Whispers of Betrayal (12 page)

‘Ah, this is a cultural matter. I should have guessed.’ Bendall’s tone suggested for all the world that he might be chiding himself for being so pedestrian. ‘And what light can you shine upon us?’

‘Very little, I’m afraid,’ the Culture Secretary stuttered. ‘I … I was at the theatre last night.’ His office hadn’t even realized he was in the frame until two hours ago.

‘But your policemen, at least, were on duty. Even chatted to them while they were playing games with my plumbing. So what did they look like?’

‘It was dark. They all wore hats,’ the Culture Secretary offered, barely above a whisper.

‘It was dark. They all – wore hats,’ Bendall repeated doggedly, in case the gods had missed this admission while they were drawing up the Bill of Execution, but he didn’t bother to pursue either the point or the man. It would be like burning the wings off a beetle, enjoyable only if you were an extreme sadist or exceptionally bored. Instead, he turned once more to Hope. ‘Let’s try the surveillance cameras. I assume you’re willing to take responsibility for those, Home Secretary. Some of them, at least?’

Hope undertook an instant diversionary tactic. ‘Colleagues may remember, Prime Minister, that security expenditure has been cut in three successive Budgets. Maintenance and upgrading of these systems are woefully behind what I would have desired and, indeed, recommended in my Budget submissions.’ It wasn’t a particularly adept attempt to shuffle off the blame elsewhere, but dancing on coals is never elegant. Across the table, the Chancellor bristled in indignation.

‘We are having the images computer-enhanced,’ Hope continued,
‘but …’ – he drew himself in – ‘as the Culture Secretary said, it was getting dark. The police are not optimistic.’

‘Somebody – I think it was George Bernard Shaw – once wrote that to do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world. Yet your security forces appear to have achieved it, Home Secretary. I congratulate you.’

‘Actually, it was Oscar Wilde …’

Silence. The silence that prevails in the moments before the trapdoor falls. Faces turned in sorrow towards Hope, the man who had chosen to contradict Bendall in his present mood. A small slip, perhaps, but when you are standing above a trapdoor … Then suddenly Bendall laughed. ‘You’re probably right. Bloody Wilde. You’re probably right. And I don’t mind being told I’m wrong. Why, as Prime Minister I shall fight to your death for your right to say so.’

And everyone around the table joined in the humour, even those more practised observers who had noticed Bendall’s deliberate twisting of the aphorism, and with it, Hope’s neck.

Hope. His lifelong colleague and rival. A man so desperately removed from reality that he had chosen this of all moments to try and score a debating point. Just like Oxford. Like a dog eating its own vomit. But soon the feast would be over. The time had come to elevate Hope to that great Cabinet table in the sky. Another Banquo. Another eternal enemy. Another risk. Bendall felt the collar of Macbeth weigh heavily on him and getting tighter all the time. There would come a point, there always came a point, where his Administration could no longer be presented as a vine in need of pruning but would be seen as a gangrenous carcass with no prospect of revival. It happened to them all, Thatcher, Major, Blair. In the long run they were all victims, it was only a matter of time. But how much time? Oh, if only he had a little oracle to guide him, yet all he had was focus groups. So he would go on cutting and slashing in order to save himself, because in the end that’s what all Prime Ministers did. Sacrifice others in order to save themselves. He had no alternative – and, as he would explain patiently to the political editors, in this case no choice. The public demanded a Home Secretary who was constructed of altogether sterner stuff, one who was more capable of kicking hell out of the
European Court, and even a few illegal immigrants, if he could get away with it. Someone skilled in the black arts of propaganda and punishment.

Someone just like young Earwig.

Goodfellowe is doodling at his desk. He can’t concentrate. Every moment of his day, from the time he leaves his front door in the heart of Chinatown until he cycles wearily back, is filled with problems. Other people’s problems, which crowd in upon him. There never seems time enough for his own.

Yet at the end of the day, when the door of his tiny apartment thumps shut behind him, his life suddenly seems full of empty spaces. The private loneliness behind the public smile.

It’s why the presence of Elizabeth in his life has become so important. She fills so many of those empty spaces within him. She is a class act, it rubs off on him, and gives him the sort of sexual self-esteem that is important in a man approaching fifty and who still has ambition. Sexual self-esteem is vital in the chaotic world of Westminster. The lust that enables a man to seduce and satisfy a woman often walks hand in hand with the desire to seduce an entire nation, and so it is with Goodfellowe. Elizabeth gives him the strength to climb Ministerial mountains, although the daily mountain of constituency correspondence is another matter entirely.

Goodfellowe’s heart sinks as an elegantly crafted pair of legs enters his House of Commons office supporting a pile of letters that look as though they could fill a dozen waste bins, and eventually almost certainly will. Somewhere behind it all lurks Mickey Ross, his secretary. It has been said that those elegant legs have got her off more speeding tickets than possession of a Chief Constable’s warrant card, although when she wants, which is frequently, they prove even more effective at getting her into a little trouble.

‘Morning, bwana.’ Her usual tone, as if she doesn’t give a stuff about anything. She does, of course, but hates to admit it. Tough
East End upbringing. Rules of survival not decreed by the Marquess of Queensberry.

‘And what has my favourite native wench brought me today?’

The pile of correspondence wobbles. ‘The good news or the bad news?’

‘Get on with it.’

‘OK, so here’s one from the Typing and Terrorism Brigade. Local section.’ A letter flutters like a flag of surrender.

‘The officer workers’ union? What do they want this time?’

‘Your undying support in a case of industrial injury. It appears that one of their merry widows yawned so hard at work that she dislocated her jaw. Now they want compensation on the grounds that the job was so jaw-twistingly boring it amounted to a health hazard.’

‘You are kidding, of course.’

An ornate eyebrow arches in rebuke. Goodfellowe groans.

‘So what’s the good news?’

‘The really good news – this will really nibble your nuts – is that the employer in this appalling case of industrial abuse is none other than the Marshwood branch of the National Farmers’ Union.’

Goodfellowe’s groans reach a higher pitch of intensity. His local brotherhoods, Mafia and Masons, knocking six bells out of each other, with him in the middle like a carcass stretched between two stampeding horses.

The mountain of letters approaches. An avalanche is about to bury him.

‘Anything else?’ It’s a plea. Go easy on me. Go away, even. But, as usual, it’s Have-A-Go-At-Goodfellowe Day.

‘The usual birthday letters to eighteen-year-olds. Declaring your undying interest in their lifestyles and personal futures now they have the vote.’ The tone leaves no doubt as to her comprehensive disbelief.

‘I was young once,’ he protests in his own defence.

‘Listening to Barry Manilow does not make you young.’

More correspondence appears.

‘Then there are begging letters to be signed to your Patrons Club, a letter to your bank manager inviting him to lunch …’

‘Overdrawn again?’ he mumbles.

It has become their habit, at times of more than usual financial embarrassment, to invite the bank manager to lunch in the House where he can be subjected to their combined persuasive abilities. In Goodfellowe’s case, this means producing a Minister who will join them for a drink. In Mickey’s case, it means wearing a blouse several degrees beyond modesty. However, the bank manager is now used to this treatment, forcing Goodfellowe to employ the firepower of ever more senior statesmen, and Mickey to discover ever more intricate ways of revealing her qualities. Soon one of them is going to run out of cover.

‘And Trevor called.’ The sigh on her lips implies more than the average weight of problems.

Trevor Fairbanks is the treasurer of Goodfellowe’s constituency party. In that position he is the rock on which many of Goodfellowe’s political fortunes are built. His is perhaps the least popular job in the executive, without the glamour of the chair or the rhetoric of the political committee, which explains why he has held on to the position for almost a decade. No one else wants it.

Yet it is a position of hidden strength, for whatever goes on within the constituency party, from planning election campaigns to replacing a typewriter ribbon or a jar of coffee, requires money. So Trevor knows everything that’s going on. Usually before it happens.

Local politics can be far more predatory and personalized than at Westminster. In the constant game of one-upmanship that infects Marshwood, Trevor Fairbanks is a steadfast friend of Tom Goodfellowe, a one-man watchtower at the heart of the constituency from where he can spot forest fires even as they are lit, while Goodfellowe has his back turned in Parliament. He is Goodfellowe’s Praetorian Guard.

He also has a bad heart.

‘He’s been to see the doctor.’ At last Mickey places the pile of letters in front of him, where they peer over the edge of his desk, threatening to jump.

‘What’s he want? Another holiday?’ Goodfellowe growls distractedly, scrabbling amidst the paper.

‘You’re not going to like this, Tom, but his doctor insists. Immediate retirement.’

‘What, not even a little gentle politics?’

‘Especially no politics.’

He is suddenly alert. He seems to have aged five years in a moment. ‘Oh, damn the gods. You know what that means?’

‘What does it mean?’

The air escapes from him as if it were his last. ‘Beryl. That’s what it means. Bloody Beryl.’

The letter arrived at Downing Street as the Cabinet was meeting in their emergency session. It was handed to one of the constables on duty at the gate by a motorcycle messenger. The messenger had no face, only a helmet.

Paperwork pollutes all aspects of Westminster. It is the debris that clogs the system and causes the gutters of delay and discontent to overflow. If Goodfellowe believed he had a problem with paper, it was as nothing compared with the tide of correspondence that pours forth every day like a mudslide and all but overwhelms the Prime Minister’s correspondence secretaries. Forget all you may have imagined about the glories of Downing Street, for at best it is a pleasant if poorly planned Restoration townhouse, yet on most days for those inside it bears a far closer resemblance to a Victorian sweatshop. Much of the sweating is done in the correspondence unit, located in the basement, where temperatures and language are known to resemble the boiler room of the
Titanic
at full speed.

All letters are routinely screened for explosives (and, it has to be said, for still more personally offensive content). If they pass this first examination, they are then subjected to a series of further tests to determine how they will be handled, and onto which pile they will be placed, for there are several piles.

The first pile is reserved for letters requiring instant action – correspondence from friends of the Prime Minister, or those he might like to have as friends. A second pile, less urgent, is passed to other parts of the Government machine for draft replies, which are generated in large part by computer.

A third, much larger, pile is set aside for complaints. To the
beleaguered members of the Prime Minister’s correspondence unit it often seems that every Englishman’s father was a shop steward and his mother a fishwife, while the Scots rarely seem to have had any parents at all. Such letters never even get close to the Prime Minister, although all will receive replies. Eventually.

Yet another pile is reserved for letters categorised as being written by eccentrics, often devoted but quite dotty people who will wait eagerly and for weeks for their reply, signed by some minor placeling at Downing Street, which they will frame and display on the mantelshelf alongside their late husbands’ ashes.

For the correspondence secretaries there is no resting place.

Amadeus’s letter arrived on a day that was neither more nor less frantic than any other, which meant that his letter was one of nearly a thousand. He had taken great care with its drafting, seeking to explain, entirely anonymously, why he and the others had done what they had done, and once again demanding an apology on behalf of all former servicemen and women. He had taken great care to hide his identity. The paper and the envelope had been purchased at the Sloane Square branch of WH Smith, and handled only with gloves. The envelope was self-sealing and had required no stamp, so no trace of saliva was available for DNA testing. The letter had also been prepared in his bursar’s office rather than at home. The dot-matrix printer at the school was from a major manufacturer and on the point of being junked, which would make any prospect of tracing the physical source of the letter all the more impossible.

Which is where Amadeus made his mistake and began to sow the seeds of exquisite confusion. For Amadeus’s problem with letters was lifelong and intense. A dyslexic. Word-blind. From his earliest years he had struggled with the art of reading and writing, his brain turning into a kaleidoscope of confusion every time a letter of the alphabet knocked at its door. To Amadeus, the whole world was an impossible anagram. Like sieving treacle. And through this sieve ‘b’s became ‘d’s, ‘j’s turned into ‘g’s and ‘f’s into ‘t’s. The words on the paper in front of him often bore only passing acquaintance with those he carried in his mind. As a boy he had written to a maiden aunt thanking her for the tuck money she had sent, and in return had received a sound thrashing. He had been regarded as a difficult child.

In many ways, it had been the making of him – as it had other word-blind people, like Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison, Nelson Rockefeller. At school he’d had to push himself harder than the rest, finding new ways of attacking a problem. Lateral thinking and a formidable memory, qualities that had marked him out at Sandhurst, had become his means of avoiding the minefield of words. His talents lay in the practicalities of warfare, not in its paperwork, which is why he had become a Paratrooper. Completing the
Times
crossword hadn’t been a prerequisite for jumping out of a Hercules at 600 feet with a hundred pounds of equipment hooked to his chest, knowing that in thirty seconds he might be dead or broken. His word blindness was also, perhaps, why he knew he would never become a general, and instead had become a leader.

Not that he could avoid paperwork entirely. He’d always wanted to command, but he couldn’t command a Para battalion without going through Staff College first. It was perhaps the greatest battle he’d ever fought. He’d survived only through stubbornness and pride and the spell-check programme on his word processor, and later there was always someone else, an adjutant or secretary or even reluctant wife, to help the spell-check programme make the right choice between laughing and fucking and ducking. But, late at night in his bursar’s office, there was no one to help him compose his letter to the Prime Minister. So he took exaggerated care, reading and rereading it until his mind had become an impenetrable jungle. The spell-check programme sanctioned the letter. Twice.

Yet dyslexia is a strange affliction. It can wax and wane like the moon, but without its predictability. And, according to some, the problem can be magnified at times of unusual stress. In any event, despite the great care Amadeus had taken, and notwithstanding the support of spell-check, the letter that was opened by the harassed secretary in the correspondence unit began:
‘Dear Pry Minister, Yew are …’

Almost a thousand letters a day. Every day. Which requires the correspondence unit to process more than one hundred letters an hour. Two every minute. On average, one every thirty seconds.

Amadeus’s letter didn’t get its thirty seconds. Wiping her brow from the heat of the boiler room, the correspondence secretary
let forth a small moan of frustration as she read. Then she threw Amadeus’s letter straight onto the pile marked with a large handwritten label: ‘
NUTTERS
’.

Thoughts of Beryl left Goodfellowe ominously distracted as he set foot inside the Members’ Lobby.

Her family name was Hailstone, as was her effect. Enough hair lacquer to spark an environmental alert and buttocks so abundant they might have required separate passports. Distinguishing features? How much time do you have? Her dress sense would have better been put to designing tablecloths. Yet she could hardly be described as flippant. She was the chair of the constituency party in Marshwood – in effect, Goodfellowe’s employer – and she had about as much time for him as she might have for a request for oral sex from Saddam Hussein.

Oh, but politics would be impossible without structures such as Beryl. She was indefatigable, unbending and, when necessary – which in constituency politics was frequently – utterly unreasonable. She drove others to the limits of exhaustion and beyond, which meant that when the crucial decisions were made, she was there to make them almost by herself, other more reasonable mortals having long since returned to their families. For Beryl had no family. She was a spinster of the parish, ‘married to Marshwood’, as she would declaim. Had she been a man she would have made a formidable Member of Parliament, and had she arrived on the scene twenty years later there would have been some politically correct quota that would have insisted she be so. But as it was, Beryl was out of time, a victim of male insecurity – ‘the Little Willy Syndrome’, as she called it – and in Beryl’s eyes, Goodfellowe was the shrimpiest of them all. The man who now occupied her rightful place in the nation’s council. Who five years ago had irresponsibly thrown away his Ministerial office and with it Marshwood’s short-cut to the inside track.