by Andrew Marr
In part, this was due to what Ella coldly called her ‘tradecraft’. They could walk together through the centre of London, but Davie would be on one side of the road and Ella on the other. They made eye contact and exchanged complicit smiles, but always from a distance, unphotographable as a couple, divided by traffic. They chose separate tube carriages, and seats a few rows apart on buses. At parties, they would enter separately and make a point of introducing themselves to each other, competing to see whose false politeness was the more ridiculous.
Davie sometimes wondered whether this no-contact public game pointed to a deeper truth about their relationship. Yet these were the only terms on which it was possible. London in the early years of the twenty-first century was the most public city in the world, and perhaps the hardest to hide in; but even London had its dead spots, its blank triangles. Davie and Ella had become anti-connoisseurs of restaurants and pubs, experienced in finding the about-to-be-closed curry houses with a patina of dirt on the window, the no-longer-fashionable trattorias where only tourists with ten-year-old copies of Time Out were ever found, the restaurants which specialised in obscure and unappetising cuisines. In their quest for privacy they had eaten kangaroo and alligator meat, glutinous Mongolian stews of lamb fat, and insect-stuffed Mexican delicacies. Once, they had even found a Belarusian restaurant. No one else was there, nor, by the look of the place, ever had been. They told one another they were paying for their passion not by being exposed to public shame, or poisoned or stabbed by jealous rivals, but by becoming slightly pasty-faced, badly fed and flatulent. Some of this they walked off late at night. From Green Park to Kensington Gardens, the squares of Bloomsbury to the duller stretches of Regent’s Park, every one of the stands of sprawling rhododendrons, tangles of holly and yew, and derelict Victorian sheds where wheelbarrows and rollers were locked up, held a memory of their subterranean life together.
Davie understood that he was becoming addicted to Ella. She never gave him enough of herself – it was always mere sex – but their games had a human reality that made the struggles of politics tolerable. Yet he knew that she always had the upper hand. At times, he wondered if she was really his friend. Had he ever mentioned her to Tony Moretti or his SNP cousins back home, it would have been regarded as proof positive that he’d been corrupted by power.
Bunty, certainly, had never liked Ella. Davie had had to adapt to Bunty’s implacable outspokenness on the subject. She had learned to say little when anyone else was in the office. But if she and Davie were alone, Bunty would start up.
‘Hoo’s the hoor?’
‘Bunty, that is … inappropriate.’
‘Well, she is a hoor. She’s got her hoory claws into you, and you’re making a damnt fule of yourself. A’body knows. It’s only a matter of time before it’s on the front of the Sun.’
‘Nobody knows.’
‘A’body knows. Well, leastways, I know.’
‘Is that a threat, Bunty?’
‘Naw, Mr Petrie, it’s a statement of puir honest Scottish fact. I don’t want to be mean, but do you think the hoor wants you for yourself? You’re no’ exactly what the girls would call an ar-wee-see.’
‘Now you’re being offensive. And I don’t even want to know what RWC stands for. Shall we get down to work?’
‘Right Wee Cracker. Nae offence.’
As in so many other areas, bloody Bunty was turning out to be nothing like a fool.
At precisely the moment that this conversation was taking place, the Master was licking the last of the champagne strawberry jam off Ella’s impressively concave stomach. His brow was furrowed with concentration as he moved towards her pubic hair.
‘Mmm. Fortnum’s? Waitrose? I’m losing my touch. But I never weary of the taste. How are you getting on with our Mr Petrie?’
Ella groaned lightly. ‘You know I’m your helpless plaything. I’ll do anything you want. But I wish you hadn’t given me bloody David Petrie as your project. He is sooo, so boring.’
The Master continued to graze. Ella noticed that the liver spots on his back were becoming more prominent. In between light kisses and snuffles, he murmured, ‘Boring in bed?’
‘Yes, but that’s the least of it. Bed’s soon over. No, it’s much worse than that. I mean just boring-boring. The man hasn’t got a single interesting idea in his head. He’s completely self-obsessed. He just goes on and on about his rivals and his childhood and his position in the party. He never says anything about real politics. He doesn’t seem to know what that even means. I have no idea, even now, what drives him.’
‘Nothing wrong with being self-obsessed. Not a lot wrong with an absence of clear views. Remember, his purpose is for us to mould him and use him. The last thing I want is for him to strike out on his own, or begin to think that he can.’
‘More jam?’
‘No, I’ve got to watch the tummy.’
‘Too bad. I still think he’s boring, and that’s the big problem. You’ve got the photos – I left them in the top drawer of your desk – so you’ve got David Petrie where you want him. I’m just not sure he’s worth it.’
‘Oh, he’s worth it.’
‘Easy for you to say. You don’t have to …’
‘I’m sorry. Let me make it up to you.’
‘You are the most vain, most impossible man I have ever met.’
‘I know. And you love me for it.’
Whitehall Life
What’s the job of a minister, really? To be in revolt against the bloody government.
The Master
He had just turned off Whitehall, and was a few yards from the door of the department. Normally Davie looked about him, but the air was chill today, and all morning he’d felt deflated and tired. He’d turned the collar of his coat up, his chin was pressed to his chest and he was barely aware of anyone around him. So the whack of a thick, meaty hand on his shoulder startled him. He looked up. The secretary of state, his new boss, a socialist of the old school, was standing staring at him. He’d clearly just said something, but Davie hadn’t caught it. He shrugged.
‘Oh dear, Mr Petrie, we don’t seem ourselves this morning.’ The man, whom David had written off long before as a soggy mass of uncomprehending ambition, leaned in towards him. His breath, very unusually these days, smelled of tobacco. ‘We’ve seen through you, Mr Petrie. You, old son, are not up to it. Your posh friends have done everything they can to pump you up, but the air keeps leaking out, doesn’t it?’ The secretary of state took his hand off Davie’s coat, stepped back and looked in the direction of Big Ben.
‘Grand, isn’t it? What a place we work in. How lucky we are. But you know, it’s harder than it looks. An excellent digestive system, and an ability to sleep like a baby, then a truly wily mind … And even all of those aren’t enough to make a good minister. You were a local hero, I’m sure. The Nationalists certainly hate you. You’ve been picked up by the right, by the old lot, and they’ve done their best. But matey, take it from one who knows. You are not quite good enough. My advice is to get out while you still can. Get back to your mountains and glens, or whatever they are, and build some more houses. Then at least when you retire, you’ll feel you’ve done some good.’
He didn’t like to admit it even to himself, but for his first few months as a minister Davie felt out of his depth. Almost literally: the building that housed the department had been built in the 1970s, and ignored ever since. Long, low-ceilinged rooms with striplights and insufficient window space meant that even the ministerial offices were gloomy and crepuscular. It was like living underwater in a dirty lagoon. Apart from the ministers, the department was staffed by sullen young grad-uates who had struggled and borrowed their way to get into government service, hoping for the Treasury. They resented being shoved here, where they already knew they had failed in life. In the Treasury they would have worn ties, or smart skirts and blouses; here they wore ear studs and corduroy trousers.
Inside the building, he was never alone. The gove
rnment had taken on new powers over urban development, as over many other things. Arguments about the demolition of 1960s car parks, or the rerouting of traffic through housing estates, or the siting of new out-of-town supermarkets – which ought, he couldn’t help thinking, to have been dealt with by the local authorities – ended up on Davie’s desk. His office had three doors: one, at least, was always open, and he was sometimes approached from different directions at the same time. He grew to loathe the sight of his private secretary – a Wykehamist with tousled fair hair, en route to the Treasury – arriving, smirking, with yet another fat folder.
Nor did he have any control over his own diary. He was just allocated meetings: meetings with backbenchers, meetings with groups of mayors, meetings with the trade press and the national press, and meetings with junior Treasury ministers (who seemed to be able to take all the real decisions that he’d hoped to take himself). Another man might have been flattered; Davie was shrewd enough to see that he was simply being given the meetings the other ministers in the department recoiled from. But there was no one to complain to; the secretary of state had not wanted him there in the first place.
Away from the stifling department, there were the Commons committee meetings, the regular question-and-answer sessions in the chamber, and the mandatory lunches, provincial tours and party events. Davie had always thought of himself as a physically strong man, but after a few months of being a junior minister, he felt as if he were on the ropes. He sagged in chairs, and lolled in the backs of cars. He found himself puffing in the street. He hardly had time to see Ella after his official car dropped him off at his flat. Utter exhaustion overtook him; sitting with yet another red box, half-watching the late-night news, sometimes he remembered his regular telephone call to Mary and the boys. Sometimes he forgot. And occasionally he just couldn’t be bothered.
During all those first few weeks and months, there was no word from the Master, or Murdoch White, or Sir Leslie Khan. It seemed that he was on his own. How was he doing? He knew he hadn’t screwed up badly yet; and his private secretary said he took decisions faster than his predecessor, which was apparently a good thing. He learned to throw himself into his paperwork, reading so fast he barely took anything in, while looking out for the wavy line in pencil that indicated where a decision might have to be taken. It was as if he had been gently ushered onto a running machine that was going just a little faster than he could manage. Nothing he said or did seemed to be noticed anywhere else.
If he had ever been in any kind of race with Caroline Phillips, he knew he was now falling far behind. She’d become a popular sofa guest on television discussion programmes, and recently she seemed to be making waves with some big idea on corporate responsibility that Davie couldn’t bring himself to try to understand. Being an adequate junior minister was, he realised, just another way of failing.
Then, to rescue him, came a great crisis. The government was wallowing, as the economy faltered and the prime minister failed to come up with a plan. Ahead of the budget the polling was terrible, and the troops were mutinous. In the end it was the chancellor of the exchequer who came up with the big idea – a massive expansion of house-building, including entire new towns, to put an end to the growing agony of the housing crisis. The chancellor spoke well. He sounded visionary. The commentators compared him to Attlee and Harold Macmillan. Some said that he might, after all, be a plausible replacement for the PM. And then, like a sprinting rugby player, the chancellor passed the greasy ball in a blur to Davie’s department; it would be their job, not his, to decide where all these new homes, roads and shopping malls would actually have to go. The hospital pass.
And so, one cold, bright morning there was a departmental meeting, with the secretary of state and all the ministers present, plus a dozen of the leading civil servants in the department, for a ‘strategic review’. In politics, the Master had said, strategic reviews are never strategic: they are always tactical and panicky. Nor are they reviews: they deal mostly with what has never been properly viewed in the first place.
The country needed hundreds of thousands of new houses built; and everywhere there were vigorous local campaigns against ‘horrid little boxes’. Grandee journalists banded together to defend Oxfordshire. Actors and actresses spoke movingly of the delights of unspoiled East Anglia. Shropshire wasn’t bloody having it. Rutland was revolting. Clearly, the smack of firm government was needed. Some parts of the country were going to have to be upset, their objections ignored. Obviously, this being a Labour government, the idea was to find as many safe Conservative and Liberal Democrat seats to build over as possible. But it couldn’t be too obvious. Some Labour areas were going to have to be offended too, otherwise the accusation of partisanship would be so serious that the crusade for housing would fail before it started. Even the useless young civil servants who would never make it to the Treasury understood that much.
The secretary of state was like a great slab of pudding – grey, unappetising, apparently passive. But he was as sly as he could be direct. He was tough, and he’d been fixing meetings since he was a teenager. He called on Davie, as the urban planning man, to open a meeting with some clear proposals. Davie, unforewarned, had absolutely nothing to say. He had wondered about suggesting a major new development in Barker, purely to irritate Caroline Phillips, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. His performance was terrible. Even his smirking private secretary looked upset.
At the end of the meeting the secretary of state said, ‘Well, I think we’ve made a little bit of progress. Not much, however, because as we have all seen, our new colleague in urban development was rather lost for words. Mr Petrie, I am genuinely surprised and upset; we had heard so much about your extraordinary prowess. Perhaps, after all, you’re merely mortal like the rest of us. At any rate, I want to convene again at the same time next week; and by then, Mr Petrie, we are all hoping for some answers from you. Good morning.’
Davie slunk back towards his office. For once, all three of its doors were closed. When he walked in, he found no less a person than Sir Leslie Khan sitting at his desk, his highly polished crocodile shoes crossed on top of a scramble of paperwork. He was fingering his beard.
‘Ah, young Mr Petrie. I thought I’d pop by. Used to work here myself, a million years ago. Came in to congratulate you. The big meeting. Everyone’s talking about it. A great chance for you, Mr Petrie. Went well? Oh. No, it didn’t go well, did it? I can tell by the slump of your shoulders, and your rather convincing impression of a small dog that has just been beaten. Hmm?’
‘It was a fucking disaster. They’re setting me up. I’m sorry, Leslie – Sir Leslie – but I didn’t see it coming. I have to come up with a list of places for major new developments. Anywhere I propose there’s going to be a riot of protest, and I’m going to be held responsible. I know I’m not an educated man, Sir Leslie, but I can see what’s happening – they’re throwing me to the wolves.’
Leslie Khan’s face tightened, and he rose to his feet. ‘Never, ever, say that. We have plans for you. But never, ever, say that, or you will never see me, or any of us, again.’
‘Say what? Leslie – I mean Sir Leslie – it’s the bloody truth.’
‘Never say “I’m not an educated man.” Nobody wants to hear that sort of whining. If you aren’t educated, it’s your own fault. And if you aren’t educated, you aren’t going to be able to lead this country at the highest level. You either start to educate yourself, or you pretend to be educated. But you never, ever, say you aren’t educated. Do you promise me?’
Davie, stunned by the force of the attack, simply nodded.
‘Good. Well, let’s get on with it then. What are the basic requirements? A quarter of a million new homes. On cheap land. Without causing a riot by the people who live there already. And somewhere close to jobs. Somewhere people will actually want to live.’
‘Aye. Broadly right. So it’s completely impossible. We could stick them up in the Highlands wi’ the midge
s and the Nats, but hardly anyone would ever move there. We could stick them in Kent, but there’s not enough of Kent left. We’ve used Kent up. And so on and so forth. The land in most of southern England is so expensive we simply couldn’t buy enough of it. As I said, I’m being shafted.’
‘So you have a wonderful opportunity to confound your critics. Think laterally, Mr Petrie. Close your eyes, and think sideways. Think about the weather.’
‘What?’
‘Where is there plenty of land, whose owners would be delighted to sell cheaply, and where your new city would be in striking distance of the Midlands, and even of London?’
‘Wales?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Nobody wants to live in Wales.’
‘Well … I have no idea.’
‘As I said, think about the weather. Winter after winter of lashing rain. Those chocolate-coloured floods. Those ruined farmers. Those ridiculous photo opportunities in newly-bought Wellington boots …’
‘You mean Somerset? The levels?’
‘I do.’
‘But with respect, Sir Leslie, that’s completely mad. It’s a floodplain. It’s the one place we just can’t build on. We’ve said it ourselves – this department has said – no more building on floodplains. It’s too dangerous, and no one’s ever done it on this scale, and as for the insurance …’
To Davie’s disappointment, Khan appeared to have no quickfire response. He just shrugged his shoulders, twiddled his beard and changed the subject. ‘You need a bit of a break. There is a big urban-renewal conference about to start. Friends of mine … I’ve got your ticket already, and the department will pick up the bill.’
Davie shook his head. ‘I’ve got no time for jaunts …’
‘I’m disappointed. I’ve just said you have to start to educate yourself, Mr Petrie. Well, here’s an opportunity. And a little bird tells me that young Miss Ella James is available, should you need an adviser out there.’
