The Rain Before It Falls

by Jonathan Coe

  The crisis had passed. Momentarily. Bonaparte was perfectly all right, of course. It was Ivy who had to be carried upstairs (I’m not exaggerating – Raymond and Owen took one end each) and was not seen afterwards for about two days, except by Beatrix. Yes, the poor girl received a maternal summons the next day. We were playing in the caravan together, at the time, and together we trooped into the house and up the stairs to Ivy’s bedroom, but Beatrix went in alone, while I lurked outside, my ear at the door. What I heard was very disturbing. It was not the words that disturbed me so much – indeed, I could hardly hear any of them – but Ivy’s tone of voice. She didn’t raise it, not at all. If she had, it might have been less upsetting. Throughout the five minutes or so that Beatrix was inside, she spoke in a low monotone which I can only describe – trying to choose my words carefully, here, without exaggeration – as murderous. I have never forgotten the controlled, deadly edge in her voice as she practically accused Beatrix (this was what I was told afterwards) of trying to kill the adored poodle – who lay, needless to say, stretched out across her feet at the bottom of the bed all this time, panting and hot with devotion. At the end of Ivy’s monologue there was a curious noise. Not so much a slap, exactly, as a sudden whooshing sound, followed by a kind of snap, as if a bone had been wrenched out of shape, and then a scream of distress from Beatrix. After that there was a long period of intense silence. When Beatrix finally emerged, she was nursing her wrist, and her eyes were red and her cheeks grimy with tears. We went up to the playroom together, and after a while I asked her what had happened, but she never told me. She just sat there in silence, rubbing her wrist, but to me what has always been horrible about this episode is not the thought of what Ivy might have done to her, but the way that she spoke. It was the first time I had ever heard a mother speaking to her child in a voice so icy with hate. Sadly, it was not to be the last.

  The story of Bonaparte did not have a happy conclusion. In fact it had a rather odd, not to say baffling conclusion. I shall explain what I mean by that shortly. In the meantime, I realize that I have digressed from my task of describing this photograph. Let me return to it.

  The little brick wall which ran the length of the lawn, at a height of about eighteen inches, dividing it into two different levels, is what is known as a ha-ha. Whoever took this photograph was standing on the lower level, adopting a deferential position towards the house, which therefore looms over the viewer, commanding respect. But because of the angle at which the picture was taken, the house’s gaze is directed obliquely, away from the camera and into the distance. The viewer remains insignificant, beneath notice, and Warden Farm instead directs its attention proudly, unruffled, over the lawns and pastures which lie obediently at its feet. Although I do not remember the house being quite as unfriendly as it appears here, I suppose that this chimes, figuratively speaking, with what I have been telling you about Aunt Ivy and Uncle Owen and their attitude towards Beatrix and myself. Beneath the cold glaze of their indifference Beatrix and I became allies, sisters, and the bond between us was not to be severed for a long, long time. Oh, there were to be many interruptions, many periods of separation, but they made no material difference. I always knew that would be the case. For this reason, there was sadness, but no sense of finality, when the time came to say goodbye to her, on the day the telephone rang in the stone-flagged hallway, and minutes later I found myself recalled to my parents’ house – as abruptly and as arbitrarily, it seemed to me, as I had first been sent away from it all those months before.

  The fifth picture for you now, Imogen. A winter scene. The recreation ground at Row Heath, in Bournville, some time in the bitterly cold early months of 1945.

  I find this a hard photograph to look at. It was taken by my father, with his box camera, one Sunday afternoon. The pool which stands at the centre of the park has frozen over, and dozens of people are skating on it. In the foreground, sporting thick coats and woollen hats, looking straight into the camera, stand two figures: myself, aged eleven, and Beatrix, aged fourteen. Beatrix is holding a dog lead in her left hand, and at the end of it, sitting impatiently at her feet, is Bonaparte. Both girls are smiling, broadly and happily, with no intimation of the disaster that is about to befall them.

  My father could take a good photograph: this one has been composed quite carefully. There are four distinct ‘layers’ to the picture, if that is the correct term, and I shall try to describe them to you one by one. First of all, in the far background, beneath a white, snow-heavy sky, you have the distant outline of the pavilion. This building loomed large in my youth: it was here that dances were held – out on the terrace in the summer, if the weather was kind – and these rather terrifying but exhilarating events used to form the backbone of what little I had in the way of a social life. It was a stylish black and white building, with high arches framing its tall French windows. You can see three of them in this picture: the remainder are obscured by trees, as is the van selling mugs of hot chocolate which was permanently stationed beside the pavilion, and the small twin bandstands which stood on the lawn beneath the terrace. It’s a shame those aren’t in the photograph. They would have looked festive and eccentric in the snow.

  In front of the pavilion, flanking it on either side, we can see two rows of grand, domineering horse chestnut trees. The four trees in each row blur together, their branches thick and tightly interlocking, so that it looks as though there are just two of them, two massive domes made up of bonelike intersections, which watch over the pool like bloated sentries, keeping silent guard. Normally, they would have thrown huge, equally impressive reflections on to the pool’s silvery surface, but it has frozen over today, and the ice reflects nothing: it is coarse and grainy, gleaming white streaked with grey where the shadows fall, and there are thin, reedy plants pushing their way through it in occasional clumps. This is where we can see the third ‘layer’ of the picture – the skating figures. Some of them are caught in motion, just a blur passing in front of the camera; others are captured in moments of strange, contorted stillness: arms splayed out, struggling for balance, knees raised awkwardly in the air. One man is keeping his left hand jammed into his pocket, while with the other arm he seems to be pointing at the ice with an outstretched finger, as if he has just spotted some sinister apparition beneath its surface. Two young women are just standing together, talking on the ice, while a teenage boy looks to be on the point of crashing into them. He is wearing short trousers, somewhat surprisingly. They all look rather poignant like this, the way the photograph has reduced them to an unnatural stillness, just when they are doing something as dynamic and joyful as ice-skating – rather like those figures embalmed in the molten lava at Pompeii, caught at the moment of their last struggle before death. How morbid my thoughts seem to be growing, recently. Most of the men are wearing flat caps – this is one of the things that dates the photograph – and that peculiar style of trouser that was so popular then, where the waistband seems to come up incredibly high, halfway up their chests by the looks of it. Rather ludicrous, I suppose, to modern eyes. You can see this because not all of them have coats on, which leads me to remember that, in spite of the frozen pond, it was quite a sunny afternoon. Beatrix and I were a little overdressed, it seems. Soon after this, perhaps, was when the thaw set in. Of course the winter of 1944–1945 was famously horrible. The blackout had ended by now, I seem to remember, and was replaced by what was known as the ‘dim-out’ instead. However, not only was the weather foul – I remember days and days of particularly thick and filthy fog, especially at dusk, which the cloudy light from the streetlamps could barely break through – but the news from abroad was dispiriting as well. The Germans had developed a major counterattack against the American First Army, and our hopes that the war might be over before Christmas were soon dashed. Although I still did not really take in the full ramifications of these things (I was a self-absorbed girl, capable of, but not interested in, understanding the events that were unfolding around me in the wide
r world, and I suppose I have stayed that way ever since) something of my parents’ disappointment and pessimism must have communicated itself to me. I have a distant memory of the conversation over Sunday lunch that day; or rather, not of the conversation itself, but of the mood it created, in me and in the house. Ivy and Beatrix had driven over from Shropshire that morning. This was a great treat for me, something I had been looking forward to for weeks. Beatrix and I had been writing to each other, writing every few days, but had seen each other very infrequently. I no longer have her letters, sadly, and as to whether she kept any of mine, I have no idea. Goodness knows what she must have made of them, anyway. I should imagine she found them very childish. Hers, at this time, were displaying ever more adult preoccupations: she was starting to write about clothes, make-up, boys – things which were of no interest to me whatsoever. (And still aren’t, I have to say.) Nonetheless, I treasured these letters because she was writing them, and anything that interested Beatrix – even when it involved such ineffably boring topics – was somehow touched with magic and excitement. Really, I was just thrilled that she wanted to be in any kind of communication with me: she could have been copying out lists of names from the telephone directory, and I would have devoured her letters with the same breathless eagerness as soon as they dropped on to our doormat. As for seeing her in person, this was a rare treat. We had not even visited Warden Farm at Christmas, this year, for some reason, but today Ivy had decided to drive over to Birmingham – quite an adventure for her – in order to see her sister (my mother), and she was going to bring Beatrix with her so that she and I could spend a few hours together. The fact that the pool at Row Heath was frozen over made the treat all the more delicious. The two of us could go ice-skating in the afternoon, after lunch.

  And so Ivy and my mother stayed indoors all that afternoon, drinking tea and catching up on the family gossip, while my father took us to the recreation ground. It was a ten-minute walk from our house, the pavements glistening with ice, Bonaparte panting and straining at the leash. Ivy had not, at first, wanted him to go with us. No doubt she would have preferred to have him sprawled out on her lap all afternoon. It was only after Beatrix had implored her, at great length, that she relented. I think it was the first time that she had ever been allowed to take him out for a walk by herself.

  Oh – I haven’t described the front ‘layer’ of the picture yet, have I? That is to say, the figures of Beatrix and myself, standing in the foreground. Well, we are leaning into one another, with our arms linked. There is a noticeable difference in height: I am standing on the left-hand side of the picture and I only come up to her shoulders. My head is slightly tilted, not quite resting upon her shoulder. My attitude might almost be described as coquettish, my eyes flirting with the camera, playing up to my father, but only in the most childish and artless of ways, whereas Beatrix, gazing directly into the lens, is smiling with a directness and an earnestness that is both mature and… well, and a little disturbing, now that I look at it. She is challenging the camera, trying to force some kind of response from it. Or perhaps the challenge is directed at my father himself. Whatever her object, anyway, the difference between us – in maturity and temperament – is every bit as visible as the difference in height. And yet Beatrix was still a child: I must remember that. What happened, in the few minutes after this photograph was taken, happened to a child. To an adult, perhaps it would have seemed ludicrous, or would at least have had a ludicrous side to it. To Beatrix, it was simply a tragedy.

  It can be described very quickly: everything happened in an instant. Beatrix now decided that it was time for Bonaparte to have some proper exercise. She let the foolish dog off his lead and waited for him to start running around in meaningless circles, as he always liked to do.

  This time, however, Bonaparte did something quite different. Without hesitation, he dashed off towards the perimeter of the park, in a perfectly straight line. He ran straight up the slope towards the two rows of horse chestnut trees. What on earth was going through his little doggy mind, I haven’t the faintest idea. We watched him, all three of us, smiling at first, pleased to be witnesses to this release of bottled-up energy. He kicked up little flurries of snow with his paws as he ran. And then, within a few seconds, a realization dawned upon us. He was not going to stop, or turn around. He carried on running, and passed between the trees, until he was almost out of sight. Even at such a distance he looked so happy, and eager, and full of life, that it took us all longer than it should have done to realize that something was wrong. Some strange impulse was telling him to keep going at full speed. He was not chasing anything. He was not trying to escape. He was not trying to find his way back to his beloved Ivy. His thoughts – if you can use that word about a dog, particularly one as stupid as Bonaparte – were simply fixed, with absolute determination, upon the distant horizon, and he was not going to stop until he had reached it.

  He had almost disappeared from view when Beatrix leaped into action. She shrieked ‘Bony, Bony!’ at the top of her voice and launched herself into pursuit. It seems almost comical now, as I describe it to you, but I can assure you, none of us thought it funny at the time. My father – carrying the ice skates, which were destined never to be used – ran after Beatrix, soon overtaking her, while I brought up the rear. We were all of us shouting Bonaparte’s name and attracting a good deal of attention from the other people in the park. But we were far too slow: he had already reached the edge, run out across the road, disappeared through a gap in the hedge opposite and was by now tearing halfway across the playing fields which belonged to the Cadbury factory, still barking joyously. First of all we had to find the gate to these fields – which was about fifty yards away along the main road – and by the time we had got through it, the dog was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Where is he?’ my father was saying, standing with his hands on his hips, panting heavily. ‘Where the devil is he?’ Beatrix by this stage was howling, a real blood-curdling howl, and soon enough this set me off as well – coupled with a scrape to my legs after falling over on that road. So my poor father had not one but two weeping children on his hands, as well as a dog that seemed to have become possessed by some demonic spirit and vanished into thin air.

  Well. What else can I tell you, about that afternoon? We must have searched the surrounding streets for an hour or more, as the afternoon grew colder and darker. We called his name until our voices were hoarse. And all the time, nagging away at our minds – or my mind, at any rate – was the question, Why? Why had this silly little dog just run off like that, with every appearance of excitement and enthusiasm? It made no sense. It was baffling, as well as heartbreaking.

  Then at last, when there was clearly no point in prolonging the search any further, there was the long, miserable return home, the breaking of the news to Ivy, and her reaction – which went through a definite sequence, beginning with silence, followed by incredulity, recrimination, shouting, hysterics and finally a sort of desperate onset of pragmatism: she and Beatrix and my father piled into Ivy’s car and drove off to the nearest police station, to register Bonaparte’s details. All in vain, of course. Mother and daughter were fated to drive home to Shropshire dogless, despondent and still unable to believe what had happened to them. God only knows what they talked about on the journey. I imagine that they said nothing at all. Beatrix was still crying, in any case.

  I did not see her again for some time after that. There was a long interval, too, before her next letter, which contained no reference to this episode, or to Bonaparte. The dog was never found again. Once, walking through Bournville hand in hand with my mother, on the way to the dentist, I passed a man walking a dog who looked exactly like him. My mother thought so too: we both stopped and turned and stared, and the man turned and stared back, puzzled and a little indignant. But we were not brave enough to confront him.

  This photograph brings it all back. And yet sometimes, the images we remember, the ones we carry inside our heads, can b
e more vivid than anything a camera is able to preserve on film. If I lay down this photograph, now, and close my eyes, what I see at once is not darkness but the memory of Beatrix, just before she began to run after that dog: silhouetted against the winter sky, her little vulnerable figure, black against white, standing motionless on the ridge between those two rows of chestnut trees, her back to me, looking into the distance, her gaze pitched towards the horizon, to the point where that foolish, annoying little animal was about to disappear from view. A silhouette, that’s all, the outline of a human shape, and yet to me it is as expressive as if I were staring Beatrix in the face: in the tense, wired attitude of her body I can see all her despair, all her terrible sense of loss, all her horror at the thought of what awaited her when we returned to the house and told her mother the news. She had stood there, rooted, for I don’t know how long – paralysed by all of these things. Just for a few seconds, I suppose, but how clearly I can still see her. The image is burned, burned on my consciousness. It has never left me, and I can be certain now that it never will.