England, England

by Julian Barnes

  Gary Desmond thought it worth the risk.

  ‘BUCK HOUSE,’ said Sir Jack. ‘We’re strapped without Buck House.’

  The hotels had their carpeting and potted trees, the twin towers of Wembley Stadium were waiting to be topped off, a replica double-cube snuggery was being slotted into Pitman House (II), and three golf courses already embellished Tennyson Down. The shopping malls and sheepdog trials were ready to go. Hampton Court maze had been laid out, a White Horse cut in a chalky hillside, and on a west-facing clifftop topiarists had trimmed Great Scenes from English History which shone as a black frieze against the setting sun. They had a half-size Big Ben; they had Shakespeare’s grave and Princess Di’s; they had Robin Hood (and his Band of Merrie Men), the White Cliffs of Dover, and beetle-black taxis shuttling through the London fog to Cotswold villages full of thatched cottages serving Devonshire cream teas; they had the Battle of Britain, cricket, pub skittles, Alice in Wonderland, The Times newspaper, and the One Hundred and One Dalmatians. The Stacpoole Marital Memorial Pool had been excavated and planted with weeping willows. There were Beefeaters trained to serve Great English Breakfasts; Dr Johnson was choosing his lines for the Dining Experience at The Cheshire Cheese; while a thousand robins were acclimatising to perpetual snow. Manchester United would play all its home fixtures at the Island’s Wembley, the matches being replayed immediately afterwards at Old Trafford by substitute teams, who would produce the same result. They had failed to get any members of Parliament; but even half-trained, a bunch of resting actors were proving indistinguishable from the real thing. The National Gallery had been hung and varnished. They had Brontë country and Jane Austen’s house, primeval forest and heritage animals; they had music-hall, marmalade, clog- and Morris-dancers, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Stonehenge, stiff upper lips, bowler hats, in-house TV classic serials, half-timbering, jolly red buses, eighty brands of warm beer, Sherlock Holmes, and a Nell Gwynn whose physique countered any possible whisper of paedophilia. But they did not have Buck House.

  In one sense, of course, they had it. The palace-front and railings were complete; guardsmen in Lycra-lite bearskins had been trained not to bayonet cute toddlers smearing ice-cream into their toe-caps; colours – a whole rainbowful – were waiting to be trooped. All this went ahead under a deliberately leaky news blackout, which naturally led people to assume that the Royal Family had agreed to relocate. Regular denials from Buckingham Palace served only to confirm the rumour. But the fact was, they didn’t have Buck House on board.

  It ought to have been easy. On the mainland, the Family had been held in low repute for some time. The death of Elizabeth II and the subsequent fracture of the hereditary principle were widely seen as the end of the traditional monarchy. The process of public consultation over the succession further diluted the royal mystique. The young King and Queen had done their best, appearing on chat shows, hiring the best script-writers, and keeping their infidelities more or less private. A twenty-page photo-spread in Terrific magazine had produced a touching moment, when readers had learnt, from a cushion-cover personally designed by Queen Denise, her nickname for her husband: Kingy-Thingy. But in general the nation had grown querulous, either dismayed by the Family’s normality, resentful of its cost, or simply tired from bestowing millennia of love.

  This should have helped Sir Jack’s cause, but the Palace was proving oddly stubborn. The King’s advisers were skilled in temporization, and openly hinted that the Windsors’ foreign bank accounts would see the Family through many more decades. At the end of the Mall a bunker mentality was developing, enlivened by occasional outbursts of what looked like satire. When the Prime Minister repeated the phrase ‘bicycling monarchy’ once too often, a Palace spokesman replied that while bicycles were not, and never could be, royal modes of transport, the King, acknowledging the economic circumstances and the dwindling supply of fossil fuels, was willing to convert the House of Windsor into a motorbicycling monarchy. And indeed, from time to time, a helmeted figure with the royal crest on the back of its leathers would power down the Mall, with silencer disconnected as if by prerogative; though whether this was the King, his wicked cousin Rick, a surrogate, or a clown, no-one could discover.

  For all the citizenry’s disenchantment, the Palace, the Department of Tourism, and Sir Jack knew that the Royal Family was the country’s top cash crop. Sir Jack’s negotiating team strove to emphasize how a move to the Island would produce both financial advantage and quality leisure for the Family. There would be a fully modernized Buckingham Palace, plus, for retro weekends, Osborne House; there would be no criticism or interference, just organized adulation ad libitum; the Family would pay no taxes, and the Privy Purse would be replaced by a profit-sharing scheme; there could be no journalistic intrusion into their lives, since the Island had only a single newspaper – The Times of London – and its editor was a true patriot; boring duties would be kept to a minimum; foreign trips would be purely recreational, and dreary heads of state would have their visa applications refused; the Palace could have approval over all coins, medals, and stamps issued on the Island, even postcards if they wished; finally, there would never, ever be a question of bicycles – indeed, the whole thinking behind the relocation was to restore the glamour and pizzazz which had been so insolently wrenched from the Royal Family in past decades. Transfer fees to make footballers swoon had been mentioned, yet still the Palace held out. It had been agreed – after a lot of flattery, most of it financial – that the King and Queen would fly down for the Opening Ceremony. But this was strictly without prejudice, as had been pointed out many times.

  The Appointed Cynic tried to look on the bright side. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘we’ve already got Elizabeth the First, Charles the First, and Queen Victoria on the Island. Who needs a bunch of pricey no-talent scroungers?’

  ‘We, alas, do,’ replied Sir Jack.

  ‘Well, if everyone around here – even Dr Max, to my surprise – prefers the replica to the original, get some replicas.’

  ‘I think,’ said Sir Jack, ‘that if I hear that sentiment again I shall do someone an injury. Of course we have a back-up position. The “Royal Family” has been in training for months. They’ll do it very well, they have my every confidence. But it’s just not the same.’

  ‘Which logically means that it could be better.’

  ‘Alas, Martha, there are times when logic, like cynicism, can only take us so far. We are talking Quality Leisure. We are talking top dollar and long yen. We’re strapped without Buck House, and don’t they know it.’

  A rare voice was now heard. ‘What about inviting old George back from his monastery?’

  Sir Jack did not even glance at his Ideas Catcher. The young man had become decidedly pert in recent weeks. Didn’t he understand that his job was to catch Ideas and not proffer his own piddling semi-notions? Sir Jack attributed these sudden moments of assertiveness to Paul’s stupendous good fortune in clambering into Martha Cochrane’s bed. Had Pitco been reduced to this, a mere dating agency for employees? There would be pay-off time, in due course; but not today.

  Sir Jack let the boy fry for a while in the expanding silence, then murmured to Mark, ‘Now that really would be insane.’ Mark’s superior laughter brought the meeting to a close.

  ‘A word, Paul, if you have time.’

  Paul watched the others file out; or rather, he watched Martha’s legs file out.

  ‘Yes, she’s a fine woman.’ Sir Jack’s tone was approving. ‘I speak as a connoisseur of fine women. And a family man, of course. A fine woman. Goes like the proverbial clappers, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  Paul did not respond.

  ‘I remember when I first set eyes on her. Likewise when I first set eyes on you, Paul. In less formal circumstances.’

  ‘Yes, Sir Jack.’

  ‘You’ve done well, Paul. Under my patronage. She’s done well too. Under my patronage.’

  Sir Jack left it at that. Come on, boy, don’t disappoint me. Show me you’
ve at least got something in your trousers.

  ‘Are you saying’ – the aggression of Paul’s tone was new, the primness familiar – ‘that my … relationship with … Miss Cochrane is unacceptable to you?’

  ‘Why should I feel that?’

  ‘Or that my work has suffered as a consequence?’

  ‘Not in the least, Paul.’

  ‘Or that her work has suffered as a consequence?’

  ‘Not in the least.’

  Sir Jack was content. He put his arm round Paul and felt a gratifying tightness in the shoulders as he led his protégé to the door. ‘You’re a lucky man, Paul. I envy you. Youth. The love of a good woman. Life before you.’ He reached for the doorhandle. ‘My blessings on you. On you both.’

  Paul was sure of one thing: that Sir Jack didn’t mean it. But what did he mean?

  ROBIN HOOD and his Merrie Men. Riding through the Glen. Stole from the rich, gave to the poor. Robin Hood, Robin Hood. A primal myth; better still, a primal English myth. One of freedom and rebellion – justified rebellion, of course. Wise, if ad hoc, principles of taxation and redistribution of income. Individualism deployed to temper the excesses of the free market. The brotherhood of man. A Christian myth, too, despite certain anti-clerical features. The pastoral monastery of Sherwood Forest. The triumph of the virtuous yet seemingly outgunned over the epitomic robber baron. And on top of all this, no. 7 on Jeff’s all-time list of The Fifty Quintessences of Englishness, as adjusted by Sir Jack Pitman.

  The Hood Myth had been given priority rating from the start. Parkhurst Forest easily became Sherwood Forest, and the environs of the Cave had been arboreally upgraded by the repatriation of several hundred mature oaks from a Saudi prince’s driveway. The rock-style facing to the Cave was being jack-hammered into aged authenticity, and the dormitory had received its second coat of primer. The gas-pipe to the whole-ox barbecue pit had been laid, and the hiring of Robin’s Band of Merrie Men was down to its final audition. Martha Cochrane was scarcely being Cynical – it was more an idle mental doodle – when, at a Thursday committee, she said,

  ‘By the way, why are the “Men” all men?’

  ‘Is the Pope a Catholic?’ replied Mark.

  ‘Knock off the feminism, Martha,’ said Jeff. ‘Top dollar and long yen simply aren’t interested.’

  ‘I was just –’

  But Dr Max pattered to her rescue, chivalric if ill-aimed. ‘Of course, whether or not the Pope is or is not, was or was not, a Catholic remains, despite its use as a seemingly conclusive item of tap-room repartee’ – and here Dr Max glanced fiercely at Mark – ‘a matter of serious concern to historians. On the one hand, the popular if fuzzy-minded view that whatever the Pontiff does is ipso facto a Catholic act, that Papality or Popiness is, by definition, Catholicity. On the other, the somewhat maturer judgment of my colleagues that one substantive problem of the Catholic Church down the centuries, what has landed it all too frequently in the ecclesiastical and historical mulligatawny, is precisely that the Popes have been insufficiently Catholic, and that if they had been –’

  ‘Turn it off, Dr Max,’ said Sir Jack, though his tone was indulgent. ‘Fill us in on your thinking, Martha.’

  ‘I’m not sure “thinking” isn’t an exaggeration,’ Martha began. ‘But I –’

  ‘Quite,’ said Jeff. ‘It’s too late for all this knee-jerk stuff. There’s only ever been minority money up that alley. Everyone knows about Robin Hood. You can’t start messing around with Robin Hood. I mean …’ He lifted his eyes in exasperation.

  Martha had been unprepared for Jeff’s attack. He was normally so solid and literal, waiting patiently for others to decide and then implementing their will. ‘I just thought,’ she said mildly, ‘that part of our task, part of Project Development, was the repositioning of myths for modern times. I don’t see what’s different about the Hood myth. Indeed, the fact that it’s number seven should make us examine it more carefully.’

  ‘May I pick up a c–ouple of Jeff’s c–omplacent, if I may say so, phrases?’ Dr Max was leaning back, fingers loosely joined at the nape, elbows warding off doubters, already in full seminar mode. Martha looked across at Sir Jack, but the chair was feeling tolerant, or perhaps malicious, today. ‘Everyone knows about Robin Hood is a myopic formula which makes an historian’s hackles rise. Everyone knows, alas, only what everyone knows, as my investigations on behalf of the Project have all too sadly shown. But the pearl richer than all his tribe is You can’t start messing around with Robin Hood. What, my dear Jeff, do you think History is? Some lucid, polyocular transcript of reality? Tut, tut, tut. The historical record of the mid-to-late thirteenth century is no clear stream into which we might trillingly plunge. As for the myth-kitty, it remains formidably male-dominated. History, to put it bluntly, is a hunk. Rather like you, Jeff, in fact.

  ‘Now, one’s first thoughts on the m–atter. Miss Cochrane has raised, very pertinently, the question of whether and why the “Men” were all men. We know that one of them – Maid Marian – was clearly a certified woman. So a female presence is established from the start. Further, the name of the very leader, Robin, is sexually ambiguous, an ambiguity endorsed by the British pantomime tradition, where the outlaw is played by a young female person. The name “Hood,” for that matter, denotes a garment which is ambisexual. So one might, if one wished to be provocative and somewhat anti-Jeffish, venture a repositioning of the Hood myth within the true corpus of female outlawry. Moll Cutpurse, Mary Read, and Grace O’Malley might come to some, if not all, minds at this point.’

  Sir Jack was enjoying Jeff’s discomfiture. ‘Well, Jeff, care to come back on that one?’

  ‘Look, I’m just the Concept Developer. I develop concepts. If the Committee decides to turn Robin Hood and his Merrie Men into a band of … fairies, then just let me know. But I can tell you one thing: pink pound does not go through the same turnstile as top dollar.’

  ‘It might enjoy the squeeze,’ said Dr Max.

  ‘Gentlemen. Enough for the moment. All thoughts to Dr Max, who will report to an emergency session of the Committee on Monday next. Oh, and Jeff, stop work on the dormitory for the moment. Just in case we need to build more little girls’ rooms.’

  The following Monday morning Dr Max presented his report. To Martha’s eye he was as dapper and fussy as usual, but with a more determined air. She predicted to herself that his preliminary hesitations might disappear; she also wondered if Paul would notice. Dr Max cleared his throat, as if he, rather than Sir Jack, were in charge.

  ‘In deference to our Chairman’s known views on sedimentary rock and flint arrowheads,’ he began, ‘I shall spare you the nonetheless fascinating early history of the Hood legend, its Arthurian parallels, its possible source in the great Aryan sun-myth. Similarly, Piers Plowman, Andrew of Wyntoun, Shakespeare. Mere arrowheads. I shall equally spare you the results of my electronic canvass of Joe Public, who in the present instance I might rename Jeff Public. Yes, everyone does indeed “know about” Robin Hood, and they know just what you might expect. Diddly-squat, as the jargon has it.

  ‘Leaving all that aside, how might the Band “play,” as it were? Jeff Public would, I think, applaud the legend of the ur-freedom-fighter not just for his liberationist actions and redistributive economic policy, but also for his democratic choice of companions. Friar Tuck, Little John, Will Scarlet, and Much the Miller’s Son. What have we here? A rebel priest with an eating disorder; a person suffering from either restricted growth or gigantism, depending how ironic you judge the medieval mind to have been; a possible case of pityriasis rosea, although dipsomania can’t be ruled out; and a flour operative whose personal identity is dependent upon his father’s social position. Then we have Allan-a-dale, whose bursting heart might allegorically refer to a cardiac condition.

  ‘In other words, a grouping of the marginalized led by an equal-opportunity employer who was, whether he knew it or not, one of the first implementers of an affirmative rights programme.’
Martha was watching Dr Max in qualified disbelief. He couldn’t mean all this stuff: he must be winding Jeff up. But sleek self-parody was close to Dr Max’s normal mode; and her enquiring glance slid off his shiny carapace. ‘Which leads us inevitably to consider the sexual orientation of the Band, and whether they might have been a homosexual community, thus further underlining and justifying their status as outlaws. See English kings, various, passim, but even so. We raised at our last pow-wow the sexual ambiguity of names – Robin and Marian being the prime examples – to which might be added the case of the Miller’s Son, who appears textually both as Much, which might indicate a certain hefty masculinity or Jeffness, and as Midge, which is well attested as a term of affection applied to short women.

  ‘As a general point, we should be aware that in pastoral communities where males greatly outnumber females, same-sex practices in a non-judgmental ethos are the historical norm. Such activities would involve a measure of transvestism, sometimes ritualized, sometimes, well, not. I should also wish to record – though would quite understand if the Committee declines to develop it as a concept – that pastoral communities of this make-up would certainly have indulged in bestiality. To take the present instance, deer and geese might seem the most likely subjects for fraternization; swans unlikely; boar, on balance, hardly at all.