curse on your sister, for pity’s sake! Well, who do you think you are, exactly? A guru, a magician? A cross between Leavis, Midas and Gandalf? I’m afraid it won’t wash any more, Roger – it just won’t wash. You’ve dazzled me for long enough. The truth is that I can see through you now. My eyes have been opened. I suppose I should be grateful for that, at least – although it’s been a heavy price
to pay, a very heavy price. Well, one lives and learns.’

  I picked up my coat from the bed and started putting it on again, intending to leave; but I was halted by some words of Roger’s, spoken in a low, insistent, chilling monotone.

  ‘I did put a curse on my sister,’ he said.

  I paused, with my arm halfway into a sleeve.

  ‘Pardon?’

  By way of reply, Roger walked over to the mantelpiece, and picked up a letter. It was written on two sheets of blue notepaper, folded in half. He handed it to me, and stood over me while I was reading it.

  It was from his mother. I cannot remember much of what it said, but I do remember the thrust, which was to let Roger know that his sister was distraught, after losing her baby in a miscarriage a few days earlier.

  ‘So?’ I said, handing back the letter, and finishing the business of putting my coat on.

  ‘I did that,’ he said.

  I looked at him for a moment, to see if he was being serious. Apparently, he was. ‘Don’t be ludicrous,’ I said, and made for the door.

  Roger grabbed me by the arm, and pulled me back.

  ‘It’s true, I tell you. That was what I asked her for.’

  ‘Asked her? Asked who?’

  ‘The Goddess.’

  I was in no mood to hear this. Whether what he said was true or not (or whether he believed it or not – which perhaps was more to the point), I wanted to leave.

  ‘Enjoy your festival tomorrow morning,’ I said. ‘I’m going home.’

  I tried to shake myself free from his grip, but it became tighter. I looked into his eyes and was amazed to see that there were tears welling up in them.

  ‘Don’t go, Harold,’ he said. ‘Please don’t go.’

  Before I really knew what was happening, he had drawn me closer to him, and was kissing me on the mouth. I tried to pull away but his embrace was stronger than I would have thought possible.

  ‘So much,’ he was whispering, as the bristles of his beard brushed coarsely against my lips, ‘so much we haven’t done. So much still to do …’

  I could feel his erection growing against my own crotch. With one final return of strength, I wrenched myself free and pushed him away with all the force I could muster. In fact it was enough to throw him off his feet and into the fireplace, where he knocked over the electric fire (fortunately unlit) and ended up half-sitting, half-lying, and rubbing his head where it had inadvertently cracked against the Victorian tiling. It crossed my mind for a moment that I might actually have caused him some injury, but such was my fury that, instead of rushing to his aid, I fumbled with the latch on his door, pulled it open as quickly as I could, and was gone without bothering to close it, and without so much as a backward glance.

  *

  There is not much more to tell.

  I did not see Roger again for more than a year after that. A short, businesslike note arrived from him on the Monday morning, informing me that Crispin Lambert was demanding the payment of a large sum of money. I scraped the sum together (borrowing most of it from my parents) and sent it off to him as soon as I could. After that, things went very quiet. I heard that Roger had left his jobbing firm, and no longer worked on the Exchange floor, but I had no idea what had become of him. Of course I was curious, but I suppressed that curiosity. I began to see that he was a dangerous person. And I began to feel that there was danger, too, in the feelings he had almost managed to arouse in me. I wanted nothing further to do with them. The period of my life that I now entered upon was safe, but colourless. I had been genuinely fond of Roger, and found that life without him was flat, lacking in piquancy. A new secretary joined the firm of Walter, Davis & Warren in the autumn. Her name was Barbara. She came from Birmingham, and she was blonde, busty and pretty. I made overtures towards her. She responded encouragingly. We began to see each other out of office hours. We commenced upon a low-key, chaste and uneventful courtship. I took her to the cinema, I took her to the theatre, I took her to the concert hall. One night early in the summer of 1960 I took her to hear Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet suite being performed at the Albert Hall, in the hope that its grand romantic climaxes would stir in both of our breasts some corresponding passion for each other. It failed to do so. In the interval, she told me that she would rather I didn’t take her to classical music concerts any more. She said that she preferred Cliff Richard and Tommy Steele. She told me this while we were finishing our drinks at the bar – mine a half pint of bitter, hers a Dubonnet and lemon – after which, she went to the ladies’, and I looked across to the other end of the bar and saw Roger staring at me. He was alone, and his face wore a satisfied, knowing smile. He raised his glass to me. I finished my beer and left, without returning the gesture.

  The next morning, a note arrived for me at work. It said:

  There is still time for me to rescue you.

  The Rising Sun, 9 p.m. tonight.

  He was right, of course. I could no longer fight what I knew to be my destiny. I could no longer tell myself lies about my own nature. When I turned my footsteps in the direction of The Rising Sun that night, it was with one fixed intention: to do whatever it was that Roger Anstruther asked of me.

  I arrived rather early, at twenty to nine, and ordered a double whisky in order to steady my nerves. I drank it quickly, and ordered another. The second drink lasted for at least half an hour, at the end of which time I looked at my watch, and realized that Roger was late. I ordered a pint of bitter, and took out my notebook, thinking that it would help me to compose myself if I occupied the time in writing. The pub was busy. Another half an hour went by.

  It was only then that I began to see the obvious explanation for Roger’s lateness. Could he possibly have been referring to the other Rising Sun? Strange though it may seem, the thought had not occurred to me until this moment. To me, The Rising Sun in Cloth Fair would always be our pub: it was where we’d had our first drink together, and where all our tenderest and most meaningful encounters had subsequently taken place. As for the other one in Carter Lane, I had only been there once – on the evening that Roger had introduced me to Crispin Lambert. It had no special significance or resonance for me at all; but I was aware that Roger had returned there many times, usually to meet Crispin and to confer about their elaborate bets. Had I made a silly, humiliating mistake by assuming that his conversations with me would loom far more impressively in his memory than those sessions with Crispin? Was he sitting there, now, waiting for me, just as I was sitting here, waiting for him?

  I delayed another quarter of an hour, and then decided that it was worth taking a chance. I could walk from one pub to the other, if I hurried, and be in with a good chance of finding Roger if he was still there waiting for me. I would cut down West Smithfield, then Giltspur Street, and then straight down past the Old Bailey and into Carter Lane via Blackfriars Lane. It ought to be safe enough. The only danger – and it was a very remote one – was that Roger might have the same thought, leave The Rising Sun at the same time, and come to find me using a different route: up Creed Lane, for instance, then Ave Maria Lane, Warwick Lane, King Edward Street, Little Britain and Bartholomew Close. But this was surely a risk worth taking.

  I drained my glass and left the pub, then half-walked, half-ran through the empty streets until the welcoming lights of The Rising Sun were visible in Carter Lane. Short of breath – partly from making such haste, but mainly from anxiety that this crucial evening was dissolving into chaos – I threw open the doors of the pub and rushed inside. There were few people in either the snug or the lounge bar, and Roger, I could see at once, was not among them. A young barman was collecting glasses from the unoccupied tables.

  ‘Has a young man been in here?’ I demanded. ‘Early twenties – red hair – beard – quite possibly wearing a cape?’

  ‘Mr Anstruther? Yes, he was here. He left about two minutes ago.’

  I let slip a torrent of swear words at this news, much to the barman’s consternation. Then, leaving the
pub even more hastily than I’d entered it, I stood for a moment in the street, looking left and right, wondering which way to go. It seemed likely that Roger might have had the same thought as I, and hurried over to the pub I had just left; so, breaking into a sprint now, I retraced my steps up the Old Bailey and Giltspur Street, and was back in The Rising Sun in three or four minutes flat.

  ‘Are you looking for your friend?’ the barman said, as soon as I appeared. ‘Because he was in here a moment ago, asking after you.’

  ‘No!’ I shouted, putting my head in my hands, and tearing at my hair. This was too horrific to contemplate. ‘Which way did he go?’

  ‘Up towards Middle Street, I think,’ said the barman.

  But I never found him. I ran outside and spent the next twenty or thirty minutes searching for Roger, calling out his name as I scoured every street within a few hundred yards of Smithfield Market. But he was nowhere to be seen. He was gone.

  There was only one last chance. I remembered that there used to be a payphone in the communal hallway of the Notting Hill house where he had his bedsit. I called the number (which I still knew by heart), and waited what seemed like an age for someone to answer, my nervous breath steaming up the windows of the telephone box. But it was no use. It was more than a year since I had last used this number, and when a stranger’s voice finally answered, it was to tell me that Roger no longer lived at this address. After a few seconds’ silence, during which I struggled to regain my power of speech, I thanked the anonymous voice, replaced the receiver slowly, and leaned my forehead against the wall of the telephone box.

  So, it was over. Everything was over. Cold, paralysing despair took me in its grasp.

  What was I to do now?

  I am not sure, in retrospect, how I managed to find myself in the street outside Barbara’s flat in Tooting. Did I get there by bus? Did I take the tube? I cannot remember. That interval of time has been wiped from my memory. It must have been late at night when I arrived, however, for I do remember that I could get no answer from her doorbell, and had to wake her by throwing pebbles at her third-floor window.