The Sound of Trumpets

by John Mortimer

  But it wasn’t long after the confrontation that Terry, arriving early at work, saw that his secretary had helpfully put on his desk that morning’s Meteor. The faces of Agnes and himself were peering over the masthead. ‘M.P.’S OBSESSIVE LOVE FOR AN OLDER WOMAN. SEE CENTRESPREAD’. He opened the paper to find June Wilbraham’s interview and a full-length picture of Kate, triumphantly beautiful, when the phone on his desk rang. ‘Have you got a moment to drop in and see me, Terry?’ Hannah Mortlock, at least, sounded quietly amused. ‘If you’re not too busy hitting the headlines?’ He closed the paper and never read the interview.

  ‘Well, I must be quite a bit older than you, Terry. Do you fancy me?’ The Home Secretary was wearing a scarlet suit with a huge, black, winking and glittering pectoral cross. She was fresh from a dawn encounter with her hairdresser and seemed in excellent spirits.

  ‘Of course I do, Hannah.’ Terry tried the resort of flippancy. ‘With a passion.’

  His answer had the unexpected result of wiping the smile off Hannah Mortlock’s face. She locked her hands together and leant forward with the pained look of a judge about to force herself, with no particular pleasure, to pass a stiff deterrent sentence. ‘Sex,’ she said, ‘is a matter of absolutely no interest to us.’

  ‘Oh.’ Terry felt he’d adopted entirely the wrong approach. ‘I’m very sorry.’

  ‘We don’t give a damn,’ the judge went on, ‘if you’re doing it with a trainee nun who’s in the process of changing her sex. If you can live with that, we can.’

  ‘Thank you,’ was what Terry felt he ought to say.

  ‘All we demand is loyalty. Not a vow of chastity. Not fidelity to your partner. But loyalty to your Party and to the Prime Minister. That, Terry, is the bottom line.’

  ‘Understood,’ Terry assured her. ‘I don’t think my loyalty’s ever been in question.’

  ‘The word “loyalty”, Terry, does not include putting your entire political campaign in the hands of an elderly Tory dinosaur who made Mrs Thatcher look like Rosa Luxemburg.’

  ‘That story was greatly exaggerated.’

  ‘If you hadn’t put your foot right in it, there wouldn’t have been a story to start with.’

  ‘I was anxious to win the seat for Labour.’

  ‘Are you sure who you were winning it for?’

  ‘Anyway, I won it.’

  ‘Oh, congratulations! Brilliantly done! What’ve you achieved? Nothing much more than an entertaining half-hour on television.’

  ‘I’ve worked hard, here.’

  ‘Junior Ministers can work all the hours that God gave, Terry, and no one will notice the difference. I’ve got one more job for you, and this should put your name in the papers.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Terry wondered if he saw a glimmer of hope.

  ‘Write a letter to the P.M. “I have anxiously considered my position and have come to the conclusion that the admissions I had to make during a recent television programme have seriously embarrassed the Party. I have therefore thought it right to offer you my resignation. I have enjoyed my work at the Home Office enormously and will, of course, give you my enthusiastic and loyal support from the backbenches.” ’

  There was silence. It was broken when Terry said, ‘You said you weren’t interested in sex?’

  ‘Of course we’re not.’

  ‘Then why not sack me after the television programme? Why wait until Kate’s interview?’

  ‘You can put that down as a question in Parliament. I doubt if anyone would be interested.’

  Terry thought this over, and then he asked, ‘Have I any choice?’

  ‘None whatever.’

  ‘Then of course I’ll do it.’

  ‘Only one thing you need in politics, Terry.’ The judge, sentence having been passed, allowed herself a smile. ‘Not charm, or good looks, you’ve got them both. Not oratory, no one can do that nowadays. Not political judgement. Most questions the government faces decide themselves or get forgotten. No. There’s only one thing you need the fairies to bring to your christening. Luck. Long-lasting and perpetual luck. And yours ran out quite quickly, didn’t it?’

  Terry stood and started to leave without answering that question. But Hannah spoke again before he reached the door.

  ‘Oh, by the way, you were quite right about the boot camps. They’re far too expensive. £31,000 a year for each little bugger. Almost as expensive as an M.P. So we’ll forget it. There now, you see. You’ve achieved something.’

  Something, perhaps, but nothing more. Terry went to clear his desk.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  As a bright winter gave way to a grey and sodden spring, with snowdrops and a few early daffodils in sheltered gardens trying to put a brave face on it, Agnes decided to clear away all traces of her past. She emptied the cupboard under the stairs, dispatching packets of bandages, trusses, a pair of crutches, blood-pressure gauges and a Zimmer frame to the Worsfield hospital. She stuffed packets, bottles, plastic cards of pills, tablets and samples of capsules claiming to cure all kinds of complaints and fend off death, all now past their sell-by dates, into black bags, and she fed them to the dustbins. When the cupboard was empty and swept out she made a bonfire at the bottom of the garden and burnt letters from the men who had loved her. Terry had always telephoned, never written to her, so in his case there was nothing to burn.

  The river had swollen in the rain, and boats on each side of Hartscombe bridge bumped against the side, almost at pavement level. As the sky cleared a little a couple strolled, where Terry and Agnes had walked as lovers, to Hartscombe lock, and crossed the weir. Garth had given his companion lunch at the Swan’s Nest to celebrate his formal adoption as the Conservative candidate for the constituency.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, encouraged by a bottle of Pauillac and a couple of brandies, ‘about the common currency.’

  ‘This,’ Lord Titmuss said, stopping to look down at the water, ‘is where it happened, isn’t it?’

  ‘Most businessmen seem to’ve come round to the idea.’

  ‘Bit of a mystery, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Mike Fishburn of Worsfield Road Furnishings says it would make sales to the continent easier.’

  ‘A boy who’d escaped from Skurfield Y.O.I. takes the trouble to come all the way back to where he might be recognized to drown himself in the weir.’

  ‘And our European partners are already printing the euro.’

  ‘He seems to have jumped, unless someone pushed him. Of course, there was a good deal of alcohol in his stomach.’

  ‘After all, we use our credit cards all over Europe.’

  ‘Someone, if I remember, thought they’d seen him at that drug supermarket, Rambo’s disco. But they were conveniently vague on the subject.’

  ‘And we can’t be left out, can we, in the struggle for market share?’

  ‘Suppose he’d got drunk and come up here with someone who pushed him. Now who would want to do that to a more or less harmless juvenile delinquent?’

  ‘There is an argument that we ought to be in there, stopping the continentals spending all the lolly on lunch in Brussels.’

  ‘Unless, of course, he had some inconvenient knowledge.’ The rain had stopped, and Lord Titmuss was watching a heron settle on a post and stare down into the water.

  ‘Leslie’ – Garth the candidate called his patron, friend and mentor ‘Leslie’ now – ‘I’ve been thinking about the Common Market.’

  Lord Titmuss turned, his mouth half-smiling, his eyes cold, towards his new protégé. He spoke, slowly and deliberately, as though determined to make it perfectly clear that his companion’s thoughts were no longer his own. ‘If you’ve been thinking about that,’ he said, ‘I’d strongly advise you not to. And I promise you to stop thinking about the untimely end of Slippy Johnson. So I don’t think there’s anything more to be said on either subject, do you? We’d better turn back. Mrs Ragg will have my tea ready.’

  So they left the weir, and the hero
n, seeing the shadow of a lone fish, swooped, pickaxe beak first, into the water.

  There was room enough, and to spare, on the green benches of the House of Commons when the last stages of a debate, neither sexy nor sensational, on water-metering had been reached. The Deputy Speaker called, ‘Terry Flitton!’, and the Member for Hartscombe and Worsfield South got to his feet and started a speech, unexpectedly passionate on the subject, making it clear that he took roughly the same attitude to water-metering as Savonarola did to group sex. Few were in the Chamber when he started to speak from the back-benches, and even fewer stayed until his peroration. They missed a passage such as the Deputy Speaker had never expected to hear from the Labour benches again.

  ‘What else, we may well ask, is now to be up for grabs? What happened to our birthright, the ownership of the water that falls from our skies, and the air we breathe? Is the air to be metered, privatized, sold off on the Stock Exchange, supervised by Off-Breath, which is reluctantly persuaded to allow special terms for asthmatics? Are we to have to pay, by the minute, for glimpses of the landscape, for walking on a beach or swimming in the sea? How much an hour for the sunshine which raises the plants in cottage gardens, or the wind that dries the washing on the line?’ (‘Use the launderette!’ was the cry of a Conservative before he left for a late dinner.) ‘What are the principles behind the unprincipled theft of public assets?

  ‘Shouldn’t we, Mr Deputy Speaker, go back to the beliefs which set us off on the long, bumpy road to government? I think of a shelf of books. No doubt we can remember their titles, although the books are old and dusty now. But what if we took them down again? The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, The Road to Wigan Pier, The Making of the English Working Class, News from Nowhere, The Soul of Man under Socialism. We might learn a great deal about the hopes and values which give a meaning to the chaotic and often disappointing business we call living. You can dismiss all of these books as hopeless dreaming, a search for Utopia. All I can say, Mr Deputy Speaker, is that no map is of much interest that hasn’t got Utopia on it!’

  So Terry sat down, after speaking to someone he no longer saw and who wasn’t there to listen to him. Later, in the bar, he met a solid figure in a blue suit, well-polished shoes and a long tie, who bought him a drink.

  ‘Count yourself lucky,’ Des Nabbs said, handing Terry his half of Guinness. ‘You can indulge yourself now, and no one’s going to worry. Of course, they’re not going to take much interest either. You don’t see too many ragged trousers round here, do you? By the way, Terry. I’ve never said thank you. I owe you a great debt of gratitude.’

  ‘Why, exactly?’

  ‘You must know. If it hadn’t been for you I’d never have got Home Office Minister in Charge of Prisons. There now. Drink up. You’ve achieved something!’

  ‘It’s unbelievable! There’s still 70 per cent of householders failing to separate their rubbish.’ Craig Begsby sat in S.C.R.A.P.’s Chief Executive’s office and looked at Kate, his beautiful Head of Public Relations, partner, live-in companion and significant other.

  And she, looking suitably concerned, said, ‘We’ll make it our spring campaign.’

  ‘You bet your beautiful life! Can you imagine, Kate? Bottles, tins, non-recyclable items, and paper! Even paper! The world’s forests, all bunged together in the same wheelie bin! Do they want to murder the environment?’

  ‘I suppose they don’t think.’

  ‘We’ve got to make them.’

  ‘A cover drawing, perhaps, of a forest being carted away in wheelie bins?’

  ‘That’s great, darling! A great idea.’

  When the head of S.C.R.A.P. had told Terry that they were looking for a younger man, he’d left gracefully. Craig had been head-hunted from his well-paid charity job and was still young enough to make the Board think they were moving with the times. He got up now, led Kate to a corner of the office and kissed her.

  ‘I saw it in the Guardian,’ he said. ‘Your husband made a speech in Parliament last night. It was all about Socialism!’

  ‘That’s odd, for Terry.’ Kate was puzzled. ‘I wonder what’s come over him?’

  ‘Who knows? It sounded very old-fashioned.’ Craig’s hand went to his zip, a move which Kate noticed.

  ‘Not now, darling,’ she smiled. ‘Save it till later.’

  So they returned to an emotional discussion of rubbish.

  Lord Titmuss stood at his library windows and looked out at dripping trees just coming into leaf. He was no longer a Minister of the Crown, or the Prime Minister’s closest supporter; yet he was still Lord of the Manor of Skurfield and ruler of the small kingdom of Hartscombe and Worsfield South. There he had imposed his will, organized victory and defeat and planned the long compaign which would restore the constituency to the true faith. In that restricted neighbourhood he was monarch of all he surveyed. He smiled when he thought how well things had gone and would surely go in the future. And then, in the cold damp of a late spring, he began to shiver.

  None too soon Mrs Ragg came into the room, sat him down and wrapped him, as she often did now, in a tartan rug. ‘I’ll light a fire in here,’ she promised, ‘and bring you your hot drink. Someone has to look after you.’ She left the room, walking delicately, and Titmuss was left alone, still shivering, looking, not for the first time, towards a conclusion that even he would find difficult to outmanœuvre.

  ‘They never mentioned them. Not in the particulars of the house when we bought it.’

  ‘Let me get this clear. The house is … ?’

  ‘Number 10 Marmaduke Road.’

  ‘In Hartscombe?’

  ‘That’s in Hartscombe. Yes.’

  ‘And who didn’t they mention, Mr Sibthorpe?’

  ‘Not the ghosts. They didn’t mention them.’

  ‘You’re troubled by ghosts?’ Terry looked at the small, anxious man in the anorak, who sat clutching the Daily Telegraph as though it were a holy relic guarding him against the devil.

  ‘I’ll say we’re troubled. The noises in the night. Deafening! And the sound of laughter.’

  ‘Gurgling?’ Terry asked.

  ‘Gurgling unpleasantly.’

  ‘It could be the central heating?’

  ‘I very much doubt the central heating would bring the hair straight up on Daphne and cause her to arch her back!’

  ‘Daphne is … ?’

  ‘Our old cat, that has lived in peace with us for years. Also I very much doubt if the central heating would cause our budgie to drop dead in his cage on All-Hallows’ E’en. We’ve had the vicar in.’

  ‘Oh, yes. What does the vicar say?’

  ‘He says he’s never known a case like it.’

  ‘I would advise a reliable plumber.’

  ‘Plumbers are helpless, Mr Flitton. Against the forces of darkness. Will you kindly write to see if we can be rehoused? We can’t risk another Hallowe’en. Not where we’re living.’

  ‘I’ll write to the Housing Authority.’ To Terry it seemed the quickest way of ending the conversation. ‘Of course I’ll write.’

  So that was it, Terry thought, as he came to the end of his surgery. That was his political career. A story of ghosts and drop-dead budgies.

  He was reluctant to go back to London, where there was little to tempt him. Instead he drove into the country. There were patches of blue sky as he got nearer to Hanging Wood. He heard the roar and clatter of lorries and the whine of circular saws.

  He walked across dead leaves, stepping high to avoid brambles, and he heard, far away in the shadows of the wood, the crash of a falling tree. He came to a clearing he remembered, a place he would never forget, but there was a gap, an emptiness; something of the greatest importance was missing. Where was Tom Nowt’s hut? And then he saw it: some wooden walls laid flat on the ground, rotting floor-planks stacked up and the hopelessly wounded sofa standing alone, with no protection, under the sky.

  And he also saw, in a rare shaft of sunshine
, at the top of a bank covered with leaves and fallen branches, Agnes, who had also come to look. She saw him and raised her arm. It could have been a gesture of greeting or farewell. But then she turned away.