A Clean Pair of Hands (5 page)

“Not so big.” George diverted the discussion from the tax question.

“Ha! You've got plenty in the bank.”

“Not as much as you.”

“Well, you're still a big man, and you sleep well at night knowing that you can pay the bills. I don't sleep well. I'm always dreaming of how I could get more and do better and I am prepared to take risks to get there.” Michel interrupted himself. “Actually, that's a very important part of my philosophy; dreaming and implementing my dreams. If I didn't dream I would have the same opinion on everything as everybody else.” He paused, took a deep breath and continued, “French people are competitive by nature, and firstly they compete with authority.”

“You sound as though you are conducting a personal war against the state. I thought the revolution brought liberty, equality and fraternity, so where's the fraternity and
socialist community spirit we hear so much about?” asked George provocatively.

“Pwah!” Michel gesticulated dismissively. “Unbridled liberty allows everybody to apply their own despotism. It means the state feels free to rob its people, so the people feel free to resist in whatever way they can. It's everyone for themselves here, and if any group is criticised or invited to change for the common good they respond by launching venomous personal attacks. There's no such thing as equality. That's just idealistic rubbish. In practice you can either have liberty or equality but not both. Listen, Uncle George,” he leaned across the table and stared into George's face, “I prefer refined vice dressed in silk, to stupid virtue wearing animal skins.”

George ducked any immediate response to Michel's outpouring, fearing to be accused of being virtuous, over-sensitive, politically correct or merely defensive if he replied directly. Instead he asked, “So, what is making you unhappy? You seem to have everything you could possibly need, and more. What are you afraid of?”

“A dull life!” asserted Michel. “My intention is not to settle into a routine, but to glide and experiment with alternative concepts. I glide from flavour to flavour, sensation to sensation, but I am not prepared to discuss sentiments at the edge of my comfort zone, like Thérèse wants me to do. In answer to your question though, I do worry about the future, but I have no pretentions that I can control it,” admitted Michel. “I know I am not an eagle that can fly high. I have to make my way in the real world in which I live. You see in France, people have given up trying to change things by voting for one party or another; they are powerless to change their own destiny. There is never any political agreement to the changes people call
for, because too many people are on the take or have gained a privileged position that they now perceive as normal and are unwilling to relinquish. They all think they are right because they are winning. They don't stop to ask who is paying for their privileges. So, if you can't change something, what do you do? You get drawn into it. There's an English expression isn't there? ‘If you can't beat them join them, and then beat them.' Most of the scandals that get into the press have at their origin someone, somewhere who was not prepared to make enough noise and demand attention to misdeeds, for fear of losing a comfortable job or promotion. They all put their own comfort and well-being first and thus the thing is accepted and grows until it reaches the proportions we see today. Then that becomes the norm. I heard a French minister recently saying she would not take a practical idea from Canada to solve a problem because that is not the French way of doing things. So we start from the drawing board to design something far worse, but which pays the right people, whereas importing a good idea that has proved to work in Canada, well, that's too cheap and easy for the French government.” Michel reflected, turning his head slightly towards a mirror to watch more people entering the brasserie. “My needs are mutable and I follow my needs. I am a down to earth person. I look around me and I take my positions. My decisions are based on perceived best interests. I am excellent at pantomime.”

“Is that what you call your talent for working with people, pantomime? Is it all an act?”

“Like everybody,” continued Michel, raising his elbows and opening his palms in a gesture, “everybody is doing their pantomime. The President takes his position with his mistresses and his racketeering. The ambitious middle class crowd dances in whatever way the vilest politicians
and judges or policemen allow them to do. You may look down on it as the pantomime of the proletariat, but what you are watching is the great impetus of the world. Do you think you have a special dispensation from it? Look around at your UK and Irish politicians and religious leaders and look at the political and business corruption in America and the way the political classes spend public money there. Tell me if you see anything different. You have old boy networks, don't you?”

George hesitated before replying. “I agree you have to connect with people to do business. Networking is a perfectly respectable manifestation of promotion. It's about being curious and wanting to share knowledge. It's not a closed dealing room. If you cease to connect by whatever means, you become isolated – you then have no influence, no means to change anything or do anything, but you can't seriously think the manipulative behaviour you described is just a form of networking.”

At the end of his last outburst, Michel had dropped his chin. There were now six empty bottles of beer on the table and the waiter had already cleared some away. George had drunk only two bottles.

Suddenly Michel raised his head again and sat up against the chair back. “You know the only thing that can move France forward? Visibility and ridicule: when the rest of the world can see what we are like and when some of these cases of corruption and abuse are more widely reported and they embarrass our governments and privileged classes, including some groups of workers, to a point where they have to change, we might see some movement, but it will be a slow process. They are not easily embarrassed. Oh no. Look at Mitterrand as an example. How can you be proud of your country when he thinks that what he does is perfectly normal and justified for as long
as he can get away with it? France is far worse than Britain in acting independently within the EU, even though we were one of the founders. You can see that even when the European Union tries to impose its pathetic standards on us, the French government continues to ignore the rules and pays the fines.” At this point, Michel dropped his head again. He was thinking,
that's it, I've said it. I'm stopping now. I withdraw into my shell and if that displeases Monsieur my uncle George, then too bad.

“So are you saying that there is no sense of duty, no morality in France or in most of the rest of the world?” prodded George.

Michel struggled to reply, but after a long pause, “Where does morality fit? Morality is always defined by those in power.” He screwed up his face with intensity and looked up to the ceiling for inspiration. “In France you have the same extremes of good and bad as anywhere else. There are good and decent people who work hard and strive to improve the world around them, but the traditional simplistic concepts of good and evil have moved out to the opposite ends of the spectrum.” With his index finger he drew a line in the pool of beer on the table, then a circle in the middle of the line. “They have polarised, leaving a large grey area in the middle and in that area a lot of quite good things live alongside quite bad things without tension between them. The odious and the admirable coexist here. The political predators live alongside their prey and all they do is bellow at each other, exchanging insults and carry on using public money as if it were their own.

“There is still an underlying morality that binds us to a common opinion on some things. But that's what I was saying just now. It blinds us from taking a unique personal opinion and striking out against the majority view. This
applies to business and politics just as much as to individuals. You are a member of professional institutes, George. I call them old boy networks because they are tribal. They all think the same. They pay experts to tell them what to think, so they all occupy the middle ground. I don't belong to any, not that they would have me. I want to be on my own and I am prepared to take the risks associated with that. You're a rational person, George, and you analyse business opportunities in your way, but I just deliver what people want without constraints, and then I work out how I can benefit. If I looked at a rational business case, it would get in the way of what I want out of life. Actually that's not entirely true. I would like to be a moralist, but it doesn't fit my plans for now. I speak about what pleases me. The rest is for intellectuals, they are the modern equivalent of monks. They have the time to sit and polish principles and express themselves in abstruse words. You're a moral person, George, and I think it just prevents you being yourself and getting what you really want out of life.”

“So what are you trying to get out of life at the moment?” probed George, shrugging but without reaction to the last assertion.

“I want to understand moral psychology and use that understanding productively for business and pleasure. I am morally tolerant and I am happy to live in a tolerant society. I only believe in something if it benefits me. As I said, I'm not going to argue or fight for some hypothetical principle.”

“So no constraints and no sense of social responsibility?”

“None, other than to my family.”

“Isn't that perhaps one of the reasons why you have the
kind of governments you complain of?” George enquired. “You know the saying: that if you want to change the world, first change yourself.”

“Possibly, but I'm more cynical. I think that businessmen, politicians and workers dig in their heels to protect their interests and use the public good as a powerful argument, just as much as other individuals do when faced with change, but I think that in the case of politicians the inertia is because the economic and social problems transcend their ability to solve them, so they have to live within the structures we have and as those structures evolve, driven by global powers beyond our control, and once having accepted that fact, they just use their time and energies to fill their own pockets. Money is probably the only thing they will take away from a lifelong career in politics.

“Consider this, George: who determines morality and true facts? It's experts, or self-appointed interpreters of truth. In some theocratic societies where people don't or can't think for themselves they are considered necessary, and the experts become a respected part of the culture, so it's easier for totalitarian regimes to build a following in those places. People are told what to think and do and are punished inhumanely if they show dissent, but that shouldn't happen in a modern educated society where intelligent people can think for themselves and are left free to do so. That's the tension in France. You have the educated political aristocracy and intellectuals, and a relatively unqualified mass who are being told what to think and do by a huge autocratic and bureaucratic middle class of civil servants and other leaders who have got such a good deal for themselves that they will never change voluntarily. You can see how minor civil servants and trade union leaders manipulate people for their own ends and
there isn't the same protection for, say, consumers as you have in the UK. Anyway, the end result is that I don't take other people's word for it. I take my position according to what benefits me, and I reject uncomfortable results.” Michel paused for breath.

“Well I do start by taking some people's word for it,” George begged to differ, “otherwise we would all have to make our way in the world from scratch. Have you heard the expression ‘standing on the shoulders of giants'? That's how we benefit from the experience of others.”

“Yeah! Who are the giants today, George? Select your giants from among our elected leaders. Is Mitterrand a giant? That's reality. I don't like reality; reality is relative; it depends on the angle of view you are taking. The greatest villains on earth all justify their actions in their own eyes; they pursue them determinedly, and they find or create beneficiaries to follow and protect them and name streets and places after them. Our leaders are a bunch of sophisticated connivers, and I don't subscribe to these people who are considered to be culturally acceptable experts. Most of them are appointed by the people who pay most to have their interests represented.” Michel went on, “I have instincts, needs and desires just like everybody, but I subject them only to my own test of acceptability.”

“So does everybody work to individual standards and morality, not accepting that there is a common standard?” argued George. “For example, you got married. When you did, that you were subscribing to a common morality, weren't you?”

“I didn't seek to be married. Charlotte chased me to the ends of the earth.”

“So, she showed that she was in love with you and wanted you more than anybody else. You must have
wanted her too.” There was a long pause, and then Michel leaned closer across the table and adopted a more conspiratorial tone.

“Charlotte trapped me by telling me she was pregnant. My mother said she should have an abortion and she arranged it, but the outcome was that we still got married.”

“Hmm. You say she trapped you, but surely it takes two to have a baby?” George responded with a slight grin, though his previous idealised image of the couple was shattered by this revelation.
So, it was real life all over again,
he mused.

There was another long pause after this while Michel reflected on his attitude when he married Charlotte. True, he hadn't really been under so much pressure to marry once the abortion was taken care of, but it was convenient and she was the brightest thing in his life at the time. He wasn't aware of the responsibilities that would come later and the expectations of those around him as to how he would fulfil them. He was now rewriting the rule book on that. But the obstacle ahead of him now was tangible. He felt the scale and thickness of it as if it were a castle wall.