The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim

by Jonathan Coe

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve come to see you. Why didn’t you answer the phone?’

  ‘Have you been calling? There’s something wrong with it. I’ve managed to mute the ring tone, I don’t know how. Now I can’t hear it when somebody calls me.’

  ‘What about your mobile?’

  ‘The battery ran down and I can’t find the charger. You didn’t fly all the way out here because of that, did you?’

  I was still standing on the doorstep.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  I think my father was genuinely touched that I had taken the trouble to come out here again so soon after my last visit. Touched and astounded. For most of the week we didn’t do anything special, but there was an easiness and even (dare I say this?) a closeness between us that was new to both of us. I gave him back the precious blue ring binder that I had retrieved from Lichfield and told him that I had read his memoir The Rising Sun, but apart from that we didn’t discuss it. Not for a while, at any rate. Nor did I mention, at first, that more than half of the space in my suitcase was occupied by layer upon layer of Roger Anstruther’s postcards. Instead, I bided my time, and we passed the first days of my visit in various low-key domestic ways. My father had been in this apartment for three months now but it still wasn’t furnished properly, so we spent some time going round furniture stores buying chairs and cupboards and a spare bed. Also he had this television that was about twenty years old and barely worked, so one day we went out and got him a nice new flat-screen TV and a DVD player. He complained about this and said that he had nothing to play all his old VHS tapes on now and the remote controls were too small and he was bound to lose them, but basically I think he was pleased, not just about the TV but about everything. We were already having a much better time than the last time I’d visited.

  Friday night came around and I still hadn’t told him what I had planned for the next day. We ordered a Chinese takeaway and opened a nice bottle of New Zealand Shiraz and then, while he was cutting up the quarter of crispy duck and taking the little pancakes out from their cellophane wrapper, I went into the next room and when I came back I said to him:

  ‘Dad, I’ve got something for you.’

  I put a Qantas ticket on the table between us.

  ‘What’s that?’ he said.

  I said, ‘It’s a plane ticket.’

  He picked it up and looked at it.

  ‘This is a ticket for Melbourne,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘For tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, for tomorrow.’

  He put it down again.

  ‘Well, what’s going on?’

  ‘You’re going to Melbourne tomorrow,’ I said.

  ‘Why would I want to go to Melbourne?’

  ‘Because … Because someone will be there tomorrow who I think you ought to see.’

  He looked at me without comprehension. I realized that I had made it sound like I wanted him to consult a specialist doctor or something.

  ‘Well – who?’

  ‘Roger,’ I said.

  ‘Roger?’

  ‘Roger Anstruther.’

  My father stopped cutting up the duck into small, flaky pieces, and sat down at the table.

  ‘You’ve been in touch with Roger? How?’

  ‘I tracked him down.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘The clue was on the last postcard he sent you. I found it in Lichfield.’

  ‘He’s still writing to me?’

  ‘Yes. He’s never stopped writing. I’ve got about two hundred postcards from him upstairs, in my suitcase.’

  My father scratched his head.

  ‘He wants to see me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you speak to him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did he sound?’

  ‘He sounded … keen to see you.’

  ‘He’s living in Melbourne now?’

  I shook my head. ‘Adelaide. We chose Melbourne because it was a good halfway point.’

  My father picked up the ticket again and looked at the time of the flight, although he didn’t seem to be taking any of the details in.

  ‘So it sounds like this is all arranged.’

  ‘If you want to go through with it.’

  ‘Where are we supposed to be meeting?’

  ‘In the tea rooms of the Botanical Gardens,’ I said, ‘at three o’clock tomorrow afternoon.’

  He put the ticket down and picked up his knife and fork and resumed work on the duck, his brow furrowed in thought. For a long time after that he said no more on the subject. My father, I’m beginning to realize, has a genius for silence.

  That night, all the same, it was obvious that he was highly agitated. I handed over the bundles of postcards and when I went to bed I left him sitting at the kitchen table, reading through them methodically. At three o’clock in the morning, still jet-lagged, I woke up and saw that there was a light coming from beneath his bedroom door. I could hear the creak of the floorboards as he paced up and down. I suspect that neither of us slept for the rest of the night.

  I was the first one to use the kitchen the next morning. While I was in there making coffee at about seven o’clock, my father came in and said abruptly: ‘You didn’t get me a return ticket.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I didn’t know how long you’d want to stay. I thought that kind of depended on how things panned out. You’ll have to buy the return half yourself.’

  ‘I can’t afford to buy a plane ticket from Melbourne to Sydney.’

  ‘I’ll reimburse you.’

  When I said this, he did something … well, he did something that I found quite extraordinary. If you were lucky enough to have had a reasonably normal relationship with your own parents, you might find it hard to understand just how extraordinary it was, to me. First of all, he said, ‘Thank you, Max.’ Then he said, ‘You didn’t have to do this for me, you know.’ But that’s not the strange thing. The strange thing was that, while he was saying it, he came over to me as I was pouring boiling water on to the coffee grains in my mug, and he put his hand on my shoulder. He touched me.

  I was forty-eight years old. It was the first time I could remember him ever doing anything like that. I turned round and our eyes met, very briefly. But the moment was too uncomfortable, for both of us, so we soon looked away.

  ‘What are you going to do with yourself, today?’ he asked me.

  ‘No great plans,’ I said. ‘Except that tonight I have to go to this restaurant. I’m hoping to meet somebody there myself.’

  I told him that it was the same restaurant where we’d failed to have dinner together at the end of my last visit. And I also told him a little bit about the Chinese woman and her daughter.

  ‘You know this woman?’ he asked, as I handed him a mug of instant coffee.

  ‘No, not exactly. But …’ (this felt like a bizarre thing to be saying, but I ploughed ahead) ‘… but in a way, it does feel that we know each other. That I’ve known her a long time.’

  ‘I see,’ he said, doubtfully. ‘Is she married? Does she have a boyfriend?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure that she’s a single mother.’

  ‘And tonight you’re going to talk to her, is that the idea?’

  ‘That’s the idea.’

  ‘Well, good luck,’ he said.

  ‘And you, Dad,’ I said. ‘It’s a big day for both of us.’

  We clinked our mugs together and drank to the success of our prospective encounters.

  About half an hour later, just before he left, I reminded my father that I’d found the charger for his mobile phone and I’d charged it fully and left it on top of the bookcase in the living room.

  ‘Don’t forget to take it, will you!’ I called, while he was in his bedroom, cramming a few things into an overnight bag.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he called back. ‘I’ve already g
ot it. I’ve got it right here.’

  And, stupidly, I believed him.

  And now here he was: back in Sydney, little more than twelve hours later, taking his seat opposite me on the restaurant terrace while the water and the lights of Sydney harbour shimmered behind us. Apart from the Chinese woman and her daughter, we were the only people left out here. A cool breeze was blowing in off the water. It ruffled my father’s hair and as it did so I thought that he was lucky still to have a full head of hair at his age. Thinking about this, I ran a hand through my own hair, which was almost entirely grey now, but – like my father’s – still full and thick, and I reflected that I had probably inherited his hair and I should be grateful for that because there were a lot of men my age who were already practically bald. I looked at my father while I was thinking these thoughts and realized that I was like him in many ways – the colour of my eyes, the line of my chin, the way we both liked to swirl our drinks around in our glasses before we drank them – and for the first time, this knowledge felt welcome, a good thing, and it gave me a warm feeling in the pit of my stomach: like a kind of homecoming.

  ‘I was hoping that I’d find you here,’ he said. ‘Have you finished eating? Will you join me in a drink? Because, believe me, I feel like a drink.’

  I told him that I would certainly join him in a drink, so he called the waiter over and asked for two large amarettos (except that he called them ‘amaretti’).

  ‘So, how did it go?’ I asked, although I could see already that something must have gone wrong. ‘How did it go with Roger? Did you manage to recognize him, after all these years?’

  The waiter brought our drinks over (that was another thing I liked about this restaurant – fantastic service) and then went to the other table to settle up the bill with the Chinese woman and her daughter.

  My father swirled his amaretto around in the glass before taking a hefty sip.

  ‘Whose idea was it that we should meet in the tea rooms at the Botanical Gardens?’ he asked. ‘Was that your idea, or Roger’s?’

  ‘That was my idea,’ I said. ‘Why, was there something wrong with it? Don’t tell me they were closed for renovation, or something.’

  ‘No. No, there was nothing wrong with the idea, really. Those gardens are beautiful. I’m just surprised you were the one to choose them, because I didn’t think you’d ever been to Melbourne.’

  ‘I haven’t,’ I admitted. ‘Actually, I’ve got a Facebook friend who lives in Melbourne, so I asked him to suggest somewhere. So I suppose it was actually his idea, not mine.’

  ‘Ah. All right then. Well, that’s fine.’

  I could sense that it wasn’t fine. That something about it wasn’t fine at all.

  ‘But … ?’ I prompted.

  ‘Well …’ My father took another sip, while he thought carefully about his words. ‘Well, it was a lovely idea, Max, but there’s just one problem.’

  ‘Yes?’

  He leaned forward, and said: ‘There are two different tea rooms at the Botanical Gardens in Melbourne.’

  I had been just about to take a sip of amaretto. I lowered the glass slowly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘There are two different tea rooms. At opposite ends of the gardens. One is up at the main entrance, opposite the big war memorial, the other one is down by the ornamental lake. I went to the one down by the lake.’

  ‘And Roger … ?’ I said, although I was barely able to speak.

  ‘Well, it seems he went to the other one.’

  The full absurdity, the full horror of it was dawning on me.

  ‘You missed each other?’

  My father nodded.

  ‘But … I gave him your mobile number. And I put his number into your phone. Didn’t he try to call you?’

  ‘Yes. Fourteen times. As I found out when I got home. Here.’

  He took his mobile out of his jacket pocket and showed me the little message on the screen which said: ‘14 missed calls’.

  ‘So why didn’t you answer?’

  ‘I didn’t have my phone with me.’

  ‘You didn’t have your phone with you? Dad – you … idiot. I asked you whether you had your phone. And you said that you did. I asked you that this morning.’

  ‘I thought I’d got it with me, but I hadn’t. I had this instead.’

  He took something out of his other jacket pocket, and laid it on the table between us. It was the remote control for his new flat-screen TV.

  ‘You’ve got to admit,’ he said, positioning it next to his mobile on the table, ‘they do look similar.’

  It was true. They did.

  ‘So … So what happened?’

  ‘Well, I got to the tea room at about ten to three, and I sat there for about half an hour or so, and then it occurred to me that Roger was late, so I checked my phone to see if he’d maybe called and I hadn’t heard it, and that was when I realized that I’d brought the remote control with me by mistake. Well, I didn’t panic, because at that point, as far as I knew, there was only one tea room at the Botanical Gardens, and I was sitting in it. So I waited there for another twenty minutes, and then a girl came over to clear my tea things away, and I said to her, “Incidentally, if you told someone that you were going to meet them at the tea room of the Botanical Gardens, is this where you would come?”, and she smiled at me and said, “Of course it is,” but then just as she was leaving she turned round and said, “Oh – unless you meant the other one, of course.”’

  We both swirled our amaretti around in our glasses and took another drink. Both glasses were almost empty.

  ‘So then I knew exactly what had happened. And I asked the girl how long it would take to walk from one place to the other and she said about ten or fifteen minutes (she could see that I wasn’t exactly in the first flush of youth), and I asked her whether there was more than one path and she said that there were several different paths. So I thought that surely Roger would realize what had happened as well, and it would be best to stay put for a little while. So I stayed there for another fifteen minutes and then I started to panic, because probably I could have asked the people in my tea room to phone the people in the other tea room and ask if they could see if there was anyone like Roger there, but anyway, I didn’t think of that, I just got up and left my table and walked round to the other tea room. Which actually took me more like twenty-five minutes, because I can’t walk so fast these days and I kept getting lost. In any case, when I got there – Roger had gone.’

  ‘Had he been there in the first place?’

  ‘Oh yes. The man serving behind the counter described him to me.’

  ‘But you haven’t seen Roger for forty years.’

  My father smiled. ‘I know. But it was Roger he was describing. Some things you don’t forget.’

  ‘So then what happened?’

  ‘So then I …’ My father was about to launch into a further narration, but seemed to have lost the will. ‘Oh, Max,’ he said. ‘Do you really need to know? What about another drink?’

  We ordered two more amaretti from the waiter: at which point I realized that the Chinese woman and her daughter were no longer sitting at their table.

  ‘Oh, no – they’ve gone,’ I said, my heart sinking. I’d been so distracted by my father’s story, I hadn’t even noticed they were leaving.

  ‘Who’ve gone?’

  ‘The woman and her daughter. The ones I wanted to speak to.’

  ‘Didn’t you manage to speak to them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I assumed you’d spoken to them already.’

  ‘I was just about to speak to them when you turned up. And now they’ve gone.’

  I was distraught. I stood up from the table to get a better look around me and spotted them about a hundred yards away, walking back towards Circular Quay, hand in hand. For a moment I actually contemplated running after them. I had come all the way from London to speak to this woman, after all. In fact I would probably have left the terrace there
and then and started sprinting off in pursuit if it hadn’t been for my father’s restraining hand on my arm.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘You can talk to them tomorrow.’

  ‘What do you mean, tomorrow?’ I said, angry with him now. ‘They’ve gone, do you hear me? They’ve gone and there’s absolutely no way of finding them again, unless I come back here in a month’s time.’

  ‘You can talk to them tomorrow,’ my father repeated. ‘I know where they’ll be.’

  Our second round of amaretti arrived. The waiter told us that these were on the house. We thanked him, and my father continued: ‘If you mean the woman and the little girl who were sitting in the corner of the terrace there –’ (I nodded, breathless with the fear that he was about to tease me with some sort of false hope) ‘– I overheard them talking when I arrived. The girl was asking if she could go swimming tomorrow, and her mother said that she could if the weather was nice, and the girl said she wanted to go to Fairlight Beach.’

  ‘Fairlight Beach? Where’s that?’

  ‘Fairlight’s a little suburb over towards Manly. There’s a sheltered beach there with a natural swimming pool. So that’s where they’ll be tomorrow, by the sound of it.’

  ‘If the weather’s nice.’

  ‘If the weather’s nice.’

  ‘What’s the weather forecast?’

  ‘Rain,’ said my father, sipping his amaretto. ‘But they usually get it wrong.’

  ‘Did they say what time they were going?’

  ‘No,’ said my father. ‘I suppose you’ll have to get there pretty early if you want to be sure of seeing them.’

  I contemplated this possibility. My flight back to London was leaving at about ten o’clock the following night, and I had no definite plans for the rest of the day. The thought of spending hours and hours sitting on some beach looking out for the Chinese woman and her daughter was slightly daunting, however. But what choice did I have? My need to speak to her had become all-consuming, now – even if it meant only exchanging a few words. The thought of going back to London without making some kind of connection with her was insupportable.

  ‘Well,’ I said, with a sigh, ‘I suppose that’s what I’ll have to do then.’