Authors: Jonathan Coe
He threw the notebook down on the table and went to get two more drinks. After a while Ted picked the book up and looked apprehensively through its pages of small, untidy handwriting. He had read some of Robin’s fiction at Cambridge, and not found it inspiring: in fact they still had one of his typescripts back at home. In their last term, shortly before Ted and Katharine announced their engagement, Robin had presented her with a story – inscribed rather fulsomely, in Ted’s opinion. He had only ever managed to read the first half. Still, this appeared to be considerably shorter, and it would at least provide some respite from an increasingly chilly conversation.
He turned to the first page of the notebook, and began to read.
FOUR STORIES BY ROBIN GRANT
1.
The Meeting of Minds
Christmas comes to Coventry.
It would be too much to hope that it will be white, of course; the only one that this place has to offer is wet and grey. Anyway, a white Christmas would only mean frozen pipes, and ice on the inside of the windows.
There were four weeks or twenty-four shopping days to go when Richard bought the last of his Christmas cards. We are dealing, then, with an organized man. The last card was for his ex-girlfriend, and had been the hardest to choose. When you are actually going out with someone it is easy, you simply get the biggest and most expensive card in the shop, scribble a few florid words and a lot of Xs, stick it in the post, and there you are, the year’s work done. But how can a mere card, however tasteful, however well designed, express the complexity of your feelings towards a woman whom you have not seen, properly, for three years, a period almost equal to that for which you were (unofficially) engaged to her?
In the end he settled for one of a snowman pulling a cracker with a rather dissipated-looking reindeer.
How the precinct irked him, at this time of year. Not because it was too crowded (crowds were comforting) and not because Christmas had become, as any fool could see, a viciously exploitative commercial exercise (for how did it differ, in that respect, from any of society’s other festivals or holidays?). It was the atmosphere of enforced enjoyment which was so depressing, which gave rise, all around him, to a palpable mood of suppressed panic and desperation. People couldn’t just get away with being unhappy at Christmas. At any other time of year, fair enough, but if they were unhappy at Christmas then they knew, at heart, that they were irredeemably unhappy. Signs of this melancholy truth were on every other face.
I dislike this mode of writing. You pretend to be transcribing your characters’ thoughts (by what special gift of insight?) when in fact they are merely your own, thinly disguised. The device is feeble, transparent, and leads to all sorts of grammatical clumsiness. So I shall try to confine myself, in future, to honest (honest!) narrative.
Richard lived in a two-bedroomed flat, on the fourteenth floor of a tower block in the worst part of the city. He shared this flat with a friend, whose name was Miles. They were close friends, with several qualities in common, including laziness and intellectual snobbery. They were both students at the nearby university. (‘Nearby’! Sometimes I wonder why I don’t chuck this business in altogether and do something useful with my life. For is it likely, we have to ask, that they would be students at a university situated four hundred miles away?) Neither of them had lived in the city for long, or was native to the Midlands. Neither of them was now, or had recently been, involved in a close relationship with a member of the opposite sex.
That evening, after Richard had posted the card to his ex-fiancée, with feelings of such a complicated nature, involving such nuanced shades of ambivalence and contrariety, that it would frankly bore the backside off the pair of us if I were to try describing them, he and Miles had an argument. They were watching the news, and an item came on about Northern Ireland. Some soldier had been blown to bits, or something, or two civilians had been cold-bloodedly slaughtered outside their own homes, or some woman had had to watch while her twin babes were hacked to death by terrorists. The precise nature of the incident is immaterial, as far as this story is concerned. Miles and Richard began to go over the pros and cons of the British military presence, familiar enough ground for both of them. After a while, though, the discussion became acrimonious, and they found themselves disagreeing fundamentally over the nature of the Irish conflict, Miles insisting that it was religious, Richard that it was political. Soon their conversation had ground to a childish stalemate.
‘There’s no point in my discussing this with you, anyway,’ said Richard. ‘Let’s have a cup of tea.’
‘What do you mean, there’s no point?’ said Miles, following him into the kitchen.
‘I mean that it’s always the same when we try to talk about religion. Every time, I come up against the stone wall of your bloody Catholicism.’
‘I see. So you think I’m bigoted.’
‘Of course not. Look, don’t take offence. I don’t want to quarrel. It’s just that suddenly you become predictable. The whole thing becomes predictable. Suddenly it’s not a discussion any more, we’re both acting out roles. I know what I can and can’t say to you, and whenever you say something, I have to ask myself, Is that what he really thinks, or just what he’s told he has to think?’
Back in the sitting room, Miles was subdued.
‘I didn’t know you felt that strongly about it.’
‘It’s not
you
, Miles. It’s these wretched compromises we have to go through, every day of our lives. We never arrive at the truth, because we’re always too busy making allowances. You end up never speaking your mind, you just say what you know the other person wants to hear. You frame a different truth for every context. You can’t talk about socialism with a group of conservatives, and you can’t talk about conservatism with a group of socialists. If you want to talk about religion, you’ll find yourself saying completely different things depending on whether it’s a Buddhist, a Christian or an atheist you’re discussing it with. If you ask an academic for an opinion, it’ll be an academic one, if you ask a doctor, it’ll be medical, if you ask a solicitor, it’ll be legal. The minute we become socially active, we sacrifice honesty, integrity and neutrality to the impulse to avoid confrontation.’ He sighed and concluded: ‘It’s very depressing.’
‘You sound like a friend of mine,’ said Miles.
‘Really?’
‘Yes. I’ve got a friend who thinks just like that.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Karen. Haven’t you ever heard me talk about Karen?’
‘The name’s vaguely familiar.’
‘She’s always complaining that she can never have a proper discussion with anyone.’ He thought for a moment. ‘You two really ought to get together.’
After a few more minutes, this became a serious suggestion. Richard was opposed to the idea of actually meeting Miles’s friend, however. He claimed that the sort of conversation which he envisaged could only be truly impartial, truly detached, if the participants were to remain at a distance from one another. He proposed an exchange of letters.
‘All right,’ said Miles. ‘I’ll call her up now.’
Soon afterwards he returned with the news that Karen had responded enthusiastically to the proposal.
‘She asked you to write the first letter,’ he said, ‘and wants to know whether you think the United States or the Soviet Union is the more expansionist. She asked you to link your answer to the mood of increased liberalization in Gorbachev’s Russia, and to say whether you think this is indicative of a crisis of identity in the communist countries generally. Just to get the ball rolling, really.’
Richard sat up until three that morning, writing his letter. He found the experience uncommonly liberating. Miles had told him nothing about Karen: all he knew, then, was that she was female, and that she was roughly his own age. Freed from the constraint of having to adjust himself to the known requirements of his addressee, he was able to express himself honestly, fully, as his head and his heart dictated. He did not even know her surname, or have any idea of where his letter would be sent. He simply wrote ‘Karen’ on the envelope, and left Miles to address and post it.
Three days later, a reply arrived. Richard picked it up from the doormat, sat down at the kitchen table and looked at the envelope. It was postmarked Birmingham. The stamp was a special Christmas issue. His name and address were typed. The envelope was expensive.
Opening the letter, he found ten pages of large, decisive and tidy handwriting. There were many crossings-out, and here and there a whole phrase had been deleted with Tipp-Ex. The letter began with ‘Dear Richard’, but ended, ‘with very best wishes, Yours in anticipation’. (He had given a purely formal ‘Yours sincerely’.)
Having taken in these details, Richard began to read in earnest.
Her analysis of recent developments within the Eastern bloc was, he found, both astute and well informed. It was also infused with a militant anti-Americanism which he felt to be rather intimidating. Her thesis was that the price Gorbachev might end up paying for the liberalization of Soviet Russia was, ultimately, its Americanization, the possibility of which she saw as being the apogee of Western capitalist consumerism. Consumerism and expansionism were, she argued, but different sides of the same coin.
To tell the truth, Richard got slightly bored somewhere in the middle of the letter. It suddenly occurred to him that he was probably dealing with a student of political science, and, while he enjoyed political discussion as much as the next man, politics students tended to be the most insufferable people on earth, in his experience. It perked up noticeably towards the end, however, when she began to talk about the impact of mass communications on relations between the superpowers, and on our received models of political relationships generally. He saw a way in which this could be usefully diverted towards a broader argument about the breakdown of traditional forms of communication, with specific reference to the impact this was having on literature. He didn’t feel like writing about politics any more, since he suspected that she had the edge over him, on that subject.
His next letter began:
Dear Karen
,
Thank you very much for an interesting and thoughtful letter. You cannot believe how pleased I am to have found a correspondent such as yourself; there are times, as I’m sure you know, when you simply can’t be candid even (or especially) with your friends, and although I find the intellectual environment at this university stimulating, I can see that my discussions with you are, in the end, going to be much more rewarding. Also, I think that the different cast of our two minds is bound to make for fruitful argument: I am an English student, whereas you (I presume – or will you have to correct me?) must be studying either politics or history. It could have been so boring, so sterile, if we were both to bring the same approach to bear on every topic, but I know, I can feel, that it is not going to be like that.
Karen’s reply came by return of post; after which, the correspondence continued unabated for the next two weeks. During this time, the following subjects were covered, with varying degrees of thoroughness: politics (again); the decline of the welfare state, with particular reference to the National Health service; sexism, its origins and effects; religion; astrology; fashion; and personal relationships. Consequently, Richard was by now in reasonably sure possession of the following bits of information: that Karen was a socialist; that she wore NHS glasses; that she was blonde; that she held no religious beliefs; that she was Pisces; that she wore trousers, not skirts, was partial to denim, never used make-up, and favoured the colours red and blue; and that she had had two boyfriends, but had not been going out with anybody now for more than a year.
At this point they found themselves presented with an unforeseen problem. There were now only ten days to go until Christmas, and although neither Karen nor Richard planned to return to their parents’ homes just yet (for Karen, it had transpired, was indeed a student, studying Art History at Birmingham University), the onset of the festive season was, nevertheless, beginning to place an obstacle in the way of their correspondence. Owing to the increased volume of mail handled by the post office at this time of year, it was now taking as many as three days for their letters to be delivered. This was, in Richard’s view, an intolerable delay; and so he suggested, in a postscript, that – purely as a temporary measure, of course – they should perhaps continue their conversations over the telephone.
Three days later, Karen telephoned him.
What a charming voice she had, to be sure. It had, unless he was much mistaken, a distantly Scottish lilt to it. There was an attractive roughness about the way she pronounced her Rs when using words such as ‘structuralism’ and ‘Derrida’ (for they began by discussing literary theory), an appealingly guttural quality to her intonation when she used phrases like ‘the auteurist conspiracy’ and ‘the camera as voyeur’ (for they ended by discussing film aesthetics). He wondered whether his own obvious Home Counties accent was annoying her.
‘Well, goodbye,’ she said, after forty minutes or so.
‘Same time tomorrow?’ he asked.
‘OK. It’s been nice talking to you.’
‘And to you.’
‘Not going home for Christmas just yet, then?’ she asked, after an awkward pause.
‘No, not just yet.’
‘Had many Christmas cards?’
‘Not many. And you?’
‘No, not many.’
Richard never got many Christmas cards, certainly not as many as he sent out, and he never sent out more than a dozen. So far there was only one card on the mantelpiece, and that was from his next-door neighbours, a small and noisy family with whom he and Miles normally had no contact whatsoever. He didn’t even know their names, for the card simply said, ‘Happy Christmas – To All at 48, from All at 49’. This year, as last year, he had replied promptly with a card saying, ‘Happy Christmas – To All at 49, from All at 48’. Every year, Richard knew, his other next-door neighbours also got a card, directed to All at 47, from All at 49, and so he was never sure whether he, too, should send a card, to All at 47, from All at 48, particularly as he knew that they were invariably swift to return the compliment, with a card to All at 49, from All at 47. (He never did speak to the small, noisy family who lived next door. Some months later, returning home in the early evening, he found their flat swarming with police and ambulancemen. In a concerted suicide, the father had shot his wife, his son, his daughter and finally himself. They left a short note which read, ‘Goodbye Cruel World – from All at 49’. The incident had made the headlines and Richard’s picture was on the third page of the evening newspaper.)