Джонатан Коу - Middle England

Doug was becoming animated. Benjamin knew how much he liked to talk like this, how even now, after twenty-five years as a journalist, nothing excited him as much as the cut-and-thrust of British politics. He didn’t understand his friend’s enthusiasm, but he knew how to play along with it.

‘But I thought it was the Tories everyone hated,’ he said, dutifully, ‘because of the expenses scandal. Claiming for mortgages on their second home, and all that stuff …’

‘People blame both parties for that. And that’s the worst of it. Everyone’s become so cynical . “Oh, they’re all as bad as each other …” That’s why it was always going to be close – until today.’

‘You think it’ll make that much difference? It was just a mistake. An unguarded moment.’

‘That’s all it takes, these days. That’s how volatile things have become.’

‘Then surely this is a good time for someone like you. Lots to write about.’

‘Yes, but I’m … out of touch with all that, you see? That resentment, that sense of hardship. I don’t feel it. I’m just a spectator. I live in this bloody … cocoon. I live in a house in Chelsea worth millions. My wife’s family own half of the Home Counties. I don’t know what I’m talking about. And it shows up in my writing. Of course it does.’

‘How are things with you and Francesca, anyway?’ said Benjamin, who used to envy Doug his rich and beautiful wife but no longer envied anybody anything.

‘Pretty rubbish, as a matter of fact,’ said Doug, staring moodily into space. ‘We’re in separate bedrooms these days. Good job we’ve got so many of them.’

‘What do the kids think about that? Have they said anything?’

‘Hard to tell what Ranulph thinks. He’s too busy obsessing over Minecraft ever to talk to his dad. As for Corrie …’

Benjamin had noticed, for some time, that Doug never referred to his daughter by her full name, Coriander. He hated the name (which had been his wife’s choice) even more than its unfortunate twelve-year-old bearer did. And she herself never, ever answered to anything other than ‘Corrie’. Use of her full name would usually be met with glassy-eyed silence, as if some invisible stranger were being addressed.

‘Well,’ Doug continued, ‘there might be some hope there still. I’ve got a feeling she’s starting to hate me and Fran and everything we stand for, which would be excellent. I do my best to encourage it.’ Helping himself to a refill of whisky, he added: ‘I took her to the old Longbridge factory a couple of weeks ago. Told her about her grandad and what he used to do there. Tried to explain what a shop steward was. Pretty tough, trying to get a private-school girl from Chelsea to understand 1970s union politics, I must say. And, Christ, there isn’t much of the old place left.’

‘I know,’ said Benjamin. ‘Dad and I go and take a look occasionally.’

The thought that, many years ago, their fathers used to be on opposite sides of Britain’s great industrial divide made them both smile, and set off parallel trains of reminiscence which ended, in Doug’s case, with the question: ‘What about you? You’re looking well, I must say. Living inside a John Constable painting obviously suits you.’

‘Well, we’ll see about that. It’s early days yet.’

‘But the whole Cicely thing … you’re really OK with that?’

‘Of course I am. More than OK.’ He leaned forward. ‘Doug, for more than thirty years I’ve been stuck in a romantic obsession. And now it’s gone. I’m free. Can you imagine how good that feels?’

‘Sure, but what are you going to do with this freedom? You can’t just sit here all day making pasta sauce and writing poems about cows.’

‘I don’t know … Dad’s going to need a lot of looking after. I suppose I’ll be doing a fair bit of that.’

‘You’ll soon get bored of that drive to Rednal and back.’

‘Well … maybe he could move in here.’

‘Would you really want that?’ Doug asked, and when Benjamin didn’t answer, and he noticed that his whisky glass was empty again, he rose effortfully to his feet and said: ‘I think I’m going to turn in. Early start tomorrow if I’m going to be back in London by nine.’

‘OK, Doug. You know your way, don’t you? I think I’ll stay here for a bit. Let it all … sink in, you know.’

‘I know. It’s rough when one of your parents dies. Actually it doesn’t get much rougher than that.’ He put a hand on Benjamin’s shoulder and said, with feeling: ‘Goodnight, mate. You did well today.’

‘Thanks,’ said Benjamin. He clasped Doug’s hand briefly, although he couldn’t bring himself to add ‘mate’. He never could.

Alone in the sitting room, he poured himself another drink and went to sit on the broad wooden sill that ran around the bay of the window. He opened the window a little further and let the cool air flow over him. The wheel of the mill had been out of use for many decades now and the river, undiverted, unharnessed, flowed past steadily, without agitation or fuss, in a perpetual rippling stream of good humour. The moon was up and Benjamin could see bats darting to and fro across the backdrop of the luminous grey sky. Suddenly a powerful sadness stole over him. The reflections he had been trying to ward off all day – on the reality of his mother’s death, the agony of her last few weeks – could no longer be kept at bay.

A piece of music came back to him and he knew that he had to listen to it. A song. He crossed over to the shelf where his iPod rested in its speaker dock, took out the device and started to scroll through the list of artists. It seemed the last one he had been listening to was XTC. He scrolled back past Wilson Pickett, Vaughan Williams, Van der Graaf Generator, Stravinsky, Steve Swallow, Steely Dan, Stackridge and Soft Machine before reaching the name he was looking for: Shirley Collins, the Sussex folk singer whose records he had started collecting in the 1980s. He loved all of her music but there was one song in particular which, during the last few weeks, had come to take on a special significance. Benjamin selected the song, pressed Play, and just as he reached the bay window again to sit down and gaze out at the moonlit river, Collins’s strong, austere, unaccompanied voice, heavy with reverb, streamed out of the speaker and filled the room with one of the most eerie and melancholy English folk tunes ever written.

Adieu to old England, adieu

And adieu to some hundreds of pounds

If the world had been ended when I had been young

My sorrows I’d never have known

Benjamin closed his eyes and took another sip from his glass. What a day it had been, for memories, for reunions, for difficult conversations. His ex-wife Emily had been at the funeral, with her two young children and her husband Andrew. From Japan there had been his brother Paul, with whom he was no longer on speaking terms: he couldn’t even bring himself to make eye contact with him, either during his eulogy or at the reception afterwards. There had been uncles and aunts, forgotten friends and distant cousins. There had been Philip Chase, most loyal of his friends from King William’s School, and there had been Doug’s unexpected appearance, and there had even been an e-card from Cicely in Australia, which was much more than he’d been expecting, from her. And above all there had been Lois to stand beside him, Lois whose loyalty to her brother was absolute, whose eyes dimmed with sadness whenever she thought no one was watching her: Lois whose twenty-eight-year marriage remained a mystery to him and whose husband, who stayed dotingly close to her all day, was lucky to be rewarded with so much as the occasional glance in his direction …