Джонатан Коу - Middle England

And so there were ten of them, in all, seated around the long oak table out on the second and larger of the terraces overlooking the river, as the light began to fade. Above the table, grapevines interwoven with lavender and flame-coloured campsis were coiled densely around an ancient pergola. Lois and Grete and Benjamin had prepared huge bowls of salade Niçoise , to be followed by steaming pots of ratatouille made with fresh Provençal courgettes and aubergines. There seemed also to be an endless supply of red wine. Then there were calissons and tartes Tropéziennes , and then dessert wines and cheese, and coffee for those who wanted it, and brandy and cognac and even pastis for those who wanted to carry on drinking, all furnished in such abundance that it was long after midnight before the end of the meal was even distantly in sight.

As conversation became more sporadic and subdued, and the candles ranged on the table and on the walls all around them started to burn low, Claire turned to Alexandre and said:

‘So, what are you hoping to learn from your week here, I wonder?’

Alexandre, who was not used to being among strangers and had been quieter than anyone all evening, now cleared his throat and said: ‘I’ve brought with me a collection of short stories – unpublished, of course – and I’m hoping that Mr Trotter will be able to read them and tell me how I can make them better. It will be an honour for me to hear the opinion of the author of A Rose Without a Thorn. Or Rose sans épine , as it’s called in France.’

‘It’s a beautiful book, isn’t it?’ Lois said.

‘What for me is most moving about your brother’s book,’ said Alexandre, picking his way through the words carefully, ‘is that it conveys the desolation of a life which is built entirely upon failure. For me, it’s the story of a man who has failed in every area of his life, and so he entrusts all his dreams of happiness to this one woman, this one love affair, and this turns out to be the greatest failure of all. It’s a life which lacks any kind of achievement, any kind of self-knowledge and so, in the end, any kind of hope.’

A short but fathomless silence descended upon the table at the end of this speech. One or two of the other guests laughed nervously.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Alexandre, ‘did I say something funny? Is my English not so good?’

‘Your English is perfect,’ said Claire. ‘It’s just that you gave the most brutal assessment of Benjamin’s life that he’s probably ever heard.’

‘Oh, but I didn’t mean –’

The silence returned, but was broken this time by Benjamin himself:

‘Sitting here in this amazing place,’ he said, ‘with you guys for company, I find it hard to see my life as a failure. In fact –’ he rose unsteadily to his feet ‘– I think this calls for a speech.’

Lois and Claire put their heads in their hands. Benjamin had been drinking for several hours now, and didn’t look as though he was capable of talking coherently about anything. However, there didn’t seem to be any way of stopping him.

‘Six English people,’ he began, ‘two Lithuanians, a Frenchman and an Italian all had dinner together one beautiful evening in September. Sadly, this is not the set-up for a joke. I wish it was. Nor is it the opening sentence of my new novel. I wish it was that too. In fact I wish I had a new novel for it to be the opening sentence of. But what it is – if anything – what it represents, what it symbolizes , I should say …’

‘We get the message,’ said Claire, when it seemed likely that he was going to stutter to a halt altogether. ‘It’s a wonderful example of European harmonization.’

‘ Exactly ,’ said Benjamin, striking the table for emphasis. ‘That’s exactly what I’m trying to say. What could be more inspiring, what could be a more powerful … metaphor … for the spirit of cooperation – international cooperation – which prevails, which has prevailed – which ought to prevail, if … if we, as a nation, hadn’t made this … regrettable, but understandable – in some ways understandable …’

‘Sit down and shut up,’ said Lois.

‘I will not,’ said Benjamin. ‘I have something to say.’

‘Then do you mind saying it a bit more concisely?’

‘Concision,’ said Benjamin, ‘is the English disease.’

‘Well, you seem to have been cured, and made a full recovery,’ said Claire.

‘Fine,’ said Benjamin. ‘I can say what I want to say in two words.’ He paused and looked around the table at the circle of expectant faces. Then, in a tone of belligerent triumph, he said, ‘ Fuck Brexit! ’, and sat down to a round of applause.

‘Really?’ said Stefano, after a moment’s reflection. ‘There are six English people here, and not a single person who voted to leave? Not a very representative selection.’

‘I almost did,’ said Charlie, sitting next to him. ‘I was in such a bad place round about then that I almost did it just to give Cameron a kick in the nuts. Benjamin saw me that week. He knows how low I was. Broke and sleeping in my car. Him and his fucking austerity. But I decided it would be a stupid way of making my point. Not nearly as satisfying as punching him in the face, if I ever got the chance.’ Stefano was starting to give Charlie a wary look, and to lean away from him slightly in his seat. ‘Oh, no – don’t get me wrong,’ he said. ‘I’m not a violent person. I mean, I used to be, but prison knocked that out of me.’

Looking less than reassured, Stefano merely said, ‘Of course. I understand.’

‘Cameron’s only part of the story anyway,’ Charlie continued. ‘The way I see it, everything changed in Britain in May 1979. Forty years on, we’re still dealing with that. You see – me and Benjamin, we’re children of the seventies. We may have been only kids then, but that was the world we grew up in. Welfare state, NHS. Everything that was put in place after the war. Well, all that’s been unravelling since ’79. It’s still being unravelled. That’s the real story. I don’t know if Brexit’s a symptom of that, or just a distraction. But the process is pretty much complete now. It’ll all be gone soon.’

From the other side of the table, Aneeqa said: ‘I don’t want to go back to the 1970s, thank you very much.’

‘Fair enough,’ Charlie agreed. ‘It would have been a shit decade for someone like you. But try to think of what was good about it. Something’s been lost, since then. Something huge.’

Claire intervened, at this point, to challenge Charlie’s interpretation of history, and to point out that the decade he was seeking to idealize had also seen record inflation, economic instability and industrial unrest. The conversation among the four middle-aged English diners became heated, and then broadened out to include Brexit, Donald Trump, Syria, North Korea, Vladimir Putin, Facebook, immigration, Emmanuel Macron, the 5-Star movement and the contentious result of the Eurovision song contest in 1968. Everybody around the table had something to say (at least that was Benjamin’s memory afterwards) but also, one by one, people started to drift away and go to bed. Those who lingered drank more wine and lost track of how late it was until, finally, the only two left were Benjamin and Charlie. And Charlie was almost falling asleep.

‘Listen,’ said Benjamin. ‘I want to play you a song.’

‘Uh?’ said Charlie, opening his eyes slowly.

‘What you were saying before – about the world we lived in when we were kids, and how it’s all gone. I’ve got a song to play you. It sums it all up.’

‘All right. Bring it on.’