Джонатан Коу - Middle England

‘We’ll see,’ said Sophie.

*

‘What will you do now?’ Sophie had asked, as she left the restaurant with Lukas and Grete and stepped out into the sunshine.

‘Now?’ Lukas looked at his watch. ‘I suppose a bit more shopping, and then back –’

‘I didn’t mean this afternoon,’ said Sophie. ‘I meant … Will you be staying in the village?’

‘Actually,’ said Grete, ‘we are taking Mrs Coleman’s advice.’

‘No! You can’t leave, because of this.’

‘It’s not because of this,’ said Lukas. ‘We just feel …’

‘It’s not that we’ve fallen out of love with England …’ said Grete.

‘Just that … We feel there are other countries now where life might be easier for us.’

‘What other countries?’

‘We’re not sure. We have plenty of time to decide. We gave notice on our house but we don’t have to leave until the end of August.’

Sophie looked at them standing hand in hand beside the canal, and knew that she was looking at two people who had made up their minds.

‘That’s terribly sad,’ she said.

‘Not really,’ said Lukas. ‘It’s always good to move on.’

‘And what about you?’ Grete asked.

They had both urged her, in the strongest possible terms, to call Ian as soon as possible. But Sophie had decided to take an even more direct course of action. And so, after they had said goodbye outside the entrance to the Birmingham Rep, and she had watched their dwindling figures as they walked past the Hall of Memory in the direction of Paradise Place, she turned her steps towards the back of the theatre, and made her way slowly, but with no flagging of resolve, towards the apartment building where she and Ian had shared their years of married life. She remembered, of course, the four-digit code for the communal entrance. She still had a key to the flat, as well: but she did not use it, on this occasion. Instead she rang the doorbell, and when Ian came to answer it, with the quizzical, slightly aggrieved look of someone who has just been interrupted watching a football match on TV, she merely said: ‘Hello, stranger.’

43.

May 2018

Coriander had taken her finals and was waiting for the results. Perhaps in an effort to kill time – or even, just possibly, to build bridges with her father – she had finally consented to spend a day or two with Doug and Gail at the house in Earlsdon. It was a stressful but mainly unremarkable visit, characterized by strenuous politeness on all sides. When it was over, on the evening of 17 May 2018, she walked with Doug to Coventry station: she was heading back to London, he was en route to Birmingham to attend (with the mixed feelings that always accompany such occasions) a school reunion. It was a twenty-minute walk in the mellow sunshine of an early-summer evening, and Coriander set a brisk pace.

‘Can’t you slow down a bit?’ said Doug, as she strode onwards, two or three yards ahead of him. ‘Anyone would think you were ashamed to be seen walking next to me.’

‘I am.’

‘Charming.’

‘What do you expect?’ she said. ‘It’s the suit. The penguin suit. You look like a paid-up member of the ruling class. It’s embarrassing.’

‘It’s not my fault there’s a dress code.’

‘Oh, please. In days gone by you would just have said fuck ’em and put on a suit and tie. You’ve become such a cop-out in your old age.’

Doug hurried to catch up with her. ‘My middle age, thank you very much. I’m not old.’

‘Whatever.’

He put his arm through hers and was relieved that, for a minute or two at least, she did not try to disentangle herself.

‘Will Benjamin be there?’ she asked.

‘Yep. Why, have you got a message for him?’

‘Nope.’

‘Because if you gave the message to me, I could pass it on to him, and he could pass it on to Sophie.’ He glanced at his daughter, whose face was a blank. ‘It could be … oh, I don’t know – an apology or something?’

‘If I’d done anything wrong,’ Coriander said, ‘I’d apologize.’

‘You took a year out of her life.’

‘During which time she wrote a book and made a TV series. Meanwhile, seventy per cent of trans people in this country consider suicide. I know whose side I’m on. Drop it, Dad. It’s not going to happen.’

At the station they kissed goodbye and Doug crossed over the footbridge which led to the platform for Birmingham-bound trains. A train arrived almost at once, but then didn’t move for several minutes. It meant that Doug, sitting in a window seat, had a clear view of his daughter as she stood waiting for her train on the opposite platform. Her strength of character, her obstinacy, her refusal to compromise were all clearly inscribed in her attitude and posture: the placing of her feet on the platform, the half-scowl on her face as she stared impatiently at the horizon, her aloofness towards the other passengers. Doug hoped that she would overcome, sooner or later, her anger at the world and more specifically at the world that his generation had bequeathed to her. They had spoken of apologies but he realized now that he was the one oppressed by the permanent sense of owing an apology: to her, in the first instance, and then to all her friends and contemporaries. Had Doug and his peers really screwed up so badly? Perhaps they had. The country was in a wretched state at the moment: bad-tempered, fractured, groaning under the pressure of an austerity programme that seemed never likely to end. Maybe it was inevitable that Coriander should despise him for his part in all this, however small. Maybe it was time to learn from her , to remind himself that there were some principles that should never be abandoned or diluted, and that it was not necessarily a noble thing to gravitate towards the centre ground in pursuit of a quiet life …

Instinctively he pulled at the bow tie fastened chokingly around his neck. He was about to unclip it, but checked himself. He did know a futile gesture when he saw one, after all.

*

As Doug was walking down the main drive of King William’s School, experiencing Proustian rushes of recollection with every step and every glance to either side (the science labs to his right, the once-forbidden kingdom of the Girls’ School to his left), he saw Benjamin a few yards ahead, parking his car and locking the door. Together they walked on until they reached the old dining hall, where a multicoloured banner announced that ‘King William’s School Welcomes The Class Of 1978’ and they found Philip Chase and Steve Richards already waiting for them at the end of one of the long bench tables.

‘Who the hell are all these people?’ Steve asked, looking around at the sea of thinning hair, wire-rimmed spectacles, stooped shoulders and evolving paunches. ‘I don’t recognize anybody. They all look the same.’

‘Some of the teachers are supposed to be coming. Mr Serkis said he’d be here.’

Steve laughed. ‘I love how you still call him “Mr”.’

‘Look!’ said Phil. ‘Isn’t that Nick Bond?’

‘No, that’s not him. That’s David Nagle. I’d know him anywhere.’

‘Shall we go and say hello?’

‘I’d rather not. We didn’t have much in common forty years ago. We’d have even less now.’

‘Then what are we doing here? Why did we come? We could’ve just gone for a quiet Chinese.’

‘Over there,’ said Doug, ‘is the reason why I came.’

The others stopped talking and followed his gaze towards the door of the dining hall, where Ronald Culpepper had just made his entrance. He was deep in conversation with the school’s current headmaster, who was chatting to him deferentially while escorting him to the centre seat at the top table.