‘He argued that if we came to you for assistance and asked for this request to remain covert, at least temporarily, you would have the discipline and resolve to accept such a condition. I, naturally, endorsed that, Ian. As to “even perverse”, Fisher said he believed this actually meant Lorna-Jane felt insulted by your refusal of the offer and that it would be degrading, humiliating, to come crawling to you for aid, even if you could provide it. This he considered a negative, vengeful, illogical, arrogant response. In not quite such blunt terms, we endorsed that, of course.’
‘Which we?’
‘As in any organization there are disputes. Occasionally, it can appear as though our people are more intent on fighting one another, rather than the outside enemy. This impairs efficiency. I sometimes think I’d like to write a book about it. Call it, say, The Looking Glass War. I won’t, of course, but I offer the idea.’
Was all the verbiage a sales pitch? Ray Bain wanted him to know there’d been a squabble over whether he should be asked for help. And so the strung-out baloney about what Lorna-Jane had done, and what Fisher had replied, despite his inferior rank. And so, also, the quibble about Ian’s ‘conspicuous’ ignoring of their invitation, or non-conspicuousness. Those in favour of an approach to Ian, including Bain, had won the dispute. Therefore, the reasoning went, Ian would see how much he was prized by some. He should feel gratitude – and agree to what they asked – since some had fought so gallantly for his suitability and right to be asked. More gratitude. Another noose.
He found it hard to guess how he could help, anyway, if it was to do with ‘this Suez invasion muck-up’. He didn’t know much more than anyone else about this Suez invasion muck-up, except that it was a muck-up. The basics were simple, and the basics were all he had: Egypt’s President Nasser recently decided to nationalize the Suez Canal; Britain had sent an army and war planes to stop it happening. Some people here and abroad were outraged by Prime Minister Eden’s decision to attack. There had been near-riots around Whitehall and Westminster. Ian had gone to report on one of them and was just able to skip out of the way of a police horse charge. His familiarity with the issue extended no further than that.
Or only a bit further: one night he’d been hanging about the newsroom of the Mirror when the editorial director, Hugh Cudlipp, cigar alight, breezed in, bright with an idea. Ian had been glancing at some pictures of youngsters in a club obviously enjoying a new kind of high-spirited music and dancing brought over by Bill Haley from the United States. The Mirror would use one of the photographs and a couple of deskmen were trying to pick the best. Jack Porter said: ‘So what is this rock ’n’ roll, Henry?’
‘I don’t know, Jack, but I bet they fuck afterwards,’ Henry said.
Cudlipp wasn’t concerned. He suggested to Ian a trawl through right-wing newspapers for anti-Eden comment. It was important they should be Rightist, Conservative sheets. Cudlipp wanted to show that even Eden’s pals thought him wrong. Ian had done the scan and a couple of days later the Mirror came out with a string of the quotes and a front-page, upper-case, big-type headline EDEN MUST GO. Maybe it had been a foolish mistake of Eden to have the kind of short surname that fitted easily on to page one in those massive, unmissable letters.
Ian and Bain drank and ate. Ian had his back to the pub’s street door and was aware of someone light on their feet entering behind him. Bain, facing the other way, put down his glass and stood again. ‘No, don’t, Ray,’ Emily Stanton said. Ian stood, too. She took a chair next to him. He and Bain sat down once more. ‘Don’t blame Ray for not warning you I’d be along,’ she said. ‘I didn’t tell him. In fact, I wasn’t sure I would come. But then I thought I should, since it’s mainly about me and mine.’
‘Oh, Ray said it was Suez,’ Ian replied.
‘Me and mine and Suez,’ she said. She asked the barman for a red wine. She didn’t touch the food.
‘You and your what?’ Ian said.
‘Daughter,’ Emily replied. She said the word without special emphasis, almost throwaway, but in her face he read pain. At that OCTU reception party he’d noticed her easiness and poise in company, plus plenty of vivacity and humour. Perhaps she could still turn all that on when needed. But he was seeing something different from her tonight, a deep nervousness, impossible to conceal. She had on a long beige coat with a large pointed collar. She wore no hat. Her hair, like Bain’s, was longer than Ian remembered, on to her shoulders, and still free from grey. How could he connect her with that tactless, blurt-prone creature at the memorial ceremony? Or with that noisy, careless girl on the King Arthur’s second-up deck cable, come to that? He couldn’t. People progressed. The wine arrived and she took a sip.
‘You and Group Captain Stanton have a daughter?’ Ian said. ‘I hadn’t realized.’
‘The Group Captain has a stepdaughter.’
He thought around that. ‘Ah, a daughter from your first marriage?’ Ian said.
‘I have a daughter,’ she replied. ‘She was away at school at your OCTU time.’
‘You’ve probably heard of her,’ Bain said, as if to shift the topic sideways fast.
‘She’s an actress – stage, some television, a film. She uses the name Daphne West,’ Emily said. ‘Just turned twenty.’
Ian said: ‘Well, of course I’ve heard of her and seen her in things on TV – the High Circle adaptation. Great. She’s a bit of a star. A very attractive girl. Perhaps I do see a resemblance.’
‘Kind,’ Emily said.
‘Was West your first married name?’
‘She chose it. Stage name.’ She cut that strand of talk. ‘What’s your feeling about Suez then?’ Emily replied.
‘Probably a mistake. Very unpopular. In the way of work I’ve joined a few protest crowds. Atmospheric, but not comfortable.’
‘We detect a growing disgust with government,’ she said, ‘and especially with the PM.’
‘Maybe,’ Ian said.
‘This is not like the World War or Korea,’ Bain said. ‘By and large the people backed our fighting services then. The moral case was strong, irresistible. The country was willing to rally round.’
‘Whereas now, the opposition could grow to a dangerous level,’ Emily said. ‘I mean an unmanageable level, very focused hate, very organized. Serious.’
Ian thought it did seem to be personalized on to Anthony Eden. That’s probably what came from winning a Military Cross in the Great War and looking like a dandy.
‘Eventually he’ll have to go,’ Bain said.
‘But what comes next when he does?’ Emily said. She didn’t wait. ‘I’ll tell you: we get a political vacuum. There’ll be outfits who see their chance to move in and take over – some of these outfits not at all desirable. So perilous, Ian. That’s our worry.’
‘Your job – jobs – mean you two have to worry about this, do you?’ Ian said.
Bain said: ‘Why we exist. Many worry about it, though.’
Ian didn’t bother now to ask which ‘we’ that might be.
‘But your daughter?’ Ian said. ‘How is she touched by all this – an actress, and successful?’
‘Yes, she’s caught up in it, indirectly caught up in it,’ Emily said.
‘Part of a protest group?’ Ian said. ‘I would think a lot of young people feel that way. The average age in the demonstrations I’ve covered has been low. It’s probably normal for idealistic teenagers and twenties. Remember that Oxford University union vote in 1933 against fighting for king and country as Nazidom began to gallop ahead?’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact, history does come into it. Can I digress a minute?’ Bain said. ‘This might sound a little far out, but let me give you the outline: some of us see this present situation as comparable with 1936.’
‘1936?’ Ian said. ‘No Suez crisis then, was there?’
‘I’m talking about the run-up to the abdication of Ed Eight, our playboy king. The country badly, grievously split and, in any case, struggling hopelessly with prolonged economic s
lump and widespread unemployment. Our archive material shows real fears began to sprout that the poverty and despair – the lockouts, dole queues, soup kitchens, miners’ marches – might lead to an out-and-out people’s revolt. Life was intolerable for so many. We know now that some highly placed, wealthy/aristocratic figures felt amazed – and vastly lucky – that this hammered, deprived working class hadn’t already tried to overthrow a failed system – a system which, even when running properly, did so only by exploiting the poor and weak.’
‘Revolution?’ Ian said. ‘Oh, come on, Ray.’
‘They had 1917 Russia in mind – less than twenty years earlier. Very frightening,’ Bain said. ‘See any parallels, Ian?’
‘You mean with now? But—’
‘Some time early in 1936 rumours, whispers, hints, multiplied concerning a strange, organized – yes, possibly, revolutionary – force in Britain. It’s all documented,’ Emily replied. ‘Our predecessors in the job carried out a very capable research mission and wrote it up. We have the records, as you’d expect.’
‘I’ve never heard anything of it,’ Ian said.
‘Well, you wouldn’t. The material can’t be made public for years yet,’ she said.
‘But you’ve seen it?’ Ian said.
‘We have a certain access, yes,’ Emily said.
‘Like Underhill and Charlie Fisher with my medical records as a kid?’ Ian said.
‘They got into those, did they?’ Bain said.
‘Didn’t you know?’ Ian asked. ‘I assumed one of you cleared that for them.’
‘I say this force was strange because it seemed based on a remarkable – no, not just remarkable; on a unique – alliance,’ Emily replied. ‘As you’d expect, one side of it were workers, trade unionists and extreme Socialists, representing the people who suffered most, were most deprived. But the other part is possibly more interesting and astonishing. It was made up of major upper-class figures, some of them authentic, blue-blood nobility, even courtiers. I mean, Britain leads the world on class division, and more so twenty years ago, but this was a partnership that managed to bring together the suffering, disaffected, ground-down Left and the anxious, self-interestedly patriotic, fiercely enraged Royalists. Documents show our forerunners in this trade—’
‘The secrets trade?’ Ian said. He’d decided suddenly on a moment of frankness at last.
‘They believed that the new King Edward, known as David to chums, provided the link between these two kinds of unlikely confederates,’ Emily said.
‘It went like this: both lots, for different reasons, vowed their faith in this mesmeric sovereign,’ Bain said. ‘The Left regarded him as a symbol of possible benign change, a saviour of the working class. Remember his promise that something would be done about unemployment, when he was confronted by the poverty and distress of his subjects in South Wales? It was regarded as a sensationally political statement for a Royal to make. Ordinary people had apparently come to believe the supposedly very modern, progressive, bold but sensitive royal night-clubber could work some sort of wholesale improvement in the wrecked state of the country. They’d forgive the gadabout image as long as he saw their condition properly and sympathized. They thought he, individually, on his own, might pull it off.
‘At the same time, you see, Ian, the Right wanted him to guard the political structure and traditions that had done them so fine for centuries and, in their view, should go on doing them fine for ever. Think of Hobbes.’
‘Which?’ Ian said.
‘Thomas Hobbes, the seventeenth-century philosopher,’ Bain said.
‘Oh, him,’ Ian said.
‘He thought people were basically so much alike in ability that they would always be fighting one another so as to get one step or two steps ahead. Only a strong leader could prevent this chaos by becoming so obviously superior that the population would kowtow to him or her, and behave properly towards everybody else. Thus, a monarch.’
‘Fascinating,’ Ian said, ‘but so? What’s it to do with now?’
‘Note the 1936 to 1956 similarities,’ Bain said.
‘You’re telling me Eden is like Edward VIII and, if he, Eden, goes there’ll be a coup, a revolution?’ Ian said. ‘Only Eden holds Britain together?’
‘Stability is something we can’t take for granted,’ Emily said. ‘Most of our citizens do take it for granted. They expect the streets to be reasonably safe; they expect the electricity and the water to reach their homes. They suppose the country is able to defend itself against foreign aggressors. But, as we’ve seen less than twenty years ago, such confidence can be challenged. We have to work for it and actively protect it. That’s one reason Ray and I hold the kind of jobs we do. It’s a responsibility.’
Perhaps the weight of it was what had helped change her from that unthinking piece at the pier memorial, that silly kid on and then off the King Arthur.
‘The trouble in ’thirty-six over the King’s wish to marry Wallis, the American divorcee, was kept out of British newspapers,’ Bain said. ‘They agreed to censor themselves so as not to disturb national stability. But some crafty, ambitious figures, mainly on the Right, did know the frailty of the King’s position, and they spotted rich possibilities, incorporating massed working-class power as an element in their own armament. There’s hefty evidence that a junta was in preparation, ready to take over. And, the point is, we get whiffs of the same possibility now.’
‘A sort of re-run,’ Emily said.
‘Junta!’ Charteris said.
‘There were people in 1936 who reasoned that, if Edward were forced out because of Mrs Simpson, unrest in the country might grow uncontainable, triggered finally by the loss of this man, Edward, who seemingly understood the pain of the masses in the slump, and who might have brought widespread hope and relief,’ Emily said. ‘There had already been occasional public protests about unemployment and hardship, but without any real central drive. Some considered the displacing of Edward could provide this. I’ve seen a photograph of a protest banner in Oxford Street as the end of Edward’s reign approached that warned: “Abdication Means Revolution”. It may sound pat and vacuous to us now, but the possibility existed.’
‘And now you believe Suez could mean that?’ Ian said.
‘There are always opportunists,’ Emily said.
‘What opportunists?’ Ian asked.
‘Power opportunists,’ she said. ‘Political people, wealthy people, business people, trade union people, anarchist people, military people,’ Bain said. ‘A country falls into anarchy. It happens abroad. Do you think we’re immune?’
And, perhaps yes, Ian did think that, did believe the governance of Britain usually stayed fairly comfortably on a safe and moderate track. So was he naive, outdated? Had his time in the Regiment, with its spit-and-polish, discipline and obedience, convinced him that things in GB would always sort themselves out?
‘We are for ever alert for groups ready to grab control if things look likely to break down,’ Emily said. ‘They could break down now. And we’ve already seen signs. The rioting you mentioned, Ian. The Suez crisis of 1956 is potentially as bad for Britain as anything in 1936. The volatility is very comparable, very equal. And you newspaper people are not helping. Some negative, even provocative stuff gets printed.’
‘“Eden Must Go”, do you mean? All my own work,’ Ian said.
‘Oh, people imagine there’d be an orderly transfer of power to RA Butler, if Eden is toppled,’ she said. ‘When Eden is toppled. A tactical illness seems probable. Perhaps a real illness. In Press pictures, he looks bad; and worse, because he had always been so effulgently dapper. I can tell you, the Conservative Party won’t have Butler. He’s forever tainted as a Hitler appeaser. Who then? No obvious candidate. This is the point, isn’t it, Ian? This is the peril. An inviting emptiness for those quick off the mark and resolute. Power could be snatched by forces outside the usual party system, a putsch. For instance, there are toffs who believe in a strong, orderly, strictl
y hierarchical regime, with themselves holding favourable, entirely secure positions in it, of course. Compare Mussolini’s Cooperative State. Or compare Magna Carta.’
‘I thought Magna Carta was a statement of the people’s essential, inalienable rights,’ Ian said.
‘Did you?’ she said.
‘It’s not?’ Ian asked. Was he naive, outdated?
‘A crowd of barons looking after their own interests, as barons always will. A few gestures towards protection for the general populace were crocheted in as disguise,’ Emily said. ‘Likewise the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the Parliamentary party in the Civil War – on the face of it early democratic movements, but really the rich and noble perfecting together a tidy deal for themselves.
‘The thinking we have to fear now is in line with these earlier conspiracies – precise and dangerous thinking, Ian. The 1936 situation didn’t come to anything because Edward suddenly quit and did a bunk. Both sides, Left and Right, felt abandoned, disabled. The 1956 version might not be so easily seen off.’
Ian went to the bar and bought another glass of wine and two more pints. Did these tales from twenty years ago, and from deeper history, colour and distort Emily’s and Ray’s views of the present? Were they slaves to their secret archive, searching for parallels and echoes, half-crazily predisposed to find them, because finding things was their forte? After all, what was the use of an archive if you couldn’t tickle it into life now and then? Too much theory, too much guess, too many imagined echoes and reruns – the way generals might think in terms of a previous conflict, instead of the one they had to fight now? All kinds of huge changes had taken place in Britain between 1936 and 1956: the impacts of a six-year world war, two Labour governments, a new Queen. Was it anything like the same place?
When he returned with the drinks, Emily said: ‘You think it’s all waffle, don’t you, Ian? Theory. Speculation. And, yes, there’s some of both, possibly. That’s unavoidable. It’s not the whole picture, though. Let’s get to particulars then. Consider my daughter. She’s having a relationship with the stage producer, playwright and occasional impresario Milton Skeeth. He’s a member of the building and property development family. But he wanted a theatrical career, so isn’t active in the company. He’s got a lot of Skeeth Construction loot and shares behind him. Big capital.’