“Feeling better today, are we, sir?”
“Like a new man. They’re letting me out tomorrow.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“And look, Jason, I’m so sorry about the busted beak.”
“These things happen, sir.”
“And I don’t know if I can ever thank you enough for the on-the-spot resuscitation you gave me. I’d have been a dead man otherwise.”
“All part of the job, sir.”
“For which I hear you guys are not paid nearly enough. And no need for the ‘sir,’ you can call me Magnus.”
“Okay… Magnus,” said Jason, before giving the big city banker some of the facts of life for those dependent on public sector pay. How, as long as austerity continued to bite, nobody on the government payroll was looking at a wage hike anytime soon: police, firemen, doctors and nurses (e.g. Hugo and Angeles), teachers, and on and on. No wonder that morale in the NHS and so many other critical public services was at an all-time low. And all this while the I’m-all-right-Jack rich looked the other way.
Sir Magnus chewed at his lower lip and swallowed hard.
“Sorry,” he said, holding out a hand to Jason. “So sorry. What more can I say?”
Clearly there was more the knight of the realm might have said, but these were waters in which he never before swum and so he remained wordless. There was also plenty more Jason might have said. Such as, “The next time your Bentley won’t start, don’t waste police and hospital time by hitting it and having a heart attack, call the AA. But he didn’t. All he said was, “Sorry is fine, Magnus. Now, if you’d excuse me? Work to do?”
“Of course. Of course,” said Sir Magnus, racking up baby step two.
Which leaves baby step three, namely the manner in which he hung his head and told presiding magistrate Dame Sally Swinburne at his magistrates court appearance how remorseful he felt at breaking PC Humphreys’ nose, particularly when afterwards PC Humphreys had saved his life with CRP. So it was an unreserved guilty plea he was entering. At which Dame Sally told him he was a lucky man indeed to be facing no more than a Community Service order sluicing out public lavatories when, without the leniency plea from PC Jason Humphreys, the defendant might instead have been looking at six months of jail time.
“Thank you, ma’am. Thank you,” said Sir Magnus, “I shall do my very best to leave the toilets spic and span. And to review my future role in British society.”
Dame Sally raised her eyebrows. “With which project I wish you the very best of luck,” she muttered before ordering a flunkey to remove Sir Magnus from her court.
“Next case, please,” were the last words Sir Magnus heard echoing behind him before being released into the custody of his probation officer, Terry Wishbone, for an introduction to the latest lavatory-sluicing devices and a list of the conveniences, male and female, for which he would be responsible.
Sated after a lunch of sausages, mash and peas, Jeremy, Julie and Dennis said what a fine walk they had enjoyed, reiterated their thanks to Barry for his continued hospitality, and lay back with the dogs on the tatty sofas in the Shepherd’s Hut parlour looking as though they might nod off. Meanwhile in the tiny kitchenette, dressed in pinnies as they washed the dishes, Barry asked Maurice if he were truly serious with this Ripurpantzov revenge idea.
“I mean, on mature reflection, it does seem a little, how shall I put it?” he said.
“Preposterous?” said Maurice, rinsing a plate.
“Quite. Not just in conception but also in practice. Are you really asking me to believe that dressing up Jeremy as a John Lennon lookalike and shooting his image all around Russia on the Internet will change anything over there? Ripurpantzov is no Gorbachev, after all. And who are we, just the little people, to imagine we could make such a difference anyway?”
Drying the plate, Maurice nodded. “See where you’re coming from, Prof. It does sound a tad outré, doesn’t it?”
“Just a mite,” said Barry, squirting more washing-up liquid into the green plastic bowl.
“But,” Maurice said, “as you taught me back at Oxford, if a problem is to be addressed, first it needs to be broken down into its constituent parts. No chance of a workable principle being adduced otherwise. I believe it was Albert Einstein you used as an exemplar in those days.”
Barry smiled while teasing sausage remnants from a frying pan. “Indeed so. Some memory you have, Mister Moffat. And how, may one ask, does this bear relevance to our current discussion?”
“Well, so far you have mentioned two elements: little people and practicality.”
“Yes.”
“Well, there are a couple points I would make.”
“Just as when you were a student, old chap. Although sometimes back then it was three or even four points. All of them always relevant, of course.”
Maurice held up his dried plate and asked where the plate cupboard was.
“Behind you, the red one. The blue one’s for cups.”
“Okay,” said Maurice, stretching backwards. “So let us take the ‘little people’ first, shall we?”
“With pleasure.”
“Well, it is my view they are no longer so little and they’re now basking in their new power.”
“Explain?”
“Because in America it was they who were directly responsible for electing the psychotic baby man to The White House, and here in Britain for severing our forty-year-old ties to the European Union. Far from being ‘little,’ these guys’ power grew in proportion to the opportunities offered them.”
“Um… I don’t quite see…”
“Populism, old chap. The manipulation, largely through the social media’s tribal mentality, of the disaffected underclasses which suffered most from the banking crash of two thousand and eight. There’s nobody a disadvantaged person is more likely to vote for than a superhero promising to fight for his rights. Ripurpantzov’s power works on much the same principle with Russians when he demonizes the West.”
Barry nodded as the logic hit home. Since his gardening days he had paid little attention to politics.
“Which,” Maurice continued, “left armies of white trash voters in the West easy prey to all manner of alt-right machinations. What were they told they should want? ‘Change,’ that was what. Any change which would put more money in their pockets and restore their national pride. And they fell for it hook, line and sinker. All that was then required were false enemies, normally ‘outsiders,’ for them to hate. Think Hitler here. So in the last two years, these ‘little people’ have changed Western politics out of all recognition while the liberal centre was caught napping and the extreme left and right took advantage by colluding in their fake news and post-truth versions of history.”
“Good God,” said Barry.
“And I cannot stand idly by and watch on while my world is turned on its head. Both personally and professionally, I take it as my duty to do whatever I can, if not totally to reverse these trends but at the very least to plant a few bombs in their path. As for the practicality of my plan, I have no idea if it will work. But then nothing ventured, nothing gained, eh? No E equals MC squared, no General Theory of Relativity, for example. And Einstein himself wasn’t absolutely sure he was right even then.”
Barry chuckled and scrubbed harder at his frying plan.
“So all I can suggest is that we trust our analysis and have a bash. If we make just the tiniest inroad, that would be a bonus. If we don’t, we don’t, but at least we will have tried. I say ‘we.’ Are you prepared to join in, despite the preposterousness? Need time to think it over perhaps?”