The Closed Circle (41 page)
“Benjamin told me something about this,” said Lois, remembering a conversation they'd had in Dorset last year. “He was married, wasn't he?”
“To a woman who was cheating on him. Claire was convinced he'd never find it in him to leave her. But he did, in the end. And he flew all the way to England to tell her about it.
And
he sued for custody of his daughter.
And
he won.”
“I'm glad about that,” said Lois. “Very glad. If anybody deserves to be happy, it's Claire.”
Philip stirred his coffee, slowly, thoughtfully, and said: “And then there's you, of course.”
“Me?”
“You. The quiet one. The one that nobody really talks about. You deserve to be happy, too, Lois. Are you?”
There was a gentle bravery in Lois's voice as she looked at Philip and said: “Of course I am. I've got a job I like. A husband who loves me. A wonderful daughter. What more could I want?”
Philip met her eyes, and smiled quickly. After which he looked away, and said something she could not possibly have been anticipating. “ âWhat is the name of your goldfish?' ”
Lois frowned. “I beg your pardon?”
“ âWhat is the name of your goldfish?' That was the last thing I ever said to you. Don't you remember?”
“Noâwhen was this?”
“Twenty-nine years ago. I was round at your parents' house. They threw a dinner party, for my mum and dad. You were wearing an incredibly low-cut dress. I couldn't take my eyes off your cleavage.”
“I don't remember this
at all,
” Lois said. “Anyway, I never even had a goldfish.”
“I know. You were talking to my dad about
Colditz,
the television programme. I misheard what you were saying. Then I asked that question and it reduced the whole table to silence. Seriously, Lois, I was so consumed with lust for you that I couldn't even make myself understood in the English language that night.”
“I wish I'd known,” said Lois. “You weren't a bad-looking little thing in those days. History might have been very different.”
“It would never have happened. You were already spoken for.”
“Ah, yes. Of course I was.” She looked down at the table, remembering that evening now; and also remembering Malcolm, her first boyfriend, who was never out of her thoughts for more than a few hours. There was a long silence. Philip wondered if he had done the wrong thing, reminiscing about an occasion which touched upon that charged, bitterly sad episode, however obliquely. When Lois finally spoke again, her voice seemed far off, tiny. “You never forget,” she told him. “Just when you think you've forgotten, something comes back. Something like that tune, that Cole Porter song. You think it's over and done with, but it never is. It's always there. Those images . . .” She sighed, closed her eyes, withdrew into herself for a second or two. “You just have to go on. That's all there is to do, isn't it? What else is there? What other choice? You just have to go on, and you try to forget about it, but you can't, because even if it's not a piece of music there's always something else, something else that brings it all back to you. Christ, you only have to turn on the television. Lockerbie. September the 11th. Bali. I've watched them all. I can't keep away from them, in a terrible kind of way. And the worst of it is, it never stops. It never stops, and it gets worse and worse. Mombasa, this time last year. Sixteen people killed. Riyadh. Forty-six people killed. Casablanca. Thirty-three people. Jakarta. Fourteen people. And now Istanbul. Have you heard the news since you've been here? Thirty people killed, yesterday, by a suicide bomber at the British consulate. Have you seen what they're doing to the embassy here, just around the corner? Great concrete blocks in the middle of the road, to stop anyone driving a truck full of explosives into it? And that's nothing, Philipâ
nothing
âcompared to the people the Americans killed in Iraq this year. Every one of those people meant something. Every one of them was like Malcolm, to somebody. Fathers killed, mothers killed, children killed. The
rage
that's building up in the world, Philip, because of all this! The rage!”
She looked away, out of the window, her cheeks glistening. Philip said: “I hadn't heard about Istanbul. That's bad. Really bad.”
“There are going to be more,” said Lois. “I'm sure of it. It's only a matter of time before something worse happens. Something
huge
. . .”
She tailed off, and soon afterwards caught sight of Sophie and Patrick, walking together towards Pariser Platz. The young couple waved at them, and their parents waved back.
“Well, they seem to have had a good evening,” said Philip, pouring more coffee for Lois and himself.
“I thought something like that might happen,” she murmured. “Maybe our dynasties are going to be joining up after all.”
“Maybe,” said Philip. “It's a little bit early to say.”
“Yes,” Lois agreed. “You're right. It's a little bit early to say.”
And they watched in silence as Patrick and Sophie walked beneath the great arch of the Brandenburg Gate, hand in hand; the two of them wanting nothing more from life, at that moment, than the chance to repeat the mistakes their parents had made, in a world which was still trying to decide whether to allow them even that luxury.
Synopsis of The Rotters' Club
Birmingham, England, 1973. LOIS TROTTER (aged seventeen) answers a lonely hearts advertisement and starts going out with MALCOLM, a man in his early twenties, also known as The Hairy Guy. Meanwhile her younger brother BENJAMIN TROTTER (aged thirteen) attends King William's School and converts to Christianity after a bizarre, quasi-religious experience: having forgotten to take his swimming trunks to school one day, terrified that the PE master will make him swim in the nude in front of his classmates, Benjamin prays to be saved from this humiliation and his prayer is answered when he immediately discovers a spare pair of swimming trunks in an empty locker.
Benjamin's best friends at school are SEAN HARDING (an anarchic prankster), the quiet and conscientious PHILIP CHASE, and DOUG ANDERTON. Doug's father BILL ANDERTON is a leading shop steward at the British Leyland car factory in Longbridge. He is having an affair with MIRIAM NEWMAN, an attractive young secretary. But the affair is making Miriam miserable, and she threatens to bring it to an end.
On 21st November, 1974, Malcolm takes Lois to a pub in central Birmingham called The Tavern in the Town, intending to propose marriage to her. An IRA bomb explodes in the pub and Malcolm is killed. A wave of anti-Irish feeling spreads through Birmingham in the subsequent days and weeks; and, shortly afterwards, Miriam Newman disappears without trace. Nobody knows whether she has run off with another man, or something more sinister has happened.
Two years later, in the summer of 1976, the Trotter family go on holiday to Skagen in Denmark, with the family of Gunther Baumann, a friend and business associate of Benjamin's father. Lois remains in England: she has not yet recovered from the shock of seeing Malcolm die, and is still hospitalized. During this holiday, Gunther's fourteen-year-old son ROLF BAUMANN makes enemies of the two Danish boys in the house next door, and they try to drown him at the treacherous meeting point of the Kattegat and Skaggerak seas. Benjamin's younger brother PAUL, now aged twelve, dives in and saves Rolf's life.
Back in England, Benjamin joins the editorial staff of the school magazine,
The Bill Board.
His colleagues include Doug, Philip, EMILY SANDYS and Miriam's younger sister, CLAIRE NEWMAN. One of the stories they cover concerns the deadly athletic and personal rivalry between RONALD CULPEPPER and STEVE RICHARDSâthe only black boy in the school, popularly known as “Rastus.” Culpepper is disliked by almost everyone at King William's, with the exception of Paul Trotter, who is beginning to show a precocious interest in politics, and who persuades Culpepper to let him join a secretive school discussion group known as The Closed Circle.
Benjamin writes a review of the school production of
Othello,
savaging the performance of CICELY BOYD even though he is hopelessly in love with her. However, Cicely is grateful for the review, and becomes his friend. The rivalry between Culpepper and Richards intensifies, Lois slowly begins to recover, and Harding's humour becomes increasingly provocative and uncomfortable: in a mock by-election held at the school Debating Society, he puts himself forward as a candidate for the National Front, causing Steve Richards to walk out in disgust.
Steve Richards beats Culpepper to the school sporting trophy, and incurs his lasting hatred. Later, when Richards comes to sit his A-levels, someone doses him with a sedative beforehand and he fails a crucial physics exam. He is obliged to take a year out before resitting the paper.
Meanwhile Benjamin abandons a rainswept family summer holiday on the Ll
n peninsula in North Wales, and makes his way instead to the house where Cicely is recovering from an illness with her uncle and aunt. He and Cicely declare their love for each other, but they do not sleep together for many more months.
Not, in fact, until May 1979. Benjamin is now working for a bank in central Birmingham, prior to attending Oxford university in the autumn. Cicely has been living with her mother in New York. One morning after her return to England, she and Benjamin make love for the first and last time in Paul's bedroom. Ecstatically happy, Benjamin takes her for a drink that lunchtime in a Birmingham pub called The Grapevine. There, he meets Philip's father, SAM CHASE, who makes two predictions: that Benjamin and Cicely will have a long and happy life together, and that Margaret Thatcher will never be Prime Minister. Cicely leaves the pub, after being told that a letter has just arrived for her, from her friend Helen in New York. Later that day, Mrs. Thatcher sweeps to her first election victory.
Jonathan Coe
THE CLOSED CIRCLE
Jonathan Coe's awards include the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, the Prix Médicis Etranger, and, for
The Rotters' Club
, the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Writing. He lives in London with his wife and their two daughters.
ALSO BY JONATHAN COE
The Rotters' Club
The House of Sleep
The Winshaw Legacy
The Dwarves of Death
A Touch of Love
The Accidental Woman
Copyright © 2004 by Jonathan Coe
Illustration copyright © 2001 by Peter Frame
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Contemporaries and colophon
are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the
product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance
to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Coe, Jonathan.
The closed circle / Jonathan Coe.â1st American ed.
p. cm.
1. Birmingham (England)âFiction. 2. London (England)âFiction. 3. Legislatorsâ
Fiction. 4. AdulteryâFiction. 5. BrothersâFiction. I. Title.
PR6053.026C57 2005
823'.914âdc22 2004057789
eISBN: 978-0-307-42826-4
v3.0_r1