‘Constitutionally, England no longer exists. It is not mentioned in the title of its sovereign. The English people have no special rights, not even a separate set of official statistics. England retains its separate identity in just two areas: religion—the Church of England—and sport—cricket, rugby and soccer. England occupies more than half of the United Kingdom’s land mass and contains over four-fifths of the population. It is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. And yet Scotland and Wales have both been more successful in securing their own institutions. For example, the BBC has special Scottish and Welsh broadcasting councils, but England has none. So how do we define Englishness? By history, by art, by character? What is the spirit of England, and how can we embody it, empower it?’
Vince didn’t like the sound of the last part. He had been digging out old speeches in an effort to uncover something more substantial on Sebastian. He knew virtually nothing about his subject’s immediate past and had hoped to unearth details about the Wells family background, but this was not entirely what he had expected to find. Turning to the front of the article, he checked the author’s name again. Sebastian Wells, right there in black and white. There was even a moody little photograph that looked as if it had been taken at university.
‘England is a compact country. All its destinations are within a day’s land travel. Consequently it maintains a national character despite the extraordinary diversity of its people. It is dominated by the vast central city of London, a city older than Christianity itself, but almost completely reinvented in the New Elizabethan age. For the Blitz caused far more destruction than mere damage to bricks and mortar. In 1939, London was still the greatest city in the world. This rich royal capital, so absolutely sure of itself, was changed forever by the incessant rain of bombs. Its traditions were lost, its centuries-old sense of national mission replaced with confusion, loss of civic responsibility, bureaucratic muddle and argument, a state of chaos from which it has never fully recovered. It is no coincidence that the post-war years saw a rise in factors contributing to that chaos: immigration, divorce, motiveless crime.’
Vince knew a little about the so-called New Elizabethans, the first generation of post-war university graduates. The name had never really caught on. Closing the book, he recalled seeing Sebastian’s name somewhere else, on another item culled earlier from the Political Science section. The curse of a photographic memory. A glance at the clock confirmed that the library would be closing in fifteen minutes. Just enough time.
He found what he was looking for in the sidebar of an article about political extremism that he had photocopied for his original course essay on London and the class system. Sebastian Wells had been thrown out of Oxford for something referred to as ‘Incitement to Hatred’, which presumably meant encouraging racism. If that was the case, what on earth was he doing answering Vince’s questions?
It was hard to believe that the two people were actually one and the same. In person Sebastian was perfectly reasonable and rational. On paper he was a torch-wielding fanatic. According to the press he was billed as one of the emerging new leaders of the intellectual far right, but his birthright seemed to deny him as much as it offered. As an MP he would have had the power to promote his ideas. As an Honourable destined to adopt his father’s title, his only power lay in preventing the ideas of others.
An alarming new picture of Sebastian Wells drew into focus. He had certainly covered the far-right corners of the political waterfront in his brief life. He considered both the Monday Club and the Disraelian Society too liberal and ‘wishy-washy’. He advocated forced repatriation, an end to the Health Service, the return of capital punishment, further tax incentives for big business. More sinister motives were hinted at.
Sebastian had not advanced a single extreme opinion in any of their interviews. On the contrary, he had evinced such naive courtesy that it was tempting to avoid the dark areas of his psyche, to enjoy his easy charm, his louche manner, his casually reckless expenditure. Vince was ashamed to admit that it was fun hanging out with someone who wasn’t penniless for a change, someone with a car and money to spend. This was what half of him had always wanted: stability, order, respect, social standing. So what if it required making a few moral sacrifices?
He had not even begun his professional career as a writer, and already the question of compromise was slapping him in the face. He decided that Sebastian would have to be told about his misgivings. He would give him a chance to explain, warn him, possibly even stop the interviews. In a way, finding out something like this was exactly what he had hoped for. But he liked the man, for God’s sake.
And there was something else. He made photocopies of the articles he had just read and headed towards his apartment, making a mental note to ask Sebastian about a phrase that had cropped up a number of times, his connection to a society known as the League of Prometheus. Instead of confronting him immediately, Vince decided to do some more reading up on the subject of the beliefs and proclamations of the Hon. Sebastian Wells.
‘It seems like you’re here every day, man,’ said the Rastafarian desk clerk as he arrived at Camden Library the following morning.
‘Yes, you’re right, I have no life,’ Vince admitted, shaking out his umbrella and stowing it in a corner. He had stepped on a paving stone that had tilted, soaking his jeans, a typical street-hazard in Tufnell Park. As usual he was the first customer, and would probably be alone until the down-and-outs arrived when they were cleared out from the local hostel. At the battered Apple Mac in the corner of the reference section, he logged on to the Internet and began a subject search for items located under the references Wells, Sebastian and League, Prometheus. The latter organisation had been mentioned most recently in a Guardian article. God knows how much this could cost me, he thought, praying for speed as he checked the loading times and pulled down a couple of text-only articles.
There were a number of old newspaper and magazine pieces to choose from, mainly concerning Sebastian’s early fundraising days for the Tories, when he had organised special events at his school. One concerned his putative friendship with a notorious Nazi sympathiser, a professor whose new book set out the theory that the Holocaust had not happened. The other featured the text of a speech he had given at the opening of a right-wing bookshop in South London. Mildly nasty stuff, yet no one had anything critical to say in print. On the contrary, the tabloids seemed to champion him as the voice of common sense, and he was generally considered to have the ear of a number of influential figures. This was a different image to the vague game-playing charmer presented to Vince.
There were no societies listed under the reference Prometheus, so he printed hard copies of the articles and logged out before the bill had a chance to climb too high. As he checked through the classical section, distant thunder rumbled above the rain-washed skylight in the centre of the room and it grew so dark that the librarians had to switch the lights on, something they were always reluctant to do, as if they considered eye-strain to be a beneficial part of the learning process.
Prometheus. Greek demi-god. Son of Iapetos, brother of Atlas. The name meant ‘forethought’. The wisest of his race, he was credited with bringing knowledge to mankind. He had been given the task of distributing powers and abilities on earth. He stole fire from the gods and gave it to mortals, only to be punished by Zeus, who had Prometheus chained naked to a pillar in the Caucasian mountains. Each day an eagle tore out his liver, and each night it grew back…
This was no help. It shed no light on the League of Prometheus, if such a thing even existed. Well, he thought, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. He would simply call up Sebastian and ask him a few casually phrased questions. But even as he considered the idea, he knew he would not do it because—the realisation came as a shock—he sensed that Sebastian would make a dangerous adversary.
He would ask Esther to help him find some back-up contacts, and if Sebastian’s society proved to be some kind of neo-Nazi organisation he would base the proposition of the book around it, maybe even sell serial rights to a newspaper as an exposé. Even though he found it hard to believe that Sebastian was such a Jekyll and Hyde character, he knew that the time had come to cool their friendship. It was the only way to avoid further duplicity, and it would free him to write whatever he pleased.
Having made the decision, though, he had an uncomfortable feeling about the possible outcome. As a small child he had read a book called Where the Rainbow Ends, an Edwardian adventure in which some children witnessed St George’s battle with the dragon. Years later, he had been shocked to discover that the book was a thinly disguised fascist tract. Even now he found it hard to recall those eerie evanescent illustrations without feeling a sense of betrayal. It was a sensation he was starting to associate with Sebastian.