A Question of Guilt

12

'Well, you made a bit of a fool of yourself,' said Major Beckett.

'I misjudged the revolutionary passion of Englishmen,' Eliot told his father. 'It boils, but only as porridge boils. It plops sedately, then cools to a stodgy mass. Perhaps stodginess is our national genius? The French and Italians are like pans of fat, igniting and burning out the kitchen every so often.'

Major Beckett frowned. He was a tall, spare, man who wore his frock coat and starched collar and cuffs like a uniform. His son had developed a clever way of speaking, which he enjoyed in women and distrusted in men. He supposed those who played politics needed to wrap their opinions like Christmas presents, or their hearers would discern them no more intelligent than those of the man beside them on the omnibus. 'You did very badly.'

'Obviously, sir, as I lost my deposit. When I was canvassing with my red rosette, every working man in Holloway swore to support me. In the end, they chose the Liberal against the Conservative. They knew where they stood with both parties. They don't trust Socialism, because it's new-fangled. No one is more conservative than the British lower classes.'

It was noon on Monday, January 24, 1910. They sat in the smoking room of the Imperial Club at the corner of Pall Mall and St James's Street, a cavern hewn from mahogany and leather. Eliot sipped his sherry, his father being old-fashioned took madeira. To soldier away half a life in India made a man confident of election to the club. A factotum to a nobleman invited the sneering mutterings which could provoke blackballing. Colonel Beckett has risked it. He believed that the agent of a duke enjoyed a standing above that of a lord or even earl, like duke's servants taking precedence below stairs when their masters were guests at country houses.

'Had it occurred to you Eliot, the working men might have given their vote were you one of them, and not of a higher social station?'

'Should I have sported a cloth cap, like Keir Hardie?'

'I'm not suggesting you played the hypocrite.'

'Why not, sir? We're a nation of hypocrites. We created an Empire rather brutally. We stand appalled at foreign accusations of drawing economic and political strength from enslaved nations. We say we're only bringing them the advantages of Christianity and drains.'

'I suppose you politicos have faith in your ideals as a salesman in his samples, however shoddy.' Feeling his political antagonism had displaced paternal affection, the major added, 'It must have been a bitter disappointment for you.'

'The blackest of my life. And wasted work always torments me, whether it's an experiment which fails, or a patient who dies. I spent the wettest winter that London has known, tramping the Holloway streets from the hour men leave for work before daylight to the hour they return well after dark. I spoke every night in cold halls smelling of damp clothes and unwashed flesh, only quarter-filled with people who were either indifferent or hostile and generally stupid. I hope the carnival didn't embarrass you? I got a good deal into the newspapers, who seemed to find a medical man as a socialist an interesting freak. What did the Duke think?'

'His Grace was quite amused. He is not particularly interested in electioneering. He knows that the important issues in the country are all decided by a dozen or so men like himself. I excused you by suggesting you'd grow out of it.'

'It's a poor fighter who throws in the towel after a pummelling in the first round.'

'Or a wise one? Your profession passes well in society today. Doctors have been knighted, and of course Lister is in the House of Lords. Look at Dawson, the Duke's doctor. On the Duke's recommendation he's now the King's doctor, and set for his knighthood. The Duke has a soft spot for you, Eliot. And you're damned clever. Give up this politicking, set up your brass plate in Harley Street. A word from the Duke could bring you the patients which could bring you a fortune.'

'I don't want a fortune.'

'You will when you're married. Your wife will see to that.'

'The marriage bed is for me an article of furniture as elusive as a seat in the House of Commons.'

The major raised his eyebrows, but seemed diffident about pursuing this remark. 'You mustn't starve yourself of the normal pleasures for a young man. I recall my own time as a subaltern…mind, London was a rougher place in the seventies, with the Middlesex and the Oxford music-halls going strong. There were houses in the Haymarket and Covent Garden where a young serving officer, deprived by duty of feminine company, might take a year's compensation in a single night.'

'I'm going to the music-hall tomorrow night,' said Eliot, looking amused. 'One of the turns is a lady of my acquaintance. I move in theatrical circles, you see.'

His father was curious. 'What's her name?'

'Belle Elmore.'

'Never heard of her.'

'She is the wife of a confrиre. A funny little man called Dr Crippen, who lives round the corner.'

'Of course, I've taken little interest in such things for years.'

'How's mother?'

'She has bred a new begonia.'

Mention of Mrs Beckett was an understood signal that one or the other had suffered enough serious conversation.

When Eliot opened his front door with a latch-key, Emma appeared from the basement to say there were 'gen'men upstairs'. He found Ruston impatiently pacing the carpet, Wince on the sofa smoking his pipe and reading his Times._

'Where have you been?' Ruston greeted him.

'The Imperial Club.' Ruston looked outraged. 'Surely a fellow may lunch with his own father? I could hardly have invited him to the Holloway Socialist Workers' Club.' He tossed his wide-brimmed hat on the iron bed. 'Why have I this pleasure? After my resounding failure at the polls, I imagined you'd want no more to do with me.'

Ruston made an impatient gesture. 'Elections are a farce, and the result in Holloway proved as much. The political parties of this country are as irrelevant as a literary tea-drinking society. All talk, gentility and selfishness. We shall achieve nothing without force.'

'And patience.' Wince turned a page of the paper.

'I'm giving you a chance to prove what you're made of,' Rushton said.

'Such courage as I have is at the disposal of the cause,' Eliot told him.

'We don't want your courage,' Ruston asserted. 'We want your respectability. A doctor will provide cover. We plan to achieve all we hope in one sharp blow.'

'What? Assassinate Mr Asquith?' Eliot asked derisively.

'The German Emperor.'

'Oh, that's quite ridiculous.'

'That is for others to decide, not you.'

Eliot felt a strengthening of his feeling that Ruston was mentally unsound. 'Have the practical difficulties occurred to your friends? That we are in Holloway and he in Potsdam? That he is surrounded by a bodyguard who would esteem it a privilege dying to the last man?'

'Emperor William has been on the German throne almost 22 years. Do you know how many times he has visited this country? Eleven! As the King's nephew he's popular here, even if his country isn't.'

'If you shoot Kaiser Bill on his next trip, it won't prevent war, but provoke it.'

'That's the 'ole idea,' said Wince, still reading the paper.

Ruston had been striding the room while talking. He stopped, hands in the pockets of his tweed trousers. 'We know our Prussians. They've constructed the most wonderful military machine, which they're itching to get moving like the proud possessor of a brand-new Rolls-Royce. The Kaiser killed in Britain! Think of the excuse it gives the hotheads in Berlin. Once von Moltke's General Staff have started the engine and released the brake, nothing can stop it.'

Eliot sat abruptly next to Wince, who was relighting his pipe. 'And what use will a war be to the English working-man? Apart from ending his miseries by permitting him to be killed in it.'

'War brings revolution. The country's seething as it is. Look at the trade unions-gaining half-a-million members a year. Look at the wave of strikes. They're startling the old fuddy-duddy union leaders, scaring the bosses and terrifying the Government out of its wits. The election meant nothing, nothing. Both parties were the bosses' party. The workers are impatient for power. They're scornful of compromise. They're impatient to tear down the plywood barriers in their way.'