The Summer Isles (24 page)

I didn’t believe John Arthur would survive this wilderness period, either. He’d been a talking point of sorts, but few people had taken very much notice of what he actually said, and even fewer embraced it. When he led the remnants of his renamed Empire Alliance on a march to take County Hall in the spring of 1927, it seemed as if this one rash act had finally burst what little remained of Britain’s Fascist bubble.

The trial for sedition that followed was John Arthur’s turning point. He used it as a platform to expose the snobbish barristers, the senile judges, the callow press; all the rottenness at the heart of Britain. Was I urging him on, clapping and cheering like that jury? I suppose I was—the part of me, anyway, that didn’t fantasise about a defeated and powerless John Arthur becoming Francis Eveleigh again, returning to Lichfield in anonymity and resuming the life that he and I had lost before it even began. Unlike William Arkwright, Peter Harrison and the soon-to-be rising star of Jim Toller, John Arthur was never openly racist or intolerant. He criticised De Valera’s government, but not the Irish. He condemned crime—but then, who didn’t? He spoke sadly but hopefully about the problems of those who, for one reason or another, found it impossible to fit into British society. Gypsies. Deviants. Jews. The mentally subnormal. The criminally insane—and homosexuals. The more enlightened hoped that this was merely an acknowledgement of the country’s problems. The naive, stupid and violent found justification for all their existing prejudices.

After his triumphant acquittal, John Arthur was fully established as a major public figure. His views were sought on every issue, his speeches were reported verbatim in the press. Many people still found him objectionable—a peddler of poorly-concealed hate and ludicrously simple solutions—but even they were talking about him. His carefully-cultured background, the wanderings, the War record, the boxing, the thuggery and unemployment of the East End, presented, like the rest of the man, so many facets that you could select the one you preferred and cling to it whilst ignoring the rest. And there was always the chance that anyone who spoke too openly against him would find their house burnt down, or fail to notice an oncoming lorry.

In the winter of 1927, John Arthur stood at a by-election in Nottinghamshire as the first-ever Empire Alliance candidate. He won easily against the usual Tory and Labour nobodies. His maiden speech in Parliament was awaited breathlessly, and the large turn-out of communist and socialist demonstrators on the streets of London only added to the sense of occasion. Nowadays, it would be broadcast live on television and radio. As things were then, I only read the full text next morning. I can well remember that moment when I picked up my copies of the
Times, Telegraph, Mirror, Express
and
Sketch
from my doormat and studied the similar headlines, the similar photos of John Arthur, and felt the usual giddy churning in my belly.

Appropriately enough, I think it was the
Sketch
that ran a smaller by-line asking W
HO
I
S
G
EOFFREY
B
ROOK?
I could have posed the same question myself until I read the article, which quoted an aside in John Arthur’s speech about how he’d briefly attended school in Burntwood, Lichfield, where he’d been much influenced by a teacher named Geoffrey Brook. After all, I was a distant memory to him; a lonely man on whom he’d taken pity in exchange for a free holiday just before the War. There was no reason why, in generously giving me a raft to cling to in my rapidly-sinking life, he should exactly remember my name. Sometimes even now, when I’m awake in the darkest corners of the night, I’m tormented by the possibility that there is a real Geoffrey Brook still out there waiting to claim my life, and that I am nothing but an impostor.

Over the next few days, when the press somehow discovered my address, I had my own few moments of fame. They called me Geoffrey, and it seemed churlish to correct them when they were so nearly right. Would it have made any difference if I had announced from my doorstep that, whilst I knew little enough about this man who called himself John Arthur, he reminded me markedly of someone else with whom I had once had a homosexual affair? Other than betraying a trust and guaranteeing my death in some freak accident, I doubt it.

The next year, 1928, whilst John Arthur was joined by another 10 EA MPs at the spring General Election, and Churchill continued about the dogged business of keeping himself in power, the editor of the
Daily Sketch
approached me about writing a weekly column, although I always thought of the money and satisfaction that came from being a populariser of history as a last gift from my Francis. At last, I felt like someone who mattered. My life, much as his own had been, was remade.

Churchill lasted until October 1929 and the Wall Street Crash, when Britain became the world leader in the 1930s Depression. Churchill resigned after all the usual crises and gambled on calling another General Election. This time he didn’t get back in. The Empire Alliance returned with 30 MPs, Ramsey MacDonald became Prime Minister of a Government of National Unity whilst Oswald Mosley attempted to reunite Labour before giving up entirely and joining the EA six months later, thus forcing another General Election. John Arthur travelled from constituency to constituency by Vickers aeroplane, and such was the dangerous glamour of the EA by then that even his fat deputy George Arkwright became a vote winner with his trademark Homburg hat, his down-to-earth manner. Uniformed EA members marched in the streets of all the big towns, and noted names as people emerged from polling stations. The EA won seventy seats. Amid an atmosphere of increasing crisis—unemployment, means tests, riots and starvation, open revolt in India, popular support for Unionist terrorist attacks in Ireland—John Arthur refused new Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s offer of a post in his Cabinet.

Chamberlain’s get-tough policy in India only served to increase the bloodshed, and the rest of the Empire was also starting to fray. A new Egyptian Government, encouraged by the French, nationalised the Suez Canal. In Britain, a State of Emergency was declared. Welsh and Scottish nationalists began to talk of independence. The country was in a state of collapse.

Chamberlain was probably right in imagining that Britain would be torn apart by another pointless General Election. He was running out of options, but there remained one figure that the great mass public still seemed to believe in. Not really a
politician
at all, it was true, and head of an organisation that had never properly disowned violence. But controllable, surely; a useful figurehead to keep the prols happy and the bully boys at bay whilst the real brains got on with sorting out the mess that the country was in. It was thus without fuss or bloodshed, in a deal in which he seemingly played no part, that John Arthur was finally summoned to Number 10 and offered the only Cabinet post that he had said he would ever consider accepting.

Just after six o-clock on the chilly evening of November 10 1932, John Arthur emerged from that famous black door to the clink of flashbulbs. In those days, traffic was still allowed along Downing Street, and he had to check left and right before he crossed over and raised his arms and smiled slightly as he looked about him like someone who is expecting to awake at any moment from a pleasant but puzzling dream.

He made to open his mouth, then hesitated, waiting for the journalists to quieten, for the expectant silence to grow. He muttered something about wishing he’d combed his hair. There was laughter, again quickly stilled. Then he said that he’d be heading off to Buckingham Palace in a few minutes, where he planned to seek King George’s advice about forming Greater Britain’s first Modernist Government…

Just by saying this, he’d probably already broken the protocols he’d agreed with Chamberlain. There was no talk of balances and coalitions. No mention of negotiations with other parties. But it didn’t matter now. Everything would soon be changed. John Arthur was in power.

N
EXT MORNING, WEIGHED DOWN
with the fatty ballast of a full English breakfast, I wander in the New Dorchester’s glowing amber air. Everywhere, people are smiling. The women are in wisps of crepe-de-chine. The girls are dressed up like bridesmaids. The boys come in kilts and bow ties. The men opt for tight double-breasted or looser colonial ice-cream suits.

I trip down carpet waterfalls, drawn by signs that point towards the A
IR
R
AID
S
HELTER
. Down and down, dicing with the newfangled escalators, and still the New Dorchester’s smooth luxury doesn’t give out. Regrettably, the entrance to the shelter itself is closed. It looks like a cloakroom as I peer through the metal links of the sliding gate.

Further up, although still deep underground, lies the S
OLARIUM
A
ND
S
WIMMING
P
OOL
. It’s damply warm here, a perpetual tropic midday closer to the earth’s core. Beads of sweat pop up on my face as I drop into one of the deckchairs that populate the tiled shore. I watch shamelessly as various bodies dive and slice beneath the rippling mock-cavern roof. I don’t know why the smell of these places is always so nostalgic, or why swimming costumes are so much more erotic than the mere nakedness of Penrhos Park…

“Found your way down here, Mr. Brook? Thinking of trying the water?”

Slick and wet, he squats down beside me in just his trunks. I know I should recognise him.

“Tony Anderson. KSG,” he says, smiling at my confusion. “I came up to Oxford to deliver the PM’s letter. You look better than when I last saw you. After that illness on your holiday in Scotland. I hope you don’t mind me saying that, Mr. Brook.”

Captain Anderson shakes the droplets from his right hand and offers it to me. His grip is moist, vast. The hairs across his chest have been sculpted into little chevrons.

“You’re, ah, working here?”

“You could say that.” He slicks back his hair. “On duty, I suppose you might call it…” He glances around. A young woman, equally sleek, almost equally lovely, climbs out from the pool at the far side and waves. He waves back. “I wish it was always like this…”

“Girlfriend?” I ask.

He shrugs. “A colleague. We, ah—well, you know…” He grins. My heart skips about in my ribcage. “There’s nothing going on there at the moment. To be honest, I wasn’t quite straight with you when I came up to Oxford with that letter.”

“Oh?”

“The fact is, I volunteered. You see, I always enjoyed those articles you wrote for the
Daily Sketch.
Well—
enjoyed
isn’t quite the right word. They meant a lot to me. And you must have led a fascinating life. Being at Oxford. Having met John Arthur.”

“It’s had its moments. And I’m pleased you remember the articles…”

“So I was wondering if I could perhaps take you out for a meal this evening? I really would welcome the opportunity to have a proper talk with you.”

“I’m not sure I’ll have the energy. I’m supposed to be going to New Buckingham Palace this afternoon. It’s nice of you to ask but—”

“—Of course. I understand.” Captain Anderson stands up and the water pats down from him, splashing on the tiles. The blue air shimmers. My thoughts are doing leapfrogs. You never know with these people, not even when they’re in wet swimming trunks and you can see the bulge of their cock. But what would be more suspicious: to accept a seemingly genuine offer, or turn it down for no proper reason?

The flags and the bunting are going up as I’m chauffeur-driven across London towards New Buckingham Palace. Tomorrow is the eve of Trafalgar Day, although my itinerary is blessedly blank apart from the evening Thanksgiving Service at Westminster Abbey. Already cheery messages to our Leader have replaced the advertisements on the sides of buses for Idris Table Waters, Venos’s Cough Cure and Dr J. Collis Browns’s Chlorodyne. G
REATER
B
RITAIN
T
HANKS
Y
OU.
H
ERE’S
T
O
T
HE
F
UTURE
. Madame Tussauds, with its fine displays of British celebrities and grisly French and Irish atrocities, is granting free admission. All pretence of normality has been forgotten—as has the fiction that we can keep all of this secret from John Arthur. He
must
know by now.

My long black Daimler sweeps with a stream of others around Hyde Park Corner and through the towering gates to pull up beside the steel flagpoles in front of New Buckingham Place. I wade through a dizzy sense of unreality past the guardsmen in their busbies and up the vast carpet-tongued marble steps into the jaws of the glittering doorway. I queue to be greeted in the crystal fairyland of the Great Hall amid white-plumed colonial hats and Technicolour saris. I’m giving Monday’s suit a trial-airing, and have even placed
News From Nowhere
in the inner pocket to give a similar weight and feel to the pistol. Nobody stops me. Nobody searches me. Once I’ve handed in my invitation card and have had a name tag attached to my lapel, no one even asks me who I am. There are one or two square-looking men who don’t seem to be guests lingering at watery intersections of tile and glass, but they keep well out of the way.

Dresses rustle as the queue shuffles forward to meet the Royal Family. I breathe the jangling air that is mingled with the scents of floor polish, lilies, mothballs, new leather, face powder, eu de cologne. My palms start to sweat. This really is starting to feel like a dry run for the day after tomorrow. There’s the barbed sense of ordinariness, fear and monumentality that must claw at the mind of every assassin as they wait for their moment to come.

My turn arrives to meet the Royal Family. His Highness the Duke of York stammers slightly as he greets me. I bow. Then his wife the Duchess, their two plain daughters. A moment later I’m standing before King Edward and Queen Wallis. Me! Whoever I am. I glance discreetly to both sides as I bow whilst, frail as dry leaves, their gloved fingers brush against mine. It would be easy for me to reach inside my jacket at this point. The gesture would seem innocent—part of the overall motion of bowing. Click back the hammer as I pull the pistol out.
Blam.
Then
blam
again. Two shots, minimum. Walter’s Humane Bullets thudding into the chest at close range, exploding through the basic organs, shredding blood vessels, bone, gristle. Within moments, this whole place would implode in shatters of glass and steel, it and Greater Britain would be drawn up through the skies in a hissing gale, back towards fairyland where they belong. The King clears his throat. A liveried butler touches my shoulder. The queue shuffles forward again. I float away.