The Body Politic Read online

  Anthony Heber Hibbs achieved this in a somewhat oblique way. While not going quite so far as actually to equate the traditional English “le weekend” with the Festival of Ramadan, the Ambassador did somehow manage to imply that Saturdays and Sundays were days in which it would be difficult to get reasoned responses out of a board of directors in London.

  And the Sheikh, he skilfully inferred, was far too sensible a ruler to want a hasty or ill-considered response from men whom it might be difficult to call together if they were already dispersing to the country to prepare to read the lesson in their parish churches the next day. With real artistry he elevated the carving of roast beef at Sunday luncheon to an important ritual, while Yorkshire pudding and gravy found their way into his discourse as vague sorts of libation.

  Sheikh Ben Mirza Ibrahim Hajal Kisra, who knew and liked Heber Hibbs, graciously allowed himself to be charmed into extending his deadline to seven days without loss of face. With the studied politeness customarily extended by members of his tribe to infidels he said, as he summoned his falconer with a flick of an imperious finger, “Is that not what you call a stay of execution?”

  Her Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador bowed.

  TWO

  After This Life’s Whim

  Alan Ottershaw was a mining engineer who knew a great deal about the rare mineral known as queremitte but very little about the ways of international politics. He had, however, a touching faith, carefully nurtured among all employees, in the greatness and goodness of the company for which he worked. This faith lasted until exactly twenty minutes past four on the Friday afternoon after the road accident in Lasserta.

  That was the moment when the Chairman of the Board, Hamer Morenci, asked the company’s Director of Finance to give him a figure for the real value of the Anglo-Lassertan Mineral Company’s assets in the Sheikhdom.

  It was while the accountant was replying to this question that Alan Ottershaw had begun to feel uneasy. It had taken the money man a little while to explain that the company’s holdings were practically incalculable except, naturally, for the purpose of writing down in the balance sheet and claiming depreciation allowances in the profit and loss account.

  “Naturally,” said Hamer Morenci, nodding.

  As he listened to the Director of Finance it was gradually borne in upon Alan Ottershaw that, excellent servant of the company that he might be, he himself now figured on the debit side of the balance sheet. Like it or not, he had become a definite liability in the firm’s eyes. And as the Director of Finance warmed to his theme and became even more eloquent on the subject of mine shafts and their role as written-down fixed assets in the company’s accounts so Ottershaw’s disquiet deepened.

  “And then,” put in Darren Greene, Vice-Chairman of the Board, in what Alan Ottershaw thought was an unnecessarily cold-blooded way, “there is the whole question of our monopoly rights in queremitte.”

  From the quality of the silence in the boardroom Ottershaw knew that nobody round the table had forgotten for one single moment that the Anglo-Lassertan Mineral Company leased the sole rights to mine under the Lassertan desert at Wadeem the only known seam of queremitte ore on the sunny side of the Iron Curtain.

  The Chairman of the Board was not a diffident man—chairmen of international companies seldom are—but even he had the grace to look slightly embarrassed as he said, “I’ve got an appointment at the Ministry of Defence Procurement at six o’clock this afternoon.” He coughed. “They have particularly requested that none of this reaches the press or, indeed, anyone else at all.” He looked up. “No one knows that you’re in the United Kingdom, do they, Ottershaw?”

  “Nobody,” said Alan Ottershaw evenly, shifting his stare from Darren Greene back to Hamer Morenci. “Not even my wife.”

  His initial disquiet was beginning to turn to real alarm now. A man didn’t have to be a Kremlin-watcher to appreciate the significance of that remark of Morenci’s about the Ministry of Defence Procurement. Normal businessmen would have been making their urgent appointments with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. After-office-hours meetings at the Ministry of Defence Procurement late on a Friday afternoon in peacetime betokened very real alarm on both sides. The Anglo-Lassertan Mineral Company was certainly looking after its own interests with a vengeance. Alan Ottershaw, by then, had begun to feel it was high time someone looked after his.

  “We have to consider the national interest, too, you see,” added Morenci, whose own ethnic origins were a matter of perennial speculation both within and outside the firm.

  That had been the point at which Ottershaw had felt truly frightened. As countless others before him had found to their cost, actions taken on those grounds could lead anywhere. Anywhere at all.

  Which was how it came about that Peter Corbishley, the Member of Parliament for Alan Ottershaw’s constituency, found himself studying his audience so carefully at the meeting at Mellamby the following afternoon. Sensing that the Board of the Anglo-Lassertan Mineral Company had reached the point of finding it difficult to discuss the realities of the situation with him underfoot, Alan Ottershaw had seized his moment and asked leave to depart to see his wife and children at his home in Calleshire.

  Given his congé, the mining engineer had high-tailed it to Mellamby and made an urgent request to see his Member of Parliament as soon as possible. News could be embargoed from family and the press, but the sacred right of a citizen of the United Kingdom to communicate with his Member of Parliament was enshrined in custom and, in the case of mental hospitals and prisons, in the Rules and Regulations too.

  With a rare serendipity it emerged that Peter Corbishley would actually be in Mellamby the very next afternoon and a meeting between the two men had been arranged for immediately after the strawberry tea. And, as far as Peter Corbishley was concerned, the sooner he was released from making speeches while someone unknown and quite probably unbalanced shouted at him to drop dead the better.

  “Which brings me,” the Member trilled fluently, “to the nub of my argument today—”

  He was interrupted again but this time by a high mocking sound. It had the elements of laughter in it but no humour and it came from somewhere over by the trees.

  “Ha, ha, ha, haaaaaaaaaaa, haa!”

  Corbishley carried on valiantly. “As you will have appreciated, ladies and gentlemen—”

  The eldritch noise came again. “Ha, ha, ha, haaaaaaaaaaa, haa!”

  Heads in the audience turned in the direction of the sound: some smiled, the more knowledgeable murmuring “woodpecker” to their neighbours before they turned back; but their concentration had gone.

  “Why don’t you drop dead?” asked his original tormentor, the heckler at the back of the audience; but he said it without conviction now.

  The Member tried to finish on a rallying note, but the woodpecker would have none of it.

  “Ha, ha, ha, haaaaaaaaaaa, haa!”

  “Damned yaffle,” said Bertram Rauly, trying to remember whether or not woodpeckers were a protected species these days.

  Reminding himself that no actor could ever compete on stage with either children or animals, Peter Corbishley finished speaking and sat down amid polite applause. Major Puiver stood up, announced baldly that the Member had agreed to answer questions, and sat down again. There followed one of those uncomfortable pauses, common at all meetings of the party faithful everywhere, when no one spoke. Eventually a rather good-looking young man sitting near the front of the audience got to his feet and, with a distinct air of being a good man coming to the aid of the party, asked about precautions against rabies in the proposed Channel Tunnel.

  Bertram Rauly leaned across Puiver and hissed in Corbishley’s ear, “Adrian Dungey, local vet. Cocky.”

  The Member got to his feet and made an answer. Since if the young man was a veterinary surgeon he must have known what the Member’s response was going to be, he kept it short, resumed his seat, and, there being no more questions from the audience, composed
himself to listen to the vote of thanks. The gallant Major called upon Miss Mildred Finch to propose it and Bertram Rauly’s expression became even more impenetrable.

  As the Chairman sat down the Member stole an unobtrusive glance at his watch. Later on this evening he and Ted Sheard, the Labour Member of Parliament for West Berebury, were due at a Grand Charity Ball over at Calle Castle to launch a joint appeal for a hospice in the town of Berebury, and it would never do to be late for that.

  Miss Finch, educated and articulate, thanked the Member for his clear exposition of his views on the Common Market without apparent irony and passed swiftly on to the Association’s appreciation of their invitation that afternoon to one of the most beautiful houses in Calleshire. Mellamby Place was part of the inheritance of them all and of great importance in the history of the county—nay, of England itself. Had not King John himself hunted deer in Mellamby Chase where there were still trees so old as not to have been planted by the hand of man?

  Its grounds, continued Miss Finch, hitting her stride now, were the home not only of Picus viridis but of many other creatures of the wild. (Puzzled faces cleared when it dawned on those of her audience who were actually listening that she meant the green woodpecker: the more sophisticated pretended that they had known all along.) As for the house, Miss Finch carried on, only slightly diverted by the sight of an ambulance with a flashing blue light disappearing towards the back entrance of Mellamby Place, it was a jewel in the County’s crown and she hoped it would remain so whatever happened for ever …

  “And a day,” she finished triumphantly, leading the applause.

  Thankfully the platform party dispersed.

  The Chairman, Major Puiver, went in pursuit of the unknown heckler, with whom he wanted to have a few words, and who was even now shambling away at quite a rate and making it quite clear that he didn’t want to speak to the Major: Bertram Rauly equally clearly wished to avoid having converse with Miss Mildred Finch and retreated back into Mellamby Place with almost indecent haste, pausing only to pick up something from the lawn. Whatever it was must have given him cause for thought, for he halted for a long moment, looking puzzled, then, keeping it—whatever it was—in his hand, he went indoors; while Peter Corbishley strolled across towards the tea table and his meeting with Alan Ottershaw.

  He didn’t have long to wait.

  Minutes after Corbishley had prudently established himself near the tea urn a wiry young man was shaking him by the hand and introducing himself as Alan Ottershaw of Lasserta and Mellamby.

  He put his problem to the Member a good deal more succinctly than most of Peter Corbishley’s constituents.

  “Can you,” he said directly, “stop them sending me back to certain death?”

  While the Saturday afternoon had been sunny and warm, it was as nothing compared with the weather on the Sunday.

  The day was one of those rare summer ones when the English climate was all that anyone could desire. This contributed in no small way to the success of the occasion of the Camulos Society’s Summer Event, the re-enactment of the Battle of Lewes. The Honorary Secretary was up and about early enough to note the faint mist first thing in the morning and know it to be a portent of greater heat to come. He did spare a thought for those likely to spend the day in full—if imitation—armour and dismissed it almost at once. Fighting men expected to have to put up with a little discomfort in battle—even in mock battle.

  The Secretary’s main concern, and this was why he and his assistants were up and about betimes, was the marking out of the course, so to speak. Before the combatants arrived they needed to know who had held which ground before the Battle of Lewes had begun. It could, after all, hardly be called the drawing up of lines of battle after the event. Everything had to be clearly marked before the battleground was officially handed over to the Battle Commander and Starter, Major Puiver.

  There was, too, a particular need for the Secretary to be careful on this occasion because of what had happened last time: no one could have called the Spring Meeting of the Camulos Society an unqualified success. It had been a re-enactment of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and it had gone sadly awry.

  Today, resolved the Secretary hopefully, would be better. While Mellamby Motte was many miles away from Lewes in Sussex and in 1264 had been untouched by the tide of war, its remains and surrounding grounds bore sufficient resemblance to Lewes and the terrain there to make it a good spot for a replay.

  Mellamby Motte had the added advantage that it was well out in the country and had plenty of open ground which could be used for the re-enactment of the battle.

  It wasn’t like that at Lewes any more.

  The other great attraction of Mellamby was the enthusiastic co-operation of its owner. Bertram Rauly was a most active member of the Camulos Society and had himself drawn the Committee’s attention to the similarity of the ground north of the old Motte to that at Lewes. Besides, not every landowner relished horses and men trampling over his ground, especially when they were attended by crowds of people, which as a rule did even more damage and certainly left more debris behind than any war. Casualties in a mock battle usually removed themselves tidily from the field: spectators always left litter.

  “You’d better come while the going’s good,” Rauly had said at the Society’s committee meeting when the venues of next year’s activities were being discussed. “God knows what’ll happen to Mellamby when I’m gone.”

  Since Bertram Millington Hervé Rauly was unmarried and had no brothers, this remark had been greeted with tactful silence by most of the Committee and by the rapid production of his diary by the Chairman. “When can we come?” he asked.

  A date had been duly fixed and had now arrived.

  With the verisimilitude for which the Camulos Society was renowned, the Honorary Secretary sent his Assistant Secretary up to the top of Mellamby Motte with a Royal Standard of the day, and set off himself for some high ground to the north of the old castle, just short of Mellamby Chase, that was to serve as Offham Hill. Warning his confrère to take care inside the shaky old tower, he picked up the four markers which were to constitute the starting post before the “off” of the opposing side.

  He frowned to himself as he made his way over the grass. Even as a schoolboy he had hesitated to think of Simon de Montfort as an enemy. He wouldn’t have liked to have had to deal with King Henry III himself. It was easier with the re-enactment of the Wars of the Roses—you could choose to be a Yorkist or a Lancastrian without ceasing to be loyal to the English throne. And you could go over the Civil Wars again and again without losing sympathy with King Charles I (admittedly a poor monarch but a good family man) or being drawn to Oliver Cromwell (unattractive on almost every count, including the warts).

  It was only the fact that some members of the Society also liked to be on the winning side that enabled the Camulos Society to rustle up enough Roundheads to stage some of the Civil War battles at all. Everyone wanted to be a Loyalist and nobody a Parliamentarian.

  The Secretary struck a marker into the ground on the top of the rise. It was meant to indicate the point where Simon de Montfort had taken up his stance at the beginning of that day in May 1264. Although Montfort might well be said to have been the first Parliamentarian himself, there had been no shortage of members willing to play him. Montfort had had a better press than poor Nol Cromwell. Perhaps the warts had had something to do with that, too.

  History might be bunk, thought the Secretary, but it was very curious all the same.

  He turned and counted his paces as he stepped eastwards and a little south. Simon de Montfort’s son, Henry, had drawn up with his men slightly ahead of his father and his force of men. De Montfort père, with a commendable restraint, had kept his own troops in reserve for the time and place where they were needed most.

  The Secretary plunged the marker into the ground and continued his way eastwards. Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Oxford, had been on Henry de Montfort’s left at the Battle of Lewes
, but he’d changed sides after it and before the Battle of Evesham.

  The Secretary tapped Gilbert de Clare’s marker into the Calleshire soil with extra vigour. Turncoats were never popular roles in the Society, but someone had been found to take his part. The last marker was intended to represent the spot where Nicholas de Segrave had marshalled his force. There had been no touch of the renegade about Nicholas de Segrave and no trouble about finding a keen young Society member to don his colours.

  Oddly enough, it had been the Royalist side that had been more difficult to cast in this battle: perhaps it was because they had been the losers.

  What had also been as tricky as always had been finding suitable roles for the more mature members of the Society to play.

  Especially Bertram Millington Hervé Rauly.

  Common politeness to their host had prompted the suggestion on somebody’s part that he should be King Henry III.

  “After all,” the youngest member of the Committee had added tactlessly, “the King was all of fifty-six at the time.”

  The Chairman of the Society, who would never see sixty-five again, had pointed out rather coldly that the King had fought valiantly and energetically all day even though he had finished it defeated and a prisoner.

  “If Hazel Ottershaw is being Queen Eleanor, then Bertram’s too old to be King anyway,” said someone else flatly.

  It had been the Honorary Secretary himself who had had the last word on who took the role of King Henry III. “Adrian Dungey has to be king,” he said, “because he’s the only one who can get into the royal armour.”