Number 10

by Sue Townsend

  Behind his sunglasses the Prime Minister blinked back tears.

  Jack answered for him: “Look, just shut the fuck up and drive.”

  The rest of the journey to the airport was passed in complete silence.

  There was an angry crowd outside the terminal at Edinburgh airport. The air-traffic controllers at Swanwick had walked out because as their leader had said, “We can no longer guarantee the safety of planes flying over UK airspace. It is only forty-eight hours since our last computer failure and we had only just cleared up the backlog.”

  At one-thirty p.m., with ninety-seven planes about to land or take off, the computer system had gone dangerously berserk and had started showing an old episode of Star Trek.

  In the spirit of adventure the Prime Minister suggested that he and Jack take the first available plane flying to a British destination. The cafeteria had run out of refreshments so the Prime Minister joined the queue for the cold-drinks machine. A middle-aged woman in front of him said angrily to nobody in particular, “I’ve lost a half-a-million-pound export contract because of this Swanwick business!”

  The Prime Minister, ever mindful of the balance of payments, asked the nature of the woman’s business. “I airfreight haggis burgers to hotels on the Costa del Sol,” she said. “At least, I try to,” she added bitterly. “This bloody government don’t give a toss.”

  “Oh, but that’s not true,” said the Prime Minister. “We care, hugely!”

  The queue shuffled forward slowly. At its head a man was banging on the franchised soft-drinks machine. He had inserted a Euro coin by mistake and the machine was withholding a can of Fanta from him by way of protest.

  After a few vicious kicks the man went off in search of somebody who would take responsibility for his loss.

  Jack was standing in the newspaper queue waiting to pay for a copy of the Edinburgh Evening News. He had been attracted by the headline, “PM’s Wife: ‘A wart is holy’.”

  There was a confrontation taking place at the cash till. Jack had time to read the whole of the front page:

  In an astonishing interview this morning on Radio Four’s Today programme, Adele Floret-Clare, the Prime Minister’s wife, told John Humphrys that human life was absolutely sacred and that since warts grow on the human body they should be regarded as holy and should be buried with care and respect, and that it was ‘clearly wrong’ to dispose of them in a hospital incinerator. An astonished Humphrys asked, “And what about corns? Are they holy too?” To which Mrs Floret-Clare replied, “Clearly.” A spokesperson for the Society of Chiropodists said later, “If we had to have a funeral service for every corn we remove our costs would go sky-high and would have to be passed on to our customers, many of whom are elderly.”

  Underneath a paparazzo picture of Adele Floret-Clare, which made her look both gormless and mad, Jack read, ‘Turn to page 3’. Jack turned. There was another picture of Adele, this time with Sir Paul McCartney. The article went on:

  A government spokesman said today, “Mrs Floret-Clare’s views are her own, and it is not government policy to legislate for the burial of small body-parts.” The Archbishop of Canterbury’s office issued a short statement: “The Archbishop of Canterbury does not comment on religious matters.” Peter Bowron, a fashionable London chiropodist, has approached several tabloid newspapers offering to tell his story in exchange for a six-figure sum.

  Jack and the Prime Minister got to the head of their queues at more or less the same time and with equally frustrating results. The computerised till was refusing to take cash, and would open up only for Switch cards. Jack handed his over and said to the girl as she swiped the card, “It’s a bit of a palaver for the price of a tabloid, isn’t it?”

  She said, “I don’t care, I don’t like touching cash—you never know where it’s been.”

  The soft-drinks machine was behaving like a despot in a Third World country: granting favours to some and withholding them from others. The Prime Minister felt that it simply wasn’t fair. He had carefully inserted the correct amount of money. He had pressed the relevant touch pad indicating his choice but nothing had rolled down the internal chute and into the stainless steel cradle.

  He’d wept convulsively at his mother’s graveside and felt dehydrated like a dried-up fruit. He needed to slake his thirst urgently. It was hours since he’d had a drink. He pressed the button for the return of his money, but the machine kept it within its mysterious interior. But then a stroke of luck: a man wearing overalls carrying the embroidered logo of the soft-drink company was approaching the machine with a steadfast expression and a big bunch of keys.

  The Prime Minister stepped back and allowed the man to open the machine, then asked the man for a can of sugar-free orange pop. The man said robotically, “If you need to purchase a can of pop, madam, you’ll have to put sixty pence in the machine.”

  “But I have,” protested the Prime Minister.

  “But how would I know that, madam?”

  “Because I’ve just told you so,” he said, smiling at the man who stared back. The man had similar confrontations several times a day. But it was in his short-term contract that he was not allowed to give refunds to the public. At the one-day training course he had attended it was implied that the public were lying, cheating bastards who would sell their small children for a free can of pop.

  The man said, “Write to the company address on the machine.”

  “What, go to all that trouble to find pen and paper and an envelope, queue at the post office for a stamp and write away for sixty pee?”

  “You’d be surprised how many cheapskates do it,” said the man as he filled the machine with fresh supplies of tins containing carbonated water, flavourings, sweeteners and colourings.

  “They’re not cheapskates, they’re people who have been cheated by your company.”

  “My company doesn’t own this machine,” said the man triumphantly. “The leaseholder does.”

  “And who is the leaseholder?” demanded the Prime Minister.

  “How would I know that?” said the man, turning his back and finishing the conversation.

  Jack and the Prime Minister left the chaos of the airport behind them and headed for the long taxi queue. They were intending to go to the coach station, but after waiting an hour and a half in the taxi queue Jack said to the Prime Minister, “Let’s walk.”

  “I can’t walk in these shoes,” the Prime Minister replied.

  “Just to the main road,” said Jack, encouragingly.

  They tried hitching a lift together at first, but nobody stopped. It was uncomfortable and frightening standing on the overgrown grass verge as trucks with speeding tyres hurtled past them, almost sucking them into their slipstream.

  Jack thought that the Prime Minister on his own in his Marilyn Monroe get-up would stand a better chance; he was certainly attractive enough from a distance to stop a truck.

  Jack crouched behind a white hawthorn shrub, and after only a few minutes heard the sound of hydraulic brakes and a rough voice shouting over the rumble of traffic. Jack leaped to his feet and had just enough time to clamber up into the cab of the articulated lorry.

  The driver’s face darkened; what had looked like a nice bit of fresh blonde bimbo at the side of the road had turned Out to be well past its sell-by date. And she had a bloke with her, an’ all.

  He, Craig Blundell, was tempted to throw them both out, but his state-of-the-art in-cab radio had got stuck on Radio Three and he had turned it off angrily a few miles back up the road, tortured beyond belief by Bach’s cello suites. At least now he had people to talk to; they would help keep him awake, and you never knew—Blondie might be all right in the dark.

  They talked football at first. Blondie seemed to know more than the quiet bloke sitting next to her—though she was well out of order when she defended the government’s part in the rebuilding of the Wembley fuck-up.

  He told them he was going to Leeds first to drop a load off. “That’ll do u
s,” said Blondie’s friend.

  Blondie asked, “What are you carrying?”

  Craig longed to tell Blondie the truth: that he had fourteen Afghan asylum seekers hidden under the tarpaulin in the back of the trailer.

  He hoped they were all right. They hadn’t looked too good when he picked them up from Perth docks. He had almost felt sorry for the poor bastards; according to the first mate of the trawler it had been a particularly bad crossing, and three of them had been carried on to the truck by the others.

  Sometimes when he listened to them jabbering away in their own language he wondered what they were saying and who they were. It made him mad when he read in the papers that he, Craig, was trafficking in human misery. He was doing them a favour, wasn’t he? England was easily the best country in the world. OK, so diesel was an outrageous price here, outrageous, but he had travelled as far as Russia in his truck and he could tell you from personal experience that there was a lot of bollocks talked about Europe. He knew from personal experience that French food was crap and Swedish girls were frigid. He also knew he was taking a bit of a risk, but what else could he do? Owner-drivers like him lived from day to day; he was always searching for a load, and he sometimes spent days at return load depots around Europe. It killed him to have to come back to the United Kingdom empty, all that diesel and nothing in the back.

  He had to make a minimum of £10,000 a month profit: the mortgage; payments on his truck and Michelle’s Merc; school fees for Emily and Jason; violin lessons; the holiday in Cancún; Michelle’s hundred-quid-a-time haircuts. It got to him, sometimes, and he wondered what it was all about. He hardly saw Michelle and the kids, and when he did they made him feel ashamed of the way he spoke and ate. And, well, what was it Edward Clare had said? “Everybody is middle class now.” But Craig knew that he still had a long way to go himself. Meantime, it was him who was in human misery.

  Craig looked the Prime Minister in the eye—alarming, since they were overtaking a petrol tanker at the time—and said, “I took steel plating from Poland to Aberdeen then picked a load of firelighters up from Perth and I’ll drop that at Leeds.”

  The Prime Minister said, “It sounds absurd to be constantly moving stuff around.”

  Jack answered, “It’s called globalisation.”

  A poem from childhood came into the Prime Minister’s head, ‘Cargoes’ by John Masefield:

  Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,

  Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,

  With a cargo of Tyne coal,

  Road-rail, pig-lead,

  Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

  “Trading is what made this country great, in the past,” said the Prime Minister.

  “Well I’d put it another way, sir,” said Jack, forgetting for a moment to whom he was supposed to be talking. He looked at Craig but Craig was speaking into his mobile phone and talking to someone called Michelle.

  “I’d say,” Jack continued, “that it was exploitation that made us rich, but not great.”

  “So what form of economic system would you prefer us to have?” asked the Prime Minister irritably.

  “A simpler one,” said Jack.

  “You’d have us all weaving our own clothes and growing our own food, would you? And morris dancing round a maypole, would you? And I suppose when we’re sick we forage in the hedgerows for natural remedies, do we?”

  Jack said, “You don’t morris dance round a maypole, and anyway you’rethe fan of the middle way.” It was their second quarrel.

  On the other end of Craig’s mobile Michelle said, “You said your radio was broken.”

  “It is,” said Craig.

  “But I can hear the Prime Minister talking in the background,” she said.

  Craig laughed. If he did have the chance to get that stupid bastard Edward Clare in his cab, he’d put him right about a few things—the outrageous price of diesel, for a start.

  It was dark when they got to the outskirts of Leeds, and a fine rain was falling. Craig pulled into a lay-by at the side of a dual carriageway and said, “I think it’s time Blondie paid me for the lift.”

  The Prime Minister tucked his skirt tightly around his thighs and moved closer to Jack.

  “I’m up for a threesome, if that’s your worry,” Craig said when Jack didn’t get out of the cab.

  Jack was insulted: did he look like the type of man who would allow his woman to give her sexual favours for the price of a few litres of fuel? He helped the Prime Minister down from the cab, saying, “Thanks, Craig, we’re very, very grateful—oh, and by the way, somebody’s obviously been tampering with your tachograph, perhaps while your back was turned.”

  Craig threw their bags after them and slammed the cab door. Then he sat for a few minutes and talked to Michelle, saying he’d be home in Sheffield by three a.m. at the latest and that he hoped that she would be nice to him when he joined her in bed. Michelle said she’d been in the gym all afternoon and was totally wiped out and that it would be nicer for her if he let her sleep.

  Craig rested his head on the steering wheel. Nobody loved him and for once not even the thought of the money he’d get for delivering his cargo could cheer him up.

  In the darkness of the moonless night, fourteen Afghans crept from a hole cut in the soft wall of the trailer and sat around several picnic tables provided for resting motorists by Yorkshire County Council. Their leader, a former ear, nose and throat surgeon, indicated that the group should remain silent until the footsteps of the man and the blonde woman had gone further down the road.

  ♦

  Jack couldn’t remember a time when he’d felt so tired. He suggested that they should lie down on the grass verge for a while and rest, but the Prime Minister confessed that he was mildly phobic about insects, so they trudged on along the A64 towards Leeds.

  In the far distance a fire was burning; as they drew nearer they could see that it was a car fire. The colours of the flames were magnificent rich reds, blazing oranges, heavenly blues and the yellows of the rising sun. There were three police cars at the scene. The policemen were talking excitably about the car chase that had preceded the crash and the fire.

  In the back of one of the police cars sat a pale-faced boy. As Jack and the Prime Minister approached they could see the policeman in the front seat give the boy a lit cigarette.

  As Jack and the Prime Minister drew closer a young constable said, “Move along please.”

  Jack wondered why policemen always said this. They weren’t in the way and as taxpayers they were entitled to see the law in action, weren’t they? He stood his ground, but the Prime Minister retreated and stood so far away that he could no longer feel the heat from the burning car.

  The young constable said with cold politeness, “Move on, sir, or I’ll book you for obstruction.”

  “But I’m not in the way,” said Jack.

  “The fire engine might want to park where you’re standing.”

  “Then I’ll move away, won’t I. I’m not a bloody fool.”

  The Prime Minister said, “Leave it, Jack, let’s go.”

  Jack would not move. He didn’t like being treated by this young whelp of a policeman as though the public were the natural enemies of the police.

  The young policeman still had adrenalin surging through his body. It was his first car chase and he was anxious to get back to his colleagues, who were enjoying an informal debrief. The last thing they wanted was some stroppy civilian muscling in and demanding his rights.

  “What’s your name and what are you doing out at this time of night?” he asked.

  “Jack, leave it, it’s not worth it,” pleaded the Prime Minister, sounding like a girlfriend in the build up to a fight.

  “I resent your implication that I’m breaking any kind of law. I’m walking along a public highway with my companion…”

  The young constable’s patience snapped. “You’re a civilian rubber-necking and obstructing the scene
of a crime, and if you don’t move on right now…”

  A fat sergeant who looked like a Donald McGill seaside-postcard policeman waddled over and asked, “What’s up, Darren?”

  “He’s refusing to answer any questions, sir.”

  A siren was heard signalling that a fire engine was on its way.

  “Your name, sir?” asked the fat sergeant.

  “My name is Jack Sprat,” said Jack.

  The sergeant’s face lost its smile. “Don’t try and play silly buggers with me. What’s your name?”

  “My name is Jack Sprat,” repeated Jack, who carried documentation to prove it. Jack could almost sympathise; in the past, when he was on street patrol, he had often asked suspicious-looking people for their names and had been told they were Engelbert Humperdinck or Bing Crosby. Jack took his wallet out and showed the sergeant his library card.

  The sergeant turned it over in his podgy hands then gave it back to Jack and said, “Right, move along now and I’ll let you go.”

  But Jack couldn’t rid himself of the grievance he felt against these two policemen. He’d done nothing but slow down and look at a burning car. If he had passed by without a glance, what would that have said about his humanity?

  The Prime Minister was furious with Jack’s obdurance; he couldn’t look at his mulish face a moment longer. He switched his attention to the tail end of a conversation a few of the other policemen were having. A middle-aged policeman with a regulation beard said, “I’m going to have a bad back in two years’ time, and because I’ll have hurt my back on the job I’ll get compo and the full pension, so me and the missis are opening up a bar on the Costa del Crime.”

  The Prime Minister was intrigued. How on earth did the constable know he was going to injure his back at work in two years’ time?

  Another policeman was talking. “…if they take me out of cars, I’ll do my back in next year. There’s no way I’m plodding the fuckin’ pavements.”