creased burgundy slacks, a beautifully cut suede jacket and a white shirt so bright it made you blink.
He said, ‘Hello, Mr Gidman, sir. You’re looking well.’
‘Hello, Dean. And you look like you’ve got something really special lined up.’
Dean grinned. He and Dave the Third had identified a common interest in the pursuit of love. He said, ‘Yes, sir. Another hour and I’m off duty, then I’m driving out to Romford to pick up this new gal I met last week, real looker, training to be a hairdresser. We’re heading up West, got a table booked for a nice meal, do a club, then it’s all in the lap of the gods.’
‘The only thing in the lap of the gods is a divine dong,’ said Gidman, smiling. ‘Sounds like yours is ready for action.’
‘Hello there, young Davey!’
He looked round to see another much older black man who suddenly flung a left hook at him which he only just managed to fend off with his right forearm.
‘Nearly got you! You come down the gym after you done your homework, we’ll soon sharpen you up.’
‘I’ll look forward to that, Sling,’ said Gidman.
Milton Slingsby had been part of his life since childhood. As well as the boxing, Sling had always been on hand to play cricket and football with, to drive him to school, to pick him up when he’d been out with his friends in the evening. The precise role he played in Goldie’s affairs had never been quite clear to Dave. He’d heard him described at various times as driver, handyman, even personal trainer. Nowadays he was never far away from Goldie who, if asked, would probably say, ‘He’s my old friend.’ If pressed to explain exactly what he did, Dave had heard his father reply, ‘Any damn thing I ask him to,’ with a laugh to signal a joke, though Dave wasn’t certain he was joking.
Just how much Sling’s treatment of Dave as a schoolboy was a joke and how much down to his mild dementia, Gidman hadn’t worked out. Certainly his mental condition would have been a lot worse if it hadn’t been for Goldie. ‘Your pappy bought my contract,’ Sling often told Dave. ‘And he say to me, “From now on in, no more boxing rings. From now on you fight only for me.”’
By one of the little jokes that time likes to play on its subjects, as Sling’s brain paid the penalty for those early rattlings, his body aged in quite a different way. No flat-nosed, cauliflower-eared, punch-drunk pugilist this; long and lean, with silver-grey hair and an academic stoop, he could have been a retired professor whose occasional abstractions were the mark of a mind voyaging through strange seas of thought alone.
‘Where’s Pappy, Sling?’ asked Dave as he moved into the house.
‘Upstairs with Jimi. You home for the holidays now, young Dave?’
‘That’s right, Sling. Home for the holidays. I wish,’ said Gidman. ‘Dean, have a great night!’
The young man gave him a thumbs-up and went back into the security control room. It sometimes bothered Dave that Sling and Dean were all the household staff there were, but his mother was adamant she didn’t want help cluttering up the place. Goldie acknowledged his wife’s domestic authority with a meekness that would have amazed those who knew him only through business. Couldn’t hire a better cook, he’d say. Which makes it all the worse she got me on a lunchtime diet!
As for security, Dave Gidman knew the alarm system was state of the art.
He ran up the stairs to a darkened first-floor room set up as a home cinema. Here he found his father watching a video of Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock. It was a taste they didn’t share. Another was the pungent Havana cigars which Flo had decreed could only be smoked in this one room.
Goldie didn’t take his eyes off the screen where the great rocker was deep into ‘Message to Love’, but raised his right hand in the imperious gesture which those around him had learned meant stand still, don’t speak, I’ll get round to you when I’m ready.
A wave of resentment surged up in his son. One thing to be seen as a school kid by Sling’s defocused gaze, quite another to be fossilized in that role by his father.
Out in the world he was the golden boy, expecting and receiving deference, even from those who disliked him. Why make an enemy of a man who was the hottest long-term bet for Downing Street in the last fifty years?
It was only those most intimately linked to his political career who refused to defer. Like Cameron and his attendant clones. And Maggie bloody Pinchbeck, who tried to control him like a performing dog. At least he could sack her. Maybe.
But his father was the worst offender. Sometimes the appellation David Gidman the Third sounded more pecking order than genealogy. OK, he couldn’t sack Goldie, but maybe it was time he understood that the wide and glittering world of political power into which he’d launched his son didn’t end at his mansion gates.
He picked up the remote and stopped Hendrix in mid-syllable.
‘OK, Pappy,’ he said, already appalled at his own boldness. ‘I need to know what the fuck’s going on.’
Goldie Gidman turned his head and regarded his son blankly. Inside he wasn’t displeased at this show of spirit. Life had given him only two things he wouldn’t ruthlessly discard in the interests of his own comfort and security. One was Flo, his wife, and the other was his son. He’d kept them at a very long arm’s length from the world he’d grown up in, a world where you learned to survive by being harder than those trying to survive around you. With Flo, it had been easy, despite the fact that she was by his side almost from the beginning. Her love was unconditional, she saw nothing he did not invite her to see, asked no questions, passed no comments.
Dave the Third was harder. Brought up to a life of privilege, it was simple to put a firewall between him and his father’s colourful past. But protection was no protection if it weakened what you were trying to protect. In the career he was launched on, he would need the same skills as his father-a nose for danger, an eye for the main chance, and a ruthless instinct for survival at no matter what cost to others.
By this small act of defiance he was showing himself flesh of Goldie’s flesh, blood of his blood, and that was good.
On the other hand, he needed to be reminded from time to time that, whatever power he now wielded and would in the future wield in the great world out there, in his father’s world he was and must remain a cipher.
He said, ‘What you talking about, son?’
‘I’m talking about Gwyn Jones ambushing me at the opening.’
‘Jones?’ He could see he’d caught his father’s attention. ‘That Jones the Mess?’
‘The same. The last guy a politician wants to see at his door if he’s got anything he needs to keep hidden. Have I got anything I need to keep hidden, Pappy?’
‘Just tell me what this Jones fellow said. I mean, the words he used.’
Dave Gidman had a power of recall that came in very useful in the House and he was able to repeat the journalist’s words almost verbatim.
When he finished, Goldie said, ‘What did Maggie say about this?’
Dave felt hugely irritated. The degree of respect, indeed of affection, both his parents showed to Pinchbeck really pissed him off.
He said, ‘Nothing. Why the fuck should she say anything?’
‘It got you worried, son. Anything you see, Maggie would see two minutes earlier, that’s for sure. Now go and see your mammy. Tell her you’ll be staying for supper.’
‘Is that it?’ demanded Dave, incensed by the implication that his PA was brighter than he was.
‘Yeah, that’s it. Nothing for you to worry your head about. You just concentrate on kicking them government bastards while they’re down.’
Dave the Third took a step closer to his father and glared down at him. Goldie stared back up at him with a lack of expression that those who had received the hammer treatment in his youth might have recognized. It felt like a defining moment.
Which in a way it was.
It was the younger man who broke off eye contact first and stalked out of the room.
Goldie felt almost disappointed but not quite. Now wasn’t a good time for young Dave to be rocking the boat. Way things were going, it would take a steady hand on the wheel and a clear eye at the helm.
Maybe, he thought, I should have left this alone.
But all his life he’d dealt with stuff as it came along. Tidy up behind you and you didn’t leave a trail.
Except sometimes, if things didn’t fall right, the trail could be the tidying-up.
Long way from that here, and anyway, he thought confidently, he’d got friends in high places who’d make sure the trail got brushed out long before it reached him.
