First Among Equals

by Jeffrey Archer

  “I’ll bet.”

  “You’ve just taken against him, Elizabeth.”

  “I’m against anything that might in the long term harm your career, Simon. Struggle on but never sacrifice your integrity, as you’re so fond of reminding the people of Coventry.”

  On Friday morning, two weeks later, Andrew and Louise set out for London airport with one suitcase between them. As Andrew locked the front door the phone rang.

  “No one’s in,” he shouted at the doorknob, “but we’ll be back on Monday.”

  He had booked a suite at the Colombe d’Or nestled in the hills of St. Paul in the south of France. He was determined to prize Louise away from London and see she had some sun and rest.

  The famous old hotel was everything the brochure had promised. On the walls hung paintings by Picasso, Monet, Manet, Utrillo—all of which the patroness, Madame Reux, had accepted many years before in place of payment from artists who needed lodging and a square meal. On the way up the winding staircase Louise was nearly knocked out by a Calder mobile and a Courbet hung above the bed in their room. But it was the bed itself, a sixteenth-century four-poster, that they both coveted. They were soon to discover it possessed a mattress so comfortable that visitors always overslept.

  The food was memorable and they walked through the green hills each day to be sure they could tackle another full dinner at night. Three days of no radio, no television, no papers, and no telephone ensured that by Monday morning they were ready to face London. They swore they would return again soon.

  Once their plane had landed at Heathrow they were made aware that the holiday was over. Twenty minutes passed before someone pushed the waiting steps up to the Vanguard’s door. Then a crowded bus to the terminal that seemed miles away was followed by a route-march to customs. Despite their first-class tickets their bags were among the last off. By the time the taxi had crawled through the morning rush hour to their front door in Cheyne Walk all Louise could say was, “I need another holiday.” As Andrew put his latch key in the door the telephone started ringing.

  “I hope they haven’t been trying all weekend,” Louise said.

  Andrew put the phone to his ear as it went dead.

  “Just missed whoever it was,” said Andrew, picking up several brown envelopes from the floor. “France already seems about a week ago.” He kissed his wife. “Must get changed and be off to the House,” he said, checking his watch.

  “How has the nation managed to survive without you?” mocked Louise.

  When the phone rang again Andrew was just stepping out of the bath.

  “Can you take it, Louise?” he shouted. A moment later he heard her rushing up the stairs.

  “Andrew, it’s the Prime Minister’s office.”

  He ran dripping and naked to the bedroom phone and picked up the extension.

  “Andrew Fraser,” he said.

  “This is No. 10,” said an official-sounding voice, “the Prime Minister has been wanting to contact you since Friday morning.”

  “I’m sorry, I took my wife to Provence for the weekend.”

  “Really, sir?” said the voice, not sounding at all interested. “May I tell the Prime Minister you are now free to speak to him?”

  “Of course,” said Andrew, frowning at his nude reflection in the mirror. He must have put on half a stone; it would have to be four games of squash this week and no more wine at lunch.

  “Andrew.”

  “Good morning, Prime Minister.”

  “Sad news about Hugh McKenzie.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Andrew, automatically.

  “They warned me about his heart before the last election but he insisted he wanted to carry on. I’ve asked Bruce to be the new Secretary of State and Angus to take his place as minister. They both want you to be the new Under-Secretary—how do you feel about it?”

  “I’d be delighted, Prime Minister,” Andrew stammered, trying to take in the news.

  “Good. And by the way, Andrew, when you open your first red box you won’t find any tickets for Colombe d’Or, so I do hope Louise is fully recovered.” The phone clicked.

  They had tracked him down, but the Prime Minister had left him in peace.

  The first official function Andrew Fraser attended as Her Majesty’s Under-Secretary of State at the Scottish Office was Hugh McKenzie’s funeral.

  “Think about it, Simon,” said Ronnie, as they reached the boardroom door. “Two thousand pounds a year may be helpful but if you take shares in my property company it would give you a chance to make some capital.”

  “What did you have in mind?” asked Simon, doing up the middle button of his blazer and trying not to sound too excited.

  “Well, you’ve proved damned useful to me. Some of those people who you bring to lunch wouldn’t have allowed me past their front doors. I’d let you buy in cheap … you could get hold of 50,000 shares at one pound so when we go public you’ll make a killing.”

  “Raising £50,000 won’t be that easy, Ronnie.”

  “When your bank manager has checked over my books he’ll be only too happy to lend you the money, you see.”

  After the Midland Bank had studied the authorized accounts of Nethercote and Company and the area manager had interviewed Simon, they agreed to his request, on the condition that Simon lodge the shares with the bank.

  How wrong Elizabeth was proving to be, Simon thought, and when Nethercote and Company went on to double their profits for the year he brought home a copy of the annual report for his wife to study.

  “Looks good,” she had to admit. “But that still doesn’t mean I have to trust Ronnie Nethercote.”

  When Charles Seymour’s drink-driving charge came up in front of the Reading Bench he listed himself as C. G. Seymour—no mention of MP. Under profession he entered “Banker.”

  He came sixth in the list that morning, and on behalf of his absent client lan Kimmins apologized to the Reading magistrates and assured them it would not happen again. Charles received a fifty-pound fine and was banned from driving for six months. The whole case was over in four minutes.

  When Charles was told the news by telephone later that day he was appreciative of Kimmins’s sensible advice and felt he had escaped lightly. He couldn’t help remembering how many column inches George Brown, the Labour Foreign Secretary, had endured after a similar incident outside the Hilton Hotel.

  Fiona kept her own counsel.

  At the time Fleet Street was in the middle of “the silly season,” that period in the summer when the press are desperate for news. There had only been one cub reporter in the court when Charles’s case came up, and even he was surprised by the interest the nationals took in his little scoop. The pictures of Charles taken so discreetly outside the Seymours’ country home were now glaring from the pages the following morning. Headlines ranged from “Six months’ ban for drink-drive son of earl” to “MP’s Ascot binge ends in heavy fine.” Even The Times mentioned the case on its home news page.

  By lunchtime the same day every Fleet Street newspaper had tried to contact Charles—and so had the Chief Whip. When he did track Charles down his advice was short and to the point. A junior Shadow minister can survive that sort of publicity once, not twice.

  “Whatever you do, don’t drive a car during the next six months and don’t ever drink and drive again.”

  Charles concurred, and after a quiet weekend hoped he had heard the last of the case. Then he caught the headline on the front page of the Sussex Gazette, “Member faces no confidence motion”: Mrs. Blenkinsop, the chairman of the Ladies’ Luncheon Club, was proposing the motion—not for the drunken driving but for deliberately misleading her about why he had been unable to fulfill a speaking engagement at their annual luncheon.

  Raymond had become so used to receiving files marked “Strictly Private,” “Top Secret,” or even “For Your Eyes Only” in his position as a Government Under-Secretary that he didn’t give a second thought to a letter marked “Confidential and
Personal” even though it was written in a scrawled hand. He opened it while Joyce was boiling his eggs.

  “Four minutes and forty-five seconds, just the way you like them,” she said as she returned from the kitchen and placed two eggs in front of him. “Are you all right, dear? You’re white as a sheet.”

  Raymond recovered quickly, pushing the letter into a pocket before checking his watch. “Haven’t the time for the other egg,” he said. “I’m already late for Cabinet committee, I must dash.”

  Strange, thought Joyce, as her husband hurried to the door. Cabinet committees didn’t usually meet until ten and he hadn’t even cracked open his first egg. She sat down and slowly ate her husband’s breakfast, wondering why he had left all his post behind.

  Once he was in the back of his official car Raymond read the letter again. It didn’t take long.

  Dear “Malcolm,”

  I enjoid our little get together the other evening and five hundrud pounds would help me to forget it once and for all.

  Love, Mandy.

  PS. I’ll be in touch again soon.

  He read the letter once more and tried to compose his thoughts. There was no address on the top of the notebook paper. Neither letter nor envelope gave any clue as to where they had come from.

  After he had arrived outside the Department of Employment Raymond remained in the back seat for several moments.

  “Are you feeling all right, sir?” his driver asked.

  “Fine, thank you,” he replied, and jumped out of the car and ran all the way up to his office. As he passed his secretary’s desk he barked at her, “No interruptions.”

  “You won’t forget Cabinet committee at ten o’clock, will you, Minister?”

  “No,” replied Raymond sharply and slammed his office door. Once at his desk he tried to calm himself and recall what he would have done had he been approached by a client as a barrister at the bar: first instruct a good solicitor. Raymond considered the two most capable lawyers in England to be Arnold Goodman and Sir Roger Pelham. Goodman was getting too high a profile for Raymond’s liking whereas Pelham was just as sound but virtually unknown to the general public. He called Pelham’s office and made an appointment to see him that afternoon.

  Raymond hardly spoke in Cabinet committee, but as most of his colleagues wanted to express their own views nobody noticed. As soon as the meeting was over Raymond hurried out and took a taxi to High Holborn.

  Sir Roger Pelham rose from behind his large Victorian desk to greet the junior minister.

  “I know you’re a busy man, Gould,” Pelham said as he fell back into his black leather chair, “so I shan’t waste your time. Tell me what I can do for you.”

  “It was kind of you to see me at such short notice,” Raymond began and without further word handed the letter over.

  “Thank you,” the solicitor said courteously and, pushing his half-moon spectacles higher up his nose he read the note three times before he made any comment.

  “Blackmail is something we all detest,” he began, “but it will be necessary for you to tell me the whole truth, and don’t miss out any details. Please remember I am on your side. You’ll recall only too well from your days at the bar what a disadvantage one labors under when one is in possession of only half the facts.”

  The tips of Pelham’s fingers touched, forming a small roof in front of his nose as he listened intently to Raymond’s account of what had happened that night.

  “Could anyone else have seen you?” was Pelham’s first question.

  Raymond thought back and then nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I’m afraid there was another girl who passed me on the stairs.”

  Pelham read the letter once more. “My immediate advice,” he said, looking Raymond in the eye and speaking slowly and deliberately, “and you won’t like it, is to do nothing.”

  “But what do I say if she contacts the press?”

  “She will probably get in touch with someone from Fleet Street anyway, even if you pay the £500, or however many other £500s you can afford. Don’t imagine you’re the first minister to be blackmailed, Mr. Could. Every homosexual in the House lives in daily fear of it. It’s a game of hide and seek. Very few people other than saints have nothing to bide, and the problem with public life is that a lot of busybodies want to seek.” Raymond remained silent, trying not to show his anxiety. “Phone me on my private line immediately after the next letter arrives,” said Pelham, scribbling a number on a piece of paper.

  “Thank you,” said Raymond, at least relieved that his secret was now shared with someone else. Pelham rose from behind his desk and accompanied Raymond to the door. “You’ll be glad to see Yorkshire back as county champions,” said the solicitor as he walked down the long passage with the minister. Raymond did not reply. When they reached the outer door they shook hands formally. “I’ll wait to hear from you,” said Pelham. A pity that the man showed no interest in cricket.

  Raymond left the solicitor’s office feeling better, but he found it hard to concentrate on his work the rest of that day and slept only in fits and starts during the night. When he read the morning papers he was horrified to see how much space was being given to Charles Seymour’s peccadillo. What a field day they would be able to have with him. When the post came, he searched anxiously for the scrawled handwriting. It was hidden under an American Express circular. He tore it open. The same hand was this time demanding that the £500 should be deposited at a newsagent in Pimlico. Sir Roger Pelham saw the minister one hour later.

  Despite the renewed demand the solicitor’s advice remained the same.

  Andrew Fraser never stopped moving from one city to another because the Scottish Office had to show a presence in Edinburgh and Glasgow as well as in London. Louise did not complain; she had never seen her husband so happy. The only moment of light relief during his first three months as a minister came when Andrew found it necessary to send a letter to his father addressed, “Dear Sir Duncan,” which went on to explain why he had to reject his offered advice on a Highlands and Islands Board project. Andrew was particularly pleased with the line, “I have for some considerable time listened to both sides of the argument.”

  Once he had settled in his favorite chair that night with a large whisky in his hand Louise told him she was pregnant again. “When did I find the time?” he asked, taking her in his arms.

  “Maybe the half-hour between your meeting with the Norwegian Fishing Minister and the address to the Oil Conference in Aberdeen?”

  When the AGM of the Sussex Downs Conservative Association came round in October Charles was pleased to learn that Mrs. Blenkinsop’s “no confidence” motion had been withdrawn. The local press tried to build up the story but the nationals were full of the Aberfan coal-tip disaster, in which 116 schoolchildren had lost their lives. No editor could find space for Sussex Downs.

  Charles delivered a thoughtful speech to his association which was well received. During question time he was relieved to find no embarrassing questions directed at him.

  When the Seymours finally said good night, Charles took the chairman to one side and inquired: “How did you manage it?”

  “I explained to Mrs. Blenkinsop,” replied the chairman, “that if her motion of no confidence was discussed at the AGM it would be awfully hard for the member to back my recommendation that she should receive an OBE in the New Year’s Honors for service to the party. That shouldn’t be too hard for you to pull off, should it, Charles?”

  Every time the phone rang Raymond assumed it would be the press asking him if he knew someone called Mandy. Often it was a journalist, but all that was needed was a quotable remark on the latest unemployment figures, or a statement of where the minister stood on devaluation of the pound.

  It was Mike Molloy, a reporter from the Daily Mirror, who was the first to ask Raymond what he had to say about a statement phoned in to his office by a girl with a West Indian accent called Mandy Page.

  “I have nothing to say on the
subject. Please speak to my solicitor, Sir Roger Pelham,” was the Under-Secretary’s succinct reply. The moment he put the phone down he felt queasy.

  A few minutes later when the phone rang again Raymond still hadn’t moved. He picked up the receiver, his hand still shaking. Pelham confirmed that Molloy had been in touch with him.

  “I presume you made no comment,” said Raymond.

  “On the contrary,” replied Pelham. “I told him the truth.”

  “What?” exploded Raymond.

  “Be thankful she hit on a fair journalist because I expect he’ll let this one go. Fleet Street are not quite the bunch of shits everyone imagines them to be,” Pelham said uncharacteristically, and added, “they also detest two things, bent policemen and blackmailers. I don’t think you’ll see anything in the press tomorrow.”

  Sir Roger Pelham was wrong.

  Raymond was standing outside his local newsagent the next morning when it opened at five-thirty and he surprised the proprietor by asking for a copy of the Daily Mirror. Raymond Gould was plastered all over page five saying, “Devaluation is not a course I can support while the unemployment figures remain so high.” The photograph by the side of the article was unusually flattering.

  Simon Kerslake read a more detailed account of what the minister had said on devaluation in The Times, and noted Raymond Gould’s firm stand against what was beginning to look like inevitable Government policy.

  Simon looked up from his paper and started to consider a ploy that might trap Gould. If he could make the minister commit himself again and again on devaluation in front of the whole House he knew that when the inevitable happened Gould would be left with no choice but to resign. Simon penciled a question on the top of the paper before returning to the political columns.

  The devaluation news had caused a Tory lead in the opinion polls of eight percent, and despite a majority of ninety-five in the Commons the Government had actually lost a vote on the floor of the House the previous day. Nevertheless, Simon still could not envisage a general election for at least another two years.