Ministry of Public Enlightenment

1

Walter Pingel had spent the last five months as a scrimshanker. A scrimshanker,
according to the Ministry of Public Enlightenment, whose soundbites educated New
Britain, was someone who lounged around all day while everyone else toiled.
Scrimshankers watched soaps like Patriot Place on stateovision, feet up on the sofa.
They drank endless cups of tea and cans of cider. Without a job to occupy them,
they were always first in the snaking queue at the State Abundance Store; they
snapped up all the sugar and soap.
But now, the day of Walter Pingel’s redemption had arrived.
After five scrimshanking months of burying himself in bed till noon, of numb
afternoons staring at his stateovision screen, of crawling back into bed at dusk, he
was rejoining the world of the toilers.
He must peep his fingers and toes out from his Hammerama Man and Sickle
Boy duvet. He must roll his body from his warm mattress into the chilly grey air of his
chilly grey flat. And he must catch a bus to People’s City Central, remembering first
to swap his pyjamas for a shirt, tie and trousers. In a ministry in People’s Square,
he’d be pardoned for his former employment with New Britain’s only experiment in
capitalism since the Pickaxe Revolution of ’85. He would accept the job the Freedom
and Plenty Party had chosen for him.
He curled his knees into his chest, pulled his duvet over his face and stared
wide-eyed at the black nothing.
In the hallway of his flat, his intercom screeched. He tumbled from bed and
staggered from his tiny bedroom.
‘Walter, is that you?’ piped a tinny voice down the crackling intercom receiver.
He stifled a sigh and pressed the entry button. ‘Yes, Mum.’
So long did his mother take to climb the stairs of the flats, he wondered if
she’d got lost. He waited with his front door ajar and tried not to inhale the concrete
dank of the stairwell, nor catch the eyes of his neighbours on their way to mine coal
or shuffle papers and drink tea. These were the heroes of New Britain, and he was a
pyjama-clad parasite, a scrimshanker.

Mrs Pingel emerged in the shadows of the landing, her hair gleaming like a
silver helmet. She bumped past him with her brown paper bag and glowered in the
hallway of his flat. ‘Walter! Why aren’t you dressed for your interview?’
Why wasn’t he dressed? Because he was an EduAd writer, that was why! He
wrote educational adverts for Everyone’s Electrics. For alarm clocks and
stateovisions and New Britain Intranet receivers. He couldn’t write propaganda! For
the Freedom and Plenty Party! In the Ministry of Public Enlightenment!
‘You’re sweating. Shower, son.’
‘I’ll shower, Mum.’
‘Good boy. And I’ll make eggs and soldiers.’ She waggled her paper bag.
‘Yoooour favourite!’
‘Yum,’ he said.
The shower head dribbled over Walter like an incontinent cat. Afterwards, cold and
damp, questionably clean, he made his way to his wardrobe and ruffled through his
old work clothes: one yellowed shirt; one whitish shirt with frayed collar; another
whitish shirt missing a cuff button … Perhaps no one would spot a missing button if
he kept his blazer on. Trousers: drooping hems or shiny knees?
He traipsed into the kitchen, which occupied the far corner of his living room
behind the sofa. Mrs Pingel had switched on the stateovision, the final model from
Everyone’s Electrics before the Freedom and Plenty Party ensured the shop went
bust. The screen showed Plywood Studio, home of New Britain News. Evidently no
news was occurring in New Britain, for the newsgirl stared silently at the camera,
blank-faced but for several layers of cosmetics.
Mrs Pingel glanced up from scratching a knife’s worth of butter over a half loaf
of toast. ‘Walter, your knees! No wonder Everybody’s Electricals sacked you.’
‘They didn’t sack me, they went … oh, never mind.’ He sank onto the stool at
the kitchen worktop, while his mother sliced the toast into dainty rectangles.
The collapse of Everyone’s Electrics had provided the entire content of New
Britain News for two months. Even Patriot Place hinted at the debacle when Rosa
the Factory Girl, tucking Wise Little Vladimir into bed, compared workers toiling for
private industry to cloud puffs in the black sky of capitalist ambition. No puff might
claim fluffy innocence of the sky’s attempted dominion over the communist soil, Rosa

cautioned, even if the sun had temporarily authorised the sky to sprinkle during a
drought.
Walter caught Rosa’s gist enough to foresee that he and his former
colleagues would be made examples of. The Freedom and Plenty Party denied them
new employment, turning them into the rarest and most despised of all New British
pariahs: scrimshankers.
Mrs Pingel set a boiled egg before him, along with the half loaf. She frowned
as he forced down a sandpaper lump of toast. ‘You should have told me sooner
about this interview. I’d have bought you new trousers.’
‘Not from your wages.’
Her jaw jutted. ‘My wages do me well enough. Just because some papershufflers in offices make a few extra pounds drinking tea all day, don’t you forget the
value of hard graft.’ She eyed his overflowing kitchen bin. ‘And since a cleaning
lady’s work is never done, nor a mother’s, I’ll tidy this place up while you’re gone. I’ll
mend your shirts too. Would you like that, if I mended your shirts?’
‘It’s all right, Mum, I can —’
‘Then I shall! You’ll need to look smart for your job at the ministry … the
ministry! From this day on, your mother shall do all your mending. Your washing and
ironing too.’
He squirmed on his stool. ‘Well, I suppose … Thanks, Mum …’
The corners of her scarlet lips soared earwards from her jowls. ‘Will I brush
your hair now, dear?’
‘No! Thanks, Mum.’
She dropped her butter knife in the sink with a clatter. ‘Your father would have
been so proud. His son, working for the government.’ She held out her hand so he
might reverence her wedding band and black diamond engagement ring. He
squeezed her fingers, and she squeezed back like the outlawed Mother Mary on
anabolic steroids. ‘My Ernest always respected the government, whichever
government it was. Don’t you forget that. Even when Maggie was closing all the pits,
his pit too.’
‘Margaret Thatcher,’ breathed Walter. He might have been whispering ‘Baba
Yaga’ or ‘Blood Countess’. Every New Briton, at least those newer than the ones
born before the eighties, spent much of their educations learning about Mrs

Thatcher, the Granite Devil. From primary school through to his degree in
Government Responsibility and Ethical Economics (GREE), Walter learnt everything
New Britons were permitted to know about the Pickaxe Revolution of ’85, which saw
the execution of the entire Tory cabinet.
‘Always do what the Party tells you, and stay out of trouble,’ said his mother. ‘I
don’t want to discover on New Britain News you’ve lost another job.’
He followed her gaze to the stateovision, that hexahedron of public
enlightenment. The reception leapt around like on one of those ancient stateovisions
you only ever saw on stateovision, slipping picture and crunching static. The newsgirl
seemed to be trying to rise from behind her desk, successful as a helium-filled
goldfish in a flushing toilet. Her mouth opened and closed like a goldfish’s too, but
the sound was too distorted to hear.
‘Obey your bosses, and before you know it you’ll be getting promotion and a
girlfriend,’ Mrs Pingel was saying, ‘getting married and giving me grand-babies.’ She
filled a glass from the tap as Walter coughed up a bread gobbet. She rubbed his
back while he drank. ‘No need for nerves. Just remember, the Party wouldn’t waste
time interviewing you unless you’d already got the job.’
He stifled a groan; yet if any man could fail to clinch a sure thing, that man
was surely him. If all could yet be lost, then all wasn’t lost after all.
‘I know what’ll cheer you up,’ his mother said. ‘Let’s switch on the DVD player.’
Never, since he won this sultan’s jewel at the Everyone’s Electrics staff xmas raffle,
had she missed an opportunity to switch on the DVD player and marvel at its
selection of buttons. She kept forgetting no New Briton, let alone Walter, could afford
any DVDs. ‘Remember when you used to watch Hammerama Man and Sickle Boy
on our old VHS? They gave you courage to face the bullies at school — naughty little
Arnie Braine, who used to tie your shoelaces together. You don’t watch cartoons any
more, do you, son?’
Before he could wilt under her scrutiny, the stateovision gave a mighty
crackle.
‘Gracious!’ she cried.
The picture came into focus, shifting to the barbed-wire-encased railings of
People’s Park, People’s City, within which stood People’s House. Normally, the
people didn’t get anywhere near ‘their’ house or ‘their’ park. Only the Freedom and

Plenty Party and the Friendly Parties could enter this seat of parliamentary power.
Today, a troop of muscular young men in dark blue uniforms marched outside the
railings, members, Walter supposed, of some edifying overgrown youth group.
Either the cameraperson was attempting an arty technique — careering
towards the marchers — or the stateovision was breaking down.
‘The stateovision’s breaking down,’ said Walter.
Mrs Pingel tittered. ‘Don’t be silly, dear. New British products are built to last.’
‘Not Everyone’s Electrics’ products,’ he answered quietly. He knew, by the
twitch of her nostrils, she sensed the import of his words. The half loaf sat heavy in
his stomach. Throughout his employment with Everyone’s Electrics, he yearned to
confess his terrible knowledge. And now he could. ‘They designed their stuff with
built-in obsolescence, like in the bad old days, to make customers buy the latest
models.’
Her lips barely moved: ‘And you wrote adverts for such … gadgetry?’
‘I had to, didn’t I? I was just doing my job.’
She nodded so hard, a few straggles escaped her silver helmet of lacquered
hair. ‘Of course you did! Go on, dear, fetch your blazer or you’ll be late for your
interview.’
Walter rose and trudged to his bedroom. His confession hadn’t brought the
balmy breezes and hula music he’d anticipated. Why should it? Why should he
deserve peace of mind when, after all, he’d been the genius behind the most
decadent of all Everyone’s Electrics’ advertising campaigns?
‘Buy bye’: two ironic words blurted out in a moment of despair on receiving a
briefing to create, not EduAds detailing bland product specifications, but a series of
panting commercials to evoke inferiority and loss in anyone who didn’t own the latest
time-bomb stateovision. A colleague reported his ‘buy bye’ sarcasm to his boss, who
loved it. Thus, the infamous Buy Bye adverts were born.
The boss was in a minority. Thrifty New Britons, even those with enough
money stashed under their mattresses for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Everyone’s
Electrics, couldn’t see the point in replacing functioning goods with glossier new
ones.
Walter shrugged his blazer on and peered at the mirror inside his wardrobe
door. Some things, however, really ought to be replaced, such as his worn-out elbow

patches. At least they matched his shiny knees. Shame he couldn’t exchange the
substandard parts of his physical person. He seemed to have aged ten years in the
last ten minutes, fallen anaemic and grown a jungle of hair.
Why, truly, did the Ministry of Public Enlightenment want to employ him? They
couldn’t think he’d make a good propagandist, not after Buy Bye failed to save
Everyone’s Electrics. Or had they spied his attempt at atonement in the final poster
of the campaign? The C in the curling hair of the mother, who sat watching a fancy
new stateovision with her offspring. The delighted O of that offspring’s mouth. The
father, tossing the previous year’s model in the bin, his jumper emblazoned with the
letter N?
Walter’s reflection grinned back at him, a stranger, a reckless fool. He
slammed his wardrobe shut. Why had he taken such a risk? He was no rebel, no
Hammerama Man fighting capitalist villains. Surely no one spied the message
anyway? His mother never mentioned it, and she scrutinised everything he did.
Back in the living room, she was seated on the couch, beaming at the
stateovision. The picture was once more in sharp focus. ‘Look, Walter, it’s that nice
young man.’
A politician he vaguely recognised stood outside People’s House. Tall and
personable, a youthful forty-something, the politician led one of the Friendly
Parties that formed the opposition-which-was-not-an-opposition. He smiled like a
prince with the fraternal touch, as cameras flashed all around him.
‘Have no doubt,’ he told the assembled journalists in cut-glass tones, ‘we in
the Progressive Front revere the chairman. We coexist with his Party in perfect
harmony and goodwill. We share his joys and sorrows, his well-being and woes.’ He
broke off, eyes lustrous like Noble Doctor Mao in Patriot Place. He sighed, sweeping
a hand through the soft chestnut hair that arced high above his forehead.
Mrs Pingel sighed back at him. ‘He’s so … urbane.’
Walter nodded. He joined her on the sofa.
She clapped her hands. ‘Urbane Gabriel Tain! That’s what they call him.’
This surprised Walter. She always made a habit of ignoring politics, declaring
that the affairs of state were not the business of little people.
She grinned. ‘Isn’t he handsome?’

He was indeed, so far as Walter could tell. Tain’s strawberries-and-cream
complexion glowed with outdoorsy health, yet his suspiciously well-tailored suit
suggested equal acquaintance with the corridors of power. His shoes might have
come from Italy and his tie from Paris, or places just as forbidden and
uncommunistic. Walter hazarded a guess that not even Gabriel Tain’s vest bore the
label ‘Homogenty: the ONLY brand for the New British gent’.
Tain flicked at a speck of dust on his jacket sleeve, then he caught Walter’s
eye and stared deep into his soul. ‘Surely you don’t blame the chairman if, in his
infinite care for you, he stretches New British resources to their absolute snapping
point?’
‘I’ve never noticed the sugar queues in the State Abundance Store!’ Walter
lied, though Tain probably couldn’t hear him.
‘Oh, I don’t mean trivial shortages’ — Tain waggled his manicured fingers
dismissively — ‘choices between, say, a good soaping or a sweet cup of tea …
though on a side note, isn’t it funny how some people always manage to get their
hands on everything?’ The politician’s scrubbed skin and well-nourished build
suggested, to Walter, a certain aloofness on his own part from the abiding soap/
sugar dilemma. ‘No, I’ve heard darker whispers,’ Tain continued. ‘People fear what
will become of them when they’re old and feeble. Our system already struggles with
the burden of an ageing population. How will the government pay for you?’
‘The chairman will provide,’ protested Walter.
‘You’re scared, aren’t you?’ insisted Tain. ‘You think of those prudent workers
before the Pickaxe Revolution who paid into private pensions, a choice denied to
you. Sometimes you wish you could take responsibility for yourself, instead of being
nannied by the state. You question other things too. In your blackest moments,
you’ve even told yourself our beloved communism stifles vitality.’
‘No, we haven’t!’ cried Walter and Mrs Pingel. Walter grabbed the stateovision
remote and tried to change channel, before remembering there weren’t any others.
Mrs Pingel peered at the window and door.
Tain smiled indulgently. ‘Well, the chairman doesn’t want you to worry. He
wants you to be happy, and he’ll do whatever it takes to make you so.’
Walter and Mrs Pingel leapt to their feet and raised their hands in the Red
Fist. ‘Long live the chairman!’

‘That’s why he and I are meeting this morning: to discuss your fears. And
doubtless we’ll be fortifying ourselves with scones and a nice cup of tea, or perhaps
not tea but some highly caffeinated coffee.’ Tain flashed perfect little teeth, but a faint
line worried his forehead. ‘The Progressive Front are united with the Freedom and
Plenty Party in our determination to avert impending financial catastrophe.’
‘Ca … tastrophe?’ Walter’s throat dried up like the shower head in his
bathroom.
‘And now, ladies and gentlemen’ — Tain reeled off enough names to make a
phone book dizzy, apologising to any reporters, photographers, film crew or viewers
at home he might have missed — ‘good day to you, and a brave new day to toilers
everywhere.’
He turned to enter People’s House, and the youth military types in the dark
blue uniforms filed into line behind him.
Walter’s arm remained frozen in salute as Comrade George’s Perpendicular Bars
filled the screen, as they did during programming glitches, closedown or whenever
the censors became alarmed. These weren’t bars at all but a detail from the old
Union Flag: the red bit in the very middle. The Freedom and Plenty Party had done
away with the Union Flag’s idolatrous crosses when they did away with Britain’s
constituent countries, creating the purity of the Union Red.
A rousing rendition of the national anthem, ‘Thither I Go With My Pickaxe in
Hand’, started up. It ended on a spectacular clash of cymbals before looping back to
the beginning.
Walter prised his arm from the air with his free hand. ‘Perhaps my interview will
be cancelled if there’s important government business.’ Not that the chairman of New
Britain was interviewing him, only the Minister for Public Enlightenment. Only the
Minister for Public Enlightenment. He dabbed his damp forehead with his blazer cuff.
Mrs Pingel’s lips tightened in a scarlet slash. ‘Don’t even think of contacting
the ministry and giving them an excuse not to see you.’
He tore his eyes from his Everyone’s Electrics cordless phone, while his
mother fetched his degree, along with his letter of recommendation from Everyone’s
Electrics, from the cupboard under the sink. He shuffled to his front door. When he

turned to kiss his mother goodbye, queasy as a draft-dodger eyeballing military
police through the letterbox, tears replaced her displeasure.
‘If your father could see you now.’ She straightened his tie, sniffing. ‘He was
so humble. He’d never have dreamt his son would rise to dizzy heights.’
‘What would he tell me today? What would he say?’
‘“Keep your nose to the grindstone and your tongue behind your teeth,” that’s
what he’d say. And, “Hard work never harmed a fly.” And he’d tell you, “Always
remember where you came from. Never forget your roots.”’
Ernest Pingel’s roots were in the ground, though his ashes occupied a
gleaming urn on his widow’s mantlepiece. Walter had been a mere zygote in Mrs
Pingel’s fallopian tube when Ernest got a fatal thump on the head crossing a picket
line at the colliery where the Pingels had, since the coal dusty mists of time, made
their livings hacking at the bowels of the earth. Ernest scabbed throughout the strike
of ’84 to ’85 and died shortly before the outbreak of the Pickaxe Revolution. As Mrs
Pingel put it, he was a martyr for the freedom of the honest man to do an honest
day’s work.
She opened the door and gave Walter an affectionate shove. ‘Get going, and
make your father proud. And I’ll make fried eggs and chips for tea. Yoooour
favourite!’
‘Yum,’ said Walter.


2
Cobwebs garlanded the out-of-service sign on the lift doors. Walter made his way
down four stairways to the ground floor of the flats. He no longer noticed the mildew
and cracks decorating each storey, but the entryway’s murals always took his breath
away — and made him feel safe to be New British: Herculean fabricators paused
from servicing a naval destroyer to gaze at some invisible horizon; a squadron of
MiGs departed over the heads of cheering citizens in People’s Square; from the
hatch of a T-90 tank, a commander chewed a cigar and watched Margaret
Thatcher’s Conservative cabinet explode in sunset hues. Smiling over all of this was
the sunlike face of the supreme strategist of everybody’s happiness, the chairman.
With a quick salute to that fatherly face, Walter ducked into the street. He
always fancied that the chairman noted any who failed to perform the Red Fist.
Legs a-wobble from his descent, he made his way to the bus shelter that
served the inhabitants of his street’s identikit flats. He paused to read a slogan
someone had scribbled over the poster adorning the side of the shelter. Across the
faces of the international Great Leaders of history, who stood shoulder to shoulder
with the chairman, the graffiti read: ‘Organisation without government’. The author
signed off with a doodle of a carbide lamp.
Walter wobbled away before any passerby suspected him of the crime. A half
hour’s wobble to People’s Square might steady his nerves for the interview ordeal to
come. Not that anyone would perform a citizen’s arrest on him anyway, for the
streets were deserted. Normally you heard the distant roar of a Lada engine or
passed gangs of hardy pensioners smoking and playing outdoor dominoes come
rain or shine. Today, nothing. Twenty minutes into his journey, he felt like a space
dog going walkies on the moon.
His relief, when he finally spotted a throng of citizens through the window of
the State Abundance Store, was akin to confirming he hadn’t confused Dress Extra
Smart for Workplace Inspection Day with the less dapper Smear Your Face in Soot
in Solidarity with the Miners’ Day. The citizens huddled around a stateovision, some
pointing at it, others shaking their heads. It must be a deluxe final model
expropriated from Everyone’s Electrics’ doomed factory.
‘Watch it!’

A meaty hand thudded into his chest. The owner, into whom he’d almost
collided, was six-and-a-half feet of muscle in a dark blue uniform.
‘S-sorry!’ Walter stammered.
‘On yer way, nothin’ to see,’ the muscle told him.
Walter hurried off towards People’s Square.
‘Oi,’ the muscle shouted after him, ‘where you going?’
Walter froze, then turned around. The muscle’s uniform — breeches, jacket
and jackboots — was the same as those of the youth military types on New Britain
News, the ones who followed Urbane Gabriel Tain into People’s House. ‘I’ve an
appointment,’ he said, but the muscle merely stared. ‘In the Ministry … of Public
Enlightenment.’
‘Wossa watchword?’
‘W-w-watchword?’ repeated Walter.
‘W-w-watchword.’
Walter stepped back. The muscle’s jackboots stepped forward. He really was
tall, the muscle. He smelt of raw mince. Walter attempted a smile. The muscle’s lips
curled too, away from his canines.
‘N-nice uniform.’ Walter touched the muscle’s sleeve in supplication. ‘Nice
blue br-br-breeches.’
The muscle blinked and saluted. Not the Red Fist but a waggly-fingered
starburst. ‘Sorry, sir! Just makin’ sure, sir! Have a nice day, sir!’
‘Ah, you too … sir.’ Walter took off. Not daring to look back, he fluttered like a
lone pigeon into the heart of People’s Square.
Dull neoclassical ministries squatted around him on every side, forming a grim
oasis amid the concrete dunes of People’s City. Not that People’s Square didn’t
contain concrete aplenty, such as the sea of flagstones where guards usually
strutted for tourists and dignitaries. In recent years, the Freedom and Plenty Party
had forgotten its abhorrence of decadent foreigners and begun luring them into
tourist-only hotels rumoured to have every devilish capitalist trapping. Perhaps
Gabriel Tain was right and the economy really was in trouble, but Walter didn’t doubt
the chairman would steer New Britain back on a straight course.
No tourists gawped or took pictures today, which struck him as a little odd. No
guards paraded either, a lot odd. At least not the usual sort of guards. Walter almost

tripped over his own feet when he spotted the blue-uniformed military types perched
on the steps of some ministries.
Perhaps he should turn back. A Suburb B5 bus, bound for home, was due
about now. He pictured his mother, her eyes glittering with teary pride at the prospect
of his new job. They’d glitter with fury if he didn’t attend his interview, though
probably not as furiously as the minister’s.
With feet like kayaks navigating ice floes, he followed a mosaic pavement
around the square till he reached a building resembling a Gorgon’s wedding cake:
the Ministry of Public Enlightenment — MOPE. He couldn’t say if it was his own
fevered wishful thinking, but as he stared up at MOPE’s grey facade a saintly face
took shape in the stonework, as if beamed from a projector. Obscure yet
unmistakable, like Lenin in a bowl of cornflakes or Marx in grilled cheese, this was a
face he knew only from photographs and the ink portrait on his mother’s
mantlepiece: farseeing eyes, lips faintly upturned, hair black and curling beneath a
miner’s helmet. The face of Ernest Pingel.
‘Go on, do me proud, son,’ the mouth seemed to say.
‘I’ll try, Dad,’ whispered Walter.
Ernest winked, then melted away.
Half expecting a pistol to cock against his head, Walter passed between the
columns of the ministry’s portico. No one attempted to hinder his progress or ask his
business. No one was there.
No one guarded the reception area either. Should he tap the bell on the desk?
Best not make a fuss. He sat on a bench near the bathroom door and strained to
pick up signs of life: a running tap, a hand dryer. Nothing. He flicked through a
magazine on the coffee table, but the familiar content — ‘Remembering the Pickaxe
Revolution 30 years on!’, ‘Five patriotic mining songs to teach your children!’ —
failed to ease his disquiet.
He rose and patted one finger on the reception bell, shattering the silence like
flatulence at a funeral. ‘Sorry,’ he told the empty room. He sank onto his bench and
tried to look invisible, not that anyone could see him anyway.
Which door would the minister arrive through? The one behind the reception
desk? The double doors leading, he supposed, to the interior of the ministry?

Something slammed against the double doors. A voice behind them roared,
‘You can’t do this to me! Don’t you know who I am?’
Walter leapt up. He considered fleeing outside, but the double doors might
burst open any second. Guards might roll through, guns blazing, and mow him down.
He slipped behind a curtain, stumbling over a potted plant en route, clutching his
GREE degree like a shield.
The doors squealed open. A thunder of feet. The doors clattered shut.
‘Get your hands off me,’ the voice yelled again. ‘I’m the Minister for Public
Enlightenment!’
‘We’s doing the enlightenmentin’ now,’ chuckled another voice, hideous as a
big ugly troll’s.
Next came a sound akin to a minister being dragged across the floor while
shrieking, ‘Ouch, my elbow! Oooh — coccyx!’ The yelps grew more distant and
rhythmic, like someone bumping down portico steps.
Silence again, broken at length by a new voice: ‘What now?’
‘Dunno,’ said Ugly Troll. ‘We loot the place?’
Walter shuddered behind the curtain.
New Voice sounded uncertain: ‘Wossat part of our orders?’
The doors screeched again, and a voice reminiscent of Walter’s college
professors, only frostier, said, ‘Indeed it was not. MOPE will be instrumental in the
days and months to come. We require it intact.’
Ugly Troll sounded a bit less scary and a bit more scared: ‘Sorry sir, Mr
Saxton sir. Gets confusing, this revolution stuff.’
Revolution! The yolk-coated soldiers from breakfast made a near-successful
charge over Walter’s tonsils. What did a good communist do during a revolution he
wasn’t embroiled in, besides shake to the tips of his shoelaces?
‘Coup, dear boy,’ said the voice named Mr Saxton. ‘And are you aware of the
most important thing one can do when caught up in a coup?’
‘Bash heads?’ said New Voice.
‘What he said,’ agreed Ugly Troll.
‘The correct answer,’ said Mr Saxton, ‘is “Know which side to take”.’
‘We does, sir,’ chimed Ugly Troll and New Voice in harmony.
‘I wasn’t referring to you,’ said Mr Saxton.

The curtain zipped back. The first thing Walter saw was, he hazarded a
guess, Mr Saxton: a man in his thirties or forties or fifties, standing straight-backed
by the double doors. Pale of face, fiery of hair, Mr Saxton wore a pewter-grey suit
that appeared to be commissioned from the same continental tailor as Gabriel Tain’s.
The second thing he noticed was a pair of men in dark blue uniforms,
especially the one holding him by the collar. ‘What you hiding for, eh? You one of ’em
commies?’ The speaker, Ugly Troll, shook Walter’s collar, and Walter’s body shook
with it.
‘We’re all communists,’ Walter protested through rattling teeth.
‘Arrivederci! He admits it,’ declared a fourth voice, and this fourth voice was
the third thing Walter noticed. Its owner, all sneer and spectacles, glided through the
double doors and sidled up to Mr Saxton.
It was the voice of Arnie Braine.
Arnie Braine: Walter’s former schoolmate, multi-lingual and perpetually bored. Arnie
Braine: his fellow GREE student at All Citizen’s, perpetually troublemaking. And by
the worst possible luck, Arnie Braine: his co-worker at Everyone’s Electrics, who
informed on him for his infamous ‘buy bye’ remark.
Or perhaps his worst luck was about to come.
‘So, Peengel,’ drawled Arnie, who might be New British as rain on Revolution
Day but who spoke the Romance languages like a poet, ‘seems it’s not buy bye for
us after all, nor yet bon dieu.’
Arnie Braine, so suave, so clever, whose self-taught tongues earned him the
admiration of all the girls in class, though he recoiled from curricular Chinese and
Russian, dismissing them as ‘barbiere’.
Walter grinned, he didn’t know why, and clasped his shield-degree to his
chest. ‘Hallo, Arnie!’
‘A Pingel, indeed?’ The flame-hared Mr Saxton scrutinised Walter with the air
of a scientist studying a rare bacterium through a microscope. ‘And how, precisely,
do a Pingel and a Braine come to be acquainted?’ His left eyebrow rose in a fiery
arch, awaiting a reply. It seemed oblivious to the viscera-melting effect the rest of Mr
Saxton’s person was having on Walter.

‘We studied together under the commies,’ said Arnie. ‘Pingel lapped it up.
He’s a commie.’
‘We’re all communists,’ Walter said again, though he was starting to suspect
this might no longer be true.
Mr Saxton smiled chillily. ‘On the contrary, Mr Pingel. There are some who
hark back to a time before the Freedom and Plenty Party. It was a time of freedom
and plenty. A time when big cogs and little cogs worked in harmony, each knowing
their places in the machine. And the machine worked especially well for ambitious
cogs, like Braine here.’
Arnie’s chest puffed up beneath his shirt, a shirt commissioned, if not from the
tailor of Gabriel Tain and Mr Saxton, then that tailor’s most promising apprentice. He
wore this silky couture sans tie, top three buttons undone to reveal a follicular
flowering that would make an alpaca wink.
‘We had a mantra in those days,’ continued Mr Saxton. ‘“From each according
to his proclivity, to each according to his greed.” What do you make of that, Mr
Pingel?’
Walter glanced around the room, in case another Pingel might be keener to
volunteer an opinion. When none came forward, he squeaked a classroom maxim,
‘R-responsibility is its own reward?’
‘Charming!’ declared Mr Saxton, and Arnie smirked, ‘but consider: why would
anyone give his heart and soul to the burden of leadership without generous
remuneration? Why would the chairman of New Britain?’
True, the chairman enjoyed certain luxuries, though Walter was certain no one
begrudged him Buckingham Palace. Some might question, very quietly, why his
children lived in the other palaces when they contributed even less to the general
wellbeing than the exiled thespian prince and skirt-chasing prince subtracted, while
doctors and teachers dwelt in crumbling flats.
‘Where is he now, the chairma—?’ Walter’s voice caught in his throat. He
remembered the MOPE minister bumping down the stairs.
Mr Saxton’s eyes flickered like pale blue flames. His words tripped and
tinkled: ‘Oh, he’s quite all right. He went into … retirement. Sensible fellow.’
‘He’s not … hurt?’

‘Hurt?’ Mr Saxton tipped back his head and produced musical laughter from
the back of his throat. Ugly Troll and New Voice joined in with guffaws. Arnie giggled
to rival a pack of cartoon hyenas. After a moment’s hesitation, Walter ventured a
tentative chortle. The instant Mr Saxton spoke again, the cacophony ceased:
‘Nothing untoward could ever happen to our chairman. Why, he’s the nearest thing to
divinity in a godless world.’
Magnified by their spectacles, Arnie’s eyes had the detached curiosity of an
untroubled troubled child ducking the head of a smaller child into a toilet bowl, a look
Walter remembered only too well. ‘Mr Saxton, didn’t they, you know, rough him up a
bit?’
‘Can coshes prevail against divinity? Our glorious chairman has departed for
a better place, delivered from the burdens of state. Isn’t that reassuring?’ Mr Saxton
didn’t wait for his breezy words to disperse the tangle of clouds swirling around
Walter’s brain. ‘And now we can build a New Britain where aspiring cogs work their
way up through the machine, the way things used to be.’
‘What’ll we do with the rest of the commies?’ asked Arnie, watching Walter. ‘À
la lanterne?’
Walter quivered. His legs and arms quivered. His feet and fingers quivered.
Even his hair. His degree fluttered to the floor.
Ugly Troll snatched the paper up, brow puckering as he read. ‘Gov-ment Responsi-billy-tay? Effy-cal Eco-nom-ics?’ He gave a gusty ‘hoo-hoo’ of laughter.
‘Sounds stoopid!’ His eyes protruded with undue wonder as a second piece of paper
came unstuck and fluttered to the floor. Walter’s palm had soaked the Everyone’s
Electrics’ letter of recommendation to the degree.
Elegant as a courtier, Mr Saxton tipped his back to retrieve the letter. He read
slowly, though Walter felt sure he wasn’t pronouncing the syllables in his mind, nor
about to ‘hoo-hoo’ when finished. ‘Fascinating,’ said Mr Saxton, to Walter’s
astonishment. ‘So you were the one who dreamt up the Buy Bye campaign, the child
pleading, “Buy bye, Mummy, don’t make me cry.” So poignant! Not only that’ — his
voice dropped to a caress — ‘you must have put the subliminal message in the
poster, in the hair and jumper, in the offspring’s delighted mouth.’
Arnie spared Walter the horror of confession or denial. His smart loafers
almost gave off sparks as he spun round to face Mr Saxton. ‘Actually, it was I who

turned Everyone’s Electrics’ vision back to the eighties. I who persuaded them we
could bring about a throwaway-culture revolution. C’est moi! Pingel just stuttered out
the slogan.’
‘Indeed?’ said Mr Saxton. ‘Sadly you attempted the revolution too soon,
Braine, but such emotive appeals to the conscience as Mr Pingel’s, those really are
timeless.’
Walter had never known Arnie to blush red with anger or embarrassment. He
tended, instead, to turn purplish-blue, as though choking on a biggest-in-show
grapefruit. He did this now.
‘The slogan didn’t work,’ said Walter. ‘It wasn’t very good. Besides, New
Britons don’t want more things than they already have.’
‘Yet I must contradict you. Come.’ Mr Saxton’s hand hovered above Walter’s
shoulder and guided him without touch to the window, where he opened the blinds.
People’s Square, so desolate when Walter arrived, now heaved with smiling
citizens and glowering blue-uniformed men, as though a Martian fleet had beamed
them all down. They faced a stage that hadn’t been there earlier — surely Walter
would have spotted the sweeping faux-marble steps and the sail-like backdrop of a
white flag emblazoned with a black megaphone? Every citizen waved a
handkerchief-sized version of this flag, from infants with perfectly coiffed curls to
elegantly dressed parents and robust elders.
‘You see, Mr Pingel? If the people were so happy under communism, why are
they cheering for the Progressive Front?’
Walter swallowed. Urbane Gabriel Tain’s Progressive Front? ‘Where did they
get those flags?’
‘Ah, Veritas, emblem of the new government of new New Britain. We in the
Progressive Front’ — Mr Saxton made a slight bow — ‘intend for Veritas, from this
day, to replace the Union Red. The liberating megaphone shall persuade the citizens
to throw off the last shackles of socialist enslavement.’ He raised the window,
ushering an undulating roar into the ministry. Like a multi-limbed beast, the crowd
thrust out every hand that wasn’t already waving flags, fingers splayed and waggling.
A chorus erupted of ‘Hail, fellow, well met! Hail, fellow, well met!’
Climbing the steps to the stage, with his easy grace and air of command, was
Gabriel Tain. The Progressive Front leader surveyed his audience from the stage,

before spreading both arms to quiet the stormy sea. ‘Hail, well met, friends,’ he
greeted the crowd through a black megaphone mounted on a stand. ‘And make no
mistake, we are indeed friends. For whatever trivial distinctions separate us, we are
in this struggle together. We have vanquished the red foe who tried to cheat us of
our slight yet proud disparities, and we are truly united in our tiny disunity, which
makes us thoroughly equal.’
This received a howling cheer, though Walter’s brain throbbed.
‘Equal,’ continued Tain, ‘in so far as individuals with differing abilities can be.
Let me remind you, friends, of a truth suppressed in New Britain: true equality is a
lie! Worse, it’s a lie that leads to stagnation. For if we are foolish enough to believe
we are equal, what remains to strive for? New Britain has ceased to strive!’
‘Strive,’ shouted a dozen voices in the crowd, ‘strive’. The chant caught like
hair lice, breaking in a mass swoon when Tain declared, ‘Every New Briton is distinct
and unique! Yet regardless of ability, your children go to the same school as every
other. They have the same life chances. Is this fair? Is it fair that you, their hardworking parents, toil without recognition while your lazy colleagues laugh at you —
yes, laugh — while drinking endless cups of tea, feet up on their desks, never fearing
their idleness may catch up with them?’
‘Sack them,’ lisped a toddler near the window.
‘We are not equal,’ said Tain. ‘Communism has robbed us of the boons
inequality brings. For only when citizens strive to catch up with their betters will our
country prosper once more.’
Walter barely heard Mr Saxton close the window. This, surely, was the Great
Blasphemy. In his college days, Walter heard rumours of terrible seditions voiced in
underground gatherings of dangerous people, and now a man in a smart suit
proclaimed these seditions through a megaphone in People’s Square.
‘Interesting, don’t you think, how they offer themselves up for persuasion?’
said Mr Saxton. ‘Of course, much work remains in convincing the rest of the
everymen. That’s where you’ll come in, Mr Pingel.’
Walter attempted to blink himself out of this mad dream. ‘Me?’
‘Why, yes. It seems you came here today for a job interview. Well, the regime
may have changed, but the ministry hasn’t, and it’s shorter staffed than ever.’

Walter couldn’t bring himself to ask what had become of the army of civil
servants that must have turned the communist propaganda wheel.
‘As a GREE graduate, you understand the necessity of firm government. And
who better to communicate the Progressive Front’s vision of a renewed New Britain
than the sagacious Solomon of the Buy Bye campaign?’ Mr Saxton’s eyes flared like
blue flames on a gas hob. ‘Mr Pingel, your country needs you.’


3
‘But-but-but —’ stuttered Arnie, a response mirroring the one Walter couldn’t quite
articulate. He appeared to be regurgitating his biggest-in-show grapefruit.
‘Of course, we already have loyal Party members like Braine here,’ said Mr
Saxton, ‘but now we’ve discovered Mr Pingel, with his unusual name and unusual
abilities, we wouldn’t care to let him out of our sights. I’ve already judged him to be a
man of conscience, a noble plebeian, an earthy son of the soil. He craves to serve
his fellow citizens. He’d never abandon them to flounder helplessly.’
‘I-I-I —’ floundered Walter helplessly.
‘“Aye”, he says. So eager!’ Once again Mr Saxton steered Walter without
touching him, not to the window but the reception desk. He slapped the bell. ‘Braine!’
Arnie’s skin tone darkened to rival the uniforms of Ugly Troll and New Voice.
He dragged his suede-loafered feet to the desk and slid behind it. ‘How may I help
you, sir?’
But Mr Saxton turned away. His eyes burned into Walter’s like corneadissolving lasers. ‘You do want to serve the people, don’t you, Mr Pingel? You do
want to serve your country? You’re with the government, not against us? Are you a
rebel, Mr Pingel? Can we trust you? Can’t we depend on you? Are you loyal, Mr
Pingel?’
The remnants of Walter’s eyeballs stung and streamed. ‘Yes, sir!’
‘Then, welcome aboard.’ Mr Saxton extended a hand, his long fingers
hovering in the air around Walter’s, trapping them in an inescapable forcefield.
‘Report to the ministry a week from Monday, nine of the clock ante meridiem. We
expect punctuality.’ His fingers reabsorbed the forcefield, and Walter’s hand dropped.
‘Good day, Mr Pingel. Braine, issue the paperwork.’
Arnie zipped behind the reception doors while Mr Saxton, whistling something
Wagnerian, strode off through the double doors with Walter’s degree and employer’s
letter. Walter considered hurtling to freedom between Ugly Troll and New Voice, who
guarded the exit to the portico. Instead he took up Mr Saxton’s tune with the air of an
overwrought cicada.
‘Sign …’ demanded Arnie, returning with an accordion of a form. He thrust it
into Walter’s arms and managed a leer, managed rather well. ‘… avec blood.’

If every page required a signature, Walter would be anaemic by the end. The
front page alone made his blood turn pink: ‘APPLICATION FOR MEMBERSHIP OF
THE PROGRESSIVE FRONT’. Arnie waggled a pen at him, one of those seethrough acrylic things with glittery hammers and sickles floating inside. Giant
unglittery versions of those implements hammered and swooshed in Walter’s
stomach. What would Hammerama Man and Sickle Boy do now? How had they
escaped Baron Bourgeois and the Profits of Doom in yesterday’s thrilling half-hour
cartoon?
‘It’s an awfully big form,’ he said, using the front page to blot a sheen of sweat
from his forehead. ‘Can I bring it back later?’ He scuttled towards the door before
Arnie could reply, willing Ugly Troll and New Voice not to seize him.
‘Buy bye! Bonito!’ Arnie shouted after him. ‘Don’t hurry back.’
Walter had no intention of doing so, if he could help it. He barrelled between
New Voice and Ugly Troll, who stepped away from each other like dancers
performing the pas de basque. They threw open the doors. ‘Don’t hurry back!’ they
chorused.
Outside in the portico, he almost collided with a pillar in an attempt to prevent
himself from slamming into blue-uniformed men. Batons poised, half a dozen of
these uniforms drove back a mob many times their size. Gabriel Tain’s stylish
audience were visible just beyond People’s Square, marching towards a fleet of
buses, but the wannabe portico-invaders were mere garden-variety New Britons in
unmistakable state-produced Homogenty and Homogyny clothing, clutching children
garbed in Homomini. They shouted things like, ‘Where’s my Jim? He works here,’
and, ‘What’s happened to Liz/Brenda/Bob?’ ‘Bob’s gone on a little trip with the
chairman,’ was the sort of thing the uniforms shouted back, or, ‘Brenda signed up
with the new government. She’ll be home in time for tea.’
Sometimes the uniforms weren’t quite so helpful. One struck his baton across
the shoulder of a weeping old woman, who refused to believe her Vicky had gone to
Siberia in the chairman’s service. ‘Wanna join yer Vicky?’ growled the uniform. ‘No?
Then shove off, ya dirty commie hag!’ He brandished his baton as if for another blow,
but paused when he caught sight of Walter over his shoulder. ‘Hey! What you sniffing
around at?’
‘Ah … hail, fellow?’ Walter raised his arm and splayed his fingers. ‘Well met?’

‘Whatever. Scram!’
Walter tried scramming, but too many citizens blocked the portico searching
for their Vickys and Jims. He might have resembled an earnest scrammer
scramming through quicksand while defending his title of champion gurner in a
national gurning competition against everyone present. When finally he made it
through the crush of bodies, an unexpected blast of speed caught his heels. He shot
into the square like a cork from a bottle, landing in brace position on the flagstones.
A groan, his own. A clack of heeled shoes. A cool hand fluttering against his
cheek. ‘Ooh, I say, are you alright?’ a voice enquired, breathy, feminine.
He uncurled himself. ‘Nothing broken, I …’ Rose-scented perfume flooded his
senses. He gazed into eyes he’d have recognised anywhere, blue as the corniest
cornflower, wide as the doe’s of antique cliché. Her eyes. ‘… I don’t …’ He accepted
Her silky-gloved hand, fearing the tiny thing might disintegrate like fairy-dust in his
own clumsy one. His heart pattered tik-a-tee, tik-a-tay. ‘… I don’t think.’
Her tinkling laughter always reminded him of wedding bells. ‘Walter Pingel? I
don’t believe it. Walter Pingel!’
His eyes shot to her fingers. Could it be, still no rings pressing through her glove? He
attempted to scramble with dignity to his feet, but her rosy grin melted his limbs. Her
teeth had the uniform perfection of cultured pearls, yet with all the prestige of their
freshwater cousins. Eight years since he saw that grin last, excluding every night in
his dreams, between dreams of Hammerama Man and Sickle Boy. But Hammerama
Man and Sickle Boy dreams weren’t the same as Samantha Hopewell dreams, not
the same at all.
Heat flamed his cheeks. ‘Well, best be going. Oh …!’ Surprisingly
aerodynamic, his half-a-tree application form flew past him. He threw himself after it.
A jackboot caught it first. The boot’s owner, a blue-uniformed type, scooped
up the form and shoved it at Walter, with something between a salute and wink for
Samantha.
‘Thank you,’ thanked Samantha, ‘Constable Clive of the Blue Breeches.’
The jackboot-wearer pinkened, then strutted off with a wiggle.
‘Blue Breeches?’ repeated Walter.

‘Yes, named after their trousers. Aren’t their uniforms darling, darling? The
BBs are our new police.’
‘New police? What happened to the old ones?’
Samantha shrugged her dainty shoulders. ‘Oh, I expect they’ll swear an oath
to the Progressive Front, or some such. Walter, sweetness, it’s so wonderful to see
you again. On this of all days! You must tell me everything you’ve done since we
studied … we studied …’
‘Effy-cal Eco-nom-ics and Gov-ment Re-sponsi-billy-tay,’ he spluttered.
Her laughter pealed. ‘That’s right! Come on, let’s find a seat.’ She linked her
arm through his, reducing his melted limbs to a puddle.
It was so wonderful to see him again. She really said that? He floated by her
side around clusters of citizens amassing, from all directions, into People’s Square.
Conversations kissed his ears like snatches of harps and lazy saxophones. Each
word was a burst of hallelujah: posh boy Tain … our jobs … we’re all fucked now!
She perched on a bench, near a huddle of citizens in sooty overalls, and
patted the space beside her. Walter dissolved into the wood, gawping reverentially
as she whipped a cosmetics mirror from her handbag and fluffed the ends of her
chin-length golden bob. She tipped her felt cap at an angle and asked, ‘How do I
look?’ No reply sounded from his lips, though they hung open. Her gaze dropped to
his application form. ‘I saw you leaving MOPE. You’re joining the Progressive Front?
How marvellous!’
He stared anew at his form. Was it marvellous? His earlier qualms returned to
his stomach with a swoosh and a hammer. ‘They’ve offered me a job.’
‘Do tell.’
‘I don’t exactly know what it is, and I don’t exactly know if I should take it.’
‘Tish! You must, and if it’s in MOPE it’s certain to be very important.’ She
leaned confidentially towards him, and a man from the nearby sooty huddle broke off
a Tain-jobs-fucked conversation to stare across. Most likely, the man meant to
admire Samantha in her jaunty cap but some grit in his eye misdirected his gaze to
Walter. ‘You were always the cleverest boy at college,’ Samantha continued. ‘Well,
the most responsible, at least. That is to say, you turned up for class … and old
Spencer thought maybe you’d do alright. Didn’t he?’

Mr Owen Spencer, Head of Politics at All Citizens College, had indeed
expressed the sentiment that Walter might not entirely screw up his life. Mr
Spencer’s faith never ceased to humble and amaze Walter, just as it amazed the rest
of the class. Arnie Braine reacted by penning Walter a series of lovelorn letters
supposedly in the lecturer’s hand, but Samantha had been too polite to venture an
opinion on Walter’s abilities, or perhaps her frequent absences meant she never
formed one at the time. She suffered from General Unspecified Weakness Disorder,
and her all-too-brief epiphanies at All Citizens were like manna to Walter, making the
endless social discomfort bearable. Not that he and Samantha had been friends, or
even engaged in conversation. Before today.
‘Mr Spencer got me the MOPE interview,’ he confided to his friend. ‘He had a
word in the minister’s ear. Of course, it wasn’t the new minister … I think he’s Mr
Saxton. It was the old one.’ Who’d gone bump-bump-bump down the stairs.
‘Everything’s turned out wonderfully. You wouldn’t have wanted to work for the
Freedom and Plenty Party, Walter. They made everyone the same. You’ll have your
chance to shine now.’ Samantha squeezed his hand, and the oxygen squeezed from
his brain. ‘The commies guaranteed everyone a job, and that’s why it all went wrong.
We didn’t have to strive. Things will be different now.’
The possibility of ‘different’ was brain-boggling enough, without Walter trying
to imagine what ‘different’ might entail. The sooty-overalled citizens near the bench
seemed to think so too, judging by the way they frowned at Samantha. The one
who’d looked across a moment earlier still bested the others in the staring stakes.
This was a short wiry fellow, whose tufty black hair framed a face filled with wrinkles,
which in turn were filled with powder resembling coal dust. A huge yellow flower
poked from his chest pocket, like something a chimp might wear to a tea party.
‘What job did you do after college?’ Walter asked Samantha to throw the little
chimp-man off the scent, whatever the scent might be.
‘Oh, I didn’t bother with that. I met a man, you see. He was so kind, so
inspiring. I thought he’d marry me, but he never asked.’ She stared down at her
gloved hands.
Shame followed Walter’s instinctive joy that her lover abandoned her. ‘How
could he do such a thing? You must have been so lonely all these years, or months,
or … however long it’s been.’

Her tiny smile made his heart lurch. Samantha Hopewell, the girl every boy at
All Citizens wanted to romance, the girl every girl wanted to be. A woman so alone.
Samantha never spoke of her parents, but everyone knew they were killed after the
Pickaxe Revolution, having bet on the wrong horse. The Hopewells tried to flee New
Britain, leaving baby Samantha with an aunt. During a police chase in Dover, they
plunged their car into the English Channel.
‘How have you managed?’ Walter asked. ‘I mean, with no one to take care of
you?’
‘But I have very good friends. They’re like family to me. Look!’ Samantha
stuck out her chest, and he averted his gaze. ‘Silly! Look.’
He swallowed hard and glanced down. Less formal than the suits worn by
Gabriel Tain and Mr Saxton, Samantha’s pale coral skirt-suit was nonetheless chic
and very … fitted. She pointed at a button badge on her lapel, featuring a black
megaphone against a white background.
She beamed. ‘I’m Senior Troop Sister of the Progressive Front Young Ladies’
League. The PF is so uplifting. It gives me a purpose, as though I belong there. I’ve
never truly belonged anywhere else, not really, not among those awful commies who
killed my …’ Her lips tightened like a clam shell, only more attractive. After a
moment, the corners lifted again in a smile. ‘And now you’re joining us. I always
knew you were different from the other boys.’
‘You did?’
‘Of course.’ She clacked open her handbag and pulled out a leaflet, handing it
to him. ‘I have to go, darling, but I do hope we’ll see each other again. At the next
Front meeting? Ladies and gentlemen sit in separate rooms, but I’m certain we’ll
pass each other in the corridor.’
His voice scratched like rust in his throat as she rose to leave. It squeaked like
helium in his ears. ‘Wait!’
She threw him a smile over her shoulder. Then she glided off into the crowded
square. Too soon, her golden hair and little cap bobbed from sight.
The leaflet read: ‘Wednesdays, 19:30. Progressive Front HQ, Subterranean Lair,
People’s Park’. At least this was the back page. The flip side revealed a troop of
young ladies marching in short white tennis dresses. Walter pressed the leaflet to his

lips. Must he really join the Progressive Front if he were to see Senior Troop Sister
Samantha again? He rose from the bench and tried for a last glimpse of her through
the crowd. All he saw were heads and shoulders and limbs, their owners caught up
in things of no moment, in coups and chairmen, while Samantha Hopewell was in
their midst and walking away.
She was gone, fluttered off like a golden canary, vanished like a wisp, like a
fairy, like an airborne mermaid on the crest of a cloud, like —
‘Nice seeing you, Walt.’
Walter lowered his gaze slowly. Standing by his side was the chimps’ tea
party attendee from the sooty huddle. The little man bowed, wizened face sinking
into the petals of the huge yellow bloom that sprouted from his chest pocket.
‘Do I know you?’ Walter sputtered.
‘Never seen you in my puff. Mike’s the name.’ The chimp-man wiped a
powdering of pollen from his nose with his finger and extended his hand to Walter.
His inner wrist bore the tattoo of a bright yellow mining lamp. Walter’s hand throbbed
as the chimp-man, aka Mike, pumped it: his arm juddered in its socket.
‘Well, me and the mates best get going. Forewoman sent us to see what’s
going on. Now we’ve seen.’ Mike released Walter’s hand with a wink. ‘Cheerio,
Waldo, but mebbe not cheerioff.’
‘Cheery … O?’ Though it came out as a question, Walter hadn’t the slightest
inclination to prolong the conversation. He shot off across the square. Had a parade
of clowns unicycled by, accompanied by Siberian tigers and dancing bears, he
wouldn’t have batted an eyelid, not after the events of the day. Or possibly he’d have
fled screaming from the tigers, or collapsed in a jellified heap before the bears, but
he felt like he wouldn’t have batted an eyelid.
A plate of egg and chips might restore a sense of normality. He imagined his
mother answering his door, a faint waft of fried food about her hair-helmet. She’d
greet him with a barrage of questions about his interview, fussing, fluttering, huffing
and puffing, haranguing, beaming and crying, along with every other behaviour she
typically exhibited over the course of an afternoon.
He stumbled onto a bus bound for the opposite side of town, City Suburb A,
the ‘posh’ part of People’s City.

Oddly enough, given the speed of New British buses, the journey passed in a
blur. The passengers’ chatter was all ‘Gabriel Tain this’ and ‘Siberia that’. To block it
out, Walter sang an old mining lullaby in his head, one his mother used to croon
when she bounced him on her knee in his infancy, or tucked him into bed on a
school night, or distracted him from worries about his GREE exams, or just to break
the awkward silences when she walked him home each evening from the gates of
Everyone’s Electrics:
Papa was a miner,
And I’m my papa’s son,
And I’ll never join no union,
For strikers all are scum.
They say in our fine colliery,
There are some rebels there.
You’d better be the bosses’ man,
’Cos ingrates all pay dear.
Oh, don’t you know you’re lucky?
Lucky, lucky, lucky.
Stand tall, brave scabs, in every strike,
Be loyal, good and plucky!
Don’t strike for the unions,
Nor listen to their lies.
Our bosses give us bread and meat,
But the unions we despise!
A dying caterwaul juddered him back to the present; his uvula wobbled in the
back of his throat. The bus had fallen still and silent, like the secret mass grave in
People’s Park marked by the monument that read: ‘Secret mass grave of Thatcher’s
unrepentant Tories, People’s Park’. Passengers strained their necks to goggle at
him. Old men and grey-haired women began whispering. Children pointed at him.

Every face might have belonged to Arnie Braine or an Arnie Braine associate,
sneering the way the sneerers sneered throughout school, college, all his dead-end
jobs and Everyone’s Electrics.
He jumped up and hotfooted it to the front of the bus. Titters rang out behind
him. Ahead, the driver hummed ‘Papa was a Miner’. Outside, the road crawled by.
He recognised nothing through the dirty windows. He might be halfway to Ultima
Thule, he didn’t care. Just let the bus stop. An age passed before the driver
crunched the brakes. Walter leapt from the bus, collided with a lamppost and hugged
it while he struggled for composure.
Ernest Pingel would never have carried on like such a fool. Ernest would
never have given people cause to laugh at him, and if he had he wouldn’t have
fretted, unless those people were his bosses. Strong and brave and scabby, that was
Ernest, whatever being a scab truly meant. Scabs, strikes, trade unions — all were
distant memories, preserved in quaint ditties such as ‘Papa was a Miner, and You’re
All Striking Scum’. Cooperative unions had long since replaced the trade unions,
their role to inspire the happy workforce to superhuman output and prevent anyone
straying like rogue sheep from the communist fold. The anti-trade-union songs posed
so little threat, the Freedom and Plenty Party hadn’t bothered to ban them.
Sobered by thoughts of Ernest’s mild-mannered courage and by fumes of
canine liquid excreta, Walter released the lamppost and staggered off in the direction
of Children of the Revolution Road.
The houses in this part of town were Mock Tudor, with as many as three
bedrooms, plus garages for shiny Ladas. Each enjoyed a patch of garden where
householders, mostly higher-ranking officials from the Party, police or army, hosted
rain-and-vodka-sodden barbecues. Mr Spencer, Walter’s former GREE lecturer, had
lived at No. 2 Children of the Revolution Road since the street’s former incarnation
as Litter of Labrador Puppies Lane, but he spent more time nurturing plants in his
garden than he did cultivating his neighbours.
At the unlatching of the gate, Mr Spencer glanced up from tending a
flowerbed. His knobbly face brightened like the marigolds that seemed to grow in his
garden year-round, and he creaked to his feet, brushing grass cuttings from the
knees of his corduroy trousers. ‘It's you, my boy,’ he declared, limping towards
Walter and tossing his gardening gloves to the lawn. These gloves were the sole

concession to his horticultural activities, for he wore, as ever, his tweed jacket with
the shiny elbow patches, paired today with a green tie that complemented the sludgy
tones of his outfit.
For all his shamble and stoop, Mr Spencer was a giant of a man with a
handshake firm as Mike the chimp-man’s from People’s Square, but no more bonecrushing than Mr Saxton’s fingerless touch. ‘Pleasure to see you,’ he said, clasping
Walter’s hand. Knowing Mr Spencer, Walter suspected he meant it.
Yet if the lecturer thought a smidgen of pleasantness still existed in the world,
he couldn’t know about the coup. It seemed wrong to deflate him while squeezing
digits in this little patch of paradise, in this prettiest garden in People’s City. To tell
him of dark deeds, of his precious chairman exiled in freezing Siberia, while the two
of them stood in a frivolity of colour and inhaled a glorious allergy of scents. While
blue tits chirped overhead and rabbits bounced in the bushes. While a squirrel stole
peanuts from a bird feeder and a newborn fawn wobbled across the lawn to nuzzle
Mr Spencer’s spare hand. Mr Spencer might never feel the same about his garden
again. His tende

r heart might break, right here, spill down his trouser leg into the

grass.
Mr Spencer retrieved his hands from Walter and the fawn. ‘I suppose you’ve
come about that awful coup?’
Straight from the lecturer’s lips, this confirmation of the day’s disaster struck
like a blow. ‘You know?’ whispered Walter.
Mr Spencer shrugged his round shoulders. ‘Some lout from the Progressive
Front called. They’ve suspended the Politics Department till further notice. So what
else is there to do but garden?’
‘Gardening.’ Walter nodded rapidly. ‘Marigolds and fawns and coups.’ The
ground swayed beneath him like an inviting green hammock. ‘Loungers and benches
… and deckchairs … and …’ He tried to steady himself by lunging for the handle of a
spade stuck in some freshly turned soil. He missed, and fell into Mr Spencer’s arms.