by Jonathan Coe
The world could wait no longer.
The plane starts to climb sharply. Michael cannot see the reason for this, and stiffens in his seat. He thinks it will surely level out, in a second or two. But the ascent becomes steeper and steeper, until suddenly they are vertical, and then they are upside down, and then before Michael has even had a chance to scream, they have looped a complete loop and regained their original position.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he shouts, grabbing the pilot by the shoulder. But the pilot is quivering with laughter – hysterical, unstoppable laughter – and crying out for joy. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
‘I said, what the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Michael repeats.
We have no argument with the people of Iraq.
‘Have you gone raving mad?’
The pilot’s laughter grows even more hysterical when Michael says this, and then the goggles and the leather helmet are torn off, and Tabitha Winshaw turns around to say: ‘You know, Michael, it’s just as I thought – these things are terribly easy, once you get the hang of them.’
Row, row, row the boat, gently down the stream Merrily, merrily, merrily, menily
Life is but a dream.
‘Where’s Tadeusz, for God’s sake?’ shouts Michael.
Our goal is not the conquest of Iraq. It is the liberation of Kuwait.
‘Do you want me to show you how it’s done?’ says Tabitha.
Michael is shaking her roughly backwards and forwards.
‘Do you know how to land this thing? Just tell me that.’
‘This dial, you see,’ says Tabitha, pointing at one of the flight instruments, ‘is the Air Speed Indicator. Green for normal, yellow for caution. See here, where it says VNO? That means the normal operating limit speed.’
Indeed, for the innocents caught in this conflict, I pray for their safety.
Michael watches as the arrow on the dial starts pushing its way out of the green arc and into the yellow arc. The speed of the acceleration is making him feel sick. The arrow is now at the upper end of the yellow arc, at a point marked VNE.
‘What does that mean?’ he says.
‘Never exceed,’ cries Tabitha. She is almost jumping out of her seat with excitement.
‘For God’s sake, Tabitha, slow down. This is dangerous.’
She turns around again and says, reprovingly: ‘Flying, Michael, is never dangerous.’
‘It isn’t?’
‘Not at all. It’s crashing that’s dangerous.’
And then, with a shrill, lunatic howl of laughter, she pushes the joystick forward to its fullest extent, the plane tips forward and now they plunge, hurtling downwards at unthinkable speed, and Michael is hollow, his body is an empty shell, his mouth is open and everything that was inside him has been left way behind, way up in the sky …
I’m going down, I’m going down, I’m going down.
Tonight, as our forces fight, they and their families are in our prayers. Row, row, row the boat, gently down the stream
The noise is deafening, the terrible whine of engine and air-stream, and yet above it all he can still hear Tabitha’s mad laughter: the endless, hideous laughter of the irredeemably insane …
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
No president can easily commit our sons and daughters to war.
I’m going down, I’m going down.
May God bless each and every one of them.
Going down …
This is an historic moment.
Until there comes a point …
Merrily, merrily
Comes a point where greed …
Merrily, merrily
A point where greed and madness …
And then there is the final scream of metal, the piercing laceration as sections of the fuselage start to tear themselves apart, until at once the whole plane breaks up and shoots off in a million different directions, and he is in freefall, diving, unshackled, nothing but blue sky between Michael and the earth which he can see clearly now, rising up to meet him, the coasts of continents, islands, big rivers, big surfaces of water …
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
I am no longer in pain …
Life is but a dream
I am no longer afraid …
Life is but a dream
… because there comes a point where greed and madness can no longer be told apart. This dividing line is very thin, just like a belt of film surrounding the earth’s sphere. It’s a delicate blue, and this transition from the blue to the black is very gradual and lovely.
The world could wait no longer.
THE WINSHAW LEGACY
∗
A Family Chronicle
MICHAEL OWEN
PEACOCK PRESS
Preface
by Hortensia Tonks, B.A., M.A.(Cantab.)
Signor Italo Calvino, an Italian writer held in some considerable esteem among the literary cognoscenti, once remarked – very beautifully, in my view – that there is nothing more poignant than a book which has been left unfinished by its author. Such fragmentary works, in the opinion of this distinguished gentleman, are like ‘the ruins of ambitious projects, that nevertheless retain traces of the splendour and meticulous care with which they were conceived’.
How appropriate, how sweetly ironic, that Sig. Calvino should have delivered himself of this lofty sentiment in the course of a series of essays which were themselves left incomplete at the time of his death! And how fitting the phrase now seems, when applied to the present volume, the truncated work of an author cut down, as it were, in his literary prime, which shows him writing at the height of his powers (and which in time, perhaps, will be recognized as his masterpiece)!
I knew Michael Owen well, and feel towards his book much as a doting parent must feel towards a favourite child, for it blossomed and took shape under my benign aegis. And so when we at the Peacock Press heard the bitter news of his death, our initial sense of shock and bereavement was succeeded by the knowledge that we could do no better justice to his memory than by sending his last work upon its way with all despatch. It is for this reason alone (despite the malicious hints which have been dropped in various quarters of the press) that we publish it so soon after the sensational events which have recently aroused keen public interest in the Winshaw family and all its doings.
One might lament the keenness of this interest; but to ignore it altogether would surely be folly. I have therefore taken the liberty of including, by way of introduction to Michael’s history, a full and detailed account of the horrific murders which took place at Winshaw Towers on the night of January 16th this year. The composition of this chapter – compiled on the basis of authentic police records and photographs (more graphic and distressing, I am told, than any previously encountered in the long career of the pathologist who supplied them) – gave me no pleasure at all; but the public has an absolute right of access to even the most disagreeable particulars of such an affair. This is a point of high principle, and one which we, as publishers, have always been proud to uphold.
It also occurred to me, in my capacity as editor, that there were certain passages in Michael’s manuscript so laudably academic in tone, so rigorous in their historical perspective, that they might have proved a trifle daunting to those readers who were drawn to the book out of little more than a natural and wholesome curiosity to know more about the January massacre. My advice to such readers, then, would be that they can safely ignore the main body of his narrative, for my intention in the remainder of this Preface is to summarize, in a few concise, vivid pages, the entire early history of the family whose very name – once a byword for all that was prestigious and influential in British life – has now become synonymous with tragedy.
∗
Tragedy had struck the Winshaws twice before, but never on such a terrible scale.
Author’s Note
I’d like to thank Monty Berman, co-producer of the film What a Car
ve Up!, for kindly allowing me to quote from the screenplay (written by Ray Cooney and Tony Hilton).
Thanks also to Louis Philippe for permission to quote from his song ‘Yuri Gagarin’ (words and music by Louis Philippe, published by Complete Music, copyright © 1989); to Raymond Durgnat, whose marvellous essay on Le Sang des Bêtes (in Franju, published by Studio Vista, 1967) furnished me with a quotation in Dorothy’s chapter and eventually suggested the title of Part Two; and to International Music Publication Ltd for permission to reproduce ‘La Mer’ by Charles Louis Augustine Trenet, copyright © 1939 Brenton (Belgique) Editions Raou, administered by T.B. Harms Co., Warner Chappell Music Ltd, London.
My novel owes a shadowy debt to the works of Frank King, author of The Ghoul (1928), upon which the film What a Carve Up! was distantly based. Paragraph one of my chapter ‘Where There’s a Will’ is copied from the first chapter of The Ghoul (with one word changed), and throughout Part Two there are several smaller instances of what Alasdair Gray has called ‘Implags’ (imbedded plagiarisms) both from The Ghoul and from the equally wonderful Terror at Staups House. Having been unable to trace any information on Mr King, the only repayment I can offer him is to recommend that readers make every effort to seek out these and other novels (What Price Doubloons?, for instance, or This Doll is Dangerous) and campaign vigorously for their reissue.
Among the other people who helped me in various ways were Harri Jenkins and Monica Whittle, who gave generously of their time to fill me in on Health Service issues and hospital procedure; Andrew Hodgkiss and Stephanie May, who provided further medical background; Jeremy Gregg, for computer literacy; Michèle O’Leary, for legal expertise; Paul Daintry, for Findlay’s signature and general encouragement; Tim Radford, for Yuriology; plus Russell Levinson, Ralph Pite, Salli Randi, Peter Singer, Paul Hodges, Anne Grebby and Steve Hyam. I’m especially grateful to everyone at Viking Penguin who has worked so hard for the book, and to the inestimable Tony Peake, Jon Riley and Koukla MacLehose, whose efforts on its behalf have been tireless.
As for my printed sources, Mark’s chapter is based largely on information gleaned from Kenneth Timmerman’s The Death Lobby (Fourth Estate, 1992.) – surely the best book ever written about the arms market – which gave me the dead beagles and the apple-shooting, among other things. Details of Iraqi torture practices were obtained from publications by Amnesty International and CARDRI (the Campaign Against Repression and for Democratic Rights in Iraq); SODI is a fictitious organization. Dorothy’s chapter draws on the pioneering work of Ruth Harrison in her book Animal Machines (Vincent Stuart, 1964), supplemented by Mark Gold’s Assault and Battery (Pluto, 1983), Geoffrey Cannon’s The Politics of Food (Century, 1987) and Richard Body’s Our Food, Our Land (Rider, 1991). Of the many books consulted for Thomas’s chapter, by far the most readable and informative were two by Paul Ferris: The City (Gollancz, 1960) and Gentlemen of Fortune (Weidenfeld, 1984). NHS data was furnished by Chris Ham’s The New National Health Service: Organization and Management (Oxford, 1991), and I learned about wartime codenames from Sir John Cecil Masterman’s fascinating book, The Double-Cross System in the War of 1939 to 1945 (Yale, 1972).
This novel owes its existence, finally, to Janine McKeown, not least because she supported me financially while I was writing it. For this and other reasons, I dedicate it to her with love and gratitude.
1 Editor’s Note [1995]: Henry Winshaw remained true to this resolve and has, indeed, some claim to be considered one of the country’s most prolific political diarists. The task of editing his journals – which run to some four million words in total – has proved an enormous one, but it is hoped that the first volume at least will be ready for publication early next year. In the meantime these few short extracts must serve by way of an appetizer.
2 This reticence, it seems, was later surmounted: Ms Carpenter married Henry Winshaw in the spring of 1953.
1 Social Insurance and Allied Services by William Henry Beveridge (1879–1963) became the blueprint for Britain’s post-war welfare legislation and, in particular, laid the theoretical groundwork for the establishment of the National Health Service (see below, passim).
2 Godfrey Winshaw (born 1909) had been shot down by the Germans over Berlin on November 30th 1942. For a thorough, if rather speculative, account of the family crisis which followed, see Michael Owen, The Winshaw Legacy: A Family Chronicle (Peacock Press, 1991).
1 This last couplet makes little sense, unfortunately, since Godfrey Winshaw’s body was never recovered from Germany. The impressionable young Henry’s excess of grief would seem to have blinded him to this detail.
1 Margaret Hilda Roberts (born Grantham, Lines., October 13th 1925), later Margaret Thatcher, later Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, became President of the OUCA in the autumn of 1946.
2 Aneurin ‘Nye’ Bevan (1897–1960), Labour MP for Ebbw Vale who in 1946 obtained passage of the National Health Service Act. Biography: Aneurin Bevan, by Michael Foot (2 vols., London, 1962 and 1973).
1 There arises a regrettable lacuna in the diaries at this point. Either Winshaw kept no records at all for the years 1949–59, or – as is more likely – the relevant volumes have been irretrievably lost. Whatever the explanation, we are lacking any account of his rapid rise to industrial prominence after graduating from Oxford, his selection as a Labour candidate in 1952, his marriage the following year, or his election to Parliament in 1955 (on the occasion, ironically, of a disastrous nationwide defeat for Labour). In my trawl for any kind of documentation which would provide a flavour of the young MP’s political acumen, I have been able to unearth only the following transcript from the BBC archives.
2 Alan Beamish (1926– ): distinguished broadcaster who began his career as a BBC political correspondent, and then went on to make his name as an innovative producer throughout the Sixties and Seventies while continuing to make occasional appearances before the camera. After an unhappy period with independent television he retired abruptly in 1990.
1 Derick Heathcoat Amory (1899–1981), later first Viscount Amory, Conservative MP for Tiverton and Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1958 to 1960.
1 In the early morning of July 14th, an announcement from Baghdad Radio stated that Iraq had been ‘liberated from the domination of a corrupt group installed by imperialism’. King Faisal, the Crown Prince Abdul Ilah and General Nuri es-Said had all been assassinated in the military coup, and a Republican regime was proclaimed. At the request of King Hussein, British paratroops were then sent out to Jordan to safeguard the area.
2 Harold Macmillan (1894–1984), later Earl of Stockton. Conservative MP for Bromley and Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963.
1 Margaret Roberts had married Dennis Thatcher, then Managing Director of the Atlas Preservative Co., in December 1951. Their son Mark and daughter Carol were born two years later. (Atlas itself was sold to Castrol Oil for £560,000 in 1965.)
2 On February 3rd Macmillan had proudly told the South African parliament in Cape Town that ‘a wind of change is blowing through the continent’. Certain elements within his own party considered his position on this issue to be dangerously progressive.
1 On September 16th an intruder had broken into the family residence under rather mysterious circumstances, and met his death while launching a violent attack on Lawrence Winshaw. The incident aroused little comment at the time, although a characteristically overheated version of it can be found in Owen, op. cit.
2 Hugh Todd Naylor Gaitskell (b. 1906), MF for South Leeds and leader of the Labour Party from 1955 until his sudden death in 1963.
3 Gaitskell’s speech in Glasgow on May 6th had been disrupted by supporters of unilateralism, leading to allegations of Trotskyist infiltration of Labour’s youth section.
1 Harold Wilson (1916–), later Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, did indeed become party leader on February 14th 1963. It’s possible, however, that Winshaw may have overestimated the extent of his animosity. I have been able to find only one instance of Wilson referring to h
im in print, during an interview for The Times in November 1965. Winshaw’s name was mentioned in connection with the abolition of the death penalty (which he opposed), and the then Prime Minister is reported to have asked: ‘Who?’
2 Richard Howard Stafford Crossman (1907–74), Labour MP for Coventry East, was at this time Leader of the House of Commons. Curiously his own copious diaries contain no reference at all to this conversation.
1 Confounding the opinion polls, the Conservatives had just won an overall majority of 31 seats in the Commons, with 46.4% of the national vote. Edward Heath (1916– ) became Prime Minister.
2 Keith Sinjohn Joseph (1918– ), later Baron Joseph of Portsoken. Secretary of State for Social Services (1970–74) and subsequently for Industry (1970–81) and Education and Science (1981–86).
3 The National Health Service Reorganization Act (1973), which was finally passed on its third reading in the Commons on June 19th by a majority of 11.
1 Barbara Anne Castle (1910– ), later Baroness Castle of Blackburn: Labour MP for Blackburn and at this time Secretary of State for Social Services. The strike mentioned here was threatened by paramedical staff at Charing Cross Hospital, who were refusing to serve forty penthouse suites set aside for private patients.
2 Margaret Thatcher had defeated Edward Heath in a leadership ballot and on February 10th 1975 was elected the first woman leader of a major British political party.
