Engleby (35 page)

I walked back to the University Arms, took the lift, forged my way through the Trust House fug, heaved back the series of sprung fire doors and went at last into my room. I took two blue ten-milligram pills and drank deep from my emergency Johnnie Walker.

What are you going to do, Mike?

Well, nothing. Obviously. Wait for the drugs to take a grip.

Then write my piece for the paper on the Tandy.

I can’t go into the past.
I
can’t get back there. So why would anyone else want to?

And if they managed – somehow – to get there, how would they know what was true?

It’s my dearest, most passionate wish to revisit, re-experience and do better.

With every atom of my being I long to be nineteen again.

Who in the whole world, if they were given a single wish, would not choose for the dead to live? Those you have known to breathe again and you to walk among them.

Who wouldn’t give all they own to be that age again, living in those days of hope but knowing what you later learned. To meet once more those bright-eyed girls and boys, to use them with the kindness of age but the vigour of nineteen.

But if I can’t manage this simple manoeuvre through the dimension of time that we poor, incompletely evolved homo saps can’t fathom or bend to our will, why should anyone else?

And even if they did, why should we listen to what they claimed to find?

I opened up my notebook, folded the pages over, and began to type on the plastic keyboard.

Tony Ball didn’t like the piece much; he thought it was ‘a bit pipe-sucking. A bit too much on-the-one-hand-on-the-other.’

Margaret liked it, though.

‘You’re so funny, Mike. And that piece with Jeffrey Archer was hilarious.’

‘It wasn’t meant to be.’

‘And Ken Livingstone.’

‘That was meant to be serious, too.’

Margaret gave me the look of exasperated affection that was starting to get on my nerves. You’re a funny boy, but I don’t mind, it seemed to say: you can’t fool me, because I understand you.

Anyway, I stuck the piece, along with three others, in for some more press awards, and I got another commendation, which meant another lunch, this time at the Savoy, where someone from the
Mirror
threw up at our table.

I was sufficiently pissed off by Tony Ball, though, that when I read in the
Observer
that three journalists from the
Telegraph
were starting a new daily newspaper, I rang them up and arranged to go along and see them.

To be honest, I also felt that working on the same paper as Margaret as well as living with her, some of the time, was becoming too much. I’d never chosen to be alone, but that was the way things had turned out, and I’d grown used to it.

The new paper’s offices were in a modernish block in City Road, near Finsbury Square. I would have thought it impossible for an architect to have designed a building so completely lacking character or distinction. But it had an advantage: it wasn’t in Wapping or the Isle of Dogs, where the other newspapers were all fleeing from the trade unions.

Three men in suits were waiting at the end of a long open-plan room on the fourth floor. They explained that they were exasperated by the criminal practices of the print workers and the incompetence of management. A fresh venture could use new (in fact pretty old, but new to England) technology to produce a high-quality paper which the journalists could effectively typeset for themselves, on screen. Press a button and – bingo, out it rolled on fresh newsprint at four or five regional centres, ready for distribution to the hungry public – readers who were tired of the Murdoch-Maxwell tat.

I could imagine Terry’s indignation. No on-site printing? No hot metal? No back-alley vans? You’re’aving a laugh, Mick. Next thing you’ll be telling me we’ve sold Tony Cottee . . .

The three men told me how they’d blagged millions from banks and pension funds to get the paper under starter’s orders. Then they told me all the distinguished journalists who’d agreed to write for it. I’d heard of some of them.

‘Who’s going to be your features editor?’ I asked.

They hadn’t got one yet.

‘What’s the paper going to be called?’

They didn’t know, but possibly.
The Nation
.

‘Who’s going to be the editor?’ I asked.

‘I am,’ said the oldest of the three. He’d previously edited the
Investors Chronicle
. ‘And what do you think you could offer us?’

‘What I do now, I suppose. What other feature writers have you hired?’

‘None yet,’ said one of the younger two, a solemn, dark-haired man of about my age. He looked like an archdeacon after lunch; in fact, he looked as though he was struggling to stay awake. Despite having it written down in front of him, he couldn’t get the hang of my name and ended up triple-barrelling me: ‘Mr Ingle-Engle-Anglebury.’ This wasn’t promising.

‘We may not have feature writers as such. All our reporters and specialists will contribute to the features pages.’ This was the third man, a zippier proposition with an explosive vocal style and narrowed eyes.

It was a bloody odd triumvirate. They seemed to have nothing in common with one another, for a start. Also, no one had heard of any of them – except maybe the older one, a little, if you read the City pages. Having tried once, I never did. The articles weren’t real journalism, they read as though the reporter had gone along for lunch then taken dictation from the company’s PR office.

I couldn’t imagine anyone with a proper job on an existing newspaper throwing it in to take a chance with these jokers, unless . . .

‘How much are you paying?’ I said.

‘We recognise we have to pay at the top end of the market, or above,’ said the boss. ‘How much are you paid at the moment?’

I was so surprised by the question that I told him.

‘We could do better,’ he said. ‘To give you an idea, the head of a small department would get thirty-five thousand and a car.’

Well, I don’t know. There hadn’t been a newspaper started from scratch for more than sixty years, and the financial, technical and talent problems were surely insurmountable. But I was tickled, I admit, by the Three Stooges – by their posh voices and expensive grey suits; by the money they’d already raised and by the way they seemed to be making it up as they went along – trying to convince themselves as much as me that what they were saying was more than make-believe.

What it came down to was this. The old ‘can’t do’ sub-Soviet Britain, where you waited three weeks to get your phone mended, was dead. That was their belief and their proposition. The country had changed, and the change was somehow connected to people like Plank Robinson grossing half a mill. From now on: forget early closing, go-slows, strikes and demarcation – you can do what you want. We’ve become America. Enjoy!

We left it that I’d write a job description for myself, along with an analysis of how the other dailies handled features and how a new paper could do better. Then I’d send it to them, with a note on what I wanted to be paid and so on.

On the way down, in the lift, I met a bearded man with large blue-rimmed glasses who told me he’d be working on the listings pages – the ‘what’s on’ bit they planned for the back. If I came to work at the new paper, he said, I should perhaps come and stay the weekend with him in Suffolk. He and his wife had lots of guests and they were very ‘easy-going’. Blimey. I couldn’t wait to get through the swing doors and onto City Road again.

I never got round to sending in my application. The listings bloke had put me off. Also, the more I thought about it, the more ridiculous the whole thing seemed. I didn’t give it better than one chance in ten of getting through to launch.

Word got out, though, that I’d been to see them. I was called in by the managing editor of my rag, a ravaged trembly old hack called David Terry, known as DT’s, who raised my pay to £32,000 and gave me sole use of a Peugeot 405.

It was the first car I’d had since the 1100 had finally conked out, so my trip to City Road hadn’t been wasted.

It’s General-Election time again. Midsummer Folly has taken the country in a gentle grip, and Tony Ball has sent me on the road. I had a day with Bryan Gould and Peter Mandelson, the Labour campaign organisers, who spent most of the time trying to neutralise wild remarks made to the press by Ken Livingstone. Now that Ken’s an MP he seems to feel licensed to foul the nest at will and even the hardest heart (mine) grew weary of laughing at Bryan and Peter’s anguish. ‘Oh God. What now?’ Peter would say to Bryan as the hotline rang once more. They were good to me, though, P and B, and let me into all their meetings.

‘What are you going to do if you lose?’ I asked Gould.

‘Go into the country and find out what people want, then develop our policies to meet their aspirations,’ he said.

I’d never thought of politics like that. I thought you stood for what you believed – and if the voters didn’t like it, then tough luck. But I could see the attraction of doing it the other way round: like looking at the football league and seeing who was most likely to win, then becoming their supporter.

I don’t really understand British politics, I must say. It’s a bit silly for me to be writing about it. You’d have thought that nowadays most people would want some sort of market economy to get the motor turning vigorously, then buckets of free health care from the resulting tax take. Not so. Anyone who prescribes
that
mixture is viewed as pathetic, ‘not having any policies’ and not really being part of our island history. No. As of May 1987, a true Brit wants either a) socialism with as few deviations as possible from a command economy (Kinnock); or b) a Malthusian free-for-all, in which survival of the fittest takes on a quasi-moral dimension (Thatcher).

What a very odd people we are. Do you think we’ve read a book between us? Looked abroad? Learned anything at all? You have to wonder.

Off I go on the ‘Battle Bus’ with Mr Steel and Dr Owen. To general derision, they preach a middle way. They’re considered to have ducked the question. Another problem is that they don’t convince as a twosome. It’s a
mariage blanc
. There’s no heat, just a winsome cordiality. (Bet they have separate bedrooms.) Back home, Steel stays up drinking cider with the beardies; Owen’s on the phone to orotund Roy Jenkins – who I think is going to lose his seat and concentrate on building up his stocks of Pomerol.

The other day I was with Margaret Thatcher. She’s a rum one. I think she may be a natural scientist, like me. Or did she read Chemistry? Actually, that would explain it.

To prepare myself, to fill in the background, I had lunch with a man called Alan Clark, whom I’d rung a couple of times for his opinion of other politicians I was writing ‘profiles’ of. Most of it was unprintable, but I’d used the odd ‘quote’, always off the record. So for instance, in my article on an incoming minister, it might go: ‘For all his high reputation as an organiser in Whitehall, the new Minister for X is not without his critics. As one colleague put it: “He’s a pushy little Israelite who had to go out and buy the family silver.”’

Mr Clark had accepted my invitation to a swanky French restaurant near the Opera House in Covent Garden.

‘What’s so great about Mrs Thatcher?’ I said. ‘Is she very clever or what?’

‘Not particularly, no. She intimidates people.’

‘Who?’

‘Howe, Baker, Channon. Fe-owler.’ He pronounced the name in imitation of the way the man himself said it.

‘What about you?’

‘What about me?’

‘Are you frightened of her?’

‘I don’t like this food. Waiter. Take this away.’

‘Monsieur does not like the sea bass?’

‘No. It died in the water.’

‘Would Monsieur like something else to—’

‘No. Just take it away, will you.’ He lifted the plate up and thrust it at the waiter.

‘I’m sorry about that,’ I said. ‘This restaurant’s supposed to be—’

‘Do you honestly like French food?’ said Clark.

‘No, not at all. But I thought you would.’

‘I like it in France. Not this chi-chi nonsense.’

I breathed in deeply. I wanted to go to the toilet. ‘Mrs Thatcher, then. Do you . . . Do you like her?’

‘
Like
her? Christ.’ He probed at an interdental cavity with a restaurant toothpick. Then his face relaxed a little. ‘she has a certain provincial sexuality, I suppose. Women of her type often do – from that Nonconformist background. Sex for them is a way to bettering themselves, certainly not a pleasure. Yet there’s something . . . Something there, and she seems to know it.’

‘But are you frightened of her?’

‘Yes, I suppose I am.’

‘Though you’re cleverer than she is.’

‘God, yes. It’s hard to explain. She has a peculiar force.’

‘Who else is any good in your party? Geoffrey Howe?’