The Wooden Shepherdess (29 page)

However, the busy Sir John kept putting off making his speech; and when Baldwin's patient negotiations had finally failed, at midnight on Monday the Third of May the General Strike had begun.

Everyone rallied behind the honest and even Quixotic Baldwin, the man they believed to detest all crunches (indeed last July's derided appeaser) now brought face-to-face with things which have
had
to come to the crunch. Baldwin was stressing the Constitutional point that yielding to outside pressure like this must sound the death-knell of parliamentary rule; and even Thomas (the railwaymen's leader) had answered that once the Constitution was challenged “then God help Britain unless the Government won!”—and had stumbled out of the House of Commons in tears.

Baldwin had broadcast a simple man-to-man plea to the nation; and thousands were queuing all day to enlist in a Glorious Army of Amateur Blacklegs.... So how could our Cincinatus linger still at the plow? Could even a fairly broad hint from Mary be needed that Now was the Time for All Good Men to Come to the Aid of the Country? True, that “awkward question” of whether the erring Liberal Party deserved his support any longer remained unresolved; but could this matter at times like the present when None was for the Party and All were for the State?

Yet Simon had still not spoken. Gilbert must strongly urge him to speak, with his legal proofs that this was a blow which a Faction unlawfully aimed at the Common Weal....

Lloyd George—because he presumably thought they would win—was believed to be backing the strikers; and this must finally cost him all decent Liberal Party support, so with Asquith gone to the Lords if Simon played his cards right.... Indeed did Gilbert's conscience allow him to stay with the Liberal Party at all, then he might do worse than hitch his wagon to Simon.

Mary was urging him openly now; and yet when it came to the point Gilbert felt strangely loth to abandon his charge of the prickly Mary and go, for virtue as well as vice can turn to a habit surprisingly hard to break. However, at last (though not till the morning of Thursday May the Sixth) the Daimler set out for London with Gilbert inside it and all the cans of petrol the car could hold: for even to have himself driven to London by Trivett seemed safer than amateur engine-drivers.

As Gilbert was trundled to London he thought about Baldwin, become overnight a national father-figure whose fairness and honesty even the Labourites almost trusted. Baldwin (thought Gilbert) had certainly grown to his job. Now-a-days few recalled their surprise when the King had chosen this unknown Baldwin instead of the Great Lord Curzon to follow the mortally-sick Bonar Law as head of His Majesty's Government. Even then the man had seemed in no hurry to try and impress himself on the public mind—except by quietly demonstrating the end in Affairs of State of all Lloyd-Georgian trickery.

Baldwin.... You couldn't deny him a certain magnanimous streak: when Churchill left the Liberals Baldwin had welcomed him, even appointing him Chancellor.

There can't have been many British Prime Ministers quite so unknown to the Public as Baldwin when first he moved into Number Ten.

Barely a year ago—which was back in Jeremy's “Post-ulant” days in the Order of Civil Servants—Augustine one morning had called at the Admiralty, bent on routing him out. Augustine belonged to the Travelers' (not that he used it much, but his family always had): the Club was in strolling distance, so now he invited Jeremy there to lunch. On their way in to eat, Jeremy nudged him: “Why—look who's here!”

At a nearby table, Augustine noticed only an unmistakable Welshman with half-closed humorous eyes and a beaky nose: a distinguished, but also a taking middle-aged face—and as shrewd as a basket of weasels....

“Well?” said Jeremy afterwards over their coffee: “Tell me about your eminent fellow-Traveler.” Augustine shook his head. “Don't you even know who he is?” Augustine said No. “But you'd guess?”

“Some South Wales mining valley. They're mostly brainy enough, but this one must have had just that little extra it takes to escape to London and land him a cushy job.”

“You boob! That's only Tom Jones, a mere Eminence Grise: what I meant was the other bloke.” So far as Augustine recalled, the man's vis-à-vis had been typical City: most probably head of some fossilized family firm. One seemed to remember a square slab of yellowish face with drooping eyes, a nobbly nose and a wide-stretched mouth like a frog's; but the creature had looked so solid and dull it was hard to imagine the link between this incongruous pair.... “That was Stanley Baldwin.”

“A brandy?”

“No thanks, or I'll snore too loud in the office and wake the others.” Jeremy looked at his watch.

As the friends descended the steps to Pall Mall, “Politics always gets only the second-raters,” Augustine resumed: “But even so....”

“Don't be misled by his looks,” said Jeremy: “Baldwin's a downy old bird—as he'd have to be, getting involved in putting the skids underneath Lloyd George as he did in '22.”

“How was that?”

“Surely even you know that in '22 the Conservatives broke with Lloyd George's wartime Coalition, fought the Election on party lines and won? Behind the scenes, Baldwin was in it all up to the neck.... And yet,” said Jeremy sounding puzzled, “Baldwin
appears
to be moved by ambition as little as you and me. It was purest accident plonked him in Number Ten; and I'm told he nearly refused.”

“Accident?”

“Two of them: Bonar's cancer and Curzon's coronet.—
Three
of them rather, because his only Cabinet job had been Board of Trade till a few months before when McKenna turned down the Exchequer: he wouldn't have otherwise even been in the running.” Jeremy paused at the top of Duke of York's Steps to indulge in a pinch of snuff. “I suppose you knew he was Kipling's cousin?”

“He does indeed seem accident-prone! It's a bit like a Kipling character though, to take on a thankless job just because there didn't seem anyone competent else.”

“Kipling—whose most successful work of fiction of all is the British Raj, which everyone thinks is true.... So now you suggest he invented his Cousin Stanley as well?”

Augustine took hold of Jeremy's arm and gently swung it: “Come off it, you!”

“But I like your idea! It's pure Pirandello....”

“No, off your ‘fictional' British Raj when you know that the bloody thing's all too real.”

“So Kipling has hoodwinked even you?”

“Damn it,” Augustine suddenly blurted out: “It's time you and I grew up!”

Jeremy winced. “All right then, make me admit that a red rash covers indeed a third of the globe, and one-third of mankind is entitled to some sort of British passport.... But have a heart! You seem to forget my Branch is the one which works with the Naval Staff; and that even my Section is ‘Ships,' so I'm sick to death of my nose getting rubbed all day in Old Nanny Pax-Britannica.” Jeremy rounded his delicate lips and emitted a raspberry.

“One thing I never realized quite till I went there,” Augustine pursued undeterred, “is how, in spite of their money and size, the Americans don't even want to compete with ourselves in terms of international power. They don't see anything in it for them—any more than you and I see anything in it for us! But there's nobody really left in Europe either, so whether we like to admit it or not we are probably easily now the most powerful state in the world.”

“And with half the shipping afloat,” said Jeremy, “flying the Old Red Duster! The whole thing has got out of hand. Although there's no longer nowadays any aggressive ‘Drang' about it, this ramshackle Empire Baldwin has shouldered just goes on growing—a banyan tree, blindly dangling aerial roots from the tips of its branches which turn into extra trunks wherever they touch the soil. Self-governing White Dominions—Protectorates—Colonies—India—and nowadays Mandates....”

“A third of the globe,” put in Augustine, “was even before we were born: if we don't look out, before we are middle-aged it could well be a half.”

“And then,” said a scornful Jeremy: “Everyone else being safely inside I suppose we shall see your dar-r-rling North American Rebels applying for re-admission?”

“Never!” Augustine said bluntly: “No more than whatever happened we'd ever join on as an extra United State.”

“So you draw the line somewhere?”

“It just wouldn't work. It's like ... like too close relations.”

“You mean, we always annoy each other too much?”

“No.... Well yes, that too perhaps in a way.... What I really mean is they feel to us like our
sister
-nation.”

“I see,” said Jeremy: “Mary and you writ large—and marriage would count as a kind of international incest....”

But now they had crossed the Mall to the corner door of Jeremy's workhouse and had to part: Augustine to Dorset again, and Jeremy back to dancing unwilling attendance on Old Nanny Pax-Britannica.

Jeremy fetched his tray from the wooden press where he'd locked it because the papers were “Secret”—though only some mothbally long-term Contingency Plans which he had to bring up to date. This particular bundle of schemes was always the New Boy's task since they risked no immediate harm: they were merely concerned with the Navy's hypothetical role in some fancied future outbreak of “Civil Unrest” at home—with landing-parties of naval technicians as well as help in maintaining public order. A scheme for destroyers ferrying Guinness's Dublin yeast to leavenless Liverpool bakers, and yet another for smuggled-in submarines used to furnish the London docks with electric power.... Fantasies maybe—and yet worked out in every detail, for this it appeared was the way that the Navy always worked: they planned in advance for everything, just in case.

*

All this had been barely a year ago, yet already those cobwebbed “Contingency Plans” were in action: light cruisers policing the north-eastern docklands, the battleships
Barham
and
Ramillies
watching the Mersey in case things got out of hand—and the Pax Britannica now come
very
near home. At least to foreign observers the end seemed at hand of Imperial Britain, an aging Goliath in clanging armour laid flat on his back by a heart attack: no need for even a well-aimed pebble.

Although that Quixotic young Liberal Statesman had not been seen in the House of Commons for eighteen months, yet nobody took much notice of Gilbert's arrival (which just went to show how wholly their minds were absorbed by the present crisis). That Thursday night, moreover, John Simon was just beginning his strangely-belated speech; and Gilbert was pleased to observe how deeply his legal proofs impressed both sides of a House where both still firmly believed in the Rule of Law.... Or perhaps (for this was what Jeremy thought as he watched from the public gallery) even the leftest of Labour Members had qualms about brothers outside making history over their heads.... And come to that, could a lawyer's like Simon's (he wondered) be quite the eyes through which downy old—honest old—Baldwin either would look on this giant trial of strength?

Appeasement never buys peace, but it can buy time to rearm: had Baldwin's derided “appeasement” of last July been simply playing for time? Last July, everyone's eyes had been still on the raw deal offered the miners: the general public needed time to forget about coal and adjust their one-track minds to the Constitutional issue instead, and Baldwin durstn't bring things to the crunch without the nation solid behind him. Moreover the very appeasement they jeered at had served to prove that Baldwin had done all he could for peace, and that if things had finally come to the crunch then the fault wasn't his....

Clever old Baldwin! Appeasement had also served to lull the appeased, who believed that Prime Ministers caving in once go on caving in; thus the Union side had in fact been totally unprepared for the crunch when it came.... And indeed if a crunch had to come (it occurred to Jeremy), even the downiest downy old bird could hardly have hoped for a better crunch-time than now, with his plans all ready while theirs so palpably weren't.

But wait: for this suggested that Baldwin might even have
meant
his peace negotiations to fail.... Well, hadn't Lloyd George as good as accused him of never allowing them once any genuine loophole although they had gone on expecting a truce to the very end—bamboozled by Baldwin's so evident efforts for peace?

Lloyd George was a crook himself, and wouldn't think twice about playing that kind of trick; but surely it beggared belief of the Baldwin one thought one knew.... So was his famous honesty fake—or at least expendable, once he'd convinced himself where the National Interest lay? Admittedly hardly a single “honest” statesman before him had failed to succumb at least once in his life to this pinchbeck excuse—and it couldn't be merely another of Baldwin's “accidents” causing the Strike to come when it did, this involved too much coincidence, too many strands in the build-up....

Somehow
he must have willed it.... Perhaps this was just another example of “Jeremy's Law” of the righteous right hand blissfully unaware what his crooked subliminal left hand was up to: the downy old Baldwin Unconscious, his Machiavellian left hand leading them
all
by the nose including the Honest Stanley himself! Certainly bearing in mind “Jeremy's Second Law” (“That it's almost unknown for a man to succeed in deceiving the rest of the world unless he's already deceiving himself”), this seemed the likelier explanation. Consider last Sunday night, that Eleventh Hour when Baldwin had gone to bed on the heels of his final ultimatum and slept the sleep of the just: a move which successfully rendered him incommunicado, frustrating all possible awkward attempts at a last-minute Union climb-down....

But now the House was adjourning, so Jeremy had to carry his somewhat simplistic analyst's-couch type interpretation of Baldwin's complex mind back to his Whitehall bed: where even the coverlet bore that ubiquitous naval badge which never let him forget his job.