For all the saints
AFTERTHOUGHT JOAN WELLS
It seemed, writes our Heavenly City Corre- Apondent, Psi Factor, as if it would go on for ever and ever. Secure in the breathless peach of a timeless summer afternoon, New Jerutalem stood sublime and aloof, apparently insulated from the shocks of terrestrial politics. Built in solid gold on foundations of jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, emerald, sardonyx, sar- dius, chrysolyte, beryl, topaz, chrysoprasus, jacinth and amethyst, it was rumoured to be able to withstand any onslaught, including direct nuclear attack. To the City's army of saints, certainly, it must have seemed that they had finally found their niche: cabinet rank in an old-established reactionary government and, according to some commentators, the prospect of a literally limitless term of office.
Then it happened. Balding, obsequious Paul Montini, seventy-one, the Eternal Father's Principal Press Secretary, let off the block- buster that has rocked the Holy City to its glittering fundament: a mass cabinet reshuffle, and for no fewer than two hundred of the old guard, loyal to the party through the worst years of purge and persecution, the sack. Typical of the reaction of the saints them- selves to this stunning news is that of portly, 1,743 year old St Christopher, an early cam- paigner in the field of road haulage, and who still claims to represent millions in the trans- port and motoring unions. 'It's the bleeding ingratitude that chokes me, matey,' he con- fided. relaxing in his jasper and chalcedony penthouse flat overlooking the crystal fountains at the centre of the City. 'When it comes to your enrolment figures, your union member- ship, who's done all the backbreaking bleed- ing work then? Millions of them I pulled in. Raving atheists for the most part, but they still pay their union dues, they still have the old medallion up.'
I put it to him that Signor Montini's state- ment had spoken of 'local veneration' as an alternative to full cabinet status. 'Now I ask you,' St Christopher went on, pouring two chilled glasses of nectar and offering me a golden bowl of ambrosia niblets, 'what is your rank and file going to say to that? They're not in it for the venerating, stands to reason they're not: they're in it for the representation and the results. Say your steering wheel _Comes off flying round one of your hairpin 'bends up in the Dolomites. I mention that because it's typical of tli type of grievance I'm having to deal with day in and day out in my Capacity as general secretary of the union.'
'There you are, out in space, twenty feet over the edge of a precipice and two thousand feet of air between you and the cruel rocks beneath. Now what's the use of your local veneration at branch level? What you want, matey, is results. You want to pop in your petition, and to know for certain that you're getting representation where it matters, at the top. It's not me that's going to raise the stink, I can tell you, it's the rank and file. I predict a marked falling off in union n*mbership, you mark my words. Me, I can take it or leave it. When you've been doing this kind of thing for the best part of a couple of thou- sand years you find one job's very much like. 'another.'
A saint who sees more sinister motives be- ., hind the decision is 1,062 year old St Wen- ceslas, young, aristocratic representative of the Czech workers' alliance. 'Basically, darling, you see this is all dirty business. Realpolitik demand a rapprochement between the Management and the Soviet Bloc. Who gets squeezed flat in the works as a result? Charlie. Exactly the same happened with Poofichops'—a reference to 1,666 year old St George, who represents British Boy Scouts—'The United States embraces the Management, who gets squashed in the middle? Old Winnie the Poof. Don't kid yourself, ducky, this isn't Home Affairs, this is Foreign Policy. Personally I don't mind any more. You kill yourself working for the organisation, this is the thanks you get : it's the boys at the front I'm bothered about. This could do the Manage- ment a lot of damage.'
St Barbara, red-haired 1,761 year old darling of the artillerymen, takes a loyal view, despite the crushing disappointment that she herself has suffered. 'If it's for the good of the Move- ment, then who are we to stand in the way, that's what I say,' she told me, strolling in the afternoon radiance in her familiar lambsblood- rinsed robes and making a minute adjustment to her tiny breath of a silver halo. 'I've been a saint all my working life and if you think I'd put my head on the block for anything that would endanger the Movement you are out of your mind. History will see this as a glorious revolution.' Rumours of St Barbara's immin- ent restoration to the Inner Cabinet were today strongly denied.
But despite the deceptive calm that hangs over the golden streets, the Government could have a rebellion on its hands even now. For all the apparent affability with which the Eternal Father 'smiles on all his foes' there is bitterness beneath the surface. Is it possible, as was sugges- ted in a sensational article by German columnist Friedrich Nietzsche, that the Eternal Father is looking round for a successor, and is creating a new lean, taut, authoritarian administration to take over when he goes? Is it perhaps that Montini himself, known to have the ear of the self-effacing but more articulate Third Member of the ruling Troika, has himself planned this coup off his own bat? There is growing anxiety here about the health of the Eternal Father: His Successor has not been seen out for almost two thousand years, and the Third Member, guiding spirit of the Movement though he undoubtedly is, has also reduced radically his public appearances. Could it be that Montini himself, having accomplished a secret take- over, is in fact streamlining the cabinet simply in order to appeal to current public opinion. If so, pundits here believe that he could be making a big mistake.
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