First Among Equals (3 page)

The following
Sunday, in an attempt to gain the upper hand, he took Joyce rowing on the Aire,
but his performance there was no better than his dancing, and everything on the
river overtook him, including a hardy swimmer. He watched out of the side of
his eyes for a mocking laugh, but Joyce only smiled and chatted about missing
Bradford and wanting to return home to be a nurse. Ray wanted to explain to her
that he longed to escape Leeds. He couldn’t wait to travel to London. But he
also knew he didn’t want to leave this pretty girl behind. When he eventually
returned the boat, Joyce invited him back to her boardinghouse for tea.

He went
scarlet, as they passed her landlady, and Joyce hustled him up the worn stone
staircase to her little room.

Ray sat on the
end of the narrow bed while Joyce made two inkless mugs of tea. After they had
both pretended to drink, she sat beside him, her hands in her lap. He found
himself listening intently to an ambulance siren as it faded away in the
distance. She leaned over and kissed him, taking one of his hands and placing
it on her knee.

She parted his
lips and their tongues touched-, he found it a peculiar sensation, an arousing
one; his eyes remained closed as she gently led him through each new
experience, until he was unable to stop himself committing what he felt sure
his mother had once described as a mortal sin.

“It will be
easier next time,” she said shyly, maneuvering herself from the narrow bed to
sort out the crumpled clothes spread across the floor.

She was right:
he wanted her again in less than an hour, and this time his eyes remained wide
open.

It was another
six months before Joyce hinted at the
future,
and by
then Ray was bored with her and had his sights set on a bright little mathematician
in her final year. A mathematician hailed from Surrey.

Just at the
time when Ray was summing up enough courage to let her kaow the affair was
over, Joyce told him she was pregnant. His father would have taken a meat ax to
him had he suggested an illegal abortion. His mother was only relieved that she
was a Yorkshire girl.

Ray and Joyce
were married at St. Mary’s in Bradford during the long vacation. When the
wedding photos were developed, Ray looked so distressed, and Joyce so happy,
that they resembled father and daughter rather than husband and wife. After a
reception in the church hall the newly married couple traveled down to Dover to
catch the night ferry.

Their first night as Mr. and Mrs. Gould.
was
a disaster. Ray turned out to be a particularly bad sailor. Joyce only hoped
that Paris would prove to be memorable – and it was. She had a miscarriage on
the second night of their honeymoon.

“Probably
caused by all the excitement,” his mother said on their return. “Still, you can
always have another, can’t you? And this time folk won’t be able to call it a
little...” she checked herself.

Ray showed no
interest in having another.

He completed
luserst class honors degree in law at Leeds and then moved to London, as
planned, to complete his studies at the bar. After only a few months in the
metropolis, Leeds faded from his memory, and by the end of his two-year course
Ray had been accepted at a fashionable London chambers to become a much-sought
after junior counsel. From that moment he rarely mentioned his North of England
roots to his carefully cultivated new circle of society friends, and those
comrades who addressed him as Ray received a sharp “Raymond” for their
familiarity.

The only
exception Raymond made to this rule was when it served his budding political
career. Leeds North had chosen Raymond to be their Labour candidate for
Parliament from a field of thirty-seven. Yorkshire folk like people who stay at
home, and Raymond had been quick to point out to the selection committee, in an
exaggerated Yorkshire accent, that he had been educated at Routadhay Grammar
School on the fringes of the constituency and that he had refused a scholarship
to Cambridge, preferring to continue his education at Leeds University.

Ten years had
passed since the Goulds’ memorable honeymoon, and Raymond had long since
accepted that he was tethered to Joyce for life. Although she was only
thirty-two, she already needed to cover those once-slim legs that had first so
attracted him.

How could he be
so punished for such a pathetic mistake? Raymond wanted to ask the gods. How
mature he had thought he was; how immature he had turned out to be. Divorce
made sense, but it would have meant the end of his political ambitions: no
Yorkshire folk would have considered selecting a divorced man. Not to mention
the problem that would create with his parents; after ten years of housing the
young Goulds on their trips to Leeds, they had come to adore their daughter
in-law. To be fair, it hadn’t all been a disaster, he had to admit that the
locals adored her as well. During the election six weeks before she had mixed
with the trade unionists and their frightful wives far better than he had ever
managed to do, and he had to acknowledge that she had been a major factor in
his winning the Leeds seat by over nineteen thousand votes. He wondered how she
could sound so sincere the whole time; it never occurred to him that it was
natural.

“Why don’t you
buy yourself a new dress for Downing Street?” Raymond said as they rose from
the breakfast table. She smiled; he had not volunteered such a suggestion for
as long as she could remember. Joyce had no illusions about her husband and his
feelings for her, but hoped that eventually he would realize she could help him
achieve his unspoken ambition.

On the night of
the reception at Downing Street Joyce made every effort to look her best. She
had spent the morning at Marks and Spencer searching for an outfit appropriate
for the occasion, finally returning to a suit she had liked the moment she had
walked into the store. It was not the perfect fit but the sales assistant
assured Joyce “that madam looked quite sensational in it.” She only hoped that
Ray’s remarks would be half as flattering. By the time she reached home, she
realized she had no accessories to match its unusual color.

Raymond was
late returning from the Commons and was pleased to find Joyce ready when he
leaped out of the bath. He bit back a derogatory remark about the incongruity
of her new suit with her old shoes. As they 22 drove toward Westminster, he
rehearsed the names of every member of the Cabinet with her, making Joyce
repeat them as if she were a child.

The air was
cool and crisp that night so Raymond parked his Volkswagen in New Palace Yard
and they strolled across Whitehall together to Number 10. A solitary policeman
stood guard at the door of the Prime Minister’s residence. Seeing Raymond
approach, the officer banged the brass knocker once and the door was opened for
the young member and his wife.

Raymond and
Joyce stood awkwardly in the hall as if they were waiting outside a
headmaster’s study until eventually they were directed to the first floor. They
walked sfowly up the staircase, which turned out to be less grand than Raymond
had anticipated, passing photographs of former Prime Ministers. “Too many
Tories,” muttered Raymond as he passed Chamberlain, Churchill, Eden, Macmillan
and Home, with Attlee the only framed compensation.

At the top of
the stairs stood the short figure of Harold Wilsom, pipe in mouth, waiting to
welcome his guests.

Raymond was
about to introduce his wife when the Prime Minister said, “How are you, Joyce?
I’m so glad you could make it.”

“Make it? I’ve
been looking forward to the occasion all week.” Her frankness made Raymond
wince. He failed to notice that it made Wilson chuckle.

Raymond chatted
with the Prime Minister’s wife about her recent book of poetry until she turned
away to greet the next guest. fie then moved off into the drawing room and was
soon talking to Cabinet Ministers, trade union leaders and their wives, always
keeping a wary eye on Joyce, who seemed engrossed in conversation with the
general secretary of the Trades Union Council.

Raymond moved
on to the American ambassador, who was telling Jamie Sinclair, one of the new
intake from Scotland, how much he had enjoyed the Edin23 burgh Festival that
summer. Raymond envied Sinclair the relaxed club able manner that was the stamp
of his aristocratic family. He interrupted their flow of conversation
awkwardly. “I was interested to read Johnson’s latest communiqué on Vietnam,
and I must confess that the escalation...”

“...What’s he
interrogating you about?” asked a voice from behind him. Raymond turned to find
the Prime Minister by his side. “I think I should warn you, Ambassador,”
continued Mr. Wilson, “that Raymond Gould is one of the brighter efforts we’ve
produced this time, and quite capable of quoting you verbatim years after
you’ve forgotten what you thought you said.”

“It’s not that
long ago they used to say the same sort of thing about you,” the ambassador
replied.

The Prime
Minister chuckled, slapped Raymond on the shoulder and moved on to another
group of guests.

Raymond rankled
at the condescension he imagined he’d heard in the Prime Minister’s tone, only
too aware that his nervousness had led him to commit a social gaffe. As in the
past, his humiliation turned quickly into anger against himself. He knew that
the Prime Minister’s words had contained some genuine admiration, for if
Raymond had gained any reputation in his first six weeks in Parliament, it was
as one of the Labour Party’s intellectuals. But he felt the familiar fear that
he would ultimately fail to turn his mental acuity into the currency of
politics.

Whereas some of
his peers among the new intake of N4Ps, inen like Simon Kerslake, had delivered
niaiden speeches that niade the veterans in Parliament sit up and take notice,
Raymond’s first effort had not been well received; reading nervously from a
prepared mainuseript, he had been unable to make the House hang on his every word.

Rooted to the
spot, feeling the familiar blush rise to his face, Raymond was determined to
remain calm. His career, he assured himself for the umpteenth time, would
simply have to follow an unusual path.

He had already
begun to work to that end, and if he could pull it off, few members would be
able to ignore or challenge him.

Reassured,
Raymond moved on to be introduced to several people about whom he had only read
in the past; he was surprised to find that they treated him as an equal. At the
end of the evening, after they had stayed what he later told Joyce had been a
little too
long,
he drove his wife back to their home
on Lansdowne Road.

On the way he
talked nonstop about all the people he had met, what he thought of them,
describing their jobs, giving her his impressions, almost as if she hadn’t been
there.

They had seen
little of each other during Simon Kerslake’s first six weeks in Parliament,
which made tonight even more special. The Labour Party might have returned to
power after thirteen years, but with a majority of only four, it was proving
almost impossible for Simon to get to bed much before midnight. He couldn’t see
any easing of the pressure until one party had gained a sensibleworking
majority, and that would not happen until there was another General Election.
But what Simon feared most, having won his own constituency with the slimmest
of majorities, was that such an election would unseat him, and that he might
end up with one of the shortest political careers on record.

That was why
Lavinia was so good for him.

He enjoyed the
company of the tall, willowy girt who couldn’t pronounce her Ws, and he was
angered by the gossip that he knew surrounded their relationship.

True, his
political career had been off to a slow start before he’d met Lavinia Maxwell-
Harrington. After Oxford, throughout his two years of National Service with the
Sussex Light Infantry, he’d never lost sight of his loal. When he sought a
position at the BBC as a gen25 eral trainee, his natural ability to shine at
interviews secured him thejob, but he used every spare moment to advance his
political ambitions: he quickly joined several Tory organizations, writing
pamphlets and speaking at.
weekend
conferences.
However, he’d never been taken seriously as a prospective candidate until 1959,
when, during the General Election, his hard work earned him the post of
personal assistant to the party chairman.

During the
campaign he had met Lavinia MaxwellHarrington at a dinner party held at
Harrington Hall in honorof his chairman. Lavinia’s father, Sir Rufus
Maxwell-Harrington, had also been, “sometime in the dim distant past,” as
Lavinia described it, chairman of the Tory Party.

When the
Conservatives had been returned to power Simon found himselt’a frequent weekend
guest at Harrington.

Hall.
By the time the 1964 election had been called, Sir
Rufus had passed Simon for membership of the Ca.rlton-the exclusive
Conservative club in St. Jarnes – and rumors of an imminent engagement between
Simon and Lavinia were regularly hinted at in the gossip columns of the London
press.

In the surnmer
of 1964, Sir Rufus’s influence had once again proved decisive, and Simon was
offered the chance to defend the marginal constituency of Coventry Central.
Simon retained the seat for the Tories at the General Election by a slender
nine hundred and seventy-ODe votes.

Simon parked
his MGB outside Number 4

Chelsea Square
and checked his watch. He cursed at being once again a few minutes late,
although he realized Lavinia was well versed in the voting habits of politicians.
He pushed back the mop of brown hair that perpetually fell over his forehead,
buttoned up his new blazer and straightened his tie. He cursed again as he
pulled the little brass bell knob. He had forgotten to pick up the roses he had
ordered for Lavinia, although he had passed the shop on the way.