Derek Robinson - Hullo Russia, Goodbye England

Now Silk was in his bed and he knew how Tony must have felt. Utterly bloody useless.

“Hey!” he said. “Just remembered. Got some Benzedrine tablets somewhere. We used to carry them. Keep us awake on ops.”

“Silko.” She threw back the sheet and sat astride him. “You’d have a heart attack. I look awful in black. Who on earth is going to vote for a widow?”

“I was going to ask you about that.” He linked his hands behind his head and enjoyed examining her breasts. “I had a joke about two upstanding members in one household, but it doesn’t seem so funny now.”

They got dressed, and had tea and toast in the kitchen. Zoë explained how she came to be a candidate.

She had gone to a party and met a major in the Education Corps, slightly drunk, offering odds of ten to one that Labour would win the General Election hands down. Most people were amused. Zoë asked why he was so sure. “Easy,” he said. “What was the British army doing between Dunkirk and D-Day? A few divisions slogged their guts out in North Africa and Italy and Burma. All the rest – trained. Troops got bored. War Office invented ABCA – Army Bureau of Current Affairs. Lectures, film shows, debates. What are we fighting for? Millions of troops had four years to think and what did they decide? They’d die for their country,” the major said. “They wouldn’t die for a load of Tory toffs.”

Next day Zoë registered as the independent candidate for Lincolnshire (South). She had a strong political base: she had run Salute For Stalin Week (socks for Red soldiers), followed by Wings Over Berlin Week (the county gave the RAF a Lancaster) and Build Our Destroyer Week (a shilling bought a rivet). She knew every club and society in the constituency and they knew her. “Good start,” Silk said. “Who are you up against?”

Zoë had four opponents but only two that mattered.

The sitting MP was 62, unmarried, a Tory backbencher for half his life. His fat majority convinced him that Lincoln (South) liked a steady hand on the tiller. His campaign slogan was Business As Usual . Nothing exciting. The country had had enough excitement.

The Labour candidate – also a local man – was an ex-soldier. France, Egypt, Italy. Invalided out in 1943; ran the family farm.

“He’ll slaughter you,” Silk said.

“He’s got a beard, he shouts a lot, he’s teetotal and he wants to nationalise the pubs.”

“All the pubs?”

“And the breweries.”

“Extraordinary… Who else?”

“A vegetarian and a nudist.”

“Too much for me.” Silk warmed his hands on the teapot. “I can’t take the hectic pace of English politics.”

“But you must. I need you to stand behind me at my rallies, Silko. In uniform. Don’t say a word. Just look staunch.”

He did his best. Her next rally was that same evening, on a piece of waste land in Lincoln. A couple of hundred turned up. Zoë stood on a barrel and used a megaphone. “Why are your pubs shut on a Saturday afternoon?” she asked. “Exactly when you want a drink? I’ll tell you why. 1916! Scandalous lack of shells! Drunken munition workers! Lies – but that’s who the government blamed and they shut the pubs! When the real blame lay with incompetent bosses! And that , my friends, is why, forty years on, you can’t enjoy a drink after two o’clock! What hypocrisy! What humbuggery!” It went down well. They cheered lustily.

Zoë struck left and right. She demanded that, for every new law which Parliament passed, it must abolish an old one (“Muck out the stables of democracy!”); that everybody’s wages should rise annually to compensate for inflation (“If you stand still, you fall back!”); that the Church of England must be separated from the State (“The prime minister – who might be an atheist – chooses the next Archbishop of Canterbury! Bishops pass laws in the House of Lords! Is that how we want to run the country today?”).

She spoke for twenty minutes, answered three questions, moved on to a village hall, repeated the formula, and did it again at a tennis club.

Next day she made five speeches, all in farming areas. After her last, and biggest, meeting of the day, she stayed to talk with voters. Silk’s calves ached from so much standing. His face was stiff with staunchness. He wanted to go home, he wanted a large drink, followed by another. Farmers kept talking to him about the warble fly. Silk didn’t give a flying fuck about the warble fly.

At last Zoë said goodbye. The night was moonless, and it was a bad road. Silk drove slowly, snaking around potholes. “That went rather well,” Zoë said.

“Okay. It’s not real politics, is it? Where’s your big election manifesto? Zoë Silk’s ten-point plan to save Britain. Everyone else has got one.”

“Not my style, darling. These people have just put in a hard day’s work. They don’t want to be lectured. They deserve some fun.”

“I see. What does that make me? The clown?”

The potholes ended. He got the Frazer-Nash up into second gear. With peace, all the dimmers had come off the headlights: now you could see oncoming traffic a mile away. There was no oncoming traffic. She tied a scarf around her hair. Thirty miles an hour. Silk thought he was just stooging along, not much above a stall. He turned onto a main road and let the car off the leash. It swept through fifty and hit sixty. He held the wheel lightly. He enjoyed feeling the vibrations, it was how he’d held the control column of the Lanc, at one with the machine yet totally in command of it. At seventy the car was no longer working hard, it was following its headlights as they swept the road clear. Eighty wasn’t too fast. The road was doing all the rushing. The car was untroubled, a rock in a torrent. Ninety would be nice. Ninety was take-off speed, when everything was roses. The engine died.

He groped for the ignition key and found nothing.

No headlights. Black night everywhere. The car slowed, and slowed more. Now the only sound was the wind, and it too was fading to a soft whistle. He put the gearstick into neutral. The wheels started to shudder on the grass verge. He used the brakes. The car stopped.

Silence, except for the faraway ping of the cooling engine.

“That was bloody silly,” he said. “No lights, we could have hit… hit anything.”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?” She sounded very quiet, very calm. “The way you were driving, we were bound to hit something. Tree, telephone pole, low-flying aircraft. Quick death. Lots of strawberry jam. Laura inherits everything, and her only two.”

“Give me the damn keys.”

“You’re a selfish bastard, Silko. Kill yourself, if you wish, that’s your privilege. You’re not going to kill me.”

“That wasn’t fast, for Christ’s sake. We were just cruising along.”

“Call it what you like. I’m driving now.”

He thought about it. “You’re a lousy driver. Slow as cold treacle.”

“And you’re ten years old.”

He got out, and she climbed over the gearstick and the handbrake and settled into his seat. He slammed the door.

“Kick the wheels,” she said. “Spit on the bonnet. Then get in and we’ll go home.”

“I’d sooner walk.”

“Five years old.” She started the car and he watched her drive away.

The RAF did not do much marching. Bomber crews rarely marched at all. Silk had been standing all evening. By the time he walked a mile his feet were beginning to ache. There was very little traffic on this road and none was willing to stop for him. After two miles his calves were weary. After three miles he felt crippled. The Frazer Nash was parked on the grass and Zoë was asleep at the wheel. He woke her up. They drove home.

They slept late.