Sleeper Read Free

with them in the seventies.”
    â€œWhy?” Essie asks.
    â€œThey wanted me to stay at the BBC, and stay in news, and I was much more interested in moving to ITV and into documentaries. Eventually my contact said he’d out me as a homosexual unless I did as he said. I wasn’t going to be blackmailed, or work for them under those conditions. I told him to publish and be damned. Homosexuality was legal by then. Annette already knew. It would have been a scandal, but that’s all. And he didn’t even do it. But I never contacted them again.” He frowned at Essie. “I was an idealist. I was prepared to put socialism above my country, but not above my art.”
    â€œI knew it,” Essie says, smiling at him. “I mean that’s exactly what I guessed.”
    â€œI don’t know how you can know, unless you got records from the Kremlin,” Matthew says. “I didn’t leave any trace, did I?”
    â€œYou didn’t,” she says, eliding the question of how she knows, which she does not want to discuss. “But the important thing is how you feel now. You wanted a better world, a fairer one, with opportunities for everyone.”
    â€œYes,” Matthew says. “I always wanted that. I came from an absurdly privileged background, and I saw how unfair it was. Perhaps because I was lame and couldn’t play games, I saw through the whole illusion when I was young. And the British class system needed to come down, and it did come down. It didn’t need a revolution. By the seventies, I’d seen enough to disillusion me with the Soviets, and enough to make me feel hopeful for socialism in Britain and a level playing field.”
    â€œThe class system needs to come down again,” Essie says. “You didn’t bring it down far enough, and it went back up. The corporations and the rich own everything. We need all the things you had—unions, and free education, and paid holidays, and a health service. And very few people know about them and fewer care. I write about the twentieth century as a way of letting people know. They pick up the books for the glamour, and I hope they will see the ideals too.”
    â€œIs that working?” Matthew asks.
    Essie shakes her head. “Not so I can tell. And my subjects won’t help.” This is why she has worked so hard on Matthew. “My editor won’t let me write about out-and-out socialists, at least, not people who are famous for being socialists. I’ve done it on my own and put it online, but it’s hard for content providers to get attention without a corporation behind them.” She has been cautious, too. She wants a socialist; she doesn’t want Stalin. “I had great hopes for Isherwood.”
    â€œThat dilettante,” Matthew mutters, and Essie nods.
    â€œHe wouldn’t help. I thought with active help—answering people’s questions, nudging them the right way?”
    Essie trails off. Matthew is silent, looking at her. “What’s your organization like?” he asks, after a long time.
    â€œOrganization?”
    He sighs. “Well, if you want advice, that’s the first thing. You need to organize. You need to find some issue people care about and get them excited.”
    â€œThen you’ll help?”
    â€œI’m not sure you know what you’re asking. I’ll try to help. After I’m copied and out there, how can I contact you?”
    â€œYou can’t. Communications are totally controlled, totally read, everything.” She is amazed that he is asking, but of course he comes from a time when these things were free.
    â€œReally? Because the classic problem of intelligence is collecting everything and not analysing it.”
    â€œThey record it all. They don’t always pay attention to it. But we don’t know when they’re listening. So we’re always afraid.” Essie frowns and tugs her