PART TWELVE
TORIES
Jack Reagan sat glued to the TV screen watching the BBC’s election day programme. It was almost eleven in the evening at his home in the Basque Country, a one hour time difference with London.
As the hour struck the result of exit polls flashed across the screen.
Reagan was concerned by the outcome of the election for a number of reasons: foremost was his own future, specifically in France where he lived. The referendum on the EU, promised by Cameron, was in the balance. If the socialist Milliband won, the danger would recede. On the other hand if Cameron could hobble together a coalition, it would depend on the strength of that coalition. In other words with a strong showing by the Liberals, their leader, Clegg, would certainly water down the rhetoric.
Until the fatidical moment, Milliband had been preparing a victory speech in his home town. At the same instant in time the Scottish Nationalist Party leader was making preparations to fly down to London to negotiate her party’s place in the Labour led coalition government.
When the news fell, the results were so astonishingly out of line with the pollsters’ predictions they were immediately cast aside by all commentators. Commencing with Ed Milliband. They was evidently an error. Probably, according to the TV anchorman, something to do with the particularity of the polling stations chosen to carry out the sampling.
It seemed absurd, it was in total contradiction with every poll published over the past weeks, all of which had predicted a hung parliament with the strong possibility of a Labour Led coalition. According to the BBC’s man, David Dimbleby, twenty two thousand people had been polled. Could they be that wrong? Jack Reagan suddenly realised the night would be long and it was, when he finally called it a day it was three in the morning.
Up at six he immediately zapped on the TV. Looking at the bar at the bottom of the screen he saw Labour was in the lead; twelve seats ahead. The Scottish nationalists were on their way to a sweeping success with every seat won so far. Then, listening to Dimbleby, the story had a different echo. Most of the one hundred and eighty seats Labour had won were in their traditional strongholds and almost every remaining seat where the counting was still underway would go to the Tories.
Reagan made himself a coffee. By the time he returned to the screen, the only question that remained was Cameron’s margin of victory. As for the Liberals they had been wiped off the map and an hour later Nigel Farage saw his dream of glory evaporate.
It not only took some time for Reagan to absorb the nature of the change that had taken place before his eyes, but also the fate of the luckless politicians faced with defeat; who would certainly be forced to resign before the day was out.
Milliband, Clegg and Farage were out of a job. Marie-Claire remarked it was a pity that some of the fossilised French leaders didn’t follow suit.
By midday Cameron was savouring the taste of complete victory. His rivals were relegated to history, forgotten, and the victory of Sturgeon, the Scot, blunted. He could now inform the Queen he would head a new government.
The consequences for the UK would be no less than historic. The risk of Scottish independence loomed greater than ever before, and with a referendum on Europe now certain, the risk of a Brexit became a serious probability. Four million disappointed Ukippers would throw their votes against Europe, joining forces with a broad ranging non-partisan army of eurosceptics. With a Yes-No referendum the risk was considerable, after all Cameron’s party had only polled thirty five percent of the total vote, and even if Labour was pro-European, many of its followers would see the referendum as a means of foiling the Tories.
The Tories would introduce swingeing budget cuts that would hit many working class families, those whose only means to retaliate would be through the ballot box when Cameron pleaded for Europe as he surely would.
Cameron’s electoral victory was a two edged sword, a Pyrrhic victory, which to Jack Reagan’s way of thinking could transform Great Britain into Little Britain, especially if the Scots went for independence.
He suddenly imagined himself clambering up the gangway of a crowded boat in Calais, in a 1940 Dunkirk style evacuation, dragging a single cardboard suitcase tied together with string behind him, heading for a lonely exile in a smaller, poorer, Britain. He texted his friend James Herring asking him, in the event of deportation, for a bed in his garden shed with the promise to wash his Jag on Saturday mornings to pay the rent.
How would Europe react to a ‘No’ vote? They would not be generous. There was already a growing undercurrent of dissatisfaction with Anglo-Saxons in general, who were seen to undermine the Union and the euro, a situation that could degenerate into rejection and rupture if negotiations to accommodate British demands failed.
AVIGNON
Sitting face to the Palais des Papes, John Francis was not only happy to be in Avignon, he was happy to be there with Ekaterina. It was the first time she had been outside of Russia, at least beyond the countries of the former Soviet block. They ordered drinks, he a Desperado and she a glass of white wine. Even the loud and persistent music of a Peruvian flute player, the sound of which was amplified by a powerful loudspeaker system, on the opposite side of the esplanade could not spoil the magic of the moment.
They then continued their before diner stroll beneath the walls of the early renaissance period palace, enjoying the fine mid-spring evening, on their cloud and oblivious to all other thoughts.
At the place de l’Horloge, they stopped to listen to an improvised concert on the steps of the Opera Grande Avignon with its chorus and artists interpreting excerpts from well-known and lesser known operas. It was gay and light hearted, Ekaterina was enchanted, she recognised the different selections, appreciating the informal show, even if it was provincial in comparison to the Moscow’s grand opera houses.
Fleetingly Francis thought of an evening at the opera, but noting a nearby poster that announced Nolwenn Leroi, a popular French variety star it seemed, would be in concert there that same evening; not exactly in the same register, he dismissed the idea.
Francis was head over heels in love. It was crazy, he told himself, how could such a thing happen to a man of his age. When he was younger he had had plenty of amorous adventures, but for longer than he had cared to think he had led the life of an unattached academic, getting on in life and dedicated to his work.
They had arrived that same morning from Paris, where they had spent a romantic week, well that’s what it was, he thought, wondering if he was too old fashioned in his ideas. He had promised to show Ekaterina the Midi and Riviera. Then what? That is to say would he marry her, live with her? Well he hadn’t spent much time thinking that one out. She was much younger than him and in his Trinity College ivory tower tongues would certainly wag.
Of course Francis was a free man. He was a bachelor, a writer and well-known contributor to a number of newspapers and magazines on subjects as diverse as serious economics, the evolution of modern society, and political and corporate finance. Beside these ancillary talents, Francis was above all other considerations an academic, a reputed historian and professor at Dublin’s Trinity College, where he lectured on economic history and development of civilizations.
He was an independent man and comfortably wealthy. He had earned a lot of money advising Michael Fitzwilliam and of course he still held his chair at Trinity College. As a scholarly intellectual he was not experienced in romantic affairs, which he knew often ended in disappointment. However, he was familiar with such situations: in university life relationships between professors, that is to say older men, and female students or younger women, had always been a subject of scandal and broadly treated in literature, past and present.
Ekaterina’s student years were well behind her, but there was still a difference of age between them of more than twenty years. It was perhaps all right for Hollywood stars and oligarchs to have much younger wives or mistresses, but how would a professor’s relationship with a young Russian single mother go down in Ireland
’s most venerable and respected seat of learning?
But what did she think? She was talkative, open minded, but seemed to avoid the future. He too for that matter. Was it his fault? Did she like the status quo? And he?
He pushed the thoughts away as she took his hand, it was as if she could read his mind. The dined in a small restaurant on rue Place Saint-Pierre, where they watched the passers-by from their pavement table, the diner and the ambience was what the guide books called authentic. They bathed in the romanticism of Provence, surrounded by the architecture of the old town and the fourteenth century basilique. Francis would have liked to capture the moment, savour it at some future time, or times, again and again. Sadly he realised it was a rare moment and there were so few moments in life when one felt really happy, when life’s problems seemed so far away, and this was one of them; he was overwhelmed by a surge emotion and gratitude to the fates for allowing him to have lived it.
Ekaterina’s feelings were the same and she took his hand in an instant of deep affinity.
Would they make their home in London or Dublin; London would be more anonymous. He hadn’t even asked her and she hadn’t pushed him. Whatever happened he was not going to live in Moscow.
Avignon was nice, but unreal, where visitors could wonder at the marvels of the past, like so many other cities across Europe and the world, a lived-in theme park. Each day brought its flock of tourists. They were delivered to the main gate of the walled city by train or bus. Twenty four hours normally did it. Hello, goodbye. Les jours se resemblés. Some visitors stayed a little longer, those interested by a more in depth experience, most hurried on to their next destination; perhaps a holiday on the Côte d’Azur, or Provincial towns, to live out another dream.
The real citizens of Avignon had disappeared, at least they did not live in the walled town. The homes had been transformed into hotels, restaurants, bars, ice cream parlours, souvenir shops and fashion boutiques. Then there were the attractions: churches, museums, galleries, antique shops and so on, the list was long.
The workers, many from North Africa, lived outside the walls of the ancient town. A large number were second generation and even third immigrant families; their parents had arrived in the seventies and eighties when work was plentiful. For the most part they lived in housing developments the French called cités. The sons and daughters of these families aspired to something better than that their parents had known: they were born French citizens, in France, had a French education and quite naturally spoke French with the regional accent. However, their origin, their religion and family upbringing, like it or not, barred them from enjoying the same privileges as their grass root fellow citizens. The result was a failed generation, if they were lucky they had jobs in the tourist industry, less well paid than their better educated compatriots, with little hope of advancement. The risk of unemployment was high and the only alternative for some was a life of petty crime and dealing.
He remembered a visit many years before and a Picasso exhibition in the Palais des Papes. He had been a young man, it was his first visit to the city. Francis recalled how he had been seduced by the splendour of the Palace, its architecture, though the paintings left him in some doubt, a doubt that remained over the years. Francis Bacon, an Irishman like himself, was his preferred artist in the field of modern art, he had often visited the museum dedicated to the artist in Dublin where he had admire his technical perfection.
The Château des Papes – Avignon – France
Sunday morning, the weather was fine, not the crushing summer heat that would arrive a little more than a month later. Church bells sounded calling the faithful to mass as they had done for centuries, the question was: who replied to their call? There were few Christians who practised their ancestral religion as to the Muslims on the periphery of the town they were uninterested by the religion of their hosts.
As they waited for their rented car, Francis witnessed a strange dispute between two women seated on a bench, who from their conversation it seemed were cousins. The argument had started à propos the remarks one of them had made about a Muslim woman who passed by pushing a pram, she wore the costume prescribed by her religion: a long robe, a coat, a veil that covered her hair and a large part of her face. One of the two women, a Jehovah’s Witness, at least her mother was, was slim and stylishly dressed. Francis couldn’t help remarking her low cut jeans revealed underwear of the same clothe as the brightly patterned shirt she was wearing. The other was more ordinary, somewhat overweight, without style, and a nominal Muslim. They were the daughters of Algerian families, second generation.
The Muslim protested she was French and had nothing to do with the devil’s religion, which it appeared was how her brother described Saudi Arabia. The other rejected Islam whilst protesting it was her mother the Jehovah’s Witness, not her.
The argument became heated and insults started flying back and forth. It reminded Francis of Northern Ireland and the arguments between of Papists and Orange men. He listened for fifteen minutes fearing they would come to blows, as the nominal Muslim declared she was French, not Algerian and not interested in religion.
He had witnessed the difficulties facing second generation immigrants and how attitudes towards religion created conflict. Spiritual traditions were abandoned by some as the new generation responded to the attitudes of a very different world to that in which their parents had grown up.
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