‘That’s that then. Tuck the envelope away, let no one see it and we’ll say not one word more about it. And don’t you forget that name and address. There. Not such a difficult or dreadful thing to ask, after all, was it now?’
Leclare let go of Ned’s wrist and leaned back, gasping for breath. Ned watched the little remaining colour drain from his face.
‘Can I radio for help now, Skipper?’
‘We’ll be ashore in five or six hours. Make no difference either way.’
‘But what is it? What’s wrong?’
‘It’s no more than a touch of illness,’ Leclare said quietly, smiling and closing his eyes. ‘A little kiss of cancer, so it is. No more than that.’
Rufus Cade arrived back in time to witness Ned, with great tenderness, laying a sleeping-bag over the dying man’s shoulders and gently stroking his head.
Ashley Barson-Garland had written seventy letters that morning. Seventy calm, placating and – though he said it himself – beautifully expressed letters. Letters to old ladies unable to understand the changes to the law on pensions, letters to unemployed layabouts who chose to blame the government for their lack of self-respect, letters from delirious fascists who thought Sir Charles Maddstone was Soft On Crime and letters from transcendently sad individuals who were determined to tell the MP about Christ.
So much noise from the populace. So much clamouring for attention. So much inadequacy and resentment. The life of a politician was indeed one of lying, lying and lying. Not the lying that people supposed, not the trail of broken promises and cynical denials complained about by newspaper and bar-stool sceptics, another kind of lying altogether. Allowing people to believe that their bitter and ignorant opinions were of use or importance, this to Ashley was the great lie. There seemed to be millions out there who could not understand that their problem was not this or that injustice or social ill, but the diminished sense of self that caused them to blame anything other than their own bitterness and rage: to bolster this delusion, that was the supreme dishonesty. There were people who believed that their opportunities to live a fulfilled life were hampered by the number of Asians in England, by the existence of a royal family, by the volume of traffic that passed by their house, by the malice of trade unions, by the power of callous employers, by the refusal of the health service to take their condition seriously, by communism, by capitalism, by atheism, by anything, in fact, but their own futile, weak-minded failure to get a fucking grip. Ashley understood Caligula’s disappointment that the people of Rome had between them more than one neck. If only the British, he thought, had one backside. What a kick he would love to give it.
To his right on the desk lay the letters, open flat in their envelopes awaiting signature. They were elegantly typed on parliamentary writing paper, the green House of Commons portcullis above Sir Charles’s name, each letter clean, unblemished and perfect. Ashley moved the four piles to the left of the blotter, a more convenient position for signing for when Sir Charles arrived. Ashley prided himself on these touches. He was the perfect servant, intelligent, thoughtful, thorough and discreet and for the moment, this contented him.
From the briefcase at his feet he pulled his diary. Only five and a half pages to fill before he would need a second volume. He wondered if he would be able to find the same book again. The shop in St Anne’s Square where he bought the first had closed two years ago. Another colour would be ideal, but it must be the same book. If he found a source he would buy at least ten, a lifetime’s supply. Would ten be enough, however? He made a rapid calculation. Twenty would be safer. ‘The Invicta’ it called itself grandly, the kind of Empire name that used to be bestowed upon everything from urinals to pocket-knives. He riffled through, observing with pleasure the growth in confidence and style of his handwriting. The last entry had been made five weeks ago. There was much to squeeze into the final pages. He should pick up from his last sentence: ‘For the moment I must put this obscene invasion out of my mind, for I have the School Address to concern myself with.’
Can it really be only five weeks since the end of term? The Oration, of course, was a triumph of wit, knowledge, flair and – as you might say – address. As such, it was understood by no one in the hall, not even by those who could decipher the Latin. The assembled parents, staff and boys knew just enough to imagine that it was clever and treated me afterwards to the embarrassed, sympathetic and bravely smiling looks which the British habitually save up for those afflicted with terminal cancer or with brains, brains being by far the more unfortunate condition in their eyes. Most people, after all, can imagine having terminal cancer, they can’t begin to imagine having brains. Ned introduced me to his father who came as near to bowing as one can these days.
‘Your own parents not here today, Mr Barson-Garland?’
‘My mother teaches, sir,’ I said, liking the ‘sir’ and liking the fact that Sir Charles liked it. I liked too Ned’s discomfiture and watched him trying to think of something to say which wouldn’t draw attention to the idea of my mother or my family.
‘Ah well,’ his father said. ‘She must be very proud of you.’
Ned delivered a feeble matey punch to my arm as they passed on. He knew of course what kind of teaching it is my mother does. He probably even guessed that I had told her to stay away.
‘Very few parents come to Speech Day,’ I had written to her. ‘You’ll find it a bore.’
What I had meant was, ‘You dare turn up and disgrace me in a bright print dress, cheap scent and a loathsome hat and I shall disown you.
I dare say Mother read all that between the lines because mothers do and I dare say that I had meant her to because sons do.
Having endured the sickly congratulations and sherry of the headmaster, (‘Ah, here comes our pocket Demosthenes!’) I escaped after lunch to the cricket match, only to find myself forced to witness the spectacle of Ned Maddstone distinguishing himself with unquestionable style against the Old Boys. Every time someone talked to me, they kept half an eye on him at the wicket and I could smell their minds weighing his tallness, blondness and smiliness against my squat, dark seriousness. The stench of that drove me back to the house where I looked up Rufus Cade whom I found in his study weltering in his own mephitic fug – cannabis, vodka and resentment. Now here’s an interesting thing. Whether to please me or not he professed a severe dislike of Maddstone. No, it cannot have been to please me, I had already sensed the fact and asked him outright. It had been instinct. And I was right. He
Who should then turn up, flushed and triumphant in scarlet and green stained flannels, hot from glory in the field, but Maddstone himself? He invited me to dine with his father at the George. The transparent guilt in his eyes was almost hilarious. ‘You may think of yourself as an outsider,’ his eyes said, ‘but I think of you as one of us.’
Balls. If he had thought of me as One Of Us he would have said, ‘Ashley, bloody bore, but how d’you fancy joining me and my father at the George?’ instead of which he got all flustered and asked Rufus to come too while managing to make it painfully obvious that he only asked out of politeness. Rufus declined on the grounds of intoxication, which I think embarrassed him into hating Ned all the more. I accepted with entirely sincere pleasure.
I wore my one suit.
‘Very good of you to join us, Mr Barson-Garland,’ said Sir Charles, shaking my hand in courtly style. ‘How absurd of me, I can’t keep calling you that. Ned hasn’t told me your Christian name.
‘Ashley, sir,’ I said, as Ned buried himself in confusion and the menu.
I talked a lot over dinner. Not so much or so greedily as to appear to monopolise the conversation or to boast, but enough to impress.
‘You seem to know a great deal about politics,’ said Sir Charles over the cheese.
I shrugged with open hands as if to suggest that, while I may have picked up the odd pebble of interest on the shore, like Newton I was all too aware of the great ocean of knowledge that lay undiscovered before me.
‘I don’t suppose this would interest you…
There and then he offered me a summer job as his political researcher.
‘A great deal of it is really not much more than a kind of secretarial work,’ he warned. ‘But it is, I think, an unrivalled opportunity to find out how the system operates. If it works out over the summer, I’ll be happy to keep the place open for when you leave here in late autumn. Ned tells me that you are sitting Oxford entrance next term too.’
‘Father, that’s a brilliant idea,’ Ned gasped admiringly (as if it hadn’t been his idea in the first place! How big a fool can he possibly take me for?). ‘I’m Pa’s biggest disappointment,’ he added, turning to me. ‘Never could summon up much interest in politics.’
‘Sir Charles,’ I said, ‘I don’t know how to begin to thank you…
‘Tshush, tshush,’ said Sir Charles, waving a hand. ‘If you’re as good at the job as I suspect you might be, then the thanks will be mine. Do I take it you accept?’
‘Well, sir. I live in Lancashire. I don’t have any…' Lancashire, indeed. I was used to saying that. Any ‘shire’ sounded better than Manchester.
‘I’m hoping you will consider staying in Catherine Street. It’s a small house, but has been a political one for over a hundred years. It has its own Division Bell, not that you will hear it ring much at first. The House doesn’t sit over the summer. If you’re still with us next year however, you’ll get so used to its ringing that you’ll want to sabotage the damned thing. Isn’t that right Ned?’ He waggled an eyebrow at his son in a way that suggested some private joke.
‘When I was a boy I used to get really hacked off by that bell,’ Ned explained in answer to my questioning look. ‘The House sits at the weirdest times and it was always waking me up at two or three in the morning. So one night I wedged a piece of cardboard between the bell and the clapper. Pa missed a vote and got into a bucket load of trouble.’
‘I passed a quarter hour in the Whips’ Office that I shall never forget,’ said Sir Charles.
Ned added to me in a pretend whisper, ‘He still says that nothing the Gestapo did to him in the war came close.’
‘It’s true I tell you, absolutely true.’
Ned was letting me into his life. A life in which casual mention of Division Bells and sticky moments with the Gestapo came as easily as references to buses and episodes of
They found me a flat in Kensington which I share with a researcher from Conservative Central Office. Flats in Kensington seem to be a staple currency of this world. There is a lazy sense of –
Between the two sounds of the front door opening and the front door closing Ashley had swiftly returned the diary to his briefcase, opened a copy of Hansard and begun copying one of Sir Charles’s speeches into a notebook.
He heard the sounds of people moving up the stairs and wondered if his not coming halfway to greet them would Look strange. Could he pretend not to have heard their arrival? He decided not.
