by Jonathan Coe
*
The Number 11 bus route, which follows the whole of Birmingham’s outer circle, makes a complete circuit of the city in about two and a half hours. Most passengers stay on it for only a fraction of that time. Alison and Selena, new students together and already new friends, were sitting on the lower deck of the 11A, the anti-clockwise version, heading from Bournville in the direction of Hall Green. They were on their way home from college, having dozed through a ninety-minute lecture on ‘Mapping the Historiography of the Para-Architectural Space’, which had failed to catch their imaginations. Well, never mind. They couldn’t expect everything on this course to be brilliant.
It was late September, and a low sun was still washing the city in pale golden light, glinting off the windscreens of cars and the panes of allotment greenhouses. Alison glanced at her phone to see what time it was, as the bus shuddered to a halt at a pedestrian crossing. Almost six thirty. This was proving to be a slow journey.
‘You going straight home now, then?’ Selena asked.
‘No. I’m meeting my mum for a drink. With her new boyfriend. Well, she calls him “new”. He’s her old boyfriend, in fact. But he seems to have popped up on the scene again.’
‘How do you feel about that?’
‘Whatever makes her happy, I suppose,’ said Alison, without much conviction. Then: ‘Your folks are still together, right?’
‘Yeah.’ Selena laughed, and said: ‘I don’t know why, sometimes, but they’ve stuck it out. For the sake of us kids, I think, as much as anything else. Good on them. I’ve seen most of my friends having to deal with their parents splitting up. I know how tough it is. You an only child?’
Alison nodded.
‘That’s even worse, isn’t it? So it’s just you and your mum at home, and I bet half the time it’s you looking after her, not the other way round.’
‘Yeah, there’s all of that. Plus, you know, it just gets so fucking lonely a lot of the time. Sitting at the kitchen table, having dinner together, just the two of us. If you don’t put the radio on or something you can hear the clock ticking on the wall.’
Selena’s wide, hazel eyes were full of sympathy: ‘Look, any time you want to come round and have a meal at our place … Just say the word. There’s five of us and it gets pretty loud and, you know, we have a good time. It might take you out of things.’
Returning Selena’s gaze, Alison took a long breath and said, in a tone of voice suddenly nervous and confiding: ‘Look, Selena, we only met a couple of weeks ago, but there’s something I want you to know about me. Something you really have to know, actually.’
Selena was startled by the change in her manner. She waited for some passengers to jostle past them on their way to the exit door, then said: ‘OK. What is it?’
Saying nothing, her eyes still locked into Selena’s, Alison took hold of her friend’s hand with a gentle grip. She lifted it, and now, moving it slowly, unobtrusively, so as not to attract the attention of the other passengers, she laid it on her own left thigh, just above the knee. She squeezed Selena’s hand, so that Selena herself was encouraged – even compelled – to respond by giving Alison’s thigh a reciprocal, questioning squeeze.
Selena’s eyes, not leaving Alison’s for a moment, flickered with surprise. There was a long silence between them: a silence charged with confusion and uncertainty. Selena’s hand did not leave her friend’s thigh: in fact it was still being held in place there. Gradually, her lips widened into a smile; the smile became broader, revealing her teeth; and at last, unable to contain her feelings any longer, she burst into laughter.
‘What the fuck!’ she said, and Alison started laughing as well.
‘What the fucking fuck!’ Selena repeated, and neither of them seemed to mind now that some of the passengers were turning to look at them. ‘Have you got a false leg?’
‘Yes!’ said Alison, barely able to get the word out, as she was by now doubled up with laughter herself. ‘Oh my God, the way you looked just then!’
‘My God, I didn’t know what you were doing! And now this … It’s like … What is it like? What’s it made of? It’s like plastic.’
‘Of course it’s plastic. They don’t make them out of wood any more, you know. I’m not bloody Long John Silver.’
‘But … what happened? How long have you had it?’
The bus staggered its way through Kings Heath and along Swanshurst Lane as Alison told her the story. Passengers came and went, the bus changed drivers at Acocks Green, but the two students were wrapped up in each other, and took no notice.
‘When I was ten,’ said Alison, ‘I kept getting these pains in my leg for no reason. Really bad pains that wouldn’t go away. We moved to Birmingham round about then so I was going in for hundreds of tests at the Queen Elizabeth and in the end they diagnosed me with this very rare thing called Ewing’s sarcoma, which is a really aggressive kind of cancer. I was on chemotherapy for months but in the end that wasn’t enough and they told me they were going to have to cut the whole thing off.’
‘Shit, that’s terrible.’
‘Well, the alternative was kind of worse, wasn’t it? Here I am, after all. Alive and kicking.’
Selena couldn’t work out at first whether this was a joke or not. When Alison’s smile made it clear that it was, she gave a relieved laugh of her own.
‘Do you want to see it?’ Alison asked now. ‘It’s very realistic.’
She rolled the left leg of her jeans almost up to the knee to expose a section of prosthesis which did indeed have the convincing look of flesh and bone.
‘The knee doesn’t look quite so good – I’ll show you that later,’ said Alison, rolling her trouser leg down again, ‘but otherwise it’s all right, isn’t it? They even matched my skin colour. When they’re ready to make the leg they give you a book of samples and you have to flick through all the different skin tones, just like you were choosing a carpet or something.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘No. I could have had one white leg, if I’d wanted to. How cool would that have been? I could have been a living example of ethnic diversity.’
Alison explained that the cancer had been so aggressive that the surgeons had had to perform a transfemoral amputation, above the knee. This meant that her left leg was lacking all the motor power of the knee joint – one of the strongest joints in the human body – so she could still only take stairs, for instance, step by step, one stair at a time. Nonetheless, on level surfaces, where there were not too many people around to impede her progress and get in her way, she was able to walk with perfect confidence.
‘How long did it take,’ Selena asked, ‘before it started to feel … you know, natural?’
‘Oh, it never feels natural,’ said Alison. ‘Never has, never will. But learning to feel – I don’t know – comfortable with it didn’t take too long. I worked with a physical therapist: in the hospital at first, and then after that she started coming to our house. That went on for a few months. Stressful time for everyone, very stressful. This guy I was telling you about – Steve – my mother’s boyfriend, he was around at this time. In fact that was when he showed his true colours.’
‘Was he not very supportive, you mean?’
‘Not really. He started shagging the physical therapist.’
After a second or two they both started laughing again at that, it sounded so ridiculous. In any case it was easier, for Alison, to laugh about it than to remember the real agony of that time, when all her own hopes had seemed to lie shattered around her, and in the face of Steve’s betrayal her mother turned int
o a wreck who drank herself to sleep most nights and seemed to age ten years in as many months. She really, really didn’t feel like seeing him again tonight.
‘Hey, look,’ she said to Selena, quietly now, ‘you couldn’t come with me to the pub tonight, could you? Safety in numbers, and all that. Only it’ll be the first time I’ve seen him in about seven years and I could do with having a friend there, to stop me doing something stupid.’
*
Outside The Spread Eagle, Alison laid a warning hand on Selena’s arm and said: ‘She’s white, by the way.’
‘Who?’
‘My mum.’
‘So?’
‘Some people are surprised, that’s all.’
‘I think I can handle it. As long as she doesn’t have two heads or something.’
‘You know what I mean. I just thought you’d probably be expecting …’
‘Alison – stay cool. Everything’s cool. You need to calm down a bit.’
‘I know. OK.’
Alison nodded her head, and took a few deep breaths, composing herself, trying to find her centre of gravity. She held out her hands, palms downwards, and pushed down as if on a pair of invisible parallel bars.
‘Right,’ she said, after a few moments of this. ‘I’m ready.’
They went inside.
Steve seemed to have lost most of his hair since Alison had seen him last, but apart from that, he looked very much the same. He kissed her on the cheek and gave her a big hug and she had little option but to put up with both of these things. When he went to the bar to get their drinks she could not help noticing how her mother’s eyes followed him appraisingly, longingly: and yet she was probably the only person in the pub who would have given this balding, potbellied figure a second glance. Alison did her best not to betray her feelings but inside she was letting out a long, deep sigh of resignation. It was going to happen all over again. Life was all too predictable sometimes.
Another example of this sad truth presented itself just a few minutes later. Her mother went to say something to the girl behind the bar. She was pointing at the little shelf of CDs that were kept there to use as background music, and Alison knew exactly what was coming next. Val’s sole top-twenty hit (from twelve years ago) was included on any number of compilation CDs and, sure enough, before long she had persuaded the girl to slot one into the CD player and search forward for the relevant track. Over the pub’s PA system the familiar keyboard riff soon blasted out, broken up by an offbeat drum pattern, providing an angular but catchy backdrop to Val’s strong, plangent melody, with her three fellow bandmembers oohing and aahing behind her in competent close harmony.
With an apologetic but proud smile at her companions, Val wandered back over to their table. Just in time to hear Selena say:
‘Ooh, I love this song.’
‘Really?’ Her surprise was obvious. ‘You know it?’
‘It’s one of the first things I can remember hearing. My mum used to have it on in the house all the time.’
‘I wrote it,’ said Val, and watched thirstily as a respectful amazement transformed Selena’s face.
‘You did? You wrote this?’
‘Yeah. That’s me singing. I’m that Val Doubleday.’
Selena didn’t actually recognize the name; it was the name of the band that was remembered by those who remembered the song at all. All the same, she was impressed; more impressed than even Val could reasonably have hoped for.
‘You sang this on Top of the Pops, yeah? I remember the little dance routine.’
‘Oh, God … We practised that for days.’ She set off down a well-worn path of reminiscence, recalling how Louisa, the fourth, blondest and prettiest member of the group, had developed a mental block about their simple dance moves and they’d had to spend the best part of a week in a London dance studio with an increasingly exasperated choreographer. Alison had heard the story many times before, and recognized by now that it took the form of a classic humblebrag: the underlying message being that the four of them may have been ditzy and naive but at the same time, they had been serious players, with the resources of a powerful record company behind them. It was dull having to listen to all of this again, but still, it gave her mother pleasure to tell the story, so she listened with a patient smile on her face and didn’t interrupt.
‘So what are you doing now?’ Selena wanted to know. ‘Are the four of you still together?’
Val laughed. ‘No. We split up ages ago. Straight after we did our first album.’
‘But you’re still in the music business, right?’
‘Of course. I can’t stop writing and singing. It’s in my DNA.’
‘Val’s an incredibly creative person,’ Steve said, sliding a proprietorial arm around her shoulders.
‘And guess what?’ said Val, looking pointedly at her daughter, whose scepticism remained unspoken but, to everyone around the table, palpable. ‘Cheryl emailed me today about the new song.’
‘Really? That’s great. What does she think?’
‘She hasn’t had a chance to listen to it yet. But she said she was really looking forward to it.’
‘Oh, OK. Wow. Well, that’s a real breakthrough …’
The sarcasm was cruder and more bitter than she had intended. Val looked down, unable to meet her daughter’s gaze, and took three or four rapid sips from her gin and tonic.
‘Your mother doesn’t need that kind of cynicism right now,’ Steve said.
Alison’s eyes lit up angrily. ‘Why does it matter to you?’
‘Because Steve cares about me and my career,’ said Val. ‘He’s going to get me some downtime in the studio at college, so I can do a better version. You know – he’s doing something constructive. Something helpful.’
‘About that, love,’ he said, leaning in closer to her. ‘I’ve been having a word with Ricky, the engineer, and he reckons that Tuesday evenings would be the best. If you could come in after nine …’
Alison only half listened to the rest of their conversation. She could tell that Selena was feeling restless and embarrassed: maybe it had been a selfish idea to bring her here, to thrust her into the middle of this awkward family situation. It angered her, too, to see that Steve was already well on his way to being reinstalled as her mother’s confidant. Soon Val had taken out a letter she had been given at work that day – something about a reduction in her working hours – and was discussing it with him.
‘The thing is,’ she was saying, ‘I can’t support the two of us on anything less than I get at the moment. No way. It’s just not possible. Especially not with the winter coming up, and fuel bills …’
‘Don’t worry, babes,’ he said – the arm never leaving her shoulders, staking its claim to ownership ever more tightly – ‘we’ll sort something out. Just give me time to think about it.’
Alison’s glass was empty. So was Selena’s. She didn’t suggest buying another round.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll walk you to the bus stop.’
Selena rose to her feet with every appearance of relief.
As they walked along Warwick Road, bathed in the evening sky’s final sunset glow, the smell of chips and kebabs and jerk chicken steaming out from the fast-food outlets, Alison took Selena’s arm and said:
‘Sorry. That was even more horrible than I was expecting.’
‘That’s OK. But you should have told me you had a famous mum. That’s just awesome.’
‘Well, she’s not famous any more, not by any stretch of the imagination. But she does write good songs still. I try to … hold on
to that.’
‘What were she and Steve talking about just now?’ Selena asked. ‘When she was showing him that letter?’
‘Something to do with her work. She works in the library in Harborne.’
‘So that’s what she is now, is it? A librarian?’
They had reached Selena’s bus stop. They could see the bus in the distance, one set of traffic lights away.
‘At the moment, yeah,’ said Alison. ‘But even that’s not looking good. They’re cutting her hours back. Libraries aren’t getting the money any more.’
‘I thought they were building a big new one in town. Spending millions on it.’
‘True, but … Well, I don’t know. Don’t ask me how these things work.’
She spoke these words unthinkingly, formulaically, as the bus rumbled towards them and her conscious mind dissolved into panic at the thought of what form, exactly, her farewell to Selena should take. A hug, a friendly hand on the arm, a kiss on the cheek? In the event, it was a clumsy mash-up of all these things. The hug lasted longer than either of them had been expecting, and involved a certain amount of affectionate back-rubbing, and they touched cheeks rather than kissing; but in the process Alison’s lips brushed against Selena’s ear, and the memory of its texture stayed with her for the rest of that evening, along with her delicate, animal scent. As she walked home, she continued to savour them both, and realized that she was singing to herself, over and over, the chorus of her mother’s new song:
