by Jonathan Coe
At this point a cat wandered into her bedroom (it was all go in this household, as you can see). This creature, a small brown and white tabby called Sefton, was only two years old but had a bearing and a philosophy of life which belied his age. Maria genuinely loved him, with a love founded, as it should be, on a profound respect. Sefton seemed to her to have got life sorted out, from top to bottom. The goals of his existence were few, and all admirable: to feed himself, to keep himself clean, and above all to sleep. Maria sometimes believed that she too might be happy, if only she were allowed to confine herself to these three spheres of endeavour. Also, she admired Sefton’s attitude towards physical affection. He was for it, from all comers. Perfect strangers had only to stop, to stoop down and to offer him the simplest caress between the ears, and then for a few minutes they would be all over each other, stroking and fondling and rubbing like two young lovers out on the golf course in the throes of pubescent rapture. This was to Maria a source of great envy. Not that she would have liked to be stroked and fondled and rubbed by perfect strangers, of course not. Exactly. What she envied was the fact that Sefton could indulge in this delightful intimacy safe in the knowledge that the pleasure taken in it by himself and his partner was entirely innocent, unless by some misfortune it turned out to be someone of bestial tendencies, and that had never happened to him yet. Not so with Maria. She had, let’s not be shy about this, had physical contact with men, or rather boys, before now, although only two, admittedly, on anything like a sustained basis. For she was not averse, at this stage, to the odd kiss, or the odd cuddle, or the occasional orgasm. But more and more she began to see the sexual cravings of the human race, including her own, as the symptom of a far greater craving, a terrible loneliness, an urge for self-forgetfulness which, so the story went, could only be attained in that peculiar private act which tends to take place upstairs, between consenting adults, and with the curtains drawn. She would not have minded touching Ronny, for instance, huddling together on the back seat of the bus, entering preciously for a moment into a shared world, were it not that she suspected his hands would shortly start moving towards her breasts, or diving between her thighs, making with killer instinct for those parts of her which boys always seemed to find so inexplicably interesting. Yes, she would have been partial to men, perhaps she might even have confined herself to one man in particular, if only she had been able to find one who shared her view that intimacy between two people was of value irrespective of whether it led to sticky conflux. But these problems did not exist, you see, for Sefton, and not only in his dealings with men and women, but also in his dealings with other cats, for he had been thoughtfully neutered, at an early age.
Maria envied Sefton on three counts. The third was this, that nobody ever expected him to take the slightest interest or satisfaction in human affairs. Thus he was at liberty to parade a breathtaking and perfectly legitimate indifference. Just watching him did Maria a power of good, in this respect. He patently didn’t give a toss about the family’s welfare, except when it affected his own. He was totally self-absorbed, and yet totally unselfish, a condition which Maria knew, already to her great sadness, to be quite unavailable to her. It made him nevertheless her favourite confidant. She could tell him, for example, of her success, without embarrassment, simply because there would be no danger of his displaying the least excitement. Many were the secrets which Maria had told Sefton, because she knew that they would mean nothing to him, and many were the little items of news which she had tried out on him, in order to gain strength from the astonishing nonchalance with which he would hear and ignore them. Every family should keep a cat, for this very reason.
She sat with Sefton on her lap, talking to him of this and that, while he slept, her day at school, her hopes and fears, her quiet desires, until her father returned from work and she was called down to dinner. The family ate dinner in the kitchen. Maria’s mother had heated up four pies, which she served with mashed potato and tomato ketchup. Her father consumed his food noisily, trailing his tie in the gravy, while her brother sat withdrawn, too shy and unhappy even to speak. He took small and regular mouthfuls. Maria waited until the meal was half eaten before telling them.
‘Mother, I have some news,’ she said.
They laid down their forks in unison.
‘I passed the exam. I will be going to Oxford next year.’
Here you are to imagine a short scene of family jubilation, I’m buggered if I can describe one.
Her father congratulated her, and praised her cleverness.
Her mother said that it was wonderful news, and told her that she must be very excited.
Her brother remained silent, but grinned.
‘You will never look back now, darling,’ her mother continued. ‘This is the very opportunity that your father and I never had. Once you have had an education like that, nothing in life will ever be denied to you.’
‘You must work hard, and enjoy yourself,’ said her father. ‘Work hard, and enjoy yourself, and you can’t go wrong.’
Her mother wanted to know if anyone else from the school would be going.
‘No girls. Three of the boys. Ronny passed too.’
‘Ronny will be there! How nice. You know, Maria, I’m sure that boy is very fond of you, and you could find a much worse husband, I’m sure of that.’
‘The girl’s only seventeen,’ said her father, ‘and you talk of marriage.’
‘Eighteen,’ said Maria.
‘Let her enjoy herself,’ said her father, ‘while she is in the full flush of youth. There’ll be plenty of time to think of marriage when she gets to Oxford.’
‘Ronny is such a nice boy,’ said her mother, ‘he has such nice manners, and he looks so smart in that nice school uniform, and if you ask me it is only a matter of time before those boils disappear altogether.’
Maria’s father now rose from his chair, advanced towards Maria, and kissed her on the forehead. He had done nothing like it for a matter of weeks, perhaps months. She gave a faint and not entirely forced smile.
‘We must celebrate,’ he said. ‘Why don’t I go out to the off licence and buy us all a bottle of cider. Or we could go out to the pictures. And then at the weekend we shall go into town together and buy you a nice present. What do you say, Maria?’
But once the initial flurry had subsided, it turned out to be an evening like any other. Bobby was the first to leave the table, for his family frightened him and he could not wait to escape upstairs, where solitary, secret pleasures awaited him. Following his departure, there was a long silence.
‘I have homework to do,’ said Maria.
‘We must not stop the girl doing her homework,’ said her father, ‘however proud we are of her.’
He started to do the washing up.
Maria, meanwhile, sat in her room, thinking, dreaming, waiting. It was a winter’s night like any other. From downstairs she heard the noise of the television, from outside she heard the bare branches of the rose bush as they tapped against her window. Sometimes she drew back the curtain and looked out, at the passing headlights, and at the road which would grow frosty, and at the stars, or, if they intervened, the clouds.
This was typical of the ways in which Maria and her family would spend their evenings, at this period.
2. The World of Meaningful Looks
When Maria came to look back on her days at Oxford, which, to her credit, she did very seldom, it seemed to her that it had all taken place in bright sunshine. We can safely assume, I think, that this was in reality not the case, but then who said our concern was with reality, or hers, for that matter. If Maria’s memories were of an Oxford bathed in sunlight, we might as well respect them, except perhaps for parts of the third chapter, where the mood will be rather more autumnal. All this is just to give you an idea of how things are likely to turn out. It was in any case autumn by the time she got there, bright blue autumn, and Maria’s college, we won’t name names, looked very pretty, even to her. She fou
nd that she was required to share a room, or rather a set of rooms, with a girl called Charlotte. She would have preferred to have a room to herself. That first evening, they sat together by the fire, and talked long into the night. This gave rise to a spontaneous and mutual antipathy.
‘My friends call me Charlie,’ Charlotte said. ‘What do your friends call you?’
‘Maria.’
Eventually the conversation came to a halting conclusion. There was a long silence, which Charlotte was the first to infringe.
‘Do you believe, Maria,’ she said, ‘that there is a certain sort of silence between people, where no words are necessary, and which signals not the end but the start of understanding?’
‘Yes,’ said Maria, and added to herself, This isn’t it.
‘Do you believe, Maria,’ said Charlotte, after a few more minutes, ‘that there is a kind of look which passes between people, and which can speak more than a thousand words and yet still leave so much unsaid?’
‘Yes,’ said Maria, looking away.
‘So much is spoken when people look at one another. Looks are so meaningful. Do you know what I intend to study at Oxford, Maria?’
‘Chinese?’
‘I mean apart from that. People. One can learn so much about people from the way they look at one another. And do you know what? I shall teach you, Maria. I shall teach you how to study people, and how to learn, from their looks, from their smiles, from what they say to each other and what they leave unsaid. We shall study these things together.’
This, Maria soon realized, was Charlotte’s way of admitting that she was morbidly addicted to gossip.
A few weeks passed, as weeks do, try as you may. Maria and Charlotte began to make friends, in and out of college. But Charlotte made considerably more friends than Maria did. Maria did not find it easy to make friends. Also she found friendship a difficult phenomenon to grasp, conceptually. For instance, she was friendly for a while with a girl called Louise, but their friendship did not last long, and while it lasted it was a lukewarm affair, so lukewarm that friendship is frankly too strong a word for it. Maria and Louise attended lectures together, and seminars together, and were united by the similarity of their tastes in literature, in particular their indifference towards the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, their lack of enthusiasm for the poems of Robert Henryson, and their loathing of the writings of Thomas Malory. (All the same, Maria sometimes felt, in private moments, that Louise’s indifference was only skin deep.) Sometimes, after a seminar, or a lecture, Louise would accompany Maria back to her rooms, and there they would sit, and talk, and perhaps eat, and then Louise would go, and Maria would find herself thinking, So what? And occasionally, Maria would be walking past Louise’s college, and would think to herself, This is where Louise lives, and, having nothing better to do, having nothing to do at all most of the time, she would visit her. Then they would talk, and sit, and perhaps drink, until the time came for Maria to get up and leave, having nothing better to do, and then as she walked back to her rooms she would find herself thinking, Well, what was the point of that, exactly?
Charlotte’s friends were a different matter altogether, there is really no point of comparison. They were a noisy crowd, frequently arriving in groups of four or five and staying until tea, dinner, supper or even bedtime. Charlotte’s best friends called on her daily, and if they could not call on her, they telephoned, for Charlotte, without consulting Maria, had installed a telephone in their sitting room. Maria had nothing against telephones per se, she could take them or leave them, but she was inconvenienced by this one because it meant that Ronny had a new means of contacting her. Ronny was at Balliol. Before the telephone was installed, he had been content to call on Maria every day, or simply to send her something, such as some flowers, which she would put in the sitting room, or some chocolates, which she would give to Charlotte, or his love, which was of no use to anyone. Now, however, he would phone at least once in the morning, and at least twice in the afternoon, and at least seven times in the evening, forever inviting Maria to parties, to concerts, to films, to plays, to dinner.
‘You’re very cruel to that boy, Maria,’ Charlotte said one evening, watching her replace the receiver.
‘As a matter of fact I like him,’ said Maria. ‘If he was prepared to be friends with me, that would be all right, but he insists on talking about love all the time.’
‘That’s not his fault,’ said Charlotte. ‘Do you know what, I think he has a soft spot for you.’
This is a typical example of her skills at character analysis. It was received with noises of approval by Charlotte’s friends, of whom there were three in attendance.
‘But perhaps Maria has a soft spot for somebody else, and isn’t letting on.’
Giggles ensued.
‘Come on, Maria, who is it?’
‘There is nobody,’ she said.
The conversation turned to the subject of the men for whom those present had spots of various degrees of softness.
‘Philip is very handsome, except that his ears are so small.’
‘John is quite nice, except that his eyebrows meet in the middle.’
‘Maurice is lovely, except for that extra finger on his right hand.’
But Charlotte, at first, had almost as little time as Maria for these concerns. She was not romantic by nature. She was far more interested in the progress of her relationship with her tutor, a woman in her thirties whose destiny, Charlotte had decided, was inextricably bound up with her own.
‘I had a very exciting conversation with Miss Ballsbridge this afternoon, Maria,’ she confided one night.
‘Oh? What did you talk about?’
‘It was about ordering some new socks for the hockey team. But it wasn’t the words which were exciting. It was the looks. We exchanged some very meaningful looks. For instance, at one point I thought to myself, Charlotte, this has gone far enough, no more pussyfooting. So I gave her a look which said, Miss Ballsbridge, I think you know that I think the paths of our lives are destined to run as one. And she replied with a look which I could have sworn was meant to say, Charlotte, I feel, and think that you feel, and feel that you think I feel, a strange closeness for which these words are only a mask. It was a moment charged with feeling. I was about to give her a look which said, Miss Ballsbridge, I’m game if you are, but then we were interrupted, and the chance never arose. She’s such a wonderful woman, Maria. I feel that if she were to guide me through life, if I was to guide her, everything would be so wonderful. Life would simply light up, do you know what I mean? Do you ever wish that your life would light up?’
‘Sometimes. There’s no point in wishing, though.’
Maria knelt down to turn on the gas fire.
Charlotte said suddenly, ‘Do you like my friends, Maria?’
‘Yes, I do.’ (This was almost a lie. But she bore them no malice, at least.) ‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. I just wondered. Sometimes I don’t think you do. And then sometimes I do think you do. And then sometimes I don’t know whether you do or you don’t. Do you want to know whether they like you?’
Maria was unable to answer this question.
‘Well, some of them do, and some of them don’t,’ said Charlotte happily. ‘Harriet, for example, doesn’t, but Judith does. Harriet thinks you’re peculiar. She thinks you have a sinister chin.’
Maria was appalled.
‘Harriet wouldn’t want you to tell me that,’ she said.
‘I think that people ought to be told what other people think of them. Just because people tell people things about other people which they don’t want them to know, doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t tell them. Anyway, Alison dislikes you much more than Harriet does.’
‘Alison is entitled to her opinion. She is also entitled to have her confidences respected.’
‘She thinks you’re weird. She asked me if you’d ever been in an institution or had experiments performed on you or anything. I said I didn’
t know.’
‘Charlotte, you shouldn’t be telling me these things.’
‘So it’s not surprising that you don’t like them, really. Although I don’t see why you shouldn’t like Judith, since she likes you so much. She thinks you have an attractive personality. Those were her very words. I’ll tell you what I like about Maria. I’ll tell you what attracts me to her. It’s her personality. With some people, it’s because they look nice, or they’ve got a sense of humour, but with Maria it’s her personality. I don’t know whether that means she thinks you don’t look nice, or haven’t got a sense of humour, although Harriet and Alison think both of those things. But anyway, she does like you, an awful lot.’ She paused. ‘I think Judith is my least favourite of all my friends. But then it’s a long time since I drew up a list.’
Maria did not answer. Charlotte got up, stooped beside her and kissed her on the cheek.
‘You are sweet,’ she said.
Sometimes Charlotte chose to confide in Maria, sometimes she did not: it varied. Maria did not much mind either way. She found it difficult to understand Charlotte. What she learnt of her affairs, she learnt in fragments, and not in small fragments, let fall frequently, but in irregular fragments, for Charlotte would, perhaps, one night talk of herself incessantly for five and a half hours, and then she would say nothing about herself for a week, or perhaps two. And if Charlotte said nothing about herself, by the way, then you can take it as read that she said nothing at all. So Maria received a very confused impression of Charlotte’s affairs, and activities, and daily doings, during the year in which they lived together.
