Goodfellowe MP

by Michael Dobbs

  ‘Corsa has friends?’ She was having trouble with the concept.

  ‘Allies, then. Money men. This mystery group of backers the newspapers have talked about. Waiting to get in on the action after the Press Bill goes through. Maybe they’re getting a bit of the action up front.’ It fitted, he knew it was right, but Goodfellowe’s elation immediately subsided into a frown. ‘Still doesn’t tell us who they are. Could be anyone. Absolutely anyone.’

  ‘Maybe I can offer a clue.’ Elizabeth’s lips puckered thoughtfully. ‘I belong to the Indulgents. It’s a small dining club of restaurateurs who get together to gossip and be disgraceful. We had an excellent little gossip last week about Freddy Corsa.’ The lips moved from side to side as though performing sentry duty. ‘He’s dined in three of the restaurants recently with the same woman. Something of a feature. An attractive and very senior oil executive named Diane Burston.’

  ‘She’s well known, a player of substance. She’d make an excellent member of any consortium.’ He picked up a final stray piece of seaweed from the tablecloth. ‘Tell me, what were they at? Business or pleasure?’

  ‘Are there different types of sin, Tom? With those people surely it’s all the same.’

  ‘Elizabeth,’ he whispered, ‘you are a remarkable as well as very beautiful woman.’

  ‘Tom,’ she smiled in surprise, ‘what has brought that on? Business or pleasure?’

  ‘I almost forgot,’ he stumbled, reaching into his pocket. He withdrew a small leather-bound edition of poetry by Yeats. ‘Not particularly valuable. Something I found in the Charing Cross Road. While I was thinking of you. A sort of good-luck charm, I thought. It seems to be working already.’

  She blew him a small kiss, the lips no longer puckering to one side but pointing straight in his direction. It had become a very special moment for Goodfellowe. He ordered a new bottle of wine to celebrate. And as he relaxed, his conversation turned to more personal matters, feelings he had difficulty in articulating but which now, with her encouragement and the benefit of wine, he attempted to explain to her. Feelings he had tried to bury. Of loneliness. Of his overwhelming sense of duty, which he still confused with love. Of how his life had become dominated by all its forms rather than its substance. He talked and shared, explaining not only to her but also to himself. Outside, the first thunderstorm of summer was turning the streets into dark rivers but, as she poured the wine and he poured out his heart, he didn’t even hear it.

  ‘The forms of life are important to me, Elizabeth. I owe responsibilities as well as love to Sam and Elinor. And I could have met those responsibilities simply by saying yes to Corsa and to Lillicrap. It was the easy way out. But it would have left me emptied inside, and what goes on inside a man – the passions, the ambitions, the very personal comforts – surely they matter too?’

  ‘You’re asking that question of an Irish girl?’ She poured once more, wanting to encourage him.

  ‘I’ve been alone for a long time now. And I found a simplicity in loneliness which got me through my days, if not the nights. Then you came along and spoiled it. I tried to hate you for it, for walking into my one-dimensional world and ruining it, but that didn’t work so I decided I had to start fighting back. Listening to the man within. Even poor Elinor recognized it. You can’t love me, she said. And she was right. I want to love her, I should love her. But I can’t. All I can do is my duty to her. Form without the substance. I need something more.’

  ‘What do you need, Tom?’

  ‘I need you, I think. At least I need to find out whether I need you. Do I make sense? Sorry, I’m not very good at this. Out of practice. Think I’ve drunk too much. But I need to open up my one-dimensional world, Elizabeth. And what I feel for you has had an extraordinary effect in broadening my horizons.’

  ‘Broadening your horizons? Back home that’s called lust. Are you propositioning me, Tom Goodfellowe?’

  ‘Think I am.’

  ‘And about bloody time.’

  ‘I feel a bit of a fool.’

  ‘Ah, but you’re a passionate fool. An Irishman at heart.’

  He began to laugh, rather wearily. ‘Trouble is, old duck, I needed a bit of Dutch courage to blurt it all out.’ He looked at his oft-emptied glass. ‘I think I’ve overdone it.’

  At a nearby table a waiter was gesticulating to the diners. ‘One hour taxi. One hour taxi,’ he shouted as the gutters outside overflowed. It was almost two a.m.

  ‘Well, if you think I’m walking home in that cloudburst, you truly must be drunk.’

  ‘My apartment is just round the corner.’

  ‘Now isn’t that a coincidence,’ she laughed mischievously. ‘But so much for lust. Seems to me it’s not so much a case of you inviting me home, but me getting you home.’

  Happy, clutching, soaking, with him trying to provide shelter for her beneath an old menu card, they had scuttled the short distance back to his doorway in Gerrard Street. Outside lay a pile of Sunday newspapers which had already turned to papier-mâché. ‘Whoops. Completely forgot I was supposed to be reviewing the newspapers in the morning.’

  ‘All the more reason for you to get a few hours’ sleep,’ she chided.

  ‘Guess I’ll have to make it up as I go along.’

  ‘Is that the passion or the review?’ she whispered. He declined to answer.

  So they had dripped their way up the stairs, fumbled with his keys, and arm-in-arm had poured themselves inside his apartment. By the door, the red light on his answering machine was blinking belligerently. Twenty-one messages. This had happened once before when an automated message machine on call-back had pestered him all day, mistaking his number for a fax line. He took the phone off the hook. He wasn’t in any fit state to be disturbed.

  ‘Bath, kitchen,’ he pointed out to her. ‘Barry Manilow tapes,’ he added, waving at the stereo system. ‘My little vice, but only ever in private,’ he confided, swaying a little.

  ‘Anything else to declare?’ she enquired, trying to stifle a giggle.

  He became instantly maudlin, taking her hands. ‘Only that I haven’t been in the arms of a woman for more than four years and I can’t wait to sober up.’

  ‘And in the meantime?’

  ‘You,’ he waved at the bed on its mezzanine platform. ‘Me,’ he pronounced, flopping across the small sofa. Smiling, she leaned down to kiss him, but already he was asleep.

  He was dragged back from the depths of senselessness by the insistent rasping of the intercom. The cab had arrived.

  ‘Damned lies! It can’t be,’ he squealed, shaking his watch in disbelief, unable to accept it was already six fifteen. ‘Ten minutes,’ he shouted to the driver. He was nearly twenty. Elizabeth watched in amusement from the bed-platform above as he scuttled about the apartment trying to balance haste against modesty, a scramble perforated by a bout of drawer-rattling indecision as to what colour shirt to wear, and all the while battling to plaster down hair which spoke eloquently of the night on his sofa.

  Finally he stood at the door, breathless. ‘I’ll be back by nine. Be here?’

  ‘Get lost, Goodfellowe,’ she smiled.

  He had hoped to find another set of newspapers in the cab but the back seat was empty. The aerial had been wrenched away, the radio was inoperable and the driver spoke unintelligible West African, so Goodfellowe had spent the journey tucking in his shirt and conducting further hostilities with his hair. By the time he reached the studios he felt uninformed, but almost fit.

  ‘Mr Goodfellowe. Brilliant! So good of you to come.’ An agitated young executive had swung open the passenger door and was hopping from foot to foot like a fire walker.

  ‘My pleasure.’

  ‘Thought you wouldn’t make it. We tried to call last night. Several times. Really quite brave of you, in the circumstances.’

  ‘What circumstances?’

  The hopping stopped, the legs suddenly grown leaden. ‘You haven’t seen the newspapers?’ It was a comment offered in awe.
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br />   ‘Not had a chance. Not yet.’

  The television executive uttered a very bad word he had learned at public school and placed his hands together, putting them to his face as though reciting the rosary. ‘I think you’d better come with me.’

  Inside, in a small private room, away from the other guests who were gathering for the morning programme, they sat him down with a cup of muddy tea and a copy of the Sunday Herald.

  ‘MP Caught With Chinese Vice Girl.’

  Below the screaming headline was the photograph of him with Jya-Yu. It seemed, more than ever as he studied the photo once again, that they were engaged in a passionate lip-spreading kiss.

  The future of Tom Goodfellowe, the former Minister who was recently found guilty of drink-driving, was thrown into further doubt yesterday when it was revealed he was having an association with a Chinatown vice girl. Police sources confirmed that Pan Jya-Yu, 18, was recently arrested on suspicion of prostitution and drug handling. She also attacked her arresting policeman. She has since accepted a caution – effectively pleaded guilty – to possession of a restricted substance, believed to be an Oriental sex drug.

  At the time of her arrest the vice girl, instead of calling for a solicitor, telephoned Goodfellowe. Police sources indicate he was at the police station within fifteen minutes of the call being made, missing a series of vital House of Commons votes to be there. He was also present at her side when she returned to answer bail.

  Goodfellowe describes himself as a friend of the attractive teenager, who is only two years older than his own daughter. Our exclusive photograph, taken outside Charing Cross police station on the public street a short while after her arrest, suggests their friendship will come as a grave embarrassment to the Government in its attempts to rebuild its image on family values after other recent sleaze scandals …

  Constituency sources in Marshwood indicated this latest scandal, coming on the heels of Goodfellowe’s own arrest and conviction for drunk driving, could result in his being thrown out by his local party. ‘We wanted an MP. Instead we seem to have got a jailbird,’ one senior local official commented.

  Last night the Member for Marshwood was not answering his telephone and was believed to be in hiding.

  Only the shivering of the newspaper in his hand revealed that Goodfellowe had not turned entirely to stone.

  The executive coughed timorously. ‘What can I say? I’m sorry. I suppose you won’t want to go on with the show, not after this. Perhaps you’d like to go straight home, I’ve kept the car.’

  Goodfellowe turned, with the eyes of a wolf in winter. ‘I’ll go on.’

  ‘You will?’ The executive brightened.

  ‘An entire division of Hitler’s Waffen SS couldn’t keep me off your bloody programme. This is evil.’ He flung the newspaper away from him, across the room, where the pages divided and settled like falling snow. ‘I want to be straight on there so I can tell everyone what a miserable piece of filth this is. I demand you let me on!’

  ‘Yeah, sure. Great. Really great,’ burbled the executive. ‘Would you like make-up first?’

  As preparations for the programme rushed around him, Goodfellowe had difficulty controlling the anger that was causing both hand and voice to tremble. He practised breathing exercises to calm himself as sound-men and make-up women fussed around, wiring him up and attempting to keep the eruptions of hair battened down. Maxine the make-up woman stepped back from him to pass a professional judgement on the result, sucking her teeth. ‘Would you like eye-drops,’ she offered, ‘to get rid of some of the red?’

  But it was too late, he was on. He was seated on the sofa opposite Jeremy, the show’s host. They hadn’t turned on the full studio lights yet but already he could feel the beads of perspiration gathering along his hair line. Too much wine, too much anger. Maxine rushed to give him a final despairing wipe. Then it began.

  ‘We start as ever with our review of the morning papers, and our guest today is Tom Goodfellowe, Government MP and former Minister. And a man much in the news himself. Eh, Tom?’

  ‘It’s filth.’ Suddenly so many thoughts were scraping around inside his head that he found it difficult to slow them down sufficiently to express them. ‘It’s filth,’ he was reduced to repeating.

  ‘For those who don’t know what he’s referring to, the Sunday Herald has this front-page story devoted to our guest this morning. Never say we’re not timely.’ He held up the Herald for the inspection of the watching millions. Goodfellowe felt his muscles tighten with tension. He was screaming at himself to relax, to take control, but the commands seemed to be being issued by a voice from an entirely separate body.

  ‘So, what about it? Is it true?’

  ‘It is a collage of innuendo and lies,’ Goodfellowe replied, scowling. Relax, you fool! the voice insisted, but Goodfellowe ploughed on. ‘This is a most shameful article.’

  ‘But you do know this girl?’ Jeremy interrupted.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘She’s not a constituent?’

  ‘Just a friend.’

  ‘A very good friend, it would seem from the photograph. Is the photograph false, have they doctored it in any way?’

  ‘Who can tell? But it is certainly …’ – last night’s indulgences were clouding his mind as he struggled for the phrase – ‘unrepresentative.’ What a bloody stupid word, the voice argued with him. ‘It implies we have a relationship way beyond the reality.’ The voice groaned.

  ‘OK, let’s deal with the facts one by one. The story states that this young lady, your friend, was arrested on suspicion of prostitution and being in possession of drugs, and assaulted the arresting police officer. Is that true or false?’

  ‘It was all a mistake. She’s a very decent girl.’

  ‘But she has, according to the story, accepted a caution for possessing a controlled substance.’

  ‘Yes, but …

  ‘A sex drug. An aphrodisiac, I suppose you might call it.’

  ‘The case is not what it seems.’ He felt heated, in more ways than one. The perspiration was beginning visibly to trickle and he knew his eyes looked puffed and blotchy. Damn, he could feel his hair springing up in defiance, pushing through the pavement of lacquer. He would look like a Christmas turkey. Behind the cameras Maxine winced. This wasn’t going to be one for her portfolio. ‘This is nothing more than a newspaper’s disgraceful attempt to distort a confused personal situation in order to damage my reputation,’ Goodfellowe continued. ‘The young lady in question is a sweet girl. Not involved in vice.’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure about that. She’s involved with sex drugs and I suspect that many people would accept the description of vice girl as fair comment. But if she’s not a constituent, why did you feel the need to help her? Not once, but repeatedly?’

  ‘Because she asked for it, she was being arrested and was frightened. There doesn’t have to be any other motive.’

  ‘Fair enough. I can understand that from your position, since as the article points out and many people know, you’re not a total stranger to the problems of being arrested yourself. But is it true that you missed important Commons votes to rush to her side? Was she that – what’s the word? – significant to you?’

  ‘At the time I scarcely knew her.’ Try not to look so stiff and guilty, the voice whispered, but it was pointless, his hands were clenched to stop them shaking.

  ‘Forgive me, I don’t mean to doubt your word, but the photograph suggests something entirely different. You were kissing her, that’s correct, isn’t it?’

  ‘It was no more than a gesture of gratitude on her part.’

  ‘It was her fault, then?’

  Goodfellowe struggled. ‘No. Don’t twist my words. It was nothing more than gratitude, I tell you …’ The voice was suggesting it had a train to catch.

  ‘Then she’s obviously a very grateful type of girl. So what is your relationship with her?’

  ‘It is tea. I buy my tea from her.’ The truth som
etimes sounds so damnably inadequate. And unconvincing.

  ‘I won’t bother asking whether you take it with one lump or two.’

  ‘Really …’ His anger was beginning to show, binding his tongue. The interviewer was quick to take advantage.

  ‘And remember, folks. That’s something you heard first on the Morning Programme. Tea for two. So let’s recap. What about the story is inaccurate?’

  ‘The whole wretched thing.’

  ‘But we’ve just gone through the relevant details and you’ve pretty much confirmed them.’

  ‘They have disfigured the facts and come up with a completely false and possibly libellous conclusion.’

  ‘Oh, so you’ll sue?’

  ‘I … I haven’t had time to consider.’ It was too evasive, and too late. He could hear the sound of a closing door as his judgement and its voice gave up and left. ‘This is not a situation of sleaze, it’s only an example of the kind of support politicians provide every day. It’s been deliberately distorted.’

  ‘The road to Hell, it would seem, is littered with used tea bags. Well, I want to thank you, Tom, for coming in this morning and clearing up the confusion. You’ve been a sport.’ Jeremy reached across and extended a hand to thank him. Only then did Goodfellowe become aware of how wringing damp his own had become.

  Jeremy turned back to the camera, his interest in Goodfellowe obliterated. ‘And as you enjoy your morning cup of tea, friends, remember – keep practising safe sipping.’ Someone on the floor crew sniggered. ‘Our next guest this morning refuses to become involved in politics and knows nothing of vice. She’s a missionary who has recently returned from …’

  And it was over. Finished. Before millions of viewers. His reputation ruined. He’d had a wealth of experience at dealing with the media and defending every aspect of policy in the teeth of the storm but this had not been politics, it had been all too personal. And he had been too angry, too emotional, too uptight. Taken by surprise. Even had he handled himself less than disastrously they would have congratulated him on his performance yet still assumed the truth of the story. A man of his age, a politician no less, and a young girl. Obvious, wasn’t it?