‘Isn’t everything these days?’ Aware that they were both lightheaded with fatigue, I said: ‘Listen, I’ll talk to the police.’

‘The police?’ Sangster looked owlishly serious. ‘We didn’t think of that. Julia, the police . . .’

I let this pass. ‘Look, I hate the violence. I hate the racist attacks. I hate the protection rackets and the bully-boy tactics. But these people are a fringe.’

‘Only a fringe?’

‘A vicious fringe, admittedly. But very few people are involved. Wherever you find sport you find hooligans. Contact sports appeal to any riffraff looking for violence. Don’t judge what’s happening by what you see at night.’

‘Fair point,’ Sangster conceded. ‘Go on.’

‘Move around during the day. Disciplined crowds, everyone on best behaviour. I watched them an hour ago. Whole families out together—healthy, fresh, optimistic, keen to cheer on their teams. Friendly rivalry, heads held high.’

‘And the banners?’ Julia leaned across the table and gripped my wrist. ‘Have you seen them? Like Roman legions. It’s incredible.’

‘Right. Banners flying. There’s a new pride in the air, all along the motorway towns. People are more confident, more positive. The M25 was a backwater left over from Heathrow, a joke no one wanted to share. Dual carriageways and used-car lots. Nothing to look forward to except new patio doors and a trip to Homebase. All the promise of life delivered door to door in a flat pack.’

Sangster nodded, inspecting his deeply bitten nails. ‘And now?’

‘Revival! There’s a spring in everyone’s step. People know their lives have a point. They know it’s good for the whole community.’

‘And good for the Metro-Centre?’

‘Naturally. We provide the focus and fund the new stadiums and the supporters’ clubs. We use the cable channels to keep up the pressure.’

‘Pressure?’ Julia tried to unclench her fists, irritated by everything I said. ‘To sell your washing machines and microwaves . . .’

‘They’re part of people’s lives. Consumerism is the air we’ve given them to breathe.’

JULIA HAD TURNEDaway, refusing to listen to me as she hunted through her handbag for her mobile phone. She stood up and patted me on the head. ‘There’s a call I need to make. I’ll be back in a moment.’

‘Don’t forget we’re having dinner tonight. Julia?’

‘I hope so.’ She paused at the door and stared hard at me. ‘The air they breathe? Richard, people breathe out as well as breathe in . . .’

‘RICHARD . . .’ SANGSTER TAPPED the table with his heavy knuckle, recalling me to his inquisition. ‘I hope you realize what you’re doing.’

‘Not exactly.’ We sat at opposite ends of the table, undistracted by Julia’s presence. ‘You’re going to tell me.’

‘I am.’ Sangster examined his swollen hands, and picked a splinter from his thumb. ‘In a way it’s quite an achievement. Back in the nineteen-thirties it needed a lot of twisted minds working together, but you’ve done it by yourself.’

‘Is my mind twisted?’

‘Definitely not. That’s the disturbing thing. You’re sane, kindly, with all the genuine sincerity of an advertising man.’

‘So what have I done?’

‘You’ve created a fascist state.’

‘Fascist?’ I let the word hover overhead, then dissipate like an empty cloud. ‘In the . . . dinner party sense?’

‘No. It’s the real thing. There’s no doubt about it. I’ve been watching it grow for the past year. It’s been stirring in its mother’s belly, but you knelt down in the straw and delivered the beast.’

‘Fascist? It’s like “new” or “improved”. It can mean anything. Where are the jackboots, the goose-stepping Brownshirts, the ranting führer? I don’t see them around.’

‘They don’t need to be.’ Sangster watched me with a quirky smile that never completely formed, as if I were a destructive pupil he disliked but was unaccountably drawn to. ‘This is a soft fascism, like the consumer landscape. No goose-stepping, no jackboots, but the same emotions and the same aggression. As you say, there’s a strong sense of community, but it isn’t based on civic rights. Forget reason. Emotion drives everything. You see it every weekend outside the Metro-Centre.’

‘Sports supporters, cheering on their rival teams.’

‘Like Goering’s “gliders”? Anyway, these teams aren’t really rivals. They’re all marching to the same brass band. As for a true sense of community, people get that in traffic jams and airport concourses.’

‘Or the Metro-Centre?’ I suggested. ‘The People’s Palace?’

‘And a hundred other shopping malls. Who needs liberty and human rights and civic responsibility? What we want is an aesthetics of violence. We believe in the triumph of feelings over reason. Pure materialism isn’t enough, all those Asian shopkeepers with their cash-register minds. We need drama, we need our emotions manipulated, we want to be conned and cajoled. Consumerism fits the bill exactly. It’s drawn the blueprint for the fascist states of the future. If anything, consumerism creates an appetite that can only be satisfied by fascism. Some kind of insanity is the last way forward. All the dictators in history soon grasped that—Hitler and the Nazi leaders made sure no one ever thought they were completely sane.’

‘And the people in the Metro-Centre?’

‘They know that, too. Look how they react to your new cable ads.’ Sangster pointed a grimy finger at me, grudgingly forced into a compliment. ‘A bad actor howls from the roof of a multi-storey car park and we think he’s a seer.’

‘So David Cruise is the führer? He’s fairly benign.’

‘He’s a nothing. He’s a “virtual” man without a real thought in his head. Consumer fascism provides its own ideology, no one needs to sit down and dictate Mein Kampf. Evil and psychopathy have been reconfigured into lifestyle statements. It’s a fearful prospect, but consumer fascism may be the only way to hold a society together. To control all that aggression, and channel all those fears and hates.’

‘As long as the bands play and everyone marches in step?’

‘Right!’ Sangster sat forward, jarring the table against my elbows. ‘So beat the drums, sound the bugles, lead them to an empty stadium where they can shout their lungs out. Give them violent hamster wheels like football and ice hockey. If they still need to let off steam, burn down a few newsagents.’

Raising his arms as if to surrender, Sangster stood up and turned his back to me. As he read the messages on his phone I stared through the window. A taxi had pulled into the main entrance of the school, and stopped in front of the admin building.

‘Your taxi?’ I asked Sangster when he put away his phone.

‘No. There’s work I have to do here.’ He gestured at the fence, where the students were threading a strand of razor wire between the posts. ‘Meanwhile, we’re organizing a deputation to the Home Office—Julia, Dr Maxted, myself, a few others. I’d like you to join us.’

‘A deputation . . . ? Whitehall . . . ?’

‘The seat of power, so they say. We may not see the Home Secretary, but Maxted knows a junior minister he met on a television programme. Something has to be done—this thing is spreading along the M25, sooner or later the noose will tighten around London and choke it to death.’

‘What about the police?’

‘Useless. Whole streets are torched and they claim it’s football hooliganism. Secretly, they want the Asians and immigrants out. Likewise the local council. Fewer corner shops, more retail parks, a higher tax yield. Money rules, more housing, more infrastructure contracts. They like the bands playing and the stamping feet—they hide the sound of the cash tills.’

‘That’s today’s England. Whitehall?’ I looked away. ‘I’m not sure there’s a lot of point. What’s happening in the motorway towns may be the first signs of a national revival. Who knows, the end of late-stage capitalism and the start of something new . . . ?’