‘I’ll give it some thought.’ The line went quiet and Alex even wondered if he’d been cut off. Finally, Virginia said, ‘I’ve given it some thought, major, and decided against it.’
‘Then perhaps a loan . . .’ he said, trying not to sound desperate.
‘Didn’t your nanny tell you, neither a borrower nor a lender be? No, of course she didn’t, because you didn’t have a nanny.’
Virginia turned around and rapped loudly three times on the wooden bedstead.
‘Ah, the maid has just arrived with my breakfast, major, so I have to say goodbye. And when I say goodbye, I mean goodbye.’
Fisher heard the phone click. He stared at the cheque for £7,341, made out to him, and remembered Benny’s words: She owes you one.
24
GILES WAS UP at five on the morning of the election, and not just because he couldn’t sleep.
As he went downstairs Denby opened the door to the breakfast room and said, ‘Good morning, Sir Giles,’ as if there was a general election every day.
Giles entered the dining room, picked up a bowl from the sideboard and filled it with cornflakes and fruit. He was going over his schedule for the day when the door opened and in walked Sebastian, dressed in a smart blue blazer and grey flannels.
‘Seb. When did you get back?’
‘Late last night, Uncle Giles. Most schools have been given the day off because they’re being used as polling stations, so I asked if I could come home and help you.’
‘What would you like to do?’ asked Giles as Denby placed a plate of eggs and bacon in front of him.
‘Anything I can to help you win.’
‘If that’s what you want to do, listen carefully. On Election Day, the party has eight committee rooms spread across the constituency. They’re all manned by volunteers, some of whom have experience of a dozen elections. They’ll have up-to-date canvass returns for the district they’re in charge of. Every street, road, avenue and cul-de-sac will be marked to show where our supporters live. We’ll also have a volunteer sitting outside each polling station, checking off the names of people who’ve cast their vote. Our biggest problem is getting that list of names back to the committee room, so we can keep track of our supporters who haven’t voted yet, and make sure we get them to the polls before they close at nine o’clock tonight. A general rule,’ continued Giles, ‘is that more of our people vote between eight and ten a.m., soon after the polls open, while at ten o’clock the Tories will begin to turn out, and keep going until four in the afternoon. But after that, when voters are coming home from work, that’s our most vital time, because if they don’t vote on the way home, it’s almost impossible to get them back out,’ he added as Emma and Harry came into the room.
‘What’s Griff got you two doing today?’ asked Giles.
‘I’m manning a committee room,’ said Emma.
‘I’m knocking up red voters,’ said Harry. ‘And if they need a lift, I’ll be driving them to the polling station.’
‘Don’t forget,’ said Giles, ‘for some of them, the last time they had a ride in a car was probably at the last election, unless there’s been a wedding or a funeral in their family in the past four years. Which committee room has Griff allocated you to?’ he asked Emma.
‘I’m to assist Miss Parish on the Woodbine estate.’
‘You should be flattered,’ said Giles. ‘Miss Parish is a legend. Grown men fear for their lives if they forget to vote. By the way, Seb has volunteered to be one of your runners. I’ve already explained what his duties will be.’
Emma smiled at her son.
‘I’m off,’ said Giles, leaping up from his place, but not before placing two rashers of bacon between two slices of brown bread.
Emma accepted that only Elizabeth could have told him off, and probably not even her on Election Day.
‘I’ll be visiting every committee room at some point during the day,’ he said on the move, ‘so I’ll catch up with you later.’
Denby was waiting for him outside the front door.
‘I’m sorry to trouble you, sir, but I hope it won’t be inconvenient if the staff at the hall were to take half an hour off between four and four thirty this afternoon.’
‘Any particular reason?’
‘To vote, sir.’
Giles looked embarrassed. ‘How many votes?’ he whispered.
‘Six for you, sir, and one undecided.’ Giles raised an eyebrow. ‘The new gardener, sir, has ideas above his station. Thinks he’s a Tory.’
‘Then let’s hope I don’t lose by one vote,’ said Giles as he ran out of the front door.
Jessica was standing in the driveway holding the car door open for him, as she did every morning. ‘Can I come with you, Uncle Giles?’ she asked.
‘Not this time. But I promise you’ll be by my side at the next election. I’ll tell everyone you’re my girlfriend, and then I’ll win by a landslide.’
‘Isn’t there anything I can do to help?’
‘No . . . yes. Do you know the new gardener?’
‘Albert? Yes, he’s very nice.’
‘He’s thinking of voting Conservative. See if you can convert him by four o’clock this afternoon.’
‘I will, I will,’ said Jessica as Giles climbed in behind the wheel.
Giles parked outside the entrance to the docks just before 7 a.m. He shook hands with every man before they clocked on for the morning shift, and with everyone coming off the night shift. He was surprised how many of them wanted to talk to him.
‘I won’t let you down this time, guv.’
‘You can count on me.’
‘I’m on my way to the polls right now.’
When Dave Coleman, the night foreman, clocked off, Giles took him to one side and asked if he knew the reason for the men’s fervour.
‘A lot of them think it’s high time you sorted out your marital problems,’ said Coleman, who was known for his bluntness, ‘but they detest Major stuck-up Fisher so much, they certainly wouldn’t want him representing our grievances in Parliament. At a personal level,’ he added, ‘I would have respected Fisher more if he’d had the courage to show his face on the docks. There are a handful of Tories in the union, but he hasn’t even bothered to find out who they are.’
Giles was heartened by the response he received when he visited the W.D. & H.O. Wills cigarette factory, and again when he went on to meet the workers at the Bristol Aeroplane Company. But he knew that on the day of a general election, every candidate is convinced he is going to win, even the Liberals.
Giles turned up at the first committee room a few minutes after ten. The local chairman told him that 22 per cent of their known supporters had already voted, which was in line with the 1951 election, when Giles had won by 414 votes.
‘What about the Tories?’ Giles asked.
‘Sixteen per cent.’
‘How does that compare with ’fifty-one?’
‘They’re up one per cent,’ admitted the committee room chairman.
By the time Giles had reached the eighth committee room, it was just after 4 p.m. Miss Parish was standing by the door waiting for him, a plate of cheese and tomato sandwiches in one hand, a large glass of milk in the other. Miss Parish was one of the few people on the Woodbine estate who owned a fridge.
‘How’s it going?’ Giles asked.
‘Thank heavens it rained between ten and four, but now the sun’s come out. I’m beginning to believe that God might be a socialist. But we’ve still got a lot of work to do if we’re going to make up the lost ground in the last five hours.’
‘You’ve never called an election wrong, Iris. What are you predicting?’
‘The truth?’
‘The truth.’
‘Too close to call.’
‘Then let’s get back to work.’ Giles began to move around the room, thanking every one of the helpers.
‘Your family have come up trumps,’ said Miss Parish, ‘remembering they’re Tories.’
‘She’s good,’ said Miss Parish, as Giles watched his sister transferring the figures just in from a polling station to the canvass sheet. ‘But it’s young Sebastian who’s the superstar. If we had ten of him, we’d never lose.’
Giles smiled. ‘So where is the young man at the moment?’
‘Either on his way to a polling station, or on his way back. He doesn’t believe in standing still.’
Sebastian was actually standing still, waiting for a teller to hand over the latest list of names so he could get them back to Miss Parish, who continued to fuel him on Tizer and Fry’s milk chocolate, despite the occasional disapproving look from his mother.
‘The trouble is,’ the teller was saying to a friend who’d just voted, ‘the Millers over there at number twenty-one, all six of them, can’t even be bothered to cross the road, despite the fact that they never stop complaining about this Tory government. So if we lose by half a dozen votes, we’ll know who to blame.’
‘Why don’t you get Miss Parish on to them?’ said the friend.
‘She’s got enough on her plate without having to come down here. I’d do it myself, but I can’t leave my post.’
Sebastian turned and found himself walking across the road. He came to a halt outside number 21, but it was some time before he plucked up enough courage to knock. He nearly ran away when he saw the size of the man who opened the door.
‘What do you want, nipper?’ the man bellowed.
‘I represent Major Fisher, the Conservative candidate,’ said Sebastian, in his best public school accent, ‘and he was rather hoping that you’d be able to support him today, as the polls are showing it’s likely to be a close-run thing.’
‘Bugger off before I give you a clip round the ear,’ said Mr Miller, and slammed the door in his face.
Sebastian ran back across the road and, as he collected the latest figures from the teller, he saw the door of number 21 open, and Mr Miller reappeared, leading five members of his family across the road. Sebastian added the Millers to his canvass return before running back to the committee room.
Giles was back at the docks by six o’clock, to meet the day shift coming off and the night shift clocking on.
‘Have you been standing there all day, guv?’ quipped one of them.
‘Feels like it,’ said Giles, as he shook another hand.
One or two turned back when they saw him standing there and quickly headed for the nearby polling station, while those coming out all seemed to be going in one direction, and it wasn’t to the nearest pub.
At 6.30 p.m., after all the dockers had either clocked on or gone home, Giles did what he’d done for the past two elections and jumped aboard the first double-decker bus heading back into the city.
Once on board, he climbed on to the top deck and shook hands with several surprised passengers. When he’d covered the lower deck, he jumped off at the next stop and got on another bus going in the opposite direction. He went on jumping on and off buses for the next two and a half hours, continuing to shake hands until one minute past nine.
Giles got off the last bus and sat alone at the stop. There was nothing more he could do to win this election.
Giles heard a single chime echo in the distance and glanced at his watch: 9.30 p.m.; time to make a move. He decided he couldn’t face another bus, and began to walk slowly towards the city centre, hoping the evening air might clear his head before the count.
By now the local constabulary would have begun to collect the ballot boxes from all over the constituency before delivering them to City Hall; a process that would take more than an hour to complete. Once they had all been delivered, checked and double checked, Mr Wainwright, the town clerk, would give the order for the seals to be broken so the count could begin. If the result was announced before 1 o’clock that morning, it would be a miracle.
Sam Wainwright was not a man destined to break speed records on land or sea. ‘Slowly, but surely’ would be the words etched on his gravestone. Giles had dealt with the town clerk on local matters for the past decade and still didn’t know which party he supported. He suspected he just didn’t vote. What Giles did know was that this would be Wainwright’s last election, as he would be retiring at the end of the year. In Giles’s opinion, the city would be very lucky to find a worthy successor. Someone might succeed Wainwright, but no man could replace him, as Thomas Jefferson had said when he followed Benjamin Franklin into the post of American ambassador to France.
One or two passers-by waved as Giles continued on his way to City Hall, while others simply ignored him. He began to think about his life, and what he might do if he were no longer the MP for Bristol Docklands. He would be thirty-five in a couple of weeks. True, no great age, but since returning to Bristol just after the war ended he’d only ever done one job, and frankly he wasn’t qualified to do much else; the perennial problem for any Member of Parliament who doesn’t have a safe seat.
His thoughts turned to Virginia, who could have made his life so much easier simply by signing a piece of paper some six months ago. He now realized that had never been part of her plan. She had always intended to wait until after the election in order to cause him the maximum possible embarrassment. He was now certain she had been responsible for putting Fisher on the board of Barrington’s, and he even wondered if it was she who’d sown the seed in Fisher’s mind that he could defeat Giles and replace him as Member of Parliament.
She was probably sitting at home in London right now waiting for the election results to come in, although in truth she was only interested in one seat. Was she preparing for another raid on the company’s shares as part of her long-term plan to bring the Barrington family to its knees? Giles was confident that in Ross Buchanan and Emma, she had met her match.
It was Grace who had finally brought him to his senses about Virginia, and having done so, she never mentioned the subject again. He also had her to thank for introducing him to Gwyneth. She had been keen to come to Bristol and help him retain his seat, but she had been the first to acknowledge that if she’d been seen canvassing with him on the high street, the only person who would have gained from it would be Fisher.
Giles had rung Gwyneth in Cambridge every morning before going into the office, but not when he returned at night, despite her telling him to wake her, because he rarely arrived home before midnight. If he lost tonight, he would drive up to Cambridge in the morning and unburden his troubles on her. If he won, he would join her in the afternoon and share his triumph with her. Whatever the outcome, he wasn’t going to lose her.
‘Good luck, Sir Giles,’ said a passing voice that brought him back to the real world. ‘I’m sure you’ll make it.’ Giles returned his confident smile, but he wasn’t sure.
He could now see the massive bulk of City Hall looming in front of him. The two golden unicorns perched high on the roof at each end of the building grew larger with every step he took.
The volunteers who’d been chosen to assist with the count would already be in place. This was considered a great responsibility, and was usually undertaken by local councillors or senior party officials. Miss Parish would be in charge of the six Labour scrutineers, as she had been for the past four elections, and he knew she had invited Harry and Emma to join her select team.
‘I would have asked Sebastian as well,’ she had told Giles, ‘but he’s not old enough.’
‘He’ll be disappointed,’ Giles had replied.
‘Yes, he was. But I got him a pass, so he can watch everything that’s going on from the balcony.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t thank me,’ said Miss Parish. ‘I only wish I’d had him for the whole campaign.’
Giles took a deep breath as he climbed the steps of City Hall. Whatever the outcome, he mustn’t forget to thank the many people who had supported him, whose only reward would be victory. He recalled Old Jack’s words after he’d scored a century at Lord’s: a
nyone can be a good winner. The sign of a great man is how you handle defeat.
25
GRIFF HASKINS WAS striding back and forth in the lobby of City Hall when he spotted Giles walking towards him. The two shook hands as if they hadn’t seen each other for weeks.
‘If I win,’ said Giles, ‘you—’
‘Don’t get sentimental on me,’ said Griff. ‘We’ve still got a job to do.’
They made their way through the swing doors into the main auditorium to find that the thousand seats that usually filled the room had been replaced by two dozen trestle tables in rows, with wooden chairs on either side of them.
Sam Wainwright, hands on hips, feet apart, stood in the middle of the stage. He blew a whistle to announce that the game had begun. Scissors appeared, seals were cut, ballot boxes were thrown open and turned upside down to allow thousands of little slips of paper, each one bearing three names, to spill out on to the tables in front of the counters.
Their first job was to sort the ballot papers into three piles before the counting could begin. One side of the table concentrated on Fisher, while the other worked on Barrington. The search for Ellsworthy’s votes took a little longer.
Giles and Griff paced nervously around the room, trying to work out from the piles of ballot papers if one side or the other had an obvious lead. After one complete circuit, it was clear to both of them that neither had. Giles appeared to be comfortably ahead if you looked at the pile of slips from the boxes collected from the Woodbine estate, but Fisher was a clear winner if you checked the ballot boxes from the Arcadia Avenue wards. Another circuit of the hall, and they were none the wiser. The only thing they could predict with any certainty was that the Liberals would end up in third place.
Giles looked up when he heard a burst of applause coming from the other side of the hall. Fisher had just entered the room with his agent and a few key supporters. Giles recognized some of them from the evening of the debate. He couldn’t help noticing that Fisher had changed into a fresh shirt and was wearing a smart double-breasted suit, already looking every inch a Member of Parliament. After chatting to one or two of the counters, he also began to move around the room, making quite sure he didn’t bump into Barrington.
Best Kept Secret Page 19