by Jonathan Coe
The founder, publisher, editorial director, marketing manager, publicity officer and art director of Chase Historical, in the person of Philip Chase himself, was currently sipping a cappuccino in the throbbing heart (or perhaps the well-filled stomach) of Woodlands, its restaurant. Here, where steak-and-ale pie and beer-battered fish and chips remained the most popular items on the menu despite the chef’s repeated attempts to give it a more international flavour, queues of white- and grey-haired customers built up all day, clutching their wooden trays, eyes feasting eagerly on the lemon drizzle cake, the scones and jam, the pots of thick brown Yorkshire tea. On this weekday morning – the first day of the spring half-term – the restaurant was doing brisk business, and Philip was pleased, because these people were his customers too, and soon many of them would be browsing in the bookshop, and sales today would be healthy. He continued to sip his cappuccino and check the time on his phone. He had arranged meetings with two people in this restaurant today, and the first one was already late.
This first person was Benjamin, as it happened, who – having misremembered the time of the meeting – believed that he was running early, and was killing time at the entrance to Woodlands’ children’s theatre. Yes, this Xanadu among garden centres even boasted a theatre – a performance space, at any rate – which came into its own at times like this, when the schools were on holiday and parents would go to any lengths to absolve themselves from the responsibility of keeping their offspring amused for half an hour. It provided gainful employment for several of the local children’s entertainers, whose trade was otherwise largely confined to weekend birthday parties. This morning, from eleven o’clock to eleven thirty, a small but excited audience was being treated to the antics of Baron Brainbox, a portly figure dressed in gentleman’s tweeds of the 1930s, with a gold fob watch in his pocket, a red ping-pong ball on his nose and a garish multicoloured mortar board set precariously atop his head. Benjamin had been watching his act for about ten minutes and had to admit that he was thoroughly enjoying it. The children were basically being given a maths lesson, seasoned with terrible puns, conjuring tricks and slapstick, all of it executed with enthusiasm rather than accuracy. It was a fairly shambolic show, but the Baron himself seemed to be enjoying himself, to judge from his frequent corpsing, and this was communicating itself to the young audience. He cut such a lovable and engaging figure, in fact, that Benjamin could not see how anyone could fail to warm to him, and was therefore surprised to hear a voice beside him in the doorway growling:
‘I hate that cunt.’
Benjamin turned. The figure standing next to him was wearing a white medical coat, wellington boots, a false moustache and a World War Two pilot’s leather helmet.
‘He always goes on too long. Always overruns. Deliberately cuts into my slot, the scheming bastard.’
There was a blackboard next to the door, with the schedule of today’s entertainment chalked up on it. The act due to take the stage at eleven thirty was billed as ‘Doctor Daredevil’. It was now eleven thirty-three.
‘Let me take a wild guess,’ said Benjamin, pointing at the name. ‘This is you?’
‘Too bloody right,’ said the Doctor. ‘And that bastard was supposed to be off stage five minutes ago.’
Hearing their voices, Baron Brainbox now glanced over in their direction and, glimpsing his rival, his face darkened into a scowl. Benjamin sensed that the situation was about to turn nasty, and decided that he didn’t want to get involved. On the point of leaving, he was taking one final look at the charismatic entertainer and his spellbound circle of children, when something strange happened. This time, when he noticed Benjamin looking at him, something dawned on the Baron’s face: something akin to recognition. It was almost as if he were about to step forward, out of the circle, out of character, and greet Benjamin in the manner of an old friend. But before anything like this could happen, the Doctor intervened – rushing towards the performance space and berating his rival, at the top of his voice, for not finishing his show at the agreed time. A bitter dispute broke out between the two clowns – the children looking on with a mixture of amusement and confusion, none of them sure whether this was still part of the entertainment or not. Benjamin decided this was definitely the time to withdraw, and, without giving more than a passing moment’s thought to that odd change of expression on the Baron’s part, he strolled across to the restaurant.
‘Where’ve you been?’ Philip asked.
‘I’m not late, am I?’
‘Eleven o’clock, we said.’
‘Really?’
They had been meeting here every month for the last year or so, ever since Benjamin had moved to the mill house. They’d chosen it simply as a midway point between their homes, but there was also the pleasing coincidence (which Philip had been the one to notice) that Woodlands itself was almost exactly as old as their friendship. They had met at King William’s School, the elite academy that stood near the centre of Birmingham and had a tradition of producing alumni who, in the words of the school song, ‘made her great and famous through the globe’. Neither Benjamin nor Philip, it must be said, had quite fulfilled that promise yet. Where some of their contemporaries had gone on to become captains of industry (such as the loathed sports champion Ronald Culpepper, now apparently the owner of diamond mines in South Africa and rumoured to be worth more than 100 million pounds) or – in the case of Doug – prominent members of the London commentariat, both Benjamin and Philip appeared to have settled for the quiet satisfactions of under-achievement. When Philip’s long-running newspaper column ‘About Town with Philip Chase’ had been axed in the mid-2000s, he had been disappointed but hardly surprised; and having already spotted a gap in the market for better-than-average local history books, he set about establishing his own imprint, wrote the first three titles himself and was now, five years later, making a decent living at it. He was comfortably settled with his second wife Carol, after a first marriage which had ended in amicable divorce. As for Benjamin, having done very well out of the London property market, at the age of fifty he was probably best described as retired. If he had plans for the future, he was keeping them to himself, and nothing much seemed to disturb his peace of mind: not even the knowledge that he had wasted the last thirty years of his life in a futile romantic obsession, or consumed some tens of thousands of hours working on a gigantic literary and musical project so overreaching, unwieldy and misconceived that even he now realized it would never reach a conclusion, let alone a public. The burden of all that wasted emotional investment and intellectual energy might well have crushed some people; but not Benjamin. He had been through the tunnel of trauma and emerged, blinking, into the benign flatlands of equanimity, through which he was now content to wander with no particular object in mind; very much like one of Woodlands’ typical customers, with half an hour to spare in the garden furniture department and no intention of buying anything.
‘Well, we’ve only got a few minutes,’ said Philip, looking at his phone again. ‘I’ve got a meeting with a potential author at a quarter to.’
‘Anyone interesting?’
Philip had a letter on the table beside him. He unfolded it and passed it to Benjamin. ‘Postcards of old Droitwich and Feckenham, apparently. “An unmatched collection,” it says.’
‘You can hardly turn that down.’ He skimmed the contents of the letter, and drew breath sharply at one or two phrases. ‘Ooh – sounds a bit cranky.’
‘They’re all a bit cranky. Cranky is fine. In moderation, like everything else. Some people would say we’re a nation of harmless cranks.’
‘I suppose,’ said Benjamin, and thought back to the scene he had just witnessed in the children’s theatre. What motivated someone, after all, to dress up as Baron Brainbox and earn a living by making a fool of himself in front of crowds of children? Wouldn’t they all be living in a duller country without people like that?
There seemed nothing particularly eccentric about Philip’s potential autho
r, in any case, when he arrived and introduced himself a few minutes later. The worst that could be said about him was that he appeared rather distracted and ill at ease. He was a dishevelled figure, with unkempt grey hair, a padded winter anorak covered with stains, and watery blue eyes that looked warily out through a large pair of old-fashioned wire-rimmed spectacles. He shook Philip’s hand, introduced himself as Peter Stopes and gave a questioning glance in Benjamin’s direction.
‘This is my friend Benjamin Trotter,’ Philip explained. ‘Anything you say in front of me can be said in front of him.’ He realized that he sounded like Sherlock Holmes introducing Dr Watson to a new client in the consulting rooms of 221B.
‘I was a tad surprised when you suggested meeting here,’ said Peter, sitting down opposite him. ‘I had assumed that conversations like this usually took place in the privacy of your office.’
Philip’s office was in fact the front bedroom of his house in King’s Heath, but he wasn’t going to admit that.
‘Well, Peter,’ he said, ‘let’s see what you’ve got for me. Postcards of Old Droitwich, wasn’t it? Did you bring some along?’
‘Postcards, yes, and accompanying text,’ said Peter, with great emphasis. ‘And yes, I have them with me, somewhere …’
He began searching the pockets of his anorak, of which there seemed to be a surprising number. Finally, after three or four attempts, he found what he was looking for, and drew out a scuffed Manila envelope, folded in two, from which he extracted half a dozen ancient, creased and folded postcards. He laid them out carefully on the table in front of Philip, in two rows of three.
‘Ah yes, the Droitwich Lido,’ said Philip, picking up the first. ‘Very nice. This looks like the 1940s, I’d say.’
‘1947, yes,’ Peter confirmed.
‘And this is a good one of the Chateau Impney. Strange building to find in that part of the world. Built by John Corbett, the industrialist, for his wife in the 1870s. She was half-French.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Well, these look very nice, I must say, Peter. How many more do you have?’
‘More? No, this is it. This is everything.’
Philip was shocked into temporary silence.
‘But … we would normally need at least a hundred, for this kind of book.’
‘Normally, yes. But this is not intended to be a normal kind of book. The text, Philip. In this case it’s the text that is everything.’
Philip said, reluctantly: ‘Then perhaps you’d better tell me a bit more about it.’
Peter glanced nervously from left to right.
‘I think we should go somewhere less public.’
‘Not easy,’ Philip pointed out, ‘in a garden centre.’
‘Necessity is the mother of invention,’ said Peter. ‘I think I have a solution. Follow me.’
He rose to his feet and walked out of the restaurant, easing his way past the growing queues of lunchtime diners. (It was never too early, it seemed, for sausage and mash or a ploughman’s lunch.) Philip followed him, throwing a baffled glance back at Benjamin and saying: ‘You don’t have to come too.’
‘I wouldn’t miss this for the world,’ said Benjamin. ‘This is even better than the children’s theatre.’
They soon realized where Peter Stopes was leading them. At the rear of the Woodlands building, hidden from the car park, hidden from the main road, lay its most secret – but for many its most precious – enclave. For here were the sheds. Modest garden sheds, at first, just big enough to house a lawn mower, a leaf blower and a handful of tools, but soon there were also summer-houses, gazebos, pavilions and ornate labyrinthine structures which combined elements of all of these; structures designed to furnish the married Englishman with perhaps the thing he craved most of all: a place where he could escape his family without actually leaving home.
There were twenty-five or thirty such sheds, arranged to form a sort of village, with streets, lanes and by-ways criss-crossing each other in between the buildings. It was the least-frequented part of the Woodlands empire, and today, it seemed, Benjamin, Philip and the mysterious author had it to themselves. Peter knew what he was doing.
After glancing back and forth to make sure that they weren’t being followed, he led them into the second of the sheds. It was towards the lower end of the Woodlands range: a basic cuboid structure, with one small window and a roof rising to an apex which was not high enough to allow any of them to stand upright. In fact even to get the three of them in there together at once was a tight squeeze. They stood, crouched and squashed together for a few uncomfortable seconds before Benjamin said:
‘I think we should find a bigger shed.’
‘Agreed,’ said Peter.
It was too small for them all to turn around, but with some difficulty they managed to reverse out into the open air, one after the other. Then they walked on. The next shed Peter found was only marginally bigger.
‘I’m sure we can find something better than this,’ said Philip, when they were all squashed in together again.
‘Of course,’ said Peter. ‘But I am actually looking to buy a shed in the near future. And this one looks about right. I need somewhere to work on my books, you see.’
Philip and Benjamin eyed up the shed as best they could in the confined space, trying to gauge its suitability as a home office.
‘It’s a bit small,’ said Philip.
‘We only have a small garden.’
‘I think you could get a desk in here,’ said Benjamin. ‘A little one. I reckon this could work.’
‘I also need somewhere to house my instruments. My wife doesn’t like them cluttering up the house.’
‘Instruments?’
‘Musical instruments. I run a small local music group. We play traditional English tunes on the original instruments.’
‘What do you play?’ asked Benjamin, almost afraid to learn the answer.
‘The crumhorn, and the sackbut.’
‘Let’s find a bigger shed,’ said Philip.
Finally they chose the biggest shed of all. It had three rooms, central heating, hot and cold running water, and a large table in the central room, surrounded by bench seating with tastefully embroidered cushions. They sank down into this with some relief.
Then there was a long silence. When Peter at last seemed to be about to speak, the others drew in closer, anticipating – correctly – that he would do so in a low voice.
‘Now, Philip … As I said, in the case of this book, it’s the text that is the important thing. And I don’t use the word “important” lightly. It tells a story which I have personally uncovered, and which, when it is widely known, will change the way that people think about one of the most significant issues of our time.’
He allowed a few moments for this impressive claim to sink in, and was about to continue when Philip said:
‘Well, in that case, why do you want me to publish it? I’m only a small publisher.’
‘True. But from little acorns, oak trees can grow. And besides,’ he admitted, ‘I must confess you’re not the first publisher I’ve approached. My proposal has already been considered by some of the larger London houses. I hope you’re not offended.’
‘Not at all. How many other publishers did you send it to?’
‘Seventy-six.’
Philip thought about this and said: ‘Well, photographs of old Droitwich might seem a bit niche to some people, I suppose …’
‘Even throwing Feckenham in as well,’ Benjamin added helpfully.
‘The photographs are just a pretext,’ said Peter. ‘As I’ve told you before, the text is the important thing. The story. Now, what I have to tell you –’ his voice sank even lower ‘– must never leave the walls of this shed.’
Benjamin and Philip nodded their solemn assent.
‘I’m assuming that you noticed something those photographs have in common? Something about all the people in them?’
Suddenly Philip knew just where this was
going. ‘Go on, I’ll buy it,’ he said, in a weary voice.
‘What they have in common, is that they are all indigenous English folk. Now, the title of my book is The Kalergi Plan, and it starts from the premise that if you were to take such photographs now …’
And after that, it did not take long for Peter Stopes’s demented farrago of an idea to come tumbling out. Besides, Philip, who had made a study of these kinds of belief some years earlier, was familiar with it already. The white races of Europe, apparently, were being subjected to a gradual genocide. They were being slowly bred out of existence, and the whole process was the devilish invention of an Austrian aristocrat from the beginning of the twentieth century called Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi. ‘The Kalergi Plan’, as some liked to call it, was a plan to create a pan-European state in which, in the words of his book Praktischer Idealismus, ‘the man of the future will be of mixed race. The Eurasian-Negroid race of the future, similar in its appearance to the Ancient Egyptians, will replace the diversity of peoples with a diversity of individuals.’ And this genocidal pan-European state, of course, was already well established, and doing its fiendish work, in the form of the European Union, of which Kalergi was nothing less than the spiritual founder.
A few minutes later, Benjamin and Philip were walking back to their cars through the February drizzle, Peter Stopes and his six old postcards having been sent packing by the Chase Historical editorial director in no uncertain terms.
