The Power

by Ian Watson

  Marianne Bennett was plump, permed, and fussily efficient. With her husband Eric she was co-director of a Mall-order fashion accessories and cosmetics business based at Churtington Industrial Estate. Though Marianne had access to cut-price gewgaws and face-powders she went very easy on these. She wasn’t a walking advertisement for Bennett products (or repackagings). Her perfume was a subtle French one.

  “Did you say more Yanks?” Jeni butted in. “Moved into the school house, have they?”

  Bert knew everything almost before it happened, though he was generally unobtrusive in his omniscience – and basically gentle and kindly, unlike Jeni’s bane, the dire Mrs Enid Jackson. In fact Bert was one of the friendliest villagers, amongst whose numbers could also be counted Ralph Underdown, George Vaux, though he looked like a right-wing codger, the Chases of course, and the Haverstocks, and – oh quite a few. Gareth did hope that Jeni wasn’t going to sour the renewed cordiality. As he waggled a fiver to attract Tom Tate’s eye he noticed that the pilot, Ron Diamond, was playing darts with the lads.

  He hadn’t spotted the pilot till now because the man was quite short. No doubt you didn’t want giants in a jet. Trim, tanned, and olive complexioned, Diamond’s sturdy black hair refused to look scalped even by a close crew-cut; Gareth couldn’t help feeling a slight twinge of envy. Dressed in jeans and red lumberjack shirt, Diamond grinned boyishly as he retrieved some neatly aimed arrows. He was a companionable type – though not with Gareth, thanks to Jeni – but he didn’t seem to have any new protégé in tow.

  “Name of Harper,” said Bert. “Jim and Glory.”

  “Gloria?” queried Marianne.

  “Glory, as in Hallelujah. With a bumper sticker saying, ‘I love Jesus.’ They’re negroes.”

  “Oh.”

  “Tall skinny chap; looks like a basketball player. She’s pretty tall too.” Bert smirked. “Got a couple of piccaninnies.”

  Gareth heard Jeni tut loudly at the good old racial prejudice rearing its head, however gently.

  “I’ll call on his wife tomorrow,” declared Marianne, who was by way of being the village welcoming committee.

  “This should appeal to you, Jeni,” teased Bert. “He’s a mechanic, but she’s a soldier.”

  “What?”

  “You know: bang, bang. The Yanks are very liberated.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “God’s truth. Saw her driving back in battledress this evening, looking proud as punch.”

  “That’s obscene. Right next to our school! I feared something like this.”

  Jeni took her half of Flowers from Gareth’s outstretched hand and swallowed most of the beer immediately.

  “Damn it,” she whispered to him as soon as he joined her, “did you hear that? The first black faces in the village, and they just had to be –!”

  “One of life’s little ironies.” Gareth sipped his Heineken discreetly. He was a lager man.

  “Hmm! Our patriotic rural Tories were getting all steamed up after Tripoli was zapped from Merrie England, right?” she went on intensely. “Selfish cowards, the lot of them. Maybe they would suddenly be a target for some Abdul with a bomb.” Fortunately the din in the pub muffled her remarks.

  “As at Kerthrop today?” he murmured to sidetrack her. “A bomb?”

  “Now I suppose it’ll be ‘Welcome to Melfort, Mrs Glory Killer,’ even though half the Near East’s in flames.”

  “Um.”

  “Not to mention the trouble in East Germany. That’s dropped out of the news.”

  “Oh yes, those SED cadres being purged.” Keep to technical details. “It is the SED, isn’t it?”

  “Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschland, right. Did you say purged? You must be joking. They’re resisting Soviet pressure to back-pedal links with West Germany. Naturally that’s all part of an American-backed attempt to destabilize the DDR. Snarl up the Russians with their old bogeyman of a united Germany, distract them from the Arab mess. Some people have ten minute memories,” she went on, reverting to her theme. “Tories vote like sheep.”

  “No solid political education,” he agreed temperately. “That’s the trouble. Tories have instincts, belief in their own values. Whereas we always need to apologize for ours.”

  “Oh do we indeed?”

  “Well, no, we’re in the majority. On the whole. But not hereabouts. This isn’t Liverpool or Glasgow.” If only she didn’t cause a fuss!

  The way she had caused a fuss when they first met Captain Diamond….

  That had been in the pub too; and while Gareth didn’t approve of the USAF, one could surely still be friendly. Engage in dialogue, softly softly.

  “Mustn’t be shrinking violets, must we?” he’d remarked to Jeni, with a nod at her CND badge – he wasn’t wearing his own at the time. “Bert’ll introduce us, won’t you, Bert?”

  Mine-of-information Bert had been there. Gareth aimed to become just as au fait as Bert with the ins and outs of Melfort; though of course one mustn’t degenerate into a gossip the like of Enid Jackson, who seemed possessed of X-ray eyes so that she knew whenever you changed your bed linen.

  Even Nancy had uncharacteristically conceived a fair dislike of Mrs Jackson on account of her prying, sociable questions, all with the kindest of intentions. Questions about the new name of Old Roses, of which Mrs Jackson rather disapproved, about the exact marital non-status of Nancy and Gareth, not to mention their friend Jeni in the granny flat, and whatever else came to mind. As skivvy to the well-heeled, as well as to the vicar, Mrs Jackson was a dead ringer for a Tory supporter, not that she would confide anything about herself or her own little clan; that was private. Such people sold their loyalties along with their labour. Didn’t have to, but they did; so the Labour Party must be anathema. Gareth had successfully suggested to Nancy that she should simply treat Mrs Jackson casually and vaguely whenever encountered; but you could never suggest anything of the sort to Jeni, which had been Gareth’s mistake on that night a year and more ago.

  Ron Diamond could have been a graduate from a charm school, crossed with a dose of bouncy hot-diggity.

  They’d chatted a while; or rather Gareth and Ron had chatted.

  “It’s a big base, Kerthrop,” Gareth had said.

  “Not as big as some. Mildenhall’s a giant.”

  “So what do you do, Captain?” Gareth asked presently. “Jockey a jet?” (That was the jargon, wasn’t it?)

  “Well, I’m rated for F-111s.”

  “Those can carry nukes, can’t they?”

  “Sorry, sir, I’m not allowed to say.”

  “Fair enough. Though it isn’t exactly a dark secret.”

  Captain Diamond shrugged and smiled.

  “Why is it fair enough?” demanded Jeni. “America could launch a nuclear war from this island without our own Parliament or people having any say, and we aren’t even supposed to ask about it?”

  “Frankly, ma’am, if I was the President I’d nuke some Arabs I could name.” He laughed self-deprecatingly. “I guess that’s why I’m not President.”

  “You’d nuke some Arabs. Just like that. One whole city? Or two?”

  “That would be an operational decision. Pentagon, White House. I just fly where I’m sent.”

  Gareth remembered intervening fussily. “Don’t you think it’s a trifle disconcerting that America is the only country which ever actually used nuclear weapons in anger? On Japan, I mean.”

  “Not in anger, sir. Those two birds did the job. Brought peace. Should have dropped one on Hanoi, in my opinion.”

  Gareth could tell that the Captain was growing leery of this conversation, though pleasant courtesy still held him, a point to which Jeni wasn’t oblivious, either.

  “I don’t wish to be rude, Mr Diamond,” she asked, “especially as Americans are mostly so polite. But the way we see it, you Americans are naive at heart. Trusting in God, saluting the flag, apple pie values. Your national naïvete’s dangerous. You never experienced the ghastlines
s of total war the way the Russians did. You never really got hurt. Look how you swept the Vietnam veterans under the carpet! Nowadays you police the world to protect Mom’s apple pie from gooks and wogs. You view the rest of the world as full of gooks. Us too, when the chips are down. We’re gooks as well.”

  “All apples have gooks in them,” joked Gareth. “The cores, eh?”

  “So therefore collectively you napalm kids. You sponsor filthy dictatorships. You sabotage peasants struggling for a decent life.”

  “There’s an element of truth,” Gareth tried to moderate. She cut across him.

  “You elbow right up against Russia then you squawk if the red rooster shows a feather within a mile of your own sacred back yard.”

  “Want to know why the Commie chicken only got half way across the road?” Ron asked Gareth. “It was a Rhode Island red!”

  “No, listen to me, Mr Diamond. You might destroy the planet with your deadly, God-fearing, sanitized innocence – and to keep the mice from your apple pie, which is anywhere and everywhere. Better dead than red. Nuke the bastards. And a fifth of all Americans are looking forward to a nuclear war with positively biblical fervour. All those born-again Christians, right? How more lethally apple-pie innocent can you get?”

  “Hey, Ron!”

  “Excuse me, I got to buy drinks for those guys.” He turned away. Soon Ron Diamond and the lads had been laughing and telling jokes.

  The pilot had avoided Gareth since then, though in the aftermath of Libya, Gareth had felt indignant enough and confident enough to buttonhole him. “I suppose you people’ll all be retreating inside Fortress Kerthrop soon, eh? In case some death squad decides on a vacation in England.”

  “No way,” Ron had said. “I’m not bothered. No one’s calling oily oxen free.” Whatever that meant. “Fact is, with all the extra personnel arriving, there’ll be more of us living off base, enjoying your British hospitality.”

  “But a pilot’s a likely target, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah, well I’m not moving house unless I get ordered.”

  “His family too.”

  Ron’s half-smile had vanished. “So who’s telling the Libyans my address? I warn you, buddy. Don’t. Ever. Threaten. My. Family.”

  “No, of course not! I didn’t mean –”

  “Don’t think of any funny tricks.”

  “Don’t think, is it?” Gareth had nerved himself to mumble. “Must be nice to be immune to world public opinion.”

  “Aw … stick a sock in it.”

  However, after her initial muted flare-up Jeni seemed unusually subdued, and concentrated on her next half of Flowers which George had already got in. Harry Blesworth from Church Hill Farm joined them, and conversation shifted to lambing and drainage, courtesy of that rural deity, the JCB. Then some farmer arrived, whom Gareth didn’t know – from Thrushby, he soon gathered – and the talk was suddenly all of the explosion at Kerthrop. Gareth hastily guided Jeni and Marianne aside to discuss wine and cheese arrangements.

  Eleven

  After Gareth had let himself in through the front door of Old Roses, Jeni stood alone for a while in the night.

  No, not quite alone. Quiet thunder rolled overhead. Two black darts close together eclipsed star after star. Moments later another pair of jets traversed the sky. F-111s never normally flew by night. This must be a crisis exercise, even a full alert.

  Those swing-wing warplanes were each burning up the annual income of an African village every half-hour. In her entrails Jeni felt a sluggish surge, bilious and baleful.

  All hyper-modern fighters were unstable in the air, so she’d read. They could only keep airborne if an onboard computer trimmed them constantly. If only she could poke a finger up into the sky.

  She must be drunk. The idea that you could magic away bits of the war machine! Instead of organizing politically, building towards a true socialist government which would expel all US bases. Even Labour only pledged to get rid of the nuclear weapons. Phased withdrawal; there’s a good get-out clause. Phased over how long?

  Really to succeed, Britain had to quit NATO. Whereupon the US would start destabilizing Britain, via the money markets first of all….

  No, one must have faith.

  What, faith, with a nuclear war maybe brewing overhead right now? With those Emergency Power bills just waiting in the wings to stifle any dissent and give foreign armed forces the run of the whole land? Even if they did speak English.

  If it wasn’t faith that she felt as she let herself in to the granny flat, it was a sensation quite as powerful and consuming. This sensation wasn’t exactly familiar. It neither echoed her period of trust in Trotskyism nor the exaltation of subsequent CND marches through London when, for a few hours, you experienced the illusion that you owned the streets. The feeling wasn’t even familiar from her distant girlhood when a God had existed, and when she had (for approximately a month) contemplated becoming a saint who had visions and wrote ecstatic poetry. The sensation was a little like that. Perhaps because it was the opposite.

  She had given no more thought to saints once she discovered how to manipulate herself. Black-robed inquisitioners were more potent figures – powerful, bullying lords of the land, armoured Captains, masked executioners, and all their modern kin.

  She hadn’t wished to remember this! Such feelings were so foreign to the comradeship of socialism and the peace movement, so alien to the fresh, liberating sisterhood she saw reflected in Mitzi. It was as if something was making her remember.

  That night she dreamed she was in the stone chamber of some ancient monastery. The vicar was searching inside a stone coffin, desperately tossing out bones which crumbled to dust as they hit the flagstones. She knew that he was hunting for the key to the reliquary cage. Two hounds, which had formerly guarded the foot of the coffin in marble effigy, had come alive. They had mutated into a pair of slavering Alsatians. The dogs were wolfing food from a platter which the vicar had put down to distract them, a wooden plate piled with floppy white … what? Chapatis from an Indian take-away? Pitta bread? Or slices of drained human veal? The dogs would clean the platter in a trice; that’s why the vicar was in a hurry.

  She had to get out of this chamber! Moments earlier, there’d been an archway giving exit through the thick stone wall. This had now shrunk to a mere crawlspace. The room was sealing itself. If she tried to creep through the gap the stones might clamp on to her.

  The vicar swung round. Eyes of blood stared at her.

  He asked, in the fluting ironic voice of Jeremy Partridge: “Does the hate wake the power? Or does the power wake the hate?”

  A riddle. If she could solve it, the doorway might open again.

  The Alsatians licked their chops and glared at her. But then they turned towards the vicar, and she knew that he was their appointed victim.

  She awoke refreshed. Almost nine o’clock. Bright sunshine poured through a gap between the pink Dolly Mixture curtains, Nancy’s choice, co-ordinating with the bedroom wallpaper. The bedroom looked more nursery than granny. A peace poster blu-tacked to the wall seemed stupidly jolly, as if the H-bomb mushroom was no more than a big bad wolf.

  For once the decor exactly matched Jeni’s mood. She herself felt sunny and innocent. Hopeful. Had she dreamt something vile? How could she have done, and now feel so renewed? In the morning perspective all of yesterday’s events appeared containable. She had work to do; phone calls to make. But first, coffee!

  She padded naked to the little bathroom to empty her bladder of last night’s beer. Pulling on jeans and jumper, she hurried downstairs humming to herself, to flip on auto-jug and radio.

  Washington announced that the US Sixth Fleet would blockade the Suez Canal until free passage was guaranteed for ships of all nations. The Soviet Black Sea fleet was moving into the Aegean. The UN Security Council would meet in emergency session later that day. Israel’s Defence Minister threatened that if its Arab neighbours tried to launch “a new Holocaust”, his country would h
ave no choice but to resort to “ultimate force” to protect itself. The Warsaw Pact was scheduling large-scale manoeuvres along the East German border. The oil tanker had sunk; a twenty-mile oil slick was threatening South African beaches …

  That should turn white beaches black. No mention of any NATO alerts last night. Surprise, surprise! The jug boiled; she made herself a mug of instant Nicaraguan coffee which, unusually among coffees, tasted to her nearly as good as it smelled.

  Here it came now!

  “… Experts admit they are baffled by yesterday’s mystery explosion outside the American air force base at Kerthrop, in which one member of the local hunt was killed and several riders and horses were seriously injured. A Ministry of Defence spokesman said that apparently no bomb was involved, and as yet no other cause can be confirmed, but investigations are continuing….”

  So. And they’d have used a fine toothcomb. Even plastic high explosive should leave chemical traces.

  No cause.

  What, then? The force that through the green fuse drives the power … that blasts the roots of razor-wire is thy destroyer. So said Dylan Thomas. Almost.

  A cramp clutched Jeni’s abdomen and wrung it like a dishcloth, paralysing her for half a minute. God, she must need a giant crap. As soon as she could move freely, she hurried up to the toilet in the bathroom again. Scarcely was her bum on the mahogany seat than all came tumbling out, in one long unbroken surge, on and on.

  When she could leap up and look, the shit lay neatly coiled like a yellow mound of sausage underwater. Odd. She didn’t usually do craps that colour. The toilet tissue was clean after a single wipe. She balled the paper up tiny.