First Among Equals (29 page)

“What’s wrong
with the one you’ve got?”

“It’s made of
rubber and doesn’t bounce like the proper ones they use in school matches.
Besides, it’s too small.”

“It will have
to do, I’m afraid.”

“But Martin
Henderson’s dad has given him a fullsized leather ball to start the new
season.”

“I’m sorry,
son, the truth is that Martin Henderson’s father is far better off than I am.”

“I’ll tell.
you
one thing,” said Peter with feeling. “I’m sure not going
to be an MP when I grow up.” Simon smiled as his son kicked the ball toward
him. “I’ll bet you can’t score against me even with a small ball.”

“Don’t forget,
we still only have small goal-posts,” said Si-non.

“Stop making
excuses, Dad, just admit you’re past your prime.”

Simon burst out
laughing. “We shall see,” he said with more bravado than conviction. At the age
of eight Peter was already able to dribble and shoot with a confidence that was
beginning to look ominous. An old school friend had recently warned him that
“By twelve they begin to beat you, and by fifteen they hope not to show they
aren’t trying their hardest any more.”

Simon still
needed to try his hardest before he managed to score against Peter and take his
place in the goal. He then watched Peter’s fiercest shots safely into his arms
and was again thankful that the goal was not full size.

He kept his
son’s best shots out for another twenty minutes before Lucy came to join them
in the garden. Simon couldn’t help noticing that she was wearing a dress
already too tight around the shoulders.

“Supper’s
ready, Dad,” she said, and ran back inside. He cursed again at the sacrifices
his own selfish greed had brought upon the family and marveled at how little
they complained.

Elizabeth
looked tired as she served up hamburgers and chips for the family, and then
Simon remembered she had to be back on duty at St. Mary’s by eight that night.
Thank God he hadn’t married Lavinia MaxwellHarrington, he thought, as he looked
up at his wife.

Lavinia would
not have hung around for hamburgers and chips.

“How did you
get on?” asked Elizabeth.

“I’ll survive,”
said.
Simon, still thinking about his overdraft.

“I’ll kill him
next time,” said Peter, “once I get a real ball.”

Raymond dug
deeper into the red box.

“
You enjoying
yourself, Red?”

“It’s fascinating,”
said Raymond. “Do you know
– ?”
“No, I don’t. You
haven’t spoken to me in the last three hours, and when you do it’s to tell me
how you spent the day with your new mistress.”

“My new mistress?”

“The Secretary of State for Trade.”

“Oh, him.
11

“Yes, him.”

“What sort of
day did you have at the bank?” asked Raymond, not looking up from his papers.

“I had a most
fascinating day,” replied Kate.

“Why, what
happened?”

“One of our
customers required a loan,” said Kate. “A loan,” repeated Raymond, still concentrating
on the file in front of him.
“How much?”

‘How much do
you wantT I said. ‘How much have you gotT they asked. ‘Four hundred seventeen
billion at 244 the last count,’ I told them. ‘That will do tine to start with,’
they said. ‘Sign here,’ I said. But I couldn’t close the deal be – ause the
lady concerned was only in posses.sion of a fifty pound banking card.”

Raymond burst
out laughing and slammed down the lid of the red box. “Do you know why I love
you?”

“My taste in
men’s clothes?” suggested Kate.

“No, no.
Just your taste in men.”

“I always
thought that mistresses were supposed to get fur coats, trips to the Bahamas,
the odd solitaire diamond, yet all I evet get is to share you with your red
box.”

Raymond opened
the box once more, took out a small package
a;
)d
handed it to Kate.

“
What’s,
this?”

“Why don’t you
open it and find out?”

Kate slipped
off the purple Asprey paper and found inside an exquisitely made miniature
solid-gold replica of the red box on a gold chain. The neat lettering on the side
of the lid read,

“For Your Eyes Only.”

*’Although they
don’t announce the birthdays of Ministers’ mistresses in the Sunday Tinies, I
haven’t forgotten the apniversary of the day we met.”

O
NCE THE CHANCELLOR had presented his budget, in November 1976, the
long process of the Finance Bill, confirming all the new measures proposed,
fully occupied the House. Charles, although not a member of the front-bench
Finance team, regularly took the lead among backbenchers on clauses on which he
had a specialist’s knowledge.

He and Chve
Reynolds studied the new Finance Bill meticulously and between them picked out
the seven clauses that would have an adverse effect on banking.

Reynolds guided
Charles through each clause, suggesting changes, rewording, and on some occasions
presenting an argument for deleting whole sections of the bill. Charles learned
quickly and was soon adding his own ideas; one or two made even Clive Reynolds
reconsider.

After Charles
had put forward amendments to the House on three of the clauses, both front
benches became respectfully attentive whenever he rose to present a case. One
morning, after the Government’s defeat on a clause relating to banking loans,
he received a note of congratulation from Margaret Thatcher.

The clause
Charles most wanted to see removed from the bill concerned a client’s right to
privacy when dealing with a merchant bank. The Shadow Chancellor was aware of
Charles’s specialized knowledge on this subject and invited him to -
,peak
out on Clause 110 from the front bench. Charles
realized that if he could defeat the Government on this clause he might be
invited to join the Shadow Finance team.

The Whips
estimated that Clause 110 on banking privacy would be reached sometime on
Thursday afternoon. On Thursday morning Charles rehearsed his arguments
thoroughly with Clive Reynolds, who had only one or two rainor amendments to
add before Charles set off for the House. When he arrived at the Commons there
was a note on the message board asking him to phone the Shadow Chancellor immediately.

“The Government
is going to accept a Liberal amendment tabled late last night,” the Shadow
Chancellor told him.

“Why?” said
Charles.

“Minimum change
is what they’re really after, but it gets them off the hook and at the same
time keeps the Liberal vote intact. In essence, nothing of substance has
changed, but you’ll need to study the wording carefully. Can I leave you to
handle the problem?”

“Certainly,”
said Charles, pleased with the responsibility with which they were now
entrusting him.

He walked down
the long corridor to the vote office and picked up the sheet with Clause 110 on
it and the proposed Liberal amendment. He read them both through half a dozen
times before he started to make notes.

Parliamentary
counsel, with their usual expertise, had produced an ingenious amendment.
Charles ducked into a nearby phone booth and rang Clive Reynolds at the bank.
Charles dictated the amendment over the phone to him and then remained silent
for a moment while Reynolds considered its implications.

“Clever bunch of sharpies.
It’s a cosmetic job, but it 247
won’t change the power it invests in the Government one iota. Were you thinking
of returning to the bank? That would give me time to work on it.”

“No,” said
Charles. “Are you free for lunch?”

Clive Reynolds
checked his diary. A Belgian banker would be lunching in the boardroom but his
cofleagues could handle that. “Yes, I’m free.”

“Good,” said
Charles. “Why don’t you join me at White’s around one o’clock?”

-Thank you,”
said Reynolds. “By then I should have had enough time to come up with some
credible alternatives.”

Charles spent
the rest of the morning rewriting his speech, which he hoped would counter the
Labour argument and make them reconsider their position. If it met with
Reynolds’s imprimatur, the day could still be his. He read through the clause
once more, convinced he had found a way through the loophole the civil servants
couldn’t block. He placed his speech and the amended clause in his inside
pocket, went down to the members’ entrance and jumped into a waiting taxi.

As the cab
drove up St. James’s, Charles thought he saw his wife coming down the opposite
side of the road. He rolled down the window to be sure, but she had disappeared
into Prunier’s. He wondered with which of her girlfriends she was lunching. The
cab traveled on up St. James’s and came to a halt outside White’s.

Charles found
he was a few minutes early so he decided to walk down to Prunier’s and ask
Fiona if she would like to come to the House after lunch and hear him oppose
the finance clause. Reaching the restaurant, he glanced through the window.
Charles froze on the spot. Fiona was chatting at the bar with a man whose back
was to Charles, but he thought he recognized his profile. Charles noticed that
his wife was wearing a dress he had never seen before. He didn’t move as he
watched a waiter bow,
then
guide the pair toward a
comer table 248 where they were conveniently out of sight.

Charles’s first
instinct was to march straight in and confront them, but he held himself in check.

For what seemed
a long time he stood alone, uncertain what to do next.

Finally he
crossed back over to St. James’s and stood in the doorway of the Economist
Building going over several plans. In the end he decided to do nothing but
wait. He stood there so cold and so incensed that lie totally forgot about his
lunch appointment with Ctive Reynolds a few hundred yards up the road.

An hour and
twenty minutes later the man came out of Prunier’s alone an – l headed up St.
James’s. Charles felt a sense of relief until he saw him turn into St. James’s
Place. A few minutes later Fiona stepped out of the restaurant and followed in
the man’s footsteps. Charles crossed the road, causing one cab to swerve while
another motorist slammed on her brakes.

He didn’t notice.
He shadowed his wife, careful to keep a safe distance, When she reached the far
end of the street he watched Fiona
enter
the Stafford
Hotel. Once she was through the revolving doors Fiona stepped into an empty
elevator.

Charles came up
to the revolving doors and stared at the little numbers above the elevator,
watching them fight up in succession until they stopped at four.

Charles marched
through the revolving doors and up to the reception desk.

“Can I help
you, sir?” the hall porter asked.

“Er… is the
dining room in this hotel on the fourth floor?” asked Charles.

“No, sir,”
replied the hall porter, surprised.

“The dining
room is on the ground floor to your left.” He indicated the way with a sweep of
his hand. “There are only bedrooms on the fourth floor.”

“Thank you,”
said Charles and marched back outside.

He returned
slowly to the Economist Building, where he waited for nearly two hours pacing
up and down St. James’s Place before the man emerged from the Stafford Hotel.
Alexander Dalglish hailed a taxi and disappeared in the direction of
Piccadilly.

Fiona left the
hotel about twenty minutes later and took the path through the park before
setting off toward Eaton Square. On three occasions Charles had to fall back to
be certain Fiona didn’t spot him; once he was so close he thought he saw a
smile of satisfaction on her face.

He had followed
his wife most of the way across St. James’s Park when he suddenly remembered.
He checked his watch, then dashed back to the roadside, hailed a taxi and
shouted, “The House of Commons, as fast as you can.” The cabby took seven
minutes and Charles passed him two pound notes before running up the steps into
the members’ lobby and through to the chamber out of breath. He stopped by the
sergeant-atarms’s chair.

From the table
where he sat during committee of the whole House, the chairman of Ways and
Means faced a packed House. He read from the division list.

THE AYES TO THE RIGHT, 294

THE NOS TO THE LEFT, 293

THE AYES HAVE IT,

THE AYES HAVE
IT.

The Government
benches cheered and the Conservatives looked distinctly glum. “What clause were
they debating?” a still out-of-breath Charles asked the sergeant-at-arms.

“Clause One
Hundred and Ten, Mr. Hampton.”

Simon was in
Manchester as a guest of the business school when he received Elizabeth’s
message to call her.

It was most
unusual for Elizabeth to phone in the middle of the day and Simon assumed the
worst. Something must have happened to the children. The principal of the
business school accompanied Simon to his private office,
then
left him alone.

Doctor Kerslake
was not at the hospital, he was told, which made him even more anxious. He
dialed the Beaufort Street number.

Elizabeth
picked up the receiver so quickly that she must have been sitting by the phone
waiting for him to call.

“I’ve lost my
job,” she said.

“What?” said
Simon, unable to
comprehend.

“I’ve been made
redundant-isn’t that the modem term meant to lessen the blow? The hospital
governors have been instructed by the Department of Health and Social Security
to make cutbacks, and three of us in gynecology have lost our jobs. I go at the
end of the month.”

“Darling, I’m
sorry,” he said, knowing how inadequate his words must sound.