AFTERTHOUGHT
England explode
JOHN WELLS
At West Minster (write Jean-Loup Cretin, London co-respondent of AO Paris!) it is the panic: many Deputies have already packed their baggages prior to the flight. At Buckingham, Philip trembles with terror, Elizabeth is at the end of her forces. In the official residence of the Premier Minister Harold-Wilson at No 10 Downing Street the coming and going is ceaseless. But it is above All in Smithsquare, Central Bureau of the British Conservative Party, that the frenetic activity makes itself perceived : the pale faces appear at superior windows:
suspicious eyes regard the street from behind the faded curtains: strange journalists who present themselves at the door are chased with sombre maledictions and big blows of the foot. Once more in England one hears the menacing tic-toc of a great bomb.
Bomb composed of elements so simple and so innocent! Perplexed by certain documents, it is a M Bumphry Herkeley, an- cient member of the Inferior Chamber, who
• have pose some questions to his heretofore colleague and friend M Jeffroy Arcer, adept at the relations in public and also ambitious candidate for the seat of Lout in Lincoln- shire. Enthusiasts to place his hands on the seat of the renowned Sir Osbore in the elec- tion which will occur at the commencement of December, M Jeffroy found himself in a situation far from agreeable. When one's seat is at stake one is not in a position to discuss documents. On the advice of M Toni Babar, grey eminence of the `tones', he pursued M Bumphry legally, protesting his innocence and making accusations of slanderousness. The documents were then placed underneath the judge, sub judice, un- til after the legislative elections.
0 curious phenomenon that is the mind of the journalist! Will the heated imagination never cool itself, will the distorted visions and the smoky phantoms that inhabit it never be dispelled? Fired with alcohol, will the dark suspicions and the churning clouds of fancy never disperse themselves in the cold bright wind of truth? Or is it obscurity alone which breeds these insubstantial demons? For so it was, that as if these words of Latin were still invested with some black spell from the Dark Ages, the journalists fell slaves to their enchantment. In their minds the ticking commenced. For the judge, dozing perhaps in his periwig of another century, the
documents beneath his velvet cushion did not tic. But for the journalists, strangeli, bewitched, the ticking echoed like the gigantesque echoes in the interior of the Big Benjamin himself.
Since this moment, sinister and pregnam with magic, the newspapermen of Fleetstreet have had the air of those who ambulate in their sleep, confused with turbulent dreams. Hypnotised by this sub judice, hocus-pocus no less powerful than the incantations of savage sorcerers, yet in the same time moved with a profound instinctual awe of the judge and his legal apparatuses, they have performed a bizarre dance about the seat of justice. Now they tremble closer on the points of their feet, brushing with their ex- pressive knuckles against the very velvet of the cushion, now they apperceive a sudden sniff or twitch on the part of the dozing judge, and pit-a-pat they have scampered away to perform their graceful eurythmic at the periphery of this enchanted circle.
Image, it must be admitted, a little fanciful and exaggerated. The gentlemen of the press do not perhaps make the pirouettes in so literal a manner around the throne of the law. But for the members of the British public, for the so-called little men of the street, the movements which they perform in the reality must be no less confusing, no less redolent of graceful mysteries. In measure as the metaphoric body of the ballet approaches more closely to the throne, so the tic-toc be- comes more deafening within the skulls of the dancers. Symptom of the demented desire for self-expression, incomprehensible paragraphs trace themselves upon the pages of the journals. Astonishing profiles of M Bumphry or of M Jeffroy etch themselves in the newsprint, deprived of commentary or interesting detail: opaque articles appear. maimed and truncated, resembling perhaps the dark manifestations of a poltergeist, in- dicator of obscure crisis.
In measure, on the contrary, that the enchanted dancers retreat, so the silence within their confused cerebelli amplifies itself among the columns of the newspapers. Histories of pussy-cats, of lottery winners, of courageous sailormen who have swum alone round the continent of Africa pro. liferate upon the page. Images of young ac- tresses, dressed in mini-kini and enormous hat struggle with photographs of the Old English Sheep Dog for the dominance of the internal spread. But not for ever. Again the mystic tingle of this sub judice makes itself sensed in the spines of the dancers, and they flutter courageously closer to this beguiling flame which could so easily destroy them.
But what of the reader of newspapers at Guildford, at Chippenham, at Shepherd Bush? For him it is the incomprehensible folly. He interests himself in the politics of Lout, he interests himself perhaps in the ex- cellent works of M Bumphry at the Associa- tion of the United Nations. All that he finds is silence or obscure phantoms, shrieking and gibbering, without sense or meaning. Little by little he grows nervous. What it is. this gentle tic-toc, minuscule but macabre. which echoes in the recesses of his brain? Little by little the madness spreads itself. Already it is an epidemic. The leaders of the nation cower before the explosion which impends. Happy inspiration, if after the legislative election, M Jeffroy were to remove his documents from beneath the judge, and, who knows, permit them to melt into oblivion!
Previous page
