The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s

The PM made a noise he had been heard to make more than once in the House.

‘I have no idea what sort of political chicanery you have up your sleeve, Colonel, but let me put it to you beforehand that nothing can alter Gaskin’s jaundiced view of the enlightened measures we are proposing.’

‘Polyannamine could,’ said the Colonel.

After a cold and curious pause, Lady Elizabeth said, ‘I’m sure we are all three very impressed by your air of mystery, Colonel. Perhaps you’d better put your case to us. I’m sure Herbert can spare you five minutes before he goes to prepare his Berlin speech.’

She embodied all the qualities needful in a Prime Minister’s wife: directness, indirectness, tact and insolence.

Blowing his nose lustily, the Colonel said by way of preamble, ‘You know I have always been a staunch party man. There can be few people in this country who do not recall the famous recruiting speech I made at East Moulton, when I was so narrowly defeated in the ’45 election. That is why I have come straight to you, Prime Minister, as a staunch party man, to lay polyannamine at your feet.’

‘I know your record,’ said the PM testily. ‘Proceed.’

‘Well, to come straight to the point, you probably remember the unfortunate riots we had in Pentonville a couple of years back. The Beaverbrook Press made a lot of fuss about it – they love a prison story. Two convicts were killed, and three severely injured. One of the injured man was Joseph Branksome. Remember the name?’

‘We must all remember the name,’ said Watts-Clinton. ‘He was the member for Dogsthorpe East in Eden’s time.’

‘That’s it. Seven years for embezzling party founds – but a good man, all the same. A good party man. You’d never shake him. I know at the time of Suez he –’

‘Yes, yes, you were saying he was injured, Colonel.’

‘So I was. So he was. Injured in the kidney – nasty business. It was touch and go for several days; I had to have him transferred to Bart’s. They put a patch on his kidney; first time that particular op had been done at Bart’s, so they were telling me. Anyhow, it seemed to do the trick, and in a fortnight we were able to bring Branksome back to the prison hospital. He was still very feeble, but extremely cheerful. I went to visit him. Never met a man more full of happiness and optimism. He was the life and soul of that ward. Why, when Christmas came round –’

‘Branksome’s dead now, isn’t he?’ the PM said.

‘Eh? Dead? Oh yes. I was coming to that. His general air of cheer deceived us all. We thought he was fit again, although he lost a deal of weight. He was back at his old job – I had him on a pretty soft number in the prison library. Then one morning – this would be just over a year ago now – he collapsed in the Do-It-Yourself section and was dead within an hour. Poor Branksome, he died laughing!’

Overcome by the tragedy of his tale, Quadroon sat in the chair, nodding his head sorrowfully. Lady Elizabeth rescued his cup.

With a touch, not to say load, of finality in his voice, the PM said, ‘Thank you very much, Colonel Quadroon, for coming along and –’

The Colonel held up a long and stringy hand, at which the others gazed with curiosity.

‘At the inquest, a remarkable fact emerged. Owing to the injury it had sustained, Branksome’s kidney had been – what d’you call it? – malfunctioning. As far as I could make out from our prison specialist, Mark Miller – very capable chap – instead of making new tissue or whatever it was supposed to do, this kidney had been secreting a substance hitherto unknown to science. Miller christened this secretion Polyannamine. Apparently it had circulated to Branksome’s endo – ah, endocrine glands and there had set up a sort of permanent imbalance if that’s not a contradiction in terms. Anyhow, this imbalance had the effect of keeping him happy even when he was dying painfully by inches.’

‘Hmm.’ The PM, with a gesture familiar to millions of TV viewers, lit a briar pipe and sat with his nose almost hanging into the bowl. ‘And has this stuff been synthesised, Colonel?’

For answers, the Colonel drew from an inner pocket a small plastic tube. He performed the gesture with what, in a better actor, would have been a grand flourish.

‘There’s enough synthesised polyannamine in here, Miller informs me, to keep all your opposition happy for the rest of their lives.’

The PM cast an eyebrow at Watts-Clinton who, never at a loss, cast one back.

‘I think the Berlin speech might be given a miss till we’ve seen Miller. My old constituency wouldn’t like to think I let grass grow under my feet, eh, Ralph? Elizabeth, my dear, do you think –’

‘Oh, Herbert, I really can’t, not again! I wouldn’t know what to put.’

‘Nonsense, pet. Usual stuff about standing fast, backing Adenauer to the hilt, Western solidarity, and all that, with the safety clause about striving for peace by all means within our power, and so on. By now you can do it as easily as I can. Tarver, the Bentley, please.’

Traffic was thick about the gloomy façade of Pentonville Prison.

‘Visitors’ night tonight,’ Quadroon said gloomily. Always draws the crowds.’

I must tell you how much I admire all your far-reaching reforms; the Home Sec. was telling me about them only the other day,’ Watts-Clinton said ingratiatingly; he had no special liking for the Colonel, but to be included on one of his shoots would be no bad thing.

‘Got Johnny Earthquake and the Four Corners playing tonight. Keeps the men happy.’

The PM looked shocked.

‘But the M1 Massacre Man – what’s his name, McNoose, is due to be executed tomorrow. Surely –’

‘That’s what’s drawn all this crowd tonight. Dodge in after that confounded Volkswagen, Chauffeur. We’re letting McNoose have a last request from Johnny Earthquake, for his mum and dad and all at 78 Montpelier Road, Camden Town.’

‘Very doubtful taste,’ the PM said.

‘You were the one who wanted the prisons to pay their way, sir.’

‘This is really no time to bring up old election promises.’

The three man lapsed into moody silence. At last a clear way showed itself, and the car swept into the front square and round beyond the bright lights and marquees to the Governor’s house. As they hurried up the steps, blaring loudspeakers carried music and a nasal voice droned:

Eva Bardy’s doin’ it, doin’ it, doin’ it,

Eva Bardy’s doin’ it …

It was good to get inside. Quadroon showed them into his study and summoned a servent to fetch Mark Miller.

Impatiently, the PM looked about the solid dingy room. Trophies, lowering photographs, handcuffs, an amateur pencil portrait of John Reginald Halliday Christie, certificates, maps, a death-mask, and a pokerwork legend bearing the words, ‘Stone walls do not a prison make,’ surrounded them on all sides. The smell was one of the tapioca with vegetable additives. Reluctantly, the PM selected the less horsy-looking of two horsehair chairs and gave it the benefit of his posterior.

‘Interesting place,’ Watts-Clinton said, in the manner of one volunteering information.

The Colonel himself looked shrunken by his surroundings.

‘I could put the fire on,’ he said. He coughed, rubbed his hands together and added, ‘I ought to warn you, gentlemen, first you may find him a little – ah, ha, ha, ah, Miller, there you, ah, are! Come in.’

Miller was in. He swept in with his arms wide, smiling broadly, and shook hands with them all before he was introduced.

‘So, gentlemen, you’re in at the birth of a new nation, in on the ground floor, eh? In fact, you’re in before the birth – on the underground floor, you might say. We’re all set to go polyannamine, the new wonder drug that makes your body works for you instead of against you.’

Introductions were belatedly performed. Miller shook hands again exuberantly, remarked how tired the PM looked and admired the quality of Watts-Clinton’s suiting. He was a tall man – almost as given to bony protuberances as the Colonel – with tufts of hair on his fingers and from beneath the sheltering foliage of his eyebrows. Not, one would have estimated, a man given to mirth; yet his geniality flowed through the room like champagne into a footsore slipper.

‘The Government is very interested in your formula, Mr Miller,’ the PM said, ‘but we should naturally require a conclusive test, under proper surveillance, of your discovery.’

Miller winked conspiratorially.

‘It’s in the bag. You’re laughing – or you will be. Why don’t you let me give you an injection? How about going down in history as Sir Herbert Macclesfield, the smiling Prime Minister – no the Primed Prime Minister? Don’t mind me, I’m only being funny. Believe me, I’ve never felt so good. Fallen arches? I’ve still got them; they still pile up; they don’t bother me. I just don’t let the worries worry me, thanks to polyannamine.’

‘Can you control your obvious ebullience enough to tell us roughly how the stuff works?’