Jonathan Coe - The Dwarves of Death

Three long hours later, we were outside, out in the middle of a wet, cold and noisy London night. Taxis and buses dawdled past, their tyres splashing and hissing, their headlamps reflecting on the surface of the road.

I thought, what the hell, and slid my arm beneath Madeline’s. As usual, she offered neither resistance nor encouragement. She merely let it stay there, and I didn’t have the nerve to follow it up by taking her hand. We had been going out for nearly six months.

‘Well …’ I said at last, as we began strolling, for no particular reason, towards Piccadilly Circus.

‘Did you enjoy that?’ she asked.

‘Did you?’

‘Yes. I really enjoyed it. I thought it was wonderful.’

I squeezed her arm.

‘You’ve got a good sense of humour,’ I said.

‘How do you mean?’

‘It’s one of the things I like about you. Your sense of humour. I mean, we can laugh together. You say something ironic, and I know exactly what you mean.’

‘I wasn’t being ironic. I really did enjoy it.’

‘There you go again. Double irony: I love it. You know, it’s a great thing when two people share a sense of humour, it really… shows something about them.’

‘William, I’m not being ironic. I enjoyed myself tonight. It was a good show. You understand?’

We had stopped walking. We had pulled apart and were facing one another.

‘Are you serious? You liked it?’

‘Yes, didn’t you? What was wrong with it?’

We started walking again. Apart, this time.

‘The music was facile and unmemorable. It was harmonically primitive and melodically derivative. The plot relied on cheap emotional effects and crude pathos. The staging was showy, manipulative and deeply reactionary.’

‘You mean you didn’t enjoy it?’

For a second I was looking straight into her sad grey eyes. But I still shook my head.

‘No.’ We walked on in silence. ‘I mean, what did you like about it?’

‘I don’t know. Why do you always have to analyse things? It was… it was good.’

‘Terrific. I see. Tell me, what did you do about that invitation to appear on Critics’ Forum? Did you ever answer that?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t been invited anywhere.’

‘Can’t you tell when I’m being ironic?’

‘No.’

We had nearly arrived at Piccadilly Circus. We stopped outside Pizzaland. I could see that I had upset her, but couldn’t find it in me to do anything about it.

‘What do you want to do now?’ I asked.

‘I don’t mind.’

‘Do you want to go for a drink?’

‘I don’t mind.’

‘Come on.’ I took her arm again and began leading her towards Soho. ‘You know, it would be nice if you expressed an opinion sometimes. It would make life easier. Instead of leaving all the decisions to me.’

‘I just expressed an opinion, and you made fun of me. Where are we going, anyway?’

‘I thought we’d go to Samson’s. Is that OK?’

‘Fine. You want to listen to your friend again, do you?’

‘He might be there tonight, I don’t know.’ In fact Tony had phoned me only the day before. I knew full well he was going to be playing there that evening. ‘Do you have to call him “my friend”? You know his name, don’t you?’

I was so much in love with Madeline that sometimes, at work, I would begin to shiver just thinking about her: I would shake with panic and pleasure, and end up dropping piles of records and stacks of tapes all over the place. For this reason it didn’t use to matter to me that we never got on particularly well. Bickering with Madeline was more desirable to me than making love to any other woman in the world. The idea of us being happy together — lying in the same bed, say, silent and half-asleep — seemed so beautiful that I couldn’t even begin to visualize it. In my heart I was sure it would never happen, and meanwhile to exchange grumpy remarks with her on a cold winter’s evening in the nastier end of Soho seemed privilege enough. I doubt if she felt the same way; but then how exactly did she feel?

She always was an enigma to me, and I’m not going to make out some perverse theory that this was part of the attraction. It used to piss me off no end. All the time I knew Madeline, there was always the sense that she didn’t fit — with me, with London, with the rest of the world. I noticed it the first time I saw her: she looked so out of place, in that gloomy bar where I was playing the piano. I’d been in London for nearly a year, and I’d thought that this might turn out to be my first break. A place in some side street just off the Fulham Road that had a clapped-out baby grand and called itself a ‘jazz club’: I saw an advert they had placed in The Stage and they offered me twenty pounds cash and three non-alcoholic cocktails of my choice to play there on a Wednesday night. I turned up at six, scared out of my mind, knowing that I had to play for five hours with a repertoire of six standards and a few pieces of my own — about fifty minutes’ worth of material. I needn’t have worried, because there was only one customer all evening. She came in at eight and stayed till the end. It was Madeline.

I couldn’t believe that a woman so well dressed and so pretty could be sitting on her own in a place like that all night. Maybe if there had been other customers they would have tried to chat her up. In fact I’m sure they would. She was always getting chatted up. That night there was only me, and even I tried to chat her up, and I’d never done anything like that in my life before. But when you’ve been playing your own music for nearly an hour to an audience of one, and they’ve been clapping at the end of every number and smiling at you and even once saying, ‘I liked that one’, then you feel entitled. It would have seemed rude not to. So when the time came to take another break I got my drink from the bar and went over to her table, and said: ‘Do you mind if I join you?’

‘No. Please do.’

‘Can I buy you something?’

‘No thanks, I’m all right for the moment.’

She was drinking dry white wine. I sat down on a stool opposite her, not wanting to appear too forward.

‘Is it always this quiet in here?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. I’ve never been here before.’

‘It’s a bit tacky, isn’t it? For the area, I mean.’

‘It’s only just opened. It’ll probably take a while to get off the ground.’

She was so lovely. She had short blonde hair and a grey fitted jacket, a woollen skirt that came just above the knee and black silk stockings — nothing provocative, you understand, just tasteful. She had little gold studded earrings and lipstick which probably only seemed such a dark red because her complexion was so pale. I noticed right away that her mouth could go in an instant from the roundest and happiest of smiles to this more habitual, downward, melancholy look. Her voice was high and musical and her pronunciation — like everything else about her — showed that she was from some high-powered background. Her hands were small and white, and she didn’t paint her fingernails.

‘I like the way you play the piano,’ she said. ‘Are you going to play here every week?’

‘I don’t know. It depends.’ (I never did play there again, as it turned out.) ‘Are you… are you waiting for someone? Or are you just here on your own?’

‘I often go to places on my own,’ she said, but added: ‘Actually I was supposed to be seeing someone tonight, we were supposed to be going out for a meal. But then he phoned up and cancelled, and I’d already got myself ready, so I didn’t feel like staying in. I thought I’d come and see what this place is like.’