The Final Cut

by Michael Dobbs

  'Good morning, Francis. The weather gods seem to be smiling in celebration. Happy birthday.'

  He didn't move from his position staring out from the bedroom window and at first offered only a soft 'Oh, dear' and a slight flaring of the nostrils in response. He lingered at the window, captured by something outside before shaking his head to clear whatever pest was scratching at his humour. 'What have you got for me this year? Another Victorian bottle for the cabinet? What is it - eighteen years of bloody bottles? You know I can't stand the things.' But his tone was self-critical, more irony than ire.

  'Francis, you know you have no interests outside politics and I'm certainly not going to give you a bound copy of Hansard. Your little collection has at least given you something for the hacks to put in their profiles, and this particular piece is rather lovely. A delicate emerald green medicine bottle which is supposed to have belonged to the Queen herself.' She puckered her lips, encouraging him along. 'Anyway, I like it.'

  'Then, Elizabeth, if you like, so shall I.'

  'Don't be such a curmudgeon. I've something else for you, too.'

  At last he turned from the window and sat opposite her as she held forth a small package with obligatory ribbon and bow. Unwrapped, it teased from him the first sign of pleasure. 'Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. And an early edition.' He fingered the small leather-bound volume with reverence.

  'A first edition,' she corrected. 'The pioneer volume for the Urquhart Library, I thought.'

  He took her hands. 'That is so typically thoughtful. And how appropriate that our Library should start with one of the finest anti-French tirades ever written. You know, it might inspire me. But... I have to admit, Elizabeth, that this talk of birthdays and libraries smacks all too much of retirement. I'm not yet ready, you know.'

  'The young pretenders may seem fleeter of foot, Francis, but what's their advantage if you are the only one who knows the route?'

  'My life would be so empty and graceless without you,' he smiled, and meant it. 'Well, time to give the ashes a rake and discover whether the embers still glow.' He kissed her and rose, drawn again to the view from the window.

  'What is out there?' she demanded.

  'Nothing. As yet. But soon there may be. You know the Thatcher Society wants to erect a statue to the Baroness on that piece of lawn right out there.' He prodded a finger in the direction of the carefully manicured grass that lay beyond the wall of the Downing Street garden, opposite St James's Park. 'You know, this is a view that hasn't much changed in two hundred and fifty years; there's a print hanging in the Cabinet Room and it's all there, same bricks, same doors, even the stones on the patio are original. Now they want to put up a bloody statue.'

  He shook his head in disbelief. 'And the erection fund is almost fully subscribed.' He turned sharply, his face twisted by frustration. 'Elizabeth, if the first thing I'm going to see every morning of my life when I draw my bedroom curtains is that bloody woman, I think I shall expire.'

  'Then stop it, Francis.'

  'But how?'

  'She doesn't merit a statue. Thrown out of office, betrayed by her own Cabinet. Is the statue going to show all those knives in her back?'

  'Yet almost all of them are hacked from office, my love. By their colleagues or the electorate. Like Caesar, taken from behind by events they hadn't foreseen. Ambition makes leaders blind and lesser men bloody; none of them knew when the time had come to go.'

  'There's only one Prime Minister who should have a statue there, and that's you!'

  He chuckled at her commitment. 'Perhaps you're right - but flesh and blood turn to stone all too soon. Don't let's rush it.'

  He turned himself to stone two hours later, as fixedly as if he had spent the night wrapped in the arms of the Medusa. It was his press secretary's habit to arrange on a regular basis a meeting with representatives of charities - ordinary members, not experienced leaders - inviting them to the doorstep of Number Ten but not beyond, a visit too brief to allow for any substantial lobbying but long enough to show to the cameras that the Prime Minister cared — the 'Click Trick', as the press secretary, a hockey player and enthusiast named Drabble, termed it. Having been at his desk since six collating the morning's press, extracting from it selected articles he thought worthy of note and preparing a written summary, he met Urquhart in the entrance hall shortly before nine thirty.

  'What is it today, Drabble?' Urquhart enquired, striding briskly down the red-carpeted corridor from the Cabinet Room.

  'A birthday surprise, Prime Minister. This week it's pensioners, they're going to make a presentation.'

  Somewhere inside Urquhart felt part of his breakfast liquefying. 'Was I told of this?'

  'You had a note in your box last weekend, Prime Minister.'

  'Sadly, kept from me by more pressing letters of state,' Urquhart equivocated. Damn it, Drabble's notes were so tedious, and if a Prime Minister couldn't rely on professionals to sort out the details. . .

  The great door swung open and Urquhart stepped into the light, blinked, smiled and raised a hand to greet the onlookers as though the street were filled with a cheering crowd rather than a minor pack of world-weary journalists huddled across the street. A group of fifteen pensioners drawn from different parts of the country were gathered round him, arranged by Drabble, who was giving an advanced simulation of a mother hen. The mechanics were always the same: Urquhart asked their names, listened with serious-smiling face, nodded sympathetically before passing on to the next. Soon they would be whisked off by one of Drabble's staff and a junior Minister from an appropriate department to be plied with instant coffee and understanding in a suitably impressive Whitehall setting. A week later they would receive a photograph of themselves shaking hands with the Prime Minister and a typed note bearing what appeared to be his signature thanking them for taking the trouble to visit. Their local newspapers would be sent copies. Occasionally the discussions raised points or individual cases which were of interest to the system; almost invariably the majority of those involved went back to their pubs and clubs to spread stories of goodwill. A minor skirmish in the great war to win the hearts and votes of the people, but a useful one. Usually.

  On this occasion Urquhart had all but completed the ritual of greeting, moving on to the last member of the group. A large package almost five foot in height was leaning against the railings behind him and, as Urquhart swung towards him, so the pensioner shuffled the package to the fore. It turned out to be a huge envelope, addressed simply: 'To the Prime Minister.'

  'Many happy returns, Mr Urquhart’ the pensioner warbled.

  Urquhart turned round to look for Drabble, but the press officer was across the street priming the cameramen. Urquhart was on his own.

  'Aren't you going to open it then?' another pensioner enquired.

  To Urquhart's mind the flap came away all too easily, the card slipped out in front of him.

  'We are for you, F.U.' was emblazoned in large red letters across the top. Across the bottom: '65 Today!'

  The group of pensioners applauded, while one who was no taller than the card itself opened it to reveal the message inside.

  'Welcome to the Pensioners' Club,' it stated in gaudy handscript. 'OAP Power!' The whole thing was decorated with crossed walking sticks.

  Urquhart's eyes glazed like marble. Rarely had the photographers seen the Prime Minister's smile so wide, yet so unmoving, as if a chisel had been taken to hack the feature across his face. The expression lingered as he was drawn across the street, more to lay his hands upon the wretched Drabble than to go through the ritual of bantering with the press.

  A chorus of 'Happy Birthday!' mingled with shouts of 'Any retirement announcement yet, Francis?' and 'Will you be drawing your pension?' He nodded and shook his head in turn. The mood was jovial and Drabble enthusiastic,- the fool had no idea what he'd done.

  'Are you too old for such a demanding job at sixty-five?' one pinched-faced woman enquired, thrusting a tape recorder at
him.

  'Churchill didn't seem to think so. He was sixty-five when he started.'

  'The American President is only forty-three,' another voice emerged from the scrum.

  'China's is over ninety,'

  'So no discussions about retirement yet?'

  'Not this week, my diary is simply too full.'

  Their slings and arrows were resisted with apparent good humour; he even managed to produce a chuckle to indicate that he remained unpricked. Politics is perhaps the unkindest, least charitable form of ritualized abuse allowed within the law; the trick is to pretend it doesn't hurt.

  'So what do you think of today's poll?' It was Dicky Withers of the Daily Telegraph, an experienced hand known for concealing an acute instinct behind a deceptively friendly pint of draught Guinness.

  'The poll.'

  'Yes, the one we carried today.' Drabble began an unscheduled jig, bouncing from foot to foot as though testing hot coals. He hadn't included the poll in his digest, or the intemperate editorial in the Mirror entitled 'It's Time To Go'. Christ, it was the man's birthday, one day of the year to celebrate, to relax a little. And it wasn't that Drabble was an inveterate yes-man, simply that he found it easier to accept the arguments in favour of circumspection; all too frequently messengers who hurried to bring bad news from the battlefield were accused of desertion and shot.

  'Forty-three per cent of your own party supporters think you should retire before the next election,' Withers elaborated.

  'Which means a substantial majority insisting that I stay on.'

  'And the most popular man to succeed you is Tom Makepeace. Would you like him to, when the time comes?'

  'My dear Dicky, when that time comes I'm sure that Tom will fight it out with many other hopefuls, including the bus driver.'

  'Makepeace = Bus Driver,' Withers scribbled, noting the uncomplimentary equivalence. 'So you intend to go on, and on, and on?'

  'You might say that,' Urquhart began, 'but I wish you wouldn't. I'm enjoying a good innings and, though I'm not greedy for power, so long as I have my wits and my teeth and can be of service .. .'

  'What do you intend to do when eventually you retire, Mr Urquhart?' Pinch Face was thrusting at him again.

  'Do?' The creases of forced bonhomie turned to a rivulet of uncertainty. 'Do? Do! Why, be anguished and morose like the rest of them, I suppose. Now, you'll excuse me, ladies and gentlemen. I have a Cabinet meeting to attend.'

  He turned and embarked upon what he hoped was a dignified retreat back across the street - like a lion regaining his den, Drabble decided, tail thrashing ominously. He declined to follow.

  Urquhart brushed into his wife as she was emerging from the lift to their private apartment. 'Everything went well?' she enquired before she had noticed his eyes.

  'They say it's time for a change, Elizabeth,' he spat, grinding his teeth. 'So I'm going to give 'em change. Starting with that bloody fool of a press secretary.'

  'Astonishing,' Urquhart thought to himself as the Cabinet filed in around the great table, 'how politicians come to resemble their constituencies.'

  Annita Burke, for instance, an unplanned Jewish suburb full of entangling one-way systems. Richard Grieve, a seedy run-down sea front (which he had once plastered with election posters stating 'Grieve for Rushpool' and had somehow managed to live it down). Arthur Bollingbroke, a no-frills Northern workingmen's club with a strong tang of Federation bitter. Colin Catchpole, the member for the City of Westminster, a ruddy face with the red-brick architectural style of the Cathedral, while other parts of his anatomy were rumoured to linger in the back-streets of Soho. Geoffrey Booza-Pitt - yes, Geoffrey, an invented showman for the invented showtown of New Spalden. Middle class and entirely manufactured, lacking in roots or history - at least any history Geoffrey wished to acknowledge. He had been bom plain Master Pitt to an accountant father with a drinking problem; the schoolboy Geoff had invented an extended name and some mythical South African origin to explain away untidy gossip about his father which had been overheard by friends across a local coffee shop. And it had stuck, like so many other imaginative fictions about his origins and achievements. You could fool some of the people all of the time, and Geoffrey reckoned that was enough.

  Then there was Tom Makepeace. With the flat humour of the East Anglian fens, the stubbornness of its clays and the moralizing tendencies of its Puritan past. He was an Old Etonian with a social conscience which Urquhart ascribed to an overdeveloped sense of guilt, unearned privilege in search of unidentified purpose. The man had undoubted talent but was not from Urquhart's mould, which is the reason he had been despatched to the Foreign Office where his stubbornness and flat humour could bore for Britain and help fight the cause in the tedious councils of Brussels, and where his moralizing could do little harm.

  Urquhart's Cabinet. 'And few of you seem to be keeping your eye on the ball, if I may be frank.' The mood was all flint; Drabble had gone missing, the ghost of his folly not yet exorcized.

  'We must finish in ten minutes, I have to be at the Palace for the arrival of the Sultan of Oman.' He looked slowly around the long table. 'I trust it will be rather more of a success than the start of the last state visit.'

  His gaze set upon Annita Burke, Secretary of State for the Environment. She was both Jew and female, which meant that the doors of power started off double-locked for her. She had stormed the drawbridge by sheer exuberance but now she sat rigid, head lowered. Something on her blotter appeared to have become of sudden importance, monopolizing her attention.

  'Yes, it was a great pity, Environment Secretary. Was it not?'

  Burke, the Cabinet's sole female, raised her head defiantly but struggled for words. Had it been her fault? For months she had planned a great campaign to promote the virtues and dispel the tawdry myths surrounding the nation's capital; from their comers and quiet tables in some of London's finest restaurants the publicity men had examined the runes and pronounced - a press conference and brass band had been organized, a fleet of mobile poster hoardings assembled and seven million leaflets printed for distribution around the city on launch day.

  'Making a Great City Greater.'

  What they had not foreseen — could not have foreseen, no matter how many slices of corn-fed chicken and loch-reared salmon they had sacrificed - was that launch day would also coincide with the most catastrophic failure of London's sewer system, a progressive collapse of an entire section of Victorian brickwork which had flooded the Underground and shorted the electrical control network. Points failure, and humour failure, too. A million angry commuter ants had erupted onto the streets, creating a gridlock that had extended beyond the city to all major feed roads. On one of those feed roads, the M4 from Heathrow Airport, had sat the newly arrived President of Mexico, expecting a forty-minute drive to the royal and political dignitaries already assembled for him at Buckingham Palace. But nothing had moved. The truck-borne poster hoardings had been stuck and defaced. Most of the leaflets had been dumped undelivered in back streets. The press conference had been cancelled, the brass band had not arrived. And neither had the Mexican President, for more than three hours.

  It was a day on which the dignity of the capital died, swept away in a torrent of anger and effluent. Failure required its scapegoat, and 'Burke' fitted the tabloid headlines so well.

  'Great pity,' she concurred with Urquhart, her embarrassment exhumed. 'The Ides were against us.'

  'And you've come up with a new idea for re-establishing our reputation for caring environmentalism. The Fresh Air Directive. Article 188.' He made it sound like a charge sheet.

  'Health & Safety at Work. Sensory pollution.'

  'Smells.'

  'Yes, if you like.'

  'And we're against them, are we?'

  'The European Commission has proposed that all urban workplaces be monitored for excessive sensory pollution with a strict enforcement code for those sites which don't meet the set standards.'

  'You know, there's a curry s
hop at the end of my street. . .' Bollingbroke began in his usual homespun fashion, but Urquhart drove right through him.

  'Clean up or close down. And you approved of this.'

  'Wholeheartedly. Cleaner air, better environment. Honours our manifesto commitment and gives us a ready answer to those who claim we've been dragging our feet on Europe.' She tapped her pen on her blotter for emphasis, betraying her unease. He seemed in such acid humour.

  'Have you ever been to Burton-on-Trent, Environment Secretary?'

  'I visited for two days when I was sixteen, for a sixth-form symposium.' Her dark eyes flashed; she wasn't going to let him patronize her.

  'And it hasn't changed very much in the many years since. Still five breweries and a Marmite factory - On a hot summer's day the High Street can be overpowering.'

  'Precisely the point, Prime Minister. If we don't make them clean up their act they'll not lift a finger themselves.'

  'But the entire town lives on beer and Marmite. Their jobs, their economy, breakfast and tea, I suppose. And far be it from me to remind you that the brewers are amongst the party's staunchest corporate supporters.'