The Temptation of Jack Orkney

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His father was dying. It was a telegram, saying also: YOU UNOBTAINABLE TELEPHONE. He had been on the telephone since seven that morning. It was the housekeeper who had sent the telegram. Did Mrs Markham not know that she could have asked the telephone authorities to interrupt his conversations for an urgent message? The irritation of the organizer who is manipulating intractable people and events now focussed on Mrs Markham, but he tried to alleviate it by reminding himself that Mrs Markham was housekeeper not only to his father but to a dozen other old people.

It had been a long time since he had actually organized something political; others had been happy to organize him — his name, his presence, his approval. But an emotional telephone call from an old friend, Walter Renting, before seven that morning, appealing that they 'all' should make a demonstration of some sort about the refugees — the nine million refugees of Bangladesh this time — and the information that he was the only person available to do the organizing, had returned him to a politically active past. Telephoning, he soon discovered that even the small demonstration they envisaged would be circumscribed, because people were saying they could see no point in a demonstration when television, radio and every newspaper did little else but tell the world about these millions of sufferers. What was the point of a dozen or twenty people 'sitting down' or 'marching' or even being hungry for twenty-four hours in some prominent place? Surely the point of these actions in the past had been to draw public attention to a wrong?

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