Authors: Jonathan Coe
Both of these lodgers, in fact, were from the polytechnic rather than the university. There was Graham, who was on some sort of film-making course, and a very shy and uncommunicative art student called Phoebe. It soon became obvious that they would not be easy to avoid: Joan presided over a regimented household, and there was a large notice pinned up in the kitchen which set out, in three different coloured inks, the rotas for shopping, washing up and cooking the evening meal. It seemed that I was to be the guest of something closely approximating to a family unit – and, to make matters worse, that there had been much advance discussion of my visit. I had the sense that Joan had been giving me a huge build-up, that by singing the praises of this exotic envoy from literary London she had been trying to stir the others into a state of enthusiasm which they seemed oddly reluctant to share.
These things started to become clear as the four of us sat down to supper together on that first Tuesday evening. It was Joan’s turn to cook. We had stuffed avocado with puréed carrot and brown rice, followed by rhubarb crumble. The dining room was small and could almost have been cosy if a little more effort had been made in that direction: instead we ate in the glare of a naked bulb, and beneath the reproachful scrutiny of a number of posters – all of them Graham’s, I was to discover – advertising political causes and foreign-language films (of which Godard’s
Tout Va Bien
was the only one I recognized). For a while I was more or less excluded from the conversation, which centred on topics of shared interest such as Joan’s latest cases and the impending end-of-year assessments at the college. I had to content myself, if that’s the word, with munching away at Joan’s wholesome food and refilling the wineglasses.
‘I’m sorry, Michael,’ said Joan finally. ‘A lot of this won’t mean anything to you. I was thinking perhaps you’d like to come with me on some of my calls tomorrow, and get a sense of what I do. It might be useful to you one day: give you something to write about.’
‘Sure,’ I said, trying to sound eager and making a poor job of it.
‘Then again,’ she said, clearly dampened by my response, ‘you’ve probably got some work you want to do. I’d hate to come between you and your Muse.’
‘What’s this then – another book?’ asked Graham, helping himself to more rice.
‘Sort of.’
‘Graham’s been reading your first,’ said Joan. ‘Haven’t you?’
‘I started it.’ He took an enormous mouthful and swilled it down with some wine. ‘Couldn’t get beyond the first couple of chapters, though.’
‘Fair enough,’ I said; but pride wouldn’t allow me to leave it at that. ‘Do you mind if I ask why?’
‘Well, I don’t really understand why people write novels any more, to be honest. I mean it’s a total irrelevance, the whole thing. Has been ever since the cinema was invented. Oh sure, there are a few people who are still doing interesting things with the form – Robbe-Grillet and the
nouveau roman
crowd – but any serious modern artist who wants to use narrative ought to be working in film. That’s my general objection. And more specifically, the problem with the English novel is that there’s no tradition of political engagement. I mean, it’s all just a lot of pissing about within the limits set down by bourgeois morality, as far as I can see. There’s no radicalism. So there’s really only one or two novelists in this country that I’ve got any time for, these days. And I’m afraid you don’t seem to be one of them.’
There was a shocked silence. At least, Joan was visibly shocked, and Phoebe was certainly silent. As for myself, I had heard too many speeches like this in my student days to be much put out by it.
‘Who would they be, then?’ I asked.
‘Well, for instance …’
Graham mentioned a name, and I smiled: a pleased, private little smile, because it was exactly the name I had been expecting. The ball was very much back in my court now, for this was the same writer whose latest work had fallen into my hands for review. And yes, I had found the word. The word which I had known was out there, all along, just waiting to be matched to its subject.
This was a writer, I should explain, some ten years older than myself, whose three slender novels had been ludicrously overpraised in the national press. Because he made his characters talk in crudely notated dialects and live in conditions of unconvincing squalor, he was hailed as a social realist; because he sometimes played elementary tricks with narrative, in feeble imitation of Sterne and Diderot, he was hailed as an experimental pioneer; and because he made a regular habit of writing letters to the newspapers, criticizing government policy in terms which had always struck me as suggesting a rather timid Leftism, he was hailed as a political radical. More annoying than any of this, however, was his reputation for humour. He had been repeatedly credited with a playful irony, a satiric lightness of touch, which seemed to me to be entirely lacking from his work, characterized as it was by lumbering sarcasm and the occasional abject attempt to jog the reader’s elbow with well-signposted jokes. It was this aspect of his style for which I had reserved my final scorn. ‘It has become a matter of routine,’ I had written, ‘to praise Mr —— for his deft combination of wit and political commitment; and even to suggest that here, at last, we have a moral ironist worthy of these ruthless times. We stand badly in need of novels, after all, which show an understanding of the ideological hijack which has taken place so recently in this country, which can see its consequences in human terms and show that the appropriate response lies not merely in sorrow and anger but in mad, incredulous laughter. For many people, it seems, it is only a matter of time before------writes just such a novel: but this reader remains unconvinced. Whatever his other qualifications for the task, I suspect, finally, that he lacks the necessary –’
And this was where my invention had failed me for so long. What was it that he lacked, exactly? The word that I was looking for had something to do with style, something to do with tone. It wasn’t that he lacked compassion, or intelligence, or technique, or ambition: what he lacked was … it was an
instinct,
somehow, for putting these things together, but in a nimble, a fleet-footed way. It was a sort of daring, but there also had to be an element of diffidence, because this quality, whatever it was, would only appear truly natural and spontaneous if it was entirely without self-regard. The word was there, and I was only inches away from it. He lacked the necessary
brilliance,
the necessary
bravado,
the necessary …
…
brio.
Yes, that was it. Brio. Precisely. It seemed so obvious, already, that I couldn’t understand why it had taken me so long to get there. At once an almost mystical sense of its rightness flooded over me: not only was I sure that it put a perfect end to the review, but I also knew, as if by some telepathic process, that it described the single quality which
he,
in his most secret heart of hearts, would yearn to be credited with. I had invaded, penetrated, wormed my way inside him: when the review appeared, on Friday morning, I would wound him; wound him deeply. I had a vision of hallucinogenic intensity, born half from imagination and half from the distant memory of a nameless, black and white, probably American film: a man in a busy, windswept city in the early morning, buying a newspaper from a street-corner vendor, taking it to a coffee bar and thumbing impatiently to a particular page; devouring a sandwich at the counter, and then the movement of his jaws getting slower and slower as he reads, until he screws the newspaper up in disgust, throws it into a bin and storms out of the bar, the anger and disappointment drawn lividly on his face. I knew – as soon as I’d thought of the word, I knew it for a certainty – that this was the scene, in exaggerated form, which would be played out on Friday morning, when he went out to buy the newspaper, or picked it up off his doormat, or as soon as his agent telephoned him with news of my crushing performance. It shames me, now, to think how happy the knowledge made me; or rather, to think how ready I was to mistake for happiness the poisoned stream of satisfaction which welled up inside me.
All I said to Graham was: ‘I thought it might be him.’
‘Not your cup of tea, I suppose,’ he said; and managed to make even this sound like another in my litany of inadequacies.
‘He has his moments,’ I conceded, and then added casually: ‘I’ve just reviewed his latest, in fact.’ I turned to Joan. ‘That phone call I had to make just before dinner. I was dictating it to one of the copy-takers.’
Joan blushed with pride, and said to her lodgers: ‘Just think – someone makes a phone call from my little sitting room, the words travel all the way down the lines to London, and a few days later, it’s in all the papers.’
‘The wonders of modern science,’ said Graham, and began stacking the plates.
∗
The next day, a wet and misty Wednesday, was not a great success. I decided to take Joan up on her invitation and accompany her on some of her visits, but it was a dispiriting experience. The bulk of her work appeared to involve turning up uninvited at family homes in order to conduct furtive interviews with the children while their parents stared on balefully, or beat ungracious retreats to the kitchen to make cups of tea which never got drunk. At first I actually went with her to sit in on these encounters, but my presence was so obviously unwelcome that I gave up on that after the first couple of visits and spent the rest of the day sitting in Joan’s car, reading through the pile of old magazines and newspapers which cluttered her back seat and waiting tiredly for her to emerge from the doorway of some council house or tower block.
For lunch we went to a pub in the centre of town. Joan had a vegetable pasty and I had steak and kidney pie, which caused her to tut reprovingly. That evening, it was Graham’s turn to cook. The dish he prepared for us may or may not have had a name: it seemed to consist mainly of lentils and walnuts burned down to a black crust, scraped off the bottom of a large saucepan, and served with a dollop of wholemeal pasta ribbons which had the texture of rubber bands. We ate, for the most part, in absorbed silence.
‘You ought to show Michael some of your work, tomorrow,’ said Joan to Graham at one point. ‘He might have some interesting comments to make.’
‘I should like that,’ I said.
∗
Graham sat me down on his bed and switched on the large, unwieldy television which dominated one corner of his bedroom. It took nearly a minute to warm up.
‘1970s vintage,’ he explained. ‘Pretty much on its last legs.’
Yesterday’s mist had cleared and the morning was turning out bright but muggy. Not that much of the sunshine would come our way: Graham’s room was permanently in shadow, with a tiny, lace-curtained window which looked out over Joan’s back yard and the back yards of other houses in the next street. We were alone in the house, it was half past ten and we were both on to our second cups of strong, sugary tea.
‘Have you got one of these yourself?’ Graham asked, kneeling down to slot a VHS tape into the video machine.
‘Can’t afford it on what I earn,’ I said. ‘I’m waiting for the prices to come down. They say they’re going to tumble.’
‘You don’t think I own this, do you? Nobody’s buying the things – you do it on the rental. Ten quid a month is all this costs me, down at Rumbelows.’
I sipped my tea and said spitefully: ‘When I was a student we used to spend our money on books.’
‘Don’t give me that.’ Graham gestured at the rows of tapes which lined his dresser and window-sill. ‘These
are
my books. This is the medium of the future, as far as film-making’s concerned. Nearly all our work at college is done on video now. Three hours of tape, there is, on one of these little beauties. Do you know how much three hours’ worth of sixteen mill would cost you?’
‘I see your point.’
‘Not too hot on the practicalities, you literary types, are you? It’s all ivory tower with you.’
I ignored this.
‘Does it have a freeze frame, your video?’
‘Sure. It’s a bit shaky, but it does the job. Why, what do you want one of those for?’
‘Oh, you know – It’s nice to have … all the gadgets.’
The screen flickered into action just as Graham finished closing the curtains and seating himself beside me on the bed.
‘Here we go, then. This is my end-of-year assignment. See what you think.’
It was a less painful experience than I had anticipated. Graham’s film was only about ten minutes long, and proved to be an efficient if unsubtle piece of polemic about the Falklands conflict, called ‘Mrs Thatcher’s War’. The title was double-edged, because he had somehow managed to find a pensioner called Mrs Thatcher who lived in Sheffield, and shots of warships steaming into battle and extracts from the Prime Minister’s speeches were juxtaposed with scenes from the life of her less eminent namesake: making trips to the shops, preparing frugal meals, watching news bulletins on the television and so on. In a disjointed voice-over commentary, the old woman spoke of the difficulties of getting by on her pension and wondered what had become of all the money she had paid in taxes throughout her working life: this was usually the cue for a rapid cut to some brutal and expensive-looking piece of military hardware. The film ended with the Prime Minister’s famous speech to the Scottish Conservative Party, in which she described the war as a battle between good and evil and declared that ‘It must be finished’, followed by a lingering shot of the other Mrs Thatcher carrying a heavy bag of groceries up a steep, forbidding street. Then the screen faded to black and two captions appeared: ‘Mrs Emily Thatcher supports herself on a weekly income of £43.37’; ‘The cost of the Falklands War has already been estimated at £700,000,000.’
Graham turned off the tape.
‘So – what did you think? Come on, your honest opinion.’
‘I liked it. It was good.’
‘Look, just try to forget that Southern middle-class politeness kick for a minute. Give it to me straight.’