circles fading in the bus roar. He said, quite relieved, 'I can't go in there, you know.' But she made him turn left instead, towards Whitehall, past Downing Street, and the Banqueting House, and then suddenly towards the river, and into a side street walled right up to the sky by a vast Victorian building. It was a feature of the London riverscape Nick had almost unconsciously absorbed, without ever deducing or being told what it was: he had an image of its roof, like a Loire chateau. He parked opposite, outside some dark ministry. The whole street was oddly dark, except for the glowing glass canopies of the chateau's doorways, somehow redolent of gaslight and cab horses, at one of which a porter in a peaked cap was silhouetted. For a moment a London sensation, unnoticed and perpetual as the throb of traffic, came clear for him: of order and power, rhythmic and intricate, endlessly sure of obedience. Then he remembered. 'This is where Badger lives, isn't it?'
'It was just Mum mentioning him,' said Catherine, as if it was an obvious breakthrough.
Nick saw that she was crazy, that the trip was not an inspiration but an irrelevance. He slumped and pursed his lips in tender annoyance. He tried kindly to find a reason in her craziness. 'You think Badger can somehow throw a light on this business? He's probably not here, is he, darling-isn't he in South Africa?' But she had opened the car door, with no sign in her face or voice that she was even aware of Nick's worry, or of any possible objection. She had her certainty, a source of joy and tension, like revealed religion. Nick's objection was mainly that he didn't like Badger, that it was mutual, and that Badger would like him even less for bringing his manic god-daughter round. It was a fuck-flat, in Barry Groom's hard phrase, not a proper home. He had an image of small hotel-like rooms in which Badger conducted strained affairs with much younger women; of Badger shooting a line as phoney as the prints on the wall and the Chippendale cocktail cabinet.
They went in under one of the glass canopies, and through a brown-marble entrance hall; a porter in a cubbyhole was listening to the radio and nodded back at them as if they were always in and out. Catherine, in her dark coat, made up, evangelical, had the confidence to pass anywhere; the sense of getting away with something was all Nick's. The wait by the lift was a reasonable but finite chance to turn back: Catherine smiled and quivered, hands thrust into pockets flashing her coat open. 'Are you sure about this?' said Nick. He knew he ought to be restraining her and at the same time he was trying to live up to her. Her conviction was a challenge to someone reasonably cowardly. He felt a vague intellectual awe of her insights, however mad. He thought her state might be like the capable elation of coke, but more psychic. There was a warning plink, the doors opened, and Penny came tearing out.
'Penny!' said Nick. He dawdled for a moment with a shrug and a helpful half smile. Catherine was already in the lift, narrow-eyed, breathing audibly. Nick, feeling like a silly ass and then also feeling the loose smugness of having discovered something without knowing what it was, grinned, and said considerately, 'How are you?'
Penny had stopped and turned round, with a look both peevish and frightened. She went very white; and then a rich hot pink started up in her round cheeks and spread (in the three or four seconds while Catherine stamped and said, 'Nick, come on!') into her neck and throat and ears. 'Um, Nick,' she said, in bossy defiance of her blush, 'actually, I shouldn't, um…
Nick, confused, reluctant to be rude, but enjoying Penny's blush, in itself and for not being one of his own, had a foot in the lift, and blocked the thrust of the door with his arm-it kept stolidly reasserting itself. 'How's
Gerald?' he said.
'Nick, come on!' Catherine said again.
He stood back into the lift and Penny, shaking her head and stepping forward, said, 'He's not here, Nick, he's not here -' as the doors closed.
'Well…!' said Nick. He glanced at Catherine, then at the mirror wall, where they seemed to stand like self- conscious strangers. Even in a stuffy old mansion block like this a slanting FUCK had been scratched on the brushed-steel door. He thought of Badger flirting relentlessly with Penny, years ago now, when Gerald had first taken her on. It was that awful, rivalrous straight thing, taking the girl not only from Nick, who didn't care, but from his best friend, who clearly would. He found himself smirking, looked in the mirror, and said, 'God, darling, Badger's going to be furious. We're obviously not supposed to know.' But the lift stopped and Catherine slipped out past him with a mocking frown, as if surely she couldn't have anyone so dim or so chicken as a friend.
He followed her along a red-carpeted hallway past brown-varnished doors with bells and nameplates; on one side brown-and-yellow leaded windows gave on to inner light wells, lit now only by the dim back windows of other flats. A telly could be heard from one flat, but otherwise sound was dampened as by the gravest discretion. The subliminal sense of gaslight, of stepping back through time into the depths of this monstrous building, was oppressive but also, for Nick at least, beguiling: his mind ran away for a moment along the panelled dado, the swan's-neck curves of the light fittings. The last door on the left was slightly ajar, waiting perhaps for Penny's return. Catherine pinged the bell, and they stood looking at the card in the brass frame that said 'D. S. Brogan Esq.' A deeply familiar voice shouted, 'It's open,' and Catherine stared into Nick's face with a gleam of vindication before she put her arm through his. It was much worse than Nick had thought. He didn't want to go in, and would have run away fast if he hadn't been tightly held there. There was a loud sigh, a soft thump of footsteps, and Gerald plucked open the door. He wasn't wearing shoes or a jacket and tie, and his front stud was undone, so that the white collar stood up skew-whiff. In his left hand he held a cigarette. Nick said, 'Oh, hello, Gerald!' and Catherine, gleaming with indignation, said, 'Dad! You said you'd given up!'
17
It didn't take the photographers long to work out about the communal gardens, though they were stretched to cover all four gates. They put up their stepladders and looked over the railings and peripheral shrubbery through binoculars or through their telephoto lenses, dreaming of shots. The falling leaves were in their favour. It was news, but it was also a matter of patience. They talked confidently on mobile phones. They were rivals who'd met so often they were friends, sharing their indifference to their victims in companionable Thermos caps of tea. They toasted them sardonically in milk and sugar. Then the house gate would open and Toby, perhaps, would come out, who for a while had worked with these guys and now was dodging them, making towards one exit and then switching and jogging to another-the photographen went swearing and clattering round the long way; one or two jumped in cars. Soon Geoffrey Titchfield was making hourly patrols of the gardens, after several of the buzzards, as he called them, had simply used their ladders to climb in. 'You are not keyholders,' he said. 'I must ask you to leave immediately.' Sir Geoffrey was deeply vexed by the whole episode. The exposure of his idol, terribly shocking to him, was brought home, like the threat of a larger disorder, by these incursions on the gardens.
At the front of the house the shutters or curtains stayed closed, so that indoors the day had the colour of an appalling hangover or other failure to get up. Electric light combined with diffused sunlight in a sickly glare. All the papers came as usual, in their long, arhythmical collapse onto the doormat, where they lay like a menace and were approached at last with long-armed reluctance. And there they were, the Millionaire MP, his Elegant Wife, his Blonde, or his Blushing Blonde Secretary. 'Troubled daughter speaks of minister's affair.' It seemed she'd spoken to Russell, and Russell had spoken to an old friend at the
On the second day, Gerald, resenting the demeaning scurry through the gardens, where he looked such a fool to the other keyholders, walking their dogs and knocking up on the tennis courts, put on his widest-brimmed fedora and a dark, double-breasted overcoat, and came out of the front door into the film set of the street. Parked vans, spotlights, shoulder-hefted TV cameras, fluffy boom mikes, the ruck of reporters-everything took on life and purpose with his emergence. The freshly whitened house-front reflected the flashbulbs. Gerald seemed as usual to draw strength from their attention. He was the star of this movie, whatever he did. Nick, looking out from behind an upstairs curtain, saw him step on to the pavement and heard him say loudly, 'Thank you, gentlemen, I have nothing to say,' in a cordial, plummy tone. The Press were in front of him in a half ellipse, of which his hat formed the centre. They called him Sir and Gerald and Mr Fedden and Minister. 'Are you leaving your wife?' 'This way, Gerald!' 'Mr Fedden, are you guilty of insider dealing?' 'Where's your daughter?' 'Will you be resigning, Minister?' Nick saw how they enjoyed their deadpan mockery, their brief but decisive wielding of power. He found it
