The major thought of Doll as a useful lad, and never more so than this evening. A certain amount of undisciplined behaviour, of affected intellectual nonsense, even of actual hints of disloyalty to the country — these were to be expected of a mock parliament, but there was surely no need for the thing to turn out quite so mock as it had. The blokes seemed to think that they could simply get up and say whatever they liked. Where that sort of attitude got you had been made all too clear at the previous sitting, when the bunch of jokers who called themselves the Government had brought in their Nationalization Bill. This meant, apparently, that they were in favour of collaring the coalmines, the steel industry, transport, public services — everything that created wealth and employment — and running them as they saw fit. That could never happen in the real world, in England, but the major could not agree with his friends in the Officers’ Mess that the passing of that Bill merely showed how idiotic the whole issue had become — he wished he could. No, it was far more serious than that: the indication of a really ugly mood. He had too much sense of responsibility not to have come along tonight to keep an eye on things, use his influence to stop them getting out of hand. He hoped he would not have to intervene. It would not be necessary if Doll did his stuff properly, and Doll surely would. Reliable fellow, Doll, even if he was a bit of a puzzle. That perpetual parade-ground appearance and manner — what was it all in aid of?
Whatever the complications of Doll’s internal drives, he was not a middle-of-the-road man; indeed, to extend the image a trifle, he was brushing up against the wall on the right-hand side. In the melodious voice that had served him so well as Complaints Supervisor at a large store in Leeds, he was saying: ‘I shan’t waste much time in destroying the dangerous nonsense we’ve just been exposed to. Russia has always been an aggressive power and always will be unless we stop her. All that restrained the Reds until 1939 was weakness. Then they went for the Baltic republics, Poland, Finland, plus various Balkan adventures. Their only interest in self-determination is to prevent it. Desertions to the Nazis included… I beg your pardon?’
‘Facts!’ the Foreign Secretary was shouting above the Speaker’s half-hearted appeals for order. ‘This is all just… insinuation. You haven’t—’
‘Facts?’ The spokesman on Defence questions brought out his own notebook, then went on as mellifluously as before: ‘All right, facts. From The Times of June 29th. Czechoslovakia signed Ruthenia over to Russia. Why? Because the Czechs wanted to get rid of it? From a BBC broadcast this morning. Russia is putting pressure on Turkey to revise their Black Sea Straits treaty and cede two territories to her. Why? Because the Turks are planning to blockade her? From another broadcast. Three hundred more Poles shot by the order of People’s—’
‘They were traitors, collaborators, there’ve been—’
‘I’ve no doubt many of them were. But we shall never know now, shall we? These people should have been tried by an international court, as we’ve said we—’
‘It was the heat of the moment. You always get—’
‘As I started to tell you, these were executions carried out under sentences passed by People’s Courts, there wasn’t just a mob blazing away in the streets. But I really must appeal to you, Mr Speaker, to quell these interruptions. I managed to keep quiet while all that Red propaganda was going on, so I don’t see why—’
‘All right, Sergeant Doll. Hargreaves, I must warn you to keep quiet.’ There was reluctance and a half-buried sympathy in the Speaker’s tone.
‘Sorry, sir. But I’ve simply got to ask him about the Polish elections. Surely that proves—’
‘Order, Hargreaves. You’ll have to shut up or leave.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The House resettled itself rather sulkily, feeling, and muttering, that it was always the bloody same: the moment you got a decent row going, some pernickety sod piped up with some moan about order. Might as well be sitting in the billet reading last week’s paper.
‘Thank you, Mr Speaker.’ Doll stared across at Hargreaves. ‘As a matter of fact I welcome the opportunity of saying something about those elections. I find it rather odd that the Reds should be so keen to get those elections held at this stage, with the country still in turmoil — but then it’ll be all right really, won’t it? — with the Reds everywhere to see fair play. No undemocratic interference from us or the French or the Yanks that might result in free elections, because the wrong people might get elected then, mightn’t they? Can’t have that, can we? Comrade Stalin wouldn’t like that.
‘I should like to round off this question with a few words on the Warsaw rising and the Reds’ unfortunate inability to come to the aid of their Polish brothers in arms. In the spring of this year—’
Hargreaves had lost all the poise that might have been expected of a Foreign Secretary, even a mock one. He leant forward on the heavy, scarred wooden bench and put his head in his hands. If only he knew more and could think faster; if only he had at his side, as living proof that Doll was wrong, one or other of the fine men and women he knew on his local Labour Party branch committee, people who had grown up in the service of Socialism and given it all their spare energy, fighting in Spain, leading hunger marches, canvassing in hopelessly impregnable Tory strongholds… He tried not to think of all that going to waste, failing ever to find its way to power. His almost continuous excitement over the results of the British General Election, due to be announced the following week, froze momentarily into despair. Contrary to what everyone thought, he had never been a member of the Communist Party. He was suspicious of the one-party system and his doubts about the Russian labour camps still lingered. But if Doll’s ideas carried the day at home there was only one logical step to take. Hargreaves was enough of a Marxist to recognize a situation in which the Left must combine against the main enemy. To have taken this half-decision brought him no relief: on tonight’s showing he was politically useless.
His obvious dejection was not lost on Major Raleigh, whose soft face had softened somewhat since Doll began to put things in the right perspective and who was now leaning back in his chair in search of what degree of comfort it could provide. This was not great. Like everything else in the room it seemed to have been made without reference to human use. Typical German unimaginativeness, the major thought to himself. The small oblong windows, through which a strong late-evening sun was pouring, were set too high in the wall to be properly seen out of, certainly by most of the children who until recently had attended prayers here, sung Nazi songs or whatever it was they did in their school hall. Two rows of flat-topped desks had been dragged out of an adjacent store-room to form the Government and Opposition front benches. It would have taken a long-torsoed boy or girl to work at one with any ease or even see fairly over it, and the design demonstrably called for a far shorter-legged man than the average mock parliamentarian currently in occupation.
The major brooded for a time upon Hargreaves and the many things that could be done with or to him to make him less all-embracingly unsatisfactory — failing which, some positive enactment of how the world in general felt about him would do him good. The things available to the major ranged from giving Hargreaves an extra duty for being unshaven (any and every day would do) to getting him transferred elsewhere. An influential contact in the relevant department at General HQ was in the habit of seeing to it that, to a large extent, the major was able to decide who should and who should not be posted out of his command. There was only one place where, after a brief break in the United Kingdom, Hargreaves would finally be sent: a very hot and distant place, full of stuff which would interest him and which, as a budding expert on world affairs, he could not afford not to know about.