“No! Of course not! Jesus Luke, you’re so ignorant!” (And even as I shouted this it didn’t seem right—in fact it registered with me instantly as something to be ashamed of, later.) “The deep psychology of all that is entirely different—it’s why the Regiment can only be around 800 men at a time (and Thatcher offered millions, to expand it to ten times its size, which was good of her, of course, but it couldn’t be done, because real élitism in anything as you know—it’s nothing to do with money). And why? Because your typical mainstream regular super-soldier—no psychopaths, no muscle-men, no fantasists—he’s someone who has no family. At the extreme of subsequent motivation—as a baby he’s been left in a plastic bag on the hospital steps—so in his late teens the Regiment becomes his family. The Regiment-Father—and my god, once he’s passed selection, how it cares. How it loves him! For always!”
“Aye! Sorry sorry sorry! Nuts!”
“Okay! Fine! So tell me—the Army of Sparta. When else was the same tactic employed?”
“Go on! Big time! Shoot!”
“Okay! So I damn well will! Pow! Poof! Because you asked for it—but you won’t like this Luke, not one bit. But just remember—our history is mostly written by academics in institutions, okay, let’s face it, in Oxford and Cambridge: and (no matter what their actual background) they can’t help it, they enter and then gradually, they come to belong to this tight social group, a Club, they dine together, they meet, and there’s no escape: they inhabit the glorious mediaeval architecture, the walled-in quiet, the peace of the gardens, they soak in the youthful eagerness (of even their worst students) and they learn the absurd traditions of their particular group (a college) and they pass the port to their left. And Luke—it’s okay—because I’m only talking about the arts! Scientists—ninety per cent of them—are more or less immune: because their interests are hard-wired into the great big brutal world of external reality (even if they happen to be studying cockroaches). Yes? Anyway, those academics in the arts, and maybe they were once fired-up boys or girls—with real interests—from Leeds or Belfast or Hull or Nottingham—they come to think that they’re aristocrats in a great house with attendant estates (which is almost socially true, for their short spell of play-acting)—and in a way that’s great. That’s the whole point of a scholarly community, to reinforce everyone’s sense of their own importance, the necessity of the work they’re doing. You know, at its lowest: the role of vision in the works of Thomas Hardy, say, or a critical work on the critical works of the critic Hazlitt, who was a great guy—yet all that’s good and necessary. Because it’s an inevitable by-product of the Great Idea—it’s like the work of those medieval monks in the scriptoriums of their monasteries, preserving the ancient texts for all of us, producing those paradisical illustrations in their Books of Hours! And yet—and yet, as always, there’s a small price to pay for the Great Good, for a celestial place, for somewhere that almost everyone is pleased to pay his taxes to support—you, me, Jason, Bryan, Robbie, even Sean: we like the idea, we could not do without it in an advanced society. And if you don’t believe me, Luke—consider this: do you or do you not like philosophy? The most outré of subjects, less use than Sanskrit, do you want it to continue? Of course you do! And why? Because you’d far rather pay someone to consider whether you exist or not, and whether you have consciousness, and whether, if you do, it’s as real as a raven flying low over bracken, and whether an artificial construct like language or mathematics has evolved to connect with reality, and anyway, yourself, your self, what status does that have exactly? So could you, as you, ever have a substantive insight into anything as banal, as boring, and questionable, as enigmatic, as diachronically dodgy as the putative products of the purely social construct of science, which may all be a risible white middle-aged male conspiracy? Or would even a very small hydrogen bomb going off in your back-garden force you to change your view? Or perhaps, even if you were an anti-science feminist of the most extreme kind, we might not hear your view? In that particular set of circumstances? What do you think? Yeah—yeah! So it’s much better to pay someone else to consider such matters on our behalf (matters? Let us pause …) someone who may well, under such entirely unnecessary and intolerable psychic pressures sling themselves from a rope to a tree, or snuggle the side of their neck (it fits!) over one steel runner of a railway-line. Jeeesus Luke! The noise of the approaching train, the metallic shudder in the cold rail…
“Redmond Redmond! You sad old Wurzel! What are you trying to say?”
“Yeah, well, sorry, you’re right—it’s just that people in well-mannered, be-suited, formal clubs like that (which are still not as bad as the Diplomatic Service—I want you to know that) they have to develop a cardboard-false personality in order to survive. They self-censor themselves. They have to—they don’t even know they’re doing it. And so they just can’t give you the truth, not quite—and the great exception is: Gibbon! But then he was lucky. He got the fuck out… because he had the money. Money of his own. So he could! And modern philosophy? Why is it a good thing? Is that what you’re saying? Obvious! Not because it gives the rest of us knowledge—-it’s like the study of the history of English literature—it doesn’t produce anything that’s new for the tax-paying public! No! Science, music, literature, art, archaeology, history do that—no, the great value of it, the social point is for philosophers and critics and their students themselves: it gives them a license to read in all the other disciplines. And in the long term, that helps: it really does produce an education!”
“Aye, but the point!”
“Yeah, yeah, I told you! Didn’t I? The nineteenth-century British navy! That’s when! The most consistently successful group of fighting men—over the longest time-span—that the world has ever seen!”
“Magic!” And then, I’m afraid, Luke shouted, “Bullshit!”
“Listen Luke, even as a kid in school it worried me, it really did, the idea of the wicked press-gang Because it made no sense. No sense at all. The bullshit, as you’d say. The bullshit we were taught—we were supposed to believe that these press-gangs went out on a Friday night and picked up poor drunk stupid local farm-boys in the taverns, the pubs, round and about the naval bases at Plymouth or Portsmouth or wherever. It makes no sense! Of course not! Look—I grew up in a farming parish, my godfathers were farmers, farms were where I liked to be—there was no greater pleasure on earth, everything about it (and besides, Luke, when you know the Mother’s Union or the Young Wives or the choir or the Parish Council were coming—all those horrible chairs in a ring—you could jump on your bike and pedal like mad and get clean away and get a real welcome, real friendship on any one of the Henly’s family group of farms, three of them …)”
“Redmond!”
“Yes, well, sorry, Luke, I’m drifting again, like you said—and I want you to know, Luke, I took a pill of heroin once, swallowed it, can’t bear needles—and it sent me to sleep for two days. Now what’s the point? Eh? Because I can do that myself, anytime!
“Christ, Luke, you’re right, it’s like you said: this is far worse than any drug (but you didn’t say that, did you? No, of course not! Because you were never a wreck like me—you never took drugs! But there again—don’t be so smug—maybe it’s just that you’re young So you never had the time! Anyway, this feeling, it’s more than a bit frightening, actually, even for an old ex-soft-druggie like me: the sixties, Luke! Way before you were born! But you’re right—no wonder the gentle sophisticated torture of choice for army interrogators is sleep deprivation! Because right now I’d say anything! Anything! I can’t stop! I’ve never felt like this before: the boss, the organizer, you know, the internal tough guy that we sometimes resent but always obey, the Mister Big who directs our thoughts, Luke—he’s gone! He’s ceased to exist!”
“Aye, aye, don’t be a wanker, I warned you! And this is it! The boys, Redmond, Jesus—they go through this every time on a two-week trip. For their entire working life. I told you! And you—you think you’re
special. But you were about to say something! Aye, tell me: the British Navy!”
“Luke! You’re so wrong! How dare you say that I think I’m special! Fuck you! If I thought that—even for five minutes a day, as you might say, then I wouldn’t need to take my scrip of anti-suicide, really life-saving, thank-you, thank-you science: Prozac. And as it happens, real chance, long ago I met the genius, the guy who discovered or invented or created it: Fluoxetine. A wonder drug if ever there was one, a saver-of-lives, like you (and yes, I hear you, Luke—but it does that for you, too, eventually: it stops you even considering whether your own life is worth the saving). This genius—and Luke, he was so quiet and shy and retiring and modest that I can’t even remember his name—he was sitting opposite me at a supper given by Mark Boxer for Anna Wintour, the editor of American Vogue. He was her attendant husband. So I asked him what he did. And he said, ‘Do you really want to know?’ And I said, ‘Yes, I really do!’ (because he had this sudden light in his eyes—and so I really did). ‘Well,’ he said, coming alive, like a bumble-bee that’s finally managed to get itself sun-warmed enough to be able to fly—‘I don’t know how much science you have’ (that’s what they say! that’s how they talk!), ‘or even interest in the subject, but I’ll tell you. I’ve spent the past few years collecting the brains of young people in the United States who’ve committed suicide—and there are a lot of them, believe me, the danger period is from sixteen to twenty-five years old. Now, of course, some parents are far too short-thinking or imploding-distressed to let me help them (or rather all the others to come, long-term) by gathering the evidence I need—but even so I have a huge sample (because it’s such a very common form of death amongst the otherwise disease-free young in the United States)… I have a sample way beyond the demands of significance in statistics. And that’s a joy to me. Personally. Because my one-to-a-hundred hunch about this has turned out to be entirely correct. And generally, professionally. Because I think I can prevent many of these pointless stupid young deaths in the future … I think I really can! Because all these brains—you put them in a centrifuge and analyse the mush it produces—they had one thing in common: an absence, a complete lack of a mystery chemical, serotonin. Whereas in the controls—young men and women of the same age killed in car-crashes, other mishaps, the serotonin levels were almost always at a normal constant. So—this one chemical—I now call it the happiness substance! And I really think it may be possible to prevent its degrading and dispersal in the brain—to conserve it!’”
“Aye! Well done! But Redmond—nuts! The Navy? The British Navy at sea?”
“Yeah yeah Luke—but if you’d just stop interrupting, I could tell you, couldn’t I? Yes, on those farms you were talking about, where we grew up, you and I (didn’t you?)—I tell you, I knew perfectly well, even at ten year’s old, that no stockman, no tractor-driver was stupid. Absolutely not! Because if they were—they lost their jobs, pronto. Believe me, there’s no such thing as a stupid farm-labourer. His knowledge may be limited, sure, but in his field, so to speak, it has to be intense, just like any social-nutcase of a Professor of Sanskrit… And then a few years ago taking my own children round Nelson’s great flagship from the battle of Trafalgar, the Victory now in permanent dry dock at Portsmouth, with all the mute wooden evidence you’d ever need—the answer came to me. Of course! Here it was: Victory! The perfect Club! Heaven! All those guys living so very close together. And the powder-monkeys, so called, the post-pubescent boys who (excuse me) were already fully aware of their sexual preferences, the youngsters who fetched the gunpowder from the casks in battle, who served the canon—there were lots of them, and they were there. And everyone got paid for this! And almost no one ever tried to desert, to quit this Club, H.M.S. Heaven—even though, for Chrissake, there was no leave for ordinary sailors, no time ashore, no chance to see your family: Luke, get this: even after Trafalgar, Jesus! The Victory simply re-armed and re-victualled and went straight out again. So? Got it? And there again you have to remember that there was all the S-and-M that any decent gay could want—everything so far invented then—cat-o’-nine-tails, the lot! The entire British Navy, for one hundred years, was gay! And Luke, I just think that people like you and me, who love women, should stop being so insecure, so mean and cowardly and self-serving about this. Yes! We should say: ‘THANK YOU BOYS!’ We should thank them—for beating the shit right out of anyone who wanted to kill us, or disrupt our family life, or take the bread out of our children’s mouths! Yes, so where’s the gratitude? Where’s the respect those guys deserve? And in battle? Imagine it! The same system as Sparta—young sex-objects first. Their tough lovers, one-to-one precisely, in rank three. And my god, the moment the British grapnels bit, how they swarmed aboard those poor heterosexual French ships! And the problem? The nonsense about the wicked press-gangs? No. That’s not how it was. Not at all. No—all over England and Wales and Scotland young gays were saving their every last penny to pay for a ride on a cart to the nearest port where they’d heard that the navy-recruitment teams (all gay, of course) might be operating—and, once there, they observed the gay code (it’s our fault, Luke, our crass majority psychically-defensive braying oppression—so they have to have a code)—so yes, once there, they lay down broke and sober outside a likely pub. And they got carried away to Heaven!”
“Magic!”
“Yeah, so Luke—if you want to be happy in a different way, to settle down, as you say, then: you must give up the lifeboats! Because, come on, you’re not that young any more, and you’ve done it all, you’ve been heroic for years! And if you keep going much longer, right up here in the north, you know better than I do, don’t you? Statistically speaking, as you say. Two or three more years. And you’re dead, Luke, you’ll drown. Remember the Longhope? Not a single crewman came back! And, like you, all volunteers, saving other people’s lives for free! And all dead.”
“Aye.”
“So now’s the time. Go on! You’re so good at it. And Luke, I should damn well know! Jeesus, Luke, I know about teaching and academic obsession (so rare!) and I’ve seen you in action, and look here—for Chrissake, Luke, I’m old enough to be your father, and yet, after all these days and nights of no-sleep, and what normal student could say that?—you still bring all these fish alive for me. Fish! And what, before you taught me otherwise, before you inducted me into their impossibly ancient biology, their kinky high-anxiety, their truly bizarre, gangster-brutal—and-then-some—unexpected and shocking personal lives: what could have been more boring biologically speaking, or just general-ignorance-speaking? Fish, for Chrissake! Fish! But now I know otherwise—so Luke: become a teacher! Become a lecturer! Settle down! And I can tell you now, Luke, right now, if we survive this, if we ever get out of here alive—if I hear, on the academic gossip-line, as I surely will, that you’ve applied for a lecturing post in marine biology somewhere, anywhere, then I’ll damn well ring up the boss personally, and I’ll go right ahead and tell him or her how you couldn’t even stop teaching a dumbo, a pre-first-year unqualified dumbo about your subject, because you love it all so much—and for Chrissake it was all on a commercial trawler, in a storm gusting Force 11 to a Category One Hurricane Force 12! So how’s that?”
“Terrible! That’s terrible! Because if you’re my referee, they’ll know it’s all hopeless, because it’s obvious, you—you’re barking! But it doesn’t matter. So I forgive you! Because it won’t happen—because it can’t happen. Because I can’t, Redmond. I just can’t. I can’t lecture. I can’t go on stage!”
“Hey Luke, tell me, what is this fear of yours? Luke, it’s OK, take it easy. Let’s do this thing. Let’s do it together. Right? Let’s face it now…”
Luke was silent.
And the sea out there, it was genuinely terrible, anyone would say so, and how easy it is, I thought, to sound decisive, even courageous on someone else’s behalf (what a pleasure!), and the noise of that vast murderous, uncaring force out there, it’s worse, it’s getting worse …
“Ach. No. That’s normal. It’s not like that! It’s far worse. It’s the stage, you know, standing up on stage!”
“A stage? A stage? Oh come on, Luke, you know very well: even as a professor you’re not always grand enough to have a stage…”
“I was! I really was! We had to raise money for the RNLI! You know! All the Aberdeen crewmen had to agree to take part! And, Redmond, for the RNLI this was an event that really mattered, because Aberdeen then—full of oil money—it was the richest city in the UK. So they gave us no choice! It was a Shell business dinner—for two whole departments of the company. You know, hundreds of people, and every man in a dinner jacket, evening dress. All very formal. Well-mannered. Official. Dignitaries, you know! And it was a big stage, with lights, like a theatre.”
Trawler Page 19
