Authors: Jonathan Coe
To be honest, I had little experience in this area. My knowledge of sexually explicit books and films was small. Despite all those years of relying on the television for sexual stimuli, I retained, amazingly enough, a fundamental aversion to pornography (an aversion probably based on principle, if you cared to look back into the distant past). In even the tackiest of the films which I bought, rented or taped from the television, there was usually a vestige of artistic justification for the couplings and disrobings which would rapidly become my main focus of interest. And in fact I had only once been to the cinema to see a pornographic film. It was in the mid 1970s, during the final grisly stages of my marriage to Verity. For several months our sex life had been dying a slow, lingering death, and in our mutual panic we decided that a visit to a nearby cinema specializing in blue movies might provide something in the way of resuscitation. Sadly, we were out of luck. The film we’d chosen had attracted a certain amount of attention in our evening newspaper because, although made by a London production company, it had been shot entirely on location in Birmingham itself. As a result it was enormously popular with the locals, and the rest of the audience consisted mainly of middle-aged couples – some of whom had obviously seen it several times before – who would have an annoying tendency to interrupt, for example, a scene of back-seat oral sex with remarks like, ‘This is the bit where you can see our Tracy’s Morris Minor going past outside’, or ‘Doesn’t the chiropodist’s look better now they’ve given it a lick of paint?’ Verity and I left the cinema without feeling noticeably aroused and spent the rest of the evening, I seem to remember, rearranging the holiday snaps from our recent trip to the Scilly Isles.
Shaking this memory off, I returned to the blank sheets of paper in front of me and tried to bring my mind into focus. It was no easy task, for we were only five days away from Christmas, and tomorrow Fiona was supposed to be going back to the hospital for the results of her tests. I’d agreed to keep her company, and we were both apprehensive about it. On top of that, I’d had an alarming phone call earlier that day – from Mrs Tonks, of all people. It seemed there had been another break-in: not at the office, this time, but at Mr McGanny’s house in St John’s Wood. The burglar had managed to force entry into his safe and several private documents had been stolen. They included letters from Tabitha Winshaw and, for some reason, statements of the firm’s accounts for the tax year 1981/82. Even more bizarrely, a number of photographs had been removed from one of Mr McGanny’s family albums. She asked me if I could throw any light on this. Naturally I couldn’t, and so the only effects of our conversation were to leave the mystery more clouded than ever and to make it even harder for me to concentrate on my work.
After a few minutes I put my list of key words to one side: it had proved inhibiting rather than helpful, and the only way to break the deadlock, I decided, was to go for complete spontaneity. I should write down whatever came into my head, and worry about the details later. So I fetched a bottle of white wine from the kitchen, poured myself a tumbler-full and wrote my first sentence.
She followed him into the bedroom
That was a good start. Nothing too complicated there. I took a sip of wine and rubbed my hands. Perhaps this wasn’t going to be as difficult as I’d thought. Now maybe just a couple of sentences to describe the bedroom, and then we would be getting somewhere.
It was a
It was a what, though? I didn’t want to go for anything elaborate at this stage, bogging the reader down in prolix descriptions. A single carefully chosen epithet ought to do the trick. How about –
It was a large room
No: much too boring. It was a sumptuous room? Too cliched. A charming room? Too twee. It was a large, charming, sumptuous room. It was charmingly sumptuous. It was largely charming. To be honest, I didn’t give a shit what kind of room it was. Neither would my readers, in all probability. Best to skip all that stuff and keep things moving.
He pulled her roughly towards the bed
That wouldn’t do. I didn’t want to make it sound like rape.
He pulled her gently towards the bed
Too wimpish.
He drew her towards the bed
He sat down on the bed and drew her roughly towards him
‘Won’t you sit down?’ he said, and pointed in the rough direction of the bed
He looked in the rough direction of the bed, and raised a provocative eyebrow
A suggestive eyebrow
He raised one of his eyebrows
He raised both of his eyebrows
He raised his right eyebrow provocatively
He raised his left eyebrow suggestively
Raising both of his eyebrows, one provocatively, the other suggestively, he pulled her gently in the rough direction of the bed
Perhaps this section was also best dispensed with. I could imagine exactly what Patrick’s criticism would be: I was dithering over these preliminary niceties so as to avoid getting down to the action.
She was wearing a
What was she wearing?
She was wearing a blouse
Yes?
She was wearing a thin muslin blouse
She was wearing a thin muslin blouse, through which her
Go on, write it.
through which her nipples stood out like
Like?
like two cherries
like two maraschino cherries
like two glace cherries
like two Fox’s Glacier Mints
like two peas in a pod
like three coins in a fountain
like Victoria plums
like Victoria Falls
like a sore thumb
Anyway, she had these nipples. That was fairly obvious. What about him, though? I didn’t want to be accused of sexism: I was obliged, as far as I could see, to present the male as a sexual object too. And so, for instance:
His tight black trousers could barely conceal
Or better still –
The bulge in his tight black trousers left her in no doubt as to
his excitement
his intentions
bis endowment
his policy
the nature of his endowment
the extent of his manhood
the length of his extension
the extent of his full, throbbing manhood
the full extent of his hot, throbbing member
I had to admit it, this wasn’t getting me anywhere. Besides, I could always come back later if I wanted to fine-tune these points of descriptive detail. If I didn’t get to the heart of the matter soon, the momentum would be gone.
He tore off her blouse
No, too aggressive.
He unbuttoned her blouse and peeled it off like a
like
like the skin on an overripe banana
I threw down my pen and sat back in disgust. What was the matter with me tonight? Maybe it was the wine, or just the fact that I was thoroughly out of practice at this sort of thing, but nothing seemed to be working. I was making all the wrong moves, falling at every fence, fumbling and groping and communicating nothing but my own inexperience.
He laid a tentative, questioning hand on her
soft, milky
warm, silky
yielding, heaving
rising, falling
swelling, bulging
big, bouncy
fleshy, bumpy, heavy, chunky, strapping, whopping, vast, enormous, massive, monstrous, prodigious, colossal, gigantic, mountainous, Gargantuan, Titanic, Herculean
her small, pert breasts
her perfectly proportioned breasts
her averagely proportioned yet somehow surprising breasts
her deformed breasts
All right. Forget that. More wine. Now think carefully. Imagine these two young, attractive people, alone in a room with only their own bodies for amusement. Picture them in your mind.
Now choose your words with confidence, and precision. Be fearless.
as he buried his face in her bountiful breasts, she pulled the shirt from his shapely shoulders
he sank to his knees and nuzzled her navel with his nose they fell on to the bed and he lay on top of her, their lips boring greedily into each other in a long, moist kiss
they fell on to the bed and she lay on top of him, their moist lips meeting hungrily in a long, boring kiss
Oh, to hell with it.
she was panting with desire
he was bursting from his pants
she was wet between the thighs
he was wet behind the ears
she was just about to come
he didn’t know whether he was coming or going
And it was at this climactic juncture, just as I had managed to work myself into a state of rather desperate excitement, that the telephone rang. I sat up in surprise and looked at the clock. It was two-thirty in the morning. Irrationally, I felt obliged to tidy up my desk and make sure that the sheets of paper were positioned face down before I went to answer. Then, when I picked up the receiver, I heard an unfamiliar voice.
‘Mr Owen?’ it said.
‘Speaking.’
‘I’m sorry to be disturbing you at this time of night. I hope I didn’t get you out of bed. Hanrahan’s the name. I’m ringing on behalf of one of my clients, a Mr Findlay Onyx, who claims to be an acquaintance of yours.’
‘That’s correct.’
‘I’m his lawyer, you see. Findlay sends his apologies for not being able to speak to you directly, but he’s being held at Hornsey police station, and isn’t allowed to make any more phone calls. He is, however, very anxious to meet with you personally at the earliest opportunity. He asked me to say that you should come round to the station first thing tomorrow morning, if it’s at all possible.’
‘Well, it’s … difficult,’ I said, thinking of Fiona and her outpatients’ appointment. ‘I suppose if it’s absolutely necessary … I mean, what’s going on? Is he in trouble?’
‘I’m afraid so. I really think it would be best if you could make the effort.’
I gave him a tentative assurance and he said, ‘Good. Findlay can count on you, then,’ and hung up. The whole conversation had taken place so quickly that I scarcely knew what had happened. For a start I hadn’t even managed to ask him why Findlay was being held by the police – unless, of course (and suddenly this seemed the obvious, the only solution), he was the one who had broken into Mr McGanny’s house and stolen the documents relating to my book. I went into the bedroom, lay down on the bed and pondered the likelihood of this. Could they have caught up with him already, if the burglary had only taken place last night? It was possible. He was old and infirm, and might well have left a trail of careless evidence. But if that was the case, why the sudden urgency? Surely he would be let out on bail, and our meeting could have been deferred until he was back in the privacy of his flat. There was no way of knowing, anyway, and I spent the rest of the night mulling over this new development in an uneasy half-sleep which was broken after only a few hours by the first shafts of wintry sunlight.
2
It seemed to take most of the morning to get to the police station by bus. Fiona wouldn’t have that problem, at any rate: I’d booked a minicab for her before setting out. I’d done this to salve my conscience as much as anything else, because she’d looked so suddenly vulnerable when I left her: she’d put on her smartest work clothes, the way people do when gripped by that strange sense of propriety which insists that, if they are to meet their doom, they should at least be properly dressed. (But then again, I suppose, it gives them a kind of strength.) Having me with her wouldn’t have made a lot of difference, anyway. That’s what I tried to believe as the bus stopped and started on its throttled course across London, carrying me ever closer towards the next stage in a mystery from which I was, to tell the truth, beginning to feel more and more detached. It was a good feeling, too, this detachment: quite a relief, after all those years of puzzlement and struggle. It never occurred to me that I would have lost it by the time the morning was out.
I was kept waiting for only a few minutes by the desk sergeant, and then taken to a bright but grubby cell on the ground floor. Findlay was sitting rigidly on a bench, his raincoat again draped over his shoulders, his white hair turned to a halo by beams of light from one small window high up in the wall.
‘Michael,’ he said, taking my outstretched hand. ‘You do me an honour. I could only wish our second meeting had not been fated to take place amid such squalor and uncleanness. The fault, I’m afraid, is entirely my own.’
‘Entirely?’
‘Well, you can probably guess what has brought me here.’
‘I have – let’s say an inkling.’
‘Of course you have, Michael. A man of your discernment, your intuition. You know the frailties an old man is subject to, when his resolve is weak but his desires – alas – remain strong. Strong as they ever were.’ He sighed. ‘I think that I mentioned, the last time we met … the bender?’