‘Oh, my God . . . no wonder the children were frightened.’
I was still wearing the St George’s cap. I placed it on the table and slapped my forehead. Julia snatched it away and tossed it into the nearby pedal bin.
‘Julia, I’m sorry . . .’
‘Never mind.’ Julia reached across the table and took my hands. I realized how tired she was, and wanted to embrace her, conjure away the dry skin and the unfamiliar bones pushing through her face. I tried to touch her cheeks but she held my wrists, as if calming a fractious patient. ‘Richard, are you listening?’
‘Dear . . . I haven’t seen you for days. Relax a little.’
‘I can’t. Things here are desperate. The school was attacked last night. Sangster drove them away but they broke a lot of windows. The Asian children were terrifed. One of the mothers had a miscarriage.’
‘I’m sorry. At least you weren’t involved.’
‘I should have been. I spent four hours at the hospital, stitching up a lot of drunken yobs. Why do they do it?’
‘Attack a school? All those years of boredom. A mysterious head teacher who frightened the wits out of them.’
‘It’s nothing to do with that. Attacks are going on everywhere—Hillingdon, Southall, Ashford. They want these people out.’
‘ “People”?’
Julia struck the table with her fist. ‘I’ll call them what I bloody like! Bangladeshis, Kosovans, Poles, Turks. They want them moved to a huge ghetto somewhere in east London. Then they can deal with them when they’re ready.’
‘Julia, please . . .’ I knew that she was bored with me for trying to raise her spirits. ‘Isn’t that a little . . . ?’
‘Apocalyptic?’
William Sangster stepped into the kitchen, his large bulk blocking the windows and throwing the small space into shadow. He took off his canvas gloves and dropped them onto the draining board, then slumped into a chair, counting his huge limbs as an afterthought. He seemed tired but at ease, as if events taking place around him confirmed everything he had expected. There was a growth of beard on his plump and babyish cheeks, like a faulty disguise.
‘Apocalyptic . . .’ I repeated. ‘A few stones? Just a little.’
‘I hope you’re right.’ Sangster tilted back his head and addressed the ceiling, as if preferring not to be reminded of his dim pupils. ‘In my experience, one stone through a window is a fairly accurate predictor that another stone will soon follow. Then two more. Hard stones make for hard data. Add a few frightened Muslim families into the equation and you can extrapolate in a straight line—all the way to a cluster of gateway towns on the Thames flood plain.’
‘Close to the container port at Rotherhithe.’ Julia glared at me meaningfully. ‘And that strange airport they want to build on the Isle of Dogs.’
‘So . . .’ Sangster shook the empty thermos, and laid a large hand gently on Julia’s shoulder. After a night of turmoil he was exhausted beyond mere tiredness, moving into a zone where any wild-eyed fantasy was probably true. ‘Do you think Julia is being apocalyptic? Richard?’
‘As it happens, I don’t. It’s ugly, very ugly. I’ll do what I can, talk to the marshals and find out which supporters came down here.’
‘Good.’ Sangster nodded sagely. ‘Julia, he’ll talk to the marshals. Maybe they’ll tell us when the next attack is. Richard, you could issue a bulletin. Like those old war films—target for tonight. Hillingdon, Ashford, alternate target Brooklands. What do you think, Richard? See it as a marketing campaign.’
‘Isn’t everything these days?’ Aware that they were both lightheaded with fatigue, I said: ‘Listen, I’ll talk to the police.’
‘The police?’ Sangster looked owlishly serious. ‘We didn’t think of that. Julia, the police . . .’
I let this pass. ‘Look, I hate the violence. I hate the racist attacks. I hate the protection rackets and the bully-boy tactics. But these people are a fringe.’
‘Only a fringe?’
‘A vicious fringe, admittedly. But very few people are involved. Wherever you find sport you find hooligans. Contact sports appeal to any riffraff looking for violence. Don’t judge what’s happening by what you see at night.’
‘Fair point,’ Sangster conceded. ‘Go on.’
‘Move around during the day. Disciplined crowds, everyone on best behaviour. I watched them an hour ago. Whole families out together—healthy, fresh, optimistic, keen to cheer on their teams. Friendly rivalry, heads held high.’
‘And the banners?’ Julia leaned across the table and gripped my wrist. ‘Have you seen them? Like Roman legions. It’s incredible.’
‘Right. Banners flying. There’s a new pride in the air, all along the motorway towns. People are more confident, more positive. The M25 was a backwater left over from Heathrow, a joke no one wanted to share. Dual carriageways and used-car lots. Nothing to look forward to except new patio doors and a trip to Homebase. All the promise of life delivered door to door in a flat pack.’
Sangster nodded, inspecting his deeply bitten nails. ‘And now?’
‘Revival! There’s a spring in everyone’s step. People know their lives have a point. They know it’s good for the whole community.’
‘And good for the Metro-Centre?’
‘Naturally. We provide the focus and fund the new stadiums and the supporters’ clubs. We use the cable channels to keep up the pressure.’
‘Pressure?’ Julia tried to unclench her fists, irritated by everything I said. ‘To sell your washing machines and microwaves . . .’
‘They’re part of people’s lives. Consumerism is the air we’ve given them to breathe.’
JULIA HAD TURNED away, refusing to listen to me as she hunted through her handbag for her mobile phone. She stood up and patted me on the head. ‘There’s a call I need to make. I’ll be back in a moment.’
‘Don’t forget we’re having dinner tonight. Julia?’
‘I hope so.’ She paused at the door and stared hard at me. ‘The air they breathe? Richard, people breathe out as well as breathe in . . .’
24
A FASCIST STATE
‘RICHARD . . .’ SANGSTER TAPPED the table with his heavy knuckle, recalling me to his inquisition. ‘I hope you realize what you’re doing.’
‘Not exactly.’ We sat at opposite ends of the table, undistracted by Julia’s presence. ‘You’re going to tell me.’
‘I am.’ Sangster examined his swollen hands, and picked a splinter from his thumb. ‘In a way it’s quite an achievement. Back in the nineteen-thirties it needed a lot of twisted minds working together, but you’ve done it by yourself.’
‘Is my mind twisted?’
‘Definitely not. That’s the disturbing thing. You’re sane, kindly, with all the genuine sincerity of an advertising man.’
‘So what have I done?’
‘You’ve created a fascist state.’
‘Fascist?’ I let the word hover overhead, then dissipate like an empty cloud. ‘In the . . . dinner party sense?’
‘No. It’s the real thing. There’s no doubt about it. I’ve been watching it grow for the past year. It’s been stirring in its mother’s belly, but you knelt down in the straw and delivered the beast.’
‘Fascist? It’s like “new” or “improved”. It can mean anything. Where are the jackboots, the goose-stepping Brownshirts, the ranting führer? I don’t see them around.’
‘They don’t need to be.’ Sangster watched me with a quirky smile that never completely formed, as if I were a destructive pupil he disliked but was unaccountably drawn to. ‘This is a soft fascism, like the consumer landscape. No goose-stepping, no jackboots, but the same emotions and the same aggression. As you say, there’s a strong sense of community, but it isn’t based on civic rights. Forget reason. Emotion drives everything. You see it every weekend outside the Metro-Centre.’
‘Sports supporters, cheering on their rival teams.’
‘Like Goering’s “gliders”? Anyway,
these teams aren’t really rivals. They’re all marching to the same brass band. As for a true sense of community, people get that in traffic jams and airport concourses.’
‘Or the Metro-Centre?’ I suggested. ‘The People’s Palace?’
‘And a hundred other shopping malls. Who needs liberty and human rights and civic responsibility? What we want is an aesthetics of violence. We believe in the triumph of feelings over reason. Pure materialism isn’t enough, all those Asian shopkeepers with their cash-register minds. We need drama, we need our emotions manipulated, we want to be conned and cajoled. Consumerism fits the bill exactly. It’s drawn the blueprint for the fascist states of the future. If anything, consumerism creates an appetite that can only be satisfied by fascism. Some kind of insanity is the last way forward. All the dictators in history soon grasped that—Hitler and the Nazi leaders made sure no one ever thought they were completely sane.’
‘And the people in the Metro-Centre?’
‘They know that, too. Look how they react to your new cable ads.’ Sangster pointed a grimy finger at me, grudgingly forced into a compliment. ‘A bad actor howls from the roof of a multi-storey car park and we think he’s a seer.’
‘So David Cruise is the führer? He’s fairly benign.’
‘He’s a nothing. He’s a “virtual” man without a real thought in his head. Consumer fascism provides its own ideology, no one needs to sit down and dictate Mein Kampf. Evil and psychopathy have been reconfigured into lifestyle statements. It’s a fearful prospect, but consumer fascism may be the only way to hold a society together. To control all that aggression, and channel all those fears and hates.’
‘As long as the bands play and everyone marches in step?’
‘Right!’ Sangster sat forward, jarring the table against my elbows. ‘So beat the drums, sound the bugles, lead them to an empty stadium where they can shout their lungs out. Give them violent hamster wheels like football and ice hockey. If they still need to let off steam, burn down a few newsagents.’
Raising his arms as if to surrender, Sangster stood up and turned his back to me. As he read the messages on his phone I stared through the window. A taxi had pulled into the main entrance of the school, and stopped in front of the admin building.
‘Your taxi?’ I asked Sangster when he put away his phone.
‘No. There’s work I have to do here.’ He gestured at the fence, where the students were threading a strand of razor wire between the posts. ‘Meanwhile, we’re organizing a deputation to the Home Office—Julia, Dr Maxted, myself, a few others. I’d like you to join us.’
‘A deputation . . . ? Whitehall . . . ?’
‘The seat of power, so they say. We may not see the Home Secretary, but Maxted knows a junior minister he met on a television programme. Something has to be done—this thing is spreading along the M25, sooner or later the noose will tighten around London and choke it to death.’
‘What about the police?’
‘Useless. Whole streets are torched and they claim it’s football hooliganism. Secretly, they want the Asians and immigrants out. Likewise the local council. Fewer corner shops, more retail parks, a higher tax yield. Money rules, more housing, more infrastructure contracts. They like the bands playing and the stamping feet—they hide the sound of the cash tills.’
‘That’s today’s England. Whitehall?’ I looked away. ‘I’m not sure there’s a lot of point. What’s happening in the motorway towns may be the first signs of a national revival. Who knows, the end of late-stage capitalism and the start of something new . . . ?’
‘It’s possible.’ Sangster stood over me, and I could smell his stale, threatening clothes. ‘Will you join us?’
‘I’ll think about it.’
Sangster held my shoulders in his huge hands, a bear’s grip. ‘Don’t think.’
WE LEFT THE kitchen and stepped into the gymnasium. A line of Asian women and their children sat against the parallel bars, suitcases in front of them, new arrivals being processed by Dr Kumar.
‘Sad. Very wrong.’ I said to Sangster: ‘Their houses have been torched?’
‘No. But they’re fearful of what may happen tonight. Let me know about the Home Office delegation.’
‘I’ll get Julia to call you.’ I glanced into the women’s changing room. The antenatal clinic had ended, and the lockers holding the medical supplies were sealed. ‘Julia . . . Where is she?’
‘She’s gone home.’ Sangster was watching me with a faint hint of smugness. ‘A taxi came for her.’
‘I could have given her a lift. We’re having dinner tonight.’
‘Perhaps not . . .’
SANGSTER WALKED AWAY, smiling to himself as he strode across the polished wooden floor. I nodded to Dr Kumar, who ignored me, and searched the side corridors for Julia. I was sorry she had left for home, irritated and distracted by Sangster’s talk of fascism. I suspected that he had deliberately provoked her into leaving. At the same time he had spoken with such force that he seemed to be making the case against which he was arguing. I intrigued Sangster because I was part of the fierce new world he was drawn to. Mathematics might be his subject, but emotion was the ungelded horse he rode so brutally. Not all the would-be gauleiters in Brooklands were manning traffic checkpoints.
In the playground an Asian woman passed me, swathed in dark shawls, a billeting docket in one hand, small son manfully trying to help her with the suitcase. Two Asian men approached, but neither offered any aid, so I stopped the woman and took the suitcase from her. Helped by the boy, I carried it to the classroom block and left it inside the entrance, where an older Asian woman halted me with a raised hand.
Catching my breath, I looked out at the dome of the Metro-Centre, its silver surface lit by a trio of swerving spotlights. On the M25 drivers were slowing to watch the parades, as they listened to David Cruise’s commentary on their car radios. The suburbs were coming alive again. A malignant fringe had done its damage, terrifying a blameless minority of Asians and east Europeans.
But a corpse had revived and sat up, and was demanding breakfast. The moribund motorway towns, the people of the Heathrow plain, were positioning themselves on the runway, ready to take flight.
25
LONELY, LOST, ANGRY
AS USUAL, TOM CARRADINE was waiting at the kerb when I stopped near the South Gate entrance of the Metro-Centre. Before I could release the seat belt he had opened the door and switched off the ignition. Confident and enthusiastic, he was dressed in the new uniform of the public relations department, a braided powder-blue confection that might have been worn by one of Mussolini’s air marshals.
‘Thanks, Tom.’ I waited as he helped me from the car and locked the doors. ‘This gives a new dimension to valet parking. In my next life I’ll come back as a Merc or BMW . . .’
‘The VIP car park for you, Mr Pearson. The Jensen still being repaired?’
‘Well . . . I think it’s come to the end of its natural life.’
Carradine nodded promptly, but there was a sharp-eyed caution about him that had become more pronounced since the bomb in the basement garage. The Metro-Centre had been attacked, and every customer was now a potential enemy, forcing a revolution in his world view. For Tom Carradine the Metro-Centre was never a commercial enterprise, but a temple of the true faith that he would defend to the last yard of Axminster and the last discount holiday. He gazed at the great concourse in front of the dome, filled with crowds of shoppers, marching supporters in their team livery, wide-eyed tourists, pipe bands and majorettes. A TV camera on a crane circled the scene, ever vigilant for any fanatic with an explosive waistcoat. Narrowing his eyes, Carradine beckoned me forward. Two marshals preceded us, affably clearing a way through the press of people.
‘You’re wearing your new uniform,’ I said to him. ‘I’m impressed. I feel I ought to salute you.’
‘I salute you, Mr Pearson. You’ve done everything here. I’ll never forget you brought the Metro-Centre back to life. You an
d Mr Cruise. Everybody really loves the latest cable ad.’
‘The abattoir? Not too gloomy?’
‘Never. Existential choice. Isn’t that what the Metro-Centre is about?’
‘I think it is.’
‘Dr Maxted explained everything on his programme yesterday. By the way, Mr Pearson, the Metro-Centre tailor is calling this afternoon. He’ll be happy to measure you up for your uniform.’
‘Well, thanks, Tom.’ In an unguarded moment I had tried on one of the new jackets. ‘I’m not sure, though . . .’
‘Three rings, lots of scrambled egg on the cap peak.’
‘I know. I’m just a writer, Tom. I dream up slogans.’
‘You’re more than a writer, Mr Pearson. You’ve given us all heart again.’
‘Even so. It’s a little too military . . .’
‘We have to defend the Metro-Centre.’
‘I’m with you there. But is it in danger?’
‘It’s always in danger. We have to be ready, whatever happens.’
I watched the muscles flexing in his cheeks. For all his flattery, the offer of a uniform was a clever power play of his own. Everyone in the uniform would be under Tom Carradine’s command, myself included. The threat to the Metro-Centre had sharpened his reflexes, but he remained the fanatical youth leader, eager to sacrifice himself for his principles.
We approached the South Gate entrance. Above the cantilevered marquee were a pair of loudspeakers used for crowd control, operated from a kiosk outside the doors. Through the din of pipe bands and marching feet I heard a succession of amplified clicks and stutters as someone adjusted the controls.
Then a harsh voice boomed over our heads:
‘NOTHING IS TRUE! NOTHING IS UNTRUE . . . !’
Carradine stopped and held my arm, as if the sky was about to fall onto the dome and slide down the roof towards us.
‘. . . UNTRUE! NOTHING IS . . . HEAR YE . . . NOTHING IS TRUE . . . !’
Carradine broke away from me, racing through the startled shoppers staring into the air. The two marshals followed him, manhandling young mothers and old ladies out of their way. They rushed towards the control kiosk and seized a tall youth in a string vest and frayed denims who was waving the microphone like a club, trying to fend them off.
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