The House

by Tom Watson

  He can’t talk about Phil. ‘I’m sorry, I should have offered you something to drink. Do you want a tea, or a coffee?’

  ‘I’m fine, thank you, Mr McKenna.’ She waits, looking at him with her head slightly on one side. Calm. Neutral. Some of her braids have sliver thread running through them.

  Fine.

  ‘He was Research Director at the Centre Ground Institute.’

  ‘Which is now defunct … ’

  ‘He destroyed it when he left to become a Cameron crony.’ The words come too fast, too hot. She doesn’t react, just writes on her pad.

  ‘And Ms Hyde was Political Officer of the Public Sector and General Workers Union at this point?’

  He nods. Easier to be off the subject of Philip, push aside the swirl of uneasy and bitter memories his name provoked, the raw feeling of his knuckles. God, they sounded like high flyers – head of this, officer of that, advisor. Still just a bunch of over-eager political junkies in their twenties, trying on responsibility and job titles like teenagers experimenting with their looks.

  ‘Georgina was impressive even then. The unions were still a difficult place for a young woman, but she’d found a way of working with the team.’

  Chloe looks up. ‘In what way “difficult”?’

  The question surprises Owen. Surely a black female QC doesn’t need to ask him that? It takes him a beat before he realises that Chloe is checking that he knows.

  ‘Institutional sexism, of course. It was a pretty macho culture. I don’t remember anything specific. I was just aware it was hard.’

  Owen spots a micro-shrug.

  ‘How did she get on with her boss?’

  Is that a trick question? ‘Well, she married him just before the 2010 election. So pretty well, I guess.’

  ‘It’s my understanding,’ she goes on, flipping a page in her notebook, ‘that things started going wrong for Jay in the autumn of 2008. Is that your recollection?’

  Owen’s memory feels hazy. He tries to remember the first time he saw Jay ruffled. Tries to find some anchor in his memory.

  ‘It’s difficult to … It’s like going bankrupt, isn’t it? What happened to Jay, I mean? It happens slowly, then suddenly and all at once.’

  If she recognises the quote she gives no sign, and Owen feels a need to explain he’s never gone bankrupt himself, it’s just … He squashes it. He can do calm.

  ‘What about the week Lehman Brothers collapsed?’ Chloe goes on. ‘That was 15 September 2008. You had a party. Do you remember that?’

  Of course he does.

  Chapter 4

  Monday 15 September 2008

  ‘It’s crazy. Have you seen this, Owen?’

  Phil’s taken the armchair opposite the TV and has pulled the curtains against the early evening sun so he can see the screen. He’s leaning forward, like he might see something new in it if he concentrates hard enough. His backpack is dumped on the floor next to him, his latest pamphlets slithering out round his feet.

  Owen puts his bag on the sofa and shrugs off his coat.

  ‘Of course I’ve seen it. It’s on a loop.’

  He can’t help watching it again, though. The woman comes through the spinning glass doors of Lehman Brothers in Canary Wharf, her expression dazed, and squints against the light. She has a cardboard box in her arms, a pot plant drooping over its edge.

  You can imagine her, picking one of her variations on the city slicker uniform ready for a day at the desk doing whatever it was she did just as dawn broke, and now at 10.30 a.m. she’s out on the street.

  She’s baffled, caught by the waiting cameras looking left and right. Owen guesses she’s probably deciding between the Tube or the bus as her taxi account would have been cancelled, but they keep showing it. Her confusion. Her cardboard box. He can feel it being etched into his brain a bit deeper every time it comes on.

  ‘It’s crazy,’ Phil says again. ‘What on earth is going to happen? Have you spoken to Jay today? I’ve been trying to commission a pamphlet from one of the LSE professors and when I called him he was almost in tears. He thinks the whole financial system could buckle any moment. It’ll be anarchy.’ Then he looks. ‘You OK? You look like crap.’

  ‘Thanks for that. Yeah. Everyone’s running round like headless chickens and picking through the copy on the website to make sure we don’t still have language about “financial innovators” in the city for the hacks to find.’

  Owen picks up his bag and goes to hang it and his coat in the hall. This is the nicest house he’s ever lived in, and his mum would expect him to treat it with respect. He can’t tell if the world is collapsing or not. The buses and cabs still cruise by outside, the bars are filling up. The sun rose this morning and the cash machines are working. But somehow the foundations are gone. Everyone is living on really thin ice, on surface tension, and they just don’t know it yet.

  What’s better, warn them? Cause panic, make them look down? The illusion shatters and we all fall through into who knows what? Or do what they are doing? Send in teams to prop it up, emergency joists under the structure made of solid gold and hope the people never know how close the abyss got to sucking them all in. Present them with the bill later? Human beings cannot bear much reality.

  ‘You going to the kitchen?’ Phil calls out. ‘There are beers in the fridge. Grab one for me, will you? And help yourself.’

  Owen walks through the house to the kitchen, walking carefully like he might fall through a crack.

  The kitchen is large – a huge wooden table at the house end – not like the polished table in the dining room. This one is rustic. What Owen has learned to call ‘rustic’. Ten years ago he’d have just called it a bit knackered. A door on the right leads to the long, narrow back garden and beyond the table is a generous U-shape of units, sink, stove, cupboards. It’s an extension built by the current owners, practical but a bit boxy and low in comparison with the high ceilings in the rest of the house. He’s learning the language of the middle classes and to pass in London, in Westminster, you need to get the words right. In every house big enough there is the room for special occasions only. It was the ‘lounge’ where he grew up, the ‘front sitting room’ here. ‘Serviettes’ there, ‘napkins’ here. ‘Toilet’ at home, ‘lavatory’ in Westminster. Then there were the little shifts in the things themselves. Figurines v. objets d’art. Family photos and reproductions v. limited-edition prints bought from the artist. Antimacassars v. spindly dining chairs with fluted backs.

  Phil has bought Stellas. A lot of them. Not Red Stripe, but good enough. Owen takes two and glances at the post on the table. Doesn’t spot his name on anything. Mostly junk mail, a couple of bills. Georgina will deal with them. She’ll tell them what they owe and make sure everyone coughs up. Phil grumbles sometimes; he’s got a weirdly picky attitude about money, how to split the bill in the restaurant, or if he should pay as much electric as Georgina because of her hairdryer. It’s uncool of him, weird and he can’t help it. Owen is a spend-it-while-you’ve-got-it man himself and he trusts Georgina to be fair. He pays less rent because he’s in the back bedroom, and it was Georgina who worked out some formula about floorspace and proportion of utility bills.

  He goes back into the lounge, sorry, sitting room – gives Phil his can and sets his own on the coffee table before he goes upstairs to change. Indoor and outdoor clothes. You wear the good stuff on the street only, then change to save the wear when you get in.

  His room might be the smallest, but it looks out over the back garden and he prefers that to the main road. There’s a crappy wardrobe, a chest of drawers too big for the room and a bed with a decent mattress. He changes into chinos and polo shirt on automatic pilot and then it hits him. He sits down suddenly on the edge of the bed and stares out of the narrow window.

  It’s not going to be OK. All those mighty ships of finance crashing into the rocks. All those wise men and wizards of the City were drunk at the wheel and charged at the rocks with a bottle of Perrier-Jouët in
one hand and a cigar in the other.

  And who is going to pay? He hopes it will be them, the financiers, but he’s been in London long enough to think that’s unlikely.

  The front door opens and closes, knocking him out of his funk. He wants that beer now. He heads back downstairs. Jay is home. A despatch from the frontline.

  Jay Dewan is perched on the far arm of the sofa when Owen comes in, a bottle of Peroni gripped in his hands, staring intently at the screen and picking at the label. As Jay hears Owen he turns and smiles. He’s excited. They exchange greetings. Jay looks like he’s ready to spring to his feet and into action at a whistle. Like a hunting dog.

  ‘Can this get any worse?’ Phil says.

  ‘Yes,’ Owen and Jay say in unison.

  ‘How did you get home so early, Jay?’ Owen adds.

  ‘I’ve been there since six and all weekend. Clive sent me home. We’re sort of working in shifts, looking after Alistair, fielding calls from bankers having nervous breakdowns. Half the time I think I should be giving them the number for the Samaritans.’ Owen laughs darkly. ‘How is it at headquarters?’

  ‘Lots of people asking each other what’s going to happen next and no one having a clue.’ He takes a long swig from his can. ‘But you holding up, Jay?’

  He runs his hand through his hair. ‘Yeah, cheers. I wish I could work out where these stories about me are coming from, though.’

  ‘What – are there more?’

  They’ve been on his mind for a few weeks now, these stories. Owen found him working in the dining room last week, upset because someone had told someone that Jay had said something off about a mutual friend. He’d explained he’d never say anything like that and been believed, but it had rattled him.

  ‘Tess asked me how I was coping, given my “party schedule”. Told her I haven’t been to a decent club since July in Ibiza, but I don’t think she believed me.’

  ‘Probably just someone jealous of you,’ Owen says.

  He smiles. ‘True. Well, who wouldn’t be? But, I don’t know, there are still plenty of people who think if you are gay and under fifty you must be out having sex with strangers in clubs five times a week. Chance would be a fine thing.’

  ‘Your team can’t think that. Just ignore it.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. I’ll try. Just grates a bit, you know.’

  Phil gestures at the screen. ‘What is going to happen to this country? We can’t just save the banks and ask them nicely not to do it again. There have to be consequences.’

  Jay picks at the label of his beer bottle. ‘There will be consequences,’ he says firmly. ‘But if we don’t support the banks they will collapse and that means no cash in the cash machines, no way to get your wages paid or buy your shopping. If the banks go, the whole bloody thing goes.’

  ‘So we bankrupt the country to save the City?’ Owen asks.

  ‘I know, I know!’ Jay replies. ‘But if the City goes, everything goes.’

  Phil reaches for the remote and mutes the news. No one protests. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? If the government does its job properly, life will carry on as normal for most people. It’s what we have to do, but we won’t get any credit for it.’

  ‘Gordon had a meeting about the party conference today,’ Jay says. They all refer to the Prime Minister as ‘Gordon’. They’d be lucky if he could identify any of them with more than a vague nod. Owen hates it. Knows he does it himself, nose up like a terrier when one of the Cabinet breezes through the office, yipping with the other office juniors for the chance to make an impression.

  ‘And?’ Phil says.

  ‘It was supposed to be five minutes.’ Jay’s voice is dry. ‘Then his executive secretary went out to grab lunch and the junior didn’t dare bust in and say the Bank of England and Treasury teams were waiting. Scared shitless of Gordon tearing him a new one. We waited forty-five minutes before Gordon looked at his watch and buzzed through to see why we hadn’t turned up.’

  His voice is hollow now, wondering. Owen gets interested.

  ‘And?’

  Jay pushes his hand through his hair again and it falls immediately back into place.

  ‘They needed Gordon’s OK to the new banking guarantees. In those forty-five minutes nearly 450 million pounds’ worth of deposits in UK banks were transferred abroad.’ He drinks the rest of his beer. ‘That secretary’s sandwich cost the UK economy almost half a billion quid.’

  They are all silent for a minute.

  ‘Fuck,’ Phil says. And he means it.

  Someone laughs on the pavement outside, footsteps on the path, then the front door opens. Georgina swings into the room. She’s got one of her work friends with her and her phone at her ear. She finishes the call.

  ‘Thanks – yes, that’s great. Glad to help. Bye!’ Phone down. She holds up a catering sack of soft white rolls. ‘We’re having a party. Owen, help us get the barbecue going, will you? Jay, Phil, be heroes and go raid Sainsbury’s for sausages? I got the burgers and buns.’

  Phil points at the silent TV.

  ‘World is on fire, Georgina.’

  She rolls her eyes. ‘Hence the barbecue. It’s a theme.’ She leans against the edge of the sofa. Owen can smell the lemon of her shampoo and the stale office air on her clothes. Her phone starts ringing again. She glances at the screen. ‘Look it’s all our people. Everyone’s been run ragged and there’s more to come. Let’s give them the chance to blow off some steam, eh?’

  The man behind her in the doorway shifts the bag of charcoal in his arms and curses under his breath at the black smear on his shirt. ‘Georgina, where do you want this?’

  ‘Out back. Just go on through.’ She turns back to her housemates. ‘Come on, Owen, you can help us get the fire going. Jay, Philip, go hunt and gather.’

  Jay sets down his beer and stands up. ‘Actually, it’s not a bad idea. Let’s call some people. Everyone needs a night off. Come on, Phil. Georgie, did you get any snacks? I’ll pick up the hummus and crisps, that sort of thing.’

  Suddenly it’s Jay’s party. Means they’ll get some interesting people coming. People come when Georgina calls too, but when Jay calls they flock to the house. No wonder some of the aspiring politicos of SW1 are jealous enough of him to make up a few stories. Owen tends to do his socialising in the pub. He hasn’t learned the knack of saying ‘you must come over’ and meaning it yet.

  Owen finishes his can, wondering if it’s learned or innate. Bit of both, like being a musician, or an artist. Jay is a born politician. Twenty-eight and he’s better at it than half the Cabinet. Turns on the smile, offers his hand and you like him. You don’t know why, you just do. He’s got ‘Future Leader’ written all over him.

  ‘Fine,’ Georgina says. ‘Thanks.’

  She answers the phone with a warm ‘Hi’ and pushes herself off the sofa to follow Sad Charcoal Guy.

  Chapter 5

  It’s a warm evening. Lights start to come on in the houses around them. Phil has opened the doors to the dining room and turned up Duffy on the midi hifi. Owen rolls the barbecue out of the garden shed, and the men fight half-heartedly about the best way to get it lit. Gradually the kitchen and garden fill up with party staffers, organisers and researchers and a handful of junior special advisors.

  Owen sits on the low wall between the stone-flagged patio and the patchy lawn with Archie from the Labour communications team. Usual topic. David Cameron and how to beat him.

  They’ve been fighting over ‘just call me Dave’ for months, and every time they do Owen feels the knot of anger and worry tighten in his head. Makes it ache. The Labour government is tired, and Georgina and Phil and Jay arriving all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed just as Tony Blair had the baton yanked from his grip can’t change that.

  Owen has been in the trenches longer than them. He was working as an office boy at Labour Party headquarters back in the glory days while they were still doing their A-levels. The political bug was in his DNA, but those early years rattling around Westminst
er had given himself something else – ambition, and a sense of possibility. He got bold, talked his way into a degree course and student politics in Manchester, then back out when he got a sabbatical in London. He’d been here for the golden years of Cool Britannia, through 9/11 and the fucking war.

  He notices Cameron’s pictures in the papers now and shudders. He is a beast of the apocalypse come to punish the party he loves for its hubris, its naïve optimism. Labour is going to lose the next election. ‘Manage the damage’ is Owen’s secret mantra now. Manage the damage.

  Archie grinds out his smoke and drops the butt into an empty can.

  ‘I’m just saying, people will see Gordon as a steady pair of hands in a crisis. And Alistair’s calm demeanour is great on TV.’

  Owen closes his eyes briefly. ‘Archie, you’re seriously telling me you think this fucking disaster is going to improve Gordon’s chances? And everyone knows him and Alistair are at each other’s throats half the time.’

  ‘But why risk the uncertainty of a new government in dangerous times?’ Archie looks hopeful. ‘Voters want to stick with what they know. Why should that change?’

  Owen’s stomach actually hurts. ‘Because they are the Tories! Just because Murdoch let Blair have a go at running the country as long as he behaved himself doesn’t mean anything’s really changed. In a crisis, trust a toff. It’s what people in this country have had force-fed to them since William the Conqueror.’ Archie looks irritated, frowns at the deepening shadows at his feet as Owen warms to his theme. He’s said it before, it wins him no friends, but he can’t help himself. ‘The Tories will attack on both flanks. Every picture of Gordon or Tony shaking hands with a banker on one side, and then “Look at Labour, so irresponsible with money” on the other.’

  He realises a pool of silence has developed around them. Someone’s changing the CD and people are looking at him.

  He stares back at them. ‘It’s true. You know it is.’

  A woman in tight jeans with long blonde hair purses her lips.