Meanwhile, posters started to appear all over the surrounding area: the composer’s portrait was to become increasingly familiar over the ensuing weeks. Even Sanderling was aware that there was a big festival drawing near, though as usual he managed to get hold of the wrong end of the stick.
‘I presume there’ll be dancing as well as music, will there?’ he ventured late one evening as we lay in our respective bunks.
‘Possibly,’ I said. ‘It depends who turns up.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose you’re right.’
He didn’t pursue the subject further, but for the remainder of the night he was particularly restless.
Judging by ticket sales the event was guaranteed to be a triumph. No sooner had I opened the box office on the first day of booking than long queues began to form. Sanderling had his work cut out keeping everyone in line. He was also required to clear the way for visiting dignitaries who came demanding seats in the grand tier. I wondered if any of them had the habit of coughing during quiet passages; or maybe such lapses had been abolished in the City of Scoffers.
That wouldn’t have surprised me at all. The entire place ticked along like clockwork, and anything which jeopardised its smooth operation was dealt with immediately. Rules and regulations were applied to the letter; correct procedures were invariably followed; and, of course, the trains always ran on time. As a matter of fact, from what I could gather it was the railways which were the governing force here. Virtually every aspect of daily life was imbued with their influence: the dictatorship of the clocks was endemic and unavoidable. Standard Railway Time applied throughout the year; the length of a day had nothing to do with natural occurrences such as sunrise and sunset. Instead, the hours were numbered simply from one to twenty-four, the terms ‘noon’ and ‘midnight’ having long since been abandoned. Great towering floodlights illuminated the industrial areas, and industry in general made no attempt to be quiet during hours of darkness. All the factories and mills had their own shunting yards; accordingly, workers’ shift patterns revolved around the arrivals and departures of freight. The elevated tramline functioned in harmony with the railways; so did the postal system and the network for the delivery of milk. Everybody carried a pocket watch or similar timepiece (this was compulsory), but actually you could tell the time from the hoots and whistles of passing engines. Even the forthcoming concerts were scheduled to coincide with train services (not the other way round). Such was the scoffers’ obsession with time that every rehearsal was attended by a uniformed man holding a stopwatch. He recorded the exact duration of each symphony, overture or sonata; the results were then posted outside the concert hall each evening, presumably so that the audience knew in advance when the music would end. Greylag seemed quite bemused when he first noticed the man with the stopwatch, but after a while he just ignored him.
Even so, the importance of the railways couldn’t be denied. We had already seen its effect in the empire: our clocks had been changed, our currency undermined and our population depleted; and yet Fallowfields only occupied one branch of a vast structure. The City of Scoffers had a reach which extended in many other directions too. How many realms, I pondered, now lay under its ‘protection’? Was there any limit to its policy of continual enlargement? Obviously not. The railways developed alongside the industries they were built to serve. Each created demands on the other, and the only solution was perpetual expansion.
The consequences could be seen every day at the central railway station. Hordes of migrants disembarked from countless trains, all clutching their ‘recruiting sixpences’. I soon got into the routine of wandering down to the station every morning to see if I recognised any of the new arrivals. I wasn’t sure who I expected to see: definitely not Whimbrel, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if Dotterel or Garganey had shown up, attracted merely by curiosity. In the event neither of them did, but there were plenty of other Fallowfieldsmen to make up the number. They were easily distinguishable because even though they all wore identical olive drab uniforms, they all looked completely different to one another. The purpose of a uniform, as I understood it, was to make everybody seem alike, but for some reason this precept didn’t apply to my compatriots. Some of them looked downright scruffy despite their uniforms being crisply pressed and brand new from the factory; others wore their uniforms in their own personal style; for example, with the cuffs rolled back or the collar turned up. Still others had been given outfits which were plainly the wrong size for them. One individual set his look off with a jaunty cap; another displayed a sprig of heather in his buttonhole. They were all typical Fallowfieldsmen, yet their collective appearance was hardly consistent with the notion of uniformity.
What these men had in common, of course, was their new destination. They all came in hope: some naturally to be disappointed; others to succeed. How many had been recruited unfairly I didn’t know, but in any case it was too late now. There was no going back without a train ticket, and you couldn’t get one of those without a travel permit.
If you wanted a job, on the other hand, this was unquestionably the place to come. The City of Scoffers was confident and unabashed. Above its proud buildings fluttered the hammer and anvil, symbol of its industrial might. The people went about with pocketfuls of money which they spent freely, thus generating even more wealth. The process was seemingly unstoppable.
Nevertheless, I sensed there was a chink in the armour. It was hardly anything, but it was there all right: a hidden uncertainty lurking behind the apparent success. Whimbrel had first drawn my attention to it weeks earlier when he mentioned the stream of visitors to the observatory. They all wished to peer through his telescope, and without exception they turned it to the west, never explaining why. Similarly, here in the city was the banner urging people to buy railway bonds and ‘resist the threat from the west’. It hung outside the headquarters of the CoS Railway Network, somewhere I’d have thought of as a veritable stronghold. Yet to my ears the appeal sounded almost fearful.
I glanced at this banner whenever I passed by, not least because I was astounded by the sheer size of it. Then, one bright and breezy morning, I noticed the wording had been changed. Now it simply said:
THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE TO TRAINS.
I looked at the banner a second time, just to make sure I hadn’t read it wrongly; then I continued on my way, trying to work out just what lay behind this strident claim. Needless to say, there was an alternative to trains — namely, shipping — but as we were so far from the sea I allowed them this error. Moreover, if it was purely a matter of railways versus canals, then obviously the statement was correct: canals became obsolete as a means of transport the moment the first length of track was laid.
I got the impression, however, that an element of self-doubt had emerged about investing solely in railways: were they trying to convince themselves they hadn’t taken the wrong course? Well, if they had they should have thought about it years ago. As far as the City of Scoffers was concerned there was indeed no alternative to trains, but they didn’t need to shout it from the rooftops.
Still, there was little time to contemplate the subject further. The day of the first concert had arrived, so I hurried back to take up my post in the box office (I didn’t really expect any ‘returns’ but you never could tell). It had been decided that the festival would open with a matinée and an evening performance. Greylag was scheduled to present a symphony at three in the afternoon, followed by another at eight o’clock. It was a heavy workload, but he seemed not the slightest bit overawed.