Джонатан Коу - Middle England

‘Who runs it?’

‘If you’re looking to identify some sinister cartel or conspiracy, you’re out of luck,’ said Culpepper, beginning to walk up the drive towards the school gates. ‘We’re just a group of ordinary British businessmen, trying to do what’s best for our country in every way possible. Surely even you could find nothing to object to in that.’

‘True, I couldn’t. If I believed a word of it, that is.’

‘Your trouble, Anderton,’ Culpepper said, suddenly stopping in his tracks and turning on him, ‘is that you’ve never taken the trouble to understand business, and never taken the trouble to understand patriotism. Neither has the rest of the liberal commentariat, for that matter. If you did, you’d realize that the two things can quite happily go hand-in-hand. I do read your columns, you know. It’s always interesting to see what the opposition is thinking. But I’m afraid I’ve never been very impressed. Your analysis is shallow, and since the referendum everyone’s been able to see what some of us have seen for some time: it’s you and your fellow anti-establishment poseurs who are the real establishment, and now the people have turned on you and you don’t like it.’

Doug thought about this for a moment and then shook his head. ‘Sorry, Ronnie, but I don’t buy it.’

‘Buy what?’

‘You see, the thing is, whenever I hear someone like you talking about “the people”, my bullshit detector goes crazy. Seems to me you’ve spent your adult life trying to put as much distance between you and “the people” as possible. Do you use public transport, or the NHS, or send your kids to state schools? Of course not. The last thing you want to do is come into contact with the proles. But Brexit has been your wet dream for years, for one reason or another, and now, as soon as “the people” deliver what you’ve been praying for, suddenly you’re all over them. You’re happy to use them just like you use everybody else. It’s how someone like you operates. But I hope you realize that this time you’re playing with fire.’

‘Playing with fire? For God’s sake, you do love to over-dramatize.’

‘I’m not over-dramatizing. We all know there’s a lot of anger in this country at the moment and to get what you want you’ve got to keep that anger burning. But people show their anger in different ways. Some of them grumble into their tea and huff and puff over the Daily Telegraph and vote for Brexit and that’s fine. But some of them go out into the street one morning with a flak jacket full of knives and stab their local MP to death, and that’s not so good, is it? And the more the papers stoke up the anger by using words like “treason” and “mutiny” and “enemy of the people”, the more likely it gets that something like that will happen again.’

They had reached the top of the school drive. Rather desperately, Culpepper looked left and right along the main road, but there was still no sign of his car.

‘I fail to see,’ he said, ‘what this has got to do with –’

He was cut off mid-sentence as Doug seized his bow tie, and used it to pull him roughly forwards until they were face to face.

‘Know who Gail Ransome is, Ronnie? Know who she lives with, these days? I bet you do. Know what it’s like to have the woman you love crying in your arms because she’s been getting death threats all day? Crying because her daughter’s scared shitless?’ He pulled the tie further forward, twisting it tight until a purplish hue started to appear in Culpepper’s face. ‘Well? Do you? Do you?’

‘Let go of me, you fucking animal.’

The words were breathless and strangulated. They stared at each other, eyeball to eyeball, for ten seconds or more, while Culpepper’s face grew more and more puce. Finally, Doug relaxed his grip, just as a large black BMW drew up alongside them by the kerb. Without another word, Culpepper yanked the back door open and stepped inside, rubbing at the circle of sore redness around his neck where his collar had dug into it. He glared at Doug as the car pulled away, but neither of them could think of a parting shot. The rank odour of hatred hung in the air even after the car had disappeared from view.

*

Meanwhile, Benjamin too was on a personal mission; but his was an altogether more reflective one. Retracing the path which was imprinted on his memory even though so many decades had passed since he had last followed it, he entered the main school building and climbed the stairs to the upper corridor where, on the left, a small arched doorway led to an altogether steeper and more occult flight of stone-flagged steps. This was the entrance to the Carlton corridor, an area of the school which in his day had been accessible to sixth-formers only, and even then only to a select few. The first room you passed, on the left, used to be the meeting room of the Carlton Club itself, where the privileged minority who had been elected to this elite organization (by a secret committee whose reasonings were never explained) could disport themselves in leather-covered armchairs while reading copies of The Times , the Telegraph , Punch , the Economist and any other publications which were considered suitable reading, back in those innocent times, for the future leaders of the country. Nowadays it appeared to serve as a more inclusive sixth-form common room. Benjamin stole past it, in any case, and made his way directly towards a pair of rooms which lay at the very end of the corridor, where the overhead lights had already been turned on by some earlier visitor. Here, on Friday afternoons, he and his friends used to put together a weekly edition of the school newspaper known as The Bill Board . Combative editorial arguments would ensue, with Doug constantly trying to push things in a more politically engaged direction, while Benjamin wrestled with the questions of cultural and literary value that would go on to preoccupy him – to little avail – all his life. The first room was dominated by the large, squat, rectangular table around which they all used to sit. Benjamin glanced around this room and then walked over to the window to see if the view would jog any memories. All he could see, at first, was his own middle-aged reflection, so he flicked a light switch – an act which seemed to plunge the whole corridor, unexpectedly, into near-darkness. Moving on into the second room, Benjamin could immediately make out the chair and desk where he used to sit writing his theatre and book reviews. From here you could look out over the rooftops of the school and, beyond them, the two tall oak trees which flanked the South Drive and tonight stood still and vigilant in the windless summer air.

Benjamin sank down into the chair and peered through the window. It was not completely dark outside yet; the muted light was gentle and soothing and within a few seconds he felt the familiar, calming pleasure of being alone steal over him. It had been good to see his friends, of course, but he would always prefer this solitude. Bored as he often was by his own thoughts, he none the less took a kind of comfort in their predictable routes and patterns. It was here, in this very chair, that he had sat alone after all his colleagues had left, one chilly Friday afternoon in January 1977: until, after a few minutes, he had realized that he was not alone at all, and that Cicely Boyd was waiting for him in the next room: sitting – or rather crouching – at the editorial table, with her back to the door and one bare foot tucked beneath her bottom, the famous golden hair swept into a long ponytail which reached almost to the small of her back. The first thing that had alerted him to her presence (her momentous, soon-to-be-life-changing presence) had been the smell of her cigarette smoke. The memory was so powerful still – the image so vivid – that he almost felt he could smell the smoke again. Almost felt that he could see it, floating across the room, drifting in spirals and arabesques towards the desk and in front of his eyes …