Engleby

by Sebastian Faulks

  ‘We may not have feature writers as such. All our reporters and specialists will contribute to the features pages.’ This was the third man, a zippier proposition with an explosive vocal style and narrowed eyes.

  It was a bloody odd triumvirate. They seemed to have nothing in common with one another, for a start. Also, no one had heard of any of them – except maybe the older one, a little, if you read the City pages. Having tried once, I never did. The articles weren’t real journalism, they read as though the reporter had gone along for lunch then taken dictation from the company’s PR office.

  I couldn’t imagine anyone with a proper job on an existing newspaper throwing it in to take a chance with these jokers, unless . . .

  ‘How much are you paying?’ I said.

  ‘We recognise we have to pay at the top end of the market, or above,’ said the boss. ‘How much are you paid at the moment?’

  I was so surprised by the question that I told him.

  ‘We could do better,’ he said. ‘To give you an idea, the head of a small department would get thirty-five thousand and a car.’

  Well, I don’t know. There hadn’t been a newspaper started from scratch for more than sixty years, and the financial, technical and talent problems were surely insurmountable. But I was tickled, I admit, by the Three Stooges – by their posh voices and expensive grey suits; by the money they’d already raised and by the way they seemed to be making it up as they went along – trying to convince themselves as much as me that what they were saying was more than make-believe.

  What it came down to was this. The old ‘can’t do’ sub-Soviet Britain, where you waited three weeks to get your phone mended, was dead. That was their belief and their proposition. The country had changed, and the change was somehow connected to people like Plank Robinson grossing half a mill. From now on: forget early closing, go-slows, strikes and demarcation – you can do what you want. We’ve become America. Enjoy!

  We left it that I’d write a job description for myself, along with an analysis of how the other dailies handled features and how a new paper could do better. Then I’d send it to them, with a note on what I wanted to be paid and so on.

  On the way down, in the lift, I met a bearded man with large blue-rimmed glasses who told me he’d be working on the listings pages – the ‘what’s on’ bit they planned for the back. If I came to work at the new paper, he said, I should perhaps come and stay the weekend with him in Suffolk. He and his wife had lots of guests and they were very ‘easy-going’. Blimey. I couldn’t wait to get through the swing doors and onto City Road again.

  I never got round to sending in my application. The listings bloke had put me off. Also, the more I thought about it, the more ridiculous the whole thing seemed. I didn’t give it better than one chance in ten of getting through to launch.

  Word got out, though, that I’d been to see them. I was called in by the managing editor of my rag, a ravaged trembly old hack called David Terry, known as DT’s, who raised my pay to £32,000 and gave me sole use of a Peugeot 405.

  It was the first car I’d had since the 1100 had finally conked out, so my trip to City Road hadn’t been wasted.

  It’s General-Election time again. Midsummer Folly has taken the country in a gentle grip, and Tony Ball has sent me on the road. I had a day with Bryan Gould and Peter Mandelson, the Labour campaign organisers, who spent most of the time trying to neutralise wild remarks made to the press by Ken Livingstone. Now that Ken’s an MP he seems to feel licensed to foul the nest at will and even the hardest heart (mine) grew weary of laughing at Bryan and Peter’s anguish. ‘Oh God. What now?’ Peter would say to Bryan as the hotline rang once more. They were good to me, though, P and B, and let me into all their meetings.

  ‘What are you going to do if you lose?’ I asked Gould.

  ‘Go into the country and find out what people want, then develop our policies to meet their aspirations,’ he said.

  I’d never thought of politics like that. I thought you stood for what you believed – and if the voters didn’t like it, then tough luck. But I could see the attraction of doing it the other way round: like looking at the football league and seeing who was most likely to win, then becoming their supporter.

  I don’t really understand British politics, I must say. It’s a bit silly for me to be writing about it. You’d have thought that nowadays most people would want some sort of market economy to get the motor turning vigorously, then buckets of free health care from the resulting tax take. Not so. Anyone who prescribes that mixture is viewed as pathetic, ‘not having any policies’ and not really being part of our island history. No. As of May 1987, a true Brit wants either a) socialism with as few deviations as possible from a command economy (Kinnock); or b) a Malthusian free-for-all, in which survival of the fittest takes on a quasi-moral dimension (Thatcher).

  What a very odd people we are. Do you think we’ve read a book between us? Looked abroad? Learned anything at all? You have to wonder.

  Off I go on the ‘Battle Bus’ with Mr Steel and Dr Owen. To general derision, they preach a middle way. They’re considered to have ducked the question. Another problem is that they don’t convince as a twosome. It’s a mariage blanc. There’s no heat, just a winsome cordiality. (Bet they have separate bedrooms.) Back home, Steel stays up drinking cider with the beardies; Owen’s on the phone to orotund Roy Jenkins – who I think is going to lose his seat and concentrate on building up his stocks of Pomerol.

  The other day I was with Margaret Thatcher. She’s a rum one. I think she may be a natural scientist, like me. Or did she read Chemistry? Actually, that would explain it.

  To prepare myself, to fill in the background, I had lunch with a man called Alan Clark, whom I’d rung a couple of times for his opinion of other politicians I was writing ‘profiles’ of. Most of it was unprintable, but I’d used the odd ‘quote’, always off the record. So for instance, in my article on an incoming minister, it might go: ‘For all his high reputation as an organiser in Whitehall, the new Minister for X is not without his critics. As one colleague put it: “He’s a pushy little Israelite who had to go out and buy the family silver.”’

  Mr Clark had accepted my invitation to a swanky French restaurant near the Opera House in Covent Garden.

  ‘What’s so great about Mrs Thatcher?’ I said. ‘Is she very clever or what?’

  ‘Not particularly, no. She intimidates people.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Howe, Baker, Channon. Fe-owler.’ He pronounced the name in imitation of the way the man himself said it.

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘Are you frightened of her?’

  ‘I don’t like this food. Waiter. Take this away.’

  ‘Monsieur does not like the sea bass?’

  ‘No. It died in the water.’

  ‘Would Monsieur like something else to—’

  ‘No. Just take it away, will you.’ He lifted the plate up and thrust it at the waiter.

  ‘I’m sorry about that,’ I said. ‘This restaurant’s supposed to be—’

  ‘Do you honestly like French food?’ said Clark.

  ‘No, not at all. But I thought you would.’

  ‘I like it in France. Not this chi-chi nonsense.’

  I breathed in deeply. I wanted to go to the toilet. ‘Mrs Thatcher, then. Do you . . . Do you like her?’

  ‘Like her? Christ.’ He probed at an interdental cavity with a restaurant toothpick. Then his face relaxed a little. ‘she has a certain provincial sexuality, I suppose. Women of her type often do – from that Nonconformist background. Sex for them is a way to bettering themselves, certainly not a pleasure. Yet there’s something . . . Something there, and she seems to know it.’

  ‘But are you frightened of her?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I am.’

  ‘Though you’re cleverer than she is.’

  ‘God, yes. It’s hard to explain. She has a peculiar force.’


  ‘Who else is any good in your party? Geoffrey Howe?’

  ‘Howe? Christ, no. I’d let him tie up the codicil to my auntie’s will in Swansea, that’s about all.’

  So it went on (‘Wykehamist arse-licker’, ‘poor man’s Enoch’, ‘tub of kosher lard’ and so on), but by allowing him to choose the wine, I managed to stretch out our meeting to the respectable time of two-fifteen before he rose abruptly from the table and strode off down Bow Street.

  I waited for my first sight of Mrs Thatcher in the flesh with several other journalists on a Midlands factory floor. I honestly forget what it produced. Pins and needles, pottery, brake linings. Something that entailed a fair amount of clanking, anyway.

  I’ve always liked factories. The paper mill held no fears for me.

  Factories are good for friendship. One of the hardest things about being alive is being with other people.

  Take Alan Clark. His face was deeply lined, but his hair, while greying, was thick, like a young man’s. And his suit, though presumably expensive (I can’t judge these things; I’m not a clothes man) was . . . Well, there was too much flannel and pinstripe, just too much suiting. And I didn’t want to see his teeth and his uvula. And his hand with the hairs on the back of the fingers wrapping round the glass . . . He was physically over-present. His molecules extended too far.

  In factories, all being well, you don’t hear that much. To be heard, people have to call out. You’re alone, but it’s companionable. I like the floors of factories, the pocked cement slab with pools of oil and small puddles of water; I like the stained tea mugs and the low grade paper towels. I like the way it’s all stripped back, undecorated and it doesn’t matter if you make a mess.

  I don’t suppose many of the journalists there that day had ever worked in a factory. They didn’t know, like me, the secrets of the brew-room and the toilet break and stores where Fat Teddy used to have a twice-weekly knee-trembler with Mrs Beasley from the back office. Through a side window on the factory floor, you could see her emerge from the stores, all flushed, smoothing down her skirt, checking things off on her clipboard in a pathetic dumbshow of normality.

  Mrs Thatcher’s entourage consisted of about a dozen men in dark suits with carnations, blue rosettes or both. They talked to one another behind their hands as they waited; perhaps they were checking for halitosis or remarking on each other’s ties. Should they all have gone for yes-man’s Tory blue, or did a splash of daffodil show greater self-confidence? They stifled laughter. Each time one of them gave way, he immediately coughed and straightened up: his tie, his face, his spine. Even the older ones made repeated attempts at looking more dignified as they waited; then a whisper would start, and a giggle passed through them, making them look like ushers at a gay wedding.

  From the machine room, the procession entered. There was a factory foreman in a brown coat, a couple of pinstriped youths and the sixty-year-old local MP – the undersecretary for postal orders or similar, who looked grey, shattered, as though he hadn’t slept for weeks, padding in on rubber-soled shoes, gesturing and talking to his leader.

  She herself wore a check woollen suit and moved with a purposeful bustle from the hips, head slightly to one side – the combination of forward momentum and strained patience that had struck fear into the chancelleries of Europe and the barracks of Buenos Aires.

  Standing well apart from the others, she addressed the gathered press about the qualities of the local candidate, the postal-order chap. Then she moved on to Europe and the economy and her desire for low taxes. When she spoke of the Labour Party, her voice hit a different frequency. It stopped modulating like normal speech and seemed to lock on to some short wavelength, perhaps favourable to dogs but hard on the human otic nerve. It was bad luck that she stood beneath a sign that said ‘Ear defenders must be worn’.

  When she’d finished her address, the supporters applauded showily, and it seemed surly of the press to keep their hands in their pockets, as their tradition of impartiality required.

  Some of the local hacks then asked her trick questions about the town’s hospital and schools and so on, but she swatted them in the direction of the MP, whom she once more endorsed. She said he was sure to win. Or else, you felt.

  I managed a few moments alone with her later on.

  ‘And this is Michael Watson,’ said the grinning young minder, pointing me towards the Prime Minister, who was sitting on a sofa with her knees together in the office of the factory manager.

  I sat down on a hard chair opposite.

  ‘Do you read a lot of books?’ I said.

  Her eyes shot up to the minder. Her hair was like fine wire wool at the front, lacquered, though thin. There was a trace of orange in the colouring that I hadn’t expected.

  She smiled slightly and inhaled, tilting her head again fractionally, like a cardinal who had decided, on balance, to grant an indulgence to a pilgrim. In private, her voice was gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman.

  ‘I like to read biographies. I recently read one of Disraeli. One doesn’t have as much time to read as one would like.’

  ‘Do you believe in God?’

  ‘We are a Christian family. We go to church.’

  ‘Can you forgive the IRA men who tried to kill you in Brighton?’

  ‘It’s our job as the Government to help the police to bring the terrorists to justice.’

  ‘Would you like to see them hanged?’

  ‘There is no capital punishment in this country, as you know.’

  ‘But for terrorists?’

  She didn’t answer, she merely looked at me, her blue eyes filled with pity and menace. I saw what Mr Clark had meant.

  ‘When you closed the pits in South Yorkshire, might you not have helped the miners to find new work?’

  ‘“Helped”? “Helped”? What do you mean?’

  ‘By putting money into starting new projects or—’

  ‘Whose money?’

  ‘Money from the relevant department. The Department of Trade and—’

  ‘That money would have come from the taxpayer. From you and me. It’s not the role of government to start up businesses. It’s our job to create a climate in which people can do that for themselves.’

  ‘Talking of money, are you personally well off? How much money do you have?’

  ‘Do you have any more questions about politics?’ said the minder.

  I thought for a moment. ‘Not really. Yes. All right. Who do you think will win the election?’

  ‘We shall of course!’ The sun came out on Mrs Thatcher’s face again. ‘The Conservative Party. People trust us and know that we have done a marvellous job for Britain.’ She had a slight wobble in the middle of the ‘r’: Brwritain. ‘Though there is work still to do. In those inner cities, for instance, where we—’

  ‘Sure, but . . .’

  ‘What?’ The face was plump and powdered, like a rich aunt’s, but the nose was sharp. I could see the tiny blood vessels inside her nostrils.

  ‘Sorry.’ I’d lost my place for a moment. ‘Yes. I know what I wanted to ask. When you look back at the riots in Brixton and Liverpool and places, the miners’ strike and the Falklands War, the rate of unemployment and so on, I wonder if you had any regrets, if you would—’

  ‘Of course not. Britain is a far stronger country, far better equipped to face the future than when we came to power in 1979. Inflation is at a quarter of what it was, our competitiveness has—’

  ‘But surely you must have some regrets. It’s only human to—’

  ‘Let me tell you something . . . Michael,’ said Mrs Thatcher, leaning forward so that her face was closer to mine. ‘Let me give you a piece of advice. “Too much looking back is a weariness to the soul.”’ She wagged her finger. ‘It was St Francis who said that. If you want to make something of your life, you must keep your eyes on the horizon. Never be deflected. Don’t look down, or you may stumble. Above all, don’t look back.’

  ‘Like Orpheus, you mean.�
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  She didn’t answer, but she smiled in my direction and nodded graciously as the minder showed me to the door.

  When I read through my notebook later, there wasn’t much I could use. My article was thus made up chiefly of a description of the factory visit and of her entourage; for quotation I used some of the answers she’d given in public.

  But in private, over the weeks and months, I did occasionally think about what Mrs Thatcher’d said to me.

  I thought about it particularly when I was at an old church in Muswell Hill watching an amateur production of The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter. Margaret (Hudson, not Thatcher) was keen to go because a friend of hers had helped design the sets. I’m not interested in the theatre because I can’t deal with the level of non-reality it offers, but with Pinter it’s all right because he’s not pretending to be realistic. It couldn’t matter less whether you ‘believe’ in it or not.

  I’d seen the play before, of course, in an undergraduate production. For students, it’s right up there with The Good Person and The Crucible; it’s nasty, brutish and not overlong. Posturing potential: limitless.

  The other good thing about an old church is that it’s not, like a West End theatre, heated to sauna point. You don’t have to clap when the star comes on. You don’t have to gasp if someone uses the word ‘bloody’. You can stretch your legs and have a drink beside your seat; you can enjoy it.

  And so I did. To begin with, at least. I’d forgotten how funny it was, the low-rent exchanges in the boarding house – like Steptoe or Hancock. And the way they can’t get over the fact that two strangers actually want to come and board in their dingy house. I’d also forgotten how early the landlord flags up the fact that he’s met these two men.

  When Goldberg and McCann appeared, I presumed that whatever Stanley was meant to have done wrong had been invented by them. They were thugs, bad guys, so Stanley had to be OK. Anyway, how wicked could a failed pianist have been? Then there came a moment when I felt, with a lurch, that even if Goldberg and McCann are genuine villains, which they are, Stanley might still be guilty of something forgotten. That was not good.