Contango (Ill Wind) (33 page)

What a sensation, he thought, impishly, if he were to address them like
that? He could imagine Turnpenny’s horror, the gasps of a million
newspaper-readers the next morning, the outraged eyes of the Prime Minister
when he heard about it…. It would doubtless be the end of him, politically.
Well, well, he wasn’t exactly anxious for that. He smiled to himself
and wondered what had come over him that he should even think such things.
Perhaps it was a sixtieth birthday feeling.

Of course, when the time came, he made a vastly different speech. He did
not hold out too many promises, but he sounded a note of cautious optimism,
and remembered to bring in Collins, the Sibleys footballer. He sensed
familiarly the crowd’s change of mood from sulky hostility to tolerant
good-humour. Most of them would go away and say he seemed “a good
sort.” Probably no one would support him who had already decided not
to, but he might secure a few dozen votes that would otherwise not have been
given at all.

During the latter half of his speech a clerk from the offices approached
the platform and whispered something to Jevons, who immediately climbed down
and disappeared with him. A few moments later Jevons returned, touched
Elliott on the elbow, and passed him a slip of paper. Elliott stared at it,
automatically continuing a sentence meanwhile. In Jevons’s neat
scribble he read: “Important message from London. Should end up soon if
I were you.” With the very slightest inclination of the head, Elliott
handed back the slip. He went on talking for three or four minutes, finishing
with a brisk peroration that earned the first gust of enthusiasm that had yet
been born upon that dreary scene. It was typical of him that even an acute
observer or listener could hardly have suspected any curtailment, so smoothly
did the words and sentences succeed each other. During the quite lively
cheering that followed, Jevons leaned across anxiously and whispered in his
ear: “Trunk call from the F.O., passed on through Chilver. Rather bad
news about the Conference. Tribourov’s been shot and everything’s
in a hell of an upset … yes, SHOT. The P.M. wants you in town at
once.”

“Good God!” exclaimed Elliott, under his breath, and went a
little pale.

“I took the liberty, sir, of ringing up the aerodrome
people.”

“Quite right… quite right. We’ll get away.”

He signalled to Turnpenny and murmured a few words that set the latter on
his feet to announce pompously that their future member had to dash away on
important business, but that before he left they would all wish to give him
three rousing cheers,
etc
.,
etc
.

Five minutes later, as the big car slewed through the factory gates,
Elliott said: “Now you can tell me all about it.”

“There’s not much to tell as yet, sir. It’s only just
come through—just the bare message without details. It seems he was
fired at during the Conference session this morning. A woman did it, and shot
herself immediately afterwards.”

“Yes, yes, but Tribourov—is he dead?”

“He wasn’t killed outright. Neither of them were. That’s
all the information there is, so far.”

“Who ’phoned you?”

“Tommy Luttrell. He seemed to think it might have serious
repercussions.”

Elliott nodded. “Yes, of course, there are all sorts of things it
might lead to.”

Then for a long time he was silent. Through the car-windows now the words
“Vote for Elliott” on hoardings conveyed a touch of mockery in
their insistence. Soon, however, he had passed the limits of his constituency
and was in Loamington. How innocent everyone looked to him—the
policeman on point-duty, the streams of hurrying passers-by, the
tram-conductor exchanging badinage with a lorry-driver—innocent as had
been the crowds in London and Berlin on that morning of Sarajevo. And he,
threading through their midst, was their appointed leader. At that moment he
felt more like a blind engine-driver in charge of a train for whose journey
the points had been set by lunatic signalmen.

“I don’t think I ever met him,” he said at length.
“He must be one of their new men—capable, I should say, from his
speeches. Poor chap…. You know, Jevons, it makes one realise what a chancy
thing history is. A mere quarter-inch in the track of a maniac’s bullet
can alter everything.”

“Yes—and also when the pistol refuses to work, like
Clive’s. I often wonder exactly how different things would be to-day if
he HAD done himself in. No Ind. Imp. And no Amritsar. Perhaps even no
Gandhi…. Though I suppose the really big things in history would mostly
have happened anyhow.”

“Would they? Or does blind chance play a bigger part in affairs than
we can easily reckon?”

“Still, sir, even if Columbus HADN’T discovered America,
somebody else would certainly have committed the indiscretion sooner or
later. That’s what I mean. And the war with Germany—I should say
that was fairly inevitable, too.”

Elliott paused to light a cigar. “I might grant you your first
example, but definitely not your second. We were just as near war with France
over Fashoda or with Turkey over Chanak as we were with Germany at the end of
July ’fourteen. A few hair’s breadths might have steered us clear
of that as they did of the other two.”

“But don’t you think it had to happen some day?”

“No, I can’t see why. Frankly, I’m chary of believing in
these big inevitabilities, except in the sense that if you play cards often
enough, it’s inevitable that you’ll some time get a hand with
four aces in it. Looking on history as a mathematician rather than as a
historian, it seems to me that the most trivial things have led up to the
most colossal… for instance, just to take one example out of many, I could
easily demonstrate that the War was really won on the 10th of August, 1911,
by the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

“I’ll buy it,” answered Jevons, laughing.

“I remember that day as one of record heat for this
country—ninety-seven in the shade, or something like that. The House
of Lords were taking the vote on the Parliament Bill, and the Archbishop,
whose attitude till then had been doubtful, decided to vote in favour, and
took eleven bishops with him. As the FOR majority was only seventeen, he may
be said to have turned the scale. Well, now, consider—merely as an
essay in the pluperfect subjunctive— what would have happened had he
voted AGAINST. The Bill would have been thrown out. We know now that in such
an event the King would have created four hundred new peers—all
Liberals, of course. And a Liberal House of Lords would certainly have passed
the Irish Home Rule Bill without delay. Which, in turn, might very well have
led to the coercion of Ulster and such disaffection in the army that we could
not have entered the War against Germany as promptly as we did, even if at
all. And if the British Expeditionary Force had not been in France just when
and where it was would the miracle of the Marne have taken place? And if
Germany had won that battle, isn’t it arguable that she would have
taken Paris and been able to dictate a victorious peace?… So, you see, in
this particular sense, an Archbishop voting on a hot day in the English House
of Lords held in his hands the future destiny of the world.”

“Ingenious, sir. Yet you could hardly say he caused the defeat of
Germany.”

“Oh no, that would be an obvious misinterpretation. We really want a
word for something that leads quite logically to something else, yet in a way
that both moralists and historians decide to ignore. Of course, the example I
gave you seems remarkable, because we can trace it and see it, but there must
be millions of similar threads which we can’t trace at all, even though
our entire lives are woven out of them.”

Jevons laughed again. “All of which seems to show that History, as
Henry Ford said, is bunk.”

“No, I don’t go as far as that, but I’d perhaps agree
that history professors should take a short course in the mathematics of
chance and probability.”

“Or would it be less bother, sir, to teach history to insurance
actuaries? Still, it’s an impressive idea, though I’m not quite
certain where it leads to, unless straight back to Calvinism and
predestination.”

“Oh, good heavens, no—not by any means! If only Calvin had
been a bridge-player he’d have known better, because life is as much
like a card-game as anything else—if you can imagine a game in which
the cards are unlimited and the players can’t agree on having any
rules…. But you’re encouraging me to be platitudinous, Jevons. Did
the aerodrome people say they could have a machine ready?”

“Yes. And it’s fine weather down south, they told me, so we
ought to have a quick and pleasant journey.”

Shortly after noon they pulled up on the concrete arena in front of the
hangars. An R.A.F. machine stood near by, slowly ticking over. Elliott
chatted to the pilot while the latter helped him on with his flying kit. He
knew Captain Hartill well, having been piloted by him many times before, and
he climbed with Jevons into the small cabin with some eagerness for the
familiar sensations. He liked flying, and liked also the type of man that the
new profession was breeding. If he had been younger he would certainly have
learned to fly himself. One reason he favoured air-travel was because it
seemed a return to smallness and individuality after a century’s trend
towards bigger and bigger units; compared with the train and the ocean liner,
it suggested independence, the sturdy freedom of solitary man. In that sense
he had accepted Lindbergh’s as a more epic achievement than
Columbus’s, though it had also occurred to him that this very
independence might some day make for the breakdown of society. It did not
require a great deal of imagination to picture a world in which power had
passed into the hands of Al Capones with their private bombing squadrons. An
appalling possibility, but it undoubtedly existed. To Elliott, as he watched
the fields diminishing till his view was like that of a fly on a ceiling
looking down on a patchwork quilt, it did seem that everywhere the forces of
lawlessness and disintegration were gaining ground; but that in England,
though a strong attack was in progress, the social fabric was holding out
with a toughness that proved its quality. His thoughts ran on, and set him
wondering whether that toughness lay somehow rooted in the million
absurdities that belonged, not to a Five Years’ Plan, but to five
centuries’ planlessness. This very by-election, for instance, forced on
him by technicalities over which even he, a lawyer, had unwittingly stumbled;
and the vast paradox of an empire, in population chiefly non-white and
non-Christian, governed by a minority whose peculiar gift to the world had
been the principles of democracy. No Home Rule for India, yet an Indian might
sit in the English Parliament for a constituency within a tram-ride of the
House itself! But England was like that, and like so many other things as
well; just when, in mind, one had fixed her with what seemed an adequate
generalisation, she suddenly sprang some terrific freakishness that shook any
logical scheme to bits. And throughout history this same freakishness had
abounded, from the time she had allowed a king’s debaucheries to decide
her religion, to the fourth decade of the twentieth century, when her people
could still wonder whether an Act of 1781 ought to prevent them from seeing a
cinema-show on Sunday.

Suddenly, rising above the thin vapours, the plane plunged into sunlight
as into a warm, golden bath. Elliott, in the midst of a sandwich-lunch,
smiled exultantly at Jevons; the roar of the engines was too loud for
conversation. He felt lifted, at that moment, to an extraordinary pitch of
serenity; flying always made him feel like that, as if, in leaving the
physical world, he had literally left its troubles behind. Tribourov, the
Conference, the by- election—how easily, if spuriously, one could
purchase the sensation of escape from it all!

The flight had lasted over an hour when he noticed an occasional
spluttering amidst the steady thrum-thrum of the engines. Once Hartill stared
round and gave a jerky shrug of the shoulders that might have meant anything.
Elliott was not alarmed, but he was surprised when he realised from the
return to mistiness that the plane must be losing height. The spluttering
continued, and soon, as through a window abruptly uncurtained, he saw land
below—that same patchwork of greens and browns, with the shadow of the
plane crawling across them like some strange insect. “We’re
descending,” he shouted in Jevon’s ear, and Jevon shouted back:
“Yes, I think something’s gone wrong with one of the
engines.” “Well,” thought Elliott, munching his last
sandwich, “if we’re killed, we’re killed—it’s
as good a way as Tribourov’s, anyhow.” He felt beatifically calm.
The machine continued to swoop, till the landscape was almost scampering
underneath—fortunately it was open country—fields, hedges, a
few trees, a lane, more fields and hedges—all swimming in misty
sunlight. “I think he’s trying to land,” Jevons shouted;
and Elliott nodded, still without much feeling of concern. It occurred to
him, with a flash of perception, that he was at that moment trusting Hartill
just as all over the country millions of people, Hartill included, were
having to trust HIM. He thought: “Yes, ‘Vote for
Elliott’s’ all right, but just now Hartill’s my
man—good old Hartill. Vote for Hartill….”

A few seconds later the pilot made a perfect landing in a field of barley.
After he had shut off the engines and clambered out, he helped his two
passenger to alight also. He apologised profusely for having had to come
down, and gave some technical reason which Elliott did not understand.
“It’s nothing serious, but I couldn’t carry on without
making the repair. I hope you weren’t alarmed, sir.”

“Not at all,” Elliott replied, smiling. “I think I ought
to congratulate you on such a fine impromptu landing.” Then he looked
about him. He could see nothing but a field, hedges, and that milk-blue sky.
“I’m only slightly worried about the delay. Do you think it would
be quicker for me to hire a car and get to the nearest big railway
station?”