‘Julia, please . . .’ I knew that she was bored with me for trying to raise her spirits. ‘Isn’t that a little . . . ?’
‘Apocalyptic?’
William Sangster stepped into the kitchen, his large bulk blocking the windows and throwing the small space into shadow. He took off his canvas gloves and dropped them onto the draining board, then slumped into a chair, counting his huge limbs as an afterthought. He seemed tired but at ease, as if events taking place around him confirmed everything he had expected. There was a growth of beard on his plump and babyish cheeks, like a faulty disguise.
‘Apocalyptic . . .’ I repeated. ‘A few stones? Just a little.’
‘I hope you’re right.’ Sangster tilted back his head and addressed the ceiling, as if preferring not to be reminded of his dim pupils. ‘In my experience, one stone through a window is a fairly accurate predictor that another stone will soon follow. Then two more. Hard stones make for hard data. Add a few frightened Muslim families into the equation and you can extrapolate in a straight line—all the way to a cluster of gateway towns on the Thames flood plain.’
‘Close to the container port at Rotherhithe.’ Julia glared at me meaningfully. ‘And that strange airport they want to build on the Isle of Dogs.’
‘So . . .’ Sangster shook the empty thermos, and laid a large hand gently on Julia’s shoulder. After a night of turmoil he was exhausted beyond mere tiredness, moving into a zone where any wild-eyed fantasy was probably true. ‘Do you think Julia is being apocalyptic? Richard?’
‘As it happens, I don’t. It’s ugly, very ugly. I’ll do what I can, talk to the marshals and find out which supporters came down here.’
‘Good.’ Sangster nodded sagely. ‘Julia, he’ll talk to the marshals. Maybe they’ll tell us when the next attack is. Richard, you could issue a bulletin. Like those old war films—target for tonight. Hillingdon, Ashford, alternate target Brooklands. What do you think, Richard? See it as a marketing campaign.’
‘Isn’t everything these days?’ Aware that they were both lightheaded with fatigue, I said: ‘Listen, I’ll talk to the police.’
‘The police?’ Sangster looked owlishly serious. ‘We didn’t think of that. Julia, the police . . .’
I let this pass. ‘Look, I hate the violence. I hate the racist attacks. I hate the protection rackets and the bully-boy tactics. But these people are a fringe.’
‘Only a fringe?’
‘A vicious fringe, admittedly. But very few people are involved. Wherever you find sport you find hooligans. Contact sports appeal to any riffraff looking for violence. Don’t judge what’s happening by what you see at night.’
‘Fair point,’ Sangster conceded. ‘Go on.’
‘Move around during the day. Disciplined crowds, everyone on best behaviour. I watched them an hour ago. Whole families out together—healthy, fresh, optimistic, keen to cheer on their teams. Friendly rivalry, heads held high.’
‘And the banners?’ Julia leaned across the table and gripped my wrist. ‘Have you seen them? Like Roman legions. It’s incredible.’
‘Right. Banners flying. There’s a new pride in the air, all along the motorway towns. People are more confident, more positive. The M25 was a backwater left over from Heathrow, a joke no one wanted to share. Dual carriageways and used-car lots. Nothing to look forward to except new patio doors and a trip to Homebase. All the promise of life delivered door to door in a flat pack.’
Sangster nodded, inspecting his deeply bitten nails. ‘And now?’
‘Revival! There’s a spring in everyone’s step. People know their lives have a point. They know it’s good for the whole community.’
‘And good for the Metro-Centre?’
‘Naturally. We provide the focus and fund the new stadiums and the supporters’ clubs. We use the cable channels to keep up the pressure.’
‘Pressure?’ Julia tried to unclench her fists, irritated by everything I said. ‘To sell your washing machines and microwaves . . .’
‘They’re part of people’s lives. Consumerism is the air we’ve given them to breathe.’
JULIA HAD TURNEDaway, refusing to listen to me as she hunted through her handbag for her mobile phone. She stood up and patted me on the head. ‘There’s a call I need to make. I’ll be back in a moment.’
‘Don’t forget we’re having dinner tonight. Julia?’
‘I hope so.’ She paused at the door and stared hard at me. ‘The air they breathe? Richard, people breathe out as well as breathe in . . .’
24
A FASCIST STATE
‘RICHARD . . .’ SANGSTER TAPPED the table with his heavy knuckle, recalling me to his inquisition. ‘I hope you realize what you’re doing.’
‘Not exactly.’ We sat at opposite ends of the table, undistracted by Julia’s presence. ‘You’re going to tell me.’
‘I am.’ Sangster examined his swollen hands, and picked a splinter from his thumb. ‘In a way it’s quite an achievement. Back in the nineteen-thirties it needed a lot of twisted minds working together, but you’ve done it by yourself.’
‘Is my mind twisted?’
‘Definitely not. That’s the disturbing thing. You’re sane, kindly, with all the genuine sincerity of an advertising man.’
‘So what have I done?’
‘You’ve created a fascist state.’
‘Fascist?’ I let the word hover overhead, then dissipate like an empty cloud. ‘In the . . . dinner party sense?’
‘No. It’s the real thing. There’s no doubt about it. I’ve been watching it grow for the past year. It’s been stirring in its mother’s belly, but you knelt down in the straw and delivered the beast.’
‘Fascist? It’s like “new” or “improved”. It can mean anything. Where are the jackboots, the goose-stepping Brownshirts, the ranting führer? I don’t see them around.’
‘They don’t need to be.’ Sangster watched me with a quirky smile that never completely formed, as if I were a destructive pupil he disliked but was unaccountably drawn to. ‘This is a soft fascism, like the consumer landscape. No goose-stepping, no jackboots, but the same emotions and the same aggression. As you say, there’s a strong sense of community, but it isn’t based on civic rights. Forget reason. Emotion drives everything. You see it every weekend outside the Metro-Centre.’
‘Sports supporters, cheering on their rival teams.’
‘Like Goering’s “gliders”? Anyway, these teams aren’t really rivals. They’re all marching to the same brass band. As for a true sense of community, people get that in traffic jams and airport concourses.’
‘Or the Metro-Centre?’ I suggested. ‘The People’s Palace?’
‘And a hundred other shopping malls. Who needs liberty and human rights and civic responsibility? What we want is an aesthetics of violence. We believe in the triumph of feelings over reason. Pure materialism isn’t enough, all those Asian shopkeepers with their cash-register minds. We need drama, we need our emotions manipulated, we want to be conned and cajoled. Consumerism fits the bill exactly. It’s drawn the blueprint for the fascist states of the future. If anything, consumerism creates an appetite that can only be satisfied by fascism. Some kind of insanity is the last way forward. All the dictators in history soon grasped that—Hitler and the Nazi leaders made sure no one ever thought they were completely sane.’
‘And the people in the Metro-Centre?’
‘They know that, too. Look how they react to your new cable ads.’ Sangster pointed a grimy finger at me, grudgingly forced into a compliment. ‘A bad actor howls from the roof of a multi-storey car park and we think he’s a seer.’
‘So David Cruise is the führer? He’s fairly benign.’
‘He’s a nothing. He’s a “virtual” man without a real thought in his head. Consumer fascism provides its own ideology, no one needs to sit down and dictate Mein Kampf. Evil and psychopathy have been reconfigured into lifestyle statements. It’s a fearful prospect, but consumer fascism may be the only way to hold a society together. To control all that aggression, and channel all those fears and hates.’