WE SET OFFalong the corridor, Sangster’s huge bulk almost filling the narrow space. He had visibly relaxed, patting my shoulder as if I were a pupil who had displayed a sudden flair for differential calculus. He closed the door of his office, shutting out his intrigued secretary, collected two glasses and a bottle of sherry from a side table, and sat down at his desk. Still wearing his overcoat, he watched me sip the sweet fluid, his baby lips mimicking my own.

‘Parents’ sherry,’ he told me. ‘Makes a long day shorter. Think of it as a business aid.’

‘Why not? I feel for you. Trying to educate six hundred teenagers in the middle of a circus.’ I pointed to the dome visible through his windows. ‘So many Aladdin’s caves, a hundred neon palaces filled with treasure.’

‘The only real things are the mirages. We can cope with that. Still, I know how you feel, Richard. An old man is shot down for no reason. The one common factor is the Metro-Centre. Somehow it explains everything.’

‘My father and the whole consumer nightmare? I think there’s a connection. Most of the people here are going mad, without realizing it.’

‘All these retail parks, the airport and motorway culture. It’s a new kind of hell . . .’ Sangster stood up and pressed his huge hands to his cheeks, as if trying to deflate himself. ‘That’s the Hampstead perspective, the view from the Tavistock Clinic. The shadow of Freud’s statue lies across the land, the Agent Orange of the soul. Believe me, things are different here. We have to prepare our kids for a new kind of society. There’s no point in telling them about parliamentary democracy, the church or the monarchy. The old ideas of citizenship you and I were brought up with are really rather selfish. All that emphasis on individual rights, habeas corpus, freedom of the one against the many . . .’

‘Free speech, privacy?’

‘What’s the point of free speech if you have nothing to say? Let’s face it, most people haven’t anything to say, and they know it. What’s the point of privacy if it’s just a personalized prison? Consumerism is a collective enterprise. People here want to share and celebrate, they want to come together. When we go shopping we take part in a collective ritual of affirmation.’

‘So being modern today means being passive?’

Sangster slapped his desk, knocking over his pen stand. He leaned towards me, huge overcoat bulking around him.

‘Forget being modern. Accept it, Richard, the whole modernist enterprise was intensely divisive. Modernism taught us to distrust and dislike ourselves. All that individual conscience, the solitary ache. Modernism was driven by neurosis and alienation. Look at its art and architecture. There’s something deeply cold about them.’

‘And consumerism?’

‘It celebrates coming together. Shared dreams and values, shared hopes and pleasures. Consumerism is optimistic and forward-looking. Naturally, it asks us to accept the will of the majority. Consumerism is a new form of mass politics. It’s very theatrical, but we like that. It’s driven by emotion, but its promises are attainable, not just windy rhetoric. A new car, a new power tool, a new CD player.’

‘And reason? No place for that, I take it?’

‘Reason, well . . .’ Sangster paced behind his desk, nail-bitten fingers to his lips. ‘It’s too close to maths, and most of us are not good at arithmetic. In general I advise people to steer clear of reason. Consumerism celebrates the positive side of the equation. When we buy something we unconsciously believe we’ve been given a present.’

‘And politics demands a constant stream of presents? A new hospital, a new school, a new motorway . . . ?’

‘Exactly. And we know what happens to children who are never given any toys. We’re all children today. Like it or not, only consumerism can hold a modern society together. It presses the right emotional buttons.’

‘So . . . liberalism, liberty, reason?’

‘They failed! People don’t want to be appealed to by reason any more.’ Sangster bent down and rolled his sherry glass across the desk, as if waiting for it to stand up on its own. ‘Liberalism and humanism are a huge brake on society. They trade on guilt and fear. Societies are happier when people spend, not save. What we need now is a kind of delirious consumerism, the sort you see at motor shows. People long for authority, and only consumerism can provide it.’

‘Buy a new perfume, a new pair of shoes, and you’re a happier and better person? And you can get all this across to your teenagers?’

‘I don’t need to. It comes with the air they breathe. Remember, Richard, consumerism is a redemptive ideology. At its best, it tries to aestheticize violence, though sadly it doesn’t always succeed . . .’

Sangster stood up, smiling to himself in an almost serene way. He gazed at his huge hands, glad to accept them as hard-working outposts of himself.

We left each other on the steps outside the entrance. I liked Sangster, but I had the distinct sense that he had already forgotten me before he waved and turned back to the school. I walked away, strolling through the sweet wrappers drifting across the path, through the cola cans and cigarette packets and condom sachets.

A BRASS BAND struck up a spirited Souza medley, fireworks threw umbrellas of gaudy pink and turquoise light over the layabed town, car horns sounded and voices booed and cheered, greeting the Metro-Centre blimp as it sailed across the dome, more dreamlike than anything that had filled our heads during the night. The weekend was an extended sports festival, sponsored by the Metro-Centre and packed with more promises than even William Sangster could have imagined.

As I made a late breakfast I listened to the buses and coaches bringing teams and their supporters from the motorway towns. Under the evening arc lights there would be a ‘Thames Valley Olympics’, featuring football and rugby matches, athletics meetings, ice-hockey elimination rounds and a series of marathons and road races. Sport and shopping would celebrate a two-day marriage, to be solemnized by David Cruise. The sky would be the wedding marquee, and southeast England was invited. On the Metro-Centre cable channel the announcers worked up their audiences, playing up the mano-a-mano rivalries of the contact sports, the ‘hate’ matches between hockey teams from the Heathrow area.

By two o’clock, when I finally reached the Metro-Centre, the largest crowd I had seen in Brooklands filled the plaza beside the South Gate entrance, a congregation of worshippers that would have filled a dozen cathedrals. Shoppers chatted to each other, vendors in official livery carried placards listing the day’s discounts in menswear, minced beef and Botox treatments. Security men murmured into their lapel radios, stewards in Metro-Centre tracksuits struggled to keep clear a railed passage from the perimeter road to the entrance.

Sports-club supporters were out in force, a suburban crusader army in their St George’s shirts. I parked my car in the basement garage, using the complimentary VIP pass supplied by Tom Carradine. Emerging from the lift, I found myself co-opted into a football squad running and skipping on the spot. The scent of their sweat and good cheer, the pain-blessed grunts and shouts, rose into the air towards the circling blimp. Nearby, a women’s athletics club were exercising gracefully, moving like a dance class through a repertory of cheerleader motions. Nowhere was there a single policeman.

The only sign of tension came from the perimeter road, where a battered pick-up truck had broken down by the kerb. But this was not a day for parking violations, the cardinal sin of suburbia in which everyone happily indulged, along with bouncing cheques and credit card overruns. Double-parking, like adultery and alcoholism, was a vital part of the social glue that kept the suburbs healthy.