Middle England

by Jonathan Coe

  He thrust the whisky glass towards her and she took a long drink. Then she leaned forward and rested her face against him as his arms enfolded her. The keening stopped, but she continued to shake noiselessly for a while. He stroked her hair. Then she pulled away and took another drink.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘What must you think of me?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I don’t have moments of weakness. “Woman of steel”, someone called me in a profile once. Remember?’

  Doug smiled. He had written that profile himself, before they’d met.

  ‘Now look at me.’

  It was true, Doug had never seen her cry. It was a terrible, heartbreaking sight. She was unrecognizable.

  ‘It’s not me,’ she said, pulling some Kleenex out of a box and rubbing at her tears and mascara. ‘They can say what they bloody well like to me. But when your kids – when your own daughter thinks you’re in danger …’

  She finished cleaning herself up. Doug sat beside her and put his arm around her. She nestled against him, curling her legs beneath her, resting the full weight of her head gratefully against his shoulder. He put his lips to the top of her head, breathing in the scent of her, pressing a long kiss into her thick, greying hair.

  ‘I love you,’ he said.

  She squeezed him tightly and said, ‘I love you too,’ exhaling the words, sighing them into his chest. Within a few minutes she was asleep. He could feel the dampness of her tears on his shirt.

  40.

  April 2018

  As the train left London, as it sped through flat, featureless Bedfordshire, as it pressed on through the Lincolnshire fens until it reached York, as it passed through the towns of Thirsk and Northallerton and finally entered the wilder, more dramatic reaches of North Yorkshire, Sohan began to look more and more woebegone.

  ‘Look at these dreary houses!’ he was saying.

  ‘They’re just houses,’ Sophie countered. ‘People have to live somewhere.’

  ‘It’s all so … empty. All these miles and miles of empty space with nothing but grass.’

  ‘They’re called “fields”. Farmers grow things in them.’

  ‘You don’t understand. I’m going to be surrounded by all this from now on. Can’t you see the horror of that?’

  ‘But this is England. You’re fascinated by England. It’s what you’re writing a book about.’

  ‘So? Just because I’m writing a book about it doesn’t mean I want to live in it, for Christ’s sake. Do you think Orwell wanted to live in Airstrip One?’

  ‘He was writing a dystopia. A nightmare.’

  ‘Which is what my life’s about to become!’ He leaned forward and grabbed her by the arm. ‘My husband – my soon-to-be-husband – is dragging me away from everything I love and forcing me to live among a strange, alien people. Miles from civilization. I’m being sent into exile – like Ovid. An outcast from polite society.’

  ‘Ovid was sent to Tomis, on the remote shores of the Black Sea. You’re going to Hartlepool. Hardly the same thing.’

  ‘It’s exactly the same thing!’

  ‘You’re going to be teaching in the English department of Durham University. Your students will be the same nice, privately educated girls that you’ve been teaching in London. Even posher, if anything. You’re hardly going to be slumming it.’

  ‘But Hartlepool? Why is he doing this to me? Why does he hate me so much? Why is he marrying me if he hates me?’

  ‘It can’t be that bad.’

  ‘Have you been there before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s Brexit central. Seventy per cent of them voted Leave.’

  ‘Then you can help redress the balance.’

  ‘They hang monkeys.’

  This seemed to surprise Sophie, at least. ‘They do what?’

  ‘It’s a famous story. A monkey got washed ashore once after a shipwreck and they thought it was a Frenchman because they’d never seen one before so they hanged it.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘I don’t know … Some time in the 1980s.’

  She raised an eyebrow.

  ‘OK, so it was the Napoleonic Wars,’ he admitted. ‘But they still call them monkey-hangers.’

  ‘It’ll be good for you,’ she said. ‘You’ll be out of the London bubble. You’ll have your metropolitan assumptions challenged. You might even make some new friends.’

  Sohan scowled, but she knew that secretly he was beside himself with happiness. Mike had finally proposed to him over dinner at The Ivy on the second anniversary of their first date. Now, six months later, they were returning to County Durham, where Mike had grown up: to get married in a civil ceremony, first of all, but after that, to settle permanently. Mike had quit his job in the City, having amassed a personal fortune that even Sohan (who was not allowed to see his bank statements) could not begin to estimate; and now, he said, he wanted to put something back into the community that had raised him, and which he had seen brought to its knees, over the last forty years, by the ravages of de-industrialization. To this end, he was setting up his own charity: an educational trust which would provide a centre for digital skills training. Premises had been bought, staff had been hired (although the team was by no means complete) and the plan was to have courses up and running by autumn 2019. Fees would be minimal, and training in web development, coding, digital content creation and emerging technologies would be offered from scratch to local people of all ages. Mike was confident that, with the help of good teachers, even men and women in their fifties and sixties, even those who had found little or no employment for decades, could be retrained and given basic competencies in the new skills required by the digital workplace. It was all, he said, a question of attitude.

  ‘This will all have to be gutted and redesigned,’ he said, later that afternoon, as he took Sophie and Sohan on a tour of the abandoned sports community centre he had bought to house the new academy. ‘It was closed down three years ago and it’s just been crumbling here ever since. But I can see plenty of scope for workrooms here, a digital lab, a café – even a couple of small lecture theatres.’

  ‘It’s a fabulous space,’ said Sophie. ‘I can see the potential.’

  Sohan said nothing.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she whispered to him, as they walked back across the car park to the spot where Mike’s Tesla Model S was waiting for them. ‘Can’t you be encouraging?’

  ‘I wasn’t listening to a bloody word,’ he answered. ‘I’m terrified about tonight.’

  Sophie and Sohan had very different evenings ahead of them. Hers would consist of going back to Bewes Hall, the country hotel where the ceremony would be taking place the next day, and sitting in her room watching television while availing herself of room service and the minibar. Sohan, meanwhile, would be meeting Mike’s parents for the first time.

  ‘They’ll love you,’ she assured him. ‘You could charm the socks off anybody.’

  ‘Are you kidding? They’ve never come to terms with the fact that he’s gay. Never will, either. And they’re both probably UKIP voters.’

  ‘Probably? Has Mike told you that?’

  ‘No. But everyone up here votes for them, don’t they?’

  Sophie gave him what she hoped was a reproachful stare. ‘For God’s sake …’

  ‘Well, never mind any of that. The fact is, I know they’re going to hate me on sight.’

  *

  The next morning, at breakfast, she asked him how it had gone and was pleasantly surprised when he answered: ‘It was fine. They were very friendly, very welcoming. Incredibly nervous, of course, but then so was I. We got over it, after a few beers. And the food was great. I was kind of hoping we’d have fish and chips and mushy peas but instead Mike’s Mum made a malu mirisata, which is a proper Sri Lankan dish, a red chilli fish curry.’

  Sophie was impressed. ‘Was it up to scratch?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Sohan, shrugging
. ‘I never eat Sri Lankan food. Haven’t done since I was a kid. But it tasted good to me.’

  Sophie poured more coffee for both of them, and spread some marmalade on a slice of the pale, lifeless hotel toast.

  ‘So they’re OK with the whole gay thing?’

  Sohan shook his head. ‘Not at all. But there’s not much they can do, I suppose. He’s their only son, and they don’t want to lose him.’

  During the ceremony that afternoon, Sophie could not stop herself from looking at Mike’s parents – particularly his father – and trying to read their emotions. He was a big, solid man in his early sixties, barrel-chested, his hair shaved down almost to nothing. His mother was taller and leaner: she had Mike’s build, and her height was accentuated by her sleeveless, full-length dress in navy blue. Neither of them seemed to display much feeling as the vows were exchanged. Mr Newland stared straight ahead, through the picture windows of the hotel’s meeting room and across the golf course outside, but he did not appear to be taking in the view: rather, his eyes were glazed over and it looked as though he were trying to imagine himself somewhere – anywhere – else. Meanwhile his wife’s eyes were darting around the room, glancing nervously at the other guests; but there was the hint of a smile as Sohan slid a wedding ring on to her son’s finger, at which point she tried to catch her husband’s eye, without success. When the ceremony was over they both joined in the applause, uncertainly and a few seconds after it had started.

  There were sixty or seventy guests, but Sophie didn’t know many of them: just a few of Sohan’s academic colleagues. Dinner, and the disco afterwards, were something of an ordeal. She found that she was thinking about Ian a lot, although she told herself that this did not mean, for certain, that she was missing him specifically, more that on this sociable, happy occasion she was missing the more general feeling of being partnered. By eleven o’clock that night, in any case, after dancing a couple of times with both Sohan and Mike, and then being dragged around the floor by an over-enthusiastic but flat-footed specialist in eco-criticism from Sohan’s department, she decided that she’d had enough. It also occurred to her that she had been drinking fairly solidly for the last twelve hours or so, and was probably about to pass out. She fetched herself a glass of water from the bar and was standing there drinking it when Mike and his parents passed by on their way to the exit.

  ‘You’ve met my mum and dad, haven’t you, Sophie?’

  ‘Yes, we spoke earlier. Calling it a day?’ she asked.

  Mr Newland nodded. ‘Past our bedtime.’

  ‘I hope you’ve had a good time,’ said Sophie.

  ‘It’s been great,’ said his wife.

  ‘They’re putting a brave face on it,’ said Mike, patting his mother’s arm. ‘It’s not quite what they envisaged for their son’s wedding.’

  ‘Got to move with the times, haven’t you?’ said his father, who seemed altogether jollier than he had a few hours ago.

  ‘I think I’ll go to bed as well,’ said Sophie. ‘I’m starting to feel a bit woozy.’

  ‘Don’t move, then,’ said Mike. ‘So and I have had enough too. Stay where you are for a couple of minutes and we’ll help you up the stairs.’

  *

  Sophie was much drunker than she had thought. She remembered leaving the hotel ballroom, and climbing the stairs with the grooms supporting her on either side. But she did not remember going into their room, kicking off her shoes, crashing down on their double bed and falling asleep fully clothed. But presumably, that’s what had happened: a few hours later she woke up, with an agonizing headache and a terrible craving for a glass of water, to find that Sohan and Mike were asleep on either side of her.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ she said in a cracked voice.

  Mike rolled over and opened his eyes. ‘Oh, hello,’ he said. ‘You’re still alive, then.’

  ‘What am I doing here?’

  ‘Well, you passed out, and we couldn’t be bothered to move you.’

  ‘But this is your wedding night. I can’t sleep in your bed on your wedding night.’

  ‘Don’t worry. You didn’t stop us from doing anything.’

  ‘You mean – while I was here …?’

  ‘No. I mean that So and I are sort of past that stage. You may have noticed that neither of us was wearing white.’

  ‘Even so …’

  ‘This time tomorrow we’ll be in Verona. I’m sure we’ll make up for it then.’

  ‘I need a glass of water.’

  Sophie got up, went into the bathroom and ran a glass of cold water. She drank three of them, in fact. Then she got back into bed, but on the edge this time, with Mike lying in the middle. He had already gone back to sleep, and his left arm was flung across his husband’s chest. In the half-light Sophie looked at the two of them, their eyes closed, their breathing regular, the ghost of a snore emanating from Sohan’s half-open mouth. They looked utterly content, at peace and at ease with each other. A stab of envy ran through her. This wasn’t supposed to happen. How had Sohan ended up happily married when she was on her own?

  It was four in the morning. She dozed fitfully for a couple of hours but by six o’clock she was wide awake. The grooms were going to be driving to Newcastle airport later that morning. Her own train back to London left just after ten. What could she do in the meantime?

  She certainly didn’t relish the prospect of a hotel breakfast with the other wedding guests. Stealthily she slid out from beneath the bedclothes, put her shoes on and staggered back to her room. Then she packed, went downstairs, checked out and called a cab.

  The driver took her to Hartlepool station but there was no café open: indeed, no sign of life anywhere. It was a warm morning, with shafts of sunlight attempting to break through the wispy banks of grey, shapeshifting cloud. The only place serving coffee appeared to be McDonald’s. The young woman who served it seemed friendly enough, so Sophie asked her if there was a beach nearby, somewhere she could sit and look at the sea. As soon as she asked it, she felt ashamed that the question made her sound like a stupid Southerner, but she needn’t have worried: the woman was East European, and told her that the easiest thing was probably to take a number seven bus to Headland. Sophie thanked her and walked to the bus stop, pulling her case with one hand and carrying her coffee in the other.

  The bus took her along an empty dual carriageway, past an Asda superstore and a retail park which reminded her of the one on the site of the old Longbridge factory. When the bus reached Headland, she found that what must once have been an elegant parade of shops, complete with handsome wrought-iron canopies, had fallen into decay, with many of the units vacant and abandoned. A row of old terraced houses which faced directly on to the high wall surrounding the docks was punctuated at regular intervals by boarded-up windows. The docks themselves stood ghostly and inactive. It was not long after eight o’clock on a Sunday morning – a time, it’s true, when not many urban spaces are throbbing with life – but even so it felt preternaturally quiet here.

  There was one place open – a One-Stop shop where Sophie bought herself an egg-and-cress sandwich before walking to the old town wall. On her way she saw not a soul. Not a single car passed by. In her fatigued, hungover state, a feeling of unreality began to steal over her. She suddenly had the powerful feeling that she did not understand this place, that she had no sense of the life it contained. Surely this was wrong: her childhood home was less than a hundred miles from here, and in any case, this was England after all – her country – but she felt wholly estranged from this corner of it. For the last ten years, despite the time she had spent in the Midlands, her heart had always been in London. She considered herself a Londoner, now, and from London she could not only travel by train to Paris or Brussels more quickly than she could come here, but she would probably feel far more at home on the Boulevard Saint-Michel or Grand-Place than she did sitting on this bench, looking out across the charcoal waters of the North Sea towards the cranes, tankers and wind turbi
nes that rose on the horizon.

  She thought again of Sohan and Mike wrapped together in their sleepy marital bed and felt the piercing sting of loneliness. She thought, briefly, of Ian. And then she thought of somebody else: and before she had time to consider how doomed the enterprise was, she had already shut herself off from contemplation of the hushed, austere seascape all around her. She had taken out her phone, and was checking the prices of flights to Chicago.

  41.

  From: Sophie Coleman-Potter

  Sent: Monday, April 9, 2018 11:49 PM

  To: Adam Turner

  Subject: Chicago bound

  Dear Adam

  Wow, it’s been a long time since we were in touch! (Though I’m sure it doesn’t feel that way to him) Just been looking through old emails and realized that it was April 2016 when I last heard from you. I sent you a couple of emails since then but maybe they went into Spam. (No they didn’t, he just didn’t feel like answering.) It’s hard work keeping a virtual correspondence going (especially when one of you isn’t really interested), but hopefully there might be the opportunity to meet up in person soon. More of that in a moment … (The suspense will be killing him.)

  Well, there has been one major development in my life since I last wrote, which is that Ian and I have separated.

  A lot of things came to a head in the summer of 2016 and after we’d tried relationship counselling for a few weeks I decided to move out. In a way I suppose it’s amazing, looking back, that we managed to brush things under the carpet for as long as we did. I’m a big fan of keeping your political differences under wraps – a pretty unfashionable view over here at the moment, where the vogue seems to be for picking fights and shouting your opponents down as loudly as possible – but when you’re sharing a living space with someone and rubbing up against them twenty-four hours a day, eventually that no longer becomes practical. We just disagreed about too much.