I Like It Here

Britain as a whole—do forgive me if I sound offensive; it’s just that I’m concerned at what I read of these post-war changes. This Socialism, now. Are those fellows going to get back into power again, do you think?”
“I hope so.”
“Oh, do you? Then you’re a Socialist? Do pardon my curiosity.”
“Well, in a way. I certainly prefer them to the other crowd.”
“The Conservatives, the Tories? Really? I’m astonished to find a person of your obvious high education opposing the Tories. You mustn’t mistake my meaning —I’m merely saying that it’s a revelation to me. Perhaps I’d better explain that I value the ideals of English Conservatism highly; I used to think they were just English ideals in general, but I’m talking now of thirty years ago, you understand. I knew some fellows at Balliol—I was next door myself, at Trinity—they used to say I was a sort of incarnation of Conservatism, much more perfect than any Englishman could be. They said they could promise me a safe seat if I cared to stand.”
He gave his sudden grinning smile. “But you don’t want to listen to my autobiography. No, what really attracted me was the terrific emphasis on freedom you get. That’s my quarrel with your Socialists, they don’t really believe in freedom, do they?”
This was just Bowen’s question. Like an examinee who has been lucky with the papers he proceeded to give Gomes a totally false idea of his political knowledge. Gomes listened carefully, biting the inside of his priestly face, not breaking in when Bowen ordered more drinks. Gomes was drinking Scotch, the most expensive drink in Portugal and therefore, Bowen was told on another occasion, obligatory among well-off people whatever their digestions felt about it.
“Well, this is most reassuring,” Gomes said when at last Bowen fell silent. “I certainly had no idea the people in your Labour Party were taking these problems so seriously. As you say, I’ve probably been reading too much Tory propaganda.” He grinned again, then went serious. “It’s marvellous to think of all this kind of thing being discussed openly, in Parliament and the Press, quite freely, no censorship or anything like that.”
“The censorship here’s pretty fierce, is it?” Bowen asked.
Gomes reacted like a man in sudden pain, clenching his jaws and drawing in his breath. As if he found it hard to get the words out, he said: “If it won’t bore you, let me tell you something of this wonderful country where I have the honour to be a citizen. Yes, the censorship is, as you express it, pretty fierce. All publications of any kind have to be passed by the censor. I don’t mean just newspapers and such things, though I may say that includes periodicals to do with football, you know, and the home and so on—they’re all examined for something the régime doesn’t like. Why, you can have no idea of what this entails. If you want to get up a charity or something like that, something utterly harmless, then you must first get the authorities’ permission, and if you have a printed prospectus, then that goes to the censor automatically. If you so much as hold a dinner and send out printed invitations, you must let the censor see those too. And what the censor doesn’t like—well, it’s something that suggests something is wrong somewhere; it doesn’t matter what or where. I’m not talking about actual complaints against the Government: you go to prison for that. Do you know who trained our secret police, that fine body of men? The late lamented Himmler, with personal supervision. But this censorship: for instance, there’s never any word of public health in the papers, except the pious statements that it’s marvellous, couldn’t be better—with the worst slums in Western Europe right on our doorsteps in Lisbon. You can’t even say things are improving; that suggests they aren’t perfect. Again, accidents. They’re just never reported. It might shake the public confidence. I’ll give you an example: you see this railway here?”
Bowen said he did; it ran along the coast from Lisbon to Cascais and, though posher and faster, had often reminded him of the tram-like train running between Swansea (Rutland Street) and Mumbles Pier: the oldest passenger railway in the British Isles, too.
“Well now—do say if I’m boring you, won’t you?— part of the embankment thing collapsed one fine day and the train ran smack into it. A small baby was killed and a woman died in hospital. Several people badly hurt. Now then. Only one paper printed this news, by an oversight I imagine. Our brave policemen came along and closed it down for a month as a warning. A warning not to depart again from the official policy to cheat and to lie.” He said this rather good-humouredly over his shoulder as he waved and hissed for the waiter. “Then of course all the film posters are censored. In the interests of public morality, naturally. Have a look next time and you’ll see the stamp. It’s the Church behind that. Don’t please misunderstand me: I’m a serious Catholic myself, or so I should like to think. But I can’t forgive the way the bishops are with Salazar in everything. And the priests. There are plenty of good ones, naturally. But for many of them, you see, to be a priest is an escape from the poverty—some money in your pocket at last. No feelings of religion at all. Two friends of mine, good Catholics, started a little soup-kitchen in their village up near Braga: free soup twice a day and bread for the children of the poor. The priest preached against them from his pulpit; it was the blow to his prestige. Actually the Church is pretty unpopular in some areas, especially among the poor. Down south recently they were rebuilding a church that had been burnt down. Well, the local poor decided they had done very well without the Father preaching there, so they all got drunk one night