Now by this time, as it happened, there was no need whatsoever for Upstairs to fear anything at all, at least from Downstairs. (From one another was, of course, another matter.) Civilisation below stairs had been saved, or at any rate an improved status quo restored. Acorn had been deposed, and the servants slept the deep, quiet sleep of the victim whose integrity cannot be impugned, or whose morality doubted. Not for them the restless nights of the General, disturbed by the ghosts of those who would be living now, were it not that he had killed them. The snow spread its soft quiet blanket all around, and sopped up the noise of the drunken agitations up above; the telephone system between Upstairs and Downstairs was not working. Its wires had become unplugged in the struggle between civilisation and barbarity, and no one had noticed.
Tomorrow, thought the servants, drifting into sleep, packed into beds, and beneath beds, and lying filleted one onto another on the palleted floor, children entwined with children, adults lovingly with each other, tomorrow the food will be better; tomorrow perhaps justice can be won and vengeance gained: just let it not be today. All we want to do is live out our lives in peace. Miriam lies dead in the cold room, wrapped in silver foil, but she is only a woman, and all people die, and the baby is safe. Acorn lies strait-jacketed and calmed by major tranquillisers on the kitchen table, where Harry’s body lately lay. He is lucky to be alive. Inverness used up all his supply of clorazepate and thioridazine before he would be quiet. He is, poor man, in an advanced state of clinical paranoia. Inverness means to inform Joan Lumb in the morning: she will want to inspect for herself his rigid body, his staring eye, the convulsive movements of his hands. If he is not ranting sufficiently, Inverness will inject him with some adrenaline. He will be carted away quickly to some secure mental hospital, where he can do no more harm. If questions are asked about his legal status, Joan Lumb will have to do the answering. Poor Acorn. Do you feel sorry for him? I do. But the penalty of believing in him, following him, is death, and not just your own, but the children’s. Inverness is right: boring but right. We deal in this world not in blacks and whites; blending sometimes into denim blue, just occasionally threaded through with brilliant silk. Inverness does what has to be done: he sacrifices the one for the many, and he of all the servants does not sleep well that night, but tosses and turns. Acorn’s just out for the count, of course.
This is what happened.
Acorn, instead of delegating the handing round of Harry sandwiches, as he would have been wise to do, could not resist taking them up, himself, and watching the hazy, drunken crew devour them. Inverness took advantage of Acorn’s absence, and addressed the servants himself.
‘Friends,’ he said, ‘and I will not call you brothers and sisters, because we are not family. We are people of many different religions, and many different races, brought together here not by the will of Allah but by hard circumstance: trapped not by common cause but by the frailty of man and the blindness of bureaucracy. Acorn is no one’s friend but his own. Lord Acorn, he wishes to be called! By what right? By the right only of his lust for power. Lord Acorn thinks he is Napoleon. Lord Acorn is insane! Agnes, are you there?’
Agnes was pushed forward by the crowd; she stood dull-eyed and slack-mouthed and wretched, quite the wrong end of the scale from the young women who fly you on Singapore Airlines.
‘Acorn is mad as Agnes is mad, but in a worse way,’ said Inverness. ‘That is to say, from time to time both need to be shut up. He beckons you to follow him, in the same way that Agnes beckons. If you go with Agnes you catch a disease. Go with Acorn and you catch insanity itself. The madness of hate and fear is catching.’
His audience shivered. They believed him. They had felt the touch of madness.
‘Acorn will lead you, in his madness, to death, pain, imprisonment, exile, and the only satisfaction you will have is the sight of blood. Acorn will have the principles, you will pay for them. Be sure Acorn won’t die. No, he will take the breath out of your children’s mouths, in the same way as he takes their food, and live off that.’
There was a breath of assent. Inverness was winning. But there was not much time. Soon Acorn would be back.
‘Acorn speaks with a double tongue,’ said Inverness. ‘He talks of purity but is himself corrupt. The woman who is no woman’ (he meant Mew, poor Mew: that is what happens when you wear a donkey jacket and heavy boots, the laces double-knotted, the better to ride a motorbike) ‘waits for him in her bed tonight. Hilda!’
The crowd pushed Hilda forward. Matilda had gone upstairs to collect her when the trouble started. Acorn had either not bothered or forgotten all about her. She could accept her concubine status; could even cradle Miriam’s baby in her arms, but she resented being forgotten. Who wouldn’t?
‘Hilda, isn’t that so?’
But Hilda said nothing. She was afraid. Well, she was very small. Small women often live in physical fear of the men they’re with: they take especial care to charm and entertain, as kittens do. That way they don’t get trodden on.
‘She’s afraid,’ said Inverness. ‘It isn’t love which keeps her silent, or loyalty. It’s fear.’
Still Hilda kept her eyes downcast, and said nothing. Inverness decided not to continue down this particular avenue.
‘Look up, Hilda,’ said Inverness. ‘Tell me how Miriam came to have her baby. Was that love, or fear?’
‘Fear,’ said Hilda, looking up. Sometimes one woman can do for another what she can’t do for herself. ‘It was rape.’
‘Those that hath eyes to see let them see,’ said Inverness, satisfied.
The crowd saw: it shuffled. Inverness promised them more meat in the pot, better heating, better lighting, a little-by-little approach to authority, proper moderate leadership – the crowd began to disperse. They understood such things would and should be accomplished on their behalf, but were bored by the detail. They were tired. It was late.
When Acorn left the drawing-room, too elated by the success of his plan to be properly careful, and pushed open the green baize door, Hastings, Raindrop and Inverness were waiting for him. A man is usually betrayed by those closest to him. Inverness tripped him, Raindrop pinioned him, Hastings bound him. In the struggle up and down the stairs, the telephone wire, which ran along the side of the skirting, became unplugged from its socket, and the old-fashioned bell-wire, rusted almost through over many decades, finally disintegrated. Inverness jabbed Acorn again and again with assorted neuroleptic drugs until he finally lost consciousness. He was strait-jacketed and stretched out on the kitchen table. Inverness dabbed some of the scum, skimmed from the surface of the still simmering pot where Harry had boiled, around Acorn’s mouth, so that no one who saw him could doubt the fact that he had been foaming at the mouth.
Then they went to bed. Securing civilisation is a tiring business. They forgot to remove the pot from the flame. In Acorn’s absence there was no one to keep an eye on such details. And Joan Lumb rang and rang and no one answered.