To play the king fu-2

by Michael Dobbs

  'If you were brought up on a street where no one could afford shoes, yet now you've got a sackful of shoes but are the only family in the street without a car and a continental holiday, you feel as if you've got poorer. You look back on your childhood as the good old days, the fun of running to school in bare feet, while you resent not being able to drive to work like all the rest.' 'And the Government gets the blame.' 'Certainly. But what matters politically is how many others in the street feel the same way. Once they're locked behind their front doors, or in a polling booth come to that, their conscience about their neighbour down the street matters much less than whether their own car is the latest model. You can't feed a family or fill up a gas tank on moral conscience.'

  'I've never tried,' he mused. 'So what about the other divisions? Celtic fringe versus prosperous South. Home owners versus homeless.'

  'Bluntly, you're down to less than twenty per cent support in Scotland anyway, you don't have many seats there left to lose. And as for the homeless, it's difficult to get onto the electoral register with an address like Box Three, Row D, Cardboard City. They're not a logical priority.' 'Some would say that's a little cynical.'

  'If you want moral judgements, call a priest. 1 analyse, I don't judge. There are divisions in every society. You can't be all things to all men and it's a waste of time trying.' The nose wobbled aggressively. 'What's important is to be something to the majority, to make them believe that they, at least, are on the right side of the divide.'

  'So, right now, and over the next few weeks, which side will the majority perceive themselves to be?'

  She pondered, remembering her conversations with Landless and the taxi driver, the closed theatre. 'You're gaining a small lead in the polls, but it's finely balanced. Volatile. They don't really know you yet. The debate could go either way.'

  He was staring at her directly across the rim of his glass. 'Forget debate. Let's talk about open warfare. Could your opinion polls tell who would win such a war?'

  She leaned forward in her chair, as if to get closer to him in order to share a confidence. 'Opinion polls are like a cloudy crystal ball. They can help you look into the future, but it depends what questions you ask. And on how good a gypsy you are.' His eyes fired with appreciation.

  'I couldn't tell you who would win such a war. But I could help wage it. Opinion polls are weapons, mighty powerful weapons at times. Ask the right question at the right time, get the right answer, leak it to the press… If you plan a campaign with expertise, you can have your opponent pronounced dead before he realizes there's a war on.'

  'Tell me, O Gypsy, why is it that I don't hear this from other opinion pollsters?'

  'First, because most pollsters are concerned with what people are thinking right now, at this moment in time. What we are talking about is moving opinion from where it is now to where you want it to be in the future. That's called political leadership, and it's a rare quality.'

  He knew he was being flattered, and liked it. 'And the second reason?'

  She took a sip from her glass, recrossed her legs and took off her glasses, shaking her dark hair as she did so. 'Because I'm better than the rest.'

  He smiled in return. He liked dealing with her, both as a professional and as a woman. Downing Street could be a lonely place. He had a Cabinet full of supposedly expert Ministers whose duty it was to take most of the decisions, leaving him only to pull the strings and carry the can if the rest of them got it horribly wrong. Few Government papers came to him unless he asked for them. He was protected from the outside world by a highly professional staff, a posse of security men, mortar-proof windows and huge iron gates. And Elizabeth was always off taking those damned evening classes… He needed someone to confide in, to gather his ideas and sort them into coherent order, who had self-confidence, who didn't owe their job to him, who looked good. Who believed she was the best. 'And I suspect you are.' Their eyes enjoyed the moment.

  'So you think there will be war, Francis? Over One Nation? With the Opposition?'

  He rested back in his chair, staring into a distance, struggling to discern the future. This was no longer the energetic exchange of academic ideas, nor the intellectual masturbation of cynical old men around a Senior Common Room dining table. The horrid stench of reality clung to his nostrils. When he answered his words were slow, carefully considered. 'Not just with the Opposition. Maybe even with the King – if I let him make his speech.' He was pleased to see no trace of alarm in her eyes, only intense interest. 'War with the King…?'

  'No, no… Not if I can avoid it. I want to avoid any confrontation with the Palace, truly I do. I have enough people to fight without taking on the Royal Family and every blue-rinsed loyalist in the country. But…' He paused. 'Let us suppose. If it did come to that. I should need plenty of gypsy craft, Sally.'

  Her lips were puckered, her words equally deliberate. 'If that's what you want, remember – you only have to say please. And anything else I can help you with.'

  The gyrations of the end of her nose had become almost animalistic and, for Urquhart, exquisitely sensuous. They remained looking at each other in silence for a long moment, careful not to say a word in case either of them should destroy the magic of innuendo which both were relishing. He had only ever once – no, twice -combined tutorials with sex. He would have been drummed out had he been discovered, yet the risk was what had made it some of the best sex of his life, not only rising above the lithe bodies of his students but in the same act rising above the banality and pathetic pettiness of the university establishment. He was different, better, he had always known it, and no more clearly than on the huge overstuffed Chesterfield in his college rooms overlooking the Parks.

  The sex had also helped him rise above the memory of his considerably older brother, Alistair, who had died defending some scrappy bit of France during the Second World War. Thereafter, Urquhart had lived in his dead brother's shadow. He had not only to fulfil his own substantial potential but, in the eyes of his mourning mother, to fulfil that of the lost first-born, whom time and grief had imbued with almost mythical powers. When Francis passed exams, his mother reminded him that Alistair had been Captain of the school. Where Francis became one of the fastest-travelling dons of his age, in his mother's eyes Alistair would already have arrived. As a small boy he would climb into his mother's bed, for comfort and warmth, but all he found were silent tears trickling down her cheeks. He could remember only the feeling of rejection, of being somehow inadequate. In later life he could never completely expel from his mind his mother's look of misery and incomprehension, which seemed to haunt any bedroom he entered. While a teenager he had never taken a girl to bed, it only served to remind him that for his mother he had always been second-born and second-best. There had been girls, of course, but never in bed – on floors, in tents, standing up against the walls of a deserted country house. And, eventually, on Chesterfields, during tutorials. Like this one.

  'Thank you,' he said softly, breaking the moment and his lurid reminiscence by swirling the whisky around in his glass and downing it in a gulp. 'But I must deal with this speech.' He took a sheaf of papers from a coffee table and waved them at her. 'Head him off at the pass, or whatever it is you say.' 'Drafting speeches isn't exactly my line, Francis.'

  'But it is mine. And I shall treat it with the greatest respect. Like a surgeon. It will remain a fine and upstanding text, full of high sentiment and ringing phrases. It simply won't have any balls left when I send it back…'

  December: The Third Week

  The Detective Constable squirmed in his seat as he tried to regain some of the feeling he had lost in his lower limbs. He'd been stuck in the car for four hours, the drizzle prevented him from taking a walk around the car, and his mouth felt like a mouse nest from sucking at the cigarettes. He'd give the weed up. Again. Tomorrow, he vowed, just as he always did. Mariana. He reached for a fresh thermos of coffee and poured a cup for himself and the driver beside him.

  They sat gazing
at the small house in the exotically named Adam and Eve Mews. It stood behind one of London's most fashionable shopping thoroughfares, but the mews was well protected from the capital's bustle and stood quiet, secluded and, for onlookers, unremittingly dull.

  'Christ, I should think her Italian's perfect by now,' the driver muttered mindlessly. They had exchanged similar sentiments on all five trips to the mews over the last fortnight, and the Special Branch DC and driver found their conversation going round in circles.

  The DC broke wind in response. The tide of coffee was getting to him and he desperately wanted to take a leak. His basic training had provided instruction in how to take an unobtrusive leak beside the car while pretending to make running repairs so that he never left his vehicle and its radio, but he would get soaked in the steady drizzle. Anyway, last time he'd tried it the driver had driven off, leaving him kneeling in full flow in the middle of the bloody street. Funny bastard.

  He had been enthusiastic when they offered him a job as a Protection Officer in Downing Street. They hadn't told him it would be for Elizabeth Urquhart and her endless round of shopping, entertaining, socializing. And Italian lessons. He lit another cigarette and cracked the window to allow in some fresh air, coughing as it hit his lungs. 'Naw,' he offered in reply. 'I reckon we've got weeks of this. I bet her teacher's one of the really slow, methodical types.'

  They sat gazing at the mews house with the leafless ivy clinging to its walls, the dustbin in its neat little alcove and in the front window a miniature Christmas tree, complete with lights and decorations,?44.95 from Harrods. Inside, behind the drawn curtains, Elizabeth Urquhart was lying on a bed, naked and sweating, taking yet another slow, methodical lesson from her Italian opera star with the beautiful tenor voice.

  It was still dark when Mycroft woke, stirred by the clatter of milk bottles being deposited on doorsteps. Outside a new day was beginning, dragging him back to some semblance of reality. He was a reluctant captive. Kenny was still asleep, one toy bear from his immense collection propped precariously beside his pillow, the rest tumbled to the floor beside the Kleenex, victims of a long night's loving. Every corner of Mycroft's body ached, and still cried out for more. And somehow he would ensure he would get it, before he returned to the real world waiting beyond Kenny's front door. The last few days had been like a new life for him, getting to know Kenny, getting to know himself, becoming lost in the mysteries and rites of a world he scarcely knew. There had been times at Eton and university, of course, during those days of the hash-smoking free-for-all do-everything-screw-anything sixties, but that had proved to be a limited voyage of self-discovery which had been all too self-indulgent and lacking in direction ever to be complete. He had never fallen in love, never had the chance, his affairs had been all too brief and hedonistic. With time he might have got to know himself better, but then had come the call from the Palace, a summons which did not allow for exhaustive and, at that time, illegal sexual experimentation. And so for more than twenty years he had pretended. Pretended he didn't look at men as anything other than colleagues. Pretended that he was happy with Fiona. Pretended that he wasn't who he knew he was. It had been a necessary sacrifice but now, for the first time in his life, he had begun to be completely honest with himself, to be his own person. At last his feet had touched bottom. He was in at the deep end, not knowing whether he had been pushed by Fiona or had jumped, but it didn't matter. He was there. He knew he might drown in the depths, but it was better than drowning in corrupt respectability.

  He wished Fiona could sec him now and hoped she would be hurt, disgusted even; it was like shitting all over their marriage and everything she stood for. But she probably wouldn't give a damn. He'd found more passion in the last few days than he had experienced during the entire course of his marriage, enough to last him a lifetime perhaps, though he hoped there would be more. Much more.

  The real world was waiting for him outside and he knew he would have to return to it soon. Leave this Kenny-Come-Lately, perhaps for good. He had no illusions about his new lover, with a Teddy in every port 'and a Franky and a Miguel too', he had bragged. Once the adrenaline of initiation had worn off Mycroft doubted whether he would have the physical stamina to keep hold of a man twenty years his junior with a velvet skin and a tongue which was both inexhaustible and utterly uninhibited, but it would be fun trying. Before he returned to the real world…

  Could an incorrigible air steward with the inhibitions of a Calcuttan street dog coexist beside the duties and obligations of his other world? He wanted it to be, but he knew others would not let him, not if they knew, not if they found him here amidst the clutter of teddy bears, underpants and dirty towels. They would say he was failing the King. But if he ran away now, he would be failing himself, and wouldn't that be far worse?

  He was still confused but happy, more elated than he could remember, and he would remain that way so long as he stayed beneath this duvet and didn't venture outside that front door. Kenny was stirring now, his long-haul tan stretching all the way from the stubble on his chin to the trunk line just above his white buttocks. Damn it, let Kenny decide. He leaned over, ran his lips across Kenny's neck just where the vertebrae protruded, and started working his way down.

  ***

  As he waited, Benjamin Landless gazed at the barrel-vaulted ceiling, illuminated by six great chandeliers, where Italianate plaster cherubs with pouting cheeks chased each other through an abundance of clouds, gilded stars and spectacular plasterwork squiggles. He hadn't been to a carol service in more than thirty years and he'd never before been inside St Martin-in-the-Fields but, as he always mused, life is full of new experiences. Or at least new victims.

  She had a reputation for being late for everything except meals, and this evening was no exception. The drive was less than three miles, complete with police motorcycle escort, from Kensington Palace to the fine Hanoverian church overlooking Trafalgar Square, but presumably she would make some asinine excuse like getting stuck in the traffic. Or perhaps as a Royal Princess she no longer bothered making excuses.

  Landless did not know Her Royal Highness Princess Charlotte well. They had only met twice before, at public receptions, and he wanted to meet her more informally. He was not a man who accepted delay or excuses, particularly from the chinless and indigent son of minor nobility he paid twenty grand a year for 'consulting services' – which meant fixing private lunches or soirees with whomever he wanted to meet. Even Landless had to compromise this time, however; the Princess's Christmas schedule was so hectic as she prepared for seasonal festivities and the Austrian piste that sharing a private box at a carol service was as good as he was going to get, and even that had cost him a hefty donation to the Princess's favourite children's charity. Still, charitable donations came from a private trust set up by his accountants to mitigate his tax position and he had found that a few carefully targeted donations could bring him, if not acceptability, then at least access and invitations. And they were worth paying for, particularly for a boy from Bethnal Green.

  At last she was there; the organist struck up the strains of Handel's 'Messiah' and the clergy, choristers and acolytes processed down the aisle. As they peeled off to occupy their allotted positions, in the Royal Box above their heads Landless nodded respectfully while she smiled from beneath the broad brim of a matador's hat, and the service began. Their seating was, indeed, private, at gallery level and beneath a finely carved eighteenth-century canopy affording them a view of the choir but keeping her at some distance from most of the congregation, who in any event were largely Christmas tourists or refugees from the cold streets. She leaned across to whisper as the choir struck up their interpretation of 'O Come O Come Emmanuel'. 'I'm dying for a pee. Had to rush here straight from lunch.'

  Landless had no need to consult his watch to know that it was already past five thirty. Some lunch. He could smell stale wine on her breath. The Princess was renowned for her bluntness: putting people at their ease, as her defenders argued;
displaying her basic coarseness and congenital lack of authentic style, according to her rather greater number of detractors. She had married into the Royal Family, the daughter of an undistinguished family who counted more actuaries than aristocrats amongst their number, a fact of which the less respectful members of the press never ceased to remind their readers. Still, she had done her job, allowing her name to be used by endless charities, opening new hospital wings, cutting the ribbons, feeding the gossip columns and providing the nation with a daughter and two sons, the elder of whom would inherit the throne if some dozen of his more senior royal relatives all suddenly succumbed. 'A disaster waiting for a disaster,' as the Daily Mail had once ungraciously described her after a dinner during which she had been overheard suggesting that her son would make an excellent monarch.

  She looked at Landless quizzically. There were small, fragile creases underneath and at the corners of her slate-green eyes which became more prominent when she frowned, and the flesh at the bottom of her neck was beginning to lose its elasticity, as happened with women of her age, but she still retained much of the good looks and appeal for which the Prince had married her all those years ago, ignoring the advice of his closest friends.

  'You've not come here to write some scandalous nonsense about me, have you?' she demanded roughly.

  'There are enough journalists in the gutter taking advantage of your family without my joining in.'

  She nodded in agreement, the brim of her hat bobbing up and down in front of her face. 'Occupational hazard. But what can one do about it? You can't lock an entire family away, even a Royal one, not in this day and age. We've got to be allowed to participate like other people.'

  It was her endless refrain of complaint and justification: Let us be an ordinary family. Yet her desire to be ordinary had never stopped her embracing the paparazzi, dragging all the First Women of Fleet Street backstage behind the royal footlights to write gushing tributes, being seen eating at London's most fashionable restaurants and sedulously ensuring she received more column inches than most other members of the Royal Family, including her husband. With each passing year her desire not to fade from the spotlight had grown more apparent. It was part of being a modern Monarchy, she had contended, not getting oneself cut off, being able to join in. It was an argument borrowed from the King before he ascended the throne, but it was one she had never understood. He had been seeking to find a concrete but constitutional role for the heir, while she saw it in terms of being able to find some form of personal fulfilment and excitement to take the place of a family life which had largely ceased to exist.