Boxer, Beetle (20 page)

‘Oh, to hell with Nietzsche,’ said Bruiseland.

‘He does seem to be a favourite of Herr Hitler’s,’ said Aslet.

‘Do you think Hitler has really read Nietzsche on race?’ said Morton as Battle, the head butler, served the soup. ‘Or Gobineau or Wagner or Chamberlain? Of course not. It’s quite obvious that he has read nothing but a handful of cheap pamphlets, the publishers of which he thereafter proceeded to jail.’

‘Nietzsche is indispensable,’ said Amadeo. ‘He shows us that Christianity is just a tumour of Judaism.’

‘What rot,’ said Bruiseland.

As Aslet reached past his steaming bowl for the pepper, a button flew off his shirt and plopped into his soup. Embarrassed, he reached in and then whipped his fingers away with a grunt of pain. ‘It’s like boiling oil!’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, sir,’ said Battle. ‘If you’ll allow me.’ Calmly he plunged his hand into the green liquid and fished around for the button. When he’d retrieved it he dropped it into a napkin and picked up the bowl. His hand had gone bright red but he hadn’t flinched. ‘I’ll dispose of this and get you another portion of soup, sir.’

‘He is a warlock!’ was Berthold Mowinckel’s shrill cry.

‘Oh, no, don’t be alarmed,’ said Erskine’s mother. ‘It’s just how Battle is.’

Battle had been born with a rare neuropathic disorder called congenital analgia which dulled his sense of pain. As a child he had inadvertently bitten off the tip of his tongue and his speech was still slightly indistinct. He was particularly useful at Claramore because he was effectively immune to both powerful electric shocks and accidental discharges of superheated vapour.

‘Do you really not think breeding is important, Morton?’ said Erskine.

‘Of course it’s important,’ said Bruiseland. ‘What breed of sheep, what breed of horse, what breed of chicken could have been abandoned as modern man has been abandoned – to random, promiscuous mating – without falling into disarray?’

‘Morton, have you heard of the Kerangal family of Brittany?’ said Erskine. ‘It’s in Saint-Brieve. Between 1830 and 1890 they were found to have produced seven murderers and nine prostitutes, and most of the rest were blind or deaf.’

‘Yes, I have heard of them, and I recall that in that time they also produced one painter, one poet, one architect, one actress and one musician.’

‘But Galton says—’

‘Remind me what that fellow said about the Royal Family,’ said Bruiseland.

‘He proved that they aren’t any healthier than the rest of us, even though millions of people pray for them every Sunday, which is, er, a bit odd,’ said Erskine.

‘Exactly. The man is an idiot,’ said Bruiseland.

‘As bad as Nietzsche?’ said Evelyn.

‘As bad as Nietzsche and Wagner and Gobineau and Chamberlain and Ibsen and Rodin and Verlaine and Mallarmé and all the rest of them.’ Bruiseland had learned the latter set of names from his wife. ‘Cripples and clowns.’

‘Wagner was a titan,’ said Kasimir Mowinckel.

‘
Halt die Schnauze
, Kasimir,’ said Berthold. ‘Although, yes, he was a titan.’

‘Pitt-Rivers said that, “Only the Jews will deliver us from the Jews”,’ said Erskine. ‘What he meant was that the Jews have guarded their own racial purity better than any other nation on earth, so we ought to learn from them.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, what is all this about purity?’ said Morton. ‘Britons are mongrels – part Norse, part Celt, part Roman, part Norman. Everyone knows that. Even Chamberlain said we weren’t as good as the “pure Aryans” from the frozen north.’

Then Millicent Bruiseland skipped into the room. She had so many freckles that Erskine wondered if she might have stolen some from other children.

‘You’re supposed to be in the nursery, Millicent,’ said Erskine’s mother. ‘Have you even had your tea yet? Where’s your nanny?’

‘I’m too old for the nursery, and anyway I must speak urgently to your son.’

Conversation resumed as Millicent went up to Erskine and whispered, ‘Mr Erskine, I have the most shocking news. Your friend Mr Morton has asked me to deliver this to your sister.’ Millicent then passed him a crumpled note, quite obviously in a child’s hand, that read: ‘DEAR MISS ERSKINE, I WISH TO HAVE AFTERNOON TEA WITH YOUR PUDENDA, YOUR’S FAITHFULLY, MR. MORTON.’

‘Dispose of this at once, Millicent.’

Millicent tutted and went out. Kasimir Mowinckel asked his father for the salt and his father ignored him.

‘Morton, you’ve done nothing this evening but snipe at our morals and mock our beliefs,’ said Erskine’s father later on. ‘Why on earth do you call yourself a fascist if you’re not interested in cleaning up the race?’

‘Because, as I said, there are more important things to worry about. Capitalist democracy is exhausted. It is grinding itself away. We’re told we live in a free country, but any freedom which allows a man who cannot afford food to own a newspaper or initiate a legal action is meaningless. Pure decadence. Something must be done. And we have two choices for the renewal of our society. One is communism, which is godless and anyway would never work. The other is fascism.’

‘So what exactly are you proposing?’ said Erskine’s father.

‘I don’t want to bore everyone.’

‘Come on, Morton.’

‘Well, to be brief, the whole adult population would be
divided up into twenty-four corporations: Agriculture, Chemicals, Transport, Banking and Insurance, and so forth.’

‘Would there be a corporation of Music?’ said Evelyn.

‘I’m afraid not, my dear, because, to the great relief of most of us around this table, twelve-tone music is not one of Britain’s foremost industries. You might be put into Professional or into Miscellaneous Manufactures. And of course there would be a corporation for Married Women. Now, above all that there would be a National Corporation, made up of elected representatives of each lower corporation. No one would be elected any more on the back of slogans or speech-making or good looks, because men would vote for colleagues in their own trade, based entirely on competence. The National Corporation would take control of profits, hours, working conditions and so on, adjusting consumption to production by the control of wages. An end to poverty and unemployment and exploitation.’

‘Sounds like Jewish socialism to me,’ said Aslet.

‘Oh, are Jews socialists?’ said Evelyn. ‘That’s funny, I’d heard they were all haughty financiers. I must have misunderstood.’

‘Same thing – it’s just that the head of the serpent is in Moscow and the tail is in New York,’ said Berthold Mowinckel. His lips were stained with wine and it made him look vampiric. ‘They’re all Jews and they all want to bring civilised Europe to its knees, so what does it matter what we call them?’ Erskine heard ‘bring civilised Europe to its niece’, which sounded quite benign.

‘Jews love currency so much because it is abstract and homeless and slippery, just like them,’ said Amadeo. ‘They feel at home with market capitalism because their whole religion is based on a contract. And because of the desert, too. The beating sun and the clear moonlight encourage soulless intellectualism. The senses and the emotions wither, and gold is all that’s left. At the same time, in the desert, you never
know whether your flock of sheep will double in number or die out from hunger and disease. So you become obsessed with unlimited acquisition and production and speculation. Such a thing could never happen in a decent, settled farming community.’

‘Oh, are Jews soulless intellectuals?’ said Evelyn. ‘That’s funny, I’d heard they were all dissolute and oversexed. This is far too complicated for me.’

‘Admittedly, what I propose is not entirely unlike what Roosevelt is doing,’ said Morton, trying to return to his subject. ‘But a great deal sterner.’

‘Morton, it seems to me that you just want to replace Parliament with something even worse,’ said Bruiseland. Although he was sitting to Morton’s immediate left, this was the first time that evening that he had directly addressed the younger man. ‘What is the point of Parliament – what has it ever been – but to prevent the government from governing? Bit by bit it broke the monarchy, it broke the Church, and finally it even broke the country squire. Then, having broken everything that could keep the country in order, it left us at the mercy of the Jews.’

‘Now, Bruiseland!’ said Aslet.

But Bruiseland ignored him. ‘A “National Corporation” would be no better. What we need is a king who’s not afraid to do what needs to be done.’

‘Fascism is not about pretending we live in medieval Albion,’ said Morton.

‘You mean to tell me, young man, what fascism is about?’ said Bruiseland. ‘Fascism is not about corporations and it is not about science and it is not about Britain. It is a great deal less fashionable than that. It is about time-honoured English traditions. It is about the crown and the soil. It is about noble blood and the working man’s loyalty. It is about George slaying the dragon.’

‘Fascism is a war as old as time,’ said Berthold Mowinckel.

‘That is all bunk,’ said Amadeo loudly. ‘You are all reactionaries. In Italy, do you see any crown or soil? Or in Germany, any war as old as time? No. Fascism is modern! Fascism is about the triumph of the machine. Fascism is about pistons and propellors. Everything else is impotence. Surely you agree with me, Mr Erskine, you who have rebuilt this wonderful house? Tell me, how long must we wait until a skyscraper is built with Buckingham Palace as its base and the dome of St Paul’s as its top? How long must we wait until we can send into Moscow tanks the size of barns?’

‘No offence, Signor Amadeo, but I think that sort of nonsense is half the trouble,’ said Aslet as the venison arrived. ‘Railways, motor cars, telephones, cinemas – “Everyone must learn to read, everyone must go to the shops!” – it’s too much. The great mass of humanity is now exhausted. Life is too frenzied now for anyone to really appreciate it. Overstimulation of the senses means mass degeneracy.’

‘Quite,’ said Bruiseland, once again glancing darkly at Evelyn.

‘Whoever uses machines receives a machine heart,’ said Kasimir Mowinckel. ‘The West today is a turbine filled with blood.’ Then there was a loud bang and everyone jumped in their seats. In panic, Erskine looked at his father. William Erskine’s face was white and a dark red stain was spreading across his chest. His fork dropped from his hand.

Only Amadeo seemed unperturbed. ‘There are not enough explosions in this country,’ he said, holding up a silver pocket-watch. ‘As you can see, this does not really tell the time, because there is a tiny pistol mechanism instead of the normal clockwork. Calibre only two millimetres. Popular among the Nazis, I hear, and it is very useful for when I am finding a conversation boring or retrogressive.’

There was a long silence. Battle helped Erskine’s father mop the spilled wine from his shirt, then went to prise the miniature bullet out of the wall with a pair of brass nutcrackers.

Erskine’s mother said, ‘I read in the newspaper today that now you can find out the time over the telephone. The Post Office seem very proud of it but I must say we’ve had that in this house for years.’

‘Oh, really?’ said Aslet.

The rest of the dinner was not a success, particularly when the women withdrew at the end to leave the men to drink their port and smoke their cigars in silence. Erskine was relieved to go to bed, declining the offer of a game of chess with Kasimir Mowinckel. He had hoped Sinner might already be asleep in the cot, but he wasn’t, and although Erskine lay awake for nearly three hours, listening to the soft crackling of the faulty electrical socket in the skirting board, Sinner still did not come upstairs. Erskine wondered if his mother had overruled his father and found Sinner a bed in the servants’ quarters, but when he woke up the next morning Sinner was there, asleep.

He stood over Sinner for a few minutes, watching his chest rise and fall, and gave himself a moment’s amusement thinking of how Amadeo had described the Jews: ‘abstract and homeless and slippery’. Sinner had been homeless, of course, when Erskine had found him at St Panteleimon’s, and the boy was slippery too, but he’d never met a human being less abstract. He dressed and went downstairs. Breakfast had not been laid out and the house seemed strangely quiet, as before a surprise party. He found the head butler in the hall.

‘What’s going on, Battle?’

‘I have some very disturbing news, sir. Mr Morton was found dead this morning.’

‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘The younger Herr Mowinckel discovered his body in the pond, sir. He seems to have been badly beaten. The police have been called.’

Erskine walked stiffly to a bentwood chair and sat down. He imagined the pages of the third
Pangaean Grammar and
Lexicon
swirling around Morton’s body, covering his eyes, sliding down his throat. How could this have happened? Quite a few of the guests at dinner had probably ended up hating Morton but none of them, with the possible exception of Amadeo, were Mussolini types – surely they wouldn’t murder a fellow fascist over a political disagreement? The most important question was, why had Sinner come to bed so late the previous night? Where had he been? And then Erskine remembered exactly what he’d said to Sinner that afternoon.

There were only really two things that Alex Godwin, the youngest of Claramore’s footmen, wanted out of life, and he saved every penny he could spare out of his paltry wages in the hope that one day he would be able to afford them both. The first was that Tara Southall, Evelyn Erskine’s maid, should become his wife and bear his children. The second was a top-class conjugal safety coffin.

As one of only nineteen remaining subscribers to
Burial Reformer
, the quarterly magazine of the London Society for the Prevention of Premature Burial, Godwin was an expert in the technology of funerary prudence, and nothing was more repugnant to him than the German
Leichenhausen
or ‘waiting mortuaries’ that had been popular in the nineteenth century. For three days after a doctor had pronounced you dead, you and twenty or thirty companions would lie on wooden slabs, set out in rows like a school dormitory, decorated with bouquets of flowers to hide the smell. Wires would be tied to your fingers and toes, and the wires would run up along ceiling rails and down to the levers of a harmonium, so that a note would sound, and the attendants would hear, if your limbs began to twitch. Every night the attendant would be obliged to play a short waltz on the harmonium to prove that all the reeds were still functional. Members of the public could tour the mortuary for a small charge.