A Touch of Love

by Jonathan Coe

  ‘Short stories.’

  ‘And did they tell you anything about him? Did they help you to understand him?’

  Hugh considered.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘What were they about?’

  ‘You see, I can’t see the point of trying to understand these things anyway,’ said Hugh. ‘I mean, what’s the point? It’s not going to change anything, is it? That’s what I keep saying to Emma: “Look, it’s not going to change anything, even if you find out why he did it. So what?’”

  ‘Who’s Emma?’ Corbett asked.

  ‘She was his lawyer.’

  ‘You’re still in touch with her, are you?’ said Davis. ‘I thought she left Coventry months ago.’

  ‘She came back. I don’t know whether she’s still working here or what. Anyway she keeps phoning me up and asking questions about Robin. I suppose she feels guilty about it or something: she seems to want to rake the whole thing up again.’

  ‘There was an interview with the boy’s father in the evening paper recently,’ said Davis. ‘Apparently Robin’s family have been writing letters to him, holding him responsible for what happened. It seems rather unreasonable to me.’

  ‘It’s the same thing again,’ said Hugh. ‘There’s no point in trying to get at the truth behind all that. It doesn’t matter whether Robin actually did it or not. The point is that he could have done it. He was capable of it.’

  ‘What do you mean, capable of it?’

  ‘Well, he had some very strange ideas about sex. That is clear from the stories, if nothing else.’

  ‘Strange ideas?’ said Dr Corbett, leaning forward.

  ‘It’s just that… men and women… going out together: I don’t think he thought it was a very good idea.’

  ‘How extraordinary,’ said Professor Davis.

  ‘He had all these affairs,’ said Hugh, ‘and they never lasted very long. I don’t know what he used to do to those women, but… it makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’

  Professor Davis and Dr Corbett wondered, silently and in unison. Then Corbett said:

  ‘This Emma woman – she keeps ringing you up, does she?’

  ‘Yes. Three or four times in the last week.’

  ‘I wonder why.’

  ‘I told you, she’s got this obsession with Robin. A few weeks ago I came across this thing he wrote, something he lent me, and she says she wants to read it.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s just a copy of his last story. One of the last things he did, apparently, was to throw all his stuff away, but there were these four stories which he was writing in different notebooks. Emma’s still got one of them – the second, I think – and I’ve got the fourth. It’s just a little story with some notes scribbled at the end of it. They’re not very interesting, I keep telling her. Anyway, she’s going to come over and see it.’

  ‘What, to your place?’

  ‘Yes, tomorrow night.’

  The professor and the doctor exchanged meaningful glances.

  ‘Didn’t she leave her husband?’ Davis asked.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘How long have you known her?’ Corbett asked.

  ‘Quite a while – about four years. Why? What are you suggesting?’

  But Dr Corbett simply looked at his watch and stood up.

  ‘I’ve really got to be getting along,’ he said. ‘Joyce will be wanting to get the dinner ready soon. I’ll be seeing you both next term, no doubt. Have a happy Christmas, Leonard.’ He put his hand on Hugh’s shoulder. ‘Good luck for tomorrow, then. Try and make it a Happy New Year.’

  Then he was gone and Hugh was staring after him in puzzlement.

  ‘That was a weird thing to say.’

  ‘Norman’s mind tends to run in rather set patterns,’ explained Professor Davis. ‘I think he assumed that your playing host tomorrow night to a young, attractive, unattached lady could only mean one thing.’

  He shook his head. ‘He’s wrong.’

  ‘You mean she’s not so attractive?’ said Davis, attempting to sip from an empty coffee cup.

  ‘Not at all. She’s very attractive. But all the same…’

  Davis chuckled, replaced the cup, and rose to his feet. He picked up his briefcase and brushed crumbs from his corduroy jacket.

  ‘Look, Hugh,’ he said, ‘you don’t want to live alone all your life, do you? In abedsit? Let yourself go. It’s Christmas.’

  Hugh did not answer, until, as Davis was walking away, he called out, ‘Why didn’t you tell me about the meeting today?’ But the professor’s hearing was not all that it used to be.

  ∗

  Hugh got soaked again on the way home and was shivering violently by the time he got back to his room. On the radio the weatherman predicted that the rain would turn to hail or snow overnight. He lay in the bath that evening for more than an hour, until the water was quite cold. He started to make plans for Emma’s visit. He would cook an elaborate meal, maybe something Mexican, and he would tidy up the room properly, leaving the windows open all morning while he was down at the launderette and the supermarket. It felt good to be making plans again. Now that he had had time to think about them, Corbett’s words no longer seemed so foolish: it was true that Emma had been phoning him a lot recently, and hadn’t she made a special effort to come to his birthday party, back in the summer? Probably, like him, she was simply lonely and a little physical affection just before Christmas was exactly what she needed.

  He went straight from the bath into bed but found, as usual, that he couldn’t sleep. The ordinary dull fantasies went through his mind, as well as distorted fragments of the day’s conversation and some thoughts about the things he would say tomorrow. At one point he realized that he no longer knew where to find his copy of Robin’s story. In a panic he switched the bedside light on, got up, and began to search, naked, for the small red notebook; when he found it he felt more wakeful than ever and decided to read the whole story again. It wasn’t very long.

  There was absolute silence in Hugh’s room as he read, and it was a silence which he knew only too well. He knew that there is no hush quite as deathly as the one you get in the hour before dawn, when you are alone in bed, and the light is on; and there is nothing which makes you hear this silence more acutely than the knowledge that snow has started to fall through the night outside your window.

  FOUR STORIES BY ROBIN GRANT

  4. The Unlucky Man

  In the tea room of a hotel in a provincial spa town, a string quartet is playing a melancholy tango.

  A man was sitting alone at a table by the window. Some of the time he was listening to the music, some of the time he was looking out at the street, some of the time he was anxiously searching the faces of the other patrons. Most of the time he stared blankly in front of him. He was very depressed. He was an estate agent (reason enough to be depressed already, you might have thought, but not the whole story, as will be revealed) and he should have been at work that afternoon, but the impetus to carry on with his life had deserted him. The foundations of his existence had started to crumble. His presence in the tea room was merely a last stand, a final desperate effort to regain some sort of control; to impose a kind of justice. But, as he looked at his watch, looked at the door, looked out at the street, he began to suspect that even here he had miscalculated.

  Suddenly he became aware that a man was standing over him, smiling down at him. For a moment he did not recognise the face, and then the name, the features and the associated memories slowly cohered. He too broke into an unexpected smile.

  ‘Larry Norden!’ he said.

  ‘Harry Eatwell!’

  ‘Well, for goodness’ sake! Sit down, sit down.’

  ‘I’m not disturbing you?’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  Harry and Larry had last seen each other some eight years before, when they had been at school together. They had never been particularly good friends, but these things tend to get forgotten on o
ccasions like this, amid the glow of nostalgia and the excitement of a coincidental meeting.

  ‘So what brings you here?’

  ‘Well, I live here,’ said Harry. ‘I live and work in this town now. How about you?’

  ‘Oh, I spend some time in this area, now and again. Seeing friends. So – how did things turn out for you?’

  ‘Oh, not so bad, I’ve done OK.’

  ‘Everything worked out the way you planned, did it?’

  There was a slightly ironic inflexion to this question which made Harry ask, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I was just thinking of what you used to be like at school. You were always so damn organized. I remember – what were we, eighteen? – when you had your whole life planned out. Do you remember how we used to talk about our ambitions, how we wanted our lives to turn out? Those discussions we used to have?’

  ‘I remember them well.’

  ‘And did it all come true? You said that by the time you were twenty-five you wanted to be an estate agent, and to be married, and to have your own home, and a sports car?’

  ‘Well, here I am: I’m an estate agent, and I’m married, and I’ve got a wife and a car. It’s all come true.’

  ‘That’s amazing.’

  ‘And how about you? You said you wanted to be… a long-distance lorry driver! With an apartment in Spain and a novel published under your own name.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And has it happened?’

  ‘No, I’m the marketing officer for a basket factory just outside Ashby-de-la-Zouch.’

  ‘Oh.’ Harry’s voice betrayed a real disappointment. ‘Still, I suppose you’re happily married now, eh?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or you’re engaged to some lovely girl?’

  ‘No.’ He patted Harry on the back. ‘You needn’t worry about me, you know. It’s always been the same with me: easy come, easy go. Take life as it comes. No worries. Now you –’ He sat back and looked him in the eye ‘– I’d say that you had worries.’

  Harry looked undecided for a few seconds, as if he was trying to pull a brave face together. Then he gave up.

  ‘I can’t hide it from you. You’ve caught me at a very bad time. Everything’s gone wrong recently.’

  ‘Tell me about it, Harry.’

  Harry drank some mineral water and wiped his brow; he didn’t seem to know how to begin.

  ‘Well – you know how it is when you feel completely in control of your life? When you hold all the threads?’

  ‘No. I don’t think I’ve ever had that feeling.’

  ‘Yes, but you know how it is when you trust someone? When you know how things are with someone, even when you’re away from them. Like… like when you’re a little kid, and you’re tucked up in bed and you’re sleeping like a light, and the reason you’re sleeping so well is that you know your parents are downstairs and watching the TV and thinking about you, and everything’s OK.’

  ‘Well, actually, my parents were always either fighting with each other or having sex. But anyway, go on.’

  ‘Well, my life’s always been like that, you see. I’ve always known. The people I’ve been close to – I’ve never allowed them to surprise me. It’s so important, that, isn’t it? Otherwise life just becomes a sort of anarchy. It’s always been so important to me that I know, for instance, at five o’clock, when I’m just seeing my last client, that Angela is back at home in the kitchen getting ready to put the casserole on. They’re what keep me going, these little certainties.’

  ‘And something’s happened to disrupt all this?’

  Harry’s voice started to quiver. ‘I found out that she’s being unfaithful to me.’

  He took another drink, while his friend leaned forward, put a hand on his arm, and said:

  ‘You’d better tell me the whole story.’

  ∗

  Harry’s suspicions had started when a colleague of his informed him, quite casually, that his wife had been seen in the hotel tea room at four o’clock one Wednesday afternoon. Harry knew that this was impossible, because his wife invariably stayed at home in the afternoons, listening to the play on Radio 4. Indeed on that very Wednesday evening she had described the plot of this play to him in some detail over dinner, although he later found out that her synopsis was lifted word for word from the Radio Times. Anyway, at first he did not take the incident seriously; but when his colleague, reluctantly, told him that his wife had been seen with another man, and behaving in a way which suggested intimacy, Harry began to look worried.

  ‘What do you think I should do?’ he asked.

  ‘You’re in luck,’ said the colleague. ‘I can put you in touch with just the chap. A sort of detective. Very discreet, and very amenable. Specializes in this kind of work. I’ll give you his card, and you can get in touch with him right away.’

  Harry was given the address of an office at the top of a mews building at the cheap end of town. The name on the doorbell was ‘Vernon Humpage’.

  Mr Humpage turned out to be a balding, rather doleful man; he bore a certain resemblance to the character played by Mervyn Johns in Dead of Night. He quickly put Harry at his ease and explained that his work could be divided into two categories – research, and surveillance. In this particular case, he suggested, it might be well to consider both. Harry agreed. Mr Humpage then promised to provide him with a full report within the space of seven days.

  Their next meeting took place one week later.

  ‘I’ve managed to find out a great deal, Mr Eatwell,’ said the detective.

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it. Do call me Harold.’

  ‘Gladly. Could I start by asking you a few questions?’

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘When did you first meet your wife?’

  ‘About two years ago.’

  ‘I see: just after she got back from Berlin.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You know that your wife worked as a nightclub hostess in Berlin for six months?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She ran away there. Shortly after the divorce.’

  ‘Divorce?’

  ‘She’s been married before, of course, but you knew that. Actually my researches show that the marriage was never officially dissolved; but he doesn’t get out of prison for another four years, so we don’t have to worry about that just yet.’

  ‘Mr Humpage, I didn’t know any of this,’ said Harry, his face loose with astonishment.

  ‘Well, let’s move on to surveillance. Harold, would you say you had an accurate idea of how your wife spends her time during the day?’

  ‘Yes, I would.’

  ‘Based on what?’

  ‘Based on what she tells me.’

  ‘All right, well, let’s see now.’ He picked up a handwritten sheet of paper from his desk. ‘What’s the first thing she does in the morning?’

  ‘She, erm, she makes me a cup of tea.’

  ‘That’s correct. And then what?’

  ‘And then we have breakfast together, and I go out to work.’

  ‘Also correct.’

  ‘Then she cleans up the kitchen and dusts downstairs.’

  ‘No, I’m afraid she doesn’t. The first thing she does after you leave the house in the morning is put her feet up, pour herself a gin and tonic, and have a smoke.’

  ‘A smoke? My wife doesn’t smoke.’

  ‘Oh yes she does. Havana cigars. You didn’t know that? Well, anyway: it then gets to be around mid-morning. You know what she does then?’

  ‘Well, I’ve always pictured her having some coffee and biscuits… maybe drawing up a shopping list, watching some daytime television.’

  ‘Wrong, I’m afraid. She phones her stockbroker.’

  ‘Her stockbroker?’

  ‘Yes. She has equity interests in five major light industrial businesses. A lot of buying and selling takes place. She didn’t tell you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How odd. You know about the lunc
htimes, of course.’

  ‘Well, she’s on this diet. She usually watches the news and has a light salad with some fruit juice. Doesn’t she?’

  ‘Actually she frequents a variety of local pubs. Yesterday it was The Bull and Gate: she had steak and kidney pie and chips and two pints of Yorkshire bitter. The day before that it was a wine bar in Dale Street: she had a double helping of chilli con carne and several whiskies. Sometimes she goes on her own, sometimes with friends.’

  ‘But when does she find time to cook dinner? Surely it must take her most of the afternoon to cook those fabulous dinners.’

  ‘Most of them are from packets. She usually pops in and gets them on her way back from the arcades.’

  ‘The arcades?’

  ‘She plays the machines. Three days out of the last four, she’s been out working the fruit machines. Not too bad at it: usually comes out with more than she takes in.’ He stopped and looked up. ‘Is this disturbing you, Mr Eatwell?’

  Harry had put on his overcoat, and was standing by the window.

  ‘What then?’ he asked. ‘The hotel?’

  Mr Humpage nodded.

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Four o’clock.’

  Harry made for the door. ‘I don’t want to hear any more,’ he said, but asked, as an afterthought, ‘Is it always the same man?’

  Humpage nodded again. And just as his client was leaving, he said, kindly: ‘Harold.’ Harry turned. ‘No one has the right to control another person, you know.’

  ‘He was right.’

  ‘I suppose he was.’

  Harold forced a smile and wiped his eyes. His old friend, who had been listening carefully, thought for some time before saying:

  ‘Do you mind if I make some very personal remarks?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘You see, frankly, Harry, I don’t think you loved your wife at all. I think you loved what she stood for – or what you made her stand for.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that what’s upsetting you isn’t just the fact that your wife’s been unfaithful. Your whole way of looking at the world – it’s been shot to bits. And not before time. You can’t make assumptions like that. You can’t assume that people will always behave in the way you want them to. Life is chaotic. It’s random. Have you only just noticed?’