“Your character is beyond saving. No, good for your spirit. Do you remember the lay-out of the grounds, where exactly the marquee was and so on?”

  Benson thought for a moment or two. He could see the exact curve of the drive, the house on the rise with the wooded skyline beyond, the long slope of parkland, the lake, the summer-house, the marquee. “Yes, I think so.”

  “How easy would it be to get to the marquee on foot from the road without being seen?”

  “Well,” he said, “it would be a question of leaving the drive at a certain point and going through the wooded part of the grounds. Of course it’s difficult to be sure. There was a hawthorn hedge not far behind the marquee, I don’t remember how far exactly …”

  He stopped, looking at her with sudden awe. Her eyes were glittering.

  “Yes,” she said. “Of course it would depend on how my car has fared overnight. We’d need a get-away car. And we’d need recruits. Two at least. Young and active, if possible.”

  7

  “That type of hat,” Carter said, “does it mean something?” His smile was false.

  “I don’t talk about it,” Elroy said.

  With a sense, yet again, of coming to the rescue, Benson raised his glass. “Here’s to the Old Brigade,” he said. “Never say die.”

  The Disbandment Party was not going at all well. In fact it was edging towards disaster. Fundamental differences in world-view kept rearing jaggedly up among the Fictioneers and his own nervousness made him slower on his feet, less adroit than he might have been at smoothing things over. He was heavily aware of ulterior motive, this recruiting business which with Alma’s battle-bright eyes upon him he had charged himself to undertake. To be disbanding and recruiting at the same time was something that life had not prepared him for. There was the fear too that Elroy, in spite of cautioning, might let it out that he alone was being persisted with, thus wounding and alienating all the others.

  “Well,” he said, “I’d like to wish you every success in your future labours. It’s a hard trade, as we all know.”

  “The pursuit of excellence,” Carter said from his armchair. “That is what it’s all about.”

  “You really have been marvellously helpful,” Jennifer Colomb said, looking as usual close to tears. “I really don’t know how I shall get on without you.”

  “Hear, hear!” Anthea said loudly, throwing back her head and taking a bacchanalian gulp at her rosé. “It was here that Michael and I met,” she informed the others.

  Hogan, in his born-again denim jacket and jeans, sat beside her smiling gently. “Lucky day for me,” he said, feeling all eyes upon him.

  Benson smiled back but could not help wondering what fate held in store for these two. If only people would drink at the same rate, he thought, we might whip up a bit of conviviality. But the Fictioneers were as various in this respect as they were in their literary concerns. Anthea was getting boisterous already, with Jennifer Colomb still on her first glass of pale dry sherry. Elroy, it had emerged, did not touch alcohol in any shape or form. Carter was putting away the beer at a fairly steady rate. He had been rather silent so far, except for the odd discordant remark, but looked as if he might be gingering up for something more, perhaps an analysis of the Quest Novel or a paean to Thatcher’s Britain. Benson was keen to prevent this. Besides, he had suddenly glimpsed a way of working round to his object and possibly rescuing the party at the same time. If he could present the thing as work in progress somehow, put it to them in the guise of fiction …

  “I don’t think of this as an ending, you know,” he said. “Of course, I am giving up my consultancy, so it is natural in a way to talk about endings and strike a valedictory note and so on, but there are no real endings any more than there are real beginnings. There are accidents and there are pauses, that’s all. Stories are made from the pattern of these, sometimes very intricate. Our lives too – if you start thinking of your life as a narrative, these are the pegs you hang it on to. Without accident there could be no events, without pauses no perception. I’m thinking of those moments when you realise something or gather yourself for something further.”

  “I think that is so true.” Jennifer was leaning forward tensely, her pale fingers clasped together. Her eyes behind the gilt-rimmed spectacles had the look of pleading Benson remembered from their sessions. “Birth and death are at the limits, aren’t they?” she said. “We make sort of parallels for them, closer within the confines, accidents, as you say. Arrivals, departures, the idea of a journey. That is why I am finding this section of my novel so utterly absorbing, you know, this journey of my two characters through the wildwood.”

  “Through the what?”Anthea had begun frowning in an exaggerated fashion, but the speaker – and it was a danger signal – neither answered nor turned her flushed face.

  “The wildwood” Benson said quickly. “Some more wine?” Anthea was not usually so disagreeable but she had some of the attitudes of the escapee – he suspected that Jennifer had all unwittingly struck an echo from the submerged past in Surrey.

  “Yes, please. Jolly good, this wine. What on earth is the wildwood?”

  “It is the ancient woodland of England,” Carter said suddenly. “There is forest in this country that has been in continuous growth since the Middle Ages with its plant and animal life quite intact. I’m surprised you don’t know that, young lady.” He paused, then said to Jennifer with ponderous courtesy, “That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “Quite right.” Jennifer gave him a smile of tremulous radiance.

  “Very good idea.” Carter was clearly encouraged. “Journey of life. Characters riding through these ancients woods at a steady pace. Of course, you’ve got to have a sense of history for that. We go back a bit further than the Beatles, you know,” he said to Anthea, catching her in the midst of another swig at her wine.

  The tone had been jovial enough but Benson saw Hogan’s smile thin down a bit. He tried to think of something to say, but nothing came to mind. His recruitment plan had gone astray among skirmishes and alien literary concerns. Carter winked at him, as if to include him in the circle of the older, wiser ones.

  “A bit further, yeah,” Elroy said, breaking a sombre silence. “Depends where you sitting. Sitting on a horse in among some old trees, that’s one thing. But you on your backside in this street, you don’t go back so far, mister. Liverpool a one-horse slum place till you found out where the black man lived. Left your visiting card in them wildwoods.”

  “Now we’re getting this homeland business,” Carter said. “You were born right here, mate. Like me. Do you think I don’t know that accent?”

  It was Jennifer’s obsessiveness that for the moment prevented graver discord. “I’ve introduced a new character,” she said to Benson eagerly. “I should so much have liked to hear your opinion. His name is Jasper Schulberger, he is a money-lender.”

  “They meet a money-lender in the wildwood?” Hogan said. “Bit improbable that, isn’t it?”

  “Of course they don’t meet him in the wood,” Jennifer said crossly. “As they are riding along they are both thinking of their lives. Lady Margaret is wondering whether her fiancé, Sir Denis, is really a strong enough character for her and Sir Reginald is thinking about his crippling debts, he is a very extravagant person – so the reader is introduced quite naturally to Jasper Schulberger.”

  “Excellent device,” Carter said. “Stream of consciousness.” He and Jennifer exchanged smiles again. A natural alliance was forming between these two.

  “Aristos, are they? I’ll tell you what,” Anthea said, and in this earnest moment she forgot to disguise the confident modulations of her upbringing – the voice, if not the sentiments, could have been her mother’s – “you should have the oppressed peasantry dig a pit for them with sharpened stakes in it, cover it over with brushwood. One moment they are riding along, thinking their over-privileged thoughts, next moment oop-la! they are impaled on the stakes. Wait a minute though, that wouldn’t be fair on the horses. You could have them dismount first, perhaps, you know, for a spot of—”

  “I have absolutely no intention of impaling my characters on stakes,” Jennifer said. She was flushed and there was a slight but perceptible quiver in her voice.

  “Endings must be left to the author, I think,” Benson said hastily. “All the same, it is surprising how often we follow these archetypal patterns. There must be something to carry the charge of meaning. It might be a single, crucial act, as in Elroy’s book. Elroy’s hero arrives, breaks the mould, departs. His action has momentous consequences, it liberates a whole people. This corresponds to the belief in significant action which most of us cling to against all the evidence. The whole meaningless or at least confused welter of our lives is brought into the order of a single shape. Then another ending is the type Harold uses – the climactic moment. Death itself, the moment of dying, can be used in this way and so can orgasm – or, in romantic fiction, the final embrace which is its prelude. As a matter of fact, I’ve run into a bit of a problem myself as to how to end my, er, current enterprise.”

  But it was no use: Jennifer had been too badly mauled. She had finished her sherry now and he noted the look of mild determination on her face, the small changes of posture that indicated impending departure.

  “I was hoping,” he said, “for some constructive—”

  “I don’t think all that much of Harold’s type of ending,” Anthea said. “I don’t think simply screwing, per se, is a good way to end a novel. I mean, that is an on-going process, isn’t it? I mean, it’s open-ended. I always think, well so what, they’ll be doing the same thing tomorrow and the next day, then after a while they’ll settle down to twice a week.”

  “You are missing the whole point.” Carter had leaned forward. “It is what it means to the characters that is important. I know this is the so-called permissive society, but we haven’t all got your attitude to sexual promiscuity. I belong to a generation that was brought up to think that sort of commitment between a man and a woman is important.”

  “I didn’t mean it isn’t important.” Anthea seemed genuinely surprised by this suggestion. “I wasn’t talking about promiscuity. It’s just, you know, I don’t think you can make an art form out of aspiring and contriving to have a fuck, not these days. You started on about generations, otherwise I’d be too shy to use such a word, but just because it wasn’t readily available when you were eighteen is no reason to think it is the road to Mecca now.”

  “What do you think the road to Mecca is?” Carter said. “A spot of hash? Lying around on social security? No wonder this country is in the mess it’s in. I know more about the road to Mecca than you ever will. I’ve had to work on the road to bloody Mecca since I was fourteen years old. With pick and shovel at first, then I worked my way up. Do some people good to roll their sleeves up, get down to some work.”

  For the first time in his experience Benson saw Elroy’s face split into a smile of pure amusement. “Haw-haw,” he said. “Do me some good, show me where it’s at.”

  This laughter of Elroy’s seemed to be the last straw for Carter, who now stood up rather abruptly. “You wouldn’t see it if it was under your nose,” he said. “You’d be too busy thinking about your identity or Haile Selassie. Well, I’ll be getting along.”

  “I must be going too, I think,” Jennifer said, fluttering with handbag and scarf. “It was really nice of you to ask us,” she said valiantly to Benson.

  Farewells with the other Fictioneers were not marked with much cordiality. Aware that they had not had a very nice time but helpless now to do anything about it, Benson saw them down. This might be the beginning of something too, he thought, watching them walk away down the street conversing indignantly together.

  Returning to his three remaining guests he was struck by the way things had worked out for him: the Fictioneers had divided themselves along lines of age and ideology; it was the active service unit that awaited him now. He resolved to lose no more time. Still, however, he felt the need to be circumspect in his approach. He gave Hogan and Anthea more wine, saw that Elroy’s orange juice was topped up.

  “I didn’t mean to offend her,” Anthea said rather unhappily. “She reminded me of an aunt of mine, as a matter of fact.”

  “That guy got hang-ups,” Elroy said. “He is festooned with them.”

  “Never mind that now,” Benson said. “There is another kind of ending that I didn’t mention before, which could broadly be called the symbolical. This often takes the form of some natural phenomenon like a rainbow or a flood, or a symbolical action like forging your swords into ploughshares or running up the Union Jack. I’ve come across a bit of a problem myself, as I said, in my current enterprise, as to which kind of ending to adopt, either the moment of realisation or the symbol type. Perhaps you can advise me. If it won’t bore you too much, I’ll tell you something about the story so far.”

  “Fire away,” Anthea said. Hogan folded his arms as a mark of full critical attention. Elroy, gravity restored, nodded slowly. They were interested, they were pleased that for the first time he was discussing his own work with them.

  He told them then the essentials of the plot, blocked and wandering hero sees old buddy-killer singing in the street, recognises the birthmark, tracks him to his lair. He told them about the conversation between these two old soldiers, the finding of the magazine, the visit to the merchant banker, what the hero discovers there.

  “I could end it at that point,” he said. “He has discovered something, he has found something out after all these years, a small thing in a way but very significant to him. He has understood something about Walters, this man I call Walters in my book, something about his refusal to be shipped off to Naples like a slave. It’s to do with slavery because that has been so much in my mind. It isn’t completely clear to me yet but I know it will be important for the rest of my days. Important for my hero, I mean of course. It is bound up with slavery you see, he wanted to write a novel about the slave trade. He can’t do it but even this failure doesn’t matter so much because he has been brought to see a kind of truth, and that is that slavery is as much to do with unity as coercion, the unity, or perhaps fellow-feeling is what I mean, that is our best guarantee of survival and which all forms of slavery practise to subvert. And then, of course, he sees that this man, the one who put on the show at Anzio, has the mind of a slave-owner too. As I say, it could end there …”

  In spite of all efforts, his voice had not remained quite steady through this. Glancing up, he saw Anthea’s eyes fixed on him with the same sympathetic curiosity she had shown on the night of Rathbone’s Show, when she had remarked on the empty place beside him. Despite her headlong style there was a perspicacity about Anthea older than her years, evidence of suffering in her own life perhaps.

  “But he’s having this new show,” she said slowly. “He is doing the same thing again, this man I mean, who was your platoon commander, or I mean the platoon commander of your character in the book. Were you in the war?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Were you at this Anzio place?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s his name, by the way?”

  “Who?”

  “The hero of your book?”

  This question, which he ought to have foreseen, took Benson completely by surprise. He paused for too long. “Bingham,” he said at last with a terrible sense of falsehood.

  There was a short silence among the Fictioneers. Then Hogan said, “You have to do something. You have to show which side you are on. I’ve found that out from my own experience.”

  “You got to strike a blow,” Elroy said.

  “But if he strikes a blow, what about my unity idea? Bit of a paradox, isn’t it?”

  “Unity made by striking blows.” Elroy looked sternly before him. “Like a anvil,” he said.

  “He knows he could subvert this show,” Benson said. “That would be the symbol. He has a plan, which I haven’t worked out in detail yet. He can’t put a stop to this man but he could turn the show into a fiasco. The thing is, he needs recruits, he can’t do it alone.”

  “How many people does he need?”

  “Two or three.”

  “Two or three here,” Elroy said, looking down with what seemed sudden shyness.

  “Cut the ropes.” Anthea held out her glass. “Can I have a spot more of that wine? Cut the ropes on them, bring the whole issue down on their heads.”

  “Cutting ropes is no good,” Hogan said. “This marquee is out in the open, you said. Big tent like that, you don’t bring it down so easily. All four of us would have to be cutting ropes at the same time. We’d be certain to be seen.”

  “Set fire to it,” Anthea said recklessly. “It’s you, isn’t it? This is real, isn’t it?”

  Benson looked from one face to another. He had come to it somehow. “Yes,” he said. “I’m afraid I practised a bit of deception on you. I’m sorry, but I didn’t know how you would feel. I know now, I think. The fact is, I can’t do anything without your help.”

  “This got to look like a battle,” Elroy said.

  “Why?”

  “They celebrating one nation, aren’t they? We need smoke bombs.”

  “Smoke bombs?” Benson felt now the beginnings of that dismay which was to accompany him through all the planning stages, the sense of things moving much too fast. “Where could you get smoke bombs?”

  “Don’ you worry,” Elroy said. “I can get smoke bombs.”

  “And jumping crackers to simulate gunfire.” Anthea ran her hands excitedly through her hair. “My God, what terrific fun it’s going to be.”

  “Now wait a minute—” Benson began.

  “No good smoke bombs and jumping crackers if they can run straight out,” Hogan said. “We must secure the entrance somehow, give ourselves time to get away.” He thought for a moment, then smiled broadly. “Safety pins,” he said. “Good strong safety pins.”

  8