by Jonathan Coe
They followed the path that wound itself around the perimeter of the school buildings – most of them dating from the redbrick inter-war era and all too familiar, some of them much more recent, and oddly unfamiliar: most prominent among these was the new prayer centre, built to accommodate the thirty per cent of King William’s boys who now practised the Islamic faith. Soon they reached the grassy bank that led down to the playing fields, where the rugby posts rose up spectral and imposing in the summer twilight, like unexplained monuments from an ancient civilization. They sat down on the grass, just as they had done almost forty years ago, on a hot summer afternoon at the end of their final term, when Doug had brought cans of lager for them to drink but Benjamin had abstained, primly conscious of his responsibilities as a prefect. The memory of that afternoon made him smile now, and sent him off on a reminiscent trail.
‘Do you remember,’ he said, looking north towards the wall that enclosed the outdoor swimming pool, tucked behind the school chapel, ‘how they used to make us swim with nothing on if we forgot our swimming trunks?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Phil.
‘The amazing thing,’ said Steve, ‘is how our parents let them get away with it. Nowadays that would be a case for the police and social services. At least you’d hope so.’
‘True,’ said Phil. ‘So much of what we took for normality in the seventies would be defined as abuse today.’
‘Well, we emerged unscathed, at any rate,’ said Benjamin, to which Doug merely replied, ‘Did we, though?’ and for a while the question hung in the air, unanswered and unanswerable.
‘It’s nice to look back sometimes,’ Benjamin said at last, in a defensive way.
‘Nostalgia is the English disease,’ said Doug. ‘Obsessed with their bloody past, the English are – and look where that’s got us recently. Times change. Deal with it.’
‘Well, you don’t,’ said Benjamin.
‘Excuse me?’
‘You don’t change much. Still making huge generalizations about the English national character, I see. “Subtlety is the English disease,” was what you said last time.’
‘What? When did I ever say that?’
‘You said it here, forty years ago, when we were arguing about a headline in the school magazine.’
‘I said “subtlety is the English disease”?’
‘Yep.’
‘I remember that,’ said Phil. ‘It was when we did that story about Eric Clapton going all Enoch Powell during his gig at the Odeon.’
‘How can you remember something that happened so long ago?’ said Doug. ‘This is my point exactly – you guys are obsessed with the past. You remember it way too well and you think about it way too much. It’s time to move on. We have to focus on the future.’
‘I agree,’ said Steve.
‘I run a historical publishing company,’ Phil pointed out. ‘I have to think about the past.’
‘And I’m very focused on the future, if you must know,’ said Benjamin. ‘I’ve taken a big decision.’
Doug snorted. ‘Really? You’re going to start buying green notebooks from now on, are you, instead of blue ones?’
The others laughed, but Benjamin put a stop to that by announcing: ‘Lois and I are moving to France.’ After taking a moment to enjoy their surprise, he continued: ‘She’s left Christopher. She doesn’t want to be anywhere near Birmingham. She doesn’t want to stay in this country any more. But she doesn’t want to be alone. So I said that I’d go with her. We’re going to find somewhere in Provence – we’ve got the money from Dad’s house, as well as mine. She wants somewhere big enough to take guests. Paying guests.’ He glanced in turn at each of their faces. They looked sombre now, rather than shocked. ‘You’re all welcome, any time you want to come,’ he assured them. ‘Discount rates will apply.’
Darkness was creeping rapidly over the playing fields. From the dining hall, a distant round of applause could be heard. Doug rose to his feet, brushing the grass from the trousers of his dinner suit. He touched Benjamin on the shoulder.
‘Sounds like you’re doing the right thing there, mate,’ he said. ‘But now you’ll have to excuse me. The speech seems to be over, and I doubt if Ronnie will be hanging around for long. Time for our little chat, I think. I’ll catch you guys later.’
As he hurried off in the direction of the fading applause, Steve called after him: ‘Don’t do anything stupid!’
*
Doug’s instinct proved correct. Ronald Culpepper, in all his slimmed-down glory, was already waiting outside the dining hall, his summer overcoat slung over the arm of his dinner jacket, lamplight glinting off his bald pate as he spoke on his mobile phone in a murmurous undertone. ‘Summoning his driver,’ Doug thought, guessing – again correctly – that so distinguished a guest would not have driven to the school under his own steam, let alone taken an Uber. There would be a Daimler or some such coming to pick up him up in a few minutes. Doug would have to move swiftly.
Culpepper spotted and recognized him when he was still a few yards away, and duly arranged his features into a look of resigned contempt. There was no handshake as the two old adversaries greeted one another.
‘Ronald,’ said Doug.
‘Douglas,’ he replied.
‘Leaving us already? Not staying around to sign autographs?’
‘If you’re jealous,’ said Culpepper, ‘because it was me they asked to address this gathering, rather than yourself, perhaps think about which one of us best reflects the school’s values. Alternatively, of course, you could coerce your friends into staging a pathetic act of rebellion. Which impressed nobody, by the way. People were embarrassed by it if anything.’
‘We left for medical reasons. We didn’t think our blood pressure could survive listening to you for twenty minutes.’
Culpepper gave a pitying smile. ‘Still fighting the same old, old battles, eh, Doug? Forty years on and nothing has changed.’
‘Forty years isn’t such a long time in the scheme of things. And it’s not that the battle is “old”. It’s the same battle. The battle never changes.’
‘For you, maybe. Some of us move on.’
Culpepper looked at his watch. His driver was taking longer than he would have liked.
‘And what have you moved on to, these days?’ Doug asked. ‘Tell me a bit about the Imperium Foundation and what it stands for.’
Culpepper’s composure wavered momentarily when this name was mentioned; but he recovered it quickly enough. ‘It’s a highly respected think tank,’ he said. ‘Information about it is freely available online.’
‘Who runs it?’
‘If you’re looking to identify some sinister cartel or conspiracy, you’re out of luck,’ said Culpepper, beginning to walk up the drive towards the school gates. ‘We’re just a group of ordinary British businessmen, trying to do what’s best for our country in every way possible. Surely even you could find nothing to object to in that.’
‘True, I couldn’t. If I believed a word of it, that is.’
‘Your trouble, Anderton,’ Culpepper said, suddenly stopping in his tracks and turning on him, ‘is that you’ve never taken the trouble to understand business, and never taken the trouble to understand patriotism. Neither has the rest of the liberal commentariat, for that matter. If you did, you’d realize that the two things can quite happily go hand-in-hand. I do read your columns, you know. It’s always interesting to see what the opposition is thinking. But I’m afraid I’ve never been very impressed. Your analysis is shallow, and since the referendum everyone’s been able to see what some of us have seen for some time: it’s you and your fellow anti-establishment poseurs who are the real establishment, and now the people have turned on you and you don’t like it.’
Doug thought about this for a moment and then shook his head. ‘Sorry, Ronnie, but I don’t buy it.’
‘Buy what?’
‘You see, the thing is, whenever I hear someone like you talking about “the people”, my
bullshit detector goes crazy. Seems to me you’ve spent your adult life trying to put as much distance between you and “the people” as possible. Do you use public transport, or the NHS, or send your kids to state schools? Of course not. The last thing you want to do is come into contact with the proles. But Brexit has been your wet dream for years, for one reason or another, and now, as soon as “the people” deliver what you’ve been praying for, suddenly you’re all over them. You’re happy to use them just like you use everybody else. It’s how someone like you operates. But I hope you realize that this time you’re playing with fire.’
‘Playing with fire? For God’s sake, you do love to over-dramatize.’
‘I’m not over-dramatizing. We all know there’s a lot of anger in this country at the moment and to get what you want you’ve got to keep that anger burning. But people show their anger in different ways. Some of them grumble into their tea and huff and puff over the Daily Telegraph and vote for Brexit and that’s fine. But some of them go out into the street one morning with a flak jacket full of knives and stab their local MP to death, and that’s not so good, is it? And the more the papers stoke up the anger by using words like “treason” and “mutiny” and “enemy of the people”, the more likely it gets that something like that will happen again.’
They had reached the top of the school drive. Rather desperately, Culpepper looked left and right along the main road, but there was still no sign of his car.
‘I fail to see,’ he said, ‘what this has got to do with –’
He was cut off mid-sentence as Doug seized his bow tie, and used it to pull him roughly forwards until they were face to face.
‘Know who Gail Ransome is, Ronnie? Know who she lives with, these days? I bet you do. Know what it’s like to have the woman you love crying in your arms because she’s been getting death threats all day? Crying because her daughter’s scared shitless?’ He pulled the tie further forward, twisting it tight until a purplish hue started to appear in Culpepper’s face. ‘Well? Do you? Do you?’
‘Let go of me, you fucking animal.’
The words were breathless and strangulated. They stared at each other, eyeball to eyeball, for ten seconds or more, while Culpepper’s face grew more and more puce. Finally, Doug relaxed his grip, just as a large black BMW drew up alongside them by the kerb. Without another word, Culpepper yanked the back door open and stepped inside, rubbing at the circle of sore redness around his neck where his collar had dug into it. He glared at Doug as the car pulled away, but neither of them could think of a parting shot. The rank odour of hatred hung in the air even after the car had disappeared from view.
*
Meanwhile, Benjamin too was on a personal mission; but his was an altogether more reflective one. Retracing the path which was imprinted on his memory even though so many decades had passed since he had last followed it, he entered the main school building and climbed the stairs to the upper corridor where, on the left, a small arched doorway led to an altogether steeper and more occult flight of stone-flagged steps. This was the entrance to the Carlton corridor, an area of the school which in his day had been accessible to sixth-formers only, and even then only to a select few. The first room you passed, on the left, used to be the meeting room of the Carlton Club itself, where the privileged minority who had been elected to this elite organization (by a secret committee whose reasonings were never explained) could disport themselves in leather-covered armchairs while reading copies of The Times, the Telegraph, Punch, the Economist and any other publications which were considered suitable reading, back in those innocent times, for the future leaders of the country. Nowadays it appeared to serve as a more inclusive sixth-form common room. Benjamin stole past it, in any case, and made his way directly towards a pair of rooms which lay at the very end of the corridor, where the overhead lights had already been turned on by some earlier visitor. Here, on Friday afternoons, he and his friends used to put together a weekly edition of the school newspaper known as The Bill Board. Combative editorial arguments would ensue, with Doug constantly trying to push things in a more politically engaged direction, while Benjamin wrestled with the questions of cultural and literary value that would go on to preoccupy him – to little avail – all his life. The first room was dominated by the large, squat, rectangular table around which they all used to sit. Benjamin glanced around this room and then walked over to the window to see if the view would jog any memories. All he could see, at first, was his own middle-aged reflection, so he flicked a light switch – an act which seemed to plunge the whole corridor, unexpectedly, into near-darkness. Moving on into the second room, Benjamin could immediately make out the chair and desk where he used to sit writing his theatre and book reviews. From here you could look out over the rooftops of the school and, beyond them, the two tall oak trees which flanked the South Drive and tonight stood still and vigilant in the windless summer air.
Benjamin sank down into the chair and peered through the window. It was not completely dark outside yet; the muted light was gentle and soothing and within a few seconds he felt the familiar, calming pleasure of being alone steal over him. It had been good to see his friends, of course, but he would always prefer this solitude. Bored as he often was by his own thoughts, he none the less took a kind of comfort in their predictable routes and patterns. It was here, in this very chair, that he had sat alone after all his colleagues had left, one chilly Friday afternoon in January 1977: until, after a few minutes, he had realized that he was not alone at all, and that Cicely Boyd was waiting for him in the next room: sitting – or rather crouching – at the editorial table, with her back to the door and one bare foot tucked beneath her bottom, the famous golden hair swept into a long ponytail which reached almost to the small of her back. The first thing that had alerted him to her presence (her momentous, soon-to-be-life-changing presence) had been the smell of her cigarette smoke. The memory was so powerful still – the image so vivid – that he almost felt he could smell the smoke again. Almost felt that he could see it, floating across the room, drifting in spirals and arabesques towards the desk and in front of his eyes …
Benjamin gasped, and wheeled around. A figure was sitting behind him, in a chair with its back against the wall. A shadowy, amorphous figure, its only distinguishing feature a pinprick of orange light glowing at the end of a cigarette. A figure which now spoke one portentous word, quietly but with disconcerting emphasis as another plume of cigarette smoke was exhaled and blown across the room:
‘Ghosts …’
Benjamin recognized the voice, and as the figure leaned forward in his chair, he recognized the speaker too. It was Mr Serkis.
‘Ghosts, eh, Benjamin?’ he repeated. ‘Remembrance of things past.’
He scraped his chair forward until the faint light from the window was falling on to his lined, reassuring face.
‘What are you doing here?’ Benjamin asked.
‘The same as you, I expect. Revisiting the old days. Chasing ghosts.’
‘You gave me a shock.’
‘Sorry about that. Cigarette?’
‘No thanks.’
‘You’re not at school any more. They can’t put you in detention.’
‘I don’t smoke. Never did.’
‘Very wise,’ said Mr Serkis. ‘Very boring, but very wise. Wisdom is often boring, have you noticed that? Better to be an entertaining idiot than a wise old bore. I know which I’m turning into.’ He stood up and began to pace slowly around the darkened room. ‘Well, this was where it all started, wasn’t it? Ever think you’d find yourself sitting here again with your old English teacher?’
‘Nothing that happens surprises me any more,’ said Benjamin. ‘And nobody can see into the future.’
‘True. But I knew you’d all go a long way. I was never in any doubt about that.’
‘Really? You think we’ve gone a long way? Doug, maybe … I’m not so sure about the rest of us.’
‘I read that book of yours, eventually,�
� said Mr Serkis. ‘Once you’d taken all the rubbish out, that was quite the little gem you wrote there. Small but perfectly formed. You should be proud of yourself.’
‘It’s not much,’ said Benjamin, sadly. ‘It’s not much of a mark to leave, in the end, is it? One little book that’s been read by a few thousand people.’
‘There’ll be other books,’ said Mr Serkis.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘It may take ten years. Twenty. But you’ll write something new, don’t worry.’
‘And in the meantime? What am I supposed to do?’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘Lois and I are moving to France.’
‘Perfect.’
‘Yes, but what am I going to do when I’m there?’
Mr Serkis took a last drag on his cigarette, then stubbed it out in a teacup on Benjamin’s desk.
‘Weren’t you listening,’ he said, ‘the last time we met? In that gloomy pub.’
‘Of course I was listening.’
‘I told you then what you should do. It was the last thing I said to you. I said you should take up teaching.’
Benjamin laughed. ‘I thought that was a joke.’
‘It was. A serious joke.’ Meeting only with silence, he continued: ‘You’d be a good teacher. I’ve always thought so.’
‘What would I teach in France?’
‘Teach people how to write. How to write and edit. You know how to do both those things. And everybody wants to be a writer these days, haven’t you noticed? “Everyone’s got a book inside them.” That’s the received wisdom. The trouble is, hardly anyone knows how to get it out. That’s where you could help.’
Benjamin thought about this for a while. It had sounded a crazy idea at first, but maybe it made sense. ‘ “The Benjamin Trotter Writing School,” ’ he said, thinking aloud.
‘I should try to come up with a snappier name than that,’ said Mr Serkis. ‘In fact, it wouldn’t be difficult.’ He touched Benjamin between the shoulder blades: somewhere between a pat on the back and a rub. ‘Come on, let’s go and see your friends. It may be the last time we’re all together like this. We should get a selfie, at least.’
