Bargained

You are utterly unaware that it can happen to you. Or. You cannot conceive of it ever happening to you.

I am an ordinary bloke. Married to the lovely, vulnerable Jane. Still. I was fifty-one at the time. The mortgage was long paid off. Jane was fit and sexy, up for partying holidays and weekend spas for couples.

The kids were through college and as settled as twenty-somethings can be. My daughter brewed up occasional storms in her new marriage that blew her back a few times to her permanently readied bedroom, before the teary, shame-faced makings up. She’s more like her mother than she knows.

Grandkids were on the near horizon: our son was a year married, and a broody pair they were. I feared expensive IVF, just because kids lack patience today. He was starting to understand the value of a pint and a couple of hours of dad-wisdom; and I thought he might even find them enjoyable, and instructive.

My pension fund was ticking up nicely. A few investments I’d made in my industry were doing fine. Expertise and experience helped. We had more money than we needed, really: that’s the kind of bloke I am, not greedy. And I loved hard work. Loved the easy skill of a job done for my whole working life, done bloody well, expertly, calmly (mostly), profitably (for the company), and confidently. Over-confidently, I was to find.

I have to disguise the facts or I will be dragged back in. But everything is true: in core and detail, bruise and breakage.

We manufactured. I was an employee (thirty-years’ service, remember that) but the company was always We to me. We built respected, quality products: components for engineering equipment. The buyers varied, from local, national, and EU, through to supranational. They sold their dozers and cranes and excavators and compressors to the construction companies, who built the tallest blocks, airport terminals like space stations, army bases that were small cities in deserts, scary dams holding back pressing, black, deep waters, bold bridges they make TV programmes about (I have a collection of recordings: solitary viewing, sadly).

We had sales offices everywhere: four in the UK; Ireland; Germany (of course); Poland; Sweden; Italy (a mistake – they have their own rules); Nairobi; Singapore; Darwen; and one for the US and Canada, markets we had never penetrated enough.

I was Head of Sales and Contracting and found reasons to visit my local blokes (yes, this is engineering, girls) and the lawyers there, so that I was circling through sunny climes once or twice a month every year, mixing the deep-tanning and over-eating with the constant, exhausting juggle of bizarre and contrasting legal systems (forever ‘reformed’ by the latest political winner); hearing of regulators ranging from the ferocious to those interested only in their personal comfort, down to the occasional extortionist with some threat to be assessed and neutralised. Usually by suing the fucker.

I kept working at the US market. I liked Americans: no-nonsense manufacturing guys ready for incompetent golf or for beers at the end of an honest day’s work, inviting you into their ranch homes to smiley, welcoming wives, to kids so used to strangers so that they even expressed interest in you, curious (Do you know the Queen? Have you been to Downton Abbey?) and chatty. So unlike the Englishman’s tired semis filled with an anxiety that visitors will judge your class by your three-piece-suite and choice of carpet; kids hidden in the trap in their screen-lit bedrooms. Yes, that’s why we keep visitors safely in the pub, which has a closing time.

I was sociable, a geezer: that was my workmates’ word for me, partly driven, I fear, by my forty-six-inch waist and tendency to wheeze on the stairs, fairways, slopes and when rambling back from the bar. I could get along with anyone. I knew tasty characters, faces in the East End, in my youth and for decades now I have dealt with top execs, fancy budget-busting management consultants, even politicians (and no, the media is wrong about them: you can trust none of them – a nugget for you) when we needed heft to open up a foreign market or face down its locals blocking all competition. We were in favour of competition. Everybody liked me. I was the jolly fat bloke with good pub jokes, non-PC but never too racist or over-blue, first and last to the bar, always up for a lock-in and a session. And I had, as they say, an encyclopaedic knowledge of my industry: you must keep it up your jumper, one cheeky, skinny kid joked once. I cuffed him round the ear.

I was always the third speaker at our loud, glossy marketing events, after the Chief Exec’s smooth jargony emptiness and the latest strategy woman’s vision thing. The bored financial journalists buggered off, giving way to the industry-specialists, and we got on with the oily-handed stuff. We flew in buyers to be richly ‘looked after’: fed by the latest name-chef they knew from TV (international research required, my boots on the ground); stocked with future war stories about monster hangovers from free bars and bad influences (me again); revived by being golfed to a standstill on unnaturally green fairways shaded by lush trees hiding the desert sands beyond. These are tactics and designs honed by corporate America: dipping grateful guys in a glittering warm infinity pool of utter pandering. I quite enjoyed it too.

And I was the lead at technical conferences. A grade down in luxury, and cities rather than remote hotel complexes, but we still treated everyone to four or five stars and unlimited booze. Real blokes would talk about research, new products, dangerous flaws that had bankrupted an over-innovative company in Taiwan, tips on changes to contracting rules. We were sharing, for the public good. Other manufacturers came. Buyers. Co-operation, networking, making diverse connections (one for the Annual Report), all to boost trade, sell UK plc, show we can still build things, lead the world, all that positivity: hooray words. But the socialising was grittier: men together, eventually shaking off uptight buyers and moaning happily about them, their impossible demands and expensive ignorance; bonding with our peers and even a couple of cynical buyers ready to bad-mouth, well, everyone, with the best gossip and predictions of disaster.

Don’t get me wrong. It was all ad-hoc, chin-wagging opportunities, boys falling together at the end of the day, nothing in diaries or ‘Calendars’ or arranged by email or message. No meetings. This went on for maybe ten years with a solid core of the same geezers – which they became, fattening, spreading, up a notch on the clothing brands (polo shirts tight across bellies) and two notches on the impending-stroke-ometer, now into ‘Wine’ for its non-bellying properties and unlimited bullshit potential (Bring us another bottle of that Sassicaia, nah, make it three, on me), at least one infarcting off his perch each year to be replaced by initially quieter guys still building up to real manhood.

We’d have the same conversations, no less gratifying for that. Who had the latest ignorant CEO parachuted in, maybe a recent reject from another of the companies represented in the group: Yeh, asshole that guy, good luck. Who had a CFO on the way to jail for skimming. Which tortured, neurasthenic Head of Compliance would get the award for Business Blocker of the Year. Which HR girls (why is it always women in HR?) would support you when you fired useless time-servers, or instead drag you into a two-year lawsuit before ‘recommending settlement’ at maximum humiliation level. How to get pricing right. Which customers were bastards (not much change there, year to year) and which were good eggs (a reducing clutch). It was all harmless. It kept the wheels on and turning, ensuring that builds got done, and you lot can enjoy your new tramlines and bus stations and your five buy-to-let apartments on the thirtieth floor. I only had three, at a good price, though.

It was all authentic. We would abandon the slick hotel and its crap bottled beer for a local bar. Half-empty, with space for us to gather a couple of corners away from the bores: low-lit, high-backed seating for our aching backs, waitresses to save our swelling legs and enliven our tired eyes. Probably ten of us, the A-team. The sessions all went the same way, like the last one.‘

‘So,’ Brum says. He is the unchallenged leader, because his company is the biggest, a household name with dodgy and dated products but still inexplicably profitable. He also has the largest stomach and is only five feet four so he looks like the real thing to us. ‘Ows bisniss?’

‘What did he say?’ Michie asks, exasperated, not for the first time, with Brum’s accent.

‘How’s business,’ I explain. ‘And you’re the bloke who has ‘melk’ in his coffee and told us that guy from Rockford was one of them FIPs.’

‘Ope, sorry. Fuckin’ Illinois People. Michiganders can’t stand them. We prolly just feel superior.’

Brum smiles and continues, ‘Y’know what oi mean, my lovely. Looks like the market needs a correction.’

‘And them buyers are ready for one,’ Sheff pipes up, our newest addition, a forty-year old with a nervous teenager’s high-pitched voice and a South Yorkshire accent you could scratch steel with. Yet he is an inexplicably corporate fast-riser, already a deputy assistant vice-prez in the US subsidiary that bought up the competition in Sheffield and Rotherham, a kid headed for the top in five or six years.

‘They’ll swallow six points,’ Oldie says.

‘All of them?’ I ask sharply, unkindly. I don’t know why. He couldn’t care less.

‘You know what I mean, Geez.’ Yes, it’s reduced down to Geez now. Nicknames are part of the fun and that’s mine.

Sheff says, ‘Market’s loose.’ He is ignored. We all know that he screwed up last year. He blames his bosses: they went for a five per cent price increase when we could see the buyers were squeezed and could afford no more than three. He lost a chunk of market share. See what I mean about inexplicably?

‘Foive, I reckon,’ Brum says. ‘Six’d kill ‘em.’

Oldie says, ‘They can pass it on. Construction is fine. It’s the only thing now. A pyramid scheme, mind. The lot of it.’ Oldie is our patented cynic, a red trade unionist in his youth, fifty years ago. Now he owns the company, mid-sized, union-free, very profitable. He’s not called Oldie because of his age but because he’s based near Oldham. ‘My customers are throwing money about.’

I say, ‘We don’t all have your cosy buyers. And not all of us are selling into simple construction.’

Michie from Michigan agrees. ‘Hey, your Govermit is just pumping money in to delay the smash. My sales guys’ll implode if I tell them prices are going up that much.’

This goes on for an hour, back and forth, just shooting the breeze about how the wind is blowing in the markets: talking shop; lubricating the intercourse of international trade…; giving buyers clarity, certainty, stability; letting them predict and plan reliably and protect jobs. All good. All innocent chat. We break up at three a.m., alcohol headaches starting, aiming for breakfast at eight and a last half day of visible business-doing and lesson-sharing in the over-bright lights of the conference suite.

Five months and nineteen days later, I get into work on a clear, frosty-blue Friday morning that I will never forget, park up my sleek company Audi with the indicators I never care to use (what else did you expect?), lumber myself up clumsily from the low seat, stop to breathe a bit, and then swing through Exec Reception, the hushed, welcoming, carpeted, recovery-room for the important people who travel to see us: pastries lined up, strong coffee on tap and multiple teas to choose from, complimentary phone, TV on a news channel. All well away from swearing workers and the risk of a grease spot on three thousand-pound suit. I start to sing, ‘Hello, Dolly,’ to our young receptionist, Dorothy, as I do every morning, but she is not there. Loo-break, I assume. But there is a quietness to the building? I pass through into the open plan office for the junior staff, heading to my glass-walled sanctum on the far side, when a beanpole kid in a badly cut charcoal suit, white shirt, maroon tie, cropped dark hair and an annoying, brainy, pale, speccy face stands up from behind a computer screen and holds a hand up like a steward controlling a queue.

‘Can I have your name, please, sir.’ No question mark. No accent. He looks about nineteen, tense but cool, cold even.

‘You first, sunshine,’ I say without thinking.

‘Jones. UKCA. Sir?’

I tell him but my head is fuzzy. Why can’t I remember what UKCA is? I should ask him, but I don’t want to show my ignorance – might it matter? – or that I am flustered, although both are probably obvious from my flushed face and lack of response.

He lets me go to my office, telling me not to use any communication devices, adding unnecessarily but perhaps it’s for my age-group: ‘no email, texting, instant messages, phone calls, whatever.’ I sit down, sudden sweat under my arms and across my back, my brain fogged, distantly hearing but ignoring the screaming routine tasks awaiting me on the desk. I want to go home. After ten minutes, he reappears with our General Counsel, Aneeka, and I start to breathe a little because she’s good: a problem-solver and, irrelevantly, tall and strong, a presence, a competitive tennis player who also rowed at Oxford. Her perennial dark lawyer’s suit and white blouse reassure me.

For about thirty seconds.

I see that her hair is half-done and she does not even have her usual light makeup about her. And she looks like she was kicked in the stomach a couple of hours ago and has been retching in the meantime.

She acknowledges me by name but in a flat tone I do not recognise. She stands, arms folded too tightly.

‘This gentleman, and his thirty colleagues,’ she says with a touch of venom, ‘are from the competition authorities. They are carrying out an investigation. We…’

‘Into what?’ I almost yelp.

I see Jones angle his head slightly to get a good look at me. Then he says, ‘She can’t tell you. Yet.’

Aneeka continues as if he hasn’t spoken. ‘You need to give me your password, confirm where any hard copy documents are and surrender…’ Surrender? ‘… any keys and your entry card and work phone and laptop. Do you have any other storage devices?’

‘Storage devices? Like a fucking filing cabinet, you mean?’ She flinches and I realise that she is following some formal wording and I am being an idiot. ‘Sorry. OK. My stuff is in that cupboard over there.’ I look at them both and add, ‘Then I’ll give Mo a call for some advice?’

‘No,’ she says.

‘Who’s Mo?’ Jones asks.

She tells him, ‘You know. Mo Anwar. Senior partner at Anwar and O’Neill.’

‘Good firm,’ he responds.

I whine, ‘Why can’t I ring him?’

Jones again: ‘Sorry, no contact with anyone involved in your work. You can go home and relax until you are phoned.’

I am not sure whether it is good or bad that Jane works because it means that there is no one there when I get home, just after ten in the chill morning. Nobody to talk to. But it’s useful not to have to tell her, and scare her, yet. She is not the strongest. The brightest girl at her school, she dropped out of university when her mum was diagnosed, and nursed her for the last, hellish ten months. She never went back to her studies. Loved bringing up the kids. When she did return to the outside world, she said that simple admin work suited her. But her intelligence always came through and she was promoted several times without applying or asking. Then she had the breakdown. Why don’t people see other people and why they are what they are? After four years she found peace as a teaching assistant, disappearing into the world of six-year olds each day. I do need to talk, but it can’t be her.

Jones didn’t say that I had to stay at home and so after a manically restless half an hour I leave the silent house where I can feel trouble approaching like a spinning storm gathering speed. Jones or Aneeka can ring me when there is some news. I drive to a country pub I know and wait for it to open. These are the moments I check my phone for messages, email, the Daily Mail. I am sickened by the reminder: I have handed over my phone to the UKCA. Raging, I down two pints standing at bar, unable to sit, and then roar the car away, good for nothing but pointless movement. Back home, I dial 1571 while booting up my computer on the desk in my den. As the number dials I click on the BBC website and see that there is nothing about us on the news, in the headlines at least, thank God.

There are no messages but a central London number comes up. I ring it.

‘Zuhrah Fofana.’ A woman’s voice. I tell her who I am. ‘Ah. Thanks. I didn’t want to leave a message in case… you know.’

‘Not really. You are?’

‘Sorry. Your solicitor. Your company’s paying.’ She tells me the name of her firm. I use my free hand to type the name one-fingered into a search engine.

‘Why aren’t Anwar & O’Neill acting?’

‘We’re specialists in this type of work.’

‘What type of work is that?’

She hesitates. ‘Defending people in corporate investigations.’

I’ve called up her website. Glossy. Expensive. ‘It says here you are white-collar crime experts.’

‘Sometimes, things get difficult for our clients. Now…’

‘You haven’t answered my question.’

‘We should really do this in the office. Can you come in tomorrow?’

‘Yes. I will. You haven’t answered my question.’

‘The company’s identified a potential conflict of interest.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Your interests might not be the same as the company’s?’

I think for a moment, my heart rate rising. ‘You mean they might blame me, say they knew nothing about it? Throw me to the wolves?’

‘Or they are worrying you might do that to them.’

I lie to Jane. I cannot bear to tell her. She knows I’m out of sorts, but I say we are insanely busy at work and I need to be in my den all evening. She brings tea and my favourite toasted teacakes. I have the computer on but have simply stared at it for hours, occasionally gazing without reading online newspapers and magazines. I was going to research what the UKCA does but reality is starting to kick in and I fear my browsing will be analysed one day. Let them be bored by my habits of searching for fantasy holidays, my skims through the human-interest stories in the papers, the long pieces on great engineering projects, unenlightening analyses of the performances of the England cricket team.

I am a good sleeper but that night is predictably wracked and wrecked. Jane awakes in the early morning tetchy from being continually disturbed by my fretful squirming and repeated sucking in of deep breaths to loosen my tight diaphragm, all made worse by my collapse into snoring hell for the last hour, the final provocation for her.

I get ready and go to ‘work’ as usual but I detour to the local railway station and ride tensely into the maw of London. Already worrying about the cost of lawyers, about losing my job, my pension, I break my favourite luxury-vice and take the Tube instead of a black cab. Then I remember why I started to take cabs in the first place.

Zuhrah’s office is near Temple tube station and the breeze from the river as I emerge is cold and fresh after the stale heat and stink of bodies and engines underground. It is hidden in the warren of barristers’ chambers that I know well, having been to too many blisteringly expensive ‘conferences’ with them over the years. I didn’t realise there were solicitors’ offices here too, although the nameplate for her firm (and the letterhead as I discover later) in fact does not identify them as solicitors. Just the name. I wonder why.

She is around forty years’ old, tall and graceful with unsettlingly observant and intelligent eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. She has an associate with her, Mike, a lean American with the sort of grating accent you do not hear in films. Zuhrah speaks like a –  what? It takes me a few minutes, and a loss of concentration that causes the skin around her eyes to crease with concern, to get it. She sounds like a practical, comforting minister: Protestant, experienced in human folly, forgiving or at least understanding.

‘Things are moving quickly, I’m afraid,’ she tells me. ‘They will want to… speak to you within a couple of days. We need to prepare. It will be intense. Sorry. It will be hard for you. I presume you are free to spend a lot of time here?’ I nod, starting to worry about fees. She says, ‘As I said, the company is paying us.’

‘I don’t know what this is about. At all.’

‘The allegation is price-fixing, that seven companies have been agreeing what they would charge for components.’

I had known this in my guts. I say, ‘There was no agreement. Nothing in writing.’ I see her try to control a wince, her eyes flicking to Mike. ‘That wasn’t the right thing to say?’ I ask.

‘It’s not for us to tell you what to say but, well, the implication in what you said…’

‘I said there was no agreement.’

‘Good.’

Mike says, ‘They have a recording.’ He mentions a name I do not recognise and sees my confusion. ‘You may know him as Sheff?’

‘Yeah. Him.’

‘We haven’t had a copy of the recording yet but we have a transcript.’

‘Well, you’ll know then that there was no agreement.’

Zuhrah comes in: ‘You’re right. There’s no contractual agreement. But all seven companies went to the same pricing levels and would not budge. The gentlemen at that meeting…’

‘And it wasn’t a meeting! We were drinking. Having a laugh.’

‘… were the key players in such decisions. And Sheff says it has gone on for years. He was told that by one of the others.’

‘What does the company say? Are Anwar & O’Neill looking after my back?’

Mike says, ‘Frankly? No. The company has gone to a US law firm, like us, Magnum Wessen, known as hired guns. They’re good, but usually go scorched earth.’

‘What is he talking about,’ I ask Zuhrah?

‘The company will say they knew nothing about it and that it was all your responsibility. In theory they could sue you for any damage they suffer.’

‘What’s this about US law firms?’

She answers, ‘We are a US firm with this small London office.’ I am wary of the expression on her face and what is coming next. ‘US lawyers are involved because this is also an investigation by the American authorities.’

‘What’s that got to do with me?’

‘Possible extradition.’

I guess they think I have had enough bad news for one day because they move quickly on to detail and practicalities, avoiding discussion of consequences, talking me through my side of the story, producing documents and asking me to comment on them, checking whether I think the transcript of our drinking session is accurate. It is. And I hate how my drunken bonhomie is laid out in formal type like an indictment. But the worst is just how obviously, unsubtly, bone-headedly I had clearly been driving the discussion: to prices and, dear God, to trust and cooperation.

These sessions go on for two hard days. I keep office hours and leave Jane in the dark. In London, I repeatedly insist that I am innocent and will fight all the way. They smile back encouragingly.

On the third day, Zuhrah says that they have come to a view and that we need to move fast. She doesn’t say what the view is. Mike takes over.

‘It looks like this is going to be a federal case – in the States? You might know from the news that defendants, people in your position, often cooperate in exchange for leniency.’

‘Leniency? But I’m innocent.’

He ignores this and I sense that he is well-practised. ‘This is what they will do.’

Zuhrah says, ‘Mike was a prosecutor.’

He continues, ‘They’ll wait and see who caves. Someone will. Some will fight all the way. Then the prosecutor will call me up and say: can we do a deal? They’ll offer probably two years’ minimum security time.’

I stare at him. He does not let the silence run.

‘And they probably won’t say it outright but they’ll say that this… this cartel…

‘Cartel?’

‘Went on for several years. And so they could bring multiple counts.’

‘You didn’t say what they won’t say outright?’

‘Yeah. That if you don’t play ball, you’ll face a full-weight prosecution, maybe for conspiracy, and possibly twenty years.’

Those two words hang heavy. They both look down at the table. The anonymous conference room is silent. I purse my lips and stare out at the tops of the lawyers’ buildings all around, down to the glistening river. I had liked meetings in classy rooms in plush offices with expensive views, sycophants to enjoy, or counter-parties to charm or crush.

My voice is the quietest it has been in all the time we have spoken. ‘Twenty years. That can’t be right. I’m innocent.’

He hands me two photocopies. One is of an article by a guy called Jed Rakoff; its title is Why Innocent People Plead Guilty in a magazine called the New York Review of Books.

I ask, ‘What’s the answer to his question?’

‘It’s not a question. People take a year in prison to avoid the risk of twenty years or worse.’

‘Even…’

‘Even when they’re innocent.’

I look at the other copy. It has InjusticeWatch: TRADING AWAY JUSTICE at the top. The headline is One innocent man gets six years for murder, while another gets life. I read it quickly, my breathing shallow.

Zuhrah says, ‘One took the plea and got six years to avoid it being worse, as usual. The other one fought and got life – without parole. You can imagine the pressure to plead guilty and get “only” six years.’

I reach the end of the article. ‘And they were completely innocent?’

‘No doubt about it.’

‘Like me.’

‘Well…’

‘I know,’ I say, honestly for once.

2
From a sunny, frosty morning in the Home Counties, I pass through the extraordinarily polite hands of lawyers and American ‘law enforcement’ officers until I reach a prison high up on a desolate plain and am surprised – it is still possible – to find a huge hall like an aircraft hangar full of men and bunk beds. No cells here. The man in the bed above me is taciturn, a rapist, I am quietly told by others, without elaboration.

Jane visits. My daughter has disappeared from our lives. My son is divorced. His wife and her family were supposedly ‘unhappy’ about only finding out I was ‘a criminal’ when they saw me on the news, being escorted onto a US-bound plane at Heathrow: ‘It’s not what he did, but that you didn’t warn us!’ As if. But I have an unusual surname and I imagine they were asked at the golf, book and wine clubs they live for. At least he has a new girlfriend, pregnant as well. I do my time, slim down.

3
We have a nice, rented house now, social housing. I golf on a municipal course once a month, sit on the checkout at the local supermarket, comfortably: because the unsurprisingly unpopular Prison Diet eased me down to half the man I was. The company stopped paying my legal fees when I confessed. The Chief Exec left with a million in severance pay. His replacement issued a press release, calling me, not by name, as a cancer in the company. Apparently my employer’s view was I had been excised by impressive regulators. When he agreed that the company would pay a fine of thirty million dollars, the share price bounced back. Thousands of civil actions continue against the company. He ordered that I be sued and I was taken for everything. Peanuts for the company (and its insurers): bankruptcy for me. At least Jane kept her half share in the house and her paltry savings.

Sheff got a promotion and a reward. An untouchable whistle-blower now who, I’m told, scares the crap out of his bosses and colleagues and spends his time looking for other conspiracies to uncover and report.

Being American, Michie knew the score, was first to cooperate and got himself probation.

Oldie had a fatal heart attack when they were questioning him.

The last thing Zuhrah said to me was to answer my questions: Why America, why not a prosecution at the Old Bailey, a suspended sentence, and maybe some litter-picking? She said, ‘Well, the Americans take capitalism very seriously, I’m afraid.’ Yes, afraid.

I cannot say that I am innocent. I guess I got what I bargained.

Who are you conspiring with?


Gally Maxwell
This version 15 March 2024

Forgive Me For What?

From the The Courier newspaper

Forgive and forget three hundred dead?

The manager responsible in the Pennine Air Disaster looks for absolution. By Michele Deridere
Wed 5 Nov 2015 07.00 BST

For a woman accused of the death of three hundred and forty-six children, women and men, Ann Smith is, at first, remarkably calm, self-contained and sure of herself. On the evening of 20 January last year, she was at home with her nine-year old daughter when she received a call from the National Air Traffic Control Centre. It was four minutes after eight o’clock and she was about to put the little girl to bed. The words of that call are, she says, already inscribed on her headstone: Two airliners have collided, exploded and fallen into a Yorkshire Dale. You need to come in.

We meet in her modest home in the Midlands, furnished, it seems, from afternoon television adverts: a pillar-box red sofa that screams interest-free credit, a thin pink carpet, and assorted ‘collectible’ ornaments, tacky, gaudy ballerina figurines mostly. She is out of work and has had no income for eighteen months. I am not allowed to say any more about where she lives, under a non-disclosure and confidentiality agreement this newspaper’s lawyers say is draconian. She is a hunted woman, she explains, and she has an air of isolation, strangely permanent isolation, as if it is a core of her personality.

The shiny mini-venetian blinds at the window, also red, are new; and they are closed. Her neighbours do not know who she is. She has changed her name. The school run is done by her father, staying with her “for now”, a hundred miles from his home. There is no mention of Smith’s mother. The father arrives home with the bright little girl just as we are beginning: a very tall, thin man with white hair and soft blue eyes, who stoops to hear his grand-daughter; and she is a wiry, lively child with short fair hair who runs in with a smile but stops and glares at me and the photographer accusingly. She is ushered gently away and Smith says that her husband died of lung cancer at thirty-five; a lifelong non-smoker, she adds. For a moment, she is very still, a small woman, perhaps five feet three in her old plastic-fluffed slippers, slim in carefully chosen, close-fitting black jeans and burgundy cashmere sweater, her ash-blonde hair tied back so that it strains her small face: a face that is lined well beyond her thirty eight years. And today it is makeup-less, a tactic, making her look fresh but vulnerable. Yet she remains pretty, fragrant.

Once we have settled in armchairs and I have switched on the recorder, her first words are: “I wasn’t even there.”

The night was wet, stormy, but in this age of high-tech aircraft and Airborne Collision Avoidance Systems, that should not have made much difference. But it did mean that the pilots could not see each other’s plane. At 19:23, Flight 9812WX, heading for Manchester and Flight 4143RZ, for Leeds, were both on Flight Level 150, or 15,000 feet to you and me. There were twenty controllers, ATCs, working that night, all supplied by the company that Smith also works for, ATC SafeFly FZC, a company registered abroad, which has the contract for the North under the privatised system. There should have been twenty two, but one was sick and another had taken last minute holiday, authorised the day before by her manager: Smith. The controllers were having a difficult, busy night and there had already been a near-miss over the North Sea around 6pm. People were tense, tired and worried, because they felt stretched, or so they told the air accident investigators. 

“It was pilot error,” Smith tells me, while pouring tea and offering up a plate of home-baked cookies (rather good ones in fact). “The ACAS alarms worked. Manchester-bound was told to ascend, Leeds-bound to descend. They both went up.” This much is true, but she has not yet mentioned that it was because her ATC screamed – yes, I have heard the recording – at the Leeds-bound plane: Climb, climb! The pilot hissed that he was required to follow the automated warning. The ATC yelled that he could override it if complying “would jeopardize the safety of the aeroplane: Climb! Now!”

I mention this and she seems angry that I have done my research. She says “Pete – the ATC – was right, based on what he saw. And he was right about the rules.”

“But,” I protest. “If he says nothing there is no collision. And how could he have been right?”

She does not explain, but says, “And there’s no crash also if the pilot follows the rule that he must do what ACAS tells him. And not what Pete says or any ATC says.”

Before I can respond, she explains that the pilot has real time data from his system, updated every second, but the controller doesn’t – and is monitoring other planes as well. “Pete was looking after eighteen planes, more than the ATC had in Überlingen.” [The 2002 tragedy in which two planes collided and many Russian children were killed.] “That is why the rule says what it does.”

And then she asserts that she was unaware of his mental state, despite having been emailed about it two weeks earlier by a concerned colleague: “I never opened the message. That was accepted. It was clear from the computer records. I was so ridiculously busy. Afzal headed it not urgent because he knew I was under pressure.” She reminds me that the AAIB report concludes that cause of the collision was that the pilot failed to follow the rules.

And, I remind her, the AAIB added that the Controller, “Pete”, panicked, his conflicting instruction contributed to the workload on the pilot, and he was clinically depressed because of the breakup of his marriage.

“Two sentences,” is her response. “Two sentences in a very long report. And Pete never panicked. Ever. I blame that wife of his. She had another man, you know.”

I didn’t know, and the widow has since denied it to me, hotly and with the support of her new husband, who came on the phone to tell me to sod off.

Quietly, Smith says, “The groups jumped on them, the two sentences.”

She means the various victims’ associations which have been seeking justice, alleging cover-ups, occasionally “revealing” conspiracies such as that the collision was engineered by terrorists – “If only,” Smith says, perhaps unwisely. They have been expertly enlisting politicians and religious leaders, and pursuing her. I know that she is now being prosecuted for manslaughter, after Pete was acquitted, a strange state of legal affairs. “And I’m being sued,” she spits out, “here, in the US and in Australia. And they publish outrageous lies about me in the papers and on television. No one ever mentions that I was not there. I’ve never met these people, these seekers after justice! They don’t know me. But they demolish and threaten me on social media. They say: Remember Überlingen. You know that the ATC in that crash was stabbed by a victim’s father? Killed. On his own doorstep.”

Her painfully twisted mouth and suddenly large dark pupils alarm me. I calm her by asking about her background. She enjoys this. She got “three good ‘A’ levels, in Maths, Economics and History, all at grade C.” She had seen film and photographs of the Control Tower at Heathrow at night, and was seduced (her word) by the excitement: the colourful ever-moving screens, the view of a floodlit airport and all its moving pieces. She spent a year at Fareham and started work at the NATC. She was identified as a rising star and was helped with fees and time to study at Banbury University for a BSc in Air Traffic Management. She got a First class degree and worked as a tutor for a while in Jerez, Spain, before returning full-time and being fast-tracked into management. When she starts to recount her appraisal ratings, I remind her, not very gently, that she has not said anything about her personal life.

“Not relevant,” she bites back. “I’m a working single mum, a grieving widow and a dutiful daughter. AND, before you say anything, it was all lies that I was having an affair with Pete. And he’s not here to defend himself.”

Yes, I have not mentioned that the Pete fell from a motorway bridge, in front of a cement lorry. It was an Open verdict…

“He did defend himself at the trial,” I say. “He said that he was overworked, stressed and that management wouldn’t listen. You mentioned Überlingen. The ATCs were cleared, but managers were convicted, yes?”

“He never named me. He meant Senior Management. He was always complaining about them. Used to say that the Service worked in spite of their decisions and not because of them. He was scathing. Said they would have blood on their hands one day. And now they have. And they’re feeding me to the wolves, to the groups. You know why Pete… well, the pressure on Pete was that they were suing him, and demanding another criminal trial, said they hadn’t got justice, meaning that they hadn’t won. They did get justice, but they didn’t like it. Then when he died, there was no one left. No pilots, no Pete. One of them said: “If he’s not to blame, who is?”

She stands up suddenly and leaves the room without explanation, svelte in her jeans with a unexpected designer tag on the bum. I have another cookie and exchange raised eyebrows with the photographer. After a minute Smith comes back with a box overflowing with papers, clearly having prepared herself. She hands me a document which I see is a High Court judgment.

“You know that I had to sue NATC to get them to continue to pay for my lawyers?” I tell her that I did, since the judgment was given in public. “Yes, they knew they would lose to me, but they didn’t dare give in or settle. The lawyers said that it’s called transfer of responsibility: let the judge take the blame. Andy Coulson had to do the same and he ended up in the Court of Appeal. He won too. Not that I want to be associated with all that. The senior people at NATC suck up to the groups, stuffing me, to protect their own necks.”

Two hours pass while she laboriously takes me through her papers: how everyone accepted that management – including her – did not know of Pete’s illness, how the “minor short-staffing” that night was found not to be a cause of the collision; and how all of this started to unravel. Although no one knows what a jury is thinking, it was, she argues, “Pete’s defence at the trial – hiding behind management,” that was generally (and wrongly in her view) accepted as the successful “tactic” that led to him being found not guilty. “His lawyers made his defence up,” she concludes coldly. And then the NATC turned on her to cover themselves. Suddenly, it was not a systemic problem but a local management issue. “And the groups took the hint,” she says, “and so now it’s me against the rest.”

She digs in her box of papers and hands me a bundle of perhaps one hundred pages held together with a giant paperclip. These are the abusive messages – or some of them – she has received. Death threats. Emails from anonymous mostly numbered email accounts (that, she tells me, the police cannot be bothered to trace), tweets just the right side of criminal, and good old-fashioned letters: green, red and orange ink, smears of what is obviously excrement, and worse, unsuitable for identification in a family newspaper. The predictable MURDERER and horrible BABY-KILLER. And, of course, sickening rape threats.

She stares at me angrily and asks, “Well?”

I say that they are terrible and wonder about the police… Her response is that they make the right noises but her lawyer says that once she had been put in the box of an accused (the manslaughter case) they find it difficult to see her as anything but an adversary.

She has tried to get support from her MP but he is “running scared shitless” of being targeted by the groups. He says, or claims, that a relative of one of the deceased (as she calls the victims) is a constituent and so he has to “stay neutral” which means keeping “his head down so far it’s up his own” well you know. “While I’m on the [expletive deleted] politicians,” she accuses them of fomenting legal action against her as their excuse for avoiding a public inquiry. They don’t want that, she says, because it will show up their under-funding and incompetence. “Think of how the manager was treated in the Baby P case,” she says. She shows me a highlighted section from the court judgment, which includes:

“I cannot leave this case without commenting on the way in which Ms Shoesmith was treated. In another case, Sedley LJ was moved to say:

‘It seems that the making of a public sacrifice to deflect press and public obloquy, which is what happened to the appellant, remains an accepted expedient of public administration in this country…’

In my view, it is also what happened in the present case. Those involved in such areas as social work and healthcare are particularly vulnerable to such treatment. … Whatever her shortcomings may have been (and, I repeat, I cannot say), she was entitled to be treated lawfully and fairly and not simply and summarily scapegoated.”

When I look up, Smith is waiting. She says: “I’m the public sacrifice. Air traffic controllers are just as vulnerable as social workers, because of the appalling consequences of a mistake. Summarily scapegoated.”

Her father appears at the door and says, “We’re going for a pizza. You can join us when you’re done…?” I feel the unspoken next question and its hint that my visit has gone on too long, but I have a job to do. And Smith suddenly looks vulnerable, a mum missing a meal out with her daughter and dad. I wonder why she doesn’t just eject me, but I use the interruption.

“How is your family coping?” I ask gently. Her father reverses out of the room.

There is the first sign of a tear – a tear of grief, that is, rather than the angry ones that have glinted in her eyes for most of the afternoon.

“Dad’s been wonderful. The little one… she’s worried about me. And kids shouldn’t be worrying about their mum. She lost her daddy, for God’s sake, and now this.” She stops there. I ask if she has wider family (because there are rumours) and she takes some time to compose away her tears with a couple of deep breaths and a wipe of the eyes. “I have two brothers, both older than me. They’re supportive, but they have their own lives.” I am unconvinced, but leave her the silence.

She doesn’t take it, so I ask, “What about your mother, is she here?”

“No. Her truth comes from the lying tabloids.”

She has to take a moment. I am thinking that a visit to the mother and the brothers might bear fruit, when Smith suddenly whispers, as if she is not really saying it because she knows she shouldn’t:

“My mother, my own mother, she hugged me and I thought… But then she said: all those poor dead children. I said, I know mum, it’s awful.

She said: I forgive you.”


Gally Maxwell 15 March 2024

---

The Great Docility

Not long, in the end. About forty years.

A University is now a Unidiversity. Tuition fees are set by law at one hundred times average national annual income. Five subjects: Business Studies, Law, Engineering, Medicine, Virtual Population Management. Officially, graduates are Brights. Everyone else is a Consumer.

Personal possession of any work of art or purported art – virtual, screen, print, audio or otherwise – is a criminal offence with a mandatory minimum of five years exclusion from Circuses, the sole, government-run, streaming service providing sport, games shows and Uplift. As the joke goes, very quietly, offenders beg for ten years. The maximum sentence is life imprisonment.

Government ministers are accountable. The Minister for Uplift (or Minister for Brassieres, as some, very quietly, nickname him) takes questions once a year for fifteen minutes from an invited audience. This is the day. He faces ten journalists, one from each New State, in an anonymous, grey-painted conference room on the fifty-eighth floor of Duma House, its two picture-windows giving vast views over the grazing fields of the Farming District of Columbia. Nine are, in the opinion of the tenth, wounded or compromised timeservers. There is stuffy airlessness. There are stifled yawns, shuffling, squeaky bottoms.

An answer from the Minister: ‘Yes, certainly. We have our stories, our culture if you will. All broadcast on Circuses.’ Timeserver One nods appreciatively.

The tenth journalist is Monti Terranuova, a thirty-year-old former Doctor, unintentionally single like so many others in the Nation, his black hair thick and wavy, hazel eyes by far the sharpest in the room. He had entered medicine on the apprenticeship route but chose to leave the poorly paid trade to double his salary by working as an Official Investigative Reporter for Alexandria. The job sounds easy: take the latest government announcements, check them for local relevance (this is the investigation) and make them fun and interesting to the Alexandrians to whom the news is streamed on the other streaming platform, Breadcrumbs of News. His last effort was the conversion of a forty-page issuance entitled Culture for the Vultures: Enhancing Circuses to Hold the Viewer. He composed his first version in his head – it was not safe to type anything into a JoyScreenLapper until it was wholly ready:

Addicting the Addicted[1]

The government today announced the resounding success of its research into the neuro-cementing of Consumer addiction to Circuses and Breadcrumbs. There will be a little more sex in the former and less reality in the latter.

What he eventually wrote was approved and published:

The Benevolent Empire Strikes Back!

With perfect timing, the Benevolent Government (BG) today announced that its long-awaited, much anticipated and resoundingly successful Research into the Long-Term Improvement of Uplift Sources has successfully concluded. We will see the superb results on Circuses within three months. Expect more tantalising fun! A well-turned ankle, perhaps! The twenty-member commission has also concluded its expert musing on a Vision for both Circuses and Breadcrumbs, recommending – to immediate BG approval – slogans to reinforce the policy principles of Greenness and NationoPatriotism:

           Enjoy, my fellow consumers!

At the press conference, Monti muses that no one has risked a follow-up, asking the Minister why the only content allowed on Circuses is that generated by Benevolent Government Non-Artificial Intelligence (BGNAI)? Content that has been minutely developed over forty years to produce Optimised Emotional Responses without fear of the outlawed Benevolently Improper Responses. OER has perfected drama tinged with comedy. No other comedy is allowed.

In response to mild questioning, the Minister has insisted that BGNAI does not produce only movies such as Superberman v Dustin Rainyman, Jadon Borne v Evan Shunt, or the successful “Beloved Product Franchise”, whose stable includes Ken, Action Man, Ludo, Snap, Happy Families, Whist, Bridge, My Mate Unilever, VW Forever, Heroic Pharma the Baby Goat and three-hundred and forty-five others.

He pointed out that Olden-Times-Dramas were increasing in popularity: The Interminable Bulk in Easteros, YonderWoman Takes Excandria, and Chor Saves Downtown Abbey being three popular examples, all in their fourteenth season. And there is music: rock from the satirically named BlandBand (nothing bland about their rhythm and noise…); soul from Retha Simon; hop-hop from the publicly chosen five boys in Tough Streets of Laurelhurst Emerald City; classical from M. Inem Junior.

While Monti is still contemplating a question, the Minister stands up and sweeps out.

‘Shit,’ Monti says to himself. ‘But probably for the best. I’m out of sorts today. Probably would have made a fool of myself… again.’

He does not want to go back to work. The office is tiny, three rooms with seven staff, all under legally mandated surveillance, visually and virtually (Cameras and keystrokes, boys, Cameras and keystrokes…) An old-timer once whispered the unthinkable: that work had been done from home. Many years had passed since that was allowed and, today, Monti remembers thinking that the BG’s Wellness to Swell-Less slogan was part of the propaganda – not a word to be spoken out loud – to ensure workplace attendance:

Work-Life Balance is Complete Work-Life Separation. Your Home Life is Sacred!

The air temperature outside is 142 degrees. The gloriously air-conditioned trams, subways, taxis, and buses carry a price, or prices. Facial recognition. Comprehensive route-recording automatically assessed by White Boy, the AI system with its algorithm designed in Alabama, triggering SWAT arrests based on predicted anti-Benevolent behaviour. Monti wants to visit his uncle, discreetly, his late dad’s (much) elder brother, now in his eighties but nailed (literally) into his beloved house – a precaution to dissuade the Benevolent Rehome Assisters from taking him away. And it was Uncle Bartolomeo who had explained how to do it.

Monti does not have to wait. An e-biker is dismounting. A rare human solidarity in this town is Cheeky Sharing. Just as departing drivers would pass unexpired tickets for parking to new arrivals, so there was an informal consensus: an e-bike could be passed to another person who could take advantage of unexpired time on the hire; and, if necessary, pay the erstwhile rider directly in advance for more time. There was no risk. The buyer pays say ten units for an hour. The seller is automatically charged eight units on the system, so gains a little profit. When the buyer’s hour is up, the bike’s engine stops, so vast roaming charges cannot be incurred. If not returned, at no charge to the hirer, the bike will be GPS located and collected.

But when the engine stops, it can still be pedalled.

He is three miles from Uncle Bart when the motor cuts off with a loud snap. His meandering route has been through dark and risky backroads of dilapidated row houses and luxury shacks, areas where the few remaining local Malevolents systematically vandalise cameras, and where repairers don’t want to go. The extra distance has taken its electrical toll.

A mile of legwork later, Monti hides and stores the bike by shoving it under a Bottlebrush Buckeye shrub a hundred yards into the wood. No one is around. He swigs from his water bottle, loosens his shoulders (the handlebars were set too wide) and strides off confidently. All his life he has played, hidden, courted, breathed in these trees. No one knows them better, except Bart of course.

The sun is low and fierce when Monti emerges into the clearing where the shabby house and well-tended smallholding sit like a native settlement in the wild. He sees that the lane from the house to the road – half a mile – is becoming overgrown, reclaimed by nature, by the absence of ingress or egress. Has Bart been forgotten?

He roars with laughter when Monti asks him.

They are standing on the porch. Extraordinarily flexible for a man in his eighties, Bart has crawled out of a small opening at the back, cut so flush that from outside it is invisible to the naked eye. Three cats have followed him. A ginger tom who immediately lies down on the porch to catch the last of the sun and two young tabbies who head for the trees. A fourth, another ginger, butts the door open with her head and gazes around proprietorially, before trotting over to Bart and winding herself in and out of his ankles. Monti bends to stroke her, clucking and saying her name, Clodia, and she transfers her affections to him.

‘That was the plan, young Monti di Montepulciano. To be forgotten. It’s working. Only whatever the hell they call Social Services nowadays ever contacts me and that’s by phone. The dogs help. Their yelp!’  

‘Stroke of genius, Bart. A man who hates dogs sets sensors that trigger angry bloody barking! How do the cats cope?’

‘What? They know a recording when they hear one. Much cleverer than us. In the hearing department especially. Hey, you’re too thin! I’ll feed us. No microing though. Go light the fire. I’ll bring the venison and potatoes.’

‘Still hunting, then.’

‘No, no, no. Bought it at BenevoMeat.’

As if.

An easy half-hour passes in the shared tasks of cookery. Turning the meat, wrapping the potatoes in foil and placing them in the fire. Slipping morsels to Clodia, and other cats, Mimi, Azucena, Sebastian, Crusoe, and Erasmus. Setting plates, cutlery and cold beer bottles on the ancient but clean-scrubbed table on the porch.

Communication is mostly silent or one word – ‘Here?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Okay.’ – between two guys wholly comfortable with each other. They chat a bit while eating. Monti explains why Annabel left after eight months or, to be accurate, confesses that he doesn’t truly understand what happened. But he did see her in a fancy vehicle a week later with a chauffeur and BenevoParty politician guy.

‘Near miss, then,’ Bart says.

‘What?’

‘She wanted security. Only guys like that can give it now. Better she exits now than at the altar, or when you had kids.’

When the food is gone and the table cleared, a message that passed silently between them an hour ago is acted on. Bart slips easily back through the low door like a fish through a reef. Clodia squeezes through with him. Monti struggles with the bending, his dodgy knee playing up. Bart helps by unceremoniously grabbing his arm and, carefully dragging him through. The party is completed by the ginger tom that Monti now remembers is Catullus, a strange name. Bart hoists him to his feet and Monti notes that the strongest man who has ever gripped him – like paralysis! – has not lost an iota of power. He follows his uncle down the hatch neatly placed under a bathmat and they stoop to walk along the tunnel of thirty-yards, according to Bart, to his underground den, Clodia trotting ahead, Catullus behind.

Monti looks around, always impressed by this well-equipped hideaway, well-stamped soil hidden now by wooden planked flooring, walls similarly panelled, cheerful hand-made rugs, wood-framed chairs brought in parts, malleted together, softened with fitted cushions, spotlight illumination up into corners, shotgun and rifle standing upright ready to be grabbed, a single bed now rather than the mattress on the floor, electric hotplate and kettle, silent fridge, big, big Screen, the last ever Sony, illegal now. Everyone’s screen is now required by law to be the government produced JoyView. A nearly flat beanbag cradles three more sleeping cats, four when a tiptoeing Clodia joins them. Catullus has lain down on the floor next to them. No need for a girly beanbag bed for him.

‘You’ve been busy,’ Monti says.

Bart is twisting two more beers open. ‘Yeah. Every little improvement seems to make a huge difference. Running electricity through is the obvious one. I was done recharging that battery.’

They sit.

Bart waits.

Monti begins indirectly, recounting the press conference. Bart nods, but, again, holds back.

Surprised by the silence, Monti takes a last gulp of beer, and asks, ‘What do you make of the stuff on Circuses?’

Bart sits a little straighter and breathes deeply in through his nose while simultaneously peering down it, studying his nephew, son of a fine baby brother and a smart, sharp sister-in-law, killed together in their car. He decides to make Monti work a little harder and give himself time to see where this going. No point answering directly and dangerously with a comment Monti is not seeking.

‘Mmm. Don’t watch it.’

‘Isn’t that risky? It’s monitored.’

‘It’s on, Monti. In the back bedroom. Statistically, I’m Avid, but that’s really Kardash, the Persian, she loves the company of a TV. Hard to get her out of there.’

Monti is not listening. ‘The programmes are competent … but … there’s something missing.’

‘Yeah. What do you think it is?’

‘It’s difficult … There’s lots of different backgrounds and settings and stories but they all feel, only at gut level … weirdly the same. I don’t understand.’

Bart gains yet more time by stretching a monster bag of salted peanuts, opening it with his teeth. Now it is Monti who waits.

‘Okay. Okay,’ Bart says. ‘Now, I swore to your dad that I would protect you from harm, grab you before you punched or fell, counsel you the best I can. Hearing an honest answer to that question could… lead to me letting your dad down. You get me?’

‘Really? Well. Sure. But this isn’t me reviewing these Uplift programmes for other viewers and wondering. It’s my reaction: feeling a disjoint – is that a word? – in… you know… I guess… Circuses is only one part. Disjuncture. Discomfort. Disarray?’

Bart finishes crunching a mouthful of nuts. No tough decision is needed. The kid has arrived. His intelligence led him there, inevitably.  If Bart doesn’t come clean, Monti’s cognitive dissonance will only worsen. And he will speak to the wrong person. Here, he is with the nearest thing to the right person. Still, he wishes that Fausto were here, so dad and uncle could consult and check out their response.

‘Okay. Last chance. Do you want me to answer?’

‘Sure.’

‘Good, because I might have been compelled to do it anyway. Listen. Old-stagers like me are a worry to the government. We remember the things they’ve swept away. They monitor and watch us, get us into supervised homes as soon as they can. Give a hint of rebellion and the family finds the old guy or gal confused and they sign the papers. The BG people are not evil. They probably kill less often than every government before them. But they’re nervous and sensitive. I think…’

‘Are you under surveillance?’

‘How does anyone know these days? They don’t need to place physical bugs, so there’s nothing we can detect. Try electro-scanning for their signal and they find you in seconds; and the stroke you suffer an hour later will not be natural. But, no, I doubt that I’m of much interest to them. And rightly so. I keep my head down. I refuse the subtle invitations to dissenter groups…’ He saw Monti’s eyes widen. A reporter, and he did not even know such groups existed. ‘Well, never mind that. I just stay home and let them forget me. Hey, you distracted me!’

‘Sorry. These gr…’

‘I said never mind them. I need to get straight to it. Can you see the door in that wall panelling? No? Good. Walk up to it and then pull it open.’

Monti stands at the wall. There is nowhere to grip.

‘Run your fingers down that darker grain in the wood.’

Yes. A small ridge. Only two fingers will fit in. He pulls. Too hard. The door flies open and hits him on the nose. No blood lost, only dignity. He steps to one side to look in. Another room, as big as the one he stands in.

‘Bart? What is this?’

‘My library. My storeroom. You’ll recognise books. There are VHS videos, CDs, vinyl records, cassettes, DVDs. And more books. But not the ones you can buy these days.’

Monti says with strange formality, ‘You have personal possession of… these are works of art? Isn’t that a crime?’

‘Yeah. Guilty to both, although I immediately regret that joking reply. Yes, they are works of art. Many of the greatest humanity has produced – ever – plus silly romcoms and even Kung Fu films. Bruce Lee was…’

‘Sure. I get it. Is this what you meant about dangerous? That I now know you have this stuff?’

‘No. That’s just the beginning.’ Bart groans as he stands up, burping painfully. ‘I’ve had too much beer. I’ll make coffee. You go in there. The shelves are labelled alphabetically. Find Roman and then a book with Lucretius on the spine.’

‘Look what?’

Bart waves him away, wriggling with another gathering eructation. Hoarsely, he says, ‘You’ll see it.’

The coffee on, Bart collapses back into his seat with a grateful sigh. Monti is already there, at first glancing through the book, then returning to the start to study closely.

‘Read out the first few lines of the Introduction,’ Bart instructs.

‘What? Oh, sure.’ Monti clears his throat. ‘All one has to do is remind oneself that it exists, to see what a puzzling poem Lucretius wrote. An important work, an undeniably great work – but the immediate problem is to remember it is there at all. It is the least visible of the great poems, even when we finally turn to look at it. What almost every lyric poem has found to praise, Lucretius’ poem scorns…’

‘Stop there.’ Bart breathes deep again. The venison was a mistake. Too rich for a geezer on the final edge of life. He smiles to himself. ‘Hey, that Intro by Rolfe Humphries is good, but we’re short of time. I can tell it quicker. So, as you’ve seen, most of the book is a long poem. Tell me, can you think of a contemporary work of art that scorns?’

‘Scorns?’

‘Expresses disdain or contempt.’

‘I know what it means. I didn’t understand your question. Of course I don’t know a book that scorns. Because why would anyone write one like that?’

‘O Glory of the Greeks, the first to raise the shining light out of tremendous dark illumining the blessings of our life, You are the one I follow… You’ll see that at the start of Book three. Monti. Almost everyone now lives in, has been manipulated into, tremendous dark. You’ve never heard of Lucretius or Confucius or Buddha or Mohammed or Cicero or Avicenna or Plutarch or Epicurus or Montaigne or Bacon or Voltaire, Rousseau, Marx, Weber, Dickens…’

Monti holds up his hand. ‘Please stop. I don’t… Now, you listen. I know Shakespeare and so do most people.’

‘You don’t. Nor does anyone else of your age.’

‘What? I took a year-long course!’

‘You studied Hamlet?’

‘Amongst others, why?’

‘You used to recite the To be or not to be soliloquy. It was very sweet. We all cheered. Can you do it now?’

Monti shakes his head, disbelieving. ‘Sure. I played it at school. Fine. I remember it. Here goes.

“To be or not to be—that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler for Claude to suffer death
Now or face the arrows of outrageous fortune,
While I take arms and prove his filthy guilt
And then, by violence, end him. To die, to sleep—
No more—and by a sleep to say we end
The heartjoy and the thousand glorious days
That the flesh enjoys —’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be feared. To die, to sleep—
To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, that may help,
For in that sleep of death fell dreams shall come,
To Claude and his mortal coil executed,
To torture him awhile. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of the loss of life.
For who would lose the quips and jokes of time,
His oppressor’s downfall, the proud man’s respect,
The bangs of ecstatic love, litigation won,
The indolence of his office, the reward
The benevolent merit and always gain,
For fear that his nephew might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would barbells bear,
To grunt and sweat in a weekly workout,
But that the dread of a revenging relative
Threatens a one-way ticket to undiscovered 
Country with no return, muzzles the will
And makes him deny the florid ills of death
And fly against me to get revenge in first?
Such conscience does make fighters of us all,
And thus the bright strong hue of resolution
Is painted over the fearful cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard they rise to thrill us all, turn 
And face the accuser. I must act in justice,
Be sure and fair, and if guilt be shown, not fluff
To execute the only name of action.
Which is but easy written: to fight until
A death. —Soft you now, my fair Ophelia.
Nymph, on your horizons, the nobility
Of my reward is to be always remembered.”’

His uncle claps briefly. ‘Bravo! Now summarise the play for me.’

‘Bart, what the…’

‘This is very important Monti.’

‘Sure. Well, Claude, Hamlet’s uncle has killed his own brother, Hamlet’s father, raped his mother Gertrude and forced her to have an abortion. Hamlet is determined to get revenge, but he believes in justice and that assassination would be cowardly. He will prove – or not – that Claude did these things and then fight him to the death. There’s a tough scene where Hamlet tries to get evidence from Gertrude about the rape and he orders her to a nunnery. He and Horatio fight Claude’s supporters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. One is killed but Guildenstern runs for it. There’s a breathless chase through the castle, up and down stone stairs, jumping out of towers onto piles of hay below, until he grabs a horse that has just been saddled. Hamlet follows and eventually jumps from his horse onto Guildenstern’s, wrestles him to the ground, and shoots him. Back at the castle we see Claude’s soliloquy, a wallow in his achievement, starting:

“O, my success is great, it rises to heaven;
It hath the primal brotherly blessing,
To marry his widow. To care for her, to pray
With strong intent and enjoy the glorious prize.”’

Bart says, ‘Excellent. Now finish your summary.’

‘Er… Polonius ambushes Hamlet because Ophelia is pregnant, and they fight. Just when Hamlet is getting the upper hand, Laertes appears and joins the scrap. With fast punches and a kung-fu kick, Hamlet decks them. He kills them with hand-chops to their throats. Hamlet has his proof now: he overheard Claude’s soliloquy. He finds this evil uncle and likely stepfather. He is angry and they spar words, but Claude is adept at taking the sting out of what Hamlet accuses him of. Word arrives that Gertrude has finally spoken and has accused Claude. Lethally enraged, Hamlet attacks Claude. But he has underestimated him and another ten-minute fight scene is the result. They end up on the battlements and Claude is struck through the heart, falling off the wall into oblivion. Hamlet shouts, “The King is dead. Long live the King. Go, bid the soldiers shoot. I am vengeance. I am the night.”[2] Our teacher said that this is an example of intertextuality. Movies took the last two sentences for their dark films. Hamlet is the first superhero, focused on justice and revenge. Oh, and it ends with the double wedding, Hamlet to Ophelia, Horatio to Gertrude.’

This time Bart fetches the book himself. He hands the Oxford Shakespeare edition of Hamlet to Monti and directs him to the To be or not to be soliloquy and Claudius’s self-lacerating, O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven. It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t, A brother’s murder.’

‘Shit,’ Monti mutters. He flicks to the start and end of the play. ‘Christ, Bart. They’re not just withholding, they’re lying to us? Rewriting a classic?’

‘They are. King Lear does not reconcile with his family and stay on as a great, wise monarch for another decade. Othello and Desdemona don’t make up in an extended sex session. Prospero is not rescued by the bravery of Alonso and Ariel killing Caliban. Romeo…

‘But what about Prospero’s great final lines?’

‘Tell me.’

‘They are:

“I know not if each man has a destiny
Or if all float around on a breeze
Accidental-like. But I think, maybe,
Maybe it is both.”

Bart says, ‘That’s not what Shakespeare wrote. Say it again.’ He listens as Monti intones the words he found profound. ‘Yeah,’ Bart says. ‘I got it. Forrest Gump. A movie from the nineties.’

‘Dear God.’

‘Yes. Listen. Romeo and Juliet both die. They don’t escape and meet cute again on holiday in Venice. Now. Understand this. Everything they spew at us as Uplift is utterly unchallenging. Before you disagree, I don’t mean difficult to follow or to read, I mean it doesn’t challenge lazy thinking, our lack of critical thought, who and where we are, and, of course, it never challenges power. Speaking truth to power, what the Greeks called parrhesia is critical to a free country. You understand?’

‘I hear you,’ Monti says doubtfully.

‘Uplift speaks power to truth, overwhelming it. Decades ago truth was devastated by powerful liars and gullible listeners. That happened cyclically. The Axis in WW2, God forbid, the Germans and the British in WW1, “Never such innocence again.”[3] Too right. … Decades later, hurricanes of information hit people through their phones and screens. Multiple narratives of real events, serious issues: they are so enervating, depressing, and confusing! But I have to say, however much I want BG out now, they saved us from the worst. Their intentions were good. The first leaders just wanted to establish one truth. The truth. But as Eliot wrote, Humankind cannot bear very much reality. People who heard, or could imagine, any other version refused to believe the truth. So BG eased away from itand created their own, comforting version. That is what you see and have absorbed. It’s unnourishing, a too-nice story without conflict or heroism or sacrifice. That’s why you are uneasy. Your uneasiness is real and valid. The perfection served up to the… the… population is unattainable – in the real world. No one, including governments, gets everything right first time. There are always difficulties. Writers and artists, and, yes, journalists, feel that and they tackle the problems. They pontificate, argue, protest, agitate, and, most importantly, they make us understand that something is wrong and must be changed.’

‘That’s all a bit heavy, Bart. But I get it… in my head… in abstract… I need…’

‘Yes. You need to read the challengers from the past, to understand how important they were, even when they were very irritating, when they chipped away at error and falsehood. Let’s start with the extreme. Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal, which was that poverty could be reduced by the poor selling their children to be eaten, getting rid of poverty-stricken kids. It would be a win-win because he has been told that they are a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled.’

‘Really? Someone wrote that?’

‘He did and it’s a classic. That will be your first read. It’s only seven pages. Swift was really attacking the government for not helping the poor even though good ideas were being put forward. I can’t remember all of them, but they were things like raising taxes on absentee landlords, and getting shopkeepers to buy local and stop cheating their customers. He despised landlords and he goes after them couple of times, proposing “teaching our landlords to have at least one degree of mercy towards their tenants”. If these ideas can be delivered, there will be no need to eat the poor.’

‘Wow. Savage.’

 ‘Yes, that’s how he’s often described, but he pitched it perfectly. Now. We need to move on… Monti. I sit here and I think about all of this. I’m no genius. You know me as a park-keeper. I was not allowed to tell anyone that I taught for twenty odd years, in University…’

‘Unidiversity,’ Monti corrects.

‘No,’ Bart says gently. ‘They were universities – for universal study and learning, in all meanings of that grand word. The shabby shadows we have now, those unidiversities, that foul massacre of words, hiding that uni there to mean, in practice, uniformity, unicolored, they’re valueless in comparison. Earlier, I stopped you at the word scorns. You know it. You know what it means, but you don’t know, you can’t conceive of its relevance to writing or other arts. You and ninety-nine percent of the population have been manipulated, deprived, misled. Art now is relentlessly positive. God help us. Spectacular human achievement built from doubt, skepticism, questioning, over thousands of years has been denied you. Why? To keep you happy: a much-overrated condition. To keep you… docile. Unquestioning. Unscorning.’

A final gurgle signals that the coffee has filtered through. Bart takes his black. He adds milk to Monti’s, handing it to him on the way back to the table.

He continues. ‘Nothing is ever simple. The so-called Benevolent Government has, I admit, calmed society. Universal – that word again – full employment; wages with built-in discretionary spending; free, continuous, unchallenging entertainment – an archaic word now – from the accursed Uplift; no noticeable government interference if you just live the docility. The World Freedom Council ensures this is, almost, worldwide. So no wars. Yet.’

‘War? That’s ancient history, Easteros and…’

‘No. You heard me mention two world wars. Your great-grandfather fought in the second, in France and Germany, your grandfather was wounded in a later operation when we peacefully annexed Siberia in 2035. You would be – you will be – proud of them.’

‘Tell me!’

‘Later. I was saying, the BG is not evil. The Great Docility as I call it has massively reduced poverty, suffering, and conflict.’

‘So what’s the problem?’

Bart says, slowly, ‘You know the answer. The unease you’re feeling. You’re not alone… No, forget that, for now at least. The Great Docility is … how can I put it … not human. We’re not wired to be docile, or not everyone. Humans are, were, driven. To discover, learn, argue, resolve, invent, improve. That’s why you have aircon and JoyScreens and JoyViewLappers and phones and non-invasive-surgery – you know they used cut people open? – and everything else. People saw a need or an improvement and, heads down, they drove at it like a linebacker on a blitz.’

‘A what?’

‘Okay. Like a bull at a red rag. Listen. The other word that has been repeating itself in my head for forty years now is stifled. Humanity has been stifled, prevented from moving on. It’s not natural and it’s not sustainable. The BG know this. Even I’m impressed by how light on their feet they are to spot a risk and quell it. Remember that guy last year – in Metro stations, never stayed still for more than five minutes. Took them a month to catch him.’

‘The noise-polluter?’

‘Exactly. They labelled him that within four hours of his first appearance.’

‘Yes, well he was pollu…’

‘No. What was he doing?’

‘Yelling at people. Playing his speaker too loud.’

‘You never heard him. That’s a statement, not a question. There are no recordings. No vox-pop on the Daily Uplift News or your Breadcrumbs from other travellers describing what they heard. Just the BG: that yelling noise-polluter.’

‘He never came on my patch. That’s why. And?’

‘He was my age. He was dying and he said to himself, Now or never. I saw him perform three times, after probably sixty attempts to get tickets. Sold out in seconds. Oh, the privilege: to see him at the Met; at Covent Garden; and La Scala of course. You’ve never heard of those places. The buildings still exist, but as those virtual Hyper-Experience Zones where you can inhabit an ancient comic’s multi-verse for a while.’

Bart pauses.

 ‘Monti. He was singing. Singing the most beautiful arias – Audio Units to you – from the finest operas, the music blasting from his speaker. Verdi, Rossini, Mozart, Monteverdi, Bizet, Donizetti, Britten, and the maestro, in my opinion, Giacomo Puccini, composer of La bohéme, Tosca, Madam Butterfly, Turandot. Oh, what the world has missed. What is almost lost.’

‘Wait a minute. You said, Now or never, to himself. How can you know that… You don’t… ? You know him?’

‘Knew him. He’s disappeared. Even if they cared for him like a child he was on his way out within a few days. Now. Listen to this.’

Bart brings a thin, square plastic box from his storeroom and takes out a shiny disc. Hidden behind the Sony is a black metal box showing green numbers on a small rectangular screen. Monti watches him push the disc into a slot. The Sony fires up, but there is no picture, only a list of, what, AUs? Bart sits down again, heavily now, he’s tiring; and wields a strange column of plastic. Seeing Monti’s confusion, he says:

‘It’s a remote control. Pre-voice activation. Ah, now.’

The opening chords of Nessun Dorma bring tears to Bart’s eyes. When Pavarotti’s voice fills their heads and the whole space of the room, Monti is incredulous and also greatly moved. His mouth falls open at the glorious climax. The music fades. Bart waves his control again and the screen falls blank.

Monti wants more. Bart sees that it is still mid-evening and there is plenty of time, if he can keep going. He’ll jazz himself up with a crafty glass of the official SmackSpeed when he gets a chance.

They listen to more great arias, to recordings of forgotten actors reading poems of Pope and Auden and Akhmatova and Baudelaire and Billy Collins, they return to music with the Internationale, Dylan and Springsteen, Joni Mitchell, Rise Against, Public Enemy and U2’s Bloody Sunday. Each chosen song must be explained. Born in the USA leaves Monti speechless.

They eat again at 9pm. Sandwiches and water, inadvisable chocolate. Coffee is kept constantly on the boil and they charge up regularly. Bart needs a rest from talking, from explaining. He chooses a DVD and after almost two hours of silence in the room, Monti, astonished and horrified, weeps – at the ending of 1984.

Bart explains that the film is based on a book and that it was a warning about the horrors of despotic states, which had to be defeated in World War II; that its message was loud and listened to over several decades; and that it was smuggled into countries suffering under those terrible regimes. He takes a moment and then says:

‘A wise author once wrote that “By definition, a country in which you are free to read Nineteen Eighty-Four is not the country described in Nineteen Eighty-Four.” Are you free to read it?’[4]

‘No. I expect not. Never heard of it.’

‘Right. Did the movie feel Uplifting?’

‘No. No, but… I forget everything we watch now, on Uplift, but there is so much in that story. I just want to think, and think. And watch it again.’

Bart stands up and stretches. ‘I’ll come back, but I need to feed the cats and lock down. Find a DVD of The Wire and watch it till I get back. You’re not working tomorrow?’

‘No. It’s the weekend.’

‘Sleep here. I’ll use the bedroom. I’ll bring some fresh food down for later and for you in the morning.’

At midnight, Bart returns. Monti is already hooked on The Wire. Packing food into the fridge, Bart says, ‘No more. We need to talk now.’

‘Really? What is this incredible show?’

‘The truth, mostly.

‘But it’s fictional. I saw that.’

Sprightly, Bart bends up from the fridge and puts a TupperJoyWare box on the table, with two cans of zero calorie cola. He sits down, tapping his foot. Monti sees that he is wired, but says nothing, too interested in the conversation.

‘Yes,’ Bart agrees. ‘But you can get closer to the truth with a fictional story informed by fact and experience. Eudora Welty was a superb writer in the last century – she lived from 1909 to 2001. She won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. She wrote:

“Art, though, is never the voice of a country; it is an even more precious thing, the voice of the individual, doing its best to speak, not comfort of any sort, but truth. And the art that speaks it most unmistakably, most directly, most variously, most fully, is fiction; in particular, the novel.”[5]

You heard that, not comfort… but truth. And the factual truth represented in The Wire has a parallel in a non-fiction book in the room there. It’s called We Own This City by a guy called Fenton.[6] Can’t remember his first name. Future reading for you.’ He says, ‘Hey, I forgot. I brought sandwiches. And the cola is frozen, so give it time and it’ll be great.’

They chew on cheese and ham on thick-cut bread that Bart makes himself. It’s warm underground and they hold the icy cans to their foreheads and wrists.

Bart finishes first, in a chemical hurry. He asks:

‘Are you following? Are you interested? Do I carry on? Can we…’

‘Whoa, slow down. Er, yes, yes, and yes. I’ve never known anything like this. It’s like… I don’t know… as if my brain was… off… and you switched it back on. Have they altered our brains?’

‘Yes, but clearly it’s reversible, as we… I expected.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Good. Now, I sent you first for Lucretius for a reason. He was writing the philosophy of the great Epicurus. And he was challenging received wisdoms, ingrained beliefs. Deep beliefs. Beliefs others probably thought were unambiguously true – and also important to maintain public order. He insisted that there is no after-life, a very perilous thing to say, contradicting a fundamental for many. He contemptuously dismissed fear of death: when we’re dead, we’re dead; we can’t suffer any more. And organised religion was bunkum. Listen to this from Book six. He has already written that men tremble in fear of the gods and ‘grovel’ in their ignorance that ‘Proclaims divine authority and sway.’ Then he turns up the heat:

Students, even those who have learned their lesson well
That gods lead lives supremely free of care,
May wonder, now and then, by what intent
This thing or that can happen, …

                                                       This wonderment
Leads to confusion, leads them to regress
To obsolete religious awe, to invoke
A bitter lordship for themselves, poor fools –
Believers in almighty gods, and blind,
Credulous, ignorant of what can be
And what cannot, limits and boundaries,
Systems determined and immutable –
And so they wander, borne along in blind
Unreason.[7]

Bart lets this sink in for a few seconds. He hands the book to Monti.

‘Strong stuff. See those critical words? Confusion, regress, obsolete, bitter, fools, blind, credulous, ignorant, blind again. Blind unreason, that’s where we are under the BG.’

‘I get it. He’s not sitting on any fences.’

‘And most powerful people of the time were believers. Who is this upstart calling them confused, blind, ignorant fools?’ Seeing Monti nodding in agreement, Bart continues. ‘Now, Lucretius lived in the century before Christ. Leap forward fifteen hundred years. To 1471. The book has been lost. It’s known to have at least existed because other writers have mentioned it. Deep in Germany, a manuscript is found. If it was controversial when written, it was suicidally dangerous now. The Catholic Church ruled –  fiercely. Dissent, discussion, scorn of its doctrines could have you killed. The ancient manuscripts were held in Monasteries mostly. But monks were often banned from any discussion about books – even sacred texts read aloud – for fear of dissent. The book on this is Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve. It’s also in there,’ he nodded to the storeroom, in the Rinascimento section. Bring it to me.’

Bart flicks through the hardback book until he finds what he wants, and reads it out. ‘The Pope,

“Benedict did not absolutely prohibit commentary on the sacred texts that were read aloud, but he wanted to restrict its source: “The superior,” the Rule allows, “may wish to say a few words of instruction.” Those words were not to be questioned or contradicted, and indeed all contention was in principle to be suppressed. As the listing of punishments… makes clear, lively debate, intellectual or otherwise, was forbidden. To the monk who has dared to contradict a fellow monk with such words as “It is not as you say,” there is a heavy penalty: “an imposition of silence or fifty blows.” The high walls that hedged about the mental life of the monks—the imposition of silence, the prohibition of questioning, the punishing of debate with slaps or blows of the whip—were all meant to affirm unambiguously that these pious communities were the opposite of the philosophical academies of Greece or Rome, places that had thrived upon the spirit of contradiction and cultivated a restless, wide-ranging curiosity.’[8]

He asks a quiet Monti, ‘Sound familiar?’

‘Christ, Bart. But what does it mean? You want to go back to dissent and argument, shake up the whole country?’

Bart takes his time to reply. He swigs a few drops of the cola that have melted around the core of ice. Finally, he says, ‘Good question. That’s where we’ve got to…

‘We… I’ve let you get away with that but now…’

‘Yes,’ Bart snaps, showing irritation for the first time. ‘I’m going to tell you. Oldies like me have lived a quiet life, heads down – yeah, enjoying the stability and prosperity – but we see the cracks appearing. The leaders are younger now and know nothing about the past. They want and desperately need the present to continue – to keep them in ready cash and pensions in the future, hold the pitchforks from the door. They’re gearing up to heighten their control. To set up a specialist operations group to, to put it simply, find people like me and “help” by sedating me in a home. If younger people have been corrupted by us – and some have, like you! – they are to be removed, currently in an unspecified way. Even the sugary Uplift is to be hardened up with nationalist ideas and martial themes. Soldier hero stories – to recruit kids to the armed forces that they want to expand.’

Monti listens intently, his brain still creaking into gear through a fog he suspects had been placed in him by the BG. How? In food, drink, water probably. His forehead is lined and the top of his nose is wrinkled.

‘I can see you’re concerned,’ Bart says quietly. ‘That’s the starting point. The young people who immediately leap from understanding the problem to conspiring to destroy BG are not what we need. Thoughtful, and artful: that’s what we want, what you are. To be very clear, we’re non-violent. No guns, no knives, no bombs. You agree?’

Alive to the unsubtle dismissal of those attracted to destroying BG, Monti says, ‘Sure. Everything you’ve said. But how…’

‘Give me a chance! Last background. Lucretius’s poem De Rerum Naturae, On the Nature of Things, had an impact in a future unforeseeable to him. He didn’t start the change, the men and women in the Quattrocento and Cinquecento all over Europe were inspired by him, and it was they who drove forward, and remade the European world. The Catholic Church was the BG of the day, but was horribly corrupt and venal. And terrified that debate and knowledge would bring it down in pieces. The Vatican knew about the corruption, but its reaction started in earnest in 1517 when, in what became Germany, Martin Luther published his 95 Theses, many of which directly challenged the Church. This was the start of Protestantism. All around, artists rediscovered learning from the Ancients – who were of course pagans, and not only because they lived before Jesus was born. A nightmare for the Church – people were questioning, engaged, discussing, criticising.’

He sees Monti nodding, pennies dropping in his mind.

‘Yes, it was the Renaissance to you and me. I hear that Italian researchers don’t like the term in their language – the Rinascimento – and prefer Quattrocento, but it was a true rebirth.’

‘Quattrocento is the 1400s?’

‘Yeah. Now, there have been dissident groups here. Some are still around. They call Government Place the Bugiale. That means the Lie Factory and in the days of Poggio Bracciolini, the man who found the manuscript, it meant the Vatican.[9] But these groups were mostly too early, too aggressive. It was never reported, but they did have guns and they killed a few important people. And it’s the too early factor that matters.’

‘They killed?’

‘Stupidly, yes. But they had no chance. In my day, before BG, artists wanted a New Renaissance. They were active and constructive and listened to. But they had no route plan, no plan at all: it was simply, Give the arts more money. That annoyed governments and the media that supported them. The real problem is in the word – renaissance. Tell me, what comes before a rebirth?’

‘Conception?’

‘Yes, and…’

‘Re… re… I guess a rebirth comes after the death of what was born before? What lived before?’

Bart claps his hands. ‘Brilliant! Exactly that. Art hadn’t died then. It was vigorous and widely loved, but it didn’t pay well. And then, the change. Over forty years, BG has killed the arts.[10] Either entirely – the disappearance of books, drama – or by  “reimagining” works, like in your version, damnable non-version, of Hamlet. So at the hand of BG, we have the death of what restarted 600 years ago, the death of the Enlightenment that followed, and the… the atrophy of our critical brains. I stopped watching Uplift years ago. That’s what has fogged your mind. And, ironically, it illustrates the power of art – negatively. In the old days we would have asked, naively, How can Art influence a whole generation? But now Uplift, a bastard lying art, is embedded in every living generation. There are quite a few ancient exceptions like me, and we’re joined by others, mostly our younger family members who have shown pain or discomfort at… not just at Uplift, but everything, without knowing why.’

He stands up suddenly, unable to sit still. ‘Let’s get some air.’

‘You’ve not long locked up.’

‘You don’t want to?’

Catullus and Clodia rise and stretch, atmospherically aware that the men are leaving. They follow into the grass and soil. The air is cool and Monti is immediately grateful to feel its freshness in contrast to the restricted, stuffy hideaway and its odours of food and men. Bart has handed him a small flashlight and pushes a similar one into his own pocket. The clear sky and moon are all he needs to see his way. He strides towards the wood, Catullus running ahead.

Under the trees, he slows to let Monti come alongside.

‘I love the smell of trees and greenery and earth at night,’ Bart declares. ‘Bury me here, if you can. And keep the struggle going.’

‘You’re calling it the struggle already? You’ll be with us for the victory. Hold on. What does victory look like?’

They duck under low-hanging boughs. Clodia is with them, ever close to Bart. Glimpses of Catullus, hunting, catch their eyes.

‘Victory. Mm. It’s a process. We learn from the ancients and the renaissance guys, the twentieth-century writers. You have to communicate this – but you also have to do the art, do the best you can. The first phase – no, that word’s too strong, too technocratic. At first all we can do is gradually inform younger generations, and try, and this is the trickiest part, to get original works out there. Tricky, because that will be seen by the BG. But they have pressing problems: there are revolutionaries who feel like us and think the answer is violence. They’re dangerous and they’ll lose. We’re already drip-feeding places the more innocuous works first. Don’t ask me which. When the BG is focused on the Malevolents, we will up the ante. Shakespeare is impossible. All his work is stuffed with strife, defiance, argument, and most of all with constant, battering ambiguity. The Ancients, Lucretius, Catullus, Virgil, Horace might be the answer. No one in power knows their work and a mini-classical revival might not seem a major risk. Then we move on, chronologically might be safest.’

Bart suddenly bends to grab and pick up a surprised Clodia who mews briefly in protest.

A fox.

It is on the trail of Catullus. The two men jog forward, the fox backs away a few feet but is terribly thin and hungry, desperate not to lose this meal. Catullus turns and arches his back, hissing. But he doesn’t see Monti, on Bart’s nod, slip behind him and lift him up, palm on belly, arms wrapping him tight as a baby to quell his squirm. Bart throws a stone towards the vicinity of the fox and, with a last dejected look, it turns and trots away.

Bart says, ‘It breaks my heart not to leave meat out for him, but when I tried that one fox became ten. I lost Niccolò – never thought that would happen to the cunning little thing – and Aligheri, who was only five months old. That hurt.’

They walk on in silence for a while, Catullus still wriggling but in protective custody now, Clodia purring and ready to snooze.

 ‘Where were we?’ He asks Monti. He knows the answer and Monti knows also that this is a test. He also notices that he is now part of We.

 ‘We start with the classics, low-key, and work up from there. I disagree. If you get your revival, you’ll need to get onto easily understood stuff and quickly: the bloke who wrote 1984, The Wire, all the ones I don’t know.’

 ‘You think? I’ll pass it on. Or, do you want to be involved, read and read and watch and advise what to release and when? The current idea is that when we reach the tipping point, and the BG is weakened, we’ll demand free elections and free expression. We might even get them.’

‘That’s fair. Getting to the tipping point is the challenge.’            

They see the lights of a road maybe fifty yards away. Rather than turning to retrace the path, Bart swings right, onto a curve now that will bend back to his place.

‘But that isn’t enough,’ Bart says. What haven’t I mentioned?’

‘Who will govern?’

‘True, but much more important than that. Try again.’

‘I’m shattered, Bart. Tell me.’

‘Okay. The Renaissance artists didn’t simply re-introduce the old writings and visual arts, they took them as their own. And they made their own art. With the foundations in place, we need – have to hope for – a Bacon; a Galileo; and, yes, a Machiavelli; a Newton; Boyle; Bocaccio; Dante; Leonardo; Michelangelo. Just one of them, to seed the rebirth.’ He stopped and turned to his nephew, each man calmly encumbered with ginger cats. ‘That’s also where you come in.’

‘Me? The new… what? I can’t paint or sculpt. My writing is a text version of Uplift’s guidelines and brain fog.’

‘In the question is the answer. When you’ve discovered as much as you can take of the Renaissance and the later centuries, you’ll be very different. You might immediately know what you must create. You won’t be painting. We have technology for images now and if pictures are what you want, you can make them. My prediction is that the change will come with a great text, old or new, combined with music and – I don’t know how – images. We have infinite images now and we can recreate those lost. The artist adds video or stills or e-reality, perhaps those astounding low-flying views we now have of Venus and Saturn. But that’s just me. There are geniuses out there. When we release them from Uplift and the BG, everything I just said will be old hat. They’ll surprise us, astonish the public, fall out with everyone, produce their greatest work in obscurity, live in unimaginable joy, or sin, as you prefer, and crack the world open. You can make that happen. Get the process – the reading, the viewing – going. Make art yourself. Search for genius.’

‘Yes. I see it. My God it’s… daunting, exciting, inspiring.’

‘It is. It is. Now, let’s get started.’

Gally Maxwell
5 May 2024

---

[1] See Ted Gioia (2024) ‘The State of the Culture: Or a glimpse into post-entertainment society (it’s not pretty)’ 18 February. Ted Gioia The Honest Broker, on Substack.

[2] From: ‘I am vengeance. I am the night. I am Batman.’

[3] Philip Larkin, ‘MCMXIV’, Collected Poems.

[4] George Packer (2019) ‘Doublethink is Stronger Than Orwell Imagined: What 1984 means today.’ The Atlantic, July 2019. Quoting the work under review, Dorian Lynskey (2019) Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell’s ‘1984’. London: Picador.

[5] Eudora Welty (2002) On Writing. Modern Library, p40, as far as I can tell.

[6] Justin Fenton (2021) We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Corruption and Cops in an American City. London: Faber & Faber.

[7] Lucretius tr. Rolfe Humphries (1968) The Way Things Are. The De Rerum Natura of Titus Lucretius Carus. Indiana University Press, 203-204.

[8] Greenblatt, Stephen. The Swerve: How the Renaissance Began (pp. 35-36). Random House. Kindle Edition.

[9] ‘Poggio had established himself at the very center of what he called “the Bugiale,” the Lie Factory.’ Greenblatt, Stephen. The Swerve: How the Renaissance Began (p. 151). Random House. Kindle Edition.

[10] Note Greenblatt on the death of the ancient learning: “The early humanists felt themselves, with mingled pride, wonder, and fear, to be involved in an epochal movement. In part the movement involved recognizing that something that had seemed alive was really dead. For centuries, princes and prelates had claimed that they were continuing the living traditions of the classical world and had appropriated, in some form or other, the symbols and the language of the past. But Petrarch and those he inspired insisted that this easy appropriation was a lie: the Roman Empire did not actually exist in Aachen, where the ruler who called himself the “Holy Roman Emperor” was crowned; the institutions and ideas that had defined the world of Cicero and Virgil had been torn to pieces, and the Latin written by the philosophers and theologians of the past six or seven hundred years was an ugly and distorted image, like that reflected in a badly made mirror, of what had once been so beautifully eloquent. It was better not to pretend any longer, but to acknowledge that there was no continuity. Instead, there was a corpse, long buried and by now disintegrated, under one’s feet.” Greenblatt, Stephen. The Swerve: How the Renaissance Began (p. 129). Random House. Kindle Edition.