The Storytellers
Authors: Robert Mercer-Nairne
The Storytellers
Metamorphosis
By the same author:
(All published by Gritpoul)
Novels
The Letter Writer
Like No Other
Warlord
Poetry
Mercer-Nairne in Malta (Illustrated by Marisa Attard)
On Fire (Illustrated by Marisa Attard)
Play
The Arrow
Non-fiction
Notes on the Dynamics of Man
A Paper (Monograph)
The Storytellers
Metamorphosis
Robert Mercer-Nairne
a novel
Book Guild Publishing
Sussex, England
Published in Great Britain in 2015 by
The Book Guild Ltd
The Werks
45 Church Road
Hove, BN3 2BE
First published in 2015 in the United States of America by Gritpoul, Inc.
Copyright © Robert Mercer-Nairne 2015
The right of Robert Mercer-Nairne to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Although the background events were actual events and the public figures referred to played out the parts ascribed to them, the principal characters and their actions are the product of the author's imagination.
Interior design and typesetting by Danscot Print Ltd, Scotland
Cover design by Larry Rostant
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
A catalogue record for this book is available from
The British Library.
ISBN 978 1 910298 47 3
ePub ISBN 97 8 1910508 53 4
Mobi ISBN 97 8 1910508 54 1
For
Jimmy Wales
knowledge is the first step
C
ONTENTS
Part One
C
HAPTER
“M
UDD!” The editor's voice shot out of his sanctum like a white ball, sending the office reds into a momentary frenzy of activity. That's how the news day started. George Gilder believed in firing a starting gun, just to get the juices of his idle sons-of-bitches flowing again. He'd been there; knew the score. After a night of booze and smoke that passed for journalism, one needed a propellant just to remember what the hell one had been chasing down the day before.
Harvey Mudd had a splitter. A protracted session with a disgruntled politician, whose blood must have been at least 90% alcohol, had yielded nothing beyond the bile of the perennially passed-over. James Callaghan, who had become Prime Minister following his colleague's unexpected resignation, was looking vulnerable. Inflation was in double figures, unemployment rising and his party had lost its majority in the House of Commons, forcing him to deal with a minority group. Labour had been in power for eight of the last twelve years and the party, like the country, seemed to have become ungovernable. There was a growing smell of rot. Callaghan was no slouch, having held all the top offices of state, but even a top dog must tire eventually. The age-old game of trying to identify the next
primus inter pares
, an egalitarian notion that fooled no one, was in full swing.
Mudd had not exactly chosen journalism, but rather it him. A story in his university paper
Protest!
, exposing a scam in the college kitchen, had earned him a prize. In a drunken moment, the head chef, with whom he had struck up a carousing friendship in his favourite watering hole, the Lord Nelson, had bragged about a holiday in Tenerife, all expenses paid, courtesy of a local butcher. When Roray â the chef â had been fired for erratic timekeeping, they agreed to stick it to the butcher, whom Roray said was a nasty piece of work, as well as to the now ex-head chef's replacement, whom Roray liked even less.
Under the guise of smoothing things between the butcher and the new man, Roray set up a meeting and recorded the whole encounter. The recording was pretty terrible, with the sound of Roray's jacket obscuring most of what was said, but Harvey had taken a punt under the headline
Moo-Cow Madness â Are We Paying For More Than Meat?
, with an article questioning his college's purchasing procedures. He'd been hauled before the principal to justify his claim and even though the scratchy conversation hardly proved his case, the explosive denials from the butcher, plus a cursory look at the kitchen accounts, persuaded Principal Harris that all was not well, elevating Harvey from scholastic oblivion to journalistic hero.
A £10 prize had been awarded by the
Oxford Mail
, a local daily, and an internship offered on graduation, which Harvey readily accepted, for want of anything else to do. Eight years at the paper had passed quickly and it even seemed he had some aptitude for the work. Several pieces exposing minor instances of local authority corruption eventually brought him to the attention of George Gilder, the editor of the great national newspaper
The Sentinel
, who offered him a position on the political desk.
âThe best place for your talents, Mudd,' Gilder had intoned.
âPolitics and malfeasance are irresistibly attracted.'
Harvey had never thought of himself as a moral crusader. In fact, he hadn't thought much about morals at all. As a boy he had dreamed of becoming a mining engineer. A branch of the family had emigrated to America and his namesake had founded the Cyprus Mines Corporation, ending his days with a reputation for civic leadership and a California college being named after him. What had fired the young boy's imagination was the fact that ancient Cyprus had been famed for its copper, but he had never quite grasped how a Los Angeles-based company could have revived the trade at the start of the twentieth century. More interested in ancient galleons than in modern mining techniques, and with no affinity for mathematics, his dream had eventually collapsed around him.
Being brought up in a modest terraced house in London's East Shoreditch by a mother with a vivid imagination and keen, if conservative, interest in the world was no barrier to fancy. âTake from no one' was his mother's mantra. Earn your own way and think for yourself. His father had died when Harvey was twelve, of a heart attack, and his mother survived on her husband's modest pension, paid faithfully each month by the bank where he had been a junior clerk, supplemented by several cleaning jobs. Her
bête noire
was socialism. A trick to turn men into vassals, she called it, using their own labour. It was a long time before Harvey had the faintest idea what she meant.
Another unusual aspect of his young life was opera, although it seemed perfectly normal to him at the time. His mother, who was part Italian, had a passion for it and whenever she could, they would stand at the back and soak up Rossini, Bellini, Verdi and anything else she could scrounge a cheap ticket for, even Wagner and Strauss. As the sounds filled his head with love and anger, sorrow, deceit and vengeance he came to marvel at the human condition. Gradually it dawned on him that what he wanted to mine was people, not copper,
and no science degree would be required. But how one might go about such a thing and earn a living from it was quite beyond him. So cluttered is a young man's head when he is starting out that it wasn't until he had been working at
The Sentinel
for several years that he realized he had found what he was looking for. The epiphany upset him. Suddenly there was something he didn't want to lose.
“Sit, Mudd.”
George Gilder's habitually brusque manner belied a fierce loyalty towards those he had decided to take under his wing.
“So how are you seeing things?” the great editor continued.
It was only ten in the morning and Harvey still wasn't seeing much. Whenever he found himself in George Gilder's office he felt either inadequate or guilty of some unspecified misdemeanour. Was his boss's question personal, a forerunner to âand when are you going to start justifying my faith in you?' Or was it about the workings of the office which could best be described as an anarchic circus of the high-blown and scatological, with
The Sentinel
's editor its ringmaster?
“It can't go on, Mudd. Change has to come, one way or another.”
“Yes sir,” Harvey agreed, without any clear notion of what he was agreeing to.
The view of St Paul's Cathedral from the editor's office always gave him a lift. Wren's masterpiece had somehow survived German bombs but would not exist had the capital escaped the conflagration of 1666 when a fire in Thomas Faynor's bakery on Pudding Lane had spread, engulfing almost all of mediaeval London's wooden houses.
“Yes, we need a fire, Mudd,” he continued as if reading his junior's distracted mind, “to clear away the tangled undergrowth that is choking this great nation of ours.”
Harvey felt relieved. Any reference to âour great nation' removed him from the frame. George Gilder was a patriot and
The Sentinel
his mouthpiece. Great nation talk usually presaged some line of attack against the establishment's shortcomings and Harvey realized he was
about to be given a mission.
“There's someone I want you to go and see. Here's his card.”
“Is there an angle you would like me to develop?”
“Just listen to what he has to say, Mudd, and then follow your instincts. When you think you have something, come and see me.”
That was it. George Gilder was waving him out. Taking one last look at the mighty cathedral dome, he turned and left his editor's office, awake, excited and alive.
C
HAPTER
S
HOREDITCH had passed through many guises. In the seventeenth century, Huguenot silk weavers had established themselves in the district, one of the many groups to find sanctuary in London from persecution at home. After textiles came furniture-making and all the while the neighbourhood supported a thriving theatre trade. But by the end of the nineteenth century, the locality was best known for crime, prostitution and poverty. The Blitz that spared St Paul's was merciless to East London and by the end of the war, hardly a house escaped redevelopment. Utilitarian apartment blocks, the brainchild of government planners with limited budgets and weary imaginations, replaced the friendly terraced houses German bombs had missed.
But even in the bleakest landscapes miracles can be found. One such was a neat little row of terraced houses on Buttesland Street across from Aske Gardens, a small patch of green with a cluster of trees and a playground. On three floors, two windows across, with a basement, number 71 had been Harvey's home all his life. His grandparents had lived there when his parents moved in, but had died soon after. Now, surrounded by a hotch-potch of blocks, the sixteen
or so houses that made up the terrace were keenly sought after. His mother had been approached by agents many times, but apart from playing them along for devilment, never thought to sell.
Sometimes he would walk home from the office. At other times, especially when it was wet, he'd take the Northern Line from Bank to Old Street, all of two stops, and walk from there. But the office was not where George Gilder wanted his journalists to spend their time, unless they were filing a story.
âYou are reporters,' he would growl, âso get out there and report. No one's interested in what goes on here.'
On the way home he would pass Bache's Street, where a thriving brothel once stood, and imagine the girls entertaining their wealthy Mayfair clients: West End boys and East End girls, the closest the classes came to mixing. Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe hadn't written their song yet, but a little bit of what they fancied doubtless did the classes good.
“That you, Harve?”
“Just me, mother.”
Harvey closed the front door behind him. Their invariable routine pleased them both. Sylvia, his mother, was less of a dynamo these days, with fewer cleaning jobs. The money he now brought in made her work unnecessary, from a financial point of view, but she enjoyed getting out. He never thought once about leaving, in spite of her chiding him that he wouldn't get a girl until he had his own place. She had looked after him when it mattered. Now it was his turn to look after her.
“Good day then?”
From her perspective, days were good unless proved otherwise. She was optimistic by nature.
“Yes, I think it was.”
“Well surely you must know?”
Harvey moved to the kitchen. It was still early enough for a cup
of tea. He hadn't wanted to contact the man on the card right away. He just knew that from the moment he did a chase would be on. If George Gilder smelled a story it was sure to be a big one.
“What do you make of things?” he called out as he watched the kettle boil. Then, remembering his bafflement in the corner office, he added, “In the country, I mean.”
“Just don't get me started, Harvey. It's a mess. The unions are running the country now, or ruining it, more like. I blame the bosses. They never say you can't have that pay rise, we can't afford it. The union just has to whisper the word âstrike' and the bosses cave. It's Labour to blame. The unions are their paymasters, right? So the government doesn't lift a finger. Wages go up and prices go up, so wages go up some more and prices follow. It's a joke, Harve, a bad joke, that's what it is. They're supposed to govern not just sit around saying yes, to get re-elected. How about some of that angel cake, dear?”
Harvey returned from the kitchen with the cups of tea and two slices of the cake.
“George Gilder wants me to meet someone.”
“Who?”
“I don't know,” he said, taking the card from his pocket and handing it over to his mother.
“Mr Peter Betsworth,” she read out, “and a telephone number. Not very informative. It's quality print and paper, though.”
His mother noticed things like that.
“Seen that girl again?” she asked, changing the subject to something more interesting.
Harvey was never sure if his mother's interest in his limited love life was benign or defensive, so tended not to talk about it. But he had met this woman, Frances Graham, at a cocktail party. Something about her had got right into him and he couldn't help mentioning it. Her face was serene and her laughter sounded like bells. They had
talked about opera and Italy, where she had family. She was quite out of his league, of course, and married.
“No. And I don't suppose I will.”
“Never sell yourself short, Harvey. You're as good as anyone.”
“Anyway, she's married.”
His mother just shrugged.
“Nature doesn't know that,” she said.
They sat, as they often did, on the sofa, watching the evening news on Sylvia's small, black and white television set. The world could seem a profoundly dismal place when viewed through this narrow window. After the 1973 Yom Kippur War against Israel, which a number of Arab states had started and then lost, an oil embargo was launched against the West by Arab oil producers. Prices rose across the board, the stock market crashed and inflation was running at 24% by 1975 before slowly starting to fall back. Since the Second World War, there had been a consensus. Whether right of centre or left of centre, governments had not interfered with the unions and management was expected to engage in what was known as âfree collective bargaining', which usually meant that under threat of strike, labour negotiators extracted a little more from management at each pay round. Like lobsters in slowly-heating water, industry failed to notice the deathly path it was on. With the oil shock of 1973, the water suddenly got much hotter and even government began to see the problem.
Faced with rampant inflation, workers demanded large pay rises, which their union bosses felt obliged to pursue and company management to accept. The government urged pay restraint on the public sector, whose wages it had to pay out of taxation or borrowing, and attempted to hold the line at 5%. But when Ford, after a surprisingly good year, settled for a 17% increase in 1978, strikes spread across the country.
“That'll do it,” asserted Sylvia tartly, with a certain grim satisfaction,
as the newsreader informed the nation that tanker drivers, members of the Transport and General Workers' Union, planned to âgo slow' in support of a 40% pay claim. “The coalminers brought down Heath,” she said. “You see what no oil will do to this government.”
As if to compound the bad news, the weather forecast that followed offered up nothing but unremitting cold. Harvey looked at his watch. It was 9.30 p.m.
“I'm just going to make a call,” he told her.
In the hall he pulled out the card and dialled the number. He didn't expect anyone to answer, but couldn't resist trying. The line rang briefly, clicked and rang several times more before a man answered.
“Betsworth.” The voice was crisp, business-like and took Harvey by surprise.
“Er, I'm sorry to be calling so late. George Gilder of
The Sentinel
suggested I contact you.”
“Who am I speaking to?”
“Mudd, Harvey Mudd, of
The Sentinel
,” he repeated.
“Yes, Mr Mudd, I have been expecting your call. Shall we meet?”
“Certainly. I could meet you tomorrow.”
“Excellent. The bridge in St James's Park, say at ten. You know it?”
Harvey had to think for a moment. St James's was the park closest to government. At one end Buckingham Palace, at the other, Horse Guards, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Treasury and Cabinet Office. Now bridge, bridge â yes there was a bridge, across the lake.
“I believe so, yes.”
“Good. Tomorrow then.”
The line went dead.
“I'm going out for a quick walk before turning in,” he called out to his mother from the hall.
“Very well, dear,” she called back. “Wrap up warm.”
He put on his thick overcoat and wound a scarf tightly round his
neck. Outside, light snow flurries swirled past the pavement lights. Occasional Christmas decorations in windows gave the streets a festive air, incongruous against the mountains of bagged rubbish that were piling up in every corner because the refuse collectors were on strike for higher wages. At least the cold suppressed the smell of rotting waste. But he loved his city, in spite of it all. What things it had witnessed since being founded on the banks of the River Thames two thousand years ago by the Romans. Wars, plagues, fire, but somehow it had gone on growing, a testament to what people, pursuing their own interests, can achieve. Its population had fallen back since the world war, but was still over 6 million with more than 300 different languages spoken.
He had been born just after the great deflagration and so was spared being sent off into the countryside to live with strangers, a well-intentioned policy, invented by bureaucrats to save the city's children from German bombs. The heartache caused was invisible and so the policy was never questioned until many years later. At the same time, in Germany, bureaucrats were sending Jewish families by the thousand, and eventually by the million, to death camps where work would set them free. There was something about the âstate' that frightened him. Its capacity for cold-blooded efficiency, in simple things â like sending millions of men from this war-front to that, or millions of families from their homes to somewhere else, all at the stroke of a pen, â was surely diabolical.
Perhaps there were worse things than the near anarchy gripping Britain now, although it was hard to think so. When the Conservatives had briefly been returned to office, Edward Heath, the new Prime Minister, had attempted to curb union power. But the miners took him on with strikes in 1972 and 74, forcing the government to introduce a three-day working week to conserve fuel. He called an election to bolster his position, but the result was inconclusive and the long-standing Labour leader, Harold Wilson, was eventually
returned to power. Now Wilson, too, had gone, leaving Callaghan the poisoned chalice.
As he turned into Haberdasher Street, he came upon three youths huddled outside the off licence, which had just closed, handing what looked like a bottle from one to the other. A large black woman, with late-night shopping bags, walked past from the other direction and cussed them.
“What's your problem, sister?” one of the boys taunted, which seemed mild, but Harvey hurried on quickly, avoiding eye contact. His was a mixed area and none the worse for that. As he walked, he turned over in his mind what the mysterious Peter Betsworth, if that was his real name, might have to say. There was certainly a growing mood in the country that things had to change.
When he came back into the front room his mother was asleep. The television flickered away and he turned the volume down. She would wake soon and take herself off to bed. With her head tilted forward and her face reflecting the ebb and flow of the pale light from the screen, he found himself thinking, just for a moment, about the time when she would not be there.