Enid scowled at Handley’s directive, changing to a smile when she saw Myra notice it. She did not — Enid said to herself — intend waiting hand and foot on a pack of bone-idle men for the rest of her life. At times the community seemed no more than a trick to bring the Court of Baghdad to England’s green and pleasant land.
Handley had picked up her thoughts: ‘Nobody can moan about the breadwinning side of things. We pull in a few dozen rabbits and plunder the odd field, so we’re fattening up nicely, especially Cuthbert. He had a haircut last week, and we were surprised to see how fat he’d got at the back of the neck. Once upon a time he was so thin he only farted twice a day. Now you have to be careful not to get too close.’
‘If you’re trying to drive me away,’ Cuthbert sneered, ‘you won’t succeed. You won’t ever break my calmness with that sort of boorish talk.’
‘You’ve got such presence of mind,’ said Handley, ‘that you’re dead from the chin up and the neck down. I’ve seen icy people like you before, but I never thought I’d have the bad luck or foul judgment to breed one.’
‘I bred it into myself,’ said Cuthbert, ‘so as not to be ground down by you.’
‘I’m glad you’re coming out of your sock,’ Handley said. ‘Most of the time you’re not with us. You’re over the hills and far away.’
‘I’m communing with my precious and immortal psyche, if you want to know,’ he mocked.
The ash fell from his father’s cigar. ‘You haven’t got a psyche. It’s just one big powder-burn.’
‘You’re becoming grotesque and ludicrous by the cancer of conceit that’s destroying you.’
‘Leave each other alone,’ Enid said, while Dawley stared and the others sighed. ‘Both of you make me sick.’
‘If I stay here much longer,’ Handley said with relish, ‘I’ll strangle that preacher. I’ll get ulcers. I’m more relaxed in a London traffic jam than in this place. How can any artist exist in such a death trap?’
Cuthbert regretted having set his father off. A few years must rush by before he’d win any clash of words with him, but he had a good try: ‘It’s a pity you aren’t thirty years older, then maybe you could find a nice cosy railway station to die in!’
Handley fixed him: ‘And it’s a pity you’re not thirty years younger, then you might never have been born!’
‘What about the meeting?’ Enid spoke softly and slowly. ‘Or shall we let somebody else have a say?’
Such a threatening mood in her could not be ignored, but he was amiable at having got the last word with Cuthbert. ‘Well then, Adam, Richard and Frank can pursue their tactical studies in subversion. Use the 2½-inch map and put groups of ten men in every wood and coppice in the county. Given the normal number of police, and troops in barracks, devise an insurrectionary exercise for taking control of all communications and public buildings. And don’t forget the power stations, like you did last time. Have a mortar for each five sections — 120 millimetre. They’ve got the range. Any gunnery snags, come to me.’
Richard made notes. ‘I’ve a 6-inch plan of the town, to work out the urban stuff. That’s always the tricky bit. We’re still writing that manual of “The Complete Street Fighter”. Adam put in a couple of days last week in the British Museum, getting quotes for us to look over.’
‘I’ve got two copies of the latest Manual on Infantry Tactics,’ Handley said. ‘Only just published. John’s army contacts are still working for us. The red-hot bits are on fighting in built-up areas. We’ll make a special pamphlet of that. The rest ain’t much cop — except the parts on radio communications.’
‘These Army manuals are written for idiots,’ Dawley said. ‘Two hundred pages can be packed into a dozen.’
‘I thought of sending one copy to the Soviet Embassy,’ Handley put in, ‘in case the “Infantry in Nuclear War” stuff will be useful. It’d be breaking the official secrets act, but I’d do anything to foul up the idea of the nation-state. Pity nobody in Russia sends out any Red Army crap. Disloyalty to the state is the highest form of respect for the individual. If everybody thought so we might get somewhere.’
Dawley stood up, and interrupted him. ‘I heard an interesting thing the other day from the Military Academy in Jerusalem. They were trying to find out who’d make the best jungle guerrilla fighter. All known data was shaken into a computer, such as character studies from various armies, place of birth, historical details, physical endurance, localities, etc. It turned out that the best bloke would be a young nineteen-year-old brought up in London, or any industrial sprawl — though not a coastal city. His quick thinking, sense of direction, cunning, guts, and artful dodgery against the forces of law and order (or counter-insurgency force) stick that label on him.’
‘No surprise to me,’ Handley said. ‘I knew we were on the right track. It’s part of the struggle that’s been neglected. What do you think about that stuff from the Police College on crowd control I got for you?’
‘Worth a bob or two,’ Dawley said.
‘In the meantime,’ Handley continued, ‘I want to talk about the subject of a constitution. There’s bin plenty of argument to say we don’t need one. Some of the best came from me, I admit, but the way I look at it now is that a constitution will give more freedom to the community. How can one be free unless there are rules? A community without a constitution is like a bird without wings. It can’t even get off the ground.’
What would take a normal being like Cuthbert a day to figure out came in a complete plan to Handley between one brush stroke and the next, and that was what made him so dangerous to the community. Maybe there was no place in it for an artist. ‘We’ve done very well without a constitution so far, but I suppose you’re getting bored and want something to chew on. The community would slip from benevolent anarchism to a state of absolute despotism in two flat weeks.’
Handley was disingenuous and amicable. ‘I won’t force anything. It would be voted in — or not, as the case may be.’
A long set-to between father and son could only end in one of them leaving, and that would be the time, Dawley thought, for going into action and getting more say over what happened in the community. Meanwhile, he could sit back and watch.
‘I’m not sure whether that sort of proposal can be put forward at all,’ Myra said. ‘And it’s far too serious to be over and done with in one session.’
‘I don’t agree with it,’ said Ralph, who saw change as a menace wherever it came from. Such a feeling had tormented him from the beginning. Face to face with the whole Handley clan he’d never been able to let out any part of the true personality which he felt shifting around somewhere below his consciousness. The fact that he was trying to get to his personality proved to him that he actually had one, which was enough as far as he was concerned, though to others it was an issue still in the balance. At twenty-six, he assumed some fulfilment was about due, and saw tranquillity of mind as the way in which it would come about. And now, having only just learned to manage his meat and sleep in a community without rules, Handley was threatening an innovation which would turn his protective devices upside down, so that he’d have to learn how to survive all over again.
Handley, tired of a smooth-running community, missed the excitement of earlier days. Order was a threat to him, and only chaos brought security. By his craving for peace at any price Ralph could deduce this — while not really understanding it. He was young enough to believe that a quiet life was the one thing of value, while Handley, having lived most of his years in strife and penury, was too glad to throw it off now that he was threatened with the mediocrity of it. Even during the worst periods of anarchy and deprivation Handley had never wanted peace. It had been a vague dream whose realisation was viewed as an atrophy of the spirit. In any case what peace was ever peace? There was only a void filled by the violent hugger-mugger of everyday life, in which his own black dog would never leave him be.