by Jonathan Coe
Benjamin stumbled back to the mother and her young children and said, struggling for breath: “I couldn’t get it. I tried, but it was too fast for me.”
“It’s all right,” the mother said, coldly. “It was only a balloon. I’ll get her another one.”
He looked at the little girl. Her eyes were filled with tears but she was still staring back at him fixedly; cautious, bewildered.
“I’m sorry,” said Benjamin. “I’m really sorry.”
And he turned and walked away from the crowd for the last time.
20
—— Original Message ——
From: Malvina
To: Doug Anderton
Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2000 1:54 a.m.
Subject: Story
Dear Doug
I thought long and hard about sending you this and have finally decided to take my life in my hands.
Please don’t read too much into it. It is a piece of *fiction* although of course we all have to write about people we know, and things we’ve experienced. I had lots of fragments to choose from—have been doing this on and off for about three years now—and couldn’t decide what to send so in the end I just chose the most recent thing I’ve written. I finished it just a couple of weeks ago.
I’m not expecting you to publish it or anything like that. I know you don’t have the space or the inclination (or the editorial freedom?). It’s just that I would value your opinion, as I have always found you *simpatico* and you are the only person I know who has anything to do with the book world in any shape or form. If you think it’s worthless (as you probably will), please just delete it and PLEASE don’t show it to anybody else.
Seems ages since the Longbridge rally. Paul sends his regards, and his congratulations on the new job, which he hopes you are enjoying.
Love
Malvina x
——TEXT FOLLOWS———————————————————————
DEMONSTRATIONS
1.
She loses her way.
She takes the wrong exit out of the station and walks for almost a mile in a mist that turns to dusk.
Her hair is damp, bedraggled. Her stockings cling wetly to her legs.
She left early for this. She could have stayed longer, one of the crowd, listening to the speeches, with the people she is starting to think of as friends, with the man who stares at her longingly, the man she keeps secrets from, the man she feels unimaginably close to.
She does not want to be one of the crowd. That is one of the facts of the matter. There are not many others (facts), she sometimes thinks.
Clouds part. A creamy moon rises. She turns, retraces her steps.
There is a hunger in her, as she walks. It grows stronger, more painful, as she nears the house. She feels this hunger, in his presence. It is a new feeling, for her. It is what draws her back, she supposes, against all her better instincts. Sometimes it is a tightness around her heart, sometimes an emptiness in her stomach, sometimes a sweet nothingness between her legs, aching to be filled. Why it should be him, of all people, who makes her feel this hunger is one of the bigger, better mysteries.
Because they are kindred spirits? Surely not.
2.
It is not a house, it is a barn. Nobody wants to live in houses any more. They want to live in barns, warehouses, mills, churches, schoolrooms, chapels, oasthouses. But especially barns. Houses are not good enough any more, not for these people, not for the people our prosperity has turned us into. As she thinks this, she is obliged to add: I am not distancing myself, not holding myself aloof. We are all in this together. I would like to live here myself.
She would like to live here herself but unfortunately, somebody else seems to have got here first. Goldilocks (with jet-black hair), she bites her lip and gazes at the pictures of his wife, the pictures of his child. The Barbies on the floor and the teddy bears on the bed and the little trampoline out in the garden. And it will amaze her, later tonight (after more wine, and a supper that she will have cooked herself—bouillabaisse, her mother’s favorite, heavy on the saffron and the garlic, the one that never fails to pacify her), that he wants her to sleep in his daughter’s bed. He wants her to sleep beneath a duvet embroidered with flower fairies, in a room with posters of Tweenies on the wall. In a bed so small that her feet stick out at one end. Perhaps he is a foot fetishist, and intends to come and stroke them in the night. Or perhaps (aha!) he is sulking, because she would not sleep in a bed with him, and this is her punishment. He would never admit as much. He just says, The spare bed mustn’t look slept in. That would arouse suspicion.
She thinks it is a little late, personally, for such niceties.
But that is still to come. In the meantime she sips her sour, lemony wine and watches as he squats on all fours and builds a pyramid of wood in the fireplace, then takes a match to it and almost howls with satisfaction as the flames catch and rear on their hind legs, dancing upright in the hearth. A few minutes later, when the fire has already withered, fallen in upon itself, dwindled to a heatless flicker, he will sulk again and blame the dampness of the wood.
3.
Shapeshifting, she splits herself in two. It is a knack she has. One of several.
They sit together on the sofa, six decent inches apart, and cradle their drinks in silence. They have worked—work is her excuse for being here—and now the traitorous time before bed must be filled. She looks at the fire and looks at the rug in front of the fire and knows that he would like her to be lying there, looking up at him. She would like to be lying there too. She would like to be lying there, looking up at him, feeling her veins tingle with the knowledge of the power she has over him, touching his leg with the tip of her stockinged foot, teasing his legs apart, moving her foot upward, up towards his thighs, up towards the weak and pliable heart of him.
And while she is teasing his legs apart and moving her foot upwards, she would look at herself, this other person sitting beside him on the sofa, six decent inches away, and she would say to her: What are you doing here? WHAT IN GOD’S NAME are you doing here? And the woman on the sofa would look down at the woman on the carpet, this wanton, aroused woman, letting her skirt ride up around her thighs, exposing the luminous pallor of her skin, and she would explain:
All my life, it has been my role to look after people. For as long as I can remember. I am twenty years old and I have never been taught how to love people, only how to look after them. That was the role I was assigned by my parents. My parent, I should say. In my short grownup life I have been fucked by two men and shortly after they fucked me they left me because they did not want to be looked after by me. I pissed them off by wanting to look after them but I cannot help it because it’s all I know. And in this man I sense a need. A need that I think I can satisfy and I don’t think anybody else can. And that is what draws me to him and that is what makes me desire him and I believe that this is the only kind of desire that I know and will ever know.
And the woman on the carpet sits up and she pulls her skirt down primly over her knees and she says:
I think you are a fool.
And she also says:
I think you are looking for a father.
4.
It is early in the morning, maybe half past one, maybe two o’clock. She cannot sleep and his daughter’s room feels stuffy so she has opened the window and she’s smoking a cigarette, looking out into the night, making fireflies in the dark.
This is a black place. It scares her. Foxes howl in the night, but it is neither city nor country. She has lived in the city and she has lived in the country, she has lived in many different places and even different continents, but this is the place that scares her most. The scattered lights in the distance. The long, indifferent, absolute silence of this Midlands night.
Middle England.
The door hushes open and he stands before her, framed by the doorway, lit from behind by the dimmed landing light. She stubs out the cigaret
te, turns, walks towards him. She is wearing only a singlet and white cotton panties and although these clothes do not feel at all sexual to her she can tell that he is excited by the sight of her. She can feel his eyes drawn to her tiny breasts and her nipples that are hardened by the cold of the night. He steps forward and puts his hand to her cheek, traces the line of her jaw, the curve of her long neck. She wants to respond, wants to purr and return his caress with her cheek like a voluptuous cat. But something prevents her. She tells him no and he asks her for the fiftieth time Why Not, and all she can say is:
Because I cannot be the person who destroys all this.
And she adds:
It has to be you.
19
Doug read Malvina’s story, bleary-eyed, at about 2:30 in the morning, some forty minutes after she had sent it to him. Ranulph had just woken up for the third time and he had carried the grizzling, sleep-hungry infant down to the kitchen, retrieved a bottle of Frankie’s expressed milk, and then sat at his desk checking emails while his son sucked noisily at the teat until his eyes closed tight shut and his breathing metamorphosed into the slow, regular ebb and flow of baby-snores. With the child cradled heavily on his left arm, Doug proceeded to carry out a number of laborious, one-handed tasks at the computer. He created a folder called “Trotter” and saved Malvina’s story to it. Then he created a blank document called “Malvina notes,” saved it to the same folder, and typed a few sentences:
M slept overnight at PT’s house, April 1 2000
Feels damaged in some way. Is he taking advantage of someone young and naive and confused?
Relationship = Career-wrecker, at this rate?
After that he could feel himself falling asleep, too. He shut down the computer, carried Ranulph back to his cot, then padded back to his own bedroom, slotted his body lovingly around the curves and corners of Frankie’s, and gave the story no more thought for the next few days.
He was still expected at the editorial meetings, but was beginning to wonder, now, whether there was any point in turning up. Usually he was the last person to be invited to speak. Sometimes they ran out of time and the books pages weren’t even discussed at all.
Next Tuesday morning, for instance, industrial news was first on the agenda. The editor arrived late, as always, threw himself into his swivel chair and found the usual circle of faces awaiting his attention with varying degrees of nervousness, according to age, experience and temperament. “OK—James,” he began. “What have you got for me?”
James Tayler, the new business editor, was eleven years younger than Doug. He was an economics graduate from King’s College, Cambridge and had been working at the paper for less than two years.
“Crunch day for Rover,” he announced, in his frank, confident way. “Alchemy Partners have got until Friday to finalize their bid. We can expect an announcement that day. I thought we should do a profile of their boss— the man who’s going to run Rover, that kind of thing.”
“It’s a done deal, is it?”
“Looks that way.”
The editor never smiled. Very rarely, however, a malicious twinkle would light up his eyes, and it appeared now. “You mean to tell me,” he said (not looking at Doug, or even anywhere near him, but somehow making it clear that he was the one being addressed), “that that wonderful, epoch-defining demonstration in Birmingham has not made the slightest bit of difference?”
“Apparently not,” said James.
“What’s the matter, don’t they read the Evening Mail over in Munich? We even put something on our front page, didn’t we? Remind me, somebody—who was it who wrote that piece?”
There was embarrassed silence around the table; a few half-hearted giggles.
“There’s a rival bid,” Doug pointed out, quietly.
The editor turned to him. “Excuse me?”
“It’s not a done deal yet. There’s a rival bid on the table.”
Feigning shock, the editor asked: “Did you know about this, James? Surely you must have heard, if the news has even reached our correspondent from the world of belles lettres.”
“Yes,” James conceded, “there’s a group of local businessmen, calling themselves the Phoenix Consortium. They reckon they can keep the firm going as a mass producer. Pretty heavyweight bunch, actually. Headed up by John Towers, who used to be Rover’s chief executive.”
“So we should take them seriously?”
He shook his head. “It’s not going to happen. They haven’t had enough time to prepare their bid, they haven’t had proper access to BMW’s books. And at the end of the day they probably haven’t got enough money.”
“Stephen Byers supports them,” Doug said.
The editor swivelled again. “Pardon?”
“The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry supports them. Rumour has it.”
“That’s true,” said James. “But Blair’s made it clear that they’re not going to get any help.” He consulted his notes. “Monday April the third, quote: ‘If governments in the past, of both major political parties, have been drawn towards “rescuing” a company in difficulties, we see our role now as helping to equip people and business for the new economy, as encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship, as improving education and training and as broadening access to new technology.’ ”
“The usual New Labour bollocks, in other words,” said the editor. “Which translated into English means Fuck off, No cash. Good. So Alchemy has it, and we run this week with a profile of their boss.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure—” Doug began.
“Douglas, let’s break with tradition and do your pages next, shall we? I don’t want to detain you any longer than necessary. You have hotly awaited contemporary novels arriving by every post, I imagine. What are you leading with this week?”
Doug took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. He was beginning to feel in the mood for some physical violence. He knew that his time was up, that he couldn’t tolerate this any more, that he would only be here for a few more days. But it was the end of an eight-year working relationship and he was going to do it properly, with dignity. He would get through this meeting, leave the building and then consider his options.
“Michael Foot,” he said, with perfect composure. “Michael Foot on Jonathan Swift.”
The editor was staring at him blankly.
“Eighteenth-century writer,” Doug explained. “ Gulliver’s Travels.”
“That’s going back a bit, isn’t it?”
“It’s a timeless classic.”
“No, I mean back to the days of Michael Foot. Michael Foot? He was born in the fucking eighteenth century, wasn’t he? He could barely stand up when he was leader of the Labor party, and that was twenty fucking years ago! What the fuck are we doing on the music pages this week—the rise of skiffle? Michael Foot? You’ve got to be taking the piss. What else have you got?”
“There’s a biography of Francis Piper. I’m waiting for the review to come in.”
“Never heard of him. Or her. Tell me she’s a woman. Tell me she’s still in her twenties and drop-dead gorgeous and we can run a half-page picture.”
“Poet. Male. Dead. White. Generally considered to be pretty good.”
“‘Generally considered to be pretty good.’ Now there’s a headline we can use. Let’s add fifty thousand to the print run this week, shall we? Who’s reviewing it?”
“Benjamin Trotter.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Paul Trotter’s brother.”
The editor began to speak, then thought better of it. He picked up a pen and sucked on it for a moment or two. Finally he said: “You know, Doug, just for a minute there, I thought you were telling me something useful. I thought you were going to tell me that Paul Trotter had written something for you. Now that would have been interesting. We’ve all heard of Paul Trotter. We’ve seen him on the television, we’ve heard him on the radio. He’s young, he’s sexy, he’s got a buzz around him. He’s news. Can
I just run a little concept past you? Paul Trotter’s brother —” (he smiled his politest, most dangerous smile) “—is not news. On the other arts pages this week, we will not be reviewing a show by Damien Hirst’s sister. We will not be reviewing any films directed by Quentin Tarantino’s aunt. The news pages will not be dominated by Gordon Brown’s nephew’s views on the British economy. Do you get the picture?” His voice rose almost to a shout: “We want public figures in this newspaper. We want well-known people, not their family members. OK?”
Doug stood up, gathered the few pieces of paper he had brought with him, and said: “I know them both. Benjamin’s one of the cleverest and most talented people I’ve ever met and it just so happens that he’s never had a break in his life. Paul Trotter is a nonentity. A famous nonentity, admittedly, but if the people who voted for him knew what his real opinions were he wouldn’t even be that for long. And Jonathan Swift is one of the greatest writers in the language and Michael Foot knows more about him than almost anybody so as far as I’m concerned that piece is news. And believe it or not, that also happens to be the kind of news your readers are interested in: not the news that some pubescent pop singer’s got herself up the duff or Paul Trotter might be shagging his assistant.”
And suddenly, all the eyes that had been averted from Doug were upon him at once, from every direction.
“I didn’t say that,” he backtracked, after a stunned pause.
“What did you just say?” the editor asked.
“I didn’t say it.”
“Did you just say that Paul Trotter was shagging his assistant?”
“No.”
