by Jonathan Coe
CN: I just don’t believe it. Miriam wasn’t that sort of girl. She never spoke to me about anybody else. Never once. The only person she spoke about was you. She was obsessed by you. She loved you.
BA: (long silence; unidentified noise, perhaps creaking of chair, BA sitting up, changing position) I think you’re right. I know you are. (silence) Yes, she was obsessed by me. I allowed that. I allowed it to happen. It was very flattering to me, and . . . I didn’t see where it was leading. I should have seen. Anyone with any sense would have seen. I suppose the reason . . . The reason I allowed . . . I loved her too, you see. I did. It wasn’t love to start with but that’s what it became, in the end. Oh, I never stopped loving Irene but that made no difference, that was what made it worse, in fact, worse for everyone. And she knew. I’m sure Irene knew. Of course she did. Women aren’t stupid. We lived like that for months. Don’t know how. I don’t know how we got through those months. I know what it was like for us, I don’t know what it was like for Miriam. We saw each other every day, at the factory. Most days. We used to meet in one of the shower blocks. That last day, the last day anyone saw her, we’d arranged to meet. But I never went. I don’t know how long she must have waited for me. It was always like that. We didn’t have any nights together. Just that once. That terrible time. I always had Irene to go home to, she didn’t have anything like that, I don’t think she was getting on with your mother and father, she said things were difficult at home, but she talked about you sometimes. Her sister. Said nice things about you. She was so unhappy, everybody was so unhappy, the whole bloody stupid thing was causing so much misery and I don’t know how long I would have let it carry on. For ever. But even so that was no way for it to end, just for Miriam to go away like that. That wasn’t the right way for it to end. I don’t think it was her way, either. I don’t think she chose to end it like that. Something funny must have happened. Something . . .
(Silence. Traffic noise. Rustle of tissue paper: BA? CN?)
BA: Your sister’s dead. That’s what I think.
CN: I’m going to turn this off now.
17
Whenever Benjamin went to church, which he did every week, and whenever he prayed, which he did every night, he would always ask God for the same thing: to end his exile from Cicely. But his prayers went unanswered. He was now condemned to a banishment every bit as complete, it seemed, as the one he had suffered before, in the days when he had never even spoken to her.
When religion failed him, he turned to the consolations of art. He began by writing a verse sequence, entitled “In Your Absence,” but it was abandoned after nine lines of a sonnet and half a haiku. Then he resumed work on his novel, attempting to recast his recent history with Cicely as a digressive and brutally ironic chapter, so that his continuing pain and sense of rejection might be transmuted into high comedy. It was abandoned after two paragraphs. A proposed string quartet got no further than a title and a dedication at the top of a sheet of manuscript paper. He heard, at second- or third-hand, that her affair with Stubbs had only lasted a few weeks; but still she made no effort to contact him. He also knew that she had resigned as secretary of the Drama Society; but he didn’t know why. She would always greet him, affectionately enough, whenever they passed in the school corridors. They waved to each other at their respective bus stops. But there was to be no return, it was clear, to the closeness they had fleetingly enjoyed during the first few weeks of the Easter term. Benjamin’s only souvenir of that ecstatic but dreamlike episode was a secret drawer at the bottom of his bedroom cupboard, containing a plastic carrier bag full of blonde hair.
Meanwhile, the rivalry between Richards and Culpepper intensified. By the time of the annual Sports Day, in early July, 1977, it had become so public, and was the object of so much interest throughout the school, that the editors of The Bill Board decided to overcome their collective prejudice against sports coverage and assign someone to follow the two competitors as they prepared to battle it out on the athletics track. Philip agreed to undertake this task, and duly turned up in the sports pavilion changing rooms fifteen minutes before the first race (the 400 metres) was about to be run.
He found Culpepper energetically performing sit-ups on the tiled floor, while Steve Richards hunted through the contents of his kit bag with an increasingly panic-stricken air.
“What’s the matter, Steve?” Philip asked.
“He’s lost his lucky charm,” Culpepper explained, between ostentatious bouts of huffing and puffing. “You know what these natives are like. Superstitious as hell. It’s some heathen icon he has to kiss three times before each race, or something.”
“It’s a St. Christopher’s medal, you wanker,” said Steve. “Which is about as Christian as they come. And I had it here a minute ago.”
“You’ll be accusing me of stealing it next, I suppose.”
“Nothing would surprise me, where you’re concerned,” Steve muttered.
Philip began to scribble frantically in his notebook. “ . . . in an atmosphere heavy with sweat and bad temper . . . accusations being slung backwards and forwards even before the races had started . . . Richards already at a psychological disadvantage . . .”
A tiny, curly-haired first-former called Ives put his head round the door and said: “Mr. Warren wants everybody outside in five minutes.”
Steve was still talking about his lost medal as the runners assembled at the starting line.
“It’s not superstition,” he said. “That medal’s got sentimental value. It was a present from Valerie.”
“I thought you’d split up with her,” said Philip.
“That’s why it’s so important. It’s the only thing she ever gave me.”
“It’ll turn up.”
Steve did not seem convinced, and he continued to glare suspiciously at Culpepper as they took their places side by side on the track. Steve was running for Astell House, and Culpepper was running for Ransome; but the House competition was not really the important thing, as everybody knew. Every year, at the end of Sports Day, a silver trophy was presented to the individual who had proved himself the most outstanding sportsman in the school over the last three terms. He would then be crowned with the title Victor Ludorum, and it was this honour that both Steve and Culpepper craved so fiercely. They were the only serious contenders.
Before the race began, Philip retreated to a bank above the athletics track, where he could get a good view of the runners over the heads of the crowd. He settled himself and turned to a new page in his notebook. When he saw what was at the top of the page he smiled, regretfully. This book consisted of unruled sheets and also doubled as his sketchpad. Here, more than eight months ago, he had begun to compile what he had hoped would be a complex “Rock Family Tree” in the manner of Pete Frame, telling the story of his long and successful collaboration with Benjamin. Instead, he had ended up with this:
And the Maws were still going strong, it seemed, pulling in respectable crowds every Friday night down at The Bournbrook in Selly Oak. Any old rubbish could get an audience these days, Philip thought, as long as it was riding on the punk bandwagon. These were desperate times for someone like him, whose heroes—specialists, to a man, in fifteen-minute instrumentals, usually with a bit of cod classical mythology and an electric violin solo thrown in—had until recently commanded two-page features in the music press but could nowadays barely get themselves a recording contract. There were bands he could have discussed avidly with his friends a year ago, whose very names would now provoke howls of derision if he so much as mentioned them in the sixth-form common room. What was so funny about Camel and Curved Air and Gentle Giant anyway? Oh, but it was a cruel world . . .
A sudden outburst of cheering disrupted these thoughts and made him realize that he had not been paying attention to the race, which now seemed to be over. He scrambled down from the bank and grabbed hold of Ives as he rushed past.
“Who won? Who won?”
“Culpepper. Didn’t you see
it?”
“No, I didn’t. What happened? Was it a close thing?”
“You’ll have to go and ask someone else. I’m in a hurry.”
“Oh, come on, Ives. Just tell me how it—”
“No time! Can’t stop! He’ll kill me if I’m not there by three o’clock!”
And with that mysterious exclamation, Ives was on his way.
It seemed that everyone had gone to watch the sports. Everyone, that is, except Benjamin. Once again he sat alone in the little office next to the editorial meeting room, high up in the Carlton corridor, and relished the atmosphere of a school entirely abandoned by its staff and pupils. It was in just these circumstances, after all, that Cicely had first come to find him. This same unbroken silence. This same heaviness and apathy. Except that then, he hadn’t been able to identify its source, whereas now, he knew precisely what he was suffering from: a paralyzing nostalgia, an almost unbearable longing for the chance to return to that day and to will his relationship with Cicely along a different course. How could he, how could he possibly have let that opportunity slip through his fingers? What had happened between the two of them, exactly? (Or failed to happen?) Whatever the explanation, there was one bitter certainty which he had been trying to ward off, but which he might just as well accept: it would take more than a few Spenserian stanzas or piano études to bring her back to him now.
Benjamin sat immobile at his desk, looked out over the rooftops and drifted into a reverie. He stared into the paleness of the blue summer sky and remembered something: a scene from his early childhood. Perhaps the earliest of all his memories. He was with his mother, at some sort of garden fête or summer fair. How old would he be: three, maybe? Four? He had an image of traction engines and vintage cars, bedecked with coloured ribbons. Tombola stalls and Aunt Sallies and games of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. On one side he could feel the tight clasp of his mother’s hand, while his other hand was clutching a balloon, a yellow balloon, on a long piece of string. They were leaving the fair and making for their car, a green Hillman Imp. And then something happened. A moment’s inattention. The string slipped from his grasp and suddenly this balloon, the most precious thing he had ever possessed, was gone. It broke free and rose into the sky. Did he wail with distress, call out his mother’s name, burst into tears? He had no memory, no memory at all of the sound of that day. In fact, whenever he thought of this scene (and yes, he often thought of it, felt compelled to revisit it again and again) the only sound that he heard was the sound of music; as if the memory was a film clip, complete with orchestral soundtrack. It was always the same music, as well. In his head Benjamin felt that he could hear, quite distinctly, the rising chords, the sweet modal harmonies of Vaughan Williams’ “The Lark Ascending.” As the balloon drifted implacably away, as his three- or four-year-old face tilted to watch it disappear, crumpled into a mask of childish desolation, the violin entered, and it too gathered momentum, took flight, spiralling into the hot Sunday sky, with innumerable loops and turns, until, like the balloon, it dwindled and faded, melted slowly into the infinite distance, leaving nothing behind but a yellow dot burned on to the retina and an aching, insupportable sense of loss. A sense of loss that Benjamin had always felt could never be surpassed. Until now, that is . . .
But then he realized something. For once the music wasn’t inside his head at all. He really could hear it. Unless he was going quite mad. Somewhere, from another room, in a distant corner of the school, he could hear someone playing the opening section of “The Lark Ascending.” A record-player, turned up extremely loud. Where could it be coming from?
Benjamin stuck his head through the open window and craned his neck to the left, looking towards the music school. This had to be the source. It was the only place he knew there was a record-player, in the big upstairs room called the Gerald Hill Studio, where the school’s library of miniature scores and classical records was housed. But who would be there, this afternoon? Someone as bored by the prospect of Sports Day as he was, obviously. Benjamin hurried down the corridor to investigate, made his way down the main staircase and past the Porter’s Lodge, then paused when he reached the quadrangle outside. He had a good view of the music school from here, and could see a solitary figure leaning against the huge picture window of the Gerald Hill Studio, his face relaxed in blissful attentiveness as the Vaughan Williams tone poem swelled to the first of its climaxes. Benjamin blinked in surprise when he saw who it was. It was Harding.
Steve had won the 200 metres, and Culpepper had won the 800. Culpepper was one of the few contenders left in the high jump (with the bar now standing at 1.9 metres), while Steve had already broken the school records in the long jump and javelin. Mr. Warren, who had devised the elaborate points system used on these occasions, and who alone seemed to understand it, was keeping quiet about the positions of the two rivals: but evidently there was little to choose between them. The tension continued to rise, fuelled even more by the mystery surrounding Steve’s St. Christopher’s medal, which he now openly accused Culpepper of stealing. Whatever the outcome of today’s contest, there would be sourness and bad feeling at the end of it.
Philip had made a few more notes—“an astonishing succession of neck-and-neck finishes . . . faces taut with e fort and exertion . . . where does competition end and antagonism begin?” —but the contest did not grip him in the way it seemed to grip most of the spectators. He wanted Steve to win because he liked him more, but that was about as far as his involvement went. To tell the truth he was beginning to feel slightly bored.
He resumed his position on the bank above the race track, turned to a blank page in his notebook and began to sketch the elaborate, fussy outline of the school chapel, which commanded the skyline in the middle distance. Under Mr. Plumb’s tutelage, he was turning into a good draughtsman. After a few minutes a small group of younger boys had gathered around him and his efforts were the subject of admiring comments.
“Of course, you know the history of the chapel, don’t you?” said Philip, as he began to sketch in the terracotta brickwork. “The school’s only been on this site for about forty years. It used to be next to New Street Station, but they decided to move it here just before the War. And the chapel isn’t really a chapel at all. It’s just part of the old upper corridor. They took it down brick by brick and then numbered all the pieces so it could be put up again on the new site. The bricks just sat in a heap here all through the War, for about five years.”
Well, Philip thought it was interesting, even if his audience didn’t. He had recently begun to pick up pieces of arcane information like this, partly from books in the local library, partly from the long walks he had begun to take at weekends, looking for interesting places to sketch. He had become fascinated, in particular, by Birmingham’s huge network of disused and neglected canals, and was lobbying Mr. Tillotson to organize a Walking Option expedition around these forgotten backwaters. Many of their most intriguing corners were too remote to explore by himself.
Soon there was another noisy eruption from the crowd below. A throng of boys had descended on the finishing line, and through them Philip could glimpse Culpepper crouched on the grass, head in hands, his shoulders heaving.
“Shit!” said Philip, jumping to his feet. “I’ve missed another one!”
This time it was the 1500 metres, which Steve appeared to have won, again by the narrowest of margins. There were only two more races to be run, now. It was still impossible to say who would emerge victorious.
With the wistful strains of the “Five Variants on Dives and Lazarus” murmuring behind them, Benjamin and Harding continued to discuss their love of Vaughan Williams. They had both agreed that the third and fifth symphonies were masterpieces, and that the eighth was severely underrated. They talked about the London symphony and wondered whether it would be possible for anybody to write a “Birmingham symphony” of the same grandeur and resonance. Benjamin thought not. He recommended that Sean (he was calling him Sean, now, without
hesitation or embarrassment) should check out the oboe concerto: a minor work, but very beautiful. Sean said that his personal favourite was the “Serenade to Music,” a choral and orchestral setting of lines from The Merchant of Venice. It had been his introduction to this composer; he had heard his mother sing one of the solo parts when he was only eight years old, at a performance given by the local choral society.
“I didn’t know your mother was musical,” said Benjamin; reflecting, as he said it, that he actually knew nothing about Sean’s parents at all.
“Mum and Dad have both got good voices,” he said. “They were always singing together. It was one of the things they used to have in common.”
“Used to?”
“They’re living apart at the moment,” he confided. It was amazing how this music was loosening his tongue, like wine. “Dad moved out a few weeks ago.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
He crossed over to the other side of the room, picked up a record sleeve, pretended to read it. It must have been difficult for him to reveal so much. “It’s been building up for some time,” he said. “Dad comes from a big Irish family, Mum’s English through and through. And she can be . . . well, she can be a difficult person to be around. She’s pretty strict.” Benjamin thought for a moment about the bizarre fantasy world Sean had created around the Pusey-Hamiltons—the shy, stunted boy subjected to a punishing parental régime, the insane lampoon of anti-Irish prejudice—and found himself wondering for the first time whether there was more to his humour than simple anarchic clowning.
“When you say strict . . .” he prompted.
And then Sean said, very quickly and emphatically: “I love my mother.” Benjamin had not meant to suggest otherwise, but it seemed of paramount importance that this fact should be stressed. “She’s an incredible woman. One in a million, actually.”
After that he abruptly clammed up, and for a while there was only music to fill the silence. Luckily, before very long, they heard a gentle knock on the door.
