The Crocus List

"That is the whole point of these stay-behind courses, " Miss Tuckey gurgled. She cleared her throat and found her lecturing tone again. "Whatever your future postings may be in the service, and whatever jobs you take after you leave the service, there'll always be the chance that some of you will be overrun during a Russian invasion. The intention is that you won't be on any lists: part of your training here will be how to assume new identities or at least give yourself new pasts. Let me assure you of one thing: you won't be alone, although you will certainly feel lonely. Stay-behind groups are far from being a new idea, although the Army hasn't always been as actively involved as it is now. And you will have one advantage that we didn't have in the war: the transistor. Radioseiscan now be so small and cheap that it would be unrealistic for anybody to try and ban them. And I'm not talking only about receiving orders: you've no idea how comforting it can be just to listen to a free voice."

She paused, wondering briefly whether to elaborate on that. But they could either imagine it or they couldn't. She no longer expected them to see, within the stocky well-dressed matron with groomed grey hair and fashionable glasses, the tired, tense girl who had hunched over the illegal radio ina Lyo

She coughed again, this time just to explain the pause, and went on. "You should see yourselves as essentially anurban Resistance movement. It follows that we are assuming there will still be cities, that the fabric of British society will still remain. If we are a nuclear wasteland, then the Russians aren't likely to be interested in taking us over. It also follows that the occupying force will work through the existing structures of that society, not try to change everything overnight. They just couldn't do it. They'll do what the Germans did in Europe: exercise control through some form of national parliament, the existing civil service, local government, the police, postal and broadcasting systems, the distributive trades and so on. And it's there, in those same cha

"There also already exists the framework you'll need for recruitment and training. I want you to take out your pens and write down all the unofficial non-statutory organisations that you have some personal co

There was a bit of old-fashioned school-marm in Miss Dorothy Tuckey. She stood beaming with confidence as they glanced at each other, puzzled, then began to write slowly, but faster and faster.

… the Regimental Sailing Club, Maxim wrote; the Littlehampton and District Model Railway Society; the Royal United Services Institute (was that statutory, though?); my mother's Thursday lunchtime club; my old school association; Camden Ratepayers' Association; the Darts Club at the Hare and Hounds; the Church of England (well, why not?); Military Book Society…

Everybody was still writing, or pausing for furious thought, when Miss Tuckey called time. She made no move to collect the papers.

"All those," she said, "are potentially subversive organisations." She rode on over their instinctive amusement. "They are all groups of people with some shared interest or commitment, and therefore a basis of mutual trust. They all have a centralised structure and some sort of a base, even if it's only a temporary or part-time one, and existing lines of communication. And don't forget the amount of further education that goes on in the civilian. world. Think of all the local authority night schools, all the summer schools run by industry and the unions, all of those are ready-made training schemes. You can't abolish them without weakening the whole structure of an industrial society, and it would be an enormous job to take them over or infiltrate them all with informers. By the way, didanybody write down the readership of Sappho or Gay News'?"

She joined in their laughter; nobody put up his hand.

"I'm glad to hear it. But quite seriously, don't dismiss homosexuals as unreliable or distasteful. Most of them have just the experience of leading secret, double lives that you lack. Moscow knows all about that. When they were recruiting among the Apostles at Cambridge before the war, they weren't blackmailing those people. They were just picking up young men who had been self-taught secret agents ever since puberty. Who already had a grudge against the existing society because it wouldn't accept them for what they were."

"What about the Church?" someone asked. "I mean any church?" Maxim was glad somebody had pre-empted that question; he was trying, because that was part of the course's teaching, to be as anonymous as possible.

"Yees," Miss Tuckey began hesitantly. "The problem is that Moscow has always taken religion very seriously -1 mean as a rival. The clergy would certainly be on the lists. But you're right in one way: any religion-Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu-has a background of subversion. They were all underground at one time. And religious belief can be a great solace in loneliness; I dare say some of you know that already."

Glancing covertly around, Maxim saw a few quickly restrained nods. A Resistance war might be lonely in the long run, but on a raw battlefield loneliness could strike in the brief snap of a bullet's flight-even if you were clutching the hand of the next man along. He had done that, too.

"Did anyone write down the Family?" Miss Tuckey asked. "Don't think Moscow doesn't know about that, either. It can be the most dangerous, subversive organisation of all."

Chris? Maxim wondered. Brenda?-yes, she'd join up within months, and Chris immediately… Dear God, don't let it happen. Let the tanks and guns be enough, even the nukes, letme be enough, just don't let it come to this. He was begi

After lunch they paced the clipped grass of the ramparts overlooking the grey waters of the firth. The barracks had been built for the garrison of the fortress surrounding them, set on a low spit of land where the cha