Gog
Page 53
Blast and booze are Highland flings in Gog’s skull, they are Irish reels and maypole dances. He rises, weaving and hobbling and lurching along the gutter. The walls are joining hands about him and tripping in a ring, the people are running past huzzaing halleluiahs, and Magog, goddam Magog, he’s sauntering along unawares down the Strand, down the Strand with no lily in his hand, but clutching a new black brolly thin as a pencil, too smart to flower even in the rain. So wobble up behind him and clobber him with fists doubled into one, but they miss his head as he moves and they strike him on the back, so that he turns and sees his enemy and flees into the thickening crowd. So press on past Charing Cross in the wake of Magog into the mob, press on, Gog, fee fi fo fum, do I smell the blood of an Englishman?
See-saw, sacradown,
Which is the way to London town?
One foot up and the other foot down,
That is the way to London town.
The people are massed on the pavements of Whitehall, they’re yelling and hallooing and hurrahing and waving, they’re screaming themselves hoarse with victory and loyalty, as the golden coach is wheeling by, yes, the golden coach of His Royal Highness King George the Sixth, Emperor of India and Infinite Lesser Places and the Very Least Breed, yes, the golden coach is clopping by behind the black horses, postillion rampant and coachman resplendent and equerry mountant and footman flamboyant, the King’s face tanned brown with make-up under the weighty crown that bends down his starveling neck, while the Queen’s got her chin up, her skin rose-white and glossy, her hair spattered with tiara drops, we love you ma’am, yes ma’am, surely, the great British people throwing up their lungs loyally in bellows of devotion, many a bum show’s been saved by twin Highnesses wearing the red and purple and ermine for the edification of their devoted subjects the people, they’re just like me and you really only they aren’t because they’re royalty, even a king sits on his own arse says Montaigne, so hooray for Good King George and Good Queen Liz, hip ray and cap over the steeple, as they ride back in state after the Speech from the Throne in Parliament on this glorious day of victory, the Fifteenth of August in the Year of Our Lord, Nineteen Hundred and Forty-Five.
The crowds are swilling and brewing, fermenting liquor of people, the sun makes the very air beery and intoxicating, Gog’s drowning like the Duke of Clarence fallen in the vast butt of malmsey which is the boozy lees of the people washing down Whitehall, as Gog struggles against the tide towards Magog making for the seats of power, Whitehall and Downing Street and the Houses of Parliament, where Magog after Magog after Magog Etcetera are sitting to rule all Albion and twist it to the use of England and London.
But Magog flits ahead, improbable and impalpable, his yellow hair flying off like a hawk to scratch at Gog’s rolling eyes, his head bouncing high as a moon before settling back on his shoulders, his body a teasing tall lure always just ahead of Gog, who thinks he’s pushing Magog invisibly just beyond his grasp a few inches ahead of his crooked and murderous fingers. Now they’re level with the Cenotaph, where the dead are uncommemorated on this day of rejoicing, now they’re past Downing Street, where the policemen are always ready to imprison the Prime Minister from his grateful electors, now they’re into Parliament Square, with Big Ben glaring down a Cyclops eye to north south east west and the Abbey ahead jouncing and clanging with bells. And Magog’s off past the front of the Houses of Parliament, past Oliver Cromwell glaring from his plinth so bronze and cruel, past the lobby entrance and the policemen guarding it into the recesses of the lawgivers of the red fifth of the globe. Gog does not stay for an invitation, he’s through the bobbies faster than a blast of wind, up the stairs into St. Stephen’s Hall, where the Commons are assembled to thank His Gracious Majesty.
Beneath the high ribbed roof falling in stone tracers; under the mosaic of King Stephen and Edward the Confessor kneeling before Saint Stephen backed by a tree cascading in green faith; below the eight scenes of picture-postcard past, King Alfred’s first British fleet knocking off the Danes with beaky longboats, Richard the Lionheart setting off mailed like an armadillo for Cross and Acre, King John looking hag-ridden by barons at Magna Carta time, Protestants protesting by reading Wyclif’s Bible in rural Utopia, Sir Thomas More telling off turkeycock Cardinal Wolsey in the halls of parliament, Queen Elizabeth the Faerie Queen of her Knights and Venturers handing a certificate of legal piracy to Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Thomas Roe conning the Moghul Emperor into giving the British a toehold in India so that they could stamp it flat with their boots later, the signing of the Act of Union by which the Scots knuckled under to the English in order to rule them ever after; overtopped by the twelve great parliamentarian apostles mouthing silently in stone, Grattan for Ireland and Burke the House of Commons dinner-gong, he’ll still be spouting after we’ve had eight courses, fat Fox for liberty with raised fist to get it, Mansfield and Somers and battle-doomed Falkland, trimmer Clarendon and ship-money Hampden, Selden and corpulent Walpole the everlasting premier, Chatham and Pitt the boy wonder, forever stone-set in youth, never grow up as old as your father; set in rows of temporary benches in this converted chapel, the new Commons men and women sit, displaced from their proper chamber by incendiary bomb-blast and from their leasehold on the Lords’ Chamber by the King’s Speech from the Throne that day. No one asks Gog about his business because no one knows who’s present, there are so many new Members of Parliament after the election, three hundred and fifty fresh faces, most of them for Labour and the people.
The leader of the people is up by the Front Bench and by the geegaw Mace lying on the table to declare parliament’s open. He’s a crabapple of a man, his voice dry as an accountant’s as he tabulates his call for revolutionary action. “We have had a General Election which has brought great alterations in the composition of this House. We have had a change of Government; but in the midst of change there are things which remain unaltered. Among those are the loyalty and devotion of the House of Commons to His Majesty. It is the glory of our democratic Constitution that the will of the people operates and that changes which, in other countries, are often effected through civil strife and bloodshed, here in this island proceed by the peaceful method of the ballot box . . .”
Does the will of the people operate through you, tally-man of royal blessings? Listen, O listen, ye people, are ye not betrayed?
“. . . In rendering our congratulations and thanks to His Majesty we pay tribute to something more than the institution of kingship. His Majesty the King and his gracious Consort the Queen have shared our anxieties, our tribulations and our sufferings during the war, and the shadow of bereavement has fallen on them as it has fallen on the homes of their people. The King and Queen have throughout set us an example of courage and devotion which will not be forgotten. By this, and by their sympathy, they have strengthened the bond uniting them to their people . . .”
Why are ye dumb, ye massed backbenchers for Labour? Did they send you to Westminster to bow and scrape your gratitude for patronage and privilege? When you spoke down there in the election to the people, you were one of them, you swore to help them, there’d be no pulling the ermine over your eyes, you’d show the ritzy boys up there in London. But one step into Westminster and you’re dumb as stones, while the old ritualists play the old games in front of you and speak in the name of the people, the forgotten people, the unremembered folk who put crosses on their ballots in faith that their hopes for equality and liberty will not be betrayed by their representatives, as they always are and always will be, Magog without end, amen.
Now the old leader’s up from the Opposition Front Bench, corpulent and out-of-date as a magnum of aged brandy, a man to raise your hackles and warm your cockles, a damned aristocrat more dangerous than a rat in a tight corner and more courageous than a bulldog when you’re in that tight corner with him. The sonorous phrases roll out like sugarplums off his gobby tongue, the phrases of glory and grandeur slowly sinking shrouded in the imperial banner to the purple deeps of the Seventh Sea
.
“The good cause for which His Majesty has contended, commanded the ardent fidelity of all his subjects, spread over one-fifth of the surface of the habitable globe. That cause has now been carried to complete success. Total war has ended in absolute victory. Once again, the British Commonwealth and Empire emerges safe, undiminished and united from a mortal struggle. Monstrous tyrannies which menaced our life have been beaten to the ground in ruin, and a brighter radiance illumines the Imperial Crown than any which our annals record . . .”
Forgive the ancient warrior talking of time past in the bitterness of personal defeat and the last gasp of Empire, upon which the sun which never sets is already setting, and India is lost and all with it. Forgive the old warhorse, put him out to pasture, let him dream of Marlborough and Boer War and Gallipoli, he has saved his island and mortgaged its inheritance, he has sold away the estate to save the birthright, lead him slowly to the grave in glory, that is what is wanted and that is his due and that is what is dead and done.
The loyal thanks to His Majesty mumble humbly on, until there’s a shiver of anticipation as the lone rebel rises at the back of the hall, rises in tweed and thick ripe Scots vowels to cast the sole voice of dissent.
“On such an occasion as this I would like to associate myself with the remarks that have been made. Whatever the future may hold – and with the coming of atomic energy some of us who hitherto considered ourselves quite dynamic figures may find ourselves well in the background – everyone must recognize the fact that as a constitutional Monarch, the King has, at all times, sought to serve the best interests of the country . . .”
So even you, workers’ candidate, sole Communist and revolutionary, even you bow before the throne and the past and the pomp and the circumstance. Even you join in the thanks of the loyal House of Commons to His Majesty, Question put, and agreed to nemine contradicente, Address to be presented by the whole House, Privy Councillors humbly to know His Majesty’s pleasure when He will be attended.
Then to round off the business, the Lord President of the Council’s orating about matters really important on this conclusion of the great day of the first opening of the parliament of the people, prating its formulae to might and majesty.
“I beg to move, That during the remainder of the present Session, until the House otherwise order: (i) Standing Orders Nos. 1, 6, 7, 8 and 14 shall have effect as if, for any reference to a time mentioned in the first column of the following table there were substituted a reference to the time respectively mentioned in the second column of that table . . .”
Call clarion to action, government of the people, call them to the barricades against poverty and class and war, call them not by lickspittle lackeydom before the palace, call them not by numbers and rote and Standing Orders and due attention to the iotas of proper business. Call the people thus, O representatives, and you will call to vain air, they will not hear you. They listen for the voices of fire and lightning, of blood and bolts from heaven, or else they listen to the voices of warmth and chuckling, of heart and home. How shall the people hear their chosen men speak in the chatter of typewriter keys, the time-tables of meetings, the agenda of business, the rapping of gavels, the intrigues of tea-rooms, the tolerance of precedence? Come in, Oliver, step down from your plinth, stride in again to St. Stephen’s Hall, put your hand on your sword hilt, command them to take away this bauble, this gilt-and-silver Mace as trumpery as a Christmas-tree angel, bid them pack off their rumps home and let the business of government be, leave power alone to the nakedly powerful, ruling by sword and blood, without pretence of parliament in the name of Cromwell and Magog, set over Gog and the people.
As Gog looks round the packed benches of St. Stephen’s Hall, Westminster, where the new Commons are assembled on this day of total victory and formal opening, he looks for the face of Magog his foe and kinsman so that he may crush in the skull of power, he looks from the face of the right hon. Member for Wakefield to the face of the right hon. Member for Jarrow, he looks from the face of the right hon. Member for Torquay to the face of the right hon. Member for the University of Oxford, he looks from the face of the right hon. Member for Montgomery to the face of the right hon. Member for West Fife, he looks from face to face to face through the several hundred faces of the Members of Parliament sitting in the Palace of Westminster, he looks for his archenemy and bloodbrother Magog. But the faces before him swim and blur and confuse like milk, then separate into clots piled on clots of faces, all alike, all the same, all the face of Magog, yea, each face the face of Magog, each face the face of power, even the face of the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale and the hope of the people, every mouth the mouth of Magog, every eye the eye of Magog, every head the head of Magog, every voice the voice of power without end as long as many men shall suffer to be ruled by few men.
As Gog opens his mouth to howl havoc before charging forwards to pick up the Mace and stove in as many of the crowns of hydra-headed Magog as possible before the bluecoats of authority drag him off to the dock and the drop, he hears the screeching of the witches behind his left ear and a stinking moribund pussycat flies through the air to land squashy and reeking on the Government Benches. “Lower than vermin yourselves,” shrieks Merry’s voice, and Gog turns to see his mother dressed in scarlet coat and jodhpurs, in black bowler and riding-boots, pulling rotten carcasses of rabbits and dogs and grouse and woodcock out of a game-bag, she’s hurling them high and away among the sitting Members on the Speaker’s right side, coveys of carrion descending from the air, rains of maggots dropping from the flying clouds of stinking meat, gobbets of fur and feathers fluttering down in a stench of dark snow. “I’ll give you vermin,” Merry screams, “I’ll give you vermin, you stinking rabble.” She volleys the government majority with the refuse and offal of the chase and the chasers, until she’s pulled out of the door by four enormous police officers, dragged out cutting at them with her whip and yelling to the high roofs, “Vermin, you’re vermin, we’re ermine, you vermin, vermin, vermin, vermin!”
Gog pushes towards his mother to help her against the blue fuzz dragging her away, but suddenly the House rises and bullocks out of the door towards the entrance, shoves out in a mob towards dinner-time at five thirty-five on the dot. House adjourned. Gog is swept on with the human mass of parliamentarians down the steps and he is thrown off sideways into old Westminster Hall with its great durmast oaken roof and medieval monarchs nodding down kindly from their high embrasures. Treason, Gog, treason, you’re thinking of treason, and here they try traitors, here they judged William Wallace, Perkin Warbeck, Thomas More, Protector Somerset, Edmund Campion, the Earl of Essex, and the greatest of them all, Guy Fawkes, remember, remember the Fifth of November, and gunpowder, reason and blow up the lot! Then black cap for Strafford, then his master Charles Stuart Himself, oh, even a King’s head can topple from the block and roll like a bloody apple across the boards. Only the Regicides get topped, too, then Titus Oates perjurer extraordinary, then the Jacobite Lords, and there’s even an acquittal, Warren Hastings, ruler of India and looter within limits of jurisprudence. But they won’t acquit you, Gog, not if they know the plots of arson and riot and annihilation that flame inside your drunken noggin, waiting to burst out in a mayhem of London.
Look, there go the Beefeaters, all togged up in scarlet and yellow, in white ruffs and black lids, swords and halberds at the unready, having a last check-up of the vaults before shutting up shop for the night. And isn’t that Magog, the last of the Beefeaters, tagging along disguised as an old man in ribbons and breeches? Yes, that tall old man at the end is surely Magog, trying to sneak off from the just wrath of Gog and the people. So creep down the steps behind them to the crypt of St. Mary’s Undercroft, creep down itching to wrench up a fancy railing and let sense into the bloody ambitions of the masters of force and trickery.
As Gog reaches the curving ribs of the buried chapel, there’s a scuffle ahead, a flailing and yammering of old men playing at apprehending Guy Fawkes again
, a scattering of dignity and medals in all directions, a barrage of oaths and a hopscotch of black shoes trying to stamp out a fuse that hisses and splutters towards the sticks of gelignite piled under the chapel seats. And there’s crookback Evans the Latin sending the Beefeaters arse over tip to the four points of the compass, there’s a fluttering of bright uniforms and a rending of surcoats and a cracking of withered bodies as dry and bent as his own, as he yells his independence: “Freedom, freedom, you wouldn’t give the Celts freedom, would you? I’ll blow you to blazes, bloody London, indeed. For Wales and Arthur and the Celtic Union! There’s shame on you, limeys, there’s shame on you Nazi limeys. Give the Celts freedom, then worry about India. Cymru ambeath, Gog bach! For Wales and St. David!”