He went up the stairs slowly, nervously, looking intently at the photographs of Prime Ministers on the walls in an effort to look as though he knew what he was doing. On the second floor he found Holly waiting for him, wearing a one-piece summer frock of white linen. Her arms were deeply tanned, and the sun had brought out a freckle or two on her nose. She was surrounded by covered furniture and painters’ sheets spread over the floor. She led him into what had once been a sitting room, though it was now without furniture and half the wall paper had been stripped away. A large hole in one interior wall revealed an equally stark room adjoining it.
‘You’re living in this?’ he asked in disbelief.
Holly looked tense. ‘Welcome to the wonders of Ten Downing Street.’ She pointed at the hole in the wall. ‘And Eleven for that matter.’
‘You’re knocking through?’
‘Absolutely. It’s the only way to make this place liveable. The Chancellor doesn’t care – his girlfriend would much sooner have him at her place. It’s going to take months to do, maybe even years, so it’s the perfect excuse not to live here.’
‘Is this widely known?’ There had been nothing in the press.
‘No. And I’m sure there will be absolute hell to pay when it does come out. Especially about the cost. All the walls were specially reinforced years ago because of the IRA.’ She pointed at the ragged wall. ‘That wall alone took three men two days to knock through. But when it does come out that we’re not living here, it will be far too late – who could expect us to live in a building site? I’ll stay nicely tucked up in Primrose Hill, thank you very much.’
He shook his head in appreciation, both of her léger de main and of the scope of the job ahead. ‘Who’s doing this?’
‘What? You mean the building work?’ He nodded. ‘I’ve got half of bloody RIBA working on it, if that’s what you mean.’
‘I’m sure the building will be all right. But what about the rooms? Who’s designing them?’
‘The architects of course. But if you mean, who’s going to decorate them, I thought that would be something you and I could do.’
He wasn’t sure he had heard her correctly, and he looked at her in the hope that he could somehow revisit the sentence and find an appropriate meaning. She interrupted this process, which in any case was assuming the futility of an atheist’s pilgrimage to Lourdes. ‘You needn’t look quite so startled. I’m sure you’ve got very good taste, and I wouldn’t say I was entirely a slouch about these matters.’
‘Holly,’ he said, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, ‘I know sweet fuck all about interior design. I thought you’d put me on the London thingummybob committee so we could meet here privately. I thought that was excuse enough. Now I find this place is a builder’s site and I’m supposed to play David Hicks with the rooms.’
‘Don’t look so sad,’ she said with a commanding laugh. ‘There’ll be lots of help if we need it. Sally Kimmo spends more on her curtains than most people spend buying their actual house – she can get us any decorator we want. Who would say no to the chance of redecorating Downing Street?’
‘I wouldn’t even know their names.’ He thought of Marla’s penchant for decorating; he could scarcely consult her, not after much better if we don’t see each other. Perhaps she’d lend him her back issues of World of Interiors.
‘Come on,’ said Holly cheerfully, as if cajoling a recalcitrant child. ‘Let’s have a look around.’
Building work was not far progressed; he couldn’t make head or tail of most of the rooms he now saw. He and Holly went upstairs, where he saw the cramped kitchen where Margaret Thatcher had prepared small tinctures for her closest few in the late hours before bed. Behind one door he suddenly found himself in a small bedroom, which was undisturbed by renovation work or repairs. It had a beautiful brass bed, with a white duvet and several high plumped pillows, and a large wine-coloured Persian rug on exposed floorboards. There was a rocking chair by a window he didn’t dare get close to, for he felt thoroughly illicit in this eyrie. A growing sense of déjà vu engulfed him as he recalled his first lodgings in London – a room in a grand-ish house on Phillimore Gardens (distant friends of friends of his parents) where he had once snuck in a girlfriend on a weekday afternoon, skiving from his first job in a Frenchman’s gallery, only to hear the lady of the house in the bath below, fatally putting him off his stroke. As he looked around him now, Holly closed the door and stared at him meaningfully. He looked back at her with surprise. ‘Here?’
‘And why not?’ she asked, pushing on the door with her hand to emphasize how shut it was.
He could think of about seventy-five thousand reasons why not, but was not sure how to express any of them. ‘What about the builders?’ he asked desperately. ‘Where are they all anyway? Or are you bringing back Old Labour working practices and they’re enjoying a five hour lunch?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Holly, beginning to unbutton her blouse. ‘I told them Harry needs peace and quiet every Tuesday at midday to get ready for Question Time in the House. They won’t be back until three, so we’ve got plenty of time.’
‘And what about Harry?’
‘Oh, he’s downstairs. But don’t worry. He really is getting ready for the House. The last thing he wants to do is come inspect a construction site. I told him it was incredibly dusty – that’s enough to keep him away. If he thinks he’d be seen on camera with paint on his suit he’s not going to come near us.’
‘Are you absolutely sure?’ he asked nervously.
This time Holly didn’t bother to reply, but came over and pushed Billings onto the bed, then started to undo his shirt. Ten minutes later he lay beneath the duvet in an untypical state of post-coital agitation, pondering his situation. Holly seemed unconcerned. ‘How was the inaugural meeting of the committee?’ she asked.
‘Largely over my head, if you must know. Everything seems somehow predetermined.’
‘Well the Tories had done a lot of work on it. And Alan has a pretty clear idea of what he wants: in committee meetings his motto tends to be Divide and Fool. But there’s bound to be work for you and Sally to do on the insides of the exhibit.’
‘Funny you should say Alan knows what he wants. It’s Richard Bruce who chairs the thing, but you’d never know it.’
‘Ah,’ she said gently, ‘poor Richard. He’s done very well, considering.’
Considering? There was something so patronising about this that Billings felt drawn to defend the man. ‘Surely he’s got more than that going for him, or he’d never have got to where he was.’ Holly’s eyes widened and she smiled knowingly. ‘I don’t understand,’ he admitted.
‘I was only saying he’s done very well to overcome handicaps other people couldn’t have got over.’
‘That sounds mysterious. What handicaps?’
‘The usual. Depraved father, I’m sure, poverty all around, lack of formal education – find a social problem and I’m sure he’s had it.’
‘You don’t even know that,’ said an exasperated Billings. ‘You’re just saying it.’
Holly giggled. ‘I bet it’s largely true. And it’s what people think. Which is just how we want it – his value’s as our token dinosaur. Don’t look puzzled, you know precisely what I mean. We have to have old Labour somewhere in the Cabinet, and this fits the bill perfectly.’ She turned and looked at him across the pillow. ‘Don’t you remember what Lyndon Johnson said?’
‘The President? What was that?’
‘Somebody asked him why he hadn’t sacked J Edgar Hoover, and he said he’d rather have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in. That’s how we feel about Bruce. And even his pissing is predictable.’
‘How charming,’ he said and looked up at the ceiling, which had been freshly painted. Holly snuggled up to him and lay in the crook of his arm. ‘Tell me,’ he said quietly, ‘have you seen the Professore lately?’
‘Professore? Who’s that?’
He struggled to r
emember for a minute. ‘Arnio, that’s what you call him.’
‘Oh Arnio. You call him “Professore”? How quaint. Arnio’s never been professor of anything that I know of. Though he’s rich enough to own his own university.’
‘How do you know him?’
‘I don’t really. I met him through Alan.’
‘Is he an old queen, too?’ he said, regretting his bigotry, but nonetheless finding the idea dismaying. Holly shook her head. ‘Not at all – in fact I think he was once a lover of Sally Kimmo. She’s never come out and said it, but it’s certainly the suggestion she’s made. That’s how Alan knows him – through Sally. But what about him?’
‘He left a package with me the other day. For your brother.’
Holly sat up in bed. ‘Kevin? You saw him? How was he? Is he all right?’ Questions poured out in a revealing rush.
‘Calm down. He was fine. But he’s gone now – back to the States. He sent you his special love, and said you weren’t to worry about him.’
‘But where’s he gone?’
‘He wouldn’t tell me,’ which was not exactly true, since Billings hadn’t thought it his business to ask. But he didn’t say so now; Holly was extremely agitated.
‘So he got the money then?’ she asked.
He nodded. She said, ‘Thank God for that. He needs it, you know. Poor sucker doesn’t have a bean.’ Billings said nothing, since he knew full well that Holly knew where the money was going to go – the only undecided matter was which vein Kevin would shoot it into.
Holly got out of bed and walked over to the window, making Billings very nervous, for although it was certainly her window by rights to appear before, anyone looking up might be startled to find her standing there naked. He realized she was very angry. ‘I’m sorry you were involved in this,’ she said flatly. ‘It’s not fair on you.’
‘It wasn’t a problem, Holly, honestly. The Professore left the package, your brother picked it up. It was as simple as that.’
She was shaking her head. ‘There were any number of ways to get the money to him without getting you involved.’
‘It was legal, wasn’t it?’
‘Legal?’ She looked astonished. She laughed suddenly, and came and jumped on the bed. ‘You are a sweetie, you know. Of course it was legal. Even Alan wouldn’t get you caught up in something crooked. No, it’s simply that I couldn’t give him the money. I’d have had the press all over me – and him, which is more to the point. I wanted to be discreet, but it should never have involved you. It’s unforgivable.’
She got up and started dressing, so Billings followed suit. ‘I hope you don’t have to rush off,’ she said, reading his mind. ‘Sebastian’s so looking forward to seeing you.’
‘Sebastian? Isn’t he in school?’
Holly paused for a moment. ‘Not today. Carrie’s bringing him down from Primrose Hill. It’s important to keep up appearances: people mustn’t know we’re not living here – not yet anyway. And that includes Sebastian. I thought you could play football with him in St James’s Park. Please,’ she asked imploringly.
He suppressed a groan. ‘So when will we meet up again?’ he asked.
‘Well,’ she said, as if planning a drinks party, ‘I thought it could work like this. You’re meeting every Tuesday morning for the time being, according to Alan. If you come through with your smart card we can have... “lunch”, as it were, each week. Then on Thursdays if you don’t mind coming up to Primrose Hill, I could see you mid-afternoon to discuss the redecorating plans.’
‘I do have a business to run.’
She looked at him, and at first he thought she was about to transfer her anger at Trachtenberg to him. He had felt her irritation before, but they had never really rowed. The prospect would have felt less daunting if the machinery of government were not at work directly below him.
‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ she said curtly, but he saw that tears were welling in her eyes, and he found himself softening.
Rationally, he knew it would be madness to reassure her, since the schedule she proposed was certain to keep him in a perpetual state of high anxiety (and probably reduced sexual capability) as well as threaten to bankrupt his business. But Holly looked so forlorn, standing with her blouse unbuttoned and her tights on and her skirt in one hand, that he felt himself wilting. For some reason he thought of Marla, and of the hurt he knew he had caused her, and he knew for certain he could not repeat the process of wounding. ‘Of course I’m pleased, Holly,’ he said tenderly. ‘I just don’t know how you’ve managed it.’
Chapter 17
He began to like the routine. So much happened so quickly that the schedule established by Holly gave him the illusory sense of order in his life, and control. And there were no more weird events, no sense of being watched or followed or tampered with.
On Tuesday mornings he would dutifully taxi over to Whitehall, then lunch in the one clear spare room of Ten Downing Street upstairs with Holly. Sometimes they had sandwiches. On Thursdays he would leave the gallery early, take a cab up to Primrose Hill, play football in the park with Sebastian, and then, as the boy had his tea with Carrie the nanny, see Holly.
He dutifully worked away at plans for the redecoration of Ten Downing Street. It turned out that R-A’s wife Elizabeth had worked for three years at Colefax and Fowler, and despite her spouse’s lofty disdain for Billings’s involvement with a Labour regime, she was excited at the prospect of helping him, since she was otherwise housebound with three small children. Soon he was trucking fabric samples and swatches of carpet to Primrose Hill, where he and Holly spread them out on the bedroom floor and begin to make decisions. She decided actually, since he continued to feel he had no taste in such matters, as well, frankly, as a decidedly low level of interest.
Their meetings in Primrose Hill were for the most part innocent; paradoxically they had more privacy at Ten Downing Street than at Regent’s Park Road, where they were subject to intrusions from Carrie the nanny, Mrs Diamond, and young Sebastian.
Sebastian was in many ways the child from hell – whiny, petulant, bad-mannered, spoiled. There was also the small matter of his education, things coming to a head when for the second week in a row Billings found that he and Holly were interrupted at Downing Street by the arrival of Carrie and Sebastian – at lunchtime.
‘Doesn’t he ever go to school?’ demanded Billings, and Holly flushed a deep red. He was puzzled. ‘What’s the problem? What did I say?’ He thought for a moment. ‘Where does Sebastian go to school, Holly? You’ve never actually told me.’
She looked even more embarrassed. He went on: ‘Do you mean to tell me that he doesn’t actually have a school?’ She nodded weakly.
‘Don’t you think perhaps he needs to go to school? I mean, do many people know about this?’
She shook her head, and he saw that she was quite upset. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said.
‘Seems simple to me. Send the little chap to school. Lots of other people have been known to do it.’
‘You don’t understand. It’s not that simple.’
‘Try me.’
‘If I send him to state school he’ll get beaten up every day – I know because we tried that. If I send him privately, the left wing of the party will beat up Harry every day.’
‘So you thought it would make more sense not to send him at all.’
‘Something like that,’ she said, nodding. ‘He’s not falling behind. I teach him every morning, and Carrie works with him after tea. She was trained as a teacher in Australia.’
Well, thought Billings, at least I now know why the little pest is always around, though actually, he found himself growing close to fond of the young monster. It was surely not the boy’s fault that no one in the household could be found to say no to him. Football, initially an obligation to be endured in the hope of a quick cuddle with Holly, became, somewhat bizarrely, something Billings looked forward to, as the days grew warm and the park on Primrose Hill fi
lled with pretty girls, ancient joggers and countless dogs. Carrie usually joined them, playing on Sebastian’s side, and she was a sweet girl, though hopeless at controlling her charge. Then Mrs Diamond was recruited to play alongside Billings, and she proved efficient and immoveable in goal.
Business at the gallery did not seem to suffer as a result of his new activities, but certainly Tara had more say in what was shown, and what was sold. Her women’s show was a critical success – not one bad review in the trade press, several interesting pieces in the broadsheets – and almost every piece sold, though at collectivist prices. When she proposed a show on working-men’s watercolours, Billings blanched at first, but then found himself entranced by the many pieces – mainly early twentieth-century – she had uncovered in her own sleuthing. Some post-war paintings from Ruskin College Oxford at first confused him, until Tara explained they came from the working-men’s college of that name, not the art school. They were in any case beautiful compositions, and though again the total invoiced barely out-registered a Tyson on the financial Richter scale, the show got stunning press. The gallery was beginning to develop a name for itself; Billings consoled himself that maybe he could eat his publicity if push came to shove.
He received better financial advice in any case. Grumbling about the time he spent away from work, Billings found Holly promptly offering to help.
‘Where do you keep your accounts?’ she asked.
‘Accounts?’
‘Yes. You must have a bookkeeper, don’t you?’
He thought of Mr Wang, an improbably translated native of California, a Berkeley graduate, who had married the daughter of a Wardour Street restaurant owner, and was struggling to pass his CAA exams. Monthly, for an embarrassingly small fee, Mr Wang – why mister? he was barely in his 30s – came into the gallery, wearing a Berkeley sweatshirt and jeans. He sorted through the massed pile of invoices, restaurant receipts, IOUs, cheques, credit card slips, and deeply unfashionable cash which Billings dumped in a small paper mountain on top of the Cedar of Lebanon.
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