Citizen Survivor Tales (The Ministry of Survivors) (10 page)

MOS Archives, ref. INF9/547 (endorsed)

THE PARTISAN

Name: ‘Fairfax IV’
Location: Unknown
Occupation: Criminal/traitor
Threat level: 5
Article clearance: Silver (amendment 1.3 and 8.3 applies)
Case file: [omitted]

Unusually, I am unable to write any preamble to this interview, as it will put my interviewee in danger. I will refer to him as ‘Fairfax’ but in fact ‘he’ could easily be a ‘she’, so my regular readers must take no detail in the following pages as gospel. It might be true. It might not. Who knows?

Fairfax, for my report we are inside a pigeon coop, what is this for?

Messages, quite impressive isn’t it? Who would have thought that the Resistance were such pigeon fanciers? Oh, please ignore my man who has had a Thompson pointed at you the entire time, and I am sorry for the blindfolded journey from our collection point, but, you can’t be too careful. Allow me to see your papers if you’d be so kind.

Your man, over there, why is he laughing at my papers?

Ah, that is ‘Waller’, he’s French-Canadian, so forgive him; he means no disrespect. He finds your name amusing. Marriane, as I am sure you know, is the French symbol of liberty, our Britannia. Come, let us go somewhere a bit quieter, I cannot think over the sound of cooing.

Are you not fearful of meeting with an employee of the Ministry?

No, we’ve taken all necessary precautions. You don’t know me, you don’t even know if I am in fact Fairfax, or even if I’m with the Resistance necessarily. You don’t know if any of what I’m going to tell you is true. You don’t know if what I’m going to tell you is simply what I want the Ministry to hear, or whether I have men in the Ministry, or if in fact I’m a Ministry man myself. Truth is real, how we interpret truth, well … It’s all a matter of faith, and what we want to believe isn’t it?

Could you explain the name and symbols behind the Resistance? Is it not distracting to your cause?

Yes, I understand what you mean, but theatricality is all part of it isn’t it? I’m more of a realist myself, but the troops love it and it is harmless, and it does the job, so I am happy with that. It’s not as clever as we like to think though, quite simple really. The Resistance is nicknamed The Roundheads after those who fought against the Monarchy in the English Civil War. The groups are named after the five men who the King tried to arrest in parliament, and our codenames are all after key figures of the Roundhead movement. Cromwell wanted to be called ‘The Lions of Albion’, but that was a bit too pompous for the men, so Roundheads stuck. You’ll see that I’m Fairfax the fourth, the three before me, well, they’re dead now.

I admire the imaginations of some of our men, though; they’d be illustrators or working at the West End if things were different no doubt. The graffiti always makes me smile, I expect you’ve seen some of our work. There are four main ones that mark the resistance.

Firstly, there is the stencil of the Bulldog. Secondly, there is the cartoon handlebar moustache, I had to have that one explained to me, I think it’s to do with keeping a stiff upper lip. Thirdly there is the crossed out silhouette of a man in a bowler hat, a reference to the Ministry and lastly there is Mr. Chad, the cheeky fellow who pops over walls with messages like ‘Wot? No Survivors?’ and ‘Wot? No Enemy?’.

Why would you condemn the Ministry when they were able to achieve a favourable peace deal?

That’s the thing isn’t it? It just doesn’t make sense. As you can see from this map, Jerry landed here on the south-coast, the Blitzkrieg moved up to Gloucester in the West and Maldon in the East and London was surrounded, making it as far as Redhill. And then? No surrender, but a cease-fire? The withdrawal of all Axis forces to south of the River Thames and East of the River Exe. Why would Jerry agree to that? Surely the Government couldn’t have held out for much longer. Why would Jerry capitulate when total victory was almost at hand?

This is pure speculation, the Ministry is wrapped up in so many layers of lies I doubt they even know what’s true anymore but the facts are there, a change of leadership, the effective dissolution of parliament to be replaced with the XXII committee, the arrests – those damned arrests by the Gestapo of men far beyond the occupied zone, the formation of the Ministry, the sudden end to hostilities. My opinion, and I speak for myself here, not the Resistance, is that the Ministry are secret collaborators at best, a puppet government at worst. Yes, they give it all the patriotic bumph, how they negotiated peace at the brink of calamity, the ‘victory’ of the Nazi withdrawal to the Thames but there are simply too many questions. The Royal Navy, the sheer scale of fighting men still at their disposal, the Empire for God’s sake, Canada, India, Australia.

Do you have contacts overseas?

The naval blockade is extremely effective; I’ll say no more than that.

What activities does the Resistance undertake?

Oh you know I can’t answer that, let’s just say anything that hinders the enemy. A lot of it is peaceful, a war of words and ideas. Some of it, I’m not particularly proud of, a few occasions I will confess I’ve been outright ashamed by our actions, but this is war, Queensbury rules rarely apply now.

The Roundheads are portrayed as violent, lawless bandits and thugs, pretending to be a force for good, who are in love with their own image by the media, did you know that?

Yes of course, and it’s to be expected. It doesn’t pain me what they write, not at all, but it pains me to know that good people will believe it, such is the power of the written word. Take the Bible for example, Western Civilization developed on a few hundred pages written down two thousand years or so ago. The nonsense they come out with though, half-truths and outright lies, it would be wrong to delude ourselves there is anything independent or there are no vested interests in the media.

I remember when Cromwell II was killed in an ambush that went wrong, we must have had a traitor because it shouldn’t have gone the way it did. He put up a brave fight but was peppered with machine gun bullets while trying to escape on a motorcycle, I was lucky enough to get away that day. The media reported it with banner headlines; ‘A DAY FOR JUSTICE! The odious and vile criminal William Pepperinge, who was the cruel leader of the anarchist gang, the Roundheads, has taken his own life in shame as being part of the group. The villain, no longer able to live with his great dishonour, crimes and treasonous acts, did approach Government forces and begged their forgiveness before shooting himself in the head with a revolver. The coward may have escaped justice in life but he was posthumously charged with high treason and recognised in court as a traitor, coward and rogue. Fanatical elements of his gang responded by setting fire to a school and a church. The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales commented ‘It is a small mercy that Mr Pepperinge, moved to pitiful child-like sobbing, begged forgiveness for his crimes on his last day, admitting he had mental illness and blaming his wickedness on his atheist upbringing, deviant sexual desires and socialist parents. May God have mercy on his soul. The news of the traitor’s death was met with ecstatic applause from gathered crowds outside the court’ and so on, and so on. What an absolute nonsense, but I bet there is a part of you that believes some of it, if not all. ‘No smoke without fire’ eh?

Do you know something, quite interesting really? They call us terrorists, a French word, and do you know to what it originally meant? Abuses of power and horror committed by the state. Now the word has been hijacked by the same people it vilified.

Did you see this news article? I’ll read it in full, if I may.

‘On 9 June the English resistance stormed the town of Crowborough. The bodies of at least thirty soldiers of the local Home Guard unit were found outside All Saints Church, which was being used as their headquarters, horribly mutilated and terribly mauled. According to the eye-witness accounts of residents of Crowborough, the volunteer soldiers had surrendered to the Roundheads after a brief fire-fight. They came out of the building with a white flag, unarmed and with their hands in the air, at which point they were peppered with machine gun fire.

A nearby resident, who has asked to remain anonymous, reported that the English resistance then used a lorry to run over the pile of men, many still alive at this point and could hear the hideous cracking of bones and cries of men being crushed to death.

Even more horrifically, the bodies of the thirty men had had their genitals severed, and then placed in their own mouths. The Roundheads then drove off at speed, making sure that each vehicle had the body of a soldier roped to the back of the vehicle which was dragged along the streets and then removed at the edge of town.

A service will be held for the men who…’ and it goes on from there.

And what makes you think that one is any more believable?

Because I wrote it…

Well … I don’t know anything about that. I knew about the raid on Crowborough, I have never heard of those accounts before though. Did you see this massacre yourself?

No but I spoke to the residents who did.

I’d be curious to know the truth of it.

Does it not concern you that you are viewed as a criminal and a villain?

Most heroes are viewed as villains by their peers, most villains viewed as heroes too. It is one of history’s cruellest tricks.

You are anti-monarchists, how is that relevant to your cause?

The King is supposed to be a leader, a rallying point, a symbol for the despairing and the hopeless. He has done nothing. Never has the Monarchy been so irrelevant as it is in these dark days.

Why do you exist if there is now peace?

Do you want to know the truth of the matter? I do not think you’ll ever believe me but I will tell you anyway. There are no Germans here, not one, not soldiers anyway. There is simply no occupation. You find that hard to believe don’t you but I give you my word. Yes, there is the British Free Corps I suppose, but they are a token gesture, guarding pointless posts in the middle of nowhere, but there is no clear overarching aim. People want to believe the British Army are still fighting heroically, somewhere, but they’re not, not to my knowledge.

No, the enemy are not goose-stepping down our streets, there are no swastikas flying from town halls. This, this is why we are branded traitors and criminals. The enemy, the enemy are among us, they are the Ministry.

That’s quite a paranoid claim if you don’t mind me saying.

You’re not alone. That’s why we have so little support from the people, they don’t understand who we are fighting or why. If you allow me to indulge my conspiracy, my paranoia as you put it, I don’t think people understand how crippling the terms of the peace were, and what peace? The country is blockaded! The country is tearing itself up from the inside, I would even say that the Ministry are deliberately making things worse. This bizarre state of affairs could surely only exist if the Ministry were on board with it all.

Do you worry you fight for a world that doesn’t want or need to be saved? Do you worry you fight for a world that doesn’t exist.

Excellent question, it exists as long as people are fighting for it.

Why did you agree to meet me, if you know I am an employee of the Ministry?

Because we need to believe, I need to believe, that things aren’t as hopeless as they seem. I don’t know who will read your report, but it is important we have our say. I don’t honestly know how long the fires of resistance will burn or what will happen to the Roundheads but I honestly believe we speak for truth, justice, honour and reason. It is fragile though, as in any Empire built on hope and ideals. It would only take one big mistake, and the whole Resistance could come crumbling down. I won’t delude myself we are going to convert thousands to our ranks, but we are asking questions that need to be answered. And let me ask you, please; Would you still fight on for a cause you believed in even if you knew it was hopeless? If you know you were fighting a battle that few now cared about or understood? Would you endure, even if it cost you your life? What is it Maryanne, that you believe? I expect no one at the Ministry has asked you that before.

Thank you for speaking to me, Fairfax.

Before you go there are two things. First of all, for security, I will ask that you stay here for two nights before you go. It will allow our group to move on so that you cannot report back on our position. You will be guarded and well cared for I promise, but you can never be too sure. Secondly I’d ask, that for just ten minutes, you put down your pen and notepad and allow me to show you something, something that may change your mind about, well, about everything. In the words of Oliver Cromwell, ‘I beseech you in the bowels of Christ think it possible you may be mistaken.’