'What does it mean?'
The air escapes from him as if it were his last. 'Beryl. That's what it means. Bloody Beryl.'
– =OO=OOO=OO-= The letter arrived at Downing Street as the Cabinet was meeting in their emergency session. It was handed to one of the constables on duty at the gate by a motorcycle messenger. The messenger had no face, only a helmet.
Paperwork pollutes all aspects of Westminster. It is the debris that clogs the system and causes the gutters of delay and discontent to overflow. If Goodfellowe believed he had a problem with paper, it was as nothing compared with the tide of correspondence that pours forth every day like a mudslide and all but overwhelms the Prime Minister's correspondence secretaries. Forget all you may have imagined about the glories of Downing Street, for at best it is a pleasant if poorly planned Restoration townhouse, yet on most days for those inside it bears a far closer resemblance to a Victorian sweatshop. Much of the sweating is done in the correspondence unit, located in the basement, where temperatures and language are known to resemble the boiler room of the Titanic at full speed.
All letters are routinely screened for explosives (and, it has to be said, for still more personally offensive content). If they pass this first examination, they are then subjected to a series of further tests to determine how they will be handled, and onto which pile they will be placed, for there are several piles.
The first pile is reserved for letters requiring instant action – correspondence from friends of the Prime Minister, or those he might like to have as friends. A second pile, less urgent, is passed to other parts of the Government machine for draft replies, which are generated in large part by computer.
A third, much larger, pile is set aside for complaints. To the beleaguered members of the Prime Minister's correspondence unit it often seems that every Englishman's father was a shop steward and his mother a fishwife, while the Scots rarely seem to have had any parents at all. Such letters never even get close to the Prime Minister, although all will receive replies. Eventually.
Yet another pile is reserved for letters categorized as being written by eccentrics, often devoted but quite dotty people who will wait eagerly and for weeks for their reply, signed by some minor placeling at Downing Street, which they will frame and display on the mantelshelf alongside their late husbands' ashes.
For the correspondence secretaries there is no resting place.
Amadeus's letter arrived on a day that was neither more nor less frantic than any other, which meant that his letter was one of nearly a thousand. He had taken great care with its drafting, seeking to explain, entirely anonymously, why he and the others had done what they had done, and once again demanding an apology on behalf of all former servicemen and women. He had taken great care to hide his identity. The paper and the envelope had been purchased at the Sloane Square branch of WH Smith, and handled only with gloves. The envelope was self-sealing and had required no stamp, so no trace of saliva was available for DNA testing. The letter had also been prepared in his bursar's office rather than at home. The dot-matrix printer at the school was from a major manufacturer and on the point of being junked, which would make any prospect of tracing the physical source of the letter all the more impossible.
Which is where Amadeus made his mistake and began to sow the seeds of exquisite confusion. For Amadeus's problem with letters was lifelong and intense. A dyslexic. Word-blind. From his earliest years he had struggled with the art of reading and writing, his brain turning into a kaleidoscope of confusion every time a letter of the alphabet knocked at its door. To Amadeus, the whole world was an impossible anagram. Like sieving treacle. And through this sieve 'b's became 'd's, 'j's turned into 'g's and 'f's into 't's. The words on the paper in front of him often bore only passing acquaintance with those he carried in his mind. As a boy he had written to a maiden aunt thanking her for the tuck money she had sent, and in return had received a sound thrashing. He had been regarded as a difficult child.
In many ways, it had been the making of him – as it had other word-blind people, like Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison, Nelson Rockefeller. At school he'd had to push himself harder than the rest, finding new ways of attacking a problem. Lateral thinking and a formidable memory, qualities that had marked him out at Sandhurst, had become his means of avoiding the minefield of words. His talents lay in the practicalities of warfare, not in its paperwork, which is why he had become a Paratrooper. Completing the Times crossword hadn't been a prerequisite for jumping out of a Hercules at 600 feet with a hundred pounds of equipment hooked to his chest, knowing that in thirty seconds he might be dead or broken. His word blindness was also, perhaps, why he knew he would never become a general, and instead had become a leader.
Not that he could avoid paperwork entirely. He'd always wanted to command, but he couldn't command a Para battalion without going through Staff College first. It was perhaps the greatest battle he'd ever fought. He'd survived only through stubbornness and pride and the spell-check programme on his word processor, and later there was always someone else, an adjutant or secretary or even reluctant wife, to help the spell-check programme make the right choice between laughing and fucking and ducking. But, late at night in his bursar's office, there was no one to help him compose his letter to the Prime Minister. So he took exaggerated care, reading and rereading it until his mind had become an impenetrable jungle. The spell-check programme sanctioned the letter. Twice.
Yet dyslexia is a strange affliction. It can wax and wane like the moon, but without its predictability. And, according to some, the problem can be magnified at times of unusual stress. In any event, despite the great care Amadeus had taken, and notwithstanding the support of spell-check, the letter that was opened by the harassed secretary in the correspondence unit began: 'Dear Pry Minister, Yew are…'
Almost a thousand letters a day. Every day. Which requires the correspondence unit to process more than one hundred letters an hour. Two every minute. On average, one every thirty seconds.
Amadeus's letter didn't get its thirty seconds. Wiping her brow from the heat of the boiler room, the correspondence secretary let forth a small moan of frustration as she read. Then she threw Amadeus's letter straight onto the pile marked with a large hand-written label: 'NUTTERS'.
– =OO=OOO=OO-= Thoughts of Beryl left Goodfellowe ominously distracted as he set foot inside the Members' Lobby.
Her family name was Hailstone, as was her effect. Enough hair lacquer to spark an environmental alert and buttocks so abundant they might have required separate passports. Distinguishing features? How much time do you have? Her dress sense would have better been put to designing tablecloths. Yet she could hardly be described as flippant. She was the chair of the constituency party in Marshwood – in effect, Goodfellowe's employer – and she had about as much time for him as she might have for a request for oral sex from Saddam Hussein.
Oh, but politics would be impossible without structures such as Beryl. She was indefatigable, unbending and, when necessary – which in constituency politics was frequently – utterly unreasonable. She drove others to the limits of exhaustion and beyond, which meant that when the crucial decisions were made, she was there to make them almost by herself, other more reasonable mortals having long since returned to their families. For Beryl had no family. She was a spinster of the parish, 'married to Marshwood', as she would declaim. Had she been a man she would have made a formidable Member of Parliament, and had she arrived on the scene twenty years later there would have been some politically correct quota that would have insisted she be so. But as it was, Beryl was out of time, a victim of male insecurity – 'the Little Willy Syndrome', as she called it – and in Beryl's eyes, Goodfellowe was the shrimpiest of them all. The man who now occupied her rightful place in the nation's council. Who five years ago had irresponsibly thrown away his Ministerial office and with it Marshwood's short-cut to the inside track.
And the man who, several years before that, had rebuffed her passions.
Local politics is often about drains, and those at the Marshwood constituency office had always smelled a bit. Then they had become stubbornly blocked. A plumber was called, who had summoned a surveyor, who announced that the drains were overflowing because the foundations had decided to take an extensive and extremely expensive holiday. They weren't where they should be. The cost of their relocation would inevitably be crippling. Even by the standards of local politics the plight of the Marshwood party was dire, but all agreed afterwards, Beryl had been magnificent.
Estimates for the remedial work had been obtained and the executive committee had gathered in the mood of missionaries facing the pot. Faith can only stretch so far. There was no money, and a repair and restitution order had arrived that morning from the Environmental Health Officer giving them a month to fix it. Had anyone any ideas?
Beryl was the most junior member of the committee, invited because they needed a woman… well, even in these modern times, somebody still has to make the tea. Yet three weeks after they had first met she had stood before them, her blouse heaving as though filled with ferrets, and she had produced Mr Gupta. Mr Gupta proved to be their salvation, a local businessman with a cautious smile and a pinkish wart on the end of his nose who craved three things: his secretary, planning permission for a site he owned near the by-pass, and an invitation to Downing Street. He suspected that achieving the latter would assist him greatly in obtaining the planning consent which, once granted, would enable him to elevate his secretary to the position of office manager and en passant to leverage himself into her bed.
Not that the executive committee of the local Marshwood party was able to peer into the dark convolutions that marked Mr Gupta's soul. All the members knew was that the man wanted to be helpful, and how much more did they need? So Goodfellowe had arranged the invitation to Downing Street, a reception for several hundred, nothing of great import, but enough to guarantee Mr Gupta a photograph alongside Bendall's predecessor and wife and sufficient, during the course of the following week, for Gupta to underwrite the local party's overdraft with an interest-free loan.
Beryl was triumphant. And rampant. As the other members of the committee drifted into the night, exhausted from their repeated rounds of commendation for her efforts, Goodfellowe had discovered himself with Beryl in the tiny kitchen of their sinking office. She was clearing up the biscuit crumbs and emptying tea slops into a galvanized bucket. He, too, had wanted to express some form of admiration for her efforts but had always found words with Beryl difficult, so instead he had placed a congratulatory hand upon her shoulder.
This had caused her to turn and face him. In the confined space, and with Beryl built like a medieval siege machine, he had suddenly found himself trapped. It must have been like this at Stalingrad. There was crimson in her cheek and a weird, acquisitive glint in her eye. Before he knew it, he was under direct assault, those lips advancing and closing in on him like a sea fog.
It was not that he had rejected her that caused her passion to turn into undying enmity, it was more the manner of his rejection. The fact that he had retreated so instinctively, a look of abject terror twisted across his face, his innermost feelings laid bare. Revealing the things he truly felt about, and for, Beryl. The sort of emotion that no man should declare. There was no time for the diplomacy of muttered condolences or passing excuses about his wife, nothing that might help reestablish their precoital relations, nothing but an upturned galvanized bucket, a banging door and a car disappearing hastily into the night.
Every time Goodfellowe looked out of his window thereafter, the siege machine was waiting, looming darkly on his doorstep, ready to exploit any weakness in his defence. Their relationship had degenerated into warfare, during which Trevor had been his staunchest ally. Now Trevor was gone. Goodfellowe was on his own, and the rumblings about deselection that had surfaced before the last election would sound like drums of war before the next.
– =OO=OOO=OO-= So Goodfellowe was distracted as he crossed the Members' Lobby on his way to take a seat in the Chamber. So distracted, in fact, he even signed the Early Day Motion that someone thrust in front of him. Early Day Motions are parliamentary billboards on which backbenchers scribble their names to protest about something, or someone. If there were enough names to show genuine grievance, the Speaker might even allow them a debate, but more frequently EDMs amounted to little more than graffiti. Jimmy's a Wanker, Tessa's a Slag, Down With Fat Cats. That level of sophistication.
This particular Motion implored the House 'to take note of the recent call by the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer for increased subsidies to the textile industry', while drawing attention 'with surprise and disapproval to the fact that the Right Honourable Gentleman habitually wears nothing but Italian suits'. In truth the EDM had stuff-all to do with the plight of beleaguered weavers and dyers, and everything to do with the fact that for the past twenty-three years the Shadow Chancellor had enjoyed the comforts of an Italian mistress. And let no one forget it! Tommy's a Double-Dealing Dog! A Wop Shagger!! The Motion was about as subtle as a can of spray paint.
Normally Goodfellowe would have passed by on the other side and would not have been tempted, let alone inhaled. But he was distracted. So he signed. Added his name to the parliamentary scribble. Anyway, he wanted to become a team player once more; he had to begin to show a little willing.
Goodfellowe was forced to push his way through, jostling to find a seat in the busy Chamber as Members gathered for Prime Minister's Question Time. They sat in long and rowdy rows, in the manner of crows crowded along a telephone line waiting for roadkill. Over many years Question Time had proved a more profound test of Prime Ministerial mettle than most of the nation's leaders cared for. Macmillan, for instance, had been a true professional, acting his way through his premiership with the aplomb of a seasoned performer at the Old Vic, but before entering upon the stage for Question Time even SuperMac had been overtaken by anxiety. On occasion his aides had found him bent over a sink, throwing up.
Now, thanks to live television and the blow-by-blow coverage it gave to this hugely devalued occasion, the entire country could throw up.
Before he'd even started, Bendall had made trouble for himself. Members were distressed by the attack on the water supply, not because they cared particularly about the circumstances of Bendall but because it amounted to an attack on the heart of government, an attack on them all. Hell, this wasn't just a matter of water but an incitement to terrorists and germ warriors everywhere. It was one of those occasions when their concern was genuine and to meet their concern Bendall should have granted them a full parliamentary statement, an open and frank exchange, but his instincts were otherwise. He considered the time he spent in the House of Commons as wasted and he'd become accustomed to ducking and diving rather than delivering. Anyway, he had so little to say, knew so little of the real reasons behind the attack, so he covered his ignorance in insult and evasion. From their perches, the crows began to squawk their displeasure.
'When will he make sure our water is safe?'
It was a simple enough question. Too bloody simple. He hadn't a clue about what he was going to do, except pass the buck.
First he laid down a smokescreen. He used words like 'deprecate' and 'wanton act of violence', he adopted a tone that was selfless and a pose that was statesmanlike, but being noble wasn't enough. So, 'I have instructed the Home Secretary to mount an immediate inquiry…' – in other words, let me make one thing perfectly clear, folks. Any shortcomings in security are the responsibility of Bloody Hopeless.
'But what about the water?' a plaintive voice insisted from somewhere across the Chamber.
'The specific issue of water quality is a matter for OFWAT, the water regulator
What are t
hey going to do, then?
'As I have just explained, that is a matter primarily for the independent regulator…' How the hell do I know? OFWAT is independent. I don't control them.
So how much?
How much what?
How much is it going to cost to make the water safe enough to put in the whisky?
'These are early days…' I've got no damned idea. But whatever it costs. What else can I say? Would someone ask me a different question? How about the upcoming summit meetings, for instance? Anything but bloody water!
Oh, but damn the Papacy and all its wicked works, if London is to get better water, doesn't the same apply to those most loyal citizens of Ulster, too?
Bendall's shoulders almost sagged. 'The Honourable Gentleman has made an interesting point – Well… I suppose so, with reluctance, yes.
The whole country, in fact?
Yes.
So how much is all that going to cost, then?
'Allow me to repeat what I said to the House a moment ago…' – I'll spell it out to those who are simply too thick or too inattentive to have got it first time around. Whatever. It. Costs.
You could almost hear the thunder of lobby correspondents' hooves as they rushed to instruct their brokers to sell water shares. Water companies operated down deep holes. And that's precisely where their business was heading.
The House was in fractious mood. The Prime Minister had rubbed against them like sandpaper. A feeling hung throughout the Chamber that he must bear some responsibility for the situation. After all, it had been his bloody bathtub.
It was at this point that the Father of the House rose from the Opposition benches. Sir Bramble was the longest-serving Member of Parliament who, although well into his eighties, still carried a sardonic smile and a chestful of medals for gallantry from ancient wars fought in his youth. He also possessed wandering hands, if secretarial gossip was to be believed, or perhaps it was only a rumour that he himself propagated. In any event his hands were now well in evidence, grasping his lapels as he turned in the direction of the Despatch Box and the early evening news.
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