A Very Floridian Swamp
In a scene that seems more at home in a Scorsese gangster film than a British political scandal, a Liberal party MP is checking out the swamps of the Sunshine State to gain verisimilitude for a plan to lie about killing a man there. The imagery of his first-hand visit just could not seem more out of place in this strange but true tale:
“Bessell decided he too would go look at Big Cypress Swamp…as he drove into he swamp through the stick night air, he saw in the beams of his headlights that there were deep ditches on either side of the narrow, unlit road. A body could be throw into one of the ditches and lie there fore weeks or months without being discovered…Either that, or it would be eaten by alligators.”
The Crash
A tragically significant turn of events in the scandal is the sudden death of a woman in a horrific automobile accident. The imagery which conveys the scene of that crash is simple and unadorned and perhaps all the more effective because of it:
“As she was driving along the A303 in Hampshire, her car suddenly veered from one lane into another. There it hit a thirteen-ton lorry traveling in the opposite direction, collided with another car and rose twelve feet into the air before skidding along on its roof.”
About that Bessell Guy
Long before the portrait of his descent into the literal and metaphorical darkness of the swamps of Florida, Peter Bessell is introduced via imagery. In fact, the very first concrete image in the book is that Peter Bessell. Having this information does lend a little context to visit to Florida that makes it much easier to imagine:
“One evening in February 1965, a man with a fondness for mohair suits, an unusually wrinkled face and a faint resemblance to Humphrey Bogart walked into the Members’ Dining Room at the House of Commons.”
Artful Allusion
Imagery that references famous artworks can be especially effective shorthand for conveying aspects of character, both physical and psychological. Of course, if one is unfamiliar with the artwork in question, the whole premise sort of falls apart. Certain artists lend themselves to this type of imagery better than others: describing a face as having been painted by Picasso is a much stronger statement than describing it as having been painted Da Vinci, for example. In describing a woman whom he claimed as having initiated him into a sexual relationship, Norman Scott reveals an intuitive understanding of the power of the artful allusion:
“Kindly, vulnerable and possessed of what Scott called `a very good Modigiliani-type face,’ Parry-Jones also proved a good listener.”
