Threats Made In Jest

We meet on a weekday in Blackheath, an upmarket area of South-East London consisting of a vast plague pit topped with turf and fringed by unaffordable houses. I have ration tickets to spare, or at least, I will eat only rice and peas in the evenings this week, so I can afford to take my father out for coffee. The government calculates our ration allocations on the basis of a years-old study that suggested, in the florid language of newspapers, that civilised Britain was only ever ‘seven meals away from barbarism’, that is to say, should your food supply be cut off early Tuesday morning, then by Thursday lunchtime you would put a brick through the grocer’s window. If there were grocers anymore; obviously, I mean Tesco’s window. They’ve done all right under the new regime. The stores they bought and weren’t allowed to open because of competition legislation are operated instead as detention centres for the ‘internally displaced’, that is, white British refugees, those few among the ranks of the unwanted whom we can’t persecute racially.
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Blackheath lies a short distance from Dulwich, a place which has a certain connection with the life of our national saviour Bob. I believe he joked about his mother having written a seventy year sick note when he finally returned to the school to receive an honour just before he died.
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It’s funny that Bob came to matter to us so much. No-one understands why his death changed everything: I mean, a few years later, when they hanged Des O’Connor in public after the show trial, no-one really gave a damn. I’m sure the academics could tell us, just as they could explain the rise of Thatcher or the popular appeal of Marmite, but all the ones that would pose challenging questions have fled to America, or perhaps Australia, where they have at least heard of Bob. We do still have professors and such, even of the arts, even of the social sciences, but they mostly appear on TV or radio to tell us that the Victorians were just like we were, the Tudors were just like we were, and everything was always already this way.
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The coffee shop has no cakes left and the national menu imposed on all establishments allows only traditional puddings such as spotted dick and sticky toffee, which are both off today, so with our coffees they serve bowls of hot custard. My father breaks the skin on his before stirring it with a spoon. He doesn’t make an attractive sight, unshaven and smoking while he eats, the cigarette composed of ninety per cent ash, the smoker scratching his dandruff onto the marble table top and into his half-full drink. Elton John sings ‘Sacrifice’ on the café radio. Outside a minor traffic accident takes place and Bob’s name is loudly taken in vain.
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‘Personally,’ quotes Dad, ‘I don’t think there’s intelligent life on other planets. Why should other planets be any different from this one?’ It’s his favourite Bob quotation, one which reveals the wisdom beneath the fake tan, the kernel out of which the whole ridiculous dogma was born. It’s propaganda of the lowest kind, the cult of Bob, but I can see it really comforts Dad: his smile is bleak but the warmth in his eyes is real and it is good, it is good to see my father again. I finger the white-and-red paper rosette pinned to his lapel.
‘A bit tatty,’ I tell him. ‘You’ll get more than a fine and a record if you’re not careful.’ Outside, blue lights flash and police begin to gather around the traffic smash.
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In 2003, Bob recorded episodes of a game show, Wipeout, previously hosted by a TV magician. Forty-seven minutes into his last recording, the white-suited master entertainer was shot once through the heart with a high-powered rifle. Unbelievably, the assassin eluded security, and no investigation has ever determined the culprit, despite thorough examination of the studio’s visitor logs, repeated scrutiny of the CCTV recordings and a painstaking forensic study.
Panic broke out immediately, for reasons we cannot determine. The government was forced to respond: checkpoints to control the aimless flow of terrorised people, wide-ranging security measures to assuage our worries. A curfew was declared in all major towns and cities. The Houses of Parliament were girded with concrete barriers resembling a ring of Lego. Loyalty oaths followed, high-profile prosecutions, and finally the introduction of the rosette, symbolising Bob’s fatal wound, to restore confidence and a sense of national identity. Even here, in the café, Ministry of Justice posters silently blare mantras of public order from every wall.
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My father and I make small talk for half an hour, while the police clear up outside the café window. I tell him about my work in the National Gallery, scraping around for money to preserve even half of the canvasses in storage. What argument can be made for restoration funding in the age of Bob?
Dad complains about the post office, bus service and municipal swimming pool, grudgingly starts a second cigarette, wonders aloud whether the U.N. will ever really send in peacekeepers and which country would be assigned to us. Perhaps, he says longingly, they’ll come from the Aboriginal Republic, down under. They seem to know what they’re doing with themselves these days.
There is a silence and I let his spoon ting against the bottom of the custard bowl.
‘So what have you really been up to, Dad?’
‘I’ve been watching the films of William Hartnell. The first Doctor Who on TV. A minor voice in the Church of Bob, an Ezekiel or such, but significant. He was in Carry on Sergeant with Bob, you see. Also This Sporting Life, where he’s another hard case. There’s a comedy, I Am An Explosive. He plays a banker, swallows a bomb by accident.’ He smirks at this last role.
‘Why’s he significant?’
‘For the change from tough guys and sarges to the nation’s favourite grandfather. His is the redemption song of the Church of Bob, of modern Britain. Who knows, if they’d ever brought back that TV show maybe we’d now be spared the worst of this hellish place.’ I look at my shop-soiled excuse for a father, a shadow of his authoritative younger self, dressed in a flat cap and filthy tweeds like a time-lost pensioner from another world. Hard to imagine why Hartnell’s song would appeal to him.
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Finally the time comes to part. I reach out to hold his old hand, the skin papery but warm, and then gently adjust his rosette. Its tatters fall away in my hands. He doesn’t seem to care but I can’t choke back a high little sound of horror. The safety pin gleams nakedly on his lapel now, screaming to the eyes of every possible informant around us.
‘Dad. Tell me you have a spare.’
His eyes are rimmed with red, his breathing is slow and unspeakably tired.
‘Dad. You’re not allowed to give up. Right. Here.’ I fetch the badge from my own lapel and deftly clip it in place over his breast. My fingers shake a little when this is done. I will be very careful riding home.
Dad rises to his feet like a man pushing eighty, not sixty, and offers a tender but distant look by way of goodbye.
‘Safe journey home, Dad,’ I sigh. The police have almost finished clearing up the road traffic accident outside. When they have gone I will try to make it home without detection. There are no more ration tickets for coffee and I make the final drops in my cup last an hour more before I venture out.
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It has started to rain. I stop in the doorway, pull my collar up and draw my coat tight around me, partly against the cold but also to obscure the tell-tale absence over my heart.
I take one look back at the cold comfort of the café, and re-read the official proclamation from the Ministry of Justice affixed to the wall:
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THREATS MADE IN JEST
WILL BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY
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In Memory of Robert Allan Monkhouse.