9
Chiffan cleaned up another neglected facet of Rud's education by taking him to the Houses of Parliament, sitting with him in the Strangers' Gallery for a time and introducing him to a friend or two, for whom he had done trifling journalistic services in the past. One or two members who had heard already of the Common–sense Movement in their constituencies were only too willing to be friendly with this ugly, white–faced, erratic talker. Rud was given tea on the terrace and inspected and drawn out.
He surveyed this celebrated Terrace. Narrow, it was, he noted, at the foot of a cliff of sham Gothic stonework, barely a century old and already badly corroded. "Thoroughly Anglican," he thought. Chiffan's friend collected a small group for him, that came and went restlessly.
These politicians impressed him as being the most shortsighted and sceptical men he had ever met. They lived in a little world that was bounded on the one side by "office" and on the other by the constituencies, and they seemed unable to imagine that it was not an eternal world. One tall man, he observed, in the year of grace 1941 was wearing a long frock–coat and a peculiar half–stiff collar reminiscent of that great parliamentary hand, Mr. Gladstone. They talked with one another about divisions; the government majority had dropped to twenty; and they talked about a scene in the House. The P.M.'s manners were becoming intolerable. Then with an air of relaxation they turned to Rud. The possibility of altering opinions in the constituencies seemed a very theoretical one to them. No doubt there were these waves of opinion in the country, and an intelligent parliamentary politician observed them and dodged about among them, but it was quite outside their technique to consider how the pressures of opinion could accumulate and be directed.
Rud thought they might be impressed by the breadth of his outlook. He tried to pose as the earnest young enquirer, wanting to know. He thrust out feelers. Where is power in the country? Where is responsibility? In this country? In any country?
But the elusive mystery of political power is no proper subject for the terrace at tea–time. There is nothing to be known about it and everybody knows all about it. So what is there to discuss?
He tried over a suggestion of Chiffan's that Power is always being drawn together into a centre, and then escaping again and diffusing itself. He had not thought much of that at the time, but now that he heard himself say it, it seemed quite a good idea. There were, he argued, widespread accumulative phases in politico–social life, and these were always followed by executive phases, a sort of diastole and systole, a diastole of accumulation and a systole of concentrated impulse against diffused systematic resistances. He tried to impress them with the idea that a phase of diastole was coming to an end, and that the apparent apathy of the day might turn at any moment to the rush of the oncoming systole. But they were manifestly not interested. He might as well have talked to a team of cricketers of possible earthquakes, grass impoverishment and a coming shortage or excess of rain. They returned to the topic of the Prime Minister's lamentable temper.
He came away with an exasperated sense of failure. He denounced parliamentary government root and branch that night. Parliament was doomed. The fact that it had not listened to Rud was only one little conclusive fact in a long indictment. "It has become a series of empty forms," he said. "All over the world, always, the sawdust of reality is running out of the shapes of quasi–public things. Not one British citizen in a thousand watches what is done in Parliament; not one in a thousand Americans follows the discourses of Congress. Interest has gone. Every election in the past thirty years has been fought on gross misunderstandings."
Bodisham ticked off the points of the new Common–sense Movement on his fingers. "The City is rotten and Parliament is rotten."
"But they are!" said Rud.
"Christianity is rotten and Labour politically is rotten." "But aren't they?"
"The curious thing is that we believe in you, Rud." "We have much to destroy," said Dreed.
"We have nothing to destroy," said Rud. "All these things are done for already. They are falling in all over the world. They are dead. No need for destructive activities. But if we have nothing to destroy we have much to clear away. That's different. What is needed is a brand–new commonsense reorganisation of the world's affairs, and that's what we have to give them. I can't imagine how the government sleeps of nights. I should lie awake at night listening all the time for the trickle of plaster that comes before a smash. Ever since they began blundering in the Near East and Spain, they've never done a single wise thing. This American adventure spells disaster. Plainly. Australia has protested already. India now is plainly in collapse. Everyone who has been there lately with open eyes speaks of the vague miasma of hatred in the streets. We don't get half the news from India. Just because there exists no clear idea whatever of a new India, it doesn't mean that the old isn't disintegrating. Things that are tumbling down, tumble down. They don't wait to be shown the plans of the new building. The East crumbles. All over the world it becomes unpleasant to be a foreigner, but an Englishman now can't walk in a bazaar without a policeman behind him…"
The little council hammered out these intuitions and dogmatisms of Rud's eagerly and helpfully. They showed themselves more and more impressed by the soundness of his idea of attracting attention in Britain by specialising conspicuously in a new American liaison and starting from the outset with an Atlantic straddle…The time for it, they agreed, was now.