The House of Cards Complete Trilogy (86 page)

It was not the only portrait on the wall. Beside it stood the photograph of a young man with open collar, staring eyes, and down-turned mouth set against a rough plaster wall. There was no sign of identity, none needed for Michael Karaolis. A promising village boy educated at the English School. A youthful income tax clerk in the colonial administration, turned EOKA fighter. A final photograph taken in Nicosia Jail on the day before the British hanged him by his neck until he was dead.

“Vangelis.”

Since he had buried his wife a few years before, Evanghelos Passolides had been captured more than ever by the past. Sullen days were followed by long nights of rambling reminiscence around the candlelit tables with old comrades who knew and young men who might be willing to listen, though the numbers of both shrank with the passing months. He had become locked in time, bitter memories twisting both soul and body; he was stooped now, and the savagely broken leg that had caused him to limp throughout his adult life had grown noticeably more painful. He seemed to be withering even as Maria looked, the acid eating away inside.

The news that there was to be peace within his island only made matters worse. “Not my peace,” he muttered in his heavy accent. He had fought for union,
Enosis
, a joining of all Greeks with the Motherland—one tongue, one religion, one Government no matter how incompetent and corrupt, so long as it was our Government. He had put his life on the line for it until the day his fall down a mountain ravine with a thirty-pound mortar strapped across his back had left his leg bones protruding through his shin and his knee joint frozen shut forever. His name had been on the British wanted list so there was no chance of hospital treatment; he’d been lucky to keep his leg in any condition. The fall had also fractured the spirit, left a life drenched in regret, in self-reproach that he and his twisted leg had let his people down, that he hadn’t done enough. Now they were about to divide his beloved island forever, give half of it away to the Turk, and somehow it was all his fault.

She had to find a distraction from his remorse, some means of channeling the passion, or sit and watch her father slowly wither away to nothing.

“When are you going to get married?” he grumbled yet again, lurching past her in exaggerated sailor’s gait with a plate of marinated fish. “Doesn’t family mean anything to you?”

Family, his constant refrain, a proud Cypriot father focused upon his only child. With her mother’s milk she had been fed the stories of the mountains and the village, of mystical origins and whispering forests, of passions and follies and brave forebears—little wonder that she had never found a man to compare. She had been born to a life illuminated with legend, and there were so few legends walking the streets of north London, even for a woman with her dark good looks.

Family. As she bit into a slice of cool raw turnip and savored its tang of sprinkled salt, an idea began to form. “
Baba.
” She reached out and grabbed his leathery hand. “Sit a minute. Talk with me.”

He grumbled, but wiped his hands on his apron and did as she asked.

“You know how much I love your stories about the old days, what it was like in the village, the tales your mother told around the winter fires when the snow was so thick and the well froze. Why don’t we write them down, your memories. About your family. For
my
family—whenever I have one.” She smiled.

“Me, write?” he grunted in disgust.

“No, talk. And remember. I’ll do the rest. Imagine what it would be like if you could read the story of
Papou
, your grandfather, even of his grandfather. The old way of life in the mountains is all but gone, perhaps my own children won’t be able to touch it—but I want them to be able to know it. How it was. For you.”

He scowled but raised no immediate objection.

“It would be fun,
Baba
. You and me. Over the summer when school is out. It would be an excuse for us to go visit once more. It’s been years—I wonder if the old barn your father built is still there at the back of the house, or the vines your mother planted. And whether they’ve ever fixed that window in the church you and your brothers broke.” She was laughing now, like they had before her mother died. A distant look had crept into his eyes, and within them she thought she saw a glint of embers reviving in the ashes.

“Visit the old family graves,” he whispered. “Make sure they’re still kept properly.”

And exorcize a few ghosts, she thought. By writing it all down, purging the guilt, letting in light and releasing all the demons that he harbored inside.

He sniffed, as though he could already smell the pine. “Couldn’t do any harm, I suppose.” It was the closest he had come in months to anything resembling enthusiasm.

Ten

I see no point in compromise. It’s rather like suggesting jumping as a cure for vertigo.

Mortima despaired of trying to check her face in the flicker of passing street lights as the car made its way up Birdcage Walk. “So what kind of woman is Claire Carlsen?” she asked, snapping away her compact.

“Different.” Urquhart paused to consider. “Whips don’t much care for her,” he concluded, as though he had no identifiable opinion of his own.

“A troublemaker?”

“No. I think it’s more that the old boys’ network has trouble in finding the right pigeonhole for a woman who is independent, drives a fifty-thousand-pound Mercedes sports car and won’t play by their rules. Has quite a tongue on her, too, so I’m told.”

“Not something of which you as a former Chief Whip would approve. So why are we going to dinner?”

“Because she’s persistent, her invitation seemed to keep creeping to the top of the list. Because she’s different.”

“Sounds as if you
do
approve, Francis,” she probed teasingly, her curiosity aroused.

“Perhaps I do. As Chief Whip I welcomed the dunderheads and do-nothings, but as Prime Minister you need a little more variety, a different perspective. Oh, and did I say she was under forty and extremely attractive?” He returned the tease.

“Thinking of giving her a job?”

“Don’t know. That’s why we’re going this evening, to find out a little more about her. I could do with some new members of the crew.”

“But to make room on the life raft you have to throw a few old hands overboard. Are there any volunteers?”

“I’d gladly lash that damned fool Drabble around the fleet. And Annita Burke was born to be fish bait.”

“I thought she was loyal.”

“So is our Labrador.”

“Go further, Francis. Much further. Bring it back.”

“What?”

“Fear. They’ve grown idle and fat these last months, your success has made things too easy for them. They’ve found time to dream of mutiny.” They were passing Buckingham Palace, the royal standard illuminated and fluttering proud. “Even a King cannot be safe on his throne.”

For a moment they lost themselves in reminiscence.

“Remind them of the taste of fear, the lash of discipline. Make them lie awake at nights dreaming of your desires, not theirs.” The compact was out again, they were nearing their destination. “We haven’t had a good keelhauling for months. You know how those tabloid sharks love it.”

“With you around, my love, life seems so full of pointed opportunity.”

She turned to face him in the half light. “I’ll not let you become like Margaret Thatcher, dragged under by your own crew. Francis, you are greater than that.”

“And they shall erect statues to my memory…”

She had turned back to her mirror. “So make a few examples, get some new crew on board. Or start taking hormone therapy like me.”

***

The door of the buttermilk stucco house set in the middle of Belgravia was opened through the combined effort of two brushed and scrubbed young girls, both wearing tightly wrapped dressing gowns.

“Good evening, Mrs. Urquhart, Mr. Urquhart,” said the elder, extending a hand. “I’m Abby and this is Diana.”

“I’m almost seven and Abby is nine,” Diana offered with a lisp where soon would be two new teeth. “And this is Tangle,” she announced, producing a fluffy and much-spotted toy dog from behind her back. “He’s very nearly three and absolutely…”

“That’s enough, girls.” Claire beamed proudly from behind. “You’ve said hello, now it’s good-bye. Up to bed.”

Stereophonic heckling arose on either side.

“Pronto. Or no Rice Pops for a week.”

Their protest crushed by parental intimidation, the girls, giggling mischievously, mounted the stairs.

“And I’ve put out fresh school clothes for the morning. Make sure you use them,” their mother called out to the retreating backs before returning to her guests. “Sorry, business before pleasure. Welcome, Francis. And you, Mrs. Urquhart.”

“Mortima.”

“Thank you. I feel embarrassed knowing your husband so much better than you.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not the jealous type. I have to share him with the rest of the world. It’s inevitable there should be a few attractive young women among them.”

“Why, thank you,” Claire murmured, acknowledging the compliment. In the light of the hallway’s chandelier she seemed to shimmer in a way that Mortima envied and which she had thought could only be found in combination with motherhood between the pages of
Vogue
. Was Claire also the type that had herself photographed naked and heavily pregnant, just to show the huddled, sweating masses with backache and Sainsbury’s bags just how it was done?

Claire introduced her husband, Johannis, who had been standing back a pace; this was his wife’s event and, anyway, he gave the impression of being a physically powerful man who was accustomed to taking a considered, unflustered view of life. He also had the years for it, being far nearer Urquhart’s age than his wife’s, and spoke with a distinctively slow though not unpleasant accent bearing the marks of his Scandinavian origin. Carlsen’s self-assured posture suggested a man who knew what he wanted and had got it, while she displayed the youthful vitality of a woman with ambitions still to be met. Contrasts. Yet it took only a few moments for Mortima to become aware that in spite of the superficial differences, somehow the Carlsens seemed to fit, have an understanding, be very much together. Perhaps she hadn’t married him simply for the money.

Claire led the way through to a reception room of high ceiling and pastel walls—ideal for the displayed works of contemporary European artists—in which the other eight guests had already assembled. Urquhart knew only one of them, but knew of them all; Claire had provided him with a short and slightly irreverent written bio of every diner, including Johannis. She’d made it all very easy, had chosen well. A bluff Lancashire industrialist who did extraordinary things with redundant textile mills that kept his wife in Florida for half the year and in racehorses for the rest. The editor of
Newsnight
and her husband, a wine importer who had provided the liquid side of the meal, which he spiced with spirited stories of a recent trip to vineyards in the mountains of Georgia where, for three nights, he had resided in a local jail on a charge of public drunkenness until he had agreed to take a consignment of wine from the police chief’s brother. The wine turned out to be excellent. There was also an uninhibited Irishman-and-American-mistress partnership who had invented the latest departure in what was called “legal logistics”—“profiling alternative litigation strategies,” he had explained; “Lawyers’ bullshit, it’s witness coaching and jury nobbling,” as she had offered.

And Nures. Urquhart had known he would be there, a relatively late addition to the guest list while on a private visit to London for dental treatment; his family’s fruit firm had used Carlsen freight facilities for more than a decade. The Foreign Office would normally have expressed qualms about his meeting the President of Turkish Cyprus in this manner, without officials present, but Nures was no longer an international pariah. Anyway, the Foreign Office couldn’t object because Urquhart hadn’t let them know; they would have felt obliged to parley with Nicosia, Ankara, Athens, Brussels, and half a dozen others in a process of endless consultation and compromise to ensure no one was offended. Left to the Foreign Office, they’d all starve.

Claire thrust a malt whiskey into Urquhart’s hand—Bruichladdich, she’d done her homework—and propelled him toward the
Newsnight
editor and the developer, neither of whom would be sitting next to him during the meal.

“Pressure groups are a curse,” Thresher, the developer, was protesting. “Am I right, Mr. Urquhart?” He pronounced it Ukut, in its original Scottish form, rather than the soft Southern Urkheart so beloved of the BBC, who at times seemed capable of understanding neither pronunciation nor policy. “Used to be there was a quiet, no-nonsense majority, folks that mowed their lawns and won the wars. But now everyone seems to belong to some minority or other, shouting t’odds and lying down in t’road trying to stop other folk getting on with life. Environmentalists”—Thresher emphasized every syllable, as though wringing its neck—“will bring this country to its knees.”

“We have a heritage, surely we must defend it?” Wendy the
Newsnight
editor responded, accepting with good grace the fact that for the moment she had been cast in the role of lonesome virtue.

“Green-gabble.” Urquhart pounced, joining in the game. “It’s everywhere. Knee-jerk nostalgia for the days of the pitchfork and pony and trap. You know, ten years ago the streets of many Northern towns were deserted, now they’re congested with traffic jams as people rush to the shops. I’m rather proud of those traffic jams.”

“Could I quote you, Prime Minister?” Wendy smiled.

“I doubt it.”

“Here’s something you might quote, but won’t, lass.” Thresher was warming to his task. “I’ve got a development planned in Wandsworth centered around one old worm-eaten cinema. Neither use nor ornament, practically falling to pieces it is, but will they let me knock it down? The protesters claim they prefer the knackered cinema to a multimillion-pound shopping complex with all the new jobs and amenities. Daft buggers won’t sit in t’cinema and watch films; no, all they do is sit down in t’street outside, get up petitions and force me to a planning inquiry that’ll take years. It’s a middle-class mugging.”