Such supposition was, of course, utterly delusory. There had been no instance of civil strife in Flaxborough since the 1893 election, when an attempt by the authorities to close the pubs and thus interfere with the traditional bribery of the voters with strong drink resulted in every policeman in sight being rounded up and locked for the rest of the day and night in one of the town’s bonded warehouses.
The truth was that Alderman Hockley was a general without an army, but people had grown so used to the spectacle of his indignant bravura on the redoubt of municipal politics that their question: “What’s the old bugger on about now?” was prompted by quite amiable regard and even a modicum of genuine interest.
“Whatever,” asked the mayoress on her arrival, dressing-gowned and yawning, at the kitchen door, “are you on about now, Charlie?”
He jabbed a fat forefinger at the Herald’s front page. “Just you wait,” he said. “The whole town—”
“—will be up in arms. Come on, mind out of the way and perhaps he can get a cup of tea.”
Fortunately for Mr Hockley, there were available in Flaxborough more tolerant listeners than his wife. After breakfast, he bore down upon the telephone like a fat old roue about to embrace a complaisant mistress.
Upon anyone of less volatile temperament than His Worship and of keener analytical sense, the Herald article might not have made its intended impression. It possessed all the elements of evangelical journalism: its tendentiousness, its coyness in the matter of actual places, dates and names, its reliance upon the propulsive power of moral indignation to carry the account safely over swamps of imprecision and chasms of missing fact. It was distinctly tainted, furthermore, with that curious odour—as of some kind of moral Athlete’s Foot—which any old Fleet Street man will recognize as a product of ethical acrobatics.
The mayor’s first victim was Mr Dampier-Small, deputy town clerk. The holder of the substantive office was, as always when telephoned by Alderman Hockley, “most unfortunately out of town—can I get him to ring you?” His deputy, as was only proper, did not run to a well trained, mendacious wife.
“Yes, sir. As a matter of fact, I do happen to have read it. A most offensive piece, I thought.”
“Offensive? I’m glad you think it’s offensive, laddie. I’ll tell you this, and no messing. The town is going to be up in arms about it.” And Mr Hockley’s scarlet dewlap napped up and down like a turkey’s wattles.
“It does seem a somewhat unfortunate outburst,” said Mr Dampier-Small. “Although, of course, the town is not identified—not in so many words. Legal response might be tricky, Mr Mayor. Quite tricky.”
“But there’s a picture of the place. Right here in the paper. I know my own town when I see it. You’re not going to tell me I don’t know my own town?”
Oh, God, thought Mr Dampier-Small, why does this lunatic have to be sicked on to me every time? “Ha ha,” he said, trying to sound fruitily humorous, “I would need to get up early in the morning to tell you that!”
“What’s getting up early to do with it?” inquired Mr Hockley, genuinely mystified.
There was an uncomfortable pause.
“Never mind that,” resumed the mayor, “what I want to know is what we’re going to do about this...this pack of lies in the paper.”
“With respect, Mr Mayor, there would not seem to be sufficient in the way of definite, ah, assertion—yes, definite assertion—in the article to constitute anything actionable.” Another pause, shorter. “If I make myself clear.”
Mr Hockley shuddered with righteous exasperation and pushed aside the mayoress, who was trying to give him a cup of tea. “Now listen, Mister Deputy Town Clerk, and I quote. Are you listening? Right. And I quote. ‘World Copyright Reserved...’—you know what that means? It means this stuff is going all over the globe, that’s what that means. ‘World Copyright...’ Wait a minute... Aye, listen to this—and I quote. ‘When I arrived in this pleasant, sleepy little market town, writes Clive Grail, the Sunday Herald’s special reporter on the state of the nation’s moral health’—and he’s the fellow you have to get after, Mr DTC, not a doubt of that—‘I thought to myself that here was likely to be found a community still conforming in pattern with the old yeoman stock that won England’s acres’—no, now wait a minute, that’s not the part I wanted to read out... Aye, here we are—and I quote...”
Twenty minutes of this mainly one-sided conversation left the deputy town clerk in a good deal more exhausted state than that in which he had gone to bed the night before. He had failed utterly either to understand what Mr Hockley supposed could be done about the scurrilous assertions of the man Grail, or—and this was more worrying—to fathom why he, a responsible and respected officer of municipal government, could allow himself to be hectored at Sunday breakfast time by an obese Scottish floorboard merchant scarcely capable of signing his own name.
As soon as he could escape from the mayor’s imprecations, which grew less articulate as they gained in ire, Mr Dampier-Small drank three cups of strong coffee and composed himself to re-read the Herald’s article more attentively. He was by now in a mood to hope that allegations which had so grievously offended Mr Hockley were true—indeed, that they might prove the mere tip of a monstrous iceberg of moral delinquency that would crush once and for all the vulgar self-righteousness of the mayor and burgesses of Flaxborough.
Meanwhile, the mayor’s rallying cry was speeding over the wire to Queen’s Road, where the chief constable had most grudgingly interrupted a curry-combing session with his pack of Yorkshire terriers in order to receive the intelligence that the town was up in arms.
“It seems to me,” Alderman Hockley was declaring to him, “that the main target for this fellow’s abuse—and it’s very offensive abuse, let me tell you, Mr Chubb, very offensive—his main target, I said, is the Flaxborough Photographic Society.”
“Really?” responded Mr Chubb, with an expression suggestive of his having been told that Mrs Chubb had just been arrested for soliciting. He in fact was not interested in anything that the mayor had said or was likely to say that morning, but knew from past experience that to admit indifference simply fed the furnace of Mr Hockley’s zeal.
“You,” stated Mr Hockley—and Mr Chubb could almost feel the man’s finger poking him in the chest—“you are a member of the Photographic Society, Mr Chief Constable. The vicar is a member. I don’t think I tell a lie when I say he’s on the committee. As I am. Yours truly. And it’s nothing short of disgraceful and disgusting that a Sunday newspaper is allowed to print this sort of thing.” A slight pause. “You’ve read this, of course?”
Mr Chubb had not. He said: “One of my officers is detailed to go through the items in the Press. He doubtless will give me a report a little later. I believe, however...” He paused to let pass, like the tiniest of sighs, a scruple, then: “I believe that Inspector Purbright takes this particular newspaper. Should you feel the matter to be of urgency, Mr, ah...”
“I’ll get on to him right away, Mr Chief Constable. It doesn’t do to let grass grow under our feet when this sort of thing happens. Listen, you may not believe this, but four people have stopped me in the street already this morning and asked what the police are doing about it.”