I believed, you see, in my youth, that I had qualities that would make it possible for me to make a valuable contribution to society. In adverse circumstances I got to Oxford, and I was successful there. I believed that I could become a political figure of significance and that, through the exercise of energy and ability, I could change the face of this country. That that was a foolish ambition I now recognize. In a society as undisciplined as ours, all leaders are powerless. Over the years I have watched the idealism go out of politicians as they come to understand that the realities of democracy make them prisoners of the greed of their electorate. Yet, foolish as I may have been as a young man, at least I had a sense of purpose, which made my life seem worthwhile. Perhaps if I had been lucky and obtained political power early I might have adjusted to its constraints and been a useful and well-balanced citizen, instead of the sterile and repellent creature I have now become. It is difficult to say. Sometimes I think that frustration and resentment at the direction my life has taken have been paramount in changing my outlook on life—in other words, that I am bitter because—and only because—I see myself as a failure. At other times I see my contempt for the way we run our society as the only intellectually valid point of view. Almost certainly, both these elements are present in some proportion. I have at all times sought a philosophical basis for my position. I have read—almost exclusively, and increasingly desperately in recent years—about people who have brought change, and about the beliefs that led them to act as they did.
My researches have been as sterile as my life. I can believe in no religion. What God could so ordain things that our world should be dominated by a species so feeble and vicious? And what philosophy has ever proved to be more than mental masturbation or a failure in practice? Perhaps Nietzsche came closest. He at least recognized that an intelligent élite should control events—not a collection of fools whose only merit is their ability to hoodwink the mindless populace. Even his philosophy, though, did nothing in practice save provide the basis for a distorted justification of the nastiest régimes I have seen in operation in my lifetime. No. I have accepted that it was naïve ever to think that special abilities fit one for the improvement of mankind. They are a curse and not, as I once thought, a blessing. They enable one to see the truth about the human condition, without enabling one to do anything to improve it.
Amiss got up, made himself a cup of coffee and stole a cigarette from Phil. He felt a deep depression flooding through him.
You will point out that gifted people do reach positions of power from which they can affect the course of history. I would point you towards the far greater numbers of them who get no such opportunity, but spend their lives looking wonderingly at the mess their idiotic contemporaries are making of things, and towards those whose successful efforts are spat upon, before they are cold in their graves, by their mediocre successors. You may point out also that one should make the best of the situation in which one finds oneself—that like you, one should at least attempt to be reasonably efficient and humane within one’s constraints. You are right if you believe this. That is exactly what I should have done. I could have made at least this department a happier and more effective organization. I did not because I could never lose sight of the opportunities I had lost, and I felt only contempt for the tiny contribution I would be allowed to make. That is why I have chosen to write this to you. Do not take the same destructive path. If you ever find that dissatisfaction with the work you are doing has taken a grip on you, change your life drastically, even at the expense of those of whom you are fond. You will always have in me a prime example of how discontent can lead to hatred, not only of other people but of oneself.
It is self-hatred which has led me to decide to kill myself. I should have done it years ago, but there lurked within me always a stupidly tenacious belief that my Weltanschauung might change with promotion for more recognition of my abilities—promotion to more important departments—had not my uselessness been made clear to me by developments in my private life. Only the week before last I found that my wife, whom I trusted and had once loved, found a rabble-rousing leader of the great unwashed more worthy of her affections than me, and that my son, for whom I have always had a deep if unexpressed love, had become a queer. My knowledge of popular psychology leads me to assume that that was in some way my fault. I realized that they would be better off without me, and that I could not in any case bear the ignominy of seeing them desert me. Were I a better person, I should have taken a quiet way out, so causing them and everyone else the least possible distress, but the cancer of bitterness within me does not allow me to do what I perceive to be the weak and apologetic thing.
You will therefore see that my motives for trying to involve my family and Martin Jenkins in my death are those of simple jealousy and the desire for revenge. You will also probably understand by now why I have so carefully set out to implicate Nixon and Wells. The first I despise profoundly. He has no right to be in the position he is in. He has certainly no right to expect one of my abilities to strive to save him from public recognition of his undoubted stupidity. Stupidity. Worse than cupidity? Wells is able—I cannot deny that. But he is foul. He has no thought of anything but his own preferment. I consider my efforts to destroy the careers of the two of them to be in the public interest. Those efforts have too the virtue of bringing them to grief because of their own failings. It was Nixon’s pusillanimity which led him to agree to giving a speech for which he is unprepared. It was Wells’s conceit and indecent ambition that made him vulnerable to my encouragement towards disloyalty.
Stafford can be put in the same category as Nixon. He is, I recognize, not a bad man, but he has neither intelligence nor imagination. For too many years I have suffered his complacent drivel about his own success in heading a large company. He has even, on occasion, talked of the pleasure he gets from inhabiting the ‘real world’, or, in one of his more objectionable phrases, ‘working at the coal face’. My father worked ‘at the coal face’ for a time when his firm was smashed through the economic incompetence of a government. He did labouring jobs for which he was unsuited and I saw too often the state of exhaustion and despair to which he was reduced. That expression from a fool in fancy clothes has driven me to rage. Cold rage. To fix Stafford’s departure from a job he never deserved has been a pleasure.
Parkinson is different. He is an able man who has deserved better from me than he has received. I cannot hide from myself that some of the malice I have felt towards him has been a consequence of envy. He has more charm than I have, and, within his own sphere, probably as much ability. It is his misfortune that he became a sacrificial victim. I choose to blame the oafs who think that administrators like me are in some way inferior to people with technological skills. When I suggested to Parkinson that he should come to work on the administrative side I intended to do him a favour. Later I realized that I simply could not bear his competence in my own field. Had he succeeded he would have given ammunition to those who think that the skills of a good administrator can be picked up by anyone. I couldn’t afford to let him succeed, and over the years I have come to hate him as the enemy of those who should be the true élite. What understanding do scientists have of the political dilemmas with which government has to grapple? What have they ever done but exacerbate those dilemmas by the construction of weapons for whose use they decline to take responsibility? Parkinson has had to suffer for the sins of his kind.
I don’t have time to explain to you the plans I have made for bringing all these people to a murderous state. You would not, in any case, find the account edifying. You will probably rightly feel, despite my explanation, that I have become destructive for destruction’s sake. That may well be the truth. I cannot, however, resist the temptation to see whether any one of these people has the gumption to hit back at me. I doubt it. I only hope, should it happen, that I see who it is that does it. In any case, my contingency suicide plans should provide some
amusement for my staff over the next few days. I cannot think that I will be mourned.
With all good wishes,
Nicholas Clark
Amiss looked at his watch. Five minutes till the car was due to take them to the funeral. He dialled a number.
‘How about a curry tonight?’ he asked.
More from this Author
For other books, upcoming author events, or more information please go to:
www.poisonedpenpress.com/Ruth-Dudley-Edwards
Contact Us
To receive a free catalog of Poisoned Pen Press titles,
please contact us in one of the following ways:
Phone: 1-800-421-3976
Facsimile: 1-480-949-1707
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.poisonedpenpress.com
Poisoned Pen Press
6962 E. First Ave. Ste 103
Scottsdale, AZ 85251
Corridors of Death Page 21
