Number 10

by Sue Townsend

  Samuelson was a grandee of the labour movement. His grandfather, Hector Samuelson, had organised the very first Ideal Home Exhibition at Earl’s Court, which had broken all attendance records when the average number of visitors exceeded 300,000 a day.

  This exhibition, with its revolutionary steam irons, non-stick frying pans and sputnik-influenced coffee tables, was credited with awakening the British public’s desire for consumer durables and kick-starting a manufacturing boom.

  Hector Samuelson’s grandson, David, had been described by a contemporary at Oxford as ‘fiendishly clever’; another contemporary, to whom he still owed a large sum of money, had described him as ‘a fiend’.

  His homosexuality was the least interesting thing about him. His taste in Portuguese waiters was well known and he had settled in a vast stuccoed house in Ladbroke Grove so as to be near a lot of them. The press occasionally photographed him with one of his waiter friends, but there is a limit to how long the public’s interest can be maintained—after all, one handsome Portuguese youth in a waiter’s uniform looks very much like another.

  Samuelson’s vice was money, and he had a love of luxury. He had grown up visiting the mines and factories of the industrial north where his grandfather and father had been Labour MPs. Even as a little boy he had recoiled from the smells and textures of working-class life and the breath and living spaces of working-class people. Even the food on their plates was crowded together and spilling over the edge.

  At grammar school he had excelled in history and shown a mature and sympathetic understanding of the development of the labour movement in Britain. He had occasionally been moved to tears by archive accounts of the bedraggled, half-starved child mill-workers who had fallen asleep on their barefoot journeys from the factory to their overcrowded hovels.

  He much preferred the working classes of the textbook to their reality, which he abhorred, shuddering when he heard their coarse voices raised in the street. He did not hate them as an entity—some of them came to his parties—but he longed for a time when there was a Parmeggiano grater in every cutlery drawer in the land.

  Samuelson said with his usual dramatic delivery, “I simply have to talk to you, Eddy.”

  Alexander said, “We’re in the middle of a meeting, Dave.” Edward looked at David, who said, “No, you should hear this, Alex, it’s important. I’ve studied the focus-group feedback. I haven’t slept, but it doesn’t matter,” he added in a martyred tone. “It’s time to change the party’s image completely and for good, starting with the name. I’ve been putting out feelers and I think the time is now.”

  Edward and Alexander sat for a full two minutes without interrupting while David outlined his plans. “We take ‘Labour’ out of the party’s name. The word Labour has totally negative connotations; it’s associated with sweat and hard work, trade unionism and protracted and painful childbirth. Think about it: most of us don’t even break into a sweat at work and most aspirational mothers are opting for Caesareans by appointment—like Adele.”

  Alexander said dryly, “If we drop the ‘Labour’ from ‘New Labour’ we’re left with one word: ‘New’. Sorry, but it doesn’t set my bollocks on fire.”

  Edward asked, “You got some suggestions, David?”

  David scraped his hair back from his forehead with long pale fingers. “No, I’ve just identified the problem. I want your go-ahead before I focus on a solution.”

  Edward said, “Are you suggesting we keep ‘New’?”

  Alexander said, “How can we keep ‘New’?” “New’ was only new in 1997; it’s bollocking old now.”

  Edward said, “You’d better go ahead and focus on the solution, David. Otherwise we’re left with nothing. Nothing at all.” He stared down at a security report on Bob Marshall Andrews MP, QC, that lay on his desk and required his signature, but he saw nothing. His party had no name. He felt himself begin to disintegrate and dislocate. He excused himself and went into his private bathroom, where he locked the door then sat on the side of the bath before taking two sheets of Bronco toilet paper from a packet he kept in a cupboard under the washbasin and wrapping them expertly around his penis. After a few moments of stillness he flushed the paper away, washed his hands and smiled into the convex shaving mirror, which hugely magnified his face and reassured him that he was still there.

  He came back into the sitting room to find Alex and David arguing about the fox-hunting bill. David was looking into the viability of using holograms of foxes beamed from satellites in outer space on to the hunting shires across Britain. Alexander was saying, “They can crucify the furry red bastards for all I care. I’m sick to death of the whole fucking debate.”

  After they had gone Edward sat at his desk and signed the paper that permitted MI5 to bug the house, car and office of Bob Marshall Andrews, MP, QC.

  Adele came in and said, “Ed baby, stay and be charming to a journalist for me will you? Give her your smile and stroke my hair in front of her. Her name is Suzanne Nicholson, she’s the women’s editor of Joy. It’s a new mag and I’m going to be on the front cover.”

  Adele’s nose was extraordinarily large. Her father, Guy Floret, had remarked on seeing her for the first time, only moments after she had been born, “Mon dieu, ma pauvre enfant. Elle est Pinocchio.”

  Edward nuzzled between her milky-smelling breasts and said huskily, “You should be the centrefold, Adele baby.”

  ♦

  “He’s so sweet,” whispered Suzanne Nicholson after the Prime Minister had kissed his wife, stroked her hair and left the room, closing the door quietly, almost apologetically, behind him.

  Adele pulled her long thin legs under her and took a sip of her camomile tea. “He is sweet but he’s not saccharine.”

  Suzanne thought about her own husband, who had slammed out of the house at seven a.m. after shouting at the bedroom door, “You’re a fucking stupid bitch.”

  He was angry because she had confessed to him that she had left his three bespoke suits in one of the 315 dry cleaners in central London. The ticket had mysteriously disappeared from each of her many handbags—was not in any pocket of any garment owned, could not be found in either car or in any drawer or cupboard at home or at work.

  After a week of prevarication she had burst into tears and told him the horrible truth. She had blamed the incident on the stress of having to prepare for the Adele Floret-Clare interview. “She’s the cleverest woman in the world,” she’d wailed. “What am I going to ask her? She’ll eat me alive!”

  Suzanne watched as Adele lifted a telephone and said in a nasal drawl, “Wendy love, we’d love some more of that fantastic tea.”

  Suzanne scribbled in rapid shorthand: “The nose is awesome. Flawless skin, professional make-up, teeth whitened (recently), shoes Prada, check price at Bond Street store. Pleb accent more pronounced when on phone.”

  Adele was making small sympathetic sounds down the phone to an obviously distressed Wendy. She then looked at her watch, mouthed ‘One minute’ to Suzanne and said briskly into the handset, “Amputation is the only sensible option.” She went to put the phone down but Wendy was obviously trying to have a conversation.

  “Not now, Wendy, I’m in the middle of something…”

  She put down the telephone and smiled at Suzanne. “I dunno, you ring for a cup of tea and get drawn into somebody else’s psycho-drama. Poor Wendy, our housekeeper. Her son Barry—a complete yob, between you and me—mangled his leg in a motorbike accident. The leg won’t heal, he’s loitering about in a hospital bed on very expensive antibiotics…Of course, this is totally off the record…”

  Suzanne put on her serious face. “It goes without saying, you’ve got copy approval…”

  “I shouldn’t have told you about poor Wendy, but I can’t help empathising with the staff and their little problems.”

  “Sorry, I’ll try and stop worrying about Wendy and Barry now. Go on, fire away.”

  Suzanne glanced down at her list of questions. “OK. What
’s it like to be named by People magazine as the cleverest woman in the world?”

  Adele laughed. “Oh, it wasn’t the world,” she said, lowering her eyes modestly. “It was only Europe.”

  Suzanne moved on to question two. “What’s a typical day in Adele Floret-Clare’s life?”

  Adele laughed. “There’s no such thing as a typical day; and, speaking as a philosopher, there’s actually no such thing as ‘life’ or ‘day’. I mean, what do you mean by ‘life’ and ‘day’?”

  Suzanne felt her temples begin to throb. “OK. What did you do yesterday, then?”

  Adele appeared to be puzzled. “Yesterday, as in the previous twenty-four hours?”

  Suzanne wanted to shout at the cleverest woman in Europe but then the door opened and a gaunt-faced woman with red puffy eyes came in carrying a tray on which sat a glass teapot and a plate of Scottish shortbread fingers arranged in a fan pattern.

  When the tray had been set down, Adele gave a little laugh and said to the woman, “Wendy love, are you trying to kill us? Shortbread? My God, the fat, the sugar!”

  Wendy said, “I was told by central supplies to buy British.”

  “But what about those oatcake thingies we used to have?”

  “They’re made under licence in Poland now,” said Wendy.

  Adele stirred the sachets of tea inside the pot and at the same time she checked her watch. She said, quite sharply, to Wendy, “About Barry’s leg. He’ll still be able to get about. Last week Edward and I presented a Children of Courage Award to a boy who had both of his legs amputated by a heritage steam train. He plays wheelchair basketball now…”

  Suzanne glanced at Wendy and was pleased to see a look of pure venom directed at Adele’s back before she closed the door.

  “So, back to your fascinating question. The alarm goes at five-thirty but we’re usually up by then. It’s a precious time, before the world crashes in on us. But it’s yesterday you want to know about…Yeah, so it was up at five, Ed made tea, and we talked. We have a rule: no politics, no family. It was a good conversation.”

  “About?” Suzanne asked, though she didn’t expect to be told.

  “Oh, it was about transubstantiation.”

  “Transubstantiation,” said Suzanne, hesitantly. “That’s nothing to do with transport?”

  Adele laughed. “I see you’re no theologian, Suzanne.” She leaned back and put her hands behind her head. “Transubstantiation is to do with the conversion of the Eucharist…Is the bread and wine wholly subsumed into the body of Christ?” she said earnestly.

  “Fascinating,” murmured Suzanne, who had only a vague idea of what the Eucharist was.

  ♦

  Adele took a sip of tea and pulled a face. “This is not camomile, it’s Lapsang souchong. Honestly. The sooner Barry’s leg comes off the better it’ll be for us all.” She continued with the previous day’s engagements. “At six, after prayers for Ed and meditation for me, Ed switched on the Today programme, he bathed, I showered then Wendy came in with a continental breakfast, then it was feed Poppy, whom I’m still breast-feeding, hair, manicure, kiss children off to school, ten minutes with the papers. Talk to Wendy about the food for the Manchester United Wives and Girlfriends Association reception here at Number Ten. Car to LSE, give lecture on the Feminisation of Western Man. Car back here. Write eight hundred words for Spectator on e–mail overload, and then lunch with Gamma P.B., who’s promised to teach me to ride when we go to Highgrove next week. Then what? Yes, I fed the baby, did some shoe shopping with Gail Rebuck, met a delegation of nuns from Rwanda, came upstairs, had a sandwich with the older children, Morgan and Estelle. He’s doing GCSEs and she’s just started at Camden School for Girls. Car to tennis lesson with Andre, back here, shower, hair, make-up. Made phone calls, wrote letters, sent emails, fed baby again, reception with Man-U Wives. Ed came—he adores football. Then, oh yes, went upstairs to kids, helped Morgan with King Lear essay. Hair, make-up, changed clothes, dined at French embassy with Charlotte Rampling and Eddie Izzard. Agreed to…”

  Suzanne, who was a fan of Eddie Izzard, said, “What’s Eddie like?”

  Adele said, “He was wearing black tights with red shoes and he seemed to be laughing at a private joke. I didn’t warm to him.”

  After Wendy had shown Suzanne out Adele sat alone and replayed the interview in her head. She knew that Suzanne had disliked her. She had known since she was a little girl that cleverness was something that should be kept hidden. Her grandmother had warned her, “Nobody likes a smart-arse, Adele.” She sometimes envied those thick people who were Ed’s constituents, with their banal small talk and their trivial preoccupations. She touched the side of her nose and wondered if she should have it fixed. Ed constantly told her he loved her nose, and he would kiss the length and breadth of it. But she was tired of carrying it in front of her like a warning flag.

  As soon as Suzanne was outside the door of Number Ten, she switched on her mobile phone. Jack Sprat, who was admiring Suzanne’s legs, heard her say, “She’s an absolute cow,” as she walked away.

  He smiled to himself, knowing exactly the cow she was talking about.

  ∨ Number Ten ∧

  TWO

  Adele Floret-Clare was born in Paris, the illegitimate child of an English Folies Bergère mother and French accountant father. She was brought up in Hoxton by a grandmother who rose at four a.m. and cleaned offices so as to be able to send Adele to a private school where she felt the other schoolgirls would not tease Adele about her nose. She was wrong: her granddaughter’s nickname at school was Le Nez. Adele was the author of four books of popular philosophy. Her first was published when she was nineteen and had become an international bestseller. Its provocative title, God is a Lesbian, ensured massive press, radio and television coverage. Adele was asked many times if she herself was a lesbian. She was always careful to give an ambiguous answer, thereby titillating the questioner and ensuring that her name and photograph regularly appeared not only on the book pages but also on the gossip and news pages.

  By the time she was twenty-one Adele was a visiting professor at the Sorbonne and had published two more books: Philosophers’ Wives and Wittgenstein: The moron behind the myth.

  She had a small flat in St Martin’s Lane, London, and a permanent hotel room at the Hôtel Rivoli in Paris.

  She had been happy: she was young, healthy, elegant, clever, successful, respected and famous. Unfortunately, Adele heard voices inside her head. Voices that spoke to her using words that were vile and obscene. She saw psychiatrists in London and in Paris, but in neither language did she gain relief. Psychotropic drugs had no effect. The voices continued to jabber and accuse her of heinous crimes. Once, when she was being interviewed by Melvyn Bragg on The South Bank Show, the voices charged her with being implicated in the disappearance of Shergar, the racehorse. She had responded out loud: “Don’t be bloody absurd.” This had startled Melvyn, who had actually asked her if Plato had intentionally influenced Alexander the Great into extending the Greek Empire. Her angry reply had not been edited from the tape as it was considered to be good television.

  When Adele Floret met Edward Clare he was the newly elected MP for Flitwick East. It was at a reception for Gore Vidal and it was a cataclysmic experience for them both. After a few minutes of intense small talk—about the proliferation of weapons in the Gulf States—it became obvious to them both that they would fall in love. Edward could not take his eyes off her magnificent nose.

  When Gore himself was brought over to talk to them they were indifferent to his drawled revelations about a screen goddess, the head of the CIA and an Afghan hound.

  After Edward had expressed concern for the dog, they excused themselves and left shortly afterwards in a black cab.

  Once the cab had turned the corner they had thrown themselves into each other’s arms. Edward had shouted to the driver to drive around the city until told to stop. The driver was unimpressed by this romantic gesture and had said that he w
as on his way home to Golders Green where his dinner was waiting. Edward had said, “OK, take us to Golders Green.”

  By a massive stroke of luck a young man had jumped from the flyover on the Edgware Road and fallen under the wheels of their cab.

  Adele was impressed by the way that Edward had taken charge—he had calmed the hysterical cab driver and removed his own suit jacket and covered the dead man’s head.

  Edward had not wanted the night to end. Adele was a fabulous woman—she had such style, such control. Seconds after the young man had fallen in front of the windscreen she had remarked through the squeal of brakes, “An Achilles in the Edgware Road.” This unpleasant incident quickly led them down pathways that they might have taken months to tread in the normal course of things.

  They had known each other for less than two hours when Edward confessed to Adele his political ambitions. Indeed, until he met Adele he hadn’t quite realised what these ambitions were himself. But with her in his arms he felt like Superman; and, like Superman, he would save the world if given the chance.

  When the statements had been made to the police and the blood had been washed off the road, they went back to Edward’s tiny pied—à—terre in Westminster. Adele explored the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves which lined the walls while he made bitter-tasting coffee in the kitchenette.

  When he brought the cups and saucers through into the sitting room he saw her applying a spray of Yves Saint Laurent’s Paris between her breasts. She was not in the least embarrassed. She had re-buttoned her cream silk shirt and said, “I’m feeling incredibly aroused. I can’t decide whether it’s the proximity to violent death or to you!”

  She noticed a guitar propped in a corner and asked if he could play. He had just picked it up, by way of reply, and played the opening chords of ‘Brown Sugar’. In a Pavlovian response she had leaped to her feet and strutted Jagger-like around the small room—one arm in the air. They were made for each other. Such was her euphoria that she took a chance and told him about the voices in her head. He gave her the name of a pal of his at Cambridge who was now a cutting-edge psychiatrist. He assured her that when a Labour government came to power mental-health services would be a top priority.