James Ballard - Kingdom Come - A Novel

‘Well . . . in a sense, you’ve already done it.’

‘Is that so? How?’

‘You helped to clear Duncan Christie.’

Sangster sat back, head resting against the maths equation, tolerating my rudeness. ‘I testified that I saw Christie in the entrance hall when the shots were fired. I didn’t help to clear him. It’s not in my gift. It was an eye-witness statement.’

‘You were actually in the Metro-Centre?’

‘Naturally. There were two other witnesses who testified.’

‘I know. For some reason, that bothers me.’ Trying not to unsettle this highly strung head teacher, I put on my friendliest account-executive smile, a grimace I had hoped to abandon for ever. ‘You all knew him. Isn’t that odd?’

‘Why?’ Chair tilted back, Sangster watched me across the form master’s desk, blowing out his plump cheeks like a puffer fish estimating the size of its prey. ‘We wouldn’t have recognized him otherwise. Why would we pretend we’d seen him?’

‘That’s the nub of the problem. It’s difficult to think of a common motive . . .’

‘Mr Pearson, are you suggesting we conspired to free Christie?’ Sangster touched the blackboard behind his head, pretending to half-listen to me. ‘Three respectable witnesses?’

‘You are respectable. Almost too respectable. It’s possible you saw someone like Christie. You might think you saw him, and naturally you feel he’s innocent.’

‘He is innocent. Mr Pearson, I taught him. For three years I was his maths teacher, in this very classroom. In fact, he sat at that desk where you’re sitting now. Someone fired those shots, but not Duncan Christie. He’s too unreliable, too erratic. He does odd jobs for me, mending the fence or mowing the lawn. He works hard for five minutes and then his mind sails off, he drops his tools and disappears for a week. His brain is a kind of theatre, where he plays games with his own sanity. He did not shoot your father.’

‘Right.’ I eased myself out of the ink-stained desk. ‘As it happens, I agree with you.’

‘You agree? Good.’ Sangster stood up and brushed the blackboard chalk from his coat, reversed equations falling into dust at his large feet. He gestured me to the door. ‘But why . . . ?’

‘I saw him outside the magistrates’ court. He was acting the killer, just to wind everyone up. He only stopped when he recognized me and knew it wasn’t a game. The real assassin wouldn’t have done that.’

‘Well put.’ Sangster nodded sagely. ‘You’ve been through a lot, Richard, and you’ve kept your focus. It may look like a conspiracy, but many of us knew Duncan Christie and we didn’t want to see him framed . . .’

WE SET OFFalong the corridor, Sangster’s huge bulk almost filling the narrow space. He had visibly relaxed, patting my shoulder as if I were a pupil who had displayed a sudden flair for differential calculus. He closed the door of his office, shutting out his intrigued secretary, collected two glasses and a bottle of sherry from a side table, and sat down at his desk. Still wearing his overcoat, he watched me sip the sweet fluid, his baby lips mimicking my own.

‘Parents’ sherry,’ he told me. ‘Makes a long day shorter. Think of it as a business aid.’

‘Why not? I feel for you. Trying to educate six hundred teenagers in the middle of a circus.’ I pointed to the dome visible through his windows. ‘So many Aladdin’s caves, a hundred neon palaces filled with treasure.’

‘The only real things are the mirages. We can cope with that. Still, I know how you feel, Richard. An old man is shot down for no reason. The one common factor is the Metro-Centre. Somehow it explains everything.’

‘My father and the whole consumer nightmare? I think there’s a connection. Most of the people here are going mad, without realizing it.’

‘All these retail parks, the airport and motorway culture. It’s a new kind of hell . . .’ Sangster stood up and pressed his huge hands to his cheeks, as if trying to deflate himself. ‘That’s the Hampstead perspective, the view from the Tavistock Clinic. The shadow of Freud’s statue lies across the land, the Agent Orange of the soul. Believe me, things are different here. We have to prepare our kids for a new kind of society. There’s no point in telling them about parliamentary democracy, the church or the monarchy. The old ideas of citizenship you and I were brought up with are really rather selfish. All that emphasis on individual rights, habeas corpus, freedom of the one against the many . . .’

‘Free speech, privacy?’

‘What’s the point of free speech if you have nothing to say? Let’s face it, most people haven’t anything to say, and they know it. What’s the point of privacy if it’s just a personalized prison? Consumerism is a collective enterprise. People here want to share and celebrate, they want to come together. When we go shopping we take part in a collective ritual of affirmation.’

‘So being modern today means being passive?’

Sangster slapped his desk, knocking over his pen stand. He leaned towards me, huge overcoat bulking around him.

‘Forget being modern. Accept it, Richard, the whole modernist enterprise was intensely divisive. Modernism taught us to distrust and dislike ourselves. All that individual conscience, the solitary ache. Modernism was driven by neurosis and alienation. Look at its art and architecture. There’s something deeply cold about them.’

‘And consumerism?’

‘It celebrates coming together. Shared dreams and values, shared hopes and pleasures. Consumerism is optimistic and forward-looking. Naturally, it asks us to accept the will of the majority. Consumerism is a new form of mass politics. It’s very theatrical, but we like that. It’s driven by emotion, but its promises are attainable, not just windy rhetoric. A new car, a new power tool, a new CD player.’

‘And reason? No place for that, I take it?’

‘Reason, well . . .’ Sangster paced behind his desk, nail-bitten fingers to his lips. ‘It’s too close to maths, and most of us are not good at arithmetic. In general I advise people to steer clear of reason. Consumerism celebrates the positive side of the equation. When we buy something we unconsciously believe we’ve been given a present.’

‘And politics demands a constant stream of presents? A new hospital, a new school, a new motorway . . . ?’

‘Exactly. And we know what happens to children who are never given any toys. We’re all children today. Like it or not, only consumerism can hold a modern society together. It presses the right emotional buttons.’

‘So . . . liberalism, liberty, reason?’

‘They failed! People don’t want to be appealed to by reason any more.’ Sangster bent down and rolled his sherry glass across the desk, as if waiting for it to stand up on its own. ‘Liberalism and humanism are a huge brake on society. They trade on guilt and fear. Societies are happier when people spend, not save. What we need now is a kind of delirious consumerism, the sort you see at motor shows. People long for authority, and only consumerism can provide it.’

‘Buy a new perfume, a new pair of shoes, and you’re a happier and better person? And you can get all this across to your teenagers?’

‘I don’t need to. It comes with the air they breathe. Remember, Richard, consumerism is a redemptive ideology. At its best, it tries to aestheticize violence, though sadly it doesn’t always succeed . . .’

Sangster stood up, smiling to himself in an almost serene way. He gazed at his huge hands, glad to accept them as hard-working outposts of himself.

We left each other on the steps outside the entrance. I liked Sangster, but I had the distinct sense that he had already forgotten me before he waved and turned back to the school. I walked away, strolling through the sweet wrappers drifting across the path, through the cola cans and cigarette packets and condom sachets.