Rule Britannia (6 page)

The sentry stared. “I beg pardon, ma’am,” he said. “I was there myself last night, helping to remove the gear. I didn’t realize you were the lady. I’ll issue you with a pass.” He disappeared into his hut and came out again with a yellow sticker and two tickets. “It’s just a precautionary measure, ma’am. They are being issued to all the local inhabitants. This is for the car, I’ll paste it on your windscreen. These are the tickets for yourself and your companion.”

“What about us?” asked Andy.

The soldier smiled and shook his head. “No one has a pass under eighteen, son,” he said, “but it’s O.K. if you’re accompanied by an adult. Thank you, ma’am.”

He lifted the barrier, and for the first time Emma could remember her grandmother shot into the right gear and accelerated, nearly cutting off the soldier’s foot. He backed swiftly into his hut.

“I’ve never heard such utter nonsense in my life,” exploded Mad. “Who do they think they are, ordering us about on our own highway?”

“Look,” said Colin excitedly, pointing to the sands, “they’ve got a barrier there too, and wire all round, and there are soldiers everywhere.”

He was right. Poldrea sands, the delight of tourists in mid-summer and refuge of local inhabitants in winter as an exercising ground for dogs, had become an encampment over the weekend, with notices everywhere saying “U.S. Marines. No Admittance.”

Mad brought the car to a standstill outside the Poldrea supermarket. She got out of the car and swept past the swing door, Emma and the boys behind her. The supermarket was full and the clatter and noise were deafening, like the bird house at a zoo. Inevitably, as on every occasion when there has been crisis, all wished to give an account of his or her own experiences during the weekend.

“I was just sitting down to tea, and I said to Father…”

“Sleep? I couldn’t close my eyes. And the roar…”

“Takes me back to wartime, I said to Jim, seeing all these fellows around, and they say they’re going to be here weeks. It’s the threat, you see, of what might happen if they packed up. Jim says…”

Mad swept purchase after purchase into her wire basket, and ended up beside the salesman who sliced the ham—when in doubt, Mad always said, one can live on cold ham. She fixed him with a cold blue eye. He was not a local man, but had been sent down from Bristol when the supermarket first started.

“Well,” she said, “what do you make of the invasion?”

“Invasion?” he queried, then smiled. “Now, you mustn’t call it that. I’ve been telling my wife it will be the saving of the country. We should have done it months ago, years ago, even.”

“Oh, really?” asked Mad. “Why?”

“Well…” He considered the matter as he sliced the ham. “It stands to reason, doesn’t it? They’re like our own people, aren’t they? We all speak English. It’s a wonderful thing for the English-speaking countries to get together. America, Australia, South Africa, ourselves… you won’t get the foreigners trying to push us around now.”

“Aren’t we being pushed around at the moment?” said Mad. “I’ve just been issued with a pass coming down Poldrea hill. No one to be allowed to move without a pass.”

“Security,” said the Bristol ham-slicer, and looking over his shoulder dropped his voice to a whisper. “You’d be surprised the things they say. Oh, not just that the continentals might be slipping over to make trouble, but our own people, folk like you and I, just biding their time to upset the Coalition Government, or make things awkward for the Americans. We must all be on our guard.”

“Yes,” said Mad, “I think we must.”

Emma, who had been keeping a close watch on the boys in case they slipped something into their pockets and not into the wire basket, followed her grandmother out of the supermarket. Mad was looking rather grim.

“Where now?” asked Emma.

“I think I’ll have a word with Tom,” said Mad. Tom was the fishmonger, and had fished the waters of Poldrea, man and boy, for fifty years. “Well, Tom?” This time Mad’s eye was not so cold. She was fond of Tom. “How do you like living in a state of siege?”

“Don’t fancy it one bit,” was the answer from the gray-haired skipper of the
Maggie May.
“They’m turning the country upside down. And what’s more, tryin’ to boss we. I don’t hold with it. And what do they think they’m to out there in the bay—diggin’ for sand-eel?”

Mad smiled. “We used to do it half a century ago,” she said. “They call it showing the flag. It’s to impress the natives.”

Tom shook his head. “It might impress some folk,” he said. “It don’t impress me. I’ve lived too long.” He looked down at his flabby wares displayed on the slab. “Nothing here to tempt you, my dear,” he said. “Caught Wednesday and been on the ice ever since. They’ve lost their bite, like the speakers up Whitehall. Will you go to the meeting?”

“What meeting?”

“There’s notices posted round the town. Meeting at town hall seven o’clock. Questions from the general public to be answered by our Member and this Yankee colonel who’s in charge.”

“Ah ha!” said Mad, and she turned to her granddaughter. “I’ve a very good mind to attend.”

Emma’s heart sank. She knew exactly what would happen. Mad would make remarks under her breath, or not under her breath, the entire time people were asking questions. And the M.P. for the constituency was one of her bêtes-noires. She was a woman, for one thing, and had called at Trevanal a few years previously before the by-election, supremely confident that Mad would be willing to make large contributions to the party. She was duly elected, but she did not succeed in bringing Mad to the polls.

“Two more calls,” said Chairman Mao to her followers. “The post office and the Sailor’s Rest.”

The queue at the post office was almost as long as the one at the supermarket, but Mad never minded queues. She said it gave her a feeling of solidarity. Also she adored getting her pension. “It makes me feel rich,” she told Emma, and kept it inside a money box shaped as a pig, then doled it out to the boys as pocket money on Saturdays.

Feelings about the state of alert over the weekend were mixed inside the post office. Some of the queuers, like the ham-slicing salesman in the supermarket, thought it a very good thing, others shook doubtful heads. The district nurse, who was sister-in-law to Mr. Trembath at the farm adjoining Mad’s domain, was one of the doubtful ones. More than this, she was angry.

“They cut my phone,” she said to Mad, “and Mrs. Ellis’s baby was due, and when I tried to get across the valley Saturday night they wouldn’t let me through. Apologies, of course, this morning. Issued with a pass. Luckily the baby didn’t arrive, but if it had…”

“It might have been born with two heads,” said Colin, who had a habit of butting in on adult conversations.

“Have you been in touch with your brother-in-law?” asked Mad, ignoring the interruption.

The district nurse nodded. “Spoke to him just now,” she said, then lowered her voice. “They’re very upset about poor Spry.”

“I know,” said Mad, “so are we.”

She left the post office with her wealth, and they proceeded by car to the Sailor’s Rest. Originally erected as a public house for seamen, dockers, clay-workers and locals about a century ago, it had transformed itself into a trendy pub for the two-car, colored-television types, who would drive over of an evening and swap wives. Mr. Libby, the landlord, had made a good thing out of it since the licensing laws had been relaxed, and positioned as the pub was, near to the sands, it would be interesting, Mad observed to Emma as they parked outside before picking up their crate of cider, to discover Mr. Libby’s sentiments. The pub was already filled with American marines and they turned as one man and stared at Emma, who felt relieved that her grandmother had remained in the car. The landlord, from behind his bar, seemed in high spirits.

“Come for your cider, love?” he called. “I’m a bit pressed right now. Send Joe down for it later.”

“We want it now,” said Emma firmly, and turned on her heel. She could hardly believe her own voice. She might have been Mad herself. One of the marines whistled as she made her exit. In a few moments Mr. Libby emerged carrying the crate of cider. Mad put her head out of the car window.

“Busy?” she asked.

He winked. “I’ll say,” he answered. “With these chaps at my door I’ll do a roaring trade, better than I ever do with the tourists. I hope they stay forever.”

He lifted the crate into the boot and waved his hand.

“H’m,” said Mad as she turned the car towards the hill. “I can only count two for certain who are on our side, and that’s dear old Tom Bate and the district nurse.”

“What do you mean, on our side?” asked Emma.

“Well, it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” replied her grandmother. “The situation is rapidly becoming one of Them and Us.”

The town hall was packed. The notice on the outside said that householders only would be admitted, and this foresight on the part of the organizers had eliminated many of the possibly rowdier elements, and certainly the younger age group, who were being turned away disconsolate. Mad, sizing up the scene instantly, held on to Emma’s arm and began to limp.

“I’m seventy-nine,” she explained to the attendant at the door, who failed to recognize her—he must have been one of the Member’s minions from Truro. “I can’t manage without help from my granddaughter.”

The attendant waved them on respectfully, and pushing forward, the limp lessening with every step she took, Mad glimpsed the familiar faces of Mr. and Mrs. Trembath somewhere in the center of the crowd. In a moment she was tapping the farmer on the shoulder.

“Let’s all sit together,” she said. “I want to talk to you anyway.”

Jack Trembath was a big man with powerful shoulders, who used to wrestle for Cornwall against Brittany in his younger days. He was still under fifty, and even now would have thrown many a younger opponent. The four of them sat down near to the gangway in the middle of the hall, Mad with Emma on one side of her and the farmer on the other.

“What are they going to tell us?” hissed Mad in a whisper so loud that it carried at least four rows ahead, and people turned round.

“I know darn well what they’re going to say,” replied Jack Trembath, “and that is that we’re to behave ourselves and do as we’re told.”

“Or else?” queried Mad.

“Or else,” he repeated. He hesitated a moment, and then he whispered in her ear, “You know they shot poor Spry?”

“I saw them do it. That’s what I wanted to tell you. It was over at once. I went out later and buried her. She’s just beyond the gap in the hedge.”

He turned and looked at her. “I wish I’d known,” he said. “I’d have spared you that job. Never mind, I’ll repay you one of these days. My feeling is that there’s more trouble to come. It’s all been done too sudden, in my opinion. I may be wrong, I hope I am, but I don’t like it.”

“Nor do I,” replied Mad, and she pinched Emma’s arm. “That makes three who feel as we do—you, your sister-in-law and Tom Bate.”

Jack Trembath smiled. “Ah, Tom,” he said. “There’s a good man to have to your side in a scrap. Plenty of belly to him.”

The hum of voices ceased. The speakers were coming onto the platform. Emma wondered if everyone was supposed to stand, as in church, but nobody did, which was just as well because her grandmother, who had been persuaded greatly against her will to get into a dress at the last minute, under an old tweed coat, had put it on back to front, finding it more comfortable that way, and the zip had snapped coming down in the car, revealing a cast-off vest of Terry’s. No such borrowed clothing adorned the Member of Parliament. Mrs. Honor Moorhouse was a very good-looking woman and she knew it. She was escorted by Colonel Cheeseman, smart and erect in his uniform, and another woman whom neither Emma nor her grandmother had seen before.

The proceedings were opened by the Commander of Marines himself.

“Good friends one and all,” he began, “I am not here on this platform to detain you any longer than is necessary.” (He’s so keen on not detaining people, Emma thought—that’s what he said to Mad when he arrived from the helicopter.) “I’m just here to say thank you for your steady nerves and your kind cooperation during the past six days. It wasn’t easy for you, and we knew it wouldn’t be easy, but we had a job to do, and because of the way you’ve backed us up that job has been completed. It’s true that you will have us with you for a while—security precautions make this necessary; but I know, from what I’ve seen already, that we’re going to have a grand time together. I’m ashamed to say it, but only today I learned your Cornish motto, ‘One and All.’ Now that’s just one of the finest mottoes I’ve ever heard, and it’s going to apply to all of us right here, in this little section of your beautiful west country. Friends, this lovely lady doesn’t require any introduction from me. Your member, Mrs. Honor Moorhouse.”

The gallant Commander of Marines stood back and the Member of Parliament rose to her feet. She had a sheaf of papers in her hand but she did not consult them. She was evidently fully briefed, and indeed it was her confident manner and capable handling of statistics that had won her the seat in parliament.

“Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Cornishmen and women, we live in stirring times…”

“Oh God,” murmured Mad to her companions, “I know exactly what she is going to say from beginning to end.”

The Hon. Member for Mid-Cornwall went over the events of the past weekend, and elaborated on the necessity for U.S. intervention and the forming of the union between the two countries. Everyone had heard it on the radio and television from the Prime Minister, but somehow, because she was a woman, and was speaking to her constituents in their own town hall at Poldrea, she made it all sound more intimate, more parochial, as if the creation of USUK had come about for their especial benefit. After all, London was “up country” and still some distance away, despite the motorway, and nobody really minded what happened in the east or the north or the midlands, so long as the people who lived there came west for their holidays. It made them all feel they were the center of attention, beaches roped off, barricades on the main road. It was new, it was sensational, it gave them a feeling of importance. Men squared their shoulders as Mrs. Moorhouse spoke, women lifted their heads and wondered where she had bought her smart lime-green jersey suit; and as their Member continued, with eloquent phrases tripping off her tongue, about the lassitude into which the country had fallen, the lack of backbone among the young, the apathy of the middle-aged and the dismal plight of the old, all of which could be changed and whipped into a frenzy of new life through union with “our cousins from across the Atlantic” (rather like the Biblical phrase, thought Emma—was it St. Paul?—“we shall all be changed in the twinkling of an eye”), cries of “Hear, hear!” rang through the hall and a young woman in front of Emma began to cry.

“Wait for it,” whispered Mad. “We shall have the English-speaking peoples in a moment, and enemies within our midst who would destroy all tradition, all sentiment, all those things which our forefathers and the Pilgrim fathers strove for when they sailed in the little
Mayflower
…”

Emma waited, and it came. Even the bit about the Pilgrim fathers.

“And so,” Mrs. Moorhouse continued, her voice rising to a higher pitch as she wound to her conclusion, “before I introduce our good friend Martha Hubbard, here on the platform beside me, who has flown over from New England especially to talk to you, I want to remind you once again of what the Prime Minister told us last week—that, if we are to survive, we must give the forces of the United States, here in our midst, our full cooperation and our friendship too. More than this, we must be on our guard against subversive tongues, and one and all put our shoulders to the wheel to make our contribution to USUK.”

She paused, to be greeted by a storm of applause from her listeners nearest to the platform. The middle rows were possibly more moderate in their enthusiasm, and the stamping of feet from those who were standing at the back could have been taken either way. The clapping died away, and the Member, with a smile of encouragement, looked at her supporters and said, “Any questions?”

Emma, with horror, felt her grandmother move beside her, and before she could tug at the half-zipped frock Mad was on her feet.

“I am sure we are all very grateful to you, Mrs. Moorhouse, for speaking to us this evening, but I would like to know—and I hope you don’t think it impertinent of me—but when did you last put a shoulder to the wheel, and what wheel was it that you actually moved?”

There was a murmur throughout the hall, somebody cried “Shame!” and the voice of a spectator at the rear of the building, sounding uncommonly like that of Tom Bate the fishmonger, shouted, “Go to it, me old ’andsome.”

The Member for Mid-Cornwall, trained to deal with heckling, remained unruffled. She did not immediately recognize the strange-looking elderly woman who confronted her from the middle of the hall. Some eccentric, she supposed, who had come to the meeting after a prolonged session at the nearest public house.

“A figure of speech,” she said, smiling graciously, “not very original, perhaps, but I am sure everyone knows what I meant.”

Those standing at the back of the hall were beginning to enjoy themselves and to express their enjoyment in laughter, which was not what the organizers of the meeting had intended. All said and done, it was a serious occasion. Emma, scarlet with embarrassment, stared at the back of the man immediately in front of her. Mrs. Moorhouse turned to Colonel Cheeseman with a little shrug of her shoulder and a raised eyebrow. Colonel Cheeseman, even more embarrassed than Emma because he had recognized, in the questioner halfway down the hall, the figure and features of the Lady Macbeth who had entertained him to tea, whispered into the Member of Parliament’s ear. Illumination appeared upon her features. She nodded, and her smile vanished.

“May I remind the questioner,” she said, “that I am here to answer questions of a serious and practical nature, and this is not a theater or a music hall.”

“I know that only too well,” replied Mad. “If it were, I should be up on the stage where you are, and you perhaps, though not necessarily, would be down here.” (Cheers from Tom Bate and several of his cronies.) “However,” Mad went on, “I should like to ask a question of a serious and practical nature, and it is this. If we are to give the gallant forces of the United States our full cooperation and friendship, will they guarantee in return
not
to shoot our farm dogs, and to permit all of us, men, women and children, free access to the roads, towns and beaches that belong to us?”

This time the applause from the back of the hall was deafening. Mrs. Moorhouse made a little gesture of resignation and turned to the Commander.

Colonel Cheeseman stood up, conciliation written all over his lantern face.

“Dear lady,” he said, addressing himself to Mad, and his tone was indulgent, suggesting he knew, and the spectators knew, that the question had been put by someone for whom they all had affection and respect, but after all she was touching eighty, was understood to be rather odd, and was possibly suffering from a state of delayed shock.

“Dear lady, I was, and am, grateful to you for your hospitality, as I told you, when I had the pleasure of taking tea with you last week. I also told you at the time that I knew nothing then of the unfortunate incident of the farm dog. The matter was later reported to me, the necessary action was taken, and compensation has been paid to the owner. But—and this I must repeat again and again—we are determined, and your government is determined, that all measures must be taken to maintain law and order in every part of the United Kingdom. Nobody in Cornwall, or in the rest of your wonderful country, wants to see a repetition here of the violence that has taken place in other parts of the world, and it is because of this that a small measure of freedom must be curtailed at the present time. Believe me, it is for your good, for the good of your neighbors. No harm will come to anyone who goes about his business in a peaceable, orderly fashion. We are here to assist you, not to repress you. USUK must be made to work, and we are here to see that in the west country, as well as elsewhere, it works one hundred percent. I hope, dear lady, that answers your question.”

Mad did not reply immediately. Possibly she was reminded of days long past when, standing in the center of the stage, she had a final line to deliver before the curtain fell. A slow, singularly mocking smile appeared upon her lips. She allowed her eyes to travel the length and breadth of the hall, until they rested once more upon the colonel.

“Yes,” she said slowly, “it most certainly does, and, what is more, it confirms me in the opinion which I have held ever since the first helicopter flew over my house on Thursday morning—that the exercise you are engaged upon has been planned by your government and ours, with the backing of financiers in the United States and the United Kingdom, for many, many months, and that it is nothing more nor less than the biggest takeover bid the world has ever seen. Whether it succeeds or fails, the future will show.”

She touched Jack Trembath on the sleeve and he rose to his feet, quick on cue like a fellow-actor. So did his wife, and Emma likewise, and the four of them walked slowly down the gangway amid a silence only known in days long vanished at the Theater Royal. It was not until they were safely outside the town hall that the uproar started. Cheers and counter-cheers, protests and whistles, calls for order smothered by the stamping of feet.

“That’s cooked his goose for the evening, and hers too,” said Mad with satisfaction. “Now we can all go home.”

She waited until the noise had subsided, then proceeded towards the car, followed by the Trembaths. Others flocked from the building, among them Tom Bate.

“Lovely job, m’dear,” he said to Mad. “As good as a play.”

Back in the town hall order had been restored, and the salesman from the supermarket who had sliced the ham for Mad earlier that day had risen to his feet. He wanted to know what effect the presence of the marines would have upon the tourist season next summer if they were still occupying the caravans and the bathing huts on Poldrea beach.