The Partridge Kite

by Michael Nicholson

  Tom felt the slightest rise of adrenalin . . . a warning signal.

  ‘I can’t guarantee to make the film to your exact requirements and taste. Colonel, but it will be reasonably objective and saleable.’

  Haig sipped his Fino and began turning the stem of the glass with his finger and thumb. Tom noticed the right forefinger had been cut off at the first knuckle. It looked as if the glass was being caressed by two thumbs. Tom waited for the next question; he would volunteer nothing unless it was in answer to a direct question. He would work his way in slowly.

  Haig suddenly leant forward and pressed a button sunk into the side of the Hamstone fireplace.

  ‘How long would it take, Mr McCullin, and when would you like to start? Would there be a fee?’

  ‘No fee. A week’s filming depending on the weather and how easily you can provide the things and people I want. . . and the sooner the better.’

  A young man came in through heavy brocade curtains that hid a door on the far left-hand side of the room. He was blond, fresh-faced. Tom noticed that his neck just above the collar was red and grazed. He was wearing a simple uniform of dark blue. Serge trousers, a military shirt, breast pockets and epaulettes, but no markings, no badges anywhere.

  ‘Gosling,’ Haig held out his left hand, touching the man’s sleeve, ‘this is Mr McCullin, a freelance producer from television. He wants to do a kind of documentary on us.’ Gosling looked straight at Tom but there was nothing, not a smile, not a nod of acknowledgement - nothing. Tom noticed he was wearing black chukka boots with elastic sides, and they were so highly polished he could see the glow of the log-fire in the toes.

  ‘I think. Gosling,’ Haig went on, now holding the younger man’s arm, ‘that I’d better say “Yes” and join the Hall of Kings. I’d like you now to check on our state of readiness. After a couple more glasses of my sherry I’d like to show Mr McCullin around the estate. Let him see just a few of the things we’re up to. Oh! and one small thing you can do for me - just a little thing that might speed things along.’ He pulled a pen from his breast pocket. Gosling immediately and without a word handed him a pad. Haig, as far as Tom could see, wrote only five words. ‘Get someone,’ he said, ‘to sort this out for me - must be done now - might make a difference.’ Gosling read them but said nothing.

  ‘Sorry to bother you with trivialities. Gosling,’ Haig said as the younger man walked away towards the curtains.

  ‘Good man. Gosling,’ he said across to Tom, handing him the decanter. ‘Son of the Air Vice-Marshal. His father was a very old friend of mine. I’d known him for thirty-six years. It was he who took me on my first drop into France, April ’44 just south of Limoges. . . Flying Officer then, of course. I’d just got my second pip. Came back for me, too. Do you know how he came back for me, a month later? He flew from Manston in Kent wave-hopping at night in a single- engined Auster packed tight with extra fuel tanks and landed on the main N20 between the houses at Bonnac la Côte. Told me later he had fifteen yards or less each side of the wing. . . and no lights either! I haven’t met a pilot yet who believes that story, Mr McCullin, but it’s as true as that glass in your hand. IBs son is a chip off the old block. I’m proud to have him as my adjutant; I’m really the boy’s father now. His father was a very brave man, Mr McCullin. This country needs men like him, now, more than ever before.’

  He paused. . . the reminiscence seemed to have made him melancholy; almost to himself he said, ‘Who knows . . . maybe we’ll get them too.’

  Tom said nothing, allowing Haig to gaze back into the past uninterruptedly, waiting for him to return in his own time.

  ‘Well, Mr McCullin,’ Haig said at last, ‘how much do you know about us here? Have you done any research yet?’

  ‘Yes, but my press cuttings on you seem to dwell more on what you did rather than what you intend to do.’

  ‘Well,’ he replied, ‘since I made my idea public upwards of twenty thousand people have contacted me - that’s a lot of people! It certainly surprised me. Of that number, eight thousand have qualified after a course here, and another fifteen hundred are waiting in the queue. At this time we have exactly three hundred and ten volunteers training on the Estate.’

  ‘Nearly ten thousand people, trained by you, on retainer to you, ready to be mobilised by you?’

  ‘A quarter of the number I’d have liked but enough for our short-term purpose.’

  ‘Which is, Colonel?’ Tom said it too quickly, and regretted it.

  ‘By “short term” I didn’t mean “immediate”, Mr McCullin. I meant that our present numbers could deal quite adequately with any of the emergencies that are likely to test us, in the foreseeable future. But should the British Volunteers become a permanent feature of British law and order, I should expect to recruit four or five times that number of men and women.’

  ‘But why should your volunteers ever be a permanent feature, Colonel? We have an army and a police force and thousands of men in countless private security organisations - why should we need any more?’

  ‘The British Armed Forces are apolitical, Mr McCullin, with some exceptions, that is. That means they respond to, and take their orders from, whoever is the Government of the day. For nearly two decades now we have seen the fortunes of this country tossed around like a counter in roulette. The unions and the small group of evil-minded Communists who control them where they matter - on the shopfloor - have blackmailed this Government time and time again, careless about whether what they demand and get is good for the country, or even for the men they are supposed to represent.

  ‘They are part of an international conspiracy, Mr McCullin, a conspiracy against democracy - and at no time during the eighteen years that it’s been in power has this Government ever taken a cane to them. Never in the dozens of crippling national strikes has it ever used the armed forces . . . in the mines, the docks, the railways. Why? Because it daren’t, not because the army’s unwilling; the tail, Mr McCullin, has been wagging the dog too long!’

  ‘But you can’t seriously suppose that this Government would ever ask help from your volunteers or that they’d even allow you to intervene in an industrial dispute!’

  ‘Not this Government; no, you’re right. But this Government can’t continue in office forever. Pendulum politics has been in a vacuum, Mr McCullin, but the swing is on its way and God help them when it comes. We’ve been held to ransom by these Marxists and their masters in Moscow long enough.’

  ‘Isn’t there a law,’ Tom asked, ‘against the recruiting and training of a private army in this country. . . something that says you can’t do what you are doing?’

  ‘There is such a law. The Public Order Act, 1936. But we are working well within that law. We are doing nothing that is not being done by rifle clubs. Adult Education Colleges, even the CCF and bloody Boy Scouts! We’re a little late but we are what Mr Edward Heath’s Cabinet had in mind when they suggested their Civil Contingencies Unit in 1972/3. Something to fill the gap in the control the Government had when confronted by groups of workers who controlled vital areas of the economy - the miners, power and water workers - the dockers.’

  From the right there was a rustle and Gosling reappeared through the brocade curtains. He walked straight to Haig, still not looking at Tom, and handed the notepad to the Colonel. Haig looked at it for a brief second, smiled up at Gosling and said. Thank you, my boy - exactly as I thought. Don’t go too far. I’ll call you shortly, /mother sherry, Mr McCullin, before we go? No? Then let’s be on our way.’

  Haig led the way out of the house - a long and rambling stone building that had been converted from a rectory to a farmhouse shortly after the last war. New red brick and breeze-block buildings stood out ugly amongst the old cob and stone stables, cider presses and coach house. Beyond them, Tom could see men working and behind them twenty or more Friesian cows side by side in the long cowshed, steam rising from their backs in th
e cold air.

  ‘You seem to be self-sufficient here, Colonel!’

  ‘Have to be,’ Haig replied, striding ahead of Tom across the cobbled farmyard. ‘No point in setting yourself up as saviour and when the crunch comes find you’re dependent on someone else for food and drink.

  ‘We produce everything we need. One hundred and sixty-eight acres on this estate, and a good deal more productive per acre than any of the farms you’ll find round here. We’ve got every vegetable you’d find in town, and more besides; we produce our own milk, flour, beer, meat and bacon; fifty-four cows, eleven baby beef, four hundred and seventy chickens, sixty pigs - you name it, we’ve got it!’

  Tom followed Haig, without comment, into a white painted single storey building on the right of the vegetable garden. It had been built from breeze block and plaster board. It was thirty or more yards long with a central corridor running between what were obviously classrooms. Each had twenty, possibly twenty-five pupils - men and women - all of them dressed in the same dark blue serge and flannel uniforms. The teacher standing at the front of each class was dressed in exactly the same way. There were no badges or markings to indicate the rank of anyone. The first class on the left as Tom passed was silent and reading; the next on the right was chanting . . . it might have been an arithmetic table or a formula or the conjugation of a foreign verb - Tom could not make out. Haig moved quickly ahead. He shouted over his shoulder, ‘Classes to suit them all. British Constitution and Sociology for the bright ones. Civil Defence for them all!’

  He stopped just before he came to the end of the corridor in front of the swing doors marked EXIT, and pointed left and right. ‘These are the tutorial sessions - one tutor, one student - the “A” streamers if I can borrow a title from the present abominable system of proletarian education.’

  Tom saw a dozen rooms, six each side of the corridor, tiny cubicles big enough to seat two people only, with a small foot-wide table dividing student and teacher. There were no doors to the cubicles but however hard he tried, Tom could hear only whispered conversations coming from them.

  Haig said, ‘They are men and women who will be expected to take on the specialist jobs at a time of National Emergency. Where we can, of course, we’ll shunt them back to their own jobs . . . power workers, nurses, train drivers, mining foremen. . . you get the idea?

  ‘Their loyalty now,’ he indicated with a nod of his head the classes around him, ‘is to their country, which is as it should be at a time of National Crisis. In the fortnight we have them here, after careful vetting, let me say, we simply concentrate that patriotism and enable them to channel it in the right direction at the right time as British Volunteers.’

  Haig was talking loudly. Tom realised this was his norm, and his voice carried and echoed down the narrow corridor. But no one, tutor or pupil, looked up or in any other way acknowledged Haig’s presence.

  He smiled at Tom, nodding his head slightly, waiting perhaps for some kind of affirmation or a point of argument. But Tom said nothing - he found he couldn’t. This was something he hadn’t expected; never dreamt of. He was unprepared. It reminded him of the futuristic plays and films he’d seen on television, bored and drunk in his flat in Russell Street. But this was real! The people in those classrooms were actually listening and agreeing and contributing; declaring their loyalties to Haig and his system.

  Haig moved through the swing doors making no attempt to hold them for Tom, only a yard behind. They crossed a small flagged courtyard; pots of geraniums were stacked in the comer, covered lightly with straw.

  They passed through a storehouse where sacks were piled high marked GRAIN and GROUND FLOUR, then past the cowshed on the left and into a paddock.

  Ahead of him Tom saw a hundred or so men in a single column, four abreast, trotting around the paddock’s perimeter which was bordered by a stone wall, four feet high. Above that a wire fence, three feet high. The paddock was surrounded on three sides by a wood of oak and beech and running through it Tom could see another fence, close-wire weave, at least seven feet high. He realised that as far as he could make out, the farm and its outbuildings could not be seen anywhere from outside the Estate. The fence in the wood probably ran to the main gate just a few yards back from the Totnes-Dartmouth road.

  Nobody outside the Estate would easily get in, that was certain. And nobody inside would easily get out!

  The men were running evenly and in perfect step. They were all dressed in dark blue singlets and track bottoms and their plimsolls were blancoed. Even on the move, Tom could see that their column was meticulously measured off by height in the old Service tradition.

  They and their instructor ignored Haig as he strode to the middle of the paddock watching. He stood there, hands on hips akimbo, legs far apart.

  Tom walked up slowly behind him. The instructor shouted something and the men began chanting as they ran, a deep musical chant and Tom then remembered it from his own Service training days. . . RIGHT - TWO - THREE - LEFT - TWO - THREE . . . over and over again.

  And something else struck him as he watched. They had precision, they had discipline, they were used to each other, used to singing and running together. These were not men training - these were men already trained. And exceptionally well-trained.

  ‘One of our top squads, McCullin!’ Haig dropped the ‘Mr’ for the first time. Tom was immediately aware of it and he felt on edge though he couldn’t quite make out why.

  ‘How top is top, Colonel?’ he asked, as flippantly as he could.

  ‘Very top indeed. They are all ex-servicemen, some with half a lifetime of service, most with experience in action - Aden, Cyprus, Ulster, even some of my own lads from Malaya. There’s also a couple of dozen in this squad that saw some fighting in Rhodesia, the Congo and Angola.’

  ‘Is there any firearms training here. Colonel?’

  ‘Of course not, McCullin - remember I told you earlier that we are prevented by law from that. Couldn’t even teach them how to use a twelve-bore to down a pheasant. . . the few who don’t already know, that is!’

  The squad around them continued their chanting even louder than before. . . they were now circling, still the same pounding beat. . . RIGHT - TWO - THREE - LEFT - TWO - THREE . . . on and on . . . around the two spectators at their centre.

  ‘So,’ Tom said to Haig, ‘physical fitness, and lessons in British Constitution, Sociology and Civil Defence - that’s the sum total of what I’m going to film?’

  ‘Ah! Yes, your film, McCullin!’ Haig looked across to him, the grey eyes staring but giving the impression they saw nothing.

  The men in blue were now much closer, their chanting much louder, their circle closing inwards quite rapidly. It sounded like a Zulu war dance, the kind Tom had heard on Sunday mornings in South African goldmines. He found he was beating the time of the rhythm with his left foot.

  ‘McCullin,’ Haig shouted across to him, above the noise, ‘can you read without glasses?’

  ‘Of course!’ Tom felt a pounding in his wrists and temples. The noise was beginning to tighten his stomach muscles.

  Haig moved a pace forward nearer to Tom. Then read this,’ he said. He handed Tom the notepad Gosling had given him back half an hour ago in the warm sitting-room.

  At the top of the notepaper were five words. . . those Tom had counted as Haig had written them. ‘CHECK WITH GRANADA I’M SUSPICIOUS.’

  Underneath in another hand, probably Gosling’s, was written, ‘UNKNOWN TO GRANADA OR SEPARATE UNIONS’.

  The chanting men were now within yards of Tom and Haig - he could almost touch them, he could smell their sweat.

  ‘Your reactions are slow, McCullin, if that your name,’ Haig shouted. ‘No let-out? No alternative line?’

  Tom looked straight into Haig’s eyes and threw the notepad almost casually back to him, but said nothing. He turned to move. . . just a half-turn to the right, bu
t he got no further. He felt a sudden sharp pain on his neck just below his left ear and his knees crumpled beneath him. As he went down he glimpsed the white fresh young face of Gosling. He sprawled at his feet, saw the black boots, caught the smell of boot polish, heard the thunderous roar of men chanting RIGHT - TWO - THREE as his head exploded in pain. He remembered no more.

  The medical officer on Haig’s staff injected Tom’s unconscious body with a mixture of Pentothal and Valium, enough to keep him in a semi-conscious state for twelve hours or more. Tom, when he recovered from the hard blow to the nerve, would be vaguely aware of light, sound and movement but would not have the strength to do anything but lie still. He would be disorientated and might, under an interrogator’s skill and with the continued use of the drugs, talk quite freely, feel no guilt, and later remember nothing.

  Haig’s men had searched his clothes but the contents gave them little help in establishing who he was. The signature on his driving licence corresponded with those on the three credit cards in his wallet. They corresponded with the signature in the visiting-book that Tom had signed in front of the two guards when he had arrived.

  ‘So we can assume he is who he says he is,’ Haig said to Gosling. Both men were standing, one on either side of the fireplace. Gosling leant down and threw another yew log into the fire-basket.

  ‘But what is he?’ Haig continued. ‘Not police. At least, not from this end or we’d have been tipped off by Sergeant Fowler. And no one from the Yard would come down here on his own - again not without Dartmouth CID knowing. He’s not a Pressman, not masquerading as a TV producer - there’d be no point; most of them in their bloody trade know there’s no way in here. That’s why I had my suspicions when he rang this morning. Thought I’d do a bit of the fly and the spider, just to see what he was up to.’