The Final Cut

by Michael Dobbs

  FOUR

  Cabinet Government frequently resembled a herd of pigs flying in close formation, he thought. In the Orwellian world of Westminster there was one prerogative above all accorded to the Chief Pig, that of choosing his companions for the fly-past, and it was something of a pity that the resignation of Makepeace had taken the edge off the reshuffle, implying an element of enforced necessity instead of presenting it as unadulterated Urquhart. Makepeace was an overweight boar, he'd insisted, fattened to excess on a diet of Brussels and scarcely capable any longer of lift-off let alone the aerial gymnastics required for public esteem on the British side of the Channel. Market time. 'Should remind others of the constant need to remain lean and hungry,' he'd told his new press officer, Grist. 'And the blessings of the bacon sheer.'

  Grist had made a good start to such a significant day, suggesting that the Prime Minister conduct a brisk walk around the lake in St James's Park in order to supply appropriate images for the benefit of photographers, a mixture of purpose and vigour. One of the cameramen had suggested the Prime Ministerial hands might be placed around the neck of a domesticated goose, 'just to give the public an idea of how it's done, Mr Urquhart.' He declined.

  By the time he returned to Downing Street an impatient flock of reporters and lobby correspondents was perched along the barriers, waiting upon first prey. Blood was about to be splashed over their boots and they squabbled amongst themselves, fighting for the first morsel, launching thrusts at the Prime Minister from across the road. He responded with nothing more than a wave and a look of sincerity practised to perfection before retreating towards the glossy black door.

  'Cry God for England and St George?' It was Dicky Withers. The wise old bird was saving his energies and his thoughts to hang upon a special moment.

  Urquhart turned in the doorway to look once more upon the scene, and nodded in Dicky's direction. Dicky knew what this was all about.

  'And warm beer, white cliffs and flying pigs,' Urquhart muttered. He said no more before disappearing inside. There was work to be done.

  It would be a long day. With long knives.

  For Geoffrey Booza-Pitt, the day had started in admirable fashion. He'd gone fishing at the Ritz, casting champagne and scrambled egg upon the familiar waters until she had risen innocently for the bait. Breakfast with Selina would in any event have been a pleasure, but the attractions of her body were as little for the Transport Secretary compared with those of her mind — or, more specifically, her memory. She was a secretary in the office of the Party Chairman and was one of several in similar political employment whom Geoffrey regularly fed and flattered. In all such cases he preferred breakfast to bed, being cautious about sleeping with women of naive years where sex could be seen as a prelude either to emotional entanglement or to the insinuations of a gossip column, neither of which Geoffrey could countenance. Sharing breakfast offered much more robust reward, pillow talk without the cigarette ash and mascara smears, information sans ejaculation.

  Booza-Pitt's political philosophy was unorthodox. He did not believe, for instance, that information attracted ownership, at least the ownership of anybody who was lax enough to let it slip. So Geoffrey would acquire a little bit here and a little bit there, not wholesale robbery, but in the end it all added up - as it had done when he was a student. He'd written to every Jewish charity he could find explaining that he was a devout student struggling to make ends meet, that he was £200 short on his tuition money. He'd work nights, of course, for his living expenses, but he did want to make sure of his tuition and could they please help? And, with a little bit here and a little bit there, the trickles of help had become a flood. If he'd had a conscience it certainly wasn't of Jewish origin since both his parents were casual Methodists. Anyway, he'd slept well in a bed of considerable comfort.

  Information was wealth around the labyrinths of Westminster, of a value greater than money, and Selina had paid for breakfast in generous fashion. She'd typed every draft of the new campaigning document being prepared at party headquarters, every addition and amendment, every thought and rethought, the paragraphs of analysis and argument, all the conclusions. And her recall was stupendous, even as the bubbles tickled her nose and made her giggle. The new campaign, it seemed, would not be radical in approach - a little direct mail, a lightweight slogan - but it had been based on new opinion research and, like Selina, was attractively packaged. She was ebullient, unsuspecting, and tender enough to believe he really wanted to help.

  Geoffrey had smiled, poured, and committed it all to his excellent memory.

  The car ferrying them back to their separate offices was stuck in the morning snarl. The fool of a driver had decided to take the rapid route to nowhere around Trafalgar Square, where ranks of one-eyed pigeons stood morose and diseased on guard duty. The Transport Secretary wound up the window and settled back into his seat, for once in his life content to remain obscure, trying to avoid the attentions of fellow jammers with their acrid fumes and equally corrosive tempers. Beside him on the back seat Selina was rearranging her elegant legs, causing him to undertake a rapid reassessment of his priorities -he was a fool for thighs, perhaps he should suggest dinner next time? - when the phone began to burble. From the other end of the line came the voice of his House of Commons secretary. The guest list for his box at the Albert Hall. The promenade concert late next week. A late cancellation, the Trade Secretary off trying to pluck leaves from the tree of Japanese abundance, where he would surely discover like all his predecessors that when it came to promises of freer trade, in the Orient it was always autumn.

  The interruption soured Booza-Pitt's mood, distracting him from his scrutiny of delicate ankles and contemplation of indulgence. He hated last-minute cancellations that disturbed what was often months of planning; he went into a sulk, like the Duke of Wellington receiving a scrap of paper informing him that Blücher wouldn't make it in time for Waterloo. He decided to shoot the messenger.

  'So what have you done?' he demanded querulously.

  'Well, I assume we'd like another top-level politician, so I've been checking the list. You've done every other member of the Cabinet in the last twelve months apart from Tom Makepeace ...'

  'This is a box at the Albert Hall, not a bloody crypt.'

  'And Arthur Bollingbroke. I've already called his secretary to check, she thinks he and his wife might be free on that evening.'

  'Bollingbroke! The man's a bloated bore, why the hell do you think I haven't invited him to anything else? I can't sit him down next to the American Ambassador and Chairman of ITN, he'd fart all through the overture while swilling down vast quantities of my champagne. Have you any idea how much that'd cost me?'

  The secretary was trying to justify herself but Booza-Pitt was in no mind to listen. The motorist stuck in the next vehicle had recognized him and was offering a two-fingered salutation; the Transport Secretary struggled to balance discretion against a sudden compulsion to get out of the car and rearrange the guy's nasal passages.

  'Perhaps we'd better wait until tomorrow, anyway,' he heard her suggest.

  'What on earth for?'

  'Until the reshuffle is finished.'

  'Reshuffle ... ?' He choked. Selina wondered if a stray salmon bone had become lodged in his throat.

  'Didn't you know? It's on television right now.'

  Reshuffles had always had an adverse effect on Booza-Pitt, they made him twitch. That first time, he'd been in Parliament less than eighteen months and had refused to stray more than twenty yards from the phone throughout the day, even though his second wife had told him there was no credible chance of his finding promotion so early in his career. Yet the phone had rung while he was out in the garden - 'Downing Street’ his wife had announced in awe through the kitchen window. He had run - rushed, tripped, fallen, broken his finger and ripped the knee from his trousers, yet nothing would stop him from taking the call. The Prime Minister's office. Wondering whether he could help. Of course, of course I can! A sp
eaking engagement in a neighbouring constituency which the Prime Minister had planned to undertake, yet which he must now sadly decline. The reshuffle, you understand. Could Geoffrey fill in, tomorrow night? His eyes blurred red with pain, Geoffrey had expressed his unencumbered delight at having been asked, while his soon-to-be former wife had collapsed in convulsions.

  You couldn't keep him down, though. He'd been involved in every reshuffle since and now the hounds of hazard had slipped the leash again. Alarums would be ringing all around Westminster, causing grown men to cringe. He studied the telephone in his hand, his features drenched in disbelief. He hadn't known it was today, right this minute, with calls reaching out from Downing Street to summon the good and the gone while she jammed the line with waffle about how it was such a pity because she truly admired Tom Makepeace and . . .

  'Get off the bloody phone!' he screamed.

  He was still in his shirt sleeves when he opened the front door. By the lack of subtlety in the creases, she suspected he might have ironed it himself.

  'You're going to hate me for pestering you at home.'

  From two steps up Tom Makepeace studied her, still munching his toast. She was tossing her dark hair nervously, the morning sun catching colours of polished coal. The lips were full, puckered in concern, her arms clutched around her in a troubled manner which seemed to lift her breasts towards him. Her coyness was a rarity in Westminster, so were the jeans.

  'I hope it's something important, Miss .. . ?' He'd noticed the lack of a ring.

  'Maria Passolides. A matter of life and death, in a way.'

  But, damn it, this was the middle of his breakfast. 'If you have a problem, perhaps it would be best if you wrote to me with the details.'

  'I have. I got a letter in return from an assistant saying thanks but you were too busy to deal with individual predicaments at the moment. He couldn't spell "predicaments".'

  'We've had an enormous number of letters in the last few days. Mostly supportive, I'm glad to say, but far too many for me to handle personally. I apologize. Perhaps you'd care to telephone my office to arrange an appointment.' He brushed his hands dismissively of the crumbs.

  'Done that, too. Five times. You're always engaged.'

  He was losing this game to love, and on his service. 'It seems I'm likely to spend the whole morning apologizing to you, Miss Passolides. Tell me briefly how I might be able to help.' He did not forsake his high vantage point or invite her inside; there were so many troubled individuals, so little politicians could do, and already too many distractions from the extraordinary pile of unopened envelopes which had taken over his dining table. Yet as she talked, she touched something inside him, a pulse of interest. It was several minutes before he recognized it as lust.

  'You must understand, Miss Passolides, it's a difficult time for politicians to get into the matter of missing graves, just when we seem to be on the point of peace in Cyprus.'

  'That's where you couldn't be more wrong.' As she talked her diffidence had completely disappeared. 'It's not openness that will threaten peace but continuing uncertainty and any hint of a cover-up. Even the Turks have recognized that.'

  He reflected on the force of her argument, his energies still weighed down by the thought of the unopened letters and unanswered calls which would pursue him for weeks to come. Life without the Ministerial machine was proving extraordinarily tiresome, with little scope for new crusades. It's all a long way from my constituency,' he offered weakly.

  'Don't be so sure. There are nearly three hundred thousand Greek Cypriots in this country and a kebab shop or taverna in every high street. Overnight a politician could have an army at his side.'

  'Or at his throat.'

  'Beware of Greeks bearing grudges.' She stood laughing on the pavement. There was an unhewn energy, enthusiasm, impatience, passion, commitment, the raw edge of life in this woman. He liked that, and he liked her.

  'It seems that the only way I'm going to get you and your army off my doorstep is to invite you in for a cup of tea. Then perhaps we can discuss the matter of whose side.' He stood aside to let her pass. 'And whose throat.'

  He declined his head as Urquhart strode across the threshold of Number Ten. Over the years the doorman had noticed that what had started as his brief nod of respect had developed into something closer to a cautious bow; as a good trade unionist he'd fought the tendency but found it irresistible, built upon generations of inbred class attitudes which instinctively recognized authority. Damn 'em all. The atmosphere had changed in Downing Street, especially when Elizabeth Urquhart was around, growing more formalized with the passage of time and Parliaments, a royal court dressed in democratic image. One day, the doorman reassured his wife, the great unwashed would stir and shake like a million grains of sand beneath Urquhart's feet and he would slip to his knees and be gone, buried beneath the changing tide of fortune. One day, someday, maybe soon. But in the meantime the doorman would continue to smile and bow a little lower, the better to inspect the shifting sands.

  The door closed, shutting out the cries of inquisitive hunger from the press corps. They'd be thrown a few bones later. Before then, there were dishes to carve. Urquhart studied his watch. Good, the timing was perfect. He'd've kept Mackintosh waiting for exactly twenty minutes.

  Jasper Mackintosh was standing in the comer of the hallway, tapping his hand-crafted shoe on the black-and-white floor tiles, trying with little success to hide his irritation. As the owner and publisher of the country's second largest and fastest-growing newspaper empire, he was more accustomed to being waited on than waiting, and after a lifetime of building and breaking politicians he was left in no undue awe by his surroundings. Several months previously he'd concluded that the time had come to start pulling the plug on Francis Urquhart - not that the Prime Minister had done anything politically damaging or offensive, simply that he'd been around so long that stories about him no longer sold newspapers. Change and uncertainty sold newspapers, and business dictated it was time for a little turmoil. Mackintosh was on a high, and in a hurry. Only last week he'd finally agreed the terms of purchase for the Clarion chain of newspapers, a lumbering loss-making giant staffed by clapped-out journalists working in clapped-out plant for a clapped-out readership, yet which offered well-known titles and great potential. The journalists could be paid off, new plant could be constructed, a new readership bought through heavy advertising and discounting, but the cost was going to be high, many tens of millions, and there was no room in Mackintosh's world for standing still. He had to get the money men off his back. That meant headlines, happenings, histrionics and new heroes. Sentimentality was a sin.

  Mackintosh had already decided that Urquhart had lost this morning's game, and not simply for starting it twenty minutes late. He assumed the Prime Minister wanted to rekindle the relationship, perhaps give him an exclusive insight into the reshuffle in exchange for sympathy. No chance. In Mackintosh's world of tomorrow, Francis Urquhart didn't feature. Anyway, where was the courtesy, the deference he expected from a supplicant? Urquhart simply grabbed him by the elbow and hustled him along the corridor.

  'Glad you could make it, Jasper. I haven't got a lot of time, got to dispatch a few of the walking wounded, so I'll come straight to the point. Why have you directed your muck spreaders into Downing Street?'

  'Muck spreaders?'

  'Driven by your editors.'

  'Prime Minister, they are souls of independent mind. I have given countless undertakings about interfering . . .'

  'They are a bunch of brigands and whatever the state of their minds, you've got them firmly by the balls. Their thoughts tend to follow.' Suddenly Urquhart called a halt to the breathless charge down the passageway. He hustled Mackintosh into the alcove by the Henry Moore and looked him directly in the eye. 'Why? Why are you writing that it's time for me to go? What have I done wrong?'

  Mackintosh considered, and rejected the option of prevarication. Urquhart wanted it straight. 'Nothing. It's not what you've
done, it's what you are. You're a giant, your shadow falls across the political world and leaves others in the shade. You've been a great man, Francis, but it's time for a change. Let others have a chance to grow.' He smiled gently; he'd put it rather well, he thought. 'It's business, you understand. The business of politics and of newspapers. Nothing personal.'

  Urquhart seemed unaffected by the obituary. 'I'm obliged to you, Jasper, for being so direct. I've always thought we had a relationship which was robust and candid, which could withstand the knocks of changing times.'

  'That's extremely generous of you . ..' Mackintosh began, but Urquhart was talking straight through him.

  'And speaking of the knocks of changing times, I thought it only fair - in equal candour and confidence - to share with you some plans which the Treasury are proposing to push forward. Now you know I am not a man of high finance, I leave that to the experts like you. Extraordinary how the nation entrusts the fate of its entire national fortune to politicians like me who can scarcely add up.' He shrugged his shoulders, as though trying to slough off some unwelcome burden. 'But as I understand it you've undertaken to buy the Clarion and are going to pay for it all by issuing a large number of bonds to your friends in the City.'