Free The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit by Graham Joyce Page B

activities, or about politics, or about falling in love.
    After a short delay in proceedings, the two men whose hands I had just shaken in the car park took their places on the platform. I noticed one chair remained empty. Then a familiar figure leaped onto the stage.
    It was Tony from the holiday resort. Just like Colin he’d found a suit and tie for the event. He blew into a microphoneto check it was working and then launched into a relaxed welcoming speech, saying how good it was to see so many old friends and so many new faces, too. He came down from the stage and strolled about the place, smiling, winking, and shaking hands with one or two people on the front row without breaking his patter. Then he effortlessly segued into a few Paki jokes.
    They were new jokes and he was very funny. He easily drew laughs from the audience and I found it impossible not to laugh with them. An edgy joke about the Jews followed and that went down very well, too. At some point a third man arrived and without fuss took his place on the platform. I assumed this to be the man they’d referred to as Carter.
    Tony threw in another Paki gag about an Indian family eating dog food, and while the audience was howling he handed the microphone back to Norman Prosser. Prosser got to his feet and thanked Tony not only for his “wonderful humor” but also for his lifelong commitment and dedication to the serious business for which we were assembled. And, he pointed out, while we can all laugh, and that it’s good to laugh, the things that were happening to the country were no laughing matter. The Reds and the Jews and the immigrants were hand in glove—and on this phrase he paused and looked searchingly round the audience
—hand in glove
, presiding over the demise of a once great nation, and the government was like the emperor Nero, fiddling while Rome burns. Well that’s all coming to an end, he said, the party was growing and change was coming. There was evidence of all sorts of new people coming forward, workers, schoolteachers, people from industry, and students. In this last category I knew withabsolute certainty that I was his evidence. I even felt a few eyes flicker in my direction. Prosser went on to say that we were fortunate today in being able to welcome to the meeting Harold Carter, who would outline for us the Way Forward.
    Prosser handed Carter the microphone and Carter got to his feet, taking some early applause from the floor. He was a tall, slightly stooped man with thinning sandy-colored hair. In a cut-glass accent he told us that the people of the country were awakening. Evidence of this was to be seen in the number of votes the party had received in the last election and the number of deposits that were not lost in that election. Furthermore, he told us, memberships in the party had increased by several thousand in the last two years alone. Awakening, he said ominously. The people are awakening and beginning to arise.
    This last bit of rhetoric got not only enormous applause but a standing ovation. It also pulled me to my feet. Not because I thought that what he was saying was either brilliant or even convincing but because my sense of self-preservation was working overtime. Perhaps I’m a coward. It’s possible. But I’m not stupid. This wasn’t a rational position to be in. To have resisted the mob in this context would have been like standing in front of a herd of stampeding cattle. As I joined in the hand-clapping, as lightly as I could, I noticed the way that Carter, lapping up the applause, darted his tongue rapidly between his lips, or shoved his tongue into his cheek to bubble out the side of his face. It was a tic I observed in him every time he paused in his oratory to take the applause from the floor.
    The Way Forward was very clear. Immigrants whowere stealing our jobs would be repatriated. They would be deported. Incentives would be found to encourage them to leave the country, and if that was not acceptable