Children of the Master

by Andrew Marr

  ‘Push out, Caroline. It’s just a bit of cramping, nothing more. Half the government still looks to my husband. He has hundreds of strings that he can pull in private. And you’re obviously one of the most talented people in the parliamentary party. It feels a bit strange at first, but you’ll soon get the hang of it. The arrangements have already been made. The water has to travel up a good five feet, you know. You’ll be joining Work and Pensions, as the minister for labour. Not very glamorous, I’m afraid, but solid, serious stuff. Feeling a little bloated?’

  ‘Sore. I want to …’

  ‘I know, darling. Just let it go. You’re going to feel wonderful. And you’re going to be wonderful. You’ve got a really solid base. That’s it. Well done. You’ve got a great constituency. Better now. You’ve shown your tough side. Everybody loves you. And above all, you have Angela. She’s rather your guardian angel, isn’t she?’

  ‘She … if she could only see me now. How long does this go on for?’

  ‘Just a little longer. Lots of good clean water in and out, and a bit of caffeine to perk you up. The main thing is to make your mark immediately, as a different kind of minister. There’s a viewing tube, if you want.’

  ‘A viewing tube? No! But thank you. When you say “a different kind”, what do you mean? Frankly, these days nobody notices junior ministers at all, unless they absolutely foul up.’

  ‘Exactly. That’s why we’re having this little talk. You’re going to get lots of help from people who’ve made a success before. But I’ve spent enough time with my husband and his colleagues to start you off. Finished?’

  ‘Ooh. I think so. Your turn.’

  ‘My turn. They usually put music on, but I find nothing takes the mind off things like talking. Thank you, Dolly. Just crack on. The bad minister is controlled by the civil servants. The bad minister learns that Whitehall operates on a flow of paper, and the job is to keep the paper, the decisions, flowing. Round and round it goes. The bad minister learns that a day without headlines is a successful day. That an interview on Newsnight in which he says nothing interesting or new is a triumph. The bad minister, being a coward, learns that it’s his secretary of state who gets to make the headlines. Just perfect, Dolly. Well done. Keep going.

  ‘All of those things are wrong. The good minister controls her civil servants. They won’t like it, and they won’t like you. They’ll snipe, and some of them will leak. And that will make your daily life unpleasant at times. But it doesn’t matter. Your job is not to keep the paper moving. Your job is to make things happen. Sometimes that means throwing the paper away. There was one minister, very well-known chap, who was so worried and offended by the stream of busybody, interfering Whitehall decision-taking that he used to take his red boxes home every evening, lock them in the boot of his car, and just leave them there for months, accumulating. His private secretary was livid, and complained to the permanent secretary; but there was nothing they could do, you see. If they didn’t have the paper circulating, nothing happened. And so, although they all mocked him, over time he was eventually able to take control for himself. That’s an extreme example, but you get my drift. Ouch. And then there’s the business of headlines. Your job is to get noticed, to get people thinking and talking. What’s the use of going on television for twenty minutes, in front of a couple of million people, unless they think slightly differently afterwards? Every media interview that doesn’t generate controversy, that doesn’t make somebody, somewhere, angry or a little shaken up, is an opportunity lost. So few of them understand that. Ooooo … aaaaah … Finally, there’s your boss. The secretary of state, with the biggest office and the grandest civil servants, is not your superior, still less your God. He’s your rival. You are going to take him down. The good minister only looks upwards, never downwards. In your case, of course, you’ve been lumbered with Norman Hastings, as decent and pleasant a lump of nothingness as the party has seen for years. So it shouldn’t be difficult.’

  As the lesson and the treatment concluded, the two women were given cotton kimonos. Sadie wrapped hers around herself, stood up a little shakily, and led Caroline to the recovery room. A low table displayed ‘Fara Clara’s treats’, which included sweet-potato jam, grass tea, and kale and snail smoothies. Caro shuddered, although she admitted to herself that she did feel better, somehow perkier. She took a bottle of water for herself, and handed one to Sadie.

  ‘But how do I pick the issue to fight on? And isn’t it true, as everybody says, that events, disasters and random mistakes will dominate my life as a minister?’

  ‘As to the issue, there are others who’ll be able to help you, but I certainly can’t. Really, the best thing is to do your own thinking. Chew it over with Angela. I think I’m half in love with Angela myself. Very clever lady. And as to “events”, you’re right. But my husband says that the true politician is the one who sees every disaster, every screw-up, as a wonderful opportunity. Always on the front foot, that’s the thing. Never relax. Never go backwards.’

  Things turned out exactly as Sadie had promised. The call came from the chief whip himself. The reshuffle had been prompted by a very minor scandal – the immigration minister turned out to have employed a cleaner from Thailand who was not in Britain legally. Caroline was summoned to Downing Street, and was well enough prepared to have dressed in her best royal-blue Jaeger suit, with matching orange shoes and handbag.

  At first she was unamused to find that David Petrie, of all people, had been promoted into government on the same day, in his case as junior minister for urban planning. But then, she reflected, her job involved people – real people, people without jobs and people scared about their retirement – while his was just about bricks and concrete. And the Sun’s caption under the photograph of the two of them striding up Downing Street was, if predictable, reassuring. Caroline was smiling, while Petrie had a workmanlike glower on his face: ‘Beauty and the Beast’. In the Telegraph, the third leader commented that Alwyn Grimaldi, having acted quickly as a butcher, was gambling by bringing in some of the brightest, but untested and untried, figures from the back benches as new ministers. ‘We applaud his optimism, but we wonder how Mrs Phillips and Mr Petrie will get on, given their recent bitter fight in the chamber over Muslim rights. Mr Petrie lost that fight, and his friends say that he remains resentful. Increasingly, the prime minister’s handling of his government resembles that old film, The Hunger Games. At any rate, he has given us a new national entertainment.’

  How to Cure a Columnist

  In a properly run country, journalists would have to wear a mark of shame sewn onto their clothing.

  … (but he didn’t really mean it)

  Sadie had taken on Peter Quint as one of her projects. The Master may have loathed him, but his wife was tougher, and understood how useful a reliable voice in a mainstream newspaper could be. Now Peter had come to her with his agonising personal problem. If anyone could help him, then Sadie, with her contacts in the land of alternative therapies, was surely the girl.

  Peter Quint oozed. That was the word he used himself, because it was unavoidable. The problem had started not long after he had signed his first half-million-pound contract for a twice-weekly column, and been profiled on Andrew Neil’s politics show. He had always had lustrous hair which needed to be vigorously washed every morning; now he found that by lunchtime it was exuding a thick, sebaceous secretion, visible and itchy. His hands had always been sweaty; now a sticky greenish oil, which smelt of cabbage, began to accumulate between his fingers and in his palms. His feet poured. He knew that he gave off a ripe scent – he knew it because that was why his girlfriend had left him. At times when he’d been standing in the same spot for a long while, at a party for instance, he felt there was almost a patch of something – could it be slime? – on the floor around him.

  Sadie sent him to Harley Street, to a physician specialising in skin complaints who had helped the Master in the past. He professed himself disgusted and baffled; half a dozen bott
les of rattling pills left Peter constipated and unable to sleep, but as slimy as ever. Sadie sent him to the In-Town Clinic, for cold saltwater baths and scourging with twigs. This refreshed – and indeed excited – Peter, but did not solve the problem. She had him fitted with lightweight, breathable shirts and suits; Peter wore them out as if they were clingfilm.

  Shortly before the ministerial reshuffle, Sadie had ordered Peter to sell David Petrie, and buy Caroline Phillips – an agonisingly difficult transition which he would have agreed to for nobody else. Thus it was that Peter found himself in Barker to do a ‘soft’ interview with Caroline and Angela.

  He was still on uneasy terms with Mrs Phillips. She was, not unnaturally, suspicious. But he found himself almost falling for the sharp-featured, dark-eyed vicar – to such an extent that he couldn’t help raising the subject of his miserable complaint.

  Angela was undisgusted and forthright. ‘It’s a spiritual matter, Mr Quint, not a physical one. Nobody in Harley Street or any of the teaching hospitals can help you with this. Let’s be straight about it. You ooze. What do you ooze?’

  ‘I’m told it might be a secretion linked to the regulation of body heat.’

  ‘Nonsense. It’s slime. What else is slimy, Mr Quint?’

  ‘I don’t know. The seashore?’

  ‘I was thinking more of toads. The truth is, Mr Quint, that you are a bit of a slimy toad. I’m sorry to be blunt. I know it’s hard to accept.’

  Peter looked sadly at the carpet. Already a dark stain was appearing around the stitching of his recently-bought brogues. ‘That’s a terrible thing to say.’

  ‘It is a terrible thing to be. Have you any idea what causes it?’

  Caro was shaking her head and making lip-zipping gestures at Angela, but the conversation had gone too far to be cut off. And oddly, Peter Quint seemed not angry, but dolefully grateful.

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘What causes it is self-importance, mingled with hypocrisy. It’s a toxic mix, Mr Quint. You have been wallowing in these vices for decades, I suspect.’

  ‘Well, since 1985 at least. That’s when I got my first big column. But what can I do about it?’

  ‘You must rid yourself of the illusion that a newspaper columnist in a small country like this one, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, is a person of importance. You are not important. You have never been elected to do anything. You have never created a business. You have never come up with a single fresh idea, and you have never helped your fellow man in any way. Yet you regard yourself as a significant figure.’

  ‘This … this … is unacceptably painful.’

  ‘Most useful therapies are. The second thing is that you must start to say only what you actually mean, and write only what you think is true.’

  ‘That’s my career gone, then. You can’t ask me to do that. It’s not what I’ve been trained to do.’

  ‘Perhaps not. But there are plenty of useful jobs that need doing all around this country. Why don’t you come with me into our little church, and get down on your knees and think about it?’

  Peter Quint, for the first time in the conversation, straightened his back, puffed out his chest, and began to sound like his usual self. ‘I am not a spiritual person, I’m afraid, Angela. I have firmly agnostic views, based on wide reading and a detestation of religious mania.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to prostrate yourself before your Redeemer – though it wouldn’t hurt. I’m just asking you to spend twenty minutes on your knees contemplating your life so far. That isn’t long. And it won’t cost you anything.’

  Peter Quint did as he was told. And for the first time in his life, he failed to file his copy. The interview never happened; or rather, it had happened, but the wrong way round.

  Bathtime Talk

  Everybody is useful somehow. Well, except farmers …

  The Master

  ‘You have to speak to him.’ Angela was soaking in the bath, a new luxury in their Barker home – the house in Pebbleton, though pretty, had only had a shower. She was barely visible under a thick, strangely scented layer of pink foam. ‘I don’t like this stuff, darling.’

  ‘Sorry. I know it’s pretty foul, but my curiosity was aroused. It’s Fara Clara’s sweet beetroot pampering foam. Why is beetroot suddenly everywhere, Ange?’

  ‘I imagine there’s some deeply secret cell of the National Farmers’ Union whose job is to surreptitiously promote unlikely vegetables,’ replied Angela, who was a deft cook. ‘I mean, look at rhubarb. A few years back, after decades of relative obscurity, it was suddenly all over the bloody place, remember? The TV chefs began to drape it over sea bream, oxtails, you name it. Rhubarb soufflés, rhubarb jam … Then there was kale. Horrid stuff. Nobody had noticed it since the thirteenth century, but suddenly it was everywhere. No dinner party was complete without a stinking bowl of kale. You could buy kale crisps. Now it’s the humble beetroot that’s leapt onto the stage, cavorting around in the most inappropriate way. I can’t believe this is all down to the hidden hand of the market. Somebody must be pulling the vegetable strings, and making them dance. You should get some of your clever civil servants to investigate.’

  There was a long, vegetable-scented silence.

  ‘But as I say, you really need to speak to him. To Petrie. This confected war between the two of you is getting out of hand.’

  Caro sighed, and reached for a towel. ‘Stand up, and I’ll give you a dry-off. Carrots, that’s another one.’

  ‘Not really, dear.’

  ‘I don’t mean ordinary carrots. I mean silly carrots – yellow carrots, white carrots. Purple carrots. And green tomatoes. Lift your arms up.’

  ‘You’re avoiding the subject.’

  ‘No I’m not.’ Caroline began to vigorously towel Angela, from her small, schoolgirl’s breasts down to her rather large stomach, and the thighs and buttocks that would have struck Peter Paul Rubens dumb with admiration. She’d put on a lot of weight in the last couple of years. ‘I just don’t like the man. He’s coarse, and he’s angry. I can’t see him getting much further up the government, never mind to the top of it. I don’t see why I should go cap in hand to him.’

  ‘Ooh, keep rubbing. Just there. Aah, that’s lovely.’

  A few years earlier, this would have been an erotic conversation. This evening, however, Angela’s bad back was uppermost in her mind. Caroline drove her thumbs, through the towel, into her girlfriend’s lower vertebrae. Angela was still gorgeous, freckled and soft; but on the other hand, she did smell strongly and unmistakably of beetroot.

  Immorality

  Remember what I said about appetites.

  The Master

  Davie had taken the news of his promotion more calmly than Caroline. As so often, the first hint had come in bed from Ella, who had rolled over and was staring at his face as if she had never seen it before, with a serious expression, her mouth twisted in a way he found erotically exciting. So, forewarned, he had taken the trouble to flatter Alwyn Grimaldi, and had listened patiently to a pep talk from Murdoch White, mainly on the subject of always taking the credit for successes and moving on briskly from failures, which should always be attributed to the civil service or to one’s predecessor, or if they were huge, to the situation left behind by the previous government.

  Davie wondered whether the unseemly pleasure he took in the trappings of his new position – the magazine profiles, the larger car and its driver, the more intelligent and attentive private secretaries – was some kind of petty revenge on his father, who for all his energy had never moved beyond a smoky open-plan office and the services of the local cab company. Certainly, the higher he climbed, the less intrusive he found his father’s memory was. He would have liked to discuss this with Mary, but when they met these days there never seemed to be time to do anything other than deal with family administration. In any case, she didn’t seem much interested in his London life.

  That life now revolved around the twin poles of his
hectic office and Ella’s flat. Some weeks he seemed to be at her place more often than his own, but still the secret held. Every fortnight he’d pick up Private Eye with an almost pleasurable shiver of unease; but nothing ever appeared.

  Ella had thawed a little, but far too slowly to satisfy Davie’s gnawing hunger for intimacy. For he was not a cold man: he thought a lot about Fergus and Callum, and quite a lot about Mary. But he had come to regard them as interesting, distant friends. Mary existed up north, but London was not her town, hardly her planet. Different planets, different rules. When he was back in Glaikit, it was as if he’d never been away. Familiar accents, the different smell of the air – muck and brae freshness, coal fires, burning stubble – and the feel of his sons’ heads on his lap as they watched telly together … All of this washed over him like an out-of-body experience or a pleasurable dream, so he sank into it and thought very little of his office or of Ella.

  In London, things were different. His heart, that unruly riot of gristle and tubing which seemed so much more than a mere pump, flailed against his ribcage as he left Ella’s flat: ‘Got away with it,’ it said. ‘Got away with it, gotta way wi’ it, gotta, gotta, gotta … ’

  And, remarkably, so they seemed to have done.

  Everybody else got caught. Parliamentary private secretaries and cookery writers; the husbands of ministers and the wives of secretaries of state; researchers and eminent authors … The press and the scurrilous websites found, week after week, further proof of the scandalous fact that sex happened, and not always inside marriage. Yet David Petrie, who as a rising minister in an unpopular government would have been a fat and juicy target, and the mysterious Ella James, already connected in the public mind to her employer, the Master, were never photographed together, never recorded. Apparently, they were never even seen.