Clive Lewis - That Hideous Strength

The least satisfactory member of the circle in Mark’s eyes was Straik. Straik made no effort to adapt himself to the ribald and realistic tone in which his colleagues spoke. He never drank nor smoked. He would sit silent, nursing a threadbare knee with a lean hand and turning his large unhappy eyes from one speaker to another, without attempting to combat them or to join in the joke when they laughed. Then-perhaps once in the whole evening-something said would start him off: usually something about the opposition of reactionaries in the outer world and the measures which the N.I.C.E. would take to deal with it. At such moments he would burst into loud and prolonged speech, threatening, denouncing, prophesying.

The strange thing was that the others neither interrupted him nor laughed. There was some deeper unity between this uncouth man and them which apparently held in check the obvious lack of sympathy, but what it was Mark did not discover. Sometimes Straik addressed him in particular, talking, to Mark’s great discomfort and bewilderment, about resurrection. “Neither a historical fact nor a fable, young man,” he said, “but a prophecy. All the miracles . . . shadows of things to come. Get rid of false spirituality. It is all going to happen, here in this world, in the only world there is. What did the Master tell us? Heal the sick, cast out devils, raise the dead. We shall. The Son of Man-that is, Man himself, full grown-has power to judge the world-to distribute life without end, and punishment without end. You shall see. Here and now.” It was all very unpleasant.

It was on the day after Hingest’s funeral that Mark first ventured to walk into the library on his own; hitherto he had always been supported by Feverstone or Filostrato. He was a little uncertain of his reception, and yet also afraid that if he did not soon assert his right to the entree this modesty might damage him. He knew that in such matters the error in either direction is equally fatal; one has to guess and take the risk.

It was a brilliant success. The circle were all there and before he had closed the door behind him all had turned with welcoming faces and Filostrato had said “Ecco” and the Fairy, “Here’s the very man.” A glow of sheer pleasure passed over Mark’s whole body. Never had the fire seemed to burn more brightly nor the smell of the drinks to be more attractive. He was actually being waited for. He was wanted.

“How quick can you write two leading articles, Mark?” said Feverstone.

“Can you work all night?” asked Miss Hardcastle.

“I have done,” said Mark. “What’s it all about?”

“You are satisfied?” asked Filostrato. “That it-the disturbance-must go forward at once, yes?”

“That’s the joke of it,” said Feverstone. “She’s done her work too well. She hasn’t read her Ovid. Ad metam properate simul.”

“We cannot delay it if we wished,” said Straik.

“What are we talking about?” said Mark.

“The disturbances at Edgestow,” answered Feverstone.

“Oh . . . I haven’t been following them very much. Are they becoming serious?”

“They’re going to become serious, sonny,” said the Fairy. “And that’s the point. The real riot was timed for next week. All this little stuff was only meant to prepare the ground. But it’s been going on too well, damn it. The balloon will have to go up to-morrow, or the day after at latest.”

Mark glanced in bewilderment from her face to Feverstone’s. The latter doubled himself up with laughter and Mark, almost automatically, gave a jocular turn to his own bewilderment.

“I think the penny hasn’t dropped, Fairy,” he said.

“You surely didn’t imagine,” grinned Feverstone, “that the Fairy left the initiative with the natives?”

“You mean she herself is the Disturbance?” said Mark.

“Yes, yes,” said Filostrato, his little eyes glistening above his fat cheeks.

“It’s all fair and square,” said Miss Hardcastle. “You can’t put a few hundred thousand imported workmen-”

“Not the sort you enrolled!” interjected Feverstone.

“Into a sleepy little hole like Edgestow,” Miss Hardcastle continued, “without having trouble. I mean there’d have been trouble anyway. As it turns out, I don’t believe my boys needed to do anything. But, since the trouble was bound to come, there was no harm in seeing it came at the right moment.”

“You mean you’ve engineered the disturbances?” said Mark. To do him justice, his mind was reeling from this new revelation. Nor was he aware of any decision to conceal his state of mind: in the snugness and intimacy of that circle he found his facial muscles and his voice, without any conscious volition, taking on the tone of his colleagues.

“That’s a crude way of putting it,” said Feverstone.

“It makes no difference,” said Filostrato. “This is how things have to be managed.”

“Quite,” said Miss Hardcastle. “It’s always done. Anyone who knows police work will tell you. And as I say, the real thing-the big riot-must take place within the next forty-eight hours.”

“It’s nice to get the tip straight from the horse’s mouth!” said Mark. “I wish I’d got my wife out of the town, though.”

“Where does she live?” said the Fairy.

“Up at Sandown.”

“Ah. It’ll hardly affect her. In the meantime, you and I have got, to get busy about the account of the riot.”

“But-what’s it all for?”

“Emergency regulations,” said Feverstone. “You’ll never get the powers we want at Edgestow until the Government declares that a state of emergency exists there.”

“Exactly,” said Filostrato. “It is folly to talk of peaceful revolutions. Not that the canaglia would always . . . resist-often they have to be prodded into it-but until there is the disturbance, the firing, the barricades-no one gets powers to act effectively. There is not enough what you call weigh on the boat to steer him.”

“And the stuff must be all ready to appear in the papers the very day after the riot,” said Miss Hardcastle. “That means it must be handed in to the D.D. by six to-morrow morning at latest.”

“But how are we to write it to-night if the thing doesn’t even happen till to-morrow at the earliest?”

Everyone burst out laughing.

“You’ll never manage publicity that way, Mark,” said Feverstone. “You surely don’t need to wait for a thing to happen before you tell the story of it!”

“Well, I admit,” said Mark, and his face also was full of laughter, “I had a faint prejudice for doing so, not living in Mr. Dunne’s sort of time nor in looking-glass land.”

“No good, sonny,” said Miss Hardcastle. “We’ve got to get on with it at once. Time for one more drink and you and I’d better go upstairs and begin. We’ll get them to give us devilled bones and coffee at two.”

This was the first thing Mark had been asked to do which he himself, before he did it, clearly knew to be criminal. But the moment of his consent almost escaped his notice; certainly, there was no struggle, no sense of turning a corner. There may have been a time in the world’s history when such moments fully revealed their gravity, with witches prophesying on a blasted heath or visible Rubicons to be crossed. But, for him, it all slipped past in a chatter of laughter, of that intimate laughter between fellow professionals, which of all earthly powers is strongest to make men do very bad things before they are yet, individually, very bad men. A few moments later he was trotting upstairs with the Fairy. They passed Cosser on the way and Mark, talking busily to his companion, saw out of the corner of his eye that Cosser was watching them. To think that he had once been afraid of Cosser!