by Lewis Orde
The League’s campaign, however, had one noticeable side product. A dozen Conservatives — incumbent Members of Parliament defending their seats, and challengers in constituencies held by Labour — began to voice the need for far stricter immigration controls. Leading them were Edwin Johnson and Daniel Cooper, the two MPs Katherine had met at John Saxon’s home on the night of Jeffrey Dillard’s party.
The instant Katherine read the report, she telephoned John Saxon. “Are your friends cut from the same cloth as Alan Venables and his gang of hatemongers?”
“Most certainly not. They’re stealing a little of the League’s thunder, that’s all, and they’re doing it for a very good reason. If you look at the constituencies involved, you’ll find the League is very active there. By promising to fight for a tougher immigration law — which we do need — these Conservatives may win votes which might otherwise go to the League.”
Katherine nodded in understanding. Margaret Thatcher herself had raised a huge outcry a year earlier when, during a television news program, she had stated that many Britons were afraid of being swamped by people with a different culture, and it was the duty of the government to hold out the clear prospect of an end to immigration. “We are not in politics to ignore people’s worries,” Katherine recalled the Conservative leader saying. “We are in politics to deal with them.” Margaret Thatcher made a strict immigration policy mean one thing, while Alan Venables twisted it into something else entirely.
The election took place on the first Thursday in May. That night’s “Fightback” was pre-empted by an election special. Katherine was free, so she took Henry and Joanne, who had no school that day, into town for lunch with their grandfather.
“Did you vote?” Roland asked his daughter.
“It was the very first thing I did.”
“Would it be presumptuous to ask how you voted?”
“Conservative. I agreed with the Eagle’s endorsement of Maggie Thatcher.” She watched her father’s face light up before adding, “I would have voted for her anyway, because I’m sick and tired of the mess you men have made of this country.”
Katherine returned to Frognal, ready for an evening of election fever — an evening of watching television, instead of appearing in it. The prospect was dashed even before the first results were in. She heard the telephone ring. Moments later, Edna Griffiths stuck her head around the drawing room door.
“Mrs. Kassler, there’s a woman wants to speak to you.”
“Who is it?”
“She wouldn’t leave a name.”
Annoyed, Katherine said, “Tell her that I don’t speak to people who refuse to identify themselves.”
“She said it was urgent, Mrs. Kassler. Concerning that story on the Eagle’s diary page about Mr. Dillard’s party. And you and Mr. Saxon.”
Katherine lifted the extension in the drawing room. “This is Katherine Kassler. May I help you?”
A high, clipped voice rapped out an order. “Meet me at the Spaniards in half an hour, Mrs. Kassler. I have some information in which you’ll be interested.”
“The only information I want from you is your name.”
“Chalfont. Deidre Chalfont.”
“Am I supposed to know you?”
“My name wasn’t always Chalfont. It used to be Saxon. Deidre Saxon. Be at the Spaniards in thirty minutes. My information is very important.”
*
The Spaniards was a three-hundred-year-old public house situated on the edge of Hampstead Heath. Even on election night it was busy, catering to its usual mixture of young and old, artist and professional, local and tourist. Katherine sat at a table tucked away in a corner, and wondered about the important information the former Mrs. John Saxon claimed to have.
Never mind the information — what would Saxon’s ex-wife be like? Family-minded, Katherine decided. Had not Saxon himself admitted the marriage had failed because he’d given more time to his business than to his wife? The Saxons had been divorced for nine years. Deidre had most certainly married again. She probably had a handful of children, which was undoubtedly what she wanted out of life. Katherine resolved to look out for a middle-aged woman sensibly dressed in flat shoes and a tweedy skirt; the terse voice of command must come from continually telling the children to behave themselves.
“Good evening, Mrs. Kassler.” The voice was just as curt in person as it had been over the telephone. “Thank you for seeing me at such short notice.”
Katherine looked around for the sensibly attired middle-aged mother. Instead, she saw a slim brunette in her late thirties, stylishly dressed in a rust-and-black houndstooth jacket and a tight black leather skirt. Wavy hair softened a face that drew hardness from a square chin.
“Mrs. Chalfont?” Katherine asked.
“It’s Miss Chalfont. I reverted to my single name when I got divorced.”
“Excuse me. I just assumed you’d remarried.”
“After John? Nothing could take his place, darling, or hasn’t he told you that yet? It must have been quite a shock when I telephoned you just now.”
“It was.” Katherine watched Deidre sit down and cross her legs. “What is the important information?”
“We’ll get to it.” The two women eyed each other like boxers before the fight begins. “You’re not the type of woman I thought John would get involved with,” Deidre said at last.
“Then we’re even. You’re not exactly what I was expecting, either. I was looking for the mousy married kind.”
“Sorry to disappoint you. I’ve seen your show several times, and I knew that Jeffrey Dillard was a friend of John’s, but it never occurred to me that you and John might have something going with each other. At least, not until I saw that little diary piece in the Eagle. Tell me something — does my husband still use William Brown for his dirty little jobs?”
“You mean his chauffeur?”
“If you want to give him a title, fine. Why don’t you ask John one day how he came to employ William? I’m sure you’ll find the story quite fascinating.”
Katherine glanced meaningfully at her Patek Philippe, and Deidre asked, “Are you in love with John?”
“Is it any of your business?”
Deidre nodded. “I have to know because of the information. It will only be relevant to a woman who feels quite deeply for John. Do you love him?”
“A little.” Katherine wished the woman would get to the reason for this unusual meeting. Simultaneously, she could not deny that she was curious about Deidre Chalfont. “You were married to John for six years, weren’t you?”
“I’m glad to see he told you about me. I was twenty-two when I met him. He was twenty-six, and already doing very well for himself. I worked as his secretary; can you believe that? It was every secretary’s dream, falling in love with the bright and handsome young boss, and having him return the feeling. Only if I’d had any brains then, I would have seen that he already had three loves. Business. Himself. And his country. After six years of marriage, being a poor fourth finally got on my nerves. I told him I wanted a divorce. To be fair to the man, he treated me very well; you could never fault him for his generosity. He made a large settlement on me. A house, plenty of money. I used that to open my own secretarial agency.” She looked past Katherine for a moment, as though daydreaming. “Poor dear, he’s so wrapped up in himself that I sometimes wonder if he even knows I’m not there anymore . . . if he even understands I’m gone.”
“Miss Chalfont, I left two children in bed, and a television screen full of election news to come here and meet you. You claimed you had some very important information for me.”
“Yes, I do. I made a vow right after the divorce that if I ever heard about John remarrying —”
“I am not marrying him.”
“Let me finish, darling,” Deidre said with a wintry smile. “If I ever heard of him remarrying, or even being involved with someone, I’d make it my business to impart this information to the woman in question.”
“Certainly. What I have to tell you is that John Saxon is the biggest bastard ever to walk this earth. I’d advise you to bear that in mind.”
*
Deidre Chalfont’s opinion of her ex-husband formed Katherine’s final thought before she drifted off to sleep that night. What was behind it? Bitterness over a failed marriage? Jealousy that Saxon might have found happiness, while Deidre had not? Or was it something else entirely? Was Deidre just trying to help another woman avoid a trap into which she had once fallen? No, Katherine told herself, it couldn’t be that. If John Saxon was even a tenth as bad as Deidre had tried to paint him with that single damning sentence, Katherine would have spotted some clue long ago. It had to be bitterness or jealousy. Or maybe both.
Excitement greeted Katherine when she came downstairs the next morning. In the breakfast room, a radio blared out late election results. Edna tried to serve breakfast to the children and listen at the same time. On the table was the Daily Eagle, its front page covered by one enormous headline: “Maggie Wins!”
“A majority of more than forty seats, Mrs. Kassler,” said Edna. “That’s what the experts are predicting. Tea will be up in a moment.”
“Thank you.” Katherine opened the paper in the middle, where polling results available at press time were listed. Both of Saxon’s friends, Edwin Johnson and Daniel Cooper, had been re-elected with substantially increased majorities. After years of drifting slowly to the left, the country had shifted sharply to the right.
“Bet you wish you were still on the newspaper, Mrs. Kassler,” Edna said. Her face was one gigantic smile, and Katherine guessed that the housekeeper had voted for Margaret Thatcher. Phillips, too. It was some reflection on society when working people, whose traditional loyalty was supposed to be to Labour, turned around and voted Conservative.
“I do indeed, Edna. There’s nowhere like Fleet Street when election results start pouring in. Especially if the paper you work for has picked the winner.” Sentiment tugged and Katherine decided to pop into the Eagle after meeting with Jeffrey Dillard that morning to discuss the next “Fightback.”
Dillard was in an expansive mood. He greeted Katherine by grasping her shoulders and kissing her on the cheek. “Did it, didn’t we? Lunch is on me.”
John Saxon called the “Fightback” offices within ten minutes of Katherine’s arrival. She had never heard him so animated. He rambled on excitedly about “a large enough working majority for the government to push through the reforms that are necessary to turn this country around.” He finished by asking, “How about a celebration lunch?”
“You’re ten minutes too late. Jeffrey asked first.”
Katherine finished by having lunch with both men. Even then, she felt like an outsider. They were both so busy talking about the election that they barely noticed her presence at the table. As the first course was cleared, she decided to interject herself into the discussion.
“I see your friends were re-elected with larger majorities. Edwin Johnson and Daniel Cooper. Their theft of British Patriotic League thunder must have paid handsome dividends.”
“Just as I told you it would,” Saxon responded. “The League didn’t win a single seat, did it?”
“Thank God for that.” Before she could think of some way to keep their attention, Saxon and Dillard were talking between themselves again. Katherine caught a few phrases — “stronger national defense; more private enterprise and a corresponding reduction in government ownership of industry; legislation against union picketing” — and then she tuned herself out.
Only when lunch was over and Saxon had gone did Katherine realize that she had neglected to tell him about meeting Deidre. Then again, did she really need to annoy him? Perhaps it was best to let sleeping dogs lie by not mentioning his ex-wife’s sudden appearance.
From the restaurant, Katherine went to the Eagle building. The Daily Eagle’s news staff was still working at fever pitch. Lawrie Stimkin had reporters and photographers outside Buckingham Palace, where Margaret Thatcher would go to be requested by the Queen, following established ritual, to form a government. More Eagle reporters were among the international press legion jammed into Downing Street, where the new prime minister would be driven from the Palace, to take up her official residence at Number Ten.
Katherine stopped by Erica Bentley’s office. The women’s page editor was sitting at her typewriter, fingers poised like talons above the keys. “Let me guess; you’re writing an open letter advising Margaret Thatcher on the way she should dress now that she’s PM,” Katherine said.
“Wrong. I’m writing a column on what women expect from a woman prime minister. What are you doing here?”
“Slumming.”
“If you’re not careful, I’ll find you some work.”
“I’d love to help, Erica. But working on something as mundane as a daily newspaper might harm my television career.”
Erica ripped the paper from the typewriter, rolled it into a ball, and threw it at Katherine. “Remember, kid, if it weren’t for me, half the television viewers in this country would think you only had one change of clothes.”
As Katherine walked back toward the elevator, she heard her name being called. Lawrie Stimkin stood in the doorway of his glass-walled office. “Want an assignment?”
“I just turned one down from Erica.”
“I think you’ll like this one.” The news editor handed Katherine a press release. At the top was a familiar triangular logo: a flaming sword against the Cross of St. George. “The British Patriotic League’s holding a press conference at six o’clock tonight. They want to complain that our electoral system is grossly unfair. In some constituencies, where unemployment’s high, and racial harmony’s bad, they got upwards of ten percent of the vote. They think that entitles them to more than just saving their deposit.”
The figure shocked Katherine. In that morning’s paper, she had paid heed only to the major parties. She hadn’t bothered to check the also-rans. “Ten percent? Where was this?”
“Distressed areas. Parts of Birmingham and Liverpool where a regular wage envelope is as rare as a twenty-year-old virgin. Couple of racially mixed places in London as well, where the whites don’t appreciate having to learn Urdu to be able to enjoy a film at their local picture house,” Stimkin added dryly.
Katherine felt the day’s excitement drain from her body. “You’re not sending anyone to this press conference, are you?”
“I’ve got no one to spare. That’s why I asked you.”
“Forget it. Let them tell their lies to empty walls.”
She drove home quite depressed. So what if John Saxon’s friends, and some of their Conservative colleagues, had stolen League thunder in their bids for votes?
The League, it appeared, had plenty of thunder to spare.
*
Roland Eagles thought so, too. Like Katherine, he had been fooled by the strength of the British Patriotic League. He had fully expected the League to be wiped out in the election, with every one of its candidates losing the financial deposit of one hundred and fifty pounds that was required for the privilege of running. Roland had always been realistic enough to understand that bigots abounded in Britain, the same as they did in every country, but he had never dreamed that they would proudly demonstrate that bigotry by voting so heavily for the League. If it was an omen of things to come, it was a singularly grim omen.
Since Katherine’s departure from the Eagle, much of the sting had gone out of the campaign against the League. A feeling existed that it was best to treat the League the way the rest of Fleet Street treated it: ignore it, and hope it died on its own.
The election results destroyed that apathy. Roland summoned to the boardroom on the executive floor the three people he considered most important to the editorial side of the Daily Eagle: Sally Roberts, Gerald Waller, and Lawrie Stimkin.
&nbs
p; “In the excitement of the election, we have overlooked some very important points. The British Patriotic League, with candidates running in areas where research dictated they would do well, has achieved what no other extremist group has ever managed to do in this country. It has capitalized on fear and distrust to gather a respectable number of votes. I know we did not cover the League’s postelection press conference —”
“We were very thin on the ground,” Stimkin said quickly.
“I’m not blaming anyone, Mr. Stimkin. I was just about to say that during the conference, their propaganda man . . . what’s his name, now?”
“Burns,” Stimkin responded. “Trevor Burns. He’s worked on one or two papers in the Street during his time, but I would imagine the union’s pulled his card by now.”
“Burns, thank you. According to reports I saw of the conference, this Burns character claimed that it would be a major mistake for anyone to regard the League as some toothless dog. I agree with him. Any extremist party that can poll ten percent in certain constituencies, needs to be taken very seriously.”
Roland looked from Waller to Sally, and then to Stimkin. “The British Patriotic League has money. It purchased Patriot House in Whitechapel for cash. The same with those buildings in Birmingham, Manchester, and Leicester. The League had to lay out fifteen thousand pounds to run one hundred candidates in this election. Some of the deposits were saved because League candidates polled enough votes, but many were lost. Advertising space was bought for the election. Then there’s the publication of Patriot, which is not some cheap mimeographed sheet. Everywhere you look, large sums of money are being spent. I want us to learn where the money is coming from. I don’t, for an instant, believe sums like this could be raised from membership dues. The League is being financed. I want to know who stands to gain from any League successes.”
“You sound like you’re declaring total war on the British Patriotic League,” Sally remarked.
“That’s exactly what I am doing,” Roland replied. “I am declaring war on these despicable swine. Which means that Eagle Newspapers is declaring war. I think that’s the very least we can do to honor the memory of Archie Waters and his grandson.”
