or because it had stopped happening those who stood in the crowds in the public squares did not seem quite to know. The Prime Minister resigned: the EEC put in a stop-gap government of bureaucrats: martial law was briefly imposed: a new currency introduced, conforming to EEC standard. Although, as a few dissidents observed, the three hundred million pounds’ worth of notes which the corner banks had distributed had scarcely affected inflation rates at all. But it was not a popular thing to say. Public pride had been offended. To believe a nation could do without money! Somebody’s fault: Rasputin’s fault: Rasputin of Bridport, the genius who had nervous breakdowns, moved his young mistress into his wife’s bed, dined on champagne and caviar while firing his staff.
‘They’ll blame me,’ said Julian. ‘I know they will. A prophet is always dishonoured in his own country. I’ll be the fall guy. Why did you say that about my having shock treatment when I was twenty-one?’
‘Because it was true.’
‘You don’t love me, you never have. My troubles began when I first encountered you, when I came to your gate—’
‘The lover at the gate,’ said Eleanor, ‘comes for more than he knows.’
‘I should never have left Georgina,’ said Julian. ‘This is my punishment. In my own house I am not believed.’
‘In your own house you are believed,’ said Eleanor. ‘And it was a good time while it lasted.’
The police came in the early hours and took Julian away, giving him not even time to put on his socks and shoes. They made him wear his slippers. They had trumped up, it seemed, charges of tax evasion, corruption and waste of public funds. Eleanor followed him to the police cars in the drive. There were four of them, all flashing their lights in the dawn.
‘It goes against the grain to apologize,’ Julian said, ‘but I shouldn’t have said the hard things I did. I was upset. I love you very much. I don’t regret a minute of it. Two years’ perfect happiness is more than many a man has in his lifetime. But now the nation is humiliated in the eyes of the world and it seems I must pay the price for it. I wonder how many years I’ll get? Will I be allowed pen and paper?’
‘Goodbye, my dear,’ said Eleanor. ‘I’ll see you are. The nation mustn’t lose a genius. I’ll wait for you.’
And she smiled and waved encouragingly, though she knew she lied. There was no need for him to be more unhappy than he had to be.
Eleanor, pursued by the press, went first to stay with Jed and poor Prune, but Prune, who seemed to have regained her will and spirits, and was considering adoption, asked her to leave within the week. ‘It’s not just the media forever at the door,’ she said, ‘or you and Jed droning on about free money economics at the dinner table, or the way you sneer at my stews, it’s never knowing what you and Jed are up to. If Jed kept himself to himself more I’d get pregnant. He just wastes his energies.’
‘That’s hardly scientific,’ said Eleanor.
‘I don’t care what it is,’ said Prune. ‘You just leave me and Jed alone. Go and live with your husband.’
‘I can’t. He’s in prison,’ said Eleanor.
‘Where you put him,’ said Prune, ‘with your mad ideas. I mean your real husband, your proper husband, the one and only. You married poor Bernard to get away from home, but that’s your bed; you chose it, you lie in it.’
It seemed not a bad idea to Eleanor, who felt an unusual need for friends and family, but Gillian said she’d rather Eleanor didn’t come to stay, one way and another. Why didn’t she just go on swanning around up at Bridport Lodge? But Eleanor said she couldn’t: Georgina had returned with a battery of lawyers: the university was being merged into the polytechnic: the place hardly existed any more. It had no future role as the arbiter of national economic policy.
‘Oh dear,’ said Gillian, ‘you’ve come such a long way and ended up with nothing! At least Bernard and I have each other. He’s got quite a little business going selling fancy cars.’
‘He doesn’t know one end of an engine from another,’ said Eleanor.
‘He doesn’t have to,’ said Gillian. ‘He was born honest and people know it. That’s all that counts.’
But Gillian did let her round to see Ken. Last time she’d seen him he’d been wrapped in blankets because