Jonathan Coe - Number 11

‘What does this mean?’ Rachel asked, pointing to the asterisk at the beginning of the last line.

‘Ah, that means that something had given him the idea for an article,’ said Laura, craning forward to take a closer look. ‘Yeah, he was always doing that. Always coming up with ideas for pieces. When we first got married I was convinced he was some kind of genius and one day he was going to turn all this obscure knowledge into some great book, some academic masterpiece. I thought that’s what was driving him. It never occurred to me that it might have been something as simple as … nostalgia.

‘Moving to this house — that was the thing that began to open my eyes to what he was really like. I was pregnant with Harry and we had this clichéd idea that if we were going to bring up a child it would be a good idea to relocate to the country. Somewhere not far from Oxford, obviously.

‘So we started looking, and then, early in 2006, we found this place. I remember the morning we drove out here to look at it. It was a pretty hard winter that year, and this was in the last week of January. The day before, there’d been a heavy snowfall, and since then there hadn’t been much in the way of a thaw. Well, of course, that was what sold us, in a way. You can imagine how pretty this village looked, can’t you, when it was covered in snow? And the cottage itself … well, it just looked beautiful. Enchanting. The owners brought us inside, and made coffee to warm us up, and showed us around the house. We were both … taken with it, certainly, although I wouldn’t say that either of us was exactly in raptures at that point. As you can see, it’s a bit on the boxy side, and there were quite a few problems to do with damp and so on — none of which have really been sorted out. I could tell that Roger was unconvinced, was maybe having second thoughts about the whole thing. But that was before he saw the garden …’

Laura smiled to herself when she spoke this word, and stared, reminiscent, into the dancing flames of the fire.

‘It was the last thing the owners of the house showed us. Roger and I went out to look at it together, and when we got out on to the terrace we held hands, as much for warmth as anything else, because neither of us was wearing gloves. And after a few seconds, I could feel him squeezing my hand. Squeezing it so tightly that it was actually hurting. I turned to look at him and I saw this look in his eye that I’d never seen before. It was … it was kind of faraway and intense at the same time. It rather scared me, to tell the truth. I could tell that some weird, powerful emotion had come over him. So I said, “Roger, what is it? What’s the matter?” And he turned to glance at me, but only for a second or two, because then he turned away again and looked across the lawn and he said something. Not to me — he wasn’t talking to me. He was talking to himself. And all he said, in little more than a whisper, was: “ The Crystal Garden …”

‘It was the first time I’d ever heard him use that phrase. It certainly wouldn’t be the last.’

She fell silent, until Rachel felt obliged to prompt her once more: ‘So what did he mean by it?’

‘I wasn’t sure at first. It was only afterwards that he explained. You saw the fountain in the centre of the lawn? It’s not working at the moment, of course. The pump stopped working a couple of years ago and now it’s one of many things that I need to get around to fixing. But it was working back then, and it formed a proper centrepiece to the garden. That was the first thing your eyes were drawn towards. And that day, I remember, it looked particularly stunning. The water had frozen, you see — that’s how cold it was. So you had this cascade, this waterfall of ice, tumbling over the different levels of the fountain. It looked like some sort of chandelier in the ballroom of a fairytale castle. There were icicles hanging from all the trees, the stream itself was frozen, and the lawn was a shimmering blanket of pure white. It did look kind of … eldritch , do you know that word? It means uncanny. Other-worldly. Rather like it was made of crystal. I thought that’s what Roger had meant, at first. But it turned out there was more to it than that.

‘We stayed out in the garden for about ten minutes but he hardly spoke in that time. He was wandering around in a kind of trance, walking over to different corners of the garden and then turning around to view everything from different angles. He stood beside the fountain and touched the frozen water. I can still see him doing this, such a sombre figure in his long black overcoat, his fingers stroking the cascade of icicles gently, then flicking them with his fingernails so that they sounded little notes like some far-off, tinkling musical instrument. His eyes were misted over. The owners of the house were trying to talk to us about water drainage and the cost of hiring a local gardener but Roger wasn’t listening to a word. He didn’t reply to a single thing they told him, until right at the very end of the tour, when he suddenly turned to them and said: “Of course, we’ll buy it.”

‘I was amazed. He hadn’t even asked my opinion. And he hadn’t said “We’ll be making an offer”; he’d said, “We’ll buy it.” Just like that. In the car on the way back to Oxford, I was too angry to talk to him properly. Anyway, he was behaving especially strangely; he was on some weird cloud nine of his own. He never once mentioned the garden. He kept talking about the house, rhapsodizing about it as though we could never have imagined anything so perfect. Finally I cut him off in mid-flow and told him that he should never, ever do anything like that again. He didn’t even know what I was talking about. When I pointed out to him that, without consulting me, he’d assured these people we were going to buy their house off them, he didn’t even seem to be aware that he’d done it. And the strange thing is, I believed him. It was as if he’d experienced some sort of fugue state.

‘As soon as we got back to our flat, he disappeared into the study and went online. I didn’t see much of him after that, until later that evening, when he came and found me on the sofa, eating dinner. I’d ordered pizza but he hadn’t heard me when I told him it had arrived. He was carrying his laptop with him and he sat down next to me and started talking.

‘“OK,” he said. “So I have to tell you what happened to me today in that garden.” I told him that was probably a good idea, and he started to explain: “Something came back to me,” he said. “Something I thought I might have imagined. From a long time ago.” He was struggling, rather, to find the words. “When I was just a kid, probably aged about five or six, I saw this film. At least, until today I wasn’t really sure whether I’d seen it or not. I didn’t know whether it was something I’d invented, or dreamed, or misremembered, or whatever. All I know is that the memory of it — even if it was a false memory — was so precious that I’d barely even allowed myself to think about it in all that time.” He looked at me so earnestly that I almost wanted to laugh. Which wouldn’t have been a pretty sight, since I had a mouth full of pizza at the time. “I didn’t know anything about it, except that it was a short film, as far as I could recall. It must have been shown mid-afternoon, in the school holidays, as some sort of filler between programmes, and it was called The Crystal Garden . At least, I was pretty sure that must have been the title. It’s so hard to distinguish what belongs to memory and what belongs to real life. I can’t remember anything about the story. I can only remember … an atmosphere, a feeling. A very faded print, the soundtrack filled with pops and scratches. A young boy as the hero: in one scene — the only scene I can call to mind, in any detail — he wanders into this garden, and I can remember the music on the soundtrack — there was a sort of tinkling background, some sort of tuned percussion, and over the top of that, a tune — a beautiful tune, lyrical and yearning — with a soprano singing the melody — there were no words — but again, the whole thing was incredibly scratchy, almost distorted — the recording must have deteriorated so badly … And this garden … The whole thing was made of crystal, was made of glass … It was a walled garden, he had to pass through a sort of passageway, a sort of tunnel in the wall to get to it, and when he came out into the garden … Yes, everything glittered, everything was made of crystal, all the flowers, the roses, the little topiary hedges, there were paths criss-crossing each other between the flower beds and they led towards this … lake, was it? this frozen pond? … a sheet of crystal, anyway, and this fountain at the centre of it, shimmering, glittering, just like the fountain in the garden today. The resemblance was incredible.” He paused for breath. I think this was the longest speech he’d ever made in the whole time I’d known him. His voice was quiet, but it was shaking as well. I’d never known him speak about anything with such passion. “I’m sure this is real,” he resumed after a while. “I’m sure I’m not imagining this. I did see that film. I know I did. I just wish I could remember more about it. It’s crazy, I can’t remember anything about the story. Nothing at all. Like I said, the whole thing is just … just an atmosphere , and the strange thing is, that the atmosphere of the film sort of … bleeds in to the atmosphere in the room when I was watching it. It was the school holidays — it must have been the school holidays — or perhaps I was off sick, something like that — and Mum wasn’t sitting next to me on the sofa or anything but she was inside the house with me, in the next room, I think, in the kitchen, getting dinner ready for when Dad came home. And it was winter, definitely winter, because there were ice crystals on the window of the living room and icicles hanging down above the window, and snow on the ground outside, or at least a frost — these details blend in, you see, they blend in with the crystal of the crystal garden; and our gas fire was on, our little old-fashioned gas fire, and it was hissing, as it always did, and giving out little pops and scratches, and again, that blends in, somehow, with the poor quality of the film soundtrack, so that it becomes even more hard to distinguish between what I’ve remembered and what I’ve imagined.”