Goodfellowe MP

by Michael Dobbs

  The sole exception to the discipline of double-price drink was Curt, who leaned on one of the quieter corners of the bar. Curt was the local beat officer and Kenny, Scouser to his roots, knew that he’d better take care of the local police or, in a turning world, they would be sure to take care of him. So Curt and his guest got not only their drinks at standard but also the corner with one of the best views in the house. What was even better from Curt’s point of view, tonight the guest was paying. Oscar Kutzman had called, wanted to meet in a hurry, as soon as he came off duty. Fair enough. Oscar was a bearded little creep with tight jeans and unfortunate personal dispositions but in addition to being a sodomite the photographer had other uses. He had a photographer’s sharp eye and was always on the street, taking in much of the London low life which had a habit of vaporizing at the approach of blue uniforms, and Oscar would usually pass on the information. He’d once helped smash a wholescale immigration racket, and all he asked in return was the opportunity to take exclusive photographs and to buy officers a few drinks in return for their tips. Yes, Oscar was all right. Ish.

  Two pints of bitter arrived and Curt gratefully took the head off his. Oscar sipped. He preferred Dubonnet, but felt forced to play it butch with the local constabulary. No one was fooled, of course, but the boys in blue talked more freely when relaxed.

  ‘So what is it this time, Oscar?’

  Oscar quickly put down his glass and made a dive towards an inside pocket of his windcheater, but before he could complete the move a new aria had begun, a duet this time. He knew he’d have trouble capturing Curt’s attention. He’d have to wait, and sought solace in examining the women with professional detachment. It was the only way he ever examined women. Curt stood smiling, tapping the bar with his fingers in time to the music until the soprano hit a High C when, accompanied by expressions of desolation and a ripping of Velcro, the costumes tumbled. The punters roared, banging bars and tables in approval. Culture could be such an inspiration.

  ‘You were saying, Oscar?’

  Oscar felt nervous. This was important. If it worked the Herald had promised instant happiness, perhaps even a staff contract. From his poacher’s pocket he withdrew a large envelope and placed it on the counter. Wiping his fingers on his jeans first, he proceeded to withdraw three photographs. Enlargements. Of Jya-Yu. Showing her face from different angles. ‘Recognize her?’

  Curt studied them. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘I don’t, my editor does. It’s important to me, Curt. Can you help?’

  The policeman was in genial mood, basking in the reflection of a week which had seen him put away not only plenty of overtime but also the station’s newest WPC. A week for sharing. He smiled. ‘Oscar, my old sweetie, if you feel the temptation to kiss me, please restrain yourself. But tonight you are in luck.’ After all, he’d been in the Charge Room at the time, sitting on top of the pile of trouble.

  ‘You know who she is?’

  ‘I can even give you the number of her charge sheet.’

  Big Ben struck four. From across the river, the famous silhouette of Gothic towers and pinnacles stood out clearly against the glow of the urban night. Only one light pierced the façade, from a window so small that it might have been no more than a reflection of the street lights along the bridge. Goodfellowe was still at work. His office resembled a waste tip on a windy day. Sheets of newspaper were strewn everywhere, covering almost every available surface. Draped over the small sofa. Washing over the desk. Laid out on the floor. Pinned to almost every part of the walls. Goodfellowe stared bleary-eyed. An image, an understanding, kept falling in and out of focus. At some points during the night it had been close enough almost to touch, then he would reach out and it would fade.

  He had started with the Earth Firm exclusive. He knew that the timing, if not the story, had been fixed, Lillicrap had admitted so. It had been reported and exaggerated for purposes that were more than simply journalistic. To help the Government, to help Corsa’s friends, but most of all to help Corsa himself. So Goodfellowe had pinned the front page up on the wall and begun to surround it with others from the last months. Eventually he was lost in a blizzard of white paper that pounded him from all sides until he grew snow blind. Until he could no longer see and everything was gone.

  His head dropped. He felt weary of this world, a world that had turned against him and had tried so hard to hurl him off. Yet as both eyesight and insight faded and his very thoughts began to ache, words kept repeating in his mind, words which Jya-Yu had spoken as he lay on Dr Lin’s treatment couch. ‘Look at things all round about, not just little bit at a time.’ He had tried. It was pointless. The headlines kept shouting at him but he was too exhausted to hear.

  SIX

  ‘He’s taken up puppy training.’ Mickey tossed her head in concern as she entered Goodfellowe’s room to discover it strewn with sheets of newspaper. ‘Or maybe he’s planning to become a tramp.’ She had noticed all the signs. The growing anxieties and sleeplessness. A loss of weight he attributed to cycling, but which was in fact pure acid tension. His battles with Sam and his inability to express his emotions to anyone other than in the form of excuse and anger. They were beginning to mutter about him in the corridors and around the Dragonaria. Flaky. He’d lost it. And every morning’s post seemed to bring more torment about his money, or lack of it. Pain and pressure everywhere. A cup which had long ago overflowed was now all but drained dry.

  Goodfellowe lay slumped across his desk, breathing heavily. By his side was a bottle of Bulgarian blanc, opened and empty. He had now come to resemble his life, which was a mess.

  ‘Tom.’

  He started, roused from a world of vivid dreams and wild thoughts which somehow never seemed to connect.

  ‘What the hell is all this, old love?’ she asked tenderly, waving at the white wreckage of the room which surrounded him like the walls of a padded cell.

  He scratched his stubbled chin. ‘It’s the answer. It’s here. Somewhere, I’m sure. Just haven’t quite found it yet.’

  ‘Tom, I think you should …’

  ‘Look, Mickey,’ he insisted, cutting through her, rising to pirouette across the paper carpet and point an accusing finger at various sheets. ‘Look at these exclusives Corsa has plastered all over the front pages. Like the Earth Firm campaign. Blown out of the water the moment it was launched because one of its members was caught playing sexual hopscotch, despite the fact that everyone knows the rules of that particular game were invented by the Environment Secretary’s husband.’ The finger pounded another sheet. ‘Then there was Wonderworld – another piece of overblown nonsense. A huge commercial organization brought to its knees because on one particular day Corsa published a story which could have been written at any time about almost any place. Ludicrously weak stories of no substance published at the moment they would cause maximum damage.’

  ‘Yes, but Tom I …’

  ‘Here’s another.’ He moved the empty wine bottle in order to retrieve the front page which lay beneath. ‘Killer Coal’, the headline screamed. ‘Some obscure academic produces a paper suggesting he’s found more cancer clusters around coal-fired power stations than around nuclear stations. Nine months later – nine months, Mickey, if you look at the small print – the Herald goes ape about it. Why? Why is Corsa going out of his way to harm these groups? Why are they …’

  ‘Tom!’ It was her turn to interrupt. ‘You’re the one in imminent danger of harm. Have you forgotten you were supposed to meet Beryl in Central Lobby?’

  ‘Oh, pig’s wind. When?’

  ‘Twenty minutes ago.’ She looked at him. ‘I’ll go fetch her, bring her round slowly. Give you time to sort out your hair and this mess.’ She began pulling a page from its fixing on the wall.

  ‘No!’ Goodfellowe’s tone was sharp with menace, like a dog confronting a burglar. ‘Don’t touch anything. It’s here, Mickey, the answer is here somewhere. I don’t want anything moved.’

  ‘But you can
’t bring her in here,’ she protested.

  ‘Then I shall talk with her out there,’ he instructed. He rubbed his feet tenderly before lacing up his shoes, retrieving his jacket from the back of the door and running a hand several times through his hair. ‘How do I look?’

  ‘Like something that didn’t quite make it at Battersea Dogs’ Home.’

  He took two deep breaths to summon up the spirit. ‘She’ll never notice.’

  Oh, but she did. Miss Hailstone was not a happy lass. She was important. As important, if not more so, in her opinion, than the Member of Parliament. She should not have been kept waiting. And she should not have been set upon by a man who looked almost deranged with darkened chin and blood-rimmed eyes and hair like the sea front at Frinton during an autumn gale.

  ‘Mr Goodfellowe …’ There was the formality again. She was rising up onto her toes in indignation in order to train her sights better on him. He knew he was in for a full broadside. ‘I have come all the way to London specifically to meet with you because I thought it was a matter of such importance. To you. Yet I find you discourteous, dishevelled – have you slept in those clothes?’ she asked, incredulous. She was angry with him, still angrier with herself for ever having been such a fool as to want him in her bed.

  He decided there was little to be gained from the truth, particularly with Beryl. ‘My humble apologies. How can I help you?’ He guided her to a small alcove where they might find a little privacy.

  ‘It’s more how you might be able to help yourself.’ She smoothed out the folds of her dress, preparing herself. Her bosom heaved. ‘I have come to inform you …’ – it sounded a little too starched, even for her – ‘to let you know that the Committee has decided to begin our election preparations and to bring forward the time for us to choose our candidate.’

  ‘My reselection.’

  Another heave. She was wearing a large cameo brooch, a flower cluster which moved towards him with the menace of a Triffid. ‘The reason I have made this trip especially is that I thought it only fair to tell you that some members of the Committee are not happy. With you. We were sad to lose you as a Minister, with all the kudos that can bring to a constituency. We haven’t had a member of the Cabinet visit us in months. And little things, like invitations to Downing Street or garden parties at the Palace, matter to some people. I’m not speaking personally, you understand, I’m far too busy, but others do talk about such things.’

  ‘I’ll try to do better,’ he offered weakly.

  ‘They also talk about your unfortunate problem with the police. We all enjoy a drink, I’m sure, but getting arrested as a result is not what the party workers in Marshwood expect. What on earth are they going to say on the doorstep?’

  ‘You told me that would be forgotten in time.’

  ‘We move but slowly. Memories die hard in Marshwood.’

  ‘Then why bring the selection procedure forward? Why not give it a little more time?’

  ‘We must be ready whenever the call comes. And you are doing yourself no favours with your antiparty activities.’

  ‘What on earth …?’

  ‘We expect you to support our party and our Government, not to keep driving under whatever influence on the wrong side of the road.’

  ‘I have my conscience.’

  ‘And we have our selection procedures.’

  ‘Are you telling me I may not be reselected? That you’ll look for other candidates?’ This was beginning to sound like a declaration of war.

  Miss Hailstone paused, deliberate, painfully long. Once again she smoothed out non-existent creases in her dress. Then the Triffids advanced with murderous intent. ‘I hope it won’t come to that. But perhaps you’ll allow me to give you a little advice.’

  Goodfellowe braced himself. Beryl never gave advice, only instruction.

  ‘You’d be wise to smarten yourself up, both your appearance and your politics. You’re going to have to start playing the team game, if you want to remain the Member for Marshwood.’

  Goodfellowe woke from his usual shallow, tormented sleep knowing that his time was fast running out. He was aware of what was happening to him. During endless nights he searched for answers but found only darkness. During his days, acid and alcohol ate away at his resolution. He was destroying himself with doubt. He had to make a decision, for no choice was a terrible decision in itself.

  Corsa? Career? Conscience? Yet in a sense it all came down to Elinor. Their life together had started out in such pleasing pastures, surrounded by the fruits of their abundant success. But the seasons had turned, as they always do, with summer slipping almost unnoticed into autumn, a mild and colourful time, and certainly still comfortable. No complaints. Autumn was a favourite season, for some people, and Goodfellowe himself had found it balmy enough. Then the mighty storm had struck and winter had arrived more harsh than he could ever have imagined. He had always seen himself as a provider, competent to deal with any eventuality, able to look after his family. But he had failed. And as he looked at himself in the mirror, he knew he was no longer even able to take care of himself.

  While watching Elinor’s decline he had told himself that it might have been worse. What did love, physical commitment, mean to him anyway? His marriage had survived contentedly for many years with little of either. And he was perhaps approaching the age when the need for such things begins slowly to fade, so he had thought – he had wished it, almost, because that would have been the easy way out. Not to have needs. Not to have desired with a passion and an urgency that turned his stomach around so fiercely he couldn’t sleep. He had a pride, and a sense of guilt, and no idea of what he should do. It was destroying his body just as it was flogging his soul and there was not a single facet of his life that was capable of surviving in such a manner. He had to decide what sort of man he was to be, or soon he would be no man at all.

  It was a difficult journey to Elinor’s nursing home without his own transport. It required a slow train to Salisbury followed by a lengthy taxi drive with the driver inevitably proceeding in silence once he had identified the destination. He tried to make the trip every week but it had become less regular recently since he had lost the car. At least, that was the excuse he made to himself. Elinor needed no excuse. She had grown oblivious to the time or the season, her world slowly becoming confined to the grounds of the clinic and, ever more closely, to her small room and particularly its television. She would receive messages from the television, she used to claim. And from the radio and car number plates, too. Messages of guilt and of damnation, blaming her for the accident that had drowned Stevie. But as she had begun slowly to realize that others didn’t understand, that they couldn’t hear or share the messages, she had stopped talking about the voices, simply sitting in front of the screen, surfing constantly between channels, even in the middle of the night when the station had gone off air and provided nothing but an electronic blizzard. That was often when the voices spoke loudest, were most insistent. The people around her didn’t know, didn’t hear, didn’t care, so it had become her secret, a life shared with no one but the devils in the television.

  She was in bed when he arrived. Inevitably, she was watching television. ‘Hello, love.’ He bent and kissed her forehead, noticing once more how dank and lifeless her hair had become, hair which had once been a match for the bubbling personality within. Now her aspect was blank, the skin grown thin and stretched like parchment. Around her the room was simple and utilitarian. And safe. No locks, except on the window. No glass or ceramic, nothing that could be made sharp. Even the fresh flowers he always asked should be at her bedside were standing in a vase of plastic. Her few personal possessions amounted to no more than a box of tissues and a few unread magazines. No sign of character. This was a room which, without her, would say almost nothing about the patient that had occupied it full-time for nearly eight months, with perhaps one exception, a small candle which stood on the windowsill in front of the dull protective metal mesh. As he always d
id when he arrived after dusk, he took a booklet of matches from his pocket and lit the candle. It was a family ritual that Elinor had begun while they still allowed her matches, a light to guide their lost son back home.

  She turned from the candle to stare blankly once more at the television.

  ‘Please, Elinor, I want to talk.’ Was it too much to hope that she could listen? He sat beside her on the bed, lifting the remote control from her coverlet and switching off her television. Slowly, as though making the difficult passage back from another world, she turned to look at him. He held her hand, all bones, her eyes as glassy as those sewn on a rag doll. Occasionally he thought he could detect a flicker behind them, but of what he could not discern. Indifference? Suspicion? Apprehension? Perhaps contempt. He could no longer tell, she seemed barely sentient. So he sat and talked. Of his new apartment. Of Sam and her fashion show and how she was growing up. A little of his own turmoil and more of his problems in the House. He massaged her hand as though he might rub into her some understanding of what he was saying and through its heat generate some response, yet there was nothing. Glass eyes stared back.

  ‘Try to understand, Elinor. I have come to a crossroads in my life, and I need your help to decide which direction I should take. I’ll probably be damned if I take on Corsa, and I’ll certainly damn myself if I don’t. I feel my whole life is changing and somehow everything depends on this. There are risks everywhere. For me, for us. Do you understand?’

  She turned away to look at the blank television screen, her movements tortuously slow, as though the brain was sending out instructions by way of the moon. Then, before he even realized it, the rag doll was staring back at him, eyes flickering vividly in the candlelight. Or was it a light within?

  ‘There’s another woman, isn’t there,’ she said slowly. They were the first words she had spoken in almost a month.

  How on earth could she tell? What insight did this warped and half-buried brain of hers retain? Could she smell his guilt, was that it? Was it so damned obvious?