It might be set in 1920, but Stephen May’s smart, sardonic novel has plenty to say about today’s world. Europe is worn out from the war and a pandemic, political extremism is on the rise, and the establishment’s cash-for-favours culture is thriving. May doesn’t hammer home the point, but it’s there for the taking nonetheless.
Green Ink is based on the true story of Victor Grayson, the former socialist MP turned secret service informant who disappeared, presumed murdered, in September 1920. (Decades later, an MP from the same Colne Valley constituency claimed Grayson was still alive under an assumed name.) Despite Grayson’s sensational election victory in 1907 at the age of just 26, by 1920, the man May describes as a “self-proclaimed agitator, freelance scribbler, speechifier for hire and one-time firebrand MP” is on his uppers. He scraped through the war only to find himself disgusted by the status quo’s refusal to change in the peace that followed.
Grayson has been threatening to expose prime minister David Lloyd George’s involvement in selling honours. As the novel opens, “amorous sparrow” Lloyd George is sneaking a visit to the attic bedroom of his private secretary and lover, Frances Stevenson, unaware that a man hidden behind the stud wall is writing down everything he hears. These notes are typed – using department-approved green ink – for Sir Basil Thomson, head of the Home Office Directorate of Intelligence. Everyone it seems, is on the trail – or tail – of another.
Green Ink imagines Grayson’s last day as he strolls and finagles around London in pursuit of booze and opportunity. The flow is an energetic ragtime as this roving, restless man encounters a memorable cast of characters, including his young daughter and her nanny, political associates and assorted friends and strangers. The pace can feel too hectic at times, but the novel is also full of sharp, spry asides such as, “One thing you learn as a leader of the English working class is that they can’t be relied upon”, and, on the wartime horror of men writing poetry, “Poetry was like TB in that way; highly infectious and didn’t seem to discriminate by class. It was a disease anyone could catch,” though, May wryly adds, “officers were more likely to get published”.
