I saw much of the parliamentary committee before I myself left, and indeed of Parliament, because I was the only one who attended all the committee’s meetings—or rather, all of those to which a representative of the Society was admitted. The Parliamentary Committee for Local Electricity, as it termed itself, continued long after my time and indeed until Bessemer’s accident brought the Society to an end.
Parliament, then.
Everybody nowadays thinks it is a bad joke that the Member of Parliament can almost never decide how he will vote, but is compelled, nonetheless to spend most of his parliamentary life attending “debates” based fundamentally upon the premise that he can so decide and is, therefore, accessible to argument. A smaller, better informed number thinks it a bad joke that the “debates” are, in the event, for the most part hardly attended at all, though almost all M.P.s in default of special personal arrangements have to hang about while they are going on, in order to pass through the division lobbies whenever required, which is often unexpectedly: day after day, week after week, month after month. A still smaller number thinks it a bad joke that we have abandoned the hope, and to some extent the practice, of government by those who are born and trained to power, in favor of government by those who have to struggle, fight, defame, blarney, manipulate, bribe, and conspire to get power, and then to go on struggling, fighting, defaming, blarneying, manipulating, bribing, and conspiring in order to keep it: men and women of one particular kind, in fact, or at least with one particular, not obviously desirable, thing in common. Government, one may say all government, must at the best be exceedingly imperfect (so that the less there is of it quantitatively, the better); but the earlier ideal would still seem to hold more promise than the later.
Generalizations such as these are common talk. What upset me was how it works in practice.
Government has been carried on less and less visibly for a long time; but the critical thing in Britain has been the swift development of official public relations. Every public authority that knows its business now has what may be termed a paddock for its critics and opponents, not excluding those inside Parliament. Quite rapidly it has become almost impossible to be a rebel. Today the rebels are put in a paddock and then built into the structure. They are patiently listened to when they have made themselves assertive enough. They are pressed to deliver their ideas in writing. They are invited to serve on joint committees. It is implied to them that if they keep their criticisms “constructive,” they may even become O.B.E.s. “Look at our splendid collection of rebels. It proves how strong, important, and on the right lines we are.” The Speaker’s Corner technique, one may call it: intensely British, brilliantly adaptable, utterly null. Faced with it, Bessemer emerged, quite unawares, as a mere nineteenth-century evangelist; not only incapable of planting his petards deep enough, but incapable of even seeing that he was paddocked, that his ostensibly critical notions were being applied, judo-wise, to the actual strengthening of his opponents. It is sadly true that only the power to inflict actual damage of some kind holds any hope of surmounting the official techniques.
Members of Parliament, already persons willing to put up with the conditions I have referred to—fighters, above all, pushers, wheedlers, conspirers—appear today in the hour of their supposed success merely as front figures for an impersonal power machine. The inner conflict, added to the odious daily life, added to the “constituency surgery,” whereat the supposed legislator of peace or war is reduced to the procurer of a supplementary pension and/or surgical appliance for every elector; all this is too much for any man or woman, any mere human. Degeneration is inevitable, even if it has not largely taken place before adoption as a candidate. The professional politician’s characteristic rejoinder is to multiply his salary and demand that sessions last all day, instead of beginning in the afternoon, so that the shop would be closed in favor of his special—not obviously desirable—type.
Yes, of course I speak with some bitterness, but anyone who doesn’t is in the paddock with Bessemer. Also I speak with some knowledge . . . No matter. I introduce Enright; Enright the exception.
He was exceptional—for me—from the start in the way I met him. It was not among the Palace of Westminster phantoms but at one of Mrs. Havengore’s parties. Mrs. Havengore was a disinterested, indeed maniacal, enthusiast for local electricity. She was a middle-aged lady with large bones, who lived in a shapeless house in Leicestershire and spent the rest of her time hunting. She would invite to “drinks” large and miscellaneously influential groups of people who could not care less about local electricity (indeed, she knew many of them through the hunting field), and compel me to attend in order to address the company for ten or twelve minutes. Mrs. Havengore’s cheeks would grow pinker and pinker, her eyes more and more challenging as I held forth, but she was the only one. The attitude of the others blended tepid spitefulness with the implication of knowledge far greater than mine. I observed these responses at the very first of the parties (as on so many other occasions), and it cannot have strengthened my discourse on subsequent visits, though the effect of my words on Mrs. Havengore herself was always identical. At the end of the party, I had to catch the last, slow train back to London from Melton Mowbray, traveling third, which was all the organization could pay for.
Walter Enright had apparently attended the previous weekend meet, and there he was, all by himself, caught by Mrs. Havengore even though his constituency was far from Leicestershire. It was during a parliamentary recess, but Mrs. Havengore would probably have captured him in any case because she knew how to make real rudeness the only alternative, even a real quarrel. This is a useful gift for the public campaigner.
Enright sat on a faded chintz-covered stool at the back of the room. He had carved-out, very clear-shaven features, and startlingly fair hair. It was noticeable, however, that he was smoking an unusual type of cigarette; also that he had narrow, bright blue eyes. He wore a tight gray suit.
He manifested no obvious interest in my lame little talk but seemed, indeed, conspicuously preoccupied with some problem of his own. I observed that he warded off approaches from the rest of the company without even much politeness. Soon he was standing about near the door, still essentially isolated, and twitching slightly.
Mrs. Havengore hauled me away from a circle of tormentors and pushed me toward the guest of honor.
“Here’s the man who can really do something about it,” she said. “Didn’t you think Mr. Grover-Stacey’s lecture was quite wonderful?”
“Very good talk,” said Enright, looking at the floor. “I congratulate you.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Won’t you make Parliament listen to him?” besought Mrs. Havengore.
“I’ll try.” Enright’s manner was dry and distant, but not malicious, as was that of the other guests.
“Couldn’t you get him an introduction to the prime minister?”
“It’s more the concern of the minister of fuel and power.”
“I always believe in going straight to the top,” said Mrs. Havengore.
“We’ll have to wait for the next session in any case.”
“I’ll leave you together to talk. I know you can make it happen if you really believe in it.”
Mrs. Havengore passed on to bore others. There is nothing people hate more than a cause which is practical but disinterested.
Enright glanced at me for the first time, then looked back at the floor.
“I’ve been very undecided,” he said, “whether or not to stand again at the next election.”
“I hope you decide in favor,” I replied with imitation urgency. After all, I was Mrs. Havengore’s guest, and it seemed necessary to emulate her attitude.
“I have,” said Enright. “Indeed, I had little real alternative.” He got out an unfashionable elaborate gold case and extracted another long cigarette.
“Forgive my not offering you one. They’re a special blend, and not everyone likes them.”
“I don’t smoke,” I said.
“I only smoke these.” From his tight waistcoat, he produced a small, cylindrical, gold lighter from which a tiny green flame erupted upon silent pressure at the base. When he put the cigarette in his mouth, it was as if it had been put between the lips of a wooden figure. Moreover, the cigarette, glowing more yellow than red, apparently gave off no smoke. It was, no doubt, a parliamentary cigarette. Enright’s blue eyes seemed to become more limpid as he smoked it.
“So,” said Enright, without further explanation, “I need something new to take my mind off things. It strikes me that this idea of yours might do quite well.”
“It was very good of you to come all this way in order to listen to me.”
“Members of Parliament have to do things like that sometimes.”
“I suppose so.”
“I might set up a committee.”
“We’ve got one already.”
“Are they any good?”
“That’s perhaps not for me to say.”
“How often do they meet?”
“I haven’t heard of them actually meeting for some time.”
Enright showed added interest, insofar as he showed anything. “In that case, believe me, they’re probably dead. Parliament is rather like a university. All kinds of causes are always being taken up and make quite a stir for a time, but unless the government adopts them, or unless there’s a big publicity interest in them, they soon die, and people turn to something else. Who is or was the chairman?”
“Mr. Biggles.”
“I don’t know him, but I’ll have a word with him and see what can be done. If I’m to go on, I need some line to take up and be associated with. I’m not in the running for office, and I must have something.”
“Thank you.” I was beginning to notice the fumes of Enright’s special cigarette in the crowded room, stuffy with platitudes.
“Of course I shall need to learn more about it. Come and see me after the recess. I can’t make it sooner because I’m compelled to go abroad. Give me a ring when I get back. I mean it.”
“I will,” I said. “I really am most grateful.”
“All this is confidential, of course. You won’t forget that?”
“Of course,” I said. “I’ll remember.”
“You might thank Mrs. Havengore. Someone’s waiting for me.”
“Certainly.”
He disappeared swiftly and quietly, and I could see no reason why I myself need stay much longer.
Enright had not given me a telephone number, nor could I find him in the directory, nor did his entry in Vacker’s Parliamentary Guide include a private address. As ringing up a Member at the Houses of Parliament is a short route to insanity, and as I had had no assistant whatever at that time for some weeks, I might well, I fear, have done nothing except possibly send a letter to Enright at some future time when the pressure upon me had become less. About a week before the commencement of the new session, however, Enright telephoned me. He began by inquiring why he had not heard from me but then invited me round that evening to his flat behind Victoria Street. I was to arrive at six.
It was a big red block of about 1905, when flats were comparatively new to Britain. Enright admitted me himself. It struck me that he looked pale and also that he was wearing the same tight suit that he had worn at Mrs. Havengore’s party.
“I won’t offer you a cigarette,” he said, “because I have a special kind which doesn’t suit everyone.”
“I remember.”
“But do have a drink.” Without further consultation, he poured me a weak whisky from an Edwardian decanter and depressed the lever of a heavily wired gasogene. It yielded a little soda water and then glugged out.
“Damn,” said Enright. He extended the half-filled tumbler toward me. “Do you mind?”
“Not at all. It’s all I want in any case.”
“My mother, who looks after me now, always forgets to put in a new cartridge. Or refuses. Years ago, she broke a finger on one of these things, and it’s a case of once bitten, twice shy. I myself am not drinking just now.”
“It’s perfectly all right.”
“Do sit down.”
The quite large but rather dully proportioned room was in remarkable disorder. Drifts of parliamentary papers lay on the furniture and floor, mingled with children’s toys. I had looked up Who’s Who before I left and learned that Enright had a wife and two sons. I pushed aside some papers on the huge gray sofa and sat on it near the middle.
Enright was walking up and down, paddling through paper.
“This thing of yours. I read a book about it when I was abroad. I had to go, you know, and I thought I might as well do something while I was there. Book by a man called Thesiger. Do you know it?”
“Bessemer, perhaps. He’s my immediate employer; he started the Society.”
“What do you think of it?”
“The Society?”
“The book.”
“I think it makes a very good case. I hope you thought the same.”
“How do you think it would go in Parliament?”
“Surely you must be able to judge that better than I can.”
“I’ve seen Biggles.”
This statement greatly surprised me. I wasn’t accustomed to Members of Parliament really doing such things, or even remembering names. All of them are expected to keep in mind such an enormous quantity of stuff.
“What did he say?”
“It’s just what I thought. Between ourselves, Biggles isn’t what he was. Not that I knew him before. I didn’t. But what’s quite obvious now is that he’s on the bottle.”
This didn’t surprise me at all. Many others had said the same to me.
“Poor chap,” said Enright.
“It does seem a pity. A bad thing for local electricity. I should very much appreciate your advice, and so, I am sure, would Mr. Bessemer.”
“Don’t worry,” said Enright. “Don’t give it a thought. I’m going to move in myself. I’ve made up my mind to it. I simply must find something, and, after all, why not?”
“Mr. Bessemer will be delighted. He was asking me only last month what had happened to the parliamentary committee.”
Enright stopped his abstracted pacing up and down. He stared at me looking slightly wild.
“Are you all right?”
“Perfectly.”
“Have another drink?”
“Thank you very much. No.”
“Have some without soda?”
“No, thank you.”
Enright started walking up and down once more.
“Since we’re going into this thing together, I’d better mention the question of my wife. It’ll have to be mentioned sooner or later, and we may as well make it now.”
I suppose I must at once have looked as though I found the subject more interesting than local electricity.
“My wife’s left me. But it’s only temporary, you understand. And it’s not in the least her fault. I’m an impossible brute to be married to, and then there were the two children, one after the other. One was bad enough, but two! It was enough to drive any woman clean out of her mind, let alone being married to me as well. Look at that.”
Enright picked off the floor a crude wooden railway engine, painted red. With his other hand, he was showing me some marks in the frame, or, more accurately, small circular holes. There was a line of them, in the shape of a crescent.
“And at that.”
Enright turned over the engine and showed me several similarly shaped groups of holes, but this time at the front end of the circular wooden boiler itself.
“Teeth,” said Enright, dropping the toy on the floor. “Just teeth.”
It was, as you can see, difficult to think of anything to say.
“You mean there’s something unusual about the children?”
“They’re not human at all. They ought not to live. But my wife naturally doesn’t see it like that.”
“Perhaps it might be better for both of you if they could be brought up in some special place?”
“No special place could take them in. It simply would not be possible.”
I did not inquire where the children then were, but merely said how very sorry I was.
“My wife says I’ve failed her by becoming a Member of Parliament.”
“I can’t really believe it.”
“You’d believe it if ever you were to meet her.”
“Why not a Member of Parliament?”
Enright gave one of the toys a sudden kick. It flew across the room and cracked the lower part of a glass-fronted bookcase containing thick, bound volumes of Proceedings.
“Never at home. Never loving. Never even living. And it’s all so bloody true. Nothing real at all. Not one bloody thing.”
“I remember you saying you had thought of giving up Parliament.”
“Well, of course,” cried Enright. “But you can’t. At least you can’t when your people don’t want you to. You haven’t one hope in hell.”
“I didn’t know the party machine was quite as strong as that.”
“They like to get something on you. Most business is like that nowadays, as well as politics. In my case, they had no difficulty.”
The Late Breakfasters and Other Strange Stories Page 29