England, England

by Julian Barnes

  At more or less the same time as a blanketed pair of dark trousers was seen leaving a mock-Tudor house in Reigate, while surprisingly well-informed paparazzi were shouting ‘Over here, Mr Holdsworth,’ Sir Jack was waving his Governor’s tricorne from an open landau of his own providing. Employees lined the route to the new Island council buildings in Ventnor. First, Sir Jack, in hard hat and with gold-plated trowel aloft, assisted at the topping-out ceremony, and was pictured sharing the rough camaraderie of roofers and masons. Next, at ground level, Sir Jack cut a series of ribbons, declared the buildings open, and formally handed them over to the people of the Island, as represented by Council leader Harry Jeavons. The cameras then moved inside, where the Council swore itself in and immediately passed its final piece of legislation. Councillors unanimously declared that after seven centuries of subjugation, the Island was throwing off the yoke of Westminster. Independence was hereby pronounced, the Council raised to the status of a Parliament, and Island patriots everywhere were invited to wave the Pitco-sponsored flags which had been tossed from the back of Sir Jack’s motorcade.

  Without moving seats, the Parliament then passed its first executive act, bestowing upon Sir Jack Pitman the title of Island Governor. His position was purely honorific, even if technically endowed with the residual authority – consigned to the finest vellum by a master calligrapher – to suspend Parliament and the constitution in case of national emergency and rule in his own person. These powers were expressed and delivered in Latin, which diminished their impact on those assenting to them. Sir Jack, speaking from a gilded throne, referred to a sacred trust, and evoked earlier governors and captains of the Island, notably Prince Henry of Battenberg, who had so proved his patriotism by a heroic death in the Ashanti war of 1896. His widow, the noble Princess Beatrice, had thereafter ruled as Governor – Sir Jack pointed out that in his grammar the masculine always embraced the feminine – until her own death nearly half a century later. Sir Jack confessed a modest ignorance of his own appointment with the Grim Reaper, but uxoriously advanced the name of Lady Pitman as a possible successor.

  As the Ventnor bells rejoiced, across the Channel an Island maiden, personally chosen by Sir Jack to represent Isabella de Fortuibus, delivered to the International Court at The Hague a petition requesting annulment of the 1293 Island Purchase. Then a Boadicean chariot took her to the Deutsche Bank, where she opened an account in the name of ‘The British People’ and deposited the sum of six thousand marks and one euro. She was accompanied by a bodyguard of late-thirteenth-century yokels, whose presence was designed to emphasize that Edward I’s so-called ‘purchase’ of the Island had been a fraud on simple folk to whom the treaty had never been properly explained. Among the yokels were various Pitco executives with rehearsed sound-bites on both the original land-grab and the subsequent, centuries-long cover-up.

  Isabella de Fortuibus continued by chariot to the station, where a special Brussels express awaited her. On arrival, she was met by lawyers from Pitman Offshore International, who had prepared the Island’s application for instant emergency membership of the European Union. This was a defining moment, the POI chief negotiator declared to the world’s media, one which encapsulated the long struggle for liberation on the part of the Islanders, a struggle marked by courage and sacrifice down the centuries. Henceforth they would look towards Brussels, Strasbourg, and The Hague for the safeguarding of their rights and freedoms. It was a time of great opportunity, but also of great peril: the Union would need to act firmly and decisively. It would be more than a tragedy if a former-Yugoslavia-style-situation were allowed to develop on Europe’s northern doorstep.

  While the London Stock Exchange endured such a Black Tuesday that dealing was suspended at lunchtime for the foreseeable future, Pitco shares soared worldwide. That evening, with Island oak logs flaming patriotically in his neo-Bavarian hearth, Sir Jack drank. He reviewed the evidence in video and anecdotal form. He chuckled at reruns of his own prerecorded bites. He kept half a dozen phone lines open as he switched from one awed listener to another. He permitted a few newspaper editors to be put through and offer their congratulations. The world’s first bloodless coup d’état since whenever, they were calling it. Taking steps towards the New Europe. Breaking the Mould. Pitman the Peacemaker. David and Goliath were invoked by the pops. Robin Hood too. The whole dramatic day reminded a tame sage on one of Sir Jack’s tonier titles of Fidelio: what a breaking of chains had there not been? Yes, indeed, the new Governor felt, a certain person might have approved. In homage – no, more with a sense of parity – he allowed the mighty Eroica to serenade his triumph.

  The sweetness of victory was all the greater when those who acclaimed your victories did not know how great they truly were. For instance, he had no intention of taking the Island into the European Union. The effects of their employment law and banking regulations, to name but two areas, would be disastrous. He just needed Europe to keep Westminster out of his face until everything had settled down. The offered repurchase of the Island for six thousand marks and a euro? Only a simpleton would believe this was anything more than two fingers up to the mainland: he’d had the account closed down before the media had boarded the train for Brussels. Likewise, he didn’t think the legal challenge to the 1293 treaty had a snowball’s chance in hell: imagine what a can of worms Europe would be opening up for itself if they let that through. And as for the fucking Island Parliament: the very sight of those jumped-up councillors behaving as if each of them were Garibaldi … It was enough to make him rise from his Governor’s throne and tell them, in English instead of Latin just so the fools and dunderheads understood, that he was planning to prorogue Parliament within a week. No, that was rather too complicated a word for them, so he’d keep it simple. There was a national emergency, one brought about by the Island Parliament’s preposterous belief that it might be capable of running the place itself. He was closing it down because there was nothing for it to do. Nothing that he, Sir Jack Pitman, wanted it to do. And the jumped-up councillors could jump on the first boat to Dieppe as far as he was concerned. Unless they wanted to put their current brief work-experience to use. The Project was still auditioning for its House of Commons Experience. Front-bench jobs had been allocated, but they were looking for non-speaking back-benchers able to master some simple choreography – rising to their feet at a signal from the Speaker, waving their order papers in mock urgency and then flopping back on the green leather benches. They would also be required to utter various non-verbal but interpretable noises – contemptuous baying, sycophantic groaning, rabid muttering, and insincere laughter being the main categories. He thought they might be able to manage that.

  Sir Jack drank more. He phoned more. He received more praise. At two in the morning he summoned Martha Cochrane and told her to bring her toyboy and snivelling note-taker, in case a vibrant dream welled up in him. Actually, he might have said fucking toyboy, the tongue did loosen after the best armagnac. At any rate, she didn’t look pleased to be called from whatever business she was about. As for the boy Paul, he went into a profound sulk as soon as Jack made a mildly ribald remark about … Oh fuck them, fuck them. He didn’t care what anyone got up to, but he wanted people around him who could enjoy. He didn’t need insolent nay-sayers like these two, who sipped their armagnac with resentful tight mouths. Especially not on a day like this. Sir Jack was well into his peroration when he spontaneously decided to include them in his restructuring plans.

  ‘The point about change is that no-one is ever prepared for it. The Palace of Westminster’s just found that out, and the Island so-called Parliament will soon follow suit. If you don’t keep one jump ahead then you’re two paces behind. Most people have to run on the spot just to keep up with me while I sleep. You two, for example.’ He paused. Yes, that got their attention. He gave them the searchlight glare. Just as he thought: the woman stared insolently back at him, the boy pretended to be looking for something down the side of his chair. ‘I suppose you ima
gined once you boarded Sir Jack’s gravy train that it was just a question of mopping your bread in his gravy until you pulled down your pension. Well, I’ve got a big surprise for you … pair of misery-guts. Now this Project is up and running I don’t need a barrelful of whingers and moaners trying to drag it down. So let me have the honour to inform you that you are the first two employees I intend to fire. Have fired. Already. As of now. Consider yourself now fired. And what is more, under the employment legislation I might or might not put through my tinpot Island Parliament, or for that matter under new contracts which will be retroactively valid, someone’s working on it, you will receive no severance pay. You’re fucking fired, you two, and if you can’t get your things packed by the time the morning ferry leaves I’ll throw all your shit in the harbour personally.’

  Martha Cochrane looked briefly across at Paul, who nodded. ‘Well, Sir Jack, you don’t seem to give us any alternative.’

  ‘No I fucking don’t, and I’ll tell you why.’ He stood up to show his full rhomboid shape, took another slurp, pointed at each of them in turn and then, either as a climax or an afterthought, at himself. ‘Because, to put the matter simply, because there is, I always feel, a fundamental simplicity within me, because I’m a genius. That’s it.’

  He was reaching towards the baroque bell-pull, ready to sluice out of his life this carping bitch and her ninnyish toyboy, when Martha Cochrane uttered the two words he least expected to hear.

  ‘Auntie May.’

  ‘I beg your pardon.’

  ‘Auntie May,’ she repeated. And then, looking up at his swaying shape, ‘Titty. Nappy. Poo.’

  THREE

  A Tourist Mecca Set in a Silver Sea

  Two years ago an enterprising leisure group launched a new venture off the south coast of England. It has swiftly become one of the most coveted destinations for upmarket vacationers. Staff writer Kathleen Su asks whether the new Island state may prove a role model for more than just the leisure business.

  It is a classic springtime day outside Buckingham Palace. The clouds are high and fleecy, William Wordsworth’s daffodils are blowin’ in the wind, and guardsmen in their traditional ‘busbies’ (bearskin hats) are standing to attention in front of their sentry boxes. Eager crowds press their noses to the railings for a glimpse of the British Royal Family.

  Promptly at 11.00, the tall double windows behind the balcony open. The ever-popular King and Queen appear, waving and smiling. A ten-gun salute splits the air. The guardsmen present arms and cameras click like old-fashioned turnstiles. A quarter of an hour later, promptly at 11.15, the tall windows close again until the following day.

  All, however, is not as it seems. The crowds and the cameras are for real; so are the clouds. But the guardsmen are actors, Buckingham Palace is a half-size replica, and the gun salute electronically produced. Gossip has it that the King and Queen themselves are not real, and that the contract they signed two years ago with Sir Jack Pitman’s Pitco Group excuses them from this daily ritual. Insiders confirm that an opt-out clause does exist in the royal contract, but that Their Majesties appreciate the cash fee that accompanies each balcony appearance.

  This is showtime, but it’s also big business. Along with the first Visitors (as they call tourists hereabouts) came the World Bank and the IMF. Their approval – coupled with the enthusiastic endorsement of the Portland Third Millennium Think Tank – means that this ground-breaking enterprise is likely to be much copied in years and decades to come. Sir Jack Pitman, whose brainchild the Island was, takes a back seat nowadays, while still keeping a beady eye on things from his exalted position as Governor, a historic title going back centuries. The public face of Pitman House is currently its CEO Martha Cochrane. Ms Cochrane, a trim forty-something with an Oxbridge brain, a sharp wit, and an array of designer suits, explained to the Wall Street Journal how one of the traditional problem areas of tourism has always been that five-star sites are too rarely in easy reach of one another. ‘Remember the frustration of hauling yourself from A to B to Z? Remember those nose-to-tail tourist buses?’ Visitors from the US to Europe’s prime locations will recognize the tune: poor infrastructure, inefficient tourist thruput, inconsiderate opening hours – everything the traveler doesn’t need. Here even the postcards come pre-stamped.

  Once upon a time this used to be the Isle of Wight, but its current inhabitants prefer a simpler and grander title: they call it The Island. Its official address since declaring independence two years ago is typical of Sir Jack Pitman’s roguish, buccaneering style. He named it England, England. Cue for song.

  It was also his original stroke of lateral thinking which brought together in a single hundred-and-fifty-five-square-mile zone everything the Visitor might want to see of what we used to think of as England. In our time-strapped age, surely it makes sense to be able to visit Stonehenge and Anne Hathaway’s Cottage in the same morning, take in a ‘ploughman’s lunch’ atop the White Cliffs of Dover, before passing a leisurely afternoon at the Harrods emporium inside the Tower of London (Beefeaters push your shopping trolley for you!). As for transport between sites: those gas-guzzling tourist buses have been replaced by the eco-friendly pony-and-cart. While if the weather turns showery, you can take a famous black London taxi or even a big red double-decker bus. Both are environmentally clean, being fuelled by solar power.

  This great success story began, it’s worth recalling, under a hail of criticism. There were protests at what some described as the virtually complete destruction of the Isle of Wight. This was clearly an exaggeration. Key heritage buildings have been saved, along with much of the coastline and parts of the central downland. But almost one hundred percent of the housing stock – described by Professor Ivan Fairchild of Sussex University and a leading critic of the project, as ‘dinky interwar and mid-century bungalows whose lack of stand-out architectural merit was compensated for by their extraordinary authenticity and time-capsule fittings’ – has been wiped out.

  Except that you can still see it if you wish. In Bungalow Valley, Visitors may wander through a perfectly re-created street of typical pre-Island housing. Here you will find front gardens where rockeries drip with aubretia and families of plaster ‘gnomes’ (dwarf statues) congregate. A path of ‘crazy paving’ (recycled concrete slabs) leads to a front door filled with crinkly glass. Ding-dong chimes echo in your ear as you pass into a living zone of garish carpeting. There are flying ducks on striped wallpaper, ‘three-piece suites’ (sofas with matching chairs) of austere design, and French windows giving on to a ‘crazy-paving’ patio. From here there are further vistas of aubretia, hanging baskets, ‘gnomes,’ and antique satellite dishes. It’s all cute enough, but you wouldn’t want too much of it. Professor Fairchild claims that Bungalow Valley is not so much a re-creation as a self-justifying parody; but he concedes the argument has been lost.

  The second ground for complaint was that the Island targets high rollers. Even though most vacation costs are pre-paid, immigration officers examine arrivals not for passport irregularities or vaccination stamps but for credit-worthiness. Travel companies have been advised to warn vacationers that if their credit rating is not to the satisfaction of the Island authorities, they will be sent back on the first airplane. If there are no seats available on flights, those who are unwelcome are put on the next cross-channel ferry to Dieppe, France.

  Such apparent élitism is defended by Martha Cochrane as merely ‘good housekeeping.’ She further explains: ‘A vacation here may look expensive, but it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Besides, after you’ve visited us, you don’t need to see Old England. And our costings show that if you attempted to cover the “originals” it would take you three or four times as long. So our premium pricing actually works out cheaper.’

  There is a dismissive tone to her voice when she pronounces the word ‘originals.’ She is referring to the third main objection to the project, one initially much discussed but now almost forgotten. This is the belief that tourists visit pr
emier sites in order to experience not just their antiquity but also their uniqueness. Detailed studies commissioned by Pitman House revealed that this was far from being the case. ‘Towards the end of the last century,’ Ms Cochrane explains, ‘the famous statue of David by Michelangelo was removed from the Piazza della Signoria in Florence and replaced by a copy. This proved just as popular with visitors as the “original” had ever been. What’s more, ninety-three percent of those polled expressed the view that, having seen this perfect replica, they felt no need to seek out the “original” in a museum.’

  Pitman House drew two conclusions from these studies. First, that tourists had hitherto flocked to ‘original’ sites because they simply had no choice in the matter. In the old days, if you wanted to see Westminster Abbey, you had to go to Westminster Abbey. Second, and more laterally, that if given the option between an inconvenient ‘original’ or a convenient replica, a high proportion of tourists would opt for the latter. ‘Besides,’ adds Ms Cochrane with a wry smile, ‘don’t you think it is empowering and democratic to offer people a wider choice, whether it’s in breakfast food or historic sites? We’re merely following the logic of the market.’