Heaven's Light

by Hurley, Graham

  If anything, they’d been spoiled for choice when it came to the selection of candidates, and only yesterday he and Charlie had been congratulated by Harry Wilcox, no less, on the small army of men and women they were fielding in the city’s wards. In Harry’s words, the Pompey First team had depth, legs and real quality. A dozen or so came from business backgrounds, middle-level executives from some of Portsmouth’s blue riband companies. By and large, they were disaffected Tories or Lib-Dems, and to them the prospect of a can-do Pompey First council made perfect sense. Other faces on the sea-green Pompey First posters belonged to union activists, and blue-collar workers, and the unwaged, most of them refugees from the left, glad at last to have slipped the harness of the Labour machine. Others still, a substantial handful, had been previously apolitical, members of no party, individuals whose indifference to politics had melted into frustration and then rage. They were tired of the name-calling and the inter-party squabbles. They wanted, quite simply, to get things done. In this sense, Pompey First’s slate of candidates was a collective vote against the state of contemporary politics, a voice that spoke loudest to people like Hendricks.

  He was still standing by the window. Barnaby offered him a choice of sandwiches. Below, on the rostrum, Kate had found herself pincered between political opponents. The Tory and the Labour candidates, for once, were in agreement. Pompey First was a sham, a mirage, a confection.

  ‘Well?’ Barnaby murmured. ‘Do you agree?’

  ‘Christ, no.’ Hendricks was beaming. ‘Far from it. If this isn’t for real, you tell me what is.’

  ‘You think we may be in with a shout?’

  ‘I think you’ll win.’

  ‘You’re serious?’

  ‘Yes. And delighted, too.’ He grinned, still watching the set below, and Barnaby wondered how much of his enthusiasm was mischievous. Media people were like kids. They got bored easily. They enjoyed putting grit in the machine. Charlie Epple was exactly the same.

  Hendricks was asking about Kate again. If she won a seat in her own ward and if he was right about Pompey First ending up with a majority on the city council, would she be elected leader?

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I guarantee it.’

  Hendricks looked briefly amused and then asked whether Barnaby was in the market for a follow-up.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A follow-up. We’d come down to Pompey and put a camera on Kate for a week or two. See how you lot cope with the curse of real power. Can do?’

  Barnaby was watching the television monitor. Kate was in close-up again, the studio lighting modelling the planes of her face. He’d rarely seen her so engaged, so luminous, so alive. She was laughing at some bon mot or other, and looking at her, Barnaby understood exactly the kinship between sex and power. She was in command. She held the ring, a beautiful woman in a roomful of men. Nothing was beyond her reach.

  Hendricks was still at Barnaby’s elbow. ‘She wouldn’t mind, would she?’

  ‘Mind what?’

  ‘Us doing a little profile. Afterwards.’

  Barnaby laughed softly, still watching the television. ‘God no,’ he said. ‘She’d love it.’

  Liz Barnaby was washing a lettuce when she heard the knock on the door. To her surprise it was Jessie, alone for once, no dog, no Lolly.

  She had a huge bunch of flowers. She thrust it at her mother, giving her an awkward kiss. She was wearing jeans and a halter-top. She’d been out in the sunshine. She looked wonderful.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to for ages,’ she said. ‘I’m just so lazy.’

  ‘Meaning to what?’

  ‘Give you these.’ She followed her mother across the living room and into the kitchen, watching while Liz filled the sink with water.

  ‘I’m touched,’ she said, ‘but what’s brought this on?’

  Jessie had helped herself to a banana. One of the differences Liz had noticed since she’d returned from Merrist House was how ravenous her appetite had become. She was always hungry, always eating, always on the cadge for food.

  ‘I just want you to know we care,’ she said, through a mouthful of banana. ‘Me and Lolly.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About you. And Dad.’

  Liz glanced back at her. She and Hayden had now been separated for nearly a month. She’d accused him of having another affair with Kate and the fact that he’d barely bothered to deny it had made the parting inevitable. When he’d asked how she’d known, she’d told him it was common knowledge. That wasn’t strictly true but at Mike Tully’s insistence she’d kept quiet about the intercepted phone conversations she’d overheard, Charlie ribbing Hayden on the fleshier implications of party solidarity.

  ‘Your father’s done it before,’ she said quietly. ‘You ought to know that.’

  ‘He has?’

  ‘Yes, with the same woman as it happens. He was never one to give up easily.’

  ‘Well, I think he’s mad.’

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘He’ll be back soon. I know he will.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Yes.’ Jessie nodded vigorously, reaching for an apple. ‘Just pretend he’s away somewhere on business.’

  Liz turned back to the sink and plunged the flowers in the water. Sometimes Jessie’s maturity astonished her. Other times, like now, she could be a child again. Was it really that simple? Kiss and make up? Pretend Kate Frankham had never happened?

  ‘Actually, I don’t want him back,’ she said slowly. ‘Not now, not ever. He’s made up his mind, whether he knows it or not. I can’t live with someone like that. Mine one minute, someone else’s the next. We’re grown-up people, Jess. And grown-up people deserve a little better than this.’

  She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand, and Jessie was beside her in seconds, misinterpreting the gesture.

  ‘Mum, I’m sorry, I really am.’

  ‘Don’t be. I’m angry, not sad.’

  ‘But it’ll be all right, I know it will. All men are the same. They just go off their heads from time to time. It’ll pass. It always does.’

  Liz turned round from the sink, the flowers dripping in her arms. The sight of her daughter’s face, so open now, made her smile. ‘You know that, do you?’

  Jessie looked back at her. ‘Yeah,’ she grinned, ‘I do.’

  Hendricks and Kate waited outside the Meridian reception area, watching Barnaby manoeuvring the Mercedes around one of the big outside broadcast vehicles. Over sandwiches and more wine, they’d sat through a replay of the programme, and Kate had been mesmerized by her own performance. She’d looked like a stranger, cool, relaxed and totally in command. The cameras hadn’t picked up a trace of the way she’d really felt.

  ‘You were very kind to me,’ she said. ‘I think I got off lightly.’

  Hendricks chuckled. He’d already given her the telephone number of the pied-à-terre he used in Southampton during the week, making it plain that Pompey First’s onscreen prospects might benefit from a closer relationship. ‘You were terrific,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe you haven’t done this before.’

  ‘I haven’t. I’d tell you if I had.’

  ‘Then you’re a natural. And the more you do, the better you’ll get.’ He bent to kiss her cheek as the Mercedes pulled up beside them. Then he reached for the rear door and opened it with a flourish. Barnaby was already out of the car, watching the pantomime. Hendricks caught his eye. ‘Pretend you’re the chauffeur,’ he said. ‘It’s the least you owe her.’

  Barnaby and Kate exchanged glances, then Kate giggled and slipped into the back seat. She’d had barely anything to eat and a second glass of Sauvignon had gone to her head. Barnaby rounded the bonnet and shook Hendricks’s hand. ‘Thanks for everything. You’ve been an enormous help.’

  Hendricks was still looking at Kate.

  ‘It’s a pleasure,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  Back on the motorway, returning
to Portsmouth, Kate was still in the back seat. As he drove through the suburbs of Southampton, Barnaby had talked about her performance, and she’d responded to his compliments with a smile and a nod, saying little, refusing to play the excited ingénue. What mattered, she’d murmured, was the next appearance and the appearance after that. If Pompey First was to be more than a gleam in Charlie Epple’s eye, then they had to think long-term. This time round, they’d been lucky. Hendricks and the production team had made it easy. Perhaps Hendricks might come up with another invitation.

  Barnaby eyed her in the rear-view mirror. ‘He wants to do a profile,’ he said. ‘I’m surprised he didn’t mention it.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A profile. That’s if we win, of course. He wants to shadow you with a crew. See how you cope with real power.’

  ‘He does?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And would he be there? In person?’

  ‘I imagine so.’

  Kate said nothing, gazing out of the window at the blur of warehouses on the outskirts of Fareham. The expression on her face, reflective, content, enigmatic, reminded Barnaby of Sunday mornings after they’d made love. There were parts of Kate it was impossible to touch, and he knew with absolute certainty that, no matter what he did, they’d always be beyond his reach. He could spend his whole life trying but he’d never truly know her. That, at least, was now clear.

  Kate breathed on the window then drew a little cartoon face with her fingertip, its mouth bowed upwards in a grin.

  ‘You should have done that interview,’ she said. ‘You’re the one with the real brains.’

  ‘Nonsense. You were great.’

  ‘I’m serious. Why should I get all the fun? All the glory? It’s not your style, darling, all this back-seat stuff.’

  Barnaby laughed. She was in the back seat. He was at the wheel.

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’ She wiped away the face. ‘You’ve spoken at meetings. I’ve heard you. You do it brilliantly. It’s what you’re best at. People believe you, they listen to you.’

  She leaned forward, her arms folded over the back of the passenger seat. Barnaby could smell the wine on her breath as she bent towards him, dancing her fingertips along the line of his collar.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No what?’

  ‘Don’t you miss it? Resent it? Just a little bit? People like me hogging it all? Some of the other guys, too. When you’ve done all the work.’

  Kate mentioned a handful of the other candidates, men and women who’d spent the last month or so devoting their spare time to bedding down the Pompey First campaign. Thanks to Harry Wilcox, the Sentinel had carried little stories on each, accompanied by the photos Charlie Epple had so carefully commissioned. The sight of their own faces in the local paper, alongside a column or two of helpful prose, had sent party morale through the roof. This was evidence that Pompey First was truly under way, proof that, individually, their touch on the wheel mattered.

  ‘You think I should have been a candidate?’

  ‘Definitely. And I still don’t understand why you’re not. You had the pick of the ward seats. You could practically guarantee a result.’

  Barnaby accepted the point. Back in the spring, he’d toyed with the idea, but the harder he’d thought about the realities of the job the less keen he’d become. Being a local councillor meant grubbing around in people’s lives, sorting out their problems, mediating in their quarrels, defending them from the chaos that increasingly threatened to overwhelm them. As a solicitor, he’d shouldered this kind of burden for years, applying Legal Aid to society’s walking wounded, and he knew exactly how frustrating and exhausting the burden could be. Far better, he’d decided, to remain behind the scenes, directing strategy, allocating resources, acting as a counterweight to Charlie’s wayward brilliance. This, he was certain, was where the real power lay. Not in the weekly trudge to draughty ward surgeries and endless committee rooms, but back at party headquarters, updating the political map, plotting the line of the next assault. He was a general, he’d decided, not one of the sharp-end troops. Though generals, too, might command a little of the limelight.

  Kate was sitting back again, watching his eyes in the mirror. When the mobile rang, she reached between the front seats, lifting the handset. The message was brief. At the end of it she glanced at her watch. ‘Give us ten minutes,’ she said. ‘We’ll see you there.’

  Charlie Epple was waiting on the main London road, deep in Portsmouth’s northern suburbs. Above his head, on a huge billboard, a man on a ladder was flattening the last wrinkles on the latest of Charlie’s posters. Since March, he’d been buying space on prime sites across the city, firing broadside after broadside in Pompey First’s assault on the local political establishment. This one, in its cheeky irreverence, was typical. Against the now-familiar sea-green background, in bold white lettering, it read HONK TWICE FOR POMPEY FIRST.

  Barnaby touched the Mercedes’ horn as the car slid to a halt beside the kerb. Charlie bent to the window. The last week or so, he’d taken to wearing a Pompey football-club tracksuit, complete with grass stains on both knees. He was a walking reminder, he said, that the big game was getting closer. Now he was indicating a group of men across the road. They were standing on the pavement outside an open door, staring at the poster.

  ‘Don’t you love it?’ he said. ‘Just look at them.’

  Barnaby followed his pointing finger, recognizing the newly painted premises of the Labour Party headquarters. Few of Charlie’s ideas lacked impact but this one was less subtle than most. In the back of the car, Kate’s head was in her hands and she was sobbing with laughter. Another car swept past, hooting derisively.

  ‘They’ll have to move,’ Charlie said. ‘They’ll never put up with that.’

  ‘They can’t move. There’s only five days to go.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Charlie banged the car roof, then asked Kate about the TV recording.

  ‘She was brilliant,’ Barnaby said. ‘Absolutely brilliant. Wiped the floor with them.’

  ‘You did?’ Charlie reached into the car, cupped Kate’s face in his hands, kissed her on the lips and then changed the subject yet again.

  There’d been another breakthrough on the media front. A leading Sunday tabloid had been on, looking for a new angle for the local elections. One of the city’s Tory MPs, Philip Biscoe, had lodged an official complaint about another of Charlie’s posters. This one had featured a photo of the House of Commons in full cry. Charlie’s graphics team had added balloons and silly hats to the bedlam in the Chamber and top and bottom Charlie had penned yet more copy that summed up the public’s contempt for mainstream politicians. PARTY TIME, the line had read, DON’T THEY JUST LOVE IT? Beneath the photo, in a smaller typeface, Charlie had added the inevitable conclusion, VOTE POMPEY FIRST. THE PARTY FOR GROWN-UPS. And on a new line, ACTION, NOT WORDS. Hard on the heels of similar digs, this poster had evidently stretched Tory patience to the limit and, rather later than Charlie had expected, the big guys had cracked.

  ‘So what’s Biscoe done?’

  ‘Gone to the ASA.’

  ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘Infringement of Commons copyright. He says it’s not our photo to deface.’

  ‘Is he right?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Charlie chortled. ‘Of course he’s right. But that’s not the point. The point is, he can’t take the pressure. The point is, we’ve dug a hole and he’s fallen bloody in. I talked to the Sunday Mirror this morning. They’re promising a centre spread. Biscoe’s gone barmy.’ He grinned. ‘Two million people read the Mirror. Are you telling me that’s bad news?’

  Barnaby shook his head, trying to assess the damage. The Advertising Standards Authority seldom went further than a slap on the wrist but getting up Parliament’s nose was a different matter. In theory, they had the power to summon Charlie to answer before the House of Commons, an order that Barnaby knew Charlie would be only too happy to obey. Publicity, in his view, was t
he fuel that powered Pompey First. The more you put in the tank, the quicker you’d change the world.

  Kate wanted to know more about the centre spread in the Sunday Mirror. Were they serious about a double page? Or was that more journalistic licence?

  ‘It’s kosher,’ Charlie said. ‘They’re trying to line up the heavy guys to have a pop at us.’

  ‘Heavy guys?’

  ‘London politicos. If they’ve got any sense, they won’t touch us with a barge pole but it’s a funny old time. The Mirror still goes to a lot of Labour families, and that size of readership might be hard to resist—’ He broke off to yell abuse at a passing motorist who’d neglected to sound his horn.

  ‘But if they did do a double spread?’ Kate insisted.

  ‘Yeah, it’d be brilliant, that kind of space …’ Charlie was back with Barnaby. ‘But we still haven’t quite got it, have we? We’re still not quite there. We need a headline, an issue, something really solid, something for the broadsheets. It’s out there somewhere. It has to be. But I’m buggered if I know where.’

  Barnaby was checking his watch. When he looked up again, he was smiling. ‘I think I may have found it,’ he said, ‘I’ll phone you later.’

  Barnaby dropped Kate outside her house. He didn’t tell her where he was going next and she didn’t ask, understanding that this was the real answer to the question she’d posed earlier about Barnaby’s political ambitions. There were some moves he preferred to make in private, without consultation or interference. When she’d tackled him before about this, demanding to be part of whatever it was he had in mind, he’d shaken his head and talked about the importance of taking risks and about not wanting to load the responsibility for failure onto others.