CHAPTER SIX

The following Thursday evening Matthew Pearce set off by taxi for Gwen's Chelsea flat, in accordance with the invitation he had received, a few days previously, to meet a couple of her friends there - namely Peter and Linda Daniels. Since he hadn't seen Gwen since Monday, following their joint return from Northampton, he was rather looking forward to the visit, if only to quieten his conscience a little over the affair with her mother. The fact that, contrary to all previous arrangements, he had told her not to visit him Wednesday afternoon ... was still troubling his peace-of-mind; though he felt relatively confident that the excuse he had made about having important work to do was fundamentally cogent, and therefore wouldn't arouse her suspicions in any way. Nevertheless he was anxious to see her, in order to be left in absolutely no doubt concerning her innocence of his real motives. Besides, he wanted to be near her and, if possible, to improve his relations with her as a kind of defence against Mrs Evans, whom he was afraid might wish to make a habit of visiting his studio and thus exposing him to the risk of emotional attachment.... Not that she had made any immediate arrangements to visit him again, or indeed claimed his time beyond a couple of hours the previous afternoon. But he was less than confident that she wouldn't do so in future, especially as she had found him so sexually satisfying and was unlikely to get on better sexual terms with her ailing husband.

Arriving at Gwen's address at about seven-thirty, he rang the bell and was duly admitted by the young lady in person, who seemed pleased to see him and relieved that he had in fact been able to make it after all, contrary to his initial misgivings about the evening in question.

"Have your friends arrived yet?" he asked, following her up the thickly carpeted wooden stairs to her second-floor apartment.

"Just a few minutes ago," she replied, glancing over her shoulder at the denim-clad ascending figure behind. "Which was pretty good timing on their part, too."

He was led into the lounge and introduced first to Peter and then to Linda Daniels, the former extending a rather stiff white hand, the latter a more flexible black one.

"Glad to meet you," he averred, as he shook hands with each of the Daniels and briefly scanned their faces - the man's firm and set, rather hard and aristocratic; the woman's, by contrast, quite fluid and gentle, pleasantly serene. He took an immediate liking to her, though the husband repelled him a little and immediately put him on his guard.

"So you're the artist Gwen has been telling us about," Peter Daniels remarked, no sooner than the introductions had run their customary course.

"Yes, I guess so," said Matthew, smiling.

"Well, I'm a writer myself, of mostly journalistic tendency, though occasionally a poet and novelist as well," Peter Daniels declared. "And my wife is a fellow-teacher at Gwendolyn’s school."

"A physical education teacher if I remember correctly, isn't it?" Matthew responded, recalling to mind what he had already learnt from Gwen.

"Yes, unfortunately so," Linda admitted, with a gentle self-deprecatory sigh.

"I think she would rather be an art teacher actually," Gwen opined, for the artist's benefit.

"Is that so?"

"Well, not specifically," Linda admitted. "Though I do have an interest in art, both ancient and modern."

Peter Daniels frowned enigmatically, or at least that's how it appeared to Matthew. "I suppose your interest is chiefly in the modern, is it?" he said to the latter, who, at Gwen's request, had just sat down in a nearby armchair.

"Well, as a practising artist I guess it has to be," he replied. "I'm not one to either copy or strive to emulate the old masters, you know."

"Ah, so you're anti-representational?" Peter Daniels conjectured enigmatically.

The inference struck Matthew as a bit odd, but he smiled and simply said: "Not so much anti-representational as pro-transcendental."

Peter Daniels raised his brows in acute surprise. "And what exactly is that?" he asked.

Matthew attempted to explain, using as few words as possible, the basis of his allegiance to the Holy Ghost and correlative penchant for the superconscious. However, the journalist transpired not to being particularly impressed by his explanation, having no prior knowledge of the superconscious and its role in shaping the arts. To him, it sounded like a figment of the imagination. And not only that but, worse still, a threat to his egocentric integrity, with its empirical objectivity. He had no desire to revise his philosophical viewpoint of Spenglerian pessimism and opposition to decadence, including, not least of all, its mystical manifestations. He was a champion of Western civilization, with its scientific rationality, and he lost no time in letting the transcendentalist know it! Needless to say, Matthew was somewhat taken-aback, suddenly confronted, as he now was, by a sense of deja vu in the presence of what seemed to him like a carbon copy of Gwen's father. "I don't quite understand you," he confessed.

"Well, whether you realize it or not," Peter Daniels rejoined, with an air of didactic earnestness, "Western civilization is seriously threatened by certain destructive elements in contemporary society whose only desire is to bring about its complete and utter downfall, and so enable the opponents of civilization to triumph. The decline of the West, as outlined by Spengler in his seminal work of that name, is an indisputable fact which cannot be denied, no matter how repugnant it may appear to us or, at any rate, to those of us with an interest in preventing and perhaps even reversing its decline. It's an extremely regrettable fact, but there it is! The enemies of Western civilization, who patently include mystical transcendentalists of a non-empirical disposition, are slowly but steadily gaining the ascendancy."

Matthew was virtually thunderstruck. He could scarcely believe his ears! Was this what he had come along to Gwen's flat to hear - the prejudices of a reactionary bourgeois? He was almost on the point of exploding with laughter. "But the civilization to which you allude," he responded, as soon as he could get over the initial shock of what he had just heard, "is being superseded by that which stands above it and signifies the next and probably final rung on the ladder of human evolution. If anything is in decline it's only the bourgeois world, which cannot last for ever but is destined to be superseded in due course. Indeed, it has already been superseded to a large extent, as a cursory glance at the contemporary world, with its photography and films and pop music, would adequately confirm."

Peter Daniels seemed not to have heard aright. "Are you seriously trying to tell me that what's currently happening to our civilization is for the better?" he objected incredulously.

"Yes, naturally," Matthew maintained. "It may not be for the better as far as the bourgeoisie are concerned, but it's certainly so for the proletariat, who have largely superseded them. If bourgeois civilization didn't decline - and it's no longer in effective operation anyway - there would be a frightful stasis, a horrible permanence of egocentric dualism, which it would be impossible to endure. I mean, what could be more absurd and fundamentally tragic than that? The idea simply doesn't bear thinking about! Fortunately, however, life is a perpetual evolution, not a permanent stasis, so we needn't fear that the changes which are occurring to and in our society are inevitably for the worse. We're climbing up higher, not falling down lower."

"Bullshit!" cried Peter Daniels, who had become flushed from suppressed rage. "How can so many of the changes which have come over the Western and, in particular, West European world this century possibly signify progress? Are you seriously trying to tell me that modern art, for instance, is superior to traditional art - to the representational art, shall we say, of the 16-19th centuries?"

"Superior in one respect it most certainly is," Matthew affirmed, trying to avoid thinking of Mr Evans. "It's not so much balanced between illusion and truth as distinctly biased on the side of truth, distinctly a product of the superconscious, with its non-representational subjectivity. Which is why I said that, as a product of egocentric tension, Western civilization is effectively no longer in operation, having been superseded by what stands above it - the transcendental bias of post-egocentric man."

"Don't you really mean what stands beneath it?" Peter Daniels protested defiantly.

"On the contrary, what stands beneath it is the pre-egocentric, in which the balanced dualism to which you evidently subscribe hadn't yet come properly into existence," Matthew retorted, "the reason being that, at that stage in his evolution, Western man was distinctly biased on the side of the subconscious and thus given to an art form which reflected his sensual predominance and correlative predilection for the illusory. But modern art generally reflects the opposite tendency and, consequently, is of a far superior nature. At its best, its most abstract, it tends to reflect a superior development to both the religious and secular art of the representational past, which is either sensuously lopsided or balanced between the sensual and spiritual realms in what amounts to an egocentric compromise. A spiritualized abstract canvas is closer to truth, whereas a beautiful representational one, particularly such as was produced during the cultural heyday of Western civilization, contains a great deal of illusion - namely the thing or person or whatever being represented, and the way in which the subject-matter is handled. Now if these days we, or at least the more spiritually evolved of us, prefer the sight of an abstract or monochromatic canvas to a fully representational one, it's largely because we've lost our taste and capacity for illusion, having evolved to a point which is so biased in favour of the superconscious ... that only what intimates of or reflects truth has any real relevance to us. The other, though still intelligible, becomes something of an anachronism for us."

Peter Daniels grunted his animal disapproval of this radical statement. "Not for me it doesn't," he grimly declared. "I take no pleasure in abstract or monochromatic canvases. And neither, I should imagine, does anyone with the least degree of sense, taste, or intelligence!"

"I'm bound to say that's a highly presumptuous claim," Matthew averred, giving way to a degree of emotional contempt for the journalist. "The fact is that the most enlightened people tend to relate more to modern non-representational art than to any traditional art, great or otherwise."

A smile of undisguised satisfaction passed across Linda Daniels' attractively oval face at this remark, whereas Gwen's remained rather stern. The former felt secretly gratified by it, whereas the latter, conscious of her inability to understand most of Matthew's art, took it as a personal affront.

"Even where monochromatic canvases are concerned?" said Peter Daniels sarcastically.

"Yes, though it's not necessary to dwell on extremes or to equate the bulk of modern art with such radical experiments," Matthew objected. "There's a lot more to it than that, as I think you would realize if you visited any large gallery of modern art or glanced through the pages of any comprehensively illustrated encyclopaedia on the subject. Even my work, at present focusing on certain religious ideals, with particular reference to the inner light of meditation, is not without a degree of variety."

"Humph, of a rather simplistic order I should imagine!" the journalist sneered, to the evident disapproval of his wife, who immediately reproved him with a curt, emphatic utterance of his Christian name.

But Matthew remained unperturbed. "As a matter of fact, my work is generally rather simplistic," he confessed. "For it wouldn't serve my illustrative purposes to make it otherwise. My basic adherence to what are termed minimalist techniques is a reflection, in large measure, of fidelity to the superconscious as opposed to the ego. Or, to be more precise, of fidelity to an ego which is more under the sway of the superconscious than of the subconscious, and accordingly less given to egocentric embellishments and self-aggrandizing complexities than would otherwise be the case."

"Bah! that's only to say you'd be incapable of producing great art, which of necessity demands a high level of complexity," Peter Daniels exclaimed.

"Yes, I dare say I am incapable of producing the kind of art that appertains to the egocentric past," Matthew admitted, anticipating some such objection on the journalist's part, "but that's exactly as it should be. For I live in an intensely artificial environment and am the recipient of post-egocentric standards and predilections. I'm very much a product of the big city and therefore don't feel qualified to paint or sculpt in a manner which, strictly speaking, pertains chiefly to a medium-sized town or a small city, where nature and, needless to say, nature's sensuous influence are never very far away, and man is accordingly more under the dominion of his subconscious, with its penchant for the illusory. No, if I were able and qualified to paint in a style approximating to the representational tradition, I'd be an anachronism, not a bona fide contemporary artist."

Peter Daniels snorted contemptuously at what seemed to him like a narrowly one-sided viewpoint. "And you regard what you do paint as art rather than anti-art?" he asked sceptically.

"Yes, most certainly!" Matthew replied. "Only, it's an art centred on truth rather than balanced between truth and illusion, essence and appearance, the subjective and the objective. In short, a sort of superart.... However, the fact that there has been an outpouring of anti-art this century is something I won't, of course, deny. Yet even that was partly founded on the delusion that art is essentially a matter of illusion, like religion, rather than a phenomenon which evolves into truth, as in fact it can do and subsequently has done. No, I don't concentrate on anti-art, any more than on the negativity of Spenglerian pessimism concerning the West, because I prefer to take a positive line and thus accept the applicability of truth to art, whether in the realm of the spiritual or the secular, the transcendent or the mundane. To me, art isn't simply something that comes to an end with the passing of an egocentric age, in which myth and sensuality play a significant part, but something that continues on up the ladder of human evolution to the reflection of a transcendental age, in which truth and spirituality are the leading factors. Why therefore should I waste time producing anti-art - which, in any case, has already been produced in sufficient abundance this century, and seems primarily intended to belittle and undermine the old representational mode of art - when there's a new art-sense to consider and much work to be done in consolidating and perfecting it? Gone are the days when it was respectable or, at any rate, credible to be an anti-artist. If I knew anyone who was one these days, I shouldn't wish to associate with him. He'd only bore and confuse me."

"Which is precisely what you do to me!" snapped Peter Daniels, to the verbal disapproval, once again, of his wife. "Whether or not it's because I was born and bred in the country, I don't know. But, whatever the reason, I can't relate to what you're saying. As a conservative, I find a great deal of modern art, of whatever tendency, totally unacceptable and completely without justification. It palls to insignificance by comparison with the greatest art produced by European civilization right up to the mid-nineteenth century, which seems to be the turning-point, the beginning of the rot, the gradual decline in our significance as a cultural power. One need only read a work like The Hour of Decision by Oswald Spengler, to obtain a fair idea of what is happening to us and why we're in decline, not only as regards the arts but ..."

"Fortunately I have no use for neo-royalist solutions to the apparent dilemma which confronts us," Matthew interposed, on the crest of another wave of contempt which had built-up inside him at the mention of Spengler again. "And no sympathy for the book to which you refer, which, in my honest opinion, is one of the most depressing, if not reactionary, works ever written."

Peter Daniels flinched sharply, as though from a sudden blow to the face. "I can hardly agree with that statement!" he ejaculated, patently shocked and offended.

"Oh, so you're a neo-royalist, are you?" Matthew deduced.

"No, damn it, a conservative, as I told you a moment ago!"

"Ah yes, a democratic royalist," the artist concluded inferentially.

There was a period of strained silence before, with an obvious air of constraint, Peter Daniels confessed: "I'm afraid I don't quite follow you."

"It simply means that you're not as extreme as your authoritarian counterparts," Matthew calmly remarked. "As a royalist, you can only be one of three principal types, viz. a genuine royalist, a democratic royalist, or a neo-royalist."

"I fail to appreciate the distinction between a genuine royalist and a neo-royalist," said Peter Daniels with a thinly ironic smile on his lips.

"So do a lot of people," Matthew retorted, "but that's only because they're ignorant."

"How dare you!" The journalist had got to his feet and was staring down at Matthew in a highly threatening manner, his fists tightly clenched at his sides.

"Peter!" Linda Daniels had also got to her feet and put a restraining hand on her husband's nearest arm. "Are you going to behave reasonably, or must we leave the room?"

"It would be better if we left this place altogether," rasped Peter Daniels, still staring down at the seated artist.

"Please, I'd rather you didn't," pleaded Gwen, stepping up to his other side. "I have some dinner on at the moment, after all."

The mention of dinner appeared to calm Peter Daniels down a little and induced him to return to his seat, accompanied by the faithful and ever-persevering presence of his wife. Gwen sighed her relief and excused herself on the pretext of having to return to the kitchen. There was an uneasy silence in the room, disturbed only by the heavy ticking of an old-fashioned wall clock. It was Matthew, however, who first broke it or, rather, broke out of it.

"I didn't intend to offend you personally," he averred, speaking directly to the journalist, "but was simply trying to point out a fact. And if you're still interested in hearing my notion, erroneous or not, of the distinction between royalism and a neo-royalism, I'll give it to you."

Peter Daniels emitted a fulsome sigh of regret. "Very well, what is it?" he rasped.

"Essentially the difference between a Henry VIII or a Louis XIV and a Franco or a Mussolini," replied Matthew, blushing slightly in response to what he basically knew to be an unorthodox viewpoint, but one which circumstances had launched him into without proper preparation or indeed complete conviction. "The difference, in other words, between a genuine aristocratic dictatorship and a dictatorship which is anything but aristocratic. Genuine royalism pertains to an epoch in which the aristocracy govern, an epoch preceding the bourgeois one of royalist/socialist compromise. Neo-royalism, or fascism, is only possible in an age like our own, which is in transition to a proletarian one and consequently subject to confusions and extreme reactionary tendencies. It's a species of authoritarianism which may triumph for a time but never for very long, since the current of evolution is against it and, in the end, it must succumb to the prevailing Zeitgeist, which, especially these days, is decidedly socialistic. Not being a genuine article but a bogus, anachronistic, plebeianized form of royalism, it is doomed to extinction and failure, even if, for a while, it has the appearance of strength. No, the legitimate epoch for royalism is one in which man hasn't yet attained to a balance between the subconscious and superconscious minds but is under the dominion of the former, and thus given to the perpetuation of a society which upholds the sovereignty of the sensual and materialistic over the spiritual and idealistic. Royalism is an elitist phenomenon, and therefore it emphasizes differences between men, as between the nobility and the commonality. It is fundamentally dark, cruel, evil, illusory - in a word, pagan. And its upholders are generally men of action, which, in any case, is what every genuine aristocracy should be. Only after they've been dethroned by the bourgeoisie do the aristocracy - or such of them as are left - begin to cultivate a more studious and contemplative mode of life. Yet the more they feel obliged to do this, the less genuinely aristocratic they become, with a result that, after centuries of progressive atrophying of the truly aristocratic instincts, one arrives at the equivalent of the poor wretch whom Huysmans delineates in his classic novel Against Nature through the character of Des Esseintes - a sickly dilettante and dandy, the degenerate consequence of bourgeois rule. Of that race of proud and ruthless predators from which he was descended, scarcely a trace remains. The fact is you can't be a genuine aristocrat, and hence royalist, after the termination of your governing epoch. You become progressively spurious to the point where, if you have any fight left in you, you may well be prepared to clutch at any fascist straw which the wind of reactionary conservatism may blow your way."

"Well, fortunately for me, I happen to be middle class," Daniels responded, "so I can't pretend it bothers me all that much if the aristocracy are not what they used to be. And my politics are neither royalist nor neo-royalist and/or fascist, as you define it, but conservative."

"Yes, democratic royalist," Matthew repeated, "because the bourgeois is ever a compromise animal, indisposed to the authoritarian. Appertaining to the middle, or second, stage of human evolution in between the aristocracy and the proletariat, you divide into two main camps - one camp with closer ties to the dethroned aristocracy, the other with closer ties to the ascending proletariat. Thus arises the prolonged parliamentary struggle between the right-wing conservative bourgeoisie and their left-wing liberal counterparts, with the former growing steadily weaker as the latter grow stronger, the political pendulum gradually swinging from the Right to the Left, even given all the relatively minor election oscillations coming in-between, as can be verified, I believe, by the increasing radicalism which the parliamentary progression from Whig and Liberal to Labour governments implies."

"Humph, you make it all sound too philosophically neat and simple!" Peter Daniels objected.

"Maybe that's because I happen to look down on it all from a higher vantage-point," Matthew declared.

"What, democratic socialist?" the journalist scoffed, turning briefly towards Linda Daniels for support.

"Totalitarian, if you please," came the instant rejoinder.

"What, you a communist?" Peter Daniels was almost on the verge of getting to his feet again, so taken-aback was he by the artist's complacent admission.

"Yes, in a manner of speaking," Matthew admitted, blushing slightly in spite of himself, for he was aware now that part of what he said was not so much him speaking as an argumentative persona which the debate had conjured up from the nether depths of his psyche like some kind of demented demon of wilful intent. "Which is to say, to the extent," he rejoined, "that I perceive totalitarian socialism as a means to social democracy and thus to the achievement of real political power by the proletariat."

"But you're an educated and well-spoken man, you're not a proletarian!" Peter Daniels hotly protested, exhaling what might have been dragon's breath towards his obdurate interlocutor.

"As a matter of fact, whether I'm educated and well-spoken or the converse has absolutely nothing to do with it," Matthew rejoined, unmoved. "The fact remains that I can understand the development of evolution away from a royalist/socialist dualism towards what transcends it and accordingly stands at the opposite pole to royalism, being the dictatorship of the proletariat rather than of the aristocracy. Now whether or not I'm a genuine socialist is another matter, seeing that, just as one cannot be a genuine royalist when the aristocracy are no longer in power but have been superseded by the bourgeoisie, so, it seems to me, one cannot be a genuine socialist when the proletariat have not yet attained to power, through the agency of totalitarian socialism, but are still subject to the control, no matter how tenuously, of the bourgeois status quo, with its capitalist base. Democratic socialists, on the other hand, are no closer to being genuine socialists ... than democratic royalists, or conservatives, to being genuine royalists or, rather, neo-royalists and, hence, fascists. They are tainted by the bourgeois brush of dualistic compromise, they're part of the parliamentary tension between royalism and socialism and, as such, they pertain to a parliamentary epoch, even if and when that epoch is drawing towards a close. A genuine socialist, however, could only look down on them from the idealistic vantage-point of one who has evolved beyond the middle, or twilight, stage of the political spectrum, with its capitalist exploitation. Standing in the light of proletarian triumph, he would not care for the relative darkness appertaining to the epoch of bourgeois democracy. But I don't stand in such a light, not even in the inceptive context of communist authoritarianism, when the proletariat, having wrenched power from the bourgeoisie through a revolutionary elite, have yet to come into their own political maturity and are accordingly subject to the paternalistic control of the Communist Party, like a child dependent on the guidance of a stern parent. No, I simply realize that such a light is one day destined to materialize, and that it's therefore impossible to regard democratic socialism as an end-in-itself, with nothing higher above or beyond it. Thanks to my knowledge and insight, I'm obliged to live as an outsider, unable to commit myself to the compromise integrity of democratic socialism, which is Welfare State socialism coupled to state capitalism, but simultaneously unable to enter into the true spirit of genuine socialism, and for the simple reason that such a spirit doesn't yet exist, the proletariat not having officially come to power, since still living under the economic heel of bourgeois capitalism."

Peter Daniels could hardly believe his ears! It was as though the fact that he found himself in close proximity to a man who belittled and contradicted all his own views and standards was too much to take, too difficult to comprehend. He had never been politically face-to-face with 'the enemy' before, with a person so unequivocally and radically left wing, and now it appeared that he was in fact face-to-face with such a person he found it strangely unreal, as though he were simply the hapless victim of a bad dream. It was really quite different from what he had imagined it would be, and largely because he was no longer as confident as before about the virtues of parliamentary democracy. He almost felt humiliated! And not only on account of Matthew Pearce but, no less evidently, also on account his wife, who, although sitting next to him, seemed spiritually far removed from him, drawn to the substance of the artist's remarks, wrapped-up in an attentive silence which somehow only served to emphasize the temperamental and ideological incompatibility which he knew to exist between them but did his best to minimize or ignore. There seemed to be a conspiracy against him in the air.

But he would not be humiliated, least of all by a frigging advocate of totalitarian socialism! His middle-class dignity rebelled against the prospect. He would speak out, defend the cause and reality of parliamentary freedom if it was the last thing he did! And Matthew Pearce, socialist or no socialist, would have to listen, irrespective of how abhorrent he found it. Maybe there was a chance that he could be reformed, made to see sense while the opportunity prevailed, encouraged to grow up and put his wishful and largely over-simplistic thinking behind him.

Thus Peter Daniels responded to the challenge in the only way he knew how - with a wholehearted defence of parliamentary democracy, a defence designed to remind Matthew Pearce that, although such democracy was not without its faults, it was still a damn sight better than the chaos and tyranny which inevitably accompanied socialist revolutions.

The artist listened patiently but, even with a consciousness of his own ideological shortcomings, remained unimpressed. He had heard such arguments before, accompanied by the usual welter of platitudes concerning the virtues of capitalist freedom and the superiority of liberal over totalitarian systems. It was what one had to expect from a bourgeois, that man of the compromise stage of evolution. To him, dictatorships of whatever description were equally objectionable. And why? Because they deprived him of his power, took away his freedom to exploit as he thought fit. Royalist autocracies kept economic power in the hands of the aristocracy. Communist autocracies would share power amongst the proletariat once they came of age and could be more democratically entrusted with its management themselves. No wonder he feared and hated them! Either way - with the possible exception of a fascist regime partial to the monied interests of the conservative bourgeoisie - a regression to feudalism or a progression to socialism signalled the end of his capitalist power. Consequently he had no option but to uphold the parliamentary system, that compromise of the bourgeois world. Four years of a democratic-socialist government, with its state capitalism, would be easier or less hard to bear, depending on one's viewpoint, than an indefinite period of totalitarian socialism which, if it didn't do away with one as an individual, would almost certainly put an end to one's economic exploitation. For after those four years had elapsed, there was at least a chance, indeed a very good chance, a more than even chance, that the party closer to his own heart and economic interests would be returned to power, and matters accordingly take a turn for the better. It was a compromise worth putting-up with!

But not for any socialist, any genuine socialist, that is. Oh, no! Such a person had no patience with the government, intermittent or otherwise, of a party in the pay of, and thus sympathetic to, the capitalistic interests of the bourgeoisie, particularly the grand-bourgeoisie. He wanted their party done away with, so that the road would be clear for socialism. And with the end of the democratic royalists would come the demise of the democratic socialists who, although left wing, were insufficiently extreme to function in the guise of genuine socialism. With the demise of parliamentary democracy, an undiluted socialist party would prevail, to signal the beginnings of a new era of political development in which, eventually, the proletariat would take over from Big Daddy the economic, political, and judicial management of their affairs. That was what every progressive proletarian wanted to see and, unless a catastrophe of unimaginable horror or disaster overtook the world in the near future, it would surely happen, evolutionary progress continuing along the path opened-up by the growth of urban civilization.

Yet it was impossible for Matthew to say all this to Peter Daniels, who probably wouldn't have understood or appreciated it. Instead, he contented himself with words to the effect that he had no use or respect for the type of freedom, so dear to the bourgeois heart, which enabled capitalist exploiters to amass private fortunes at the proletariat's expense, growing ever more corrupt the richer they became.

"Yes, but really," the journalist rejoined, his voice strained with self-righteous emotion, "surely you must realize that dictatorial regimes are essentially evil and cruel. I mean, just look at the examples the world has seen this century, Stalin's most especially, not to mention those currently still in existence."

"Of course, I strongly object to fascist regimes," Matthew countered, "since they're against the grain of evolution and a scourge to the most progressive people. When I think of the number of socialists killed or tortured by Hitler's accomplices, my blood positively boils with anger at the magnitude of the reactionary tyranny unleashed at the time. But there's one hell of a difference between a neo-feudal regime and a socialist regime, and that's a fact which you parliamentary people don't always appreciate. You cite Stalin as an example of communist tyranny, and no-one would doubt that Stalin was effectively a cold-blooded autocrat who ruled the Soviet Union with a tyrannous hand. Yet Stalin was still a progressive revolutionary and not a regressive reactionary, like Hitler. He was virtually an angel compared to Hitler, even if a somewhat fallen one."

"Oh, come now!" Peter Daniels protested, becoming red in the face with suppressed rage. "I would hesitate to describe someone responsible for the butchering of some twenty million people in quite such euphemistic terms!"

"Yes, but one must remember that Stalin was under a considerable amount of internal pressure from rival factions and consequently felt obliged to take extremely stringent measures to safeguard his regime," Matthew averred. "As to the full facts of the matter, I'm not of course sufficiently well-informed, since that is something for the historian or politician. But I do know that I'd rather hear about the erection of concentration camps by a Stalin than by a Hitler, or any other fascist dictator for that matter."

"Even with the murder of several million people?" queried Peter Daniels incredulously.

"Even then."

"You mean you're not against the mass murder of millions of innocent people?" gasped Peter Daniels, patently astounded.

Matthew was about to reply in the negative, but then wisely hesitated on the verge of speaking. No, he wasn't going to be duped by bourgeois humanism. "As to the mass murder of millions of innocent people, I would most certainly object, and in the strongest possible terms!" he averred. "But not to the liquidation - an altogether more pertinent term - of millions of guilty people, or people, in other words, whom it's necessary for one to remove in order to further and safeguard the new society. I strongly object to the indiscriminate murder of millions of innocent people, such as was sanctioned by Hitler's regime on chiefly racial grounds. For such cold-blooded genocide is patently criminal. It leads to the elimination of millions of the best as well as the worst, socialists as well as capitalists, the oppressed as well as their class oppressors. It doesn't hit the nail on the head, so to speak, and these days more than ever it's precisely the head which needs hitting - namely the bourgeois one!"

"You mean you wouldn't object to a purge of the bourgeoisie by any prospective socialist regime which came to power in the near future?" exclaimed Peter Daniels, his strained tone-of-voice indicating a mixture of horror and accusation.

"No, of course not!" Matthew admitted. "For it's pretty obvious that the bourgeoisie would be somewhat incompatible with the socialistic requirements of such a regime. They would be far from enthusiastic about sacrificing their competitiveness for the sake of a uniformly co-operative framework within the context of public ownership, and for the simple reason that such a sacrifice would run contrary to their material interests as capitalist exploiters and free-market predators. One couldn't expect them to suddenly become proletarians, as though by the wave of a magic wand. You can't simply slip out of one soul and into another, out of a private domain which has done a Faustian pact with the Devil and into a public one which repudiates any such pact. No, they'd have to be interned, and not simply because they were adjudged incompatible with the socialistic requirements of a truly co-operative society, but also as retribution for their capitalist crimes and exploitative past. The proletariat would have to be avenged on their historical oppressors!"

"And who exactly would those oppressors be?" Peter Daniels wanted to know, a mildly ironic humour replacing his previous sombre response to the artist's apocalyptic revelations. For it was as though the tragedy of what he had just heard had suddenly been transmuted into farce, albeit of a slightly sinister order. He wasn't prepared to accept the guilt of the bourgeoisie, since bourgeois blood ran in his veins. He knew that, historically, the bourgeoisie were justified, even if he wasn't prepared to admit to the fact that their justification was transitory.

"Obviously a great number of them would be businessmen," Matthew obliged, after a few seconds thoughtful deliberation during which time he cleared his throat with guttural relish, as though in preparation for an arduous task. "And, most especially, those businessmen, in particular, who had oppressed the workers the most and reaped the biggest dividends from the capitalist system. The largest sharks above all! But also a number of smaller ones, staunch believers in free enterprise, i.e. the right of private entrepreneurs to pursue their capitalist interests irrespective of the moral and spiritual cost to society in general, and with a view to becoming rich and powerful, like their more successful exemplars. Then, of course, a number of professionals, including private doctors, private dentists, and public-school teachers - in short, those professionals who weren't salaried employees of the State but distinctly independent. And, needless to say, fascists and conservative politicians, artists and writers of a reactionary or conservative turn-of-mind, royals and peers, reactionary priests, especially those who had belonged to the Established Church and thus recognized the monarch as head of the Church - a thing which no genuine Christian would ever do, since alpha and omega, power and peace, are quite incommensurate, and the Church is supposed to be on the side of ecclesiastic truth and not, as would appear to be the case with the Church of England, on the side of monarchic strength! Such a paradoxical Church, which has the embodiment of autocratic power as its head and a long tradition of invasive imperialism behind it, could only be incompatible with socialist requirements."

"I see," sighed Peter Daniels, following a short but anguished pause during which he mopped his brow with a linen handkerchief. "And presumably this hypothetical socialist regime would liquidate, if that's the correct word, journalists like myself, who profess to distinctly conservative viewpoints."

"Naturally," Matthew rejoined. "It would intern anyone who was in any way opposed to its policies of socialist progress and either incapable of or unwilling to contemplate reform."

"Well, thank goodness it doesn't exist at present, and that a certain amount of sanity and decency still prevail in the world, especially the Western half of it!" cried Peter Daniels triumphantly. "I very much doubt that such a godforsaken regime will ever exist, and not only because we, the right-thinking individuals of society, wouldn't allow it to, but, no less probably, because the catastrophe that would most likely precipitate such a horrible state-of-affairs - namely a third world war - would more than likely result in the wholesale destruction of life on this planet and consequently in the elimination of all political parties, whether Right, Left, or Centre, moderate or extreme, and not in what I suspect you would hope to be a socialist victory!"

"Oh, let's not drag Armageddon into it!" protested Linda Daniels, breaking the long silence she had patiently kept while the two men waged their own verbal war in front of her - an ideological one which she had tactfully preferred to keep out of. "A third world war would be too unspeakably vile, too unspeakably horrendous! Let's hope it will never come about, and that some sense and decency will accordingly continue to prevail. We want life, not death!"

As though that were a signal for a fresh beginning, Gwen suddenly returned to the room and announced, rather to everyone's relief, that dinner was ready. Accordingly, Matthew followed the others out through the open door and into the dining-room across the hallway.