The Closed Circle (13 page)

“Me?” said Benjamin, incredulous.

“Well, why not? If I'm going to get any benefit at all out of this shitty job I might as well use it to do my friends some favours.”

“But I've never reviewed anything before. Let alone for one of the nationals.”

“Doesn't matter. You couldn't write anything worse than some of the rubbish the regulars send in. Anyway, I've got something that's right up your street.”

“Yes?”

“D'you remember that doddery old queen who came to read his poetry to us at school? Francis Piper, his name was.”

Benjamin nodded. That day was, in fact, imprinted upon his memory with indelible force. It was the same day he had forgotten to take his swimming trunks to school, and had been threatened—under the brutal, arcane rules of King William's PE department—with the possibility of having to go swimming in the nude in front of all his classmates. God had come to his rescue that day; and it was upon this incident (although hardly anybody else knew it) that Benjamin's entire system of religious belief was founded. It was not the kind of day you forget in a hurry.

“Yes, I remember him. Nice old bloke: I bought all his poems after that. Haven't read them for years, mind you. You're not telling me he's still alive, is he? He must have been about ninety when he came to read to us.”

“Died about five years ago, apparently. And now there's a biography coming out. Massive great thing—about eight hundred pages. What do you reckon? Do you think you could write something about it?”

“Yes, of course—I'd love to.”

“We should be getting a copy in about two or three weeks. I'll send it straight on to you.”

Philip had been walking only a few paces behind them during this conversation, and now, drawing level, he said: “I remember that guy. He had this sort of . . . angelic look about him, but his poems were absolutely filthy when you realized what he was going on about.”

“Which none of us did, at the time.”

“Except for Harding,” said Phil. “Don't you remember? He put his hand up in one of Fletcher's lessons and asked him if Piper was gay.”

“Only he didn't put it quite that nicely, did he?” Doug smiled, and wondered aloud: “Ah, Harding, Harding . . . whatever happened to you? Where are you now that we need you?”

“He could be anywhere,” said Benjamin. “We don't know that he even left Birmingham. He could be here today.”

Phil shook his head. “Sean? No. This was never his style. He wouldn't go in for solidarity with the workers, or with anybody else. Anarchy was more his thing.”

“Well, it'd be a let-down to meet him again anyway,” said Doug. “As I've said before, he probably became a quantity surveyor or something. He's probably turned out more boring than any of us.”

“Who are you talking about?” Malvina asked, drifting back towards them after spending the last few minutes on the fringes of the march.

“Just someone we used to know,” Doug answered. “Three middle-aged farts reminiscing about their schooldays. Stuff that happened before you were born.” And then he asked, as an afterthought: “When were you born, anyway?”

“1980.”

“Jesus.” They all looked genuinely incredulous at this information, as if what Malvina was claiming was a biological impossibility. “You really are one of Thatcher's children, aren't you?”

“Well, don't worry about having missed the 1970s,” said Phil. “I think you're just about to enter a time capsule.”

Warning for Blair as 100,000 Rally for Rover

Doug Anderton

The chanting never seemed to stop, and after a while it became hypnotic, like a classic piece of trance: “Tony Blair, Shame on You! Shame on You for Turning Blue!”

Whether the Prime Minister is listening or not is another matter. But the people of Birmingham left the government in no doubt about their feelings yesterday, as the city saw not only its own biggest demonstration since the 1970s, but one of Britain's most significant expressions of mass protest since Mrs. Thatcher's confrontations with the striking miners.

BMW's decision to abandon Rover cars has stirred the city into action. In an angry but good-natured display of public feeling, Rover workers, union leaders and tens of thousands of ordinary citizens marched side-by-side through the Birmingham streets yesterday, converging on Cannon Hill Park to hear a number of defiant speeches, preceded by a short set from local band UB40.

In terms of age, class and ethnic grouping, the rally was a fine demonstration of the city's broadness and diversity. Eighty-four-year-old Joe Davenport carried a banner offering a new spin on the initials BMW: “Betrayed Midland Workers.” Meanwhile, children as young as three or four milled around the grown-up feet, sporting balloons and candy floss from nearby stalls. There were no incidents and no arrests.

During the speeches there was some heckling from far-left groups. Richard Burden, the Labor MP for Northfield, had to bear the brunt of the crowd's anger at what many people see, at the very least, to be inertia and lack of foresight on the government's part. (His parliamentary colleague Paul Trotter, incidentally, was conspicuous by his absence.) Other speakers elicited a powerful response. Albert Bore, the leader of Birmingham City Council, got the biggest cheer for describing the Longbridge sell-off as “the rape of Rover.” The TGWU's Tony Woodley also pulled no punches, insisting that BMW had behaved “dishonestly and dishonourably,” and that the government has “a responsibility to Rover, to Britain and to British manufacturing industry.”

Probably the biggest hit of the afternoon, however, was radio celebrity and self-styled “community historian” Dr. Carl Chinn, who proved himself a compelling orator and drew unashamedly on a wealth of references to working-class and trade union traditions of protest: the sort of rhetoric that, were it to come from a member of his inner circle, would have the current Prime Minister choking on his Chardonnay.

But with memories of the Chartists ringing in their ears, most of the crowd seemed to go home invigorated and fired up for battle. What form that battle takes, and who will be enlisted, now depends—like everything else, it seems—on occult discussions which will no doubt be taking place behind the closed doors of Millbank over the next few days.

Carl Chinn's speech ended with the words: “We serve warning—if they do not hark to our voice then we will march through the streets of London and take our fight to the doors of Westminster.” And when the cheering had died down, Tony Woodley returned to the rostrum to add: “There has been a clear message to BMW today. We are not going quietly.” He was repeating the phrase, to even louder cheering and swelling applause, when Philip felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to see his son and his ex-wife standing behind him, smiling warmly in greeting.

“Hi, Claire,” he said, and embraced her tightly. He clapped Patrick on the back while Claire and Carol also managed to do the decent thing and greet each other with a short, functional hug.

Then Claire found that Doug was looking at her. It was their first meeting in more than fifteen years. He took her by both hands and in his eyes she could see the same hunger, the same curiosity she remembered seeing even longer ago: back when they were schoolchildren, and had travelled home together every afternoon on the number 62 bus. It was not as if the decades since then had simply dissolved. The moment was more troubling than that, because it impressed upon her, again, the truth of what she had realized at Benjamin's concert in December: there were some feelings that never faded, no matter how many years intervened, no matter how many friendships and marriages and relationships came and went in between. It was true, she thought, glancingly: he will always feel the same way about me; and I will always feel the same way about Benjamin; and Benjamin will always feel the same way about Cicely. Twenty years on, and deep down, nothing has changed. Nothing ever changes.

She didn't say any of this. She just smiled when Doug said, “You're looking fabulous, Claire,” and answered back: “You're looking great, too. I hear you've joined the aristocracy now. Hanging out with the upper classes obviously agrees with you.”

Before he could think of an answer, Doug became aware that the person standing behind Claire wanted to speak to him. He was a tall, slightly diffident-looking man, wearing a navy blue anorak, his hair thinning and greying, perhaps in his late sixties, clinging on to the arm of his wife, who seemed stouter and fitter and more assertive. Doug knew that he should recognize them, but he couldn't put a name to their faces. Claire noticed his uncertainty and turned to make introductions.

“Oh, I'm sorry—you do know each other, don't you? This is Mr. and Mrs. Trotter. Benjamin's mum and dad. We ran into each other just outside the cricket ground.”

“Hello, Doug.” Colin Trotter shook his hand, then held on to it, having apparently forgotten to let it go. “Doing very well for yourself now, I see. Sheila and I are so pleased. What would your dad have made of all this, I wonder?”

“He would have been glad to see you here, I can tell you that,” said Doug, meaning it.

“Well, we had our differences. We all did, in those days. But this is a great factory, that's the truth of the matter. Nobody wants to see it being tossed on the scrapheap like this.”

“Are you still working there, Colin?”

“No. I retired four years ago. Not a minute too soon, I have to say. We were sorry to hear about your father, Doug. Very sorry. He never got to enjoy his retirement much, did he?”

“Well, it was quick. He would have hardly known what was happening to him. It's not such a bad way to go.”

“How's Irene coping?”

“Battling on. She would have loved to come today, but she's only just had her hip done. I had to come up last week, take her to hospital and all that. We went private in the end.”

“Well,” said Colin, “there's no point having money, is there, unless you spend it?”

“Seems to be the way things are going,” Sheila Trotter added. And then said—perhaps to change the subject—“We thought Benjamin would be with you.”

“He should be.” Doug looked around, suddenly realizing that he hadn't seen his friend for about fifteen minutes. “He went off to say goodbye to someone, but he said he was coming straight back.” He turned to Philip and Carol, and although there was surprise in his voice, it was tinged with a familiar exasperation. “Has anybody seen Benjamin recently?”

Malvina had soon grown bored of the speeches: Benjamin could see that clearly enough. That wasn't why she was here. She had come to be with Paul; partly to make sure that Paul was present, and seen to be present, but also from sheer longing to be in his company. Benjamin hated having to admit such a thing to himself, but there was no avoiding it. And the worst of it was, it didn't seem to change his own feelings for her at all. When she turned to him in the middle of Tony Woodley's speech and said, “I think I'm going to head off,” he followed her unthinkingly, and walked with her all the way to the Cannon Hill car park, clearing her path through the jostling crowds. “Don't miss the rest of this,” she said to him, at the main gateway. “You should go back and join your friends.” He nodded, helpless. He was ashamed of himself, for feeling so drawn to her, but nothing could be done about it. It couldn't be shifted. And Malvina must have sensed it, too, because just before leaving, she said an odd thing, a wonderful thing, something he would never have expected. She said: “You know, Benjamin, whatever happens, however any of this pans out . . . I shall always be glad that I met you. I'll never regret it.” Then she kissed him quickly, fiercely on the cheek and darted away, like a fish making a sudden bolt for safer waters. Benjamin watched her disappear.

He began to wander back towards the stage at the far end of the park, where Doug, Phil and Carol had taken up prime position. The speakers' rhetoric had started to sound like meaningless shouting, a barrage of hectoring noise in some language he had long forgotten—although it still seemed to be remembered by the crowd, whose waves of cheering and heckling now felt to him entirely predictable, entirely robotic, a response only to the tone and rhythm of the voices from the stage, not to anything that was being said. He had started out this morning feeling engaged, politicized, and was now consciously slipping into a kind of melancholy inertia: the very opposite of what the rally was hoping to achieve. It wouldn't do. He would have to rejoin them all, go to the pub with them afterwards, talk about how inspiring the day had been and how they could keep its momentum going. Perhaps his parents had shown up by now and they would want to come along too. This was where his obligations lay. This was the sane and proper thing to do.

He walked back through the car park and reached the fringes of the crowd. A hot-dog stall filled the air with the smell of meat and onions, and a white-haired, ruddy-faced man with union jacks emblazoned on his top hat and waistcoat was selling balloons to children. Benjamin watched as two little girls—aged about five and three, at a guess—clutched the strings of their balloons solemnly while their mother wrestled with the lid of a Tupperware lunchbox and took out a little pile of jam sandwiches wrapped in clingfilm.

The five-year-old took her sandwich and bit into it; but her younger sister's co-ordination was not equal to the task. She reached out for a sandwich and in doing so let slip the string attached to her yellow balloon. Instantly it floated up into the air. She looked up and for a moment her face was wiped clean of all expression; then it froze into wide-eyed horror. “
Mum-my,
” she shouted, and made a grab for the string but already it was too high. “
MUMMY!
” she shouted again, and to Benjamin's ears her voice seemed far louder, far more affecting than the guttural ranting coming from the stage. He saw what was happening and ran forward; heard himself calling, “I'll get it, I'll get it!,” as if from a great distance, and ran past the girl's mother who was watching him in complete bewilderment, convinced he was a madman. The girl stared after him, too, but he took no notice: his gaze was fixed on the balloon as it drifted determinedly in the direction of the horse chestnut trees towards the edge of the park. It picked up speed and so did he, jostling the tight bunches of demonstrators and catching the shoulder of one woman who shouted after him, “
What the FUCK . . . ?
” Emerging from the crowd into more or less open ground he broke into a sprint, but it was much too late. The yellow balloon rose higher and higher, caught itself briefly on a branch but wrenched itself free, then took flight, spiralling into the grey April sky with innumerable loops and turns until it dwindled and faded, melted slowly into the infinite distance, leaving nothing behind but a yellow dot burned on to the retina and an aching, insupportable sense of loss . . .