papers -… the 1950s piece and the comparatively recent literature it seems rather strange. Still, I’ve every faith in our people, the English have brains and want to learn and we’ll do respectably, perhaps much better -good grounds for hope.
‘With religion they are few and frail, Controller. When we first appealed for volunteers to put at our disposal whatever documents or other evidence they might possess relating to the liturgy, how it was actually produced and performed, not merely what was said and sung, well, there was a small response to that appeal. I expected it to grow. I was wrong. It died away, to nothing and nobody, literally nobody. And first I should like to know why.’
Silence fell just in time to prevent Alexander from peremptorily asking to be excused and stalking out of the room. As it was he lowered his brows and put a thoughtful, troubled expression on his face. After a few seconds of this he said in a low voice,
‘May I make a suggestion, papa?’
‘Please do.’
‘You must have thought of it yourself, Commissioner, and perhaps rejected it – pre-war influence.’ Illogically, but usefully and universally, a pre-war was understood to be a member of the native population born early enough to have acquired a clear and reasonably full impression of what English life had been like in the years before the Pacification.
‘Exactly the case,’ said Mets with a comfortable smile. ‘The youngest pre-wars are now in their early sixties and the group as a whole is of course not large. Are you suggesting that they have enough influence to deter Christians or potential Christians or ex-Christians or simply the inquisitive from responding to our appeals?’
‘They certainly have influence on that scale. It should be easy enough to confirm the presumption that it’s at work in this case. You see, I don’t agree with my father that it doesn’t matter what any of them think of us.’
‘But for something that happened fifty years ago…
‘And for something else that’s been going on for fifty years.
I was brought up here, Commissioner. These old people would do anything to
‘Why then,’ pursued Mets, ‘if this theory of mere obstruction is correct, is there no similar policy of mass avoidance of the theatre and literature projects?’
‘I don’t know, sir. Perhaps they feel they must concentrate their efforts.’
‘Or perhaps…’ Petrovsky’s eyes, a deeper blue than his son’s, sometimes, as just then, had a similar trick of turning incurious. ‘Perhaps, in a question of religion, religion is involved. Perhaps they’re saying to us,” Do as you please with our literature, our theatre, our music – we’ll even help you; why not? But our Protestant faith is different; if you won’t leave that alone, don’t expect us to attend the party.” They’re a proud people, the English, and they fought and died for their beliefs.’
‘Centuries ago,’ said Mets quickly, ‘when everyone else was doing it too.’ Softening his tone, he went on, ‘And surely the effect of those fifty years…’
‘That’s not very long in the history of a religion, Commissioner. Even today there are Baptists in Russia.’
‘Some, but for different reasons they’re in a condition similar to that reached by adherents of the English Church by the time of its suppression. They, the English Christians, were worked on by enlightened forces both without and within. They were in decline both in numbers and in superstitious belief – most of them held scientific or quasi-scientific ideas, even among the clergy, not least the higher clergy, and the remainder were too demoralised not to tolerate them. The suppression merely hastened the inevitable. It doesn’t seem to me likely that today-’
Petrovsky had been listening to this rehearsal of the familiar with well-suppressed irritation. Now he broke in, ‘My dear fellow, aren’t we in danger of believing our own propaganda?’
‘Possibly,’ said Mets. He was used to such expressions of what he would have called parlour liberalism, not by any means only from the Controller, but had acquired less skill than the latter in dissembling his feelings. He turned almost violently to Alexander. ‘What’s your view, ensign?’
That officer was in the irksome position of wanting not to agree with his father while disagreeing with Mets and yet not appearing ignorant or indifferent. ‘The religious feeling is there,’ he improvised feebly, ‘but its strength would be hard to estimate. We have nothing else to go by.’
‘Thank you,’ said Mets. ‘Let’s return to matters of fact. Here is what I take to be an important one. None of the former clergymen to whom I appealed for assistance to the religion section has answered my letters. Not one. That must be concerted action, for whatever purpose. The second permission I require today is to interview some of them.’
‘And apply pressure,’ said Petrovsky.
‘If necessary. Better I than another.’
‘Better you than the other we’re both thinking of, certainly. And his deputy, from what I’ve seen of him. But I have a suggestion, Commissioner. A visit from you, even more a summons from you, would be official and committing. A visit from an individual quite unconnected with you would obviously be neither and might be most valuable.’
‘Perhaps.’ Mets tried hard to think of another reason for demurring than that he disliked the prospect of yielding up any of his power at all, even temporarily. ‘What you suggest is, er, is irregular.’
‘Precisely. That’s its advantage.’
‘Such a visit would have to be soon. Our time’s running out.’
‘How soon could you do it, Alexander?’
‘I’m sorry, I was miles away, trying to think of something a clergyman said to me the other week.’ The thoughts, set off by the allusion to Korotchenko a moment before, had in fact been about Mrs Korotchenko, and of an intensity such as to induce their thinker to pull his chair in further under the table. Part of the rest of the morning was thereby predetermined.
‘I thought it might be useful if you visited one of these old boys, or more than one, investigated attitudes and reported back to Commissioner Mets.’
‘I’d be delighted. As to how soon, today possibly, tomorrow for certain.
‘Splendid, I’m most grateful,’ said Mets, all warmth and condescension now that resistance had become vain. He took a list of names and addresses from his dispatch-case and Alexander noted down one he said he had sufficient acquaintance with. Mets expressed gratitude for his contribution.
‘May I make a final contribution?’ he asked. ‘Or rather two? The first is just a question. Wouldn’t it have been more natural to inaugurate the New Policy with a festival of sport instead of visual arts and the rest? It was far more popular.’
‘And infinitely more bloody,’ said Mets, gravely shaking his head. ‘Faction battles at soccer and race riots at cricket.’
‘All the pre-wars I know say that all that is much exaggerated.’
‘Well, they would, of course. Anyway, I have no say in the matter.’
‘My other contribution is another question. Don’t you think your difficulties might be lessened if you left it to the English to organise matters instead of doing so for them? At present they must feel it’s our project, not theirs.’
‘I sympathise with that, and it is our eventual aim, but at the moment we can’t leave it to the English to do anything. We must learn to walk before we can run.
‘How well I know that expression.’ Alexander glanced at his father, who to a knowing eye looked faintly uncomfortable. ‘Can they not at least be given a plausible illusion that they’re in charge? It would make it easier for those who are looking for an excuse to participate.’
‘A very fair point,’ said Mets, writing on a pad, ‘and one I’ll bear in mind in the general context. Renewed thanks.
There was politeness in Mets’s rising to his feet and a morsel of real cordiality in his handshake and parting smile. Alexander listened to the silence behind him as he walked down the room and out into the west hall; his father, he knew, was waiting to ask Mets if he didn’t think that that was a fine lad. The old idiot! -would he never hit back when baited? But there were more important concerns than fathers ahead, and Alexander forgot his almost before he had shut the dining-room doors after him.
