August 6th
Today Herbert Johnson took over the action from Gil – Gil who now seems to be infected by bourgeois morality and is a traitor to his principles. I must forget Gil and remember that there was once a Julian Despard who taught what he believed to be true regardless of the consequences.
That ghost, Johnson, has contacts which have often proved useful. One of them is old Ian Roberts. He has been in love with his county since he was a boy and at one time wrote a column in the weekly paper. Landowners, the canons, the amateur historians and archaeologists, he knows all of them who are serious readers and they may borrow as well as buy from his bookshop in the shadow of Gloucester Cathedral.
What happens to cathedrals when the New Revolution is a fact? The infinite values in the earlier traditions of our ancestors must, I think, be treasured. In any case the appreciation of beauty, though it may be inarticulate, is above all else. There can be nothing against olive groves descending to blue sea or against a glory of architecture, yet one has to analyse what is in favour. It seems that for me the New Revolution implies a New Religion. I wish I was back among my books or even in prison with time to think. The man of action must be taking a day off.
I called on Roberts. Herbert Johnson’s firm is running a series of popular histories for the pig ignorant, and I intended to persuade him that he need not be ashamed to see them on his shelves. He took me into the back office for a chat and a glass of sherry. His middle-aged daughter does the selling while he attends to the buying and – though he’d be horrified at such a term – the public relations. He was impressed by the academic distinction of some of our authors and gave me a trial order. With that out of the way, I told him that I had spent a few long evenings exploring the Cotswolds and had been impressed by the timeless, well-timbered valleys around the headwaters of Colne and Churn. I said that it was like a return to the England of two hundred years ago, leading him on to tell whatever he knew about the inhabitants.
‘And earlier than just two hundred,’ he replied. ‘The Romans liked our valleys as well.’
He carried on about the collapse of Roman civilisation which continued to flourish only on the country estates of the villas. Then his chins shook with a chuckle and he said that I should talk to the Reverend Sir Frederick Gammel about that. Sir Frederick believed that not only were we going the same way but that we ought to.
I said that I thought baronets who were also clergymen had pretty well disappeared since the time of Jane Austen.
‘Mr Johnson, there’s a flood of houses and people all over us but you’d be surprised how many quiet little islands are left in it. I have a valued customer on Severnside who worships the gods of Greece.’
‘The craze for the occult?’
‘Not at all! He’s protesting against it in a way. Blue skies, white marble, flowered meadows and no nonsense – that’s his ideal. Founded on fallacies just like your ideals and mine. He forgets the mysteries and the whispers of human sacrifice that a gentleman didn’t mention. And yet the farmhouse he lives in is as old as Adam with a well-attested elemental popping in and out of the river mists. Beowulf and the Wagner stuff should be his line, but there’s no accounting for some folk. Well, he’s got the flowered meadows all right. You should see ’em in June! You won’t believe me, Mr Johnson, but fifty years ago I could bathe naked a mile above Wainlode and not a chance that anyone would pass!’
I saw that he was about to take me up the Severn with the salmon whereas I wanted to get him talking about hill coverts where Shallope spent his days among foxes and badgers. That baronet in holy orders also sounded interesting. So I asked him, picking up his metaphor, what sort of island in the flood Sir Frederick was. An eccentric village parson?
‘Not he! He’d set his heart on being a college chaplain, or so one of the cathedral canons told me.’
‘That must have been a long time ago.’
‘Well, he’s close on seventy, or over.’
Not very helpful. But Roberts went on to say that when Gammel inherited the estate of Roke’s Tining along with the title he had at once turned it into a cooperative of craftsmen and workers on the land.
‘An econut?’
‘No. I hear his farming is quite normal and up to date. Spinning and weaving from his own wool, iron-working, thatching – those are what he’s crazy about, together with a wheelwright’s shop and I don’t know what else. He’s preserving it all for the smash. Inflation, pollution, nuclear fallout, disease, all the things they threaten us with. When the New Revolution they talk about comes along he’s just the man to run you up a pony trap, and I’ve still got the hitching post outside you can tie up to.’
We had a little more half-humorous, doom-watching conversation and then he said:
‘Well, you could do me a favour, Mr Johnson, and judge for yourself if you’re so interested. Take this up to him with my compliments and see if he wants it. He’ll post it back to me if he doesn’t.’
It was a first edition of the Kelmscot Press News from Nowhere. I have the book now. Only when I was driving back to Witney did I realise that it would look odd to deliver a book on foot, demanding some weak explanation such as wanting exercise. But I am not risking a car down there. I want to see before I am seen.
August 8th
Yesterday I breakfasted at Northleach and left my car in the inn car park a safe six miles from Roke’s Tining. My plan, so far as I had any, was to avoid approach from Cheltenham and come in from the east through largely wooded country, then looking down on Sir Frederick and his community from the high ground above the valley.
That turned out to be impossible. I could see nothing. Roke’s Tining was much as an Anglo-Saxon settlement must have been – a forest clearing alongside running water. So I took to the cover, keeping off anything that looked like a path in case this was Shallope’s workshop and he was guarded. I was fairly sure he would not be unless Clotilde was there monitoring his mood as Rex had said. The general principle is never to put out sentries over, say, a bomb factory or a meeting unless something has gone badly wrong. If sentries are needed the focal point must be so unimaginatively chosen that it should not be used at all.
The front of the house looked south-east down a narrow, wooded valley with grass on one side of the stream and the road on the other. It was a simple Jacobean manor of Cotswold stone, warm and contenting as the Cotswold wool which had paid for it. Under the gaze of those mullioned windows I could not take the road or the meadows and made my way past the house along the slope. The beeches were thick on the ground, smelling of fox. Progress had to be very slow to be silent. It would be a waste of time to teach jungle movement to urban guerrillas, but if I were on the Action Committee I should like to have at my disposal a Group Commander who knew the drill. Well, two weeks ago they still had one in Gil and for all I know there may be others.
When I was high on the steep side of the valley, well above the decorative chimneys of the house, I looked down into a flagged courtyard between wings which had been invisible from the front. The far wing was wholly agricultural: barns, storeroom and a modern milking parlour. The workshops appeared to be in the near wing of which I could only see the roof. Chimneys there were industrial rather than decorative. Up the valley, closing the end of the courtyard but well away from it, was a large building, higher than the rest, which had been a tithe barn. This had a considerable chimney above which the air danced and quivered with heat.
Somewhere a circular saw was screaming but there was no sound of any power plant. Through the trees at the head of the valley I caught the gleam of water. It was a mill pond. Sir Frederick was consistent in his doom-watching; he was running his estate from a waterwheel. He had not rejected petrol for transport, however. There were two tractors in the courtyard and Shallope’s car.
One must always have patience in attack, over and above the patience expected by the enemy. I was prepared to stay where I was all day and the next if necessary. Patience paid off. I began to know m
y reverend baronet from his occasional appearances. He looked no older than the late fifties, white-haired, slender, tall, with his head thrust forward. His tweed and breeches suggested a caricature of an old-fashioned farmer, right down to leather leggings which I had never seen before. When he was alone he had a set expression of worried vigilance, like a fine old cock with disobedient hens, and was inclined to mutter to himself; in contact with any other person he was at once genial. I felt the geniality was in character, not the well-trained pose of our business rats.
At one o’clock I was reminded of a monastery. A bell over the arched entrance closing the courtyard rang. Out of the workshops trooped eight men and women going in to a communal lunch. No sign of Dr Shallope. I assumed that he was somewhere inside the house. Gammel evidently put his trust in God and nuclear science or else he did not know what he had under his roof.
I had been inclined to think that he knew and approved. Now, watching him through his morning routine, I was sure that he did not. That made a considerable difference. I might be able to deliver the William Morris News from Nowhere when Shallope had left. But I had to be careful that neither Clotilde nor Rex nor any committee member remained behind. Nobody else was going to recognise Gil.
If Sir Frederick was not in the secret and had been led to believe that some innocent, mediaeval metallurgy was being carried on in his courtyard, it was most unlikely that Clotilde would accompany Shallope right into Roke’s Tining. Her voice was not deep and could not long be mistaken for a man’s, nor could she take off that hat. She was able to get away with deception when, for example, asking at a hotel desk for Dr Shallope, but not for a whole day. Then where was she? It would make sense if she were dropped at some quiet spot to keep an eye on the lane which led out to the main road and to Cheltenham, noting any traffic which loitered or behaved at all suspiciously and ready to intervene in an emergency. The appearance of Gil where he had no right to be would count as an emergency.
It was about four in the afternoon when I set out to test my theory. I reckoned that she would not be more than fifty yards from the road; farther away she could not be sure of decisive action in the event of Shallope changing his mind, or of the arrival of police. Moving along the open in dead ground and crawling at intervals to the crest above the valley I could not see her but at least I spotted where she ought to be – covering a junction of two lanes by either of which an intruder might come. The hill turf was too bare to stalk her. If she caught a glimpse of me she could slip behind any of the dry-stone walls which bounded the fields and come up for a better look.
I decided to wait, and again patience was rewarded. Soon after six a few bicycles and one car came up from Roke’s Tining. Then Shallope drove past and quickly picked up Clotilde. She had shown less subtlety than I attributed to her, simply sitting in a dip by the side of the lane where surface stone had been quarried. She had an excellent view of the approaches for quarter of a mile either way but could see nothing else.
When the car was out of sight I walked boldly down to the house. Everyone had knocked off. Monastic discipline with no overtime. I rang the bell and asked the housekeeper for Sir Frederick, saying that Ian Roberts had requested me to drop a book on him. I gave my name as plain Johns in case he should mention Herbert Johnson to Shallope. When he spoke or wrote to the bookseller, Roberts would merely think he had got the name wrong as old men do.
No explanations were called for. Sir Frederick ushered me into his study, apparently assuming that the natural way to reach Roke’s Tining was on foot. No doubt some of the members of the co-operative and the heartier visitors did so.
He wanted the Kelmscot News from Nowhere saying that he had not read it since youth but had always remembered Morris’s prediction that under socialism the dustman and other labourers in hard and dirty trades would have to be paid more than the intellectual in order to attract them into the unpleasant work. He had found that prophecy impossible to believe, yet had lived to see it come true.
I replied that personally I would prefer to shift garbage and at the day’s end feel that I had used my muscles, solved simple problems and completed something of value to the community rather than work on a production line turning out needless goods the only value of which was to make money for the producer.
‘That’s been put very well by the chap who was gaoled for bombing politicians and escaped,’ he said. ‘What the devil was his name? My memory, Mr Johns, is going while the rest of my old body can still praise its Maker. Despard, of course! “The Twopence off Syndrome” he called it.’
It was a curious sensation to find myself suddenly transformed back into Julian Despard. I knew very well that I need not fear recognition, but for the moment I was a trinity with all parts of me in action simultaneously. It actually produced a slight feeling of nausea.
When I had pulled myself together I said – in order to open the way for more conversation – that I had read it and found it too slight and satirical for so urgent a problem. So I do. At the time of writing I had not considered it possible to promote actively the collapse of society. I merely thought collapse desirable, and was attacking the spiritual squalor and material greed of mass democracy by way of one example which man and woman on a London bus could understand. Proof of the final degradation of the bourgeois society is that it can be enticed by an offer of twopence off to buy an unwanted article the whole value of which does not reach twopence apart from packaging and the costly narcotics of advertising.
Is it fair to call such an insignificant human folly the final degradation? Yet degradation it is, and insignificant it is not. Twopence Off Nothing lies at the base of all the economics of the developed world. It will be plain enough when food, warmth and work at last begin to fail.
I asked him if he had always been attracted by socialism.
‘Once upon a time, Mr Johns! Once upon a time! I now see that it is unworkable, demanding one unproductive apparatchik to every ten citizens. I therefore must call myself an anarchist.’
‘Bombing politicians like your Julian Despard?’
Despard did not, but I am never sorry that the politicians thought he meant to.
‘A Christian Anarchist, sir! I believe in example, not violence. You will understand if you come and see what we are doing, and perhaps you will have a meal with us afterwards.’
Indeed I was anxious to understand, but to my regret I could not risk the much wanted meal and made my excuses. Apparently several members of the co-operative lived in the house beside those whom I had seen going home. It was better not to show myself. So far I had only been seen by him and the housekeeper who opened the door.
The industrial wing was all of a hundred yards long, a third of it of the same date as the house, the rest an addition in Cotswold stone. It was, I felt, what a place of work should look like – a Utopian impossibility but to be kept in mind as an ideal. Gammel opened the doors of the empty workshops. Among the crafts was the usual damned pottery, cabinet-making using beech and oak from the estate and, as Ian Roberts had said, spinning and weaving all the way from the fleece to a finished serge which would have stopped a knife thrust let alone the wind. Sir Frederick told me that the product was known to trawlermen and that he hoped for trials by the Navy.
‘I am a capitalist to the extent that I provide capital,’ he said, ‘but my share of the profits is the same as that of the rest of us. I consider myself as no more or less necessary than the accountant.’
He led me to the large building outside the courtyard. This was the blacksmith’s shop, but far from the conventional village industry. Though on a small scale it was right up to date, so far I was capable of judging, with lathes, rollers and a lot of precision machinery for cutting and stamping.
He explained to me that there was always a market for small and intricate pieces which had to be specially made by hand.
‘The shop has been discovered by a wide circle, Mr Johns. Given exact specifications, we can forge, shape and temper anything small �
�� even machine tools. It is known to inventors that they may work here on a prototype with complete confidence in our discretion. Sometimes very interesting and unexpected guests! We have one at the moment, a Dr Shallope from the Ministry of Defence.’
The daring of it! I was and still am amazed. Yet it’s logical. The most dangerous development would be if Shallope, through accident or police inquiries, were detected using a false name on his holiday. Granted that he is above suspicion, why should he not spend a couple of weeks working on some invention of his own for which Roke’s Tining had all the facilities? Since he is living in a hotel and keeping his daily visits secret, he and Magma obviously hope that his presence here will not be known; but if it does become known he has a reasonable story ready.
I asked Sir Frederick what Dr Shallope was working on.
‘He asked us all to sign the Official Secrets Act, so I am afraid I can’t say more than it’s a very revolutionary advance on the Stirling cycle heat engine, efficiency depending on the length of the cylinder and a special alloy used for the lining. We carry a good inventory and were ready to supply and prepare the metals he needs, but he doesn’t want much from us beyond one large, simple forging and a lot of little tricky ones. A crate of his own materials was delivered here.’
‘And he works quite openly in the blacksmith’s shop?’
‘No, no, Mr Johns! That would be too much to ask. In the house there is an extensive basement with all normal laboratory equipment. I fixed it up for myself when I was investigating the recycling of domestic sewage to edible protein. I was unsuccessful. My ideas are ahead of my time but my chemistry is, I am amiably told, fifty years out of date. However, the problem has since been solved and gives us hope for the future.’
Hostage Page 5
