by Brian Aldiss
‘You love playing the decent chap and you love playing the cad, Simon. Which are you really?’
‘The common man, David, l’homme moyen sensuel. In other words, a bit of both. Buy yourself an ice-cream while I’m phoning.’
I got through to Saints straight away and recognised the head porter’s voice at once, strained as it was through thickets of phlegm. Legend has it they built the college round him.
‘That you, Dibbs? Challington here. Would you put me through to Professor Norman Parmettio.’
‘Hello, sir, nice to hear your voice. We haven’t seen you here for months. You used to be so frequent.’
‘Pressure of work, I fear. Is the professor there?’
‘Well, we had a bit of trouble last night, sir.’
‘Trouble? What sort of trouble?’
‘Well, sir, we had to have the fire brigade round, sir. Some young hooligans threw petrol bombs over the east wall, sir. Terrible it was, sir. Fortunately I was all right in here. I phoned the police and the fire brigade and anyone I could think of. Proper scaring it was. I’ve never seen nothing like it.’
‘Indeed, anyone killed?’
‘Not to speak of, sir. But the east wing’s ruined. Your old room gone, sir, and part of the chapel. By a miracle of good fortune my lodge was preserved, but –’
‘It seems impossible such things could happen in Oxford, Dibbs. The time is out of joint. Where’s Professor Parmettio?’
‘Those are my feelings exactly, sir. There you have it. Terrible it was. As for the professor, bless his soul, he committed suicide the day before yesterday, an hour or so after the Prime Minister spoke about us British being neutral and keeping the lamps alight. At least he missed the fire and all the fuss –’
‘Parmettio dead? Do you say he’s dead?’
‘No, he committed suicide, sir, up in his bedroom. Left a note to say his country had dishonoured him and that he was taking the only possible course open to him. A fine old fellow he was, sir. …’
As I climbed back into the car, David dropped a newspaper he was scanning.
‘You’re as pale as a ghost, Simon. What’s the matter?’
‘How’s your presentiment of evil, David? Norman’s dead. Committed suicide – couldn’t bear the dishonour. Poor dear old Norman! The porter told me and put me on to the Warden.’
‘On to Starling? He’s a true blue government man. What did he have to say?’
‘He’s not so true blue as we thought; frankly I feel sorry for him. He sounded like a sick man over the phone. He told me that several of the clearer-thinking younger Fellows, Thorn-Davis, Shell, Geoffrey Alderton, and one or two more, tried to charter a private plane to fly to America. Foolish, I suppose, but quite understandable. They were apparently arrested at the aerodrome and haven’t been heard of since. Starling went round and saw the local superintendent of police in person but couldn’t get a word out of the man. He was almost weeping as he told me. And then –’
‘Then?’
‘Starling was cut off.’
We sat in silence.
At last David said, ‘I’m sorry if I sounded stupid before. It’s all a bit nastier than we thought.’
‘No nastier than we had a right to expect. We’d better get to London while we still have the chance.’
‘You think all potential trouble-makers are being arrested?’
‘What else? And I’d hazard that by now you and I are on the list. Got that gun of yours ready?’
He had bought a local paper from a vendor while I was phoning. As we drove off I caught sight of its headlines: RUSSIAN NUCLEAR SATELLITE IN ORBIT: Ultimate Weapon, Moscow Claims; For Emergency Only.
At one point, David leant over and switched the radio on, but they were playing Roses of Picardy again.
We drove into and through the outskirts of London without being stopped. By noon we were crawling through Hammersmith, moving in fits and starts through dense traffic.
‘How about stopping for a drink and some sandwiches?’ David asked. ‘We don’t really know when we’ll eat again, do we?’
‘Good idea. There’s a pub over there that looks likely.’
London was far from normal. In the centre of town we would see processions and meetings. Here were only people in small groups, hanging about or strolling. Some of the smaller shops were closed. Never had I seen such a large percentage of the population with their eyes buried in newspapers, not even at the time of the Suez crisis, back in ’56 – when the Americans had failed to support us, came the treacherous thought to my brain. Momentarily irritated with myself, I ushered David into the pub.
As I ordered drinks, I saw him cast his eye over the men present. One of them next to him, a man in voluble conversation with his mate, mistaking the intent of David’s look, leant towards him and said, ‘You agree, don’t you, mate?’
I could not be sure what David replied in the general hubbub, but I heard the other fellow say, ‘Why should we go to war for a lot of black men in Sumatra? I’d never even heard of Sumatra till last week! I reckon the government did right. Old Minnie has my vote every time. Let the blighters fight their own battles.’
At last I got served. Carrying a tray with a Guinness and a pale ale and expensive chicken sandwiches over to David’s table, I was in time to hear David say, ‘I can’t see that neutrality is a way of saving our skins.’
The two men, who worked, or so I surmised, at the big cake factory nearby, were on him with glee.
‘You mean you think it would be safer to have declared war on the Chinks and Ruskies?’
‘I mean that once global war breaks out, safety axiomatically disappears.’
‘Never mind axiomatically, mate! As long as we aren’t in it, it’s not global, is it? ’Ere, Bill, there’s a bloke here thinks we ought to be fighting for the bloody Yanks!’ They motioned to a couple of their mates, and soon there was a ring of them round our table. David’s nervousness increased.
‘If they wants a war, let them have it, I say,’ Bill opined. His cheeks were heavy with woe and drink-fat. ‘It’s none of our business.’
‘But that’s precisely what it is, Bill,’ I said. ‘You’ve heard of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, I expect?’
Howls of derision greeted this. The first speaker – Harry, I believe he was – leant over our table and said, ‘Are you honestly going to sit there and tell me that you want to see this country blown to bits just because the Americans have come a cropper in Sumatra?’
‘That’s not a proper question. But if you are trying to ask me whether I support the democratic way of life, then I must answer yes –’
‘Democracy! Wrap up!’
‘– because I believe, like many another Englishman, that it is better to die fighting than die under Communist bombs or whips.’
‘That’s all bloody propaganda!’
‘Who’s he think he is?’
‘Go and join the Army!’
‘You’re a right one,’ Bill said to me. ‘What have the Yanks done for you to make you so fond of them?’
‘You ought to ask yourself that,’ David said angrily. ‘You’re old enough to remember the last war – yes, and the war before that! How do you think we’d have managed without American aid then?’
‘Okay then,’ Bill said in gloomy triumph. ‘Then we’ll hang on for three years and then we’ll come in to help them, the way they did with us before!’
This sally drew a howl of laughter, and they turned away from us, losing interest and going back to a game of shove-ha’penny.
‘Bill certainly averted a nasty moment,’ David said with rancour. He drank deeply into his Guinness. ‘Thank God for this poisonous British ability to laugh at themselves.’
‘And at others.’
We drank up, ate our sandwiches, and rose to go.
‘See you on the Russian Steppes – scrubbing them!’ Harry called. Their laughter followed us into the sunshine.
We drove down the Mall
and so to the Foreign Office, where I hoped to see Tertis. We had passed the marchers and the speakers, the ragged and the angry; but the prevalent mood was distastefully light-hearted. Although many of the shops had closed, cafés and pubs were open, and people were treating the whole thing as a grand unplanned holiday, lying in the parks caressing each other or buying each other ice-cream.
All this angered David much more than it did me; he had always been the one with faith in the masses.
I thought of the cities I knew thousands of miles away, their grandeurs and their shortcomings: Washington, New York, San Francisco (my favourite American city), Chicago, Kansas City, and others I had never had the opportunity to visit. Yes, and I thought of Moscow and Leningrad, Baku and Tiflis, each of which I had visited on trade missions in the fifties; and of the teeming cities of the Orient, Canton, Shanghai, Peking with its factories and Ming tombs, Amoy, all cities I had not visited and now never would visit.
What was happening in them now? Were they being crushed to the ground even while London lazed in the sun? I looked up to the sky, half expecting to see – I knew not what.
‘Not yet,’ David said grimly, interpreting my look. ‘But it will come.’
We parked the car with difficulty and made our way to the FO.
On the drive down from Oxford, after hearing of Norman Parmettio’s death, my mind had become clear. If it were possible to help overthrow Minnie’s government, I would help. If I were needed to take part in a new government, in whatsoever capacity, again I would help. Throughout the fifties and the early sixties, when the Cold War had shown signs of thawing (largely because of the then Russian leader Khrushchev’s love-hate affair with the West) I had remained convinced that Communism was a declared enemy. Nothing I had written or spoken publicly had wavered from that belief. My record was clean. There were not so very many like me left in Britain. If I were needed, I would serve.
Although I did not know if Tertis was accessible, he was my best line of approach. I had worked with him often; we knew and trusted each other. If he were not available, I would try elsewhere, probably with the Athenaeum as first call.
At the doors of the FO, David and I were stopped. We had to give our names, after which I was allowed to write a note for a messenger to take up to Tertis. The messenger was gone for a long while; only when fifteen minutes had elapsed did he return and request us to follow him.
Leo Tertis was assistant head of the Military Relations Department formed in the sixties and lately of growing importance. We walked down a corridor I remembered well, with messengers lounging by doorways and chandeliers hanging overhead. Nobody knocks on doors in the FO, the assumption, I suppose, being that anyone admitted to the building in the first place will be birds of a feather. When our messenger indicated the second room of the Department, I walked straight in.
Tertis was there, five years my junior and at fifty a curiously youthful figure with plump pale cheeks, almost white hair and dark eyebrows. He looked, not unexpectedly, exceedingly grave and very tired. A vacuum flask of coffee stood on his desk; though the window was open, a smell of stale cigarette smoke pervaded the room.
He had been sitting talking to a short plump man. As David and I entered, he broke off, rose, and came round the desk to shake my hand. I introduced David; Tertis eyed him appraisingly.
‘David Woolf; I remember the name. You stood for Fleetwood in the by-election, didn’t you?’ he asked.
‘I did.’
‘Then you’re a unilateralist. What are you doing here with Sir Simon?’
Give David his due, he hardly hesitated before replying, ‘I’ve seen the error of my ways.’
‘You’re too late, my boy,’ Tertis said grimly, turning away to add, ‘I won’t pretend I’m particularly glad to meet either of you just now, but while you’re here you’d better be introduced to the Minister of Economic Affairs, Mr Edgar Northleech.’
I had already recognised the plump man as Northleech. For me he represented one of the country’s worst enemies, a crony of Menhennick’s, and one of the prime movers for increased appeasement towards the USSR since the retirement of Macmillan had allowed his sort to get into power. Northleech moved heavily towards us now, his white hair flowing round his head, paunch well out, beaming through his spectacles as he extended his hand. David took it; I did not.
Moving round to Tertis, I said, ‘We don’t have to tell each other where we stand. What can I do to help, Leo?’
‘I’ll give you the true picture in a moment; it’s bad. Friend Northleech, like your friend Woolf here, is busy changing sides. These are men of straw, Simon, blowing with the wind. I would rather ditch them than use them.’
Northleech came into the conversation saying, in the rambling manner he maintained even when angry, ‘The ability to change should not be despised. I can help you, Tertis. I can get you to Menhennick; he’s ready to discuss anything; pressure of events makes him feel he may have been misled.’
‘Misled!’ David exclaimed. ‘We don’t want to talk to you and Minnie. We want to shoot you. Don’t you realise that revolution or civil war is brewing up and down the country? Misled, be damned!’
‘Enough of that talk, Mr Woolf,’ said Northleech. ‘We have the situation in hand, you know. Anybody can be misled.’
‘It’s the duty of men in office not to be misled. You’ve failed in your duty – abysmally. The Communist bloc’s intentions have been clear since the forties.’
Red in the face, Northleech pointed a fat and shaking finger at David and said, ‘That comes well from a unilateralist and a homosexual!’
‘Leave personalities out of this! At least I and my party acted from our convictions. We advocated national disarmament as a first step towards general international disarmament. We advocated neutrality because as a neutral power Britain could weld other neutrals into a powerful enough group to break the deadly status quo of Big Two power ideologies that have frozen the world since the close of World War II. But your people, Northleech – yes, and I include you in this, Simon, and you, Mr Tertis – what were you up to all the time?’
Tertis banged furiously on his desk.
‘That’s enough,’ he said. ‘If you wish to remain in here, hold your tongue.’
But David went straight on, levelling one finger like a firearm at the three of us.
‘Your sort had no real thought for world peace, or even for the country. You were after preserving the social structure to which you belonged, just as Halifax, Baldwin, Chamberlain, and the other hangers-on did in. the thirties. You’re the damned middle-class powermongers, with no knowledge of Russian or Chinese language and culture, or of what goes on in their dangerous skulls. It’s your unspoken assumptions that have ruined Britain, not Communism or Socialism or all the other isms put together – your assumption that the best thing that can happen to anyone is that he can become a conformist and a gentleman, your assumption that your own narrow way of life is the only fit way of life. What happened to the workers? Once they got an education – your type of education, with a smattering of Shakespeare and a veneer of BBC accent – then they too were hell-bent on becoming gentlemen, poor carbon-copy gentlemen.’
‘Paranoia!’ I exclaimed.
‘Why?’ he demanded explosively, turning on me. ‘Because I don’t subscribe to your conventions? Don’t worry, you had nearly everyone else subscribing. You fools, you’ve ended by deluding yourselves. That’s why we’re all on the brink of disaster: you said to yourselves, “Oh, the Chinese leaders are gentlemen. Treat them like gentlemen and they’ll behave like gentlemen!” Look where it’s got you.’
‘You’re a very foolish young man,’ Northleech said. ‘There is no historical basis for your remarks. If we have in this country a rule by gentlemen, as you claim, then it is simply because the hoi-polloi have proved themselves unfit to rule. Besides, there is no conspiracy. Sir Simon and I went to the same public school, but we never had one opinion in common, then or since.’
‘Except the unspoken assumption that you were both of leader material!’
‘Bringing you to the FO has gone to your head, David,’ I said. ‘Your speech would have been more effective delivered to rabble in Trafalgar Square.’
‘It may be yet. I’d still like to know why Northleech should be here, rather than with Minnie, palling up to the Chinese.’
With a brow of thunder, Tertis said, ‘If you’d had the courtesy to keep quiet when you came in here, you would have heard why the Minister is here. It’s too late for your type of speechifying, Mr Woolf, just as it’s too late for a lot else. Edgar, you’d better tell them why you came.’
Northleech cleared his throat, glanced anxiously at Tertis, removed his spectacles to polish them furiously as he said, ‘It is no longer possible to keep peace with the People’s Republic. Three hours ago – probably at about the time you were leaving your university – the first nuclear weapon of World War III was detonated. A “clean” one-megaton bomb was dropped on Hong Kong. It fell at about six in the evening, local time, when the maximum number of people was about in the streets. We are as yet unable to obtain coherent accounts of the extent of the destruction.’
In the silence that followed, Tertis’s internal phone rang. He picked it up, listened, said, ‘Bring him in.’
Looking up at us, he said wearily, ‘Our country is fatally split, gentlemen. That’s the curse of it: when we come to discuss any detail, the opinions on it are infinite, and one man’s vote is as good as another’s. Perhaps it’s the democratic system itself that has brought us to this humiliating position; I don’t know. But I must ask you now to put personal considerations aside if you wish to remain here. We are about to be visited by General Schuller, Deputy Supreme Commander of NATO.’
This I scarcely heard. I was still overwhelmed by the news of the Hong Kong catastrophe and trying to assess its meaning. As a result, I had one of the briefest and most significant exchanges that ever passed between two men.
I asked Northleech, ‘Then I suppose we are now actually at war with Communist China?’
Northleech said, ‘No. Their Ambassador has apologised. He claims the bomb was dropped by accident.’