A Perfect Spy

There was never a by-election like it, Tom, there was never an election like it. We are born, we get married, we divorce, we die. But somewhere along the way, if we get the chance, we should also stand as Liberal Candidate for the ancient fishing and weaving constituency of Gulworth North situated in the remoter fens of East Anglia in the unlit post-war years before television replaced the Temperance Hall, and communications were such that a man’s character could be born again by removing it a hundred and fifty miles north-east of London. If we do not have the luck to stand ourselves, then the least we can do is drop everything from crypto-Communism to unconsummated sexual exploration and, forgetting the later Minnesänger, hasten to our father’s side in the Hour of his Greatest Test to shiver on icy doorsteps for him, and charm votes out of old ladies in the manner in which he has instructed us, and see them right if it kills us, and tell the world by loudspeaker what a crackerjack fellow he is, and that they will never want for anything again, and promise ourselves, and mean it, that as soon as polling day is over we will forsake all other lives and take our place among the working classes where our hearts and origins have always been, as witness our clandestine espousal of the workers’ cause during the formative years of our studentship.

It was deep winter when Pym arrived and it is winter still, for I have never been back, I never dared. The same snow lies over the fens and marshes and freezes Quixote’s windmills to a standstill against the cindery Flemish sky. The same steepled towns dangle from the sea’s horizon, the Brueghel faces of our electorate are as pink with zeal as they were those three decades ago. Our Candidate’s convoy, led by the lifelong Liberal Mr. Cudlove and his precious cargo, still bears the message from chalky schoolroom to paraffin-heated hall, skidding and cursing over country lanes while Our Candidate broods and downs another wet, and Sylvia and Major Maxwell-Cavendish fight in undertones over the Ordnance Survey map. In my memory our campaign is a drama tour of the theatre of the politically absurd as we advance across snow and marshland upon Gulworth’s majestic Town Hall itself — hired against all advice from those who said we’d never fill it, but we did — for Our Candidate’s Positively Last Appearance. There suddenly the comedy stops dead. The masks and fools’ bells come clattering to the stage as God in one simple question presents us with His bill for all our fun till here.

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Evidence, Tom. Facts.

Here is Rick’s rosette of yellow silk that he wore for his great night. It was run up for him by the same luckless tailor who made his racing colours. Here is the centre-page spread from the Gulworth Mercury next day. Read all about it for yourself. CANDIDATE DEFENDS HIS HONOUR. SAYS LET GULWORTH NORTH BE THE JUDGE. See the picture of the podium with its illuminated organ pipes and curving staircase? All we need is Makepeace Watermaster. See your grandfather, Tom, centre stage, hacking at the speckled beams of the spotlights, and your father peeking coyly from behind him, forelock at the slope? Hear the thunder of the great saint’s piety rising into the wagon roof, do you? Pym knows every word of Rick’s speech by heart, every hammy gesture and inflection. Rick is describing himself as an honest trader who will devote “my life for as long as I am spared, and as long as you deem in your wisdom that you require me,” to the service of the constituency, and he’s about five seconds from making a swipe with his left forearm to cut off the heads of the Unbelievers. Fingers closed and slightly curled as ever. He is telling us that he’s a humble Christian and a father and a straight dealer, and he’s going to rid Gulworth North of the twin heresies of High Toryism and Low Socialism, though sometimes in his teetotal fervour he gets them the wrong way round. He also hates excess. It really churns him up. Now comes the good news. You can hear it from the faith in his voice. With Rick as its Member of Parliament, Gulworth North will undergo a Renaissance beyond its dreams. Its moribund herring trade shall rise from its bed and walk. Its decaying textile industry shall bring forth milk and honey. Its farms shall be freed of Socialist bureaucracy and become the envy of the world. Its crumbling railways and canals shall be miraculously cut loose from the toils of the Industrial Revolution. Its streets shall run with liquidity. Its aged shall have their savings protected against Confiscation by the State, its menfolk shall be spared the ignominies of conscription. Pay-As-You-Earn taxation shall go and so shall all the other iniquities that are featured in the Liberal Manifesto which Rick has partly read but believes in totally.