Paul Hawkins was only with us a few short days. He seemed to be recovering from a nervous breakdown. Quite possibly on the brink of another one and about to slip over the edge … Sometimes travelling out with the crew all day long can be a cathartic experience. The regular crew members just help people by listening to their stories. Everybody seems to have a tale to tell. Letting them spill it all out and get it off their chests. Relive the hurt and pain and re-experience the trauma in the hope that they can come to deal with it. Understand it better. Setting those cold ripples of anxiety running down the back again. It all leads to some kind of healing … Paul Hawkins is slight of build, with average brown hair swept across his head and plastered down with some kind of hair cream. A couple of turned up pieces of hair at the end of a ducks’ tail seem to be his sole concession to modern fashion. He wears those kind of National Health glasses made popular by John Lennon in recent times. White, open-necked shirt, grey flannel trousers. Black, well-made shoes laced and polished. No adornments of any kind unless you count an expensive-looking Cartier watch, with a shiny, silver-metal strap … Paul Hawkins has a soft, well-spoken voice. Self-effacing in manner, but not timid. Slightly hesitant, but pleasant. The crew have to strain their ears very hard to catch the full meaning of what it is that he’s saying. An educated and intelligent person in his late twenties, who had high hopes and expectations on leaving Cambridge with a degree in Modern History …

With his novel, The Children of the Empire, Scott has taken the wise decision to change peoples’ names. We live in pretty perilous and litigious times, and quite a few of the characters sprawling across the story have extremely dangerous and lethal companions and enemies. Right from the very pinnacle of society down to the wasted dregs of humanity; fermenting murder and destruction at the very bottom. Scott could easily vanish altogether one night. A victim of a random squat murder in Milner Square. Perhaps an early morning hit and run car accident in Upper Street. Scott doesn’t want to end up a one-line sentence and item in the local weekly Islington Gazette. Only a mention of an unnamed male squatter from Milner Square … Just let the imagination run wild … So, you see, names and certain places have been changed a little to protect Scott. You will just have to accept that. The Paul Hawkins story is a prime example …

Paul Hawkins is actually twenty-two years of age, just down from Cambridge University with a Master of Arts degree in Modern History. Cambridge is a place to be seen and gather acquaintances. A very well-connected friend of Paul’s recommended him for a highly sought-after position. The former Pamela Hill-Brewster, now Lady Pamela Gisborne, the daughter of Lord Hill-Brewster no less, had been looking for a private secretary. After an introduction and interview, it was decided that Paul Hawkins fitted the position perfectly. All the right requirements. Very knowledgeable, discreet, charming in a slightly nervous, hesitant way. Young and quite attractive in an antiquated kind of a manner. No ties to speak of. After briefly visiting his mother in Bristol, he started almost immediately. A very well-paid position. A full-time, virtually twenty-four hour, seven days-a-week employment. Paul Hawkins has his own rooms in the Gisbornes’ large, detached town house in St. Leonard’s Terrace, just off the Kings’ Road in Chelsea, and nearby Burton Court …
‘Nothing could be finer than to live in Carolina in the morning’ ...

Paul Hawkins keeps taking his slightly fashionable National Health glasses off and rubbing his eyes. He can't quite believe his luck. Suddenly he's right on the edge of real high society and close to some kind of power. Pamela Hill-Brewster had married Lord Gisborne and it was the match of the year in the mid nineteen-fifties. The society pages of the time were full of it. Royalty even discreetly attended the nuptial ceremony. Lady Gisborne becomes a breeding machine, and in the next eleven years produces seven fine children including twins. She has accomplished her task. Producing four possible future male heirs to the title. But time can sway everything including emotions, bodies, expectations. Lady Pamela becomes very enamoured of the highly fashionable society interior designer and style guru Michael Wickes who still remains the designer of the moment with the upper classes and the upper crust, smart set … Some of Paul’s duties involve handling the arrangements and the required etiquette on all the many occasions when Lady Pamela Gisborne steps in as a replacement for her father, Lord Hill-Brewster. This has led to Lady Pamela being invited by quite a few organizations to join them. She is already on the boards of a few companies connected with her father. Some charities and hospitals as well. Women's organizations like the Women's Institute adore her. She is clearly a lady in demand. Her diary is full and her commitments many. Hence the urgent need for a full-time, live-in, private secretary …

Lady Pamela is in her late thirties, not really that attractive, yet according to Paul Hawkins, she has a real poise, a careless charm. Intelligence. The off-hand manner and expensive clothes and trappings of the very privileged. She can be seen on occasions at Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace. Her father, Lord Hill-Brewster, has strong royal connections by bloodline. So, Lady Pamela, through her father and her husband, is well-acquainted with the very rich and the very famous. She is welcome in royal circles. For Paul Hawkins, dealing with her on a daily basis is a very rich and rewarding experience. Sometimes great fun, seeing the motions and behaviour of the powerful in action. Never a dull moment on a round-the-clock job … Lady Pamela Gisborne is due to cut the ribbon for a presentation at a new Hospice one morning at eleven o’clock on Royal Hospital Road. At five-to-eleven with Paul Hawkins hopelessly flapping, she stubs out her duMaurier cigarette, grinning at a functionless and adrift Paul Hawkins. She slides her feet into some expensive and serviceable high-heeled shoes. All the while looking in the hallway mirror as she clips real pearls around her neck. Fixes matching earrings. She swings around, grabbing her fur coat off a hook from a hallway stand. Applying a smear of rose-coloured lipstick. Paul Hawkins reminding her of this and that. Pacing anxiously to and fro along the hallway carpet … Like a battleship in full sail, Lady Pamela Gisborne pulls the front door open wide. Letting the sunshine in. She straightaway leaves the house in St. Leonard’s Terrace and marches on high heels across the green square that is Burton Court. She arrives at the presentation two minutes after eleven o’clock, which of course is her prerogative - she knows this full well. Straight into the action and cutting the white tape with a very large pair of yellow scissors for the photoshoot. Declaring the Hospice officially open with her penetrating, cut-glass voice. Now posing with the official dignitaries for the obligatory group photograph. With a few handshakes and a wave to the sixty or so onlookers, she leaves straight away … Making her way back across the open grass square of Burton Court.

Paul Hawkins opens the front door for her, rather than the maid. He has watched all of the cutting of the official tape ceremony from a nervous distance … Lady Pamela immediately kicks off her high-heeled shoes down the hallway. Swears in good humour, relieves herself of the fur coat. Enters the downstairs drawing room with the greyish-white pearls bouncing around her neck. Plonks herself down in an original Queen Anne chair. Sticks her bare feet up on a footstool and is handed a large, stiff, gin and tonic by Paul Hawkins. Lady Pamela drinks it straight down and holds the empty glass out for a refill. She starts talking about a totally different subject with Paul, as if what she had just done in cutting that tape was no more than making a cup of tea …

Lady Pamela Gisborne is a very classy performer. Strong, confident, full of character as befits her breeding and station in life. Paul Hawkins is becoming enchanted, captivated by turns. Gradually being drawn into their lives, their family gossip, the problems of the moment and the intrusion of business matters. Though Paul is always an employee, an outsider. But you get irresistibly drawn into their games and it’s so easy to forget who you really are, and your role in these played-out lives, and their family concerns. You can so easily get out of kilter with your own purpose. Rumours from out of the blue can send you dizzy and spinning with confusion nonstop … Among Paul Hawkins’ chosen tasks, he has to sift through all the many requests that Lady Pamela receives all the time. Eliminating many that do not come within her remit. On their daily morning briefing, he goes through the requests he has selected. Proposing which ones Lady Pamela should accept and why. She gradually comes to rely on his good judgment. Paul monitoring all the incoming telephone calls on the dedicated business-line. Providing a barrier to the endless stream of pesterers, would be hangers-on, the endless charities seeking her support. Her name alone could be a passport to raising much needed funds.

Paul Hawkins soon learns that everybody is always desperate. They pretend to hide it but are only too happy to divulge the terrible secrets of their innate poverty. They have his ear and they intend to use it. Another of his main duties is to handle all press releases and media requests. If Paul Hawkins said yes to everything, he soon realizes that not even a hundred Lady Pamela Gisbornes would be enough to satisfy all the demands. Then, of course, there is the interior designer, Michael Wickes. Still the darling of the smart set. Paul handles the liaisons and trysts between Lady Pamela and Michael Wickes with consumate discretion. It's not for Paul Hawkins to pass any kind of judgment or form an opinion. But, of course, human nature being what it is, you just can’t help it. Lord Gisborne is a very shadowy, distant figure, who seems to prefer to spend most of his time on the Country Estate down in East Sussex. The children are at boarding schools, or nannified in their own quarters in London and Sussex. The occasional gifts and open disregard for convention, and the reputation of Lady Pamela becomes a major concern for Paul Hawkins, who is easily given over to worry and fretful behaviour. Love affairs have always been accepted among the rich and upper classes, but discretion is called for to maintain a respectability for general public consumption. Michael Wickes, as if believing himself to be above such matters, has a tendency to flaunt the entanglement, as if seduced by the intrigue of it all. The wonder to Paul is how Lady Pamela puts up with it. But Michael Wickes is an attractive man in his early thirties. Successful. Seen as a good catch for an older woman who has, let us remind ourselves, given birth to seven children. It must be an exciting experience to break the monotony of her daily round. Only churchgoers and the striving middle-classes are offended by such immoral behaviour. Paul Hawkins is so rapt and enthralled by Lady Pamela for taking such an attitude …

Paul Hawkins would break off occasionally in the telling of this story of his life, as if the sheer intensity of the retelling of it is overwhelming him. He must have relayed parts of it to other people. His mother, his brother, a friend from Cambridge, but Scott senses he’s never gone this far or this deep. All the crew are bound up in it. Scott finds himself driving the Paris Green Cortina carefully at sixty mph so as not to disturb Paul’s rhythm. Not gunning along with his foot pressed hard down on the accelerator at eighty, to try and hit the intended prop early. Tom has his book on the latest farming methods in his hands, but he is not reading it. He’s listening to Paul. Carole Bishop is rolling the joints expertly. Sometimes casually rubbing shoulders with Paul to encourage him. He’s sat in the back in the middle. Eric strains hard to hear, intent on every word. Paul Hawkins sometimes chokes up. His voice can become faster and faster, and lower and quieter when he becomes excited or reaches an anxious part of his story. The crew have heard them all. Rock stars, actors, drug dealers, soldiers, witches, models, musicians, artists, writers, political activists, but no one has ever captured their attention and interest like Paul Hawkins. It’s as if they are willing him to continue, they sense his frailty, his distress, his desperate need to somehow communicate what has happened to him before it is too late to give meaning to it all …

Paul Hawkins even explains how he got to be on good terms with Lady Pamela’s father, Lord Hill-Brewster. With royal blood flowing through his veins, a naval war hero during the Second World War, he is truly a man of stature. Tall, good-looking, commanding in both manner and appearance. An attractive figure of power and connection. He takes to using his daughter’s house for secret meetings, assignations, private matters and afternoons with the Prince. Lady Pamela’s house in St. Leonard’s Terrace is not under constant surveillance by the press and the media. Within easy access. A suitable side door to slip in and out of. And the arrival of Paul Hawkins. His daughter's private secretary who can be relied upon for discretion in all matters. Capable of handling the odd peccadillo. Professional to his fingertips. Lord Hill-Brewster comes to rely on Paul Hawkins but never takes him fully into his confidence. On a few very special occasions, the upstairs back drawing room is set aside and Lord Hill-Brewster receives his nephew, the Prince. They spend afternoons together drinking, laughing, gossiping. The Prince, a very powerful figure himself, quite obviously admires his uncle, and values their private afternoons together, whenever he can get away from his never-ending round of Royal duties. They like Paul to serve them their drinks. Usually gin and tonics or champagne. They love to tell bawdy jokes in his presence which embarrasses his youthful earnestness. If they can make him blush bright-red, so much the better. This gives them a tremendous sense of merriment and no end of amusement. Helps pass the time. Paul Hawkins is only too willing to oblige …

The crew listens hard. On reflection, Scott realises that the core of Paul Hawkins’ story is never absolutely clear. The Michael Wickes affair with Lady Pamela, the Prince and the Royal connection, they were all just so much foreplay. It seemed, as he somehow struggled to tell his story that Paul Hawkins never understood, or more likely refused to believe, that Lady Pamela Gisborne was a real player. She is not her father’s daughter for nothing. Unexplained trips abroad veiled in mystery. Unexpected visits late at night from courteous, well-dressed strangers who seem able to merge with the very brickwork. The continuing presence of a bodyguard is only to be expected. Then there are the secret discussions between Lady Pamela and Lord Hill-Brewster. They are becoming more frequent and Paul Hawkins is not a party to them. Not invited …

A sudden silence in the Cortina, save for the thrumming of the engine. The crew are collecting their thoughts, sifting through what Paul Hawkins has been telling them. Scott has decided to push onto Basingstoke to allow him to talk some more. For now, he seems to have the need to be silent. Preparing himself for further revelations of his time as a private secretary. Obviously striving hard to find fresh meaning to what has happened to him. He seems right now like a nervous casualty in need of urgent help … It's worth remembering, mind you, that the story takes place and develops over five years. Paul Hawkins, in relaying his story, condenses the time, jumping like a grasshopper back and forth. Shredded brief spans of time that almost bring him to tears behind those almost fashionable, National Health glasses … Paul, from how he talks, was quite clearly a very satisfactory and conscientious personal secretary. Discretion could have been his middle name. What exactly the crew are really thinking, Scott isn’t quite sure. A mixture of pity tinged with disbelief and despair. Any thought of a crew chorus would reduce him to tears …

Paul Hawkins starts to talk again as the Paris Green Cortina passes a signpost saying ‘Basingstoke, twenty miles’ ... He’s talking far too quickly and his face grows darker, he starts to tremble a little. A fascinated Carole Bishop holds his right hand briefly and passes him yet another spliff to ease the nervous strain … From what the intently listening crew can gather, Lord Hill-Brewster is the Chairman of a very successful property development company with strong political connections. His daughter, Lady Pamela, sits on the company board as the token woman. The crew do their very best not to hiss in unison on behalf of all the squatters in Elgin Avenue … Through a jumble of words and hesitant revelations, Paul Hawkins explains how he gradually came to realize that hugely corrupt practices and conniving machinations are going towards making this property development company very, very rich and successful. They even have the Royal seal of approval. ‘By appointment to the Queen’. Still, no surprise there … This company, whose name Scott is at pains not to reveal else his novel Children of the Empire, would never see the light of day. Eaten alive by conglomerate power and influence.

They manage, as Paul Hawkins hesitatingly puts forth as an example, how the company get their hands on two whole blocks of lower Fleet Street, right opposite the Old Bailey Law courts, and down along to Lancaster Place and the corner of the Aldwych. All this property was condemned as structurally unsafe with unhealthy sanitation, by the City Council. Surveyors and the different landlords were all facing damaging legal proceedings if they didn’t comply with the new regulations. The prospective expense involved was prohibitive. Lord Hill-Brewster and his property development company were able to purchase all of the lower Fleet Street properties at knockdown prices … Paul Hawkins coughs as if the telling of his tale and the passed-around joints are overpowering him. This tale of upper-class gangsterism on the Monopoly board is proving too hard to take on the vocal cords …

The signpost to Basingstoke now reads ten miles. Paul Hawkins’ voice seems to have given out for the present. All the raw emotion of telling his tale has dried up his hoarse throat. From the looks of him in Scott’s rear-view mirror, he couldn’t give a leaflet away for free on the streets of Basingstoke today, much less get into somebody’s house tonight and sell them a painting on velvet … Scott turns on the car radio to distract from Paul Hawkins and take the attention away from him … The first few sentences from a BBC Radio Four broadcast interview and the three regular members of the crew all chorus
‘Turn it off!’ Scott smiles.
‘You mean to say you don’t wish to listen to the Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Rippon, outlining the benefits of joining the European Common Market?’
‘No, we don’t!’ chorus the crew.
‘You’re not interested in the relaxing of trade tariffs and the prospect of joining forces with our European neighbours?’
‘No!’ yell the crew.
‘You don’t see yourselves as future Plutocrats, then?’
‘We're not Plutocrats...’, the crew are clear on the matter.
‘In that case, I bow to the majority decision and Geoffrey Rippon gets the big switch.’ Scott turns off the car radio and the crew all laugh …

Returning from Basingstoke that night. The crew all sold, except Paul. It was a good evening for points, although, when Scott picked up Paul Hawkins up at the pre-arranged spot, he looked desperately lost and forlorn. As if, just what exactly is a former private secretary to Lady Pamela Gisborne doing stood on a street corner at twenty minutes to ten of a June evening, on a modern private estate on the outskirts of Basingstoke?

Paul Hawkins regains his sense of composure back within the safe confines of the Cortina. His voice has renewed strength and he picks up the threads of his story from where he left off … It transpired that three months after Lord Hill-Brewster’s property development company had acquired those unsafe buildings in lower Fleet Street, the City Council amended their bylaws concerning buildings. Lo and behold, those aforementioned properties were no longer condemned. They could be repaired at a minimal cost and put back on the market without any further alterations or Council hindrance. Such are the ways of local Councils. Backhanders and kickbacks with the promise of more to follow … Paul Hawkins is frowning behind his National Health glasses. When the right opportunity arose, he confronted Lady Pamela Gisborne about the fraudulent and dishonest business practices of the property development company, of which she is a board member. Lady Pamela laughed right in Paul Hawkin’s face. Adopted that supercilious manner beloved of her class. Told him he was an innocent abroad. A fool. The haughty refrain of the rich and privileged.
‘Who, after all darling, is ever going to believe poor little you?’

Who indeed would believe him, when the property development company is headed by her famous father, Lord Hill-Brewster, the Chairman. A man of impeccable reputation. A war hero no less, from Royal stock. They have the Royal seal of approval and the Chancellor of the Exchequer is on the Board of Directors. The message is clear to Paul Hawkins, he’d better watch his step, be on the lookout and hide his diaries where he is recording most of what he sees and hears. Dangerous. Paranoia creeping on. Suddenly the bodyguards, secret MI6 agents, the household staff, everyone, seems to be in on it to Paul. He’s becoming neurotic, delusional, a paranoiad … He breaks off his tale. Eric lights a cigarette for him. His hands are shaking too much. He hints in a roundabout way that there is much more he is not telling the crew. It is better for their safety that they do not know … In Scott’s eyes, how much do you believe? All manner of types pass through the crew. When people are adrift, lost, on their uppers, lonely and emotionally in shock, they have a habit of speaking the truth. Eric has a kind face and an easy way about him. Someone you can sit next to, confide in without fear …

Paul Hawkins somehow manages to press on as the car is approaches the outskirts of London … one night in St. Leonard’s Terrace about eight months ago, Paul Hawkins lingered in the upstairs hallway, and caught snatches of a conversation between Lady Pamela and an unnamed, high-ranking security official. His ears pricked up when he heard his name repeatedly mentioned. Phrases like ‘security risk’, ‘not totally to be believed’, ‘knows too much’, ‘could become a liability’, ‘can he be trusted?’ Did his obvious infatuation for Lady Pamela blind him to the realities?
‘ ... what is to be done with him?’ A maid appears in the upstairs hallway carrying a tray and Paul Hawkins is seen to be eavesdropping … He goes and packs what he can carry. Waits until four o’clock in the morning, when the night is at its darkest and the world lies lost in sleep. He slips out that back door much favoured by the Prince. He goes unnoticed, like a thief sliding off into the darkness …

Paul has brightened up considerably as Central London resumes at Chiswick … He won’t tell Scott where he is hiding out. He’s been running ever since that night. In fear for his life. As he might well be. There is a permanent watch on his mother’s house in Bristol, and his brother at Manchester University, feels sure he is under surveillance of some kind. England is, after all, a nation of spies. Elizabeth the First sniping her way across the country castles and mansions of England, with Francis Walsingham spying on everyone. We live now in a time of spies and secret agents. From the reality of Kim Philby to everyone seemingly in thrall to the likes of James Bond. Matt Helm. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Spies and secret agents everywhere furthering the Cold War … One fifth of London stands empty right now, housing is a huge issue. Property developers rule the roost. Kindling an insatiable desire, that almighty hunger and greed for untold riches. No matter how much you protest, nothing changes. The government of the day just announces yet another commission to look into it. Window-dressing, which soon gets lost in the blizzard of daily news. No wonder the Children of the Empire are looking to resist it all …

Secrets and hidden meanings. One night back in late April when Patricia first started freebasing Charley. She suddenly started talking a streak about how working very late one evening in an inner office at the Thomas More Street Building. She casually overheard the Greek shipping magnate with an American, whom she deduced to be a representative of the CIA, from the way that he spoke. Her Greek shipping boss was being paid huge sums of money to organize the delivery of weapons to a guerrilla group in Cambodia named the Khmer Rouge, and their leader, one Pol Pot. The CIA were attempting to finance a coup in Cambodia … Many more pieces of secret information pour forth. Once Patricia opens her mouth, the coke tumbles it all out in an excited haze of indulgence. Scott had never heard of the Khmer Rouge until that night. Put to the test, he would probably have guessed that Pol Pot was a brand of Hong Kong noodles. All he vaguely knows about Cambodia is the ancient, deserted temple city, Angkor Wat. The ancient capital city, Angkor Thom, and that Cambodia is right next to Vietnam, maybe once under French rule as Indochina. Scott’s not totally sure. That’s the trouble working for Advanced Art, you don’t get time to read the newspapers properly. It’s hard to read on Sunday. Don’t like reading Sunday newspapers on acid. The only magazines of real interest are the underground press like OZ, Friendz, Rolling Stone and the International Times, or IT. But this was before the powers that be closed Bill Levy down through a court order instigated by the London Times thundering out its authority …

Why was Angkor Wat left deserted? No one rightly knows. Maybe they had a dreadful plague like the city of Oran, and the survivors fled in fear for their lives. Perhaps continual monsoons arrived and they lost all of their rich harvests for many years and were eventually forced to move on; or maybe the Priests declared they had discovered an Ancient Relic, and the most venerable of the Priests had dreamed a sacred message. The city of Angkor Wat has been revealed to be an unholy place and the people must leave … Could be any one of them, besides many more, unimagined … That information about the CIA is highly toxic stuff. Patricia doesn’t seem to care. She declares after yet another line, that her powerful Greek shipping boss always brags that she is the very soul of discretion. If only he could see her when the sun has gone down ...