Freedom Island (9 page)

              Of course, most Insurgents with the intelligence to have had any real effect in the first place, knew instinctively that, once identified or caught, their only chance was to play things Haussmann’s way; to join his band of cronies, become outposts of his particular thinking: to leave behind their beloved principles as though they had never mattered at all. So to Haussmann, these latest fools who had bombed a statue represented merely new recruits, competent people who could perhaps put their energies to better use. A few would have to die of course, to satisfy the public, but ‘maybe not the most able’, chuckled Haussmann to himself, as though it were a well-worn phrase: ‘maybe not the most able.’
              As a sycophant spoke, Haussmann’s attention drifted. Flickering images, ideas, memories, commitments, fantasies, intersected with a gentle whisper. Then his pen rolled off the table. And he’d just put his phone in the wrong pocket. He was not a superstitious man, but nor was he a chaotic one so this bothered him, momentarily, and his half-empty china cup clattered lightly in its saucer.
             
‘Belief, respect, belonging, fear . . . ’ he murmured half-aloud, for he knew better than anyone, ‘require selling. The Statue of Europa represented all of this.’
              Had the newcomers attacked a political leader he had plenty more to drop in their place, or had they waltzed into a TV station the fear in the eyes of a TV personality would have made them appear insane. No, the more he began to chew it over, the more uncomfortable he began to feel: It was an attempt to break the established illusion, and with instability the tendency is change. He made a mental note to follow this one up, personally. Then he laughed aloud, and raising his manicured Rolexed hand he announced grandly to the others: ‘We shall rebuild Europa, and twice the size!’

❊

Given the geographical isolation of Bedlam, the institution had a large effluent tank—‘The Great Vault’—tucked beneath the centre of the building, that fed into the estuary twice daily. Thanks to the distraction of the Governor and the fiscal focus of the Deputy, the neglected sluices jammed, that active anus of Bedlam suddenly blocked: its daily rhythm lost, its pressure soaring the sulphureous methane from the overburdened tanks fed back on up the labyrinth of rupturing decrepit pipes to the washrooms behind the canteen—a tremor, and everyone fell silent.
              The Head Prefect who was rounding the corner into the canteen puffing on a cigarette, doubled back to check: After one puzzled second the washroom door was blown from its hinges and Olimpio Galasso himself was pinned to the wall, cracking his skull, the cigarette jammed in his throat while the adjacent wall (built by sub-contractors under the previous Governor) opened-up taking the corner of the canteen with it. Frank, Odd and the others sat there with freedom staring them in the face. Everyone clapped. Nobody moved.
              ‘Come on!’ Frank whispered urgently, but Odd shook his head wisely. Blofeld pushed his peas back and forth. The others looked away. Mary came over, Frank turned to her:
              ‘Let’s run!’
              ‘Where?’
              ‘Anywhere!’
              ‘It was not better for me out there. Here I eat, we have windows and a door. I can practice my craft. I’m not running anywhere.’
              ‘And what would I do?’ she added, challenging him. ‘Runaways can’t get jobs, you know that!’
              That morning, Frank had said to her: ‘I love beautiful things’—for Frank, it had been a spontaneous, spiritual, lyrical moment, intended to communicate his happiness in her company. He’d meant it in all sincerity. But for Mary, beauty was a prize, a danger: people sought her for that—and now, her residual anger from that morning comment drove her negativity.
              ‘We could manage somehow
. . 
. ’ he tried again.
              ‘No, I’m staying!’ Her response was emotional but final, and Frank took it as evidence of the limit of her love.
You’ll have to piss and shit out the window for a month, they were told. But the bars! they cried in unison. Then use a bucket first! And they did: for a month the irregular sound of structural repairs would be accompanied by the sight of turds somersaulting past, urine leaping in crystal jets or floating pearl rain showers—even the Governor projected from his terrace and he, like them all, felt an unfamiliar sense of freedom.
              Frank lay sweating in his bed, eyes wide open. Devastated. Still devastated that his love had determined his fate: his unquestioning adoration of Mary had forced him to sheepishly accept his imprisonment. Not only did she not care about her freedom, she did not care about his! Eventually, he slid into a sleep where the devil herself were playing piano in the Great Hall: she wore a beautiful grey gown and an impassive face of impeccable beauty—framed by dramatic orange hair.
              The following morning Frank left in the grey van driven by Odd to Canterbury, to beg. The giant hole in the Bedlam wall had changed nothing—the walls themselves had outlived their purpose.
              ‘I’d like to beg alone today, Odd.’
              Odd looked over to his friend a little suspiciously. ‘Fine.’
              And as the van moved off, so did Frank. Quickly and surely in all-grey, out of the underpass and across the park, around the Castle and through the next underpass—it stunk of piss—but he had a plan and it would take him all day and all night, begging, climbing aboard busses, walking for miles on asphalt or mud toward the only freedom he remained capable of imagining: the very gypsy village that had given him his love by ejecting her.

❊

As I settled into my new life as my brother’s farm-hand and occasional Insurgent, not only had my life changed, but I begun to change too: I became supremely confident; I had purpose; responsibility; comrades! I was full, but there was also an equal but opposite force in play: I found it harder to stay calm. Harder to be myself. Harder to know right from wrong. Harder to restrain myself or to trust others. And worst of all I
had been
having trouble sleeping, and it was becoming more and more intrusive and delusional. I would find myself in a half-sleep, or a half-trance I was unable to escape from, visited by ghouls demons ghosts and archangels—even pigeons. The light helped a little. There were people from the past, travellers from the future squatting in my room and laughing in the corner, or beating on my chest so I couldn’t move, peeling my head!
              Soaked in sweat, I would shriek names numbers and senseless horrible broken phrases all in a cracking voice, yelling improbable quotations then panting and stammering in uncontrollable fury. And I could hear it all as though it were someone else, as I foamed at the mouth and shook with such fear I would make the bed vibrate, sweat streaming down my face. I saw mutilated bodies, arms legs heads missing naked and propped up in compromising positions: ‘I won’t have it! Get rid of all of them! Traitors!’ I was plagued by horrific delusions of being invisibly restrained in a dreadful asylum where nobody would listen: I found myself screaming, shouting and struggling atrociously with my disobedient body then finally wandering restlessly to and fro, half here, half there, panting and mumbling with the lights on.
              Not sleeping for days at a time, delirious, I would rant to my fellow rebels or to my long-suffering brother: ‘God does not exist, humanity does not exist, the universe does not exist! Where is Jesus, where is Jesus?!’ quite certain I was possessed by something on some evil adventure, one of many secretly destined to take over: ‘Die Die Die! I know what I have to do, I have to kill them! why are they watching me? what about this what about this!’ I kept on saying: ‘but how am I going to sleep? I just want to sleep! Why won’t they just let me sleep?!’ with a random question sandwiched in-between, ’you never listen to what I’m saying . . . why can’t you answer my questions?!’
              From hysteria down into the blackest depression I fell, the deepest darkest most hellish thick black paint crawling down the inside of my eyelids as if I were descending in an eternal lift, full of guilt and regret and failure, my eyes aching, searing somewhere up to the back between their entrails and my brain, my body paralysed yet utterly restless. Next, prompted by the totally inconsequential, I would behave like a spoilt child, or a frantic and delirious woman scolding in shrill tones, stamping my feet and banging my fists on tables and walls and people, as I tried to drum up in others the same commitment I found in my own soul.
              To come to terms with this exhausting problem—the chasm between my own faith and that of the others—I went on to have my comrades (my lagging heroes) tattooed one by one with the Cross of St George, a symbol reduced by Union propaganda from utmost pride to unspeakable shame, so they would no longer be half committed, one foot in one foot out. It was to remind them, my sorry sufferers of all our sins past and future, sadness and despair their only companions on a sea of misery—torn as they were by ill fate from the place where they belonged, of what they dreamed!
              Women came and went—on demand: they became functional, younger, to balance my own ageing perhaps and my hunger for control. In their size and timidity they’d come to resemble mother, yet still more I sunk beyond salvation: lethargy, heart pains, gas and migraines consuming me in private; they were bearing down eating me up rendering me incapable of working, timid and sensitive, puny and sickly. Increasingly I leant on Maggie, who never said much though what she did say was sure, and as people are best measured by what they don’t say, I would ask for a second opinion in almost every circumstance.
              But something new was needed, some way forward! I needed the others to show some initiative, good God, to help me to believe too! They were devious and lazy, stupid, really stupid: why did I have the drive, that sufficient unrestrained ambition, only to have them mess up all the time?! Simpletons mindless servile scum, flatterers adulators crawlers theorists and cowards . . . ‘Show me some instinct!’
Union Interior Minister Gustav Haussmann followed his instinct, and he showcased it—his ‘feeling’, as he put it. Riding on a respectable background, his appearance bourgeois and devoid of genuine emotion but over-keen, he was gormless yet certain. A pedant, a quibbler, hair-splitter and nit-picker. And whilst obsessed with displaying his own academic learnings to others, he was seldom able to use his intellect rather than his power, wielding a tremendous contempt for the average man.
              His mother, Ursula, was a stocky woman of Schwab extraction. Her big-toe-like thumbs belying centuries of (Lower?) village society. Her self-satisfied face warning all men not to mistake her gender for weakness: her eyes and ill-placed laughter drilled through those trying to impress; her friendliness struck fear into those who knew her best. On the rare occasions when she did actually like someone, she would look down on them as though they were a pet, regardless of their height.
              Ever since his father had tumbled down the stairs over Wolfie the cat when Gustav was ten, Ursula had been the head of the house. She became the inspiration behind his meteoric rise to Head Boy of his elite school, and then on to Interior Minister of the Union. Gustav was the typical first child, her boy, a Scorpio (and that mattered to him a lot). He had married, as orchestrated by Ursula, but there was no question that his mother was the woman in his life, a fact his wife had long learnt to accept. And he would meet mother three or four times a week for dinner to discuss the family business—the Union—plans, rivals, problems. Ursula’s no-nonsense approach had always helped clear the confusions and uncertainties in his mind, and since the past had shown she was always right, Gustav would act on her advice without really thinking a problem through himself; hence his rivals were unable to compete with his clarity and resolve, whilst his
own somehow impotent personality perfectly belied the harsh policies dreamt up by his mother.
              She
delivered her English like the Queen of England in a laboured way, as though it were an equation
slowed down to
make it abundantly clear no-one should interrupt, b
ut her most striking characteristic was her smile: hers was a terrifying mystery of conniving s
uperior intelligence, cruelty and lack of restraint
.

Tomorrow, the hanging of my accomplices was to be shown live on TV, two full years after our attack on Europa. After painstakingly meticulous planning, having recruited or planted rebels into the run-of-the-mill jobs which gave us the access we needed: Maggie the cleaner, Jim on streetlight maintenance . . . yes, we’d had blasts from bins, lampposts, drains, toilets and walls—decorating the city with body parts, on the hour, every hour, from nine to five for seven days: the Government Quarter, the commercial and banking districts: town halls, police stations and tax offices. It was a disturbance beyond even the distortion and disguise of the Union, leaving it preaching and flailing like a toothless old lady. People were talking to their neighbours and office enemies again—and listening, sharing in the consolatory awakening joy of suffering, of not trusting the outside, the unknown, the impersonal, the Union!
              People wouldn’t go out, kids weren’t going to school, and they didn’t care who was listening in or if their adrenaline was logged, their negativity recorded. For one week the citizenry stopped thinking about shopping malls, mix ’n’ match fashions, TV shows, wine and home decorating, as people lost their lives and their limbs, victims of the Union in life and victims of the people sworn to save them, in death and mutilation. We were called Nazis, because all the Union’s lapdog media could do was demonise us, but we were patriots.
              Because, only by challenging the brainwashing of the Union, could things change! And anyone who works for the Union—even though they know not what they do—is an enemy of a Free England.
              But soon the streets were back to normal; old ladies laden with shopping mumbled to themselves, mothers struggled to control their children, young men rushed on their way from somewhere or other to somewhere else, trying to make a crust: and we had been caught. Betrayed. And it could have been any one of those disaffected youths, thrown out husbands, runaway wives, the envious and miserable bankrupts, drunks, criminals, tortured academics, old men bursting with aggression and of course, spies, all of whom labelled themselves rebels.
              But the others suspected me. Two of them sat opposite me in the police cell, in seething silence: Jim, who at one time I’d imagined might be a Union spy, or even my Observer, but here he was about to die, his terror for the first time making him dangerous. Next to him, Maggie, mascara smudged and faded. I was to live: tomorrow, I was to attend a low-level hearing at the exact same time as they would be departing this world for good. After clearing my throat I tried to talk but the words rang hollow and boring and insincere; my voice had lost its crispness and certainty, become humdrum and jittery. My movements were slow and awkward, unsteady, and a tic had made my face seem violent even on the occasions when it wasn’t. I looked down at the floor and began to tremble, in a convulsion; I began to cry uncontrollably, saliva and tears running down my face—I couldn’t stop it, my collar and shirt-front became soaked-through with sweat—I smiled weakly at them. I felt everything in each of them in my skin and bones: their doubt their hate creeping up on me with agonised sleepless gaunt faces and ulcerous stinking open sores, with scissors in their hands. Their eyes like burning black coals, I felt their pain, their torment and anger, their resentment; I could not prove it, but I was sure—positive.
              For some time my moods had been swinging between sentimental and callous, plunging from bursts of bravado down to anger and sulkiness, crying and wailing with self-pity; my comrades would watch as my face would become distorted disfigured maimed by my traumas insomnia tics visions and paranoia. At their slightest contradiction indignant insolent rage would erupt such that I felt the vein on my forehead swell and throb, and out of my mouth would come the same old broken phrases—beyond my control—jumping from one subject to the next in an intense endless stream of nonsense God damn it forever sounding as though it was about to make sense. I would hear it all: ‘You don’t understand, nobody understands, you can’t understand! You don’t know the truth. How can you know the truth?!’ And just as suddenly my complexion jaundiced, flabby and expressionless, my manner listless and indifferent.
              They had a point: I had got them into this mess. So recently these two here had come to idolise me, like all of my followers: I had made them confident, excited, foolish; hanging on my every word—worshippers of some idea which had found its embodiment in me. They would talk about me as if I had the lure of a secretive star, a romantic figure, and they had started to dress like me, tribal bloody numbskulls, despite my reproaches. These two had been among my privileged inner circle; those I had come to trust the most in the padded shirts I’d designed myself, my private team—loyal to me personally, ruthless and smart and cutting the throats of those I suspected on a whim.
              It had been easy: life having run such a series of unfortunate events, I found nothing inside to distract from my purpose: no patience, no gentleness, only rage boiling uncontrollably and indiscriminately, rousing, rousing me to demand instant results, ideas and impulses. I was suspicious, rightly so, and hostile; they were all useless, but why, why do they stare? Why do they stare?! But the two of them just sat and stared, ceaseless hatred and betrayal flaring from their four eyes as if they could rip my head off any second. But the next day they were dead.
              How I laughed, as the doctor walked in. To think of my miserable old days in that flat and how I had gone on to become the man I was destined to be. As the old man in the park had said, that’s why I’d had to suffer so much, so I could awaken! I recalled this wistfully, reverently, filled suddenly with
joy and then a gentle breezing energy as if I could tap-dance and sing, all thoughts freed as if a flower were growing out of my head, wanting to get things done!
I could rebuild our great nation, this our historic homeland from John o’Groats to Lands End! The cult of the Brits! our honest heroic past: only I could do it. I was their saviour, the burden of our history—fuck all those who try to suppress it, weighing on my every moment! But why was I still alive? I had to live, I must . . . only through me could my people attain their destiny.
The judge spoke with an almost theatrical articulation:
              ‘You have been charged with the serious offence of civil disorder.’ He raised his hands. He sighed. ‘You attacked a symbol of our society! What did you hope to achieve, son? You might have killed someone!’
              I was about to answer, but then realised I wasn’t supposed to.
              The judge rolled his eyes in resignation, then continued in a soft, fatherly tone, which I couldn’t help but warm to, although I was uncomfortable being addressed to as ‘son’: I was forty by now, after all.
              ‘You will benefit from Community Rehabilitation. You will labour for the good of the Society and Family Company and be attended to until you are healthy again. I trust they will inject some new values into your life.’ And then, with added volume: ‘I also suggest, young man, that you find yourself a wife!’
              The court had attributed a minor involvement to me, addressing only the Europa episode, and had immediately accepted the psychological arguments of my Union-appointed lawyer. But I wasn’t about to dwell on it; the next years were mapped-out, and an extraordinary sense of calm flowed through me. No, I was not depressed, not in the slightest. To be an official failure was a sudden release; a release from responsibility, from expectations, from failure itself!
              I was led out of the courtroom. My youthful lawyer, who’d seemed more nervous about the proceedings than I had, was now flushed with pride, marching alongside resolutely clasping his leather briefcase with gold initials.
              ‘You will be located in a small village in the Iberian Department, and given daily manual labour and psychiatric therapy,’ he reported, repeating what the judge had already said.
              I had always envied manual labourers, perpetually lodged in some street or on some building that was drawing imperceptibly closer to completion, hunched whistling straining under some physical load, their lives easier, clearer as though the physical burden eased the mental one, the frustration, the mistaken idea that we suffer alone. They were like my own father, content to cut the grass and bale the hay, somehow able to savour the priceless passing moments despite the knowledge that we are about to lose it all. It felt like a promotion.