Authors: Jonathan Coe
‘Carry on. I know what you mean.’
‘I’ve been reading this book. It’s… well, I think it’s clarified a few things about what I may be going through. This woman, she talks a lot about the “I”, the importance of the “I”,’
‘The importance of the eye?’
‘The “I”, One letter. The – the sense of personal identity. You know, your sense of self, the person you are.’
‘Yes, quite.’ Ted tutted. He had not tied a proper knot, the cotton had come adrift, and now he was going to have to start all over again.
‘Are you listening?’
‘Of course I’m listening. Do you mind if I put the light on a minute? I’m having a few problems here.’
‘Well, what do you think?’ he asked, as Ted got up to switch the light on.
‘What do I think?’
‘What do you think I should do?’
‘Well –’ Ted started sucking on the cotton again, and said, ‘perhaps the problem is that you’re lonely. Have you thought about getting a girlfriend?’
‘What?’
‘You know, someone who could keep this flat tidy, and provide you with a bit of company in the evening. Not someone like Aparna, who’d only argue all the time. Someone stable and supportive.’
‘And where would that get me?’
Ted caught the note of contempt in his voice and, although he was engaged in tying another knot, looked up. He said, very seriously: ‘I know one thing, Robin. I was never really happy before I married Katharine.’
Robin avoided his eyes.
‘I never want to be involved with a woman again,’ he said, and left the room.
Ted put down the needle, considered these words, and made a mental note to write them down in his file for future reference; for they confirmed, or rather reawakened, a personal theory which he had once entertained regarding Robin. In fact it had been Katharine herself who first suggested it, back at Cambridge. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he had said at the time, ‘Robin is as normal as you or I’. Gradually, however, the idea had come to seem less incredible, and Ted had overcome his initial revulsion. In an odd way it had even reconciled him to the closeness of Robin’s friendship with Katharine, to the obvious pleasure which they took in each other’s company. Towards the end of their last summer term, the three of them were scarcely to be seen apart. And Katharine had said to him once: ‘It would explain why he is so sensitive.’
‘Sensitive?’
‘Yes. They’re always the most sensitive.’
He had asked Robin, subsequently, whether he thought that this was true, that they were always the most sensitive, and he had said yes, it was often the case, and had added that some of the people he most admired were homosexual; which struck Ted, then, as being a shocking admission. But he had told himself, Never mind, he is simply less fortunate than the rest of us, and this display of liberalism had been the cause of much private self-congratulation. It had its limits, of course. For instance, he would never have left Robin alone in a room with Peter. Ted believed that you couldn’t be too careful, where children were concerned.
Robin came back, and opened the curtains at the window by his desk. The sky was darkening.
‘I suppose you’ll have to be getting back soon.’
‘Well, I’ve been thinking about that,’ said Ted. He had been thinking, in fact, that it would suit him to call on Dr Fowler the next morning; in which case, he wouldn’t have to visit this dreary part of the world again for more than a month. And he had been thinking, distasteful as he found the ambience of Robin’s flat, that here at least was the chance of a bed for the night. ‘You don’t seem too grand and there’s no real reason why I have to be home tonight. Why don’t I phone Katharine and tell her I won’t be back until tomorrow?’
‘If you like,’ said Robin.
This was not the flood of gratitude that Ted had anticipated.
‘Then maybe we could go out for a drink. Do you think that would cheer you up? And perhaps I could read one of these stories of yours.’
‘All right. I’ll get dressed.’
Robin took the least dirty of his clothes into the kitchen and changed while Ted was on the telephone. He returned in time to hear the last few words of the conversation.
‘Who’s Peter?’ he asked.
‘Peter? Surely I must have mentioned him, in one of the newsletters. Our first boy. Two years old.’
‘Oh. Of course.’
‘Yes…’Ted smiled. ‘He’s a grand little chap.’
Robin picked up the first of the notebooks and slipped it into the pocket of his trousers.
‘Let’s go if we’re going,’ he said.
∗
It is a warm night in mid-April; getting on for eleven o’clock. Robin and Ted have left the pub, and are setting off in a new direction, Robin leading, Ted hurrying to keep up. The people of Coventry are sleeping, now, or preparing to sleep; but they continue to walk at a breathless pace, these two friends who are no longer friends.
Up Mayfield Road, along Broadway, across the bowling green, scene of many of Robin’s private reveries. Here he has sat, on windy spring Saturdays, watching husbands and wives pass their time in skilled and light-hearted competition, sporting anoraks and headscarves. Old people, still bound to one another, still bound to the city in which they have lived, worked, grown up; in which they were born. He has watched them on windy Saturday afternoons, feeling at once both contempt and envy. He has wished to join them, to demonstrate his own skill, for he, too, has played bowls, with his mother, father and sister. Naturally he’d be out of practice, a little erratic at first. And at the same time he has wished only to leave them, because he is burning from the touch of their scared occasional eyes, fleeting but eloquent glances which phrase, unmistakably, he questions, Who is that strange man, and why is he staring at us?
Across the road and into Spencer Park. In autumn here the trees rustle, and you have to weave your way through kids playing football, with piles of clothes for goalposts. But tonight it is quiet and empty, except for a young woman out walking her dog: a bit foolhardy you might have thought, but perhaps she feels safe with the dog, an Alsatian after all, and a big one at that. She doesn’t say hello, her eyes are averted. It is very still, once she has passed. And now the lights of the city are before them, beckoning them, these two companions who have nothing to offer each other in the way of companionship, and their stride quickens again.
Across the steel footbridge, and over the railway line. There are few trains at this time of night, services to London and Birmingham and Oxford have all but ceased, but now as they cross the footbridge a goods train passes beneath their feet. It seems immensely long and noisy, making conversation impossible. A good job, then, that they have no wish to converse, although a detached observer, supposing one were to pass by, might have noticed on Ted’s face the marks of a growing unease, the strainings of a question long since framed but as yet unable to express itself. But Robin is oblivious to this nuance; he is chuckling in a secretive way at the graffiti which cover the walls of the bridge from top to bottom, from end to end. Anarchy – The Only Way Out. Say No To Cruise. I Have Seen The Fnords. Disarm Rapists. So Much To Say, So Little Paint. Wogs Out. Nigger Shit. Something about this mixture seems to appeal to him, but the nature of this appeal clearly eludes his confidant (in whom he has no confidence), for Ted’s sidelong glances grow more and more puzzled and wary. And sidelong. So that now they have given up all converse not only of the voices, but of the eyes.
Down Grosvenor Road, a deserted warehouse to their right, houses to their left, half of them boarded up. Soon they are walking through the subway and then into Warwick Road, past the lit windows of estate agents and the door of a crowded wine bar, from which people are beginning to emerge. Robin hesitates here briefly, but soon moves on, faster than ever. Ted stops and peers in confusion at the doorway, then runs to catch up. It occurs to him, not before time, that Robin has in mind, as the mainspring and primary motivation behind this walk, the consumption of further alcohol. He puts this question bluntly, and is answered with a nod and a noise. Robin now stops again, this time to look in the window of a bookshop. He ignores the main display of paperbacks and picture-books, concentrating his attention instead on a bulky volume half hidden towards the back, in a right-hand corner:
The Failure of Contemporary Literature
, by Leonard Davis. A sticker attached to the front cover announces, as a further inducement to prospective purchasers, that Professor Davis is a Local Author. Robin clicks his tongue.
The precinct is all but deserted. There is the occasional down-and-out, obviously, slumped in a doorway, but you get these even in the most prosperous cities. In fact you get them especially in the most prosperous cities. The precinct has a haunted air about it at this time of night. Built for public use, designed purposely to accommodate crowds of happy shoppers, thronging, swarming, threading in and out of Smiths, Habitat, Woolworths, BHS, Top Man, and yet tonight there are only these two figures, wordless, distant, their footsteps echoing in the concrete square, their shadows faint in the fluorescent light. Where are all the old women, dragging shopping bags on wheels? Where are the young couples, window-shopping, arm in arm? Where are the punks and skinheads? Tucked up in bed somewhere, I hope, in terraced houses or high-rise blocks, hundreds of feet up in the air. They would have received little attention from these two, tonight, anyway, because they are now walking faster still, and Robin has begun to glance anxiously at his watch.
They cut across Broadgate, past the statue of Lady Godiva, and head down Trinity Street. Ted has no way of knowing it, but they are not far from the cathedral; here, in the daytime, you can while away a pleasant hour or more admiring the windows, looking at the Sutherland tapestry, or experiencing (for a small fee) the holographic recreation of the Blitz, an aural and visual adventure in three dimensions, for those who weren’t lucky enough to have been present at the real thing. But Ted’s only memory of the cathedral will be of a dark bulk rising to his right as he crosses the square, somewhere behind the old library. And even then he will not have known that it was the cathedral, because he is tired, and angry, and has stopped asking questions. Robin, needless to say, never ventures information unsolicited. Ted has long since ceased to feel any curiosity about his surroundings anyhow, and the whole city has begun to seem like a clammy inferno, one unsavoury district after another. He hardly notices, then, that they have left most of the shops behind, have just walked past the dimly-lit forecourt of a large, run-down hospital, almost uninhabited, it seems, at this hour, and that they have entered upon a long street composed mainly of bulky terraced houses. He does notice, however, that only about one in four of the people they have passed in the last few minutes has been white; and this gives him a certain anxiety.
Before long they have taken a right-hand turn, into a very dark side street. They stop at the door of what appears at first to be a house, in a row of houses. Through a glass panel in the door, a faint orange glow is visible. Then Ted realizes that there is a sign above the door, that the house has a name: that it is, in fact, another pub. Robin is knocking on the glass panel, rhythmically, like a code, and now a man has come to the door. A few words, and they are admitted.
∗
‘What’s going on?’ asked Ted.
They were seated in a small gloomy bar with perhaps a dozen other men, most of whom Robin seemed to know. Everyone was absolutely silent, and the average age of the patrons, not counting Robin and Ted, was about sixty-two.
‘A friend of mine told me about this place,’ said Robin. ‘They lock the front door and then let us stay until about three or four. The police know about it but they usually turn a blind eye.’
Ted was appalled.
‘How often do you do this?’
‘I don’t know. A couple of nights a week.’
‘You need the drink that badly?’
‘It’s not the drink. I can get that at home. It’s the company.’
‘The company!’ He looked around in astonishment. ‘But look at these people. They’re old men. You have nothing in common with them. Nobody’s even talking.’
‘It’s better than being alone.’
‘But tonight I would have been with you.’
There was no reply to this remark, so Ted assumed that it had struck home. He noticed that he was drinking too fast, and had nearly finished the second of the gin and tonics which Robin had pressed upon him. When he had suggested going out for a drink, he had envisaged a convivial evening, drinking pints of lager in a boisterous, youthful environment. Now he felt bored and drunk and homesick. Robin was fingering an empty glass, his eyes half closed, slumped in his chair, his head bowed in a gesture of militant introversion.
‘It seems to me,’ said Ted, ‘that you’re overreacting to this little quarrel.’
‘Quarrel?’
‘Your argument with Aparna. I take it that that’s why you’re behaving in this way?’
He looked up and his eyes awoke, briefly.
‘It’s not the only thing,’ he said.
Ted could see, none the less, that he had touched a nerve, and ditching his original theory about Robin he began to wonder whether there was more to this friendship than he had suspected. There was no point, he decided, in trying to approach the subject delicately; so he simply asked, ‘Are you having an affair with her?’
Robin’s stare was cold and enquiring. ‘What makes you think that?’
‘You mentioned having been close.’
‘We are,’ said Robin, but amended it to ‘were’.
‘And?’
‘It was never physical. I suppose that’s what you’re getting at.’
‘I see. A platonic friendship,’ said Ted, drily.
‘If you like.’
‘A meeting of minds.’
Robin hesitated, then rose to his feet. Ted thought, for a moment, with a mixture of panic and relief, that he had taken offence and was about to leave; but he had merely stood up in order to fetch the red notebook out from the back pocket of his jeans.
‘Since you’ve mentioned the phrase,’ he said, ‘why don’t you read this story? Then you might have more idea what you’re talking about.’