The Rotters' Club by Jonathan Coe Read Free Book Online

promises, they chip away at the workers’ pay packets. It’s not good enough. It’s –’
    ‘It’s not about pay, you fool!’ Bill was shouting, cutting across the rest of Slater’s answer. ‘This strike is not about pay!’
    ‘What is it about, then?’ said Doug, who had appeared in the living-room doorway, drawn by the sound of the television.
    ‘This ignorant… pillock!’ For a moment Bill was speechless with anger. ‘It’s about right and wrong,’ he then explained, ostensibly to his son but more, you might have thought, to an imagined audience of television viewers. ‘They’ve been docking workers’ pay because of the time they’ve been spending cleaning themselves up in the last half hour of the shift. It’s about the right to… cleanliness, and hygiene.’
    ‘… just as long as it takes,’ Slater was insisting, on the screen. ‘We want this money. We have a right to this money. We’re going to get –’
    ‘It’s not about bloody money!’ Bill shouted, a hand coursing frantically, now, through the thinning hair above his forehead. ‘You didn’t even call this strike, Slater. You know nothing about it. You don’t know what the bloody hell you’re talking about.’
    ‘Is he the one that was so rude to me,’ Irene ventured, ‘down at the club that time? When you were buying drinks?’
    ‘He’s rude to everybody. He’s a nasty piece of work. And he’s got no right, no right at all, to get up on the television and start –’ The telephone rang, shrill and excitable. Bill scarcely missed a beat as he went to pick it up. ‘Here we go, then. This’ll be Kevin. He’ll have seen it. He’ll be screaming blue murder.’ He grabbed the receiver and snapped: ‘Hello?’
    It wasn’t Kevin. It was Miriam.
    ‘Hello, Bill. Is this a good time?’
    He still retained, occasionally, the capacity to surprise himself: it took only a second or two to recover, and take the measure of the situation.
    ‘Oh, hello, Kev. Yes, I saw it. What’s… what’s your view, then? How do you think we should proceed?’
    Miriam, too, was accustomed to this kind of subterfuge. ‘Listen, Bill, I was ringing about tomorrow night. I wondered if you might be free.’
    ‘Always…’ – he glanced at his wife, whose attention was concentrated on the television – ‘always difficult, that, isn’t it? Always a bit of a problem.’
    ‘But Bill – darling –’ (was the word calculated, or had it come naturally? She would surely know the effect it would have on him) ‘– it’s Valentine’s Day.’
    ‘Yes, I’m aware of that. Well aware. But –’
    ‘And I’ve got the house to myself. All evening.’
    Bill was silenced, for a moment.
    ‘Claire’s going to some disco, you see. And it’s parent-teachers. Parent-teachers night at King William’s. Mum and Dad’ll be out.’
    And so will I, you fool, Bill said to himself. Had you not thought of that? I’ve got to be there too. And yet, at the same time, a heavenly vista opened up to him. An hour alone with Miriam; maybe two. Privacy. A bed. They had never made love in a bed. Every time so far had been rushed, fumbled, in some corner of the factory, always the threat of someone disturbing them, never the chance to do it properly, to take their time, to undress. And this way they could undress. He could see her naked. For a whole hour; maybe two.
    But it was parent-teachers night. Irene would expect him to go. She had a right to expect that. And he owed it to Doug.
    ‘Can you not find an alternative, Kev?’ he said loudly into the phone. ‘I have to say that of all the nights you could have chosen, that has to be the worst.’
    ‘Please try to make it, Bill. Please. Just think what it would be like…’
    ‘Yes, all right, all right.’ He cut her off, not wanting to listen to her pleading. The picture was quite vivid enough as it was. He sighed heavily. ‘Well, if that’s when it has to be, then… that’s when it has to be.’ He could hear