Martin more than justifies his place by a practical, non-intellectual intelligence and an extraordinary capacity for hard work. He says little in Council but his contributions are invariably apposite and sensible. His loyalty to Xan is absolute. During Council meetings he was the only one who doodled. Doodling, I had always thought, was a sign of minor stress, a need to keep the hands busy, a useful expedient for avoiding meeting the eyes of others. Martin’s doodling was unique. The impression he gave was of a reluctance to waste time. He could listen with half his mind and draw up on paper his battle lines, plan his manoeuvres; could still draw his meticulous toy soldiers, usually in the uniform of the Napoleonic Wars. He would leave his papers on the table when he left and I was astounded at the detail and the skill of the drawings. I rather liked him, because he was invariably courteous and displayed none of the covert resentment at my presence which, morbidly sensitive to atmosphere, I thought I detected in all the others. But I never felt that I understood him and I doubt whether it ever occurred to him to try to understand me. If the Warden wanted me there, that was good enough for him. He is little more than medium height, with fair wavy hair and a sensitive, aesthetic face which reminded me strongly of a photograph I had seen of a 1930s film star, Leslie Howard. The resemblance, once detected, reinforced itself, imbuing him in my eyes with a sensibility and dramatic intensity which were foreign to his essentially pragmatic nature. I never felt at ease with Felicia Rankin. If Xan had wanted a colleague who was both a young woman and a distinguished lawyer, he had less acerbic choices available to him. I have never been able to understand why he chose Felicia. Her appearance is extraordinary. She is invariably televised and photographed in profile or half-face and, seen thus, gives the impression of calm, conventional loveliness: the classic bone structure, the high arched eyebrows, the blond hair swept back into a chignon. When seen full-faced, the symmetry vanishes. It is as if her head has been fashioned from distinct halves, both attractive but put together in a discordance which, in certain lights, is close to deformity. The right eye is larger than the left, the forehead above it bulges slightly, the right ear is larger than its fellow. But the eyes are remarkable, huge with clear grey irises. Looking at them when her face was in repose, I used to wonder what it felt like to be cheated so spectacularly of beauty by so minute a margin. Sometimes in Council I found it difficult to keep my eyes from her and she would suddenly turn her head and catch my quickly averted eyes with her own bold contemptuous glance. I wondered now how much my morbid obsession with her looks had fuelled our mutual antipathy.
Harriet Marwood, at sixty-eight the oldest member, is responsible for Health, Science and Recreation, but her main function on the Council was obvious to me after the first meeting I attended and is indeed obvious to the whole country. Harriet is the wise old woman of the tribe, the universal grandmother, reassuring, comforting, always there, upholding her own outdated standard of manners and taking it for granted that the grandchildren will conform. When she appears on television screens to explain the latest instruction it’s impossible not to believe that all is for the best. She could make a law requiring universal suicide seem eminently reasonable; half the country, I suspect, would immediately comply. Here is the wisdom of age, certain, uncompromising, caring. Before Omega she was head of a girls’ public school and teaching was her passion. Even as headmistress she had continued to teach the sixth form. But it was the young she wanted to teach. She despised my compromise of taking a job in adult education, spooning out the pabulum of popular history and even more popular literature to the bored middle-aged. The energy, the enthusiasm she had given as a young woman to teaching is now given to the Council. They are her pupils, her children, and, by a process of extension, so is the whole country. I suspect that Xan finds her useful in ways I can’t guess. I also think her extremely dangerous. People who bother to cogitate about the personalities of the Council say that Carl Inglebach is the brain, that the brilliant planning and administration of the tightly knit organization which holds the country together has been formulated within that high domed head, that without his administrative genius the Warden of England would be ineffectual. It’s the kind of thing that gets said about the powerful and he may have encouraged it, although I doubt that. He is impervious to public opinion. His creed is simple. There are things about which nothing can be done and to try to change them is a waste of time. There are things that ought to be changed and, the decision once made, the change should be put in hand without procrastination or clemency. He is the most sinister member of the Council and, after the Warden, the most powerful.
I didn’t speak to my driver until we reached the Shepherd’s Bush roundabout, when I leaned forward, tapped the window between us and said: “I’d like you to drive through Hyde Park then down Constitution Hill and Birdcage Walk if you will.”
He said, without a motion of his shoulders or any expression in his voice: “That, sir, is the route the Warden has instructed me to take.”
We drove in front of the palace, its windows shuttered, the flagpole without its standard, the sentry boxes empty, the great gates closed and padlocked. St. James’s Park looked more unkempt than when I had last seen it. This was one of the parks which the Council had decreed should be properly maintained and there was, in fact, a distant group of toiling figures wearing the yellow-and-brown overalls of Sojourners, picking up rubbish and apparently clipping the edges of the still-bare flowerbeds. A wintry sun lit the surface of the lake on which the bright plumage of two mandarin ducks stood out like painted toys. Under the trees lay a thin powder of last week’s snow and I saw, with interest but with no lifting of the heart, that the nearer patch of white was a drift of the first snowdrops.
There was very little traffic in Parliament Square and the iron gates to the entrance of the Palace of Westminster were closed. Here once a year Parliament meets, the Members elected by the District and Regional Councils. No bills are debated, no legislation is enacted, Britain is governed by decree of the Council of England. The official function of Parliament is to discuss, advise, receive information and make recommendations. Each of the five members of the Council reports personally in what the media describe as the annual message to the nation. The session lasts only for a month and the agenda is set by the Council. The subjects discussed are innocuous. Resolutions by a two-thirds majority go to the Council of England, who can reject or accept as they will. The system has the merit of simplicity and gives the illusion of democracy to people who no longer have the energy to care how or by whom they are governed as long as they get what the Warden has promised: freedom from fear, freedom from want, freedom from boredom.
For the first few years after Omega, the King, still uncrowned, opened Parliament with the old splendour, but driving through almost empty streets. From being the potent symbol of continuity and tradition, he has become an unemployable archaic reminder of what we have lost. Now he still opens Parliament, but quietly, wearing a lounge suit, stealing in and out of London almost unnoticed.
I could remember a conversation I’d had with Xan the week before I resigned my post. “Why don’t you get the King crowned? I thought you were anxious to maintain normality.”
“What would be the point of it? People aren’t interested. They would resent the huge expense of a ceremony which has become meaningless.”
“We hardly ever hear of him. Where is he, under house arrest?”
Xan had given his inward laugh. “Hardly house. Palace or castle arrest, if you like. He’s comfortable enough. Anyway I don’t think that the Archbishop of Canterbury would agree to crown him.”
And I remembered my reply. “That’s hardly surprising. You knew when you appointed Margaret Shivenham to Canterbury that she was a fervent republican.”
Just inside the railings of the park, walking in line along the grass, came a company of flagellants. They were naked to the waist, wearing, even in the cold of February, nothing but yellow loincloths and sandals on their bare feet. As they walked they swung back the heavy knotted cords to lacerate already bleeding backs. Even through the car window I could hear the whistle of the leather, the thud of the whips on naked flesh. I looked at the back of the driver’s head, the half moon of meticulously cropped dark hair under the cap, the single mole above the collar which had irritatingly held my gaze for most of the silent journey.
Now, determined to get some response from him, I said: “I thought this kind of public display had been made illegal.”
“Only on the public highway or pavement, sir. I imagine they feel they’re entitled to walk through a park.”
I asked: “Do you find the spectacle offensive? I gather that was why the flagellants were banned. People dislike the sight of blood.”
“I find it ridiculous, sir. If God exists and He’s decided He’s had enough of us, He isn’t going to change His mind because a rabble of no-hopers dress up in yellow and go wailing through
