“I never forget my origins, personal or public, by day or by night, Prime Minister.” He decided to test how much Browning wanted him to stay. “It seems a shame to waste your time in reminiscence. I think I should be off.”
Browning leaned forward and stabbed a button on his desk, then stood up and made for the door.
“That’s very good of you, Matt. But there’s no need to worry about me. I’ll leave you to your own devices for a while and catch up on a bit a work. See you soon.”
He slipped through the door which clicked with ominous finality behind him. The poro-glass windows blackened and the room was engulfed in total darkness. Matlock started to his feet, the terror back, then subsided again as a white square glowed in the wall opposite him and he realized what was happening. He was being shown a film.
Back projection was being used of course, so there was no stream of light pouring over his head. Also it was obviously a poro-glass screen, the advantage of which was that its shape and size were easily altered.
An impersonal voice began to speak. There was still no image on the screen.
“Matlock Matthew. Born Carlisle, Cumberland, Committee Region 62. Parents ...”
And now the picture appeared. His mother, long haired, bright eyed, her lovely face animated as she mouthed silent badinage at the camera-man; his father, tall, thin, a trifle ascetic, but touched as always by the fullness of life which overflowed from his wife. These were home movies. Matlock dimly recollected having seen them before. If asked where they were he would have guessed in one of the trunks that contained all he had wanted to keep of his childhood home and which had lain in storage untouched for forty-five years. Untouched by himself, at least.
Matlock saw himself on the screen now. A mere child. An only child.
His education and adolescent life were dealt with briefly, but with a remarkable attention to essential detail. It didn’t surprise him. No one grew up without leaving traces of his passage. Everyone left a trail of pictures and tapes and documents marking a clear path from birth to the grave. Since the passing of the Age Act, the necessity for close documentation had become still more acute.
But soon he felt a growing unease as it became apparent that ever since his earliest successes in politics, his every move had been carefully supervised.
The voice went on: “The accidental death of his parents in May 1982 came at an opportune moment. He had been moving further and further towards the Uniradical Party and only his emotional loyalty to his father and mother had prevented him from openly joining at an earlier date. Now he accepted the Party discipline, was soon adopted as a candidate and was elected at his second attempt.”
The film now was all professionally shot. Some of it was newscast material; much wasn’t. In an effort to be fair, he reminded himself that much of it must have been shot at the instigation of the Lib-Lab coalition then in office, and only later inherited by the Unirads.
The years in Opposition were soon disposed of, but not without a clear picture being sketched of Matlock’s attitudes to the big questions of the day. The drive, the force, the sense of mission, the ruthlessness of this ghost from his own past were always apparent.
The events which led to the expansion of the Unirads from one of the smallest Parties in the House (five or six new Parties had gained representation in the seventies and eighties of the twentieth century) to the first Party in nearly ten years capable of governing without coalition, were clearly and honestly indicated. The world was in economic chaos, due mainly to the population explosion. America and Russia had turned their backs on their former allies and retreated into self-sufficient isolation in which the only things that mattered were employment and food. Their moonbases were abandoned by both nations and the planets handed back to the science fiction writers. The European common market was creaking along in an atmosphere of mutual distrust at Governmental level and hatred at national level. The Lib-Labs had put all their eggs in the European basket and when the Great Consult of Brussels in 1987 broke up in confusion and recrimination, the British Government fell. The Unirads, who had been advocating a return to insularity for years, were returned to Parliament with a slender overall majority.
It was a great year for Matlock. He was elected with the largest personal majority ever known in modem Parliamentary history, he married Edna Carswell, only daughter of the party leader, and he was made at the age of twenty-seven Secretary of State at the Ministry of National Re-organization.
The photograph above the mantelshelf appeared now for a moment. Matlock looked at his fresh young face, brown against the apple-blossom of Carswell’s orchard, and found he was clenching his fist till it seemed that these savagely sharp knuckles would cut through his skin.
Now the voice was stressing, gently but insistently, that the main policymaking responsibility of this first Unirad government was Matlock’s. His own post was a new creation. He made it the most important in the Cabinet.
“The decision to quit Europe was the Party’s. The speed and completeness with which it was put into effect were Matlock’s,” said the voice. “He rescued more for Britain than had ever seemed possible and left the other European nations bewildered at the fate which had overtaken them. Within weeks every other British overseas commitment had been cancelled. The national enthusiasm which had brought the Unirads to power reached incredible proportions and Matlock’s personal popularity was so vast that many felt he would have taken over the leadership of the Party had it not been in his father-in-law’s hands.”
Matlock smiled for the first time since the film had started.
It amused him for once to be wrongly assigned a virtuous motive instead of the other way round. The reason he had not taken over the leadership of the Party was practical, not sentimental. Indeed, old Carswell had offered to stand down.
But his smile faded as the voice continued.
“The truth is that Matlock was not yet absolutely certain of his authority, whereas Carswell could only be challenged by Matlock. And he still had the biggest step of all to take.
“In January 1991 Matlock introduced the Age Bill.”
Matlock who had felt uncomfortably hot for some time began to sweat profusely. On an impulse he rose, knelt in a comer and put his hand over the airconditioning duct.
The gentle stream of air was burning hot. He almost heard Browning’s appreciative chuckle and the air began to grow cooler even as he took his hand away.
Back on the screen, the effects of the introduction of the Age Bill were being described. Comfortable again — in body, but not in mind — Matlock watched as the strikes, the demonstrations, the protest-meetings unfolded on the wall.
Then he saw himself, young, confident, poker-faced, being escorted by the police through booing crowds from the House to the Westminster Bridge Hover-launch. He had seen this sequence a hundred times. Until comparatively recently it had appeared at least a couple of times a year on the popular Tele-recall programmes. It was still, so he was told, a leading request item on these shows.
As he stepped on to the pier, over the heads of the demonstrators in full view of the cameras soared a small round object. The sun glinted on it as it spun in the air. The young Matlock stepped forward casually, cupped his hands close to his chest like a seasoned cricketer, caught it; then, changing sport, turned, dropped it on to his foot and booted it far out into the clear blue waters of the Thames.
It exploded just below the surface. A fountain of water arched into the air and its outermost fringe rained down on the pier where the police were plunging into the bewildered crowd in pursuit of the thrower.