by Mark Helprin
The House roared in almost hysterical disapproval. Every Tory was terrified. Had Pimcot gone mad? “Killer! Killer!” screamed Labour, and not just one or two, but a hundred or more.
He took the opportunity to work them up yet again, aiming for a state of froth. “ ‘No, no, and no again, Mrs Albingle-Epworth! No heating allowance for you! Not a chance!!’ ”
The House was half insane. Apehand rose, and after five minutes, when the jeering had subsided, he cautiously sought to drive in the stake that he thought Pimcot had placed pointing at his own heart. But he was still worried. “And why, Prime Minister, why, I ask, why in the name of God, would you deny to this poor woman a few lumps of coal?” The pathos was as thick as apple-butter.
Pimcot waited until not a single member was not on the edge of his seat and holding his breath. “I would deny her those few lumps of coal,” he replied to Apehand, as gravely as he possibly could, “because,” he paused for what seemed like forever, “she didn’t need them. She didn’t need them, because she gave up her flat in October, moved to Jamaica to live with her son and daughter-in-law, and died there, on a ninety-eight-degree day, of heat prostration. That’s why.”
The Conservatives now rose as one and cheered as if indeed Japan had just surrendered, which Rupert Bertie Bethune believed to be the case. “And that is why we are on this side of the House, and you are on that side,” Pimcot said, bearing down. “We do our homework.”
Next up was Hillary Lamb, terrified by the display of Pimcot’s resilience but determined as a matter of faith to take the shot he had prepared. Lamb was a ladies’ man, and this everyone knew. Evidently his Roman haircut, military background, and genuine astonishment that anyone could disagree with his obviously sensible views were, to women, in Apehand’s phrase, “like fresh vegetables for an Eskimo.” His party had discovered that 88 percent of its adherents were professional women who wore scarves and brooches and bathed with perfumed soaps. When this was made public, Pimcot had opined that not one member of Apehand’s party used perfumed soap, and that only a few used soap at all. Apehand, engaging the totality of his wit, had shot back that he did use soap.
Now Lamb stood with the troubled, earnest expression for which he was famous, and spoke in his cashmere voice.
“The prime minister is aware, is he not, of the recent case of environmental atrocity at the Royal Naval Station, John O’Groats? One of my constituents, a Mr Coningsby Isaac, had been employed by the Royal Mollusc Society to care for molluscs in the marges of John O’Groats. He was obliged, therefore, to expose himself to the highly dangerous high-frequency emissions from the radomes at RNS John O’Groats, which the Royal Mollusc Society suspects are responsible for the very low rate of reproduction among the local mollusc community.
“Molluscs at John O’Groats are stunted and puny, and virtually never achieve orgasm. Why? Because of the Royal Navy’s ludicrous assertion that it must guard the seaward approaches to Britain.”
The speaker rose. Always when addressing Lamb she had a special tingle in her voice, but now she was irritated as well. “Would the gentleman please put his statement in the form of a question.”
“Certainly, Madam Speaker. Is the prime minister aware that Mr Coningsby Isaac, after more than forty mollusc expeditions to John O’Groats, has suffered the same fate as his charges?”
The House perked up.
“Mr Isaac, having been irradiated like a mollusc, is no longer capable of satisfying his wife. Or, for that matter, anyone else. Has the prime minister read, in The Noon Behemoth of yesterday, Mr Isaac’s courageous, exact, and detailed account of his many unsuccessful attempts at sexual relations? Is the prime minister not impressed by the man’s courage in publishing so exhaustive an account, replete with photographs, to illustrate not only the plight of British molluscs but his own? And can the prime minister tell this House, and the British people, what he is going to do about it?”
“I have always thought,” the prime minister replied, “that men after whom women lust uncontrollably are fools. It is unthinking to consider them exemplars of manhood when in fact they have given up their manhood, willing as they are to keep it so unbalanced. A man is many things. He is the sober protector of his family, the earner of wages, the fighter of wars, the father of his children. In his life he discovers that the greatest part of being a man is standing fast in the teeth of those forces that whittle away at his existence and eventually will destroy him, so that he may do his duty to his God, his family, and his country. This you cannot do offhandedly, for in the end it takes everything you have. But a man whose life is filled mainly with the prospect and attraction of adoring women has, perforce, abandoned those things that most make him a man. Women of substance know this. The last great duty of a man is to stand alone. He cannot do that if he is courted by ten thousand women. He becomes a gigolo, a powder puff, a kind of perfumed cushion, who, with his bevy of admirers in the seraglio gossips about nipples and tarts.”
The House was stunned. Lamb said, “Why, may I ask, is the prime minister addressing such a topic?”
But Pimcot had made his statement only as a Parthian shot, and had no desire to debate what was clearly obvious. “We are, are we not,” he asked, “addressing the matter of Mr Coningsby Isaac’s impotence?”
Lamb nodded.
“I have read the account in The Noon Behemoth,” Pimcot stated. “Who has not? After inquiring of the minister of defence, I am relieved to inform the House, although Mr Isaac may not share in my relief, that RNS John O’Groats reports that though the radomes at the installation are still standing, the equipment that had been inside them was removed in nineteen seventy-six, and there have not been radar emissions at or from RNS John O’Groats for years. Do you get my drift?”
Not only Tories, but Labour and even the Liberals smiled. Even Lamb. Pimcot gave the already spinning wheel a little pat. “Will you then please convey to Mr Isaac my wishes for a speedy recovery, if such a thing is possible. And I do hope that in future more molluscs have orgasms. Meanwhile, I will be able to sleep at night with the knowledge that my government has not robbed them of this enjoyment.”
Who would dare challenge Pimcot now? After such an exhibition he seemed invulnerable. Every sensible member of the House, knowing that Pimcot would defend the monarchy unto death, feared to ask about the scandalous behaviour of the Prince of Wales. This was a huge piece of meat, a whole ox, that could cook either way. The House was silent for fear that Pimcot had saved his most devastating ambush for the very question that had brought them all out. Pimcot, who had absolutely nothing left in his quiver and not a single bolt for Freddy, showed as much confidence as he could, hoping to bluff his way.
The House was silent, but then, to Pimcot’s distress, the speaker recognised the one Labour backbencher who caused the Tories more pain than any other. At the mention of his name they closed their eyes and cringed, for although only four and a half feet tall, with the visage of a troll and the speech of a broken irrigation pump, he was all hide and no nerves, and he was from the safest seat in England, Mold-on-Gruth, a dark and melancholy depression filled with rubbish dumps, coal pits, and chemical factories. “Mr Mallet Scuffs,” she said, and, though it was hard to tell, he stood bolt upright.
On this occasion he was wearing a rust-coloured jacket that matched what was left of his rust-coloured hair and beard. On the left (naturally) lapel of this jacket was a button that read Please piss off. Like all arresting characters, he did not let fear push him too early into speech. Instead, he surveyed the House as it surveyed him, slightly altering his expression, letting the silence deepen. And then he did what virtually no one had ever done during Prime Minister’s Question Time. He actually asked a question.
“What . . . about . . . him?” he said, in words that boomed and echoed through the House chamber like summer thunder.
“What about who?” replied the prime minister, although he knew.
“You know who. The Prince of Wales,” said Ma
llet Scuffs, with the undiluted singularity that had attended his rise.
“The Prince of Wales?” inquired the prime minister, hoping to get through the next few seconds, as if he had never heard of him.
“Yes, Prime Minister. I’m asking the question of you.”
“But what about the Prince of Wales?” the prime minister asked. Already, the House was tittering like an aviary.
“We’re not French, we don’t have to be coy,” said Mallet Scuffs, finally content to make a statement. “I do read The Morning Psnake. I read the Behemoth. I read the Omelette. And I cannot imagine, Prime Minister, that you don’t.”
“And the question?”
“What about him? He’s bloody mental, isn’t he? I mean, he’s quite ’round the twist, ain’t he? And someday he’s supposed to be king. I say, throw them out when they’re ripe. People in my constituency are starving and born with sixteen fingers. Did you ever eat weasel shish-kebob? Freddy doesn’t walk by the side of the motorways to gather dandelions for his salad, but the people who sent me here do. Why are we supporting him? He doesn’t deserve it. The Tories won’t give milk to children who go to school hungry and come home to baked cat.”
Happy that Mallet Scuffs had larded up his attack, Pimcot knew he had a chance at division. “The last time the Right Honourable Gentleman raised the accusation about the policies of this government forcing his constituents to resort to inedible foods—in that case, as I remember, it was ants, earwigs, and glowworms—the National Health looked very seriously into the matter, and their inspectors. . . .”
“Division! Division!” cried out some who had got the scent of blood, and Mallet Scuffs himself, successfully diverted, cried out, “Weevils, too! Weevils and grubs!”
“Their inspectors. . . .”
“Weevils, too, weevils and grubs! Weevils, too, weevils and grubs!” chanted a Marxist anti-missile faction.
“Their inspectors,” insisted Pimcot, “found that it had long been a custom in Mold-on-Gruth to barbecue unusual edibles.” The inspectors had determined no such thing. Pimcot had made it up out of whole cloth for the sake of outraging the House into a division.
But just as Pimcot had by brilliance and skill risen to the leadership of his party, so had Apehand and Lamb risen to the leadership of theirs, and they prepared to cross his T. First, Apehand stood to put the debate on course, speaking in the magical voice of Wales. “I believe that the question, Prime Minister, was not about weevils and grubs but about the Prince of Wales. Would the prime minister be so kind as to answer the question?”
When Pimcot was cornered, he assumed the expression and mannerisms of a hurt and resentful child. This habitually cost him as much as his vaunted ability effortlessly to exploit victory habitually brought him advantage. Nonetheless, he persevered. “England needs a king,” he said, “as much as it needs its weather. The sovereign is the point around which everything in this country has revolved for so long that without the sovereign everything would fly apart. To cripple the sovereign would be an act of efficient self-destruction. No wonder you want it. I have always taken hostility to the queen and her family as the manifestation of just such a tendency. Indeed, though it is difficult to say of Englishmen, I have always taken it, and am not the only one to do so, as hatred of country. As the royal power has decreased, its symbolism has increased, and it stands now for Britain as never before. Is it not a fortunate circumstance that, given our own direction of our own affairs, we may enjoy it without anxiety? And why bother now to strike at the sovereign, when the balance of our power and his position has reached perfection?” He sat down.
Up popped Apehand on his side of the Sceptre. “No one is talking about abolishing the monarchy, Prime Minister, so you need not display your put-upon look. What my colleague holds up for the consideration of the House is the behaviour of the heir to the throne, certainly a legitimate concern, especially if, as the prime minister says, the throne is inextricable from the sinews of state. When I see a nut, Prime Minister, I am not afraid, I am not afraid to say, there, there is yon nut. And I do see a nut, Prime Minister, and I do say, there, there is yon nut. And what do you say?”
“It is really very unfair,” Pimcot insisted, “to make a judgement of the Prince of Wales based on what one reads in newspapers that every day owe their circulation to photographs of nude women in ludicrous and provocative poses. Yesterday the Omelette had a picture of a nude gymnast in an aerial split above a trampoline made to look like a buttered scone. And what about the ‘Naked Ms Napoleon’? Based on such nonsense would you seriously question the foremost representatives of an institution exceeded in longevity only by the Papacy and the Chrysanthemum Throne?”
Slowly and languorously, Lamb rose, and was recognised by the speaker. So what if his party held only seven seats. He always looked marvellous.
“Thank you, Madam Speaker.” He had a great, impatient air, a magnificent flustration, and a velvet voice. He was not thinking of what he said, but, rather, feeling it. And knowing that an unprecedented number of women would now have their eyes bonded to his image, he would speak somewhat rashly. In fact, many members of the House would believe that, after Pimcot’s earlier attack upon his character, he had been waiting for his chance. The riposte, however, would strike not Pimcot but Freddy, who could not be present to defend himself. Lamb’s constituents were confused about the monarchy, not Apehand’s, who wanted to abolish it, so Apehand was delighted for Lamb to do the work and leave him high and dry.
Lamb looked about the House with the tortured look that some thought made him a modern Mark Antony and others attributed to a digestive complaint. “Madam Speaker, does the prime minister not realise that all the accusations are true? Does he not realise that they are founded upon evidence—photographs, videotape, voice recordings and transcripts—that is incontrovertible? Does he not realise that simple, blind support of things royal will not in the end preserve the monarchy? That, Madam Speaker, is the real danger.” He sat, hoping Pimcot would take the bait.
Pimcot rose and did. “The Right Honourable Gentleman simply repeats the foreign affairs and defence positions of his party in another guise. ‘We want a strong Britain, but the way to strength is to be courageous enough to do without weapons and armies. We can catch more birds with honey, so let’s cooperate with our rivals, enemies, and detractors. In fact, we’ll show them. We’ll show them that we’re strong enough to capitulate to them!’ It’s always the same. In this case he advises that the best way to defend the monarchy is to refrain from its defence. Is it his view that not only is the strongest army the army with no soldiers—or perhaps half a dozen, as in Andorra—and no weapons, but that the queen is best served by a chief minister who abstains from her defence? And as the Right Honourable Gentleman has stated that the tawdry newspaper allegations are based on incontrovertible evidence, does he believe then also that infant survivors of the Titanic have recently been cast up upon Beachy Head, that the prime minister of Norway is a space alien, that the Pope is repeatedly struck by meteorites, and that the American singer Barbra Streisand is actually the panicked reincarnation of Frederick the Great? If the honourable member has incontrovertible evidence, I invite him to show it.”
Lamb stood. “Madam Speaker, may I?” he asked. She indicated that he might, and he did. He lifted some sheets of paper. “This,” he said, “is a transcript taken from the recording of the Princess of Wales speaking to Mr Thor Früsengladje, Her Royal Highness’s former hairdresser. It is the voice of the princess. I can attest to this. I know women’s voices. Allow me to read.”
“Madam Speaker, this is highly irregular,” Pimcot said. The Tories were so anxious that, amazingly, each and every one of them was awake.
“May I remind the prime minister that it was by his own invitation? Does he now urgently request a ruling against himself? Really. Go ahead, Mr Lamb.”
“I will simply read from the transcript.
“ ‘Thor: Let me suggest to Your Royal Highness an
icy-blond highlight for the back sweep. It’s called Fantastic Alaskan Vanilla Frost.’
“ ‘Princess: I liked the Icy Jamaican Platinum Orange better, and She loved it.’
“ ‘Thor: They don’t make that any more, I fear.’
“ ‘Princess: Oh dear.’
“ ‘Thor: Madam seems dejected.’
“ ‘Princess: It’s just terrible.’
“ ‘Thor: Tell me. I won’t tell a soul.’ ”
“Except his bloody tape recorder, that’s all!” screamed a Tory, who in the Magdalen College production of Pinocchio played the whale.
“It is,” said Lamb, “no matter what its origins, the truth.” He then returned to the transcript.
“ ‘Princess: I think Freddy’s crazy. He’s been acting so strangely of late. I’m frightened.’
“ ‘Thor: What did he do?’
“ ‘Princess: I don’t know if I should tell.’
“ ‘Thor: It will never leave this room.’ ” (General laughter in the House.)
“ ‘Princess: He’s crazy. He assaulted me with an encyclopaedia. I’m lucky to be alive. He threw it at me and called me a mealy-mouthed worm. It was blue. I don’t know what it was, but he’s always reading it.’
“ ‘Thor: Oh my God.’
“ ‘Princess: Even so, that’s a kind of normal thing to do, isn’t it? I mean, people do throw things at each other. But what was so crazy was why he did it.’
“ ‘Thor: Why did he do it?’
“ ‘Princess: He called me a cyclops. What’s a cyclops? Is it bicycle shoes?’
“ ‘Thor: He called you a what?’
“ ‘Princess: A cyclops. He just started screaming at me, and saying, “You’re a cyclops! You’re a cyclops! You’ve only got one bosom!” Just like that. That’s why I’m going to lower the cut on my dresses even more. I’ve got to show him that he’s wrong.’