Middle England

by Jonathan Coe

  ‘What a load of self-satisfied bullshit,’ said Sohan. But, regrettably, he did not say it on stage.

  *

  ‘Do you think so?’ Sophie asked.

  They were sitting in the Gilbert Scott restaurant at St Pancras station, conducting a post-mortem on the event. It was an expensive choice of restaurant, but they had decided that, since their meetings were going to be so few and far between from now on, each one should be treated as a special occasion. Sophie had ordered a green pea risotto, while Sohan was experimenting with prawn and rabbit pie, which turned out to be delicious.

  ‘These people don’t know what they’re talking about,’ he continued. ‘This so-called “tolerance” … Every day you come face to face with people who are not tolerant at all, whether it’s someone serving you in a shop, or just someone you pass in the street. They may not say anything aggressive but you can see it in their eyes and their whole way of behaving towards you. And they want to say something. Oh yes, they want to use one of those forbidden words on you, or just tell you to fuck off back to your own country – wherever they think that is – but they know they can’t. They know it’s not allowed. So as well as hating you, they also hate them – whoever they are – these faceless people who are sitting in judgement over them somewhere, legislating on what they can and can’t say out loud.’

  Sophie didn’t know what to say. She had never heard Sohan speak so candidly or bitterly on this subject before.

  ‘In Birmingham,’ she faltered, ‘people seem to get on … I don’t know, there are a lot of people from different cultures, and …’

  ‘You would see it that way,’ Sohan said, simply. But he had been looking forward to this dinner, and wanted to keep the mood light, so he switched topic by picking up his iPhone, finding an image on Facebook and thrusting it towards her. ‘By the way – what do you think?’

  Sophie found herself looking at the face of a waxy young man as he gazed stonily at the camera from behind his untidy desk.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘One of my postgrad students.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He’s single.’ Sophie stared back at him, stupefied. ‘Well, you’re looking for someone, aren’t you?’

  ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘Anyway, give me a break. He looks like an anorexic Harry Potter.’

  ‘Charming,’ said Sohan, and summoned up a different picture from Google Images. ‘OK, what about him?’

  Sophie took the phone again and squinted at the middle-aged, disappointed face on display.

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘One of my colleagues.’

  She looked closer. ‘Getting on a bit, isn’t he?’

  ‘I don’t know how old he is. I know he’s been writing the same thesis for nineteen years and hasn’t finished it yet.’

  Sophie looked closer still. ‘Is that dandruff?’

  ‘Probably just dust on the screen. Come on, I shared an office with this guy last year. He’s fine. Yes, there were a few … personal hygiene issues, but –’

  Sophie passed the phone back. ‘Thanks, but no thanks. No more academics. I’m through with pebble glasses and stoop shoulders. My next boyfriend’s going to be a hunk.’

  Sohan gave an incredulous laugh. ‘A hunk?’

  ‘Tall, dark and handsome. With a proper job.’

  ‘Where are you going to find one of those, up there?’

  ‘ “Up there”?’ repeated Sophie, her eyes dancing with amusement.

  ‘It is up, isn’t it?’

  ‘Everything’s “up”, to you. Everything north of Clapham.’

  ‘So my view of the world is London-centric. I can’t help it. I was born here, this is my city and it’s the only place I’ll ever live. Bristol was a passing aberration.’

  ‘Come and visit me in Birmingham. It’ll open your eyes.’

  ‘All right, I will. But tell me what the men are like.’

  ‘They’re the same as anywhere else, of course.’

  ‘Really? I thought men from the Midlands were shorter.’

  ‘Shorter? What gave you that idea?’

  ‘I thought that was why Tolkien invented hobbits.’ When Sophie broke out into affectionate but mocking laughter, he dug himself deeper into the hole. ‘No, seriously – don’t most people these days think Lord of the Rings is really about Birmingham?’

  ‘There’s a connection, obviously. There’s a museum now, at the place which is meant to have inspired him, just down the road from where I live.’

  ‘Arsehole Mill,’ said Sohan, deadpan.

  ‘Sarehole,’ Sophie corrected. ‘Look, come and see for yourself. It’s a lovely city, really.’

  ‘Of course it is. A land of boundless romantic and sexual opportunity. Next time you come down here, I’ll be taking you both out to dinner. You and your hobbit boyfriend.’

  With which words, he poured them both a final glass of wine, and they drank a toast: to Middle Earth, and Middle England.

  3.

  When Doug received an email from the Downing Street press office announcing a raft of new appointments, he did some googling. The name of the new coalition government’s deputy assistant director of communications had caught his eye: Nigel Ives. There had been a boy called Ives at school. Timothy Ives. And while it wasn’t such an unusual surname, it had set off a distant memory. Benjamin had once told him that in a moment of weakness, some years earlier, he had accepted Timothy Ives’s friend request on Facebook, and had discovered, among other things, that he had a son … Wasn’t the name Nigel? That, too, could be a coincidence. But in any case, Doug emailed Nigel, and Nigel emailed back, and when they met for an off-the-record chat at the café next to Temple tube station, the first thing Nigel said to him was:

  ‘I think you were at school with my father.’

  ‘Timothy? At King William’s in Birmingham, back in the seventies?’

  ‘That’s right. He was terrified of you.’

  ‘Really?’ said Doug.

  ‘But he also worshipped you.’

  ‘Really?’ said Doug.

  ‘He was convinced you despised him.’

  ‘Really?’ said Doug, remembering that this was definitely true. Timothy Ives had been a short, runtish boy, and the older boys in the school – especially Harding – had been ruthless in exploiting him, constantly requiring him to run errands and do favours. ‘How is he, anyway? What’s he up to?’

  ‘He’s become rather a successful proctologist.’

  ‘You don’t say.’

  ‘I’m sure you don’t suffer from haemorrhoids, Douglas, but if you did, my father could ease your pain.’

  ‘I shall certainly bear that in mind.’

  ‘But I dare say you didn’t come here to talk about your piles.’

  ‘I don’t have piles, and I wasn’t talking about them.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘No, I came here because I wanted to raise the possibility that you and I might begin a … warm and mutually beneficial relationship. If the Tories and the Lib Dems can form a coalition and find ways to work together, then … who knows? Maybe so can we.’

  ‘Indeed. You’re talking about the spirit of the age, Douglas. A complete break with the old two-party system. No more petty antagonism. Just common ground and cooperation. It’s a very exciting time to be entering politics.’

  Doug looked at Nigel and wondered how old he might be. Straight out of university, by the looks of it. His cheeks were pale, rosy and looked like they never needed to be shaved. His dark suit and tie were smart but characterless, like his side-parted hair. His expression was bland, his tone of voice permanently enthusiastic but otherwise inscrutable. He could only be in his early twenties.

  ‘But how are things really shaping up at Number Ten?’ Doug asked. ‘You’ve got two very different parties, here, with very different agendas. It can’t last for long, can it?’

  Nigel smiled. ‘Dave and Nick and the team respect you as a commentator, Douglas, but we k
now it’s your job to look for trouble. You’re not going to find it here. Dave and Nick have their differences, of course. But at the end of the day they’re just two regular guys who want to get on with the job.’

  ‘Regular guys?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Regular guys who just happened to go to unbelievably expensive private schools before shimmying up the political greasy pole.’

  ‘Exactly. You see how much they have in common? Wasn’t it brilliant, watching them that first day together in the Rose Garden? Larking about for the cameras, having a laugh …’

  ‘So there’s no ideological divide?’

  Nigel frowned for a moment. ‘Well, Dave went to Eton, and Nick went to Westminster. That’s a pretty big difference, I can see that.’ He soon brightened, however. ‘But honestly, Douglas – or can I call you Doug, now?’

  ‘Sure, why not?’

  ‘Honestly, Doug, you should hear the bantz between them at the cabinet table.’

  ‘Hear the what, sorry?’

  ‘The banter. Bantz.’

  ‘Banter?’

  ‘The jokes, the laughs, the mickey-taking. Believe me, I’ve heard a lot of this kind of stuff, especially at uni, and we’re talking top banter here.’

  ‘Let me get this straight – you’re referring to … cabinet discussions?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘So a few days ago there were thousands of young people out on the streets of London, protesting about huge rises in tuition fees, which Nick Clegg promised not to support and is now supporting, and in the meantime the new chancellor is announcing massive cuts to public spending, and you tell me that basically this is all being driven by … banter?’

  Nigel hesitated. He seemed nervous about how his next remark would be received. ‘Doug, don’t take this the wrong way, but I think this is a generational thing. We’re talking about a generational divide. You and your friends and my dad were brought up in a certain way. You’re used to an antagonistic form of party politics. But Britain’s moved on. The old system’s broken now. May 6th showed us that. On May 6th Britain was asked to choose a new direction and the people spoke with a loud, unanimous, decisive voice and what they said could hardly have been clearer. They said, “We don’t know.” ’ He smiled pleasantly in response to Doug’s bewildered silence. ‘ “We don’t know,” ’ he repeated, shrugging and spreading his hands. ‘Two years ago the world experienced a terrible financial crisis and nobody knows how to deal with it. Nobody knows the way forward. I call it radical indecision – the new spirit of our times. And Nick and Dave embody it perfectly.’

  In a mechanical response, Doug nodded his agreement, but deep down he couldn’t tell whether Nigel was joking or not. It was to become an increasingly familiar feeling over the next few years.

  4.

  December 2010

  The letter from West Mercia police dropped on to Sophie’s mat one late-October morning. Cameras had caught her vehicle on Streetsbrook Road, doing thirty-seven miles per hour in a thirty-mile limit. She was offered a choice between putting three points on her licence or paying £100 to attend a Speed Awareness Course. Naturally, she chose the latter.

  Her appointment was for two o’clock in a faceless office block on Colmore Row, early in December. She arrived and was shown to a reception area on the ninth floor, equipped with two machines selling fizzy drinks and chocolate bars, and two dozen chairs arranged against the walls in a square. Most of these chairs were occupied when she entered the room. There were men and women of all ages, and all skin colours. A few wry, muttered, half-humorous conversations were taking place. The atmosphere in the room reminded her of school: boys and girls who had been caught out in minor misdemeanours and were now waiting outside the headmaster’s study to receive their punishment. Sophie chose not to sit down, but wandered over to one of the grime-covered windows and looked out over the city, the shopping malls and high-rises, the old rows of terraced houses in the distance and, further still, the concrete tangle of Spaghetti Junction, all looking grey and blurry in the weak afternoon light.

  ‘Right, everybody,’ said a young, energetic male voice, behind her. ‘Could you all follow me, please, and we’ll take our seats and get started.’

  Sophie had not seen who the speaker was. She followed the shuffling line of people into the next room, which was set up like a classroom, with bench seating, desks and a screen at the front for PowerPoint presentations. The overhead strip lighting was fierce and joyless. At the front of the class a tall, well-built man was standing with his back to them, arranging some papers on a table. Then he turned round.

  ‘Good afternoon, everyone,’ he said. ‘My name is Ian and I’m going to be your facilitator for this afternoon’s session. And this is my colleague Naheed.’

  The door at the back had opened and a very striking woman – almost as tall as Ian, probably only in her thirties but with frizzy, shoulder-length hair already streaked with grey – advanced up the aisle between the two rows of desks. She leaned back very slightly as she walked, carrying herself with confidence, smiling hellos to the people sitting on either side of her. The smiles were challenging and combative. Sophie liked the look of her at once, and thought that it must take balls for a woman like that to stand up in a room full mostly of men, mostly of white men, and take them to task for their driving errors.

  Neither of these instructors, in fact, fitted her expectations at all. Ian, far from being the elderly, finger-wagging pedagogue she had rather unkindly been picturing in her mind, seemed to be in his mid- to late-thirties, with the build of a rugby player, a welcoming, open face with a fine bone structure and distractingly long eyelashes. This feature, in particular, drew most of her attention while he was making his preliminary remarks, although she managed to focus again when he started asking everyone in the room to describe their speeding offences, and to say something in their own defence if they could. He listened to each answer with perfect gravity and attentiveness; whereas with Naheed, the smile never quite left her lips, and the amused glint never quite left her eyes.

  The answers themselves were interesting. As Sophie listened to the speakers, so different in age, class, gender and ethnicity, all with such different stories to tell, she realized that they were in fact united by one common factor: a profound and abiding sense of injustice. Whether they had been exceeding the speed limit in order to keep an urgent appointment, or (in one case) to take a sick relative to hospital, or (in another) because they’d bought a Chinese takeaway and wanted to get home before it went cold, or perhaps had simply arrived at their own, personal judgement that the speed limit was unreasonable and they were going to ignore it, they all burned with a righteous sense of indignation, a feeling that they had been singled out, picked on, by malign, unseen forces: forces drunk on their own power, and determined to bolster that power by making life difficult for ordinary citizens who had been caught doing nothing worse than pursuing the blameless objects of their daily lives. The whole room was heavy with this feeling. It smelled of victimhood.

  Sophie was determined to have no part of it. As chance would have it, she was the last person to be asked to give an account of herself, and she decided she was going to buck that trend, come what may.

  A few seconds later Ian was turning his attention to her, and Naheed too, from the front of the room, was asking her, with those mischievous, questioning eyes, to share her story with the instructors and with her fellow miscreants.

  ‘Well, there’s not much to tell,’ she said. ‘I was driving in a thirty-mile-an-hour limit. According to the letter I got, I was doing thirty-seven miles an hour. So that’s that.’

  ‘So why were you speeding, do you think?’ Ian asked. ‘Any particular reason?’

  Sophie hesitated for a short moment. It would be so easy to trot out the obvious explanation: she had thought she might miss her train. How boring was that? She was not prepared to play the innocent. And besides, she had decided that she wanted to make an impressi
on on Ian, somehow.

  ‘I suppose Huxley expressed it better than anyone,’ she said, taking the plunge.

  Ian was puzzled. ‘Who?’

  ‘Aldous Huxley,’ Sophie explained. ‘The novelist and philosopher. He wrote Brave New World.’

  He still gave no indication of recognizing the name. ‘OK. And what did he have to say?’

  ‘He said that the nearest thing we have to a new drug is the drug of speed. “Speed, it seems to me, provides the one genuinely modern pleasure.” ’

  Naheed and Ian, who until now had given the impression of having heard pretty much everything during their time teaching these courses, exchanged a brief glance. Implicit in the glance was a question about which of them was going to deal with this unexpected contribution. Sophie was impressed by the quickness of understanding between them, the wordless ease with which an agreement was reached.

  Ian approached her, and sat on the edge of her desk.

  ‘So, speed for you is like a drug, yeah?’ he said, smiling.

  She nodded, and smiled back. They both seemed to know perfectly well that she wasn’t being serious.

  ‘And you were doing thirty-seven miles an hour?’

  She nodded again. His smile was very disarming.

  ‘Well, you weren’t exactly mainlining heroin, were you? That would be doing … about eighty, I’d say.’

  Sophie remained silent, while continuing to hold his gaze.

  ‘Or snorting crack cocaine. What would that be – sixty miles an hour, fifty?’ When she still didn’t answer, he went on: ‘Whereas, thirty-seven in a thirty limit? In drug-taking terms, that’s a bit like … oh, I don’t know, putting two teaspoons of coffee in your cup instead of one.’