Pride and Avarice

by Nicholas Coleridge

  Greg spent four days thinking about Miles’s overture over lunch, considering it from every possible perspective. That is to say, he analysed how it might advantage him personally, balancing benefit against risk.

  Although in his regular quotes to the Droitwich Advertiser, and in his television soundbites for Midlands Today, he remained implacably confident about prospects for the Labour Government, and spoke of a fourth and even fifth term of compassionate, progressive socialism for decent hardworking families, Greg was in fact increasingly panic-struck. The latest polls were alarming, even those published in Labour-supporting papers, and results from recent by-elections seemed to back these up. If his constituency followed the national trend, he wouldn’t have a hope of winning the seat, through no fault of his own. The local government elections in the West Midlands saw a wipe-out for Labour, with most of the councils turning from red to blue. And during his rare forays on the doorsteps, and at the ‘listening’ surgeries he convened in church halls, the voters were increasingly hostile towards him and towards the whole Labour project. Proletariat who complained about democracy didn’t deserve to have it.

  He considered taking Mollie into his confidence—after all, Miles was her dad—but hesitated. The trouble with Mollie was she didn’t think like a politician, she was too idealist. Under normal circumstances, this was an advantage. Greg could explain to her the party’s intellectual position on any topic—on eradicating child poverty, for instance, or Gordon and Ed Balls’s pet tax credits for the low paid—and Mollie bought into it and regurgitated it in her own words at the school gates, which Greg had to admit she was very good at. The flip side was that once she’d got an idea into her head it was difficult to shift. She didn’t seem to appreciate that realpolitik contained a degree of expediency, and party policy needed to reflect this. In recent months, Greg and Mollie had argued over the tax arrangements for non-doms, Iraq and the new state schools ‘academy’ projects, with Mollie taking unrealistically ethical positions each time. Greg doubted she’d be too keen on his plan to switch to the Tories.

  Secretly, he met with Miles a second time at the flat in Mount Street. Later, with mounting secrecy, he met other leading Tories from party headquarters who quizzed him on his motives for defecting, and peered at him like an alien species in a lab. Finally, he met Paul Tanner, recently elevated to party Chairman, who was well briefed on Greg’s career in local politics and seemed more than willing to embrace him into the party. ‘Miles has been telling me a lot of good things about you,’ Paul said. ‘And our communications people are excited about the idea of you coming over.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ said Greg.

  ‘What would you say has been the decisive factor in your decision?’

  ‘Oh, my belief in the small state, your ambitious programmes for health and education reform with greater local autonomy. And your support for small enterprise versus the multi-nationals. I mean, I’m strongly against further consolidation in big business, in favour of consumer choice.’

  ‘Quite,’ replied Paul.

  Archie had never arrived at the office so early. Normally, he found it a struggle to roll in before 9.45, so the 8.00 a.m ‘morning prayers’ almost finished him off. Today, he startled the commissionaires by getting in at 5.30 a.m. Tucked into his wallet was the checklist he’d drawn up with Miles over a drink at the Mount Street flat the previous evening. It was alarmingly long, and Archie knew he’d need to work fast to make copies of everything before anyone else arrived.

  It didn’t help that he had never previously used the photocopier. Ordinarily, he considered himself far too grand to do his own photocopying and delegated it to one of four departmental gofers. But now he was on his own. The photocopier stood in a glass-walled pod along the corridor, and he felt uncomfortably exposed as he snuck inside with the big stash of documents camouflaged within a pile of newspapers. It worried him the photocopier seemed to be broken, with no sign of life, until he noticed the plug was switched off at the wall. Slowly the great grey machine purred and rattled into life. Archie placed the first of the strategy documents onto the glass plate and was dismayed when it came out blank. He turned it over and had more luck.

  Over the next ninety minutes he copied the lot: the four ring-bound dossiers, minutes of all the ‘war cabinets,’ PR strategy, investor contact notes with Freeza Mart’s internal assessment of how likely they were to vote their shares behind the takeover, the highly sensitive plan for integrating the two businesses if they were successful, including the proposed new organisation chart and reporting lines. Every detail of the deal structure was copied, and every memorandum from Freeza Mart’s investment bankers. As the pages rolled off the copier and into the sorting tray, Archie slipped them inside his briefcase.

  He was on the final document when he heard a rapping on the glass wall. Glancing up guiltily, he saw Ross.

  ‘You’re in bright and early, Archie.’

  ‘Er, yes. Lots to do at the moment. Thought I’d make an early start.’

  ‘Well done, lad. You saw this morning’s papers? The news about Dick Gunn?’

  ‘Um, no, I haven’t got to the papers yet.’

  ‘Front page of the Financial Times. The Gunn Partnership’s bought a stake in Pendletons. Quite a big one, actually. And he’s come out for them.’

  ‘Really? That’s a pain.’

  ‘A setback, certainly. We need to plan our reaction, put out a release. He’s a sharp operator, Gunn, by all accounts. I’ve not met the guy.’

  ‘He used to shag my sister,’ Archie replied. ‘Not that that’s a very exclusive club.’

  Mollie was sitting in the staff room at school in front of the lunch-time television news. Her hands half covered her face, because she couldn’t bring herself to watch it full on, it was too upsetting. Her discomfort was enhanced by the presence of several of her fellow teachers, all left wing, clustered disapprovingly around the screen.

  The story about Greg switching parties was the lead item on a slow news day. Mollie could see her husband now, standing alongside David Cameron, George Osborne and the Conservative party chairman, Paul Tanner, on St Stephen’s Green outside the Houses of Parliament, giving a news conference. Greg had a big blue rosette pinned to his suit and was wearing a blue tie for the first time in his life.

  The newsreader was saying Greg had been selected as prospective Conservative candidate for the safe Tory seat of Mid-Hampshire, following the retirement of long-serving Monday Club backbencher Ridley Nairn. Everyone was slapping Greg on the back, and he was smirking smugly into the television cameras. Mollie couldn’t bear the thought of all her new friends up in Droitwich watching this, who had been so welcoming to them and so kind.

  Greg had only broken the news of his defection to her at breakfast time that day. At first, Mollie thought it was a joke, he was winding her up. ‘That’s right, Greg. I can just see you in a pinstripe suit and top hat, a Tory toff.’

  ‘They’re not like that these days, Mollie. You should get with the programme. We’re an all-inclusive, multi-cultural political force for the third millennium.’

  ‘You are joking, aren’t you? Please tell me you are?’

  Then they’d had a blazing row which left Mollie bewildered and crying, and Greg stormed off to a breakfast briefing with the Conservative communications department. Since then, they hadn’t exchanged a word.

  And now here he was on TV, being lauded as a hero for his traitorous behaviour. A voiceover was predicting a General Election in six to nine months time, and it was suggested Greg might be only the first of several talented young Labour politicians to switch sides.

  ‘I am honoured to join a party which reflects my political philosophy of helping the underdog. I deeply regret that my former party has sold out, and no longer represents the ordinary decent disadvantaged working people of this country. Consequently I have resigned my membership of the Labour Party and joined Dave’s new Conservatives.’

  There was a crescendo of cheering
from the small crowd of Tory apparatchiks ranged up in the background, and Greg continued, ‘I shall fight to champion the cause of a fairer, more equal Britain.’

  ‘Mr Clegg … Mr Clegg,’ called out the political editors. ‘Where do you stand on your father Ross Clegg’s takeover battle against Pendletons?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t want to get drawn into that,’ replied Greg. ‘But as ever I am on the side of the consumer and individual choice against the growing power of big business conglomerates. For this reason, I hold a different opinion to my father. I support an independent Pendletons.’

  66.

  Miles felt wonderfully self-satisfied for the first time in weeks. The fact was, he was playing a blinder and was nothing less than an utter genius.

  If anyone had earned his fees tenfold in the past forty-eight hours, it was him. In fact, he now reckoned his handsome retainer from Pendletons was woefully inadequate, and he intended getting it raised significantly in the euphoria of victory.

  That Pendletons would prevail was no longer in doubt. Miles felt perfectly confident on this point, the change of sentiment had been as profound as it was sudden. And all credit to himself, the master strategist. It was at moments like these that Miles could see how seriously good he was, and only hoped others recognised it too. In every field of endeavour there is one towering figure who stands head and shoulders above the rest, and in the field of public relations that man was Miles Straker.

  This morning’s newspapers, spread out on his desk in Charles Mews South, were testament to his ability. Eight news stories, seven columns of opinion, four leader articles, three op-ed comment pieces, not one of them favourable to Ross. Not one! Miles would love to have been a fly on the wall at today’s morning conference at Freeza Mart House, and had instructed Archie to call him the minute he came out. He guessed it would be a long meeting, with so much bad news to digest. Sometimes the only recourse is to sit back and gloat.

  Everything had come together, as only a brilliantly conceived plan can. The announcement of Dick Gunn’s strategic investment had taken the markets by surprise, and his public backing of Pend-letons’s management made a number of windy fund managers have second thoughts. If a buccaneer like Gunn was putting his reputation and cash behind the status quo, perhaps that was the smart thing to do; you never wanted to bet against Gunn, he tended to call these things right. Not that it had been easy persuading James Pendleton to put Gunn on the Board, and the honours people in Whitehall had been violently opposed until Miles arranged some attractive half-term family holidays at Zach Durban’s hotels. But it had been a strategic masterstroke, and kick-started the whole Pendletons resurgence.

  Archie’s daily bag of goodies was helping enormously too, even more than Miles had anticipated. To have the entire Freeza Mart game plan at his fingertips … it was glorious. It was all here … Ross’s scribbled notes to his communications people, his bankers’ assumptions and spreadsheets and, best of all, the maximum price they were prepared to pay. At present, their bid valued the business at just under 11.5 billion pounds, but Miles now knew they were prepared to go up to 12 billion, but not beyond. Furthermore, he could see exactly how the financing was structured, and which banks around the world were in on it. Already, he had briefed Pendletons’s own bankers, without revealing how he had come by the information, and they were exerting pressure on several institutions. Archie was relaying everything, every change of strategy, every conversation. The benefit to Pendletons was incalculable.

  And then, of course, there was his inspired masterstroke over Greg. Not entirely palatable, of course, having to consort with pond-life like his son-in-law who made you want to hold your nose, but it was working triumphantly. All the newspapers were running stories about Greg’s attack on Ross, and Freeza Mart increasingly coming over as the ugly face of capitalism. Ross had looked rattled last night on Newsnight, blathering on about Freeza Mart’s environmental and corporate responsibility programmes. The interviewer gave him a hard time which Ross clearly hadn’t expected, and he fluffed his lines more than once.

  It was a feature of Miles’s character that when things were going well in his working life he felt a corresponding surge of bravado in his personal life. All of a sudden he felt all his old recklessness and smoothness returning. On his way back from lunch, he commanded Makepiece to draw up outside his wine merchant in St James’s where he ordered ten cases of very expensive claret on the Straker Communications account; afterwards, he commissioned three new suits and a velvet collared overcoat from his tailor in Mount Street. Later that same afternoon he briefed his PAs that the annual Chawbury Manor client lunch party would be resumed, and that they would be organising it all, in conjunction with Nico Ballantyne of Gourmand Solutions. To round off a highly satisfactory day, he arranged for a nubile and very young hooker to join him in Mount Street for an overnighter. It was the first time he’d used the agency since the regrettable encounter with Samantha at the Hotel Meurice.

  Having declared his intention of reviving the Chawbury lunch party, it occurred to him he needed to repair relations with his children in advance of the event. A hallmark of the party had always been the illusion it was a ‘family’ celebration, and many thank you notes from his corporates explicitly referred to the attractiveness and politeness of his offspring. With no Davina there, it was doubly imperative to reassemble the children.

  As Miles was quick to recognise, the job was already partly done. Archie, the prodigal son, was back in the fold and so, of course, was Mollie. As the wife of the prospective Member of Parliament, Miles expected to see a good deal of his younger daughter in the coming months, and he would need to make sure she got help with her wardrobe. It was one thing dressing like a batty social worker when you are the wife of a Labour candidate for a Midlands seat, but this was Hampshire. She’d need an appropriate frock for the lunch party.

  Which left Peter and Samantha. Miles didn’t know what to make of his elder son at the moment, except that it was all rather pathetic. How he filled his days in the Siberian wastes of northern Scotland where nobody lived, Miles couldn’t imagine; apart from deer stalking and mackerel fishing, nothing went on there at all. In the past couple of weeks, people had been mentioning Peter’s CD, saying it was rather good, but Miles assumed they were just being kind. He’d spotted a short interview with him in T2 of The Times, but the trouble with the pop industry is that, unless you’re Mick Jagger or someone, there was no money in it. Nevertheless, he instructed Sara White, his senior PA, to track down Peter’s telephone number and tell him it was a three-line whip for the Chawbury lunch. It would look odd if Peter wasn’t present.

  As for Samantha, she was an altogether more complicated proposition. The bottom line was: Miles needed her at the lunch. For a start, she was his most attractive child. Secondly, she was the only one who could be said to be reasonably famous and successful. Wherever he went—and he found this intensely annoying—people told him they loved Sam’s cringe-making Freeza Mart commercials (‘I’m a Freeza kinda girl’) and billboards were still up on every street corner. If she wasn’t at the lunch party, people would wonder why. And then, of course, she was his favourite, always had been, always would be. He had adored his blonde, classy, gorgeous elder daughter, before she went off the rails.

  Against this, he found it difficult to overlook the mess she’d got herself in. To have a daughter who’d worked as a call girl was something he should never have had to contend with. If it ever got out, it would be mortifying for him. Her taste in men was appalling but with hindsight she could have done a lot worse for herself than marrying Dick Gunn. She was foolish not to have snapped him up while she’d had the chance.

  In his current mood, however, Miles found himself looking more benignly upon his elder daughter, and resolved to extend the hand of forgiveness before the invitations went out.

  Finally, there was the abiding Serena question. Miles found it genuinely baffling, and was surprised by how irritated it made him. H
ad Serena been the wife of a great nobleman or hedge fund tycoon, he’d have understood. But she had told him countless times how unhappy she was with Robin, and how desperate for an exit.

  The good thing about giving a large party at home is that it provides you with a deadline for getting your house in order. Miles decided it would be rather satisfying to have Serena at his side by the time the guests arrived at Chawbury Manor.

  Mollie didn’t know what to do or who to confide in, and in the end she called on her mother in Holland Park Square.

  She found Davina in the kitchen doing yoga with a couple of neighbours and the table pushed back. Since Dawn departed the square for her upgrade with James Pendleton, Davina had lost her yoga buddy and found substitutes. These days, she devoted much of her time to the traditional divorcee pastimes of yoga, pilates, weight training and working out in Kensington Gardens with a personal fitness coach. Twice a week she did remedial reading at Mollie’s school, teaching the alphabet to struggling immigrants.

  All this aerobic exercise and honing had altered her mother’s body shape, Mollie noticed. Still sweetly beautiful, she looked five years younger and more confident than she had when living with Miles. Her figure had a leaner, more urban definition. She’d finally lost her ‘victim’ face too, Mollie decided.

  After the yoga session, Davina made coffee and she and Mollie sat outside in the little patch of private paved garden which gave on to the larger communal space. Recently, Davina had filled it with dozens of terracotta flowerpots bursting with jasmine, clematis and tobacco plants which filled the air with their sweet musky fragrance.