Реджинальд Хилл: Matlock's System

Nowadays hardly a news broadcast passes with a lead item about the Economy. A quarter of a century ago, to the non-political and non-politically correct economy was something practised by Scotsmen in jokes and inflation had something to do with Germans taking home their worthless pay in wheelbarrows back in the twenties.

But things they were a’changing. The buoyant sixties had sunk, the punk seventies were rolling in, and people were beginning to be dimly aware that what the Chancellor did on Budget Day had consequences a little wider than the price of fags and beer. And I found myself fantasising, what if instead of balancing national income to cover proposed expenditure a government decided to regulate population to fit within national income?

MATLOCK’S SYSTEM (first published as HEART CLOCK) was the result. It enjoyed a modest success. Naturally I wished it might have been a best-seller. Until the eighties, that is. Then, realising we now had a government to whom anything was possible, I spent a whole decade fearful that someone in one of the Think-Tanks might come across my book and think, Hey, I wonder if they’ve thought of this at No 10 …

Perhaps they did.

Matlock looked carefully round the hall as the Chairman’s voice droned on. He had heard the introduction, or ones like it, too many times to listen any more. There had been a time when they flattered him, but that was long ago. Now he used these moments to take in the meeting, look for trouble spots, recognize old supporters, old enemies.

The hall itself was as familiar as his own living-room. There were cobwebs in corners and a smell of damp stained the air. The cream-coloured walls (white originally, he seemed to remember, but now darkened by a patina of cigarette smoke and grime which invited brave fingers to trace slogans and abuse in it) were cracked and rutted. The whiteness of the powdery plaster shone against the dark background.

There will be more cracks tonight, thought Matlock.

The only advantages of this hall were not his. It was in the middle of the oldest, most decaying district of Manchester. It was several narrow, ill-lit streets away from the nearest transport-stop. It was in a curfew area.

There were halls like this available to Matlock in every major population centre. Dingy. Unattractively situated. Scarred. More scarred after every meeting.

Matlock had protested. He always protested. It was good policy to form patterns of behaviour. Sometimes the unexpected could work if the conditioning had been good.

“You’re not suggesting that your freedom of speech is being interfered with, are you?” the Chief Constable had asked. “You’ve never been refused permission for a meeting in my area. This just happens to be the only hall available.”

“Like last time. And the time before.”

“You’ve been unlucky, Mr. Matlock. Still, you couldn’t hope to fill a larger place, could you?”

Matlock had smiled.

“With your own contribution, we might manage it, Chief Constable.”

“I’m sorry you’re not satisfied. We like to co-operate. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll call an early meeting of the Watch Committee and put you on the agenda.”

“That would be kind of you.”

Matlock had halted as he left.

“Do you remember a time, Chief Constable, when Watch Committees gave instructions to the police?”

“Good day, Mr. Matlock. And please remember, no trouble. You’re getting a bad reputation. The Committee will have to take that into consideration as well. For your own sake, keep things quiet. You’re sixty-nine now, aren’t you? You might as well end your days peacefully.”

At the back of the hall, which smoke and the place’s own miasma made an area of almost impenetrable shade, Matlock could dimly make out a row of figures on whose breasts glinted the silver circle of the police. He let his eyes drift slowly forward. It wasn’t a bad audience even when you removed the 25 per cent he knew to be provocateurs, plain-clothes men and layabouts looking for fun. There must be well over a hundred people present. Then he laughed inwardly and humourlessly at his estimate of a hundred as a‘good’ audience.

There were five million living within a radius of thirty miles.

He let his drifting gaze halt when he reached the front row. There were only four people sitting there. Three of them he knew. More than knew. They were his, and he belonged to them. Colin Peters, his agent. Ernst Colquitt his chief assistant and heir-apparent. And Lizzie Armstrong, his secretary. She smiled broadly at him as his eyes paused on her. He drooped an eyelid in reply, then moved on to the fourth.

He had never seen him before, but him he knew also. At least he knew him in general terms. Sitting two or three seats away from the others; dressed in a charcoal-grey suit, brilliantly white shirt, dark-blue tie split down the middle by a thin silver line; holding an elegant leather document case on his lap; he was present at all the meetings and sat as impassively as his fellows had under Matlock’s close scrutiny.

The Chairman’s voice changed gear and Matlock brought his attention back to the figure beside him. Percy Collins was a few years younger than Matlock, but looked considerably older. In this day and age it was strange to see a man looking so old. Matlock’s own hair was still mainly brown, his face relatively unlined, his cheeks full, his teeth sound. Percy on the other hand looked like an octogenarian in the old days. His crown rose in wrinkled baldness out of a few wisps of white hair which clung round his ears and nape. His face skin hung in leathery pouches and his jaw-bone protruded like a loop of wire through muslin. But his eyes were clear and alight with enthusiasm, and as always they reassured Matlock when he felt doubts about the kind of image people like Percy gave to the movement.

“Ladies and gentlemen. Matthew Matlock!”

He had allowed his thoughts to drift again and was not quite ready, but years of experience in public speaking took him smoothly to his feet as applause, enthusiastic from the front rows, rippled back and lapped itself out in the shadows at the back. Matlock’s practised ear told him that things were worse than he had expected. He readjusted his estimate of the sympathetic audience to nearer seventy five than a hundred.

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for those kind words,” he began, smiling down at Percy. They were the only occupants of the platform. If I am to be a target, he had said at an early stage, let us at least put a premium on accuracy and award marks only for bullseyes, not for inners, outers and magpies.

“Tonight I want to concentrate your attention on one thing and one thing only. Budget Day. In a few weeks’ time the Government will be bringing in yet another Budget, its thirty-fourth since it first came to power. Since then there have been nine years in which the Government did not feel it necessary to introduce a formal Budget and merely contented itself with using its majority to bulldose through one or two more economically restrictive measures in the normal course of Parliamentary business.”