Anglo-Irish Murders (9 page)

***

‘My God, we could do with Plutarch,’ said the baroness, as she and Amiss conferred in a corner. ‘It’d be much better to have her here beating up MOPE than pining in those kennels into which you so callously thrust her.’

‘You know I don’t believe that you can deal with troublesome elements by bringing in one even more troublesome.’

‘My career demonstrates that the truth lies the other way about. Most of my success can be attributed to my being more troublesome than the people I was brought in to sort out.’

‘You are the exception that proves the rule, Jack,’ said Amiss, with a certain froideur. ‘In any case, you are not a cat.’

‘If I were an animal I’d be a big cat. Bigger even than Plutarch. I’d be a king of the jungle.’

‘Jack, may I once more display my pedestrian tendency and drag you from your egotistical fantasies to the more mundane level of timetable adjustments which may be necessary in the light of this delay.’

She snorted. ‘The trouble with you is…Good grief! Here’s Lucrezia already.’

Laochraí walked over to them and addressed them without a flicker of expression. ‘We have decided as a confidence-building gesture and in the interests of reconciliation that we will for the moment cease to speak in Irish.’

‘What do you mean “we?” It was only you.’

Laochraí glared. ‘My colleagues and I have decided as a confidence-building gesture and in the interests of reconciliation that we…that is, I, will for the moment speak English if everyone else does.’

‘Well that’s hardly likely to be a problem,’ said the baroness irritably. ‘None of them ever wanted to speak anything else in the first place.’

Amiss scowled at her. ‘Thank you, Laochraí. The gesture is much appreciated.’ Pausing only to throw a dirty look at the baroness, Laochraí strode back towards the conference room.

‘Jack,’ said Amiss, ‘for Christ’s sake, do you have to alienate them needlessly?’

‘Look, I alienate them just by existing. And vice-versa.’

‘Yes, and I see both your points of view. But try not to let your antipathy show so obviously, will you?’

‘I’ll try,’ she growled. ‘But the world would be a better place if it was still possible to transport people like that to the colonies. Speaking of which, here’s the miracle worker. How did you do it, Chandra? And why were you talking like a Delhi greengrocer?’

Kapur smiled. ‘It seemed appropriate. They had to be nice to a poor native.

‘What happened was that after a word with Okinawa, who can’t stick MOPEs, we explained to them that they might not come out of it well if he released his film to the television news. They weren’t sure at first, but when we said that sadly we would be obliged to express our disappointment that they had wrecked the conference, they caved in. It would not look good, they realized, to be criticised by a yellow and a brown man.’

‘Cunning old oriental devils,’ said the baroness delightedly. ‘We should get you over to outwit them in Northern Ireland. Now we’d better get started again.’

As she was about to move, Aisling arrived. ‘I’ve just heard,’ she said. ‘Well, that’ll make your lives easier. However, it requires me to say goodbye.’

‘What!’ said the baroness.

‘You don’t need me now.’

‘We certainly do.’

Aisling shook her head. ‘Sorry, Jack, but rules are rules. Interpreters have no role other than interpreting.’

‘We can soon change that.’

‘We can’t. The department wouldn’t wear it. I’m really sorry, but I have to go. And the signer’s going too. He’s mutinied. Says his job is to help the deaf, not to make an idiot of himself at the behest of pillocks.’

The baroness jerked her head towards the door. ‘Come with me, Aisling. Let’s talk this over.’ It was five minutes before she returned. ‘What a disaster,’ she moaned to Amiss. ‘I feel like a cat who’s seen the canary fly out the window.’

‘Join the club,’ said Amiss bitterly.

Chapter Nine

‘All right, let’s get this show on the road,’ said the baroness. ‘And no playing silly buggers this time. Who’s going first?’

‘I’m afraid the English are supposed to,’ said Charles Taylor apologetically. ‘Not that I mind. I’d be happy to make my presentation at any stage of the proceedings, but at Robert’s instigation we had a sort of lot-drawing thingie earlier and I…’

‘What the hell are you apologizing for now? Just get on with it, for Pete’s sake. Give us your hooray for English culture.’

Taylor flushed, took a video tape from his briefcase and handed it to Amiss, who had appointed himself technical assistant for the morning. ‘I’ll let the video speak for itself, but I’m obviously happy to answer questions later.’

Amiss lowered the blinds and started the tape. Within a few minutes it became clear its contents had been determined by a committee bent on offending no one except perhaps white native English. The coverage of the joys of multi-culturalism included West Indians leaping about at the Notting Hill Carnival, Neasden Hindus celebrating Diwali, Birmingham Muslims at prayer, the opening of a Buddhist temple on the Thames, and shots of various Irish, Welsh and Scots in London hostelries respectively celebrating St Patrick’s Day, St David’s Day and Burns’ Night. The only sightings of native English culture were a dozen elderly Morris dancers, a shot of Shakespeare superimposed on Stratford upon Avon, a Charles Dickens pub sign and an aerial shot of the Dome.

After it came to an end and Amiss had opened the blinds, there was a long silence.

‘Taylor’s contribution hasn’t done much to liven us up, has it?’ enquired the baroness. ‘Has no one a comment or did you all fall asleep?’

‘Ah now, Madam Chairwoman,’ said Sean O’Farrell with a smile, ‘you’re very hard on us all and especially on poor Charles here. I thought that was grand.’ He paused and added uncertainly, ‘Oh and very inclusive. Yes. Most inclusive.’

‘Huh,’ said the baroness. ‘I’d be more impressed with that judgement if I hadn’t seen you sneaking in halfway through.’

Completely unabashed, O’Farrell grinned. ‘There’s no hiding anything from you, is there? You’re a real divil.’

There was a half-hearted interjection from Laochraí to the effect that this was unduly cosmetic and failed to showed the sad plight of the Irish in Britain, but her heart wasn’t in it. Silence fell once more.

The baroness glared down the table. ‘Chandra. Any reactions?’

‘Madam Chairwoman, I am a little surprised at the absence of the indigenous English,’ said Kapur, who had clearly abandoned his poor-Indian routine. ‘I admire the English for their great hospitality to foreigners and their kindness to strangers…’

An attempt by Laochraí to break in indignantly was quashed by a ‘shut up’ from the baroness and Kapur continued smoothly ‘…but to the best of my knowledge the vast majority of that country is still occupied by white people who are English by birth and culture. Could we not have seen, for instance, something of the House of Commons? Surely the mother of all parliaments deserves acknowledgement?’

‘Anyone else?’

‘Yes,’ said Steeples. ‘I wonder what the grunts on the ground would say if they saw that. It was no more to do with English culture than my calves have to do with line-dancing. Typical government sell-out. And a waste of money at that, so it is.’

The baroness looked more cheerful. ‘Any other comments? Robert?’

Amiss shook his head.

‘Rollo?’

Pooley shook his even more vigorously. For about twenty seconds there was complete silence. ‘Well then, Charles. What have you to say to Chandra and Gardiner?’

‘Just that while I hadn’t actually seen the film before now, I have to say I thought it got the balance right. We have to look to the future not to the past.’

The baroness looked at him with ill-concealed contempt. ‘Is that it?’

He nodded.

‘Right then.’ She looked at her list. ‘Let’s abandon this wasteland and see if the Taffies have done a better job.’

Wyn Gruffudd looked at her nervously. ‘Now see, I know nothing about this,’ she said. ‘As I was telling Robert earlier, I am here at short notice, and I said, when they asked me, that I would not come if anyone thought…’

‘Got you. We won’t hold you responsible.’

The Welsh contribution was more entertaining and anything but inclusive. It took the company at a gallop through Welsh history, stopping here and there to contemplate anti-English avenging heroes like Owen Glyndower. Plenty of attention was given to the sufferings of coal-miners, but there were also clips from some great orators, a great deal of superb scenery, a fair amount of singing in pubs and at rugby matches and a nod to the new Welsh assembly. The presenter then plunged into Welsh (with subtitles), there were a few recitations, a bit more singing and then five minutes of an eisteddfod with people in white robes and hoods installing a new Druid. After a sentimental verse about forefathers from the valleys and another blast of song, it ended with another shot of declaiming Druids.

Kelly-Mae burst in. ‘That’s outrageous. You’re showing the Ku Klux Klan like they were OK!’

Wyn flushed. ‘Look you, Kelly-Mae, now you have to see that…’

‘Miss O’Hara,’ cut in the baroness icily, ‘you are an observer. Observers observe. They do not speak if they are so ignorant that they confuse old Celtic ceremonies with southern white supremacist lynch mobs.’

Kelly-Mae looked towards MOPE for support, causing Laochraí to interject with some embarrassment, ‘Kelly-Mae’s reaction was very understandable. However, Kelly-Mae, this is a fine Celtic ceremony which deserves the respect of all of us, being neither imperialist nor anti-nationalist.’

Other than false praise from Sean O’Farrell and Charles Taylor, no one could summon up enough interest to say anything, so Amiss put on the Scots film. This was an altogether more lively affair, full of caber-tossing and bagpipes and Scottish reels and clips from films of martial Scots swarming over the Highlands in variously coloured kilts. There was no denying, however, the triumphalism and implicit anti-Englishness with which the 1999 establishment of the Scottish parliament was described. ‘Scotland-the-Visionary faces the future looking towards Europe and away from the narrow Whitehall-driven agenda of the past,’ was the last line.

When the strains of ‘Scotland the Brave’ had died away, there was a general murmur of approval, including a ‘jolly good’ from Charles Taylor that caused the baroness to snarl that clearly nationalism was OK for everyone except the English.

Laochraí, however, had a concern. ‘That was a good film,’ she said, ‘but you avoided the issue of sectarianism and the discrimination under which the Catholic and particularly the Catholic Irish people in Scotland have lived and still live.’

Wallace peered through his foliage. ‘Ach, we cannot always be harping on the past. These days we Scots are full of bounce.’

‘We could have done with a wee parade in there,’ said Steeples. ‘There are 60,000 in the Scottish Orange, so there are.’

‘Since you both feel that the issue of sectarianism should be addressed,’ put in Taylor brightly, ‘in a very real sense, Gardiner, you and Laochraí are in agreement.’

‘We are not,’ said Laochraí and Steeples in unison. And as they both broke into indignant and competing speech the baroness looked at her watch. ‘This debate, I suspect, will be more appropriate to the next session. Now we stop for coffee.’

‘That’s it,’ she said to Amiss as they left. ‘Now I know the United Kingdom is finally finished. And I don’t know that I’m sorry. We’re better off without all the bloody Scots and Welsh. If we could only keep the modernisers and the wimps out of England and bring the decent Prods over from Ireland to join us, we could have quite a cosy time.’

***

No expense had been spared on the film from the Irish cultural group, which was essentially a highly professional marketing exercise. Awash with pop stars, fashion designers, models and internet whizzkids, it was full of lively music, vivid images of glorious scenery and merry people. Mellifluous voices declaimed the prose and poetry of winners of great literary prizes and the travelling Irish were seen skipping and laughing and singing their way around the world. ‘Irish culture,’ explained the presenter in conclusion, against a background of the inevitable mystical Celtic pipes, ‘has enriched the world for centuries and nowadays is everywhere welcomed for its style, exuberance and cosmopolitanism.’

‘Wonderful, wonderful,’ said Charles Taylor. ‘What it is for a vitiated culture like ours to see the magnificent vibrancy and spiritual openness of all that is great in the Irish. What I find so moving and yet energizing…’

As the baroness began to swell like a bullfrog, the Sailor’s Hornpipe sounded. ‘Hello,’ whispered Amiss. ‘Yes of course. I’ll be right out.’ He fled thankfully.

***

The florid man with a halo of white hair chatting happily with the porter looked to be in his mid-fifties. Amiss approached him with his hand out. ‘Hello. I’m Robert Amiss.’

The man took his hand and wrung it enthusiastically. ‘Pascal O’Shea. Jaysus, I was just telling Pat here what a desperate journey I’ve had. What time is it now?’ He looked at his watch. ‘Christ’s teeth, it’s six feckin’ hours since the car arrived for me. Six in the morning! What sort of time was that to expect a fella to leave home! And we’ve been crawling through the lashing rain ever since. God, I need a drink.’

‘You wouldn’t like to look in at the conference, would you? It’s in its last hour for this morning. It’d give you a chance to say hello and get a sense of how things are going.’

‘Robert Amiss, are you completely mad? You might drag me in this afternoon, though I’m making no promises. But Simon Legree himself wouldn’t have expected a fella to spend six hours on the road and then go straight in to listen to a lot of tosspots banging on about cultural awareness.’

‘I’m sorry, Pascal. I didn’t mean to be unwelcoming. Of course I’m very grateful to you for standing in for Theo at such short notice…’

‘For Theo? Are you telling me I’m standing in for Theo Mathew?’ He roared with laughter. ‘They didn’t tell me that. That’s a laugh and no mistake.’ He clapped Amiss on the back. ‘Well, you can accuse our side of lots of things, but you can’t accuse them of lacking a sense of humour. The only thing that’d be funnier than replacing Theo by me would be replacing me by Theo.’

Amiss looked at him nervously. ‘Would you mind awfully if I just pop back in to the conference? I’m afraid the bar won’t be open yet, but let me organize a drink for you now.’

‘Not at all. You get back in there and forget about me. I’ll be grand. Pat here’ll see me right. And I’ll stand you a drink when you’re free. How’s it going anyway?’

‘Bit early to say.’

‘The minister left, I hear.’

‘Called away.’

O’Shea clapped him on the back again. ‘God love you,’ he said. ‘God love you. Now get back to them and I’ll see you soon.’

Chuckling, he moved unerringly in the direction of the bar.

***

Laochraí was in full denunciatory mode when Amiss returned. ‘A disgrace. The whole thing was a disgrace. Not a word about the national struggle or the suffering of our people.’

‘Or inequalities and impoverishment created by the deliberate international capitalist policy of underdevelopment,’ added Father O’Flynn.

‘Which sought to weaken the poor by exacerbating sectarianism,’ added Billy Pratt.

‘Ah, now lads,’ said O’Farrell, ‘in the interests of peace and mutual understanding, would y’ever give us a break? Sure we don’t want everything to be doom and gloom. Can’t we cheer up a bit?’

‘Anyway I’m sure you’ll more than make up for the lack of whingeing with your film, Miss de Búrca,’ interpolated the baroness acidly. ‘Now, since no one seems to have anything else to say about that piece of ersatz Paddywhackery, I suppose we might as well get your contribution over with.’

***

The MOPE film was as ghastly as Amiss had feared: the difference between it and its predecessor being akin to that between a graveyard and a nightclub. It opened with a lengthy dirge which accompanied heart-rending Victorian sketches of Famine victims, then took the audience briefly back to earlier woes like the penal laws, Cromwell’s sack of Drogheda and mass hangings after the 1798 rebellion. Then back again to the Famine (referred to as a holocaust and the worst act of genocide ever known to man), then a leap forward to the 1916 rebellion, complete with heroic pictures of Patrick Pearse and his comrades in the General Post Office being bombarded by British guns and culminating in the sound of rifle-fire over the pictures of those later executed. A quick leap through the war of independence followed, and then the focus went on to accounts of discrimination in Northern Ireland, sectarian oppression and what were euphemistically described as spontaneous outbursts of anger by the nationalist people. There were shots from a play showing brave women being battered by evil gloating policemen and the whole thing finished with one of them holding up a clenched fist and declaiming: ‘We may be the most oppressed people ever, but we’ll proudly gain our freedom in the end.’

Most of the participants gazed at the table after the film came to an end. The baroness looked enquiringly at Steeples, who shrugged. ‘If that’s culture, I’m the Pope, so I am.’

‘Yet,’ said Billy Pratt, ‘it is a most constructive aid to the process by which we all come to feel each other’s pain.’

Laochraí beamed at him. There was another silence.

‘Do you feel, Rollo,’ the baroness asked icily, ‘that that was a fair account of Anglo-Irish history?’

‘I couldn’t possibly comment,’ said Pooley. ‘I’m too new to all this.’

‘Charles?’

‘All I can usefully do is apologize for the wrongs done to Ireland by my ancestors.’

‘Not just your ancestors,’ interjected Laochraí. ‘You’re still doing it.’

‘Of course, for any continuing injustices also.’

The baroness surveyed him. ‘Pusillanimous Albion,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you admit to genocide and be done with it.’

Taylor looked at her nervously. ‘Well…’ He cleared his throat.