Middle England Read online

  ‘I’ll put him to bed,’ Lois whispered at about nine o’clock, after her father had had two whiskies and was starting to nod in his chair. It took her about half an hour, while Doug went back into the kitchen to check on the subs’ changes to his article and Benjamin talked to Sophie about her thesis, which was on pictorial representations of nineteenth-century European writers of black ancestry, a subject on which he was not well informed. When Lois rejoined them, she looked grave.

  ‘He’s in a right old state,’ she said. ‘He’s not going to be easy from now on.’

  ‘What did you expect him to be doing today?’ said Benjamin. ‘Turning cartwheels?’

  ‘I know. But they were together fifty-five years, Ben. He did nothing for himself in that time. He hasn’t cooked himself a meal for half a century.’

  Benjamin knew what she was thinking. That, as a man, he was bound to find some way of ducking the task of caring for their father.

  ‘I’ll come and see him,’ he insisted, ‘twice a week, maybe more. Cook for him. Take him out shopping.’

  ‘That’s good to know. Thank you. And I’ll do what I can too.’

  ‘So there you are. We’ll manage somehow. Of course –’ and in making the next observation, he was fully aware of treading on thin ice ‘– it would be easier if you spent a bit more time in Birmingham.’

  Lois said nothing.

  ‘With your husband,’ he added, for clarity.

  Lois took an irritable sip of cold coffee. ‘My job’s in York, remember?’

  ‘Sure. So you could come down every weekend. Instead of … what, every three or four?’

  ‘Chris and I have been living like that for years, and it suits us very well. Doesn’t it, Soph?’

  Her daughter, rather than rallying to Lois’s cause, said merely: ‘I think it’s weird.’

  ‘Nice. Thank you. Not all couples like to live in each other’s pockets. I haven’t noticed you and your current boyfriend racing to move in with each other.’

  ‘That’s because we split up.’

  ‘What? When?’

  ‘Three days ago.’ Sophie rose to her feet. ‘Come on, Mum, it’s time we drove back. I’d like to have a chat with Dad before bedtime, even if you wouldn’t. I’ll tell you all about it in the car.’

  Benjamin came out with them to the forecourt, kissed his sister and gave his niece a long hug.

  ‘Great news about the thesis,’ he said. ‘Not so good about the boyfriend.’

  ‘I’ll survive,’ said Sophie, with a wan smile.

  ‘Give me the keys,’ said Lois. ‘You’ve had three glasses of wine.’

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ said Sophie, handing them over all the same.

  ‘You drive too fast anyway,’ said Lois. ‘I’m sure that was a speed camera flashing at us on the way over.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Mum – it was just the sunlight on somebody’s windscreen.’

  ‘Whatever.’ Lois turned to her brother. ‘I think we did her proud today. That was a beautiful speech. You’ve got a lovely way with words.’

  ‘I should have. I’ve written enough.’

  She kissed him again. ‘Well, I think you’re the best unpublished writer in the country. No contest.’

  One more hug, and then they slammed their doors and Benjamin waved after their headlights as the car reversed cautiously down the driveway.

  *

  It was still warm enough, just about, to leave the sitting-room window open. Benjamin loved to do this, when the weather allowed it, to sit there alone, sometimes in the dark, listening to the sounds of the night, the call of a screech owl, the ululation of a predatory fox, and above all the murmur, ageless, immutable, of the River Severn (which was a new incomer to England at this point, having crossed the border with Wales only a few miles upstream). Tonight was different, though: he had Doug for company, even though neither of them saw any hurry to get into conversation. They had been friends for almost forty years, and there wasn’t much they didn’t know about each other. For Benjamin, at least, it was enough for them to sit there, on opposite sides of the fireplace, glasses of Laphroaig in hand, and let the emotions stirred up by the day gradually settle and subside into quietude.

  Eventually, however, he was the one who broke the silence.

  ‘Happy with your piece?’ he asked.

  Doug’s response was unexpectedly dismissive.

  ‘I suppose it’ll do,’ he said. ‘I feel a bit of a fraud these days, to be honest.’ When Benjamin looked surprised, Doug sat upright and launched into an explanation. ‘I honestly think we’re at a crossroads, you see. Labour’s finished. I really think so. People are so angry right now, and nobody knows what to do about it. I’ve heard it on Gordon’s campaign trail the last few days. People see these guys in the City who practically crashed the economy two years ago and never felt any consequences – none of them went to jail, and now they’re taking their bonuses again while the rest of us are supposed to be tightening our belts. Wages are frozen. People have got no job security, no pension plans, they can’t afford to take a family holiday or do repairs to the car. A few years ago they felt wealthy. Now they feel poor.’

  Doug was becoming animated. Benjamin knew how much he liked to talk like this, how even now, after twenty-five years as a journalist, nothing excited him as much as the cut-and-thrust of British politics. He didn’t understand his friend’s enthusiasm, but he knew how to play along with it.

  ‘But I thought it was the Tories everyone hated,’ he said, dutifully, ‘because of the expenses scandal. Claiming for mortgages on their second home, and all that stuff …’

  ‘People blame both parties for that. And that’s the worst of it. Everyone’s become so cynical. “Oh, they’re all as bad as each other …” That’s why it was always going to be close – until today.’

  ‘You think it’ll make that much difference? It was just a mistake. An unguarded moment.’

  ‘That’s all it takes, these days. That’s how volatile things have become.’

  ‘Then surely this is a good time for someone like you. Lots to write about.’

  ‘Yes, but I’m … out of touch with all that, you see? That resentment, that sense of hardship. I don’t feel it. I’m just a spectator. I live in this bloody … cocoon. I live in a house in Chelsea worth millions. My wife’s family own half of the Home Counties. I don’t know what I’m talking about. And it shows up in my writing. Of course it does.’

  ‘How are things with you and Francesca, anyway?’ said Benjamin, who used to envy Doug his rich and beautiful wife but no longer envied anybody anything.

  ‘Pretty rubbish, as a matter of fact,’ said Doug, staring moodily into space. ‘We’re in separate bedrooms these days. Good job we’ve got so many of them.’

  ‘What do the kids think about that? Have they said anything?’

  ‘Hard to tell what Ranulph thinks. He’s too busy obsessing over Minecraft ever to talk to his dad. As for Corrie …’

  Benjamin had noticed, for some time, that Doug never referred to his daughter by her full name, Coriander. He hated the name (which had been his wife’s choice) even more than its unfortunate twelve-year-old bearer did. And she herself never, ever answered to anything other than ‘Corrie’. Use of her full name would usually be met with glassy-eyed silence, as if some invisible stranger were being addressed.

  ‘Well,’ Doug continued, ‘there might be some hope there still. I’ve got a feeling she’s starting to hate me and Fran and everything we stand for, which would be excellent. I do my best to encourage it.’ Helping himself to a refill of whisky, he added: ‘I took her to the old Longbridge factory a couple of weeks ago. Told her about her grandad and what he used to do there. Tried to explain what a shop steward was. Pretty tough, trying to get a private-school girl from Chelsea to understand 1970s union politics, I must say. And, Christ, there isn’t much of the old place left.’

  ‘I know,’ said Benjamin. ‘Dad and I go and take a look occasionally.�
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  The thought that, many years ago, their fathers used to be on opposite sides of Britain’s great industrial divide made them both smile, and set off parallel trains of reminiscence which ended, in Doug’s case, with the question: ‘What about you? You’re looking well, I must say. Living inside a John Constable painting obviously suits you.’

  ‘Well, we’ll see about that. It’s early days yet.’

  ‘But the whole Cicely thing … you’re really OK with that?’

  ‘Of course I am. More than OK.’ He leaned forward. ‘Doug, for more than thirty years I’ve been stuck in a romantic obsession. And now it’s gone. I’m free. Can you imagine how good that feels?’

  ‘Sure, but what are you going to do with this freedom? You can’t just sit here all day making pasta sauce and writing poems about cows.’

  ‘I don’t know … Dad’s going to need a lot of looking after. I suppose I’ll be doing a fair bit of that.’

  ‘You’ll soon get bored of that drive to Rednal and back.’

  ‘Well … maybe he could move in here.’

  ‘Would you really want that?’ Doug asked, and when Benjamin didn’t answer, and he noticed that his whisky glass was empty again, he rose effortfully to his feet and said: ‘I think I’m going to turn in. Early start tomorrow if I’m going to be back in London by nine.’

  ‘OK, Doug. You know your way, don’t you? I think I’ll stay here for a bit. Let it all … sink in, you know.’

  ‘I know. It’s rough when one of your parents dies. Actually it doesn’t get much rougher than that.’ He put a hand on Benjamin’s shoulder and said, with feeling: ‘Goodnight, mate. You did well today.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Benjamin. He clasped Doug’s hand briefly, although he couldn’t bring himself to add ‘mate’. He never could.

  Alone in the sitting room, he poured himself another drink and went to sit on the broad wooden sill that ran around the bay of the window. He opened the window a little further and let the cool air flow over him. The wheel of the mill had been out of use for many decades now and the river, undiverted, unharnessed, flowed past steadily, without agitation or fuss, in a perpetual rippling stream of good humour. The moon was up and Benjamin could see bats darting to and fro across the backdrop of the luminous grey sky. Suddenly a powerful sadness stole over him. The reflections he had been trying to ward off all day – on the reality of his mother’s death, the agony of her last few weeks – could no longer be kept at bay.

  A piece of music came back to him and he knew that he had to listen to it. A song. He crossed over to the shelf where his iPod rested in its speaker dock, took out the device and started to scroll through the list of artists. It seemed the last one he had been listening to was XTC. He scrolled back past Wilson Pickett, Vaughan Williams, Van der Graaf Generator, Stravinsky, Steve Swallow, Steely Dan, Stackridge and Soft Machine before reaching the name he was looking for: Shirley Collins, the Sussex folk singer whose records he had started collecting in the 1980s. He loved all of her music but there was one song in particular which, during the last few weeks, had come to take on a special significance. Benjamin selected the song, pressed Play, and just as he reached the bay window again to sit down and gaze out at the moonlit river, Collins’s strong, austere, unaccompanied voice, heavy with reverb, streamed out of the speaker and filled the room with one of the most eerie and melancholy English folk tunes ever written.

  Adieu to old England, adieu

  And adieu to some hundreds of pounds

  If the world had been ended when I had been young

  My sorrows I’d never have known

  Benjamin closed his eyes and took another sip from his glass. What a day it had been, for memories, for reunions, for difficult conversations. His ex-wife Emily had been at the funeral, with her two young children and her husband Andrew. From Japan there had been his brother Paul, with whom he was no longer on speaking terms: he couldn’t even bring himself to make eye contact with him, either during his eulogy or at the reception afterwards. There had been uncles and aunts, forgotten friends and distant cousins. There had been Philip Chase, most loyal of his friends from King William’s School, and there had been Doug’s unexpected appearance, and there had even been an e-card from Cicely in Australia, which was much more than he’d been expecting, from her. And above all there had been Lois to stand beside him, Lois whose loyalty to her brother was absolute, whose eyes dimmed with sadness whenever she thought no one was watching her: Lois whose twenty-eight-year marriage remained a mystery to him and whose husband, who stayed dotingly close to her all day, was lucky to be rewarded with so much as the occasional glance in his direction …

  Once I could drink of the best

  The very best brandy and rum

  Now I am glad of a cup of spring water

  That flows from town to town

  The melody carried Benjamin back, back to the last two weeks of his mother’s life, when she had been unable to speak, when she had been sitting propped up in bed in the old bedroom, and he had sat in the room with her, for hours at a time, talking at first, trying to sustain a monologue, but finally realizing that the task was beyond him, and deciding instead to create a music playlist to fill the silence between them. So he made the playlist, and put it on shuffle, and for the rest of their time together – the rest of her life – Benjamin spoke to her only rarely, but sat on the edge of the bed and clasped her hand as they listened to Ravel and Vaughan Williams, Finzi and Bach, the most calming music he could think of, wanting things to end for her on a note of beauty, and there were more than five hundred songs on the playlist, and this one didn’t come up for a long time, almost until the final day …

  Once I could eat of good bread

  Good bread that was made of good wheat

  Now I am glad with a hard mouldy crust

  And glad that I’ve got it to eat

  … Lois and his father were in the house too, but they didn’t have his staying power, they drifted in and out of the bedroom, they had to keep themselves busy downstairs, making tea, cooking lunch, but Benjamin had never had any problem with inactivity, it suited him fine just to sit there, it suited his mother as well, it suited both of them just to gaze out of the window at the sky, which that day, he remembered, had been the deepest, heaviest grey, a lowering sky, an oppressive sky, perhaps merely typical of that dreary April, or perhaps, it had occurred to him, something to do with the cloud of volcanic ash which had drifted across Europe from Iceland and was making newspaper headlines and wreaking havoc with airline schedules across the continent, and it was while he was contemplating this sky, its preternatural mid-morning darkness, that Shirley Collins’s song had been plucked out at random by the iPod’s algorithm and began to tell its mournful story of ancient misfortune …

  Once I could lie on a good bed

  A good bed that was made of soft down

  Now I am glad of a clot of clean straw

  To keep meself from the cold ground

  Paying attention to the words now, Benjamin guessed that this was a song from the eighteenth or early nineteenth century, and gave voice to the misery of a prisoner awaiting transportation, but the associations that it set off in his mind, tonight, had nothing to do with crumbling cell walls or rat-infested mattresses: he thought, instead, of what Doug had told him about the anger he had encountered in the last few weeks on Gordon Brown’s campaign trail, the sense of simmering injustice, the resentment towards a financial and political establishment which had ripped people off and got away with it, the quiet rage of a middle class which had grown used to comfort and prosperity and now saw those things slipping out of their reach: ‘A few years ago they felt wealthy. Now they feel poor …’

  Once I could ride in me carriage

  With servants to drive me along

  Now I’m in prison, in prison so strong

  Not knowing which way I can turn

  … Yes, it was possible to extract this meaning from the words, to infer a story of los
s, of loss of privilege, that resonated across the centuries, but in reality everything that was beautiful about the song, everything that reached inside Benjamin now and clawed at his heart, came from the melody, from this arrangement of notes which seemed so truthful and stately and somehow … inevitable, the kind of melody that, once you heard it, you felt as though you’d known all your life, and that must have been the reason, he supposed, that just as the song was coming to a close that morning, just as Shirley Collins was repeating the first verse in her richly accented, mysteriously English voice, a voice that cut through the words like a shaft of sunlight cutting through the waters of a wine-dark river, just as the first verse was being repeated, something bizarre happened: Benjamin’s mother made a sound, the first sound she had made for days, everyone had been assuming that her vocal cords were useless now but no, she was trying to say something, at least that was what Benjamin imagined she was doing, for a moment or two, but then he realized, these were not words, this was not speech, the voice was too high, the pitch was too varied, even though it was hopelessly unmatched to the pitch on the recording, nevertheless his mother was trying to sing, something in the tune had touched upon a distant memory for her, it was coaxing out, or trying to coax out, some primal, instinctive response from the depths of her dying frame, and as the final verse came to an end, Benjamin’s spine tingled at the sound of this other voice, this impossibly thin, impossibly weak voice which must have belonged to his mother (although he could not recall having heard her sing before, not once, in all the time they had spent together), but which seemed, at that moment, to be coming from some disembodied presence in the room, some angel or ghost which was foreshadowing the immaterial essence his mother was about to become …