England, England

by Julian Barnes

Subject behaved as if he had answered the question. Subject was asked if he could identify other participants in the battle, comment on military strategy, suggest possible causes of the conflict or its consequences.

  Subject was silent for twenty-five seconds. ‘Duke – I think Duke – William of Normandy, came over with his army, by sea from France, though it might not have been France then, the bit he came from, won the battle and became William the Conqueror. Or he was William the Conqueror already and became William the First. No, I was right before. First proper King of England. I mean, Edward the Confessor and the king who burnt the cakes, Alfred, but they don’t really count, do they? I think he was related to Harold in some way. Possibly cousins. Most of them were related at that time, weren’t they? They were all sort of Normans. I mean, unless Harold was a Saxon.’

  Subject was asked to reflect on the matter of whether or not he considered Harold to have been a Saxon.

  Subject silent for twenty seconds. ‘He might have been. I think he was. No, on second thought I’d bet against it. I think he was another kind of Norman. On account of being William’s cousin. If he was.’

  Subject was asked where exactly the battle took place.

  Subject: ‘Is that a trick question?’

  Subject was assured there were no trick questions.

  Subject: ‘Hastings. Well, not in the town, I don’t think. Though I suppose there wasn’t much of a town then. On the beach?’

  Subject was asked what happened between the Battle of Hastings and the Coronation of William the Conqueror.

  Subject: ‘Not sure. I imagine there was some sort of march on London, like Mussolini’s March on Rome, with some skirmishes and maybe another battle, and the locals flocking to the victor’s flag as they tend to on such occasions.’

  Subject was asked what happened to Harold.

  Subject: ‘Is that a … no, you said there weren’t any. He got an arrow in the eye.’ Aggressively: ‘Everyone knows that.’

  Subject was asked what happened after this incident.

  Subject: ‘He died. Of course.’ In a more conciliatory mood: ‘I’m pretty sure he must have died from the arrow, but I don’t know how long after receiving the wound. I shouldn’t think there was much you could do in those days about an arrow in the eye. It’s pretty unlucky, when you think about it. I suppose the course of English history might have been different if he hadn’t looked up at that moment. Like Cleopatra’s nose.’ Pause. ‘Mind you, I don’t actually know who was winning the battle at the time Harold got the arrow in his eye, so perhaps the course of English history would have remained exactly the same.’

  Subject was asked if there was anything he could add to his account.

  Subject was silent for thirty seconds. ‘They wore chainmail and pointy helmets with noseguards and had broadswords.’ Asked which side he was referring to, Subject replied: ‘Both sides. I think. Yes, because that would tie in with them all being Normans, wouldn’t it? Unless Harold was a Saxon. But Harold’s boys definitely weren’t running about in leather jerkins or whatever. Hang on. They might have been. The poorer ones, the cannon-fodder.’ Cautiously: ‘Not that I’m saying they had cannon. The ones who weren’t knights. I can’t imagine everyone could afford chainmail.’

  Subject was asked if that was all.

  Subject, excited: ‘No! The Bayeux Tapestry, I’ve just remembered. That’s all about the Battle of Hastings. Or part of it is. It’s also got the first sighting, or the first recording, of Halley’s Comet. I think. No, the first representation, that’s what I mean. Is that any use?’

  Subject agreed that he was now at the full limits of his knowledge.

  We believe that this is a fair and accurate account of the interview, and that the Subject is representative of the target group.

  Dr Max uncapped his fountain-pen and leaked his reluctant initials onto the report. There had been many others like this, and they were beginning to depress him. Most people remembered history in the same conceited yet evanescent fashion as they recalled their own childhood. It seemed to Dr Max positively unpatriotic to know so little about the origins and forging of your nation. And yet, therein lay the immediate paradox: that patriotism’s most eager bedfellow was ignorance, not knowledge.

  Dr Max sighed. It wasn’t just professional, it was also personal. Were they pretending – had they always been pretending – those people who flocked to his lectures, called his phone-in, laughed at his jokes, bought his books? When he splashed down in their minds, was it as useless as a flamingo landing in a birdbath? Did they all know bugger all about bugger everything like this ignorant 49-year-old bugger in front of him, who considered himself cultured, aware, intelligent, and well-informed?

  ‘Bugger!’ said Dr Max.

  THE PRINTOUT of Jeff’s survey was laid before Sir Jack on his Battle Table. Potential purchasers of Quality Leisure in twenty-five countries had been asked to list six characteristics, virtues or quintessences which the word England suggested to them. They were not being asked to free-associate; there was no pressure of time on the respondents, no preselected multiple choice. ‘If we’re giving people what they want,’ Sir Jack had insisted, ‘then we should at least have the humility to find out what that might be.’ Citizens of the world therefore told Sir Jack in an unprejudiced way what in their view the Fifty Quintessences of Englishness were:

  1. ROYAL FAMILY

  2. BIG BEN/HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT

  3. MANCHESTER UNITED FOOTBALL CLUB

  4. CLASS SYSTEM

  5. PUBS

  6. A ROBIN IN THE SNOW

  7. ROBIN HOOD AND HIS MERRIE MEN

  8. CRICKET

  9. WHITE CLIFFS OF DOVER

  10. IMPERIALISM

  11. UNION JACK

  12. SNOBBERY

  13. GOD SAVE THE KING/QUEEN

  14. BBC

  15. WEST END

  16. TIMES NEWSPAPER

  17. SHAKESPEARE

  18. THATCHED COTTAGES

  19. CUP OF TEA/DEVONSHIRE CREAM TEA

  20. STONEHENGE

  21. PHLEGM/STIFF UPPER LIP

  22. SHOPPING

  23. MARMALADE

  24. BEEFEATERS/TOWER OF LONDON

  25. LONDON TAXIS

  26. BOWLER HAT

  27. TV CLASSIC SERIALS

  28. OXFORD/CAMBRIDGE

  29. HARRODS

  30. DOUBLE-DECKER BUSES/RED BUSES

  31. HYPOCRISY

  32. GARDENING

  33. PERFIDY/UNTRUSTWORTHINESS

  34. HALF-TIMBERING

  35. HOMOSEXUALITY

  36. ALICE IN WONDERLAND

  37. WINSTON CHURCHILL

  38. MARKS & SPENCER

  39. BATTLE OF BRITAIN

  40. FRANCIS DRAKE

  41. TROOPING THE COLOUR

  42. WHINGEING

  43. QUEEN VICTORIA

  44. BREAKFAST

  45. BEER/WARM BEER

  46. EMOTIONAL FRIGIDITY

  47. WEMBLEY STADIUM

  48. FLAGELLATION/PUBLIC SCHOOLS

  49. NOT WASHING/BAD UNDERWEAR

  50. MAGNA CARTA

  Jeff watched Sir Jack’s expression move between wise self-congratulation and acrid dismay as he worked through the list. Then a fleshy hand dismissed him, and Jeff knew the bitterness of the messenger.

  Alone, Sir Jack considered the printout again. It frankly deteriorated towards the end. He crossed off items he judged the result of faulty polling technique and pondered the rest. Many had been correctly foreseen: there would be no shortage of shopping and thatched cottages serving Devonshire cream teas on the Island. Gardening, breakfast, taxis, double-deckers: those were all useful endorsements. A Robin in the Snow: where had that come from? All those Christmas cards, perhaps. The Magna Carta was currently being translated into decent English. The Times newspaper was no doubt easily acquired; Beefeaters would be fattened up, and the White Cliffs of Dover relocated without much linguistic wrenching to what had previously been Whitecliff Bay. Big
Ben, the Battle of Britain, Robin Hood, Stonehenge: couldn’t be simpler.

  But there were problems at the top of the list. Numbers 1, 2, and 3, to be precise. Sir Jack had put out early feelers to Parliament, but his initial offer to the nation’s legislators, put forward at a working breakfast with the Speaker of the House of Commons, had been insensitively received; the word contempt might even have been used. The football club would be easier: he’d send Mark up to Manchester with a team of top negotiators. Little blue-eyed Mark who looked like a soft touch and then flattered you into signing your life away. No doubt there would be matters of local pride, civic tradition, and so on – there always were. Sir Jack knew that in such cases it was rarely just a question of price: it was price combined with the necessary self-deception that price was finally less important than principle. What principle might apply here? Well, Mark would find one. And if they dug their little studs in, you could always buy up the club’s title behind its back. Or simply copy it and tell them to fuck off.

  Buck House would need a different approach: less carrot and stick, more carrot and carrot. The King and Queen had been taking a lot of flak lately from the usual mixture of cynics, malcontents, and nay-sayers. Sir Jack’s newspapers had been under orders to patriotically refute all such treasonable libels while reproducing them in mournfully extensive detail. Ditto that squalid business with Prince Rick. KING’S COUSIN IN DRUG-CRAZED LEZZIE SEX-ROMPS – was that the headline? He’d fired the journalist, of course, but sadly dirt had a tendency to adhere. Carrot and carrot; they could have a whole bunch of carrots if that was what it took. He would offer them improved pay and conditions, less work and more privacy; he would contrast the carping ingratitude of their current subjects with the guaranteed adoration of their future ones; he would stress the decay of their old kingdom and the bright prospects of a precious jewel set in a silver sea, Mark II.

  And how would that jewel glitter? Sir Jack prodded a forefinger down Jeff’s list again, and his loyal growl intensified with each item he’d crossed off. This wasn’t a poll, it was barefaced character assassination. Who the fuck did they think they were, going around saying things like that about England? His England. What did they know? Bloody tourists, thought Sir Jack.

  CAREFULLY, AWKWARDLY, Paul laid out his life before Martha. A suburban upbringing on a mock-Tudor estate: prunus and forsythia, mown grass and neighbourhood watch. Car-washing on Sunday mornings; amateur concerts in village churches. No, of course not every Sunday: that was just how it felt. His childhood had been peaceful; or boring, if you preferred. Neighbour would report neighbour for using a sprinkler during a hosepipe ban. At one corner of the estate there was a mock-Tudor police station; in its front garden stood a mock-Tudor bird-box on a long pole.

  ‘I wish I’d done something bad,’ said Paul.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, so that I could confess it to you, and you would understand, or forgive, or whatever.’

  ‘That’s not necessary. Anyway, it might make me like you less.’

  Paul was silent for a few moments. ‘I used to wank a lot,’ he said with an air of hopefulness.

  ‘Not a crime,’ said Martha. ‘So did I.’

  ‘Damn.’

  He showed her photographs: Paul in nappies, in shorts, in cricket pads, in black tie, his hair gradually darkening from straw to peat, his glasses patrolling the outer parameters of fashion, his adolescent plumpness fading as the anxieties of adulthood took hold. He was the middle child of three, between a sister who mocked him and a feted younger brother. He had been good at school, and good at escaping notice. After college, he had joined Pitco as a management trainee; then steady promotion which offended nobody until one day he was in the gents and realized that the figure next to him, so broad it seemed to lever out the wings of the stand-up, was Sir Jack Pitman himself, who must have decided to forsake the splendour and privacy of his porphyry toilet for an exercise in democratic urination. Sir Jack was humming the second movement of the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata, which made Paul so nervous that his pee had dried up. For some reason he never understood, he started telling Sir Jack a story about Beethoven and the village policeman. He didn’t dare look at the Chairman, of course, just told the story. At the end of it, he heard Sir Jack zip himself up and wander off, whistling the third movement, the presto, very inaccurately, Paul couldn’t help noticing. The next day he’d been summoned to Sir Jack’s private office, and a year later had become his Ideas Catcher. At the end of each month he would present the Chairman with his own personal Hansard. Sometimes he even managed to surprise Sir Jack with items of forgotten wisdom. The jowly nod would be primarily of self-approval, but it also served to congratulate the Catcher of the Idea for his nimbleness in recuperating the crystal aphorism before it hit the ground.

  ‘Girls,’ Martha said. She’d had enough of Sir Jack Pitman.

  ‘Yes,’ was all he replied. By which he meant: from time to time, carefully, awkwardly. But never like now.

  She answered with a preliminary version of her own life. He listened tensely when she recounted her father’s betrayal and the Counties of England. He relaxed with the Horticultural Show and Mr A. Jones, laughed uncertainly at the story of Jessica James, went solemn about not blaming your parents after the age of twenty-five. Then Martha told him her mother’s opinion that men were either wicked or weak.

  ‘Which am I?’

  ‘The jury’s still out.’ She was teasing, but he looked downcast. ‘It’s all right, you’re not meant to agree with your parents after the age of twenty-five either.’

  Paul nodded. ‘Do you think there’s a connection?’

  ‘Between what?’

  ‘Between your father sodding off, as you put it, and you working for Sir Jack?’

  ‘Paul, look me in the eye.’ He did so, reluctantly; he had graduated beyond her ears by now, but there were times when he preferred her cheeks and her mouth. ‘Our employer is not a substitute for a lost father, all right?’

  ‘It’s just that he sometimes treats you like a daughter. A rebellious one who questions him all the time.’

  ‘That’s his problem. And that’s cheap psychology.’

  ‘I didn’t mean …’

  ‘No …’ But he must have meant something. Martha, having constructed her life, having built her character, resisted contrary interpretation.

  There was a silence. Eventually Paul said, ‘Do you know the story of Beethoven and the village policeman?’

  ‘You’re not auditioning for a job now.’ Oh, watch your tongue, Martha, it was meant to be a joke, but he’s blushing. You’ve murdered relationships with that tongue before. She softened her voice. ‘Tell me another time. I’ve a better idea.’

  He kept his eyes away from her.

  ‘I’ll be weakly wicked and you can be wickedly weak. Or the other way round if you prefer.’

  It was their fourth time in bed together. The first careful awkwardnesses were disappearing; they had stopped banging knees. But on this occasion, as she felt them about to take their separate journeys, he half-raised himself on an elbow and said quietly, ‘Martha.’

  She turned her head. His glasses were on the bedside table and his gaze was naked. She wondered if she was out of focus for him, and if this made it easier for him to look her in the eye.

  ‘Martha,’ he repeated. In a way, he didn’t need to say anything more, but he did anyway. ‘I’m still here.’

  ‘I can see that,’ she said. ‘I can feel that.’ She tightened herself around his cock, but knew she was being defensive, jaunty.

  ‘Yes. But you know what I mean.’

  She nodded. She’d got out of the habit of being there. She smiled at him. Maybe things could be simple again. In any case, she was grateful to him for taking the risk. She stayed with him, watching, attending, following, leading, approving. She was careful, she was honest; so was he.

  And yet, it wasn’t the best sex she’d ever had in her life. Still, who said there was a connection between
human decency and good fucking? And who kept a league-table of lovers? Only the insecurely competitive. Most people couldn’t remember the best sex of their lives. Those who did were exceptions. Like Emil. Good old Emil, a gay friend of hers. He remembered. She’d once sent him a postcard from Carcassonne. By the time she got home, his swift and exultant reply was on her mat. His letter began: ‘Had the best fucky-fuck of my life in Carcassonne. Way back when. A hotel room in the old city with a balcony overlooking cooked roofs. A tremendous storm was brewing, like in an El Greco, and as the heavens went about their business, so did we, until the gap between the lightning and the thunder grew to nothing, and the storm was overhead, and all we seemed to be doing was following the guidance of the skies. Afterwards we lay on the bed listening to the storm head off towards the hills, and as we paused, we heard a cleansing rain begin to fall. Enough to make you believe in God, eh, Martha?’

  Well, enough for Martha to believe that God, if He existed, didn’t have any prejudice against gays. But God – and man, for that matter – had never arranged such grand counterpoint for her. The best fucky-fuck of her life? Pass. She snuffled her face into Paul’s armpit. She’d settle for good.

  ROAST BEEF of Old England was naturally approved on the nod by the Gastronomic Sub-Committee, as were Yorkshire pudding, Lancashire hotpot, Sussex pond pudding, Coventry godcakes, Aylesbury duckling, Brown Windsor Soup, Devonshire splits, Melton Mowbray pie, Bedfordshire clangers, Liverpool Christmas loaf, Chelsea buns, Cumberland sausages, and Kentish chicken pudding. A swift tick was given to fish and chips, bacon and eggs, mint sauce, steak and kidney pudding, ploughman’s lunch, shepherd’s pie, cottage pie, plum duff, custard with skin, bread and butter pudding, liver and bacon, pheasant, game chips, and crown roast. Approved for their picturesque nomenclature (contents could be adjusted later if necessary) were London Particular, Queen of puddings, Poor Knights of Windsor, Hindle Wakes, stargazey pie, wow-wow sauce, maids-of-honour, muffins, collops, crumpets, fat rascals, Bosworth jumbles, moggy, and parkin. The Sub-Committee banned porridge for its Scottish associations, faggots and fairy cakes in case they offended the pink dollar, spotted dick even when renamed spotted dog. Devils- and angels-on-horseback were in; toad-in-the-hole and cock-a-leekie out. Welsh rarebit, Scotch eggs, and Irish stew were not even discussed.