“Masterman went down onto his knees and sobbed. I demanded that he reconvene the old men of letters so that I could impart the war to each and every one of them. Masterman pushed the drapes of hair from his eyes and moaned like a bereaved mother. We were indifferent to his suffering, Collinson and I. We waited for his faculties to return. He took a drink from his desk drawer, and flopped back in his chair.
“I said, ‘We intend to invent a mechanism for communicating the war to the crowd, all at once, for which we will need money and resources.’
“He muttered, ‘I wonder if anybody is sane.’
“I repeated our intentions, that he was to divert resources from Wellington House to our jurisdiction. Collinson’s formula demonstrated that the Allies and the Central Powers were locked in an endless war of attrition and reprisal. My talent would provide the revelation necessary to break the deadlock before Europe became a bankrupt slaughterhouse of unmated women.
“Collinson pressed Masterman for an opinion as to what percentage of the population would need to be exposed to the experience of war in order for the crowd to turn against it. Masterman shook his head.
“‘Far fewer than the numbers of men who are fighting. Far fewer than the number of women who have lost fathers, brothers, sons. Far fewer than the number of fatherless children. If you want to end the war, then you don’t persuade the masses to your cause, you bring around the elite few.’
“I asked for names and addresses. Masterman flopped a pallid hand around his desk, took out a copy of a book and threw it across the room. It was the British edition of Who’s Who.
“‘Work alphabetically through these people.’
“‘Then we will persuade the masses,’ I said.
“‘The masses are already persuaded. We monitor the mail, we tabulate and track its sentiment. Trust me, the mass mind is against the war.’
“At that moment I glimpsed victory. The Order of the Omega would provide a lightning rod for the nascent resistance. Between us, we would carry the idea of peace into the population and lay it down before them like a wounded son. That was how we would end the war.
“I did not know that Masterman was manipulating me. He was playing up my pathetic desire to be a saviour. Had I not stood before him in the first weeks of the war and displayed my vanity? He knew that I was in love with the romantic myth of the man who makes a difference.
“Masterman shuffled around his office in a state of feigned shock. ‘You mean that our boys are perishing like dumb animals,’ he whimpered. ‘Then you are right. We must end the war.’
“He gave us everything we asked for. Wellington House signed over this house and its estate to the Order of the Omega. We were persuaded against visiting the war upon the names in Who’s Who in preference to developing a mechanism by which the war could be imparted to many people at once. Only that, Masterman argued, would ensure peace. He was so plausible. There was no confrontation. That was not his way. He took the risk that over time our idealism could be distracted, our intent delayed. That disappointments and minor defeats would sour us and make us malleable. Masterman visited us here, and he was so black-hearted and down about the war, and bleak about the human condition, that it never entered my mind that his nihilism was a delaying tactic.
“It was on one such visit that he raised the question of the enemy. ‘Of course you will have to use your talent upon Germany,’ he said. ‘If you persuade the allies to lay down their arms first, the Hun will put us all to the sword.’ And that was it: the Order was dedicated to reducing the German will to fight.”
“Did they?”
“The Germans surrendered, eventually. Did we help bring that about? Perhaps, but we could have ended the war much earlier if we had followed our original plan.”
Omega John flicked his cigarette butt away and it skittered across the painted floorboards.
“I’m the last man left.” He lay back, and his breathing laboured under the weight of his years. He turned to Huxley. “I’ll need another injection.”
Huxley dithered.
“It will kill you.”
Omega John closed his eyes.
“Then prepare me for death.”
Huxley smeared embrocation upon the young-old skin of the dying man. He prayed for the forgiveness of this servant of God, for whatsoever sin had been done by his eyes and ears, by his nose and lips and palate, by the touch of his hand and the step of his feet.
Omega John said, “Trevenen, I heard you deliver Extreme Unction so many times on Suvla Bay. It always brought death so close by.” Then he grasped the hand of Father Huxley and whispered, “It’s you, isn’t it? You really came back to me, and that’s all that I ever wanted.”
James stepped away from the bed and left the other inmates to witness the administering of last rites.
* * *
James woke in his room before dawn. He dressed and washed quietly. He passed the bedroom of Omega John and saw the inert body covered over in the bed. He met Alex Drown quietly closing the door to her room behind her. She was carrying a suitcase.
“I’m leaving,” she said. “We survived.”
“Yes, we did.”
She took a long look at him. “You could come with me.”
“For work?”
“And more,” she ventured a smile.
“I am part of this now.”
“‘The refining cycle of the Process has been reset with a new entrant.’”
“What does that mean?”
“They were Omega John’s last words. If you are staying, then you will have to figure them out for yourself.”
She put her arms around him and kissed him goodbye. Alone, he went down to the kitchens and made himself breakfast from what he could find in the cupboards. He went out into the dark lawn with a cup of tea and found Father Huxley there, smoking. Together they gazed down into the gardens.
“Omega John is dead but we’re still alive,” said James.
Huxley was quizzical.
“We are still very much alive,” said the priest.
“For a time there, I was concerned we were all figments of his imagination.”
Huxley smiled.
“Not his imagination, James. We are the arguments of God.”
He was part of the Institute now. He had been with Hector when he was shot, had carried him on his back. It would be different this time. His actions had made it so.
James said, “I’m going for a last patrol on the Downs. Would you care to join me?”
Huxley demurred. He was, he explained, expecting visitors. So James set off alone. He had lost everything in the war, but the sacrifice and suffering had meant something. The exact meaning was obscure to him. He had shown kindness and courage in the war, and he had lived through it. Yes, that was it. He had endured the war, and endurance was beautiful.
On the road out of Glynde, the sun was bright and cold. The assembled company of the Order of the Omega came down the lane, his former comrades-at-arms bearing their flags and banners on their way to the Institute. At their rear, under the shadow of a hood, he glimpsed the blade of a nose, dark brows and ghostly pallor of John Hector. He sought a look of recognition from the stretcher bearer but Hector’s smile remained tight-lipped, his gaze fixed forward.
Author’s Note
The reader may wish to know more about the historical record from which this novel deviates.
The account of the Suvla Bay landing draws upon two books by John Hargrave: At Suvla Bay: Being the Notes and Sketches of Scenes, Characters and Adventures of the Dardanelles Campaign published in 1916, and his later, more candid account, The Suvla Bay Landing, 1964. A Quaker, an artist, a writer, boy scout and student of the world’s religions, Hargrave would go on to found the radical outdoor movement, The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift.
As I researched the life of John Hargrave, I noticed a few men of his type scattered through the war: men of pacifist persuasion who chose the lowly position of stretcher bearer or ambulance drive
r as a way of serving in the war without fighting, and from this particular vantage point – half-observer, half-participant – developed a trench mysticism directed toward the transformation of society. I began compiling a folder entitled “The Mystical Stretcher Bearers of the Great War”.
The soldier-priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin served heroically on various battlefields across the Western Front. He was the tall thin corporal of the Zouaves, the North African sharpshooters who maintained that he was protected by his baraka – that is, his spiritual stature. Before the war, he had studied theology at Ore Place in Hastings. He attended the archaeological dig of the Piltdown Man, finding the canine tooth of man’s supposedly ancient ancestor. Teilhard de Chardin even dined at Lewes in the lee of the castle. It was during his time in Sussex, with its ancient yet incessantly renewed landscape, that he grew more conscious of the drift of the universe.
Teilhard de Chardin’s war-time letters collected in The Makings of a Mind, and his Writings In Time of War were invaluable sources in compiling the trench mysticism of the character of Trevenen Huxley. History records that Noel Trevenen Huxley committed suicide in 1914 so he did not serve. The history of the Huxley family is interwoven with evolutionary speculation, science fiction and progressive causes, and his brother Julian Huxley wrote the introduction to Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man. It was this affinity that led to me to concoct a different life for Trevenen.
The Quaker-led volunteer group of Friends Ambulance Unit also served at the Western Front. Two of its number, science fiction writer Olaf Stapledon, and the professor and meteorologist Lewis Fry Richardson, influenced the characters of James and Professor Collinson.
Stapledon’s voluminous letters to his future wife Agnes during the conflict, collected in The Love Letters of Olaf Stapledon and Agnes Miller, 1913-1919, edited by Robert Crossley, were consulted. The most obvious and significant debt I owe to Stapledon is the character of Odd John, the Homo superior from his novel of the same name. Lewis Fry Richardson’s paper on the Mathematical Psychology of War provides the equations found in Collinson’s Equation of War.
The Eleonte necropolis was discovered by French soldiers during the Gallipoli campaign, prior to the Suvla landing and many miles south of the location given in the novel. For an account of that archaeological dig under fire, I referred to Uncensored Letters from the Dardanelles by French medical officer Joseph Marguerite Jean Vassal.
Other sources for the landing at Suvla Bay include The Pals at Suvla Bay by Henry Hanna, Conditions: Evacuation of the Sick and Wounded from Suvla Bay, and the diary of Private Wilfred Knott and the papers of Reverend Private Thomas, who served with the Royal Ambulance Military Corps at Suvla Bay: these are held at the Imperial War Museum.
As for the bailiff’s armour, the term “colloid” is used by Rudyard Kipling to describe the transparent layer covering the windows of the airships in his story “With the Night Mail”. Its “pedrails” were invented by Bramah Joseph Diplock and inspired HG Wells’ short story “The Land Ironclads”. In the war, Wells would advocate the use of the land ironclad to Winston Churchill, who was involved in the development of the tank. The private armour fashioned for James by the Process is based upon the more recent research of Marc Meyers at the University of California, San Diego.
The meeting at Wellington House between Charles Masterman and the great authors of the day took place on the afternoon of September 2, 1914. I could not locate the minutes of that meeting. It is believed that detailed records were destroyed during the Second World War. My sources were the diary entries of Arnold Bennett, the recollections of Thomas Hardy, the subsequent articles written by HG Wells and GK Chesterton, and The Great War of Words: Literature as Propaganda 1914-18 and After by Peter Beuitenhuis. There was no one like John Hector in attendance at this meeting.
Some of Masterman’s dialogue is drawn from his book England After War. The description of Europe as “a bankrupt slaughterhouse inhabited by unmated women… I wonder that anybody is sane,” was spoken by Mr Page, American Ambassador in London to Mr Alderman in Hampton, Virginia in 1916. And it is to Masterman that I am indebted for the conceit of Omega John’s talent. In England After War, Masterman speculates, “If but a fraction of the active torment or dull misery of the war combatants could have been transferred, not by the clumsy interpretation of picture, written or spoken word, but by some mind current affecting another’s human sensation, lighting up in another mind the unassailable and uncommunicable direct apprehension of pain, then the war would have come to an end in less weeks than it endured years.”
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Matthew De Abaitua, Hackney, 2015
Acknowledgments
My agent Sarah Such was positive about IF THEN from its initial conception. Her encouragement, patience and expertise was crucial throughout the writing of the novel and then she found it the right home at Angry Robot.
Thanks to everyone at Angry Robot, particularly my editor Phil Jourdan for his insightful notes and strong reaction to the novel, copy editor Paul Simpson, and most of all to publisher Marc Gascoigne.
I owe a debt of gratitude to my friends and the community of Lewes, who I miss dearly. We never really said goodbye. Particular thanks to John May and Gavin Clark for many evenings of good conversation in the Lewes Arms.
To my friends in the HC, you’ve all taught me so much. Particular thanks to Josh Glenn for creating that particular world.
IF THEN was planned and half-written in a rented flat in Lewes through winters of austerity. Lean years for me and my family. My dream of writing this book would have got nowhere without the hard work and support of my wife Cathy, who also advised on Ruth’s work as seamstress. Cyril Connolly famously observed that one of the enemies of promise was the pram in the hall. I’ve had three prams in my hall, but my children have been nothing but an inspiration to me. I hope that Alice, Alfred and Florence will one day read the novel that was written in and around their childhood.
About the Author
Matthew De Abaitua’s first novel The Red Men was shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke Awards. Filmmakers Shynola adapted the first chapter into a short called Dr Easy, which can be watched for free at created-to-help-you.com. He is a lecturer in creative writing and science fiction at the University of Essex.
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harrybravado.com • twitter.com/MDeAbaitua
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An Angry Robot paperback original 2015
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If Then Page 36