1

Walter Pingel had spent the last five months as a scrimshanker. A scrimshanker,

according to the Ministry of Public Enlightenment, whose soundbites educated New

Britain, was someone who lounged around all day while everyone else toiled.

Scrimshankers watched soaps like Patriot Place on stateovision, feet up on the sofa.

They drank endless cups of tea and cans of cider. Without a job to occupy them,

they were always first in the snaking queue at the State Abundance Store; they

snapped up all the sugar and soap.

But now, the day of Walter Pingel’s redemption had arrived.

After five scrimshanking months of burying himself in bed till noon, of numb

afternoons staring at his stateovision screen, of crawling back into bed at dusk, he

was rejoining the world of the toilers.

He must peep his fingers and toes out from his Hammerama Man and Sickle

Boy duvet. He must roll his body from his warm mattress into the chilly grey air of his

chilly grey flat. And he must catch a bus to People’s City Central, remembering first

to swap his pyjamas for a shirt, tie and trousers. In a ministry in People’s Square,

he’d be pardoned for his former employment with New Britain’s only experiment in

capitalism since the Pickaxe Revolution of ’85. He would accept the job the Freedom

and Plenty Party had chosen for him.

He curled his knees into his chest, pulled his duvet over his face and stared

wide-eyed at the black nothing.

In the hallway of his flat, his intercom screeched. He tumbled from bed and

staggered from his tiny bedroom.

‘Walter, is that you?’ piped a tinny voice down the crackling intercom receiver.

He stifled a sigh and pressed the entry button. ‘Yes, Mum.’

So long did his mother take to climb the stairs of the flats, he wondered if

she’d got lost. He waited with his front door ajar and tried not to inhale the concrete

dank of the stairwell, nor catch the eyes of his neighbours on their way to mine coal

or shuffle papers and drink tea. These were the heroes of New Britain, and he was a

pyjama-clad parasite, a scrimshanker.

Mrs Pingel emerged in the shadows of the landing, her hair gleaming like a

silver helmet. She bumped past him with her brown paper bag and glowered in the

hallway of his flat. ‘Walter! Why aren’t you dressed for your interview?’

Why wasn’t he dressed? Because he was an EduAd writer, that was why! He

wrote educational adverts for Everyone’s Electrics. For alarm clocks and

stateovisions and New Britain Intranet receivers. He couldn’t write propaganda! For

the Freedom and Plenty Party! In the Ministry of Public Enlightenment!

‘You’re sweating. Shower, son.’

‘I’ll shower, Mum.’

‘Good boy. And I’ll make eggs and soldiers.’ She waggled her paper bag.

‘Yoooour favourite!’

‘Yum,’ he said.

The shower head dribbled over Walter like an incontinent cat. Afterwards, cold and

damp, questionably clean, he made his way to his wardrobe and ruffled through his

old work clothes: one yellowed shirt; one whitish shirt with frayed collar; another

whitish shirt missing a cuff button … Perhaps no one would spot a missing button if

he kept his blazer on. Trousers: drooping hems or shiny knees?

He traipsed into the kitchen, which occupied the far corner of his living room

behind the sofa. Mrs Pingel had switched on the stateovision, the final model from

Everyone’s Electrics before the Freedom and Plenty Party ensured the shop went

bust. The screen showed Plywood Studio, home of New Britain News. Evidently no

news was occurring in New Britain, for the newsgirl stared silently at the camera,

blank-faced but for several layers of cosmetics.

Mrs Pingel glanced up from scratching a knife’s worth of butter over a half loaf

of toast. ‘Walter, your knees! No wonder Everybody’s Electricals sacked you.’

‘They didn’t sack me, they went … oh, never mind.’ He sank onto the stool at

the kitchen worktop, while his mother sliced the toast into dainty rectangles.

The collapse of Everyone’s Electrics had provided the entire content of New

Britain News for two months. Even Patriot Place hinted at the debacle when Rosa

the Factory Girl, tucking Wise Little Vladimir into bed, compared workers toiling for

private industry to cloud puffs in the black sky of capitalist ambition. No puff might

claim fluffy innocence of the sky’s attempted dominion over the communist soil, Rosa

cautioned, even if the sun had temporarily authorised the sky to sprinkle during a

drought.

Walter caught Rosa’s gist enough to foresee that he and his former

colleagues would be made examples of. The Freedom and Plenty Party denied them

new employment, turning them into the rarest and most despised of all New British

pariahs: scrimshankers.

Mrs Pingel set a boiled egg before him, along with the half loaf. She frowned

as he forced down a sandpaper lump of toast. ‘You should have told me sooner

about this interview. I’d have bought you new trousers.’

‘Not from your wages.’

Her jaw jutted. ‘My wages do me well enough. Just because some paper-

shufflers in offices make a few extra pounds drinking tea all day, don’t you forget the

value of hard graft.’ She eyed his overflowing kitchen bin. ‘And since a cleaning

lady’s work is never done, nor a mother’s, I’ll tidy this place up while you’re gone. I’ll

mend your shirts too. Would you like that, if I mended your shirts?’

‘It’s all right, Mum, I can —’

‘Then I shall! You’ll need to look smart for your job at the ministry … the

ministry! From this day on, your mother shall do all your mending. Your washing and

ironing too.’

He squirmed on his stool. ‘Well, I suppose … Thanks, Mum …’

The corners of her scarlet lips soared earwards from her jowls. ‘Will I brush

your hair now, dear?’

‘No! Thanks, Mum.’

She dropped her butter knife in the sink with a clatter. ‘Your father would have

been so proud. His son, working for the government.’ She held out her hand so he

might reverence her wedding band and black diamond engagement ring. He

squeezed her fingers, and she squeezed back like the outlawed Mother Mary on

anabolic steroids. ‘My Ernest always respected the government, whichever

government it was. Don’t you forget that. Even when Maggie was closing all the pits,

his pit too.’

‘Margaret Thatcher,’ breathed Walter. He might have been whispering ‘Baba

Yaga’ or ‘Blood Countess’. Every New Briton, at least those newer than the ones

born before the eighties, spent much of their educations learning about Mrs

Thatcher, the Granite Devil. From primary school through to his degree in

Government Responsibility and Ethical Economics (GREE), Walter learnt everything

New Britons were permitted to know about the Pickaxe Revolution of ’85, which saw

the execution of the entire Tory cabinet.

‘Always do what the Party tells you, and stay out of trouble,’ said his mother. ‘I

don’t want to discover on New Britain News you’ve lost another job.’

He followed her gaze to the stateovision, that hexahedron of public

enlightenment. The reception leapt around like on one of those ancient stateovisions

you only ever saw on stateovision, slipping picture and crunching static. The newsgirl

seemed to be trying to rise from behind her desk, successful as a helium-filled

goldfish in a flushing toilet. Her mouth opened and closed like a goldfish’s too, but

the sound was too distorted to hear.

‘Obey your bosses, and before you know it you’ll be getting promotion and a

girlfriend,’ Mrs Pingel was saying, ‘getting married and giving me grand-babies.’ She

filled a glass from the tap as Walter coughed up a bread gobbet. She rubbed his

back while he drank. ‘No need for nerves. Just remember, the Party wouldn’t waste

time interviewing you unless you’d already got the job.’

He stifled a groan; yet if any man could fail to clinch a sure thing, that man

was surely him. If all could yet be lost, then all wasn’t lost after all.

‘I know what’ll cheer you up,’ his mother said. ‘Let’s switch on the DVD player.’

Never, since he won this sultan’s jewel at the Everyone’s Electrics staff xmas raffle,

had she missed an opportunity to switch on the DVD player and marvel at its

selection of buttons. She kept forgetting no New Briton, let alone Walter, could afford

any DVDs. ‘Remember when you used to watch Hammerama Man and Sickle Boy

on our old VHS? They gave you courage to face the bullies at school — naughty little

Arnie Braine, who used to tie your shoelaces together. You don’t watch cartoons any

more, do you, son?’

Before he could wilt under her scrutiny, the stateovision gave a mighty

crackle.

‘Gracious!’ she cried.

The picture came into focus, shifting to the barbed-wire-encased railings of

People’s Park, People’s City, within which stood People’s House. Normally, the

people didn’t get anywhere near ‘their’ house or ‘their’ park. Only the Freedom and

Plenty Party and the Friendly Parties could enter this seat of parliamentary power.

Today, a troop of muscular young men in dark blue uniforms marched outside the

railings, members, Walter supposed, of some edifying overgrown youth group.

Either the cameraperson was attempting an arty technique — careering

towards the marchers — or the stateovision was breaking down.

‘The stateovision’s breaking down,’ said Walter.

Mrs Pingel tittered. ‘Don’t be silly, dear. New British products are built to last.’

‘Not Everyone’s Electrics’ products,’ he answered quietly. He knew, by the

twitch of her nostrils, she sensed the import of his words. The half loaf sat heavy in

his stomach. Throughout his employment with Everyone’s Electrics, he yearned to

confess his terrible knowledge. And now he could. ‘They designed their stuff with

built-in obsolescence, like in the bad old days, to make customers buy the latest

models.’

Her lips barely moved: ‘And you wrote adverts for such … gadgetry?’

‘I had to, didn’t I? I was just doing my job.’

She nodded so hard, a few straggles escaped her silver helmet of lacquered

hair. ‘Of course you did! Go on, dear, fetch your blazer or you’ll be late for your

interview.’

Walter rose and trudged to his bedroom. His confession hadn’t brought the

balmy breezes and hula music he’d anticipated. Why should it? Why should he

deserve peace of mind when, after all, he’d been the genius behind the most

decadent of all Everyone’s Electrics’ advertising campaigns?

‘Buy bye’: two ironic words blurted out in a moment of despair on receiving a

briefing to create, not EduAds detailing bland product specifications, but a series of

panting commercials to evoke inferiority and loss in anyone who didn’t own the latest

time-bomb stateovision. A colleague reported his ‘buy bye’ sarcasm to his boss, who

loved it. Thus, the infamous Buy Bye adverts were born.

The boss was in a minority. Thrifty New Britons, even those with enough

money stashed under their mattresses for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Everyone’s

Electrics, couldn’t see the point in replacing functioning goods with glossier new

ones.

Walter shrugged his blazer on and peered at the mirror inside his wardrobe

door. Some things, however, really ought to be replaced, such as his worn-out elbow

patches. At least they matched his shiny knees. Shame he couldn’t exchange the

substandard parts of his physical person. He seemed to have aged ten years in the

last ten minutes, fallen anaemic and grown a jungle of hair.

Why, truly, did the Ministry of Public Enlightenment want to employ him? They

couldn’t think he’d make a good propagandist, not after Buy Bye failed to save

Everyone’s Electrics. Or had they spied his attempt at atonement in the final poster

of the campaign? The C in the curling hair of the mother, who sat watching a fancy

new stateovision with her offspring. The delighted O of that offspring’s mouth. The

father, tossing the previous year’s model in the bin, his jumper emblazoned with the

letter N?

Walter’s reflection grinned back at him, a stranger, a reckless fool. He

slammed his wardrobe shut. Why had he taken such a risk? He was no rebel, no

Hammerama Man fighting capitalist villains. Surely no one spied the message

anyway? His mother never mentioned it, and she scrutinised everything he did.

Back in the living room, she was seated on the couch, beaming at the

stateovision. The picture was once more in sharp focus. ‘Look, Walter, it’s that nice

young man.’

A politician he vaguely recognised stood outside People’s House. Tall and

personable, a youthful forty-something, the politician led one of the Friendly

Parties that formed the opposition-which-was-not-an-opposition. He smiled like a

prince with the fraternal touch, as cameras flashed all around him.

‘Have no doubt,’ he told the assembled journalists in cut-glass tones, ‘we in

the Progressive Front revere the chairman. We coexist with his Party in perfect

harmony and goodwill. We share his joys and sorrows, his well-being and woes.’ He

broke off, eyes lustrous like Noble Doctor Mao in Patriot Place. He sighed, sweeping

a hand through the soft chestnut hair that arced high above his forehead.

Mrs Pingel sighed back at him. ‘He’s so … urbane.’

Walter nodded. He joined her on the sofa.

She clapped her hands. ‘Urbane Gabriel Tain! That’s what they call him.’

This surprised Walter. She always made a habit of ignoring politics, declaring

that the affairs of state were not the business of little people.

She grinned. ‘Isn’t he handsome?’

He was indeed, so far as Walter could tell. Tain’s strawberries-and-cream

complexion glowed with outdoorsy health, yet his suspiciously well-tailored suit

suggested equal acquaintance with the corridors of power. His shoes might have

come from Italy and his tie from Paris, or places just as forbidden and

uncommunistic. Walter hazarded a guess that not even Gabriel Tain’s vest bore the

label ‘Homogenty: the ONLY brand for the New British gent’.

Tain flicked at a speck of dust on his jacket sleeve, then he caught Walter’s

eye and stared deep into his soul. ‘Surely you don’t blame the chairman if, in his

infinite care for you, he stretches New British resources to their absolute snapping

point?’

‘I’ve never noticed the sugar queues in the State Abundance Store!’ Walter

lied, though Tain probably couldn’t hear him.

‘Oh, I don’t mean trivial shortages’ — Tain waggled his manicured fingers

dismissively — ‘choices between, say, a good soaping or a sweet cup of tea …

though on a side note, isn’t it funny how some people always manage to get their

hands on everything?’ The politician’s scrubbed skin and well-nourished build

suggested, to Walter, a certain aloofness on his own part from the abiding soap/

sugar dilemma. ‘No, I’ve heard darker whispers,’ Tain continued. ‘People fear what

will become of them when they’re old and feeble. Our system already struggles with

the burden of an ageing population. How will the government pay for you?’

‘The chairman will provide,’ protested Walter.

‘You’re scared, aren’t you?’ insisted Tain. ‘You think of those prudent workers

before the Pickaxe Revolution who paid into private pensions, a choice denied to

you. Sometimes you wish you could take responsibility for yourself, instead of being

nannied by the state. You question other things too. In your blackest moments,

you’ve even told yourself our beloved communism stifles vitality.’

‘No, we haven’t!’ cried Walter and Mrs Pingel. Walter grabbed the stateovision

remote and tried to change channel, before remembering there weren’t any others.

Mrs Pingel peered at the window and door.

Tain smiled indulgently. ‘Well, the chairman doesn’t want you to worry. He

wants you to be happy, and he’ll do whatever it takes to make you so.’

Walter and Mrs Pingel leapt to their feet and raised their hands in the Red

Fist. ‘Long live the chairman!’

‘That’s why he and I are meeting this morning: to discuss your fears. And

doubtless we’ll be fortifying ourselves with scones and a nice cup of tea, or perhaps

not tea but some highly caffeinated coffee.’ Tain flashed perfect little teeth, but a faint

line worried his forehead. ‘The Progressive Front are united with the Freedom and

Plenty Party in our determination to avert impending financial catastrophe.’

‘Ca … tastrophe?’ Walter’s throat dried up like the shower head in his

bathroom.

‘And now, ladies and gentlemen’ — Tain reeled off enough names to make a

phone book dizzy, apologising to any reporters, photographers, film crew or viewers

at home he might have missed — ‘good day to you, and a brave new day to toilers

everywhere.’

He turned to enter People’s House, and the youth military types in the dark

blue uniforms filed into line behind him.

Walter’s arm remained frozen in salute as Comrade George’s Perpendicular Bars

filled the screen, as they did during programming glitches, closedown or whenever

the censors became alarmed. These weren’t bars at all but a detail from the old

Union Flag: the red bit in the very middle. The Freedom and Plenty Party had done

away with the Union Flag’s idolatrous crosses when they did away with Britain’s

constituent countries, creating the purity of the Union Red.

A rousing rendition of the national anthem, ‘Thither I Go With My Pickaxe in

Hand’, started up. It ended on a spectacular clash of cymbals before looping back to

the beginning.

Walter prised his arm from the air with his free hand. ‘Perhaps my interview will

be cancelled if there’s important government business.’ Not that the chairman of New

Britain was interviewing him, only the Minister for Public Enlightenment. Only the

Minister for Public Enlightenment. He dabbed his damp forehead with his blazer cuff.

Mrs Pingel’s lips tightened in a scarlet slash. ‘Don’t even think of contacting

the ministry and giving them an excuse not to see you.’

He tore his eyes from his Everyone’s Electrics cordless phone, while his

mother fetched his degree, along with his letter of recommendation from Everyone’s

Electrics, from the cupboard under the sink. He shuffled to his front door. When he

turned to kiss his mother goodbye, queasy as a draft-dodger eyeballing military

police through the letterbox, tears replaced her displeasure.

‘If your father could see you now.’ She straightened his tie, sniffing. ‘He was

so humble. He’d never have dreamt his son would rise to dizzy heights.’

‘What would he tell me today? What would he say?’

‘“Keep your nose to the grindstone and your tongue behind your teeth,” that’s

what he’d say. And, “Hard work never harmed a fly.” And he’d tell you, “Always

remember where you came from. Never forget your roots.”’

Ernest Pingel’s roots were in the ground, though his ashes occupied a

gleaming urn on his widow’s mantlepiece. Walter had been a mere zygote in Mrs

Pingel’s fallopian tube when Ernest got a fatal thump on the head crossing a picket

line at the colliery where the Pingels had, since the coal dusty mists of time, made

their livings hacking at the bowels of the earth. Ernest scabbed throughout the strike

of ’84 to ’85 and died shortly before the outbreak of the Pickaxe Revolution. As Mrs

Pingel put it, he was a martyr for the freedom of the honest man to do an honest

day’s work.

She opened the door and gave Walter an affectionate shove. ‘Get going, and

make your father proud. And I’ll make fried eggs and chips for tea. Yoooour

favourite!’

‘Yum,’ said Walter.

2

Cobwebs garlanded the out-of-service sign on the lift doors. Walter made his way

down four stairways to the ground floor of the flats. He no longer noticed the mildew

and cracks decorating each storey, but the entryway’s murals always took his breath

away — and made him feel safe to be New British: Herculean fabricators paused

from servicing a naval destroyer to gaze at some invisible horizon; a squadron of

MiGs departed over the heads of cheering citizens in People’s Square; from the

hatch of a T-90 tank, a commander chewed a cigar and watched Margaret

Thatcher’s Conservative cabinet explode in sunset hues. Smiling over all of this was

the sunlike face of the supreme strategist of everybody’s happiness, the chairman.

With a quick salute to that fatherly face, Walter ducked into the street. He

always fancied that the chairman noted any who failed to perform the Red Fist.

Legs a-wobble from his descent, he made his way to the bus shelter that

served the inhabitants of his street’s identikit flats. He paused to read a slogan

someone had scribbled over the poster adorning the side of the shelter. Across the

faces of the international Great Leaders of history, who stood shoulder to shoulder

with the chairman, the graffiti read: ‘Organisation without government’. The author

signed off with a doodle of a carbide lamp.

Walter wobbled away before any passerby suspected him of the crime. A half

hour’s wobble to People’s Square might steady his nerves for the interview ordeal to

come. Not that anyone would perform a citizen’s arrest on him anyway, for the

streets were deserted. Normally you heard the distant roar of a Lada engine or

passed gangs of hardy pensioners smoking and playing outdoor dominoes come

rain or shine. Today, nothing. Twenty minutes into his journey, he felt like a space

dog going walkies on the moon.

His relief, when he finally spotted a throng of citizens through the window of

the State Abundance Store, was akin to confirming he hadn’t confused Dress Extra

Smart for Workplace Inspection Day with the less dapper Smear Your Face in Soot

in Solidarity with the Miners’ Day. The citizens huddled around a stateovision, some

pointing at it, others shaking their heads. It must be a deluxe final model

expropriated from Everyone’s Electrics’ doomed factory.

‘Watch it!’

A meaty hand thudded into his chest. The owner, into whom he’d almost

collided, was six-and-a-half feet of muscle in a dark blue uniform.

‘S-sorry!’ Walter stammered.

‘On yer way, nothin’ to see,’ the muscle told him.

Walter hurried off towards People’s Square.

‘Oi,’ the muscle shouted after him, ‘where you going?’

Walter froze, then turned around. The muscle’s uniform — breeches, jacket

and jackboots — was the same as those of the youth military types on New Britain

News, the ones who followed Urbane Gabriel Tain into People’s House. ‘I’ve an

appointment,’ he said, but the muscle merely stared. ‘In the Ministry … of Public

Enlightenment.’

‘Wossa watchword?’

‘W-w-watchword?’ repeated Walter.

‘W-w-watchword.’

Walter stepped back. The muscle’s jackboots stepped forward. He really was

tall, the muscle. He smelt of raw mince. Walter attempted a smile. The muscle’s lips

curled too, away from his canines.

‘N-nice uniform.’ Walter touched the muscle’s sleeve in supplication. ‘Nice

blue br-br-breeches.’

The muscle blinked and saluted. Not the Red Fist but a waggly-fingered

starburst. ‘Sorry, sir! Just makin’ sure, sir! Have a nice day, sir!’

‘Ah, you too … sir.’ Walter took off. Not daring to look back, he fluttered like a

lone pigeon into the heart of People’s Square.

Dull neoclassical ministries squatted around him on every side, forming a grim

oasis amid the concrete dunes of People’s City. Not that People’s Square didn’t

contain concrete aplenty, such as the sea of flagstones where guards usually

strutted for tourists and dignitaries. In recent years, the Freedom and Plenty Party

had forgotten its abhorrence of decadent foreigners and begun luring them into

tourist-only hotels rumoured to have every devilish capitalist trapping. Perhaps

Gabriel Tain was right and the economy really was in trouble, but Walter didn’t doubt

the chairman would steer New Britain back on a straight course.

No tourists gawped or took pictures today, which struck him as a little odd. No

guards paraded either, a lot odd. At least not the usual sort of guards. Walter almost

tripped over his own feet when he spotted the blue-uniformed military types perched

on the steps of some ministries.

Perhaps he should turn back. A Suburb B5 bus, bound for home, was due

about now. He pictured his mother, her eyes glittering with teary pride at the prospect

of his new job. They’d glitter with fury if he didn’t attend his interview, though

probably not as furiously as the minister’s.

With feet like kayaks navigating ice floes, he followed a mosaic pavement

around the square till he reached a building resembling a Gorgon’s wedding cake:

the Ministry of Public Enlightenment — MOPE. He couldn’t say if it was his own

fevered wishful thinking, but as he stared up at MOPE’s grey facade a saintly face

took shape in the stonework, as if beamed from a projector. Obscure yet

unmistakable, like Lenin in a bowl of cornflakes or Marx in grilled cheese, this was a

face he knew only from photographs and the ink portrait on his mother’s

mantlepiece: farseeing eyes, lips faintly upturned, hair black and curling beneath a

miner’s helmet. The face of Ernest Pingel.

‘Go on, do me proud, son,’ the mouth seemed to say.

‘I’ll try, Dad,’ whispered Walter.

Ernest winked, then melted away.

Half expecting a pistol to cock against his head, Walter passed between the

columns of the ministry’s portico. No one attempted to hinder his progress or ask his

business. No one was there.

No one guarded the reception area either. Should he tap the bell on the desk?

Best not make a fuss. He sat on a bench near the bathroom door and strained to

pick up signs of life: a running tap, a hand dryer. Nothing. He flicked through a

magazine on the coffee table, but the familiar content — ‘Remembering the Pickaxe

Revolution 30 years on!’, ‘Five patriotic mining songs to teach your children!’ —

failed to ease his disquiet.

He rose and patted one finger on the reception bell, shattering the silence like

flatulence at a funeral. ‘Sorry,’ he told the empty room. He sank onto his bench and

tried to look invisible, not that anyone could see him anyway.

Which door would the minister arrive through? The one behind the reception

desk? The double doors leading, he supposed, to the interior of the ministry?

Something slammed against the double doors. A voice behind them roared,

‘You can’t do this to me! Don’t you know who I am?’

Walter leapt up. He considered fleeing outside, but the double doors might

burst open any second. Guards might roll through, guns blazing, and mow him down.

He slipped behind a curtain, stumbling over a potted plant en route, clutching his

GREE degree like a shield.

The doors squealed open. A thunder of feet. The doors clattered shut.

‘Get your hands off me,’ the voice yelled again. ‘I’m the Minister for Public

Enlightenment!’

‘We’s doing the enlightenmentin’ now,’ chuckled another voice, hideous as a

big ugly troll’s.

Next came a sound akin to a minister being dragged across the floor while

shrieking, ‘Ouch, my elbow! Oooh — coccyx!’ The yelps grew more distant and

rhythmic, like someone bumping down portico steps.

Silence again, broken at length by a new voice: ‘What now?’

‘Dunno,’ said Ugly Troll. ‘We loot the place?’

Walter shuddered behind the curtain.

New Voice sounded uncertain: ‘Wossat part of our orders?’

The doors screeched again, and a voice reminiscent of Walter’s college

professors, only frostier, said, ‘Indeed it was not. MOPE will be instrumental in the

days and months to come. We require it intact.’

Ugly Troll sounded a bit less scary and a bit more scared: ‘Sorry sir, Mr

Saxton sir. Gets confusing, this revolution stuff.’

Revolution! The yolk-coated soldiers from breakfast made a near-successful

charge over Walter’s tonsils. What did a good communist do during a revolution he

wasn’t embroiled in, besides shake to the tips of his shoelaces?

‘Coup, dear boy,’ said the voice named Mr Saxton. ‘And are you aware of the

most important thing one can do when caught up in a coup?’

‘Bash heads?’ said New Voice.

‘What he said,’ agreed Ugly Troll.

‘The correct answer,’ said Mr Saxton, ‘is “Know which side to take”.’

‘We does, sir,’ chimed Ugly Troll and New Voice in harmony.

‘I wasn’t referring to you,’ said Mr Saxton.

The curtain zipped back. The first thing Walter saw was, he hazarded a

guess, Mr Saxton: a man in his thirties or forties or fifties, standing straight-backed

by the double doors. Pale of face, fiery of hair, Mr Saxton wore a pewter-grey suit

that appeared to be commissioned from the same continental tailor as Gabriel Tain’s.

The second thing he noticed was a pair of men in dark blue uniforms,

especially the one holding him by the collar. ‘What you hiding for, eh? You one of ’em

commies?’ The speaker, Ugly Troll, shook Walter’s collar, and Walter’s body shook

with it.

‘We’re all communists,’ Walter protested through rattling teeth.

‘Arrivederci! He admits it,’ declared a fourth voice, and this fourth voice was

the third thing Walter noticed. Its owner, all sneer and spectacles, glided through the

double doors and sidled up to Mr Saxton.

It was the voice of Arnie Braine.

Arnie Braine: Walter’s former schoolmate, multi-lingual and perpetually bored. Arnie

Braine: his fellow GREE student at All Citizen’s, perpetually troublemaking. And by

the worst possible luck, Arnie Braine: his co-worker at Everyone’s Electrics, who

informed on him for his infamous ‘buy bye’ remark.

Or perhaps his worst luck was about to come.

‘So, Peengel,’ drawled Arnie, who might be New British as rain on Revolution

Day but who spoke the Romance languages like a poet, ‘seems it’s not buy bye for

us after all, nor yet bon dieu.’

Arnie Braine, so suave, so clever, whose self-taught tongues earned him the

admiration of all the girls in class, though he recoiled from curricular Chinese and

Russian, dismissing them as ‘barbiere’.

Walter grinned, he didn’t know why, and clasped his shield-degree to his

chest. ‘Hallo, Arnie!’

‘A Pingel, indeed?’ The flame-hared Mr Saxton scrutinised Walter with the air

of a scientist studying a rare bacterium through a microscope. ‘And how, precisely,

do a Pingel and a Braine come to be acquainted?’ His left eyebrow rose in a fiery

arch, awaiting a reply. It seemed oblivious to the viscera-melting effect the rest of Mr

Saxton’s person was having on Walter.

‘We studied together under the commies,’ said Arnie. ‘Pingel lapped it up.

He’s a commie.’

‘We’re all communists,’ Walter said again, though he was starting to suspect

this might no longer be true.

Mr Saxton smiled chillily. ‘On the contrary, Mr Pingel. There are some who

hark back to a time before the Freedom and Plenty Party. It was a time of freedom

and plenty. A time when big cogs and little cogs worked in harmony, each knowing

their places in the machine. And the machine worked especially well for ambitious

cogs, like Braine here.’

Arnie’s chest puffed up beneath his shirt, a shirt commissioned, if not from the

tailor of Gabriel Tain and Mr Saxton, then that tailor’s most promising apprentice. He

wore this silky couture sans tie, top three buttons undone to reveal a follicular

flowering that would make an alpaca wink.

‘We had a mantra in those days,’ continued Mr Saxton. ‘“From each according

to his proclivity, to each according to his greed.” What do you make of that, Mr

Pingel?’

Walter glanced around the room, in case another Pingel might be keener to

volunteer an opinion. When none came forward, he squeaked a classroom maxim,

‘R-responsibility is its own reward?’

‘Charming!’ declared Mr Saxton, and Arnie smirked, ‘but consider: why would

anyone give his heart and soul to the burden of leadership without generous

remuneration? Why would the chairman of New Britain?’

True, the chairman enjoyed certain luxuries, though Walter was certain no one

begrudged him Buckingham Palace. Some might question, very quietly, why his

children lived in the other palaces when they contributed even less to the general

wellbeing than the exiled thespian prince and skirt-chasing prince subtracted, while

doctors and teachers dwelt in crumbling flats.

‘Where is he now, the chairma—?’ Walter’s voice caught in his throat. He

remembered the MOPE minister bumping down the stairs.

Mr Saxton’s eyes flickered like pale blue flames. His words tripped and

tinkled: ‘Oh, he’s quite all right. He went into … retirement. Sensible fellow.’

‘He’s not … hurt?’

‘Hurt?’ Mr Saxton tipped back his head and produced musical laughter from

the back of his throat. Ugly Troll and New Voice joined in with guffaws. Arnie giggled

to rival a pack of cartoon hyenas. After a moment’s hesitation, Walter ventured a

tentative chortle. The instant Mr Saxton spoke again, the cacophony ceased:

‘Nothing untoward could ever happen to our chairman. Why, he’s the nearest thing to

divinity in a godless world.’

Magnified by their spectacles, Arnie’s eyes had the detached curiosity of an

untroubled troubled child ducking the head of a smaller child into a toilet bowl, a look

Walter remembered only too well. ‘Mr Saxton, didn’t they, you know, rough him up a

bit?’

‘Can coshes prevail against divinity? Our glorious chairman has departed for

a better place, delivered from the burdens of state. Isn’t that reassuring?’ Mr Saxton

didn’t wait for his breezy words to disperse the tangle of clouds swirling around

Walter’s brain. ‘And now we can build a New Britain where aspiring cogs work their

way up through the machine, the way things used to be.’

‘What’ll we do with the rest of the commies?’ asked Arnie, watching Walter. ‘À

la lanterne?’

Walter quivered. His legs and arms quivered. His feet and fingers quivered.

Even his hair. His degree fluttered to the floor.

Ugly Troll snatched the paper up, brow puckering as he read. ‘Gov-ment Re-

sponsi-billy-tay? Effy-cal Eco-nom-ics?’ He gave a gusty ‘hoo-hoo’ of laughter.

‘Sounds stoopid!’ His eyes protruded with undue wonder as a second piece of paper

came unstuck and fluttered to the floor. Walter’s palm had soaked the Everyone’s

Electrics’ letter of recommendation to the degree.

Elegant as a courtier, Mr Saxton tipped his back to retrieve the letter. He read

slowly, though Walter felt sure he wasn’t pronouncing the syllables in his mind, nor

about to ‘hoo-hoo’ when finished. ‘Fascinating,’ said Mr Saxton, to Walter’s

astonishment. ‘So you were the one who dreamt up the Buy Bye campaign, the child

pleading, “Buy bye, Mummy, don’t make me cry.” So poignant! Not only that’ — his

voice dropped to a caress — ‘you must have put the subliminal message in the

poster, in the hair and jumper, in the offspring’s delighted mouth.’

Arnie spared Walter the horror of confession or denial. His smart loafers

almost gave off sparks as he spun round to face Mr Saxton. ‘Actually, it was I who

turned Everyone’s Electrics’ vision back to the eighties. I who persuaded them we

could bring about a throwaway-culture revolution. C’est moi! Pingel just stuttered out

the slogan.’

‘Indeed?’ said Mr Saxton. ‘Sadly you attempted the revolution too soon,

Braine, but such emotive appeals to the conscience as Mr Pingel’s, those really are

timeless.’

Walter had never known Arnie to blush red with anger or embarrassment. He

tended, instead, to turn purplish-blue, as though choking on a biggest-in-show

grapefruit. He did this now.

‘The slogan didn’t work,’ said Walter. ‘It wasn’t very good. Besides, New

Britons don’t want more things than they already have.’

‘Yet I must contradict you. Come.’ Mr Saxton’s hand hovered above Walter’s

shoulder and guided him without touch to the window, where he opened the blinds.

People’s Square, so desolate when Walter arrived, now heaved with smiling

citizens and glowering blue-uniformed men, as though a Martian fleet had beamed

them all down. They faced a stage that hadn’t been there earlier — surely Walter

would have spotted the sweeping faux-marble steps and the sail-like backdrop of a

white flag emblazoned with a black megaphone? Every citizen waved a

handkerchief-sized version of this flag, from infants with perfectly coiffed curls to

elegantly dressed parents and robust elders.

‘You see, Mr Pingel? If the people were so happy under communism, why are

they cheering for the Progressive Front?’

Walter swallowed. Urbane Gabriel Tain’s Progressive Front? ‘Where did they

get those flags?’

‘Ah, Veritas, emblem of the new government of new New Britain. We in the

Progressive Front’ — Mr Saxton made a slight bow — ‘intend for Veritas, from this

day, to replace the Union Red. The liberating megaphone shall persuade the citizens

to throw off the last shackles of socialist enslavement.’ He raised the window,

ushering an undulating roar into the ministry. Like a multi-limbed beast, the crowd

thrust out every hand that wasn’t already waving flags, fingers splayed and waggling.

A chorus erupted of ‘Hail, fellow, well met! Hail, fellow, well met!’

Climbing the steps to the stage, with his easy grace and air of command, was

Gabriel Tain. The Progressive Front leader surveyed his audience from the stage,

before spreading both arms to quiet the stormy sea. ‘Hail, well met, friends,’ he

greeted the crowd through a black megaphone mounted on a stand. ‘And make no

mistake, we are indeed friends. For whatever trivial distinctions separate us, we are

in this struggle together. We have vanquished the red foe who tried to cheat us of

our slight yet proud disparities, and we are truly united in our tiny disunity, which

makes us thoroughly equal.’

This received a howling cheer, though Walter’s brain throbbed.

‘Equal,’ continued Tain, ‘in so far as individuals with differing abilities can be.

Let me remind you, friends, of a truth suppressed in New Britain: true equality is a

lie! Worse, it’s a lie that leads to stagnation. For if we are foolish enough to believe

we are equal, what remains to strive for? New Britain has ceased to strive!’

‘Strive,’ shouted a dozen voices in the crowd, ‘strive’. The chant caught like

hair lice, breaking in a mass swoon when Tain declared, ‘Every New Briton is distinct

and unique! Yet regardless of ability, your children go to the same school as every

other. They have the same life chances. Is this fair? Is it fair that you, their hard-

working parents, toil without recognition while your lazy colleagues laugh at you —

yes, laugh — while drinking endless cups of tea, feet up on their desks, never fearing

their idleness may catch up with them?’

‘Sack them,’ lisped a toddler near the window.

‘We are not equal,’ said Tain. ‘Communism has robbed us of the boons

inequality brings. For only when citizens strive to catch up with their betters will our

country prosper once more.’

Walter barely heard Mr Saxton close the window. This, surely, was the Great

Blasphemy. In his college days, Walter heard rumours of terrible seditions voiced in

underground gatherings of dangerous people, and now a man in a smart suit

proclaimed these seditions through a megaphone in People’s Square.

‘Interesting, don’t you think, how they offer themselves up for persuasion?’

said Mr Saxton. ‘Of course, much work remains in convincing the rest of the

everymen. That’s where you’ll come in, Mr Pingel.’

Walter attempted to blink himself out of this mad dream. ‘Me?’

‘Why, yes. It seems you came here today for a job interview. Well, the regime

may have changed, but the ministry hasn’t, and it’s shorter staffed than ever.’

Walter couldn’t bring himself to ask what had become of the army of civil

servants that must have turned the communist propaganda wheel.

‘As a GREE graduate, you understand the necessity of firm government. And

who better to communicate the Progressive Front’s vision of a renewed New Britain

than the sagacious Solomon of the Buy Bye campaign?’ Mr Saxton’s eyes flared like

blue flames on a gas hob. ‘Mr Pingel, your country needs you.’

3

‘But-but-but —’ stuttered Arnie, a response mirroring the one Walter couldn’t quite

articulate. He appeared to be regurgitating his biggest-in-show grapefruit.

‘Of course, we already have loyal Party members like Braine here,’ said Mr

Saxton, ‘but now we’ve discovered Mr Pingel, with his unusual name and unusual

abilities, we wouldn’t care to let him out of our sights. I’ve already judged him to be a

man of conscience, a noble plebeian, an earthy son of the soil. He craves to serve

his fellow citizens. He’d never abandon them to flounder helplessly.’

‘I-I-I —’ floundered Walter helplessly.

‘“Aye”, he says. So eager!’ Once again Mr Saxton steered Walter without

touching him, not to the window but the reception desk. He slapped the bell. ‘Braine!’

Arnie’s skin tone darkened to rival the uniforms of Ugly Troll and New Voice.

He dragged his suede-loafered feet to the desk and slid behind it. ‘How may I help

you, sir?’

But Mr Saxton turned away. His eyes burned into Walter’s like cornea-

dissolving lasers. ‘You do want to serve the people, don’t you, Mr Pingel? You do

want to serve your country? You’re with the government, not against us? Are you a

rebel, Mr Pingel? Can we trust you? Can’t we depend on you? Are you loyal, Mr

Pingel?’

The remnants of Walter’s eyeballs stung and streamed. ‘Yes, sir!’

‘Then, welcome aboard.’ Mr Saxton extended a hand, his long fingers

hovering in the air around Walter’s, trapping them in an inescapable forcefield.

‘Report to the ministry a week from Monday, nine of the clock ante meridiem. We

expect punctuality.’ His fingers reabsorbed the forcefield, and Walter’s hand dropped.

‘Good day, Mr Pingel. Braine, issue the paperwork.’

Arnie zipped behind the reception doors while Mr Saxton, whistling something

Wagnerian, strode off through the double doors with Walter’s degree and employer’s

letter. Walter considered hurtling to freedom between Ugly Troll and New Voice, who

guarded the exit to the portico. Instead he took up Mr Saxton’s tune with the air of an

overwrought cicada.

‘Sign …’ demanded Arnie, returning with an accordion of a form. He thrust it

into Walter’s arms and managed a leer, managed rather well. ‘… avec blood.’

If every page required a signature, Walter would be anaemic by the end. The

front page alone made his blood turn pink: ‘APPLICATION FOR MEMBERSHIP OF

THE PROGRESSIVE FRONT’. Arnie waggled a pen at him, one of those see-

through acrylic things with glittery hammers and sickles floating inside. Giant

unglittery versions of those implements hammered and swooshed in Walter’s

stomach. What would Hammerama Man and Sickle Boy do now? How had they

escaped Baron Bourgeois and the Profits of Doom in yesterday’s thrilling half-hour

cartoon?

‘It’s an awfully big form,’ he said, using the front page to blot a sheen of sweat

from his forehead. ‘Can I bring it back later?’ He scuttled towards the door before

Arnie could reply, willing Ugly Troll and New Voice not to seize him.

‘Buy bye! Bonito!’ Arnie shouted after him. ‘Don’t hurry back.’

Walter had no intention of doing so, if he could help it. He barrelled between

New Voice and Ugly Troll, who stepped away from each other like dancers

performing the pas de basque. They threw open the doors. ‘Don’t hurry back!’ they

chorused.

Outside in the portico, he almost collided with a pillar in an attempt to prevent

himself from slamming into blue-uniformed men. Batons poised, half a dozen of

these uniforms drove back a mob many times their size. Gabriel Tain’s stylish

audience were visible just beyond People’s Square, marching towards a fleet of

buses, but the wannabe portico-invaders were mere garden-variety New Britons in

unmistakable state-produced Homogenty and Homogyny clothing, clutching children

garbed in Homomini. They shouted things like, ‘Where’s my Jim? He works here,’

and, ‘What’s happened to Liz/Brenda/Bob?’ ‘Bob’s gone on a little trip with the

chairman,’ was the sort of thing the uniforms shouted back, or, ‘Brenda signed up

with the new government. She’ll be home in time for tea.’

Sometimes the uniforms weren’t quite so helpful. One struck his baton across

the shoulder of a weeping old woman, who refused to believe her Vicky had gone to

Siberia in the chairman’s service. ‘Wanna join yer Vicky?’ growled the uniform. ‘No?

Then shove off, ya dirty commie hag!’ He brandished his baton as if for another blow,

but paused when he caught sight of Walter over his shoulder. ‘Hey! What you sniffing

around at?’

‘Ah … hail, fellow?’ Walter raised his arm and splayed his fingers. ‘Well met?’

‘Whatever. Scram!’

Walter tried scramming, but too many citizens blocked the portico searching

for their Vickys and Jims. He might have resembled an earnest scrammer

scramming through quicksand while defending his title of champion gurner in a

national gurning competition against everyone present. When finally he made it

through the crush of bodies, an unexpected blast of speed caught his heels. He shot

into the square like a cork from a bottle, landing in brace position on the flagstones.

A groan, his own. A clack of heeled shoes. A cool hand fluttering against his

cheek. ‘Ooh, I say, are you alright?’ a voice enquired, breathy, feminine.

He uncurled himself. ‘Nothing broken, I …’ Rose-scented perfume flooded his

senses. He gazed into eyes he’d have recognised anywhere, blue as the corniest

cornflower, wide as the doe’s of antique cliché. Her eyes. ‘… I don’t …’ He accepted

Her silky-gloved hand, fearing the tiny thing might disintegrate like fairy-dust in his

own clumsy one. His heart pattered tik-a-tee, tik-a-tay. ‘… I don’t think.’

Her tinkling laughter always reminded him of wedding bells. ‘Walter Pingel? I

don’t believe it. Walter Pingel!’

His eyes shot to her fingers. Could it be, still no rings pressing through her glove? He

attempted to scramble with dignity to his feet, but her rosy grin melted his limbs. Her

teeth had the uniform perfection of cultured pearls, yet with all the prestige of their

freshwater cousins. Eight years since he saw that grin last, excluding every night in

his dreams, between dreams of Hammerama Man and Sickle Boy. But Hammerama

Man and Sickle Boy dreams weren’t the same as Samantha Hopewell dreams, not

the same at all.

Heat flamed his cheeks. ‘Well, best be going. Oh …!’ Surprisingly

aerodynamic, his half-a-tree application form flew past him. He threw himself after it.

A jackboot caught it first. The boot’s owner, a blue-uniformed type, scooped

up the form and shoved it at Walter, with something between a salute and wink for

Samantha.

‘Thank you,’ thanked Samantha, ‘Constable Clive of the Blue Breeches.’

The jackboot-wearer pinkened, then strutted off with a wiggle.

‘Blue Breeches?’ repeated Walter.

‘Yes, named after their trousers. Aren’t their uniforms darling, darling? The

BBs are our new police.’

‘New police? What happened to the old ones?’

Samantha shrugged her dainty shoulders. ‘Oh, I expect they’ll swear an oath

to the Progressive Front, or some such. Walter, sweetness, it’s so wonderful to see

you again. On this of all days! You must tell me everything you’ve done since we

studied … we studied …’

‘Effy-cal Eco-nom-ics and Gov-ment Re-sponsi-billy-tay,’ he spluttered.

Her laughter pealed. ‘That’s right! Come on, let’s find a seat.’ She linked her

arm through his, reducing his melted limbs to a puddle.

It was so wonderful to see him again. She really said that? He floated by her

side around clusters of citizens amassing, from all directions, into People’s Square.

Conversations kissed his ears like snatches of harps and lazy saxophones. Each

word was a burst of hallelujah: posh boy Tain … our jobs … we’re all fucked now!

She perched on a bench, near a huddle of citizens in sooty overalls, and

patted the space beside her. Walter dissolved into the wood, gawping reverentially

as she whipped a cosmetics mirror from her handbag and fluffed the ends of her

chin-length golden bob. She tipped her felt cap at an angle and asked, ‘How do I

look?’ No reply sounded from his lips, though they hung open. Her gaze dropped to

his application form. ‘I saw you leaving MOPE. You’re joining the Progressive Front?

How marvellous!’

He stared anew at his form. Was it marvellous? His earlier qualms returned to

his stomach with a swoosh and a hammer. ‘They’ve offered me a job.’

‘Do tell.’

‘I don’t exactly know what it is, and I don’t exactly know if I should take it.’

‘Tish! You must, and if it’s in MOPE it’s certain to be very important.’ She

leaned confidentially towards him, and a man from the nearby sooty huddle broke off

a Tain-jobs-fucked conversation to stare across. Most likely, the man meant to

admire Samantha in her jaunty cap but some grit in his eye misdirected his gaze to

Walter. ‘You were always the cleverest boy at college,’ Samantha continued. ‘Well,

the most responsible, at least. That is to say, you turned up for class … and old

Spencer thought maybe you’d do alright. Didn’t he?’

Mr Owen Spencer, Head of Politics at All Citizens College, had indeed

expressed the sentiment that Walter might not entirely screw up his life. Mr

Spencer’s faith never ceased to humble and amaze Walter, just as it amazed the rest

of the class. Arnie Braine reacted by penning Walter a series of lovelorn letters

supposedly in the lecturer’s hand, but Samantha had been too polite to venture an

opinion on Walter’s abilities, or perhaps her frequent absences meant she never

formed one at the time. She suffered from General Unspecified Weakness Disorder,

and her all-too-brief epiphanies at All Citizens were like manna to Walter, making the

endless social discomfort bearable. Not that he and Samantha had been friends, or

even engaged in conversation. Before today.

‘Mr Spencer got me the MOPE interview,’ he confided to his friend. ‘He had a

word in the minister’s ear. Of course, it wasn’t the new minister … I think he’s Mr

Saxton. It was the old one.’ Who’d gone bump-bump-bump down the stairs.

‘Everything’s turned out wonderfully. You wouldn’t have wanted to work for the

Freedom and Plenty Party, Walter. They made everyone the same. You’ll have your

chance to shine now.’ Samantha squeezed his hand, and the oxygen squeezed from

his brain. ‘The commies guaranteed everyone a job, and that’s why it all went wrong.

We didn’t have to strive. Things will be different now.’

The possibility of ‘different’ was brain-boggling enough, without Walter trying

to imagine what ‘different’ might entail. The sooty-overalled citizens near the bench

seemed to think so too, judging by the way they frowned at Samantha. The one

who’d looked across a moment earlier still bested the others in the staring stakes.

This was a short wiry fellow, whose tufty black hair framed a face filled with wrinkles,

which in turn were filled with powder resembling coal dust. A huge yellow flower

poked from his chest pocket, like something a chimp might wear to a tea party.

‘What job did you do after college?’ Walter asked Samantha to throw the little

chimp-man off the scent, whatever the scent might be.

‘Oh, I didn’t bother with that. I met a man, you see. He was so kind, so

inspiring. I thought he’d marry me, but he never asked.’ She stared down at her

gloved hands.

Shame followed Walter’s instinctive joy that her lover abandoned her. ‘How

could he do such a thing? You must have been so lonely all these years, or months,

or … however long it’s been.’

Her tiny smile made his heart lurch. Samantha Hopewell, the girl every boy at

All Citizens wanted to romance, the girl every girl wanted to be. A woman so alone.

Samantha never spoke of her parents, but everyone knew they were killed after the

Pickaxe Revolution, having bet on the wrong horse. The Hopewells tried to flee New

Britain, leaving baby Samantha with an aunt. During a police chase in Dover, they

plunged their car into the English Channel.

‘How have you managed?’ Walter asked. ‘I mean, with no one to take care of

you?’

‘But I have very good friends. They’re like family to me. Look!’ Samantha

stuck out her chest, and he averted his gaze. ‘Silly! Look.’

He swallowed hard and glanced down. Less formal than the suits worn by

Gabriel Tain and Mr Saxton, Samantha’s pale coral skirt-suit was nonetheless chic

and very … fitted. She pointed at a button badge on her lapel, featuring a black

megaphone against a white background.

She beamed. ‘I’m Senior Troop Sister of the Progressive Front Young Ladies’

League. The PF is so uplifting. It gives me a purpose, as though I belong there. I’ve

never truly belonged anywhere else, not really, not among those awful commies who

killed my …’ Her lips tightened like a clam shell, only more attractive. After a

moment, the corners lifted again in a smile. ‘And now you’re joining us. I always

knew you were different from the other boys.’

‘You did?’

‘Of course.’ She clacked open her handbag and pulled out a leaflet, handing it

to him. ‘I have to go, darling, but I do hope we’ll see each other again. At the next

Front meeting? Ladies and gentlemen sit in separate rooms, but I’m certain we’ll

pass each other in the corridor.’

His voice scratched like rust in his throat as she rose to leave. It squeaked like

helium in his ears. ‘Wait!’

She threw him a smile over her shoulder. Then she glided off into the crowded

square. Too soon, her golden hair and little cap bobbed from sight.

The leaflet read: ‘Wednesdays, 19:30. Progressive Front HQ, Subterranean Lair,

People’s Park’. At least this was the back page. The flip side revealed a troop of

young ladies marching in short white tennis dresses. Walter pressed the leaflet to his

lips. Must he really join the Progressive Front if he were to see Senior Troop Sister

Samantha again? He rose from the bench and tried for a last glimpse of her through

the crowd. All he saw were heads and shoulders and limbs, their owners caught up

in things of no moment, in coups and chairmen, while Samantha Hopewell was in

their midst and walking away.

She was gone, fluttered off like a golden canary, vanished like a wisp, like a

fairy, like an airborne mermaid on the crest of a cloud, like —

‘Nice seeing you, Walt.’

Walter lowered his gaze slowly. Standing by his side was the chimps’ tea

party attendee from the sooty huddle. The little man bowed, wizened face sinking

into the petals of the huge yellow bloom that sprouted from his chest pocket.

‘Do I know you?’ Walter sputtered.

‘Never seen you in my puff. Mike’s the name.’ The chimp-man wiped a

powdering of pollen from his nose with his finger and extended his hand to Walter.

His inner wrist bore the tattoo of a bright yellow mining lamp. Walter’s hand throbbed

as the chimp-man, aka Mike, pumped it: his arm juddered in its socket.

‘Well, me and the mates best get going. Forewoman sent us to see what’s

going on. Now we’ve seen.’ Mike released Walter’s hand with a wink. ‘Cheerio,

Waldo, but mebbe not cheerioff.’

‘Cheery … O?’ Though it came out as a question, Walter hadn’t the slightest

inclination to prolong the conversation. He shot off across the square. Had a parade

of clowns unicycled by, accompanied by Siberian tigers and dancing bears, he

wouldn’t have batted an eyelid, not after the events of the day. Or possibly he’d have

fled screaming from the tigers, or collapsed in a jellified heap before the bears, but

he felt like he wouldn’t have batted an eyelid.

A plate of egg and chips might restore a sense of normality. He imagined his

mother answering his door, a faint waft of fried food about her hair-helmet. She’d

greet him with a barrage of questions about his interview, fussing, fluttering, huffing

and puffing, haranguing, beaming and crying, along with every other behaviour she

typically exhibited over the course of an afternoon.

He stumbled onto a bus bound for the opposite side of town, City Suburb A,

the ‘posh’ part of People’s City.

Oddly enough, given the speed of New British buses, the journey passed in a

blur. The passengers’ chatter was all ‘Gabriel Tain this’ and ‘Siberia that’. To block it

out, Walter sang an old mining lullaby in his head, one his mother used to croon

when she bounced him on her knee in his infancy, or tucked him into bed on a

school night, or distracted him from worries about his GREE exams, or just to break

the awkward silences when she walked him home each evening from the gates of

Everyone’s Electrics:

Papa was a miner,

And I’m my papa’s son,

And I’ll never join no union,

For strikers all are scum.

They say in our fine colliery,

There are some rebels there.

You’d better be the bosses’ man,

’Cos ingrates all pay dear.

Oh, don’t you know you’re lucky?

Lucky, lucky, lucky.

Stand tall, brave scabs, in every strike,

Be loyal, good and plucky!

Don’t strike for the unions,

Nor listen to their lies.

Our bosses give us bread and meat,

But the unions we despise!

A dying caterwaul juddered him back to the present; his uvula wobbled in the

back of his throat. The bus had fallen still and silent, like the secret mass grave in

People’s Park marked by the monument that read: ‘Secret mass grave of Thatcher’s

unrepentant Tories, People’s Park’. Passengers strained their necks to goggle at

him. Old men and grey-haired women began whispering. Children pointed at him.

Every face might have belonged to Arnie Braine or an Arnie Braine associate,

sneering the way the sneerers sneered throughout school, college, all his dead-end

jobs and Everyone’s Electrics.

He jumped up and hotfooted it to the front of the bus. Titters rang out behind

him. Ahead, the driver hummed ‘Papa was a Miner’. Outside, the road crawled by.

He recognised nothing through the dirty windows. He might be halfway to Ultima

Thule, he didn’t care. Just let the bus stop. An age passed before the driver

crunched the brakes. Walter leapt from the bus, collided with a lamppost and hugged

it while he struggled for composure.

Ernest Pingel would never have carried on like such a fool. Ernest would

never have given people cause to laugh at him, and if he had he wouldn’t have

fretted, unless those people were his bosses. Strong and brave and scabby, that was

Ernest, whatever being a scab truly meant. Scabs, strikes, trade unions — all were

distant memories, preserved in quaint ditties such as ‘Papa was a Miner, and You’re

All Striking Scum’. Cooperative unions had long since replaced the trade unions,

their role to inspire the happy workforce to superhuman output and prevent anyone

straying like rogue sheep from the communist fold. The anti-trade-union songs posed

so little threat, the Freedom and Plenty Party hadn’t bothered to ban them.

Sobered by thoughts of Ernest’s mild-mannered courage and by fumes of

canine liquid excreta, Walter released the lamppost and staggered off in the direction

of Children of the Revolution Road.

The houses in this part of town were Mock Tudor, with as many as three

bedrooms, plus garages for shiny Ladas. Each enjoyed a patch of garden where

householders, mostly higher-ranking officials from the Party, police or army, hosted

rain-and-vodka-sodden barbecues. Mr Spencer, Walter’s former GREE lecturer, had

lived at No. 2 Children of the Revolution Road since the street’s former incarnation

as Litter of Labrador Puppies Lane, but he spent more time nurturing plants in his

garden than he did cultivating his neighbours.

At the unlatching of the gate, Mr Spencer glanced up from tending a

flowerbed. His knobbly face brightened like the marigolds that seemed to grow in his

garden year-round, and he creaked to his feet, brushing grass cuttings from the

knees of his corduroy trousers. ‘It's you, my boy,’ he declared, limping towards

Walter and tossing his gardening gloves to the lawn. These gloves were the sole

concession to his horticultural activities, for he wore, as ever, his tweed jacket with

the shiny elbow patches, paired today with a green tie that complemented the sludgy

tones of his outfit.

For all his shamble and stoop, Mr Spencer was a giant of a man with a

handshake firm as Mike the chimp-man’s from People’s Square, but no more bone-

crushing than Mr Saxton’s fingerless touch. ‘Pleasure to see you,’ he said, clasping

Walter’s hand. Knowing Mr Spencer, Walter suspected he meant it.

Yet if the lecturer thought a smidgen of pleasantness still existed in the world,

he couldn’t know about the coup. It seemed wrong to deflate him while squeezing

digits in this little patch of paradise, in this prettiest garden in People’s City. To tell

him of dark deeds, of his precious chairman exiled in freezing Siberia, while the two

of them stood in a frivolity of colour and inhaled a glorious allergy of scents. While

blue tits chirped overhead and rabbits bounced in the bushes. While a squirrel stole

peanuts from a bird feeder and a newborn fawn wobbled across the lawn to nuzzle

Mr Spencer’s spare hand. Mr Spencer might never feel the same about his garden

again. His tende r heart might break, right here, spill down his trouser leg into the

grass.

Mr Spencer retrieved his hands from Walter and the fawn. ‘I suppose you’ve

come about that awful coup?’

Straight from the lecturer’s lips, this confirmation of the day’s disaster struck

like a blow. ‘You know?’ whispered Walter.

Mr Spencer shrugged his round shoulders. ‘Some lout from the Progressive

Front called. They’ve suspended the Politics Department till further notice. So what

else is there to do but garden?’

‘Gardening.’ Walter nodded rapidly. ‘Marigolds and fawns and coups.’ The

ground swayed beneath him like an inviting green hammock. ‘Loungers and benches

… and deckchairs … and …’ He tried to steady himself by lunging for the handle of a

spade stuck in some freshly turned soil. He missed, and fell into Mr Spencer’s arms.