A Touch of Love

by Jonathan Coe

  ‘Good idea. Put your feet up. You’ll feel better for it. Kerry and I are going away soon: two weeks in Portugal. When did you and Mark last have a proper holiday together?’

  ‘Oh, some time ago. Look, the father is your main witness, is he?’

  ‘Yes. His version of events is – well, you’ve read it yourself. He says that his son went into the bushes to retrieve this ball and Grant followed him in there.’

  ‘But that’s not what happened at all. Robin was there already.’

  ‘So he says. But what does a grown man sneak off into a clump of bushes for, at seven in the evening?’

  ‘To relieve himself, of course. Which would explain, wouldn’t it, why he was looking “shifty”, as I believe the father put it? He’d been drinking tea and coffee all day, with a friend.’

  ‘A friend?’

  ‘A male friend. Parrish. Edward Parrish: they knew each other at university. Have you not been in contact with him?’

  ‘Oh, the elusive Mr Parrish. Yes, I have. I found him very reluctant to testify. He might yet be open to persuasion, though.’ Alun crossed and uncrossed his spindly legs, so that they came into embarrassed contact with Emma’s beneath the table. ‘Well, there we have the facts. There we have the facts which, as you rightly say, are open to quite different interpretations, given their overall sketchiness. And so, since we cannot furnish additional facts, in all probability, we must take the ones which we have already, and arrive at a more solid basis of interpretation. Wouldn’t you agree?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Emma, who was only just beginning to remember how boring he could be. ‘What are you suggesting, then?’

  ‘Well, we have the boy’s testimony. It’s not very coherent, it’s not very conclusive, it just says that this man exposed himself and he was very frightened. Then we have Grant’s version, and we have the other’s version. Whom do we trust, that’s what I’m saying: which of these people is the most trustworthy?’

  ‘I haven’t met the father.’

  ‘I saw him a few days ago. He phoned me and said that he’d remembered some more details since making his police statement. As it turned out, they weren’t all that significant, but I found out a few more things about him. He’s going to make a very good witness.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘The man is a pillar of the community. Without a doubt. A scoutmaster, for one thing: good with children. A member of the local RSPCA, for another: kind to animals. He’s a staunch churchman, a methodist. He hands out the bibles every Sunday. He started his local neighbourhood watch, he belongs to the Rotary Club, he may even be a Freemason. His wife regularly attends W. I. meetings and is the guiding light behind the Radford Ramblers’ and Birdlovers’ Coffee Club. They are blood donors, both. What more do I have to say?’

  ‘What does that prove? So he’s a family man, and this boy is the only child. All the more reason to be neurotic about his safety. It’s an obvious case of overreaction to a harmless and really rather comic incident.’

  ‘I wouldn’t try to use that line in your defence if I were you. A man strips naked in front of a terrified child and you call it comic!’

  ‘He did not strip naked. He undid his trousers, that’s all.’

  ‘You know, perhaps your trouble with this kind of case, Emma, is that you don’t have any children of your own.’

  Emma did not know what to say to this. To hide her confusion, she took a sip from the orange juice which she had silently resolved not to touch. She assumed that Alun would apologize, but when he spoke again, his tone remained aggressive.

  ‘So, tell me about Robin. I’ve just given you a description of a reliable and trustworthy witness. Now tell me what’s so special about this man. What gives you so much faith in him after knowing him such a short time?’

  Emma swallowed hard; but her voice, once found, was brave, with more of her Edinburgh accent in it than had been noticeable before.

  ‘Well, I found him very likeable, if you must know. Likeable and intelligent: very intelligent. He’s depressed, of course. He’s going through a bad patch, with his work and everything. It takes a while to get him to come out of himself. But once you’ve made the effort, it’s very rewarding. I thought he was funny, and sharp, and very… perceptive.’

  Alun left another strategic pause, this one designed to make her feel that he did not think she could possibly have finished.

  ‘Well, OK., Emma,’ he said. ‘Play it your way. I dare say you’ve got some tricks up your sleeve which you don’t feel like telling us about. Fair enough. But believe me, it’s for your benefit that I’m asking these questions. I don’t want you to get your fingers burned on this one. I want you to be absolutely sure that you know the kind of man you’re dealing with.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Well, for instance.’ Alun picked up the red notebook and tapped it with his forefinger. ‘You know about Grant’s writing, do you? You know that he fancies himself as a writer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And have you read any of his stuff?’

  ‘No, I didn’t think it was necessary. Surely it could have no evidential value.’

  ‘Of course not. But that isn’t to say that it wouldn’t be illuminating. This notebook was found in the pocket of his jacket on the evening of the crime – I’m sorry, the alleged crime. It contains one of his stories.’

  Emma took the notebook and flicked through the pages. They were covered with dense, untidy handwriting. She closed the book and read aloud the title which Robin had written in block capitals on the cover.

  ‘The Lucky Man,’ she said. ‘What’s so special about it? What’s it about?’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to give it away. Let’s just say that it projects a rather unusual personality,’ said Alun, and added, ‘You’ve hardly touched your drink. Is it worth me getting you another?’

  ‘I don’t want another. I didn’t want that one.’

  Emma stood up. She suddenly felt an absolute lack of curiosity about the contents of the notebook, indeed about the truth behind the case itself. Instead she had a mind to drive out to Warwick and sit in the grounds of the castle for a few hours.

  ‘The point is,’ said Alun, draining the last of his lager, ‘that you should really persuade him to plead guilty.’

  Emma laughed.

  ‘Nice try, Alun. But we’re neither of us going to give up.’

  ‘Perhaps there are things he hasn’t been telling you. You see, Grant is quite well known around these parts.’

  ‘Well known? What do you mean?’

  ‘This was what the father came to tell me. He’d seen Grant before, but couldn’t remember where. That’s why it wasn’t in his first statement. Apparently every Saturday this man takes his family to play bowls, on the green near the Broadway. The child goes too. And Grant has been bothering them before, it transpires. Watching them. He’d had his eye on that kid for some time.’

  Emma stared at him warily.

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ she said.

  ‘Please yourself. We could both save ourselves a little bit of work again, that’s all.’

  He followed her up the stairs, and the absurd clicking of her heels against the wooden steps irritated her more than ever. Someone had told her once that it was the kind of noise that men find sexy: perhaps it had even been Mark. She made as little fuss as possible about shaking his hand, which was slippery with sweat, and as she walked away she had no awareness at all of what her parting words had been. The sunshine and the glass of wine were making her sleepy and dizzy.

  July 1986: the first week of that month was extraordinarily hot. The tarmac on the pavements was sticky. Sunlight bounced back off the windscreens of shiny new cars, driven by sales reps in their shirtsleeves as they made the last calls of the week. The crowds of unemployed teenagers hanging around in the doorways of shops in the precinct were sporting pale greens and blues this year. Emma walked quickly to the multi-storey car park and cursed herself for having c
hosen to park out on the roof: the steering wheel was too hot to hold. She opened all the windows, turned the radio on, found her ticket and was pleased to discover that her purse contained enough change. Then, trusting her initial impulse even though it was already rather faded, she drove over to Warwick. The rush of air through the open windows and the cheerful, sentimental music put her in a better mood.

  ∗

  Emma is lying by the river on a hot Friday afternoon. She has not bought anything for her husband’s supper, in fact she cannot even remember whether he will be in for supper tonight. She used to like her husband, they used to have plenty of things to say to one another. Now each considers the other slightly too selfish for comfort. Nothing has actually been articulated yet, nothing she can put her finger on: there is merely a certain coldness at the breakfast table, a certain tiredness about their lovemaking, an almost too obvious effort to be made when it comes to taking an interest in each other’s work. One television programme too many gets watched last thing at night. But this is all, so far. The shouting, the sulks, the suspicion, the blunt recriminations, the unexpected fear – these are treats which life still holds in store for Emma. This languor that weighs down upon her, this semi-conscious decision to let her mind run in lazy circles, perhaps it is an intimation, perhaps it is a shying-off from the certainty of what is about to happen to her life. In which case she can be forgiven, in all charity, for having forgotten about Robin and his problems; at least until the evening, when it is cooler, and she feels ready to turn to the first page of his story.

  FOUR STORIES BY ROBIN GRANT

  2. The Lucky Man

  In a northern town, a man awakes, pulls back the curtains, and peers at an unfamiliar street.

  The man, whose name was Lawrence (I don’t intend to keep you in the dark, when it comes to relevant details) then got back into bed and stared at the ceiling for a few minutes; not because it was an especially interesting ceiling, but because he was thinking. He had a headache, which made this process difficult. Gradually, though, he began to piece together fragmented recollections of the previous evening: the journey, the railway station, the drive at breakneck speed through dark and twisted streets. After that, nothing. He could not remember arriving at this house.

  A slow smile spread across his face.

  Somehow he had managed to undress, or someone had undressed him; probably the latter, since his clothes were folded neatly over the back of an armchair in a corner of the room, and he never folded his clothes before going to bed. He was wearing only his underpants. With sudden energy he swung his legs out of the bed and started to dress. Then he noticed his bag, beside the armchair. He opened it and found that it contained clean clothes, several days’ worth. So he put on new underpants, shirt, sweater, trousers and socks, and stepped out onto the landing.

  From downstairs he could hear a man’s urgent voice conversing quietly on the telephone. He also saw that the bathroom door was open, and he took the opportunity to go to the lavatory and wash his hands and face. By the time he descended the stairs, the voice appeared to have stopped.

  He opened a door to his right at the bottom of the stairs and found himself in a small, badly lit but cheerful sitting room. Clothes were being dried on a rack in front of the gas fire and there was a table covered with the remains of breakfast, including half a piece of toast and a mug of tea, still hot. Lawrence noticed that the walls were covered with political posters advertising rallies and marches, and alerting him to the fact that, by purchasing certain brands of coffee and chocolate, he was giving implicit support to corrupt regimes in various far-flung countries, many of which he had never heard of, and many of which he could not pronounce. A young man was sitting by the fire listening to a portable radio which was tuned to Radio 3. He looked up when Lawrence came in and said:

  ‘So you made it? The state you were in last night I thought you’d never wake up. Never.’

  He had a Belfast accent.

  ‘Where am I?’ asked Lawrence.

  ‘How do you mean, exactly?’

  ‘What town is this?’

  ‘This is Sheffield,’ said the man; he seemed slightly surprised by the question. ‘Would you like some tea?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lawrence, and added, ‘I don’t know your name.’

  ‘My name is Paul. I think I owe you an apology.’

  He handed Lawrence the tea, which was lukewarm and very strong.

  ‘I wasn’t aware of it,’ said Lawrence. ‘I was about to thank you for putting me up for the night.’

  ‘It was the least we could do,’ said Paul. ‘A slight case of mistaken identity is what happened, I think. We took you for a party by the name of Docherty. Ultimately, though, you will find that James Joyce is to blame.’

  This idea seemed to appeal to Lawrence, who grinned broadly, although in a private way, before saying:

  ‘I look forward to hearing you explain that.’

  ‘It’s quite simple really,’ said Paul, resuming his seat. ‘We had instructions to meet this Docherty fellow off the 10.58 train. We’d never seen him before and had no description to go on, but it had been arranged that he would be carrying a copy of Ulysses, by James Joyce. So then you show up carrying a copy of the very same book. It was an easy mistake to make.’

  What had actually happened – although Paul and Lawrence, unlike the privileged reader, were never to find it out – was this. Docherty, a terrorist by profession, had been invited by a circle of IRA sympathizers in Sheffield, of which Paul was a prominent member, to come and give an informal lecture on the subject of the Troubles. Slides were planned and coffee and cheese biscuits were to have been served afterwards. Now Docherty, before committing himself to the revolutionary struggle, had once been a railway buffet-car attendant, and he still had a nostalgic liking for British Rail sandwiches, as well as an intimate knowledge of the timetable of the Midlands and Yorkshire services. Consequently, while travelling up to Sheffield, finding that his train contained no refreshment facilities, he decided to pop out to the buffet restaurant at Derby, knowing full well that the train was meant to stop there for seven minutes. How was he to know that the driver, whose video recorder was being repaired that week, was determined to get home in time to see a Channel 4 documentary about organic farming, which featured an interview with his aunt’s cousin’s next-door neighbour, the manager of a health-food shop in Doncaster? So the train pulled out two minutes early, leaving Docherty dancing with frustration on the platform, and leaving Lawrence, who had intended to get off in Derby, but didn’t, having fallen into a deep sleep, which will be explained in the fullness of time (but not before), alone in the compartment with the fatal copy of Ulysses. Which, when he was rudely awakened by the ticket inspector, and told to get off at Sheffield, he took with him, with a vague and drowsy idea of handing it in to the lost property office. He was, however, forestalled in this plan by the arrival of Paul and his cronies, who bundled him into their car and whisked him off to an anonymous three-storey terrace before he knew what was happening.

  ‘It was only this morning that I discovered our mistake,’ said Paul. ‘I took the liberty of looking through your jacket.’

  ‘I would have done the same myself,’ said Lawrence.

  ‘You don’t seem unduly disconcerted,’ Paul now ventured, ‘to find yourself in a strange house, with a strange man, in a strange town.’

  Lawrence smiled his private smile again, slightly more publicly than before.

  ‘Without wishing to sound blasé,’ he said, ‘this sort of thing happens to me all the time. My life has been a chain of accidents, and I would have it no other way. I don’t suppose there’s any more tea?’

  Paul set about making a fresh pot, and Lawrence asked him, meanwhile:

  ‘This man Docherty – what was he coming here for, anyway? Why all the secrecy?’

  ‘Well I’m afraid that’s a secret. I’d soon find myself in very big trouble if I started telling you that. Let’s just say he was coming
here to address… a political meeting.’

  ‘Oh, politics,’ said Lawrence, and Paul noticed the bored intonation which he gave to this word.

  ‘Politics doesn’t interest you, I suppose? You wouldn’t describe yourself as a political animal?’ He handed him a new cup of tea, which was weaker and warmer.

  ‘I’m afraid I find it all rather naive, in the long run,’ said Lawrence. ‘Thank you. You see, nothing gets changed that way.’

  ‘Well, I’d have to disagree with you there. There’s too much defeatism around, that’s all. If we all tried a bit harder, if more of us pulled together – well, anyway. I suppose you are a religious man, then, from the sound of you? Now there’s naivety for you! Religion, as Marx so rightly said, is the opium of the people.’

  ‘That’s very true. I’d go along with that.’

  ‘I see,’ said Paul, somewhat put out by the readiness of this concession. ‘So, you have no faith in politics, and none in religion? Hmm.’ He considered for a moment. ‘I take it, then, that you are a materialist? That you take, as the purpose of your life, the acquisition of money, without regard to scruple or morality?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Lawrence. ‘Money is the root of all evil.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more. But are you, then, no more than a hedonist? Have you chosen, as the wellspring of your existence, the single-minded and unashamed pursuit of pleasure?’

  ‘Far from it,’ said Lawrence. ‘The pleasures of the world are as fleeting as a breeze, in my experience.’

  ‘My sentiments exactly,’ said Paul. He sat down opposite Lawrence and fixed him with a look of puzzled enquiry. ‘So, what is it with you, then? What drives you on? Is it knowledge, is it power, is it love? Are you a sentimentalist, or an existentialist, or an aesthetic pantheist? Or just an alcoholic? What is your system? What are the principles that govern your life?’

  ‘My system is to have no system,’ said Lawrence. ‘And my principle is to have no principles.’