Sally took no notice at all, and half a dozen policemen hustled over and blocked the man from getting any closer. As she and the chauffeur drove off, Billings took heart from Sally Kimmo’s certainty that she would see him again, the first substantial indication that Holly would too, and he went off without any class resentment on his own part to the Underground and home.
Chapter 12
The catalogue raisonné of Arthur Hopkins, RA, was itself a rare book. At the London Library it had been stolen or misplaced; among second-hand bookshops there were none at hand. Presumably there was a copy in the British Library, but Billings would not be able to take it home with him.
This left his own copy, which he assumed was still sitting on a bookshelf in his former Notting Hill home. Reluctantly, he rang Marla, not seen since the Sunday scare about Holly’s brother. She was friendly on the phone, but a little guarded. He arranged to drop by on his way home to collect the book.
After work, where again he had sold nothing, he took the Tube to Notting Hill. Spring was in the air: girls – and they were girls, to Billings’s eyes, these breezy items looking eighteen years old – wore short skirts and pretended their legs were already tanned. He found something ’60s-like in the freshness of the London young, the generation after him, the style setters with their nasal studs, black uniforms, and inordinate height (children of the well-nourished) and he was relieved to find signs of the equally dated Englishness of the population around him on the Underground. Stuck, walking up the stairs at Notting Hill, behind an old man in a raincoat using his stick to slow effect, Billings moved sideways on the stairs, only to find himself behind another man with a stick, moving equally at snail’s pace.
Marla had cut her hair, and he stared at her with surprise when she opened the door. She didn’t like having her hair cut, so what was going on? She ignored his surprise and held the book on Hopkins’s oeuvre out to him with both hands. He took it but did not turn away. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me in?’
She shrugged – her assertiveness already on the wane, he thought. ‘Sure,’ she said, shrugging, ‘but I’ve made some changes...’ Her voice trailed away.
‘Changes?’ he said, and walked into the house as Holly retreated. The hall was unchanged; the same pictures lined the stairway in the hall. He moved left into the sitting room and stopped in the doorway. ‘Golly,’ he said, in the imitation American accent she had always found funny. She didn’t laugh now, but merely looked shy. ‘Do you like it?’ she said quietly.
‘Where’s the tallboy?’ he asked, thinking of her Bonhams purchase, not two weeks after they had landed. ‘And the mirror?’ he continued, which they’d shipped at such expense from New York. ‘Not to mention the chairs,’ he added rhetorically of the three Chippendales which he had contributed, taken back after fifteen years’ residence in the R-As’ house. There was now a large Victorian sofa with a curved mahogany end and rich red cushions the colour of fire engines. And a Planter’s chair, parked next to a new circular table – it looked Regency.
‘They’re all in store,’ said Marla briefly.
‘Why? Are you thinking of moving?’
She shook her head. ‘Not for the time being. But those things were our pieces. These are mine.’
‘Any chance of a glass of wine?’ He was intrigued by the changes. Did they signify something he should know about? He hadn’t actually thought much about Marla recently, and found himself wishing a little that he had. He walked across the room to peek into the dining room. It wasn’t a dining room any longer, that was for sure, since the table was gone, and the eight matching chairs. There was an architect’s drawing board with a swivel chair in the corner; next to it was an easel that held an enormous sketch pad. He wondered what she was working on.
‘DON’T GO IN THERE!’ Marla shouted from behind him. He turned around to find her in the kitchen doorway holding a glass of wine. ‘Please,’ she said more calmly.
‘You’re painting again,’ he said flatly.
‘I do not want to talk about it,’ she said, handing him his wine.
He sat down and Marla reluctantly joined him. ‘I won’t stay long,’ he said, sensing her discomfort. They talked for a while about Sam, who had woken up in the kitchen and come in to join them. Billings scratched his head and he lay at his master’s feet. ‘You know,’ he said, softened by the wine. ‘If you ever want to go some place where you can’t take Sam, I could look after him.’
‘I’m sure there’s someone else who might feel differently.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Don’t patronize me. If you want to see someone else I can’t stop you. But don’t pretend you’re all on your own.’
He sighed. If only she knew how much of the time he was alone. She seemed to regret her outburst, for she said, ‘What are you doing on Election Night?’
He shrugged. ‘Probably what most people do. Sitting at home and watching the returns. Why?’
It was her turn to shrug. ‘Just wondered. I guess I’ll do the same, that’s all.’ The implicit invitation was not taken up, and her face saddened for a moment. Then she said harshly, ‘I’m not even sure I want to watch. Labour sicken me.’
‘Really?’ asked Billings, feeling both defensive and surprised. Marla had always been a classic Democrat in the States – she had even insisted on licking envelopes for Michael Dukakis’s doomed campaign. ‘I thought you liked Labour. Aren’t they for all the things you support?’
‘Thin,’ she said contemptuously. ‘Their support for anything is approximately one centimetre deep – that’s the depth of the latest opinion poll telling them what to think. I have never seen a bigger bunch of charlatans in my life.’
‘There must be a couple who are okay,’ he found himself arguing.
‘Who?’ she asked. ‘White thinks only of himself. Bruce is a moron. Alan Trachtenberg is a slimebag. And Harry Lester, he’s...’ She paused, searching for a capping epithet. ‘He’s a lightweight.’
At least her political opinions had always been clear. He finished his wine, comforted that Marla shared his own view of the next Prime Minister. But as he stood up, she suddenly added, ‘And that wife of his.’
‘Whose?’ He was suddenly alert.
‘Lester’s,’ she said impatiently. ‘Holly Lester. What a phoney.’
‘Oh I don’t know,’ he said casually, though he sensed – no, he must be imagining it, such was his hypersensitivity – that Marla was watching him carefully. ‘But I’ll leave the politics to you. Thanks for the wine. See you soon.’
One week before Polling Day, a poll appeared in The Times which suggested that, for the first time, the vast number of uncommitted voters was showing a slight move towards the Conservatives. By evening, this slightest of indications had mushroomed, assisted by careful massaging by the media (manifestly bored to death by the one-sided nature of the campaign) into a Conservative ‘comeback’. When Harry Lester foolishly stopped outside his touring coach in Leamington Spa and took three cracking questions from Kate Adie, his airy optimism – presidential sounding in speeches – seemed jejune. By the next morning, one tabloid had taken the original indicator past a trend and into a significant movement – LABOUR’S SLOWING DOWN, the headline bellowed.
Billings watched with real alarm as things got worse. Why should he care? he asked himself, as Eleanor Eeley (who Holly had told him had more lovers than sense) defended the rights of lesbian women to create fatherless test tube kids; he had never voted Labour in his life, he told himself, when Hamish Ferguson called a woman Tory MP a wart-hog in an off-air briefing that was promptly televised on ITV. But Billings realized he did care – if Holly wanted to live in Downing Street, then Holly should get the chance. And there seemed nothing especially dangerous about these people and their policies – so bland, so indistinguishable from the Tories. Surely the Professore was right; none of this bunch was going to do anything very radical. And whatever Marla said about them, at least they seemed honest – by now the Tories a
bsolutely stunk, like rubbish bins that had missed not just one, but two collections.
To reinforce Labour’s comparative piety, a novel element of religiosity emerged in the Labour campaign. Billings had never been aware of any such streak in Holly – indeed, he had always found her relentlessly secular, by contrast to his own woolly, sentimental ambivalence. Recently, however, she and Harry had taken quite publicly to going to church; profile writers now mentioned the couple’s modest but long-held Christian faith. A certain Canon Flowing appeared on the scene, a South African vicar of the Anglican church, long transplanted to British shores the better (and safer, thought Billings sourly) to fight apartheid. It transpired that he had been a moral mentor to young Harry when the latter was at university, guiding him in the direction of a movement Billings had thought long defunct – Christian Socialism. Canon Flowing spoke movingly, if vaguely, of his former charge’s rise to the pantheon of political life, and assured the British public that Harry Lester was a good man, Harry Lester was a decent man.
But it was not public perceptions of Harry’s probity (or even policies) which Billings was now worried about – it was his and his party’s campaigning competence. There were more mistakes made: the future Home Secretary admitted he had miscalculated the costs when putting forward a new crime prevention proposal, and a research assistant at Millbank turned out to have a paedophiliac past. Things were suddenly snowballing, and a second poll – MORI, more reputable than the first – showed even greater negative movement among the undecided. When Harry Lester showed astonishment on camera at the news (had no one briefed him?), Billings picked up the phone and dialled Holly’s mobile. To his surprise he got her alone in Primrose Hill. ‘I just nipped in to pick up some fresh knickers. I’m flying up to join the coach in Leeds tonight. Honestly, if it’s up to me I will never get on a bus again in my life. I feel car sick half the time.’
‘Listen Holly. I’m worried.’
‘Don’t be. We’ll see each other soon. Don’t worry – I told you I had a plan.’
‘No, not about that. About the Election. Everything was going so well, and now it looks like it’s getting close again.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Two days ago even I was getting a bit worried. Of course, Harry’s always worried – even when he wins he gets scared that it’s just a dream.’
He was concerned by her lack of concern. ‘I’m not sure any of you realize how it looks from out here. All I’m hearing is that Labour’s momentum’s stopped and things are swinging the other way. There’s still time for the Tories to come back. Six days is a long time in politics.’
‘Sometimes,’ she said vaguely.
‘Holly, are you listening to me? I know I’m not a politician, but I can see things. I tell you, I’m worried. You all have to do something.’
‘It’s in hand,’ she said firmly. ‘Alan was out for two days. He was simply too exhausted to go on, and we thought it was safe enough to let him rest. Don’t worry – we won’t let that happen again. But watch the news tomorrow – I think you’ll see a sudden improvement.’
‘What, in the polls?’
‘Don’t know about them, though Alan says the next Gallup should be okay – we’re a lot firmer than MORI shows. No, it’s something else altogether. I can’t say over the phone, but you’ll see.’
‘You said that last time, when the business about your brother blew up.’
‘And look what happened. Jock Nichols rode to the rescue. I have told you, Alan knows what he’s doing.’
The next day’s Gallup wasn’t particularly reassuring, but since it was buried so far down the lead item of news Billings realized it didn’t matter. For, first and foremost, was the entirely unexpected publication of the Dowling Report, an internal parliamentary investigation into certain activities of four prominent Tory backbenchers. After the first allegations of misconduct the previous autumn, the inquiry had been sanctioned by the Prime Minister, then forgotten about by almost everyone. Its sudden appearance now – a good five months before most people thought it due – was absolutely devastating, since it concluded that all four MPs had accepted inappropriate payments from a Bahamian offshore bank of dubious standing. The report was short, business-like in tone, and utterly damning. It led the news all day, and then, like a good parent, sowed the seed for offspring stories to follow.
These were less official in both tone and content, but brought the grey content of the Dowling report into every household in Britain by the simple expedient of supplying the racier details of the corporate largesse enjoyed by the Backbench Four – as the tabloids now called the hapless MPs. Flown to Nassau for a fun-filled February weekend the year before, two of the four had received the favours of a Miss World Finalist. When she had been paid only half the fee due her for her labours, she took her revenge by fleshing out, as it were, the details of Dowling in return for a cheque for forty grand from Fleet Street’s finest.
She told all. THREE IN A BED: TWO AT A TIME was in Billings’s view the best of the headlines, though TORY TRYST TRIO – TANIA TELLS came a close second. The fine print of Dowling had been most effectively translated for a popular audience. When even Mr Ali, the newsagent, who kept a photograph of Lady Thatcher taped to his till, said, ‘These men are pigs, they have to go,’ Billings knew that the game was up.
So Election Night began almost anticlimactically. The first two seats showed a Labour swing of 11%, and the television commentary found itself hoist on the petard of its own statistical accuracy – adept at taking the smallest sample and blowing it up to a national scale, the technicians of the Swingometers could hardly disavow this expertise now, and claim viewers were watching a cliff-hanger. All that remained to see was the extent of the victory (obviously the majority would be at least 100 seats) and watching which famous Tories holding putatively safe seats would now be out in the cold. The broadcasters were quick to latch on cravenly to the new victors, saving their aggression for the crestfallen senior Tories who braved their interviews out of some reflexive sense that it was the done thing. But there was also a sense of awe to the coverage, as if it seemed hard to believe that two decades of Tory rule were suddenly being dismantled in one night.
Billings had been oddly disturbed by Marla’s accusation that he was seeing someone. He supposed Holly fit that bill, in the confines of any definition of adultery, but it would be hard to argue that he was ‘seeing’ her in any commonplace sense of the word. And in a mix of self-protection and genuine concern, he didn’t want Marla knowing about Holly, or thinking he had found another mate. However much he saw Holly in future, he did not think – had never thought – that she would be his second wife.
He rang Marla at about ten thirty, but there was no answer. Miffed by this, he left a brief message, explaining he was going to bed, making it clear, he hoped, that he was watching the results alone. When the phone rang, he was half asleep. ‘I said I’d speak with you tomorrow,’ he said, half asleep in his bed.
‘I think you should speak to the Prime Minister’s wife whenever she deigns to speak to you.’ It was Holly, sounding tipsy; there was background noise of revellers. ‘Anyway, who did you think I was?’ she said accusingly.
‘My ex-wife,’ he said. ‘But congratulations.’
‘Are you in bed?’ She sounded incredulous.
‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘I didn’t think there was anything more I could do for the cause. You won. Well done.’
‘And let the good times commence. Get up,’ she commanded, ‘Put your clothes on, and come up here. There’re lots more seats to go – I’m planning to stay up all night.’
‘Are you at party headquarters?’
‘Not any more. I’m at home, along with what looks like half the Labour party. Come on, hurry up. I want you here.’
‘You sure? Discretion must be even more in order now.’
‘Don’t be silly. I’m surrounded by friends. To them, you’re just another one. I’m expecting you. When the Leader’s wife commands
, you must obey.’ And she rang off, leaving him wide awake, worried, but basically obedient.
He dressed, went out and after twenty minutes, found a cab, which went through Notting Hill since an accident had blocked the flyover. On Holland Park Avenue, the pub at the corner of Ladbroke Grove was overflowing, with people on the pavement standing in shirtsleeves and short skirts. As they passed, a loud roar came from the crowd inside. Billings looked and saw people jammed in front of an over-sized screen hung high on the wall.
‘What’s the commotion?’ he asked the driver.
‘Where’ve you been? It’s the results coming in. Probably my own constituency.’
‘The East End?’
The driver looked insulted. ‘Essex,’ he said shortly, and Billings realized he was twenty years behind the times.
He asked conciliatorily, ‘Is yours a Conservative seat?’
‘Not any more. I’m not sure there’re any left.’ The driver gestured in the direction of the pub. ‘It’s not as if that lot are celebrating because they’re Tories.’
‘I guess not,’ said Billings, thinking of the neighbourhood. Chattering classes, the odd council estate; not many Tories there.
‘You’d be hard pressed to find anyone waving a blue flag tonight.’ Since other revellers loomed in the street ahead, the driver turned left and north, cutting through the Chepstows. ‘Mind you,’ he reflected, ‘I voted for Mrs Thatcher three times myself. I’d have voted Tory again if she was still there. But they’ve never properly replaced her, have they?’
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