The Rotters' Club by Jonathan Coe Page A

a third use for it. Neither spoke much as they perused their menus, which were printed on enormous sheets of card, some two feet by eighteen inches, but seemed to offer only three choices, one of which was off.
    Bill went for the mixed grill. Miriam chose the chicken-in-a-basket.
    ‘Do you want chips with that?’ the waitress asked.
    ‘What’s the alternative?’ asked Miriam.
    ‘Just chips,’ said the waitress.
    ‘Chips is fine,’ said Miriam, fighting back tears.
    ‘I’m sorry about that,’ said the waitress, concerned. ‘Do you not like chips?’
    ‘It’s all right,’ said Miriam, reaching for a tissue. ‘Really.’
    ‘She loves chips,’ said Bill. ‘Adores them, in fact. We both do. This is a purely personal matter. Please go away.’ Just as she was about to disappear into the encroaching shadows, he added: ‘And bring us a bottle of Blue Nun while you’re at it.’
    He took out his own handkerchief and dabbed tenderly beneath Miriam’s eyes. She pushed him away.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m being stupid.’
    ‘Don’t worry. It’s this place. I know how you feel. It’s so depressing.’
    ‘It’s not that,’ said Miriam, sniffing. ‘It’s Irene. I want you to leave her. I want you to leave her and move in with me.’
    ‘Oh, Jesus Christ,’ said Bill. ‘I don’t believe this is happening.’
    This was not a response to Miriam’s declaration – which he had been anticipating anyway, with growing dread – but to the arrival of a party of twelve men and a ferocious, tweedy woman at a nearby table. The men were a sullen-looking bunch: middle-aged for the most part, too poorly dressed to be businessmen, too weedy and unathletic to be rugby players. They were noisy but there was no boisterousness, no high spirits about them; and they all seemed to be terrified of the woman, who, after sitting down at the table, took out a monocle and clamped it over her right eye. It would have been an unprepossessing assembly, at the best of times. But this was the worst of times: for among their number, quite unmissably, was someone Bill recognized only too well. Someone he saw every day of the working week, and usually went out of his way to avoid. His brother-in-arms in the labour relations war, and personal bête noire: Roy Slater.
    ‘Don’t move,’ said Bill. ‘Don’t look around, and don’t say anything. We’re going to have to leave.’
    ‘What are you talking about?’ said Miriam. ‘Did you hear what I just said to you?’
    ‘Of course I heard,’ said Bill. ‘And we’ll discuss it. I promise we’ll discuss it. But right now’ – he glanced over his shoulder, taking note, with some relief, of a velvet-wallpapered door in the wall behind them – ‘it’s time for a quick getaway. You know who Roy Slater is, don’t you?’
    Miriam nodded, confused.
    ‘Well, he’s right behind you. And if we don’t get out of here in the next ten seconds, he’s going to see us.’
    The dimness of the lighting was on their side, this time, and it was easy enough to leave their table and slip out through the door. They found themselves walking down a deserted corridor, past a number of dark, unused public rooms, until a fire exit gave them access to the hotel car park. The cold night air assaulted them brutally, without warning. Miriam actually cried out: a brief, uncontainable wail of distress. It was the shock, mainly, but also a hint of her despair at the way this longed-for evening was turning out.
    They hurried round to the front of the hotel, ducked inside, then paused uncertainly in reception.
    ‘Let’s go upstairs,’ said Bill. ‘Let’s go to bed.’
    ‘Bed? It’s only eight-thirty.’
    ‘We can’t stay down here. It’s too risky.’
    ‘What about my chicken and chips?’
    Bill didn’t seem to have heard her. ‘What’s he doing here, anyway?’ he was saying to himself. ‘Who are those people?’
    He went to the reception desk and asked for details of