The Rotters' Club (30 page)

‘I don’t think so,’ said Benjamin, who couldn’t have cared less. He would have ditched any pretence of good manners for the sake of this thrilling intimacy. ‘I think there’s something going on between those two tonight, anyway.’

‘I just find it so hard to talk to Claire after what she wrote about me. I feel she betrayed me. Can you make her out, at all?’

Benjamin shrugged. As usual, in Cicely’s presence, he was afraid of appearing inarticulate, and as usual, this fear robbed him of his power of speech.

‘People are so… opaque, so
enigmatic,’
she mused. ‘That’s fascinating, though, isn’t it? That must fascinate you, as a writer.’

‘Yes, it does,’ said Benjamin. He had rashly told Cicely that he was working on a novel, and now she had him marked down as a keen observer of human nature. It was a pretence he felt obliged to sustain, for her benefit. ‘The complexities of social behaviour, the… subtle nuances of character are all…’ (what the
fuck
was he talking about?) ‘… well, I’m really into all that.’

‘I find it rather terrifying,’ said Cicely, with a smile, ‘to think how closely you must be watching everything I say and do. Do you write it all down afterwards?’

‘I don’t need to,’ said Benjamin, solemnly and truthfully. ‘I can always remember it.’

‘I hope you aren’t going to put me in your book. I’m sure your portrait would be very unflattering. I’d emerge as some ridiculous egotist, totally obsessed with myself and not at all interested in the world around me.’

It pained Benjamin that every time he saw her (and this was the fourth of their meetings at The Grapevine), she would fall into this way of talking: this endless, punishing self-denigration.

‘Is that really how you see yourself?’ he asked.

‘It’s how you’ve
made
me see myself,’ Cicely answered, and there was nothing but gratitude in her voice and eyes as she said it.

‘I’ll get you a drink,’ muttered Benjamin, and as he waited at the bar he bit his lip and told himself, yet again, that the time had come to confess the truth: to tell Cicely once and for all that it was absurd, this rôle she had found for him, casting him as her severest critic, her conscience, almost, when the fact of the matter was that he worshipped everything about her with unquestioning fervour. Only one thought was holding him back – the awful suspicion that once she knew what his real feelings were, she would lose interest in him, and not want to see him again. He was in a grotesque situation, in other words, being permitted to spend as much time as he wanted in the company of the person he idolized more than anyone in the world, but only on condition that he never said anything affectionate to her, never paid her a compliment, never mentioned that he loved or valued or was even attracted to her. The price he must pay for seeing Cicely was to live a permanent lie.

In any case, shortly after returning to their table with a half pint of Guinness and a Bloody Mary, Benjamin learned that this particular ordeal would soon be coming to an end.

‘You’re very special to me, you know,’ Cicely said. A tiny piece of snot was peeping out from her left nostril, and he watched, enraptured, as she absently removed it with a delicate stroke of her finger, and wiped it on a handkerchief. My God, he even adored the way she picked her nose. If it had come to a choice, at that moment, between watching Cicely pick her nose, or being slowly fellated in turn by Brigitte Bardot and Julie Christie, he knew which he would have preferred.

‘We’ll always be friends, from now on,’ she continued. ‘And not just ordinary friends. There’s something different about our friendship. A kind of… precious quality to it. The way it started! God!’

She threw back her head and laughed, but for some reason Benjamin couldn’t share in her hilarity. He had a nasty, hollow intimation that something dreadful was about to happen. He smiled weakly.

‘I’ll always be grateful, you know, for what you did for me. The way you revealed me to myself. No one could ask for anything more than that. And I’ve loved these meetings we’ve had. Coming to this pub, and talking to each other, so frankly, so honestly.’

‘You’ve…
loved
these meetings?’ Benjamin said. She looked at him inquiringly, so he explained: ‘You said “loved”. You used the past tense.’

‘I know.’ She stared into her drink, unable to meet his eye. ‘I can’t come here and see you any more, Ben. I’m sorry.’

A fuse was suddenly blown, in some far distant galaxy, and the universe went black.

‘Why not?’ Benjamin heard himself saying, light years away.

‘My boyfriend says he doesn’t like it.’

‘Your… ?’

‘I’ve started going out with Julian. Julian Stubbs.’ She was almost weeping into her drink, now. ‘It’ll be a disaster, I know. Oh, I’m a terrible, terrible person.’

*

The evening turned out more successfully for Claire. Her reward for being friendly to Doug all evening was that he invited her home for coffee. They were both slightly drunk, and on the back seat of the number 62 bus as it rattled its way up Lickey Road, past the Longbridge factory gates, she allowed him to slip his arm around her shoulder. She drew the line when he made fumbling but unmistakable overtures towards her left breast; but it was pleasant, on the whole, to sit back on that warm spring night, not saying much, not attempting to make conversation, just watching the play of amber light on the seats in front as the streetlamps passed overhead and the bus made its slow progress towards the terminus, taking Claire closer and closer to the next stage of her quest; or perhaps even its end.

When they arrived at Doug’s house, his mother was watching television and his father was still working, his papers arranged in careful stacks on the dining-room table, his cigarette burning out almost untouched in the ashtray. They both rose to their feet when they saw that their son had company. For a terrible moment she thought that Doug was going to tell them her full name, so that Bill would realize she was Miriam’s little sister and would become hostile and suspicious and reluctant to talk to her. But all he said was, ‘Mum, Dad – this is Claire’, and then Bill went back to work, and she talked in the kitchen for about half an hour with Doug and Irene, and then just as she was leaving she went back into the dining room and asked Bill if she could interview him for the school magazine, and he looked amazed but clearly very pleased by the idea, and Doug also looked amazed and slightly less pleased, but then Claire kissed him on the mouth when they said goodnight in the front doorway and that seemed to make things better.

15

THE BILL BOARD

Thursday, 28 April, 1977

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

From Arthur Pusey-Hamilton, MBE

Dear Sirs,

A recent article by your correspondent, Douglas Anderton, highlighted instances of what he describes as ‘anti-Irish sentiment’ among the good people of Birmingham. Since 1974, the year of the pub bombings, he alleges a catalogue of firebomb attacks, lynchings and unprovoked assaults on Irish citizens, and describes these incidents as a ‘disgrace’.

For once, I fully agree with Mr Anderton. These incidents are indeed disgraceful. There have been far too few of them, for one thing, and they have not been nearly serious enough.

Does Mr Anderton not realize that we are fighting a war in Ireland – a war designed to protect legitimate British interests? In these circumstances, it is surely incumbent on every right-thinking British citizen to do everything in his (or her) power to support the government in its campaign against those forces of sedition that are massed against it on the other side of the Irish sea.

There are a number of simple but effective measures which all of us can take in this respect. Take, for instance, the controversial (to some minds) British policy of ‘internment’. It was in fact Gladys, my good lady wife, who first found a way of putting this into practice at home. We had long nursed a suspicion that our next-door neighbour, Mr O’Reilly, was – not to put too fine a point on it – Irish. Although we had no concrete proof, there were certain factors – his name, his choice of colour (emerald green) for the family car, his habit of whistling ‘Danny Boy’ while mowing the lawn – which convinced us pretty firmly that he had Irish blood in him. It was the work of just a few hours for Gladys to set up a primitive booby trap across his front drive, and then, when he was dangling helplessly by his left ankle from the nearest lamp-post, to bind him securely and carry him kicking and screaming upstairs to the airing cupboard, where he is confined to this day. One less Paddy to contaminate the streets of this fair city, say I!

My own approach, I might add, has been somewhat more radical. It has for some time been rumoured – although why there should be any secrecy about this, I can’t imagine – that the British army operates a ‘shoot to kill’ policy in Northern Ireland. Despite having written numerous letters to No 10 Downing Street, I have been unable to obtain official confirmation of this fact, and yet I thought there was no particular reason why, as a patriotic Englishman, I should not attempt to instigate something similar in our own pleasant, tree-lined avenue. Accordingly I obtained a modest bank loan in order to purchase some ammunition and convert our loft into a small gun turret, and began to keep watch on the street outside. It wasn’t long before I noticed that the name on the local butcher’s van, which drove past our house every Tuesday and Thursday morning at 10 o’clock, was none other than ‘Murphy’s – Suppliers of Fine Meat and Poultry’. Could anything have been more blatant? The driver might just as well have spray-painted the words ‘Troops Out’ on to his van in six-foot lettering. Right, I thought. Right, you little Provo bastard – I know what your game is. Accordingly, the very next time that he passed by, I let rip with a couple of rounds from my trusty Kalashnikov. Sadly, my aim is not quite what it was (my eyesight has been dicky ever since a trivial argument with Gladys, my good lady wife, over the correct position to adopt while singing the third verse of the National Anthem; tempers got a little frayed and our ornamental Burmese corkscrew was rather too close to hand) and the only target I managed to hit, on this occasion, was a dog belonging to an elderly passer-by – it was an Irish wolfhound, I’m pleased to say – while the cowardly blighter Murphy swerved as soon as he heard my fire and crashed into a nearby tree, sustaining what tragically turned out to be only minor external injuries. He then had the effrontery to report this incident to the police, and they, showing a lack of judgement and an absence of patriotic decency that can scarcely be credited, thereupon arrested both myself and Gladys, my good lady wife. Even now we find ourselves detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure, but we remain confident that our names will be cleared at the forthcoming trial, which takes place on Wednesday next. The presence and support of all of your good readers on this historic occasion would be much appreciated.

  I remain, Sir, yours indefatigably,
  Arthur Pusey-Hamilton, MBE.

SEALED with the ancient and noble Seal of the Pusey-Hamiltons.

‘FLOREAT VAGINA!’

16

CN:… this tape recorder, if that’s OK?

BA: Certainly, certainly. Whatever suits you best.

CN: I mean, obviously, I won’t use everything we say. I’ll edit it all down.

BA: I’m in your hands, Claire. This new-fangled technology’s beyond me.

CN: (
laughs
) Not
that
new-fangled, really… Anyway, here we go. Ready?

BA: (
laughs
) Ready as I’ll ever be. Fire away then. Do your worst.

CN: OK… Well… I’m not quite sure where to start. I’m talking to Bill Anderton, Convenor of the Works Committee at the British Leyland Longbridge ptant, and a senior – senior shop steward?–

BA: Senior, yes, that’s fair to say.

CN: – in the Transport and General Workers’ Union. Perhaps you could begin by telling me why
you
think that the readers of this magazine should be interested in what happens at Longbridge.

BA: Well, Claire, that’s a very interesting question, and I can think of two ways of answering it. One is simply to say that everyone who lives in Birmingham is affected by Longbridge. You can’t get away from that. The life of a factory this size has an impact on every part of the local community. From the dealers who sell the cars, the engineering firms who help supply the parts, the supermarkets where the men’s wives spend their money at the end of the week… The list goes on and on. I think everybody can agree about that. But the second thing I’m going to say is more contentious, if you like. There’s a struggle going on at Longbridge – a war, you might say. The struggle between labour and capital. This struggle is as old as history or at least as old as capitalism, but you don’t read about it much in the history books. I’ve looked at the books my son brings home from school and they’re the same as the books I used to read when I was a kid – the history of kings and princes and prime ministers. The history of the ruling class, in other words. But the ruling class is only a tiny part of history and over the centuries it’s been sustained and supported by the labour of the rest of the population, and those people have a history as well. So what I’m saying is that the kids at King William’s ought to be interested in Longbridge because it provides a – a microcosm, if you will, of society as a whole. The ruling class
versus
the labouring class. Management
versus
workers. That’s what history is all about and that’s what society is all about and that’s what life is all about, to be honest. I’m not sure… I don’t know whether I’ve put that very well.