Джонатан Коу - Middle England

‘I’m over it, Ben, don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Or rather, I’m beyond it now. In fact I saw Robert last week and he asked me to marry him again and I didn’t say no this time. I told him I’d think about it. It was worth it just to see how happy he looked.’

Benjamin tried to smile, but made a poor show of it. So he tried to hug Jennifer instead, and she put her arms around him in return, but she would not relax into the embrace. He could feel her resistance.

‘I hurt you,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Wiping her eyes on his shoulder and pulling gently away, Jennifer said: ‘Don’t worry about it, Tiger. Like I said, I’m beyond it now. For a while I kidded myself that we might be soulmates, but … Well, you found your soulmate years ago, didn’t you, and nobody will ever quite replace her.’

Benjamin nodded. ‘Cicely, you mean.’

‘No, not her ,’ said Jennifer, scornfully. ‘I mean your sister, of course.’

‘You mean Lois?’

‘Looking back,’ said Jennifer, ‘it’s obvious really. Even at school, we could all see how much you meant to each other. It’s lovely when you see that between a brother and sister. That loyalty. That support. That’s why we had a joint nickname for you. Benjamin and Lois Trotter: the Rotters. Bent Rotter, and Lowest Rotter. That was it, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, but I never thought – I mean, I never saw it like that before …’

‘It makes perfect sense for you to go away together. Much more sense than you hanging around Middle England trying to make things work out with me.’

Benjamin leaned towards her and kissed her on the mouth. She responded, but again the response was wary, reluctant.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he repeated.

Jennifer turned back towards the pub, walked on and shifted the conversation briskly towards practicalities.

‘Is now a good time to be moving to Europe?’ she asked. ‘With Brexit and everything?’

‘We’ve looked into that,’ said Benjamin. ‘As long as you move before 29 March next year, nothing changes.’

‘You’ve probably chosen a good time to get out.’

‘I don’t know … I feel very torn about it. I’m going to miss this country. I’m going to miss my house. I’m going to miss living by the river. This river …’ He looked wistfully at the friendly, meandering Severn, now turning a deep crimson in the dying sunlight as it wandered past the pub on its slow, endless journey down from his mill house forty miles away. ‘All my life I’d wanted to live by a river.’

‘They’ve got them in France, now,’ Jennifer said. ‘I was reading about it in the paper just the other day.’

Benjamin was pleased to hear her making a joke again. She smiled at him and took his hand. They walked like this along the path for a few minutes. Then he put his arm around her shoulder, and she rested against him. That was even better. It was enough to give him the courage he needed.

‘There was one other thing I wanted to say to you,’ he began.

She looked up at him questioningly. Her eyes glistened. ‘Yes?’

‘I wanted to say thank you.’

‘Thank you? What for?’

‘For … Well, for all the sex.’

The questioning look mutated into an expression of disbelief. It seemed that, even now, Benjamin still had the capacity to astonish her.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘It’s just that I never thought … At my age, I’d sort of given up hope. I mean, I’m not exactly Colin Firth, and I’m not very good in bed.’

Jennifer laughed now, silently but for quite a long time. When she turned to Benjamin again, her lips were still twitching with amusement as she said: ‘I suppose I could punish you for that, just by agreeing with you. But the fact is – you did have your moments.’

‘Really?’ He pulled her closely towards him, kissed her and whispered in her ear: ‘Robert’s a lucky man. You have the loveliest body. Thank you for sharing it with me.’

And there they stood, cheek to cheek, pressed tightly against each other, the embrace lasting for so long that the fisherman sitting a few yards away might easily have mistaken them for a married couple rediscovering their youthful passion, rather than what they really were: a pair of rueful lovers saying goodbye for the last time.

45.

September 2018

‘Well,’ said Lois, ‘I got you a river.’

Indeed she had. The house stood on the banks of the Sorgue: and even if this particular stretch of water didn’t carry, for Benjamin, quite the symbolic weight that he invested in his beloved Severn, or hold the same repository of memories for him, it certainly had charms of its own. Theirs was a mill house, once again. For as long as anyone could remember it had been known simply as ‘Le Vieux Moulin’, and it nestled in a curve of the river not far from its source in Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, clasped so snugly in the water’s embrace that it might almost have been planted rather than built there, to grow alongside the willow and magnolia trees that surrounded it. Benjamin and Lois had taken possession in the middle of August, and, while the house was in good condition, the last three weeks had been busy and stressful, with workmen coming and going every day, receiving their often approximate instructions from the new owners in broken French. Things had been easier after the first week, when Grete and Lukas had arrived. Grete spoke good French, and had agreed to take on the role of housekeeper. Lukas intended to look for work in nearby Avignon, and in the meantime was on hand to help Benjamin with the many practicalities that he found so daunting. Together with their little girl, Justina, they would be living in a small, two-bedroomed cottage which lay within the grounds of the house, just a few yards from the main building.

On this hot, breathless afternoon, Lois found her brother leaning up against the rusty iron fence that formed a boundary between their terrace and the idling, grey-green river. He had a beer glass in his hand, and gave every impression of idling himself.

‘Were you having a rest?’ she asked, with a slight undertone of impatience. It was Friday. Le Vieux Moulin was due to open for guests on Sunday evening.

‘Just a quick beer, that’s all.’

‘There’s still a lot to do.’

‘I know. Just give me twenty minutes.’

‘There’s still no electricity in any of the rooms on the top floor.’

‘It’s probably a fuse. I’ll sort it.’

‘Well, I’m going to finish putting sheets on the beds.’

‘OK. Don’t worry. I’m just going to be twenty minutes.’

Once his sister had disappeared inside, Benjamin sat down at the old wrought-iron table: the table he had brought all the way from Shropshire, the table which had borne witness to so many conversations with family and friends over the years, and so many solitary hours of writing and contemplation. He could not have left it behind in England. He took a sip from his glass and gave a quiet sigh of satisfaction. Tilting his face, he felt the full heat of the mid-afternoon sun. Wonderful. You didn’t get that in the Midlands. He closed his eyes and listened to the river as it continued to drift placidly by. He had just succeeded in losing himself in its gentle music when another, less soothing sound reached his ears, and grew louder and louder: the sound of a car approaching down the long, cool, poplar-lined lane. Soon the car had entered the house’s main courtyard, pulled to a halt and a familiar voice could be heard calling from the hallway: ‘Anyone home?’

It was Sophie. She quickly found her uncle out on the terrace and, after they had kissed, she walked across to the fence and leaned against it, looking over the river, and said: ‘Well, isn’t this lovely?’