A Woman's Place (24 page)

George sighed. No wonder nothing had been forthcoming from Bhadeshia into Prima: the man had other fish to fry. That was understandable, but George was not reassured that this might be the start of a close friendship.

‘Certainly. Perhaps your secretary would contact mine at Prima tomorrow afternoon? Good luck, and thanks for calling.'

The Daimler slipped away from the bustle of Brussels airport and headed the short distance to the grandest of the UK's three embassies.

‘The trouble with Europe,' Harrison asserted lazily, ‘is that the Commission is obsessed with
petty restrictions. Far too many rules, which are then ignored by other countries. We, of course, behave impeccably. That's why we lose out.'

‘I think we overdo it at times,' Anthony murmured.

‘Really?' Derek stared at him. Anthony flushed. In the front seat next to the driver, Chadwick half turned and gave the PPS a wink of encouragement. At least the new chap had some original views, unlike his boss.

Earnestly, spreading his hands, Anthony continued, ‘We go mad in Britain. Often, quite unreasonably.' He went on to give several examples.

The noise from Chadwick might have been a chortle, had that not been impossible from the normally humourless Deputy Secretary. Derek slapped Anthony's thigh.

‘The secret, old boy, is to blame Brussels whatever happens. People at home know so little about what goes on and it's so sparsely reported that we can agree to whatever we want out here, then scream blue murder that it was imposed on us. Don't you go interfering, there's a good man.'

‘You see,' Chadwick continued the lesson smoothly, ‘we'll agree this health directive today. In return we'll get concessions. Our rights to border controls and quarantine, for instance.'

‘But why should we want that?' Anthony was exasperated. His father, whose business transcended international boundaries, had forceful objections to paperwork at customs posts. ‘Other countries are nowhere near as paranoid about rabies. Why not?'

‘Because they vaccinate everything in sight. Pets, dogs, cats, the lot. And put down dosed bait in the forests for foxes. At public expense. So they have hardly any cases.'

Chadwick waved an airy hand, as if the idea in Britain were unthinkable.

‘Wouldn't it be better if we did the same? Look at the millions who cross the Channel every year. Maybe we have no rabies simply because our neighbours haven't either. Nothing to do with quarantine. It seems so darned old fashioned to me.'

There was a stunned silence in the car. Anthony's statement amounted to heresy.

Chadwick concealed a smile behind his hand. ‘Ah, but you see,' he intoned, ‘if we took your position and followed the practice of our partner countries, we would lose something terribly precious.'

Anthony was puzzled. ‘What's that?'

‘The right to be different – even wrong. It's called sovereignty. You wouldn't want to challenge that, would you?'

‘Now then, gentlemen. Proposition four (c)?'

Fourteen voices murmured in unison. ‘Agreed.'

‘Four (d)?'

‘Agreed.'

‘Thank you so much.' Lord Tarrant looked around, satisfied. The board was behaving itself beautifully today. It helped that that fool Ferriman was missing, on a fact-finding tour to the Seychelles, or so he claimed. The proof that all was above reproach was that he'd taken his researcher with him. And Bob Horton was elsewhere, sorting out the latest rail strike. Funny how nothing had ever happened till he was appointed to run Railtrack – frightfully bad luck, really. Might be time for a quick sherry before lunch.

Behind him and on both sides dark portraits of his predecessors stared down like grim ghosts, men with side whiskers or luxuriant beards, gimlet eyes and solemn jowls. The encrusted gilding of the frames and the soft but well-placed spotlights enhanced their claim to the highest integrity allied with perfect financial wisdom. After lunch Lord Tarrant would be sitting for his own, an experience he secretly found delightful.

He turned a page. ‘Proposition five needs more thorough consideration, I fear. We are being
asked to be the lead investor in a new development in East Africa, in…' He named the country as he removed his spectacles and placed them neatly on the page, the better to impress on those present the need to think deeply.

‘Not the lead investor – Barclays have agreed to take on that role, though they've only offered two million to start.' This came from Atkins, smooth as ever, the youngest chief cashier the bank had ever appointed, whose economics PhD from Cambridge gave him a dismaying intellectual edge.

The correction appeared to irritate the noble visage. Atkins hastened to restore harmony. ‘We're asked to put up around three million. But you're right, chairman. Our support will make the difference. With two banks in, the proposers won't have any trouble raising the rest.'

‘What is it they want to build?' The newly ennobled Baroness Gorman put her own spectacles on her nose and searched through the papers. Tarrant suppressed a sigh. Why hadn't she bothered to read the stuff more carefully; it had cost enough to courier to her country house in Essex?

‘Shops.'

‘Shops?' The baroness brightened. That sounded an excellent idea: Thatcherism and the consumer society brought to the natives. Indeed, if the shops at home were good enough, perhaps the natives might be persuaded to stay put and not keep nagging to come to Britain.

‘Yes – but they don't exist yet. And the country is still in a mess after a civil war, a revolution and a coup in the space of seven years.' The chairman could feel himself making up his mind. ‘Does anybody here know this Bhadeshia chap?'

George Horrocks intervened. ‘I know him through Prima. He was runner-up in the Asian Businessman of the Year. Started twenty-odd years ago with nothing and has built up a substantial empire of retail outlets. Diversified recently into textiles and engineering, though that side faltered a bit during the recession. Big contributor to the Conservative Party, chairman. In fact you met him, though it may have slipped your mind, at a function last January at No. 10.'

‘Aha!' The Prime Minister's father-in-law perked up. ‘Sounds a good sort, then?' Tarrant wondered vaguely if the fellow could have been at that tedious Treasurer's dinner at his home. With forty unknown names provided by Central Office it had been difficult to cultivate more than a few.

George assented. ‘Thoroughly nice chap. But I have serious doubts about this venture. Not because of Bhadeshia, but because the location is so dodgy.'

The baroness looked unhappy. Other directors darted surreptitious glances at the ornate clock behind the chairman's head. An aroma of roast beef was seeping into the boardroom from the nearby kitchen and the clatter of plates could be heard.

‘Shall I move that proposition five be put back, until further information is available?' suggested Atkins helpfully.

‘George, you happy with that?' the chairman enquired. One wouldn't want to come between a board member and his friends.

George was silent. Bhadeshia was counting on him. The banks were under heavy criticism, much of it justified, for not co-operating with adventurous new businesses; but his duties as a director must be placed ahead of any faint loyalty to Bhadeshia. He raised his head and nodded.

‘Excellent. Then I declare the meeting closed.'

It was not a question of how he was seen and assessed by other people. Anthony York knew, as he examined himself in the bedroom mirror, adjusted the white tie and straightened the tails, that for him there was one judge and jury – himself.

His mind roamed over the day's events and kept returning to the spat in the car. He had not intended to be so forthright, but the official stance had seemed puerile. Yet that was the position Harrison had faithfully taken later in the day and the ‘victory' was duly won and trumpeted. Anthony's duty required him from here onwards to give full, if not fulsome, support.

Would there be any diminution of his principles if he simply kept them to himself? That was a different question entirely. It might make life easier. It would not require conformity to anybody else's ideals, or lack of them. On the other hand, as Edmund Burke had gravely declared, all that was required for evil to triumph was that good men do nothing. Surely that also implied that all that was needed for foolishness to predominate was that wiser counsels stayed mute. Not to air objections left them stillborn; an argument not expressed was not an argument.

Margaret Thatcher and Keith Joseph and Alfred Sherman had never kept quiet – they shouted from the rooftops their beliefs in privatisation, home ownership, trade union reform, personal responsibility and free trade and carried a whole generation of voters with them, including Anthony himself. Half the new nations of Europe had copied them, replacing the dead hand of communism with the blunt certainties of Thatcherism even as that creed was discarded in its homeland. He wondered if Mrs Thatcher had been warned to keep her crazy nostrums to herself. At the start the answer must have been, often. Yet she took no notice.

Mr Major, on the other hand, had never challenged anybody's complacency. His name, indeed, had become synonymous with caution. Whereas ministerial office under the blessed Margaret could only have been the experience of a lifetime, service under her successor, especially in a lowly post, would have been a dreadful anticlimax. It was not hard for
his
successor to be a far stronger personality. Yet somehow, without anyone being able to put a finger on
why
and
how
, John Major had stayed at the top far longer than most Prime Ministers.

It was a great conundrum. Maybe he, Anthony, should simply observe and absorb, at any rate while he was in such a junior job. If – when – he was promoted, once he had built a coterie of
like-minded
people and learned how to deal with the press, that was the moment to move ahead with original announcements. Then he could stick his neck out. Not now.

The manservant gave a discreet knock at the door. It was time to go down for dinner.

He squared his shoulders. It was settled. In his personal behaviour, both outward and private, he would incorporate the high standards of honour, decency, straight-dealing and decorum laid down for him by his parents. The York name would gain further respect through his tenure of it. In his open statements and politics, meanwhile, he would be discretion itself. There would be no repeat of that morning's outburst.

As Anthony reached the top stair, the door to Chadwick's room opened. The civil servant, freshly shaved and bathed, was dressed similarly to Anthony but with a gold-filigree decoration as Commander of the Bath at his throat. Courteously Anthony waited, but could not hide a raised eyebrow at Chadwick's red necktie.

‘Oh, this?' Chadwick chuckled self-deprecatingly. ‘The award is virtually routine once one gets to certain levels. As for the slight unorthodoxy of dress: we have to conform so very much, but we are allowed one small quirk. To keep us sane, you might say. My neckwear is my sole flamboyancy.'

‘It's splendid, Mr Chadwick.' Anthony wondered if he should try something similar –
red-spotted
handkerchiefs perhaps – as a reflection of his new-found self-control.

‘My dear chap – the name's Martin. At least while there aren't too many junior clericals around.'

An arm was placed briefly around the younger man's shoulders and the two men's eyes met with the ancient conspiracy of the educated upper-class English male.

Anthony laughed and relaxed. ‘Then you must call me Anthony, please. You can't really call me anything else – not Minister, anyway.'

‘Not yet, Anthony. But keep your mind as sharp as it was this morning and it won't be long.'

The Ambassador, Sir Clifford Mawby, was tall, spare, cultured, affable and sharp as a needle. A
superb example of the British career diplomat, he had previously served in the Paris embassy. There, his originality and style were immediately apparent for he had contrived to arrive via the Channel tunnel which was still under construction at the time, and thus became the first representative of the English monarch to travel to another state over dry land for 400 years, since the days of the first Elizabeth when the last one had ridden north to Scotland.

As he waited in the hall the Ambassador reflected grimly that ministerial delegations could be a trial. They expected to stay in the residence, which was extra work for all concerned, though Douglas Hurd, to do him credit, had frequently opted for a hotel – but then he'd been in the Foreign Office game long before he entered Parliament. Official visitors often failed to realise this was a
home
and that they were
guests
– even if everything was provided with public money, or perhaps especially so. They shouldn't expect a hairdrier, a kettle and a well-stocked mini-bar in every room. They shouldn't arrive minus basic items like deodorant or toothpaste and expect them to be supplied for free. Some insisted on bringing British equipment such as radio alarms and caused a great nuisance over plug adaptors, which then disappeared home in their luggage. Nor should embassy staff be treated as room service – one's house guests were supposed to rise at a reasonable hour in the morning and, as consolation for their intrusion, make sparkling conversation at breakfast. Most of all, since the evening's banquet was laid on in their honour, it was appreciated if they could
turn up on time
.

The Minister of State appeared at last, his face flushed, white tie slightly askew. Sir Clifford glided forward, mouth twitching, eyes hard. He had heard of Mr Harrison's habits. It had been a mistake, as Ernesto the head steward had warned, not to move that young chambermaid temporarily to other duties.