Chapter 2 Eccentricity #2
As far as Flynn himself was concerned, however, he thought that Gerald Barry, in his wisdom, had been right—the Festival had been “just the ticket” for him.
A tonic. He was surprised how, most days, he was able to approach the office in a good humour.
When he started here, the war and the mistake of Ivy Shears behind him, he vowed to stop merely plodding and to live his life lightly—to skim the surface, like a water boatman, and have no truck with the depths below.
Better to have been dragooned into a festival than a war, no matter how trivial or absurd it often seemed.
And Flynn enjoyed his muted camaraderie with Badger and Evans—the Boy, too.
Unlike Ivy, they had no expectations of him and he none of them.
He wasn’t whole, he would never be whole, but, like the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of men before him who had returned from a war, he was getting on with his life by treating the past as if it barely existed.
He vowed never to write a memoir, never to seek out a survivors’ reunion or swap stories of torture and imprisonment.
The past broke through into the present occasionally, usually in the form of nightmares or a recurrent bout of malaria, but Flynn had determined to cast off both quickly.
All three men in the office had, each in their own way, been seeking a temporary harbour here, even Badger.
(Something to do with an “incident” in his past, but they didn’t delve into the particulars.) Between them, they fulfilled Gerald Barry’s interpretation of “relief”—sopping up all the bits and pieces of Festival business that no one else cared to.
In Savoy Court they were nestled between the cleaning woman’s cupboard and a room where, in their moments off-duty, the commissionaires huddled and smoked ceaselessly while sometimes frying sausages on a little gas ring.
The Boy had tried to wheedle his way in there, like a dog scenting a bone, but the commissionaires were impervious to his charms. They were mainly men who had served in the Heavy squad during the war, pulling bodies, both alive and dead, from beneath the rubble of the Blitz.
It was just as well, as there was a huge variety of objects, from lipsticks to statuary, that they had to manhandle in and out of the building every day.
Once inside Savoy Court, this miscellanea had to be assessed to see if it was worthy to claim a place in the Festival.
Worthy or not, ten thousand items had to be contracted, costed, catalogued and eventually returned—a clerical nightmare that was overseen by Trowbridge, a retired lieutenant-colonel in the Army, although he preferred to be addressed as “Mister.” (“Don’t want to frighten the horses.
”) Nonetheless he brought military discipline to the task, alongside his aide-de-camp, an equally efficient and very pretty assistant called Jeanette, over whom the Boy swooned.
Badger did indeed appear, the Boy on his heels.
He was carrying a large rabbit in his arms, cradling it like a baby.
At first, Flynn thought it was alive, and it was only when he caught a glimpse of its glassy eyes and frozen, palsied face (not the best example of the taxidermist’s art) that he realized it was stuffed.
Badger placed the rabbit on the floor and rummaged in its furry nether regions.
The Boy gave a filthy laugh and said, “Bloody hell, Mr. Badger.”
“Watch it,” Evans warned.
“Sorry, Mr. Evans.”
The Boy’s own father having died before the war (of something simply referred to as “lungs” by his mother), Evans had taken him under his wing and, in loco patris, had assumed the task of trying to civilize the Boy before he evolved into Man and was therefore for ever damned.
Badger found the switch he was looking for and, after a few seconds, the rabbit twitched into life and commenced to revolve, painfully slowly, while waving a paw that clutched a carrot made of felt.
“Automaton,” Badger said. “Quite clever. What do you think?”
“No,” Evans said.
With some difficulty the switch was found again and the rabbit was persuaded to cease its jerky revolutions.
Badger placed it on his desk, where it joined an assortment of bric-a-brac that had also failed to secure a place in the national celebrations.
Amongst this gallimaufry of rejects was a pair of motorcycle goggles with small windscreen wipers attached; a (surprisingly lifelike) mechanical tortoise, and a mandolin made from matchsticks, on which Badger had heroically managed to scratch “Annie Laurie.”
Their room resembled a bazaar more than an office.
At some point there had been an ill-advised appeal to the public for “interesting and unusual objects and ideas” for the “Eccentrics’ Corner” in the Lion and the Unicorn Pavilion, which resulted in a deluge of oddities that no one knew what to do with, most of which seemed to find their way to the basement office eventually.
(“The Old Curiosity Shop,” some wit had called it.) Idiosyncrasy, apparently, was what the British did best. “God help the future of the country if that’s the case,” Evans said.
Some of the larger “Eccentricities,” as they referred to them, such as “a collapsible rubber bus” (able to manoeuvre under low bridges), had luckily never made it past the in-tray of written submissions, although the eternally mysterious “smoke-grinding machine” had been welcomed, if only because no one could imagine how it worked or what it was for.
Badger, inclined to whimsy, had been so captivated by the idea of “a model of the South Bank site composed entirely of soft toilet rolls” that he had encouraged it into the building and displayed it in their office, where it took up an enormous amount of room.
Fortunately, soft toilet rolls were such a novelty that the Boy couldn’t resist, and, one by one, the citadel was quietly dismantled and peddled by him to the occupants of the other offices.
Flynn was only thankful that the Ministry of Pensions’ request for a “modest display of artificial limbs” had been headed off at the pass, eventually finding a home under “Orthopaedic Surgery” in “Health.” Evans had entertained a brief, rather morbid fancy when a firm in the Midlands requested space to display shrouds and “coffin fittings,” and was disappointed when it was passed on to the “Manufactured Goods” section in the Dome of Discovery, where the request was denied.
And it was to Badger’s everlasting regret that he had been made to turn down the offer from a hospital of 604 gallstones arranged in the shape of the Festival emblem.
“All from one patient too,” he said sadly.
“There will be room for everything,” Gerald Barry had told Flynn that day in the park, but someone had to draw the line somewhere. The task usually fell to Evans, who was immune to whimsy.
Partly due to the lack of money, but also partly due to an entrenched cynicism, the country had proved remarkably truculent about taking on the frivolous business of merrymaking.
The Express bellowed with righteous indignation almost daily, as if the very concept of lauding “The Land and Its People” was somehow subversive. (“It is,” Evans said.)
Celebrations involved money and time and enthusiasm—all of which were in short supply.
There was a war going on in Korea, the pound had been devalued and the whole country was bankrupt, thanks to the previous war, not to mention the cost of setting up the National Health Service and the Welfare State.
The “doldrums,” Gerald Barry had called it.
Although it had been made clear when the nod was given for the Festival to go ahead that it was to be a nationwide affair, not just a junket for the capital, only the capital was given any money for it.
It was left up to local councils, generous donors and willing volunteers across the country to come up with ways and means of being en fête in the provinces and shires.
The suggested possibilities appeared to be endless: flower shows and fireworks; the renovation of parks and public gardens; new public toilets and bus shelters; sheepdog trials; cricket teas and whist drives; village fetes and barn dances; brass-band concerts and choirs; maypole dancing and May Queens.
“So, basically,” Evans said when this catalogue had first been rolled out to them by Denholm, “people doing what they would normally do in the summer and sticking the Festival emblem on it.”
“Exactly!” Denholm said.
Nominally their boss, Denholm had started life as an actor and no one understood how he had ended up in a position of responsibility, let alone authority, as he seemed to have a horror of command.
Anything he needed them to do was usually prefaced with a conciliatory “How do you feel about…?” or “Here’s a thought, chaps.
” Occasionally they were “lads,” although, apart from the Boy, it was a long time since any of them had qualified for the term.
“Call me Jeremy,” Denholm had said to them when he first introduced himself. (They never did.) “We’re all equals here, aren’t we?”
“Are we?” Evans said.
There was an unlikely rumour that Denholm had been a bomber pilot during the war, but Badger said he had heard that he had merely played the part of one for the Crown Film Unit.
Denholm didn’t seem the sort to have a wife.
He looked as if he spent a lot of time at the trough, dressed more flamboyantly than most—paisley-patterned cravat or a red bow-tie—and seemed especially pleased with his voluptuous head of hair.
Evans, who had a bald monkish tonsure, was quietly jealous of Denholm’s hair.
As usual, Denholm appeared in the office as if from nowhere. He was given to making unnervingly quiet entrances and exits, fading in and out of their office; he would have given the Cheshire Cat a run for its money. (“Light on his feet,” Evans said.)