It would be unfair to say that Terry’s beliefs came into being only as a gesture of hate against his father. Perhaps Rob’s adoption of the no-nonsense politics of the corner shop and middle management steered his son towards the Labour Party but, once there, Terry found the faith that Susie’s horror of churches had denied him in religion. He visited the insanitary and crumbling bed and breakfasts where the families of men slimmed down in Rob’s purges were lodged as they waited at the tail-end of housing lists. He took food to street sleepers round the Worsfield bus station. When he became President of the Students’ Union he was the delegate on innumerable marches and demonstrations and was invited to visit Young Socialists in Belgium and Yugoslavia. The government seemed so outrageous to him, the unyielding enemy in Downing Street so clearly merciless, that he was able, speaking in common-room debates, outside the gates of factories on strike or once, even, by special invitation, at a fringe meeting at a party conference, to convince not only his listeners but also himself. Some day, perhaps some day soon, the dark age of materialism and greed would be over. The street sleepers and the millions of jobless would be led into the promised land and Tel would be not only of the Party but among its leaders.
In the meanwhile he had to earn a living. He saw an advertisement in the Guardian for a job at S.C.R.A.P. (The Society for Rural and Arboreal Protection). Although he had been more concerned with the Worsfield homeless than the fate of distant rain forests or tremulous and melting ice floes, he went for an interview. Once in S.C.R.A.P. he was determined to succeed and spent the next decade making himself indispensable to the Chairman of the Board, an amiable biologist who had been made a peer and specialized in frogs, a species which he understood better than human beings. This Chairman was only too happy to leave the running of S.C.R.A.P. to Terry, who turned up on the radio and television, however obscure the programme, when trees fell, green belts were threatened or when gasping Third World smokers, choking furnaces and coughing engines caused dark clouds to drift across far-eastern islands.
He was into his thirties before he put his name down in Walworth Road. When the Hartscombe seat became available, the lecturer in sociology, who had lost it twice, decided he had grown too old for yet another public humiliation. Terry told the selection committee that he hadn’t a moment’s doubt that he would win the seat. He was chosen in a moment of helpless astonishment at such an unusual prediction and had to wait while the last of the summer died and leaves began to fall before the government issued the writ for a by-election. He had a battle on his hands, and the rain forests would have to look after themselves.
He was driving along a rare, unencumbered stretch of road when the mobile phone on the seat beside him buzzed again. A strange female voice spoke without introduction and, he thought, with menace. ‘Are you there, Mr Flitton? This is Lord Titmuss’s private office. His Lordship has asked me to make an appointment at your mutual convenience, sir.’ What was this, Terry wondered. An attempt to compromise him, to make him look ridiculous? The Tories, they had told him in Walworth Road, would stop at nothing. Caution overcame him, and all he said, in a deliberately husky voice tinged with a slight Scottish accent, was, ‘Wrong number, I’m afraid,’ and he switched off the phone.
The trouble had begun again. He was forced to a snail’s pace by the speed limit and huge yellow signs charting the flow and counterflow, the twisting lanes between tall, red-and-white outsize witches’ hats. He thought of what Robert’s factory produced, the product his mother had never troubled to ask about, a rapidly increasing number of road signs, crash barriers, and traffic cones by the million.
Chapter Four
‘What’ve you got against the death penalty, exactly?’
‘Well, I’ve got nothing against it personally.’
‘I didn’t imagine you’d ever committed a capital offence. So what’s your problem?’
Lord Titmuss had visitors – Tim Willock, who, having lost his seat in the previous election, had been adopted for a return to Parliament as Tory M.P. for Hartscombe and Worsfield South, and the local Party Chairman. Willock was a short, perky man with thinning hair and half-glasses. He had a surprisingly deep and penetrating voice for his size, and his head often leant to one side, like an inquisitive bird’s. He had spent his years in the wilderness building up his computer-sales business, and now his hands moved nervously, as though he wished to surf the Internet for an answer to the old dragon’s difficult question. Deprived of mechanical aids, he came out with the best he could do for himself.
‘I’m just thinking about the Party image. We don’t want people to see us as hangers and floggers.’
‘Why not?’ The Titmuss voice rasped out at him from behind a well-cleared desk. ‘That was what they used to rather like about us.’
‘It may have been so in your day, if you don’t mind me saying so. But times have changed, haven’t they? Your years in government were a simply enormous success, of course, but didn’t the public find them a little …’ – Willock, without a word processor, paused with his lips pursed, and came out with – ‘Metallic? Perhaps a little merciless? Even inhumane?’
‘So you don’t like it when the going gets tough?’
‘Oh, no, indeed. Tough going’s what you expect in politics. It’s the name of the game, isn’t it?’ Willock laughed, a rumbling sound that, again, seemed too big for him.
‘You said you had nothing against the death penalty, personally.’ There was a lamp fixed on a Chinese pottery base which flooded Titmuss’s desk with a pool of white light. Around him the library was despondently dark and cold, with a glass screen in the empty fireplace. He sounded like a dangerously experienced police officer about to nail a tricky suspect. ‘So, you think it might be a useful deterrent?’
‘I think that’s possibly true.’
‘Possibly true.’ Titmuss savoured the words as though they were a confession. ‘But you think killers should get away with their lives for the sake of our Party image? I mean, so the public can think we’re a lot of bleeding hearts and soft on crime. Is that what you think?’ He leant back in his chair then and, his voice coming from the shadows, he added, as though to himself but loud enough for the others to hear, ‘If you think about it at all.’
‘Of course I’m not soft on crime. Certainly not.’ Willock’s head was now moving in an agitated fashion, like a bird pecking for crumbs of comfort. ‘By no means! I’m all for very long prison sentences. “Life” should mean “life”. Yes, of course. But when I talk about the Party image, I’m just worrying about what we present.’
‘What you present to me? Not a cut-glass bowl, for God’s sake. Cash in hand would be quite acceptable!’ Titmuss rotated his swivel chair and laughed, a dry, clattering sound which Tim Willock found even more disconcerting than his Lordship’s questions.
‘What I think Tim’s getting at is this.’ The Chairman bravely interposed himself between his candidate and the fusillade of Titmuss laughter. Sir Gregory Inwood had retired early from the diplomatic service; he had a long experience of dealing with cunning and tyrannical mid-eastern sovereigns as well as bringing on tender cuttings and sheltering them from the nips of frost. ‘Tim really means we’re all agreed that we want to save Hartscombe from Socialism, but we may have different approaches. Yours, of course, has been extremely successful in the past. Didn’t you’ – Sir Gregory had iron-grey hair, a small moustache, well-kept teeth and a winning smile – ‘get the largest Tory majority this constituency has ever known?’
‘And I didn’t get it’ – Titmuss couldn’t resist putting the Chairman right – ‘by offering a few years of television and cream teas to convicted murderers.’
‘Of course not. But we don’t want to lose the punters who don’t care for hanging. I think there may be some sense in an approach from a number of angles.’
‘There may be some sense in daring to say what you think.’ His Lordship was keeping a beady eye on the candidate.
‘I’m sure, Leslie, you’ll s
ay exactly what you mean.’ Sir Gregory turned on the full diplomatic charm.
‘I certainly will.’
‘And the question is, when will you do it? We want to use you as much as possible during the campaign.’
‘Really?’ Titmuss leant into the light and stared challengingly at Tim. ‘And how, exactly, will you want to use me?’
The candidate was as unnerved as he would have been if some daunting elderly lady, once a famous beauty, had offered to open her legs for him. He fell back, unhappily, on the sort of language he used in planning P.R. for his computer-sales business. ‘What we aim to do with you, with your kind co-operation, of course, is to raise maximum public awareness and achieve optimum media coverage. I can’t remember for the moment, have you done “Breakfast” with Kenny Iremonger?’
‘I have. I have also done lunch with Gorbachev, dinner with Deng Xiao-Ping and breakfast with Ronald Reagan. I’ve given up television, having reached the age when I am no longer required to answer foolish questions.’
‘I think Tim means’ – Sir Gregory could see that steering this candidate towards a safe seat was going to call for all his negotiating skills – ‘that we would like you to do one big event. Just one great, great crowd-puller.’
‘Absolutely right!’ Even Tim Willock realized that to discuss his plans for the Radio Worsfield ‘Breakfast Egg’ show would not be met kindly. ‘What about a speech from the steps of Hartscombe town hall? Before a huge crowd. The way Gladstone and Disraeli played it.’
‘Whatever you may think, those politicians were not my exact contemporaries.’ Lord Titmuss rose to his feet and crossed the room, making for a table on which stood one bottle of whisky and a siphon. ‘All the same,’ he went on, mixing himself a drink, ‘a speech in Hartscombe Square might be interesting. I won’t detain you for a scotch and soda. I’m sure you chaps have got a lot of work in front of you, raising public awareness.’
‘Thank you.’ Sir Gregory stood up and did his best to look grateful. ‘I’m sure Tim will give his all for the Party.’
‘Goodnight.’ Tim made for the door as though unexpectedly released from custody. ‘It’s been terribly interesting to meet you.’
‘By the way.’ Titmuss lowered his whisky and detained the candidate for an embarrassed moment. ‘In the leadership election, did you vote for the present Prime Minister?’
Tim stood still, looked longingly at the door and, at last, came out with, ‘It was very difficult. I found it so hard to make up my mind.’
‘I can believe that,’ Titmuss smiled. ‘I’m sure you find it almost impossible. So fortunate you’ve got Sir Gregory with you. Or should I call him Greg? In the great battle of Tim versus Terry, I suppose you find it rather odd that I’ve never chosen to call myself Les.’ When they’d gone he took his drink over to his desk and made another telephone call.
Terry stood in the Dust Jacket, Hartscombe’s sole remaining independent bookshop, and looked up at the shelf of second-hand books over the travel section. A line of hardbacks, their covers stained, the lettering on them faded. Some he’d read in his first year at Worsfield, with titles that had been recited like articles of faith by a wispy economics lecturer, so old that he still spoke of Russia as a heroic ally in the war against Hitler. Terry saw The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, The Road to Wigan Pier, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, The Making of the English Working Class and a handful of Left Book Club publications whose red covers had faded to pink. Then he got another whiff of Gauloises.
When he turned to look the woman was industriously, even ostentatiously, grinding out her fag on the lid of a tin, which also contained paper clips, rubber bands and a stamp or two, on a desk in the corner of the shop.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I know you don’t like them.’
‘Books about Socialism?’ He was smiling.
‘No. Cigarettes. I’m afraid I was smoking in the Magnolia the other night. One of your friends objected.’
‘That was my wife.’
‘She must have thought I was very rude.’
Knowing that this was true, Terry thought it wiser not to answer. Concentrating on trying to inject a small shot of fighting spirit into his pessimistic agent, he had hardly noticed Agnes, except as a face behind a puff of smoke and a lingering smell of foreign tobacco which Kate had resented. Now he saw the fair hair, untouched by grey, which matched the colour of her skin, cornflower eyes and laughter lines which were there whether she was amused or not. He saw a woman of fifty, still as thin, it seemed to him, as a youth, who wore jeans with a wide leather belt and a thick woollen jacket, because she was always cold in the shop. He said, looking back at the shelves, ‘Those were the books I was brought up on.’
‘They belonged to my father-in-law,’ Agnes said. ‘He was a kind of well-heeled left-wing vicar. A surplice Socialist. I suppose you could have called him that. I put them out on the second-hand shelf.’
‘Because you don’t like them?’
‘Because I want to convert a few of the blue rinses and tweed suits of Hartscombe to the Labour Party.’
‘Any success?’
‘I haven’t heard anyone going out singing “The Red Flag”. Come to think of it, I haven’t noticed anyone buying one at all. Can I sell you something?’
‘Maps, guidebooks, the history of this constituency.’
‘You’re a travel-writer?’
‘A candidate.’
‘Which one?’ She looked at him with suspicion. He was delighted to be able to tell her. ‘That’s wonderful!’ she said. ‘And I blew smoke at you. What can I do to make it up?’
‘Nothing. It was really nothing. It’s just my wife …’
‘I know what I’ll do! I’ll give you a window. I was going to make up a window for the new Sandra Tantamount. Backstroke. All about bonking in the world of Olympic swimming. Well, you’re a great deal more important than she is. You’ve got a lot of pictures of you, posters of you looking meaningful?’
‘I’ll get them for you,’ he promised, and he wondered if Penry had managed to get in a big store of meaningful posters. He thought, perhaps not.
‘And I’ll give you something. Something for luck.’ She moved back to the second-hand shelf. ‘You say you’ve read these?’
‘Most of them.’ It wasn’t entirely true.
‘Even this?’ She found a small blue volume, a faded World’s Classics edition, and handed it to him. ‘Oscar Wilde?’ He looked at the spine.
‘Collected Essays. There’s one on Socialism.’
‘Oscar Wilde the Socialist? It sounds a bit of a contradiction.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Like Mrs Thatcher the Romantic Poet. Or Leslie Titmuss the Prison Reformer. But read it. He says the great advantage of Socialism is that we wouldn’t have to waste our time feeling sorry for people.’
‘Is that a waste of time?’
‘You don’t think so?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Perhaps you’re nicer than Wilde. Have it anyway. A good-luck present. Not that it brought him much luck when you think of it. Now then, what’ve I got about the neighbourhood?’
‘My patch.’ He sounded, she thought, amazingly confident.
‘Is that what it’s going to be?’
‘Of course.’
‘You’ve got no doubts?’
‘I don’t think doubts are particularly useful things to have.’
‘I know. Some of us can’t help them. Let’s have a look.’
In the end he bought Highways and Byways round Hartscombe and Wanderer to Worsfield, a book of photographs of the surrounding villages, which was unnecessarily expensive, and a second-hand Shell Guide to the county. When he’d paid for them she took him out in the street to show him the window that would be his. It was on a prime site on the high street, to be converted into a shrine to Terry Flitton, visible to all the passers-by. It was near the ending of the year now, there’d been a night frost and the sun glittered on the pavement and on
Agnes’s face, which stood up well to it. She looked up at the name of the shop and shuddered slightly.
‘The Dust Jacket,’ she said. ‘You think that’s a terrible name for a bookshop?’
‘Well …’ – he didn’t want to hurt her feelings – ‘Unusual.’
‘I know. It sounds like a boutique. Jilly Bloxham, my partner, wanted me to call it that, and I’ve never got round to changing it. Well, then. I do hope you win.’
‘I told you. I will.’
She moved a step towards him and he thought, for a moment, that she might be going to kiss him in the way actresses kissed goodbye on the first acquaintance. Instead she held her hand out and looked, for a moment, with her short hair and jeans, like a slender and forthright boy. So he shook her hand, promised to let her have the posters, and they parted.
That night Terry and his young wife Kate lay in parallel lines in the bedroom in Tufnell Park. Their legs were straight and their toes pointing upwards like figures on a medieval tomb. ‘It’s a fantastic site,’ Terry said dreamily, gazing at the ceiling. ‘Everyone’s going to see it on their way to Sainsbury’s.’
Kate said, ‘Have you worked out why she wants to help you?’
‘She’s a Socialist,’ Terry told her, as though that explained everything.
‘If she’s such a Socialist, why’s she running a bookshop in a privileged place like Hartscombe? Why isn’t she running a bookshop in Stoke Newington?’
The Sound of Trumpets Page 3