by Matthew Hall
Black looked up from his desk at the life-size marble statue of William Codrington himself, which stood grandly and commandingly in the centre of the room. He was set high on a plinth and dressed in Roman costume, a scroll clasped in his right hand. He was certainly not a man who had lacked confidence, which was to his credit, Black supposed, but he was still a man who had seen his slaves clapped in irons and whipped for minor misdemeanours. A man who embodied all the contradictions that still plague us: we thrive at the actual and theoretical expense of others. How to get beyond that? How to invite everybody to the party? What kind of idea has the power to disarm both the despots and the lone fanatics of the world? It would take far greater minds than his to frame it, but he could think of two conditions it would have to fulfil: it would have to promise dignity and it would have to involve sharing the spoils.
He picked up his pen and began to write.
What is within our power and what is outside it?
We cannot persuade hostile nations, cultures and individuals to our way of thinking overnight but we can offer the security and resources within which change can occur. Above all, we have to be ambitious and universal in our vision, not ad hoc, not piecemeal, inconsistent, or, worst of all, devious. We have to act and to talk as if we have a plan for the next 100 years. History tells us that only with such grandeur of purpose can we hope to win the hearts and minds set against us. Only with such grandeur of purpose can we hope to square our actions with our consciences. And if we act outside conscience, we do our enemies’ work for them.
He read his words over again, unsure if they were worthy of a public airing or if they were no more than empty rhetoric. He decided he liked them, even if they were a little flowery. He had spent his adult life fighting wars that no one in authority had ever justified to him except in the most technical terms of immediate threats and objectives. He had never been inspired. No general or prime minister had ever convinced him he was risking his neck for a high and glorious purpose. And if you couldn’t even convince your own side, what chance had you of convincing an enemy?
His phone buzzed silently in his inside jacket pocket. He brought it out to find a text from Karen: You’d better show up tonight! I am NOT facing that lot alone. K :)
Damn. The Provost’s invitation to high table had conveniently slipped his mind. He glanced at his watch. It was evening already. The afternoon had vanished. Inwardly groaning at the prospect of dinner with the fellows, he had to remind himself that he was running out of chances to ingratiate himself. No matter how warm his reception at West Point, he needed at least a few of them on board.
Reluctantly returning Edward Shepherd Creasy’s Imperial and Colonial Institutions of the Britannic Empire to the shelves, Black resolved to face the ordeal at his charming best, but in truth he would have preferred to negotiate with smiling warlords while a dozen men aimed Kalashnikovs at his back.
‘There you are. I thought you were going to bail on me again.’ Karen was waiting for him in the cloister, wearing a long black academic gown over a dark blue dress and matching heels. She had tied up her hair, exposing a pale, graceful neck.
‘Sorry. You needn’t have waited for me. I thought you’d be up in the SCR with the others.’
She shrugged, too embarrassed to confess that she hadn’t felt able to face pre-dinner drinks alone.
‘Shall we?’ He nodded towards the staircase at the far end of the cloister that led up to the Senior Common Room.
‘There’s no point now. It’s nearly time. I can’t stand sherry, anyway.’
‘Fine.’ Black smiled. He couldn’t help stealing another glance at Karen. He could hardly recall having seen her in anything other than jeans or Lycra. He was glad to see that her damaged arm was now wrapped only with a tight crêpe bandage and that the shine had returned to her eyes. Nevertheless, the sense of guilt that he might be the cause of her suffering gnawed at his conscience like a dirty, unspeakable secret.
‘Don’t say it.’ She gave him a playful look. ‘Admittedly this dress hasn’t left the cupboard all year, but at least I fit into it.’
‘I was going to say you look very elegant.’
‘That must be a first. Shame about this.’
She held up her bandaged arm and smiled.
Their eyes met, a spark passing between them that caught Black by surprise. For a fleeting moment he felt as if they might fall naturally into a kiss. He sensed her moving fractionally towards him but in his surprise he stiffened and clammed up, then groped awkwardly for something to say. ‘Any word from the police?’
‘No.’ There was the merest trace of disappointment in her voice. ‘The best they can come up with is that it was a one-off. Some lunatic wanting to pay for his fix. At least we’ve got security cameras out at the greenhouses now.’ She was anxious to change the subject. ‘Anyway, how have you been? I didn’t see you at the weekend. Did you run away to the country again?’
‘Yes,’ Black lied. ‘Spur of the moment. I thought it might help me think.’
‘I’d like to see it some time. I love the hills.’
‘You’re welcome – if you don’t mind slumming it. It’s a bit rough and ready.’
‘I grew up on a council estate in Sheffield. Most places feel like luxury.’
She laughed. And, as she did so, Black noticed her eyes flittingly anxiously, as if she were still on the alert for lurking attackers.
The college clock struck the half hour. It was seven thirty. A group of late-coming students dressed in undergraduate gowns ran up the steps from the quad and through the large doors to the dining hall. Shortly afterwards, the sound of well-lubricated voices travelled through the open doorway to the Senior Common Room staircase. A dozen or so of their colleagues and a handful of invited guests emerged, flush-faced. Black and Karen crossed the flagstones to join them, exchanging polite greetings as they waited for the Provost to lead them into dinner.
The ritual hadn’t altered since Black’s undergraduate days and had probably gone largely unchanged during the three centuries since the college’s foundation. The students, seated at three long tables perpendicular to the door, rose from their benches and stood in respectful silence as the Provost led the procession to the high table at the far end. The senior party arranged themselves behind their chairs and dipped their heads while one of the undergraduate scholars read the Latin grace from a lectern. Christ Church used a version of the same text, but Worcester prided itself on using the full and unexpurgated form. It was the most elaborate grace in Oxford and Black knew it by heart:
Nos miseri homines et egeni, pro cibis quos nobis ad corporis …
On and on it went for a full paragraph until the young woman reading paused, and in unison, the assembled company intoned the Amen. There was a scraping of chairs and the evening began.
Black had taken care to position himself directly opposite Karen to afford her maximum cover. It was an immutable law that the higher the collective IQ at the table, the greater the probability of being cornered by either a bore or a lecher. Karen had mixed luck: to her left was Claire Symes, a young, earnest but rather humourless fellow in law and to her right was Professor Silvio Belladini, a renowned political philosopher with an extravagant mane of white hair. His recent nomination for his discipline’s highest honour, the Kyoto Prize, had done nothing to diminish his already swollen ego. Sitting to Black’s right was Dr Gina Marlowe, an unassuming but fiercely intelligent immunologist, and to his left Dr Mike Callaghan, one of the country’s foremost modern historians and a self-proclaimed post-modernist. Professor Alex Levine, the Provost, sat at the head of the table, two to the right of Black. As the winner of multiple prizes and already widely tipped for a Nobel, his authority was undisputed.
To Black’s relief their pre-dinner drinks had left his colleagues in good humour. Conversation over the starter of smoked Argyll salmon drifted good-naturedly around several uncontentious subjects before Levine told the story of his ill-fated attempt to purchase a sma
ll Umbrian vineyard the previous summer. At the eleventh hour his Italian lawyer had suffered a fit of conscience and forewarned him of the informal ‘taxes’ he would have to pay to the local mafia, who were the de facto government in the area.
Belladini laughed uproariously. ‘I am afraid old habits die hard in my homeland. But these local clansmen are perfectly pleasant when you get to know them. Tell me, how many times have you settled down to a bottle of fine wine and some pleasant conversation with a British taxman?’
Levine conceded that he may have been too timid in backing out of the deal but that some cultural differences were just too daunting to navigate.
Callaghan picked up the thread and launched into several amusing anecdotes of growing up in a Northern Ireland border village governed by an unholy alliance of bumbling priests, cattle smugglers and the IRA. Black observed the shocked reactions Callaghan’s stories provoked from Claire Symes with amusement. Born in the early 1990s, it was almost beyond her comprehension that armed banditry was still flourishing on United Kingdom soil during her lifetime.
‘They actually gave shelter to terrorists? How did these priests justify their actions to themselves?’
‘Well, that would have required a period of sober reflection, and I don’t think I ever saw Father Dominic in that condition.’ Callaghan crossed himself with an expression of mock piety. ‘God rest him.’
They all laughed, except for Claire, who seemed appalled by their reaction.
‘I don’t think it’s particularly funny either,’ Karen said in an effort at solidarity.
Black gave her an appreciative smile between the arms of a silver candelabra.
Talk veered off on to the college’s latest fundraising efforts and a discussion on the morality of accepting a large donation from a minor Saudi prince to endow scholarships for students from the Middle East. The mood took a serious turn as they navigated a delicate topic strewn with potential bear traps. No one dared risk a monosyllable that might be misconstrued. Black ventured his opinion that any initiative that promoted the exchange of ideas with the Islamic world was to be applauded as long as the emphasis was on exchange. Anything was an improvement on mutual ignorance. His comment received general approval. It was his first substantial contribution to the conversation and he counted it a success. Gina Marlowe, who had remained virtually silent until that moment, added her view that there was no antidote to religious fundamentalism of any kind quite as effective as the empirical scientific method: the students in her laboratory witnessed the evolution of bacteria occurring from week to week.
There was a murmur of approval. Black kept his thoughts to himself: that for all their post-imperial guilt everyone at the table, even Callaghan, believed as fervently in the export of Western critical thinking as their Victorian forebears had in spreading Christianity.
Waitresses in white aprons appeared to clear away their starters and replace them with the main event: gigot of lamb accompanied by Chateau Grand-Puy-Lacoste 1986. Karen had requested the vegetarian option: a dish consisting mostly of cauliflower and broccoli, the sight of which made Black’s stomach ache. Nevertheless, he admired her restraint. He took a mouthful of the lamb. It melted on the tongue. The wine was soft and complex. They were decadent pleasures, but after years in the field subsisting on army rations, he relished them.
As glasses were refilled, the gregarious Belladini became the natural leader of the conversation and regaled them with an account of his recent fortnight spent as a guest lecturer in Beijing University.
‘I was appointed not one but three official “assistants”!’ he exclaimed. ‘One surly young man who made not the slightest attempt to disguise the fact that he was a government agent and two women as beautiful as porcelain dolls.’ He smiled apologetically at Karen and Claire. ‘I think it was quite deliberate on my hosts’ part. They are not beyond playing the old tricks, but, I assure you, I behaved impeccably. These three attended every lecture, not seeking to censor me – quite the reverse, they nodded along attentively, but I also saw them observing the students for signs of subversion. They were effective. Very effective. All my questioners took a critical stance: Why is the West so tolerant of political chaos? Do our warring politicians take no blame for the hedonism and neurosis of our younger generations? Do our endless elections not frustrate our governments’ ability to be productive? I longed for one of them to ask me something frivolous or irreverent like my Oxford students – the other day one young undergraduate asked me whether I had ever been to one of Berlusconi’s bunga bunga parties. Ha! If only! The Chinese would never dare. The thought wouldn’t enter their heads. They are so unnervingly reverential.’
‘Did you suspect your audience had been forewarned?’ Levine asked.
‘Possibly, but I also sensed a genuine commitment. Theirs is a goal-orientated society. Beneath all the fizz of consumerism its fundamentals are still deeply rooted in a sort of deferential feudalism the communists have adapted and exploited to the full.’
‘You don’t detect the stirrings of individualism?’ Callaghan asked. ‘Surely the internet is changing the culture profoundly? The kids must at least be looking at porn for goodness’ sake.’
‘Technology is stimulating desires, material and carnal, no doubt. But fomenting a desire for democracy? For earthquakes? No, I don’t think so. My impression is that the underlying consciousness of the population remains the same. It seeks to preserve itself in all its vastness. And the mind of a people is attracted to the most efficient method of survival, don’t you think?’
‘That depends what you mean by a people,’ Claire Symes said. ‘There are plenty of Chinese minorities hungry for democracy: the Tibetans for a start.’
‘One of my students from Pakistan made an interesting point today,’ Black interjected. ‘Democracy and freedom are very different things. A repressive state can offer protection that majority rule certainly won’t. Look at the exodus of Christians from Iraq. Democracy hasn’t done much for them.’
‘And that’s an argument for what, precisely – propping up repressive regimes?’
‘A more graduated approach perhaps.’ Black became aware that the others had fallen into expectant silence. Karen met his eyes. She had sensed it, too. This is what they had been waiting for, a glimpse of just who and what this former military man was. Suddenly self-conscious, Black chose his words carefully, aware of the heat beneath his tightening collar. ‘My approach, partly based on personal experience, is that repressive regimes exist for a reason. They’re containing pressure of some sort. Release it too quickly and you’ll get an explosion which the supposed beneficiaries of your intervention won’t thank you for. You have to proceed with maximum historical and cultural understanding. If you want to sell democracy to another Iraq, you have to make it an irresistible proposition. If the population don’t know they want something, then, by definition, they don’t want it.’
There was another silence as his words were digested. Black and Karen exchanged a glance. He felt as if he were being subjected to a pre-planned audition.
Belladini smiled, rolling the stem of his glass between thumb and forefinger. ‘If you’ll pardon me for saying so, Dr Black, it sounds as if you may have experienced a Damascene moment at some point.’
‘No particular moment. Just an accumulation of observations.’
‘But there came a time when you chose to leave the military. The Special Air Service, wasn’t it?’
‘I’d always hankered after returning to my studies. The time seemed right,’ Black said, avoiding the latter part of the question.
‘And we happened to have run out of wars to fight,’ Callaghan said. ‘Although I expect your former colleagues have since found plenty to occupy them elsewhere.’
Black sensed the vultures circling. At the corner of his vision he spotted Levine lower his gaze to his empty plate.
‘Yes, I’d had my fill of conflict,’ Black said, hearing a note of defiance enter his voice. ‘Although I’m under n
o illusions – while there is such a thing as freedom, there will be a continual struggle to preserve it.’
‘A violent struggle? Perpetual war?’ Belladini challenged.
‘Some violence, yes. Contained. Localized. Specific. War is something bigger. I hope we’ve learned to avoid it except in the most parlous circumstances.’
‘And the legality of this localized violence – does it worry you?’
The question came from Claire Symes. Black knew what was coming next. The rumours. They had reached his colleagues, just as he had expected. He resolved to remain calm. ‘Holding ourselves to the highest standards is imperative. If we fail in that, we have no authority whatsoever.’
‘But you have personally been involved in illegal covert operations. Or at least, that’s what you are accused of?’ she pressed.
There it was. The bomb they had all been waiting to drop. Delivered – no doubt by arrangement – by the most junior of their number. Claire had drawn the short straw.
‘Really? I’m not aware of any such accusations.’
‘There was an article on the Cherwell website this afternoon,’ Gina Marlowe chimed in. ‘Haven’t you seen it? I’m sure it’s been picked up by the nationals by now.’
‘No,’ Black answered honestly.
He glanced across at Karen. It seemed to be news to her, too.
‘May I ask what’s been said?’
‘A Libyan named Yusuf Ali Mahmoud has cited “a former British officer, now an Oxford University lecturer” as one of his abductors,’ Claire Symes said. ‘He claims that in 2007 he was kidnapped in Tripoli and rendered to Guantánamo by British Special Forces.’
‘I confess, I’ve never heard of Mr Mahmoud. It sounds as if someone’s stirring up mischief. I suppose it would be surprising in the current climate if someone like me didn’t go unchallenged.’