Revolt

by Vernon Coleman

  ‘The top brass only use the first three floors,’ replied Napoleon. He turned and lowered his voice, sharing a secret. ‘The lifts don’t always work.’

  ‘Ah,’ nodded Tom, understanding. It was nice to know that the sprouts had their little problems too.

  They got into the lift. There were seats inside. An attendant in a smart blue and gold uniform, including a blue and gold peaked cap with an impressive looking badge on the front, greeted them with a salute.

  Out of the corner of a disobedient eye the lift attendant was watching his favourite Telescreen programme, a daily soap opera which told the story of a saintly black, gay Romanian who had a lisp, a limp and an ugly dog.

  ‘Third floor,’ said Napoleon.

  ‘Certainly sir,’ said the attendant, with obvious reluctance, tearing the corner of the disobedient eye off the screen in order to concentrate. ‘Please take your seats and fasten your seat belts.’

  Tom and Dorothy looked at the seats and then at the lift attendant.

  ‘Health and safety rules,’ the attendant explained. He spoke English with a heavy accent and Tom and Dorothy had difficulty understanding him. ‘I can’t press the button until you fasten your belts.’

  They sat down and fastened their belts.

  Standing in front of them, and holding himself firmly to attention, the lift attendant then took a small laminated card and a pair of reading spectacles out of his top pocket. He put on the spectacles and read to them the words printed on the card.

  ‘In case of an emergency malfunction of the suspension mechanisms, air bags will be liberated from the floor and sides of the elevator capsule. Liftees are to stay still and calm and remain in their seats to await rescue. In case of a door opening failure, emergency supplies of vitamins and nuts can be found available underneath your seats. These may contain vitamins and traces of nuts.’

  ‘Life’s full of ups and downs, eh,’ said Tom. Dorothy glanced at him and dug him in the ribs with her elbow. No one else seemed to notice.

  The lift attendant, trained to perfection, fastened his own seat belt, pressed the button marked UP with the index finger of his right hand, and took them up to the third floor. When they had unbuttoned their seat belts and were leaving the lift he saluted again.

  Napoleon led them along a corridor and into a huge reception room where a dozen secretaries sat staring into space. There clearly wasn’t anything for them to do. Napoleon asked Tom and Dorothy to stay where they were and approached a receptionist at the end of the room. He explained who he’d brought. The receptionist, looking pleased or relieved or possibly both, nodded and spoke.

  ‘Sir Czardas will see you immediately,’ Napoleon told Dorothy. ‘You must be very important. I’ve known people wait days even when they had appointments.’ He turned to Tom. ‘Would you mind coming with me? The appointment only mentions Dorothy Cobleigh.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ said Tom.

  ‘We’ll go and have a drink and watch football,’ said Napoleon.

  ‘We have some old film of football matches from the 20th century.’

  ‘Great’, said Tom, who hated football. ‘That will be nice.’

  Chapter 39

  ‘We had quite a job finding you,’ said Sir Czardas.

  ‘I wasn’t hiding,’ said Dorothy.

  ‘No, no, not at all. Obviously not,’ said Sir Czardas. ‘It’s just that our records aren’t quite as good as they used to be.’

  ‘Why did you want to find me?’ asked Dorothy.

  ‘A very natural question,’ said Sir Czardas. ‘But if you don’t mind I’d like the Chief Commissioner to tell you that herself’ He leant forwards a little, as though about to impart a piece of secret information. ‘If you have any concerns about the meeting I think I can reassure you. I’m confident that you will be pleasantly surprised by what the Chief Commissioner has to say to you.’ He paused and smiled at her. When he smiled he looked like a pantomime villain, Captain Hook in Peter Pan perhaps, leering at his next victim. It wasn’t his fault and he didn’t mean to look that way. It was just the way he smiled.

  He himself took Dorothy down the corridor to the Chief Commissioner’s office suite.

  It has been a long time since Sir Czardas had treated any suspect so well.

  Chapter 40

  ‘You made that?’ demanded the Chief Commissioner, pointing towards the bust on her windowsill. She had expected to be disappointed by Dorothy but she wasn’t. Not in the slightest. Dorothy was far older than the sort of woman who attracted her personally (she changed her personal assistants every six months to keep them young and fresh) but she looked interesting and intelligent and capable and, given the circumstances, that was all she wanted of her.

  ‘Oh crumbs!’ said Dorothy, tempted to giggle. It had been a long time since she’d giggled. The bust was one she’d made when she was a student. She thought it primitive and rather clumsy. She couldn’t even remember who had modelled for it. Almost certainly one of her fellow students.

  ‘Did you make that?’ demanded the Chief Commissioner again.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dorothy, the giggling moment now over. ‘Yes, I made that.’

  ‘I like it,’ said the Chief Commissioner. ‘It’s a wonderful piece of art.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Dorothy.

  ‘I like art,’ said the Chief Commissioner. She waved a hand around the room. ‘As you can see.’

  Dorothy followed the hand with her eyes. She was tempted to giggle again, but didn’t. She’d never seen such a mish-mash of furniture in one place. She had, she thought, seen more thought put into a display of furniture in an auction room.

  ‘I want you to make me some statues,’ said the Chief Commissioner, who wasn’t a woman to waste time on small talk. Especially not with suspects. She’d been surprised about Dorothy being a suspect. But it wasn’t the end of the world. And certainly not the end of the project.

  ‘Statues?’

  ‘Statues,’ repeated the Chief Commissioner. She pointed to the bust. ‘Like that one but with chests and bodies and arms and legs.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Dorothy who knew what a statue was. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Can you action that?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘I want to celebrate the wonderful work done by EUDCE,’ said the Chief Commissioner. ‘Our work is not always fully appreciated.’

  Dorothy didn’t quite know what to say to this. So she asked a question.

  ‘Who would be the subject?’

  ‘The subject?’

  ‘The model for the statue?’

  ‘Oh, it doesn’t really matter.’

  ‘Yourself?’

  The Chief Commissioner felt herself blushing. ‘Myself?’

  ‘A statue of yourself?’

  ‘Well, do you think that would be artistically online?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Dorothy who didn’t particularly like doing it but who could butter with the best. ‘You’d make a splendid subject for a statue.’

  The Chief Commissioner blushed an even deeper shade of red. ‘Well I dare say that would be...’ she searched for a word. ‘Acceptable,’ she said at last. ‘I have no doubt it would make my people very happy.’

  There was a silence for a moment. Dorothy didn’t know what to say and the Chief Commissioner was clearly imagining the statue of herself

  ‘But I don’t just want the one.’

  ‘Not just one statue?’

  ‘No. Not just one. Rather more than one.’

  ‘How many were you thinking of?’

  ‘My door’s open on that one but let’s say just over eight thousand to start with,’ said the Chief Commissioner. ‘Say eight thousand and one, perhaps?’

  Dorothy stared at her and only managed to stop her jaw dropping by clenching her teeth. ‘Eight thousand and one statues?’

  ‘That would be the starting point,’ said the Chief Commissioner.

  ‘What would you like the statues made of?’ asked Dorothy.

 
; ‘Terracotta,’ said the Chief Commissioner immediately.

  And then Dorothy, who had, as a student, actually visited the Terracotta army in China, knew and understood. It was quite a shock to realise just how mad a Chief Commissioner could be, and the heights to which her sense of grandeur could aspire.

  ‘The thing is,’ continued the Chief Commissioner, ‘brown is such an unfetching colour.’ She leant forward and lowered her voice, as though the next bit of the sentence included something of great importance. ‘They would be a browny sort of colour wouldn’t they?’

  ‘They would,’ agreed Dorothy. ‘That’s the sort of general terracotta colour. Brownish red.’

  ‘Could you perhaps paint them EUDCE blue? You don’t need to dress them, of course. That would make them look like window display models. Just paint blue uniforms on them. With little yellow stars.’

  ‘Blue? With yellow stars?’

  ‘That would be nice, don’t you think? Artistic? A celebration of EUDCE. Creating a work of art to celebrate the glory of the United States of Europe, formerly the European Union, formerly the European Economic Community, formerly the Common Market. That sort of thing. Great artistic achievement. Grand. Magnificent. And sponsored by the world’s greatest ever art patron.’ She looked at Dorothy and smiled and then added. ‘EUDCE,’ she added quickly. ‘EUDCE being the greatest ever art patron.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ agreed Dorothy. She swallowed hard. ‘That would be very artistic,’ she agreed.

  ‘We’d want more later,’ said the Chief Commissioner. She stood up and started to pace around the room, as she did when she felt particularly excited by some great venture. She liked to think of herself as a visionary, a dreamer. ‘I want to make a statement. A statement to celebrate our great achievements.’

  ‘Would you like all eight thousand statues to be in your likeness?’ asked Dorothy.

  The Chief Commissioner looked at her sharply. ‘Good heavens, no!’ she said. ‘This isn’t an exercise in vanity. Mix them about a bit. You can do that can’t you? Change the faces. The bodies can be the same. Just change the faces.’ She thought for a moment. ‘We could even have some men in there,’ she said, albeit slightly reluctantly. She thought about this for a while. ‘We could have some of our great ones,’ she said. ‘Do a statue of the great Edward Heath. You remember him, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Dorothy.

  ‘And the great Lords Mandelson and Kinnock.’

  ‘Right,’ said Dorothy.

  ‘Two Kinnocks,’ said the Chief Commissioner, remembering. ‘There should be two Kinnocks. One male, one female.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’ll need quite a lot of terracotta,’ said Dorothy. ‘And some help. I’ll have to hire a lot of assistants.’

  ‘Of course you will,’ said the Chief Commissioner.

  ‘And I’ll need somewhere to make the statues.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ agreed the Chief Commissioner. ‘See Sir Czardas about all that. He’ll fix you up with whatever you need.’ She picked up the telephone. ‘I’ll tell him to get you whatever you want,’ she said. She thought for a moment. ‘I’ll see that you and your family get extra food coupons. And if your work is satisfactory I’ll think about making you a sprout.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Dorothy.

  The Chief Commissioner turned to the telephone and waved a hand of dismissal.

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Dorothy, heading for the door.

  But the Chief Commissioner was already busy talking to Sir Czardas and telling him to get Dorothy as much terracotta as she needed.

  ‘Where do I find it?’ asked Sir Czardas.

  ‘How the hell should I know?’ demanded the Chief Commissioner. ‘Just find it.’ And she slammed the telephone down. As she did so it occurred to her that she wasn’t even sure what terracotta was. But that wasn’t her problem. She walked across to the windowsill and stood in front of the bust she so admired. Eight thousand statues. Eight thousand and one. And more to follow. And at least one of them a likeness of her. Maybe she’d been hasty in telling the sculptor not to make them all like her. Maybe she’d have another word with the woman later. And she’d have to think of where to put the statues when they were made. They could fill the old House of Commons with them. And the House of Lords. They were empty buildings and would make a nice setting for a few hundred statues. And maybe they could use a football stadium. No, that would be no good. The statues might be damaged if it rained. Then she remembered that the English, in the dying days of their existence as a race, had built a football stadium with a moveable roof. She could close the roof and put them in there. How many would that hold? Around 100,000 in the stands. They could rip out all the seats. And another 100,000 on the pitch. And there were other stadiums weren’t there? She smiled. This was going to be better than anything the Chinese had done. When it was all finished she’d invite the Life-time President of EUDCE over from Brussels. He could do the official opening. She almost purred. Tony might even bless her. One of his personal blessings rather than one of the communal ones. She shivered with excitement. She pressed the intercom on her desk and told her personal assistant to come in.

  Chapter 41

  ‘And she has the power to order 8,001 statues all by herself?’

  ‘It seems so,’ replied Dorothy. ‘I got the impression she runs the region as though she owns it. A sort of personal fiefdom. I don’t think the last Queen of England had a zillionth as much power as she has.’

  ‘They’re loaded with money and stuff,’ said Tom. ‘They’ve got everything in the world in that place. While you were with Her Highness, Napoleon took me into the sprouts’ bar and offered me a choice of nine different malt whiskys.’

  ‘You should have seen the furniture in her office,’ said Dorothy. ‘It was all beautiful furniture. Each piece worthy of a place in a museum. But together it looked like a badly organised shop. Do you remember that antique shop on the King’s road which catered for rich Arabs and Russians?’

  Tom laughed at the thought. In the olden days, just before the final rise of EUDCE and the final fall of England, they had sometimes walked into the shop, pretending to browse. They’d once watched the owner sell a Russian oligarch a Chippendale desk and a Louis Quinze chair as a ‘nice pair’. When the Russian had sat in the chair and commented about how well it went with the desk they’d had to rush out of the shop in giggles. They’d laughed a lot more in those days.

  Napoleon and the stout sprout had driven them home. Sitting in the car neither of them had dared talk about what they’d seen or learnt. There was a glass partition between the two of them and the sprouts sitting in the front but neither Tom nor Dorothy were naive enough to imagine that the back of the car, where they were sitting in comfort, would not be bugged. They had collected Tom’s aunt from Gladwys and Dalby’s flat (they had insisted that Napoleon take her and Tabatha there before they’d agreed to accompany him to the EUDCE Headquarters) and were back in their kitchen.

  ‘She wants to outdo the Chinese Terracotta Army?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, presumably she wants the statues to be bigger.’

  ‘She wants more of them.’

  ‘Yes. But she also wants them bigger?’

  ‘I suppose so. She certainly wouldn’t say no if they were bigger.’

  ‘Say, seven foot tall?’

  ‘That would be OK. As long as it was measured in metres!’

  ‘The Chinese soldiers are hollow aren’t they?’

  ‘The legs are solid, so that they are strong enough to hold up the weight of the bodies. But, yes, the bodies are hollow. The heads, arms and bodies are hollow.’

  ‘Yours will be hollow too?’

  ‘Yes. Otherwise they’d weigh too much. And they’d use up a lot more terracotta.’

  ‘You’d make them in two halves and then glue them together?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The sprouts won’t know how much a terracotta statue should w
eigh?’

  ‘I don’t so I don’t expect they will. I doubt if anyone has ever weighed one.’

  ‘You could put something into the hollow of the body?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose you could,’ agreed Dorothy. ‘What sort of something?’

  ‘If you had something solid inside the statues you wouldn’t need to have solid legs?’

  Dorothy thought for a moment. ‘No, I don’t suppose so.’

  Tom sat back and grinned.

  ‘What on earth are you planning?’ asked Dorothy.

  ‘We could hide things inside the terracotta statues,’ said Tom.

  ‘Yes, I gathered that!’ said Dorothy. ‘But what?’

  ‘Think about it,’ said Tom. Dorothy thought about it. And thought about it.

  And then she knew.

  ‘Oh my God!’ she said suddenly.

  Chapter 42

  Dorothy was given the use of a disused Tesco supermarket in the centre of the town where she and Tom lived. Supermarkets had died a relatively fast death as the oil price had soared. The cost of moving food and other goods around the world (and, indeed, around the country) had risen so far and so fast that the increase in transport costs had put the supermarkets out of business. The little shops that replaced them sold locally grown produce and locally made clothing. Most small shops sold a bit of everything because instead of offering specialist services they catered for the needs of local communities.

  ‘We’ll need a constant supply of the coarse, porous clay we need,’ Dorothy told the sprout, a seconded Senior Administrative Officer (Shredding) who had been given the specific task of making sure that Dorothy’s commission to produce 8,001 statues was not hindered by a lack of resources.

  ‘I can have it delivered to the goods yard at the railway station,’ said the sprout. ‘But I don’t know how we’re going to move it from there to Tesco’s.’