Page 46 of The Gathering Storm (Morland Dynasty #36)

Polly laughed. ‘You look exactly like Mary Pickford! James is a worry to me,’ she went on, with a sigh.

‘He had such bad luck – gave his heart to the American woman, Meredith, and she went back to America without a word to him. And as soon as he transferred his affections to someone new, she got murdered.’

Jessie glanced sideways at her companion. ‘You didn’t have much luck either, did you? But it’s been a long time – have you never fancied anyone else?’

‘I think I’m just too particular,’ Polly said lightly. They came to the place where the track branched off towards Knapton, and she checked Zephyr and said, ‘Let’s not go that way. I hate seeing North Field all cut up, and concrete and bricks everywhere. It looks so dreadful.’

‘People have to have somewhere to live,’ Jessie said. ‘It will look all right when it’s finished.’

‘I know. But let’s go on towards Rufforth. We can have a gallop across the grounds of Rufforth Hall, and come back by the Whin.’

They took the left fork, and Polly said, ‘Tell me more about the ball. I suppose you’ll have it all to do again in a few years’ time for Ottilie?’

‘I don’t think so. Ottilie has two passions – horses and aeroplanes. Her greatest hero is Aunt Helen: she’s living proof that a woman can fly. When she found out that women couldn’t join the RAF, she cried for an hour.’

The King opened Parliament on the 3rd of November, and appeared, many said, calm and happy and, at least from a distance, young and handsome, like a smiling Prince Charming.

A week later, Kit met Chips Channon, the Member for Southend, at his club, and learned that Mrs Simpson’s name had been mentioned in the House.

A question had been raised about the arrangements for the Coronation, and a Labour MP, John McGovern, shouted out, ‘Why bother, in view of the gambling at Lloyd’s that there will not be one? ’

There had been cries of ‘Shame! Shame!’ and McGovern shouted, ‘Yes, Mrs Simpson—’ and the rest of his sentence became inaudible through the bellows of outrage.

‘I think that’s a Rubicon,’ Kit said.

‘You’re right,’ said Channon. ‘I passed Sir John Simon afterwards in confabulation with Eden, and heard him saying that Baldwin is thinking of putting it to the colonies. Not sure if he’s hoping they’ll say, “Sure, old man, he can marry anyone he likes,” or whether he’s hoping a robust four-letter response will make HM think again.

’ He shrugged. ‘At least he’ll be kept out of harm’s way for a while: inspecting the fleet on the twelfth, and a tour of the South Wales coal fields on the sixteenth. ’

‘I hear South Wales is pretty grim,’said Kit.

‘Yes, that ought to take some of the bounce out of him,` said Channon.

It didn’t take long for Basil to grasp the limitations of his salary.

His Spartan lodgings and landlady’s cooking did not shock someone who’d been to an English public school, but having no jingle in his pocket limited his social life, and he was a sociable creature.

Bob Zennor often, tactfully, paid for the drinks when they went to the pub after work, but Basil didn’t like to leech on him too much.

And he had other wants, too. What he really needed was a rich girlfriend.

His interest in Miranda Byrne began when Zennor told him she was privately wealthy, and she had the advantage of being accessible – his job took up a lot of his time.

She was undeniably attractive; he had been told she was very intelligent, which he had no reason to doubt; and her clothes showed she had taste as well as money.

She seemed in every way qualified to become his companion.

But so far he hadn’t got anywhere with her.

She acknowledged him when he passed her in the building with the same brisk greeting she gave everyone else.

He had managed to bump into her ‘accidentally’ in various places around the building, but despite considerable outlay of charm, she wasn’t responding to him.

He had learned that she was rather left-inclined, as indeed was the whole newspaper, so he got hold of a couple of suitable books, and allowed himself to be seen with his nose in them when he encountered her.

The first time Miss Byrne only glanced at him and frowned.

The second time, she definitely looked at the book, and seemed as though she was about to speak.

On the third occasion he contrived to drop the book at her feet and be slower than her in picking it up.

She looked at the sticker on the cover as she handed it back to him.

‘The Left Book Shop?’ she said. ‘I’m surprised you know it. ’

Basil had never been there – he had borrowed the book from another fellow in the newsroom – but he’d seen the address on the sticker. So he said, ‘Charing Cross Road isn’t exactly out of the way. I wonder they can afford the rent, though. I’d have thought somewhere like Peckham would be cheaper.’

‘They wouldn’t get so many people coming in, in Peckham,’ she said.

‘I suppose that’s true,’ Basil said. ‘But how do they afford it?’

‘Wealthy supporters pay for the premises.’ She looked at him as though reassessing him. She indicated the book, which was called Post-Structuralism and the Fallacy of the Chartist Legacy . ‘Are you interested in those sorts of ideas?’

‘Isn’t everybody?’ he said, rather than tell a lie. He’d had difficulty reading the title, let alone anything inside.

‘I hadn’t realised,’ she said. ‘I thought you were rather a—’

‘Yes?’ he prompted hopefully.

She didn’t answer directly. ‘Would you like to come to a party tomorrow night?’ she asked. ‘Some friends of mine – they don’t live in Peckham, though.’

‘I’m quite prepared to forgo Peckham,’ he said, and to his relief, she smiled. He’d been afraid she had no sense of humour, which would have made things difficult. ‘What sort of a party?’

‘Are there different sorts?’ she said. So he assumed there’d be food, drink, dancing and – if he was really lucky – the opportunity to steal a kiss at some point.

‘Just some like-minded friends talking about important issues,’ she went on.

His heart sank. But still he said yes. It was progress, wasn’t it?

* * *

The earnest young man in the sleeveless Fair Isle pullover was holding forth. Every now and then, at moments of vehemence, a lank forelock of dark hair fell over his pale brow and he had to brush it back. His round glasses shone. Everything about him shone with innocent conviction.

‘We must embrace the proletarian life. We must live alongside them and work alongside them. Because the proletariat are the only authentic people. Only they live a truly natural human life.’

Outside, the November evening was cold and sleety, and Basil had put on his warmest sweater over a shirt and undervest. But the party was in a basement, with a fire burning in both the small rooms, and a gas stove in the kitchen alcove where someone was cooking sausages, and the heat, together with that generated by the guests, was making Basil uncomfortable.

It was hard to concentrate on what the young man was saying.

‘Why should the owner of a factory take all the profits, when his factory is useless to him without the efforts of his labourers? They are the ones who create the wealth, so they ought to share in it. That’s only fair, isn’t it? You can see that.’

The company nodded and murmured. They could see that. It was only fair.

‘And since only the state can be disinterested, it follows that the factory ought to belong to the state, so that it can oversee the distribution. So that everyone gets an equal share. We are all equal, aren’t we?’

They murmured agreement. They were all equal.

‘Communism is the only rational organisation of society. Everything must be owned by the state so that it’s owned by everyone. Private property must be outlawed. As Marx said, “Property is theft.”’

Basil stirred. ‘That wasn’t Marx,’ he said.

He wasn’t even sure he’d said it to be heard, but the earnest young man was thrown off his stride. He turned the headlamps of his spectacles towards him. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Marx didn’t say property was theft. That was Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Nineteenth-century French anarchist.’ He only knew that because, purely by chance, he’d had to look it up for an article.

The young man gave him a stern but kindly look. ‘I think you’ll find it was Marx,’ he said. And then, ‘Are you an anarchist?’

All eyes swivelled on Basil. Plainly being an anarchist wouldn’t go down well – though he had no idea how they differed from Communists. He waved a dismissing hand. ‘Do carry on,’ he said.

After a doubtful pause, the young man resumed. ‘All work should command the same wages. Why do managers get more than workers? We all have to buy food and clothes and pay rent. The bosses’ wages should be taken away from them and divided up among the workers. That’s how they do it in Russia.’

Basil saw the beauty of that idea. He would like to receive a slice of the salary of the top earners at the Messenger . He had a sneaking suspicion, however, that it could not be quite as easy as that.

‘But how do you motivate people to work hard and get on if their efforts won’t earn them any more wages?’ he asked, when the earnest young man drew breath.

‘That’s a capitalist question,’ the young man said disapprovingly. ‘You’re coming at it from the wrong direction. You see, in the Communist state we all belong to one another, and the good of one is the good of all. You work hard for love of your brother man.’

Basil could see a problem right there, but the young man went straight on.

‘You have to purge the population of individualism. Where you have individualism, you have ownership. Ownership fosters greed, and greed leads to war. You only have to look at Germany. Capitalism means war. It’s inevitable.

Eventually, when Communism spreads over the whole world, conflict will be a thing of the past.’