The Summer Isles (23 page)

To our right lies Downing Street. Even as we watch, the gates slide open on electric hinges. Out rolls a black Rover 3 Litre with Austin police patrol cars ahead and behind. There are no bells, no flashing lights. As the cars turn up Whitehall—perhaps towards New Buckingham Palace—I glimpse John Arthur’s face, absorbed in thought as he stares from the Rover’s plain unsmoked glass. My heart freezes. For a moment, even Father Phelan is dumbstruck.

Our bus crosses the new Waterloo Bridge. Ahead on the South Bank, easily dwarfing the old County Hall where John Arthur made his first lunge at power, lies the National Theatre, the Empire Exhibition Centre, our own New Dorchester Hotel. Wrought shamelessly of glass, steel girders, concrete, these buildings are massive, slope-shouldered, aspirational. After years of semi-classical drifting, Greater British architecture has found its true voice. There are hints of Venetian Palaces, pagan ruins—something Mayan, even; the sea-dipped relics of a lost civilisation. But above all, the buildings on the south bank of the Thames look like nothing more than a brace of art nouveau wardrobes.

The buses pull in at the New Dorchester’s entrance through the dust of the work on the new Underground. A loud-hailer calls out incoherent instructions as we minor dignitaries mill about on the marble paving. Slowly, muttering in several languages, we shuffle through the revolving doors. Hugh Reeve-Ellis, the Under Secretary who’s in charge of us here, maintains his usual weary air. Once one of his underlings has retrieved my forgotten walking stick from the bus, he lays a moth-like hand on my shoulder and steers me across the New Dorchester’s vast main atrium where fountains burble, Elgar’s
Chanson De Nuit plays
from hidden loudspeakers and high, high above, beyond the recessed galleries, bare-breasted caryatids raise their arms to support the arches of the glass-domed roof like the colliding prows of a dozen ships.

“Two days before the big day now, Brook. About time we had that little chat…”

I nod without enthusiasm, although I know Reeve-Ellis is making a point of talking privately with all the Trafalgar Celebration guests he’s responsible for. He leads me past the hotel souvenir shop. There, beside a door marked N
O
A
DMITTANCE
, a plump Police constable T3308 lounges on a chair, his holstered pistol hanging between his legs like a cock. I’ve yet to fathom what dictates whether a particular job should be done by the Metropolitan Police, the regular army or the KSG. He stands up as we approach.

“Good day for the weather sir?”

“Well… You know…” Reeve-Ellis mutters dismissively as the door closes solidly behind us. My skin prickles, but along each side of the corridor beyond lie rooms from which typewriters crackle, phones ring, filing cabinets drawers boom open and shut; it’s the very picture of bureaucratic ordinariness. People rush up to Reeve-Ellis. He snaps at them. They rush away again. There’s an air of controlled crisis.

“So this is where everything gets done?”

“I wish it was…” Reeve-Ellis shows me into a temporary office and shuts the door. “’Fraid everything’s a mess here,” he says as he removes his jacket and shrugs on a baggy grey cardigan. “Been meaning to ask, by the way. You don’t remember Pim Wargrove?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Before your time at the Varsity, I suppose…” His little moustache bristles. He attempts a smile.

I know already that Reeve-Ellis is a Balliol man, 1909 intake, that he went straight into Whitehall, and was working in Cabinet Office when Lloyd George resigned. So he’s seen it all, has Reeve-Ellis, has toiled under every shade of administration. A generalist through and through, he takes Modernism in his stride. He’s near the end of his career now, seconded for the term of the Trafalgar Celebrations from his usual job supervising prison budgets at the Home Office. You get the impression he wishes he wasn’t.

“So. Everything just the way you expected it to be?”

“I had no idea what to expect.”

“Good. Good.” He studies me. Pale and brittle, he’s much easier to imagine dead than Cumbernald—in fact, he seems half-way there already. “So I suppose Monday evening’s the big event for you…”

“I’ve been meaning to ask. Exactly how—”

“—You’ll be up in the VIP seats for the afternoon parade up the Mall. Have to miss the end of
that,
though, I’m afraid, if we’re going to get you across to Downing Street in time.” He smiles. “Don’t look so worried. The streets will be cleared.”

“So there’ll be—what?—about twenty or so people in the gardens at Number Ten. And I suppose some… Staff?”

“That’s about right. It’s an informal occasion.”

“Is there anything I need to bring?”

“Just yourself will do.”

We drift into silence for a moment. A phone bings.

“What if it rains?”

“We’re a lucky country, Brook. It won’t rain—and there are contingency plans, anyway, if it does. Not many of us get the chance to meet the PM. Least of all to be able to call him an old friend. He’s very keen, so I’m told by the people who actually know about these things. Of course, I’m just the conduit…”

He smiles again.

“And I can assure you that when the PM’s keen for something to happen, it happens. As I say, keep a space in your diary for six o-clock, Monday. Everything has been arranged. Don’t worry about protocol or what suit to wear—JA’s the least bothered person about that kind of thing you could possibly imagine.”

“I do have a new suit, actually,” I say. “It was delivered to me this morning from Hawkes on Saville Row.”

I’m in my usual old slacks and tweeds at the moment, so Reeve-Ellis can’t help but look a little relieved. Hand-tailored, crisp and smelling of starch and cool unadulterated newness, the thing cost me a fortune, and feels quite different to any clothing I’ve ever worn. Just as I requested, the jacket has been tailored with an especially strong and deep inner left-side pocket. The cut is so good you’d never know it was there.

In my room, I disentangle my feet from my shoes and gobble my tablets. A fresh
Evening Standard
lies on the marble table. F
RANCE
A
ND
B
RITAIN
C
LASH
O
VER
E
GYPT
. You can feel the news hotting up as autumn slowly cools, although this is probably just another Embassy bombing. The French have their own right wing ultra-nationalist government now that Blum’s been succeeded by De Gaulle, although it seems a poor shadow of our own Modernism.

I flop down on the huge oval bed and gaze up at the nymphs and seashells on the ceiling. My throat aches. My heart hammers. Beyond that, everything is eerily silent. Just the buzz of the air-conditioning, the maritime bustle of the evening river softened to a whisper by the thick double glazing of my balcony doors.

Lying here, I can summon anything I want just by pressing the lines of brass buttons above the mahogany headboard. I can call Room Service. I can make the lights brighten. There are bakelite angels, deep fur rugs, soft leather chairs, a shrine-like corner which houses a huge television set, and an ornate stained-glass frieze depicting Saint George Resting In A Forest set into the far wall.

I press a button marked M
USIC
. An orchestra swells. The one beside it is C
URTAINS
, and causes red velvet to whisper across my balcony windows. I lie there as the music flows, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then, sitting up, crossing my room, I slide back the shining teak doors that hide my suitcase and few clothes.

There was an awkward moment on my arrival when the porter virtually insisted on unpacking for me. Still, I managed to dissuade him; I was probably helped by the look of this old suitcase. It needs straps now just to keep it together. Moving as much by touch as sight in this gloom, I lift it out from the wardrobe, open the lid and slide my hand into the bottom’s flabby lining, feeling for the gnarled stock of the pistol.

I sit down on the bed with it gripped in my hands, conscious of the weight of the metal, the pull of history, gravity, fate. Then—now seems as good a time as any—I begin to load it from a crumpled and faintly lavender-smelling handkerchief with my five remaining bullets. I tested the others from close range against a dead stump late one evening in Readon Woods when the very stars seemed to shrink back and the trees in the clearing rustled in surprise at each loud sound. Now, each bullet makes a tiny but purposeful click as I slide it home. The pistol still smells faintly of oil and of Walter’s Bracken’s shed. Is
this
what death smells like? Is death so clean? I spin the cylinder, ease back the hammer, then lock it home.

Later, unable to rest, I put on my coat, take the lift and head out into the sprawling London night. The traffic roars by as I cross Westminster Bridge and pass the old Houses of Parliament; floodlit, not even the vegetable market that Morris envisaged, but a lesser stopover on London’s ever-expanding tourist circuit, they look no more real now than the reflection that slides and breaks in the Thames. The strung lights along the Embankment twinkle as I stride at my best walking stick-assisted pace. People are
running
, amazingly enough, dressed up like athletes in shorts and vests, and there are accordionists and street vendors, floating restaurants, arm in arm lovers, wandering tourists. I, as ever, turn along darker ways. Beside Blackfriars, the arches remain litter-strewn, sootily furred, and ghosts of old newspapers rise on the air as a train clanks overhead, drawing up scents of decay. A footstep scuffs amid the unlit backs of buildings. A shadow retreats. But I’m safe here in this new country that I find myself in. There are no tramps and perverts left to bother me.

I visit a bar along Fleet Street, which has a blurry and expectant air as it waits for the weary journalists to arrive once their papers have been put to bed. Drinking several pints of Fuller’s expensive and overrated ale, I try to summon the energy for the long walk back to the New Dorchester, or at least to find the nearest Underground or taxi rank. Back in central London after an age, I can’t help feeling a twinge of my old erotic longing. It was always at its strongest in me at the times like this when sex was only a chance, an unfathomed possibility. It was really more about simply being here; about being a stranger. The line of a knuckle; the curve of a jaw; a dark hint of eyelash; grey eyes; a glimpsed line of belly hair. I could love people more easily if they came broken up into smaller packages.

The door bursts open. Loud and beery from the all places they’ve already visited, a group of lads rush in from the night. I study their close-cropped necks and the workings of their shoulders as they crowd close to the bar. Linking arms, they begin a jokey chorus of
Happy Birthday To You,
and I find that something in my head is singing also, grinding and buzzing in my ears like some huge engine in the way that the world sometimes does if I’ve had either too many or too few tablets.

Suddenly, it comes back to me. I’m standing in another London pub, depressed and sore after having staggered through the nettles of a patch of wasteground from my assailant-lover. I can’t get a drink, and there’s something odd about the atmosphere. Violent, even. Then there’s a stir in a corner. A few voices are raised jokingly in song—
Happy Birthday To You
—before a man breaks from them. He’s good-looking and still seems youthful, although he’s starting to grey and there are lines around his eyes. He climbs up onto the bar—jumps, really. He smiles, raises his hands…

Yes, now I remember. Now, I understand why he’s invited me. That night at the Cottage Spring when I first saw John Arthur will, I realise, lie exactly 15 years into history in two days’ time.

I thought I’d already been through all the possible stages of grieving for my Francis by then. I’d been angry. Almost suicidally miserable. I’d been frantically busy—and near-comatose with self-pity. Eventually, just as one grows weary even of weariness on the longest of journeys, I’d come to imagine that my life was no longer under his shadow.

But just knowing how I looked to him as I stood in that pub—the way he almost smiled and turned away—made me realise that everything about me was still Francis, Francis, Francis. What, otherwise, was I doing in London in the first place, if not trying to wipe out my love for him?

The first ripples of knowing that Francis was still alive brought a fierce self-questioning. Alone, unloved, I saw my life for the shambles it was. After that, I became desperately angry. Angry with
him
—this John Arthur who stood up in the Cottage Spring—for living. Angry with Francis for choosing to die. For the first time in my life, I was even angry with history itself.

After that, I came to doubt my own sanity.
Had
I really seen Francis?
Had
he ever died? Had I ever really been in love with him? And one man can easily look very much like another—especially after so many years.

Predictably for me, it all soon became a matter of research. Hence a burrowing in the Lichfield City Council records. Hence a sudden interest in London East End politics. But, even in 1925, John Arthur was no longer a totally obscure figure, and I was soon saved the trouble of having to delve through my specially-ordered copies of
National Rights!
and
The Spitalfields Chronicle
to follow his activities. As if my finding him conferred some form of blessing, John Arthur started getting mentions in the national press.

Politics was still an alien sport to me. At that time, apart from the chance it gave me to study John Arthur’s face in the newspapers and follow the greying of his hair, Churchill’s use of right wing groups such as Saint George’s Men to help break the long succession of strikes didn’t seem especially significant. On the back of this, though, John Arthur’s was one of several names to emerge into the wider acres of political debate. Many of the others are now also major figures, or have died in mysterious or shameful circumstances. But John Arthur was always ahead of the rest. His gaze was straight. His voice came across clearly, honestly. The press and the radio and the cinema adored him for his young face, the grey hair, those penetrating blue eyes, the mixture of youth and maturity that he presented. With his accent, his manners, he seemed both educated and working class: no wonder I’d loved him. In an age of lost certainties, he made good copy. And he had a knack of simply stating the obvious—that Britain was poor, that we were shamed by the loss of Ireland and Empire—that most politicians seem to lack. After the next year or so, when Churchill had succeeded in curbing the powers of the unions and stabilising the economy, he no longer needed the likes of John Arthur’s shabby troops, and stated so publicly. No doubt he thought they would sink back into the mire from which he had raised them.