Children of the Master

by Andrew Marr

  Alwyn Grimaldi, who was more conscious of the Italian origins of his family than he ever let on in public, rejoiced that the original twelfth-century house had been owned by one Elias de Scaccario – which made ‘Grimaldi’ seem almost homely. He had no family to play football with. Romping was alien to his nature. But he much enjoyed the scents of the rose garden, which was visible from his upstairs study. In the almost ridiculously spacious Great Parlour, with its fine wainscoting and oil paintings, he had gathered his cabinet on several occasions as they tried to discover that elusive but essential quality they were missing – a purpose. They had tried in vain, but Alwyn had found the trying invigorating. Now he hoped that this mysteriously charismatic woman, in partnership with a mysterious vicar, would help him out.

  All too often, Alwyn found the underlying theme of Chequers to be discouraging. He was a thoughtful man, and the large collection of Oliver Cromwell memorabilia, including the lord protector’s death mask, and the immaculately bound, untouched yards of memoirs by previous premiers, suggested to him the only ways in which his own career was destined to conclude, and perhaps sooner rather than later: either in death or in resignation and unread, remaindered self-justification. Death scared him very much. It had been glibly said that politics was show business for ugly people. Really, Alwyn thought, it was tragedy for the modern man – a giant, pitiless stage on which no one normal survived.

  And there was now a new source of pressure. Here, at Chequers, Alwyn had recently been on the receiving end of no fewer than four telephone calls from the president of the United States. Their theme was no surprise to him; the subject had been raised at weekly meetings of the Joint Intelligence Committee for weeks now. Washington’s Department of Homeland Security and the CIA were pressing for the signing of a secret memorandum which would pass authorisation for surveillance of all British citizens, on their own turf, to the United States. GCHQ would become what the president called ‘the properly reliable and loyal collaborator’ of American intelligence. Al Qaeda, the president said, was a single, flexible enemy with a single ideology and command structure, operating around the world; to combat Islamist terrorism, it was necessary that the West become the same.

  The president had been calm, persuasive and friendly. There hadn’t been the merest hint of the whiff of the ghost of a suggestion of a threat. And yet Alwyn understood perfectly well that he had no choice. Britain, now that she was outside the softly stifling embrace of the EU, found herself very short of friends – the Grimaldi government could not be choosers.

  Glancing around the lovely old room, birdsong in his ears and the scent of freshly cut grass in his nostrils, Alwyn asked himself what Churchill would have done. He knew the answer. Then he asked himself what the Master would have advised. Alwyn would have been considerably alarmed had he received the news from Sir Anthony Bevins about what the Master was currently up to; but the Bevins memorandum had gone from the FCO straight to the prime minister’s private office, and his private secretary was another member of the staff at Number 10 who remained loyal to the Master. It was the Master himself who used to say that in politics, where one most looks for help, there lies the worst of the danger.

  Caro and Angela had been arguing all the way down from Barker, and nearly lost their way shortly before the Chequers gates. Had it been a good idea to bring the boys? Caro, although in general a too-tolerant and appeasing figure in their lives, thought not. She hadn’t mentioned Nick and Ben to the prime minister; he would have made no arrangements. And what would they do? Chequers would be like a musty old National Trust house, crammed with things that might be knocked over. Angela, however, was unmoved. The prime minister had become an almost ridiculous figure in the country, a limp and bloodless intellectual nobody wanted. He had invited Caro and her not to be kind or flattering, but because he wanted their help. That in itself was flattering enough, but if the price was to put on a few fish fingers and allow the boys to kick a football around outside, he’d find it a price well worth paying. Nick and Ben hadn’t been listening from the back seat; they had their ear-buds well jammed in.

  Mrs Wilkinson, who hated children, was tremendously welcoming as the visitors tramped across the gravel and into the house. She would put on some pasta with cheese sauce, she said; the boys wouldn’t necessarily enjoy what she’d got ready for lunch. Sitting around an oval oak table, the adults were served beetroot soup, followed by home-made steak pie with beetroot salad.

  A Sermon in Barker

  In politics, there are hardly any good ideas. One comes along perhaps every decade: so be sure you notice it.

  The Master

  Angela had found that she loved Barker. Barker was ugly. Its town hall had been built in the 1950s, when there wasn’t enough money around for beauty. A clumsy gyratory system had carved its way through medieval streets; in the High Street, now pedestrianised, there wasn’t a single local shop left – all chains, just like everywhere else. But Barker was alive. Things were still made here; in its narrow avenues and red-brick crescents, people left home every morning for factories and regional headquarters; not everyone had given up hope. The town was small enough for her to be swiftly recognised. Her sermons became shorter and more urgent. She took to wearing jeans and trainers with her black shirt and dog collar. Nick and Ben made friends with sharp-eyed, assertive Asian boys, who teased her at home about the wine, yet seemed to have a natural politeness their English contemporaries did not. She ordered in Chinese and curry, Thai and chips.

  Caro was with her every weekend, and now that she was in government she had the use of a limousine and driver. She’d sweep up outside the house bursting with bundles of paper and all the latest gossip. Sometimes she brought a young man from the office to work with her for a few hours. He always seemed to be the same young man, yet his name kept changing; Angela assumed there was a type. Anyway, life in Barker was both faster and more interesting than it had been in Pebbleton. Angela was so happy that she was managing to drink quite a bit less; she kept the wine – mostly – for the weekends. Above all, she found that she noticed more, and thought more deeply.

  The constituency people, who would drop into the house, seemed unpretentious and friendly. Nobody in Barker made a lot of money. There was a couple on the outskirts of town who had won several million pounds in the lottery, and there was a scattering of converted farmhouses in the nearby countryside where City workers, exhausted by the week, would come for a rest. Yet so far as Angela could tell, the town was devoid of jealousy: the lottery couple were said to have blown most of their money on cars, which they then pranged; and nobody envied the draining existence of the rich commuters, who would occasionally be seen tottering, white-faced, into the town’s few delicatessens or wine merchants.

  If happiness means not having to crane your neck upwards at people earning more, then Barker was a happy town. The people who came to church, the people in local politics, were hard-working but relaxed, as if England still really existed. Here, to be a head teacher, a surveyor or the works manager of a light-engineering company was to have reached the top of the social tree. Caroline, as the MP, and Angela, as a vicar, were considered part of the social elite. That would never have been the case in London or any of the big cities, or even in Scotland. And it made Angela think. And when Angela thought, things changed.

  Miraculously, one soft, warm Thursday evening, Caroline was back from London early. The boys were downstairs on the Xbox. Caro and Angela were curled on the sofa in Angela’s study upstairs. And Angela, having thought, now spoke.

  ‘What do people want? That’s the question you lot at Westminster never really ask. Because you think you know what they want – more money, more … stuff, better medicines, longer holidays.’ She gently pushed herself away from Caroline and stood up. She needed to use her arms.

  ‘But from what I can see around here, they’re not made happier by money. I know lots of happy people. And I’m beginning to see what makes them happy. Ill, well, young, old, they
come and talk to me. Teachers, women working in shops, traffic wardens, engineers, you name it. And I listen. And Caro darling, what makes people happy is very simple. It’s to be respected. I don’t just mean status, in the sense of titles, or handles; they want a certain look to come into their neighbours’ eyes when they pass them in the street. They want to be known and admired for being – I don’t know – good, I suppose. That’s the fundamental need that the Church has always understood and that politics, particularly perhaps you so-called socialists, has never got.’

  This was, for Angela, quite a short speech, and initially Caro was disappointed. She drained her glass. ‘It’s lovely to have a philosopher in the family,’ she said. ‘But I’ve come up here with two heavy boxes full of practical and immediate decisions that have to be taken. Which measure of inflation should be used to uprate the minimum wage; whether we should bring our gangmaster regulations into line with those of the European Union. And complaints from both branches of the local Muslim community about favouritism being shown to the other. Plus, a long, whining letter from the prime minister complaining about government drift and hinting strongly that he’s about to give me the Home Office. So, with the best will in the world, I’m not absolutely sure where your lecture on “respect” is taking us. It’ll make a fine sermon, I see that …’

  Angela, having upended the last of the bottle into their glasses – a good half-inch more for her than for Caroline, Caro noted – interrupted. ‘Well, let’s start with that letter from the PM. He’s quite right. Nobody has the faintest idea what the Labour Party really stands for these days. What’s it all about, sweetheart? You haven’t got the revenues to build a proper, modern welfare state, and even if you did, the state’s failed so often. You stand for equality, except that you’re too scared of the rich and powerful to really squeeze them. Probably rightly, because in the modern world, they’d just bugger off somewhere else. You want to rein in big business, but you don’t know how. So consider this.

  ‘Think of it as the Barker Bulletin. To persuade the people who really do have power, the leaders of industry and business, to do your work for you, you have to offer them something radically different. If you could get all the biggest companies to pay a living wage and to offer serious, well-funded traineeships, and not to base themselves overseas, but to pay a fair amount of tax, how much of your real agenda would you be able to accomplish?’

  Caroline considered. ‘Almost all of it. It would make us serious, certainly. But I’ve met the glossy, bumptious men and women who run the big companies, and it’s no good, darling, it’s no good. They’d give us some of what we want, but only in return for tax breaks that would undermine and cripple us.’

  ‘Which is exactly where my little sermon comes in. You’re offering them the wrong thing. You’re being too narrow. You still control the state – that is, you control the fount of honours. You control how people are seen, whether or not they’re respected. Just imagine if you divided all the major companies into two groups – those that did, broadly speaking, the right thing, and those that didn’t. The companies that played fair and paid fair would be designated – I don’t know, call them “National Merit Companies” or something. Only their bosses would be eligible for honours. They’d get respect. Real respect. Only they would be appointed to commissions and inquiries into the future of their industries. Only they would be invited onto the prime minister’s plane when he’s making his next trade visit to China or Brazil. Only their companies would be legally allowed to fund political parties. They’d get, in short, political and public respect, and they’d get it for the right reasons. Because they were the leaders of business and industry who paid people properly, trained the next generation, and paid their taxes. They’d be the genuinely admired knights of industry, looked up to and respected by their fellow citizens. The rest, the ones who didn’t play ball, would just be grubby little profit-mongers.’

  Caroline laughed and applauded. ‘You are so gorgeously naïve, Angela. You’re still Pep on the edge of the playing field, with your eyes burning bright, dreaming your dreams. In the horrid real world, none of that would work. We’d be laughed out of court.’

  Angela kissed her, without anger, on the forehead. ‘You couldn’t be more wrong. All you people down there in that buzzy, self-important world of politics have lost sight of how the rest of us think. Give it a go. Though, speaking of being laughed out of court, you’d need the support of the king. Do you know the king?’

  ‘Not yet, darling, but it can’t be long. Let me think about this. Do you mind if I talk to the Master?’

  Angela, who had already spoken to the Master’s wife, shrugged and shook her head. She was thinking about pouring herself another glass of wine. It didn’t look as if there would be any sex tonight, so she did.

  What Happened to the Idea?

  The state, as we used to understand it, is over. It’s very important, however, that the voters never notice.

  The Master

  When the Master was in town, he had his haunts, or perches, in the most obscure places. He dropped in for the big news, force of habit. The home secretary, a baby-faced former researcher, had resigned, and Caroline Phillips had been appointed as his replacement. The Master had not expected Grimaldi to work so fast, and wondered why he had.

  Once upon a time he would have arranged a tryst with Ella while he was in London, but Ella had vanished. The Master’s tentacles spread everywhere, but even he had been unable to track her down. He strongly suspected that she had run off with one of the Washington players who’d been in Venice – she’d have been impressed by the raw power at their fingertips. Sometimes he wondered whether David Petrie had had something to do with it. But Petrie still had a bit of the air of a bumpkin. Ella had called him a second-rater. At any rate, the Master thought, it was time to replace Ella. There would be plenty of candidates, but he needed someone very discreet, someone with almost as much to lose as he did.

  The obvious someone had called him even before he had called her. Caroline Phillips arrived five minutes early for their meeting in the Academicians’ room at the Royal Academy. The Master, who had slipped in discreetly by a back door, directly from an exhibition of Damien Hirst’s late works, was ten minutes early, however. Was it a trick of his, or simply a tic? Even he could never decide. The room was almost empty; an elderly architect was going through some sheets of drawings with a young woman. The broadcaster Jon Snow goggled and waved at him, but, his curiosity whetted, had to leave, frustrated. The Master hoped he’d have left the building before Caroline arrived.

  ‘Did you see Snow?’ he asked as she click-clacketed across the wooden floor.

  ‘No.’ It had been windy, with some sleet – Caro didn’t yet speak fluent politics. But she got straight down to business. ‘I’ve had a sort of idea. It’s quite a big idea, but it’s very simple. Perhaps too simple.’

  The Master, who had never believed in complexity of thought, only of organisation, leaned back and listened intently. When Caroline had finished, he thoughtfully rubbed his upper lip, almost as though he were smoothing an invisible moustache. Finally, he delivered his verdict. ‘I like it. I like its simplicity. It’s actually very New Labour – socialist ends, better wages, better investment, but without socialist means. No, it’s very good, even if we might have to exempt a very few very important companies from the list of those who fail to meet the criteria.’

  ‘No, we can’t do that. No exemptions. Start to let people off the hook, and the whole thing collapses. That’s the point. Sorry.’

  ‘Caroline, are you standing up to me? Not what I’m used to.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Master. But there can be no exemptions. Even for your friends.’

  ‘Cheeky. But I’m still impressed by the idea. And I like the fact that you didn’t back down. You are slowly strengthening into leadership material, my dear. Now, I should warn you that time is getting short. I fear our Mr Grimaldi may soon decide to step down. He’s not a well man. S
ay nothing to anybody at this stage, I’m just tipping you off. I’m coming round to the idea, by the way, of backing you when the time comes. It’s come down to just you or Mr Petrie. You have the reach into the south of England and London, which Mr Petrie, fine man though he is, doesn’t. But he’s got the big picture … Venice, and so forth. One thing, however. There should be honesty between us. Was this idea of yours entirely your own?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I wanted to bring it to you first.’

  ‘I had the strong impression that it was Angela’s. She discussed it with my wife two days ago. So you prove yourself a liar. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing in general. Just make a mental note, would you, not to lie to me again? I have my little tentacles everywhere, you know.’

  His mobile started to vibrate. ‘An old friend. Would you forgive me? Mrs Wilkinson!’ The Master nodded goodbye to Caro, and left for his rendezvous with his former housekeeper.

  Following Angela’s advice, Caro had already told the prime minister about her idea. She didn’t want the Master pretending he’d come up with it himself; and Grimaldi was too weak to do the dirty on her. But he’d left a spate of increasingly urgent-sounding messages on her BlackBerry, asking her to ‘drop round’ as soon as possible. So after leaving the Royal Academy she hurried down St James’s Street, past the old brick palace, and straight across the park. Entering Downing Street through the back gate – a privilege of her new position – she was sitting in the prime minister’s study fifteen minutes later.