The major’s mouth tightened. So far he had refrained from interjecting more than a sentence or two into these debates, but after what he had just heard, and in this evening’s intensified mood of discontent, he knew he would be failing in his duty to all sorts of entities — to common sense, to discipline both military and civil, to England, yes, and to the King, why be ashamed of it? — if he refrained from extensive comment. His eye met that of Cleaver, who looked away instantly. The major waited impatiently for the Home Secretary or whatever he was to finish.
Interest in the parliament had fallen off from the moment of its inception. Deliveries of newspapers and magazines had recently improved in speed and quantity and the major suspected that access to civilian drink had likewise improved; he must get his batman to keep his ears open. Less than half the original members were in their seats tonight. The Opposition front bench lacked its Leader and its spokesman on Defence questions: Doll had declared himself finally disgusted with his fellow-MPs’ frivolity — ‘I think it’s ridiculous spending a lot of your time and thought preparing stuff for a load of apes, sir, don’t you?’ The ministerial bench was even more thinly held, with the Lord Privy Seal (if the truth were known) risking court-martial by thoroughly fraternizing with a nurse from the civilian hospital in Hildesfeld, the Chancellor of the Exchequer asleep on his bed with a three-day-old Daily Express over him, the Prime Minister himself with two of his mates from the Sergeants’ Mess attacking something they vaguely thought of as gin in something they even more vaguely thought of as a pub on the far side of the railway yard. But the Foreign Secretary was in his seat, and the young man the major very precisely thought of as that official’s boyfriend was in his.
The Home Secretary might have been thought to be drawing to a close, although, as the major reminded himself, you could never tell about that or anything else with fellows as unused as this to public speaking or indeed to anything else even remotely to do with the highly responsible and specialized and difficult task of running a modern industrial state. ‘You heard the other week about how we’re going to give the Empire back to the blokes that live there,’ the Home Secretary was saying: ‘well, we’re going to do the same thing, so to speak, with Great Britain itself. The country belongs to the ordinary working bloke and by Christ he’s going to be running things from now on. No messing.’
The major brushed his moustache with his knuckle and looked at the cracked and scaled maps which, in the absence of anything else that might blot out some of the clay-coloured plaster, somebody had pulled out of a cupboard and hung up. What a mess Europe had evidently been in in 1555, with all those hundreds of little countries, quite different from today, and how big Naples and Venice had been then. The major remembered enough German to wonder how there could ever have been two Sicilies. And again, who was Van Diemen and how had he filled in his time in Tasmania?
‘Good enough, then,’ the Home Secretary said. ‘There are just three principles involved here: liberty, equality and fraternity. You’ll remember that that’s what the French Revolution was about. Well, we’re not going to have a revolution about it, that’s not the way we do things in England, not violent revolutions anyway, with barricades and shooting and so on and so forth. But there’s going to be a revolution nevertheless and nobody’s going to stop us.’
He sat down amid varied applause from his own side. The major looked at the Speaker for the first time and raised a finger in assumed humility. Archer seemed to pretend not to have seen him at first, then, having looked round the chamber, caught his eye and nodded to him.
‘I shan’t keep you long,’ the major said as he rose to his feet. ‘But there are just one or two points I feel I ought to put to you, if I may. We’re all equal here — we’re all members for Arromanches and Bayeux and Amiens and Brussels and Mechelen and Tilburg and Münster and Rheine and all the rest of the bloody places, and we can talk to each other as gentlemen. We’ve been through the whole thing together. And the first thing I want to say to you is this. Everybody’s done a first-class job, you have and I hope we have as far as it was possible to us, and of course the fighting troops, nobody can say what they went through… Anyway, sitting here tonight it just occurred to me that it would be an awful pity if we were to let one another down by forgetting the things that have made it all possible, the teamwork and sense of responsibility, and behind that the way of life we’ve been fighting for. We’ve always been a pretty good-natured lot, we British, and the fellow up here’ — he raised his hand to shoulder level — ‘and the fellows down there’ — he extended his arm downwards with the hand still spread — ‘have always got on pretty well together. Each has had his job to do—’
Hargreaves stood up and said: ‘I spy strangers.’ He spoke loudly but unemotionally, as if promulgating his occupation rather than delivering a challenge.
The major stopped speaking immediately and looked towards the Speaker with an expression of courteous bafflement.
The Speaker’s expression was of incredulous horror. He said: ‘Er… Hargreaves… can’t we…?’
‘I spy strangers,’ Hargreaves repeated a little louder, gazing into space.
‘Could I ask you to clarify that, Mr Speaker, sir?’ the major asked good-humouredly.
Archer replied as if the words were being wrung out of him. ‘I was reading… it’s a formula calling for the expulsion of unauthorized persons from the debating chamber. The idea was—’
‘Unauthorized persons?’ Smiling, the major glanced from face to face. ‘But surely—’
‘The thing is that officially only Members of Parliament are allowed to be present,’ Archer said, more steadily than before. ‘Anybody else is here on sufferance. I spy strangers is the way of saying you want to cancel that sufferance, so to speak.’
Raleigh still smiled. ‘Are you ordering me to withdraw, Mr Speaker?’
‘I’m telling you what the book says.’
In the pause that followed, the major again looked round the House, but nobody returned his look. He went on trying to think of something to say until it became clear to him that there was nothing to say. With a glance at Cleaver, who quickly rose and followed him, Major Raleigh withdrew.
Outside in the darkness he said: ‘You drive, Wilf, will you? I want to think.’
‘Are you all right, Major?’
‘Wilf, if you ask me if I’m all right once more, I’ll… Anyway don’t. Just shut up.’
‘Yes, sir.’
IV
‘Well, you must be pretty pleased, Mr Archer, I expect, at the way things have gone.’
‘Yes, I must admit I am, Sergeant. Such a thumping majority, too.’
‘Yes, that did rather take me by surprise. I expected it to be a much closer run thing than this. Of course, being wise after the event, it’s not difficult to see what happened. The Service vote did it. The lads have been in uniform all these years and they’ve had enough. Voting Labour’s a protest. It’s a way of saying you’re browned off and want to go home.’