Political Suicide

by Robert Barnard

Jerry gave a tired, seen-it-all smile.

  “Fascist thugs? Is this another media scare? Do you really imagine I’m likely to employ Fascists? You know my record. There’s been no more dedicated anti-Fascist on the GLC than me—”

  “Do you realize that the bully-boy that you employ at your HQ to keep us at bay has I’M WHITE tattooed on the back of his neck?”

  Jerry smiled, pityingly.

  “You’re libelling a dedicated Socialist—and one put out of work by the policies of this government. I suppose it never occurred to you, did it, that his name was White? Syd White?”

  • • •

  “Here,” said Jerry Snaithe to his agent, as the march which he was to lead with Albert Scadgett was assembling on the outskirts of town. “What’s the name of our rough-trade kid?”

  “Who?”

  “Our bully-boy protecting us from the media.”

  “Reg Bickerstaffe. Why?”

  “Get rid of him, eh?”

  “If you say so. Any reason?”

  “You’ll see soon enough, if the media play true to form. Try and replace him with a black, will you?”

  “I can try. But the ethnic vote in this constituency’s not worth a tinker’s cuss. Why a black?”

  “They don’t tattoo easily,” said Jerry.

  • • •

  Oliver Worthing was lost. It had happened rather too often in the last election, and now it had happened in this. After a bit of light canvassing in an area sympathetic to middle-ground politics, they had had half an hour’s break before the next item on the day’s schedule. Oliver had driven home to see to his cat, which had been out all night. The cat was bedraggled and cheeky, and when he had seen to her needs Oliver had driven off to Gigglesworth Middle School for a question-and-answer session with the seniors. But was it Gigglesworth Middle School he was supposed to be at? he asked himself, as he parked in the staff car park. Or was it Perkdale High? Or even Clunmeadow High? His agent had shouted to him as he drove off: “Remember—it’s eleven o’clock at . . .” Where? Gigglesworth, Perkdale or Clunmeadow? All those names were as familiar and everyday to him, a local counselor, as Whitehall or Downing Street were to a Westminster politician. But which of them had actually been named?

  It was no good—he would have to go in and ask. To say, in effect, “I am here; am I supposed to be?” was rather humiliating, but the school secretary was sympathetic, and she rang round to the other two and established that where he was supposed to be was Perkdale High. Even the headmaster came in and shook his hand and wished him well. Headmasters were congenitally well-disposed towards middle-ground politics.

  Bells had sounded while they were exchanging hurried civilities, and as he made his way back to his car children were changing classrooms amid clatter, laughter and shouts. Pushing his way hurriedly through the surging throngs, he was amused to hear how the by-election was sharpening schoolboy wit. He laughed when he heard one scruffy teenager say to his mate:

  “He looks lost. He must be a politician.”

  The smile left his lips when he heard the mate’s reply: “Don’t you know him? That’s Oliver Worthing. The Borstal boy.”

  • • •

  Antony Craybourne-Fisk’s day, or so he thought, had begun very nicely indeed. His grandmother had arrived the evening before, and was to spend the morning canvassing and speaking with him. He had lodged her at the Unicorn, and taken the precaution of moving out that day to Penny’s cottage, in case she was too appalling, or too demanding in the matter of grandfilial duties. But she turned out to be a spry and forceful old lady, eminently presentable, with the remains still on her of a classical loveliness which it would have been difficult to find any trace of in her grandson. When Antony picked her up the next morning she said she had had such an unusual breakfast, served by such a nice type of young man, a type she had known in her younger days, but thought had died out. Antony was not sure of the degree of irony behind these remarks, and merely replied that he was glad.

  She was wearing an enormous, voluminous fur (“Ivor’s, darling: I bought it at the sale of his effects”) over a summery frock in yellows and greens that emphasized her queenly, impressive figure. She walked with difficulty, but with a certain game dignity. Antony warmed to her, or at least he warmed to himself for taking the risk of inviting her.

  They were first to tour the constituency in the loudspeaker car, concentrating on the better-heeled areas and the suburbs where the older generation was to be found in large numbers. This went awfully well: Granny Masterson’s voice rang out through the streets like Vera Lynne announcing her next number at a troop concert. Now and again, when there was a little knot of shops, they got out so that Antony could introduce her to the shoppers (“Isobel Ainslie, the actress, but to me she’s my Granny Masterson”). She caused a frisson of interest such as Antony on his own never evoked, and she revelled in her audience.

  The morning was to end in the town square, as lunch-time began. They had rigged up their makeshift platform there, and Antony had concocted a little speech of which he was proud: after an introductory sentence about the historic opportunity which the by-election presented to the voters of Bootham, he intended to launch off, with a paragraph beginning “I have a vision . . . ,” into five minutes of perfumed hot air which he had sweated over the night before. Granny Masterson was to sit on the platform, gazing admiringly, and then finish the proceedings off with a five-minute puff for him. Unfortunately Granny Masterson demurred.

  “No, darling: in this performance I am merely the warm-up artist. I shall say my little piece first, then evaporate into the crowd and watch your performance from among the grrroundlings. I know you will be perfectly splendid!”

  She patted his knee in the back seat of the car, and he smiled at her a smile which she recognized as compounded mostly of self-love (for who would more readily recognize self-love than a member of the acting profession?).

  When they got to the town square there was already a gratifying little knot of people awaiting them, some of them Conservative stalwarts summoned by the party agent, some determined theatre-goers who remembered Isobel Ainslie from those rep days in Sheffield in the ’fifties. They gave her the sort of cheer the English give to a gallant trouper, and she clambered stiffly up on to the platform (“Whoops, darling!”) and delicately fingered the microphone as if it were the hand of a royal suitor. She gave her all in introducing her grandson, ending up in hortatory voice: “I know you’re all going to run along to the polling booths, or whatever they call those little places, and give your sterling support on February 27th to Antony, and to the Conservative Party.”

  She had not paused before “Conservative Party,” but she had said it very distinctly, as if it was a line she had had difficulty learning. Then she clambered heavily down off the platform, waving graciously, and went determinedly into the crowd, shaking hands enthusiastically with her fans from long-ago, autographing the odd yellowing programme and flirting outrageously with the men. The middle-aged and elderly of Bootham loved her.

  “Oh, Miss Ainslie, I remember you so well in Private Lives—”

  “Do you, darling? So kind of you. I played it twice, you know. Popular demand. Noel was going to come, but he had to fly back to Jamaica to escape the tax people. Such a lovely part!”

  “And that American play,” said the man, “the one there was all the fuss about.”

  “My Blanche du Bois! Second only to Vivien’s they do say, and a part I always loved. Playwrights don’t write parts for actresses any more. We’re positively a forgotten species.”

  “I have a vision . . .” the voice of Antony had raised itself to a Joan of Arc fervour from the platform, but it went unheeded.

  “And in films, too,” said an aged lady. “I remember you before the war in Nelson’s Emma.”

  “Yes, darling, and in The ’Forty-Five, cavorting with Bonnie Prince Charlie in the hay, if I’m not mistaken. Small parts, but awfully telling. Dear Alexander Korda. I was quite a
protégée of his. I was a starlet when starlets were starlets! Don’t talk to me about Rank! Pooh!”

  “And weren’t you one of the nurses in Green for Danger?” asked a well-set-up man with a drooping moustache, who was in fact Superintendent Sutcliffe, come to Bootham in the hope of catching James Partridge’s agent in one of his odd moments of free time.

  “Yes indeed. What a darling film—everyone adored it, and so exciting. And then in Passport to Pimlico. But I loved those years in Sheffield,” she went on, not entirely truthfully, for they had hardly signified an advancement in her career. “For any actress worth her salt the stage will always be her true home.”

  “And always the best parts,” said one of the men.

  “Always the star parts. People were so kind . . .”

  “And now you’ve come back up here,” said a sentimental lady, “to play a supporting role to your grandson—”

  “Who, darling?”

  “Your grandson. The Conservative candidate.”

  “Oh, little pushy! Yes, one has to do one’s bit, you know. Children! Always such a problem. Did you ever see my Gertrude? . . .”

  Soon Antony’s oration (which had not had quite the effect of his namesake’s over the body of Caesar) was over, and, pressed by photographers, he had come over to be taken with his grandmother. She posed like a professional, best profile forward, but as Antony and his agent melted away she said loudly “Who was that?” There was a little nervous laughter, and Isobel Ainslie gave one of her wickedest sideways glances. Then she confessed that she was tired.

  “Awfully exhausting, doing my all for little whatsis-name. Darlings, I spy my hotel over there, and it has a perfectly charming little bar with a divine little Sicilian gigolo who adores me, and I wonder if one of you could just give me an arm to lean on—”

  Many arms shot out, but Sutcliffe’s was the first and the most stalwart. “I’ll look after Mrs Masterson,” he said, in his most pukka voice. She shot him a brave, grateful smile.

  “Thank you . . . So kind . . . A cavalier! What was that line, now? ‘I have always depended on the kindness of strangers . . . ’ ”

  And, hobbling slowly and painfully, Blanche du Bois exited in the direction of the Unicorn Hotel.

  Chapter 10

  Dear Old Granny

  They made their way slowly but with a certain style in the direction of the Trueman Bar of the Unicorn Hotel. It was a little side bar that did not serve eats, and now, at nearly two, it was practically deserted. Only one other couple was seated there, the woman sipping her glass sceptically.

  “No, don’t complain: it’s quite interesting. I’ve never had a gin and soda before.”

  Gianni was behind the bar.

  As Sutcliffe settled Granny Masterson—or Isobel Ainslie, as he preferred to think of her—down in a comfortable corner, Gianni smouldered over to them. He was, Sutcliffe thought, one of the few things in the industrial desert that was Bootham that was smouldering. Isobel Ainslie appeared delighted to see him.

  “Oh, here’s Fairy Lightfoot, my own favourite dago! Ciao, Gianni! Campari soda, darling. I strongly recommend you to have it too. He understands both words, don’t you, Don Giovanni?”

  But Sutcliffe, who had once holidayed on Lake Garda, experimented with “Birra?,” and actually got just that. The triumph he felt was lessened by the two pounds Gianni gave him as change from a five-pound note.

  “Well!” said Isobel Ainslie. “This is nice. How lovely to find people who remember me—and so affectionately, too! Glowing memories, wouldn’t you say? Of course, they do too in the Home, but there we’re all in the Profession. They all crowd around if they show one of my old films on television, but then I have to crowd round when their old films are shown. Actually to be remembered by the public! So good for the old ego, darling. I really am glad I decided to come.”

  “Was it a surprise to be asked?”

  “Bolt from the blue, darling. Hadn’t heard from him for years, and didn’t expect to. Knew he was standing, that was all.”

  “Why do you think he asked you?”

  “Oh, to show off the only Yorkshire connection he has, of course. Quite silly. They all remember me, and come along and get my autograph, but whoever heard of anyone voting for someone because he had a Yorkshire grandmother? I really think, you know, that that young man is underestimating his voters.”

  Sutcliffe thought again what a sharp old lady Isobel Ainslie was.

  “So you hadn’t seen your grandson for a while, Mrs—”

  “Call me Isobel. As one gets older there are fewer and fewer who do. No, not for years, darling. In fact, I can remember the last time. It was on Waterloo Station, or Victoria, or somewhere, and I was on my way to a television studio somewhere to film an episode of Steptoe, in which I had a lovely little part, and he was on his way to Stowe or Lancing or whatever school it was he went to. Old Mrs Craybourne who brought him up was with him, going to give him a bust-up at the Savoy, or the Ritz. Anyway, I was in a fearful rush and I gave him half-a-crown, which he made it devastatingly clear was not enough.”

  “And that was the last time?”

  “The last time. It was a miracle I recognized him then, because I’d only seen him five or six times. I think he knew me, in fact, from the odd television appearance. As you see, though I was reasonably maternal with twerpie’s mother, by the time I got to be a grandmother, the instinct was wearing very thin indeed. Perhaps it was just intuition—telling me how he would turn out.”

  “So he wasn’t brought up by his mother?”

  “Good Lord, no. That wasn’t Virginia’s line at all. I’d had her right at the beginning of my career—1934, it was, when I was still doing little bits and pieces for Mr Cochrane.”

  “You were married?”

  “Good heavens, yes. One was in those days. He was someone who did things with stocks and shares in the city—just like little Antony . . . in many respects. Sleek and ever so slightly crooked. We were married at least in name until I came to Sheffield, which he said was the last straw. Anyway, I did my best with Virginia, but then I began to get small parts in films, and one had to, well, farm her out, find people to look after her most of the day. By the time she was in her teens she was lovely—just beautiful, darling—but the teeniest bit wild.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Virginia? . . . What an unfortunate choice of name! . . . Well, when she was seventeen she married, very hurriedly, Mr Fisk, who was a solicitor in Great Yarmouth, of all places. That didn’t last, as anyone could have predicted. There was Antony, but when she bolted she took him with her.”

  “Bolted?”

  “With Mr Craybourne. He became a Tory MP, and the marriage lasted five years or more, which was something of a record for Virginia. When she bolted the second time she didn’t take Antony with her . . .” Meditating, she emitted a fruity chuckle. “Probably a good thing, really: young puppy out there would probably have a seven-barrelled name instead of a double-barrelled one by now.”

  “She changes partners, does she?”

  “Worse than a square-dance, darling! Gets passed from hand to hand. Marvellous really that she can still do it at her age, though I remember I . . . Ah well. Nothing worse than the salacious reminiscences of the elderly, is there?”

  “So Antony was brought up by step-parents, was he?”

  “Actually by this Craybourne’s mother. She was a silly creature, and she made a bad job of it by the look of the little creep, but I do think one should be grateful that she did it at all, don’t you? I rather gather he came to her as a sort of godsend, to give her an interest in her old age, and certainly it must have been good for the poor little mite to feel wanted by someone. But perhaps she rather overdid it, don’t you think? He rather does assume that he is the centre of everybody else’s universe, as well as his own. When he asked me to come up, it was definitely as if he were doing a favour to me, rather than the reverse. No, a silly woman, I’m afraid. She suggested he t
ake the double-barrelled name, you know, and in giving him that she seems to have given him a double-barrelled opinion of himself.”

  “And did he keep contact with his mother?”

  “Oh yes, some. It was always, frankly, rather difficult to keep track of Virginia, let alone contact with her, but she would phone now and then, or descend on the Craybournes for a visit, or take him off for a meal or a pantomime somewhere. She meanwhile went from flower to flower: there was Rotherbrook the newspaper tycoon, there was Lord Prestonpans—she never actually married either of those, so she never got a title, poor duck. There was supposed to be an Arab sheikh, and she did marry him, but he turned out to be an Egyptian greengrocer, and I think all her experience of the mysterious Orient took place in the Cromwell Road. There were others—heavens there were others!—and now I believe she’s married to some Greek gigolo or other. Talking of which—”

  Sutcliffe signalled to Gianni to bring replenishments. As he did so, something caught his eye in the street outside. The Labour Party march through town, headed by Jerry Snaithe and Albert Scadgett, was leaving the town square and threading its way past the Unicorn Hotel. Sutcliffe recognized Jerry Snaithe from his picture in the newspapers, and Albert Scadgett from his innumerable appearances on television during the sheet metalworkers’ strike of last year. He was a conservatively-dressed man with a prim, rosebud mouth, on which was planted an expression of the most intense self-approval. Last year had been his great year: then he had led the sheet metalworkers to defeat through month after punishing month, had appeared daily on the news bulletins, had had missiles hurled at him by Tory harridans. Then it had been his proud boast to have brought the soup kitchen back to Yorkshire. Now, since the strike had collapsed, his fame was on the wane. Already the other couple in the Trueman Bar were discussing whether he was a television quiz-show chairman, or the villain in Emmerdale Farm. But today was Albert Scadgett’s big chance to relive fleetingly the heady days of last year’s fiasco, and hence that expression of self-approval that curled his tiny mouth into something approaching a smile.