He wants to sound me out.
“No, that’s okay.”
“So you know what I’m talkin’ about?”
“Yes. Of course.”
Encouraged by this, Fortner expands on his theme.
“There’s just certain things you say, certain observations you make. For a guy your age you have a very jaded perspective on things. Maybe it’s normal for your generation. I hope you don’t mind me sayin’ this.”
I don’t mind at all. The barmaid puts two more pints down in front of us and gives Fortner his change.
“Example. Do you really think that the concept of Queen and Country is just a lot of shit?”
“Why did you use that phrase? Queen and Country?”
“Because you did. With Kathy on Saturday night. She told me you’d said you didn’t want to go into the Foreign Service for patriotic reasons because you thought that kind of stuff was a waste of time. Why d’you feel that way?”
“Maybe it’s difficult for an American to understand,” I say, trying to find a way of balancing expediency with opinions that I genuinely hold. “Although your country is divided in a lot of ways-down racial lines, in the gap between the very rich and the very poor-you’re still bound together by flag-waving patriotism. It’s drummed into you from childhood. God bless America and put a star-spangled banner outside every home. You’re taught to love your country. We don’t have that here. We don’t do things the same way. Loving the country is something blue-rinse Tories do at the party conference in Blackpool. It’s seen as naive, lacking the requisite degree of cynicism. We’re a divided nation, like yours, but we seem to relish that divisiveness. We have no reason historically to love our country.”
“That’s a crock. Look at the camaraderie you generated during World War Two.”
“Right. And we’ve been living off that for fifty years. Let me tell you something. Four in ten people in England celebrate St. Patrick’s Day every year. How many do you think do something to celebrate St. George’s Day?”
“No idea.”
“Four in every hundred. English pubs can get a special late license to serve on St. Patrick’s Day. They can’t if they want to do that on St. George’s.”
“That’s pretty sad.”
“Too right it’s pretty sad. It’s pretty fucking embarrassing, too. But that isn’t the reason why I’m jaded, necessarily.”
“Why, then?”
The builder suddenly scrapes back his stool, bundles up his copy of The Sun, and leaves. He’s heard enough of this.
“I think we’re living in an age of social disintegration,” I tell Fortner, trying not to sound too apocalyptic.
“You do?” He looks nonplussed, as if everyone he has had a conversation with in the last few days has said exactly the same thing.
“Absolutely. Health and education in this country, the two bedrocks of any civilized society, are a disgrace.”
I almost used the word time bomb there, but I can hear Hawkes’s voice in my head: You’re not trying to defect, Alec. Then his brisk, cackled laugh.
I continue, “For nearly twenty years the government has been more interested in installing pen-pushing bureaucrats into hospitals than it has been in making sure there are enough beds to tend for the sick. And why? Because in these days of enlightened capitalism and free markets, a hospital, just like everything else, has to turn a profit.”
“Come on, Milius. You believe in free markets just as much as the next guy.”
True. But I don’t admit this.
“Just a second. So in order to make their money, they’ve created a culture of fear overseen by big-brother management consultants-no offense to you and Kathy-whose only concern is to get their annual bonus. The last thing it has anything to do with is curing people.”
Fortner makes to interrupt me again, but I keep on going.
“Education is worse. Nobody wants to become a teacher anymore, because in the mind of the public, being a teacher is just a notch above cleaning toilets for a living. Just like doctors, they’ve been treated with utter contempt, subjected to endless form-filling, changes in the curriculum, low salaries, you name it. And all because the Tories don’t have the guts to say that the real problem isn’t the teachers, it’s bad parenting. And you know why they don’t say that? Because parents vote.”
“You think that’ll change if Labour wins?”
I give a spluttering laugh, more contemptuous than I had intended.
“No. No way. Maybe they’ll try and make the difference in schools, but until the accumulation of knowledge stops being unfashionable, until kids are encouraged to stay at school past sixteen, and until they find parents who actually take responsibility for their kids when they go home in the evening, nothing will change. Nothing.”
“It’s no different in the States,” Fortner says, curling his mouth downward and shaking his head. “In some cities we have kids checking in assault rifles before assembly. You go to a high school in Watts, it’s like passing through security at Tel Aviv airport.”
“Sure. But your system isn’t a toss-up between private and public education. Only a very few people actually pay to go to high school in the States, right?”
“Right.”
“That’s not the case in this country. Here, you can buy your way out of the mess. And the worst of it is that the more state education goes into decline, the more parents are going to send their children to fee-paying schools, and the more teachers are going to want jobs outside the state sector because they don’t need the grief of working in an inner-city comprehensive. So the gap between rich and poor will widen. It’s exactly the same pattern with medical care. The only way not to have to wait three years for an operation is to pay for it. But you want to know what really sickens me?”
“I feel sure you’re gonna tell me.”
“Our fee-paying schools. They have unbelievable facilities, superb teaching resources, and they cost a fortune. But they’re wasted on the people who can afford to go there.”
“Why d’you say that?”
“Look at what the students do after ten years of being privately educated. Most of them go and work in the City with the sole objective of making money. Nobody ever puts anything back in. Nobody is taught to feel a responsibility toward their society. It’s women and children first with those guys, but only if Tarquin isn’t worried about losing the twelve percent bonus on his offshore-investment portfolio. That’s the extent of his imagination.”
“But these are bright guys, Milius. And maybe after working in the City they go into the law or politics, or they start their own small business and create jobs for other people.”
“Bullshit. Excuse me, Fort, but that’s bullshit. They’ll just make sure they have enough money to send their son to Winchester, and then the whole cycle will begin all over again. Another generation of inbred fuckwits who are spoon-fed just enough of the right information by gifted teachers that they can scrape through their A levels, go to university, and waste some more of the taxpayer’s money. You know what? We should have to pay to go to university like you do in the States. At least then we’d appreciate it more.”
Fortner smirks and mutters, “Yeah,” under his breath. A vapor of sweat has appeared on his forehead and he has a thin line of Guinness threaded across his upper lip.
I try a different tack: “Reminds me of a story my father told once.”
“Your late father?”
“Yes.”
Why did he need to stress that? Late father. Does it make him feel somehow closer to me?
“He said that whenever a Cadillac goes by in America, the man on the street will say, ‘When I make my fortune, I’m gonna buy one of those.’ But when a Rolls-Royce drives past in England, people look at it and say, ‘Check out the wanker driving the Rolls. How come he’s got one and I haven’t?’”
This is actually a story Hawkes told me, which I thought would go down well with Fortner.
“That’s what we’re faced with here,” I tell him. “A profound suspicion of anything that smacks of success. It’s
