Part 5 (1/2)

”This country used to be free,” he said. ”We used to be able to speak and think as we like. We used to be ent.i.tled to a private life.”

Angelica nodded. ”I'm inclined to agree with you. I went into this job, you know, because I felt that I would be helping to protect freedom. Freedom of speech, freedom from arbitrary arrest and intimidation, freedom to walk about the place without being obliged to give an account of yourself to some officious gendarme. I really believed that.”

”And now?”

She looked William in the eye. ”I still believe that. I still think that the work we do is meant to protect our society from people who would impose their will on us. From ideologues who use violence to intimidate others. Who would impose tyranny of one sort or another on us. I still believe that ...” She faltered. ”Except, I think that while we're trying to protect freedom, there are plenty of people who are busy destroying it. And they're not doing it with threats or bombs, they're doing it through regulations and legislation and a hundred little restrictions on freedom of thought and speech. Each of these may be small, but their c.u.mulative effect is a ma.s.sive erosion of freedom. Death by a thousand cuts. They're hooked on getting as much control over us as they can. They're thoroughly illiberal. They really are.”

William listened. He agreed with her; what she said seemed very reasonable. And yet she had made this absurd, almost paranoid suggestion that they could not talk openly in his flat.

”I can a.s.sure you that there's n.o.body listening in to what is said in this place,” he said. ”Corduroy Mansions isn't bugged.”

”That may be so,” said Angelica. ”But the point is this: we have to have strict rules about when we can talk with our contacts. We like to control the time and place. It's a procedural issue.”

”So when do you want to see me?”

Angelica took a piece of paper out of her handbag. ”The details are here,” she said, handing it to him.

William glanced at the paper. ”Written in invisible ink?” he asked. ”Do I have to iron it to get the ink to appear? That's what we did when we were in the scouts. We wrote in lemon juice, if I remember correctly, and an iron would bring out the writing.”

Angelica laughed. ”No, this is perfectly legible. But I'd appreciate it if you'd make a mental note of what is written there, and then burn it.”

William let out a hoot of laughter. ”You're not serious, Angelica!”

Angelica nodded. ”Deadly serious,” she said. ”And tell me, since you mentioned the scouts, when you were in the movement did you make a promise? Did you promise to do your duty?”

William remembered standing in a circle and raising his arm in the scout salute. He remembered the words of the scout promise, dredged up now from the deep recesses of memory; it was so long ago, and the world was so different then. It was before sorrow and failure and the sense of things getting thinner.

”I suppose I did,” he said. ”I wonder if modern scouts promise to do their duty?”

”I have no idea,” said Angelica. ”But do remember what you promised. A promise is a promise, isn't it?”

William stared at his visitor in silence. He wondered if this was the way they recruited people these days, and if so, whether anybody responded to such tactics. n.o.body believed in anything any more, as far as he could make out, and promises appeared to mean nothing. And if that was the case, then why was he so readily agreeing to meet these people?

The reason came to him suddenly. He loved his country. He loved it because it might be a bit frayed round the edges but still it was filled with good-natured, tolerant people; with eccentrics and enthusiasts; with people who really did drink warm beer and ride bicycles (well, some of them did, although the cyclists now were mounted on racing bikes and drank high-energy drinks from aluminium flasks, rather than warm beer but they were still loveable).

So he agreed to do what they wanted him to do and to meet them where they said they wanted him to meet them.

”Remember to bring your dog,” said Angelica. ”Don't forget to bring Freddie de la Hay.”

William nodded his agreement. But then the thought struck him forcibly: how did they know Freddie's name? He had not mentioned it to Angelica, and yet she knew. Was it the business of these people to find out everything even the name of one's dog?

Chapter 17: An Icelandic Poet.

Marcia looked at William in frank disbelief. ”What?” she asked. ”Could you tell me again what you've just told me?”

Marcia, who was William's old friend, former flatmate for a very brief time and general confidante, had called in at Corduroy Mansions the same day he had received the visit from Angelica. Marcia was a caterer, and she owned a small company that specialised in cooking for events. In the days when boardroom lunches were more common she had concentrated on those, but now, with companies being encouraged to be slender in every sense, she had been obliged to diversify. Catering for weddings and funerals was now the staple of her business but she had also developed a profitable line in providing canapes for diplomatic c.o.c.ktail parties and political receptions.

That day she had been prepared a small finger-lunch for the Icelandic amba.s.sador in honour of a visiting Icelandic poet, Sigurlin Valdis Antonsdottir. The amba.s.sador's a.s.sistant had asked for several varieties of northern fish to feature on the menu, to mark the fact that the guest of honour was the author of Cold Waves, a highly regarded saga of migrating cod, which had won Iceland's premier literary prize and had recently been translated into Finnish. Marcia had risen to the challenge and had served herring rolls, cod roe, and a great deal of smoked salmon. Some of it had been left uneaten and was not wanted by the emba.s.sy, so Marcia dropped round to deliver it to William. He always welcomed the surplus snacks that Marcia brought him, and indeed had once remarked that he could live almost entirely off the sc.r.a.ps from her table. This pleased Marcia. She had been brought up by her very domesticated mother to believe that of all the satisfactions open to women, feeding men was ultimately the most profound. She knew that this was, quite simply, wrong, but the beliefs instilled in childhood and youth are hard to dislodge, and Marcia had eventually stopped fighting the convictions that lay deep within her.

”I know I'm pathetic,” she once said to a friend. ”I know that I should be all independent and self-sufficient and so on, but that's just not me. I want to feed men. I just love putting large plates of food in front of them. I love it.” She paused. ”Does that mean there's something wrong with me?”

Her friend looked at her pityingly. ”Yes,” she said. ”It makes you inauthentic, Marcia.”

Marcia winced. ”Does it really?”

The friend nodded. ”Yes, it does. You have to live for yourself, you know. You have to do things that fulfil you, not others. Women are not there to look after men.”

Marcia thought about this. ”But who'll look after them if we don't?” she asked.

Her friend rolled her eyes. ”Marcia, dear ...”

Marcia tried another approach. ”But what if you're fulfilled by doing things for other people? Why can't I feel fulfilled by making food for other people ...” She corrected herself. It was not feeding other people that gave her pleasure, it was the feeding of men. ”Making food for men, that is.”

The friend's frustration showed itself. ”That's really sad,” she said. ”It's sad because you don't know that you're being used by a system the old, deep-rooted system of male domination. Of course men want us to feed them. Who wouldn't?” She looked at Marcia, as if to challenge her to contradict this. But Marcia just listened, and so the friend continued, ”Most men, you see, don't grow up; they're fed by their mothers when they're little boys and they realise how satisfactory that is. And being fed by somebody else is really very comfortable. So they manipulate women into carrying on doing it for the rest of their lives.”

”But if women want ...”

”No, Marcia, that's not going to work. Women think they want to make food for men, but that's false consciousness. You know what that is? No? Well, I'll explain it to you some other time. The point is that women are made to think that they like doing things, but they don't really. They want to do their own things, things for themselves.”

The conversation had ended at that point, and Marcia had gone about her business, which was feeding people. Her friend might have been right but she felt that there was not much that she could do about the state of inauthenticity that her friend had diagnosed. And now that she came to think of it, perhaps it was quite pleasant to be inauthentic, and if one was happy in one's inauthenticity, why should one try to change it? It was an interesting question, but there were canapes to be prepared and that was a more immediate task than the rectification of false consciousness.

Now, as she removed the cover from a dish of rolled herring, she felt a warm glow of satisfaction at William's obvious pleasure.

”My absolute favourite!” he exclaimed, picking up one of the strips of herring on its c.o.c.ktail-stick skewer.

Marcia smiled. ”Well, I'm glad. The Icelandic poet turned up her nose at these. And yet her poems are all about cod and herring, apparently.”

”Perhaps she couldn't bring herself to eat the subject of her poems,” suggested William, reaching for another. ”Poor woman. It would be like Wordsworth eating daffodils. One just can't.”

William went on to tell Marcia about Angelica's visit and the a.s.signation that he had the next day. Marcia put down the plate of herring and listened intently.

”This is ridiculous,” she said, when he had described the incredible conversation for the second time. ”I take it you won't be going.”

William shook his head. ”No. I mean, yes, I am going.”

Marcia stared at him incredulously. ”But this is a lot of nonsense, William. You can't get involved in these ridiculous schoolboy games. Get a grip, for heaven's sake!'

William looked away. He did not like Marcia telling him what to do, and he felt that this really was none of her business. But she was a difficult person to argue with and he had to admit that it was a rather absurd situation.

”But I told them I'd come,” he said. ”They're expecting me.”