The House of Cards Complete Trilogy (21 page)

“You’re going to challenge Henry Collingridge for the Party leadership?” the presenter spluttered in surprise. “But surely you can’t win?”

“Course I can’t win,” Bearstead responded, almost contemptuous. “But it’ll focus the minds of the big beasts in our jungle. They’re all griping about the PM but none of them has the guts to do anything. So, if they won’t, then I will. Flush it all into the open.”

The presenter’s lower lip was wobbling as he tried to decide the right place to intervene. “I don’t want to interrupt but I do want to be clear about this, Mr. Bearstead. You are saying that the Prime Minister must resign, or else you will stand against him for leadership of the Party?”

“There has to be a leadership election no later than Christmas: it’s Party rules after an election. I know it’s normally nothing but a formality, but this time around it’s going to be a real contest. My colleagues are going to have to make up their minds.”

An expression of pain seemed to have taken hold of the presenter’s features. He was holding his earpiece, listening to a shouting match underway in the gallery. The director was demanding that the dramatic interview should continue and to hell with the schedule; the editor was shouting that they should get away from it before the bloody fool changed his mind and ruined a sensational story. An ashtray crashed to the floor, someone cursed very crudely.

“We’re going for a short commercial break,” the presenter declared.

Twenty-Two

Politics. The word is taken from the Ancient Greek. “Poly” means “many.”

And ticks are tiny, bloodsucking insects.

Monday, October 18—Friday, October 22

Sterling began to be marked down heavily as soon as the Tokyo financial markets opened. It was shortly before midnight in London. By 9:00 a.m. and with all the Monday newspapers screaming about the challenge to Collingridge, the
FT
All Share Index was down 63 points. It fell a further 44 points by lunchtime. The money men don’t like surprises.

The Prime Minister wasn’t feeling on top form, either. He hadn’t slept and had scarcely talked since Saturday evening, gripped by a strong depression. Rather than allow him to return to Downing Street that morning, Sarah kept him at Chequers and called the doctor. Dr. Wynne-Jones, Collingridge’s loyal and highly experienced physician, prescribed a sedative and rest. The sedative gave some immediate release; Collingridge had his first lengthy spell of sleep since the start of the Party conference a week earlier, but his wife could still detect the tension fluttering behind his closed eyelids. Even as he slept, his fingers remained firmly clamped onto the bedclothes.

Late on Monday afternoon, after he had emerged from his drugged sleep, he instructed the besieged Downing Street Press Office to make it known that, of course, he would be contesting the leadership election and was confident of victory, that he was too busy getting on with Government business to give any interviews but would have something to say later in the week. Charlie wasn’t giving any interviews, either. He still wasn’t making a word of sense about the shares, and the resulting official “No comment” was never going to be enough to steady the family boat.

Over at Party Headquarters Lord Williams ordered some more polling, and in a hurry. He wanted to know what the country really thought. The rest of the Party machinery moved less quickly. The rules for a contested leadership election were dusted off and found to be less than straightforward. The process was under the control of the Chairman of the Parliamentary Party’s Backbench Committee, Sir Humphrey Newlands, while the choice of timing was left in the hands of the Party Leader. The confusion only grew when it emerged that Sir Humphrey, displaying an acutely poor sense of timing, had left the previous weekend for a holiday on a private island in the West Indies and was proving extraordinarily difficult to contact. This resulted in a flurry of speculation among the scribblers that he was deliberately keeping his head low, playing for time while the awesome powers of the Party hierarchy were mobilized to persuade “the Lion of Leicester,” as Bearstead had been dubbed, to withdraw. By Wednesday, however, the
Sun
had discovered Sir Humphrey on a silver stretch of beach somewhere near St. Lucia along with several friends, including at least three scantily clad young women who were obviously nearly half a century younger than he. It was announced that he would be returning to London as soon as flights could be arranged. Like Charlie Collingridge, his wife was offering no public comment.

In such a stormy sea Henry Collingridge began to find himself drifting, cut off from the advice of his wise and wily Party Chairman. He had no specific reason to distrust Williams, of course, but the constant media prattle of a growing gulf between the two began to make a reality of what previously had been little more than irresponsible gossip. Distrust is a matter of mind, not fact. The proud and aging Party Chairman felt he couldn’t offer advice without being asked, while Collingridge took his silence as evidence of disloyalty.

Sarah went to visit Charlie and came back late and very depressed. “He looks awful, Henry. I never realized quite how ill he was making himself. So much alcohol. The doctors say he was close to killing himself.”

“I blame myself,” Henry muttered. “I could have stopped him. If only I hadn’t been so preoccupied…Did he say anything about the shares?”

“He’s scarcely coherent; he just kept saying ‘£50,000? What £50,000?’ He swore he’d never been anywhere near a Turkish bank.”

“Bugger!”

“Darling…” She was biting her lip, struggling with the words. “Is it possible…?”

“That he’s guilty? I simply don’t know. But what choice do I have? He has to be innocent because if he did buy those shares, then who but a total fool is going to believe that I didn’t tell him to do so. If Charlie is guilty, I’m going down, too.”

She gripped his arm in alarm. “Couldn’t you say that Charlie was ill, didn’t know what he was doing, that he somehow…found the information without your knowing…” Her excuse faded away. Even she couldn’t believe it.

He took her in his arms, surrounding her, reassuring her with his body in a way that his words could not. He kissed her forehead and felt the warmth of tears on his chest. He knew he was close to tears, too, and felt no shame in it.

“Sarah, I’m not going to be the one to finish off Charlie. God knows he’s been trying hard enough to do that himself, but I am still his brother. Will always be that. On this one we’ll either survive, or sink if we must. But, whatever happens, we’ll do it as a family. Together.”

* * *

The party conference season had been six weeks of sleep deprivation and sweat, and it had been Mattie’s intention to take a little time off to recover. A long weekend had been enough. No matter how much exotic Chilean wine she drank or how many old films she watched, her thoughts kept straying back to her job. And Collingridge. And Urquhart. And Preston. Particularly Preston. She picked up several sheets of sandpaper and began rubbing down the woodwork of her Victorian apartment, but it didn’t help, no matter how much she attacked the old paint. She was still mad as hell with her editor.

The following morning at 9:30 she found herself back in the office, rooted to the leather armchair in front of Preston’s desk, laying siege. He wasn’t going to put the phone down on her this time. But it didn’t help.

She’d been there nearly an hour when his secretary peered apologetically round the door. “Sorry, Matts, the Big Man’s just called to say he’s got an outside appointment and won’t be in until after lunch.”

The world was conspiring against Mattie, spreading sauce on her shirt. She wanted to scream and was building up to do so. It wasn’t brilliant timing, therefore, when John Krajewski chose that moment to come looking for his editor.

“I didn’t know you were in, Mattie.”

“I’m not. At least, not for much longer.” She stood up to go.

Krajewski stood ill at ease; he often was in her company, liked her just a shade too much for comfort. “Look, Mattie, I’ve picked up the phone a dozen times to call you since last week, but…”

“But what?” she snapped.

“I guess I couldn’t be bothered getting my head bitten off.”

“Then you were…” She hesitated, about to snap and suggest he was correct in his assumption, but she bit it back. It wasn’t his fault. “You were wise,” she said, her voice softening.

Since his wife had died in a traffic accident two years earlier, Krajewski had lost much of his self-confidence, both about women and about his professional abilities. He was able, had survived, but the protective shell he had built around himself was only slowly cracking. Several women had tried, attracted by his tall, slightly gangly frame and sad eyes, but he wanted more than their sympathy and a mercy fuck. He wanted something—someone—to shake him up and kick-start his life once again. He wanted Mattie.

“You want to talk about it, Mattie? Over dinner, maybe? Away from all this?” He made an irritated gesture in the direction of the editor’s desk.

“Are you putting the squeeze on me?” The slightest trace of a smile began to appear at the corners of her mouth.

“A gentle tickle, perhaps.”

She grabbed her bag and swung it over her shoulder. “Eight o’clock. The Ganges,” she instructed, trying in vain to look severe as she walked past him and out of the office.

“I’ll be there,” he shouted after her. “I must be a masochist, but I’ll be there.”

And he was. In fact he got there ten minutes early in order to get a beer down him before she arrived, five minutes late. He knew he would need a little artificial courage. The Ganges, just around the corner from Mattie’s flat in Notting Hill, was a tiny Bangladeshi restaurant with a big clay oven and a proprietor who ran an excellent kitchen during the time he allowed himself away from trying to overthrow the Government back home. When Mattie arrived she ordered a beer and kept pace with Krajewski until the last of the tikka had been scraped from the plate. She pushed it away from her, as though clearing space.

“I think I’ve made a terrible mistake, Johnnie.”

“Too much garlic in the naan?”

“I want to be a journalist. A good journalist. Deep down I think I have the makings of a great journalist. But it’s not going to happen with an arsehole as an editor, is it?”

“Grev does have his less attractive side, I suppose.”

“I gave up a lot to come down to London.”

“Funny, we blokes from Essex always think of it as coming
up
to London.”

“I’ve decided. Made up my mind. I’m not taking any more of Greville Preston’s crap. I’m quitting.”

He looked deep into her eyes, saw the turmoil. He reached out and took her hand. “Don’t rush it, Mattie. The political world is falling apart, you need a job, a ringside seat, to be part of the action. Don’t jump before you’re ready.”

“Johnnie, you surprise me. That’s not the impassioned plea to stay on as part of the team that I was expecting from my deputy editor.”

“I’m not speaking as the deputy editor, Mattie.” He squeezed her hand. “Anyway, you’re right. Grev is a shit. His only redeeming factor is that he’s totally uncomplicated about being a shit. Never lets you down. You know, the other night…”

“Tell me before I rip your balls off.”

The waiter arrived with yet another round of beers. He took the head off his before he replied.

“OK, newsroom shortly before the first edition deadline. A quiet night, not much late breaking news. Grev’s holding forth, spinning us some yarn about how he’d been drinking with Denis Thatcher the night of the Brighton bomb. No one believed it; DT wouldn’t be seen dead with Grev Preston, let alone drinking with him, and Lorraine in Features swears she was shagging him in Hove at the time. Anyway, he’s halfway through his pitch when his secretary shouts at him. A phone call. So he disappears into his office to take it. Ten minutes later he’s back in the newsroom and very flustered. Someone’s lit a fire under him. ‘Hold everything,’ he shouts. ‘We’re going to change the front page.’ We all think, Jesus, they must have shot the President, because he’s in a real state, nervous. Then he asks for your story to be put up on one of the screens and announces that we’re going to lead with it. But we’re going to have to beef it up.”

“It doesn’t make sense. The reason he spiked it in the first place was because he said it was too strong!” she protested.

“Shut up and listen. It gets better. So there he is, looking over the shoulder of one of our general reporters who’s sitting at the screen, dictating changes directly to him. Twisting it, hyping it, turning everything into a personal attack on Collingridge. ‘We’ve got to make the bastard squirm,’ he says. And you remember the quotes from senior Cabinet sources on which the whole rewrite was based? I think he made them up, on the spot. Every single one of them. Didn’t have notes, just dictated them straight onto the screen. Fiction from beginning to end. Mattie, believe me, you should be over the bloody moon your name wasn’t on it.”

“But why? Why on earth invent a story like that? What made him change his mind in such a hurry?
Who
made him change? Who was he talking to on the phone? Who was this so-called source in Bournemouth?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, but I think I do,” she whispered. “It has to be. Could only be. Benjamin Bloody Landless.”

“We don’t work for a newspaper anymore; it’s little more than a lynch mob run for the personal amusement of our proprietor.”

They both went back to their beers for a moment as they tried to drown their miseries.

“Oh, but it’s not just Landless, is it?” Mattie said, as though the beer had refreshed her mind.

“Isn’t it?” Krajewski had taken the opportunity of diving into his drink to run his eye yet again across Mattie. He was growing distracted, while she was growing more intent.

“Look, Grev couldn’t have concocted that article without my copy, and I couldn’t have written it without the leaked opinion poll. Believe in coincidence if you want, but there’s somebody else, someone on the inside of the Party who’s leaking polls and pulling strings.”