Chapter 8 The Lion and the Unicorn #2
The Lion and the Unicorn Pavilion was a massive, airy building, with a vast plate-glass frontage.
At one point in its construction all the plate glass available in the country was on site.
Despite being a tribute to the eccentricities of the British character, the Pavilion was in fact mostly devoted to an exhibition entitled “The British Craftsman.” The two aspects were not necessarily unrelated.
The Pavilion took its name from the creatures who were to be stationed at the entrance—life-size sculptures made of straw by a craftsman in Essex called Fred Mizen.
(“Life-size?” the Boy ruminated. “How big is a unicorn?”)
From afar, Flynn had developed a certain affinity with the Lion and the Unicorn. He was, he felt, himself a figure of straw, insubstantial and unenduring.
The Lion and the Unicorn were charged with the weighty task of representing the nebulous concept of the “British character.” “In straw,” Evans said.
“No irony there, then.” Apparently the Lion symbolized “pragmatism and strength,” while the Unicorn was emblematic of “the imagination and fancy,” and, as with everything on site, they were designed to be ephemeral.
“More irony,” Evans said. He had been out to Essex to view their progress and found that they had already become home to a nest of field mice.
(Their rat cousins had already chewed their way through many of the electric cables on the South Bank site.)
Once, during the worst of his war, working in the Kanyu Cutting—the Hellfire Pass—Flynn had lucked upon a mouse and had unthinkingly popped it in his mouth and eaten it alive.
He had been too hungry to care. He could still recall the sensation as he bit down on wriggling fur and delicate bones.
He shuddered at the memory. Perhaps one day he would in turn be nibbled to death by mice—a fitting revenge for that innocent little soul he had dined on that day.
Flynn, although not responsible for them, was familiar with the “Crafts” in the Pavilion from the Stock List. An extraordinary assortment of objects was to go on display, although none of them had taken up residence yet—except for a “model animal, toad” (Peggy Tearle, 202 London Road, Leicester) that was occupying a rather forlorn position in a glass display case while it waited to be joined by—what?
A Bernard Leach bowl? Or perhaps a “movement of time switch” (Horstmann Clifford Magnetics Ltd, Newbridge Works, Bath, Somerset).
The latter was particularly intriguing to Flynn.
Could a “movement of time switch” transport you back to the past?
To a time when everything still seemed possible, a time when you ate wild figs from a tree beside a hot dusty road with a woman called Cora.
Or when you flew down Whitwell Hill on your bike, your brother screaming with excitement behind you.
Or perhaps back to a time when you knew better than to agree with your editor when, at the end of 1941, he suggested that you fill the temporarily vacated post of foreign correspondent in Malaya.
“Don’t worry about the Straits, Flynn. The Japanese are all tied up in China.
They’re in Indonesia but that’s just strategic, to cut off Chinese supply lines.
They won’t come further south. They’re hardly a fighting force to be reckoned with.
Singapore’s impregnable—Fortress Singapore and all that. ”
Flynn’s attention was caught by a small shelf of “British Writers,” which proved to be both eclectic and disappointing: two volumes of Richardson’s Pamela, a letter from Lord Byron, a corrected page proof from Churchill’s History of the Second World War, and—as if it were capable of representing British literature—a typescript of the Festival Poems. A little card in front of it said, “The winning Festival Poems, kindly lent by the compiler, Mr. H. Flynn.” “I didn’t!
” he protested to a woman standing near him—Olive Gibson, he knew her vaguely.
She was arranging a display case of knives.
“A knife for every eventuality,” she said, as if she were a salesgirl.
She wore rather heavy spectacles and had the can-do air of a hockey captain.
She had been a squadron officer in the WAAF, so perhaps that explained her demeanour.
She was right, too; there was a surprisingly large variety of knives on offer, including but not limited to: linoleum, oyster, tea-pruning, shoemaker’s, smoker’s, meat inspector’s, lamb’s foot.
He recognized the names from the Stock List. Evans might fear numerology, but Flynn was harried by the Festival’s endless cataloguing.
“This one’s nice,” Olive said, passing a knife to him. He felt the solid heft of it in his hand. “Spear-point blade,” she said. “For stabbing, basically, I think. You didn’t what?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You said, ‘I didn’t!,’ sounding very peeved.”
“I didn’t lend them this.” He gestured at the Poems.
“Oh, you’re that Harry Flynn. The one whose French girlfriend’s gone AWOL.”
“Not my girlfriend. Not missing. Just late into work.”
“If you say so.” She picked up the Poems and rifled through them. “I had a shufti earlier, there’s some awful rot in here, isn’t there? Two shillings and sixpence—daylight robbery for this rubbish.” She read out loud:
“Like an athlete overtrained
Reactively-erect from faceward aisles.”
She raised a questioning eyebrow at Flynn, who said, “I think it’s about a coal miner. The poems often are.”
“And this one is indecipherable. We are not an age that can put its feelings into a ribboned perruque. What does that mean?”
“Sorry—no idea.”
Olive sighed and shook her head. “It’s hardly what we fought the war for, is it? Were you looking for something?”
“No, just having a browse.”