by Ben Elton
‘My Goad! He slept with that Pop Hero judge! Ah can remember watching the whole thing, Ah even voted for Tommy. Turns out now Ah needn’t a’ bothered, eh? He was going to win anyway.’
Tommy could not allow this lie. ‘That is not true. He won on merit.’
‘Who’d ‘a’ thought he wuz a poof?’
‘He is not a poof, it was a weird one-off, that’s all.’
‘Oh yes, and of course you’d know, wouldn’t ye? Being’ as how you are Tommy. Sorry, Ah was forgetting…But fuck, this is an incredible story. The bitch actually slept with him to get it. She’s no better than Ah’ve been. Actually she’s quite amusing about it. Listen to this: ‘And if anyone thinks I’ve been a tad immoral in my investigative techniques, let me ask you this, girls. Wouldn’t you mix a bit of pleasure with business if you had the chance to get your leg over Tommy Hanson?’’
‘So she says I was good, then?’
‘No, she does not say you were good, Tom Boy. She says nothing could ever live up to what you’d expect from shagging Tommy Hanson and Tommy Hanson certainly didn’t.’
‘Bitch.’
‘Ah’d still have him, I must say.’
‘You would?’
‘Yeah, of course. He’s gorgeous, best-lookin’ bloke around. But what a wanker. Ah mean, Ah thought he were a wanker before, but you just have to read this, it’s pathetic. You’ll give up any dreams o’ wanting tae be the arsehole. Listen to this…‘He wept and wept as he confessed to me his feelings of doubt and self loathing. He feels that for all his wealth and fame he is lost and that his unhappiness seems to increase alongside his success…‘ ‘
Jessie laughed and laughed. Tommy tried hard not to mind. ‘What a pratl Jesus Christ. We’d swap a bit o’ our shite lives for his, wouldn’t we? Unhappiness and all. We should gi’ him a ring an’ tell him, eh, Tommy, spend a night on the fuckin’ street an’ see how unhappy your success makes ye then.’
‘Come on, be fair. I mean, just because you’re not at the bottom of the pile doesn’t mean you don’t have a right to be unhappy.’
‘As far as Ah’m concerned it fuckin’ does. Honest, you have to read this, Ah mean Ah know ye admire the guy, obviously ye do tae want tae be him so much, but what a whining, whingeing, self-indulgent, self-pitying little prick. Ah can’t believe Ah used tae like him.’
Tommy was finding it increasingly difficult to feign indifference. In fact momentarily his face flashed with anger. But then he smiled. This was the post-epiphany Tommy. Love had mellowed him. ‘Yeah, you’re right, what an idiot. All that money, all that fame, and he can’t even find a way to be happy. Stupid, eh?’
‘Well, Ah’m sure you’re right and that rich people can be depressed, but he’s just so self-obsessed about it.’
‘Isn’t he.’
‘All this poor little me bit.’
‘What a cunt.’
‘Oh no! ‘Ah cannae trust ma old friends, Ah cannae trust ma new ones.’’
‘Arsehole.’
‘Well, give your fuckin’ money away then, ya silly twat.’
‘Well, some of it, certainly.’
THE HYATT REGENCY, BIRMINGHAM
Peter Paget finally picked up the phone. It had taken him more than twenty minutes to gather sufficient resolve. It was noon on the Sunday after the Labour Party gala dinner and amongst the mass of congratulatory emails, faxes and phonecalls Peter had received there were two that were life-changing. The first had been a call from Dr Wellbourne to congratulate Peter on the results of his final blood tests. He was completely in the clear. The second call was the reason that Peter was now agonizing about calling the Prime Minister. It had been from Paula Wooldridge, who took great delight in enquiring whether Peter would like to make any comment on the story her paper intended to run the following morning.
Samantha had turned on him more quickly and with greater venom than he could have imagined. Peter had thought that it would be a sexual affair that he would find himself denying. He had not reckoned with the accusations of drug-taking. How could he have been so stupid?
‘Yes. It’s Paget here, Minister for Drugs. I know that the Prime Minister is at Chequers. Could you possibly put me through…Yes, it’s very urgent.’
The wait seemed interminable. The Prime Minister had had to be summoned from the garden.
‘Prime Minister, I have bad news. I’m afraid we’re under attack. Your favourite newspaper and mine has a piece which they seem intent on running. They’ve cooked up a sex scandal. My ex parliamentary assistant is claiming that we had an affair. No, Prime Minister, there is no truth in it whatsoever. I have never so much as laid a hand on her. The simple facts are that she developed something of a crush on me and made advances which I rejected. Hell hath no fury and all that…’
Across the room Angela Paget struggled to maintain her composure. Her eyes were red; she had not slept at all that night.
‘Yes, Prime Minister, of course I’ve told them that the girl is a fantasist and that if they publish they’ll be sued to within an inch of their lives, but I think they’re going to pursue me none the less. There is another factor…The girl is claiming that we took drugs together. Cocaine and ecstasy. I suppose their theory is the old Goebbels adage: When you tell a lie, make sure it’s a big one.’
Once more, across the room, Angela Paget gulped. Peter tried to ignore her until finally he put the phone down. T have to go to Chequers immediately. They’re ordering a car.’
‘Peter…‘ Angela hesitated for a moment. ‘This thing about your taking drugs with her. That bit really is a lie, isn’t it?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I have no sodding idea what to think any more!’
‘Of course it’s a lie! For heaven’s sake, don’t you see what’s going on! This is a press conspiracy. They want to destroy my bill and the only way they can do that is to destroy me. Sex wouldn’t be enough, not with the head of steam I’ve built up. People like me too much, they need something special, and I have to admit that this is a pretty good shot. If they can smear me with drug taking, then every single thing I’ve said is utterly compromised.’
‘So you never took drugs with her?’
‘I have just fucking told you! No!’
‘Then they are being total bastards and you have to beat them. We have to beat them.’
‘Thank you, Angela.’ He began to cross the room towards her, but she stopped him with a gesture.
‘No, Peter. Not yet. We’ll fight this together as a family, but that doesn’t make me feel like you are part of the family. Not yet, I’m afraid. But what you’ve achieved so far is too important to let them destroy it. You have singlehandedly brought the drugs debate into the twenty-first century. Nobody must be allowed to stop that…Not even your ex-lover.’ Angela went into the bathroom to cry.
THE BULL RING, BIRMINGHAM
They had been begging together for some hours, but early Sunday evening in a provincial city centre does not offer the richest of pickings.
‘I always thought them beggars in doorways made fookin’ thousands.’
‘Then you’re an even bigger twat than I thought, Tommy.’
‘Yeah, but that’s what everybody says, in’t it, that they make loads?’
‘Not anyone who’s ever tried it.’
It was getting cold. Particularly for Tommy, who had no coat. They had found some cardboard boxes, which when flattened out provided a little insulation from the chill of the floor of the shop doorway in which they sat.
‘So will ye sit wi’ me the night, then, Tommy Boy?’ Jessie asked.
‘You want me to stay?’
‘Sure, ye can share ma coat an’ blanket an’ we’ll keep each other warm.’
‘I thought you liked to be alone.’
‘On a beach, maybe, or in a room o’ ma own. But not on the streets, not at night.’
‘I’d love to stop here with you.’
‘Good. An’ tomorrow mebbe we can both try tae get intae a hostel or
somethin’.’
‘Yes. Tomorrow everything will be all right.’
Across the street a big car had drawn up beside a telephone box. Tommy watched idly as two men got out of the car and one of them entered the phonebox. He was putting something on the windows. Tommy did not know what.
Jessie had not noticed the men. She was inspecting their meagre takings. ‘Three quid,’ she said. ‘Shall we gi’ it a bit longer or go and get some chips?’
‘Let’s stick it out, eh? Another pound and we can have a sausage.’
FALLOWFIELD COMMUNITY HALL, MANCHESTER
Tommy’s voice was no longer steady. ‘If only I’d said yeah, let’s go an’ get some chips. But I didn’t, and instead of getting up and moving on, we just sat there…Who knows, if we’d walked away there and then maybe we’d have been all right, or maybe they would’ve noticed us anyway. I don’t know. All I know is, we sat there and it happened. The bloke across the road comes out of the phonebox and he’s about to get back into the car with his mate when he glances across at us. Just a glance, but that were enough. I reckon him and Jessie recognized each other at exactly the same time. ‘Oh no,’ she says. That was all, and I looked at her and she’s like paralysed, that’s the best way I can put it, fookin’ paralysed with fear. The next thing is the bloke across the street is walking towards us, real fast, almost running with his mate following. I think Jessie tried to get up, but she couldn’t, her legs was all wrapped up in her coat.’
THE BULL RING, BIRMINGHAM
Hello, Jessie. I think you owe us for a broken skylight, don’t you?’
‘Fuck off! Please! Leave me alone, you bastards! I’m out now, I’m clean.’
The first of the men reached down and, grabbing Jessie by the shoulders, hauled her to her feet as if she were a bag of shopping.
Tommy jumped up too. ‘Hey, get your fookin’ hands — ’
The other man wore a knuckleduster. He knocked Tommy down with a single blow. As he lost consciousness for the second time in twenty hours, Tommy saw Jessie being carried across the street towards the men’s car.
FALLOWFIELD COMMUNITY HALL, MANCHESTER
When I came round they were gone and I had my mission in life set out for me.’ Tommy stared at his shoes, biting his lip, clearly trying to master his emotions.
‘It felt like nothing I’ve ever felt before, nothing. Like I’d had my stomach cut out o’ me, like the whole world had been painted black. Eight hours I’d spent wi’ Jessie, eight hours during which time I’d begun to discover that I might actually still have a heart or a soul or whatever you want t’call it. That I might not be the totally irredeemable arse’ole that I’d thought I was. That there were more important people in the world than me. Oh, fook it. Can you hear me? I’m still talkin’ ‘bout myself, still seeing every thin’ as a reflection of how I feel! Seem’ the worst fookin’ tragedy I’d ever personally been close to in terms of my own pathetic little ego. I’m a cont. A bastard, that’s all. I don’t deserve even to have met Jessie, a bird who could do cold turkey on her own aged seventeen or whatever in a brothel! I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of fookin’ pounds on fookin’ recovery, me — Betty Ford, the Priory, they should fit a revolving door for conts like me! I’ve done the whole bastard LA thing, rollerbladin’ round past Geri an’ Robbie, carryin’ me poxy bottle o’ water an’ doin’ interviews about being’ clean. I devoted every second o’ my life to me an’ my problems, an’ then one day I meet someone who’s for real, wi’ real problems, the reallest person I ever knew, an’ then I lose her. An’ what am I like? I’m goin’ ‘Oh, look everybody, this is how it changed me.’ Honest to God, what am I fookin’ like? An’ here’s me, still goin’ on about me by goin’ on about how much I hate meself for goin’ on about me, I mean, fookin’ ‘ell.’
Once more Tommy struggled with his emotions. ‘So she’s gone, right? An’ everything’s turned black. It’s like I’m looking through a tunnel which has all blurry dark edges. I’m sitting there just shouting at the gathering night. ‘Jessie! Jessie!’ An’ I’m cryin’ an’ acting like a total fookwit for about five minutes, kicking the door o’ the shop an’ lookin’ at the place where she’d been sitting like she’s going to reappear. An’ suddenly this copper’s standin’ there, this big Brummie copper’s asking what the fook I think I’m playin’ at, an’ I tells him that the girl I love ‘as just been fookin’ kidnapped! So he asks me who she was. What was her surname? Who kidnapped her? What were the reg’ o’ the car? An’ I realize that I don’t know any of those things, so the copper says in that case there’s not a lot he can do about it, is there, but if I keep on shoutin’ an’ kickin’ doors he’s goin’ to nick me.
‘So after he fooks off I’m sat there like shakin’ but thinkin’ to meself that the trail is never going to be warmer than at that very moment. Every minute that passed was gonna take Jessie further and further away from me. I couldn’t wait for the morning. I couldn’t wait for my money and my people and my whole fookin’ fookwit support structure. I had to do it now. But what? Who were those bastards? Well, the bastards what grabbed her the first time, had to be, but who were they? Where had they taken her? Even Jessie hadn’t known where the house was, else she were goin’ to try and save the other girls. So I’m sat there an’ I’m thinkin’ an’ I’m thinkin’…Like there must be a clue. If I relive every moment from when I first noticed the blokes to when they punched me out, there must be somethin’. I picked up Jessie’s coat an’ put it on, it were all I had left of her, an’ I walks across the road to where the car had been parked. I don’t know what I’m thinkin’…somethin’ really fookin’ thick like maybe there’s tyre marks that I could get photographed an’ have tracked or else perhaps one of ‘em dropped a fag packet with a mobile number written on it or an address that might lead me to her. But of course there was nothin’. An’ I’m thinkin’ an’ thinkin’, an’ for fook’s sake the answer were staring me in the face. The telephone box! What had they been doin’ in the telephone box? Makin’ a phonecall, had t’be. If I could find out who they’d phoned…the last call that were made from that box…So I jumps into the box like a shot, thinkin’ if some other fooker gets in there an’ starts makin’ loads o’ calls I’m fooked. An’ then it hits me. The bastard never made a phone call. That’s right! He were just sort o’ messin’ about, weren’t he? Hang on, ‘e were puttin’ somethin’ on the win dowll Of course! He’s a fooking whoremaster, he’s advertising! The whole phonebox is covered in all them prossie stickers. ‘New Asian girl — Young’…‘Petite, young Aussie, willing’…‘Like it ‘anging from the chandelier wi’ a bunch o’ roses stuck up your arse? I’m your girl’…You know the stickers. Weird, some of ‘em…And bang on top of all the others, brand new, not half picked off an’ covered in biro scribble, there was a bunch o’ nicely printed little stickers sayin’ ‘Sexual Services. Many girls. All new. All young. Asian. Russian. Bosnian. All willing.’ An’ there were a phone number t’call.’
CHEQUERS
Peter had always wanted to visit Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country retreat. To visit the place where Lloyd George had planned the convoy system in 1916, where Churchill had pondered the battle against Nazi Germany, where Attlee had taken respite from his titanic struggle to bring the welfare state into being. Now that Peter had been elevated to Cabinet status, he had been looking forward to many evenings dining amongst the myriad souvenirs of administrations past, basking in the history that had been made and the history that he was playing such a central part in making. But such had been the speed of Peter’s ascension to the very highest ranks of public life that there had thus far been no time for such niceties, and this was Peter’s first trip. The circumstances were not remotely what he had hoped.
Charlie Ansboro, the Prime Minister’s Press Secretary, a man known within the Labour Party as the Wild Pig, stared Peter straight in the eye. ‘Minister. Tell me now and tell me absolutely straight. Is there any truth in what they’re about to throw at you
? What they’re about to throw at us?’
They had barely sat down. Peter had not even been offered a drink. There had been no niceties, the Prime Minister had not yet joined them, and he would not do so until the Wild Pig called for him. Peter was either about to be cast out or to remain in, it was a matter of spin control, and the decision lay with the Press Secretary. If Charlie Ansboro decided that the government and the party would be better off dumping Peter, then the process would begin immediately and Peter would not see the PM at all.
T do not lie to the Prime Minister, Charlie. As I told him earlier, there is no truth in these allegations whatsoever,’ Peter replied, answering the Pig’s stare with an unblinking one of his own.
All the way from the Birmingham hotel to Chequers Peter had been agonizing over his strategy, going over every moment of his affair with Samantha. An affair which, thank God, he had conducted with the greatest care and secrecy. There was only one occasion when any other person had been in direct contact with Peter and Samantha during their relationship, and that had been the birthday dinner party. The occasion on which he had taken cocaine for the first and only time in his life. Apart from that the whole thing was a matter of his word against Samantha’s. If he had been spotted going into Samantha’s flat, so what? She had been his parliamentary assistant. As a backbencher he shared office space with countless other MPs. Was it any wonder that on some evenings they had made use of Samantha’s place in which to work, and if anyone said why hadn’t he used his own home, he would enquire whether they had ever tried living with two noisy teenaged daughters.
But there was that birthday dinner party. Samantha’s best friends would be bound to testify against him. Pondering this on the drive to Chequers, Peter had conceived a plan. He intended to produce witnesses of his own.
Charlie Ansboro leant forward in his chair. ‘Peter, I’ve known for months that you’ve been fucking her.’