The Stars’ Tennis Balls

‘Mum, there are people at CDC still awaiting their second set of teeth. There are millionaires working for Cotter with undescended testicles and training bras.’

‘Well that sounds encouraging, I must say. ‘You know what I mean. I wouldn’t be the youngest person there by a long way.

‘Gordon, tell him.’

Gordon had taken the letter back. Portia felt a wave of something coming from her husband that disturbed her.

Was it irritation? Not envy surely? She was shocked to realise, once the thought had flashed across her mind, that there could be no doubt of it. It was envy. Something in the way his tongue flicked over his lips and his eyes darted so quickly over the letter, as if still looking for proof that it was a hoax, told her that he was, beyond question, jealous of his own son. He was annoyed, he was resentful, he was angry. No one but Portia could have detected it, but it made her stomach turn over to see it.

‘Well now,’ said Gordon, assuming the measured tones of a wise and objective man of the world. ‘If you do go and see him, you make damned sure you don’t agree to anything – anything, without talking it through with us first. If there’s a contract we’ll make sure the company lawyers see it before you even think of signing. These people can be very convincing, very plausible but none the less…’

‘Sure Dad, sure. Jesus!’ Albert flashed a smile at both his parents and skipped from the room, a slice of toast between his teeth.

Oliver Delft hated politicians. Most people profess a dislike that springs from distaste at what they perceive as the hypocrisy, double-dealing and populist vulgarity of the breed. Delft disliked them for almost opposite reasons. It was their grindingly slow moral probity and obsession with ‘accountability’ that maddened him. Accountability in a double sense. Their pettifogging fixation with audits, financial openness and Treasury Rules was as numbingly odious to him as their perpetual nervous glances over the shoulder towards Commons Ethical Committees, “best practice guidelines” and investigative journalists. If a thing was to be done, then surely it should be done without qualms and scruples. Wavering and havering about morality was almost always, in Oliver’s view, the least moral option. He had warned them about Kosovo, Chechnya, Nigeria, East Timor, Zimbabwe, Myanmar – he could name a dozen little local cancers that could have benefited from the quick kindness of invasive surgery but had instead swollen and flourished in the name of ‘ethical foreign policy’ or ‘constructive engagement’ – the politicians had failed to listen and paid the price.

The secret world’s big secret was that it made a profit. This simple and surprising truth had saved Delft’s department from even more ministerial interference than he already suffered. Secrets made money and Britain (especially now that there were no ideological factors to complicate the world and make martyrs and traitors out of intellectuals and fanatics) retained a healthy balance of payments surplus with the rest of the world when it came to her trade in the dark arts. So long as those figures stayed on the right side of the ledger, ministers could be relied upon to allow Delft a freer hand than that enjoyed by any of his successors since the Second World War. Nevertheless, as far as Oliver was concerned, any interference was too much. It is a melancholy fact that shareholders in a company that makes a fat profit are greedier in chasing down every penny than shareholders in a company that breaks even or reports a small loss. Delft had siphoned off over the years enough to guarantee him an opulent retirement, but there was always room for more. For the moment however, his rectitude was beyond question. Every pony for his daughters and every necklace for his wife was bought with honest money from his meagre public salary and dwindling inheritance. That he had made provision for a better life in the future, no one could possibly guess. He was covered. In the meantime however, his surface life continued on its dull and grinding course. Today, for example, was a day of meetings.

He weathered the fortnightly RAM committee with his usual show of patience. The Resource Allocation Module had been the bright idea of a twenty-three-year- old wunderkind from Treasury and Oliver’s private contempt for the fashionable accountancy mechanisms dreamt up by such weird creatures knew no bounds. Old- fashioned double-entry book-keeping with quill and feint-margined foolscap was more secure and less easily manipulated. The RAM, however, used the latest ‘input engines’ and ‘nominal ledgering’ to model the department’s financial behaviour and (more importantly) it boasted its own logo, departmental colour-coding and screensaver. This made it the darling of ministers and entirely proof of criticism.

In a moment of weakness, Oliver had agreed to lunch with Ashley Barson-Garland to talk about his wretched Private Member’s Bill. They met at Mark’s Club in Mayfair. The good taste of the décor and the discreet expertise of the staff (‘Good afternoon, Sir Oliver.’ How the hell did they know his name? He needed people like that on his payroll) settled him into a better mood and by the time he had absorbed the menu he was ready to enjoy himself despite the prospect of political company.

Ashley arrived at the upstairs bar two minutes late and spent more than five minutes apologising in what Oliver guessed with a revolted shudder was supposed to be a charming and self-deprecating manner.

Oliver found it reassuring to remind himself that he was actually some six or seven years older than the balding, jowly and unappetising creature blathering beside him. Oliver’s secret vice was vanity. He had an interest in skin-care and male cosmetics that only his wife was aware of and no colleague or underling would ever have guessed at. Pomposity, ambition and bad soap had written themselves indelibly across Ashley’s features, Oliver noticed, much as gin and tropical sun used to print themselves on the complexion in the grand old days of Empire. A course of humectants, exfoliating creams and cell refreshant night masks would go some way to improving general skin tone, but very little could be done to help the folds of double chin and the dull glaze over the eyes. Perhaps these are nature’s way of warning us off, he thought.

‘I see they’ve shown you a menu,’ Barson-Garland said, when the tiresome story of his taxi ride from Westminster to Charles Street had finally wound to an end. ‘As to wines. Shall we go Burgundian? What do you think? There’s a mighty Corton Charlemagne to begin with and I happen to know they have recently added a La Tache that it would surely be madness to pass over.

Oliver was well aware that the only La Tache on the list cost over four hundred pounds a bottle. He suspected that Barson-Garland knew that Oliver would know this. Hum, he thought to himself. Trying to impress me, are you? Trying to soften me up? You in your Old Harrovian tie and Christ Church cufflinks. Jesus God, what kind of man wears college cufflinks?

They moved downstairs from the bar to the dining room. Barson-Garland had ordered a boiled egg crammed with Beluga caviar which he ate with repulsive elegance as he talked.

‘Let me first of all assure you that I am not here to enlist your support for my Bill,’ he said. ‘That would be quite improper. Quite improper. However, as you may be aware, there remains a certain level of confusion about the implications of my proposals both within and without the House. There are those who cast doubt on the Bill’s technical, legal and practical feasibility. It depends, as you know, upon the creation of a new body, something akin to America’s National Security Agency. Our own GCHQ won’t quite answer. I’m sure you agree with me there.’

Oliver moved his head in a manner that might have been interpreted as a nod.

‘Quite so. My proposed agency would have considerable, even awe-inspiring powers. We already have satellites that scan the surface of our world, but I am suggesting an electronic capability that would allow us to scan, as it were, beneath the surface. We have the macrocosm, let us help ourselves to the microcosm. There are those who fear that I am taking, as the Guardian put it only this morning, one hell of a civil liberty.’

Oliver made another non-committal movement of the head. A nauseating vision arose in his head of Barson-Garland pasting his press reviews into an album and sending them to his mother.

‘It seems to me,’ Ashley went on, delicately pressing at the corners of his mouth with a napkin, ‘that I need a trusted figure, someone of irreproachable integrity and proven expertise in the field of security, who is willing to shoulder the responsibility of building such an agency from the ground up. If it were known in the right quarters that a man of the reputation of Sir Oliver Delft might be prepared to take the job on…’ Barson-Garland took a prim sip of wine and let the thought hang.

‘I have not heard anything,’ Oliver said, ‘that leads me to believe that your Bill will meet with success.

‘Naturally not. The Bill will fail. That is axiomatic. We take it as read and move on. The issue will have been laid out, you see. That is the point. The possibility of government having such power within its grasp will have been propounded. The genie, as it were, will be out of the bottle. Such tedious niceties as open debate will have to, ah, take a powder.’

‘I hate to remind you of this, B-G, but you are not in government. You are in opposition.’

‘Oh, as to that,’ Ashley waved his hand, ‘while a week may be a long time in politics, a decade is but a passing breath. The Blessed Margaret already feels like a distant dream, does she not? His Toniness too will disappear into the vacuum history in a twinkling. I am sure you agree with me that it is in the interests of your service to take a longer, more strategic view. My suggestion is that you and I develop an informal relationship. Consider it as a wager on the future. I have no doubt that you have cultivated unpleasantly ambitious politicians like myself before now. You see? I have at least the virtue of self-knowledge.’

‘If I were to suggest to my masters that I do favour the idea of an agency along the lines you have proposed, how would that benefit you?’

‘It would benefit the country,’ said Ashley. ‘That may sound sententious, but I happen to believe it to be true. It would also establish my credentials in the field. Opposition provides few opportunities to do more than talk. The popularity of my bill amongst some journalists and much of the public is one thing, but I need to demonstrate to my party that I am capable of treading my way around the dark and slippery corridors that people like you inhabit without coming an arser. You follow?’

‘Mm,’ said Oliver. ‘I think I do.’ Barson-Garland put him in mind of those poison toads whose heads were said to contain jewels. Ugly and dangerous, to be sure, but offering the possibility of great riches none the less if handled properly.

‘There is nothing unethical about mutual advantage,’ said Ashley, as if reading his thoughts. ‘Quite the reverse, I should say.

‘Do you remember when we first met?’ Oliver asked.

Ashley seemed a little taken aback by the question. ‘Well now, let me see,’ he said, twisting the stem of his wine glass and screwing up his piggy eyes. ‘I pride myself on a fair memory. I fancy it may have been at the Telegraph Christmas party in Brooks’s club. December nineteen eighty-nine.’

‘No, no,’ said Oliver. ‘We met many years before that. You were still a schoolboy.’

A terrible image arose in Ashley’s mind of furtive liaisons in Manchester public lavatories long ago. ‘Really?’ he said with a ghastly attempt at a smile. ‘I’m not sure I quite understand. When and where might that have been?’

The dark crimson flooding Ashley’s face and the flash of fear leaping into his eyes had not escaped Oliver’s attention. ‘Catherine Street,’ he said, watching carefully. ‘You were working for Charles Maddstone. Private secretary, personal assistant, something like that.’

‘Good Lord,’ said Ashley. ‘How clever of you to remember!’

Oliver noted the instant look of relief that replaced Ashley’s initial expression of terror and wished, not for the first time, that he had the power of a J. Edgar Hoover to look more deeply into the lives of his political masters. It seemed that some dark secret lurked in Barson-Garland’s childhood. Oliver wondered if he came