Remembrance Day

‘Things are different in the States, Levine,’ Marsh said, condescendingly. ‘In London, psychotics are guys who have discovered how life really is. Over here, that bit of luck goes to mountebanks. They can capitalize on their discoveries in ways valuable not only to themselves but to the public at large.’

‘Embry?’

Marsh sucked on a crab claw. ‘You should read Embry’s book on transpsychic reality – and not just because it’s sold a million. Basically, what he says – I’m wedging his argument into a nutshell – is that the nature of self, and hence of our perceived world, is – or can be – up for grabs. He says everyone has visions, sees ghosts, or whatever. Parapsychic phenomena … Such things are dismissed as childish – which they may be – or disgraceful in our Western societies, and so are repressed or misinterpreted … well, something like that. But actually such so-called delusions are pleas from an inner self for change. Urgent communications. We must all change.’

‘Nothing very new there.’

‘OK. That’s no objection, is it? But Embry states that our early experiences can cause us to fix on a mental model of the world which we may need to junk. Like some disaster early in life can set us on disaster courses later. “Circumstance-chain” is his phrase. Pass along the pitcher, “old chap”.’ He put his mode of addressing Levine in humorous quotes, as if recalling a phase of life he had jettisoned.

Marsh’s friend, Polly Ester, sitting on his far side, had hitherto contented herself with reading the legend on Marsh’s T-shirt over and over. She bestirred herself to lean forward and say smiling to Levine, ‘Dale’s forgotten the part of the argument I like best. It’s not just individuals whose memories of disaster can lead them to further disaster later in life. There’s a brilliant chapter on how the individual is a microcosm of the nation. Hen shows how certain countries are ruled by – ruined by – memories of disaster.’

Several places away, engaged in argument, Hengist Embry nevertheless caught the mention of his own name and roared down the table, ‘Alpha for you, Polly. Examples include Georgia, Serbia, many Latin American countries, maybe China, and, of course, Ireland.’

Marsh formed a circle of thumb and forefinger and made Embry a cheerful ‘spot-on’ sign as the latter plunged back into his own noisy conversation.

‘Whether all that’s true or not …’ Deciding against completing the sentence, Levine returned to his platter of crab.

Rather to Levine’s surprise, Embry paid him renewed attention as the group left the restaurant. In the carpark, he took Levine’s arm in a friendly way and led him apart from the crowd, his mind evidently still full of his dinner conversation.

‘Remember that lovely “Veni, Redemptor”? Well, man has to be his own Redemptor, to my way of thinking – but fast.’

‘Most human plans for improvement come to grief.’

‘There opinions differ. Look what the US has become. This was all wilderness two centuries ago.’

While Levine was feeling ashamed of his English remark, Embry deftly changed the subject. ‘As a successful man, I have my enemies here, Gordy,’ he said. ‘Some are not above spreading lies about me. You find the same kind of thing in every community. Now, let’s get to the crunch. I’m a visionary but I’m also a practical man. I was hoping you could maybe give me a few introductions back in England, to ease my path in the new post.’

Levine said he did not entirely understand what line of work Embry was planning for the AUN.

‘Gordy, I will be more than happy to inform you. What I mainly require from you is a warm personal intro to Sir Alastair Stern, principal of AUN. He’s your uncle, right?’

‘Father-in-law, actually.’

‘How I relish that British “actually”. I didn’t know you were still using it.’

‘I’ve heard the word on American lips.’

‘Now, in a few sentences, I’ll explain the project I have up my sleeve. It’s a real beaut. I am eager to be working in Norwich. It’s the capital of the County of Norfolk, right? See, I have some Norfolk blood in my veins. My great-grandfather sailed over to New England from Norfolk, back in the 1830s. That was a terrible time for the poor. The legend in the family is that the last great-grandfather saw of England was a line of hayricks burning on the horizon.

‘My proposed project involves the analysis of an incident which occurred in the Norfolk port of Great Yarmouth. Do you know Great Yarmouth, Gordy?’

‘Yarmouth. Yes, I’ve been there more than once. It’s a seaside resort.’

‘It so happens that there are Embrys buried in Great Yarmouth cemetery.’

‘Quite a coincidence.’

Embry stopped his strolling and looked hard at Levine. ‘A coincidence – or something more? Is it not what I term a circumstance chain? Is the universe of human affairs random – stochastic – or pre-ordained, or ruled by God? Or what? That is precisely the question I mean to research. It’s a big question, with large implications.’

Looking as if for inspiration towards the distant neon sign proclaiming JUMBO STONE CRABS, Embry began to recite. ‘“What of the Immanent Will and its designs? It weaves unconsciously as heretofore Eternal artistries of circumstance, Whose visions – wrought in wrapt aesthetic rote – Seem in themselves its single listless aim, And not their consequence.” Thus the poet … Well, we are going to diagnose those artistries of circumstance for the first time. Ingenuity lavished on space technology will now confront Fate. Pardon the expression.’

The wine had somewhat clouded Levine’s perceptions. He felt they should drive back to the Hilton, where he could lie down, or perhaps have another drink.

‘I don’t follow. A diagram of circumstance? I mean, couldn’t you pursue such research more effectively in the US? Why Yarmouth, for heaven’s sake?’

‘It so happens that Great Yarmouth presents us with precisely the contained situation required, the kind of laboratory test case.’ He smiled benignly. ‘I’m an optimist, Gordy, and, what’s more, I have the future good of humanity in mind. I see – I do believe I see – a way in which poor suffering mankind might be made happier, safer. And I’m not talking about SDI or anything like that.

‘Ask yourself why we are always running towards disaster. Just when you might think affairs were straightening out, along comes a fresh crisis. It happens in individual life, it happens in international affairs. I can remember back to the aftermath of World War II. Just when we were sorting out the peace and trying to put everything together, along came the threat from the Soviet Union, and the Cold War descended upon us, warping millions of lives for decades.’

‘That may be so, but it doesn’t have much to do with Yarmouth.’ He should have known that such a remark would not have ended the discussion.

A sagacious finger was wagged at him. ‘I hope it has everything to do with Yarmouth,’ Embry said. ‘There I shall test out my hypothesis of transpsychic reality …’ He repeated the phrase thoughtfully, as if more for his benefit than his listener’s. ‘Transpsychic reality … If I’m right, then a new epoch in human relationships will dawn. I shall father a revolution in how we view the physical world around us …’ He took a deep breath and then said, suddenly, ‘I should have gone to the john before we left the restaurant.’

‘We’d better get back to the hotel.’

The bladder problem evidently wasn’t too serious. Embry dismissed it with a grand gesture. The physical world was going to have to wait.

They had come to the end of the carpark. Beyond some smart new plastic warehousing, masts of dinghies could be seen. Music of the swing era could be heard.

‘I may as well admit it, Gordy. It’s an ambitious plan, and it will need a whole heap of moral support from Sir Alastair Stern, not least because of the depressed state of the British economy in 1990. I want your father-in-law on my side.’

He outlined the circumstances of the case as clearly as if he was lecturing a class.

One of the depressants afflicting British life was the situation in Northern Ireland, which cost the British taxpayer many millions of pounds sterling a year. The Irish Republican Army, the IRA, although not politically effective, existed as a disruptive force in social life. In the mid-eighties, it had attempted a major coup when it planned a series of bomb outrages in English seaside towns during the holiday season.

Scotland Yard had got wind of the plan. Bombs of Czech-made Semtex were detected and defused in six towns along the South Coast. Three men had been arrested, including a high-ranking IRA officer. Unfortunately, one bomb had escaped detection. It exploded in a small hotel in Yarmouth.

‘Four people were killed in the Great Yarmouth explosion,’ Embry said as they climbed into his car. ‘I am not concerned with the IRA. Though I may say parenthetically I do not approve of American support for the IRA. They can be described only as terrorists, killing and maiming innocent people. My AUN unit will investigate the lives lost.

‘Who were those four persons killed that day? What were their lives like? What brought them to that hotel on that date? Was their presence merely stochastic, or had it to do with, say, economic conditions?’

‘Or the hand of God?’ hinted Levine, smiling.

‘We are open-minded. We rule nothing out. Not even the Immanent Will. “Veni, Redemptor”. I do not go into this project with preconceived ideas, Gordy. I want to establish whether the random was at work, or were those deaths circumstance-chain deaths – with submerged social causation of the same kind that draws me back to ancestral ground?

‘It’s going to be an original and epoch-making sociological field exercise. Who exactly were the four who died that day in the Hotel Dianoya in Great Yarmouth?’

2

Displaced

Midsummer 1986

The car was an orange Hillman which had seen better days. Ray Tebbutt drove it with the kind of care he devoted to most matters, slowing to corner, braking gently to stop, signalling whenever humanly possible. He left the main Fakenham–Cromer road and turned north in third gear. Although the side road was empty of traffic this summer evening, he handled the wheel as cautiously as if in one of the city traffic jams to which he had previously been accustomed.

Clamp Lane was a narrow strip between high banks. History had split it open to the sun like a walnut. Within living memory, the lane had been shaded by elms, their woody topknots havens for birds. The trees were all that remained of extensive forest which had once choked this region of Norfolk before the Enclosures Acts of the previous century had begun a process of denudation. Then Dutch Elm Disease, spread through the importation of cheap foreign timber, had wiped out the last grand sentinels. Three summers and they were gone, and the birds they sheltered gone with them. Clamp Lane was now bathed in impartial summer sun, banal, no longer secret, me-andering between unfrequented wheat fields, easy going for orange Hillmans.

Tebbutt slowed still further where the road sloped into a depression which provided some shelter from the wind for two cottages, solitary in the landscape. Like the landscape, these two Victorian cottages, close yet apart, built for farm labourers, were dominated by the socio-economics of their time. Machinery had superseded the labourers; they and their families were gone long ago, as the birds had gone.