Authors: Jonathan Coe
This suggested to Ted that Robin must have been preserving a mysterious reticence on the subject of his early life. Now he leaned forward and said, in a low voice:
‘Tell me – would you say that you and Robin were close friends?’
‘Fairly close, yes.’
‘Then tell me this: what do you think is the matter with him?’
‘The matter? How do you mean?’
‘Why do you think this has – happened to him?’
‘Happened? What are you talking about?’
Ted could see that he was being stonewalled. Fortunately, four years of selling computer software had, he believed, taught him to understand the psychology of situations such as this. So he asked:
‘When was the last time you saw Robin, before today?’
‘About two weeks ago, I suppose.’
‘Is that usual?’
‘Well, it’s not unusual.’
‘Where has he been?’
‘Where has he been? How should I know?’
Ted now changed his tone, to one of calm but urgent pronouncement.
‘I think Robin is experiencing some sort of mental breakdown.’
Hugh laid down his book, stared at him for a few seconds and laughed hysterically. Then he stopped, as suddenly as he had begun, and resumed his reading.
‘So, you don’t believe me?’ said Ted. ‘So, why hasn’t he been on campus for weeks? Why isn’t he sleeping, or eating, or washing, or shaving? Why does he never leave his flat? Why has he lost so much weight? Why did he try to make an urgent telephone call to me, his oldest and closest friend?’
‘Where did you say you knew Robin?’ Hugh asked.
‘At Cambridge.’
‘Well, that was four years ago. Perhaps he’s changed since then. To my mind, there’s been nothing unusual about him recently. He often disappears for days at a time. He often forgets to shave. He always smells like that. He’s a student. Worse than that, he’s a postgraduate student. What incentive is there to keep up appearances?’
Ted could not follow the logic of this argument.
‘Robin is studying for his doctorate. That is a respectable profession like any other.’
‘Profession my arse,’ said Hugh cheerfully. ‘Robin will never finish his thesis. Doctorate my fanny. I’ve seen dozens like him. How long’s he been doing it now? Four and a half years. And do you know why he’s nowhere near finishing it?’
‘Why?’
‘Because he hasn’t started it yet.’
Professor Davis was now approaching their table. He was thin, bespectacled, and almost bald, and had a habit of staring around him as if looking hopefully for someone who he knew, in his heart, would not be there. His progress towards them was painfully slow; at one point he tripped on the carpet and stumbled against a plastic table. Behind him, Christopher (who seemed to be about Robin’s age) was carrying a tray which held two cups of coffee and a macaroon.
‘Professor Davis is actually quite a celebrity,’ said Hugh. ‘You’ve probably heard of him.’
Ted found it convenient to nod.
‘In the academic world he has the reputation of being something of an iconoclast. His new book,
The Failure of Contemporary Literature
, provides a radical and provocative overview of the last twenty years. Critics have hailed it as the logical successor to his earlier book,
Culture in Crisis
, which provided a radical and provocative overview of the previous twenty years. He and I are old friends. We came to the university at exactly the same time.’
‘When was that?’
‘Sixteen years ago.’
As Ted pondered this information, the professor finally arrived and Hugh rushed to get him a seat, which he sank into, wheezing like an asthmatic. Christopher drew up a fourth chair and put the tray down in the middle of the table.
‘So,’ said Hugh, after a pause, ‘are you well? How are things in the department?’
‘Oh, not too bad, not too bad,’ said Davis, helping himself to sugar.
His students hung on these words and nodded sagely after he had spoken them. Then there was another silence. When he seemed about to speak again, Hugh and Christopher leaned forward in anticipation.
‘The trouble with getting sugar in lumps,’ he said, ‘is that two is never enough, and three is always too much. Don’t you find that?’
He continued sipping his coffee, thoughtfully.
‘I see you’ve got Kronenburg’s new book on narrative aesthetics,’ said Christopher, picking up Hugh’s library book. He turned to Davis. ‘You’ve read this, of course?’
‘It looked a bit too German and theoretical to me,’ he said, with a benign smile. ‘I gave my review copy away to a nephew in Chipping Sodbury.’
Christopher handed the book back to Hugh.
‘The older one gets,’ said Davis, with his mouth full of cake, ‘the less useful critical theory seems.’
‘You mean one should go back to texts?’ asked Hugh.
‘Yes, perhaps. But then, the more one reads them, the less interesting the texts themselves appear to become.’
‘This essentially is what you’ve been arguing in your new book,’ said Christopher. ‘It’s a radical and provocative viewpoint, if I may say so.’
Davis nodded his acquiescence.
‘But does this mean,’ Hugh asked carelessly, ‘the end of literature as we know it?’
‘As we know it?’
‘As it is taught in our schools and universities.’
‘Ah! No, no… indeed not. Far from it. In fact I think –’ here there was an almighty pause, far surpassing any that had gone before ‘– I think…’ Suddenly he looked up, the gleam of insight in his eye. The tension in the air was palpable. ‘I think I’d like another macaroon.’
Ted took an immediate liking to Professor Davis. He found him entirely free of a trait which was, in his experience, the failing of most academics, that of excessive commitment to his own discipline. Despite the repeated attempts of Hugh and Christopher to involve him in abstruse and specialized discussions, he refused to be drawn, and seemed far more anxious to talk about computers and the nature of Ted’s job. He spent some time trying to convince him of the university’s suitability as a venue for his employers’ next sales conference; and in return, Ted outlined the many advantages, to a man in his position, of a varied and flexible package of word-processor software. Professor Davis was impressed with the labour-saving potential of his programmes, and admitted that he had long been searching for an alternative to the tedious process of correcting his manuscripts by hand. By the time they parted, they had built up a solid respect for one another, and Ted left with a highly satisfied sense of having dealt with a shrewd and very practical businessman.
∗
‘Professor Davis is a brainless dick,’ said Robin, as he sat in the passenger seat of Ted’s car. It was late in the afternoon and they were driving back towards Coventry. ‘The only radical and provocative thing about him is the number of macaroons he manages to get through in a single day. I don’t know what Hugh sees in him.’
‘I don’t know what you see in Hugh,’ Ted answered. ‘He’s not at all the sort of person you would have chosen as a friend at Cambridge. From what I can gather he does nothing all day but hang around at the university drinking coffee and eating sandwiches.’
‘That’s what most of my friends do.’
‘Why doesn’t he get a job?’
‘Because there aren’t any academic jobs.’
‘Then he should look for something else. It’s time he started being realistic.’
‘If he were to start being realistic it would be disastrous. He’d realize that life had nothing in store for him any more. He’d probably kill himself.’
Ted snorted. ‘Don’t be fanciful.’
‘Anyway, Hugh’s not an isolated case. There are lots of people like him at this university. People who don’t belong here any more, but who like it too much to leave. Except that ‘like’ is the wrong word for this sort of person – it’s much too positive – because anyone who likes universities that much really hates life itself.’
‘Yes, but surely in a few years’ time, if he managed to apply himself, and if he managed to get himself onto some sort of training programme –’
‘Someone like Hugh is completely unemployable,’ said Robin, ‘because his mind has travelled too far along a particular path. There’s a certain sort of intelligence he’s gifted with, which, partly as a defence mechanism, partly as a form of egocentricity, he’s started to believe is the only sort worth having. This has rendered him quite literally unfit for the company of other human beings.’ He looked at his watch. ‘You can just drop me at the flat if you like. I suppose you’ll be wanting to go home.’
‘Yes, I had better be getting back.’ Ted had surprised himself, in fact, by not having left already. He was aching, after less than two days’ absence, to see Katharine and Peter, but at the same time he was nagged by a sense of business unfinished, duties undone. He had been shocked to find Robin so changed, and it was on the basis of this shock that he had slowly begun to contrive an explanation for the peculiarities in his behaviour. Robin had simply forgotten the kind of person he used to be, in the days when he was happy; and so the arrival of an old friend from Cambridge was neither more nor less than a God-given opportunity, sudden and unhoped-for. Continuity with the past, with that former self which he so desperately needed to retrieve, could be re-established; and he, Ted, was the agent through which the link could be made. Not to seize this chance would be an unforgivable dereliction of the obligations of friendship. At the very least it was worth missing his supper for. ‘Still, there’s no mad rush,’ he said. ‘What were you going to do, the rest of today?’
‘I’m tired,’ said Robin. ‘I might go to bed.’
‘You’ve only been up a few hours.’
‘I might watch the news. See if any more war crimes have been committed by our leaders today.’
‘It doesn’t do to worry about what’s going on in other parts of the world. Leave that to the politicians. What about doing some writing?’
‘I’m sick of that. There’s no point.’ After a while, he added: ‘Maybe I’ll do some work on the second story. It’s still not right, yet.’
‘Why don’t we go for a walk?’ said Ted. ‘There must be a park, where we could go for a walk. It’s going to be another nice evening. You could bring your story along. You might get some ideas.’
They were approaching the street where Robin lived. Ted parked the car while Robin went to fetch his second notebook, and then they started walking towards Memorial Park.
‘It’s a lovely evening,’ said Ted, undoing his tie. ‘You know, I think I could really get to like it round here.’
‘This is a fucking stupid idea,’ said Robin.
∗
It is another warm early summer’s evening, and the world seems, to all intents and purposes, to be at peace; so they set off again, these two strange bedfellows, to walk the final stretch of their friendship’s path.
Down Albany Road, and up into Spencer Avenue. This should be familiar territory to Ted, he was here only yesterday, but he was preoccupied then, and is preoccupied now, and he feels no glimmer of recognition. As for Robin, his familiarity with this area is like a bad taste in the mouth, it is like a weight around his neck. He longs to leave these pleasant suburban streets, as soon as possible, for as long as possible, but he has no clear plan of how this can be achieved; and his spirit is so tired, he cannot even find it in him to resent Ted for denying him the temporary means of escape.
They walk, in silence, past the deserted playground of an old school, and they head towards the main road. As they wait at the pelican crossing, a curious phenomenon occurs, and their thoughts begin to concentrate, with a sudden rush of purpose and energy, on exactly the same person. And at last, after so much wilful misunderstanding, so much incomprehension, so much distance and difference, their minds meet, after a fashion. They are both thinking of Katharine. Ted, with a gleam of far-off contentment in his eye, is thinking of how pleased she will be to see him again, how clean and welcoming she will have made the house in readiness for his return. He is thinking of the meals she will cook for him, this weekend, and the wine he will buy to go with the meals, and the love they will make after drinking the wine. He is thinking of how pretty she will look; wondering whether she will be wearing her hair up or down. He is flushed with a new, grateful awareness of his own good fortune: their mutual good fortune, in having found one another.
Meanwhile, Robin’s thoughts are all of the past. He is smarting with the recollection of feelings which he has spent five years trying to suppress; which he thought he had forgotten, until yesterday, when Ted had arrived, and he had once again heard her voice over the telephone. He is remembering his obsession with Katharine, and wondering whether she ever realized, or ever suspected. Or perhaps he is simply shutting the certainty out of his mind, for safety’s sake, since it would have been quite obvious to most people that Katharine had always suspected, and it was only because she had despaired, in the end, of his ever making his intentions clear, that Ted’s blunt, straightforward proposal had come like a break in the clouds. And so if Robin had only been a little more dynamic, a little more decisive, then who knows, she might have married him, in the fullness of time, and they would all have lived happily ever after, even Katharine – who is not, in case you were wondering, going to be allowed a voice in this story, because it is the story of Robin and Ted, who have both, in their different ways, resolved to keep her out of it. Which is a pity, in a way, because I think you would have preferred Katharine to either of them, had you been allowed to meet her.
They are now approaching the entrance to Memorial Park, and as they pass through this leafy gateway, Ted realizes that the moment cannot be put off any longer: an attempt must be made, for Robin’s sake, to plumb the well of shared memory, to remind him of a time when their friendship was fresh and sustaining; to show him that the past, if it lives on in their minds, cannot be irretrievable. So he sits Robin down on a bench, and says:
‘Do you remember that day we rode out to Grantchester, the five of us, you, me, Bernie, Oppo and Little Dave, all on our bikes, and how the sun was shining, and how we’d all finished our exams, and how we stopped at the Red Lion, on the way there, and the Green Dragon, on the way back, and the Black Horse, where we had lunch, and I had scampi, and we all drank champagne, and the sun was blazing away, in the sky, and we sat in the garden, by the river, near the bridge, close to the jetty, just by the boats, and the garden was full of people, young people, like you and me, full of hope, full of fun, full of the joys of spring, except that it was summer, which probably explains why it was raining, for a while, but not for long, and we went inside, and Bernie was drunk, and Oppo was pissed, and Little Dave was completely rat-arsed, and the whole thing was like a scene out of
Brideshead Revisited.’