The project could not have had a more spectacular vindication. Both airports – Tennyson One and Tennyson Two – are approaching capacity. Visitor thruput has outperformed the most optimistic expectations. The Island itself is packed yet calmly efficient. There is always a friendly ‘bobby’ (policeman) or ‘Beefeater’ (Tower of London guard) from whom to ask the way; while the ‘cabbies’ (taxi-drivers) are all fluent in at least one of the major tourist languages. Most speak English too!
Maisie Bransford, of Franklin, TN, vacationing with her family, told the Journal, ‘We’d heard that England was kind of dowdy and old-fashioned, and not really up with the cutting edge of the modern world. But we’ve been mighty surprised. It’s a real home away from home.’ Paul Harrison, chief adviser to Martha Cochrane, and in charge of day-to-day strategy, explains that ‘There are two guiding principles here. Number one, client choice. Number two, guilt avoidance. We never try to bully people into having a good time, into thinking they’re enjoying themselves when in fact they aren’t. We just say, if you don’t like these premier sites, we’ve got others.’
A good example of client choice is how you spend your money – literally. As Ms Cochrane points out, Pitman House could easily have eliminated any awareness of financial disbursement, by either all-inclusive packages or the instant crediting of a final account. But research indicated that the majority of vacationers enjoy the act of spending, and, just as important, that of being seen to spend. So, for those addicted to plastic, there is an Island Charge Card, diamond-shaped rather than oblong, which takes up the credit limit of your card back home.
But there is also, for the fiscally adventurous, the head-scratching complexity of real old English currency. What a rich and pocket-stretching array of copper and silver you will find at your command: farthings, ha’pennies, pennies, groats, tanners, shillings, florins, half-crowns, crowns, sovereigns, and guineas. Of course, it is possible to play the traditional English pub game of shove-ha’penny, or shuffleboard, with a plastic counter, but how much more satisfying to feel the weight of a glinting copper coin against your thumb. Gamblers from Las Vegas to Atlantic City know the heft in the hand of the silver dollar. Here at the Island Casino you can play with a velvet purseful of Angels, each worth seven shillings and sixpence, and each impressed with the figure of Saint Michael slaying the Dragon.
And what dragons have Sir Jack Pitman and his team slain here on the Island? If we look at the place not just as a leisure business – whose success seems assured – but as the miniature state it has effectively been for the past two years, what lessons might it hold for the rest of us?
For a start, there is full employment, so there is no need for burdensome welfare programs. Radical critics still claim that this desirable end was produced by undesirable means, when Pitco shipped the old, the longterm sick, and the socially dependent off to the mainland. But Islanders are not heard to complain, any more than they complain about the lack of crime, which eliminates the need for policemen, probation officers, and prisons. The system of socialized medicine, once popular in Old England, has been replaced by the American model. Everyone, Visitor or resident, is obliged to take out insurance; and the air-ambulance link to the Pitman wing of Dieppe hospital does the rest.
Richard Poborsky, analyst for the United Bank of Switzerland, told the Wall Street Journal: ‘I think this development is very exciting. It’s a pure market state. There’s no interference from government because there is no government. So there’s no foreign or domestic policy, only economic policy. It’s a pure interface between buyers and sellers without the market being skewed by central government with its complex agendas and election promises.
‘People have been trying to find new ways to live for centuries. Remember all those hippie communes? They always failed, and why? Because they failed to understand two things: human nature, and how the market works. What’s happening on the Island is a recognition that man is a market-driven animal, that he swims in the market like a fish in the sea. Without making any predictions, let’s just say that I think I’ve seen the future, and I think it works.’
But this is to look ahead. The Island Experience, as the billboards have it, is everything you imagined England to be, but more convenient, cleaner, friendlier, and more efficient. Archaeologists and historians might suspect that some of the monuments are not what traditionalists would call authentic. But as Pitman House surveys confirm, most people here are first-time visitors making a conscious market choice between Old England and England, England. Would you rather be that confused figure on a windswept sidewalk in dirty Old London Town, trying to find your way while the rest of the city bustles past (‘Tower of London? Can’t help you there, guv’), or someone who is treated as the center of attention? On the Island, if you want to catch a big red bus, you find that two or three come along in a jolly convoy before you can sort out the groats in your pocket and the dispatcher can raise her whistle to her lips.
Here, in place of the traditional cold-fish English welcome, you will find international-style friendliness. And what about the traditional chilly weather? That’s still around. There is even a permanent winter zone, with robins hopping through the snow, and the chance to join the age-old local game of throwing snowballs at the bobby’s helmet and then running away while he slips over on the ice. You can also don a war-time gas-mask and experience the famous London ‘pea-soup’ fog. And if it rains, it rains. But only outdoors. Still, what would England, ‘original’ or otherwise, be without rain?
Despite all our demographic changes, many Americans still feel a kinship with, and curiosity about, the little land William Shakespeare called ‘this precious stone set in the silver sea.’ This was, after all, the country from which the Mayflower set sail (it’s Thursday mornings at 10.30 for ‘The Setting Sail of the Mayflower’). The Island is the place to satisfy this curiosity. The present writer has visited what is increasingly referred to as ‘Old England’ a number of times. From now on, only those with an active love of discomfort or necrophiliac taste for the antique need venture there. The best of all that England was, and is, can be safely and conveniently experienced on this spectacular and well-equipped diamond of an Island.
Kathleen Su traveled incognito and solely at the expense of the Wall Street Journal.
FROM HER OFFICE Martha could experience the whole Island. She could watch the feeding of the One Hundred and One Dalmatians, check throughput at Haworth Parsonage, eavesdrop on snug-bar camaraderie between straw-chewing yokel and Pacific Rim sophisticate. She could track the Battle of Britain, the Last Night of the Proms, the Trial of Oscar Wilde, and the Execution of Charles I. On one screen King Harold would glance fatally towards the sky; on another posh ladies in Sissinghurst hats pricked out seedlings and counted the varieties of butterfly perching on the buddleia; on a third hackers were pock-marking the fairway of the Alfred, Lord Tennyson Golf Course. There were sights on the Island Martha knew so intimately from a hundred camera angles that she could no longer remember whether or not she had ever seen them in reality.
On some days she seemed hardly to leave her office. But then, if she chose to operate an open-door policy with employees, she had only herself to blame. Sir Jack would no doubt have instituted a Versailles system, with hopeful petitioners clustering in an ante-room while a Pitmanesque eye surveyed them through a spyhole in the tapestry. Since his ousting, Sir Jack had himself become a petitioner for attention. The cameras would sometimes catch him out in his landau, desperately waving his tricorne at puzzled Visitors. It was almost pathetic: he had dwindled into what he was supposed to be – a mere figurehead with no real power. Martha, out of a mixture of compassion and cynicism, had upped his armagnac allowance.
Her 10.15, she saw, was with Nell Gwynn. That was a name from the past. How far away those discussions during Concept Development now seemed. Dr Max had been making mischief that day, but his intervention had probably saved them trouble down the line. After several reports, Nell had finally been a
llowed to keep her place in English history; but her failure to make Jeff’s list of Top Fifty Quintessences had legitimized the down-sizing of her myth.
Nowadays, she was a nice, unambitious girl who ran a juicer stall a few hundred metres from the Palace railings. Yet her essence, like her juice, had been concentrated, and she remained a version of what she had once been, or at least what Visitors – even readers of family newspapers – expected her to have been. Raven hair, sparkling eyes, a white flounced blouse cut in a certain way, lipstick, gold jewellery, and vivacity: an English Carmen. This morning, however, she sat primly before Martha, buttoned to the neck, and looking quite out of character.
‘Nell 2 minding the Juicery?’ asked Martha routinely.
‘Nell 2’s dahn wiv a bug,’ replied Nell, at least retaining her learned accent. ‘Connie’s mindin’ the shop.’
‘Connie? Christ … what do …’ Martha buzzed through to the executive office. ‘Paul, can you sort this out? Connie Chatterley’s running the Nell Juicery. Yes, don’t ask, I know. Quite. Can you get a Nell 3 out of Props straight away? Don’t know how long for. Thanks. Bye.’
She turned back to Nell 1. ‘You know the rules. They’re quite clear. If Nell 2 is sick you go straight to Props.’
‘Sorry, Miss Cochrane, it’s just, well, I’ve been rather under the weather lately. No, that’s not right, I’ve been in a bit of a pickle.’ Nell had stopped being Nell, and the screen in front of Martha confirmed that her original surname was double-barrelled and that she had been to finishing school in Switzerland.
Martha waited, then prompted. ‘What sort of a pickle?’
‘Oh, it’s like telling tales. But it’s got worse. I thought I could laugh it off, you know, make a joke of it, but I’m sorry …’ She pulled herself upright and squared her shoulders. Her Nellness had now quite fallen away. ‘I have to make an official complaint. Connie agrees.’
What Nell Gwynn and Connie Chatterley agreed on was that the current tenant of Nell’s Juicery shouldn’t have to put up with lewd behaviour and sexual harassment from anyone, not even if he was the King of England. Which in the present case he happened to be. At first he’d been nice, and asked her to call him Kingy-Thingy, not that she would. But then remarks had been passed, her engagement ring ignored, and stock interfered with in a suggestive way. Now he’d begun taunting her in front of customers, who just laughed as if it were all part of the show. It was unbearable.
Martha gave Nell the day off and requested the King’s presence in her office at 3.00 that afternoon. She had checked his schedule: just a pro-am tournament on Tennyson Down in the morning, then nothing until decorating Battle of Britain heroes at 4.15. Even so, the King looked sulky when he turned up. He still hadn’t got used to the idea of being summoned to Island HQ. At first he’d tried sitting on his throne and hoping that Martha would come to him. But all he got was Deputy Governor Sir Percy Nutting, QC ex-MP, who mixed historic grovelling with regretful insistence on the King’s clear obligations under both contractual law and the executive authority which now ran the Island. Martha had called him in several times, and knew to expect a flushed, complaining presence.
‘What have I done now?’ he asked, pretending to be a child called up for chastisement.
‘I’m afraid there’s been an official complaint against you. Your Majesty.’ Martha added the title not out of deference, but to remind him of kingship’s obligations.
‘Who from this time?’
‘Nell Gwynn.’
‘Nell?’ said the King. ‘Well, Lordy-Lordy, aren’t we getting a little above ourselves all of a sudden?’
‘So you acknowledge the validity of the complaint?’
‘Miss Cochrane, if a fellow can’t make a few jokes about marmalade –’
‘It’s more serious than that.’
‘Oh all right, I did say …’ The King looked across at Martha with a quarter-smile, inviting complicity. ‘I did say she could juice my clementines any time she wanted.’
‘And which of your scriptwriters gave you that one?’
‘What a cheek, Miss Cochrane. It was all my own work.’ He said it with evident pride.
‘I believe you. I’m just working out if that makes it better or worse. And were the obscene gestures also spontaneous?’
‘The what?’ Martha’s gaze was stern; in the face of it, he ducked his head down. ‘Oh well, you know, just a lark. Talk about the morality police. You’re as bad as Denise. There are times I wish I was back there. When I really was king.’
‘It’s not a question of morality,’ said Martha.
‘Isn’t it?’ Perhaps there was hope. He’d always had trouble with that word and exactly what it covered.
‘No, it’s purely contractual in my book. Sexual harassment is a breach of contract. So is conduct liable to bring the Island into disrepute.’
‘Oh, you mean, like normal behaviour.’
‘Your Majesty, I’m going to have to give you an executive instruction not to attempt relations with Miss Gwynn. There’s something rather … controversial in her background.’
‘Oh Gawd, don’t say she’s got the clap.’
‘No, it’s more that we don’t want people looking into her history too closely. Some clients might not understand. You’re to treat her as if she was, oh, fifteen.’
The King looked up belligerently. ‘Fifteen? If that filly isn’t way past the age of consent then I’m the Queen of Sheba.’
‘Yes,’ said Martha. ‘From the birth certificate point of view. Let’s just say that, on the Island, on the Island, Nell is fifteen. Just as on the Island … you’re the King.’
‘I’m the fucking King anyway,’ he shouted. ‘Anywhere, everywhere, always.’
Only as long as you behave, thought Martha. You are King by contract and by permission. If you disobey an executive order and we put you on a boat to Dieppe in the morning, I doubt there will be an armed insurrection. Merely an organizational hitch. Someone, somewhere, always wanted the throne. And if the monarchy got too big for its boots, they could always draft in Oliver Cromwell for a bit. Why not, actually?
‘The thing is, Miss Cochrane,’ said the King whinily. ‘I really like her. Nell. I can tell she’s more than a juice-girl. I’m sure we’d click if she got to know me better. I could teach her to speak properly. It’s just,’ he looked down and twiddled his signet ring, ‘it’s just that one does seem to have got off on the wrong foot.’
‘Your Majesty,’ said Martha in a softer tone, ‘there are lots of other women to “really like” out there. Of the right age.’
‘Oh yes, frinstance?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘No, you don’t. Nobody knows how difficult it is being in my position. Everyone stares at you all the time and you aren’t allowed to look back at them without being hauled in front of this … industrial tribunal.’
‘Well, there’s Connie Chatterley.’
‘Connie Chatterley?’ The King was incredulous. ‘She fucks oiks.’
‘Lady Godiva?’
‘Been there, done that,’ said the King.
‘I didn’t mean Godiva 1. I meant Godiva 2. Didn’t I see you at the audition?’
‘Godiva 2?’ The King’s face brightened, and Martha glimpsed the ‘legendary charm’ ritually invoked by The Times of London. ‘You know, you’re a real pal, Miss Cochrane. Not that Denise isn’t a pal,’ he added hastily. ‘She’s my best mate. But she isn’t always very understanding, if you see what I mean. Godiva 2? Yes. I remember thinking, now she could be a top girl in Kingy-Thingy’s book. Must give her a bell. Ask her out for a cappuccino. You wouldn’t –’
‘Biggin Hill,’ said Martha.
‘Eh?’
‘Biggin Hill first. Medals on heroes.’
‘Haven’t they got enough medals, those heroes? You couldn’t get Denise to do it today, could you?’ He looked appealingly at Martha. ‘No, I suppose not. It’s in my contract, isn’t it? Every sodding thing’s in my sodding
contract. Still. Godiva 2. You’re a pal, Miss Cochrane.’
The King’s departure was as jaunty as his arrival had been surly. Martha Cochrane flicked a monitor over to RAF Biggin Hill. All seemed normal: there were Visitors clustered before the little squadron of Hurricanes and Spitfires, others jabbing at battle simulators or wandering through the Nissen huts at the runway’s edge. Here they could watch heroes in sheepskin flying jackets warming their hands over paraffin stoves, dealing cards, and waiting for the dance-band music on the wind-up gramophone to be interrupted by the order to scramble. They could ask questions of these heroes, and receive period answers in authentically clipped tones. Piece of cake. Bad show. Jerry sat on his own bomb. Thoroughly browned off. Mum’s the word. Then the heroes would go back to their cards, and as they shuffled, cut, and dealt, Visitors might reflect on the wider hazard that filled the lives of such men: sometimes fate played the joker, sometimes it turned up the scowling Queen of Spades. Those medals the King was about to bestow were thoroughly deserved.
Martha buzzed through to her PA. ‘Vicky, when BH calls for Godiva 2’s number, it’s authorized. Godiva 2, not Godiva 1. Thanks.’
Vicky. It made a change from Sir Jack’s procession of Susies. Insisting on the PA’s real name had been one of Martha’s first steps on becoming Chief Executive Officer. She had also partitioned the double-cube snuggery into a cappuccino bar and a men’s lavatory. The Governor’s furnishings – or those deemed company rather than personal property – had been dispersed. There had been an argument over the Brancusi. The Palace had put in for the Bavarian fireplaces, which now served as indoor hockey goals for the sports room.