The Laughter of Carthage

TWO

NEXT AFTERNOON four coffins came aboard: four long wooden boxes, probably of ammunition. We left Novorossisk with an additional trio of elderly Russian women, a deaf old man, a wounded British captain and his Indian orderly, an Italian Red Cross nurse. We now had one of the most curiously mixed groups of passengers any ship had ever carried. We would be continuously at sea for several days, heading into warmer weather. Our last Russian port of call was to be Batoum. In my new mood I began to look forward to Constantinople, to the prospect of travelling in Europe and settling in London. I wanted so much to be free of Brodmann (or rather the threat of what he represented). I wanted to enjoy the Baroness without the sense that my idyll might be interrupted at any moment. This, I now decided, might be achieved in Constantinople during the few days I would be there.

The delicious geometry of the Baroness blended in my imagination with the more severe geometry of the ship. Both struck me a; shuddering, powerful, uncertain beasts to be controlled with skill and delicacy. On that second day I introduced her to the pleasures of cocaine-sniffing. I heaped her with sensation upon sensation. She was greedy for everything I could offer. ‘It has been so long. I have missed so much.’ She was a huge, arrogant cat which had elected to place herself absolutely in my power. The more obedient she became in pursuit of her lust the more my affection for her increased; yet she never seemed to lose her identity. She remained the

Baroness von Ruckstühl; almost an ally to equal Mrs Cornelius. She called me her ‘mysterious, dark stranger’. She had heard the calumny, too. She said she would not care if I was a Jew and a charlatan; but she believed in me, in my greatness, in my destiny. She thought, she said, that race was of no importance at all. Ich verspreche lhnen! She was a woman of enormous, if specific, generosity.

I had some misgivings, of course. These were to do with my discovering the wealth of passion and sensuality I had unlocked in her; the considerable determination expressed in her feelings which, I feared, might at any moment go out of my control. It was not long, for instance, before her original intention of ‘a brief, illicit love affair’ began to transform into a desire for a longer, possibly more formal, liaison. Soon she suggested breathlessly it would be ‘wonderful if we could be together for a whole night’.

I had already planned to spend more time with her, but I could not help fearing she would choose to interpret a mere inclination as a declaration of fidelity. I had already made it plain to her that my career took precedence over everything else. I looked directly into her great blue-green eyes and said as tenderly as I could: ‘That’s impossible.’

She responded wistfully. ‘I suppose so.’ Yet it was obvious she was already considering another approach. As the end of our voyage drew near, she hoped for some sort of reassurance from me. I was touched by the way she turned her massive head to one side and let her shoulder fall. She was like an enormous schoolgirl. I embraced her, stroking her cheek. ‘Already there has to be considerable gossip,’ I said. ‘The more pernicious because Mrs Cornelius is still officially my wife. And you would suffer far worse from gossip than I.’

‘I don’t give a damn about their gossip, do you?’

It was true I did not much begrudge them their little crumb of scandal. It took their minds from their own troubles and within a fortnight I would be free of them. But it suited me to feign discomfort. ‘I do care,’ I told her. ‘These are times when a little bit of malice can cost you your life.’ Plainly it was up to me to keep a sense of proportion. Moreover, I was still thinking of Brodmann. He had the power to put me in front of a firing squad, should certain people believe him. Similarly, it was important to placate the Baroness. If she became vindictive she could embarrass me with the Allied authorities. Much better that the affair should be brought to a gradual, bitter-sweet conclusion, without anger or tears. Soon she and I would go our own ways. The entire voyage would be remembered as a passing interlude, a pleasant shipboard romance. The Baroness was bound to lose some of her infatuation for me when we disembarked. Nonetheless it was the first time I had enjoyed an affair with a woman denied pleasure for too many years and yet who was used to commanding authority. I was becoming fascinated by her.

Even when she pretended to change the subject it was actually to amplify her theme. She stroked my head almost as if I were her child, or a favourite dog. ‘There are people I expect to meet in Constantinople, Simka. You and they could work to your mutual benefit.’ By which she revealed she now planned a future for us! She seemed to ignore my mission, my association with Mrs Cornelius, my own ambitions, and when I murmured something about them, she was dismissive. ‘There’s no harm in considering different options, surely?’

‘You think of me too much.’ I took her hand. I was gentle. Yet we duelled. ‘You must first look to your own interests. I have protected myself pretty well for several years!’

‘I see my interests as yours,’ she said. It was the nearest she had come to a plain statement. In an effort to turn her mind from this course, I pressed my hand hard against her breasts and bit her ear-lobe.

Since I could not control her imagination I would have to resort to minor deception, using the ‘secret orders’ excuse which had served me excellently in the past. If I liked I could use it within a day of reaching Constantinople. I could even enjoy her company for a week after we disembarked and still leave with honour and little fear of her turning treacherous. At a pinch I would also recruit help from Mrs Cornelius. (Though currently I could not easily confide in her, since she spent most of her evenings with the English sailors. She was rarely in bed much before dawn.)

Satisfied I had evolved a good enough plan, I relaxed again, though the spectre of Brodmann remained a flaw to my overall peace of mind. At night I would spend an hour or more looking for him (or whoever it was who so resembled him) but without success. Twice I waited outside the closed cabin door, to be rewarded with nothing more than what might have been a faint groan, or a small, dry coughing noise which lasted a few seconds. I maintained my habit of rising early, often before Mrs Cornelius returned from her revels, and enjoying my own company on deck. A day or two out of Novorossisk the weather began to improve. Sometimes blue sky could be seen between clouds whose outlines resembled sleeping polar bears.

At length the ship appeared to be hemmed in by these massive white mountains. Perhaps she was adrift in one of those submarine caverns scientists say lie beneath our icecaps; caverns leading to undiscovered tropical continents where an explorer might find primitive nations inhabited by half-human races. The engines echoed loudly in my ears, filling the whole vast expanse. Had Russia drowned in the tears of the dying? Had we alone escaped? Were we sailing even now above the silent roofs of cities whose populations were corpses: corpses whose hair streamed like seaweed, whose damned eyes begged for release? It was impossible to stop. We could not help. We were searching for our Ararat. I began to fancy this was truly the end of civilisation; ourselves the only survivors. Might it be my fate to lead these people towards a New Dawn. The best of them (especially the English) already believed in me as a prophet. Again I became fully inspired with the sense of my great destiny. Of course I did not really believe the world had ended, but the metaphor was accurate. I stood on the forward deck of the Rio Cruz in dignified fur. The black and silver Cossack pistols in my pockets continued to remind me of my heritage while I now believed as strongly as I ever had in the brilliant future which awaited me. Behind me was a beloved but thoroughly exhausted Russia; before me was Europe. She had learned the lesson of War and now must surely restore herself in a Golden Age of justice and human achievement where my engineering abilities would be immediately recognised and I would be called to play a major role in a great renaissance. The future was in the hands of the mighty Christian nations: Britain, France, Italy and America, even Germany. A future of skyscraper and undersea tunnel, of television, the matter transmitter and, greatest of all, the flying city. Let Russia with all her sins fall back into a Dark Age in which petty would-be tsars squabbled for dominance of an ever-diminishing territory. The West must become purified chrome and glass rising to the clouds, sophisticated machines and wonderful electronics, the true heritage of Byzantium: a Graeco-Christian Utopia!

Two thousand years ago we had lost the path. Now we had again been granted the chance to find it and follow it. The Turk was on his knees; the Jew scuttled for cover. Carthage was once more reduced and this time must never be allowed sufficient pause to regain her strength. I knew I could not be alone in this dream. All over the Christian world men and women were taking fresh breath, preparing themselves for the task. Bu ne demektir? People snigger at me now when I tell them what might have been. They do not realise how many of us there were; how easily (had it not been for the machinations of petty, greedy minds) we might have made the dream reality. Anyone who knows me will tell you I have scarcely an ounce of suspicion in my nature; paranoia is foreign to me; yet only an idiot would deny the power of Zion. Theirs was a dark vision, opposed to mine and those like me. Mr Thompson was one such fellow soul. I sought him out. It was important to keep a reasonable distance between myself and the Baroness. I confided to Mr Thompson that I found it hard to imagine how I should survive in the non-Russian world. Again he assured me men like myself were needed everywhere, particularly in Britain. I was, he said, ‘a wonder’, an ‘infant prodigy’. My talents would not be wasted. Sucking his pipe for hours on end he quietly contemplated my ideas, admitting that many were above his head. He was convinced, however, it was to be an engineer’s future. ‘I envy you, Mister Pyatnitski. Trotski’s a fool to drive people like you away. I’m surprised you haven’t thought of the USA. That’s where I’d go, if I was young. They appreciate our sort in America.’

But the United States at that time had never captured my imagination, although the pictures of redskins, frontiersmen and buffalo (gleaned from my reading Karl May and Fenimore Cooper) were romantic enough. I believed there were no true cities in America and precious little civilisation. It took time, in my view, to develop a true city. I shook my head. ‘It’s not my ambition to build farm-machinery or locomotives, or work out means of mass-producing cheap clocks. Let the miners keep their gold; I’ll not part them from it in exchange for a few penny toys!’

Mr Thompson shrugged. ‘You might find you’re glad to be free of European squabbles. Yankees like to keep themselves to themselves. I know how they feel. The British are too fond of taking care of other people.’

‘I’m a Russian and a Slav. Mr Thompson. I couldn’t leave Europe in the lurch. Also I am a Christian. My loyalties are clear. But for the Bolsheviks and the Jews I should not be an exile at all. Everyone knows that Jews already control New York. I have nothing in common with the self-serving bourgeoisie aboard this ship. Let them go to America if they wish. They are all deserters.’

We were leaning against the funnel for warmth while this particular conversation took place, contemplating the black, featureless ocean. Our various lights, red, green and white, were reflected in the water and we might have been riding on dark clouds, through infinite space. Mr Thompson relit his pipe. ‘You Russians seem a hopeless bunch of creatures, I must admit. I’ve seen the refugees in Constantinople, already. A man with your qualifications is welcome anywhere. But what do you think will become of the rest? The women and children? Will they be allowed back when the war is over?’

I could not answer. In those days no one believed what hideousness was yet to come. Many went back, during the so-called New Economic Policy period. Most were dead before 1930. I will not pretend that as the years passed I looked for hope of welcome, or at least recognition, in my homeland. I would not be alive today if I too had clutched at the straws offered by the Reds in the middle-twenties.

When Mr Thompson returned to his duties I was melancholy again. Against my usual habit, I sought the company of Mrs Cornelius. As usual she was enjoying herself in the dining-saloon with some of the officers. Jack Bragg was there, singing the choruses of Knock ‘Em In The Old Kent Road and Two Lovely Black Eyes. I think he flushed when he saw me, confirming my suspicion of his amorous feelings towards my companion. He could not know how sympathetic I felt. Mrs Cornelius wore her yellow and black dress (she called it her ‘tango frock’) and was performing the traditional English dance known as the Knees Up. I took a glass of rum and sang along with the others, imitating every one of Mrs Cornelius’s inflections and gestures. It was how my rather formal English, inherited from Pearson’s Magazine and various novelists, began to gain that neat touch of colloquialism which would often confound native Britons and enable me to move gracefully in all walks of life.

Mrs Cornelius winked at me, as she usually did, and persuaded me to sing one of the songs she had taught me. I willingly displayed my mastery with a rendering of Wot A Marf, Wot a Marf, Wot a Norf An’ Sarf. This has always remained one of my favourites. It was greeted with huge applause. Those Russians who had remained at the far end of the saloon, nearest the doors, were completely baffled. Mrs Cornelius gestured kindly for them to join us, but they displayed either embarrassment or downright surliness and disapproval. I too called they should ‘let their hair down’ and then, to my sudden horror, saw Brodmann, who had been huddled in a shawl and hidden by a fat dowager, rise from his seat. I could barely contain myself. It was a tribute to my iron will that I did not cry out. I forced myself to continue smiling and held my hand to the figure who hesitantly approached us. The smile turned to what was probably an inane grin of relief as I realised this creature was not, after all, my enemy. In response to me, he began to beam all over his red, greasy face, stumbling forward, singing some popular ditty familiar to me from my early days in Odessa. I would never normally have shown such welcome to a Jew, but now it was too late. ‘I am so glad,’ he said, when he had finished the first verse. ‘I have been ill, you know. Afraid they would turn me off the ship. Measles or something, but I am completely recovered. I have seen you once or twice, have I not? At night when I was getting some air?’ Before I could extricate myself, Mrs Cornelius put one plump, pink arm around his shoulders and the other around mine and was soon kicking up her legs in a kind of can-can. I had no choice but to make the best of it. By the time Mrs Cornelius broke away to dance with Jack Bragg I was left with the drunken, sickly Jew whose name, he said, was Hernikof. In his expensive, gaudy suit, with his gold watch-chain and huge diamond rings, he looked grotesque. He sweated a great deal, mopped his head and neck and insisted over and over again that he was ‘perfectly recovered’. He began to tell me how terrible it had been for him in Odessa; how his family had died in a pogrom, how his mother had been crucified by White Cossacks: all the familiar exaggerations of his race. When a short time later he leered at me and asked me if I, too, were going on to Berlin ‘with the attractive Baroness’ it was all I could do to hold back my temper. Yet, of course, I remained relieved that the ghost had been laid. At last I managed to return to the table where Mrs Cornelius sat panting. I squeezed in between her and Bragg, refilled my glass and made a great show of concentrating on the words of O, What A Happy Land Is England. It was bad enough having to travel in close proximity to the likes of Hernikof, but it was far more hateful when they assumed an intimacy and similarity of ambition and character. True, I had left Odessa considerably richer than I had arrived, and with military promotion into the bargain, but these fat brokers, wailing for sympathy, had had nothing of the real experiences, had seen nothing of the true horror. They had neither been imprisoned by anarchists or Bolsheviks nor had they known what it was to give up any hope of living. They had not seen men and women kneeling in the snow beside the railway tracks waiting to be shot in the head. They had not been forced to keep company with corpses and crows, with louse-ridden Cossacks who might kill you casually from mere boredom. They had heard of a few arrests, the occasional execution, seen some Jews being pursued through the streets, but their indignation was chiefly aroused by lost bills-of-lading, requisitioned houses, stock purchased with useless money.

That night I felt as if I had been driven back into my former mental condition; ‘within the nightmare’ as Russians say: that perpetual dreamlike state of frequently unadmitted terror I had known for over two years. My life and sanity had been attacked, my whole existence thrown upside-down by the cruel madness of Revolution and Civil War; my brain and body had throbbed, night and day, with fear. The terror becomes manifest. The dry mouth opens. Any words will come out of it. Anything which might save it. When the danger passes it is impossible to remember exactly what that frightened mouth has said. Neither does it matter, because you are still alive. Yet people look at you in contempt and call you a liar! They are lies, of course. I am not a fool. I will not deny it. My survival depends on self-knowledge. But are they like the lies Hernikof doubtless gave the British simply to gain sympathy and a passport to the rich pickings of Berlin? Such slimy untruths would not work on me. While not proud of everything I have done, I scarcely feel guilty; because I survived. What did it matter if the Jews tried to ingratiate themselves with me? What if those jumped-up kulaks snubbed me? The condemnation of the privileged is meaningless. Besides, I was admired by the British. I was loved by a woman of noble blood. I was watched over by another who was both mother and sister to me. The Jew was somehow shaken off and I found myself swaying between Mrs Cornelius and Lt Bragg, singing one of the sad Cossack songs I had learned when a prisoner of the Reds. Jack Bragg was plainly moved. He would have remained to hear the rest of the verses but he had to go on duty. I was halfway through and had reached the part where the second pony has died, giving up its life for the heroine, when Mrs Cornelius fell with a gargling noise backwards into my lap and looking up at me through her large, candid eyes said slowly, ‘I fink ya’d better put me ter bed, Ive.’

I helped her back to our cabin. This time she controlled her stomach until we were both undressed and then, as I reached to pull the blankets over her, she was sick on my only nightshirt. By the time I had washed it out in the ship’s toilet (the cabin had no running water or individual heating) she had gone to sleep. I stood supporting myself with a hand on the bunk looking at her in the yellow light from a hurricane lamp Jack Bragg had managed to find for us. The throbbing of the ship became indistinguishable from the throbbing of my own loins. Once you become used to lust being satisfied it is much harder to control. I longed for her to want me, to open her arms to me. I leaned down to stroke her hair. She murmured gratefully and smiled. ‘Thass loverly . . .’I touched her neck. ’Oo,’ she said, ‘you wicked fing,’ and she wriggled in the bed. I sat down on the edge. I kissed her ear. Her eyes opened and her smile changed to an expression of shocked surprise. ‘Ivan! Yer littel bleeder. I fort you woz . . .’ It was evident she had forgotten the name of her Frenchman.

‘François.’ I began to stand up.

‘Yeah.’

Aloft once more I fell into a troubled sleep, dreaming of Brodmann disguising himself as Hernikof and summoning vengeful Cossacks to torture and kill me. Waking from this I deliberately recalled the strong thighs, the red, eager lips of my Leda, her magnificent Slavic breasts, her hair, the sweep of her spine, the curve of her backside. Sex has always helped me to soothe away my fears. I became increasingly willing to risk a night or two in the Baroness’s company. The consequences, after all, would not be considerable, even if she did turn against me. And would it be any more than I deserved? I was guilty of dreadful greed in my desire to possess Mrs Cornelius as well as Leda Nicolayevna. How could I forget the bargain I had made with my one friend in all the world; the person who had saved my life more than once: my Guardian Angel? Sometimes, even now, when Mrs Cornelius and I have known carnal love, I recall that incident with shame. I am not a monster. But I suppose it is in all of us to behave like a monster occasionally. Looking back, I blame Hernikof. When those about you are cynical and assume your motives to be as cynical as theirs, sometimes you behave as they do. We are all social creatures, unconsciously moved by the desires and expectations of our fellows. I am no different to anyone else. I have never claimed to be.

Now I understand my behaviour a little better. Unquestionably I was still within the nightmare. It takes more than a week or two at sea to dissipate the reaction to years of familiar terror. Terror truly becomes an old friend. One misses him. The sudden absence of threat can be almost as traumatic as the loss of security. For the same reasons, small wars frequently follow hard on the conclusion of larger wars. Any habit, no matter how self-destructive, is hard to lose, particularly when it is never fully acknowledged. Perhaps, too, something happens to the body-chemistry when so much adrenalin is frequently summoned. We have all seen the small dog rescued from the fangs of the larger beast; frequently he will turn and fasten his teeth in the wrist of his benefactor. My love for Mrs Cornelius was far more spiritual than it was physical, though of course she was extraordinarily sensual. I was equally special to her, I know. She did not at that time wish to risk the destruction of our relationship by introducing common lust into it. She told me this many, many years later. I understand that perfectly now, of course. On the Rio Cruz. however, I found myself frequently baffled.

Next morning I got up as usual and went on deck. The air was considerably warmer and the light spray refreshed me. Two or three seamen were at work polishing our brass and scrubbing our decks almost as if they prepared for a special event. The sun shone through patchy, fast-moving cloud. I fancied I could smell the coasts of Asia, though I knew it would be some time before we sighted Batoum. The wounded English officer nodded to me as he limped past, leaning on his walking stick, his face pale with pain, his Indian batman a pace or two behind him, showing poorly-disguised concern for his master. The woman with the cards, my own personal Moira, played on, her black shawl rising and falling on her shoulders like the wings of a lazy scavenger. And the Jew Hernikof was there, offering a feeble grin, as if our contact of last night had made us boon friends. There was something about his features which still reminded me of the pathetic Brodmann. I did not want trouble. I nodded to him distantly and tried to walk on. But he followed. He was eager. ‘I hope you weren’t offended by anything I said last night. I can’t remember too clearly. I suppose I’m not completely recovered. I’m normally not much of a drinker, anyway.’

‘It’s of no importance.’ To escape, I began to climb the metal ladder to the forecastle. He clucked like a sick chicken and his feet moved involuntarily as if scratching gravel. Evidently he was frustrated at not being able to follow me.

‘I think I might have lost my usual sense of decorum. The experiences were painful, you know.’ His voice was hoarse, even desperate, as he craned his neck.

‘We have all had them.’ I reached the forecastle and peered down at him. There was nowhere else to go. At my back was the sea, parting in white foam before the bow.

‘Oh, of course.’ Again the hesitant grimace of a smile. ‘They will never end, I suppose, for the likes of us.’

I was offended by his presumptive claim to be Russian. As I turned away I heard him say: ‘Der Krieg ist endlos. Das Beste, was wir erhoffen können, sind gelegenliche Augenblicke der Ruhe inmitten des Kampfes.’

I understood him perfectly but chose to tell him coldly and in Russian, ‘I do not speak Yiddish.’

He protested. ‘It is German. I gathered you’re a linguist.’ He blinked, too short-sighted to see me properly yet trying to read my expression.

I became furious, ‘Is this a test, M. Hernikof? Do you think I am not what I say I am? Do you suspect I’m an agent provocateur? A Boche? A Red?’

He pretended innocence. ‘Of course not!’

‘Then please do not pursue me about this ship shouting at me in foreign languages.’

As he turned away his lips were trembling. Had I not guessed his intentions I might have felt pity for him. But he meant me no good. Also it was not in my interest to be seen hobnobbing with someone of his persuasion. Later it occurred to me that because of my dark hair and brown eyes he believed me a co-religionist; not the first time such a mistake had been made. The same looks were once likened to those of the Tsarevitch himself! Were the Tsar and his family Jewish? Friends have told me all my life I should not take such misunderstandings to heart. But it is a cruel thing, and sometimes dangerous, to be the victim of that particular error. On occasions it almost cost me my life. I was able to escape only by means of sharp wits, excellent credentials and a little good fortune.

After breakfast I joined Leda as usual. She was sitting outside the dining-saloon beneath the shadow of a lifeboat which swung gently in its davits. The sun was beginning to shine quite strongly and she held up her face as if a pale ray or two could warm her. She smiled at me. She pushed back her heavy hair so that the sun might touch as much of her flesh as possible. ‘Good morning. Maxim Arturovitch.’ We were always formal on such occasions. I lifted my hat and asked if I might bring a deckchair to sit next to her. I think she could see I was disturbed. ‘Did you sleep badly?’ Her strong hand moved a fraction towards me. She straightened herself a little. ‘Only for want of you,’ I whispered. Kitty came running up. She wore a maroon coat with matching hat and gloves. ‘Will you play with me today, Maxim Arturovitch? I’m beginning to think you don’t love me any more!’ I was frequently struck, as now, by her remarkable resemblance to her mother. For a moment I was filled with enormous lust.

Leda laughed. ‘You’re a bad girl, Kitty. A flirt! What will become of you?’ Yet I was forced to be her donkey, galloping round the deck two or three times with her warm little thighs pressed into my waist before I feigned exhaustion. When I returned to my chair I found Hernikof balanced against the bulkhead. He was chatting to the Baroness who, well-mannered as always, seemed perfectly happy to give him the time of day. I seated myself without a word and pretended total concentration upon a paper aeroplane for the little girl, delighting in the sensation of her lovely, delicate flesh leaning against my own. I was so enraptured that I hardly noticed Hernikof leave.

‘That poor man,’ said Leda. ‘You have heard his story I suppose.’

‘I’ve heard a thousand like it. That poor man is, at best, an opportunist. I’ve been trying to shake him off since last night.’

‘He’s lonely.’ She had that streak of philosemitism so familiar in romantic German women of the same generation and since I had no wish to upset her I remained silent. It was not impossible, I thought, that her own husband’s origins had a touch or two of the Levant in them. ‘He’s a bore.’ I finished the aeroplane and handed it to Kitty. The child immediately launched it into the wind. It disappeared on the other side of the bridge and she ran off in pursuit. Leda was laughing. ‘You’re certainly out of sorts today. Have I offended you?’

I was actually half-mad with a mixture of lust and rage. ‘Not at all!’ I reassured her enthusiastically. I drew in several salty breaths. ‘If I seem in poor spirits it is because I’ve been separated from you for too long.’

Her face was glowing; she was at once amused and flattered. She controlled her own breathing. ‘Well, I want you to try to be polite to M. Hernikof. Everyone on this ship snubs him. He’s been very ill. And he lost his entire family, you know.’

I held my tongue.

‘He was acquainted with my late husband. They occasionally had business in common. He was then very powerful. A financier. He still has considerable interests abroad. Perhaps he could be helpful, when your mission is over, in backing some of your inventions.’ She arranged her plaid rug over her knees, her hand lingering in her lap.

I could not believe she did not know what Jewish money meant: it corrupted; the best of mankind’s motives were twisted by it and always utilised to the benefit of Zion. How could she have witnessed the descent of Russia into Chaos and barbarism and still not understand the chief cause? Like many women she was moved too much by a personal liking for individuals. Probably the Hernikof who charmed her was in himself no villain. But he represented the forces which most threatened our Christian civilisation. I saw no point in mindlessly attacking such a man. I never approved of concentration camps and pogroms; yet there were sound reasons for these things. And there were reasons for being suspicious of any smiling Jew who held out his bag of silver to you. Where did he acquire that silver? Ask Judas. Would the truth come cheerfully and spontaneously to his lips? Would it to any man’s who had done what he had done?

‘I have no desire,’ I said to Leda, ‘to be rude. All I meant to say was that I’ve little in common with him and have no intention of becoming his closest friend!’

‘You’re as much a snob as the rest,’ she said, ‘It’s incredible.’

I refused to answer at first. Then it occurred to me to tell her how I had been betrayed by a Jew; how I had almost lost my life. I turned to speak.

She smiled at me. ‘Well,’ she said, ending the matter, ‘he’s a decent, kindly man. How lovely a little sunshine is after all that dreadful greyness.’ She touched my arm, careless of the stares of the two little old monkey-sisters as they passed us. She put her face close to mine. ‘I think sexual frustration is ruining your temper.’

I made an effort to seem cheerful. I smiled. The sun caught the waves for a second and turned them to silver, ‘It’s hard to live this ridiculous charade.’

‘And your Mrs Cornelius? Has she complained?’ The warmth of her voice was at odds with the nature of her question.

‘She knows nothing.’

‘I doubt that. Still, young Mr Bragg takes up most of her attention.’

A little offended, I bridled. ‘She finds him amusing company, no more.’ I had told her of the bargain between myself and Mrs Cornelius, how my companion intended to see her Frenchman as soon as we reached Constantinople. I suspected the Baroness of jealousy. She had somehow guessed, as women will, my feelings towards Mrs Cornelius and she was sounding me out, I knew. I remained on guard, even when she responded mysteriously: ‘Then you have a wonderful means of avoiding certain evidence, my dear, for you are not a total innocent. I bow to the power of your imagination.’

This puzzled me. ‘I fail to see the connection between my imagination, which many have praised, and my innocence, which few have remarked upon since I was sixteen.’

I could not understand why she was close to laughter, though I was relieved that she was not pursuing the matter of Mrs Cornelius. ‘Oh, I know you have seen much more of life than I.’ She made an exaggerated gesture of obeisance. ‘And you are much better educated in almost every respect. Indeed, your only disadvantage in life, as far as I can see, is that you are male.’

That was my cue to dismiss her mysteries. Whenever a woman begins to speak cryptically of secret, female knowledge it is always best to ignore her. She is murmuring a spell which has meaning only to herself (if it has meaning at all). What a woman cannot verbalise she will classify, with superb pretence at authority, under the general heading of ‘what a woman knows’. Thus, in argument, she baffles her male opponent, gaining the advantage while he wonders what it is his poor, insensitive masculine brain cannot comprehend. Frequently my confidence has been threatened by this trick. I have only recovered by virtue of my superior intelligence and perception. Why else would so many women have loved and admired me in my lifetime? They soon learn respect for someone who refuses to be drawn into their little traps. Life is in many ways an ongoing contest (which is possibly what Hernikof meant). We must forever be alert, particularly against those who claim they have our best interests at heart. None respects female intuition more than I, but sometimes women will read far too much into a simple situation. So it was with my Baroness. Infatuated with me, she presumed therefore that all women must be desperate to lure me to their beds. I was amused by her curiosity, but remained anxious lest it turn into that crazed feminine jealousy which is, at very least, inconvenient and often very dangerous. In the afternoon we made love as usual, drenched in our mutual fluids until we stank, as she put it, ‘like cats on heat’. By now I was halfway to promising her a few days at least in Constantinople and she was growing excited in her anticipation, ‘If only it could be sooner than that.’ My hands were full of her flesh; of her breasts, her thighs and her buttocks and for a third time in succession I enjoyed the huge warmth of her magnificent cunt. She was like a Grecian goddess, and a welcome change from the young girls I usually chose. I felt I could disappear into her forever and remain safe from all the world’s vicissitudes. In a woman like my Baroness it was possible to escape and explore simultaneously. As the dinner bell sounded I was still inside her. It was with considerable reluctance that we parted, washed as best we could, and emerged, reasonably well-groomed, to face the expressionless stare of Marusya Veranovna, the excited cries of young Kitty, full of the day’s adventures.

Leda did not seem especially concerned, yet I had begun to resent the servant’s unspoken criticism of us. And I hated the circumstances which made us end our love-making sharp at six o’clock, no matter what we were doing. Constantinople seemed a year away.

At dinner, Mrs Cornelius said to me across the table: ‘Yore lookin’ worn art, Ivan. Did I keep yer up larst night? Sorry abart bein’ sick’.

I waved a careless hand. She appeared not to remember the rest of the encounter and I was grateful for that. Attacking her meat-pudding with panache, she smiled around at the officers as if to include them in her apology. Captain Monier-Williams joined us. He looked proudly down at his own piece of pudding before beginning to eat. He often remarked how well his ship was feeding everyone. ‘A good bit of duff keeps your strength up a treat.’ He had heard we should be able to approach Batoum without danger. ‘And probably dock in the harbour, thank goodness. They’ve had very little trouble so far.’ He uttered a small sigh of satisfaction. ‘After Batoum, we’ll be heading back in the right direction. I suppose you’ll both be pleased to get to Constantinople.’

‘As punch,’ said Mrs Cornelius. ‘Though I can’t say this ‘asn’t bin a nice trip.’

The captain picked up his knife and fork, staring purposefully at his dinner. ‘Only a few more days, then. After that, it’s home and Blighty!’ He ended this conversation by placing a large piece of grey meat into his mouth and chewing slowly. He dearly wished to be back in Dorset where he had lately bought a small house for his retirement, but had gone through the whole war as a volunteer troopship commander. All his male relatives had served either in the Royal Navy or the Merchant Marine and he spoke frequently of sons and nephews who had sailed with this ship or that. He was luckier than most, he told us, and had lost only two. He knew of whole family names which had been extinguished between 1914 and 1918.

As he ate I said to him, ‘I agree with Mrs Cornelius. This has been, all things considered, a wonderful voyage. The Russian people will forever be grateful to you. There are some aboard who already think you little short of a saint.’

This brought a response. He swallowed his food and smiled. ‘I’m doing my duty, Mr Pyatnitski. It’s the British taxpayer they should canonise.’

‘For my part, that debt shall be settled soon, sir. I suspect that when the Reds have reduced my country to total chaos a reasonable government will be called back. Only at that time shall I consider going home. By then I shall have passed on one or two ideas to your people which I’m sure they’ll find useful. There’s a strong chance I shall be a member of the future Russian government. In that case, England shall have a friend in me.’

He shook his head at this. ‘If it happens I’ll be the first to cheer. But my experience, old chap, is once a country embarks on a course of bloody uprisings and counter-coups there’s no restoring possible. Look how China is fragmenting. The pattern’s already set.’

‘Russia is not China, captain. Nor is she Indo-China, ruled over by a dozen contentious rajahs.’ I was gentle but direct. ‘She is a great imperial nation. Order must eventually prevail. The Russian people already cry out for a new Tsar.’

‘Oh, I’m sure they’ll get one,’ he said. ‘Of some sort.’ And he remarked on the excellent suet in his mouth.

At that time I was upset by his apparent cynicism, but he was over sixty years old and I not yet twenty. His prediction proved, of course, to be completely accurate. I could not have afforded to believe it then, however, and retained my sanity.

Meanwhile, Mrs Cornelius took no interest in our conversation. She remained discreetly silent while Captain Monier-Williams discussed the characters of Trotski and Lenin as if he knew them personally. She had, of course, indeed known Trotski intimately and Lenin pretty well, and sometimes I detected amusement in her glance when the captain or one of his officers spoke authoritatively about Trotski’s motives.

Jack Bragg, being something of a Red sympathiser, professed admiration for the Russian people. He admitted respect for Kerenski. At this I could not keep my peace. ‘Lenin might be the chief villain now,’ I said, ‘but Kerenski’s irresponsible and euphoric liberalism led to the present crisis. If Kerenski had been stronger he would have kept Russia in the War and we should have won. Constantinople would now be unequivocally Russian, as has always been agreed with the Allies. Rather than losing territory almost daily to our former subjects, we’d be reaping the benefits of victory. Kerenski sold us to Lenin and Lenin sold us to the Germans and the Jews. Soon Russia will have no more of a “homeland” than the Ottomans now possess. She will merely be Muscovy again. A shrunken Muscovy at that. As a result, every Western border will be overrun. Can’t you see? We have held back the barbarian from Europe for a thousand years. Now Tatars will reclaim their old Empire. They will league with Turkey to establish the most powerful Moslem domain the world has seen! The Allies must remain firm and destroy Lenin. Russia must have more help, or civilisation itself will die. Christianity will be crushed.’ I addressed this last remark directly to Captain Monier-Williams who shook his head. ‘I can’t see it, old man. I suppose you can hope a more moderate leader will emerge, but God knows what “moderate” means in this context.’

I could scarcely keep from weeping. His boyish features red with embarrassment. Jack Bragg put an understanding hand on my arm. ‘You’ll be back before you know it, Mr Pyatnitski. The Allies are bound to send more help. Then all this beastliness will be over.’

I made a small gesture of thanks. As he turned away I noticed a tear or two in his own honest blue eyes. He seemed so young, yet he was probably two or three years older than I. His was genuine sympathy, however, for he had known the horrors of sea-warfare and better than most was able to imagine my ordeal. A little in my cups by now, I spoke of all I had lost: the mellow glories of Kiev, the wide steppe, the rich mingling of cultures in old Odessa, the cool beauty of Petersburg, the comradeship of my fellow students, the charm of Kolya and his bohemian friends. Sometimes I could feel almost nostalgic for my months with the anarchist Makhno! I spoke of Yermeloff the Cossack who, in his way, had befriended me and had been killed as a result. But it was a mistake to resurrect such memories, for next I began to speak of Esmé. I checked myself and left the company as soon as dinner was over. Passing a small table near the door, where four passengers sat, I saw with some distaste that Hernikof had somehow managed to place himself opposite my Baroness and actually had his hand on Kitty’s arm! In further confusion I went directly out on deck, into a cold wind, a curtain of drizzle.

Leda joined me almost at once. I said nothing about Hernikof, for I knew what her answer would be. ‘Is something wrong?’ she asked. She began to guide me into the darkness, avoiding the ship’s lights and stopping at last in the shadow of the afterdeck. I listened to the screw turning through the water. I heard the movement of our pistons. I knew our machinery almost as well as Mr Thompson. I recovered myself and kissed her gently on the cheek. ‘These English people mean well,’ I said, ‘but they occasionally revive memories which are best left to die.’

She understood. She stroked my face with her soft, loving hand. ‘That is why we learn the habit of never asking questions,’ she said. ‘Of waiting until we are told.’

I looked at her a little sharply, wondering if there were anything more in what she said. But she seemed sincere. She did not have quite the same ability as Mrs Cornelius to make me relax, but she was calming me now. I sighed and from its case took one of my last papyrussa. Using a brass ‘everlasting match’ which someone had given me as part payment for passport work, I lit the cigarette with care. She leaned against me. chiefly to shelter herself from the cold wind which blew now from the North East. ‘It is so hard to imagine the future,’ she said.

‘You mean in your personal life?’

She smiled. ‘You, of course, have a very good idea of what the future should be like, even if your dream never comes true. That must give your life the momentum which mine, for instance, lacks. All I have is Kitty. She’s my only reason for going to Berlin, where I may find some security, a good school. Yet I’m dependent on the kindness of distant relatives. My destiny is in their hands.’

‘It was once the same for me.’ I drew carefully on the papyrussa. The tobacco was too dry and the whole thing threatened to fall from its paper tube, ‘It’s terrible to be made a child again. And all for the sake of a real child, too. Is there no work you could do?’

She held out her hand to take the cigarette from me. She puffed at it once or twice, then gave it back. ‘I was trained to be the wife of an eminent industrialist. Nothing else. The likes of me, my dear, are a glut on the market. There are thousands of us all over the world and only a handful of eminent industrialists! Some of us try to poach from those who have one; others become lost in a kind of mental haze. I even heard of one or two who took up with completely unsuitable young men.’ Though she joked I became again suspicious. Did she now have it in mind to turn me into the creature she would best like to marry?

‘You are intelligent and personable,’ I told her. ‘You have a little capital in Germany, eh? You should think of going into business. Become an eminent industrialist in your own right! Go to Paris. All the best Russians are in Paris. Found a Fashion Salon. Or a secretarial agency.’ My imagination failed me.

‘I would rather,’ she teased, ‘become an international adventuress and bring down kings and emperors.’

‘But this is the age of republics and democracies. It is so much harder to seduce and ruin a committee.’

She laughed at this. ‘Maxim Arturovitch, you are insufficiently romantic tonight. It’s my function to be the realist, yours to be the dreamer. Would you rob me of my only portion?’

I forced myself to dismiss my suspicions. ‘Very well, I shall continue to dream for you. And you may continue to be a sceptic. But I assure you the future I plan is very practical. A scientist makes it his business to know how things work, to be aware of the proper place of every nut and bolt.’

We parted at her cabin door. ‘Until tomorrow,’ she said, and then: ‘We shall be able to be together in Constantinople at least for a while I hope.’

‘I hope so.’

She said hastily. ‘Batoum is safe. Couldn’t we go ashore there?’

I agreed to consider the idea, which had not occurred to me. While I would be glad to break the journey I remained wary of our intimacy deepening, particularly at an earlier stage than I had planned. I returned to my cabin. As usual when Mrs Cornelius was absent, I indulged myself in a larger than usual sniff of cocaine for, by all accounts, Constantinople had become the capital of the drug world and I would be in no danger of running out of that particular means of moral support. I have never been addicted to anything in my life. I smoke and drink and take cocaine from choice; they give me pleasure. The mild effects of deprivation from cigarettes or from ‘neige’ are hardly noticeable when I am busy. Anyway, I would not buy what today’s hairy children call ‘cocaine’. It is no more than a mixture of household powders touched up with a taste or two of quinine or procaine to numb the lips and a dash of amphetamine to simulate the euphoric effect. One might as well mix ginger beer with dish-washing liquid and call it champagne!

They think they are so modern and daring with their ‘narcotics’. They soften their brains with marijuana and sleeping pills to the point where they cannot tell one drug from another. I despise them, in their leather jackets; they look the same as those barbarians who swaggered through the Winter Palace in 1917, thinking they knew everything when all they had was a monumental arrogance born of stupidity. I see them every day, across the street, in Finch’s pub. They whisper together and pass little paper packets back and forth and every so often the police come, bored and irritable, to perform some ritual search and take one or two of them away. They toady to negroes. The police merely restore the belief of these louts in their ‘outlaw pride’. There is nothing different about them. No wonder the use of cocaine is frowned upon these days. In my youth it was the drug of the aristocrat, the artist, the scientist, the doctor. Ask anyone. Even Freud. And I have made no secret of my dislike for his views. (The Triumvirate which destroyed our civilisation is Marx, Freud, Einstein. It will be remembered in a million years as the greatest enemy of mankind. Marx attacked the basic foundations of Christian society. Freud attacked our minds so we doubted every opinion. Einstein attacked the very substance of the universe. And they say Goebbels was a Master of Lies! He was an ingénu. How that Triumvirate must laugh as it pushes down fragile walls and monuments, tramples the ikons, stands, with hands on hips, amongst the rubble of the world’s greatness while rivers of blood wash its feet and Hope and Humanity are defeated, dying in flames whose light casts a monstrous shadow over the world; the shadow of the Beast, the three-headed symbol of Death.)

Freud himself helped ruin the reputation of cocaine. But they have no need to consider my arrest. I will not use that adulteration of talc and scouring powder they try to sell me.

Quietly enjoying my isolation, I lay down on my bunk to consider Leda’s suggestion. It would be pleasant to go ashore in Batoum. By all accounts it was a handsome enough town, though full of Moslems. We would probably find a hotel without much difficulty and spend a night or two together. This would be both a holiday and an amiable way of easing our inevitable parting. Yet if she saw this as a sign of our enjoying a longer liaison it could cause embarrassment in the future. For all my caution lust once again triumphed and I decided to ask the captain what he thought of some of us going ashore. I would not, though, put the question at dinner for fear of hurting Mrs Cornelius’s feelings, so I would seek the Old Man out next day and have a word with him alone.

I was asleep by the time Mrs Cornelius returned. I awoke to hear whispering on the other side of the door and realised Jack Bragg was with her. I heard her giggle. There was a scuffle. It was obvious that he had also temporarily lost control of himself. In order to save them both embarrassment, I called, as if startled, ‘Who’s there?’

The whispering subsided. I believe she kissed him and murmured goodnight. When she closed the door behind her she asked if I would mind her turning up the lamp. I said it was all right. She was dishevelled and tipsy, but her usual happy self. She waved her fingers at me. ‘Orl alone, Ive?’

She sat on the edge of her bunk to remove her shoes. She was wearing another frock, a pink and silver one. She had managed to bring a large, up-to-date wardrobe in several trunks. Mrs Cornelius always was fastidious about her clothes, at least when she could afford it. In later years poverty conquered both of us and we were forced to lower our standards considerably. ‘Phew!’ she said. ‘It’s a party ev’ry night aboard this bloody boat, innit!’

‘Your energy is boundless.’ I was admiring. ‘It would exhaust me.’

‘I’m sorta makin’ up fer lorst time. That Leon was such a bleedin’ pill. Fergot ‘ow ter enjoy ‘imself. They’re orl ther bloody same.’ Her view of the Bolshevik leaders was contemptuous and universally dismissive: they were a bunch of pious hypocrites, repressed middle-class intellectuals. If they had let their hair down a bit they might have been much happier and caused a lot less trouble. Not one of them, she would occasionally tell me in confidence, was any good as a lover. ‘And some of ‘em ‘re downright odd!’ She had a soft spot for loonies. ‘I’ll prob’bly orlways end up wiv blokes ‘oo’re a bit potty. They’re more int’restin’, at least at first.’

With her usual skill she got into her nightclothes, smoked a cigarette, read a page or two of one of her ‘books’ - old popular magazines someone had found for her on the ship - and turned the lamp down. ‘Night-night, Ivan.’ Again I was left with only her snores which, in the darkness, could still be mistaken for the pantings and exhalations of lust. And as usual I sought consolation in masturbation and fantasy, recalling my lovely Slav only a hundred yards from where I lay. I was now determined to spend all the time I could with her in Batoum.

I was up early, having decided I might best consider my plans in the fresh air. Our cabin was always extremely stuffy by morning. We had the choice of taking the rags and newspapers from the louvres of the door and freezing, or being virtually unable to breathe. As I dressed, Mrs Cornelius shifted in her bunk. Sleepily she said: ‘You watch yer don’ get in too deep, Ivan. Yore a clever littel bleeder, but yer got no sense . . .’Then her eyes closed and she was snoring. She had said nothing new. She believed me headstrong, my own worst enemy. She would tell me so through all the years to come, almost to her dying day (though I was kept from the deathbed by jealous relatives). I have been praised and condemned by great leaders, famous artists and intellectuals, but only her opinion was worth anything to me. Everyone remembers her; she became a legend. Novels were written about her, just as novels were written about Makhno. She could wrap politicians and generals around her fingers. She never lied to me.

‘They should’ve given yer the Nobel Prize, Ivan,’ she said one night in The Elgin. ‘If only fer tryin’.’It was just before closing time on a Saturday night. The pub was a favourite with gypsies from the Westway camp; it was full of rowdy fiddles and accordions. They were the same seedy kind who had infested Odessa and Budapest and Paris fifty years before. It was almost impossible to stand up without being pushed over. Mrs Cornelius was rarely given to betraying strong feelings, but five pints of mild-and-bitter had relaxed her tongue. She felt sorry for me: it was not long after my last trouble with the Courts. I had also been insulted by a cloth-capped junk man, reeking of urine and motor-oil, when I tried to get to the bar. She was trying to show she at least still recognised my gifts. From Mrs Cornelius it was worth more than a knighthood. I am glad she was able to speak before she died, confirming her faith in me. That memory alone sustains me. I have suffered injustice for too long. Now there is no hope.

I helped her through the sweating singers in their collarless shirts and greasy coats, into the dark rain of Ladbroke Grove where the buses and lorries splashed and grumbled. I took her in my arms. She felt sick, she said. She bent over the gutter outside her flat in Blenheim Crescent, but nothing came up. Even then it was apparent she was very ill. She was dying. There was no need for her to lie. We were always honest with each other. She had a nose for genius, even if it were sometimes corrupt. Trotski, Mussolini, Goering: she had known them all. She shook her head. ‘They never give ya yore due, Ivan.’ It was true. She alone could testify that, but for the Bolsheviks, every Russian honour would today be mine. I would be a world name.

The Poles called the Tsarist Empire ‘Byzantium’ and use the same word today for the Soviet Union. The Polish talent for piety is almost as great as their talent for laziness. I did not become an émigré merely to own a little house in Putney and work for a record company. They are not martyrs. They are self-pitying petit bourgeoisie. They would complain under any regime. I wish people would stop introducing them to me. It is the same with the Czechs. We have nothing in common beside basic Slavonic. During the War it was all Poles. Now it is all Czechs. Mrs Cornelius told the neighbours how great I had been and how I had suffered. But I did not want their pity. I gambled, I said to her, and I lost.

I go up to the canal near Harrow Road. It is so bleak there. Everything is rotting. Everything is grey. There is slime on the water. The tow-path is littered with filth. I look at the backs of derelict buildings where unhealthy children smash the remaining windows and piss on floorboards which are beds for tramps. They spray the bricks with their excrement and illiterate slogans. This is Sunday afternoon and this is my exercise! My day off, my stroll, my relaxation! I have seen the wonders of Constantinople, the glories of Rome, the masculine grandeur of Berlin before they bombed it, the elegance of Paris, the brutal magnificence of New York, the dreaming luxury of Los Angeles. I have worn silk from top to bottom. I have satisfied my lust with women of outstanding beauty and breeding. I have experienced at first hand all the world’s noblest engineering miracles: the great liners, the skyscrapers, the planes and the airships. I have known the exhilaration of rapid, luxurious travel. But now I totter along a disgusting tow-path, staring at flotsam and smeared walls, terrified in my frailty for my worthless old life, praying I do not slip on a dog turd or attract the ruthless curiosity of some prepubescent footpad. Their noises echo over the water; the mysterious croaks and grunts of primitive amphibians heralding a return to bloody ignorance and unsentient savagery.

I have been here nearly half my life! Since 1940, in one part of London. Dopoledne . . . The first half was spent exploring and instructing the entire civilised world. Major Sinclair, the great American aviator and my mentor, warned me I was not doing the fashionable things. He too was ruined for his unpopular views. His friend Lindbergh was another great man brought low by petty, vicious enemies. Lindbergh once told me his closest-kept secret. He had never meant to fly to England at all. He had originally set out for Bolivia, but his instruments had deceived him. We had much in common, Lindbergh and myself. He knew why the Jews destroyed the Hindenburg.

Under the arches of the motorway (with which ‘planners’ bisected Notting Dale and Ladbroke Grove without a thought for those who have to live below) gypsies build shacks of old doors and corrugated iron, parking battered caravans amongst heaps of rubble and scrap. Their thin dogs run everywhere; their children are dirty and neglected. The wonderful modern road speeds traffic to and from the West, from Bristol and Bath and Oxford where people live in eighteenth-century elegance. It is a white, efficient road and has done much, they say, to remove traffic from residential streets. But to build it they had to knock our houses down. Unstable, featureless towers were erected in their place. On both sides of Ladbroke Grove, in the shadows of the Westway. stagger alcoholics of both sexes, young and old, begging for coins to buy methylated spirits, swearing at you if you dare to refuse. Or at night lounging boys accost you, their black faces snarling threats. From within the concrete caves butane gas sputters, just as the naphtha flared above the market-stalls in winter in old Kiev. They built a great white road to the West and thus created a warren for thieves and skinheads who cling to the surface of civilisation like detritus around a boat. Yet without civilisation they could not survive.

I do not say Portobello Road and Notting Dale were perfect. Taxi-drivers refused to take you to Golborne Road at night. We were famous for our prostitutes and half the population was on the borderline of crime. Policemen went in threes through our alleys. But the social workers and politicians told us this would be changed. The road, they said, would abolish injustice and squalor. The filthy lorries would go. There would be paradise in the city. And what do we have?

Rock and roll bands give free concerts in the motorway bays and exhort their audience to Revolution and the smoking of hashish. Whores give their customers a cheap time against the pillars and negro homosexuals squabble and shriek while the traffic moans above their heads, taking the Lords and Ladies to Bath and Oxford and Heathrow. Those planners dreamed of Utopia but denied all reality. Then Utopia was no longer financially possible. Perhaps it never had been. Nonetheless, they continued to build as if nothing had changed. They built their wonderful road, much as the natives of New Guinea build bamboo aeroplanes to coax back the marvellous cargoes which came from the sky during World War II.

They told us they would plant flower-gardens in the mud they had created. It is bezhlavy. They said they would build theatres and shops and provide social services under the Westway: but they have even failed to deal with the gypsies who fight and drink beneath the arches from Shepherds Bush to Little Venice; murdering one another, beating their wives and children, refusing either education or work, while youth gangs menace old-age pensioners and wheezing mental-deficients display their diseased genitalia to little boys. And they had the temerity to laugh at me for my dreams! Is their Utopia any worse than mine? And where is the prosperity we were to see? The traders come from their suburbs to the Portobello Road on Fridays and Saturdays, wearing their bohemian finery, selling their high-priced junk. They make a tourist attraction of a slum. And they turn the tourist attraction even more into a slum when they leave. I see the bewildered Americans on a Thursday, wandering up and down the dirty streets looking for the glamour which, like a travelling fair, is only there at certain times, disguising the permanence of poverty and ignorance. Where are the Beatles and the bobbies on bicycles, two by two? Where are the great walls of Windsor and the bells of Old St Paul’s? They have no wish for anything but the romance. On a Thursday, we are not capable of providing it.

Does any of that tourist money stay here? No. It is taken back to Surbiton and Twickenham and Purley; and at night the muggers and the alcoholics re-emerge as if nothing has occurred to interrupt their routines. The tourists return to Brown’s and White’s and the Inn On The Park. Up the West End, that’s the best end. . . Disneyworld last year, Englandworld this. Each country a different theme-park, existing in isolation, cosmetically perfect. And the Westway carries the buses and the sports cars and the trucks over the grime, the unromantic desperate poverty, and nobody need ever know in what human degradation its great pillars are sunk. But it made a profit for Mr Marples and Mr Ridgeway; it made a profit for the speculators of the swinging sixties, the Feinsteins and the Goldblatts and the Greenburgs.

Mrs Cornelius hated the Westway. She said it destroyed the character of the neighbourhood. It attracted outsiders, too, who had no business coming. ‘This woz orlways a friendly district. Everyone knew everyone else. Now ‘arf ther people in ther noo flats ‘re from Tower ‘Amlets an’ Spitalfields. No bleedin’ wonder there’s more crime abart. They know their mums carn’t spot ‘em.’ She firmly believed most thieves were young and did not properly understand the rules: you did not steal from your own. The old family gangs of Notting Dale used to fight amongst themselves. If you were not associated with the gangs you were left alone. The break-up of the family has had consequences even the Church could not anticipate. But we are watching civilisation itself collapse, after all, throughout the Christian world. The Hun swarms again over our ruins and hucksters unpack their stalls in our holy places; travelling players perform lewd charades in our churches while the patrician hides in his villa outside the city, afraid to raise his voice against the very people who bought his birthright. So History repeats and Christ looks down on us and weeps. I thought to save the world from meanness and cruelty; instead I have survived to witness its degeneration. I might even live to see its final destruction.

I did my best. Mrs Cornelius alone appreciated the appalling irony of my life. I was a genius, but I lacked an appreciation of Evil. My Baroness called me ‘charmingly amoral’. By this I think she meant the same thing.