by R. N. Morris
‘There’s something going on here,’ observed Inchball. ‘Something very fishy indeed.’
Quinn studied his sergeant’s face closely, as if it was the first time he had seen it, or any face, and he was trying to make sense of it. And yet, if it held any meaning, it eluded him.
TWENTY-FOUR
Stanley Ince walked the first-floor corridor. He was tense and alert, his senses attuned to the moods of the inmates. They were all locked behind doors now, but he could feel their growing agitation. He stopped at a window and looked out over the gardens. The sky was darkening quickly, though not from the onset of night. It had been building to a storm all day. But the weather had still not broken.
Ince dreaded storms, indeed any extremes of weather. It was well known that a full moon disturbed lunatics. But the weather did it too, especially sudden changes. These last few days had been particularly changeable.
Howling winds were the worst. Nature screaming obscenities and befouling herself. And the way the trees rustled and trembled didn’t help.
It always upset them.
In a lunatic asylum, emotion spreads like a highly contagious fever. It doesn’t matter where that first emotion arises, or even if it is real. A shivering oak is as likely to spook a loony as a raving man. And once the first loony has been spooked, it’s not long before they all are.
He had never encountered any other creatures who were as sensitive to barometric pressures. It was as if their bodies were filled with mercury. At the slightest increase in the air’s density, they would go off on one.
He could hear them now. The massed whimpering. They were cowering in the corners of their cells and dormitories, arms clamped over their heads.
It would be worse when the storm broke. When the wind whipped up and rattled the windows in their frames. When the rain lashed down with Old Testament fury. The kind of rain that it was impossible to imagine ever stopping. Until the world was flooded and the sky drained.
Good God, he’d spent too long among these feeble-minded imbeciles. He was beginning to think like one of them now.
And now the first fat gobbet of rain crashed into one of the panes. There was an immediate answering shriek from somewhere behind him. The second drop followed soon after. The downpour began, drumming a tattoo upon the glass. Almost simultaneously the sky was lit up for one lurid instant, like a whore caught under a streetlight in her garish slap.
Something snagged at his vision in the flash. The sense of something awry. An object out of place. But now it was lost from sight. The darkness had come back, more impenetrable than before. Maybe he had imagined it. He had only an uncertain impression of it. Some fleeting thing glimpsed out of the corner of his eye. If there was a second flash of lightning and he looked for it, whatever it was, there would be nothing there.
And now, with the lightning, the shrieks began in earnest. And the heels pummelling the floor. The heads pounded against walls.
There would be blood to mop up tomorrow. Along with everything else.
He held his breath until it came. The first roll of thunder.
In answer, the sounds of the lunatics’ distress grew into a roar.
There was nothing you could do but let their frenzy run its course.
A second flash of lightning – brighter, more startling than the first – showed the world to be a stranger place than he had ever imagined: wild, uncanny, misbegotten. In the brief illumination, he looked again to where he had sensed that something not quite right.
He saw now that he had been wrong. It did not try to flee his attempt to see it. Or rather, he did not. For Ince saw quite clearly that it was a man out there, standing in the middle of the lawn, alone, naked, his arms reaching up towards the lightning.
And though the man had his back to him, Ince knew immediately, and without a shadow of doubt, that it was Timon Medway.
TWENTY-FIVE
Hyde Park was sodden and littered with the debris of the previous night’s storm. Clumps of battered clouds lingered in the sky, like a riotous assembly that had been broken up by the police.
On the ground, the air was fresh and eager, a breeze that came at you and wouldn’t let you be. It even had a chill edge to it. The sun shone gamely, giving the dampness a pristine gleam. There was a sense of renewal in the air.
Quinn had arranged to meet Inchball and Macadam at Speakers’ Corner at nine. The idea was that they would wander from speaker to speaker, mingling with the crowd, one eye open for anyone handing out Gracchi leaflets, and an ear cocked for Irish accents.
Look. Listen. Learn.
It might have seemed like a vague and even hopeless plan. Inchball had said as much, in his own blunt way. Clutchin’ at bleedin’ straws!
But you never knew what you might witness, and where it might lead.
Macadam was the first to turn up. They had agreed not to acknowledge one another, except by the briefest of signals: scratching the left ear with the right hand. Whereas scratching the right ear with the left hand meant that you had seen something of interest and so required support. Scratching the right ear with the right hand, or left ear with left hand, simply meant that the ear in question was itchy.
Inchball, when he arrived, made no attempt to conceal his disgruntlement. He had better things to do on a Sunday morning and he wasn’t talking about going to church.
He became quickly confused by the ear signalling and simply shook his head in exasperation.
It seemed a good moment to split up.
So far, there were three or four speakers in evidence, positioned at a distance from each other, with varying numbers of listeners clustered around them. As always, the speakers had raised themselves above the crowds by standing on steps or portable platforms. These were adorned with placards promoting the cause that the speaker was arguing for.
A cursory glance was enough to identify their themes:
CHRISTIANITY
WOMEN
PEACE
SOCIALISM
The SOCIALISM speaker had attracted by far the biggest crowd. Without thinking, Quinn found himself drawn into it. He shouldered his way towards the front.
It was easy to see why this man had gathered so many people about him. It was not what he was saying, Quinn suspected, so much as the way he was saying it. In fact, Quinn guessed that there were as many who disapproved of his message in his audience, as those who applauded it. He heard as many jeers and boos as he did cheers.
The man was young, good-looking and impassioned. His hair was black and glossy and he was continually sweeping the long fringe up off his forehead, over which it continually fell. Despite this repeated distraction, his eyes blazed with a visionary fervour. But he was not without humour too. And though his accent betrayed a public school background, he had a knack for expressing himself in simple, down-to-earth expressions that spoke directly to his audience.
His gesticulations were precise and forceful. There was something of the actor about him.
Quinn looked into the faces of those listening. In some he saw detached amusement, in others, intent devotion, a fervour that was equal to the speaker’s. After he had seen the same expression on a number of faces, he realized what it was: hope.
‘Comrades!’ cried the speaker. ‘I see over there, to my right, a gentleman who is quoting verses from the Bible. From the New Testament, I believe. He preaches a message of brotherly love. Remember the story of the good Samaritan? That’s what a socialist is! That’s right. That’s all it is. My message, the message of the socialist gospel, is not so different from his, you know. Except I want us to build a fair and just society – a paradise, if you will – in this world. Why wait for the next? I mean, we only have his word for it that there will be a next world! I believe in life before death. What is it that it says in the Bible? The Lord helps those who help themselves. In other words, you’re on your own, mate. You can pray all you like, but you’d better not wait for God to come down from His heaven and smite the unjust. You’ve got
to do your own smiting. Oh, yes! God is just. He’s just not interested in our mundane affairs. Not as far as I can see, anyhow. So, it’s up to you, it’s up to all of us, to create a better world, a better life, ourselves. Can’t leave it to anyone else, oh no! A good life, a better life, for everyone, that’s all I’m talking about here. For all my brothers and sisters. Sisters, yes! Sisters! For over there, beyond the Christian gentleman, I see that one of my sisters – we are all brothers and sisters, you know – yes, one of my sisters is talking about the woman question. The woman question is resolved, is answered, in socialism. For the socialist holds that we are all equal. Men and women. There is no woman question, once you accept socialism. And there, to my left, another well-meaning gentleman argues the case for World Peace. Who could take issue with that? Not I. But how do you deliver world peace? Through universal, global socialism. Because it is the capitalists and the imperialists and the industrialists and the profiteers who cause wars. And they are the only ones who benefit from wars. There is a cabal – and I use the word advisedly – oh yes, I’m afraid so. It pains me to say it, but there you have it. Money is the root of all evil. I’ve read me Bible, you can see! If you want to know the guilty ones, just look where the money goes. Who has the most to gain from war? I’ll tell you one thing. It’s not the poor bloody foot soldier who’ll end up dying in a ditch so some fat slimy kike …’
Was this what it always came down to? Whatever ideology you subscribed to, at some point it became simply the way you justified your hate.
Quinn felt suddenly exhausted, and hopeless.
Some of the audience began to drift away, but an equal number, perhaps more, replaced them. Quinn noticed that another speaker had set up his stall. He glanced at his banner and his eye was caught by the word UNIONISM. The speaker was a bowler-hatted gentleman in a dark suit, wearing an orange sash. The union flag was draped over his podium. Quinn pushed his way out of the socialist’s crowd to hear what the newcomer had to say, blanking Macadam as they crossed paths along the way.
More people were arriving at Speakers’ Corner all the time, swelling the ranks of each speaker’s audience. The Christian gentleman was faring worst, drawing only a handful of listeners, presumably because if people wanted to hear a sermon on a Sunday morning, they would go to church.
The advocate of unionism, on the other hand, was pulling them in. Quinn suspected that many of those amassed there were supporters he had brought with him. They looked like him, with the same thickset body shape, and were dressed similarly, except for the sash. Their faces were twisted with the same expression of righteous rage. If Quinn had ever seen a group of men spoiling for a fight, this was them. They were, to a man, holding umbrellas. In their hands, the furled black sticks became unspeakably sinister.
They seemed to be the only ones who could understand the speaker’s thick Ulster accent. It even struck Quinn that they had heard the speech before. They knew where to cheer so well that they sometimes jumped their cue, and drowned out the telling phrase.
He was cautious about looking them directly in the eye, in the way that you would not provoke a vicious dog if you could avoid it. And yet he found their anger fascinating. It was clear that they were outraged. As his ear attuned to the speaker’s voice, he began to understand why. The country they pledged loyalty to had betrayed them. It had placed them in the most invidious position. They were being sorely, grievously provoked. There would be blood, the speaker declaimed. And it would not be on his hands.
The government of the day was a traitor to its own people. He would not hesitate to call upon all true and loyal defenders of the Union to take up arms and wage war on those Judases of Westminster.
‘The blood will be on their hands! For they have brought this upon themselves by their perfidy.’
He urged his congregation to make no mistake. War was coming. It would be the worst kind of war. The bloodiest kind of war. A war of survival. There would be carnage and conflagration. God knew, they had not sought this fight. But neither would they shirk from it.
That roused his supporters. There seemed to be certain words that triggered their enthusiasm: conflagration, perfidy, shirk. It was as though they were applauding his vocabulary rather than his sentiments.
Quinn looked to his side to gauge the reaction of the bowler-hatted man next to him. Like his fellows, he held himself clenched with pent-up aggression. Quinn tried to affect a similar expression, as if he was trying on the other man’s anger, as he might try on a suit at the tailor’s.
The man next to him must have sensed Quinn looking at him, for he faced him with a hard stare. But then he took in Quinn’s appearance and his expression warmed. He gave a terse nod, acknowledging him as one of his tribe. It was true, Quinn did not look so different from these men. He was wearing a bowler hat himself. And perhaps his famous ulster overcoat would be taken by them as a token of solidarity, an adequate substitute for an umbrella.
More in embarrassment than fear, Quinn averted his gaze and looked down. His eye was caught by a small enamel badge pinned to the man’s lapel. A red hand raised in open-palmed salute.
His gaze shot up to the man’s face again. ‘I like your badge,’ he shouted, pointing at the object in question. ‘How would I get one?’
‘Yoy must join the UVF.’
‘UVF?’
‘The Ulster Volunteer Force.’
‘Thank you. Yes. Of course.’
‘And you must be prepared to lay down your life for the defence of the Union.’
Quinn nodded and moved on. It was time to give the pacifist group some consideration. This time on the way he encountered Inchball, who engaged in some confusing and confused business with hands and ears, scratching every conceivable ear with every conceivable hand.
He does it to provoke me.
Quinn averted his eyes from his sergeant with a frown. He could not help giving a small disapproving shake of the head, though he contrived to make it appear a distracted, self-absorbed gesture, made to contradict his own musings. And nothing at all to do with the strange pantomime that was happening in front of him.
The speaker who stood beneath the PEACE banner was a tall, wiry man of patrician bearing. He had a full head of silver hair, and a wayward moustache that seemed about to take flight from his face. The moustache might have been distracting, but there was a sort of no-nonsense briskness to his delivery and a directness to his gaze that held you and made you take him seriously. There was clearly no doubt in his mind of the truth of what he argued, and as far as he was concerned that ought to be enough to settle the matter beyond dispute.
The full wording of his placard was STAND TOGETHER FOR PEACE! Quinn recognized the phrase from the Fellowship of the Gracchi flyer which he had found on the first dead man. Much of the man’s speech echoed sentiments that had been expressed in that, although it might be said he went further in the practical action that he advocated. ‘Don’t enlist! Do resist!’
It wasn’t long before one of the very same flyers was thrust into his hand by a young woman who was weaving her way through the growing crowd. Quinn held up a hand to stop her moving off. He pointed at the man addressing them.
‘Who is he?’
‘Oscar Villiers. Isn’t he marvellous?’
‘You’re a member of this lot, are you?’ Quinn pretended he was reading the flyer for the first time. ‘The Gracchi?’
‘Of course.’
Quinn scanned the text. He read out: ‘Combine and conquer the militarist enemy … How do you do that, if you’re a pacifist? How do you conquer anybody if you’re a pacifist?’
‘We have to win the argument.’
‘And how do you do that? I mean, surely the man who wins the argument is the man with the biggest army?’
Despite Quinn’s cynicism, the young woman maintained her good humour. She smiled winningly. ‘Well, then, we have to win over as many people as possible to our cause. We have to make sure that our army is bigger than any other army. Can we
count on you?’
Quinn frowned. ‘An army for peace?’
‘That’s right.’
‘But what do you fight with?’
‘Words. Reason. Right. Justice … Love!’
‘Love?’
‘Yes! Why not?’
‘Love can’t stop bullets.’
‘Yes it can. It can stop them being fired in the first place. If we win everyone over to our side, there won’t be anyone to fire the bullets.’
‘There will always be someone to fire bullets.’
‘Some man, yes. But you are forgetting that half the population are women. Mothers, daughters, sisters … wives. It is their love that will stop bullets. They will prevail upon their menfolk. Why, you yourself, when you think of your own mother …’
‘My mother is dead.’
‘Your sweetheart then …’
‘I don’t have a sweetheart.’
‘Oh dear! No sister either?’
‘No, nothing like that. There is no woman to prevail upon me.’
‘But even from a man’s point of view, war – if it comes – it will not be your war. You have nothing to gain from it. Why should you sacrifice your life for the sake of the military industrial complex?’
‘Because there will be nothing I can do to stop it.’
‘But there is something you can do! You can join us. If everyone joins us, if all men join us, there will be no one to fight the war.’
‘Then we will be conquered. The nation will be conquered. The Germans will overrun us.’
‘Except that all the German men will have laid down their arms as well!’
‘Do you really believe this?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does he believe it?’
‘Yes. It will happen. It must happen.’ She looked adoringly up at Oscar Villiers. ‘Oscar will make it happen.’
Quinn followed the direction of her gaze. There was no doubt that Villiers was a charismatic speaker. The crowd around him was growing all the time. Perhaps it was the combination of a message they wanted to hear delivered by a somewhat authoritarian individual – indeed, the kind of man one might normally expect to exhort young men to enlist.
