by A. N. Wilson
‘The President … er … the fact is, I spoke … is frankly unhappy … I have to tell yer, Len, I spoke ter the President frankly this morning.’
This was said in estuary English, the PM’s previous utterances having been spoken by an Elder Statesman.
‘You spoke to President Bindiga?’ There was disbelief in Lennox Mark’s voice.
‘To the President of the United States.’ The Elder Statesman pompously came to the rescue of the Barrow Boy.
Lennox waved the cigar-weapon.
‘And we all know,’ he said, ‘what the Yanks mean when they start talking about democracy and fair play.’
‘Ur read yer leader, Len.’ Barrow Boy took over again. ‘Um hearing yer. But Um bound ter say …’
As if the opposite had been said, Lennox regurgitated the salient points of that morning’s editorial.
‘What’s important about Zinariya? The fact that in common with almost all African countries it is a one-party state, or the fact that it is one of the world’s most important copper-producers? We all know the Americans would like to take over WAMO. Democratically, of course. Fairly.’
The prime ministerial brow furrowed in pain at the cynical tone of the tycoon. Elder Statesman and Barrow Boy stood to one side while the Concerned Vicar said a few words.
‘It isn’t just the Americans who are worried about Bindiga’s human rights record, you know. Surely’ – he pronounced the word shoe-early – ‘we all care about human rights.’
Especially those of us married to highly paid human rights lawyers, Lennox thought silently.
‘Your own paper admits that the situation in Zinariya is frankly appalling.’
‘No it doesn’t.’
‘I’m sorry, Lennox – the excellent piece on the features page by Sinclo Manners.’
Lennox felt himself blushing, and an overwhelming lust for a bacon sandwich possessed him. He did not like admitting the truth, that he had not read every page of The Daily Legion. What had Tony Taylor been playing at – on his last day as editor?
The Prime Minister, who had the newspaper open in front of him, shoved it across the table to Lennox. This was tantamount to an accusation that Lennox had not read the article. His eye took in at a glance what sort of article it was. There were four photographs – one of emaciated mine workers, one of some boys from the cocoa farms wearing their manacles, one of General Bindiga in his uniform resplendent with medals, looking like the judge of a beauty contest with two tall, large-chested Scandinavian women standing beside him, and one, inevitably, of Father Vivyan Chell. Lennox had heard of Sinclo Manners – Mary Much thought she was in there with a chance – he was some public schoolboy with a conscience who had been to Zinariya. Unlike most Legion readers. What in the fucking name of glory was Tony Taylor playing at, printing this horse-shit?
‘It makes my point,’ said the Elder Statesman again, elbowing the Vicar out of the way and capitalizing on the advantage. ‘Of course there’s a case for not rushing to judgement, but there’s no gainsaying the truth of that article. Sinclo Manners isn’t some liberal intellectual. He was in Zinariya as a soldier.’
‘Was he?’ Lennox unguardedly asked, adding with an assumed shrewdness which in the circumstances seemed absurd, ‘I mean, you take his word for that?’
‘Green Jackets, wasn’t it? Part of the UN peacekeepers sent in two years ago.’
Shit and fuck Sinclo buggering Manners. Lennox felt like grabbing the telephone from the Prime Minister’s elbow, ringing the little arsehole now, this minute, pronto, and telling him to clear his desk at once and get the hell out of LenMar House. While Mary had a crush on the man, however, Martina would want a share of the action. They hunted in pairs, those two. He could not sack Sinclo Manners because he dreaded the contempt of the two women, and because he knew they were clever about people in a way that he was not. They would get him his peerage. So he had to lick a bit of ass while, an anatomically challenging exercise, kicking it.
‘With very great respect, Prime Minister – and that’s why the Legion has consistently praised your robust stand over this issue – we all care about human rights just as much as it suits us to care. We at the Legion don’t want to sweep anything under the carpet, which is why we were prepared to run Sinclo’s piece. But at the end of the day the editorial line is clear. Zinariya’s a small country so we can boss it around, tell it what to think about child labour, homosexuality.’
‘Excuse me,’ said the Vicar, pointing to the paper which now rested on Lennox’s blotter, ‘but public castration? Assuming that story is true, it’s simply unacceptable …’
‘Assuming. But let’s be clear about this – we’re all prepared to strike deals with China and ask not one awkward question about what they do with their political dissidents, their unpaid child-labourers, their female babies murdered at birth, their secret police, their …’
‘As zmadderfac’, Len, yer wrong there,’ said Barrow Boy. ‘Behind the scenes, we’ve made a lodda progress.’
He’s so far up the American asshole, thought Lennox, that he’s started to pronounce the word ‘progress’ in the Yank way. Though he pronounced it this way himself, Lennox despised the PM for doing so.
‘But I take yer point, Len. We can’t let the Americans outmanoeuvre us on this one, and yes’ – a schoolboy full of sheepish pride at having won all the cups showed he’d absorbed the flattery with which that morning’s Legion had larded him – ‘there are times when a guy’s godda get tough. That’s why Britain’s gonna say to the Commonwealth – look. Either we work out a solution in Zinariya or we hand over to the Americans.’ Gratifyingly the Prime Minister was now mouthing, almost word for word, the views e-mailed to the Legion’s leader page by Martina the previous evening. ‘Bindiga’s methods may be rough and ready, but this is a guy who went to Sandhurst. We can do business with him.’
It would be a colossal mistake for a British Prime Minister, in an election year, to rat on one of Britain’s best allies in West Africa. Those were the actual words.
Lennox rolled the cigar in his fingers and grinned.
This Prime Minister has been a good leader. He has the makings of a great one. The forthcoming Commonwealth conference will be his chance to show …
‘What we’re very much not saying,’ the PM went on, and here, shit him, he was singing from a different fucking hymn-sheet, one written by Sinclo sodding Manners, ‘is that the human rights issue’s gonna go away.’
‘Of course not, Prime Minister.’
‘I mean – you know it all, it’s all in Sinclo’s piece …’
Sinclo? Did the PM fucking know the young busybody, or was this simply an example of the Vicar’s habit of referring to everyone by their first name?
‘We’re talking here about torturing journalists.’
‘Wouldn’t you just love to do that sometimes?’ asked Lennox impishly.
He received a baffled, slightly wounded look in reply.
The Elder Statesman rose to indicate that the interview was at an end.
The cigar was still unlit when Lennox Mark was shown out of the Cabinet Room and into the marbled hall. Actually to light up, or to flick ash about the place was a temptation. The cigar had served its purpose, by suggesting that, baby or no baby, the Fourth Estate would if needs be blow smoke in the face of the First Lord of the Treasury; equally that, all things being equal, the Legion would show deference to the PM. Hence the good Zinariyan tobacco – yes, fuck it, gathered in by slaves and who cared? – would remain unlit. For the present, the balance of interests was nicely poised, between a Prime Minister in need of a friendly press, and the ambitions of an ex-colonial whose wife would enjoy styling herself a peeress.
The question of Zinariya was, on one level, no more than a useful pitch on which the game could be played out, the Legion offering the political puppet the chance to prove himself on the international stage. Besides, they all knew that they were safe. Many of Zinariya’s most vociferous critics at the
Conference were, as Lennox and the PM both knew perfectly well, tyrants every bit as brutal as Bindiga. Nor did many of them really want to expel the General from the Commonwealth. They wished, if any aid were going spare from Britain, America or the private agencies, to advertise their agonized and shocked consciences. In fact, once their protests had been duly noted in the minutes, when their pompous speeches had been made and their wives had done the hokey-cokey with the Duke of Edinburgh after the State Banquet at Windsor, they were looking to Britain cautiously to retain the status quo.
What Lennox hoped was rather less clear, either to the Prime Minister or to anyone else, was his own dependence on the Bindiga regime. Kurtmeyer (Chief Executive of News Incorporated) and Spottiswood (Managing Director) had both been uttering the same unthinkable warnings for some weeks. Banks making ugly noises – debts unsustainable – share prices plummeting – if you thought last year’s circulation figures were bad look at the figures for this year – Blimby bloody useless, Taylor no better – meetings in the City – need to face facts – gravity of situation.
Beyond the possession of LenMar House itself – a questionable asset in a recession since rented office space was hardly at a premium – Lennox Mark had no assets in the UK. This was the stark truth. If measured by the bleak realism of profit and loss accounts, of ledgers, of pluses in one row of figures and minuses in another, then Boss-Man Lennie was no richer than the most junior secretary working on Legion Classified.
It was the General who could, with real money, actual dollar bills in suitcases, bail out his old friend. Even Kurtmeyer and Spottiswood were probably unaware of how simply this was true: that the whole glittering media empire of Lennox Mark, the twenty-five provincial newspapers, the TV channels, the dud football club, the glossy mags and the nationals, the dinners for the rich and powerful, the house in Knightsbridge, the glass tower in Bermondsey depended less on the business acumen of its chairman than on the goodwill of a diminutive African army officer, at that moment almost certainly shagging a hooker in his fortified palace outside Mararraba.
There was a much taller man than Bindiga sitting on one of the hall chairs in a contemplative pose. Lennox heard the Prime Minister’s secretary address this figure.
‘He’ll see you now, Brigadier.’
When he stood up, this military gentleman was very tall indeed – six foot six perhaps. Lennox, a good twelve inches shorter, nodded and received a little smile in return.
Lighting his cigar on the doorstep, Lennox remembered the irrelevant detail that Bindiga liked to remind everyone that he was a cavalry officer. As well as being Commander-in-Chief of the Zinariyan Revolutionary Army, he was Colonel-in-Chief of the Lugardian First Lancers. All the horses, unfortunately, had been eaten during the famine of ’96.
TWENTY
‘Temperatures mild, rising as high as seventeen degrees in the south, with that warm front pushing away to the west, but still gusty and showery and you’ll need your umbrella!’
A jaunty jingle followed this announcement which came from Trevor Topling’s portable radio.
Mercy, placing a cup of tea beside him, reflected sadly that he would not need an umbrella. He had not been out for weeks.
She was dressed in a black T-shirt with a swooping V-neck, revealing much of her chest. Over this, she wore a pale grey cardigan decorated with geometric charcoal-coloured shapes. The previous day she had taken off work, falsely pleading illness, and had her hair braided at Afro-Styles. It had taken hours – the straightening, the dying of some of the hair golden, the tight plaiting, which had been very painful. She emerged radiant. It was a great success. Brad and Lucius had told her she looked great. Heads had turned in the High Road as she had teetered home. Trevor had not apparently noticed.
‘The bishops of the Church of England,’ said the radio, ‘have issued a joint statement today in which they say that they take very seriously indeed allegations of child abuse among their clergy. The Gay-Lesbian Christian Association has condemned the report, saying that it makes entirely unjust identifications between paedophiles and gay priests. Here’s our religious affairs correspondent, Angela Lickorish …’
‘There’s a corn beef hash on the cooker – all you have to do is heat it up and stir it,’ she said.
She meant – heat yourself and stir yourself. He sat slumped, motionless, staring ahead.
‘He rang again,’ Trevor murmured. ‘That social worker.’
‘Kevin?’
‘The boy’s been playing truant for a month now.’
‘I told you, Trevor – we’re not going to worry about that any more. He’s nearly sixteen. Even Mum thinks it’s best.’
‘It’s breaking the law,’ said Trevor.
‘He’s got a job – up at this really posh restaurant. I told you that – Diana’s. It’s in Ebury Street. All the stars go there. He’s seen Joan Collins – she had a Caesar salad. Mum says he’s so much better.’
Mercy named several other famous people who had eaten at the restaurant.
‘He’s meant to go to school until he’s sixteen.’
‘It’s only a few months off,’ said Mercy.
She caught a glimpse of the pair of them in the mirror over the fireplace, and ran a finger lightly through her new hair.
‘… an abuse of trust, say the bishops, which cannot under any circumstances be tolerated.’
‘He sounded concerned – the social worker,’ said Trevor. ‘Said that whatever happens, Peter should come to his sessions with him. Said there was a real danger …’
Trevor, in the mirror, looked like an old man who was half asleep.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Well, I’ve got to go to work now, love.’
‘Where’s the boys?’
‘They went to school half an hour ago.’
‘The Prime Minister is expected to defend Zinariya’s continued membership of the Commonwealth today, in a speech to foreign ministers from around the world meeting in Biarritz …’
TWENTY-ONE
‘Wonders will never cease – a decent article in The Daily Legion.’
‘You don’t mean one by your husband?’
‘By you? You must be joking.’
Neither Julia nor Lionel Watson looked at one another as they exchanged these words across the kitchen table.
Julia still possessed a faded beauty in her boyish face. She was nearer fifty than forty, and she spent a lot of money on hairdressing. The dark bob, streaked with silver, framed pale, bony cheeks. She wore very bright red lipstick. People still stared at her beauty in public places, but twenty years of being furious, first with her husband, then with life in general, had left their mark. As she read the paper, she smoked cigarettes with the eager repeated gasps of one who, quite conceivably, believed it to be impossible to inhale oxygen other than through the filter of a Dunhill King Size.
Lionel flinched from his wife’s hatred and tried to repay it with indifference. At the same time, he believed she had a perfect right to be angry with him. The only way he could think of making things right for her, since he could not repay her with what she needed – affection – was by maintaining a London house which, even on a journalist’s high salary, he could barely afford.
The late Georgian house was not far from Clapham Common. Julia, who ran her own, not very lucrative, interior design company, had been given a blank cheque: no expense had been spared. The kitchen in which they were sitting was stone-flagged. A large deal table stood between the double sink and the Aga. At the far end of the room, a chaste Georgian dining table and eight chairs were reflected in the glass above the white marble chimney piece. All five floors of the house, which had been featured in World of Interiors as well as several colour supplements, were comparably spotless and over-considered. She was constantly scouring style magazines for new ‘ideas’ and the house was often invaded by builders, redecorating rooms which did not need it.
Lionel Watson was a fallen archangel, and Julia had opted to accompany him on his
fall. In his youth, after Oxford, he had seen himself as a travel writer and poet in the mode of the 1930s. His first book, Amazonians, had recounted an extraordinary canoe journey he had made down the great South American river with a college friend. It had won prizes. A later book, about Tibet, remained a minor classic, an extraordinary evocation of the lives of the people there, deeply read in their languages and religion. He had spent a year travelling rough. He had not cared about money or comfort while he did so. From that experience had come not only a travel book but the first volume of poetry, Conversations with a Lion – an allusion to Wittgenstein’s saying that if lions could talk, we should not understand what they said.
He had returned to London from his Asian travels thin, brown, gentle, funny. Women fell in love with him easily and he responded. He married the first one to become pregnant, Julia Ingoldsby, a decent, playful woman a bit younger than him. In those days she had a job as an assistant stage designer at the Royal Ballet.
Neither of them had any money. It seemed foolish not to accept any journalistic work offered as a way of paying the mortgage on a small flat in Clapham. L. P. Watson – from the first he had used his initials rather than his first name – wrote reviews, a few short travel pieces for the broadsheet newspapers, and a few longer articles for colour supplements. It was the success of his books which drew him to the notice of newspaper editors. After a year or two, however, he discovered that journalism was much more lucrative, and much less hard work than ‘proper writing’.
During one long assignment abroad – a piece on the countries of West Africa, which involved visits to Lugardia, Nigeria, Ghana and Benin – he had an affair, with the woman who had been sent out by the magazine to take photographs. It was a delightful affair – the first since he married Julia. He had not considered it important at the time. Liz Stein, the photographer, and he went their separate ways after only a few months. His children had been four and six when it happened. He was determined not to allow his marriage to founder. Julia knew Lionel so intimately that there was no need to search his belongings nor to discover (as she did, some weeks later) letters from the Stein woman. It clung to him, the obviousness of it, like a smell. The shy way he made love to her, the first time after his return home; his increased intake of alcohol and cigarettes. His spiritual distance from her. Julia had been very much hurt. Lionel had been very guilty. Neither of them had spoken one word on the subject.
