by Bill James
She was about his height but slimmer, auburn hair cut fairly short, straight though not prominent nose, blue, intent eyes, pleasantly uneven teeth with a minor gap to the right, probably not the result of a punch or catapult ball-bearing in the school yard, but kept like that because she thought it distinctive and intriguing. And Ian did like it – thought of it as the kind of opening you’d love to squirt something through. Also, the space caused a certain delightful, muted whistling around some of her spoken consonants, like the sharp whirr of a well-spun cricket ball. ‘We’ve worked out you’ll quit the Air Force in fifty-seven days unless you re-engage,’ Underhill said.
‘I’m not counting,’ Ian said.
‘And we gather you’ve no intention of re-engaging,’ Fisher said, ‘although we’re sure they’d like to have you.’
‘Gather where?’ Ian said.
‘You’re thinking of journalism,’ Underhill replied.
‘Pathfinding there already done by the girlfriend, Lucy Armitage, and her effectively caustic writing style,’ Fisher said. ‘We’re happy that relationship seems settled again and satisfying after some differences. There are bound to be episodes of uncertainty.’
‘I’m glad you’re happy,’ Charteris said.
‘Now, I’m certainly not going to argue that there aren’t good careers in the Press – if you can put up with a double negative,’ Fisher replied. He made it sound as if Ian had better put up with it or he’d trample his balls and put the relationship with Lucy in peril once more.
‘Journalism, though, is what it sounds – of the jour, as the French would put it – of the day. Immediacy, nowness, is its essential and its strength, its raison d’être no less,’ Underhill said. ‘These are certainly not qualities to be totally discounted. The instant report has its value. Think of Hemingway in the Spanish Civil War, reporting what he saw. Merit, too in the kind of considered “think piece”, as a comment article is often described. Lucy is very telling with her think pieces. Here is intelligent opinion, here is well-based attitude vigorously expressed.’
‘Undoubtedly,’ Fisher said.
She changed tone. Her voice got touched by super-rationality, and by contempt. ‘Yet some might allege journalism gives only extremely short-term gratification to its practitioners,’ Underhill said. ‘The word “journalism” can be derogatory, can’t it, equating with opportunistic, shallow, sensational? Literary critics, for instance, condemn material as “mere journalism” in work that is trying unsuccessfully to be something deeper. My brother was a barrister and not making much at it. My mother – not highly educated, but bright – said that whenever she heard the word “barrister” as a youngster it was accompanied by the word “impecunious” – an impecunious barrister. Skint. Likewise, I think, the word “journalism” is tied to the word “mere” – mere journalism. There are, Charles and I believe, those who seek a return on their work which is more lasting, more solid, basically more worthwhile.’
‘True,’ Ian said, ‘and they wouldn’t have to learn shorthand.’ The three were in his office overlooking the patrolled gates and double-layer, twelve-feet-high barbed-wire fencing below. For this tail-end of his service, he’d been posted away from the OCTU and to a camp in Yorkshire. RAF Norton, Gleadless, Sheffield had no airfield to guard, but a very high security rating – ‘matters of a confidential, secret, category’ operated from here, as Fisher had said.
‘Obviously, Lorna-Jane doesn’t want to pile on the flattery, but she feels, as I do, that you might be wasted in the journalistic game,’ he said, ‘even supposing you could get on to the kind of paper you’d like. It’s not always easy, and Lucy’s advice and influence could only help up to a point. This is why we’re here.’
‘It’s not the first time we’ve been to Norton,’ Lorna-Jane said.
‘Hardly,’ Fisher said.
‘Norton is what you might call our sort of hunting ground,’ she said. ‘Its officers tend to be our kind of people.’
‘Which kind?’ Charteris said, but he could make a guess.
‘Norton’s record with us is exemplary. Its people are naturally accustomed to the clandestine,’ she said. ‘The role of Norton demands it. This and its sister outfits around GB lie outside the general three-tier command structure of the RAF – Fighter, Bomber and Coastal – don’t they? Norton, and its sister establishments, stand separate, a bit shady, even – confidential, secret, as Charles puts it. These units are Ninety Group, a title which calculatedly tells nobody anything about the nature of its members’ work: not fighter, bomber or coastal duties; not to do with aircraft at all in fact, or only the potential enemy’s aircraft. The urgent role of Norton and its comparable stations is to prepare, extend and service the country’s network of radar defences against a Cold War Russian threat.’
‘You’re not supposed to know this,’ Ian replied.
‘It’s the type of thing we do know and specialize in,’ Fisher said.
‘We’ve advised on some of the security,’ Lorna-Jane said. ‘I don’t mean your Alsatians. But, for instance, the Ninety Group’s headquarters is in that delightful, innocent-seeming, seventeenth-century former country manor house with high, ornate ceilings and glowing mahogany panelled doors, at Membury, near Marlow, in Buckinghamshire, yes? We suggested that as an unnoticeable spot. I expect you’ve been there for a briefing pre-Norton. Of course you have. We laid it down that every new joiner at Norton should be given a thorough preparatory Membury session first. You’ll have noticed that the travel warrant actually named two stops beyond where you left the train, so as to prevent evidence in the rail company offices of a slinky visitors’ build up at HQ. That’s a routine precaution recommended by us.
‘You and your contingent of RAF Regiment troops, plus the military police platoon and their doggies, look after Norton and the radar installations its technical crews set up and monitor in north-east Britain. That would probably be the airway route for any Soviet plane or rocket attack. If possible, the existence and location of Norton and the other linked stations should be concealed from the Russians, as well as the areas of Britain where the radar fields are at their most effective. You’ll surely see what we mean when we say you’re already accustomed to operating in an area of vital and sensitive State secrets.’
‘You’re a natural,’ Lorna-Jane put in.
‘No, not exactly a natural,’ Fisher said. ‘He’s been shaped and directed towards this kind of work, and has grown to be efficient at it.’
‘Perhaps more than efficient,’ she said.
Ian said: ‘Perhaps. But I—’
‘But you think a newspaper future,’ Fisher said. ‘Sure, sure the Press does useful work now and then. Naturally, we’ve undertaken quite a bit of research into your early days, including a dedicated scan of old newspapers in your locality then, and—’
‘Dedicated to what?’ Ian said.
‘And we’d have to admit – and I’m sure I speak for Lorna-Jane as well as myself here – we’d have to admit that the Press reporting of that air-raid shelter murder and the trial back in 1941 certainly covered very significant ground,’ Fisher replied. ‘And, of course, you figured notably there as a witness. You, in fact, made the nationals as well as the town Press. I don’t know whether in your boyhood that helped turn your thoughts towards a newspaper career – rather writing the material, not being its subject. The crime and trial were given considerable space, despite the shortage of newsprint in those wartime days. And, naturally enough, you followed up that sequence of incidents to the end, and joined the jail gate crowd for the hanging, also covered by the newspapers.’
‘How do you mean “dedicated scan”?’ Ian said.
‘An affection for and interest in the Press from that kind of experience might seem far-fetched,’ Underhill said. ‘But the idea struck both of us, Charles and myself. Quite often these seemingly minor, even quirky, factors lead to very substantial decisions.’
‘And then again, even earlier than this, came the hero
ic sea rescue by your dad,’ Charles Fisher said. ‘That had great Press coverage, too, didn’t it – and justifiably so? I expect he’d keep the cuttings and you saw them as a child. You might have developed a sort of subconscious link to the admittedly exciting world of newspapers.’
‘Many are fascinated by that world – the smell of printers’ ink and so on, the green eyeshade, “Hold the front page!” – even without your special, emphatic connection to reportage by participation in the shelter case,’ Underhill said. ‘Emphatic connection to reportage’ came out slightly, intriguingly, shrill through the teeth cleft, the consonants busying themselves around his ear drums like special, excited messengers. ‘And yet is this more than a superficial romanticizing of what is basically a run-of-the-mill trade, like many another run-of-the-mill trade?’ she said. ‘Urgently relevant on one day, perhaps, and fish-and-chip wrapping the next. I ask once more, can it provide long-lasting satisfaction for someone of mature outlook? And we take leave, Charles and I, to judge that you are of mature outlook. We don’t have to rely on our own findings to form that conclusion; we also get extremely credible, reliable advice along those lines.’
‘Journalism’s detractors always do the fish-and-chip paper bit,’ Ian said. ‘But, by the time yesterday’s paper is a wrapper, there’s another issue out full of new, topical reading.’
‘I wouldn’t say we are detractors of journalism,’ Underhill replied.
‘Oh,’ Ian said.
‘No, indeed,’ Fisher said.
‘Are you recruiters?’ Ian replied.
‘Recruiters in which sense?’ Underhill said.
‘Recruiters in the recruiting sense,’ Ian said.
‘It’s an interesting suggestion,’ Lorna-Jane said.
Ian kept it general for the moment. ‘You go around talking to selected National Service people near the end of their time and try to persuade them to stay on – switch to a career commission? I suppose the Sword of Honour would help put me on your shortlist. You’re not in uniform, though. Does the RAF farm out the job to Management Selection firms? Anyway, it’s not going to work. I’m leaving. Anyone who’s asked about it I’ve told at once, I don’t want that kind of life. Your research into my childhood and so on is brilliantly accurate, but irrelevant – a time-waster, I’m afraid.’
‘No, not that kind of recruiting,’ Underhill said.
‘Which other kind is there?’ Ian said. He thought he knew, though.
‘Yes, there are other kinds,’ Underhill replied. ‘I think you’ll come to see what we mean.’
‘Your pal has already said that. I still don’t know what it’s about,’ Ian said.
‘I think you possibly do,’ Fisher said.
‘We’ve given plenty of indications,’ she said.
‘We’re not here to propose a twenty-two-year commissioned career in the RAF Regiment, excellent as that regiment and career might be,’ Fisher said, his cadence branding the regiment and a spell in it as unholy shit.
‘But it is about a career, is it?’ Ian said.
‘We don’t think of it as simply a career,’ Underhill said. ‘That might do for journalism. It’s too narrow and ordinary a word for what we’re talking about.’
‘But I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Ian said. He did, but enjoyed giving them the tease. He had an electric kettle in his office and some mugs and made tea now.
‘That research you kindly spoke of threw up something else apparently irrelevant – to use your word – yes, irrelevant in a workaday sense,’ Fisher replied. ‘Yes, flagrantly irrelevant in a workaday sense.’ He waved an arm to give extra force to ‘workaday sense’ or ‘flagrantly irrelevant’. The movement made it obvious he wasn’t responsible for the nice scent. ‘But perhaps in a mysterious, even mystical way this research finding provides a pointer.’
‘We like to build from available information a personality profile of those we’re going to talk to,’ Underhill said. ‘A completeness, in so far as that’s possible.’
‘Did someone do it to you?’ Ian said.
‘What?’ Underhill said.
‘Concoct a version of your personality before they offered you a job,’ Ian said.
‘It’s routine in our sort of activity,’ Underhill said. ‘One doesn’t resent it. Indeed, one recognizes it’s for the best; there will be a matching of work with the operative’s character. “Character” here to mean inner resources, flairs, aims, ambitions.’
‘Which one doesn’t resent it? I do,’ Ian replied.
‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in standard-issue thinking, Ian,’ Fisher said. ‘I’m referring to your illness when you were four years old.’
‘How did you get on to that?’ Ian said.
‘Yes, we got on to it, to use your phrase,’ Fisher said, with a comradely smile. ‘This is part of what we mean by a “dedicated scan”, you see. One can’t know what might be turned up.’
‘Diphtheria,’ Ian said.
‘You were whisked off to the sanatorium,’ Fisher said. ‘An emergency ambulance job, you torn away from your parents.’
‘The sana, as it was known,’ Ian said.
‘An isolation hospital,’ Underhill said.
‘Luckily, its medical records are still archived and available in some circumstances,’ Fisher said.
‘Which circumstances? I thought medical records were private, even a child’s,’ Ian said.
‘Well, yes, in a sense,’ Underhill said. ‘Definitely.’
‘Which sense?’ Ian said.
‘We make the circumstances. Fortunately, we were able to get sight of them,’ Fisher replied.
‘But how?’ Ian said.
‘That’s the way things go sometimes, isn’t it, given a degree of know-how in procedural matters?’ Fisher said. ‘We discovered that every patient in the sanatorium had a number, and twice a week in the South Wales Echo – previously the News – a bulletin gave the state of all patients, but, for confidentiality, using these numbers, not their names. This appeared as a grid under one of two headings: “Condition Unchanged” and “Progressing Satisfactorily”. Given the fatality record of diphtheria then, “Condition Unchanged” looked funereal.’
‘There was a blackboard over each bed with the number chalked on it,’ Ian said.
‘You were two-one-three,’ Underhill said. ‘They kept you in the sanatorium for six months, so you must have got very used to those figures.’
‘Yes,’ Ian said.
‘It would have taken over your name,’ Fisher said.
‘In a way, yes,’ Ian said.
‘This must have been nearly impossible for a child of four to comprehend,’ Fisher said. ‘An identity, as it were, lost. Older patients might realize their name had been put aside temporarily for admin reasons as much as anything. Normality would return once they were discharged. But a child of four might think he’d permanently ceased to exist as he had been previously. Not death, but a total morph.’
Underhill said: ‘I spoke of building a personality. Sometimes we have to rebuild.’
‘That was ages ago. My personality has been OK lately,’ Ian said. ‘I’ve got an RAF number, but it’s not me, it’s a number.’
‘There are memoirs by prisoners in German concentration camps or Russian gulags who became reduced in their own minds to an institutional number, as might have happened to you – almost certainly did happen to you – in the hospital,’ Fisher said.
‘And then, of course, the Charles Dickens novel A Tale of Two Cities shows this sad mental state in a character called Dr Manette,’ Underhill said. ‘Freed from the Bastille prison in the revolution of 1789 for a while he can think of himself only as his cell label, “One-Oh-Five North Tower”. He slips back to that identity if suddenly stressed even long after release, and restarts the job he had there mending shoes. Perhaps you felt something like that.’
‘I’ve never mended shoes,’ Ian said. ‘I hated the way cobblers kept the nails
in their mouth. A bit of an indigestion twitch and they’d swallow the lot.’
‘Of course, we called at the public library and looked through bound copies of the Echo covering your “sana” months checking for mentions of two-one-three,’ Fisher said. ‘We had a real thrill when, between Tuesday’s and Friday’s editions of the Echo one week you moved from “Condition Unchanged” to “Progressing Satisfactorily”. It seemed to say more to us than your health had improved. We felt we could reach out to you now, and you to us.’
‘Look, what’s all this jabber about, then?’ Ian said. ‘Why so much digging? Who told you I had diphtheria?’
‘It must have come to be almost second nature for you to drop your name and the identity that went with it and become this number two-one-three instead,’ Underhill said. ‘The self you’d been born with and brought up with for your first four years could be discarded, and this new, sort of anonymous, featureless, individual took over. You’d become a chalk mark on a board.’
‘That is a very useful asset in the kind of work we’re here to discuss with you,’ Fisher said. ‘The uniforms, and the band, and the gloire and the Sword are all very, very fine. Who’d deny it? But they are not, decidedly not, everything. Our impression is that even though you took the Sword of Honour you knew this.’
‘Of course I fucking know life is not one noisy parade,’ Ian said.
The three of them were seated around a small conference table near the window in Ian’s office. He had taken the chair he usually occupied for meetings at the table’s head. Anyone looking in would have assumed he was running things. It didn’t feel like that to him. More like things were running away from him.
Underhill had made an occasional note in a small pad she carried. Now, she read some words from it. ‘You mentioned our possible interest in “selected National Service people near the end of their time.” I think we can plead guilty to that. But I’d like you to notice above all the word “selected”. And Charles referred to it, didn’t he? You’ll probably have gathered from what we’ve said so far that selection is not at all a pushover. We know what we are looking for and those who haven’t got it will be excluded. In fact, it’s very unlikely we’d even approach them.’