The press, of course, had other ideas, wanting to inquire after her holiday and the whereabouts of her husband and holiday companion, but she was having none of it. “The Princess will entertain questions only about the car, gentlemen,” an aide had announced. Why not a Jaguar—because it was American owned. How many other cars did she have—none like this wicked brute. What’s the top speed—seventy miles an hour while I’m driving. Hadn’t she recently been clocked at over a hundred on the M1—a sweet smile and a grab for the next question. Would she lean a little lower over the bonnet for the benefit of the cameras—you guys must be joking. The next shower of rain looked imminent and already it was time for a few quick revolutions around the cameras before departing. She climbed in as gracefully as the low-slung bodywork would allow and wound down the window for a final smile at the jackal pack as they closed in.
“Isn’t it a bit demeaning for a Princess to flog foreign cars?” a sharp voice asked bluntly.
Bloody typical. They were always at it. Her cheeks colored beneath her tan. “I spend my entire life ‘flogging,’ as you so snidely put it. I flog British exports wherever I go. I flog overpriced tickets for charity dinners to help the starving in Africa. I flog lottery tickets so we can build retirement homes for pensioners. I never stop flogging.”
“But flogging flash foreign sports cars?” the voice continued.
“It’s you lot who demand the flash. If I turned up in secondhand clothes or thirdhand cars, you’d be the first to complain. I have to earn my living the same as everybody else.” The smile had disappeared.
“What about the Civil List?”
“If you knew how difficult it was to do everything that’s expected of you on a Princess’s allowance, you wouldn’t ask such bloody fool questions!”
That was enough. They were goading her; she was losing her temper; it was time to go. She slipped the clutch, a fraction impatiently, for the car began to perform inelegant kangaroo hops toward the cameramen who scattered in alarm. Serve the bastards right. The V-8 engine stalled, the man in the shiny suit looked dismayed and the cameras snapped angrily. She restarted, selected a gear, and was off. Damn their impertinence. Back at the Palace after only a week away she would be greeted with a small hillock of paperwork that would contain countless invitations, more requests and begging letters from charities and the underprivileged. She would show them. She would answer all the invitations, accept as many as possible, go on eating the dinners and raising the monies, smiling at the old and the young, the sick and the infirm, comforting those who were just plain unlucky. She would ignore the jibes and go on working hard, as she always did, grinding away through the hillock. She had no way of knowing that on top of the unopened pile lay a brief telling her about arrangements for the new Civil List, and that already copy was being prepared for the morning editions attacking a pouting princess in a brand new foreign sports car who complained she was not paid enough.
Misery in a Maserati.
***
The image of the Princess’s glowing brake lights faded from the television as Urquhart hit the red button. His attention stayed fixed on the blank screen for a long time, his half-knotted tie hanging limply around his neck.
“Am I not old enough for you, Francis? You prefer middle-aged nymphomaniacs to good, clean-living young girls like me, is that it?”
He gave her a doleful look. “I couldn’t possibly comment.”
Sally dug him playfully in the ribs; distractedly he pushed her away. “Stop that or I’ll revoke your visa.” But the warning served only to redouble her efforts. “Sally! We’ve got to talk.”
“God, not another of those serious, meaningful relationships. And just when I was beginning to have some fun.” She sat on the sofa opposite him, smoothing down her dress. She put her underwear in her handbag, she’d sort that tangled mess out later.
“There will be a storm about those pictures tomorrow. The headlines will be savage. Alas, it is also the day I’ve chosen to make the public announcement about the new Civil List. Unfortunate, the announcement sitting alongside those sort of pictures, but”—he smiled a huge, theatrical smile like Macbeth welcoming dinner guests—“it can’t be helped. What I find most distressing is that it will focus attention not only on our hapless and witless Princess but on the whole Royal Family. And that’s where I need your help, O Gypsy. Please.”
“I am a stranger in your land, suh, and my campfire is small,” she mocked in a deep Southern drawl.
“But you have magic on your side. Magic that can take a family so royal, and make it so common.”
“How common?”
“So far as the lesser Royals are concerned? As common as gigolos on a beach. But not the King, though. This isn’t all-out war. Just make sure he’s not above criticism. Reflect a degree of disappointment. It can be done?”
She nodded. “Depends on the questions, how you set it up.”
“How would you set it up?”
“Can I go to the bathroom first?” Her dress was now immaculately smoothed, but somewhere underneath she was still a mess.
“Tell me first, Sally. It’s important.”
“Pig. OK, off the top of my head. You start with something like: ‘Have you seen any news about the Royal Family in the last few days, and if so, what?’ Just to get them thinking about the photographs without, of course, being seen to lead them on. That would be unprofessional! If they’re such bozos that they’ve not heard a damn thing about the Royals, you can exclude them as dickheads and deadbeats. Then something like: ‘Do you think it is important that the Royals set a good public example in their private lives?’ Of course people will say yes, so you follow up with: ‘Do you think the Royal Family is setting a better or worse public example in their private lives than in previous years?’ I’ll bet my next month’s income that eight out of every ten will answer worse, much worse, or unprintable.”
“The Princess’s bikini could yet prove to be as powerful as the sling of David.”
“If somewhat larger,” she added testily.
“Continue with the tutorial.”
“Then perhaps: ‘Do you think the Royal Family deserves its recent pay increase or do you think, in the current economic circumstances, it should be setting an example of restraint?’ Words like that.”
“Perhaps even: ‘Do you think the number of members of the Royal Family supported by the taxpayer should remain the same, get larger, or be reduced?’”
“You’re learning, Francis. If you put in a question immediately before that to ask whether they feel they get good value for money from the work of Princess Charlotte and a couple of other disreputable or unknown Royals, they’ll be warmed up for it and you’ll get an even fiercer response.”
His eyes were glittering.
“Only then do you come to the killer. ‘Is the Royal Family more or less popular, or doing a better or worse job for the country, than five years ago?’ Top of the mind the public will say they are still great fans. So you have to bring out their deeper feelings, the concerns they hide away, the sort of things they’re not always aware of themselves. Put that question up front, first off, and you’ll probably discover that the Royals are only marginally less popular than they were. But ask away after you’ve given them a chance to think about sand, sex, and Civil Lists, and your devoted and loyal citizens will have become a rebellious mob who will string up their beloved Princess Charlotte by her bikini straps. Is that enough?”
“More than enough.”
“Then if you don’t mind I’m going to disappear for a little repair work.” Her hand was on the door handle when she turned around. “You don’t like the King, do you. Man to man, I mean.”
“No.” The reply was dry, blunt, reluctant. It only fueled her curiosity.
“Why? Tell me.” She was pushing at doors he had not chosen to open freely, but she had to broaden the relationshi
p if it were not to descend into empty habit and boredom. It had to be more than simply screwing each other, and the Opposition between times. Anyway, she was naturally curious.
“He’s sanctimonious, naive,” came the low reply. “A pathetic idealist who’s getting in the way.”
“There’s more, isn’t there?”
“What do you mean?” he asked, irritation undisguised.
“Francis, you’re halfway to raising a rebellion. You’re not planning that just because he’s sanctimonious.”
“He’s trying to interfere.”
“Every editor in Fleet Street tries to interfere yet you invite them to lunch, not to their own lynching.”
“Why must you press it? All this twaddle about his children and the future!” His face revealed anguish, the tone had sharpened and his characteristic control had disappeared. “He lectures me constantly about how passionate he is to build a better world, for his children. About how we shouldn’t build a gas pipeline or nuclear power station without thinking first, about his children. How his first duty as a future King and Monarch was to produce an heir to the Throne—his children!” The flesh around his eyes had grown gray and his lips were spittled with saliva as he grew rapidly more animated. “The man is possessed about his children. Forever talking about them whenever I meet him. Nagging. Harassing. Whining. As if children were some form of miracle that he alone could perform. Yet isn’t it the commonest, most covetous and selfish act of all, to want to re-create your own image?”
She stood her ground. “No, I don’t think it is,” she said softly. She was suddenly frightened by the eyes that were red with fire, looking directly at her yet at the same time staring through her to some torment hidden beyond. “No, it’s not. Not selfish.”
“It’s sheer egoism and self-love, I tell you. A pathetic attempt to grab at immortality.”
“It’s called love, Francis.”
“Love! Was your child born out of love? Damned funny kind of love that leaves you in the hospital with broken ribs and the child in a cemetery plot!”
She slapped him with the full force of an open palm, and knew at once it was a mistake. She should have recognized the danger signs in the throbbing veins at his temples. She should have remembered that he had no children, had never had children. She should have shown pity. Understanding came with a cry of pain as his hand lashed in return across her face.
Immediately he drew back, despairing at what he had done. He collapsed into a chair, the energy and hate draining from him like an hourglass shedding its last grains of sand. “My God, Sally, forgive me. I am so very sorry.”
By contrast, she retained a supreme calm. She’d had so much practice. “Me too, Francis.”
He was panting, the leanness that often gave him the appearance of vigor and youth now turning him into a shriveled, aging man. He had breached his own defenses. “I have no children,” he said, gasping for breath, “because I cannot. I have tried all my life to convince myself that it never mattered, but every time I see that damned man and listen to his taunts, it’s as if I am stripped naked and humiliated simply by being in his presence.”
“You think he does it deliberately…?”
“Of course it’s deliberate! He uses his talk of love like weapons of war. Are you so blind you can’t see?” His anger gave way to contrition. “Oh, Sally, believe me, I’m sorry. I have never hit a woman before.”
“It happens, Francis.”
Sally stared at this new image of the man she had thought she knew, then closed the door quietly behind her.
Thirty-Two
Leadership is the quality that enables a man to make a complete cock-up of things, combined with the ability to rise far above it.
A buzz of expectation grew as Urquhart walked into the House from behind the Speaker’s Chair, red leather folder tucked beneath his arm, civil servants filing like ducklings into the officials’ box at the back of the Chamber. They were there to provide him with instant information should the need arise, but it wouldn’t. He had briefed himself very carefully for this one; he knew exactly what he wanted.
“Madam Speaker, with permission, I would like to make a statement…”
Urquhart looked slowly across the packed benches. McKillin sat on the other side of the Dispatch Box, double-checking the statement Urquhart’s office had made available to him an hour beforehand. He would be supportive. Such matters were supposed to be noncontroversial and, in any event, as Urquhart’s personal relations with the King had become the subject of press controversy, so the Opposition Leader’s identification with the Monarch had grown. Your enemy, my friend. It’s what Opposition was about. The Leader of the small Liberal Party, sitting with his band of eternal optimists toward the far end of the Chamber, was likely to be less enthusiastic. He had seventeen MPs in his party and an ego greater than all the others combined. As a precocious backbencher he had made a name for himself by introducing a private bill to restrict the scope of the Civil List to only five members of the Royal Family and, furthermore, to batter home the message of equality by passing Royal succession down through the eldest child of either sex, and not exclusively the eldest son. It had given him ten minutes of parliamentary time before the bill was thrown out, but several hours of prime time on television and coverage in newspapers he measured in feet. He had a record to defend; doubtless he would seek to do so with decorum but, as Urquhart glanced further around the House, the Prime Minister noted that decorum had a short shelf life in politics.
His eyes alighted on “The Beast of Bradford.” Dressed in his habitual shapeless sports jacket, the colorful and eccentric Member for Bradford Central was already leaning forward in anticipation, lank hair falling over his eyes, wringing his hands and waiting to leap to his feet at the first opportunity. The Opposition MP was a street fighter who saw every issue as a chance to pursue the class war against capitalism, which he fought with considerable venom sustained by the scars of a factory accident as a working student that had left him with two short fingers on his left hand. An ardent republican, he was primed to self-ignite on issues involving hereditary rights. He was also utterly predictable, which is why Urquhart had ensured that one of his own members, a Knight of the Leafy Suburbs renowned for his bucolic complexion and pugnacious temper, was stationed directly opposite. The Knight had been deputed to “take care” of The Beast during the statement; what this might involve had been left to The Knight’s discretion, which was notoriously fragile, but he was anxious “to get back into the fray,” as he put it, after treatment for a mild heart complaint. He was already glowering across the floor at the Honorable Member for Bradford Central, seated barely six feet away.
“I would like to make a statement on arrangements for future financial support for His Majesty the King during the ten-year period ahead,” Urquhart continued. He paused to look directly at The Beast and smiled condescendingly. The other responded with an audible growl, which only served to broaden the Prime Minister’s smile. The Beast’s cage was already being rattled.
“The settlement is a considerable and I hope generous one, but is for a full ten-year period during which the vagaries of inflation must be accounted for. Should inflation prove to be less than predicted, the surplus will be carried forward…”
“’Ow much is the Princess getting?” The Beast snapped.
Urquhart ignored him and continued with his explanation.
“Come on, then. Tell us. ’Ow much are we paying Charlotte to screw around in the Caribbean next year?”
“Order! Order!” Madam Speaker demanded shrilly.
“I was only asking…”
“Shut up, you fool!” snapped The Knight, a comment heard by everyone in the Chamber with the exception of the official record takers of Hansard.
“Carry on, Prime Minister.”
The atmosphere was already tangled, the temperature rising as Urquhart contin
ued to the end of his short announcement. He had to struggle through growing noise as The Knight continued his private tussle across the floor of the Chamber. The Beast muttered away throughout the brief and supportive response of the Leader of the Opposition who, in a modest attempt to get under Urquhart’s skin, was fulsome in his praise of the King’s environmental work and social perceptiveness.
“Tell that to this bloody man!” the Knight stormed, waving an accusing finger at The Beast who had just impugned his wife’s fidelity. He got a crude gesture involving two amputated fingers in response.
The Liberal leader, when it came to his turn, was less supportive. “Will the Prime Minister recognize that, although we fully support the valuable work of the Royal Family, its financial affairs leave much to be desired? The Civil List represents but a fraction of the expense to the taxpayer of the Royal Family when you take into account the airplanes of the Royal Flight, the Royal Yacht, the Royal Train…”
“The Royal Racing Pigeons,” interrupted The Beast.
“…the costs of which are buried in the budgets of various Government departments. Wouldn’t it be better, more open and honest, to consolidate all these expenditures into one budget so that we know exactly what the true figures are?”
“It’s a sham. What’re you ’iding?”
“I resent the Right Honorable Gentleman’s insinuation that I am being neither open nor honest…” Urquhart began.
“’Ow much is it, then?”
“There is no secret conspiracy on these matters. The Royal Family gives us excellent value for money—”
The House of Cards Complete Trilogy Page 51