NGLND XPX

by Ian Hutson

  There must have been almost a metric half-dozen of them. The Whitehall doormen had quaked in their boots and then quite properly deployed the big wooden locking bar on the main door and stacked several heavy off-duty caretakers against it. Nonetheless, it still felt as though the hushed marbled sanctity of the Civil Service corridors within were going quite without, as far as security went, in re from those viewed without from within. It seemed as though London, and thus all of modern Earth civilisation, would soon be lost to the mob!

  Lady Constance Mann-Bighter (eldest daughter of the Earl of Cleethorpes) was leading the aural assault with a battered tin megaphone and a battered conductor’s baton. The baton was actually in excellent condition. The battered conductor was describing his attacker to the crowd that had gathered around him as he sat on the pavement outside the Albert Hall holding a handkerchief to the cut on his noggin. ‘My name iss Hubert von Karajan und I hav bin mugged by a large polite lady viz ein umberella und nein sense of timink. She took my liddle musical pointing shtick.’ Lady M-B didn’t care a whit. Not so much as half a jot. She had done what she had done for the Cause.

  ‘WHAT DO WE WANT?’ she sang, to the tune of Crimond.

  ‘STEAM!’ responded her acolytes, relying heavily for energy and zest on the electrolytes left over from their light breakfast of kedgeree and gin at the Suffragette Club.

  ‘When do we want it?’

  ‘As soon as practicable!’

  ‘What else do we respectfully request?’

  ‘Locomotion!’

  ‘When do we want it?’

  ‘Once all the technical bugs have been ironed out!’

  ‘What else could we possibly fancy?’

  ‘Large-scale ironwork structures!’

  ‘By when would we like them if possible?’

  ‘In time for the Great Exhibition!’

  ‘What further might we suggest?’

  ‘General industrial mechanisation!’

  ‘For why do we propose it?’

  ‘To make our cotton mills oop t’north profitable and competitive!’

  ‘What in addition might be rather splendid?’

  ‘Canals!’

  ‘Why would they be commercially beneficial?’

  ‘Because the roads are freightfully awful!’

  ‘What do we say, Ladies?’

  ‘Pleasey-weasey!’

  ‘What will we say when it’s all done?’

  ‘Thank you, thank you ever so!’ (Oh who writes this rubbish?)

  ‘How may we be of further assistance?’

  ‘BY STARTING OUR CHANT ALL OVER AGAIN!’

  ‘Lucinda – more effort on the Barbershop harmonies please. Daphne – a teensy-weensy par-boiled semi-quaver earlier on your Locomotion solo and go easy on the shimmy, this is not burlesque. From the top everyone, let’s do this for England, ladies, for England. A-one, a-two-ah, a-three-ah... WHAT DO WE WANT?’

  ‘STEAM!’

  ‘WHEN DO WE WANT IT?’

  The chant was somewhat wearing both for those at the wobbling-tonsil contralto end and for those at the point of the drawing board and the technological breakthrough. Tensions were running quite high and the Mayor had placed the whole of London upon an “Amber” fainting threat alert. Emergency Paramedic Response Teams with smelling salts, cool damp flannels, collapsible hand fans, bone-saws and staunching-tar buckets had been stationed in areas known to be especially prone to high drama or touches of the female vapours.

  Slap and Resuscitate powers under the Pull Yourself Together Woman Act of 1166 had been extended to Park Wardens, Public Lavatory Attendants and to members of the Baker Street Irregulars – anyone entering the new “under the ground railway” stations to wait for “tube trains” to be invented was subject to random corset checks. Moreover, random corset checks with no need to prove probable cause. It was like martial law where whalebones were concerned.

  [This would later prove awfully prickly when statistics collected were collated and indicated that narrow-waisted, pale and medically distressed-looking women were over seven million trillion umptillion gazillion percent more likely to be stopped and checked for illegally tight corset lacing than were men. Authorities responded sympathetically to the shrill “equal” rights outcry by pointing out that it was tough shit and they were in charge so boo ruddy hoo kindly go back to your knitting madam, as one did in those days.]

  Suddenly, one of the covert-operations ladies broke away from the madly marching circle and walked briskly towards the Patent Office building, checking her route for navigational hazards such as horse poop or picturesque flower sellers named Mrs Enery Iggins. No sense in making a dramatic break for it and then falling foul of stepping in a pancake of traffic pollution or a bunch of cheap lilacs with an Cockerney-Hollywooden accent. The covert agent’s fully loaded, snub-nosed, auto-repeating face was half-covered by a lace handkerchief tied at the back, as was recommended in the Society’s pamphlet on Polite Civil Disobedience for Ladies.

  Bopping a constable in the legal nuts with her rolled-up umbrella she then reached into her handbag, zeroed-in on her target through pince-nez and threw something through the third window along, fifth floor up, second pane down on the frame to the right. She threw with a little twisting top spin to stabilise the message.

  It should be noted by History that the lady threw in the manner of a rather delightful shot-putter, whirling like a summery dervish before sighting down an outstretched, long-gloved arm and launching from the hunched neck and shoulder. She grunted behind her lace mask as she released the air explosively from her lungs, hopped on one multi-petticoated stocking-bedecked leg to watch the curve of the throw. She then unhooked her umbrella from the crook of her elbow to stand - rather defiantly, it must be said - as she waited for arrest. It was simply not possible that she could have performed the manoeuvre without flashing at least one ankle so criminal charges of some sort were inevitable in any polite society.

  Her missile missive landed on the desk in front of the Chairperson of the Committee for the Nitty-Gritty Nit-Picking Implementation Details of The Industrial Revolution. It had called briefly at the temple of the Committee Secretary and then rushed straight over the heads of Finance and Public Relations before bouncing off Regulatory Affairs like a bad idea and settling, with a sliding ninety-degree correction, between Mr Branson’s entrepreneurial but naturally cautious leather-patch covered tweed elbows. Branson’s Nanny had always, always warned him against leaning his elbows on any table. Had he listened? No, of course not, and now look what had happened. He had virtually fallen into the arms of Suffragettes! Stupid boy!

  Shards of thick, greenish, hand-blown window pane scattered across the mirror-finish inlaid walnut in the manner of a very upset dish of Messrs Barker & Dobson’s best Imperious Mints. The shards took quite some time to rattle to a random conclusion. Most of the committee looked to the window as the point of entry, one or two of a more conventional religious bent looked questioningly up to the ceiling and beyond. The Committee Secretary succumbed to concussion and fell off his perch onto the fringed Persian.

  [This was, fortunately, a rug and not some sort of barnet-challenged Middle Eastern gentleman taking the minutes of the meeting.]

  The objet in question was a small, hand-made ship-in-a-rock, wrapped all about with a perfumed Basildon Bond love-notelet and some cornflower-blue ribbon.

  [The ship-in-a-rock was the forerunner to the more popular ship-in-a-bottle. Putting exquisite little models of sailing ships into clear bottles rather than igneous rocks allowed the customer to see the fine craftsmanship of the model-maker and made them easier to sell to an increasingly cynical and distrustful seaside consumer public.]

  The protestor in question was promptly and duly wrestled to the ground by the new Constable Class, Riot Division Bobbies who had Lignum Vitæ truncheons and who weren’t afraid, for obvious reasons, of being caught on cctv as they laid in enthusiastically with intra-costal entreaties to observe the rule of established
law. There was bound to be something somewhere in the statute books about delivering unsolicited collectible items via closed fenestration. Several dozen layers of her top-skirts were thrown over her head to facilitate unlawful-protestation muffling and to allow for her easy launch into the back of a horse-drawn Maria-of-Colour (colour was the new black, even back then before political correctness burst upon the world like a ripe boil). She would be before the Borough Magistrates within the quarter-hour and, if not of decent birth or judicial bedroom influence, on a sailing ship to van Diemen’s Land before the sun set solid, there to work as a sheep-dog or a bar-Sheila. At least, to do so until she died of the bite of the female trap-door kangaroo or manifold agues of fever and plagues of the head-blood or something medically antipodean and terribly, terribly, un-English. Justice would be swift; there would be no more than six or seven months before she had red dust on her heels and hot koala-spit on her best lace 'kerchief.

  Mr Branson stirred. ‘I see that Mr Palmer has yet to acquire a monopoly upon English mail deliveries’, he noted as he tugged at the apparently Gordian knot in the ribbon with an exploratory finger and thumb. One or two of those on the committee, those with better haircuts than the Persian gentleman taking the minutes, and possessed of at least a rudimentary sociable life, recognised the ribbon as a John Kay – Joseph Stell Loom Premium at one and sixpence a yard from Harrods. The notelet scent had the top-notes of sandalwood and patchouli that had been so popular last season with ladies of good standing north of the river. There was some very good standing north of the river.

  The paper itself was actually inked in an exquisite copper-plate hand and the return address was given as Belgwavia [sic] so there was hope for the protestor yet. There might well be a respectable husband with a loose five pound note with which to purchase her bail and cancel her probable passage to pastures penal, or an aged Aunt adventurously aghast at authoritarian antipathy towards any anti-establishmentarian angle or argument arraigned afresh a-public by an agitator of an atypical aspect in regards to gender.

  My Lords,

  I am writing to you in my capacity as Chair of the Ladies’ Committee for Insistence upon the Prompt and Satisfactory Prosecution of the Industrial Revolution and for the introduction of Billiards Cues in Women’s Sizes.

  We rather respectfully request:

  An end to the odious practise of the existence of the rural peasant class and to their use to till the soil in a non-intensive and seasonal manner in a rural setting, thus forcing a move towards fiscally obligated toil of a more industrial nature in the much tidier urban environments, beginning with wide-loom cloth mills and working towards the ultimate goal in a couple of centuries of similarly structured and pleasant pre-Sub Continent I.T. and General Utility Service Call Centres.

  The immediate introduction of the replacement of “organic” fuels with fossil fuels in the process of smelting iron, the wider use of Sir Clement Clerke’s reverberatory furnaces, the release from patent of potting, stamping and Henry Cort’s puddling processes, and the summary availability of cheaper, better quality steel with attendant reduction in Swedish imports and increase in availability of machine tools.

  The development of steam engines, preferably of the Watt double-acting rotative type where appropriate, both static and mobile, taking advantage of the improvements to and reduction of costs of, pig iron and steel and allowing the development of industrial scale Cotton Mills and Multi-Function Shared Contract Distribution Centres even where there is a lack of local water power, plus the playful facilitation of the long-awaited introduction of the Steam Train, the Seaside day excursion and the Kiss me Quick hat.

  The extensive and immediate building of perilously experimental bridgeworks, roadworks and gasworks, viaducts, aqueducts and social conducts, the digging of a lot of ridiculously narrow canals, the immediate use of the vast network of pre-Dr Beeching pattern railway lines, and the mandatory introduction of a commercially exploitable improvement in the weather resilience and reliability of shipping by requiring the Onedin Line et al to retro-fit steam boiler engines and side-paddles to Captain Baines.

  The immediate and bloody, evening invasion of Belgium on any day except Sunday next.

  If our demands are not met then we have it within our power to effect the summary withdrawal of feminine company from all mixed social occasions up to and including wifely duty with or without knuckle-biting and horizon-staring. The rearrangement of stray locks of hair falling over the eyes will be optional and dependent upon circumstances and humidity.

  Our sincere heartfelt bosom-heaving bodice-ripping breech-buckling damp curly blond locks-scattering, bare thigh slapping, rosy-red lip pouting, yee-hah screaming, chandelier-swinging, garter-twanging, mattress-spring pinging apologies for mentioning wifely duty in polite company but, quite frankly, you’ve driven us to it.

  Yours most truly,

  ever your humble servant,

  Lady Constance Mann-Bighter.

  p.s., Demand number five, while self-evidently desirable, is negotiable within the context of this portfolio with respect to the introduction of reasonable delays so long as the endeavour is complete before the next Easter egg rush.

  With that and a small curlicue the missive ended.

  It seemed to be a distillation of all of the usual feminist movement demands for a better world.

  Branson dropped the note to the table after reading it and flipped open the ornate cover of his rather unusual but questionably intelligent design of fob-off pocket watch. The ornate brass “time” hand covered the period from a quarter to the eighteenth century to a quarter past the nineteenth. The “second” hand indicated more specifically that it was, roughly, summer or thereabouts. What was worse, the new built-in barometer settled firmly in the green “yes” zone when tapped, as opposed to settling in the red “no” portion of the dial. From this Branson concluded that the internet would still be down and that there was probably little chance of blissfully welcome generalised hypoxia with attendant fatal cyanosis today, at least without extenuating circumstances or third-party intervention. This overwhelmingly depressing deluge of sufficient detail from his hitherto friendly and benign waistcoat pocket served him a-right for buying irreducible technology that he had just stumbled upon at a carriage boot sale on a heath and from a blind watch-maker’s untended stall at that.

  A fair proportion of the rest of the committee and quite a lot of the typing pool were staring into space with heads full of heartfelt bosom-heaving bodice-ripping breech-buckling damp curly blond locks-scattering, bare thigh slapping, rosy-red lip pouting, yee-hah screaming, chandelier-swinging, garter-twanging, mattress-spring pinging advanced pages from that inordinately popular Tibetan Monk manual of sedate rumpy-pumpy, the Calmer Sutra.

  ‘Gentlemen, one cannot fault the Chair of the Ladies’ Committee for Insistence upon the Prompt and Satisfactory Prosecution of the Industrial Revolution and for the introduction of Billiards Cues in Women’s Sizes for the accuracy of her committee’s demands. Indeed, I am ashamed to say that they are most succinct and generous in their terms, “immediately” being the timescale offered me only earlier this morning by Her Majesty, The Queen Victorian Person, for the introduction of the means of her total world domination.’

  At this juncture Branson twirled the large globe used by the Pith Helmet & Plymouth Gin Supply-Line Planning Committee into a blur of English Navy-dominated ocean blue and English Army-dominated Empire pink. The vital routes were updated in Chinagraph pencil at the Committee’s meetings every third September of every other decade. Tradition held that this was done by the youngest surviving Tory member of the quango just before the member’s expenses were voted through on a drunken nod.

  ‘Young Vickykins allowed me just one light stroke of her fluffy white “world domination” lap-cat and then demanded better munitions, an even larger naval fleet and efficient water extraction pumps for the coal mines in the slave colonies of [old] South Wales.’

  A fair proportion of
the committee and a lot of the typing pool were far too calm and sutra to listen. Some of them wandered off to the smoking rooms, most of them would be good for nothing more until long after luncheon. One or two had simply forgotten where they were and snored in a puddle of happy gentry dribble at the conference table.

  Branson turned towards the window and absently watched the workmen’s cranes several streets away assembling Oldfield’s design for the new tubular bell. It was mooted to be three times louder than the current non-tubular design of the luncheon bell used by the Civil Service Canteen to summon the faithful for subsidised pheasant-and-chips. He wondered again if the roof of the Canteen could support the weight and resist the vibrations five times daily plus repeats for last call for pudding.

  A light drizzle had begun to fall but, fortunately, only outside the building where it was disrupting the Peace Camp Progress Protest by sending both the ladies and the police alike running for the comparative safety and shelter of a nearby tea-rooms. Once inside – ladies first, of course – the two parties separated, Police into the Mug & Shot Bar and the ladies into the A-Cup & Saucer Lounge. Industrial kettles were no doubt being engaged by heavy lever in some deep, dank, dark-ish Dantean kitchen even as Branson watched. It was quite possible that indentured cake-slicers, apprenticed cream-whippers and novitiate cherry positioners were being roused from their slumbers in lice-infested hammocks even as the flames crept higher in the hearths and bare-footed sloped-foreheaded brutes with names like “Yes’um” and “Rrrrrgh” fetched water from the especially tasty-fresh public drinking well in Broad Street.

  The “ooh – get it off me, get it off me before I dissolve!” dance of the mildly drizzle-damp sugar-plum Englishman and Englishwoman was reaching an umbrella and hat shaking crescendo inside the Tea-Rooms doorway. The Ire-ish would later copy this, add tartan, exaggerate the movements and – in a stroke of genius - call it The Rivet Dance to make oodles of dosh selling tickets to people who, poor loves, wouldn’t recognise sophisticated entertainment even if you tattooed it on both cheeks of Lily Langtree’s ample arse right under where it already read “Royal Slap” and “Royal Tickle”.