The Closed Circle by Jonathan Coe Read Free Book Online

she’s responding to the music; how she’s dealing with the
change in tone, the change in her husband. And her demeanour has changed, as
well. She’s no longer staring up at the stage, adoringly. She’s looking at the floor.
There’s a smile on her face, yes, but what a smile! It’s the ruin of a smile, a fossilized remnant left over from the exhilaration of the last few numbers; frozen
into place now, lifeless and unmoving, a kind of rictus that only spotlights the
terrible sadness the rest of her face is betraying. And I can see, with that one glance
in her direction, that Benjamin may have had his heart broken, once, many years
ago, by the woman commemorated in this music, but Emily’s has been fractured a
hundred times, a thousand times over in the years she’s been married to him, by
the knowledge that he has never got over that brief, ridiculous, devastating
teenage love a fair. Never
tried
to get over it, I would guess: that’s the really
bruising, the really unforgiveable thing. He has no interest in forgetting her. No
interest in making Emily feel anything other than second best. The one he never
really wanted. A consolation prize for the inconsolable.
    I look around at the unreadable expressions of the other people in the audience,
and ask myself: don’t they know what they are witnessing here, what they are
listening to? Can’t they hear it? Can’t they see it in the stricken pallor that
Emily’s face has been washed in, since this music began?
    No. I don’t think they get it, to be honest. There’s only one other person in the
room who seems lost in this music, taken over by it, who seems to know anything
about the depths from which Benjamin must once have dragged it: and that,
remarkably, seems to be Malvina. She’s got her eyes fixed on Benjamin and
her
demeanour has changed, too: she’s wired, alert. She’s been sitting on the sidelines
until now, not taking part, observing everything coolly, but I can tell that something about
this
piece of music touches her. She’s involved, for the first time this
evening—passionately involved.
    Which leaves me wondering, again, the thing I’ve been wondering a lot over
the last few days: what
is
going on between those two, exactly?
    I glance at them both again, the two women that Benjamin (obliviously, I’m
sure) has started to torment with this music, and I know that I have to get out of
this pub right now. I find Patrick and tug on his arm, and when he turns to me I
cup my hand around his ear and tell him that I’m leaving, and we make an
arrangement that we’ll see each other tomorrow in his school lunch hour. Then
I’m gone.
    I stand by the side of the canal, a few minutes later. Frost is already spreading
along the towpath, and the black water ripples sometimes, mysteriously, with the
reflections of pale lights splintered into dancing fragments. The smoke from my
cigarette coils in the air, and the rough taste of it at the back of my throat is bitter,
hot and cleansing.
    It feels, now, as if I know everything there is to know about what’s happened
between Benjamin and Emily in the years I’ve been away. How easy it is, after all,
to read the history of a lifetime in one single unguarded moment. You just have to
be looking in the right direction; in the right place at the right time. But I knew
that before, if I’m honest with myself. I found it out just a few weeks ago, in
Lucca. Not in a pub. Not at a reunion of old jazzers. I was in the local
gastronomia
at the time. It was early evening, and I was by myself, and that was when I
spotted Stefano and his daughter Annamaria trying to choose between two
different  kinds of olive.
    Such a banal incident, when you think about it. Nothing unusual about it at
all. Of course, my first impulse was to approach him. Why not? There would have
been no awkwardness about it. We were supposed to be meeting for lunch in