by Sue Townsend
Jack said to Ali, “You’ve let yourself in for a lot of paperwork, Ali, the Official Secrets Act and all that.”
James was so shocked to see such a famous person he jabbed the gun against the side of the Prime Minister’s head. The Prime Minister winced and James said, “Sorry, did I hurt you?”
The Prime Minister said, “No, not much, it’s OK.”
James said in a confidential tone, “I’ve got some insider information about Gibraltar, Prime Minister. Don’t let those Spanish bastards get their hands on Gibraltar.” He then went on to say that the reason the Spanish government wanted Gibraltar back was because Gibraltar was entirely composed of crack. It was one big massive piece of rock; it was a geological miracle that was a gift from God to mankind. And if it were to be sympathetically mined there would be enough crack to keep every man, woman and child on earth well happy.
The Prime Minister listened as attentively as a man could with a gun pressed against his temple. He then said automatically, “I am indebted to the honourable gentleman for that information, and I will pass it on to the relevant department.”
The Prime Minister understood for the first time the expression ‘If I had a gun to my head’. It was remarkable how the gun clarified his thinking. His first thought was that the government should really do something on a huge and dramatic scale about crack-cocaine, and as the endless seconds dragged by he made his mind up about many problems that had recently been exercising him.
To attack Iraq would be madness; instead war would be declared on poverty. Centres of excellence would be built in the most deprived areas around the country. Tushinga would be taught to play jazz guitar or the violin in a music academy within walking distance of his house. The Prime Minister saw a future illustrated in the imagery used in Watchtower magazine, where Jehovah’s Witnesses of every race walked in harmony in verdant countryside by sparkling rivers—children could run and jump and play free from the constraints of insurance companies. He saw CC TV cameras removed and replaced by efficient street lighting; he saw state-run nurseries staffed by trained women and men where children would be taught the old art of how to play. He saw a no-fee state nursery at the end of Tushinga’s road. Toyota would be free during the day to study and work. He saw glorious sports centres and more public parks and even with a gun to his head his fingers itched to sign the next election manifesto. The next generation of children and young people would be given the chance to realise their full potential.
In less than a second Jack had knocked the gun out of James’s hand and James was on the floor straddled by Jack and Ali.
Norma pleaded, “Don’t hurt him, Jack, he’s only a lad.”
Yvonne picked the gun up and looked at it curiously.
Norma said, “Put it down, Yvonne, you’ve always been a clumsy bugger, you could have somebody’s eye out with that.”
The Prime Minister once again fell back on statistics, and said that there were an estimated 740,000 unlicensed guns in Britain and that gun-related crime had risen by eight and a half disciples over the last five years.
Yvonne carried the gun carefully to the sink, threw it into the washing-up bowl and ran the tap over it. Bubbles came out of the barrel and collected on the surface like ghostly bullets.
The fight went out of James and he started to cry and said that it wasn’t his fault that he’d turned out so bad. Jack cut him off. “We don’t want to hear the details. It’ll be the same as everyone else’s story; it’ll be death, separation, disappointment, injustice and suffering, won’t it?”
James nodded and Jack let him sit up. He was now weeping big jumbo-sized tears that fell off his chin on to his T–shirt. The Prime Minister turned his head away, unable to bear the sight.
Ali was unmoved. He said, “If he started my kids on crack I’d pay somebody to blow his head off, init. You can get it done for 250 quid in Leeds, less a seasonal discount.”
Norma said, “Let him go, Jack, think about our Stuart.”
Jack said wearily, “Stuart didn’t buy heroin from the Co-Op, Mam, it was a bastard just like James who started him off.”
Norma tore off two pieces of kitchen towel and handed them to James, who blew his nose and wiped his eyes.
Jack asked Yvonne to go upstairs to Norma’s room and find something with which to tie James’s hands and feet together. James howled like a wolf throughout.
Jack said, “You’re lucky, James: you’re going to prison for a long time and you’ll be able to get on a degree course and you’ll come out an educated man.” Then he unfastened Peter’s cage from its stand and ushered everybody out of the house.
∨ Number Ten ∧
TWENTY- TWO
Clarke and Palmer watched the little gaggle leave the house. Their shift had finished but they were hanging around in the observation room to see how the story would end. They waited until both Ali and Yvonne’s cars had left the estate before contacting the local drug squad, who, when they finally gained entry to Number Ten, assumed that James had been indulging in a bizarre sexual ritual since his hands and feet were tied together with several of Norma’s lurid-coloured suspender belts and a dog collar on which hung a metal disc engraved ‘Bob’.
♦
They left Leicester and headed south on the M1 in a convoy of two. The Prime Minister sat in the back of Ali’s taxi with one hand protectively on the top of the birdcage. He became more anxious with the passing of each mile. He felt fear gather around his heart. It was a familiar feeling. He was dreading returning to work the next day. There would be a thousand responsibilities waiting for him and he would be privy to many terrible secrets from around the world. He said to Jack and Ali, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could drive to Dover, get on a ferry and disappear in Europe.”
Ali said, “No, I’m missing my own bed, I can’t sleep properly without Salma, she’s fat and I’m thin but we fit together nice, innit.”
Jack turned in his seat to face the Prime Minister and said, “Ed, you don’t have to carry on being the Prime Minister, nobody’s got a gun to your head.”
The three men laughed and Jack asked Ali to stop at the first service station, saying that he was hungry and needed to eat. Yvonne followed Ali’s car as it turned into the slip road and parked in front of the main entrance. There was an air of celebration as the two parties made their way into the restaurant complex. Norma admired a display: a Horn of Plenty made of polyethylene which stood in the entrance to one of the self-service cafés; luscious plastic fruit and vegetables tumbled from its interior; sheaves of dusty corn poked from its rim; mini-boxes of Kellogg’s breakfast cereal had been arranged by unseen hands to give an effect of plenitude. The Prime Minister’s mouth watered. He joined Ali and Yvonne at the hot-food counter. Jack gave his mother a tray and told her to have exactly what she wanted to eat or drink, then excused himself saying he had a couple of phone calls to make.
The first was to Alexander McPherson to tell him that they would be returning to Downing Street in the early hours. McPherson said, “I’ve just had an extraordinary email from the bollocking security services telling me that a man has been arrested in your mother’s house who claimed that Edward Clare, the Prime Minister, tied him up with suspender belts and stole his crack. What the fuck is going on?”
Jack said, “It’ll all be in my report, McPherson. Book a room at a Travel Inn near Luton airport for my mother and sister and get them on the first flight to Malaga in the morning.”
McPherson said, “Who the fuck do you think I am? Lunn bollocking Poly?”
Jack said, “It’s news management, McPherson. The females in my family have got big gobs.”
McPherson said, “What’s Eddy doing now?”
Jack glanced into the café “He’s queuing up for an all-day breakfast,” he said. “There’s a truck driver behind him trying to look down the front of his dress.”
McPherson said that Jack would be required to give an initial verbal report at two o’clock the next afternoo
n.
Jack said he would be there. Though he couldn’t guarantee the presence of the Prime Minister, who had been having serious doubts about his future in politics.
Alexander McPherson said, “Your little holiday was meant to reinvigorate him; if he goes he takes me and you with him, Sprat.”
Jack looked into the café and saw the Prime Minister helping himself to dozens of sachets of salt, pepper and sugar and putting them into his handbag.
Jack had one more call to make. He had to talk to Pamela, he felt like a river about to burst its banks; he had to tell her he loved her—he was afraid that unless he did he would be swept away from her by the flood of normal life. He leaned against the Horn of Plenty and pressed number one on his phone. When she answered he could tell from the noises in the background that she was in the accommodation block making her late-night checks. He became tongue-tied as soon as he heard her voice shouting, “Hello! Hello!” above the noise of the barking dogs. She said, “Is that you, Jack?”
“Yes,” he answered.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Watford Gap service station,” he replied.
She laughed. “The proverbial Watford Gap, poised between the hard north and the soft south.”
He could hear her lighting one of her cigarettes and he thought that he might take up smoking himself, he was sure that if he persevered he could grow to like it. He felt shy about telling her he loved her, knowing that his declaration would be picked up by tracking stations around the globe, but he told her anyway—why shouldn’t the world know? “I love you,” he said.
She said, surprised, “Oh!”
There was a long silence, then he heard her saying goodnight to the dogs. It became quiet apart from the sound of her breathing. He imagined her walking up the path towards the house. He felt her absence like a physical pain and wished he was waiting in the kitchen for her with a drink and a clean ashtray. The silence was finally broken by the sound of liquid being poured into a glass. He said, “Are you celebrating, Pamela?” He thought he would always call her Pamela and never Pam.
“As a matter of fact, I am,” she answered. “It’s many years since anybody told me they loved me, and even longer since I loved myself.”
Jack said, “I don’t believe in love at first sight.”
She said, “Neither do I.”
“So I must have met you before,” said Jack.
“That must be it,” she agreed.
“I’ll be back in London in a few hours. When are you going to come down for our Chinese meal?” said Jack.
“Very soon,” she said. “I’ve been practising my chopstick technique since you left.”
Norma shouted that Jack’s coffee was getting cold.
Jack said, semi-formally, “I’ll phone you again. Good-night, my love.”
He went into the gift shop and bought an absurd fluffy animal, a bear of some kind. Between its front paws the creature was holding a red satin heart on which had been embroidered in some Far Eastern factory unit, ‘I love you’.
Later, in the car, when the Prime Minister asked what was in the bag, Jack showed him the bear and said, “It’s for your sister.”
The Prime Minister said, “Pam hates anything like that. She was horribly cruel to my old toys when she was a child.”
Jack said with confidence, “She’ll like this.”
♦
The next time the convoy of two stopped was at the motel near to Luton airport where EasyJet would convey Yvonne and Norma through crowded skies to Malaga airport from where they would travel to Marbella.
After inspecting her room Norma came out with Yvonne to the car park to say goodbye to Peter. Peter was in his cage on the back seat of Ali’s taxi, a mere smudge in the dark. The motorway thundered nearby. Norma crouched beside the car and told the dazed little bird to be a good boy and told him that she wouldn’t have let James put him in the microwave. She told Peter that he was the most important person in her life. Jack and Yvonne exchanged an ironic glance and Yvonne muttered, “Gee thanks.”
Norma stroked the bird’s feathered head through the bars of his cage and said, “Well ta-ra, then, Pete.”
The Prime Minister said, “I’ll simply say this to you, Norma: I’ll do my very best to make sure that Peter becomes a fully integrated member of my family. He will be rehoused in a cage that accords with European guidelines and will receive regular veterinary care.”
“He likes to be talked to first thing in the morning,” said Norma.
Yvonne said, “C’mon, Mam, they want to get off”
She was right. Jack was twitching with impatience. He kissed his mother on her cheek and said, “You’ve been a wonderful mother, to Pete.”
Norma nodded goodbye to the Prime Minister and Ali, then took Yvonne’s arm and went into the Travel Inn. Before the door closed they heard her say to Yvonne, “Are the fags a lot cheaper in Marbella, Vonnie?”
Jack said to the Prime Minister, “She was a terrible mother to me, Vonnie and Stuart. She was lazy, selfish and pig-ignorant, and proud of the fact that she had never read a book. My mother put the prol into proletariat.”
The Prime Minister said, “Well, we’re all middle class now, Jack.”
Jack said, “Don’t be so fucking stupid, Ed. Can you imagine Toyota giving a dinner party and talking about house prices and the Turner Prize?”
♦
Adele woke to find that it was dark outside and that she was alone in the small room. She lay back on the hospital pillows and touched the empty space where the end of her old nose used to be. She then felt the dressings which covered her new nose and she could tell that nobody would ever call her Concorde behind her back again.
She looked up at the white ceiling, where two small flies were dancing a jig. She felt deliciously drowsy; she had no wish to talk or give an opinion on any subject whatsoever.
There were books on the locker next to the bed, but the thought of opening them and making sense of the words inside exhausted her. She remembered that she was married to the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Edward Clare, and that she was the mother of Morgan, Estelle and Poppy, that she had written books and papers and given lectures and attended meetings and arranged dinners and receptions, that she could type, ski, dive, compute, drive, speak French, German and Italian, cook, iron, remove a stain from a carpet and juggle. For now it was enough just to lie in this high white bed and watch the flies dance. To simply exist.
♦
Malcolm Black was sitting up in bed reading Engels’ The Condition of the Working Classes in England in 1844. He was annotating it for Morgan Clare, as promised. Hannah came out of the adjoining bathroom wearing a short white cotton nightie and smelling of soap and toothpaste and said, “Oh, Malc, you’ve got ink all over the sheets again.”
Malcolm put down the pen and nodded solemnly, registering his wife’s complaint, but continued to turn the pages; he was looking for a particularly appalling passage about the rat population of Greater Manchester. She slid into bed beside him and leaned over and removed a collection of paper from his pyjama top pocket; he was in the habit of writing notes to himself before going to sleep.
She had bought him a pocket dictaphone for the bedside table, but he had been unable to operate it successfully and it now rested unused in the bedside drawer, together with other un-mastered gadgets.
She un-scrunched one note, smoothed it flat and read:
Dear Ed,
It is with deep regret that I offer my resignation to you tonight…
She opened another.
Dear Ed,
It is with great regret that I have to tell you that I have been visited in your absence by a delegation of Members of Parliament and New Labour supporters requesting that I take over your duties as Prime Minister…
The third said:
Dear Ed,
It is with great regret that I have to tell you that I am intending to form a new political party, to be called the Old Labour
Party…
None of them had been completed or signed.
♦
“Listen to this,” Malcolm Black said. Then he read aloud:
Where there were still commons, the poor could pasture an ass, a pig, or geese, the children and young people had a place where they could play and live out of doors; but this is gradually coming to an end. The earnings of the worker are less, and the young people, deprived of their playground, go to the beer shops.
“Or the crack dens,” Hannah Black muttered. Then she said, “Malc, should you be helping Morgan with these projects? Isn’t that his parents’ job?”
Malcolm Black said, “The boy is studying socialism; Ed and Adele know nothing about the subject.”
Hannah lay her head on his big chest and said, “Which of those notes will you complete?”
“Probably all three,” he laughed.
She said, “I’ll base myself in the countryside and when you’re Prime Minister you can visit me and any children we may have at the weekends, how does that sound?”
He said he thought it sounded very good indeed.
♦
Ali’s car drove through the Downing Street gates, waved on by Jack’s colleagues. The door to Number Ten opened and the Prime Minister, carrying Peter’s cage, Jack and Ali were ushered quickly inside. Jack had been instructed to take the Prime Minister immediately upstairs and to leave Ali in the hands of a security officer who introduced herself as Ms Pollock.
When he saw the Prime Minister, Alexander McPherson laughed and said, “Jesus Christ, Ed, you look like a three-quid whore.”
The Prime Minister was hurt by McPherson’s insult; he flounced into the bathroom and slammed the door.
Jack said, “Go easy on him, McPherson, he’s a woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown.”
♦
The next morning when Estelle went down to the sitting room, she found her father apparently talking to himself. She overheard him say, “I don’t have to carry on, do I, Pete?”