England, England

by Julian Barnes

  ‘Exactly. So I shall invoke clause 13b of their contracts.’

  Ted continued to look as if some compassionate female compromise was being proposed. Clause 13b merely stated that in special circumstances, which circumstances to be decided by the executive officers of the Project, employees could be required to transfer to any other employment as designated by the said officers.

  ‘You mean you’re retraining them? That’s not justice in my book, Miss Cochrane.’

  ‘Well, you said they were criminals. That’s what I’m going to retrain them as.’

  The next day, Premier Visitors were invited, on payment of a supplement, to witness an authentic but unspecified example of Heritage Action at an undisclosed location. Despite a pre-dawn departure, tickets were swiftly subscribed. Three hundred Premiers, each holding a complimentary hot toddy, watched as Excise officers raided the village of Lower Thatcham. The scene was lit by flaming torches with rough fill-in from floodlights; period oaths were uttered; smugglers’ doxies appeared at casement windows in a state of classic-serial undress. There was a smell of burning pitch and a subdued glitter of gilt Excise buttons; a vast contrabandist, cutlass aloft, ran menacingly at a group of Premiers until one of their number threw down his toddy, cast off his overcoat to reveal a comforting uniform, and downed the fellow. As dawn broke, twelve ringleaders in nightshirts and leg-irons were loaded on to a requisitioned hay-wain to genuine applause. Justice – or job retraining – would begin the next day at Carisbrooke Castle, where some would sit in the stocks and be pelted with rotten fruit, while others would tread the grain-wheel and append their signatures to the wrappers of the resulting convict loaves. Twenty-six weeks of this and they would have paid off the executive fines levied by Martha Cochrane. By the time they were transported to the Continent the new smugglers of Lower Thatcham, operating under more tightly-drafted contracts, would be thoroughly trained.

  It would work. Everything on the Island worked, because complications were not allowed to arise. The structures were simple, and the underlying principle of action was that you did things by doing them. So there was no crime (apart from blips like this) and therefore no judicial system and no prisons – at least, not real ones. There was no government – only a disenfranchised Governor – and therefore no elections and no politicians. There were no lawyers except Pitco lawyers. There were no economists except Pitco economists. There was no history except Pitco history. Who could have guessed, back there in Pitman House (I), as they stared at the map laid out on the Battle Table and joked about bad cappuccino, what they would stumble into creating: a locus of uncluttered supply and demand, somewhere to gladden the heart of Adam Smith. Wealth was created in a peaceable kingdom: what more could anyone want, be they philosopher or citizen?

  PERHAPS IT REALLY was a peaceable kingdom, a new kind of state, a blueprint for the future. If the World Bank and the IMF thought so, why deny your own publicity? Electronic as well as retro-readers of The Times discovered immaculately good news about the Island, mixed news about the wider world, and unremittingly negative news about Old England. By all accounts the place had been in a state of free-fall, had become an economic and moral waste-pit. Perversely rejecting the established truths of the third millennium, its diminishing population knew only inefficiency, poverty, and sin; depression and envy were apparently their primary emotions.

  Whereas on the Island a bright and modern patriotism had swiftly evolved: not one based on tales of conquest and sentimental recitations, but one which, as Sir Jack might have put it, was here, was now, and was magic. Why shouldn’t they be impressed by their own achievements? The rest of the world was. This repositioned patriotism engendered a proud new insularity. In the first months after Independence, when there were legal threats and murmurings about blockade, it had seemed daring for Islanders to take a surreptitious ferry to Dieppe, and for executives to dash across the Solent by Pitco helicopter. But this quickly came to seem wrong: both unpatriotic and pointless. Why become voyeurs of social strain? Why slum it where people were burdened by yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that? By history? Here, on the Island, they had learnt how to deal with history, how to sling it carelessly on your back and stride out across the downland with the breeze in your face. Travel light: it was true for nations as well as for hikers.

  So Martha and Paul worked fifty feet away from one another at Pitman House (II), and spent their Leisure – some of it Quality, some not – in a Pitco executive apartment with a Premier view over what maps still called the English Channel. Some thought the water needed rechristening, if not full repositioning.

  ‘Bad week?’ asked Paul. It was little more than a ritual enquiry, since he shared all her professional secrets.

  ‘Oh, average. Pimped for the King of England. Tried to sack Dr Max and failed. Plus the smuggler business. At least we put the lid on that.’

  ‘I’ll ser–ser–sack Dr Max for you.’ Paul’s tone was enthusiastic.

  ‘No, we need him.’

  ‘We do? You said yourself no-one goes near him. No-one wants to know any of Dr Max’s old history.’

  ‘He’s an innocent. I think he’s probably the only innocent person on the whole Island.’

  ‘Mar–tha. We are talking about the same fellow? TV person – or rather, ex-TV person – tailor’s dummy, phoney voice, phoney mannerisms. He’s an innocent?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Martha stubbornly.

  ‘OK, OK, as unofficial Ideas Catcher to Martha Cochrane, I hereby record her opinion that Dr Max is an innocent. Dated and filed.’

  Martha let a pause extend. ‘Do you miss your old job?’ By which she also meant: your old boss, how things were before I came along.

  ‘Yes,’ said Paul simply.

  Martha waited. She waited deliberately. Nowadays she almost urged Paul to say things which then made her think less of him. Simple perversity, or a practical death-wish? Why did two years of Paul sometimes feel like twenty?

  So part of her was satisfied when he went on: ‘I still think Sir Jack’s a great man.’

  ‘Parricide’s guilt?’

  Paul’s mouth tightened, he dropped his eyes from her, and his tone took on a pedant’s sharpness. ‘Sometimes you’re just too clever for your own good, Martha. Sir Jack is a great man. From start to finish, this whole project was his idea. Who pays your salary, really? You’re dressed by him.’

  Too clever for your own good. Martha was back in her childhood. Are you being pert? Don’t forget that cynicism is a very lonely virtue. She looked across at Paul, remembering when she had first noticed him stir in his patch of straw. ‘Well, then, maybe Dr Max isn’t the only innocent on the Island.’

  ‘Don’t patronize me, Martha.’

  ‘I’m not. It’s a quality I like. There’s far too little of it around.’

  ‘You’re still patronizing me.’

  ‘And Sir Jack’s still a great man.’

  ‘Fuck you, Martha.’

  ‘I wish someone would.’

  ‘Well, count me out tonight, thank you very much.’

  On another occasion, she might have been touched by Paul’s habit of polite qualification. I hate you, if you’ll pardon the expression. Burn in hell, you vile cow, excuse my French. But not tonight.

  Later, in bed, as he pretended to sleep, Paul succumbed to thoughts he couldn’t refute. You made me betray Sir Jack, now you’re betraying me yourself. By not loving me. Or not loving me enough. Or not liking me. You made things real. But only for a while. Now it’s back to what it was like before.

  Martha also pretended to sleep. She knew Paul was awake, but her body and her mind were turned away from him. She lay there thinking about her life. She did this in the normal way: roamingly, rebukingly, tenderly, revisingly. At work, faced with a problem or decision, her mind would work with clarity, logic, and, if necessary, cynicism. By nightfall, these qualities seemed to evaporate. Why could she sort out the King of England more easily than she could sort out herself?


  And why was she being so hard on Paul? Was it just disappointment for herself? Nowadays his passivity just seemed to provoke her. She wanted to prod him, stir him out of it. No, out of more than ‘it,’ out of himself – as if, against all the evidence, there was someone different lurking inside. She knew it made no sense. Try office logic, Martha. If you provoke someone passive into irritation, what do you get? A formerly passive, currently irritated, and soon-to-be-passive-again person. To what end?

  She also knew that it had been this very gentleness, this lack of ego – which she now rechristened passivity – which had been one of his attractions. She had thought … what, exactly? She thought (now) that she had thought (then) that here was someone who wouldn’t seek to impose himself on her (well, true), who would let her be herself. Had she indeed thought that, or was this a later version? Either way, it was false. ‘Be herself’ – that’s what people said, but they didn’t mean it. They meant – she meant – ‘become herself,’ whatever that was, and however that might be attained. The truth was, Martha – wasn’t it? – that you were expecting Paul’s mere presence to act as a growth hormone to the heart? Just sit over there on the sofa, Paul, and beam your love at me; then I’ll turn into the mature, ripened person I’ve always wanted to be. Could you get more egotistical, and more naive? Or, for that matter, more passive? Who said human beings became ripe anyway? Maybe they just became old.

  Her mind hopped back to childhood, as it did more frequently these days. Her mother showing her how tomatoes ripened. Or rather, how you ripened tomatoes. It had been a cold, wet summer, and the fruit was still green on the stalk by the time the leaves curled like wallpaper and a frost was forecast. Her mother had separated the crop into two. One lot she left by themselves, to ripen naturally together. The others she put into a bowl with a banana. Within a few days the tomatoes in the second bowl were edible, the ones in the first still fit only for chutney. Martha had asked for an explanation. Her mother had said, ‘That’s what happens.’

  Yes, Martha, but Paul isn’t a banana and you aren’t a pound of tomatoes.

  Was it the Project’s fault? What Dr Max called its coarsening simplifications – were they corrosive? No, blaming your job was like blaming your parents, Martha. Not allowed after the age of twenty-five.

  Was it because the sex wasn’t perfect? Paul was attentive; he stroked the inside of her arm (and more) until she yelped; he’d learnt the words she needed to hear in bed. But it wasn’t Carcassonne, to use her private code. Still, why should that be a surprise? Carcassonne was a one-off: that was its point. You wouldn’t keep going back there in the hope of finding yet another perfect mate and yet another El Greco thunderstorm. Not even old Emil did that. So maybe it wasn’t sex.

  You could always blame luck, Martha. You can’t blame your parents, you can’t blame Sir Jack and his Project, you can’t blame Paul, or any of his predecessors, you can’t blame English history. So what’s there left to blame, Martha? Yourself and luck. Let yourself off tonight, Martha. Blame luck. It’s just bad luck you weren’t born a tomato. Things would have been much simpler. All you would have needed was a banana.

  ON A STORMY NIGHT when westerlies raised heaving waves, when the stars were occluded and a wild rain fell, a group of boat-builders from a village near the Needles had been discovered standing at the water’s edge waving lanterns at supply ships. One of the vessels had altered course, imagining that the lights of the harbour-bar were before them.

  A few nights later, a transport aircraft reported that as it was making its final descent into Tennyson Two, it had spotted, half a mile to starboard, a rough trail of alternative landing lights.

  Martha noted the details, approved Ted Wagstaff’s investigations, and waited for him to leave. ‘Yes, Ted? Something else?’

  ‘Ma’am.’

  ‘Security or Visitor Feedback?’

  ‘Just a bit of VF I thought I should mention, Miss Cochrane. In case it’s relevant. I mean, it’s not like Queen Denise and the fitness trainer, which you said was none of my business.’

  ‘I didn’t say that, Ted. Just that it wasn’t treason. Breach of contract at most.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Who is it this time?’

  ‘It’s that Dr Johnson. Fellow that dines with Visitors at The Cheshire Cheese. Big, clumsy fellow, floppy wig. Scruffy, if you ask me.’

  ‘Yes, Ted, I know who Dr Johnson is.’

  ‘Well, there’ve been complaints. From Visitors. Casual and official.’

  ‘What sort of complaints?’

  ‘They say he’s depressing company. So the sun rises in the East, eh? Miserable bugger, don’t know why they want to have dinner with him anyway.’

  ‘Thank you, Ted. Leave me the file.’

  She summoned Dr Johnson for three o’clock. He arrived at five, and was muttering to himself as he was shown into Martha’s office. He was an awkward, muscular fellow with deeply scarred cheeks and eyes which barely seemed to focus on her. He continued muttering, sketched a few antic gestures, then without invitation threw himself down in a chair. Martha, who had helped audition him, and sat in on a Cheshire Cheese preview which had been a blast, was alarmed by the change. When they hired him, they had every reason for confidence. The actor – she could no longer remember his name – had spent a number of years touring a one-man show called ‘The Sage of Middle England,’ and had full control of the necessary material. The Project had even consulted him when building the Cheese, and had engaged tavern companions – Boswell, Reynolds, Garrick – to relieve the one-on-one pressure that might have ensued had the Doctor been left alone with Visitors. Project Development also provided a bibliophilic stooge, ready with a deferential prompt to spark the Great Cham’s wit. Thus the Dining Experience was choreographed to move between Johnsonian soliloquy, repartee among co-evals, and cross-epoch-bonding between the Good Doctor and his modern guests. There was even a scripted moment of subtle endorsement for the Island Project. Boswell would bring the conversation round to Johnson’s travels, and ask, ‘Is not the Giant’s Causeway worth seeing?’ Johnson would reply, ‘Worth seeing? Yes. But not worth going to see.’ The exchange often provoked a flattered chuckle from Visitors alert to irony.

  Martha Cochrane scanned the file onscreen which summarized the complaints against Johnson. That he was badly dressed and had a rank smell to him; that he ate his dinner like a wild beast, and so quickly that Visitors, feeling obliged to keep pace, gave themselves indigestion; that he was either bullyingly dominant or sunk in silence; that several times, in mid-sentence, he had stooped down and twitched off a woman’s shoe; that he was depressing company; that he made racist remarks about many of the Visitors’ countries of origin; that he was irritable when closely questioned; that however brilliant his conversation might be, clients were distracted by the asthmatic gasping that accompanied it, and the needless rolling-around in his chair.

  ‘Dr Johnson,’ Martha began. ‘There have been complaints against you.’ She looked up, but her employee seemed to be paying little attention. He shifted mammothly and mumbled something that sounded like a phrase from the Lord’s Prayer. ‘Complaints at your lack of civility towards those who share your table.’

  Dr Johnson stirred himself. ‘I am willing to love all mankind,’ he replied, ‘except an American.’

  ‘I think you will find that an unhelpful prejudice,’ said Martha, ‘given that thirty-five percent of those who come here are American.’ She waited for a reply, but Johnson had apparently mislaid his taste for argument. ‘Are you unhappy about something?’

  ‘I inherited a vile melancholy from my father,’ he replied.

  ‘After the age of twenty-five you’re not allowed to blame anything on your parents,’ said Martha crisply, as if this were company policy.

  Johnson gave a vast heave, an asthmatic wheeze, and bellowed back at her, ‘Wretched un-idea’d girl!’

  ‘Are you unhappy about those you work with? Any tensions? How are you getting
along with Boswell?’

  ‘He fills a chair,’ replied Johnson gloomily.

  ‘Is it the food, perhaps?’

  ‘It is as bad as bad can be,’ replied the Doctor with a jowl-wobbling shake of the head. ‘It is ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-dressed.’

  Martha considered all this to be rhetorical exaggeration, if it wasn’t an early strike for improved pay and conditions. ‘Let’s get to the point,’ she said. ‘I have a screenful of complaints about you. Here, for instance, is Monsieur Daniel of Paris. He says that he paid his Dining Experience supplement expecting to hear examples of high-class traditional British humour from you, but that you uttered barely a dozen words all evening, none of them worth repeating.’

  Johnson wheezed and snorted, and threw himself around in his chair. ‘A Frenchman must always be talking, whether he knows anything of the matter or not. An Englishman is content to say nothing, when he has nothing to say.’

  ‘That’s all very well in theory,’ Martha replied, ‘but it’s not what we pay you for.’ She scrolled on. ‘And Mr Schalker of Amsterdam says that in the course of dinner on the twentieth of last month he made a number of enquiries of you, to none of which you gave any response.’

  ‘Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen,’ replied Johnson with heavy condescension.

  Really, this was getting nowhere. Martha called up Dr Johnson’s contract of employment. Of course: it should have been an early warning. Whatever the actor’s original name, he had long ago changed it by deed-poll to Samuel Johnson. They had engaged Samuel Johnson to play Samuel Johnson. Perhaps this explained things.

  All of a sudden there was a rolling and a scrabbling and a muttering and then a thump as Johnson fell to his knees, reached under the desk, and, with a heavy yet bearishly precise flick, removed Martha’s right shoe. Alarmed, she looked across the surface of her desk to the top of his soiled wig.