He had phoned several of his heavy-hitters. He had persuaded Barnsbury, a latecomer, and a serious acquisition to his campaign – perhaps in the light of his wife’s illness he no longer cared for his career, or for Alan Petherbridge – and Lady Jenner, an eloquent member of the Lords as well as a distinguished physicist, to cancel their appointments and join him at Haver House. Graham Barnsbury was enthusiastic, Lady Jenner, a Liberal and no friend to Lord Haver and his ilk nevertheless agreed to come, for the sake of the campaign.
However, once at Haver House, Gott had begun to suspect something was wrong. Neither Haver nor his wife had greeted them at the door. Ushered straight into the drawing room, where Haver was sitting in his wheelchair with a plaid rug over his legs, there had been no hospitable offer of tea or coffee or, jovially, perhaps something stronger after the journey. Gott had put the case for opposing the bill to Haver as forcefully as he could, but throughout his explanations Haver had sat quite still in his wheelchair, expressionless and staring hard at him with small, angry blue eyes.
Lady Jenner, who headed the party in the House of Lords, just studied Lord Haver’s face as he said to Gott, ‘Edward, I’m gratified that you – that you’ve all – chosen to come here, that you think I can help. I’m interested in what you have to say. My difficulty is that I believe in loyalty, loyalty first and last. And however disturbing this state of affairs may be, I cannot really find it in my heart to back this attempt to unseat a Prime Minister. It would be demoralizing, to say the least, for the party at large. The overall result would probably mean a Labour victory at the next election. And, of course, now, at this juncture, loyalty is paramount.’
A few days earlier, the US Senate, after vigorous debate and by a perilously narrow majority, had agreed to back the invasion of Iraq. Critics said the Senate had lost the vote and the oil companies and the arms and aircraft manufacturers had won it. And now the pressure would be on Petherbridge to put the British forces in beside the Americans, although the country was 80 per cent against it. Haver’s pieties about loyalty and the rest were nonsense, Gott thought. Haver had reneged – he was in the business of war and had probably been promised a slice of this one. Meanwhile, he and two other busy people had cancelled their appointments to come here. Gott was furious.
Graham Barnsbury jumped in. ‘I think Edward’s made it very clear that that is not the intention. This opposition to the bill is not a political manoeuvre. There’s no intention to unseat Alan Petherbridge.’ Gott glanced at Lady Jenner’s inscrutable face and imagined she knew, as he did, that if they won the vote Petherbridge would be much undermined and would, perhaps, have to go.
‘Whatever your intentions are, that is likely to be the effect,’ Lord Haver told Barnsbury. ‘It will be divisive and dangerous. The implication of this bill being overturned is that we’re prepared to oppose our natural allies, the US, and give way to terrorists.’
‘Not at all,’ Barnsbury protested. ‘That is not the case and I do not believe it would be seen that way.’ Gott glanced again at Lady Jenner and was fairly certain she knew, as he did, that Barnsbury was labouring in vain.
His eyes drifted to the windows and over to the bare, misty trees in the distance. He reflected that, surrounded by his own 600 acres, Lord Haver had less reason than most to worry about terrorists.
Haver said, ‘I’d differ with you about that. But the important thing is that I myself feel this is a time to stand firm, with the US, whatever it takes, and to stand firm with the party which will achieve that.’
As Gott looked steadily into the small, inflamed eyes and wondered if he should relieve the struggling Barnsbury in some way, Lady Jenner heaved herself to her feet. ‘Lord Haver, it’s plain we came here under a misapprehension. I don’t propose to take up any more of your time, or my own.’
‘Thank you all, so much, for coming to me and putting the arguments,’ Haver said. ‘I do hope you won’t go ahead with your plans.’
Gott was pleased Lady Jenner had made her abrupt move. He also rose. ‘Harry,’ he said, ‘nothing you’ve said today squares with what you said to me last night. But I assume you have your reasons for changing your mind, although I would have been happier if you’d let me know earlier, and spared me the journey.’
‘My understanding was that you were coming to lobby me,’ Haver said.
‘Well, I’ll have to check the recording,’ Gott said briskly. ‘Good morning.’ And he left the room.
He waited outside the house with Lady Jenner, in dank mist. He said, ‘Frances – I apologize,’ but she said only, ‘Don’t worry, Edward. Not your fault, I’m sure.’ When Graham Barnsbury joined them he apologized again. Barnsbury had at last understood what had happened. ‘No apologies needed,’ he said briskly. ‘Harry’s always had a malicious streak, worse since his accident. Obviously, he’s made another deal.’
There was more to be said, and it would be, but for the time being they parted by common consent to salvage what was left of their day.
Gott was furious for the first fifteen minutes of his drive back to London, even more aggravated because he suspected that the fields, the village and the woods he was passing all belonged to Lord Haver. By the time he was on the motorway he calmed down and began to assess what had happened. In all probability, after ringing him, Haver had called Petherbridge and Petherbridge had promised him something – defence contracts, post-war building contracts, oil, perhaps. Or even good, old-fashioned cash. There would be a war chest of dollars somewhere to cover a contingency such as this – a direct challenge to Petherbridge, and to the US government who had paid for his election. The banker in Gott wondered who had the keys to the chest. It would be offshore, that was certain.
Gott felt offended there’d been no effort to buy him off. Petherbridge had offered him Barnsbury’s job and threatened him with Vigo’s revelations about the Kirkham affair. He’d even threatened to expose Gott’s private affairs. But there’d been no offer of hard cash, often the quickest way to a man’s heart. Perhaps Petherbridge didn’t dare to be so blatant. Perhaps he thought Gott would refuse and speak out. But if he wasn’t on the payroll, he wondered who else was? How strong were the forces against him? He already had the sick feeling of a man who has made a mistake – causing busy people to come 150 miles for nothing. He started to worry. If he lost the campaign against the vote, he’d lose his influence, his position as the party treasurer, half his life. And he would be dragging a lot of others down with him. The rebels would be demoted, discredited and deselected as soon as Petherbridge could manage it. Was his judgement – was his luck – equal to the task?
He disguised his doubts later when he answered Joshua’s phone call. ‘Sugden’s, private room, six thirty,’ he said crisply.
Sugden’s, Fox Square, London SW1. January 25th, 2016. 7.00 p.m.
William, supervising the new waitress carrying food upstairs to the Green Room, said over his shoulder to Jack Prentiss, who was, unusually, taking an active hand in the running of his restaurant, ‘They want six bottles of Bollinger.’
Jack went to the wine waiter and gave the order. He and William then walked into the restaurant and scanned the busy room.
‘All well, William?’ Jack asked.
‘We’ve got another ten dozen oysters on their way in a cab,’ William reported.
Jack nodded, unsurprised. He knew the nation’s legislators’ unappeasable appetite for oysters at times of national crisis.
‘I meant you, actually, William. You’re looking tired,’ he said.
‘Terrific,’ William answered. ‘My mother-in-law’s been in the psychiatric ward at St Mary’s for ten days. Life is sweet.’
‘Well, keep up the good work,’ said Jack vaguely. ‘Sorry to hear about your mother-in-law.’ He turned to greet two guests who had just come in. William’s buzzer went and he moved into the hall to find out from one of the two Miss Bonners – small Miss Bonner this time – what the message was from upstairs. He told a waiter to take up six bo
ttles of Evian to the Green Room and added, ‘Open a window. It must be getting warm in there.’
The 24 hours after the TV Centre bombing had been long and hard for William, though harder for Lucy, who was on duty at the hospital all night. That evening, after Joe had rung the doctor, Marie Sutcliffe had emerged from her comatose condition and instantly started crying out for Lucy, and shouting at William, ‘You’ve killed her. You shouldn’t be living here at all. Why couldn’t you bring her home? Get Lucy! Bring me Lucy!’
As Joe ineffectually tried to calm and reassure his wife, William looked up the number and started to ring the GP again, which was when Marie, suddenly realizing what he was doing, wrenched the phone from his hand. William snatched it back. ‘You silly woman,’ he shouted. ‘There’s just been a bombing – people are hurt – some of them are probably dead. Your daughter’s trying to help. Don’t be so selfish.’
Although William had only said half, or even a quarter of what he was thinking and feeling, Marie was shocked at being spoken to in this way. She burst into tears. Joe looked at William angrily, then put his arm round his wife and led her to the couch. William, grimly, got through to the GP’s office again and left a further, urgent message.
‘Don’t let them take me away. Don’t let them take me away,’ Marie implored Joe, through her tears. The phone rang and William’s mother asked if he and Lucy were all right.
‘Lucy’s gone to the hospital,’ he told her.
‘Oh, right,’ said Grace Frith.
Behind William, as he spoke, Marie’s voice came, ‘I’m all right. I don’t need a doctor.’ She began to wail. ‘I’m all right. I’m all right. Please don’t let them take me away.’
‘What’s going on?’ Grace asked.
‘Marie’s upset,’ William said. ‘I’ve called a doctor.’
‘Good,’ said Grace.
‘She’s in a bad way,’William mumbled. Tears were rolling down Marie’s face. Her mouth was slack. Her round face seemed to have lost all form, as if it had melted.
As soon as William put the phone down Joe said, ‘Do you know – I don’t think we need the doctor any more, William. Marie’s out of the fugue state – that’s the dangerous thing – why don’t I ring back and cancel him. I’ll ring Lucy and ask her—’
‘For Christ’s sake, Joe, are you mad?’ William exclaimed. ‘She’s in the middle of an emergency. There are injured people everywhere!’
The habit of keeping his wife safe from grim reality was so ingrained in Joe that he began to shake his head at William, indicating that he should watch his words.
William cried desperately, ‘Joe – I’m still worried about Lucy. You’d think she was safe enough as a nurse, in a hospital, but how do we know? There are nutters out there. Suppose they picked up one of the bombers with the other casualties. Suppose there’s someone in that hospital with a bomb strapped to them. I want to go there and grab Lucy and bring her out, if you really want to know. This is a fucking crisis, Joe, and Marie needs an injection so don’t go near the fucking phone or I won’t answer for myself.’
When the phone rang again it was Jack Prentiss. ‘William, I hate to ask you, but can you come in? There’s no sign of Paul, his phone’s not answering, and Jean-Pierre’s just called to say he’s not coming to work, the city’s too dangerous. I’ve got Sally waiting at table and I’m sous-chefing myself.’ But William refused. He was too anxious about Lucy. And he knew that if he left Joe would immediately ring and cancel the doctor’s visit. Joe did ring Lucy and William did not try to stop him. When she finally came to the phone what she said plainly disconcerted her father. He put the phone down, glanced at Marie, sobbing quietly on the sofa, at William sitting on a hard chair in the kitchen doorway as if to be as far from the scene as possible, and went back to sit with his wife.
There was complete silence for half an hour, broken only by the distant wail of emergency vehicles. Joe said, ‘Lucy says, when the doctor comes, can you ring her? She’ll get here, if she can.’
William, on his chair, found it an effort to stay awake. He’d been close to a bombing, he’d seen the injured and the dazed, his wife was at the hospital and he was stuck, impotently, in a silent flat with a madwoman and her husband who had become almost as mad as she was over the years. His mind had gone on strike.
An hour later, the doorbell rang and the doctor came in. William caught Lucy on a break and she said she had a police car lined up to bring her home. The doctor, a tired Sri Lankan, talked to Marie, who had spoken ramblingly of her childhood, her desire for the world to be a better place and her efforts to look after her husband and child as they should be looked after. ‘The world is so lovely,’ she had said. ‘The world is like heaven. And my Joe and my Lucy are like angels.’ The doctor was trying to get a history of Marie’s mental illness from Joe when Lucy came in, still in uniform, with a bloodstain down the front of her apron. To William this indicated that Lucy meant business. Ordinarily she would rather have appeared naked than shown her mother a patient’s blood on her clothes.
She took the doctor into the bedroom for a conversation. When they came out the doctor spoke to Marie, now hunched on the sofa like a punished child, ‘Mrs Sutcliffe. I think it would help you to enter a hospital for assessment, and a little rest. Your daughter agrees.’ And to William’s astonishment Marie said meekly, ‘If you and Lucy think it’s best, doctor.’
Lucy went back to her own hospital, while William and Joe took the docile Marie to St Mary’s with her bag.
The internal phone rang again at the reception desk and small Miss Bonner told the weary William, ‘Coffee, a bottle of gin, and tonic water for the Green Room.’
There were nine people squashed in the Green Room, some sitting round a table in the middle, others in easy chairs. Tired lace curtains hung at the window and, beside them but not drawn, tired green and red brocade curtains. There were lamps with cream parchment shades burning in corners of the room. A dim light filtered in from Fox Square. Joshua, leaning on the table, was reminded of having to help his mother clear out her Uncle Charlie’s house in the faded West End mews house he had lived in. Not for the first time he pondered about how comfortable the powerful of Britain appeared to be in surroundings redolent of the past – old houses, old colleges like those at Oxford and Cambridge, shabby old furniture, anything somehow linking them with the past. Beside him sat his friend, Douglas Clare, and beside Douglas at the table were two other dissident Conservative MPs, members of the awkward squad, the Usual Suspects – old Jacob Whittington and the younger, fatter Emma Pym who had the air, as someone had said, of a magistrate about to order you to be transported for twenty years to Van Diemen’s land. The other leaders of Gott’s cadre of dissidents, Jenny Appleby and Victor Treadwell, were away holding meetings. Lord Gott, Graham Barnsbury and Lady Jenner were also there. The seven politicians were, effectively, the hosts.
The guests, and the reason for the meeting, were Rod Field, editor of the country’s most-read broadsheet, and Amelia Strange, Head of BBC news. Gott, after his dark night of the soul on the road back from Berkshire, had decided not just to rally his troops at Sugden’s, but to go public. It was a risky strategy. Amelia Strange was coldly brainy and Rod Field was, it was generally held, a nasty wicked man, exceeded only in nasty wickedness by his employer, the owner of the paper, Helmut Niemeyer. But, as Gott had said, with the Prime Minister under pressure from Washington to join in the invasion of Iraq, and the British public against it, now was the time to press home the opposition to the Ministry of Defence Lands Sale Bill, which would hand the airbases over to the US government.
Gott and Barnsbury sat at the head of the table. Lady Jenner and Amelia Strange were in easy chairs, facing the table. Gott stood up, banged a fork on his glass, and, when he had silence, immediately sat down again. ‘I’ve no need to introduce most of you to Joshua Crane, a young – youngish—MP, a promising man with a big public profile and a reputation for honesty and straight speaking. Nor do I need to
say very much about Jacob Whittington and Emma Pym, nor about Jenny Appleby and Victor Treadwell, who unfortunately can’t be here tonight. They’re MPs, they’re honest, they’re attractive, they have high public profiles and they’re spearheading the opposition to the third reading of the Ministry of Defence Lands Sale Bill, scheduled, I’ve just heard, for February the eleventh. Unseemly haste – are we surprised? I can tell you we have promises of seventy votes in opposition and I think there may be more from those who don’t want to declare themselves but will in the end vote against, or at least abstain. There will be a public debate at Westminster Hall a week hence in the name of the coalition against the bill. We have, of course, the support of the Liberal Democrats. I, the distinguished Lady Jenner, the effective Graham Barnsbury and everyone else here, will answer any questions you have to put.’
‘Edward,’ said Amelia Strange, leaning forward in her chair, ‘are you sure the third reading has been scheduled?’
‘Quite sure,’ said Gott.
Rod Field, who was sitting on a hard chair beside the window, looking as if he was going to get up and go away at any moment, said, ‘The important question is what Carl Chatterton’s going to do. You have the Lib Dems, you have your well-organized dissidents, Lord Gott, but unless the Labour Party votes with you, and there’s no sign they will, all you might have done is stir up a revolt in your own party. Chaos for nothing. So what will Labour do?’
Fifty-First State Page 19
