A Small Revolution in Germany

by Philip Hensher

  I’ll come back to the second reason why James Frinton kept returning to Tracy – kept badgering her, as she came to think. It is not a very honourable reason.

  James Frinton’s existence at this time. It had seemed perfectly unimportant to him where he lived. He had taken no more than a morning to look at rooms in flats and decide to take one. ‘Where on earth did you find it?’ people asked. The answer was that he had found it in the classified adverts in Time Out magazine, like someone who had moved to London without knowing anyone at all. The flat was owned by a middle-aged set designer, whose boyfriend, a painter, had died of AIDS a year earlier. (This was not specified in the advert.) James contributed to the household budget, sleeping in a spare room that was still lined with the painter’s grey-to-brown abstracts. No one could understand why he hadn’t taken a flat with friends, like Tracy or anyone else. But returning to a domestic setting of tears, muddle and Eartha Kitt spectaculars (I am guessing) was inexplicable. Perhaps, like a novelist, James Frinton was gathering material. At the Globe, James Frinton quite quickly became the graduate trainee in the green tweed suit – the one who lives with the old queen – no, but last night in the pub he was saying – fending his landlord off – preserving his honour – barricading the bathroom door with a loofah – you’d have to ask him, it’s a good one. None of it was true – the set designer was aloof, chaotic, incapable of action. But the stories were good. In one year the general agreement would be that something must be done about James, and the top floor of a Notting Hill villa would be his.

  That all lay in the future.

  Some friends of Tracy who lived in Parson’s Green in a beaten-up old terrace were having a party, the first Saturday of January. There was some kind of funeral theme. The invitations were black-bordered. The hosts regretted to announce the long-expected passing of their old friend and constant companion, Fun. Guests were requested to attend in deep mourning. Tracy scored a personal victory by turning up in a white sari, a vivid presence in the little rooms among everyone else in black. She had even managed to part her hair down the middle, and score the parting with cochineal. At one point she was on the little terrace behind the house. It was really too cold to stand outside in January in a sari, but the house was simply too full. Why was it the end of fun? Who knew? The end of Oxford, of private dining societies, of fancy dress? This year, in London, they had declared themselves both wage slaves and hopelessly broke. They had even asked people to bring bottles. The door opened. It was James Frinton, in an outfit that had survived the evening’s demands, a Victorian mourner’s coat and stock, and even a cane. She had had no idea he would come.

  ‘What are you got up like that for?’ James Frinton said.

  ‘It’s mourning in India,’ Tracy said. ‘Widows in India don’t wear black. They wear white. It’s very, very sad, if you think about it. I’ve just been in India. We went to India for six weeks. It was full of widows. Most of the widows you never see. This is in India I’m talking about.’

  ‘Have you just been to India?’ James Frinton said, smiling. ‘I thought that was last year.’

  ‘I went with Blaise,’ Tracy said. ‘Just now, last year. He’s always wanted to. So we went. He said we were going to take ourselves off to an ashram. There is this very, very holy place in the hills that we were going to. It’s so holy. It’s not the Himalayas, it’s the other place. The Ghats it’s called. And it’s so holy that they all smoke this very holy opium, very holy, very pure.’

  ‘I hadn’t heard that bit,’ James Frinton said. ‘Did you get to see the Taj Mahal, Tracy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘So we went to the ashram with our suitcases and everyone else had backpacks ‒ it was so awful I could have died. And then we sat cross-legged and listened to people talking and sat some more and looked into the trees, and after thirty-six hours Blaise asked an Australian in the queue for the vegetarian dhal when the holy opium came out. And it turned out they didn’t have holy opium. Only it was all right because it turned out that a lot of people came to this place hoping to experience this holy opium. So when on the third day we walked down into the town nearby there was somebody who straight away could sell us some holy opium.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ James Frinton said. ‘Would you like to know something? I missed you terribly when you were in India.’

  Tracy looked at James Frinton, focusing. He had never said anything like that before to her.

  ‘But that was a long time ago now,’ Tracy said.

  ‘I wish you’d written me some letters,’ James Frinton said. ‘Letters from India. That would have been so interesting, to read about things while they were going on. Are you having a good time?’

  ‘Now, you mean? Good-ish. I’m cold, but it’s too crowded in there. And I really, really don’t want any more to drink.’

  ‘Do you want to go home? I’ll walk you home. I wasn’t going to stay long.’

  ‘Blaise was going to come but I don’t know that he did in the end. We had an awful row on Tuesday and he left. I think he’s at his mother’s.’

  ‘I was thinking about you,’ James said. ‘You were the person I really wanted to share things with, you know. I mean, to tell things to. Every time I see you I want to be on my own with you. Can we go back to your flat? I think I’d really like that.’

  ‘We could go back to yours,’ Tracy said, not meaning it.

  ‘No,’ James said. ‘Yours is best.’

  There was an unusual urgency about James Frinton’s tone. She tried to dissect it. We know, on the whole, when we’re talking to someone who wants the same thing that we want. I think about the moment, so long ago, when I found that my face was in exactly the same place as the face of a twenty-two-year-old Chilean. We had been standing, too, in a narrow outside space with a party going on inside. Tracy might have realized, at this moment, that her head was a foot below that of the man she was talking to. What he had said ought to coincide with what she wanted. In many ways it did. She wanted to go back to her flat, too, to shut the double door and have marvellous sex with James Frinton one more time. But what James Frinton had said did not coincide with what she wanted. He seemed to have forgotten that she had another flatmate called Ludo, a good friend of her boyfriend. There was no possibility that she could take James Frinton home with her. She felt terribly alone, and badgered. He would badger her until he got what he needed. At least he would be close to her all that time.

  ‘Come round tomorrow,’ Tracy said. ‘I love it when we have tea and chat. Chat about old times. Get out all those lovely old letters you used to write to me. They were such fun. I’d love it if you came round.’

  James Frinton smiled the gauche, charming smile of the good loser. She watched him go back into the party. She lit another cigarette. In five minutes a girl she knew came out.

  ‘Aren’t you simply freezing?’ she said. ‘So brilliant of you. Mourning in Asia. White. Did you see, Jimmie Frinton came. I love him. He’s such fun. I honestly think people have such a strange idea of him. If they got to know him—’

  ‘I know him,’ Tracy said.

  She got up quite early the next morning. There was still no sign of Blaise. Ludo hadn’t come home, either. She knew that James Frinton would be round as early as he dared. She estimated what he would estimate her time of getting up to be. She didn’t think he’d be round before eleven, but not much after that, either. She tidied the flat in a brilliant frenzy, picking up her clothes from the floor and putting them into the laundry bag. Two rubbish bags were filled. She walked to the flower shop and bought some yellow chrysanthemums; to the French patisserie and bought two éclairs, one chocolate, one coffee. (The joy of discovering at Oxford that an éclair could be coffee-flavoured! She would never go back north to the town she had grown up in, as long as she lived.) She went to the bedroom. She took the shoebox out from the bottom of the wardrobe. As a final tou
ch, she thought she would place a pile of James Frinton’s old letters to her on the little table. He would appreciate that.

  The flat was on the second floor. It looked out onto Earl’s Court Square. She saw him coming down the street. He was wearing one of his famous green tweed suits and, astonishingly, a trilby – she realized that it was, unlikely as it seemed, his seduction outfit. It was exactly five minutes to eleven, as Tracy had exactly foreseen. His walk was determined. He knew what he was coming for. Tracy went into the kitchen. She quickly made two cups of coffee. She brought them through and set them on the table. She took the opportunity to put herself down at the desk, open a file of papers she had brought home from work, spread a few sheets of financial summary about. There was no reason for James Frinton to know she was in trouble at work, had been given a warning that her probation period might not have a successful outcome if she didn’t knuckle down. This morning, for James Frinton’s sake, she would pretend to be hard at work.

  ‘Hello, my darling,’ Tracy said into the entryphone. ‘Just push hard on the door.’

  ‘It’s me,’ James Frinton said, over the intercom. ‘Before you say something you regret.’

  ‘I knew it was you,’ Tracy said, opening the door as he hurtled up the stairs. ‘I saw you coming, actually. Strangely enough, I don’t have a hangover this morning. Did you stay long?’

  ‘No,’ James Frinton said, flinging himself down on the sofa. ‘I might even have left before you did. What’s up? Is that for us? That lovely-looking pink box?’

  ‘It’s got éclairs in it,’ Tracy said. ‘I was saving them for Blaise, but do you know what? I think I’d rather eat one now, with you. Would you like a cup of coffee? Have that one. I only just made it.’

  ‘What on earth is that?’ James Frinton said, poking at the pile of his old letters. ‘God, my handwriting was so awful then. It’s awful now but in a completely different way awful. Do you like your handwriting? This is like the writing of a nine-year-old.’

  ‘Put them down, darling,’ Tracy said. ‘They’re only there because when I got back last night I had a sudden urge to read them again. What fun they are.’

  ‘Happy days,’ James Frinton said. ‘If you wouldn’t mind, some time I’d really like to—’

  ‘All that smashing windows and posting poo through letterboxes and painting Trotskyite nonsense on walls. And smashing up other people’s meetings! I can hardly believe we used to do any of that.’

  ‘It’s an oddity, isn’t it?’

  ‘And no one would believe it now. It’s so extraordinary that we never got caught, either. The truth of the matter is – I know it’s amazing – but the only real solid evidence that any of that ever happened is really here. I mean in your old letters. I don’t know why, but it was obviously preying on your mind, up there in Leeds. All the window-smashing and so on. Ah, well. Happy days.’

  ‘Happy days,’ James Frinton said. He eyed her, neutrally.

  The reason she had made him a cup of coffee before he arrived must have become apparent. She was not going to go into the kitchen, and leave James Frinton alone in the room with his old letters. If she gave them to him, or let him take them, she would never lay eyes on him again. It was the one thing that would continue to draw him to her, she understood. He smiled back. He changed the subject. They began to talk about his plans for his career ‒ by which I mean, if you think about it, that he did not change the subject at all.

  We had eaten almost nothing all day. Our expense of energy had been tremendous. The girl Sybille had invited us to have our supper with them, but had not mentioned the time. It is fair to say that both Joaquin and I hoped that it would not be too late. Pete Frinton had the bohemian air that you might expect from his history. His girlfriend Sybille had the upholstered, blonde, comfort-accustomed appearance of someone who did not wait for dinner. Between the sort of person who had grown up scavenging and one who had eaten meat promptly at six all her childhood, we preferred the sensible German bourgeoise.

  We showered and changed into the shirts from yesterday, laundered by Sybille. We rinsed our by now unspeakable socks. We went downstairs barefoot. There was a good smell of cooking, and a cosy sound of television laughter from somewhere in the back.

  ‘Hello?’ I called.

  ‘Here,’ Sybille shouted. ‘Come through.’

  There seemed no change in atmosphere between the public parts of the hotel – the wood-panelled bar and restaurant, the painfully orange cheerfulness of the rooms – and the private. We went past a chaotic office, a bathroom and a bedroom that, unused, looked much like the room we had been sleeping in. We found Sybille in an L-shaped sitting room, watching the television with absorption. An open box of chocolates lay on the sofa beside her.

  ‘I’m watching my programme,’ she said. ‘He’s cooking tonight.’

  There was a strong echo of the past in Sybille’s absorption. I thought of Pete Frinton’s mother, in the shabby private quarters of a public business, soaking up an ancient diva. Sybille, too, was watching a musical programme with total attention. We sat down and looked. It was a religious programme. A choir of women was singing in a self-satisfied, unprofessional way about the love of Christ. They were in a church in the south of Germany. The camera kept cutting to the exterior, among alps and meadows. But there was something different about Sybille’s attention. She was both detached and intensely aware. She was not being swept away by this, but following the detail of the ladies’ outfits and dental work with considerable fascination. She pushed the box of chocolates towards me and Joaquin without a word. We took one each. In a moment the song came to an end, with a thundering organ, and the credits of the programme began to roll.

  ‘There you are,’ Sybille said, with a satisfied sigh. ‘He’s cooking his speciality ‒ it’s chicken in an Indian way. He likes it and I think it makes a change. He’ll be happy to be cooking for someone else. He thinks I don’t appreciate it properly.’

  ‘We like a curry,’ I said.

  ‘So are you going out together,’ Sybille said. ‘Like boyfriend and boyfriend?’

  ‘Something like that,’ I said.

  ‘Can you ask her now how long the dinner is going to be because you know I think I am going to die,’ Joaquin said. I patted his knee.

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ Sybille said comfortably. ‘But then I thought if you were like that you would have nicer clothes to wear.’

  Pete Frinton came through. I was touched to see that he had changed, perhaps in our honour. He was wearing a bow-tie with his cook’s apron. He was carrying a tray with three drinks on it and a very welcome bowl of nuts.

  ‘Gin-tonic all right?’ he said. ‘I’ll only be five, ten minutes. Welcome to our humble abode. I don’t know the last time we had anyone to entertain. It’s a bit of a treat for us.’

  ‘We’ll be sorry to get on the bus tomorrow,’ I said. ‘We had a good time in the end. What have you done with Nala?’

  ‘Oh, he’s down there in his basket,’ Pete Frinton said. ‘You’ve worn him out today. Listen. I found something that’ll interest you. Though I expect you saw it at the time. It was from some long piece about my brother the Observer printed, about his whole story. It was about a year ago. My mum sometimes sends me things like that.’

  He took a copy of a colour magazine from his apron pocket and handed it to me. The cover was completely occupied by his brother’s face and the two words ‘HISTORY CALLS’.

  ‘I didn’t see it,’ I said. We’re not great readers of the mainstream media, especially Sunday newspapers.

  ‘It’s a silly piece,’ Pete Frinton said. ‘But it’s got some photographs with it you’ll like.’

  He disappeared, almost shyly. I turned the pages, Joaquin looking over my shoulder. Quite soon I came to the photograph that Pete Frinton must have meant. I had never seen it before. It must have been taken in the summer of 1983. I rem
embered it. We had all gone out for a day in the country – a bit of a hike over the hills. We were still at school. In the photograph, we were posing on top of a hill, next to some monolith. Kate had come, too. Mohammed must have been taking the photograph. It was not a very good photograph, but you could see all our faces. I would have predicted that we would look terribly young. But in fact we looked utterly middle-aged. It was the hairstyles we had, which our generation has carried into their forties and fifties, and which now seem suitable only to the ageing. The paper had identified most of us. For the sub-editors, this was clearly a remarkable document in its own way. The legend underneath read ‘L to R: Kate Rothenberg (now a prize-winning poet), Eric Milne (now Lord Milne, QC), Percy Ogden (author and journalist), Tracy (Alexandra) Cartwright, unknown, James Frinton (now Home Secretary)’.

  Joaquin craned over my shoulder. ‘You are really in the luck,’ he said. ‘You are the guy nobody knows.’ Of course it was me that had defeated the Observer journalists. I had sunk into oblivion, and merited the label ‘unknown’. Joaquin, of course, was right. I wouldn’t have wanted this ancient connection known about. But the photograph’s label gave me a small stab. As I said, I have lived a quiet life. The fact that every other person I had known had gone on to something made me feel for a moment that my quiet life has been not just overlooked but wasted. Even Tracy, brackets, Alexandra. What she had gone on to was three days of gleeful coverage in the tabloids between her death and her funeral. Fame of some kind. Joaquin must have understood this. He took my hand; he squeezed it; he left his hand where it was.

  ‘Come through, gentlemen,’ Pete Frinton said.

  We were eating in the large kitchen. The windows and door were open to the warm summer night. They gave onto a chaos of trees and high grass and, not far away, the little river that ran through the village. The table was set with six dishes: a chicken curry, three vegetable dishes, a pile of poppadoms and a tureen of rice.