The Final Cut

by Michael Dobbs

  So she was organizing. 'Who?' 'Cresswell.'

  'Ah, the soft white underbelly. A man whose only fixed opinions seem to centre on puddings and port.'

  'But worth a week of headlines.'

  'Publicly?' Makepeace demanded. 'He'd come out and say so publicly?'

  'Timing is everything.' Digby was at it again, leaving the question unresolved. 'Once the first few are out of the trap, others will follow. Momentum is everything. It's catching, like mumps.'

  'Safety in numbers,' Makepeace muttered, almost to himself. 'It makes that first step so vital.'

  'Timing is everything,' Burke echoed, delighted that Makepeace's observations appeared to be focusing on the definitive and practical. His mind was on the move, three parts there, just one last push . .. 'You can go all the way, Tom, if we retain the initiative. We must start organizing now, but for God's sake don't reveal your hand too soon, until everything is ready. The trouble with you is that once you make your mind up about something you're too impatient, too emotional. Too honest, if you like. It's your biggest fault.'

  True enough. Exactly what Claire had told him. He could handle himself, but there were other problems. 'To fight and win an election we need a machine, grass roots in the constituencies, not just a debating society in Westminster,' Makepeace reflected.

  'That's why we need time.'

  'And timing.'

  The car had stopped outside 'Vangelis'', where he had invited them to eat. And, it seemed, to plot. It sparked a memory of something Maria had said at their first meeting by the milk bottles. About a ready-made headquarters in every high street and overnight an army at his side.

  The ghost of a smile hung on his lips. The various strands of his life seemed to be drawing together, or at least entangling themselves. Urquhart. Ambition. Maria. Passion. All pushing him in the same direction. Suddenly there seemed to be no point any longer in reluctance or resistance, he'd better lie back and enjoy it. And as Maria had said only the previous night, his timing was usually immaculate.

  They disembarked from the car. 'I guess about eleven o'clock, Mickey,' he told his driver. 'Not earlier, I'm afraid. I've a feeling this dinner is going to be a long one.'

  Mickey tipped his cap. This new job was proving to be most stimulating. The pay was better than sitting around the corporate car pool, Makepeace was a kind and considerate passenger. And the gossip was a hell of a lot more entertaining than listening to businessmen wittering on about ungrateful clients and their wives' muscle-minded tennis coaches.

  Others were being pushed and jostled. Hugh Martin was in his forties, once fleet of foot and a former rugger wing-forward who was more than accustomed to the elbows and abuse of a line-out. He hadn't expected to find the same tactics used outside the Nicosia Folk Art Museum. The museum, which lay amongst the labyrinths behind the city's ancient fortified walls, was promoting its most recent exhibition and invitations had been issued to the city's erudite and elevated, the British High Commissioner amongst them. He had counted on a pleasant stroll around the stands with Mrs Martin, greeting old friends and making some new, perhaps even finding something to inspire his wife, who had started a small collection of ceramics. Instead he found a group of almost twenty people gathered outside the hall distributing leaflets. He had no chance to discover what the leaflets said because as soon as they saw his official Rover draw up the group turned its full attention and considerable volume in his direction.

  His bodyguard, Drage, was out of the front seat first. 'I'll check it, Sir.'

  But Martin was both curious and amused. If the capital's demonstrations were anything like its plumbing, the noise would far exceed the efficiency. Anyway, this was Nicosia, courteous, civil, archetypically Cypriot, not Tehran or bloody Damascus. So he followed. It was a move he would soon regret.

  'British murderers,' one old crone hissed through purple gums, propelled to the fore by younger hands behind her. A banner appeared, something about graves and war crimes, and as the protesters gathered around someone behind her shoulder spat. It missed, but the swinging fist didn't. It came from too far back to inflict any real damage but the surprise caused him to gasp. Drage was at his side now, pushing and shouting for him to retreat to the car, but in turn they were being pushed back by far greater numbers and the High Commissioner, still disorientated and clutching his stomach, stumbled. Drage caught him, lifted him up and tried to move him towards the car. Martin thought the blow must have done him more harm than he had realized for he was seeing lights; to his dismay he discovered they were the lights not of mild concussion but of a television crew. Every part of the demonstration - every part, that is, which occurred after the landing of the blow - was being caught on video. The anger of aged mothers. Waving banners demanding an end to

  British colonial cover-up. Ban the Bases. The stumbling retreat of a High Commissioner, carried like a child in the arms of his bodyguard, fleeing into the night from the wrath of old women. The first spark of Cypriot defiance. Such an unhappy coincidence that the news crew should have found itself in the right spot at precisely the wrong time. An unpleasant outbreak of bone fever.

  'The tea room's infested.'

  'Mice again? I understand Deirdre all but jumped out of the window into the Thames last week when she found two of the little brutes staring up at her. They're rampant behind the panelling. Time to bring back the cat, d'you suppose?'

  'Not mice. Rumour.' Booza-Pitt was exasperated with his leader's apparent flippancy. 'Tom's up to something, but no one seems to know precisely what.'

  In the background the squealing serenade of children at play came from around the pool area where a dozen of them, all litter of senior Ministers, were indulging in the rare delights of a summer Sunday at Chequers. Out on the sweeping lawn the Environment Secretary was running through a few golf shots as a policeman in blue sleeves and bulky flak jacket passed by on patrol cradling a Heckler & Koch semiautomatic; on the patio, in the shade of the lovely Elizabethan manor with its weathered and moss-covered red brick, an air force steward served drinks. The atmosphere was relaxed, lunch would shortly be served, and Urquhart seemed determined not to be pushed. This was his official retreat, he'd handle matters in his own way.

  'A leadership challenge in the autumn,' the wretched Booza-Pitt was persisting, trying so hard to impress that his eyebrows knitted in concern like a character out of Dostoevsky.

  'No. Not that. He'd lose and he knows it.' Claire sipped a mint julep - the bar steward had recently returned from a holiday in New Orleans - and subsided. She was leading the Home Secretary on, Urquhart knew and was amused by it, only Geoffrey was too blind to realize. For him, the conversation had already become a competition for Urquhart's ear.

  'Even so, he might. Out of spite. Inflict a little damage before he fades into the shadows.'

  'No. He has other ideas.' She subsided again.

  Urquhart was himself by now intrigued. She had an air of such confidence, and a voice which brushed like fresh paint on canvas, but he couldn't yet see the picture.

  'Like what?' Geoffrey threw down a challenge.

  Claire looked to Urquhart; she'd intended to keep this for a more private moment but he was of a mind that she should continue. A golf ball clattered around their feet, followed by a belated cry of warning from the lawn,- evidently the Environment Secretary was in considerable need of his practice. Urquhart rose from the wooden garden seat and began to lead them around the pathways of the garden, out of earshot and driving range of others.

  'A new party,' she began once again. 'A big media launch with some prominent names in support. Then more to follow over the weeks ahead. Several from within our own party. Perhaps one or two even from within the Government.'

  'Madness!' Booza-Pitt snorted.

  But Urquhart's eyes had grown fixed, his frame stooped in concentration as he walked, studying the ground as though peering through a trap door into a personal hell. 'He'd hope for a couple of by-elections where they'd buy anything new on t
he shelf. Bite after bite, taking mouthfuls out of my majority. Making it ever more difficult for me to govern.'

  'One step building on the next.'

  'He wants to bleed me. Death by a thousand cuts.'

  'Could he do it? Could he really?' Booza-Pitt had at last caught the changing wind. 'Sounds like a party no one but women's magazines would take seriously.'

  'Even women take time off from painting our nails to vote, Geoffrey. We're not all hot flushes and flower arranging.'

  A sense of urgency crept into the Prime Minister's step; Booza-Pitt felt he was being left behind. 'But where'd he get the money for it all?' he demanded breathlessly. For Geoffrey, the practicalities of life all came down to a question of money. He'd once found a short cut on the school cross-country run and, much to his annoyance, had made the team. He'd found consolation by selling the short cut to his friends.

  'Money's not his problem, it's time,' Claire responded. 'Time to build momentum. Time to build an organization before the next election and to establish that he's more than merely a figment of the media's fevered imagination. Time to encourage our sweaty band of galley slaves to jump ship.'

  'It'd be no more than a dinner party at prayer,' Booza-Pitt all but spat in contempt. Then his expression altered as though refashioned with a mallet. 'Good God. What does that mean for my Bill? I'd be giving him all the money.'

  Urquhart came to a sudden halt under the limbs of a spreading cedar tree. 'Not quite what I had in mind,' he conceded quietly.

  'I've . .. I've got to withdraw it. Somehow.' Booza-Pitt's voice trailed away, his mantle as defender of democracy in tatters even before it had been woven.

  'There is another way,' Claire offered.

  'One which would keep my reputation?'

  'Keep the Government's reputation, Geoffrey,' she corrected. 'Your Bill will sponsor as many different groups as possible. Fine. We mustn't give Tom a clear run.'

  'Nibbled to death by a thousand minnows, that was always my thinking,' Geoffrey exclaimed, wondering whether the time had come to reclaim authorship of the plan.

  'And meanwhile make damn sure our own supporters have got something to get their teeth into. Let's fly the flag for them. Give them something that reminds them what we're all about, and how much they'd lose if it all went wrong.'

  'Like what?' Geoffrey pleaded.

  'I thought you were the one with all the bright campaigning ideas.' It was Urquhart, his tone sharp, back amongst them. 'Geoffrey, why don't you go and have a wander through the Long Library before lunch? Fascinating collection of first editions -Sartre, Hemingway, Archer. Right up your street.'

  'Maybe a little later, F.U.?' he suggested, determined not to be written out of the plot.

  'Geoffrey. Be a good fellow and bugger off.'

  'Yes, right. Long Library. See you at lunch then.'

  She marvelled at his resilience to insult. Even now, she suspected, he was working on how he would divulge to others the privilege of the PM's personal invitation to inspect his rare editions.

  'He'll not love you for that,' she commented.

  'Geoffrey is incapable of love for anyone except himself. His adoration of his own inadequacies is as total as it is astounding and leaves no room for anyone else. I suspect I shall survive, as will he.'

  In the distance a lunch gong was being beaten and the squeals of children echoed with renewed impatience, but he ignored the summons, instead gripping her arm and leading her through french windows which brought them from the terrace into the house. They were in his study with the windows firmly closed behind them, shutting them off. Suddenly she felt claustrophobic, the rules had changed. This was no longer a summer stroll around the garden making sport with Booza-Pitt, but one on one, she and Urquhart, in an atmosphere of personal intensity she'd never felt with him before.

  'I'm sorry, Francis, did I offend you, talking about the possibility of defeat?'

  'No. You managed to express, and most eloquently, something that...' - he was going to say 'voices inside my own head' - 'my own thoughts have been telling me all too sharply.'

  'So you think it could happen?'

  'I'm not a fool. Of course it could happen. We're no more than passengers on a tide,- even as we are rushed along by it, only one small slip could sweep us under.'

  'And if we were to slip and he were to win, just once, there would be no way back for us. Tom's always been committed to proportional representation - he'd change the election law himself, skew it in favour of the small parties, the minnows.'

  'Who would grow into great pikes and tear any Government apart. This country would be turned over to chaos. By legislative order of Booza-Pitt and Makepeace, destroyers of civilization. Hah!' To her alarm he sounded as if he found ironic pleasure in the prospect of the Apocalypse.

  'You would be history,' she warned.

  'And favoured by it all the more!'

  She realized why she had begun to feel so claustrophobic. She was standing beside not just a man, but a political Colossus whose deeds would be writ large. Yet she had known that from the very start; wasn't that why she had agreed to join him, for her own selfish place in his shadow, the thrill and experience of standing beside a great chunk of that story? Up so close, so privately, it left her not a little in awe.

  'There is one major gap in his armour,' Urquhart continued in a state of considerable animation, 'his point of greatest vulnerability. He must keep his momentum going, appear irresistible before enough people will take their courage in their hands and march with him. But to raise an army he needs time. Time which is ours to give, or to deny. We must keep an eye on young Tom.'

  'I already am,' she responded a little sheepishly. She'd intended to keep it secret, in case he disapproved, but the atmosphere of intimacy overcame her caution. 'He has a new driver who is - how shall I put it? - extremely keen to share his experiences, especially when he picks up his weekly pay cheque. From a very close friend of my husband.'

  'Really? How splendid. I should have thought of that. I'm slipping.'

  'Or perhaps I'm learning.'

  He began to look at her quizzically, in a new light. 'I do believe you are — turning out to be a truly remarkable find, Claire, if you'll allow me to say so.' He had turned to her, taken her hands, his voice dropping to a softer register. He'd already invited her to share so much yet there was a new and pressing intimacy in this moment. 'One thing I have to ask.

  You've been pretty tough about Tom Makepeace. Politically, I mean. Yet from the way you understand him so well I get the impression - a sense, perhaps - that once you and he were .. . close. Personally.' 'Would it have mattered?'

  'No. Not so long as I could be sure of your loyalty.'

  Loyalty tied by bonds at least as secure as any she had shared with Makepeace.

  'Francis, you can. Be sure of my loyalty.'

  She felt herself being pulled by the enormous force of gravity which surrounded him. She panicked, realizing she was losing control, her lips reaching up towards him. Suddenly she was afraid, of both him and her own ambitions. She was falling, yet couldn't find it within her to resist, even in the knowledge that coming so close to him was likely to leave her burnt up and scattered like cinders. As had happened to others. She was on fire.

  Then there was ice. Urquhart drew back, allowed her hands to fall and deliberately broke the spell that tied her to him. Why, she would never know, and Urquhart would never admit, even to himself.

  For how can a man admit to such things? The guilt he felt for others he had taken in such a way, used, discarded, left utterly destroyed. With the passage of time he felt himself being drawn towards the day of his own judgment and such things bore more heavily on his mind. Some might even mistake it for conscience. Or was it merely the knowledge that in the past such entanglements had caused nothing but grief and turmoil, confusion he could do without in a world which, thanks to Thomas Makepeace, had suddenly grown far more complicated?

  Yet there was something else whi
ch turned his blood cold. The gnawing dread that Francis Urquhart the Politician had been constructed on the ruins of Francis Urquhart the Man. Incapable of children, denied immortality. A desert, a barrenness of body that had infected the soul and in turn had been inflicted upon Elizabeth, the only woman he had ever truly loved. The others had all been pretence, an attempt to prove his virility, but in the end a pointless exercise, a scream in a sound-proof chamber.

  And, as she stood before him, desirable and available, he was no longer sure he could even raise his voice. The end of Francis Urquhart the Man.

  Francis Urquhart the ageing Politician stepped back from temptation and torment.

  'Best that we keep you as my good-luck charm, eh?'

  In the Cypriot capital the crowds streamed through the entrance gates for an evening with Alekos, a young singer of talent from the mainland who had built a remarkable following amongst Greeks of all ages. The young girls swayed to the rhythm of his hips, old women fell for the voice which dripped like honey on dulled ears, the men won over by the manner in which he crafted the images and emotions of Hellenism into music of the Greek soul more powerful than a first-half hat-trick by Omonia. He had flown from Athens for a special concert in support of the Cyprus Defence Fund. Few of the several thousand enthusiasts at the open-air auditorium gave a thought to how a concert could raise money for the CDF when all the tickets had been given away, as had the large number of banners which were being waved above the heads of the emotion-gripped crowd. We Shall Not Forget, the refrain in memory of the victims of Turkish invasion, was thrust high alongside other soul-slogans such as Let Us Bury Our Dead With Honour, British - Give Back Our Bases and, yes, even Equality With Orchids.